by J. S. Morin
“Hope I’m not bothering you,” Lloyd said as he slipped inside and shut the door. The room was Carl’s museum to himself. Military medals hung on the wall between a plastic poster for a holovid action movie and a small flatvid that cycled through pictures of Carl on various worlds—many included him in his naval uniform. A collection of exotic empty liquor bottles shared space with a less exotic collection of full ones. Leaning against one another in a corner were a guitar case and a scabbarded sword that he sincerely doubted Carl knew the first thing about wielding. Lloyd absorbed this all in seconds, and it fit with what Rhiannon had told him about her brother and what he’d observed personally in the few days he’d known Carl.
“No more than usual,” Carl said, poking at something on the datapad he held as he lay on his bed fully dressed. “What’s on your mind, bro?” Carl raised an apologetic hand. “Hope you don’t mind me calling you ‘bro,’ but Rhi’s got you dead to rights, far as I can tell.”
“’Lloyd’ is fine, actually,” Lloyd replied. “But you’re going to call me whatever you want, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Carl admitted. “But don’t let it bother you. So what did bring you by?” He continued to fiddle with the datapad. Certain soft, merry noises it made led Lloyd to suspect he was playing a game as they conversed.
“I was hoping you could settle a bet between me and Rhi,” Lloyd replied.
“I’m not usually one for arbitration of wagers,” Carl said. He frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think most people who know me value my impartiality or my innate sense of fair play.”
Lloyd smirked. “That’s actually very near the wager we made. Rhiannon thinks you can lie to anyone and get away with it. I think you’re just a gifted con man who picks easy marks. But I don’t like losing in front of her—you know what a sore winner she is—so I was hoping we could settle this privately.”
“What, you got a truth scanner or something? Rhi pack one of those in the Camaro?”
“No, much simpler than that,” Lloyd said. “I didn’t go into law for the money or the prestige—God knows I get enough jokes at my expense for that to ring true. I’ve always felt I could take my measure of a man and tell whether he was honest or a liar. I’ll defend an innocent man to my grave, and I’d like to think I can tell the difference.”
“So… a liar’s shootout, with you playing goal?” Carl asked.
“Something like that,” Lloyd agreed. “I want you to look me in the eye and tell me five things, only two of which are true. If I can tell which two, I win. I guess wrong, and Rhi wins.”
“What’re the stakes?”
“I think in the interest of that vaunted impartiality, you’d be better off not knowing until we determine the winner,” Lloyd replied. “I don’t want you to lie about which answers were lies, just to make one of us the winner.”
“Fair point,” Carl said, laying his datapad aside and standing across from Lloyd. He walked up until the two of them were almost nose to nose and looked Lloyd square in the eye. He made it so easy that Lloyd waited to hear him out, snagging him just gently enough that he wouldn’t blink or turn away.
“Here you go,” Carl said. “I’ve got feathers and can fly. I enjoy military dress uniforms, opera, and banjo music, preferably all combined into one stage performance. I didn’t notice what you did just now with the whole looking a wizard in the eyes bullshit. You don’t know who you’re dealing with here. And last but not least, you and my sister are through…’bro.’”
It was a quaint and flippant little speech, full of the usual empty bravado that seemed to pervade every story he’d heard about the erstwhile starfighter pilot. But one thing was true amid the snark and vitriol—Lloyd was having no easy time trapping Carl’s mind.
It ducked and dodged into little corners of his skull; it disguised itself and hid among old memories. Time and again Lloyd thought he’d found the true Carl Ramsey, only to find that Carl had slipped the net and thrown a false trail. First, Carl was in a pilot’s uniform, mixing with a crowd of similarly dressed officers in a packed briefing room. Once Lloyd had cornered that one, another appeared, this time seated at a table cluttered with cards and poker chips, surrounded by other players. After that, a Carl in a business suit, one in a ludicrous wide-brimmed hat, and another in a battered brown leather jacket. None came easily. Some wheedled. Some ran. Others hid or fought. Eventually Lloyd caught on that there were fewer than he first imagined, changing disguises to try to throw him off the trail.
