"It’s a conjuring spell, all right, but not one I’m familiar with." Aziz said. "Definitely hermetic, and definitely related to the summoning of a spirit. But the diagram for the hermetic circle isn’t like any I’ve seen before. Usually it encloses a square pattern representing the four elemental energies. This one omits the square entirely, and instead places a pentagram at the middle of the circle. The first four symbols at each of the lower points I recognize—they’re the standard glyphs for the elements of fire, water, air, and earth. But I’m not familiar with this fifth one, here at the top of the pentagram. It’s almost reminiscent of a yang symbol. Hmm . . ."
Pita was bored by the shopkeeper’s ramblings. If she stood here any longer she’d fall asleep on her feet. She ambled over to pat the cat. It was wedged into a space between books and shelf, licking its paw and affecting complete boredom and disdain. As Pita reached up and stroked it under the chin, the cat broke into a rumbling purr. Now that it was at a level where she could see its face, Pita noticed the animal’s unusual eyes. One was a vivid yellow, the other a soft sky blue.
The cat shifted, rolling over so that Pita could scratch its belly. It used its rear paws to push itself along the books, and as it did so one was dislodged. Pita instinctively picked it up, intending to put it back into place. But then she looked around at the shelves on which books were stacked every which way, wedged into any available space. She was tempted to just drop the thing back on the floor, but the picture on the cover, done in brilliant primary colors and outlined in gold, caught her eye. It showed a beautiful woman reclining on the ground with her arms straight out in front of her, palms flat against the sandy soil, staring forward intently. Just above and behind her, framing her body with its own, was the shadowy outline of a cat whose eyes were twin dots of gold. To either side of the woman were strange sculptures of a creature with a cat’s body and a human head. The statues looked vaguely familiar, and after a moment Pita remembered where she’d seen them before—in one of her history vids. They’d had a weird name: finks, or spinks, or something like that.
"You recommend this book, huh?" Pita jokingly asked the cat. It
mrrrowed
softly in response.
Slowly, Pita sounded out the book’s title:
Way
of
the
Cat:
The
Shamanistic
Tradition
from
Ancient
Egypt
to
Current
Day
. It didn’t sound very exciting. But flipping through the pages, Pita saw that it was full of beautiful pictures like the one on the cover. The book wasn’t anything like the visual aids she’d been used to at school, with their animated graphics and icon-prompted info blips. With a vis-aid, all you had to do was touch the icon and a voice would explain what you were looking at. In comparison, these old-fashioned books were way tougher, full of long passages of printed text that looked like heavy gray blocks. It would be a real yawn having to sound out all the words yourself just to see what the pictures were about.
One of the illustrations on an inside page caught Pita’s eye. It showed a woman wearing a cat-shaped headdress and standing in a building whose walls were covered in strange symbols. Around her feet sat dozens of cats of every description, looking up at her with a mixture of awe and intense loyalty. What appealed most to Pita was the woman’s air of self-confidence and pride. Her eyes conveyed a clear message—this was one chummer you didn’t want to mess with.
Instinctively, Pita touched one of the cats as she would a vis-aid icon. Then she sighed and shook her head. Lips moving, she sounded out the words beneath the picture: "Bastet, cat goddess of ancient Egypt."
Pita flipped to the front of the book, looking for instructions, and found something there called a Table of Contents. It seemed to be a kind of static menu, like the kind they put at the beginning of text-based computer files. The menu was organized into blocks called chapters, each with a title and a brief bit of text that was like a dialogue box underneath. Pita read through a few of them. There were chapters on the ancient rituals used to worship this Bastet, on something called mummification, on the jaguar priests of ancient Aztlan, and on the lion kings of Africa. But the chapter title that really intrigued her was one called: "The Way of
the Cat: Empathy and Mind Control." She liked the
sound of that. Mind control. Cats had a way of getting people to do what they wanted. Pita wouldn’t mind being able to do that, too.
