“What’s up, lad!” the silhouette said with Captain Baer’s voice.
“Hello, sir,” the effort required to pronounce the words allowed me to focus and pull myself together.
It took a few seconds for the familiar shapes of buildings and platforms to stand out of the veil of strange beings. I felt better.
“I heard you had a problem,” the chief of Redstone’s NZAMIPS noted genially.
He came to the train station wearing his posh uniform.
“There were some,” I did not argue.
“Let me give you a lift!” he proposed generously.
Very well! I guessed I was about to get sent straight into a madhouse. With a dark mage who did not understand where he was, they would deal shortly.
He took my suitcase by the handle and went forward, pointing the way, and the crowd parted before him like waves before a ship. I stomped after, carefully freeing my consciousness of the stranger’s influence. I sensed that what was happening had something to do with my promise to think of others. Not without reason had I dreamt of white mages all night! If they saw the world halfway like that, then how they could survive at all? However, all that could just be an illusion, charmed by Rustle because of its mean nature.
I ought to keep myself in hand! Forty days had not passed yet; it seemed that the most interesting would be ahead.
When we left the station, only a slight tremor of my right eyelid reminded me of the strange visions.
Captain Baer ignored a line of cabs and headed to the parking lot. I expected to see a striped police car, but he brought his own auto.
I felt like I was kicked in the stomach, just thinking that he owned a car.
“Get in!” the chief of NZAMIPS clicked the lock and took my basket, not paying attention to the fact that I was morally destroyed.
Oh, that was a real car! Of course, not a black limo, but still quite impressive: big, bright, conservative blue, without a single scratch on the mirrored polished body. Captain Baer effortlessly lifted my suitcase and put it into a roomy trunk, onto some neat terry rug. Not wasting any time, I got inside. Leather seats! The back ones were like a sofa bed, with enough space to comfortably sleep; in the middle there was a little extra strap, probably for children. Subtle echoes of cleaning spells suggested that they were used here on a regular basis. Not a cheap thing, by the way. I was impressed; no, I was shocked. Someone else owned my dream. NZAMIPS wasn’t, of course, a poor institution, but I always felt that government officials were supposed to look and behave like humble gray mice. What a surprise…
I squirmed in my seat, trying to soak into my skin the flavor of the luxurious leather. Yes, my motorcycle was also quite stylish, but of incomparable comfort. And no one around was surprised that the chief of Redstone NZAMIPS loaded my luggage; probably, the townsfolk took his clothes for a certain type of driver’s uniform. For a moment, I imagined that was true: my own car, my private chauffeur—I felt good! The captain finished with the basket and took the driver’s seat.
“Do you know where to?”
“Yes, I do.”
Well, okay. It would be strange if the boss of NZAMIPS was not able to obtain my new address. The captain was driving out of the station square’s crowd to the boulevard, and I relished my new experience.
In such a car I could drive and drink champagne without risking knocking my teeth out and even without splashing a drop. There was definitely some magic in the car; I didn’t know of any suspension that could provide such soft movement over the pavement slabs, tram routes, and central alleys covered with cobblestones in imitation of the antique style. Nothing in common with Uncle’s clunkers. I would buy myself the same model! I would do anything to buy it.
I felt like my dream came true, but somewhere halfway down I realized that we were driving to the town’s junkyard.
Oops.
Yes, Thomas, you feared the wrong things…
Silly thoughts frantically rushed through my clever head. Maybe I should threaten him with disclosing the story about the crystal? No, it would not work. I thought about hitting him on the head and jumping out. Yeah, an attack on a NZAMIPS officer would look great on the list of my sins! Or maybe the situation was not so scary? He didn’t bring soldiers along; he came without fisticuffs; what if we would be able to come to an agreement? Maybe he just needed money.
Hopefully Max had not reached home yet…
When the car stopped at the rickety wooden gates, I decided not to step up with initiative and instead followed him in silence. If the captain wanted to make a show, I should help him with that.
The junkyard itself (the junkyard, not a dump!) was quite a remarkable place. On a space the size of a small field, there were long piles of incredible stuff that was sorted by a gang of idiotic personalities, though they were quite friendly. What exactly their business was like I didn’t know, but the junkyard owner shipped carts of various items daily and immediately filled the freed space with a new batch of stuff. Part of the territory was occupied by illegal housing—junkmen’s sheds, workshops of amateur alchemists, as well as garages of car enthusiasts, less wealthy than I was. Knowledgeable people found the place very convenient: in the junkyard one could get parts to almost any obsolete device, starting with a wall clock and ending with a locomotive (for the first time I came here for that very reason). The owner of the junkyard charged a few copper coins for the right to own a squalid tin can and watched that no one lived there seriously; despite the cheap dilapidated gates and fence, the junkyard was well guarded.
That day, the maze of rickety ruins was particularly quiet—the local old-timers sensed troubles well. The captain stood beside the familiar garage and looked at me expectantly.
“Have you been inside?” I asked.
“I looked through the crack.”
I sighed and opened the door. It was never locked. In the garage there was my huge black motorcycle; my merry dead dog sat right next to it. Well, of course! Why would it be somewhere else?
Max, wagging its tail, ran toward me and began to swirl around my legs (that’s right, the captain and I came together as friends, and the zombie did not have any reason to worry about the stranger). I patted Max on the back, routinely refreshing the revivifying spell. No point in hiding it! The chief of Redstone’s NZAMIPS calmly watched the spectacle. The man had iron nerves!
“Why did you make this zombie?”
I shrugged: “Not on purpose, it just happened so!” Max shoved its ears into my hand to stroke and looked at the stranger in a quite friendly manner. “The dog saved my life. And it was also a victim of the ghouls.”
By the way, the dog resisted death much longer than the afflicted people.
“Okay, what’s done is done,” somebody grimly announced behind me.
That was a mage. A dark. An adult. Something clicked in me, and to the very roots of my being I realized the truth: I’d better not start a fight with him—I would lose. Max pressed tightly to my knee, folding its ears as if making a house of cards.
“Calm the beast, hold it by the collar. I do not like dogs.”
I firmly grabbed Max by the skin, though I was sure that without my word it would not move from the spot. Scenes in which I had dealt with other dark magicians face-to-face flashed through my mind. There were not many of them: Uncle, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Rakshat, that was about all. None of them was really tough, but this guy was truly strong—no need to go to an empath. It wasn’t easy to assess his age, but I felt that the mage was no older than forty, and my imagination persistently pictured him in general’s epaulets. An abundance of power gives a dark mage’s face a specific expression… Who did Captain Baer bring along?