Sam looked at Dodger, who nodded. He wasn’t sure he trusted this professor, but Dodger did. What did he have to lose? If the professor had wanted to betray him to those who had hunted him, it would have been easy enough. He started in on his tale, trying to suppress the thought of how easy it would still be for the professor to betray him to his enemies.

26

“Concentrate!”

Laverty’s voice was insistent. Sam was too tired to focus on the picture of a medieval shield that Laverty wanted him to imagine. Hours of sharp questioning about his travails followed by more hours of testing, some obvious standard medical examinations and others clearly arcane. For someone who was not supposed to be staying around long, Sam had been in Laverty’s company for quite a while.

“Keep the image of the shield in your head!”

Sam tried to comply, but his mental vision blurred as a sharp pain drove through his head, a spike of ice impaling his brain. He almost cried out from the hurt before rallying and driving it back. The pain receded, leaving him drenched in sweat. He slumped in the chair.

When he opened his eyes again, the Elf was staring at him, his look stem and thoughtful. Seeing Sam awake, Laverty checked a monitor screen and entered a note on a data-pad. At the professor’s nod, Estios stepped forward and began to detach electrodes from Sam’s head.

“That is the last test.”

Dodger got up from his chair against the wall and walked over to lean against the bench that held Laverty’s monitoring apparatus. “In truth, an overly long enquiry, professor. My friend is not applying for citizenship.”

“You wanted to know what was wrong with him. I needed certain information to make a diagnosis. Now I have that information.”

“And?” Sam and Dodger said almost in unison. “I believe that the available data offers only one reasonable conclusion.” Laverty carefully placed his datapad on the console. Then he pulled a chair around in front of it and sat down. He seemed content to draw out the moment of revelation. Just as Sam was ready to prompt him again, he spoke. “You, Samuel Verner, are a magician.”

Sam blinked.

“Impossible!”

“Is it?” The professor rubbed his right index finger along his upper lip. “Your headaches are prime evidence that you cannot function normally within the hypothetical world of the Matrix. Such a limitation is almost universal in those who have strong magical talent. Had you sought counseling before, you would have learned this a year ago.”

“I thought the headaches were normal, that everybody got them.”

Dodger shook his head.

“Well, if I’m different, it must be something else. I’ve never had anything to do with magic. It must be some kind of interface problem,” Sam protested. “Bad neural connections.”

“Soriyama doesn’t make those kind of mistakes,” Dodger informed him. “The way your icon limps shows some kind of psychological interface problem. It’s neither built into the software nor a glitch in the hardware.”

Laverty tapped the back of his chair to get attention. “Let us put aside the issue of the Matrix for a moment,” he said. “When you were attacked by Ehran’s people, the sorcerer Rory Donally used what, by your description, was a fireball spell. But it did you no real harm. How might that come to be?”

Sam ran his hands through his hair. “The mage wasn’t very good at his job.”

Laverty smiled indulgently. “Donally may not be a full mage, but he is an accredited adept. He passed the Tir’s certification competitions for noble ranking. He is a sorcerer of high skill and unusual efficiency. He would not work for Ehran if he were not good at his job.

“No, Sam. Donally’s spell was ineffective because you cancelled its effects. Unconsciously, you opened a mana channel to dissipate the energies that Donally had gathered. You routed those energies back into astral space, where they dispersed harmlessly.”

“Unconsciously or not, I could never do that.”

“But you did. You can do it still. The last test we conducted let me watch you in action. Mr. Estios cast a spell at you while you were supposed to be concentrating on the selected image. It was a very real and a very dangerous spell. Had you not shunted the energies, we would not be having this conversation.”

“You could have killed him!” Dodger rocketed erect. Estios stepped between the decker and the professor, cutting off Dodger’s move toward Laverty.

“The professor knew what he was doing, Alley Runner,” the big Elf sneered as he blocked Dodger’s attempt to get around him.

“The lesser tests were inconclusive, Dodger. It was a risk, but I was already certain Sam had the necessary capability. I surmised that it would take a legitimate threat to trigger his latent capacity, and it did.”

Sam thought the professor was pretty casual about putting someone’s life on the line to test a theory, and he didn’t like it one bit. But then he only had their word about the spell. All he got was a headache and he had those all the time. “Even if I did stop Estios’s spell,” Sam said wearily, “that doesn’t make me a magician. I’ve read about people who can protect themselves from magic without being magicians. They’re catted negamages.”

“Negamages don’t project astrally,” the professor said.

“Neither do I.”

“Ah, but you do. How else did you return to that lamentable clearing where you observed Ehran’s paladins?”

“I sneaked up on them,” Sam said flatly.

Estios laughed heartily. “Not with you exhausted from your run, city boy. Not on those paladins.”

“Didn’t you say that Grian looked right at you?” Laverty asked.

Sam nodded.

“Do you know how well an Elf can see in the dark? He would not have missed you.”

“He must have,” Sam insisted. He was an ordered, rational person who had built himself an ordered, rational life. His father had instilled in him a deep distrust of anything to do with magic. He could never accept what they were telling him. This magic talk was too strange.

“Why do you fear the magic?” the professor asked.

“I don’t.” Sam heaved himself out of the chair and began to pace back and forth. “It’s just that all this magic stuff is illogical. It doesn’t make sense. Or it’s just tricks for gullible people. It’s not part of my world.”

Laverty sighed. “The spell that Rory Donally used burned your clothes and the trees in the forest. The cloth and the wood were part of the real world. They really burned. If that result wasn’t part of your world, then perhaps yours isn’t the real one.”

Sam stopped pacing and stared at the ceiling. Now that suggestion was the open door to madness. “I don’t deny that something happens when a real magician does what he calls casting a spell. I was trained to believe in hard evidence. Yes, his spell burned something. How can I deny that? I felt the ash and smelled the smoke. But don’t try to tell me it’s funny hand gestures, strange words, and the power of the stars. It’s got to be something else, some kind of subconscious manipulation of ultra-low-frequency electromagnetic radiation, maybe.”