The salesman welcomed my return with a mixture of irritation and excitement on his face.
“Hey, man! How much does it cost?” I shouted, bellowing over the roar of the engine.
“Four thousand!” he shouted in reply. “But you could buy it with a two-year installment plan!”
“I’ll take it!”
That was how I became the owner of the most monstrous vehicle in the whole Ingernika.
The motorcycle became the breath of air, the fresh stream that allowed me to get out of the stupor caused by the Empowerment; the vehicle merged my old and current lives—the awakened Power and the acquired freedom. I think I was the last student in our group to recover. Seeing me brisk and angry, Mr. Rakshat sighed with relief and began drilling us with renewed energy—there should be no dropouts in our group anymore.
My monstrous machine (prudently dyed black by the manufacturer) settled in a shed at a junkyard (the yardman owed me). The convenience was many-sided: first, no one could see it; second, no one could hear it; and finally, it was cheap. The junkyard dwellers would not dare steal from a dark magician, even under the death penalty; they were very superstitious people. So it all worked out splendidly, except for the yard’s stench. The roar of the rumbling engine didn’t let me fully enjoy my night rides—anybody could track my routes just by the sound. It did not help to keep the secrecy of my trips (remember, remember NZAMIPS!). Since buying another vehicle was out of the question, I had to modify the vehicle. I was an alchemist, after all! Though, my gut feeling was telling me that alchemy alone wouldn’t be enough.
The motorcycle was an advanced model that used a spell to operate the engine: it was a brilliant solution that relieved the owner of problems with the ignition and idling. The design fell short of perfect just a little bit. The solution came to me on the way to Redstone from a client’s: it was getting dark, but the headlight refused to light up—the spell that controlled the engine decided to ignore the dynamo-machine. The spell just disliked the dynamo! The engine heated up like a stove, but it could not incandesce one little steel hair in the bulb—the spell was rejecting intermediates, the wires and coils. The problem was fundamental: the dark spell was not an alchemical structure, created by a sorcerer once and for all; the spell existed as an equilibrium of flows, in constant movement, pseudo-alive. The engine was like an organism with its own rhythm, but it perceived the dynamo as an alien structure with a wholly different logic of being; the stronger body cast off the foreign one. They had to be designed as two separate modules, independent of each other, but coming in contact through a simple material buffer. Thinking about the design of the lighting block, I inevitably came to the issue of energy source. And then it hit me: aalternating current!
I made the alchemical parts of the new design in the workshop myself. As for the magic components, I hesitated for a while, but didn’t dare draw a pentagram in the garage. I asked Mr. Rakshat for a spot in the lab. The instructor was clearly impressed by the extent of my responsibility; he gave me the place and even advised periodically.
“I do not know why you need this amulet,” he hinted pointedly.
“Oh,” I brightened up, “it would be a revolution in the mufflers!” Let him suffer from curiosity.
I called Quarters to come and appreciate my exceptional skill and unique talent. By that time the device had already been installed and field tested twice—riding the motorcycle felt much more comfortable now.
Quarters respectfully looked around my machine.
“Cool bike! Does it run fast?”
I brushed him aside: “You’ve got that wrong. Look at this. Better - listen!”
I turned the starter, and the ground trembled.
“Wow!” Quarters shook his head, unaccustomed to my vehicle.
I grinned and turned an invisible lever on the panel. The roar was cut off immediately, transforming instead into a deep growl, and the headlight mounted on the handlebars beamed rays of blinding light.
“Wow!” Quarters’ eyes were glued to my motorcycle. “How are you doing that?”
“Dark magic.”
Quarters raised an eyebrow.
“Well, how do I explain it to you… the movement of pistons creates a light wave instead of sound.”
“Apply for a patent!”
“What?” I did not understand.
“This. Needs. To be. Patented,” he repeated slowly. “The first person to see it will instantly steal it.”
“Come on…” I did not want to get involved in such an enterprise. I do not like bureaucracy.
Quarters instantly caught my mood: “Do you want me to attend to it? We’ll split the profits 50/50.”
“Agreed!”
Half is better than nothing, right? Quarters was more knowledgeable about such things, his dad was wealthy, and instinct for money was hard-coded into my friend’s genes, he believed. Well, we’ll see about that.
My life was filled with colors again: money (lots of it), a fury of battles with monsters from the other world, the taste of victory, and the realization that I was a “genius” (according to Quarters). What else does a dark magician need to be happy? A silly question: of course, the news that NZAMIPS was shut down! And Captain Baer hung up.
Chapter 10
The window in Conrad Baer’s office looked to the west: the setting sun was peeping through. An old tree protected the room from direct sunlight in the summer, but now its leafless branches only introduced chaos, casting a net of weird shadows on the wall. However, the owner of the office wasn’t going to draw the blinds—he preferred to add some anxiety to the atmosphere. Having climbed to the rank of captain, the policeman nicknamed Locomotive willy-nilly learned some professional tricks.
