“Not a blessed thing, I swear by the sacred knucklebone of Saint Elias. I think he came out of his mother’s womb squint-eyed and suspicious. Assuming he even had a mother. You ready for the afternoon games?”
“I have to make some calls,” said Lensky, retreating.
He looked desperately worried. Why? I thought I’d slithered out of Webster’s latest trap very neatly. And having given up on extracting any meaningful information out of all these nice young people with their average brains and super-sized egos, I intended to indulge myself this afternoon by winning.
First up was something involving tossing eggs from one person to another; I think the object was for all of us to end up spattered with egg and agreeing that we weren’t perfect. Well, I may throw like a girl, but I have finely-honed skills in small object manipulation. I wouldn’t say ‘perfect,’ but certainly good enough for government work.
I was basking in my egg-free status, and Margo was handing out cue cards for the next game, when Lensky burst out of the residence building and came galloping over to the big deck. “Can I borrow Sally for a minute?” He didn’t wait for permission, grabbing my hand and drawing me away from the group. “We have to get back to Austin,” he announced, “sorry to miss the rest of this wonderful retreat, but it’s urgent.”
“What is it, Mr. C. can’t wait to see Sally?”
“Something like that. Come on, Sally, pack your bag.” He hustled me into the residence building and up the stairs.
That little job didn’t take me long. It’s always easier to pack for going home than it was to pack for the outward journey; all you have to do is look around the room and fill your bag with everything that isn’t guest house property. Given the apparent rush, after packing I even slung Mr. M. around my neck rather than taking the time to thread him through my belt loops. But Lensky was even faster; he was waiting for me at the door downstairs.
“If it’s an emergency, shouldn’t I teleport us?” I asked under my breath.
“It’s an emergency,” Lensky agreed, “but not one that will be improved by hurrying once we’re out of here. I need to get my car back to Austin. And I can fill you in on the way.”
But once he’d shaken the dust of Inner Light Guest House off his tires, he seemed reluctant to start talking. When we reached Dripping Springs I decided it was on me to break the silence.
“So what kind of emergency demands that we leave immediately, but it doesn’t matter when we get to Austin?”
He sighed. “I should think that would be obvious. Remember what Webster said? Chayyaputra’s back.”
“So?”
“So what happens if he decides to go to Wimberley and have a look at his so-called fiancée? He knows he’s not engaged. He also knows what you look like. I don’t see a good outcome for that scenario. I wanted to pull you out of there before you got caught.”
“Oh.”
He was right; I should have thought of that for myself. I had been too wrapped up in the clever way I’d danced around Webster’s attack and re-established my credibility.
I watched swathes of Texas sweeping by. The brooding silence resumed, and I felt it was heavier than before. Mr. M. was the only occupant of the car who wasn’t on edge; he was snoring gently. Eventually I asked, “What are you not telling me?”
“What makes you think there’s something I’m not telling you?”
“The quality of your silence.” I’m not a telepath, but I do know Brad Lensky. What filled this car was not a restful silence between two people who know each other well enough to feel no need for conversation.
“Wait till we get to Allandale House, okay? You’ll want to hear it from Jimmy, and there’s no point in going through it twice.”
I thought there might be some point in relieving my anxiety, but it wasn’t worth starting a fight with Lensky. Probably. We were already on Mopac; in a few minutes I’d know whatever was wrong.
But what did Jimmy have to do with it? If Chayyaputra’s return had caused a crisis, wouldn’t it affect the other topologists, rather than the support staff?
Indeed it had affected us, as I learned when we got to the office. Since it was the middle of the afternoon and there were people around, we took the conventional route: climbing the stairs.
The double doors at the top of the stairs opened on a scene of confusion and despair. Jimmy was slumped over Annelise’s desk, head in his hands. Ingrid was tentatively patting him on the shoulder, in the manner one would expect from somebody brought up in a family that eschewed casual touching. Standing in one corner, looking bemused, was a short stocky guy with wet hair, wearing clothes clearly designed for a much taller person.
