Cybermage, page 24
“As you wish,” Tesla said, stepping back and blending into the shadows underneath a large cedar tree nearby.
“Where have you been?” Humphrey said, as soon as he caught a glimpse of Thea. “You were supposed to check in. I’ve been going out of my mind, back here.”
“Yes, Terry said something about that,” Thea said. “And so did Ben. Sorry. Things got a bit busy. We were a little stretched, trying to get something done on two fronts, and we’ve had… mixed success.”
“Thea,” Humphrey said, a warning in his voice, “I need to know what’s going on.”
“Well,” Thea said, reaching for the same words that had already been used so often, “I have bad news and good news. And you might not entirely agree which is which.”
Humphrey sighed. “Spill it,” he said.
“On the pigeon front,” Thea said, “I’m afraid that the Colorado situation might be… beyond salvaging. One of them is dead. There doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it. There were a few things we could try, and we did. But it didn’t work. As for the others–two of the remaining pigeons, we’ve got.”
“When? How?” Humphrey said. “I had an agent in the city, keeping an eye on Kristin and Ben. They didn’t seem to be meeting with much success, your Finder and her companion. The Alphiri were out there, though…”
“Ben said you had a tail on them,” Thea said.
“Hardly a tail. Just a backup, in case something went wrong. But somehow they kept… slipping out of his…” He frowned, pushed the thought away. “Never mind that, now. Two, there was only one back in Colorado, shouldn’t there be three?”
“One is gone,” Thea said, ticking it off on her fingers. “Two we have in hand. The last one… the Alphiri got.”
Humphrey reached out a hand and leaned heavily on the nearest tree. He said something under his breath, too softly for Thea to hear.
“I knew I should have sent in a stronger force, not just a couple of kids,” he said, after taking a second or two to collect himself. Thea actually winced at the emphasis he had put on that last word, but Humphrey didn’t appear to notice that. “But if the Alphiri have the cube… and now they have one of the pigeons,” he continued. “How did it happen?”
“Your spy didn’t tell you that?” Thea asked, leaving Humphrey’s misconception about the location of the Tesla cube in place.
Humphrey glared at her. “I told you, it wasn’t like that. But in point of fact, no, I heard nothing of the sort.”
“That’s because the Trickster was involved again,” Thea said. “It’s entirely possible your guy might have witnessed the entire incident and had no idea what he saw. But we have… a line on it.”
“A line on what?” Humphrey shook his head, confused.
“That last pigeon. The one that’s MIA. I’ve made arrangements… and I’m waiting for word on that. I’m afraid I had to make a promise, on your behalf.”
“What did you do?” Humphrey said in a low voice, suddenly sounding afraid.
“You’ll owe immunity to the Faele,” Thea said sweetly. “They’re about to go snatch the Water Pigeon from the Alphiri, and leave them a changeling.”
There was so much in that sentence that Humphrey was left entirely speechless for an instant; he opened and closed his mouth several times, like a fish out of water, before he could find the words to speak.
“Immunity? To the Faele? I owe… immunity… a pigeon changeling? The Water…” He stopped, suddenly struck by the precision of that description. “Wait. Just a minute. You can tell the Elements apart? In the pigeons? How–are they that different? Just by looking at them you can see–but that’s hardly possible, they wouldn’t have been able to blend into the pigeon population for this long if they were that extraordinary, even in New York City somebody would have noticed–how can you tell…?”
“We couldn’t. We didn’t know, of course. But Nikola Tesla knew.”
“Nikola Tesla knew.” Humphrey May repeated Thea’s words precisely, as though he were uttering a foreign language which he completely failed to understand, staring at her from under a bewildered frown. And then the bewilderment flowed into half a dozen other emotions in quick succession, a dawning understanding, chagrin, outrage, a sort of astonished admiration, fury. “The cube,” he finally said. “You’ve still got access to the cube. My God, Thea. What do you know? Where is it? How could you have kept this from me? Do you realise what’s been going on back at the office since that thing disappeared?”
