Void: Book Five of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

  “Yep!”

  “Ah, it’s like that. How about we skip the interrogation details? I’m looking forward to cake. I don’t want to spoil my appetite.”

  “Nothing can do that.”

  “Okay, you have me there. I’ll enjoy it more if we don’t go over the bloody, screaming, whimpering details.”

  “It was more a long, shrieking, fiery display. I have a video of it, if you want to see. Unlike some people, Salvatore showed up quite well on camera.”

  “During dawn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh. Diogenes?”

  “Yes, Professor?”

  “I don’t show up at night, but have you observed me during the morning transformation?”

  “Yes, Professor.”

  “How do I look?”

  “Your presence registers intermittently during the process. Frames with your image are sparse, but grow more frequent during the process until you register consistently.”

  “I’ll want to watch that, sometime.

  “Certainly, Professor.”

  Salvatore’s story was, for the most part, unsurprising. Salvatore didn’t believe in magic, vampires, witches, warlocks, dragons, elves, or any other supernatural hocus-pocus. Aside from a little superstition—his childhood included live-in Italian grandparents—he was basically a hard-headed, hard-nosed, practical sort.

  Then Mary transformed into a vampire as the Sun went down. Apparently, this shook him like a Bond martini. It didn’t break him. At least, it didn’t break him in the sense he didn’t sit in a corner to gibber and drool. It did shatter his worldview, though, and he didn’t appreciate it a bit.

  I found I could sympathize. Many, many years ago, I was a junior professor of physics and didn’t believe in any of that supernatural crap, either.

  All of a sudden, Salvatore found religion, or at least a damn good reason to go looking for it. He didn’t find God, but he found highly-religious people who were willing to believe he might have a vampire on his hands.

  “So, did Salvatore know if they were part of a recognized religious organization?” I asked.

  “Salvatore wasn’t in the loop on their formal affiliations. The ones he spoke to struck him as either Catholic or Catholic Light.”

  “Catholic Light?”

  “Episcopalian or Anglican. All the ritual, half the guilt.”

  “Catholic Light,” I chuckled. “Not bad. I thought Episcopal and Anglican were the same thing?”

  “Not in England. They have a specific brand of Anglican over there.”

  “Duly noted. Continue.”

  “Salvatore never questioned who they were or where they were from. He did have helpful information for us to add to your questioning of the religious captives we accidentally brought to Denver. Added together, I infer them to be what we call the Templars. These hunters are possibly still connected to their original church or churches, but carrying on their own little crusade against the forces of darkness. A cross-denominational secret society, if you like, specifically on the prowl for vampires.”

  “So, it’s less the Templars and more the Spanish Inquisition?”

  “No. Don’t go there.”

  “I wouldn’t expect to.”

  Mary flicked a spoonful of batter at me. I took it like a man.

  “Goofball. They asked Salvatore for funding, so I doubt they’re formally supported by their churches—or they’re on a budget. He wasn’t sure which. It seems he’s changed his will to include them, in case anything happens to him.”

  “If they don’t find a corpse, how long does it take before he’s declared dead?”

  “Seven years.”

  “Hmm. I’m wondering if we should provide a corpse and see who collects.” Mary paused as I spoke and cocked her head in thought.

  “I’m not sure the sun left enough remains to be cloned. Should I go vacuum some up?”

  “At least get the cake in the oven. Are the remains buried?”

  “Yes, but it’s the desert. They’re not being digested in a swamp.”

  “We have time, then, assuming we don’t get temporal whiplash.”

  “Always assuming,” she agreed, and poured batter. “I’m done with Salvatore, who was the important part. I’m still annoyed with their organization, but it’s only a mild annoyance. We’re still leaving Flintridge, right?”

  “Yep. As soon as we finalize all the paperwork and spend the money. They have useful stuff in their world. I mostly want all the ruthenium and osmium we can lay our greedy little mitts on.”

