Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Reign of the Brown Magician

“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.