“Yes, Iron Guard. It was the same two that came here. She arrived as they were leaving in a red pickup truck. The spirit was not strong enough to follow them because of their ring wards. But from the looks of it, I believe they will be returning shortly. The woman is hiding, watching the place now.”
The flash of inspiration was so clear that he had no doubt it was divine. The marine was not nearly as big as Toru, but he was rather tall. “Have you told any of the others?”
“No, Iron Guard.”
Toru carefully folded the map and put it inside his clothing. “What is your name?”
“Okada Hiroshi,” he answered proudly.
“You have done a great service to the Imperium today, Okada Hiroshi,” Toru said solemnly, and then he bowed. The marine was shocked at the display. It was rare to receive a compliment from one of the mighty Iron Guard. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, Iron Guard,” Hiroshi stammered.
Toru drew his sword and struck so quickly that the marine never even saw death coming. It was completely painless. Toru had already cleaned the blood from his sword and put it back in the sheath before the body toppled. He gently carried the body into the garden and hid it. He then put on his most distinctive kimono and went back to the house. He made sure to greet a few of the staff, and then snuck to the basement to carry up a crate of explosives.
After returning to the garden, he dressed Hiroshi in his kimono and set the body next to the bomb. It was enough to make a mess, but would still leave plenty of big pieces. Toru bore eight kanji, Hiroshi only bore one. A careful inspection of the body parts would reveal what he’d done, but they probably wouldn’t even check until they realized Hiroshi was also missing. His brothers would not search for him if they thought he was dead, and by the time they realized the truth, his trail would be cold.
Fuse lit, Toru escaped over the back wall into the woods. His Brute speed had gotten him a quarter mile away by the time the explosives detonated and thunder rolled through the trees. He turned for one last look at what had been his home and watched the smoke rising from the garden. For the first time in his life, he was truly alone.
The life of an echo.
Perfect sky and mountain firm.
Fires of purity burn.
On a dark ocean.
The Iron Guard understood it now. The meaning had become clear.
New York City, New York
“Buckminster Fuller. Heard of him?”
“Nope.” Francis looked up from his drink, and then suspiciously down the bar. None of the other customers seemed to be paying attention to Francis and Chandler. It was a low-rent speakeasy and since technically nobody was supposed to be here, customers pretty much minded their own business. For whatever reason, Chandler seemed to be the expert on out-of-the-way dives like this around the city. Francis kept his hat pulled low and his overcoat collar up so no one would recognize him. Luckily, it was cold out, and every time the door opened another blast of cold air would come shooting into the dark bar, so at least he wasn’t the only one dressed that way.
Chandler looked around the room, then lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I’m enjoying this detective thing. Much more interesting than accounting. Fuller’s a Cog. He’s got a little shop in Greenwich Village.”
That wasn’t particularly fancy for a Cog. “What’s his magical brilliance in? Musical theater?”
“For a rich guy, you sure do look down your nose at the arts.”
“Hey, I’ve donated piles of money to… stuff.” Francis wasn’t in the mood for witty banter. He’d told his secretary to hold his calls and then he’d slipped out through the UBF mail room and had run for his life. He’d gone from millionaire to fugitive in less than five minutes. Which was about as fast as he’d gone from nobody to millionaire in the first place. He sighed. “So what’s his deal, Ray?”
“Fuller’s a big idea man, but his thing is domes.”
“Domes?” UBF employed several Cogs who specialized in useful things like engines, electronics, or aerodynamics. “No wonder I’ve never heard of him. Who’d pay good money for a dome? Eskimos?”
Chandler finished his drink and then signaled the bartender for a refill. “The Office of the Coordinator of Information.”
“Fuller owns Dymaxion?”
“One and the same. Fuller’s come up with some sort of geometric design that chases away magic. Ten minutes after he announced it, OCI swooped in and told him to shut his trap. They have been buying everything he’s turned out since.”
Finally, some good news. “We need to buy him out.”