  “I’ll try and expedite it,” she assured me, setting a timer on the oven. “Take this out when the oven goes ‘ding’.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As a side note, the cake was delicious.

  The Manor, Wednesday, November 29th, 1939

  Firebrand has no interest in the Manor. It elected to spend some time with Bronze, getting reacquainted. I left it on the front seat and went back to Apocalyptica, down the hall, and out to Maryport.

  When I left the Manor last time, it was the beginning of November. Now it’s the end of November and I’ve only been gone a couple of days. You’d think I would be used to this sort of thing by now.

  As with so many things, this is good and bad. It’s bad, of course, because it reminds me I live in an unpredictable, sometimes capricious universe which has no regard for my projects, schedules, or feelings. It’s good in that the construction has continued in my absence and is darn near done.

  The war also hustled along. U-boat “wolf packs” are all over the north Atlantic, shipping is risky, bombers keep dropping their loads on industrial areas of Britain… and, in many cases, dropping bombs on civilian populations, too. The German bombers have fighters defending them on the way to and from their targets, and the jet-powered Messerschmitts seem to be extremely effective. It’s an item of concern in the papers and on the radio, and this German technology is “viewed with alarm” by His Majesty’s Government.

  On the upside, if the Germans feel they have overwhelming air superiority, they’ll prioritize production over research. Diogenes tells me there are still no signs of radioactive refineries, which comforts me. The Germans don’t have the V-2 in production, so maybe they focused more on jets than on rockets in this world.

  Without a German rocket program, will this world’s space travel be delayed? Will people ever have any real interest in rockets? No rockets, no satellites, no telecommunications… no trip to the Moon, less inspiration for aeronautics and astronautics, less inspiration for space travel in fiction, no Star Trek, no Star Wars, and I don’t know what else. Maybe no ICBMs, either—just bombers with nukes. It could change the world. It will change what I think of as the “normal” course of history in so many different ways.

  Is this one of the major branches of alternate realities? Am I watching as it happens? From the German decision to prioritize jet engines, what else changes and how? I’m not sure I want to watch. Maybe I’ll come back in a hundred years and see what they’ve done.

  Up on the roof, the skyguard’s logs recorded line-of-sight on eleven German aircraft in the past month. It shot down all of them, not just the ones on a course to pass over the grounds. Oops. Strangely, though, I’m okay with that. My only worry is what they landed on. I hope it wasn’t anything important. It did remind me, however, to install a micro-gate connection inside the thing. Diogenes can access it like a Diogephone, download the logs, or control the unit if the independent processor runs into a situation not covered by its programming—a lot like the robots on Apocalyptica, come to think of it.

  I think the time-slippage wasn’t that Karvalen and the Manor ran fast. I think Apocalyptica ran slow, making all the other worlds seem to skip ahead. The thing giving me a headache is the relative temporal movement of the various universes and the unpredictability of sudden slippage. I wish I had an objective reference. There isn’t a master clock somewhere I can compare everything to. Time isn’t a fixed construct, but a s
ubjective one.

  Intellectually, I already knew that. Emotionally, it annoys and frustrates me.

  More locally, we’ve accomplished a great deal. The buildings are in the interior-woodwork phase. That is, they’re buildings, they keep the rain off, and so forth, but each of them still needs more detail work, such as wiring, fixtures, carpets, wainscoating, plumbing, or some combination thereof.

  The best news, to me, is the completion of the human storage—excuse me, the dormitory. It’s three floors of motel, basically. The stairs are outside, accessing the covered walkways for each floor. Apartment doors lead out onto the walkways, rather than to some interior hallway. The opposite side of the building has balconies and windows looking out on the eastward countryside. It’s a three-storey block of flats, basically, but it’s groundbreaking in the here-and-now.

