The Reign of the Brown Magician

Chapter Fourteen

“It’s creepy,” Carleton Miletti complained. “I know all this stuff, and I don’t know how or why, or what half of it means.”

“I don’t care what any of it means,” Margaret Thompson answered. “I just want to take Angie and go home.”

“In that case, Ms. Thompson,” Major Johnston said from the doorway, “I think we can oblige you.”

The five looked up, startled.

“Are you giving up the project?” Aldridge asked.

“No, not at all,” Johnston said. “We may want to call you back again, if anything develops. For now, though, events seem to be at a standstill, and there’s no reason to inconvenience all of you.”

“So you’re sending us home?” Miletti asked.

Johnston hesitated; his mouth twisted wryly. “No, Mr. Miletti,” he said. “We’re saying that Ms. Thompson can take her daughter and go home, if she wants, and Mr. Aldridge and Mr. Blaisdell can go, as well, if they choose-we’ll provide transportation right to their doors, and an escort if they want, as well as a lump-sum payment as compensation for the time and inconvenience we’ve put them to. But they don’t have to go-we’d be just as pleased if they stayed here.”

“They? What about me?” Miletti demanded.

“Well, Mr. Miletti,” Johnston said, “we do want to keep one contact available at all times, just in case, and you’ve been so successful that we’d prefer it to be you.” Before Miletti could protest, Johnston raised a hand. “We won’t insist; you’re a free citizen, and if you walk out that door right now I won’t stop you. However, I would advise against it.”

“Why?”

“Because we would find it necessary to ask other governmental agencies to keep a very close eye on you, Mr. Miletti. The I.R.S., for example. And your local police. And of course, the FBI is already involved in this operation.”

“You’re threatening me with harassment, in front of witnesses!”

Johnston didn’t answer that; instead, he went on, “I’m sure that we can come to some comfortable arrangement; we don’t insist that you be here, only that you be available on a moment’s notice, and that you talk regularly with one of our people. I understand you live not far from here; do you have a portable phone? If not, we’ll provide one. And a pager. That should be more comfortable than wearing a wire at all times, don’t you think?”

Miletti stared at him in horror.

* * * *

“I still don’t see why you won’t send me home, Mr. Brown,” Wilkins said.

“I told you, it’s nothing personal,” Brown answered edgily. “It’s just that I’ve sent someone into the Empire to get something I want, and I don’t want to risk you interfering.”

“Why the hell would I interfere?”

“No reason,” Pel admitted. “I’m just being cautious.”

Wilkins thought he was being a good bit more than cautious, but decided it wouldn’t do any good to say so again. They had been through this argument several times over the last few days, to no avail.

At least this time he’d gotten something vaguely resembling an explanation; up until now, Brown had refused to give any reason at all.

He’d been willing to talk about almost anything else-Wilkins had eventually got the whole story of how Pel Brown had defeated Shadow and become Pelbrun the Brown Magician, told piece by piece and gradually assembled into a fairly coherent whole-but this was the first time he’d said anything about sending someone else into the Empire.

What in all the worlds could the absolute ruler of an entire universe want from the Empire? Why from the Empire, and not from Earth? Pel was from Earth; wouldn’t that be where he’d want something from?

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave the room now, Wilkins,” Brown said.

Wilkins stared at the polychrome glare for a moment, then shrugged. “Let me know when you can send me home, all right?” he said. Then he turned and walked out, not through the side door that led to the fortress living quarters, but through the big double door that led to the stairs and down to the grand entrance hall.

“I’m taking a walk,” he announced. Not that Brown had asked.

Wilkins wanted a breath of fresh air. He’d have to settle for the nasty stuff that covered Shadowmarsh, which was foul even by the standards of this unpleasant world, but at least he’d be out of doors.

* * * *

“It’s honest work,” Best said with a shrug. He dropped another handful of berries into his bucket.

“It may be honest, and it’s certainly work, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Begley replied, as he untangled his trousers from the thorns of a berry bush. “How long do we wait? What if Poole didn’t make it back, or whoever’s bringing our orders gets killed on the way here? What if he can’t find us, because we’re down here in the bogs picking berries?”

“I give it a month,” Best replied. “If we haven’t heard anything by then, we pack it in and go back to the rendezvous.”

Begley looked at him silently for a moment, then announced, “I’m going back up to the highway, to see if I can see anything.”

“Please yourself,” Best said, plucking another handful.

