My Son, the Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

  A diesel horn brayed. Matt jumped back. The boys scattered away, and the bus pulled up, slowing for the corner. The door hissed open. Matt dropped the stick and jumped aboard.

  Luco and his gang realized what was happening and shouted, running toward the bus, but the door closed as the driver started moving to turn the corner. A couple of thuds clattered on the side of the bus, and the three other passengers made disapproving noises. “Kids today!” one grandfather grunted. “Ought to take the strap to every one of them!”

  “Thanks, Mr. Joe,” Matt panted.

  “Hey, you ain’t been around in months, I got to give you a ride.”

  “Really good to be on your bus again,” Matt said fervently. “Sorry about the excitement back there.”

  “Them!” Joe said with scorn. “I won’t let them ride my bus no more. Last time I did, one of them lit up a joint, and I sat at the curb for fifteen minutes before he gave up and threw it away. I caught hell from the checker, too.”

  Matt nodded. “They’re not much to worry about, as gangs go.”

  Actually, he was surprised to find that they weren’t. They had terrorized him through junior high and high school, but now he found out that they couldn’t really fight all that well. They hadn’t been trained, of course, but even as street fighters went, they weren’t much to worry about—clumsy and slow, and they didn’t know very many moves. What had he ever been afraid of?

  Well, even the last time he’d been home, they’d been a lot better fighters than he had been, and there had never been fewer than three of them to his one. Now he’d had Sir Guy’s lessons, and Saul’s—and had the muscles Sayeesa had wished on him for her own purposes. And he’d been knighted. In Merovence, that carried a lot of benefits: authority, understanding of military strategy, fighting ability—and courage.

  So that was why he hadn’t been swamped by the surge of boyhood fears! Apparently the enchantment of the knighting ceremony stayed with him, even in a nonmagical universe. It made sense—the knowledge and skills were in his brain, no matter how they’d come to be there.

  Nonetheless, Matt reminded himself, he still wasn’t any world-class street fighter. It wasn’t just his own improvements that made the neighborhood gang look inept. They really were—and maybe it wasn’t just that he was better, maybe it was that they were worse. Six years of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco could do that. There were a lot worse street toughs than them around, and not all that far away, either.

  “The neighborhood isn’t what it used to be, Joe,” he said.

  “Used to look a lot better,” Joe agreed. “Used to be some nice kids in it, too. Not now, though. Drugs and TV, that’s what it is.”

  So it wasn’t just the contrast of the cramped, working-class neighborhood with the fields of Merovence or the luxury of Alisande’s castle. The neighborhood really had gone downhill, and badly. Matt found himself wishing there were some way he could get his parents out of it.

  Matt changed buses across from the supermarket. It was a shock to see it closed, but it was a bigger shock to see the chain-link fence around the whole property, even the parking lot. Of course, he hadn’t been down this way in a year or more—six, in his own time—since the last time he’d had to take the bus into Bloomfield, but it was still a shock.

  “Six months closed, an’ no sign of anyone startin’ it up again,” said a woman waiting nearby. “Why’d they have to close it down, anyway?”

  “Said there was too much shopliftin’,” the other woman answered. “Where they think us poor folks gonna go shoppin’ now?”

  Come to think of it, Matt did remember a lot of signs warning people not to shoplift.

  Matt caught the bus to Main Street, handed the driver his transfer, and watched the familiar neighborhoods roll by. It still looked awfully run-down compared to Merovence, but at least the urban-renewal project in the shopping district had been very successful. The plastic canopies all along the central blocks made it look much nicer, anyway.

