by Scott Meyer
“Well, okay,” Martin said. “The first time, there was a knock on the door. When Phillip opened it, there was nobody there, but some kids were walking away with a package that was meant for him, and I saw someone lurking in the shadows across the street.”
Gwen said, “I remember that. That was last night.”
“So you can back him up on this?” Roy asked.
“No,” Gwen said flatly. “I didn’t see any of that stuff. I just remember him arguing with Phillip about it. Wasn’t the guy across the street some wearing a Star Wars costume?”
“Phillip said he looked like a Jawa, but he didn’t even see the guy.” Martin flapped his hands away as if shooing off a bee. “Okay, fine. Yeah. I admit that one’s not very convincing. But just now, in Atlantis, I saw the same guy, and he definitely attacked Phillip.”
“Okay,” Roy said. “What did he do?”
You know the kids’ game Mouse Trap? He made a real-life version of that to trap Phillip.”
“So, he’s captured Phillip?” Gwen asked.
“No.”
“So it didn’t work.”
“No, it worked. The cage came down on him, but he was able to get out really easily. Then I chased the guy. He had a head like a goblin. I’m pretty sure it was a mask. That, or he’s just real ugly. Anyway, he sicced a flock of birds on me.”
Tyler turned to Gwen. “Man, when you two are fighting he really goes off the rails, doesn’t he?”
Gwen said, “Martin, if you really believe that Phillip is in danger, shouldn’t you be talking to him?”
“I did. He doesn’t believe me. But just say I’m right, and Phillip is being attacked. They’re subtle and nonlethal attacks, but he’s being attacked, nonetheless, by a magic user. I met him. Look at what he did to my robe.”
“Yeah,” Gwen said. “I noticed. And I’m not going to fix that for you.”
“I didn’t ask. Bigger fish to fry. While the attacks haven’t been dangerous yet that we know of, do we want to wait around and see if that changes?”
Tyler held up a finger to stop Martin. “Let me see if I understand. You’re saying that a shadowy figure has attacked Phillip twice, in ways that are so subtle and indirect that he doesn’t recognize them as attacks, even after you pointed them out to him. Is that the gist of it?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you want from us?”
Martin looked at the others as if they’d lost their minds. “To help me stop it.”
“Stop what?!” Roy asked. “The almost nothing that probably isn’t happening? It seems like you should be able to handle that yourself. We’re not the ones to help with this anyway. If Phillip’s the one in danger, he’s the one you should be talking to. And if he won’t listen, Brit the Younger would be the next logical choice.”
“Yeah, but I already talked to Phillip, and all he did was mock me. If I go to Brit the Younger, what’s she going to do? First thing is she’ll tell Phillip, then they’ll both mock me.”
“So you came to us so we could mock you?” Gary asked.
“No. I came to you because I hoped, foolishly, that at least one of you might want to help me.”
“I’ll help you,” Gwen said.
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll give you the best kind of help there is. A suggestion.”
“That’s the best kind of help?”
“Yes, from my point of view, because it lets me feel like I did something without putting out much effort. Anyway, I suggest that you’re a time traveler. Use that to your advantage. Go forward in time and ask some future version of Phillip who was attacking him, and why. If it turns out he was in danger, he’ll be happy to tell you so you can come back and save him. If he isn’t in danger, future him will get a good laugh out of it. Either way, you’ll have helped him.”
Martin started to respond, but stopped short when the wizards all heard shouting at the outer door that opened from Gary’s antechamber with its large stone altar to the mouth of Skull Gullet Cave.
Gary called out, “Hubert?”
Hubert hustled in from the entrance and bowed deeply. “Master, I am sorry.”
“What is it?”
“People to speak to you, Master. I told them to go away, but they refused.”
“What do they want?”
“I’d much rather they told you.”
Gary crossed through his antechamber, and all of the other wizards followed. Three young men from the village were standing outside the ornately carved stone door. One was a hog mucker, another was a fish gutter, and the third was a hide scraper at the local tannery. Martin didn’t know any of their names, but he recognized their smells.
“What can I do for you?” Gary asked.
All three of the young men fell to their knees. The hide scraper pleaded, “Train us, oh Master, like you’re training Hubert!”
Gary pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hubert, didn’t I order you not to tell anybody about our arrangement?”
“Yes, Master. You did.”
“And did you tell anybody?”
“I might have mentioned it to someone, Master.”
“And by might have, you mean . . .”
“I definitely did, Master.”
“And by someone, you mean . . .”
“Them, Master.” Hubert pointed at the three men on their knees, beseeching Gary to train them.
“So you definitely told these three men about our arrangement after I ordered you not to.”
“I wouldn’t say that, Master.”
“But it’s true.”
“Oh, yes.”
10.
Phillip teleported home from Brit the Elder’s, his heart heavy with woe, and his brain buzzing with problems. He materialized outside the door of Brit the Younger’s apartment. Her living space connected to his despite the tremendous distance and time differentials that separated them, and he thought of her apartment in Atlantis, the building that held his office, and his hut on the outskirts of Leadchurch as one large dwelling.
