Dragonrank Master

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  The books on the mantles fell into categories, many of their titles obscured by mold. The upper levels held psychology texts and guides to hypnotism, witchcraft, and other paranormal phenomena. Beneath it, a row of physics and history tomes stood in stately contrast. The historical references held a definite bias toward the Middle Eastern cultures. The last shelf consisted of a mixed batch of hardbound science fiction novels, a bible, and assorted medical and literary references. Many of the volumes held the same Library of Congress classification tags Larson had thought he recognized on the books of the current Dragonrank Master. A glance down the stairwell re-vealed a well-equipped kitchen and a bathroom. The remaining room appeared to be a bedroom.

  The tour took only a few minutes, but the trapped, ancient air felt suffocating and centuries of grime burned Larson's lungs. Until he had a chance to identify the strange gadgets in the laboratory and kitchen, he knew that allowing his companions to explore might prove too dangerous.

  Gaelinar stood in the doorway, blocking Bramin's entry. Only Taziar had followed Larson inside. Snatching up the half dozen journals on the lab bench, including the one wedged beneath the skeleton, Larson caught Taziar's arm and herded the climber to the exit. "I'm not sure what we have here, but I'd rather examine them where I can breathe and see." His brief inspection had also revealed overhead lighting. But even if Mannix had created a working system for electricity, Larson doubted the bulbs could have survived.

  Larson led his companions back outside, leaving the door propped to air out the building. Scraping aside snow to uncover the sand beneath, they sat in their manufactured clearing. To Larson's relief, Bramin came, too; apparently the dark elf wanted to keep track of his quarry or else he assumed the journals in Larson's arms held more interesting information than the house itself. And he's probably right. If these are, as I believe, Gary Man-nix's private notes, they may hold a wealth of magical and technological data. He shook his head, picking the first volume up in a hand which had begun to tremble. The mind boggles.

  Taziar and Gaelinar seized later volumes as Larson flipped through page after page of formulas and calculations. The paper was watermarked, stout and sturdy enough to have survived the centuries. Tiny letters and numbers swarmed across each leaf in tight bunches, the mathematics punctuated by paragraphs of information, most of which made little sense to Larson: "The long-held theory that acceleration to light speed creates infinite mass is incorrect. No actual data has been previously available for particles traveling at or beyond light speed, only the extrapolation of Einstein's equations. We have shown that energy translates to mass up to a point. Beyond this threshold, energy will increase a particle to super-relativistic speed. Once the barrier of light speed is breached, a particle of insignificant mass liberates infinite energy. We have already determined time travel must be easier for energy than matter. Once the antipar-ticle mu was accelerated to super-relativistic speed, we might be able to store the massive energy this process would create in some alternate part of the Earth's orbit. If we can find the date of Nova, perhaps directly on our own sun." The text lapsed back into numerical incomprehensibility.

  Larson looked up. Gaelinar and Taziar had lain aside their volumes in disgust, unable to interpret the English writings. Bramin stood behind Larson. Intent on his findings, Larson had not noticed the dark sorcerer reading over his shoulder. Apparently, however, Gaelinar had. The Kensei studied Bramin through narrowed eyes, his hand on his sword hilt.

  Bramin broke the hush. "Some sort of magical runes."

  Larson scooted around to face Bramin, annoyed by the abstraction which had kept him from perceiving an enemy at his back. "English, actually."

  Taziar and Gaelinar exchanged glances. Larson's explanation held no meaning for them.

  "I can read it," Larson clarified. "It's written in a language I understand." He added belatedly, "Elven, sort of." He hated to deceive his companions, but it seemed far less time consuming. He wanted as much of the daylight hours as possible to decipher the writings.

  "Please, read, then," Gaelinar insisted.

  "Aloud," Taziar specified.

