The New York Magician

by Zimmerman, Jacob

  I nodded, swallowed, then asked the question. "What do I do if they get three strikes?"

  He grinned at me. "That's your problem. What I'm telling you is this: if you follow those rules, the only people who you're gonna have to deal with are the ones who were gonna start a fight with you no matter what you did once you walked in that door. You might still have to fight or run, but you'll always know you had no choice."

  I'd tipped him double the fare. He shook his head while he drove away.

  I walked past the three huge guys at the front door, making a slight jog so my Red Zone didn't touch theirs. They looked at me but didn't say anything. I went into that bar that night, found who I was looking for, and got out of that bar that night. I'm not telling you I never got in fights, but I'm telling you that that cabbie was right; every time I've followed that rule, I've never had to fight anyone that wasn't doing his or her damnedest to make sure we squared off no matter what I did.

  Unfortunately, some days there's just one of those jackasses in the bar.

  I was in a dark and dusty corner joint in Washington Heights, the kind with an Irish name but nary an Irishman in sight and where the beer is decidedly American but the rum, if you know how to ask for it, is dark, wicked and unnamed. If you did know the name you'd probably have to report the owner to the Customs and Excise people for illegal trafficking with some dark and mysterious South American lost city.

  I like rum like that. It was one of the reasons I was there.

  The other reason was rumors. I chase rumors much of the time. It's what I do. The leather bandolier across my chest is strung with the fruits of those pursuits, and it's saved my life more times than I can count.

  Would my life have been endangered if I hadn't pursued those rumors in the first place? Ah, well, that's another of life's questions. I sipped rum and sniffed appreciatively at the odors from the illegal propane grill midway down the bar where the bartender was frying something that smelled a lot like pork and plantains.

  Anyway, there had been rumors. The weather had been ferocious in New York this summer so far - thunderstorms, even hail. Global Warming was big on the radio, as was El Nino, but the buzz Uptown was that Someone was in town. Someone was upset.

  I was poking around to find out who it was, and if they'd talk to me. That's why I follow rumors. I talk to those who have few others to talk to. Mostly because my grandmother once taught me that too much respect just creates a wall of loneliness, and loneliness can be worse than death. But also because she also taught me that New York is a human place, and someone has to keep an eye on things.

  I love my grandmother.

  The rum was even more evil on the third cup than the second. I had been listening to conversations all over the bar for a couple of hours, and while people were talking about all manner of things, none of them seemed to be talking about the shitty weather or about mysterious visitors from out of town. This, too, was normal; most of the chase involves sitting around listening. I'm good at that, too.

  Sometimes I trade on the markets. You'd be surprised at what listening to the communities of New York as a full-time occupation can tell you. I don't do too badly.

  Three drinks is usually my limit, though. Time to find another bar. Nobody had bothered me, and I hadn't bothered anyone, just had my drinks. I was rising from the booth to go when my Red Zone flashed a warning and I sat back down quickly to get my hands beneath my table. A slender man in a dressy shirt and slacks slid into the seat across from me and smiled. I didn't know him, so the smile made me instantly wary. "Can I help you?"

  "Probably." He didn't go away. Strike two.

  "How?" My hands were still below the table.

  "Well, for one, you can put your hands on the table." He had both of his in view, resting on the table in front of him.

  "Really. Is that a threat?" Belligerence was creeping into my voice. I wasn't sure what was going on, so this was opening move 47-j - test the waters.

  "I rather think so, yes." He was still smiling and his hands hadn't moved. I narrowed my eyes.

  "Why should I do that, precisely?" I gave him a once-over, visibly. I'm not a very big guy, but I was larger than him, and there was little doubt I was in better shape. The intimidation behind that once-over? Secondary move 32-q.

  Didn't work. His eyes got a little harder. "I really don't want to make a nasty scene in here."

  Strike three. Time to move to my favorite weapon. I ran my mouth. "Is that so? That's just terrible. I'd hate to drop you down the popularity list in the neighborhood watch. Your compadres here look like they'd take it terribly amiss if your fur got ruffled." I waved my left hand at the other denizens of the joint, solid South American blue-collars all.

