License Invoked

by Robert Asprin

  “For pity's sake,” she shouted, shoving herself away from the multiple grimacing images of herself and the band. “Get me down from here! I'm not a bleedin' kite!”

  “Well, I'll be,” said Boo, shaking his head. “It's not strong enough. Whatever that Robbie is pumpin', it is some powerful mojo.”

  “Do somethin', you sufferin' fools!” Fionna shouted, her accent thickening. “I can't do me dance steps up here!”

  The band stopped playing to stare at their lead singer hovering over their heads. When the music died away, the crowd let out cries of protest. In the upper stands a few people started to chant.

  “No! No! No! No!”

  “Oh, no, we can't have that,” Liz said in alarm. “They'll start a riot.” She leaned out of the shelter of the speakers, heedless of whether the audience could see her. “Start playing!” she ordered the band. Voe and Eddie looked at each other uncertainly, but Michael strode forward into the center of the round stage, and struck a forceful chord on his guitar.

  Bless him, Liz thought.

  Automatically, the other musicians followed suit and began to play. Fionna, still hovering above them, started singing again. As the positive side of the energy began to reassert itself, Fionna dropped slightly, lowering to within twenty feet of the stage. The audience, or most of it, cheered.

  Not all the protesters stopped complaining. In the area around the apron of the stage, some of the fans began to fight. A skinny man in a T-shirt yelled as he was hoisted up and tossed onto a crowd of bystanders. They threw him off and went to beat up the people who had flung him at them. Up in the stands, more fights were breaking out.

  Fed by the anger building in the arena, monsters leaped forth from the steam pipes. Each new creation was larger and more fearsome-looking than before. Each pulled angrily at its roots, achieving a little more distance from the curtain of vapor. It looked like soon they would be able to sustain their reality without touching it. The crowd's own energy was making the threat worse. These new creatures were drawn in multiple colors, disgusting hues of sickly green, blood red, decay brown. Fans near the stage retreated, shrieking, as the beasts struck out at them. The creatures were still insubstantial, but that could change any moment.

  “What's going on?” Lloyd demanded, appearing at their shoulder. “Make it stop! Get her down from there!”

  “We are trying to,” Liz said. “Robbie is employing an astonishing amount of psychic energy.”

  “What? I thought she couldn't do anything if she wasn't here.”

  “Somehow they're using a kind of remote control,” Boo-Boo said, regarding the security man with reproachful eyes.

  “Man!” Lloyd said, crushing his huge hands together. “If I'd known that foolish little bird was capable of causing trouble like this . . . !”

  “She's not to blame, Lloyd.” Liz took a chance using his first name, since he'd never given them permission. “She's being used. Ken Lewis is behind this.”

  That put an entirely different complexion on the situation. Lloyd's face darkened with angry blood.

  “I'd strangle that bloke if I had him here. Have you called the cops?”

  “And tell them what?” Liz asked, reasonably.

  “Dammit,” Lloyd raged. “Do something! Fee's afraid of heights!”

  He stormed off to his post and began to talk into his cell phone. Liz understood his frustration. She felt it herself.

  “Try something else to get Fionna down,” she asked Boo. “In the meantime, I'll try to put a lid on this outburst.”

  Everyone was getting too excited. The protection spell would have to look after itself for the moment.

  Calm, she thought, opening her arms wide and leaning back with her eyes closed. Summoning the first lessons she'd learned in the use of power, she called upon the element of Earth to spread out among the crowd. Calm. Serenity. Pleasure. She felt herself floating above all the people, settling down like a hen on the world's largest nestful of eggs. Everyone must calm down. This kind of outburst was unseemly even for a rock concert. Everyone had to get hold of their emotions and calm down. We are not barbarians here. We are adults at a public entertainment.

  It was no easy thing soothing 80,000 people. She tapped all the way down into the bottom of her reservoir of magic to touch the outermost rows of the audience. It was a technique she'd learned from her old grandmother, to scotch negativism at its source by appealing to the need for order within, something within each human being. She urged her mood of calm on the thousands of people, chivvying them to release their harmful emotions in a positive way. For just a moment, everybody's shoulders heaved up, then relaxed as they let out a huge, collective sigh.

