8FOLD: Mancers # 13, "Skimble-Skamble Stuff"

[Tom Russell]

Among us walk the MANCERS - humans gifted with mystical power by dread
Venus! Some serve the elder gods, and conspire to give them dominion
over mankind! Others fight in rebellion against Venus, seeking to end
magic itself! And in this midnight war - fought by spies and assassins
with secrets and mysteries - the fate of the Earth shall be decided!

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#     #           [8F-201][PW-46]
#     # NUMBER 13 - "SKIMBLE-SKAMBLE STUFF"

-------------DRAMATIS PERSONAE-------------

     MEMBERS OF THE SECRET CIRCLE
A band of mancers opposing the gods of Venus.

MAILE AKAKA, age 20. Aeromancer.
Once the top field agent of The Company, she orchestrated her own
abduction and memory wipe to defect to the circle. She now serves as
their leader.

LIEKE VAN RIJN, age 27. Doppelmancer.
Split into two autonomous bodies, madly in love with each other, now
separated and desperately alone. This Lieke is with the circle.

JUNE LASH, age 47. Ailuromancer.
Gourmet chef and spymaster, commanding dozens of feline agents around the globe.

TREVOR JEFFRIES, age 23? Robot head.
Thought to be a mekhanomancer, recently revealed to be a Company robot
constructed by Cradle Tech.

DAVID COLLINS, age 31. Mnemonomancer.
Married to Beth Collins, brother of Claire Belden, wielder of the
ancient blade Thirteen. He has accidentally remembered a forbidden
name locked in his dead father's memories, resurrecting a great and
unspeakable evil.

AZABETH "BETH" COLLINS, age 37. Oneiromancer.
Wife of David Collins, only recently awaken from a long slumber.

SARAH AVERY, age 25. Evocamancer.
Reluctantly allied with the secret circle, and even more reluctant to
use her demon-summoning magic, preferring to serve as an engineer.

PILAR "PILL" GARCIA, age 34.
Non-mystical human collector of magical artifacts and lore.


     EMPLOYEES OF THE COMPANY
A shadow conglomerate in the service of dread Venus.

CLAIRE BELDEN, age 31. Metamancer.
Having framed and murdered her former boss and lover Lydia Black,
Claire is now the head of Human Resources for The Company. From
within, she pursues her own agenda, aiding the circle and The Company
in equal measure to maintain a mystical stalemate between the two
sides. Sister of David Collins, responsible for both his escape and
Maile's defection.

TRINITY "TRINI" TRAN, age 35. Haematomancer.
A fugitive, reluctantly working for The Company in return for their
protection, and allied with Claire. She carries David Collins's child,
and is now rooming with (and keeping an eye on) the mind-wiped
"Angel".

ANGEL, age 27. Doppelmancer.
The other Lieke van Rijn, amnesiac, depowered, and consumed by a
desperate emptiness. Held captive by The Company.

