The Reign of the Brown Magician

Chapter Twelve

The State Department man and the deputy from the Imperial Department of Science were chatting quietly on one corner of Amy Jewell’s patio, the Imperial’s purple space suit an odd contrast with the Earthman’s gray jacket. Major Johnston had been carefully not listening to them even before he got into the argument with the newly-arrived FBI agent-in-charge, but he did wonder just what they were saying.

The first official contact between the governments of the United States of America and the Galactic Empire was taking place just a few feet away, and here he was in a stupid jurisdictional dispute.

“The Bureau dumped it on us back in April,” Johnston pointed out.

“An error,” the agent insisted. “We’re correcting that.”

“Seems to me that it’s not really your concern any more than it’s an Air Force matter, at this point. State and the CIA might have a claim, but why you? There’s a spacecraft involved, which would mean either Air Force or NASA, but no one’s committed any federal crimes. And we do have seniority here.”

“Domestic espionage is a matter for the Bureau,” the FBI man argued.

Johnston had been keeping half his attention on watching Lieutenant Austin and his two men climb the ladder; now he dropped the argument completely to watch as Spaceman Farmer-a name and rank combination that Earthpeople found funny, but the Imperials apparently didn’t-vanished into thin air upon reaching the top. Farmer’s bulky purple space suit just disappeared, as if erased.

Barrington followed, and Austin was nearing the top when an AP distracted Johnston.

“Sir, there are reporters out front.”

“What reporters?” Johnston asked, turning away.

“Heyworth, from the Post.”

“Any video? Photographers?”

“Not that I saw, sir.”

Johnston nodded.

He’d known it wouldn’t stay quiet forever; everything leaked eventually. In this particular case he hadn’t even tried for real secrecy; relying on normal discretion and the high unbelievability factor had seemed like a better idea. The nut theories that had been circulating for decades about a government cover-up of alien spaceships had been about the best protection he could have asked for, and classifying anything would only have made people suspect that there was something real this time.

But with the FBI and State involved, and the four psychic contacts, something had to leak, and sooner or later someone would check it out. Johnston did wonder whether it had been the paranoid Miletti or the publicity-hungry Aldridge who called Heyworth-they seemed the most likely candidates.

If it was either of them, it was probably Aldridge; Miletti would more likely have just called more lawyers.

“Should I allow them back here, sir?”

Johnston glanced up in time to see Austin’s purple-booted feet disappear. “I don’t think we can legally stop them,” he said. “You tell Heyworth that this is private property, and he’s trespassing at his own risk, but if that doesn’t keep him out, then let him past.” He wished he’d brought Ms. Jewell along, so she could order the reporters away, but he hadn’t thought of it; she was, as far as he knew, in the hotel in Crystal City, a good forty minutes away.

The AP turned and headed back around the side of the house; Johnston watched him go, then glanced at the diplomats.

They were shaking hands; then the State Department man watched as the Imperial representative turned and trotted out toward the rope ladder, lifting his bubble helmet into place as he went.

Johnston blinked.

“If we had our men in place here,” the FBI man said, “I think we could find a way to keep these reporters out.”

“Oh, I could find a way,” Johnston answered. “For awhile. If I told the APs to keep ’em out, they would, legal or not, but why antagonize the press? They’ll find out sooner or later, and if we treat them nicely maybe they’ll make us look good in their reports.”

“We could order them not to interfere in an ongoing investigation.”

“And you think that would work?”

The Imperial envoy was climbing the ladder, and Johnston was puzzled and uneasy. He had had the distinct impression, when he had ordered Austin and the others released, that this deputy was supposed to serve as the Imperial representative here until an ambassador could be sent-so why was he climbing back up there?

“It’s within the Bureau’s authority,” the FBI man said.

“Okay, fine,” Johnston said; he could hear footsteps, and glanced over to see Heyworth coming around the corner, first staring up at the unsupported top of the dangling rope ladder, then at the space suited figure clambering upward. “Fine; you tell Mr. Heyworth that.” He turned away and headed for the State Department man, leaving the FBI agent to deal with the reporter.

The man from State was calmly watching as the Imperial ascended.

“What’s going on?” Johnston asked.

“Hmm?” The man in the gray suit looked mildly startled.

“What’s going on?” Johnston repeated. “Where’s he going?”