  As if to field-test her enchantment, a new laser-born monster, more horrible than before, with glowing red eyes and huge tusks rose up out of the steam pipes, its claws reaching for fans in the first sixteen rows. Liz was rewarded when, instead of screaming in fear, the audience erupted with glee at the exquisite complexity of the special effects, applauded appreciatively, then settled down into a quieter enjoyment of the music.

  “Good God,” said Boo-Boo. “Some of 'em are even foldin' their hands.”

  “I had some good training,” Liz said, with satisfaction, “as a room monitor at a girl's school.”

  “That's mighty impressive,” Boo admitted. “But they're tied to your emotional state now. If you get frightened or excited, sure enough, the crowd will do the same. We'd have a bloodbath.”

  Liz shook her head. “I am capable of retaining my cool,” she said. “I am an Englishwoman.”

  She viewed the scene with deliberate detachment. The visions in the laser works had ceased to be bloodthirsty monsters with scales and huge fangs. Instead, green-edged horses, rabbits and other natural animals sprang about on the misty gray wall, as though the programmer had tapped into a benevolent nature show. Dragons appeared, too, but they were friendly dragons, with softer muzzles and not so many spines on their tails. The crowd reacted with polite applause and shouts of “Hurray!”

  “Ain't that a little bit of overkill?” Boo-Boo asked, beginning to ready his next incantation.

  Liz shook her head. “I've only grabbed hold of the edge of this blanket of energy. It could still explode into . . .”

  “Explode” was the operative word for what came next. From the frameworks on either side of the stage that held the Roman candles, huge cylinders launched toward the ceiling. Popping in time with the music, they burst overhead into stars of color that filled the whole room. The crowd burst out in cheers of delight. Clouds of gold spangles expanded under the light plastic ceiling like dandelions opening on time-lapse photography. Fionna dodged this way and that, trying to avoid the onslaught. Liz stopped meditating on peace to renew her protection spell around her old school friend. The sparks might scare her now, but they couldn't hurt her.

  “I don't remember seeing this kind of sophisticated fireworks on Robbie's list,” she said, puzzled. “It looks like Guy Fawkes Day up there.”

  “Y'mean like the Fourth of July,” Boo-Boo corrected her. “You're in the U.S. of A. right now, ma'am.”

  “Don't argue,” Liz gritted through clenched teeth. The crowd was loving what they saw as unique special effects, but they were getting more excited the longer the display went on. Fights were breaking out again, and she heard some angry shouts. “The power is growing. Help me dampen it down.”

  Her American counterpart was already chanting. A feedback loop of some kind was at work here in the arena, transforming the positive energy flowing out from the fans into negative power. That influence had to be coming into the building from somewhere or someone. She wished she could pull away to search for the source, but that was impossible. Until the concert ended, she had to maintain her post and keep the audience in order. If she left now, noisy chaos would follow within moments. It wouldn't matter if she found what she was looking for, apprehended the perpetrators, and managed to solve the mystery that had led across two continen
ts and at least three countries. She'd be too busy explaining to HQ why she allowed a riot to begin when she could have stopped it.

  Calm, she instructed herself. Mustn't let maybes and coulds interfere with the here and now. Most of the audience was responding well to her determined serenity.

  But such high-minded platitudes didn't help when the level of power was rising higher all the time. Liz threw her entire soul into keeping the peace. The laser pictures displayed a placid beauty now. Landscapes. Waterfalls. Eagles soaring above the clouds. A dove with a budding branch in its beak. Perhaps, Liz was forced to admit, not a perfect fit with the wild, acid-rock song Fionna and the others were performing. She heard some unhappy voices not far away to her left, criticizing the mix. Liz worried that someone might begin to panic and set the whole thing off all over again. Her shoulders sagged. She was getting very tired.

