The Flux

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  “…When did you hire a bodyguard?” Paul asked.

  Payne chuckled. “Mr Rainbird is not my bodyguard. He is my head of special HR. He vets all of my specialty hires.”

  Paul looked up at Rainbird. “How am I doing?”

  Rainbird wrapped his lips around the cigar again, inhaling. The tiny scar spirals on his dark cheeks glistened; he seemed to grow larger as he savored the heat within him.

  Then he exhaled at Paul, engulfing him in such a torrent of ash-stinking smoke; Paul choked. Eyes watering, Paul remembered feeling around for Aliyah in the scorched apartment, the burning carpet sending toxic fumes into the air, Aliyah shrieking for Daddy in her bedroom…

  “Comically,” Rainbird said.

  Paul stiffened. He didn’t know for sure that Rainbird had intended to summon up those memories. But Rainbird’s toxic grin that told Paul how badly Rainbird hoped to push him into saying something regrettable.

  “Mr Payne,” Paul ventured. “I’m sorry I didn’t contact you earlier…”

  “I would have mentored you, Paul. I could have guided you through New York’s political snakebeds. Together, we could have equipped New York to ward off any magical threat, and instead you…” He grimaced. “Well, to be honest, I’d have to say you’ve weakened this city.”

  Paul bristled. “One bad incident does not make a career.”

  “A bad incident caused by a loose cannon you did not control. By poor staffing. By poor authority.”

  Paul clenched his fists. This was no interview: it was a humiliation conga line. He was tempted, so tempted, to tell the old windbag just why the New York Task Force had been ineffective…

  But no. He had to get David off his trail. Off Aliyah’s trail.

  Offer him something he needs.

  “I’m not….” Paul swallowed. “Perhaps I am not a natural leader. But as a follower, I saved you millions in claims. I found evidence of ’mancy at sites no one else even suspected. And I’ll save you more money, if you’ll hire me. Sir.”

  Payne’s thin lips compressed into a contemplative scowl, a father who wanted to believe his begging son was responsible enough to take the car for the weekend.

  “…I’m sorry, Mr Tsabo. No.”

  “No?”

  He spread his hands. “New York has been magically quiet over the past two years. Truth be told, in such peaceful times, there’s a reason I felt comfortable demoting Kit to a part-time consultant. Sadly, I run a business. As such, I only cut checks to people who’ll benefit me.”

  You anticipated this, Paul reminded himself. Now offer him something he can’t get anywhere else.

  “What if I told you why New York was so damned quiet?”

  The regretful look vanished from Payne’s face. His nostrils flared, as if he’d scented something particularly tasty. Even Rainbird had paused in mid puff.

  “Do you know, Mr Tsabo?” Payne asked, arching trimmed white eyebrows.

  “It all comes down to Anathema.”

  “The paleomancer you killed a few years ago. The last time New York faced any serious danger.”

  “She had access to some deep, deep ’mancy. ’Mancy that we still don’t understand.”

  “You say.” Payne’s leatherbacked chair creaked as he leaned back. “You’ve claimed she boasted she’d raise new generations of ’mancers. But we have only your word for that.”

  “No. I’ve fought ’mancers before. She was different.” She made Aliyah into a ’mancer twenty years earlier than any ’mancer I’ve ever heard of. “If she said she seeded New York with ’mancers, then… she did. And something’s blocking that.”

  “Do you know what that ‘something’ is?”

  “No.”

  Payne snorted through his nose. “So you have a theorem. A–” He whisked his fingers across his desk, as if sweeping everything away. “A sense of a counterforce.”

  “A counterforce that’s kept New York clean of ’mancy.”

  “And I...” Payne gave a taut little you’re kidding, aren’t you? laugh, looking at Rainbird. “I should pay you to track this... force... down? When it’s keeping us so safe from harm? Why would I–”

  “Because we could make every city as safe as New York.”

  Payne’s laughter wilted. Rainbird froze, still bent over, focused on Paul. Paul drank their confusion in, then reached out to lay his hands on Payne’s desk – violating Payne’s space.

