The Reign of the Brown Magician

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was perfect. It was, Pel thought, really almost perfect. It wasn’t at all like that first night with the simulacrum of Nancy. It wasn’t like any night ever before, not even their honeymoon.

At first Nancy had asked about Rachel-Pel hadn’t told her where Rachel was, or that she was dead; he had merely told her that their daughter was safe, that he would explain everything later.

She had still wondered, in a half-hearted way, but she hadn’t argued too strenuously.

And she had asked where they were, and Pel had told her they were in Faerie, but it was all right, Shadow was dead and they were safe, he would explain it all later.

And she had asked about the glow, the strange colors flickering around him, and he had told her that it was magic, but it was under control, he would explain later.

And she had asked about his beard and hair, and he told her he’d been too busy to shave lately, but he’d clean himself up when he had a moment.

And she had asked how she got there, and he said she had been unconscious for a long time, but she was all right now.

And then she had run out of questions and he had taken her in his arms, and it had been damn near perfect.

At first.

But then he woke up beside her, and looked at her sleeping there, and he thought it over.

She shouldn’t have been aware of any long separation. She had died just a dozen yards away from him, aboard that ship; they had been together until just hours before. Yet she had acted as if they were reunited after months apart.

They were, but how would she know?

Was it just his own altered appearance that had let her know? That shouldn’t have been enough, he thought-it wouldn’t have had the emotional impact she seemed to have felt. Had she been somehow aware while she was dead? Had he snatched her back from Heaven, perhaps?

Pel had never really believed in Heaven, and he still didn’t-but he had never believed in a lot of things he had seen for himself of late.

And she hadn’t argued with him about anything, not really. She hadn’t insisted on knowing where Rachel was, or who was looking after her.

Well, there must have been something of a shock, going from being raped aboard a spaceship to waking up in a magician’s castle.

And she hadn’t mentioned being raped, but all the survivors of Emerald Princess had said she was raped before the pirates killed her.

There hadn’t been any physical evidence that Pel could see, but after all, the body had been in such terrible condition that he wouldn’t have noticed anything whether it had been there or not, and why would the others have lied?

So she had been raped-and how could she go so willingly from that to her husband’s bed? It didn’t seem right, somehow.

That first fetch he had restored had screamed at the memory of what had happened to him; Nancy hadn’t. Why not?

Pel frowned, and told himself that he was worrying about nothing, trying to ruin his own happiness with all these niggling little worries. Maybe years spent as Shadow’s fetch were far more horrible than what Nancy had lived through. Maybe she didn’t remember being raped; he hadn’t asked her about it, so he didn’t really know. Maybe she had blocked out those last few minutes. Or maybe that was why she had been eager enough to not ask more about Rachel, maybe she had wanted something clean and good to wipe away the memory.

This was Nancy. She had known his name when she first woke up. She had asked about Rachel, even if she hadn’t insisted. She had responded just about the way Nancy always had, nothing had been wrong or strange-until now, until he sat here thinking too much.

Had she been a little slow to react to things, a little detached?

Well, she had been dead.

He got up and had the matrix drape a robe about him, leaving Nancy undisturbed.

There wasn’t anything wrong with her.

There wasn’t, he told himself as he walked down the stone corridor, finding his way in his own light, anything wrong with her.

But somewhere in the back of his head he remembered something Shadow had said before she died.

The exact words were hard to recall, given her archaic phrasing, but he thought he had it. “I can instill therein a semblance of life, indistinguishable by any normal means from any mortal born,” she had said, “yet some certain spark is lacking.”

She had been referring to the ability of a resurrected person to use magic, to hold a matrix, Pel reminded himself. Nancy could never be a magician-but who cared?

That was all Shadow had meant, Pel told himself.

It was still Nancy. She was alive again.

And in an hour or so, Rachel would be, too.

* * * *

His Imperial Majesty George VIII drummed his fingers on a six-hundred-year-old table and considered his disgraced General Secretary, delivered directly from the spaceport to the palace and rushed hastily through security.

“Bucky, whatever were you thinking of?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you mean, your Majesty,” Sheffield replied uneasily.

“We mean why did you persist in antagonizing this Brown person? You know better than that.”

“I’m not sure I do, your Majesty,” Sheffield said. “I did what seemed best to me.”

“We’re disappointed, then. Why in the world didn’t you just give him his dead wife back? What possible harm could that have done?”

