Science and Sorcery (45 page)

“They’ve called you already?”  Matt asked.  “Lesage moves quick, doesn't he?”

“Yep,” Buckley said.  “Apparently, Team Six is going back on the hunt for terrorists in Afghanistan – and they want a werewolf to help.”

Matt had to smile.  Werewolves were
very
good at tracking people, particularly people who didn't have the power or imagination to cast spells to prevent easy tracking – and Joe was almost indestructible to boot.  He could easily imagine a werewolf slinking after a Taliban attack force, following them all the way to their lair and then crashing in to tear them apart.  Or, perhaps, calling in an airstrike and watching them all die in fire.  The Mage Force could have used Buckley, but there were four other newly-created werewolves now.  And he
had
wanted to go back to the military.

He held out a hand.  “Good luck, Joe,” he said.  “Just be careful who you bite.  We don't want terrorist werewolves among our enemies.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Buckley assured him.  “If they could stone a little boy to death for making a chair dance across a room, they’ll never bother trying to keep a werewolf alive.”

Matt rather doubted that – terrorists had been claiming credit for the disaster in New York ever since Harrow had been defeated – but he held his peace.

“And come back alive,” he added.  “The doctors want to do more tests.”

“More tests?”  Buckley asked.  “I’d sooner die.”

***

“See?”  Mindy said.  “
That’s
how you turn someone into a toad.”

The frog sat on the ground, blinking owlishly at her.  It had
been
another magician, one of the older ones who had volunteered for government service, until he'd annoyed Mindy to the point where she’d tried a spell Calvin had suggested to her.  The
mana
level on the base was quite high and the spell, somewhat to her surprise, had worked perfectly.  Looking over at the scientists who were trying to monitor
mana
and its effect on the universe, it struck her that they looked to be in absolute disbelief.  They didn't seem to even believe their own eyes.

“But he was a big guy,” one of them was protesting.  “What the fuck happened to the rest of his mass?”

He looked over at Mindy.  “How did you do it?”

Mindy hesitated.  In truth, she didn't know – which, as Miss Reynolds had pointed out, might be why she’d succeeded.  Fireballs were easy, but actually transfiguring a person into something a great deal smaller was much harder to understand.  Calvin could probably have put it all into words, but Mindy had to settle for shrugging – and the knowledge that none of the others were likely to complain again about having to study with a kid.  She might be eight years old, yet she knew more about magic than anyone else.  Apart from the remainder of the Thirteen, of course.  They still haunted her nightmares every time she slept.

“I just did it,” she said, finally. 

“Very good,” Miss Reynolds said.  Only someone who knew her well would have detected the brittleness in her tone.  “And can you turn him back?”

Mindy grinned at her.  “Of course,” she said, and reached out with her mind.  There was a blinding flash of light and the toad became a human again.  “See?  I
can
turn someone into a toad.”

“And you don't have to kiss him afterwards too,” one of the other students muttered.

After the class was finished, Mindy wandered through the base until she finally reached the tiny graveyard.  Calvin was buried there in an unmarked grave, she knew; the country was hardly likely to provide him with a proper funeral, even after he’d sacrificed his afterlife to bring down Harrow.  Their parents had apparently already been resettled somewhere in California, without ever expressing a desire to see their children again.  But Miss Reynolds was a better mother than her natural mother had ever been. 

There were a handful of ghosts hanging around the graveyard, but none of them looked familiar.  Mindy ignored them as best as she could – one piece of advice from Golem had been to ignore the dead, or they might stop ignoring you – and quietly said her prayers for Calvin’s soul.  It was impossible to believe that everyone became a ghost when they died, if only because the entire planet would be covered in ghosts.  But no one seemed to know what happened to human souls that went onwards.  Countless religions existed to suggest answers to that question, yet no one really
knew
. 

Officer Coombs – who’d told her to call him Matt – had said that Calvin had lived badly and died well, which had struck Mindy as faint praise.  But he was right and Calvin himself had admitted as much.  And now Calvin was gone completely.  She knew that everyone else lost their loved ones when they died – and she’d been lucky to be able to speak with Calvin’s ghost – but it still hurt.  And she knew that the rest of the Thirteen were out there, waiting for their own chance to return to the world of men.  Calvin had warned her that she would have to help stop them.

