The Warlock's Curse

by Hobson, M. K.

  “Well, of course Argus came back early,” muttered Will. “If he got wind that someone was going to hang him in effigy, he wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  “Dad will see,” said Jenny softly, striking a tightly closed fist against her leg. “I’m going to show him and then he’ll understand. He’ll understand everything.”

  Then she didn’t say anything else for a long time.

  They drove down to the Ferry Terminal Building, where they could catch the ferry that would take them to Oakland, where the Berkeley campus was. Given that Mr. Grigoriyev had said that the Dimensional Subway would take them straight to Detroit, it wasn’t worth making arrangements for transporting the Baker. They both agreed (Will more reluctantly than Jenny) that it was time for them to part ways with the crummy old machine.

  Using tools from his leather bag, Will carefully removed the Otherwhere Flume and tucked the cigar box safely inside his vest. It was bulky and the corners poked him, but it was safer there than rattling around in his bag of tools. Jenny withdrew her little calfskin grip from under the seat. In their escape, Will had neglected to retrieve her packages from the automat, but he supposed she didn’t dare comment on that.

  Even though the Baker was a beat-up old wreck, Will felt a twinge of regret. He and that car had had some fine times. He gave it a last fond pat. Jenny sniffed.

  “Honestly,” she said. “It’s a rotten heap and the one good thing about it you just took out. Which, strictly speaking, I own, since I bought the car.”

  “Don’t push your luck,” Will growled, lifting the toolbag and settling it over his shoulder. Leaving the Baker behind made him keenly aware of how little he truly had. His Otherwhere Flume, his toolbag, his cap, the clothes on his back—and an angry father-in-law hot on his heels.

  A quick ferry ride to Oakland, followed by a quick streetcar ride, and they were on Berkeley’s leafy campus. Will knew the campus layout by heart—before he’d been accepted into the Tesla Industries apprenticeship program, Berkeley had been one of his top choices of colleges. He’d often scrutinized the campus map, noting with special interest the South Hall, which housed one of the very first physics laboratories in the United States.

  And even though he was going to Tesla Industries, Will felt no less excited as they entered the ivy-covered building and climbed the polished wooden stairs to the second floor.

  Entering the physics lab, Will was reminded of the similar lab he’d worked in at the Polytechnic. Bunsen burners sat atop soapstone work surfaces; cabinets and shelves were crowded with apparatuses, tools, etched reagent bottles. He breathed in the wonderful smell of science—tangy and bitter and profoundly rational.

  In a far corner of the room a heavyset young man stood hunched over some kind of experimental setup that was emitting random, infrequent clicks. Curious, Will crossed the room to get a closer look. The sound of his steps was swallowed by the soft asphalt floor tiles.

  The clicks, Will discovered, were coincident with the flash of a phosphorescent tube and the galvanic jerk of a pen on a scrolling piece of paper. The paper was also being marked at regular intervals by a chronometer. Nearby was a barometer; as the chronometer ticked off a marking, the heavyset young man indicated the barometric pressure reading near to it.

  Will was so fascinated that he didn’t even look at the young experimenter taking the measurements. The clicking device seemed familiar.

  “A Geiger counter!” he blurted, when the recognition finally hit him.

  It was only then that the two young men actually looked at each other, and when they did their surprise was compounded.

  “William Edwards!” the young experimenter cried.

  “Tom!” said Will. There was a round of hearty handshaking and backslapping. “Are you the one everyone calls ‘Massy’?”

  “Yeah, the fellows gave it to me as a goof.” Massy sheepishly patted his belly, which had indeed gained in mass since Will had last seen him. “Too much time in the lab, not enough with the kettle bells.”

  “Jenny, this is Thomas Masterson,” Will said. “He was a senior at the Polytechnic when I was just a raw frosh. He showed me around.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Jenny, extending her hand. “I’m Will’s wife.”

  “Wife!” Massy’s eyes widened, and he stared at Will. “But you just graduated, didn’t you? You move fast!”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Will said. “I’m on my way to Tesla Industries. I’ve been accepted into their apprenticeship program.”

