by K. E. Mills
Oh lord, he thought miserably, staring at all those magnificent First Grade staffs. It felt as though his official Departmental tie had tightened to throttling point. There has to be more to wizarding than this.
An irate shout rescued him from utter despair. 'Oy! You! Who are you and what are you doing in my factory?'
He turned. Marching belligerently towards him, scattering lab coats like so many white mice, was a small persnickety man of sleek middle years, clutching a clipboard and looking so offended even his tea-stained moustache was bristling.
'Ah. Good afternoon,' he said, producing his official smile. 'Mr Harold Stuttley, I presume?'
The angry little man halted abruptly in front of him, clipboard pressed to his chest like a shield. 'And if I am? What of it? Who wants to know?'
Gerald put down his briefcase and took out his identification. Stuttley snatched it from his fingers, glared as though at a mortal insult, then shoved it back. 'What's all this bollocks? And who let you in here? We're about to do a run of First Grades. Unauthorised personnel aren't allowed in here when we're running First Grades! How do I know you're not here for a spot of industrial espionage?'
'Because I'm employed by the DoT,' he said, pocketing his badge. 'And I'm afraid you won't be running anything, Mr Stuttley, until I'm satisfied it's safe to do so. You've not submitted your safety statements for some time now, sir. I'm afraid the Department takes a dim view of that. Now I realise it's probably just an oversight on your part, but even so…' He shrugged. 'Rules are rules.'
Harold Stuttley's pebble-bright eyes bulged. 'Want to know what you can do with your rules? You march in here uninvited and then have the hide to tell me when I can and can't conduct my own business? I'll have your job for this!'
Gerald considered him. Too much bluster. Wliat's he trying to hide! He let his gaze slide sideways, away from Harold Stuttley's unattractively temper-mottled face. The thaumic emission gauge on the nearest etheretic conductor was stuttering, jittery as an icicle in an earthquake. Flick, flick, flick went the needle, each jump edging closer and closer to the bright red zone marked Danger. In his nostrils, the clogging stink of overheated thaumic energy was suddenly stifling.
'Mr Stuttley,' he said, 'I think you should shut down production right now. There's something wrong here, I can feel it.'
Harold Stuttley's eyes nearly popped right out of his head. 'Shut down? Are you raving? You're looking at over a million quid's worth of merchandise! All those staffs are bought and paid for, you meddling twit! I'm not about to disappoint my customers for some wet-behind-the-ears stooge from the DoT! Your superiors wouldn't know a safe bit of equipment if it bit them on the arse — and neither would you! Stuttley's has been in business two hundred and forty years, you cretin! We've been making staffs since before your great-grandad was a randy thought in his pa's trousers!'
Gerald winced. By now the air inside the factory was so charged with energy it felt like sandpaper abrading his skin. 'Look. I realise it's inconvenient but — '
Harold Stuttley's pointing finger stabbed him in the chest. 'It's not happening, son, that's what it is. Inconvenient is the lawsuit I'll bring against you, your bosses and the whole bleeding Department of Thaumaturgy, you mark my words, if you don't leg it out of here on the double! Interfering with the lawful conduct of business? This is political, this is. Too many wizards buying Stuttley's instead of the cheap muck your precious Department churns out! Well I won't have it, you hear me? Now hop it! Off my premises! Or I'll give you a personal demonstration why Stuttley's staffs are the best in the world!'
Gerald stared. Was the man mad? He couldn't throw out an official Department inspector. He'd have his manufacturing licence revoked. Be brought up on charges. Get sent to prison and be forced to pay a hefty fine.
Little rivers of sweat were pouring down Harold Stuttley's scarlet face and his hands were trembling with rage. Gerald looked more closely. No. Not rage. Terror. Harold Stuttley was beside himself with fear.
He turned and looked at the nearest etheretic conductor. It was sweating too, beads of dark blue moisture forming on its surface, dripping slowly down its sides. Even as he watched, one fat indigo drop of condensed thaumic energy plopped to the factory floor. There was a crack of light and sound. Two preoccupied technicians somersaulted through the air like circus performers, crashed into the wall opposite and collapsed in groaning heaps.
