License Invoked

by Robert Asprin

  “This is a disaster,” Liz said, turning to the others. “If she had stayed we could have contained her. Now she's on the loose.”

  “Sorry,” Nigel said. “I didn't know. I believe, you know that, but Robbie Unterburger, of all people! Who'd figure a sad creature like her for a sorceress or a telekinetic? She was screwing up so much I thought it'd be less trouble if she was gone.”

  The agents looked at one another.

  “We'd better find her,” Boo-Boo said. Leaving Nigel Peters fretting, they made for the exit.

  Chapter 14

  “Where are you going?” Lowe asked Ken Lewis. The lighting director had risen from his station and was heading for the door of the control room. “We've got to keep on with this miserable rehearsal.”

  “I've got to make a call,” Ken said, very casually. He didn't even bother to take his headset off, just unplugged it from the console. “Family emergency.”

  Lowe narrowed an eye at him. “You'd better not be calling the press,” he said.

  Ken held up his hand in a Boy Scout pledge. “I solemnly swear this is not going to be a call to a reporter or anyone who will call one.”

  “All right, then,” Lowe said, not mollified. “Hurry up and get back—”

  Ken didn't wait to hear the rest of Lowe's speech. Keeping an eye on the tiny screen of his cell telephone, he walked until he got an indication for a clear signal. Hitting the memory redial, he fidgeted uncomfortably until the call was answered on the other end.

  “SATN-TV,” the voice of the receptionist said brightly.

  “I've got to talk with Mr. Kingston,” Ken said. He drummed his fingers on the wall, then glanced around to make sure no one was overhearing him. “Mr. Kingston, we have a problem.”

  * * *

  Augustus Kingston listened intently. His mystery employee had been channeling the energy SATN was sending via satellite transmission lines through their conduit to see the results. They'd been spectacular, but not exactly what they wanted. “I was just trying a few little tricks during the rehearsal, to make sure it would all work tonight, and the girl went out of control. She was too nervous, and there were other things going on . . .”

  “Cut to the chase, young man or young woman, whatever you are. Let's hear the worst.”

  Ken chose his words carefully. He didn't want to explain the love triangle. He knew that the boss he'd never met wouldn't care about the emotional entanglement or the jealousy.

  In retrospect, once he'd become aware of those issues, maybe he should have realized Robbie Unterburger hadn't been the best choice for the job. It had been just too tempting to take advantage of such a natural magical channel. She'd responded so well when not under personal attack, but the moment she drew attention to herself, she became flustered, and hit out with everything she had, including SATN's precious power storage. Ken had been lazy, and he was paying for it.

  “ . . . Between one thing and another, it was more than I should have made her handle before the big moment.”

  “Well, what's done is done,” Kingston said, calmly. “There's not much time left. My, er, friend assured me you could handle the job. There's a lot riding on it. Bring that girl back and make this work.”

  “She's split,” Ken said, sullenly. “She's vanished into the city.”

  “You find her and bring her back. I thought you had a leash on her.”

  “I do,” Ken said, sullenly. He wasn't used to having his competence questioned, but he had to admit Kingston had reason to be upset. “I have a tracer that picks up the energy she emits. It's an electronic dowser.” He took the device out of his pocket. It looked high tech except for the Y-shaped piece of wood attached to the top. He'd made it himself. New technology, not like his dad's old means of water-witching with a plain hazel switch.

  “Well, I don't care if it's a sign that says `You are here.' Use it. A lot depends on this working out right. Go on! Go get her!”

  “What about those agents?” Ken asked.

  “That matter's taken care of,” Kingston said. “Didn't I tell you? Now, call me when everything's back in place.” There was a click at the far end as the other man hung up.

  Irritated, Ken switched off his phone. He looked back toward the control room, then past it to the door of the press box where the transmission lines into which he'd tapped ran into the building. His connections were still open. He ought to close them, or the evil power transmitted from SATN that acted as a catalyst for Robbie's outbursts would continue to leak into the arena like gas. Little might be left over for the concert itself. The event was still hours away. Torn, he wondered whether he should go back or head out after Robbie. Suddenly, he heard the control room door open, and footsteps clap on the concrete walkway.