“Already done, chief. Congratulations. You own a company that makes domes and a funny-shaped car.”
“Just what I needed. When can I talk to this guy?”
“I told him to meet us here at seven p.m.” Chandler looked at his watch. “So about three minutes.”
“Anybody ever tell you that you’re the best accountant ever?”
“My mom did once, but I think she was lying to make me feel good about myself.” A cold wind struck as the door opened. Chandler leaned around Francis to see. “I do believe that’s our Cog.”
He was a handsome fellow in his late thirties, wearing a brown wool suit and a dark vest. Chandler waved and he came over to greet them. Confident, he looked Francis over. “Good evening, Mr. Stuyvesant,” he said. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Francis shook his hand, a little perturbed that Chandler had let slip his name.
Chandler caught the look. “I didn’t tell him.”
“I recognize you from the papers.” Fuller took the barstool next to him. Francis noted that he was wearing multiple wristwatches. Sheesh, Cogs and their odd habits… Francis was thankful that Browning was relatively normal compared to most of them, and he was a wizard when it came to guns, so that was saying something.
Fuller continued. “The transference of such a massive sum of funds occurred so rapidly that I’m not entirely surprised to see that it was a company with as many resources and as well-informed as United Blimp and Freight, that would be so interested in my spheroidal research.”
“What?”
Chandler interpreted. “We paid a lot of money, very quickly.”
“Indeed,” Fuller replied, happy as a calm. “A truly accommodative sum.”
“How much money, Ray?”
“More than I’ll ever make.” Chandler grinned. “Let me get you two a table.”
Francis’ head hurt. He’d dealt with many Cogs in his relatively short life. They were all geniuses, even before their brains were boosted by magic. He’d heard about a few people that the Power had come upon later in life, and they’d gone from relatively normal communication to absolute incomprehensibility as a result. He was guessing Fuller was one of those. Cogs tended to be eccentric, but this man was either the smartest or the densest one of the bunch. “Wait… Wait, I need you to try to explain that again.”
Fuller was very proud of his Dymaxion nullifier. “Tensional integrity, or as I call it, tensegrity, is a structural relationship principle in which structural shape is guaranteed by the finitely closed, comprehensively continuous, tensional behaviors of the system and not by the discontinuous and exclusively local compressional member behaviors! The nullifier is based on tensegrity. The Power, itself existing omni simultaneously as a geometric construction, is driven from the area of spheroidal influence upon operation of the nullifier.”
“Jesus…” Francis rubbed his temples. “Okay, let’s try this. If somebody had a nullifier, and an Active wanted to be able to use their Power around it, how would they beat it?”
“Beat it?”
“Say I’m telekinetic, and that guy over there”-Francis pointed at a random drunk-“was about to shoot me with a gun. He’s got a nullifier though, so my Power doesn’t work. So, how can I pick up this glass”-Francis lifted his scotch-“and hit him in the face with it?”
“Hmmm… You could throw it.”
Francis sighed. “I’d prefer
to throw it with my brain.”
“Magic as weaponry? Mr. Stuyvesant, I’ll have you know my life’s work has been based in livingry, not killingry.”
“Are those even real words?”
Fuller seemed offended. “Absolutely. They are now.”
The Cog seemed like a decent enough sort, his brain was just running on a different track than Francis’. “Let me level with you, Mr. Fuller. You’ve already sold some of these to a group called the OCI, correct?”
“Why, yes. I’ve created and sold a total of seven of the devices.”
“Really?” Francis was surprised. “That’s it?”
“Each one takes months of effort. The interaccommodative housing is simple enough, but the geodesic device is rather complex in its manufacture. Currently, I am the only individual capable of crafting the nullifiers, though I have tried to train others; their crafting requires almost an individual artistic touch rather than a replicatable construction methodology.”
“It’s hard, so you’re the only one that can make them?”
“That is what I said.”
I’m getting better at this. “Okay. The OCI has been using your inventions to do some very bad things. Like depowering Actives so they can assault them.”
