The Ambivalent Magician

by Simon Hawke

  "Pamela, wait," said Colin. "The last thing we want right now is security guards up here. Let's try to sort this out on our own first." He approached Warrick. "So, you're Warrick, eh?"

  "Aye," said Warrick, looking Hightower up and down with a critical gaze. "And who are you?"

  "The name's Hightower. Colin Hightower. I'm a reporter. And I've heard a great deal about you, sir." He held out his hand. Warrick glanced down, but refused to take it.

  "Have you? And just what have you heard, and from whom?"

  "I've spoken with some of the people you've been sending here, from wherever it is you came from," Hightower said. "The Alabaster Tower, is it? In Pittsburgh? In a land of twenty-seven kingdoms? You mind telling me why?"

  "Perhaps not," said Warrick. "But first, I have a few questions of my own that I want answered. I have only just arrived here and I would like to know exactly where I am. What is this place?"

  "Fair enough. It's Dr. Marvin Brewster's research laboratory in the headquarters building of EnGulfCo International, in London, England," Hightower replied, and then added, "in the twentieth century."

  "Brewster?" Warrick said, his eyes narrowing. "Brewster Doc?"

  "Dr. Brewster, that's right," said Colin.

  "Where is he?" Pamela demanded. "Is he all right? Have you seen him?"

  "Oh, I would like very much to see him," Warrick replied, "but I have some other matters to attend to first. Where is the Narrator?"

  "Who?" asked Pamela with a frown.

  "The Narrator," repeated Warrick. "The voice in the ether. The demigod who governs this ethereal plane."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about," said Pamela. "But you are illegally in possession of highly classified equipment, and you have gained unauthorized entry into a restricted area. That's enough right there to put you in prison for a very long time, so I strongly suggest that you cooperate or else suffer the consequences."

  Megan made a soft whimpering sound behind Colin and shut her eyes.

  "For a wench, you are exceedingly arrogant," said Warrick. "I take it you are in some position of authority here. Well, thus far, I have been tolerant, but there is a limit to my patience. I wish to see the Narrator at once. You will send word to him that Warrick Morgannan has arrived and demands an immediate audience."

  "Now just hold on a minute, friend," said Colin, stepping between them. "I don't think you fully understand your situation. You're way out of line here. Now why don't we just-"

  Warrick raised his hand in a sorcerous gesture and quickly mumbled a spell under his breath. Absolutely nothing happened.

  "I beg your pardon?" Colin said. "I didn't catch that."

  Warrick frowned, raised his hand once more, and gestured toward Colin dramatically, repeating the spell with no more result than the first time. (God, I love this ...)

  "Now see here, old chap," said Colin irritably, "I don't like people waving their hands in my face, and I didn't particularly care for the tone of that remark, whatever it was."

  Warrick raised both hands high above his head, shouted out the spell at the top of his lungs, and swept his arms down at Colin, fingers splayed, inches from his face.

  "Right, that does it," Colin said, and he cracked Warrick across the jaw with a right hook. The wizard crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

  "That was constructive," said Pamela, wryly. "Now what?"

  "You struck him down!" said Megan with astonishment. "You struck down Warrick the White, the mightiest sorcerer in all the twenty-seven kingdoms!"

  "I don't care who the bloody hell he is," said Colin, gazing down at Warrick's prostrate form. "No one takes that kind of tone with me."

  Pamela headed for the time machine in which Warrick had arrived.

  "What are you doing?" Colin asked.

  "Checking the temporal chronometer settings," Pamela replied as she got in. "I should be able to reset and return to his departure point."

  "Now wait a moment," Colin said uncertainly. "Surely, you're not thinking of taking off in that thing!"

  "Marvin is still back there," Pamela said as she started up the engines. "And he'll be trapped permanently unless I go back for him."

  "I'm going, too!" said Megan, rushing toward the machine. "I want to go home!"

  "All right, get in," said Pamela. "I won't know my way around and I'm going to need some help in finding Marvin."