Shaking her head, she turned and walked away from the graveyard.  It was time to return to work.

Epilogue

Tehran, Iran

Day 55

She was going to be married.

Hamideh lay on her bed, trying to come to terms with what her father had decided for her.  She was going to be married, not to someone she liked or even someone she knew, but to a man who was one of her father’s political allies.  It didn't matter that he was older than her father, or that he had been married twice before; her father wanted to cement the alliance between them in the oldest possible way.  Hamideh had protested, and then screamed, only to discover that it was useless.  She was going to be married.

She’d feared that it would happen one day, no matter how hard she studied or tried to carve a career out for herself.  Indeed, the only thing that had kept her father from marrying her off earlier had been his determination to ensure that his daughter would receive a good match.  And, on the face of it, it
was
a good match.  Her intended husband was wealthy, politically powerful and generally seen as untouchable.  But she didn't want to marry him.

There had been no man in her life.  Iranian girls knew to be very careful when they made contact with men, for the religious police might catch them and beat them – and she knew just what her father would say if she was caught with a man.  She’d never dared respond to any flirtations, but now she wished she had.  If she'd given up her virginity...her father would probably have sent her to America to have her virginity surgically replaced.  Or Japan, or somewhere else where she might have made her escape...

But even that was futile. 

She knew very little about the outside world.  What would she do, without her father and his money?  How could she live elsewhere, even if she could
get
elsewhere?  She could walk out of the house and then...where could she go?  There were no bars around her, but she couldn’t avoid feeling that she was in a prison cell.  And when she was married, she would be in a prison of a different sort.  She wasn't ignorant; she knew what happened in the martial bed.  The thought of an elderly overweight man slobbering over her was horrifying...

“Then learn to do something about it,” a voice said.

Hamideh jumped and spun around.  A man – his face seemed oddly blurred – was standing behind her, leaning against the wall.  She stared in absolute disbelief, wondering just how he’d managed to walk through the guards and into the female quarters.  No man, apart from her father, was supposed to enter her rooms.  And this man had just walked inside.

And then a strange calm fell over her.

“I can’t do something about it,” she said.  It struck her that she should be scared, yet she just felt calm and relaxed.  “My father won’t let me escape my marriage.”

“You have a talent,” the man said.  “You can use it, if you like.”

He smiled.  “You may call me Strife,” he said.  “I'm here to help.”

End of Book One

Do you want a sequel?  Let me know!

Afterword

[I normally write about politics in my afterwords.  But this time I thought I should address a different topic.]

There are movies where the bullied kid gets a lesson in badass from someone and beats the shit out of his tormentor.  Afterwards, the tormentor becomes a great friend of his former victim and everyone lives happily ever afterwards.  There’s just one small problem with those cheerful movies ...

They’re utter nonsense. 

People who have never been bullied rarely understand it.  I received feedback from several people who read
Science And Sorcery
and thought that Calvin was unrealistic and/or the blackest villain.  I’m not going to dispute that Calvin went well over the line.  I have no sympathy for Moe, if only because I’ve known too many people like him, but for the rest of it?  Rape, murder, high treason ... Calvin turned to the dark side, at least long enough to unleash Harrow.  His actions were indefensible.

But unrealistic ...?

I’d like to tell you about a guy I know.

He was bullied at school.  He spent four years in a school in Scotland, during which time there was hardly a day when he wasn’t attacked by his schoolmates.  He was punched, kicked and shoved around, insulted and degraded – it went on and on, with no end in sight.  There was no safety, no place he could go to hide.  He told his teachers and they did nothing.  His behaviour at home worsened; he picked on his siblings until they grew large enough to stand up to him.  He found petty and spiteful ways to strike back against his tormentors (destroying their school notes, for example) that did nothing beyond granting him some brief satisfaction ...

The experience left scars on his soul.  He was nervous and withdrawn around almost everyone, even after he left the school, for years.  Making friends was difficult, almost impossible; he largely withdrew into his own world.  Pain (physical or emotional) was bottled up inside.  Sometimes, he lashed out verbally or physically at people who had done nothing to deserve it.  In some ways, he never really grew up.  When confronted with a stressful situation, he almost collapsed. 

And this guy was one of the lucky ones.

