Chapter Five
London
Monday morning Zarabeth woke shivering and sick to her stomach. She knelt in the bathtub, drinking greedily from cupped hands. Some germ from that horrid club.
She came late to the morning review, which made her a target for the senior manager, a skinny toff named Harold Bourke with a prize rooster’s hair and temperament. “I’m sure you have so much to tell us after your week’s audit,” Harold said.
“Happy to discuss it,” she said, in her flattest Yank accent. “I feel good, overall. Excellent service, good return. And, great job keeping the meetings short.”
“That’s all?” Harold said. “Optimized flew you from Boston just to pat our backs?”
Territorial pissing? Or Underwood? “More to ensure there aren’t any risks to the firm, Harold. Our role here is unusual. More responsibility than a consultancy contract.”
“I’m not sure what you’re implying.”
“Mercurex bleeds money. As their finance division, how have we advised them?”
Harold drew himself up, but his swimmy eyes betrayed him. “We shared our concerns,” Harold said, “but it wasn’t for us to underline the issue.”
“Even to put it in writing?” Zarabeth asked.
Harold strained to smile. “Even to put it in writing.” He looked away as if to banish her.
She sent Magda a quick message and went to the kitchen. Petra, a tiny blonde network engineer and frequent smoker, was getting coffee.
“Aren’t you on the wrong floor?” Zarabeth asked.
“Our machine is broken,” Petra said, in her breathy Bavarian accent. “So I hacked the badge reader.” She poured Zarabeth a cup. “Don’t tell?”
“Mum’s the word,” Zarabeth said. “Good weekend?”
“No weekend. Spent it here, installing new servers to speed decryption.”
“I thought the network centre was in Birmingham?”
“Just the dirigible pilots. The network is here. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Petra led her four flights down the fire stairway to a thick metal door. The network centre was a dim blue-lit cavern with rows of workstations, staffed by people on headsets.
Above and behind them, a square of sixteen large screens displayed a giant outline of Great Britain, covered by a lopsided chevron of pulsing lines. Purple, blue, cyan, a rare flash of orange. “That’s usage on the ground,” Petra explained. “Cool colours are lower traffic. Distracting, yes? I am glad I don’t work here.”
Zarabeth nodded. Hard to speak while watching it, as if the lines were a language the Polyglot didn’t yet know. She made herself look away. On other walls, lesser Britains, different patterns but similar colours. “They’re all cool colours.”
“I guess we don’t have a lot of traffic yet,” Petra said. “Not really my department.”
“Nor mine.” Zarabeth took out her phone.
“The room is shielded. No mobile signals.”
“Just checking when my next meeting is.” Really she keyed a video, to send to Magda.
Back at her desk, her copies of Mercurex spreadsheets wouldn’t update. Open ports shut. Her spat with Harold had improved security. Maybe she could ask Petra to hack it for her.
She went for a walk instead. Around her, the bustle of the City, the financial district, high-priced people in high-priced suits. A skilled pickpocket would have a field day.
Or not. Any pickpocket preying on City folk would be caught soon enough. Most people paid with credit cards, not purses of gold. A good thief today was a hacker, not a bandit. Mercurex seemed to answer that problem, but really it didn’t. Businesses hiding their information needed secure databases and encrypted transmissions. Secure comms were for soldiers and spooks. Mercurex was a business with one customer, who had moved on.
She felt herself tiring like an old woman. She bought a take-away sandwich in a tiny café near a tony square of white townhomes. Unwrapped, it looked too daunting to eat whole. She picked out the meat while she called Endre in Internal Support.
“Tally-ho, old chap,” he joked. “Everything ship-shape?”
“Stop kidding around,” she said in Hungarian. “I need perspective.” She laid it all out: Rex’s occult connections, Underwood’s threat, Straightforward letting Mercurex bankrupt itself. “Why build a giant network with no revenue?”
“You don’t know there’s no revenue,” Endre said. “Just no traffic.”
“Traffic is revenue. Those dirigibles aren’t routing any data.”
“No client data. The network still exists. Signals, time checks, tests, reports.”
“Interesting,” Zarabeth said. “Is all that encrypted too?”