  My boothmate didn't rise to the bait and look away. He lifted his hands from the table in what looked at first to be a placating gesture, palms towards me - until I noticed that his fingertips were curled slightly inwards. "They won't notice a thing. Not a thing, I assure you."

  Okay, so the hands were a bad sign. He was armed, and in a nasty way, or at least he knew enough to make me believe he was. I looked at his hands, then at him. "What do you want?"

  "I want you to very, very slowly open your coat and then hand me the leather bandolier that you have strapped across your chest. Without," he continued with calm emphasis, "touching your palm to its center at any time. I know you can unhook it at your waist."

  Damn. Now he was making me nervous. Nobody should know that much about me. My mouth continued firing. "You want me to undress for you? That figures."

  "Mr. Wibert. You won't make me angry. You will annoy me, but that won't cause me to lose control or even distract me, although it might make me do terrible, horrible things to you, later." His voice assumed a nasal tone at the end. "All I want is the bandolier, and I'll leave. You have no right to them, in any case."

  "Oh really? Why is that, may I ask?" I knew his answer, of course. I'd heard it before. Sure enough, real anger colored his response.

  "Because you have no concept of the power you hold. You have no birthright to it; you have no ability to direct or use it. You are a shadow, Wibert. Just like the rest of them." At this, he waved one hand slightly at the rest of the bar. Surprised by his motion, I glanced over. Everyone else in the bar was frozen in place, the lights dimmed. There was a blur over the doorway that I knew would prevent anyone outside from deciding to enter.

  Crap. This was bad.

  "Wow. That's pretty good," I heard my mouth say, still running on automatics. "Do you do lighting for high school plays?"

  His eyes flashed, but he was under control. "They will, as I told you, notice nothing. If you refuse to give me the bandolier, Wibert, I will be forced to harm you and take it from your corpse."

  He could, too. The guy was manipulating time flows, from the look of it, with some power and a great deal of expertise. I looked at the bar again and noted that the area extended at least as far as the walls. I looked back at him and shrugged. "Okay."

  His face flickered. "You agree?"

  "Don't look so surprised, Señor Dipshit. I don't like death." I reached for my waist and unfastened the bandolier at my left ribcage, then drew it slowly over my neck.

  "Slowly!" His hands returned to face me. I paused with the bandolier still over my head, the ends of it held in my left hand, the center dangling uselessly in midair.

  "See, I'm guessing here. Do you mind if I speculate? I can't touch the talismans here-" I shook the bandolier above me- "-and I'm insanely curious, not having any Power my own self."

  He glared at me for a second, then looked at the bandolier. "Very well. Put the bandolier down on the table with the center fold towards me."

  "Sure," I said agreeably, and did so carefully. The vial and pocket watch, snug in their pockets, were pushed out towards him, out of reach of my hands now.

  "And so you know," he said with a cold smile, "if you attempt to shoot me from under the table, you will fail. I have a shield up that will sim
ply accelerate the cast I am prepared to make at you using the strike of your bullet as a source of power."

  Damn. "Oh, I figured that," I lied. Think, damn it. "I just wanted to know, though. See, you're holding entropy down in the rest of the bar, and we're still talking. I'm guessing you're working with balances, here?"

  He cocked his head, hands still poised. "Continue."

  "I figure if you cut loose at me, what's going to happen is that all the time that isn't passing over there-" -I nodded at the bar- "-is going to happen right around me. But really fast and really hard. Probably satisfy some form of arcane math involving energy decay and volumes."

  "That is correct, Mr. Wibert." Ooh, I was a mister again. "Astute of you for someone with no talent himself."

  Asshole. "Oh, I have talents," I told him. "Just not like you. That was a shitty Peter Lorre imitation. May I go?"

  He studied me carefully. "If you stand carefully, and walk slowly to the door, I will allow you to leave. I will hold these others as hostages to your good behavior."

