Gingerly, he knelt, reaching over to touch the inside lip of the pit’s wall. Yep, as smooth as glass.
“Uh, sir, should you do that?” the intelligence captain asked. “It, ah, might be radioactive or something.”
Getting back to his feet, the general brushed the leg of his pants and marched back to the command building. He had a few calls to make. Somebody—Americans? little green Martians? Klingons?—had just sent him a message.
From the look of things right now, he was guessing that there wouldn’t be a war after all.
• • • •
“Impressive,” Capie commented, as the Sirius Effort moved away from the Tactical Airbase at the Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran, Iran. Paul had used the incredible power of his new chutzpah to hover the ship in place, disguised as the USS Sulaco from the Aliens movie, and then fire a fictitious beam of incredible energy, selectively vaporizing the F-14’s in their individual hangars.
No one would miss a message such as that.
“And no one was hurt,” he crowed boastfully.
“I can’t wait to have a chutzpah like that,” Daneel said, with obvious yearning in his voice.
• • • •
Jahan Darvish was furious. He sat at his oak desk in his lavishly appointed office, his arms folded over his chest as he scowled in anger. All of his work, all of his planning for the last sixty something years, up in smoke. Gone, like a fog with the rise of the Sun.
Darvish was the Errabêlu wizard of Iran. And it had been his plan, from the beginning, to launch a war against Israel from Iran, a plan that he had been formulating and executing ever since Israel became a state in 1948. A clever plan it had been, audacious in the implementation. Each and every step had been meticulous carried out very successfully.
Spoiled. All the work gone now. He would have to start all over again. From the beginning.
He didn’t know who had done it. Perhaps it was that new wizard that everyone seemed to be talking about these days. Whoever it was had broken the rules, creating that huge spaceship that floated all over the Middle East, taking pot shots at things, in some places creating huge funny holes in the ground and in other places vaporizing a lake or melting a 500 foot long bridge down to a slag heap in mere seconds.
But they hadn’t limited themselves to such mundane targets, no! In Syria, they had skewered the cast-iron block engines of three companies of Zulfiqar and T-72S main battle tanks with three inch diameter holes! And then his precious F-14’s at the Tehran airbase here in Iran! He had been there himself, trying to stop that strange purple beam of light that had slashed his planes to ribbons in their hangars! And he hadn’t been able to do it, no matter how much power he threw into the spells he cast! Nothing he had tried had the least bit of effect!
He was reluctantly reaching the conclusion that all the rumors might be true, that it must have been a new wizard, one who commanded considerable power. No wizard that he knew of on Earth controlled enough magical power to perform that sort of stunt. The fact that he had personally witnessed the power of that act of magic was the best proof he could have on that theory, right? And this new wizard was dangerous. Very dangerous. No respect for the established rules. No respect for territory or boundaries. No respect at all for Errabêlu either, apparently.
A little over a week ago, there had been the simultaneous destruction of several talismans. According to reports, that had occurred in Australia, of all places. And then, far worse, a few days later, that magical disturbance of stupendous proportions that had taken place in the American northwest. The Earth had rung like a bell with that one! It was like nothing Darvish had ever felt before nor even heard of in legend. It simply had to be the rogue wizard’s doing. All of these events, happening at virtually the same time, were all connected. He was convinced of that.
Darvish snickered once. That disturbance, in the western United States—he wondered what Clarke had thought about that since it had happened on his turf. What was that old reprobate up to now?
And confound it, where was Hamadi, his partner in crime, the Errabêlu of Syria? Disappeared? Gone? Had the Errabêlu in Israel—what was his name?—done Hamadi in? Or maybe it had been this new wizard? Perhaps it had been.
At the next gathering of the Conclave of Magi, he intended to submit a proposal to deal with this new threat. All of the wizards of Errabêlu needed to join forces, long enough to kill this new wizard. The sooner the better.
Darvish sighed, leaning forward, picking up a pencil and putting it to the paper pad in front of him on the desk. He might as well get started. If it took him fifty years, he would attack and wipe out Israel. It was his destiny, his right, and his duty to do so.
EPILOGUE
Roselawn Memory Gardens Cemetery
3045 State Road 67
Lake Geneva, WI
November
Saturday 4:01 p.m. CDT
Capie wiped a tear away as she stood at the foot of her parents’ grave, her mother buried on the right and her father on the left. She still found it hard to believe sometimes that her father was really gone, even though his death was now months in the past. There were still so many active memories of him that she held dear to her heart.
The words for the tombstone had been very hard to choose. In the end, she had settled for:
In Loving Memory
Christopher Edgar Kingsley
We will miss you
“Are you going to be okay, Mom?” Daneel 1 asked, floating several feet away. In his display, he watched her with deep concern.
“What he said,” Paul echoed anxiously, standing on the other side of the grave, with Daneel 2 at his side.
The golden framed mirror, with Ariel-Leira displayed, had been retrieved from the Graylands facility and was floating above and behind the headstone. “She is, of course. Strong lady, she be.”
Capie smiled sadly, staring at her father’s final resting place. “Thanks. And yes, I’m okay. I just wanted to pay my respects one last time before we leave. Thanks for bringing me here, Paul. For coming with me. And for understanding.”
With a gentle smile, Paul stepped around to her, putting his arm over her shoulders. “Take all the time you need. I understand completely.”
Daneel 2 created a life-sized hologram of himself, projecting it near his parents, in an effort to physically be with them. Both Paul and Capie turned to him, giving him a big smile. Not to be outdone, Daneel 1 did the same. All four of them gathered together in a big family hug.
Ariel-Leira watched, grinning widely. “To go where no mirror has gone before, I can’t believe I’m going. Excited, I am!”
“I’m ready to go now,” Capie announced, turning her head to face Paul. “I have all the research materials I need for the MBE Drug Project. And Mars is waiting. The people of Earth are waiting. They want to be free of Errabêlu. Let’s help them achieve that.”
With a grin, Paul nodded, waving a hand. All four of them and the mirror levitated into the air, ascending the fifty feet that it took to reach the tail end of the Sirius Effort, hovering above the cemetery. Higher they went, up the side of the ship, stopping not far from the nose. Opening a portal through the hull of the ship, Paul and the two Daneels flew in, the mirror following along smartly.
At the brink of the portal, Capie paused and turned to look down toward the cemetery.
And sadly but with determination whispered, “‘By Grabthar’s hammer, by the Sons of Warvan, you shall be avenged!’” quoting Dr. Lazarus from Galaxy Quest. “I promise that you won’t be forgotten, Dad. Like the man said, you didn’t die for nothing.”
She stepped inside with grim determination, the portal snapping closed behind her.
The Sirius Effort, now fully repaired, as shiny as a new coin and also fully loaded with all the supplies that the Armsteads could possibly need or want on Mars, lifted quietly and gracefully away from the surface of the planet Earth, accelerating steadily towards orbit. As the ship gained altitude, its fusio
n engines kicked in, thrusting it out faster towards the blackness of space.
They would be the first humans, mirror-woman and Scotties to go out that far.
Table of Contents
SECTION I TRAGEDIES ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
SECTION II WAR ON TERROR NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
SECTION III EMERGENCE FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SECTION IV THE OUTBACK SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINTEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
SECTION V EXODUS THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) Page 43