“Don’t want your competition to see your traffic logs.”
First pass at a new technology, Rex had said. “Can a network be charmed?” she asked. “It’s all Rex’s code. What if it writes a spell at the same time?”
“I don’t know,” Endre said. “It’s a clever thought. Good that you’re technical. Your predecessor Sasha was a people person, but helpless with gear.”
Not an accidental mention. “Thanks for saying so. I never did meet her. Sasha.”
“People change jobs. Got to go.”
She searched the company directory. Two Sashas, both in Midwest offices, one clerical, one industrial. Her predecessor had left the firm. Endre wanted her to know about it. Why?
* * *
Zarabeth woke. She felt nothing but knew there was a damage inside her. Something in her dream had told her more.
It was four-thirty. She made coffee and turned on the TV. In a news report on tensions in Iraq, a gray-haired Kurdish politician spoke around his bristly black mustache. She couldn’t understand him before the translation. Meaningless scribbles on the walls. She changed channels. German business, French drama, Russian news. All foreign again. Her demon was gone.
Rex’s smile. How had she missed it? She ran to the toilet, vomited yellow bile.
She called Missy. Missy answered. She retold the weekend in a breathless babble.
“You careless slut,” Missy said. “Rex is eating your life. But for your Polyglot you’d most like be dead. Sigil magic. Bet he’s an Osman Spare type, doesn’t come during sex. Sweetie, nothing good in sperm except X chromosomes.”
“Whatever. I think I need help.”
“We’ll break his connection. Got a pen?” Missy dictated a simple spell. “Around the star, center to close. You know the drill.”
“Not really.”
“Learn by doing. You gotta perform it. Singsongy. A bit boo. The powers like a show.” She added another line. “If you want to hurt him, use that for the close, if you can stand it.”
“Stand what?”
“You thought this wouldn’t hurt? But you’ll hurt him too. Get to work. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” Zarabeth said. “I guess I owe you.”
“I reckon we’re even,” Missy said. “And, we’re friends. See you soon, I hope.”
Zarabeth had no time to reflect on Missy’s generosity. She had never done anything like this, and had it work. This, or dying.
She traveled with tea light candles, in case she smoked in hotels with sealed windows. Two fresh bars of soap on the vanity. She pushed the bed back and rolled up the rug. Enough space for her body, barely.
She hammered a safety pin into the floor with her shoe, and tied a length of dental floss to it as a compass. Using soap, she drew the circle, marked even points for the star, and used pin and floss to draw straight soap lines.
Blue light seeped up the eastern sky. Zarabeth showered in cold water, put up her hair with hotel pencils. On the bed, she rehearsed Missy’s spell. Not getting it. Easy for drama queen Missy. Zarabeth had no talent for performance.
She spread her bathrobe on the floor outside the circle, sat cross-legged, breathed deeply. She raised her abs into downward-dog pose. If she had to put on a show, better yoga than singing.
She lit the candles and stepped into the star in the circle. She stood in tree pose, left foot flat against right thigh, arms raised and thumbs linked. The spell was chanted once from the center, four times at each point, five more at the center. No water, no rest: endurance was part of the cost. Cross the circle, or break the soap lines—worse than what she fought.
Zarabeth chanted, her voice rough and plaintive:
“I want this to be over now, I want him to be gone.
“He steals my life to feed his youth, he sucks me dry to bone.
“I will sever his connection, he can no more hold on.
“I want this to be over now, I want him to be gone.”
She stepped out, pivoted, held out her arms to warrior pose. She repeated the spell, eyes on the tips of her fingers, on the edge of the circle. Her arms a sword of light.
She dropped her hips, raised her arms, high crescent lunge pose. Her hips lower, lower. Her left knee hurt to take the weight. She chanted in hard breaths. She touched the ground, rolled sideways, grabbed her toe with her free hand, side plank pose. She fell over, raised her hips and straightened her limbs, downward dog. Clean lines, perfect lines. Zarabeth had girders for sinews. Let earth be impressed how she holds up the sky.
She stepped counter-clockwise into warrior at the second point of the star. The candles burned painfully white and a foot tall. Her voice, already a whisper, but her poses felt strong.
