The Flux (8 page)

E
ven now
, Paul had to quell anxiety about pressing the silver button up to Mr Payne’s office. Long-time Samaritan fellows called that elevator “the guillotine,” as when it descended, heads rolled.

He braced himself as the elevator rose. Kit would be proud: Paul would do anything, anything, to keep his daughter safe.

Even if that meant shackling himself to Payne.

A bell chimed.

The doors opened.

Lawrence Payne’s lobby was frugally impressive: just enough flash so bankers wouldn’t think the organization was going broke, but not a penny more decoration than necessary. Payne’s office lay safeguarded behind a large bank door in accountant’s-visor green, imposing enough to send the message:
this is where the money lies
. The Samaritan Mutual logo was engraved on the door in tasteful gold.

Payne’s name, famously, was not on the door. He had no ego when it came to his company.

Payne’s secretary looked up, coiffed in a 1960s-perfect beehive hairdo and a tight red dress. “Mr Tsabo,” the secretary said. “Right on time.”

She pressed a recessed button under her desk. The door glided open.

Paul remembered to breathe.

Mr Payne’s office was a narrow space lined with steel filing cabinets, jutting all the way up to the ceiling, blocking out the walls. Here, there was no hint the world had advanced beyond the 1960s. A long, narrow meeting-room table was topped with antiquated relics, which carried out their functions inexpertly. There were old typewriters, and mimeograph machines with their pink papers to make copies, ticker-tape machines that still rattled off spools of Morse-code-like stock prices.

It’s more a museum than anything else
, Kit had once reassured him.

Are you sure he
doesn’t
use the ticker-tape machines?
Paul had asked.

…no
.

Paul stepped in, balancing on his bad legs as he made his way through the narrow spaces. The tight squeeze comforted Paul, reminded him of his old office; he’d liked having everything he needed at arm’s reach.

At the far end sat Mr Lawrence Payne, who sat stiffly yet welcomingly – the old-fashioned lord of the manor receiving guests. Payne’s stiff white hair was cropped close, his skin so pale and age-thinned it looked like papier mâché plastered across a bullet-shaped skull. He was dressed in a tweed suit, his hands crossed, a thick stack of forms beneath his slender fingers.

Behind Payne stood a tall black man, his cheeks branded with tiny spirals. He stood with a stiffness that spoke of an upbringing in some distant country that disdained American excess – and as if to accentuate that contempt, he took a deep pull on a gigantic cigar, inhaling until the tip burned a cherry red, savoring the taste of smoke.

Then he exhaled – not
quite
in Paul’s direction, but rather up towards the center of the room, a huge and thoughtful stream of burned tobacco that seemed in some way to be marking territory with his lungs. Paul’s eyes prickled from the scent – a hot, forest-fire smell.

Payne did not acknowledge the smoke cloud above him as it drifted down across the desk, flowing onto the floor. His iceberg-blue eyes swept across Paul like a lighthouse beam, as if to ask,
do we have a problem here?

Paul did. He knew all the regulations about smoking in the workplace. Smoking was not only a health risk, but a fire hazard in an office so crammed with paperwork. Perhaps that foolishness might have seemed wise back in the 1960s, but today?

Instead, Paul took the closest chair to Payne’s desk, and bowed.

Payne interlaced his fingers, pleased that Paul had passed the first test.

“So. The prodigal son returns.” Payne’s voice had a movie narrator’s plummy tones, with the white-mustached tickle of an English accent dropped in. “Oh, Paul. Paul Tsabo. Would that you had bent the knee sooner.”

“…sir?”

Payne spread his hands, as if offering the world to Paul. “I was overjoyed when I heard you had been picked to spearhead the New York Task Force.
One of my boys, placed high in the world!
I’d always taken a special pleasure in signing off on your claims, Paul. It was as though I’d filled out those forms my very self.”

Paul tried to quell his blush. He was praised so little, these days.

“So when you moved up, as talent should, I thought,
well, here’s a man who will keep New York safe
. You’d always found evidence of ’mancy, Paul. If it was there, you furrowed it out.”

Payne made a violent digging motion with his fingers to accentuate the “furrowed it out.” Paul’s embarrassment grew: he’d always
found
the evidence, but hadn’t always
reported
it.

