The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Chapter 12

SIRIN'S EXPERIMENTS ALWAYS WORKED.

That's what bugged Jane. They could construct identical assemblages of retorts and glass tubing, heat them with Bunsen burners feeding off the same petcock, flames tuned to the same height and color, measure out portions of sal ammoniac and exsanguinated toad's liver from the same carboys, their weights identical to the gram, and come morning Sirin's alembic would contain an azure essential oil with a spirit of light dancing in its depths and Jane's would be black with carbonized gunk. She had to pay for any glassware rendered unreusable, so there would follow a good fifteen minutes' sincere and futile brushwork at the sink before the thing would finally and mercifully burst in her hands. It seemed her fingers were always stained and bandaged, where Sirin's were long and slim and white as milk.

It wasn't fair.

Frustrated, she stepped out of the Alk-200 lab and let the thronging students sweep her away. The hall echoed with the clicking of hooves and heels. Everyone was in hurry, walking rapidly, turning suddenly to step into a classroom, appearing abruptly from side corridors no wider than a doorway. They seemed to be constantly popping in and out of existence. Jane's half of the traffic suddenly poured down a wide marble staircase, and she was carried along with them. Three floors she descended, and made it to the dissecting theater just as the bell rang.

Monkey was in a benevolent mood and had saved her a seat by the railing. Jane nodded thanks as Monkey lifted her stack of books away. Comparative and Speculative Anatomy was one of Jane's favorite classes. She looked forward to next semester, when she'd get to do some dissecting herself.

"Are we still on the centaur?" she whispered.

"No, I think he finally rotted." Monkey giggled, slipped a foot out of its shoe, and tugged at one of her own braids. "By the look of the control, I'd guess we're finally going to get to see something cute cut up."

"About time."

In the narrow horseshoe balcony, students were settling themselves in, a bright ripple of beaks and bat-wings, horns, jackal's-heads, bandannas, and horsehair plumes. Below, the control stood by the linen-covered dissecting table. He was a well-made young fey in an olive dressing gown provided by the Department. He had sleek black hair and a scornful eyehe was scanning the audience dispassionatelyand when his gaze met Jane's she shivered involuntarily, as if somebody had touched ice to the nape of her neck.

The Chirurgeon strode into the amphitheater. With a muffled clatter everyone rose. Solemn and imposing in black, she brooded over the corpse, hands folded, like a priestess at the altar. When the class had reseated themselves, she nodded to either side. A teaching assistant whipped the linen cover away. The control put the gown aside and stood naked beside the dissecting table.

Monkey's eyes narrowed. She wrote a large "7" on the top of her yellow tablet. A nixie to her other side reached over to scrawl "6.5 at most!" beneath the 7 and underlined the most! three times.

Monkey dipped her head to stifle her laughter.

"the incidence and frequency of the minor organs," the Chirurgeon was saying, "the gallbladder, suprarenal glands and kidneys in particular." She gestured down at the corpse, a gray twin of the young fey beside her. "The abdominal cavity has already been partially opened by a transverse and a lower vertical incision. Now I shall continue the operation by making a second vertical incision and opening the peritoneal cavity."

Hands the color of bone china floated delicately down to make the first cut. They flicked an invisible bit of tissue onto the floor as an offering to the Goddess.

An elbow dug into Jane's ribs. Glancing to the side, she saw that Monkey had filled her tablet page with a careful rendering of the control's genitalia. Jane scowled and shook her head.

This was serious, damn it.
* * *

By the end of class Jane's hand was cramped and aching from taking notes, and Monkey's drawing was surrounded by a woven wreath of lesser penises in varying states of erection. The Chirurgeon laid down her scalpel and with the slightest hint of a bow removed herself from the amphitheater. The air brightened. The students began to stand, chatter, gather up their books. The control put on his gown. "Oh, hey," Jane said. "Are you done with my Shearer's?"

"The dissection manual?" Monkey asked airily. "I ate it."

"You what?"

"I ate it. Why else would I want it? I was hungry and I ate it."

"But I need it for class."

"Then you shouldn't have given it to me." Monkey's beady eyes glittered strangely, maliciously, in her round face. "Really, Jane, you can be so dim at times." With a sudden standing backflip she disappeared through the doorway.