  “Hire me. As a full-time ’mancy investigator. Hire me to find out what makes New York different from all other cities. If I’m right, and I find what’s protecting New York, there’ll be no more broaches, no more Europe, no more poor Lisas and Annas hurt in magical crossfires.”

  Payne flushed. “I did not ask you to weigh in on personal matters–”

  “And I could give you access to something other insurance companies would pay billions for.”

  Payne squinted, balancing money lust against trust. “Why not get it yourself, if it’s worth so much?”

  “I have a child to take care of. I need a salary now, or I lose my apartment.” That was bullshit – what Paul needed was enough Samaritan Mutual access to throw David’s investigators off the scent – but it played to Payne’s worst impressions.

  “Huh,” Payne said. “I thought of all people, you would be good with money.”

  Paul shrugged: I have many surprises, Mr Payne.

  Payne glanced up at Rainbird, who looked uneasy; Rainbird shrugged.

  Payne then hunched over his desk, resting his chin in folded hands, glaring at Paul with an X-ray intensity.

  Paul straightened, feeling an insane confidence washing over him: he was the ’mancer-hunter. Every newspaper headline touted his deadliness.

  Paul glared at Rainbird, as if to ask, how am I doing now?

  Rainbird lowered his cigar in confused surrender.

  “You might find nothing,” Payne said.

  “It’s true. These last two years may be a statistical fluke.”

  “Why would I pay you to hunt for something that might not even exist?”

  “You risk a little money now in the hopes it pays off big later on,” Paul said. “You probably know something about that.”

  Payne laughed – a rich and luxurious noise, a true laughter Paul hadn’t been sure the old man had, a genuine amusement that lasted until Rainbird produced a handkerchief from his suit pocket. Payne’s laughter dwindled to chuckles as he dabbed a tear from his eye.

  “Very well, Mr Tsabo.” Payne squeezed Paul’s hand hard enough to remind Paul that Payne had once been a soldier. “Welcome back to Samaritan, my boy.”

  Paul breathed in cigar smoke, wishing this felt like triumph.

  Eleven

  Unbreakable Bonds of Interlaced Flex

  Paul sketched out plans on his legal pad as he rode the subway back home. The car held the usual mid-morning weekday crowd, a motley mixture of students, late businessmen, and weary retail workers heading into their late shifts.

  He’d gotten the job. That was step one. Step three was covering his tracks. Step two, however, involved tracking down the King of New York – no sense scrubbing his trail if the King would just drop another dime on him – and that was the tricky part.

  Step four was Aliyah. But he wasn’t going to deal with that right now.

  He brainstormed solutions for the first three, writing them down. The pad twitched in Paul’s hands. A new sheet flew up, and neat handwriting appeared on the yellow paper, as though written by an invisible pen:

  The party of the first part wishes guaranteed confidential access to the party of the second part.

  A notary seal indented itself into the paper, waiting for Paul’s signature.

  Paul covered the legal pad, worried someone might see him – but of course, everyone around him had their faces planted in their cell phones. Oscar’s artificially induced good luck stretched out to protect his Flex supplier.

  Paul clicked his ballpoint pen and signed the request. A surge of ’ma
ncy left him, but no flux came back; he’d paid for that when he’d brewed that Flex for Oscar a year ago.

  “Good,” Oscar said from behind him.

  Paul jumped; he hadn’t even seen Oscar enter the car. “I hate it when you surprise me.”

  “Ssshhhh.” Oscar placed a thin finger over thinner lips. He leaned back in his seat, looking towards the subway doors with the serene air of a man expecting a grand show.

  Only the thin ring of crystals around Oscar’s nostrils told Paul that Oscar was flying high on Flex.

  Paul watched Oscar, an unassuming man who did not look like a grand crime boss, but rather a henpecked accountant. Oscar did not acknowledge Paul’s attention; his face was strangely merry, though that might have been the Flex talking. It also explained why he’d left his bodyguards at home; on Flex, the odds were ever in Oscar Gargunza Ruiz’s favor.

