The Book of Masks (Abridged)

The High Cost of Scientific Advance

YOU CAN ALWAYS CREATE another mask to experiment on; right now you are just eager to see what further surprises the book holds. So you turn your attention to the "sealing" spell. This one appears to be simpler than the mask-creation spell, and requires no materials you haven't on hand.

Mindful of what happened last time, you wait until the next day, when the rest of your family is outside or off running errands, before setting up the desk and fan near the window. You carefully draw the sigil, set a bowl in it, and begin mixing ingredients.

There are no explosions this time, though the bowl hisses menacingly at a couple of points. The result is a puddle of stuff with the consistency of paint, and with a brush you set about coating the mask's inner surface. It dries almost instantly. Luckily no polishing is required, and almost as soon as you are done a faint oval appears on the "sealing" page. You cover it with the mask, and are rewarded with a new spell.

Before examining it, though, you look over your recently "sealed" mask. Except for the new layer on its inner surface, it appears to be unchanged. Again, you take off your clothes and gingerly put it to your own face. Again, a deep feeling of drowsiness overcomes you, and you struggle to stay awake as warmth flows over your trunk and limbs. And then it evaporates, leaving you feeling very cold and shaky. You remove the mask and examine yourself: no changes to you or to the mask. You're not sure that you could have expected anything different. After all, would it have made sense to disguise yourself as yourself? At some point, you reflect, you are going to have to try it on someone else. But how to do that without tipping the fact that you have this mask, and a book that describes how to make it?

You toss the problem aside and return to the new spell. This one comes with an iconic image whose meaning you cannot recognize, and you sigh heavily when you get through translating the list of ingredients. It requires a bunch of stuff you don't already have, and some of them—like quicksilver—will be hard to find. You're in lower spirits still when you get through deciphering the instructions on making the mysterious new item: it will apparently be some kind of metal band onto which you will have to inscribe some complicated runes and symbols. That will require you to purchase some new tools as well.

You glance over at your top dresser drawer, where you keep your cash stash. It's already pretty depleted from your earlier purchases, and had been enough to cover those only because you had a bunch of birthday money saved up from August. You drum your fingers for awhile, until your hear voices from downstairs.

Your dad is watching TV as you come down, and he glances up only briefly when you ask if you can borrow some money. "How much," he asks, returning his attention to the ball game.

"Two hundred?"

That earns you his full attention. "What the hell for?"

"That science project?"

"Why doesn't Caleb pay for it?"

"Because I'm doing some side stuff on my own. I mean, it's related, but ..."

He eyes you carefully. "Why don't you take that part-time job instead of him?" You make a face. "If you don't, I don't see how you're going to pay me back."

"Caleb really wanted it."

"Then find another job for yourself." He turns back to the TV.

You could look for a job, but who knows how long it would take, and you're eager to get your hands on some cash now.

"If I applied for that job, would you lend me the money?"

"If you apply, I'll loan you a hundred. If you get it, I'll loan you the rest."

"Okay, I'll do it. How do I apply?"

"I'll bring you the forms tomorrow." He reaches into his wallet and plucks out a stack of twenties—ten of them. "I know the foreman," he explains as he hands them to you. "You'll get it, but I'll want those bills back if you screw up."

* * * * *

After school you use the advance on your forthcoming salary to purchase supplies. But instead of taking them home, you drive to the old elementary school, which is about two blocks over from your house.

It's an ancient, graying hulk, with a half-abandoned playground out back that some of the younger neighborhood kids still haunt. A few years ago the village renovated the old cafeteria and turned it into a community rec center, but the rest of the building was left alone. You've been in it a few times, passing through old, dusty classrooms that appear to have been last renovated in the 1940s. The most interesting thing about the building—and what recommended it to you several years ago as a hang out—was its basement, which is accessible only from a sunken, recessed door hidden under the old gymnasium. You'd found that door, which is on the outside of the building, when you were a sophomore, by poking around. With a little jimmying you'd got it open and explored inside, which was stuffed with a jumble of old desks and tables and bleachers.

You'd improvised yourself a small fort, more out of mischief than a sense of fun, and found your fort still intact when you checked back a few days later. So you installed a brand-new padlock on the door, as you were curious to see how long it would be before someone needed to go into the basement and cut your lock off. Six months later it was still undisturbed.

So you'd taken to rearranging the basement to suit your own tastes, hiding in it some stuff you didn't want your parents to find, and inviting Caleb and Keith and few others to hang out and explore. Last year you and some guys even spent Halloween down there, telling ghost stories and sampling some liquor that Keith had gotten ahold of.

That was about the last time that you'd been out there, and you're surprised but pleased to see that your padlock is still there. Inside, you clear away spaces next to some of the windows that peek out just above ground level, set up some tables, and generally go about making it into a workshop and laboratory. If you're going to burn anyplace down, you'd rather it be the old school than your own house.

You worry about ventilation and so have brought plenty of fans, but the new item you're making proves to need little in the way of combustion. You brush the strip of copper with the mercury as directed, sandwich it between two flat mirrors laid flat on the sigil in the book, then with a steel-nib pen scratch the specified symbols on the back of the top-most mirror. Only a subtle hissing, tells you that something is happening. When you pull out the copper strip you find that it has turned a brilliant silver and become almost infinitely flexible.

Then you return home, where you can do the etching and engraving needed to complete them in the comfort of your own room.

Your dad is waiting there with the application for the job at Salopak and the assurance that the job is already yours; you will start it next Monday, working three hours a day after school on weekdays and five hours on Saturday. This will really cut into your free time, so you decide tomorrow to start preparing a new mask so that you can start getting it polished before the new job starts.

Upstairs, you take out the small metal engraving tools and start cutting the runes into the first band. It is slow, delicate work, but you push through and stay up past four in the morning, working by the lamp on your desk, until you have completed both bands. You eyes are drooping when you fall onto your bed and lay one of the bands across your forehead.

* * * * *

The shrill buzzing from your alarm clock wakes you, and you sit up in surprise and alarm. What is it about these things that they put you to sleep?

You rip the band from your forehead. It doesn't seem to have changed— No, wait, something glitters around the runes. You look at them more closely.

Thin, silvery letters seem to float above the archaic lettering: WILLIAM MARTIN PRESCOTT

Your hand drops nervelessly into your lap. The thing knows your name. It scarcely seems odd that the magic should be able to copy your face and body. But to reproduce your name, a thing that isn't on your body, but, if it is anywhere, is inside your body, inside your mind—

You stagger over to the book and place the newly made band on the newly visible image. The page turns, revealing a new spell and the remainder of the old. The latter is only a few words long, and can fit inside a browser window without causing it to crash: "to know the mind of another" appears to be the best translation.

A low whistle escapes your lips. Of course: It wouldn't do to try imitating someone if you couldn't carry off the deception perfectly, which would require somehow gaining their memories. With such an instrument you could learn everything you desired to know about a person: what they know, what they fear, what they desire, what they hate ...

Your eye falls on the second band, already prepared and ready to be used on another person.