He smiled, and his eyes were brown again, and his hair was just curly. Little springy bits of it had escaped the ponytail. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said, briefly riveted by his gorgeousness. He took the knapsack—swinging it up over his shoulder like it weighed nothing—and reached for my algebra book. I couldn’t let him carry everything while I minced along beside him like a . . . girl. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll stick to this one.” He looked surprised.
“I have a new theory about algebra,” I said. “I’m going to learn it by osmosis.”
His face lit up in a fantastic grin and then we were more comfortable with each other. We turned and walked beside the river without saying any more. I knew my knapsack was a torture device but Casimir didn’t seem to be aware of it. I kept surreptitiously trying to rearrange the algebra book so he wouldn’t notice I was struggling with it, but it didn’t want to rearrange, or anyway however I held it there was some corner that was digging into my ribs or my arm or my stomach. In another minute I was going to leave it for the squirrels.
What do you say to a gorgeous boy you’re trying not to look like a moron in front of? One of the things I’d thought of while I was sitting on the bridge was that I could ask him if he’d heard about the cobey in Copperhill. An interest in current events is a sign of a mature mind, right? And he hardly could not have heard about it, by now it was everywhere, first header on your pocket phone local news and the live billboard ribbons too, but it was better than saying, Gods, I could die for your dimples. So I asked.
He nodded. “But it is only one so far, right?”
Only? So far? I thought, clutched my shield-like algebra book, and didn’t think about deep lines like the one that ran between Copperhill and Station. I swallowed. “Only—one?”
“In Ukovia, we have them more often than you do here. You know this, yes? Oldworld has many more than you do.” He looked at me, but my mind had gone blank just like I’d been afraid it would.
“Nazoku, we call them,” he said. “Cobeys.” He looked at me again, expecting me to behave like the other half of a conversation. When I didn’t say anything he went on. “Eh, I was taught in school that they are something like bulges, like bulges into our world from another, like hands beating against a curtain, and we do not worry unless they appear as a series, eh, we say toruna, too many, too many strong hands against an old curtain which may tear if the hands beat too hard. Yes? This is the fear, that the boundaries between worlds may become weak in that gron of space. This is why you have your Overguard and your cobey regiments, and we have our tesra torontona. The new textbooks have decided that flow is a better word for the energy pattern of a nazok; not bulges but surges. What you see as the nazok is the crest of a wave; there are many waves because there are many worlds which interrupt the flow of the bransti siir domnoor; I am sorry, I do not know how to say this, the energies from which the worlds come. You hope that this nazok that troubles you in your world is the unusually tall one, and the others will pass without your noticing.”
I had stopped to stare at him better.
“Do they not teach you this?” he said, stopping too. “I do not translate these concepts easily.”
I made an effort to unblank my mind. “You translate fine. We’re not taught—not that we’re—what—a lot of little rafts on an ocean of—” Chaos, I was going to say, but I didn’t want to say it aloud. A shield-sized algebra book and a humming shadow seemed like very poor protection. Plus a new paper mascot in the knapsack over Casimir’s shoulder and a lot of probably by now pretty beat-up second-rate kami.
He shook his head. “It is only another part of life,” he said. “We need certain qualities in the air we breathe and certain qualities in the food we eat—and certain qualities in the earth that bears us. The wrong air, the wrong food can harm or kill us. It is no different.” He looked at me again. “What do they teach you about—cobeys?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “That we should leave it up to Watchguard and if it’s too big for them, then Overguard will send the niddles—NIDL. We’re allowed—encouraged—to squash silverbugs, but anything bigger or weirder, we Run and Report.” I hesitated. “We have specially trained units to deal—”
He was nodding. “Yes, of course. We do too.”
“But some of the training is about—er—resisting the effects of being close to a cobey.”
He was still nodding. “Yes, of course.”
“Mental effects,” I said.
He stopped nodding. “It is very disorienting—”
“No, it makes you nuts,” I said. “According to the big guys. Overguard. Which is why we have the niddles. That’s why they ripped the gene for magic out of us a few generations ago. Using magic makes you more susceptible.” They say. Until last night I’d never doubted it. Or wanted to doubt it. Now I did. Poor Casimir. A little more forcefully than I meant to I went on: “They decided that having magicians going loopy all over the landscape was bad for business, and all their wires and beams and boxes did it better anyway.”
“Magicians are trained—trained for many years—to withstand the risks they take. There are other dangerous jobs. Members of the ordinary police force are sometimes injured performing their duty. Having no magic to use leaves you totally vulnerable,” Casimir said. “You cannot be sure of a—niddle—being close enough to protect you. It is like you take a first-aid course so that you can stop the bleeding while you wait for the doctor.”
“That is what Watchguard is for,” I said. “There’s always a Watchguard around the corner. And why we Run and Report. You have to know this—that it’s all tech and gizmos here. They wouldn’t have let you in if there was any magic in you.” I wondered if he could hear the jittery edge to my voice. He was probably used to women getting a little manic when they talked to him. “So you’re totally vulnerable while you’re here. Like us.”
He looked troubled. “I took many tests to be allowed to come here, yes. But the arrangements were made by the trust which is paying my scholarship. My country—all of Oldworld—wants to know more of your science, that it appears to keep your people safe without magic. That is why I am here—that is why my trust exists. There are other people like me here, and other organizations in Oldworld like my trust. And yes, I was told I could not use magic here, which did not disturb me, but also that I had to leave my talismans behind.” He smiled a little wryly. “I was not happy about this. But I will take some risk to help my country, you see? But I have been surprised at the—at the vehemence against magic here. People recoil, as if someone were telling them to walk into fire.”
Ask me about my mom’s new husband, I thought. Or about humming shadows that smell nice. “That’s supposed to be one of the side effects of the gene-chopping,” I said. “At a cellular level we all have post-traumatic shock.”
“But your system works.”
I hesitated again. “Some people think that instead of having magicians going crazy right and left we have physwiz engineers and philosophers going crazy. That engineers are easier to organize, and the philosophers are all locked in the brain bureaus. Or that it’s easier to see the signs that they’re going doolally—magicians are halfway there all the time. Maybe engineers and philosophers go crazy more tactfully than magicians do.”