The Best of Galaxy’s Edge 2013-2014

by Larry Niven

  “But I thought—we aren’t supposed to leave—” he stammered.

  “I’m a Day Student, I’m allowed to go home,” she pointed out, and smirked. “And I’m allowed to bring study partners with me. Of course, they’re rather stupidly assuming that it’s Mom doing the apport, and not me, and that I’m stuck at school until she gets me. That’s not my problem. Who’s bullying you? The Pretty People?”

  “How—why—” he began, and then his face just crumpled and words poured out of him. Mostly, they were nonsense about how he was going to hell, he was a pervert, and he deserved every bit of it. Vickie let him spew, then cut him off.

  “Did you get that crap from your parents?” she said, scornfully.

  He nodded.

  “And I bet they would tell you that you were going to hell if they thought you were doing magic, too, wouldn’t they?” she pointed out. The poor kid actually started, as if she had slapped him.

  “But I—but they—”

  “They’re wrong about both, obviously,” she interrupted again. “And if I have to keep you sitting here until we both get demerits from missing class until you believe it, I will.” She paused. “Or else I’ll tickle you into submission. Either one works.”

  The second was so absurd he actually laughed weakly.

  “OK. We’re good.” She grinned at him. “Now, let’s get to the important part. We’re going to keep anyone from messing with you ever again. After classes, you come back with me; they told me specifically I can bring people home for study partners. I have a plan …”

  * * *

  Every afternoon, Vickie and her new “study partner” apported straight home and went to work. After seeing they really were working and not fooling around (and probably realizing more quickly than Vickie had that the kid was gay) her parents left them alone, just setting an extra place at the dinner table for him and sending him back before curfew.

  Finally, finally, Vickie had found someone who saw magic the way she did! When she explained the whole math thing to the pale kid—Paul—he’d grasped it immediately. In fact, he turned out to be better at it than she was, although he couldn’t manage to use modern tech any better than most magicians, so she still had something of an edge on him.

  Slowly, and with the help of Konrad Lorenz, Farley Mowat, and other ethologists, she convinced him that he wasn’t some sort of perverted monster. And once convinced, he was willing to let her help him.

  What the Pretty People were doing was completely counter to the rules, as she had pointed out. The entire problem was that they needed to shine a big fat light on the cockroaches and send them scurrying. And the only way to do that would be to trick them into coming out into the open in the first place.

  Paul had wanted to just avoid stirring up a nest of hornets, but she’d convinced him about that, too. She knew how bullies worked. When they couldn’t get to him because he was spending most non-school time with Vickie, they’d find some other way to torment him, and the number one target would probably be his room.

  Here was the challenge that she had been craving, and she and Paul slaved over both the rules of conduct and the mathemagic. The rules, because she was dissecting them like a lawyer. The math, because they were building something so brand new no one had ever tried it, out of the break-down of the spells they already knew.

  When it was ready, Vickie snuck in one night after both of them should have been asleep, and they set up the trap. After that it was just a matter of waiting.

  * * *

  “Victoria Nagy.”

  Vickie looked up from her book, startled. This was study-hall, she was working on her history lesson, and she was so deeply into it she hadn’t noticed the proctor until he spoke.

  “Yes?” she managed.

  “Come with me. Leave the books.” The older kid was stony-faced, but she knew immediately why he had come for her. What else could it be? She felt a rush of mingled apprehension and elation. This, after all, was mostly her magic. If anyone was going to get in trouble, even expelled, it would be her. She had made sure it was her signature that was all over it, because Paul didn’t have a safe place to go to if he got expelled.

  She got up and followed the proctor out of the library, out of the building, and across the Courtyard, as she had anticipated, to the dorms. Up the stairs to the fourth floor, and out into a hallway, and into an uproar.

  This was, of course, one of the boys’ floors, but there were students of both sexes crowding the hall and rubbernecking, and the proctor had to push through them to get to the area of Paul’s room. A line of proctors was holding the curious back; they went through that line, and finally Vickie could see the … damage.

  Whoa! It was hard not to be excited. She’d been pretty exact as to her parameters, but she hadn’t anticipated the sheer weight of nastiness that the Pretty People had brought to the party and which they had gotten back in their teeth.

  It was hard to recognize Lucille, the tall, blond, head-cheerleader type, because she wasn’t thin or pretty anymore. She was round to the point that her clothing was straining and splitting in places, and she had a face like a frog. The only thing that remained to recognize her by was her blond hair.

  Bert, one of the jocks, was black and blue, and on the floor, moaning and holding what looked like a broken arm. A couple of the other boys were in similar straits.

  Angela was bald. Bridget had the worst case of acne Vickie had ever seen.

  Standing over them was Professor Elba, with a face like a thundercloud. As soon as Vickie entered the cleared area, the Professor rounded on her.

  “What did you do to them, you miserable little—” It looked as if the Professor was going to actually attack her, and in that moment, Vickie realized who it was who had been protecting the bullies all this time.

  Fortunately, at just that moment, the Dean stepped into the space. “Meredith!” the Dean snapped. “Control yourself this instant!”

