‘Apparently,’ Courtney said, ‘it decided to pay me back for stopping it getting its first victim. It picked Kyle as its tool because it knew I trusted him. If Nava hadn’t figured it out, I would have been tortured to death by Kyle.’
‘I see… Please, Melissa Connelly, continue. What “stories” are you speaking of?’
‘Well, they’re sort of urban legends really. There have been stories told about the worlds where Harbinger sites have been found for almost as long as there have been spacer tales about the Harbingers. I found a couple of studies on them. The research was done because, well, the spacer tales turned out to have a hint of truth about them, so maybe the urban legends did. The recurring factor is a form of possession. The victims of this have missing periods of time during which they’re entirely unconscious. Not sleeping. Totally unaware of time passing. They suddenly find themselves somewhere unexpected and have no idea how they got there or what they’ve been doing.’
‘What about that thing you mentioned with the possessed lovers?’ Mitsuko asked. ‘Didn’t that just involve missing memories?’
Melissa blushed. ‘Uh, yes. That’s the exception since there generally isn’t some peculiar travel involved. However, the research agrees that those stories are just stories. There was an obscure porn vid made in one thirty-six with that basic plotline. It’s thought that embellishments of that are the source of all the, um, saucy ghost stories.’
‘I see.’
‘A general summary of the papers on the subject suggests that there is something to the Harbinger spirit idea. They may really exist. Certainly, no one has been able to satisfactorily explain some quite well-documented incidents and these incidents only happen on worlds which used to be Harbinger colonies.’
‘Shinden was never a Harbinger colony,’ Darius pointed out.
‘No,’ Mitsuko said, ‘but we recently took receipt of an active Harbinger artefact which could have contained some kind of immaterial entity. Lambert Stenger was possessed almost immediately after turning the thing off.’
‘Foolish,’ Naomi said.
‘Yes, but he’s paid a rather steep price for his curiosity. His wife won’t, no, she can’t see him. She’s been emotionally destroyed and it’s possible that she’ll never be able to go near him again.’ Mitsuko looked down at the table for a second, frowning. Then she looked up at Melissa. ‘So, there is at least apocryphal evidence to support the existence of these spirits.’
‘Yes,’ Melissa replied. ‘There’s considerably less evidence for direct action by them, but the possession stories have a reasonably solid basis in fact. There are two Harbinger sites which were uncovered due to someone finding themselves there, kilometres from where they last have a memory of. It’s like the Harbingers don’t want to be lost in time, so they pointed someone at the sites.’
‘It’s preposterous,’ Darius said. ‘But… I suppose if it fits the facts…’
‘Exactly,’ Courtney said. ‘I don’t want to believe it myself, but we don’t have a better theory.’
‘Besides,’ Melissa said, ‘we’re magicians. We make things happen every day that scientists would have said were impossible before the discovery of metaphysics. We know the Harbingers had magical technology far beyond our capabilities. Who’s to say they couldn’t somehow transcend the need for physical bodies?’
‘What can we do about this?’ Naomi asked.
‘Lambert Stenger is currently trying to uncover any secrets the remains of his artefact might be hiding,’ Courtney said. ‘It’s not easy for him, considering what that thing cost him, but he’s working on it. We have someone examining old metaphysics papers. There was some research done into “spirit magic” back in the early days. We’re hoping that might produce some results we can use.’
‘He’s still working on it,’ Melissa said. Neither of them were mentioning a name because Darius would likely blow a fuse if he discovered a first year on the support stream was doing the work. ‘He’s hoping to have some results tonight.’
‘Good,’ Mitsuko said. ‘We need a method of containing this thing.’
‘No,’ Nava said. ‘What we need is a method of killing it. The mistake the Harbingers made was that they locked up some criminal, an insane serial murderer. It got out and it’s just started up where it left off. We work out how to end it, and then we show it absolutely no mercy.’
‘I’m not sure the metaphysics specialists in the faculty would agree. They’d say it was of crucial scientific importance.’
‘They can tell that to Candide Stenger.’
~~~
Lambert Stenger looked uncomfortable as he walked into Mitsuko’s apartment. He looked downtrodden, defeated, but those emotions were kind of expected of a man whose wife thought had almost tortured her to death. The discomfort was because he had been invited to a single student’s apartment. Of course, he was hardly there alone with her, but…
‘Perhaps we should have done this in the student council room,’ Mitsuko said. It was getting a little crowded in her lounge. Nava was perched on the arm of one of the sofas, but that still left five seats to find. ‘Oh well, we’re all here now. Sit beside Kyle, please, Mister Lambert Stenger. I’m sure he won’t mind scooting closer to Courtney.’ Mitsuko was standing having taken the job of chairwoman.
‘Never let it be said that I won’t sit closer to an attractive woman,’ Kyle said.
‘Don’t think I won’t put you on double patrol duty,’ Courtney replied, though her heart was not really in the banter.
‘Uh, let’s skip the formalities under the circumstances,’ Lambert said. ‘If you keep calling me “Mister Lambert Stenger,” this meeting will continue until tomorrow morning.’
‘Fine,’ Mitsuko replied. ‘If everyone is okay with that, let’s proceed. Melissa, for those not present at the council meeting earlier, a twenty-word summary of your findings, if you would.’
‘Okay,’ Melissa said. She pursed her lips briefly. ‘Research suggests that the idea of immaterial entities, spirits, on Harbinger colony worlds is not without foundation.’
‘Admirable. I think you have two or three words spare.’
‘They’re probably real.’
‘I was unable to find any research which confirmed that,’ Rochester said. ‘However, that seems to be because spirit magic,