  "Yeah. I figured that." I looked at him carefully, searching for the signs I was looking for.

  Found it. Sweating, just below the hairline.

  I stood up, carefully, and with two fingers gently slid the bandolier over to him, then stepped back from the table. He turned in his seat to keep his hands focused on me. "Mr. Wibert?"

  "What?"

  "I have one question. Allow me an answer to convince me of your motives."

  "Okay."

  "Why do you give me these so easily?" he nodded at the bandolier. He was sneering, but only half - he was actually curious.

  I shrugged. "I've got other tools, whoever you are. And one of the reasons I'm still around despite playing in a world inhabited by things like you is that I know when to walk away." His eyes tightened at the insult, and I wondered if I'd overplayed it, but he nodded.

  "I understand. Very well. Thank you. Please accept that you were simply outmatched here, and there will be no need for another meeting."

  I looked at him stonily for a moment, and then turned away towards the door. He called behind me, "Please walk slowly. I will extend the field with you." I nodded without looking back and began a measured pace to the door.

  Step. Step. I passed a pair of men drinking, one caught in mid-laugh, perhaps a foot away. Neither budged. So he had fine control of the field. I had a clear path to the exit. Step. Step. I was nearly to the bar's corner, perhaps eight feet from the door.

  When I reached the blur that blocked the doorway, I turned to face him, still sitting in the back booth. "Hey, you'll need to-" but as I spoke, I whipped back my coat with one hand and drew the big pistol with the other. I had time to see his face tighten and his hands clench; then there was a rippling feeling around me, but by that time I had taken aim and fired.

  The Desert Eagle roared tinnily in the space that was tightly enclosed by his talent, the sound ricocheting up the airspace around my arm and to my ears. I felt the blast compress the skin on my right arm, gases burning my wrist, and then the bullet punched through the propane tank propped behind the bar a few feet down from the grill.

  Blue and orange flame flowered from the tank in slow motion, coupled with a sudden massive rise in the ambient temperature around me as the entropy from the explosion was channeled through whatever the little git was doing to my immediate vicinity. I roared in pain as my exposed skin burned, and suddenly there was a blast of cool air on me. I opened my eyes at a sudden change in the nature of the roar of sound to find myself standing in the middle of the bar holding the Desert Eagle. There was a rising hubbub of voices around me.

  I looked at the bar. The propane tank was split open and blackened, but no flame issued from it.

  The booth where I'd been sitting was a pyre of white flame. A high, thin scream issued from it as the chronomancer struggled to escape the storm of energy his channeling cast had been funneling when the overload of the propane explosion blew his control. I dashed towards the back booth, stuffing the gun into my coat, and grabbed the end of the bandolier which had been knocked off the table in his thrashing.

  Without looking back, I barreled into the rear of the bar and out a narrow door into an alley as a fire alarm began to blare from the front of the building. I didn't know if anyone had gotten a good look at me, but I didn't want to chance it. Jogging out of the alley, I turned away from the avenue and began making distance, fastening the bandolier around myself.

  Yeah. I give them three strikes. And every time one of those supercilious motherfuckers tries to tell me that I'm homo deprecatus or whatever and he's the Next Evolutionary Thing, I have to remind him of the golden rule.

  Homo sapiens took down everybody else to become the apex predator on this planet, and not because we were bigger, badder, sharper, faster, harder or more frightening than anybody else.

  We're tool users.

  Just like me.

  V

  Yet the sun still rose

  * * *

  St. Vincent's hospital lurks at the corner where 7th Avenue angles to the west on its way downtown into the heart of Greenwich Village. It may have loomed there one day, but now things are simply too tall and it's all it can do to lurk, pushing its emergency entrance out into the avenue in a bid to be noticed.

  I don't like hospitals. I haven't since my parents passed away. This was altogether too familiar.

