Spinspace: The Space of Spins (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 2) (34 page)

Chapter 88

Carolyn
: worrisome possibilities

“Even paranoids have real enemies.”

– Golda Meir

It seemed like forever before he came out again.  Carolyn frowned as the minutes flew by.  How long was he going to be in there?  She had assumed he wanted to tell his father about the
icetorch
weave he had discovered.  But that would not have taken this long. 
What could they be talking about?  I have to get back!

When the boy came out of his father's rooms, he didn't seem as happy as she had expected.  “What's the matter?  Wasn't your father proud of what you did?”

Nathan didn't answer immediately.  He followed her into the stairwell and up the stairs silently as if he had a lot on his mind.  When he finally spoke, it was barely more than a whisper.  “When we graduate, are you going to stay on at the school and teach?”

“I guess so.  Why?”

“I want to be a teacher too.  But I'm not grown up like you.  I mean, I've had my
bar mitzvah
and all, but they'll still expect me to come home first, if I'm not fully grown by then.”

“So?  If that happens, you can come back to teach when you're grown.  I'm sure Xander will be glad to have you, especially after what you showed him tonight.”

“But they'll try to find me a wife.  Can I teach if I'm married?”

“I don't see why not.  Is that all that's worrying you?”

“No.”  He stopped at the next landing.  “Will I have to swear not to tell anybody what I've learned?  Keep it secret?  Because if I don't then I'm like a spy here, a thief stealing secrets.”

“I seriously doubt it,” she told him.  “Xander
wants
people to learn these skills.  That would be like keeping how to read and write a secret.  It wouldn't help anyone.”  She stopped and looked at him.  “You're not stealing secrets, Nathan.  Xander's giving them away.  He thinks they belong to everyone.”

“We have to catch the trouble-maker,” he said, changing the subject on her.  “And I want to help catch him.  But what will happen to him after that?”

That was a harder question to answer.  “Kristana and her people will decide that.  Not us.”

“But it's our school.” 

She smiled as she notice he was finally calling it that, instead of Xander's school.  

“And besides,” he continued, “what if the trouble-maker is only doing what he promised to do?  Maybe he doesn't want to cause trouble but he has to do what someone told him.  Take me.  If someone  was going to hurt my mother if I didn't do as they told, I'd be stuck.”

“Nathan, are you saying you know who it is?”

“No,” he said.  “I'm just trying to understand why he's doing it.  If I help catch him and they punish him, it would be like
I'm
punishing him.  And that would be hypocritical if I'd do the same thing if I were in his place.”

“I think you're over thinking this,” she told him.  “What makes you think you're going to be the one to catch whoever it is?”

For once, he did not reply.  They reached the floor of the student rooms and she pushed the door open.  “It's late,” she said.  “Get some sleep and we'll talk about this tomorrow.”

He nodded but did not go straight to the room he shared with Kareef.  Instead, he went to the room where Kaleb and Esteban slept and stood in front of their doorway for a few moments, then went back to his own room.  Instead of going straight to bed he stood just inside his door for a few moments, then disappeared into the room.”

Lester stood up and helped her shove the table back across the stairwell doorway.  “What took you so long?”

“He wanted to visit his father,” she said.  “Apparently they had a lot to talk about.”

Chapter 89

Kaleb
: puppet show

“The Master stays behind, that is why she is ahead.

She is detached from all things; that is why she is one with them.”

– Tao Te Ching, the Book of the Way, by Lao Tse

Kaleb stretched out on the bed, thinking of what the two apprentices had shown them tonight.  Had he seen any artifacts like Nathan's icetorch?  If so, he couldn't remember them now.  And Kareef, his pipe that rolled by itself, that reminded him of something?  What was it?  Oh yes, the way the Queen's carpet unrolled for visitors.

On the other aside of the room, Esteban began to snore.  Without thinking, almost by itself Kaleb's hand slipped under his mattress and retrieved the ring of blue metal.  At the feel of it his eyelids closed and he slipped it on as he sank back into trance.

