Independent Variables
Mark Shantz
“So you want to be a Hero, is that it?” The stern words were accompanied by an even sterner face. Doctor Nicolas Lazlow turned on his heels after entering the lavishly appointed study to stare, dead faced, at the younger version of himself that followed. The older man’s eyes were hard and dark, shadowed by a thick set of grey brows. His hair was just as thick, but where the brows bushed out like the fringe of an owl, it was immaculately trimmed and groomed. Lines crevassed Lazlow’s face as if they had been brought about by erosion. His reward for years of serious study and a lifetime of scowling.
“Being a hero has nothing to do with it, Father,” the younger Lazlow answered with exasperation. “Why do you have to treat things so dramatically? This is how I choose to live my life!”
Jonathan Lazlow stood even with his father’s rigid five foot, ten inch frame and unclasped the cloak covering his shoulders. The resemblance between them was considerable, as attested by all who knew the Doctor, but he was softer of feature and firmer of muscle. Still, in the grand mirror that took up the major portion of the wall to his right, Jon couldn’t help but see two stages of a single man’s life, facing off against each other.
“What would you have me think?” Dr. Lazlow returned. “I send you off to Silmaria so that you can study at the Academy of Science, an honour never possible in my youth, and what happens? You end up in Shapier learning card tricks and chicanery!”
The older man took his son’s dusty, green cloak and hung it carefully across a plush chair in the corner. Wiping his hands against each other, as if trying to wipe his son’s lifestyle from him, he marched across the room to a small table with two opposing chairs and motioned for then both to sit.
The table top had been carved into the board of alternating light and dark squares that had become so familiar to Jon. This was a ritual that had played itself out many times in his life. A ritual no less important, he thought, than any he had learned in his arcane apprenticeship.
The young mage shook his shaggy head, bemused at his father’s comment, and pulled out one of the expertly carved and arduously polished chairs.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jon shifted the shoulder bag hanging across his chest as he sat. “And it’s not as if I set out for Shapier. I was just as excited about Silmaria as you were, if you remember. Things just happened along the way.”
“Obviously,” the Doctor didn’t look up as he removed the game pieces from their drawer in the table. He handed the dark set to his son, placing his own pieces on their spots one by one. He was always White, Jonathan thought. Always with the first move.
When each man had set their tiny, intricate warriors ready for action, they looked into each other’s eyes and nodded.
Nicolas Lazlow’s white pawn hammered down, breaking the clean line and entering the empty field of battle. “So you met some peasant girl on the road and decided to throw away a lifetime of scientific discovery. Not to mention all of the money I had given you. Not the most original move. Perhaps I should be asking for the gold back?”
“If you want it back, you can have it,” A black pawn took its place in standoff against its counter. A small black bag took its place beside the board with the heavy sound of coin. “That’s one of the reasons why I’ve come. That, and to see you , try to make you understand. And it wasn’t any girl that turned my path from Silmaria. It was a crazy old beggar actually, or so I thought at the time.”
One overgrown eyebrow raised at the last statement and a steely eye flashed up for a split second before returning to its intimidation of the board. The Doctor contemplated his move for a short time and then another white pawn was on the move.
“Keep your gold,” the father sat back stiffly and folded his arms across his chest. On anyone else the pose would have been one of relaxation. On Nicolas Lazlow, it held the allusion of forced and uneasy patience. “It sounds like you’ll need it if you’re taken in so easily by con men. Did I teach you nothing? I surely hope he was only after your gold.”
“Please, Father,” Jon looked to the ceiling and shook his head. “Have a little faith in your own son. Have a little faith that you did teach me well. You did! If it had been a thief on the road that day, I may well have ended up right where you had expected. But it wasn’t. It was much, much more. And now I am much more than I ever was or could have been.” A black knight rose from the board with a mumbled word and a quick gesture and deposited itself in a new location.
