The Flux

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  Paul frowned. The credit card had been stolen at Paul’s favorite diner, where they’d taken Aliyah out for a late-night supper. She’d refused to place her order with the mundane waiter, instead pointing to the items on the menu.

  In an ideal world, his daughter’s decision to move in with them would be his first priority – followed closely by tracking down the King – but the government was hot on his tail.

  Fortunately, Imani had been understanding when he’d told her Aliyah wanted to stay at his place for a few days. He’d heard David yelling in the background as Imani shushed him, bellowing she had every legal right to demand her daughter back…

  But Imani had simply asked, “Is this what she needs, Paul?”

  Paul hadn’t been sure. But he also wasn’t sure how to keep his videogamemancer daughter at her mother’s house if she didn’t want to stay. So he’d said, “Give her a couple of days, Imani. Let me see if I can talk some sense into her.”

  “I know I should make her an appointment for a psychiatrist – she’s young for medications, but…” Imani sighed. “I just… I don’t know how to talk to her anymore.”

  Neither do I, Paul had thought. But Paul knew of no psychologists qualified to rein in daughters with unlimited cosmic power – and if they did exist, then SMASH employed them.

  He took the elevator up to the Samaritan Mutual offices, twitching with reluctance. He had to fix things before Aliyah’s next flux-load complicated things. He’d considered setting himself up as a private investigator, but the licensing process would have taken weeks. He could certify himself in seconds, but with David poking around, Paul didn’t want people asking how he’d punched through the paperwork with supernatural speed.

  No. Paul needed instant access, in order to cover his trail against David Giabatta. His old job as an insurance claims investigator would get him there. He could make requests in Samaritan’s name; they’d grant him temporary access until his official paperwork came through.

  So why was he so nervous?

  The elevator doors creaked open. Paul ambled in, looked over Samaritan Mutual’s offices – as ever, a strangely antiquated workplace. Lawrence Payne, Samaritan’s CEO, infamously despised computers. He didn’t mind data analysis, but thought the “frippery” of email led to needless miscommunications, wasted time spending fifteen minutes writing memos that a two-minute conversation could handle. Emails weren’t disallowed, certainly, as many customers expected them, but… if you sent emails to your superiors, your promotion chances sank.

  So the phones always rang at Samaritan. People bustled from cubicle to cubicle, tugging each other aside for impromptu meetings. Everyone was in open-air offices, so the managers had nowhere to hide when Payne stormed through. There were typewriters, honest-to-God typewriters, where underpaid secretaries read information off computer screens and typed claims onto paper forms, all because Mr Payne didn’t trust printouts.

  Paul had taken to typing up his own forms directly, just in case Mr Payne needed them – an inefficiency his co-workers thought crazy, until they saw how many of Paul’s claims went through.

  Reflexively, Paul scanned the offices for Mr Payne’s presence. You learned to watch out for the old man – the gray Marine buzzcut, the squared shoulders, the old sour face, striding through the office as people practically flung themselves out of his way. Payne still walked with a soldier’s vigor, though he was pushing eighty.

  Mr Payne dropping by your office was like a military invasion. He ensured no claims were paid unless they hewed perfectly to the paperwork he himself had designed. If he showed up, it meant you had approved an imperfectly filed claim and cost him money.

  People who cost Lawrence Payne money got fired.

  Paul tightened his tie. Already, he felt the tension returning.

  Yet it wasn’t tension that made his hands tremble.

  He looked at the beleaguered secretaries, hammering keys into paper on antique machines, all so Mr Payne could find a way to refuse more claims. And Paul put a name to this feeling:

  Guilt.

  Paul had discovered his skills as a bureaucromancer at Samaritan – fixing forms for claimants so Samaritan’s stingy claims department couldn’t deny them. Hell, Old Man Payne had denied Aliyah’s plastic surgery claims, sniffing that reconstructive facial surgery wasn’t life-threatening…

  Mr Payne had only hired him because he was good at tracking down evidence of ’mancy, and ’mancy was cause for refusal on cheaper insurance plans. Paul’s entire job had been to find ways to negate claims, which he’d counteracted by staying late and filling out forms to ensure others would get their money, and…

  His leaving had hurt people.

