by Pam Uphoff
Ride swallowed. "Right. We're going to borrow that police car and head for Collinsville. Hob you stay and . . . Oh hell, forget it, we're all going. Fean, can you make the car look like . . . oh, all black, maybe? Hide the lights?"
Fean dredged up memories from Princess School . . . inscribed spells . . . Yeah. I can do this. "Does Dan have any fruit juice that isn't fermented? I need some sugar for this." And I should drink some for the energy. I need it! She staggered over to their supplies. An open crate was half full of jars of all sizes. She grabbed one and drank. "Gah. How much powder did he put in? Once we get him back, I'm going to beat the crap out of him." She took another swig, and strode over to the car. It must have already started fermenting. But it can't be too strong yet. I just feel weird because I'm overdoing the magic. "I hope you guys have suits, cause I don't think I can disguise you, too." She dipped her fingers in the jar and started drawing patterns. And singing. "Big. Black. Important. Car. Big. Black. Important. Car."
Ride snatched the jar from her and sniffed. "This is the stuff he's already distilled. Don't drink any more. That's an order."
She giggled and climbed into the back of the car and laid down on the seat.
The last thing she heard was Hob's voice. "I guess she doesn't drink very often."
Her head hurt, she was going to barf any minute now, and she was being shoved around . . . sat up with Madam Song pressing against her, and beyond, Dan, looking as sick as she felt. She winced at the slam of car doors, then her stomach lurched as the car pulled away from the curb.
"You better pull over so I can barf."
"Not yet." Idre sounded firm. "We need to get out of town before all those spells I was throwing around wear off."
Fean managed to focus her eyes on the exterior. The last houses passed and they were out in open farmland. The car zoomed forward. Fean concentrated on her breathing. Counting. Thinking of anything but her stomach. The car slowed, turned.
Stopped. She fumbled . . . "There's no handle."
Ride and Hob got out and opened both back doors from the outside.
Fean half fell out and barfed all over the dirt road. From the sound of it, Dan was doing the same on that side.
"As soon as possible, we need to get back to our camp. I haven't a clue if the deputies out there are still asleep, but the sooner we get there and send them on their way, the better."
Fean nodded, spat and gulped, trying to control her stomach. She climbed back into the car and slumped against the door. Let the world spin around as the car got back in motion.
Ride drove it right to the same spot in their camp and leapt out to examine the deputies. "Right. So Fean, we need to get rid of the illusions on the car."
"Oh." She moaned and tried to think. "Water. I need water to wipe out the marks, while I try to remember how to remove the impression."
Ride sent Hob with a bucket down to the river.
"Humph." Madam Song climbed out of the car and poked at the exterior. "Those are quite impressive illusions. Especially for such a young girl."
"Who was drunk." Hob snickered and handed over the bucket.
She took it, and sloshed away at her marks while she tried to reabsorb the power she'd applied. Bit by bit it faded, and return the police car to its black and white original color. Getting the lights on top to show up again was the hardest part. Or maybe she was just getting tired.
Done. She staggered away, and Idre took her arm and steered her into the grass. "Stay out of sight. I'm going to send the deputy away thinking the tax department has taken over and is dismantling the still."
Hob was already there, leaning on his boxes of electronic gear. She collapsed beside him. "I'm too sick and tired to even wonder where Madam has gone."
"Chasing birds. What else?"
Fean moaned.
Out in the clearing, voices.
"Excellent job, Deputy Wilson."
"It's all yours Inspector." The slam of a car door, the sound of an engine, then wheels crunching through the grass. Fading away.
"Did we actually survive all that?" Fean whimpered.
"Yep. Go back to sleep. We'll have everything packed and ready to go as soon as Ajha returns."
She woke with a panicked jolt. A vehicle driving along the road, turning . . .
It was Ajha.
Fean bolted down to the river and hastily splashed water on her face and arms, ran fingers through her hair, and twisted it into a knot as she walked back to the clearing.
Madam was fussing with some of the large cages. Large birds in three different colors laid out, still under a sleep spell, in them.
