Differently Morphous

by Yahtzee Croshaw

  All of this she set aside from what really interested her: several loops of string and tape, all carefully adorned with rune sequences, and a smartphone.

  There was only one application on the phone, which launched immediately whenever she turned it on. A list of runic symbols was displayed, and touching one would add it to a bar on the right. Pressing the button underneath the bar would cause the phone to chant the selected symbols in a bored female voice.

  Alison could recognize the dispel sequence that Diablerie had used in Doncaster on the night of the squirrels—it was one of the shortest chants on the phone’s Favorites list—but the purpose of every other sequence was a mystery. Some of them may have been long and complex enough to be a salt-creating ritual, but experimentally activating any of them felt like a catastrophically bad idea.

  The other mystery was the tube that Diablerie had been waving during his dramatic appearance. It was light metal painted white, about a foot and a half long and one inch wide. Symbols had been drawn along its length, but they didn’t seem to be runes; they weren’t on the smartphone app’s list. Alison thought they looked more like Japanese writing.

  She rolled the tube back and forth across her palms. Then she brought one end up to her mouth and blew, but the effect was neither magical nor musical. Then she covered one eye and peered through the tube as if it were a telescope, but saw no effect as she tracked her gaze wildly around the room.

  When she lowered it from her eye, Elizabeth Lawrence was standing in front of her. “I trust I’m not interrupting.”

  Alison hurriedly put the tube down and started when it made an unexpectedly loud clack on the desk. She reached out and straightened it apologetically. “Sorry. Hello, Ms. Lawrence. I hadn’t heard you’d—”

  “Which cell?” asked Elizabeth, gazing straight past her at the six doors flanking the hallway ahead. She was holding a black leather briefcase in her free hand.

  “Erm. Doctor Diablerie’s in room six, on the end,” said Alison, pointing. “Erm!” she added, as Elizabeth shifted her weight onto her cane to start walking.

  She fixed Alison with a stare that in a photograph would have looked expressionless, but which somehow in real life transmitted impatience so fiery that Alison could feel her skin trying to recede up her body. “What is it?”

  “Did you read my account of how he appeared?”

  “I think I have the gist,” said Elizabeth. Alison’s email had required five full-page scrolls to get to the bottom, but she had skimmed the important details. “He attacked you and your fluidic associate and declared himself to be the Fluidic Killer?”

  Alison dropped her gaze. “He didn’t actually have a chance to attack, but yes.” Elizabeth seemed about to move on again. “But . . . it just seems like that would be a weird thing for him to do. If he actually was the Fluidic Killer.”

  “He may have realized that you would think that.”

  “Oh. I . . . suppose so.”

  “You can go now,” said Elizabeth emphatically.

  Alison eyed her briefcase. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to eliminate him from our inquiries.” She glanced at the pile of stocking fillers on the desk. “Mr. Brooke-Stodgeley has set up in the kitchen. Don’t keep him waiting.”

  Alison nodded meekly and stood up. The tube and phone went into her pockets, and she slung the bundle of rune circles over her shoulder. Elizabeth strode past her, walking stick thudding heavily in anticipation.

  At the door to the stairwell, Alison looked back. Elizabeth stood against the opposite wall, holding her briefcase behind her back, making no motion towards the door to Diablerie’s cell.

  It was only after Alison had fully left the room and her slow footfalls on the stairs could no longer be heard that Elizabeth turned and unbolted the door.

  64

  Nita Pavani peered through the slit in the curtains she had hurriedly affixed over the “stage doors” with masking tape. Two or three journalists were sitting in the makeshift pews—she recognized Pippa Morment—and a considerably larger throng of them was gathered around the long table to the side, where Anderson had arranged the bar. Behind the chairs, the students sat upon the grass, mostly confused but not about to question a free day off.

  Since the age at which magic potential is discovered can vary wildly, the oldest of the “kids” was in their midtwenties. Anderson had even found a couple with bar experience, and they were currently being worked off their feet keeping the throats of the visiting press from getting dry.