“Where’s Annelise?” was my first, probably irrelevant question.
Jimmy jerked his head towards Meadow Melendez’ office. The door was closed. “She’s in there with Meadow, having hysterics.”
Okay, maybe it had been a relevant question, because Annelise had never become hysterical before. She had handled everything from topologists flying around the office to being magically whisked to India with admirable aplomb. And if she was upset, why wasn’t Ben taking care of her? Where was Ben, anyway? Come to think of it, it was also out of character for Meadow, our resident robotics engineer, to put up with Annelise being hysterical. I’d have expected her to tell Annelise to stop making that (expletive) noise and get a (profanity plus obscenity) hold of herself.
I looked at Lensky. “Is this the emergency you wouldn’t tell me about?”
“More like the results of it.”
“Will somebody please tell me what’s been going on here? Brad?”
He gestured at Jimmy. “Ask him.”
“It’s a long story,” said Jimmy, raising his head. His eyes looked haunted. “It all started Monday, when Ben teleported me into SCI’s lobby.”
Of course. I should have known somebody was up to something when they insisted it was vitally important I spend the week in Wimberley, spying on a bunch of clueless employees. If I’d been here—But I hadn’t. And was it something we were allowed to talk about in front of outsiders? I tilted my head towards the stocky stranger. “Ah, should we…”
“He’s already been transformed into a fish and back again,” Jimmy said wearily. “It’s a little late to worry about non-disclosure agreements.”
“A… fish?”
Lensky nodded. If he confirmed this story, it must be true.
“Wait a minute.” I pulled an empty chair up to the desk and dropped into it. This had the definite feel of a story that you didn’t want to hear without a place to sit down. “I didn’t realize any of us knew how to transform someone into a fish.” If I’d had that ability, I might have turned our reluctant intern into a fish last January when he was making a nuisance of himself. Anybody as free with his hands as Prakash could only be improved by having to live without hands for a while.
“We don’t,” Jimmy said. “Chayyaputra does.”
I began to grasp the nature of the emergency. “He’s back in town, by the way.”
“I know that,” Jimmy said with a groan. “Now.” He looked at Lensky. “Your call to warn me was a bit late.”
Tardily I realized that we were missing a couple of people who really should be in on this, if it was a question of – once again – opposing Shani Chayyaputra’s black magic of black birds with applied topology. “Where’s Colton?”
Jimmy nodded towards the partition that sealed off the Research Department offices. “Studying transformation algorithms. Not that it’ll do us much good.”
“And I assume Ben is doing the same?” Although I couldn’t see Ben diving into abstruse topological theory while Annelise was so upset.
“Uh, no. Ben is… not here right now. That’s kind of the problem.”
Oh.
And it must be a very bad value of ‘not here’ to have sent Annelise into hysterics.
“Tell me everything. From the beginning,” I suggested for the second time.
; 11. Two thousand pounds of water
Austin, Thursday
Before they started the story, I had to wake up Mr. M. and give him some coffee, because I wanted him to hear everything too. He didn’t get very much coffee, though; I believe I’ve mentioned the deleterious effects of a caffeine high on his behavior.
Jimmy started with their Monday intrusion into the lobby of SCI. He summarized as best he could, given how much there was to tell. I had lots of questions, but managed to refrain from interrupting as he recounted the surprise of Harper’s arrival, Ben’s determination to remove a painful and crippling tag from one of the unfortunate fish in the aquarium, and the subsequent appearance of a naked, screaming woman standing in the plastic tub where they’d isolated the first fish to work on it.
“She was a little happier after Ben borrowed some clothes from Annelise for her,” Jimmy finished, “but I got the impression she never wanted to see or hear from us again.” Ingrid flushed, and it was clear Jimmy had left out some parts of the story. But I could find out the good stuff later.
Jimmy seemed to have run down. “So then you rescued all of the other fish that had these iron tags on them,” I prompted.
“Yes, but we couldn’t do that on Monday.”