“Why would they do such a terrible thing?”
“I don’t know. Every time we’ve met they’re too busy trying to kill us to ask.”
Fuller was confused. “Us?”
“Us… Actives.” Francis concentrated on his glass. It rose off the table, hung there for a moment, and then floated gently back down. “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to be able to use my God given magical Power to make this glass go up and down without asking the government’s permission first.”
Fuller corrected him. “ Up and down are archaic terms, when in reality you mean in and out based upon the object’s relation to the gravitational center of the Earth…”
“I bet you and my buddy Jake would get along swell.”
“But I can see what you mean. I did not know my inventions were being used to cause harm. I do not approve.”
“Well, first and foremost, now that you work for me, you’re not making any more of them for the OCI. Will the other ones break or wear out?”
“They are very resilient and as long as the interaccommodative housing is unharmed and the spheroidal nullifier is in motion, then it will retain magical cohesion, even with minor maintenance. The first one I created was large enough to be motorized for continual operation and had a greater range, while the later six were portable but had to be spun by hand, which gives them only a few minutes of usage at a time, and a limited range.”
“Gotcha. So smash it or stop it from moving. So getting back to my original question, how do I get around a nullifier?”
“As in the theoretical application of your glass of alcohol against that individual’s face?” Fuller pointed at the same man Francis had.
“What’cha looking at, asshole?” the drunken construction worker growled. “Got a problem?”
“Nothing, sir,” Francis answered happily. “Let me buy you a drink.” Chandler was sitting at the bar near the entrance and had caught the exchange. He signaled the bartender to send the big fellow another round. Good man. “Lower your voice. Are you trying to get us beat up?”
“Sorry, Mr. Stuyvesant. There is one hypothetical answer to your question. Fuller produced a pencil and a notepad from his coat. “The Power is made up of thousands of individual geometric constructs.” He quickly scribbled a complex design onto the paper. “This is what yours, as a Mover, looks like.”
Francis took the pad. It was the design for a spell, only much more complex than anything the Society had cobbled together in the Rune Arcanium. This was closer to some of the things that Sullivan was playing with. He had never seen what his own looked like before. It was strangely familiar, like a half-remembered dream. “Where’d you learn this?”
“Learn it?”
“Who taught you this spell?”
“I’m looking at it right now,” Fuller explained. “I can see the Power. I can always see magic and its many complex connections. That was how I was able to design the spheroid’s repellent omnialternative correlation for the nullifier.”
That blew him away. “You can see the Power? All the time?”
“Why, yes. Of course.”
However much money Chandler had spent to pick this guy up was well worth it. Sullivan’s few minutes dead and hanging around the Power had given them several new spells, and Fuller could see everything right now! Francis was going to be rich… well, richer. “Wow. I really wish I had more time. Back to the business of beating your nullifier..”
“In my travels I’ve come across two types of connections to the Power: those that are chosen by the Power directly, and those that man has created through his own experimentation. Their appearance is drastically different, as if the original was created by a master sculptor and the others are a copy done in chalk on a bumpy sidewalk by a fat-fingered child. The nullifier will repel either. However.. ” Fuller took back the notepad and flipped to a new page. This drawing was much more complicated. It was shape on top of shape, using various points as starting areas for new lines and circles, until half the page was filled with a garbled mess. “This is the one Power-related geometry that not only resists the repulsion of the nullifier, but will actually destroy the omnialternative correlation.”
“So if this spell comes close to a nullifier?”
“A catastrophic release of energy,” Fuller answered. “Far greater than the interaccommodative housing can-”
“Boom?”
Fuller sighed like he was talking to a particularly idiotic subject. “Yes. Boom.”
“Big or little? We talking hand grenade or Peace Ray?”
“Well… maybe grenade. Probably smaller than that. I would assume more like a very large firecracker… except perhaps for Dymaxion Nullifier Number One, which would be roughly equivalent to ten pounds of TNT.”