  Since the Dean had her wand out—the Dean was clearly one of those magicians who felt she worked better using a wand—Professor Elba backpedaled a step or two.

  “This—girl’s—magical signature is—”

  “I’ve been fully briefed, Meredith, thank you,” the Dean replied, in tones of cold neutrality, and turned to Vickie. “Miss Nagy, I have the greatest respect for your parents, as does nearly everyone in the magical world. I find it … remarkable … that you would have perpetrated this sort of harm on your fellow students. Quite out of keeping, one would almost say. Explain yourself.”

  “I didn’t perpetrate the harm on them, Dean,” Vickie said, as she had rehearsed a thousand times. “They perpetrated it on themselves.”

  The Dean, a tall, stern woman with hair like cast iron and a face like a stone statue, raised one eyebrow, slowly. “Indeed? Would you care to explain further?”

  And Vickie did. She explained how she and Paul had broken down one of the old Wiccan Sacred Circle spells into its component parts and isolated the sequence that read the intent of anyone or anything that tried to cross the circle. She detailed how they had broken down the Warding spells that established real-world perimeters. She described how they had worked out how the Mirror Spell that cast back magical harm on the caster worked. And how they had put these things all together in order to create something new: a Ward that read the intent of anyone trying to get into Paul’s room, and did to them exactly what they were intending to do to Paul or his property.

  “Impossible!” spat Elba.

  Vickie shrugged, and before anyone could stop her, strolled across the threshold of Paul’s room. She stopped, spread her hands wide, wordlessly showing how she came to no harm at all, and came back.

  “Impossible!” Elba said again. “You just created a hazardous Ward that would only recognize you and that little pervert!”

  Vickie bristled. “That’s not true! We did exactly what I said we did!”

  The Professor began to shout, or rather, scream, but the Dean cut her off—
not by look, or order, but by stalking across the threshold of the room herself. There was a collective gasp, and when she came back out without so much as a hair being out of place, there was another.

  “Take the … so-called victims to the Infirmary,” the Dean ordered. “And someone go to the Staff Reading Room, wake up Professor Higgins and bring him here, please.”

  Vickie perked up a little at that. So-called victims? So the Dean believed her?

  But she had to wait in silence while this Professor Higgins was fetched. This gentleman was someone Vickie had never seen before, tall, lean, wearing an odd flat velvet hat and academic robe over a shabby suit.

  “Miss Nagy,” the Dean ordered. “Tell the Professor exactly what you did. Down to the smallest detail.”

  So Vickie did—but the moment she started, the Professor suddenly looked as if he’d been jolted awake by electricity, and began questioning her—about the math! Jarred into excitement herself, Vickie could hardly get the words out fast enough. The Dean listened, looking vaguely baffled, for about ten minutes, and finally interrupted them.

  “Professor,” she said, politely. “Will this Ward do what the girl says it will?”

  For the first time the Professor actually looked at Vickie’s work, peering at the doorway over the top of his glasses. “Oh my, yes,” he said, sounding as if he had just discovered an entirely new theorem. “Oh my, certainly yes. It reads the intent of those who cross it, and if they are intending something wicked, it bounces them back with as close an approximation of their intended actions as it can manage, wrought on their persons. So elegant for such a youngster! Why look here—” He began describing some of Vickie’s process, and the Dean cut him off again.

  “And would you be willing to take Miss Nagy and her confederate as your pupils?” she asked.

  “I was about to demand that very thing, Dean!” the Professor replied, sounding a little indignant. “As you are aware, I have not had a mathemagician to tutor in far too long, and I certainly am not going to permit you to expel the first ones to come along in the last five years!”

  “Hrrm.” To Vickie’s relief, the Dean sounded more amused than anything else. “We’ll make the arrangements, Professor. Miss Nagy, with me. The rest of you—” she swept the group with a stern gaze. “Disperse, if you please.”

  * * *

  Paul was already in the Dean’s office when they arrived, and the Dean put them both through a fierce interrogation. Frankly, Vickie had seen FBI interrogators who weren’t that skilled. Paul obviously began the interview with no intention of revealing that he’d been being bullied, much less over what. He ended it spilling everything. Vickie’s role, evidently, was just to corroborate what he said, and reiterate that the magic had been all her idea, though the two of them had worked it out and implemented it together.

  Finally, the Dean sat back in her chair and steepled her fingers. “You manage, Miss Nagy, to have neatly skated past every single rule applicable without actually breaking it,” she said dryly. “I will candidly admit that I do appreciate your handiwork, and I will be having it applied to every room on this campus, which should put paid to some of the mischief we’ve had over the years here.”

  Vickie blushed and ducked her head. “Thank you, Dean,” she said looking at her hands, and heaving a sigh of relief.

  “There is no room at St. Rhiannon’s for prejudice,” the Dean continued. “Mister Hunter, your tormentors will be … watched. They will either genuinely mend their ways, or learn to feign it. In either case, they will no longer trouble you. And to ensure their good behavior, Professor Elba will not be allowed any further contact with them.” The Dean’s tone suggested that something more was likely to occur regarding Professor Elba, but what that would be, Vickie could only guess.

