Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 54

by John Joseph Adams

  Kaslo said, “If so, I’ll be glad for you.” He found he meant it.

  “You’ll be more than glad,” said Obron. “Was it not you who told me nobody wins a war by defending?”

  “It was.” It seemed a long time ago now. “That, at least, hasn’t changed.”

  “If what I thought, if what I did, was right, we will be able to go on the offensive.”

  Kaslo felt as if the room had just filled with sunlight after a cloudy morning. “That would suit me fine.”

  “Give me two more days.”

  • • • •

  Kaslo fought to keep the sunlight, but two more days of inactivity wore upon him. He knew his own psyche well enough to understand that at least some of the unease he was feeling did not spring from his own inner depths. When he had touched the flesh of the entity in the seventh plane, its immense sorrow had flowed into him like cold liquid, seeping down into his deeper levels to form a black pool.

  His mind would probe that chill darkness the way a tongue probes the gap made by a missing tooth. He found it had different flavors: remorse, regret, guilt, and an aching to atone for some great lapse, coupled with the knowledge that there would never be an opportunity to do so.

  Kaslo fought against the urge to revisit the entity’s despair. It is not my emotion, he told himself. It is a contamination from outside. But he knew that what he needed to rid himself of gloom was a call to action. Thus he was glad when, standing atop the castle’s highest tower, surveying the horizons and seeing nothing, one of the women came up to tell him that he was wanted in the workroom.

  “I’ve done it,” Obron said. Again, he gestured to the spread of papers with their incomprehensible jottings.

  “Done what?” Kaslo said.

  But the wizard only tapped the side of his nose and said, “Come and see.”

  They left Bodwon in charge. Kaslo got the spring-gun, but Obron said, “You won’t need that.”

  “I’ll feel better,” said the op, which earned him a shrug and a wry look from his employer.

  They passed through the gate and the boundary spell. Obron was carrying a black bag, closed by a drawstring. Thrust through the sash that cinched his robe was the wand of black wood that had once belonged to a would-be thaumaturge named Asrat Gozon, the source of the first three noubles.

  They walked towards the ruins of Indoberia, but when they came to the broken slider that led to the spaceport, Obron turned southwest. Soon they could see the command tower above the trees, and a few of the larger vessels that had died on their pads when the universe shifted its orientation.

  “Are we foraging for whimsy medications?” Kaslo asked, as they passed the wreckage of the liner. But Obron smiled and walked on.

  They came at last to an empty pad, in the part of the spaceport where the wealthy kept their private spacecraft. Kaslo noticed a discreet plaque that identified the berth as reserved for a yacht named Saunterance, Diomedo Obron, owner.

  The wizard surveyed the unoccupied pad from several angles and apparently found it satisfactory to his requirements. He opened the velvet pouch and withdrew from it, one at a time, a series of noubles. These he placed in various positions around the pad’s perimeter, checking constantly against a diagram in the book on interplanar mechanics, which had also come in the noubles pouch.

  The process took some time and required some corrections before every nouble was where the green book said it ought to be. Obron then brought forth the noubles recovered from the sleeper, and placed these at precise points in the middle of the pad. The moment he put in position the last black sphere, the air around the platform became charged with a crackling energy that caused the hairs on Kaslo’s arms to stand on end.

  The wizard stepped clear of the pad and gave the arrangement of spheres one final assessment. He moved one of the perimeter orbs a minim to the left, at which the level of energy so intensified that Kaslo’s teeth vibrated in his jaws.

  “We should step back a few paces,” Obron said. When they did so, the op’s discomfort lessened. The wizard, meanwhile, was leafing through the green book until he found the page he was looking for. Then he turned to Kaslo, and said, “You might not know that, when the change comes, not all integrators die.”

  “I certainly did not. What survives and how?”

  “The most ancient sentient devices, on the oldest settled worlds,” said Obron, “have been through the change several times. They know how to protect themselves and carry on.”

  “Will there be such on Novo Bantry?”

  “Doubtful. This world was settled late in the second effloration.”