“How come?”
He explained how transforming just one fish had sucked so much energy out of its surroundings that the lobby was freezing cold and even the water in the aquarium was dangerously cold for the tropical fish in it. “And Harper threw a fit when we even suggested that if we just saved the ones that were people, the other fish were expendable. There were only three other tagged fish, and we figured we could do them one a day – Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday – and still be out of there with no risk of encountering Shani Chayyaputra. Why did he have to come back a day and a half early?” he all but wailed.
With deep regret, I put aside the question of who the other “fish” had turned into until later. We needed to get to the emergency.
“Okay. I gather he caught you today. What happened to that last fish?”
“Oh, we’d already freed him and brought him back here.” Jimmy nodded at the stranger. “That’s Will, one of the guys who disappeared from Logan’s company. No, we didn’t get caught then. We wouldn’t have got caught at all if I hadn’t wanted to go back and install an improved version of the virus. But we should have had plenty of time!”
He stopped again.
“Okay. You and Ben were in SCI’s offices; you to work on the program you sneaked into their system and Ben, presumably, to teleport you in. Chayyaputra surprised you. And— ?”
Jimmy stared at the desk. “He threw this, like, lightning bolt at Ben. Blue lightning. It transformed Ben into a fish,” he said in a defeated monotone. “Shani grabbed him and clamped one of those iron tags on his back fin and threw him into the aquarium. I was waiting for him to do the same thing to me, but he didn’t. He let me go. He told me to come back to the Center and tell my colleagues what had happened.”
He glanced up. “I would have done that anyway. I wasn’t following his orders.”
“Of course you weren’t,” said Ingrid, patting his shoulder some more. “And it’s not your fault.”
“Oh, yes, it is! If I hadn’t wanted to do a little last-minute tinkering with the virus… if I’d borrowed Harper’s key to get into the office, instead of asking Ben to teleport me…”
“Then he would have transformed you,” Ingrid said, “and we’d never have known what happened to you. I think that would have been worse.”
For once, I had nothing to say. The horror of Ben’s fate was choking me. A fish, and Chayyaputra’s prisoner. What tortures would he inflict on Ben in retaliation for the invasion of SCI? An image of a fish in those beringed hands, thrashing and choking and slowly dying, tormented me.
“Thalia.” Large, warm hands cupped my face, then rested on my shoulders as though Lensky could impart his own strength and sanity by touch. “Thalia, I know what you’re doing. You’re imagining the worst that can happen.”
Well, that was my habit at moments of crisis: picture the worst and then tell myself that I could deal with it.
This, I wasn’t so sure I could deal with. I started shaking. Ben.
“Cut it out!” Lensky said roughly. His hands tightened on my shoulders and he shook me slightly. “You can’t afford to go into a trance now, or let yourself be paralyzed by all the awful things that might happen. We need your brains and talents. Ben needs you.”
But what could I do for him? What could anybody do, now?
I looked at the stranger. “He was a fish?”
“We only freed him a few hours ago,” Jimmy said.
“Was he damaged in any way?”
“He seems just the same to me, but then I didn’t know him all that well before. Will?” Jimmy looked at him.
“I don’t feel damaged,” said Will. “Confused, yes. Disoriented, yes. Mostly it’s as if I went to sleep, had a really bad nightmare, and woke up to discover ten weeks had passed while I was dreaming. And apparently I was a fish for those ten weeks. A few hours shouldn’t hurt Ben.”
“You know him?”
“Ah, we met after he cut the tag off and I became human again. Seemed like a real nice guy. I hope we can get him back.”
So did I. Indeed, I tried to follow Lensky’s advice and not even think of any other outcome. Get him back. We needed a plan. I tried to think.
“That aquarium – how big is it?”
Jimmy pulled himself together and concentrated. “Um, six feet long. Three feet high, but it’s not on the floor, it’s on a kind of a ledge that’s three feet tall.”
“Oh. I guess stealing the whole thing will be kind of difficult.”