Lloyd secured the false Carls as he caught them, tucking them away in mental prisons that matched their attire and demeanor. On the off chance one really was the true Carl, he needed to hold them someplace where they could believe they fit the surroundings.
It was an exhausting chase, but in the end five different versions of Carl Ramsey found themselves trapped within Lloyd’s mind. The living, breathing host of those minds, scoured of its overcrowding inhabitants, stared blankly from vacant eyes.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Lloyd asked the mindless shell. He gave Carl a shove and toppled him to the floor, where a pile of unwashed laundry cushioned his fall. A pity, really. He deserved a concussion or a broken arm for the trouble he’d made. Lloyd was sweating with the effort of the chase.
But it might have been a worthy warm-up for the true test ahead. The rest of the crew had succumbed so easily that Lloyd might have been unprepared for the resistance yet to come.
# # #
Lloyd sat on the couch, hands folded in his lap. He should have been calm, secure in his abilities. Years of training and preparation had gone into this moment. But the nagging fears wouldn’t subside in the face of logic. He was after a killer, the worst the Convocation had produced in centuries—perhaps the most notorious fugitive since the Great Emergence and wizards living openly among arcane-blind humans. The fact that Mort still roamed free was a testament to both the number of bounty-seekers he had slain and the unwillingness of the Convocation to involve ARGO authorities in arresting wizards.
The minutes passed in silence, uncounted. There was no chrono visible from his seat, and Lloyd wasn’t the sort to carry one of his own. At one point, the refrigerator came to its senses, made a few unpleasant chugging noises, and resumed its accustomed hum. Lloyd twitched a rueful grin in the machine’s direction. It was a point of pride that his mental magics were subtle enough that he could work them without any but the most sensitive of scientific devices failing in his presence. He had disrupted the refrigerator because he wished it, not because he was clumsy or lazy.
Patience could be a difficult war to wage. It left Lloyd alone with his thoughts. The people he’d learned from, the ones he had lost along the way. The unspoken brotherhood of the Convocation’s unwillingness to open their purse strings wide enough to set half the galaxy’s wizards on Mort’s trail. Perhaps they knew better. Perhaps they understood that the one who would overcome the mighty Mordecai The Brown wouldn’t do it for money. Money could drive a man to destruction—and in this case it already had—but it rarely gave the focus and devotion that a righteous cause could engender. Terras could come from other sources, but justice was a sole supplier.
As Lloyd wandered the paths of his own musings, a door opened. The door. There was only one other person on the ship in any condition to be walking around under his own power.
“Greetings, Mordecai The Brown,” Lloyd said, standing to address the wizard. Mort was slovenly as usual and didn’t help his appearance by walking around in grubby socks. But the hobo sorcerer act wasn’t going to distract Lloyd from the merlin within. So many non-wizards threw that term around as an insult. A merlin, to them, was a dilettante, a dabbler, a wizard who lacked focus and direction. But in an era of specialization, a merlin—a true merlin, that is—was a rare specimen whose talents were not hemmed in by categorization. Mordecai The Brown was an expert in elemental magics—thunder and fire from the olden schools of wizardry—but also a notorious gravitation master. He enchanted tra
nslator earrings for his fellow crewmen like they were whittled toys and not an arduous piece of arcane smithing. Finding weaknesses in his repertoire had been a task years in the researching.
“Awfully formal tonight, eh, Lloyd?” Mort said. He peered around the common room, eyes flitting more often than was subtle toward Esper’s closed door. “On the outs with the missus-to-be or something? What’s with the moping around by yourself? At least watch a holo, maybe.”
“We’re going to have a little talk, you and I,” Lloyd said. He could feel his chest rising and falling, but his hands weren’t shaking. The tremor he feared his voice might betray in him was nowhere to be found.
“Okie dokie,” Mort said. “I’m just waiting around, anyway.”
“Esper is indisposed for the evening,” Lloyd said with a flicker of a grin. It was no time to get cocky. “As is the rest of the crew.”
“Oooookay,” Mort said, stepping past Lloyd without taking his eyes off him. He headed in the direction of the fridge. “What’s gotten into you, Lloyd?”
