Inconvenient Magic 01 - Potatoes, Come Forth! Read online

  “Monsieur De Schael, might I have a moment of your time?”

  Everett jumped at the unfamiliar male voice behind him and whirled about to confront this newest apparition.

  The man appeared average in every aspect: height, weight, build and features. In fact, he seemed to possess no distinguishing mark of any kind. His bland, unblemished face was clean-shaven and his mouse brown hair moderately short. His eyes were no color in particular, simply dark, and his nose symmetrical, so much so that it struck Everett as odd; most noses favored one side, nostril-wise. The newcomer wore a plain gray jacket over equally plain brown trousers. It was as if he had been created to be the epitome of no-one-in-particular.

  “I wish you people would pop into existence in front of me!”

  “You have my apologies.”

  Everett made a not unfounded guess. “You’re Technology?”

  The fellow nodded without smiling. “Excellent deduction.”

  “You’re also really not here?”

  “Indeed. As referencing my current focus, the projected image is the product of the interaction of sympathetic vibrations in multiple light spectra that –“

  “Right. I get the idea. What do you want?”

  “Simply to correct some misconceptions that you may have been given.”

  “Right. Sure.”

  “I understand your reluctance to accept my statements at face value, considering that we appear to be on opposite sides of this contest, but I would at least like the opportunity to present my case.”

  Though he had not actually given it a great deal of thought, Everett had never entertained the expectation that Magic’s adversary would appear polite and well-spoken; this fundamentally violated all classical conventions.

  “What, no threats?”

  Technology showed his empty palms. “I am not, as you may have been led to believe, the ultimate evil. My only goal is to see that corporeal sentients in this universe achieve the quality of life that they would have otherwise had without the handicap of a bastardized system of foundational underpinnings.”

  “Are you talking about the Magic-Technology thing?”

  “Obviously.”

  In this persona, at least, Technology presented no apparent danger and, in fact, seemed only a reasonable man attempting to convey a reasoned argument. Everett decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “All right, have your say.”

  A thin box-like device with a black, glossy surface took shape beside Technology.

  “What’s that?” Everett questioned.

  “In this instance, it is merely a simulacrum. I intend to employ it to facilitate in a natural and intuitive fashion the display of visual images that will lend support to my thesis. It and its variations and adaptive incarnations have many different identifiers throughout numerous universes, but this universe will not see it manifest, if it manifests at all, for at least another century. Consequently, it has no comprehensible descriptor currently. For the purposes of practical nomenclature, I will simply refer to it as a visual presentation device, or VPD. Primarily, the VPD will indicate certain calculated projections of forthcoming events derived from a given set of assumptions with approximations applied for variables whose randomness cannot be deemphasized.”

  “So, you’re saying that you're going to show me more visions of the future?”

  “I apologize. I had thought that my statements exemplified the communication that I desired to transmit.”

  “Why are you talking like a dictionary?”

  Technology tilted his head and bumped the side of it above his ear with the heel of his hand. “Sorry about that. I am not directly experienced in the corporeal means of communication. My special area of interest lends itself to verbosity, that is, wordiness, and I seemed to have applied an incremental situational adjustment in the wrong direction.”

  Technology bumped his head again. “Okay, I think I've got it now. This better?”

  “Uhm, I suppose.”

  “Good. Like you said, I’m going to show you scenes from the future.”

  Everett curled his lip in disgust. “I’ve already seen what the Esatis are going to do.”

  “I’m not going to show you visions of those fiends. Everett, I assure you, the Esatis, their twisted philosophy, and their reprehensible methods did not originate with me. Edwin is the prime culprit in the mutation of what was once only a social club into a genocidal political force. Men made the Esatis, not me.”

  “But they’re doing what you need done, whether you’re guiding them or not.”

  “To some extent, this is true, but you must understand that my corporal self, Donald de Grosivna, doesn’t have the political clout needed to restrain Edwin and his fanatics. They’re very popular with elements in the Intelligence Directorate and if he tried to suppress their excesses, he’d find himself isolated from key information and excluded from critical decisions.”

  To Everett, this sounded like a convenient, self-serving rationalization, especially from a noncorporeal sentient being, but he simply waited for Technology to continue.

  Technology nodded. “Let’s begin with the most important scene.” He waved his hand. Color and light blazed from the glossy surface of the mechanism. Everett watched closely, looking through a window into another time and place.

  It took a moment for him to recognize the weeping man. “That’s me.”

  “Indeed. The time of the image is less than one month from now.”

  The angle of the view changed so that Everett came to see the bier over which his doppelganger wept. Sarah lay upon it, her face lifeless and gray, her body thin and shrunken.

  “How does she die?” Everett asked, unable to turn away.

  “There's a type of life that is not yet understood here,” Technology replied. “It's so small that it cannot be seen without mechanisms that have yet to manifest in this universe. This life, of innumerable sorts, grows practically everywhere about human beings and lives quite peacefully in its proper environment. However, if certain sorts are introduced into flesh where they should not be – by a bullet dragging scraps of contaminated cloth, for instance – then this life will infect and fester. These infections can and often do kill.”