  “You’re going to Fort Tesla? With a wife?” Massy shook his head, as if he didn’t know which fact was more astonishing. “Boy, they must really want you!”

  “You know, I’m standing right here,” said Jenny, rather sourly. Massy gave her a courtly bow.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Edwards,” he grinned. His eyes traveled over the gear they both carried—Will’s toolbag, Jenny’s little grip—then back up to them. “So, using my exceptional powers of deduction, I reach the following conclusion. Given that Tesla Industries thinks you’re so swell, they’ve decided to impress you by offering you the use of the Dimensional Subway to get to Detroit. Am I right?”

  “On the nose.”

  “Fine and dandy,” Massy said. “Happy to oblige. But you’ll have to wait until I take my next reading. I’ve been taking them every fifteen minutes for the past month—it’s been one hell of a job, even with someone relieving me at night.”

  “What are you recording?” Will asked, peering at the pens on the paper.

  “Studying the correlation between cosmic rays and barometric pressure,” Massy said. “You know how some researchers think that the Connection Drop Problem is associated with barometric pressure, right? Well, it’s my theory that it’s not the barometric pressure, but the fact that more cosmic rays get through when the pressure is high.

  In other words, I’m starting to get the idea that it’s the cosmic rays that cause the random connection loss.”

  “You don’t say.” Will shoved his hands in his pockets, doing his best to remain casual. He glanced at Jenny, but she was pointedly ignoring the conversation, instead looking out a window onto the smooth green lawn outside the South Hall.

  “I certainly do! I’ve been taking readings for a month now, and the preliminary results are very interesting. I’ve already decided to do my master’s thesis on it.”

  Will cleared his throat. He looked at his shoes for what seemed quite a long time before an inspiration struck him.

  “So how are you accounting for the terrestrial radiation?” he asked.

  Massy shrugged. “I’ll just factor it out using the Princeton averages.”

  Will sucked in air through his teeth.

  “What?” said Massy, immediately on guard.

  “Hell, Tom, I don’t like to mention it if you’ve already been taking readings for a month—”

  “What?” Massy roared.

  “This building has a granite foundation,” said Will. “Noticed it when I came in.”

  “So?” Annoyance laced the graduate student’s voice.

  “Haven’t you heard about the comparative analysis of granite they did down at Stanford?” Will asked. “They found extremely high radiation in some California granites. Who can say how much radioactivity the granite foundation in this building is giving off?”

  “God damn it!” Massy blurted. “Granite? You’re saying my whole set of readings might be screwy because of granite?”

  “It’s not so bad.” Will strove to sound soothing. “You just have to figure out the exact level of terrestrial radiation you’re dealing with. Do some comparative studies of different granites, that kind of thing.”

  “That’ll add months!”

  “Oh well, it’s not like you know of anyone else who is working on this,” Will said. Then he added, somewhat pointedly: “Do you?”

  “No, no one,” said Massy. “But still—”

  “Then what are you worried about? Tak
e all the time you need. Get your numbers right. It’ll make defending your thesis that much easier, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Massy. He didn’t sound happy about it, but he sounded convinced, and Will exhaled a silent sigh of relief.

  After taking his reading, Massy led them out of the laboratory and down the hall. He walked ahead of them both, muttering curses under his breath as he did. Jenny leaned close to Will.

  “Good work,” she said, elbowing him in the ribs. “You’re sneakier than I thought.”

  “I am not sneaky,” Will whispered back, hotly. “California granite is radioactive.”

  “Well, thank goodness, because otherwise your Nobel Prize is going to have Thomas Masterson’s name on it. Now, I don’t like to say I told you so—”

  “Then don’t.”

  “Fine. But I will say this. The sooner we get your Flume patented the better!”

  Will said nothing, but suddenly felt a strong agreement with her. The thought of anyone else getting credit for the discovery he had made—even Massy, who he liked—was flat out infuriating.