Ah, there you are.  Report.

His mind unreeled the events of the day, telling the voice everything.  He wondered why he was doing this, but that thought was quickly submerged under the press of new instructions.

Get up.  There's work to do.

He swung his legs off the bed and stood up.  Yes, he had work to do.  He stepped out into the main room, barely noticing a tingle when he crossed the threshold.

“What are you doing up?”  It was Carolyn who addressed him.

The voice gave him words to say: 
I couldn't sleep.

“I...I couldn't sleep,” he said, walking towards her

She put down her book.  “I don't blame you.  Today gave us all a lot to think about.   But you should try to rest.  Who knows what will come tomorrow?”

The voice inside his head went on talking, giving him words and instructions.  “I know.  But that
icetorch
weave Nathan came up with is hard not to think about.  Did he tell you how he did it?”

“No, he was in a hurry to talk to his father, thought.”

“I feel like I'm falling behind.  I know, it's funny, because I've solved the swizzle and he hasn't.  But still, he's jumped past all of us to working with the
tonespace
Xander mentioned a couple of times.”

“Yes, but that's not exactly ahead of you.  Xander laid out his sequence of steps for us to follow, but it looks like not all paths are the same.”

“You mean, there's a
pathspace
for learning, too?”  He stepped closer to her.

“Sort of.  But it's different for different people.”  She looked thoughtful.  “I suppose we'll have to find ways to test the next group of students to see what they're best at before we start telling them what to learn first.”

He moved closer.  “Why?  We still have to learn it all, don't we?  What difference does it make where they start?” 

“Who knows?  I was just thinking if we let them start in whatever area they already have an aptitude for, it would help with their confidence more than struggling at something that's hard for them.”

At the instruction of the inner voice, his hand slipped casually into an outer pocket of his robe. 
You see a mosquito on her head,
the voice told him, and he did.  There it was, larger than life, getting read to drink her blood.  Disgusting!

Swat it and save her!

He could see the question in her eyes as he whipped his hand out of the pocket holding his swizzle.  Her puzzlement changed to alarm and she began to duck, but he was faster, and already in motion.    As her head pulled downward, the pipe in his hand missed the huge mosquito on her cheek, but it still bounced off the top of her head and she collapsed to the carpet.

As he stood there, aghast, the voice began to speak to him again, telling him everything was alright, that he was mistaken.  Before his eyes, the form of Carolyn became a heap of rags and trash.  He shoved the swizzle back in his pocket, already forgetting he held it, and wondered how to dispose of all this trash.  The voice told him what to do.

He looked over at the table blocking the open elevator doors, remembering how Xander had pulled them open with his pathspace.  Reaching out with his mind, he concentrated and the table began to slide out of the way.

“So it
is
you.  Why are you doing all this?”

He spun toward the voice as Nathan appeared out of thin air.  “What?  Doing what?”

He wants to stop you from cleaning up.  Don't let him!

Without thinking Kaleb conjured a blast of
pathspace
-funneled wind that knocked the boy off his feet, then turned his attention to the pile of rubbish, reaching out to make it slide across the floor toward the elevator shaft.

Chapter 90

Kareef:
doing what can be done

“...if anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the lives of all mankind.”

– Quran 5:32

Wrapped in darkness, groping his way along the wall, he heard Nathan speak up.  “So it
is
you.  Why are you doing all this?”

Unseen, Kareef shook his head in amazement.  He'd had his doubts when Nathan shook him awake, but somehow the boy had caught the traitor in the middle of his mischief.  His hand reached out and felt nothing: the open elevator.   He stepped to his right, moving away from the precipice, and let the invisibility weave collapse so he could see what was happening. 