------------------------------------------


The plan is fairly simple.
   Sarah and June will rent a van under an alias. The facility is on a
private road; roughly a half-mile before they come to it, they will
turn onto a gravel road leading into the woods. Sarah figures that
should be close enough to the facility for Trevor to pick something
up. June's adorable fluffy agents will be in key positions between the
van and the Cradle Tech facility, so as to alert them to any movement
toward their position. June will in turn notify Maile and Pill so that
they can intercept if things go awry.
   "Easy-peasy," says Maile when she's finished explaining it to
Trevor. She stares at him. It's weird; now that she knows he's a
robot, he doesn't look real anymore. His eyes seem lifeless, the
expressions on his face smack of artifice. She guesses that this will
make it easier if she has to turn him off.
   "Trevor, do you remember the conversation we had a few weeks ago?
About you being useful to me? And what will happen if you're not?"
   "Yeah. I remember."
   "Well, this is your chance. Don't screw it up. Don't cross me."
   Something flickers behind Trevor's eyes. The worst part about
knowing he's a robot is that he's also suddenly much harder for her to
read. "What if I don't mean to? You know, programming kicks in or
something, but it's not something I'm doing, something I'm choosing to
do."
   She doesn't bother hiding her annoyance. "I think we both know what
the answer is to that question."
   His head wobbles in an approximation of a nod. Maile supposes it
must be hard to move one's head without a body to hold it on. "What
about after?"
   "What about it?"
   "I mean, once I'm done being useful to you. Once you figure out all
this robot stuff or whatever. What happens to me?"
   "Cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess."
   "Great."
   Maile throws back her head, exasperated. "Look, I don't know. Right
now I'm kinda focused on all we got going on right now. You're not in
a position to make demands."
   "I know it," says Trevor. "Every day I'm alive, every minute, it's
because you've decided to let me keep going."
   "You bet your butt it is," says Maile. "Well, your head. You don't
have a butt anymore."
   "I'm not trying to bargain or to make demands. I know I got nothing
to bargain with. It's just that it's hard. Having that over you all
the time. Wondering. I don't, I don't think you know how hard that is,
day to day."
   Something about what he says and how he says it catches Maile by
surprise. "I get it," she says quietly. "Look. You want to know what
happens after, you want to know if you get to have an after. Sure. We
get through all this nonsense or whatever, and you haven't given me a
reason to turn you off, and I can get some kind of certainty that
you're not going to give me a reason in the near future, then sure,
you get to live something ever after. I don't know what that looks
like," she waves her hand toward the mess of wires feeding into his
head, "I don't know what you want that to look like. But we can talk
and figure it out at that point."
   "Thanks," he says.
   "Yeah, sure." Maile regrets it immediately, regrets softening,
hates herself for backing down. Better to keep him afraid. He's not a
friend (heck, he wasn't even a friend when he was a friend). He's not
a person. He's a machine. This is like feeling sorry for a calculator.

Maile and Pill follow the cats into the woods. The idea is to situate
themselves at a point roughly equidistant to the facility and to the
van, so that they can run in whatever direction they have to when
something goes wrong.
   Not when. If, Maile reminds herself: if something goes wrong. Don't
jinx it. This isn't one of Kyle's D&D campaigns, where every stealth
or recon mission always resulted in an ambush followed by a madcap
skedaddle. (There are things she misses about her old life, but Kyle's
crummy dungeon mastering isn't one of them.)
   There's just as much a chance that the afternoon will pass
uneventfully, and after fifteen or twenty minutes of utterly boring
data retrieval, they'll all head home. As much as she might tell
herself that's the case, apparently her face feels otherwise, because
Pill asks her if she's nervous.
   "Nah," says Maile, playing it cool. "I think between the two of us
we can handle whatever gets thrown at us. Appreciate you coming, by
the way."
   "Sure. I'd say I appreciate being asked, but it's not like you have
a whole lot of options. Your little squad isn't exactly built for
mixing it up. Theoretically David should be handy with the magic
sword."
   "Theoretically?"
   "Well, he has all the memories of practically everyone who used it
before. So he's got ten thousand plus years of experience. But the
minute he steps out into the world, you've got the necromancer's merry
band of idiots breathing down your neck. (I've got something in the
works for that, bee tee double-you, but haven't quite finished it
yet.) So, really, it's just you and Sarah."
   "Sarah?"
   "Her name is Sarah, right? I'm bad with names."
   "I mean, yes, but Sarah's not a fighter."
   "Evocamancer, though?"
   "Yeah, but she doesn't use it," says Maile. She studies Pill's
face. "You disapprove?"
   "No, I get it," says Pill. "I mean, is it the way I would do it if
I was in her shoes? No way, man. I'd be summoning demons all over the
place." She smiles, as if in a pleasant daydream. "Never have to do my
own laundry again."
   "Pity you're not a mancer, then."
   "Oh, I don't know," says Pill. "You all get that one special thing,
right, but I got the Eye of Kandam, so I can read ancient Lemurian. I
can turn invisible; that's the cloak of the night. Unlock any door:
the key of keys. I can set things on fire." She stares at Maile
expectantly, her eyes huge, struggling to hide a stupid grin.
   Maile sighs, rolls her eyes, and then says mechanically: "Pill,
what wondrous piece of kit do you have that lets you set things on
fire?"
   Pill exaggerates an indifferent shrug. "It's called a lighter." She
laughs suddenly but quietly.
   Maile is less amused. "Yeah, I thought so."
   "But if I can get my hot little hands on the crown of the morning,
I can definitely ignite things more effectively." She looks wistful.
"Company got to it before I did."
   "Turn invisible, huh? You could be right in a room with me and I
would have no idea?"
   Pill smirks mischievously. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
   "Yes," says Maile flatly. "That's why I'm asking. It could give us
a tremendous tactical advantage."
   "Hmmph."

