A Wizard In Absentia

by Christopher Stasheff

  But Ian remembered that the soldiers who were looking for him would scarcely believe such a tale—and that they were still looking for a young serf boy who had run away.

  It was almost as though the soldier heard his thoughts. "There were foresters and soldiers thick about here just now. Like as not, they were hunting for you. They would scarcely believe such a tale." He nodded, agreeing with himself. "Yes. We had better go quickly, then, boy, and very quietly, by back trails. What have you done, that they should search for you by night in this wilderness?"

  Ian's heart leaped into his throat—but he swallowed, and forced himself to speak. What could he say, except the truth? Anything else would be to abuse this new-found friend. If he chose to have nothing to do with a runaway, well, then Ian was no worse off than before—but if he found it out later, then he might betray Ian to the foresters in anger. "I have escaped, sir." Not all the truth, perhaps, but enough.

  And the soldier seemed satisfied. He nodded and said, "Come, then. I know what it is, to escape—and be found."

  Ian looked up, startled at his tone—but the freelance was no longer smiling, nor looking at him. He was gazing straight ahead, frowning—and remembering.

  * * *

  Basic training was a crashing bore. Magnus couldn't understand why the other recruits complained so much—ten-mile hikes in the middle of the night were an inconvenience, of course, but nothing he hadn't had to do at home, now and then. Learning to ride was no problem for a young man who had virtually grown up on horseback, though his city-bred companions had quite a few choice words to say about the hardness of their saddles as they were learning to post. He became used to hearing them grumble, "Where are the brakes on this thing?" and, "Show him who's boss, she says! Confounded beast knows who's boss, no matter who's in the saddle!"

  Magnus had the good sense to keep his mouth shut when the instructor was teaching them how to pitch camp, and did pick up a few useful tricks without giving in to the impulse to mention a few of his own. He went on keeping his mouth shut while Svenson, the grizzled old field agent who was in charge of martial arts, gave them a ritual dressing-down and challenge before he began teaching them.

  "Ed Gar!" he snorted as he passed Magnus, checking his name from the list. He looked him up and down, mostly up, and said, "Gar Pike, more likely, as long as you are, and with that length of jaw!"

  Magnus didn't respond, recognizing the gambit of insult, to make him know his place. Svenson eyed him hungrily, hoping for indignation, for a challenge to put down, but didn't get it, and only sighed as he turned away to the next recruit, shaking his head. Then he gave them a brief lecture about martial arts, telling them why they wore such outlandish uniforms for practice, and how the color of the belt denoted the level of their skill, which was why theirs were white. To his credit, he told them a little of the philosophy underlying it, too, though it was mostly as a guide to how to defeat an attacker.

  Then he put them through their paces in unarmed combat. Magnus dutifully mimicked every move the man made, duplicated every sequence of blows, but forgot to do it clumsily at first, and the veteran pulled him aside at the end of the second session. "Done this before, haven't you?"

  "I didn't think it showed," Magnus answered. "When you do every move exactly right the first time? You bet it shows! What belt do you hold?" Magnus could have claimed to be a belted knight, which was true, but he knew it wasn't quite what the man had in mind. "None."

  "No belt?" Svenson frowned—up, of course. He was a foot shorter than Magnus, though just as heavily built, and almost as fast. "Your instructor's guilty of gross negligence! What school did you go to?"

  "None, for martial arts," Magnus said.

  Svenson's frown deepened. "Where'd you learn it, then?"

  "From my father, as I grew up."

  Svenson turned away, looking exasperated, and nodded. "Yep, that explains it, all right. Here I am, trying to teach these lunkheads something that you took for granted. I don't suppose he ever took you to competition?"

  Magnus knew he was speaking of formal tournaments, not actual combat. "No. We lived very far out in the . . . boondocks." The word was unfamiliar, but he managed to remember it.

  "Too far to go to the nearest tournament, eh? What did he teach you? Kung fu? Karate? Jujitsu?" Magnus stared, then spread his hands, at a loss. "He taught me to fight."

