Apprentice Wizards of Hope

by Gary J. Davies

  "Agreed," said Elizabeth. "Between the Demon and the military Hope is too dangerous for our citizens. I'll set up shop in front of this building as the evacuation point. Many folks are already gathered out there."

  "I better go join Eric," said Alan. "Too bad my League friends have gone home, as they probably could have helped also." With that Alan Dale also popped away.

  Out of sight from the others Amanda used her amulet to contact her daughter Jewel. "Yes, the situation here is direr than ever, daughter, and of course your Alan and my Wolf insist on being in the middle of it. Keep all of our Unaligned and League friends advised of developments. Their aid may be needed again very soon."

  ****

  At the Hope front gate, Eric, Sam, and Alan were confronted with a chaotic scene. Two besieged Hope Police gate-guards faced off against a dozen heavily armed military people. The military people didn't know it, but they were greatly over-matched. Both gate guards were talented Attack Wizards.

  The 'gate' itself was merely a light-gage orange-painted steel chain that stretched across the narrow roadway between two small wooden white guardhouses. It and the little guardhouses were strongly warded, of course, and deceptively strong. Not even the huge A-1 Army tank that sat to one side of the road only fifty yards from the gate could have rumbled through the chain or guardhouses, or through the deceptively flimsy looking ten to twenty-foot high chain link fence that stretched from each guardhouse to completely encircle the town of Hope. Along the fence in either direction Eric and Alan could see that there were more Army trucks and bored looking troops, hundreds of them! Mike's report hadn't exaggerated the Army presence. Meanwhile beyond the tank and squads of solders on the road, the Wizards could detect dozens of civilian vehicles that were being prevented entry into Hope; mostly trucks carrying food and other consumer goods.

  Immediately in front of the gate a small ordinary looking bus with Center for Disease Control written on it in several places sat idling. Out of it climbed a military officer and a small man in a business suit. Eric and Alan walked to meet them.

  "Ah!" exclaimed the Military Man, as he reached out to shake Eric's hand. "You are Red Eric of the Hope Council, are you not? I am Colonel Ed Wells, US Army, and this is my civilian counterpart, Dr. George Crane. We are honored! We have wanted to meet a Hope Council Master Wizard in person for a long time!"

  Eric's jaw dropped! These Norms knew who and what he was!

  "You are George Crane the Physicist who taught at Stanford?" exclaimed Dale, as he joined in the hand-shaking. "I've read your writings! The books written for the general public of course; not your technical papers."

  "Remarkable," said Crane. "You are Alan Dale the infamous Rogue! We have intel on you also of course, and on your efforts to form an international league of paranormal people. Your presence here is very much an added bonus."

  "Since astonishingly we already apparently partly know each other already perhaps we can get right to business," said Eric. "What do you want with Hope?"

  "In sum we need to ensure the safety of the United States and the world," said Crane. "We have been monitoring paranormal activity here and elsewhere for many decades. While there appeared to be no danger to the country we kept out of your business, but events yesterday in Hope took a very serious turn. We need to assure ourselves that this country and its citizens are secure with respect to Wizards, elves, and the especially the monster you battled yesterday. A Demon, was it not?"

  The words were terribly shocking ones for Eric and the other Hope personnel! Hope's anonymity was a sham! "The crisis of yesterday is temporarily abated but is expected to shortly resume," Eric admitted. "Your presence here at this time is an added complication that endangers us, you, and all life on Earth."

  "I concur," said Alan. "There is nothing that you folks can do to help us. Only human and elf paranormal powers have any chance to defeat the remaining Demon danger."

  "That may or may not be correct, Mr. Dale," said Wells. "In any case it is our group that has been entrusted by our Government to make such assessments. We will of course take your inputs into consideration. We will take over Hope security today via marshal law legal provisions as indicated in our notices provided to you earlier. Meanwhile we invite both of you to join us in our bus while we drive first to the site of yesterday's commotion and then to your Council Hall to confer with Hope leadership."

  "That requires a certain amount of trust that you have yet to earn," said Alan.

