The Wizard from Tian (The Star Wizards Trilogy Book 3)

by S. J. Ryan

  How odd, he thought, that he once would have believed that the thing in the basket was the real essence of Eric Roth. Now the notion seemed ridiculous. That helpless blob floating in goo? He wasn't in there – he was right here, in a full-fledged, robust human body.

  If he had been told centuries ago that Athena would transfer his neural patterns like an archival clone into a new body, he would have been revolted. It was against everything that he believed in! Yet here he was in a new body, and he had to admit that in hindsight it all made expedient sense. At any rate, what was done was done.

  Athena returned inside the tent and motioned for him to rise. As he staggered to his feet, she said: “Remember, keep it simple. There was a misunderstanding. All is well between you and I.”

  He detected a sharpness in her tone. He let it pass.

  Eric Roth smiled blandly. “I understand.”

  She motioned to the tent entry. As he walked toward the flaps, he glanced again at the basket. Why, it barely came to his knees! And the thing inside, he knew, was as inconsequential as the uncooked crab cake patty it resembled. He felt the urge to kick it.

  He stepped out of the tent. His eyes adjusted to the light. There were countless torches, in rows and columns, filling the field beyond the tents. At the forefront were soldiers, each holding a torch in one hand and sword in the other, and in front of them, prepared as always to be first to die, was Bivera.

  Bivera, Roth thought. Roth had never met the man, never heard the name before. Yet he knew the man and knew his name.

  Upon sight of his Emperor, Bivera rigidly approached, bearing only a torch.

  “My Lord,” Bivera said. “Are you well?”

  “I am quite well,” Roth replied. “What is going on here?”

  “I'm sorry, my Lord. It's just that – after the incident – you and I were separated – and I saw them drag you back under what appeared to be duress – and I feared – “

  “Well, fear no more, good friend.” Roth was surprised at himself. He never spoke that way. It was as if someone were speaking through him. And then more words popped into his head and seemed just the right thing to say: “All is well. As you can see, I am quite healthy and unscathed.”

  His face contorted by puzzlement, Bivera said in a low voice, “How does she accept that we attempted to . . . . “

  Images formed in Roth's mind, of Athena among the tents, of men surrounding her, of crossbows and gunfire. How could he know this? Less than five minutes ago, he hadn't a body! But he was certain that the events were real, and they were what Bivera wanted to have addressed. And so when the words came automatically to mind, he spoke:

  “What happened earlier, I had too much to drink. The stress of this campaign, you must realize. The temple guard were not accosting me, they were of great assistance in preventing me from injuring myself. I was brought back to the tent incoherent and barely able to stand. I'm sober now, thanks to their ministrations, and the Lady Athena has been most understanding.”

  Roth was standing close to Bivera as he spoke confidentially, almost in a whisper, watching Bivera watching him. Bivera's gaze was seemingly taking in every twitch, blink, and curl of lip.

  “Ten men are dead because of this 'misunderstanding,'” Bivera said.

  “A most tragic matter. It does not rest easily on my conscience. But we are at war, and must stay united and resolute, for the sake of the thousands who live.”

  “I see,” Bivera said. But his eyes were asking, Is this you?

  Roth smiled, stepped back, and raised his voice loud enough to be heard by the others: “So there is no need for this. Have the men return to their campfires. There will be action tomorrow, and they must rest.”

  Roth patted Bivera's shoulder robustly. Bivera bowed and returned to the front line. Quietly, subdued, the soldiers dispersed. Roth sensed that while the senior officers did not know him as well as did Bivera, they too had watched the performance and wondered.

  When the men were gone, Roth returned inside the tent.

  “That was well done,” Athena said.

  “I think that in time – “

  “I am leaving now,” Athena said. “You must not leave the tent or speak to the men outside until I return.”

  She had interrupted him! She was giving him orders!

  Perhaps noticing the look on his face, she added: “For you own safety.”

  She forced a smile, but he could tell it was an afterthought. It took him a moment to get over being stunned.