  Oscar tapped his ivory cane expectantly against the subway floor, adjusting his Panama hat. His olive skin had a stylish tan that Paul envied; he wore a custom-fit suit that reeked of tasteful wealth. He could have been at the opera, waiting for the show to begin…

  …and one stop later, dreadlocked college students stormed in, wearing sleeveless Che Guevara shirts. A willowy woman brandished a cardboard sign: THE BREAKDANCER BEAT.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” she cried. “May I have your attention? You may think we are ordinary breakdancers, looking for spare change – but no!”

  The woman flipped the sign over: THE BREAKDANCER POETS.

  “We are here to blow! Your! Minds!”

  Grinning at each other under the assumption that they were blowing people’s minds, two launched into a series of voluminous slam poetry; two more spasmed on the floor in a mockery of dance moves. The others wriggled their way through the crowd, thrusting self-published manuscripts at people.

  This didn’t happen often on New York subways these days. But Oscar’s Flex-luck had ensured these students had thought this was a perfectly fine idea right now, and Oscar’s Flex-luck ensured no policeman would arrive to chase them away until Oscar’s conversation with Paul was completed.

  “There,” Oscar said, content. “Now no one will overhear our conversation.”

  “Must you find me without warning?”

  Oscar raised an eyebrow. “Preauthorization before making contact wasn’t in the contract. Though I might make appointments, if you’d care to manufacture some restriction-free Flex for me…”

  “No, that’s all right.” Paul wouldn’t give Oscar a magical drug that could allow his gang to commit the luckiest of murders – so he’d forced Oscar to pre-authorize any usage of the Flex. Oscar had accepted that, only requesting certain drug runs went without a hitch, or that meetings with rival gangs were ambush-proofed. Not things Paul was comfortable with, but nothing violent.

  Still, Oscar chafed at restraints. And he was smart enough to make his first request The party of the first part may, at any time, use the drug to locate the party of the second part no matter where he may be – a clause Valentine had referred to as “lightly ominous.”

  Fortunately, Oscar ruled with a light hand.

  “Mr Tsabo, I must insist you report in to me after any Flex-brewing failure. I dislike getting my information from the headlines. Though you do tend to make headlines these days no matter what your identity.”

  “I’m sorry,” Paul said – and he did feel sorry. Oscar had always treated Paul with respect. “It’s just – there’s been a lot going on…”

  “I understand.” Oscar tapped his temple. “The issue is my fellow compatriots.”

  “It’s…” Paul wrung his hands. “I know $1.4 million is a lot, but I’ll pay it back…”

  Oscar threw his head back and laughed – a loud, generous sound that the poets’ beat-boxed verses about government abuses in Guantanamo Bay drowned out.

  “You... you don’t want me to pay it?”

  “No, Mr Tsabo. $1.4 million is not a lot. You’re a penny-ante slot machine with a Lotto-size payoff. Have you any idea what one batch of Flex does for my business? As investments go, Mr Tsabo, you’re among my cheapest.”

  Paul brightened. “So… you don’t care?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  The poets began doing a dance, accidentally jabbing subway riders as they whooped in a bad imitation of Native Americans. Paul tried to read Oscar’s face, but those leathery features were impenetrable.

  “Well,” Oscar said, relenting. “To be clear, I don’t care. Not much. I like you, Paul. You go out of your way to keep our agreements. You could go to war with us – your bureaucromancy could track us down, Psycho Mantis could rain meteor showers down on our heads. And yet–” Oscar shook his head, looking at Paul with unmistakable fondness “–with all that power, you treat this debt not as an inconvenience, but as an obligation to be settled.”

  Paul was so relieved, he almost passed out. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “Don’t.” Oscar held up his cane. “The issue is, I am not a single entity.”

  The poet-dancers started throwing Xeroxed dollar bill confetti.

  “I represent a loosely held cabal of conflicting needs. I have bodyguards who covet my power, subordinate dealers longing to best me, superiors who fear my competency. So when I put my faith into someone who doesn’t deliver… well, I begin to look weak.

  “Your Flex is worth quite a bit to me, Paul,” Oscar continued, looking grave. “It keeps accidents from happening. But I need results. Soon. Or people will think I’m your bitch. And when that happens… well, are we clear?”

