“I wonder,” Lensky said, “what happens if these burn up? Do you burn with them? Ben,” he called without looking behind him. “can you set these on fire?”
There was a pause of several seconds during which Lensky had to keep dodging Balan’s attempts to reach the hand holding the feathers; then the tips burst into flame and Sandru Balan screamed. Lensky kept his hand clenched around the quills until the feathery part was quite burnt up. He didn’t care about getting scorched. To his disappointment, Balan stopped screaming when the fire went out. Worse yet, he appeared to be unsinged.
“I’d have burned them one at a time,” Lensky said softly, “if I’d known how it would hurt you.”
Balan’s shield was gone now. He knew because half a dozen people threw themselves on him and pulled him away from Sandru Balan. “You mustn’t kill him now,” Ben panted.
“It would be murder,” Ingrid said.
“And even Annelise might not be able to explain it away,” said Jimmy.
What did it matter?
24. I am IIT-trained expert in destruction of small devices
A slit appeared in the air before me, widened until he could step through it, then healed itself.
“Prakash! What are you – oh, never mind. Help me!” My hands were free, but I hadn’t managed to burn through all the cords holding me to the bedpost. The cell phone lay on the carpet, just out of reach.
“Thalia! Your hands!” He knelt beside me.
“Later! The cell phone – the phone – “
“You want it?”
“If anybody calls my number,” I said, “the bomb will go off.”
“Ah!” Prakash was on his feet again. “I am IIT-trained expert in destruction of small devices.” He brought one of his gleaming black shoes down on the phone with so much force that fragments of the case spattered all over the carpet. “And just to be sure…”
He picked up the mangled phone and disappeared for a moment. “I was putting it in water,” he said on his return. “Allow me to assure you that water is inevitably fatal to these devices. It is common hazing of new students to put their phones in the toilet.”
“Where did you put mine?”
Prakash’s eyebrows rose. “Why, in the toilet, of course. After all, I know by a previous theorem that this will work. Now to free you…”
“Wait!” I said as he dropped to one knee and opened his pocketknife. “The wire.” I touched it with one finger. “If it goes slack, that will set off the bomb. I daren’t move.”
“Hmm.” Prakash considered the problem. “The wire is not actually attached to you,” he said eventually. “It is attached to the… thing that is wrapped around you.”
“The bomb, you mean?”
“Yes. But do not fear, Thalia. I shall extricate you without allowing tension on the wire to drop.”
He closed his hand around the wire, two feet from my body, twisted slightly and severed it while using his hold to maintain tension. Then he wrapped the cut end of wire back around his hand. “Now,” he said, “we are removing the bomb from your person, isn’t it? Slowly-slowly, yes, and I keep the wire tight all the time.”
He cut the remaining cords, awkwardly, one-handed. I saw blood drip from the hand that was holding the wire. “You’re hurt?”
“This wire is very fine. It is not important. Stand now, carefully…”
With agonizing slowness I wriggled free of the pocketed vest Balan had strapped around me, always careful to maintain the tension on that damned wire. Prakash moved his hand to mimic my movements, and took hold of the entire vest as soon as possible.
When I was out of the thing, he suggested that I trap it under the bedpost. That, I was able to do. And then I found some of the longer bits of cord, tied one to the other bedpost, passed it through the loop Prakash had made in the wire and pulled it taut so that Prakash could finally relax his hold on it.
We were both sweating freely when the process was completed, and I couldn’t wait to get away. Prakash’s improvised system could fail, or there could be yet another detonating device that Sandru Balan hadn’t mentioned.
“We need to get back to the office and warn everybody.” But my head was swimming. Being drugged, tied up, and left waiting for imminent death will do that to a girl. Having to generate fire via Riemann surfaces, without the aid of my stars, had also contributed to wiping me out. I didn’t think I could visualize as much as a Möbius strip right then.
