Mash Up

by Gardner Dozois

  MUSE OF FIRE

  BY JOHN SCALZI

  “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

  The brightest heaven of invention…”

  Well, shit, thought Ben Patton. He shoved his good hand under his leg to keep from reaching for his lighter. He had thought there wouldn’t be any triggers at the corporate Christmas party.

  A muse of fire…

  Closing his eyes, he willed himself to remain still, telling himself he was only imagining the small, subtle weight of the lighter which was in fact in his pocket.

  He could usually play it off as a nervous tic, but if he pulled the lighter out here – at a play – there would be a problem. He knew it. Brad Evanson was sitting just three seats over, looking smug, as he so often did. Ben had been on Evanson’s shit list nearly as long as the prick had been his boss. Evanson particularly disliked the lighter.

  Stupid Brad, Ben thought. What sort of asshole picks a Shakespeare play for a Christmas party, anyway? It was just the sort of status-grasping stunt that Evanson would pull. To try to look cultured and suave while everyone else in the company just wanted to drink and laugh and have an actual Christmas party. With spiked punch and Christmas cookies and mistletoe and candles—

  Ben rubbed his hand, slicked with sweat, hard against the plush red velvet of his seat. He’d thought they were just using the lobby of the Lyric Opera. He didn’t know he’d be trapped at Henry V, with the Chorus intoning his word in a plummy baritone.

  Fire.

  No, Ben had to admit, shaking his head. It wasn’t the word fire. It was the image.

  The muse of fire.

  He managed to hold out until the end of the scene and then in the brief dimming of the lights, Ben rose and in a half-crouch, stumbled his way past the people sitting beside him. He noted Evanson’s displeasure as he scuttled past.

  Charlie tapped him as he went by. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Something I ate,” Ben muttered.

  The lights came up as Ben was hurrying up the aisle. The actors started on new lines, but the only words he heard was the first sentence still echoing. Oh, for a muse of fire…

  He pushed past the heavy red curtain and into the dark vestibule before the lobby. Leaning against the wall, he fumbled his lighter out of his pocket and flicked it open.

  The flame danced above it, and inside she opened her eyes.

  Smiled at him.

  “Hello, my love,” she said.

  * * *

  At home he lay in front of the hearth – the reason why he’d bought the house, which was otherwise far too large for a single man, or at the very least a single man of such limited social activity as he was.

  The sprawling three-story Victorian had a fireplace in every room, and a hearth in the living room large enough to cook an entire sheep. The other fireplaces had been converted to gas, which worked, but this one was a real wood fire still. She liked that better. And so he always kept the coals banked so he could keep the window open to her.

  As soon as he got home from the play, he’d laid the fire with kindling and pieces of dry cedar. The flames licked around the logs, teasing him with glimpses of her, until the wood caught fully.

  Hestia sat up amid the flames and stretched. “Feeling better?” she asked him.

  “I missed you,” Ben said.

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Silly. There were tealights in the foyer. I watched you from there. You should have stayed.”

  “I can’t talk to you when people are there.” He rubbed at the tight scars on the remains of his left hand. “It would be easier if the others could see you.”

  “We’ve talked about that,” Hestia said.

  “I know,” Ben said. They had. Endlessly.

  Ben changed the subject. “Charlie thinks that we have a shot at using the Helmholtz facilities for testing.”

  Hestia clapped her hands, crackling embers. “Wonderful!” she said. “Oh, Ben. I’m so proud of you. All of your hard work.”

  “You mean your work,” Ben said.

  “Ours, then,” Hestia replied.

  He grinned, much of the tension ebbing out of his body as he talked to her. Some part of him was fully aware that the most likely scenario was that he was insane and that she was an expression of that, but he’d given up on meds years ago. What kept him believing in her were the calculations. She was a genius with numbers.

  He shifted closer to the fireplace. The heat baked into him and he could imagine her touch flickering over his body. His muse of fire.

  “To be fair, I don’t know that it’ll really come through,” Ben said, into the fire. “Helmholtz is notoriously strict around protocols and the parameters you need are on the outside of their safety zone.”

  “Just show them the Tratorian equation,” Hestia said, waving a hand as if to brush away the problem, sparks curling in the air around her fingers. “It directly addresses the thermal variants that Charlie worried about. It should satisfy them at Helmholtz.”

  Ben grinned at this. The “Tratorian equation” was their personal intimate name for a bit of math fearsome enough that it exhausted both of their talents to describe. It was the sort of things they gave Fields Medals for.

  If it worked, that was, and if a medal was what Ben was working for in the first place.

  “You were eavesdropping,” Ben said to Hestia.

  “You were playing with your lighter,” she replied. Teasing. Then her face sobered and she leaned forward, as far out of the fire as she could go. “I worry about you, Ben. You should have stayed at the play.”

  He shrugged and flexed the stubs of his left hand. “It wasn’t my thing,” he said.

  “Maybe you should try the medication again,” Hestia suggested.

  “Not you, too.” Conversations like this were the ones that worried him. If she was his subconscious, then was she telling him that he was crazy?

  Or rather, was he telling himself?