'StuttleyV He grabbed Harold by his lapels and shook him. 'Do you see that? Your etheretic containment field is leaking! You have to evacuate! NowV
The rest of the lab coats were congregated about their fallen comrades, fussing and whispering and casting loathing looks in their employer's direction. The acrobatic technicians were both conscious, apparently unbroken, but seemed dazed. Harold Stuttley jumped backwards, tearing himself free of officialdom's grasp.
'Evacuate? Never! We've got a deadline to meet!' He rounded on his employees. 'You lot! Back to work! Leave those malingerers where they are, they're all right, they're just winded! Be on their feet in no time — if they know what's good for them. Come on! You want to get paid this week or don't you?'
Aghast, Gerald stared at him. The man was mad. Even a mere Third Grade wizard like himself knew the dangers of improperly contained thaumic emissions. The entire first year of his correspondence course had dealt with the occupational hazards of wizarding. Some of the illustrations in his handbook had put him off minced meat for weeks.
He stepped closer to the factory foreman and lowered his voice. 'Mr Stuttley, you're making a very big mistake. Falling behind in your safety statements is one thing. Its a minor infringement. Not worth so much as half a paragraph in Wizard Weekly's gossip column. But if you try to run this equipment when clearly its not correctly calibrated, you could cause a scandal that will spread halfway round the world. You could ruin Stuttley's reputation for years. Maybe forever. Not to mention risk the lives of all your workers. Is that what you want?'
Harold Stuttley swiped his face with his sleeve. 'What I want,' he said hoarsely, 'is for you to get out of here and let me do my job. There's nothing wrong with our equipment, I tell you, it — '
'Quick, everyone! Run for your lives! The conductors are about to invert!'
As the technician who'd shouted the warning led the stampede for the nearest door, Gerald spun on his heel and stared at the sweating etheretic conductors. The needles of each thaumic emission gauge were buried deep in the danger zone and the scattered drops of energy had coalesced into foaming indigo streams. They struck the factory floor like lances of tire, blowing holes, scattering splinters. The insulating cables linking the conductors to each other and the benches glowed virulent blue, shimmenngs of power wafting off them like heat haze on a dangerous horizon.
Balanced in their cradles, the First Grade staffs began to dance.
'We have to turn off the conductors!' said Gerald. 'Before all the staffs are charged at once or the conductors blow — or both! Where are the damper switches, Stuttley?'
But Harold Stuttley was halfway out of the door, his clipboard abandoned on the floor behind him. Wonderful.
Now the etheretic conductors were humming, a rising song of warning. The air beneath the factory ceiling stirred. Thickened, like curdling cream, and took on a faintly blue cast. He felt every exposed hair on his body stand on end. His throat closed on a gasp as the etheretically burdened atmosphere turned almost unbreathable. Something warm was trickling from his nostrils.
He should run. Now. Without pausing to pick up his briefcase. Those conductors were going to invert any second now, and when they did -
'Bloody hellV he shouted, and leapt for the nearest cable.
It wouldn't disengage. None of the cables would disengage. He ran up and down the benches, tugging and swearing, but the leaking power had fused the cables to the cradles and each other.
He'd have to get the staffs clear before they all got charged.
Stumbling, sweating, parched with terror, he started ha
uling the gold-filigreed oak spindles out of their cradles. Tossed them behind him like so much inferior firewood, even as the air continued to coalesce and the etheretic conductors juddered and sweated and discharged bolts of indiscriminate power.
In his pocket his modest little cherrywood staff began to glow. It got so hot he had to stop flinging the First Grade staffs around and drag off his coat, because it felt like his leg was burning. Moments after he threw the coat to the floor the wool burst into flames and disintegrated into charred flakes, revealing his smoking staff with its copper bands glowing bright as a furnace.
The First Grade staffs he'd released from confinement leapt about the floor like popcorn on a hotplate. Those still in their cradles began to buzz. On a sobbing breath he continued tearing them free of the benches.
