A Calculated Magic

39

“I am confused about the last bid,” said Boris Bronsky, as the auction resumed. “My government authorized me to spend lots of U.S. dollars on Karsnov’s secret. However, I cannot offer control of a section of my country as part of the deal. Maybe we could discuss some land in Siberia, but no people. Under the old system, you could probably get terms. But we are a democracy now. Trading people for merchandise is forbidden.”

The Old Man of the Mountain sighed heavily. He was starting to look older than his centuries. It had been a tiresome evening for the Lord of Assassins. “A strictly monetary bid will suffice for now. We can discuss extra incentives later. What is your bid, Mr. Bronsky?”

“Uh,” said the Russian, “I forget where we are. It is a high of seventy miltions?”

“No,” said Loki. “I bid sixty-six, then Nergal raised the ante to seventy-five. You’re at eighty-three.”

The Russian frowned. “What happened to eighty-two million, five hundred thousand? Five hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money to round off. I offer eighty-two, five. No people.”

For the first time since his arrival in al-Sabbah’s throne room. Jack relaxed. With Bronsky slowing the action to a crawl, the auction could drag on for hours. Which meant that his scheme would proceed like clockwork. All was good with the world. For about fifteen seconds.

That was when the phone in the far corner of the room rang. Startled, Jack checked his timepiece. It was only five minutes past the hour. It could not be his call.

“Use that spectacular hearing of yours to eavesdrop on this conversation,” he whispered to Hugo as Hasan al-Sabbah hurried over to the telephone.

“Yes,” said the Old Man of the Mountain curtly. His sunken eyes shrank to the size of pinpoints as he listened. “What? They’re what? They will pay for that mistake—pay dearly. Yes, you did right to continue. The girl is missing? How can that be? What does the sphinx say?” Hasan’s voice had risen with each question until he was nearly screaming. “Well, tell the dolt to forget the puzzle and answer you!”

“The guards escorting Roger to Hell found the other ghuls unconscious,” whispered Hugo. “Instead of reviving them, they rushed over to Hell. They’re calling from the phone in the sphinx’s home. You can fill in the rest.”

“Son of a bitch,” said Jack, disgusted by the unexpected turn of events. “Toss my schedule out the window. It’s history.”

He tapped Cassandra lightly on the arm. “Ready for action? We’re changing plans. Hasan’s discovered Megan’s missing. We can’t risk the possibility that he’ll stop the auction. When the Old Man hangs up the receiver, Hugo, that’s your signal. The plan starts right then.”

Cassandra grinned and reached for her knives. The Amazon never looked happier. She loved impossible odds.

“The dog can’t talk, you idiots!” Hasan screamed into the phone. His white features were bloodred. If the Old Man of the Mountain wasn’t immortal, he would have died centuries ago from high blood pressure. Even his eyes were tinged with crimson. “Awaken the incompetents in the guard room. Set their feet on fire if necessary. Call me when you have some explanations!”

Hasan slammed down the receiver. Instantly, Jack’s left shoulder went numb. Hugo had launched himself at the vial. Everyone’s gaze was fixed on the Old Man of the Mountain as he stormed back to his throne. Thus, only Jack saw the raven materialize as if out of nowhere directly on top of the plague vial. But the bird didn’t remain unnoticed long.

“Hey, stupid,” cawed Hugo, flapping his black wings in the Afreet’s face. “I’ve got your dumb vial. And you can’t catch me.”

“Stop it!” shrieked Hasan. “Save the virus.”

No one saw the race. Both supernatural entities moved at speeds faster than the eye could follow. In a larger room, they would have broken the sound barrier.

In the space of a heartbeat, Hugo rocketed across the room to Jack’s mysterious bottle. The Afreet, a red blur, was less than a microsecond behind. But that barely measurable tick of the clock was all the time the raven required. It dropped the vial into the mouth of the light blue container and then vanished through the chamber wall. With an odd popping noise, the tiny vessel tumbled into the heart of the twisted glass figure.

The genie didn’t hesitate. It never disobeyed direct commands. The raven wasn’t important. The virus was what mattered. Air whooshed as the neon red figure shrank into a swirling red cloud. With the same popping noise, the Afreet followed the vial into the bottle.

Immediately, the entire container glowed bright crimson. It rattled violently for a few seconds then stopped. Fritz Grondark built bottles to last for an eternity. It became even more difficult to look at without getting a headache. The genie did not reappear. Nor did the vial.

“That’s that,” said Jack, cheerfully, after trying fruitlessly to stare into the mouth of the container. He knew better but couldn’t resist the temptation of attempting the impossible. “Scratch one Afreet and one plague virus. They’re prisoners of the fourth dimension.”

“Explain yourself, mortal,” demanded Hasan al-Sabbah angrily. The Old Man of the Mountain glared at Jack from the safety of his obsidian throne. Behind him stood the Crouching One, and behind them both were Loki and his front giants. Boris Bronsky sat balanced on the edge of the small table where Karsnov’s manuscript, momentarily forgotten, resided. “What nonsense are you babbling?”

