A Logical Magician

33

“You want to go where?” asked Simon, late that afternoon.

“Back to campus,” said Jack. “Tonight.”

“That’s what I thought you said,” declared the changeling. “At least, now I know I’m not going crazy. You are.”

Jack laughed. He and his friends sat clustered around Witch Hazel’s tiny kitchen table. The addition of Fritz Grondark made conditions even more crowded than before. But, somehow they all fit in the front room of the mobile home.

“I’m tired of being chased, Simon,” said Jack. “Ever since Merlin and Megan were kidnapped, I’ve been on the run. Von Bern and the Border Redcaps have kept me off balance so I can’t interfere with their devilish scheme. Well, the time has come to stop running and start fighting.”

“That’s my type of talk,” said Cassandra.

Fritz Grondark grunted in agreement. The dwarf, who had followed them back to the trailer camp in a massive tow truck, carried an immense monkey wrench hooked to his belt. Fritz made no secret of the fact he intended to use it on the skulls of any Border Redcaps, distant relatives of trolls, he encountered.

“The other day,” Jack continued, “Hazel remarked that perhaps science and sorcery are actually the same but we’re just too ignorant to realize it. There’s a great deal of truth in what she said. I know how to defeat Von Bern and the Border Redcaps. But the equipment I need is at the college.”

“Can’t we buy the stuff?” asked Simon. “Or build it?”

“If we had the time,” replied Jack. “But we don’t. Tomorrow evening is Beltane. Trust me, Simon, raiding the college laboratories is our only chance to obtain the proper tools.”

“For what?” asked Hazel. “You still haven’t told us what weapons you intend to use against the Huntsman.”

“Light defeats darkness,” said Jack, smiling. “Order defeats chaos.”

“Water washes mud,” said Simon. “Which is about as clear as you’ve been lately. What does it matter, anyway? We still don’t know where to find the German and his prisoners.”

“Oh,” said Jack. “I forgot to tell you. Right before von Bern attacked us on the highway, I figured out where he’s holding the women captive.”

For a moment, no one said anything. Then, the trailer rocked with the collective shout, “WHAT?!”

“Sorry,” said Jack. Actually, he wasn’t the least bit ashamed. After all the half-told stories, hints, and unexplained remarks made by the supernaturals, it felt pretty good to catch them completely by surprise.

“Once I combined all the clues, the location was obvious. January told us that the Huntsman bragged that his prisoners were beneath the feet of the police. That implied an underground hideaway. Megan mentioned a huge chamber, so I knew it couldn’t be the basement of a warehouse. All of the kidnappings took place in the Loop and nowhere else, so it seemed logical to assume there was a reason for that. It was then that I remembered that when Merlin was kidnaped, no one saw his captors leave the building. Combining the two facts, it was obvious that they hadn’t.”

“Huh” said Simon. “Where did they go, then? Underneath?”

“Exactly,” said Jack. “The Border Redcaps carried Megan and her father to the basement of the tower and then below it. As they did with all the women they captured.”

He drew in a deep breath. “I phoned the main library information center an hour ago and had them do a quick search for me. Each and every one of the Loop buildings where a disappearance took place was once connected to the old underground tunnel transportation network beneath the Loop. That’s where von Bern’s hideout is located.”

“The same tunnels that flooded a few years back?” said Hazel. “The ones used in the 1920’s to bring goods into the Loop from the railroad yards?”

“That’s them,” said Jack. “The tunnels are all but forgotten now, but at the turn of the century they were considered an engineering marvel. The dirt excavated in their construction was used as landfill on Lake Michigan and became the site of the Field Museum.”

“Excuse me,” said Cassandra, “but I’m lost. I’ve only lived in Chicago for a few years. You’re not talking about subway tunnels?”

“Those were constructed years later,” said Jack. “These tunnels preceded them by decades. They were narrow passageways, just wide enough for a railway handcar. Barely lit, they were not intended for commuters but for commercial goods.”

Jack paused, putting his thoughts in order. “At the end of the 19th century, traffic in the Loop was so bad that merchants were having difficulty getting their goods from the railroad yards on the south side into downtown. The abundance of wagons, carriages and trolley cars on the streets made deliveries nearly impossible. Goods could only be transported late at night, which made most store owners quite unhappy. That all changed when a system of underground tunnels were built, linking the railroad yards with the Loop.

“Goods were unloaded from the incoming freight trains, transferred to handcars, and then sent from the train station to a central receiving depot deep beneath the central commuter railroad station downtown. There, the products were sorted and forwarded to their final destinations, again by handcar, through branch tunnels that snaked all through the Loop. Nearly a hundred different buildings were serviced by this unique underground delivery service. Each stop had its own receiving dock, located in the subbasement of the structure.

“The network even ducked beneath the Chicago River and supplied stores on the near north side as well. It stayed in service until the early 1930’s, when shipping by trucks replaced most railroad deliveries.”

“The tunnels were closed and abandoned,” said Hazel. “The owners shut off the power, but otherwise left the system intact and undisturbed. During World War Two, I recall talk of opening them up and using them for POW camps. What a crazy idea. Later, in the 1960’s, an alderman proposed they be converted into giant bomb shelters. Happily, no one took him seriously.”

“A few years ago,” said Jack, “as a result of a series of bureaucratic blunders centering around bridge repairs, a hole was punched in the top of the tunnel passing beneath the river. Water rushed into the system and flooded the basements of half the buildings in the Loop. It knocked out electricity throughout the near north side. The accident nearly shut down the entire city, and things didn’t return to normal for weeks. Among other problems, the flood forced the closing of the subway.”

“That I remember,” said Cassandra. “I thought they plugged up the system with cement.”

“Not really,” said Jack. “The city engineers closed off the section beneath the river, but the rest of the network remains open. And von Bern and his captives are down there.”

“Any idea where?”

“Megan mentioned a huge chamber. The only place that fits that description is the old central shipping depot. According to the city librarians, the center resembles a gigantic amphitheater a hundred feet beneath the streets. Doesn’t that sound like the perfect arena for conducting a blood sacrifice to an ancient God?”

“I’m convinced,” said Cassandra. “How do we stop it?”

’Tonight we raid the campus and get the necessary equipment for my secret weapon,” said Jack. “It’s all stuff available only in laboratories. Tomorrow, we go shopping. There’s a bunch of things I want to buy for additional protection.

“After that, we head underground. The sacrifice is scheduled for May Day Eve. We’ll attack during the daytime, when the forces of darkness are at their weakest. Still, I suspect von Bern and his Border Redcaps are expecting us to show up. They’ll be ready and waiting no matter when we arrive. But this time, we’re going to be the ones with a few surprises.”