Fugue, page 102
Gus stuck his head up over the breakfast counter, tongue lolling, tail wagging. I flicked another treat, angling to bank off a wall and into the living room. Gus scrambled after it. I put the box on the counter for Phoebe.
“Tell you what. I’ll go take a look at Cameron while you think about what you want. Fair?”
“I’ll be here, Pop.”
I went up to her workroom, checked the day/night cycle and time-ticker for Shasta, and opened a gate.
Getting into the Fields of Lilac Sanitarium was easy enough. Technically, it was “The Lilac Hospital for the Insane,” but it had more than one division. One wing had restraints and padded walls. The others didn’t.
That was the entirety of their patient division. It was practical, at least.
I went in as a visitor, got to see Cameron as he sat quietly in his bathrobe and slippers, and talked at him while he watched leaves flutter on the trees.
I also took note of how the orderlies were dressed. I came back later at night with the appropriate outfit and my usual Somebody Else’s Problem spell. Who looks at an orderly? An orderly carrying a tray is practically invisible.
Cameron was asleep in his bed. I closed the door, locked it—the door only locked from the outside, but I jiggered it a bit with tendrils—and sat down to examine him in more detail.
My afternoon examination was, of course, perfunctory. He was still in there, but he was having a hard time bridging the gap between thinking and doing. My nighttime assessment, however, was much more detailed.
Cameron had an interuniversal portal in his room. Alden found out everything Cameron knew about it by drawing the information from Cameron’s mind. At first, I thought the process was damaging, but I kept seeing anomalies. Physically, Cameron’s brain was fine. The consciousness driving it was the problem.
I think the issue was the struggle. Cameron didn’t want to give up the information. He fought. And Alden, being stronger, kept ripping away every fact despite Cameron’s best efforts. I’m going to liken it to a mugging. Three guys come up with knives and demand your money. You give it to them and they go away. Or you fight them for it, get cut and stabbed, and they take the money anyway.
The problem wasn’t an organic one. As I said, his brain was fine. His spirit, his psyche, his consciousness was the damaged part.
How do I un-break a mind? Jigsaw puzzle glue?
Fortunately for Cameron, he was recovering naturally. I could see the damage inside his mind and the rents where psychic wounds were closing. I didn’t have a mind-welding spell, but I have tendrils that can touch such things. I gently pressed the edges together and did the equivalent of stitching. I might have been able to do more, but Cameron wasn’t one of my lab rats. First aid and basic care were as far as I felt I could safely go. I didn’t feel comfortable doing experimental psychic surgery.
I ought to get a few humans and start my bliss-addiction experiments. I really should. It’s on my To-Do list.
Still, a few hours later, Cameron’s mind was better. Not healed, no, but the psychic damage was treated in a way to encourage healing. He slept through the whole thing, which was excellent. I observed my first stitches already showed signs of sealing the wound. His mind was pulling itself together before. Now it didn’t have to pull so hard.
I wonder if the psychic scars will be treatable through psychotherapy? Or will he have ongoing mental problems? I guess I’ll find out.
I goofed off until after the local sunrise, then stepped back into Phoebe’s place. With the time-ticker running, it hadn’t taken an hour. I worked my way downstairs with caution—it’s a new habit—and reported on my work with Cameron.
“He’s going to recover?” she asked, going straight for the results.
“He should, or mostly. I did what I could, but I don’t usually have to deal with psychic damage. The people I psychically damage have it coming, and they don’t last long enough to complain. This is new to me. We’ll have to see how he does and maybe come up with additional treatment options. As of now, he’s on the mend.”
“Good. Any thoughts on how to track down Alden and punish him?”
“Punish, yes. I haven’t given much thought to tracking him, but it will probably involve a phone call. Have you figured out what you want to do about your drug cartel problems?”
“I’m still not sure.”
“You can always start over in another branching timeline.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good option. I mean, all the people I know will still be there, won’t they?”
“Barring accidents or suchlike.”
“Yeah, no. It would be too weird to make friends with my friends again.”
“Wouldn’t it, though?”
“Pop, I think I finally get it. Why we moved to another part of the country when we moved across worlds. You knew, didn’t you?”
“Knew what?”
“How it would be too strange to live in the same place over and over again.”
“I suspected. I chose not to risk it.”
“How did you get so wise?”
“Lots of mistakes. So, if we’re not switching timelines, what do we do, here and now?”
“Well, if you’re looking for something to do, there are wildfires in California.”
“Smartass. I’ll make it rain. What else?”
“Seriously?” she asked, sitting up with difficulty. Why she held on to that ugly couch, I will never understand. I guess she likes it. I can’t complain. She brought it with her, after all. At least she brought my chair, too.
“Why not?”
“Weather magic is impossibly power-intensive. I didn’t think—you’d really do it for me?”
“Sure. It’s not as bad as you think. Not for me. Everyone has their talents. You’d think gate magic was mine, but no, it’s weather magic. In another situation, I might have been a weather forecaster or a tribal rainmaker. It’s a talent I don’t get to use. Much.”
“Can you show me again? I don’t think I have the hang of it.”
“No problem. Got a power feed to the roof?”
