by Scott Meyer
Gary stopped firing as he flew to the side of the street and hit a wall.
Martin took his hands down from his ears.
The dragon let out a large plume of fire, but Martin managed to get a force field erected in time to spare himself the pain. When the dragon had emptied its lungs, it saw Martin still standing there, unharmed. The dragon brought its head low, pointed its horns forward, and drew its body down and back, like a sprinter in the starting blocks.
Martin lifted his staff to fly, but Gary shouted, “No! Stop! Let it try! I have an idea!”
Martin moaned, but did what Gary asked. The dragon ran forward. Martin turned and ran a few steps to soften the blow. As he was still in his Giant Martin form, the dragon’s horns hit him squarely in his giant rear end. Martin’s real body was protected inside of the larger structure, but the sudden acceleration still jarred him quite badly. He heard Gary shout, “Tuck and roll,” so he did, careening down the street like a poorly made soccer ball.
Martin came to a stop many yards away. “I thought you had an idea,” he shouted as he lifted his immense form up to its hands and knees.
“I did,” Gary said. “It worked! Look!”
Martin peered back and saw that the dragon had come to a stop after ramming him, but had also lined itself up to ram him again.
“Now you just play kick the can,” Gary said, “only you’re the can. I’ll follow along and use force fields to keep you on course if I have to.”
The dragon lunged forward. Martin didn’t like the plan, but he didn’t have time to argue, and had no better idea of his own. He stood up, turned his back, and the dragon rammed him again. He tucked and rolled again. Martin hated it, again. He had to admit, though, the plan would probably work. The street they were on led to the edge of town, and it would only take four or five more butts in the butt to get there.
The dragon made contact again, this time a bit off-center. Martin rolled to the right, toward some poor person’s hut. Just before he made contact with the fragile building, he struck an invisible force field and ricocheted like a billiard ball, striking another force field on the other side of the street before stopping.
If Gary’s smart, he has walls set up all the way down both sides of the street, Martin thought. That can be a pretty big if.
He looked down the street. At the edge of town, the road turned. A hut on the outside edge of the turn blocked his rolling path to the field beyond.
“Should I take off and fly out of town?” he asked hastily before absorbing another impact from the rear.
“No,” Gary said, “Keep rolling. This is working. I’ll worry about the building.”
Martin came to a stop, glanced up, and saw that one more shot would send him into the hut’s closest wall, and possibly through its farthest wall immediately afterward. Whatever Gary planned to do, he hoped he’d do it quickly.
The dragon hit Martin. Martin rolled forward toward the hut and hit the invisible force-field ramp.
Later, Martin would grudgingly agree that the ramp had been a good idea, and Gary would refuse to admit that it had been poorly executed.
A long, shallow ramp allows a rolling object’s momentum to change direction with a minimum of violent shock, and results in a low, flat trajectory, and a less jarring impact as well.
Gary, however, made his ramp almost a perfect forty-five-degree angle. When Martin hit it, he felt like he’d hit a concrete wall. His mass flew almost straight up in the air. He untucked, centrifugal force pulled his limbs outward, and he cartwheeled gracelessly in space before landing like a sack of laundry in the hut’s backyard. In his ear, he heard Roy say, “Inbound hot, one mile out.”
Martin moaned and rolled over on his back. He saw the horned dragon land on the hut’s roof, spread its wings, inhale, and start to cough out a blanket of fire with which to smother him. Then the dragon disappeared with a deafening crack and two streaks receding into the distance, one a dull beige and next to it a line of orange fire.
9.
The waiting room of the Atlantis medical clinic was empty. There were no sick or injured people, just one very healthy receptionist sitting behind the reception desk thumbing through a catalog. His uniform differed from the official male uniform of Atlantis in that his netting shirt and kilt were dyed the aqua color of generic hospital scrubs.
It didn’t startle him when Brit the Younger and Gwen materialized in front of his desk. He’d been in Atlantis long enough to be accustomed to magic. The receptionist placed his catalog facedown on his desk, stood, smiled at Brit and Gwen, and said, “Good morning! Welcome. Please have a seat. Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll see to it that the doctor is with you in a moment.”
“Nothing’s wrong, thanks,” Brit said. “We just need to discuss some business with Louiza.”
“Is the business medical in nature, or does it pertain to her role as president?”
Brit asked, “Does it really matter?”
The receptionist said, “You’ll see her just as fast either way, but she likes to know what kind of unpleasant conversation she should brace for.”
“It’s a little bit of both, in this case.”
The receptionist said, “I’m sure she’ll appreciate the warning.”
Gwen leaned in closer to look at the catalog the receptionist had been reading. The front cover featured a man in a puffy shirt with the collar open to the belt buckle, and the words International Male. The back cover offered a surprising variety of Speedo-style swimsuits.
“Interesting catalog,” Gwen said. “Not many of the men in Atlantis read English.”
“I don’t either,” the receptionist said. “The doctor got it for me, to see if there’s anything I might like to wear around the office.”
