Science and Sorcery (44 page)

Somehow, he pulled himself to his feet.  His mind seemed to be flickering in and out of consciousness, probably caused by the Niven’s Wheels.  He could certainly see
mana
leeching from Harrow’s wards and merging with the growing store in the Wheels, slowly threatening to destabilise and explode.   It was quite possible that the spells Enchanter had used to make him – and preserve him through the long absence of
mana
– were breaking apart too.  But it hardly mattered.  Harrow had already killed him.

He lumbered out of the damaged building and advanced on Harrow.  She was in serious trouble, her wards no longer linked directly to her mind.  Golem hadn't expected Calvin to be able to do anything to slow her down, but he’d clearly underestimated the little brat.  Maybe he would be able to redeem himself after all.  Pushing the thought aside, he stepped into Harrow’s wards and started to press through them.  They were already weakening under the constant bombardment.  Right now, he could break them.

Harrow seemed to be kneeling on the ground, her hands gripping her head as she sought to destroy the ghost.  She’d never considered the possibilities of a ghost having a link to her, Golem realised, or she would never have allowed it to happen.  But it was too late now; grimly, Golem broke through the second set of wards, and then the third.  The shortage in
mana
was making it harder for the wards to reform without her direct input.  And she had too much else to worry about...

She opened her eyes and looked up at him.  Golem smiled as he broke through the fourth set of wards, reaching for her skull.  It would be easy to crush it and the rest of her body down to powder, which could be sealed inside a can and then dumped into the ocean.  Even the most powerful rejuvenation spell in existence would have problems bringing her back after that. 

Harrow’s eyes flashed with red fire and she lashed out at him with raw magic, all bent to a single purpose.  Golem felt flames tearing through his body, burning through his protections, and then there was nothing, but darkness.

***

Harrow watched the Homunculi disintegrate with heavy satisfaction.  It had been well-protected, astonishingly well-protected, but it couldn't stand up to raw magic.  Very little in the universe could.  Enchanter’s final and greatest creation shattered in front of her, each fragment containing a tiny hint of its essence, preventing any hope of reassembly.  Besides, one of the spells she’d added to the mix should have consumed it’s makeshift soul, as easily as she'd finally destroyed Calvin.  It was a shame, really.  A little more ruthlessness and the boy would have made a promising sorcerer.

And then she realised her dreadful mistake.  Too late.

***

Matt saw Golem disintegrate in a sheet of red fire, followed rapidly by Harrow’s wards collapsing into nothingness.  She’d lost the ability to hold her wards together, or to protect herself at all.  He lifted his rifle and opened fire again, watching as the bullets tore into her undefended body.  The SEALs opened fire too, countless bullets ripping her apart.  Harrow seemed to scream mentally, a howl that echoed in all of their minds, and then her presence simply vanished.  Matt stumbled forward as the SEALs stopped firing and looked down at the remains of Harrow of the Thirteen.  Her body had been disintegrated almost as thoroughly as Golem’s. 

And yet there was an odd sense of something biding its time, a sense of
potential
...

“I think we won,” he said, finally.  He looked back down at the body.  Was it his imagination, or was it moving very slowly?  “Get a clean-up crew out here – we have a body to destroy.”

Shaking his head, he looked over at the fragments that were all that remained of Golem.  Enchanter’s greatest creation had given his life to save the modern world, a world that might have rejected him purely for not being human, a world that might have recoiled from the simple implications of his existence.  He picked up one of the clay fragments and looked down at it, trying to sense a hint of Golem’s presence.  But it felt as mundane as the clay pots he’d made in school.

“We need to get Mindy to the hospital,” Misty snapped.  She and two of the SEALs were bent over the child, who was bleeding from her nose and ears, her face twisted in torment.  “Call a helicopter!”

“I’ll see to it,” Joe Buckley said.  The werewolf looked scorched, but alive.  “Did we really win?”

Matt looked around.  New York had been devastated, thousands of people were dead and the remainder of the population would be in shock.  It would take years to recover from the devastation Harrow had inflicted and
she
was the weakest of the Thirteen.  But perhaps, given time, they'd be able to beat the others with science and sorcery. 

“I think so,” he said finally.  “Don’t jinx it.”

Chapter Forty-Four

Washington DC, USA

Day 50

“And there are twelve more like her out there?”

Caitlyn nodded.  Unsurprisingly, the first thing Congress had done after New York had been liberated was to set up a Commission to investigate what had happened and why.  She’d spent the last few days testifying before it, along with everyone else who was even remotely involved in the search for Calvin, and then Harrow.  At least she’d been able to convince them that Matt, Misty and Mindy were too unimportant to be interrogated further.  The Mage Force needed them to spearhead the search for the remaining Thirteen.

“I’m afraid so,” she said.  Mindy had shared all of the memories she’d ripped out of Harrow’s mind, although they hadn't been certain how seriously to take them.  But Golem had warned that there were twelve more to come – and that Harrow had been the weakest of them, although her control over nightmares had given her an unexpected advantage.  “The others could appear anywhere.”

