Dragon's Teeth (60 page)

For Those About To Rock

Mercedes Lackey and Dennis Lee

I drink a lot of coffee and tea; I have a minifreezer just for the coffee, ’cause I order it bulk, delivered. Today was a day I was glad I had a lot of backstock, because I was going to need a lot of coffee. Djinni was out on another solo job and Bell had ordered me to keep tabs on him with Overwatch. Keeping track of the Djinni on solo is a lot like keeping track of a flea on a hot griddle; it taxes even my considerable capabilities. Though that’s mostly because he hates magic so much.

Jeebus. Hates magic. We were not exactly talking right now. We’d had this . . . explosion.

Actually, he’d snapped at me and jabbed me in the proverbial gut, right when and where I was most vulnerable. It’s as if he has radar for that kind of thing.

This was how it happened. The explosion, I mean. He’d been on another solo job, right after the Goldman Catacombs. Not a surprise, since he recovers faster than anyone I had ever seen. There’d been a news story just before he went out, courtesy of Spin Doctor. We’d both caught it. He thought it was hilarious.

I was in the Overwatch room, he was on the system. “. . . and for those curious about last night’s specTACular lightshow over the Nevada desert,” he’d mimicked, “rest assured, those were your own, your brave, your heroic boys and girls of ECHO on some routine training maneuvers. ECHO, training to keep you, your loved ones and America safe!” He’d snorted. “Training maneuvers. Gotta love that friendly fire then. Feels good to be out of the infirmary. Was getting tired of Scope’s retching anytime a new layer of skin grew back.”

I’d been raw, still trying to get over Herb. “Remind me again why this thing of yours is supposed to be a
super
power?” But I had a job to do, Overwatch on the Bad Boy.

He’d been surprisingly civil. “Hey Victrix. You better?”

I’d toyed with being honest, decided on a white lie. “If I say ‘no,’ Spin Doctor will read me the riot act for ‘negative impact on morale.’ I’m fine, thanks for asking.” I just hadn’t wanted to open myself up to him.

“Oh screw him.” He sounded gruffly sympathetic. “He was pushing me to reveal my real face, for the sake of good press.”

I tried to sound light. Probably hadn’t succeeded. “It would be, if you look like Brad Pitt. If you look like Emo Phillips, not so much.” I couldn’t help it. It slipped out. After all Djinni was the only person besides Bella that . . . knew. Knew that what I’d called up hadn’t been just this giant rock Elemental, but a very dear friend. “I miss Herb.”

There was a moment of hesitation. Then something unexpected. “Yeah . . . listen, I’m sorry about what happened to him.”

I don’t know why I said it . . . except that it was true. And maybe he needed to hear that I
knew
this. “Magic has a price. Always does. Always will.”

He sounded surprised. “Hey, that’s my line.”

Finally I asked. “That why you hate it? Everything has a price, you just don’t always know about it.” I guess maybe I was trying to figure a way to make him understand not just where I was coming from, but about how seriously I took magic. How it was so much a part of me that magic and me couldn’t be separated, and I understood the risks I was taking, dancing on the edge of quantum physics as I was.

He’d paused, a long pause on the freq. “That sums it up, I’d say. Professional habit. I like knowing the odds before going in, and magic complicates that. It’s hard to give estimates to a client when the potential pitfalls of a job range from ‘papercut’ to ‘complete and utter obliteration of everything in existence.’”

I’d raised an eyebrow over that. What the hell had he—or someone he knew—been tinkering with in his deep, dark past? “Hmm. I take it you’ve never worked with a properly trained mage before. Odds of the latter are pretty insignificant most of the time.”

The reply I’d gotten was not anything like I wanted. I’d intended it as an opening. I got dissed. “Fine, whatever.”

