The Reign of the Brown Magician

Chapter Eight

“What the hell is taking so long?” Pel wondered aloud.

No one answered. Taillefer and Mahadharma had both slipped away some time ago, and were probably halfway to their respective homes-Pel thought he could probably locate the wizards’ auras, or whatever it was the matrix let him see, but he didn’t see any reason to bother. Athelstan was off getting himself something to eat-he’d skipped a meal or two while he tutored Pel in the manufacture of homunculi, and was making up for lost time. Boudicca had stepped out to the privy.

The only people in the room, besides Pel himself, were the revivified Susan Nguyen and a fetch. Fetches generally didn’t answer questions, didn’t talk at all unless directly ordered to do so, and Susan was keeping her own counsel.

Pel wondered whether the fetch had a name. Obviously it had had one when it was a living man, but did it remember that? Had Shadow given it a new name, perhaps?

It probably didn’t need a name, though; fetches didn’t seem to have any real sense of identity. They were interchangeable zombies, as far as Pel could see.

Pel supposed he should have asked the dead man he’d revived about it-after all, he’d been a fetch for some time before Pel’s experimentation had restored him fully to life. He’d been so distraught, though-Pel had thought it kinder to just let him go home.

Of course, Pel thought, he could just restore this fetch and ask him. In fact, he probably should restore all the fetches-and he would, when he had a chance, but for now they were useful and he was busy.

“What’s it like, being dead?” he asked Susan.

She stared at him, apparently untroubled by the shifting glare of the matrix. “I don’t remember,” she said.

“Really?”

“Really. I had shot Shadow, and she turned to face me, and then there was a sudden pain, and then I was lying on the floor and you were standing over me, with Shadow’s lights all around you.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

Pel considered Susan for a moment. She was something to think about, to distract him from wondering why that stupid fetch needed half an hour to collect a couple of hairbrushes and wastebaskets. He thought back to that insane, terrible confrontation, here in this very room, just a few days ago, really, when Shadow had killed Raven and Valadrakul and Singer one by one.

“Why’d you try to shoot her?” he asked.

Susan blinked.

“I mean,” Pel said, “you were always so good at surviving, at putting up with whatever it took to get through. You didn’t fight the pirates who captured Emerald Princess, or the slavers on Zeta Leo III-you just outlasted them. So why’d you try to shoot Shadow?”

“I don’t…” Susan stopped, obviously struggling to organize her thoughts. She tried again.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Pel waited, and after a moment she continued, “All my life, I survived by waiting. When I was a little girl I survived the Viet Cong by waiting until my parents saw their chance. Then I survived the Cambodian pirates who sank our boat by not fighting back while they killed my family and raped me, and I survived the refugee camps by never causing trouble, and I survived the racists and sadists all through school and college and law school by just putting up with their abuse. I always played by whatever the rules were, to survive; I became a lawyer so I could have the rules on my side for once. Whoever knows the rules, whoever makes and interprets the rules, comes out on top. So I didn’t fight the spaceship pirates or the slavers-they had the rules, and I didn’t.”

“So why’d you shoot Shadow, then? She made whatever rules she wanted!”

“Because I was tired of playing by the rules,” Susan said. “I was tired of being passive; I wanted to finally do something more than survive. If Shadow died, we could change the rules any way we wanted.”

“But she killed you,” Pel said.

“But she killed me,” Susan agreed. “It was stupid. I should have just waited, the same as I always have.”

Pel hesitated. She’d tried to be a hero, and she’d wound up dead, and Pel figured that that was what always happened to heroes in real life, but here she was. This was real life, but it was like a story, too-the fact that he was alive and Shadow wasn’t proved that. “But it’s turned out okay,” he said. “I mean, you’re alive again, and I guess now I make the rules, so you’re safe.”

She stared silently at him.

* * * *

The room was cool, but Spaceman Hitchcock was sweating visibly.

Bascombe smiled bitterly at that. As if Hitchcock had anything to sweat about! He was probably about to be proclaimed a hero for coming back up the ladder alive, as if that was some great accomplishment. Hitchcock was just scared because he was face to face with Space Marshal Albright and Secretary Markham-the poor little nobody wasn’t used to facing the big brass. Hell, he’d be nervous just facing Under-Secretary John Bascombe, and these two were probably here to shoot Bascombe’s career down in flames.

