The rest of the checkup was rather an anticlimax. Without promising anything, Andrew weighed me and x-rayed my entire body, giving special emphasis to the hips, skull and forepaws. Then he measured me for some alterations to the back-brace and I was free again, at least for the moment. I wandered down the hallway and rode up one floor. While Megan wasn’t waiting for me at the front desk this time—I could hardly expect her to be, after all—my cousin had left word to be called the minute I showed up and asked about her. I was still fussing with the way my clothing fit over the orthopedics hardware when she appeared.
“Hi, Greg!” she greeted me with a smile. “You look a lot better in white.”
I grinned. The chestnut-colored dye I’d been wearing stank and made my fur feel itchy-stiff, but it was an excellent way to hide my identity while I was out making buys. Though shapeshifting wasn’t all that common of a phenomenon, the world was also a very big place. There were more rabbit-people in it than one might expect. But so far as anyone knew, I was the only white one. Uncle Andrew claimed that given my family background it was inevitable that I’d turn into a white-whatever, white being the color of magic. “Thanks, cuz. You wanted to see me about the buy?”
She smiled. “Yes. I’ve set up a conference call. My office?” Megan waved her arm invitingly, and I led the way past the receptionist and into her place of business. As part of her official duties my cousin regularly entertained state governors, congressmen and senators; the décor was impressive and the furniture well-padded. But the guest chair was uncomfortable regardless. It was proportioned all wrong and cramped my tail.
“Uh… I’ll stand if you don’t mind.” I explained, hopping down. “Assuming this won’t take too long.”
Megan understood. “Of course, Greg. Make yourself at home and let me know when you’re ready to get started.”
“Now, I guess,” I replied, shrugging. In doing so I was reminded that my shoulders no longer moved as freely as they once had. But what could one do?
“All right, then.” My cousin punched a couple buttons, then began. “Archie, Grace, Gwendolyn? Are you there? Prince Gregory has arrived.”
I pressed my lips together. I disliked being referred to as ‘Prince’ Gregory, and always had. Our little monarchy was magically locked into place by spells a millennia or more old. Breaking the True Line at this point would cripple the power of every Guild brother and sister in the world, or else we mages would’ve gone to some kind of elected council long since. It would’ve been a far more modern system, and fairer as well. In these better and more progressive times, it was a bit embarrassing so far as I was concerned to be a Prince by right of birth. But it was far worse now that the title had become a mere mockery, a promise that could never be fulfilled. Megan was correct in her behavior, however. Appearances had to be maintained when outsiders were present. And Gwendolyn was FBI, not family or Guild.
“Archie Blandon here! Hi, Greg!” Archie was a computer geek, distantly family but not magically endowed. I knew him slightly. There were better programmers for hire out there, but as a relation he was utterly trustworthy. And we needed somebody discreet in his job.
“Hey, Arch!” I replied.
There was a pause, then Grace spoke. “I’m here too.” Grace was a specialist in Nothing Powder, not an easy thing to find. She wasn’t family. But as a sworn Guild sister she merited equal trust.
“Excellent,” Megan replied. “Gwendolyn?”
“Here!” she finally replied after a long silence. “Sorry, went out for coffee.”
Megan looked unhappy, but I sympathized. “My apologies, Mrs. Matthews” I interjected. “Uncle Andrew took a lot longer with me than expected. Sorry to have kept you waiting.”
“I understand entirely” she replied. “Treating your condition comes first, Your Highness. I’m just sorry I was late getting back.”
“Quite all right,” Megan replied. “But we have a lot to accomplish here. So let’s get down to business, shall we? Everyone present should’ve been informed by now that Gregory successfully made a black market purchase of Nothing Powder yesterday afternoon. We have authenticated that the powder is genuine, and the packaging disappeared as soon as we opened it up. There is essentially no physical evidence save the powder itself, which is perfectly normal in every way. Would you care to describe the transaction, Greg?”
“Yes,” I spoke up, self-conscious of the rather high pitch my voice had taken on recently. My words sounded almost as if they came from a child, which did nothing to help me feel authoritative and official on occasions like this one. “It went down exactly as promised. The material was in a rented locker downtown, to which I’d been sent the key. They provided exactly what was paid for; someone is dealing honestly in unlicensed magical goods.”
“There was a security ward,” Megan pointed out.
“Yes,” I agreed. “More unlicensed magic. Whoever’s behind this knows what they’re doing. The ward vanished as soon as the transaction was completed.”
“A magical ward?” Archie asked. “Are… Are you all right, Greg?”
It was good to know that others cared, but the continual explanations were irritating nonetheless. “Yes,” I replied as politely as possible. “Just fine. Uncle Andrew agrees.”
“Good!” he answered. “I’m very glad to hear that.”
“Yes, well… Anyway, there’s not much more for me to tell. No excitement, no troubles, no worries at all except for a traffic jam on the way back. I’m eager to fly home and get back to work.” There was a long silence after my words. Too long.
