Off to Be the Wizard - 2 - Spell or High Water

by Scott Meyer

The head of the statue rolled noisily to a stop. Martin looked at it, grimaced, and said, “Ugh, is that Ayn Rand?”

  The sound of a gavel echoed through the hall. All eyes turned to the podium and Brit the Elder, who was rapping her gavel for order.

  “As I stated this morning, something unexpected has occurred. I move that we adjourn for the day. Seconded?”

  Brit the Younger seconded the motion.

  14.

  After the delegates had mostly cleared out, Gwen came back to the main hall. She wanted a look at the statue’s base. Truth be told, she had wanted a good look at the base of the first statue that had fallen the night before and had gotten up early to sneak in to the hall to snoop around a bit, but the statue had been repaired during the night.

  In the convention center she saw servants cleaning up rubble and Martin, leaning on his staff, looking at the podium, deep in thought.

  Martin turned as Gwen approached. He nodded, smiled, then turned his attention back to the podium. It was pristine and undamaged from the floor up to the point where the ankles and gown tapered to their narrowest points. There, the material was sheared smoothly at an angle, as if cut with a saw then sanded to remove any imperfections.

  “How often do those stupid statues break at the ankles and fall over?” Martin asked.

  “Never,” Gwen answered. “The entire time I’ve been here it’s never happened, and none of the other sorceresses can remember it ever happening either.”

  “Well,” Martin said, “I’d say that’s suspicious, but I think you’re way ahead of me on that.”

  “Yeah,” Gwen said. “It’s not very subtle, is it? I mean, at least last night the statue was posed with its legs together, so the statue only had to break at one point. This one had its legs apart, so the statue had to break cleanly in two places at the same time.”

  “I know,” Martin said, “and even if the statues did fall over twice in two days, the fact that they both fell on the same person is just a dead giveaway. How is Brit, by the way?”

  Gwen said, “Shaken up. It didn’t hurt her at all physically, but that kind of thing still takes its toll on your nerves.”

  “Yeah, I know. Gwen, how well do you know Brit?”

  “She’s my best friend.”

  Martin thought a second, then asked, “Which one?”

  Gwen answered, “Both of them. They’re the same person. You get that, don’t you, Martin? I mean, I thought I’d explained that.”

  Martin held up a hand in surrender. “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just weird. I know they’re the same person, and they look exactly alike, but they act so differently. And besides, they don’t seem to get along that well.”

  “Yeah,” Gwen sighed, “there’s some tension there. They’re just very different people.”

  Martin let this pass. He got up close to the pedestal, examining one of the broken ankles in more detail. “What is this made of? Not more diamond, is it?”

  “No. Diamond is good for some things, but not as good for others. Besides, it’d be pretty boring if everything were made of diamond.”

  I suppose this is what passes for boredom when you’re a time-traveling wizard, Martin thought.

  Gwen continued, “Diamond is used for the large-scale structural pieces, but most smaller-scale construction and decorative work is actually a toughened glass.”

  “Really?” Martin asked. “Like Pyrex?”

  Gwen nodded.

  “Well, what do you know? Phillip was right.”

  Gwen looked around the room. “Hey, where is Phillip?”

  “Dunno,” Martin said, still looking at the shorn ankles of the statue. “He hung around for a few minutes after the crash, then said he had something he needed to do and took off.”

  Brit the Younger was curled up in her favorite chair looking miserable when the doorbell rang.

  The second time it rang, she wondered why her servant hadn’t answered it.

  The third time it rang, she remembered that her servant had gone out to get her dinner.

  The fourth time it rang, she realized that it wasn’t reasonable to expect whoever was ringing to wait for her servant to return and answer the door.

  The fifth time it rang, she realized that whoever it was doing the ringing was probably tenacious enough to wait for her servant, but she’d have to listen to this ringing the whole time. She hoisted herself up from her chair and walked to the door, slowly enough that ring number six occurred while she was in transit. She looked through the peephole and was delighted by who she saw.