He still hadn’t completely understood, though, because when Tesla suddenly stepped out from his shadow Humphrey could do nothing but stare in frozen shock.
“The Alphiri do not have the cube,” Tesla said. “Which is a good thing, as I gather. But I never intended for it to be in the possession of the FBM either.”
“I have it,” Thea said quietly.
“Why?” It was the only word Humphrey seemed to be able to muster, and he flung it at Thea like a gauntlet.
“How did you know where to find me?” she asked him, apparently changing the subject completely. “I said on the phone that I was in the woods where you met Mrs. Chen… and you came straight to me.”
Humphrey searched her eyes with his own. “I completely missed that,” he said quietly. “You should not have known about that meeting, should you? I had it shielded, out here. I thought I had it covered. This was the Wandless Academy, free of magic, I thought if I had a basic shield up it would deal with most things that this school could throw at me. But I forgot I had a fledgling Elemental on the grounds. What did you hear?”
“Enough,” Thea said, glancing back at Tesla. “I went to get the cube because I couldn’t handle the possibility of another Diego de los Reyes. Not again. The last time, it was the Alphiri; this time, it sounded like it might be you guys.”
“That we might what?” Humphrey asked, after a beat.
“Take him. Use him. Control him.” She paused, and met Humphrey’s eyes squarely. “Use me to control him.”
“So, you set out to save him,” Humphrey said a little bitterly, crossing his arms across his chest. “You overhear part of a conversation, take it out of context, and decide that we are the bad guys this time around?”
“You said I was a weapon which you would use if you had to,” Thea said.
“I believe I also said I was sworn to protect, and that is what I would do, whatever it takes,” Humphrey said.
“Whatever it takes,” Thea said, nodding. “That’s exactly what freaked me out. Protect what? Against whom?”
“The preservation of the safety and security of the world, as you know it is my job,” Humphrey said. “It’s what I do, Thea. You’ve helped save the world a couple of times, and it was a tough thing for you to do–but it’s my job. I save the world on a daily basis, if you like, from threats you haven’t even heard of.” This time it was Tesla’s turn to react, and he gathered his brows together in a delicate frown at the sweeping statement. But Humphrey was concentrating on Thea. “You… decided unilaterally that saving one man–whether or not he needed saving from me–was far more important than perhaps using that man to save the world.”
Thea glanced at Tesla, and then back at Humphrey. “Sometimes,” she said, “saving a single man is saving the world.”
“I had made my own plans on that score,” Tesla said. “If they had all gone according to my wishes, you would never have had the cube that housed me in your possession in the first place. Your young mage reacted on pure instinct. But the instinct was completely correct. I too made a bargain with the Faele, back in the days when my body was failing me and I knew it was time to transfer myself to the world I had set up inside the Elemental cube. You see, I knew that the FBM would be all over my room and the things I had left behind. So, I bargained with the Faele to come and take the cube, as soon as I was gone. I had no doubt it would surface when circumstances were correct for it to be found. I did not want to wait for that day in the vaults of the FBM, where I would be subject, every day, to the misguided and incompetent attempts to open my cube by mages who had no idea what they were doing or how to go about it, who saw only the end and did not care about the means, who could not possibly understand the way another Elemental could understand.”
Humphrey was shaking his head a little. “You make us sound like malevolent idiots,” he said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a true Elemental to deal with. The ones who are left are all too low-level or too damned old, their powers failing, to be useful. I’d forgotten just how intransigent an Elemental could be. Your kind has no respect, no understanding, for society’s laws–and that laws are made to protect people.”
“From whom? From us?” Tesla raised an eyebrow at Humphrey. “Just what is it that you think I might do, split the planet like an apple?”
“According to some of the notes we did inherit from you,” Humphrey said, “you had means to do such a thing.”
