The Warlock's Curse (26 page)

Will’s heart leapt into his throat. He considered lying, saying that he’d left it at the apartment ... but that would only forestall the inevitable. He reached into his vest where the lumpy cigar box still rested.

“About that ...” Will began. “There’s been a problem.”

Will laid the cigar box on the desk and lifted the lid, revealing the tangle of burnt wiring within. “I’m afraid bringing it through the Dimensional Subway was a mistake.”

An infuriating smirk curled Roher’s lips as he peered inside the box. Grig’s face, however, remained impassive.

“I expect it was the result of incompatible Otherwhere Embedding,” Will offered. Roher poked at the wiring with a disdainful finger. “I guess it resulted in an episode of Critical Interactive Resonance.”

“Of course it was, and of course it did,” Roher sniffed. “You could easily have protected the mechanism against an overload of that type, you know. There’s a very handy little gizmo you’d do well to familiarize yourself with, Mr. Edwards. It’s called a
fuse
. Maybe you can get one of the dollar-a-day line workers in the Teslaphone plant to explain the concept to you.”

Will reddened with embarrassment, but refused to rise to the bait. Quietly he shut the lid on the Flume.

“Never mind,” Grig said. “There’s plenty of time. You can rebuild the prototype, of course?”

“Yes,” Will said. “It will take me ... a couple of weeks, probably. But I can get started right away, if you’d like me to.”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” said Grig. “I’ve seen and heard enough to know that you can, and that is sufficient. At the moment, I have a far greater need for your personal assistance on my own project. I think you will find it very interesting.”

“Would you like me to throw this away for you?” Roher smirked, tapping the scorch-marked lid of the cigar box. “If there’s one thing I am glad to help you find, it’s the ashcan. I imagine you’ll be needing to use it quite a lot.”

Clenching his teeth, Will continued to pointedly ignore Roher’s barbs. He was growing unhappier with his assignment of desk mates by the moment.

Mr. Hahn, Grig’s secretary, came up behind them.

“Mr. Grigoriyev, Legal just rang. They’re ready for you to bring Mr. Edwards over.”

Grig sighed. “Paperwork. The bane of human existence. Come, Mr. Edwards. We shall make this quick.”

Emerging from Building Three, they discovered that it had grown colder and the sky was clotted with gathering snow clouds. Will was once again glad for the overcoat his mentor had lent him. They walked briskly to another building. It was not numbered; instead, a sign by the front door read, in thin modern letters of chrome, “Corporate Offices”.

After negotiating receptionists, assistants, and even an elevator, they arrived at a large corner office. The placard on the door read “George Jovanovic, Chief Counsel”

The office’s occupant was an older man, balding, with a round belly and skinny legs. He wore a very flashy vest, which did not surprise Will, for it was his experience that only balding men with round bellies and skinny legs—or lawyers—ever went in for vests like that.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Edwards,” said Jovanovic, shaking Will’s hand heartily. Then he wagged a finger at Grig. “Is it true you’ve already been showing him around Building Three? Before he’s signed his paperwork?
Tsk tsk,
Grig.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, let’s just get this over with,” Grig muttered, taking a seat. “Never were we so plagued by lawyers in the old days! We all have much more important things to do, Mr. Edwards included.”

“The formalities must be observed!” The lawyer sounded hurt on behalf of the formalities, as if the formalities were a small kitten constantly being abused. Retrieving a freshly-typed stack of papers from his desk, he slid on a pair of half-moon glasses and peered down at them.

“Now, Mr. Edwards, we sent you the boilerplate apprenticeship contract with the acceptance letter, but given your irregular circumstances we had to make a few adjustments.” He looked at Will over the top of his glasses. “Am I to understand that you brought a
wife
with you?”

Will nodded. Jovanovic’s eyes lit with amusement as he touched a place on the page. “Good thing we took out the celibacy clause then, isn’t it?”

“Celibacy clause?” Will said.

