Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom

by Jack L. Chalker

  She nodded. "He sounds like an interesting man."

  "Well, interesting has several connotations. He's as nutty as they come, only in his own unique ways, and sometimes he's not at all easy to take, but…." He stiffened and she sensed it.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Head down and quiet! Somebody or something's coming this way and I can't tell who or what it is."

  They hunched down so that the mists covered them and almost held their breaths. Charley could hear now what Dorion had heard, but it sounded odd, like muffled footsteps rather than the steady beat of horses or other beasts. Just a couple of people, very close, although she was certain there had been no one near only minutes before.

  The footsteps stopped, and a man's voice, very near them, said, in English, "Well, it's about time! A few more hours and we would have been forced to give you up. I was beginning to doubt Yobi's competency, or yours."

  Dorion knew that voice; even in English it was hard to forget it. He poked his head up and saw a man standing there wearing the buckskin outfit of a Navigator and for a moment it threw him. Then he saw the face and said, "Holy shit'"

  "And the same to you, Dorion. Get up. Charley. You've been itching to meet me for quite some time so you might as well do so. You can't run from me."

  She felt herself rise and turn towards him even though she hadn't really willed herself to move, sort of like a slave spell interacting, and then she saw the speaker with her magic sight, all deep crimson, but not like Dorion's rust-red aura; this was intense, and a churning, throbbing mass. All but a little blob of emerald green that seemed to be perched on his shoulder or someplace like that. and move a little on its own. That part confused and bothered her.

  "Come on, you two. Why, Dorion! That's the filthiest I think I've ever seen you, and out of uniform, too. Come on, you two. Boday is waiting for us and we have wasted too much time now. Also, I don't want to run into old Rutanibir, who's lurking all over here of late trying to find me. He's the same old incompetent asshole he always was, but I can't afford any more delays."

  Charley found herself following the man and yet terribly confused. Dorion sensed her total befuddlement and said,

  "Charley we don't have to go any farther into the hub. That's Boolean. We found himor he found us."

  Boolean! Here! Alive! And with Boday! It seemed too good to be true, coming out of the blue as it was. And yet, after this, this was the great Boolean, the wizard of wizards, sorcerer of sorcerers? He sounded so, well, ordinary, more tike her old high school English teacher. She wondered just what he looked like. Then an unsettling thought hit her, and she whispered to Dorion, "Are you sure? Remember how the adept fooled Boday and me."

  Dorion shrugged. "Fairly sure. Might as well accept him, anyway, since if it isn't him, then there's nothing we can do about it."

  "You're going to have to tell me how you wound up a slave with a ring in your nose without first being defrocked, Dorion," Boolean said as they walked. "You know the rules of the Guild. You defrocked yourself when it happened. Can't have anyone with the power enslaved." He paused. "Save it for now, though. We have a long journey and a lot of time for stories once we're under way."

  Dorion hadn't thought of that angle to slavery. No wonder nobody had spotted him as a magician back at the camp. He wasn't one any more. It was a small loss, but it stung his ego greatly. Still, he wasn't going to admit that to Boolean, particularly within earshot of Charley. "HHow'd you find us? And why not sooner if you could?"

  Boolean chuckled dryly. "Same old impertinent little twerp, aren't you? Well, you know it was kind of a crowded mess over there, and it was no mean feat keeping myself out of sight and undetected as I watched their little show. I knew where you were and I figured I could just pick you up when I was done. I knew you were there because my spells at the kingdom's borders told me so, and I had one of my associates unobtrusively there to sort of invisibly suggest to Coleel a few courses of action. But Charley vanished in that mess, and then you vanished after her while I was over surveying the damage, and I barely got Boday out of there before Rutanibir was called in. So, with all hell breaking loose and our appearance urgently needed elsewhere. I had to cool my heels and pray that Yobi's spell, which mandated that if anything went wrong Charley was to come to the capital and find me would lead you into the null. Glad I got you, too, Dorion, but, frankly, you weren't on my priorities list. Once Charley got into the null, though, she was in my element, so to speak. I knew immediately and got here as fast as I could."

