by Garon Whited
“Mom says we need him. She needs him, maybe.”
“All right, so I borrow him. He’ll disappear for a day or two while I explain to him how wonderfully beneficial it will be to his health, safety, and sanity if he never touches you again. Maybe it sticks. Maybe it sticks for a little while. Maybe he doesn’t listen. If he touches you again after that, he vanishes permanently.”
“You just warn him, first?”
“It’ll be a strong warning,” I assured her.
“Maybe,” she allowed, reluctantly, turning the toy soldier over and over in her hands. “What else?”
“I can build a house for you, set you up with your own place, and you can live away from him.” I shrugged. “I’m not marrying you, so you’ll have to find a husband in your own good time and fashion, but you can live in my house until it falls down. You can even bring your mother, if you want to. Then, if he comes over to bother you, you can throw him out—or report it to me, and he’ll vanish.”
“You like the vanishing thing,” she observed.
“Dark magic,” I reminded her, smiling with a mouthful of teeth. “It’s simplest and most certain.”
“Any other ideas?”
“Leave? I bet I can find you a tall, strong, handsome man of honor, intelligence, wisdom, and grace who will happily be your husband.”
“I don’t want a husband!”
“Are you sure?” I asked. She almost snapped an answer at me, but checked herself.
“I don’t want a husband right now,” she amended. “Maybe later. Someday. If I meet someone who makes me think about him being a husband.”
I didn’t say anything about the gentleman she hinted at earlier. Can of worms.
“Fair enough. Those are my ideas. Got any of your own?”
She thought about it. I liked watching her think. It was a darn sight better than watching her weep.
“Can you put a spell on him to keep him from touching me?”
It was my turn to think about it. The local magical environment was low to mild, meaning talented locals might manage to use elaborate, ritual spells. It was slowly increasing as more power flowed out from the main power-points of my magical operations. This background power rise might not be detectable to normal people in Patricia’s lifetime. It also meant any spell I scraped together out here would need a power boost on a regular basis. Maybe an energy-conversion spell on top of it. Something like a solar conversion panel as an outer layer around her, absorbing a piece of everything in the non-visible ranges of the spectrum…
“I think so. Got any plans for tonight?”
“No.”
“Come on. Let’s find somewhere we won’t be disturbed.”
I mounted up and swung her behind me. We rode off into the woods together until we came to one of Diogenes’ sensor pylons.
The pylons are obelisks of some advanced composite. They remind me of the Washington Monument, only smaller—about four meters high. Inside them are sensors of various sorts, partly for detecting giant ants and some of the more pestiferous mutant monsters, but mostly because of those stubborn mutated elephants. The pylons are placed around each village, but more heavily on the sides toward any pachyderm territories, in case of migration. Diogenes also tracks the movements of the herds with semi-dirigible drones, but it’s nice to have a line of defense near the villages if things go bad.
I’m hoping we never find another ant nest.
The pylons aren’t the only defense, of course. The residents are armed, primarily with bows and arrows, but they brought a few guns with them when they transferred from their home worlds. They’ve been briefed on the local wildlife and most have seen examples—dead examples. A stampeding herd of elephants is beyond their defensive capabilities, but these elephant things don’t stampede. Even if they did, Diogenes would warn whatever village was in danger and probably kill at least half the herd as it passed between his pylons. The people also don’t like the spring-snakes, nor are they pleased with the tank caterpillars, and I know they dread the crab-spiders. I can’t say I blame them.
The residents are always looking to make better weapons. Predators are a problem, yes, but humans are such good predators they eat other predators. By and large, I think they do all right.
In the clearing around the pylon, Patricia lay down. I scratched in the dirt around her, chanted and hummed, waved my hands, all that stuff. I cheated a little. One of the things I usually have with me is a power crystal on a cord, like an amulet. I put it on her and tied everything into it.