  Beauray moved behind her and put his hands over the hollows just underneath her collarbone. Before she could ask what he was doing, she felt a rush of energy flow through her. He was very good at multitasking, being able to continue his own spell-working and at the same time feeding her more Earth power. Liz perked up as she felt her psychic batteries recharging. And only just in time. More fireworks filled the air, exploding in multiple colors. The next boom! shook the building. She sent out a burst that pacified the pockets of unrest beginning to break out in the east quadrant. The audience let out a collective “Ahh” of pleasure.

  Nigel wailed behind them. “But we don't have any chrysanthemum skyrockets! The fire marshall wouldn't approve them! Or those spinning Catherine wheels! Where are they coming from?”

  It was just bad luck that Michael was passing close enough to the rear speakers for Nigel's frantic voice to be picked up on his guitar mike and carried throughout the auditorium speakers. The band paused for half a beat, not knowing what to do. The audience heard and felt the hesitation, and shuffled uncomfortably. The rowdy ones picked up on the uncertainty, threatening to start rioting again. Liz felt control slip. She dug deep into the new power reserves, refreshing the protection spell around Fionna and keeping the peace.

  On stage, Michael gave the musicians a stern look. They were to carry on and pretend nothing was wrong. Even though their lead singer was hanging in midair kicking like a hooked salmon. Even though they were surrounded by rockets as though they were on a battlefield under attack. The Guitarchangel whipped the band into a musical frenzy, using gestures and shouts. He strode around the stage, urging the audience to clap along with the beat.

  As he passed Liz his next circuit around, he hissed, “Do something!”

  “We're trying!” she growled back, frustrated, not wanting to interrupt her multiple chants for long.

  Boo's cell phone rang, somewhere deep in his pockets. Liz shot him an exasperated look.

  “You'd better answer it,” she shouted. Boo scrabbled for the little box. He popped it open.

  “This is Tiger,” the tinny voice in his ear said. “I think I've seen your lady, man. She walked by with some guy a little while ago. I couldn't get to the phone until now.”

  “Which way they goin'?”

  “Toward Decatur.”

  Boo reached into Liz's shoulder bag and felt for the little cell phone. He turned it on and tucked it into her neck.

  “I know where she's gone,” he shouted. “Keep things together here.”

  Leaving Liz chanting, Boo-Boo trotted out of the Superdome arena, out the back door onto Giraud Street.

  A taxi swung into the curb at his wave. Boo-Boo clambered into the back seat. The young black man behind the wheel twisted around to exchange hand slaps with him.

  “Hey, Boo-Boo, where y'at? Where you want to go?”

  “The Quarter,” Boo-Boo said, settling back against the seat. “Run the lights. I'll make it right later.”

  Chapter 17

  Ken Lewis held Robbie cuddled against his chest on the grass in the shelter of the gazebo overlooking the riverfront, hoping passersby would take them for a pair of overamorous lovers in the dark enjoying the fireworks display along with the thousands of other people hanging out along the Moon Walk. At least, he was enjoying it. He doubted whether Robbie was truly aware of them in any intellectual way. She'd had quite of few hits of LSD and one or two of Rohypnol. The “date rape” drug made her easier to manage. She reacted to exterior stimuli, including his voice, without conscious will power. It was too bad he'd had to drug her so heavily, but he couldn't let that strong moral backbone of hers interfere with his last chance to make his plan work. No matter how he played up the provocation she had been suffering, she didn't really want to hurt anyone, not even Fionna. Who ever heard of somebody with the perfect opportunity to take revenge on a hated rival without consequences who didn't take it?

  On the way to the park he had picked up a bottle of tequila and a couple of glasses, and he had more acid in his pocket, all the better to make sure she didn't regain control of her faculties before the show was over. He splashed some of the booze into her glass and held it up to her lips.

  “Had too much,” she said, her voice slurred. Tequila dribbled out of the corners of her mouth.

  “No, you haven't,” Ken said, wiping up the spill with the cuff of his shirt. “The night's just beginning.”

  “Oh, all right,” Robbie said. She swallowed and made a face as the liquor burned its way down to her stomach. “Oooh.”

