My Path to Magic mptm-1

by Irina Syromyatnikova

  Not surprisingly, when I noticed the chief of Redstone’s NZAMIPS waiting at the university gates, I did not linger my eyes on him for a second. All the more so because Captain Baer was in civilian clothes. Maybe he was waiting for a girl there?

  No, the captain (Quarters told me that his nickname was “Locomotive”—he was like a steam engine: slow-witted, narrow-minded, and impossible to stop) had other plans. When I caught up with him, he hissed: “Hey! Slow down.”

  I slowed down and exhaled a disgruntled huff: “Any questions for me, sir?”

  “We need to talk.”

  He took me to a dark cafe and offered a seat at the far table. I did not mind—I preferred that other people did not see me with him. Otherwise, it would be the talk of the town.

  “I want to re-record your crystal.”

  My eyes may have popped out: “Why is that?”

  “Because I can replace it without any problem, but they’ll have my head if I lose it.”

  “I don’t get it!” I was being honest.

  The policeman frowned crossly.

  “Look here! I have gotten a new supervisor recently. I worked with my previous boss for fifteen years; naturally, I helped him a few times, did some favors—I couldn’t stay that long on his team without that. But God forbid I should trust any of the dark mages; I know your brothers’ nature very well. My boss had personally covered up the case of your “breakdown”, saying that the channel was stable and there was no reason to panic. I did not mind; there was no point in arguing with the boss. Had I gathered an expert commission to investigate, both you and we would have endured a lot, but the conclusion would have been the same. It’s a different story now: he is no longer my boss, and I can’t pin his words to the file. I’ve been thinking and realized that I was a fool—I shouldn’t have believed a dark magician. It’s not about you personally, it’s just that you guys have differently rotated brains; you cannot take other people’s interests into account.”

  “Why, we can!” I replied touchily.

  “Not in this case,” the captain dismissed my comment. “In short, the entire division is looking for one smart ass, browsing crystal records, fussing around everywhere. The new boss will see your crystal sooner or later, and it will be better if he doesn’t find the “breakdown” in it. Do I have your interest?”

  I clearly understood that the chief of Redstone’s NZAMIPS was offering me to collude. And it was more important to him than to me!

  “I do not agree if it’s for free.”

  “What do you want?” Locomotive growled in an unfriendly manner.

  “I want to know everything!” I joked.

  “Then you’ll die early,” he promised.

  I shrugged: “Maybe. You won’t pay me anyway; after money, information is the second most valuable thing. Let’s agree as follows: you will fully answer one of the questions that interests me, we’ll record a new crystal, and you’ll give me back the old one.”

  “Ha!”

  “Come on! You don’t really believe that I’ll blackmail you, knowing what is at stake for me, do you?”

  “Then why do you want it back?”

  “Are you kidding? That was my real Empowerment!”

  He paused for a moment, staring at me with blank eyes. I never thought that a man with such a dull appearance could have a bright mind. Now I knew.

  “Agreed,” the captain decided. “The crystal hasn’t been numbered; after it has left the storage, nobody will be able to discover where it was recorded. You can’t present it as an imprint of another mage’s aura; your name was engraved on it before the recording.”

  “I have never even thought about giving to a stranger!” I reassured him.

  “You will come to my office tomorrow—here’s your notice.”

  The timing was perfectly appropriate: he was obviously aware of my class schedule.

  “I will,” I hid the notice in my pocket and suddenly asked him, “How do you feel about zombies?”

  He gave me a hard look.

  “In theory, I mean!”

  “Don’t be a smartass!” he threatened. “I’ll watch you closely, you theorizer, son of a bitch!”

  Why did he mention my mother? Ugh. I just had to find a place for my dog.

  Chapter 15

  Only in a week I managed to leave the sewage factory and come back to the office. I expected to ask Johan a couple of questions, but the white mage’s desk was empty.

