They say I’m the best swindler there’s ever been, huh? Then what am I in here for? Most say the best cons are Yaps, Traps, Mouths, whatever you want to call ‘em, ‘cause they can change how the mark thinks. Then the Readers, Head Cases, they’re next, ‘cause they can tell you what the mark really thinks. Honest truth? They ain’t all that. Magic makes it too easy, makes a con soft. They got no imagination . . . Fine. You got me. I am the best . . . But you know what? Don’t take a wizard to clean a mark. You know the real secret to running a confidence scam? Tell them what they want to hear. There’s a sucker born every minute.
—Joseph “Hungry Joe” Lewis,
Interview at Sing Sing State Prison, 1888
UBF Traveler
The Japanese airships were right above them. Harsh rain pounded against the hull with a rhythmic drumming noise. Lightning flashed, seemingly just beyond the glass of the cockpit. It was blinding, yet the afterimage made it so that Sullivan could see the black shapes of the Imperium warships searching for them even with his eyes closed.
They were running completely dark, but that wouldn’t help if the lightning reflected off of the Traveler’s hull. “Think they spotted us?” Sullivan asked.
“If they did, we’ll know when the first shells hit,” Captain Southunder replied, perfectly calm. This wasn’t the first time the old pirate had run a blockade. “We’re practically swimming in Impy bastards.” He looked out over his bridge crew, obviously thinking hard about what to do next, stuck between several choices, all with bad possible outcomes, but sometimes a pirate just had to run on instinct and make a call. “Barns, take us down a thousand feet, nice and slow.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” Barns gently pulled a brass lever on his console.
The Traveler shifted violently to the right. Most of the crew had to grab onto something to keep from losing their footing. Sullivan just planted his feet and imagined that he was anchored to the deck until the tremors slowed. After several seconds of ominous creaking, the Traveler seemed to steady a bit, and the crew of the crowded bridge all got back to work, fiddling with gizmos that Sullivan frankly did not understand in the least. “That was nice and slow?”
Barns grinned. “We’re getting sideswiped with sixty-mile-an-hour gusts. Anything that doesn’t corkscrew us into the ocean is nice.”
“You asked for rough air, Mr. Sullivan. I’m happy to provide,” Captain Southunder said.
“All I asked was for you to get us to Shanghai unseen.”
“Same thing. As sleek as this girl is, anything that’s beating us this badly has got to be hell on those Imperial slabs. Shanghai’s position on the coast means that this area is crawling with ships. Of all the Free Cities, it’s the one I dread visiting the most. I drained my Power to unleash this unseasonable beast in the hope that the Imperium would have the sense to dock their fleet. However, it appears they don’t have the sense God gave a duck. I really didn’t expect to see any patrols this far out.”
“Bad timing, or do they suspect what we’re up to?”
“If they do, then we’ll know when the entire Jap navy is waiting in Shanghai to greet us.” Southunder turned to the teleradar operator. “Mr. Black?”
The pirate’s eyes were glued to a picture tube. “They haven’t changed course.” It all just looked like green haze and glowing dots to Sullivan, but the UBF invention seemed to be working, and whatever it was showing, it was making the operator happy. “Good thing too. From the return I’m getting, one of those airships is a huge multihull. From the size, maybe a Kaga class.”
“Bearing?”
“Seven miles ahead, two thousand feet above us. Bearing north-north-east.”
Southunder rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “How we managed to get along without that marvelous device all these years, I’ll never know. Bless those UBF Cogs and their pointy heads. Bouncing radio waves off of solid objects to see how far away they are . . . It’s like magic.”
“Says the man who makes hurricanes with his mind,” Barns said as he fought the controls. “That UBF doohickey is just fancy science.”
“Science which I, for one, am happy the Imperium hasn’t invented yet, or our jobs would be far more difficult.”
“The day the Imperium gets one of these radar thingys is the day I give up privateering to do something safer,” Barns muttered, glancing at Sullivan. “Like sword swallowing or lion taming.”
