The Mongolian Wizard Stories

by Michael Swanwick

  Even as he struggled to pry the woman’s hands from him, Ritter saw Director MacDonald reach into a drawer and pull out a revolver. Freki’s training, however, was good. Before he could manage a mental command, the wolf had launched himself at the director.

  Desperately, and despising himself for doing it, Ritter punched Miss Andrewes hard in the face. She let go and staggered back. Meanwhile, the first bullet from MacDonald’s gun struck Freki. Blood flew.

  Ritter snatched his gun free of the holster. He saw Freki’s body hit the director, sending his second shot wild. Miss Andrewes screamed. He leveled his revolver at MacDonald, who was bringing his gun around toward him.

  Ritter shot the man three times in the chest.

  Simultaneously, Ritter felt his own body lurch backward and to one side. One shoulder went numb. So this was what it felt like to be shot! As he fell toward the floor, he could hear alarmed voices outside the room, the door slamming open, and . . .

  . . . and the world shifted again.

  Dead calm. Ritter was on his feet, unhurt. Freki sat not far away, fur up, a worried-looking expression on his face. There was nobody but the two in Director MacDonald’s office. There were no bodies nor any indication of the uproar that repeated gunshots could be expected to provoke.

  The door flew open and Peter Fischer stood panting within it. “Thank God!” he cried. “It worked.”

  Miss Christensen poured tea and then left the office, closing the door behind her.

  Director MacDonald took a long sip from his cup and then said, “I don’t know whether to be grateful to Fischer for saving my life or angry at him for blabbing in the first place.” He looked wary and his clothes were travel-stained. “How much do you recall of what occurred?”

  “I recall that I killed you.”

  “So I understand. Yet here I am. Thanks to the warning that our young melancholic hastily sent to his earlier self.” MacDonald lifted a scone from his plate and took a bite. Shedding crumbs, he said, “I am most damnably hungry. The trip to London and back was not an easy one to make in the little time I was given.”

  “Will you be attempting to undo Miss Hargreaves’ murder?”

  “Oh, Lord, no. Water under the bridge. Anyway, all this message-passing has already destabilized the area most dreadfully. As it is, I shall have bring in mind-readers to monitor the scryers and make certain this doesn’t happen again. Even at that, it will take weeks for things to settle down.”

  “And Margaret Andrewes? What will become of her?”

  “Nothing. The war effort needs her.”

  “I see.” Ritter looked down at the letter that the director had fetched back from London and found himself rereading it for the fifth time:

  My dear, dense lieutenant, it began in familiar cursive. Our mutual friend informs me that you will in all likelihood recommend that the Institute be shut down. Coming from anyone else with your knowledge, I would find this incredible. From you, alas, it is all too plausible. Allow me to remind you of the atrocities you have seen with your own two eyes in Krakow. You know what the Mongolian Wizard is capable of. Imagine a world under his domination.

  The enemy can create wizards in numbers that we cannot match. Our only hope lies in the Institute and the technology it makes possible. You are forbidden to stand in its way.

  Do nor harass my old school chum Curdie. Come home immediately. I have work for you to do.

  It was unsigned.

  “You have no doubts as to its authorship?” MacDonald’s bright eyes twinkled and he smiled impishly. “I urged Willoughby-Quirke to sign it, but Tibby said that would not be necessary.”

  Ritter touched the letter to a candle. “Sir Toby does not like to put his name on such documents,” he said. “For understandable reasons. I will pack now. If you would call up a carriage to take me back to London, we shall be done with one another forever.”

  “You don’t want to stay for supper?”

  “No.” Leaving his tea untasted, Ritter stood to go.

  In the doorway, he paused. “Have you considered the possibility that your work will do irremediable damage to the world? That it might even destroy it?”

  “Of course I have. It is a risk we simply must take.”

  Ritter stood on the gravel drive outside Yarrow House, waiting for his carriage. As he did so, a distracted young woman rode out of the twilight on a roan mare. Seeing him, she smiled nervously and drew up her horse.

  “Hello,” she said. “My name is Alice Hargreaves.”

  “I know who you are,” Ritter replied, “and I am afraid that there is nothing here for you.”

  Murder in the Spook House

  Ritter was newly returned from seeding the harbor of Odessa with kraken eggs, an act of sabotage that would deny the Mongolian Wizard access to the Black Sea for years to come, when a uniformed young man appeared at his door with a telegram.

  “Tella-gram?” Ritter asked in sleepy befuddlement. The word meant nothing to him.

  The boy cocked an eyebrow but did not actually sneer. “Just read the slip of paper. Since you’re new to this, I’ll explain that you’re supposed to give me some brass in gratitude for my diligence. Sixpence is customary.”

  Ritter gave the boy a coin—threepence, for he disapproved of insolence in the lower classes—and, closing the door firmly, read: MURDER AT THE DEPOT. YOU ARE NOW ACTING DIRECTOR. CAR ON ITS WAY.

