The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister, Landon Wark [10 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

He stopped in mid-mutter.

His finger traced the rows of figures, first one and then the other, one greenhouse after the other and then back again. His brow furrowed and he shook his head, running back to the environmentals. He shook his head and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Outside, the sun had long since set and the crescent moon was shining in through the frost rimmed window of the lab. Once again he shook his head in frustration.

“Two hours shouldn't make that much of a difference.”

It was night. Cold, dry and clear. A few people dared to venture outside, sipping at the chill, crystal air. In the light of the street lamps they danced across some of the packed, snow covering the black ice that lay on the sidewalks, blissfully ignored by a city that bowed to the whim of the automobile. Several of those breezed along beside the walkers, exhaust billowing white into the cold night.

From inside the scene below took on the likeness of a snow globe, one that was far too large to shake, but entertaining to look at none-the-less. The few people on the street would be unnerving to be around at this time of night and in this part of the city, but from above they had an almost friendly air that brought a tiny smile to the unfamiliar lips of their observer.

Anyone looking up at the window of the laboratory, or anyone walking through it for that matter would believe that it was deserted; that anyone who worked there, looking after the machines that fed and watered the plants that were the sole reason the building existed had wisely gone home for the night. Of course they would have been wrong. For if the lights had been on at that moment, anyone looking up at the window would have seen the thin, unimposing figure standing at the center of the window, staring down with judgmental eyes, arms folding over his chest. He tapped his foot impatiently; ear straining to hear the alarm of the timer that he hoped would sound at any moment.

After several seconds the timer beeped and Jonah sprang into action. His lips moved, vocal chords thrumming at barely a whisper as he pulled a single slide out of the square jar of solution on the bench. Wiping it twice with a tissue he carefully placed it on the microscope stage, voice asking it silently, with words that anyone else would have described as nonsensical, to yield its secrets to him. After several seconds of staring intently through the eyepieces his shoulders slumped, his hands loosed on the knobs and a sigh let out of his troubled lips. He leaned back and sighed once more, putting his hand to his eyes to rub the sleep out of them. There were a few more mutterings, more nonsense words that he couldn't keep from coming out.

Jonah grasped a blue notebook and jotted a grim message to the future, when light would peer in through the window and the people who worked in the laboratory would return. He waited another several seconds, mind trying to decide between staying another few minutes to double check, possibly missing his one means of getting home and leaving immediately, possibly letting hours of work have been in vain. With a sigh he decided and he pressed his eyes to the microscope once again.

This time he took longer. His brow furrowed suddenly and his hands tightened on the knobs, moving the slide about the stage. Anyone watching him would have been concerned, for his mouth began churning out new nonsense, flinging it around the room with near abandon. But, after a while he settled, removing his eyes from the eyepiece, furrowing his brow even deeper. A strange thought began to form in the back of his head, in a place where all ideas to be forgotten as soon as they are thought are formed, the refuse area of the brain.

He scowled, suddenly aware of the ticking of the clock on the wall. Struck from the chair he grasped another book at his side, this one hard, heavy and its slick cover nicked and scratched from innumerable droppings. This he shoved into a bag slung over the chair, barely remembering to grab the coat hanging on the rack nearest the door and tugging it over his arms as he waited impatiently on the impossibly slow elevator.

The bus door hissed open and he and the driver made tired acknowledgements; two warriors of the night hours saluting on their battlefield. Both knew that there would be no further conversation even though they were the only two present. He merely slipped his bag onto the seat in the back, took the huge hard book out of the largest pocket and sat, reading for the entire trip.

All the while, as the streetlights brushed by the window, unnoticed by his tired eyes and unremarked on by his muttering mouth, the refuse area of his brain remained uncleared and every once in a while, even though his conscious mind would never admit to it, that part of his brain that still clung to the mutterings of his youth could not help but think that back in the laboratory he had witnessed something entirely amazing.

“And what did you do today, Jonah?”

The voice on the other end of the line was somewhat distant, as if otherwise engaged. Jonah shifted the receiver under his chin and slumped back in his chair, the only piece of furniture in the tiny bachelor apartment other than his bed and a small table that doubled as a nightstand. His brain churned over the reasons he made these weekly calls, unable to come up with anything other than guilt.

“The same as always,” he breathed.

As was always the case during this time every week, in addition to this actual conversation, there was a second,