Pathspace

by Matthew Kennedy

  Chapter 43

  Lester: “my father's death before him”

  He could hear dripping somewhere. Why was that? Had Xander spilled something? Or maybe Otto knocked over the water pitcher on the table. That must be it.

  He sat up and looked for the table. There was no table. He was in a room with stone walls and a metal door. Instead of a couch, he was sitting on a cot with metal legs. He saw these things in the dimness of light leaking in from a small barred window in the door.

  Memories came flooding back, bringing with them a splitting headache. He explored with his fingers and found a bump on the back of his head. The men from Texas must have decided to take no chances with him on their way back from Rado.

  He held his head and groaned. A cell. In Texas. Not good.

  “He's awake. Send word.”

  Perhaps he should pretend to be asleep, if they were willing to let him sleep. No, it wouldn't fool them now. It looked like he was going to find out soon enough how they treated prisoners in the Lone Star Empire.

  Something scuttled away from him when he stood up. He decided he didn't want to look and see what it was.

  Someone had taken his boots, because he could feel cold stone beneath his feet. Why was that? Did they think he had a concealed knife in one of them?

  Well, from what he had heard they would be sending word. While he waited to see who that would bring, he examined his cell as best he could from the light coming in the little barred window in the metal door. The room was roughly square. He estimated it as being ten feet across. The floor was not exactly level; it sloped toward a drain in a back corner. The ceiling was too high to reach, and had a vent set into it in a front corner diagonally across from the drain.

  There was nothing hanging on the walls, which were smooth stone and mortar.

  Going to be hard for even Xander to find me in here, he thought. Then he remembered, and wished he didn't. They'd shot Xander! He had fallen and stopped moving. In all likelihood he was dead, and there was nothing that could be done about it.

  A terrible sense of loss assailed him. He tried to tell himself it was mere selfishness. Without the wizard, he'd probably never learn any more about pathspace. But that was all right, wasn't it? He never asked to be an apprentice – he'd been kidnapped.

  So why were his eyes watering so much? Must be something wrong with the air in here.

  He sat down on the cot again and thought about Xander. The man didn't seem to care about money or fame or even whether anybody liked him. All he wanted was to establish his school for wizards, – or as he had called it once, “parascience technicians”. And why was the school so important? Not to make Xander famous. He'd wanted it for the sake of a fallen world, a fallen civilization. He'd wanted to create what the Tourists had failed to give to Earth – the technicians who could create and maintain the Gifts, so that a new civilization could arise, instead of a thousand little countries fighting wars over dwindling resources.

  And now that he was gone, that dream would die with him. I can't start the school without him. I don't know all the things he knew. I'm only just started on my apprenticeship, learning how to be invisible, the first application of pathspace. I don't know anything at all about the other two things he mentioned, spinspace and tonespace. And without Xander, I probably never will.

  In fact, he would probably rot away in a Texas prison. Unless of course he was useful to them somehow, useful enough to be let out occasionally. Useful to the men who killed Xander? The hell with that.

  His stomach growled. Who am I kidding? he asked himself. All they have to do is wait until I'm hungry enough to cooperate. Then they can probably buy me for a crust of bread and a glass of water.

  He heard a metallic sound. Someone was unlocking the door. It swung open and a man who looked to be in his mid-forties entered the room with a younger man who had the look of a guard. At least they did not appear to be carrying anything painful-looking.

  “You're in Dallas,” the older man said. “That'll be your first question, so we might as well get that out of the way.” Someone outside the cell passed in a chair and the man seated himself. “Your second question will be, who am I, and the answer is, I am the Honcho.”

  “My third question is why do you do your own interrogating?” said Lester. “Don't you trust your underlings?”

  The older man nodded. “Yes, that would be your third question. I figured you would be smart enough to skip the stupid questions like, 'why am I here?' and so on.”

  “What made you think that? For all you know I am a complete idiot.”

  “I doubt that,” he said, smiling. “My men report than you showed up with the wizard, and that implies that you're his apprentice, since I've never heard of you. He was not the kind of man who takes on fools as apprentices.”

  Lester felt a lump in his throat at the man's use of the past tense. Was. “Okay maybe I'm not an idiot. Obviously you're not here to answer questions, but to ask them. What makes you think I'll tell you anything useful?”

  The Honcho sighed. “Here is where it gets awkward. I could, of course, starve you into submission. You'd be surprised what a man will disclose when he's hungry enough.”

  “If you're threatening me, you're too late. I'm already hungry. On the other hand, you could feed me and see what gratitude will buy you.”

  He laughed. “Sometimes the actions of soldiers,” he said, catching Lester's gaze with his own, “may lead people to presume they come from a land of savage barbarians. But we are not barbarians here in Texas.” He turned to the guard. “Bring something to eat, a double portion.”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me.”

  The man was plainly uncomfortable. He fidgeted as he answered. “Sir, begging your pardon but I can hardly leave you alone with the prisoner! Wait a minute, and I will summon another guard to – “

  “Corporal,” said the Honcho. “I will be obeyed. Go and bring the food. You can lock the door behind you. I hardly think our guest is going to attack me on an empty stomach.” He turned back to Lester, smiling. “Are you?”

  “Of course not,” Lester said. “Considering my situation, it would be rude, as well as unwise.”

  “There you are. Hurry back. I confess I'm hungry myself. Go on.”

  Lester heard the sound of the key turning in the lock, then footsteps growing fainter.

  “I am sorry your wizard is not with us,” said the Honcho. “I would have preferred it so, for I suspect it would have been to our advantage to have had his participation in this conversation.”

  Lester's eyes burned. “Well, you can thank your men for his absence. He wouldn't have shot anyone in the back like they did. He knocked Brutus out, but that's all.”

