Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Reign of the Brown Magician

“Okay, don’t tell me,” Pel said with a shrug. “I’d think, after seeing me grow that man a new ear and put the other’s arm back together, you’d have a bit more appreciation of me than that, but what the hell. Susan, get a blaster.”

Susan took a raygun from a nearby fetch.

“Now, unless someone tells me just who this Mr. Grigsby is, what his job is, and what an Imperial representative is doing on your little backwater planet,” Pel said, “I’m going to tell this woman to put that blaster to Mr. Miller’s ear and pull the trigger.” He grinned broadly as he spoke.

It was, he supposed, a pretty cruel joke; these people didn’t know that the blaster wouldn’t work here. Frankly, though, he didn’t much care; he was fed up with Imperial uncooperativeness. He wanted to show he could be ruthless-and he had to do it before they saw him bring their dead companions back to life, or the effect would be ruined.

Of course, he could threaten to fry them all magically, which would be a more honest threat, but somehow Pel suspected the blaster would be a more effective threat. These people undoubtedly believed in blasters, while they probably didn’t believe in magic.

It was Grigsby who spoke up, which obscurely pleased Pel.

“Don’t shoot him,” he said. “I’m the governor-general of Beckett.”

Pel’s nasty grin turned into a pleased smile. “Governor-general? Is that what it sounds like?”

“I couldn’t say,” Grigsby answered. “I’ve no idea what it sounds like to a barbarian such as yourself. And just who, might I ask, are you? You know who we are; who are you? Are you Shadow?”

“No, I’m…” Pel hesitated, then gave the name he was known by here-maybe back on Earth he was Pellinore Brown, but not here. “I’m Pelbrun, the Brown Magician. And to me, ‘Governor-General’ sounds like the highest office on the…the planet? Is Beckett the name of the planet? Or is it just an island or a continent or something?”

“Beckett is the planet,” Grigsby admitted.

“That’s great!” Pel was absolutely delighted; this was a real stroke of luck. This first raid in his planned campaign of terror had just been intended to add to his armory; he hadn’t hoped for so valuable a hostage.

He had figured that in any sort of open combat, soldiers from Faerie would get cut to pieces if they didn’t have any better weapons than swords and spears, and he didn’t have the patience to infiltrate an entire new network of spies and saboteurs. He did have three blasters-the one Prossie had used to kill Shadow, and two others that had belonged to Lieutenant Dibbs’ men when Shadow slaughtered them. What he needed was to get more.

So he had sent the monster through, knowing it would die, so that soldiers would come and look at it, maybe post a guard; then the fetches were sent through, three at a time, to kill or capture the soldiers in order to get more blasters.

The first three had gotten killed, but another threesome had been close behind, ready to snatch up the blasters the first set dropped and continue the fight, and then, after a dozen had gone through, he had sent the false Nancy to assess the situation and either sound the retreat or call for the enemy’s surrender, whichever seemed appropriate.

And it seemed to have worked. They had more blasters.

The fetches reappeared and lowered a purple-uniformed corpse to the floor.

That was something to practice resurrection on, Pel thought, smiling.

The fetches vanished back through the portal.

“All right, Mr. Miller,” he said, “you can go-just step back through that portal, the way those two just did. Then get in your aircar and go-but I want you to take a message back to your bosses for me.”

“What message?” Miller said warily.

“Simple enough-you tell those fools at Base One that I’ll trade your Governor-General here, and these fine soldiers, for the bodies of my wife and daughter. I get the bodies, I let everyone go. But if I don’t get them soon, I start killing hostages. And if I run out of hostages, I’ll stage another raid-and probably not on Beckett. My men could pop up anywhere in the whole fuckin’ Galactic Empire, Mr. Miller-you tell those bastards that!”

Miller hesitated, unsure what to say; he stared at Pel for a few seconds, glanced at Grigsby, then back at Pel.

“Go on,” Pel said, with an impatient gesture.

Miller stepped forward, groping for the opening-and then he was gone.

Pel nodded with satisfaction. It would take time for Miller to get back to wherever he came from and pass the word; it would take time for the message to reach Base One, and for the brass there to decide what to do.

They might well decide the wrong thing; the Empire had demonstrated before just how pigheaded and stupid it could be. Pel told himself that he had to be ready if the idiots said “no” again.

And he only had nine blasters so far.

* * * *

“Another report,” the telepath said. “This one’s from my cousin Sharon-I mean, from Gamma Trianguli II. A party of armed men appeared from nowhere, took hostages, broke into the local constabulary’s armory, then vanished, taking the hostages with them. They left a note demanding the bodies.”

“God,” Albright said, resting his head in his hands and staring down at the desk.

“We should have just delivered them in the first place,” Markham said. “All the raids have been new arrivals, there haven’t been any signs that he left spies or saboteurs in place; we should have believed him and given him the damn bodies.”

“That’s as may be,” Sheffield replied. “We didn’t, and we can’t now.”

“Why not?” Albright asked, lifting his head. “Why the hell not?”

“Because we can’t give in to terrorism. We mustn’t let ourselves be blackmailed, or he’ll have won, we’ll have to do whatever he demands. I have His Majesty’s backing on this-we will not give in.”

Albright stared silently at his superior for a long moment, then glanced at Markham.

Markham shrugged.

“For God’s sake,” Albright said. “He wants something that’s his by right, that we should have given him long ago, and now you say that we can’t?”

“Not while he’s attacking us. If he returns all our hostages, then maybe we can negotiate. If we choose.”

“We did negotiate,” Markham pointed out. “He agreed to our terms, and did what he said he would, and then we changed the rules.”

“We asked for proof, that’s all.”

“Proof-how the hell was he supposed to prove a negative?”

“Look, it doesn’t matter,” Sheffield insisted. “The Emperor says we don’t give him anything. We don’t even talk until he stops the attacks.”

“And if he never stops the attacks?”

“We’re going to make him stop the attacks.”

“How?” Albright demanded. “We don’t have any way of locating or blocking the space-warps he’s using; they don’t produce the same radiation ours do. They don’t produce any radiation we can detect. As far as we can tell, they can pop up anywhere.”

Sheffield shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. He turned to Celia Howe, who had sat silently throughout the debate. “What’s the latest report?”

“We’ve been interviewing all the captured subjects, of course,” Howe replied. “It’s been assigned our highest priority. Most of them know very little about Brown, or for that matter Shadow, but they seem willing to tell us what they do know, even those immune to telepathy, though of course we can’t be sure those aren’t lying. We’ve resorted to unpleasant methods with some of them…”