  We still have the youngest children living in the main house, but the majority of teachers and students are now living in the dorm. The house is much quieter and the staff are much relieved. In the evenings, it seems very much a Stately Home of England again. Of course, during the day the house still doubles as a school, but now it’s part-time instead of every minute. Even the workmen are well-housed, thanks to Diogenes and his easy-assembly structures. One of those is the laundry building, because there is an awful lot of it. Several are connected together to make a messhall and a corresponding kitchen.

  The place is starting to shape up.

  I notice we also have a small, wooden church, reminiscent of the old one-room schoolhouse. Graves tells me there’s a priest in there. I’m okay with it, mostly. No doubt people like the idea of having someone religious on hand to keep the morals of the place from degrading.

  “It is my understanding,” Graves went on, “that Mister Hammond was uncertain about constructing a church on the property. There does not seem to be a chapel in the plans.”

  “Ah. Yes. I knew I forgot something.”

  “Thus he has constructed a wooden structure, Sir, as a temporary placeholder until you can decide where you would like to place the permanent structure.”

  “I see the wooden thing is well down the drive, toward the gate.”

  “Hammond wished it out of the way of the other construction, Sir.”

  “Very good. Tell him he can build the permanent church when he’s done with the rest. So he can focus on it. Where it is will be perfectly fine. Or on the other side of the driveway. That should let people use the existing one while the new one is being built.”

  “As you say, Sir. The Reverend Reginald Moresby has already observed the walk is rather lengthy, however.”

  “We’ll include paved sidewalks and lots of bike racks. Besides, a morning stroll before services will help wake up the congregation.” I didn’t mention the tunnel seeds planted in each foundation. I had no plans to connect them to the church.

  “I shall so inform Hammond and the good Reverend.”

  “Anything else of note?”

  “There is a little girl, one Jennifer Dreyfus, who has consistently asked for you, Sir. She is most insistent.”

  “She’s probably out of lollipops. I’ll see her at her convenience.”

  “Very good, Sir. Do you wish to take lunch here or in the dining room?”

  “I’ll take it here. I have work to do and I’ve been neglecting it.”

  “Of course, Sir.”

  I love having that man around. He’s got the perfect air of competence. I like delegating when I can delegate to people who know what they’re doing. It lets me ignore annoyances and do what I want. Which, in this case, consisted of sitting down with my artificial firmament generator. The shape of the void-ship would be determined by what I could do with my own little firmaments.

  Jenny showed up in my downstairs study—all right, all right; my audience chamber—and Graves knocked on my inner door for her. He pounded on it loud enough to be heard, yet somehow also managed to do so politely. It was like a gentle throat-clearing to get my attention, but loud enough to be heard across a room. It must be a butler thing.

  I came down, thanked Graves, and sat down with Jenny. She swarmed into my lap uninvited, clutched at my shirt, and cried. I had the instant impulse to kill whoever was responsible.

  In case you missed it, children in distress do not make me a happier, more pleasant person.

  I rocked her and held her and asked what was wrong.

  “I want my Trixie,” she sniffled, still using my shirt as a handkerchief.

  “I’m sure she’s around,” I soothed. My guess was the pixie was upstairs, in her fairy-bath. Second guess was the fountain outside.

  “She’s gone!” Jenny insisted, and began to wail.

  “Hey. You. Look at me.” Jenny lifted her head, still sniffling, tears streaming freely down her face. “Did I rescue you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I had to find you first, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I can find you, I can find Trixie. And I will.”

  Jenny’s tears stopped, but the sniffling continued.

  “Promise?”

  “I don’t know where she is, but I will find her.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Jenny went back to hugging me, face buried in my shirt. At least she wasn’t crying. I patted her back.

  “How long has Trixie been gone?”

  “I dunno.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “I dunno.”

  I reminded myself that Jenny was four, going on five, and possibly not entirely clear on the days of the week. Time is relative, and for most small children, a distant relative. They haven’t had much experience with it.