  By the time Ritter had slapped water on his face and donned a fresh shirt, one of the new motor carriages, with its two-stroke engine and eerie lack of horses, was outside his door. Minutes later, his wolf lying at his feet, he was being briefed on the essentials of the murder, while the carriage sped through the night at the breakneck speed of twenty miles per hour.

  The Depot was located miles outside of London on a lonely country road. At the sentry hut, Ritter presented his papers and the guard raised the pole to let them pass. They followed a glow in the sky for what seemed a very long time before coming to the main gate. An endless fence stretched in either direction from twin guardhouses. Behind it were row upon row of war machines.

  Here, Ritter was directed to get out of the car and wait. A not-unreasonable time later, Major Jeffries, the Depot’s commander, hurried up to shake his hand. “I’ll be your escort. We walk, I’m afraid. No civilian vehicles. The regulations are most firm about that.”

  “It will give me time to learn more about what happened.” The gates closed behind them and they walked between long lines of armored cannon-cars which, if Ritter’s memory served him right, had been dubbed tanks. Though it was an overcast, moonless night, they could be seen clearly, thanks to sputtering electric arc lamps raised regularly on a series of tall poles. The cold, unhealthy light gleamed on the rows of weaponry and on puddles from a recent rainstorm. “The murder took place in the old mill, I understand?”

  “Everyone here calls it the Spook House. Your Sir Toby had it made into a kind of conference facility, which he could use for meetings where security was of utmost importance.” Jeffries, Ritter had been told, was a solid man. Conscientious, hard-working, unimaginative. A perfect fit for Ordnance and just this week put in charge of the Depot to free up a man better suited for combat.

  “Yes, I have been there.”

  “Forgive me. I’m new to this post,” the major said. Then, “You have noted how many guards there are? This is the most secure site in all Europe.”

  “Yet they did not stop the assailant. Which means that it was an inside job.”

  “Yasss…” Major Jeffries looked off into the distance, as if searching for his rapidly receding career. Then, all business again, “Present at the time were three guards and three civilians: the building manager, a cook, and your Mr. MacDonald.”

  Ritter stopped. “George MacDonald, do you mean?”

  “Yes. You know him, I assume?”

  “Very well, unfortunately.”

  Spook House was an old rustic mill alongside a stream that meandered incongruously through s
eemingly endless ranks of mobile cannons. Ritter noted with approval that the guards at the entryways—front, back, and one side—had been doubled and looked alert.

  A phantom jackdaw, glowing bright as if lit by the morning sun, flew past Ritter’s face and through the wall as they approached the mill. Major Jeffries flinched back from the apparition. Seeing the man’s horrified expression, Ritter said, “You were not told about this?”

  “I…somebody started to say something. But it was nonsense, so I cut him off.”

  “I see.” Ritter looked carefully about, then drew Major Jeffries away from the building and, speaking in a low voice so they could not be overheard, said, “You should have been briefed. What I will now tell you is classified Most Secret by His Majesty’s Government. You know the punishment for sharing such information.”

  “I do.”

  Quickly, Ritter sketched out the existence of MacDonald’s organization of scryers—though not its name or location—systematically peering into the future to relay back schematics of technology that would not be invented for many decades yet. “That is why the sudden appearance of all these wondrous weapons that surround us.” The major nodded, clearly untroubled by what he had heard. Unimaginative indeed! Ritter thought. “However, there is a price. Think of our voyage through time as a path, one of an infinite number of forking paths constantly diverging in a dark wood. Every anomalous”—Ritter pronounced the English word with care—“invention jolts us onto a new path, one we were not destined to trod. The universe knows we do not belong here and tries to jolt us back. However, the momentum”—again, he spoke carefully—“of our journey keeps us going. So, briefly, two paths overlap and something that does not belong in our world appears.”

  “Ghosts, you mean?”

  “Sometimes. It depends on how much pressure the universe applies. If there is enough, a man might walk into our world from one that no longer exists and…” Ritter was going to say, shoot you dead, but changed it to, “…shake hands with you.”

  The major shuddered. “I will confess that the bird gave me a start.”

  “You will get used to it,” Ritter assured him. “And worse.”

  The building manager was waiting for them. He was compact, a touch chubby, and, given the circumstances, preternaturally composed. He introduced himself as Nigel Mouldiwarp. “Mr. Ritter,” Major Jeffries said, inadvertently accentuating Ritter’s provisional status by dropping his military title of Kapitänleutnant, “is Acting Director of Intelligence. He will be conducting the investigation.” Turning to Ritter, “I imagine the first thing you’ll want to see is the corpse?”

  Ritter indicated this was so.

  Leading them inward, Mouldiwarp said, “He has—had, rather—an office here. He was found at his desk.”

  Ritter sent Freki, who had sharper senses than he, in first to sniff things out. Thus, by the time he saw the body—mustached, grossly corpulent, and thrown back in its chair by the force of the bullet to its brow—Ritter already knew it was dead. Despite the blood that had flowed from the bullet hole, the facial features were unmistakable.

