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Out of Bounds (Unplugged)
Chapter 7.
VII. Brainstorming a Snowstorm
"Nasty! Report!" Drummond yelled as soon as he cleared the barrier curtain at the Ice facility. He heard the clatter of small, booted feet down a set of metal steps back a ways in the cavernous space and stopped to wait. Let the Elf come to him. He looked around and was surprised to see that, despite all the administration's efforts to encourage demand, the cases of the Ice were still stacked twenty high. Row after row of the Amazon Ice Company's Queen Featherhead logo stretched back as far as he could see in the bad warehouse lighting. And cold? The place had to be several degrees sub-zero to protect the Ice until it could be dispatched. He shook his head, wondering what was wrong. In a large-scale sense, everything looked pretty normal, if badly overstocked.
After a few moments, a runty figure appeared around a skid of cases of Ice. With pointed ears and shaggy hair, dressed in ragged jeans and a CFXS sweatshirt several sizes too large for his skinny frame, he was atypical even for an Elf, but his above-average intelligence, initiative, and inventive randiness made him a favorite with the most female senior staff of the Center.
"Nasty," Drummond said in greeting.
"Chief," the other said. "Thanks for coming. If you come with me, please."
"Can you tell me what's up?" Drummond asked as they walked briskly back an aisle between stacked skids of Ice. "You've got the whole campus in an uproar over this. It'd better be good."
"Oh, it's good, Chief. Or bad, if you prefer. How much do you know about Ice?"
"Just what anybody knows. It's made by a secret formula, thousands of years old, passed down through generation after generation of Amazons, from mother to daughter. It has healing properties that mere ice or chemical ice packs can't touch. In particular it is quite good for soothing feelings of sexual desire or frustration. Its chemical composition, while secret, is stated to be extremely pure, with very little contamination and absolutely nothing in it that's harmful or toxic at any concentrations. And it's said to make any booze taste ten times better... even ouzo, which is a hell of an accomplishment, if you ask me."
"OK." Nasty held a door open for Drummond, then passed through himself before going on. "You do know that we have a license from the Amazon Ice Company to make our own supply here at the Center, on a royalty basis?"
"Not really. I might have heard something like that, but it didn't stick in my mind. I knew we had machines all over campus and they are always full. Or almost always. And I never worried about it much more than that."
"Well, that's as Dr. Britten and the Board want it. This operation could become a target for all kinds of scummy types if it became known just how much of the stuff we can produce here."
"Why? Sure it's got some special properties. But it's just ice, isn't it?"
"Well, yes and no." Nasty ushered Drummond up a set of metal steps to a second level catwalk. "Yeah, Ice is just frozen water. But what makes it special is how it's frozen. How it's made. I'm not gonna go into the gory details, 'cause, frankly, I just learned all this stuff today myself, and I'd only get it wrong. But what you need to know is that we make our own here, the process of making it involves magic, and that the chief technician in charge of making it is out of town for the weekend."
"Whoa. Whoa, Nelly! Magic? Why are you calling me? Why not call the Thaumaturgy Department?"
"It may come to that. But the Center protocol says we call you first."
"But I'm a tech guy. I don't know bupkis about magic."
"Well, I don't know, Chief. They just told me to call you in. But I look at it this way. Isn't magic just another kind of tech?"
"Yeah, sure. And the gods use it all the time. But we're not gods, and they come to us with questions about tech. We shouldn't be fucking with this, Nasty."
"Relax, Chief. You don't even know what's going on, yet. Here we are."
He opened the door on a large, empty office. There was a metal desk in the middle of the floor with a pair of lamps aimed at a chair in front of it. Seated in the chair was a young, mousy-looking girl, with long, dishwater blonde hair. She was dressed in a nondescript looking outfit that, Drummond realized as he looked at her, was a floor-length robe of some heavy gray fabric.
"This," Nasty said with a dramatic flair, "is our problem. Chief, meet Belinda, the co-op thaumaturge assigned to the Ice facility. She's supposed to be in charge while the regular mage is out of town."
"What? Whoa! Time out," Drummond made a "T" with his hands. "Indra's not here?"
"Nope. She's in Myrtle Beach for the week. Can't get back inside of thirty six hours, at which point, the crisis will be over."
"What's the crisis?"
"We have too much Ice and the facility is making more, and we can't shut it down."
Drummond turned to the young girl. "I suppose you're going to tell me that you can't shut it down."
She shook her head.
"Anybody care to tell me why?"
Just then, Belinda broke into tears. "It's my fault. I just wanted to..." sob "...impress Indra." Sniff. "I used the sorcerer's apprentice spell and now..." she broke down completely, sobbing helplessly.
"Hey! Hey!" Drummond knelt next to her, his hear softened by her tears. That's all they need to do, he thought sarcastically to himself. Just turn on the waterworks and you turn into jelly mush.
"So... what? Can't we just let the stuff melt? Shut off the power to the machinery?"