If he’d had just a little longer Bascombe thought he could have pulled it off, could maybe have moved the Department of Interdimensional Affairs out of the Department of Science and right up to cabinet level.

“Just tell us about it, Spaceman Hitchcock,” Secretary Markham said. “Don’t worry about the formalities. This Major Johnston offered you a deal?”

“No, sir,” Hitchcock said. “He offered the lieutenant a deal, and the lieutenant wouldn’t take it. Me, they just told to come back here and report-I didn’t have to do a thing in return.”

Markham nodded, and Bascombe frowned.

“And what was it that you were to report, Spaceman?” Marshal Albright asked.

“He said-Major Johnston said to just tell you what happened, and that they want to talk, they aren’t hostile. That’s all. And that you get the lieutenant and the others back when you agree to talk, and not before.”

“And do you think that’s the truth?” Albright asked.

Hitchcock blinked. “Do I think what’s the truth, sir?”

“That these people aren’t hostile.”

“I don’t know, sir. They treated us all right, but…well, that doesn’t mean much.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Albright agreed. He glanced at the silent figure of his personal telepath, then at the Secretary of Science.

Bascombe wondered how Albright could stand having a telepath with him all the time. It was supposed to be a great honor to have one’s own telepath, with one at all hours of the day or night, but that was an honor Bascombe could do without-a damn mutant freak spying on him every second. Bad enough working with them when he was on duty.

Markham had one, as well, of course. Bascombe supposed the telepaths had names and identities of their own, but no one had introduced them; they were just there, part of the background.

That was a drawback to political advancement he had never really considered.

Secretary Markham leaned forward and said, “Spaceman Hitchcock, this Major Johnston is the highest-ranking official we’ve yet contacted on Earth. Do you think you could go to Terra and tell the Emperor about him?”

Hitchcock went white, and Bascombe winced. In all his years of political jockeying he had never yet had the honor of reporting directly to His Imperial Majesty, and here this poor frightened gee-puller was being offered an audience.

That was an honor Bascombe did want-but he wasn’t about to get it.

Hitchcock stammered incoherently until Albright finally broke in. “Never mind, Spaceman; I don’t think we need to send you to Terra.”

Hitchcock relaxed, but at the same time a look of hurt disappointment crossed his face.

“Yet,” Albright added. “I’m sure that eventually His Majesty will want to meet you and thank you.”

Hitchcock nodded.

Albright and Markham leaned together to confer for a moment, and Albright’s telepath leaned in with a word or two as well; then Markham turned and looked straight at Bascombe.

“Mr. Bascombe,” he said, “I believe we’ve heard everything we need from Spaceman Hitchcock for the present, but there are a few things we’d like to ask you. If you would be so kind…?”

He gestured toward the interrogation chair, where an Imperial guard was guiding Hitchcock to his feet.

Bascombe straightened. Here it was, at last. If he could sell this, he was made.

If not, he was ruined.

He rose and rounded the table, watching the telepaths as he went.

* * * *

“He doesn’t look very healthy,” Johnston said, eyeing the pale, black-garbed figure. It was a deliberate understatement; the gaunt stranger looked downright corpselike.

“Doesn’t seem to be able to talk, sir,” the lieutenant said. “I haven’t gotten a sound out of him-not so much as a grunt. He just sits there.”

“Do you speak English?” Johnston asked loudly.

The stranger didn’t stir; he simply sat, staring straight ahead. A layer of grayish dust covered the family room sofa, but this mysterious person didn’t seem to notice. Johnston looked at the stranger’s hands, and at the largely-undisturbed dust.

He hadn’t touched the couch anywhere except where he now sat.

That didn’t seem natural.

An airman stood beside the couch, one hand on the stranger’s shoulder. Johnston looked at that, and the lieutenant followed his gaze.

“If we don’t physically hold him he starts walking away,” the lieutenant explained. “Frankly, sir, I think he’s mentally disturbed-autistic, or something. We can’t communicate with him at all.”