  "A little bit of everything," Svenson interpreted, "all rolled together into a system that can take on any of them—which is just what I'm teaching you. No, cancel that—what I'm teaching the rest of these would-be heroes. Maybe I oughta have you join the teaching staff."

  Magnus picked his words with care. "By your leave, sir, that might be damaging to morale." Svenson gave him an approving glance. "Yes, it might, and it might set them all against you, too. Good point, Gar Pike. We'll just keep on as we're going, shall we? With you pretending you don't know anything—and who knows, you might pick up a few new techniques."

  "Yes, sir," Magnus agreed. "I'll try to be a bit more clumsy from now on."

  He wasn't the only one who already knew martial arts, but the other had much better sense than to let it show. His name was Siflot, and he was wiry and nimble, but pretended to be clumsy. He had a marvelous sense of humor, though, and every trip, every stumble, brought laughter from those around him. Siflot always came up grinning, which Magnus at first ascribed to good sportsmanship, but eventually realized was satisfaction—Siflot had intended to get a laugh, and was grinning because he had succeeded. During the first evening, though, he stepped aside from the campfire, took three balls out of his pockets, and began to juggle. Conversation gradually stilled as the other recruits watched him, waiting for a fumble, a dropped ball—but it never came. Finally, Siflot caught all three balls and tucked them away, turning back to the campfire—and noticed all eyes on him. He laughed, embarrassed. "I have to practice every day, that's all, or I'll lose my touch." He sat down by the fire.

  "I can see why you'd want to keep it, a skill like that," Ragnar said.

  "That could be useful in a medieval society," Lancorn added.

  "It's an old skill," Siflot admitted, smiling at her. She smiled back with a slumbrous look, but it seemed to go right past Siflot; he turned back to the fire, asking Ragnar, "What tricks do the jugglers do, in your home?"

  The conversation picked up again, but Magnus gazed at Siflot, weighing him. He certainly had intended his mates to notice his skill, though Magnus didn't doubt he did need to stay in practice—and if he could juggle like that, he certainly couldn't be as clumsy as he pretended. No, more—deliberately taking pratfalls like his required a great deal of skill and control over his body. Why, Magnus wondered, was he playing the fool?

  He had his answer in the others' reactions to Siflot. Within days, everyone liked him—and were a little consdescending. Everyone knew that Siflot could never be a threat—which meant that if he ever did need to fight one of them, he would have the advantage of tremendous surprise. In the meantime, he had become everyone's friend and everyone's confidant—there was no one who didn't trust Siflot. Why not? He could never hurt them.

  But Magnus had a different notion of the matter, and the second day, he managed to pair up with Siflot in unarmed combat class. True to his promise to Svenson, he did his best to be clumsy, stumbling as often as Siflot and falling down in the middle of a throw just as he did. The climax of the day came when they both kicked at each other at the same moment, and both missed. Siflot laughed, and Magnus grinned, then stepped in for a hip-throw and stumbled, giving Siflot the perfect opportunity to pin him with an elbow-lock, which the juggler dutifully did—then skidded in his own turn, and landed right beside Magnus, who looked over at him, grinned, and said with all the sarcasm he could muster, "White belt, sure."

  A wary look flickered over Siflot's face, then was swallowed in an impish grin. "Why, Gar Pike, how could I be anything else?"

  Svenson stamped up to spare Magnus an answer. "If you two clowns are th
rough with the circus now, we might get on with the lesson."

  "Oh yes, Sir! Yes, Sir!" Siflot rolled up to his feet, nodding—no, bobbing. "It was the hip-throw, wasn't it, sir?" And he grabbed Magnus and executed the move perfectly—except that when Magnus was at the top of the arc, Siflot collapsed. Magnus couldn't help it—he burst into laughter as he rolled off Siflot, then caught the smaller man's shoulder, asking, "Are you all right?"

  Siflot came up grinning. "Why, of course, friend Pike—you landed as a feather would." Then, to Svenson, "I'm learning, sir."

