The Reign of the Brown Magician

Chapter Six

Samuel Best sometimes wondered whether his name had helped him in his career in Imperial Intelligence. Nobody would admit such a thing, of course, but sometimes he wondered whether, on some level, people expected more of him because of his name, and chose him for tough assignments because he was, after all, the Best.

Not that he necessarily believed he actually was the best; to think such a thing could lead to over shy;confidence, and that could easily be fatal.

He did try to be good at his work, though, and in this case that had resulted in delays that had irritated the hell out of that officious twit, John Bascombe, Under-Secretary for Interdimensional Affairs.

Best didn’t much care. Bascombe might be an up-and-coming politician, he might be able to ruin Best’s life-but screwing up a field assignment could get a man killed. Better to annoy one’s superiors and live than to do as one’s told and die.

It had just seemed to be common sense to insist on speaking to anyone in the Empire who had actually been in this Shadow place, and it wasn’t his fault if the surviving crewmen of I.S.S. Ruthless had been reassigned and scattered.

It was too bad no one from Colonel Carson’s squad had made it back alive, but they hadn’t; there were only the six men from Ruthless.

Not that they had been able to tell him much, in any case; they had only been there for about twenty minutes, and in an area hundreds of miles from his intended point of arrival.

Still, it was useful to know about the heavier gravity, the lower-than-optimum oxygen content of the atmosphere, the blue-shifted sunlight, the pseudoterrestrial ecology, the appearance of a feudal social structure-and the clothing. Best had no desire to be obvious; he wasn’t about to go in in uniform.

The squad sent to the other universe, the place called Earth, could make their own decisions; he and his boys were going in in the closest approximation of local costume they could manage.

This meant that the Earth squad went first, of course-Bascombe hadn’t been willing to wait.

That was fine with Best; he wasn’t eager to be the first to try this trick of climbing through a space-warp on a rope ladder. And the fact that the Empire only had one space-warp generator operational at the moment-though he knew that more were under construction, a fact he was not supposed to know-meant that he and his three underlings couldn’t go anywhere until the Earth squad was through, and the generator shut down, recalibrated, and re-started.

It seemed to be working, though; having finally approved the preparations, he stood behind Bascombe and to the side, hand shading his eyes, and watched through the thick tinted glass as the four space suited figures vanished into the blinding white glare of the space-warp field.

A fifth figure, also suited, emerged from the glare and waved to the control room.

“They’re through,” one of the engineers said.

“Good,” Bascombe said. “Then get this thing shut down and open the warp to Shadow’s universe.”

“But, sir,” someone protested, “If you do that, you’ll cut off the men on Earth-the ladder will be sheared off, and we won’t be able to retrieve them.”

“Roll the damn ladder up,” Bascombe said, “and then use it to get Best, here, and his crew, to Shadow’s world. Then you can re shy;open the warp to Earth. We’ll do four-hour shifts hanging that ladder in each universe.”

“Give them another hour, sir,” Best said. “It’ll take me that long to get my men ready.”

Bascombe turned to glare at him, looked down at the phony peasant garb Best wore, then shrugged.

“Forty minutes,” he said. “I want you and your men in the staging area, suited and ready to go, in forty minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” Best said. He saluted, and stood at attention as Bascombe left the room.

“What an idiot,” an engineer muttered when the door had swung shut.

Best didn’t bother to reply aloud, but his own opinion was the same.

* * * *

“It didn’t work,” Pel said, glaring at the dead dog. It had stopped twitching.

“Well, O Great One,” Athelstan said, “did we not say that we knew not the way of it?”

“You said you thought you could, if you had enough power,” Pel countered.

“Nay, rather, said we that we thought we might, had we the power,” Athelstan corrected him. “’Twould seem we were mistaken. Ne’er did we promise.”

For a moment, Pel just stared at the dog. Then he sighed. “I know you didn’t promise,” he said. “So you can’t do it, you don’t know how-but doesn’t anyone know? Shadow knew, right?”

“Yes, it does…that is, rather, it did.” Athelstan stared at the dog as well.

After a moment’s silence, the wizard bestirred himself and said, “Hark, then, Master-we know the theory of old, as we told you, handed down from master to apprentice since the earliest years of Shadow’s use of fetches. Our knowledge thereof must, we see, be deficient in some wise. Perchance, though, were we to study an ensample of the practice of necromantic art, understanding might be gained thereby.”

Pel turned and looked at the wizard.

“What?” he said.

Athelstan blinked, then said, speaking slowly and clearly, “O Great One, had we the chance to study, and to test, perhaps to destruction, one that had in fact been resurrected from death, might we then gain the understanding we lack?”

Pel stared at him.

“Your fetches, Lord,” Athelstan explained, gesturing at the pair that stood guard by the door.

Pel blinked, then glanced at his unmoving servants, then back at Athelstan.

Something twinged, twitched, tickled at him somehow. He paused.

Something felt odd, and slightly wrong, and he wasn’t sure what it was or where it was or even whether it was internal or external. Something was disturbed, somehow.

It might have been somewhere out in the matrix, in the web of magical currents that covered this entire world-or it might have been in his head.