* * * *

For a moment, Pel considered opening a portal to Earth and sending a fetch, or maybe Susan, to bring back some clothes and toiletries. Getting a place ready for Nancy and Rachel, complete with familiar clothes and belongings, would keep him occupied, keep his mind off the delays. The simulacra in the Empire seemed to be taking a long time to deliver the bodies.

But then, he was impatient, he knew he was impatient, and after all, they weren’t necessarily even on the right planet. The Galactic Empire had faster-than-light travel-in their universe there was apparently no reason not to-but it still wasn’t anywhere near instantaneous, and each of the thousands of inhabited planets was, if not as big as all of Earth, at least the size of Mars.

It might be weeks, or months, before he had his wife’s corpse available to resuscitate. Setting up a room for her now would just add to the frustration. And he’d have to resist the temptation to let the Nancy simulacrum use things-he was constantly fighting the urge to treat her as Nancy, or to try to turn her into a closer substitute for Nancy.

Besides, he reminded himself, he had an appointment. That was why he had sent Wilkins away-it was time to check on Peter Gregory, to see what progress was being made.

He worked quickly; the portal-opening procedure, which Shadow and the other wizards would have called a spell, had become very familiar in the last few days. He twisted his perceptions through the matrix, in a direction that wasn’t conceivable to anyone but a matrix wizard, and found the weak spot between realities.

Gregory was waiting; the instant the portal opened, he stepped through.

He looked worried, and Pel felt suddenly nervous. Simulacra weren’t prone to worry-generally, they just went along with whatever happened, untroubled by guilt, responsibility, or fear. Pel had noticed that first in the imitation Nancy, who would agree to anything he proposed-he suspected that she would have smiled and nodded and obeyed if he ordered her to cut her own throat. Gregory and Shadow’s other spies had all behaved similarly, as if their lives, being artificial creations, had no real value.

Maybe it was because they’d had no childhoods. Maybe it was something inherent in the matrix magic. Pel didn’t know, and didn’t really care; he’d simply observed that the characteristic was there.

So how could Gregory be worried?

“Master,” Gregory said, “Felton’s been captured.”

Pel blinked, then asked, “Who’s Felton?”

“One of our agents,” Gregory replied. “Augustus Felton. Shadow replaced him about two years ago. He’s a military records clerk. Balding, mid-fifties, overweight…”

“That’s enough,” Pel interrupted. “How’d it happen?”

“As nearly as we can determine,” Gregory explained, “Felton was checking through the files, trying to find where your wife’s remains were, and when he couldn’t find what he wanted in the regular files he tried to get into the records of Imperial Intelligence, and got caught in a restricted area.”

“He’s in prison, then?”

“We don’t know where he is-Imperial Intelligence operates very secretively.”

“That figures.” Pel stared at Gregory for a moment, trying to think. Then he shrugged; despite his two-week stay at Base One, he didn’t know what the Empire was like, and Gregory did. “Now what?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Gregory said. “Whatever you tell us to do. I’m sorry Felton failed you.”

“Not your fault,” Pel said. He didn’t see where this was really a big problem, and he wondered why Gregory had looked so concerned. “You tell everyone to get on with it and get me those bodies, and to be more careful, that’s all. And if you can find Felton and get him out, that’s fine, but it isn’t important. Finding the bodies, that’s what’s important!”

Gregory nodded, his expression again cheerful. “Yes, O Great One,” he said with a bow.

He turned, and Pel watched him vanish back through the portal.

It occurred to Pel, a little belatedly, that perhaps he should have ordered Gregory, and through him the others, to keep the search for the bodies quiet-a simulacrum would gladly die rather than disobey orders, or at least so Gregory had assured him, so he wouldn’t have had to worry about Felton breaking under interrogation.

But he hadn’t given such orders.

Well, Felton would probably figure out for himself that he was supposed to keep quiet.

And if the Empire did find out that Pel wanted the bodies, so what?

* * * *

Celia Howe was not stupid; quite the contrary. She could hardly have risen as far as she had in Imperial Intelligence if she were a fool. All the same, she came very close to making a serious error regarding the proper disposition of the information received from telepathic interrogation of the records clerk, Augustus Felton.

It would have been a natural mistake. After all, if Felton was working for the Brown Magician of Faerie, that made his apprehension an interdimensional affair, and reporting it to the Under-Secretary for Interdimensional Affairs would appear to be the proper, sensible thing to do.

Howe trembled when she thought how close she had come to doing just that.

Fortunately for her career and her political ambitions, she had paused at the last minute-perhaps it was something in the telepath’s expression, or perhaps the telepath was illegally projecting a bit, or perhaps Howe’s well-developed sense of self-preservation had awakened a bit late-and had reconsidered.