Harrow’s death had left New York in chaos and it had taken too long to rush emergency aid into the city.  Thousands of citizens were dead, either through mental collapse or the bombardment during the recovery mission, and hundreds of thousands more were suffering long-term trauma as a result of their experiences.  Everyone in New York still suffered nightmares, Caitlyn had been told, along with countless others who’d been at the edge of Harrow’s influence.  And Harrow was the
weakest
of the Thirteen.  What would the strongest be able to do?

Matt had chopped Harrow’s body into four separate pieces, exposed it to a Niven’s Wheel and then arranged for the pieces to be buried in different containers.  One had been dropped to the bottom of the sea, one had been launched into space using a kinetic spell that should have it halfway to Jupiter by now, one had been buried under a nuclear test site and the fourth had been stored in the labs, where the mage-researchers were studying it to see how Harrow had rendered herself effectively immortal.  Although she might be regretting it now, Caitlyn thought to herself.  No one could imagine how she could reconstruct her body from four wildly disparate locations. 

“Anywhere,” the Chairman repeated.

“Anywhere,” Caitlyn confirmed.  There were hundreds of thousands of places of power in the world, ranging from the obvious to the subtle.  Arlington Cemetery hadn't had thousands of years of history when Harrow used it to stage her return.  “We might see the next one appear in Africa, or China, or Russia...”

The thought made her scowl.  Harrow’s attack on Washington and then her capture of New York had sparked a major diplomatic incident.  The rest of the world was angry at the United States choosing to keep Golem’s existence – and that of the Thirteen – a secret, although the anger was mixed with a touch of sly amusement that it had been the US that had suffered worst because of the secrecy.  Besides, comparing Golem’s knowledge to what Calvin had passed down to Mindy, Caitlyn suspected that Golem’s teachings hadn't been as useful as he’d expected.  The clay-man hadn't known the basics of magic, nor had he been able to teach them very well.  A great deal of knowledge would simply have to be reinvented. 

But that raised another problem.  What if China or Russia made a deal with the next one of the Thirteen to appear?  Or, for that matter, one of the smaller rogue states?  She couldn’t see North Korea hesitating to sacrifice thousands of its citizens in exchange for vast power.  The United States had warned them of the dangers, but no one knew what would happen if they were given the opportunity to learn from the Thirteen.  If they
were
given the opportunity.

She settled back in her chair and concentrated on answering questions.  Congress
was
having problems coming to terms with what had happened, not least because the entire country was shell-shocked and demanding answers.  And because there was a strong feeling that magicians – and the Changed – were more trouble than they were worth.  Calvin had successfully blackened the name of every other magician, including ones who hadn't known that they
were
magicians yet.  At least one magician who’d come into his powers had been battered to death before he could learn to control them. 

“You have gone on the record as stating that we should take a mild view of any incidents when magicians discover their powers,” a different congresswoman said.  “And yet these incidents often include murder.  Should we
really
take such a forgiving attitude?”

Caitlyn scowled.  Politics.  “We have carefully researched the family and educational background of Calvin Jackson,” she said.  The NYPD had done most of the legwork, aided by prompts passed down from the Mage Force.  Caitlyn had carefully not told them that they came from Mindy’s conversations with her brother, prior to his ghost’s disappearance during the battle with Harrow.  “None of it makes pleasant reading.  He was bullied for years by his peers before his powers unlocked themselves and he lashed out at them.  We cannot term his first action as anything other than self-defence.”

“Three children died,” the congresswoman protested.  “How can you be so...callous?”

“Three teenagers with a reputation for bullying just about everyone,” Caitlyn said.  At least some good had come out of the situation.  Fairview High School’s principal had been forced to resign, while the remainder of the teachers had been reprimanded for failing to spot the signs of extensive bullying.  The NYPD had interviewed a number of other students and discovered that they’d all known what was going on.  They just hadn't bothered to do anything about it.  “The problem is that Calvin believed that he had nowhere to go.”

He’d been wrong, Caitlyn knew, but it was easy to see why he might believe that he was completely alone.  Moe and his cronies had been popular; Calvin was the weird isolated loner who kept himself to himself.  Moe’s bullying was tolerated because he was a sports star – although he was penny ante compared to the really
big
names of sport; Calvin was considered an expendable victim, precisely because he
was
unimportant.  Right now, every other new magician would be watching to see which way the government jumped.  If self-defence became a crime, they wouldn't come forward.  And even without Harrow’s training, a new magician could cause a hell of a lot of damage before being brought down.

Five days after the Battle of New York, a magician had started using his powers to rob banks and shops.  He’d been a petty criminal before coming into magic and he’d just continued committing crimes, rather than trying to make something of his life.  He hadn't been very Genre Savvy either; a police sniper had shot him down the moment he’d had a clear shot.  The remains had been cremated and then scattered in several unmarked graves, just to be sure.  But the next one might be smart enough to put up wards against bullets. 