  Wells shrugged. "We are well aware that either of you could for example in moments teleport away or incinerate all of us, but we trust you will not do that. That would bring hellish retribution down on your town and your kind. We would rather confirm our intel and analysis that tells us that you are generally outstanding individual human beings and American citizens. We want to freely exchange information and work with you on common issues such as elves, Demons, and humans with paranormal powers."

  "Very well," said Eric. "Let's talk further in your bus. I have a lot of questions for you, such as how do you know so much about us? And exactly what do you want from us?"

  "I suspect that we have far more questions for both of you," said Dr. Crane. "In particular with regard to space aliens known as elves and Demons."

  ****

  "I tell you again that there are certainly no deadly pathogens involved," Eric told Dr. Phelps, who insisted on putting on a hazmat suit for his examination of Desolation Glen. "We have explained to you that Demons are the very antithesis of life. Demons kill all life they contact, including those lifeforms dangerous to humans. The elves are super-careful visitors of multiple worlds and are many centuries further advanced in science than humans. They would never contaminate any world they have dedicated themselves to protecting! There is no reason for you to check for microscopic bio-hazards!"

  "All this information is from where?" asked Dr. Crane.

  "Mostly from Soone via Ben King as passed on to me by my children," said Eric.

  "That sounds like unsubstantiated rumors at best, and I still must as best I can follow CDC protocol anyway," said Phelps.

  "Yes, it is what it is," said Crane. "As I have said before, we must insist on conducting our own science-based investigations and drawing our own independent conclusions as to what is hazardous. Dr. Smith will suit-up to go with you, Phelps."

  "I should also go with you to pinpoint exactly where events happened," said Eric.

  "We have drone video that does that for us accurately enough, and anyway we only have two hazmat suits with us," said Dr. Smith, who has already putting on the second one.

  "I can shield myself and several others against any conceivable dangers except a Demon," said Eric. "And there is nothing to fear here anymore anyway. As I told you, all the Evil here has been destroyed and the remaining Demon and Evil are in the Grim Mansion."

  "Thanks for the offer to help, Tuttle, but we have to do this on our own," said Dr. Crane. "You need to stay in the bus with the rest of us and answer more questions. I'm intrigued about what you just said about the advanced state of elf science. Would elves be willing to share their science acumen with humans?"

  "I don't know," said Eric, as Phelps and Smith stepped out of the bus and towards the desolated area nearby.

  "I hope they won't share dangerous information with you," said Alan Dale. "But why ask us? Ask an elf directly."

  "We thought to do so shortly at Hope Council Hall," said Crane.

  "The senior elf Gaou Soone could teleport here now, if you wish," said Eric. "The quicker you use up your questions, the sooner we can all get back to the serious pressing business of destroying the second Demon."

  "Let's not get ahead of things," said Wells. "The first thing we have to do is objectively establish what happened here and what the current status is. Then we'll decide what needs to be done and by whom. Hopefully with your cooperation of course, if we do determine that we need your help."

  "Alan and I have just spent the last half hour telling y
ou what has happened and what the current status is," said Eric. "Elves have been battling Demons and protecting humans and other sentient Galaxy life-forms for thousands of years, at least." Through a bus window he was watching Phelps and Smith. They were walking slowly and stopping every few feet to take photos and various measurements. They reached the edge of the desolation itself but instead of proceeding into it they cautiously skirted around it. At least they were heeding his warning that the desolation was dangerous.

  "We are required to verify everything for ourselves!" insisted Wells.

  "LOOK AT THEM OUT THERE DITHERING ABOUT!" said Alan privately to Eric. "THEIR EXAMINATION OF THE GLEN COULD TAKE HOURS, AND THEY PLAN TO THEN DO SOMETHING SIMILAR AT THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS. VERIFICATION FOR THEM MEANS MEASUREMENTS AND LAB ANALYSIS TO DETERMINE THINGS THAT WE CAN IMMEDIATELY PERCEIVE AND WE ALREADY KNOW. THEIR VERIFICATION EFFORTS COULD TAKE DAYS. SAM DOESN'T THINK WE HAVE DAYS, AND NEITHER DO YOU. WE HAVE TO GET AT THE DEMON AND ITS EVIL NOW!"

