The Wizard from Earth

by S. J. Ryan

  “Servants will talk. Do you have free time now?"

  "I have all the time in the world. Archimedes isn't asking me to do much these days."

  "I have noticed that he keeps to himself as well. Say, do you know the noise from his workshop yesterday morning?"

  "What noise?"

  In a nasal monotone, she said, "Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh!"

  "Just some machine he's tinkering with."

  "Loud, for nothing much."

  He paused, wondering if he'd need to lie, saddened that Carrot had been so open with him while he was hiding so much from her.

  "Well, I don't wish to pry about Archimedes," she said. "And as you are free . . . ." She pointed northward to a third story ledge on an older, elaborately ornamented building. "See how the facing can be climbed? I would like to sit up there with you. Think you can reach it?"

  “You're throwing down the gauntlet?”

  “The what?”

  “I guess that's one phrase that didn't survive the trip from Earth. Anyhow, you lead.”

  They finished their cones. She strolled over and lithely scaled the height. He did his best, and with some humiliation accepted the pull of her hand. Again he noticed how her flesh was soft to touch, but when he squeezed it was like iron within.

  “What do you think?” she asked. “I like it because of the privacy.”

  It was a nice view of the Square, he admitted. The building was recessed from the row, so that their spot was hidden from the sides and below. One would have to look closely to notice the pair perched above.

  “I like it,” he said. “Do you come here often then?”

  “When I want to get away from people. I find I don't want to do that as much anymore.”

  They sat on the ledge with their backs against the quasi-gargoyles, legs propped in front of each other and feet almost touching.

  “Matt.”

  “Yes, Carrot.”

  "I know about Earth and Seattle and interstellar travel and DNA and even about Ivan. What I don't know about is you, Matt."

  Matt took a second look at the physical circumstances and vaguely suspected he'd been methodically trapped.

  He tried to shrug nonchalantly. "Not much to tell."

  "What about your family? I know you had one, but what were your mother and father like? Or do you have something else?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, with all the technology of your place and time . . . . “

  “I had a mother and a father. They were flesh and blood.” He decided not to mention that his mother was an archival clone.

  "What were they like? How did they treat you?"

  "They were good. I liked them. They liked me."

  "Liked, not loved?"

  "Well, loved. Both had been married before and had children before and then they had careers, so I wasn't exactly the center of their universe.”

  “Yes . . . . “

  “What do you mean, 'yes?' Do you think that families couldn't care about each other back in the twenty-second century?”

  “I sometimes wonder if everyone in your time having an implant like Ivan was good for them socially. Why bother to relate to others when the perfect person is already sharing your head?”

  “So, are you saying I seem standoffish to you?”

  “Well, yes, as I understand the word to mean 'aloof.'”

  Matt felt his cheeks grow hot. After all I've done to try to get you to like me!

  “Aloof. Why is that?”

  “Well, you hardly share anything about your personal feelings. For example, Matt, when you were so young you chose to leave your world for the stars. I cannot imagine making such a decision. Not even the yes or the no – just the making of it. It's too momentous. Yet you've never shared any reason for making such a decision.”

  He thought a moment and said, “Well, maybe it has to do with the Explorer Gene.”

  “I don't recall a video of that.”

  “My parents talked about it a lot. They said that they each had the Explorer Gene, and as their child I must have a double shot.”

  “But what is the Explorer Gene?”

  “Well, I suppose there really isn't a single gene for it. But overall, it's a set of random mutations that says that you're happy when you're exploring, and unhappy when you're not.”

  “It seems an improbable genetic heritage.”

  “All mutations are improbable, that's why they need populations of millions in order to occur.”

  “I understand that. But it is improbable that such a genetic tendency survived. As I understand the theory of evolution now, wouldn't people who leave the safety of home be more likely to die and not pass such a gene or genes on to offspring?”