“Lucky guy like you?” Lance Talon chuckled. The knight had come up to the bridge to watch, fascinated by the show. “That wouldn’t even be a challenge. I’ve done lion taming. It’s overrated.”
Barns’ oddball Power was somehow related to altering probability and coming out with favorable results. “You’re using your magic right now I hope?
“Don’t fret, Sullivan. This part is always a little tense, but then afterwards, we have a drink and a laugh at the Imperium’s expense.” The look of intense concentration on the young man’s face suggested he was, in fact, using his Power. “Good times.”
“Shit. I’m getting a better side view,” the teleradar operator said. “That’s definitely a Kaga.”
Everybody on the bridge died a little inside. That was the most advanced airship in the Imperium’s arsenal. It had more conventional firepower than a Great War battleship, several hundred extra pairs of eyes on the lookout, armor that the Traveler wouldn’t even be able to dent, and worst of all, a Peace Ray, which could vaporize anything in its line of sight. “If that thing sees us, there ain’t no running.” Sullivan said.
Barns grinned. “Like I said, good times.”
Southunder was chewing on one knuckle. “Any signs of surface ships, Mr. Black?”
“None yet, Captain. Hard to tell. Surface is choppy as hell.”
“Stay on this heading and descend to five hundred feet, Barns.”
“Gonna be rough winds that close to the deck,” Barns said, but it was more of a warning than an argument. The pilot had already started to comply
“Not as choppy as being obliterated by a Peace Ray. We’re burning a lot of magic right now. I’d hate to pass too close if they’ve got a tuned-up Finder aboar—”
CRACK! BOOM!
That time Sullivan did flinch, but it was more from the flash and electrical snap than any movement of their vessel. The actual airship had barely moved, but all of the tubes and lights on the bridge had either gone black or were flickering unsteadily.
“Peace Ray!” someone shouted.
Idiot. If it had been a Peace Ray, they’d already be ashes.
“Lightning strike,” Southunder stated. He turned around in his captain’s chair and looked to his Torch. “Ori! Status?”
Lady Origami was so quiet and tended to always position herself so far out of sight that it was easy to forget she was even around. The Torch placed one diminutive hand on a bulkhead and closed her eyes. Torches had to have some sort of mental view of their surroundings relating to fire, much as a well-practiced Heavy did with gravity, or like Faye had with that weird head map she’d gone on about. Always curious when it came to magic, Sullivan decided that he’d have to interview Lady Origami for his notes, assuming they didn’t blow up in the next few seconds at least. “I stopped some sparks. Bags clear and happy.”
The bridge crew all quit holding their breath. Sullivan realized that all of the hair on his body was standing on end.
“So we’re not going to explode. Yet.” Southunder turned to the teleradar operator. “Did that strike illuminate us? Are any of the Imperium altering course?”
“Teleradar is out,” Black answered. “I’m blind.” He slid out of his chair and opened a panel on the side of the machine. Smoke came wafting out. The smell of burnt wiring hit everyone’s nostrils. “Shit.”
Without that UBF toy, they could blunder right into an Imperium ship. “One of my knights, Schirmer, is a Fixer,” Sullivan said.
“Fetch him,” Southunder ordered. “And the UBF engineer too.”
One of the crew picked up a mouthpiece and began turning the charge handle. “Damn it. Horn’s fried.”
“I’ll get them.” Sullivan turned to leave. He was just a useless spectator up here anyway.
“Good.” Southunder’s attention was on keeping them in one piece. “There’s a Crackler among your knights. Make sure he’s awake and have him point the lightning elsewhere.”
Wish I would have thought of that before, Sullivan thought as he left the bridge.
“And you’ve got a Torch. Have him be ready to help Ori in case things get out of hand.” Southunder called after him.
“Captain!” Lady Origami sounded very indignant at the idea of her actually needing help.
The Traveler was being hammered by the wind. Walking down the corridors was difficult, even for somebody who was close personal friends with the laws of gravity. Barns sure hadn’t been lying about it being rough closer to the ocean, and the whole ship was getting a kick in the pants.
“Just the man I’ve been looking for.”
