A Tapestry of Fire (Applied Topology Book 4)

by Margaret Ball

  Mr. M. raised his head a few inches. “It would appear that the Master of Ravens has learned something from the Center for Applied Topology.”

  “What?”

  “Is it not obvious? Just as you have hardened the shields around your office and your homes so that no unauthorized person can teleport into them, so has he hardened the shields on his apartment inside the building.”

  “Oh.” He’d learned from us, dammit. I hadn’t considered that possibility. “What can we do about that?”

  “Short of sending someone to enter the apartment by normal physical means and remove the protections, nothing. And even then, he would have to find the tokens. Chayyaputra may well have disguised them.”

  “That would be a suicide mission,” said Colton.

  “Yes, very likely.” Mr. M. didn’t seem fazed by the notion. But then, given that Meadow had never gotten around to equipping his snake body with retractable hands, he could be pretty sure that he wouldn’t be the one sent on the mission.

  There was a hammering on the door and several soprano voices demanded to know if we were through yet.

  “Repairs,” Colton shouted. “There’s been a sewage backup.”

  “Eeew!” The girls moved on, presumably to use a different restroom; the building had several, and if we’d been thinking clearly we would have assembled in a less accessible one. Oh well, too late now.

  “The lobby,” Ingrid said, “we’ll have to go in that way after all. We’ll need Jimmy to spot for us.”

  She turned sideways and disappeared. A moment later she stepped out of the air and back down onto the tiles, holding Jimmy’s hand.

  “We need you to picture the lobby of SCI,” she told him.

  “Yes, but what—”

  “Just do it, okay?”

  Ingrid and I took Jimmy’s hands, and Colton wrapped an arm around Annelise. We were an untidy, scruffy group, trailing a stepladder and aquarium equipment, some of it not very securely held; I hoped everything would make it through the in-between all right.

  There were no problems of that sort; no such luck. None of us, and nothing that we held, passed through that hard, reflective barrier. The only thing that was better about this attempt was that I had my knees bent and was balanced on the balls of my feet, half expecting the vigorous bounce-back. So I didn’t fall on my butt this time.

  Progress.

  Of a sort.

  “He’s got the whole building shielded!” Ingrid exclaimed.

  And now I was getting dizzy. I checked my colleagues. Ingrid and Colton also looked kind of pale and a bit wavery, as though they weren’t completely here. I was familiar with the sensations attacking me; although we could now feed stars into a visualization slowly enough to make short jumps relatively simple, at the beginning of our teleportation adventures any jump of more than a mile would send a topologist to the floor with low-blood-sugar shakes. We were a lot stronger now – strong enough that we hadn’t thought it necessary to sugar-load for a mere ten-mile jump powered by three topologists – but all three of us had poured a lot of our energy into the two attempts to get through Shani Chayyaputra’s shields. (A lot of stars, too, but the good thing about taking a finite number of objects out of an infinite set is, we still had as many stars left as we’d begun with.)

  “Food,” Colton said.

  We hauled the stepladder and other equipment into the cafeteria across from the restroom, gave Annelise and Jimmy some money, and sent them off to buy whatever high-calorie food they could find. While we waited for them to return, Ingrid tore open a sugar packet and dropped the contents into her mouth.

  “Ick,” said Colton. “How can you do that?”

  “Like this,” Ingrid said, repeating the treatment with another sugar packet. “Emergency sugar.” She began to look somewhat less like an ice sculpture of herself. She might be extremely fair, but her hair and face did normally have some color. You had to see the energy-drained version of her to recognize what was missing. “You know what? This isn’t a trap after all. You try to lure people into a trap, not to lock them out.”

  I took a packet out of the stack of condiments. So did Colton. She was right; I felt significantly less transparent and more three-dimensional after swallowing it.

  “Doesn’t do a lot for me,” Colton said glumly.

  Ingrid looked at the empty packet in his hands. “Of course not. You’re eating Splenda, you idiot!”

  “It must be some other kind of trap,” I said, grabbing another sugar packet.

  “What’s Splenda?”

