Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Reign of the Brown Magician

When the surrenders began, Albright had sent for a report from those guards.

There had been a small disturbance a day or so before the first surrender-objects had appeared loudly from nowhere. A civilian who had been hanging around, one of the people who worked there, had argued with the guards, slipped out of sight for a time, then returned.

They hadn’t held him. Albright cursed them all for idiots when he heard that.

They had checked his identity, though-his name was Peter Gregory. Albright ordered an immediate search.

It was two days later that Gregory was found-or rather, that he turned himself in at the local constabulary, announcing that he was the ringleader of the Brown Magician’s espionage network.

By then, however, Albright hardly cared. The surrenders had spread as far as Base One, and shock after shock was registering as one trusted person after another announced that he or she was actually one of Shadow’s spies, now working for the Brown Magician. The telepaths were constantly busy, interrogating the captured spies-or trying to; many, it turned out, were impervious to telepathy, which explained how they had survived for so long.

No one had expected that.

And no one had expected how many spies would turn themselves in. The official count made Peter Gregory #113, and Marshal Albright was morally certain that there were others whose capture had not yet been reported-and that there were many more yet to come.

After all, these were just from a two-day radius around Delta Scorpius IV, and the Empire’s full expanse required thirty days to cross.

And while no one in the Emperor’s cabinet had surrendered, nor anyone in Intelligence, nor any telepaths- that was a terrifying thought!-still, it was a shock when General Hart’s aide confessed to deliberately arranging for the inept Colonel Carson to command the expedition to Faerie, instead of the competent Captain Haggerty, to ensure the mission’s failure; when an engineer confessed to unsuccessfully attempting to sabotage the entire space-warp program; when Major Harrison acknowledged doing everything he could to ensure hostility between the Empire and Earth…

How could there be so many infiltrators?

Why hadn’t the telepaths long ago spotted them and reported them?

And the most frightening question of all-if Pel Brown was giving all these agents up, what was he holding back?

Pel sat cross-legged on the verandah of his treehouse and glared angrily up the dangling rope ladder.

A little time for paperwork and general dithering was one thing, but this was getting ridiculous. He had been hanging around here for days, waiting for the Empire to make good on its promise.

He had kept himself busy. He had constructed the elaborate four-room treehouse, growing some parts and building others, and then furnishing it to suit himself, using pieces of the dead bat-thing and I.S.S. Christopher for some of his raw materials; he had sent messages written on tree bark and shaped into gliders, rather like paper airplanes, back to the fortress, to keep Susan and the imitation Nancy appraised of his whereabouts; he had created a few monstrous little servants for himself from bits of tissue he found in the forest-tufts of fur, lost feathers, and the like.

And he’d done all that, made himself this cozy little nest, and all the time, what the hell had the Empire done?

Nothing, so far as he could see!

No one had emerged from the warp since that popinjay Curran had departed.

And nobody responded when he opened the portal to Gregory’s place and threw things in-presumably Gregory had, as ordered, turned himself in to the Imperial police.

Well, they’d had quite long enough.

Without looking, he sent an arm of the matrix back to the clearing, a hundred yards away-he’d done this often enough while working on the house that he hardly needed to think about it any shy;more.

The magic touched Christopher. Rivets flashed red and parted, as purple paint blackened and flaked away; a moment later a hull plate, about four feet by eight, popped out of the wrecked ship’s hull and floated gently upward.

Black letters etched themselves into the metal surface, spelling out Pel’s message: YOU HAVE ONE HOUR TO CONTACT ME AND EXPLAIN THE DELAY.

Then the curved steel sheet sailed up through the treetops, and on through the space-warp at the top of the ladder.

* * * *

How many more were there?

Secretary Sheffield’s hands trembled as he stared at the latest list. Terra itself appeared to be complete now, as Base One had been for days; the woman who had appeared in the Emperor’s own bedroom was secure, under heavy guard. Surrenders had ceased throughout most of the inner Empire, though more of Shadow’s agents continued to trickle in elsewhere.

The count was over four hundred in all.

Four hundred, including generals, technicians, records clerks, confidential secretaries, and assorted others in sensitive positions.

And they had thought that after Operation Spotlight, with its haul of almost a hundred, there might still be as many as twenty left.

How had Shadow done it? She must have spent all her free time for seven years infiltrating her agents into the Empire! And some of these agents were people who had well-documented histories going back to childhood, thirty, forty, fifty years ago, but the telepaths were now saying that some of them weren’t even truly human. How had Shadow managed that? Had she corrupted records? Had she somehow created false memories in friends and family members? Had she substituted her imitations for the real people?

If so, how had she done it without their closest friends noticing any change?

Had she actually been working her agents into the Empire for decades, not just the seven years everyone had assumed?

And what was Pel Brown holding in reserve? Surely, he wouldn’t give up this network for next to nothing. Were these four hundred just the tip of the iceberg?

It was a nightmare.

The list was still clutched in his hand when someone knocked on the door.

“Come in,” he called.

The door opened, and a messenger saluted nervously.

“A message has been received, Your Excellency,” he said, “from the Brown Magician.”

Sheffield looked up, cold dread clutching his heart.

The messenger cleared his throat, and continued, “It was etched into a plate from a spaceship’s outer hull. The complete text read, ‘You have one hour to contact me and explain the delay.’ It came through the warp…” He glanced at his watch. “…twenty-three minutes ago.”

“Good God,” Sheffield said, struggling to his feet.

His legs didn’t want to support him; he leaned heavily on the table.

They had to keep Brown talking.

“Send a messenger through immediately,” he said. “Before the hour is up. The messenger is to say that an explanation will be along within another hour. Use a telepath to get that to the warp crew, if it’s fastest-do whatever it takes. Go! Get going!”

The messenger saluted, and turned away.

“Run!” Sheffield shouted after him. “Run, damn you!”

The messenger ran.

* * * *

Pel wished he had a watch.

Electronics didn’t work in Faerie, though, so his old digital watch would have been useless even if he still had it. Spring-driven watches probably worked well enough, but they didn’t appear to have been invented here-at any rate, Pel hadn’t seen any.

He hadn’t bothered to make a sundial, either.

An hourglass would be in keeping with the local technology, but he didn’t have one, and he had no idea how he could calibrate the thing if he created one.