  Phillip said, “Brit, we need to talk. I think someone’s trying to kill you.”

  “Of course they are. Come in.”

  Phillip entered Brit’s home and immediately had to stop to take it in. He had been in Atlantis less than a day, and while he was accustomed to everything being beautiful, Brit’s living room still came as a shock. Like his and Martin’s quarters, one entire wall was the curved, transparent outer wall of the city providing a panoramic view of the ocean. Brit’s home was much lower in the dish than Phillip’s, so the wall was raked at a much steeper angle, and the ocean outside was a much darker blue. Brit’s floor was a single slab of pristine white perfection with a subtle etched grid pattern to help give a sense of scale. Her furniture was sleek and modern, yet comfortable looking. It was the kind of room Phillip had seen pictures of in magazines and thought, Nice, but no real human being could possibly live like that. It was the kind of room he had tried to create in his attic back home, but hadn’t had the taste to pull off.

  Phillip said, “Nice place.”

  Brit said, “Eh,” then curled back up in her favorite chair, which looked to Phillip like a matched set of comfy cushions supported by just enough milky glass to maintain structural integrity.

  Phillip sat in the identical chair opposite her, leaned in for emphasis, and said, “Brit, I’m serious. I think someone’s trying to kill you.”

  Brit replied, “Yeah. I know.”

  Phillip still wasn’t sure his words were getting through to her. “I don’t believe the statue was an accident.”

  “I know it wasn’t, Phillip. Obviously. It wasn’t even the first attempt.”

  Phillip nodded. “Yes, the statue last night.” Phillip leaned back in his chair and took a moment to try to figure out what was going on. After a moment, he came to the conclusion that what was going on was that he didn’t know what was going on, and that anything beyond that was uncertain.

  “You don’t seem very worried,” he said.

  “I’m not.”

  “Someone’s trying to kill you, Brit.”

  “Yes, but they’re failing at it, and they’re going to keep failing.”

  “How can you be sure?” Phillip asked.

  “Because Brit the Elder is here. She makes me miserable, but one bright side to her existence is that as long as she’s around, I know I’ll live long enough to be her someday.”

  Phillip considered this. “I guess that is a pretty good bright side.”

  “Yeah,” Brit agreed. “It’d be even brighter if I liked her, or wanted to be her, but there it is. Even when your future is good, it’s not necessarily the one you want. Anyway, as long as I know that whoever is trying to kill me will never succeed, then their constant attempts are just an inconvenience.”

  “That’s one heck of an inconvenience,” Phillip said.

  “Eh, I dunno,” Brit said. “It’s always over fast, and they come to wherever I am. Really, as attempted murderers go, I think I’m getting pretty good service.”

  Phillip was about to comment on this when the door opened. Brit’s servant walked in, carrying a steaming crock of some fantastic-smelling liquid. Unlike all of the other servants Phillip had seen, Brit’s servant was average height, and while thin and in good condition, he was not so muscular as to be bulky. H
e was dressed in the same ridiculous mesh top and kilt as all servants, but he somehow wore it with more dignity than the others. As he entered, the servant said, “I’m back, and I got that soup you like. The shop was about to close, so I had to beg a bit, but I told them it was for you and there was no problem.” The servant saw Phillip. “Oh, I didn’t know you were going to have company for dinner. I’m glad I got extra soup.”

  Brit stood and said, “Ah, I should introduce you. This is my servant, Nikolas.”

  The servant bowed slightly, still smiling, and said, “Please call me Nik. You must be Phillip.”

  Phillip stood up and returned the bow. “It’s good to meet you, Nik.”

  Nik looked Phillip in the eye, kept his smile turned up to maximum, and said “It’s good to meet you, Phillip. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Phillip said, “I hope you heard good things.”

  Nik held the smile and the eye contact just long enough to make Phillip uncomfortable, then said, “I know you do.” Nik and Brit shared a small laugh, which Phillip joined in an attempt to be pleasant.

