The Wizard from Earth

by S. J. Ryan

  "There are no pictures or video in your interface?" Carrot asked.

  "What kind of face? And what is 'video,' is that a Britanian word?"

  Carrot's hands made hapless circles. "It's like a movie, I mean, a series of pictures, I mean, as if you are watching a play but you are not really there, as if through a window – "

  Archimedes blinked. “We talked to each other. He heard what I heard and saw what I saw.”

  "How did you go from print shop manager in Kresidala to Chief Scientist of Rome?" Matt asked. "Did Isaac guide you?"

  “Isaac was a meek fellow. All he did was teach me things and ask me to teach others. He choose me precisely because of all the people in the shop, I seemed most eager to learn new things. He told me he had selected his previous host because he thought a print shop owner would be willing to print the books that he, Isaac, wanted published. Alas, the owning family had no interest in printing books on mathematics and science and as I gained Isaac's appreciation of such subjects I left their employ.”

  “You stood up to the owner and she fired you,” Prin said.

  “Well, in fairness, I made the one unforgivable error that an employee can make: I trained an assistant who was able to do my job.” Archimedes gave Matt a twisted frown. “Truth is, recently I was coming to wonder if I had made the same mistake again. But of course, other events have intervened.”

  Matt persisted, “How did you go from the print shop to chief scientist?”

  “I think you know the rest of the story. I came to Rome in search of fortune, hired on as a tutor, changing my name to 'Archimedes' because he was a great scientist and no one wants their child tutored by a man named Larkin, which sounds like what I am, the son of a farmer.”

  Prin made an elaborate yawn.

  “And so I rose up Rome's tutoring profession ladder until I was tutoring the children of the patrician class. I tutored Hadron and Valarion and a host of others, watched them become generals and senators and emperors. Hadron felt that science was lacking in Roman warfare, so he took me along as his consultant on campaigns. When I tired of that, he made me Chief Scientist of Rome.”

  “More properly you were Chief Engineer and should have taken the ancient Earth-Roman name of Vitruvius,” Andra said. “For you took Rome as a fishing village and built it into the capital of an Empire.”

  “Andra, I've warned you,” Prin said. “Compliment him too much, his head might explode!”

  “By then I was stuck with and quite happy with the name Archimedes,” Archimedes replied. “And if there is an afterworld where we should all receive judgment, I would that the patricians and generals and emperors receive the blame for making Rome a pox upon the planet.”

  "Poor Hadron though," Andra said. "For a patrician, he was very forward thinking."

  Archimedes scowled. “'Archie, can you make a catapult that can throw a rotting pig carcass over a city wall?' Yes, that's moving forward – over the bodies of his victims!"

  “Archie, he's dead now.”

  “I could retort that so are his victims, but the truth is, I mourn his death more than you all. And I know the one who has taken his place is far worse.”

  Matt broke the silence, “You said the mentors stopped speaking to you. Can you tell me more about that?”

  They shrugged in parallel.

  “It happened decades ago,” Andra said. “Prin's was the first to go. Archie's was the last that I know of. I remember the day that Hypatia no longer spoke. I felt my best friend had died.”

  “Yes,” Matt said. “Well, it could be that they simply wore out over the centuries. Maybe I could have Ivan take a look.”

  “You would do that for us?”

  “Well, I'm not saying fixing them is possible. And refurbishing would take time. Ivan's not designed for microelectronics work, but we'll see.”

  Carrot asked, “If you do get your mentors back, what will you do with them?”

  Andra shrugged. “Learn and teach. What else is there to life?”

  The Twenty-Second Century in Matt replied, "That's everything."

  Carrot folded her arms.

  “Did the mentors tell you anything about the Pandora War?” Matt asked.

  They shook their heads.

  “Mentors are very discreet about the lives of past hosts,” Archimedes said. “But history tells us that once there were mentors in every fair sized village and several in every city. Then after the war, they all but disappeared from public awareness. Our mentors admonished us to keep their presence secret. From all that, I concluded they had lost the war and were fugitives.”

  “Matt,” Carrot said. “What do you think this means about your brother?”

  “He's not my – I don't know what it means, Carrot. He could be dead by now even if he survived the war, or he could be in hiding. I don't even know why he came to this planet.”

  “Call it intuition. I think he is alive, and I think he cares about you.”

  “Then he should have left a message aboard Herman about what I would face down here. That would have saved me a lot of trouble.”

