The Warlock's Curse

by Hobson, M. K.

  “You have a call from California, from a Mr. William Edwards. Connecting you now.”

  Will was about to say “hello” when the voice on the other end of the line boomed with expansive warmth:

  “William Edwards! I thought we would never hear from you! Waters has spoken so very highly of your skills.”

  “I’m glad to speak to you as well,” Will said, feeling a rush of relief at the warmth of the man’s greeting. “I wanted to telephone and apologize for the delay. I would like to accept the apprenticeship you have offered me. I can come to Detroit immediately.”

  “This is wonderful news. You certainly are not planning to come by train?”

  Will—who, up to that point, had been thinking only about getting to San Francisco and Jenny’s crooked lawyer—hadn’t given more than a passing thought to how he was going to get to Detroit. But of course he’d have to take a train. How else could he be expected to get there? He was so puzzled by Grigoriyev’s statement that he stammered:

  “Well, I do have an automobile,” he said. “It runs on a new type of power source of my own design. It could make it all the way to Detroit.”

  A sound of mildly scoffing indulgence crackled across the line. “Yes, Waters has told me about this ‘Otherwhere Flume’ you have been working on. I must remind you, Mr. Edwards, continuous power delivery is hardly revolutionary. It has been around for decades.”

  “No it hasn’t,” Will blurted—then, realizing how impertinent it must have sounded, added: “Not really continuous power delivery, I mean. There’s always been the Connection Drop Problem.”

  There was a silence over the line.

  “No one has found a way around the Connection Drop Problem,” said Grigoriyev.

  “I have,” said Will. He let the silence hang. He’d promised Jenny not to reveal more, and, besides that, he liked giving this man something to look forward to.

  “If that is the truth, then it won’t be long before you’re not an apprentice anymore, and are rather a highly paid employee,” Grigoriyev cleared his throat—a rough, rattling sound over the long-distance lines. “You must come at once and bring this Flume of yours. But don’t bother with the automobile, you’ll find we’ve got plenty of those in Detroit.”

  “We can be there in a few days,” Will said.

  “We?” Grigoriyev must have said the word quite loudly, for it crackled over the line like fireworks. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

  “Well, I won’t be coming alone.” Will fingered the thick silk-wrapped receiver cord. “I’m ... I’m bringing my wife.”

  “Wife?” Grigoriyev bleated. “Mr. Edwards, you never mentioned anything about a wife!”

  Will didn’t quite know what to say, so he said nothing.

  “Didn’t Mr. Waters explain our position on privacy to you?” Grigoriyev said. “Haven’t you read the terms of the apprenticeship contract? It is a strict matter of Tesla Industries policy, dictated by Mr. Tesla himself. Our apprentices live on the Compound, in private dormitories, and must uphold the strictest modes of conduct and sanitation. You are simply not allowed have a wife!”

  “I can’t very well leave her behind, Mr. Grigoriyev!” Will suddenly realized that in this situation that would be exactly what Grigoriyev would demand he do. He covered with a quick lie: “She has no family out here and no one to stay with. She must come with me.”

  There was another long pause. Finally, Grigoriyev spoke again.

  “I’m sure this is a very expensive call for you, Mr. Edwards, so for the sake of your wallet we will not discuss the matter any further. I will simply have to find some way to make this right.” He didn’t sound very happy about it. “Mr. Edwards, please keep in mind that at Tesla Industries we put a priority on secrecy and discretion—as well as a pure, sanitary mode of existence. Your wife will have to respect that. I take it she is ... well-behaved?”

  “Of course, Mr. Grigoriyev!” said Will, putting some outrage into the answer. Grigoriyev made a sound that might have been a grunt of satisfaction or disbelief. There was a brief silence.

  “She’s not fat, is she?” Grigoriyev asked.

  “Not at all,” Will said, and his answer must have been a bit warm because Grigoriyev then asked, with an even more intense note of alarm, “For God’s sake, you’re not fat, are you?”

  “No, sir. I’m not fat.”

  “Chubby at all?”

  “No, I’m a perfectly normal size.” Will heard Grigoriyev release a long sigh of relief.

