Science and Sorcery

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Senator Whitehall has managed to do more than just cause rallies,” the President said, calmly. Too calmly. “I’ve had...other Senators bending my ear, demanding that we take harsher action. Is that even possible?”

  “I’m not sure,” Caitlyn admitted. She reached for her briefcase. “I brought a full report on our findings so far.”

  “Give me the highlights,” the President said. “What do you know so far?”

  “We know very little, even with Golem’s help,” Caitlyn said. The President would have been briefed on Golem’s arrival. “Much of what he knows is hard to relate to anything we know, if that makes any sense.”

  The President nodded slowly, so Caitlyn continued. “Mana appears to be an energy field that is responsive to direction from certain human beings,” she said. “We have not yet been able to produce a system for measuring mana in its natural form, but when the mana is tapped by human magicians it produced a faint signature that interferes slightly with advanced sensing equipment. In theory, we should be able to follow up on this to produce a working magic detector. Right now, however, we are capable of detecting it only at very short range.

  “Our best guess is that some DNA is designed to channel mana. Sometimes it allows a high degree of conscious control, creating magicians, people who can concentrate and shape the mana at will. At other times, the use is already hardwired into the DNA, creating the Changed. There will probably be more Changed as the mana grows stronger.

  “Exactly how mana works magic is still beyond our comprehension. We know that some spells – for want of a better word – affect human minds, rather than reality itself. Others, however, seem to be much more...physical. One of the scientists believes that magic alters reality through a form of quantum manipulation, others believe that it’s really just another tool for manipulating the surrounding environment. Spells designed to summon water seem to suck moisture out of the air and concentrate it, for example, but other spells seem to do things that are completely inexplicable. Golem tells us that it is going to get worse as the mana level increases. So far, there have been no reports of people being subjected to baleful polymorphs, but that is going to change.”

  The President frowned. “Baleful polymorphs?”

  “Being turned into animals, or objects,” Caitlyn explained. “Apparently, it’s something of a fetish from when it was safely impossible.”

  “I see,” the President said, after a long moment. “And is there any way we can control this?”

  “We’re still working on it,” Caitlyn said. It had only been a handful of days since the Mage Force had been authorised, hardly enough time to do more than throw ideas at the problem to see what would stick. Maybe the President had hoped that they would wave a magic wand and solve all of the mysteries at once. “One of our theorists – Larry Niven, a science-fiction and fantasy writer – put forward a concept from one of his books. The Warlock’s Wheel basically sucks up all the mana in a given region and burns it. In theory, we could produce something similar and prevent other magicians from drawing on their powers near the Wheel.”

  “In theory,” the President repeated.

  “We are still experimenting with it,” Caitlyn explained. “Larry’s book was an allegory about the oil crisis, that non-renewable resources eventually ran out. In his story, there was no way of replenishing the mana. But our situation appears to be different. It’s difficult to be sure, but we think that the mana, once concentrated and used, fades back into the general field. The resource might run out.”

  “It might keep getting stronger,” the General said.

  “Yes,” Caitlyn agreed. “That is one possibility.”

  The President looked up at her, meeting her eyes. “Do you trust Golem?”

  Caitlyn took a moment to put her thoughts into words. “I think I trust that he is telling us the truth, as he knows it,” she said, finally. The President lifted his eyebrows. “But there are some curious gaps in his knowledge. Most of the spells he knows were learned by rote; apparently, most sorcerers in his world tried to keep some knowledge private, without sharing it with their apprentices. And he was never a real apprentice in the first place. He knows very little about actually shaping new spells.

  “There's also the fact that he isn't human,” she added. “Some human concepts make absolutely no sense to him. He has accidentally insulted researchers and interrogators without, I suspect, any awareness of why he was being insulting. When it is explained to him, he remains uncomprehending. In some ways, he is completely focused on his mission and seemingly unaware of our limitations. He expects us to study all hours of the day, with neither rest nor food, and then expects the non-magicians to defer to the magicians.”

  She shook her head. “In some ways, it’s like dealing with a child, or someone with a mental problem, and in other ways it’s like dealing with someone from an entire different culture. We tried to explain the controversy over birth control and abortion to him and he shrugged, utterly unable to understand why anyone would make such a fuss...”

  “I have supporters I wish would shut up about it,” the President said, wryly.

  “...But, quite by accident, he heard about girls having their breasts enhanced and he was horrified,” Caitlyn said, ignoring the interruption. “Apparently, mutilating oneself – that was the term he used – can cost power, if someone happens to be a mage. We decided it would probably be better not to mention circumcision to him.”

  “A wise decision,” the General said. He leaned forward. “We keep avoiding the elephant in the room. What about the Thirteen?”

  “A very good question,” Caitlyn said. “Golem is convinced that they will be returning to the world as soon as the mana levels become strong enough to support them. At that point, we will be facing sorcerers who know much more about mana and magic than we do, with the training that allows them to create new spells. If half of what Golem says is true, we could be looking at the End of Days.

