Crystal Core

by P. S. Power

“Hello? Ambassador Mableton?”

  It was indeed his friend Cindy’s face on the device. She looked good, of course. A bit pointed at the chin, but only enough to give her real character, not make her seem sharp or unpleasant. She reminded him a little bit of a fox. A very attractive one.

  Glancing over at him, she waved.

  “Hi. Orange wanted my help. I can… Be there in about five minutes. Can we get Tim Baker in as well? It will help a lot. Even if we have to hide him in a different room. I keep all my exceptional focus with him, so…”

  It seemed a slightly strange thing to ask for. Not that having a hyper intelligent, brilliant, wizard in the room wouldn’t be potentially useful. Even for code breaking. Interestingly, they all understood what the plan was that way. Even Willum, which made sense to him. As far as he knew, he was the one that was closest to Cindy, in that particular room. Of course, he’d know some of her secrets. They were friends and even decently close.

  Patricia simply nodded.

  “I’ll get on that, if at all possible. See you in five then. Do you know how to get here?”

  The woman on the other end of the device, simply winked.

  “I have it. Even if it is unlisted. See you soon.”

  Then the picture in the focus stone went away, to be replaced by a stream of slowly moving blue words. They floated just above the surface of the glass like white stone. The color meant it had been made on the Moon, since that was how focus stone from there looked. It was pretty, in an austere way.

  Without missing a beat, Patricia tapped several of the glowing blue sigils rapidly, making the face of a very sleepy looking Tim Baker appear in a nearly black room, after a moment.

  “Trice? What’s up?” It was pleasant sounding for having been clearly woken up.

  Willum recalled that as being his least favorite part of sleeping. The bit where you had to stop, and get up for the day. He didn’t do that any longer, but it was starting to wear on him, he thought. Not that he knew exactly why he felt that way. A lot of things were like that with him though. He understood things, but… There wasn’t always a good reason for what he knew. Or thought he did.

  Again, like with most of the immortals, the man looked young. Like he was in his early twenties or so, at the moment. That was a few years older than the last time they’d met. His face was just as puffy around the eyes and as sleep creased as anyone else would have going on though. Long lived, wizard, or plowboy. Pillows didn’t care whose face they bent and warped.

  It was probably part of their clever plan to take over. An evil and seductive thing. Being all soft and friendly like they were.

  Patricia smiled, as if she had a secret.

  “We need you. The location is…”

  There was a wave, stopping her. For an instant, Willum wondered if he were going to beg off, or insist they come to him. Both were well within his rights, being as important as he was. The man was the secret ruler of Austra, after all. Also, one of the mightiest wizards they had. Famous for it, as well. Instead he just looked at them, his eyes darting a bit. Taking in the room, as well as the people there.

  “I have it. No need to speak about it out loud. I’ll be there shortly. That means I’m showering first, unless you have a real emergency?”

  Smythe chuckled, holding up his cup of water.

  “That sounds fine. We’re just discussing some things, at the moment. Perhaps we could set up some food? That would be lovely.” It sounded, without saying anything specific, like they were about to have a party.

  As if anyone invited Will Baker to real parties. His presence would, no doubt, be taken into account by his Uncle Tim. It wouldn’t serve for the man to think he was going to be well entertained or anything fun like that. Even if Smythe did look festive with his new hair. He was in gold and white robes as well, which might signal he was there for fun.

  Except that Willum was dressed like a military man and Alice looked to be in her daily service uniform. It was black as well, but the cut was different. She had a lot of pretty orange stripes on her sleeve to indicate she was important. Trice was in black, like he was, but it was a soft looking material that didn’t shine like silk, but looked to have about that kind of weight. From the way it hugged and pressed against her, showing everything underneath, she wasn’t wearing any undergarments.

  Then, most didn’t, if they had magical clothing.

  Not that it mattered. Cindy, true to her word, showed up about five minutes later, stepping out into the room without fanfare or more than people standing to bow in her direction. Willum did it as well, since the woman was an ambassador. More to the point, she’d come to meet with them, on no notice. After Alice Orange had, apparently, contacted her with her mind. That wasn’t a thing that he’d known the military space commander could do. From the way that it had felt, Willum had to assume it wasn’t a power, as much as a clever mental trick that the woman had worked out. That or already known.

  She was old enough that a lot of things had probably come up in her life.

  Cindy bowed back, but stood quickly.

  “Tim is going to be a few minutes? We should eat then, like you suggested, Councilor Smythe. Not that Countess Thomson was starving me, but Willum hasn’t eaten in most of a day. That isn’t good for him. He burns energy about like I do, or really, more so. He’s bigger.” She spoke with an accent, but everyone was able to understand her easily enough. Really, she was no worse off than a lot of nobles were that way. They all spoke Standard, but most of them had regional dialects at home which were nearly different languages.

  Councilor or not, Smythe fled the room, his white and gold robes flapping a bit. Probably to get food, which was nice of him. At least it would be if he bothered to share. The man had been good that way in the past, so Will liked his chances.

  Instead of getting directly to work, even though Cin looked at the leather-bound book closely, she stayed back from it.