  “A low-calorie sugar substitute that does absolutely nothing for your blood sugar.”

  “You couldn’t have warned me?”

  “I thought you could read!”

  Okay, we were irritable as well as shaky. Fortunately, our non-mathematical colleagues came back with actual food before we could descend farther into childish squabbling. We grabbed utensils and fell on the plates of food with only a slight attempt to avoid resembling a pack of harpies. When we’d inhaled all the hamburgers, milk shakes, and slices of pie on the table, I sat back feeling slightly bloated but very much here. I was even willing to answer my phone when it rang – checking first, of course, to make sure the caller wasn’t Lensky. I wasn’t sufficiently recovered to face him quite yet.

  What I had to face turned out to be much worse.

  “Sally,” purred a low, velvety voice that I recognized instantly. “We have so much to talk about, don’t you think?”

  I sat up straighter and waved at the others to hush them. “I don’t talk with people who harm my friends.”

  “Oh, there’s no need to take that tone with me,” Chayyaputra said, sounding amused. “Nothing irreversible has happened to your friend yet. Nor need it happen, if you act intelligently.”

  “And your definition of acting intelligently?” I cupped a hand over my free ear to muffle the echoes of conversation and clattering dishes in the room. I didn’t want to miss anything here.

  “Giving me what I want would be intelligent. I do not have much use for your friend. The poor fish. I will be happy to return him to your colleagues.”

  “Just like that?” I didn’t believe it.

  “There will, of course, be a price to pay.”

  That I could well believe.

  “The pictures on Miss Ginny’s cell phone were extremely interesting.”

  Blast! I hadn’t even noticed her taking pictures.

  “You and your friend Lensky had quite an amusing time in Wimberley, did you not? You must have laughed to think what a fool you had made of me. Now it will be my turn to laugh. Surrender yourself and Lensky, and I will give your friend back.”

  “That’s not a very good deal,” I said. My throat had suddenly gone dry. “Why should we give you two for one?”

  “Because you have no bargaining power?”

  “It’s not a matter of bargaining,” I said, “it’s a matter of what’s available. I can’t deliver Lensky; he is too paranoid for me to trick him into this. If you want a trade, you can have me for Ben. Nobody else needs to be involved.”

  We talked for some time more, but I wouldn’t be moved from my position that I had no power over Lensky. Eventually, and somewhat reluctantly, he agreed to take me alone in exchange for Ben. We spent some more time haggling over the details of the exchange before everything was agreed.

  I hung up and was immediately mobbed by my friends.

  “Was that Chayyaputra?”

  “What was that about Lensky?”

  “What kind of a trade did you agree on?”

  I thought that last had been perfectly clear from my half of the conversation. “Straight up. One for one. Me for Ben.”

  “You can’t do that, Thalia,” Colton said.

  Annelise’s lower lip trembled, but she said, “No. Ben would never forgive me if I let you sacrifice yourself for him.”

  “Who said anything about sacrificing?” I asked. “Obviously, I’m going to cheat.” U
nless, of course, I failed and got turned into a fish.

  “How?”

  “Let me explain. Quickly – we don’t have much time. For starters, we’re meeting at Mayfield Park in one hour.”

  Ingrid groaned. “Remember the last time? He can bring all the grackles he wants to a place like that.”

  “I’m counting on you and Mr. M. to keep the grackles too busy to interfere. Now that Meadow’s given him customized flash-bangs as well as lasers, it should be a piece of cake. Mr. M., are you loaded for grackle?”

  “Of course!” Mr. M. said indignantly. “How could I act as your armed guard if I did not bear arms? But I will not leave you to face this so-called ‘god’ alone, Daughter of Stars.”

