Space Magic (15 page)

Tony turned to the line of men at the factory gate. “Put down your guns and clubs. These people are not your enemies.” Some of the finks lowered their axe handles, but the cops were more disciplined and retained their weapons.

Seeing this, the men in the crowd who had not put down their bricks gripped them tightly, and a few men bent down to pick up new ones. Despite the cocooning cold, Tony began to sweat.

Just then the first-shift workers began to pour from the plant’s doors. But this was not the usual tired shift-change procession. These men were still wearing their work clothes and safety gear, running hard. One man screamed in horror.

Tony had no idea what was happening. Neither did anyone else. Cops, finks, and workers looked around, uncertain of what to do.

The policeman raised his bullhorn. “You strikers are still under an order to disperse!” But no one moved.

The first men to emerge from the plant passed through the main gate. They ran wide-eyed and staring, intent on putting as much space between themselves and the plant as possible.

The bullhorn spoke again. “Pinkerton men, see to the disturbance inside the plant! Officers, disperse these strikers!” The finks turned and ran toward the steel mill; the cops moved forward, raising their weapons. Several men in the crowd of workers raised bricks over their heads, prepared to throw them.

“
No!
” Tony cried, raising his hands, and a wave of cold seemed to burst from him, rings of stillness spreading like ripples in a pond.

He faced the crowd of workers—his friends, his co-workers, their wives and children—and said “
Go home!
” As one they backed away from him. He turned to the policemen, and to them he did not even speak—he only stared at them, and they shrank back.

Without a word, the workers turned and walked away, back toward the park. They moved as though in a dream. The cops stood where they were, equally entranced.

Only Gino seemed to remember himself. “Mother of God,” he whispered. “Tony, what’s happened to you?”

“I’m not Tony,” came the words from his mouth, and he strode purposefully toward the plant. Gino followed him.

When they reached the plant, the last few first-shift workers were just emerging from the doors, and most of the finks were already inside. The sounds of the working steel mill had never paused, but now they were joined by screams and gunshots.

“What the hell is going on in there?” asked Gino, but Tony just kept walking.

Soon they passed through the door of the plant. “By the Blessed Virgin,” said Gino.

The steel mill was running at full capacity—ladles pouring molten steel, huge stamping mills pounding ingots into plates, rolling mills pressing out continuous sheets. But the men running the mill...

Some of them were gray and transparent, like half-developed photographs of themselves. Others were horribly burned, leaving flakes of charred flesh behind them as they moved. One man had a steel pry-bar thrust through his chest, oozing blood from both sides. Everywhere were torn and mangled limbs, flayed skin, cracked skulls.

Those whose faces were still intact seemed to be having a wonderful time. Tony even recognized one of them—it was Marco Costanza, who’d bled to death after his arm was crushed by a falling girder. He was moving fine, hauling heavy bundles of steel rebar one-handed, though the other arm dangled uselessly at his side.

The dead men paid no attention to Tony and Gino, or to the strikebreakers. One of the finks stood stock-still, petrified by fear, and was crushed by a forklift driven by a headless machinist. Another fink fired his pistol at the gray shadow of a crane operator; the bullet ricocheted off the crane cab and grazed his skull, knocking him over.

“What the blue blazes is going on here?”

Tony turned to the sound of the voice, to see Kensington and Ailes emerging from the office. Kensington was puffing like a locomotive, his pink face glowing like a blast furnace.

The dead steelworkers all turned to the voice as well. All action in the plant stopped. They began to move toward Kensington.

Kensington was clearly terrified, but to his credit he pressed on regardless. “You men will stop this... Halloween prank, or whatever it is, and get back to work this instant!” But the dead men closed steadily in around him. “Get back to work!” he gasped again, with no effect. “Get... back...”

A ring of burnt, shredded, and broken flesh closed around Kensington, and from the center of it came a strangled scream and a sound like broomsticks breaking.

Tony turned his attention to Ailes, who was pressed against the office wall, arms and legs trembling. He was even paler than before.

“Mister Ailes,” Tony said. “Nice to see you again. You have records. Files. Reports.”

