Genie and Engineer 1: The Engineer Wizard

by Glenn Michaels

  Jaret glanced anxiously around. “You’re a crazy wizard, Paul,” he muttered. “Entertaining but crazy. An intoxicating combination indeed.” And then, louder, “Coming!”

  THIRTY FIVE

  Under Lake Michigan

  20 miles east of Chicago, Illinois

  June

  Thursday 8:58 p.m. CST

  They found themselves in a semi-lit, cramped wet cavern hardly large enough to hold the three of them and the luggage. The walls and ceiling were composed of blackened earth literally dripping with water. Two inches of liquid covered the ground beneath their feet.

  “Yuck!” Capie grunted in alarm, staring at all the dirt and mud around them, revealed by the glow of the hovering ball of light. She wiped some of the dripping water off her face and lifted her feet from the wheelchair footpads to keep them from getting wet. “Where are we?”

  “Sixty feet under Lake Michigan and twenty miles east of Chicago,” Paul absently replied, doing a quick sweep of the room and verifying it wasn’t on the verge on sudden collapse.

  “Hey! My suitcases are getting wet!” Capie protested vehemently.

  Paul waved a hand and the three bags levitated two feet into the air. A holographic umbrella snapped into existence above them.

  “Did you create this place? Why did you bring us here?” Jaret asked with a frown, doing his best not to touch the walls.

  “‘At the time, it seemed the logical thing to do,’” Paul quipped, quoting Sarek in a Star Trek episode. “I created this place a couple of weeks ago. Since there is only sixty feet of dirt and mud between us and Lake Michigan, there’s just barely enough earth to keep the lake out. On its own, eventually this room will either collapse or fill up with water.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Jaret said. “And what is that thing there, in the corner?”

  “Oh, the basketball-sized object?” Paul responded, leaning down to wipe the surface of the spherical object in question. When he wiped a thin layer of mud and water away, the surface glistened with a dull gray-silver sheen.

  “That, my friends, is a large ball of solder, the largest I could put here.”

  “Solder?” Capie asked, incredulously.

  “It’s part of my contingency escape plan. The solder will let me cast a more powerful spell.”

  With a snap of his fingers, Paul created a large portal in front of Capie. Nothing could be seen through the portal opening. There was no light on the other side.

  “You’ll see,” Paul replied, using a magical spell again to push the wheelchair forward. “Enough questions for now. We don’t know how close the bad guys are. Let’s get out of this place.”

  “By all means!” thundered Jaret, as he and the luggage followed Paul through the opening.

  • • • •

  The light from the glowing ball now showed that they were standing on a concrete pathway. Off to each side, there were a few rocks visible and then bodies of black water. Off in the distance, the bright lights of a cityscape beckoned. There was a chill in the air and, this far from Chicago, the stars shone brilliantly in the night sky above them.

  “What city is that? And is this still Lake Michigan?” Capie asked.

  “To quote Teal’c, ‘Indeed,’” Paul answered with a hurried motion. “We are standing on the breakwater barrier just off shore of Michigan City, Indiana.”

  “I don’t see the purpose of the chamber under the lake,” Jaret said. “They’ll just follow us through that place to here.”

  Paul gave a wicked grin. “No, they won’t.”

  Kneeling, he laid one hand on the concrete and opened a small portal, no more than a half an inch in diameter, back to the cave under the lake. “I’m going to take care of that right now. Let’s see how fast I can do this,” he said. With a spell, he reached through the small portal, concentrating on several drops of water on the far wall of the underground room. Stripping their deuterium atoms, Paul forced the nuclei to come together, fusing them into helium nuclei. As the blast wave roared inside the cavern, he scrambled to get the portal closed.

  A small blast of super hot air shot through the rapidly closing aperture, pushing him backwards and singing the sleeve of his shirt.

  “What was that?” Capie cried in alarm.

  “I guess I should have made that cave just a little bit bigger after all,” he mused, slapping at his smoking sleeve, using a spell to extinguish the burning threads. When the fire appeared to be out, he got back to his feet and closely examined the damaged area.