Ten — twenty — thirty: oh lord, he'd never finish in time -
And then the staffs were simply too hot for flesh to touch. As he fell back, scorched and panting, the power's song became a scream. Both thaumic emission gauges exploded, the top of the conductors peeled open like soup cans… and a torrent of unprocessed, uncontrolled etheretic energy poured out of the reservoirs and into the remaining First Grade staffs.
The thaumic boom blasted him against the nearest wall so hard he thought for a moment he was dead, but seconds later his blackened vision cleared. He wished it hadn't.
Terrible arcing lines of indigo power surged around and through the staffs hed failed to pull free of their conductive cradles. The emptied conductors, ripped apart from the inside out, lay fallen on their sides. Two ragged gaping holes in the ceiling directly overhead spilled sunlight onto the dreadful aftermath of undisciplined thaumic energies. Through them spiralled two thin columns of unfiltered emissions: the leftover power not captured by the staffs escaping into the wider world beyond the factory.
Groaning, Gerald staggered to his feet. If he didn't shut down that self-perpetuating loop of energy pouring through the First Grade staffs it would continue to build and build until it exploded… most likely taking half the suburb of Stuttley with it. It wasn't a job for a lowly probationary compliance officer, or a Third Grade wizard who'd received his qualifications from a barely recognised correspondence course. He doubted it was even a job for a First Grade wizard… at least, not one working solo. A whole squadron might manage it, at a pinch.
But that was wishful thinking. There wasn't time to contact Mr Scunthorpe and get him to send out a flying squad of Departmental troubleshooters. There was just him. Gerald Dunwoody, wizard Third Grade. Twenty-three years old and scared to death. So long, life. I hardly lived you… Looming large before him, the howling, writhing mass of thaumaturgically linked First Grade staffs, bathed in unholy indigo fire. Abandoned on the floor at his feet, his pathetic little cherrywood staff, as useful now as a piece of straw.
And scattered around him, four of the First Grade staffs he'd managed to rescue before the massive conductor inversion. Rolling idly to and fro they glowed a gentle gold, their filigree activated. They must have been caught in the nimbus of exploding thaumic energy.
Everybody knew that Third Grade wizards didn't have the etheretic chops to handle a First Grade staff. Even using a Second Grader was to risk life, limb and sanity. Attempting to use one of those erratically charged First Graders was proof positive that sanity had left the building.
But he had no choice. This was an emergency and he was the only Department official in sight. Instincts shrieking, fear a gibbering demon on his back, he reached for the nearest activated First Grade staff. If it was one of the special orders, keyed to a specific wizard, then he really was about to breathe his last -
A shock of power slammed through his body. The world pulsed violet, then crimson, then bright and blinding blue, spinning wildly on its axis. Something deep inside his mind torqued. Twisted. Tore. His vision cleared, the mad giddiness stopped, and he was himself again. More or less. Something was different, but there was no time to worry or work out what.
Bucking and flailing like a live thing, the staff struggled to join its brethren in the heart of the magical maelstrom. Gerald got his other hand onto it, battling to contain the energy. It felt like standing inside the world's largest waterfall. The staff was channelling the excess energies from the atmosphere, attracting them like a magnet. Pummelled, battered, he wrestled with the flux and flow of power. Poured everything he had into taming the beast in his fists. But the beast didn't want to be tamed.
Gasping, fighting against being pulled into the maelstrom, he opened his slitted eyes. The etheretic conductors were empty now, their spiralling columns of power collapsed. But the trapped staffs within the indigo firestorm continued to blaze, amplifying and distorting the energies they'd consumed. Only minutes remained, surely, before they exploded. And he had no idea how to stop them.
CHAPTER TWO
Desperate, Gerald tipped back his head and stared through the nearest hole in the factory ceiling.This was no time for pride; he'd take help from anywhere.
'Reg? Reg] Are you out there? Can you hear me?'
No reply. Did that mean she was just refusing to answer or was she really not there? Was this the one time she'd actually done what he asked and was keeping her beak out of his business? Typical.
