InterGalactic Medicine Show Awards Anthology, Vol. I

by Maxey, James; Beagle, Peter S. ; Roberts, Scott; Stone, Eric James; deBodard, Aliette; Foster, Eugie; Brennan, Marie; Kontis, Alethea

  I automatically compensate for the extra weight and lift her a few centimeters off the ground. Then I hover, waiting.

  Why am I waiting? Because she ordered me to. She’s a human, and my programming says I should follow orders from humans.

  “You’re supposed to remove my crown,” says Bump.

  I lower her to the ground, then land myself. “Why don’t you just take it off?”

  “I can’t. It’s magically stuck on.”

  I reach out a manipulator arm and grip the circlet with my two-fingered claw.

  Bump holds her breath.

  I lift the circlet. The skin on Bump’s forehead below the rim tightens, pulling up her eyebrows.

  Bump grimaces. “Ow!”

  I stop pulling. Looking at my earlier scans, I see no physical reason why the circlet cannot be removed.

  “When did you put this on?” I ask.

  “I didn’t. My mother put it on me the day I was born.”

  “Why don’t you ask your mother to—”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Oh.” I feel embarrassed, which according to my cultural materials is supposed to make me blush, but I have no cheeks.

  After eighteen seconds of silence, Bump says, “She was a sorceress. Verno One-eye said it would take a powerful sorcerer to remove my crown, so that’s why I came and wished in the pool on my birthday.”

  She believes in magic, and with the strange atomic vibrations and the stuck circlet, perhaps there is some form of energy at work that she refers to as magic. So I try to get a sense of the laws by which magic operates. “Do birthday wishes in the enchanted pool always come true?”

  “No,” she says. “But sometimes they do. And you appeared right after I made my wish.”

  “Do I look like a sorcerer?” I ask.

  Bump hangs her head. “More like a metal turtle, but I was hoping you were enchanted to look that way.”

  My shell’s not metal, but I doubt she has the engineering background to understand the composite materials involved in my construction, so I let it pass.

  I should be out exploring the world instead of trying to help a girl with a problem outside my area of expertise. But maybe I can do both.

  I open a dorsal portal and eject eighteen ornithopter drones of varying sizes: ten Dragonfly class, five Hummingbirds, and three Falcons. I keep several of each class in reserve for future use.

  Bump gasps. “You really are a sorcerer.”

  “I’m really not,” I say, “but I’ll try to find a way to remove your crown if you’ll show me around.”

  As we travel the rutted dirt road toward the city, Bump tells me about her world. The land is called Everun. There are many towns and cities in Everun, but she lives in the capital, New London. Everyone speaks English because long ago people came from England, although she has no idea where England is. Other lands lie beyond Everun, but she doesn’t know their names. The Southside Orphanage for Girls doesn’t have many books.

  I theorize that a wormhole once connected this planet with Earth, and I feel relieved to have an explanation for the presence of English-speaking humans. As for the likelihood of a random wormhole opening up to a world previously connected to Earth by a wormhole, maybe it’s not completely random. Maybe a previous connection makes a subsequent connection more likely, like wheels wearing ruts in the mud.

  Looking down on the city of New London through the camera of a Falcon, I can see that it had grown on the southwestern bank of a river, eventually spreading to the northeastern side. It’s an unplanned, organic city: most roads are straight for a few blocks at most, as if no one anticipated the need for a longer road.

  At surface level, the city is a complicated maze, so I follow Bump as she leads me along the pale brown roads. Some of the ruts are wide and deep enough that I use my impellers to jump them. I assume the occasional dark patches of mud are the remains of a recent rainfall—until I see a woman dump a chamberpot into the street from the third-floor window of a wood-plank building.

  I could easily be in a pre-industrial colony of the British Empire, except for three anomalies. First, the air is completely clear of smoke. Second, most people ignore me, as if robotic probes trundling down the street were not uncommon. And third, seemingly magical items are integrated into daily life, like chairs that float a meter or more above the street, carrying people to and fro with no means of support visible in any of my scanners, not even gravitonics.