She turned her back to the others, then slipped the book into an inner pocket of her jacket. Quietly, she zipped her jacket shut. The cat watched her, its head tilted inquisitively to one side.
"You won’t tell, will you?" Pita whispered to it.
It purred and closed its eyes.
When Pita returned to the others, Aziz was leaning back from the display, stroking his chin. Suddenly he jumped to his feet. Pita was worried that he might have been mind-reading again, that he’d monitored her thoughts when she boosted his book. But he ignored her and strode over to a messy pile of papers on the floor. Rummaging through them, he withdrew a book bound in cracked red leather.
"Here it is." he said, returning to his seat. "Remember what I was saying before, about the pentagram? The five-pointed pattern reminds me of the writings of the fourth-century Chinese alchemist Ko Hung." Aziz leafed through the book as he talked. "He postulated not four elements, but five: water, fire, earth, wood, and metal. His spell formulas are nonsense—no hermetic formula that omits the elemental energy of air stands a chance of working properly. It’s simply too unbalanced. And despite extensive research, no ‘fifth element’ has ever been found. It’s simply an impossibility.
"But what if the
Pao
P’u
Tzu
was misconstrued? Chinese alchemists used a lot of code words—they called mercury ‘dragon’ and lead ‘tiger.’ It’s possible that the names of the elements were coded, too.
"Now this passage here,"—Aziz tapped a page with his finger—"refers to the fourth element as ‘firewood.’ It’s usually translated simply as ‘wood.’ I’ve always thought that wood was a curious choice as an element, but what if the original translation was ‘burning wood’? When wood burns it produces smoke—not just particles of soot but also various gases. Ko Hung might have used ‘burning wood’ as a metaphor for ‘air.’ That would make more sense."
Aziz rapidly turned pages, then found the passage he wanted. "Here, Ko Hung refers to the supposed fifth
element as ‘bright-shining metal.’ The translators
always simplified this to ‘metal,’ but what if they missed the point?"
He looked up at the two reporters. Carla was leaning forward, lips parted, waiting for the punchline. Masaki’s forehead was crumpled into a frown. He blinked slowly, as if he were on the verge of falling asleep.
Aziz had his back to Pita, but his rigid posture spoke volumes about his excitement.
"What if." he said slowly, "Ko Hung was not referring to a fifth element, but to a form of energy? And what if the text indicated not the metal itself, but its shiny surface? The proper translation would not be ‘metal’ but would instead be ‘shining’ or—"
"Light." Carla answered.
"Exactly." Aziz tapped the circle-and-pentagram graphic on the display screen. "So what we have here is some experimental spell that’s apparently trying to summon a spirit whose physical manifestation is composed not of the usual four elemental energies, but of light." He stopped, eyebrows furrowed. "Of course, that just isn’t possible. . . ."
"But it fits with the kid’s eyewitness account." Carla said. "She said she saw light pouring out of the mage just before he died."
Pita shuddered at the memory of the brilliant white light and burning flesh.
Aziz turned to face her. "You were the one who saw this spirit?" he asked. His eyes bored into hers. Pita was unable to look away. She felt unseen fingers sifting through her mind and tried angrily to push them away. Then the mage sighed, as if suddenly very tired. "Yes, I see."
"What?" Carla asked sharply.
"The man in the alley that Masaki was going to interview. He claimed to know all about this spell. If he was the one who was going to spill it to the media, he must have been involved in the research—he probably helped design the spell. Be that as it may, it does sound like this was the spirit that killed him."
"But why would it do that?" Masaki asked.
Aziz shrugged. "Once a spirit has been conjured, the mage has to be able to control it. If the spirit’s will proves stronger, it can resist being bound. Sometimes the struggle drains the mage to the point of unconsciousness, and the spirit escapes. An uncontrolled spirit is dangerous—and violent. It quite often tries to kill the mage who summoned it.