  "Damn it, she'd just been raped! You expect complete recovery and cold logic from somebody who'd just been through thai?"

  Boolean sighed. "Well, no, but I'm not omniscient, Dorion. I really thought that fellow was far too possessive to allow it. All right, score one for your side. I apologize to the lady, but tilings were getting critical fast."

  Dorion's anger was mollified somewhat by the unexpected concession, but he was still confused about the details. "But how could you know? That she was in the null, that is?"

  "The spell, you poor excuse for a magician! She's keyed to me! That ring makes her mine, right? I sensed it as soon as she entered. I've been looking for it for a couple of days now. Oh, I'm sorry, my dear. Feel free to speak your mind and say what you please. Sorry for the lack of nice introductions, but time is wasting. I'm James Traynor Lang, Ph.D., although here I call myself Boolean. It's one of their silly customs that sorcerers have to have ridiculous trade names."

  "I hardly know what to say. What name did you say?"

  "James Traynor Lang, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics and formerly a full professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You've heard of it?"

  "Of the college, yeah. Of you—I'm sorry."

  "Well, I'm not surprised. I don't think I won the prize in your world, just in mine. Our worlds are close by, but they're not identical."

  "Your world! Then you're not from here?"

  He laughed. "My dear, almost none of the Second Rank sorcerers who amount to much are born and raised here. You've got to be a genius to be a native and a power. No, we're mostly mathematicians, a few physicists, even one engineer, god help me! Different worlds, of course, but all from the upper out-planes. For a while, most all of 'em here had German accents, but in my time English has been the language where much of the big work in math has gone on and it's displaced German as the dominant tongue of the Second Rank—thank heavens. In English we just appropriate whatever local words are handy and invent new ones if needed. In German you have to mince together old words to make new ones and it gets unwieldy as hell in this environment. We still have a smattering of old Germans, plus a couple of Italians, a Dane or two, a couple of Russians and even one Japanesehe's the engineer. Ah—there's Boday!"

  So that's why English was so popular among the sorcerers! she thought excitedly. Suddenly she didn't feel so alien and alone any more.

  "Charley!" Boday screamed—her only English word, really—and ran to her, picking her up off the ground and hugging her. "Boday is so happy to see you! That you are all right! We were afraid we would have to desert you here in this desolate place!"

  "All right! Calm down!" Boolean shouted. "I wish I could give you time to sleep and feed you filet mignon and get you bathed and rested and all that, but, first of all, my old quarters have been kind of blown to heaven in little particles or changed into tree-lined swamps. Second, in spite of my getting to Boday first, they know where our missing Sam is. She's in a Covantian colony and the only lucky part is that she's stuck in the middle of nowhere in a place that's damned hard to get to, and I had somebody there to slow the bastards down. But time is wasting and it's a long trip, and we still have to beat them or she's dead and probably this was all for nothing. Crim can't keep a whole horde down forever he's got the same problems with geography they do."

  "They've got Second Rank sorcerers," Dorion pointed out. "How come they can't get there by the quicker routes that only sorcerers use well ahead of us
?"

  "Because they don't know where she is. Without Boday, they're at the mercy of a mercenary bastard free-lancer named Zamofir who's been dogging her the whole way. He found her the same way Crim did, but Crim can't break that damned spell she's under so there was no use in him rushing to her first. He was better used guarding the door. Zamofir's going for the big payoff, biggest of his career. He tells them where and they don't need him any more. Of course, if he fails, he'll be enslaved to the demons in the netherhells for a few thousand years of torture, but he's going double or nothing for the big payoff and he knows it."

  "Zamofir," Charley repeated. "The little man with the moustache? The bastard who joined up with the raiders on the train?"

