by Kay Hooper
“Of all our abilities, it’s the most dangerous.” His gaze turned to her, still brooding. “It’s also forbidden without the approval of the Council.”
“Do we … have its approval?”
Merlin shook his head.
All Serena knew of the Council of Elders was that it was the ultimate authority among wizards. Merlin hadn’t told her much more than that. But it was enough to make her feel a little chilled just then.
She attempted a laugh that didn’t quite come off. “You, Richard, breaking a rule?”
His mouth twisted oddly. “If I had not broken another … Well, never mind that now. I’ll deal with the Council, if need be, when we return.”
“This is very important,” she realized.
“Very.”
“Why?” She wasn’t sure he would answer.
Merlin hesitated. “The less you know about the specifics, the better our chances of success.”
“Really?” She couldn’t help doubting that.
“Really, Serena. I’ll take an oath if you like, but I hope you won’t need that from me. The truth is I honestly believe that for you to know everything at this point is to invite potential disaster.”
The sincerity in his voice convinced Serena he meant what he said. It was frustrating, but she had to trust that he knew what he was doing. “All right. What can you tell me?”
Merlin obviously chose his words carefully. “I believe that something went wrong in our past.”
“Our past?”
“The past of wizards. I can’t be sure, since it was so long ago and most of the records haven’t survived—either because of the passage of time or because they were deliberately destroyed. All I am certain of is that we must go back and try to understand what happened.”
She frowned. “And change it?”
Again he hesitated. “I don’t know. That decision can only be made when we have more information. If we make a mistake—change too much or the wrong thing—we could destroy our present.”
Serena felt another chill. “If we did that—made a mistake in the past, I mean—then couldn’t we go back again and just fix the mistake?”
Merlin shook his head. “Not even a wizard can exist twice in the same time and place. Paradox: the bane of time travel. Once we go back, then we were there.”
“Yes, but …” Serena chewed on her bottom lip as she tried to figure that out.
Patiently Merlin said, “There are two paradoxes in time travel. The first is our inability to alter our individual lives—our personal time lines—in any way whatsoever. Any change, however minor, affects who and what we became; that, in turn, affects our reason for going back in the first place.”
Serena blinked. “Um … I’m confused.”
He smiled briefly. “All right, then consider the example today’s thinkers like to offer when they say time travel is impossible. Suppose you build a time machine, and it takes you back along your personal time line—which is, in effect, the direct line of your ancestry. You encounter your father years before your own conception. Either directly or merely by your presence, you influence events in his life, and he dies.”
She waited, then said, “And so?”
“And so it isn’t possible. If your father dies before your conception, then you are never born to build a time machine and travel back in time. Paradox.”
That example worked. Serena nodded slowly. “I get it. We can’t do anything that would directly affect our own present, because it would change too much for us to be able to go back.”
“Close enough,” Merlin murmured.
“But you said there were two kinds of paradoxes. What’s the second one?”
“In a sense the second is much simpler. Once we go back, we were there. What do you suppose would happen, Serena, if you went back to the same place a second time and came face-to-face with yourself?”
She shivered. “That’s eerie.”
“It’s also dangerous. The theory is that a duplication of self occupying the same place and time would fracture that time line. Destroy it—or unalterably change what must be.”
Serena cleared her throat. “So what would happen to me in that case? Both of me?”
“I can only offer you another theoretical answer. In theory, there would be, from that point on, two separate Serenas in two separate—and probably quite different—time lines. Alternate lives, alternate futures, and both of you would be diminished.”
“Yuk.” She stared at him. “I don’t like the sound of that at all.”
“I should hope not.”
“So we only go back once.”
“We could go back to an earlier or later time, or another place in the same time, but we aren’t allowed the luxury of repeating our actions until we’re satisfied with them.” He looked at her steadily. “It’s a one-shot deal, Serena. We have to get it right the first time.”
FIVE
After a moment she said, “But how can we go back into the past of wizards? Won’t that affect our present?”
“Not yours or mine, no, at least not directly. I’ve traced our ancestries back as far as possible, and neither of our personal time lines in any way touches Atlantis.”
Serena leaned forward slowly in her chair, reaching out for the edge of the desk as if for support. “Atlantis? The lost continent? That’s where we’re going?”
“Yes.” A frown tugged at his brows, and he said almost to himself, “Still a risk if we change anything, unless there were no survivors. And if there were no survivors, how could what happened there have changed the history of wizards?”
A little numb, she murmured, “Another paradox?”
Merlin stopped scowling and shrugged. “Perhaps. But there must have been survivors. At least one. Someone had to tell the others what happened there. Someone had to know what had gone wrong, or else why would they have felt so strongly that they made the law—and made it so inviolate.”
“What law?”