I slid my fingertips into my right-hand pocket, very gingerly so as not to aggravate the burns – which were now hurting like hell – and drew out a sprinkling of stars clinging to my fingers. I held my hand out to Prakash, who was staring at the tiny blue-white lights sparkling on my fingers.
“Take them,” I said impatiently. My hands and wrists were really hurting now, and the longer we stayed anywhere near the bomb the more twitchy I got. “You are going to have to do the heavy lifting. I’m not sure I can teleport right now. The stars will add power.” When he opened his palm, I tapped my fingers against it and the little twinkling lights formed a miniature glowing cloud in his hand. He looked surprised; I hadn’t mentioned how the lights felt. (Like a series of very small, friendly shocks, is the best way I can describe it.)
Lensky’s bedroom blinked out and we were stumbling at the top of the stairs to the third floor of Allendale House. A slightly rough landing, but give Prakash props for being able to do it at all. The only problem was that I was not quite as steady on my feet as I should have been, and I went down, hard, on one knee.
It looked as if the rest of the Center had been having an interesting time too. Everybody was out in the central room, and most of them seemed to be hanging on to Lensky. When he turned his head to look at us, his face was like nothing I’d ever seen before: dead white. A mask of grief.
“Thalia?”
He whispered my name as if he thought he was seeing a ghost.
I scrambled to my feet and registered that beyond Lensky, there was a man lying on the floor. Tall, blond…. Was it Balan?
Lensky shook off the people hanging onto his arms as though they were no more than some dried leaves on his jacket. With three steps he reached me and swept me into his arms, and – I was not going to do a girly thing like crying on him. I did some furious blinking and swallowed, hard, before I raised my face to his.
There were tears in his eyes.
“I thought you were dead,” he whispered. “I thought I’d killed you. Balan came here and goaded me into calling you, and then he said that my call had been the signal for the detonator.”
Which, I supposed, accounted for the fact that Sandru Balan was gagged and tied up on the floor, sporting a number of impressive scrapes and bruises. Lensky had collected some marks himself, though I couldn’t figure out exactly how he’d scorched his left hand.
“What do we do if he calls the grackles for help?”
Lensky’s smile was wolfish. “I think he can’t do that any more. I burned the feathers – his tokens from the Master of Ravens.” Oh. That explained it.
Prakash cleared his throat. “Thalia has been badly burned,” he informed Lensky.
“What? Where?” Lensky started running his hands over me.
“Just this, and it’s not that bad.” I showed him my wrists and the backs of my hands. They were covered with raised, puffy blisters and under that there were streaks of red. “It’s, um, not as bad as it looks.” I needed to remind myself of that, because they were throbbing and hurting rather viciously by now.
“Balan did that?”
“No!” I said quickly before he could move towards the captive. “No, he just tied me up. I did this to myself. Burning the cords until I could get my hands free.”
Ben grinned. “Riemann?”
“Riemann,” I confirmed. “At last we’re getting some practical use out of your discovery.”
Annelise swooped down on us with the first-aid kit she kept in her desk and started working on all three of us. Prakash and
Lensky didn’t need much beyond antiseptic gel and bandages, but she frowned over my hands. They were looking kind of gross by now. “I think… this is beyond my first aid skills. You really need to see a doctor, Lia.”
“In a few minutes. Look, can you just cover the blisters up for now, so they don’t get infected? I have to know what’s been going on here.”
They filled me in on everything that had happened since Sandru Balan’s appearance. Lensky kept trying to apologize for letting Balan trick him into making that phone call.
“Yes, he told me he was going to do that,” I said. “We got lucky with the timing. You must have called right after Prakash destroyed my cell phone. Oh, by the way, be very careful going into the condo. The bomb’s still there.” I described the setup in as much detail as I could. Lensky pulled out his phone and went off into a corner to call somebody.
“It’s arranged,” he announced on his return.
“Who’d you call?”
“My FBI contact. She’ll get the city to arrange a bomb disposal squad and then she’ll come here to collect Balan.”
“She?” I echoed.
“What’s the FBI got to do with it?” asked Jimmy.
