The Reign of the Brown Magician

Chapter Sixteen

Best settled onto a patch of relatively dry ground and read the inscription on the little packet that the messenger had handed him. The code, still legible despite the smearing, was correct-and really, there could be little doubt that the orders were genuine, under the circumstances.

Not that he was in any hurry to read them; they’d probably mean trouble, and he’d found berry-picking to be fairly pleasant, low-stress work. It would have gotten intolerably dull eventually, but Best thought he could have handled a few more days of boredom.

“We didn’t have any trouble,” Poole said. “I just told anyone who asked that I was taking a man in purple to see Pelbrun.” Best nodded in understanding, but the messenger looked puzzled; Poole explained, “They’d all heard about this proclamation he’d issued, that he wanted all the wizards and all the strangers in purple, and nobody was about to interfere with anyone following the Brown Magician’s orders. A couple of centuries of Shadow’s rule here gave the locals a healthy respect for authority, and this Pelbrun is the man who killed Shadow. You’re on his business, you’re safe.”

“Oh,” the messenger said, comprehension dawning. “So that’s why people fed us, even when we couldn’t pay, but wouldn’t talk to us? They were scared?”

Poole nodded. “You’ve got it exactly.”

“Someone could run a pretty nice little scam that way,” Begley remarked.

“You’d need an Imperial uniform,” Best remarked, as he reluctantly tugged at the seal on the envelope. “Not that easy to come by around here. And you’d have to be careful never to be seen heading away from the fortress.”

“The direction isn’t a big problem,” Begley argued. “You could always double back cross-country. And how many of the natives know what a real Imperial uniform looks like?”

“Good point,” Best conceded. The wax broke, and he opened the flap.

Before taking the folded paper out he looked up at the others. “Sit down, all of you,” he said. “You make me nervous, standing around like that.”

“I should be getting back…” the messenger muttered uneasily, glancing out across Shadowmarsh. He had obviously picked up a few stories about the place during his nine-day hike down from Sunderland-even if the natives wouldn’t talk to him, Best was sure Poole had had a few things to say.

“Without waiting to see if I have a reply, or a report?” Best said mildly. “I don’t think they’d like that back at Base One.”

The messenger sat down, with an uncomfortable glance to the west.

Best unfolded the paper and read.

From Under-Secretary Bascombe to Samuel Best, with Bascombe’s full title, official address, and all the other usual curlicues, while the “to” line read simply, “Samuel Best, in the field.” No rank, no unit-everyone in the Empire knew that meant he was in Intelligence. And “in the field” was nicely vague, while being completely accurate-they were sitting on the edge of a blackberry field.

Best smiled to himself at the thought that if he’d been working in the cranberry bog down the highway a bit, the address should say “in the bog.” Maybe it should have read “in the rain”-but the rain had stopped.

He was putting it off, he realized. He forced himself to get past the salutations and authorizations and down to the actual orders.

They didn’t take long to read; he stared at them in disbelief.

Was this some kind of joke? He glanced down at the bottom.

“John Bascombe, Under-Secretary of Science for Interdimensional Affairs, by appointment, in service to His Imperial Majesty George VIII.” And the Great Seal, embossed in light blue.

Nobody would put the Emperor’s name and Imperial seal on a joke.

“That’s insane,” he said. He looked up at the messenger. “This is completely insane.”

The messenger, perched uncomfortably on a hillock of wet sand, shrugged.

“Why?” Begley asked. “What do they want us to do?”

Best threw down the letter.

“That idiot Bascombe!” he said. “He’s ordered us to arrest Pellinore Brown!”

* * * *

There were two uniformed spacemen waiting in the clearing.

The last time Wilkins had seen the place, the dead body of Shadow’s giant bat creature had lain across most of the opening, completely covering the useless hulk of I.S.S. Christopher; now much of the monster’s substance had been cut away, or been eaten away by the local wildlife, or had simply rotted. What remained was a rather grisly maze of dried black hide and protruding white bone, with a clear path to Christopher’s main hatch and various other navigable routes in and out of the mass.