“That’s enough!” Rage contorted Lazlow’s already deeply wrinkled features. “I will not abide by the use of such unnatural practices! Not in my house! How dare you insult me like that!” He was livid and his hands grasped and pumped the air as if to wring the vary light from it.
Jonathan pulled back slightly from the table, taken aback. A spell of calming immediately sprang into his mind but he pushed it away. He wouldn’t force a false calm on his father. If that had been his goal at coming here he could simply make the man think whatever was necessary. This needed to be real, though. This needed to be faced. “I’m sorry, Father.”
Nicolas caught sight of himself in the mirror and sat back down. The silence that accompanied his scowl threatened to scatter everything in the room to ashes. Once composure was retained, a white bishop challenged the knight. “I can’t stop you from throwing your life and your talent away on these... corruptions, but this is a house built on science and I will not have it here.”
“Why are you so scared of magic?” The black knight shifted away from the bishop and removed a pawn from the board. “A man of science should never be so closed minded to the mysteries of the world. I can’t quite remember who I heard that from though. Do you have any idea?”
“Very funny,” Nicolas picked up another pawn and held it for a moment, feeling the lines and curves of the piece in long, slender fingers. The agile fingers of an scientist. “You know very well that it was I who said that. Doctor Edington was afraid of electricity, not a practice that summons unspeakable evil into this world every day. And I’m not scared, Jonathan. I simply will not stand for the natural forces at work being tampered with.” The pawn landed in an unassuming location.
“How can you judge all wizards so harshly on the basis of a few? That is another thing you taught me. Never to generalize anyone or anything. Magic is a pizza, like anything else. It is the cook that makes the taste.” The younger Lazlow goaded his father with his own teachings as his long, slender fingers chose the next piece. The agile fingers of a magic-user
The Doctor let out a small grunt, conceding the point to his son. “You’re still a smart one. That’s for sure. No matter what you’ve done with your life. Now tell me about this man, this ‘more than a beggar’ that stole your mind from science and robbed the world of all of its potential.”
Jon smiled. He had gotten in. Only slightly mind you, but the door was open. This was a huge step for his father. “He was a strange one, that much I can tell. A little man, hunched and lame in one leg. His face had the look of a mad bullfrog, one eye in a constant squint, the other the size of a saucer. And with the oddest accent you’ve ever heard. I’ve been to a few lands in my travels since and I’ve never heard it again.”
A man quietly entered the room from the door behind Jonathan. He was older then Nicolas and perhaps even more rigid in his manor. “Forgive the interruption, Sir.”
“Yes, of course Michael. What is it?” Dr. Lazlow had seen his servant come in and knew exactly what was going to be said. Jonathan turned to see the man who had seen to all the things his father hadn’t had time for all those years ago.
“Your new alarm, Sir. It has sounded,” the white-haired butler began. “Shall I rouse the guards staying in the guest quarters?”
“No, not yet.” Nicolas’ thin lips turned up at this distraction. “Wait until the statue has been taken. And have them wait outside. I don’t want any mess in the house.”
“Yes, Sir. Certainly.” Michael turned to leave but looked back for a moment. “And it is good to see you again young Jonathan. Will you be needing your bed turned down?”
“Thank you, Michael, but no,” the young man answered. If his father was shocked or hurt it did not show.
“Perhaps I will, in any case. Just to be safe, young Jonathan. Tonight does not seem to be the night to be out by ones self.” He left before another denial could be spoken.
“What was that all about?” Jonathan looked to his father in puzzlement.
“Oh, just some tests being run. Now where were we?”
The pieces had gone back and forth between the two men at an even pace. Jon scanned the board to refresh his memory and made another move. “The little man. He was sitting under a tree by the roadway I was travelling. I was about four days out from here and I came upon him at about midday. I was hot and hungry and when I saw him he looked like such a starved and pathetic wretch that I dismounted and offered him some of my food. It turned out that he was in a worse state then I had seen.
“The poor old goat looked like he had taken on three goons in a bare knuckle pit brawl. I immediately forced a couple of those tonics we had made down his throat and when he was strong enough, gave him some food as well.”