  “Ah, I see,” Capie said, her eyes showing understanding. “You destroyed the room with that spell, didn’t you? I guess they will have trouble getting under the lake, now that the nasty little place is gone.”

  “Yes, by the time they could dig their way down there, the portal spells your fiancé used to bring us here will have dissipated completely,” Jaret added, nodding at Paul with a smile. “I watched him make those preparations and didn’t have a clue what he was up to. Brilliant. Simply brilliant.”

  Paul bowed. “Thank you, kind sir.” He sighed, again feeling relieved that they had escaped without getting hurt in the process. “Now we need to discuss what comes next.”

  Capie suddenly looked thoughtful. “Say, that does raise an interesting question….” she said, giving Jaret a canny gaze.

  Paul raised a hand. “We’ve already worked out a deal, sweetheart. He gets the secret of isotopes. You get to be a wizard.”

  “YES!” squealed Capie, jumping straight up out of her wheelchair to latch onto Jaret and giving him a tight hug. “Thank you!”

  Surprised at the sudden embrace, Jaret stammered a quick reply.

  “Okay,” Paul said, swallowing laughter at Capie’s antics. “I guess before we do that, I need to retrieve a box of cash, ID and credit cards that I stashed in Danville, Illinois. Then we need to find a place where we can stay for a day, where we can give Capie her powers. We can’t go back to Chicago. And we certainly cannot go to Los Angeles or any place in Southern California,” Paul said, thinking out loud. “I think we should go to New York City next. A nice, dense, heavily populated city,” he proposed. “To make it harder for them to find us.”

  “That sounds dreadful,” Jaret declared. “I recommend someplace with wonderful scenery instead,” he suggested, as Capie resumed her seat in the wheelchair. “That mountaintop where I gave you your powers is good.”

  Paul shook his head. “Wrong time zone right now. It’ll be dark there.”

  “Whoa, there!” Capie said, interrupting their planning session. “Just hold up a cotton pickin’ minute!”

  Paul blinked in surprise. “Cotton pickin’? Where did you learn that sort of talk?”

  “Too many years of watching westerns, I suppose,” she admitted but without a hint of remorse. She turned to Jaret. “I think I ought to have a say in all this. I know just the place. Lake Tahoe.”

  “Tahoe?” Paul asked, surprised by her choice.

  “I was there, once, on a vacation,” she divulged with an airy wave of her hand. “Harvey’s, on the Nevada side of the lake. Gorgeous views, especially from the restaurant on the top floor.” Her smile grew even more impish. “And while we are in Nevada….”

  Paul snorted in laughter. “Of course! The perfect place to go. As soon as you get your powers, we can get married!”

  Jaret lit up like a Christmas tree. “A wedding? Fantastic! Can I be the best man? Or can I give the bride away? Perhaps both? Yes, a grand idea. Let’s go to this Lake Tahoe place. I absolutely adore weddings.”

  Paul reached out to open a portal but Jaret stopped him.

  “Allow me,” he said with a wide grin. “I can get us there faster.”

  THIRTY SIX

  Harvey’s

  19 Kitchen and Bar

  South Lake Tahoe

  Nevada side of the state line

  June

  Thursday 7:29 p.m. PST

  “And what do you think of the view?” asked Paul.

&
nbsp; The three of them were sitting in the 19th floor restaurant at a table next to a large window. Jaret was looking toward the west, across the lake to the snow capped mountains on the west side. They could see Phipps Peak and the mountain range on both sides.

  Jaret nodded, his lips puffed. “It’s gorgeous, as you said. The lake and the trees add to the view. I must include this location on my list of favorite places to visit in the future.”

  Paul cut and bit into his filet mignon steak, savoring the flavor. Capie was nervously eating a small salad.

  “Jaret, are you ready for the exchange of information we talked about earlier?” Paul asked the other wizard, as he cut another slice of steak.

  “No, I am not,” the other solemnly declared.

  “What?” both Capie and Paul exclaimed simultaneously in surprise. At a nearby table, a couple of other patrons glanced in their direction at their outburst.