  “ . . . Better see where Ken is,” said the technical director's voice.

  Ken started running for the escalators.

  * * *

  “Hey, Ben,” Boo-Boo hailed a gray-haired black man in a guard's uniform standing at the guard station on the ground level. “You see a little thing go by, brown hair and glasses? She woulda been in a little bit of a hurry.”

  “Yeah, I saw her, Boo-ray,” Ben said. He exchanged complicated handshakes with the FBI agent. “She flew out of here in a big hurry. Came out of the main door and practically jumped down the escalators.”

  “She get a taxi?”

  “Nah, she just went right straight out of here on foot,” Ben said, pointing. “Crossed Poydras without lookin', and kept on moving. Looked like she was preoccupied, I'd say.”

  “Thanks, Ben. I'll be seeing you.” Boo-Boo looked worried as he took Liz's elbow and hurried her out the door.

  “What's wrong?” Liz asked.

  “She's on foot. I'm guessin' she's gonna try to get back to the French Quarter,” Boo-Boo said. “She doesn't know where she's goin'. It's that way, but that's not the best neighborhood. It's got some lonely stretches, where nobody sees nothin', if you understand me. Most people don't go walkin' through it alone. A stranger, walkin' fast, not payin' attention to her surroundin's, is just askin' for problems.”

  Liz's eyes widened. “We'd better catch up with her.”

  * * *

  Two shadows peeled themselves away from the side of the Superdome, and fell into step a dozen yards behind Boo and Liz.

  Liz held out the psychic detector that she carried with her in her purse disguised as a box of breath mints. The faint traces of energy that she could find on the sidewalk opposite the Superdome verified the security guard's statement that Robbie had come this way, broadcasting a blue streak, so to speak. The girl had been moving fast, but still left behind a distinct trail. Liz shook her head at her own blindness.

  “How could we have missed seeing the obvious? Robbie has had a longstanding grudge against Fionna, and she must have been with the company while it was in Dublin, the scene of our other agent's attack.”

  “One or two things are still botherin' me,” Boo-Boo said, after exchanging a word with an old man eating a late lunch on a park bench. “Robbie Unterburger doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would take out the kind of revenge on a rival that she's been wreaking. In fact, she seemed kind of freaked out by the effects. And yet, there don't seem to be any doubt that she's the source.”

  “Could we be witnessing the birth of a rogue talent?” Liz asked. She'd read of such things in the departmental archives. Mass destruction often accompanied the emergence. Not that the reports lent any credence to the occurrences, citing instead natural catastrophes such as lightning storms and earthquakes.

  “That'd be one good thing that came out of this situation,” Boo-Boo said. “That is, if we can catch up with her before she hurts herself or someone else too much just to be able to walk away. We could get her some trainin', anyhow.”

  “It's not personal,” Liz said. Beauray glanced back at her with his brows drawn up in a question. “I have the strongest feeling that Robbie still doesn't really want to hurt Fee. With the amount of p
ower she's slinging, she could have killed Fee any time. That gigantic poster might have come down in a single piece, but she caused it to explode into little paper flakes. She doesn't mean any harm. She's venting frustration, or so it seems to me. She just can't control herself.”

  “That amount of power in an untrained practitioner just didn't seem natural,” Boo said. “I've been thinkin' about it myself. We woulda detected it if that girl was buildin' it all up inside herself. You get some spillover even in experienced people. It's almost as if she was channelin' it from somewhere. I'm more curious about that. Where's it comin' from?”

  “We won't know until we catch up with her,” Liz said, grimly. “So far, she's managed to blend in far too well. She could stay hidden until it is too late.”

  “Not really,” Boo said, encouragingly. “This is the Vieux Carré. It's a community. We're aware of strangers. Someone will know where she went.”