Jane's hands clenched. But really it was no more than she had learned to expect. Roommates were forever eating your books, having anxiety attacks, adopting rats and carnivorous slimes which they then expected you to feed, getting drunk and throwing up on your best dress, moving into the closet and refusing to come out for months on end, threatening suicide the night before Finals, leaving piles of rotting leaves in the middle of the floor, entertaining boyfriends in your bed because it was made and theirs not, evolving into large bloodsucking insects. Monkey was actually good of her kind.

Well, she could always pick up a new manual.

She took an express elevator eight floors up to the University bookstore. Over the past year Jane had come to know the layout well, the nature and locations of its antitheft systems and the identity of the part-time plainclothes dick. Security was tight up front by the cash registers. But there was an emergency exit at the back of the store, hidden from the cameras by the overstocked back shelves. Opening it would automatically trip an alarm, but that shouldn't be too big a problem.

Jane gathered up a new Shearer's and traced an indirect path toward the exit. Luckily, she'd had the foresight to case the back halls recently and break the lock on a nearby stairwell door. She was pretty sure she could be down a flight before the detective reached the door, and around a corner by the time he got to the stairs. There was an element of risk, but it was a method she'd never used and was eager to try out.

She took a deep breath and put a hand on the push bar.

A sudden sense of dark unease swept through her, a heavy wash of gravitas that unsettled her stomach and left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Iron talons seized her shoulder. "Miss Alderberry."

It was Doctor Nemesis.

"Ma'am!" Stricken, she looked up into her adviser's face. The doctor's eyeglasses rode low on her beak, two luminous disks under a painfully weak pair of watery pink eyes. The effect was like being stared at by two separate creatures, one of which you pitied and the other feared.

"I have been going over your laboratory reports, Miss Alderberry." Dr. Nemesis put an arm through hers, and walked her toward the front. "They are, if I may confide in you, disappointing, most disappointing in a student of your potential."

"I've been having trouble with the sophic"

"Exactly so." They strolled out the front entrance. Distractedly, Jane realized that, cloaked within the magnetic field of Dr. Nemesis's dignity, she had effortlessly bypassed security. What would have taken calculation, daring, and risk on her part, her adviser had accomplished without even noticing.

She walked Jane to a faculty elevator and unlocked the controls. It was snug as a nut within, walnut panels polished to a glassy smoothness. The doors closed noiselessly. Silently, they ascended. Jane could dimly see her own reflection in the wood with her adviser looming beside her like a storm cloud.

"You must surely realize why I am concerned for you."

"Well…" Jane didn't really, but that double glare bored into her, waiting for an intelligent response. "I'm here on a merit scholarship, so I suppose"

"No!" Dr. Nemesis stamped her foot impatiently. As if in response the elevator door slid open. She steered Jane outside. They were on an office level now. The walls were decorated with large unframed oils of umbrellas and sides of beef. The runners on the hall floors smelled new. "I am not talking about mere money, but about your very survival! This is a Teind year, surely you must know that." Jane nodded, meaning no. "The department heads are even now assembling the list of those ten percent of the students who are… expendable. Your name, Miss Alderberry, is going to be on that list unless you straighten up and fly right." She glared at her: weakly, sternly.

"There's something I'm missing," Jane said rapidly. "It must surely be something elementary, something basic. If I could only understand it, if only I could see what it was, I'm certain I could keep up."

"I feel it may help, Miss Alderberry, were I to admit to you that at one time I was myself but an indifferent researcher. Oh, yes. Even I." Dr. Nemesis smiled vainly. "Lazy, unorganized, insolentall the virtues a teaching assistant can have, I lacked."

"I was wondering could it maybe be the pontic water"

"What set me straight was one particular incident. My adviser, none other than the wizard Bongay himself mind you, had obtained grant money from the Horned Man Foundation to create a divinatory engine in the form of a brazen head. This was, you will understand, very early in the history of cybernetics. It was all done with vacuum tubes then."

"It couldn't be my technique. I was ever so careful."

"We had taken over an unused handball court and fitted it with our equipment. There we spent most of a year, flirting with glory and never winning her. The final month of our fundingthe Foundation had harsh penalties for failurewe literally moved into the lab. For three weeks straight we built, unbuilt, and rebuilt that monstrosity. Up all night, every night, and far into the dawn. We slept on cots and lived on take-out, eating cold pizza for breakfast, egg rolls and chocolate doughnuts at midnight. I lost count of the times we booted the creature up, got it to open its eyes, and coaxed it into moving its mouth, but to no purpose. It would not speak.