  “Mr. M., you have to. Look, here’s how it’s going to work…”

  I went over the details of my plan. There weren’t many; there were too many contingencies and we had no time to prepare for every possibility. If things went as I hoped, we would be able to retrieve Ben without giving Chayyaputra anything in return. If they didn’t – well, we’d just have to think on our feet, wouldn’t we? And in the worst possible case, I would surrender to Chayyaputra in return for Ben’s freedom. I didn’t mention that part because we didn’t have time for an argument, and anyway I hoped desperately that it wouldn’t come to that. I did not want to spend the rest of my life as a fish, let alone a fish in Shani Chayyaputra’s custody. Even the prospect of getting out of the wedding was not enough to make that particular outcome attractive.

  Annelise’s part in the plan was to go back to the Center for Applied Topology and keep Lensky too busy to wonder where everybody else had gone. Her talent for nonstop conversation would doubtless be stretched to its limit, but I had faith in her. She wouldn’t even have to lie to him – as long as she didn’t let him get a word in edgewise to ask any questions. After putting the fish-rescuing equipment back in his car – all but the bolt cutters, which Ingrid would keep – Jimmy would join Annelise and add what he could to the distract-Lensky project. If necessary, he promised, he would tell Lensky all about the advantages of statically-typed programming languages.

  I felt sorry for Lensky. But even being told all about statically… statistically… whatever Jimmy said… was better than what would happen to him if Shani Chayyaputra got hold of him. I thought.

  Colton, Ingrid, and Mr. M. would come to the park with me but separately from me, all hidden by camouflage. I needed to have my own, separately controlled camouflage going.

  Now that we’d refueled, teleporting to Mayfield Park would be easy. And thanks to Prakash’s work on using two topological applications at once, we could arrive already camouflaged instead of just stepping out of the air and upsetting any possible witnesses. In fact, my plan depended on the other three being unnoticeable to Chayyaputra himself.

  All four of us had been there recently enough to form a good mental picture of the area around the same lily pond where we’d met the Master of Ravens, almost one year ago, for a similar exchange. That time it had been an exchange of data for hostages. Almost nothing had gone as planned, but we got Lensky’s niece back and the Master didn’t get the data he’d wanted, so I considered that venture to have been a success. I could only hope that this would work out as well.

  Once at the park, I left Colton, Ingrid and Mr. M. in their own camouflage at the far end of the pond. The plan, such as it was, depended on my being able to drop my own camouflage while they stayed concealed.

  Last time we’d been here, it had been a Sunday afternoon and the park had been full of visitors. This had made things extremely complicated both for us – we’re not supposed to do any applied topology where outsiders can see it – and also for Lensky, who had some trouble getting a clear shot at the Master of Ravens. It would have been much easier for him on this warm weekday afternoon. Our only potential witnesses were a couple of college kids dressed in full hiking gear, complete with sunshades and extra water bottles. And they were just setting off to explore the trails that went off down the hill from the old house. I thought they wouldn’t have noticed us even if we’d stepped out of the air into full visibility, instead of manifesting as slight blurs of our backgrounds.

  I missed Lensky, but he couldn’t be here this time. He couldn’t even know this was happening until it was all over. I spared a thought for Annelise, hoping that her inventiveness wouldn’t desert her under Lensky’s piercing blue stare. He was in as much danger from Chayyaputra as I was, and he didn’t have any paranormal abilities he could use to protect himself.

  A peacock waddled up to me and let loose a deafening screech, after which it looked up at me just as though it could see right through my camouflage. I looked back where Colton and Ingrid should have been standing with Mr. M. Nothing was visible but a slight shimmer of light where their camouflage projected an image of whatever was behind them. But two peahens were prancing in and out of the borders of their camouflage. They looked very odd indeed, with their heads disappearing and reappearing and their tails flipping in and out of sight. And their nodding heads, when I could see them, seemed to be looking precisely where Colton’s and Ingrid’s faces would be.

  Peacocks could see through Ben’s camouflage algorithm? Who knew? I just hoped grackles were not similarly gifted, or I was screwed. We really hadn’t given enough thought to the effect of an open covers visualization on different kinds of optic nerves, had we? Another detail for further research – assuming I lived to return to my real work.

