Lawrence Watt-Evans - Out of This World

Despite his wounds, he looked a lot happier now than he had then-and why not? He was on his way home.

Amy wasn’t so lucky. She didn’t know where she was headed.

She hoped it was home.

* * * *

The richness of telepathic contact was so wonderful, after the long drought on Earth and in Shadow’s realm, that Prossie was tempted to just lean back in her seat and let the whine of the aircar’s engine shut out distractions while she soaked in impressions-but she knew she couldn’t do that. She had duties to attend to.

She sent a wordless status report to Carrie, back at Base One-Carrie and the family were always her first concern, of course, whatever her official orders might be. And Carrie would keep the higher-ups in the military hierarchy informed and happy, anyway, so that was all right.

Then there were plans to be made here on Psi Cass Two. They would need a ship, to get everybody back to Base One as soon as possible. That barbarian who called himself Raven, and his bodyguard Stoddard, and the rest of them, she supposed they would all be unspeakably valuable to Imperial Intelligence; Shadow was a top concern, and this was the first time a group of friendly natives from that universe had ever been found.

At least, as far as Prossie knew, it was, and as far as she was concerned that was definitive-if any telepath knew it, now that she was back in normal space and in contact with the family, she would know it, on some deep unconscious level. And if anyone who ever came anywhere near a telepath knew it, or if anyone a telepath contacted from a distance knew it, then the suspicion would leak through.

The telepaths all knew things they didn’t know they knew, things that had registered deep in the back of the mind, far below consciousness-it was one of the more useful side-effects of their talent, really.

It was also one that they tried not to let normals know about. Prossie wasn’t going to tell anyone that she knew how important these people were; she would let her superiors tell her how important they were.

And not just Shadow’s people; the Earth people were potentially valuable, too. An entire new universe, with its own science-even if much of it didn’t work here in the real world, that still had to be valuable.

Not that Under-Secretary Bascombe thought so. He thought the Earth people were barbarians.

Prossie knew better; she hadn’t snooped deeply, but even a light brush showed her that their minds were rich, sophisticated, crammed with a wealth of stories and information. She couldn’t even understand much of what she found in there-especially when she tried this Susan Nguyen, whose background was so different from the others, and who had spent her early childhood speaking an utterly alien language.

Raven and company, on the other hand, were barbarians. Oh, they had their own culture, with plenty of elaboration and ritual, and their wizards had a great deal of esoteric knowledge about their “magic,” but they had the singlemindedness and ethnocentricity typical of primitives.

She conveyed all that to Carrie, in mental shorthand.

But then she turned her attention to the governor in Town-Psi Cass Two had only one settlement, and nobody had bothered to think up a fancy name for it yet.

A ship. They needed a ship. And Captain Cahn held a special commission as emissary to Earth that, despite what he had told Raven, gave him plenipotentiary powers.

And there were all those people still stuck out in the desert.

She had some arguing to do, to speed things along.

* * * *

Raven watched the vehicle depart. No single part of it touched the sand beneath, and yet these people denied the reality of magic?

What else was their science but another magic?

Yet deny it they did, always and vehemently. It was a curious thing indeed.

Would that the more ordinary, commonplace magic functioned in this hellish realm wherein he had found refuge! Alas, he knew from the reports of his compatriots and their spies that it did not and could not; the currents of power that wizards tapped did not flow here, those lines of the web Shadow had strung did not reach here, in this so-called Milky Empire.

What power was it, then, that these machines used? A pretty puzzle, that; perhaps, were it solved, wizards of Elani and Valadrakul’s ilk could draw upon that same source. That was a thought for another day.

For the nonce, the need was to reach the heart of the Empire from this barren outpost, and there to find the portal back to Stormcrack.

And of course, to bring through the Empire’s men and machines, to do battle with that infernal Shadow that had fallen upon all the true lands.

Thus, to ride the machines, this aircar, and then some other-would it be as that other vehicle, in the realm named Earth?

Raven did not quail to face man or monster, with blade or less; he feared not death, as must needs come to all in the end. Still, at the memory of that ride his lips tightened.

He did not trust these machines, nor the men that built them!

* * * *

Pel’s digital watch was still not working. He had no way of telling, therefore, how long the aircar was gone.

It seemed like days. The sun-or rather, the star Psi Cassiopeia-vanished below the horizon not long after the vehicle departed, and the air cooled quickly. Darkness fell suddenly and more completely than the suburbanite Browns were accustomed to; there was no glow of streetlamps and headlights, but only the light of a few million stars.

The stars were brighter and more numerous than Pel ever remembered seeing before, even on trips to the country, but that still hardly made up for the lack of a moon.

The air temperature dropped with astonishing speed once full dark had arrived; where the sands had seemed cool in the heat of the day, they were quickly the warmest thing around.

That, Pel thought, explained why they had been cool in the first place-the sand held the heat far better than the air, which had turned downright chilly. Captain Cahn used his blaster to heat the rock face where the portal had been, just like Lieutenant Sulu in an old Star Trek episode, and the party huddled around it, but in fact the night air was not actually as cold as all that-at its worst, it didn’t approach freezing.

There was no food to be had, no supplies of any kind except the half-bottle of Pepsi that Smith had somehow hung onto throughout their adventures; there was nothing to do here, nowhere to go, no place worth exploring, just miles upon miles of empty sand and rock. The remaining travelers, whether from Earth, Terra, or Shadow’s realm, had little choice but sleep.

Pel was very glad they had eaten the pizza before venturing through the basement wall; that ensured that hunger, while real, was not a serious problem. Rachel did complain, when she was awake, about being thirsty, but she accepted the fact that there was nothing to drink. Captain Cahn was holding the Pepsi in reserve, doling it out in capfuls as he deemed appropriate. He was very cautious about it, and nobody came away satisfied.

The captain did allow Rachel more than her share, Pel had to admit.

At least there were no live monsters, nor even shadows that monsters might hide in. Their situation was not pleasant, but neither was it particularly frightening. Mostly, it was simply dark, dull, and boring, and just chilly enough to make sleep difficult.

Pel had the feeling, sometimes during the long wait, that he ought to be doing something. A storybook hero would be doing something-Captain Kirk, or Arnold Schwartzenegger, or Horatio Hornblower wouldn’t just sit and wait, would he?

But what could he do?

Besides, he wasn’t a hero. If this whole mess was someone’s great adventure, it probably wasn’t his. He didn’t feel like the star, but just a bit player. His role was to go along until he could get back home, out of the story entirely and back to real life.