"After one particularly exasperating failure, Bongay declared himself in great need of sleep and staggered off to his cot. He left me awake, though, with stern warnings to watch the head and wake him immediately should it come to life.

"I was dull with fatigue myself, but I stayed up resoldering some circuits. Vacuum tubes were fussy things. You'd be surprised how often a problem could be resolved simply by ripping out a demonstrably complete circuit and replacing it with its twin.

"Not half an hour later, the head's eyes snapped open.

"Time is," he said.

"I put down my soldering iron. To tell you the truth, I was not sure it had actually spoken, for the eyes clicked shut as soon as it was done and that noble brass face was as still as the tomb. It might have been a waking dream. But I had my orders and I went to the wizard Bongay and put my hand on his shoulder to waken him. Only then he rolled over and the blanket slipped from him and I saw how fearsomely aroused he was in his sleep.

"Bongay had the habit, you see, of gratifying his impulses as they arose. To sharpen his wits, you see. I was the first female laboratory assistant he had ever employed but I knew from experience that he would exact from me certain favors which he had grown accustomed to receiving from young male graduate students." She raised an eyebrow significantly.

"You mean?" said Jane, not sure what she meant.

"Exactly. My hemorrhoids were in bloom. The thought of accommodating him was intolerable. So I decided I must have been mistaken. An hour passed. The head's eyes again opened. Again, he spoke:

"Time was.

"This time I was sure the head had spoken. But nowin addition to my perfectly understandable reluctance to arouse the wizardI knew that I had committed a grievous error in not awakening him the first time. If I awoke him now, he must surely punish me for not awakening him sooner. I was in a quandary. I dithered for a good hour. At the end of which, the head spoke for a third and final time.

"Time is past, he said.

"His eyes rolled up and there was a burning smell. Heat radiated from the brazen head, greater and ever greater, until the metal did actually glow. I screamed and Bongay awoke.

"Is he aware? Bongay demanded. I must speak to him. There are things I must explain before

"Then he saw how the head glowed and how the solder ran in little rivulets from the seams in its neck and with it the gold and silver of its circuitry. Then did the wizard Bongay himself scream, in such fury that I fled for fear of his wrath."

She laughed. "He lost tenure over that incident, and his life as well. That happened near the end of the fiscal year, and the University had been relying on that grant money. Everybody involved with that fiasco was executed by order of the Bursar."

"How did you survive?"

"They needed somebody to write the final report. The Wizard Bongay, His Brazen Head and Fearsome Doom: Some Early Lessons Learned. You may well have read it. But that was the incident that taught me. Never again was I so behindhand in my duties. Vigilance, Ms Alderberry! That must ever be our watchwordvigilance!"

"I'm sure I could catch up. If only I had a little hint what I'm doing wrong."

"Good, good," Nemesis said. "I knew our little chat would help. Only remember that we all have quotas to keep. We can show no favoritism. In order to retain you, we must let some other deserving student go. Surviving the Teind, however good a scholar you may be, is a privilege, not a right." They had come to her office. She unlocked the door, stepped inside, and turned. "And remember also, that my door is always open."

She closed it in Jane's face.
* * *

The undergraduate elevator from the classroom levels to the three floors collectively designated the Lady Habundia Residence for Female Scholars was crowded with several dozen chattering undergraduates, half of them with bicycles. Jane felt simultaneously inferior and superior to them. They were an unserious lot, most of them, and squandering their educations where she was studiously making the most of hers. On the other hand, there was no denying that they had fun and she largely did not.

A boom box came on. Riders began dancing to the skirl of elfpipes and synthesizer. Two froudlings with greyhound-lean faces, theater majors as like as not, went into a choreographed sword fight, spinning and kicking, leaping and parrying blows from imaginary sabers. Off in a corner several willies had formed a study group. Notebooks passed from hand to hand.

The elevator operator was a potato woman, her brown face so bulgy and lopsided that her scowl was lost in its hilly contours. She opened the doors onto the dorm lobby, and the Habundians surged forward, giggling. The two duelists crouched in their midst, trying to sneak in.

The potato woman was having none of it, though. She snatched up a broom and drove into the crowd, laying about her right and left, smashing the boys on their heads and arms until blood flew. She was a whirlwind, cursing and forcing the two back into the elevator. With a triumphant cackle she clanged the gates shut.