  Anderson himself clomped into the assembly hall via the main entrance corridor. “Wollstone and his crew are here,” he announced. “How’s it looking?”

  “Your bar’s certainly the center of attention,” said Nita disapprovingly.

  “Don’t knock it, love. Trust me, those twats will print whatever you want by the time they finish the third crate. What’s the plan?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s all in hand.”

  Anderson made one of his signature moves, stepping into Pavani’s personal space and looming over her, his face a pulsating red dwarf filling the sky of a dying planet. “There’s a lot riding on this not fouling up. I need to know what the plan is.”

  Pavani rolled her eyes. “Speeches first. One from the fluidics, one from Aaron-Byhagthn, then we reunite them with Jessica Weatherby and I interview them about the schools. After that, meet and greet.”

  Anderson glanced at the Weatherbys, who were talking amongst themselves in the corner. “They look pretty reunited already to me.”

  “Not officially. Is that enough, or are you going to keep up the gorilla impression for a few more minutes?”

  He backed off, glaring. “It’ll do. A heads-up would’ve been nice. Gonna have to restock the bar before the meet-and-greet part.” He pointed a finger in her face like he was training a dog not to steal sausages. “Keep it together. If this buggers up, you can kiss goodbye to any more consultancy gigs in this hemisphere.”

  At that, Henry Wollstone entered, followed by the fluidics, neatly arranged into two rows like a selection of gelatin desserts on a buffet table. Wollstone was wearing the same tailored suit he always brought out for television appearances, and at some point he’d taken to wearing contact lenses.

  Anderson underwent a spectacular transformation in the time it took to transfer his gaze from Pavani to Wollstone. He went from the angry red dwarf to a cheerful, companionable grin. He would not have looked out of place dressed as a chimney sweep, singing and dancing next to Mary Poppins.

  “All right, Henry?” he said, stepping over with hand outstretched. “Good to see you again. And who’re your friends?”

  “Erm.” Wollstone made a sweeping gesture. “They’re all called Shgshthx.”

  Anderson looked exasperated for a fraction of a second before replacing his smile and smacking his forehead. “D’oh! Of course they are. Listen, thank you so much for talking them into this. I know you’ve got engagements up the arse.” He shook Henry’s shoulder in a chummy if slightly violent way.

  “A-actually, it was more the opposite,” said Henry, unconsciously brushing his jacket where Sean had touched it. “I wasn’t sure, but the fluidics have been very interested in all this business about—what was it? Double-conscience persons?”

  “Persons of dual consciousness,” said Pavani stiffly.

  “We’d weally wike to meet them,” interjected the fluidic at the head of the procession.

  “All right, well, I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Dr. Pavani,” said Anderson, beckoning for Nita to come over with an urgent finger waggle behind his back. “Nita, do you know if Liz is around?”

  “She went down to the basement a while ago,” said Nita, not looking away from Wollstone’s slightly embarrassed face.

  “All right, catch you all later.” Anderson made a gun-finger gesture and turned away to look for the stairs.

  The fluidics began to spread around the room, exploring the space curious
ly. Some remained orbiting around Wollstone, and some others took a pronounced interest in the Weatherbys. “I don’t believe we’ve met before,” said Pavani, with very little warmth. “I wanted to say, I’ve taken a great interest in the work you’re doing with the fluidics.”

  “Oh,” said Wollstone, leaning slightly away as Nita leaned slightly in. “Thank you.”

  “They must consider themselves so lucky to have come to you first,” she continued. “They could so easily have found someone who wanted to exploit them for personal gain.”

  “Nita!” called Anderson, whose upper half was peering around the door to the basement stairwell. “I’ll just be downstairs.”

  “I know, Sean.”

  “Good.” The red dwarf flared up again for a moment. “Just thought I’d let you know. In case you started worrying that I wasn’t keeping a watchful eye on everything.” He pointed to one bulging eye, which he kept trained on her as he slid out of the room.

