The Fixer Of God's Ways (retail) (26 page)

"
This will make my son's career problematic…"

"Your
kid was about to destroy half of a downtown block! A dark mage would have gotten himself
Shackles of Deliverance
or an army contract for life. And you are whining about his career prospects!"

Rizolti
was silent for a moment. "It's because of me," he muttered at last.

"
Of course! But not in the sense you have in mind. You made Leon believe that it's okay to break the law for a good reason. Now he will be tempted to repeat it, and our oversight is the lesser evil for him. Hopefully, our help didn't come too late."

Having met
a harsh rebuke, Rizolti shut up. The captain saw that his words surprised the artisan. Perhaps, Rizolti didn't expect any compassion from a man with a gorilla-like appearance.

"
What would you like to know"? the white asked quietly.

Baer
was under no illusion; it was unlikely that the hardened sectarian would give away his accomplices for sentimental reasons. The captain had a question that had bothered him for a long time. "Why did you join the sect? I always wanted to ask."

Rizolti smiled wryly,
"You won't understand."

"T
ry me!"

"
Imagine a world where the supernatural doesn't poison people's lives. A world without dark magic, simple and intuitive, where you can fearlessly walk on a moonless night and sleep without a protective perimeter…"

Baer thought
for a while, "Why do you think that a world without dark magic will be safer? If society does not have the resources to provide all its citizens with affordable housing and food, vagabonds and night bandits are bound to appear, and you won't safely walk in the moonlight, no matter whether there is dark magic or not."

"
You do not understand…"

"I do
! Such is the nature of people; it won't change from the disappearance of magic. Do people exist at all in your fairy tale?"

The a
rtisan did not answer.

"
Well," Locomotive slapped his knee; it was time to end this farce, "I am glad that we don't have to choose which world to live in. We are done with your sect!"

"
You are mistaken," the sectarian replied barely audibly. The captain became all ears. "NZAMIPS defeated the followers of Maitre Haino, but not all artisans shared his views. There are some who weren't in Haino's faction."

"
How many of them are there? Where are they hiding?" Baer asked hoarsely.

"
I don't have a clue. I heard that some live outside Ingernika, so you won't reach them. Our brotherhood will survive!"

The sectarian
looked at Baer with bittersweet triumph. An ice needle pricked the captain's temple again. He imagined his last twenty years repeating themselves again and again, and grinned, "This time we stopped you before you made a serious mess. If you have any hopes, remember: we're not going anywhere. We'll watch for you!"

Rizolti
's revelation about the artisans outside Ingernika was the only valuable fact that Baer obtained from the interrogations.

* * *

The main culprit was only a couple kilometers away from the captain. He sat on a bench at the rail station square. Years and years of troublesome life eventually caught up with the magician: wrinkles furrowed his face; his eyes lost their vigilance; his thin, almost transparent, wrists visibly trembled. A conveniently curved cane rested on the bench next to him.

Two
young men went out of the ticket office. It was difficult to recognize white mages in them: the guys walked too decisively, too confidently. When they came up to the old man, their behavior changed: they looked like two caring grandsons, seeing off their grandpa. A policeman wandering near the square did not pay attention to them.

"There are
available seats on the passing train, but in different carriages. Austin suggests buying tickets right before departure."

The old man nodded,
"Good, but you'll buy only one ticket. For me. We are partying here."

"Why?" the young men
were shocked.

"I…
erred. My mind lost clarity, my senses lost their acuteness. It's time for the younger to take over our sacred duty. It's your world, you were born into it, and you are responsible for its future. The deed of
The Light and the Justice
falls on your shoulders now."

"
What about you, Teacher?"

"I
want to avoid attracting attention to you. Everyone who spoke to me over the last year is now captured or on the run. We must not risk our last people. Do not worry, Austin, I can take care of myself. Perhaps when the noise settles, I'll return, but in the near future you'll have to rely on yourselves."

The young
white looked sad and disappointed.

"
As a teacher, I fulfilled my goal - I prepared my successor. It's you. Remember, the future depends on you. Be very careful."

Half an hour later
the decrepit old man, whose only luggage was a leather trunk mounted on a wooden cart, took a train heading south. The further the train went away from Finkaun, the sooner dull weariness left the patriarch. His power was returning to him, slowly but surely.

The officer on duty at Finkaun's NZAMIPS
warned me that the senior coordinator of the Northwestern region was far too busy to take any visitors. But my case couldn't wait.

When I came in,
Larkes fingered pages with the names of the artisans. I noticed that in the margins he was making marks: perhaps "to arrest" or "to invite for edifying conversation". I felt that he barely tolerated my presence and tried not to mock him; for a dark mage the moment of his triumph is sacred.

"
Let me climb down to the catacombs while they are not walled up."

"For what
?"

"
I want to show them to Clara. I promised her."

"
Why do you care about her?"