The senior regional coordinator arrived from Ho-Carg at Redstone; another one, not Larkes, whom Locomotive more or less got used to. Larkes had been moved into another position, and nobody knew whether it was a promotion or the former boss was sent to a distant place like the King’s Island as a “cleaner”. The new coordinator, as rumored, possessed dark power at the master’s level; he was young and pathologically active. Having arrived in town on the five p.m. express, he requested an urgent meeting in one hour. The captain did not invite to the meeting any of his own mages, but he dressed in the highest level safety suit (just in case) and replaced his secretary with an agile guy from the guard (there was no reason to risk the life of a mother of three kids). The senior analyst, the head of the investigation group, and the on-duty patrol officer were called to the meeting as well.
It remained to be seen what the new boss had in mind.
The senior coordinator (young, perhaps too immature) appeared at the meeting together with a youthful woman, carefully maintaining distance between them. She had an inconspicuous appearance, with clothing that was strongly reminiscent of an archive servant, but an amazingly penetrating green-eyed gaze unmasked her. Locomotive displayed a blank face; his entire look lent to that. It was not his first meeting with a white empath; he guessed that this girl was a walking X-ray.
The coordinator’s move went down the drain: Conrad Baer was not the son of a glazier. But the question remained: what caused a dark magician to work in cahoots with a white? Strange winds must be blowing at the top…
“Senior Coordinator Mr. Satal. Ms. Kevinahari,” the captain introduced the newcomers. “Mr. Vosker, Inspector Shtoss, Lieutenant Hamirson. May we help you with anything?”
The coordinator looked around the room with evident displeasure. Having plenty of experience dealing with dark mages (they accounted for a quarter of his staff), the captain had arranged the furniture in his office in such a way that the visitor from the capital would not be able to take the place of the office’s owner. Baer did not care how weird the arrangement looked. If he did not stop the instinctive proclivities of the coordinator from the very beginning, he would have to quarrel with the dark all the way, figuring out which one of the two was the boss.
The guest hesitated for a
few seconds but did not wade through the bottleneck of chairs. His companion smiled faintly and sat in a chair pre-arranged for her.
“The reason for our visit is the alarming news from the suburbs of Redstone.”
“…And management decided to satisfy our request for more staff?” Baer continued for him.
Mr. Satal angrily shrugged: “It’s about outrageous lawlessness in Redstone County!”
The coordinator said the magic word “county”, and the captain relaxed a little: formally, his mandate ended at the town’s boundaries, and the county office had not reported any problems lately.
“Could you provide more detail?”
It was a tricky question, because Locomotive recalled outright dozens of incidents in the county office that could be characterized as malfeasance, but he did not want to ruin the career of the chief of the county’s “cleaners”; the old man deserved his honorable retirement.
“A case of illegal practice. Five episodes minimum!”
The captain instantly caught what was going on. No, he did not have his own agents outside the town, but a large part of the Baer family lived in remote rural areas. Regular visits by his cousins and aunts were enough to keep up with all the gossip. It did not make sense to deny the facts, and the captain allowed himself to correct the coordinator cautiously: “Probably, closer to two dozen cases.”
Mr. Satal crept: “Do you know what’s going on?”
“Only rumors, sir. The ssuburbs are outside my jurisdiction.”
For some time, the coordinator contemplated what was said, and Locomotive waited patiently to continue. He was surprised at the speed with which the news reached the capitol; generally, their superiors used to respond to the most urgent requests in a year, maybe a year and a half. The impression was that the couriers met in the middle or that a spy worked somewhere in the neighborhood, and his information went to the authorities directly.
“What exactly do you know?” Ms. Kevinahari finally gave tongue.
The captain shrugged: “Rumor is that any otherworldly problem could be solved without calling the “cleaners”. Inexpensive, fast, with a warranty.”
Not to mention that the unknown dark magician was polite and gave a discount to families with children.
“Nobody questions him about his certification and license,” the captain sighed.
“Do you consider it normal?”
Locomotive shrugged again: “Someone has to do the job!”
Locomotive did not want to inform on the county’s “cleaning” service or, rather, did not want to risk his life; the guests would leave, and he would stay. He knew firsthand the heart of the problem: townsfolk, faced with the boorishness of the county’s “cleaners”, often sent their complaints to the captain, and he and old Yudter, the chief of the “cleaners”, had to actually use their authority a few times to make the mages move their butts. At least a little bit. Alas, military status allowed the Division of the Supernatural Phenomena Liquidation (the official name of the “cleaning” service) to ignore opinions of the chief of the civil division of Redstone’s NZAMIPS. The “cleaners” paid him no mind, regularly and with pleasure.
“In some sense, you’re right,” Mr. Satal suddenly confessed. “All who approached the mage-infractor had direct or covert written rejections from the county’s “cleaners”. My team of internal investigators is working there now, and I guarantee that heads will roll. What an almshouse here, at taxpayers’ expense!”
That was the answer: the capitol authorities intended to instill the fear of superiors into the “cleaners” and stumbled upon the dubious magician right away. Locomotive remembered the ugly face of Colonel Grokk and cheered—the chief of the “cleaners” was cruising for a bruising!
Mr. Satal switched to a business-like tone again: “I hope I do not need to explain what our duty is?”
“To give this guy a medal?” the captain suggested.
