“Good enough,” Albright said. “Get the Halls in here, then.”
* * * *
Pel accepted the wastebaskets and said, “Thanks,” before he remembered that he was talking to a fetch.
He paused, startled by his own slip.
The fetch had been human once. It wasn’t now. Pel could fix that.
He really ought to fix that.
After he had Nancy and Rachel back, he promised himself. After that he’d fix all the fetches. For now, he had more important things to do.
It was a relief to let the portal to Earth close, finally, and to move on to other things; he collapsed the opening into nothingness, then sent the fetch away with a wave of his hand and stared hungrily into the wastebaskets, at the hairbrushes and the bits of dust and hair.
From that he could grow new bodies—clones, they’d be called in Earth terms; simulacra, they were called here. To the wizards it was a matter of the Law of Parts, of the part containing the whole; Pel tended to think more of the genetic pattern that must be complete in every single cell.
It might be the same thing; he didn’t know.
And what’s more, he didn’t care, so long as it worked.
* * * *
“Okay, we know one of the players,” Johnston said. “Brown and his friends look pretty straight and simple, just the way Ms. Jewell and Ms. Thorpe here said, and he’s happy now he’s got his zombie back; as long as he stays on top there I don’t think we have to worry, and he currently holds all the strings.”
He paused, and looked around at the others—at his staff, the FBI man, Jewell, Thorpe, and the rest of them.
No one spoke.
“This Galactic Empire’s another matter,” Johnston continued. “They’ve got the ability to pop through into our reality, and for all we know they can do it anywhere—though the fact that they came through the same place twice might mean it’s not that easy for them. They tried to send an embassy first, and we arrested ’em—maybe that’s why the second bunch looks like spies, but it might just be they’re twisty, and how we treated the first batch didn’t matter. They speak English, but that doesn’t mean we know how they think.”
Thorpe shifted—deliberately, Johnston realized, to remind him of her presence.
“Thorpe, here, does know how they think, better than anyone—she grew up there, and she could read minds—so we’ve got something to work with, but on the other hand, she doesn’t understand how we think.”
Thorpe almost nodded at that.
“They have one big advantage—they can spy on us, with their telepaths and space-warps, and we can’t get at them at all. So we’re going to collect everyone we know they can contact and see if we can open some serious negotiations, and we’re going to keep an eye on Ms. Jewell’s back yard, but mostly, since we don’t have any space-warps or magical portals or mind-readers, we just wait. Unless anyone has a better idea.”
This time it was Jewell who got his attention by clearing her throat.
“Was there something you wanted to say, Ma’am?” Johnston asked.
She looked around nervously, then shook her head, and he made a note to talk to her privately as soon as possible.
* * * *
Growing a simulacrum from bits of hair and skin and nail was not the same as creating one from scratch; Pel didn’t need to sculpt it, but instead coaxed it along in what seemed a process of unfolding. As he guided the magic through and into it, the little knot of detritus on the workshop table melted together into a little blob, then elongated, expanded, shaped itself.
He had thought that it might grow like a clone, first an embryo, then a fetus, a baby, a child, until Nancy was again a grown woman; he had even idly toyed with the idea of stopping the process a bit early, restoring her to her youthful beauty—not that she wasn’t still beautiful, but…
But he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do that. He wanted Nancy, the way she had been when she was killed, not some close approximation.
And it turned out to be a moot point, because the thing didn’t develop that way at all; it didn’t acquire any recognizable human features until it was two feet long, and by the time it reached three feet in length and became clearly a person stretched out there on the rough wooden table, it was an adult woman in form, not a child. The familiar breasts were fully developed, in proportion to the still-small body; the hips were as broad, in proportion, as the real Nancy’s had been.
He cursed himself for thinking “the real Nancy” that way. This was the real Nancy, or at any rate it soon would be. And it was enlarging—she was enlarging quickly, drawing mass from the magical energy Pel poured into her.
This wasn’t cloning, he reminded himself, this was magic—the laws were different here. Here he really could bring back the dead.
Or at least, he could create a simulacrum…
He forced that thought away. He would bring Nancy herself back from wherever she was, from wherever her soul had gone. He would have an exact duplicate of her body, grown from her own tissue—wouldn’t that be enough?
He hadn’t gotten the first simulacrum right, but that was different; that time he’d been trying to recreate her from memory.
This time it would work.
It had to.
* * * *
“Mr. Blaisdell,” the man in the gray suit said, “I’m with the government. It appears that we were, ah…a bit hasty in sending you home.”
Oram Blaisdell stared at the stranger for a moment. He looked over the blue government sedan parked on the gravel by the road, and around at the surrounding hills. Smoke was rising from the Ballard place down the valley, but he couldn’t see any of the neighbors watching.
Then he glanced at his son Henry, standing by the door of the house, looking confused and a bit scared.
“What the devil are you talkin’ about?” he asked at last.
“I’m talking about your communication with…well, you thought they were angels.”
“You sayin’ they ain’t? What the hell do you know about it?” He reached a hand down toward the splitting maul he’d been using, but didn’t touch it. He was getting too old to be splitting the damn firewood anyway.
