Pathspace

by Matthew Kennedy

Chapter 82

  Ludlow: “And after this our exile”

  He moved like a ghost in the shadows of the empty armory. Well, not empty; the eight tanks were lined up (the ancient metal brutes reminding him of the dinosaurs in some of Xander's books) against one wall, and the two fuel trucks and three jeeps faced them from the opposite wall like a pair of metal monster armies lined up to attack each other on some ancient battlefield.

  He yawned. This would have been a lot more convenient if he could do it in the daytime. But the Honcho had been adamant. All of Ludlow's practicing had to be done after the workday for most was over, because there was a chance even the armory workers had been infiltrated by Rado spies. And what he was about to practice would lose its advantage of surprise if Denver had any inkling of it.

  He stood in front of a tank and faced the jeep across from it, concentrated as he strove to weave pathspace. As the light from the lanterns began to flow around him in the new configuration, he was plunged into darkness. Damn. This will never do. The drivers have to see where they are going.

  He abolished the weave and the light flooded back into its original straight path. Now he could see again, but the tank would be visible. Also unacceptable. There had to be a way to hide the tank without blinding it.

  Frowning, he kicked at a clod of dirt that had fallen off one of the tank's treads. The clod sailed across the room and bounced off the grille of the Jeep back toward him.

  He froze, seized by a sudden realization: the tank was visible not because of light moving toward it, but by the light moving toward the observer. Bending the pathspace of the incoming light, as he had done, would prevent reflected light from being seen. . . . but would also prevent the driver from seeing where he was going. But what if he was going about it the wrong way?

  He turned around to face the tank and took three steps backward, toward the jeep behind him, and began to concentrate again. Picturing in his min a wall of light behind the tank, coming toward him, he imagined it splitting and going to the left, to the right, and over the tank, coming forward and rejoining back into a plane just in front of the projected gun.

  As he had hoped, the tank faded from view. Now he saw only the wall behind it. He stepped forward until he was through the bent pathspace, nearly brushing the front of the vehicle, which had reappeared,. and slowly turned around.

  It worked! He could see forward now. The trick was not to worry about incoming light, but about the reflected outgoing light. You had to let in light so the driver could see...but you also had to let light that had not struck the tank continue outward, so that objects behind it would be seen instead of a patch of darkness.

  While he was gloating, the pattern decayed and the tank faded back into view. At first he was tempted to curse at it. He should have anchored the pattern on the tank itself, not on the region of space around it. It would have been longer-lasting that way . . . and would be able to move around with the tank, hiding it even when it was in motion.

  On the heels of that thought another realization struck him: if I make his tanks permanently invisible from the front, he won't need me any more. Then, the best-case scenario is I get exiled, and worst-case is, I go back into the cell . . . or get executed to satisfy the Church.

  He was well aware that this was not Rado. For the support the TCC gave the Honcho, Martinez would had to be seen as respecting the Church's ban on “demon magic.”

  He would have to be very careful now. If he could not help, he was doomed. But also doomed if his help was permanent.

  The sound of a door interrupted his musings. Speak of the Devil! Turning, he saw Martinez coming into the armory toward him. The door closed behind him, eclipsing the sight of the Honcho's bodyguard left outside.

  “I see you found the place,” the Honcho said, pretending his men had not personally escorted Ludlow here to the Abilene armory. “Have you thought of anything yet that could help us?”

  Ludlow smiled. “Yes, Excellency, I have,” he said. “I believe I can give you another advantage. But there are a couple of problems.”

  “Explain.”

  “I'm sure Commander Glock told you that I can make myself invisible when I want to. I can also do this to objects – make the tanks invisible from the front,” he said. “Kristana and Xander won't see them coming.” Swiftly, he gave a partial explanation, and demonstrated, doing exactly what he had just done.

  Martinez appeared impressed. That is, until the tank reappeared again. “What went wrong?”

  “Nothing. This is one of the problems I mentioned. The effect is temporary. Anchoring it in the metal will help the spell last longer, but it will still fade in time.” He neglected to mention that with the dense metal, that time might be measured in years or decades. “And if we were to invisible them just before you get to Denver, the border patrols will see them coming in before I cast the spell.”

  The Honcho frowned. “Either way we'd lose the element of surprise. Is there any solution?”

  “There is.” Ludlow paused, thinking. “We put the tanks in a single file column, and I will have to ride in the lead tank, continually refreshing the spell. That way it will hold all the way to Denver.”

  Now he held his breath, watching the Honcho absorb this. Ironically, his survival now depended on Martinez not caring whether he lived or died. If he worried about losing his only wizard, it would be back to the prison cell.

  But Martinez did not disappoint him. “Then we'll do that. What's the other problem?”

  “Sound. Invisibility worked for me in Kristana's fortress because I walked quietly. But I imagine your tanks make a lot of noise. Even if they don't see them coming, they'll hear them.”

  “So it won't work.” His disappointment was obvious.

  “I didn't say that . . . only that it was a problem.”

  “Is there a solution to the noise?”

  Ludlow let himself appear to be in deep thought. “There might be,” he said, after a pause. “If I can bend the paths for the motor noise also, send it back behind the tanks, then no one will hear them coming.”

  The Honcho's eyebrows rose. “Can you do that?”

  “I think so, but it might take a bit of practice. I've never bent sound before. As your spy in Denver, it was more useful for me to be unseen but still listening.”

  The other man considered this. “All right, you've got three weeks. They tell me it'll take that long to cook up enough fuel for all the tanks and fuel trucks and jeeps. If you can do it by then, you'll get a uniform and rank to avoid questions from the troops, and we'll proceed as you suggested. Otherwise . . . well, we'll just have to do without you.”

  Do without you, Ludlow thought. You mean, execute me. “I think I can be ready by then, Excellency.”