He nodded. “That is one way to look at it,” he confirmed and stared past her.
Stephanie didn’t notice.
“What if nMU really does exist all around us but only affects those sensitive to it…” She paused, obviously turning the thought over in her mind. “What if it’s spread really thinly, but when people come across it, they become aggressive and act badly or violently and that draws it together. Then it’s able to affect more people so they act badly, and that draws more nMU to that location, causing more people to— Agh!”
She buried her face in her hands and BURT allowed the L’Shy construct a small smile but she caught sight of it. “I hate you.”
BURT knew she didn’t mean it and let the construct’s smile grow a little wider. He was quite pleased with how he was coming to understand the way sentients interacted.
Stephanie continued to think about nMU regardless of the response. “If it went on long enough, it could leave a residue…” she murmured, and he let the smile fade from L’Shy’s face. “So that ‘stain,’ if you like,” she continued, “might act as a magnet for more nMU, meaning it would maybe form a pool?”
“Maybe…” he conceded.
“And maybe, because of the disasters, there’s less nMU because there are less people where the nMU has pooled,” she extrapolated, “and because there are less people, there’s less violence and because there’s less violence. the nMU has slowly faded? Evaporated? Something?”
She uttered another heartfelt sigh.
“So, on Dreth,” L’Shy said and returned to where she’d first encountered the nMU on a world, “the Council Hall and Fortress were built on places where nMU existed, but that there was probably something in their history to cause it to be drawn there, and it was enough that it pooled and that continued aggression and violence keep it strong.”
“Yes.” She waved her hand. “Something like that.”
“So, we could look for it on Earth using historical and current events, and then go and investigate any likely locations…” he mused while he began plugging the parameters into a search engine.
He also searched the databases for more information on the location of the Council Hall and Fortress, but Dreth history was sketchy—as though the disaster that had almost wiped them from their planet had wiped their history, too.
It took a moment to make a note to find a way of asking Jaleck, and he discovered she had continued her musings alone while he was distracted.
“…know they were active in World War Two…so we can ch—” She paused and he waited, wishing he had fingers to tap. “The World War Two Morgana said they were practicing human sacrifice.”
Again, she stopped and frowned and BURT finally became impatient.
“And?” the L’Shy construct pressed.
“So, if nMU has been around a long time, there are other locations on Earth we can check. One of my History classes covered ancient civilizations. I think it was supposed to help us appreciate where scientific concepts had come from or something.” She shrugged and shook her head. “Anyway, about the only thing most of us were interested in was the way they used human sacrifice. Teens, right?”
“Right…” He looked troubled, as though he didn’t know where she was going with this.
Stephanie hurried on to explain. “So, there were the Aztecs, the Moche, the Mayans, and the Incans in South America. Then there were the Druids and the Vikings in Great Britain and Europe. Hmmm…I wonder how many more there were and if we’d find nMU around the ruins or burial sites where human sacrifice was recorded.”
“What do you think?” L’Shy asked.
“I don’t know. I’d have to go and look.” She looked at him and shrugged. “The problem is that most of those sites are closed. No tourists allowed.”
He smiled. “But you wouldn’t be a tourist, would you? You’re the Witch of the Federation, pioneering the study of magic on Earth. That might be enough to grant you access.”
The frown returned, but she nodded. “I’ll ask Elizabeth. We could always go to some of the tourist sites and then approach the researchers. It would probably help if we had some evidence to back up the theory, first.”
L’Shy nodded. “That might be best,” he agreed and looked past her. “Ah, I see you have visitors.”
“Visitors?” Stephanie looked around as Bumblebee bounded toward her, Zeekat in his wake.
The two cats twined around her and Bee ducked his head to avoid goring her with his horns when he rubbed his cheek against her thigh. Zee wound around her the other way, purring a demand.
“Who let the two of you in here?”
L’Shy rose to his feet. “That, I think, is my signal to leave.”
She looked quickly at him. “I can send them away—”
The Meligornian raised his hands. “Your pets need you,” he told her. “Far be it from me to stop you looking after them.”
As much as she wanted to dig into what sites there might be for her to investigate, she knew the Meligornian had a point. “Hartuitus Baskilor, Master L’Shy.”
“Baskilor nye myerda,” he answered. “Your thanks are not needed, but I receive them gratefully.”
He faded from sight and returned to the system that had conjured him as Stephanie turned to the cats.
“And what do you two want, hmmm?”
Both paused and Bumblebee stepped back to regard her with lavender eyes.
Stephanie arched an eyebrow at him “Well?”
The cat hissed at her and crouched low. As Zeekat stepped around her for the third time, the yellow-and-black cat launched himself into the air and pounced on him.
Zee gave a yowl of surprise and the two of them rolled, hissing and spitting, away from her. After several rotations, they came apart facing each other, their backs arched and tails lashing.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “So, do you want to hunt, boys?”
Both heads swiveled toward her and their ears pricked and tails stilled.
“AI, can we return to Meligorn so the cats can hunt?”
“As you wish, Stephanie.”
