Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Reign of the Brown Magician

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.

“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.”