Phillip reckoned he’d left Brit the Younger’s nearly two hours earlier, a long time to be gone for a walk. Brit would definitely ask him where he’d been, and while he fully intended to tell her, he wanted to do it on his terms. He needed to grease the skids, ease into it, then tell Brit the Younger, his Brit, everything. But he had to make it clear that she must keep her distance. She couldn’t interact with Brit the Elder until everything was resolved, because it might just cause the entire universe to crash. He had reason to hope she would be fine with that. She didn’t like Brit the Elder anyway.
Phillip did some quick mental math and a rough Esperanto translation, then said, “Reiru unu duonan horon.”
Phillip seemed to remain stationary, but the sun, the shadows, and the people milling around on the street outside all changed. He took a final quiet moment to prepare himself, then, technically only thirty minutes after he left, Phillip entered the apartment.
He found Brit the Younger exactly where he’d left her, curled up in her favorite reading chair.
She glanced up from her book and smiled. “You weren’t gone long.”
“Uh, no, I suppose I wasn’t. How’s the book?”
“Interesting, but Capoeira isn’t exactly what I hoped it would be.”
Nik leaned out from the kitchen. “Phillip, do you have the chicken?”
Phillip moaned and rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. “I’m sorry, I forgot your chicken. I’ll pop out and get you one in just a moment.”
Nik said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. I need to go get a few other things anyway.”
“Oh. Good. Still, sorry about that, Nik.”
“I forgive you.”
“Thank you,” Phillip sa
id, then after a long pause, he turned back to Brit the Younger. “Look, I’d like to talk to you about something.”
“Been doing some thinking, eh? Fine.” Brit closed her book, placed it on her lap, and looked up at Phillip, still smiling.
Phillip said, “It’s about Brit the Elder.”
“Oh.” Brit’s smile withered and died. She picked the book back up, opened it, and returned to reading. “I don’t want to talk about her,” she said, quietly, almost as if to herself.
Phillip said, “I know she’s not your favorite person.”
Brit the Younger snorted. “Not my favorite person? When I’m in a great mood, and she’s just done something nice for me, she’s not my favorite person. Right now she’s pretty close to my least favorite. Even when she decides to be helpful, she does it in the least helpful way possible, then acts like she’s some kind of saint for it. You know how when we were off fighting the dragons, she helped Louiza with the wounded?”
“Yes. I thought that was quite kind of her. For someone with no medical training to jump in and help Atlantis’s only trained doctor deal with the flood of injuries from a dragon attack, I’d say that’s commendable.”
“That was. What was less commendable is that she refused to tell me how she helped, so when I’m her, I’ll have to figure it out for myself. And she talked Louiza into not telling me either. Then she had the gall to come in here, into my home, to gloat about the fact that she wasn’t going to tell me. And to top it all off, just because she thought it was fun, she decided to mess with me a little bit, pretending to remember something wrong, just to give me a moment of hope that I might not turn into her someday, all so she could have the fun of snatching that hope away.”
Phillip stood, looking down at Brit the Younger, stunned into silence by the unexpected ferocity of her response.
“Wait a second,” Brit said, rising to her feet and dropping her book to the floor. “Did she contact you?”
“No. She hasn’t.” Phillip noted that, strictly speaking, this was not a lie.
“Good! Because If I thought, even for one second, that she was somehow interfering in our relationship, I’d have to go track her down and give her a few choice pieces of my mind.”
“Uh, do you mean a few choice words? Or a piece of my mind? You sort of combined the two.”
“Yeah, because I’m mad enough to do both at the same time. Seriously, Phillip. Tell me if she’s bothering you. I’d love an excuse to go over there.”
Phillip remembered Brit the Elder’s warning that any direct interaction between herself and Brit the Younger could hasten, or, indeed, cause the destruction of the entire universe as they knew it.
Phillip put what he desperately hoped was a calming hand on Brit the Younger’s shoulder. “No, Brit, there’s no need to do that. She hasn’t contacted me.”
Brit took a moment to calm herself. “Sorry I got so worked up. It’s just, Phillip, you’re the one thing I have that she doesn’t. Our relationship is kind of the only thing that’s really mine. If she did something that messed it up for me, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“I understand.”
“Good. So, you wanted to discuss Brit the Elder. What’s on your mind?”
“Just that I think it might be for the best if we both avoid her for a while.”
Brit the Younger smiled. “Fine by me. What brought that on?”
“Just that . . . while I was on my walk, I realized how much happier you are when you don’t have to deal with her.”
Brit picked her book up off the floor and returned to her chair. “Good call. I agree to your plan of avoiding my least favorite person. That’s a very good idea, Phillip. I find that a nice walk can be a good chance to think.”
“Yes,” Phillip said. “I suspect I’ll be taking a lot more walks in the future.”
* * *
Martin stood in the séance room of his workspace in Medieval London: a large square room with velvet draped walls, decorated with four large statues in each corner of the room, facing inward. If one of the locals came looking for Martin’s wizardly help, he would identify the four statues as “the old gods and the new,” but anyone from Martin’s time would easily recognize them as Optimus Prime, Boba Fett, Grimace, and The Stig.