“Right this way.”
Twenty minutes later, we had the diagram on the flat-topped roof, a printed map of the West Coast, and a real-time radar weather display on her smartphone. I walked her through the spell, along with high and low pressure systems, Hadley cells, the jet stream, the effect of sunlight on the ocean…
The lesson went on for another hour. She took the assistant role, helping me with the spell, but I did the real work. In another three days, five at the most, a line of storms would roll across most of the West Coast.
“There,” I said, sitting down next to a lawn chair. Phoebe took the chair. It was aluminum tubing and polymer. I didn’t want to risk crushing it. “Look at the radar. See anything?”
“Not yet, but didn’t you say distance is a factor?”
“Yes. We’re not summoning weather in our vicinity. We’re pushing from way over here. Proximity is a factor. It always works better when you’re drawing it to you. I don’t know why.”
“So, summon a hurricane where you’re standing and get out of there?”
“Yes.”
“Good to know. And I think I have an idea about my bad guy problem.”
“Oh? I’m all ears.”
“Not anymore, round-ears.”
“They may be rounded, but they’ll still hear a pin drop in Harlem. What’s the idea?”
“I can find bad guys to pummel. I recognize it’s an adrenalin rush. It’s a thrill-seeking thing. I get it. I like it, even though I know it’s not the best idea. I guess I’ll grow out of it, eventually, but I do enjoy it, Pop.”
“Nothing wrong with doing what you love,” I allowed, hoping she would grow out of it, as she put it, and do it soon.
“As for the guys smuggling drugs, selling them, getting people hooked and desperate, all that…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “Punishing them is what I want to do, but beating them up isn’t going to solve the problem.”
“What’s the solution?”
“Economics.”
“Go on.”
“Gates are not my thing, but I can scry perfectly well. If I find where they keep their cash—and it’s a cash-only sort of business, at least until you get into the money laundering—I can use a gate to reach through and grab it. They could lose a million dollars a year—”
“—and they’ll barely notice,” I cut her off. “Do you have any idea how much money goes through the drug trade?”
“But, a million dollars, Pop!”
“There are billions of dollars running through their hands every year. In North America. Let’s not talk about the rest of the world. True, a million-dollar loss in New York would be noticed, but it would be cause for irritation and action, not surrender. At best, you’ll raise the street prices. That’s probably happened already, thanks to your efforts.”
“There’s got to be something I can do.”
“Well…”
“You’ve got a thought. I know the look, Pop.”
“Maybe.”
“What is it?”
“If you’re going to hit them in the money, you have to find large piles of it. You don’t do that at a distribution point. You do it by following the money. It’s collected from distribution points. It goes up the chain through the dealers to the shippers to the suppliers. Follow it. Some of it stays with the lower echelons, but the higher you go, the bigger the pile of cash. Also, the bigger the pile of goods.
“Eventually, you get to the point where, as you noted, money laundering comes in. Just below that are suitcases full of cash. Swipe those. At that level, we also have huge piles of drugs. Kilos or bricks or whatever units they use. If you take millions in cash and destroy tens of millions in drugs, it only takes a few such strikes to raise the street price beyond what even the wackiest addict can afford.” I shrugged.
“There are pros and cons to this,” I continued. “If it goes on for a long time, the true addicts will get desperate. They’ll go a little crazy—crime will spike as they try to get their fix—but they’ll also wind up stuffed into either rehab or jail.” I didn’t mention the probability that some would shoot people, or get shot, in their desperation.
“Keep it up long enough and the market for the product will tank, making it hard to recover immediately. With drastic shortages, there will be low-level dealers who find something else to do. With the decrease in manpower, money, and influence, the suppliers won’t have as much power to resist being outed. Spy on them. Document their activities. Send pictures and video, times, dates, and amounts anonymously to whatever law enforcement is appropriate. Or have Zeno put up and maintain an anonymous website with all this criminal evidence for anyone to see.”
Phoebe stared at me for a while. She kept doing it for an uncomfortably long time.
“If you’re going to be a vigilante,” I told her, “you have to understand there’s a limit to how much you can accomplish within arm’s reach. Sometimes you have to enlist the help of the society you’re in. Get the police on your side. Or, rather, convince them you’re on their side.”
“Pop? Have you done this?”
“Not exactly.”
“How do you know these things?”
“I’m old and I’ve eaten a lot of evil bastards.”
“I guess there’s a lot about you I still don’t know.”
“You know all there is worth knowing,” I assured her. “Everyone is a mix of light and dark, colors of every shade. You’ve seen through my eyes, so you know what I mean. You’ve encountered mostly my brighter aspects.” I chuckled. “You’ve encouraged them, in fact. You’ve made me a better person because I needed to be one for you.”
“I’m glad I could help. It makes me wonder what you were like before, though.”
“Less patient.”
“You’ve always been patient with me.”
“You’ve always tried your best for me, so it was easy to be patient.”
“Easy? I have a hard time believing that.”
“Easier than being patient with other people?”
“That, I can believe. But you’ve given me advice on my career—my current career. Any thoughts on Alden?”
“Some. I don’t feel comfortable sharing them. You’d be disappointed in me.”