  "Colonel Wells, we've told you again and again about the overriding urgency of the Demon situation and you've essentially ignored us," said Eric. "I don't know if you can even be any help to us in destroying the Demon, but we should at least talk about it."

  "OK," said Wells, "let's cut to the chase. The Demon is of course our biggest concern, not yours. You've told us where it is. Thank you! Our science team with military backing is going to be ready to contact whoever or whatever is in that Mansion within an hour. Don't worry yourselves about that; if necessary, we will use a great deal of deadly force if negotiations with the creature fail."

  "If necessary?" said Alan. "Negotiations?"

  "Naturally we will first try to negotiate a peaceful agreement with it before using any force," said Wells. "That is established protocol for alien contact."

  "You can't be serious!" said Eric.

  "And don't try to stop us," said Wells. "We have abilities you don't know about."

  "If you mean the limited powers of John, Jake, and Ken, they're far out of their league," said Eric.

  "You'll just get your men killed," said Alan. "And worse, you'll delay our trying to destroy the Demon! You could get everyone on Earth killed!"

  "We're the Government, we're in charge here, Tuttle," said Wells. "Bottom line, that's the way it has to be. You folks are civilians. We appreciate your cooperation and we'll be as fair as we can with you and your people, but the incident yesterday changed everything. Our little undercover project to track you folks that have what you call Wizard powers has suddenly gone prime time and our bosses expect us to take charge. So we have."

  "We repeat, you'll just get your men killed, and maybe even all life on Earth killed," said Eric. "Colonel, Doctor, we'll have to parlay among ourselves to figure out where we go from here with you."

  With a loud snap Eric and Alan disappeared.

  Colonel Wells immediately turned to face Major Jake Osborne, chief of ELF Team security. "You and the others were supposed to constrain them with your psi-powers! What happened?"

  Jake and the other two security personnel sat quietly, eyes open and staring ahead and bodies unmoving, and failed to respond. Others of the Team rushed to revive them but for several minutes the three men were unresponsive.

  "Report, Major!" Wells repeated several times, until Jake was finally able to reply.

  "The three of us attempted to constrain both of them. That's all that I remember."

  "I told you that they would be far too strong for us," said Ken Wishborne, FBI agent, when he was finally able to speak. "Tuttle is a well-trained Master Wizard, maybe the best there is, and nobody knows exactly what Dale is, but he's said to be one of the most talented of the Unaligned. We were as small children to them. They felt us trying to constrain them and instead constrained us."

  "They could have easily killed all of us," Crane pointed out. "Instead they simply left us. Also our forces are receiving no resistance from them at the front gate. Our tanks and armored personnel carriers are almost to the Grim Mansion. The townspeople are withdrawing from the area of the Mansion and offer no resistance to us. They also answer no questions, but tell us we must refer all our questions to their Council."

  "And after the Demon attack yesterday that's the Tuttles and Fredrick Kroner," said Wells. "Well, for now we don't need any of them. The Demon is the greatest and most powerful threat. Our first priority is to contact the Demon and seek a peaceful alliance with it. That's our marching orders from on high."

  "That will be a totally useless and highly dangerous exercise, according to Tuttle," said Crane. "But let's get on with it. Recall Smith and Phelps. They can come back here in the near future to study this site. If Tuttle and Dale are right, we need to intervene with the Demon immediately."

  "Can we trust what Tuttle and Dale told us?" asked Dr. Marx, a Team Physicist.

  "Every damn word of it," said Wells. "They didn't deny anything. Maybe we put the fear of the Government in them. It was obvious that Tuttle felt that truth was the most sensible way to deal with us."

  "Among us you're the best judge of character and truth telling," noted Crane. "Maybe you have a touch of psi-powers yourself!"

  "Tuttle seemed far more scared of the Demon than he was of us," said Marx. "I think that we should talk to the elves before we try to contact the Demon. We should first try to understand the science aspects of this creature, physical and psychological! Tuttle said that Demons are from another universe or from something he called 'the Void’ between universes. And he said that the elf Soone knows far more about that."