  We were a few minutes early, and I didn’t see Chayyaputra yet. Careful to keep my camouflage up, I took slow deep breaths and tried to absorb the peace of the gardens. Actual palm trees – not that common in Austin – towered above us; the pond at my feet was bright with pink and yellow water lilies raising colorful bursts of petals above the flat green leaves. Where the water lily pads didn’t cover the surface of the water, I could see red and golden koi moving lazily among the lilies and other plants. If I could keep my mind off the giant water moccasin we’d encountered last year, this place was a sub-tropical paradise.

  Well. The water moccasin and the Master of Ravens. At least the original Paradise had had only one serpent.

  There was a disturbance of the air behind me. I turned sharply and saw two separate blurs of camouflage where there had been only one. The smaller blur faded and resolved into Prakash Bhatia. “Thalia, where are you?” he called in a low voice. “You need to know—”

  I dropped my own camouflage. “What, Prakash?”

  “Lensky knows.”

  I glanced at my watch. He’d gotten the truth out of Annelise in less than fifteen minutes! “Is he coming here?”

  “Yes, but he is driving only. I came to warn you… and also so that he could not ask me to teleport him.”

  Idiot! There’d been nothing to stop him from pretending to agree and then teleporting to some other place where he could strand Lensky in safety until this was over. “Listen, Prakash. I need you to wait in the parking lot. When Lensky gets here, grab him and teleport both of you out of here.”

  “What? Why are you wishing this? Where should I be taking him?”

  “Oh…. Never mind, I’ll get Colton to do it.”

  Last winter Colton had saved all our lives by taking a bomb that was about to explode, teleporting back to his home in the Panhandle and dropping the bomb on some tumble-down buildings that his father had always meant to demolish. If he left Lensky at the family farm now, there was no way Brad would be able to get back from the Panhandle in time to interfere with us. And he would be safe; Chayyaputra would never guess where to look for him.

  I turned and talked to the blur where Colton had to be and explained what I needed. He dropped camouflage; Prakash joined Ingrid and she raised shields and camouflage over both of them. Prakash might be a bit of a jerk, but he was an outstanding mathematician; it was thanks to his research earlier this semester that we’d learned how to do two applications simultaneously. It was possible he’d be useful here.

/>   Colton ambled back towards the car park, not even bothering to use camouflage. Why should he? He’d never been face to face with the Master of Ravens and he could easily pass for a normal visitor wandering around the park.

  With my mind freed of that worry, I was able to give Chayyaputra my full attention when he blinked into existence about twenty feet away, accompanied by his usual annoyance of grackles. The birds dispersed and settled on nearby bushes, allowing me to see that he was carrying a bucket – and not an empty one, judging by the way he held it.

  Ben! I dropped camouflage and let Chayyaputra see me.

  13. A destructive force of nature

  Austin, Thursday

  “Dear ‘Sally,’” Chayyaputra said with an oily, very fake smile. “Are you ready to come to me? A man and his promised bride should be close, should we not?”

  A little trickle of sweat ran down my back; May was coming in unnecessarily warm. It was not a chill going down my spine. “Put the bucket down and back off,” I said. “I want to be sure you aren’t cheating us.”

  Chayyaputra did as I asked, though he didn’t give me much space; he only took three steps back. I moved forward, cautiously, and drew my invisible shield close to my body so as not to betray its existence.

  So far so good; there was a pink fish in the bucket, swimming as best it could under the handicap of a heavy metal tag clamped to its back fin. But we should have brought Jimmy! None of the rest of us had any idea whether or not this fish looked like the ones that he and Ben had freed. All I knew was that Jimmy said the fish had been tortured with an iron tag, like this one, and that removing the tag was all that was necessary to allow them to resume their human shape.

  “We’ll have to verify that you’ve actually produced Ben, of course,” I said, talking briskly and trying to pretend this had been part of the deal all along. It damn well should have been part of the deal. I’d been thinking so hard about keeping Lensky safe that I hadn’t given enough thought to verification. “I’ll just get the bolt cutters…” Which would be a neat trick in itself, given that Ingrid was holding them and that I didn’t want the Master of Ravens to know of her presence. If I needed backup, best that it was a surprise to him, right?