Sullivan turned to see Dr. Wells. The alienist had walked right up behind him without even making a sound. The fellow had to be near as quiet as Heinrich to pull that off, either that or Sullivan’s ears were still ringing from the lightning strike. He had already sent Schirmer and the UBF Fixer up top, and alerted Cracklers to keep them from getting blasted again, so he figured he had a minute before he went back to being anxious and useless on the bridge. “What is it, Doc?”
“Could you spare a minute?”
“That depends. You gonna complain some more about your living conditions?”
“It’s not the Ritz, but it is a bit better than the hole at Rockville. Not by much. But no, I’ve got something for you.” Wells always talked too loud. Like he thought he was on stage or something. He held up a stack of papers. “This is a profile of our target. I’ve taken everything your Grimnoir spies had about him, plus I interviewed Toru rather extensively about this Master Saito. It is not ideal using secondhand and biased observations, but I believe this will help deal with our imposter Chairman.”
Sullivan took the neatly typed stack of papers. “We have a typewriter on board?”
“Yes. The UBF men came rather prepared. I don’t know what they expected to do with all of those office supplies in a war zone, but be thankful because you probably wouldn’t be able to read my handwriting. Legible penmanship is a sign of a boring mind.”
Sullivan scanned the first page, then the second, then the third. It helped that he could read faster than anyone he knew. Wells had put together a very detailed list of every action the Grimnoir knew the new Chairman had taken since the real Okubo Tokugawa’s death, complete with a hypothesis about what each act meant.
The alienist seemed really proud of his work. “Toru was rather impatient with my questioning. I really don’t know how anyone manages to put up with that pushy Iron Guard, but we are lucky to have someone who was once a student of Saito’s.”
“Bit more than that, ain’t it?”
“Indeed. Our obstinate friend tried to make his observations all sound as if they were personal, but I could tell many of his opinions had been formulated by old Master Hattori. It is almost as if Toru has a whole extra person in his head with the memories that were forced upon him by the dear deceased ambassador. That is a fascinating situation, which if I had more time, and a more agreeable and less impatiently violent subject, I would love to study further . . . Oh, if only I could absorb one other person’s life experiences like that, I do believe it would have to be John Keats . . . Or perhaps Jack the Ripper.”
“Gibberish.”
“No, really. It would be fascinating to know what made such a mind tick.”
“I mean your papers. This is junk.”
“Please, Sullivan. We both know the dumb lug routine you utilize is a defense mechanism of yours. Don’t pretend you haven’t picked up enough Latin to reason your way through the correct terminology.”
“I brought you into this because Bradford Carr thought you were some sort of man-hunter. He said your results rival a Justice.” Sullivan leafed through the sheets. “This is nothing but guesswork.”
Wells was holding onto the walls to keep from being knocked down as the Traveler swayed. “Then I’m afraid you misunderstand the fundamental science behind predicting behavior. All of us are merely a sum of our experiences. Psychology isn’t algebra, where you give me a few variables and I will solve for X. Psychology is an art, but I understand people as well as you know gravity. The information I have is spotty, but sufficient. It is really rather simple.”
“Simple? This Saito asshole is working with an outer-space monster in order to get everybody on earth killed. How—” A powerful gust of wind struck the ship. The Traveler lurched so suddenly that Wells lost his balance and fell. Sullivan had to shift his weight a bit but was unmoved. Impatient, Sullivan reached down and pulled Wells to his feet. Of course the Massive was unharmed. “How can you make sense of that?”
Wells dusted off his shirt. “Just because someone’s reasoning is flawed does not mean that there was no reasoning at all. Everyone wants something, and it usually isn’t what they tell you it is. Once you figure out what it is that they are looking for, that gives you power over them. That’s why even Readers are so often wrong. They can read the thoughts that float to the surface, but they often miss the ocean of subconscious which lies beneath. Find out what lurks in those depths, Sullivan, and you know them better than they know themselves. Once you achieve that, you can manipulate them into doing whatever you want.”
“No wonder your patients loved you so much.”