  Jenny was willing to be comforted indefinitely. Children seem to like me with an inverse relationship to age. The older they are, the more suspicious they get. Nevertheless, once I had her tears stopped and her sniffles abated, I sent her off. She didn’t want to go, but I convinced her by telling her I had work to do to find Trixie. She didn’t leave happily, but she did get out of the way.

  I immediately checked Trixie’s little house. She wasn’t in it. I then took a stroll outside, braving a ferocious afternoon drizzle, to examine the fountain. No sign of Trixie.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  All right, Trixie was awake and moving because she had a regular supply of magical energies—and, possibly, the intense belief of children to draw on. Could relocating the children have put her back into sleep mode? No, she did fine without them. Still, she wasn’t in either of her magical water pools.

  Can I summon a pixie? I don’t think I can summon one, as such, since they seem to be—at least primarily—physical entities. Still, I ought to be able to cobble together a beacon, kind of like a bug light, to call them. It wouldn’t drag them over, but it would wave and beckon.

  If I ever want to have another face-to-face with an energy-state being, maybe I should open with something like that. I’m not sorry I had a full summoning and containment ready, though. Valan was a jerk. Hopefully, not all of them are.

  I went up to my laboratory, sketched for a bit on some paper, worked out what I needed, and drew the spell on the table. A little energy, a bit of a push, and it fired up. I went back to my firmament generator for a while.

  After dinner, I returned to my pixie-calling spell. Nothing. The rest of the local pixies were asleep or hibernating and I didn’t want to wake them, so dialing up the gain was out of the question.

  Well, there are other ways to fry an egg. I took apart my spell, cleaned the tabletop, and set up a compass. After a bit of drawing, chanting, and handwaving—along with one of Trixie’s doll-sized hair ribbons—I had a compass that paid no attention to magnets. It swung around and pointed. Trixie was that way.

  I went for a bit of trudge around the grounds, not enjoying the English countryside nearly as much. I like it fine through a window, somewhat less when ankle-deep in wet grass and mud. I’m not fond of it at all when I go fac
e-first into a slippery, soaking lawn. My mood worsened while the sky continued to spit.

  The needle swung fairly quickly, though. She had to be somewhere on the grounds.

  If she’s that close, a radar-like locator spell should work. Tied in with a scrying mirror, it should get me a good look at her and where she was. Armed with this knowledge, I retired to my laboratory again to towel off and try it.

  Trixie was lying on the bottom of a glass jar, one wing under her, one wing covering her, and sobbing.

  Poke me in one of my sore spots and I tend to overreact. I admit it. It’s one of the things I don’t like about myself. I’ve been trying to be a better person, but this particular failing isn’t going away soon.

  Still, I wanted more information. I pulled the view back and scanned around. The glass jar was on a small desk in the dormitory. The two children in the room were boys, one older, one younger. Was that by design? It struck me as a good idea to partner younger kids with older kids for roommates, at least where feasible. Judging by the desk, it was the younger boy’s.

  Of course. A little kid caught a fairy in a jar and took her back to his room. Nobody said anything about it because most people get too old to see fairies. I understood perfectly what was going on and it didn’t help my temper one bit.

  Two minutes later, I knocked on the door. The older boy opened it and his eyes went wide.

  “Squire?”

  “Who are you, and who is your roommate?” I asked, stepping inside. I stayed on the rug in front of the door to avoid dripping on the floor.

  “I’m Gregory Amundsen. My roommate is Harald Oxwain.” Gregory waved at Harald. “Say hello to the Squire, Harry!” Harry kept his eyes on the floor and wouldn’t look at me.

  “Hullo.”

  “Good evening to you both, and I’ll get right to the point. Which of you has the fairy?”

  Gregory fidgeted uncomfortably.

  “Sir? Harald’s been all about this imaginary fairy he’s caught.”

  “Oh, has he now?” I asked. “I’d like to see it, please.”

  “Harald? Will you show your fairy to the Squire?”