"Are you k
idding? She's a writer! What if she writes nasty things about me?"

"
Do you want access through the dump?"

"
I'd rather go through the Academy."

Larkes
signed a permit and gestured for me to get out. I left, letting him savor his victory. He would remain in history as the leader who inflicted a crushing blow to the sect. Frankly, without my help he would still be chasing gophers.

The head of the a
cademy's security examined with suspicion my permit and assigned a guard to Fiberti and me. A "cleaner", of course. I did not mind and immediately commissioned him to carry a coil of rope. He obeyed like a good little boy!

I
t became easy to navigate through the maze of dark corridors, because I used as a guide the memory of the ancient guard that we raised. I saw the shelter as it was during his lifetime. The more I delved into his recollections, the more admiration I experienced for the genius of ancient people. Not because of the grandiose scale of the things they built, but because they created the greatest artifact in the world, knowing about dark magic only from books. That was a real miracle! They compelled the forces of nature and supernature to obey! I couldn't wait to view the artifact. In the ancient books they called it
McCane's Generator of the Focusing Field
or simply the
Hole
. Such a nickname caused unhealthy associations in me, so I decided to remain faithful to the habitual
Project
.

A golem sent by
Rustle
waited for us at the entrance; its appearance came as a shock to both of my companions. Though Clara wasn't scared; she didn't know the true might of the golem. But the "cleaner" activated his Source and tried to choose who to attack first: the golem or me.

"
It's a catacombs' guard. He is on our side! By the way, the dark magic does not work on him," I leniently patted the golem on its "shoulder".

"
And what does?" Clara's curiosity knew no bounds.

"
It's funny but white magic can harm him; it temporarily breaks his integrity. And necromantic weavings, too. For example, I can control such creatures."

I took the
coil of rope off the "cleaner" and put it on the golem. This fully reconciled the combat mage with the monster. Without rushing we walked to the familiar elevator shaft, and I sensed no supernatural in the darkness.

"C
limb down!" I told Clara, tying the rope around her waist.

"
What do you mean 'down'?" she stepped back in fear.

"
The most interesting area is several levels below. This shaft is the only access to it."

"
Is it absolutely necessary, Thomas?" my aide was really scared.

"
There are recesses in the shaft's wall; they are like stairs, Clara," I showed her where they were.

"How
will we get back?" she asked in a hoarse voice.

"
Same way. If you find the stairs scary, this guy will lift you up on the rope!"

The g
olem nodded, confirming my words. I would not trust my neck to the "cleaner"; he had no climbing experience. The golem was a safer choice.

"I am sorry
, Thomas, but…this is beyond me!"

"
No problem. Don't climb down. But I have to; I left my stuff there. Wait for me here, I'll be back soon."

"
Of course!"

I began
to descend. I was sure that the "cleaner" wouldn't follow me - he was too lazy. It's a pleasure to deal with dark magicians; we are so predictable.

The m
emory of the ancient guard became more vivid at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Now I had to remind myself that it wasn't me for whom Bill and Bob waited in the staff room with beer, and it was not my shift starting in two hours.

I was lucky to stumble upon the right corpse
for the Circle: the guy knew all the exits, all the places I could access with my dad's Key, and he even guessed from whom the Key was stolen.

I
was not interested in the Grand Door; from the guard I knew what was behind it - a system of springs and shock absorbers for a focusing rod. The dead man's memory showed me a huge column made of black crystal (golem material, I guessed) going down for over a hundred feet.

Soon
I noticed on the floor two white stripes with symbols; they indicated major routes for employees - to the generator room and the hospital. (The guard feared local doctors, and I recalled what Ed Rooney mentioned in
The Word
: several survivors were taken for "treatment" to the hospital and never came back.)

I chose the passage
to the generator room. My guide was there once and remembered a spacious bright room with the focusing rod, strange aggregates, and tangled cables. The emergency exit in the generator room had a mechanical lock; I used my knife to open it and then jammed the door to prevent locking myself inside. My skin tickled from the presence of magic.

I c
ame in and nearly cracked my head on a beam. I trusted the memory of the ancient man too much, because the thousands of years that passed after his death had changed a lot of things. A huge hall was littered to the top. Broken stuff was seen everywhere: metal beams with gross welding defects, the cracked pillars of viewing platforms, piles of burnt lamps. Sand creaked under my feet, insulting the brilliant perfection of the
Project
by its very presence.

I adjusted th
e wick on the lantern and looked around.

The
place was very impressive: in the middle of the hall, under the pointed end of the focusing rod, a humongous Dark Source oozed its power. The Source looked like a fountain of black gloom enveloped in bluish flashes; it was confined by a low barrier with pillars. The Source was luring me to plunge into its otherworldly glow. But I'm no moron!