“Then how’d he get into the basement here?” Johnston asked.

“I don’t know, sir-I didn’t see him arrive. Just all of a sudden he was there.”

“We might just let him go and see what he does,” Johnston said.

No one answered. The black-clad stranger didn’t move.

The fellow looked like a corpse, Johnston thought. It was hard to believe he could move at all.

“Let him go,” Johnston said.

The airman hesitated, then lifted his hand.

The pale man stood, rising smoothly from the couch without a single wasted motion, and began walking. Johnston, the lieutenant, the FBI man, and one of the three airman followed; at Johnston’s command the other two airmen remained in the family room.

Johnston had expected the stranger to aim for the front door, but instead the silent visitor marched up the stairs and into the master bedroom. There he paused for a moment, scanning the room, then headed for one of the dusty, cluttered dressers. He picked up a hairbrush, then another, and another; clutching the three brushes in one hand he turned and scanned the room again.

“Hairbrushes?” the lieutenant asked incredulously.

The stranger spotted his target, and picked up the pink plastic wastebasket from beside a bureau. He dropped the brushes into it and headed for the door.

The FBI man and the airman stepped quickly aside.

“Major, do you know what’s going on here?” the FBI man asked.

Johnston shook his head.

The stranger had to step carefully when he searched Rachel Brown’s room-the floor was strewn with toys. Johnston saw him hesitate at the sight of the plush alligator on the girl’s empty, unmade bed, the first time the man had acted like a human being, instead of a machine.

Or maybe he was just trying to figure out whether the alligator was a hairbrush.

But no, the child’s hairbrush was on her bureau, and a wastebasket was at the foot of her bed. The black-clad stranger collected both items and headed back for the stairs, a wastebasket in each hand, hairbrushes in each wastebasket.

“Stop him!” Johnston called to the airmen in the family room.

The pair blocked the foot of the stairs, and the pale stranger stopped and simply stood, as if waiting for them to step aside.

“You aren’t going to let him go, sir?” the lieutenant asked.

“I don’t think so,” Johnston said. “Not yet, anyway. He’s got what he came for, I’d say-but why does he want them?”

“Trash, sir?” one of the airmen at the foot of the stairs asked. “He just took the trash?”

“And hairbrushes,” the lieutenant said.

“What good would that be to anyone?” the airman who had accompanied the officers asked.

“Maybe he’s gonna use voodoo on someone,” the airman who hadn’t previously spoken suggested. “Get some hair and nail-parings for the voodoo doll, y’know?”

“God knows this guy looks like a zombie!” said the airman beside him.

The others smiled, but Johnston looked at the back of the stranger’s head and seriously considered it.

It was true, this guy did look like a walking corpse.

Jewell and Thorpe had said that there was a universe on the other side of the basement wall where magic, or something one hell of a lot like magic, really worked.

Maybe this fellow was a zombie. Maybe his master had sent him after hair and fingernail clippings.

He didn’t smell like a corpse; there was an odd, meaty, slightly sweet odor clinging to him, all right, but Johnston had smelled corpses, and this odor was definitely not the stink of a dead body.

Maybe, if he was a zombie, the odor had something to do with the magic that had brought him back from the dead.

“Put him back on the couch,” Johnston ordered.

The airmen grabbed the stranger by the arms and hauled him into the family room. He didn’t resist, didn’t protest, just went along as if it didn’t matter in the slightest what he did, or what happened to him.

The lieutenant’s theory that the man was autistic did seem to fit-but so did the idea that he was a zombie.

“Come on,” Johnston said. “I want to see the basement.”

* * * *

“So that dead woman we found on Beckett was Shadow, and an Earthman is running the show in her world now,” Albright said.

“If Hall is right about what she picked up from Thorpe, yes,” Bascombe replied.

“But Thorpe’s a renegade-we can’t trust anything she says,” Markham pointed out.

“She’s a telepath, and she was talking to another telepath,” Albright said. “I can’t lie to a telepath; can she?”