  Larson hesitated. His single semester of college physics had scarcely gotten him past the law of gravity and Newtonian mechanics. "It's mostly numbers. They wouldn't have any meaning for you. If you give me a little time, I may find something useful." He opened to the first page again, taking note of details. The entry was dated 12/07/1988. Larson gawked until the numbers blurred beyond his ability to read them. 1988? Almost twenty years after I went to Vietnam. He tried to picture his sister, Pam, more than forty years old, telling her children about their uncle killed in the war. But the image defied him. Absently, he fluttered the pages as he considered. I destroyed the future, didn't I? Or changed it, at least. Then again, since Mannix apparently came back before I did… His thoughts became incomprehensibly jumbled; time lost all relative meaning.

  As pages flicked past him, Larson noticed a change in the quality of the penmanship. Toward the end of the journal, a darker handwriting replaced the chicken scratch of numbers. The discrepancy caught Larson's attention. He found the first entry of the newer author, a long treatise of words in letter form. "I think I have something here." Tucking his legs beneath his buttocks, he began to read.

  "Galin R.," Larson glanced up to find Gaelinar watching him, a perplexed look on his wizened features. "Galin R.," Larson started again, and this time the incongruity clicked. "Galin R., Gaelinar." The names sounded too alike to attribute to coincidence. Despite the unfinished quest, an enemy close at hand, and multiple unsolved mysteries, Larson broke into laughter. Unable to read on, he lowered the book and roared.

  Gaelinar and Taziar looked alarmed, which only made Larson laugh harder. He gasped between bouts, "Now… we know… where Silme… got your name." The Dragonrank mages must have passed it on for centuries. Several more minutes passed before Larson gained enough control to continue.

  "Galin R.," Larson snickered, but managed to go on. "Well, I did it, at last. I channeled the stored energy and set off for…" Larson paused. The diary read "Egypt, 700 B.C.," but he saw no way to translate the place and era. He settled for a vague description of the location and indicated centuries back in time.

  Taziar interrupted. "You must have misread. How could someone live for more than 1700 years?"

  Larson held his place in the journal with a finger. "Shadow, I have a feeling it'll get even more confusing." He returned to reading.

  "The explosion must have looked magnificent. I'm sure you'll read about it in the papers long before you see this letter—if you ever see this letter. Certainly, there will be those who try to link my disappearance to the…" Larson skipped over the word "nuclear" which had no Old Norse equivalent. "… testing which went on here for the last fifteen years, but you and I and three dozen lab assistants know better. I thought we would never get past moving peach pits, books, apples, and cats short distances into the past and future. Now we've done it. I'm gone, and everything went with me: my research, yours, the…" Larson avoided the term "particle accelerator" which held no more meaning for him than for his companions. "… the equipment, the walls. Everything went exactly according to plan except one thing, dear Galin. The instant I arrived, I lost power. The lights went out, the…" Larson substituted "tools" for "machines" and continued "… went down, the…"He interposed "box for keeping food cold" for "refrigerator—"

  "… stopped running."

  Larson continued reading, interpreting where possible, substituting descriptions for words when necessary, and paraphrasing as much as he could. "The air conditioner also quit working, but, oddly, it didn't bother me. It couldn't have been more than forty degrees outside, and the only desert sand was the stuff I brought with me from Nevada. Thank God for your paranoid insistence on contingencies—and your addiction to Pepsi. I lived off warm soda and canned fruit cocktail while the steaks spoiled in the nonfunctioning freezer during the two weeks it took me to establish a geothermal energy s
ource. Boy, could I use a physicist. If you ever find yourself in ninth or tenth century Scandinavia, feel free to drop in for a visit, okay?

  "By now, Galin, I'm certain you figured out what happened. Some miscalculation dropped me in the wrong place and time, not a tragedy in and of itself, except I'm apparently no longer in contact with our line of stored energy. I 'm trapped, unable to tap the power and unable to move through time, stuck in a world of Vikings until you find me. Of course, I could start the process over again. I have the cyclotron and your notes. But without your knowledge or the patience to go over the long, complicated mathematics you did for me, I'd probably end up in the Pacific Ocean somewhere during World War II. Besides, I'm short a few pounds of plutonium and a handful of lab technicians. So, if you happen to come across any extra, please send them to Gary Mannix care of General Delivery, Old Scandinavia. I don't know the zip, but I can tell you I'm about six inches shy of hysteria.