The receptionist pressed a button on his desk that that had been programmed to act as a buzzer and intercom. He told Louiza that there were two sorceresses here to speak with her about both medicine and city business. She sighed heavily and told him to bring them to her.
The receptionist led them to Louiza’s private office. As with pretty much every room in the entire city, everything but highly specialized equipment or an imported memento from the sorceress’s original time was tasteful, modern, and made from a seamless, white, crystalline material. In this case the floor, walls, desk, and chairs were clearly from Atlantis, but on the wall behind the desk, several diplomas and college degrees hung in black frames.
Louiza rummaged through the drawers of her desk. She welcomed her guests in a distracted manner. Brit and Gwen returned her greeting, smiling broadly.
The receptionist left. Louiza offered Brit and Gwen a seat while still digging through whatever clutter filled her desk. They thanked her and sat down, smiling broadly.
Brit said, “Your presidential office down in the capitol doesn’t have any diplomas. You could move some of these there, for balance.”
Louiza said, “No, they have to stay here. You need an education, practical experience, and certifications to practice medicine. To be president, all you need is the confidence of most of the people who bothered to vote.”
Brit and Gwen sat silently for several seconds, watching Louiza continue to rifle through her own desk.
Gwen asked, “What are you looking for?”
Louiza froze and held up a single finger, communicating the idea that Gwen should wait a moment. With nobody moving or speaking in the room, they could all hear a faint but distinct beeping, like the alarm of a long forgotten digital watch going off from deep within the cushions of a couch.
“I only noticed it about a minute ago,” Louiza said, “and it’s already driving me crazy.”
Brit the Younger said, “Oh, sorry. I can take care of that.” She swiped her finger through space in front of her, looking at menus only she could see, then finally made a selection, a
nd the noise stopped.
Gwen and Brit smiled broadly at Louiza, offering no explanation.
Louiza said, “Okay, out with it.”
Gwen said, “I’m sorry?”
“I’m sure you are,” Louiza said, “I just don’t know about what yet. People only smile like that and don’t say anything when they have something to say that’s going to make someone else unhappy, so out with it.”
Brit said, “Well, you know that medevac protocol we’ve been working on, to handle medical emergencies?”
“Yes.” Louiza turned to Gwen and said, “The idea is for a sorceress or wizard to stabilize and evacuate an injured person, then treat them and replace them without them or their friends and family knowing they were ever gone.”
Gwen said, “Yeah, Brit told me.”
Louiza said, “Of course she did. Sorry. Force of habit. As a doctor, most of my job is to explain things in the least alarming way possible. Same goes for being president, actually.”
Gwen said, “Makes sense.”
“Is there some snag with writing the programming?” Louiza asked Brit. “I can get you some assistance if you need it. It’s a complex job.”
“No, no, the program’s written, tested, and ready to go.”
“Really? You tested it and it all worked?”
“Yes. We successfully transported people to the triage center, time was frozen from their point of view, and their exact time, location, and positioning at the point of extraction were recorded so that we could replace them after treatment. It’s just like you requested. I also added a way for sorceresses to use the program on themselves if they get hurt.”
Louiza said, “That’s great! Good job! That means I can get to work on the treatment protocols.”
“Yeah,” Brit said. “Where are you with those?”
“I haven’t started them yet. I thought we’d get phase one done, then when that worked, move on to phase two.”
Brit said, “Oh.” Then she and Gwen smiled broadly.
Louiza narrowed her eyes at them.
Brit said, “I also added an audible alarm to tell you when a patient arrives in the triage center. I tried to make it subtle.”
“Oh, God,” Louiza moaned. “You’ve sent me a patient already, haven’t you?”
“Consider it a field test,” Brit said. “A trial by fire.”
Louiza said, “Fire?”
Gwen said, “And arrows. And swords.”
“Where’s the patient now?”
“The patients are in a facility I set up in the lower bowl to hold them so you could look them over, do some triage, and take them one at a time.”
“Them? How many patients are we talking about?”
Brit said, “A few. The point is, they’re in stasis, so you can take your time.”
“How many is a few?”
Brit sighed and said, “Twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six! You said a few! Twenty-six isn’t a few! It’s a few dozen.”
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic. It’s not a few dozen. It’s a couple dozen.”
“Well that’s a lot more than a few!”
Brit said, “Touché.”
Louiza spent a moment glaring at Brit and Gwen, then asked, “What happened?”
Gwen said, “Well, from our point of view, it’s still happening, so we really should get back to helping.”
“And if it’s happening in the Dark Ages, where you two spend your free time, then from my point of view it won’t happen for hundreds of years, so you have time to explain.”
“Louiza, we’re sorry,” Gwen said. “We’re just both really stressed out. We just fought off a dragon attack.”
“You’re telling me a dragon hurt those people?”
“Five dragons. One of the wizards made some artificial dragons, and they got away from him somehow. Five of them got into a fight with a small town, but the dragons didn’t really do any damage. They can’t directly injure anyone.”
