Genie and Engineer 1: The Engineer Wizard

by Glenn Michaels

  The plane braked hard, swaying slightly side to side as it slowed to a taxi speed. If he wanted to escape by portal, now would be the time to do so. And with the gold bar he was sorely tempted. But with only the gold bar to work with, his portal jumps would be too short to do him any real good, not when compared to how far the enemy could portal. Paul judged that his best option was as he had originally planned: Bide his time and see what happened.

  He felt the plane coast to a stop, its jet engines spinning down. There would be a wait now, while the cargo handlers moved into position, before the hatch was opened. Even then, it would take some time before they began moving out the pallets at the front and working their way back to his location.

  Paul sat still, waiting patiently, the pinky on his right hand occasionally twitching.

  And indeed, it did take a few minutes before he heard snapping sounds. He watched with nervousness as the hatch swung upward on its hinges, the lights mounted outside of the terminal building streaming into the interior of the plane. With great care, Paul edged forward, peering out through the large opening, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

  Men in coveralls were moving around, a ULD was approaching the cargo hatch, and he could see a truck with aircraft steps moving up to the pilot’s door. There were no flashing red lights, no SWAT vehicles, no police cars, and no Army personnel carriers. From all appearances, there was nothing unusual out there at all....

  And then, two Oni strolled into view, both dressed in the uniforms of Mexican Federal Police, flak jackets and berets, and each carrying a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun.

  Great. Just...great.

  He glumly considered the possibilities. He could take the gold bar and portal out right now, from inside of the plane to some other location. But he knew from personal experience how fast the Oni could move. Even though they weren’t all that close, it would still be a gamble to try to get through a portal before they countered his spell. The only reason that they hadn’t already attacked him was that they didn’t really know he was here. Yet. But they would soon.

  So, what could he do now? Fear of being caught, of death, gripped his heart.

  Come on, Paul, think! Think!

  The ULD finished moving into the cargo hatch, blocking his view, and Paul crept backward into the plane, dodging around the cargo pallets.

  Trapped! The level of fear grew stronger, piercing his heart, and he froze, unable to move for almost a minute. He considered summoning Merlin or the CIA guy, but he was too afraid that even a low level spell might be detected. In a few minutes—-possibly less time than that—-he would be discovered. His only options seemed to be either submitting peaceably or attempting to escape via portal. The odds of his survival seemed really low either way. For a second, Paul toyed with a third option: the idea of the 4-D Man play again, dropping through the skin of the fuselage, but he was reasonably sure the magical energy level involved would attract the Oni too.

  Oh, if only Paul could make himself invisible to the Oni....

  Wait a moment! That wasn’t a bad thought at all. Anxiously, Paul considered the idea. Maybe he could.

  A memory of his college Physics 101 professor came back to him. Dr. Green had been a short man with a receding hairline, but he understood physics backward and forward. Even now, Paul could remember him explaining photons, electrons, spectrum energy, and Planck’s constant.

  Planck’s constant. The relationship between photon energy and wavelength.

  Glancing up, Paul focused on the light coming from the security lights outside of the plane. In the United States, most such security lights were now metal halide lamps, which produced a whiter light, covering more of the visible spectrum, especially into the blue end of the band, as far out as 350 nanometers.

  But here in Mexico City, the lights appeared to be more yellow in color. It strongly suggested that they were still using the old high pressure sodium lamps. Their spectrum didn’t extend very well into the blue band, with hardly any output lower than 450 nanometers and nothing at all in the ultraviolet band.

  Merlin once told him that his magic could change some aspects of physics, but not others. Paul wondered which group Planck’s constant fell into?

  He decided to find out. He knelt beside a pallet, gripping his bag and the gold bar tightly.

  “In the name of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, my old college Professor Green, and Murphy’s laws, let Planck’s constant in the surrounding area become half its current value.”

  Instant blackness everywhere, as if all the lights had suddenly been switched off!

