A Tapestry of Fire (Applied Topology Book 4)

by Margaret Ball

  “Everybody deserves rescuing,” Harper said.

  Ben backed up. “Right, sure, I’m not regretting saving Faelyn. I’m just saying I would have been okay with leaving her for last. At least today we’re bound to get some useful information, whether it’s Will or Eli we transform.”

  This time he’d added a flatbed dolly to the equipment they had to bring inside. The thing was heavy and its wheelbase had no discernible relationship to the spacing of the stairs in front of the building. After he wrestled it onto the lowest stairs, Harper put down her stepladder and came to help him. Even for the two of them, it was a job and a half wrestling the thing up another couple of stairs.

  “I don’t know if it’s worth it,” Harper panted.

  “Yes, but it’ll be easy once we get it inside…” Ben stopped grappling with the dolly, stood up and slapped his forehead. “I’m an idiot. Harper, let go.” He grasped the handle of the dolly firmly and took a deep breath. “Brouwer.”

  He and the dolly disappeared from the steps.

  “Harper, unlock the doors,” he called to her from inside the lobby.

  “How did you do that?” she asked when she found him sitting on the dolly and breathing hard.

  “Usual way,” he said between gasps. “You’ve – seen me – do things like that – before.”

  “Have I? I’ve been carefully not thinking about it,” Harper semi-explained. “That’s hard to do when you make yourself and a dolly disappear right in front of me.”

  “Didn’t disappear,” Ben said, “just… moved the thing really, really fast, okay?”

  “And through locked doors.” Harper was pale; her freckles were unbecomingly dark against her white face.

  Ben took another deep breath. “Slight miscalculation… takes way too much energy to move a big inanimate object that I can barely pick up. I should’ve used my stars.”

  “You do this stuff with astrology? I never realized it was actually good for anything!”

  Ben figured he’d already allowed Harper to see enough to justify giving him several lifetime sentences if the Agency decided to take nondisclosure agreements seriously. He could hardly be in worse trouble for telling her just a little more. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a glittering cloud of tiny points of light swirling and dancing on his palm, fizzing with joyful energy. “Not astrology. Stars.”

  She shook her head. “Ben, holding your hand out like that doesn’t explain anything.”

  Oh. Right. Only Mr. M. – the original source – and the Center’s research fellows could see the tiny lights that amplified their topological applications. To anybody else, he was holding a handful of nothing. “Can’t explain it. Sorry. Probably just as well. If I tell you too much the Agency might want to lock you up.”

  Harper shook her head again. “I swear, I’d stay well away from you people if it weren’t for the fish torture.” She thought it over. “And I’d think you were delusional if I hadn’t seen the transformations. Oh, well. Just two more fish and then I can go back to pretending that none of this actually happened. Have you caught your breath yet?”

  Ben nodded and put their largest plastic tub on the dolly. From the stepladder, Harper scooped aquarium water into the tub until it was nearly full – stopping once or twice to replace tropical fish that had swum into the dipper unnoticed. “Blasted tetras,” she grumbled. “They’re so little and fast and they get into anything, and they’re too dumb to notice when they’re in trouble.”

  “I don’t think any fish are noted for a high I.Q.” Ben commented, handing her the small net with a couple of attempted escapee tetras. “I wonder… the people we’ve brought back seem to have fully functioning brains. Ergo, the transformation isn’t destructive. I wonder if they thought at all while they were in fish form?”

  “From what Faelyn said, it doesn’t sound likely. Gimme the big net.” Harper gave Ben her dipper and took the long-handled fish net from him.

  Ben snorted. “I don’t believe Faelyn thinks a whole lot when she’s in girl form. No, I’ll have to ask Will or Eli. Whichever one we get today.”

  Harper leaned perilously over the aquarium and jabbed her fishing net towards the bottom. “If you ask me, your friends aren’t that smart in fish form either. They’re hiding under that big lump of coral where I can’t get at them.”

