by Scott Meyer
Gwen said, “Well, after a lot of arguing, mostly from Phillip, it was decided that the Brits counted as one person, so they only get one vote.”
“Yup,” Martin said, “between that, and the fact that the chancellor has to be a non-sorceress, voted into the job by the non-magical citizens of the city, I suspect things will be a little different around here.”
“Yeah, though the sorceresses still outnumber us on the council by two to one,” Ampyx said, “while we outnumber them out here by over a hundred to one.”
“Yeah,” Martin allowed. “I said a little different, not very different.”
Ampyx leaned in and lowered his voice. “Look, they don’t tell us a lot about what you’ve been doing in there. What ended up happening with Ida and Nilo?”
Gwen said, “Part of why you haven’t heard is that we didn’t really do anything until yesterday. Dealing with them was the last official act of the summit. Phillip and the Brits went and retrieved them, as Brit the Elder said, the morning after they escaped, and dragged them in front of the summit. We gave them one last opportunity to justify their actions, listened while they failed to do it, then we punished them.”
Ampyx clearly wasn’t satisfied with that answer, so Martin elaborated. “They were both stripped of all powers. Nilo was banished from Atlantis for life. He’s back in the little fishing village he came from. I’m told he always hated it there, so that’s nice. Ida was sent back where she originally came from too. You realize that none of us are really from here, right?”
Ampyx nodded.
“Okay,” Martin continued, “anyway, like I said, she was stripped of all powers including her immortality, and was sent back to where she came from, never to return.”
“That’s it?” Ampyx asked. “Banishment? That’s all the punishment they get?”
Gwen explained, “When you know what’s possible, what you could do, where you could go, how long you could live, believe me, Ampyx, knowing that you had all of that and that you squandered it because you wanted just a little more . . . that’s enough punishment for almost any crime.”
“But enough about punishment,” Martin said. “Ampyx, let’s talk about rewards. You helped us, you helped me, and for that, we’ve all decided that you should be rewarded.”
Ampyx said, “I really didn’t do much.”
Martin said, “That’s true, but the point is, you did something, and you could have been killed doing it. You helped me figure things out. You went with us to confront Ida, not knowing what she might do, and you tried to stop Nilo from pounding me into a puddle even though it would have been easy for him to kill you.”
“I wouldn’t say easy.”
“Very easy, Ampyx. Anyway, we all discussed it, and we can’t give you powers or immortality, but if you’re careful, and avoid doing anything too stupid, you will live a long life, and you will be healthy until the day you die. Also, if you like, you have been offered a position as Brit the Elder’s personal servant.”
“Really?” Ampyx said, clearly very grateful and impressed. “Brit the Elder!” He pictured it for a long moment, smiling broadly. Then he asked, “Doesn’t she have a whole team of servants?”
“Yes, and she still will. They’ll continue to do pretty much all of the work. Yours will mostly be a ceremonial position. Nice work, if you can get it.”
“Will I be expected to—”
“No,” Gwen and Martin said in unison. “You will not.”
“Okay,” Ampyx said. “I won’t be expected to, but . . . will I—”
“No,” they repeated. “You will not.”
“Fine,” Ampyx said. “I understand, that’s not part of the deal. At least not for now, but who knows what the future holds?”
Gwen said, “Brit the Elder does, and she wanted us to make it clear to you that your services in the bedroom will not be required, not now, or ever.”
Ampyx looked disappointed. Martin said, “I don’t think you’re quite understanding what we’re telling you. Brit has very limited need of a personal servant. Your duties will consist entirely of light cleaning and attending the occasional dinner party.”
“The sort of work women are ill-suited for,” Ampyx said.
“Yeah, whatever,” Martin said. “Anyway, that’s all you have to do, and in return, you have income and a place of your own to live in for life, and you can pursue any woman you like, sorceress or not.”
The more he thought about that, the more Ampyx liked it. There would be a major change in the way he approached women. Instead of trying to use his physical assets to attract someone of higher status who could take care of him, he would be using his ability to take care of others to attract someone of equal status. It would take a while to get used to, but Martin and Gwen thought he’d figure it out.
The three of them made pleasant conversation until breakfast was done, then exchanged thank-yous and goodbyes.
As he shook Martin’s hand, Ampyx said, “I guess I won’t see you again.”
“Nonsense,” Martin said. “There’s another summit in ten years. And also . . .” He looked at Gwen, who nodded. “I plan to come back for visits from time to time.”
Ampyx looked at Martin, then at Gwen, then he laughed the kind of laugh that said that he knew exactly what was going to happen while at the same time making it much less likely that what he thought would happen would.
Gwen and Martin took their leave of Ampyx and walked through the streets of Atlantis like two people who had someplace to go but were in no hurry to get there. After far too little walking and far too brief a lift ride for their liking, they arrived at their destination, Brit the Elder’s patio, where—to Martin’s surprise—they were immediately invited inside.
