Balefires Read online

  The wrought-iron grill at the far end was delicate but still a real barrier, even without the two guards on the other side watching as Howard approached. They were alert, very big, and not in the least friendly.

  Muscle-bound, Howard told himself. I could slice them into lunchmeat with my rapier!

  He knew he was lying, and it didn't even make him feel better. Quite apart from big mennot necessarily being slow, this pair held shotguns.

  "Good morning!" Howard said, trying for "brightly" and hitting "brittle" instead. "I have an urgent summons from Mr. Popple!"

  Christ on a crutch! What if this was some kid's practical joke? Let's see if we can scam some sucker into busting into the Strange Mansion! Maybe they'll shoot him right where we can watch!

  Howard glanced down, which probably wasn't the smartest thing to do now that he wasn't protected by the excitement of the thing. At least he didn't see kids with a cell phone and gleeful expressions peering up expectantly.

  One of the guards said, "Who're you?" His tone would have been a little too grim for a judge passing a death sentence.

  Howard's mind went blank. All he could think of was the accusing glare of his resume picture-but wait! Beside the picture was a name!

  "Howard Albing Jones!" he said triumphantly.

  "Nothing here about 'Albing,' " said the other guard.

  The first guard shrugged. "Look, it's Sunday," he said to his partner. Fixing Howard with a glare that could've set rivets, he said, "We're letting you in, buddy. But as Howard Jones, that's all. That's how you sign the book."

  "All right," said Howard. "I'm willing to be flexible."

  One guard unlocked the grating; the other nodded Howard toward a folio bound in some unfamiliar form of leather, waiting open on a stand in the doorway. The last name above Howard's was that of a regional manager who'd been sobbing as he trudged into the parking lot for the last time.

  The first guard pinned a blank metal badge on Howard's sweatshirt, right in the center of Fuqua. "Keep it on," he said. "See the yellow strip?"

  He gestured with his shotgun, then returned the muzzle to point just under where the badge rested.

  An amber track lighted up in the center of the hallway beyond. The glow was so faint that it illuminated only itself. Focusing his eyes on it meant that Howard didn't have to stare at the shotgun.

  "Right," he said. "Right!"

  "You follow it," said the guard. "It'll take you where you're supposed to go. And youdon't step off it, you understand?"

  "Right," said Howard, afraid that he sounded brittle again."I certainly don't want you gentlemen coming after me."

  The other guard laughed. "Oh, we wouldn't do that," he said. "Pete and me watch-" he nodded to the bank of TV monitors, blanked during Howard's presence "-but we ain't cleared to go wandering around the mansion. Believe me, buddy, we're not ready to die."

  Howard walked down the hall with a fixed smile until the amber strip led him around a corner. He risked a glance backwards then and saw that the light was fading behind him. He supposed it'd reappear when it was time for him to leave.

  He supposed so.

  Howard hadn't had any idea of what the inside of the Strange Mansion would be like. There were a thousand rumors about the Wizard of Fast Food but almost no facts. Howard himself had envisioned cathedral-vaulted ceilings and swaying chandeliers from which a bold man could swing one-handed while the blade of his rapier parried the thrusts of a score of minions.

  There might be chandeliers, stone ledges, and high balconies on the other side of the blank gray walls but that no longer seemed likely. The corridor surfaces were extruded from some dense plastic, and the doors fitted like airlocks with no external latches.

  The amber strip led through branching corridors, occasionally going downward by ramps. The building sighed and murmured like a sleeping beast.

  Howard tried to imagine the Thief of Baghdad dancing away from foes in this featureless warren, but he quickly gave it up as a bad job. It was like trying to imagine King Kong on the set of2001.

  The strip of light stopped at a closed door. Howard eyed the blank panel, then tried knocking. It was like rapping his knuckles on a bank vault, soundless and rather painful.

  "Hello?" he said diffidently. "Hello!"

  The corridor stretched to right and left, empty and silent. The amber glow had melted into the surrounding gray, leaving only a vague memory of itself. What would Robin Hood have done?

  "Hello!" Howard shouted. "Mister Popple!"

