Black Easter Read Free Page B

soon-to-be-brief strangeness of the man who does not really know what is going on and hence thinks he might be about to be fired. It was as though something had swallowed him by mistake, and – quite without malice – was about to throw him up again.
    While he waited for the monster’s nausea to settle out, Jack went through his rituals, stroking his cheeks for stubble, resettling his creases, running through last week’s accounts, and thinking above all, as he usually did most of all in such interims, of what the new girl might look like squatting in herstockings. Nothing special, probably; the reality was almost always hedged around with fleshy inconveniences and piddling little preferences that he could flense away at will from the clean vision.
    When the chief had left and Ware had come back to his desk, however, Jack was ready for business and thoroughly on top of it. He prided himself upon an absolute self-control.
    ‘Questions?’ Ware said, leaning back easily.
    ‘A few, Dr Ware. You mentioned expenses. What expenses?’
    ‘Chiefly travel,’ Ware said. ‘I have to see the patient, personally. In the case Dr Baines posed, that involves a trip to California, which is a vast inconvenience to me, and goes on the bill. It includes air fare, hotels, meals, other out-of-pocket expenses, which I’ll itemize when the mission is over. Then there’s the question of getting to see the governor. I have colleagues in California, but there’s a certain amount of influence I’ll have to buy, even with the help of Consolidated Warfare – munitions and magic are circles that don’t intersect very effectively. On the whole, I think a draft for ten thousand would be none too small.’
    All that for magic. Disgusting. But the chief believed in it, at least provisionally. It made Jack feel very queasy.
    ‘That sounds satisfactory,’ he said, but he made no move towards the corporate chequebook; he was not about to issue any Valentines to strangers yet, not until there was more love touring about the landscape than he had felt in his crew-cut antennae. ‘We’re naturally a little bit wondering, sir, why all this expense is necessary. We understand that you’d rather not ride a demon when you can fly a jet with less effort –’
    ‘I’m not sure you do,’ Ware said, ‘but stop simpering about it and ask me about the money.’
    ‘Argh … well, sir, then, just why do you live outside the United States? We know you’re still a citizen. And after all, we have freedom of religion in the States still. Why does the chief have to pay to ship you back home for one job?’
    ‘Because I’m not a common gunman,’ Ware said. ‘Because I don’t care to pay income taxes, or even report my income to anybody. There are two reasons. For the benefit of your ever-attentive dispatch case there – since you’re a deaf ear if ever Isaw one – if I lived in the United States and advertised myself as a magician, I would be charged with fraud, and if I successfully defended myself – proved I was what I said I was – I’d wind up in a gas chamber. If I failed to defend myself, I’d be just one more charlatan. In Europe, I can say I’m a magician, and be left alone if I can satisfy my clients –
caveat emptor
. Otherwise, I’d have to be constantly killing off petty politicians and accountants, which isn’t worth the work, and sooner or later runs into the law of diminishing returns. Now you can turn that thing off.’
    Aha; there was something wrong with this joker. He was preying upon superstition. As a reformed Orthodox Agnostic, Jack Ginsberg knew all the ins and outs of that, especially the double-entry sides. He said smoothly:
    ‘I quite understand. But don’t you perhaps have almost as much trouble with the Church, here in Italy, as you would with the government back home?’
    ‘No, not under a liberal pontificate. The modern Church discourages what it calls superstition among its adherents. I haven’t encountered