Dragons & Dwarves (47 page)
Authors: S. Andrew Swann
Seeing what the dwarves did, and seeing the major problem of the day as the breakdown of infrastructure in the city combined with the panicked departure of much of the available skilled labor, Mazurich became Rayburn’s ally in getting the nonhuman population legal recognition. Rayburn had high-level geopolitical motivations, mostly concerned with preventing a federal takeover of the city. Mazurich was much more practical. He saw the potential to integrate these new people into the city and get things working again. The dwarves were quick studies and picked up English—and shovels and jackham mers—all within a few short weeks.
Mazurich talked with the leaders of all the clans, always in an effort to try and meld the existing dwarven society into our own. It wasn’t an easy task. Dwarves weren’t solitary, and the clans tended to act as a unit—including in the acquisition of living space. Finding facilities to house several thousand dwarves in one place wasn’t easy, especially for a race that preferred living underground.
Mazurich managed to pull it off, though. He managed to get the Port Authority and the county to buy up all of the remaining private property on a spit of land called Whiskey Island and designate it a relocation area for the dwarven population.
He managed to get his hands on the prime lakefront property and longtime political football by the simple expedient of political blackmail. There was still a federal blockade, and while the Feds were letting people out, no one was getting back in. In the space of a few months, Mazurich’s dwarven contractors were pretty much the only game in town. Sewer, water, power, roads, name it and Mazurich’s dwarven allies were maintaining it.
Keeping the dwarves happy became high on everyone’s priority list.
And whatever the history, and whoever’s ox was getting gored, Whiskey Island was a perfect solution for the dwarves. Not only was it spitting distance down the coast from the Portal, it was home to acres and acres of subterranean salt mines under the lake. Pretty much a perfect environment for the dwarves.
“I seem to remember some nasty stories coming out of the salt mines, before the dwarves moved in.”
She frowned at me. “Are you trying to imply something?”
Actually, I wasn’t. “I just remember some news stories from back then.”
“Alarmist bullshit. It was the same stuff that was happening everywhere at the time—a salt mine just happens to be a dangerous place to panic.”
“Uh-huh.” I sipped my coffee, wondering exactly what she wasn’t telling me. “What about recently? How were things with him and the dwarves?”
She smiled. “They loved him, he was practically one of their clan.”
Mazurich managed to be human advocate and power broker to his new nonhuman constituency. His dwarves managed to form a bloc that was a political counterweight to Rayburn. They weren’t particularly glamorous, but they ran the city, and because of them, Mazurich managed to keep the City Council tightly under his control. When you got down to the nitty-gritty, it
mattered
where your ward was on the priority list to get potholes fixed.
mattered
where your ward was on the priority list to get potholes fixed.
In return, Mazurich’s own ward benefited greatly from dwarven labor. The technology park that lived over the remains of the old steel industry grew threefold, built by low-bidding dwarves. Dozens of new businesses set up shop, dwarven-owned and operated, ranging from one-dwarf operations like
Thor’s Hammer,
to multimillion dollar R&D outfits like Magetech.
Thor’s Hammer,
to multimillion dollar R&D outfits like Magetech.
“Magetech? That’s a dwarven operation?”
“Right in the heart of the Kucinich Technology Park. In fact, now I know why that name’s familiar . . .”
“What name?” I was still absorbing the idea that Magetech had anything to do with dwarves. I had heard of it, of course. It was a magnet for venture capital. The next Internet boom and all that. The idea that it might be the first to viably apply magic to
any
modern technological process was like crack for investors. If anything, I would have expected a dragon or two to be involved.
any
modern technological process was like crack for investors. If anything, I would have expected a dragon or two to be involved.
But dwarves?
“Parthalán. That clan name. Their clan leader happens to hold the CEO position there, and a bunch of others sit on the board.”
“No kidding . . .”