  Massy came to a stop at a very simple door, certainly simpler than one would expect for what lay behind it. It actually appeared to be a broom closet that had been retrofitted for its special purpose. On the door some wag had tacked up a sign printed by New York City’s Transit Commission, warning travelers against swearing and spitting. On a hook screwed into the wooden doorframe hung a clipboard; it held a sheet to record the Subway’s use. Using a stub of pencil tied to the board by a piece of dirty string, Massy quickly wrote down their names. Then, pulling out a key he wore around his neck, he unlocked the large wooden cupboard on the wall.

  Within the cupboard was a tangle of wires. Will could see glass fuses as well as a board of numbered wheel dials and a very large knife switch. A list of locations was thumbtacked to the inside of the cupboard door. Massy peered at this list, running his finger down it until he found the numerical code for Detroit. He carefully set the dials, then threw up the knife switch. There was a low hum, and the door ... smudged. It didn’t shimmer, or glow, it just seemed to lose focus. Will blinked to make sure it wasn’t his eyes, but it wasn’t.

  Fascinated, Will rubbernecked over Massy’s shoulder into the open cupboard. Even a glimpse of the arrangement of the wiring board might help him understand how it all worked. It was a piece of Tesla Industries technology that was still extremely experimental, and they had never published any information about how it actually worked. But Massy quickly closed the cupboard and locked it.

  “Now, it’s really quite easy,” he said. “You just walk through this door, and you’ll be in the Otherwhere. In front of you, you’ll see another door. The distance to the second door is proportionate to the actual physical distance between here and the place you’re going, so I’d say that makes it ... oh, about fifty feet. So you walk that fifty feet to the second door, you open it, and you’ll be in Detroit.”

  “And it’s not going to make us sick?” said Jenny. The brisk, businesslike tone in her voice told Will she was scared.

  “That’s the whole point, there’s no magic in it,” Massy said. “Not a bit. It’s powered by electricity. It goes through an Otherwhere where the wind never stops, so they’ve rigged up a whole bunch of windmills to generate electrical power.”

  “And what about that Connection Drop Problem everyone’s always talking about?” Jenny said. “What if that happens while we’re in there?”

  “Unlikely,” Massy said, stroking his chin. “If it did, you might get stuck in there. But someone would get around to resetting the system. Eventually.”

  Jenny looked at Will with naked alarm on her face.

  “Never fear, Mrs. Edwards,” Massy chuckled. “You have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning.”

  “Are you referring to the probability in a given year, or over a whole lifetime?” she snapped at him. “Because I will have you know they are orders of magnitude apart!”

  Massy was taken aback by this outburst.

  Will put a steadying hand on Jenny’s arm. “Actually, it’s probably more on the order of me personally getting hit by a meteorite within the next fifteen minutes,” he offered. Jenny’s eyes turned inward, and he could almost see the calculations flickering behind her eyes as she factored in a multitude of estimated variables, including the area of the Earth’s surface, the density of human habitation, the size of Will’s head ...

  “About one in twenty trillion,” she concluded with a sigh, after just a few seconds. “That’s much better.”

  Massy was silent for a long moment, looking between them. Then he released a whistle of admiration. Will felt a strange thrill of pride at having a wife—even a fictional one—who could be calmed by mathematical analysis.

  “I guess I can see why you married her!” said Massy. “If Tesla Industries wasn’t men only, they might take you both.”

  Jenny frowned at him, chin lifted regally “I’d say thanks for the compliment, except I can’t see how either one of those statements qualified.”

  “All right, all right,” Massy said, throwing up his hands. Catching a glimpse of his wristwatch, he startled. “Hey, I got to get back and take my reading! Get on through, you two. And whatever you do, don’t stop in the middle.” He directed this advice at Will particularly. “Don’t you dare go Otherwhere exploring. You get lost in there, and no one’s going to come in and find you.”

  Readjusting the satchel on his shoulder, Will took Jenny’s hand and opened the door.

  “Oh yeah, and watch out for Jepson! He’s a no-good son-of-a—” But the rest of Massy’s words were lost as Will closed the door behind them.

