by John Levitt
Rafael’s bust had come a week later—suspiciously timely. One thing for sure—the idea of a pimp calling the cops for help was ridiculous. Unless he’d been encouraged to. The result being that Rafael stayed out of commission for an extended period, with no more chance to go poking around places he shouldn’t. A setup seemed likely, but I didn’t mention anything about that possibility. It wouldn’t do him any good and he had enough to worry about.
Rafael was getting fidgety and his fist was still closed tightly around the jewel. I held out my hand.
“I need that stone back, Rafe.”
He hesitated, holding his breath. I could see him weighing the possibilities, running through scenarios that would end up with him keeping the stone. He couldn’t go anywhere, but he could swallow it, for example, and where would that leave me? I could just see explaining to Victor that I hadn’t exactly lost the stone, it was just that someone had eaten it.
I used some potential and let a quick illusion flit over my face, just to remind him I could be dangerous as well. A stereotypical devil mask, complete with flickering tongue, sharp teeth and rudimentary horns. It was a momentary glimmer, not lasting long enough for him to be sure what he’d seen, but long enough.
“Hand it over, Rafe,” I said.
He let out his breath and dropped it into my hand. “Just a thought,” he said. “Probably better I don’t have it anyway. It’s trouble, isn’t it?”
“Looks that way.”
“Oh, well. Sorry I couldn’t be more help. Hey, you looking for the four one one on anything else?”
I ran down the attacks on me for him. In his own weird way Rafael’s not a bad guy, and I knew he’d help me out—if it didn’t cost him anything. I told him I was looking for any leads at all, anything else weird he might have noticed in the last year, anything unusual.
“I hear you,” he said when I was done. “You know, right before I got busted, there was some funny shit going down. You checked out The Challenges?”
“The what?”
“The Challenges, man. You not hip to that?”
“Not really.”
Rafael looked at me with something like pity. “You don’t know shit about stuff, do you?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Okay, listen. On the first Tuesday of every month, just before it gets dark, some of the heavy hitters gather for what they call The Challenges. You know those big fields in Golden Gate Park where they play soccer and there’s that big track that goes all around?”
“The Polo Fields?”
“Yeah, that’s the place. It happens over there, on the east end.”
“And what is it they do there?”
“Just what it sounds like, dude. They challenge each other. I guess.”
“Over what?”
“Shit, I don’t know.”
“You never checked it out?”
“Well, that’s the thing. I tried once. I went over there, but you know, as soon as I got close I started worrying about what might happen to me if I were caught, not being one of you and all. So I turned around and started back to my crib, only halfway there I started thinking I was being a pussy and there was no reason anything would happen and then when I got close I started thinking again of all the things that could happen to me. I mean, I didn’t want to get turned into a skunk or something, you dig? So I gave it up and went back home again.”
“And when you got home you couldn’t understand why you got so freaked, right?”
“Exactly. I don’t know how they do it, but I could tell I wasn’t supposed to be there.”
It made sense. Not exactly an aversion spell, but along the same lines. If it was cold, you would decide to come back another day when it was warmer. If you were hungry, you’d suddenly really need to get something to eat. If you were fearful, the place would seem truly dangerous. In any case, you would never get close enough to find out what was going on there.
Rafael glanced over through the small window set up high on the door and waved at another inmate being led down the hall in shackles.
“Julian. He got written up for fighting. They screwed up and put him in a cell with one of the Sureños. What the hell did they expect?” He turned back to face me. “The thing is, the dudes who go to these challenges are some heavy players, and they’re not too nice, I hear.”
“How long has this been going on?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, maybe a year. So, what do you think? Is that any help?”
“Could be,” I said, getting up. “Worth checking out, anyway. Thanks, Rafe. Listen, is there anything I can do for you? Besides walking you out of here,” I added hastily. “I don’t have those kind of skills.”
“That’s okay. I’ll be out of here soon anyway. There’s no way they can hang this on me, not with the lawyer I got.” He smiled ruefully. “You know,” he said, “there’s been so many things I have done where I never got caught, maybe this is just karma catching up to me.”
“You believe that?”
“No, not really, but you got to be philosophical in here.”
I pressed the buzzer to summon the guard. “You done?” he asked, unlocking the door.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think he’s learned all he can.”
I went through the entry process in reverse order—through the first door, sign out the log, second door, cage door, down the elevator. But when I reached the lobby, the elevator door opened and showed me the basement instead. I pressed the lobby button but the elevator stubbornly stayed put, the door mindlessly opening and closing. It wasn’t until I’d left the elevator, found the stairs, walked up a flight and found myself back in the basement that it dawned on me that it might be more than a simple elevator malfunction. It was the same type of loop that had trapped Rafael so effectively. Interesting. But I wasn’t Rafael.
I climbed up the stairs again, slowly this time, sending out small probes to check for a discontinuity. If it was there I couldn’t find it, and when I pushed open the fire door on the landing it just opened back into the basement again. I was more annoyed than worried. This type of spatial loop isn’t that hard to set up, although it does take some power. But it’s not that hard to get out of either. Usually, I relied on Lou to deal with this sort of thing; Ifrits have little trouble wriggling through spatial holes. Of course, Lou wasn’t with me. I’d left him outside.