  In reference to strangers, Liz had taken note of a couple of large, muscular men walking behind them on the other side of the street. Wearing the usual working uniform of button-down shirts and twill pants, they could have been a couple of bouncers on their way to work, or a pair of musicians going anywhere, but she noticed that they kept pace with her and Beauray, although taking care to remain at least a dozen yards behind them. They turned when she turned, crossing the nearly deserted street in the middle of the block to follow them along a narrow street that ran parallel to Rampart. Once they crossed Canal into a rundown street that led between a huge yellow brick building with boarded up windows and an empty lot, it became an undeniable fact that the two men were following them with a purpose in mind. A glance at her companion told her that he had noticed them, too. His hands, deep in the pockets of his ratty coat, were working.

  Liz paused very casually to dig into her handbag, coming up with a handkerchief under which she concealed one of her government-issue containers. As though she was freshening up her lipstick, she unscrewed the small vial and dribbled a little of the powder into her palm. The men had no choice but to saunter slower, and pretend to study the elderly brick building. As they came within a few yards, Liz put her handkerchief to her nose and blew a few grains of the dust toward them. The grains, part of a sensing cantrip she had learned in her first year at the department, revealed no magic in particular about their pursuers. Ordinary common-or-garden thugs. Well, she'd heard there was street crime in New Orleans. She should be prepared. And she was not alone. That was good. She started walking again, faster. The two men behind them picked up the pace, too.

  As they neared the center of the lonely street, she readied the chamomile-and-gunpowder mixture that would stun or knock out an attacker.

  What she couldn't have foreseen was that there were four of them. The other two heavies were waiting at the head of the narrow street where it came to a dead end. As Liz and Boo-Boo came within a few paces of the cross street ahead, they stepped out from the brick doorway where they had been concealed.

  The surprise nearly spoiled her aim, but Liz reminded herself the British Secret Service was made of tougher stuff than street muggers. With amazing clarity of mind that surprised even her, she turned and lobbed the sandy mixture at the large man farther to the right. A flash of light erupted from Boo-Boo's hands, hitting the left-hand pursuer square in the chest. Both ruffians went flying several feet.

  “Have you got any more of those?” Liz asked. He grabbed her arm and started to hustle her back the way they had come.

  “'Fraid not, Liz,” Boo said.

  “Pity.” They started running.

  The second pair, seeing their quarry escaping, put on a burst of speed and ran after them. The first two had not been knocked completely unconscious. Liz dodged around the first one, who lay partly across the cracked sidewalk. He made a grab for her ankles. In evading his grasp, she nearly tripped over the second thug, who was on his hands and knees, shaking his head like a stunned steer. He wrapped an arm around her leg and hung on. Liz let out a squawk. Time to see if those unarmed combat lessons she had paid for had done her any good.

  Boo-Boo, who had made it nearly all the way back to Canal, turned at the strangled sound. Liz was now surrounded by all four of the ruffians. One of them had snatched her purse and held it away from her, while two of the others grabbed her arms. The third one hovered over her menacingly, drawing back a fist. Boo-Boo ran back to help her, but arrived just half a second too late. In the blink of an eye, Liz squirmed loose from one man, kneed another soundly in the crotch, and was chanting with intent as her free hand worked in a hazy pattern Boo-Boo recognized as a confusion spell. She was pretty good, now that he had to admit it. The trouble was that her attention was divided between more than one person. Even if she succeeded in clouding the mind of one man, the other two would still be threats.

  He circled the tableau, wondering where to jump in. Liz'd done an admirable job of getting herself out of a jam, but she wasn't free yet. The three men feinted toward her, trying to catch her off balance by drawing her attention. She hadn't much time before she had to cast her spell or let it fade. The fourth man had gotten over the radiating pain and was climbing up from the ground, angrier than ever. Though he would have been curious to see how his efficient British counterpart would handle the situation, it was time to intervene.

