Conceal Me What I Am Ch. 01

Already, my fellow cattle-class passengers were bored with either sitting around their tiny windowless cabins or being stuck all crammed together in a too-small lounge that seemed to be directly copied from some dentist's waiting room. The lounge was cozy, to say the very least. It had about two dozen hard uncomfortable chairs in a long oval all facing each other with stacks of positively ancient magazines on the only coffee table. Some of the magazines were even old enough to date from Kennedy's second term as President. The fashion this year still seemed to be the neo-Victorian style of prim high collars and long hems for dresses that has been en vogue for much of the last decade. Very polite, and absurdly politically correct and proper, making sure hardly an inch of bare wickedly evil and sinful flesh could be discerned. The gentlemen were all sporting their hair long with either long sideburns down to the bottom of their jaws or even full sets of muttonchops to accompany the apparently compulsory mustache. Hats and parasols for both men and women seemed to be virtually mandatory. Needless to say with my short almost military style haircut I obviously looked quite out of place and tempo, and most of the women in the lounge were either trying to avoid looking at me entirely or else were giving me nasty looks. I wouldn't have minded an in-flight romance, or even a single late-night torrid encounter, but I was apparently quite unfashionable enough that even the most rebelliously inclined female didn't think much of my offerings and never passed me a single crumpled note during the trip suggesting a late night rendezvous.

Naturally, any thoughts of dalliance with some of the posh dainty bits down in First Class was quite impossible, or nearly enough so that I didn't bother trying. Sometimes, well actually quite often, the Americans can be even more snobby and class-conscious than even their European aristocratic counterparts. The worship wealth up here and if you're not sporting it large in First Class, then you're definitely not worth knowing or their even acknowledging your presence.

Bored with reading textbooks, I casually suggested that just like in Canterbury Tales, everyone take turns telling a story to help pass the time, but most of my fellow imprisoned inmates looked at me in dismay as if I were wanted to dispute Keynesian economic theory. On the other hand, I certainly couldn't discuss my job, or magic, even in abstract generalization, as I was traveling sort of undercover and most Americans view magic, and the practice thereof, as both being in exceptionally poor taste and quite vulgar. It's a curse to be ashamed of rather than a pretty cool talent to be proud of. If the Puritans or the Founding Fathers could have burned every single 'witch' with even a hint of magical powers at a stake, they'd have done so... and they didn't fail due to lack of trying, or the result from running out of firewood! Teddy Rex enacted the final definitive law to ensure full citizen rights for magically inclined citizens, but many Yankees still hate and fear anyone with an ounce of adept or wizard power... and god help the poor 'witches' or 'sorceresses', who still get occasionally lynched if caught unaware in a lonely place.

Just like in the Great Western Alliance and CSA (or Deseret for that matter), magical sensitives and adepts, and even the occasional wizard are born in the poor backwards US... and since every other country around them has embraced magic as just another weapon of war, and economics. Even the utterly retarded USA finally had to eventually get its collective head out of its ass and admit that magic does exist, and should be used for something useful... because their enemies have magic and the will to use it against them! Unfortunately, socially there is a very large 'but' -- but it can be permitted only as long as it can be completely proven that the Adept or Wizard possessing this power isn't in fact a pawn or agent of the devil, or other legions of darkness.

Sure... right... it's marvelously near impossible to prove a negative. Accordingly, unlike my own BMA, the FBMR is not one of the happier federal agencies to belong to if you're a Yankee wizard (still mostly called witches (male or female), or sorceresses or warlocks for wizard grade talent. No one trusts you, and probably a near majority of your fellow citizens want you to die in a bonfire... and that really hurts badly back in Washington at budget approval time.