  "Galin, please tell Marsha and Jimmy I love them very much. I doubt my life insurance policy covers such a contingency. I trust you and your team. I know you'll come for me if you can. If you time it right, perhaps you'll arrive before I write this note. For the record, my watch says it's October 16, 1989 at 9:17 pm. According to the guarantee, it's not supposed to lose more than a minute a year. Think I can get my money back?" The signature at the bottom read simply "Gary." Larson lowered the journal.

  An expectant hush followed, broken finally by Taziar. "Did that make any sense to anyone?"

  "Not much," Gaelinar admitted.

  Even Bramin looked perplexed.

  The sun hovered directly overhead, creating short shadows beneath the buildings and the wall. Recalling the skeleton hunched over the lab chair, Larson reached for the final volume, labeled number six. If someone spent his last moments of life writing, he must have had something urgent to say. The binding was cracked, as if the book had remained in one position for quite some time. Larson separated the covers, and it fell open naturally to a blank page stained black with old blood. Larson backtracked to the final entry and read aloud in the same manner as before.

  "Dear reader,

  "Much of what I write may seem primitive to you. Unless the manufacturer greatly underestimated the life span of this paper, you must be a time traveler. Therefore, you come from a future I never had the opportunity to see. As far as I know, I am the first time traveler. Even if the technology I used has become outdated, my story may prove interesting to anyone who comes after me, if only to learn from my mistakes. I have no choice but write my story quickly. Today, almost certainly, I am going to die.

  "My name is Gary Mannix. I am a parapsychologist, originally from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. More than once, a sneering skeptic has called my profession an oxymoron, but I don't find that comment any funnier now than when I became trapped in ninth or tenth century Scandinavia twenty-two years ago. Apparently, neither did the United States government. In their infinite wisdom, they gave me and my associates a grant to study ways to affect enemy alpha brain waves with oscillating magnetic fields, but they wouldn't give a penny to my friend, physicist Galin R., for his research on time travel.

  "I have always had a special interest in the differences between the ancient mind and our own. Despite tremendous gains in technology, information and its processing, there has also been knowledge lost: the secrets of the great pyramids and Stonehenge, for example. I felt certain I could glean useful information from Egypt in 1000-500 B.C., an age when brain surgery was not only being performed, but the patients survived. Galin convinced me his project was worthwhile. By careful manipulation, I managed to work his research onto my grant. It worked out well for both of us. Galin got his money and a laboratory in the basement. I got a promise that I would be the first man to travel through time.

  "Galin's research is detailed in previous volumes of his journal. To protect him, I've blotted out his last name, and those of our numerous assistants, everywhere they appear in his notes. I have no idea what impact my disappearance may have on him. Whatever happens, I want to give him the option of disclaiming his role in my mistakes. I take no credit for the brilliance of his project, but I deserve all the blame for the consequences my subsequent actions unleashed upon the world."

  Larson paused. He knew Mannix's revelation lay beyond the comprehension of his companions, especially with the huge and myriad gaps lost to translation. But the word "Dragonrank" farther down the page seized Larson's attention. He continued reading.

  "Our laboratory was understandably nonstandard. We needed modern living facilities to take with us on our hops through time and solid barriers to defend us from warrior cultures. The time travel required a huge cyclotron buried beneath the sand. Its ends pass through Gal-in's workroom in the basement. He used it to accelerate antiparticles to relativistic speeds, continuously feeding the generated energy back into the system. A single, contained nuclear fusion blast liberated enough additional energy to drive larger particles beyond light speed. Once the threshold was breached, the process became exothermic. By channeling the massive amounts of power thus created, Galin made an essentially infinite energy line which we tapped in small amounts to move through time and run the standard electricity in the laboratory. A series of complicated equations and experiments with inanimate objects determined the amount of energy needed to travel instantaneously to various times and places. That's how I understand it, but I'm no physicist. I have to rely on the simplified information of Galin's verbal explanations. I'm certain, friend reader, you could learn more from Galin's notes."

  I doubt it. Larson's head was pounding already, and he made no attempt to translate the paragraph for the others. "Anyone for lunch?"