  Outside the plane, Paul heard howls of anger, and he sensed magical spells released, throwing balls of light into the darkness. Of course, that wouldn’t work; the light from the Oni spells would be instantly shifted into the infrared end of the spectrum, beyond the visible, the same as with the light from the airport security lamps. Paul could picture their confusion, and he chuckled in delight.

  But this was no time to be entertained by their anger, so Paul snapped a portal open in the deck of the plane and fell into it, dragging his carry-on with him.

  • • • •

  He hit the tarmac hard, on his left shoulder, but managed to roll to one side. There would only be a few seconds before the Oni came roaring though a portal after him. He snapped open another one and rolled through—

  —out into the middle of the runway, a 767 on final approach, its landing lights dazzling bright and only six hundred feet away and forty feet in the air, heading directly at him! The glare of the lights and the sound of the jet engines terrified him, threatening to paralyze him. Frantically, Paul cast another spell, a portal opening up—

  —which took him to the roof of Terminal Building 1. He took a moment to heave a sigh of relief. And then another portal—

  —took him inside the Terminal Building. Paul anxiously dashed toward the window, his carry-on momentarily delaying him when one edge of it slammed against an unoccupied chair in the departure lounge. Arriving at the window, Paul watched the two Oni magically appear through a portal on the runway, their silhouettes framed in the lights of the landing 767.

  Neither one of them was able to make it out of the way in time.

  EIGHTEEN

  Mexico City, Mexico

  Benito Juarez International Airport, Terminal Bldg 1

  January

  Monday, 8:09 p.m. CST

  Paul gulped, his throat tight, and he turned his face away from the window, sickened by the gore. He hadn’t planned for that outcome at all. His intentions had only been to frighten the Oni, at least long enough to make good on his escape. He certainly hadn’t intended for them to die, even if they had been trying to kill him!

  But there could be other Oni in the vicinity too. Paul didn’t dare to remain in the airport, not even to try to catch a flight to the United States. He needed to put as much distance between himself and this disaster as quickly as he could. So he didn’t hesitate but instead used his gold bar to open a portal that would put him out in the middle of the main terminal.

  In his haste, Paul forgot to invoke an invisibility spell. Several people nearby did double takes, pointing in his direction and backing away. Ignoring them, Paul spied a currency exchange booth just down the corridor and zigzagged through the crowd to reach it.

  Fortunately, there was no one else in line, and the clerk was efficient. In less than three minutes, Paul had exchanged half of his stash of Euros for pesos and the other half of them for U.S. dollars. With a grateful smile at the clerk, he hurriedly shoved the money into his pants pockets and strode away. Without a care what the other people around him might think, he gripped the gold bar, popped open a portal, and ducked through.

  A series of portals, all overlapping and using every other trick to disguise them that Merlin had taught him, took Paul two miles west to TAPO, the Terminal de Autobuses de Pasajeros de Oriente. Bus travel was the major form of public transportation in all of Mexico, far more so than ai
r or train travel. Many Mexicans didn’t own a car but traveled by bus everywhere they went.

  TAPO was a unique place with no similar counterparts in the United States, resembling a train station but servicing buses instead. Paul did briefly consider taking one of the combiss, one of the small local buses (typically a Volkswagen microbus), but he decided against it. A Primera (1st class) bus would take him farther and faster.

  Inside the domed building of the bus station, Paul decided to purchase three tickets. At the first window, he bought one for Guadalajara, which he purchased as himself, without using a spell to disguise his appearance in any way. In the second line, he appeared as an itinerant young Mexican man wearing second-rate clothes, buying a ticket for San Luis Potosi. The third ticket was purchased at yet another window with a destination of Tampico, Paul assuming the disguise of an elderly woman wearing a shawl and a frumpy, checkered dress.

