by P. S. Power
Just before noon James the driver showed up at the door of the office's main room. Doctor Wiseman standing behind him wearing tough-looking tan slacks and a matching jacket, made of something that seemed like very heavy canvas. He had on dark brown leather boots that laced in the front, reminding Gwen of the combat boots she'd seen on television programs from time to time.
Both men carried their hats in hand.
“I've been sent with box lunches by your Mother, I mean Mrs. Vernor, ma'am.” James said by way of greeting.
The way he said it made her wonder again if he just didn't know about her or was simply that good of an actor. If his job was to make her seem like Katherine Vernor playing a game, he was doing a superb job. For the time being she really needed to just act like he didn't know when she could, since that would play into his act best, if it was an act.
The doctor of geology started in on a much more flowery welcome, but Bethany put up a hand to stop him.
“We've had... an incident here today. Your colleague Baron Mathews... it turns out that he is indeed the person that attacked Gwen. He used some form of enforced mesmerism on several of the detectives, which would have been a crime even if he wasn't guilty of anything else. Gwen had to use force to try and subdue him, but he managed to escape, using a translocator or teletransporter of some kind. I mention this because your university may wish you to distance itself from our investigation at this point. You... should probably signal the dean and make certain that he doesn't feel your aid would sully the school's reputation.” Her voice held as much diplomacy as Gwen had ever heard someone use in real life.
“Right. My... are you alright, Miss Farris? He didn't harm you did he?”
“No, no, I'm fine. The only one harmed was him and I don't think I did too much damage really, since he got away before the chair hit. If I could have been a second faster...” Gwen smiled at the man, who still looked concerned, but went off to call his university as Bethany had suggested.
“You know, Bethany, where I'm from, the police, the Constabulary, kind of outrank an employer as far as investigations go. This seems really odd to me. Plus, wouldn't they want to volunteer their help? I mean, nothing distances you from a scandal like trying to take down the guilty party with everything you've got, right?”
James cocked his head at a funny angle but didn't say anything. He settled his weight back on his heels and waited, relaxed, to find out what the plans were.
“That's interesting.” Bethany took Gwen's arm, using it to steer her over toward their bags and jackets. It looked like they, at least, were going to this quarry, no matter what the geologist found himself doing.
“How does that work? Don't businesses end up closing due to the bad feelings of the public?”
It took a while, but Gwen explained how well it actually worked for the businesses, which ended up having almost total protection from what their employees did, as long as the company or employer hadn't ordered it themselves. Even then it sometimes gave them protection, the company being considered separate even from the owners in a lot of cases, if they were big enough. No one really wanted to lose all those jobs after all.
Wiseman came back from the small room where the telestator was kept.
“The dean suggested that I continue to aid you, provisionally. He asks only that our aid be kept out of the press, if at all possible. Not too keen on the newsies myself, as a rule.” The grimace on his face when he talked of these newsies seemed genuine. Reporters? That made sense to her, but she needed to learn what they were for certain if she could. Maybe she could get Bethany alone and pick her brain later?
In the back of the carriage each woman found a small lunch packed in white baskets. Inside there were small ceramic containers, each with a tiny lid that fastened into place with a clever lock over it made of steel, to one side sat a linen napkin. When she pulled it out to place on her lap, which Bethany had done and so had the doctor, from his own larger, brown-colored basket, a cream colored envelope pulled out as well. She managed to catch it before it hit the floor.
The outside said “Miss Farris” in black ink, handwritten. She opened it, looking around carefully, in case this turned out to be a trap of some sort. If it was, then they'd better not eat the food, she'd thought, only half joking. After all, she had a guy disappear right in front of her earlier. The technology worked differently here, they even talked about magic... but that... well, if some of them could do that, who knew what else they could do? Reading minds seemed easy to accept compared to that. Gwen could accept it though. It happened all the time on TV and in movies, so a part of her knew to simply acknowledge what had happened and move on. Here people could teleport and read minds. OK.
No problem.
She read the letter inside twice, then looked up at Bethany, biting her upper lip a little. This however might be one though, Gwen thought.
“Um... Mrs. Vernor's birthday party is this Friday evening and she wants us to come, if we can... It's formal. Apparently Katherine is expected to show up and this is something that will be covered in the press. Possibly. If she, Katherine, doesn't show... We're both invited.”
Bethany nodded, clearly thinking of something. Wiseman sat up suddenly, looking surprised.
“My! That's unexpected then isn't it? An invitation to one of the Vernors' famous parties? That's special. I'm surprised, that they'd be willing to host a Wes...”
She saw him falter then, quickly looking at Bethany then away as if he'd made some kind of major misstep. The other woman noted this, waving a bit as if to let him know no offense had been taken. The face above the hand looked less than pleased.