  "Hello," said the pleasant voice of the girl who'd come up behind him.

  Howard executed a leap and pirouette that would have done Robin-or for that matter, a Bolshoi prima ballerina-proud. "Wha?" he said.

  The girl was of middle height with short black hair and a perky expression that implied her pale skin was hereditary rather than a look."I'm afraid Wally gets distracted," she said with a smile."Come around through my rooms and I'll let you in from the side. The laboratory started out as a garage, you know."

  "Ah, I was told not to leave…" Howard said, tilting forward slightly without actually moving his feet from the point at which the guide strip had deposited him. After the guards' casual threats, he no longer believed that the worst thing that could happen to him in the Strange Mansion was that he'd lose his job.

  "Oh, give me that," the girl said. She deftly unpinned the badge from Howard's sweatshirt and pressed her thumb in the middle of its blankness, then handed it back to him. "There, I've turned it off."

  She walked toward the door she'd come out of, bringing Howard with her by her breezy nonchalance. He said, "Ah, you work here, miss?"

  "Actually, the only people who work here are Wally and the cleaning crews," the girl said. "And my father, of course. I'm Genie Strange."

  She led Howard into a room with low, Japanese-style furniture and translucent walls of pastel blue. It was like walking along the bottom of a shallow sea.

  "Have you known Wally long?" Genie said, apparently unaware that she'd numbed Howard by telling him she was Robert Strange's daughter."He's such a sweetheart, don't you think? Of course, I don't get to meet many people. Robert says that's for my safety, but…"

  "I've enjoyed my contact with Mr. Popple so far," Howard said. He didn't see any reason to amplify the truthful comment. Well, the more or less truthful comment.

  Genie opened another door at the end of the short hallway at the back of the suite. "Wally?" she called. "I brought your visitor."

  The laboratory buzzed like a meadow full of bees. The lighting was that of an ordinary office; Howard's eyes had adapted to the corridors' muted illumination, so he sneezed. If the room had been a garage, then it was intended for people who drove semis.

  Black silk hangings concealed the walls. Though benches full of equipment filled much of the interior, the floor was incongruously covered in Turkish rugs-runners a meter wide and four meters long-except for a patch of bare concrete around a floor drain in an outside corner.

  "Oh, my goodness, Mr. Jones!"said the wispy little man who'd been bent over a circuit board when they entered. He bustled toward them, raising his glasses to his forehead."I'd meant to leave the door open but I forgot completely. Oh, I Iphigenia, you must think I'm the greatest fool on Earth!"

  "What I think is that you're the sweetest person I know, Wally," the girl said, patting his bald head. He blushed crimson. "But just a little absentminded, perhaps."

  "Mr. Jones is going to help me advertise for a volunteer," Wally said to the girl. "I don't see how we can get anybody, and we reallymust have someone, you know."

  "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Jones," Genie said, offering her hand with mock formality.

  "Ah, Howard, please," Howard said. "Ah, I have a position with Strangeco. A very lowly one at present."

  "That's what my father likes in employees," Genie said in a half-joking tone. "Lowliness. My stepfather, I should say. Mother buried two husbands, but Robert buried her."

  Howard shook h
er hand, aware that he was learning things about the Wizard of Fast Food that the tabloids would pay good money for. Remembering the uneasiness he'd felt while walking through the mansion, he also realized that the money he'd get for invading Strange's privacy couldn't possibly be good enough.

  An area twenty feet square in the center of the lab was empty of equipment. Across it, beyond Wally as Howard faced him, was what looked like an irregular, razor-thin sheet of glass on which bright images flickered. If that was really the flat-plate computer display it looked like, it was more advanced than anything Howard had heard of on the market.

  "Well, Mr. Popple…" Howard said. If the conversation continued in the direction Genie was taking it, Howard would learn things he didn't think he'd be safe knowing. "If you could tell me just what you need from me?"

  "Oh, please call me Wally," the little man said, taking Howard's hand and leading him toward the thin display. "You see, this piece of mica is a, well, a window you could call it."