Ajha climbed out of the truck. "Any trouble while I was gone?"
Hesitation. Ajha's eyes narrowed.
Fean sighed. "Dan got drunk. I didn't realize . . . well, I got a bit tipsy too."
He eyed her, then turned to Dan. "And still hung over, I see. I ought to let you both suffer, but we need to get to work, we got stuck in traffic and we're almost late for the gate time. Which I am sure you would have handled perfectly without me." He tapped Dan's forehead, then hers. The lingering malaise disappeared.
They started moving all the cages up to each side of the beacon. Just in time. A faint glow, like fog, grew above it, and opened suddenly to a view of home. Grey utilitarian buildings. And men ready to catch. The guys started throwing, ganging up on the larger cages. Fen hustled, moving cages up into their reach. Last one. A bag flew threw in return. The gate swirled shut.
"Right. So, shall we head out now, or relax here and wait until tomorrow morning?'
"I would love." Fean spoke firmly. "To go to a hotel and take a bath. Don't we need to backtrack to Himmler in order to get on the road to the south?"
Ajha looked at all the nodding heads. "Yep. So let's go."
Madam sidled over to her and murmured. "You're a very good liar, too."
"Thank you."
Chapter Six
10 September 2288
Death Valley, California, North America, World 163
The first thing Ajha taught them in the desert, was how to deal with the heat.
The spell didn't work very well unless they drank lots of water, but perhaps it was better than nothing. They scouted the region, then shifted to a hotel in Bakersfield.
"We'll alternate, going out for a few days, then coming back to recuperate." Fean gave the noisy cooler a dubious glance. It worked by sucking the hot dry air through wet fibrous mats. Amazingly primitive, but it worked quite well.
From there, eighty miles by road got them into the desert, another hundred got them to the depths of the below sea level, and well named, Death Valley.
Sweating in a world so dry the sweat didn't have a hope of dripping before it dried while poking under rocks and spiny bushes for eight different kinds of rare lizards did not exactly sound like fun. Something about all the warnings about rattlesnakes . . . and the damned things were fast. Spotting them was easy enough . . . catching them, on the other hand.
Leggy seemed disinclined to help, poking about bushes with a stick.
Fean sighed and spotted something up on a rock . . . she slid over carefully, trying to not frighten . . . the rather large snake. She backed away, and scanned the rocks for another. Not another snake—but she was beginning the realize that there were more of them than spined lizards and desert iguanas.
And there was an actual lizard, little thing, bands across the neck . . . she pounced, scrambled to grab at it. Got it. She held it in the cage of her hands and walked carefully down to the cages. Stopped at the warning buzz and backtracked to walk wide around another rattlesnake.
Leggy was down slope in a brushier area. Would there be fewer snakes than in the rocks? She dropped her prize in a small cage and walked down.
Leggy stopped dead. "Oh shit, oh, shit . . . that's not a dragon. It's not!"
"Of course not." Fean spotted movement and eyed the big lizard. She tried to sound confident. "I think that's a chuckwalla . It's on the list."
The man dithered.
"And anyhow, I thought you were the Master of Dragons?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I am." He strode forward. The lizard darted for cover and Leggy snatched it. Hands around its middle—it was easily a third of a meter long—he hesitated.
"Damn, that's a good one!" Fean ran back and grabbed a cage, held it open.
"Yeah. Yeah, it is." He dropped the lizard in and looked around for another one.
Whew!
Three hours later, they'd only found one more lizard.
"Fiend? We have a problem."
Fean backed away from yet one more buzzing, pissed off snake and looked over to find Leggy standing very still with a shotgun pointed at his stomach.
The person holding the gun was old. Greasy grey hair straggled out from under a battered hat. His clothing was worn, faded and filthy, blending in perfectly with the desert rocks and sand. The only signs of grooming or cleaning were the polished stock of the shotgun and his clean shaven chin . . . Oh. No. The only sign of cleanliness was her well kept weapon.