It was Gwendolyn who finally spoke up. “Your Highness, what do you have in mind as a next step?”
The same thing I’d always had in mind, of course. “Another buy. And another and another until we obtain some solid evidence regarding who’s behind this. Renegade Guilders, elves, it doesn’t matter. No one is perfect; a mistake will eventually be made.”
“I see,” the FBI lady said. She sounded unconvinced. “With all due respect, Your Highness, we’re taking a considerable risk here with your person. What makes you so certain that we won’t be the first to make a mistake?”
“Someone out there is selling genuine magical products,” I explained, trying to hold my temper. Didn’t these people understand? “This isn’t only almost unheard of, but is also incredibly dangerous. Nothing Powder isn’t healthy stuff to be around if you don’t know how to handle it.” I turned to my cousin. “How much was there in the bag, anyway?” I asked her.
“The full amount promised. Ten drams.”
“And how much mischief could you make with that, Grace?” I asked. “Even if you were ignorant of the stuff?”
“Oh, my!” she exclaimed apprehensively. “Almost anyone can use Nothing Powder. You just blow it towards whatever you want to take the magic out of. With that much you could counter almost any magical spell, even a fairly powerful one. So the amount of potential damage would depend on what the original spell was intended for. The President has a magically-repaired heart condition, for example. It’d be fairly simple to reverse that spell from, say, a few hundred yards away. Though thankfully ten drams isn’t enough to reverse a disaster spell, like the one that the Guild put on Mount St. Helens. That’d take a lot more Powder than ten drams!”
There was more silence. “I didn’t know that,” Gwendolyn said eventually. “About the President, I mean.
“It’s no secret,” I replied.
“Then…” Gwen sounded irritated. “I just don’t understand, Your Highness. Why are you so insistent on handling this yourself? And why won’t you let anyone cover you? You’re taking incredible risks. I mean, I hate to be impolite. But the fact is that you’ve been kidnapped once already.”
And the FBI had utterly and completely failed to catch the party or parties responsible, I didn’t remind her. After all, my family had failed to catch them too. “First of all, I can’t be followed or ‘covered’, as you FBI folks put it, because we’re deal
ing with magic users. We can see things you can’t, Agent Farber, and go places beyond your imagination. If anyone tries to follow or monitor me, even a skilled magic user, they may well only succeed in getting me killed. Or worse. Which brings me to the second point. I completed four years of sorcerer’s training before the kidnapping. You knew that, did you not?”
“Yes,” Gwendolyn replied. “But-“
“No, I can’t be around mana any more. Still, the training isn’t entirely wasted. For example, could any of your agents have spotted the security ward yesterday? I’ll give you a hint: It didn’t exist in any of the ordinary three dimensions.”
I waited a bit for her to reply, but she was smart enough not to. “Not only is there that factor to consider,” I went on, “But all you have to do is look at me to see that I have an excellent reason for wanting to buy Nothing Powder. Trained sorcerers know that the stuff only works in one out of perhaps a thousand cases of cursing; in the rest it usually produces insanity or an excruciatingly painful death. Mundanes, however, often fail to understand this. A truly afflicted person will leap onto any bandwagon that offers hope. Selling cursed mundanes Nothing Powder is a lot like selling cancer patients laetrile. They’ll line up five deep for the stuff, based only on that one in a thousand chance. Besides,” I pointed out. “It was only through my on-line support group that we first heard about this stuff being on the market to start with. Archie has kept me anonymous there right from the get-go, to protect my privacy. And I’m still anonymous, aren’t I?”
“No one knows who you are, Greg.” he replied soberly. “Your video feed has shown you as a brown bunny from day one. And your true location is totally hidden. I wrote the software myself.”
“See?” I pointed out to the room in general. “There’s dangerous stuff out there. Only a cursed person who’s been in an on-line support group long enough to be well-known and trusted can hope to find it. Has any intact Nothing Powder turned up anywhere else?”
“No,” Gwen admitted. “Only around the cursed. Or their corpses.”
I shook my head. “This is part of something bigger; it’s just got to be. Nothing else makes any sense. But for now, I’m the only one I know of who can pass as cursed, who has the ability to detect magic, and whom everyone in a position of authority can trust. And as for the personal danger…” I paused and sighed. “Perhaps the rest of you don’t want to hear this, but it’s true regardless. I don’t have all that much to lose anymore, do I? Why shouldn’t I take the chances, rather than some other poor slob who still has a real life ahead of him?”