  Her hair was shorter than it had been a week before, in a military bob, or something close to it. What women wore on duty, in the Noram forces. The color was still a golden blonde, which was lustrous. Normal though, not glowing or being like golden metal. She was dressed in a skirt that touched her ankles, with brilliant blue running shoes on under that. Her top was a button up with short sleeves, meaning it was probably warm where she’d been, on the surface of the planet. Given the season, and that it was almost certainly a spot in Noram, she’d probably been in the Capital.

  Her skirt, while nice, was magical in nature. That meant she’d been dressed for a very casual visit. For most people that would have meant being well away from nobles. For Cindy, a woman from a different reality, it probably meant that she was simply with a friend. Countess Thomson, most likely. Possibly with one or both of her sons. Clemance worked in space now, being attached to Alice’s fleet as a special adviser.

  Dumas, the younger son of the Thomson family was off learning to be a line walker. Attending special lessons for it, with a man from a different reality, altogether. If he hadn’t already learned to do so. Once you started in on void training, time was a very different factor than it was for most people.

  Cin, reading the story of his thoughts, if not life, from above his head, made a small choked sound.

  “That’s pretty good reasoning. It was Countess Thomson and Tyler the butler. Did you know he used to be a barrel maker when he was younger? I would have thought generational house servant, wouldn’t you?”

  The truth was that he’d never even considered such a thing before. It was, he realized, a bit of a blind spot for him. Not that he didn’t see other people as real and valid, but he really did tend to think of them as he last saw them now. Then change his mind, as they shifted and grew in the world. Tyler was a butler now, so that was all that mattered.

  As far as he knew, the man was even good at it. Frequently, he stood physical guard over Ambassador Mableton and the others while they worked. Trying to find the enemies of the king as well as those from other r
ealities that had come at times to kill people.

  An act of futility on the enemies’ part. A thing so clearly foolish that it pretty much didn’t have a real purpose. So far it had been the biggest threat they’d encountered in the world they were in. The IPB reality where Cindy was from was in about the same craft that way. Attacks had come, but they were pointed at individuals, not the masses.

  The person attacked most had been Tor, so far. At least if they didn’t count Willum. In the last months he’d been hit a lot that way. Right up until the last set of changes Timon had made to his genetic pattern. Now he looked the same, but was very different, inside. Practically not himself at all.

  Not that no one on their side never died, but if the goal was really to destroy whole realities, then killing a single person occasionally wasn’t really going to do much. The entire problem, according to the enemy, was that in the end, when time ran out for a life, no person ever truly died. At the point of death, say when your head was severed from your body, a new reality would come into being and your consciousness would flee to that one. Where you survived, in some fashion.

  The issue then would be that no consciousness could ever die. Even as the rest of their individual universes faded into nothingness. Leaving the person floating there, unable to do anything except suffer. Probably as an energy being, or a thought form, since there was no way the physical body of a human being or most other living things he’d encountered, would survive sitting in a void like that.

  Even as a thought form or being of energy, you’d eventually dissipate. Unless you held yourself together somehow. All the line walkers could do it, so he didn’t doubt that others could learn how, if they had all the time in the world to focus on themselves.

  Cindy stared at him, her eyes flickering back and forth for a while. Then she did it again, several times.

  “I… Right. That’s probably the end point then, isn’t it? Anyone truly left in a void like that wouldn’t be able to survive, if they didn’t want to. There would be no splitting of realities at that point, because there would only be two possibilities. Wanting to survive, which you could do, but it would be a choice, or letting go. Until only the last one would eventually…”

  It was probably out of turn, her speaking about his thoughts like that, but nothing much was bothering him at the moment. Really, it was kind of exciting, except for the fact that just telling those others that they didn’t have to worry, that they wouldn’t suffer if they didn’t want to, wasn’t going to really do all that much for them.

  Probably because most people are, and always were, idiots.

  That thought got a laugh from Cin. It was a hard thing, at the edges.

  “People do have their moments, don’t they? Still, it’s kind of a relief, knowing that we won’t all be undone at any moment. That means what though? We’re still under attack.”

  Alice Orange, a woman of true physical power, which showed as muscle when she moved, just nodded clearly having a keen mind behind her gem blue eyes.

  “That’s the way of most wars, in the end. The trick is to cut off the head. The true believers at the bottom have little to no power, in general. Most of them won’t really believe in anything much past ensuring their next meal if they have any choice in the matter. Find their king, their president or head person and remove them and their councilors. The rest will fall apart. Go back to farming and having babies.”

  Which made perfect sense, if they were dealing with sane beings in any form.

  Willum looked at the door, feeling William Smythe’s field moving toward them. When he came into the room, the door vanishing briefly, sealing behind the man instantly. Both his hands were full, carrying two very large silver trays, filled with dozens of types of foods. Mainly snacks. Cut and sliced cheeses, crackers and bits of fruit, instead of a more solid meal. It probably spoke of either the man lacking imagination or of it being between meals in some official sense. That or he’d simply wanted things they could eat with their fingers without tainting the book.