  He got off at the post office and enjoyed the feeling of stepping back into a more affluent era as he came into the lobby of the 1930s Federal-Classic building. The ceiling was high, the wainscoting was real wood, and so were the windows. Matt rented a post-office box, wrote the number down on a piece of scrap paper, then also wrote down the longitude and latitude—he still had them memorized from a grade-school assignment. It had been twenty years, but things drummed into young brains tend to stay there. He bought a hundred stamps, then wrote down the exact wording above the slots for outgoing mail—“local” and “out of town.” After all, he wanted to be able to send Christmas cards, didn’t he? He picked up a couple of the “moving” booklets, with their forms for letting people know his new address, filled out two of them, mailing one to his parents and the other to Mrs. Vogel, the next-door neighbor who had been so kind to him when he was little. When he was a teenager, too, in fact. Then he went out for a stroll.

  He went quite a bit faster than strolling, of course. Time was wasting—a week in Merovence for every half hour here.

  Around behind the train station he went, through the bridge under the tracks to the far side. He glanced around before he entered—it was an ideal place for an ambush, but also for a tramp to hide out from the rain. It was empty at the moment, though, aside from some stale smells that he didn’t like to think about. He took up a stance right in the middle, out of sight of anybody but some nosy kid who might happen to be wandering by, and began to recite the words of the parchment that had originally brought him to Merovence.

  “Lalinga wogreus marwold reiger

  Athelstrigen marx alupta

  Harleng krimorg barlow steiger...”

  They were nonsense syllables.

  Matt tried again, beginning to sweat. He’d been speaking this language for five years now! He should know it as thoroughly as he knew English! But the words remained stubbornly opaque, devoid of meaning. If they would just start making sense, his mind would be in tune with the universe in which the language was spoken; if he could let the beauty of the words sink in, begin to feel the body-rush that came with that beauty, he would find himself in Alisande’s castle.

  He took a deep breath and reminded himself that it had taken two months and more of reciting those syllables, of digging into the origins of those words, before their meaning had come beating through. Surely he couldn’t expect the magic to work on the first try!

  Could he?

  He tried again. Better this time—he began to feel magical force gather around him, but only its fringes. It didn’t build. He tried a third time, felt the magic field gather again, felt it starting to build...

  Abruptly, it was gone, like an electrical motor starting up then jerking to a halt as a fuse blew. Matt stood, devastated and aghast, feeling as though a rug had been yanked out from under him and the floor with it, leaving him trying to stand on thin air. Such a complete and sudden cancellation of the magic field had nothing to do with how many times Matt recited the verse, nothing to do with the nonmagical nature of his home universe. If the magic had worked at all, it would have continued to build, stronger and stronger with each time he recited the verse, finally transferring him, exhausted but whole, to Merovence. But it had cut off as though someone had thrown a switch—and Matt was sure that someone somehow had. Some enemy had canceled his magic account and left him stranded at home.

  He sat down on his heels, rested his back against the wall, put his head in his hands, and thought. Now that he remembered it, he’d been surprised how easy it was to come back to this universe. Could that have been because he’d been born here, and was part of its physical structure? He shuddered at the thought that he might belong here, where he’d always been a loser.

  No, he corrected himself—felt like a loser. But the boyhood “winners” had been Liam, Luco, Choy, and Herm, who’d let themselves get addicted to drugs and were now eking out livings with minimum-wage jobs and mugging. They would die in the same part of town they’d been born i
n, or one very much like it—except that the neighborhood would get worse as they grew older. Matt, whom they had kicked around and bullied and insulted, had graduated from high school, then college, and had finished the coursework for his doctorate. Even if he’d stayed in this universe, he would have had a better life than the neighborhood toughs, who saw themselves as winners.

  Or did they? Was that just his teenage perceptions talking? Sure, the neighborhood girls had scorned him and cooed over Liam and Luco—but whom would they gravitate toward now?

  Not that it mattered. Matt was married, and to a woman finer by far than any of them—a real princess who had become a real queen, in a universe in which his talents and knowledge made him a winner.

  He had to get back to it.

  His head snapped up; he looked around, suddenly aware that he was very vulnerable—but the tunnel was still empty with no one in sight, though he did hear footsteps back toward the station. He lowered his head again, but didn’t let his mind wander as it just had. He’d been so deeply sunk in the trance of thought that he wouldn’t have heard any muggers coming up on him. Shame to have to think that way, but there it was.