“It was all very clearly stated in the boilerplate we sent you,” Jovanovic said, and Will’s embarrassment burned afresh. “All interns must agree to remain pure and chaste for the term of their association with Tesla Industries.”

“Mr. Tesla believes that by refraining from intimate physical congress, one can channel one’s mental activities to a higher plane.” Grig stated all of this with textbook flatness. “Meditation is also involved.”

“In any case, we have stricken that clause.” Jovanovic smiled again. “I trust you will meditate a little bit harder, Mr. Edwards, to make up the difference.”

Jovanovic turned over the sheaves to another place on the contract.

“Another irregularity ... as the result of your matrimonial state, arrangements have been made for you to live off the Compound. I’m sure Grig has told you how exceptional this is. I have revised the language surrounding punishments for leaving the Compound, items of that nature ... but I have also added some new language about not leaving the Compound unless you are accompanied by Grig. He will walk you to and from work every morning.”

Will looked at Grig, raising his eyebrows. Grig gave him a soothing smile, much as he had given Roher.

“It is a peculiarity of Mr. Tesla’s,” he said mildly. “He fears for the mental purity and physical cleanliness of his workers, especially his apprentices, who are younger and more impressionable. He would like our program to be ... well, he thinks of it rather like a monastery. A monastery of brilliant young men, working toward the achievement of science’s noblest aims.”

Will absorbed this. Finally, drawing a deep breath, he said, “Mr. Grigoriyev, Mr. Jovanovic—I didn’t come to Detroit to see the sights. I came to work and to learn. I swear to abide by any restriction.”

Both Grig and Jovanovic seemed amply pleased by that response. Jovanovic, particularly, smiled even more broadly.

“Well! That is the kind of attitude we like here at Tesla Industries. We needn’t bother going over the rest of these changes, then. It is good to know that you understand that we have your best interests at heart. So, let’s get these signed, and you and Grig can get back to work.” Retrieving the signature page from the end of the stack of papers, he laid it on top then squared the papers neatly. Then he opened his desk drawer and withdrew something small wrapped in a sanitary cardboard wrapper. From the wrapper he extracted a small steel razor blade that glinted in the light.

“You expect me to sign in
blood
?” Will wanted to be accommodating, but he could not keep the surprise from his voice. He was aware that many companies, especially old-fashioned ones that still trafficked in magic, required such a soul-binding signature on contracts of importance. But Will hardly expected it from a company with the kind of modern, progressive reputation that Tesla Industries had.

“I assure you, Mr. Tesla would prefer that our contracts not be signed using bodily fluids,” said Jovanovic. “But it is a corporate necessity that I have prevailed upon him to accept. You may cut your finger yourself, or I can do it for you. I promise you, I am quite good at it.”

Will remembered Jenny’s admonitions.”I think perhaps I should look these over,” he said, haltingly. “May I sign them tomorrow?”

Grig and Jovanovic exchanged glances. Jovanovic’s cheerful demeanor clouded.

“We
did
send you the boilerplate with the acceptance letter,” he said. “And you
did
have ample time to review that, didn’t you?”

Will gulped. “Uh ... sure. Of course. But the changes ...”

“The changes really are insubstantial,” Jovanovic interjected curtly. “And you have already seen the inside of Building Three.”

“That is my fault,” said Grig. “You mustn’t hold Mr. Edwards responsible—”

“Nonetheless, he has already seen more of Tesla Industries than Mr. Tesla would allow anyone to see without signing a non-disclosure agreement, at the very least.” Jovanovic pointed out. He sighed before adding, “Also, there is an additional complication.”

“An additional complication?”

“I don’t know if Grig has told you, but there have been urgent inquiries about you. Inquiries which give us very significant legal pause.”

Will’s blood chilled. “Inquiries?”

“Your professor at the Polytechnic, Mr. Waters, telephoned me yesterday, asking about you,” Grig hastily explained. “Your people back home are demanding that you be returned to them immediately. It seems that not everyone is pleased about you taking this apprenticeship.”