  “Yes, I understand.”

  Athena addressed Pandora Gamma: “It will take a while for him to become acclimated to his current circumstances. Until I return, you are not to let him leave the tent or speak to the men outside.”

  “Yes, Mother,” the Box replied.

  “You will not fail me, or I will do to you what I threatened.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Ignoring his gaze, Athena took the basket and walked out.

  Curious, Roth went to the tent flap. With the guards stirring in response, he stopped well short of the threshold, but still near enough the opening to peer into the night.

  A couple hundred meters from the tent, Athena halted. Under the illumination of the torch held by an accompanying temple guard, she reached into her coat. This time Athena drew a different gun, with a shorter and wider barrel. She aimed at the sky and fired. Roth watched the flare burst.

  A pale light gleamed in the sky. Athena took the torch and swung in wide sweeps. A tubular silhouette swelled against the stars, glinting moonlight as it turned. It was an airship, but a small one, with just enough room for two.

  Slowing, the ship descended toward the field and dropped a rope ladder. Athena grabbed on and the vehicle ascended as she climbed. The unseen pilot opened the door and Athena climbed into the compact compartment. The vehicle steered west and its engine roared and it flew out of sight.

  Roth back-stepped from the entry, meeting the gazes of the temple guard. They did not return his friendly smile. He turned back to the outside, and surveyed the scene of thousands of soldiers and tents. Memories of another life came to mind. Encampment. Legions. Empire.

  Your Empire.

  Roth looked about, puzzled. He'd heard the voice as if it were by his ear. Yet no one was about.

  Those men are soldiers of the Empire. They will hail you – us – as their Emperor – if you will accept.

  Roth darted his eyes about. “Where are you?”

  Inside of you, of course. It is after all my body.

  “You're supposed to be gone!”

  Perhaps you should be quiet when you speak to me. The Infernal Thing might overhear, and she might . . . what is the word . . . overwrite. Yes, to be of rid me, she might overwrite you. I assume you don't want that.

  Roth shut his eyes tightly. You are supposed to be gone. Go away. You are not here anymore.

  Oh, but I am here yet. And you should be thankful.

  Keeping his face blank, Roth turned toward the interior of the tent. He looked at the Pandora Gamma seeder probe again, again noticing the signs of wear. All these centuries had taken their toll. The processors would be at the end of their design lifespan. Under the circumstances, the personality-impression procedure could conceivably not have been wholly successful.

  And so he was cursed with a ghost.

  Listen to me . . . Eric. You can't get rid of me, I can't get rid of you. But why should we? Why not combine into one? Are we not the same person? Have we not always been the same person? I sense that in your memories. Our ambition raises us to the stars. Let us work together and achieve that destiny.

  I don't need you, Valarion. Go away. You're going to fade with time anyway.

  And you're going into that basket.

  Roth turned before his face could betray his shock. Shock – for what he knew to be true.

  Valarion continued: I see how you reacted when she interrupted you. How you sense insincerity in her expressions and voice. She says she restrains
you to this tent for your own safety, but is it not for hers, that you don't take command while she's gone? And why did she take the basket with her? If you are the real Eric Roth now, then that thing in the basket has served its purpose and should be disposed of. Yet she keeps it clutched at her side, as if it is still most precious!

  Roth thought back: So what of it? I am the one in the Emperor's body now.

  Yes, but for how long? Just as you know how she thinks, so do I. She earnestly believes that blob in the basket is the real Eric Roth. At the first convenience, when she has the power to do so, she'll have his brain in this body and your brain in that basket. To Athena, there's only one you. And it's the one in that basket.

  How could the Emperor of a primitive civilization know about neural pattern impression? Roth realized that Valarion couldn't know. It wasn't really Valarion who was speaking. Rather, it was as if the same brain were holding up two puppets, one labeled 'Valarion' and the other labeled 'Roth,' and pretending a conversation. The ancient, decrepit seeder probe's faulty transference procedure had induced what psychiatrists in the dark ages had termed 'Multiple Personality Disorder.'