“She’s a very competent woman… for a Fibbie. And the FBI comes into it because as I’ve explained before, my agency does not have authority to make domestic arrests.” The last few words came out through clenched teeth; Lensky hated having to turn his work – or in this case, his captive – over to another agency.
Ben let out his breath. “Good thing Thalia showed up before you killed Balan, then.”
Lensky looked wistful, as if mourning lost opportunities. “I’m really not through with the bastard. I don’t suppose you would consider untying him and letting me spend some quality time alone with him before the FBI gets here?”
“No,” said a number of people at once.
“Not unless I get to play too,” said Prakash.
Lensky looked at him. “Bhatia. I owe you. But Balan is mine.”
This conversation wasn’t going anywhere good. I sat down at Annelise’s desk, rather more abruptly than I’d intended. “Does anybody have an aspirin?” The waves of pain were making me want to throw up, and I really didn’t want to interrupt the argument in such an embarrassing way.
25. All your nights and all your days
Against my complaints that it was too dangerous to remove two of our working topologists while Balan was still there, Lensky had Ingrid whisk me off to the nearest emergency room before the FBI even showed up. “Face it, Lia,” Ben said, “you’re not up to doing much right now. If Ingrid can give up seeing the rest of the grand finale to escort you, you can damn well accept it graciously.”
True.
But I still considered it grossly unfair that I was going to be deprived of the last act, although I had to admit it was worse for Ingrid, having to miss everything just to babysit me. I explained to Lensky that this was totally unnecessary and he reminded me that the Master of Ravens was still free and that I was currently unable to do any applied topology whatsoever.
“I’ll recover in a few minutes.”
“No, you won’t,” Lensky said.
“What do you know about it?”
“That ‘aspirin’ I gave you? Tylenol 3.”
It took me longer than it should have to work it out. “That’s got codeine in it.”
“And given your reactions to any kind of opiates or sedatives,” Lensky said, “you won’t be able to apply any topology at all for the next few hours. So let Ingrid take care of you.”
“Traitor.” I considered screaming at him for drugging me, but it didn’t seem worth the trouble; there was a nice fluffy cloud rising around me and although my hands were still throbbing, that seemed to be happening in a universe far, far away.
Ingrid made everybody there swear on Foundations of Point Set Theory that they’d tell us everything when we got back. “Preferably with videos,” she said, “you all have cell phones, so use them!”
After all that, Annelise told us when we got back, there wasn’t actually that much drama. Kate Highman, the FBI agent in charge, showed up with two very large gentlemen who hauled Balan to his feet and walked him out of the office. Lensky went with them.
Everyone relaxed once Sandru Balan was in custody and out of our offices. Chairs were dragged out of personal offices, soft drinks were brought from the vending machine downstairs, and they draped themselves over the chairs in varying stages of collapse.
“Prakash, of course, did not slump,” Annelise allowed. “I’m not sure his spine allows that configuration. Also, he felt cheated; indignation probably kept him from collapsing like the rest of us.”
“Cheated?”
“It seems that in all the best Bollywood flicks,” Annelise said, struggling to keep a straight face, “the girl realizes that the handsome hero who rescues her is really her true love.”
“He’s delusional!”
“It’s all right. Ben explained to him that Lensky’s owned you since the day he walked into the Center and you’re so crazy about him that you don’t even see anybody else.”
“That’s a gross exaggeration.” I’m not that easy! It had been a whole week before I fell for Lensky.
Before I admitted it, anyway.
“Then Dr. Verrick came stumping up the stairs and demanding to know why the entire staff of the Center were lounging around like odalisques.”
I was momentarily distracted. “Like what?”
“I think it means like, a harem girl or something.”
“Prakash must have loved that.”
“You forget. He was the only one not lounging. Anyway, we tried to explain to Dr. Verrick.” Annelise shuddered. “I understand now why all you topologists are terrified of the man. It was like when Lensky gets furious at you guys for going off and getting in trouble, only worse. Much worse.”