“If the notes gave you any idea that I ever intended to put such a possibility into practice you understand even less than I gave you credit for,” Tesla snapped. “Or is it that, if any planet-splitting is to be done, you would prefer it to be on your terms and with you giving the orders?”
Humphrey flushed. “It isn’t like that at all. And if we’re going to talk motives, what about yours? What made you sequester yourself away in that cube in the first place? You couldn’t have possibly known what the future would bring. You were locking yourself away, perhaps for all eternity, and after you had ripped your Elemental gifts out of you. Why would you do that, if you didn’t have your own agenda?”
“The future would evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments,” Tesla said. “The present, my then-present, belonged to the humanity living in that moment of time; the future, for which I had always worked, was mine. It would bring me what I needed. That much, I knew. The form it would take… I had no way of predicting.” He glanced at Thea. “This,” he said, indicating her to Humphrey with an economical gesture of his hand. “This was as inevitable as it would be rare. Some day, you would have an Elemental again. And what’s more, from observing her work, I have come to believe that you have an entirely new kind of Elemental on your hands.”
Thea’s heart lurched. “What do you mean?”
“Did they tell you that it was I who cobbled together the first real Nexus?” Tesla said, turning his full attention to her. “At that time, in that place, the thing you know as a computer was only a vision, a pipedream. But there was a first version of a computer-like device which used tapes to store information…”
“The tapes they found with the cube,” Thea said.
“Precisely. Those were the accessory to the final version of the prototype of the machine that I created. I did not have time to do much more than that. Then, when the Faele came to retrieve the cube as was our arrangement, they took those tapes as well and because they had no idea how fragile and vulnerable they were–well–most of that information was lost, apparently, as I discovered when I was assisting your friend Terry at the current Nexus. It is so much more than even I envisioned it could be; he knows his way around it, but you–” Tesla touched Thea’s shoulder lightly, for emphasis. “You have harnessed this thing with as much control and raw intuition as I had once harnessed the power of water or of fire in my time. I heard Terry refer to that world by the prefix ‘cyber’–and in as much as I am… as I had been… a quad-Elemental mage who could rule Water, Fire, Air and Earth, it is your gift to rule the cyber-Element, as much of a basic building block of your world as the rest have ever been.” He paused, weighing his next words with care. “You are a new thing, Thea Winthrop,” he said. “You are a cyber-Elemental. A cyber-mage.”
“That makes you… a tri-Elemental.” Humphrey almost spluttered at the thought, staring at Thea.
The shadows in the cool, damp cedar glade brightened for a moment as a flash of bright light made all three of them throw up an arm to shade narrowed eyes. Then a small winged creature hovered over Thea’s head before coming to rest on her shoulder, crouching for balance, and whispering something directly into her ear with its hands cupped around its mouth for secrecy as a child might have done. Thea listened, then nodded, and the winged imp launched itself off once more and vanished in another shower of sparks.
“It looks like our lost pigeon is home to roost,” Thea said. “It’s with the others. I think we’d better get back there.”
“Wait. Where? Where is everyone? Thea, I am not the enemy, damn it. Let me in on this.”
“Back with Cheveyo,” Thea said.
Humphrey’s eyes narrowed a little. “You owe me that,” he said, his voice tightly controlled.
She sighed. “You’re right. I do. Mr. Tesla, you need to get back into the catcher again.”
“I am at your disposal,” said Tesla, with a small bow.
Thea lifted the dreamcatcher again and sighted Tesla through it.
“What are you doing? Aren’t those the same dreamcatchers that you had when the spellspam… where did he go?” Humphrey looked around a little wildly as Tesla winked out.
Thea shook the dreamcatcher lightly to focus his attention back on it. “In here,” she said. “It’s a way of carrying him around. Well? Are you coming?”
Humphrey began to step forward while still in the shadow of the cedars, but the foot that had left the ground on damp ground covered with soggy brown cedar fronds dropped from the trees came back down in the soft red dust of Cheveyo’s country.