Brit the Elder’s quarters looked very similar to Brit the Younger’s, what with the Scandinavian-inspired crystalline furniture and the lack of clutter. The primary difference was that there was no giant window onto the ocean. Because her home was so low in the bowl of the city, having a transparent glass wall was not an option. Instead, she had windows built into the walls that were constructed of modified portals, which allowed light through but nothing else, and in only one direction. Because of this, while her apartment was at the very bottom of the city, it commanded views from the top of the tallest building on the rim.
Brit the Elder stood to welcome Gwen and Martin. Brit the Younger and Phillip remained on the couch, holding hands. Martin saw Phillip’s hard-sided brown Samsonite suitcase sitting on the floor next to his own black-fabric flight attendant’s special.
Brit the Elder said, “Martin, it’s such a shame to see you go, but it’s not forever, and besides, we did get a lot accomplished, didn’t we?”
“A bit too much, if you ask me,” Phillip grumbled.
Brit the Younger beamed at him and said, “We don’t have to ask you, dear. Everybody knows how you feel about it.”
“Well, I’ll keep repeating it until someone listens,” Phillip said.
“We have listened to you, Phillip. You gave a speech in front of the entire summit and everybody listened.”
“If you were really listening, you wouldn’t have voted against me.”
“Or,” Martin offered, “maybe we voted against you because we were listening.”
Brit the Elder tried to calm things down, saying, “Phillip, I never said my proposal was without its problems.”
“It’s not without problems? It’s all problems! It’s a cluster of problems packed so tightly together that it appears to be one big problem! I mean the technical problems involved in password protecting all known instances of the file—”
“All of which I’ve already solved.” Brit the Elder said.
“—pale in comparison,” Phillip continued, “to the logistical problems of finding every instance of the file that every wizard and sorceress found and used to come back her
e, then password protecting them, but removing the protection just before that instance was found in the first place, and putting it back just after the time traveler in question was told about the plan. Even saying it out loud is a confusing nightmare, let alone trying to implement it!”
“But,” Brit the Elder said, patiently, “we have many very smart people working on it, and we have literally all of the time in the world to work it out.”
Martin said, “I don’t know why you’re complaining. Thanks to your forethought as chairman, our colony is one of the few that had a census of all of our people and where they found the file ready to go. You should be proud.”
“Besides,” Brit the Elder said, “we’ve gone to the future to check, and the plan is already working. All instances of the file are locked down. Now we just have to live up to our end and do the locking.” Brit the Elder stopped, as if something important had just occurred to her.
“That’s what’s bothering you, isn’t it?” she asked. “The fact that the plan seemed to go into effect before we did anything to make it happen except decide we would do it. It flies in the face of your free-will fetish.”
“For the record,” Phillip seethed, “it didn’t go into effect the instant we decided to enact the plan. It went into effect the instant you told us about the plan. The fact that they all later decided to go along with it is incidental. And while I’m setting the record straight, my love of and belief in the simple truth of personal free will does not now, nor will it ever meet the clinical definition of a fetish.”
“Well, in any case,” Brit the Elder said, “I can see now why it upsets you so.”
“No, you can’t! Because that’s not the biggest problem with your plan. The biggest problem is the moral problem.”
“If the problems were Voltron, the moral problem would be his torso,” Martin added, trying to be helpful.
“I don’t know what that is,” Phillip said, letting Martin know that he had failed. “It’s like we’ve built a nice treehouse, climbed up into the treehouse, and now we’re pulling the ladder up behind us because if we don’t, someone we don’t like might come in.”
Brit the Younger squeezed Phillip’s hand and said, “You’re right, Phillip. You are. No one denies that. The problem is that she’s right too. Actually, you’re all three right. Martin’s Voltron analogy was quite apt.”
“Thank you,” said Martin.
“The file has been a tremendous benefit to those of us who have found it,” Brit the Younger told Phillip, “and it feels horribly selfish to deny that to the rest of humanity, but if we don’t take steps to control it, the file will be used for evil again.”
Phillip said, “But it’s already been used for evil, several times, and besides, we’re just as likely to use it for evil in the future as anyone else.”
“Exactly,” Gwen said. “That horse has already left the barn. We can’t undo the damage that’s already been done. We can only try to prevent more from happening.”
“There might be ways to undo things. We are time travelers,” Phillip protested.
Gwen asked Phillip, “Are you, of all people, about to suggest that we should go back in time and prevent ourselves from finding the very thing that allows us to go back in time? Phillip, you know better than that. That’s the kind of thing Martin would suggest.”
Martin started to argue, but then decided it was unwise. Why start an argument with Gwen when things were going so well? And she did have a point.
Phillip stopped arguing, but he was clearly unconvinced. “Okay, okay. We’ve been through this already, I know. The summit debated this for two days. It just feels wrong to me, that’s all. The file, it’s bigger than any of us. It belongs to the whole world. Arguably, it is the whole world. Who are we to try to tell others they can’t have it?”
Brit the Elder said, “We’re the ones who found it, who had the imagination to see how it could be used, and who have the responsibility to make sure that it’s used wisely.”
Phillip said, “I don’t know that you’ll ever convince me of that.”
