This choice: Too dangerous; stay out of it • Go Back...Chapter #41Into Another's Shoes by: Seuzz   "It would look suspicious if Shabbleman and Blackwell showed up back in Cuthbert so soon after leaving," you say. "We should wait a bit, think about it."
"So we keep him here in the meantime?" Frank says. "Doing what?"
"Keeping him busy with scutwork," Joe says.
"Grandmother's going to be checking up on him," Frank observes. "I should stay as him so I can feed her some plausible lies." He licks his lips and smiles thinly. "We'll put the real one under a mask of me."
And so it is decided. Will Shabbleman, trapped under a mask of Frank, goes home with you, who switch back into Joe's form.
* * * * *
You're secretly glad for this arrangement, for it lets you return to work on the Libra while keeping Frank out of your hair. You hide in Joe's bedroom while golem-Frank does homework out in the main part of the house.
You find that the spells are getting harder. The first new spell after the illusion trap consists of a lot of fragmentary ones; it takes you nearly an hour--even with Joe's brain as a crutch--to realize that they are a set of gnomic instructions, written like a rebus. It will require two masks, one of which you will have to design yourself.
You spend the rest of the night--only going to sleep at around two--taking apart the sigil provided. It looks simple, but you realize that's because it is also incomplete. It's almost like an exercise that has been left for the magician to complete--another test. The only hint you can solidly decipher is that it is a "one mind in two places" spell. But you already have something like that with the anima bands that you've put on Joe and Frank. Read another way, the hint can translate as "stand in another's shoes." But you've been able to do that since the very first spell. You look down into the palms of your open hands. Two masks. "One mind in two places." "Stand in another's shoes." You puzzle and puzzle until your puzzler is sore. But you have school tomorrow, and when no answers come you go to bed.
* * * * *
The answer, when it comes, appears in the heat of argument. Pre-class basketball practice goes off fine, but when you run into Straussler (that would be Joe, again) in third period he gives you the fish eye. "I got some kind of stink on me?" you demand when he just snarls at your cheerful greeting.
He grabs at you; you push him off, but relent when he insists on dragging you out of the room and around the corner of one of the wings. "The fuck did you do with Monique?" he demands.
"I fucked her and got a copy of her," you retort. "You remember the weekend."
"What did you while you were just being with her? She's treating me cold. You said something or did something."
"Nothing you haven't done, Jonathan," you say. "Did it without protection, so that was new."
"That is a little weird," he says with a growl. "What else?"
"Just talked. About the future. You're going off to college and she's--"
"You idiot!" He swings his fist, and you're not fast enough to dodge, and stagger back. "You don't talk to girls about the future! Especially when--" He glowers.
You nurse the side of your face, which is ringing from his blow. "Well, fuck me then! I was being in character!"
"And left it up to me to fix!"
"If you want to find a bathroom and switch places, I'm game," you say.
"You'd fuck it up even more. She's the one that needs fixing."
"By turning her into a golem?" You're angry enough that the words spring out unbidden. "Is that what you've been thinking?"
"She's not worth the expense," he growls.
"Well, if you don't want me jumping into her shoes after jumping her bones--"
You stop short. That's the answer.
"Never mind," you say when he asks what you were going to say. "I just had another idea. Something that might fix things."
"How?"
"I'm not sure yet. There's lots of possibilities and I just saw one. Give me a few days, and we'll talk."
"She'll probably be over it by then," he grumbles. "But you've planted a real land mine in our relationship."
"Look at who you are," you say. "It was always a potential problem. You take Straussler, you take the bad as well as the good. What little there is of it."
He hisses, and doesn't speak to you the rest of the day.
* * * * *
Back at the house, after school, you sketch out the possible designs. It's so simple once you see what the hints were aiming at.
It's a kind of remote control. Two masks. You put one on yourself, and one on a victim. The mask on the victim contains a golem shell, so it is docile and under your control anyway. But with a word or gesture of command, you can put your own consciousness inside the remote mask. It would be as if you had switched masks, but without having to take them off, and you would find yourself wherever your victim happened to be.
And the hole in the sigil? You see now that's where the "key" goes. The masks--the control mask you would wear, and the remote mask that goes on the victim--have to be "tuned" to each other with some unique code that would go in both. The most obvious code would be the name--when translated into sigilistic logic--of the spell crafter.
"I'm playing around with some of those spells you and Joe uncovered," you tell Will Shabbleman (really Frank) when you show up at Blackwell's at around eight. "We still have any blank masks and bands? Sealant?" He nods. "I'll take a few back with me. How are you getting along?"
"This place stinks," he says in a sneer, which looks like a natural expression on Shabbleman's face. "I'm going out of my mind with boredom."
"You heard from the family?" You run up the stairs, and he follows.
"No. I sent Grandmother a text--she's at least that much up to date--telling her that Blackwell's got me doing housework and yard work while 'testing' me out. And that's how I've been trying to keep occupied."
"Then go up to the college. You can hang out in some classes, try to continue your education."
"Feh. Being this asshole's got me all out of sorts."
"It's no fun with the original back at your place," you say. "Even under a Frank mask. There's something-- I dunno. Just something wrong about him."
* * * * *
Back at the house, you start by taking off your mask--it requires removing the nail from your forehead first--and putting a new layer into it. The control mask, you figure, doesn't need to be in a mask of its own. You draw the sigil on the new, blank layer and fill it with your name and with a sigilistic description of the gesture that will let you switch into the remote. The only downside you can see is that you yourself, while occupying the remote, will be immobile, for there will be no "golem" to take over for yourself, and the spell doesn't seem designed to let you put one in.
It's careful and exacting work, but not so intense you can't spare a little concentration to think through the design as you work. The remote mask will also need a sigil of a similar sort--just with a few key terms reversed--and as you think about it you realize that should be enough. You break off long enough to frown over your notes and over the Libra, but stare and puzzle as much as you can, you do not see why the spell calls for essentia in the remote. It should work without the essentia. The only reason you can see to put it in--
Well, it's only a practical reason. The sigil will bind the remote mask onto the victim--it has "hooks" that connect it directly to the victim's substantia--but the essentia is there so the result will be a golem. Leave the essentia out, and the victim will still be awake and alert except during those times when the magician isn't controlling him or her.
Which is a good idea. Still, you smile to yourself at how evil it would be to leave the essentia out. The result would be a kind of "sleeper agent": a free person you could "possess" whenever you wanted. It would suck to be them, of course, to find themselves seized and guided into doing all kinds of mischief.
But there's practical reasons to leave it out too. First, a magician only has so much essentia to go around. Put it into the remote masks, and he'll be limited to six remotes. Leave the essentia out, and he could seed dozens, hundreds, even thousands of "sleeper agents" around the world.
An even better reason to leave it out, you reflect, is that in some cases the essentia could cripple the victims. Like if the victims were Frank and Joe Durras.
You got anima bands onto Frank and Joe, and for that reason they still have the gifts bestowed by their essentia. But if you put them under remote masks--turning them into golems under your control-- their powers would be blocked. Even you wouldn't be able to exercise their powers if you used remote masks to get inside them.
But if you put a remote mask on them, while leaving out the essentia, you could switch into them and have their powers. The downside is that you wouldn't be able to let go of your victim afterward, for they would regain control of themselves. And even with your anima band inside them, you doubt they'd take kindly to your hijacking them.
Still, it might be a way of reasserting your control over your two erstwhile allies.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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