Uptown Local and Other Interventions (26 page)

            At the door on the street, Rob paused. “Are you for real?” he said. “Is this place for real? Or will you just vanish when I go?”

            Uli made that amused sniff again. “Without me, there is no reality,” he said. “But meanwhile, one must make a living. You will not need me in this mode again. But if one of your clocks breaks—“ He shook Rob’s hand.
 
“Auf wiedersehen.”

            Rob went around the corner to catch the tram.

*

            Half an hour later he called his office from the Hauptbahnhof, and spent some time sweet-talking Chei into forgiving him. The next morning, the second-string Lear was sitting in a civil-aviation slot at Kloten, and Chei met him at its door with his proper passport and a pile of paperwork. By that evening they were home, back at HQ: and when the ruckus had settled down and everyone left him alone at last, Rob went to the safe to put his bogus passport away.

            The click of the safe’s opening sounded odd, muted. As the door swung open, he saw why.

It was almost completely full of stacked glassine envelopes.

            His hands trembling, Rob reached in to the top of the left-hand stack and drew the envelope out. Inside it was a dramatic splash of grey and silver against a sky full of clouds and lightning, and a heroic face, smiling, half-hidden under the silver helmet:
Captain Thunder,
issue one.

            Rob sat down shakily at his desk, slipped the comic out of the envelope and laid it carefully on the blotter. He read it, cover to cover, as twilight settled down outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. The old, old joy came up from the page to meet him, as if it had never been gone.

            But now it
had
never been gone….

Trembling, Rob turned the last page over, and the single piece of white notepaper lay revealed between the last page of small ads and the back cover. The printing at the top of the page said
WILLINGDEN FEED AND GRAIN:
at the bottom, it said
Call HArmon 180.
  

And between these, someone had written,
  Thanks for everything.

            Carefully Rob closed Issue One and pushed it aside. Then he put his head down in his hands and cried for what he’d lost that he’d suddenly got back again—

— not the comics.

I think it was in
Wizards at War
that chocolate starts to become the core of a running gag in the Young Wizards universe—where the redoubtable Carmela Rodriguez, sister of wizard Kit Rodriguez and would-be galactic personal shopper, faces down a heavily armed crowd of aliens with a bar of Valrhona Caraïbe Grand Cru single-estate … and triumphs. (Oh, all right, she was carrying an energy weapon too… but it was the chocolate that made the difference.) This story continues playing with the joke. Among other things.

            The bells, the
bells:
the sound of them brought him very slowly out of a dream, and he cursed under his breath as he woke up, because he knew it was one of those dreams he was never going to be able to recover no matter how he tried. Ken cursed harder as he rolled over and realized that “the bells” were nothing more than the “real ring” ringtone he’d downloaded for the phone last week. He was bored with it already.
And how bored is everybody else?
he thought, as he levered himself more or less upright and fumbled around on the dressing table, wincing at the sunlight streaming in through the bedroom window and trying to find the PDA-phone without opening his eyes a millimeter wider than he had to.

            There was a thump as it fell onto the rug by the bed: he’d left the “vibrate” setting on at the club last night, and now the thing had walked itself off the table. Ken started to bend over to pick it up, and then the throbbing in his head warned him that bending over right now was
not
a good idea.

           
Ooh, too many Caipirinhas,
he thought.
And when am I going to learn that
any
Caipirinhas is too many for me?
Meanwhile, the phone lay there on the rug, ringing away.

Ken moaned. “Will you just come
here
, please?” he said in the Speech.

            The phone leapt into his hand.
Because you ask nicely…
it said.

            “I always ask nicely,” Ken muttered, fumbling for the right button. “Hello?”

            “You need to get your butt down here,” Malesha’s voice said.

            “
What
?? Are you kidding? You said today was an off day for me!”

            “That was before today turned into the nightmare it’s presently becoming,” Malesha said.

The fact that she sounded perfectly calm did nothing for Ken’s temper. Malesha
always
sounded that way, even if the roof was falling in (which had happened last week) or Earth was being invaded by giant alien talking squid (the week before). It was infuriating. “This is
not
fair to me!” Ken said, swinging his legs out from under the covers, as he already knew what the end result of this conversation was going to be.

“‘Fair’,” Malesha said, “and our career choice—” —that being the code word used in the office for the practice of wizardry, when there were nonwizards around— “are usually mutually exclusive, as you know. Your client’s going to be here in eleven minutes.
You
be here in ten.”

“Oh, come on—!” Ken said. But it was too late: she’d hung up on him.

He scowled at the phone.

Not
my
fault,
 it said.
Don’t shoot the messenger!

“I could be tempted,” Ken said, and tried to sit up straight. Then he put the phone down in a hurry and put his head in his hands. “Oooooh…”

Better take an aspirin,
 the phone said.