  “The problem is that we don’t understand precisely what Enchanter did to create their prison, or where it might be. Or, for that matter, if there is one prison or thirteen. Golem doesn't know the answers to some of the questions or can’t render his answers in a form we can understand. All we can really do is watch and wait and hope we can deal with them when they are unleashed.”

  “Maybe they’re dead,” the General offered. “They’ve been in prison for at least six thousand years...”

  “Golem seems convinced that they did something to make themselves immortal,” Caitlyn said. She rubbed her forehead, grimly. “I don’t know if that worked for so long, but we have to assume the worst.”

  “Table that for the moment, then,” the President said. He looked down at his desk and scowled. “How bad is it likely to become without them?”

  “Bad,” Caitlyn said, flatly. “The higher the level of mana, the more magicians will be able to do with it. Right now, Golem can perform all kinds of spells for us, including some that affect people’s minds, as well as producing fire on demand. Later on, there will be spells that allow people to fly, or to teleport, or to cause earthquakes...”

  “God help us,” the General said. “Didn't you mention spying in your reports?”

  Caitlyn nodded. “A magician – a low-level magician – could be spying on us now and we would never know it,” she warned. “Or anyone else for that matter. As the mana level gets higher, we might see terrorists teleporting bombs into the White House, or jinxing Air Force One’s engines, or...”

  “I’m starting to wonder if Whitehall has a point,” the President said.

  The General had a more practical thought. “Is there anything we can do about this?”

  “Golem has been working to teach our handful of mages how to produce wards that provide a certain degree of protection,” Caitlyn said. “We should be able to protect the White House and other installations, but...there are limits. Golem was astonished to discover just how large many of our installations actually are; in h
is time, they tended to build smaller dwellings to make it easier to ward them against unwanted intrusions. It’s possible that we will figure out how to overcome the limits, but it may take years before we have a proper handle on the laws that govern magic.”

  Her lips twitched. “It gets worse,” she added. “The greater wizards of Golem’s time had prescience and forethought, the ability to glance into the future. If you happened to be a wizard facing a swordsman, it was easy to predict your enemy’s actions and outthink him, or even avert the entire encounter. Just to complicate matters, if two wizards happened to fight, their prescience would be useless. They’d cancel one another out and everything would become unpredictable. Golem outlined a story of how his creator watched, in advance, as a thief raided his home, deduced the true nature of the thief from how he’d acted, and baited a trap at precisely the right moment to catch him.”

  The President shook his head in disbelief. “How the hell does that even work?”

  “The scientists are still trying to figure it out, working mainly from theory,” Caitlyn explained. “Their best guess is that a wizard can snatch a glimpse at the most likely future, but not the one destined to happen, because he can change the future with a little forethought. An alternate explanation is that they see multiple futures and know how to work towards the one they want. Everything gets a little...funny at that point.”

  “Great,” the General said. “How long is it going to be before Russia or China or the goddamned Taliban start using magic against us?”

  “The Taliban has killed several people it accused of being Changed,” Caitlyn pointed out. “So did the Government of Afghanistan, or at least it looked the other way when they were killed. It might be a long time before they embrace magic...”

  “I have seen terrorist scum, fighting in the name of Islam, get drugged up before going out to die,” the General said, bluntly. “I have seen them drink, or force women into marriage, or prostitution, all forbidden by Islamic Law. What makes you think that they will choose to ignore or kill a terrorist who discovers that he has the ability to teleport a bomb into this building? It is much more likely that they will make use of him.”

  “We are pushing ahead to learn how to cast wards as quickly as possible,” Caitlyn said. She didn't mention the fact that Golem had suggested that she should learn too, as if she could dump all the paperwork and start studying magic. She wasn't even sure what her talent was, or if it was anything useful. “And we hope to have trained magicians working for the country soon.”

  “I hope so,” the General said. “What do you intend to do about the vampire in New York?”

  Caitlyn scowled. The FBI had taken the case from the NYPD and then dumped it in her lap. It hadn't stopped various policemen from carrying stakes in the hopes of running into the vampire, but the autopsy had suggested that the vampire was immensely strong. A policeman who ran into it might wind up dead, or undead. If the vampires were undead. And if they failed to catch the vampire quickly, someone like Whitehall would start making political capital out of the whole affair.

  “I’m sending a team of experts to New York to deal with the situation,” she said finally, and prayed that they wouldn't ask too many questions. The only people she could really send were Matt – and Golem. Golem was the closest thing to an expert they had and Matt has his Hunter skills. In the absence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was the best they could do. “We should be able to kill the vampire.”

  The President gave her a sharp look, but changed the subject. “Do we need to make tougher laws?”