“I waited for you to come to me, Paul. You and I, Paul, we’re rare coins: living New Yorkers with direct evidence of how deadly ’mancy is. My mother fled from Europe – back when the first broaches ripped across Germany. My poor sisters, devoured by demons –
worse
than devoured. I saw buzzsects, pouring out of the broaches, eating... eating laws. Of
physics
. They... they ate
gravity
, somehow. They chewed away cause and effect. And my sisters, Lisa and Anna, they... they screamed in reverse as the buzzsects devoured the time from their bones. And I... I…”

Payne’s taut face slackened with memory. Paul felt a glimmer of sorrow for the old man. He could envision a young Lawrence Payne, carried by his mother to safety, shrieking as he watched the world unravel.

Paul squeezed the Maxi pad taped to his left forearm, blotting up fresh blood. Payne was right; Paul had once healed a broach, but it had left an empty furrow though his skin that would never heal. Those seething buzzsects had gobbled SMASH agents, chewed away magic, devoured an entire factory before Paul had finally driven them back – what must it have been like to be a mundane, watching entire cities consumed by swarms of extradimensional mouths?

No wonder you went into insurance
, Paul thought. Insurance battled life’s chaos with actuarial tables – you couldn’t choose
which
houses would burn, but could turn that destruction into a predictable percentage.

“I’m sorry that happened,” Paul said.

Payne seemed startled to see Paul there. He flicked his fingers, dismissing years of history.

“No need for sorry, Paul,” he said gravely. “You were there at that botched SMASH operation – the one that broached. You know how bad it would have gotten, don’t you? If SMASH hadn’t… sealed it?”

Paul had sealed that rift himself. But yes. He understood just how close New York had come to being the focal point for an invasion from an alien dimension.

“Oh, Paul.” Payne sagged. “I thought we’d clasp hands to stamp out this world-rending threat. Instead, you snuck in my back door.
Stole
information I would have given. I had to force poor Kit into retirement when I discovered he fed you the information. How can I reward you for that?”

All Paul’s sympathy vanished. Kit hadn’t told Paul the reason for his retirement.

I gave you eight years of my life, and when my daughter got burned, you tried to fire me so you wouldn’t have to pay her claims. The whole reason I fought SMASH forces is because you wouldn’t cut me a check to restore Aliyah’s face. So how
dare
you lecture
me
about loyalty?

The black man removed his cigar and leaned in, sensing Paul’s anger. A faint smile curled on his thick lips:
No, please, Mr Tsabo. Tell us what’s on your mind
.

“…When did you hire a bodyguard?” Paul asked.

Payne chuckled. “Mr Rainbird is not my bodyguard. He is my head of special HR. He vets all of my specialty hires.”

Paul looked up at Rainbird. “How am I doing?”

Rainbird wrapped his lips around the cigar again, inhaling. The tiny scar spirals on his dark cheeks glistened; he seemed to grow larger as he savored the heat within him.

Then he exhaled at Paul, engulfing him in such a torrent of ash-stinking smoke; Paul choked. Eyes watering, Paul remembered feeling around for Aliyah in the scorched apartment, the burning carpet sending toxic fumes into the air, Aliyah shrieking for Daddy in her bedroom…

“Comically,” Rainbird said.

Paul stiffened
.
He didn’t know
for sure
that Rainbird had intended to summon up those memories. But Rainbird’s toxic grin that told Paul how badly Rainbird hoped to push him into saying something regrettable.

“Mr Payne,” Paul ventured. “I’m sorry I didn’t contact you earlier…”

“I would have mentored you, Paul. I could have guided you through New York’s political snakebeds. Together, we could have equipped New York to ward off any magical threat, and instead you…” He grimaced. “Well, to be honest, I’d have to say you’ve
weakened
this city.”

Paul bristled. “One bad incident does not make a career.”

“A bad incident caused by a loose cannon you did not control. By poor staffing. By poor
authority
.”

Paul clenched his fists. This was no interview: it was a humiliation conga line. He was tempted,
so
tempted, to tell the old windbag just why the New York Task Force had been ineffective…

But no. He had to get David off his trail. Off
Aliyah’s
trail.

Offer him something he needs.

