Free The Wizard That Wasn't (Mechanized Wizardry) by Ben Rovik Page B

works or not?  There’s no way for the squawk box to print an error report.  If it hitches up, we won’t have the foggiest idea why or where.   Lundin cursed under his breath, rubbing his eyes.  He was getting ahead of himself.  There was no point in running the disks if they hadn’t figured out how to measure the results yet.  He should follow Samanthi’s example and go get some sleep.  He set down his canteen and shambled over to the squawk box, a flicker of motion up in the rafters briefly catching his attention—
    Lundin stopped dead in his tracks.  The ojing were turning white.
    But not just pure white.  He dragged a stool noisily over across the floor and leapt up on it quick as a monkey to get a look at the leathery circles.  Each ojing was still about three-quarters tan, the neutral color they’d been when he hung them.  But playing across the center of each circle was a blot of white, like a splash of spilled paint, identical on each face of the disk.  And the blots were shifting before his eyes, like the amorphous creatures a naturalist might find in pond water with her microscope.  Now a tendril would reach out this way; now a curve would contract on that side; now the odd shape would lurch a centimeter towards the ceiling or floor.  The white patches were forever in motion, and even the area covered by white was not static but rippling, like the surface of a saucer of milk bumped by a clumsy foot. Even more exciting, Lundin was certain that the area covered by white on each ojing had grown in the brief moment he’d spent watching.
    “—liki a’tiel havir im shorea pinth—”
    Lundin looked down at the squawk box, blandly reciting the words of arcane creation.  “You’re magic,” he whispered.  There were tears in his exhausted eyes.  “We made you do magic.”
    “Mister Lundin.”
    Lundin looked to the doorway, where Sir Kelley stood with his arms across his chest.  Nearly midnight, and Kelley still looked as crisp and precise as he did at midday, with his jacket pressed and his boots blacked to an onyx shine.  Lundin scrambled off the stool with a hasty bow to the squad leader.  “Sir Kelley; glad to see you.  Can’t believe you’re up so late!  You’ve got to see this—”
    Kelley cupped a hand around his ear.  “What?  I can’t hear you, Mister Lundin,” he said, theatrically.
    “Sir, please come see!  It’s the ojing , the, uh.  They’re turning white!”
    “—arvoreala ith pingada em sh’mai tronn doptari—”
    The Petronaut shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, though his pockmarked face was tight with anger.  “You’d better turn it off!” he shouted, pointing at the Melodimax.
    Lundin hesitated, looking up at the ojing .  “Sir Kelley—”
    “Turn it off, Mister Lundin,” he said, dropping the sarcasm.
    The single gaslight over Lundin’s station cast long shadows on the walls of the workshop.  The silhouette cast by the trumpet of the squawk box seemed to reach out forever, touching the shutters to the outside world.  Swallowing hard, Lundin flipped the single off-white switch.  The androgynous voice abruptly stopped, though the thrum of the generator took several seconds to wind down into silence.
    He looked up at the ojing .  There were still patches of white on each disk; the magic hadn’t faded away instantly.  “Sir Kelley, look, look up here,” Lundin said, with hands outstretched, as the Petronaut strode across the workshop towards him.  “Now, it’s not necessarily conclusive, but those white patterns suggest that a mechanized Invocation seems to gather magical energy just as a—”
    “You’re fired,” Kelley said flatly.
    Lundin looked back at his superior, slowly lowering his arms.  The senior ‘naut stared right back.  “Sir Kelley,” he began softly, “I know I’ve been—”
    “Insubordinate.  Deceitful.  Obsessive.  Irrational.  Negligent.  Seditious.  Self-serving.  The list goes on, Mister