The French ignited Arc Deco revolution eventually helped bring them out of the stone age, but then again the USA has always been jealous and mistrusting of anything French, until recently when they joined together in a political alliance against Great Britain. In theory, if France and England go to war again, this could break the fairly stabilized peace between the USA and the CSA, creating the first true world-wide war. The GWA has strong economic ties and treaties with the German Federation of States but not quite to the level of a mutual defense pact which might keep us free and still neutral, but I wouldn't like to bet good hard coin silver on it. Frankly, we've told each of them through diplomatic channels to 'play nice', or at least have the decency to wait until Deseret is taken care of... permanently. We don't want a war with anyone, but dealing with those demon worshiping cannibals with ultra-high Arc-Tec must come first... duty now, we tell our other American cousins -- settling old scores with each other can wait until later.

***********

To avoid upsetting the primitive locals, I didn't wear most of my blatantly obvious magical protection rings or jewelry, and only packed and wore just one of my usual three-piece suits, heavily imbedded with as many protective spells as I could safely layer upon it without it spontaneously combusting. No suitcases, just two hand carry bags. One with a couple of changes of more casual clothes and the other full of magical textbooks... and an alarming amount of Miracle Putty. I wondered now if I should have brought along another suitcase full of cheap glass beads to trade with the rather simple natives, especially since some of my fellow travelers looked particularly inbred and dull-witted.

I kept my jacket and long-sleeved shirt on to help cover over my heavily scarred right arm, where an unusual and absurdly powerful ancient Incan magical artifact had more or less grafted itself right into my very skin and made itself quite at home. I guess five thousand degrees of heat, or more, can cause that to happen - but there are always unforeseen dangers when you match powers against an ancient fire god, and I've pretty much decided that it was past time to stop burning down various parts of Austin. It was definitely getting extremely bad for my reputation!

This artifact was powerful enough to grant a 'normal' woman without an ounce of magical power the ability to summon a bunch of increasingly nasty critters that I could only just barely handle or banish even as a highly skilled Adept with years of magical experience. Dealing with the rogue Fire God back in Austin, I'd put her long bracer onto my right arm, along with a similar but more modern attempt at a re-creation onto my left and gone into battle, and somehow impossibly lived to tell about it. The modern reproduction bracer puddled into expensive junk but Incan relic bonded itself into my flesh and hung around for the duration. What it was really intended or designed to do, I hadn't the slightest idea, but now as a physical part of me it certainly seemed to boost my powers well beyond Adept range and into Wizard level ability. The fact that an old flame with near godlike powers also had gone into my brain and done a little 'optimizing' before taking off on an eternal tour of the multiverse, probably boosted my powers too, enough so to handle packing off the angry god back to his distant other dimensional home by myself, long after I should have been burned to a crisp. Even now months later after some 'recharge' and recovery time, I still had no idea what my real level of ability was or just how much sheer raw magical power I could handle in another emergency, but I had the willingness to find out.

But the next time some rampaging fire or sun god wants to burn down the rest of some city, someone else can handle the job!

*********

The stopover in St. Louis wasn't too bad at all. They probably thought they were punishing us by locking us up in a tiny secure terminal waiting room with just one broken toilet for thirteen hours while we waited for some needed maintenance on the airship to be agonizingly slowly completed, but after three hours some of the local staff ruined the scheme by taking pity on us caged second class passengers and let us disembark into the main terminal and mix with our social betters for the next ten hours. Other than breathing space, we were also all getting desperate for some food that hadn't been packaged back when Roosevelt or Kennedy was still President. The terminal restaurant was open twenty-four hours and we all stuffed ourselves silly, and then we each ordered a couple of extra meals to-go, to take with us back on the airship. Oh, the food wasn't that good, but it was just barely fresher and slightly less vile and nasty than the automat offerings. One evil-minded steward started to give me some bullshit about not being allowed to bring food on-board, but I fixed his clock good without casting a single malicious spell -- I just showed him the corned beef sandwich that I'd obtained from the automat and threatened to make him eat it!

He rather quickly agreed to our point of view and let us board with all of our ill-gotten food!

Some say that Teddy Rex is still alive, being kept in a secret Washington bunker as a mystic arcane oracle via extreme measures of magical preservation immediately after his assassination, but I doubt it. He was the greatest US president ever, and anyone ought to be tired of political power after four and a half terms as President. I hope they let him enjoy his rest, eighteen plus years as the big boss would drive anyone nuts, and no one needs a demented oracle!