  "Sure are," Svenson growled. "Pretty soon, maybe you won't fall until he hits the ground. A little more effort and a little less humor, Siflot." He turned away, fighting to keep his face straight.

  They faced off again. Siflot asked, "And how old were you when you took your black belt, friend Pike?"

  "I never did," Magnus answered. "We don't use them."

  "Ah. Suspenders, no doubt."

  "No, garters. Think you can stay on your feet this time, friend Siflot?"

  "No, friend Pike, but I might stay on yours." They all called him "Pike" by the third day, following Svenson's lead. Ragnar claimed the name suited him.

  Siflot kept the classes from being boring, with his mock clumsiness and wide-eyed innocence that led him to ask the most hilarious questions. Still, Svenson was only teaching Magnus what he already knew, and he had to summon all his patience to take them with good grace.

  But the acculturation classes were another matter, partly because it was material he didn't know at all—the background, social system, and customs of the world he was being sent to—and partly because Allouene was teaching them. Soaking up the history, dialect, and laws of a new planet was fascinating, and watching Allouene was a pleasure that Magnus felt to his marrow, even though she was all business as she paced before the class, with nothing seductive or alluring in her manner. But the honey of her hair still shone, her eyes flashed as she told them about the inequities of the aristocratic system, and her movements were poetry.

  Apparently, Magnus's heart was not locked up quite as tightly as he had thought—but even if it had been, the rest of his body was not. Watching Allouene roused physical sensations that permeated Magnus's whole body, even though his emotions stirred only slightly.

  Of course, he feigned a relaxed posture and kept his face impassive, showing none of what he felt. "We'll begin by telling you why we're going," she said, "and the answer is that the agent in charge has called for help."

  "I thought SCENT didn't like to send in lots of agents," Ragnar said.

  Allouene nodded, making her hair sway around her face in a way that Magnus found enchanting. "SCENT rules are very strict about disrupting indigenous cultures, and the fewer agents involved, the less the chance of disruption. The ideal is to send in one agent only, and have him put the planet on the road to democracy single-handed—but that almost never happens."

  The words transfixed Magnus—for that was exactly what his father had done: come to Gramarye as an agent of SCENT and set it on the road to democracy, single-handed. Well, not by himself, no, but without calling in any other SCENT agents. He made do with local talent—very well: he married one, and raised some others.

  Of course, that was unjust. Magnus knew quite well that Rod Gallowglass had stayed on Gramarye because he had fallen in love with Magnus's mother. He knew it not just from his parents' report, but from several others of the older generation who had witnessed it—including Fess. And anything the children had done had been incidental.

  Until now.

  "Usually the scout agent calls for help," Allouene went on, "just as he has in this case. His name is Oswald Majorca, and he has set up a thriving business as a merchant, which allows him to travel anywhere he wants, even to other continents. It also gives him an excuse to send his own agents to any other city, and they might 'just happen' to stop over at any place in between. He has situated himself admirably, and given us a great start. It's up to us not to blow it for him."

  Allouene turned to key the display screen to a diagram of a solar system, showing a yellow sun tinged with orange. "It's a G-type star, but it's cooler than Sol, so even though the planet's only the second one out and is closer to its sun than Terra is to Sol, it has about the same temperature range. It has three continents—the largest has an inland sea—and a host of islands. Serfs flee to those islands now and then, so the lords have to mount expeditions to clean them out periodically."

  "They could just leave them alone," Lancorn objected.

  There were only the four of them in this classpresumably, Allouene was keeping her mission small. Magnus was glad to see that Siflot was one of the four.

  "Of course the lords could leave them alone," Allouene agreed, "but they aren't about to. The official exuse is to eliminate piracy—but they also, incidentally, wipe out any possibility that somebody besides the ruling elite might have a decent life, and make sure that the serfs don't go getting ideas about rising above their station. There's a pocket of escaped serfs growing to the critical point right now, on an island they've named Castlerock . . . " An island toward the northern coast of the inland sea began to glow . . . "and the lords are getting ready. for a full-scale expedition. They've already sent a small band, but the serfs killed off the officers and persuaded the soldiers to join them."

