The Lucifer desk

10

The blare of the telecom’s alarm snapped Carla awake. She groaned and wiped the sleep out of her eyes, then sat up and looked around her apartment. She’d slept in her clothes after kicking off her shoes and neatly folding her jacket over a chair. She’d only intended to take a quick nap. but she’d set the alarm for six p.m. just in case she slept too long. Now the logo and call letters of KKRU Trideo News scrolled across the screen as the newscast began.

The camera zoomed in toward Rita Lambrecht and Tim Lang, tonight’s celebrity news anchors. Carla winced. Rita was a ditsy elf who smiled even when reciting the night’s body count, and Tim was a dwarf wrestling champion who’d been chosen for his rugged good looks and deep baritone voice. It looked like Rita would give the lead-in to the top story. Carla hoped she didn’t muff her lines.

Amazingly, the lead story wasn’t on the dead mage. Instead, it was about a group of rebels who’d blown up an oil refinery in the Yucatan; killing 127 technicians in the explosion. A grim-faced Aztlan spokesman promised “swift and thorough” retribution for the attack. The footage that accompanied the piece was gruesome and graphic, but Carla still didn’t think the story deserved the three minutes KKRU had given it.

Nor was the dead mage mentioned anywhere in the international slot. Carla fumed through the first seven minutes of the newscast, debating whether or not to call the station. But then the local news segment began to roll, and Tim “Tiny Terror” Lang began to read the first story.

“In local news, a Seattle resident whose body was found in an alley two nights ago appears not to have been the victim of the thief who has been dubbed the ‘Magical Mugger.’ Instead he apparently died at the hands of a new form of magical spirit that may still be at large on the streets of our city. Here, with an eyewitness report, is Jun Masaki”

Carla sat on the edge of her seat, waiting for the report. She had to wait for the end of a ten-second infomercial between the lead-in and the news clip. Annoying, but these commercials were what kept KKRU on the air. Indirectly, they paid her salary.

The piece opened with a shot that superimposed a framed image of Pita over the footage Masaki had shot in the alley. When she pointed at the ground, describing what she’d seen, the ork girl seemed to be gesturing at the body itself, then at the mirror-like windows from which the rays of light had bounced like a ricochet. As she spoke, white rays seemed to emerge from the body while the words GRAPHIC SIMULATION scrolled across the bottom of the screen. It was a standard editing technique; the dotted lines didn’t look enough like beams of light to arouse complaints of news fabrication, while the frame around Pita told the viewers that her take was a superimposed shot. The take ended with Pita describing how the dying man had dropped a datachip he’d been holding, and how she had picked it up. Funny, how she called it a “personal chip.” Masaki should have called her on that one. It might weaken the Mitsuhama connection.

Carla was also irritated to see that Masaki had used a “Jane Doe” face to digitally mask the girl’s features. But the kid was speaking well, giving a vivid description of what she had seen.

The take dissolved into a split-screen pairing, the left half of the screen showing Aziz seated amid the clutter of his shop, while the right showed Mrs. Samji. Wayne had done a seamless job of editing; the two seemed to bounce comments off one another, livening up an otherwise boring “talking heads” take.

Aziz: “The spell on this chip is unknown in the hermetic tradition.”

Mrs. Samji: “My husband followed the Zoroastnan faith.”

Aziz: “It’s a formula for conjuring a spirit.”

Mrs. Samji: “Farazad regarded magic as a religious practice. He often used it in his sermons.”

Aziz: “The formula seems to summon a spirit I am unfamiliar with.”

Mrs. Samji: “We Zoroastrians conceive of God as light.”

Aziz: “The uniqueness of the ritual seems to indicate the spirit manifests as a blinding light.”

Mrs. Satnji: “Farazad was wrong… to… call on… the creature.”

Carla caught the slight tonal shifts that indicated Wayne’s splicing of the last comment. But it was extremely subtle, something the average viewer would never notice. The story would be getting to the point any second now, by revealing the Mitsuhama connection. She leaned forward expectantly as the right screen did a fast cut to an interview with the medical examiner who’d examined the body. The doctor reiterated that the mage had died of massive internal trauma due to heat-“cooked alive from the inside out” as she so eloquently put it. She also speculated that the burns were assumed to be magical in nature, since there had been no evidence of fire in the immediate vicinity.