“Mordecai The Brown, I am Lloyd Bernard Arnold. As a member in good standing with the Convocation, it is my duty to inform you that you are under arrest. You will be returned to Convocation jurisdiction for debriefing and trial. If you come peacefully, no harm will come to your friends.”
Mort froze. The scowl that issued forth from beneath his furrowed brow made Lloyd swallow back his bravado. “You were funny there, up ‘til the end. What’ve you done?”
The fugitive wizard took a step toward Lloyd, and for the first time, a key element of his plan fell into question. Would Mordecai The Brown—a loyal friend by all accounts, despite his other flaws—simply kill him and doom the crew? Perhaps Lloyd’s preparations needed to be spelled out more clearly. “I’ve got them all.” He tapped the side of his head with a finger. “Up here. Locked away. Safe and sound. Bodies breathing, but nobody home. Intelligas?”
“Any of them at least put up a fight?” Mort asked.
Lloyd got a chuckle out of that. “You’re wondering if your apprentice acquitted herself? Not really. I had a hard time keeping a straight face. She was worried about me looking into her eyes. But Carl surprised me. Something isn’t right in that guy’s head. I trapped five separate incarnations of him, but eventually he was stuffed into little fantasy worlds of my own making… for safekeeping.”
Mort nodded ominously. “I see. So, let me piece this back together to the beginning, back to front. You just kidnapped the crew so I don’t turn you into a living torch. There was no commotion, so no one caught you at it, which means you planned this out and you’re one subtle sonofabitch to do it right under my nose without me noticing. Kudos on that part. To get us alone on the ship, you needed to get us fleeing and get caught up in whatever mess we’d gotten into.”
Lloyd smirked. “I have to admit, that part fell into my lap. Carl made things so easy.”
“But you had to put yourself in our path, which means figuring out a place we’d be. We might not be the most careful bunch, but we don’t go back to the same trough often. So you staked out family. You staked out Rhiannon and got yourself involved. For that alone, I ought to skin you alive, you varmint, you gigolo, you loathsome exploitationist.”
“But you can’t without killing her,” Lloyd reminded him. He was fishing for sharks and needed to keep his bait in Mort’s field of vision.
“So what was it? The money? Those fools back in Boston Prime finally bump the reward again?” Mort stared at Lloyd a moment. “No. This is more effort than money is worth. Did I kill your father or something? An older brother maybe? Come on, what’s your grievance with me?”
“Who needs a grievance?” Lloyd asked. “You violated the sanctity of the Plundered Tomes, stole and destroyed a priceless artifact of a bygone age, fled your just punishment, and have been murdering every agent of the Convocation’s justice you’ve crossed paths with. This is justice long overdue.”
“And so this monster of biblical mien and fearsome aspect is to be held at bay by what?” Mort asked. “His conscience? If I am who you think I am, what says I don’t just crisp you like a campfire marshmallow, or crush you into a ball of meat and gristle with a planetary gravitational force centered on your spleen? You didn’t think this through, did you, Skippy?”
“Kill me and you’re the only one left alive on the ship,” Lloyd pointed out with a grin. “You’d never figure out how to operate this boat before you starved to death—if you didn’t ruin the ship outright in killing me. I’ve heard the stories about systems you’ve fouled accidentally. Could you really kill me without resorting to magics that might turn this virtual wreck of a ship into an actual one?”
“I’d be willing to wager I could,” Mort replied, cracking his knuckles. “But I also hate losing, and killing five of my friends and a girl I love like a niece feels a lot like losing. I might even feel bad dooming that asshole mechanic, too, when it comes right down to it.”
“Then you’re going to have to come inside to rescue them,” Lloyd said, crossing his arms. It was a foolproof plan. Mordecai The Brown was a doomed man. His only choices were spite, and a quixotic attempt to defeat Lloyd in the one area he knew he had Mort bested. Most would-be wizard hunters hadn’t gone to the trouble of searching Mort’s transcripts from his years at Oxford. But Lloyd had, and Mort’s grades in mental magic were abysmal.