  He changed the subject again. “So, I picked up some new books,” he said. “Do you want me to read to you?”

  Hestia refused to budge. “Ben,” she said. “Love. You always dodge this when I bring it up. The medication controls the OCD.”

  “And it also keeps me from seeing you,” Ben pointed out.

  “It’s okay. I can still see you,” she said.

  “Well, that’s healthy,” he said. Ben scrubbed his face, trying to press the annoyance out of his skin. What he didn’t say, and what he knew that she already knew, was that for him there was no point if he couldn’t see her. No point. No spark.

  No fire.

  His gaze returned to Hestia, in the flames. The fact was that he should have stayed for the play. But everything called him to her. He felt guilty when he wasn’t there for her. Wasn’t there to see her. Wasn’t there to distract her from her fate. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Sorry for what?” she asked, soothingly. “It’s all right, Ben.”

  “It is not all right.” Ben rolled onto his knees. “You’re in Hell. I’m supposed to just ignore that?”

  She looked away, firelit face blanching white. “I so regret telling you,” she said.

  “I’ll get you out,” he promised.

  “But at what cost?” She gazed to his left arm, where his hand had been.

  He had touched her. Once.

  * * *

  Ben sat in the corporate meeting with the other engineers trying to pretend that he was paying attention to Brad Evanson. Who was droning. Again. Evanson had two modes: droning and ranting. There did not seem to be anything in between them, except the occasional random social bit like “how are you” that he didn’t really mean but had read somewhere that you should say, to make it seem like you cared, thus facilitating employee retention. Or something. Fact was, for all his pretensions and striving, Evanson was not a people person. He was a numbers man.

  Not in the higher math sense, mind you, like Ben and the other engineers. Oh, no. Evanson was all about profit and loss.<
br />
  This meant that Ben and Evanson used the same words, but did not speak the same language. Take the word “efficiency.” Ben and Evanson both used the word, but did not mean the same thing when they used it. Evanson had zero understanding of the role of efficiency in thermal dynamics. All he cared about was the fact that he thought Ben had invented a force field that the military was very interested in. The reality was more that Ben had to build a plasma window that would function like a force field, if the testing worked.

  It amounted to the same thing as far as Evanson was concerned. Money.

  Ben had his tablet braced with his bum hand and was drawing on it with the stylus. It could usually pass for taking notes.

  His IM popped up a message from Charlie Spencer, silently. LET’S MAKE A DRINKING GAME FROM HOW MANY TIMES HE SAYS SYNERGY, it said.

  Ben glanced across the table to where Charlie sat, apparently at full attention. His sandy blonde hair had thinned above the temples and gave him a widow’s peak (Charlie’s wife Sandra hated the description, with some justification). He kept it a little long on top and could fuzz it up into “Doc Brown” hair when he was escorting investors through the facilities. They loved the authentic scientist look, apparently. He had a pair of black-rimmed spectacles that he put on to look the part, too. Perfect vision, otherwise.

  Charlie caught Ben’s look and raised his eyebrows just enough to say Am I right? without actually breaking his apparent concentration on Evanson’s prattle.

  As if he’d timed it, Evanson said, “…departments work together in perfect synergy…”

  Ben snorted.

  In a pause, of course. Evanson turned to him.

  Shit.

  Ben frowned and rubbed at the scar tissue on his left hand, working really hard at playing the snort off as a sound of pain. “Sorry. Cramp.”

  His IM flashed. HAVE A DRINK.

  Evanson narrowed his gaze at Ben, who returned the gaze calmly, not quite daring his boss to make something of it. Evanson wouldn’t, of course: a clueless flub with another disabled employee two years ago had sent Evanson into corporate-ordered sensitivity training. The course was complete bullshit as far as Ben could tell, but as a practical matter it meant he had wiggle room because of the “cripple” status that he occupied in his boss’s brain. Ben had no problem exploiting that when necessary, in no small part because he knew Evanson’s opinion of him otherwise.

  Evanson hummed his disapproval at Ben, but then started up his drone again. “As I was saying… We achieve our best functionality when all departments work together in perfect synergy. Synergy which is perfect.”

  DRINK! DRINK!

  Down the table Rebecca Steuben had a sudden coughing fit. Ben would bet anything that Charlie was IMing her, too. The toad sitting next to her looked actively annoyed, as if anyone wanted to hear more about “synergy.”

  Evanson droned, “…synergy is the perfect term to use because our work is in energy. Do you see? Synergy and energy? Synergy fans the flames of creativity.”

  Oh, come on, Ben thought at Evanson. You’re not even trying to sound like an actual human anymore. He pulled his lighter out and flicked it open. Hestia had to hear this.

  He had already brought his finger down on the thumbwheel before his forebrain caught up with him. Not in a meeting, jackass, it said. Don’t bring the lighter out in a meeting with Evanson.

  But the flame was lit and she was there. The metal warmed in his palm.

  The guy next to him glanced over, then rolled his eyes and looked away. They’d all seen this before – his “nervous tic” – but Evanson hated it. Ben lowered the lighter, but kept his thumb on the wheel.

  His IM flashed a message from Charlie: DUDE. PUT THE LIGHTER AWAY.