The two Imperials were standing near the center of this macabre tangle; one was leaning against a gigantic rib, while the other was fully upright.

Neither of them had noticed Wilkins yet; he had a habit of moving stealthily any time he walked alone across country, and he was good at it. He had seen men die because they’d made a wrong assumption about how dangerous supposedly-friendly terrain was, and he didn’t intend to follow their example.

He didn’t make reckless assumptions about supposedly-friendly people, either. In theory, those two men should be his bosom buddies; in practice, he was out of uniform and they probably weren’t expecting anyone, and might shoot first and ask questions later.

Not that they could shoot him, really; their blasters wouldn’t work here.

They probably weren’t used to that yet-he noticed they both had holstered blasters on their belts. And they were in those easy-to-spot bright purple uniforms, while he was in dull, hard-to-see brown. He had other advantages besides simple surprise.

That damned messenger Simons hadn’t mentioned any guards, though.

He probably assumed Wilkins already knew about them; he hadn’t seemed terribly bright. One didn’t get a messenger job by graduating top of the class, after all.

And all this debate wasn’t getting him anywhere.

He stepped forward, into a pool of sunlight, and called, “Hey!”

The two turned, startled; the one who had been leaning stood up, and the other’s hand fell to his holster flap.

Old habits die hard, Wilkins thought with a smile.

“Hey, yourself,” the former leaner called, relaxing somewhat at the sight of him. “Are you Ron Wilkins, by any chance?”

Wilkins blinked, almost as startled by the question as the guards had been by his shout. “How the hell did you know that?” he called back.

“Telepath said you were coming,” the guard said. “We were sent to escort you home.”

“Telepath?” That made sense. And an escort? As far as he knew, there were two kinds of escorts-honor guards and jailers. Wilkins wondered which kind his escort was supposed to be.

Not that it really mattered; he figured he could manage either way. The Empire knew he was alive now, and they had telepaths tracking him; he wouldn’t be able to escape if they really wanted him. He didn’t have much of a choice about going back.

He stepped forward into the clearing, and let the two soldiers lead him to the ladder.

* * * *

The crew of I.S.S. Ruthless had been dispersed in the course of Operation Spotlight, and then again after Best had tracked them down and consulted them, but Albright had found that two of them, Elmer Soorn and Bill Mervyn, happened to be on Base One. He had the two of them detached from their regular duties and sent to the cold storage lockers, without explanation-and without their sidearms.

Markham met them in the security room.

“You wait here,” he ordered Mervyn. Then he crooked a finger at Soorn. “You come with me.”

Together, the two men stepped past the guards, and Markham led the way through the vault door into the locker where the corpses lay.

“Recognize them?” he asked, pointing to the two bodies that sprawled stiffly on a dissection table.

“What’s this about?” Soorn asked. He glanced at the cadavers-then stopped, and looked more closely.

“Oh,” he said.

“You know them?”

Soorn hesitated. “The little girl…I know who she was, yeah. That’s Mr. Brown’s little girl, from Earth. Rebecca, was it? Something like that.”

“Rachel,” Markham said, his breath puffing out in a cold little cloud. “What about the other?”

“Mister, whoever you are, be serious-look at her! She’s been out in space, hasn’t she? She’s bloody well freeze-dried, barely looks human. And it looks as if her face was smashed in even before she went out the lock.”

“You can’t venture a guess?”

Soorn looked at the larger corpse again.

“I could guess,” he said, “if you promise not to hold me to it.”

“Guess, then.”

“Well, since you’ve got her here with the little girl, I’d guess she might be the girl’s mother, Mrs. Brown.”

“You think she could be?”

Soorn shrugged. “The hair’s right, what’s left of it. If there were any clothing…”

“This is how we found her,” Markham said.

“Last I saw,” Soorn said, “Mrs. Brown was wearing a borrowed uniform-there were probably half a dozen other women who wore them just aboard Princess, though.”

“This one wasn’t wearing anything when she was recovered,” Markham said. “What about the face?”

“The face…” Soorn shuddered. “There’s nothing that makes it impossible, but who could tell?”