  “Yeah, but look at the big picture. Once upon a time, many hundreds of thousands of years ago, there was a tribe of humans without the Explorer Gene. They were happy to stay in their own little valley. Meanwhile, there was a tribe of humans that did have the Explorer Gene, and they went out of the valley. Because they were always facing unknown dangers, they tended to get killed more often than the stay-at-homes, but they were able to procreate more too and so they filled the Earth and now they're going to the stars. Someday they may fill the galaxy. The stay-at-homes, meanwhile, will forever live in that one little valley.”

  “Unless their DNA is loaded into a box and shot to another star.”

  “Eric Roth took care not to do that.”

  “Matt, do you think genetics explains everything? Why you came here, that is?”

  He paused. “No, not really. The truth is, I wanted to leave because I really didn't fit in back there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for starters, I'm not that intelligent.”

  “You seem very intelligent to me.”

  “Yes, because here I have an implant and no one else does. Believe me, when everyone has an implant, they see me differently.”

  They lapsed into silence. Matt finally added, “Of course, I don't fit in here either.”

  Carrot smiled. “I think you fit in fine.”

  "I find that hard to believe. Anyhow, I think it's time to be on my own. Leave Archimedes, I mean.”

  She sat up straight. “I know there is an issue between you two. I had no idea it was so serious.”

  “Well, maybe he'd still let me live there. But I get the message. It's time to leave.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don't know. See the world, I guess.”

  He waited for her to say, I will go with you.

  Instead she replied, “Perhaps we should return to the house.”

  Like a skilled gymnast, Carrot propped herself on her hands and spun to face the ledge while her body hung over the side. She released herself and fell to the next ledge, and from there hopped to the ground. Matt was slower.

  On the way back, she said, "What will you do to support yourself?"

  "I've thought of becoming a professional healer. I could stay in Rome for a while and set up a practice."

  He waited for her to say, Good, then I can visit!

  "A healer, yes, of course."

  They trudged without speaking and went their separate ways at the house. Matt, to his room, where he lay on his bed and thought about what to do next. He realized that he was becoming like his friend Random, taking forever for each move.

  “Maybe what I've got to do is set a departure date,” he subvocaled. “How about next week?”

  “Would you like to generate a do list?”

  “It's been a long time since I've heard you ask that. But yes, time to start planning my life again. And it'll be nice to become a healer again and know that I'm really helping people. I'm supposed to be from an ethically enlightened era, but somehow I got suckered into maintaining the infrastructure of an evil empire, and then I got tricked into helping to build a super-weapon. So we are getting out of here. Sooner the better.”

  Archimedes was eating in his workshop these days, so
dinner was with Carrot and the servants. They barely spoke and finally Nilla blurted, “Are you two having an argument?” Gwinol scolded her and Carrot said no and Matt thought it felt like the fallout of one.

  He went back to his room and waited, hoping for a visit. A little later, Ivan detected rustling in the courtyard. It was night and in infrared they watched Carrot, scaling the wall facing the street. Matt waited until she was over, then rushed down. He called Gwinol to barricade the street door and she admonished him, “It's not safe after dark, Matt! Thieves and brigands and whatnot!”

  As the crossbeam clunked behind his back, Matt muttered, “Whatnot . . . .”

  Ivan's olfactory sensory apparatus was adequate to follow Carrot's trail through the streets. Please don't climb the roofs, Matt thought. She didn't. Soon they spotted her infrared signature a couple blocks ahead. Matt slowed and kept to the doorways and corners.

  Carrot prowled the city for more than two hours, checking every alley, pausing to sniff walls. Midnight for Ne'arth's Longer-Than-Earth's-Day passed. Matt marveled at her tenacity and questioned his own sense in pursuing her. What good would an unarmed ordinary person do in a fight between mutant creatures? But he couldn't let her fight the thing alone.

  Then, suddenly, she took off. Matt ran but couldn't keep up. Then around a corner, Ivan reported, “Matt, Carrot climbed a wall here. I am unable to track her scent any farther.”