  “Thank goodness. Mr. Tesla might have overlooked it, given your brilliance, but he wouldn’t have liked it. This will make things much easier. Now, you must not take the train. It is far too dirty and slow. We must have you here immediately. Where are you now? Don’t you live somewhere near San Francisco?”

  “I’m in Stockton right now,” said Will. His head was spinning from the speed at which the man changed subjects, and the oddness of the subjects themselves. “But I will be in San Francisco on Monday. I have ... business there.”

  “Excellent. After your business is done, you must go to Berkeley, to the College of Mechanics. There’s a graduate student in the physics department who goes by ‘Massy.’ Ask for him. He will send you through the Dimensional Subway.”

  Will’s heart leapt. He’d heard about the Dimensional Subways. They were still experimental, but it was said that they had the potential to completely replace the old-fashioned magically powered transportation portals called Haälbeck Doors—the use of which, for members of the “Malmantic Generation,” was an invitation to a sickening bout of magical allergy. A vast network of Haälbeck doors still existed, but they could be used safely only by older businessmen, men born before The Great Change, whose ability to use magic was unimpaired.

  The older generation’s use of Haälbeck Doors (not to mention a million other kinds of magic) was the source of great hard-feeling among their younger counterparts. Up-and-coming businessmen begrudged their seniors their access to swift, easy magical transportation across the country. Some even went so far as to deem it a “Mantic Trust.” There had been increasingly loud demands that the government take steps to bust this trust, to “level the playing field” for the younger professionals.

  Will couldn’t care less about the political posturing—he left that stuff to Argus—but he knew that Dimensional Subways and other scientific advancements like it were going to be critical in settling the issue. Will was thrilled at the prospect of seeing it in action.

  “That will be fine,” said Will, but Grigoriyev had already rung off without a goodbye.

  Will gently replaced the receiver in its cradle, simultaneously elated and disquieted. He hadn’t even imagined that the presence of Jenny, playing the role of wife, might give Tesla Industries a second thought about him. Gee, maybe he should have read the apprenticeship contract more carefully. But all that writing had been so tiny.

  What if they decided that they couldn’t take a married apprentice at all? That it was too hazardous to their jealously guarded security? Or worse, a threat to their “pure, sanitary mode of existence” (whatever the hell that meant). Wouldn’t that be a piece of irony? Just like that story where the wife sold her hair to buy the husband a watch fob when the husband had already sold his watch to buy her a comb. Will never had liked that story.

  And then there was the fact that Jenny had actually started to take an interest in his work. She had made him promise to patent his Flume! What would Mr. Grigoriyev think of that kind of meddling?

  Well, no use worrying about it. He was a married man now, even if the role was purely fictional. And his purely fictional wife wanted to go dancing.

  It being the Friday night after a holiday, there was no shortage of dances. After a good hearty dinner, Will took Jenny to a place he knew, one he and Pask had haunted on many a Saturday night—the Tivoli Concert Hall on El Dorado.

  The admission fee was twenty-five cents for a couple. The inside of the dance hall was cavernous and echoing
, and had always reminded Will of a gymnasium. At one end of the hall was a small stage, where a ten-piece ensemble played marches and two-steps and slow drags.

  Dozens of couples were already dancing under a ceiling hung with small electric bulbs inside colorful Chinese paper lanterns. Even more couples milled above the dance floor, on the darkened mezzanine balcony, sipping soft drinks judiciously made hard by the addition of flask-carried liquor.

  Jenny gazed around herself with wonder as they entered. Looking down at her, Will felt a sudden thrill of pride. He’d never come here with a pretty girl on his arm. All in all, it was a much nicer feeling than he’d expected. He could get used to this.

  “You’ve never been here before?” he asked her, before immediately realizing what a dumb question it was. Jenny said she’d been to Stockton with her dad, and he certainly wouldn’t have taken her out dancing.

  “I’ve never been to a place like this at all,” Jenny breathed, wide-eyed. “The girls at my school all try to keep up with the newest steps ... but none of us have ever actually gone to a dance hall!” She watched the dancers swirling across the polished wood floor, the girls in frothy white gowns of embroidered linen and lace. She looked down at herself ruefully. “Gosh, I’m not even dressed right.”

