Lisa Smedman - The Lucifer desk

Pita did as she was told, positioning herself in a line with Aziz’s right foot.

“Now run forward, the way you did before. Hold your body exactly as you did then, and try to make the same gestures.”

Pita looked up at the ceiling, imagining the brilliant tornado of the spirit where the dusty light fixture hung. Then she held up her arm, as if shielding her eyes from it. “Aziz!” she shouted, feeling somewhat foolish. She ran forward and hopped over the green circle. She wondered whether or not she should mime falling over backward, but Aziz halted her before she could make up her mind.

“Stop right there!” He clambered to his feet and grabbed her right arm. He turned it over to inspect the underside of it.

“What’s this mark?” he asked. “It looks like a burn. Did the spirit touch you?”

Pita turned her arm to look at the red line that was painted like a slash across the inside of her wrist. The mark had faded, but the burn itched where the hair was starting to grow back. “Oh, that,” she said. “Yeah, it touched me. But not yesterday. This happened days ago.” Aziz's long, narrow fingers pinched tight around her forearm. “When?”

“The night the guy died in the alley. I was, uh… looking at him, and one of the beams of light coming of his mouth touched my arm.”

“Hmm.” Aziz stared off into space, his eyebrows knitted together in a tense frown. For a moment, Pita worried that he’d figured out she’d boosted stuff from the pockets of the dying mage, and that he’d call cops on her. But his mind was apparently on other matters entirely.

“That was the night the spirit attacked Farazad,” he said, thinking out loud. “The night the spirit became free. Hmm…”

“Are you going to let go of my arm?’

“What?” Aziz glanced down. “Oh. Sorry.”

Pita rubbed the spot his fingers had pinched. Then she looked again at the burn mark on her wrist, “You think this has something to do with it?”

“I do, indeed.”

“You going to tell me or what?”

Aziz gave her a coy look, as if deciding whether or not she could keep a secret. “Sure,” he said. “Why not? I'm going to need your cooperation with this, anyway. There’s no way around it.”

He took a deep breath and began to lecture, sounding just like a high school teaching program: “When a spirit breaks the control of the mage who conjured it and escapes, it sometimes remains in the physical world rather than returning to astral space. The moment of its escape is the moment of its birth as a free spirit. It’s also the moment the spirit attains its true name.

“A free spirit can be controlled by any magician-of either magical tradition-who knows this true name. The mage can use the true name to call, control, banish-or even destroy the free spirit. Or merely drive it away, as you did yesterday morning. The trouble is, finding out a free spirit’s true name is usually an impossible task.”

Pita frowned, completely lost. “I still don’t see what all this has to do with the mark on my arm.”

“I’m coming to that,” Aziz answered. He ran a hand over his hair, smoothing it back. “According to hermetic theory, the true name is imposed upon the free spirit by the astral conditions in existence at the time and place of its birth. It’s just possible that the spirit you saw was intoxicated by its newfound freedom and shouted its true name out loud as soon as it learned it.”

“But I didn’t hear anything. Not any ‘true name,’ anyhow.”

Aziz took her arm-more gently, this time-and touched a forefinger to the burn. “Yes, you did,” he said softly. “The spirit spoke in the only way it could- in pulses of photons. It inscribed the true name, there, in the cells of your skin.”

Pita looked at her arm, uncertain whether to believe him or not. It sounded incredible-a magical spirit writing its name on her arm with a ray of light. But at the same time, it made sense. Somehow she had driven the spirit away. There’d been no one else in the room at the time except the helpless Aziz; Pita had to have been the one with the edge. The more she thought about it, the more her skin tingled. It was like suddenly waking op to find that someone had implanted a cybernetic device in your arm while you slept. Her wrist felt as if it were no longer entirely her own.

“I thought you said the magician had to understand the name,” she said at last. “Well, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t even know about it.”

“But it was there, just the same, when you entered astral space. You carried the name with you. And you used it-albeit without conscious volition-as a tool to drive the spirit away.”

Pita thought about that a moment. “So, according to what you said, I can control this thing now? Can I make it do anything I want?” Visions of revenge danced in her head. She’d show that Lone Star fragger. She imagined the cop twitching on the ground, like a puppet with its strings cut while the spirit burned out his insides. It was a gruesome but satisfying image. One that brought a grim smile to her lips, exposing her curving canine teeth.

Aziz hurriedly dropped her hand. “Ah… yes. You do have the potential to control the spirit. But not without proper magical training. Control over a free spirit isn’t automatic. Once you’ve learned the spirit’s true name, you still have to best it in a test of wills. A battle that pits you against the magical force of the spirit.” He gave her a grave, serious look. “And make no mistake, this is a powerful spirit. It’s not one to be toyed with.”

“Promise me, Pita, that you won’t do anything rash. That you wont try calling it or controlling it without my help.”

Pita saw through him at once. The mage wanted to be part of this. He wanted to control the spirit himself, but he was going to need her to do it. He probably had his own revenge in mind-the yakuza who burned down his shop was a prime candidate.

Well, Pita would show him. If she was the one who could control the spirit, she’d be the one calling the shots. But not yet; she didn’t fully trust her newly awakened magical talents. She sure as drek didn’t want to wind up like the mage in the alley. Dominating a human mind was one thing. Dominating a magical creature of light was something else entirely. For the time being, it looked as though she was stuck with Aziz’s “help.”

“O.K.,” she said. “Deal. As long as you don’t make me call the spirit until I’m ready.”

Aziz gave her a thin smile. “Deal.”

Carla stepped out of the tour bus and looked up at the six skyscrapers that made up the Mitsuhama Computer Technologies complex. Setting the camera in her cybereye to wide angle, she began with a shot that included all six buildings. She would have liked to have filmed them earlier in the day-better lighting would have shown off the silver sheen on the plascrete walls and the gleaming black-tinted windows. But the skyscrapers were an impressive sight. even so. They would make a nice establishing shot to intro her story.

She zoomed in slowly on the public entrance to the central tower, gradually losing the manicured lawns and backdrop of Lake Washington, and focusing on the entrance to the Byte of the Future display. On either side of the automatic doorway, neatly groomed security guards watched the people flow in and out. In their peaked cloth caps and trim blue uniforms with the gold MCT logo on the breast pocket, the guards looked like bellhops at a glitzy hotel. They weren’t carrying any weapons or sporting any obvious cyberware, but it was a given that they were in constant touch with the rest of their team via commlink. They could call for heavy-duty backup in an instant if the situation warranted it.