  Matt stared at the rooftops, the building sides, the empty streets. He leaned against the wall, puffing hard. “Ivan – Herman – “

  “Herman's sky view will not be available for another five minutes.”

  “Oh, great. Well, what triggered her to run off like that? Do you smell anything unusual?”

  “Please define unusual.”

  “Well, like an animal. Animals other than humans, I mean.”

  “I detect the recent presence of a horse, two dogs, a cat, three rats, a crow, a kimodo dragon – “

  “Stop! Are you sure? About the dragon, I mean.”

  “The match is only sixty-five percent, so I am not sure.”

  “Still, it sounds like a chimera.”

  “It is consistent with data on chimera scent generation.”

  “She'll get herself killed!”

  Matt pounded the wall, then stepped back and surveyed the upward view. There was no way he was going to climb it. He paced feverishly.

  “I wish we had a way to track her when she's not in sight,” he said.

  “That is possible,” Ivan said. “I could make a partition.”

  “No, it's too intrusive.” But as he slid with his back on the wall to sit on the ground, his fears for her safety arose, and Matt said, “Let's talk about it later.”

  Ivan announced Hermanrise. Matt had the sky view IR processed, then scanned for rapidly moving high-metabolism figures amid the maze of Roman streets. There were two such sources. They were several blocks north, one in an alley and the other rapidly converging upon it.

  “Ivan, rig for hypermode.”

  “Understood.”

  It took minutes to prepare his body for the rigors of hypermode, and in the meantime Matt ran on his own. He followed Ivan's directions to the alley. At the corner, he heard something breathing – or snarling. He heard a man and a woman cry out. He ran inside.

  He caught the scene in a glimpse. Carrot in homemade ninja suit was standing with her back to him, the blade of her dagger fully drawn. A patrician couple and their bodyguard were cowering against the far wall.

  In between was the creature. It was no taller than a man, but it had scales like a lizard, horns like a bull, talons instead of fingers. It was silhouetted by candlelight from an upper window. It whirled about at Matt's arrival and crouched, ready to pounce.

  The indicator in the corner of Matt's vision showed that hypermode was still not available.

  Unmindful of Matt, Carrot advanced on the creature and raised her blade. The creature was looking at Matt, though. Then it looked at Carrot and hissed, “Another time!”

  It leaped up the wall and was gone. Carrot leaped after – but fell backward onto the pavement, groaning.

  The patricians and their bodyguard fled past, and Matt knelt beside Carrot. “Are you okay?”

  “No!” she said, pulling off her hood so that he could see her scowl.

  Matt saw Carrot's outfit was shredded and damp with blood in places. She had deep gashes over her legs and abdomen and face.

  “Hold still, Ivan can heal – “

  “I can heal myself.”

  “You almost got yourself killed.”

  “I almost killed her, when you showed.”

  Matt reviewed the video of the creature. “It doesn't look like you even touched it. Or her. Are we calling it a 'her' now?”

  “It – she – is the woman we saw with General Valarion on the dock. Her name is Inoldia, 'Lady' Inoldia. She is one of the Sisters of Wisdom. In fact, she is the only one ever seen in public.”

  “You know all of this, because of your servant gossip network?”

  “You should not have followed me. What could you have done? You were only in the way. I could not fight her effectively and block her from you at the same time.”

  She pushed herself off the pavement. He reached to help. She shoved him away – hard. He landed on his buttocks and glared.

  “She was concentrating fully on stalking them,” Carrot said, standing up. “She did not even know I was behind her. But now she'll be on guard.”

  She offered him a hand. Matt stood on his own.

  “It's not safe for you to be out at night,” she said. “We can go home together.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “I say the same to you.”

  Nonetheless they walked together, though in silence. On the street outside Archimedes' house, Carrot, who had been limping the whole way, now climbed the wall. A moment later, the door opened seemingly on its own to admit Matt. She was nowhere to be seen.

