A Tapestry of Fire (Applied Topology Book 4)

by Margaret Ball

  “Can’t he just magic them into something suitable?”

  “No.”

  “Anyway, shouldn’t he be right back? I mean, even if it takes him an hour to find the clothes, can’t he just travel back to the time when he left here?”

  “Are you kidding? That would be time travel.” Jimmy couldn’t help thinking of his previous experience with time travel, and he could feel his face heating up and his ears turning as red as his hair. “In my next life I want to be tall, dark and handsome,” he muttered.

  “Well, you’ve got the tall part down, anyway,” Renata said.

  “I don’t think he’s all that bad looking,” Harper said.

  “For a computer geek,” Renata qualified.

  “How did you know that’s what I do?”

  Renata sighed. “You look exactly like one of my software developers. Bad haircut, glasses, ink-stained shirt…”

  “Nice smile,” Harper said.

  Harper, Jimmy thought, was a nice girl, but he sort of wished she wouldn’t keep trying to make him feel better. It was the kind of thing Ingrid would not be understanding about.

  “Ben should be back soon,” he said.

  “I’d like to know how you two work that little trick,” said Renata.

  So much for breaking the news to her gently.

  “Why don’t you do it too? I’ll watch more closely this time,” she suggested.

  Jimmy sighed. “I’m not the one who can teleport. That would be Ben.”

  “You can’t, but your friend can?” Renata scoffed. “Oldest con game in the book! ‘There really is magic, only I can’t show you, but my friend could demonstrate if he were here.’”

  “They don’t call it magic,” Jimmy said. “They prefer to say ‘applied topology.’ It’s based on mathematics.”

  “How do you do magic with topography?” Harper asked.

  “Topology.” The mathematicians were extremely picky about that word, though not so good at explaining exactly what it meant.

  “Okay, you yourself can’t teleport, what can you do?” Renata demanded.

  Jimmy took a deep breath. “Just about anything to do with computer software. In Java, C-sharp, C plus plus, Python or R. And without applying any topology. I’m just that good.”

  Renata’s eyes narrowed. “What a coincidence. CodeSense is written in R. You wouldn’t be the bastard who messed with our code, would you?”

  “No,” Jimmy said, telling himself to stay cool, “that would be someone who actually works for Shani Chayyaputra.”

  The air behind Harper thinned, showing a colorless chaos that made Jimmy’s head hurt, and then Ben stepped through to them and the opening disappeared.

  “Skirt, blouse, um… other stuff,” Ben said, proffering a double armload of colorful fabric. “I’m sorry, the skirt might be a bit long on you.” Jimmy recognized the long cream and maroon skirt. It had been a midi-skirt on Annelise, and she was considerably taller than the irate CEO. He thought that Ms. Rivera would probably trip over the trailing hem and break her neck. He wasn’t sure he cared.

  “Newspaper?” she demanded.

  It was tucked under Ben’s arm; now he flourished it.

  “Give me that!” Renata’s improvised blanket-sarong slipped a bit as she reached for the newspaper. She looked at the header on the front page and her eyes widened; then they rolled back in her head and she slipped from the chair to the carpet, unconscious.

  “Oh, shit! Harper, get her some water.”

  “Why?” Jimmy asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s what they always do on TV. Come on, Harper, can’t you wake her up? I draw the line at wrestling clothes onto an unconscious naked lady.”

  While Harper knelt over the unconscious woman, trying to revive her, Ben looked at Jimmy. “And you’d better brace for another fight.”

  “How come?”

  “Lensky’s back.” Ben paused for effect. “And he’s not happy.”

  5. The ice princess and the floozy

  Austin, Monday

  Ben persuaded Lensky to wait in his office until the present emergency was sorted out. “You’ll be happier,” he pointed out, “if you don’t know exactly how many non-disclosure rules we’re breaking.”

  “Oh, are there some you aren’t breaking?” Lensky asked. “Oh, okay, get on with it, and what I don’t see or hear, at least I won’t have to report to the Agency. But make it snappy. We’ve got to do something about Thalia.”