He looked at her for a long moment, then shook his head a little. “The point is that someone must have survived the destruction of Atlantis, and because of that person’s beliefs or experiences, a decision was made that altered the society of wizards. That’s the only possible answer.”
Aware that her question hadn’t been answered, but assuming it was because she had strayed into the part of all this he didn’t want her to know about, Serena merely said, “Are you sure it was only one person?”
“I’m not sure of anything. My guess is that there couldn’t have been more than a few survivors. Atlantis was too remote, and travel too difficult in those days, for it to be very likely that many escaped.”
“Surely they had time to plan their escape. Wouldn’t there have been some kind of warning? I mean, the whole continent vanished. Even if it sank all at once, wouldn’t the people have realized long before it actually happened that they were heading for disaster?”
Merlin shrugged again. “It’s difficult to say. I doubt the continent existed in calm for years and then simply disappeared one day; there must have been earthquakes, volcanic activity—something. But that may have been going on for so long that the people simply accepted it as normal. Or they may have been trapped there with no way of escape. Or, even more likely, they may not have realized that their whole world could vanish so completely. Look at the people today who build houses and businesses along earthquake fault lines, Serena; they may know the risks intellectually, but do you honestly think they really face the knowledge that one day it could all be gone?”
“I see what you mean. So the people of Atlantis might have gone blindly to their fate. But at least one escaped.”
“I believe that must have happened. Atlantis was so cut off from the other civilizations in the world that no one could have known for certain what happened there unless they were told by a witness.”
“Were there a lot of wizards then?” Serena asked curiously.
“More than today—relative to the population at
least. And those in Atlantis were probably in some sort of control over their society.”
“I thought wizards didn’t do that.”
“Not now, and not for a long time. But then … who knows? Power has a way of corrupting, and at that time there weren’t many other ways to be powerful. There was no worldwide society as there is today, no technology, only crude weapons. Though they were primitive by our standards, wizards must have stood head and shoulders above most others in terms of power.”
Thinking of the romantic stories she knew of wizards, Serena said, “How were they primitive? I mean, look at some of the things your namesake did.”
Merlin half closed his eyes in a pained expression. “Fiction, Serena. I’ve told you.”
In a small, wistful voice, she said, “No King Arthur?”
He hesitated, then sighed. “I wouldn’t go that far. But reality—if it was reality—can never measure up to legend. If there was a Merlin then, and if he was great, it was mostly by comparison to those around him.” Taking note of her dejected air, he decided to abandon the subject of Arthurian legend. “Serena, the wizards of Atlantis are probably first graders in relation to us. They’re still learning to read and tell time and count without using their fingers.”
She brightened just a bit and, using the same yardstick, said, “If they’re first graders, where are you?”
“Working on my doctorate,” he said promptly.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer, but asked anyway. “And me?”
He was silent and reflective long enough to make her nervous, but then said judiciously, “A few credits away from your baccalaureate, I’d say.”
Surprised and a bit flattered, she said, “I thought you’d say I was still in high school.”
“You’re still a long way from final graduation,” he reminded her.
Serena nodded with a stab at meekness, but she was quite pleased by his assessment of her progress. One thing she did know about wizards was that it required a good many years of study to achieve the highest levels of the craft; she had gotten a late start, so if she had done as well as he said, she had every right to be proud of herself.
“In any case,” Merlin went on, “we should certainly be able to hold our own with even the most powerful wizard of Atlantis.”
Yanked from her self-congratulation, Serena felt a little shiver of unease. “You say that as if you expect us to land in the middle of a battle.”
Merlin glanced down at the book before him again, then looked at her seriously. “I don’t know what we’re going to land in the middle of, but I’m expecting the worst. We should both expect the worst. The continent vanished, Serena; whatever happened there can’t be good.”
“That makes sense.” She took a deep breath. “Okay. So what happens next?”
“First I have to teach you to completely shield your powers. After that I’ll build the gate.”
Somewhat confused, Serena said, “Shield my powers? You mean, from another wizard? I thought I could already do that.”
“No. You shield your thoughts, but the fact that you possess power would be obvious to any other wizard who came near you. I must teach you to project a powerless facade so that no one, not even a Master wizard, will suspect you to be anything other than completely powerless.”
“Why?” she asked slowly.
He looked at her for a long moment, as if considering whether to answer her, then said, “I have a hunch that it would be … more difficult for us to travel together if both of us are obvious wizards. But whether I’m right about that or not, it’s still a prudent step to take. With your powers hidden from other wizards, we have an ace up our sleeve—and present a less-threatening appearance to those we encounter.”
Serena chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, then said, “It won’t really affect me, will it? I mean, I’ll still be able to use my powers if I need to?”
With that uneasy question, she reassured Merlin that he had made the right decision in electing not to tell her why they had to go back in time. If Serena had any idea that he could steal her powers from her, she would never be able to trust him—and he had a strong feeling her trust was needed.
