A Book Of Tongues (3 page)

“Appearances aside, gentlemen, magicians may be reckoned very
much like these bot-flies — ”

“In that they’re all weird as hell and twice as scary,” someone
muttered, near Morrow’s elbow.

“ — since all fully expressed magicians cannot appear to help
feeding parasitically upon each other’s power, as a type of autonomic
reflex. Which is why the best two examples of this oh-so-puzzling
human genus can ever manage is a sort of brief accord for the
duration of a shared task, during which they agree to consider each
other not rivals or prey, but allies . . . until, task done, they move
quickly on before they are forced to turn on one another, and hope
devoutly to never meet again.

“Thus witches who bear witch-children to term (itself unlikely)
must give their babies away at birth, or risk sucking them dry; thus
there are no formal schools of magic, only apprenticeships, which
all too often culminate in either death or murder. Thus two wizards
cannot love, or live together if they do, for fear of their passion
becoming mutually assured destruction.

“‘Mages don’t meddle,’ as the old phrase goes. And for this, we
who are not of that ilk must all, indisputably, thank God.”

“Is the point of all this we’re gonna be fighting hexes now, sir?”
called out the same voice as before. Doctor Asbury opened his mouth
to answer, but closed it again at Pinkerton’s gesture.

“Let me take this one, will you?” As Asbury nodded: “Seems to
me that what he’s sayin’ is — if we just play it right, we can trick ’em
into fighting each other
for
us.”

Asbury pursed his lips and made some ambiguous little
movement of the head. “To some degree, yes, Mister Pinkerton. And
yet — ”

“Sorry, doc,” another agent broke in, “but . . . what-all exactly
could we even fight ’em
with
, if we had to? Silver bullets?”

“Och, I’ve found real bullets do just fine, long as you catch ’em
off-guard,” Pinkerton said, dismissively. Then added: “’Specially
when aimed straight to the head.”

A flood of laughter rippled through the assembly, levity washing
away all but the soberest members’ concerns. And sometime after
that — when the train-car had long cleared itself once more, leaving
Morrow alone with Asbury and Pinkerton — the true mission
briefing began.

“We need you to find Reverend Rook, Ed,” Pinkerton began,
without preamble. “Chase down his gang, get yourself signed up,
then move in close — close as possible, without recourse to the
obvious.”

“Can’t think but Chess Pargeter might get a mite riled at me, I
was to do
that
,” Morrow said, flushing slightly.

“Oh, you know what I mean. Hell, chat
him
up too, while you’re at
it. No easier way to come next to Rook, considering where the little
bastard usually spends most nights.”

“And the — formal — goal of this particular sortie, sir?”

“Well, I’ll let Asbury here fill you in on that. It’s his baby, not
mine.” As Pinkerton stepped back, the doctor moved forward
once more, reassuming his place at the lectern. He rummaged
inside his pocket, withdrawing an utterly unfamiliar device. Once
flipped open, closer study showed a resemblance to those magnetic
compasses Morrow had handled during his service in the War —
albeit with some notable differences. This apparatus seemed to have
two needles, each spinning counter-clockwise, plus a slim, strangely
curved tine of something blendedly green and red which fluttered
in a completely different direction. The whole array involved no
obvious clockworks, these indicators instead floating “freely” on
a mercury-dollop housed in the shallow depression located at the
object’s centre.

Morrow could see no reason for the way the needles spun and
flipped without pause, as if constantly re-orienting themselves to
an invisible horizon — if
a
pole, then neither of the ones already
mapped, those immutable icons of fixity. For whatever
this
object
was made to measure obviously moved, consistently yet erratically,
as though it was alive.

“I call it the Manifold . . . Asbury’s Manifold, naturally,” the
doctor said, blushing slightly. “These needles I adopted from the
Chinese science of acupuncture, which posits an invisible energy
known as the
ch’i
that supposedly courses through every living
creature. Medical difficulties are said to be caused by blockages in
this energy-flow, necessitating the implantation of such needles
underneath the skin at specific pressure-points throughout the
human body. They know so much more than we do on so many
different matters — yet never seek to share the information except
under duress, these secretive Celestials.”