The d
imensions of the hall were distorted, as if touched by
the phoma
; the wall opposite the door was broken open. The rails of a narrow-gauge road, along with two forgotten carriages, rusted on a dump of clay and gravel. Around the Dark Source's barrier was a construction of armored plates. I circumvented the Source twice and climbed on one of its surviving pillars for better visibility. The plate assembly looked absolutely out of place, and I understood that it was the artisans' breaker. It surely wasn't part of the original design!

Before
, I wondered why the artisans left the corpse of the guard where I found it; now I guessed - they simply hadn't been there. The artisans broke into the hall from another side. Perhaps, the artifact's guards weren't programmed to react to the diggers. The artisans (who else?) delivered the armored plates of the breaker via the railroad they built underground and assembled them near the Dark Source. What tedious work it was! Why did they fail? What went wrong?

From the pillar, I
could view only the upper part of the Dark Source; it began somewhere on the lower levels. To see its roots, I climbed down a bunch of cluttered stairs and finally reached the fountain's bottom: a mirror from an unknown alloy, above it four stone arcs holding something that unpleasantly reminded me a coffin. The "coffin" oozed black gloom.

This
place roused a familiar sensation in me. Was it in memory of the ancient people I raised? I experienced the same tingle when I passed through the Golden Gate. Black ripples started spinning in the air; the endless rustle scoured my ears. It was
Rustle
.

"
What are you doing, you damn monster?! I am engaged in business here, and you are flickering before my eyes!"

He
took into account my remark, and the room suddenly lightened up, the black ripples disappearing. My lantern brightly lit the large mirror, the stone arches, and the cocoon hanging among them in a whirl of black leaves. The cocoon and I looked at each other for a minute, and then for some reason
Rustle
became shy at his nakedness.

My
God! I thought that nothing in the world could surprise me anymore! I was so wrong!

I recalled that
the Golden Gate's stability was ensured by a group of dark mages, who sacrificed their lives so that their souls could monitor the integrity of the Gate's protective spells. My own zombie Max was "alive" because his dead body had embedded the dog's soul. The builders of the
Project
used the same principle!

I grasped that c
ontrol over the
World Axis
was entrusted to one of the people that ancient scientists were taking for "treatments". This person became one of the fundamental constants of our world. However, it wasn't a human anymore. It was that same monster, who could reach any dark in the world:
Rustle
!

I
touched one of the stone arcs and sensed fine vibrations of necromantic magic. These arcs belonged to the two worlds simultaneously. What an amazing device! "How does it feel - to keep the worlds together?"

Rustle
gave me a recollection, a compressed image from his incredible memory: a tube in the throat, arms and legs ceasing to exist, bundles of cables extending to the head, and a painful feeling of the inevitability of something horrible.

"Calm down, man.
It's long gone. Everything is okay now."

Rustle
did not like how I addressed him.

"
Do you mean it is a woman in the cocoon?"

The
poor monster fell into a stupor. He never thought of his (her?) past life in such a manner.

"Do not worry. It doesn't matter who
you were in the past. I, too, was once both sperm and egg."

Rustle
plunged into philosophical reflections on the primacy of the chicken and the egg. It should keep him busy for a while.

I
paused and pondered. The
sinister HE had foreseen that people (even his former colleagues) could try to break the artifact, since his device lacked a switch to turn it off. Furthermore, a trap was prepared for renegades: the being, created to keep the two worlds connected, had his own will and did not want to die.

I pressed
myself to the arc, trying to absorb its strange magic. How could this artifact be broken in principle?

Clearly, the single most
important part of the artifact was
Rustle
, whom I perceived as an uninitiated magician, conscious of himself. That is, any attempt to shut down the fountain of Dark Magic should start from liquidation of
Rustle
, but the monster was very much alive. I didn't recognize in the breaker any weapon adequate to the task of killing the monster. Thus, the breaker of notorious "celestial angels" wasn't targeting
Rustle
directly. Congratulations, cretins! For so many years you didn't to figure out that the monster should have been destroyed first!

Obviously,
every activation of the breaker somehow affected
Rustle
(most likely, insignificantly). To maintain his integrity, the monster was falling asleep (thus reducing the power of the fountain of Darkness), and the contact between the two worlds was thinning out. But sooner or later the breaker used up its energy, and the monster returned from "sleep", overdoing his job of ensuring a connection between the worlds. And periods of low supernatural activity, launched by the artisans' breaker, were replaced with periods of hyperactivity.

So t
he
World Axis
was
Rustle
, singlehandedly protecting our civilization from global catastrophes!

Stupid, stupid me - just r
ecently I had tried to exterminate the monster!

I worried
what would happen if artisans understood the root cause of their failure. Okay, all entries to this place would be blocked (
Rustle
would see to that), but
The Liturgy of the Light
launched the breaker remotely! I wished the genius who created this "wonderful magic add-on" would have died in the cradle. Besides, the immortal monster was vulnerable physically - his coffin looked quite fragile.