  "Hold it!" Colin shouted over the noise of the engines. "You can't just leave! What about him? And what am I supposed to do?"

  "He's not going anywhere," Pamela shouted back, over the rapidly rising whine of the engines. "Security will take care of him. Tell them what's happened."

  "Tell them what?" Colin shouted. "That you've gone back in time to get your boyfriend? They'll throw me in the loony bin and leave me there to keep my mouth shut! Besides, if you think I'm missing out on this, you're crazy! It'll be the story of the century! Move over! I'm coming with you!"

  "There's no room!"

  "Megan can sit on my lap!"

  "All right, I'm not going to argue. I'll need all the help I can get. Get in!"

  Hightower got into the machine and readjusted the safety straps so that he could slip them over both himself and Megan as she sat on his lap, leaning back against him. "This isn't going.to hurt or anything, is it?" he asked.

  "I haven't the faintest idea," Pamela replied. "I've never done this before."

  "Oh, Lord. Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

  "All I need to do is throw this switch here when that indicator moves into the red."

  "And then?"

  "And then hold on to your hat!"

  "Oh, Jesus ..."

  She threw the switch.

  Nine

  Well, your faithful narrator feels more in control now. Warrick has finally been neutralized. As we all know, magic doesn't work in modern London, for if it did, England would still have an empire and the royal family would probably be having a lot less trouble. Fortunately, Warrick did not suspect his powers would be useless in our world, otherwise your faithful narrator would be in a considerable pickle. As it is, Warrick is now trapped in London, at EnGulfCo headquarters, with no way of getting back home. And that means he can't interfere with this story anymore, to my immense relief.

  In a short while, Jerry the security guard will realize that more than four hours have gone by since Pamela told him her consulting colleagues had to catch a flight from Heathrow Airport and he'll call upstairs to see if everything's all right. Warrick will not pick up the phone, because although he'll certainly have regained consciousness by then, he has no idea what a telephone is and he'll be baffled by the mysterious ringing noise. When Jerry gets no answer, he'll call in the alarm and discover that Dr. Davies, the head of EnGulfCo R and D, hadn't left for a fishing weekend in the country after all. Dr. Davies will immediately rush to the lab, where the reprogrammed palm scanner will admit him and a detachment of security and they'll find Warrick, take him into custody, and subject him to a long and strenuous interrogation.

  Now, I realize that by telling you all this, I'm violating one of the cardinal rules of writing. Ask any of my students, and they'll say I always teach them that a good writer should show, not tell. However, I also teach them that good writers should avoid authorial intrusion, and I've already blown that all to hell and gone. But you see, this is the sort of thing that happens when you decide to push the limits of the envelope, as they say in The Right Stuff. The author of that book, Tom Wolfe, did it when he invented the New Journalism in The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby and Hunter Thompson did it when he invented Gonzo Journalism in The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved. (Actually, he didn't really "invent" Gonzo Journalism, it was more like a freak accident, but that's another story and we've already gotten ridiculously sidetracked.)

  The point is, I wanted to experiment with "Fantastic Metafiction," because I learned in grad school that this is what you do when you want college professors to take you serio
usly. You write something really weird and come up with a multisyllabic label for it-like "Literary Deconstructionism"-and then you become the acknowledged expert in that field, because nobody but you can understand what the hell you're doing. So, to explain it, you write articles for The English Journal and you give talks at academic conferences and then you write grant proposals to get money to conduct intensive research in this new field you've just invented. This is called "getting tenure."

  Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked yet again. The point I'm trying to make is ... what the hell was the point I was trying to make? Oh, yeah, right. I was trying to invent this new literary form and it just sort of got away from me. But... that's okay. That's part of it. That's the very nature of "Fantastic Metafiction." It's what was supposed to happen. Yeah ... that's it, that's the ticket...