CHAPTER EIGHT
S
URPRISINGLY, one phone call got me a meeting with the Chief Operations Officer of Magetech. It was unexpected enough that I had to reorder my whole day to fit in the sudden appointment. When I called to reschedule with members of Mazurich’s staff, most of them sounded relieved.
URPRISINGLY, one phone call got me a meeting with the Chief Operations Officer of Magetech. It was unexpected enough that I had to reorder my whole day to fit in the sudden appointment. When I called to reschedule with members of Mazurich’s staff, most of them sounded relieved.
Magetech was housed in a cluster of office buildings sheathed in mirrored glass. Even before I reached the parking lot, I could tell there was something unusual going on here. If you looked at the right angle, you could see something else in the mirror, something dark that traced glyphs and symbols that barely registered in the conscious mind.
The wards, if that’s what they were, seemed only to register on my peripheral vision, and when I tried to look at them directly, my eyes hurt and I felt something between paranoia and dread.
I had to blink a couple of times to get the feeling to pass.
One of the annoying things about the world post-Portal was the fact you couldn’t readily dismiss sensations like that. The sense that this was not a good place might actually have a concrete source outside my own subconscious.
Of course, dismissed or not, there was little I could do about the feeling anyway.
I pulled up and into the visitor parking area, feeling the uncharacteristic hope that this was a wild goose chase. As I stepped out of the car, I pulled my jacket close against the chill in the air. I walked up to the building, under a logo hovering in midair, and into a cavernous neo-industrial lobby: a few cubic acres of glass, exposed steel, and ductwork. Everything had been polished, so that even the rivets in the exposed girders gleamed.
Display cases lined the polished granite floor between the lobby doors and the reception desk. Floating in rune-carved Lexan cubes were artifacts of Magetech’s R&D efforts. The objects were all pretty mundane and wouldn’t have made much of an impression on someone who wasn’t a Cleveland native; PDAs, cell phones, laptop computers, televisions, radios, digital cameras . . . so what?
The “so what” was the Portal. The mana flowing out from the world next door caused interference, severe interference, in every type of recording and communication media known to man. Magetech was jump-started by being the first to patent ways to correct for the problem. Because of that, Magetech got a piece of nearly every electronic device sold in Northeast Ohio.
I walked up to the reception desk. It was staffed by a woman who looked like a cross between a librarian and one of the nastier guards at a women’s prison. She looked at me over the top of her glasses.
“Can I help you?”
“Kline Maxwell,
Cleveland Press.
I have an appointment with Simon Lucas.”
Cleveland Press.
I have an appointment with Simon Lucas.”
“The
Cleveland Press,
I don’t know—”
Cleveland Press,
I don’t know—”
“It’s okay, Nora,” came a voice from behind me. “I approved it.”
I turned and faced the Chief Operations Officer of Magetech. He was taller than I expected, and balder. There wasn’t a lick of hair on his naked skull, and he was almost elven in his height and the way he moved. He held out a long-fingered hand and I shook it.
“Mr. Lucas?” I asked.
He nodded and looked toward the receptionist. “I apologize, Nora. Last minute addition.”
Nora let out with an intimidating “Hrumph.”
“Come with me, Mr. Maxwell.”
Lucas led me past the reception desk, past a few corridors, and to a bank of elevators. “Nice setup you have here.”
“These are just the corporate offices,” Lucas said as he pressed the up button. “The heart of the operation is in Solon.”
“Oh, I thought you had labs here?”
“Not for years,” Lucas laughed.
The elevator slid open for us and we both stepped inside.
The interior of the elevator was all chrome and mirrors, and I again got the headache-inducing sense of seeing something out of the corner of my eye. As if something was written underneath the reflections, something old, arcane, and evil . . .
“Are you all right?” Lucas asked.
I realized I was rubbing my temple and I lowered my hand. “I’m fine. But I am correct? This is where operations started for you?”
“Oh, yes. On the location of an old blast furnace.”
