“Tell me, Mr. Draith, what would you do if someone tried to steal your objects from you?”
Objects? I thought. As far as I knew, I had only the sunglasses. Still, his question made me think. I’d come to feel strongly possessive of the sunglasses. I would fight to keep them—that much I was sure of.
“I suppose I would fight to keep what’s mine,” I admitted.
A long, thin finger flew upward and he waggled it at me. “Exactly!” he said. “I would expect no less. They are so magical—so captivating. They become like a part of us. The bond will grow ever stronger, you’ll find. They are unique, priceless, and irreplaceable. The things you can do with them will define who you are. In time, they will become your beloved children.”
I rubbed my chin with the back of my hand. I didn’t like where this conversation was going. He was trying to prove to me that greed and fascination could take over my mind.
“OK,” I said. “These powerful objects tend to make people do bad things out of greed and possessiveness. I get that. Still, you guys are a bit beyond the pale. I mean, bleeding animals and chanting bad French poetry in a circle? What’s that all about? Are you wannabe witches or what?”
Gilling chuckled. “Hardly. We do not perform actual magic in the traditional sense. We call ourselves technomancers. We perform magic with advanced technology.”
I blinked at him.
“Let me explain,” he said. “To someone from the time of the American Revolution, a television set or the Internet would be magical. They could not understand how it worked, even if they could learn how to use it. You and I are in a similar situation. These objects do what they do because of principles of physics we don’t understand—there are rules and reasons, but we simply don’t know them. Therefore, they might as well be magical in nature.”
I thought about that for a second, but knew he was still dodging my actual questions. “You still haven’t explained the blood and the book.”
“Both are functional. The power I have, as I’m sure you have guessed by now, is to open pathways through space.”
“Yes, I’ve run into quite a number of them lately.”
“I require organic material to light these fires,” he said.
“Fires?” I asked.
“Do you know what flame truly is, Mr. Draith?”
I thought about it and decided honesty was the best policy. I shook my head.
“It’s a body of incandescent gas. It requires a source of intense heat to begin burning, and then a supply of fuel to continue the chemical reaction. These rips in space are similar in nature: they don’t last forever without some substance to keep them going. I am able to create the spark that starts the reaction, that’s all.”
“And you use blood for fuel? Why not wood or tap water?”
“I’m not exactly sure why, but most substances don’t work. Recall what I said about utilizing technology one does not fully understand—in this way, we are like most computer users. We can read our e-mail, but have no comprehension of the complex process by which it actually appears on the screen.”
“All right,” I said. “So only blood fuels your power? That makes you some kind of vampire.”
“We don’t use that term,” Gilling said stiffly.
“I’m not surprised.”
Gilling pursed his lips for a moment in irritation before continuing. “Once these openings in space start burning, only organic fuels seem to work. Blood happens to be a very convenient, efficient source of fuel. We tried store-bought meats, both cooked and raw. They couldn’t sustain the reaction. Freshly killed animals do marginally better, but only for short periods. A significant flow of warm blood, however, has moved us into a new realm of power!”
His eyes lit up as he spoke. I found his manner disturbing. The pistol in my hand, which I’d let dangle while we talked, perked up seemingly of its own volition. Some part of my mind had decided the world might be a better place if this man were dead. But I didn’t shoot him. Instead, I asked him another question.
“And the poetry?”
“Oh, that. Again, functional. It helps me keep my mind focused as I maintain the opening. I have to think about where I want it to go while I set my fire, you see. If I’m distracted, I make mistakes—poor Hugo.”
Indeed, I thought, staring at the table where a man had died earlier this eve, his torso merged with a sheet of glass. Poor Hugo. It was very different now, thinking of these people as individuals, as people who were caught up in a new kind of science humanity had never met up with before.
I had a thought then…what if we had discovered these things before? At a previous point in history?
“Gilling,” I said, “do you think the witches of the past—do you think they might have discovered something like this?”