‘A-anyway…’ Mitsuko actually seemed a little worried that Nava might not be joking. ‘The Stenger Mendels are both in secure rooms in the infirmary. Sedated. Lambert Stenger has been diagnosed with physical exhaustion. They’re suggesting that he hasn’t slept since he vandalised the lab. Candide Lambert’s wounds were severe, but she’s been healed of those. The physical ones. Mentally, she’s a wreck, hence the sedation. Her husband of twenty years spent the entire night and half the day torturing her. She hasn’t been coherent enough to make a statement yet.’
‘According to this,’ Nava said, ‘Lambert Stenger stated that he was making a more detailed scan of the artefact’s interior using imaging radar. Then he blacked out. The video evidence shows him using the radar unit, but then turning to the cameras and blowing them out with Concussive Force spells. He claims to have woken up in a storage closet several hours later. The video evidence shows him walking to the basement where the cameras lose him. When his wife was discovered by Courtney, he “attempted to pull the same waking up con.” Courtney’s words. He claims to have no memory after using the scanner until he woke up against a wall in his house, but the medics say he’s probably been awake and active the entire time.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ Mitsuko said. ‘I admit that it’s not easy to believe that an intelligent man such as Professor Lambert Stenger–’
‘He hates being called “professor,”’ Melissa said. ‘I know it’s the correct title, given his tenure, but he expressly forbade us from using it.’
‘Won’t even accept doctor as a title,’ Rochester added.
‘He’d say, “Mister is quite good enough.”’
‘Well, it’s difficult to believe a man like that would snap like this, but high intelligence doesn’t preclude mental instability.’
‘No previous indications of domestic abuse,’ Nava said. She was tapping away at Mitsuko’s ketcom screen and obviously accessing things she was not really supposed to. ‘The daughter’s teachers have noticed no signs of anything until today when Bethany suddenly began claiming that her father was not her father. There’s also the last words Lambert Stenger spoke before doing his “waking up act.” According to Courtney’s report, he said, “You can have him.”’
Mitsuko frowned. ‘Are you making a case for mind control?’
‘I’m suggesting that the case may not be cut and dried. If it’s mind control, I see no reason for an external agency to victimise a metaphysics professor and his family. If it’s mind control, that probably leaves us with a psychopathic mind controller among the staff or students, and then there’s the question of why they waited until now. We’ve been here for months and no one has decided to randomly torture a housewife until now. I’m not sure mind control works, but I’m also not sure that Lambert Stenger was in control when he did those things. And I can’t get over the weird feeling of unease I felt when I was near that artefact. The artefact Lambert Stenger was working on when he suddenly went crazy.’
‘I see. You think the artefact is somehow responsible.’ Nava gave a small shrug in reply. Mitsuko considered for a second. ‘But the first thing he did was to destroy the artefact. If it was controlling him, shouldn’t destroying it have removed that control?’
‘If. There’s another more specific piece of evidence suggesting that something is out of place.’
‘Oh?’
‘The video shows Lambert Stenger using Concussive Force to destroy the security cameras.’
‘Yes. So?’
‘Those cameras are mounted under hardened plastic domes. Concussive Force requires a permit if you know it at rank three or above. Lambert Stenger has no such permit. He has a licence for Slice and Sorcerer’s Eye, and a permit for Complex Illusion. He would need quite a high ranking in Concussive Force to destroy those cameras and I don’t believe he has that.’
Mitsuko’s frown deepened. ‘He could have kept it secret… I have no idea how I’m going to do this, but I’ll mention the inconsistencies to Courtney.’
‘So long as she keeps an open mind on the possibilities, that’s enough for me.’
‘She’s fairly wound up after finding Candide Stenger… I’ll see what I can do.’
~~~
‘All the scans were giving back the same information,’ Lambert said. ‘The density of the casing material was giving us some trouble, but even so, it was apparent that there was a… void inside the artefact.’
‘A void,’ Courtney said. She was spending her lunch hour on interrogation again and it did seem that something had changed. Lambert was giving more detail about the time before his supposed blackout anyway. ‘What kind of void?’
‘A spherical force barrier, I believe. It had to be of a type we currently can’t create because it was blocking all forms of magic as well as every other method of determining what was inside it. Well, visible light may have worked, but I couldn’t see through the case.’
‘A spell that’s lasted several tens of thousands of years.’
‘Quite amazing, I agree, but there it was. Information magic simply returned that there was something blocking the use of information magic.’
‘A scrying block.’
‘Presumably. With no other way forward, I was attempting to examine the imagery we had of the engineering around the void. I assumed that was powering the spell. It had to be collecting quintessence using a mechanism far smaller than anything we’re currently able to make. In one of the images, I saw a shape which, to me, appeared to be a switch. An old-fashioned, bar-shaped toggle switch.’
‘Inside the case?’
‘As you say.’
Courtney closed her eyes. She could tell that Kyle, standing beside the door of Lambert’s room, was having the same thought because he groaned. ‘Don’t tell me you toggled the switch.’
‘It seemed like the only course of action available,’ Lambert said. He did sound a little embarrassed about it.
‘If someone shows you a big red button labelled “Do not press under any circumstances,” do