  Snappy? Ben was already tired and spacy after teleporting everyone back to the Center for Applied Topology. But as he’d told Jimmy, he felt it was past time to get out of there; all the time they’d been in Shani Chayyaputra’s offices he’d been antsy, fearing that someone would come in unexpectedly. The fact that Harper had done just that hardly added to his peace of mind. In fact, he teleported them out of the building so fast that Renata was still trying to get into her borrowed clothes when they materialized on the top floor of Allandale House.

  “Where’s Annelise?” Jimmy asked. He’d been the last to be teleported back, and he’d expected to see Ben’s girlfriend at the reception desk. In fact, he’d been rather counting on her to calm Ms. Rivera down.

  “Obviously, we had to go home to get the spare clothes for Renata,” Ben said. “I asked her to drive herself back here; I’d already figured out that I was going to have to do too much teleporting this afternoon.” He took a long swallow from the Coke that Harper had helpfully brought him from the second-floor vending machine. “Even using the stars, dragging the ladies and then your great heavy body through the in-between was enough to affect my blood sugar.” Although teleporting had definitely been the way to go; it spared him having to escort a partially clad Renata up two flights of stairs before an interested audience. The Center for Applied Technology had the third floor of the Victorian mansion known as Allandale House, but the first two floors were occupied by special collections curated by librarians. The librarians frequently mentioned that they wondered just what the mathematicians up on the third floor did that involved fires, things crashing off the roof, strange singing noises and other odd phenomena. Ben had no desire to add a half-naked, cursing woman to their list of interesting anomalies.

  “You should have let me drive us all over in my van,” Harper said. “You didn’t mention that… what just happened… was going to exhaust you. I’ll have to go back to get it now.”

  “I didn’t think of that,” Ben confessed. He finished the Coke and sank down into Annelise’s desk chair. He wondered if he should ask Harper to go back downstairs, not talk to any librarians, and get him another soda from the vending machine on the second floor. He really felt as if he still needed sugar therapy.

  “Do you have a safety pin?” Renata asked, ignoring the discussion about something that she refused to think about and that probably hadn’t happened anyway. She appeared to be wrestling with Annelise’s midi-skirt. So far, the skirt was winning.

  “It’ll take more than one to raise the hem,” Harper said helpfully.

  “Never mind the hem,” Renata snapped, “I need something to close the waist. I can’t exactly button a waistband that’s six inches smaller around than I am!”

  “Probably not more than three inches,” Ben said while rummaging through Annelise’s desk. “Annelise isn’t all that slender.”

  “It. Is. Still. A. Problem.” Renata said through her teeth, “and I can’t get back to my own office until I’m decent.”

  Jimmy put his hands in the air around her waist to estimate just how many safety pins would be needed.

  It was, perhaps, unfortunate that at just that moment Ingrid Thorn, hearing unfamiliar voices in the open office, walked a Möbius strip through the doorless wall partitioning off the Research Division offices to see what was going on.

  “James,” she said as soon as she was clear of the wall, raising her eyebrows, “aren’t you going to introduce me to your new friend? Or would you rather wait until she gets her clothes back o
n?”

  “She’s practically dressed,” said Jimmy. “We just need a couple of safety pins. Well, maybe more than a couple. Depends on whether she can button the blouse, once she gets it on.”

  “They’re Annelise’s clothes,” Ben contributed. “Would you get me a root beer or something from the vending machines, Ingrid? I’m feeling sugar-shocky.”

  “Of course they are. That makes everything perfectly clear,” said Ingrid, ignoring Ben’s request. Her voice dropped several degrees, from cold to frosty. Jimmy shivered. He’d had enough cold in the lobby of Chayyaputra’s offices to last him for some time. And he was fairly sure that Ingrid could duplicate the feat of lowering the ambient air to freezing if sufficiently displeased. That was the kind of thing you just had to deal with when your girlfriend was a tall, pale ice princess with applied topology skills.

  “Ingrid, I can explain everything,” he said, and immediately realized that had been the wrong thing to say. A wrong thing. There were probably plenty of others available.

