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Ectoplasm Wallahs around for.
Impresses the brass no end. But that's another course.) John, Manesh,
Dipak, and Mike are behaving just like bored junior technical staff on
another week-away-from-the-desk-is-as-good-as-a-holiday training
course. Fred from Accounting looks confused, as if he's mislaid his
brain, and Callie's found a pressing reason to go powder her nose.
Can't say I blame her; this kind of experiment is fun, the same way
that demonstrating a thermite reaction in a chemistry lab is fun—it
can
blow up in your face. I make damn sure that the electrical fire
extinguisher is precisely two paces behind me and one pace to my right.
    "Okay, everybody pay attention. Don't, whatever
happens, touch the grid. Don't, under any circumstances, say anything
once I start. Don't, on pain of your life, step outside the red circle
on the floor—we're on top of an earthed cage here, but if we go
outside
it—"
    Topology is everything. The idea of a summoning
is simple: you create an attractor node at point A. You put the
corresponding antinode at point B. You stand in one of 'em, energize
the circuit, and something appears at the other. The big "gotcha" is
that a human observer is required—you can't do it by remote control.
(Insert some quantum cat mumbo-jumbo about "collapsing the wave
function" and "Wigner's Friend versus the Animal Liberation Front"
here.) Better hope you picked the right circle to stand in, otherwise
you're going to learn far more than you ever wanted to know about
applied topology—like how the universe looks when
you're turned inside-out.
    It's not quite as bad as it sounds. For added
security, you can superimpose the attractor node and the safety cell,
locking in the summoned agency—which means they shouldn't be able to
get to us at the antinode. Which is why Herr Doktor Vohlman mit der
duelling scars unt ze bad attitude has plonked the test bench right in
the middle of the red pentagram painted on the lecture theatre floor
and is enjoining us all to stand tight.
    Of course, to get to the fire extinguisher I'd
have to step out of the circle … 
    "Is this practice approved by the Health and
Safety officer?" Fred asks.
    "Quiet, please." Vohlman shuts his eyes,
obviously psyching himself up for the activation sequence. "Power." He
shoves a knife switch over and a light comes on. "Circuit two." A
button is depressed. "Is there anybody there?"
    Green vapour seems to swirl at the edges of my
vision as I focus on the pentagram of silver wire. Lights glow beneath
it, set in a baseboard made of timber harvested from a (used) gallows;
setup is everything.
    "Three." Vohlman pushes another button, then
pulls a twist of paper out of his pocket. Tearing it, he exposes a
sterile lancet which he shoves into the ball of his left thumb without
hesitation. The hair on the back of my neck is standing on end as he
shakes his hand at the attractor and a bead of blood flicks away from
it, bounces off the air above one wire, rolls back toward the
centre—and hovers a foot above it, vibrating like a liquid ruby
beneath
the fluorescent lights.
    "Is anybody there?" mimics Fred. Abruptly his
face crinkles in a grin. "Good joke! I almost believed it for a
minute!" He reaches out toward the drop of blood and I can feel vast
forces gathering in the air around us—and all of a sudden I can feel a
headache coming on, like the tension before an electrical storm.

    "No!" squeaks Babs, realising it's too late to
stop him even as she speaks.
    I see Vohlman's face. It's a mask of pure
terror: he doesn't dare move a muscle to stop Fred because touching
Fred will only spread the contagion. Fred is already lost and the last
thing you do to someone who's in contact with high tension is grab them
to pull them away—that is, if you do it, it's the last thing you'll ever do.
    Fred stands still, and his jacket sleeve
twitches as if his muscles are writhing underneath it. His hand is over
the attractor, and the drop of blood begins to drift