  Matt saw the light in Carrot's room go out as he padded across the courtyard.

  The next day, a steam main from a vent at the base of Mount Enta broke and half the factories in the Artisan District were without pressure to power their looms and mills. The accident also left the sewer pumps in the area without power, and so the sewers backed up as well. Archimedes broke off from his 'special projects' and Matt also was given more than enough to do.

  Matt had hoped that it might be a time for reconciliation with Archimedes, but their basic conversational mode was: “I need you to do this and that with them and report back to me in such and such. Got it?” “Got it.”

  For days he worked long hours, arriving home to a late dinner and no sight of Carrot. The servants assured him that she was still living there, and he could see for himself that she was still absent at night due to her patrols.

  “This has got to stop,” he said to Ivan back in his room as he stared across the courtyard at the street door. “Her going off like that and getting in danger and us not knowing where she is.”

  “I have the partition prepared,” Ivan replied. “All that is necessary for transfer is physical contact for several seconds.”

  “Well, there's physical contact and then there's physical contact, Ivan. Do you mean hand-to-face or what?”

  “Hand to any part of her body will be sufficient.”

  “That's uncomfortably open ended.”

  Ivan paused. “I see. Yes, a sexual innuendo was not intended. May I suggest hand-to-hand contact, such as occurred a few days ago when she helped you climb the facing of the building at Victory Square.”

  “So then all I have to do is ask her to help me climb something.” He thought for a moment and buried his face in his hands. “And that's another double entendre! Ivan, what's wrong with me?”

  Ivan diplomatically remained silent on that, but said, “You could also explain the process to her so that the transfer could be done with her consent.”

  “And she'll say no,
and then she'll never trust me to let me touch her again.” He rubbed his hands in his hair and sighed. “Ivan, can you turn off my sex drive completely?”

  “I can, but be advised that it will result in hormonal changes that you may find disagreeable.”

  “What kind of – never mind. I can get through this on my own. Like a million years of teenage boys before me.”

  In fact, the workload was unrelenting and his thoughts about Carrot were restricted to mumbling, “Carrot . . . Arcadia . . . Carrot . . . Arcadia,” just before falling asleep. Without any artificial aid, Matt's extreme exhaustion was doing an excellent job of turning off his sex drive.

  Then, early the first morning he was finally able to sleep in, he woke to voices in the courtyard. Several soldiers were by the street door, speaking with the servants – and Carrot in particular. Still in his soiled work clothes from the day before but concerned she'd had a run-in with authorities, Matt rushed down. Archimedes was there, and gave a grunt as acknowledgment.

  Carrot opened a box, revealing fourteen (Ivan counted) red roses.

  Nilla shrieked and said, "Oh, they're beautiful! I've never seen such! Let's put it in a vase for the dining table!"

  Carrot's expression was blank, but she replied in monotone, “Well, I'm sure they are nice, for flowers.”

  Then the captain presented a smaller box, which Carrot slowly inspected end over end.

  Gwinol demanded, "Don't tease us, open the box! I'll bet it's jewelry!"

  Mola said, "That's real gold wrapping! You have a wealthy admirer, Carrot! Very wealthy!"

  "Open the box! Open the box!" they chanted.

  Carrot replied, "Let me read the card first."

  After doing so, she refolded it and opened the box. It was a jeweled brooch in the shape of a dandelion.

  "Oh, it's beautiful!" Nilla exclaimed.

  "You and Gwinol share it then," Carrot said. "It's not really something I would wear."

  “Carrot, we can't!” Gwinol exclaimed. “It's a year's wages for us both!”

  Carrot almost snapped, “I don't want it.”

  Gwinol cowered and accepted the jewelry, intimidated but also substantially richer.

  The captain then presented a much larger package. When Carrot declined to take it, he opened the box himself to reveal a dress. “It is requested that you wear this to the party.”