The Reign of the Brown Magician Page 8

  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.

  Chapter Seven

  “I know, I know,” Johnston said wearily, “name, rank, and serial number.” He waved at the prisoners and sat down. He sighed heavily.

  “You know,” he said, “we aren’t at war with the Empire. Right now we aren’t at war with anybody, and we’d like to keep it that way. I think I might know a few things you boys don’t, things that your superiors would be interested in—but I’m not going to just hand them over if you people insist on acting like prisoners of war. So far, you’re just trespassers and illegal aliens…” His mouth twitched a little at that phrase, and he had to stop for a few seconds to keep from laughing.

  The four of them sat silently as he recovered. The leader, Lieutenant Austin, was glowering at him; one of the others was looking sheepish, a third was staring at his own knees, and the fourth was studying the ceiling.

  “You trespassed on Ms. Jewell’s land,” Johnston said, “and you’re in the country without the proper papers, but you aren’t felons, you aren’t charged with espionage, you aren’t considered hostile or prisoners of war. You’re maybe subject to a fine and deportation, and that’s about it. Now, I’ll offer you a deal—you tell us why you’re here, and we’ll take you back and see if we can send you home. If the opening’s still there we can send you through by helicopter, maybe, even if the ladder’s gone. You keep quiet, and I’ll keep you locked up and incommunicado for as long as I possibly can. It’s that simple. If your people want to talk, we can talk—not me, I’m Air Force, but we can get the State Department in on it. If you don’t want to talk, you stay the hell out of our space. Simple enough?”

  The sheepish-looking one shifted his feet.

  “We’ll give back the suits before you go, too,” Johnston added. “No tricks.”

  The one who had been watching the ceiling tiles threw his superior a glance, but Austin wasn’t buying.

  It was obvious who needed convincing here.

  “Lieutenant Austin,” Johnston said, “I’m not asking for much.”

  “Too much,” Austin said.

  Johnston sat back and stared at Austin for a moment; the Imperial looked back unflinchingly.

  “So what the hell do you want us to do with you?” Johnston shouted suddenly. “You want to rot here?”

  Austin shrugged. “You’re holding Imperial personnel against their will,” he said.

  “You’re not in Imperial space, you…” Johnston bit his words off short; it wouldn’t help any to call Austin an idiot.

  He obviously was an idiot, but it wouldn’t help to tell him that.

  “Okay, look,” he said. “Maybe you think the Empire’s going to come in here, blasters blazing, to rescue you—but did they go after the crew of the Ruthless? Did they go after the squad that went with Lord Raven? I know about all that. I know your blasters don’t work here, your ships can’t fly here—this is our turf. They couldn’t save you even if they wanted to, and I’ll bet they don’t want to.”

  Austin was unmoved, but the other three were all visibly nervous now.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do, then,” Johnston said. “We’re going to send one of you…let’s see…Hitchcock. We’ll send Spaceman Hitchcock back through the space-warp, and let him talk to whoever’s in charge over there, and tell them that we want to talk, we want answers, and that none of you are going anywhere until we get them.”

  Hitchcock looked up from his folded hands.

  “I know we didn’t talk when the Ruthless came through, because we didn’t know it was for real,” Johnston said. “Well, now we know. We want to talk. You just tell ’em that, Hitchcock.”

  “Yessir,” Hitchcock said, smiling nervously.

  Austin threw him a look that should have been fatal, and Hitchcock wilted into silence, but Johnston leaned back and smiled.

  * * * *

  The formerly-dead man—Pel could no longer think of him as a fetch—crouched with his head on Boudicca’s chest, shivering silently. He hadn’t been eager to answer questions, and Pel hadn’t pressed the issue—the man appeared to be unnerved by the memories of spending several years as Shadow’s undead servant. Waking up suddenly, with all those memories, had sent him into a screaming fit.

  The fit seemed to be past, but Pel still didn’t think he wanted to know just what the man was remembering.

  The revived dog, on the other hand, seemed perfectly happy with her situation; she sat panting cheerfully as Pel petted her.

  “’Twould seem, O Brown Magician,” Athelstan said, “that you now have the knowledge that you sought.”

  “Yeah,” Pel said, scratching the dog behind her ears, relishing the familiar doggy feel of the coarse hair and loose skin. She was a pleasant dog, a mutt, mostly hound—she looked something like a coonhound, only smaller.

  He felt pretty pleased with himself just now, and he wanted to bask in it for a moment. He’d fixed the fetch, turned it back into a man. He’d brought a dead dog back to life. He thought he had a good understanding of resurrection, and he could use Susan Nguyen as a final trial, bring her back from the dead to sure it would work on Earthpeople. Everything was going well.