  “Too bad,” Kaslo said. “A functioning integrator comes in handy.”

  “There’s another category: Integrators on vessels that are not in our plane when the change occurs retain their faculties. They do, however, experience a transmogrification when they reenter space time.”

  “How so?”

  “To put it simply,” the wizard said, “sentient devices are not allowed under the new rules, so they have to become … say, their equivalents. Personal integrators that pass through the seventh plane become what they used to call ‘familiars’—and probably will call them that again.

  “Ship’s integrators become …” Here Obron decided to show rather than tell. He held the book open before him, drew the wand from his sash and pointed it at one of the interior noubles. He spoke words that meant nothing to Kaslo, then aimed the black wood at another one and uttered more syllables. The air now crackled with powers and potentials.

  “Excellent fluxions,” Obron commented, as if to himself. Then he pointed the wand at the black nouble, which looked to Kaslo as if it had become a lightless hole in reality. The wizard spoke again, emphasizing each sound with a tap of the wood upon the air. Each stroke of the wand made a noise like thunder. To Kaslo, it sounded as if a giant was hammering his fist on some vast, echoing door. He took an involuntary step backwards before steadying himself.

  The black nouble glowed with nonlight. Then it began to expand, slowly at first, then more rapidly. At the same time, it became less spherical, thinner, until it was finally two-dimensional. A circle five times Kaslo’s height now stood on the landing pad, a circle that roiled with black and purple amorphities.

  “It’s a whimsy,” Kaslo said.

  “Yes,” said Obron, searching through the book again.

  The op raised his spring-gun. “What if the enemy comes through?”

  “He can’t. This one is mine and mine alone.” The wizard found the page he was seeking, and raised his voice. He spoke a string of syllables, the only one of which Kaslo recognized was ‘Saunterance.’

  The whimsy flashed with streaks of light, reds and blues and bright yellows. Then out of its middle something poked through the barrier, something very much like an animal’s muzzle—but an animal larger than any beast that had ever lived on mild Novo Bantry.

  First the muzzle, then the eyes—big as saucers, the color of old gold, split by a vertical pupil—then the cranium and the long, sinuous neck clad in blue-green scales. Then the shoulders and the forelimbs, with curved talons the size of Kaslo’s hands. Then the heavy body and the unlikely wings, and finally the hindquarters—more talons—and a tail to match the neck for length and suppleness, finished off with a spade-shaped vane.

  “It’s a dragon,” the op said, as the whimsy dissolved.

  “Now it is,” said Obron. “It used to be my yacht.” He was picking up the noubles and returning them to the pouch, but he paused to smile up at the huge creature. “Welcome back.”

  The dragon opened its mouth, showing glistening fangs and a prehensile tongue. “I am different,” it said, in a voice like heavy rocks rolling in a flood. It examined one paw, flexing its clawed digits.

  “In some respects,” said the wizard. “To me, you are still the very good and shiply companion you always were.”

  The creature considered that for a moment, then said, “Agreed.”

  Kasl
o let out the breath he had been holding.

  “Where do you wish to go?” Saunterance said.

  “Off-world,” said Obron. “Can you do that?”

  The dragon consulted some inner process, then said, “I can. But how will I carry you?”

  “That,” said Obron, “will take a little time to organize. In the meantime, you could carry us back to my castle.”

  “Very well,” said the dragon. It seized both men, though gently, in its forepaws and leapt toward the sky. Its wings dug into the air and in moments they were high above the spaceport.

  “Over there,” said Obron, indicating the castle on its rise.

  “Very good,” said Saunterance, tilting one wing up and the other down. They slid toward home.

  After a moment, Kaslo noticed he wasn’t sad anymore.

  • • • •

  For two of the castle staff, the arrival of a dragon carrying their master and his security chief was one brick too many on an unsteady pile. The man and woman fled, screaming, toward the ruins of Phalloon’s manse. Fortunately, they went as a couple, which made it easier for Kaslo to chase them down, reassure them (though only partly), and lead them back to the castle. By then, the wizard had raised a high-ceilinged, open-fronted barn outside the curtain wall, where Saunterance now sat, apparently content to do what former space yachts did when nothing else was on the agenda.