  65

  It was the first time Alison had seen the monastery kitchens from the other side of the serving window, and like a schoolgirl earning a privileged glimpse of the staff room, she was making the most of the opportunity. She passed fascinated glances over the stacks of plastic trays and stainless steel industrial ovens that dominated the room like the monoliths of a stone circle. Dutiful to a fault, the monks had made a light breakfast for the students and scrubbed the place to a mirror shine before leaving, so the room stank warmly of omelets and bleach.

  Archibald Brooke-Stodgeley was seated at one of the preparation counters, with a pile of Diablerie’s rune circles to his right and his laptop to his left. He examined them in silence for close to ten minutes as Alison paced back and forth.

  “Nope,” he eventually concluded, freezing Alison in her tracks. “Nothing here that could create salt. Not by any method I’m aware of.”

  “So what do they do?” asked Alison, leaning over.

  “I don’t want to bore you . . .”

  “Bore me. Please.” The impatience in Alison’s voice surprised even her.

  Archibald picked randomly through the circles. “This one would start a fire. This one would emulate a basic magnetic field. This one, I think, would create silence . . .”

  “That rune,” said Alison, pointing to the first symbol of the silence sequence. “That rune was on the first circle I showed you. The invisible-wall one?”

  “Oh yes. That’s because it’s . . . erm. Well, I won’t try to pronounce it. If you could imagine the word lunch, but replace the first letter with a vowel—I won’t say which—that’s how you pronounce it. Like you’re biting on an invisible sandwich.” He made some silent mouth movements to demonstrate. “Literally it means push or project, but the actual effect depends on context. The invisible-wall sequence is ‘push upwards physically.’ This is ‘push sound outwards.’ Stop me if this is getting too technical for you, my dear.”

  Alison reached over the pile and pulled out the mysterious metal tube. “And do you know what this is?”

  Archibald took it and turned it over a few times. “This? This isn’t anything.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “These symbols are meaningless. They’re not runes, and in any case, they’re not in any kind of functional sequence or circle. If you’re looking for your magic fluidic killing weapon, this isn’t it.”

  “I see. Thank you for your help, Mr. Brooke-Stodgeley.”

  “Any time, my dear.” He slid the tube into his trouser pocket. “I’ll just hang on to it for now. There are some more tests I can . . . well, you know.” His voice faltered when he realized that she wasn’t paying attention. She was staring at a cheese grater on a nearby drying rack, because behind it was a wall, and beyond the wall was a floor, and under the floor was Diablerie, undergoing Elizabeth’s interrogation.

  Richard Danvers entered, shoving the kitchen doors open with one hand while mopping his brow with the other. His trousers seemed to have been fighting a long, losing battle to keep his shirt tucked in. He grabbed the nearest loose object by the sink—a gravy boat—and filled it with water before collapsing onto a pedal bin.

  “I think that’s enough ‘being visible’ for now,” he said, finally acknowledging the presence of the other two agents. “Anyone seen Elizabeth? Anderson’s looking for her. He’s up to a level-four stomp.”

  “I gather she’s still in the basement with Mr. Diablerie,” said Archibald as the words stuck guiltily in Alison’s throat.

  “Mr. Danvers,” she forced out. “Can I ask you something?”

  He took a long pull of water and smacked his lips distastefully at the faint, lingering flavor of institutional beef. “Hm?”

  “Do you know what the thing is between Ms. Lawrence and Doctor Diablerie?”

  Danvers recrossed his legs, holding his gravy boat close to his chest, and gave this as much thought as he could be bothered to expend. “No.”

  “But you have known them for . . .”

  “They were both already with the Ministry when I started. I was like you. I figured out there was some history there; it’s hard to miss. But I gave up asking about it years ago. She locks up, and he . . . well. He’s him.”

  “It’s just an act, though, isn’t it?” said Archibald, mimicking Danvers’s relaxed pose. “All that Mandrake the Magician business. It’s like he’s trying to seem like he knows what he’s doing.”

  “I don’t know if it is an act,” said Danvers, peering down the spout of the gravy boat. “He’s always seemed to me like someone who’s been through a lot of insanity and found his own way of dealing with it.”

  Alison straightened up. “I need to talk to her,” she resolved aloud.