  “Why not?” Capie asked, as calmly as she could manage.

  “Don’t worry; I will help you become a wizard, yes,” Jaret assured her. “But I have reconsidered my circumstances and I no longer wish to know the secret of the isotopes.”

  “You don’t want to make a super-talisman for yourself?” Paul asked him, puzzled by the other’s sudden change of heart.

  “Paul, I can’t carry around a talisman with that kind of power!” the ex-genie protested. “It would make me the target of every wizard on the face of the Earth! I didn’t understand that until I saw how many of those magical monsters and wizards were trying to capture and kill you in Chicago.”

  “I thought you wanted a powerful talisman,” Paul reminded him.

  “Not like the one you are planning to make! It’s much too risky,” the other wizard objected firmly.

  Paul rubbed his jaw. “Okay, so when I teach you the basics, you can make your own talisman less powerful, to whatever level you desire. Half the power of mine, if you want.”

  The former genie shook his head. “Ten percent, maybe.”

  Paul smiled slyly. “Forty percent.”

  “No, no, no! Fifteen percent is as high as I will go!”

  Paul’s smile grew to a chuckle. “Thirty percent!” he insisted.

  “Twenty and that is my final offer,” Jaret said, chin in the air, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Well, if that is your final offer, so be it,” Paul grinned. “Twenty percent.”

  “‘Now, if you’ve finished hosing down the decks with testosterone?’” Capie observed, quoting Maureen Robinson from the Lost in Space movie. “Can we get on with this? I am on pins and needles here. Can we talk about my magical powers now?”

  “Yes, we can, my lady,” Jaret said, with a polite half bow. Then he faced Paul again. “The secret to giving other people magical powers is simple. You cannot give what they already have.”

  “Huh? Say that again, slowly,” Paul said, frowning, laying his fork down.

  “You cannot give people magical powers,” Jaret repeated. “They already have them.”

  “You are not making any sense,” Paul objected. “I didn’t have magical powers before you gave them to me. And Capie doesn’t have them now.”

  Jaret grinned from ear to ear. “Yes, you did. And yes, she does. That’s the secret. Everyone is born with magical powers but they are also born with a mind-block that prevents them from using those powers.”

  “A mind-block?” Paul echoed, thoroughly confused.

  “Isn’t it delicious? All those centuries, the wizards of the world have been desperately trying to give people something that they already have when they should be trying to take something away instead! I find it quite amusing,” Jaret laughed.

  “Quite,” Paul said, narrowing his eyes, still feeling confused. “I don’t remember you doing that in the spell you cast on me.”

  “Oh, I did it after I put you to sleep,” Jaret confessed. “A wizard has to keep some secrets, after all.”

  Paul nodded, chagrined that the other man had fooled him so completely. “So how do you remove the mind block?”

  “Just visualize yourself inside the other persons head. Picture a levee or barricade. Then just remove it. Simple!”

  “Would you mind guiding me through it with Capie?” Paul implored him. “I don’t want to make a mistake.”

  “I would feel better about it too,” Capie added.

  Jaret glanced around. “We will need a more private place than this.”

  Paul whipped out a credit card and motioned for one of the waitresses.

  “We’ll rent a room here, in the name of Wesley Farrell. If you two are ready, we’ll go take care of this now.”

  • • • •

  It only took a few minutes for them to go down to the lobby, pay for a room and use the elevator to take them to Room 408. The suitcases subserviently following them moved into a corner of the room, stacking themselves out of the way.

  Jaret glanced around the up-scale hotel room before stepping over to a window and again nodding at the view. “I like this place.” He indicated the bed. “Whenever you are ready, my lady.”

  Capie took a deep breath to compose herself. “I’m ready now.”

  Paul reached forward and gave her a comforting hug. “I promise, this won’t hurt a bit.” Then with a grin and a deep voice, he said, “Remember, the Force will be with you…always,’” quoting from Star Wars: A New Hope.

  Capie produced a weak smile but did not otherwise reply.

