Spinspace: The Space of Spins (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 2) (26 page)

Chapter 65

Lester
: accidentally on purpose

Did Xander ever sleep? 
He must have been up late reading.  How else did he get here before me?
  Lester watched the older wizard poking the soggy but charred remains of the guard and tried not to gag at the stench in the stairwell.  “What happened?”

“If you ask me,” said Xander, sniffing the air and nudging a metal hip flash out of the mess with one boot, “it was whiskey, a cigarette, and eventually, a bucket of water, too late to help him.”

“That was me, sir,” said a young guard.  “I heard him screaming, and when I ran up to the landing he was rolling on the floor trying to put the flames out.  I grabbed one of the buckets we keep filled for emergencies, but by the time I got back to him it was too late.  Poor bastard.”  The guard's eyes were wet.  “Burning's a terrible way to go.  Should I get Daniels?”

“Let the doctor sleep.  Nothing he can do here.”  Xander rubbed his chin, thinking.  That's two accidents on the stairs now.”

“You sure about that?”  Lester asked him, seeing a wisp of steam begin to curl up from the body.   He reached down and groped for a moment, then pulled a coin out of the remains, holding it by the edge.  “Because I think it was no accident.”  It was dark enough in the stairwell to just make out a faint red mote hovering in the air above the coin.  “I think he had this in his pocket and didn't know it was still turned on.”  Xander stared at it in silence.

“Come on,” Lester told him, leading the way back upstairs to their quarters.  “There's something I should have shown you earlier.”  When they got there he went to his bed, reached under it, then took Xander's hand and put something cold in it.  Something invisible.

“What's this?”

“One of our swizzle pipes, with an invisibility weave on it.”

“Why'd you make it invisible?”

“I didn't.  I found it in the stairwell after my own 'accident'.  I think someone left it there for me to trip over.  Whoever it was didn't want to risk me seeing it.”

He half expected Xander to say it was a crazy idea, but the older man just nodded, lips pressed thin by anger.  “But who?  Do we have a wizard infiltrator?”

“What, you mean, like Ludlow?  I don't think so.  Look.”  Lester lifted the pipe and turned it this way and that, showing Xander how the cloaking wasn't perfect from all sides.  “See that?  I think old Ludlow would have done a better job than this.”

Xander sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his eyes.  “You're saying it was one of the students?”

Lester began to pace.  “Who else?  But who and why?  I'd rule out Carolyn, but the other three are all from other countries – Texas, Californ, and the Emirates.  They can all do the invisibility weave by now, and any one of them might have been sent here with a hidden agenda.”

He could see Xander processing that.  “That might explain what happened to you,” Xander said slowly, “but whoever the guard was, he was no wizard.  Not even a student.  Why kill him?”

Lester kept pacing.  “That's a tough one,” he admitted.  “If we were on the ground level, I'd say it was a diversion to help someone else sneak into the building.  But we're dozens of floors up.”

“Well then, maybe it
was
an accident.”

Lester stopped pacing as another idea occurred to him. “He really burned up, as if someone was fanning the flames.”  He looked at Xander.  “I'll bet I can prove it was deliberate.”  He turned and strode out the door.  “Come on!”

Xander followed him back to the stairwell, and Lester surprised him.  Instead of heading down to the body, he raced up to the roof.  “Just as I thought,” he said, and pointed down at the corner of the door, propped open by a rock wedged in just right.

Chapter 66

Kristana
: a necessary deception

“Whether women are better than men I cannot say – but I can say they are certainly no worse.”

– Golda Meir

Spring came nearer every day, but you could still see your breath at night. Gazing out the window of her inner office, the Governor of Rado felt colder than the morning air outside.

Duty goes both ways, up and down the chain of command. In the grim business of war, men die, but at least you know, if you are doing your job as their commander, that their deaths serve a higher purpose.  Whether riding down lonesome trails or charging into battle, her soldiers knew full well that the arrow or sword of an enemy might end their careers.  But that was part of the job.

Burning to death in a stairwell was not part of the job.

The door behind her opened and her two wizards filed in.  She watched a crow land on a shorter building across the street.  “Tell me what you know.”

Xander spoke up first.  “It wasn't an accident, although it might be best if we explain it that way, for now.”

Now she spun to face them.  “Best?  A man is
dead
...and you want me to lie to my troops about it?   In what world is that
best?
”

“In the world of the killer,” said Lester.  “We have more of a chance of his making a mistake if he doesn't know that
we
know it was deliberate.”

She collapsed into her chair and regarded him.  “Do we know that it was?  Deliberate?”

Xander nodded, his face grim.  “Someone spilled whiskey on his clothes, slipped him an everflame that was still putting out heat, and propped open the roof door to ensure an updraft on the stairs to fan the flames.”  He looked at the floor for a moment, then continued.  “The everflame we found on his body was turned down low, but not off.  It must have taken half a minute or more to ignite the fumes.  The killer wanted time to leave the roof.”

She put her face in her hands.  “Did anyone see anything?”