“You’re right,” Brit the Elder said. “At every summit after this you move that we lift the password protection and get voted down. Eventually we make it part of the opening ceremony.”
Phillip smiled weakly. “Wonderful.”
Martin laughed. “Cheer up, man. Look at it this way. With all of the known instances of the file password protected, we know Jimmy can never weasel his way back into the past to seek revenge.”
“We knew that already,” Phillip said, his mood lifted by the memory. “We fixed him but good. Yes sir, we can all rest easy knowing that we’ll never see Jimmy again.”
With that, Phillip and Martin started the familiar leaving ritual. They said their goodbyes, then talked for several minutes. Then they resaid their goodbyes, then talked for several more minutes. Everyone had a good laugh at how silly they were being, then they talked for several more minutes.
Finally, they all got serious. Gwen hugged both men, hugging Martin noticeably longer, then said, “I’ll see you both soon.”
“You will?” Phillip asked, confused.
“Yeah, I’m coming out to visit Martin. Please keep it quiet. I don’t know how the locals would react if they knew the witch was returning.”
Brit the Younger shook Martin’s hand, then kissed Phillip goodbye. She said, “I’ll miss you.”
Brit the Elder said, “So will I.”
Phillip sighed. “You know, I still don’t buy into the idea that you two are the same person.”
Brit the Elder touched Phillip’s cheek. “I know, Phillip. I know.”
Phillip asked, “Do I ever?”
Brit the Elder fought back a small laugh. “Phillip,” she asked, “if I’m not the future version of Brit, how would I know the answer to your question?” Then she kissed him on the cheek.
While Phillip was working through his irritated silence, Martin took the initiative. He tipped his hat, said, “Ladies,” and teleported himself and Phillip back home to Medieval England.
They materialized in Phillip’s rumpus room.
“Here we are,” Martin said. “Two weeks later. I can hardly wait to hear about all of the nothing that happened while we were gone.”
Phillip said, “It’s just less confusing to keep track of things this way. I never liked returning to places the instant after I time traveled out. It never felt quite right to go away and come back without really having left. Besides, if anything interesting happened while we weren’t around, we can always go back and be there for it.”
Martin shook his head. “And for us, that’s what passes for ‘less confusing.’ Awesome.”
Phillip put down his suitcase, sat in his easy chair and said, “So, Gwen’s coming to visit you, eh?”
Martin smiled and said, “Yeah.” He may even have blushed slightly. He sat on Phillip’s couch and tried to avoid eye contact, instead staring at the GORF machine.
Phillip persisted. “And by visit you, we mean . . .”
“We mean visit me. She’s coming for a visit and the last thing I need is anybody insinuating that I claimed anything else is going to happen.”
“Okay,” Phillip said, smiling.
“Seriously,” Martin said.
“Sure,” Phillip agreed.
“No, seriously, Phillip,” Martin said, locking eyes with him. “I mean it. We need to be clear on this—she’s just coming for a visit. That’s all it is.”
Phillip studied Martin’s face for a moment then said, “Really? That’s it, huh?”
“Yeah,” Martin said, leaning back. “Things are good, but we’re going to take things slow. It turns out, Gwen’s a little old-fashioned.”
“Oh,” Phillip said. “I see. Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Martin said. “I guess.”
<
br /> Phillip said, “Well, since you’ve opened up to me, I might as well tell you that Brit and I have a date next Saturday.”
“Whose Saturday, yours or hers?” Time travelers have to think about these things. “And which Brit?”
“The Younger, of course. And her Saturday, but at my place. I’m going to bring her to the rumpus room, show her my Fiero.”
Martin said, “That all sounds filthy.”
They laughed, then Phillip said, “Yeah, Brit’s not old-fashioned.”
Martin groaned, and said, “Okay.”
“She’s quite progressive, in fact.”
Martin said, “Eww.”
“Yes, eww,” Phillip agreed.
They sat for a moment, Martin shaking his head in disgust, Phillip nodding his head in delight. Finally, Phillip stood up, clapped his hands together, and said, “I’m going to pop downstairs, make sure the place is still standing.”
Martin stood as well, saying, “I should go to my place and do the same.”
They grunted a cursory farewell, more a see you later than a goodbye, then Martin touched the handle of his suitcase, said the magic words, and the next second he was standing in his warehouse as if he’d never left.
Martin breathed deeply, savoring the sensation of being home and alone. Martin and Phillip enjoyed each other, but they had been in close proximity for the better part of two weeks. Martin wasn’t quite sick of Phillip, but he was getting close, and he knew that there was a better than average chance that Phillip had had enough of Martin.
Martin dragged his suitcase over to the work table and had started to unpack his computer when he heard the chime that meant another wizard was trying to contact him.
That’s weird, Martin thought. Nobody knows I’m home but Phillip.
Martin lifted his hand in front of his face. A small, semi-transparent image of Phillip’s head appeared in the palm of his hand.
“Really?” Martin said. “You miss me already?”
“Have you found your invitation?” Phillip’s head asked.
“No, what are you talking about?”
