This choice: Hang back and develop your technique • Go Back...Chapter #66The Way of the Slow and Steady by: Seuzz   Blackwell is on his way out to the university when you barge in on him. "Good heavens," he exclaims as he meets your company at the front door. "Where have you been? I've been worried."
"Bullshit," Frank says. "You were hoping something ate us so you'd have the run of things again." Blackwell scowls at him.
"Go to class," you order the professor. "We've got some stuff to do here. Oh, and bring Melody Weiss back with you when you return."
"The girl could be useful for getting in the university," Rick says after Blackwell is gone.
"Yeah, I don't see any reason to get rid of her," you reply. You notice he's hanging back in the foyer. "What's wrong with you?"
"Who says there's anything wrong with me? Everything's working like it should." He looks around furtively. "Too well."
You give him a long look.
"Well, you have to get your car back up to Cuthbert anyway," you say. "For the Stellae to find. How about you take care of that while the rest of us deal with the house?"
Rick chews on the inside of his cheek, then with a shrug departs.
* * * * *
You slump in the library after he's gone and glare at the shelves. The room feels shabby and disused, and an oppressive sense of apathy settles onto you. Joe perches on the edge of the desk. "It's like we're back to square one," he says.
"Nowhere close," you retort. "I've learned too much." You chew furiously at your lip. "And I want to know more!"
"To do what?" Frank asks. He's sitting on the other side of you.
"Knowledge is its own reward," Joe says.
"But I don't know what I want to do!" you jump in before Frank can turn it into an argument. "I want to know what I can do before I decide what I'm going to do!"
Your allies exchange a glance. "So where are we going to go?" Frank says. "One of the high schools? Keyserling? We need a hiding place, Joe and I. And Rick."
"We've still got the Strausslers as a base," Joe says.
"Right," you say. "What did you do with them when you left town for Cuthbert?"
Joe shrugs. "I dunno. That was when the first Joe Durras was handling things. I've only got the memories you had in your mask. But I assume he shoved Straussler back under his own golemized mask and left Daddy Moneybags as he was."
"Better check. Call him and get him out here." Then you think to ask: "Wait, what day is this?"
"Saturday. The fifteenth," Joe says as he taps at his phone.
"What month?"
"November." He whaps you lightly across the head. "Do we need to buy you a calendar?"
You had completely lost track of the days and dates while in Cuthbert. Actually, you've hardly been paying attention to them since dropping out of school. And that reminds you that— You cover your face and groan. "I've got a doppelganger at home who's probably wondering if I'm dead."
"Unless he's dead," Frank says. "That hex he's wearing can't be getting any better."
God! There is so much to do. And the only way to get going on it is to get organized.
* * * * *
If you're going to implement a research program you will need a central base to operate from. Blackwell's villa, with its tools and its books and its house guardian, would seem ideal for that. But the house has a reputation, and thanks to Joe and Frank's original investigation its occupant is known to the Stellae, so it seems best to find another location. So when Jonathan Straussler shows up a little after noon—with pizzas, which are a pleasant dividend—you get him to describe the lay of the Straussler house.
"Dad runs the business," he tells you. "Mom runs the house, through Arturo and Mrs. Szymanski. Any orders that those three give, the rest of the staff will follow." He also mentions Liu, who doubles as Curt Straussler's chauffeur and bodyguard, but he doesn't have much to do with the running of the house.
"I want to keep our powder dry," you say after giving the layout some thought. "We can each of us have six golem, and it sounds like it would take six just to hold down Jonathan's house."
"What else are we going to do with our essentia?" Joe asks.
You shrug. "Save it for when we know what we're doing."
"But you invented a way to pull essentia out of people," he argues. "So we can use it to get control of Jonathan's house, and when we're ready to move on we can disassemble the golems."
That is a point. But it's another point that the spells are complicated and the sigils hard to draw.
It's a third point, though, when you decide that can be the first project: the construction of a permanent set of sigils for use in assembling and disassembling golems and people.
You send Jonathan and Frank into town to buy a list of supplies that you quickly draw up, and put Joe to work on constructing a master catalog of Blackwell's library.
* * * * *
You have a design in mind for a multi-part sigil that will allow you to swap out any and every part of a human being or golem—imago, essentia, anima—and also for splitting up essentia. Frank returns by two o'clock with a ten foot by ten foot sheet of metal and some metalworking tools, but by that time, as you've sketched the design out in a notebook, you see some extra additions that you'd like to weave into the final design. More come in at a hard and feverish pace, so that you keep putting off the moment that you'll commit yourself to a final design, and you tear up and toss aside a score or more preliminary sketches. You are having to work almost a dozen very complicated sigils into one seamless whole, and over an early, hurried dinner you tell your friends that you understand why they constructed a machine in Cuthbert. "It's just easiest."
Blackwell returns a little before six, bringing Melody Weiss with him. She seems no happier than the magician at seeing your company returned. You talk to her only long enough to learn that she has nothing interesting to report, and send her away. Blackwell you banish to his living room with orders not to come out until bedtime.
You're still working at midnight, by which time Rick has returned from Cuthbert in Jape's tow truck. He checks into a hotel, though, while you and Joe and Frank lock yourselves safely away in a bedroom. During the night you think you are visited by the planet Kenandandra, but your memories are a murky, heavy haze when you wake the next morning. They don't become any clearer after you've showered, but you feel remarkably freshened and reenergized when you come down the stairs afterward. You are silent during breakfast, then bolt for the library when you've finished your eggs.
The final design—including empty spots that you know you will eventually need, even though you don't yet know what will go in them—seems to be sitting in front of your eyes, and you copy it down quickly in a firm hand with no erasures into your notebook over the course of an hour. You hear Joe murmuring at Frank as you sweep up your notes and move into the living room: "I've never seen anyone in that kind of a trance before."
Yes. It's all there. You can practically see it, glittering inside the flat, unfinished metal sheet that's lying on the living room floor, including a sigil that, you now recognize, came to you during the night. "Call Jonathan back out here this afternoon," you tell Joe, who has followed you into the living room and is watching as you kneel on the metal sheet with a large compass. "I've got something special planned for him and you." You can feel the gleam of excitement in your eyes.
* * * * *
So certain is your design that you are finished by mid-afternoon. Rick has come in and been watching you, and he grunts when you sit back with an exhausted smile. When he asks you what it does, you explain it to him with quiet pride.
"Great," he grunts. "Now that you're finally done with it, let's put an end to my personal farce."
Your face falls. "What do you mean?"
"Let's stain it with Rick Bredon's blood."
You gasp, and call Frank and Joe in. They listen gravely as Rick explains himself.
"Put me in storage," he tells you. "Take me apart. I can't contribute anything to your little club except muscle and advice."
"We can always use your advice," Frank says.
"You can get it without me. Put my brain in one of your little doodads, and you can pop it on anytime you want to know what I'd think. Faster and surer than a Ouija board," he mutters.
"But don't you want to stick around, help us, see what happens?" you plead.
He shakes his head. "I'm not sure you kids mean bad—I guess I don't mean bad, 'cos I guess I'm one of you," he adds with a stammer. "But I got doubts about where this is going. Besides—" He glances around the room. "I don't like this scene. I'd just as soon you recycle my parts in a form that, uh, fits your plans better. Whatever those plans turn out to be."
From the way he sets his jaw you can guess you can't talk him out of it.
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