  “Now?” said Danvers, raising his eyebrows. “Well. Touch the door before you go in. Things might have gotten heated in there.”

  66

  As Alison passed through the assembly hall and the area that had been grandly rechristened “backstage,” she stopped when she noticed Aaron-Byhagthn and the fluidic representatives. He was standing near the stage curtains with a sheepish look on his faces, waiting for the cue, and the fluidics had gathered around him like a pattern of cowpats in an anomalously popular section of meadow.

  The only other person around was Jessica Weatherby, who was hanging back against a wall with her eyes locked on her phone. From outside, Alison could hear the bustle of mildly merry journalists slowly dying down as Nita Pavani delivered some kind of introductory speech.

  Alison crept over to Jessica, who made no outward reaction to her presence. “Everything going all right here?”

  “Dunno,” said Jessica monotonously.

  “The fluidics are ready?”

  “I guess. They were asking Aaron a whole bunch of questions, but they’ve stopped now.”

  Alison frowned. “What kind of questions?”

  “Dunno. Wasn’t really listening.”

  It was nice to see Jessica back to her usual self, but Alison glanced worriedly at the flashing screen in her hand. “Reaver hasn’t sent any more messages, has he?”

  Jessica finally looked up. “No. I thought Diablerie was Reaver?”

  “Never mind. Talk after the show.” Alison made her way towards the door that led to the basement stairs, but she stopped and looked at the crowd of fluidics. “Shgshthx?”

  “Yesh?” replied every fluidic in the room, bobbing slightly in acknowledgment. It was like someone had turned on a wave machine.

  “Sorry, I meant my Shgshthx. The one I drove here with?”

  Alison had trouble recognizing a lone fluidic as “her” Shgshthx—an understandable issue that she was nonetheless faintly ashamed about—but it was getting easier to spot the difference when she had several of his fellows to compare against. His mass had a slight extra hint of green, somewhere between wallpaper paste and fresh snot. He slithered out of the ranks. “Awison?”

  “Could you come with me for a minute?”

  Shgshthx bobbed indecisively. “We’re h
ewping with the pwess ewent.”

  “Can’t you spare one individual?”

  The gathered fluidics reacted with a simultaneous fart that was the fluidic equivalent of a surprised gasp. Shgshthx’s bobbing slowed, then gradually intensified. “Indiwidual?”

  “Ye-es?” said Alison, confused.

  “Yes! I will be an indiwidual.” He turned to the other fluidics, which is to say, he didn’t move but directed his audible voice from the opposite side of his mass. “Awl of oo can hewp with the pwess ewent. I wiw go somewhere ewse with Awison because I am an indiwidual.” The other fluidics bobbed and huffed with a mixture of excitement and envy, like a platoon of shelter dogs watching another dog getting adopted.

  “Erm. Right,” said Alison, feeling like the unwitting explorer who makes a deal with a tribe of islanders and somehow comes out of it as the god of their new cargo cult. “This way.”

  Moments after they left, Nita Pavani batted the curtain aside and came in from the stage, amid polite, understated clapping from the audience outside. “All right, now, Shgshthx . . . es. Who would like to do the talking?”

  “Meee!” said a fluidic with a hint of red, like dishwater that had been used to clean a plate of Bolognese. “I will be the indiwidual who does the tawking.”

  “I wiw hewp!” said another resembling an ill-advised cooking experiment involving custard and frog spawn. “I wiw be the indiwidual as wew.” The rest of the fluidics continued huffing jealously.

  “Super,” said Pavani, slightly perplexed. “You remember the sort of thing to bring across? Just say, hello, we’re fluidics, this is Aaron-Byhagthn, they’re like us but different, please treat them like you treat us?”

  “Yesh,” said the red fluidic. Nita pushed the curtain aside to let them slither through.

  The bar was due to be restocked, so most of the journalists had finally taken their seats. Half were watching with open interest, while the rest (the ones that hadn’t gotten as much of the lager) sat with arms-folded cynicism. All were silent as the fluidics approached the microphone, which had already been lowered to knee height.