Jane went to her room and dropped her books on her bed. Monkey was out as usual, but at this time of evening there was always a gathering of girls out on the balcony, playing cards and gossiping. Jane sat down at her desk, resolved to put in an hour's study before joining them.

She opened her Petrus Bonus and read: "Something closely analogous to the generation of alchemy is observed in the animal, vegetable, mineral, and elementary world. Nature generates frogs in the clouds, or by means of putrefaction in dust moistened with rain, by the ultimate disposition of kindred substances. Avicenna tells us" She yawned, lost her place, found it again. "tells us that a calf was generated in the clouds amid thunder, and reached the earth in a stupefied condition. The decomposition of a basilisk generates scorpions." Most of this was mere example-mongering, the establishment of authority by largesse of data. But there was no telling when a key concept might be dropped in the middle of a pageful of dross, so she had to read it all. "In the dead body of a calf are generated bees, wasps in the carcase of an ass, beetles in the flesh of a horse, and locusts in that of a mule." She skimmed over several more exemplars. "The same law holds good in the mineral world, though not to quite so great an extent."

Jane slammed shut the book and pushed back from her desk. This was too boring for words. She couldn't concentrate. Her stone was two weeks overdue, and she didn't think she could get another extension. Worse, somewhere along the line she was sure she had missed some basic concept, because with every class she could feel her understanding slipping steadily and inevitably behind. If she couldn't catch up fast, she was never going to catch up at all.

She needed a drink.
* * *

A glorious sunset was smeared across the horizon, visible in the thin slits between the buildings of the Great Gray City, reflecting gold from the windows to the east. Sirin was there, feet up on the balustrade, showing off her fine long legs, and Raven, Nant, and Jenny Greenteeth as well with a near-full case of Frog City at their feet.

Jenny was throwing beer to the gryphons. She cocked her arm and flung an unopened can as far as she could. It caught the sun and glittered as it spun toward the unseen street.

Shrieking desperately, three gryphons plunged after the can. The victor snapped it up in its beak. With a screech of tearing metal the can popped open. Beer gushed and fizzed. The gryphon hovered, wings working mightily, as it chewed and swallowed.

Gryphons, though they loved it dearly, had small tolerance for alcohol. Several of the creatures were plastered already, weaving erratically in the canyons between soaring stone high rises. One narrowly missed slamming into a walkway bridging two University buildings. Jane gasped.

Jenny laughed and belched and threw another can.

"Pull up a chair," Sirin said genially. "We were talking about things."

Jane leaned against the balustrade, staring into the endless stepped towers with their rounded shoulders, like so many termite mounds enchanted to monstrous size. Skywalks linked them in a complex web of relationships. Here and there specks of green marked balconies and rooftop gardens. The buildings were sufficient to the needs of their dwellers, with theaters and shops, hospitals and restaurants ringing their atria. It was possibleespecially if you were a studentto go for weeks without ever seeing the street. Staring into the endless rows of windows, Jane felt a sense not of anonymity but of being one among millions, singular in a galaxy of singularities. She felt comfortable here, as she had no place else in her life. "What sort of things?"

"Anarchy and social justice."

"Gryphons' eggs."

"Boys."

Jane popped a beer, letting a little slop over onto the floor. She plopped down in an empty chair. Raven thrust a bowl of beetle crisps her way, but she shook her head. "I'm having trouble making a sophic hydrolith. I don't know what it is, maybe the pontic water isn't pure." The hydrolith was one-third of her final grade, but she carefully kept her tone of voice light. "Any of you guys know what I should do?"

"You're too tense," Sirin said airily. "Too serious. Too academic. You should go out and get laid more often."

"The world's got enough hydroliths anyway," Nant added. She was a black dwarf, and insanely politicized. "What it needs is a system of governance that's not simply the strong telling the weak what to do." She made the sign of the hammer with crossed forearms, not at all self-mockingly.

"That's not helpful, either of you."

"Oh well." Sirin stared upward and announced to the general universe, "Chrysoberyl told me that Billy Bugaboo has three balls."

"What?!"

"As if she'd know."

"He does not! Does he?"

"Well, I'm going to find out soon," Sirin said. "Chrys promised to set me up with a date." She raised a butterfly chip from a cellophane bag in her lap and closed her perfect mouth about it.