Will flushed, humiliated. Goddamn it. He knew his parents were looking for him, but he hadn’t imagined they would contact Mr. Waters, contact Tesla Industries—suggest that he should be dragged home like a truant schoolboy playing hooky in the pool hall! It was just plain mortifying.

“I’m eighteen years old!” Indignation burned under Will’s collar. “I have every right to come here. My people back home don’t have anything to say about it.”

“Absolutely you do,” Grig said encouragingly. “That’s the spirit!”

“By signing the contract, you empower us to respond to these inquiries on your behalf, should your parents decide to pursue the matter more ... forcefully,” said Jovanovic. “Once you formalize your legal relationship with Tesla Industries, we will handle everything.”

“Fine,” Will said, snatching the shining little razor blade.

Jovanovic took out a dish and a bottle labeled “Haycraft Leech Saliva”—a substance that would allow the blood to flow as freely as regular ink. The lawyer put several drops from the bottle into the dish and passed it over the desk to Will. Will cut his finger and let the drops fall into the dish. Jovanovic gave Will a steel-nibbed pen. Will signed the contract. Once he was finished, the lawyer blew on the signature to dry it, then squared the papers.

“We’ll have a copy certified for you, Mr. Edwards,” he said. Then he went to his desk drawer and withdrew another small, glittering thing. He showed it to Will—it was a small pin, like a tie tack, enameled in black and red with the lightning bolt design that featured so prominently in all of Tesla Industries designs.

“Your Tesla Industries Identification Badge.” The lawyer pinned this to Will’s lapel, smoothed the fabric. “Take care with that, Mr. Edwards. It’s a mark of distinction.” Then he dusted his hands and nodded at Grig. “He’s all yours.”

“Excellent,” Grig said, beaming. “Let’s get to work.”

And work they did. In his first day, Will ate a vegetarian lunch in the gleaming white cafeteria, copied several dozen pages of Grig’s notes—still not quite succeeding in comprehending the exact nature of the project he was working on—rewired a faulty magnetometer that none of the other apprentices had had time to fix, and was informed by Roher that he’d decided to nickname Will “Blockhead.”

The short winter day purpled into frostbitten evening. Near dinnertime, Grig had been called into an urgent conference with Mr. Tesla. In his absence, Court was tasked with giving Will a more thorough tour of the Compound. Will was disappointed in Court’s perfunctory discharge of these duties, especially the slapdash tour of the power plant with its massive Tesla Coils. Court was much more interested in getting to the end of the tour—a secret spot where the apprentices went to smoke. Pushing aside some branches in the tall laurel hedge, his guide led him to a cleared-out hollow, made more comfortable by the addition of some empty crates that bore the mark of a scientific instrument company in Chicago.

“Smoking is absolutely forbidden inside the Compound,” Court warned, as he pulled out a paper packet of cigarettes. “You just let Niko catch you at it and see what happens.” Lighting up, he blew smoke over the hedge. He offered Will one, but Will waved it away—he’d never picked up the habit, and if Tesla didn’t like it he didn’t want to. “But don’t worry, Grig watches out for all of us. He’s like a mother hen. You’re lucky to have gotten on this team. We’re the best in the whole compound.”

“So there are other groups?” Will asked. Court nodded.

“Three total,” he said. “Mr. Tesla has a mania for the number three. He does everything in threes, or multiples thereof. If you ever have to help Grig with a report intended for Mr. Tesla, make sure you never send it up with an even number of section headings.” He looked regretful, as if freshly reliving some painful section-heading related mishap. Then, having worked through the trauma, he took another drag on his cigarette and continued.

“Now, my personal area of expertise is geophysics,” Court said. “I was recruited because Tesla’s big project right now is using the resonant frequencies of the earth to transmit electric power wirelessly.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Will, carefully. Even with Court, who had been friendly and open, he didn’t feel safe venturing more than that. He’d been at Tesla Industries less than a day, but already he was feeling wary and overwhelmed, like he was sure to give the wrong answer at any moment. Will was not used to being around people who were as smart—and likely smarter—than he was. It was ... well, it was
terrifying
, that’s what it was.