The elevator was in the middle of a bland, featureless hallway that stretched out equally in both directions. It could have been the basement of any office building anywhere in the world. I picked left at random, walked down the hall and around the corner, and ended up where I’d started. I tried the right-hand side next, just to be sure, and this time the corridor continued on. About fifty feet farther along it dead-ended, but another corridor branched off at a forty-five-degree angle. I didn’t like that. A large bureaucratic structure doesn’t usually have corridors shooting off at odd angles. I was being guided in that direction, which is always a good reason not to go that way.
At the far end of the angled corridor I thought I saw something move, something low to the ground, but it might have just been nerves. Even farther back something glittered briefly, like a tiny Fourth of July sparkler. Or a magical gemstone. I briefly thought about investigating, and if I’d had Lou with me I just might have, but I decided not to go looking for trouble until I at least had some idea of what kind of trouble it might be.
I walked back to the elevator and contemplated. Since it was no longer the “real” elevator, it couldn’t take me where I wanted to go. But I had something else that wasn’t “real,” my I.D. card, still clipped to my collar. Easy enough. I got into the elevator, took off the card, placed it on the floor, and hooked it into the energy flow of the elevator. Then I sucked up the blurry lines, returning the card to its original blank Office Max incarnation. Sweet as could be, the reverse on the card carried the elevator along with it, and the small shiver of dislocation told me I had the original back. I punched the lobby button
and a minute later was walking out of the building.
Something more to think about. That incident wasn’t a serious attack; it was merely designed to keep me out of the way for a while, although I’ll bet I’d escaped a lot quicker than was bargained for. But out of the way of what? Again, not enough information.
Louie of course was nowhere in sight, so I sat on the low cement wall that runs along the side of the building and passed the time with a black gentleman who walked up to me and introduced himself as Spaceman.
He wore a motorcycle helmet plastered with stickers, hockey shin guards and knee pads on the outside of his pants, a leather jacket similar to mine except for the bicycle reflectors stuck onto it and the keys and cymbals hanging from the lapels. He displayed mirrored sunglasses, a nose ring from which dangled heavy iron crosses, black gloves and spiked bracelets around his wrists. In his belt he had stuck a large ray gun from Star Wars or something. Even by San Francisco standards he deserved a second look.
He sat down next to me, jangling like a set of wind chimes.
“Yo,” he said.
“Yo,” I agreed. He was silent for a few seconds.
“You a Raiders fan?”
I shook my head. “Niners.”
“Niners? How can you be a Niners fan?”
“I live here. What choice do I have?”
“Raiders. Raiders, man. The Niners are a bunch of pussies. They’re…”
He trailed off as words seemed to fail him concerning the shortcomings of my chosen team. We talked Raiders and Niners for a while until he veered off into politics. His speech was high-pitched, rambling, and disjointed, but despite that he was able to make a surprising amount of sense. Eventually, Lou showed up to rescue me, licking his lips. If ever a dog existed that could survive on the streets, it was him. Lou sat down and stared at Spaceman. Spaceman stared back.
“He yours?” he asked.
“In a manner of speaking.”
Lou didn’t seem his usual self. He was acting twitchy, turning his head every few seconds to check over his shoulder, restlessly standing on one paw, then another. Or maybe I was projecting. Maybe he was just getting cold and bored and wanted to go home. Spaceman continued his staring awhile longer and abruptly got up off the wall. He walked away, but after five steps he stopped and looked back over his shoulder.
“You be careful now,” he said, in a completely different voice. “I can see it hanging on you. The black man is not your friend.” He continued down the sidewalk and quickly turned the next corner. I looked down at Louie.
“What was that about?” I asked.
Lou sat impatiently, not interested. We walked over to Mission to catch the bus and I slipped him into the backpack again. On the bus ride home I couldn’t get Spaceman out of my thoughts. He was obviously nuts, but he did have a quality to him beyond that, almost like an oracle of sorts. Did he mean a particular black man or black people in general? Or somebody dressed in black? And why can’t oracles ever be more direct? Would it kill them to be specific? When you come right down to it, advising someone to “be careful” just isn’t all that useful.
Seven
First thing next morning I called Eli, but he wasn’t home. Probably teaching a class out at USF. I left him a message and he called back later that afternoon.
“Mason,” he said. “Anything new? Any more trouble?”
“Nothing worth talking about. I do have a question, though.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“Have you ever heard of something called ‘The Challenges’?”
“I have,” he said.
“What’s the deal with it?”
“The Challenges? Well, it’s a game of sorts. Nowadays, at least. It wasn’t always.”
“Have you ever bothered to check it out?”
“Yes, but it hasn’t been active for a long time. Why?”
“Well, apparently it’s still going on and some very heavy hitters are involved in it these days.”
“Interesting. Very interesting.”
“You think it’s worth looking into?”
There was a brief silence. “Definitely. I’m surprised I haven’t heard about this before.”
“I hear it can be difficult to attend uninvited.”
Eli chuckled. “Yes,” he said, “it always has been. Where is it being held these days?”