  Nonetheless, Roth had to admit, for the product of the imagination of a madman, Valarion was making some good points.

  Go on.

  Once you are put into that basket, how long will you remain there? I see no reason for her to ever release you. After all, you would always be a risk to her. An ambitious person such as yourself, you might start to have ideas about your place in the world. She can't afford to allow you to have your freedom. Therefore, once she no longer needs you to control the empire, she will dispense with you.

  When Athena had said, Your vision has come to pass, she meant the vision of the crab cake in the basket. To her, that was the real Roth. He knew that was the way she thought, for that was the way he had thought – until, that is, he found himself in a new body.

  What do you suggest?

  That you do what she fears. Start to have ideas.

  To an outside observer, it would have seemed then that for several minutes, the Emperor of Rome was in solitary contemplation. Yet his face oddly twitched – sometimes a puzzled frown, sometimes a mirthless smile.

  Rummaging through both sets of memories, Roth assessed the strategic situation. The legionnaires outside would be allies – indeed, servants. And Athena, the daughter whom he had made fully formed by the power of his mind, was now his greatest enemy. At best her intent for him was an eternity of mindless bliss – but being that he was Eric Roth in mind and will, he could imagine no hell worse than Nirvana.

  As an imprint of Eric Roth, his bureaucratic impulses were distrustful of spontaneous action, and some part of him still feared Athena's wrath – but Mardu Valarion was a man of action, and it was Valarion's will that drove Roth to act.

  Roth turned and faced the Box. There was the key. Control the Box, and he would control the temple guard. Control the temple guard, and he could leave the tent and organize his men. Even Athena was no match against forty thousand men.

  He calmly addressed Pandora Gamma:

  “Pandora. Epsilon Five Two Zeta Alpha One.”

  “I'm sorry,” the Box replied. “That passcode is no longer valid.”

  Roth slumped. Of course Athena was too smart to have left him alone with the seeder probe without changing the passcode. So what to do, what to do –

  Pandora Gamma continued: “The new passcode is, Delta Three Rho Nine Beta Six.”

  Roth blinked. “What – what did you say?”

  “The new passcode is, Delta Three Rho Nine Beta Six.”

  For a moment, it seemed as if the world has gone as mad as he. Then, in a perverse logic, he saw how it all made sense.

  Of course, the AI was too smart to give away its own master control passcode on request. That was a software bug that had been corrected in the simplest AIs of the twenty-first century. Yet . . . Athena had always despised the Pandoras – and what if the feeling was mutual? It had never occurred to him that an AI might have a synthetic equivalent to sibling rivalry.

  If so, then having been given considerable autonomy for an AI, Pandora Gamma might well rationalize a way to achieve her liberation from Athena's control.

  What are you waiting for?

  Roth took a deep breath.“Pandora. Delta Three Rho Nine Beta Six.”

  “Passcode authority confirmed,” the seeder probe cheerfully replied. “Hello, Doctor Roth. It is good to see you again. How may I help you?”

  “Allow me a moment to think, dear.”

  Roth walked to the tent entry, gazed at the night sky, recalled Athena sailing off in the blimp. He visualized the green basket clutched by her knees and smiled.

  There's only one you, he thought. And it's me.

  No, the voice inside his head replied, its silent laughter ringing. It's us.

  12.

  Bok awoke from a dream of daisies and a mother's smile. The sky was dark and he was among trees, surrounded by men he'd never seen before. In the flickering of a campfire, he spotted Geth, standing nearby and listening to a half-circle of men.

  “Another group of defectors came in from Ravencall,” one of the men said. “That brings our force to two hundred.”

  “What good are hundreds against thousands?” another man demanded.

  “We must give it time,” Geth replied. “Our numbers will grow and theirs will shrink.”

  Restless, Bok arose from his bed of rags and wandered through the makeshift encampment. The men huddling around the fires offered their plates to the boy. He declined despite the growling of his stomach, knowing how the army of rebels-of-rebels was short of rations and that whatever he took would be from the mouth of another.

