by Garon Whited
“No,” Harald replied, lower lip sticking out. “It’s mine.”
“Harald!” Gregory insisted. “It’s the Squire!”
“No. It’s mine!”
“I’m sorry,” Gregory apologized. “He’s a bit of an odd duck, I’m afraid, sir. Bit barmy.”
“I see,” I told him, as gently as I could. I advanced two paces and went to one knee to be on Harald’s level. He still wouldn’t look at me. “Harald. May I please see the fairy?”
“No! It’s mine!” He hurried across the room, snatched the jar from his desk, and curled himself around it. He immediately began scream-chanting, “Minemineminemine!”
It took all my strength to resist the urge to spring across the room. I clearly saw him rattle Trixie around in the jar. It must have shown on my face. Gregory took a step back.
“I apologize, Greg,” I told him, speaking up to be heard over the din. “Do your friends call you Greg?”
“Yessir!”
“Very good. All right. Harald does seem a bit disturbed. Has he had other episodes like this?”
“Yessir.”
“How do you manage?”
“He just needs a bit of time, I think. Don’t look at him and don’t touch him. He calms down of his own accord in a bit, sir.”
“I see. All right. Well, if he has these little episodes too often, or if they’re too extreme, you make sure to report it. He may need more care than a roommate can give.”
“Oh, he’s no trouble, sir, once you know his little ways.”
“You’re a good lad, Greg, but don’t take too much on yourself. All right?”
“Yessir.”
“Very good. Good evening to you.”
“It was a pleasure to have you, sir.”
I stepped out onto the dormitory walkway and Gregory shut the door, narrowly avoiding a gust of wind and wet spray. I didn’t get what I wanted from the visit, but I got enough. Trixie wasn’t free—not yet—but I knew what I was up against.
I left the dormitory and headed to the kitchen. I needed a jar.
Mary is the thief. She could sneak into a nursery, steal the bottle out of a cranky baby’s mouth, and leave before it noticed. I’m less sneaky. I could slither into Harald’s room, suck the life force out of both him and Gregory until they were practically comatose, and then pry Harald’s hands off the jar to rescue my friend. And, if I had to, I wouldn’t spare a second thought about doing it.
Thing is, I don’t like to do such unpleasantness to children. Harald might not be a bad kid. His only real offense, as far as I was concerned, was the capture and containment of my friend. I doubted he would ever capture her again—certainly not in the same way!—but he didn’t deserve any of the things my worse instincts wanted to do to him. He didn’t know any better. He was a kid being a kid, even if he was being unreasonable even for a kid. Maybe he’s a brat, maybe he’s a high-functioning autistic, maybe he’s just a little weirdo. I have no idea.
Yes, I wanted to spank him until his pants caught fire. I resisted the urge. It was unworthy and unbecoming and totally out of proportion for what was—to him—as harmless as catching fireflies.
In hindsight, I might still have overreacted, but overreacted the other way. Instead of letting my temper get the best of me, I went far out of my way to maneuver around the problem.
Gates between universes are troublesome things, usually requiring power from the Apocalyptica side—or from Karvalen, where they have magic to burn. But point-to-point gates within a single world are both enormously simpler and enormously cheaper.
I had a couple of small electromagical transformers, a glass jar of the same type as Trixie’s prison, and a whole evening to scratch on the glass with my fingertalons. I gathered up every power crystal in the laboratory and laid out the diagrams around the jar. I focused a mirror on Trixie, centering the viewpoint just inside the jar’s lid. Sure enough, Harald had the jar clutched in his arms while he slept.
The jar there and the jar here were the same type of jar, made by the same company. Spatially, they were pretty much identical. All that mattered now was switching the two spaces, exchanging the empty space in mine for the fairy-filled one in Harald’s. It’s easier when both ends are enchanted and linked, but it can also be done with merely congruent spaces, much like opening a gate between an enchanted gate and a mundane doorway.
I fired the spell. There was a blink and my jar was occupied. I tilted it, slid her out onto my hand, and raised her to eye level. She lifted one wing and peeped out at me.
“Hello,” she whispered, and collapsed. I rushed her to her diorama house and laid her carefully in the water, near the shore, so she could half-float. I also dialed the transformer up to full power.
“Trixie?” I asked, as she lay there. Do fairies breathe? Do pixies need to? I cursed myself for not studying pixie biology. Their physical forms are at least partially a product of magical energy holding them together, so I don’t have the foggiest notion of how they work. My vampire eyes told me she was alive, yes, but not at all bright and shiny. I couldn’t decide if she was recuperating or dying. Without a longer baseline, it was impossible to tell if she was stable at a low level, gradually gaining, or losing ground.
Her eyes fluttered open. She blinked at me.
“I’m hungry,” she said, and closed her eyes again.
I didn’t bother going downstairs. I looked out a window, plucked gillyflower petals with tendrils, and snatched them up through her faerie door. Within thirty seconds, I dumped a double handful of petals over her. She pulled one up to her face and started munching on it, eyes still closed.
I left her alone long enough to grab the other small transformers and juice up her little area. It might not be the most magically-charged environment I’ve ever seen, but it was stronger than anything this planet could boast. She seemed more comfortable, at least.