A check of recent reports, and the whereabouts of various appointees, made it clear that Under-Secretary Bascombe was currently out of favor. He was still in office, and would have to be informed if he asked, but if Intelligence, in the form of Howe or her representative, could report directly to someone higher than Bascombe, that would be a better move in the continuing struggle for status and power.

Of course, Howe could have just passed the information to her own superior and let him worry about it, but that wouldn’t do her any good, not really. She wasn’t going to make a friend of Stanley Winter, and Stanley Winter wasn’t going to help her advance in the service.

And jumping to the next level up, or straight to the Director at the level above that, would make too many enemies-not just Stan Winter, but others as well. No, she was best served by passing this information out of Intelligence herself, while her written report wound its way through channels to the uppermost echelons.

But telling Bascombe was out.

Though Secretary Markham was the next obvious possibility, Howe hesitated. Marshal Albright was also at Base One, and the military had been active in Faerie. And there was always the possibility of going clear to the top, to the General Secretary or even the Emperor himself-though bothering His Imperial Majesty with something he considered beneath his notice was a good way to end a career completely.

Howe, upon consideration, didn’t think this little affair was worthy of the Imperial notice. That left three possibilities.

The General Secretary, of course, had his own ways of obtaining information; he would know soon enough, and he wasn’t particularly pleased by attempts at ingratiation.

That left Markham or Albright.

She looked at the notes she had made of the telepath’s oral report. Felton’s assignment had been to locate and retrieve two corpses-he didn’t know why anyone in Faerie wanted these particular bodies, only that he and his cell of Faerie’s spy network were under orders to obtain them by any means available.

It was interesting to learn that Faerie’s spy network still existed and functioned, despite Shadow’s death, and despite Operation Spotlight, which had rooted Shadow’s agents out of the ruling circles of half a dozen rebel worlds-and a few Imperial ones as well. Howe had not been aware that other spies continued to operate, and she suspected that her superiors still didn’t know it.

And they were active, and wanted these bodies, a woman and a child.

Well, who had the corpses?

Howe didn’t know-but she would find out. If it was the military, she would report to Albright. If it was the Department of Science, she would report to Markham.

If neither organization had the corpses, or if each had one of the two, then she would tell Albright and Markham, she decided.

As for learning where the corpses were, she didn’t worry about how she might do that. That was exactly the sort of thing Imperial Intelligence had always been best at, she thought with a wry smile-finding where the bodies were buried.

* * * *

Sometimes Pel considered just sending a messenger to the clearing in the Sunderland woods, and through that warp the Empire kept opening there, to ask the Empire for the bodies. It surely wouldn’t be a big deal for them to deliver Nancy and Rachel.

On the other hand, somehow he suspected that the Empire wouldn’t cooperate with even so simple a request. He’d probably get caught up in the bureaucracy somehow, or they’d demand some absurd payment.

Better to get them on his own, if he could. He could always ask the Empire openly if other methods didn’t work.

It wasn’t, after all, as if the Empire had openly sent their representatives into Faerie. No ambassadors had turned up at the fortress, asking for audience. Instead they were apparently sending spies.

Well, Pel had spies of his own, and Gregory and the others seemed fairly confident that they could, in time, locate Nancy and Rachel.

He sat in his throne, drumming his fingers, while magic and light played in shifting patterns through the air around him.

* * * *

Begley looked eastward, toward the Sunderland forests-though of course he couldn’t see that far, even on this oversized planet with its distant horizons. He could see scattered houses, a few trees, thousands upon thousands of berry bushes and acres upon acres of bogland, and the narrow path the locals considered a highway cutting its way through half a mile or so of the countryside before it was lost in the background.

Nothing moved anywhere on the highway, so far as he could see.

He turned to the west, where Shadow’s fortress thrust up from the horizon beyond a vast open marsh, at the end of a narrow causeway.

A man was walking on the causeway, a very long way off.

“Someone’s coming this way, from the fortress,” he called down to Best. “Should we talk to him?”

Best looked up.

“Couldn’t hurt,” he said. “At least, not if you’re careful.”

Begley nodded. “I’ll be careful,” he said.

* * * *

Wilkins ambled along the causeway, bored and aggravated. He should have been back at Base One by now. If it weren’t for this mysterious secret project Brown was working on, he would have been back.

If he had been stuck here for good, that would have been less than ideal, but he could have lived with it. If he got home, that would be fine. But this dismal waiting, caught in between, was annoying.