  With a wave of his hand, Paul cast a spell, levitating her up and out of the wheelchair and over to the bed where she was gradually lowered to the level of the mattress. She stretched out fully, getting comfortable. And closed her eyes.

  Paul reached out his hand, closing his eyes as well, and projected himself into her thoughts. He could suddenly see images and hear sounds but they made no sense to him. Then, ahead, Paul could sense a large blockage in the path.

  Jaret appeared beside him, his image wavering back and forth, the sound of his voice tinny, as if it came from a very old phonograph record.

  “That is the barrier of which I spoke,” he assured Paul. “Remove it carefully. There is a great deal of pressure behind it.”

  Paul reached out and grasped a handful of the barrier. It pulled like sticky taffy. After several seconds of tearing at the barrier, it began to give way.

  The former genie was right about the pressure. Without warning, the entire structure broke loose and Paul was swamped in Capie’s thoughts and memories. He backed off as quickly as possible.

  “That’s all there is to it,” Jaret said, as his image faded away.

  Paul opened his eyes to see Capie asleep and Jaret with a huge grin leaning against the small desk in the room.

  “That’s why you can never make a wizard a normal person again,” Jaret whispered. “The barrier cannot be put back into place, once it is removed. She will sleep now, for a day or so.”

  Paul smiled at Capie, so beautiful as she slept. He reached out and gently swept a lock of hair from her forehead, to keep it out of her eyes. “Rest easy, dear. We will be here.”

  Then Paul turned to Jaret.

  “Before we talk about improved talismans, may I ask a question?” Paul asked.

  Jaret bowed slightly. “Certainly.”

  “If everyone is born with a barrier and the only way to exercise magical powers is for another wizard to remove that barrier, then how did the other wizards of Earth come into being?” Paul paused as another question popped into his thoughts. “And why do they claim that they can’t turn Normals into wizards when clearly, sometime in the past, somebody must have been able to do so?”

  Jaret grinned widely at him. “That is two questions, Paul. Please remember that I have only been a wizard for a very short period of time and so I am not privy to their long history. But I have a theory. Would you like to hear it?”

  “By all means,” Paul told him in encouragement. “Fire away.”

  “Fire away? Ah, another one of those m
odern expressions. Very good, that one.” Jaret chuckled. “My theory: Sometime in the past, there must have been at least one person who was born without the barrier, or at least, with a weakened barrier. A person who also experimented with magical powers. I believe that the first wizards did a lot of experiments, to find spells that would work, to test their limits of power. The modern wizards, not so much. Arrogant snobs, are they not? They seem to think they know everything. Such conceit. Humph!”

  “And?” Paul asked.

  “I think that the first wizards kept their secrets close to their hearts, never revealing them unless they had to. I think that one of the early wizards must have discovered how to turn humans into wizards too, but I think he kept the secret to himself, never sharing it with the other wizards.”

  Paul could almost see it happening. “So, over time, perhaps a few centuries, he turned a few hundred other Normals into wizards. And then, what? He died?”

  “Without sharing the secret,” Jaret said, with a nod. “And it is such a clever little secret that none of the other wizards guessed how to do it, even though he had done it to them.” Jaret grinned even wider. “Just like you did not guess how I did it to you.”

  Paul chuckled in amusement. Yes, it was ironic. “Touché.”

  “And now, let us go find a more appropriate place for the lessons on isotopes. I am now the pupil and you the master,” Jaret said with a bow.

  Raising a hand, Paul protested, “Hold on a moment. I can’t leave Capie! Can’t we have this conversation here?”

  Jaret shook his head. “I like a good mountain top. And this Phipps Peak sounds interesting.”

  Paul glanced at his sleeping fiancée. “I won’t leave her alone.”

  Jaret shrugged. “No problem. We will just take her with us.”

  The portal took the three of them along with the queen sized bed Capie was sleeping on to a ledge near the top of Phipps Peak.

  “What a wonderful view,” Jaret observed as he scanned the horizon toward the east. “We won’t be interrupted here. This seems like a good place for a classroom, don’t you agree?” Jaret asked before taking a deep breath. “Ah, fresh air.”