“Y-yes...”

“Take me to them.”

Ailes turned and half-ran, half-stumbled through the office. Tony followed at a steady pace. Gino came behind him.

They entered Ailes’s private office. “Here they are,” he said, and pointed to a file cabinet.

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

Tony pointed at the file cabinet, and all four drawers flew open. The papers within burst into the air like a thousand fat snowflakes. Tony waved his hands and the flying papers aged, browning and curling, two hundred years in a moment. Then they all crumbled to dust, leaving nothing but a smell like dead leaves.

Tears ran down Ailes’s cheeks. Gino muttered one prayer after another.

“Now I can go,” Tony said, and the world went black.

-o0o-

When he came to, he was outside the plant and Gino was leaning over him. “Are you awake?”

“I think so...”

“Do you remember what happened in there?”

“There were dead men. I saw Marco. Lots of others.”

“Yeah. Hundreds. I think it was every man who’s ever died in a Pennsylvania steel mill.”

“Kensington.”

Gino snorted. “Yeah, but he doesn’t count.”

“Are they still in there?”

“No. I think they all vanished when you passed out. There’s nobody in there right now but a half-dozen dead finks.”

“Ailes?”

“He’s talking with Mike Kelley. I think they’re coming to an agreement.”

“That’s good.” He closed his eyes.

-o0o-

Gus Collina was born on an autumn day, when the cool light streamed in through the windows of the new house his mother shared with his Uncle Tony and Aunt Sofia. The first face he saw in this life was Tony’s.

He met Tony’s eye and winked. And then he had a good long cry.

Glistening in the firelight, a drop of sweat gathered at the tip of Yüen Su’s nose. It was a distraction, a thing of the world, and she strove to ignore it, to empty her mind of all thought as she knelt in prayer.
Namo Guan Shi Yin Pusa
, she prayed over and over: I bow to you, being of wisdom, who hears the cries of the world. The drop swelled until it fell from her nose, landing with a small explosion of dust on the pounded-earth floor of the mud hut in which she knelt. It was followed by another, and another. But though the little hut was sweltering hot, when she finished her prayers she found herself hesitant to leave—unwilling to return to her master, General Zhang, and the noise and smoke and stink of death that surrounded him.

Su slipped the bracelet from her wrist. The air of Xian would calm her.

The bracelet was of bronze, and depicted the Dragon of the West with its tail in its mouth. Though not elegant, it had been carefully crafted for her by Shan the metalworker, and blessed by the Mother of her order with a special charm.

Su spoke a secret word of power, and the bracelet tingled in her fingers and grew cool, a shimmer like a desert mirage filling the space inside it. She brought her nose close to the opening and smiled at the cold air that blew from it. It was breezy this night in her favorite meadow, half a day’s walk from her home temple of Miao Feng Shan in the country of Xian.

The breeze smelled of high mountains and cold streams. It smelled of snow. It smelled of home.

She opened the neck of her robe and allowed the air from the bracelet to flow down inside, evaporating the sweat that pooled in the hollow of her throat and the space between her breasts. But after only a short time of this she sighed. It would not do to luxuriate too long when she had so many difficult tasks awaiting her. She spoke a second word. The bracelet tingled again, and then returned to inert metal.

It was still cool to the touch, though, as she slipped it back onto her wrist. A small reminder of the snows of Xian, so many thousand leagues from the wretched little town of Guang-xi.

Yüen Su stepped from the shabby little hut into the torchlit street. Barely deserving of the name “street,” it was only two paces wide and constructed of dirt, like everything else in Guang-xi. Even the walls that surrounded the town were simple bulwarks of rammed earth, not even faced with brick. They would offer little resistance to the siege engines of Yao Ming.

No townspeople were about at this hour; to defy the curfew imposed by General Zhang was to embrace death. But Zhang’s troops recognized Su, and bowed to her as she passed.

Zhang stood with his lieutenants in the great hall—such as it was—of the town’s magistrate, who cowered with his family to one side. Zhang had sketched a map of the town and its surroundings in the dirt floor, and indicated its various features with the pointed butt of a halberd.