  Samaritan’s forms were needlessly specific and baroque; there were forms to handle damages caused by meteor showers, forms if you slipped in the shower, different forms if you slipped at a pool. Yet that paperwork had felt like a living organism to Paul, each form serving a specific and perfect purpose…

  And Paul had been its heart.

  When he’d left, he’d taken Samaritan Mutual’s kindness with him. People who didn’t know the difference between the wasp hive injury form and the bee hive injury form might as well have had no insurance at all. That challenge was fair on some objective level – if you had the time to devote to navigating their thousands of forms, eventually Samaritan Mutual had to pay out. But who had the time?

  Paul had, once. If he just filled out the right forms, he’d save people.

  He’d saved people so often, it had become magic.

  And in taking the job at the Task Force, Paul had abandoned his duty.

  Nobody at Samaritan blamed him, he realized; he was mad at himself, for allowing a cold company to freeze into permafrost. Mr Payne had always run a skinflint operation, but Paul’s absence had allowed Mr Payne to rip even more people off.

  Now he had to kiss the old man’s muscled ass until the skinflint gave him the information he needed….

  “Mr Tsabo?”

  Paul didn’t recognize the cheery voice – but as the Mundane Who Killed ’Mancers, strangers often greeted him enthusiastically.

  Paul didn’t know the woman – a Samaritan Mutual secretary, to judge from her prim, 1960s-style dress – but the tray of Dunkin’ Donuts this cheerful Asian woman carried was all too familiar.

  “A gift from an old friend,” she said. She grinned as she handed Paul the donuts, the excited smile of someone happy to be in on the gag.

  Inside the lid, on a Post-It Note: “CALL ME, YOU YUTZ.”

  “Tell the old rascal we miss him,” said the secretary. “The company’s just not as interesting without his stories.”

  “Will do.” Paul dialed his old friend Kit’s number, holding the phone away from his ear so he wouldn’t be deafened.

  “Boychik!” Kit’s voice was scratchy but boisterous, an old Jewish man who’d worn his throat raw extolling various pleasures. “Finally you call! What, is the toll call to Florida too expensive for your unemployed ass?”

  “Kit, who the hell talks about ‘toll calls’ anymore? You’re going senile in retirement.”

  “I am going mad with boredom in retirement. No magical cases to investigate. The beach is nice, but it’s not the same as being on the hunt.”

  “So you gossip.”

  “It’s what old men do. And Valentine, she likes to blab once in a while. Good kid. A little low on the self-control, a little too into the Vanilla Kremes – speaking of which, what’s your choice?”

  Paul looked down at the donuts, plucked out a chocolate glazed. “I’m taking a glazed today. Do you ever stop with the donut psychoanalysis?”

  Kit grunted, displeased. “Chocolate glazed isn’t your style, bubbie. You changed to a Boston Kreme, after Anathema. From sweet and gooey to crisp and chocolatey. And a man switches donuts when he’s on the cusp of a major change.”

  “My donuts have nothing to do with my state of mind.”

  “Really?” Paul practically
heard Kit raise an eyebrow. “So with the firefight and the firing and the fights with your daughter, you deny you’re on the cusp of a major change?”

  Paul swallowed his donut.

  “As I thought,” Kit concluded. “You’re running hot. And you’re going to blow this interview unless you listen to your old friend Kit.”

  “I’ll just kiss that rat bastard’s ass until my lips turn brown.”

  Kit sighed. “He knows you hate him, boychik. He’ll push your buttons to see where your loyalties lie.”

  “My loyalties? What about his loyalties!? He–”

  Kit clucked his tongue in loud mock sympathy. With a shock of shame, Paul realized he was practically shouting into the phone.

  Maybe Kit had a point about him running hot.

  “Yes, he refused the surgeries to repair Aliyah’s face after she got burned,” Kit said sympathetically. “Yes, he tried to fire you when you started making waves. But… that’s not personal to him.”