  “I am sorry that happened,” said the Honcho. “There is nothing I can do about that. To be fair, your wizard was a dangerous man, when he wanted to be. After all, he had captured the men once already.”

  “Yes. Without killing any of them.”

  “Point taken. Had I been there, things might have gone differently. But I was not. I'm told,” he said, changing the subject, “that they clouted you on the head on the way here. Also regrettable, but soldiers here do tend to get paranoid about wizards.”

  “I'm no wizard,” Lester told him. “Just an apprentice.”

  “Ah. I suppose they couldn't tell the difference. From what I've heard, you haven't been in training very long, have you? I thought not. But they didn't know that, you see.”

  A minute later he heard the key turn in the lock again. The guard reentered the cell carrying a tray with bread, sliced beef, yellow cheese, and a pitcher of water with two glasses.

  “Set it down there,” said the Honcho, pointing to the middle of the floor, “and then go stand watch outside.”

  Lester stared at the tray and his stomach rumbled. He was tempted to snatch at the food, but he scooted back to the cot when the Honcho produced a knife.

  “I want you to know the food is not poiso
ned or drugged,” the Honcho told him, “because if you thought it were, you would naturally refuse it. And you'll need your strength. So here's what's going to happen.” He picked up the bread and cut off four slices. “I'm going to make us two sandwiches, and you pick one. I'll eat the other.”

  In less than a minute he had piled slices of beef and cheese on two pieces of bread and covered them with the other two. Then he slid the tray toward Lester. “I let him know I was hungry too so they wouldn't try anything. Go ahead, it's grass-fed Texas beef, the best in the world. Pick one. Hurry up, I wasn't lying about being hungry.”

  Lester reached out at random and seized a sandwich. So did the Honcho. Lester waited for the other to take a bite first. Then he watched the Honcho swallow and pour them both water out of the pitcher. “Do you trust your own men? How do you know they won't poison both of us?”

  The Honcho nearly choked on his second mouthful. He swallowed, laughed, and wiped a tear from his eye. “Son, you don't know Texas men, to ask something like that. My men might be crude. They might even sometimes do things I don't exactly feel proud of. But they are not disloyal.”

  Lester thought about that, then decided he could risk eating his sandwich.

  “You won't be tortured either,” the Honcho told him. “But I'll trade you. I'll tell you a truth, then you tell me one. I'll go first. Did you know I wasn't my father's first choice to succeed him?”

  Lester shook his head.

  “It's true. I used to have an older brother, Francisco. Frank was going to be the next Honcho after my father. And he had grand plans. Our father didn't know it, but Frank disagreed with him on a few things. The most important of these was how to reunify the continent. How to bring peace.”

  “I've seen the kind of peace your soldiers bring,” said Lester. “It wasn't pretty.”

  The Honcho took a bite out of his sandwich before answering. “The flower of peace,” he said, “grows out of soil prepared by brutal men of war. It's always been that way. The ancient Romans had to conquer and subdue many peoples to bring their Pax Romana, their Roman peace. Empires expand with war at the borders, peace within them. Only a strong and wise parent can stop children from squabbling.”

  “Is that what your brother wanted?”

  “Frank was an idealist,” said the Honcho. “He thought the way to establish peace was by treaty, by negotiation. But Lincoln had already learned that approach is a waste of time.”

  “Lincoln?”

  “He ruled America, hundreds of years ago, long before the Tourists came. When he came to power half of his country split off and declared itself independent of the Union. Do you think he brought them back by negotiation?”

  “Since you're using him as an example, I'm guessing he didn't.”

  “He did not. He fought a bloody war that lasted five years to conquer them. And then there was peace again. But only after a lot of Americans on both sides died.”

  “But your brother didn't follow his example?”

  The Honcho sighed. “I'm afraid not. Frank sent out ambassadors with his proposition: a central government of elected representatives. Something similar to what I imagine your own Governor would like to try.”

  Lester finished his sandwich. “And what happened? Did they respond?”

  The Honcho looked down. “Yes,” he said. They responded. But not the way Frank had hoped. The Dixie Emirates to the East laughed and said they didn't need our beef, they already had cows. New Israel in the Northeast sneered and said they didn't need our oil, they already had coal. The Kingdom of Deseret to the Northwest chuckled and said they didn't need our Church, they already had a religion.”

  “What about Californ? Did they respond?”

  The Honcho's eyes glittered. “Yes, they did. The Queen of Angeles invited Frank to come talk about it. Our father advised against it, but Frank rode off into the sunset, intent on showing his father that things could be done differently.”

  “And what happened?”

  The Honcho caught Lester's gaze and his eyes would not let go. “She sent back his head, with a note. It said 'Thank you for the entertainment, he was most amusing'.”

  Neither of them said anything for a moment.

  “I'm sorry you lost your brother,” said Lester.

  “He was a fool,” said the Honcho. “But I learned from his example. Peace will not come from letters. It will only come from the sword.” He finished his sandwich. “You probably think I have some kind of grudge against your Governor of Rado.”

  “You do seem to fight a lot of wars with us,” Lester said.

  “It's nothing personal, son. I'm aiming at the same thing that she is: unification. We have to stop fighting each other and get together if this civilization is ever going to rise again. The only difference between her and me is, I have a more practical approach. I'm willing to use the sword to bring peace.”

  “And Californ? Are you going to bring them peace too?”

  The Honcho's eyes appeared to blaze with intensity. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I'm going to pacify the hell out of them.” He was silent for a moment. “Your turn,” he said. “Tell me something about yourself. How did you end up with the wizard?”

  Lester decided there was no harm telling him that, since Xander was dead. “He came to my village, on the coach,” he said. “At first I thought he was just an old man.”