"Watch this!" Jenny Greenteeth flung a can into a space precisely equidistant between two of the circling gryphons. In their eagerness, they crashed into each other, feathers flying. While they were fighting, yet another gryphon swooped down and snagged it with his talons. He sailed away, shaking his leg in a futile effort to free it from the can.

They all, Jane included, hooted with laughter.

Nant wanted to play canasta but Raven insisted on pinochle, so they eventually settled on hearts. Sirin won heavily. Jane got stuck with the black virgin and a short run of hearts three times running. "It's not your day," Sirin observed.

"No. It's not."

"Well, I don't know about you but I'm going to check out the action off-campus. There's a new place over in Senauden. Anybody coming with me?"

Nant nodded. Raven scowled and shook her head. Jenny Greenteeth impulsively threw the deck over the edge of the balcony. The wind caught the cards, spread them, and swept them away.

"Count me in," Jane said.
* * *

The skywalk to Senauden Tower was located eighteen floors below Habundia. They crossed over and rode up another thirty-four floors to a new club Sirin had heard of called The Drowned Man. It was situated by the central elevator banks and the enamel gray steelplate walls trembled when the larger cars passed by. "It looks like a submarine," Jane said, eyeing the painted water pipes and exposed ducting overhead.

"Submarines aren't this crowded."

"Don't gawk," Sirin said. "We don't want anybody to think we're students."

Banks of televisions over the bar multiplied the aftermath of a bombing in Cockaigne. The images flickered in eerie sync with the toothache throb of the house band. They got a table and had a few drinks. A dwarf named Red Gwalch dropped by to make a perfunctory pass at Sirin and stayed to argue with Nant.

"I'm a hierarchist myself. It comes from being a dwarfwe're all conservative at heart." He stuck a cigarette in his mouth. "Some of us try to pretend otherwise. Not me."

"Oh, don't get her started," Sirin said.

But Nant rose to the bait. "More fool you, then! Hierarchies only work to the benefit of those on the top. If you're high, you'll get by. If you're low, out you go! That's how it is."

"So?" A match flared. A grin floated in the darkness. "What's your pain to me?"

"Sirin?" Jane reached forward to squeeze her friend's hand. "You've got to tell me what's wrong with my experimental set-up."

Sirin looked embarrassed. "Jane, it's something you're supposed to figure out for yourself. Working it out is part of the learning experience."

"But"

"It's better this way. It really is."

"It's your pain too, or ought to be. Unless you're planning to be tall and elvish when you grow up?"

"Very cute. I've met your kind before."

"What kind is that?"

"Sirin"

"I won't talk about it. I won't!"

"The kind who talks about dwarven history for hours, but wouldn't dream of dating one of her own kind."

"Don't let it bother you, little man. I'm sure you'll find somebody who'll overlook your… shortcomings."

"You're really a bitch, aren't you?" Red Gwalch dropped his cigarette on the floor, and ground it under one shiny Italian shoe. "I like that in a woman." He held out a hand and Nant accepted it. They walked out onto the dance floor and disappeared in the crush of bodies.

"That's the last we'll see of" Sirin began.

The air crackled with premonition, and an elf in a tufted-silk suit materialized by their table. "Ladies." He had the sort of cultivated good looks that seemed striking face on and less pleasant the instant you looked away. "May I join you?" He slid into a chair, extended an arm. "Galiagante."

"Sirin."

"Jane."

When she touched his hand, Galiagante seized her fingertips and turned her hand over. He bowed low over it, lightly kissing her palm. Sirin hid a smile.

They hadn't been talking long when Nant came back to reclaim her purse. Red Gwalch waited for her by the door. She glanced nervously at him over her shoulder. "I'm going back to the dorm now."

"Sure you are," Sirin said kindly.

They all three watched her leave. "She didn't get much dancing in," Jane commented.

"I cannot blame her. This style of music is not made for dancing." When Galiagante smiled, his cheekbones shifted, as if something were crawling around under the skin. His eyes were feverishly bright. "Too young. However, I know a place where the music is soft and the dancing slow. If you don't mind a touch of travel…"

He slid a hand under Sirin's elbow and helped her to her feet.

"Hey," Jane said. "This isn't the way to the elevators."

Galiagante smiled patiently. "The public cars are so crowded, aren't they? I'm sure we can do better than that." He led them to a small, tiled alcove, where a bank of unmarked elevators stood, and pushed the call button.