To my relief, the doors slid open. It was all I could do to avoid racing Lucas for the exit. Outside the elevator, there was a plush lobby where a glass wall opposite us looked out over the shorter buildings of Magetech corporate headquarters. Beyond that sat the rest of the Kucinich Technology Park, backed up by the Cleveland skyline.
The sky was clear enough that I could even see the cylindrical clouds marking the static weather front above the Portal itself.
“This way,” Lucas said.
I followed him down a corridor dotted with portraits, most dwarven. I took out my notebook and jotted down names as I followed Lucas. No titles were provided, but I suspected I was looking at the founding members of Magetech.
Two of the portraits were of humans. The first, little surprise, was of Councilman Mazurich with tie uncharacteristically straight. The second was a man I wasn’t familiar with at all. I suspected that meant that he wasn’t a politician. The name on the engraved plaque was “Dr. Eric Pretorious.”
I wondered what kind of doctor he was.
“Mr. Maxwell?”
Lucas stood by an open door, waiting for me. I stepped away from Dr. Pretorious and into Lucas’ office. “So how did you come to be part of Magetech?”
Lucas closed the door after us. “I’ve always been a part of Magetech.”
“Then why isn’t your portrait on the founder’s wall back there?”
“I do not work for that kind of recognition.” He held out a hand toward a chair at a large oval conference table. “Have a seat.”
The office was impressive, almost the size of the lobby downstairs. Two walls were glass, looking out at the Cleveland skyline, and everything was appointed in black-lacquered hardwood, chrome, and leather. It made me wonder what the CEO’s office was like.
“You are here to talk about our history,” Lucas said as he walked around me to fold himself into another chair across the table.
I held my notebook in front of me and nodded. “I’m doing a story about Councilman Mazurich’s influence on the city.”
“That was a tragedy,” Lucas said. “He deserves a proper elegy.”
At first, I thought Lucas misspoke. However, he didn’t strike me as one to make a casual slip of the tongue. He was very controlled. It made me think of what Teaghue Parthalán said, “A soul like Mazurich should have an epic written to him.”
I nodded, “I’ve talked to dwarves that have the same sentiment.”
Lucas leaned forward. “They told you much of the late Councilman Mazurich?”
“They expressed gratitude for the efforts he conducted on their behalf.”
Lucas leaned back. “Impressive efforts they were. He did much to create their world on this side of the Portal.”
“Such as helping to found this company?”
“Yes, the councilman was instrumental. He brought all the initial people together, including myself. He was adept at recognizing a problem, and seeing who might have potential solutions.”
“The interference from the Portal.”
“Our first viable product was a police radio and a walkie-talkie for the National Guard. Those first government contracts were the seed money that allowed all of this to happen.”
I rubbed my forehead. The phrase “government contract” clicked one of the journalistic circuit breakers in my brain. “Was Mazurich involved in getting Magetech that kind of business?”
It was the obvious question, but it was also a loaded one.
Politicians, especially at the city and county level, were always open to the charge of conflict of interest. It would be hard to find a local official who didn’t have an incestuous relationship with local business. That was the nature of the beast. As long as the politician in question wasn’t
directly
involved in the decision to award largesse, there wasn’t anything criminal to it.
directly
involved in the decision to award largesse, there wasn’t anything criminal to it.
But there’s something called, “the appearance of impropriety.” And, of course, it’s the job of every corporate hack and politician to keep that “appearance” minimal.
Therefore I wasn’t prepared when Simon Lucas said, “Again, he was instrumental.”
I looked up from my notes, “Are you saying that the councilman helped steer contracts toward Magetech?”
Lucas smiled. The grin was predatory, and disturbing. As if Hieronymus Bosch did a hairless portrait of Jack Nicholson. Though the surreal appearance of Mr. Lucas might have had more to do with the office I found myself in. I got the continual sense of something trying to pry itself into my skull.
“Mr. Maxwell, the councilman did everything in his power to help our enterprise . . . Are you feeling all right, Mr. Maxwell?”
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