While her computer is shaking hands with Trevor's disembodied skull,
Sarah steals a few precious seconds to scratch at the mancer's mark on
her left wrist. Something dry and hot is skittering under the skin
again. Less like fingers or insects, and more like teeth and lips,
raspy voices whispering from the inside out, occasionally licking her
muscles and gnawing on her bones.
   "Demon thing again?" says June.
   Apparently Sarah's discomfort was showing more than she thought. "I
got it handled, June, thanks." The computer is ready for her now, so
she gets back to work.
   "Of course." She shrinks: the arms pull inward and her gaze falls
away from Sarah and into her own lap. The change in posture feels
significant, like it's in reaction to what Sarah said, but it's hard
for her to connect those dots. She wonders if she's hurt June in some
way. She's not sure how, and as she replays the conversation in her
head, she can't see anything that she's done wrong.
   Part of her wonders if she should apologize. But she doesn't know
what she'd be apologizing for, and if it turned out she had misread
the situation, it would make things awkward, as it often had in the
past with other people. She didn't want to make it awkward between her
and June, mostly because she doesn't want June's cats to be mad at
her. People are dumb and mysterious, but cats Sarah understands.
   "It's, uh, it's not that I'm struggling with dark desires or
anything," offers Sarah. "Or that I'm tormented and I need to talk
about it. They're more irritating than anything else," she half-lies.
"They just make it hard for me to focus."
   June nods, and her body language becomes looser, which Sarah takes
as a sign that if this wasn't the right move, it at least wasn't the
wrong one.
   "Getting something now," says Sarah as she begins the file transfer
from the facility through Trevor to her laptop.
   "So am I," says June, grabbing the handheld transceiver. "Maile,
you've got incoming."