When a car arrived, its interior was small and dark, with black leather seats. A stolid dwarf in chauffeur's livery and cap stood at the controls. They piled in.

"Lac sans Oiseaux," Galiagante said.

Without even nodding, the dwarf slammed the doors shut. Jane's stomach lurched as the car fell. Galiagante shot a sleeve back to check the time and placed his arm across the seat behind Sirin's back, not quite touching. Sirin shifted slightly, accepting the arm, moving into it. His hand closed on her shoulder.

Jane was captivated. It was like a little dance between diplomats, an exchange of formalities ending in entente. The dwarf faced forward, watching the floors rise through a slit of glass. Galiagante's other arm reached out to encompass Jane as well, and this she did not like nearly so well.

"So," she said brightly. "What do you do? For a living, I mean."

"Do?" Galiagante sounded politely baffled. "I do nothing. I suppose that in the sense you mean rather than doing things I am things."

"Like what?"

"Oh, an investor, perhaps. An inheritor. Many, many stockholders. And you, Jane, just what is it that youdo?"

"Right now I'm trying to figure out why my experiments never work."

"You are a researcher?"

"We're students." She ignored Sirin's scowl. "Alchemy majors."

"Ahhh. I have interests in an alchemical firm or two. Perhaps I can help."

The elevator was going deep, deep, and yet it was still accelerating. The cables whined and sang in the background. They must surely have passed ground level long ago, and be speeding into the roots of the world. Jane described her problems with the sophic stone.

"We have a phenomenon very like that in industry," Galiagante said when she was done. "It's called green thumb syndrome. It sometimes occurs when a new plant establishes a complicated but known procedure for the first time. Your people set it up perfectly but nothing happens. The oxides won't reduce, the catalysts won't… cattle. Punishing the technicians accomplishes nothing. The reaction simply refuses to run. Eventually management will fly in somebody who's worked on the procedure before and have her run through it once. For her it will work. Then, ever afterward, it will work for the new plant. But that first time it must be run by somebody who is sure it will work, who knows it in the core of her being. It has something to do with quantum uncertainty events, I believe, though I wouldn't swear to it."

"Then I'm screwed. How can I make myself believe in an experiment I've seen fail five times in a row?" Sirin's attention was fixed on Galiagante; she never once looked at Jane.

"You can't. But surely there must be some way to outthink the set-up. Let's say that next time you run the experiment, you borrow glassware that's already been used for that purpose. Make sure you assemble it in the proper orderI doubt that identical glass tubes would be interchangeableand it ought to work fine. You must have friends who'd be glad to lend you what you need. Perhaps you could trade new equipment for used."

"We're slowing to a stop," Sirin said.

In the foyer an ogre in a tuxedo barred their way, saying, "This is a closed floor, sir." Galiagante offhandedly flashed a gold card, and they were let by.

The first thing Jane realized about Lac sans Oiseaux was that while Sirin might be appropriately attired for the clubcasually, but in keeping with the restshe herself was not. It was a rich crowd, Teggish and better, and not a one of them was wearing jeans. Just being among them made her stomach hurt. When Galiagante got a table, Jane slumped down in her chair, trying to look inconspicuous.

Behind the bar was an enormous glass tank, lit by harsh fluorescents, where the rest of the club was bathed in red and purple. A horse was drowning in the tank. Legs churned up clouds of bubbles. Eyes bloodshot and wild, it craned its neck to lift agonized nostrils above the thrashing surface. It was excruciating to watch. The music was slow and romantic, but just loud enough that the horse struggled in silence.

Jane shifted her chair so she wouldn't have to see. Galiagante looked amused. A kobold brought them brandies and was dismissed. "Would you like some coke?"

"Of course we would," Jane said quickly, cutting off Sirin while she was still shaking her head.

Mirror women glided through the crowd, bearing trays. Because their surfaces reflected whatever was before them, Jane couldn't tell whether they were entirely naked or merely mostly so. They were angular singularities, warping reality with their passage, leaving it unchanged in their wake. Galiagante snapped his fingers, and one bent low over their table.

Light flashed from one chrome nipple as she offered the tray. Neat lines of powder were laid out ready to use. Galiagante laid his wallet on the table, and bent to snort up two, one per nostril. Sirin and Jane followed his example. He left several bills on the tray.

"Dance?"