“I am not quite sure, your Majesty, and I preferred to err on the side of caution. Secretary Markham seemed to believe that the so-called ‘magic’ at Mr. Brown’s disposal might be able to make some use of the woman’s remains.”

“And what possible use could be worse for us than getting Brown furiously angry?” the Emperor asked. “And not only that, Bucky, but you lied to the man-you promised delivery, then balked. He did everything you asked-do you realize he ordered his entire network of spies to swear loyalty to us? To us, personally? That was more than anyone asked, and entirely his own idea, and he didn’t even bother to mention it. The man was being as friendly as he could be, and how did we respond?”

“Um,” Sheffield said. “But your Majesty, he…the Empire cannot afford to appear weak.”

“Oh, nonsense. The Empire isn’t weak, so it doesn’t really matter how we appear. Except that it’s much easier to stab someone from behind, and an enemy will never turn his back, while a friend won’t give it a second thought, so we should have done all we could to appear friendly. We should have turned over the bodies immediately.”

Sheffield swallowed. “So Secretary Markham came to believe,” he said.

After all, just because his own career was ruined, that didn’t mean that he had to drag innocents down with him.

“And what did Albright, your other partner in crime, think?”

“I’m not sure he voiced an opinion, your Majesty. Marshal Albright quite properly thinks in terms of means, rather than ends, as a military man should.”

“A good soldier knows when to offer suggestions, Bucky, even if he doesn’t try to force them on anyone,” the Emperor said gently. “It may be time for Marshal Albright to retire honorably.”

That wasn’t so bad, really, Sheffield thought.

“General Hart will be court-martialled,” the Emperor said. “John Bascombe’s already up on a charge of treason, and he’s guilty, but I don’t think we’ll hang him, as he’s not so much dangerous as he is stupid. The telepaths identify those two as responsible for a great deal of the bumbling prior to Mr. Brown’s ascension, and some of the mishaps afterward.” He smiled. “The rest, we’re afraid, was largely your own doing-well-intentioned, but wrong.”

“The telepaths, your Majesty?”

“Oh, yes, Bucky-there’s nothing in the world more useful in untangling a mess like this than the network of telepaths. We wish we had a million of them, not just a few hundred.”

Sheffield shifted uneasily. He wanted to say something about the untrustworthiness of the mutants for anything beyond interrogation and long-distance communication, but he couldn’t think how to phrase it properly.

“You don’t like them, do you?” the Emperor asked. “The greater fool you, then. Don’t you know they’re just people? They want to be liked and appreciated, and most people hate their guts-they must be miserable. All you have to do is like them a little, and they’ll love you in return. And we do like them.” He grinned. “They could tell if we were faking, after all.” The smile faded.

“And right now,” he said, “we can’t think of anyone better to run things until they’re straightened out than the telepaths.”

He paused, then added, “Under our own direction, of course.”

* * * *

Rachel sat up and blinked.

This time Pel had suppressed the visible portion of the matrix in advance; he sat there looking as ordinary as he could contrive to look. He’d combed out his hair and trimmed both his hair and his beard somewhat, but he hadn’t managed to shave.

He hadn’t shaved for several days before he and Rachel were separated, so that shouldn’t be too strange, and otherwise he thought he looked pretty much as Rachel would remember him.

Except for the robe, anyway; he hadn’t bothered to find any Earth-style clothing. And they were in a bare, candle-lit stone chamber that wasn’t terribly friendly looking.

“Where am I, Daddy?” Rachel said.

“You’re in a place called Faerie, honey,” Pel replied.

“You’re dressed funny,” she said. Then she looked down and squealed, “And I’m not dressed at all!”

“You’ve been sick, Rachel, very sick,” Pel said. He hesitated, then asked, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Rachel looked up at him, thought for moment, then said solemnly, “The bad man squeezing my neck.” She added, “It hurt a lot.”

Pel swallowed. “The bad man is gone,” he said. “The soldiers in the purple uniforms came and took him away, and he’s gone forever. But he’d hurt you so bad it took magic to fix it, so I came here and learned to do magic, and here you are, all better.”

“Do I have to stay here?”

“No,” Pel said, smiling as he tried to keep his eyes from tearing, “no, you can go home if you want.”

“What about you and Mommy? Will you go home? Is Mommy all right?”

“We’re both fine, honey,” Pel said.

“She isn’t dead?”