Zhang himself was an imposing figure, with dark intense eyes and a long gray beard that suggested his many years of successful command. He wore a long purple robe, trimmed and tasseled in red; the armored surcoat with its many square bronze plates hung on a rack nearby. “Do not depend too much on the mountains to the north,” he scolded one of his lieutenants. “Yao will send at least three companies around to surprise us from behind. It may take them some days to get here, but we should be prepared. Post watchmen here, here, and here.”

“But they have been riding hard for days, my lord,” said a lieutenant. “For exhausted men to cross those mountains would be suicide.”

“Yes,” Zhang acknowledged with a grim nod. “That is why he will send three companies—to be sure at least one survives.”

The lieutenant gave a silent bow, conceding the truth of Zhang’s observation. Yao’s troops were untrained conscripts, but they vastly outnumbered Zhang’s remaining forces and Yao was willing to spend many lives for a successful attack.

“Priestess Yüen Su,” Zhang said, fixing her with a dark commanding gaze, “Have you prepared yourself as you require?”

“Yes, my lord,” she replied with a trembling bow.

Zhang pointed to a series of parallel lines drawn on the plain below the city’s south gate. “You are to scout General Yao’s camp. Determine the strength of his forces, and if possible his plans.”

Head still bowed, she stammered out, “But, my lord, I know nothing of military matters.”

Zhang sighed heavily and looked heavenward. “Honored ancestors, I thank you for saving me and these remaining men at the battle of Yu-min. But why could you not have seen fit to leave me more than this one miserable priestess?” His piercing gaze returned to Su. “Can your spirit hear, as well as see?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“The general’s tent will be in the middle of the camp. Listen there for any numbers. How many companies, battalions, divisions, horses. Times and places. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Begin, then. Waste no time.”

“Yes, my lord.” She bowed deeply, then knelt on the dirt floor and pulled her box of incense from her sleeve.

Su made her preparations, shivering beneath her robe despite the oppressive heat. As a priestess of Guan Shi Yin, the living expression of loving compassion, she had devoted her life to understanding and peace. Using the powers of her office for warlike purposes was abhorrent to her. But hers had been the poor fortune to be on an outreach mission to the court of Li when General Yao of the upstart state of Wu had attacked, two months ago. She had been placed under the protection and command of General Zhang, who had kept her safe and never before asked for anything in return. But the last of Zhang’s military magicians and priests—ancestor worshippers who practiced human sacrifice, but still human beings worthy of Guan Shi Yin’s love—had been killed by Yao’s forces at the recent, disastrous battle of Yu-min. Zhang had no one else, and she must carry out his orders not only because he was her properly appointed commander, but because he and his men had saved her life in the initial attack and many times since.

Even so, the thought of it made her sick to her stomach.

He has not asked me to fight or kill
, she reassured herself. It didn’t help much.

She cleared her mind and prayed, struggling to block out the sounds and smells of an occupied town preparing for attack. After a long while, with a feeling like tearing silk, her spirit detached itself from her body.

It was always disorienting to look back on herself, yet now she found it strangely reassuring—a female Xian face, with its strong cheekbones, shaven head, and pigtail, alone among these shaggy Li men. It was almost as though one of her temple sisters were here.

Then she chided herself for delay, and sent her spirit out through the tile roof of the hall.

Su’s spirit soared above the town, with its courtyards glimmering with the torches of Zhang’s remaining troops. Quickly she flew over the walls, and the moat beyond them, to the plain below the town where Yao had massed his army. Thousands of fires burned there, in rigid rows and columns. Su knew nothing of armies, but she could count, and even she could see that Yao’s army vastly outnumbered Zhang’s forces.

But there, in the center of the camp, was one tent larger than the others, which swarmed with soldiers coming and going like an ants’ nest. Su swooped down upon it and through its fabric roof.

She recognized Yao Ming at once—she had seen his scarred, dark-bearded face in many scrolls and woodcuts. He wore an armored surcoat, fashioned of many palm-sized squares of rhinoceros leather, over a blue robe with black trim. At the moment he and his lieutenants were bowed in concentration over a smoking brazier.