“Oh, he’s just going back to get his staff,” the State Department rep replied. “He wasn’t sure how many he could bring, what sort of facilities we would have.”

“But he’ll be back?”

“Oh, yes, of course. He’ll be right back. Ten minutes, he said.”

Johnston frowned, then turned to watch as the Imperial climbed. He was about fifty feet up now, and climbing fast.

Heyworth was trying to shove past the FBI man to get closer to the ladder, and the FBI man was holding him back; the AP had followed Heyworth and was hanging back, standing by the back door of the house.

“You,” Johnston called, “get me a radio.”

“Yessir,” the AP said, with a salute. He trotted away.

Johnston watched the Imperial climb.

He didn’t like this; once that man was back through the warp the Empire would be free of any commitment to Earth. The hostages had been freed-Johnston didn’t mind admitting to himself that Austin and the others had been hostages, though he would have vehemently denied any such thing if it had been suggested by anyone else. The crew of Ruthless was long gone. Prossie Thorpe was in exile.

Of course, the Empire was perfectly willing to abandon their people anyway; they’d demonstrated that before. Maybe it didn’t mean anything that in a few moments they would have none of their people on Earth.

But Johnston didn’t like it.

He couldn’t do anything about it without possibly creating an international-interdimensional!-incident, but he didn’t like it.

Ten minutes, the State Department man said.

The AP returned with the radio when the Department of Science deputy was a little over halfway up the long climb.

Johnston got through to the people he wanted at about the three-fourths point.

“Listen, that copter we had on standby,” he said, “get it in the air and get it up here. Right now.”

He didn’t really listen to the acknowledgement.

Heyworth had stopped arguing; he was standing where he was, watching the diplomat climb, just as Johnston and the State rep were. The FBI man was watching Heyworth.

The Imperial reached the top and vanished; the State man clapped his hands together and said, “Well! He should be back in a moment; shall we have a drink while we wait? I’m sure there must be something around here.” He seemed to notice Heyworth for the first time, and frowned slightly.

Johnston paid no attention; he was staring at the ladder.

Heyworth turned to answer the man in the gray suit, the FBI man turned to follow the reporter, the AP stationed by the ladder had glanced away, so only Johnston saw the first jerk as the ladder moved.

“Damn it,” he exclaimed, as he dashed across the patio. “Grab it!” he shouted at the AP.

The other three men turned and stared in astonishment as Johnston ran across Amy’s back lawn and took a wild leap upward, trying to catch the bottom rung of the rapidly-rising ladder. The AP had grabbed hold and was being yanked upward.

Johnston’s own grab missed, and barely kept himself from falling when he landed on the grass; by the time he could collect himself for another jump it was obviously far too late. The ladder was being hauled upward at a prodigious rate, and the AP had lost his nerve and dived free, to land rolling on the grass.

“God damn it!” Johnston shouted, as the ladder vanished upward into the space warp.

The State Department man stared at the empty air.

“But he said he’d be right back,” he said. “Maybe it’ll be right back!”

The FBI man didn’t say anything; Johnston snorted.

“What the hell is going on?” Heyworth demanded.

Johnston looked around at the others, and a sudden silence fell.

Heyworth was still badgering them, trying to get a response, when the Air Force helicopter arrived a few minutes later, to fly aimlessly back and forth through empty air where the space warp had been.

* * * *

Someone was entering the fortress, Pel could sense it, but right now he was too busy to care. Susan was ready, wearing a green dress that Pel hoped wouldn’t stand out in the Empire-he had seen very few civilians at Base One, and didn’t really remember what the women had worn on Psi Cassiopeia II or Zeta Leo III.

Not that he’d seen all that many women there, either.

He did remember the passengers on Emerald Princess, though, and he thought this green dress he’d magically created from fabric he’d found in one of Shadow’s workshops was a reasonable approximation of the gowns they wore. Simpler, perhaps-he hadn’t bothered with any sequins or lace-but along the same general lines, with its high waistline and long skirt.

Susan didn’t argue about the dress-but then, Susan didn’t seem to argue about anything any shy;more. After the one burst of uncharacteristic action that had gotten her killed she seemed to have become more passive and tolerant than ever.

She stood there in her seamless new dress, purse slung on her shoulder, a blaster tucked in the purse, and said nothing at all as Pel tried to locate the spot he wanted and open a portal.

