Zephyr II

by Warren Hately

  I give the chopper a little wave and a wan smile and shrug, oh well, for the cameras. I have to shake myself off a moment to ascertain that my powers haven’t deserted me completely, and then I do the crouch thing and pretty much abscond from the whole disaster, avoiding the news loops for the next two days that show me getting my ass handed to me from pretty much every angle Amadeus Chancel could provide.

  Everyone’s happy enough to lend their own little comments to my performance, but they don’t even think to ask who the hell was my opponent. The only time anyone even thinks to address the matter – and to add insult to injury, it’s Nightwind – the panelists just shrug their shoulders and move on to the next schmuck.

  From my sickbed, with the wound healing nicely, I scrub Chancellor’s name from the ‘potentials’ list and work the phone, whittling down the final candidates via conference call as the big night comes ever closer.

  Zephyr 4.7 “To Contemplate The Higher World”

  FINALLY I do not have to explain to my two mothers why I reschedule our dinner. With Zephyr’s secret out, I am a rare recipient of motherly concern, double-barreled, after I solve hours of satellite TV programming shortfall by dint of my poor performance on the roof of the city’s telecommunications hub. I call out for pizza and Chinese and Turkish food and convince my well-wishers it’s “just a flesh wound” and dose my incinerated chest with salt washes and iodine and a couple of tubes of the “Human Regenerative Tissue Paste Type III” we looted from a KAAS stronghold years back.

  I’m on my feet in no time, and in a new suit.

  At least the break gives me the chance to catch up on my homework. We’ve whittled down our team to six members and three in reserve, Seeker and I both chickening out of telling Mastodon he can only be a back-up. I’ve also spent more hours with Sal Doro’s spreadsheet than I’d care to remember – and while I now have a far more intricate understanding of the Mafia’s corporate web in this country, I’m at a loss to explain why Azzurro’s flunkies would be busting in to rob a lab at Mys-Tech that he technically already owns. The Excel document has given me a half-dozen lairs to check, once I have the time. I’m starting to think I need a sidekick, but I remember where that reasoning got me last time. No deal. Perhaps it could make an interesting training exercise for Tessa.

  Speaking of whom, she’s invited herself along to the Grand Lesbian Paternity-Revealing Dinner as well, figuring she may as well be privy to the information that could well loom as large in her life’s future as mine. It’s a weird sort of logic I can’t fault.

  Along the way I call in to the Wallachian Fortress, which rendezvous with me through space-time at the corner of Imperial and Fourth, the alleyway beside a burger barn, and Seeker’s there along with Vulcana, all her limbs present and accounted for, but my efforts at witty banter fall short with something dark and sensitive in Connie’s eyes, and when I try and pull her aside to ask what’s wrong, the willowy, rubbery woman just shrugs me off and disappears into her own quarters.

  “Vulcana’s staying here?” I ask.

  It’s just me and Seeker, awkward again as my co-captain dusts dandruff from my shoulder.

  “Yes, there’s room enough to house several thousand, if we’re ever forced to.”

  “So, like, I could have quarters here too, if I wanted?”

  Seeker nods. “I do. It might be good to be . . . closer.”

  “For like meetings and stuff,” I say.

  “Yes.”

  I chew the inside of my cheek for a few seconds.

  “So do they have wi-fi, or what’s the deal?”

  Seeker shakes her head.

  “Come with me,” she says and actually leads me by the arm from one dank medieval chamber and into a hallway of similar dimensions. “There’s one last meeting we’ve got to have.”

  “I think you’ve used that line already.” I smirk and add, “You’re not just going to take me somewhere quiet and jump my bones, are you?”

  Seeker aka Loren stops dead in the dungeon hall and there’s a silence so complete I can actually hear what sounds like the clanking of chains. I’m half expecting something from the Wandering Monster Table to come around the corner. Instead, it’s just Seeker’s eyes that well up.

  “You think that’s funny?”

  “Christ, I was just trying to be light-hearted.”

  “Stop blaspheming, Zephyr,” Seeker says abruptly. “The monks have been complaining.”

  “I thought you said this wasn’t about Christianity?”

  “It’s complicated,” she replies.

  “Look, I’m sorry if I offended you. It was just a gag.”

  “I know,” Seeker replies, hurt still. “Everything’s just a gag to you, a joke.”

  I say nothing on the grounds I’ll otherwise incriminate myself.

  Seeker dips her head and there’s another awkward pause, nothing moving except my offsider’s hairstyle, doing the underwater thing with not a beach in sight. To break the silence I consider asking her if she knows any transforming robot-type guys, but this seems unlikely. She turns, downcast still, and I’m as surprised as the next guy, figuratively speaking, when her hand reaches out and takes my fingers seemingly of its own volition. We stand there a moment, Seeker sniffling, and while I’m taken back to the moment of my liberation at Twilight’s Grant Turkey Roast, obviously I am the only one of the pair unable to more easily connect with the raw feelings that still emanate from that encounter. I gently tug my fingers free and Seeker’s hand drops limply to her side.

  “Wh-who is it we’ve got to see?” I ask.