“I meant on finding him.”
“Right now? I’m thinking of targeting the micro-gate in his phone and doing a little scrying of my own. If the gate is open, it bypasses scrying shields, but not that damned sacred static effect. I’m also tempted to pump through a high-pressure jet of something incredibly toxic and see if he dies. I’m not sure what I want to send through the—” I broke off.
“You’re making that face again. You have an idea.”
“I do, yes. It’ll take time to set it up, though, I think. The phone he stole is an older model and doesn’t have GPS on it.”
“But?” she prompted.
“But I’m clever and he’s living in a technology-heavy world. I’ll need Zeno to help, though.”
“Anytime. Is there anything I can do?”
“Not yet, but I’ll let you know.”
Saturday, May 3rd, Phoebe’s World
A dedicated, linked gate costs much less than a generic gate. You can still use a generic gate to aim for either end of a dedicated pair, but the enchantment on the dedicated pair doesn’t help at all. It’s like reaching for any normal circle. My former Ring of Many Gates has enchanted gates, but only in the sense they will draw in ambient energy to help support a gate connection. They’re generic enchanted gates, not a bunch of dedicated pairs.
Still, I can aim for the micro-gate inside the phone. Even if it’s only acting as a simple locus, it’s tiny and therefore not all that expensive to maintain.
The real trouble, of course, is Alden is using my own stealth and cloaking spells. I can’t target the gate in my old phone—or my ring, for that matter—because I can’t find it. So I need Phoebe’s phone and its dedicated link. This, by itself, doesn’t tell me where the other end of the connection is, but it does open up possibilities.
I’m desperately tempted to pump dioxygen difluoride through at water-knife pressures and see if he survives it. I know the phone won’t. Will it be lethal to whatever he is? Possibly. It’ll cost me any other opportunities centering around the one micro-gate I have on him, though. Let’s save it for last.
How about pumping radioactive gas through? Nitrogen-13 is a good choice. The half-life is about ten minutes and the positron decay combines with any handy electron to produce gamma radiation. Although, Oxygen-15 does the same thing and only has a half-life of two minutes. It would be faster, and his lungs would absorb it into his body and spread it around, maximizing the effects of the radioactive decay. If he has my phone in a pocket, he’ll build up a lethal dose of radiation without even noticing. At least, without noticing the gamma radiation. He’s sensitive to magical operations, at least somewhat, so he might notice the phone is active.
The trouble is, as I see it, if I try to kill him through a micro-gate, he might survive. I don’t know all his powers. My amulet and ring won’t help much with radiation damage, but suppose he has some innate healing ability? If I try and fail, even if my attempt is something that doesn’t destroy the gate, he won’t be anywhere near it afterward.
There is one way to open the micro-gate and not raise suspicions about it.
The plan was to call Alden on the magic phone a couple of times. Not only would this give us a chance to look at him and around him, it would also give us a window. I would pump radioactive oxygen through—not a lot, given the size of the gate, but time is one of the components of a rate of flow. It helped that we could establish a gate connection independently of whether or not the phone was in use. The gate comes on first, then the other phone rings. The phones hang up, then the gate disconnects. Adding a few seconds on either end meant more radioactive gas. I plan to leave it open longer and longer after each call and see if he still answers. If he doesn’t notice, maybe we can leave it open all the time.
Phoebe’s phone no longer has a micro-gate in it. The micro-gate is the output port on an irradiation unit. The tank of oxygen has to be replaced every so often, but we make it radioactive before we pump it through. It may not have any effect, but it’s a good start.
Meanwhile, Zeno sends an additional cellular signal through the gate. Tapped into the local phone network, he can use it to track the phone’s location.
Phoebe called. Alden was busy, but promised to call back. He called back a couple of hours later, but we turned up the music and Phoebe pretended she was in a club. They played phone tag for a couple of days. Every time, I got a look at Alden’s area, had him breathe radioactive gas, and let Zeno put a pin in the map.
It was not lost on me that someone else could use similar techniques to track me down. Not the exact technique, of course, but it made me slightly more paranoid. They would need Phoebe’s replacement Dad-phone—or its dedicated micro-gate—but it could be done.
Dang. I need to get her a replacement phone. Mental note.
Alden was usually in one of two types of places. There were upscale, high-profile pins in the map—cathedrals, art galleries, event venues, and city government buildings. We didn’t get a cluster, though, indicating a home. You’d think there would be a half-dozen pins in one location, but no.
There were also several pins with altitude notes. Some had approximate height above ground, of course, but a few had a negative value—depth. Sometimes he was underground.
My scrying snapshots of his area told me more. He was associating with two types of people: the upper end of the social order and the very lowest. Mostly, he was talking to self-important, well-dressed individuals. Occasionally, he was surrounded by masses of the underground unwashed.
If I were an evil psychic bent on mind-controlling people for my own ends, I would target people in power, or people who could get me closer to people in power. If I can ask for a favor from any or all the city officials, I can meet the governor, my Senator, my President, and, potentially, most of the leaders of the world. I’m not sure how quickly Alden can do his psychic thing, nor how obvious he has to be, so he might need a private meeting. That might slow him down.