  “That’s not necessarily stupid of them,” Ben said. “Think of it from their point of view. They’ve seen us take two of their kind out of the tank and we never brought them back. For all they know, we’re thinking of them as lunch. Hey, hey, don’t lean that far over!” He made a grab for Harper’s ankles and barely saved her from plummeting into the tank.

  “Thank you,” she said breathlessly when her balance was restored. “Having a hundred-and-twenty-pound foreign body plunge into the tank would have been a terrible shock for the fish. Not to mention shedding hair and skin cells and… well, it could have been bad.”

  “Not much fun for you either.”

  “Oh, well, I don’t melt,” Harper said absently. “I’d just drip-dry, no harm done. The fish are much more important.”

  “Okay, to avoid accidentally poisoning the fish tank, why don’t you let me handle the net? I’m taller; I won’t have to practically hang off the top of the tank by my toes to sweep the bottom. And you can go and coax one of those machalee fish to come out from behind the coral.”

  “How?”

  “You’re the fish expert. Think of something!”

  By the time Ben had positioned the net again, one of the machalees had come out into the more open area of the tank and was swimming back and forth in its usual monotonous loop. He scooped it up, brought the net out of the tank and dipped it into the plastic tub of water. Harper took hold of the fish, very gently, and extricated it from the folds of the net.

  It took two of them to wheel the tub out of the lobby and into the office space, one to push and one to guide a dolly which was bent on turning in a circle clockwise. But that was still a great deal easier than trying to move the tub on its own.

  “Now we’ll get to talk to someone sensible who’s been through the transformation,” Ben said, feeling for the connecting bar on the fish tag while Harper held the fish still. “Here—ah! Got it!” He positioned the bolt cutter blades, stood up and pushed them together with all his strength. There was a sharp click as the blades met, and then the increasingly familiar sense of energy being drained from air and water. The lights dimmed, the temperature dropped towards freezing, a film of ice kept trying to form on the surface of the water. And something that was no longer quite a fish thrashed, rose out of the water, took shape.

  “Ben?” Harper said hesitantly as the shape became solid flesh.

  “Mm?”

  “Is – one of Jimmy’s friends – very short, and very brown, and kind of old?”

  Ben shook his head, staring at the naked man standing in the tub.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not Will. Or Eli.”

  Harper picked up the bathrobe and offered it to the strange man. He pressed his palms together and bowed to her, then wrapped the bathrobe around himself.

  “Give him a hand,” Harper said, “I don’t think he can climb out on his own.”

  Ben reached out a hand, then moved closer to the tub so that their new companion could lean on his arm. It was true that while the dolly had made it easier to move a large tub of water, it had also aggravated the difficulties faced by a rescuee. Now, in addition to stepping over the foot-high edge of the tub, they’d also have to step down an extra six inches from the bed of the dolly to reach the floor. And for someone as short as this guy, that would be quite the stretch. Ben had to practically lift him out of the tub.

  When he had both feet safely on the carpet, the little old man bowed again, repeating that peculiar gesture of pressing his hands together.

  “I am giving many thanks for preserving of my life and restoration of freedom,” he said in a heavily accented voice.

  “Who
are you?” Ben demanded. Only one fish left, and we’re still missing two people.

  “Pandit Navinchandra Balakrishnan, of Hindu Temple Austin, your most devoted servant,” said the man, bowing yet again. “Pandit is my title, Navinchandra Balakrishnan is my name. And may I inquire, sir, what is your good name?”

  He seemed a lot calmer than Renata or Faelyn had been, though his experience had been much the same as theirs. Perhaps being a Hindu priest, Ben thought, had accustomed him to volatile gods working their will on hapless humans.

  But when he voiced that thought, the Pandit rejected it almost violently. “No, and no, and no! This being is taking the name of the god, but he is not the god.”

  “What is he, then?”

  “He is partial avatar of Shani dev,” the Pandit said. “It is common misunderstanding among ordinary people that Shani is god of suffering, cruelty and despair. But this is error!”

  “So… what is the real Shani dev god of?”

  “Something much more frightening,” the Pandit said dramatically. “He is god of karma! Or you might say, of justice.”

  “There seems to be damned little justice about the way this, ah, avatar is behaving,” Ben said.