  Paul shivered. Valentine had told Paul not to worry about Oscar, telling him she could take that “little punk” if she had to – and she had bested Oscar once already. Still, something about Oscar’s calm, contemplative nature made Paul tremble.

  Valentine’s splashy violence looked good in a videogame cutscene, full of gratuitous shrapnel-filled explosions. Oscar’s pinpoint violence involved silenced guns, never-to-be-unearthed quicklime pits in construction lots.

  “How much more credit do I have?” Paul asked.

  Oscar unleashed a crooked grin. “You have a plan! Is it a cheap plan?”

  “Somewhat. I need another lab – not a big one, but with a decent-sized bag of hematite – and an opal. A good opal. Top tier.”

  “Top-tier opals are not cheap.” Oscar waved a gloved hand to indicate no expense was a problem for him. “Will you be making Flex for me, with this lab?”

  “I’ll be trapping a King.”

  Oscar nodded. “I was wondering when you’d get around to that.”

  Oscar’s approval convinced Paul that whatever else Oscar was up to, he was not calling in tips on Paul. Which meant Oscar was not the King of New York – which was good, because Oscar made Paul feel strangely content. Oscar was reasonable. He delivered. He made the rules clear. And it was ridiculous that a criminal should serve that purpose in Paul’s life – but by making ’mancy illegal, the government exposed Paul to unthinkable dangers.

  In an ideal world, ’mancers would be working for a reliable organization overseen by professionals, properly regulated. Something to help them manage their flux, keep civilians safe.

  A school, to teach Aliyah.

  A place both Imani and Paul would feel comfortable sending people to.

  Instead, Paul had to ally himself with criminals, worry about his own protection. As a ’mancer, no law could shield him.

  Oscar contemplated the costs. He watched as the breakdancers did the Worm up and down the car, while the poets donned priests’ collars and wore paper manacles of Xeroxed cash, shrieking, “The power of money compels you! The power of money compels you!”

  “I’ll get you the equipment on one condition,” Oscar whispered.

  “And that is?”

  The pad twitched again. Paul read the additional clause.

  “I think we can manage that,” Paul murmured, signing off on the new agreement. He felt a tingle as a surge of newly auth
orized luck flowed from Oscar’s Flex-fueled body somewhere further down the subway line.

  The car jerked to an abrupt stop. The people seated were almost flung forward; the people riding held on to their straps. But the subway poets, who were not at all paying attention, were flung bodily into the back door.

  Oscar raised his white-gloved hands and applauded.

  Twelve

  Garbage Angels

  Valentine had insisted on driving them all to the Flex lab, and had made a conscious effort to clean up her beater of a car. She’d removed the usual tide of crumpled Burger King bags from the floor, and had even bought a Donkey Kong-shaped air freshener to hang off the cracked rear-view mirror.

  What she had not done was vacuum the seats. There were dead ants on the car seat that had gotten mired in an old milkshake stain.

  Valentine looked at Paul. “Everything OK?”

  Paul contemplated what that sticky mess would do to his suit.

  Then he got in the car.

  Paper and plastic crunched behind him. There was no seat visible any more, just garbage so high that Aliyah spread herself out in it, thrust her arms into the detritus, moved her arms back and forth.

  “Look!” she cried. “I can make garbage angels!”

  Valentine started to laugh, but muffled it when she saw Paul’s disappointed stare.

  “You couldn’t clean out the back seat, too?” he asked.

  “Hey, I didn’t think we’d have kidtacular company today. Hasn’t been SOP to bring the munchkin along to our drug brews before.”

  “But you went to the effort to clean out the front seat,” Paul spluttered. “Why not just keep going, and… and do the… do the whole…”

  His argument wilted under Valentine’s oblivious gaze. She squinted her remaining good eye, trying hard to follow his argument, but not quite getting there – it really hadn’t occurred to her to clean beyond the absolute minimum of what she had to.

  Paul looked in the filthy back seat. Valentine had lost her apartment to flux, doing ’mancy to try to save Paul’s ass from an incoming SMASH team, and then she’d slept in that garbage-strewn car for three weeks while she’d hunted Paul down to save him.