  That one wasn’t going to happen, even if Will had to wrestle with some greasy fingered people to stop it. Even if he was just him and they were important. It had taken way too much to get the thing to allow defilement to take place. Cindy smiled at him, clearly understanding his plans that way but helped Smythe settle the food on a different table, that she got new chairs for. It was nicer looking, seeming like wood, with a fine routing along the edges. There was a simple carved design to the whole thing. Triangles on the surface, which barely sunk into the top of the thing around the edge. It was lighter in color, but subtle enough to almost be invisible. Refined, in a way.

  The chairs were equally nice, being copies of things from King Richard’s palace in Noram.

  Plates and silver, along with napkins appeared as well. That got Alice to laugh.

  “Ah! I’d forgotten that the new facilities could do that part. We live in a very interesting time.”

  The book was left over on its own table, away from the people that used a combination of fingers and silver to eat the food they’d been provided. It was hard, after all, to eat crackers with a fork. Even the most cultured of them didn’t bother trying that one. Will did spear a chunk of soft white cheese though, and ate it plain. He was starving, for all his focus had held that fact away from him for a bit. That part of his life was actually a bit difficult. Getting enough food each day was hard, given his schedule. Which meant he was too thin now. People noticed it, in a lot of places.

  There were five of them, but Cindy and he sat side by side, sharing one of the trays between them. Guarding it with flashing forks and serving tongs. Not that the others were trying to come for their food, having their own. If they had been though, it would have been a real battle. One that he and the Ambassador would have won, at a guess. Unless Timon used magic to steal from them.

  That could have worked, if the fellow planned things out well enough. Possibly. Luckily for them, he wasn’t there at the moment.

  Halfway through the meal, Timon Baker walked out of the red hut, across the room. At least it looked kind of like him. The face was different, being a bit lopsided, with heavy eyebrows and a crooked nose in the middle of his light tan face. It was a look similar to what Willum had going on at the moment. Smythe was doing better that way, not wearing a disguise, but he was also being largely ignored by Alice.

  She had a real problem taking attractive men seriously. It got worse, the better looking you were as well. So Smythe, a fine and handsome man, but one who wasn’t perfect, would be ignored by her. If he gave any ideas, she wouldn’t take them seriously, even to the point of thinking he was wrong about obvious things at times. Tim Baker, who was near the very top as far as things like looks went, would be taken as actually attempting to trick or con the woman all the time.

  Unless he hid what he really was. In this case it was being done with a disguise amulet. The old kind that could be gotten at the magic shop in Harmony. The main Moon city. Since his wife, Patricia Baker, ran the place and he made a lot of the stock they had in it, that wasn’t a huge stretch to see taking place. If the fellow didn’t just walk around with one on him all the time. A lot of people did, if they had access to that kind of thing.

  “Hello! I didn’t get what I was supposed to be coming for. So… I don’t need the new weapons system that I’ve worked up?” He patted his right-hand pocket, which bulged a good bit, showing something was really there.

  Emptying his mouth, Willum waved the man in. You didn’t generally bow with family, after all. Technically, both Cindy and Smythe could have done that, but neither did. The Councilor just signaled for him to join them, as well. It seemed cozy, actually.

  The man took a seat, as Will explained, a bit rudely, pointing with his fork.

  “We have… Well, a book. In code. It’s supposed to be what we need to break the war apart, but as anyone would expect, the authors took pains to guard their knowledge from us. So far that part seems cleverly done. Cindy came
to help with that, and wants you to help her focus, so her powers work better.” That might not let her read the book, but she could still find things out that might be helpful to them.

  Even if it didn’t work that way, having her there was nice.

  Being informal, Tim got some food, making a plate appear for himself first. It matched the others, but then, it would. Not just because it was what the station made when you wanted something to eat off of, either. It was a white ceramic thing, that was heavy feeling, but not really there. Plain, other than that, meant not for entertaining, but to use day to day.

  Just as Timon had intended, when he’d built the space station.

  That bit of information was taken from the man himself, who was kind of projecting his thoughts, at the moment. Then a wave of silence came across him, and linked to the Ambassador. Bolstering and honing her power. The basic trick could work with anyone, naturally. For instance, if Timon hadn’t been available, Willum could have done the same basic thing, he thought. It was made more effective, since Timon and Cindy were part of the same being. Pieces meant to live in different realities and not meet, but they were still the same that way.

  Like fingers, being temporarily brought into contact. They lived separately, but were innately connected to the greater whole.

  Normally he tended to look at people like that as being this or that world’s version of the same person, but it wasn’t exactly that. They weren’t separate. They were one being, or parts of it. Like Eva or Samantha, Dare Canton’s magical daughters, who had individual bodies numbering into the hundreds or more, even though there were only two minds there, for all the bodies.

  Except that Tim and Cindy definitely had their own minds.

  It made sense to him, anyway.

  There was food to eat, so he kept going, since he might well need more calories than not. It felt like it, if that counted for anything. As he shoved bits and pieces of things into his face, lacking couth, as well as style, he focused his own mind again. Then took time to feel it happening with Cin. She did her own eating the whole time, as well.