Doorways to Infinity: Book Five of the Wizard Born Series

by Geof Johnson

  “Excellent.” Dr. Tindall smiled broadly. “I’ll make a list of my recommendations and give it to you when we get back to Cullowhee.”

  * * *

  Jamie lay in bed that night, staring into the darkness, letting his imagination run like a greyhound set free of its leash. A research facility. He put aside, for the moment, the fact that he could never tell that many people about his magic — all of the researchers and assistants and the large staff it would require to make it work — and he fantasized about what it could be like to create one.

  In his mind, he pictured a multi-story, rectangular building, with a sign out front that said The Rivershire Institute of Science and Magic. Or Magic and Science? He couldn’t decide which was better. Inside, the corridors would bustle with people of all descriptions, clamorous with conversations in languages from all corners of the Earth, white lab coats everywhere.

  One spacious gallery, full of magic portals, would be the heart of the institute. Glowing doorways would be spaced at even intervals along the walls, dozens on a side, and researchers with expensive-looking equipment would be lined up, waiting to go through to other worlds. They would wave when he walked by, eager to get his attention for a special project that they had in mind. “Mr. Sikes, do you have a moment?” Or, “Mr. Sikes, I have an interesting proposal I’d like to run by you.” Or possibly, “Mr. Sikes, you should see what we discovered yesterday on the newest unnamed planet.”

  At the far end of the room he’d find scientists putting on their pressure suits, adjusting straps and tightening helmets, preparing to go through special airlocks to worlds with no atmosphere — Mars, the Earth’s moon, recently discovered worlds. At their feet, they’d have aluminum cases, and nearby, a vehicle, a rover, sporting large knobby tires and a tubular frame, with NASA stenciled on the sides.

  Once a year, Jamie could change the doorways to open up to new places, after an Institutional Review Board (made up of top-notch researchers and his trusted friends) had carefully studied proposals. Universities from all over the world would be desperate to have their project chosen, and the competition for a special portal of their own would be fierce. Jamie would tell them, Have you spoken to my staff? They make those decisions. Oh, and have you made arrangements for scholarships for the Rivershire School graduates?

  Some scientists would want to stay in Rivershire for the convenience, since that’s where the research institute would be. Others would move to Hendersonville and commute through the permanent doorway in Granddaddy Pete’s warehouse. The ones from distant countries might bargain to have a portal that would connect the institute directly to their colleges: Oxford, Kyoto University, the University of Melbourne, Universität Heidelberg.

  In the physics lab, which would be loaded with the most modern equipment, Jamie could work with world-renowned physicists to study things he had wondered about for years, such as the amount of energy he could generate with his most powerful blast, whether or not the doorways opened to quantum universes, and how his shield worked. They could also study how Rollie was able to fold space and run so incredibly fast, or how Aiven was able to communicate with horses.

  Another lab, full of chemists and medical professionals, would study witches’ magic — how women like Fred and Keeva were able to take ordinary substances and infuse them with magic to make amazing potions and powders. Cancer could be cured. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, too. Severed limbs and spinal cords regrown. Miracles that would improve the lives of millions.

  And all of it would be financed from the fortunes that Granddaddy Pete would generate for Jamie with his own special magic, the gray-haired man with the golden touch. There would be plenty of money, enough for the entire operation, and Jamie could hire his magical and non-magical friends, like Bryce and Melanie, and the kids from the track team. People he liked and trusted.

  He put his hands behind his head and sighed toward the dark ceiling, his breath escaping like a genie from a bottle. That would be cool. Working with my friends all the time. The institute would be right next to Grannie Darla’s new park, and the landscaping would match so that it would be beautiful. Everything would be perfect.

  He closed his eyes. If could I only tell all of those people about the magic, the scientists and everybody. Too bad I can’t.