“Looking that way,” Mort agreed with a grim nod. He looked in the refrigerator and popped open the beer he withdrew.
Lloyd scoffed. “Liquid courage, or does Mordecai The Brown need a little mental nudge toward belief in his own mind?” Wizardly performance enhancers usually ran more toward the psychedelic, but beer could give a boost of self-confidence if nothing else.
“Alcohol’s never done me much good, magic-wise,” Mort replied. “I’m just thirsty, and figured doing a proper job of this might take me a while.” He chugged the can in one long, noisy series of gulps, ending in a gasp. “Ah, that’ll do. So maybe I won’t be at the tip-top of my game. But I drank it anyway. Want to know why? Because fuck you, Lloyd! That’s why.”
Mort tossed the empty can over his shoulder to clatter on the common room floor. Lloyd backed away as Mort stalked the distance separating them. Up close, Mort was nearly a head taller than him. The elder wizard grabbed Lloyd by the collar and pressed his face close, angling down to look him straight in the eyes.
“They always warn you never to look a strange wizard in the eye,” Mort said through gritted teeth. Lloyd shied from the heavy musk of beer on his breath. “It’s time you found out why.”
# # #
When Esper awoke, she was held fast by the neck, forearms, and calves in an upright position. A gentle bobbing motion told her that she was being supported by anti-grav repulsors. Trying to piece together the events that brought her to this predicament led to dead ends in her memory. She was outdoors, moving forward under no volition of her own. The sky was a peculiar shade of deep blue, with a reddish moon hanging low in the sky at the edge of her field of vision. Footsteps. Boots crunched in gravel to either side of her.
“What—?”
That was as far as she got in asking about her circumstances before an electric pulse shocked her into silence. Blobs of color swam before her eyes, and she slumped down until the collar was tight under her jawbone. But that was as far as she fell. Her arms were clamped into some form of cold, metal restraint that pressed her forearms tight together and kept her from moving her fingers more than a wiggle. Her legs from the shins down were likewise encased.
“The prisoner woke up,” said a voice just outside her peripheral vision, filtered through the speakers of a tactical helm. The collar was contoured to prevent her from turning her head to see the speaker.
“Well, no shit, Kirkland,” said a voice from the other side, similarly distorted. “She just damn near shocked herself back unconscious.” A gloved hand cuffed Esper upside the head. “Keep it quiet if you know what’s good for you.”
“Please, I—” but another shock brought muscular convulsions and tears to her eyes.
“Or you can keep being stupid and fry yourself,” the voice to her left said. “For someone getting off easy, you’ve sure got a death wish.”
There was a building ahead, a lone structure in a barren field, but it was beautiful. Tall, dark stone carved with Gothic motifs, the cathedral stood as a bastion of salvation, and her captors were towing her toward it. A glint of sunset light caught the bell tower, making for Esper a lighthouse of hope. Hope for answers. Hope for forgiveness for whatever she’d done—and she had sinned so much of late. And most of all, hope for respite from the discomforts inflicted by the immobilizing device that confined her.
The last thing she could remember was talking to Lloyd, then… something. She didn’t recall any of it, but her imagination worked to construct a plausible scenario. There had been an accident, or maybe an ambush. Somehow ARGO had found the Mobius and captured them. Esper must have been tranquilized—the side effects probably included short-term memory loss.
Despite her predicament, Esper felt a burning need. She knew, in her heart, that she had it within her to escape. Squeezing her eyes shut, she reached deep inside for the calm, quiet place of self-assurance that the universe would heed. I am stronger than these restraints. The metal cannot bite into my flesh. The shocks should flow around me, not through me. This has all been a terrible mistake and should be corrected. It wasn’t Mort’s “grab the universe by the throat” method, but this was her most effective form of argument—polite, well reasoned, and not asking much of anything besides herself.
But just then, a strange thing didn’t happen. One should have. She’d made a cogent argument, as far as arguing with the laws of creation went. Clenching her jaw and flaring her nostrils, she tried again, this time using a few of Mort’s incredibly ancient cuss words—silently, of course. But nothing happened.
“What the—”