This choice: Let one of them go to Cuthbert • Go Back...Chapter #37Vacuums and Vortices by: Seuzz   You'll probably be outvoted anyway, and since both of them are looking more than a little pissed at the way you've gotten pissed, you surrender with as much grace as you can muster. "I'll put this on the backburner to look at that problem you found," you say, and push aside the mess you've been working on. "You guys can check out Cuthbert. But Blackwell seems to think it's dangerous up there. Be careful, okay?"
"I'm glad you still care about us," Frank says.
You wince. "Look, I'm sorry I yelled. It's just a shock, is all. I should have kept myself in the loop."
"No harm," Jonathan says. "We got some useful stuff." He points at the mask--the mask of Joe you'd taken off--that's sitting on the desk. "You want we should do this thing up so it's like my mask? Flipping faces is better than having to take masks off and on." He demonstrates again, flicking rapidly between Jonathan's imago and his own.
"That'd be good," you say. "How many faces can you put in a mask?"
"I don't think there's a limit. Are there any other faces you want to put in there? Frank's, maybe?"
You talk it over a little more with them, and are still talking it over when Blackwell arrives. The final decision is to make up three masks, each with a complete set of all the disguises you have available: one mask for each of you. That way you and Joe and Frank can, with a flick of the hand, become Will Prescott, Joe Durras, Frank Durras, Aubrey Blackwell, Melody Weiss, and Jonathan Straussler as the situation demands. They also make up one of those nails, so you can attach your mask to your face. Calls go out to the golems of Melody Weiss and Will Prescott, summoning them to the house, so it can all be completed.
And since there are now multiple people capable of imitating Blackwell, it is decided that Frank will go up to Cuthbert in his guise, and will leave in the morning.
* * * * *
But you and Frank are looking like yourselves later that evening, when you're back at his house. "You should try looking at that creepy page while I'm still here," he says. "That way I can revive you after it knocks you out."
"No, I'll do it when I see Joe at Straussler's tomorrow," you reply, staring down into the open Libra. "I want to study these other spells first."
"He won't--" Frank starts, but you're not paying attention.
There are no longer any instructions or even lists of ingredients to any of the spells that come after the one that puts a golem inside a mask. That by itself would show that the "torn page" was only a test put in by the book's author, a trick to separate the novices from the experts. Now the spells take the form only of sigils, and you have to be able to read them in order to understand how to use them. Your own intense studies over the past few weeks, though, have left you able to navigate them without undue effort.
There's not much to the spells that let you put multiple imago inside a mask. It's another kind of sealant that closes off an imago and any attached mind bands, letting you insert new imago and mind bands; a complicated gesture across the face will change the wearer's appearance; and landing in a blank layer will bring the wearer's own face to the fore.
Nor is there much to the "nail": A small spike, some essentia, and the sigil will craft a nail; drive it into your forehead, and any masks or bands you are wearing can only be removed by the person whose essentia went into its crafting.
There's a bit more to the next spells: One that removes the contents from masks and bands, allowing them to be recycled. One that lets you copy the contents of masks and bands into blanks. (You smile over that one; you'd basically figured out earlier how to do it with a simple "recapitulate" spell.) Though you've kissed and made up to your partners, the "stripping" spells still leave you feeling shuddery. The one that strips "minds" away actually strips a person of their anima; the one that strips "bodies" strips them of anima, essentia and imago. You don't linger over them, though you've a nagging feeling that the sigils contain exploits that might be used for other effects.
You don't pay much attention to the "shrink golem" spell, for you see no use for it. Neither had Joe and Frank, and to execute it they had made a special trip out to the cemetery to retrieve Blackwell's golem, which had been buried inside Lucy's mask.
You closely study the last one, the one that makes a "doppelganger." Joe and Frank had pulled in your own twin, taking the Will Prescott mask off of Straussler and knocking him out with some of Blackwell's special powder. They had used the golemized Lucy as the required golem. The result had been another Straussler, which they had had to sedate after it had revived and become quarrelsome. They had then used the "strip body" spell to return it to the form of a golem, and put Prescott's mask back on the original Straussler.
They had called it a "doppelganger" spell when describing it to you, but you're not so sure. Certainly it copies imago and anima over, but there's no transference of essentia. The result is a "free golem," not an exact duplicate of the original person. As with the spell that shrinks golems, you're not sure what use it could be. But as with the two "strip" spells, you've a sense that there is a hidden exploit that you're not seeing.
At eleven o'clock, Frank nudges you out of your studies with the demand that you meditate.
On earlier nights, your meditation exercises hadn't shown you much; mostly, you'd just seemed to traverse the starry nightscapes in the company of your two ousiarchs. But tonight's session seems different.
The two planetoids are quite different in aspect: the Moon is a silvery disc pocked with smudges of craters, while Pluto is a coal-black disc speckled with glittering particles. The Moon seems pale and retiring and passive, even empty. Pluto throbs with tightly bound energy. On previous nights, you had done little but hang in the sky in their company. Tonight, though, the two discs move into a conjunction, with the Moon neatly covering the other. Or is it Pluto covering the Moon? They seem to merge into each other, and then vanish. But something is left: small, rocky places, unconnected to each other, but hanging where the planetoids had been.
But are the remaining fragments actually unconnected to each other? You have the impression that something else has remained, binding what is left of the planets behind. You study it for the longest time, convinced that there is some secret thing here. And then it fades.
When you open your heavy eyes, Frank is smiling at you. "Congratulations," he says. "You floated." You ask what he means, but he just maintains that inscrutable smile and tells you to go to bed.
* * * * *
He's gone when you get up the next morning, leaving only a note saying that he's gone to Blackwell's to pick up the latter's car for the trip to Cuthbert. You switch to Joe's face, do some stretches, and go for a run. After that, you shower and eat. You watch a few cartoons--getting your mind nice and loose and awake--before turning your attention to the Libra. From what Joe said, it's going to be a lulu.
You open it up to the spell that creates that "doppelganger", then with gritted teeth turn the page. That illustration stares up at you.
It's like a vortex, and it's more than an illustration or optical illusion. Your vision reels and you start to sink sideways. It isn't just disorienting. It's drawing you in. Objects in your peripheral vision fade away, and all you can see is the vortex rushing up to engulf you.
You could easily surrender to it, fall into it, let it have its way with you. Terrible winds and centrifugal forces tear at you, pushing you toward its raging walls. But as you spin, you see a path through the maelstrom. They are like tiny stepping stones, themselves rootless and whirling, appearing out of the wind and vanishing into it. You cannot stay on one too long without being swallowed into the violent clouds about you. But if you move rapidly, intuitively, leaping from one to the next, you are able to keep to your feet, diving deeper and deeper down the throat of the thing.
It's just a platformer, you think to yourself, and almost lose your footing.
On and on the path leads, and the neck of the thing grows narrower and narrower. You have no body, but the winds whirl closer and closer to you, threatening to tear you to pieces. Finally there is room only for your concentrated gaze, and a small still place at the very center of the winds.
It is a lock, and inside the lock is a key. You grab it, and twist it--
* * * * *
You are on the sofa, with the Libra in your lap. Where there had been an illustration of the vortex, there is now only the illustration of a lock and a key. You touch it, and know:
You can turn the page now. Or you can turn the key. If you turn the key, that illustration will appear again, and you will have to renavigate that whirlwind to again unlock it.
Frank and Joe can't do it, you are quite certain, or else they wouldn't have passed the book back to you. Do you tell them that you have penetrated deeper into the book, or keep it a secret for now?  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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