“Yeah. Dr. Verrick’s critiques could strip paint.” They rarely did any structural damage, though.
“Believe me, you and Ingrid are lucky you missed that. He wound up by telling Ben and Prakash to give formal presentations on the applications of topology they used.”
“Just as long as the words ‘true love’ don’t enter into Prakash’s presentation.”
Annelise shook her head. “He’s too professional for that. I think you’re safe. But, Lia…”
“Yes?”
“He did teleport himself to you without knowing your physical location. That… doesn’t happen very often.”
Ben to Annelise. Me to Lensky. Yes, there was a pattern. You could only teleport to someone you knew and loved.
I guessed Prakash wasn’t totally delusional. Not about his feelings, anyway. Only about his having a snowball’s chance in hell of detaching me from Lensky.
“He’ll get over it.”
“I hope so.” Annelise didn’t seem so sure.
I didn’t make it to family dinner that night. The bandages were too conspicuous. I was too tired. And Lensky wouldn’t let me out of his sight. But I did talk to Andros on Saturday morning, and he seemed fairly okay with the home situation. That would have to be good enough until my hands healed.
Lensky had to go to D.C. at once, that same Saturday, for some reason connected with winding up this case; either to testify, or to fill in details for his superiors, or to coordinate with the FBI. Because he doesn’t talk about Agency business any more than he can help, I wasn’t clear on the details. And I didn’t really care, so long as Sandru Balan wound up being put away for a long, long time.
I did mind the agency’s keeping Lensky in D.C. indefinitely, though. Quite apart from the regular nightmares about Balan killing both of us, until he came back I would have to actually live in the apartment I nominally shared with Ingrid. That was a sop to his anxiety; after the Tylenol 3 wore off and I got something to eat, I was once again a fully functional applied topologist. But he’d made me promise to stay with Ingrid until he got back. We still didn’t know wha
t had happened with the Master of Ravens; all we knew for sure was that Shani Chayyaputra had checked out of the Driskill.
And for my part, I wasn’t too eager to try sleeping in the condo again. Lensky’s bedroom had become the setting for my nightmares. I didn’t know what we were going to do about that. So Ingrid and I rubbed along together much as we used to do pre-Lensky, which is to say, not very well. And he called every day, sounding more and more tired and worn down. I had some ideas on what to do about that, but they’d have to wait until he was back in Austin.
Almost three weeks after leaving, he called to announce that he was done in D.C. He didn’t sound his usual bouncy and exuberant self, though; clearly he was still tired. He sounded – almost tentative. It wasn’t one of his normal modes.
“I’m coming back tonight. Could you…”
“Pick you up at the airport?”
“No, I still don’t know exactly when I’m arriving. All the flights that get in at a reasonable hour are full. I’m trying to get on standby, but if that doesn’t work… Well. Anyway. I’ll probably be late. And I was wondering if you’d… um… stay at the condo tonight. I’d just like to know you’ll be there whenever I do get in.”
“Of course I will,” I said before I could chicken out.
When I stepped out of the air into Lensky’s living room, the first thing I noticed was that the place smelled slightly of paint. I walked into the bedroom and saw why.
The room had been completely redecorated. It had been a dimly lit cave; now, with the ugly yellowing plastic blinds replaced by a gauze drape, and the overhead light fixture with white wall sconces, it felt light and airy. Instead of Landlady Beige, the walls were now a cool, light green. The new carpet was a darker green. The chest of drawers had been replaced by built-in white shelving along one wall. And the old but sturdy bed was gone, replaced by a simple low bed in a frame with no posts, no headboard, nothing that anybody could be tied to.
I wanted to cry. He’d done all this at long distance, just for me. It must have been hell arranging everything; no wonder he’d sounded tired! In fact, possibly I did cry just a little bit. There were no witnesses, and I’ll deny it if anybody ever asks.
An Annoyance of Grackles (Applied Topology Book 3) Page 18