"Good afternoon?" Fean tried to swallow. Decided that reaching for her water bottle might not be a good idea, right now.
"What the Hell are you doin'? There's plenty of less painful ways t'kill yerself than playing with rattlers."
"We're collecting rare lizards." Fean glanced back and saw that the snake had departed. "Well, we're trying to. Mostly I seem to be annoying snakes."
"Yeah. I noticed. So . . . you pay fer lizards?"
"Umm, yeah." She hunted through her pockets for the paper slips they used here . . . "Umm, twelve marks? How many lizards can we get for twelve marks?"
"Alive." Leggy added. "The professor goes berserk if you kill one. Crazy lady."
"I ain't crazy!"
"I meant the professor." Leggy grinned and looked over at Fean. "Maybe Madam Doktor Professor Song should come out tomorrow."
"You gotta Lady Prefessor?"
"Yep."
"Huh. Here. Hold this." She handed the shotgun to Leggy and snatched the money from Fean's hand. Then she grabbed one of the little cages they'd brought along.
Half an hour later they retreated with several dozen lizards, all sides perfectly happy. Well, except for the lizards.
Madam was delighted. But despite returning to the same spot the next day, the old desert hermit didn't show. Ajha got an opportunity to demonstrate magical poison removal and breakdown spells. Madam was a bit huffy over the whole incident, but memorized the spells in case she was bitten again.
They shifted to an area with more water and plants, caught half a dozen big fat—poisonous!—lizards called gila monsters.
They caught some of the biggest, ugliest, vultures Fean had ever imagined could exist. Why anyone would even think about reintroducing these "condor" things to the One World was beyond her.
Then they fired up the beacon and tossed the lizards and birds through.
Next stop, the Gulf of Mexico.
Chapter Seven
12 October 2288
Corpus Christi, Texas, North America, World 163
"It is a bit early for the fall migration of cranes and herons and spoonbills and song birds, and . . . well. So we will concentrate first on a few year round residents like the Ivory Billed Woodpecker . . . "
Corpus Christi was an active port, both for freight and fishing. They'd taken the ferry across to a large barrier island where several resort hotels overlooked a long beach, nearly deserted, today. Fean gazed longingly out at the miles of solitude.
"Right." Ajha pushed back from the table on the patio overlooking the Gulf. "Madam, perhaps you and I should study some maps. We'll locate the best habitats for the woodpeckers and so forth, and collect them first. No rush. I sent a note with the California delivery to delay the time by two weeks to make sure we got what we need. So, everyone take the rest of the day off, and we'll start planning tomorrow."
Madam Song looked stubborn.
Fean looked over at her. "Are there any shore birds of interest? Perhaps a hike down the beach . . . "
That perked the old Princess up.
She marched off, binoculars in hand.
Fean dawdled. Still keeping Madam Song in sight, but otherwise alone on a long warm beach. She tried to imagine herself assigned to someplace with a beach like this. Interior Directorate anywhere. Or even the same beach, on the One World. She could stroll every evening after work . . . some stuffy office . . . well, maybe a view . . . paperwork . . . a nice apartment . . . no magic lessons . . . lots of men worth dating . . . no danger . . . No firewood to gather . . . no reason to even use magic, really. She closed her eyes and felt the hot humid air wafting in from over the warm gulf waters. No desert, no rattlesnakes, no old hermits. No handsome rebels, no arrogant blonde Nazis. But there would be more handsome, witty, civilized Oners. I seem to have a defective batch, here. Well, Idre has started giving orders, and pulled off the rescue pretty neatly. And Leggy's over his dragon lizard problems. And Hob's cute as can be, smarter than hell . . . fixated on electronics. All Dan needs is to be hauled into the Medgicians to get an alcoholism cure.
And then there's Ajha. He's such a free thinker it's a bit scary. And a Clostuone. Going bald. One Damn it all.
High class city job. Umm, not sounding quite so good any more.
Especially since it probably wouldn't come with a beach.
She picked up the pace, before Madam Song got too far ahead.