  “Magic will give me a spell,” Everett said in a dull monotone.

  “I’d say you were right except for the fact that this projection is accurate based upon current circumstances. For whatever reason, as of this moment, Magic does not intervene and Sarah will die a difficult death in twenty-seven days’ time.”

  Shaking his head, Everett rejected the idea. Magic had not gone to so much trouble to preserve her great-granddaughter’s life to let her die to an illness that could be cured with a single spell. This false revelation must simply be a ruse to gain leverage by exploiting his feelings for Sarah.

  He refused even to consider that it could be true.

  Apparently reading the essence of his thoughts from his expression, Technology slowly nodded. “It’s true, Everett. Unless something changes drastically, Sarah will die.”

  “Your sympathetic tone is wasted on me. I know you want her dead.”

  “Actually, this is no longer the case. There was only a small window where her demise would aid in the transition of this universe to a purely technological nature. That window has closed and her survival will not currently lower my chances of success. Whatever you may believe, I'm not inherently spiteful or callous. Just for your information, those conceptions don't exist in any form in the noncorporeal realm. I know how important she is to you and I assure you that there's nothing to be gained toward my cause by her death.”

  Everett, resolute, did not respond.

  Technology, after a short pause in which he watched Everett with an open expression, continued. “The scenes that I’m going to show you now are not projections from current conditions. They’re an alternative future created from a single change in the current time line.”

  “They’re ‘What if Technolog
y wins?’”

  “Very perceptive.” Technology waved his hand again.

  The vignettes that sprang from the imaginary mechanism described a future of plenty, of health, and of ease. Through the introductions of mechanisms that would tend to every need, the visions suggested, life for human kind would become comfortable, safe, long, and happy.

  Everett grunted depreciatingly when the mechanism went dark once more. “I’ve seen the future beyond that. It’s not so pretty.”

  “Men almost always fail to understand moderation, Everett. There are universes in which magical warfare has left planets barren of life. I can’t tell you that humans will outgrow their own limitations, but I can tell you that millions upon millions in future generations have the potential to live longer and happier lives though the use of technology.”

  “They could do the same through magic.”

  “Do you really believe that? ‘Magic is inefficient, inconvenient, undependable, and frequently quite useless.’”

  Everett frowned. “I’ve never said that out loud.”

  “But you know it’s true.”

  “Are you done? I need to get to Kleinsvench.”

  Technology sighed. “I’ve got one last bit of information to share and an offer to make, and then I’ll leave you be.”

  “Get on with it.”

  “Very well, I’ll keep it short. Magic didn’t begin altering your spells with your eighth, but with your first.”

  “What does that mean?” Everett groused.

  “According to Destiny, you've always been intended to be a great wizard. Magic couldn't alter that, it’s outside her scope. She just changed your spells so that you would be receptive to her needs. Your first seven spells weren’t supposed to be crap, Everett. They were supposed to be magnificent! You’d have been wealthy and powerful by the age you are now, a man secure in his place in the world. You'd have received your remaining six spells as a pair and the first ever quadruple within a year of your twenty-ninth birthday and become the most powerful Grand Master Wizard in history. Instead, you became an itinerant tradesman who could barely sustain himself, an unsettled individual dissatisfied with almost every aspect of his life, and a dreamer with unfulfilled aspirations who was primed and ready to become Magic’s champion. She manipulated you into becoming a man who would literally jump at the chance to run away with a beautiful young woman.”

  Everett was speechless.

  “I’m sorry, Everett, but it’s true. What’s more, at this stage the operational parameters relating to you are so far out of whack that you haven’t been in the scope of Destiny and Fortune since your ninth spell. Magic has a relatively free hand with you; she can manifest any spell to you at any time. However, and this is the key part, the conditions that make these unlimited manifestations possible for her also make them possible for me.”

  Shaking his head as he dealt with the mental whirlwind thrown up by Technology’s accusations, he argued, “I’m not a technician, so I don’t see where that makes any difference.”

  “But that's exactly my point. I now have it in my power to make you the most powerful grand master technologist that this universe has ever seen.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Everett shaded his eyes from the sun as he scanned the imposing pile of the castle. “I think I can see the balcony that you’re talking about.”

  Sarah grinned, her arm linked with his, and seemed hardly able to contain her enthusiasm. The no-nonsense strength and determination that was the cornerstone of her character had given way to the bouncy excitement of a little girl. “That’s the balcony to my family’s apartments. The one with the red granite baluster. If you can get us up there, then we’ll be home!”

  Everett thought for a split-second of the place he thought of as home, his father’s orchard. His sister Lessye and her family lived there now. He had not visited in more than three years.