The frame containing the image of the medical examiner did a flickering dissolve, as if it were being consumed by fire. Carla smiled and gave it the thumbs-up. “Nice touch, Wayne,” she said to herself.

But her smile soon evaporated. There was one last clip from the Aziz interview, in which the mage speculated that the powerful spirit might have been conjured by Farazad and then somehow escaped from his control to become a free spirit-a magical wanderer. The story did a quick cut to a meteorologist, who noted that sheet lightning-a rare occurrence over Seattle-had been spotted over the city skyline in the past two nights. Then Carla and Masaki appeared for a quick voice-over byline.

And that was it. The story ended with a dissolve back to the studio.

“Well, well,” Tiny Terror commented. “A dangerous new spirit on the loose in Seattle. That’s not something to make light of.”

His co-anchor laughed brightly at his pun. “Keep an eye on the sky tonight, folks. In other news…”

“What?” Carla leaped to her feet. “That’s it?” She snatched up the telecom remote and furiously stabbed the icon that would fast-dial the station. After a second or two, the screen displayed the image of Gil Greer, producer of the six o’clock newscast. He was human, but large enough to be taken for a troll in the wrong light. His shoulders strained the fabric of his suit, and he usually ambled about the office like a large, untamed bear, scratching his back on door frames and glowering at the reporters. He frowned out at Carla from the telecom screen. A single word was all that was required; this was a line reserved for use by KKRU reporters only: “What?”

“The story on the dead mage-Farazad Samji,” Carla said. “What’s the idea of runing it as a metro piece?”

“The death is two days old,” Greer answered. “The only thing that made the story fresh was the free-spirit-as-cause-of-death angle. You’re lucky your boyfriend is such a looker and that the story had a tie-in with the weather update, or we wouldn’t have run it at all.”

Carla stopped short of protesting that it had been more than three years since anyone could have called Aziz her “boyfriend.” instead she kept her professional cool. “But where’s the Mitsuhama angle? This is a story about a corp dabbling in a dangerous new magical technology-not about unusual fragging weather patterns!”

“What Mitsuhama angle?” Greer grumbled.

“Didn’t Masaki tell you?” Carla asked, dumbfounded. “The chip from the pocket of the dead mage. The spell. It’s a Mitsuhama project.”

“I didn’t see any footage showing that connection.”

“Farazad Samji worked for Mitsuhania’s research lab,” Carla explained. “The day before he died, he contacted Masaki, telling him he’d turn over the specs on a top-secret research project the corp was developing. He was on his way to meet with Masaki on the night the died!”

“I guess Masaki didn’t think his own testimony was enough to establish a link. Without outside confirmation and hard evidence, we haven’t got a story.”

Carla was dumbfounded. She couldn’t believe Masaki had given up so easily. A story about the contents of the chip that deliberately did nor mention Mitsuhama probably made him think he was safe. He could curl up in his cozy little world of feature pieces and the big bad corporation and its goons would go away. The sad part was, he was probably wrong.

“We’ve still got a story,” Carla argued. “A good one. About a corp that’s experimenting with dangerous new magical tech.”

“No, we don’t,” Greer countered. “At least not until I see some evidence that directly links this crazy spirit thing to Mitsuhama.” He sounded irritable; his patience was obviously wearing thin. Still, Carla wasn’t one to give up a story without a good fight.

“We could have at least worded tonight’s piece to imply that-”

“You don’t take on the big boys without documentation,” Greer cut her off. “You don’t even drop hints. Not when Mitsuhama’s legal department has a bigger budget than our entire news network.”

“Give me one more day,” Carla pleaded. “1 know I can get something. If I follow up the angle that-”

Greer was glancing at something to one side, only giving Carla part of his attention. “We’re on the air,” he reminded her. “I haven’t got time for an extended debate on the merits of this supposed story.”

“One more day!” Carla insisted.

“All right,” Greer at last agreed. “But if you don’t come with anything new, I spike the story.”