Sirin accepted his arm and they moved out onto the floor.

The wallet had been left behind on the table. It sat in a pool of light, almost breathing it was so imbued with life. The leather was decorated with a skull-and-rose tattoo. This small gesture, leaving the wallet behind, impressed Jane greatly. It implied much about Galiagante's resources.

Casually, she glanced inside.

Elves were volatile. It would be madness to rip one off. It would take a suicidal amount of nerve. She sipped her drink. Sirin danced beautifully, of course, and Galiagante held her close, murmuring in her ear. Her features were fine and aristocratic, and seeing her among her own kind Jane realized for the first time that Sirin was surely one of the Tylwyth Teg herself.

The music was slow and, propelled by it, the two dancers were preternaturally graceful, like ice swans aglide on a pond. By degrees, though, Sirin's placid mood changed to distress. Her step faltered. She seemed to struggle against Galiagante's implacable grip.

Jane watched them thoughtfully.

When the dance ended, Sirin returned to the table and seized her purse. "I'm going to the power room. Are you coming, Jane?" There was a touch of demand in her last sentence.

"We won't be long," she threw over her shoulder.

Galiagante did not respond. He sat staring at the drowning horse, a small smile flickering like flame on his lips.
* * *

"Hold this for me." Sirin thrust her purse at Jane, and slammed into a toilet stall.

Jane leaned back against a sink, studying the line of stalls. From one came the sounds of somebody puking. Ruby heels showed in the space beneath the door. Jane went into the next stall and slid shut the bolt.

On the tiles by the vomiting elf-lady's knees was a beaded handbag. Slowly, carefully, Jane drew it closer with the toe of her shoe. Its owner was too involved in being sick to notice.

There was a lot of money in the handbag. Jane took it all, and returned the bag to the floor. Sirin's purse had considerably less, but what there was she took. She tore Sirin's public elevator pass into shreds. The pieces floated for a moment in the toilet bowl. She flushed them away.

When she emerged, Sirin was repairing her makeup in the mirror. Her face was ashen. She clutched Jane's arm fiercely.

"We've got to get out of here. Now."

"What are you talking about?"

"Galiagante. Jane, all the time we were dancing, he was talking to me, telling me things. Things that. Jane, you know me. I'm not a prude. But some of the things he said. About fishhooks and…" She stopped. "We've got to get out," she insisted.

"Of course we will. We'll leave right now."
* * *

They burst through the club's double doors and ran to the elevator bank. Sirin pushed the call button. She looked anxiously over her shoulder. Galiagante had not yet noticed that they were late returning from the john.

"There's a car coming. I can hear the cables."

"It can't come any too soon for me." Sirin took out her wallet and opened it. Her face twisted in dismay. "I don't have any money! We'll have to use the public" She rummaged in her purse with growing panic. "Where's my elevator pass?"

"Take it easy, Sirin."

"We're trapped. Jane, you don't know what he wants me to dowhat he wants both of us to do!"

"It's okay, Sirin. Really it is."

"You can't imagine. It's so…"

The elevator arrived, and a dwarf in liverynot the same one as earlierscowled up at them. Jane shoved Sirin within, and snapped, "Skywalk level to Bellegarde. Step on it." To Sirin she said, "It's okay, I've got enough money to cover it. My treat."

Sirin collapsed, weeping, on her shoulder.
* * *

At Jane's insistence they didn't go directly back to the dorm but went to the Pub instead. The Pub was a student bar not many floors beneath Habundia. It was crowded and noisy and safe. Jane ordered a pitcher of beer, and Sirin knocked back three mugs one after the other.

Beer always made Sirin maudlin. "I'm so grateful to you. For the elevator, for getting me out of there. Jane, you can't imagine what you saved me from, what kinds of things he wanted to do."

"Don't even think of it. It's nothing."

"No, really. What would I have done without you? I'm in your debt. Anything you want, if I can do itit's yours." She fell silent a moment and then a small, fey smile floated up to the surface. "Not that I wouldn't like to… someday. Only I don't think I was ready for it just yet."

Jane stared down into her mug, at the bubbles rising up through the beer, slowly at first and then with gathering speed. They shone like tiny galaxies, each bubble its own universe. She tipped the mug back and drank deep. I am become death, she thought, the destroyer of worlds. Aloud, she said, "That line of bullshit Galiagante gave me about green thumb syndrome won't work, will it? That was just so much noise."