The Congresswoman snorted.  “And you would forgive them their crimes?”

“We appear to have already forgiven the crimes of their tormentors,” Caitlyn pointed out, mildly.  There
was
a law against using magic to humiliate people, but there was
no
law against humiliating people without using magic.  Caitlyn knew that law wouldn't last; human nature simply wouldn't allow it.  Why should a tormented victim hold back when he had a chance to lash out at his tormentor?  “We don’t seem to hold bullies to account for their crimes.  That will have to change.”

She shook her head.  “We cannot tell – yet – what separates a magician from a regular human,” she concluded.  “That means that we cannot choose who is to be granted magical powers.  We need to make use of the ones who appear – and that means taking a forgiving attitude to their first magical actions.”

Caitlyn smiled as the conversation moved on to a different topic.  The media had picked up on just how Calvin had been treated, prior to becoming a magician, and had blown it out of all proportion.  Hopefully, the thought of being burned alive – or turned into a snail – would deter bullies in the future from bullying helpless victims.  Or maybe she was just being optimistic.  Bullies rarely bothered to consider that their victims would find a way to retaliate. 

Time would tell.

***

“I’m afraid we don't know how
Golem was created,” Jorlem admitted.  “And besides, all of his fragments seem to be completely drained of magic.”

Matt nodded, staring down at the baked clay and ashes that were all that remained of Golem.  Harrow had ripped him apart, even if in doing so she’d weakened herself to the point where she could be killed.  They’d tried putting the pieces together with new clay, then searching for spells that might have survived Harrow’s attack, but nothing seemed to work.  As far as they could tell, Golem was very definitely dead.

“Thank you for trying,” he said, finally.  Few of the early studies of Golem had shown any clue as to how Enchanter had created him, while later research had been pushed aside by the struggle to defeat Harrow.  Golem himself hadn't said much about how he’d been created; in hindsight, there had been a great deal Golem hadn’t told them, either through ignorance or through withholding information.  “I guess we’ll have to bury him.”

Jorlem gave him a sharp look.  “We could still use his body as a research tool...”

Matt shook his head.  “You shouldn't,” he said.  “You might as well cut up the body of a soldier for medical research.  Golem died to save the modern world.”

“Not all of it is grateful,” Jorlem pointed out.  “There are quite a few nuts out there complaining about the creation of artificial life.”

“Ignore them,” Matt said.  He shook his head.  “Can you have the remains transferred to an urn?  I want to see if we can get permission to bury him in Arlington.”

“I could see them having problems with that,” Jorlem pointed out.  “But he did die to save the country.  And his home is deep underwater.”

Matt nodded.  The Navy had finally dispatched a mission to where Atlantis had been, deep under the Atlantic Ocean, and the mermaids who’d done the first survey of the area had located the remains of the city.  In many ways, the discovery had shocked historical researchers, many of whom hadn't
believed
in Atlantis, but it had also galvanised interest in researching the long-lost time of magic and monsters. 

The survey work on Atlantis had barely begun, but one researcher had identified a mystery that was puzzling everyone.  Atlantis should never have been able to exist in the middle of the Atlantic.  It didn't seem to have been based on a tiny island, or a volcano – and it should have needed an island at least the size of Nantucket to survive.  Larry Niven, still working with the brainstorming trust, had suggested that Atlantis had been held on the surface by magic and had fallen under the waves when the magic had finally run out.  A Niven’s Wheel might become an immensely destructive weapon if used on such a target, if they ever managed to make a Wheel powerful enough to influence an entire city.  Or maybe a spell with the power of a baby nuke had destroyed Atlantis.  There was no way to know for sure.

Matt pushed the thought aside, looking over at Jorlem’s pile of research notes.  Hundreds of researchers were pushing the limits of the possible, studying
mana
and its uses – and trying to come up with defences that could be deployed against the remainder of the Thirteen.  Others were coming up with even stranger ideas about the relationship between mind and
mana
, a handful even wondering if the Thirteen might have been right to believe that they could jump into godhood.  And one even believed that space was full of
mana
and all they had to do was build a spacecraft and fly into orbit to gain unlimited power...

It didn't help that one well-known proponent of junk science had already started to claim that
mana
came from the sun, and that the destruction of the Ozone Layer and global warming was responsible for the return of
mana
.  Matt had suggested writing out a long explanation – complete with heavy sarcasm – about why that couldn't possibly be the case, but Caitlyn had pointed out that it was a waste of time.  Some people just never listened to reason. 

“I guess we’ll find out,” he said, finally.  He was due to travel to Chicago tomorrow to interview another prospective magician for the Mage Force.  “But we owe him a proper ceremony after everything he did for us.”

“Definitely,” Joe Buckley said, as he stepped into the office.  “I just came to say goodbye.”