  All at once they were in a hot, arid desert under a bright burgundy-colored sky that roiled with clouds the color of pomegranate juice.

  Powerful winds assaulted them. The force of the gusts plastered Jenny’s skirts against her legs and she had to seize her hat with both hands to keep it from being flung into the distance. Will squinted against the clouds of red dust that the wind kicked up. The windmills Massy had mentioned were clustered around the portal at intermittent distances, tall and black and stark, blades whirling like electric table fans.

  The second door was, as Massy had said, about fifty feet distant. Like the door they had just come through, it looked like it belonged to the inside of a broom closet. Jenny grabbed Will’s arm and pulled him toward it.

  “Come on!” she yelled, above the howling wind.

  But Will could not move. He was frozen with awe. He was in an actual Otherwhere. An entirely different dimension. He could hardly believe it. He scanned the horizon, trying to freeze the wonder of it in his memory.

  But then the Flume tucked inside his vest began making a strange sound—a high-pitched hum. He slapped a hand to his chest. The cigar box was getting warm. Hot actually. Very, very hot—very, very quickly. The hum became a squeal, loud and piercing. Then a screech. Will’s heart began to race. Leaping forward, Will dragged Jenny to the opposite door, threw it open, and pushed her through.

  Chapter Eight

  Detroit

  DETROIT, MICHIGAN

  26 DAYS UNTIL THE FULL MOON

  S lamming the door behind him, Will stumbled across the polished floor of a dark and quiet room. He fell against the far wall, toolbag clattering on the floor at his side. There was the smell of burning wire and rubber; Will clawed at his chest, frantically reaching inside his vest to pull out the cigar box. Once he got it out he dropped it; it was hot as hell, smoking and sputtering. When he opened the lid, blue sparks leaped out, followed by little orange tongues of flame. Pulling his handkerchief out of his pocket he slapped desperately at the mechanism until the fire was out, then peered disconsolately inside the box.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  “What happened?” Jenny breathed, alarmed. She was caked with fine red dust from hat to hem.

  “I have no idea. I think—something to do with Critical Interactive Resonan
ce, maybe?” His mind was already navigating the tangle of melted wires, trying to imagine what could have happened, and what he’d have to do to fix it ... if he could fix it. “Never even thought about what might happen if I took the Flume into a different Otherwhere ...”

  “Well, it is clear you are thinking about it now,” Jenny said loudly, trying to break through his absorbed concentration. “Please, share.”

  Taking a deep breath, Will turned his gaze away from the ruined Flume and onto her dust-streaked face.

  “Every Otherwhere, being a different dimension, has slightly different laws of physics from our standard universe.” He spoke slowly, thinking through the problem as he did, drawing conclusions with every word. “The Otherwheres we use are compatible enough with ours to allow us to exist within them. But the physical incompatibility between Otherwheres can be quite substantial. Substantial enough that if you bring two of the wrong ones into contact with each other—”

  “I’m guessing you’re about to say boom.”

  Will frowned. “Not boom, exactly. More like schloop, as the two Otherwheres collapse in on each other. Then maybe boom after that. I don’t think anyone would live long enough to find out.”

  “Oh, wonderful.” Angrily, Jenny began brushing red dust off of herself. “Not only is my lovely new suit simply ruined, but I almost got schlooped in an Otherwhere. So much better than taking the train.” She looked at the cigar box in Will’s hands. “Can it be fixed?”

  Will released a long sigh.

  “No.” He ran a glum finger over Admiral Dewey’s scorched face. “It’s ruined. I’ll have to build a whole new one from scratch.”

  Jenny’s face lit up with rather more happiness than Will thought was appropriate. He glared at her as he climbed to his feet, tucking the ruined Flume back inside his vest. “What are you smiling about?”

  “Don’t you see?” she said. “This takes care of all your problems with Tesla Industries! They wanted you to show them your Flume ... and now you can’t! It burned up! You’ll have to build a new one from scratch, and that will take weeks.”