  “He took a vacation,” Polak tried not to look at me, “to recover from sickness. During his time off, we’d better put things in order…”

  The white magician started commanding my respect—he decided to ask for help! Let’s face it: these guys do not always have enough spirit to understand their own problems. A good reason to roll up my sleeves.

  “Can I take the test records?”

  Polak pointed to a cabinet full of folders. I wondered whether it had the same chaos in the records as in the drawings.

  Thick, bound folders kept records of all BioKin’s deeds. The project had a brisk start two years ago: a team of three magicians and four alchemists gathered together to make a unit that would utilize the advantages of the enhanced bacteria. As its basis, they took a standard fermentation vat and four of the most promising strains. The process worked beautifully in the tubes, but when they tried to scale-up, failures came one after the other. To be more specific, the record uptime of the new gas generator was one month. The alchemists deserted first, quickly figuring that they wouldn’t get a free ride, and then followed the magicians, one of whom was Johan’s student. For the last six months, BioKin worked with less staff, fine-tuning (seemingly) the final nuances of the design. With no result…

  The project looked quite hopeless; it was the right time to quit. But I had already squandered Quarters’ advance and didn’t expect any more money to come. If the unit could not work, I had to explain why, at least.

  For three weeks I pondered the problem, viewing it from different angles, focusing mainly on the actions of people who managed the fermentation vats, not on the charts provided by the bacterial engineers. Summer break at the university facilitated my task: I spent all my days and nights at the factory. Soon I realized that the gas generators in general were surprisingly stupid; that is, the time elapsing between the turn of the control switch and the response of the culture was quite long, up to fifteen minutes. According to the experiments’ records (and I had no desire to repeat them again), the inoculation of advanced cultures into the fermentation vat was like trying to run a tractor engine on nitroglycerin. No way would it work! The fact that BioKin managed to keep the unit stable for the whole month was a masterpiece of alchemical thought! In order to substantiate my feelings, I read all of Johan’s articles and lecture notes on the theory of operation control and came to the disappointing conclusion: the application of the new BioKin design for the control block was impossible without an essential modification of the vat’s design.

  The latter idea I presented at the next coffee break, now taking place regularly (Johan, who had put on weight and regained some of the pink color in his face, was back to work).

  “How should a ‘perfect vat’ look, in your opinion?” Polak smiled encouragingly.

  “A long, small diameter tube.”

  Carl snorted.

  “It will cool down too quickly!”

  “It can be warmed from outside,” I snapped.

  “What if we use a self-heating culture?!” Johan unexpectedly helped me out.

  “How about cleaning them?” Carl did not stop.

  “We can combine multiple tubes into a battery and clean them one at a time.” Strings of digits and design schemes were already spinning in Polak’s eyes, who shouted, “Smaller volumes are easier to handle!”

  “And use diverse strains simultaneously,” Johan stuck to his guns.

  The team took heart, and the work began in earnest. Carl drove me off my favorite drawing desk—that was the first result. Wo
uldn’t it be fairer to drag his own board to the window? I protested but soon realized that on a wave of enthusiasm he would do all the hard work for me. I quietly retreated and returned to leisurely sorting the drawings.

  Polak knocked in money for the model (simple, one pipe) from the client, and it was a feat worthy of inclusion in the annals. Making the buyer fork out for yet another pilot device after two years of total failure… Polak had a phenomenal talent for persuasion, though, perhaps, Ron contributed to his success, too. We hoped that the new gas generator would be tested by the end of summer.

  I wondered if I should quit before running the tests or wait for the results. I was sure the unit would work as designed, but feared another meeting with the shift master from the factory.

  Just after the drawings of the new design had been sent to the factory and we had learned that there wouldn’t be any problem with assembly, Ron invited me to the wine cellar “Three Students” to celebrate something. I did not mind and greatly hoped that he would buy us something stronger than coffee—all that creative rigmarole wore me down even more than combat with ghouls.

  “Dance!” Quarters demanded.

  “Want a kick in the teeth?”

  He asked touchily: “Why have you gotten so angry?”