“I’m not….” Paul swallowed. “Perhaps I am not a natural leader. But as a follower, I saved you millions in claims. I found evidence of ’mancy at sites no one else even
suspected
. And I’ll save you
more
money, if you’ll hire me. Sir.”

Payne’s thin lips compressed into a contemplative scowl, a father who wanted to believe his begging son was responsible enough to take the car for the weekend.

“…I’m sorry, Mr Tsabo. No.”

“No?”

He spread his hands. “New York has been magically quiet over the past two years. Truth be told, in such peaceful times, there’s a reason I felt comfortable demoting Kit to a part-time consultant. Sadly, I run a business. As such, I only cut checks to people who’ll benefit me.”

You anticipated this
, Paul reminded himself.
Now offer him something he can’t get anywhere else.

“What if I told you
why
New York was so damned quiet?”

The regretful look vanished from Payne’s face. His nostrils flared, as if he’d scented something particularly tasty. Even Rainbird had paused in mid puff.

“
Do
you know, Mr Tsabo?” Payne asked, arching trimmed white eyebrows.

“It all comes down to Anathema.”

“The paleomancer you killed a few years ago. The last time New York faced any serious danger.”

“She had access to some deep,
deep
’mancy. ’Mancy that we still don’t understand.”

“You
say
.” Payne’s leatherbacked chair creaked as he leaned back. “You’ve
claimed
she boasted she’d raise new generations of ’mancers. But we have only your word for that.”

“No. I’ve fought ’mancers before. She was different.”
She made Aliyah into a ’mancer twenty years earlier than any ’mancer I’ve ever heard of
. “If she said she seeded New York with ’mancers, then… she did. And something’s
blocking
that.”

“Do you know what that ‘something’ is?”

“No.”

Payne snorted through his nose. “So you have a theorem. A–” He whisked his fingers across his desk, as if sweeping everything away. “A sense of a counterforce.”

“A counterforce that’s kept New York clean of ’mancy.”

“And I...” Payne gave a taut little
you’re kidding, aren’t you?
laugh, looking at Rainbird. “I should pay you to track this... force... down? When it’s keeping us so safe from harm? Why would I–”

“Because we could make
every
city as safe as New York.”

Payne’s laughter wilted. Rainbird froze, still bent over, focused on Paul. Paul drank their confusion in, then reached out to lay his hands on Payne’s desk – violating Payne’s space.

“Hire me. As a full-time ’mancy investigator. Hire me to find out what makes New York different from all other cities. If I’m right, and I find what’s protecting New York, there’ll be no more broaches, no more Europe, no more poor Lisas and Annas hurt in magical crossfires.”

Payne flushed. “I did not ask you to weigh in on personal matters–”

“And I could give you access to something other insurance companies would pay
billions
for.”

Payne squinted, balancing money lust against trust. “Why not get it yourself, if it’s worth so much?”

“I have a child to take care of. I need a salary now, or I lose my apartment.” That was bullshit – what Paul needed was enough Samaritan Mutual access to throw David’s investigators off the scent – but it played to Payne’s worst impressions.

“Huh,” Payne said. “I thought of all people,
you
would be good with money.”

Paul shrugged:
I have many surprises, Mr Payne
.

Payne glanced up at Rainbird, who looked uneasy; Rainbird shrugged.

Payne then hunched over his desk, resting his chin in folded hands, glaring at Paul with an X-ray intensity.

Paul straightened, feeling an insane confidence washing over him: he was the ’mancer-hunter. Every newspaper headline touted his deadliness.

Paul glared at Rainbird, as if to ask,
how am I doing now?

Rainbird lowered his cigar in confused surrender.

“You might find nothing,” Payne said.

“It’s true. These last two years may be a statistical fluke.”

“Why would I pay you to hunt for something that might not even exist?”

“You risk a little money now in the hopes it pays off big later on,” Paul said. “You probably know something about that.”

Payne laughed – a rich and luxurious noise, a true laughter Paul hadn’t been sure the old man had, a genuine amusement that lasted until Rainbird produced a handkerchief from his suit pocket. Payne’s laughter dwindled to chuckles as he dabbed a tear from his eye.

“Very well, Mr Tsabo.” Payne squeezed Paul’s hand hard enough to remind Paul that Payne had once been a soldier. “Welcome back to Samaritan, my boy.”