Thea released Tesla from his dreamcatcher, and he gave everyone a nod of greeting before striding off to crouch much like some large spider before Kristin’s bird cage, where now three birds fussed and cooed. Away to one side a trio of winged Faele waited, squirming, in an obvious agony of impatience. Cheveyo himself presided over the whole scene with a degree of poise and serenity which, at least judging by the expression on Humphrey May’s face as he took everything in, was all the more galling to Humphrey because those were the very qualities he found himself lacking in the present moment.
The Faele scurried forward as soon as they realised they had Thea’s attention.
“We lingered on our Queen’s command until you were here,” one of the Faele said. “We just wished to make certain that it was conveyed. The bargain is done, the bird you wished has been brought to you, and our obligations are concluded. Yes?”
“My thanks to your Queen,” Thea said.
The Faele glanced over at Humphrey, briefly. “The immunity…?”
Humphrey almost audibly gritted his teeth, but it was to him that the question has been addressed; he glared at Thea, and then back at the birdcage, and then back at the Faele who stood awaiting his answer. Humphrey may not have approved of the way things had been done, but he could not deny that the thing he had wanted done had been accomplished, and those of Tesla ‘s Elemental pigeons which could be rescued had been found and brought together with Tesla. He had not planned beyond this point, not really; he’d figured that he would have time and opportunity to deal with events as they unfolded. But he was out of time, now, and finally he gave a curt nod. “I will see to it,” he said. “Immunity.”
The Faele inclined his head in acknowledgment of the compact that had just been entered into, and then trilled something at his companions in a language too high and too fast for the humans to understand. They all launched themselves into the air and melted into it, vanishing instantly.
“Now what?” Ben asked, staring at the cage where Tesla was still communing with the pigeons.
“Terry, you simply… spun them all together, back in the room,” Tess said. “And you–what did you call it?–reconstituted Tesla, all of those component parts that we had taken off in different directions… can you do the same thing with him and those pigeons? Just spin them all together in the dreamcatcher and make him whole again…?”
“As whole as he can be, with only three,” Cat murmured. She still carried her bundle, the last pigeon, wrapped in its shroud of black silk, as though she were expecting a miracle at the eleventh hour.
“No, I am afraid that would not quite work,” said a new voice, and they all turned to see Grandmother Spider smiling at them from beside Cheveyo. She wore her hair long and dark, in two braids that fell to her waist, her eyes slanted and dark, her skin a burnished bronze.
“Who’s that? Where did she come from?” Humphrey demanded, looking around for a convenient hiding place that might have housed this new arrival before her abrupt appearance.
“Grandmother Spider,” Thea said, leaning a little closer to whisper the name.
Humphrey did a double-take as Grandmother Spider came to them, stepping lightly on the red dust on small feet clad in leather moccasins.
“She’s someone’s Grandmother?” he said, staring.
Grandmother Spider caught his eye, smiling a little, and Humphrey dropped his gaze down to the red dust at his feet with his face turning almost the same shade.
“Should you try that with the catcher that I gave you, all you will accomplish is to integrate three pigeons into a human being,” Grandmother Spider said, graciously passing over Humphrey’s discomfiture. “Not their essences, themselves. The reason you were able to bring Tesla himself back together the way you did was simply because all the pieces you were playing with were part of the same puzzle. But the pigeons have to be rendered… less pigeon-like if that sort of thing were to work with the dreamcatchers.”
“But Terry said he might have a plan,” Humphrey May said in a low voice. “When I last spoke to him, he would not tell me all–and I only now begin to understand why–but I did get the sense that he might be on the verge of some sort of breakthrough.”
“I…uh, yes, I think I do have a way,” Terry said, glancing at Humphrey. He wore a laptop satchel slung diagonally across his body, shoulder to hip. “Tesla helped me work it out–Tesla, and Twitterpat. I need to set up the program, but I think I can do it–I can digitize the pigeons, sort of, and get them into a form that Tesla can…”