"Now here’s the curious thing." Aziz added, scrolling to the end of the text. "According to this note at the bottom, addressed to you, Masaki, your contact was going to post this spell on Magicknet as soon as your story had run. Looks like your mage friend
wanted
other mages to try casting the spell themselves. But that would be suicide for most magicians. Not only is this spirit of a type I’ve never heard of before, it’s extremely powerful. You can tell by the number of hours specified for the ritual."
Carla sat, thinking, tapping a manicured finger against her chin. "So maybe Mitsuhama didn’t kill the mage." she mused. "Maybe he was stupid enough to try conjuring a spirit that was too powerful for him. You’re lucky you weren’t there when the spirit broke free, Masaki. It might have killed you, too."
Masaki paled and licked dry lips.
"It didn’t kill me." Pita observed.
Carla shrugged the comment off. "You were just lucky, I guess."
"I don’t get it." Masaki said, sitting up in his chair. "That chip was supposed to hold the specs of a research project Mitsuhama was working on. Where’s the profit in summoning a spirit composed of light?"
"Like I said, I don’t know how it’s possible, but it would make a deadly weapon." Aziz observed. "Given the energy that would be bound up in the spirit, its light could blind, burn, or irradiate a person instantly. Imagine an assassin that could travel at 300,000 kilometers per second—at the speed of light. You’d quite literally never see it coming.
"
If
such a thing were possible." Aziz repeated, arching an eyebrow.
"But it’s gone now, right?" Masaki asked.
"Possibly." Aziz answered. "A spirit that has escaped its summoner usually flees back from whence it came. But sometimes it hangs around in the physical world, for reasons known only to itself. The technical term for an uncontrolled being like this is ‘free spirit.’ Some of these spirits are playful and protective, but others are extremely dangerous. Lethal, even. And the only way to summon one is to learn its true name." Masaki glanced uneasily at the window. Outside, sunlight was shining through a break in the clouds. It slanted into the shop, painting scrollwork shadows on the floor. "Could such a spirit get through your window, Aziz?"
The mage shrugged. "This shop is protected by every kind of magical ward I know how to create. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all—" His comment was cut short by the buzz of the telecom. An icon on its screen flashed, signaling that the incoming call contained a visual feed. Aziz reached over to answer the call.
Pita glanced down at the datacord that ran down from the telecom unit out to a jack in the wall. "Could the spirit get in through a fiber-optic cable?" she asked.
Masaki’s eyes widened. "Damn!" he wheezed, diving for the cable. He yanked it from the wall, leaving a frayed stub hanging from the metal jack.
"What did you do that for?" Aziz snapped. "The spirit doesn’t know who you are, much less that you’re here." He glared at Masaki. "But assuming the spirit did somehow want to attack you, it would have done it out there, in the street. You’d be dead already. What are you going to do—hole up in my shop for the rest of your life without even a bloody trideo feed?"
Masaki glanced nervously around, then shot Pita a pained look. She made a face at him. All she’d done was ask a question, one that had seemed perfectly logical at the time. It wasn’t like she’d told him to panic or anything.
"Excuse me, but I’d like to shoot some trideo." Carla
reminded them. "That is, if we’re all calm enough to handle it." she added sarcastically.
The mage grudgingly broke off the glare he’d been giving Masaki.
Carla smiled sweetly at him. "Now if you’ll just face me, Aziz, I’d like to shoot a little trid while you explain the significance of the spell that’s on the chip. Keep it short and put it in lay terms so our viewing audience will understand."
Aziz popped the datachip from the deck and turned to face Carla. When she reached for it, he pulled his hand back. "How about I keep this for awhile as payment for services rendered?" he asked. "I want to study the spell. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The formula is highly theoretical, real cutting-edge stuff. The spirit it supposedly summons doesn’t fit any of the known categories of hermetic magic. I’d like to know more about it."
When Carla started to protest, he waved a finger at her. "If I know you, Carla, you’ve already got a copy of this stashed away somewhere. And don’t worry that I’ll spill the beans before the story airs. Living with a reporter taught me all about confidentiality and not revealing my sources. Nobody’s going to scoop you on this one."