Pinkerton broke back in, his tone almost as impatient as Morrow
already felt: “With all respect, doctor, we’ve but a little time more
before we pull into the next station.”

“Of course, of course.” Dr Asbury held the Manifold up for
Morrow. “Do you take note of these markings around the rim, here?”

Morrow squinted. “I do, sir.”

“Their purpose is to measure various gradients in the ebb and
flow of this
ch’i
, which my researches have conclusively ascertained
to be the driving connective force behind all hexation. Once its
parameters are established, therefore, we may eventually use the
Manifold to identify magicians whose talents are hidden not only
from us, but also . . . from themselves.”

“You mean the, uh . . . ‘unexpressed,’” Morrow said.

Asbury nodded. “Consider what a stupid and terrible
waste
our
dealings with the sorcerous amongst us have been, to this point,”
he said. “What a wanton slaughterhouse the past is, when gone over
with anything resembling a Christian conscience. Have you ever
seen a witch-burning, Mister Morrow?”

Morrow dry-swallowed. “Never had that inflicted on me, no,” he
replied, carefully. “Though I do recall an old harelipped woman took
up in my home-town when I was but eight or so, for travellin’ alone
during a drought. They found cats living in her hotel room and a
dried snakeskin in her bags, so they tied her to a cart and dragged
her through town. My Pa said it was a miscarriage of justice against
all of God’s strictures, no matter what
Leviticus
might have to say on
the subject — but that was ’fore she spat vitriol at him, and cursed
him blind in one eye.”

“And what happened then?”

Morrow sighed. “They buried her up to her neck in the sand,”
he said, reluctantly, “and told us kids to chuck rocks at her ’til she
stopped moving.” He paused. “Which . . . we did.”

Asbury nodded again, without comment — as though he, too,
could hear the irregular crunch of stone against bone ringing in
Morrow’s mental ears — that wet snap of cheekbone and teeth
breaking, punctuated by the cruel laughter of children he still
considered friends.

Said Pinkerton: “Only way, sometimes.”

“If one knows no better,” Asbury shot back. “But think,
gentlemen — if we had gotten to that woman earlier in her life,
before a few decades’ worth of hatred and exclusion had warped her
beyond salvage. If we had been able to treat her with kindness, with
understanding.”

“Break her to the bridle and
use
her, like any other animal. Turn
a wolf into a dog.”

Morrow noted that though Asbury seemed far less enamoured of
this simile than Pinkerton, he made no overt protest.

Asbury continued: “Or consider the trail of destruction Reverend
Rook himself left behind, when he first manifested — good men
killed, law and order left in ruins, and why? Because he accounts
himself abused, in large part owing simply to the circumstances of
his . . . second ‘birth,’ one might call it. Using the Manifold, we could
avoid all that horror by discovering witches and wizards
before
they
come to their full power . . . our ideal being not to exterminate them,
as in previous centuries, but to nurture — and, at length,
recruit
—
them.”

Pinkerton nudged Morrow, pointing to Asbury. “That’s why we
call him ‘witch-finder general,’” he confided.

“The point being, Mister Morrow,” Asbury concluded, ignoring
Pinkerton’s joke, “that we are in desperate need of data. A reading
from Rook would allow us to map out a spectrum with which to
assess potentials.”

Morrow frowned. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“I’d teach you, of course — the process is simplicity itself.
Observe.” He held out the Manifold again, balanced in one palm,
pointing it directly at Morrow. Morrow felt an instantaneous urge to
bolt, for no very good reason, and fisted both hands at once to keep
himself in check. But the needles simply spun on in their different
orbits, clicking fiercely, and Asbury gave him a kindly little smile,
probably prompted by Morrow’s obvious trepidation.

“No visible reading whatsoever,” Asbury told him, just to clarify.
“We have two scales, one running clockwise, the other counter-; a
power like Rook’s would doubtless cause both needles to meet — and
lock — somewhere along the red scale, in the upper numbers.”

“So . . . what’s that mean, then?”