  Nik winked at Phillip so quickly that he wasn’t really sure he’d seen it, then Nik started walking toward the door at the side of the room. “You two get comfortable,” he said, “I’ll pour this soup into a couple of bowls for you and be right back.”

  “Actually,” Brit said, stopping Nik in his tracks, “I’ve changed my mind. If you could please keep the soup warm for a little while, I think I need to get out of the house and clear my head a bit.”

  Nik bowed again, said that this would not be a problem, and gave Phillip another smile. Phillip wasn’t sure if Nik was smiling at him, or smiling with him.

  Phillip said, “I suppose I should be getting back.”

  Brit said, “You could do that, or you could come with me. I wouldn’t mind the company.”

  Phillip remembered the look Nik had given him and thought, Okay, I guess he was smiling with me.

  Phillip had expected “getting out of the house” to entail walking out the door, but instead, Brit reached down to the floor next to her chair and brought up what appeared to be a small rectangular sheet of glass. She held it with both hands and the flat surface of the glass came alive with printed shapes and symbols. Phillip leaned in closer to get a better look. Brit tilted the sheet of glass so that Phillip could see it better. The buttons were all clearly marked. Phillip only had time to glance, but he could see that there were controls for the heat and lighting in the various rooms in Brit’s home. Various other buttons did other things that Phillip was sure he could figure out if he had the time.

  He had seen some gadgets from after his time, but nothing like this. There was literally no place for any electronics that he could see. It looked for all the world like a simple sheet of glass, except that animated symbols and text were flowing smoothly over its surface. “What year are you from?” Phillip asked, amazed.

  “I’m from 1996,” Brit answered, more than a little puzzled by tone of the question. She looked at Phillip, followed his gaze to the tablet in her hands, then laughed. “This isn’t from the future. It’s just a sheet of glass with the edges sanded. Our version of what you call the shell can project touch controls onto any surface, or into thin air. Usually the person using the controls is the only one who can see them, but I made this up so there’d be visible controls for Nik to use.”

  Brit pressed a button in the corner of the tablet, then pointed out the curved, wall-sized window into the ocean beyond. As if called into being by the act of her pointing, a glowing sphere appeared, dimly at first, then quite brightly before dimming again to be barely visible.

  Brit lowered the sheet of glass, and extended a hand for Phillip to take. “Our ride is here,” she said. Phillip reached for his staff, which he’d placed on the ground next to his chair. “You won’t need that,” Brit said. “Besides, it won’t fit.”

  Phillip left his staff on the floor and took Brit’s hand. She tapped the corner of her control panel with her thumb, and the next instant she and Phillip were looking in at the living room from outside the window.

  Phillip looked around the interior of the sphere. At first it seemed to Phillip that he was simply floating at a fixed point under the sea, but he immediately realized that he was standing upright, perfectly dry, and breathing normally. They were inside the sphere that he had seen Brit conjure up just a moment before. It was perfectly transparent with a flat, clear floor and two clear chairs. She sat in one. He took the other. She pulled her legs up underneath her with her control panel on her lap. Phillip couldn’t easily read it from where he was, but he could tell that she was scrolling through various options.

  Phillip asked, “Do you just conjure one of these things up whenever you want?”

  “I could do it that way. Really it’d be just as easy, but I keep this one around all the time. It just hovers outside my window until I need it. I like knowing that I have a vehicle, and that it’s there when I need it.”

  Phillip considered telling her about his Fiero, but decided against it. Not yet, at least.

  Brit turned to Phillip and said, “We have all of the oceans to choose from. That’s two thirds of the Earth’s surface. Anything you want to see?”

  “Surprise me.”

  Brit looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then scrolled through her list of options and selected one. Instantly, the world got much brighter. The deep blue that had surrounded them was replaced with a lighter shade that gave way to an undulating plain of silver above them, and an explosion of colors beneath.