Jack smiled at Cassandra. The Amazon smiled in return. She was the reason the others maintained their distance from Jack and the blue bottle. The Amazon gripped a knife in her right hand and a handful of throwing stars in her left. Stuck point first in the floor at her feet were her other knife and a half dozen poison darts.

Cassandra was ready, willing, and anxious for a melee. None of the immortals she faced appeared anxious to challenge her.

“It’s a Klein bottle,” declared Jack, dipping his head as a signal to Boris Bronsky. The Russian nodded in response. “Supposedly, it can’t exist in our physical universe. But, then, neither can immortal demigods, genies, and sphinxes. So I asked a few friends with magical powers to see if they could construct one. And they did.”

Faced with a puzzle they did not understand, the supernaturals acted exactly as Jack expected. Like legendary rogues and villains throughout history, they stopped reacting to the situation and instead started asking questions. They couldn’t do anything else. It was part of their basic nature.

“What is a Klein bottle?” asked Hasan al-Sabbah. “And why, since it is not capped by the seal of Solomon the Wise, hasn’t my Afreet emerged from inside it?”

“A Klein bottle is the three-dimensional equivalent of a Mobius strip,” explained Jack, slipping into his graduate student lecturer mode. “It’s a bottle with only one surface—the inside and outside form one continuous plane. It doesn’t require a cap because the contents are within and without at the same time.”

“Impossible,” declared the Old Man of the Mountain. “That makes no sense. Everything has two sides.”

“Really?” replied Jack, “What about a Mobius strip? Surely, you’ve seen one. Take an ordinary strip of paper. Give it a half twist then connect the ends to form a closed ring. It becomes a surface with only one side. If you take a paintbrush to it, you can paint both sides on the strip without ever lifting the bristles from the paper. Though it appears to have two sides, it verifiably has only one. An ant crawling along the strip will never come to the end.”

Al-Sabbah grimaced in mental pain. Jack recognized the expression. He had seen it for years on the faces of countless students. The Old Man of the Mountain had gone into math shock. “What about this magic bottle?” he demanded. “How can a container have no inside?”

“Raise the concept of a Mobius strip one dimension,” said Jack. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Boris Bronsky casually lean over and pick up Karsnov’s manuscript. No one noticed. Their attention was fixed on Jack, the blue bottle, and his explanation.

“Take a thick glass tube, open at both ends,” said Jack, repeating the instructions he gave Fritz Grondark. “Stretch one end into the neck. The other open end is the base. Twist the neck in a semicircle and pass it through the fourth dimension, thus making no hole, into the side of the tube. Connect the open mouth to the open base and you have a Klein bottle. As it utilizes a curve transversing the fourth dimension and we live in a three-dimensional world, it’s impossible to visualize. Which is why staring at the bottle gives you a headache. Our minds can’t cope with curves outside the universe.”

“You speak gibberish,” said the Old Man of the Mountain. “I hate mathematics. I’ve always hated mathematics. This must be a trick. Genie, return to me. Now. I command it.”

Other than the bottle glowing brighter red, nothing happened. Jack shook his head. “Sorry. He can’t do a thing. There’s no exit from a Klein bottle.”

“But there’s no seal,” said Hasan angrily.

“This bottle doesn’t need a plug,” said Jack. “When the genie chased the vial into the Klein bottle, he pushed himself into a four-dimensional curve. The Afreet is inside and outside the container at the same time. The entrance and exit form a continuous loop. Departing and returning are synonymous. He finds himself coming and going at the identical instant. When he leaves, he enters and vice versa. Like the ant on a Möbius strip, the genie can never find an exit. The bottle is a topological nightmare. And he’s trapped by it.”

“Destroy the bottle,” whispered the Crouching One. “Shatter it to a thousand pieces. That will free your servant.”

Jack shook his head, grinning. Behind his spellbound audience, Boris Bronsky had retreated to the elevator. The Russian held a Zippo lighter in one hand and was carefully incinerating Karsnov’s manuscript a few pages at a time.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” said Jack. “If you slice a Möbius strip along the center, it forms one long two-sided loop. But if you cut it a third of the distance from the edge, the scissor makes two complete trips around the strip in one continuous trip. The results are two strips intertwined—a two-sided hoop and a new Möbius strip.

“Cutting a Klein bottle down the middle, which would require passing your knife through the fourth dimension, would produce two mirror-image Möbius strips. And, probably a genie divided into two parts. Perhaps. No one can say for sure since no one has had the opportunity before to deal with such a construction. Equally possible, the genie and the vial instead might disappear into the higher plain of existence.

“If you don’t slice the bottle exactly in the middle, the results defy speculation. Shatter the container into forty or fifty pieces and you could end up with bits and pieces of the Afreet scattered throughout the universe. Or create four-dimensional sinkholes that would swallow nearby objects like black holes. In any case, the Afreet and plague virus would definitely not survive the separation.”