“No, she isn’t dead,” Pel said. He managed to keep himself from adding, “Not any shy;more.” Rachel wouldn’t have understood.

“Can I see her?”

“Sure,” Pel said. “Come on.”

* * * *

“So he’s got the bodies back,” Johnston remarked as he led Amy and Prossie down the front walk of Miletti’s suburban home. “Think he can really resurrect them?”

“Shadow said she could raise the dead,” Amy replied.

“But Pel isn’t Shadow,” Prossie pointed out. “He’s got the power, but does he know how to use it?”

“You sound like someone in a bad movie, saying that,” Johnston said. He hastily added, “No offense meant.”

“Pel obviously thinks he can do it,” Amy said.

“Or at least hopes he can,” Prossie corrected her. “And for all we know, Shadow was lying in the first place.”

Johnston opened the car door for the women.

“I don’t think she was lying,” Amy said, as Prossie climbed in. “But I think she said something about the resurrected people not being quite the same.”

“Like in Pet Sematary?” Johnston asked. “They come back evil, or something?”

Amy shook her head, then seated herself. “I don’t think it was anything like that; just they’re a bit less lively, or something.”

Johnston shrugged. “Well, it still sounds like a happy ending to me, then,” he said.

He slammed the car door and circled around to the driver’s side.

* * * *

Pel watched as Nancy and Rachel embraced. He had wiped away his tears, but was still grinning so broadly that his jaws hurt.

They didn’t cry, he noticed. Neither of them did. They smiled, but that was all.

But then, he reminded himself, they didn’t know they’d been dead. Nancy had seen Rachel alive and well just minutes before the pirates hauled Nancy out of the storage locker and raped her; Rachel had been safe with her father the whole time, for all Nancy knew.

And Rachel didn’t really understand what had happened to her, or to her mother.

Still, he had somehow expected weeping.

Nancy looked up, and asked, “Pel? Are you ready to explain what’s going on?”

Pel hesitated.

“I’d rather not, just yet,” he said.

“If Rachel weren’t here?”

Reluctantly, Pel nodded.

“I’ll get Susan to keep an eye on her,” he said.

“Susan? Susan Nguyen?”

Pel nodded again.

“She’s here?”

“Yes.”

“What about the others? Ted and Raven and Amy and the rest?”

“Ted and Amy are back home on Earth,” Pel said. “Raven is dead. Most of them are dead, and the rest have gone home; it’s just Susan and I who are still here.”

“Why?” Nancy asked.

“Why what?”

“Why are the two of you still here?”

“I had to get you two fixed up,” Pel said. “And Susan stayed to help, I guess. I offered to send her home, but she didn’t want to go.”

“That’s odd,” Nancy said. “You offered to send her home? What about Elani?”

“Elani’s dead,” Pel said. “I’m a wizard now.”

Nancy stared at him. “Go get Susan,” she said. “You have a lot of explaining to do, Pel Brown.”

Pel stepped to the doorway, but that was just for appearance’s sake; he used the matrix to summon Susan with a gentle tug.

She had been waiting down the hall, as he had told her to do; she was there within seconds.

“Go with Susan, Rachel,” Pel said, giving his daughter a gentle shove. “She’ll try to find you some proper clothes.”

Rachel looked up and said nothing. She was still wrapped in the crude shroud she had been buried in.

Together, silently, Susan and Rachel left the room, and Pel turned to his wife, who sat up in bed, wrapped in a sheet.

“I was dead, wasn’t I?” Nancy said. “I remember that man pointing that raygun at me and pulling the trigger, and I remember this incredible pain. I wasn’t just unconscious, was I?”

“You were dead,” Pel admitted. “For months.”

“And Rachel?”

Pel nodded. “She was killed a few weeks later. Strangled.”

“And Susan?”

“Susan, too. Shadow stopped her heart.”

“The others?”

Pel shook his head. “Nobody else who’s still alive.”

“So if we died…well, what about you? Are you dead, too? Is this some sort of afterlife?”

“No, I didn’t die,” he said. “There were a couple of times I wanted to die, or was certain I was about to, but I never did.”

“So what happened? How can you be a wizard? Did you make a deal with the devil, or something? Or with Shadow?”

“I’ll explain,” Pel said. He took a deep breath, and began.

He told her how Emerald Princess had been captured by pirates under the direction of one of Shadow’s agents, how the passengers and crew had been sold as slaves on Zeta Leo III, how he had worked in the mines until the Imperial task force came and liberated them all-and found Rachel dead.