“Then how did the twenty-six people in the triage center get hurt?”
Brit said, “They did that to each other, accidentally, trying to fight off the dragons.”
Louiza said, “That sounds awful.”
Gwen said, “It is.”
“And you can’t stay here and help because you’re in a hurry to get back to it?”
“Yes.”
“Fighting five dragons sounds better than staying here and helping me?”
Brit said, “When you’re angry, yes.”
“You can’t just dump a bunch of injured people on my doorstep like this.”
“That’s the whole point of the medevac program,” Brit said. “To deliver injured people to your doorstep.”
“For that matter, that’s the whole point of a clinic,” Gwen said. “To create a doorstep to have the injured delivered to.”
Louiza waved her hands in a motion that looked like both a signal of surrender and swatting away a bee. “Okay, yes, fine, but not yet, and not this many! I don’t have any of the systems in place. I don’t have all the equipment I’ll need. I don’t know how I’m going to treat these people without them learning things about Atlantis we don’t want them to know. I only have one assistant and he’s really just eye candy. I’m not prepared.”
“But you have plenty of time,” Brit said. “They’re in stasis. Heck, you could treat one a day and just make a part-time job of it. They’ll never know the difference.”
“We know you can do this,” Gwen said.
“In fact,” Brit added, “we know you have done it. Part of the system is that we tag the patient’s place and time so they can be returned seamlessly. All of the patients in the triage room right now have been returned. We saw them. They’re already back, gathered in the church, sleeping while they heal, just like we talked about when we first came up with this idea. So, it worked.”
“For you,” Louiza said. “For me it will work, because I’m going to have to make it work.”
“But you will,” Gwen said.
“From our point of view, you already have,” Brit added. “And we’re terribly impressed, and grateful.”
“Or, we will be,” Gwen said. “From your point of view.”
“And while I’m here, cleaning up your mess, you two run off to go dragon hunting with your boyfriends.”
Brit said, “Hold on. Nobody said we wouldn’t help. I’ll help.”
Louiza stood up. “Oh! Okay. Then let’s get to it.”
Brit said, “Sorry, I can’t help right now, but I’ll help later.”
“Later?”
“Later.”
“How much later?”
Brit winced. “Very much later?”
Louiza sat back down. “You’re telling me to ask Brit the Elder for help, aren’t you?”
Brit said, “That’s one of the advantages of having a later version of myself hanging around. I can dump work off on her, and technically I’m not shirking. Just procrastinating.”
10.
Brit the Younger and Gwen appeared in Martin’s warehouse, looking relieved.
The warehouse had two parts: a spookily decorated vestibule for the locals to see, and a large loft-style live/work space, where the tired, bruised wizards had gathered after the battle. They had draped themselves over Martin’s furniture, as limp and tired looking as the hastily removed clothes strewn around the room.
Usually they would have gathered in Phillip’s rumpus room in Leadchurch, but they all agreed that once the dragons were chased off and the fires were out, hanging around to meet and greet the locals seemed like an unpleasant prospect.
Martin asked, “How’d it go?”
Gwen settled into a large leather couch next to him and said, �
�Louiza calmed down eventually, but for a while there she made me miss the dragons.”
Phillip said, “Well, I’m glad you’re both back. Now that we’re all here, and we’ve had a chance to calm down, Jeff can explain what he’s done, and make us all angry again.”
Jeff said, “You all wanted the dragons to react to stuff like animals would. I tried to program that manually, but it was impossible. I had to try to guess at what you would do, and then guess how an animal would react, all in advance. I drove myself half crazy trying, then I got a little desperate.”
Gwen said, “I don’t know, Jeff. Seems like you were taking this all a little too seriously.”
“No, I took it the right amount of seriously. The whole point of this exercise is to give us the tools to defend ourselves and the practice to know how to use those tools. I don’t think there’s any way to take that too seriously.”
“Well there is a way,” Gary said, “and you found it.”
“Of course you’d think that,” Jeff said. “You don’t take anything seriously. You’re not the one who Todd dropped off a cliff. You’re not the one who fell all the way to the ground before his friends figured out a way to save him.”
“No, but I am the one who got his leg cut off while you were busy falling.” Gary lifted his artificial skeleton leg and wiggled his bony toes just to drive his point home.
For a long moment nobody spoke, because nobody knew what to say. Luckily, Roy had a way of dealing with awkward feelings. He ignored them. “Okay, so that’s why you did it. Now tell us what you did.”
“I isolated an animal’s entry in the repository file and made a copy. I isolated the parts of the entry that seemed to relate to their fight-or-flight response. Then, I rewrote my dragons’ behavioral files with hooks to those parts of the animal’s original entry.”
Roy nodded. “Change a few variables from manual values you chose as call outs to an existing entry and your dragons gain the natural instincts of a real animal. That’s elegant.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s also the most bone-headed, dangerous, haphazard shortcut I’ve ever heard of!”