  When the op entered the castle yard, he found Obron directing the rest of the staff to bring a range of items out of the building and into the open space. Set before the wizard was what seemed to be the entire contents of his workroom, including the furnishings, as well as two comfortable chairs from the sitting room, Obron’s and Kaslo’s beds, two changes of clothing for each of them, and a few other possessions that made life reasonably comfortable.

  “What now?” Kaslo asked, but Obron was occupied in checking what was being brought before him against a list. “No time to dawdle,” the wizard said, then gestured to the pile of Kaslo’s goods on the cobbled stones. “Is there anything of yours that I ought to have included?”

  The op saw clothing, weapons, toiletries, all higgled and piggled together. “That depends,” he said, “on what is going on.”

  “We’re taking a trip,” said Obron.

  “Where?”

  “Off-world.”

  “How?” But even as Kaslo asked the question, the answer came into his mind. “Saunterance?” he said.

  “Just so. Now take a look at your gear. Everything I need is here. We’re waiting on you.”

  Kaslo looked, then said, “Rope came in handy when Bodwon and I—”

  Obron snapped his fingers and called for rope.

  “Anything else?”

  Almost everything Kaslo owned was on the little pile. He experienced a brief flash of nostalgia for his old traveling valise, but its intelligence had died with all the other integrators, so the once-useful devices he had built into the suitcase were now just so much dead metal. “No,” he said, “that’s it.”

  “Then step back,” said the wizard. He opened a book that rested on his lectern, found the page he wanted, and slipped the sleeves of his robe back to his elbows. “Here we go.”

  The spell was lengthy and, as usual, in a language Kaslo had never heard of. It also called for the caster to move hands and arms in precise motions. Kaslo saw strain on Obron’s narrow face as the thaumaturge struggled to contain and command unseen but powerful forces. Finally, with a downward chop of one bony hand into a lean hand, the magic was completed.

  A shining hemisphere, twice a man’s height, now stood where their possessions had been stacked. It resembled the kind of bell-shaped cover that would be whisked away to reveal a chef’s creation in one of the first-class restaurants Obron had once frequented: a silvery reflective dome topped by a semi-circular handle of the same material.

  Obron spoke a word and a segment of the shining stuff slid silently aside. “Come along,” he said and stepped within.

  Kaslo followed and found himself in a room that was somehow larger than the dome’s dimensions should have allowed for. The wizard was rearranging his goods and furnishings to make a workspace and a sleeping area. He beckoned for Kaslo to do the same, and the op moved his bed to one side and placed his few items on or under it. With a few more words and gestures, Obron created interior walls and doors to make cabins around his sleeping space and Kaslo’s, with a common space between them that had room for their chairs.

  The wizard surveyed his work, fists planted on hips, and said, “That should do. Are you ready?”

  “Let me speak to Bodwon,” Kaslo said. But when he put his head out of the open doorway, he saw that his second-in-command had already taken charge. Bodwon was sending the staff back to their duties, before turning and offering his superior a salute.

  Kaslo returned it and withdrew into the chamber, where Obron was adjusting the color and luminosity of the dome’s inner surface to a more tranquil, neutral appearance. The wizard looked about him, apparently saw the order he wanted, and spoke another word that closed the door.

  “Take a seat,” he told the op, “and hold onto the arms. There will probably be a period of adjustment.”

  Kaslo did as bid. Obron sat in his own seat on the other side of the room. He cleared his throat and said, “Saunterance, we are ready.”

  For Kaslo, it was like sitting in the saloon of a space yacht as its in-atmosphere drive cycled up. Except that there was no discernible vibration. Instead, the floor suddenly pressed against his feet and his stomach lurched down deeper in his abdomen.

  “Easy, Saunterance,” said the wizard, “and softly.”

  The g-forces moderated. Kaslo’s breathing settled. “It can fly in space?” he said.