  Chapter 16

  Saturday, the last one before school started back for the new semester, Jamie and Coach Harrison went to Rivershire to lay out the track. It was a relatively simple procedure, using a long tape measure, string, and wooden stakes. Coach brought along a manual published by Track and Field Magazine, and selected a standard 400-meter design from it because it would be big enough to incorporate a soccer field.

  After they had all of the string staked in place, Jamie stripped the grass away with his magic, slicing it cleanly in sections and translocating it to a pile at the back of the property in case they needed any of it later. When he was finished, a huge oval of bare dirt remained.

  Coach nodded as he appraised the results of their work. “That was fast. We’ll get the gravel spread on it tomorrow. Anybody coming to help us?”

  “My dad’s driving the dump truck with the gravel, and I sent a message to everybody on the team, but I had to be vague about it in case someone’s snooping. I don’t know who will be back from vacation in time to help us, but I imagine a few will show up. I’ll borrow some wheelbarrows and yard tools from my parents and our neighbors.”

  “Coach Dave will be here, though I don’t know how much help he’ll be if Miss Duffy comes, too.”

  “I think he’s here today, somewhere.” Jamie turned and looked toward town. “They’re off courting, I suppose.”

  Coach grunted a laugh. “Courting. Sounds funny to hear you put it that way.”

  “That’s what they call it here, because they’re pretty old-fashioned about things like that. I remember when John Paul was dating Brinna. I doubt he spent the night with her until their honeymoon, even though both of them had been married before.”

  Coach gazed toward town, too. “I guess I should be happy for Dave, but I don’t want to lose him. He’s a good coach, even if he’s only been with us a short time.” He shook his head and frowned. “I can’t be replacing assistant coaches year after year. It’s bad for the program, and it’s hard on me.”

  “I’ll tell him I won’t make doorways for him if he doesn’t keep coaching for WCU.”

  Coach laughed harder. “That’ll work. Do that for us.”

  They returned the next day to finish the track, and many of Jamie’s teammates came with them, both girls and boys, all eager to help, a few of them with rakes or shovels that they’d managed to scrounge from somewhere.

  Jamie made a doorway to Hendersonville, and his mother, the Callahans, and the Wilkins came through with wheelbarrows and yard tools. Sammi carried a toy rake in one hand and proudly showed it to Jamie. “I’m gonna help. Leora’s comin’, too.”

  Then Jamie made a bigger doorway, and Carl drove through it in a dump truck full of gravel. Carl dropped the load on one side of the bare track, and before he’d moved the empty vehicle off the field, several horse-drawn wagons arrived. Families — mothers and fathers and kids — spilled put and began unloading shovels and rakes and wooden wheelbarrows of their own.

  “All right!” Max raised a fist in the air. “Reinforcements have arrived.”

  The mothers set out baskets full of food on the backs of their wagons: cookies and cakes and bread and jugs of cider. The men started working side-by-side with the track team, spreading the tiny gray rocks over the huge oval of dirt.

  Mr. Bass came, too, and brought a sod roller to smooth out and compress the gravel. It looked like an oil drum turned on its side, with metal bars attached to each end that bent upward to form a handle. “It’s your day off, Mr. Bass,” Jamie called to him when he approached, pushing the contraption across the road from Granddaddy Pete’s headquarters.

  “I want to help,” he replied. “I think it’ll be
fun.”

  Miss Duffy came with her flute, and she sat close by and played for them, and the event began to take on a festive atmosphere, like when they’d first built the school, with music, food, and occasional laughter mingling with the work, and children playing in the grassy field encircled by the track.

  Coach Harrison stood with his shovel in one hand and admired the scene. “Jamie, is it always like this when you build stuff for this school?”

  Jamie looked around for a moment and shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  “It’s like a party!” Allison said, pushing an empty wheelbarrow past them.

  Coach chuckled and nodded. “The kids from the team are certainly enjoying it. They seem to get along pretty well with the Rivershire folks.”

  “I thought they would,” Jamie said.