“Of course you will,” he replied calmly. “What I’ll teach you to do will be rather like putting on a mask. You’ll be able to see and hear clearly, and the mask will remain in place until you reach up and take it off. As long as you wear it, your powers—your true identity—will be hidden behind it. But only hidden. Not changed in any way.”
Serena relaxed, not even aware until then that she had tensed. “That doesn’t sound so bad. Will it take me long to learn?”
“A few days, I think. And a day at least for me to build the gate. You have a week’s vacation left, don’t you?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Owen won’t be happy if I suddenly take off this coming week without warning,” she said, referring to her boss, “but everything’s caught up, so he really doesn’t have an argument. I gather that’s the idea? That I should start my vacation beginning tomorrow?”
“The sooner we get started, the better. I can close the office for the week and give Rachel the time off so we won’t be disturbed at all.”
“What’ll we tell people? When we leave, I mean.”
Merlin shook his head. “We won’t tell them anything, because no one will ever know we even left the house. I’ll set the gate to return us within minutes, no matter how long we spend in Atlantis.”
Serena had to think about that for a moment, but then nodded. “We’ll be in the past, so time won’t advance in the present—right?”
“Right.”
“So how much time will we spend in Atlantis? Relative time, I mean?”
Once again Merlin glanced down at the opened book on his desk before he replied. “If we’re to be successful, I believe we have to be there at the end—or as close as possible. A month before the destruction, I think. That should give us enough time to observe and understand the society.”
“You know exactly when it happened?”
He nodded. “Yes—another reason why I suspect there was at least one witness. The account of Atlantis’s final hours is extremely detailed and seems to have been written from a ship at sea.”
She looked curiously at the book lying open before him, but since it was upside down from her viewpoint, she was unable to see much. “That account?”
“This account,” he confirmed with a slight nod.
“That isn’t one of your books,” she noted. From ancient times Apprentice wizards had been required, as part of their training, to hand-copy (with exquisite penmanship, no less) a complete set of spellbooks from their Master’s library. This was required not only for the discipline gained in the long process of carefully copying the books, but also because spellbooks were never translated or printed.
Since Serena was in the process of copying her own set of spellbooks (only those in which she had completed her training), she could recognize all of Merlin’s, and all the reference books in his library, as well; the book on his desk was something else. It looked very, very old, and she had the feeling that despite all her training and learning, she wouldn’t have been able to read the enigmatic script.
“No,” Merlin said, replying to her comment. “It was given to me, recently, by my own Master.”
She hesitated, but since the topic didn’t seem to be taboo, she said, “I never thought, but of course you would have had to be apprenticed to a Master when you were a child.”
“In my case, the Master was my father.” With a slight smile he added, “A difficult undertaking for both of us. Wizard or powerless, fathers and sons always seem to be at odds.”
“He was a difficult taskmaster?”
“Not so much that as a … difference in personalities and temperament.”
“You must take after your mother then,” Serena ventured.
Merlin’s face closed down instantly, as if a curtain had dropped. “Yes, I suppose I do.”
/> “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
He shook his head abruptly to cut off her apology. “Never mind. We wandered from the point. This account of the destruction of Atlantis is very detailed, obviously from an eyewitness who was at sea. So there must have been at least one survivor.”
Serena realized she had touched a nerve in her comment about his mother, but she had no idea why. Nor could she probe for an answer; his shuttered eyes made that clear. All she could do was follow his lead.
She was relieved to find a humorous angle in her own thoughts, and that relief was audible in her voice. “It just occurred to me that since the nonwizard world has no idea about some of this stuff, any powerless historian would just love to get his hands on your books.”
Merlin smiled slightly. “They wouldn’t be able to read a word.”
“True.” Serena thought for a moment, and found a genuine worry to distract her from everything else. “Something else occurs to me. Since we’ll be in Atlantis just when everything’s about to hit the fan—you will be able to get us out of there in a hurry, won’t you?”
“If we’re near the gate, certainly.”
She stared at him. “If we’re near it? You mean it’s a fixed gate?”
Returning her stare, Merlin said, “Well, I don’t propose to carry it around in my pocket.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. If we happen to get stuck away from the gate just when we need it, wouldn’t you be able to make another? A spur-of-the-moment escape hatch, so to speak?”
“No. One gate causes a small rip in the space-time continuum, which is dangerous enough; a second gate could create a crosscurrent and make it impossible for either doorway to be closed. We don’t want that to happen.”
“I guess not.” Serena frowned. “So there really is a space-time continuum?”
“Of course.”
“Oh. I thought the science fiction writers made that up.”
“So do they.”
Serena laughed, and realized only then that in the surprise of Merlin’s announcement about their forthcoming trip, she had completely forgotten the tension between them. It felt more like old times, talking to him like this without difficulty, as if no trouble had sprung up between them.