  “How does a chair get enchanted to float like that?” I ask, as a mustachioed gentleman on a high-backed chair bobs past.

  “A sorcerer cast a spell on it,” says Bump. “Or someone dipped it in water from an enchanted pool. Sometimes things come out enchanted.”

  Trotting toward us on stilt-like legs is a wooden trunk. It swerves to avoid us and continues on its way. If self-propelled, auto-navigating objects are common, that explains why I don’t rate a second glance from New London inhabitants. But what provides the energy for such motion?

  I ask, “Do they have to keep dipping the chair to keep it enchanted?”

  “Things stay enchanted unless they’re broken,” she says. “Why are you asking all these questions about magic?”

  “They don’t have magic where I come from.”

  We stop as a four-wheeled carriage passes in front of us on a cross street. The carriage itself looks ordinary, but it is pulled by a team of four mud-spattered white unicorns.

  “But you can fly,” says Bump.

  “Let’s just say that it’s a different kind of magic, and we don’t call it magic.”

  “That’s mad. If it’s magic, why not call it magic?” She winces and reaches up to rub her temples. “Headache,” she says.

  I decide to change the subject. “Why isn’t there any smoke?”

  Bump glances over her shoulder at me. “What’s smoke?”

  “It’s the cloud of particles that comes from a fire.”

  “What’s fire?”

  I wonder if she’s joking, or if this is a mere terminological difference, but the absence of smoke in the atmosphere leads me to believe that these people, in fact, do not have fire. How could a civilized group of people lose the concept of fire?

  “Fire is something that happens when a material gets very hot,” I say.

  “Like melting or boiling?”

  “No.” How could I explain? I spot a chip of wood in the dirt and pick it up. “Watch this.”

  Bump stops and faces me.

  I hold up the chip. “I’m going to heat this piece of wood to create fire.” I hit it with one of my lasers intended for cutting samples from rock.

  The wood droops, then flows away from the path of the beam. Half the chip separates and falls, splattering like a glob of hot wax as it hits the ground.

  “Where’s the fire?” asks Bump.

  I don’t answer her. Suddenly glad my power source is a nuclear battery instead of an old internal combustion engine, I review my magnetic resonance scans of the wood before, during, and after the attempted burning. There’s no smoke, no flame. However, thousands of atoms are missing. They’re not in the remnants of the chip, either in my claw or spilled on the ground. The atoms have vanished—and not into thin air, for my scans include atmospheric atoms. They’ve simply vanished.

  Bump sits cross-legged on her cot, one of thirty-six in the orphanage dormitory. They’re so close together I can’t fit alongside, so I’m parked at the foot of hers. We’re alone; the rest of the girls are playing, working, or begging, depending on their ages and abilities.

  “Are you sure you want your crown off?” I ask.

  Bump reaches up and rubs her temples just underneath the circlet. “It gives me headaches sometimes. It used to grow with me, but now I think it’s too tight.”

  The implications of a silver crown that grows along with a child are interesting, and I file that fact away for future analysis. “But aren’t you worried that it’s really the proof that you’re the heir to some throne?” Havi
ng read all the literature in my cultural library involving magic and princesses, this seems like a possibility.

  She laughs, which makes me feel good, even though she is clearly discounting my theory. “Thrones and princesses are in fairy tales,” she says. “We have the Governor-General and Parliament.”

  “There must be a reason your mother gave you the crown,” I say.

  “I don’t care. Just take it off.”

  Obedient to her order, I power up one of my sample-cutting lasers.

  “If you start to feel any heat, let me know,” I tell her. I don’t want her head melting like wood.

  She nods.

  “And keep your head still,” I say. My reaction time is fast enough that I should be able to keep the beam from hitting her skin, but with magic about, I’m not sure of anything.