“I am very good at what I do. It is even easier when someone is hiding their true motives behind a false narrative, because then all you need to do is think ahead a bit to anticipate what actions they will take in order to best reinforce their narrative. Stimulus. Response. We provide the stimulus, and since we anticipate the likely response, we set a trap. Thank your lucky stars that Dr. Carr hadn’t offended me so, because if I’d still been working for him, he would’ve easily beaten the Grimnoir.”
“Trying to trap us didn’t work out so well for Dr. Carr . . . And what if Saito’s brain is being controlled by the Pathfinder?”
Wells smiled. “He’s not.”
“I don’t get how—”
“I’d bet my life on it. This fake Chairman’s actions are rather clearly and unambiguously human. There is nothing alien about his actions. I see a man trying to prove himself. I see a man who believes he could have been great, but was stifled in the shadow of a greater man for so very long. Everything he has done or said since he has been in control of the Imperium is a clue to his ultimate goal. It is all there, plain as that gigantic, many-times-broken nose on your face . . . And to think I was told that you were some sort of detective. What kind of detective ignores expert testimony?”
“Fine.” Sullivan sighed. “Assuming we don’t get blown out of the sky, we should be in Shanghai in a few days. I’ll go over this and make a call before we land.” Sullivan leafed through the pages. “I just need to know how to kill this son of a bitch.”
“There’s not sufficient information to tell you what his physical or magical capabilities are, but I can tell you how to reach him. My recommendation is in the summary. Last page.”
Sullivan skimmed it, and as he did so, he came to fundamentally understand how somebody like Wells had been able to carve himself a position of authority amongst the hardened killers of Rockville so quickly. Most of the cons would’ve been open books to somebody like him. Sullivan gave a low whistle. “Remind me to never play cards with you. So you want us to be bunco steerers and hustle the most dangerous man in the world?”
It was nice having a Ph.D. who was also a con. “More like he’s the confidence man and the Imperium is his mark. He’s laid the groundwork for us. We use his own scam against him.”
“You’re one malicious, manipulative son of a bitch, you know that, Doc?”
“It is nice to be appreciated.”
Wells’ study was much deeper than Sullivan had originally given him credit for. Though the alienist was careful to put in plenty of disclaimers about how he had a limited sample to extrapolate from, consisting entirely of Grimnoir spies’ intelligence reports, and one crazy former Iron Guard whom Wells was counting as two separate subjects stuck into one homicidal body, everything he’d written seemed to make an intuitive sort of sense.
The Traveler was still busy trying to run a blockade and survive a magical storm. Sullivan was pretty much useless in this situation, and he couldn’t abide being useless, so he’d gone to his bunk, managed to maneuver himself into place, and started reading. The lights were out, something to do with Pirate Bob conserving electricity and burning less hydrogen, so Sullivan had done most of his reading by flashlight and lightning strike.
He’d pretty much memorized the whole thing in short order, but he kept pondering on it and reading each bit over and over again. Normally he preferred to do his deep thinking while doing some sort of manual labor, a trick learned while breaking rocks in prison, but there just wasn’t much for someone like him to do on a dirigible.
Sullivan had been a private detective. He’d never been financially successful, barely making enough to pay the rent most of the time, but that hadn’t meant he was’nt good at it. He enjoyed puzzles, and he’d often found that once you figured out the important pieces and how they fit together, the rest sort of fell into place. People were the biggest puzzles of all, but that didn’t mean they were any different. As he read and reread the profile of Dosan Saito, Sullivan began to get that old puzzle solving feeling again. This fit.
The Pathfinder must have landed sometime after the Chairman had died . . . Unlucky for them, it had wound up in Asia again, and somehow it had hooked up with Saito. Why China again? Bad luck, or something else? All of those details were a complete mystery, but Saito himself wasn’t. He was a man who wanted to be in control and thought he really was in control.
If Wells was right, even if Saito was being influenced by something alien, he was still a man, and he would make decisions like a man. He was the product of a foreign culture, which most of them could never understand, but he was just a man, which meant he could be reached. Now the question became what to do once they got him.