“Those tonics were for you,” the father cut in. “In case anything happened to you on the road.”
“Father, you’re missing the point. Anyway, he was so grateful to me that he insisted on paying me back. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, but since, as he said, he was just a poor old cripple, he had nothing to give but the gift of his company on my journey. He never actually asked where I was going though.”
“Sounds like a con man to me, Son.”
“At that point it did to me too. But things happened on the road, Father. Things that showed me that this old man was no mere cripple. Things that taught me there was more to the World Pizza than the simple toppings that could be picked apart at a place like the Academy.”
Pizza. The perfect food. The culmination of dietary achievement. The quintessential metaphor that all scientists held dear. His father had to see the truth in it.
“Bah!” Nicolas Slammed his queen back onto the defensive. “The scientific method can produce a rational explanation for everything! And it can produce results that any man can copy, not just a select group of old nit-WITs!”
The pun regarding the Wizard’s Institute of Technology was not lost on Jonathan. He found himself once again smiling and looking to the regally painted ceiling for help. It, of course, had nothing to offer. “I know Father,” the young man replied as a black rook rained death on the white army. “I believe you. I always have. How could I have grown up in this house and do anything less than apply the scientific method to all that I study?
“It has been the same with magic. There is actually very little difference between magic and science, Father...”
“You sound like the local fools who think swamp gases are spirits,” the older man interrupted. “They speak of monsters when all I see are understudied beasts. They cower in fright at the might of angry gods and I revel in the power of static electricity. You keep bringing up the lessons I tried to instill in you, Jonathan. I taught you these things too. Why do you ignore them? Why do you choose to spend your life trying to validate superstitions? Why do you waste your time trying to control metaphysical energies when the real ones hold so much more potential?” The black rook was slaughtered, the king was in check.
“It is those very lessons you speak of that have made me as powerful as I am.” The young Lazlow closed his eyes as if in thought. “They said I was unique at the Institute. Never before had someone of my back ground, my upbringing, entered their ranks. And never before had they seen someone progress so rapidly.” The black queen pulled back, seemingly to protect her king.
“It was those teachings,” Jonathan continued. “I alone of all the wizards of WIT know exactly why the wooden branch burns as it does. Only I have held lighting in a jar without magic. Only I know how it is that the birds stay in the sky.
“It is this knowledge that allows me to understand the principles of magic so easily. Knowing how the natural world actually works allows me to fine tune my concentration and focus my energies on exactly the outcome that I need. You taught me these things, Father. You. You have made me what I am today. I came back to Munsic tonight, I came back here, to thank you.”
“That is a credit, Son, that I will not accept.” The Doctor spoke in soft tones. He was looking at the game board but his eyes were seeing something all their own. “I raised you to be a man of truth and science, not illusion and mystery. If what you say is true, and magic is linked to science, then it should be studied, quantified and harnessed so all my benefit.” With that, the remaining white bishop pushed its way through the crowd to corner the black king.
“Check mate, Son.” Nicolas Lazlow looked up at the younger version of himself. His smile of victory was little more than a twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“Good game, Father.” Jonathan stood and began handing his tiny soldiers to the older man.
“Yes,” the man replied. “As usual.”
The wizard pushed in his chair and walked to where his worn, old cloak was draped. It fluttered like the wings of a great bird as it took its place on his shoulders. Turning around again, he found his father waiting.
“It was good to see you again,” Dr. Lazlow grabbed his son’s hand and gave him a quick hug. It was returned in full.
“Yes, you too. Thank you, Father” The reply was warm but collected. “Don’t trouble yourself. I know the way out. I’m sure you’ll want to check on that test. And Father, whoever this thief is, who I’m sure doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into, don’t let them kill him, will you?”
“What did I you tell about using magic in my house?!” Doctor Nicolas Lazlow could only make the reply to his son’s back. And even that was fast fading in the darkness of the hallway.
whoh.... that was bitching to the extreme. 