Nathan was down and Carolyn was sliding across the floor toward Kareef.  Who was making that happen?  Kaleb!  Thinking fast, Kareef reached out toward the student from Californ and wrenched at him with an invisible donut, making him spin around and slam into the wall.  Butt Carolyn's unconscious form was still sliding toward him and the open elevator.  Kareef fell to his hands and knees and shoved at her body, hoping she was still alive.  Despite his pushing, she was still in motion.  Desperately, he wrapped her in a twisting smoke ring of
spinspace
and tumbled her sideways, out of the path that was taking both of them toward the open doors.

Across the room Kaleb was getting up.  He stared at Kareef sliding toward doom, gaping as Kareef tried to grip at the carpet.  “What are you doing?”

“Stopping you,” said Nathan as he set Kaleb's robe on fire.

Kareef felt his legs slip into the elevator shaft. 
Never thought I'd end this way.
  He dug fingernails into the carpet, ignoring the busts of pain as three of them broke. 
I guess this is it for me.

“No!” shouted Nathan, leaping toward him.  Hands grasped his wrists.  But he was still moving.  Both of them were.

“Let go, you fool, or we both die.  Save yourself!”

But the idiot refused.  In a moment Kareef was dangling over the shaft, and Nathan was tumbling over it after him. 
It must have been a pathspace weave,
he thought.  Unanchored, it should be dissipating by now.  Not soon enough to save them, however.  His life was in the hands of Allah now, as it had always been.

Both of them began to drop, and then they jolted to a halt.  “You're not going anywhere,” said Esteban.  “Come on, get back up here before he gets all of us.”

How he managed to pull Nathan up and back onto the floor? Kareef supposed he must have grabbed Nathan's ankles just as he fell over the edge.  In a moment all three of them were sprawled on the carpet, hearts pounding as Esteban sucked in breaths and climbed to his feet.

Kaleb was rolling on the floor to extinguish the flames eating at his robe.  He moaned as he rose to his hands and knees.  Esteban tottered toward him, panting, but Kareef beat him to it.  Launching himself at the traitor like a racer exploding from his starting stance, he was on Kaleb in a flash, knocking him over onto his back and pinning him to the floor.  “One move and you're dead.”

Kaleb gaped up at him.  “Wh-what's going on?”

“Save it,” he told the traitor.  “Get Xander and the doctor!” he barked at Nathan.  The boy nodded, but spared a glance at Carolyn before he darted through the stairwell door.

Chapter 91

Xander
: a matter of responsibility

“You have enemies?  Good.  That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

– Winston Churchill

The old wizard swore when the pounding on his door snatched him from the kindly arms of drowsiness. 
Confound it, can't they let an old man rest?

Blearily he planted his feet and forced himself upright.  He straightened his robe and stepped to the door and managed to open it without falling down.  “What?”

Nathan's face looked pale.  “We have to get the doctor!” he gasped, out of breath as if he had been running.  “Carolyn's hurt.  Kaleb tried to throw her down the elevator shaft.”

Xander stared at him as the words penetrated. 
Kaleb.  I should have known the Queen sent him to stop us.
  “Is she bleeding?  How badly hurt is she?” 

“I don't know! Come on!”  the boy pulled at him, and Xander followed him to the stairs.  “I think he hit her with something.  She's not moving.  She needs the doctor.”

“You go get him.  I'll see what I can do until he gets there.”  They split up, the boy scrambling down the stairs as Xander ascended, taking the steps two at a time and to hell with caution.

In what seemed like moments he burst out of the door and took in the scene: Carolyn lying motionless, while Kareef held down a baffled Kaleb while Esteban glowered.  He hurried over to the girl and bent down to press and ear to her mouth.

After a second, warm air tickled his ear.  So she was still alive.  He nearly sagged with relief, and ran fingers over her skull.  Nasty bump there near the top.  It had bled a little, but not much.  Well, not much he could do for her.  Daniels would see to her.

He got to his feet and went over to Kaleb.  The student's robe was burned in places, he noted.  “What've you got to say for yourself?”

Kaleb stared up at him.  “About what?”