The idea was to surround Patricia with a field specifically attuned to Alvin’s nervous system. I could do that because I recently had a good look at it. Even better, my long-ago research into pain spells paid a dividend. Starting about an inch away from her skin, nerves called nociceptors would activate—but only Alvin’s nociceptors. The intensity of the activation would increase as they came closer, firing at maximum on contact.
In many ways, it would be like reaching into a blowtorch. The big difference, of course, was he wouldn’t burn. It was extremely efficient, since it only activated nerves rather than producing heat. Wrapping her in an energy-conversion spell might provide enough power to keep it running indefinitely.
It was perfect and I loved it and I immediately realized I could do better.
It’s a beautiful and terrible thing when that happens. I love it when I’ve just come up with a brilliant improvement. I hate when I’ve wasted so much work. Technically, I suppose it’s not wasted. I had to do the work to realize there was a better way. But, looking back, why couldn’t I have simply had the brilliant idea up front? Maybe I need a better brain.
I took most of the spell structure apart and started again. The power conversion modules needed minor tweaking, but the effect I wanted to generate was completely different. Instead of firing the pain receptor nerves, I wanted a more general effect, and in reverse. Don’t put energy into the nerves to activate them. Since they’re based on electrical impulses, take energy out of them to turn them off! Steal some of that power for the spell itself and ground out all the rest!
I also replaced the one-shot spell in the message-spell figurine. Just in case.
After waking her, I explained the operation of the spell and the limitations. I didn’t mention the first draft of it. Patricia nodded when I was done and examined her new pendant.
“As long as I wear this, he can’t touch me?”
“He can touch you, but doing so will make whatever part of him touches you go numb. There’s no point in touching you if he can’t feel it. It should also cause a certain amount of muscle weakness, so breaking free from his grip shouldn’t be difficult. Don’t hug him. He’ll probably pass out.”
“I have to wear the amulet, though?”
“Yes. It’s a power source. Don’t show it to anyone. Keep it a secret. I don’t want him snatching it off you or someone stealing it.”
“All right.”
“And one more thing. It won’t let him hold on to you, but he can still hit you. The spell won’t prevent it.” I didn’t mention what would happen if Diogenes noticed Patricia was bruised or bloody. He would tell me, and after that, she could probably guess.
She put her arms around my neck and didn’t let go for a while.
“Thank you.”
I escorted her home, helped her sneak in, and the Black took me back to Denver.
I still think of it as Cybertron, no matter what Mary says.
Apocalyptica, Sunday, September 20th, Year 11
I spent the remainder of the night in my headspace, reviewing spells of summoning and binding. Occasionally, I stepped out to review some details in Diogenes’ databanks before stepping inside again to think. It does no good to have Diogenes correlate everything in a billion universes about spirits, ghosts, angels, demons, devils, and all related phenomena if I don’t understand it. I spent longer than I like to think about coming to thaumaturgic grips with these theological Things.
When t
he dawn came, I waited through it in the bathroom whirlpool, soaking and enjoying the swirling water, thinking about Patricia and how it felt to ride out again on a quest, however small. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to spend a good portion of the night in the saddle. Maybe I should get out more…
As I thought that, Diogenes informed me of a request. Mary wanted me to meet her at the Niagara site. Since my transformation was pretty much over, I went through another rinse cycle, dried and dressed, then headed out through the shift-booth.
In one of the residential complex silos, we have a variable-size gate we can dial for any destination. It’s there because sometimes I’m willing to burn a larger portion of the power budget in going somewhere that doesn’t have a shift-booth. The other full-sized gate is in our facility underneath the new Niagara Falls. It’s our main cosmos-probing location. It comes complete with automated mini-gates, extensive sensor packages, gigantic water turbines, and over half of all our electromagical transformers. The power budget for the place is enormous because it has to be.