That turned his thoughts to a sheet of paper hidden under his bunk with a terrible spell copied onto it . . . It had drastically magnified Zangara and Crow, but at what cost? Maybe that. But only if he didn’t see any other choice . . .
“Mr. Sullivan?”
He pointed the flashlight at the hatch. Buckminster Fuller had to cover his eyes. He’d been so distracted he hadn’t heard the Cog come in. In fact, he’d been so engrossed in pondering on the fake Chairman that he hadn’t even realized the storm had tapered off. How long had he been thinking? The Traveler was running as quiet as something with jet engines could run. The emergency lights were on in the corridor, so he killed his flashlight. It would’ve been too much work to try to get his big body out of the tiny bunk, so he just set the report on his chest. “Hey, Fuller.”
“The knots!” The Cog seemed agitated, but then again, Cogs usually seemed agitated. Browning was the only one Sullivan had met so far who seemed collected. “I’ve untied the knots!”
“Knots?” It took him a second to remember. “You mean the skinless man’s magic?”
“It isn’t magic! It was! Not anymore. It is something else, a perversion of magic, an evolutionary monstrosity. The deceased biological specimen used to be a Brute. And it wasn’t a knot at all. It was a loop! A lasso! It isn’t omnidirectional, it is multi-omnidirectional! It’s, it’s, it’s—”
“Okay, easy there.” Sullivan decided this was probably worth getting up for. It took a few seconds, but he managed it without bashing his head onto anything metal. He pulled the chain and turned the light on. “Break it down for me, and use words an idiot can understand.”
“Domes are my area of expertise, but strings are a fascinating side note.” Fuller looked around in consternation, spotted a work boot under Barns’ bunk, hurried over, and pulled it out. He roughly jerked the laces out of the boot and tossed it back on the floor. He held up the shoelace. “What is this?”
“A shoelace?”
“It is the omnidirectional flow of magical energy between the host, in this case, Active magicals, and the parasitic symbiote, as in the multidimensional Power being.”
“Us on one end. Power on the other.”
“Yes.” He took an end in each hand and stretched it out. “It is still a mystery as for how it determines suitable selection criteria.”
“It picks some of us and not others. What part of it we connect to determines what magic we can do. Got it.” Sullivan had figured that out on his own, and he wasn’t a fancy Cog, either.
“Upon connection to the human host, what we think of as magic flows down this connection to the host, where it collects, and through an unknown process of exercise through the host’s life cycle, is grown, and upon cessation of biological function—”
“Death.”
“Yes, when we die . . .” Fuller let go of one end of the shoelace to let it dangle. “The being then collects the now-increased magical energy back to itself in order to continue its life cycle.” Fuller took all of the shoelace into one hand in a big clump.
If Sullivan had been a more mirthful man, he might have made a sound like a spaghetti noodle getting sucked up.
“Hold this.” Fuller held out the shoelace. Sullivan took it and stretched it out, curious as to what Fuller was so spun up about. “Now you are representing the connection between Actives and the symbiote. When I used my magic earlier to ascertain the nature of the magical connection of the specimen you collected from Axel Heiberg, I spoke of knots, as if the connection itself had been manipulated in some heretofore unknown manner. The normal magical geometries seemed chaotic, tied into knots, if you will, but they were not knots at all!” Fuller then went to Barns’s other boot and yanked the lace out of it too.
“Barns is going to be ticked when he sees somebody’s been messing with his stuff.”
The Cog didn’t even seem to hear him. “This second string represents a new entity. Which for the intents of this discussion I shall label the Enemy. Normally I prefer not to use language which predisposes an adversarial nature, but I’ve come to see the point of your usage of the term.” Fuller took the second lace, looped it around the cord stretched between Sullivan’s hands. He tied a basic knot on his side. Fuller’s loop slipped back and forth on the original shoelace. “The multiomnidirectional layering was not some new evolution in the connection between the host and the symbiot at all. There was no knot in our connection, only extra materials.”
“It was a hijacking.”
