Seeing Redd

CHAPTER 26

I N HER tent at Boarderland’s most exclusive retreat, the Lady of Diamonds was flexing her imagination under the guidance of a trainer, or enabler.

“You can’t imagine yourself able to fly and then-poof!-you’re flying,” the enabler was explaining. “But you can imagine wings on your body and, if they’re large enough, you’ll be able to fly by virtue of their motion. Like everything in our universe, imagination has its laws.”

Eyeing the modest swirl of imagination energy before her, the Lady of Diamonds didn’t seem to be listening. She was trying hard not to blink.

“Imagination’s laws have been gleaned from the study of the strongest, most talented imaginationists throughout history. A talented imaginationist can transform an inanimate object into a simple life form, such as a gwormmy. But for more complex creatures, such as doggerels of war or jabberwocky, even

the most talented can only create an illusion of them, not the actual life forms themselves. Therefore, when

I speak of conjurings, I am referring mainly to inanimate objects, to successfully complete which, you must first envision your chosen object in intricate detail. And this…” the enabler turned a doubtful eye on the Lady of Diamond’s hovering amoeba of imaginative energy, “…is what you should be doing now. First construct the object in your mind. The better you understand the object, the more knowledge you have of it, the more successful you’ll be. Which is why I wanted you to choose something you know well.”

The energy swirl was beginning to solidify, but into what was unclear.

“Good!” said the enabler. “Excellent! Keep concentrating on the jewelry case in your mind and, by dint of your obvious talent, you will transfer what you see into the physical realm.”

“I’ve always told my husband I was talented.”

“Conjuring is nothing more than focus, Lady Diamond. Imagine-ha ha, I amuse myself-but really, imagine that the light of our suns is Imagination. On any given day, the sunlight is all around us, diffused

and shining on what it will without any influence from us. Now suppose your imagination is a magnifying crystal that channels the sunlight to a specific point with increased intensity until it creates a flame. The flame is your conjured object.”

The Lady of Diamonds’ neck muscles were tensed and trembling. She had gone from trying not to blink to squinting hard, as if the slit of her eyes determined the degree of her mental focus. But her conjured jewelry case resembled nothing so much as four pieces of wood glued together by a toddler.

“The more complex an object,” the imagination enabler said, “the longer the process takes and the more energy that is required. More energy requires a greater imaginative gift. To conjure a chair is easy; to conjure a meticulously engineered aerial craft is significantly more difficult. Those with powerful imaginations seem to intuit complex objects, as they can conjure instantaneously what it would take lesser imaginations days or weeks to conjure, if at all. But anyone can see from this display of your strength-just look at the jewelry case you’ve produced!-that you have a particularly powerful imagination.”

The Lady of Diamonds gazed proudly upon her creation. “It looks exactly like the 104 I have at home,”

she said. “Put them side by side and I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” enthused the enabler. “Being from Wonderland, the name of Alyss Heart will obviously be familiar to you. But what you cannot know, as I don’t like to mention it lest it seem like bragging, is that I was your queen’s imagination enabler when she was a child. Since that time I have enabled many other highly gifted imaginationists, but you, Lady Diamond, are easily the most gifted imaginationist I have ever coached.”

“Well,” the lady said. Was this not further proof that she should be queen instead of Alyss Heart or any

of Wonderland’s other ranking ladies? Should someone as gifted as she not lose herself in reveries of her own stupendousness? Absolutely she should. So the Lady of Diamonds floated away on musings of her magnificence, which was why it took her a moment to realize that her tent had been invaded by the white rook and his small force of pawns and card soldiers.

“Lady Diamond,” the rook said with a sarcastic bow, “by order of Queen Alyss Heart, I hereby take you into custody, to be carried back to Wonderland, where you’re to stand trial for treason and conspiracy

to murder the queen.” “What?!”

The pawns and card soldiers surrounded the lady.

“This is outrageous!” she raged. “Someone’s clearly playing a trick on you, chessman! Do you have any idea how much my vacation package at this retreat costs? Get out of here before I have you arrested!”