  The work went so quickly that they decided they had time to expand the facility. After making a shot put circle, they had just enough gravel left over to make a long jump runway, so Carl and Mr. Bass took a couple of the boys back to Hendersonville to fetch bags of sand for the landing pit from the hardware store.

  When it was nearly completed, Carl watched Coach Harrison level the last of the sand, scraping a board across the surface until it was smooth.

  “The pit looks good, Coach,” Carl said. “Everything does. Now all you need to do is paint the lanes on the track.”

  Coach tossed the two-by-four aside and wiped his hands. “It’s not hard. You use this little machine with wheels, and it lays down the paint as you roll it around the track. I can get you one of those, cheap. You only have to do it every few months, depending on how much you use the track.”

  “Then I want you to teach me how to do it,” Mr. Bass said.

  “Don’t you have enough to do around here as it is?” Carl said.

  “It should be my, job, if it’s part of the school. I’ll teach Stev how to do it, too. Besides, I want to make sure it gets done right. We can’t have anything shabby-looking around here. Got to be first rate.” He gave one firm nod.

  By the look in his eyes, Carl could tell that Mr. Bass took his job seriously. He’s proud of this place, Carl realized. He glanced at his watch and said, “It’s getting late. Anybody seen Jamie?”

  “He wandered off a few minutes ago,” DeSean said.

  Carl found Jamie near the road, gazing at the field catty-cornered from the school. “Why are you over here by yourself?” Carl said when he neared him.

  “Hunh?” Jamie spun to face him. “Oh, just thinking. Trying to picture how everything’s going to look once it’s finished.”

  “Is that where the park is going to go?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Next to Granddaddy’s headquarters. I thought we could build the playground at the front of it so the kids from the school can use it, since it’s so close. I want it to have swings and slides and everything.”

  “It’s going to be great, Jamie.” Carl nodded and looked in the direction Jamie had just been facing. “The work went really fast today, with all the help we had. Your track friends seem to get along really well with the Rivershire folks.”

  “I figured they would,” Jamie said. “After the bonfire and all. My teammates like it here.”

  “Your coach said you guys can train here tomorrow if you want to. It might rain in Cullowhee.”

  Jamie only mumbled a response and turned to gaze again at the empty pasture next to his grandfather’s building. He stared in that direction for a long moment before Carl said, “Something on your mind?”

  “No, not really. Well…maybe, kinda.” He pointed off in the distance. “There’s still going to be room over there for a research facility, if we ever build one.”

  “What do mean, if? Is it a matter of money?”

  “No, Granddaddy said we’ll probably have enough once we sign another mining deal, and the facility itself would generate some income, too, according to Dr. Tindall.”

  “So what is it, then? Is it because you’d have to tell so many people about the magic?”

  “At least a hundred, maybe more. There’s no way I can tell that many people. I’m scared to tell even one more person.”

  “Don’t give up on your dream so easily, Jamie. There might be a way to make it happen.” Carl looked across the road again and tried to picture the big building that Jamie had described to him once. “What do you suppose Eddan would’ve thought of a research center right here in Rivershire?”

  “If he were still alive, he’d move in and never leave. Security wouldn’t be able to keep him out. He’d sleep on the couches in the lobby, if he ever remembered to sleep.”

  “He might not be the only one like that, from what I’ve heard of scientists. Better make sure you have showers installed, when you build it.”

  “And a cafeteria, too. If we build it.”

  “Not if. When.” Carl put a hand on Jamie’s shoulder and said, “But it’s getting late, and everybody’s gotta go home. You need you to make doorways for us now.”

  * * *

  Jamie sat in front of the Killian Annex on the second day of classes, hands pushed deeply inside his coat pockets, waiting for Fred so they could go to lunch in the dining hall. He had a clear view of the expansive courtyard, framed by the Coulter building on one side and the rec center on the other.

  The concrete bench he rested on was long, stretching across the curve of the building at his back. Normally, it would be covered with students, roosting on it like pigeons, but today it was too frigid, and the concrete seemed to absorb and amplify the chill. He had it all to himself.