  And, well, Charlie was right, wasn’t he? Dude, he definitely should put that lighter away. He was going to put the lighter away. Evanson wasn’t even looking at him. All Ben had to do was lift his finger off the igniter and the flame would extinguish. He just needed to take his thumb off the lighter.

  Hestia looked around with curiosity, always wondering where he would take her. Her gaze widened when she realized she was in a meeting. “Ben. Ben!” she said. “Close the lighter.” There was an unusual tone of pleading in her voice. “Close the lighter. Do it now.”

  But he was stuck. He knew he was stuck. He even knew what it would take to get unstuck. All he had to do was move his thumb. Move his damn thumb.

  As soon as Evanson said “synergy” again, he would. She just needed to hear that.

  But Evanson kept droning and came nowhere near the word. The flame danced and now other people at the table had noticed he had it out.

  Just close the damn lighter, Ben.

  “Is there a problem, Dr. Patton?” Evanson had stopped talking and stared down the table at Ben.

  Fuck. Ben spent so much energy thinking about when to close the lighter that he’d stopped paying attention to Evanson himself. Ben didn’t see him turn, or see his boss’s eye drawn, naturally, to the flame of his lighter.

  Ben finally closed the lighter. “Sorry,” he said, looking back at Evanson, watching him now.

  Which is how he could detect the oh-so-slight change in Evanson’s expression; the tiny glint in his boss’s eye. Evanson had any number of reasons for disliking Ben; the two of them were pieces in a puzzle that fit into different places, not meant to be jammed together. Evanson didn’t get Ben, or his work methods, or his tics and twitches. He especially didn’t get why he wasn’t allowed to just fire Ben; Ben knew Evanson simply didn’t have the math to know that what Ben was doing – was doing with Hestia – was putting the company light years ahead of their competition.

  Evanson didn’t get Ben, and couldn’t fire him. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t make him uncomfortable.

  “I thought we had discussed the lighter,” Evanson said, in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice that immediately made Ben paranoid. “It’s a safety hazard. Bringing a flame into an office meeting, in a non-smoking building – what are you thinking?”

  “My mistake,” Ben said. “It won’t happen again.”

  “No, it won’t,” Evanson agreed, and held out his hand. “Give it to me.”

  “Excuse me?” Ben said.

  “The lighter,” Evanson said. “I want you to give it to me, please. Now.”

  Sweat beaded on Ben’s face and on the back of his hand. “I’m putting it away,” he said, of the lighter.

  “That is not what I asked for,” Evanson said. Ben detected a tone in his voice that he suspected was what it might sound like when a cat addressed a cornered cricket. “Dr. Patton, you’ve been told about the lighter. You’ve been told not to bring it to meetings. You’ve been told it makes others nervous. You’ve been told it presents a real and present fire hazard. You’ve been told this again and again, and yet here we are again, with that lighter in your hand. Putting it away isn’t going to be sufficient this time. I need you to hand it to me now.”

  “This isn’t elementary school,” Ben said. “You’re not the teacher.”

  “But I am your superior,” Evanson said. “So give me the lighter or I’m going to cite you for a safety violation.”

  “I’ll take the safety violation, thanks.” The words were out of Ben’s mouth before he realized he’d said them; it took Rebecca Steuben gasping for it to register that he’d said them out loud. He slid the lighter into his pocket.

  Evanson gaped; however he expected the conversation to go, this was not that way. “Fine,” he said. “Good. Then you can expect that report in your HR file by the end of the day. Along with an additional report for insubordination and for causing a disruption in the workplace. You do understand, Dr. Patton, that other people work here, yes? That your attitude and habits make it more difficult for everyone else?”

  Ben said nothing to this, waiting.

  “Apparently not,” Evanson said, after an awkward pause. “Well, then, I am going to make sure you do. And until then, there’s a
new rule for this department and this building. No open flames of any sort in the building. That means your lighters and your candles, Dr. Patton. They are hazardous materials and you are endangering the life of every person in this building. No more open flames. Anywhere.”

  Rebecca raised her hand. “What about Bunsen burners?”

  “What?” Evanson peered at her with the confusion that he always seemed to have about having a woman scientist on the team. Ben looked over to Rebecca, who had a small and, to Ben, attractively mischievous smile on her face.

  “In the lab,” Rebecca said. “We have Bunsen burners. Do we have to stop using them?” Ben noticed a strand of her deep brown hair had slipped out of her bun at her temple and curled around her glasses. He was also fairly certain they didn’t actually use the Bunsen burners since most of the polymer work they were doing involved much higher temperatures. But Evanson probably wouldn’t know that.

  Before Evanson could respond Charlie raised his hand as well. “And what about the Meker burners?” he asked. “I’m supposed to show some investors around later today and those always get a good response. The money guys like seeing the old-fashioned burners with the computers. The old-meets-new synergy, you know?”

  Ben snorted again. Evanson glared at him and Ben raised his stump. “Sorry,” Ben said. “Cramp.”

  “Yes. The burn victim,” Evanson said. “I’m surprised that you carry a lighter since you clearly don’t know how to be safe around fire.”