  Wally glanced over his shoulder, then averted his eyes with another bright blush. As he'd obviously hoped, Genie was following them.

  "I noticed that shadows seemed to move in it," Wally said, peering intently at what indeed was a piece of mica rather than a high-tech construction. Hair-fine wires from a buss at the back touched the sheet's ragged circumference at perhaps a hundred places. "That was six years ago. By modulating the current to each sheet separately-it's not one crystal, you know, it's a series of sheets like a stack of paper and there's a dielectric between each pair-I was able to sharpen the images to, well, what you see now."

  Howard eyed the display. A group of brightly dressed people walked through a formal garden. The women wore dresses whose long trains were held by page boys, and the men were in tights and tunics with puffed sleeves. They carried swords as well, long-bladed rapiers with jeweled hilts.

  "How do you generate the images, Wally?"Howard said."This isn't fed from a broadcast signal, is it?"

  "They aren't generated at all," Genie said. "They're real. Show Howard how you can move the point of view, Wally."

  Obediently the little man stepped to the computer terminal on the bench beside the slab of mica. On the monitor was a graph with about thirty bars in each of two superimposed rows.

  Wally touched keys, watching the mica. A bar shrank or increased at each stroke, and the picture shifted with the jerking clarity of a rotated kaleidoscope.

  "Hey!" said Howard as what he thought was a lion turned and raised its feathered head. Its hooked beak opened and the long forked tongue vibrated in a cry which the mica didn't transmit. "That's a chimera!"

  "I thought so at first," said Genie, "but they're supposed to be part goat too."

  "I don't think it's anything that has a name in our world," Wally said, making further small adjustments. "Of course the people seem to be, well, normal."

  "Not normal where I come from!" Howard said. Except maybe in his dreams. "And what do you mean aboutour world? Where's that?"

  He pointed. The image tumbled into a scene of vividly dressed gallants fencing while a semicircle of women and other men watched. The duelists were good, damned good, and they didn't have buttons on their swords.

  "Robert thinks it's fairyland," Genie said. Her tone was neutral, but Howard heard emotion just beneath the surface of the words. "He thinks Wally's a wizard. Robert also thinks he's a wizard himself."

  "Your father has been very generous in supporting my researches, Iphigenia," the little man said, glancing toward but not quite at Genie. "I wish I could convince him that these effects are ordinary science-"

  He paused and added self-consciously, "Ordinary physics, at any rate. I'm afraid my researches have been too empirical to qualify as proper science. But the underlying laws are physical, not magic."

  The mica showed the dim interior of a great hall, the sort of place that Howard had imagined the Strange Mansion might be. A troupe of acrobats capered on the rush-strewn flagstones, executing remarkable jumps while juggling lighted torches.

  Splendid men and gorgeous women watched from tables around the margins of the hall, and over the balcony railings peered children and soberly dressed servants. At the center of the high table was a grave, bearded man wearing a crown. He held a crystal staff in which violet sparks danced.

  Beside the king, occasionally rubbing its scaly head on the back of his carved throne, was a dragon the size of a rhinoceros. It didn't look exactly unfriendly, but its eyes had the trick of constantly scanning in every direction.

  "I…"said Howard. "Wally, this is wonderful, just completely amazing, but I don't understand what you want me for. You've already succeeded!"

  The image shifted again. Instead of answering, Wally gazed with rapt attention at the new scene. A spring shot from a wooded hillside to splash over rocks into a pool twenty feet below. Butterflies hovered in the flowery glade; in the surrounding forest were vine-woven bowers.

  "Wally built the window on his own," Genie said in a low voice."What Robert is interested in is opening a door into… that."

  She nodded toward the mica. A couple, hand in hand, walked toward the pool. The man knelt, dipped a silver goblet into the limpid water, and offered it to the lovely woman at his side. She sipped, then returned the cup for him to drink in turn.

  Wally shuddered as though he'd been dropped into the pool. He tapped his keyboard several times at random, blurring the image into a curtain of electronic snow.