  He didn’t expect it to last, he was sure something would go horribly wrong at any minute now, but he wanted to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment while he could.

  “Are we then free to go?” Athelstan asked.

  Pel frowned as he considered the question.

  “I’m afraid not just yet,” he said at last. �
�Not till Susan…not till I know this works every time. And besides, I don’t have the…the bodies…” His throat tightened. The pleasant afterglow vanished as he imagined Nancy and little Rachel lying dead. He forced himself to take a deep breath, and asked, “But I can make bodies, can’t I? Raven said that Shadow could make duplicates of people—do I need a hair or something from the person, to work with?” He thought of the science fiction stories about cloning people from a single cell, and he thought that it ought to be possible to do something like that with magic.

  “Simulacra? Alas, O Great One, I know nothing…”

  Pel’s brows lowered, and thunder rumbled somewhere—not outside the fortress, but in the hallway outside the throne room doors.

  Athelstan blanched.

  “Perhaps, with some experimentation…” he said.

  * * * *

  “I’m out of this one,” General Hart said, shaking his head. “Once you called in Intelligence, I knew enough to get out of the way. It’s all yours, Bascombe.”

  Bascombe, seated comfortably behind his own desk, stared up at the general. “And I suppose you’ll deny approving Raven’s expedition? We happen to have the paperwork on that one, with your signature all over it.”

  “Oh, I’ll admit to that one, all right,” Hart said, leaning back against the gray-painted steel wall. “I did that one through the proper channels, you approved it, everything by the book. I sent Major Southern back to Terra with a full report. And that was just a dozen troopers, two officers, a telepath, and a bunch of foreigners—I didn’t send any Intelligence agents, Colonel Carson’s no loss, and the telepath was authorized higher up. It’s not going to look real pretty on my record, but it’s not serious.”

  “Are you suggesting that my follow-up actions are a serious mistake?” Bascombe demanded.

  “If they aren’t,” Hart said, straightening up again, “then why do you want me involved? I can see spreading the blame, but since when would you want to share the credit?”

  “I’m just trying to be fair,” Bascombe said.

  “Oh, of course. You didn’t bother to consult me until you heard that the Imperial Marshal and the Secretary of Science were on their way here, but then you suddenly wanted to be absolutely sure I didn’t mind. What a coincidence.” He put his hands on Bascombe’s desk and leaned forward until his face was a foot or so from Bascombe’s. “Not a chance, Bascombe. If there’s credit to be had here, you can have it. I’ve had enough of you. This one’s all yours, and I hope you choke on it.”

  * * * *

  Best thought he was making good time as he led his little squad through the forest; he just wished he knew where he was going.

  Begley, his number two man, had claimed some expertise in woodlore and had reported finding a track that someone had followed away from that huge pile of rotting flesh that covered the wreck of I.S.S. Christopher. Best hoped he was right, and that they were following the right people.

  The track became obvious after a point, and now Best was leading the way, with Begley, Poole, and Morcambe following close behind. Morcambe was carrying his knife ready in his hand; the others left theirs sheathed.

  Best wished he had thought to bring a bow and arrows—but that assumed one could have been found at Base One, which was doubtful.

  This silent forest, with its filtered, scattered sunlight and its thick, rich smells, was getting on his nerves. There could be enemies behind any tree. The Ruthless survivors had described monsters that came charging out of the woods at them, that burrowed up out of the ground; the thing that had dropped on I.S.S. Christopher looked as if it had had wings, before the scavengers and bacteria had started in on, and that implied that it flew. Monsters could come at them from any direction, from above or below, at any time.

  And he didn’t want to face monsters with just a knife. A bow and arrow would have been only slightly better. He wished blasters worked here, and he wondered just what sort of weird place this was that they didn’t.

  He wanted to get out of the woods, onto open ground. He wanted to find a native to talk to.

  The daylight seemed brighter ahead—was that a clearing? Were the trees thinning?

  He beckoned to the others, muttered, “Come on,” and picked up the pace.

  * * * *

  “I guess we won’t need the chopper,” Johnston said, staring at the rope ladder that hung from empty air, swaying in the breeze, its bottom rung bumping gently against the side of the spaceship that covered half of Amy Jewell’s back yard. He turned to one side for a moment and said, “There you go, Mr. Hitchcock—your way home. You get up there and tell them that we’re ready to talk, and that they don’t get their other men back until we do.”