  “Yes, yes. He understands only dark side of Shani.” The little man launched on a detailed description of the true god Shani, waving his hands so vigorously that the robe threatened to fall open. “He is associated with Saturn, thus his gravity is more than this planet’s. What we plan or do, both good and bad, the weight of Shani’s power lies upon us and we receive the consequences of our actions. To man who thinks and does good, Shani dev is friend. But for man who does bad deeds, he is Sade Saathi, disaster and an enemy. This avatar is not properly understanding whole truth of Shani dev.”

  Ben was beginning to feel overwhelmed with theology. Better to concentrate on what had actually happened.

  “Is that why Shani avatar turned you into a fish? A theological argument?”

  “I was here to represent his errors to this avatar,” the Pandit agreed. “I was also attempting to banish him, to send him back into the true god so that he would know the completeness of Shani. But he is more powerful than I realized.”

  “Clearly. He turned you into a fish. Why a fish? Prakash – a colleague told us that Shani’s vehicle is a black bird, and up to now he has worked all his magic using black birds. If he was collecting shape-changed prisoners, I would have expected him to make a flock of ravens. Or maybe grackles, considering this is Austin.”

  The Pandit nodded, shook his head, nodded again. “Birds are not so easy as fish to keep as prisoners,” he said. “Also, some wise men are saying that Shani dev is favored by Lord Vishnu, whose first avatar was Matsya, divine fish. Perhaps Shani avatar is also drawing upon powers of Lord Vishnu. This is trouble to the maximum! I must return to temple where we will work to weaken this avatar.”

  “How?”

  “We shall make offerings to please Shani dev: iron objects, black cloths, black sesame seed. Also, I will recite Shani mantra one hundred plus eight times. This is very powerful mantra for averting wrath of Shani.” He took a deep breath and began chanting in a reverberating voice, “Neelanjana Samabhasam Raviputhram Yamagrajam Chaya Marthanda Sambhootham Tham Namamy Shanaishyaram.”

  “Also,” he said, reverting to a normal speaking voice. “will be saying Hanuman chalisa on Tuesday and Saturday. As well as many other prayers, and offerings of oil.”

  Ben thought he wouldn’t hold his breath waiting for help from the Hindu temple. “Ah, yes, I see. Great. Would you like us to take you to the temple so you can get right on it?”

  Harper drove.

  10. I have no fiancée

  Wimberley, Thursday

  Webster didn’t show up on the dining deck for lunch on Thursday, which suggested either that he was up to something (my theory) or that he’d been forewarned about the menu (Lensky’s theory). I didn’t think the latter was probable. “He already ate tuna salad, tuna noodle casserole, and ‘Mexican’ mac and cheese. Broccoli lasagna isn’t any worse than those.” I’d been careful not to serve myself a large portion. I took a cautious bite. “And at least there isn’t any tuna in it.” Maybe I could hide the rest of mine under the wilted lettuce salad.

  “Only you would consider that a positive feature,” Lensky murmured. “Tuna would add some protein.”

  And we had thoughtlessly consumed the rest of Lensky’s food stash the night before, after he assured me that midnight feasts were an absolutely necessary part of the summer camp experience. “Want to go in to town tonight and get barbecue?” A body like Lensky’s required regular fuel, lots of it, and plenty of protein. Cardboard granola for breakfast and broccoli lasagna for lunch weren’t going to sustain him for long.

  “Is there a barbecue place in Wimberley?”

  “It’s Texas. There’ll be barbecue.” I tried to remember what other options were reasonably close. “Or… if you don’t mind a slightly longer drive… we could go to the Salt Lick.” I hadn’t been there for a while and wasn’t sure I could teleport there accurately. Prudence suggested we use an actual car to get to the restaurant.

  “Salt Lick! You do know how to make a man happy,” Lensky said. “Can we park somewhere after dinner?”

  “Oh, maybe…” I singsonged, “if you play your cards right…”

  “This week is like a tour of the best moments of my adolescence,” Lensky said happily. He thought that statement over. “The anticipated ones, anyway. The actual moments never quite lived up to my hopes.”