  "Dangerous," Siflot murmured, and Lancorn looked at him in surprise.

  "The lords think so, too," Allouene agreed. "That's why they're preparing the big expedition—but I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the basics. History next."

  Her four students keyed their notebook displays to the topic.

  "This all started seven hundred years ago, when the government of the Terran Sphere was still the Interstellar Dominion Electorates. A thousand or so financiers set up the planet as a tax haven. They had the arrogance and audacity to name it just that—Taxhaven. They were ready for retirement, so they found an undeveloped world and bought it outright. Then they shipped in all the machinery necessary for a luxurious life-style, and each declared it to be the permanent site of residence for his or her whole family. They left their sons and daughters on Terra to look after business."

  Ragnar raised a hand. "But wouldn't they still have come under the Terran tax laws?"

  "Technically, no," Allouene said, "and the technicalities were exactly what their lawyers went to court with. The financiers gave up their citizenship and declared themselves to be a sovereign government, so they didn't have to pay tax to the I.D.E."

  "The businesses would still have been taxed," Ragnar objected.

  "Their accountants arranged things so that the businesses were either operating at a loss, or showing so little profit that it didn't matter—not hard, when all the real profits were going to Taxhaven."

  "The I.D.E. allowed that kind of gold flow outside its boundaries?" Lancorn asked, amazed.

  "No—the younger generation officially sent all the profits to their parents' Terran accounts, which were only nominally taxed, since the older generation were foreign citizens. Of course, the 'kids' had the use of their parents' mansions and yachts, and were paid excellent salaries for pocket money—but officially, they were just hired help."

  "Neat," Ragnar said sourly. "Very neat."

  Magnus had trouble following it all; where he came from, you paid what tax you were told, or you went to prison. He made a note to look up Terran tax laws.

  "Didn't the second generation feel as though they were getting short shrift?" Lancorn asked. "No—they knew their day was coming, and in the meantime, they were enjoying power and privilege. When they reached retirement age and grew weary of the fleshpots of Terra, they moved to Taxhaven and left the third generation to take care of business on Terra and the inner planets."

  "Of course, they had been waiting in demure patience for their turn at power," Siflot murmured. "Very good, Siflot," Allouene said, with surprised approval. "I thought you'd never say anything. Gar, you might work on that, too.
No, the grandchildren had been fuming at not being the big cheeses, so they didn't mind being left holding the moneybag when Poppa and Momma wanted to retire to the boondocks."

  "Then Poppa and Momma could champ at the bit." The idiom came easily to Magnus, and he was probably the only one there who understood what it really meant.

  "A word to the wise was sufficient." Allouene gave Magnus a slow smile. "Will you always do as I bid you?"

  Magnus felt the thrill pass through him, and give her a smile in return. "Always awaiting your 'come hither,' Madame."

  She turned back to the screen with a self-satisfied smile, and Magnus felt the danger pass, though the thrill still vibrated within him. "You're right about the second generation," Allouene said, "but when Grandma and Grandpa finally died, the fortune officially stayed on Taxhaven, and the second generation became the dukes and marquises and counts. Then the third generation retired and moved up to take over the estates and fortunes, while the fourth took over the business—and so it went."

  "And the government never caught on to them?" Lancorn asked, outraged.

  "They caught on right away, but there was a limit to how much they could do about it. As the generations passed, the government put increasing pressure on Taxhaven to become an official dominion, part of the I.D.E., and therefore subject to the same tax laws as the rest of the Terran planets, but Taxhaven adamantly refused, and had the Sol-side lawyers and lobbyists to be able to prevent a takeover. Their lobbyists and tame Electors were also able to keep the I.D.E. from boosting taxes on Solar System earnings much past five percent, and to frustrate every other strategem the Executive Secretary of the I.D.E. could think of."

  "There had to be a limit to that kind of influence," Ragnar said, frowning. "I thought the I.D.E. turned to a rob-from-the-rich, give-to-the-masses program toward the end."