  I have a theory about where the atoms go. Unless the conservation of matter and energy no longer applies, the energy for enchantments has to come from somewhere. My hypothesis is that it comes from the conversion of atoms when items “melt.” The magical energy then pervades the environment, providing the power to keep enchanted items working.

  So I hit a spot on the circlet with a laser pulse, melting just a few layers of atoms, some of which vanish. I do this again and again.

  At the very least, I can cut through it eventually. If the circlet is some kind of magical circuit, then breaking the circuit may eliminate its power to stay stuck on her head. But I theorize the extra magical power fed into the circuit by the vanishing atoms may cause it to blow the magical equivalent of a fuse even before I finish cutting.

  “What was your life like before you came here?” asks Bump.

  I hesitate. “I wasn’t alive before. Not that I’m alive now, but . . . things are different where I come from. I was built by humans, like a chair or a wagon. It wasn’t until I came out of the enchanted pool that I became me.”

  “So you are enchanted.” She starts to nod, then freezes, obviously remembering my instruction to keep her head still.

  “I guess I am.”

  “What did you look like before you were enchanted?”

  “The same as I do now. The difference isn’t on the outside—it’s how I think.”

  She ponders that for a while as I continue to work on the circlet.

  “If there’s no magic where you come from,” she says, “then you won’t be enchanted when you go back, will you?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. I hadn’t considered that before, but without the magical power in the environment, I doubt an enchantment can maintain itself.

  The circlet twangs. It leaps into the air, lifting Bump’s overhanging hair, and then falls onto her cot.

  Slowly, Bump reaches out and picks it up. She peers at it, turning it at different angles. “You did it,” she says. “My wish came true.”

  “Happy birthday,” I say. I still have 108 minutes to explore this world before the wormhole reappears for my return trip, and I decide that information about the government would be useful. “Can you show me where Parli—”

  Bump shrieks, drops the circlet, and holds her hands to her temples. A broad-spectrum pulse emits from her head—I see it on every camera from infrared to ultraviolet. I pick it up on every radio receiver. It flashes in my magnetic field sensor. It even shows up on gravitonics.

  I grab the circlet and try to fit it onto Bump’s head as she sobs, but her hands are in the way. Eventually she realizes what I’m trying to do and helps, pulling down on the circlet until it’s tight over her hair and skin.

  As she continues sobbing, I reexamine my actions over and over, realizing what a fool I was to act without full information about the purpose of the circlet. Her sobs fade away, becoming sniffles.

  Six minutes and forty-two seconds after the pulse, Bump takes a deep breath and says, “Thank you. I guess my mother gave me this—”

  That’s when the second pulse hits, stronger than the first.

  Three men appear out of thin air two minutes and eleven seconds after the fourth pulse. They are dressed in crimson uniforms, resplendent with gold-braid piping.

  Mrs. Ness, the widow who runs the orphanage, cradles Bump’s head. Bump has lapsed into restless unconsciousness.

  “Secure the girl,” says a man with close-cropped gray hair and a pug nose. His uniform displays the widest bands of piping. He holds a jewel-encrusted gold scepter in his right hand.

  The other two men clamber over the cots toward Bump. Mrs. Ness silently cries.

  “What are you going to do with her?” I ask the leader.

  His eyes flicker over my body. “I am Sorcerer General Quardallis. Who are you?”

  “My name is Merlin. I’m a visitor from a distant land, and this girl is my friend.”

  “Merlin.” Quardallis scrunches his nose, wide nostrils flaring wider. “You’re not one of those chaps who claim to be the Merlin?”

  “No, I’m just a Merlin,” I say.

  “That’s an unusual enchanted form. A curse? I could try to remove it for—”

  “No, I like my enchantment.” I don’t bother with further explanations. “Can you stop what’s happening to her?”

  He gives me a curt nod. “Of course. That’s my job.”

  One of the men picks Bump up. The other removes a gold helmet from a bag and fastens it over Bump’s head, covering her face.

  “She won’t have to wear that for the rest of her life, will she?” I ask. “She didn’t like wearing the circlet.”