  "No," said Wells. "We'll go straight to the Demon and learn what we need to know for ourselves even quicker. If Tuttle is right and the Demon is the immediate threat we need to try to change its mind A-S-A-P.”

  “Or we’ll need to kill it," agreed Crane.

  “If necessary.”

  There was another aloud 'snap' sound.

  "What the hell was that?" Wells asked.

  "I'd say that was the second of our Wizard friends," said Wishborne. "Only one of them popped away a few minutes ago. The second one turned himself invisible and stayed a little bit longer to listen to us talk."

  "Or a third one was with us all along, invisible and listening," said Major Osborne. "There could still be one or more with us! And some Wizards can read thoughts also!"

  "Swell," said Wells. "Forget about Wizards for now. We need to figure out exactly what we'll tell that Demon in about fifteen minutes. Words, protocol, fallbacks, weapons, and so forth. Get to work!"

  ****

  "We have to protect ourselves!" said Sam. "If you hadn't told us to port here to the Courtyard we'd have fought the Norms to stand guard over the Grim Mansion!"

  "We can't legally oppose them," said Kroner. "Even if the Norms are wrong, they think that they're protecting national security! Our national security! We are USA citizens! As long as they aren't violent with us we can't get violent with them."

  "I agree," said Red Eric. "I did a lot of mind-reading while I was with them, and for the most part they have been honest with us. When I stayed behind cloaked to spy on them I became even further reassured. The Government has been aware of Hope and paranormal folks for many decades. Hope has been keeping paranormal citizens hidden and in line for centuries, which is exactly what they want, so they've generally let as alone."

  "Sounds like we've been unknowingly working for the Norm Government," said Sam. "Maybe we should sue them for Government back-pay and pensions."

  "They've apparently infiltrated Hope and know a lot about many of us," continued Eric. "They have even enlisted some of the Unaligned as agents. So they sort of have paranormal humans figured out but the recent proof of the reality of elves and Demons has them in a tizzy. And apparently the power of the Demons is intriguing to the military higher-ups."

  "As some sort of military weapon or ally?" asked Sam. "Are they crazy?"

  "Colonel Wells thinks it's a crazy idea also," said Eric, "but if he doesn't give it a shot
he and perhaps his whole Team could be replaced by people that know nothing and care less about Wizards or Hope. That, I think, would be a bad thing for everyone."

  "So what do you think we should do?" asked Kroner. "Oh, and by the way, your wife and I have voted you to be the new Council Chairman. Congratulations!"

  "That's swell; I'll try to not let it go to my head," said Eric. “We'll let the Norms give it their best shot but provide some back-up support for them. We'll make ourselves available to step in if needed, and I expect we'll get to that point very quickly. We have over a dozen Attack Wizards and at least three dozen volunteers with some Attack training. Missionaries have also been recalled and are trickling home to Hope. We’ll use half our folks back up Wells and his folks. Sam and I will work out details."

  "What if the Norms figure out what we're doing?" asked Kroner. "What if they object? Most of them do carry guns! It takes Level 3 powers to stop a bullet safely! We are supposedly under martial law and confined to our homes."

  "I intend to tell Wells what we are doing and perhaps even get his agreement," said Eric. "I can be pretty persuasive."

  "What about Hope non-combatants?" asked Martha Sharp, who had remained silent up to that point.

  "How many will be evacuated say, by half an hour from now?" Eric asked.

  "Only a couple of hundred out of roughly ten thousand," said Sharp. "We have two dozen Wizards led by Elizabeth teleporting young children, Norms, and others out of town as quickly as they are able, but there are too many to evacuate quickly. Some of us could fly out but few can also cloak at the same time or carry others with us, and flying people might make tempting targets for startled Norm soldiers who are maybe looking for flying monsters. I suggest that you get your buddy the Colonel to bus most of us out, including all children. They are the future of Hope."

  "Yes, we should keep our kids out of combat," said Eric. "They were admittedly indispensable but far too involved with that first Demon altercation. I want them out of harm's way from this second Demon."