The first thing she does is she makes it rain. A thick rain, the sort
that soaks you in an instant, the stuff coming down in sheets, buckets
of it. The kind of rain that you have to wipe out of your eyes. That
doesn't necessarily help visibility for her or for Pill, but she
figures it's gotta be worse for the machines.
   These ones don't quite look the part. There are machine parts to be
sure - an arm here, half a skull there - but mostly they look like
people. No, not people: corpses, the flesh hanging on the metal,
rotting and expressionless. Maile counts three of them and makes a
fist: kra-koom! Now there are two.
   She makes a fist again, calling down another bolt of lightning, but
the woods are too dense, and it hits a tree instead. The branch cracks
off and lands on the robot. It doesn't seem to notice. Pill aims a
weird blue scepter at it and hits it with a weird blue something. This
time it notices. A couple of follow-up shots are enough to put it on
the fritz, and with her eldritch red short sword she delivers the coup
de grace.
   "One to go," says Maile.
   "Not sure about your math," says Pill with a toss of her head behind Maile.
   "Four more?" says Maile. She sighs, and with casual indifference
she dispatches the last of the original robots with two well-placed
bolts.
   Pill snaps her fingers, and the mystical kinda-sorta tripwire she
had set decapitates two of the zombie robots. "Easier than I thought
it'd be."
   At that moment, out of nowhere, another robot jumps down from up in
a gee-dee tree right above Maile. This one looks like it's all robot,
no corpse; just her luck. She avoids being crushed but doesn't move
fast enough to avoid the thing grabbing her by the arm. It yanks hard,
pulling her in with one arm while hauling the other one back as if
it's going to lay her out, only the palm is open. There's a
split-second pause: with a soft but discernible click, a six inch
spike pops out of the palm. Maile's not sure what about the spike
makes her queasier: the sharpness of its point, or the width of its
base.
   A tinny monotone emanates from a box in its throat. "Such a deal of
skimble-skamble stuff."
   She knows better than to try close quarters with a full-on robot.
That'd just be a good way to break every bone in her fist. And trying
to judo-throw this heavy piece of machinery is a non-starter, and
while she's wasting time doing that, it'll have punched a couple holes
in her. Lightning's the way to go, though she's never hit something
that's holding onto her, and she wonders briefly and morbidly if she's
about to electrocute herself to death.
   Before Maile has a chance to test that theory, however, and, more
importantly, before the robot has a chance to stick its nasty palm
spike into her skull, Pill arrives, sword in one hand, pistol in the
other. She cuts through the arm at the elbow while tracing a line of
pistol shots from its head to its groin.
   The severed hand around Maile's arm releases its grip.
   "Thanks," Maile mutters.
   "Thank me later," says Pill. "Here comes the next wave."
   Ahead of their new adversaries comes three of June's cats. They
wail at Maile cacophonously.
   "They shouldn't be attacking in waves," says Maile quickly.
"Sending in little groups that we can pick off. They should just be
throwing everything at us."
   "You're thinking this is a feint?"
   One of the cats mews loudly.
   "Yeah. Keeping you and me busy."
   "I can handle this," says Pill. Maile doesn't doubt it. With a
glowing stick Pill draws a wide circle in the mud; the circle glows,
pulsing and green.
   The cats start running in the general direction of their mistress,
and Maile follows. It's five minutes of hard running, and the mud from
her storm doesn’t make it any easier. Before she gets to the road,
through the dense sardine-packed trees, she can see the white of the
van peeking through. It looks wrong somehow, but it's not until she
gets closer that she realizes it's standing on its crushed-in nose,
its rear leaning toward the trees.
   Instead of catching her breath, Maile pushes forward.
   There are more zombie robots, of course, bearing in from both sides
of the road. These don't move as fast or as confidently as the ones
she and Pill were just dealing with; instead, their movements are
hesitant and herky-jerky. Sarah is in the middle of it, surrounded.
She's alive, she's conscious, but she's on the ground, propping
herself up with one arm. In her other hand she holds up Trevor's head,
like Perseus with the head of Medusa. Trevor's mouth is open.
   It's only as she gets closer that Maile realizes that Trevor is
making a noise. It's so high pitched that she can only really hear it
if she listens for it, and when she does so, she starts to feel
nauseous and dizzy. These robots probably have more sensitive audio
receptors. The sound must be interfering in some way.
   That's a question for later, though. The robots haven't noticed
Maile at all, so she's free to call down her equivalent of an air
strike, wiping them out with a forty-hit combo of sturm und drang.
   Her mancer's mark feels like it's on fire, hurts in a way it's
never hurt before. She stares at it: it didn't used to look like that.
Everything used to be in a tight little circle, and now little bits of
glowing linework are bleeding into her fingers and up her arm.
    She'll worry about that later. "Sarah, are you okay? Are you bleeding?"
   "Only internally," she says. Then: "A joke. I'm fine." She gets up
on her feet, a little wobbly. "Scuffed up a bit."
   "June?"
   "Down here," says a voice that is like June's, but not like June's.
Maile turns toward the sound. A small black cat is washing its face
with her right paw. She pauses and looks at Maile. "Yes," says June,
who turns to the other cats. "Thank you, my beauties. Return to your
homes."
   "I didn't know you could do that," says Maile.
   There's a mad rustling coming from the woods.
   "It's me," says Pill. "They just keep coming. They'll be here in a
minute or two." She looks at the van and exhales like a deflated
balloon. "Was kinda hoping for a high speed chase out of here."
   "You and me both," says Maile.
   "Excuse me," says a woman's voice. It's coming out of Trevor. "Hi,
hello, you don't know me, and I don't know you, but you seem like rad
people? You need a ride, right?"
   "Yeah," says Maile.
   "Cool, My friend is just stealing a car right now. Borrowing a car.
We're just borrowing a car now, without permission. Be there in like
two minutes?"
   Sarah pipes up. "I was talking to her before. She uploaded
something to Trevor so that he could hit those high notes."
   "Okay, mysterious stranger. We'll head back to the main road, meet
you there." Maile turns to her team. "You guys get a head start. I'll
do rearguard."
   Pill looks at Maile's arm. "You gotta take it easy for a spell. Not
even a drizzle, doctor's orders. Let me hold them off."
   "You already did that for me once."
   "You can make it up to me later," says Pill with a wink. "Get going."
   June rubs up against Maile's leg. "Carry me," she demands catly.