Now it was Pinkerton’s turn to smile again, clapping Morrow’s
shoulder once more for emphasis, like he was congratulating him
on having knocked up his wife. “It proves you’re no magician,
Morrow — not even the beginnings of one. So we don’t have to worry
over you givin’ us a false positive.”

Thank God
,
was all Morrow could think.

“What do you say, son? You up to the task?”

Worth a promotion, Morrow knew, if he said “yes.” Better pay.
Some way of building a secure life for himself at the end of all this,
’stead of dying alone or starving on an uncertain pension after a
bullet shattered something beyond repair. Wasn’t like you could
ever hope to live your whole life without dealing even once with
hexslingers — not as a Pinkerton, and for damn sure not out here.
Just wasn’t . . . practical.

“Yes sir,” Morrow said, at last, “I somewhat think I might be, at
that.”

Which was always what they liked best to hear, down at the front
office — and easy enough to say, before he’d actually spent any sort
of time in Reverend Rook’s company.

Three months ago, and counting; an age, seemed like. Eighty days
and nights, twice the length of time God took to drown the world,
or Jesus to wrestle Satan in the desert. And in all that time spent
standing idly by while Rook and Chess cut their bloody double
swathe over an already-wounded landscape, he’d never yet been able
to get close enough to take the reading which would kick him free
from this whole nightmare for good.

Or remembered to do so, anyhow, whenever he
had
gotten that
close.

So here he was, and here he stayed.
Would
stay, however long it
took — until he finally got it right.

“They call this Whore City,” Chess said, balancing back on his heels
and surveying the area with a cold eye. “Though why folks make
that distinction, given the rest of this crap-heap . . .”

“Weren’t you born here?”

“That’s how come I get to say so.”

To the casual observer, ’Frisco’s Chinee-town — or at least the part of it known as China Alley, a dingy passage extending from Jackson
to Washington Street — was completely given over to a sprawling
tangle of semi-respectable bagnios on the one hand, outright cribs
on the other. It had begun to rain sometime during their trek down,
reducing visibility considerably, with mist and mud conspiring to
further dim the overhanging lurch of shadows. Outside the bagnios
red paper lanterns had been posted, casting a hellish light.

Morrow thought they all looked tolerably enticing destinations,
when compared to the cribs: cramped, one-storey raw-board shacks,
at whose small barred windows girls leaned straight out into the
alley, shamelessly bent on advertising their wares. Their top halves
were covered with brief silk blouses, but the minute a man’s eyes fell
upon them, they opened their drawstrings wide and called out.

“China girl nice! You come inside, please?”

“Two bittee lookee, flo bittee feelee, six bittee doee!”

And most inexplicably: “Your father, he just go out!”

“A white woman would have to be pretty much on her last inch of
trim, to end up like that,” Morrow remarked. “‘Course, this
is
where
the smoke all comes from, I’ll bet.”

“There’re plenty,” Chess said, shortly. “And not all of ’em opium
fiends, either.”

For a split second, Morrow wondered how he knew — but he made
sure not to let it show.

“Songbird’s house should be along here somewhere,” the Reverend
broke in. “Selina Ah Toy’s, they call it. Chess?”

“I ain’t been down here in five damn years, as you well know, and
my Chinee ain’t worth squat ’cept for negotiating very
specific
points
of sale.”

The Rev fixed him with a sidelong warning look. Chess snorted,
and grabbed hold of the next old pigtail who clattered by them.

“
Ai-yaaah
!” the man yelled out — then stared a bit closer. “You
Ingarish Oo-nah’s boy,
wei
?” he asked, at last.

Morrow noted how the tips of Chess’s ears flushed bright red at
being thus identified. But seeing how it was under the Rev’s watchful
eyes, he conjured some vile parody of a pleasant expression, replying,
“Uh huh. Nee how, uncle — long time no see. Songbird ah?”

“Songbird? No can do!”

“
Can
do, uncle. Selina Ah Toy’s, cash money ah. This fella jootping, same as her. You bring.”

“Songbird no-go!
Chi-shien gweilo, ben tiansheng de yidui rou
— ”

And here he went off into some further rattle-fast string of stuff,
only stopping short when Chess stuck his gun to the old man’s shiny
blue silk-clad chest.