The meeting dragged a bit after that; both sides had pretty much having had their say. We argued for another an hour while covering no new ground, and I grew steadily more frustrated. Why couldn’t anyone but me see that the Nothing Powder affair had ramifications extending far beyond the deaths of a few cursed people? Why weren’t these other folks able to grasp that this was only the tip of the iceberg? And most of all, why couldn’t they see that I was clearly the right person to investigate? It was only when I caught Megan furtively glancing at her watch that I began to understand. There are none so blind as those who’ve been ordered not to see. When the discussion finally wound down, no further plan of action having been agreed upon, I wasn’t in the least surprised to find my Uncle Andrew waiting for me in the hall outside Megan’s office.
“Hello, Andy!” I greeted him.
“Hi, Greg!” he replied. “I’m headed for the airport. Want to ride back with me? I’ve got plane tickets bought for us both.”
“Certainly,” I agreed. “I’ve got to return my rental car first, though. We can meet aboard the plane.”
“No need for that,” my uncle replied. “One of Megan’s people can take care of it. That way we can spend some time together.”
“Fine,” I agreed. There was no point in arguing; I already knew which way the wind was blowing. “Where are you parked?”
“I rented a limo so that I could get some work done instead of driving. It's waiting out front.”
“I see,” I agreed again.
“Excellent!” Then he swept his arm in a grotesquely overdone flourish. “After you, my dear Alphonse.”
It was an old joke, but one that never failed to bring a smile to my face. “Non, non!” I replied in a phony French accent, shaking my head theatrically and gesturing with my own arm. “After you, my dear Gastone.”
"Non!" Andrew replied somberly, gesturing again. "I weel not hear of this madness! After you, Alphonse!" The silly game went on for quite some time, ending of course with both of us jammed in the doorway. Thus we shared one last happy moment together despite the fact that both of us were quite aware of what was going to be discussed during the long ride to the airport.
Which was, of course, the terms under which I was about to be declared incompetent to manage my own affairs.
III
I stared blankly out the limo's window, feeling nothing but emptiness inside. I’d known for a long time that this day must eventually come, but the words still stung like a thousand hornets.
“…not going to be all that intrusive, Greg,” my uncle was explaining. “You’ll still have your privacy, and you can live in your own house for a long time to come. Would you be more comfortable there?”
“Yes,” I replied, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’ve got it all scent-marked the way I like it now. You may’ve read that we rabbits sometimes find it difficult to adapt to a new range.”
My uncle stared at me popeyed for a moment, then spoke in reassuring tones. “If you really see it as your home range, Greg, well…”
“Damnit, I was joking!” The words were bitter in my mouth. Had I flubbed the algebra test that badly? “Yes, I want to stay at home for as long as possible. But that’s because it’s my home, not because it smells right. Human people like to be at home too, you know.”
Uncle Andrew looked relieved, though not entirely convinced. Our easygoing relationship had grown very badly strained in the last few minutes. So strained, in fact, that it might never recover. “That much is settled, then. I’ll have my people find you some live-in help…”
“I don’t need any live-in help!” I declared for the dozenth time. “I’m not incompetent yet, can’t you see that? Lots of people are bad with numbers, and they get by just fine. Why should I be any different?”
Andrew sighed. “No, you’re not incompetent. Not quite yet. But the point is, Greg, that you will be. And very soon at that. Right?”
When he put things that bluntly, I had a hard time arguing. “No,” I finally whispered. “It won’t be long at all. Will it?” Tears welled up in my eyes, and I wanted to whine.
Andrew laid a gentle hand on my knee and stroked my soft fur until the bad moment passed. It felt good to be stroked by someone I liked. “And when that time comes, someone should already be there, ready to help. Someone who already knows you. They’ll need to know where things are, what needs to be done, what you like and dislike. We can’t wait any longer.”
I flopped my head back onto the leather seat in resignation. “Part of me understands, Andrew. Really and truly it does. But this Nothing Powder thing…”
“…is no longer any of your concern” he finished for me. “You aren’t in any state to be running around taking any more stupid risks. Period. End of subject. I can’t believe you ever sweet-talked me into letting you make that first buy. It came near to ruining you, son.”
I stamped my feet, something I often did nowadays when angry or frustrated. A toeclaw caught the leather upholstery just right and punched a tiny hole, leaving me feeling guilty. The limo was a very nice car indeed. Certainly it didn’t deserve to be torn up by a badly-behaved animal…
The tears began to flow freely at last, and I was no longer able to choke back the wails. I curled up into a miserable little ball right there on the seat and wept as if I were the only one weeping for the whole world. Uncle Andy held me in his arms and gently stroked me behind the ear
s. “It’s all right for you to cry,” he reassured me. “God knows, son, it’s all right. We’re going to get through this…”
And then he broke down too, because the simple truth was that we weren’t going to get through it, that I was well along the road to losing my mind and soul, that there could be no happy ending. The cards had all been turned over and I’d rolled boxeyes. Or something like that; I couldn’t quite remember anymore. But in any event the game was over, and the loser was me. I cried until I felt empty and hollow inside. And then, rabbitlike, I slept deep and dreamlessly.