  Still, I went in anyway and stopped at the receptionist. They eye you peculiarly when you wander around New York in a long Burberry's trench coat on not-particularly-cool fall evenings. The orderly behind the counter glanced up from his computer monitor, beige plastic stained with finger oils and unknown greases. "Yes?"

  "Here to visit Nan Wibert." I had to spell it for him.

  "Room 727. Have you been here before?" I nodded. He grimaced in apology. "Right. Elevators over there."

  Room 727 was like all the other rooms I could see, but this one was bathed in a brilliant light, because my grandmother was in it. She was lying in a throne-like bed of medical technology, face peaceful, sleeping. I walked to her side and looked down at her. The machines muttered to themselves in their secret chatter, glyphs winking out furiously for those with medical training decoder rings to decipher. I just looked at the woman.

  She'd raised me, those years in the West Village. Taken me into her small apartment when my parents were taken from us, and made me a part of her life and her a part of mine. The grief of those long ago years wasn't lessened, but it was countered with the love that she had laid over the wounds.

  A nurse walked past and looked into the room, saw me, and leaned in. "Sir?"

  I turned.

  "Oh, Mr. Wibert, I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you."

  "It's all right."

  She came into the room and stood by me, looking down at my grandmother. "She's had that half-smile on all day. She looks very peaceful."

  I didn't snarl at her, but it took a great deal of effort. Instead I swallowed and said, "She's dying."

  The nurse patted my arm. "Yes, dear, she is. But she's at peace, with her family, and she's not in pain, and she's led a full, long life. Would you have her go any other way?"

  I didn't answer. The nurse patted my arm again and slipped out. I just looked at the woman in the bed, because I knew something the nurse didn't know. I slipped one hand into my overcoat and rested my palm against the lump just over my breastbone, where the Baba's vial lay. I could feel the Power concentrated there. I knew it wouldn't diminish it in the slightest if I let it free. That's what the Water of Life did, after all - it granted life to a soul and to a body, if used for that purpose. That's what Baba Yaga did with it as a Goddess of Nature.

  And she'd given it to me.

  I turned away from Gran’mere and found a chair to sit in, my arms trembling. I rubbed my eyes with sweaty palms and arranged my coat to hang in a more comfortable manner over the bandolier at my chest and the large gun at my side. I'm not all that small, and the chair
was struggling to make it work, but I didn't care.

  I have no real Power as a mage, or sorcerer, or witch, or whatever word you'd like to use. I have one talent, one which is shared by many more people in this world than realize they have it, but which is discouraged by society and religions and science. It is discouraged to the point that most people who have it convince themselves that they're imagining things by the time they're teenagers. Some that refuse to do so later burn their minds out on drugs to make it go away, and nearly all those who avoid that fate either learn to conceal it or end up in treatment for various esoteric forms of insanity. Some become charlatans for pay. One in a great many is like me.

  I can Hear and See beings of power. Gods, deities, demons - whatever you want to call them; I can see through the veils that hide them from normal people. Veils that they place over themselves, and veils that humanity places there - a vast slumbering herd mind too disturbed to recognize the bright light that walks among it, unknowing of its own strength. Remember when Barrie's Peter Pan urged all you children to believe? Well, guess what? It works the other way, too.

  The Djinn in his endless wanderings, Baba Yaga behind her ageless cold mask; I could See them where others saw only their vessels. Looking down at my grandmother, I could See her too, touched as she was with a Power much stronger than mine. I could Hear her as she lay there.

  For my grandmother wasn't peaceful. She was screaming.

  * * *

  I went to drink.

  This doesn't help, but at least gives me a perfectly good excuse for feeling maudlin, useless and guilty. Nan Wibert was old. I didn't know how old, precisely, because she didn't know herself, but she was in her upper nineties. She had given birth to my mother in France before coming to the U.S., arriving sometime after the Second World War. She had some degenerative illness whose name I kept managing to forget two minutes after the doctors told me, one that despite my considerable financial resources I couldn't save her from. She'd known that, of course, and schooled me sharply about it before she'd closed her eyes some weeks before.