  He turned to Howard and said, speaking very quickly to focus his mind somewhere other than where it wanted to go, "Mr. Strange felt that if we could see the other place, we could enter it. A person could enter it. He's correct-I sent a rabbit through the portal last week-but I don't think anyone will be willing to go when they realize how dangerous it is. That's why I need you to help me write the advertisement for the volunteer, Mr. Jones."

  This was going to work better if the little guy was relaxed… which probably wouldn't happen as long as Genie Strange was in the same room, that was obvious, but Howard at least had to try to calm him down.

  "Howard, Wally," Howard said, patting Wally on the shoulder. "Please call me Howard. Now, what's dangerous about the trip? Do you wind up wearing a fly's head if things go wrong?"

  "No, it wasn't that, Mister-ah, Howard," Wally said, pursing his lips. "The problem occurred later."

  He adjusted the values on his display again, bringing the image of the royal entertainment back onto the mica. A young girl danced on the back of a horse which curveted slowly, its hooves striking occasional sparks from the flagstones. It was pretty ordinary-looking except for the straight horn in the center of its forehead.

  Seeing that Wally wasn't going to say more, Howard raised an eyebrow to Genie. She shrugged and said, "I didn't see it myself-Robert won't let me in here while the tests are going on. But all that really happened is that the rabbit hopped out, perfectly all right, and a lizard ate it. The same thing could have happened anywhere."

  "The lizard stared at the poor rabbit and drew it straight into its jaws, step by step," Wally said without looking at the others."It knew it was doomed but it went anyway. I've never in my life seen anything so horrible."

  Then you don't watch the TV news a lot, Howard thought. Aloud he said, "It was a basilisk, you mean? Not just a lizard?"

  "It was a lizard," Wally insisted stubbornly."But it wasn't a lizard from, well, this world. It was horrible, and there are any number of other horrible things over there. It's really too dangerous to send somebody into that world, but that's the only way we can get… things."

  "Well, an assault rifle ought to take care of any basilisks that come by," Howard said reasonably. "Or dragons either, which is more to the point. Basilisks aren't supposed to be big enough to eat people."

  He sighed."I hate to say this, Wally, but science always seems to win out over romance. Ireally hate to say it."

  "But that's just what I mean, Howard," Wally said despairingly."I had a leash on the bunny so I co
uld pull it back, but it didn't pass through the portal. The leash was still lying on the floor when the bunny disappeared. The volunteer won't be able to take a gun or even clothes, and I really don't believe he'll be able to bring the scepter back for Mr. Strange."

  "Robert thinks that purple scepter gives the fairy king his power," Genie said, her hands clasped behind her back as if to underscore the restraint in her voice. "Robert wants someone to go through Wally's portal and steal the scepter."

  With absolutely no feeling she added, "Robert sacrificed a black hen the night Wally sent the rabbit through. He did it over the drain there-"

  She nodded toward the bare concrete.

  "-but you can still smell the blood caught in the pipe. Can't you?"

  "Now, Iphigenia," Wally said, blushing again. "Your father has his ways, but he's been very generous with me."

  Howard's nose wrinkled. He'd noticed a faint musty odor, but the room was so ripe with the smells of electronics working-ozone, hot insulation, and flux-that he hadn't given any thought to it. He still wasn't sure that what he smelled was rotting blood rather than mildew or wet wool, but now that Genie'd spoken he wouldn't be able to get the other notion out of his mind.

  "Wally, you're a genius!" the girl said so forcefully as to sound hostile. "You could go anywhere and find somebody to fund your work! I only wish you had."

  Wally turned and looked her in the face for the first time. "Thank you for saying that, Iphigenia," he said, "but it isn't true. I went many places after I first saw what the mica could do, and they all sent me away. Your father thinks I'm a magician and he's wrong; but he doesn't call me crazy or a charlatan."

  A door-the door that the light had led Howard to-opened. Robert Strange, identifiable from the rare photos that appeared in news features but much craggier andharsher in person, stepped through. He wore a long-sleeved black robe embroidered with symbols Howard didn't recognize, and through the sash at his waist he'd thrust a curved dagger of Arab style. Hilt and scabbard both were silver but decorated with runes filled with black niello.