“The message sentry on the roof, Simon, says he saw him talking to someone.”  He paused.  “Someone in a gray robe.”

She digested that.  “Any of those robes missing?”

“No, I thought of that, but but your tailors haven't made many yet, and I keep the spares in my quarters.  I wish I could say someone swiped one, but no.  They're all accounted for.”

She rose and turned to the window again.  “So it was one of the students.  But why?”

“One of the male students,” said Xander.  “Simon would have remembered someone as attractive as Carolyn.  As to why they did it, well, it wasn't because of any grudge.  Kurt had only been guarding the school for two days.”

“Can we stop dancing around the obvious?” Lester said.  “Someone wants us to shut down the school.  Whoever their agent is, at first they tried to get lucky with me.  Wen I survived, they decided that killing non-wizards would get your troops riled against having wizard in your building.”

“I'm afraid he's right,” Xander said.  “Could be the TCC, but my money's on Angeles or someone in the Emirates.”

“At least you only have three suspects, then.”  She turned back to face them.  “Maybe I should lock them all up, until we know which one did it, just to be on the safe side.”

Xander scowled.  “That's exactly what you
shouldn't
do.  We have to keep this quiet until we know more.  Making student wizards look like criminals sends the wrong message to everyone.  You'd be confirming soldier prejudices and scaring future students away.”

“So I'm supposed to just shrug it off as an accident?”

“No, not just shrug it off.”  Xander sighed.  “I hate deception as much as you do, but I think the best course of action is to announce it as an accident and use it as an excuse for safety lectures.”  He rubbed his chin.  “Another troubling question is what to do with the killer when we catch him.”

She stared at Xander. 
He couldn't possibly be asking for leniency just because it was a student!
  “That's obvious.  Either we get a confession or hold a quick trial, then a public execution.”  Her eyes narrowed.  “We could even make the punishment fit the crime.”

“What, burn him at the stake?”  Xander seemed horrified at the idea.  “I get that you want him to suffer, but we're not barbarians.  That would make us no better then him.”

“Fine, then hanging it is.”  When she saw him start to open his mouth she cut him off.  “No prison sentences for murderers.  Not on my watch.”

“I wasn't going to argue,” he said.  “But until we know for sure, this has to stay between the three of us.”

Chapter 67

Kareef:
“...and a practice for every one of you”

“We have appointed a law and a practice for every one of you. Had God willed, He would have made you a single community...”

– Quran 5:48

He glared at the length of pipe in his hands.  It was bad enough that Xander let a woman study magic.  After his initial shock of seeing her, in those disturbingly clinging clothes of her, he had tried to make his peace with it.  Different lands, different customs.  He supposed in a country ruled by a woman, it would be hard for the wizard to refuse at least one female student.

However, now she was making him, Kareef, look like a fool!  It came as no surprise that she was able to master the invisibility trick before him.  She had been working on it longer.  But then she had solved the swizzle test, shortly after Xander's demonstration with the smoke ring.  That rankled.  Bad enough to share a class with a female, but to lag behind her?  Intolerable!

He had tried imagining smoke rings traveling down the pipe, to no avail.  What was he missing?  It could not be that hard if a
woman
had solved it.

“Listen up.”  The junior wizard, Lester was addressing them again.  Kareef set the pipe down and watched him.  The teacher was barely older than Kareef himself, and yet according to Qusay, few of the Order back East could make a swizzle as this young man already could do.

“I have some announcements to make.  As you know, this school is just getting started.  No one we know of has ever set up a school like this before, so we'll be making changes from time to time as we learn new things.

“The first change we're making is uniforms.  Our first thought about clothing for wizards was to have everyone wear gray robes, but we're changing that.  In a couple of days you'll all be issued white robes.  Yes?”

Carolyn had raised her hand.  “Won't white get dirty faster?”

“Probably.  But some of you won't be wearing white long.  When you've made enough progress, you'll be back in gray.”

Lester turned slowly to look at each of them.  “We've decided to make wizardry a guild, like blacksmithing, doctoring, leather working, and the other professions.”  He brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes.  “Apprentices like you will wear white robes.  Once you have learned all we can teach you about pathspace and are ready for other things, you'll graduate to journeymen and put on the gray to become teachers like me.  Xander will be our master wizard, and he'll be wearing black.  Yes, Esteban?”

“From what I understand about the guilds, journeymen aren't considered proficient enough to teach until they complete their master piece.  After they are accepted as Masters, then they are allowed to teach, but not before that.”

“You're right.  Someday we'll have exactly the same rules.  For now, however, since the school will be growing, we'll soon be needing more teachers than we have. By the old rules, technically, I'm only a journeyman myself.  But Xander can't be spending all of his time teaching you, so that falls on me.”

“Are you saying we all have to stay here and become teachers?” Esteban asked.  “Is that the price for our training?”

“I'm not saying that, no.  This isn't a prison.  You're all free to go home at any time.  If you stay, however, and progress all the way to the black robe, then you'll have a choice.  You can stay here and continue teaching and helping Xander and me with research, or you can leave and start your own schools if you want.”