“Right. A Westmorland. We're generally not asked to large social gatherings... Really we're generally not asked to anything that doesn't directly affect our individual areas of endeavor. Maybe I should just beg off and send you alone?” Beth sounded concerned, as if she really felt that going would be a bad thing or make too many waves.
Popping the seal on one of the small containers, trying to collect her thoughts, Gwen saw it had something like coleslaw in it, a tiny portion, enough for about four small bites it looked like. The next had a small salad with a vinaigrette dressing and next to that a small portion of potatoes in a cream sauce. The largest section, which still looked small, held what looked like a few slivers of braised roast beef. No bread of any kind came with it.
Gwen shook her head firmly. “Nope. I'm not going alone. I need a native guide here, Beth. You're the only person I know that I can count on to keep me out of trouble. Plus, if things get too hairy, we can always claim we need to leave because of something case related. If I'm alone no one is going to buy that as an excuse. I like the Vernors... I mean I don't want to leave them hanging or make trouble for them, but I really don't want to go alone either... so what do you think?”
The other woman went still, not moving at all for a bit. Finally she shook herself a little and noticed how intently the others looked at her. Smiling Bethany explained.
“You called me Beth. It made me remember my childhood. That's what everyone called me at central, when I went through my training.” A light touch on Gwen's arm and a happy expression reassured her that this could be considered a good thing.
“As to the party, let's then. I don't know what we'll wear, but I agree that the Vernors should have what support we can muster for them. Perhaps we should arrange a visit with Mrs. Vernor first, to see what her thoughts and ideas are on the matter? That way we won't make any dangerous mistakes or accidentally announce the whole situation to everyone.”
Everyone seemed satisfied with the idea, and began to eat, Doctor Wiseman and Beth talked about local news and politics, which eventually came back to the Westmorlands. Not really understanding why they seemed to scare people so much, since a lot of people had magic here or whatever they called it, Gwen finally just asked.
“Why? I mean, why are the Westmorlands so... looked down on doesn't seem right, but set aside? Feared almost? I don't
get it...”
The doctor nodded, but Bethany was the one to speak.
“It goes back to the Great War, nearly seventy years ago now. The war set up against two large coalitions, we called them the Allies and the Axis. We, the Allies, were actually losing in the Pacific Ocean region, that's what we call the ocean off the West Coast of this continent here. Anyway, a new project trained orphans to use their innate magical natures to rip holes in the fabric of space and time, creating massive damage. More than any weapon ever had before.” She took a few small, almost delicate, bites of potato. The lorrie filled with silence as she did it.
“We only had a small handful of Westmorlands ready to go, Westmorland was the name of the project that developed abilities, using, well no need to go into how it was done, but it's a bit extreme, to say the least. Actually, it was the name that the orphanage had that the original children came from... So, we only had a few ready to deploy. Fearing that we were about to lose the war and be overrun, our leadership dropped two Westmorlands out of airships, sacrificing their lives in the process, as well as the crews of the airships, over the island of Nippon. They killed... tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands. The radiative contagion after the initial damage kept killing for years. It devastated the people there, tearing them apart physically, but also mentally, for a long time. They surrendered after that, fearing continued attacks.”
Wiseman nodded along.
“That's why people fear them, I think. There are other Westmorland projects now, but most of them are small. People like Miss Westmorland here... how many are there?”
“Oh, five in all, trained exactly like I am, even then there are differences in what we all do exactly,” Bethany answered him.
“Right. So five of them, a few hundred healers, probably some espionage and other combat related programs that we don't hear about, but several thousand of them that are trained only as weapons along the lines of those two. So, people hear Westmorland, they don't think of them as safe and helpful all the time, I'm afraid. Silly, but there you have it.”
Flipping his palms up he went back to eating.
Gwen felt a thrill of familiarity come over her. That story sounded, almost exactly, like the end of World War II.
“I don't suppose those Westmorlands were dropped out of planes called the Enola Gay and Bockscar, and were codenamed Fat Man and Little Boy, were they?” She looked at the other two, her head slightly cocked.
Both her companions stopped eating and stared at her, finally the doctor spoke, his tone hushed.
“One airship was called the Enola, the other was Bocks Lorrie... How, how do you know the code names though? Outside of academic circles no one knows that kind of thing...”
Gwen shook her head, smiling.
“So, people fear the Westmorlands, because they're this world's fucking atomic bombs?”
When she'd explained what an atomic bomb was, Bethany agreed with her assessment.
“That...would explain things, then.” Gwen said.
Chapter eleven
The quarry boss turned out to be an older man, about fifty or so, named David Horner. Unlike most of the people Gwen had seen so far, instead of a suit, he wore an old pair of blue jeans and tan work boots, with a faded red lumberjack style shirt. His gray hair tufted out over his ears pushing out from under a well-worn buff colored hat that looked like something Indiana Jones would have had on. If he'd walked into a quarry, or even a store in her world, no one would have looked twice.