  “It won’t matter once we’re moving.” Will pulled her toward the floor. “Come on.”

  They had to push their way through to get a good place, but they were soon moving together smoothly, her hand on his shoulder, his hand on her waist. Will had an extensive experience of female waists—in the context of the dance floor, anyway—and he discovered that Jenny’s was comparatively very fine; firm, smooth, and warm.

  “You must come here a lot,” she said. “The coat-check girls all know you. I heard them giggling.”

  Will grinned ruefully. “Pask and I have given them plenty to giggle about.” When Jenny blushed at the implication, he added quickly, “Not like that! I mean, we just tease them, that’s all. Give them a hard time.” Damn it, that was the wrong choice of words. He felt his face getting red too.

  “I have simply got to get some new clothes.” Jenny quickly changed the subject, looking not at Will’s face but instead at a particularly lovely gown spinning past them. “I haven’t a stitch beside what I’m wearing.”

  Will’s face remained red, and he said nothing. Jenny looked at her hand, resting on the breast of his suit jacket. “You’ll need new things, too,” she mused.

  Will shrugged. “I don’t need much. Besides, I think I’ll be getting a stipend from Tesla Industries eventually. Maybe I can hold out until then.” He struggled to recall his diligent skimming of the apprenticeship contract—hadn’t there been something in there about money?

  “We’ll figure it out,” she said, giving his chest a confident pat. “Meanwhile, I’ll just keep track of how much I spend on you. We’ll settle it all up when we get divorced. Don’t worry, I’ll give you easy terms.”

  “Oh, really?” Will smiled down at her. “I hope you’ll keep in mind that I’m providing you a service as well. Keeping you safe from mashers, showing you the sights of Stockton, driving the car. There’s got to be some value in that.”

  “With a car like Pask’s, you’re virtually ensuring you never get put out of a job, William,” Jenny smirked.

  “Why do you always call me William?”

  “It’s your name, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but everyone else always calls me Will. Or sometimes Bill.”

  Jenny made a face. “I don’t like ‘Will’,” she said. “It makes you sound stubborn and perverse. Or like a legal document associated with death. And Bill is even worse. It makes you sound unpaid and unwelcome, something to be dodged. I like William. It’s a beautiful name. Though you’ll notice I don’t include Wordsworth in that estimation.”

  “And what about ‘Edwards’?” he said, softly. It seemed a more serious question than the ones that had gone before.

  Her face was impassive. “I’ll be ‘Hansen’ again, eventually.”

  “But you’ll never be ‘Miss’ again. You’ll be a divorcee. Doesn’t that bother you? You act like you don’t care.”

  Jenny shook her head sharply, forestalling further conversation. And Will realized that it did bother her, and she did care, but while she’d planned out the tactical logistics to a nicety, the emotional logistics had yet to be worked out. And until such time as they could be, she was determined not to think about them at all.

  They slowly made their way off the floor after the song ended. It was hot, and the band was launching straight into an up-tempo castle walk—a popular favorite—and a stampede of couples rushing onto the floor made it hard to pass. As they were moving toward the refreshment counter, they passed a cluster of very distinctive young people. Each one wore clothing of unbroken black—the boys even wore black shirtfronts and black collars and black ties. But it wasn’t their bizarre outfits that distinguished them; it was their sickly, sallow complexions, seemingly smudged with purple bruises. The girls emphasized this ugly contrast by heavily ringing their eyes with black kohl. They smoked black cigarettes in ebony holders, blowing the smoke upwards in elegant arcs. Jenny stared back at them as she and Will stood in line for drinks.

  “Dorians,” she whispered to him.