Well one of the advantages of being Overwatch is they can’t turn you off. Not without taking out the earpiece, and he didn’t dare, not on a job. “Hey. Look I’m not trying to blow smoke up your ass here. Yeah, things can get nasty, yeah, there’s a price, and yeah, there is a quantum uncertainty thing going on, but a properly trained mage has the equivalent of a PhD in Nuclear Physics. Sure, the odds of turning on a linear accelerator and blowing up the universe are there, but they’re pretty small. Most of the time. A trained mage knows the risks and the costs and knows when to back down on the bad ones. Unless, of course, you’re trying to
prevent
the blowing up of the universe, in which case, the risk you take is probably worth it.”

The anger in his voice was very real. “And what gives you the right, any of you, to mess with shit like that?”

Where the hell had
that
come from? I was just as angry, how
dared
he? What did he know? And how about all those perfectly ordinary people out there who took horrible risks using nothing more but their hands and their brains? Or all the metas who took risks that
always
endangered the innocent? Wasn’t that why ECHO had the DCOs in the first place? “What gives you metas the right to do what you do? And you—what about you? You weren’t exactly fighting the good fight until you got dragooned into ECHO.”

His voice dripped with contempt, as if I was some stupid teenager who’d been playing games with the DoD computers in Iron Mountain. “Christ, get some perspective, lady. I’ll admit I’ve never been a boy scout, but I wasn’t messing with primal forces. You want to argue the relative morality of what I did with trying to control the fabric of reality? Good luck.”

The arrogant, judgemental son of a—oh he’d pushed my buttons but good. “Arthur C. Clarke: ‘Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ From where I sit there are plenty of people besides mages messing with the fabric of reality. Including plenty of metas.”

He had an answer for that, too. “So? I’m hardly defending any of those douchebags. Magic, science, anything and anyone with the audacity to mess with crap on that scale is an asshole.”

I’d snorted my own contempt. “So you’d prefer it if everyone went back to living in caves? You can’t pick and choose.”

Now his voice just dripped scorn. “You’re big with the absolutes, aren’t you? Someone who invents the wheel? Good job. Someone who tries to ignite a new sun in Kansas? Douchebag.”

So who had died and appointed
him
Lord High Everything Else? “Look, brainiac, on some level everyone with strong enough willpower messes with the fabric of reality. That’s what luck is! You want something bad enough, if there’s not enough force opposing you, by damn, you get it! That’s why one of the Prime Laws is ‘Be careful what you wish for’! Even YOU. Bet you have done just that, and gotten it. Bet you any amount of money you have.”

Evidently I had pushed one of his buttons right back. If words were weapons, he’d skewered me with them then. “Right, ’cause you know so much about me! Victoria Victrix, the lady with ALL the answers! Tell me you’ve got it all down, that you have it all figured out, that you knew what would happen to Herbert!”

I froze. The hurt—it felt like a heart attack for a minute. Finally I managed to say something. “Transmitting your requested info. Overwatch out.”

I still heard him, of course, heard the sudden guilt, the contrition, the instant before I shut the comm down. “Shit . . . Victrix! I’m sorry dammit!”

But it was too late.

So now it was two days later, and I was settling in with the closest thing I could get to Tim Horton’s coffee (dark roast, pinch of salt on the grounds, double cream, double sugar) and wondering if I could stand to listen to his voice. If he’d skewer me again. Of course I was feeling much, much better now, since Herb was back. In fact, the now-little Elemental was perched on one of the desks, watching the monitors curiously.

Bella had been all over me to kiss and make up. I guess she’d been at him . . . more directly, because when I put on the headset and opened the feed the first thing I heard was, “Word to the wise—when Bella knocks on your door, get ready to duck, she’s got a mean suckerpunch. Ow.”

I couldn’t help it. I felt a smirk coming on. “Jaw hurt?” I asked sweetly.

“Would that make you happy?” His tone was quite neutral.

Honesty, or not? I opted for prevarication. “Yes and no. I’d be lying if I gave an unqualified no. But hey, schadenfreude. You have a solo job. I’m supposed to inform you because you haven’t been checking your email, phone or PDA. There. You’ve been informed. You’re also on Overwatch at Bell’s insistence.”

“Thanks.” A very long pause. “Victrix?”