“Mr. Blaisdell, we’ve learned the truth about those angels,” the man in the suit said. “They’re quite real, you were right, but they aren’t quite what you thought they were.”
Oram considered this, threw Henry another glance, then asked, “You humorin’ me, so you can get me to some doctor Henry called, or you serious?”
“I swear, Pa,” Henry said, “I din’t call nobody. He’s got a badge ‘n’ all.”
“Rose called, maybe?”
Henry shook his head. “I don’t think so, Pa; she din’t tell me a thing ’bout it if she did.”
Oram studied his boy’s face, then looked back at the government man.
“I can understand your doubts, sir,” the government man said. “I’m sure you’ve had some people who thought you were imagining the whole thing, and you think your children might have been worried about you and tried to fool you for your own good, but I promise you, that’s not the case. I’m really with the government.” He flipped open a brown leather case and displayed a badge and document; Blaisdell didn’t care to admit he couldn’t read the damned thing without his glasses, and wasn’t too sure he’d get it all then.
“We need your help,” the man in gray said. “If you agree, we’ll be driving you directly to Knoxville and putting you on a plane to Washington—a chartered plane. We’ll provide accommodations at the other end, give you an expense account for meals; you’ll be free to move about, to use the phone, call anyone you want, but we need to know if the…if these ‘angels’ contact you again.”
“You think they will?”
The government man didn’t answer that.
“You mind tellin’ me what they are, if they ain’t angels?”
“To be honest, sir, they didn’t tell me that.”
Blaisdell eyed him carefu
lly. That sounded authentic and true, somehow.
Then he looked around, at the wood he’d been splitting, and at the house it was meant to heat.
“C’n I bring Henry, here? Or Rose?”
“I was told you could bring your family, yes, sir.”
“How ’bout a lawyer?”
“If you want, yes—or you can call one locally after you reach Washington.”
“C’n I bring a gun?”
“Yes, sir. You aren’t under arrest; you can bring whatever you like.”
That convinced him. “Gimme an hour to pack,” he said.
An hour later he was in the back of the dark blue sedan, on his way to Knoxville, with his old leather suitcase in the trunk and a .357 Magnum in his lap.
* * * *
At first Ray Aldridge thought he was being sued; it had happened before. Then he thought he was being arrested for fortune-telling; that had happened to a friend of his back in Massachusetts once.
Finally, though, he realized what was happening.
He was being called in as a consultant. A psychic consultant.
He almost babbled with joy as he ran down the steps from his apartment to the waiting car. He was being hired as a psychic consultant to the FBI!
This was it. Even if he couldn’t help, couldn’t come up with a thing, just being called would be enough.
His career was made!
* * * *
Margaret Thompson climbed aboard the plane with her head awhirl in confusion. Angela’s invisible playmate was real? Her own little girl was getting mental messages from somewhere real? That silly made-up name, Basurpathork, was real?
Well, not quite—Angie had garbled it. Proserpine Thorpe—what kind of a name was that?
She looked down at her daughter.
Angie was staring wide-eyed at the interior of the plane. “We’re really gonna fly, Mommy? Up in the air?”
Margaret smiled, despite her confusion. “That’s right, Angie, we’ll fly right up into the air. All the way to Washington.”
* * * *
“If you guys are I.R.S., I swear I’ll sue. It’s unconstitutional,” Carleton Miletti said, for the hundredth time.
“Yessir. We’re not from the I.R.S., sir.”
“You better not be.” He sank back in the seat and watched the streets of Washington sliding past the car windows on either side.
He didn’t understand this. He hadn’t received any messages from anyone, didn’t know what the hell these people were talking about. He didn’t remember anything special this past spring—but then, he’d been busy.
Still, he thought he’d remember any mysterious messages, and he didn’t.
It had to be a coincidence, or just his imagination, that that odd feeling of being watched was back.
Chapter Ten
It was Nancy.
At least, Pel thought the woman he had created from hairs and nail clippings was truly Nancy.
She lay there, nude and lifeless, and Pel stared at her, looked over every inch of her, looking for any flaw, any sign that he had failed to perfectly recreate his wife’s body in every detail.
Of course, he had only his memory to go on, and he was dismayed by how untrustworthy that was. The curl of the hair was right, the curve of the hip, but was that mole on her thigh in exactly the right spot? Had it maybe been a quarter-inch lower before?
He couldn’t be sure.
There were photos back in the house, and he could send a fetch for them, but those wouldn’t help—those were portraits and ordinary snapshots, no full-length nudes, nothing that could show him every single feature.
He couldn’t be absolutely sure—but as far as he could see, this was Nancy, recreated and intact, just as she had been. Even the smell was right.
But she wasn’t alive. Not yet.
He touched her, carefully.
Her skin was cold and dry, her eyes blank; he drew back, shuddering.
This was really creepy, he realized. He had been so intent on it that he hadn’t really thought about what he was doing. This was like something out of a Stephen King novel, trying to bring back the dead—or really, maybe it was more like something from “Invasion of the Body-Snatchers,” since this wasn’t really Nancy’s body at all. This was a copy, grown from tiny discarded bits, and the real Nancy was still lying dead and mutilated somewhere in the Galactic Empire.