  Hitchcock nodded, smiling happily as he stepped forward. He already had his space suit on. “Will do, Major,” he said. He lifted his bubble helmet into place and began securing the seal.

  “Major Johnston,” someone called.

  Johnston turned to locate the speaker.

  “Got a call for you.” The voice came from the back door of the house, where a lieutenant was leaning out, the receiver of Ms. Jewell’s phone in one hand.

  Johnston blinked, then frowned. “This better be important,” he said.

  “It’s Thorpe,” the lieutenant replied.

  Hitchcock had his helmet in place; he gave Johnston a questioning look, and the major waved him on toward the ladder.

  “I still say we should’ve suited up some of our own men and sent them along,” someone muttered.

  Johnston shook his head as he started toward the house. “Too dangerous,” he said as he walked. “Could be construed as hostile. Trespassing. Invading. We don’t know how rough they play.” He took the receiver from the lieutenant. “Ms. Thorpe?” he said. “Johnston here.” He turned to watch as Hitchcock started up the ladder.

  “Sir,” Prossie Thorpe’s voice said unsteadily, “I tried to talk to Carrie—to Registered Telepath Carolyn Hall. She contacted me.”

  “Go on,” Johnston said. Hitchcock was moving quickly, but it was a long climb, a good hundred feet at least, probably more.

  “She…she questioned me, but I…”

  The Imperial telepath’s tone penetrated Johnston’s focus on Hitchcock’s ascent. He looked down at the kitchen floor, at the toes of his shoes, and concentrated on the voice in his ear.

  “Take your time, Thorpe,” he said.

  * * * *

  Prossie drew a deep breath and tried to compose herself.

  It shouldn’t hurt this much, she told herself. She had already known she was a rogue, an outlaw; she had already known that Carrie was turned against her.

  Still, she hadn’t felt it until she had taken up direct mental contact with Carrie again.

  Then she had felt it, all right—that tense loathing and anger, not just from Carrie, but through her from the entire network of telepaths, the entire extended family.

  In fact, most of it came from the four hundred, not from Carrie—but then, Prossie knew that Carrie hardly had any real existence apart from the network. All her life she’d lived in the family’s web of thought and feeling, just the way Prossie had before Ruthless came through the warp.

  And much of what the family felt they picked up from the normals around them, the non-telepaths. Carrie was working with John Bascombe and General Hart and people who hated and feared telepaths; it was easy for her to direct that fear and hatred at her traitor cousin.

  Still, it was a shock to feel it.

  And it was a shock to learn why it was so intense.

  Bascombe had sent those men to Earth after her.

  Carrie hadn’t meant to let that slip, but she had. She hadn’t meant to tell Prossie anything.

  And Prossie hadn’t meant to tell Carrie as much as she had, either, but any time telepaths communicated directly there would be leakage, there would be things that slipped out. A telepath couldn’t completely hide anything without breaking contact.

  Hell, even when th
ere was no conscious contact, things tended to leak through; telepathy wasn’t limited to conscious thought. Anything one telepath knew, they all did, on some level—though they might not all remember it.

  Prossie swallowed and gripped the phone, the strange Earthly gadget that was almost like a mechanical telepath, that could transmit voices for hundreds of miles.

  “Major Johnston,” she said, “I found out what those men were sent after.”

  “Yes?”

  “They think…they suspect that you and your people have joined forces with Shadow, that you’re plotting together against the Empire, and that I came here as Shadow’s liaison. They came to capture or kill me, and to see whether such an alliance actually exists. I told Carrie that it doesn’t, and that Shadow is dead, and she should know I wasn’t lying, but I can’t be sure.”

  For a moment Prossie heard nothing, and she wondered whether the phone had broken, or whether some part of its mysterious mechanical workings needed extra time to transmit this particular message, but then Johnston asked, “Can you relay to her for us?”

  Prossie shook her head before she remembered that Johnston couldn’t see her.

  “No,” she said. “She and I…we can’t communicate any­more.”

  “Damn. You’re sure?”

  Prossie took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”

  “Is there anyone else she can communicate with, then? Did they send any telepaths with that bunch we have locked up? And please, don’t tell me it’s Hitchcock, because he’s two-thirds of the way up the ladder out here.”

  “No, sir. Not Hitchcock or any of the others, so far as I know—none of them are telepaths, and I don’t think any of them can receive.” Prossie blinked. “But there are some possibilities, sir—you know, we sort of made contact with some of your own people before Ruthless came through. There were six…no, five of them, because one died.”

  She didn’t really listen to what Johnston said to her next, because she knew what it was going to be. She closed her eyes and concentrated, remembering.