  Phillip had watched enough nature programs to know that he was looking at a reef. Bizarre organic shapes in colors Phillip had never imagined spread out beneath them, fading into the murky blue distance. As Brit piloted their craft between the silver boundary above and the neon obstacles below, a school of fish, swimming in tight formation, played chicken with their craft. The fish swam straight ahead, directly into Brit and Phillip’s path, then parted silently, enveloping them for a moment before reforming behind them, as if nothing had been in their way to begin with. A strange shadow fell over Phillip. He looked up and saw that a manta ray was swimming overhead, briefly eclipsing the sun.

  Phillip said, “I just can’t get over it, Brit.”

  Brit said, “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, this submarine, it’s amazing. There are no seams, no moving parts. It’s so elegant. And, the fact that I know exactly how it works just makes it more impressive. I mean, it’s all the same basic things we’ve all been doing all along, replicating, materializing, levitating, and moving through time and space, but it just never occurred to us to put it all together like this.”

  “I’m glad you approve.”

  “I, uh,” Phillip stammered, “I once made a car indestructible, and gave it unlimited fuel. I thought that was pretty clever. I see now that was so needlessly complex. I could have just made it move forward without the engine. It would have been silent, which would be a bit weird, but I’d have thought of some way around that.”

  “That’s an easy fix,” Brit said. “It’s not hard to alter something’s sound and light signatures. This bubble is completely silent and invisible.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Oh yeah. We could hover over Disneyland watching kids ride the teacups for an hour and nobody would see us.”

  “That would be great for hopping around time checking out historic events,” Phillip said.

  “Yeah,” Brit agreed, “I considered that, but then I realized that most of history is made up of things I’m actually pretty happy that I wasn’t there to see.”

  “Good point. I once went to the Kennedy assassination. I wanted to see who that shadowy figure on the grassy knoll was.”

  Brit’s eyes widened. “You actually went to the grassy knoll?”

  Phillip nodded.

  “Who was there?�
� Brit asked.

  Phillip gritted his teeth. “Nobody, until I got there. Luckily, not many people saw me. I managed to stay in the shadows.”

  They continued their tour of the reef in silence for a moment, then Phillip continued. “Anyway, like I was saying, it just never occurred to me to assemble these kinds of complex constructions, like this sub, or the elevator platforms, or frankly, Atlantis itself. I’m just blown away by it all, and Gwen tells me it was all your idea.”

  “Yup,” Brit said. “My idea.”

  Phillip said, “Well done.”

  Without turning to face him, Brit said, “I’ll pass your compliment along to Brit the Elder.”

  Phillip cursed himself. Here he was trying to pay her a compliment, and he had said the exact wrong thing. He started to apologize, but Brit cut him off.

  “No, Phillip. I’m sorry. You were just being nice, and I handled that gracelessly. I did come up with the ideas. Laying down materials an atom at a time, using the objects made that way to build complex structures and devices, building Atlantis if it didn’t already exist, heck, going to Atlantis in the first place, they were all my ideas. The whole reason I wanted to go to Atlantis was that I had all these things I wanted to try, and it’s hard to do that when you’re living with your parents in Racine, Wisconsin.”

  “What did you do for a living in Racine?” Phillip asked.

  “I was a tour guide at the Johnson Wax building. That Frank Lloyd Wright really knew how to design a building, except for the roofs. They always leak. Seems like a funny thing for the world’s greatest architect to be bad at, roofs. It’s kinda the primary reason to make a building in the first place, wouldn’t you say? To keep the rain out?”

  Phillip agreed.

  “Anyway,” Brit continued, “I had all these crazy ideas I couldn’t wait to try, and no place to try them, so I go back in time to Atlantis, and when I get there, Brit the Elder is waiting for me with the good news that she already tried my ideas, and they all worked. She’d used them to build the city, just like I wanted to, and all of the people who live there are very grateful, to her.”