  • • • •

  The Tampico bus was already boarding, and Paul joined the line, letting the spell on his appearance morph back into his regular self again. No one around him seemed to be paying any attention. A bus line worker took his carry-on to load into the baggage compartment.

  When it was his turn, Paul climbed aboard, handing his ticket to the driver, who grunted in return and pointed toward the rear of the bus.

  Once inside, Paul grinned in unconditional appreciation. The autobus here had better accommodations than the passenger buses he had seen back in the States. The seats were larger and much better padded, with large arm rests, cup holders, and even a night light built into the head rest. He fell into one of the seats and stretched out, appreciating the luxury.

  The bus sat at the terminal building for another few minutes as several other passengers boarded. Nervously awaiting their departure, Paul took a moment to survey some of the closer passengers, including one heavyset lady and her prettier daughter. Another seat was occupied by an older, thinner Mexican carrying a brown paper bag wrapped around a bottle that had a small funny red hat on top. Probably a bottle of tequila. There were other passengers too getting on, mostly migrant or factory workers.

  To Paul’s great relief, the driver swung the door shut and started the engine. Backing out of the parking slot, the bus followed the loop around the terminal building and out the exit.

  Paul was on his way out of Mexico City. Hopefully, in Tampico, he could buy another ticket for points farther north, with an eventual destination of the United States border.

  • • • •

  It was a long, winding trip, parts of it through rugged terrain. The sun was rising on the eastern horizon as the bus entered the outskirts of Tampico. By all appearances, it was a sleepy city, although this early in the morning, it was hard to tell for certain. The mundane looking streets rolled by the window in sedate fashion.

  He had no warning whatsoever. As the bus pulled into the parking lot next to the Terminal Central de Autobuses de Tampico, it abruptly jerked to a halt, and every shiny surface inside reflected strobing blue lights from outside of the vehicle. Through the windows, Paul noted with sickening horror that the bus was now surrounded by a half-dozen police and military vehicles and at least a dozen armed men in uniform.

  And two Oni that he could see, dressed in Mexican military fatigues and carrying FN P90 submachine guns.

  He reached into his shirt pocket, grasping his gold bar, and frantically tried to create a portal in the aisle. But instead of a portal, there was only a brief fizzle of light. His spell had been blocked from outside! He tried to invoke another spell, this one to change Planck’s constant, but that too failed.

  “Paul Armstead!” shouted a voice through a bullhorn. “Come out with your hands up! Think of the other passengers! Come out now and they won’t be harmed!”

  All the people on the bus were looking around at each other in growing fear and excitement. The man with the bottle in the bag was staring at Paul.

  What am I going to do now? he asked himself. Is the stuff in my pocket going to help protect me?

  He glanced out the window again, noting that there were now three Oni in view. He was well and truly busted. He stood slowly, feeling trapped and afraid. He really didn’t have any faith in the soybeans, garlic, salt, or onions in his pants pockets.

  And then, in a flash, he remembered something that his stepson, Douglas, had once told him about drinking alcohol. It dovetailed with what Abe no Seimei had said.

  Which caused a new idea to pop into his head. Without questioning his inspiration, he dug out the roll of bills from his rear pants pocket.

  “You have just 30 seconds to come out, Paul! Then we storm the bus!”

  The other passengers were beginning to freak out, their cries of alarm rising quickly in volume.

  Paul doled out several neuvo peso bank notes in $100 denominations and thrust it at the man with the bottle. “Necessito su botella! (I need your bottle!)” he yelled over the noise.

  The elderly Mexican blinked but grasped the bag and bottle more firmly, pulling away from Paul.

  “Twenty seconds!” screamed the bullhorn.

  “No me iré sin botella! (I’m not leaving without the bottle!)” Paul snarled.

  Glancing out the window at the flashing lights and armed men, the other passenger changed his mind, reaching out to snatch the money and pushing the bottle into Paul’s hand.

  With a quick spell, Paul popped the little hat off the bottle and did a strange thing. He raised the bottle high and upended it on himself.