People have died because of bullying.  They become so broken, so convinced that no one can or will help them, that they give up all hope and commit suicide.  Or they become convinced that everyone is against them, to the point that they take guns into school and open fire, gunning down their classmates – the innocent along with the guilty.  Except, of course, there are no
innocent
in their minds.  There are merely the bullies and those who did nothing to stop them. 

I don’t care what excuses the bullies put forward to justify themselves – if they actually bother to justify their own actions.  And I simply do not have the words to express my contempt for those who
make
excuses for bullies.  Maybe they have abusive parents.  Maybe their elder siblings picked on them.  Maybe they were adopted.  Maybe they’re on drugs or have ‘conditions’ that make it hard for them to control their behaviour.  Maybe they’re simply too young to know better.

Bullshit. 

One person being abused does not justify them abusing others – and make no mistake; bullying is abuse.  Bad lives do not justify making others have bad lives – and make no mistake; being bullied is a bad life.  A person with mental problems who cannot help himself should not be left in a position where they can hurt other people.  And if they are old enough to bully someone, they’re old enough to know better.

It’s easy to say that the bullied will suffer later in life as their bad habits catch up with them.  Someone who is only capable of responding to his peers through violence and intimidation  will probably run into trouble with the law.  An act that might be laughed off, even tacitly condoned, in a school could lead to arrest or unemployment in the adult world.  Sure, there are bullies who grow up to be managers or human resources directors – but most bullies are going to be in deep trouble if they try their act when they grow up. 

The problem is that this is no consolation to their victims in the here and now.

Kids – and teenagers - simply don’t have a sense of long-term planning.  Delayed gratification is a joke for young children; they don’t really believe that they will ever grow up.  I remember being eleven and thinking that sixteen would simply never come – and now I’m thirty.  You tell a bullied child that his tormentor will be in jail when he grows up and he won’t take it as any consolation.  Why should he?  Adulthood never comes. 

It is a natural human reaction to side with the strong – or at least to refuse to confront them.  That is, among other things, the secret to maintaining a dictatorship.  In schools, the bullied child often finds themselves completely isolated from the rest of the children; the onlookers don’t want to be bullied themselves, so they stay away from the one who attracts bullies.  Never mind that that isn't fair or right – kids don’t reason that way.  The bullied child is a victim twice over, a victim of the bully and of his fellow classmates, the ones who do nothing to help.

Or is he a victim
three
times over?

If you're being bullied, tell a teacher.  Or so a piece of advice went, when I was at school.  It was an anti-bullying campaign that included brightly-coloured leaflets, lectures given by cheerful visitors on how the different really aren’t that different after all ... and lots of other crap I have gratefully forgotten.  The sad truth is that the bullied child, upon complaining to a teacher, often receives no help – and a reputation as a sneak. 

Why don’t the teachers do anything?  There are all sorts of reasons – and they are all pathetic.  Some teachers may not like the victim.  Some may think that the bully is more important than the victim (this often happens in schools where sports are important).  Some may believe that the bully has an excuse (see above) and expect them to grow out of it.  Some may actually be afraid of the bully – yes, this does happen.  Some are afraid of the consequences to their career if they try to stop it. 

Bullying is corrosive.  It is bad for the victim, who may snap and commit suicide – or carry out the next school shooting.  It is bad for the bully, who is learning bad habits that will not serve him well in adulthood.  It is bad for the onlookers, who will learn to knuckle under to the strong (“first they came for the Jews ...”).  It is bad for the teachers, who will lose authority – and the respect of their pupils.  It is bad for the parents, who may do something drastic to deal with the situation. 

Every anti-bullying campaign I’ve seen has been an expensive waste of paper, at best.  So are most anti-bullying strategies.  The messages teachers send are often the wrong ones – “you are both partly right and partly wrong” – and sometimes even serve as a gourd to further bullying.  The bullies need strong deterrents to stop them.  Those deterrents are rarely provided.

There is no acceptable excuse for bullying someone.  Teachers have to make that clear to the students – without worrying about their self-esteem.  The self-esteem of a bully does not matter compared to the self-esteem of their victims.  Imagine taking a paedophile’s feelings into account when dealing with him.  Now why should teachers be worried about the feelings of the bully, who can leave scars that last just as long on their victim’s soul?

Sometimes, you just have to say NO.  And then enforce it with as much force as necessary.

Christopher G. Nuttall

Kota Kinabalu, 2013