Nasty sighed. Obviously, they'd covered all this ground. "Apparently the spell prevents interference with "child" processes that directly affect the making of more ice."
"OK. It's plenty furkin' hot outside. Dump the stuff on the ground... someplace where there's good drainage... and let it melt."
"No good. Apparently, part of the binding magic is that if the spell is released too quickly, or on too large a mass of the Ice, or both... then the whole thing goes kaflooey."
"Kaflooey?" Drummond asked.
"Ask her," Nasty pointed at the young girl, who was recovering to the point of merely sniffling occasionally.
"Kaflooey?" Drummond repeated.
"There's not only thermal energy bound up in Ice, but also the energy of mana."
"OK. I've heard of that. I know enough about it to know that when I encounter it, I call in a witchlet."
She shuddered at the word. "Please. We don't like that word. Call us thaumaturges."
"Listen, girlie, you can correct my usage when you take the cloak. Right now, I know more thaumaturges than you can shake a stick at, and I'll call 'em witchlets if I like."
"Yes, sir," she said meekly.
"Now, what's the deal with the mana in the Ice."
"Well, to put it simply, if you release the binding energy too quickly, it's like... well, the difference between a fire and an explosion. They release the same amount of energy, but the one does it gradually and the other does it... explosively."
"I see," Drummond nodded, stroking his beard thoughtfully. Then, "And why is it exactly that you can't turn the process off?"
"The spell I used. It's call the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It's listed in the book as being a great work and time saver, 'cause it puts any repeating process in a continuous loop. Problem is--and I didn't know this until I tried to find the counterspell--I can't say the counterspell. I don't know the language it's in and I can't pronounce the glyphs properly."
"Hmm," Drummond grunted. "Well, the answer to that is easy, then. Call Redpath. Get him to stop the process. The name of that spell. Are you familiar with the legend of the..."
"No. Or, I wasn't when I first read it. Nasty told me." She blanched, shuddering. "This could be a whole lot worse," she mumbled.
"Yeah, it could," Drummond agreed. "But you're still in deep kimchee. I'll leave that for your supervisors to sort out." He turned to the Elf.
"Nasty," he said.
"Yeah, Chief. I'll get hold of Redpath. I think he's in Scotland right now. But we still need to deal with the overruns, here."
"Yes. But once we deal with the magic problem, what we are left with is a purely mechanical one. We have to disperse the energy in the surplus Ice gradually. Right?"
"Right," Nasty replied, grinning. For the first time since he'd walked into this situation, he thought he saw a way out.
"OK. Here is where you could handle this... if you had the knowledge and the authority to make stuff happen. Remember last winter's Winter Games?"
"Sure. How... ?"
"Watch and learn, m'boy. Watch and learn. Gimme a cell phone." For the next five minutes, Drummond was dialing and spitting out instructions. He was in his element: one of pure intellect and logistics. He loved making things happen.
"Shop? Ozwald there? Drummond. Lemme yak at 'im. Oz, baby. Wiz here. Listen. Need you to work up a new auger. Remember the snow makers we rigged up for the Games last winter? I need a new auger for it that can handle harder input... chunks about an inch and a half on a side, irregular, and put it out in a spray of single crystals. Think you can handle it? Dunno. It may not be that important. Say... oh, the equivalent of a hundred thousand gallons an hour. OK? Um... An hour and a half? Heh-heh. Yes, I did. Don't give me that shit, just do it. Later, dude! Garage? Benno; Wiz. Yeah: Long time no time. Still got that snow maker from the Games last winter? Get it over to Carpenter and get it set up on the back lawn. Away from the house. Then unship the auger and take it over to Ozwald at the machine shop. He's gonna give you a replacement. Cool. No. We're gonna make a snowstorm for the Solstice in July party. Oh, and Benno... don't say anything to Seraphin. She doesn't know about this, yet. I want it to be a surprise. Yeah. Later, dude. Personnel, please. Sandy. Can you lay hands on a couple dozen strong backs for me? No, I need them at the Ice facility. They'll have to drive mules loaded with skids of Ice over to Carpenter Hall. Yeah. Right. They'll need to be qualified on the electric mules. Right now. The sooner the better."
Drummond shut off the phone and chuckled evilly to himself. "This is gonna be good."
"Is Mitch Drummond here?" came a voice from the door.
"Yeah," Drummond turned to greet the messenger Elf.
"Got a delivery for you from O.O.D."
"Thanks, buddy," Drummond said, scribbling his signature on the P.O.D. board and accepting the thick, heavy envelope from the messenger. He ripped it open and lifted out his cell phone and his own service automatic. He pocketed the former and clipped the latter to his belt. "Well, Nasty. You think you can handle it from here?"
"Sure, Chief. No sweat."
"Great! I'm off to Carpenter, then. There's a certain little Dolly who's a-waitin' there for me."
"Take off, then, Chief. Enjoy! See ya at the party!"
"Yeah. See ya at the party!"