He shook their hands easily, not seeming to mind that Bethany and Gwen were women, which most of the other men they'd run into had for some reason. He showed them around the quarry, which took only a few minutes, it was a big facility, but instead of walking to most of it, he just stood and waved in different directions. The machinery looked both familiar and odd to her as he pointed it out. He showed them a crane, one with a long arm that moved in eerie silence even as it hefted a huge stone that must have weight ten tons or more.
All of the machines ran silently, except for the saws, which gave off a loud, piercing whine as they ran through the stone slowly, freeing the huge blocks from the side of the pit. Near the office building, which looked like a large wooden warehouse to her, another saw took slabs off of larger stones, leaving polished looking surfaces on the top and bottom.
Bethany described the altars' stone tops to him and asked if there would be any way to track things like that.
“Well... I could give you a list of all the merchants that buy from us, would that help? We don't actually have specifics on what was sold, just the amount in weight and the prices...” Horner rubbed at his forehead.
The older man found the paperwork quickly and gave them a list of names, which Bethany wrote down in her notebook carefully, double checking the spelling and location of each. Only eight companies bought large pieces from the quarry, but the total list had twenty-three retailers that had bought enough in weight for the slabs to have been in the mix. Most carried smaller stones or used them to make other products themselves, paving, statuary and building stones.
When they were ready to leave, they all shook hands with the quarryman again.
“Thank you, Mr. Horner. If you have any thoughts as to who may have specifically purchased pieces as mentioned, please don't hesitate to contact us.” Beth gave the man her card, complete with the contact code, just in case.
On the way back into town, Bethany asked James to take them by Park street, which meant nothing to Gwen, but everyone else seemed to understand without question. Maybe an adjunct to the district house or something? They pulled up to a large gated community instead, nearly as large as the campus of Western University, she thought at first. When they got through the gate it became clear that this was a single, massive dwelling.
James pulled around the circular driveway, stopping the lorrie by the front door.
“It would normally be a little rude to just stop by like this, unannounced,” Beth told her. “But being you're one of the family it should be alright. Especially if anyone's watching for you. I can't blame the Vernors for not wanting this whole thing to be known, but it certainly would be easier to hide if they weren't quite so high profile themselves. If they ran a bakery we wouldn't have to do half the work that this situation is requiring.”
Gwen didn't want to walk up to the door and insisted on knocking when they got there, even though Wiseman opined that it would look funny for her to knock on the door of a place where most people still thought she lived. This issue didn't come up, as the door opened and a tall man in a black uniform welcomed her before they got within ten feet.
“Miss Katherine! So good to see you. May I announce all of you to your Mother?” The man asked her gently as if worried that she'd break if he spoke too loud.
“That would be good, thank you,” Gwen told him after a few seconds, making her own voice soft and pleasant sounding. At least she tried for pleasant.
“These are my friends, Bethany Westmorland and Doctor Wiseman...”
The man stood at attention briefly, then spun to find Katherine's Mother, leaving them on the doorstep. Beth motioned her to walk inside.
“You're supposed to still be living here, more or less. It will look funny if you stand on the doorstep too long. Besides, I think he expected you to just come in...”
They moved inside, shutting the door behind them. A few moments later Mrs. Vernor met them, coming in slightly breathless, having apparently run from wherever she had been.
“Kather... Gwen! I'm delighted you stopped by. So good to see you again as well, Miss Westmorland. This is...” She prompted looking directly at Doctor Wiseman.
“This is Doctor Wiseman, a geologist from Western University. He's helping us find out about the people that attacked me.”
Mrs. Vernor swept forward and took Gwen by the arm gently, almost like she wanted to make sure Gwen wouldn't fall down. Were people here really that fragile or something? They didn't seem to be, but everyone kept acting l
ike she was made of glass. Maybe it was just the girls that got treated that way?
Or just the ones that had nearly died less than a week ago?
“I've asked Winslow to set us up for tea in the front drawing room, I trust that's acceptable?”
The older woman glanced at Wiseman as she said the word acceptable, it clearly had some importance, though Gwen couldn't figure out what the look meant.
“Oh, yes, that should be lovely. Doctor Wiseman is fully aware of the situation, I believe,” Beth told her, causing the woman to jump slightly.
“I thought, well... from our last meeting...” Mrs. Vernor hesitated.
Bethany grinned at her slightly.
“Yes, Gwen figured out that the Constabulary had left me in a specific working state for about six months. Not on purpose, but it's definitely nice to be able to speak to people normally again.” She let her voice come across as friendlier than Gwen had heard it before, probably trying to put the woman at ease. It seemed to work, because Mrs. Vernor looked at her and expressed her shock at such treatment.