************

The trip from St. Louis to Chicago was scheduled to take about two more days, but some strong cross winds blew us nearly as far east as north, nearly as far as Indianapolis before our weak-motored airship could keep us pointed and mostly heading in the right direction north.

For this leg of the interminable trip, some faces in our second class cattle pen of a lounge were now new, having just joined our merry little traveling caravan at St. Louis, but I couldn't say that most of them were any friendlier, except for one darker skinned gentleman that seemed to take an instant shine to me.

"Zak Zephyr, is that the name? A very unusual one... do you work in the air conditioning business? Ha!" The thin fellow looked heavily tanned and was taking his rusty sense of humor out for a test drive. Allegedly he was from the Yankee side of northern Colorado, but his eyes had that unmistakable dark look that immediately screamed to me 'Deseret'. You just can't miss picking out their terrorist 'missionaries'... oh they talk and sound fairly normal and look just like everyone else, but it's their crazy dark eyes that give them away every time! Too much time spent on their knees praying to their insane dark demonic gods marks them in ways that any minor Adept with even half of a brain couldn't mistake!

The fact that I had also had never once given out my last name to any of my traveling mates convinced me that despite anything he said, he was here on a mission... probably to make damn sure that I didn't fulfill mine! You can't reason with the kooks in Deseret, they don't live in the same universe with you and me. Any of them would sacrifice their lives in a heartbeat to do anything that their unholy bishops would even vaguely hint needed to be done, preferably suddenly, violently and with extreme prejudice. To die with joy and a song in their heart in the hope of receiving their just martyr's rewards in their demonic paradise. Fuck them!

Frankly, it's the nutjobs in Deseret that give all Adepts and Magicians everywhere a bad name! I'd been a thorn in their side once already and I'm sure that my name had been written into some black book inside their big black basalt rock temple on the Salt Lake, with a notation that I'd been very wicked and naughty and needed to be punished severely, preferably something involving massive bloodletting, dark demonic forces and/or including a very professional carving of the Viking blood eagle across my back.

I decided to decline the opportunity.

"Aye, lad." My hidden little friend Sean whispered to me inside my head. "You've picked him out right and he'll yet be trouble soon, you'll see!"

*************

In the process of closing a massive inter-dimensional rift between a thousand worlds that we'd like to remain as far away from us as possible, I picked up a 'Visitor', an inter-dimensional guest, or should I rather say that he instead picked me! He's an odd one, that's for sure... but he's proven himself to be very useful to me in the past -- like helping me to save my life when confronting that ancient but nearly omnipotent fire god! He prefers to spend most of his time invisible, even to me, which was fortunate for everyone around us because the little bugger is not much of a looker. Short and thin, kind of like a cross between a demented leprechaun gone to seed and an undersized and oversexed goblin with too much nose that's gone into the knee-breaking business. The clumps of hair growing from out of his ears are just too disturbing for words. He can speak out loud, with a bit of fake Celtic accent that he sometimes forgets to use when he gets excited, like now, but usually he just talks to me in my head and then listens hard for my sub-verbal response... he says my mind stutters.

At first I thought he was an imp, a scrawny little troublemaker from one of the nether-realms, but they're mostly magical nonentities, more sizzle than steak, and this little guy has more hot juice in his pinky finger than I used to have in my entire body. For lack of a better classification, I've now decided that he's sort of a brownie, albeit one absurdly powerful one from god knows where. Very definitely not one of the weaker home-grown domestic ones here on Earth.