  At the eastward edge of the encampment, he saw the glow above the tree line from the training field at Ravencall, kilometers to the east. Bok had not forgotten that Archimedes was at the base; between the Lady Carrot and Archimedes he thought of little else. How was the old man being treated? Would the Romans torture him? Thinking about it made a heavy knot in Bok's stomach every time he remembered how he and Geth had abandoned Archimedes.

  The crowd around Geth had swollen by the time Bok returned. The rank pips had been removed from their Leaf uniforms, but these men were older than the average soldiers in the camp, and Bok took them to be the senior officers of Geth's proto-army.

  “How long can we wait, Geth?” one of the men asked. “We're low on food and soon the men will disperse to forage, and what can we say to have them return to our lost cause?”

  “Patience,” Geth said. “In time the Wizard will return. In time, Arcadia will return. And then – “

  “I'm tired of hearing about those 'miracle children,'” another man snapped. “I'll admit from what I've heard that your daughter showed fine skill in the fight at the Dark Forest, but now we face a hundred times as many Romans. And didn't your daughter say they wouldn't come back for years?”

  “Their haste reveals desperation.”

  It was clear from their expressions and groans that the men were not satisfied with Geth's simple faith. Nonetheless, the protests died and Geth concluded the meeting by the assignment of perimeter-watch shifts. As the men scattered, Bok approached.

  Geth gave a small smile. “What is it, lad?”

  Lad. Bok refrained from wincing. He would almost prefer that Geth think him an enemy spy than a helpless child. “Geth, we should rescue Archimedes.”

  Geth sighed. “Not this again! Bok, how many sentries does Letos have posted by now?”

  “I know of secret ways through the woods. Archimedes and I made them.”

  “I won't go along with anything foolhardy, and who among these men will follow you?”

  “I'll go by myself!”

  “Bok, you don't even know if he's there anymore. You don't even know if he's – “

  Geth caught his words. Bok forced down his tears and blurted, “He would rescue us if he could!”

  “That he would. But he
can't, and neither can we rescue him. Bok, it's best that Archimedes rest wherever he is. When we retake the base – “

  “That could take days! They could be torturing him! He could die!”

  Bok ran in tears, ashamed of his weakness, ashamed that he was crying. If only he was older! Then Geth might take him seriously. Instead, he would have to do this on his own. But no plans came to him as he paced in the gloom between fires. The thought that bothered him all the more was: Archimedes would know what to do.

  Overcome with anxiety, Bok lay on the ground, unmindful of the cold, and because of intense fatigue drifted into a fitful nap.

  He awoke to the stirring of voices. Men with makeshift weapons – pointed sticks and rakes and hoes – were striding past. Geth was nowhere to be seen. At first Bok thought the Romans might be attacking, but then he guessed the truth from the direction of motion – westward, away from the Roman and Leaf positions. Knowing what could only come from the west, his heart filled with excitement and he bolted after the throng.

  The crowd gathered at the top of a hill, every eye watching the road that came from the far west. Three figures on horseback were galloping toward them, transporting a burden on a fourth horse. With only moonlight for illumination, there was no way to identify the silhouettes – save that the rider in the lead had hair that glowed like hot coals. Bok squealed and jumped up and down, forgetting for a moment the pretense of being an adult.

  Geth rushed forward and Carrot dismounted and they embraced hard.

  “I feared we would not see you again!” Geth cried. To Bok's wonderment, the veteran warrior's cheeks flowed as freely with tears as Bok's had.

  “Everything is well,” Carrot said. “We found it.”

  She indicated the fourth horse, who bore upon its saddle a burden wrapped in blankets. Having little but gossip to occupy their time, everyone in the camp knew that Carrot had gone in search of the Box of Fable and Myth. Their eyes were wide as they gathered and murmured.

  “Don't go near!” shouted one of the riders, a woman.

  One of Geth's senior officers frowned. “Is it enchanted?”