  "That's him. He's very good at what he does, which is anything at all that pays handsomely. No morals, no scruples, nothing. This is a rare time when he's doing his own dirty work instead of hiring it done, but since he took responsibility he also takes the blame or the reward. Now, Charley, you can ride with Dorion, since you make such an interesting couple. Dorion, lash her down and hold her tight. We're going to have to make real speed here. Boday, you take the point in front since you're my confirmation that we're going correctly, and we'll take the rear. Don't worry about guidance I'll be handling things."

  Dorion took Charley over and guided her foot into a stirrup. She started to help herself up, when she realized it was a pretty low and fairly shaky saddle and froze. Then slowly, she felt under the saddle.

  "Dorion there's no horse under this saddle!" she whispered through clenched teeth.

  "Yeah, I know. You get used to these things with real sorcerers. You think we could make it by riding?"

  He hoisted her up, secured her as best he could, then climbed on in back of her. "Hold on," he warned her. "I have a sinking feeling that we're going to go very fast and maybe very high."

  "All right," they all heard Boolean's voice as if he were right next to them, "let's get going here. Hang on and don't fall off. We've got close to a thousand miles—two thousand leegs in the local parlance—and with breaks for stretches, food, and drink, and one sleep, it's going to take us two or three days to get there. It's going to be very close as it is."

  And, with that, the saddles rose straight up in the air, lined up in his predetermined pattern, and paused there for just a moment. Boday was muttering very nervously and Dorion wasn't too thrilled himself. Charley could only imagine the sight, but she could see just how far down the null was.

  Boolean sighed and looked back at Masalur hub spread out before him. "It used to be one hell of a town," he muttered, and suddenly the saddles were off like a streak, back across tile null, across an unfamiliar colonial boundary, high above the trees and roads, heading back to Tishbaal, back to Covanti, and, eventually, to Sam.

  Dorion held her tightly, but Charley had the distinct feeling that he was holding on to her just as much for his own sake as for hers. As for her, her head was still spinning from this rapid and dramatic turn of events; she hadn't had time to collect her thoughts and emotions or even catch her breath.

  "Dorion how is it possible? Are these some kind of saddle-like vehicles or something?" she asked him.

  "No, just saddles. They look like ones off army horses."

  "Then how?"

  "It's fun to be a sorcerer. Miss Sharkin," Boolean's voice said to her. "Don't worry—you'll get used to it. Besides, it beats broomsticks, even if it is the same general principle."

  Charley had met some magicians, and Yobi, of course, but she had not until now experienced the real power that these high ones possessed. Even after all this time in Akahlar, and with all the demons and charms and spells, somebody who could do this, apparently with a wave of his hand, was as shocking and inconceivable to her now as it would have been on the streets of Albuquerque.

  And yet, in many ways, it was power from a man who seemed both very friendly and ordinary and yet so callous of lessors, too. He'd lived and done his work in Masalur for many years; he had to know its people, really like both those people and the place itself. All that had been destroyed; whether or not he'd had the power to stop it was not the issue. What was the point was that he didn't seem very broken up about the fact that everything and everybody who meant anything to him in Akahlar had just been totally destroyed, and all he could do was make light conversation and comment that it used to be a hell of a town.

  Dorion had warned her that Boolean wasn't quite right in the head, but she couldn't help being disturbed by the man's reputation on the one hand as a social critic and reformer and the most vociferous battler of Klittichorn with somebody who could be like that, and she said so to Dorion, not caring if the sorcerer could hear her or not. He had given her permission to speak her mind.

  "He's always been nearly impossible to figure out, like the other Second Rank sorcerers," the magician responded. "But he's always hidden a part of himself from even his closest associates. I think he feels it, though. More than he'd admit."

  "No, not more than I'd admit," Boolean responded to them- It was eerie how, even with the wind rushing by and them whooshing along at a good clip it sounded like he was right next to them. "This was the most agonizing time I had since I learned how to do miracles. When I first wound up here, I apprenticed in this region and they were all good to me. I was fascinated by the place and by the possibilities. I had a lot of close friends there, and there were a lot of good people rolled over in that mess."

