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Nation of Airports 02.08
Her phone rang at eight-forty, just as she passed through the toll plaza. She didn't know the number but it was a Boston area code. "It's Jill Carson. Welcome to the team. Where are you?"
"In my car." Elisabeth closed her window to reduce the noise. "About fifteen minutes from the office."
"I'm about to e-mail you some materials to review. Also, is your passport in order?"
"Yeah." Elisabeth tried to remember where her passport was. "I think it is, anyway."
"Call me if it isn't so we can get it expedited. Otherwise have a good morning." Jill hung up before Elisabeth could ask why she needed a passport.
The e-mail was in her box when Elisabeth arrived. Attached were twenty pages of document scans, tiny print, hand-corrected, something to do with telecommunications. She skimmed through it twice. It was all information, no directives at all.
Wanda appeared in her door with a thick plastic-film envelope. "This just came for you," she said, handing it to Elisabeth. "By messenger."
"Thanks." Elisabeth started to open it, but Wanda was still there, not hiding her curiosity. "Now leave. And close the door."
Inside were a small jewelry box, a large manila envelope, a smaller white one, and a greeting-card-sized black one with a bar-coded sticker over the flap. In the box was an orange key-fob bottle opener, with the firm's logo and the current marketing slogan:
The gift was oddly comforting. Maybe her new job was odd and mysterious, but she got a company tchotchke.
The large envelope contained an offer letter and Human Resources paperwork. She put it aside to sign later. The small envelope contained a plane ticket, business class to London, this Sunday. No return ticket. Elisabeth had never been to London, but right now even that wasn't exciting. She tossed the ticket on the pile of employment papers.
She studied at the black envelope a long time before gingerly slicing open the top edge. Inside was a single piece of parchment, with a pentagram hand-drawn in dried blood. It was a charm, a magic spell embedded in a physical object, like a disk of software. Elisabeth had heard about these and she knew what to do with them. She had never seen one. A few other perks. She looked through the papers. No information. She didn't know what it did.
It was a test. Don't do it, do it now, do it later. The first wasn't an option, not with a new job at the other end of Magda's dare. The last seemed pointless. Why do it at home? Here there were people around to help if she had a problem, and if she turned into a monster she would have something to eat. Do it now.
Elisabeth emptied out her candy jar, hiked up her skirt and sat cross-legged on the floor. She reached without standing again and grabbed her lighter from her bag. Her heart raced and fluttered, as if she had run stairs. She took yoga breaths to calm down, count of four in her nostrils, count of eight out her mouth.
When she no longer felt her heartbeat she picked up the charm, holding it by the corner so as not to touch the blood. She flicked the lighter and held the flame. Was it all right to use a disposable? Should it be a candle? Flame is flame, she decided.
The parchment burned blue, violent and very hot. She dropped it into the jar, her fingers smarting. It took a long time to fall, as if the flames fought gravity. When it entered the jar the parchment vanished in a final flare of blue, leaving thick oily smoke that spilled slowly over the edge of the jar. Elisabeth breathed the smoke in until she coughed.
Elisabeth closed her eyes. The smoke affected her like a painkiller, making her dreamy and dizzy. She allowed herself to lie back on her elbows. By the time her arms had fallen asleep the numbness in her mind had receded, into an object's dumb presence, a there there. She drifted into memories of movies, TV shows, things she had recently seen. She didn't know if she was supposed to indulge the memories or stop them.
She clambered up to her chair. Once seated she realized the smoke was completely gone. She had a paranoid thought that she had imagined it all, but the jar was still warm.
An hour or so later the phone rang. She keyed the speakerphone. "Miss Elisabeth Battrie?" a man asked. "I'm Endre, from Internal Support Systems here in Boston. I was calling because we shipped a device to you. Have you received it?"
"The charm? Yes, I got it, thank you."
"Did you have any problems with it? It appears we neglected to send you documentation." There was something funny about his voice.
"No," Elisabeth said. "I mean, I think I did it right, you know."
"It sounds as if everything went satisfactorily," Endre said lightly. "I also wanted to give you our phone number here in case you have questions later."
"That's great, thanks." Not his voice, Elisabeth thought, as she keyed the number into her phone's contact list. His accent? His words. His words and the order of the words. And hers. "Um, Endre?" she asked hesitantly. "Am I -- I mean, you're speaking Hungarian. Right?"
"Yes, Miss Battrie, we're both speaking Hungarian." Endre sounded pleased, the same gotcha satisfaction that Magda had also enjoyed at her expense. These Boston people liked to fuck with you, she thought. Thought in Hungarian.
Oh. This was cool.
"The Polyglot begins with standard speech, then adapts to your current region," Endre was saying. "Your accent and slang improve after a couple of days in-country. If you have advance notice of a trip you can brush up before you go by listening to shortwave or web-cast radio." He switched to English, which he spoke with a heavy accent. "There's an online help file if you want more information: iss / docs / familiars / polyglot. And you can always contact us -- we staff this desk twenty-four-seven. Welcome to the team."
Elisabeth hung up. The Market, she remembered, and laughed out loud. Wait till I tell Missy, she thought. Wait till I tell her in French.
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