“A fine word in this case. The Enemy, to use your rough term, has entered the equation. The connection now extends into another dimension.” Fuller pulled harder on the lace and Sullivan could feel the tension, so he held on tighter to keep from losing it. “It is hijacking the flow of magic. Now what happens when biological functions cease?”
Sullivan let go of one end. Fuller pulled it toward himself and snagged the first shoelace before it pulled through his loop. Now it was pulled tight between them.
“Your hand representing the Power being is still making an effort to hold the string. The symbiote must decide. It is tethered to the Enemy now. It will be dragged toward the Enemy. Notice, I do not drop the other end which I have hijacked from you. Why? This host’s lifecycle has ended.”
Sullivan figured this must be like what college was like. “They ain’t really dead. Like the skinless man.”
“Correct. They are now biological tools, implements of this Enemy. They are anchors.” Fuller tugged hard on the shoelace, so Sullivan had to pull back harder. “And worse, especially because I lack a sufficient number of hands and extra shoes with which to demonstrate this principle, these hijacked anchors will now go on to loop around and entrap other host-bond connections! The process will increase at an exponential rate. When enough of these hosts become anchors, what will the symbiote do?”
Sullivan let the shoelace fall.
“Exactly. Deprived of enough vital energy, and being pulled inexorably toward its predator, it will cut the connections and flee.”
Now Fuller had all of the shoelaces, but Sullivan still had no ideas. “Thanks for the lesson, but I’d already sort of figured that. How’s that help us all not get hijacked like you hijacked Barns’ boots?”
Fuller sorted out the shoelaces until he held up the loop he’d tied. “This.”
Sullivan sighed. “You got me there, doc.”
“This is what the Chairman’s magnificent globe was designed to track. I was so distracted by the arrival of a biological specimen which still retained some measure of magical connection that I neglected to compare my notes to the design of the detector. Over the last few days, I have finally been able to layer the two together. This looping, this hijacking, that is what is displayed on that magnificent spherical device, an interruption in the normal cycle of magic. Now that I have seen the actual target, and not a mere representation of the target I can replicate—”
“You can build your own Enemy detector . . .”
“In a manner of speaking, yes, but better. The Imperium Cog’s spellbinding was brilliant, but it lacked creativity. It lacked true artistry.”
Sullivan had thought the big globe thing had been rather pretty, but he didn’t want to derail Fuller’s chain of thought. It wasn’t like the Cog was seeing things the same way as a regular man did, anyway. “That’s good news.”
“Far better than you realize, Mr. Sullivan. With your permission, I will require the skills of all the UBF employees, Southunder’s more mechanically capable crew members, and especially the Fixer Mr. Schirmer. I will need supplies procured once we land; I will provide a full list, and I will need a sufficient portion of the cargo hold for workspace. ”
“You get this thing built fast, and I’ll have dancing girls bring you breakfast in bed.”
Fuller smiled. “As you are well aware, the idea of harming any life here on spaceship Earth fills me with a most profound dread. There are rumors aboard this ship of what you intend to do, and I am fully aware of the dire consequences these actions will have against the people of Shanghai. It does not take a fool to know that my entreaties to search for a peaceful resolution will fall on deaf ears, nor am I deluded enough after seeing the Axel Heiberg specimen to think that such a resolution would be achievable in a time frame sufficient to not prevent the extinction of all life on spaceship Earth . . . Still, every act of violence diminishes us.”
“I figured we’d keep you hidden on the Traveler.”
“Obviously! That is not my point. I am aware that you wish to expose the Chairman as a charlatan, and by doing such a thing in an expedient manner, prevent as much killingry as possible.”
I don’t know about that. Sullivan figured there’d be plenty of killingry to go around. “I’ll try.”
“My point is that I will not simply spellbind you a device which will serve as an Enemy detectlocator. I intend to build you an Enemy detectlocateexposer. The loops will become visible to the naked eye. The truth will be laid bare for all to see!”
“An Enemy-exposer? You’re a genius.”
Fuller blushed. “I’m not a genius. I’m just a tremendous bundle of experience.”
That made Sullivan think of Wells’ alienist profile of Dosan Saito . . . And one more piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