“Borrow a calculator?” The stocky man called Will took the one that Ingrid handed to him and started tapping the keys. “How deep is it, Jimmy?”
“Oh, about eighteen inches. I think.”
“Thirty-two and a half cubic feet,” Will said. “Conversion factor, hmm, I think it’s about seven and a half gallons per cubic foot…” More key punching as he muttered to himself. “Approximately two hundred and forty gallons. One gallon weighs, damn, I know it in metric. Converting to liters, about nine hundred liters, one liter weighs one kilogram, so nine hundred kilos times two point two…” He raised his head. “It’ll weigh just about two thousand pounds. One ton. And that’s just the water.”
There was no way the four of us – me, Ingrid, Colton and Prakash – could teleport something that heavy. And that was assuming Prakash would help. His semester of internship was ending and his head was already back in the math department, working on his dissertation. Most days, like today, his body was over there too.
“Okay, then we’ll have to scoop him out of the tank. I don’t like spending that much time there, but I guess we can go in after Chayyaputra’s left for the night.”
“He doesn’t leave. He has an apartment on the second floor. Decorated,” Ingrid said, “in a not-so-tasteful mixture of Indian Rajah and Parisian Brothel.”
“How do you know what a Parisian brothel looks like?” Jimmy asked.
“I saw Souvenirs de la Maison Close. That’s House of Pleasures in English,” she translated. I have to admit the translation was useful; neither two years of college French nor my crazy Aunt Alesia’s French conversation had taught me what you call that kind of house in French. University language courses never teach you anything useful, and my aunt was too much of a lady to discuss such subjects. Maison close, huh? Never would have guessed it.
Chayyaputra lived right there in the SCI building, right above the offices. And I bet he had the lobby alarmed. No, Ben and Jimmy had been coming and going all week. Well, he’d want to have an alarm now. Possibly he wouldn’t have had time to arrange it yet. Our best chance would be to go in as soon as possible. Ingrid and Jimmy agreed with me.
When we reached that point in the discussion Lensky interrupted us. “No! You can’t go there. Not this afternoon,
not tonight, not any other time.”
“Sure we can,” I said. “Jimmy must have the location imprinted on his brain by now, and Ingrid and I can teleport with him. We can get Colton to help too.
“I forbid it.”
“You’re not our boss,” Ingrid pointed out. And Dr. Verrick, who had somewhat more clout when it came to forbidding us to do things, was out of the office as so often these days.
“And Harper has everything we need.” Jimmy, looking better than he had since I’d come in, started ticking off the required items on his fingers. “Small stepladder, butterfly net, plastic tub, dipper to scoop out water for the tub. Oh, and bolt cutters. We may need to buy those; I don’t know where Ben put the ones he bought.”
“Everybody shut up, you’re not thinking!” Lensky said, somewhat louder. “It’s a trap. It’s obviously a trap. Why do you think he spared Jimmy? So he could tell us what happened to Ben, so we could try to mount a rescue, so he could collect even more of you for his blasted aquarium!” His voice got louder with every clause; he was almost shouting at the end. Since he was standing behind me, I couldn’t see him, but I felt sure that vein on his left temple was twitching again.
What he said seemed depressingly probable, but I couldn’t think what we could do about it. “We have to rescue Ben. And if that means disabling some of Shani Chayyaputra’s traps, we’ll just have to do that too.”
“Count me in,” said Will, unexpectedly. “I can’t do any magic tricks—”
“Applied topology,” Ingrid corrected him.
“Whatever you call it, I can’t do it! But if you could use some muscle… well, Ben rescued me. I’d like a chance to return the favor.”
“Don’t you people listen?” Lensky demanded. “You. Cannot. Go. Into. That. Building. It’s too dangerous. This kind of thing is precisely what I was stationed here to prevent. It’s my job to stop you! It’s my job to preserve the Center for use by my agency, and part of that is keeping you – you suicidal lemmings from going over the first cliff you find!”
A Tapestry of Fire (Applied Topology Book 4) Page 11