“Golden Gate Park. First Tuesday of each month. At dusk.”
“Ah. You realize today is the first Tuesday in December? Perhaps we should attend the coming session.”
“We?”
“Absolutely. I’ll need your help. You have a lot of ability, Mason, and even some common sense, although you don’t have the background or training to totally comprehend sociological complexities.”
“The black man is not my friend,” I muttered under my breath.
“What?”
“I said, thanks for the kind words.”
“Don’t pout. You know I’m right.”
“Yeah, I suppose I do,” I said. “But shouldn’t you be taking Victor instead?” I wasn’t that eager to go. I thought it would be more productive for me to look for that practitioner’s house Rafael had broken into.
“Victor’s in L.A. for a couple of days. Trouble with Ricardo again.”
“Oh. Okay then. So, can you tell me exactly what it is that goes on there?”
Eli cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “it’s pretty much what it sounds like. A challenge. A duel, if you will, utilizing talent.”
“Are there rules?”
“Oh, definitely. The challenged party sets up a situation which the challenger must overcome, or a problem he or she must solve. If they do, they win. If they don’t, they lose. Pretty simple, actually.”
“And when did all this start?”
“A long time ago. It’s a very old tradition. Once it was a socially accepted method of settling disputes. Back then it was dangerous, with losers often losing their lives as well as the contest.”
“And now?”
“Well, over the years, the practice gradually fell out of favor. Then, about thirty years ago, during a period of constant disputes among practitioners, it made a comeback. It served much the same function, but this time it wasn’t so lethal. The winner still acquired a certain amount of power from the loser, but it no longer proved fatal.”
“I thought talent was an inborn trait. You can’t acquire magical power that way. Or can you?”
“Well, yes and no. You can acquire power, but not a lot.”
“Why not? If you kept fighting duels, the more times you won, the more power you would accumulate, right? And the more power you accumulated, the easier it would be to win, and so on and so on, until eventually you’d become all-powerful. Am I right?”
“No, not exactly,” Eli said. “First of all, you can’t gain a practitioner’s power unless there’s an agreement in place—a legitimate contest. So you would need a lot of contests. If you were to attack someone randomly, ignoring the formal rules of contest, no transfer of power could take place. Second, you don’t gain all of a practitioner’s power even if you do win the contest, just a portion of it. Third, there’s a built-in check against the scenario you suggest. Are you familiar with chess rankings?”
“Vaguely.”
“Well, in chess, when a stronger player defeats a weaker, he gains ranking points. However, the greater the disparity in strength, the fewer points he acquires. If the disparity between the two is large enough, say a grandmaster who defeats some patzer, no points are gained at all.
“Now if their rankings are equal, one goes up a little and the other goes down a little. If they should play again, the now stronger player gains fewer points and the weaker loses less.”
“And if a very weak player defeats a much stronger one?”
“He gains a significant boost. The stronger loses a significant amount. It’s the same in power duels.”
“I see. So you can’t gain unlimited power just
by knocking off weaker opponents one by one.”
“Precisely. Things even out in the long run, and once you establish your personal level of skill, whether in chess or in talent, you tend to remain close to that level.”
I thought about that for a minute. “Then what’s the point?”
“Some people just like the rush. Talent junkies. And remember, long ago when it was serious, there were no rematches. That’s one of the reasons practitioners kept the extent of their power a closely guarded secret. You had to have good reason to challenge someone if you weren’t sure what level of expertise you might be facing. Even today, you know that asking about the extent of another’s talent is gauche, like asking someone how much money they make.
“During the last revival safeguards were instituted,” Eli continued. “And it was quite the rage for a few years, but after several practitioners ended up severely damaged despite the precautions, it fell out of favor again. Practitioners went back to more mundane ways of resolving differences.”
“Except, apparently they haven’t.”
“Apparently. And that’s interesting, because there always is a reason why things come back into vogue.”
I didn’t share Eli’s view that all trends are grounded in rationality, but I let it pass.
“And what would that reason be?”
“I have no idea. That’s why I think it’s time for a bit of fieldwork. Meet me about four and we’ll see what we can find out. Be sure to bring Louie with you.”
Like I needed him to tell me that. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll pick you up in a couple of hours.”
* * * *
Eli lives over in the Richmond, not far from Golden Gate Park. He was waiting on the sidewalk outside his flat when I pulled up, and by four, we were driving through the park. I cut across and turned left onto John F. Kennedy Drive, parking near the horse stables. It was only a five-minute walk from there to the Polo Fields. It was still light when we got there, but dusk was fast approaching.
Gathered in the northeast corner were perhaps forty or fifty people, aimlessly milling around. They were too far away to see exactly what was going on. When we still were fairly far off, I had a thought. If we were to just walk up to the group and there really was something bad taking place, either we’d end up in trouble ourselves or they’d simply wait until we left to resume whatever it was they were up to. It might be a good idea to observe cautiously at first, keeping a reasonable distance away. I turned to Eli, but before I could explain my reasoning he turned to me and said, “You know, maybe just walking right up in the middle of this isn’t the best way to go about it.”
