“Fascinating,” said the centaur, tossing the depressor into the whirring maw of a recycling chute. “You don’t have any of the goblin mechanisms: oil glands, spark teeth, and so on….”
Lazuli waited politely for a conclusion to this line of thought, but apparently this was not forthcoming, as the centaur began drawing a complicated 3-D model of Lazuli’s throat in the smart space over his desk.
“And so on…?” she prompted eventually.
Foaly jerked as though he’d forgotten she was there. It was classic absentminded-genius behavior.
“Oh yes. And so on. Where was I? You don’t have the mechanisms, you see, to…” The centaur wiggled his fingers furiously in front of his mouth, which Lazuli assumed was supposed to represent whooshing flames. “So it was magical. The entire episode. I have never seen anything like it—though I suppose I didn’t see it this time, either, but Holly assures me it did in fact take place, which is why I injected you with the magic-suppressor. That tiny chip will prevent you from accidentally vaporizing your squadron during a briefing, which I think would be bad.”
“Yes,” agreed Lazuli. “Very bad.”
Foaly nodded. “Indeed. So, the chip keeps everyone safe. Try not to get electrocuted and short it out.”
“I’ll try,” said Lazuli.
Foaly paused and fixed Lazuli with a curious stare. “I do apologize for staring, but you are a hybrid, and a pixel at that. Doubly blessed, I would say. You are, in my opinion, the next step in fairy evolution. Absolutely fascinating from a scientific point of view, though not everyone shares my perspective. Hybrids are not even considered one of the official fairy families.” He winked at her. “Neither are centaurs, but who wants to be official, eh? Or even normal? Whatever that is.”
Lazuli was amazed.
For as long as she could remember, there had been supposedly enlightened fairies who looked down on her because she was half pixie and half elf. She had not been expecting prejudice in this office, considering the esteem in which Commodore Short held the Magitek director, but she had not been expecting such kind words, either.
Lazuli shook her head. “No,” she said. “Who wants to be normal?”
But the truth was, she had ached to be normal for the longest time.
“So, Specialist Heitz,” said Foaly, “the next step is an MRI, if you’re up for it?”
MRI, thought Holly. Magical Resonance Imaging. The next step in turning magic into a science. What this building is all about. Am I to be their latest subject? Jammed full of needles and radioactive fluids?
When Foaly wasn’t self-obsessing, he could at times be quite perceptive, and this proved to be one of those occasions.
“Don’t fret, Specialist. We’re not going to turn you into some kind of laboratory experiment, if that’s what you’re worried about. We are not human, after all. We need to find out what you are capable of and what damage you might have done to yourself internally. Shooting flames from your mouth can’t be good for one’s tooth enamel.”
The centaur laughed, and his warbling titters were contagious enough to make Lazuli smile at least.
“All right,” she said. “What harm can it do?”
“None whatsoever,” pronounced Foaly. “You’ll be out in a jiffy.”
This, they both knew, was simply a comforting platitude, a turn of phrase often employed by doctors to put their patients at ease, but in this case it turned out to be the actual truth, though not in the way Foaly expected.
Foaly slid Lazuli into the MRI machine as though she were a torpedo being loaded into its tube. As her bed glided along the tracks, the centaur disappeared from view except for his flanks, but Lazuli could still hear his voice through the speakers mounted inside the machine.
“Are you comfy in there, Specialist? Probably not. The MRI wasn’t built with comfort in mind. At least you can fit. We scanned a young centaur last week. Poor fellow was trussed up like a farm animal. He had a panic attack halfway through and kicked out four of the sensors. I have designed a new, more spacious model, which is in production at the moment. What use is that to me? I hear you cry. None whatsoever, I suppose, unless you have to come back for another dose.”
“Another dose?” asked Lazuli. “Dose of what?”
Foaly knelt on his forelegs so his long face appeared in the light at the end of the tunnel. “Just a turn of phrase,” he said, his voice seeming to come from everywhere. “In fact, we’re going to create a magnetic field around you and do a very basic scan until I find the source of your SPAM.”
“Spam?” asked Lazuli.
“Spontaneous Appearance of Magic,” explained the centaur. “Not my finest acronym, but I just made it up this second. That’s how few cases we get. Your amazing skin means I have to proceed slowly with the MRI.”
Foaly was justified in referring to Lazuli’s skin as amazing, even though as a scientist he probably should have been more clinical in his descriptions. In fairness to the centaur, his notes in Lazuli’s file were less flowery, as we see below:
Appearance-wise, the subject Specialist Lazuli Heitz’s hybrid identity presents as follows:
Skin: Aquamarine. Following the coloring of Atlantean pixies, with the sunflower-yellow markings of Amazonian elves (this sunflower camouflage is rendered ineffective by the blue skin)
Eyes: Blue (“unsettlingly piercing,” according to one convicted felon who broke down and confessed after being in an interview room with her for thirty seconds)
Height: Thirty-six inches (still enduring late-stage growth)
Skull circumference: Thirteen inches. In line with elfin norm.
Features: Sharp planes of cheekbone and jaw (elfin). Pointed ears.
Moodwise, the pixel seems slightly anxious, but this would seem to be no more than the average case of white-coat syndrome. I have assurance from a reliable source that she is highly intelligent and more than competent in the field. The subject is not aware of the following plan, but Commodore Short has proposed that Specialist Heitz be fast-tracked to management over the next few decades, provided we can nail down this spontaneous-magic-manifestation issue.
Inside the MRI, Lazuli relaxed a little bit. She didn’t know exactly why she had been anxious in the first place. She had never worried about medical procedures before, but then again, she had never been in an MRI tube before. The only real procedure she’d had to endure was a healing from paramedic pixies when she’d fractured a fibula during a combat exercise. And even then, she hadn’t been worried. It was the unknown, she realized, that scared her. A broken leg was a broken leg, but she had a condition now: SPAM. Almost nothing was known about it. There were only a dozen or so recorded cases, and three had resulted in accidental fatalities.
Foaly is right, she decided. This magic needs to be suppressed.
“These machines used to make quite the racket,” said the centaur. “But we installed some mufflers last year, and now it runs smoother than a purring kitten.”
“Great,” said Lazuli, but as pixies and cats were mortal enemies, this did not comfort her much.
“If I were you,” said Foaly, opening the door, “I would take a little nap. In fifteen minutes, I will come back and ease your mind with some answers.” And Lazuli heard the soft swoosh of the door closing behind her centaur consultant.