It's a two-door coupe. Maile is about to ask how they're all going to
fit when she notices that there's no driver.
   "Is that you?" she asks the woman in Trevor's head (God, her life
didn't used to be this weird).
   "It was," says the woman. "Turning it over to you now. Would've got
a bigger one, but short notice, man. We'll be in touch."

Once they return to Shallow House, Pill sequesters herself in the
library once more while Sarah gets to work trawling through the files
she copied. David assists; he doesn't know thing one about computers
or robotics but he knows The Company. And that proves to be the key.
   "So," says Sarah, "let me explain this kind of backwards. About a
month ago, this site's primary purpose was shifted to storage for
something called Huxley. Those would be the zombie robots. But they
originated at a different site, and there's no data there, which
really broke my heart.
   "Prior to, and for a long time, the purpose was to impart mystical
abilities, energies, what-have-you, onto machines."
   "Is that even possible?" says Maile.
   "Kinda sorta? They had some mixed results. The real Trevor was one
of those experiments, it didn't work (he's super-dead, sorry), but
they thought they could mimic his magic through mechanical means, and
you know the rest of that story."
   "Don't forget the other part," says David.
   "I was getting to that, David, thank you," bristles Sarah. "So,
there are a couple little bread crumbs in the whole thing where
they're exploring the eventual application of the process - which
again doesn't really always work - to non-magical humans."
   "Like, giving someone a mark?"
   "More like taking someone's mark, and transplanting it, surgically.
Or even moving a human consciousness to a robot body if and when the
process works and is stabilized. And there wasn't a whole lot of this
and it didn't really make any sense until David saw the name on some
of the emails. Tag, you're it."
   "John Maddocks," says David. "The Maddocks family has been with The
Company for a long time and they've always kind of steered things,
been responsible for a lot of the legitimate money going in. Long line
of very powerful mancers; he's the kind of guy that likes to talk
about his mystical birthright and the purity of his magical
bloodline."
   "Okay," says Maile. "So, like a Harry Potter villain. Got it."
   "Only because of the Lullaby, there hasn't been a mancer in the
family in a long time. His grandfather was one, his aunt was one, but
not his father, not him, and so his big thing until last summer, when
it happened, was breaking the Lullaby."
   "Oh!" says Maile. "Can I guess the twist?"
   David looks flustered, but nods.
   "Lullaby breaks, bunches and bunches of random people become
mancers, but not Maddocks. The 'purity of his bloodline', and he gets
nothing. Serves him right; what a tosser."
   "Pretty much that," says David. "And, you know, like anything else,
there are factions and power plays. Maddocks still has a lot of pull
and a lot of allies, but he's not a mancer and that makes him
vulnerable to other factions. So, he'd be very interested in trying to
give himself what Venus denied him, even through a secret program like
this. And I do mean secret: information flow about this is completely
isolated from the rest of The Company."
   "Why a secret?"
   "From their point of view, theologically? This stuff is blasphemy."
   Maile chews on her knuckles for a moment. "David, your sister is the worst."
   "I mean, she did run me through with a magic sword, so yeah."
   "This wasn't about helping us with Trevor. And it wasn't a trap.
This is information she couldn't get. Not without alerting Maddocks,
not without him moving against her. So she sent us to get the proof
she needed to eliminate a rival."
   "That does sound like her."
   "So, she played us?" says Sarah.
   "No," says Maile. "I mean, yes, she did, but she also just handed
us a tremendous amount of leverage."
   "What are you going to do with it, boss?"
   Before Maile can answer, Beth rushes into the common room, flush
and out of breath.
   "What's wrong?" says David.
   "I've had a dire vision in a dream," says Beth. "Someone who needs
our aid desperately."
   Maile sighs. "Of course you did. Of course they do."



WHAT'S GOING ON? FIND OUT IN
   MANCERS/DAYLIGHTERS: BRAVE NEW WORLD!
    TAKING PLACE BETWEEN THIS ISSUE AND # 14!



COPYRIGHT (C) 2020 TOM RUSSELL.