“You are a
personal digital assistant
,” Ken said, straightening up again to find out how it felt. It felt awful. Nonetheless, he stood up, and only wobbled once. “
Not
a paramedic!  Unfortunately. Because that’s what I need.”

Self-pity looks bad on you,
 the phone said as Ken staggered into the bathroom.

“My
face
looks bad on me,” Ken muttered, glancing just once at the mirror, and away again, in a hurry. “Just shut up and let me get on with pulling together the shattered fragments of my life.”

The phone remained mercifully silent. Ken turned on the shower and waited for the water to come up to heat, while his thoughts ran in small tight circles and his brain tried to get itself going.
She was really pretty last night. What was her name? Angela?
Something with an A.

Steam started to rise. Ken started rooting around for his razor, which as usual was hiding at the bottom of a basket of men’s grooming products. Then he straightened up again, leaving it where it was, as “ten minutes” meant designer stubble again this morning. “What was her name?” Ken said to the phone as he pushed the shower curtain aside and got into the tub.

Who?

“You know perfectly well who. The brunette, last night. The one in that little red—you know, the dress thing—” Though it hadn’t exactly been a dress. It definitely
had
been little. “You know, with the real high—”

It’s hard to be sure. There were so
many
ladies you were drooling over last night.

“Oh, great,” Ken muttered, “first you’re an EMT and now you’re my mother. Give it a rest.”

Six minutes now…

“Come on, what was her name?”

If she was so hot, you’ll remember yourself. Myself, I think she deserves better.

 “
I
deserve better than your value judgments,” Ken muttered, squeezing his eyes shut and pushing his face up into the stream of theoretically hot water. “I’m going to trade you in for a number 2 pencil and a notepad.”

You kidding? Not even the Powers that Be can read
your
handwriting.

Ken fumbled for the soap in silence, considering that this was probably true. “What’s it about?” he said, finding the soap and getting busy with it.

‘It’ what?

“Whatever Mal’s calling about.”

Chocolate,
  the PDA said.

Ken’s eyes flew open, regardless of the water and the hour of the morning. “You interest me strangely.”

Heh,
said the PDA.

“What
about
chocolate?”

Please! Not while you’re washing
there.

And not another word would the PDA say on the subject, not even when Ken was  out of the shower and dried and dressed and running down the stairs from his little studio apartment. He never bothered with the elevator on the way out to work in the morning: not even a wizard would willingly deal with getting stuck in the elevator this time of day. There were just too many possible complications, and though most people wouldn’t normally notice wizardry even if you did it right under their noses, there was no point in taking unnecessary chances.

Meanwhile, he was happy enough to let the PDA play out its little drama: first of all because no one was any too sure about Manual sentience issues in these new portable formats—they were all still in beta—and besides, the walk from Ken’s place was short, and the peace and quiet gave him a few extra minutes to enjoy his coffee on the way to work. He swung into the Korean place on the corner, and Kim the counter guy had his coffee ready as usual. Ken put down his buck on the counter, picked it up, and was out the door again, slurping the bitter coffee through the patented scald-yourself-regardless top and speedwalking westward toward the corner of Forty-eighth and Park.

He paused there at the Waldorf’s northwest corner in the hazy spring sunshine to wait for the light along with eight or ten other people, his gaze resting half-consciously on the scarlet and chrome-yellow tulips in the median. His place might be hardly more than the size of a walk-in closet, but it was perfect for a city wizard who preferred a short commute: three minutes’ walk from the nearest Food Emporium, five minutes from the office, and ten minutes’ walk from the worldgates at Grand Central. The light changed, and he charged across in company with the office ladies in sneakers and the suits with their little razor-thin briefcases, meanwhile hunting for that babe’s name. She had been hot, indeed
well
beyond hot. Brunette: Ken preferred them—anyone willingly bucking the blonde trend these days was worth investigating.
Didn’t begin with an A,
 he thought.
It was a C. Celeste—Celine—

First letter,
the PDA said.
Sounds like—

Ken opened his mouth, then (saved again by reflex) fumbled in his jacket pocket for the phone’s mike/earpiece, stuck it in his ear. “Don’t taunt me,” he said to the dead earpiece. “It’s cruel, and it speeds up entropy.”

The PDA snickered. Ken grinned. Mobile phones made this particular aspect of wizardry so much easier: you could “talk to yourself” all you liked in the streets, these days, and no one could tell telepathy from telephony.
‘Begins with a C’,
  the PDA said.
How often has
that
been true lately?

“I’m batting at least .150.”

But not in any league that matters. Two minutes,
  the PDA said.

Ken broke into a trot again.
Even if I’m not dead on time, I can at least look like I’m out of breath—
But he was already close enough that he was going to have a hard time getting that breathless. Even from here he could see the sign over the brownstone’s cellar door: HIGHRISE EMPLOYMENT. He had never been able to find out to his satisfaction where the blame for the terrible joke lay: Malesha and Tik took turns blaming each other, leaving Ken to suspect that it was both of them.

