Castle War

Thirty-four World

He crouched in the tall grass between two fiberglass buildings. Two soldiers walked by on the company street between the tents and the buildings. He waited till they passed, then stood up and began running his fingers over the outline of a window on the side of the building.

He knew Alice was inside. Clairvoyance? Call it “knowing the location of things and people that matter.” This was his magic; he had discovered it, so far as he knew. He could invent the nomenclature.

The window fell out, its screws and washers loose and falling free. He caught it and put it carefully and quietly down.

“Alice?” he called softly.

She came to the window. Inside was a storage space converted to a cell. She came through the window headfirst and he eased her to the ground.

They crouched in the weeds. More soldiers passed on either side of them. Voices. There didn’t seem to be any way to get out of the compound without being seen.

He suddenly had a wild idea. Why not?

“Alice, listen. We’re going to get up and walk out of this camp. No one will see us. They won’t be able to see us. Understand?”

She nodded.

He took her hand and they stood. He led her out of the weeds and onto the street. Two soldiers were coming toward them. He steered a path past them, not hurrying, trying to be nonchalant, confident, cool.

The soldier on the right looked at them, slowed, and frowned. He stopped and narrowed his eyes. He shook his head. Then he looked away and caught up with his companion.

They kept walking. Three more soldiers passed them; there was no reaction at all.

They walked right out of the camp, heading toward the VTOL field. He had another wild idea.

The cockpit of the VTOL was carpeted with dials and gauges, all incomprehensible to him. It didn’t matter. He sat in the pilot seat and grabbed the controls. Alice sat beside him. He reached for the hatch and locked the compartment.

He closed his eyes and thought about gremlins. Little gremlins who knew every rivet and bolt in the craft, who knew its every function and capacity. He was in command of those gremlins, those little imps. He would tell them what to do and when to do it. They nattered and mumbled, crawling all over the craft, climbing on the wings, getting into the engines, squirming through the wiring. They were everywhere, and he commanded them.

He set them to work.

Start the engine.

The starter motor cranked, turbine blades began to whir, then picked up speed. Fuel pumps pumped, and kerosene ignited with a roar.

Take her up.

Slowly the craft began to lift, its directional engine nozzles funneling the exhaust toward the ground. The vectored blast provided stability and safety, creating a magic carpet of force that defied gravity, working its own kind of magic.

He put his hand on the thrust lever and the other on the stick. He slid his feet onto the pedals. He didn’t know how they worked, but it didn’t matter, either.

Guide me.

He turned the craft east and vectored forward. The craft gained altitude and speed. He pushed forward on the throttle, and the nozzles automatically rotated toward the horizontal as the airspeed increased, their attitude computer-controlled.

The craft rose over the trees and headed for the darkening sky. He looked at Alice. She was smiling, confident as ever. He smiled back, then glued his eyes to the instruments he didn’t understand.

He found the altimeter. It already showed five hundred something — feet, meters? The airspeed indicator was marked out in tens, and the needle pointed to one hundred. He pushed the throttle forward, keeping the foot pedals even. The craft jumped forward into full aerodynamic flight. Now the craft was a jet airplane. He didn’t know how to fly a glider, let alone a jet airplane.

But for a master magician everything is easy. Let your familiars do the work. Anything goes. Pumpkin, become a carriage. In you go, Cinderella, honey. You’re late for the ball.

They streaked east, deserted farmland rolling beneath them. It wasn’t long before pursuit craft came up behind, faster than he had thought of going. He pushed both the throttle and the stick forward, and the craft dove and picked up speed.

His pursuit mimicked him. The lead craft fired a preliminary burst, nothing serious, just letting him know that they were around. They probably didn’t want to lose an expensive VTOL. After all, where could he go? They’d just follow until he either gave up or was forced to land.

But he wasn’t worried. The more he did and the longer he did it, the more powerful he felt, and the more things he felt himself capable of doing. He thought he’d try some more experiments. This aircraft had a certain operational speed capacity — or “capability,” as engineers insisted on saying. Nothing could push it over that limit. But what would happen, say, if from out of nowhere, extra fuel materialized in the combustion chamber and added to the mixture? Just that. A little extra fuel. Like an afterburner. Whoosh.

The craft shot forward, and the flashing lights of the pursuing gunships dwindled.