  “I would like to know more about Earth,” Andra said. They all nodded.

  And so for the next hour and more, Matt told them about Earth, about its history and science and technology, about how printers and robots provided food and clothing and shelter for everyone, about how every disease had been cured, and no one had to die ever again.

  “And you left such a place?” Andra asked with open astonishment.

  “I didn't think I was coming here,” Matt said. “But – I – don't think this place is so bad. Since coming here, I've felt – well, I don't know how to describe, I've felt – “

  “Useful?” Archimedes asked.

  Matt ended up nodding. He decided not to mention that coming to Ne'arth also meant that he had gotten to meet Carrot.

  “Tell us more about star travel,” Prin said.

  And then, the conversation turned to seeder probes, and Pandoras. On that subject it was Carrot who provided the most insight. After she spoke with conviction on the evils of the Pandoras, for a long time only the engine hum broke the silence.

  “We could not defeat them when mentors numbered in the hundreds,” Archimedes said. “How do we defeat them now?”

  “We have Matt now,” Carrot said.

  “We had his brother before.”

  “He's not my – “

  “Yes, Matt, but doesn't that make the matter even more grave? He was everything you are, plus years of experience, plus perhaps the advantages of even greater technology than you brought. And still the mentors were defeated and driven into hiding.”

  “If Earth is so wonderful,” Prin said, “why don't its people come and stop the Pandoras?”

  “Maybe Earth doesn't want to stop them,” Archimedes said. “Maybe the people of Earth want to see this experiment of the Pandoras play out. Maybe they want to see a mutant species of humanity arise, and if it means wiping out humans here, what of it?”

  Andra turned to Carrot. “No offense meant, dear. We don't mean to say that you're on the side of the mutants against humans.”

  “I would never join the Pandoras even if I had no attachment to humanity,” Carrot said firmly. “The one I met was insane. Is Inoldia her idea of a superior being? Inoldia may have superior physical powers, but she struck me as very stupid.”

  “Maybe that's what the Pandoras want humans to be,” Matt said. “Before I left Earth, the smartest AIs were often asked what would be their model of the ideal society. Some of them said that AIs should do all the thinking, and humans should become mindless robots who serve without question.” He shrugged. “Those AIs weren't the ones we let run things.”

  “I thought the Pandoras were programmed to make humanity superior,” Carrot said. “How does making us stupid make us superior?”

  “The goal of the Pandoras was to make humans superior in terms of survivability. From the viewpoint of a super-intelligent AI, it's easier to take car
e of humans if they just do as they're told.”

  “It sounds like bees,” Andra said. “Pandora is their queen, the Inoldias are the drones.”

  “She would destroy what is best in humanity in the name of saving humanity,” Carrot said. “She is insane.”

  “To us,” Matt replied. “But to herself she's still being logical. Anyhow, I don't think the Hive Mentality is what Eric Roth had in mind for improving the species. Probably, in his view, the Pandora AI has gone rogue.”

  “Yet on him I have come to agree with you, Matt,” Carrot said. “If there is a hell, I hope he is burning in it.”

  “One more happy thought before I retire,” Archimedes said, glancing over at Geth. “A handful of Inoldias could be a challenge for a legion. So why don't your Pandora Boxes make an army of Inoldias and take over the world tomorrow?”

  None of the humans had an answer for that, but Ivan spoke, “It is possible the Pandoras are in conflict with one another.”

  Matt repeated aloud what he had said.

  “But how does that explain why the one on the Isle doesn't make an army?” Archimedes asked.

  “I do not know,” came Ivan's reply. “I am simply observing that seemingly illogical and inconsistent behavior on the part of the Pandoras would be accounted for if they are in conflict.”

  They listened to Matt relate and Archimedes nodded. “Maybe that's something we can exploit.”

  “A glimmer of hope,” Prin said.

  It was in the lapse of conversation that they all noticed at once that the pitch in the hum of the engines changed. As the hum deepened, Matt became aware that the ship was slowing.

  "Andra," Archimedes said. "Why are we stopping here?"

  She raised her hand from the throttle levers. "I'm not touching anything!"

  The engines slowed more, then coughed and came to a complete stop. Matt looked out the window. The sun had set and they were adrift in darkness that blended sky, clouds, and sea. There was no sight of land.

  "How could both engines fail at once?" Prin demanded.

  "They didn't," Geth said.

  He came forward, yawning, and Andra stepped aside as he took the helm. Geth pulled a side lever, then aligned the throttles while looking over his shoulder at the engine housings.