He was seated on the throne, the matrix seething about him; Susan stood before him, waiting, eyes closed against the glare. The fetch who had brought the hairbrushes from Earth stood by the back wall, motionless, dead eyes untroubled by the brilliance of the magical display.

Pel could sense the simulacrum of Nancy, still waiting in the bedroom down the stone corridor; he could sense the other fetches scattered about the fortress, and the hundreds of homunculi and other creatures with which Shadow had peopled the place. Boudicca and Athelstan were eating in a kitchen two levels below. Since Pel’s takeover a handful of the local peasants had also made themselves at home in the fortress; he could feel their presence, as well. The thousands of monster slugs in the surrounding marsh were also detectable, tiny dark sparks in the magical tracery.

The lone man who had just walked in through the front gate was no one Pel recognized from the pattern of magical energy; that meant it wasn’t Taillefer or any other wizard, nor any of the peasants who had spoken to him before. It might, he supposed, be that Imperial spy, though he wouldn’t have expected the spy to march in so openly.

Well, if it was the spy, then that was all the more reason to get on with it. The portal would form a few feet to Pel’s left, Susan’s right, and Susan could just walk right through.

Perhaps he should send the false Nancy, or Athelstan, or Boudicca, or one of the peasants-but he didn’t trust any of them, really, and he had thought of Susan first, and here she was.

He twisted the matrix, poured energy through it, and felt reality give way as the portal opened. A cool breeze blew into the throne room from somewhere in the Galactic Empire, cutting through the thick, overheated air.

“It’s open,” Pel said. “Go ahead.”

Susan straightened, adjusted her purse strap, stepped forward-and almost collided with the man stepping out of the portal.

* * * *

Samuel Best stared at the fortress.

He hadn’t expected it to be quite so ugly.

And he hadn’t expected it to be built on a sort of island at the center of a vast open marsh.

There were only two ways to approach the place, so far as he could see-openly, walking along the causeway, or by sneaking through the marsh.

He looked down and contemplated the mud, the sawgrass, the likelihood that there were leeches, ticks, and assorted other vermin, quite aside from whatever defenses Shadow or its successor might have deliberately planted.

He sighed.

“Poole,” he said, “it’s your turn. Begley and I are going to wait here for orders, because I’m not interested in either wading through a swamp or walking into somebody’s gunsights. You go back for pick-up and tell ’em what this place looks like, and that unless something unexpected turns up, we aren’t going any farther without a direct order to do so.” He glanced at Begley, and added, “If then.”

“It’s a long way back,” Poole objected.

“But it’s back home,” Best pointed out. “If you’d rather stay, maybe Begley wants to go.”

Begley smiled, and Poole shrugged. “I’ll go,” he said.

“Good,” Best said.

* * * *

“Best has hit a dead end,” Brian Hall announced. “He’s sending his man Poole back for orders.”

Markham glanced at Hall in surprise. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

“Shadow’s fortress-or the Brown Magician’s, whichever it is-is surrounded by marsh, sir. The only safe approach is by a completely unsheltered causeway several miles long.”

“What about the other man, Wilkins? Has Best contacted him?”

“No, sir,” Hall answered. “Wilkins went on into the fortress, by way of the causeway.”

“Can you contact either man?”

“Not reliably, sir-neither one is expecting telepathic contact, you see, and they’re both in the area where the interference is very strong. It’s getting hard to read Best, and I can only perceive Wilkins intermittently now.”

“It’s very suspicious, that interference,” Markham said. “Why is it there?”

“I don’t know, sir. It may not be deliberate.”

“Hmm.” Markham frowned. “Well, keep me posted as best you can.”

* * * *

“Damn it,” Pel said, “strangers aren’t supposed to keep stepping out of these things!” He made no attempt to suppress the glare of the matrix as he glowered at the newcomer.

The man was squinting, shielding his face with a forearm, but he didn’t look perturbed by the brightness, nor in any way confused or frightened. He wore a black jacket of a cut that seemed peculiar and slightly archaic to Pel, but which was not all that different from some he had seen in the Galactic Empire; beneath the jacket was a purple silk vest, a pale pink cravat, and a white shirt with fancy white-on-white patterning to it-Pel couldn’t make out the details of the design past the jacket, vest, tie, and shifting light. The man’s pants were slightly flared black slacks with old-fashioned wide cuffs.