  Will nodded, sparing the group an amused look. The black-clad youths were devotees of the British writer Oscar Wilde, specifically his famous Lippincott’s serial, “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” They fancied themselves living the American version of La Vie Boheme. To achieve the dark, wan, sickly look that they seemed to associate with that Bohemian life, they used—or rather misused—magic. The special cigarettes they smoked—”Golden Bat” brand, which came in an exquisite green and gold package—had been specially charmed to have a variety of effects on the smoker. They were as stimulating as the cocaine that came in medicine bottles, and they bestowed a distinctive glamour on the hair and eyes, lending both a dramatic, fascinating gleam. The final effect derived from the first two; the charm placed upon the tobacco was sufficient to induce the mildest form of magical allergy—too little to cause any real harm, but poisonous enough to give the users an “interesting” pallor.

  “They’re all over the place in San Francisco.” Jenny’s tone was intensely disapproving. “They’re like a plague.”

  “And now they’ve spread to Stockton,” smirked Will. “Can Fresno be far behind?”

  But Jenny clearly didn’t think they were funny. She stood glaring at the Dorians so hard that eventually one of them—a girl—noticed and raised a plucked eyebrow, and blew a thin plume of glowing smoke in her direction. The purplish smoke curled in the shape of a bat—a hallmark of the expensive cigarettes.

  “People shouldn’t use magic that way,” said Jenny, and this time instead of whispering she said it loudly, so her voice would carry. “It’s not healthy, and it’s an insult to everyone who’s really suffered and—oh, it just makes me mad!” Will might have had to break up some kind of fight had Jenny not turned and started shoving her way toward the door. Will didn’t catch up with her until she was already retrieving her canvas duster from one of the giggling coat-check girls.

  “Come on, Scuff. They’re just a bunch of poseurs. What’s got you so upset?”

  “I’m tired,” she said flatly. “I want to go back to the hotel.”

  When they got back to the hotel, however, Jenny’s mood had not improved. She tore the hairpins out of her hair and slammed them down on the side table.

  “As if the Black Flu epidemics were just some kind of ... joke!” she muttered, as she went to her grip for a boar’s-hair brush. She sat on the edge of an ottoman and began to brush her hair; the action seemed to calm her. “Some kind of fashion statement! Almost a million people, all over the world—dead! And that doesn’t even take into account all the millions more who have suffered. Mothers, and fathers, and—” She closed her mouth and brushed with a vengeance. Will sat on a chair watching her. Her hair gleamed in t
he electric lamplight.

  “And your family isn’t helping matters any!” she said, out of the blue.

  Will raised his hands, startled. “What has my family got to do with the Black Flu? I lost a sister to it myself, you know!”

  “Your brother Argus,” she hissed. “California’s Man of the People—he based his whole campaign on an anti-immunization platform!”

  Will groaned. He couldn’t think of anything he wanted to discuss less than politics—especially his brother’s politics. But the question of mandatory Panchrest immunization had divided the nation—and it was true, Argus’ passionate partisanship on the issue had swept him to victory.

  The Panchrest—the life-saving medication that had halted the Black Flu epidemics—was able to stop the deadly allergy because it blocked the natural magical channels in the human body. It “gummed up the works,” so to speak. And the effect was irreversible. Those who took the Panchrest were rendered immune to magical allergy—but also unable to work any kind of magic at all.

  This was a matter of little concern to the members of the Malmantic Generation; since the strange generational allergy was discovered, it was clear that magical practice was outside the reach of humanity’s new breed. However, there was the question of the Old Users, and the disquieting advantage they enjoyed. Their ability to use magic without impairment was an ever-increasing source of concern.

  And so, some had begun to argue that the Panchrest should be administered, preventively, to every United States citizen—young and old. Supporters trumpeted the scheme of mandatory immunization as a critical necessity to public health—but their deeper motivations were just as clear. Mandatory immunization would bust the “Magical Trust.” Older businessmen would have no magical advantage over their younger comrades. No longer could they take advantage of Haälbeck Doors, or a hundred other little charms that they currently employed to their mercantile advantage.

  The political faction Argus had aligned himself with—the Anti-Immunizers—argued that the government had no place interfering with the ability of the older generation to conduct their business. They argued that legislating such a fundamental rearrangement of the human system was unconstitutional. And they argued (probably most persuasively, in Will’s opinion) that as the Panchrest had been developed very quickly, in response to the national emergency of the Black Flu epidemics, that no one really knew what its long-term effects might be.