  "I'll take care of it." Taziar opened his pack and set to the meal while Larson returned to Mannix's journal.

  "A miscalculation brought me to ninth/tenth century Scandinavia rather than b.c. Egypt. I've reviewed Galin's calculations a thousand times without finding it. Over time, I've come to believe it's a mistake so small as to be within the natural error of the gauges. That would also explain why Galin was never able to rescue me. Regardless, I soon realized that if I was to ever see my wife and son, my friends, my home, my world again, I was going to have to find my own way back. In the meantime, I set out to meet the people of my new era.

  "My Norwegian-English dictionary proved of little use in translating their ancient language, but desperation makes a damn good teacher. Eventually, I learned to communicate with them. They called me Geirmagnus. At first, I thought it was their accented pronunciation, but that didn't quite fit. Then I convinced myself it was a title of respect. Within a year, I met six other Geir-magnuses and realized it was simply a common name and the closest to my impossibly strange American one.

  "No history text could describe just how filthy, foul-smelling, and diseased these people were." Larson looked up quickly, but his companions did not seem to take offense. "More than ever, I wanted to go home, but the same curiosity which pushed me into research drove me to gain their trust and experiment. It was then I discovered the fascinating truth. Not one of them could be hypnotized! I tried every technique I could think of, carefully adapting it to the culture of their time without success. Certainly, there are people from my own time who can't be hypnotized, and theories abound as to the reason. But, after due consideration, there was only one reason I could see for an entire primitive race, perhaps the entire era, evolving barriers to mental exploration. Protection. Apparently someone or something could meddle with minds, perhaps destroy them. And I was the only one defenseless against it!"

  Larson ate the jerked meat Taziar handed him, feeling a sudden kinship with a parapsychologist named Gary Mannix. But how did a man without mind barriers become a Dragonrank Master? Understandably intrigued, Larson read on.

  "Obviously, the people had little or no knowledge of their gifts. When questioned about mind-reading beings, most mentioned mythological gods. Nevertheless, my persistence won out. Eventually, I was told of
a rare subculture of people known as "dream-readers." For a fee, a dream-reader would interpret dreams and thought obsessions, provided his client withdrew the mental barriers. As with all things not well understood, the dream-readers were looked upon with a mixture of fear, hatred, and respect.

  "Scientist to the end, I couldn't let the discovery rest. I began a search which took me across Norway and parts of Sweden. I believe I interviewed and hired every dream-reader in existence. There were only eleven. More importantly, my efforts turned up Hosvir. He was a gawky youngster, not well suited to feats of strength or skill. After failing at multiple apprenticeships and on his father's farm, Hosvir was sent away from home. But Hosvir had the ability to perform tricks which I would have believed were simple sleight of hand were it not for the fact that he had the coordination and agility of an old plow horse. Because of his odd gift, he decided to try becoming a dream-reader.

  "Hosvir did not fare well. He lacked the honey-tongued, used-car-salesmanlike sweetness which successful dream-readers use to relax clients enough to drop their mental barriers. Of course, I was no challenge. Hosvir read my thoughts. Then he read my memories. When I asked about his past, he didn't tell me. He showed me, with vivid images placed directly in my own mind. Hosvir was to other dream-readers what Harry Houdini's water tank was to my six-year-old son's card tricks. I thanked Hosvir for a unique experience. He thanked me for having flawed mind barriers. I took him back to the lab, and the first Dragonrank sorcerer was made."

  Larson sighed, wishing his own experiences with Dragonrank mind powers had been equally benign.

  "It didn't happen overnight. Through trial and error and good communication, I elicited the mechanism for Hosvir's ability. Some special difference in his internal makeup, I never discovered exactly what, allowed him to channel what I called 'psychic energy' and he referred to as 'Chaos.' In truth, his term was probably more accurate. He would summon this entropy as a scattered force and mold it into whatever he wanted or needed. It was the ultimate conversion of energy to matter, an alchemist's dream. Hosvir could turn lead to gold, but it was just as easy for him to create gold from nothing.