He explained how the Empire had sent the survivors back into Shadow’s world on a suicide mission to get rid of them, how some of them had made their way cross-country to Shadow’s fortress, gradually realizing that that was what Shadow had wanted them to do, because she wanted someone to serve as a placeholder, keeping her magic for her, while she explored the Galactic Empire.

He told Nancy how Shadow had casually killed anyone who displeased her, reducing Raven and Singer and Valadrakul to ash, and had settled on Pel as, as he bitterly put it, “her human bookmark.”

And he described how Prossie had taken a blaster from one of the dead soldiers and had followed Shadow into the Empire and shot her dead.

He didn’t mention that it had been his idea.

“Shadow was just an old woman?” Nancy asked.

“As human as I am,” Pel replied.

He went on to explain that he had sent Amy, Ted, and Prossie to Earth, because Prossie had broken some law and couldn’t go back to the Empire. He had stayed in Faerie to see if he could restore Nancy and Rachel to life, and after various difficulties, he had managed it.

He didn’t mention his abortive attempts to introduce democracy and social justice to Shadow’s world; he only told her he had wanted to resurrect her-and, of course, Rachel.

Susan, he explained, had been for practice.

“And here we are,” he said.

“What about Raven?” she asked. “Are you going to bring him back next?”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Pel said. “I don’t think there’s enough left.”

“What about any of the others?”

Pel shook his head. “I’m not God,” he said.

“But you brought me back, and Rachel, and Susan…”

“Susan was right there, and I needed to try, to see if I could do it,” Pel said. “And you and Rachel-I love you. I had to bring you back.”

“Oh,” she said.

Just that, flatly, and Pel felt slightly sick at the sound of it. “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Bring back everyone who dies? I’d never have time for anything else, and I’d never keep up, anyway. It’s not my responsibility.”

“I guess not,” she said. “So, what happens now?”

“Whatever you want,” Pel said. “We can go home to Earth, if you like, and just forget any of this ever happened-but if we do, we can’t ever come back here. When I leave Faerie, the matrix will come apart, and I’d never be able to restore it, and there won’t be anyone here to open portals for us.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Pel said. “Maybe not right away. I mean, there’s a lot we could do here first-we could see the world. It’s a big world, as big as our own, and I don’t know much about it.”

She nodded.

“Listen, do you want to get some clothes?” Pel asked. “I can open a portal back to Earth, and you could go get stuff for Rachel and yourself while I wait here.”

Nancy glanced down at herself. “That might be a good idea,” she said.

“Oh,” Pel said, remembering, “but you’d want to wear something-there’s this Air Force intelligence officer camped out in our basement.”

“Would he let me go upstairs?” Nancy asked.

“He ought to,” Pel said.

Nancy considered, then said, “I guess I won’t bother, yet.”

“All right.”

The conversation was becoming uncomfortable, and Pel wasn’t sure why. It didn’t feel right.

But why not? They were just talking, calmly discussing the situation…

And that was it. How could they be so calm? He had just brought Nancy back from the dead, turned a mutilated, months-old corpse back into his living, breathing wife-shouldn’t they both be laughing and crying and screaming?

And Nancy’s last memories…

“You said you remember dying? Being shot?”

Nancy nodded.

“Do you remember what happened…just before that?” Pel asked nervously.

“You mean being raped?”

Pel nodded silently.

“I remember,” she said quietly.

“Do you…do you want to talk about it?”

She shook her head. “It’s over.”

“They’re dead,” Pel said suddenly, the words rushing from his mouth unwanted. “The Empire tracked them down and hanged them, hanged everyone involved, all the pirates, they’ve been dead for months.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nancy said.

And that, Pel knew, just wasn’t right.

He didn’t say anything then. He still tried to tell himself he was imagining it.

But half an hour later the real Nancy encountered her simulacrum in the passage.

She didn’t scream, or even start; she simply turned to Pel and asked, “Who’s this?”

“I tried several ways to bring you back before I got it right,” Pel said.

“Oh. Is that really what I look like?” She eyed the duplicate with mild interest.

The duplicate looked back, complacent and smiling.

Pel looked back and forth between the two of them.

The real Nancy hadn’t screamed, hadn’t shouted at him, hadn’t shuddered. She didn’t even ask if he had bedded the simulacrum, either directly or merely hinting.

Something was very, very wrong.