That could ruin someone’s day. Francis took the notepad. “Can I have this?”
“You have paid me a sum of money sufficient to guarantee the financial freedom necessary to pursue my life’s work.”
“So… yeah?”
“Yes, Mr. Stuyvesant. You may have my notepad.”
The spell would be remarkably hard to get right. “Where did you see this one?”
“Only once. Several years ago I was taking the train to Chicago. A young man boarded and rode for a time. This particular geometry was bonded to him. I have not seen its like since, and I have seen many Actives.”
Francis put the sheet representing his Mover abilities next to the mystery Power. The new one had ten times the lines. He had no idea how that translated into real world use, but he sure hoped that guy was on their side. “What does it do?”
“I have no idea. Are you familiar with the principles relating to the creation of a geometry on a solid plane of-”
“Yeah, I can spellbind.”
“Spellbind… Spellbound…” Fuller smiled. “An interesting portmanteau. Would you mind terribly if I were to use that?”
“Why not? You seem to like sticking words together. So if I create this near a nullifier, it’ll blow it up?”
“It is the one geometry that I am aware of which, in theory, would do so. However, I have never attempted to activate this particular geometry myself in order to see what would happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because, Mr. Stuyvesant. That spell frightens me. I can extrapolate no possible explanation of what it may do. It is beyond my comprehension and has troubled my sleep at night.” There was a sudden chill wind as the door opened. “I would urge the utmost caution in its creation.”
There was a sudden shout from the bar. “Hey, watch it, jerk!” It was Chandler.
Francis looked up to see what the commotion was. His accountant had gotten up and shoved the construction worker. The big man was getting up with
a look on his face that suggested Chandler was about to get pasted. “What in the world is he doing?” And then Francis realized that there were two men standing in the doorway, hands in their coat pockets, with a look that just screamed G-men.
“What’s your deal?”
“That’s right! I said your wife’s fat and ugly!” Chandler raised his fists in an exaggeratedly drunken manner, then blundered backwards into the new arrivals, distracting them. One G-man shoved Chandler, who then slugged the construction worker in the mouth. The big man hit a table and took down a pair of dockworkers. Several other toughs took the opportunity to jump in. The UBF vice president of finance began shouting, “Raid! Raid!” Which caused everyone else in the place to stand up to see what was going on. The construction worker got up, charged Chandler, missed and took one of the feds to the ground.
Most of the patrons who were sober enough to not want to get arrested ran for it. Francis stashed the notebook. “Come on, Fuller.” He got up, grabbed the Cog by the arm, and dragged him straight for the back. These places always had multiple exits in case of a police raid. The whole front of the bar had descended into a free-for-all. Francis looked back just long enough to make eye contact with Chandler, who winked, and then hit a sailor with a chair.
The speakeasy was in a basement. There was a brick hallway that went past the toilets, up some old metal stairs, and ended at a wooden door. Francis pushed hard and hit somebody with the door. The alley was even darker than the bar. Before his eyes could adjust, the man he’d struck took hold of Francis’ sleeve. “Stop in the name of the law!”
Francis threw out a wild surge of Power. The G-man was slammed back off of his feet, and from the racket, into a bunch of trash cans. Still pulling Fuller along, Francis ran toward the light of the street. More bar patrons were coming out behind them and there was enough noise now that the downed G-man wouldn’t be able to pick them out of the crowd. Francis turned right on the busy sidewalk and slowed to a walk.
Fuller seemed really excited. “That was interesting.”
“You’ve never seen me. You’ve never met me. You weren’t here. They’re after me, got it? And they can’t know we’ve talked. It’s for your own safety. Go home. Understand?” Fuller nodded. “Good. Keep on walking like everything is normal. I’ll be in touch.” Francis veered to the side, saw a break in traffic, and ran across two lanes of traffic. It was an obvious move, but he couldn’t let the OCI know that he’d met the man building their Dymaxions.
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