  “Is something wrong, young man?”

  Matt looked up. A middle-aged man stood by him, dapper in a gray pin-striped three-piece suit and silk tie. He was lean, with kindly eyes, a straight nose, mustache and goatee. He gazed down at Matt with concern.

  Matt pushed himself to his feet, forcing a smile. “Nothing, really. Just kinda tired.”

  “No, I can see something is troubling you,” the stranger said, frowning. “Surely there is some way in which I can help.”

  Matt shrugged, feeling awkward. He knew the older man meant well, but was really butting in. Still, he was only trying to help, so Matt forced himself to be civil. “I’m just having trouble figuring out how to get home, that’s all.”

  “Oh!” The stranger’s face relaxed, even smiling a little as he reached inside his suit coat. “Well, if that’s all...”

  “No, no, I’m afraid money won’t help!” Matt held up a palm to keep him from pulling out his wallet. “I can’t get home with a train ticket.”

  “Not by train? But...” The stranger glanced back at the station.

  “Why am I under the tracks?” Matt forced a smile. “Good place to be alone to think.”

  “Sometimes thinking is more easily done by talking.” The old gent looked sympathetic again. “How can you get home?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” Matt searched for a generality that would satisfy the old busybody. “I’m from far away, you see, and it’s a matter of working the system.”

  “Oh, bureaucracy!” The stranger smiled. “I’m expert in that. Nirobus, at your service.” He held out a gloved hand.

  “Matt Mantrell.” Matt shook the hand, warming to the old chap in spite of himself.

  “What is your situation, Mr. Mantrell? A lost passport?”

  “More like a refused visa,” Matt said slowly.

  Nirobus frowned. “Can you be more specific?”

  “Only hypothetically.” Matt felt drawn to the old guy, drawn to talk. “You’re right, maybe talking it out would help. But I’d have to try to explain it to you by metaphor—the real situation is just too hard to believe.”

  “Try me.” Nirobus smiled, gesturing back toward the station. “But why don’t we sit down while we chat? This tunnel is certainly not conducive to thought.”

  “You’ve got a point,” Matt admitted, and fell in beside him, going back to the station. “I don’t want you to miss your train, though.”

  “Plenty of time—I came early. Proceed with your metaphor, young man. Was it as difficult for you to come here as it is to go home?”

  “No, it was very easy.” Matt halted, frowning. “Maybe too easy.”

  “Indeed!” Nirobus sat on a bench, gesturing to the place beside him. “It would seem that you had no reason to expect difficulty.”

  Matt sat, gazing out unseeing over the tracks and the weathered concrete bridge. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, just that it was a sort of inertia.”

  “Inertia?” Nirobus frowned.

  “Yes, inertia.” Matt took a deep breath. “Okay, here comes the metaphor—magic. Let’s say I’m transported to a foreign country by a spell.”

  “Magical transportation?” Nirobus smiled. “How convenient! No passports, no customs—yes, I think the idea could catch on. I rather like your metaphor, young man.”

  Matt grinned at the old guy, feeling a chime of rapport. If Nirobus could let his imagination wander, he was a kindred spirit. “All right, so some enchanter waves a magic wand and transports me to France in the blink of an eye—but he has to expend a lot of magical energy to do it, because I’m part of America and belong here.”

  “So you have magical inertia!” Nirobus clapped his gloved hands in delight. “A tendency to stay in the universe in which you were born! Magical physics—what a fascinating notion! So when you came back, it didn’t surprise you that it required very little effort—inertia was helping to pull you.”

  “Like a rubber band, sort of.” Matt grinned.

  “But now you think your return was too easy,” Nirobus remembered. “What do you suspect—an enemy sorcerer, not magical inertia?”

  Matt felt a chill inside. “That’s the obvious guess, yes.”

  “But couldn’t this enemy sorcerer have used your inertia against you?”