As an aside, I ought to mention how I made some assumptions in my original gate-dialing hypotheses. I thought the various plaques we originally enchanted stood for some sort of universal constants. Using combinations of them, we could then dial randomly for different universes. For example, someplace where the shape of space was such that a circle’s circumference involved an ever-so-slight variation on the ratio we know as pi.
During the course of our explorations, Diogenes conducted some tests. To the limits of his experimental error, all the earth-analogue worlds have identically-shaped spaces. The universal constants don’t vary. They seem to be interuniversal within the larger structure of the multiple universes we’ve been able to access.
This ruined my carefully-built-up mental construct of how it all worked and forced me to reevaluate my hypotheses. I hate when that happens, but it’s a risk you take when you deal with the scientific method.
I now believe—with no way to test my idea—that the various Earth-worlds are literally alternate Earths. At every point in history, there have been decisions. A flip of a coin, a roll of the dice, a turning left instead of turning right, and so on. In each of these cases, the decision went all ways, each one spawning a new quantum superposition of the universe—a branch off the original timeline, if you like. As a result, there are worlds where Kennedy was shot, but not killed; where Kennedy was shot at, but unharmed; and, of course, where Kennedy was assassinated.
Which means, of course, we don’t understand how the dialing process works. The symbols mean things—to me, since I’m doing this magically—but they don’t mean what I thought they meant in the larger structure of the multiverse. We still use them, obviously, even though we don’t understand them. I thought it was like dialing random phone numbers. All the digits are strange symbols instead of numbers, but we can still dial random numbers and write down what combinations we used.
I now think our magical dialing system is nothing but the most primitive of make-do work, tapping only the most basic possibilities of the system. We’re throwing a line out into water and reeling in whatever we get, so to speak, but we could be using sonar if only I understood how to define the quantum superposition of a universe. Thing is, I don’t know how to even begin to look at a universe’s address in the multiplex decision tree of possible universes.
Our dialing system does work, though. To the extent it works, I’m glad it does, but now I know I don’t understand why it works. It provides us with access to some ridiculously high number of decimal places of worlds and the opportunity to gather data for a more comprehensive theory of alternate realities.
We still don’t know why we sometimes, very rarely, get completely unrelated worlds like Karvalen. They’re clearly not alternate timelines. These outliers, these mavericks, annoy my sense of tidiness and order.
At any rate, the probe-gate site.
The whole site is buried deep underground in a series of Norad-like armored boxes, accessible through airlocks and sealed to contain pretty much anything I could imagine. The whole of the Niagara River now flows down through the power turbines, rather than over the new lip of the falls, before flowing out into the Niagara Crater Lake. Even so, those subterranean turbines are still higher up than the complex.
The complex also has internal firepower in the form of lasers, masers, sonic weapons, chemical slugthrowers, railguns, gas, and the only nuclear weapons Diogenes ever built. Well, the only ones he built deliberately. There are seven of them in the hundred-megaton range: one is in the center, the other six equally spaced around it about two kilometers away. Multiple overlapping awfulness, just in case something ugly and potentially world-ending happens.
Gates can be dangerous. I worry about what might come through one. After all, I did.
Mary hugged me when I came through and I returned it in kind. She also had one of the latest-model Blacks with her, but I wasn’t fooled. I know Bronze in any form she wears.
“How did she…” I asked, trailing off.
“How did who what?”
“Bronze. How did she take over a cyborg horse?”
“Aww,” she pouted. “We were going to surprise you.”
The Black—Bronze—snorted.
“She says,” I relayed, “that you intended to surprise me. She knew it wouldn’t work.”
“I wish she told me,” Mary pouted. Bronze snickered and ruffled her mane. “And to answer your question, I don’t know how she did it. Maybe she knows. She’s a disembodied spirit and can possess a car. I figured a cyborg horse shouldn’t be a problem.”
Bronze nodded. She didn’t understand it either, but it worked.
“Was there something wrong with the Impala?” I asked.