He thumped down the stairs and paused to look in through the little barred window before opening the door: their quarters were tight, and there was almost always someone standing right where you would whack the door right into the small of their back. But he could see only one person inside, this morning: an attractive brunette lady, wearing a charcoal-gray skirtsuit, leaning on the counter that separated the office proper from the “front of house”.

Ken opened the door carefully, slipped in sideways—the space between the door and the counter was limited—and smiled at the brunette, upgrading her from “attractive” to “extremely attractive”, despite her worried expression. At the sound of the door shutting, out of the back office popped Tik. Tikram was one of those people who looked like he should have been a star in some obscure Bollywood-movie romance: tall, slender, dark, with close-cropped hair, handsome aquiline features and deep liquid eyes. He could have been called pretty if he wasn’t so aggressively muscled: it had occurred to Ken that the two factors possibly had something to do with one another.

“Ah, the token native arrives,” Tik said under his breath, and took the half-finished coffee out of Ken’s hand. “You still drinking this stuff? You astound me.” He took a slug himself, and as he finished, whispered, “Just in time. She’s on the poke this morning.”

On cue, Malesha came out of their tiny back room with an armful of files, looking as usual like a cranky Nefertiti, with her tight, beaded cornrows up in an Hérmès scarf. The blazer and pants suit, unusual for a woman whose normal fashion modes were native African or tweaked punkette, suggested that Malesha had something high-tension scheduled for the morning. So did the residue of some recent wizardry hanging about her, which Ken could practically smell as that kind of lightning-scent that was unique to her.

 “I’ve got an appointment uptown,” she said to Ken, reaching over the counter to push the files into his hands. “And  this lady has a problem…”

So did everybody who walked in their door. The question was always, was it going to be a problem better handled with an employment database and the Internet, or with wizardry?—because other wizards all over the metropolitan area referred problem interventions over here, but always under cover of the kind of help that you would normally expect to get at a more normal employment agency. Ken juggled the files into the crook of his left elbow and put out a hand for the lady to shake. “Ken Moorman,” he said. “How can we help you?”

“Miz Cruzeiros here has had an unexpected vacancy in her business,” Malesha said, “and she needs to fill it in a hurry. I’m sorry to make you tell the story twice,” she said, smiling winningly at Ms. Cruzeiros, “but sometimes in this weather our staff have difficulty making it
in
on time. Ken, before you get started, can I have two seconds…?”

She steered Ken away for a moment and lowered her head by his. “I think something may be missing from her kitchen,” she said. “Check it out and let me know if I’m right.”

He had a feeling she would be: Malesha was an unusually accurate seer, even by wizardly standards. “And you’re not going to beat me up for being late?”

“I’ll do that later,” she said. “First things first. Get busy.”

Ken turned back to Ms. Cruzeiros, smiled at her, and nodded toward the one little desk on the “client” side of the counter, the sum total of their public space. “Please, sit down,” he said, making his way to the other side of the desk and putting the files out of harm’s way.
This is what you get,
 he thought,
for letting yourself be snookered into agency work. You could have gone it alone, practiced quietly between jobs and slept late whenever you liked. But no, you had to let your local Advisory talk you into this multiple-wizard gig. “It’ll be good for you,” he said. “It’ll be a challenge.” Yeah, well it’s time I called him and said,  Carl,
mostly
what it’ll be is a big fat pain in the—

“I’m sorry,” Ms. Cruzeiros said, looking around her a little dubiously and not sitting down. “When I told my lawyer that I needed to find an agency temp for my staff, I thought he understood that I meant a
catering
agency temp—”

“We handle catering,” Ken said, putting the papers down to one side and pulling the computer’s keyboard over. Starting to use a computer as if you actually had useful something stored in it was, he’d found, a good way to calm the antsier clients down, the ones who were sold on postmodern furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows as signs of a successful business. “We’re extremely well connected: I placed a sous-chef at Termagant & Co. just last week. Please sit down and let me know how we can help you.”

Ms. Cruzeiros put her eyebrows up at that: T&C was the hottest restaurant in town right now, having lasted in that position for more than the usual three days.
But then maybe a restaurant where you go
expecting
to have the staff yell at you was always going to do well in this town,
  Ken thought.
Can’t wait for these “themed” places to go away…

“Well,” Ms. Cruzeiros said. “We— I run a chocolate store down in the Village. Theobroma—maybe you’ve heard of it?”

It was Ken’s turn to put the eyebrows up. “Who hasn’t? Best chocolate south of Union Square. A friend of mine gave me some of the lemon cream eggs last Easter. They were dynamite.”