He scanned the horizon, planning to turn back-after all, he didn’t have anywhere else to go, and the hot, swampy air out here wasn’t much of an improvement over the dusty dimness of the fortress.

A movement caught his eye.

Someone was standing on the highway, off in the distance-Wilkins couldn’t tell whether the figure was man or woman, whether it stood inside or outside the boundary of Shadowmarsh, but someone was standing on the highway.

Wilkins paused, and thought for a moment.

Nothing was happening back at the fortress, so far as he could see. What harm would it do to walk on out and say hello to whoever that was? It would take time, of course-maybe an hour each way-but so what? It would relieve the boredom.

And that might be a woman-maybe one as bored and lonely as he was.

He turned eastward and trotted on.

* * * *

The messenger crouched quickly and listened.

Yes, those were footsteps, coming toward him through the forest.

He hated this. This was not what he had signed up for. Fighting was one thing; running messages around Base One was another; but neither of those had anything to do with sneaking through a huge alien forest, trying to find a couple of spies on a hostile planet where science was all cockeyed, aircars and blasters didn’t work, and he didn’t have any roads to follow or addresses to find.

Samuel Best was reportedly waiting at the east end of the causeway across Shadowmarsh-how was he supposed to find that in this wilderness? Was he supposed to ask the natives for directions, and hope they wouldn’t put a bunch of arrows in him or tie him to a stake and burn him? It wasn’t as if there were any maps-no one had done an orbital survey, or even brought back whatever crude doodles the locals used.

He wished that idiot Bascombe had picked someone else to carry his message. Wasn’t this sort of thing what telepaths were for?

He brushed against a bush, then snatched his elbow away as the leaves rustled loudly.

The footsteps stopped.

“Anyone there?” a voice called.

The messenger hesitated. The language was English, but then the locals here supposedly spoke English, as well. The accent didn’t seem exotic.

“My name’s Poole,” the voice said. “That looks like Imperial purple behind that thicket, assuming I’m not imagining things. If it is, I’m on your side.”

The voice didn’t sound hostile. Cautiously, the messenger stood up.

“Good morning,” the man who called himself Poole said, smiling. “What brings you here? Are there others? You aren’t one of Lieutenant Dibbs’ men, are you?”

The man wasn’t in uniform; he was wearing a baggy, ugly woolen outfit, brown and dark gray. His hair was blond and short, though, and how would a native know about a Lieutenant Dibbs?

If the truth be known, the messenger had never heard of Lieutenant Dibbs, but somehow that just made it all the more convincing.

“I’ve got orders for Samuel Best,” the messenger said.

“No shit?” Poole grinned. “Well, I’ll be damned. He sent me back to get further orders-you’ve saved me some hiking.”

“You said your name was Poole…”

“Right-Abner Poole, Imperial Intelligence. I’m with Best. Come on, I’ll take you to him.”

For a moment the messenger hesitated anew; this was all almost too easy.

But then, the man said he’d been on his way back for orders, and where did this miserable trail go other than the clearing where the space-warp came out?

“Right,” the messenger said. He stepped out from behind the bushes.

“So what are the orders?” Poole asked curiously, as the two set out westward.

“You’ll have to wait,” the messenger said. “They’re for Best.”

Poole shrugged. “Good enough,” he said. He strolled on, leading the way toward Shadowmarsh.

* * * *

It was simple enough to find the little girl; her body had been recovered in a pacification operation on a backwater planet called Zeta Leo III, at the start of the recent campaign to bring Shadow’s network of puppet governments into the Empire. The corpse had been brought to Base One, and was in cold storage in the zero-gee lockers near the core of the hollowed-out asteroid.

The military had offered it to the Department of Science, in case someone wanted to dissect it and see if Earthpeople were different from normal humans, but so far no one in Science had shown an interest. After a moment’s consideration, Howe removed a few records and made sure that no one ever would.

The other body was much harder to track down. Howe could find no records about it except the interviews with the Earthpeople, where Nancy Brown’s death was reported.

Nancy Brown had died during the capture of Emerald Princess-but her body wasn’t aboard when Zeta Leo III was taken and Emerald Princess recovered.

Well, why would the pirates have kept it? They had undoubtedly shoved it out the airlock and left it to drift in space.

Celia Howe frowned. That might be difficult. Finding a floating corpse…

They did know the ship’s course, and running a heavy gravity generator along the route might turn up something. The Department of Science had done a few fishing expeditions that way in the past.

The military had their own equipment, of course; gravity generators had plenty of uses in combat. There was no need to bring in Science.

It was time, though, to talk to Marshal Albright.