Martin opened the small silver box that disguised the Android smartphone he used to run macros and manipulate the file. He picked a time about six months into the future and ran a search. When he found Phillip’s location, he initiated travel through both time and space.
Martin got the momentary impression of being in a smallish, darkish room with one other person, but only for a fraction of a second. Before his eyes could even adjust to the new light level, he transported again, this time against his will and with no control over the destination.
He found himself standing alone among rows and rows of theater seats, their wooden bottoms folded upward. Martin looked around the room, but saw nobody else on the main floor. The balcony and luxury boxes above also seemed empty. The stage curtains were drawn shut. Martin appeared to have the theater to himself.
Two powerful spotlights turned on with a mechanical ka-chunk. Brilliant white cones of light shone down from the upper reaches of the theater, illuminating two seemingly random portions of the stage curtain. Martin heard the sound of pulleys turning and ropes stretching. The curtains separated, receding to the sides of the stage with surprising speed, revealing two figures in full tuxedos, complete with top hat, tails, and white-tipped walking sticks.
“Oh, Lord,” Martin moaned.
“Yes,” one of the gentlemen said, spreading his arms wide. “I am forced to surmise, from your emotional exaltation, that you have come to the stunning realization that you are to be the lone witness to a private performance by those magnificent magicians, those preeminent prestidigitators, those accomplished alliterators, yours truly, the Sensational Sid, and my cooperative counterpart, the Great Gilbert.”
Gilbert waved. “Hi, Martin.”
Martin said, “Guys, can we just—”
Sid brought the ivory tip of his walking stick down onto the stage floor with a loud bang. “Please, out of respect for the dignity of the performance, we ask that you hold all questions and comments for the end of the show, when I promise they will be disregarded in due course. Now, at long last and at great personal expense, we present to you a special trick, custom designed for the occasion, entitled Phillip’s Personal Message to Martin, on the Occasion of Martin’s Leap to the Future to Discuss Possible Danger to Phillip’s Well-Being, Posed by What Appears to be an Angry Jawa.”
Gilbert said, “We spent a lot more time designing the illusion than we did thinking of a snappy name.”
“Indeed,” Sid said. “And that surplus of effort on the one will show as vibrantly as the lack of effort about the other, I assure you.”
Martin glared at the both of them, but folded down a seat and settled in to watch the performance.
From somewhere offstage, Martin heard what sounded like a small, poorly rehearsed band playing “The Final Countdown” by Europe.
Martin shouted, “Arrested Development. Very nice.”
Gilbert smiled and tipped his top hat.
Two assistants wearing hooded black velvet robes and white porcelain masks to obscure their faces came out on stage. One pushed a large steamer trunk on wheels. The other pulled a fifteen-foot-wide red curtain, hanging from a wheeled frame.
With much unnecessary rhythmic arm waving, one assistant opened the trunk. The other reached into the trunk and produced two more robes, which Gilbert and Sid put on in a needlessly dance-y manner, whipping them around as much as possible in the process. The assistant then handed them two masks, the same as the white ones the assistants wore, except that Sid’s was bright red and Gilbert’s bright blue. The two magicians threw their
hats and canes off into the wings, put up their hoods, and the trick began in earnest.
Gilbert, in the blue mask, stepped into the open trunk and knelt down while Sid, in the red mask, pushed the lid closed, sealing him in. Sid wrapped the trunk with a chain, which he fastened with a cartoonishly large padlock.
One assistant spun the trunk, while the other pulled the rolling curtain in front of it, blocking Martin’s view. Sid and the two white-masked assistants pranced rhythmically in a circle around the rolling curtain and the hidden trunk for a few bars.
The two assistants moved the rolling curtain off to the side, then they both sprinted into the wings and out of sight. In the center of the stage, Sid, in his red mask and hooded cloak, waved his hands over the trunk. The lid of the trunk shook, then opened a crack, straining against the chain. A pair of hands worked their way out through the gap, holding two thin metal implements, and began working on picking the lock. Sid ran to the rear of the stage and darted behind the rolling curtain.
As the padlock sprung open and fell to the floor, the curtain also fell, revealing that Sid had vanished. The trunk sprang open and Sid stood up from inside, having somehow transported from behind the screen into the trunk. Sid removed his red mask and hood, held his arms out wide, and turned around, revealing a message embroidered into the back of his robe.
Martin—
You’re embarrassing yourself. Just drop it.
—Phillip
From behind him, Martin heard a voice say, “Good bit of advice there, I reckon.” Martin turned to see Gilbert sitting in the next row back, looking exaggeratedly relaxed, reclining with his feet kicked up on the back of the seat next to Martin.
“Uh-huh,” Martin said, without enthusiasm. “Did you think this whole thing was going to impress me? You realize I can teleport from place to place, too.”
“Yeah,” Gilbert said. “But the impressive bit is that we didn’t. What you just saw was all illusion. No actual magic involved.”