"I don't need a full manifestation from either Eligor or Botis," she explained, "but I do require the application of some of their attributes: Eligor discovers hidden things, while Botis discerns past, present, and future. Now if you will excuse me-"
The first gesture of her elegantly manicured hand was a wave to get me to move back a couple of steps. The next was a pass that accompanied her conjuration. Calling up demonic attributes without getting raw demon, so to speak, is a tricky business; I watched quietly and respectfully while she did what she had to do.
It was more like coaxing than commanding: no impressive circles or pentagrams, no manifest thyself or eternal torment shall overwhelm thee. At the climax of the incantation, she just said, "Help me, please, you two great Powers." I tell you, modem sorcery lacks the drama it had in the good old days.
But we can do things now that our ancestors never dreamt of trying. When Celia Chang pointed to the plaques on the cable, the seals that bound Eligor and Botis, which had been black squiggles on silver metal, began to glow with a light that outshone the St Elmo's fire on the ceiling.
The light started to fade, then grew again. They're searching through time for the etheric connection," Celia Chang said. Just then, Botis' seal blazed for a moment; I had to blink and turn my head aside. The CBI wizard softly clapped her hands together. "We have the fix in time. Now to see whether Eligofs allegory algorithm can uncover the missing phone number."
I didn't know what we were waiting for - probably for Eligofs seal to flare up the way Botis' had. That didn't happen; its squiggles continued to shine as they had before. I don't know if you're familiar with Eligor's seaclass="underline" it looks rather like an open mouth with a rubber arrow threaded through its upper lip.
Arrow or not, though, that sort of a mouth up and spoke like the old Roman godlet Aius Locutius: one number after another, until there were ten. Celia Chang and I both wrote them down as Eligor gave them to us. By the time we'd recorded the last one, the lines on both plaques had stopped glowing.
"Let's compare them," the wizard said. I handed her the scrap of parchment on which I'd taken down the numbers.
She held out the one on which she'd written them. We'd both heard the phone number the same way. She asked, "Is this number familiar to you?"
"No." I shook my head. "It's not Judy's; it's not any phone number I've seen before."
"I expected as much, but you never know," she said.
"We'll have to go to the telephone consortium, then, and learn to whom the number belongs - if anyone, of course. It might be a public phone."
"I hadn't thought of that," I said in a hollow voice. Hard for me to imagine kidnappers having a victim make a call from a pay phone in the middle of the morning, but it was possible, especially if they knew of one that couldn't be easily seen from the street.
Mistress Chang said, "We'll be in touch with you as soon as we learn anything, Mr. Fisher." She packed up her sorcerous impedimenta, nodded to me - still businesslike, but with, I thought, some sympathy, too - and strode out of the office.
My stomach growled, fortunately a couple of seconds after that. What with all the coffee I'd poured down there, it had been growling on and off for a while now, but this was a different note. It wanted food. No matter what your mind tries to do to you, your body has a way of reminding you of life's basics. I went over to the cafeteria and bought myself a vulcanized hamburger - as a matter of fact, it was cooked so hard that Vulcan, had he been of a mind to, could have carved the battle reliefs that he'd put onto the shields of Achilles and Aeneas right onto the surface of the meat. I ate it anyhow; at the moment, I didn't much care what I fed my fire, as long as it filled me up. And I washed it down with more coffee.
The stuff was starring to lose its power to conjure up my demons. I found myself yawning over the last of my fries.
But no rest for the weary; I plodded back to the office to see what I could accomplish.
In short, the answer was not much. Part of the reason was that I jumped halfway to the ceiling every time the phone yarped, hoping it would be Judy again. It never was. None of the calls I got was of any consequence whatsoever. Every one of them, though, broke my concentration. In aggregate, they left me a nervous wreck.
Along with hoping one of the calls would be from Judy, I also kept hoping one wouldn't be from Bea. I just didn't have it in me to play staff meeting games right then, and I wasn't real thrilled about having to bear up under sympathy, either.
Atlas carried the whole world, but right now I had all the weight on me I could take.
But Bea, to my relief, didn't call. Except for relief, I didn't think anything of it at the time. Looking back, though, I think she didn't call precisely because she knew I couldn't deal with it. Bea is a pretty fair boss. I may have mentioned that once or twice.
The phone squawked yet again. When I answered it, Celia Chang was on the other end. "Mr. Fisher? We have located that telephone whose number I traced a little while ago. It is, unfortunately, a public phone up on the comer of Soto's and Plummer in St. Ferdinand's Valley."
"Oh," I said unhappily.
"I am sorry, Mr. Fisher," she said, "but I did think you would want to know."
"Yes, thank you," I said, and hung up. I never have figured out why you thank someone who's given you bad news - maybe to deny to the Powers that it's really hurt you, no matter how obvious that is.
After Celia Chang's call, the phone stopped making noise for a while. I tried to buckle down and get some work done, but I still couldn't make my mind focus on the parchments in front of me. I'd write something, realize it was either colossally stupid or just pointless, scratch it out, by again, and discover I hadn't done any better the next time. All I could think about was Judy - Judy and sleep. In spite of all that coffee, I was yawning.
About half past three, someone tapped on my door. Several people had been in already; news of what had happened was getting around with its usual speed in offices. I knew they meant well, and it made them feel better, but it just kept reminding me of what Judy had gone through and might be going through now. Still, once more couldn't make me feel much worse than I did already. "Come in," I said resignedly.
It was somebody I worked with, but somebody who already knew what was going on. "Hello, David," Michael Manstein said. "I trust I am not intruding?"
"No, no," I said - someone else would have been, but not Michael. "Here, sit down, tell me what that thing - that Nothing - I mean - in the Devonshire dump is."
He folded his angular frame into a chair, steepled his long pale fingers. "First tell me if you have any word of your fiancee," he said. So I had to go through that again after all. He listened attentively - Michael is always attentive - then said, "I am sorry you were out of the office when Judith called. I wish I could have been here when the CBI wizard traced the call, as well. I have had occasion to attempt that twice, but succeeded in only one instance. An opportunity to improve my technique would have been welcome."
I had the feeling he was more interested in the magic for its own sake than the reason it had been used, but I couldn't get angry about that - it was Michael through and through. I tried again to make the carpet fly my way: "So what was that Nothing? Did you analyze it?"
"I did," he answered. "As best I could determine, it is - Nothing."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I know I sounded peevish - nerves, exhaustion, coffee again.
Michael didn't notice. What he'd found intrigued him too much for him to pay attention to details like bad manners.