  “Oh, that hardly seems necessary,” Ingrid said, sweeping across the room to look down at Renata where she perched on a corner of Annelise’s desk. The blond braids wrapped around her head seemed to be crackling with energy and trying to escape the hairpins that kept them in place. “The situation explains itself, does it not? All I want to know is why you brought your floozy into the office. If you were going to run around on me, couldn’t you at least keep it private?”

  Three of the four people facing her spoke simultaneously.

  “Why couldn’t she be my floozy?” asked Ben, as though logic was going to be any help in this situation.

  “Ingrid, why are you immediately assuming the worst?” Jimmy asked, as though even more logic would do the trick.

  “Who are you calling a floozy, you Anglo beanpole?” Renata screeched.

  Ingrid looked down her patrician nose. “Very well. Cougar,” she amended. “Aren’t you ashamed to go after young men? At your age?”

  Renata pulled one arm back to swing at Ingrid. Jimmy caught her just in time.

  “If you’re still my fiancé,” Ingrid announced, “you’ll quit manhandling your bimbo.”

  “He’s just trying to keep it from getting worse,” Ben said.

  “Ms. Rivera, sit down and let me handle this,” Jimmy said, pushing the indignant woman towards a chair and putting Annelise’s blouse in her hands. If they could just get the woman covered up maybe Ingrid would calm down.

  He turned back to Ingrid, grateful as never before that his height allowed him to look her in the eye. “And you, if you’re really my fiancée, how dare you jump to the conclusion that I’m cheating on you? Didn’t you learn anything from that mix-up last fall? You’ve got a hell of a lot less excuse for your suspicions than Annelise and Lensky had then – and they, if you remember, were dead wrong.”

  “Do you have the gall to pretend this is the same kind of situation?”

  “Damned right I do,” Jimmy said between his teeth, “except this is much less misleading, and you’re incredibly dumb, Brainy Math Girl, for making such stupid assumptions.”

  Ingrid gasped. But before she could say anything, Jimmy had grabbed her shoulders and shut her up with a kiss. He’d started out as furious as Ingrid, but as she stopped trying to hit him, and slowly began to return his kiss, he began to have trouble remembering to be angry.

  Eventually they had to come up for air.

  “You’ve got a hell of a nerve, Computer Geek,” Ingrid said, but she didn’t sound cold and detached any more.

  “Let’s go into my office,” Jimmy said, “and discuss why a beautiful woman like you is so insecure that she assumes I’m cheating on her based on the flimsiest of evidence.”

  “A reasonable question,” Ben said judiciously. He was exploring the back of Annelise’s top desk drawer as he spoke.

  Ingrid turned on Ben. “And you’ve got a nerve too, opining on something that’s none of your business, you idiot!”

  “I,” Ben said, “am the hero of the hour. Behold, safety pins!” He held up a shiny chain of linked safety pins and Renata snatched them out of his hand.

  “All I want,” she said, pinning furiously, “is to get away from all of you maniacs and find out what’s happened to Rivera Cybersecurity.”

  “I can’t teleport you,” Ben apologized, “I’ve never seen your offices.”

  “And Dios mediante, you never will! Just call me a car, I have an account with Uber. I’ll wait downstairs.” In a flurry of long trailing skirts, she headed down the stairs.

  “An impressive woman,” Ben said to Harper. “She didn’t even trip over Annelise’s—”

  There was a thud in the stairwell, followed by more footsteps and enough Spanish curses to turn the air blue.

  “I guess she’s all right?” Harper said tentatively.

  “Let’s hope so, because I’m tired of her.” Ben sighed. “Some people aren’t very grateful for being rescued from the life of a fish, are they? Come on, let’s get some bolt cutters and go back to free the rest of the prisoners.”

  “I thought you were tired of… doing whatever you just did,” Harper said.

  “Yeah,” Ben sighed. “If Colton – my other colleague – is here, maybe he can take over the transportation. Or we could just wait until Annelise brings my car over, and maybe she’ll bring some doughnuts. I really am getting shocky from applying all that topology.”

  “And I thought you were afraid of being caught there,” Harper said.