“To give, but not a medal!” the coordinator exploded. “This man has gone crazy with greed: he conducts expulsion rituals at five-six day intervals. He is leaving no time for basic recovery. We must stop him before he destroys himself and others!”
Locomotive nodded sadly. Dark mages are essentially all the same: loosen the reins a bit, and they over-speed. It would be strange if a crook poking under the nose of the county’s “cleaners” were any different.
“Do we have any complaints?”
Mr. Satal’s face literally blackened; the captain even got frightened. A nutty boss was the last thing they needed here…
“We will act preemptively,” Ms. Kevinahari quickly interposed. “No use waiting for the situation to end in disaster.”
Locomotive nodded readily—let it be preemptive. He was not in the mood to test the reliability of his safety suit.
“We received neither complaints,” the coordinator pulled himself together, “nor certified testimonies. One might as well start a conspiracy case!”
Baer imagined peasants that suffered a great deal from the cleaners’ meanness “greeting” NZAMIPS agents, and he silently sympathized with the coordinator: his people, carrying out their duty, felt spit at up and down. It remained to be seen how they intended to look for the mage, with no statement or witness testimony…
“We don’t have an imprint of his aura,” Ms. Kevinahari added to the conversation. “He uses a portable altar and the most basic spells and always thoroughly destroys all traces of divination. Even if we get a search warrant, unlikely we will find any specific proof.”
“The prudent son of a bitch,” Mr. Satal sighed.
“By the way, he is a good psychologist, too,” the empath seemed to be amused by the difficulties before her colleagues. “For a dark, it is a very rare skill! Nobody saw him without a black coat, leather shoes, a handbag and, more recently, a cane. These flashy attributes of the profession attract all the attention: the witnesses who agreed to speak with us cannot describe his facial features or even his hair color.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t operate alone?” Locomotive suggested cautiously.
“Can you picture a cohesive team of dark magicians?” the coordinator hummed. “No, his style is too unique, precisely because of his elusiveness. The guy works not only with magic, but with people as well: he says what they want to hear, does what they expect from him. He is so convincing in this role that even the white don’t feel false; on the contrary, they would rather not trust the police. You have no idea how difficult it is for a dark to achieve this!”
Captain Baer had some ideas.
“That is,” he concluded, “you can only catch him red-handed.”
“That’s it. The county’s office is now trying to find his contacts.”
Locomotive figured that Mr. Satal would wait for a long time for the results from his old friend Yudter: the chief of the county’s “cleaners”, being a seasoned pro, didn’t fear resignation and criticized the politics of the capitol’s authorities, using foul language. He would need to talk to the old man in person; acting together, they would be able to prevent the bloody denouement of the story. The captain didn’t doubt for a moment that the end would be bloody. After the mage’s arrest he would petition the court to mitigate the punishment and, perhaps, even offer the enterprising guy a full-time position at NZAMIPS. But he had to be found first.
“Have you already got some details?” the captain asked.
Ms. Kevinahari took the floor again: “We were able to establish that our smart guy uses public transit for traveling; the analysis showed that the starting point of his routes was, most likely, Redstone. In addition, we noticed certain periodicity in his actions; for example, he never goes to clients on Wednesday. We may, of course, suggest some sort of superstition, but most likely he is engaged in some legitimate work at this time.”
Redstone! That’s why they came to him. Locomotive tried to figure out which one of his charges could have gotten involved in this venture and shook his head: “Redstone is a big town; there a
re a lot of dark magicians here. Furthermore, there’s the university. This guy just needs to change clothes to mix with townsfolk.”
Mr. Satal reluctantly nodded: “We have a chance to track him down at the station—a man in a black coat, with a cane and handbag should be eye-catching.”
“How many people do you intend to involve in surveillance?” Captain Baer said half-heartedly, weighing his resources.
“Two!” Ms. Kevinahari calmed him down. “It would look strange if I wait at the station alone, without a companion.”
In a quarter of an hour they had created a plan for the operation. Locomotive admitted that an ambush with the empath’s participation was the surest means of solving the problem. The coordinator himself wasn’t going to take part in the ambush, but he couldn’t wait—his eyes thirsted for action. Captain Baer hoped that Mr. Satal would direct his energy at the county’s “cleaning” service. The guard on duty, who replaced the captain’s secretary, called the garage for a car. The fierce coordinator and his empath were shown out to the hotel.
When thick cabinet doors closed behind the visitors, Mr. Vosker loudly gasped; the senior analyst of Redstone’s NZAMIPS was a nervous man that grew pale simply upon hearing the words “dark magician”. Meeting with the new boss made the poor man lose heart.
Inspector Shtoss cleared his throat: “Hmm, a very energetic man.”
Captain Baer just smiled: “He is exactly what is needed to whip Colonel Grokk into shape. Listen,” he turned to Hamirson, and the lieutenant melancholically raised his eyebrow, “Do not do any favors for the county’s “cleaners”, and order your people the same. Everything should go through me! All inquiries should bear signatures, all papers—endorsements. The same applies to the rest of you.”
His subordinates nodded with understanding.
“Grokk will twitch now like a man hanged on a rope; I hope he won’t drag us with him!”
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