  She takes a juddery breath, frustrated now and reeling herself in as she deftly wipes her eyes with the backs of her palms and sweeps her hair needlessly free and turns back down the corridor, leading the way as we bang through a massive oak door and down some curling stone steps.

  “Simon Magus.”

  *

  “SIMON MAGUS?” I say, voice needlessly shrill. “I haven’t seen that guy for years.”

  “I think that’s the point, Zephyr,” Seeker replies. “I don’t think the world’s foremost magician keeps regular office hours.”

  At the bottom of the steps I am surprised to see pink light spilling from a cloudy portal. If I recall my last encounter with Simon Magus, after kicking butt against a small army of ensorcelled fairytale creatures, we fell out over what to do with the Welsh Dragon – an actual Welsh dragon. Call me sentimental if you will, but I think if there’s not many dragons in the world we should be trying to keep them around, even with their occasional rampages. Simon saw it otherwise. The Welsh nature god, which is what the dragon effectively was, now works in a bilingual second-hand bookshop in Aberystwyth and is married to a drab slip of a girl who used to be another of the magician’s enemies until he transformed her as well.

  “We’re not . . . going through this portal, are we?” I ask, struggling to clear my throat and not sound too ginger.

  “It’s not a portal. It’s just a door like any other,” Seeker explains.

  “Well . . . it doesn’t look like it.”

  “That’s because we are in the catacombs now,” Seeker says. “There’s no need to maintain solid-state illusions for the benefits of corporeal minds.”

  “Corporeal minds?”

  “Like yours.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Yours too?”

  “Not once we are in the Otherrealms.”

  “Not those again.”

  “We’re in the heart of the machine now, Zephyr. Or in the bowels, to be more accurate.”

  She gestures to the fluffy-looking and I am sure quite harmless void. I keep expecting things to slip through with mandibles and vaginas for eyes.

  “This is the interface of pure ideational energy, what drives the ship.”

  “Ship?” I say. “I thought it was a castle.”

  “Come on Zephyr, you know it moves.”

  “Sure.”

  I shrug and imagine something like the bridge of the Starship E
nterprise back in Kirk and Spock’s days.

  “I know this baby can travel in space-time. I just thought you’d punch in some numbers or something.”

  “That’s not really how it operates.”

  “I figured.”

  “I’ve only been calling it technology for ease of language so far,” Seeker goes on. “The Wallachians made their scientific advances in a parallel universe and before we had the sort of Empiricist understanding of the universe so dominant today. The fortress is powered by an ideational drive, one of the most advanced technologies in the universe – so advanced, to push the Asimov line, that it looks like magic to most of us.”

  “Ideational,” I say with a blank expression. “You mentioned that before when talking about these Otherrealms of yours.”

  “The Otherworld, the Afterlife, Hell, Nirvana, the Happy Hunting Grounds, whatever you want to call it – these are all derived from pure ideational space. An ideational drive is a propulsive mechanism that uses this energy, the purest energy in the cosmos, to move along.

  “But it travels using ideas, and as you can understand, I am sure,” she says without a great deal of confidence, “in the history of the world and all space-time, as you call it, there’s a lot of different ideas. Empiricism, which assigns everything rational, codifiable, quantifiable numbers, is just one of these.”

  “I think you’re trying to explain to me why we didn’t just type in August 12, 823 when we buried Ash and the Drill the other day.”

  “I am.”

  She gives a wan smile that is one part apology, another part self-acknowledged geek, and the rest just total cuteness.

  “I guess the shortest way to explain it is that the ship travels along discursive lines generated by ideas.”

  “Christ, those French university types must just love you,” I say and shake my head. “It still seems kinda imprecise.”

  “Maybe. But when you start throwing in a view of the multiverse that takes in quantum realities, you’d be surprised that when you ‘do the math’ – and yes I’m being metaphoric when I say that – the Wallachians’ system is actually far more elegant.”

  I point at the swirling, glowing fog.

  “And you’re still trying to tell me that isn’t a portal?”

  Seeker laughs, the first one that’s sounded genuine in years.

  “Okay. Yes, Zephyr, it’s a portal. You’ve well and truly made it a portal now. For me, though, it’s just a doorway. A doorway to a space. So let’s walk through.”

  She disappears through the glowing cotton candy as I ask, “What space?”

  We step out onto a tiled terrace, the view over the low stone walls being a valley filled with mist, the domes of some enormous, monastic-looking architecture rising up to reflect back the distant mountains, a shining sea, an alien sun enameling the trammeled surface, tiny blips that might be ships except they float too high to be on the water.

  There are a number of low wooden tables and benches and a few Asian men dressed like Taoist monks eating quickly and efficiently and giving the impression they are needed quickly elsewhere. There’s just one Westerner in a long white coat and matching pants, a lavender tie at the unloosened throat of his shirt the only color in the whole ensemble. Even Simon Magus’s short, male model hair is preternaturally silver, not dissimilar to his grey eyes. Yet he stands and smiles warmly enough as we appear, and strangely awkward in my leather gear, I crane around and note the impressiveness of the Wallachian castle superimposed on the other side of the quadrangle.