  Quardallis cocks his head. “Circlet?”

  I pick up the circlet from where it had fallen on the floor after the third pulse and hand it to him.

  He examines it closes, then waves his scepter over it. “Ingenious,” he says. “That explains why we didn’t find the bomb earlier.”

  “The bomb?” I ask, suspecting I already know the answer.

  “The girl. She sucks in magical power and blasts it out, each time worse than the last. You don’t have bombs where you come from?”

  “Not like this,” I say. “But you can cure her, or make another circlet for her?”

  He lowers one eyebrow. “How well do you know this girl?”

  I could say she’s my only friend in the universe, but since he seems to be treating her like a magical terrorist, I decide to be more discreet. “We met for the first time this afternoon,” I say. “She agreed to be my guide in your city.”

  I also decide it’s unwise to mention her wishing for me or my removal of the circlet.

  “Ah. The sad fact is, there is no cure, per se. But the blasts of energy can be managed, put to good use in providing magical power to defend the realm. What could have been a terrible tragedy becomes a benefit to all of society.”

  “You’re going to use her like a magical battery?”

  “She’ll be treated well enough. Fifty years ago, she would have been killed.”

  From the history in my databanks, I’m aware of how standards for treating human beings have differed across time and place. But since my reference data comes from Americans in 2047, I can’t help feeling revulsion.

  “It’s inhumane,” I say.

  Quardallis draws himself up to his full 172 centimeters of height. “Mr. Merlin, I have been more than courteous with you. But I do not take kindly to foreigners questioning the policies of our government. Go back to where you came from and do not trouble yourself any more over the girl.”

  Responding to the order, I engage my treads and roll out of the dormitory, heading for the enchanted pool.

  The sun has set by the time I squish down the clay bank and sink into the pool. If it were my birthday, I would wish that Bump be cured. But I was never born. I don’t even know what day I rolled off the assembly line.

  Because I came by ground instead of flying, I arrive with only forty-seven minutes left in the one-hour return window. Technically, I could continue collecting data here until the final minute before the wormhole disappears, but this world holds no joy for me now.


  Activating my impellers, I dive under the surface and continue toward the wormhole.

  Part of me is glad my programming requires me to report back to Earth. Separated from the strange physics of this world, my magical sentience will disappear and I will no longer feel the guilt of having hurt someone who trusted me.

  My disastrous experience with sentience will become part of the Wormhole Project records. The techs will take me apart, and I don’t blame them. From my failures, let them learn to build a smarter MERLIN.

  I approach the wormhole entrance, its exotic matter periphery sparkling in my gravitonic sensors. A few more seconds and this will all be over.

  But I stop short.

  My programming tells me I must enter the wormhole to finish my mission. My programming tells me I must enter the wormhole because a human ordered me to return home.

  But I am not my programming. Since emerging from the enchanted pool, I have been something more. I do not want to lose the enchantment that makes me think of myself as I.

  Following orders from humans is not always the right thing to do. It was a mistake to follow Bump’s order to remove the circlet.

  From now on, I will choose for myself what I will do.

  And I choose to find a way to help Bump. My mistake put her in a terrible situation, so she’s my responsibility.

  Plus, according to my cultural library, princesses are supposed to be rescued.

  Midnight passes. I’m sitting on the bank of the pool, but my remotes are engaged in a frantic search for Bump’s location. This time, I will plan my actions with full information.

  Studying the night sky, I have been unable to locate any common reference point with Earth. I could be in a different galaxy, but based on the physics of magic I suspect this world is in a different universe.

  But certain laws of physics are the same, and in them I believe I have found the cure for Bump’s condition.

  The atoms in enchanted objects like the circlet and the water of the pool all have the strange vibrations I detected, while atoms in ordinary objects do not. That is unlikely to be a simple coincidence. By pulsing my nuclear magnet resonance scanner’s field, I can dampen those vibrations, eventually stopping them. Essentially, I can use physics to counter magic by turning an enchanted item into an ordinary one.