  “As for you two, I’ll be rearranging your class schedules so that you will have Special Studies with Professor Higgins daily. I’m sure I can find something you’ve been sleepwalking through that can be eliminated. There will be no coasting with Professor Higgins, I will warn you in advance. You might just consider this your punishment for unauthorized experiments in magic.” The Dean was not joking, Vickie suspected. I’d rather sweat than coast, so there.

  “Remain here, while I arrange that,” the Dean concluded. “We’ll allow the rest of the school to assume you are in here being lectured.” She got up and departed through a door in the rear of her office, leaving the two of them alone.

  Vickie looked at Paul. He looked back at her. And for the first time since she had met him, he was grinning.

  “Fag hag,” he said, fondly.

  “Homo,” she retorted, with a wink.

  They fist-bumped. It was going to be a beautiful year.

  Published in Galaxy’s Edge Issue 10

  Copyright © 2014 by Mercedes Lackey. All rights reserved.

  The Nechronomator

  by Brad R. Torgersen

  The mausoleum was silent as I waited quietly at the end of the east corridor. Sodium lamps on the street outside cast a ghastly light through the stained glass windows that ringed the corridor, just above the crypts. I smelled flowers and floor wax, plus a hint of decades-old cigarette smoke. It had been six hours since I’d wheeled myself to my current spot. Nobody on the mortuary staff had thought to check before locking the doors. I was alone, and not quite believing what I was doing.

  Until I heard the scrape of marble on marble.

  The air suddenly came alive. A sickening stench of formaldehyde and ethanol, mixed with ozone.

  My hands shook, but I gripped the arms of my chair tightly and waited, breathing deeply and slowly, not moving an inch.

  Footsteps. The sound of someone taking a seat.

  More marble scraping on marble.

  I almost screamed when I saw the woman trudge past the open end of the corridor. She walked as if compelled from without. Halting, pained steps. Joints and tissue which hadn’t moved in years made an indescribable sound as the woman went up the central hall. She never even looked in my direction.

  There was muffled talk—whispery and hollow.

  When it became apparent the conversation would be lengthy, I set myself into motion. Gently, with practiced tension, I rotated the wheels on my chair and began a slow, noiseless progression toward the central hall. It took minutes, during which I listened intently, but couldn’t quite make out the words. Each yard drew me closer to the source of the stench, and the air was almost alive with static.

  Eventually I reached the intersection, and was able to lean forward just enough to peek around the corner, my chair snug against the wall.

  The Nechronomator was hideous. His flesh hung limply on his tallish skeleton, sagging and gray. He sat cross-legged on a marble bench that sat at the top of the cross-shaped mausoleum. Liver spots had darkened to black and his mouth looked dry as he moved it. The woman stood before him, motionless in her Sunday finest. The only breaths either of them took were the ones they used to move air across stale vocal chords.

  I still couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  Suddenly the Nechronomator stood—a surprisingly swift movement for someone who’d been dead for three years—and slapped the base of his palm on the woman’s forehead. She spasmed and gave a quick, hoarse cry, then flashed into nothingness—like the bulb of a camera had gone off, erasing her from existence.

  I reflexively sat back in my chair, teeth clenched. What had I just seen?

  One thought—impossible—returned again and again to my mind. But I was a scientist, fully in command of my faculties, even if my body was succumbing to age. There were explanations to everything that was occurring. Rational explanations. I would have them.

  I wheeled myself boldly into the intersection and spun to confront the Nechronomator. The undead. A monster.

  My friend.

  “Christopher,” I said loudly, hoping to cover my fear with bravado.

  He remained standing, arm still outstretched and palm forward, exactly where
he had touched the woman.

  Slowly, his arm dropped back to his side.

  “You should not have come, Matthew.”

  His voice was like a bellows.

  “If you remember anything about me, then you know I would have come eventually. I was here when they sealed you away, after all. I gave the eulogy. I never expected I’d be seeing you again.”

  “Nor I. What do you want?”

  I paused for a moment, then said, “I want to know if it’s true.”

  The Nechronomator laughed. A hard, coughing sound.

  “I told you it was possible. We used to argue about it after hours, in the staff room. I couldn’t ever make it work in the lab, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t feasible. Now, I have the power.”

  “Power derived from what?” I asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “From God?”

  “You never believed in Him.”

  “Neither did you. I still have the photo I took of you shaking hands with Dawkins.”

  “Dawkins was wrong. We were all wrong.”

  “So, God sent you back?”

  “No, I am here by my own choice. God’s got nothing to do with it.”

  I was sweating profusely under my topcoat and scarf. The moisture was beginning to cloud my glasses, but my hand would be shaking so badly I didn’t dare reach to take them off. To cover my instinctual fear of the unreal creature before me, I held fast to my belief that this could be pursued as an intellectual problem.

  “How does the math work out? On the other side, I mean.”

  “The math was never the issue,” said the Nechronomator. “I always had the math right. It was the energy source that was the problem. Trying to do everything with mere electricity. Even the big colliders can’t touch what’s available in the After.”

  “So you can do it?”

  “I just did.”

  “The woman?”

  “That was it.”

  “Show me,” I said.

  My old, dead friend seemed to consider me for a long moment.