  After a long, grim silence, Ritter said, “There can be no doubt of it. This is Sir Toby.”

  * * *

  Sir Toby was dead.

  Ritter felt a visceral shock at seeing the body. It was a terrible thing to see a close friend, comrade-in-arms, and military superior lying lifeless before oneself. Nevertheless, there was work to be done. After a long and careful examination of the crime scene, he directed Major Jeffries to send for a detail to remove the corpse. Then, because there was no point in putting it off, he went to confront MacDonald.

  A good half of the mill’s space had been converted to a thoroughly modern conference room with a long table at its center, comfortable chairs scattered here and there, and a map of Europe dominating one wall. A modest coal fire in a fireplace to one end burnt off the worst of the autumn chill. MacDonald himself was fussing over what appeared to be a scientific apparatus on the table. Standing nearby were a guard and a young woman who could only be Lillian Willowes, the facility’s cook.

  “Where are the other guards?” Ritter said without preamble.

  MacDonald looked up with a small, infuriating smile. “They have been questioned and dismissed.”

  “What?!”

  “They were innocent and I have proved it. So they are no longer needed. Hullo, Ritter. Still as stuffy as ever, I see. But let me explain. This device”—he stroked the apparatus before him as if it were a cat—“will make your job obsolete.”

  Under other circumstances, Ritter might have felt a flicker of amusement. “It talks to wolves?”

  “Don’t be tedious. Your job as an investigator, I mean. All that running around, asking questions, crawling about on carpets and rummaging through dustbins, looking for clues. The mechanism is properly called a polygraph, but my scryers assure me that it will come to be universally known as a lie detector. It measures and records blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity—all physiological indices that change when an individual feels threatened or nervous, as liars inevitably do. The leads are attached here, here, and here.” MacDonald demonstrated by attaching them to the young soldier. “I will now ask a series of questions the responses to which will be recorded on a moving paper tape.” Four pens quivered at the ends of long, spidery wire arms. “When the guilty individual is confronted with a question bearing upon his crime, the device will record his evasiveness.”

  “Suppose he is a very good liar?” Ritter asked.

  MacDonald looked superior. “He would have to be a damnably calm fellow indeed to experience no fear when his very life is on the line. But allow me to demonstrate.” He flicked a switch on the machine and, turning to the guard, said, “State your name.”

  “Private Timothy Sutton, sir.” The pens scratched up and down, leaving four jagged but roughly parallel scribbles on the tape.

  “Where were you when the murder occurred?” The pens leaped wildly.

  “On guard duty. By the kitchen door.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  Again, the pens leaped.

  Freki, meanwhile, had been moving quietly about the room, sniffing the shoes and hands of all present. The cook had her hands clasped behind her back and when his wet nose touched them, she jumped and then turned a crimson red.

  “The other guards testified that Miss Willowes brought them a cup of hot cider. Did she do the same for you?”

  A third leap, even more pronounced.

  “It was cold and damp, sir. I was grateful for her kindness.”

  Ritter glanced at the sheet from which MacDonald was reading and saw that the list of questions was very long indeed. So he stood Freki up and made him attempt to leap up and place his forelimbs on the cook’s shoulders. She shrieked and backed hastily away.

  Putting on a voice that his wolf had been trained to recognize as insincere, Ritter scolded, “Down, Freki! Down! If you can’t behave, I’ll just have to put you out in the hallway.” Then, suiting deed to words, he opened an interior door and shooed Freki off to examine the rest of the mill.

  * * *

  Moving all but silently, Freki went first to the building manager’s room and smelled nothing more than expected: hair oil, shoe-blacking, cigarette ash, whiskey from a flask of modest proportions, a cup of tea left on the windowsill and long grown cold. The wainscoting in the hall smelled of wood polish and the carpet of rug cleaner; Mouldiwarp, it seemed, took his duties seriously. There was a supply closet, which Freki could not enter because the door was firmly shut, containing various cleaning supplies. It smelled very strongly of bleach. He passed by Sir Toby’s office, which had already been examined, though Ritter noted that the taint of putrefaction there was fading quickly.

  The kitchen pleased the wolf for it was full of interesting odors and all of them save for the pervasive scent of cooking coal, were pleasant: hot cider in a pot still steaming atop the cast-iron stove,
flour, raw red meat (chiefly mutton), kidneys and mustard, sprouts, cabbage, raisins, vinegar, cucumber, gingerbread. Lingering underneath those, from long-forgotten meals: fried fish, boiled tripe, batter for Yorkshire pudding, and the laundry smell of suet boiled in a cloth. Not yet cleared away were some chopped ham and mango chutney, the makings of Sir Toby’s favorite snack, Bengal toast, an emptied plate of which still sat on his desk. Wartime shortages and rationing did not, it appeared, apply to the head of British Intelligence.