At the third point, fatigue walloped her. Wavering warrior, wobbling lunge, her side plank floppy, a cow sitting on her dog. She pushed back against it as if to throw it in the air. The candle flames shed little floating spheres of white fire.
At the fourth point of the star, the powers poked her, prodded her, resisted her. The floor like nails in her palm, her knee about to crack, bloody bone out her skin. The fire spheres turned orange and burst like seed pods. Each shard a tiny burn and she unable to squirm.
“I want him to be gone,” she spat.
At the fifth point she gasped between verses, through flurries of hot pain. A stream of sweat ran down her spine, maybe enough to rinse a break in the soap-lines. In her head, the Polyglot egged her on in Sanskrit: Virabhadrasana! Chandrasana! Vasisthasana! Adhomukha svanasana!
She returned to the center. The votive flames burned blood red now, the color of the pain eating through her. She folded her body down, touched her palms to the ground. Her calf muscle ripped. She dared not cry out. She had one shot. She clasped her hands together, straightened her back, her bellybutton opening wide. Headstand, legs in the air, toes pointed high. She grunted:
“I want this to be over now, I want him to be gone.
“He steals my life to feed his youth, he sucks me dry to bone.
“I will sever his connection, he can no more hold on.
“I cannot let this deep wound close ’til our pain pays all debts.”
She pushed her arms up, from headstand to handstand, chanted again. Red-hot needles twisted inside her, keening like birdcalls: kiri kiri kiri, kiri kiri kiri.
Again. Hot coals rained on the soles of her feet, on her legs. She chanted through clenched teeth while her elbows crack-crackety-cracked with each word.
Another voice in her head now, buttery and elegant. Take a break, it said. Stop now.
“’Til our pain pays all debts!” she shrieked.
A volcano’s breath of sand and ash, she would fall she would fall. Twenty-five is plenty, the buttery voice said. Enough as good as a feast. Stop now.
One more if it killed her. She chanted louder than the voice:
“I want this to be over now lava rain each I want him to be gone drop a blister He steals my life to feed his youth smoking charred He sucks me dry to bone pockmark skin I will sever his connection devil piss strip He can no more hold on flesh like acid I want this to be over now well-done food I want him to be GONE fine you win.”
A ball of semen in her throat, big as an egg. She retched it out. Gone and never been there. Cold wind blew out the candles. She fell into the dark.
* * *
That morning Zarabeth felt fantastic, not merely recovered but healthy, though her arms were sore from scrubbing the soap off the floorboards. She wore new shoes, pointed brown patent leather with a saddle-strip. Rex had called them Governess Fetish.
Rex. Smoke breaks would be awkward. More awkward for him.
At ten, she sat with Durjaya, a scrawny code manager with a rubbery face and a thick Yorkshire accent, as he showed off his archiving system. She felt back in form, back in her old job, a good memory on this wonderful day. She even took notes.
The mail icon on Durjaya’s screen flashed. A moment later Zarabeth’s phone buzzed. The same message, from Kath Boyle. Zarabeth read over Durjaya’s shoulder:
With great sadness, we inform you of the untimely death of our Mercurex colleague, Mr. Rex Densmore, from a heart attack this morning. In respect of their grief, the encryption team will take the afternoon off.
She stopped reading, sat back so Durjaya couldn’t hear her excited heartbeat. Zarabeth had never broken the sixth commandment before. It was thrilling.
“My word,” Durjaya said. “Did you know him?”
“Yes. Both smokers.”
They sat saying nothing, unsure how long to accord the dead respect. In the silence her mood soured. Magda had wanted them to swallow her up, both worm and hook. That Zarabeth had survived it was her own good fortune, not Magda’s plan. All Magda had wanted was for her to cause some damage.
“Durjaya,” she said. “I mean your name. Means ‘hard to beat,’ right?”
He raised a thick eyebrow. “I suppose that’s the translation, yes. Impregnable really, difficult to conquer.” He drew himself up. “Hard to beat. I like that.”
“Me too.” She would have to like it. From now on, it was the only way to live.