IN WHICH THE FEDS GET WISE

[little_lady_d]

The night of the raid, Immanuel Bachman was in the office. Most nights Immanuel spent in the office. The higher-ups didn’t need him turning over speakeasies or hunting monsters in the moonlight, but then, they never needed him until there was a problem no one could solve.

The Bureau of Thaumaturgy and Thaumaturgy Prevention seized anything that had the look of the arcane to it, but some books didn’t burn when you torched them. Some snapped like a bear-trap, or unfolded like a puzzle-box, secrets nestled under layers. Immanuel didn’t mind those. He could spend weeks picking apart an enchantment, finding rationalizations in the ur-language, until he could construct a counterargument to break it all down. There was a satisfaction that came with prising the secret out of a puzzle-box — puzzles, unlike problems, were made to be solved.

 

That night’s problem came from some smiling, boyish associate, sweater-vest and shirt-sleeves and hair in need of cutting. He knocked on the threshold of the room before he entered, which was polite, but pointless. Immanuel couldn’t tell him to leave. He couldn’t even shut the door. Give a man a closed door, and what’s to stop him from slipping a magic book into his pocket and taking it home?

 

“Mister Bachman,” the boy said. “Mister Bachman, I’m so sorry to disturb you, but could you take a look at something for me? It has to do with the recommissioned golems.”

 

Immanuel raised an eyebrow. “Recommissioned?”

 

“That’s right. You took detailed notes on the animating schemae of the decommissioned police golems, didn’t you? I liked the history you put in.”

 

Immanuel searched the boy’s face for insincerity. Any underling tasked with reading and summarizing his notes, digressions and all, had to be pitied. “I’ve always found ‘police golem’ to be something of a contradiction in terms,” he murmured. “Given the golem’s origins as protections for communities where policing was insufficient at best, unjust at worst. American golems are, admittedly, cultural chimerae. Built from a patchwork of thaumaturgic traditions, which have to be considered individually and jointly ...” He was making excuses, he realized. Explaining too much, again.

 

“That’s what I mean,” the boy said beaming. “You’re so thorough! I would never have learned all that if you didn’t write it down.”

 

You could read it in a book, Immanuel thought, if the books weren’t kept behind walls of Bureaucratic red tape and truename permissions. Get the right book, and you could make your own golems.

 

But enough of what he didn’t have, what no one let him keep. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked.

 

“It’s the scrying system — here. Let me show you.” A shallow, silver bowl, a flask of water gathered by moonlight, and a chunk of raw glass. With secretarial grace, the boy laid out each on the desk, then placed glass in bowl, poured water over glass. He spoke a series of letters and numbers, tav-mem-alef-one-one-one-two-two-serekh-null — patchwork, as Immanuel said.

 

In sing-song ur-language, he said reveal, reveal.

 

Like a drop of ink, blackness spread through the bowl. It swirled from its edges and into the water, stealing clarity, swallowing vision. It flowed into the glass itself, and changed it to a small world of shadow.

 

“See?” The boy plucked up that world, held it out to Immanuel. Even the skin of his palm didn’t show through.

 

“No,” Immanuel admitted. The glass didn’t glimmer, when it turned in the light, tumbling from the boy’s hand into his. It wasn’t glass anymore, but the sight of somewhere else — somewhere the light of the room didn’t touch. “Which is the point, I suppose?”

 

“Each golem was outfitted with a set of scrying-eyes, but this unit’s don’t seem to be working. Nothing shows, no matter what I do.“

 

“And where is this unit?” Immanuel ventured to ask.

 

“In the field,” came the reply. Perfect innocence.

 

“So when you say the cage-golems were recommissioned …”

 

“It was quick work,” the boy said, “but did you know, there’s more room in the papers on Monday mornings? If there’s a string of arrests using all-new equipment on Sunday night, it’ll make a nice story, don’t you think?”

 

“Thanks to the likes of you, here, stuck overseeing it,” Immanuel said. Winced, when he realized he’d said it aloud. Blame lack of sleep — it was worse than drink. “What were you expecting to see?”

 

“It’s as you say,” the boy said, hands open, no hard feelings. “I’m not there, so I can’t confirm what’s on the other end. There could be anything, couldn’t there?”

 

“Then you should be satisfied with anything. But,” Immanuel continued, “you say the scrying’s not working. Why?”

 

“Because nothing’s showing?” Question mark at the end, head tilted to one side, eyes wide and wondering — good. He was thinking.

 

Immanuel took off his pince-nez, chased off competing reflections, and gazed into the glass. It didn’t glimmer. Shouldn’t glimmer, that wasn’t a surprise to him. Nothing changed when he held it up to the lamps.

 

Nothing changed, so that meant when the darkness shifted, it wasn’t a shift in the light. He saw gradations of shadow, like gradations of sky, skyscraper-bright on the horizon and black infinity at the zenith. And beyond that, like a web of veins faintly pulsing ...

 

“Stars.”

 

“Stars?”

 

Rather than leave it to his own eyes, Immanuel passed the glass back. “Look. Let your vision adjust. It should take a moment.”

 

“Oh,” said the youth.

 

Then, soft, “Oh.”

 

It was as if they’d peered through a nebula, shrouded in space-dust. Dark and vast but never empty.

 

“It’s one step to question the equipment,” said Immanuel, “but what you should do is question your assumptions. Define your expectations, and deduce from what follows. Is your scrying showing you nothing, or is it showing you something you didn’t expect?”

 

“What could it be?”

 

“Not quite ‘anything.’ But close. If you start with the assumption that the scrying system is functional — albeit occluded — an on-site scrying should tell you more. Remote scrying gives you sight, but once you’re closer to the subject, you can open up other senses.”

 

“Oh, let’s do that! Do you know how?”

 

“Knowing,” said  Immanuel, careful, “is one thing. Authorization is another.”

 

“Then why don’t I authorize you?”

 

Immanuel looked at the sweater-vested youth anew. Question your assumptions, he thought, but that face was nowhere near hardened enough for an agent of any clout. “How?”

 

“It shouldn’t be a problem. Why don’t I share my truename permissions with you, too? I’ll put you down as an investigative partner to Blessed-be-the-King-that-cometh Chaudry.”

 

It tripped too easily off the tongue — even agents who knew the name wrestled with it. No mistaking him, at least, for a John or James Chaudry. The Bureau’s apotropaic prodigy, survivor of the Brethren, and heir to the Brethren’s quaintly puritan naming practices.

 

“Agent Chaudry,” Immanuel said as though nothing surprised him. “You do have a reputation.”

 

“That sounds so formal. Won’t you call me Blessed?”

 

“No.”

 

“Mister Bachman, then.” Blessed put his hands together, and — like a storybook prince — bowed. “Will you help me redeem myself? This was my raid, after all.”

Comments

[ernest]

I already love Immanuel immensely! He's a lot like Guildenstern in how he thinks in digressions, while at the same time a lot more open to information which challenges him (where Guil would freeze up probably). And then that last line is wonderful!

[little_lady_d]

eee thank you! you’re exactly right about immanuel — he has that same sort of fractal thinking process that guil does, that way of spiraling into different theories and philosophies while trying to grasp a larger context. but he also has some of that willingness to test and experiment and adjust that ros does. i was just thinking the other day that a lot of what i learned about writing dialogue, i learned from loving r&gad so much lol.