  “Seeker,” the magician says warmly as he approaches us.

  Then all the love dies in his eyes.

  “And you, Zephyr.”

  I nod, keeping it curt because the old familiar Magus-derived sensation of not being able to access my memories properly throws me off as I try and fail to recollect whether there’s something deeper I really should remember about my relationship to history’s foremost magician.

  I come up blank just as the ageless, silver-haired old goat cracks a sardonic smile.

  “Give it up for me, buddy,” and he walks forward with his arms out and I am so off-guard that I consent to his hug.

  “It’s been a while,” I say.

  “It has,” he nods and steers us toward the tables. “Let’s talk.”

  *

  “I’M NOT EXACTLY sure why we’re here,” I say as I accept green tea from a tiny Chinese serving lady, who bows after setting down the bowls and departs backward.

  “Or where here is, to be honest.”

  “If calling it Shangri-La would help, you could say that,” Simon shrugs.

  “I like to know the real names for things,” I say with more iron in my voice than I really intend, but the guy radiates smugness and arcane knowledge in equal bounds and I don’t like not having home ground advantage. “I know it might surprise you, but I haven’t gotten on as long as I have in this world by just accepting the first thing someone tells me.”

  The magician shrugs. “Suit yourself.” And doesn’t elaborate. Instead, he turns his considerable charms on Seeker and they talk for a good five minutes about the developments of the past few months.

  I’m cool with that. The green tea is good and zingy and the view transfixes me. It turns out the boats are single-sailed gondolas powered by monks kneeling in concentration, their little hands up and fingers curled into elaborate di-grams derived from hand gestures used to contemplate the “Higher World”. It also makes them kickass psychics. Simon Magus explains he’s been living among the Chi Worshippers for nearly two years as he expands his knowledge of the eldritch world.

  “Seeker tells me your team is short in the magic department,” he says.

  “We were going to bring in Annie Black, but she signed up with the Feebs,” I say.

  I make a little finger motion indicating the connection between the two of them.

  “I didn’t realize you two had been talking,” I say. “Are you interested?”

  My tone sounds slightly incredulous and it has a right to be. Magus’s dismissive, apologetic expression confirms my suspicions correct that he wouldn’t be caught dead slumming with a bunch of latex-wearing freaks like us.

  “No,” he says. “I’ve done my time in such endeavors, and, well, I wouldn’t want to offer you anything but words of encouragement, so I won’t say anything more.” He slurps from the small bowl before him. “On that point, at least.”

  Sitting at the bench across from us, Magus does a funny twist as he keeps talking, eyes bringing our attention to a cowled figure sitting in silence at the furthermost table – someone I hadn’t seen before, and therefore, I firmly believe, someone previously masked or invisible to us.

  “I have a colleague I would like to introduce. I believe he may just be the fit you’re looking for.”

  By silent concession we all stand as the figure moves from his table and around to us. Brass-colored fingertips draw back the hood to reveal a head made of the same substance, intricate plates upon panels upon whorls that confuse the eye, the tattoo-like grooves a complication of etching-meets-clockwork design, the whole effect at one and the same time decorative, mechanical, and decidedly eldritch.

  “What’s this?” I can’t help but snarl. I’m no big fan of droids, as I’m sure you’re aware by now.

  “Seeker, Zephyr, this is my old friend Tom Brass. You might know him as Tom O’Clock,” Simon says.

  The magic robot nods his head. Black glass sits like pince-nez where his eyes should be.

  “I’ve been looking for a way back to your Earth for some time,” Brass says in a voice pretty much like what you’d expect from a Nineteenth Century mystical automata, erudite, just a touch of Sherlock Holmes with not as much of the smackability as I might’ve anticipated, especially coming from something that basically replicates humanity and which I find a little unpleasant and unnerving.

  “Tom O’Clock?” I frown and cast a quick glance at Seeker to see if she’s buying this shiz. “I can’t s
ay I’ve heard of you.”

  “Tom was in the Crusaders and the original Union Jacks,” Simon says.

  “The original Union Jacks?” Seeker asks, astounded.

  The girl knows her superhero lore better’n me.

  “I was in the Star Squad after that,” the robot replies conversationally. “But we were mostly based off-world. I find not too many people have heard of them, but that’s preferable to being, as you might imagine, linked to the chaps who broke up the Beatles.”

  “Helped break up the Beatles,” Simon says helpfully.

  I harrumph anxiously at this too-close conversation and jut my chin out to get the robot’s attention.

  “The Crusaders: who were they?”

  “Oh, just a league of chaps, you know, to do her Majesty’s bidding in the Shadow War,” he replies.

  I discern some kind of movement behind his glasses, though it is probably not much more than the whirring gears and cogs that allow him to come into focus on my scowl.

  “Which ‘Her Majesty’ are we talking, here?”

  “Queen Victoria.”

  “Hmmm, I thought so.”

  “I sense distrust from you, dear Zephyr,” O’Clock, if I really have to call him that, says as he steeples his glove-like fingers. I’m not sure how the expressionless plates of his face arrange themselves to emote understanding, but they do. “Maybe if I told you a little more about myself?”