'Reg, if you're out there I'm sorry, all right? I apologise. I grovel. Just — help]'
Still no answer. Breathing like a runner on his last legs he ignored the howling pain in his shoulders and wrists and battled the gold-filigreed staff to a temporary standstill. Like a wilful child it fretted and tugged, still trying to join its blazing siblings.
A glimmer of an idea appeared, then, an iceberg emerging out of a fogbank. Staffs were both conduits and reservoirs of power. They were attracted to it like flies to honey Yes, this staff was already charged — but not completely. And everybody knew that Stuttley's staffs absorbed higher levels of raw thaumic energy than any other brand in the world. So if he could just coax some more of that untamed pulsing power into this activated staff and perhaps one or two others — maybe he could prevent the imminent enormous explosion.
Summoning the last skerricks of his strength, he inched closer to the indigo firestorm. Immediately the staff began to fight him again. He hung on grimly: letting go would be the worst, last mistake of his life. When he was as close to the writhing thaumic energy as he could get without being sucked in, he stopped. Raised the statf above his head. Focused his will, and plunged it end-first into the factory floor. Where it stuck, quivering.
A questing tendril of thaumic energy licked towards it and, amidst a sizzling crackle, fused with the staff's intricate gold fretwork. More power poured into the tall oak spindle. Gerald watched, the stinking air caught in his throat. If it held… if it held… The transfer held.
Staggering, he picked up another partially activated staff and plunged it into the floor two feet along from the first. Within moments it too was siphoning off the lethal, undirected thaumic energy. He did the same to a third staff, then a fourth. A fifth. A sixth. By the time he'd finished, he was looking at a whole row of crackling, power-hazed First Grade staffs and his legs could barely hold him upright. His lungs were a pair of deflated balloons. Indigo spots danced before his eyes. But he'd done it. He'd averted disaster. The suburb of Stuttley and its famous staff factory were saved.
Holly Devree had kept his handkerchief, so he smeared the sweat from his face with one shirtsleeve and watched, exhausted, as the ferocious thaumic firestorm faded. Smiled, shaking, as the ear-battering roar of untrammelled power abated.
Saint Snodgrass's trousers. Had anything like this ever happened before? A Third Grade wizard managing to successfully stymie a major thaumatur-gical inversion? He'd never heard of it. As he stood there, gently panting, he let his imagination off its tight leash.
This could be it, Dunwoody. This could be your big chance, finally.
Mr Scunthorpe would have to take him seriously now. Let him off probation early. Possibly even approve a transfer
to a different department altogether. Even ¦- miracle of miracles — Research and Development.
The thought of reaching such an exalted height made him dizzy all over again.
With a final whimpering sputter the last randomly dissipated etheretic energies discharged into the staffs he'd plunged into the floor. The benches and staffs still trapped in their conductive cradles disintegrated in a choking cloud of indigo ash.
Despite his exhaustion and his myriad aches and pains, Gerald did a little victory dance. 'Yes! Yes! R and D boys, here I come!'
Then he stopped dancing, because it was that or fall over. Instead he just stood there, eyes closed, heart pounding, revelling in his moment of unexpected triumph.
Breaking the blessed silence, a sound. Thin. Sharp. Dangerous — and escalating. Nervously he opened his eyes. Stared at the militarily upright staffs plunged into the floor. Before he had time to blink, the first one transformed into a narrow blue column of fire. Moments later the second followed suit. Then the rest, one by one, like a row of falling dominoes. The air began to sparkle. The factory floor began to smoke.
He frowned. 'Oh.' Apparently he'd found the thaumaturgical limit of a Stuttley Superior Staff. How clever of me. Research and Development, indeed. 'Right. So this would be a good time to run away, yes?'
His wobbly legs answered for him. He had just enough time and wit to grab up his poor little cherrywood staff and reach the nearest door. The blast wave caught him with his fingers still on the handle, tumbled him through the air like so much leaf litter and dropped him from a great height into the middle of an ornamental rose garden.
The last thing he saw, before darkness claimed him, was the irate face of Harold Stuttley.
'You bastard! You bastard! I'll have your job for this!' Mr Scunthorpe folded his hands on top of his desk and shook his head. 'Gerald… Gerald… Gerald…'