  I could have chosen to write the scene where Warrick gets captured and interrogated, and actually show it happening, because I'd dearly love to see old Warrick squirm after all the trouble he has caused me, but the fact is it wouldn't really advance the main plot of the story and we'd only wind up getting bogged down in nonessential details (which is what I'm doing right now, come to think of it, but hey, that's how "Fantastic Metafiction" works. It's a technique known as ... uh ... "Narrative Transcendentalism." Yeah, right, that's it. I'll explain it more fully in the essay I'm planning to write for The English Journal). However, if we have a chance, we will drop in on Warrick once again, because it's not good storytelling to leave subplots unresolved.

  Speaking of which, some of you may be wondering whatever became of all the people Warrick had teleported to our world with Brewster's time machine. Well, we don't really have the time to get into all the individual case histories, otherwise this book would be a Robert Jordan novel, so we'll simply look at a representative sampling.

  Those of you who have been with us from the beginning will recall the dotty old wizard known as Blackrune 4, to whom the brigands sold the time machine after they discovered it in the Redwood Forest. Why does he have the number 4 after his name, you ask? Well, if you'd read the first installment of this metafictional adventure (The Reluctant Sorcerer, Warner Books), you'd already know that, but for those of you who haven't, it was because the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild registers all mage names, and there were already three other wizards named Blackrune, 1 through 3, respectively, registered with the guild. It was Blackrune 4 who had first stumbled on a magic spell to activate the time machine by tapping into its temporal field. He was teleported to Los Angeles, where his magic wouldn't work and he wound up becoming part of the homeless population. He met a lot of other homeless people who found him absolutely fascinating and made him into a sort of street guru, which resulted in his being featured in a PBS documentary about the homeless. A Hollywood producer saw the program and it gave him an idea for a sitcom called Street Smarts. Blackrune was found and hired as a consultant for the show, which starred George Carlin in his second series television venture, and it became an instant ratings hit. Blackrune 4 changed his name to George R.R. Blackrune, renegotiated his contract, and is now one of the show's executive producers, with a house in Sherman Oaks, a regular table at Spago's, and a Mercedes Benz convertible in his garage.

  Blackrune's young apprentice, who delivered the time machine to Warrick and became his first test subject, wound up in New York, where he lived on the streets for a while until he took up with a nineteen-year-old performance artist who introduced him to all her friends in the East Village arts community. He adopted the name Johnny Snot, got a gig as a lead singer with a heavy metal band called STD, and their last CD, Another Time, Another Place, just went triple platinum.

  Remember the Pittsburgh hooker who was teleported on stage in the middle of an Allman Brothers concert in Georgia? Well, after becoming hysterical on stage behind a mike, tearing her hair and wailing about going back home, she was given a five-minute standing ovation and hailed as a great white blues artist. She got a recording contract with Atlantic Records, got a great write-up in Rolling Stone after the debut of her first album, Shriek, then disappeared after giving birth to a beautiful blond baby boy. Rumor had it the father was Gregg Allman. Well, she and her son are now living in Arkansas, where she's happily married to a prosperous real estate broker who is currently under federal indictment for tax fraud.

  One of Warrick's test subjects was teleported to Japan, where the urban density of Tokyo coupled with the sight of people unlike any race he'd ever seen and speaking a language he couldn't understand put his nervous system into overload. He ran hysterically through the streets, convinced he'd been transported to a world of demons, until he was finally apprehended by the Tokyo police. When questioned by an officer who spoke English, he fearfully told his story, which resulted in his being sent to a hospital for psychiatric observation, where he remained for about ten months. Once convinced no one would harm him, he stopped being violent and was allowed to mix with the other patients and watch television. This proved to be an immensely educational experience for him. He learned Japanese, discovered a great deal about our world, and was eventually released. However, having been a criminal in his own world, he naturally gravitated to what he knew best, and is now working as an enforcer for the Yakuza.