I considered pouring vitality into her, but I decided to save it as a last resort. Humans and faerie-folk are not the same thing and the energies involved are not identical. I had no idea what effect, good or bad, my raw vitality would have on her pixie existence.
I sat with her the rest of the night, waiting and watching.
The Manor, Thursday, November 30th, 1939
Trixie slowly worked her way through a bunch of gillyflower petals and went to sleep.
While I waited, I had plenty of time to consider how to keep this from happening again.
The problem with a live pixie roaming around is someone might do exactly what Harald did—catch her. Aside from keeping her out of sight—which was simply not going to happen; she loves playing with children—what was to be done?
Two major things need to happen. She needs a way—possibly several ways—to keep from being captured. She also needs a way to break out if someone does capture her. Again, possibly multiple methods of freeing herself.
I found myself distracted by alternating feelings of worry over her condition and rage over her condition. I wanted to gently repair any damage, just as I wanted to violently cause some damage.
I’ve been ambivalent before. I don’t enjoy it.
This is unusual for me, though. I have tons of anxiety and nothing worthy on which to vent it. Harald? Not Harald. He’s a child, unaware of the seriousness of his actions. If he played with matches and burned down a building, killing six people, would it be proper to execute him for murder? Of course not. He doesn’t understand the potential consequences.
I’m accustomed to having dire enemies upon whom I can loose torrents of wrath and destruction. Instead, this time, I have a Harald.
It’s easier when I have something to kill, and that concerns me a bit. When problem-solving, when did “Can I kill it?” creep into my top five options?
The sun came up and I didn’t bother with a bathroom. I hit my cleaning spell and continued to sit by Trixie’s poolside. She opened her eyes, blinked a bit, and yawned.
“Are you going to make it?”
“
I don’t know.”
“That’s not what I wanted to hear. What’s wrong?”
“The lid was made of iron.”
“Steel, probably, but I see the problem. Is there anything I can do?”
“I don’t know.”
“How’s the—how are the sparklies in the water?”
“Good.” She paused for a moment. “Can I have more?”
I considered the setup. Every transformer I had was already on-line. My breadboarded firmament generator was running at full load, holding in energy. There was one more thing I could do, but it might have repercussions.
“Yes. Hold on.”
I gathered up overflow power from the Firmament shield and built an Ascension Sphere. I very carefully included an external “off” switch. If it ran for very long, it could build up one hell of a charge. Trixie wasn’t going to absorb it all, that was for sure. Still, if she needed the magical equivalent of her oxygen tent upgraded to hyperbaric chamber, she would get it.
An hour later, the field strength inside the Ascension Sphere was higher than the average for Karvalen and still climbing. Trixie seemed to feel better, though, so I turned off everything but her pixie-bath transformer and let it slowly increase. Eventually, in this low-magic environment, the power required to contain the artificial magical intensity would exactly equal the power from the transformer attempting to charge the Ascension Sphere. When it achieved equilibrium, we could gauge Trixie’s health.
She seemed to be doing well enough that I went to gather gillyflower petals for her to nibble on, had my own breakfast, and set up the fountain-enhancing projector again. I also did some more preliminary work on the estate-encompassing shield discs, plotting where to put them and how to tie them together. All this kept me busy and distracted while she recuperated.
It’s easier to fix a vampire. You dunk any of us in a bathtub full of blood and we’re cured. If we’re missing larger chunks, you might need to refill the tub. The required time varies from vampire type to vampire type, but that’s about as complicated as it gets.
I spent most of the day sitting next to Trixie while she slept, ate, and slept some more. I wasn’t too interested in food, myself. I had sketches to make of enchantment diagrams and several iterations of new pixie equipment to get through.
Technically, Trixie is naked. Her leafy-looking skin is just that—skin. To conveniently carry equipment, she needs something to carry it on. The problem is her wings. I’d give her a belt and that would be the end of it, but her wings are membranes, kind of like butterfly wings, not simply modified arms. They connect to her body from ankles to shoulders in a long, continuous line. Wrapping a belt around her waist would involve punching holes in her wings, and that’s not going to happen.
The alternative is a sort of V-shaped belt, kind of like some of the skimpier brands of swimsuit. With a strap running over each shoulder, she could have a toothpick-sized sword on her back and a half-inch of knife on the front. I’m thinking titanium, but if Diogenes has a better non-ferrous alloy, we’ll go with that.
The sword can help her keep from being captured. Phase one.
The knife, I’m thinking, is more of a tool than a weapon. An artificial diamond, perhaps, with a cutting edge and a saw edge, both enchanted to a monatomic crystalline sharpness. Put Trixie in a glass jar—or just about anything else—and she can cut her way out of it. Phase two.
I’m also thinking of a necklace for her. Probably an ornate, silver thing with a pretty crystal. If she thinks it’s pretty, she’ll never take it off. If it’s enchanted to amplify and focus her scream—while shielding her ears from it—there’s a good chance she can stun a human target or shatter any container made of glass or ceramic. Phase three.
