“Och, I’ve found real bullets do just fine, long as you catch ’em off-guard,” Pinkerton said, dismissively. Then added: “’Specially when aimed straight to the head.”
A flood of laughter rippled through the assembly, levity washing away all but the soberest members’ concerns. And sometime after that — when the train-car had long cleared itself once more, leaving Morrow alone with Asbury and Pinkerton — the true mission briefing began.
“We need you to find Reverend Rook, Ed,” Pinkerton began, without preamble. “Chase down his gang, get yourself signed up, then move in close — close as possible, without recourse to the obvious.”
“Can’t think but Chess Pargeter might get a mite riled at me, I was to do that,” Morrow said, flushing slightly.
“Oh, you know what I mean. Hell, chat him up too, while you’re at it. No easier way to come next to Rook, considering where the little bastard usually spends most nights.”
“And the — formal — goal of this particular sortie, sir?”
“Well, I’ll let Asbury here fill you in on that. It’s his baby, not mine.” As Pinkerton stepped back, the doctor moved forward once more, reassuming his place at the lectern. He rummaged inside his pocket, withdrawing an utterly unfamiliar device. Once flipped open, closer study showed a resemblance to those magnetic compasses Morrow had handled during his service in the War — albeit with some notable differences. This apparatus seemed to have two needles, each spinning counter-clockwise, plus a slim, strangely curved tine of something blendedly green and red which fluttered in a completely different direction. The whole array involved no obvious clockworks, these indicators instead floating “freely” on a mercury-dollop housed in the shallow depression located at the object’s centre.
Morrow could see no reason for the way the needles spun and flipped without pause, as if constantly re-orienting themselves to an invisible horizon — if a pole, then neither of the ones already mapped, those immutable icons of fixity. For whatever this object was made to measure obviously moved, consistently yet erratically, as though it was alive.
“I call it the Manifold . . . Asbury’s Manifold, naturally,” the doctor said, blushing slightly. “These needles I adopted from the Chinese science of acupuncture, which posits an invisible energy known as the ch’i that supposedly courses through every living creature. Medical difficulties are said to be caused by blockages in this energy-flow, necessitating the implantation of such needles underneath the skin at specific pressure-points throughout the human body. They know so much more than we do on so many different matters — yet never seek to share the information except under duress, these secretive Celestials.”
Pinkerton broke back in, his tone almost as impatient as Morrow already felt: “With all respect, doctor, we’ve but a little time more before we pull into the next station.”
“Of course, of course.” Dr Asbury held the Manifold up for Morrow. “Do you take note of these markings around the rim, here?”
Morrow squinted. “I do, sir.”
“Their purpose is to measure various gradients in the ebb and flow of this ch’i, which my researches have conclusively ascertained to be the driving connective force behind all hexation. Once its parameters are established, therefore, we may eventually use the Manifold to identify magicians whose talents are hidden not only from us, but also . . . from themselves.”
“You mean the, uh . . . ‘unexpressed,’” Morrow said.
Asbury nodded. “Consider what a stupid and terrible waste our dealings with the sorcerous amongst us have been, to this point,” he said. “What a wanton slaughterhouse the past is, when gone over with anything resembling a Christian conscience. Have you ever seen a witch-burning, Mister Morrow?”
Morrow dry-swallowed. “Never had that inflicted on me, no,” he replied, carefully. “Though I do recall an old harelipped woman took up in my home-town when I was but eight or so, for travellin’ alone during a drought. They found cats living in her hotel room and a dried snakeskin in her bags, so they tied her to a cart and dragged her through town. My Pa said it was a miscarriage of justice against all of God’s strictures, no matter what Leviticus might have to say on the subject — but that was ’fore she spat vitriol at him, and cursed him blind in one eye.”
“And what happened then?”
Morrow sighed. “They buried her up to her neck in the sand,” he said, reluctantly, “and told us kids to chuck rocks at her ’til she stopped moving.” He paused. “Which . . . we did.”
Asbury nodded again, without comment — as though he, too, could hear the irregular crunch of stone against bone ringing in Morrow’s mental ears — that wet snap of cheekbone and teeth breaking, punctuated by the cruel laughter of children he still considered friends.
Said Pinkerton: “Only way, sometimes.”
“If one knows no better,” Asbury shot back. “But think, gentlemen — if we had gotten to that woman earlier in her life, before a few decades’ worth of hatred and exclusion had warped her beyond salvage. If we had been able to treat her with kindness, with understanding.”
“Break her to the bridle and use her, like any other animal. Turn a wolf into a dog.”
Morrow noted that though Asbury seemed far less enamoured of this simile than Pinkerton, he made no overt protest.
Asbury continued: “Or consider the trail of destruction Reverend Rook himself left behind, when he first manifested — good men killed, law and order left in ruins, and why? Because he accounts himself abused, in large part owing simply to the circumstances of his . . . second ‘birth,’ one might call it. Using the Manifold, we could avoid all that horror by discovering witches and wizards before they come to their full power . . . our ideal being not to exterminate them, as in previous centuries, but to nurture — and, at length, recruit — them.”
Pinkerton nudged Morrow, pointing to Asbury. “That’s why we call him ‘witch-finder general,’” he confided.
“The point being, Mister Morrow,” Asbury concluded, ignoring Pinkerton’s joke, “that we are in desperate need of data. A reading from Rook would allow us to map out a spectrum with which to assess potentials.”
Morrow frowned. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“I’d teach you, of course — the process is simplicity itself. Observe.” He held out the Manifold again, balanced in one palm, pointing it directly at Morrow. Morrow felt an instantaneous urge to bolt, for no very good reason, and fisted both hands at once to keep himself in check. But the needles simply spun on in their different orbits, clicking fiercely, and Asbury gave him a kindly little smile, probably prompted by Morrow’s obvious trepidation.
“No visible reading whatsoever,” Asbury told him, just to clarify. “We have two scales, one running clockwise, the other counter-; a power like Rook’s would doubtless cause both needles to meet — and lock — somewhere along the red scale, in the upper numbers.”
“So . . . what’s that mean, then?”