In the local Austin BMA library, I tried to do some research on brownies and I found a few domestic correlations... but none that exactly matched my visitor. There are English and Scottish hobs, the Scandinavian tomte, the Slavic domovoi and the German Heinzelmännchen... and then there is my visitor who calls himself Sean, just plain Sean. I did find a few allusions to an odd visitor race known as the Ùruisg, but even that clue got me next to nowhere. One fourteenth century wizard was said to have been befriended by one and wrote a book about the race, but no surviving copies are known to survive. Another obscure mid-19th century Texican history has a footnote about John Lovett and James Joseph Wylde meeting one of these rare and incredibly powerful magical creatures who helped them with an impossible task, but that footnote referred to a rare original document of which no complete modern reproduction has been made... and the original is preserved in the Emperor's own personal library. No chance of my ever seeing that!

Sean, despite probably being the most powerful creature within a thousand aeronautical miles of us, is surprisingly quiet and low key, but usually has the attention span of a four-year-old preschooler. Back at home, he concentrated his efforts upon a comprehensive study of human behavior, first starting with television soap operas, then infomercials, until finally he was ready for the profound experience that is the Home Shopping Network. It was something of a relief when he next discovered the dozen or so cable hardcore porn channels, and it was much cheaper too! He has also discovered the twin delights of human accomplishment, aged bourbon and scotch, especially served with fine Dominican cigars, preferably smoked while watching a John Wayne movie. The Duke amuses and awes him greatly and Sean has declared him the greatest human ever born, and a savior to our otherwise shallow and vapid, but otherwise highly amusing race.

Sometimes when he's had a couple of bottles in him, he'll laugh that he's just a scout for the invasion force -- here to find the best bars, booze, broads and bacon for the advance troops. Bacon is also apparently our greatest contribution to inter-dimensional cuisine, and a priceless rarity eagerly sought after on most worlds. He keeps asking if we can give up the minor magician for hire bullshit so that we could start earning some real silver by starting a hog farm!

I try to avoid getting into these sorts of discussions with Sean... they always make my head hurt and my mouth thirsty for more good Texas whisky than is good for me. I just can't tell if he's kidding me or if he's deadly serious.

**************

It wasn't a very good plan, but I decided that my best plan for staying out of the way of the Deseret assassin for the next few days until we reached Chicago was to just lock myself in my microscopically small stateroom and catch up on a decade's worth of reading magical textbooks. For the most part, it worked. I had two days of peace and quiet reading my old school books and eating my stack of take-out dinners. It was time surprisingly well spent -- I was actually learning quite a few things I should have learned years ago and some even better techniques for some things I'd already learned by accident or by trial and error, but being inordinately stubborn, I always had to do things my own way, or rather mostly not do them at all. Now I was slowly making up for lost time, but maybe a new trick or two would help keep me alive up here in the unfriendly north.

Sean, going slightly through vid withdrawal and down to just a few remaining inches of scotch in his last liquor bottle, had taken a bar of Miracle Putty and created a pair of Napoleonic armies, complete with cavalry and regimental flags, and had lined the pairs up in a recreation of the Battle of Austerlitz. I ought to have been extremely disturbed, particularly with the sounds of the cannons going off filling the cabin now full of clouds of black powder, but I was used to Sean constantly doing unusually perturbing and disturbingly unnatural things, so I kept reading and pretended not to notice. I was halfway through a rather interesting text on air-weaving techniques when I suddenly noticed that the armies were suddenly gone and the air was immediately clear of cannon smoke. I could now hear loud noises outside my door next to the engine room, as if someone was trying to beat down that door.

"Uhhh, oh...." I think Sean beat me to it, but I was certainly already thinking it myself.

"Laddie, just how well do ye think ye could fly? Like in another half moment... if this air barge were to blow apart to smithereens -- just a wee bit?"

"Don't even joke about that, because the answer is slim and none. If there were a strong Air Ley, I might be able to hover for maybe a minute but flying is right out of the question." That was an understatement. Levitation is supposed to be easy-squeezy, just a matter of applied willpower, but I never had the knack for it. Levitation and flying is pure middle-school level easy magic and often it separates the wizards from most of the Adepts. I was pudgy as a kid and everyone laughed their asses off that the nerdy fat kid could just barely lift his tennis shoes an inch or two above the ground. I think even today I still have some sort of mental block about this, even though I shed (most of) the puppy fat many years ago.