  “Not personal?” He cupped his hand over the phone. “He would have left Aliyah scarred! For God’s sake, Kit, it sounds like you admire the bastard!”

  “Admire? No. But I respect him. Because he lets me live in Florida.”

  “‘Lets’ you? Are you under Samaritan Mutual House arrest?”

  Kit laughed. “No, silly. But I have a nice pension. It’s pricey, living on the coast. How many companies do you know that haven’t tapped into their pension funds these days? Not Payne, though. He wouldn’t allow it.”

  “That’s sweet, Kit, but... he was going to let Aliyah die.”

  “Die? No. He paid for Aliyah’s hospital bills to keep her alive – he just wouldn’t foot the bill for her to be pretty again.”

  “So you’re saying Payne is…” Paul swallowed. “Good people?”

  “I’m saying the man has his own morality. You think he owes you for the hell he put you through – but Payne won’t see it that way. Payne won’t hire you for your old job. Payne doesn’t need me, and I was your manager.”

  Paul grabbed a cruller. This was becoming a two-donut day. “So what do I do?”

  “Offer him something he needs. Something he can’t get anywhere else. Something profitable.”

  Paul wished he could hug Kit over the phone. The old man had always been good at refocusing him when he got too angry. “But what if what Payne needs is more than I’m willing to give?”

  “Then give it to him. Because I gotta tell you… even from here, I can tell Aliyah needs some help, and fast.”

  Ten

  Manufacturing Benefactors

  Even now, Paul had to quell anxiety about pressing the silver button up to Mr Payne’s office. Long-time Samaritan fellows called that elevator “the guillotine,” as when it descended, heads rolled.

  He braced himself as the elevator rose. Kit would be proud: Paul would do anything, anything, to keep his daughter safe.

  Even if that meant shackling himself to Payne.

  A bell chimed.

  The doors opened.

  Lawrence Payne’s lobby was frugally impressive: just enough flash so bankers wouldn’t think the organization was going broke, but not a penny more decoration than necessary. Payne’s office lay safeguarded behind a large bank door in accountant’s-visor green, imposing enough to send the message: this is where the money lies. The Samaritan Mutual logo was engraved on the door in tasteful gold.

  Payne’s name, famously, was not on the door. He had no ego when it came to his company.

  Payne’s secretary looked up, coiffed in a 1960s-perfect beehive hairdo and a tight red dress. “Mr Tsabo,” the secretary said. “Right on time.”

  She pressed a recessed button under her desk. The door glided open.

  Paul remembered to breathe.

  Mr Payne’s office was a narrow space lined with steel filing cabinets, jutting all the way up to the ceiling, blocking out the walls. Here, there was no hint the world had advanced beyond the 1960s. A long, narrow meeting-room table was topped with antiquated relics, which carried out their functions inexpertly. There were old typewriters, and mimeograph machines with their pink papers to make copies, ticker-tape machines that still rattled off spools of Morse-code-like stock prices.

  It’s more a museum than anything else, Kit had once reassured him.

  Are you sure he doesn’t use the ticker-tape machines? Paul had asked.

  …no.

  Paul stepped in, balancing on his bad legs as he made his way through the narrow spaces. The tight squeeze comforted Paul, reminded him of his old office; he’d liked having everything he needed at arm’s reach.

  At the far end sat Mr Lawrence Payne, who sat stiffly yet welcomingly – the old-fashioned lord of the manor receiving guests. Payne’s stiff white hair was cropped close, his skin so pale and age-thinned it looked like papier mâché plastered across a bullet-shaped skull. He was dressed in a tweed suit, his hands crossed, a thick stack of forms beneath his slender fingers.

  Behind Payne stood a tall black man, his cheeks branded with tiny spirals. He stood with a stiffness that spoke of an upbringing in some distant country that disdained American excess – and as if to accentuate that contempt, he took a deep pull on a gigantic cigar, inhaling until the tip burned a cherry red, savoring the taste of smoke.

  Then he exhaled – not quite in Paul’s direction, but rather up towards the center of the room, a huge and thoughtful stream of burned tobacco that seemed in some way to be marking territory with his lungs. Paul’s eyes prickled from the scent – a hot, forest-fire smell.