  "Well, you knew it was coming," she responded. "You weren't just not at home when it came by accident. Why didn't you warn them to get out?"

  "To where? If I started any major evacuation or gave them much warning at all, it would tip Klittichorn that I was on to him. He'd have come in with everything he had right then and there and it would have been far worse even than now. They're in shock, but they're not dead, and a fair number have kept their wits about them. I went back in and sought some of them out after. Not that easy to do, by the way. They really are absolutely physiologically identical. Fortunately, I knew where to go and what names to call. There will be a ton of mental breakdowns and some suicides and perhaps other problems we can't imagine, but there are enough folks there with level heads and strong personalities to pull it together with hard work. It's better than the alternative."

  "Alternative! You sneak out and leave them to be turned into whatever it is they are. What we heard about them makes them total nonsense."

  "Green French porn queens who have been double exposed is about the best I can give it," the sorcerer replied, chuckling a bit at the description. "Yes, I agree, a species that is apparently both animal and becomes plant doesn't make sense, and I have no notion as to what the extra set of arms, let alone breasts, are good for, but we aren't exactly well designed, either. We only make sense because we're the norm to our own selves against which we measure everybody and everything else. We could be designed far more efficiently, I'll tell you. But it's only form, and it's not a bad one considering that many of the results of Changewinds I've seen have looked like refugees from a bad Japanese horror movie. I expected far worse. I did get as many members of my own staff out as possible, since I didn't want them to lose their power, but some volunteered to stay, both because it was their home and because somebody had to maintain that shield while I was gone for a sufficient time to convince old Rutanibir and his flock that I was still home. The rest I couldn't help. They would have been chewed to pieces in a panic evacuation, and, frankly, the majority are far better off as a new race than as millions of slaves of the new administration."

  She hadn't thought of that. "You said it was better than the alternative. You mean total slavery?"

  "Oh, no- Klittichom's been getting very good at using the maelstrom effect of the practice Changewinds his princess has been calling up all over the place. In between the out-planes, dead center in the storm, it's a calm, almost a sort of vacuum cleaner effect. She's been quite good at putting it where he wanted it and he's been very neatly scooping up
what he needed and dropping it down to him here. The effect is hard to explain, but you have at least experienced it. It's what he used to pick you up. You remember dropping through the maelstrom to Akahlar. It's a natural phenomenon of the wind, which has picked up and dropped a ton of stuff on Akahlar and the colonies and the lower out-planes over the millennia, including probably the first Akhbreeds. There's some evidence that nothing is actually native to Akahlar; this is, as I once told you, the ass end of the universe. Among the things he's picked up, other than people, are heavy weapons and ammunition and, among other things, a few thermonuclear devices."

  She was shocked. "You mean atom bombs?"

  "They're primitive- They are hydrogen at least. And it didn't take him long to figure out how to bypass the fail-safe mechanisms and replace them with his own, either. He didn't wind up down here with just the shirt on his back, you know. Among the things that came with him because they were caught in the same vortex was his portable computer and much of his current notes and fancy mathematical programs. That's what's made him a top dog so quickly. Once he grasped the basic mathematics of magic here, he was able to build and solve enormous equations with the thing, far beyond the abilities of even the greatest mathematical minds here. Once he had a little experience, he could work out how to do Just about anything and knock over any big-shot sorcerer who stood in his way. And, of course, he is a genius, one of the rare true ones. Another Einstein, da Vinci, or Fermi at least."

  "Smarter even than you?" she asked him, wondering about his reaction.

  "Oh, my, yes. Certainly. Although I am one of the few minds capable of not only understanding but using and perhaps refining his work. I, for example, never dreamed it was possible to enter the Maelstrom through the weak point after it had passed, but once I saw that he could, well, I figured out the way. That relative intellectual position, alas, is why all of this came to be. In a way, it's all my fault, although I have days when I wonder if that is entirely true. Certainly some basic defects in my character helped shape this crisis. You see, I'm a very good wizard, my dear. I'm just not a very good man."