  Boo pulled a bag of dust out of his pocket. With only a cursory glance to make sure it was the right one, he slammed it down on the ground in the midst of the group. Billows of noxious green rose around the group. They wailed miserably, clawing at their faces and one another. Boo-Boo felt a twinge of guilt. He hated to use that stuff because of what it did to people—the residual effect gave them nightmares for days, sometimes as much as years after exposure—but it was really effective. It was comprised largely of graveyard dust and bile, but it had half a hundred other ingredients. One man cried out in alarm and struck out with a fist, smacking his nearest comrade in the ear. The man he struck responded with a wild yell and began flailing with both arms, dropping Liz's purse. Things were getting just a little too dangerous in there.

  Pulling the lapel of his ragged jacket over his mouth and nose, Boo-Boo reached into the roiling green smoke and pulled Liz free. He helped her over to lean against the wall of the derelict department store while she coughed the powder out of her lungs.

  Chanting the counterspell in a whisper so it would only affect her, he kept an eye on the four men while she recovered her sanity.

  “What was that?” Liz demanded, coughing.

  “Fear dust,” Boo-Boo said. “Local product. Effective, isn't it?”

  “Very.” Liz watched the men screaming and struggling, fighting against invisible opponents and hitting the others in their frenzy. “Will they recover?”

  “Sooner or later,” Boo-Boo said. “They're fightin' with their inner demons just now. I'll give 'em a moment before I stop the effect and ask 'em questions. It's amazin' how cooperative they get when the terror stops. They see nightmares, monsters, all kinds of terrible things. I hate to use it, but it works.”

  “You're right,” Liz said, shuddering. “It does.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Mr. Ringwall.”

  Boo-Boo grinned. “Hey, now, hold on. I know those two.” He pointed at the two men who had been waiting concealed at the head of the street, a white man with a handlebar mustache and a shaved head, and a black man with a grizzled beard clipped to a point. “One of them works as a bouncer for one of the jazz clubs on Bourbon. The other is security in the state museum buildings. They're not the kind who normally go in for muggin'.”

  Over Liz's protests, Boo-Boo pulled them out of the miasma and counterspelled them. The first pair, startled at the sudden movement, cowered, throwing up their hands. The eyes of the other two stopped whirling. The men shook themselves like large dogs coming out of a lake. The bearded man's mouth dropped open.

  “Beauray! Hey, man, what happened?”

  “Oh, just a little thing, Samson.
Whatcha doin' hangin' out in this neighborhood?” Boo asked. “Gets kinda dangerous in the evenin' around here.”

  Samson and his companion looked sheepishly at their feet. “Sorry, man. Din't know it was you. Sorry, ma'am. If you're a friend of Boo's, we're pleased to meet you. I'm Samson. This is Tiger.”

  “Eliz—er, Liz,” she said, holding out her hand to them. Her fingers were swallowed up in their vast handshakes.

  “You gonna tell me why you're standin' on street corners scarin' strangers?” Boo-Boo asked, in his easy way, but there was steel in his bright blue eyes.

  “They hired us,” Tiger said, in a basso growl. “Said there was some bad-ass who needed a little kickin' around. Thought it was a good cause. We had no idea they were puttin' a mark on you. I woulda known better than to try. You want us to mess 'em up a little?”

  “No, thanks. I'd rather talk to 'em,” Boo-Boo said. “I need to know why they hired you.” But when he turned to the others to undo his whammy they shied away from his moving hands. Before he or Liz could do anything, they ran away down the street, shrieking as if the fiends of hell were after them, which, for all he knew, they might be. “Left it a little too long,” he said apologetically to Liz. The spell would work itself out in a few hours. “You fellas have any idea what was goin' on?”

  “Not a clue,” Samson said apologetically. “They're from out of town, that's all we knew. We thought there was some big problem they needed help with. They sounded like nice fellas. They had some money. We had some spare time. We sure are sorry, ma'am. Can we do anything to help?”

  The sudden surge of courtesy did little to calm Liz's temper. So much time had been wasted! She produced the picture of Robbie she had taken from Nigel Peters.