“And this doesn’t account for Thorpe’s brief appearance in normal space in an unnamed system a hundred light-years from Beckett,” Bascombe pointed out.

“That could have been anything,” Albright said, waving it away. “It had to be Shadow sending her through, for some reason, and Shadow’s dead, so what does it matter?”

“It might,” Bascombe said. “Somehow.”

“I doubt it,” Albright replied.

“Suppose we wait before we leap to conclusions,” Markham suggested. “Under-Secretary Bascombe has sent a scouting party into Shadow’s universe, after all; why don’t we wait and see whether this man Best can confirm Shadow’s demise?”

“And if Shadow is dead?” Albright asked. “What do we do about this Earthman who replaced her?”

“Why don’t we just wait until we hear from Best?” Markham answered.

* * * *

Johnston crossed the basement, ignoring the card table, radio, folding chairs, and video set-up-which, of course, had run out of tape at the crucial moment.

He stared at the bare concrete wall; it appeared perfectly ordinary in the light of the bare bulbs overhead. Johnston glanced up at the lights, then turned his attention back to the wall.

“There’s no opening now,” he said. “I wonder how he expected to get back?”

“I don’t know,” the lieutenant said. “I don’t know how the hell he got in here in the first place.”

“You didn’t see any opening here?” Johnston asked, gesturing at the blank wall.

“No, sir-not a thing.”

Johnston frowned. He put out a hand, not knowing what he was looking for, and attempted to tap the wall.

His hand vanished into seemingly-solid concrete; astonished, he staggered, thrown off-balance. Both hands went out, grabbing at concrete that wasn’t there, and he stumbled forward, through the wall.

He caught himself just short of going down on one knee and stared at the blaze of shimmering, shifting color before him. The cool, dusty air of the Browns’ basement was suddenly thin, sharp, clean, crackling with electricity and redolent of sweat and cold meat; he felt suddenly heavy, the way he sometimes felt the loss of buoyancy upon climbing out of a pool.

He couldn’t see anything but colors, as if he were trapped in some incredible light show.

None of them, Jewell and Thorpe and Deranian, had mentioned anything like this inside the portals; they’d said the transition was instantaneous. If he’d gone through a portal, shouldn’t he have come out somewhere?

“Hello?” he said.

* * * *

As he settled back on the dark wood of his throne, Pel had the uneasy feeling that there was something Susan was not telling him.

He didn’t know what it could be; he believed her when she said she didn’t remember being dead, and he believed her explanation of why she had tried to shoot Shadow, but he was sure there was something that she was not saying about her recent experiences.

Did she know something about why the fetch was taking so long? He didn’t see how she could; after all, he was the magician, not her. He was the one who could turn a dead body into a fetch, or bring it back to life entirely. He could sense everything that touched magic, through all the world, and she was just an ordinary human being-a lawyer.

What could she know that he didn’t?

He was trying to think of some way to ask her when a man stumbled out of the portal.

Startled, Pel let his partial suppression of the matrix’ visual manifestations slip. He could still see perfectly well, of course, but anyone else would be blinded by the barrage of light, color, and shadow.

He thought for a moment that the fetch had returned, and wondered why he had been startled, but then he got a better look at the new arrival.

It was a man of medium height, middle-aged, a few pounds overweight, and wearing the uniform of an officer in the United States Air Force.

He was unquestionably alive, and not a fetch. He was staring blindly into the matrix glare, eyes watering.

“Hello?” he said.

Pel was in no mood for new complications; for several seconds he considered magically shoving the stranger back through the portal, or even just flash-frying him-burning him to ash would actually be much easier, since it just meant unleashing a little wild energy, where pushing him meant directing controlled energy while maintaining the portal.

But burning him would be murder, and Pel was astonished that it had taken him so long, a good three or four seconds, to realize this.

Besides, this man might know what had become of the fetch, and where the hairbrushes and wastebaskets were.

“Hello,” Pel said, letting the matrix amplify and distort his voice into an echoing roar. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, as he began fighting down the matrix glow.

“Major Reginald Johnston, U.S. Air Force,” the stranger said, squinting through glare. “And you, I take it, are Pellinore Brown?”