  “Now, concentrate,” Ken said. He squeezed Robbie's face between thumb and forefinger and held her head up, making her look at the pulsing waves of white-hot light shooting up into the night. “Follow the sequence exactly. Can't you hear the director? He wants the flames to rise higher. Higher. Higher! Yes!”

  Robbie's chin sagged slackly against his palm, but her muddy-colored eyes were fixed on the starbursts filling the air over the river.

  “Like that?”

  “Wonderful, baby. You're the best. Keep it up. More. Yes, more!”

  He caught the indulgent smile of an older couple sitting close by on the grass. So what if they thought he was talking about sex. This was better than sex. This was better than anything.

  Ken kept up the description of what he wanted to go on in the arena. Robbie acted as if she could see what he was talking about, responding to cues as he gave them. It was like leading her in a guided meditation minute by minute through the concert, except with added explosions and starbursts and a special surprise ending. Inside her head, the stage was laid out before her. Her slide pots and push buttons were underneath her hands. When she operated her controls, the special effects came to life in her mind. Yes, if he could keep her going like that, he could bring her to cause a disaster when the audience was the most worked-up and the power was at its highest level.

  He'd forgotten about the fireworks display. Pure serendipity. To Ken, it was just Satan's way of telling him he was in the right place at the right time.

  He found it hard to believe that he could be working magic without any physical contact. He felt naked without the familiar technology surrounding him. But doing sorcery by remote control was definitely the way of the future. The satellite feed from SATN-TV had helped to prime the pump, and now the pump was running full strength. By the time he lowered the boom on the concert center, he'd be able to send Mr. Kingston a bolus of magical energy not just threefold, but three thousandfold. It ought to blow the roof right off SATN. Ken watched the fireworks, feeling smug. He ought to hit Kingston up for a bonus on top of his fee. It would have been worth it just for locating Robbie in the first place.

  What a conduit she was. He could feel the edge of the power as it poured through her body. She almost crackled with it, but at the same time was totally unaware of it. She didn't know any more than the paper a message was written on knew its contents. Roberta Unterburger, special effects engineer, was a special effect in herself. The perfect dupe. He and she had sat there in the midst of Green Fire's company for months waiting, while Ken had plotted and planned for just exact
ly this moment. No one had suspected a thing. Now it didn't matter if they knew the whole story. Nothing they could do would stop the destruction of Fionna Kenmare, and everyone in the Superdome with her. There'd be headlines all over the world tomorrow morning, but only three people would ever know who was responsible: him, Mr. Kingston, and Mr. Mooney.

  Ken could even monitor the havoc he was causing. It was a shame he couldn't watch, but now and again he could hear through the earphone on his headset. The audio only seemed to arise in momentary bursts, maybe coinciding with bursts from Robbie exerting her psychic gift and causing something to happen, but Ken felt as if he was sitting at his console in the control room in the Superdome, listening to the chatter. The disconnected cord hung down on his chest, but thanks to Robbie's gift, through the Law of Contagion the headset was still a part of what it had touched. As much as he was having fun giving Robbie ideas, he really enjoyed those little glimpses into the pandemonium at the concert. The crew was going nuts. In the background he could hear the roar of the crowd. They sounded scared. No one understood what was happening, not even those nosy secret agents. The effect was better than he could have hoped.

  “Okay, you see those red fireballs?” he asked, lying back on the grass and pointing to the sky. Robbie nodded obediently. “Let's make 'em chase the band around. Give 'em a little hotfoot. It won't hurt 'em,” he assured her as she started to writhe uncomfortably. “You have my solemn word on it.” She relaxed.

  “Okay,” Robbie said. “If you're sure.”

  Ken grinned wickedly above her head, out of her line of sight. He enjoyed feeding her suggestions. “I'm sure, baby. Go for it.”

  He heard a blaze of static in the earpiece. It cleared to reveal the businesslike mutter of the technical director's voice giving instructions to the crew. Then—

  “What the hell . . . ?” Lowe demanded. The connection cut off. Too bad, Ken grinned. They were making headlines. He'd have to read all about it in the morning.

  Robbie started to sag backward against his chest.