Hasan al-Sabbah howled in frustration. Loki grimaced. Nergal, Lord of the Lions, scratched his head in bewilderment. Boris Bronsky finished burning the last pages of Karsnov’s notes and strolled over to the baffled supernaturals.

“Why?” asked the Old Man of the Mountain despondently. “Why did you do this? Obviously, it took advance planning, You came here specifically to thwart my plans. What reason prompted The Man to order this punishment?”

“You pompous, overconfident moron,” snarled the Crouching One before Jack could launch into a lengthy discourse on the Old Man of the Mountain’s supposed infractions. “Haven’t you yet comprehended the truth? These two owe no allegiance to the one you fear. What proof did they offer? You accepted them on their word and they took advantage of your stupidity.”

“But,” said Hasan, confused, “if they are not associated with The Man, who are…”

“Mathematics,” spat out the Crouching One. “Deliberation and rationality. Face the facts, you incompetent executioner. He’s Jack Collins, the Logical Magician.”

Jack, knowing the time for pretense was finished, inclined his head in acknowledgment. “At your service. Assisted and abetted by the lethal Ms. Cassandra Cole.”

Hasan al-Sabbah’s bony fingers clenched into fists of rage. “The Collins figure my agents had been shadowing in Chicago the past few days?”

“A doppelganger, of course,” said Jack.

“The so-called Master of Treachery and Deceit deceived,” declared the Crouching One, more than a hint of mockery in its voice. “At least Dietrich von Bern didn’t provide food and lodging for his foe,” The demigod raised its hands skyward. “Why am I singularly cursed to be served by incompetents and fools?”

“Is goodt question,” replied Boris Bronsky.

The Russian had positioned himself between and slightly behind Loki’s twin frost giants. Reaching up with massive ham-sized hands, Bronsky grabbed the two leviathans by their outside ears and slammed their heads together. The crack of skulls echoed like a gunshot through the chamber. “You is not the only one who has complained about the same difficulty.”

Ponderously, the Russian stepped over the unconscious frost giants. “There is plenty of ineptitude close by,” continued Bronsky as he marched past a stunned Loki and joined Jack and Cassandra. “It is a common plague. People have suffered from its effects for thousands of years. If you could isolate and breed the germs responsible, you could conquer the world in a week. Maybe less.”

Boris grinned at Jack. “I did good, huh?”

“Exceptional,” said Jack. “I thought the extra touch with Loki’s bodyguards was inspired.”

“They forget sometimes,” said Boris, “that big, friendly bears have claws, too.”

Shaking his head in frustration, a distraught Old Man of the Mountain sank into the center of his obsidian throne. Arms folded in disgust, the Crouching One stared daggers at the Assassin overlord. Meanwhile, Loki walked around his helpless assistants, trying to kick them awake.

Jack glanced at Cassandra and winked. The minutes were slowly but surely passing. In the reasonably near future, the phone would ring, delivering a decisive blow to Hasan al-Sabbah. Jack was starting to think they might survive the evening without a single violent adventure.

“Well,” grumbled the Crouching One, “what steps are you planning to recover your lost honor? I assume you realize that if word of this fiasco becomes known, your business will drop to nothing. Nobody wants to hire an assassin so inept he wines and dines his worst enemies. And allows his genie to be trapped in a mathematical contraption.”

Hasan shifted uncomfortably on his throne. It was clear that Nergal’s criticisms stung his vanity. “The deeds are done,” said the Old Man of the Mountain. “How can I undo what has already taken place? The disaster is complete and cannot be repaired.”

“Kill them,” said the Crouching One. Jack cursed in annoyance. The ancient demigod was determined to rule the world. And it still considered eliminating a certain Logical Magician as the necessary first step in achieving its ambition. “That simple action would reverse your fortune.”

“I could smash the life out of them,” mused al-Sabbah, “Then claim that I decided to keep Karsnov’s formula for myself. The prestige of murdering Collins and acquiring the plague virus would bolster my sagging enterprises. No one would know I was lying.”

The Old Man of the Mountain shook his head. “Unfortunately, the deception disregards my most pressing predicament. My note to The Man comes due in less than a week. Unless that debt is paid in full, this entire plot remains meaningless.”

“How much is owed?” asked the Crouching One.

“A hundred and ten million,” said Hasan al-Sabbah. “Hell cost a great deal more than I anticipated.”

“I will pay that sum,” said the Lord of the Lions, “for the head of the Logical Magician. To be precise, only his head, neatly preserved in a metal box. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes,” said Hasan al-Sabbah, straightening in his chair. “We have a bargain. Though, if you don’t mind, we will dispense with the customary handshake sealing the agreement.”

“Understood,” said the Crouching One.

Beaming with good cheer, Hasan al-Sabbah whistled.

“No worries,” said Boris Bronsky to Jack. “Me and the young lady, we defend you from these three repulsive fellows. Even if they wake up the two albinos, I don’t think we have much trouble.”

“It’s not them who worry me,” said Jack. A dozen hidden doors had opened in response to the Old Man of the Mountain’s signal. Shambling out of them came a horde of seven-foot ghuls. “Those guys are the problem.”