  Our plans were interrupted by Webster’s arrival on the deck. For a smallish guy, he certainly had a heavy step; his boots crashed down on the planks and momentarily halted all conversation. Everybody put down the forks they’d been rather languidly plying and looked up at him.

  “Guess what,” he announced into the lull, “Mr. C.’s back already. And we just had a very interesting little chat.”

  “Does he want us to come back to the office tomorrow? Or today?” Even Ginny, who claimed that she’d never met a meal she didn’t like, appeared to be perfectly willing to miss out on Inner Light’s last day and a half of catering.

  “We didn’t talk about that,” Webster said with an ugly smirk. “I just happened to mention how much we’d enjoyed meeting his fiancée. And you’ll never guess what he said!”

  Looking at his satisfied smirk, I had an extremely good guess. Margo Foster was hovering in the doorway behind Webster, looking unhappy; had he already shared his bombshell with her? My mind started whirring. I could teleport myself and Lensky out of here, and then Shani Chayyaputra would know exactly who’d been spying on him. I could endure a very unpleasant conversation and then leave by normal means, possibly keeping at least some of my secrets. Or – was it possible I could talk my way out of this? An idea was beginning to dawn on me. The best part was that I wouldn’t even have to lie. For some values of “lie.” Our Director, Dr. Verrick, holds that it’s not lying to be selective with the truth. Our Indian intern, Prakash, had talked about a marriage arranged by his family…

  “He said,” Webster announced loudly, “‘I have no fiancée!’”

  Into the stunned silence that followed, I said, “Of course he did.”

  “What?”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of an arranged marriage? We haven’t been negotiating personally; where there’s money on both sides, the complications are daunting. It’s best to leave that to one’s family. The actual agreement is quite recent. I myself found out only about the same time that squib appeared in Whirred.” Shortly afterwards, to be precise – thanks to Ginny. “Shani’s been out of town on business; he probably hasn’t got the memo yet.”

  “Oh… Is that why you sounded sort of tentative on Sunday, when I showed you the article?” Ginny asked.

  “It sometimes takes a little while for one to fully take in good news.” That statement was true enough, and it wasn’t my fault if she applied the generality to my present situation.
<
br />   “This week must have been quite disorienting for you,” Hien observed. “Imagine getting the news of your engagement and immediately being thrown together with all of your fiancé’s employees!”

  “I don’t have to imagine it.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Webster broke into this feast of agreement. “Didn’t any of you hear me? Sally is not Mr. C.’s fiancée. She’s an impostor!”

  Ginny waved a dismissive hand at him. Her engagement ring looked bigger than ever. Oh-oh, something else to explain. “Oh, dry up, Webby. We heard you, and then we heard Sally, and her explanation makes perfect sense. Is that why you don’t have an engagement ring, Sally? I was wondering, but I didn’t like to ask.”

  “That, and the fact that I don’t want one. I lose stuff. Frankly, I don’t want the responsibility of walking around with a huge expensive rock on my finger.” True enough; I’d already been over that with Lensky. “And you can imagine the kind of ring Shani would think appropriate!” Every sentence was true, even if the last one didn’t have any connection with the first two.

  Fortunately, Alec chose that moment to make a crack that diverted the inquisitors.

  “So what’s he going to get you, a nose ring? You wouldn’t lose that.”

  “Alec, that’s racist!” Ginny hissed.

  “I don’t think she’s even Indian,” Webster said. “She’s not dark enough.”

  “Webster, that’s racist!” Hien said.

  “I can personally assure you,” Lensky said loudly, “that Sally has been planning her wedding for quite some time.”

  My mother had, anyway.

  His interruption broke up the question-and-answer session long enough for me to excuse myself without looking like I was running away. I shamelessly abandoned the broccoli lasagna. God never intended lasagna to be green.

  “You’re just lucky Webster didn’t think to ask Shani about ‘Brian Lester,’ I murmured after we escaped the dining deck.

  “He seems to dislike you so much that he can’t think about anything else. You must have done something to piss him off.”