That had been most satisfying. Keep it up, gremlins. The bleak countryside rolled by, darkening in the twilight. He banked to the right, using the pedals and the stick, correcting course. The portal was … where? Ahead. Another few miles yet.

The pursuit was catching up. Apparently these craft had real afterburners. Yes, now he understood. How about a little more fuel in the combustion chamber. No, let’s not do something that might tempt physical reality. Don’t want to overheat the chamber or cause it to explode. Do something else.

Invisibility? It had worked before. But maybe he couldn’t do it for something as big as the aircraft. Anyway, the pursuit probably had infrared scopes and heat-seeking missiles.

He imagined what they would see through those scopes when they looked, and what the missiles would see with their heat-hungry eyes.

Multiple images! A hundred targets in their sights. A thousand! Diverging now, all heading in different directions, scattering to the winds.

That is apparently what they saw. The pursuing ships fell back in confusion, then split off in different directions.

He continued on. The portal was below. He powered down and the computers took over, rotating the nozzles and laying down the magic carpet.

The craft floated to the ground, blasting the tall hay in the twilight. The landing gear deployed and the craft settled. The whine of the engines died.

“We’re here, Alice.”

Alice looked out at a lonely hillside. She didn’t see the standing rectangle of darkness near the craft.

“There,” he said. “See that? It’s the entrance to my world.”

They got out and walked toward it. A night wind was up. It was almost dark.

A VTOL came screaming out of the dusk, guns chattering.

He became angry. He had had enough. He raised his hand, finger pointing. He knew now that he could do anything, that he could, if he wanted, be a god in this world, a world that was beyond strangeness, beyond hope.

A bolt of yellow fire left his finger and lanced toward the attacking craft, enveloping it in blinding luminescence.

The VTOL blossomed into a fireball. The burning wreckage fell out of the crepuscular sky.

They watched the dry brush burn.

“I didn’t want to do that,” he said. “But I did. I’m only human.”

“You did what you had to do,” she said.

They stood before the portal. He could see the stone of the castle’s walls.

He grasped her shoulders. “Alice, do you want to come with me? This is not my world. I have to leave it, and I won’t be back. This is your world. Do you want to leave it forever, leave it in the hands of InnerVoice? Or do you want to stay and change it, fight InnerVoice?”

The wind blew the hay around and stirred the trees, the sound almost drowning out the soft chirp of crickets.

“I want to stay,” she said.

“I thought you would. Listen to me. I’m a great magician, and I’m going to cast a spell on you. It will be a very special kind of spell. I will give you the gift of immunity. They can never saddle you with InnerVoice again. Your body will fight it off. You will be immune to it. But there’s more. You will be able to pass on this ability to anyone you meet, anyone you come in contact with. It will be like passing on a disease, but it will be a benevolent disease. And the people you give it to will be able to pass it on to other people. It will be a gift that will be shared among people all over this world. In time, InnerVoice will be eradicated, and there will be freedom. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Gene.”

“Good. I’m going to leave you in a moment.”

A few stars were out. The Big Dipper was up in the northern sky. He followed the pointers to the polar star, then turned east.

He pointed. “The Outforces are that way. I want you to get into the aircraft and fly about thirty miles east.”

“But I can’t —”

“Yes, you can.” He laid a hand on her forehead. He imagined all the power and all the knowledge that he had flowing from him and into her through the channel of his arm. A tingling went through him, and she gave a little shiver.

“I’ve just given you the power. This kind of thing could happen in this world only once. The power comes from some kind of flux, some kind of flow between two very different universes when there’s a tiny opening between them, as there is now. I don’t know how long it will last. I don’t think it will last very long, Alice, so you must leave now.”

She drew close to him. “Thank you. Thank you for all you’ve done. I’ll always remember you. You gave me my name.”

They embraced. Then she turned and went to the craft.

He watched her get in and close the hatch. She looked as though she did it every day.

The engines started and the exhaust beat the hay around. The craft levitated straight up, rotated its nose toward the east, and moved off. It flew over the trees and out of sight. He listened to the sound of her engines fading in the night.

He looked at the stars again. They looked the same as they did on the world in which he was born.

He turned and walked back into the castle, his powers fading with every step.

Back to reality.