Max pursed his lips, took another look through the scope, sat up again. Uncapping the inkwell on the table, he dipped a pen and wrote below Roni’s last line in the ledger:
“Amazing work - you’ve found it! And now for the real fun - first to understand exactly how this conversion works, then how to harness it, then how to control it.”
He sat back and stared off through the windows, into the landscape in the light of the dawning sun. Plans, Max thought, more plans, always plans. But this one was different. If we control the roots of power we can finally take on the gods.
“So what do you think?”
Max jumped on the stool, startled out of his reverie.
Roni was leaning in the doorway, wrapped in a robe, her hair tucked into the robe’s hood. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said.
“You were concentrating, I didn’t want to disturb you. Anyway, I’ve always liked watching you when you’re thinking about something, you get that dreamy mind-in-another-world expression.”
“Hah,” Max said, “don’t give me that. Since when is your mind going wooly?” He turned his head away and looked out the window at the colors of the rising sun. “What did I think, you asked? You’ve done landmark work, that’s what I think. It was worth it getting dragged here just to see this.”
“Thank you, Max.” She was looking out the window too, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Max, I wanted to tell you, I’m sorry about the situation, what we’re asking you to do for us.”
He shrugged. “It’s not your fault. That still doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it, because I’m not. This thing could be pretty unpleasant, you know,” Max said.
“I told you I’m sorry, Max, I really am.”
Max leaned back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling. “Sometimes I think friends are more trouble than they’re worth; all I seem to do some years is bail you all out of problems. Friends don’t want to die, well, I don’t want to die either, but somehow it’s always my life getting risked out in front.”
“You do it because you like to do it.”
“That’s true, up to a point. Beyond that point, I do it because I never seem to have any choice.”
“You’ve chosen not to have a choice,” Roni said. “You’re the one who wanted to take on the gods. You didn’t have to do that. Plenty of people have been living with the gods for a long time without any issues at all.”
“Whether these people admit it or not, the problem was there all along, I only inherited it. But why are you getting so worked up about it now, after all this time?”
“Because I’m tired of you complaining. Your biggest problem is now the gods are an obsession with you. You wanted to demonstrate you have free will? - well, okay, you’ve done it. You’ve got free will. Why not use it for yourself for a change? Why not find someone and fall in love? It would do you good, you’re getting too sour.”
Max raised one eyebrow and looked sideways up at Roni. Was that why she was worked up? Give me a break, Max thought. “I’ve been in love,” he said.
Roni turned a subtle red color. “You know it would have never worked out.”
“You know it might have,” Max said. “But it’s all right. You chose Karlini, probably a better pick in any case, he’s a lot easier to get along with than I am, and that was that. You’re my good friend, and I like you, but I don’t love you.”
“Max, I -”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Anyway, that’s not the only time I’ve been in love, and things didn’t work out then either.”
“You should still find someone new.”
“I’m not in the mood,” Max snapped.
“Max, that’s -”
“You think I should show free will? You think I should settle down? I can’t settle down. I wouldn’t mind it for a change, but I can’t. The last time I tried, a fireball dropped out of the sky and blew up the house. If I hadn’t been standing next to a window I wouldn’t have gotten out. The problem was I wasn’t the only one inside. And you say I should fall in love? You say I should show free will? Forget it. That’s the dream. I stay on the road because I don’t have a choice. I won’t have a choice until I can turn and fight back, and make it count.” Max stabbed a finger toward the microscope. “And with the work you’ve got here I’m finally going to be able to do it.”
“If you survive Roosing Oolvaya.”
“Well, yeah, of course,” said Max. “There is that.”
9. WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW
Even after they dumped me in the local jail I was still thinking it over. The way the Guard had arrested me had been slick as a textbook. I couldn’t see anyone bothering to learn my habits well enough to trap me that neatly, with me not even able to draw my sword, much less fight or run, so it might have been purely good luck for them or bad luck for me. Either way, it didn’t seem like I’d gotten any benefit from the metabolic association with Gashanatantra, my erstwhile client. Any luck he had sure hadn’t rubbed off.
Luck or no luck, though, I couldn’t make the operation add up. The way I read it, that squad had been ready for me. They knew I was someone they were after, they’d recognized me immediately, and they’d acted in perfect coordination without pausing to think. Reviewing my activities for the last few weeks, I couldn’t think of anything I’d done that would make me that important a target. In fact, their recognition of me was just a little too perfect; I don’t have a particularly distinctive face, but they hadn’t even checked me against a description. They’d just jumped.
That left a couple of possibilities. I ruled out mistaken identity - with all the crazy stuff I had been mixed up in lately, it didn’t surprise me at all that something this unusual had happened. Of course, being picked up by the Guard because I’d been confused with somebody else would have been the most ridiculous thing of all. I didn’t think I had to reach that far. No, I had the feeling I’d been pegged. A person out there in the city wanted me out of circulation, and had managed it very nicely. One side of martial law is a tendency to arrest everyone handy and sort things out later. With all the confusion in the city, and the number of people being grabbed, I could disappear into the shuffle for a week or two and no one would think twice about it, or come looking for me either. With Gash and his damned metabolic linkage hanging over me, though, on ice was exactly where I couldn’t afford to be.
I didn’t have to think too hard to find a prime candidate for wanting me out of the way. The barrier-maker was the obvious one. Oh, sure, some person who had their own grudge against me could have chosen this time to get even, but I thought I’d already piled up enough coincidences for one morning. It was improbable enough to think that the barrier-maker already knew I was looking for him. I had had no reason to think he knew who I was, except for the clear fact that there I was, sitting in jail, and I hadn’t found him yet. Unless I had, and hadn’t realized it. I did have a candidate; after all, the list of people I’d talked to since this new mess had started was real short. My new pal Gash, and Carl Lake.
In fact, you could say Carl had led me right into that Guard troop. He could have left his house, assuming I’d follow him, and sent his manservant off to arrange things with the Guard. He didn’t necessarily even have to arrange anything - for all I knew he could have just plain taken control of the soldiers’ minds and led them through it directly. Following a magician can be tricky, which I knew, of course, but like a sap I’d let myself ignore it. When a magician’s around, you never know what things just happen by themselves and what they’ve caused deliberately. The final misstep that had put my hand out of reach of my sword - was that chance, or did magic make my foot slip? The perfect coordination of the Guardsmen - was it practice and drill and luck, or was somebody else running them? That’s why I hate magic. Things are usually complicated enough without having to worry about whether a given thing was random or not, or whether a hidden puppet master was calling the shots in a way I’d never detect, or whether a piece of evidence was real or had materialized out of a puff of colored smoke.