The world changed from L’Shy’s mountain retreat to the purple-hued vegetation of a Meligornian forest.
“There you go,” she said to the felines. “Will this do?”
Bumblebee gave a querying chirp and tilted his head to regard Zeekat. Zee looked around, twitched his tail, and swatted the big yellow-and-black cat before he bounded one step away.
The other hissed at him, but he gave a soft mew and flared his nostrils before he stared intently toward a gap between the trees. Stephanie followed his gaze and used the energy of Meligorn to sharpen her vision.
She took a deep breath, too, using the magic to enhance her sense of smell. “I bet I can catch one before either of you,” she declared, and Bee roared his defiance.
Zeekat remained silent but streaked into the forest, his ears perked forward as he covered the distance between him and the mauve-colored buck he’d spotted grazing between the trees.
It was too late. Bee’s roar had alerted the animal and it bounded away, the panicked beat of its hooves gaining speed as it tried to outdistance the cats and the strangely scented Meligornian.
Bumblebee raced after Zeekat and swatted his fellow-hunter with one paw as he passed.
Payback, Stephanie thought, as the two ran side by side after their prey. She drew on the MU all around her and ran after them.
At first, the two felines outdistanced her, but when the magic flowed through her limbs, she began to catch up. The buck bounded on, charged through bushes, and leapt over rocks, the hunters in hot pursuit.
When she reached the first dense patch of brush, she took to the trees, sprung from the ground to reach the first low branches, and vaulted higher. Her magic-sharpened eyes showed the cats’ progress, and she chased them.
Below her, the buck felt in more danger than before and jinked sideways. Bee followed, his six feet scrabbling through a patch of purple moss as he scrambled up
a pile of boulders. Zee bounced off one and changed direction in the air…and Stephanie ran out of branch.
Sighting on the boulders, she plummeted off her perch but lifted herself as she tumbled. Her feet touched the top of the boulder and she sought her next landing point. A dangling vine caught her eye, and she threw herself toward it.
She flew true, wrapped her hands around the creeper, and prayed it would hold. The sudden drop made her gasp, but it snapped tight and she swung forward to release her hold at the top of the arc and looked for her next landing point.
The buck had made it to open ground, but the cats were gaining.
Stephanie tumbled for a moment before she spread her arms and called the magic and managed to rise over them as Zeekat launched himself onto his prey’s back. Bee raced alongside and waited for his partner to land before he swept his horns under the buck’s flying hooves.
She flipped upright and adjusted the magic around her so she landed lightly several feet from the cats’ kill. Both lifted bloodied muzzles toward her, and Bumblebee gave her a querying chirp.
With a laugh, she raised her hand. “No, boy. I’m good. I’ve got to head back to class. You two enjoy it.”
After a few more seconds of solemn regard, the felines lowered their heads. She winced as they tore into the carcass, glad she wouldn’t have to wash any real blood from their paws when they got out of the pods. Cleaning them up after their rampage through the Dreth pirate ship had been bad enough.
She turned away.
“AI, take me back to class.” She looked at her clothes and noted the tears and twigs from her passage through the trees. “And please, change my clothes.”
“I suppose you think that’s funny,” she told it a few moments later when she found herself dressed in a wetsuit.
Whatever it thought, the computer wasn’t finished, and she began to wonder if one of the programmers was messing with her, although she couldn’t see how one would have accessed One R&D’s systems.
Maybe I should mention this to Ms E.
After rejecting a ballet tutu, a clown outfit, and three different national costumes, she glared at the sky overhead. “When you’re quite done…”
Her words banished the formfitting spandex and six-inch heels of the computer’s latest attempt to alter her clothing. She breathed a sigh of relief as the thigh-high boots and garish red and blue outfit were replaced by a more professional business suit.
“Thank you.” The world began to waver as the computer reset. “I’m gonna need a physicist.”
“You want to what?” Marcus Rimmer was not impressed.
BURT had dragged the physicist out of his Virtual lab as he’d been going over the notes he’d made for his next test simulation. It had helped that the AI had disguised himself as a Federation order for the physicist to “assist the Witch in her research,” but not by much.
Stephanie’s request had seen to that.
Now, Marcus Rimmer stared at her as though she’d grown a second head and sprouted horns and a tail.
“You heard me,” she told him. “I want to know how to turn radioactive substances into something not radioactive.”
“Like U238 into lead.”
“Something like that. Can it be done?”
Marcus stared at her. “It’s a naturally occurring process.”
It was? Stephanie stared at him. When he didn’t say anything else, she prodded him. “So, how long does it take?”
“About 6.5 billion years.” He smirked. “Why, how long did you have in mind?”
She smirked in return. “Not that long.”
“How long, then?”
“I’d like to get it done in an hour.”
“And I suppose you have a magic wand for that?”
“It’s not exactly a wand,” she told him and let the magic roll over her hands and arc between her fingertips. The physicist registered the blue and put two and two together and finally realized what she meant.
“Oh… Oh, I see,” he said and blushed. “You want to…” He paused, clearly hunting for the right words. “You want to change nuclear waste at a sub-atomic level so that it’s not radioactive anymore.”