"Well, it could work, I suppose. It just wouldn't be very practical."

"Then what's the secret?"

"Oh, Jane, I've given you enough hints. Please don't make me"

"You said anything I want, right? I saved you, remember?"

"Yes, but I didn't know you'd ask me something like this. It's simply not permitted. It's"

"Hush." Jane stroked Sirin's hand, touched her knees under the table with her own. Gazing deep into those unfocused eyes, she murmured, "You're very beautiful."

"What?"

Jane was hardly drunk at all and she understood that to communicate with somebody who was required broad gestures, ruthless simplification, bright primary colors. Touching foreheads, she whispered, "Come on, Sirin, I'd do it for you. I'm your friend, aren't I? You can trust me. Give."

Sirin blushed and stared down at their mingled hands. "I cheat. I cook the results."

Jane continued caressing her fingers. She felt a little dirty doing this, but it wasn't as if she had any other options. "Tell me how."

Sirin's eyes blurred and turned a milky white, the pupils and irises breaking into tiny motes and dissolving to nothing. In a husky voice that was not her own, she said, "Do you know the distinction between exoteric and esoteric alchemy?" Jane shook her head. "Everything you've been doing, all the lab work, all the p-alk and organic alike, is exotericconcerned with the transmutation of matter. It is the outer tradition. Are you following this?"

"Yes."

"Esoteric alchemy is the inner tradition. It's the other side of the coin. There aren't any classes for esoteric alchemy, but a researcher must necessarily learn it on her own. Esoteric alchemy is concerned with the transmutation of the spirit. This can be accomplished in many waysthrough pain or terror or monastic discipline, for examplebut is most easily achieved through the measured application of sex."

"Tell me how it works. The practical side of it."

Sirin's voice had by degrees hardened and deepened. It was no longer a female voice. "The procedure has two parts."

"Two parts."

"The first part is esoteric. It involves sex. While you're f*cking, you must visualize the experiment, start to finish, step by step. If your familiar comes before you're done, you must start over again."

She could not free herself from Sirin's cold hands. A numbing energy flowed up her arms and down her spine, returning to Sirin where their knees touched. It was mesmerizing. The table faded away underneath her, and the chair she was sitting on. There was nothing in all the universe but the voice and the resonant circuit of Sirin and herself.

"The second part is exoteric. When you assemble the experiment and as you run it, picture what you were doing as you imaged it in the first part. Where you held your familiar, how you felt. This will create a feedback loop. You will find yourself growing aroused. For purely social reasons it will be best if you hide this aspect of your work.

"Creation of the sophic stone is entry-level sex magick. As you advance in exoteric learning you will need to acquire more sophisticated esoteric skills. But for now your simple animal drives will suffice."

Out of nowhere, it seemed, a window had been opened into Jane's world, and the alien landscapes it revealed made no sense to her at all. How could it be, she wondered. How could the one affect the other? Where and by what mechanism did they connect?

She recalled a bright summer day, cloudless and without shadow, so immediate that the air felt like a membrane stretched over the yolk of an egg, full to bursting. One prick of a fork and the other side would come spilling out to fill all the world. She was sure then that the seen world was only surface, that deeper and darker things lurked beneath the surfaces, whales sounding under the sidewalks, faces larger than worlds mugging behind the sky.

Jane felt close to something basic, so close that she could almost touch it, taste it, feel it. She was trying to frame a question when the power behind Sirin's words spoke again.

"You've been flirting with great mysteries. Watch that they do not crush you." Sirin's eyes fluttered open and in her normal voice she said, "I feel sick."

Like a tide ebbing the alien presence withdrew. Once again the bar closed about her, as real as a packing crate and as confining.

Jane refilled her mug. When it was empty, she poured another. At some point she looked up and Sirin was gone. There was a pleasant-faced nondescript talking to her. She vaguely recalled him introducing himself as Jake Shakestick. He was telling a joke. She couldn't follow it, but she was pretty sure she'd be able to guess when she was supposed to laugh. It looked as if she were on her own, to make whatever decision she would.

There was a hopeful smirk in the corner of Jake's mouth.

Well, she thought, as well him as another. Anyway, she'd been chanting the birth control spell faithfully every day without fail for over a year.

It seemed a pity to let it go to waste.

Two days later she ran the experiment again. This time it worked perfectly.