  I would have explained why, but I did not want to start all over again. Ron could not keep his news secret for long: “Our patent is bought…”

  “Hmm…”

  “For twenty-five thousand crowns!”

  “What?!”

  “And a crown from each machine that installs the device. Can you imagine how many diesel cars they make per year?!”

  “But our device won’t be on each one; dark magic is expensive.”

  Quarters squinted his eyes: “Man, did you show your amulet to anyone?”

  “Well… to Rakshat, for example.”

  “Did he tell you that your design was a ‘transmaster?’”

  “No.”

  “I am telling you that! It does not use the Source, meaning it can be installed by any magician. Dark magic is only needed to create the inverse template, and then any white dolt can rubber-stamp the amulets. Done!”

  I was flabbergasted. I felt like a cat that someone dipped in a cold bathtub.

  “Didn’t we sell it too cheap?”

  “Are you kidding? We sold only the principle; design and production are not our problems.”

  I already knew what the realization of a basic idea would cost, and I understood that we got rich almost for nothing.

  “When will I get the money?”

  Quarters solemnly handed me a check: a large, multi-colored paper with gold lettering and metallic sheen. The money. A lot of money. Almost without any strain on my part. I love that so much!

  “How will you spend it?” Ron was curious.

  I brushed him aside. For now, I just wanted to look at the check, carry it with me, and show it to everyone.

  “Interest will go to your student account.”

  “Ron, you are a genius!”

  “Come on,” Quarters was embarrassed. “If you think up something like this again, let me know!”

  And then I noticed a funny thing.

  “Listen, the check was issued two weeks ago.”

  “So what? It’s not a fish; it won’t rot.”

  “Then why didn’t you give it to me right away?”

  “So that you wouldn’t lose the incentive to work.”

  When the meaning of his words reached me, I almost lost my speech.

  “You son of a bitch…”

  To kill him! To wipe the bastard off the face of the earth and leave him without offspring!

  “Quiet, be quiet! Why get worked up? Everything turned out excellent!”

  “Shit!”

  For a few minutes I unsuccessfully chased Quarters around the pub, but he refused to meet me in a fair fight. He locked himself in a bathroom stall. Breaking my way into the bathroom was kind of awkward, and I returned to the table, meanly determined to eat all of the food without him.

  That rascal… god save me from working under his command!

  In about ten minutes Quarters got bolder and came out of his hiding place: “You got mad at me for nothing, Tom!” he proclaimed emotionally (I had already finished all the pork ears on the plate by that time). “I only wanted the best for everybody.”

  “Go to hell! All because of a cool chick?”

  “Are you kidding?” Ron took offense. “I bet with my uncle I could make the device work. Thirty percent of the shares in his factory if I win.”

  What could I say? He definitely had a talent! Sort of dark magic, just more profitable.

  Part 4. RUSTLES AND WHISPERS

  Chapter 16

  Reading biographies of famous combat mages didn’t fascinate me, but I heard that all of them were motivated by external stimuli. Typically, we, dark magicians, find a compromise between our natural instincts and reasonable opportunities to satisfy them (if we can’t, we die) and reach a certain balance in our existence. Ordinary people get used to everything—even to ugly, pugnacious, vindictive, and heartless dark magicians, and life gets back to normal. But some dark have no such luck. Certain unavoidable circumstances don’t let them settle a warm nest, prompting painful and unnatural efforts such as a struggle for power, defense of the fatherland, or perfection of the art of dark magic. What’s the point? Instead of a simple desire to be at the top of their local hierarchy, they take responsibility for the future of the nation, the sovereignty of economics, or (god save me from such fate!) health and safety. Some quirk of the psyche fancifully changes the nature of the unfortunate guys; poetically speaking, they hear the Voice of Destiny. That’s the story people tell about the celebrities.

  I need to confess: I didn’t hear any such voices. In my case, it all began quite casually, with a funeral.