“Why do we need more schools?”  Carolyn asked.

“Because we're going to change the world.  Do any of you know why the civilization of the Ancients fell?  It fell because we had no wizards.  Xander prefers to call us 'psionic engineers' but either way, the fact was that we couldn't keep the Gifts of the Tourists going, and that's what crashed us.”

Esteban raised his hand.  “But the Ancients had an advanced  civilization before the aliens came.  Can't we just do it again as we did before?”

“Maybe, but it would take a lot longer to rebuild our lost
infrastructure
without magic.  So this time, we're going to use technology
and
magic, to speed up things.”  He paused.  “Other schools will be starting up, to teach the old sciences like metallurgy, chemistry, mechanical and electrical engineering.  But for them to succeed, there will have to be jobs waiting for their graduates, or no one will spend years learning the old skills.”

“But how can there be jobs waiting for them?”  Kaleb objected.  “The business that need people with those skills don't exist any more.”

“You're right.  It's going to be hard to get things started.  It's always a lot easier to just keep doing what you're doing.  For businesses to start up, they'll need customers.  That means we need more people.  The population has to grow.”

The others must have looked as puzzled as Kareef felt, because  the teacher went on explaining.  “When civilization fell, a lot of people died.  There were billions of people living on the Earth back then.  Billions!  But people have to eat.  The farms that fed them all depended on machinery.  When the machines failed, no one could grow as much food anymore.  People starved.  For a couple of hundred years now, our population has been more or less constant.”

Esteban spoke up again.  “How can we change that?”

“Good question.  The first thing we'll have to do is help the farmers grow more food and raise more livestock.  That means making more swizzles for irrigation, and something called
everwheels
to pull the plows and mill the grain.  They'll need metal tools, so we'll need more everflames to smelt ore and to recycle all the scrap metal lying around from wrecked buildings and abandoned cars.

“And that's where we come in.  Everyone, including me, will be making swizzles as soon as they learn how.  We'll be making them every day, for practice and to give away.”

Kareef wasn't sure he heard that right.  “To give away?”

“That's right.  We'll be giving them away to Rado citizens first, and then also trading them to other countries.  When we can make everwheels, everflames, and coldboxes, we'll be doing the same with them.  As the old saying goes, we'll be killing two birds with one stone.  All this making will help us grow more experienced wizards, and the things we make will help grow more farms, more blacksmiths, more millers, and so on.  More food will enable larger families, giving us more people.  It's kind of a snowball effect.”

Seeing puzzlement on some of their faces, Lester explained.  “So you see,” he concluded, “we have to start the little snowball rolling.  That's us.  If we succeed, the school will grow, the farms will spread, the population will grow, people will start businesses to sell them tools and transport food and such, and the other schools will be able to start up, once there are jobs for their graduates.”

Kareef tried to remain skeptical, but the enthusiasm in Lester's voice pulled at him.  Here was a way indeed to make a difference!  With the swizzles he could teach is countrymen to make (once he got the blasted weave to work), the farms in the Emirates would be more productive than ever.  He smiled, as he imagined the look on his father's face when he returned home to help their farms crowded with crops.

“For those of you who can make a swizzle, I'll be teaching what I call the telescope weave and the xray weave.  Once you master all of those, you'll be ready to put on the gray robe again, and join me in learning
spinspace
, the next step.”

For the next few hours Kareef tried to make his piece of pipe a swizzle, but he just couldn't seem to get the pattern to work.  He also tried to ignore the pile of swizzles growing next to Carolyn.  When at last they broke for lunch, he excused himself to say prayers and then sped down the stairs to Qusay's floor.

Qusay had just finished saying hos own prayers when Kareef knocked on his door.  “Come in.”

Kareef entered, feeling he would burst from all the news he carried.  But before he could begin. Qusay surprised him with news of his own.  “I'm afraid you won't have as much privacy from now on.  Starting tomorrow, you'll have a roommate.  The school is getting another student.”

“What?”  Kareef did not know what to say to that.  “Who?”

“Nathan Silverman, the son of the ambassador from New Israel.  He'll be moving into your room at the School tonight.”

Kareef's eyes narrowed.  “You want me to share a room with one of
them?
”  Out of respect, he tried not to growl it.

Qusay shrugged.  “It was not my decision.  “I know you've had a room to yourself up to now, but times change.  For all I know, a month or a year from now they might be packing students in three or four to a room.  Try to look at this as an opportunity.”

Kareef couldn't stop himself from frowning. “An opportunity?” he echoed.  “For what?”

“This Union of theirs, of Rado and Texas, it just might grow, Kareef.  If New Israel joins it and we don't, they'll be a more threatening enemy.  If both New Israel and the Emirates join, then we'll be allies.  Either way, it would be a good idea to know someone who might become a wizard in the North.”

“I suppose so,” he said. 
Or maybe I can get Kaleb or Esteban to swap rooms with me.
  Even a Catholic would be better than a damned New Israelite.

“Well, that's my news.  What's yours?  I can tell you needed to tell me something.”