  A great many of Warrick's test subjects wound up in various institutions, where some of them remain, perfectly content. However, most were eventually released. Television had made an immense difference in their lives and they have all more or less acclimated to their new environment. Many of them took correspondence courses and got their GEDs, and are now working in productive jobs in their communities. Some turned to crime, as they had in Pittsburgh, but most took advantage of the opportunities in their new world and started to build productive lives for themselves, working at such diverse occupations as short order cooks, highway construction workers, sanitation engineers, topless dancers, and postal service employees. One is now a deputy sheriff in Pima County, Arizona. Another is a popular veejay on MTV. Several became used-car salesmen and one, a former member of The Swindlers Guild, became a televangelist and is now running for Congress from the state of Louisiana. However, most of them, with the exception of Warrick's first few test subjects, had at least one thing in common-they were still under the spell of compulsion Warrick placed on them, directing them to return to him in his Alabaster Tower and tell of what they'd seen.

  In many cases, drugs helped dull the uncontrollable compulsion. Given enough thorazine, even Godzilla would mellow out. The rest of them, however, were still driven by a relentless urge to reach the Alabaster Tower and tell Warrick what they'd seen. Unfortunately, there was really nothing they could do about it, save toss and turn all night and redirect the compulsion into such activities as overeating, gambling, alcoholism, sex addiction, and watching soap operas. Many of them wound up buying sets of Lego blocks and constructing large plastic white towers in their apartment living rooms, rather like Richard Dreyfus building a mountain out of mud in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. They were immensely frustrated, knowing there was no way they could get back home until one day something very strange happened to all of them simultaneously.

  For no apparent reason they suddenly all felt compelled to go to London. (Oh, by the way, did I mention that the EnGulfCo Corporate headquarters building was faced with white ferroconcrete slabs and known as "The White Tower?")

  It was almost sunrise when Queen Sandy started heading back toward the castle. It had been a long and busy night. After leaving The Stealers Tavern, she had hurried to another end of town, not far from the market district, and a small stone coffeehouse and bakery known as The Smorgasbard. It was a place where one could partake of coffee and herbal infusions and a wide assortment of fresh baked bread and pastries while listening to bards regale the patrons all night long with their songs in exchange for gratuities dropped into their hats or instrument cases. The Smorgasbard was open until the wee hours of the morning, and was a popular gathering place for artists, bards, and craftsmen, a
s well as the occasional aristocrat. They even allowed filkers to perform. Their slogan was, "All the bards that you can stand."

  On entering, Sandy pulled her hood closer around her face and headed straight for the door to the back room. She knocked three times, paused, then twice, then paused again, then once. A small panel set into the door at about eye level was slid aside and someone asked, "Who knocks?"

  "One who seeks," Sandy replied, giving the password.

  "Enter," said the voice, and the window slid shut. A moment later, the bolt was drawn and the door opened.

  Sandy walked into the dimly lit back room, illuminated only by a few candles placed on a long table. There were no windows, and the walls were thick, ensuring privacy. The men and women seated around the table immediately got to their feet as she entered and pulled back her hood.

  "Your Highness," said one of them, bowing politely and sweeping his hat from his head. He was middle-aged, with long, wavy brown hair, a luxuriant beard, and a wide, ruddy face. Beneath his dark cloak he wore a brown leather doublet, a lace-trimmed shirt, brown breeches, and high black boots. He also wore an extremely well-crafted sword.

  "Good evening, Lord Aubrey," Sandy said, nodding to the other members of the Underground. "Please, let us dispense with formalities. Be seated, my friends. What news?"

  "None that is good, I fear," Lord Aubrey replied, resuming his seat as Sandy took her place beside him. "The army is marching for Brigantium tomorrow. They have formed their own kingdom, separate from Darn, and apparently with King Durwin's support. His Majesty has received assurances of solidarity from all the other rulers-save King Durwin, who has sent no reply-but only three, King Vidor, King Alan, and King Rodney, have chosen to support his war with troops. Our forces have been augmented by six regiments of foot and three regiments of horse. It makes for a formidable army, the largest ever assembled in the twenty-seven kingdoms. Brigantium will never stand a chance."