Could it have been a twinge of guilt at the idea of destroying a fetch?

After all, he supposed the fetches had been alive once, free people with their own souls and their own interests and their own rights-but they weren’t now; he could see that through the matrix, could see how their magical energies differed from those of real live human beings. Shadow hadn’t brought them back that far; she had left them mindless zombies. They were already dead, really; why should he feel guilty about dissecting one, or whatever Athelstan had in mind? He had already killed about a hundred of them himself, one way or another, and didn’t feel guilty about it. Letting the wizards kill one more was no problem, not really.

If that was what he had felt, then his subconscious was being silly and unreasonable.

If he’d felt something else, something out there in the network somewhere, it could wait. Bringing back his family took priority over anything else.

“Sure,” he said. “Go to it.”

* * * *

Major Johnston took a final look around the yard, his gaze lingering on the silly-looking purple spaceship. “You’re sure no one could be hiding in that thing?” he called.

“Sure as we can be, sir,” a lieutenant replied.

Johnston nodded, glanced up at where the rope ladder had disappeared into thin air, then headed back around the side of the house, toward the waiting cars.

There were four of them, lined up by the roadside; he hesitated for an instant, then marched up to the last one in line, an Air Force-blue sedan.

Amy Jewell looked up at him through the closed window. She showed no sign of rolling it down, so he spoke loudly.

“I’m sorry about this, Ms. Jewell,” he said. “I’m going to see if we can get you listed as a civilian consultant, and get you some compensation for your time-you and Ms. Thorpe both. We’ll provide alternate accommodations for you, if you’d rather not stay here for now. And I’m afraid we may want to buy your house, if these people are going to keep coming.”

Amy shrugged, then nodded. “Thanks,” she called, her voice barely audible through the glass.

He patted the side of the car, then straightened up.

More cars were arriving, bringing more men-Air Police, so far; Johnston hoped they’d be enough.

After all, next time the Galactic Empire might send an attack force, rather than scouts or diplomats. If he had had his way, he’d have had a fully-armed squad of Marines here, ready for anything-but he was Air Force, and didn’t have the authority to call in the jarheads. A request like that would have to work its way up through channels. He’d started the paperwork, but it would take time.

APs he could do now.

He no longer doubted the existence of the Galactic Empire; he had arrived just in time to see the rope ladder vanish into thin air. He wished he’d been able to reach the place in less than forty minutes; maybe he could have sent someone back up.

But that might not have been safe. The Imperials had arrived in space suits, after all-genuine Buck Rogers space suits, bulky purple things with fishbowl helmets, straight out of “Destination Moon.” Maybe they’d needed them at the top of the ladder.

They weren’t saying, though.

He glanced at the two civilian cop cars that had been the first things he’d been able to get to the site. Each one had two men in back, space suits and equipment removed, but still in their silly-looking Imperial uniforms.

He marched over to the closer one and peered in the open window. “Care to tell me anything?” he asked.

“Lieutenant James Austin, Imperial Service, H-657-R-233-B-708,” the purple-uniformed man said, staring straight ahead without so much as glancing at Johnston.

Johnston sighed. He slapped the car roof.

“Take ’em away,” he said.

* * * *

Prossie sat motionless in the back of the groundcar, wishing she could know what the people around her were thinking. Sometimes her mental silence was a blessing, sometimes a curse; right now it was horrible.

The Empire had sent more men-not an envoy this time, no telepaths, but a scouting team, probably, from their actions, Imperial Intelligence.

She wasn’t as frightened of the Smarts as most of the people she had known; over the years she had read the minds of several of the dreaded Intelligence agents, and while they generally weren’t nice people, they were just people, not the fearsome, emotionless supermen they were reputed to be. She had even worked directly for Intelligence once or twice herself; all the telepaths, the entire Special Branch, were nominally under the joint jurisdiction of Intelligence and the Imperial Messenger Service, always available if the Smarts needed them.

But still, any time Intelligence was involved, matters were serious. The situation was serious now.

Especially since she didn’t know why they were here.

Especially since one possibility was that they had been sent after her.

She knew that the Empire would take a rogue telepath very seriously indeed. If they knew she was here, if they knew she had really, genuinely gone rogue…

Otherwise it seemed like quite a coincidence, an Imperial team arriving directly behind the very house she was staying in.

She knew that it wasn’t really as much of a coincidence as it first appeared; she had read from the minds of Imperial scientists that something about the shape of space itself made it easier to open a space-warp in the same place every time. If the Empire was going to open a warp to Earth anywhere, this would be the natural place; she was here herself because this was where the warp had come out before.

Still, even if it wasn’t a coincidence, why were they here? What did they want? She knew, beyond question, that when she had left Base One with Colonel Carson and Raven and the rest, no one at Base One had had any plans for further contact with Earth, with the possible exception of sending Pel and Amy and the rest home someday. John Bascombe had written Earth off as worthless; General Hart had considered it irrelevant.

Why had they changed their minds?

There was one way she might be able to find out; Carrie had tried to contact her several times. Carrie would know what was going on; she wouldn’t be able to help it. Maybe Prossie could coax an explanation out of her.