  His only concession to the bitter January day had been his winter jacket — no gloves, no hat — and he wished he’d at least added a scarf. The air bit at the end of his nose and tips of his ears like pliers, pinching the sensitive skin. Jamie frowned and eyed the bench. I can do something about that, at least. He glanced around to make sure no one was observing him, and placed both palms flat against the concrete seat. Then he summoned his will and commanded: Warmer.

  He felt the heat spread immediately from his hands and under his nearly frozen bottom, then away like a wave, down its arcing length in both directions. “Ahhhh,” he sighed. A blissful smile tugged at his mouth as he closed his eyes. He opened them quickly when he heard girls’ voices, and he saw three pretty young ladies with their shoulders hunched against the chill, walking up the steps toward him.

  One of them cautiously placed a bare hand on the seat and said, “Ooohh, it’s warm from the sun. Let’s wait here.” And they all plopped down, only a couple of feet away.

  Man, Jamie groaned inwardly, hope Fred doesn’t see them and get jealous. He considered reversing the spell and cooling the concrete again, but after seeing the delighted looks on the girls’ faces, he decided against it.

  He stood instead. It gave him a better view of the courtyard, anyway. Sidewalks curved around either side of it, forming a broad oval. Grass, normally deep green in the warmer months, was brown now with the advent of winter, and filled the spaces in between the wide ribbons of concrete.

  Students were everywhere, chins tucked low and walking quickly, trying to stay ahead of the icy wind, bundled in coats and wool caps and fleece hoodies. Jamie knew Fred wouldn’t cover her head, though. She always let her hair flow free.

  He spotted her as soon as she rounded the corner, even though she was walking in a crowd. Her red curls glowed in the bright sunlight, and the colors around her seemed dulled somehow, as if she were soaking up all available pigments and making them her own, to be radiated everywhere in brilliant hues.

  He caught her gaze and held it, her emerald eyes dazzling, spellbinding. He couldn’t look away even if he wanted to. He felt an instinctive, visceral pull, a primal need to move closer, and he hurried down the steps, drawn to her inexorably, as the sun draws a comet from the outer reaches of the solar system.

  He walked directly toward her and the crowd around them seemed to part, forming a clear path to the girl he loved, as if his magical connecti
on with her formed a barrier, a tunnel, which no one could pass or enter.

  Is it really our magic, he thought idly, or just chance? There was a statistical probability that no one would step between them, wasn’t there?

  Or maybe not. Statistics had nothing to do with it. It was supernatural, a power beyond understanding. He quickened his pace and they rushed closer together, and his final thought before they met — could anyone be as drawn to each other as we are? She ran the last few steps and kissed him immediately as if to answer….

  No. Only you and I.

  * * *

  Jamie found the text message from Terry on his phone when he checked it at the end of track practice. Let’s hang out tonight. Bring Fred. No one else.

  Jamie met Fred in her dorm later, and Melanie seemed upset. “Why just you two?” she said, leaning one shoulder against the wall with her arms crossed, while Fred finished getting ready to go. “Is it because I don’t have any magical powers?”

  “Rollie and Nova aren’t coming with us, either,” Jamie said, “so that’s not it.”

  “So what is it, then?”

  “Guess we’ll find out in a minute.” He made a portal and he and Fred stepped through it to the living room of Eric and Terry’s house.

  The two agents were at the big table with the electronic equipment. They both pulled off their headphones and stood to greet them. Eric was his usual, expressionless self, but Terry seemed tired and pale.

  “We have some news about Cage,” Eric said. “He struck again. At least, Terry and I think it was him. This time, he killed an Israeli diplomat who was staying at a friend’s home on the French Riviera.”

  “He didn’t wait long for this hit, seems like,” Jamie said. “It hasn’t been that long since the last attack.”

  “We think he wanted it to look like a reprisal by the Iranians.”

  “Why do you think it was him?” Fred asked.