  Payne did not acknowledge the smoke cloud above him as it drifted down across the desk, flowing onto the floor. His iceberg-blue eyes swept across Paul like a lighthouse beam, as if to ask, do we have a problem here?

  Paul did. He knew all the regulations about smoking in the workplace. Smoking was not only a health risk, but a fire hazard in an office so crammed with paperwork. Perhaps that foolishness might have seemed wise back in the 1960s, but today?

  Instead, Paul took the closest chair to Payne’s desk, and bowed.

  Payne interlaced his fingers, pleased that Paul had passed the first test.

  “So. The prodigal son returns.” Payne’s voice had a movie narrator’s plummy tones, with the white-mustached tickle of an English accent dropped in. “Oh, Paul. Paul Tsabo. Would that you had bent the knee sooner.”

  “…sir?”

  Payne spread his hands, as if offering the world to Paul. “I was overjoyed when I heard you had been picked to spearhead the New York Task Force. One of my boys, placed high in the world! I’d always taken a special pleasure in signing off on your claims, Paul. It was as though I’d filled out those forms my very self.”

  Paul tried to quell his blush. He was praised so little, these days.

  “So when you moved up, as talent should, I thought, well, here’s a man who will keep New York safe. You’d always found evidence of ’mancy, Paul. If it was there, you furrowed it out.”

  Payne made a violent digging motion with his fingers to accentuate the “furrowed it out.” Paul’s embarrassment grew: he’d always found the evidence, but hadn’t always reported it.

  “I waited for you to come to me, Paul. You and I, Paul, we’re rare coins: living New Yorkers with direct evidence of how deadly ’mancy is. My mother fled from Europe – back when the first broaches ripped across Germany. My poor sisters, devoured by demons – worse than devoured. I saw buzzsects, pouring out of the broaches, eating... eating laws. Of physics. They... they ate gravity, somehow. They chewed away cause and effect. And my sisters, Lisa and Anna, they... they screamed in reverse as the buzzsects devoured the time from their bones. And I... I…”

  Payne’s taut face slackened with memory. Paul felt a glimmer of sorrow for the old man. He could envision a young Lawrence Payne, carried by his mother to safety, shrieking as he watched the world unravel.

  Paul squeezed the Maxi pad taped to his left forearm, blotting up fresh blood. Payne was right; Paul
had once healed a broach, but it had left an empty furrow though his skin that would never heal. Those seething buzzsects had gobbled SMASH agents, chewed away magic, devoured an entire factory before Paul had finally driven them back – what must it have been like to be a mundane, watching entire cities consumed by swarms of extradimensional mouths?

  No wonder you went into insurance, Paul thought. Insurance battled life’s chaos with actuarial tables – you couldn’t choose which houses would burn, but could turn that destruction into a predictable percentage.

  “I’m sorry that happened,” Paul said.

  Payne seemed startled to see Paul there. He flicked his fingers, dismissing years of history.

  “No need for sorry, Paul,” he said gravely. “You were there at that botched SMASH operation – the one that broached. You know how bad it would have gotten, don’t you? If SMASH hadn’t… sealed it?”

  Paul had sealed that rift himself. But yes. He understood just how close New York had come to being the focal point for an invasion from an alien dimension.

  “Oh, Paul.” Payne sagged. “I thought we’d clasp hands to stamp out this world-rending threat. Instead, you snuck in my back door. Stole information I would have given. I had to force poor Kit into retirement when I discovered he fed you the information. How can I reward you for that?”

  All Paul’s sympathy vanished. Kit hadn’t told Paul the reason for his retirement.

  I gave you eight years of my life, and when my daughter got burned, you tried to fire me so you wouldn’t have to pay her claims. The whole reason I fought SMASH forces is because you wouldn’t cut me a check to restore Aliyah’s face. So how dare you lecture me about loyalty?

  The black man removed his cigar and leaned in, sensing Paul’s anger. A faint smile curled on his thick lips: No, please, Mr Tsabo. Tell us what’s on your mind.