The overall effect was of a dandy from some alternate past, where fashion had followed a different route.

And in fact, that was probably just what the fellow was, Pel thought-some foppish Imperial who had wandered through the portal by accident.

But why wasn’t he dismayed by his sudden transition into another universe?

“Who the hell are you?” Pel asked. His anger filtered into the matrix, and his voice boomed from the walls as if heavily amplified, while red light flickered overhead and a pale, insubstantial mist swirled coldly around the stranger’s ankles.

The well-dressed man turned to face the throne directly, and Pel could see him blinking behind his shielding arm.

“I’m called Peter Gregory,” he said. “I take it that you aren’t Shadow, though you sit in its stead.”

“No, I’m not,” Pel said warily. “You knew Shadow?” He had his doubts about that, given Gregory’s choice of pronoun.

“Shadow created me,” Gregory said.

Pel blinked, and reached out into the magical web that surrounded him. He drew it down onto this Gregory, and really looked at him.

He looked human-but Pel could see that he wasn’t quite. There were subtle differences, extremely subtle, detectable through magic, but probably by no other means. Pel stared intently.

Gregory’s inner force, his magical essence, was smoother than a real human being’s. It wasn’t like the damaged magical core of a fetch, or the simplified one of a homunculus or monster, but it lacked the…the texture of a human’s.

Just the way the artificial Nancy’s essence did.

“You’re a simulacrum,” Pel guessed.

“Yes, sir,” Gregory said.

“Was there a real Peter Gregory, then? What happened to him?”

“Shadow killed him, I believe; I’m not entirely sure.”

The simulacrum seemed utterly undisturbed by the death of his original, and Pel shuddered; the matrix flickered eerily purple-white for a moment, reflecting his discomfort.

Pel looked away from the simulacrum for a moment and noticed Susan standing beside him, waiting patiently. He also felt the stranger in the fortress, down in the gallery-whoever it was was moving slowly, clearly in no hurry to confront the Brown Magician.

“Go sit down somewhere,” Pel told Susan. “It may take awhile to straighten this out.”

And he decided he didn’t want the new arrival-the Imperial spy, if that’s who it was-to come into the throne room just yet; the doors at the top of the stairs swung closed, and a tendril of the matrix sealed them shut.

Susan nodded and headed for one of the side doors.

“Where’s Shadow?” Gregory asked as the Earthwoman departed. “Why are you in the matrix now?”

“Shadow’s dead,” Pel said, preparing to flash-fry the simulacrum if it proved necessary to stop an attack.

Gregory blinked, but did not question that.

“You spied for her, didn’t you?” Pel asked.

Gregory nodded.

“Did she tell you what to do if she died?”

“Of course not,” Gregory answered. “She didn’t think she could die.”

That was probably true, Pel thought-but he couldn’t be sure; Shadow had been clever.

“Will you obey me now, as you did her?”

“Of course, if you want me to,” Gregory replied. “You hold the power that made me, as Shadow did; you sit in her throne, the master of her fortress and her world. You are my God, as she was my Goddess.”

Pel smiled, and began to dim down the matrix glare.

“Good,” he said. “You spied on the Galactic Empire for her?”

“Yes.”

“You know your way around there?”

“Yes.”

“Are there other spies, as well? Captain Cahn thought there were.”

“Oh, yes, sir; I am simply the one who was waiting by the gateway when it opened. I was due to report some time ago, but the gateway did not open on schedule, so I waited. By the time the opening finally appeared there were three of us taking turns waiting, and there are many more of us, placed throughout the Empire. Some are probably still waiting at other gateways.”

“Excellent!” Pel grinned broadly. “Then listen, Peter Gregory-I have a new job for all of you. I suppose Shadow wanted information, and was planning all sorts of elaborate schemes, and wanted to conquer the Empire, but all I want are two people…two…two bodies. There’s a woman, medium height, dark hair, named Nancy Brown-she was killed aboard a ship, I.S.S. Emerald Princess. And the other’s a little girl, Rachel Brown; she died on Zeta Leo III. I want their bodies.

“You go back through that portal and tell the others-do whatever it takes to bring me those two.

“Whatever it takes.”

Gregory nodded.

“Yes, sir,” he said, as he turned back toward the portal.