The rook threw a grenade at the lady’s feet. She flinched, but instead of a bone-shattering explosion, the grenade’s detonation produced a small cell, one just large enough to contain her.

“But you don’t even have jurisdiction here,” she whined, shaking the porta-prison’s bars. “King Arch is aware of my mission and has granted me all the authority I need.”

“King Arch? That deceitful…Arrest him, why don’t you? He’s to blame for everything. I’m warning you, chessman! Let me out of this thing or proceed at your own risk! I can stop you with the power of my imagination!” The lady squeezed her eyes shut, balled her hands into fists and-

Poosh! A piddling little jewelry case formed. The rook, soldiers, pawns, and imagination enabler stared

at it, wondering what miraculous means of escape it would provide. Then it fell apart.

“Hup,” one of the card soldiers said as he and the others lifted the Lady of Diamonds’ porta-prison between them and carried it out to the waiting smail-transport.

“Somebody notify Lord Diamond!” the lady shrieked, shaking and rattling the bars of her cell. “Lord Diamond knows how to put chessmen in their proper places! Just you wait, Mr. Rook! You’ll face a punishment worse than any you can fathom for this mistake!”

“You and your husband will have plenty of time to discuss my punishment while you await your trials,”

said the rook.

Their memories of the previous night were unreliable, befogged and sketchy, entire chunks of time blacked out by overindulgence. Still, Jack of Diamonds was pretty sure that he had fallen asleep atop a mattress-sized pillow stuffed with the first-growth feathers of tuttle-birds. The Lord of Diamonds was likewise certain that platters of tasty treats and decanters of mind-fuzzing libations had been within arm’s reach when he had drifted to sleep beneath the canopy of an antique Kalaman bed. And both father and son remembered tiring themselves out with dancing, their ears even now ringing from the loud volume of the Boardertonian deejay’s music. How then had they become surrounded by so much blatant industry?

“What’s all this?” the Lord of Diamonds asked, waking from a heavy slumber and reluctantly opening his throbbing eyes.

They appeared to be in a factory. The signs of mass production were all around: conveyor lines, automated assembly arms, laser-solders, racks of intel chips, an army of steel skeletons, some fitted with wire-vein armatures and lab-grown muscle, others plain. On the billowing tent walls: blueprints for building Glass Eyes.

“Where are the ladies and servants?” Jack of Diamonds yawned.

Which was when the white knight, leading a contingent of pawns and card soldiers, marched into the tent. The knight gazed around at the Glass Eyes manufacturing facility-overwhelming corroboration of King Arch’s story, if ever there was.

“Lord Diamond,” he said, “by order of Queen Alyss Heart, I hereby take you into custody, to be carried back to Wonderland, where you are to stand trial for treason and conspiracy to murder the queen.”

“Arrested?” the Lord of Diamonds murmured, backing away and shaking his head. “Treason and murder?”

The knight turned upon the Jack of Diamonds. “And you, sir, being an escapee from the Crystal Mines, are also under arrest. I intend to personally deposit you back where you belong.”

The knight lobbed a pair of grenades-one at Jack’s feet and the other at the lord’s. Foosh! Porta-prisons shot up at the grenades’ points of impact, but-

They contained nothing. Jack could be surprisingly quick for his size, and he’d jumped behind the machine that screwed Glass Eye heads onto Glass Eye bodies. The Lord of Diamonds, meanwhile, was ducking under mechanical arms and stumbling across loading bays. The pawns and card soldiers split into two groups and gave chase, but the lord ran a serpentine course, erratic and nonsensical enough to avoid capture until he sighted an unobstructed path to the tent’s exit. He sprinted toward it, was just a couple strides from freedom when-

“Ugh!”

The white knight dove off a storage rack and tackled him. Out came another grenade and-foosh!-the

Lord of Diamonds was encaged in a porta-prison.

The pawns and card soldiers gathered round, congratulating one another on a mission accomplished. Or mostly accomplished. For in all the rumpus, he of the oversized rump, Jack of Diamonds, had quietly slipped away.