He was back in Storyland, only this time it wasn’t some great heroic adventure, it was a horror story. Something terrible was going to happen, he was meddling in things Man was not meant to know…
But he had magic, damn it. Nothing would go wrong. He could bring her back, safe and sound, in this recreated body. He could do anything—he held Shadow’s matrix, controlled all the magic, all the creative energy, of this entire universe.
He knew he could.
He took a deep breath, clenched his fists, then unclenched them and let out his breath. He gathered in the magic, sucked in energy through the matrix—he didn’t want to fail by not putting enough effort into it. He wanted to get it right the first time, he didn’t want to go through this again. He had saved out part of the hair and a toenail clipping and some powdery residue he was fairly sure came from hair or skin, but he didn’t want to have to use it.
Most especially, he didn’t want to have to destroy a botched attempt.
For a moment he thought about calling Boudicca or Athelstan back into the room to advise him, or even just Susan, for moral support, but then he clenched his fists again and quashed the idea. He would do this himself. He didn’t want anyone else seeing Nancy like this. He didn’t want anyone else watching if something went wrong. He didn’t want anyone else around, inhibiting him, if everything went right. He didn’t want to worry about distractions or explanations or anything else.
He would do it alone.
He drew in the energy, filled the chamber with a thick roiling fog of magic, so dense that the colors seemed like liquid currents in the air, deep orange and blood red and seething molten gold.
He waded through them, feeling the viscous electric force prickling and oozing across his skin, and approached his recreated Nancy. He moved around to the foot of the table and stood there, looking down at her, at toes and legs and the tight curls of hair, and he wrapped the magic around her, felt it soak into her, permeate every part of her.
This wasn’t just raising a fetch this time; he wound the pattern of energy in her spine and brain, but at the same time he drew the pattern from the flesh itself, and did something he couldn’t describe in words, reaching out in one of those directions that wasn’t really there, but which magic gave him access to. He somehow knew that he was reaching through the portals of death itself, to find Nancy’s soul and draw it back.
He pulled and wove and pushed and embraced, all at once, all through the matrix—his own hands never touched her—until he felt the power flowing of its own accord, the heart beating strong and steady, the brain waking, the eyes seeing. The flesh warmed, blood surged, muscles tightened and relaxed.
She blinked, and turned her head, first to one side, then the other.
For a moment he held his breath; he let the magic pull away, let her life free itself from the matrix.
“Nancy?” he breathed at last.
She blinked, raised herself up on her elbows, and looked at him.
“Is that my name?” she asked.
* * * *
“Shadow is dead?” Best asked, startled. “You’re sure?”
“Man, where have you been these three days past, since the news first came?” The innkeeper set down the wooden mug of thick, foul-smelling beer. “Aye, Shadow is dead, destroyed at the hand of one Pelbrun, styled the Brown Magician—we’ve the word of half a dozen travelers on it, one of whom spoke to a man who had been in the very throne room of Shadow’s fortress, and had spoken there with Lord Pelbrun.”
Best picked up the mug warily, then glanced first at Begley, then at Poole, finally at Morcambe.
> Morcambe shrugged.
“It’s…I mean, ’tis a hard thing to believe,” Best said to the innkeeper.
“I’truth, it is!” the innkeeper agreed. “Yet all who come hither from the west attest it true, and it pleases me well to hear it. ’Tis to be a kinder reign, methinks, for Pelbrun’s orders have come down to us, that there shall be no more hangings for aught but murther, and that we may serve the Goddess an we choose.” He gestured toward the window; Best looked, and saw the gallows in the town square.
He had seen it before, when he and his men had arrived in the village—it seemed a perfectly ordinary gallows. Judging by the stains and general wear it had seen considerable use.
It was empty now, though, and perhaps that was what the innkeeper meant to point out. Presumably, when Shadow was running things, there was usually a criminal or two suspended there.
“What if it’s trickery?” Best asked, doing his best to imitate the barbaric local accent, with its flat, harsh vowels and archaic phrasing. “What if Shadow still lives, and is only testing your loyalty?”
The innkeeper shrugged. “What would you have of us? What could Shadow have of us, an it yet lives and rules? We’re but plain folk; if ’twould destroy us, it may, and what’s to be done? Why strive to deceive, when ’twas long said that Shadow had the power to see within every heart, should it trouble itself to do so?”
“What if…” Best paused, struggling to phrase his questions. This seemed too good to be true, that the superhuman enemy of the Empire had conveniently died, but he couldn’t very well explain that to this brew-soaked barbarian. It seemed more likely that it was all part of some elaborate scheme, perhaps directed at the Empire.
And who was this Brown Magician?
“Enow, good sirs, I’ve others to tend to,” the innkeeper said, after Best had groped unsuccessfully for words for a few seconds. “’Tis a wonder indeed, that we should live to see this day, and I’ll give you time to think upon it, and to resolve what you’d say. Drink heartily, and give voice an you’d have more.” He turned away and stumped off.
Best looked at Begley. “What d’you think, Bill?” he asked.
The Reign of the Brown Magician Page 11