  “I was. I am. But I’m not coward enough to weigh that against the rescue of prisoners who are already in sad shape. In fact, I’m not tired enough to keep them waiting, now that I think about them.” He placed his open hands on the top of the desk and levered himself upright. “Let’s go!”

  “Wait!” Harper caught hold of his sleeve. “You can’t free the others now.”

  “Why not? I may be feeling a little shaky, but I can do this, Harper.”

  “Because if you try to do it all at once you’ll kill everybody who’s still in the aquarium. Didn’t you notice how cold it got when Ms. Rivera transformed?”

  “Yes. Hmm.” Ben took off his glasses, polished them with the cuff of his shirt, replaced them. “Mass. Energy. The transformation sucked energy out of the air to replace mass? I wouldn’t have thought that would have been nearly enough energy, though.”

  Harper shrugged. “I’m not so hot at math and physics and all that sciency stuff. All I know is, when everything else got cold, so did the water in the aquarium. My fish just got lucky that it was a big tank and the water temperature didn’t drop enough to kill them. But another blast of cold before the tank warms up again probably will kill them.”

  “Okay,” Ben said, “so we take three of those big plastic tubs and put one of the fish-prisoners in each one. Then we don’t have to worry about one of them freezing in the tank. If I can cut the tags off fast enough—”

  “That beautiful blonde of Jimmy’s was right,” Harper interrupted him. “You are an idiot. What do you think will happen to all the other fish if you freeze the aquarium?”

  Ben shrugged. “The little colorful ones? I didn’t see any tags on them. Ergo, they’re not people, just fish.”

  “Just fish,” Harper repeated scornfully. “And that makes it all right to kill them?” She pushed the hair off her face, the better to argue. Her cheeks were getting red and her eyes sparkled behind those heavy glasses and she looked, Ben thought, better than she ever had up to now. Not that it mattered to him – nobody who had a girl like Annelise would go shopping around for somebody else—but it was interesting to see this drippy Harper looking like somebody who might actually be attractive if she put a little effort into it.

  “Okay, okay, I do see your point,” Ben said. In fact, now that he got it, he was totally with her. When he’d met Mr. M. as a disembodied turtle head, he’d refused to kill another turtle just to provide the Mesopotamian mage with a new body, hadn’t he? Fish were jus
t as entitled to live their lives as turtles, weren’t they? “So, we have to wait until the aquarium water gets back to a normal temperature. How long do you think that’ll take? Let’s see, if the aquarium contains n cubic feet of water and it lost, say, twenty degrees…”

  “I may not be an expert in math and physics,” Harper said, “but I do know aquariums. It won’t be back in balance until tomorrow.”

  “Couldn’t we, I mean, doesn’t it have some kind of heater?”

  “That’s allowing for the fact that I turned the heater on before we left.”

  “Really? I mean, that’s slow. What if we added a stronger heater?”

  “You want to cook the fish?”

  Ben threw up his hands. “All right! All right! Let’s see, if we do one fish a day… well, that should work out okay. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and I assume Chayyaputra won’t be back before the weekend.”

  Assumptions are dangerous things.

  ***

  What was left of Monday was taken up with plans and explanations. First Ben had to explain the situation to Harper, who pointedly said that she’d taken a lot on faith already and she needed to know what was really going on. It was fortunate that she’d had some time to absorb the idea that “that nice Mr. Chayyaputra,” was, to say the least, not at all “nice.” That seemed to trouble her more than Ben’s discussion of applied topology, paranormal abilities, and their reasons for going up against Shani Chayyaputra – at least the most recent reasons; he didn’t have the energy to give her the full story of the Center’s conflict with the Master of Ravens.

  “Are you allowed to tell her that?” Jimmy asked when he and Ingrid emerged from his office to hear Ben skating lightly over the topic of teleportation.

  “I asked Lensky not to listen,” Ben said.

  “And I haven’t decided how much I believe anyway,” Harper added.

  Once they’d thrashed things out to Harper’s satisfaction and taken her back to her van, there remained Brad Lensky to deal with. The time spent sitting in his office so as not to hear rules being broken had not made him any happier.