I am immensely tempted to enchant her tiny sword with a nerve-blocking spell, kind of like the one Patricia wears. A good poke anywhere in the neck should put anyone who survives it into a coma, with lesser effects for hits farther away from the brain. But, again, she’s a pixie. If a curious child grabs her, the kid doesn’t deserve to die. A sting should be sufficient.
Besides, we don’t need a killer pixie on the premises. If there’s something around here that needs killing, that’s my job.
I finished my preliminary designs and called Diogenes.
“Yes, Professor?”
“Hold a connection to The Manor, please. I don’t want to get timesnapped.”
“One moment, please.”
“One moment? I don’t recall the last time you asked me to wait for anything. Is something wrong?”
“There has been a grey goo event at Niagara. It has been contained, but two probe bunkers have been destroyed and a third has been damaged. Repairs are underway.”
“Grey goo? What sort of nanotechnology are we talking about?”
“Analysis is also underway. They were stopped by electromagnetic pulse, however, which limits the possible types of nanites.”
“You’re certain you got them all?” I pressed.
“The probability approaches unity.”
“I’ll have to settle for that, I guess.”
“Your connection is established, Professor. I am holding a continuous micro-link to the skyguard system.”
“Thank you.” I stepped through the closet into Apocalyptica and headed down the hall to the media room. “Show me what you’ve got on the grey goo event.” Holograms sprang up as Diogenes explained.
“During a routine random dialing, the gate connection locked on normally. A probe rod extended through the gate for initial evaluation. The planet is subject to high ultraviolet and has low levels of oxygen. Atmospheric scans indicate a defunct civilization. No life detected. Further data available if desired.
“Nanites entered through the gate during data collection. Their primary programming involves deconstructing organic molecules. Lacking a rich field for deconstruction, they began harvesting material from the probe room for replication. At this point, I became aware of their presence and initiated quarantine, containment, and sterilization procedures. As I mentioned earlier, the electromagnetic pulse generator succeeded in disabling the nanites.”
“Very good. So, do we think this is a holocaust-class weapon, or did we just probe into a nasty spot?”
“Holocaust weapon. The low oxygen content and the high ultraviolet are not immediate products of nanite activity. They are global phenomena caused by secondary factors.”
“Any survivors?”
“It would require a remote location and a specialized survival shelter complete with total environmental support. The likelihood of total human annihilation approaches unity.”
“Too bad. Got it catalogued?”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Good. Lock it off, please.”
“Already locked, as per protocol.”
“Very good. How long until we get our probe project back up to speed?”
“Present projections indicate damaged gate containment bunkers will be repaired in sixteen days, plus or minus twenty hours.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“You can stay out of the way, Professor. Your presence would merely disrupt the orderly progress of robot labor.”
“Fine, fine. I know when I’m not wanted. You can make it up to me.”
“Of course. It will be my pleasure, Professor.”
I handed over my sketching and explained what I wanted. Diogenes had some suggestions about the materials to be used and the design of the harness. I had him go ahead with his ideas. He knows far more than I do about… well, pretty much everything.
“On another note, Professor, I believe I have an alternative to the space elevator.”
“Oh?”
“Probe room two was engaged in a download of public information from a different world when the grey goo incident began. I do not have complete specifications, but the world in question developed a gravity-altering technology suitable for spacecraft. When I am able to complete the data acquisition, it is probabl
e we can build spacecraft which do not require rocket engines or large launching infrastructure.”
My comment was short and profane.
“I thought you would be pleased,” Diogenes noted. “Was I incorrect?”
“No, I am pleased. Pleased about having gravity-drive ships, anyway. Not so pleased about how much time, effort, and resources we’ve wasted building the foundations of a space elevator a third of the way around the world!”
“Most of the materials can be salvaged and recycled.”
“Yes, and you’ll do it as efficiently as is possible, I know.” I fumed a little, rubbing my temples. “All right, continue with the space elevator.”
“Continue, Professor?”
“Yes. The space elevator will still be an enticement to whoever it is living on the Moon. The gravity-drive ship is for us. I’ve got enough problems without wondering if the Moon is going to drop in unexpectedly. At least with the elevator we know where. Assuming they’re peaceful neighbors, anyway.” I felt the tingle of a sunset starting.
“Crap,” I said, or something similar, and sprinted for the Manor booth. I slid through quickly and flipped open my phone as I emerged. “Sorry for the sudden bailout. It’s still daytime here and I don’t want to be stuck in Apocalyptica for the next several hours.”
“I understand, Professor.”
“Thank you, Diogenes.”
“It is my pleasure to be of service, Professor.”
“By the way,” I asked, “do you have anything in your memory banks about what to do for a creature of faerie when it’s sick from iron exposure?”
There was a brief pause. I don’t think Diogenes has ever had a question quite that random thrown at him.
“There are a number of literary references,” he admitted, “but, aside from asking the audience to clap if they believe in fairies, nothing suggesting any sort of first aid.”
“Oh, well. Thank you for checking.”
“Always a pleasure, Professor.”
I hung up and went to sit with Trixie. She was still lying in her pool, but she was awake and gently rippling her wings in the water.