  “It is doing so now,” said the wizard. At a wave of his hand, a portion of the wall became transparent. Novo Bantry was a great, sunlit circle growing smaller.

  “How?”

  The wizard sighed. “You keep asking such questions, but when I try to explain you can’t accommodate the concepts. Did you ever know the precise physics of a deep-space drive?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, then.”

  There was a silence while they watched the grand old world shrink to the size of a coin, then a bright dot.

  “Where are we going?” Kaslo asked.

  “The seventh plane,” said Obron. “That’s where the enemy lies.”

  “But we’re traveling through space,” Kaslo said. “Could you not have conjured another whimsy on Novo Bantry?”

  “Yes, but I could not have brought all this.” He gestured to his books and apparatus. “For that, I must enter the plane at a specific point, where the interplanar barrier is at its thinnest.”

  “And where is that?”

  “We’ve discussed this, haven’t we?” said the wizard. “A desolate place called Barran on a fusty, forgotten little world called Old Earth.”

  © 2014 by Matthew Hughes.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Matthew Hughes writes science-fantasy. His SF novels are: Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice, Black Brillion, Majestrum, The Commons, The Spiral Labyrinth, Template, Hespira, The Damned Busters, The Other, Costume Not Included, and Hell to Pay. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Postscripts, Storyteller, Interzone, and a number of “Year’s Best” anthologies. Night Shade Books published his short story collection, The Gist Hunter and Other Stories, in 2005. Formerly a journalist, he spent more than twenty-five years as a freelance speechwriter for Canadian corporate executives and political leaders. His works have been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards. His web page is at matthewhughes.org.

  To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.

  Solstice

  Jennifer Stevenson

  This story is about a small-time rocker full of ambition and careful big plans. She lives for the day when she can come up like thunder on the rest of
the herd, so she’s a little stunned to find herself fighting with her boyfriend on the night of the big gig, slamming out of his van and marching across a frosty prairie outside Madison, Wisconsin, her guitar in her hand and her hot, angry breath making her scarf all scummy with ice crumbs as she curses him and her stupidity at coming so far in his company. Why should she have to dump him tonight? Only a doofus breaks up with her boyfriend in a moving vehicle. She vows here and now to make a new start, while she is alone, nowhere, storming across the empty fields, suspended between her humble origins and her destiny. Under the colorless starlight, she looks to herself like a stick-drawing person, white parka, grey jeans, black stubble, drawn but not yet painted. The ground is parched for moisture, the loam frost-heaved, last summer’s daisies and black-eyed susans and sweet grass killed by frost and just now crisp with it, though tomorrow under a pale sun they will warm up enough to make her slip with every step, especially if she stays mad enough to stomp all night long the way she is doing now. That would mean spending the night in the fields, however, not, as she would prefer, finding a road to follow to a roadside bar, not, as she expects she must, sleeping in a barn next to some smelly cow. She swears and stomps and swings her ax in the frozen air, scattering sibilants (his name is Stassen, which is a good name for hissing angrily) and gouting steam without regard to the threat of the cold. Her name is Dawn.

  Slip she does. She lands on her bottom, her wind knocked out, and lies back in her parka, feeling the heat bleed out of her into the throbbing ground. What a world of stars is up there, she thinks, fields and fields of them, sheep for days. She remembers sheep pouring over the Nebraska plains in galaxies, white on black. The land back home is much flatter than this boggy, lumpy prairie, yet the sheep eat these same stale grasses with their backs to the same stars. These stars. A wave of vertigo swamps her. She sees the heavens turn. This is how stars must feel, she imagines, opening her eyes deliberately as they spin. So big, so slow. Only we frenetic particles can’t see how they run hump-rumped over the vast prairie. We’re moving much too fast.

  Her fingers tingle. Way too pissed off for my own good, she thinks, and calms instantly. She has that sensible streak that lets her suddenly take command of her emotions, letting go once they’ve done their work. She smiles. That bum Stassen will stay mad for a week. She is at peace. Still the ground throbs. She feels it through her whole body. Good grief, what have I done to my ass?