And maybe not. She and Carrie hadn’t exactly parted as friends. Prossie had betrayed her family, betrayed all the telepaths in the Empire, by lying to Imperial officers, disobeying orders, and in general breaking any rule she found inconvenient once she was outside Imperial space and cut off from the mental network she had grown up in.

That she had done so because she could now see that she had been oppressed and abused all her life would not matter much to Carrie or the others; they were still there, under the Empire’s thumb, subject to summary execution for the slightest infraction of the telepathy laws. Prossie’s rebellion could conceivably endanger them all.

And maybe that was why Carrie hadn’t done a thing, hadn’t lifted a finger or transmitted a thought when Prossie had been utterly at Shadow’s mercy and convinced she was about to die.

Prossie was the one who had broken contact, who had been unspeakably rude, who had been refusing to communicate; maybe Carrie would listen, maybe they could make up. They were cousins, bound together by blood and background-surely a little internecine squabble could be patched up.

But Carrie would have to try again before they could talk. Telepathy was impossible in Earth’s universe. Prossie couldn’t send unless Carrie was listening, couldn’t receive unless Carrie was sending.

Carrie or someone, anyway. There were four hundred and fourteen other telepaths in the Empire, at last count.

And until one of them tried to reach her, Prossie couldn’t talk to any of them.

All she could do was to sit in the groundcar, in the thick silence of her own isolated mind, and wonder whether the Empire wanted her, or wanted Earth.

And whether it really made any difference.

* * * *

Best brushed aside leaves and peered down at the ground below.

For the most part the earth was thick with dead leaves and moss-nobody lived here, that was obvious.

In one direction, though, the view was different. There was a clearing ahead, and a very strange clearing indeed. It appeared to have been created or enlarged by breaking limbs off trees, where any normal clearing would simply be a place where no trees grew. Most of the clearing was covered by a black mound of something Best couldn’t identify; here and there things showed through the black, some of them bones, some of them unidentifiable. At one side, at the very edge of what he could see, something large and purple protruded from beneath the mound, something that Best thought might be I.S.S. Christopher.

Most of it was hidden by trees, so he couldn’t be sure; he’d have a better look when he reached the surface.

All around the black mound were signs that people had been there-but not that any were there now.

The area looked entirely deserted, in fact.

That was exactly what Best wanted; smiling but still wary he climbed down the rope ladder into the forest.

* * * *

Athelstan and the woman, Boudicca, were just finishing their dissection when that odd kink in the matrix suddenly vanished.

It hadn’t been guilt. Pel had been forcing himself not to think about it, but when it disappeared so abruptly its absence drew his attention. Nothing internal could have done that; he knew it must have been a twist in the currents of magic, not in his subconscious.

That was reassuring.

So it had been caused by something out there in the world somewhere-presumably a wizard, because what else could affect the magical flow? And from the size of the disturbance, big enough to cause him a real twinge, the wizard must be a fairly powerful one.

Another wizard…Athelstan and Taillefer and Mahadharma hadn’t thought there were any others left alive. Boudicca, more conservative, had refused to venture an opinion. Pel had known there were other people out there who could touch magic, but had thought they might all be just beginners or dabblers.

Anyone who could make himself-or herself-felt through the matrix like that wasn’t just playing around with fire-lighting spells. If this current batch didn’t work out at least there might be another chance.

“See you,” Athelstan said, pointing to the fetch’s heart, “how ’tis with this?”

At first Pel thought Athelstan was addressing Boudicca, but then he realized that both wizards were looking in his direction-not quite at his face, because of the haze of magic around him, but in his direction.

“What?” he asked, leaning forward and trying not to be sickened by the sight of the fetch’s opened chest.

At first he saw nothing but gore, but then he adjusted his vision, shielding his gaze with a layer of magic-not because it had occurred to him that that would help, but just to put something between himself and the exposed organs.

And when he did, he saw the fetch not as a human body, but as a magical structure, and he could see what Athelstan meant: the pattern that kept the heart beating, and that was not at all what they had tried to use on that dog.

“Oh,” he said. He studied it for a moment, then said, “I could do that.”

“So,” Boudicca said, sitting back on her heels. “Thus it is.”

“I could do that,” Pel repeated.

It was simple, really. Not obvious, but simple.

And judging by what he saw in the fetch, it was stable, self-sustaining. It could be done in anything that had the right general structure to it, it didn’t have to be a human heart.

Were the homunculi and the rest done the same way?

If so, no wonder Shadow had made so many of them. It would be easy.

Pel tugged at the magic flowing through and around the chamber, and the fetch’s chest closed, healing almost instantly.

Athelstan fell back, startled, in a most graceless and unwizardly fashion. Boudicca merely blinked.

That pattern in its heart kept it alive, Pel could see that, and the network that ran through the rest of its body, like a miniature of the matrix itself, let it move and function.

But there was a break in the pattern, a discontinuity, where living creatures continued down into fractal complexity, but the fetch’s energies simply flattened out and looped back upon themselves; Pel wondered if Athelstan had seen it.

Excited by this discovery, without thinking what it might do, Pel reached out and repaired the flaw.

The fetch sat up. It opened its eyes and looked about.

Then it started screaming.