  Matt lifted his head, eyes widening. “Yes, he could! Our hypothetical sorcerer could just increase my magical inertia, and the spell that transported me to Merovence before, wouldn’t be strong enough now!”

  “Merovence?” Nirobus frowned.

  “France,” Matt amended.

  “By any other name.” Nirobus smiled. “Yes, I see—a contraction of ‘Merovingian province.’ But why inertia? Why not simply imagine that your enemy magus has erected some sort of magical barrier to keep you from going back to, ah, Merovence?”

  Panic started at the thought—what was this nameless evil sorcerer doing to his Alisande and her kingdom? Matt fought down the idea and concentrated fiercely on not looking like a madman. “That’s an even simpler way to look at it, yes. So I have to figure out how to defeat that magical barrier.”

  “Or to overcome that magical inertia, if you wish to look at it the first way,” Nirobus agreed. “There ought to be some way to do it, no matter which it is. Can you apply physics again?”

  “Only what I learned in high school,” Matt admitted, shamefaced. He remembered a diagram of opposed forces. “It should just be a matter of energy. Whether it’s a wall, inertia, or an actual force pushing me away from Merovence, I only need to summon enough force to counter it—and something to push against.”

  “A lever long enough to move you between worlds, to paraphrase Archimedes, and a fulcrum upon which to rest it?”

  “Yeah.” For an instant, despair almost overwhelmed Matt. “But what kind of fulcrum? What kind of backstop? To push against something, say a piano you’re trying to roll onto a truck, you need to brace your feet against the ground—but how do you brace yourself when you’re trying to use magical force?”

  “Perhaps you have the wrong analogy,” Nirobus suggested. “Perhaps you need an anchor, not a backstop.”

  “Yes!” Matt lifted his head, hope rising again. “If I can throw the magical equivalent of a cable to someone in Merovence, he could pull me in—or at least anchor me so that my own efforts won’t push me away.”

  “An excellent thought!” Nirobus nodded. “But your ‘anchor’ would have to be a magician himself. Who do you know who could do it?”

  “Oh, that’s no problem—Saul! The Witch Doctor! He’s common to both universes—born in this one, same as I was, but happier in Merovence because he’s better suited to it!”

  “Again, the same as you are,” Nirobus murmured.

  “Yes!... What?”

  “This is a very interesting metaphor y
ou’ve constructed,” the older man said, amused. He waved a hand in a rolling motion. “Please go on. I take it you must establish some sort of contact with this witch doctor?”

  “Yes. If he knows what’s going on, he can be my anchor.” Matt frowned. “If it’s just a matter of my trying to push against magical inertia, or break through an enchanted wall.”

  “What else could it be?”

  “Now that I think of it,” Matt said slowly, “I remember the magical force gathering around me, then abruptly disappearing, as though it had been deliberately canceled.”

  “Do you really!”

  Matt eyed the stranger warily. “You wouldn’t be a psychiatrist, would you?”

  Nirobus held up both gloved hands, as though reaching for the sky. “Innocent.”

  “Well, somebody isn’t. Whatever sorcerer is trying to strand me here is keeping a magical eye on me, just waiting for me to try to get home, then countering my spells, presumably with his own.”

  Nirobus shook his head sadly. “If I were a psychiatrist...”

  “Don’t worry, it’s all hypothetical.”

  “Very reassuring. But, young man, do you really think your hypothetical sorcerer could spare all his time for surveillance of you?”

  Matt caught the unspoken question: Do you really think you’re that important? Well, he knew he was, in Merovence, but had to admit to himself that there was a snag in the idea. “Good point. If he wants me out of the way, it’s because I’d be an obstacle to some major project he’s got going.”

  “Could he assign a minion to surveillance of you?”

  “Maybe,” Matt said slowly, “but why would the minion let me build up some power before he stopped me? Wouldn’t he have cut me off at the first sign of trying to return?”

  “Slammed the door in your face?” Nirobus frowned. “Perhaps he didn’t have the power himself, but had to call his master.”