Markham nodded.

“I think that’ll do,” he said.

Ten minutes later Mervyn rather queasily confirmed Soorn’s guess that the body was Nancy Brown’s-though he, too, was reluctant to swear to it. He hadn’t known Mrs. Brown well, he insisted, and he, too, pointed out the condition the corpse was in.

Secretary Markham had to admit the body was in bad shape, but he was reasonably certain now that it was the right one. He left the vaults feeling rather pleased with himself.

That lasted until he reached his office and found the telepath waiting to report.

* * * *

“The Empire has recovered your wife’s body,” Gregory reported, “but they’re keeping it, and Rachel’s, under heavy guard; we can’t get at them.”

Pel frowned. “Have you tried bribery?” he said.

Gregory nodded.

This was very annoying; that simulacrum, Felton, must have talked. The Empire knew that he wanted the bodies.

Well, that wasn’t really that big a deal. He’d just have to talk to the Empire and get them back openly.

He couldn’t go there himself, of course-the matrix would collapse the instant he set foot through a portal, and then he’d never be able to resurrect Nancy and Rachel-but he could send an emissary.

He could send Gregory, of course-but that seemed rather a waste. The Empire might hang him for espionage.

Or they might not believe him in the first place.

No, they had telepaths-they could check.

But could telepaths read the minds of simulacra? And the Empire didn’t have all that many telepaths; they might not bother to check before consigning Gregory to the loony bin-or the noose.

This would require some thought.

He could, Pel supposed, send Wilkins as his emissary-that would be a nice little goodwill gesture, and would leave no doubt that the message really came from Faerie.

He cast about with the matrix, and discovered, to his surprise, that Wilkins wasn’t in the fortress, nor anywhere nearby.

That was puzzling.

Thinking back, he realized he hadn’t seen Wilkins in days-not since he had announced that he was going out for a walk.

Pel hoped nothing had happened to him; he sort of liked Wilkins.

Maybe he’d gone off somewhere; Pel looked further out in the matrix. He couldn’t really tell one person from another reliably when they were outside the fortress, and certainly not by the time they were outside Shadowmarsh, but if he saw anyone around who felt out of place…

He didn’t notice anyone he could recognize as Wilkins.

There were three men coming up the causeway, though-presumably they were coming to see the Brown Magician.

Pel decided he could attend to whatever they wanted, then get back to worrying about the Empire.

“Go back and wait,” he told Gregory. “I’ll get back to you shortly.”

The simulacrum bowed, and stepped through the waiting portal, out of the throne room and back to his little corner of the Galactic Empire.

* * * *

“Bascombe ordered what?” Markham stared at the telepath in disbelief.

“He ordered Best to arrest Pellinore Brown on charges of subornation of treason,” the telepath repeated. He added, “Specifically, coercing Proserpine Thorpe into going rogue.”

“But he’s a head of state!” Markham shouted. “He’s a bloody dictator, for God’s sake! You can’t just walk in and arrest him!”

The telepath just stood there, staring straight ahead, and after a moment Markham calmed down enough to stare back.

“Pel Brown’s a head of state, and John Bascombe’s an idiot,” he said.

The telepath didn’t argue.

“All right,” Markham said, “Best is in Intelligence, so I assume he’s not an idiot. What’s he doing about his orders?” Markham knew what he hoped Best was doing-sending back a request for confirmation and clarification. That would eat up two or three weeks in transit both directions, and was the only legitimate stalling tactic Markham could think of.

And the clarification would be to tell Best to ignore it, Bascombe’s an idiot.

Best would see that, surely. Markham’s spirits rose.

“He’s…well, he’s more or less planning to attempt to carry them out, sir.”

Markham’s spirits plummeted again. “He’s what?”

“I’m afraid his opinion of Under-Secretary Bascombe matches your own, so he assumes that the orders meant just what they said, and any clarification would confirm that. Furthermore, he and his men-especially his men-are tired of delay, and prefer not to wait around. Therefore, they’re planning to enter the fortress and ask the Brown Magician to return to the Empire with them; in fact, they’re already on the causeway across the marsh. Given Spaceman Wilkins’ experience, they don’t expect to be harmed outright. Best has no intention of mentioning anything about an arrest.”