  His nearest neighbors gasped in surprise and disgust as the alcohol splashed downward, mostly on Paul, but some of it splattering on the closest of the other passengers.

  Ignoring their cries of outrage, Paul dumped the bottle’s entire contents all over his chest, shoulders, and head. The liquid burned the corners of his eyes, the smell of it overpowering him, and he coughed and gagged at it.

  Dropping the bottle to the floor, Paul took the gold bar from his pocket, perched a foot up on the armrest of one of the seats, and tucked the bar into his sock.

  “We’re coming in!” squawked the bullhorn.

  The driver was heading down the aisle, determination and anger in his eyes. Paul dropped his leg and charged up the aisle to meet the man, who dodged, gripped Paul by the collar, and yanked him forward. There was banging at the bus doors, but the driver slapped the door button and shoved Paul down the steps at the same moment.

  The doors opened just in time to let him fall into the waiting arms of an Oni.

  The Oni yelled, spun him around, and tripped him. Hitting the asphalt knocked the breath out of Paul and caused white dots to form at the edge of his vision. Combined with the smell of the tequila, he nearly vomited.

  But strong arms yanked him back up to his feet and thrust him away from the bus.

  All around Paul, grim-faced men pointed a variety of rifles and handguns at him, but the scariest sight was the four Oni surrounding him.

  His arm was twisted behind him with irresistible force, and the sudden pain made him gasp hard. Despair filled him. Was he about to die, right here, right now? With all these witnesses?

  And then a strange thing happened.

  The Oni in front of Paul leaned forward and took a whiff.

  “He’s drunk,” it said with an American accent. “Good stuff, too.”

  “What? You didn’t save any for us?” roared another Oni.

  All four of them laughed in their funny way at that joke.

  Gritting his teeth and sub-vocalizing, Paul whispered, “In the names of Preston Foster, Al Bundy, and Homer Simpson, may the alcoholic fumes from my clothing be concentrated in their noses!”

  “Hey!” growled the Oni behind him, the one gripping his arm. “He cast a spell! Weak, but he must have something on him!”

  “Search him!”

  Rough hands began frisking him. In seconds, they pulled the money from his pockets and then the bag of salt.

  “What’s this? Salt? Another bag? Are those soyb
eans?! Really?!”

  This time, they laughed all the harder, while the Oni searching him tossed the bags on the ground, stomping on them in contempt.

  The Mexican police were frowning, lowering their weapons in puzzlement. This was not how to arrest a dangerous suspect.

  “No one has tried to use soybeans against us since the Sino-Japanese war!” the second Oni declared, laughing loudly.

  Well, so much for the grocery plan. Will my new idea work better? Paul wondered. Doug had told him that breathing strong alcoholic fumes was a far faster way to get drunk than by drinking the stuff. Alcohol inhalation bypassed the stomach and liver, going straight from the lungs into the bloodstream. Doug had actually confessed to having tried it, despite the fact that it was illegal in California. Of course, that little fact had not deterred him any.

  Paul studied the nearest Oni. According to the Japanese expert, Abe no Seimei, the Oni loved to drink. What was their tolerance level? Would the smell be enough to make them drunk? And if so, how would they react? Since the soybeans and other items had failed, this was practically Paul’s last hope.

  Another Oni leaned close and took a deep whiff. “Tequila!” it roared. “Not my favorite, but not bad!”

  More whiffs from the other Oni. They were enjoying themselves.

  And then the pressure on his arm decreased.

  “Found it!” said the searching Oni, pulling the gold bar from Paul’s sock. “Ooh, gold! Nice work there, wizard!” Then the Oni turned to one of the unhappy Mexican police officers. “Here! Catch!”

  And just like that, the gold bar was gone.

  “Do you remember that saké we had at the New Year’s party?” Oni number three asked. “That was pretty good stuff too!”

  More sniffs, deeper ones.