Kareef looked ready to spit.  “He keeps talking like that.  But I saw what he did.  He was going to kill her, and he nearly got me and Nathan too.”

What?
Xander went through the student's pockets and found his swizzle.  There was a little blood on the side of it near one end.  Kaleb clutched at it, trying to wrest it from his grasp, and Xander saw a ring of blue metal on one of his fingers.

Without knowing how he was certain, he was sure it was an artifact.  He grabbed the lad's wrist and yanked the ring off his finger.  It had no markings that he could see, but when he probed at the space around it he thought he detected the trace of some unknown weave.

Well, whatever it was, it would wait.  “What happened here?”

Kareef did not take his eyes off Kaleb for a second as he strove to answer the question.  “Nathan woke me up and we came out invisible, so I missed the first part.  When I dropped the weave and could see again, she was already down and sliding toward the elevator.  He must have already got the table out of the way.”

Kareef paused to take a breath.  “Things happened fast after that.  Nathan must have set his robe on fire to distract him while I rolled her out of her path.”

Xander watched Kaleb's reactions as Kareef told him about nearly falling to his death to Nathan until Esteban saved them.  Kaleb appeared baffled and shocked as the story unwound.

At this point Nathan returned with Daniels.  While the doctor looked her over, the boy joined them around Kaleb.  Kareef's lips were pale and thin.  “Maybe we should throw
him
down the elevator shaft.”

“We don't kill people here,” Xander told him.  “or at least, only in battle, in self-defense.  Besides, I think he was under someone else's influence.”

“Why are you all looking at me like that?” said Kaleb.

“Stop pretending not to know what you did,” Kareef growled.

Xander held up a hand.  “I don't think he's pretending.”

“What, you're saying someone could make him do things and then forget what he did?  Sounds like a fairy tale to me.”

“I have an idea about that,” said Nathan.  “But maybe I'm wrong. It was something I read about in a psychology book, called
hypnotism
.  You can use it to talk people into doing things.”  He shrugged.  “The problem is, you have to be close to speak with them.”

“Maybe not,” Xander said, feeling the ring in his pocket.  He had a sneaking suspicion he knew what it did, now.  But that would wait.  “Send down for some rope and tie him up.  And blindfold him.  Until we know what's going on we can't risk him pulling anything else.”

He strode over to Daniels.  “How is she?”

Daniels didn't look up from his patient.  “I'd say she has a concussion, but so far there's no sign of hematoma.  As long as her brain doesn't swell, she might be all right.  We'll know more when she wakes up.”

“Can we move her?  If her head was hit her neck and back should be okay.  Am I right?”

“Probably.  All right, help me lift her and get her to her own bed.  No point in carrying her all the way down to the infirmary unless she gets worse.”

He didn't want to ask how she could be worse than unconscious   and unresponsive.  Together, they lifted her and took her back to her room.  Once they were inside and had stretched her out on the mattress, Xander turned to the man.  “When your father was training you, did he teach you anything about hypnosis?”

Daniels raised an eyebrow.  “I learned a little about how to use it for anesthesia, and to help with insomnia.  “But she isn't feeling any pain at the moment.  When she wakes up she'll be feeling it.'

“Not her,” said Xander.  “I think Kaleb, the student who did this to her was in a trance at the time.  I've run across references to this stuff before, but I always thought you couldn't make anyone do things they wouldn't do in a normal state of mind.”

“Hmmm.  Ordinarily, you'd be right, but there are ways to get around that.  There are stories of hypnotists, for example, who could get a woman to take off her clothes in public by convincing her she was alone in a hot room.  You can use suggestions to manipulate perceptions and then you can sway decisions in surprising ways.”

“Have you ever hypnotized anyone? I remember you  mentioned anesthesia.”

“Once or twice.  Are we thinking the same thing?'

“I'm thinking,” said Xander, “that Kaleb is in a lot of trouble if we don't prove he was under someone else's control.”