I was bringing up my camera feeds. And I was not at all inclined to be anything other than chill and civil. “Yes, Red Djinni?”

“I really am sorry.”

I don’t often explode. That’s Bella’s thing. I’m usually . . . ok; face it I am usually huddling in a corner shaking in every limb rather than dealing with anger and confrontation. But this time I exploded. “You’re an unmitigated cream-faced spleeny unwashed bugbear. A pustulant boor. A ham-handed, toad-spotted malcontent. A beslubbering, pickle-brained pigeon egg. A lumpish folly-fallen apple-john. A qualling ill-breeding malcontent. A clouted common-kissing wagtail. A . . . ” I groped for words. They weren’t there. “Damn. I’m running out of Shakespearian insults.”

“S’ok. Thanks for putting in the effort.” That kind of floored me. What the hell did that mean?

Well at least I wouldn’t have to talk to him for long. “We’re supposed to keep radio silence on this one. We only break it if you’re in too deep to get out alone.” Or alive, but he would know that was what I meant.

“No constant Overwatch?” He sounded surprised.

Well of course I
could.
But . . . him and magic. Again. “Nothing you’d accept.”

Then he floored me a second time. “What about a magic line?”

The hell? I nearly inhaled my coffee. “I thought you were against me messing with the fabric of the universe.”

“I think the universe will hold up to one arcane phone call.” When he said that, I almost went to the window to see if there were pigs flying in attack formation over the Varsity.

OK. OK. Let’s make this the littlest and least intrusive thing I could. “Safest and smallest would be a light charm to link the PDAs and text.” Why text? Cause the spell to make what appeared on his screen also appear on mine was . . . well it was easy, small, and used less magic than lighting a candle.

Which, by the way, is the single most cliched way to show you are a mage in the entire universe. So don’t do it, OK? Just don’t. It only impresses the rubes. It makes the rest of us sigh and roll our eyes.

I couldn’t read his voice, but his words were clear enough. “All right, make it happen.”

I did. A few moments later I was typing.
Testing.

Agh! My testicles!
This is what passes for Djinni humor.

OK, it was funny.

Dr. Ruth has a pill for that,
I replied.
You want 2027 West Catalpa. Surveillance. Possible Doppelganger sighting. Definite explosives, hence radio silence. They know there’s a bomb maker in there and they know he’s using a radio transmitter to detonate, but they don’t know what freqs he has his detonators set for. I can’t find out magically because I don’t know who he is, I don’t have anything of his to use as a target. And I can’t find out by computer because I don’t know his IP address and there’s nothing around there I can hack to find it. Which makes the technomancy out on both counts.
I was babbling, overexplaining. Why was I doing this? What about this man made me double-think myself, made me think I had to explain anything to him? I couldn’t help it. It was like scratching at a scab.
Rules. There are rules to this magic stuff. Lots of rules. Unless, of course, you don’t mind killing and hurting a lot of people, including random strangers and yourself.

His reply was . . . well . . . right on.
Christ, even texting you talk a lot. Alright, objective?

That was simpler, and required no overexplanation.
Determine if DG is in there or not. If not, get Bomb Boy out without him setting off anything. If so, let me know and wait for backup.

K. I should be at destination in 15 minutes.

Now . . . let me get this straight, here. When I say I have the magic equivalent of a Ph.D. in Astrophysics, I am not kidding. Yes, there are instinctive mages. And some of them, a very few, are very good. Those few are the equivalent of natural athletes, or people who sing opera well with no training. The rest? They’re like every yahoo who says, “Hold my beer” and thinks he can drive like Mario Andretti or Paul Newman. Not. Gonna. Happen. Oh, they can get where they are going, most of the time, but there’s a lot of flailing and flogging and very often, very, very often, there is collateral damage.

And yes, there are the old “Fam-Trad” mages, trained in the traditional manner, by a family or coven member. Things mostly work. They mostly never stray out of the family recipe book. They honestly do not know what they are working with, in the same sense that people drive cars every day and have no idea of the mechanics and physics of an internal combustion engine.