The Wizardry Cursed

Thirty-two: THE ULTIMATE WATER BALLOON

Craig was deep in the design of a new kind of battle armor when one of Mikey’s robot servants came for him.

"The Master commands your presence," the robot said in a Darth Vader voice of doom.

"You mean Mikey?"

"The Master. Come." With that the robot pivoted on its heel and marched out the door with Craig hurrying along behind.

Mikey was up on the battlements, standing next to a troughlike contraption and looking out over the valley.

"What’s shaking, dude?" Craig said as he puffed up with the robot guide.

"Shaking? A whole lot. I want you to see my latest invention."

Since Mikey had ignored everything he had done since he made the giant robot, Craig didn’t think this was quite fair. But he didn’t object. Instead he bent over and inspected the device.

"What is that thing?"

"It’s a water balloon. The best goddamn water balloon you’ve ever seen."

It didn’t look much like a balloon to Craig. Just a featureless silvery sphere, like those mirrored balls people used to put on pedestals in gardens. The sphere was resting in the trough and there were some springs and some other, less identifiable, bits of machinery underneath.

"What does it do?"

"Watch," Mikey told him. "But put these on first." He snapped his fingers and the robot stepped forward and proferred a couple of smashed ham sandwiches.

"Not those, you fucking moron!" Mikey said. "Give him the goddamn goggles!

"Jeez, Craig, you need to do something about these robots. They’re so fucking stupid."

Craig started to tell him it wasn’t one of his robots, but Mikey had already slipped on a pair of dark goggles and was looking back out over the valley. Craig took the pair of goggles the robot was holding out to him, wiped the mustard and mayonnaise off the lenses and slipped them on.

Mikey threw a lever on the side of his device and the silvery ball whisked down the trough and out over the valley in a high, lazy arc. Craig watched the ball shrink to a dot and then lost it in the sun.

Suddenly the world exploded.

Castle, valley and mountains all disappeared in a blaze of blinding radiance. Craig squinched his eyes shut but the sight was burned into his vision. He opened his mouth but he was bowled over backwards as if he had been slapped by a giant hand. Sand and bits of rock stung his skin and the wind whipped insanely about him. The parapet shook beneath him until he was sure the castle was coming down. The noise shook him like a terrier shakes a rat. All he could do was lie curled up in a ball and scream at the pain in his ears and the red after-images in his eyes.

Then it was over. As suddenly as it had come the noise and the shaking stopped. Cautiously, Craig opened his eyes and tried to climb to his feet.

Mikey was standing at the battlement braced like a sea captain facing into a storm. His hair was blown back and his clothes had been whipped about, but he stood firm and unrelenting, looking out over the valley. As he gazed on the roiling clouds of dust and debris below his smile reminded Craig of a picture he had seen once in Sunday school, of Moses looking out over the Promised Land.

Craig shook himself and looked around. The pennants on the castle towers had been torn to shreds by the blast. Half the roof tiles had been blown off the conical roof of the nearest tower and the chamber below gaped up. His robot guide lay in a twitching heap, unable to rise.

Mikey said something, but it didn’t register on Craig’s numbed and ringing ears.

"What?"

"I said, ’Neat huh?’ " Mikey half-shouted.

"What in the hell was that?"

"Like I said, a water balloon."

"Like hell!"

Mikey’s smile grew broader. "Nope. Take a sphere of water-just ordinary water-and squeeze it real hard. Pretty soon the atoms disassociate into hydrogen and oxygen. Then if you squeeze it hard enough those hydrogen atoms are forced close enough together that they fuse." He threw up his hands. "Poof! Instant H-bomb."

"Jesus Christ," Craig said. Then he looked out over the dust-filled valley. "Jesus H. Fucking Christ on a goddamn rubber crutch!"

"Hey, that was nothing. The castle’s shields took most of the blast so we only got a little of it. And the best part is that the spell to compress that water is so simple I can make my H-bombs any size I want. A hundred megatons, two hundred, even a thousand megatons, no problem."

Craig leaned against the battlement to ease his shaky knees. "That’s some water balloon. You ought to put one of those things in the nose of an ICBM."

"ICBMs? We don’ need no steenkin’ ICBMs. Combine that with the teleportation spell. What do you think would happen if you shoved a mother big bomb down into the planet’s crust?"

"Jesus," Craig breathed. "You could sink half a continent!"

Mikey’s smile grew wider. "If you do it right you should smash the world." He looked out past Craig, past the fortress and past the dissipating cloud.

"The whole fucking world," he repeated dreamily.