  Caitlyn took a breath. “I think that we have to acknowledge that great power needs great responsibility – and not everyone blessed or cursed by magic is going to have it,” she said. Quite apart from those who had been Changed, and therefore not entirely responsible for their actions, the law of averages suggested that the mana would touch a few oddballs as it grew stronger. Some of them might be outright evil before the mana transformed them into magicians. “The problem remains building a legal framework that can handle it.”

  The President’s Legal Advisor leaned forward. “Writing legislation in the heat of the moment tends to cause problems later,” he said. “The teacher from New York who defended herself; how can we say, given what was at stake, that she didn't do the right thing?”

  Caitlyn winced. She’d interviewed Misty Reynolds and had to agree that there had been no choice, although Misty hadn't known what she was until the magic came to life. But that hadn't stopped some of the talking heads whining about how it hadn't been fair. The more thoughtful ones pointed out that while she had been right, others might massively overreact to a more innocent situation.

  And then there was the problem of enforcing any laws. Golem had made it clear that most sorcerers had been vastly more powerful than Misty Reynolds. If one of them had decided to destroy half a city, very few people could have stopped him, if they’d even cared to try. Now, the first sorcerer to appear might have an unbeatable advantage.

  What was the old joke? A five thousand pound gorilla could sit wherever it wanted to sit, which was pretty unfortunate for anyone under the gorilla when it sat down.

  “We're still working on it,” she said, finally. “Right now, we don’t have the ability to prove that magic was used in most cases. If we start banning it, we just make it clear that we can't stop it – and convince new magicians that they have to hide from the government. We need to get them working with us instead.”

  “Whitehall won’t like that,” the President observed. “And nor will the population, according to the polls.”

  “Mr. President,” Caitlyn said carefully, “I understand your concerns, but we don't have the knowledge we need to move ahead. Not yet.”

  “I know,” the President said. “But time is running out.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  New York, USA

  Day 17

  “Moe Levisohn was a credit to the school,” the principal droned. “He was a skilled player on the football field, winner of two awards...”

  Calvin tuned him out as the principal continued to blether about how wonderful Moe had been. If he’d been all that wonderful, surely the principal would have insisted on holding the special assembly the day they went back to school, instead of waiting several days. The charitable part of his mind pointed out that the principal had to deal with the fallout from Gavin’s assault on Coach Thornton, but he dismissed it angrily. He’d tried to complain to the principal about how Moe treated him, only to be brushed away.

  He scowled at the picture of Moe someone had blown up to life-size and placed at the front of the hall. It would have been easy to unleash a burst of magic and destroy it, or incinerate half the room, but he held the impulse under firm control. Harrow had pointed out that his magic would attract attention, perhaps from mages who had already gone to work for the government. He was not – yet – invincible. Besides, Sandra was sitting only seven chairs away from him and she seemed to be sensitive to magic.

  Calvin eyed her thoughtfully, considering. As far as he could tell, she didn't seem to be capable of what Harrow called Projective Magic, unlike him. There was no sense that she could cast spells for herself, although Harrow had warned him that didn't mean anything. A mage with sufficient training and practice would be able to contain the mana to the point where his true nature would be almost undetectable Or maybe Sandra had yet to come into her powers. Calvin looked back at the principal and yawned as the moron kept blathering on, and on, and on. Who would have thought that someone could say so little in so many words?

  The assembly lasted for nearly an hour, with a handful of people standing up to talk about Moe and his cronies. Shirley, who had been Moe’s girlfriend when he died, spoke briefly about how well he’d treated her. Calvin noted that she didn't look particularly upset and drew his own conclusions. Coach Thornton took the stage and told everyone how wonderful Moe had been as a sportsman and that he might have gone professional one day. Calvin alread
y knew it; his sporting skills were what had kept him immune to punishment for his misdeeds. Besides, Coach Thornton made it sound like Moe’s death had been a world-class disaster. It wasn't as if Moe had been the reincarnation of Babe Ruth!

  “Please think a little on Moe before you sleep,” the principal concluded. Calvin did; he thought about how Moe had died, and how it had been his first taste of real power. “And now we have a safety announcement from the NYPD.”

  He picked up a sheet of paper as Calvin leaned forward, interested for the first time since the sanctimonious bastard had started babbling about Moe without mentioning all of his flaws.

  “As you will have heard,” the principal said, “there was a confirmed vampire attack in New York City. Two people were murdered, one apparently drained completely of blood. The NYPD has warned people to remember all the details of vampire lore and to remain inside after sunset.”

  Calvin concealed a smile. His father had had a great deal to say about the vampire attacks, pointing to it as yet another failure of the Mayor’s anti-gun policy. Calvin couldn't see how one led to the other, but he’d said nothing as his father spoke about the newly-formed pressure group that would demand a relaxation on gun laws, or recall the Mayor and throw him out of office. A vampire would keep attention away from Calvin’s own activities. More practically, he’d cast a handful of runes around the house that – according to Harrow – would work far better than garlic and prayer at keeping vampires out.