boy.’”
“But how does the chick sexer know ?” Aliyah asked.
“That’s the trick! Even the chicken sexer can’t explain how he knows. But sit with the chicken sexer for a week, and after a while, you start being able to tell! Eventually, you’ll look at a chicken butt and think, ‘That’s a girl.’ And you’ll have no way of knowing why you know that. But after seeing enough boy chick-butts and enough girl chick-butts, the back of your mind knows how to tell the difference, even if the front of your mind can’t explain it.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re telling her this story just so you can use the word ‘chick-butt’,” Imani said, leaning back on her elbow, radiating bemusement.
“No, this is completely true,” Paul shot back.
“Don’t make me go to Snopes.com, my love.”
“Go to Snopes. Go to Wikipedia. Go to the American Organization of Chicken Sexers, if you like. They’ll tell you the same.” He knelt before Aliyah, quashing the irritation that Imani was contradicting him in front of their daughter. “But that’s what magic’s like, sweetie. ’Mancers are rare – I’ve hunted them for almost a decade, and met maybe thirty – but see enough magic, and you get its feel.”
It was a partial truth. Kit hadn’t been able to see ’mancy, no matter how many cases they’d investigated. Still, Paul chuckled; for months afterwards, Aliyah solemnly told everyone she met that “My daddy uses magic to sex chickens.”
Paul looked along the row of gambreled roofs, the dry yards pinned with forlorn “FOR SALE” signs. After yesterday’s frog shower, there was some chicken-sexing going on around here, for sure. The cops were looking everywhere within a five-mile radius, but they didn’t know what to look for. You had to feel the ’mancy.
He quashed a concern: What if Anathema had moved on? Maybe. But ’mancers down on their luck enough to need a Flex lab usually found it difficult to move all their accoutrements. And Anathema–
–there.
That house set his chicken sense a-tingling.
Paul strolled by a three-story house with a sagging porch, trying to figure out what had set off his alarms.
The first evidence was simple police work: though there was a “For Sale” sign in the front yard, the first-floor windows were propped open to let in a breeze.
A ’mancer called this place home. Paul was sure of it. The same ’mancer who’d made the Flex that had burned his daughter. The rain of frogs came when this sonuvabitch had lost control trying to freeze his magic within hematite, and flung the damaging weirdness as far away as possible.
That’s what this ’mancer would teach him: to master flux.
He popped open the Pepsi bottle he’d brought along, as if he was an old cripple who needed to cool off. He sipped the lukewarm soda, checking for obvious ’mancy signs: the glint of a copper wire running around the perimeter of the yard, a large pile of rust.
No such luck. But the yellowed grass in the yard…
…Paul squinted over the decaying picket fence. The uneven grass sprouted in thatchy clumps. But those three dandelions over here, bobbing in the breeze? They had three identical dandelions five feet to the left, their fuzzy white heads bouncing to the same rhythm. That mounded anthill over there? The exact same anthill existed five feet over, the ants running in the same direction.
The entire yard was one five-foot square of bad lawn that had been copied and pasted. A side effect of the magic this ’mancer was trying, inefficiently, to distill.
He reached down to flick a stem of wheatgrass; the others quivered in time. Paul marveled; he’d never seen a cloned landscape before. Then again, he’d never seen most magics. Only the army had standardized magic into Unimancy; everyone else fixated on unique hobbies, blossoming pastimes into power.
Inside was the ’mancer who had harmed his daughter. A man ramping towards mass killing. A man not afraid to murder.
I
“But how does the chick sexer know ?” Aliyah asked.
“That’s the trick! Even the chicken sexer can’t explain how he knows. But sit with the chicken sexer for a week, and after a while, you start being able to tell! Eventually, you’ll look at a chicken butt and think, ‘That’s a girl.’ And you’ll have no way of knowing why you know that. But after seeing enough boy chick-butts and enough girl chick-butts, the back of your mind knows how to tell the difference, even if the front of your mind can’t explain it.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re telling her this story just so you can use the word ‘chick-butt’,” Imani said, leaning back on her elbow, radiating bemusement.
“No, this is completely true,” Paul shot back.
“Don’t make me go to Snopes.com, my love.”
“Go to Snopes. Go to Wikipedia. Go to the American Organization of Chicken Sexers, if you like. They’ll tell you the same.” He knelt before Aliyah, quashing the irritation that Imani was contradicting him in front of their daughter. “But that’s what magic’s like, sweetie. ’Mancers are rare – I’ve hunted them for almost a decade, and met maybe thirty – but see enough magic, and you get its feel.”
It was a partial truth. Kit hadn’t been able to see ’mancy, no matter how many cases they’d investigated. Still, Paul chuckled; for months afterwards, Aliyah solemnly told everyone she met that “My daddy uses magic to sex chickens.”
Paul looked along the row of gambreled roofs, the dry yards pinned with forlorn “FOR SALE” signs. After yesterday’s frog shower, there was some chicken-sexing going on around here, for sure. The cops were looking everywhere within a five-mile radius, but they didn’t know what to look for. You had to feel the ’mancy.
He quashed a concern: What if Anathema had moved on? Maybe. But ’mancers down on their luck enough to need a Flex lab usually found it difficult to move all their accoutrements. And Anathema–
–there.
That house set his chicken sense a-tingling.
Paul strolled by a three-story house with a sagging porch, trying to figure out what had set off his alarms.
The first evidence was simple police work: though there was a “For Sale” sign in the front yard, the first-floor windows were propped open to let in a breeze.
A ’mancer called this place home. Paul was sure of it. The same ’mancer who’d made the Flex that had burned his daughter. The rain of frogs came when this sonuvabitch had lost control trying to freeze his magic within hematite, and flung the damaging weirdness as far away as possible.
That’s what this ’mancer would teach him: to master flux.
He popped open the Pepsi bottle he’d brought along, as if he was an old cripple who needed to cool off. He sipped the lukewarm soda, checking for obvious ’mancy signs: the glint of a copper wire running around the perimeter of the yard, a large pile of rust.
No such luck. But the yellowed grass in the yard…
…Paul squinted over the decaying picket fence. The uneven grass sprouted in thatchy clumps. But those three dandelions over here, bobbing in the breeze? They had three identical dandelions five feet to the left, their fuzzy white heads bouncing to the same rhythm. That mounded anthill over there? The exact same anthill existed five feet over, the ants running in the same direction.
The entire yard was one five-foot square of bad lawn that had been copied and pasted. A side effect of the magic this ’mancer was trying, inefficiently, to distill.
He reached down to flick a stem of wheatgrass; the others quivered in time. Paul marveled; he’d never seen a cloned landscape before. Then again, he’d never seen most magics. Only the army had standardized magic into Unimancy; everyone else fixated on unique hobbies, blossoming pastimes into power.
Inside was the ’mancer who had harmed his daughter. A man ramping towards mass killing. A man not afraid to murder.
I
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