“She loved it,” Mary assured me, while the Black nodded again. Excuse me. While Bronze nodded. I wasn’t sure it looked right. The Black was a sizable horse, yes, but not like Bronze. The real Bronze. The original Bronze. You know what I mean. It’s one thing to know she’s playing Christine with a car, quite another to see her looking out of flesh-and-blood eyes at me. Mostly flesh and blood. Cybernetic eyes. Realistic eyes. Whatever, it still seemed odd.
And that’s coming from a guy who dies at sunset, has seen beyond the Edge of the World, has a quasi-deity altar ego, sometimes loses arguments with his sword, and has a cloak of quasi-divine manufacture with abandonment issues.
I realized with a shock that this was the first time she’d ever seen me with real eyes. Organic eyes.
“I thought she might like something more horse-like,” Mary continued. “She jumped out of the Impala and into the Black. Melted the front bumper, but Diogenes already replaced it. What do you think?”
“On this, I think whatever Bronze thinks. She likes it in there.” I rubbed her nose. It was soft and warm and felt all wrong for Bronze, but, at the same time, was perfectly her. Her mane didn’t behave the way I expected it to, either, but it was right. Color, size, texture, temperature—all wrong, all her. Bronze is Bronze. If she’s a wind-up, mechanical horse or a miles-high, horse-shaped cloud, it matters not in the slightest to me, aside from practical considerations.
“I am wondering,” I added, “how the biological components are holding up. And what’s going to happen to the body, as a whole, when you jump out of it.”
Bronze tossed her head and snorted. Clearly, it wasn’t high on her list of concerns. Truthfully, it wasn’t too up there on mine, either. I was curious, though.
“I’m also wondering if you have to fry the Black when you jump out of it. Is this avoidable? Or is it an inevitable consequence?”
Bronze rubbed her nose against my cheek. She was certain I would figure it all out.
When someone has faith in you, it either drives you to new heights or paralyzes you with insecurity. I had the advantage of knowing Bronze would forgive me instantly if I didn’t measure up. Or, no, maybe it’s the fact she would never be disappointed in me. Is that it?
No. No, now that I think on it, no. I got it wrong. Her belief in me is what drives me to be the man she already knows I am. I’ve been without that for far too long.
“Hold it,” Mary said, raising a hand. “Let’s not forget our dimwit vampire hunters.”
“Oh, yes. But we’ve got until…” I glanced at a hovering drone. “How long?”
“Their injuries are responding well and they are ahead of schedule. Based on their injuries and response to treatment, the first will be decanted in eleven hours. After a brief period of recovery, he should be available for interrogation. Call it twelve hours.”
“Suits me. In the meantime, Bronze and I have to make a little trip.”
“To?”
“I need to talk to god.”
“I’ll wait here,” Mary decided.
Karvalen, Thursday, December 29th, Year 8
Well, not the God but a god. A local boy. He’s a decent sort, for a quasi-deity, considering his father is a dark overlord. Mary elected to keep an eye on Apocalyptica, specifically the medical building in Denver. She doesn’t trust vampire hunters not to break out of their regeneration tubes and wreak havoc.
I prepared to open a gate since Bronze insisted on coming along. She felt a gate wasn’t necessary. As a horse-sized horse, she could use a shift-booth. I was dubious, but we tried it through a booth back to the residential complex and the Hall of Doors. The booths are large, by closet standards, but not meant for horses. Still, a cyborg horse with Bronze’s spirit possessing it can maneuver in ways no normal horse can manage. It was a tight fit, but she made it work. It just took a little time to squeeze in and squeeze out. We took extra care since it was daytime at both ends. It would be silly if I wound up crushed under her.
Once out of the Karvalen booth, in the Temple of Shadow, we stretched a little in the monastic cell outside the closet. That, at least, was large enough for a horse. It sometimes hosts three small ogres in armor. Today, there was only one man. I told the sentry he could wait outside. Then I had a seat and tried all hailing frequencies.