They plotted out the range of their targeted species and then took two weeks, driving all over. Some sort of "prairie chicken" and then into tick infested woods to find an elusive oversized black-and-white woodpecker, barely distinguishable from another oversized black-and-white woodpecker.
Ajha persuaded Madam Song to show them how to put a bird to sleep. It was subtly different from a sleep spell for humans. And each bird species was different, again subtle alterations. The guys gave up. Fean sweated and learned.
Lots of birds got a lot of sleep before Madam had enough woodpeckers, kinglets, hermit thrushes and . . . Fean lost track. She just fetched sleeping birds. Madam identified them and either caged them or placed them gently on the grass to recover.
One morning she woke to distant honking filtering down from hundreds, possibly thousands of meters in the air. A ragged vee of geese heading south.
Madam Song emerged from her tent and stretched. "Excellent. The migration has begun. We should get some passenger pigeons here in the woods, then we can move to the coastal marshes for the larger birds."
The pigeons were easy enough. The flocks were huge. They took eight pairs in less than an hour, then headed for the coast.
About halfway back to Corpus Christi, a stretch of wetlands along the coast attracted just about every bird imaginable. Ride was driving, Dan up front with him. Ajha was apparently asleep, in a hammock. As they passed through the town of Victoria, Fean spotted military vehicles. "Why here? Is there anything the military could possibly want, here?"
Madam Song peered out the back with her. "It's a main highway—by their standards. Once we leave the highway, we probably won't see any more of them."
Fean nodded. "After all, we're just driving around collecting birds, no reason they should be looking for us."
A snicker from Leggy. "Apart from Fean beating up an officer, and us stealing our truck back in Illinois, Dan and Madam Song disappearing from police custody in California . . . "
Fean shrugged. "At least they won't know about our encounter with the rebels. Although frankly I think they were really just bandits."
Hob shook his head. "The Nazi's had an agent in the rebels. Some of the intercepts are pretty funny. They're wondering if we managed to drug their water, to make them all pass out like that. Some of them think we have advanced weaponry. The one guy that said ESP was laughed out of the message ring. But I'm sure they don't know anything."
Fean scowled. "And there's no reason anyone who would recognize us would be down here."
; Leggy peeked out as well. "Right, but that car does look a bit familiar."
Fean looked, and winced. "I recognize those officers."
Ajha sat up. "So long as they don't recognize us, everything is just fine. This is our last stop. Eight species of migratory waterfowl, and we'll all go home." The truck turned off the highway, down a secondary road, driving past a market.
"I thought we were going to stop for supplies? Food?" Hob bit his lip. "Ride lose his nerve?"
Ajha snorted. "Used his brains. We'll come back in a few days, and hopefully find that the army has moved on. Unlike your computers, humans can change their plans on the fly."
"My programs are pretty flexible." Hob glanced at his crates. "Well, back home they are. These things are limited."
"Pity we can't trade." Ajha laid back in his hammock. "Electronics for minerals, and well, rare birds." They wound down progressively poorer quality roads. Potholed tarmac gave way to gravel, to dirt. Idre drove carefully over increasingly boggy ground, and parked on a slight rise. Grassy, no trees.
Madam was delighted. She climbed up on top of the truck, binoculars in hand.
The rest of them spread out and set up camp.
Madam stomped back, looking displeased. "We're still too early in the fall, there aren't many migrants down here yet."
"Yes, this world has been impressing me as being in a fairly warm phase. That's why I requested the extra two weeks. We'll have plenty of time." Ajha looked around. "We're unfortunately obvious here. Don't unpack more than necessary. We'll probably move again."
They moved two days later, with the southeastern horizon black, and the wind picking up. Back toward town of Victoria, which looked to be free of Nazi soldiers. They took two connecting rooms in an inn, the last two available.
"It's barely even a tropical storm, the wind won't be too bad." The old lady in the office shrugged as she handed over the keys. "Plenty of rain, though. Sometimes a twister. People living close to the coast get nervous and move up here for a few days."