  The official residence of the Elector of Kleinsvench was the centuries old former stronghold of an extinct royal line. It occupied a dolerite crag that rose two hundred feet above the rest of the city, surrounded on the west, north, and east by high bluffs and on the south by a sloping fortified approach. A long narrow lake further defended the eastern side and it was from a bench on the lakeside main avenue of the city that they stared across at the square and generally featureless main building. It sat on the highest point of the crag, rising in plain view above the thick walls that surrounded it. Bulky, lichen-stained stone defensive towers of archaic designs sprouted all along the southern approach, but only one tower rose above the bluffs at the northern end, a distinctive, extremely tall tower built of red brick. This slender edifice narrowed in three steps and had large, cutout windows and a striking golden dome at its apex.

  Over the course of two not hurried days, they had completed their journey to the city of Kleinsvench by means of Everett’s Vital Transportation Variant. This had permitted the two of them a quiet, comfortable time in each other’s company and an opportunity to find proper clothing to replace Everett’s rags and her ripped shirt. They had arrived early and strolled through the hardly stirring city, with Sarah shedding her restraint only when the Residence came into sight.

  He had not informed Sarah of the appearance of Technology, the being’s claims concerning the motives of Magic, or of his seductive offer.

  “Let’s go, Everett,” Sarah prompted with an eager grin. “I’d like to sleep in my own bed for a change.”

  He concentrated on a locus in the right corner of the balcony. “Beautiful Woman, come forth!”

  As soon as they landed, Sarah released him, rushed to a set of glass-paned doors, and cast them open.

  The sitting room inside had a scattering of comfortable but worn armchairs, a card table whose varnish had been worn from the edges by decades of elbows, a chess board with exquisitely carven pieces, and wall-to-wall bookshelves filled to overflowing. Small signs -- books left laying about, a half-eaten sandwich forgotten on a saucer behind a lamp, a pair of beaten-up shoes under a footstool, a desk cluttered with paper held down by eyeglasses, a schizophrenic key ring, a magnifying glass, and a jar of sweets -- suggested that the room was the private province of a family rather than a place intended for company.

  A high-pitched shriek erupted from a girl of perhaps thirteen. “Sister!"

  Previously draped in a chair with a large book astride her lap, the girl exploded from her seat and threw her arms about Sarah’s neck. A younger boy tumbled from a settee, scattering papers and a tablet, to join the fray. Their features matched Sarah’s so well that there could be no doubt of their kinship. After much hugging, some weeping, shock and concern for her injury, and a general babble of questions and exclamations, the girl took notice of Everett and glared.

  “Who are you?” she demanded in an accusatory tone.

  “Everett’s a friend, Emily,” Sarah affirmed. “He’s a wizard and helped me return home. Everett, these are my youngest sister Emily and my youngest brother Joseph.”

  “Oh!” Emily’s eyes became large. “Wait, a friend, or, you know, just a friend?”

  “None of your business. Where’s Father?”

  “He’s down in the Lower Ward with the rest of the First Section of the Reserve Company. They’re filling sand bags but we have to study for our end of term exams. You won’t believe it, but Father said, war or no war, we had to get an education. How silly is that?”

  Joseph, a year or two younger than Emily, marched to Everett and extended his hand, his demeanor frank and serious beyond his years. “Thank you for returning Sister to us, Monsieur.”

  As Everett shook solemnly, Sarah quipped, “Don’t be too quick to thank him, Joseph, he’s also the one that stole me away.”

  “Oh, I knew it!” Emily exclaimed. “He is a friend!”

  Then there was nothing for it but that Emily and Joseph should catch Sarah’s hands and run out through the richly paneled interior door into a spacious, portrait-lined hall.

  Not f
eeling quite so energetic, Everett followed at a sedate pace, using the echoes of their laughter and juvenile exuberance as a guide. Their path led down through the building, out into an open court, and down a winding access road through weathered stone gates and arched passages to another larger courtyard, trumpeting all the while that Sarah is home!

  Ravenous, he would have preferred to seek out the kitchens, but understood the priority of Sarah’s reunion with her family. Curiously, he did not encounter anyone else in the splendid corridors, magnificent staircases, and grandiose entrance hall of the main building, nor were any sentries posted on the crenellated walls that marked the limits of the first courtyard. The smaller side buildings and gatehouses by which he passed appeared likewise deserted. Without any solid basis for the assumption, he had thought that the castle of the ruler of the city would be attended by a horde of servants, flunkies, and potentates.

  In the Lower Ward, the boisterous charge of Sarah and her siblings had interrupted fifteen men and women at work. By the time Everett arrived, the group had abandoned sacks, shovels and a wagon of sand and had gathered around Sarah to exchange hugs and grins and demand a telling of all that had happened to her.

  All heads turned to consider him as he approached. They were a varied lot of more or less ordinary-looking people dressed in worn work clothes, and while a few eyed him with suspicion, most appeared ready to give him the benefit of the doubt. Sarah broke free of her welcome and ran back to catch his hand.

  "Come on, Everett! I'd like you to meet my father."

  She led him through the still exultant gang to a tall, solid, older man with thick gray hair and a sun-browned face, interrupting him in the process of mock scolding the two youngsters for abandoning their studies.

  “Father, this is Everett de Schael,” Sarah introduced. “He brought me home. Everett, permit me to introduce my father, First Assemblyman Guillaume Monte-Jaune.”