  I was notified of a telegram from home. It was strange, because I did not expect any correspondence: at the beginning of summer Joe wrote to me twice, asking to come home, but I excused myself, referring to the new job. Did he decide to try again?

  The telegram was drafted without any attempt to save money on punctuation marks (most likely, my mother sent it); it briefly stated that Uncle Gordon had passed away, and the funeral would be in two days. Not that the message was incredible (we are all mortal). I just couldn’t understand why he died now. Last summer the old man looked quite cheerful—magicians generally live long. The dark mages cannot grieve keenly in principle; we all will meet out there sooner or later. But I had some plans for Uncle, and they would have to be changed now. And one more thing: will Chief Harlik agree to tell me what he promised to find out for the old man?

  In this philosophical mood I came to work, barely responded to the greetings of my coworkers, and sat down to meditate over the bills. All of my drawings were finished a week ago, the calculations - checked and rechecked. Carl personally controlled the assembly of the modules; I was bored and wanted to follow Polak’s example: hide somewhere and take a nap. Perhaps I looked gloomily detached.

  “Something isn’t working?” Johan began to worry.

  “No,” I waved my hand dismissively, “my uncle passed away.”

  I shouldn’t have said it to him. The white began clucking around me, and within a minute the whole office knew of my loss. They grieved over the death of a stranger more than me, who had known him all my life.

  Mr. Polak decided that I must urgently take some time off and go to the funeral. I didn’t care about the obsequies, but didn’t mind a few days away. It was summer after all!

  “Will you be okay without me?” I put on an act that I did not want to go.

  “Family is your first priority!” the boss cut me short. “The model works--what’s left is the assembly—and we’ll sort it out.”

  Excellent! And if they fail, I will be away—nobody could blame me.

  To get to the funeral in time, I had to leave right away. It turned out that only one ticket was lef
t for the Krauhard Express. It was in first class, for the outrageous sum of one hundred and twenty crowns, but dinner was included. I sighed with relief, and the cashier raised his eyebrow in surprise. He didn’t know that, given availability in economy class, greed would have forced me to buy the cheapest ticket. Then my zombie-dog would have to stay in Redstone, and the revivifying curses I imposed on it could fall off before my return. To come back to realize that the city was quarantined because of my dog would be… unpleasant.

  For Max to get on the train was a piece of cake: under the guise of a bale of fur (it was incredible how tightly you could pack an animal when it did not resist). In order to get the dog off the railcar at the desired station, it was enough to just throw the bale out of the window. The next morning I sat on the express train, riding in the direction of Krauhard. I was going to arrive at the funeral just in time.

  Krauhard met me with its usual fog and empty platform, but some things did change, yes. No one could say that a dark magician takes the death of a relative lightly! I adjusted the lapel of a deliberately fashionable, beige-plaid jacket without a single black thread, but with a bright red tie. Tribute to tradition! Black, as well as white, is not considered a mourning color in Krauhard. In the past, people didn’t think much about funeral colors, but they settled on purple-red in the end. It was elegant, practical and, on top of that, red was the symbol of “pure death”, death not defiled by a supernatural touch. (Anyone who saw ghouls would understand my point.) But Krauhardians don’t practice a parade of mourning colors. A tribute to passed away is paid by arranging a lavish funeral and taking custody of dependents of the deceased (especially young children); his or her pets (horse, dog, or cat) receive special treatment as well. Krauhardian funerals served as a favorite subject for jokes: newcomers often confused them with weddings. From a stranger’s viewpoint, they were almost the same, except that people sang different songs and had no cake on the table. To me, there is nothing wrong with the similarity of the events—both require some optimism from the family. I, for instance, never understood the popularity of mourning and grieving at the white funeral. Would a normal deceased want his or her relatives to weep and tear their hair? Only a pervert would like that, and what would be the point of crying about him at all then? Uncle Gordon didn’t have close relatives, especially underage; at least, we knew none of them. The village alchemist did not keep pets or cattle, so that simplified the entire list of things to do. Just the booze. In fact, I had hoped for that.