Well, at least he was a quick study.
“Now, you’re getting it,” Stephanie told him. “I merely don’t know exactly how to go about it.”
“You’re not asking if it’s possible—”
She shook her head. “You said nature does it, so I know it’s possible. I only need to work out how to do it faster.”
“Using magic.”
Stephanie nodded.
The look on his face was one of disbelief and doubt. She decided not to give him time to voice any of it. “So, U238 breaks down to lead, but it takes time, so I could speed that process up by using magic to take it apart?”
“You could,” Rimmer allowed, “but then you’d release 6.5 billion years of radiation at once.”
He stopped and allowed her to work it out for herself. Stephanie couldn’t help poking him a little. “And that would be bad, right?”
She smirked when he rolled his eyes. “Yes,” he said as though speaking to a small child, “that would be bad.”
“Maybe I could use it to blow something up.”
The man sighed. “I thought magic was supposed to be a creative force for you.” Stephanie wondered how he’d come up with that but he continued before she could pursue it. “Aren’t you trying to find ways to help the planet heal using it? Isn’t that something you said you wanted to do?”
Not in any public space she could recall, she thought but didn’t say it. She wondered what the AI had told him when it had dragged him out of whatever laboratory it had found him in. She made another note to speak to Ms E but for the moment, she contented herself with answering the question.
“Yes.”
“Well, why don’t you try creating with it, instead? You know, literally make the world a better place.”
There was something in the way he said it that made her study his expression, but nothing in his face suggested he was being sarcastic—except for the way it said nothing at all.
“So, you’re saying I should add protons or neutrons?” she asked, and he rolled his eyes.
“No, because elements with a really high atomic mass tend to be radioactive.”
“Riiiight…so creating is really out of the question then, isn’t it? I mean we can create in two ways, you know. If I change an element by altering how many protons its atoms have, I can really do that by adding some in—which you say won’t work—or I can take them out, right?”
Rimmer didn’t move. He merely stared at her.
Stephanie pushed him. “Which means that technically, when I’m tearing pieces off the atom, I’m not destroying anything but remaking it. And if I’m making something, I’m creating. So tell me again what was wrong with breaking down the U-238 the same way nature does but only faster?”
He rolled his eyes and looked at the ceiling in a heaven-help-me kind of way. “Only that you’ll have to deal with all the radiation created by an accelerated rate of alpha and beta decay over billions of years that will be released in whatever ridiculously short time span you’re aiming at.” He drew a short, sharp breath. “And that’ll be much worse than the actual mess you’re trying to clean up.”
“Right, so I should work out how to deal with that,” she decided.
The physicist snorted to show exactly what he thought about that and looked around the room. “AI, get me out of here.”
“Yeah, AI,” Stephanie snarked when he was still there a few moments later. “Put the nice man back in his lab where I can find him later. Us grown-ups have important stuff to work out.”
“Hey!” He snapped around to answer that but BURT whisked him away before a single word escaped.
“I am afraid you might have offended him,” he told her shortly after and gave her a brief view of Rimmer’s outburst when he found himself back in his lab.
She watched it, wide
-eyed. “Wow! I don’t think I’ve been called so many names in such a short time before. Who would have guessed he knew that many cuss words.”
Disguised as L’Shy, BURT stepped through the wall of her classroom. The Meligornian glanced toward the window showing the scientist, still muttering invective about ‘science-fantasy,’ ‘ignorant brats,’ and ‘poorly educated Gov-Sub refugees.’
“I’m not sure you’ll ever win him over now,” the mage observed.
Stephanie snickered. “I’ll make it up to him by getting this to work. He’ll be okay.”
“At least you said okay.”
“Well, it’s better than FINE, because we all know what that means.”
He smiled, and they watched as the physicist finally wound down and went to sit at his desk. “How much radiation would she release?” the man muttered and BURT closed the window.
The Meligornian turned to Stephanie. “You might bring him on-side,” he admitted. “He at least seems interested in the problem.”
She smiled but it turned almost immediately to a frown. “Yeah, he does, but he makes a good point. How much radiation would I release and what would I have to do to contain it?”
L’Shy began to fade. “I’ll let you work that out,” he told her. “Let me know when you do.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Unaware that Stephanie was busy pissing off one of the world’s best physicists, Elizabeth had decided to go to dinner. She’d also decided not to dodge her bodyguards this time. They would eat with her, instead.
She took note of the crowd when they pulled up outside Tarantino’s and sighed.
Amy laid a hand on her arm. “It’s hard to see anything coming with all those people as cover.”
Tracy nodded. “Are you sure you want to do this, boss?”
If she was honest, she didn’t really want to face a pack of paparazzi. However, she really did want a meal at Tarantino’s, and if that meant going through the pack, that’s exactly what she would do. Besides, there wouldn’t be another booking available for months.
She nodded. “Absolutely. The steaks in there are to die for and I have a craving for red meat.”
Witch Of The Federation III (Federal Histories Book 3) Page 36