Markham stared. He considered.

Then he shrugged. “What the hell,” he said. “It can’t hurt.”

* * * *

“You sound like an Imperial or an Earthman,” Pel said, “but there aren’t supposed to be any other Earthpeople around, and as far as Imperials go, you’re not Ron Wilkins, nor Tom Sawyer, either. What the hell are you doing here? Who are you?”

“No, sir, I’m not Wilkins or Sawyer or an Earthman,” the man said, blinking and shading his eyes against the glare of the matrix. “My name’s Samuel Best. And I’m here on behalf of the Galactic Empire.”

Pel stared, drumming his fingers on his knee and letting the matrix swirl greenly. He glanced quickly at Susan, standing silently to one side, then back at his visitor. There was something familiar about the man-not his physical appearance, but his magical one. Pel placed it finally.

“You’re the spy,” he said. “One of them, anyway. The ones they sent through the portal in Sunderland’s Low Forest. And those two are more of them.”

He reached out with the matrix and drew Begley and Poole forward, from the landing into the throne room. Neither of them screamed, which was something of a relief. Peasants always screamed.

“Yes, sir, I am,” Best admitted.

“I didn’t expect you to just walk in here like this,” Pel said. “I figured you’d be sneaking around causing trouble.”

“My orders were changed,” Best-if that was really his name-explained.

“They told you to come talk to me?”

Best nodded. “Yes, sir. And to respectfully request that you accompany me back to the Empire.”

Pel stared. The matrix billowed up in deep blue glow, wrapping around Best.

“Why?” Pel asked.

“They want to talk to you about what happened to their men here, and to the telepath, Proserpine Thorpe,” Best said-and Pel knew he was lying; the matrix couldn’t provide telepathy, but it could, he had discovered, read physiological signs much as a polygraph could.

The matrix darkened.

* * * *

Best could sense that the conversation had suddenly gone bad; the blinding waves of light and color shifted, and what had previously seemed like an outward manifestation of irritated curiosity was now almost openly hostile. He tried desperately to recover.

“I don’t really know what they want to talk to you about,” he said hastily. “I’m just a spy; they sent me because I was handy, and told me to bring you back to the Empire with me. They didn’t say why.”

The seething cloud of color surged forward slightly, stopping just short of engulfing him.

Was there really a human being behind that, controlling it? It hardly seemed possible. Best began to suspect that if it truly was Pellinore Brown in there, he was no longer entirely human.

“They think they can just order me around?” that thunderous voice roared.

“I don’t know what they think!” Best protested. “I’m just the messenger!”

“Messenger?” The Brown Magician’s voice boomed from the walls. “All right, messenger, I’ve got a message for you to carry!”

* * * *

The sergeant stared. “Who the hell are you, and why are you dressed like that?” he demanded.

“My name is Samuel Best,” the man in the primitive clothes replied. “I was just stranded here, wherever I am, and I need to get back to Base One immediately.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m working for Imperial Intelligence.”

The sergeant considered that. It wasn’t a very likely story; it sounded like something out of the fiction magazines, really.

On the other hand, strangers in crude woolen tunics and baggy tights didn’t generally walk in off the street here; the local government here on Delta Scorpius IV was not known for its sense of humor. And ships were coming and going all the time; one of them could have dumped an unwanted passenger here easily enough.

Why anyone would bother to strand someone alive was another matter. If he had been a smuggler or pirate, the sergeant thought, he’d have just dumped the troublemaker out an airlock-but he supposed some outlaws might have scruples about such things.

It wasn’t as if sending a man to Base One was a big deal; the regular supply run was headed out there in another two hours anyway. Passing the problem along would be the simplest solution, and if the fellow really was in Intelligence, the sergeant didn’t want to interfere.

“I’ll have to ask you to submit to a search,” he said, “and from the look of that outfit, a delousing, too. Do you have any credentials?”