  "We should be able to wind-start . . . . " he murmured. The propellers windmilled freely, then the engines rattled and hummed back to life. "There we go!"

  I don't remember teaching him that, Matt thought. Aloud, he said, "What was wrong?"

  "Nothing, really. We ran out of fuel. I switched over to the emergency reserve tank."

  "We're not even to Espin!" Archimedes exclaimed. "How could the main tank have run dry already?"

  "I had to dump about half of it."

  “Why in the world would you do that?"

  "It's a long story," Geth said. "May I tell without interruption?"

  They waited.

  Geth continued, "The holes that the Roman Witch punched into the balloon have been competently sealed by my daughter, but not before we lost a great deal of levitation gas. So much so, that even with all the ballast released, I could not sustain a safe altitude over the city. I determined the only way to raise altitude was to lighten the ship further by dumping some of the fuel. I didn't want to dump half the tank, but that is what it took to maintain a good altitude. Otherwise this ship would have floated so low over the Bay of Rome that it would have taken a hundred flaming arrows each to gondola and engines and we would have been adrift – and likely dead as well – long before this."

  "Oh," Archimedes said. "Are you – well, you do seem to know how to fly this ship, I'll grant that. But now we don't have enough fuel to reach Britan, so what are we to do?"

  "The emergency tank should have enough fuel to reach Espin," Prin said. "We can avoid Roman occupation troops if we fly deep inland and slowly release enough gas to softly crash in the deepest forests. Then we'll hike our way to the coast and reach Britan by ship."

  "Do we have money for passage?" Andra asked. "Every haddie Archie gave us, we spent on building this poor thing."

  "You think of this vehicle as a poor thing?"

  "It is if we have to crash it."

  "I fear I am too old for an extended hiking trip through the forests of Espin," Archimedes said. "Also, I hear the interior of the island is infested with bears. Carrot, you can fight bears, can't you?"

  "We will not have to crash and my daughter will not have to fight bears," Geth said. "Now, I once fished these waters, and know them somewhat. Many of the smaller islands are unaligned with Rome, and we will safely land once we find one with a prominence high enough so that we can moor without the release of more gas. Then we will descend the slope to a settlement. Naval rum is a near-universal commodity, and if we cannot find barter with the natives, then Matt can obtain its purchase by offering his services as a healer."

  "Yes, he is a good healer, I'll grant that.” Archimedes patted his robe but by popular request refrained from displaying once more the lack of scar. “And how are the barrels of rum to be transported from the shore of this hypothetical inhabited island up the slope of the hypothetical prominence upon which the airship is to be hypothetically moored?"

  "My daughter may enlist to carry them."

  Carrot smiled. "I prefer that to fighting bears!"

  Matt frowned. "Geth, how did you think of all this?"

  Geth shrugged. "It is entirely straight-forward."

  Carrot giggled and tapped Matt lightly on his temples. "It is possible to think with one's own brain, you know."

  None of the humans had a good comeback, and if Ivan did, he kept it to himself.

  51.

  Despite Carrot's faith in her father's plan, an island with a suitable mount for mooring was harder to find than envisioned. The stiff breeze made the mooring a battle, damaging the port rudder and engine. The islanders were disinterested in bartering and in no need of a healer. And, they were short of rum.

  Then a Roman navy ship came, bristling with soldiers anxious to win the million-grams-of-silver bounty for the stolen airship.

  Yet, somehow, everything worked out.

  The soldiers departed after Carrot ambushed a few. Civilian ships arrived and their sailors had the occupational ailments typical to their profession – that was how her father put it – and were eager to trade their rum for a healer's services. They paid so well that Matt hired islanders to carry the barrels to the ship and Carrot had only to watch.

  Archimedes, Prin, Andra, and Matt repaired the control surfaces and engines. Carrot wandered about loosely and finally Andra sent her to collect flowers and sea shells as 'scientific specimens.' Carrot knew she was being banished.

  She had time to wander the cliff-side and gaze at the sea and ask, What am I to do now? She felt nostalgic for the Leaf, where no one had ever treated her as if she were a nuisance. Somewhat subversively, that led to the thought, What would I do without Romans?

  Housekeeping, she thought. She was good at that. But though she found it relaxing, it was hardly enough to satisfy her now! She had seen the world beyond the villages of North Umbrick.

  Then she watched Matt climbing over the engine, smearing grease and oil upon the jumpsuit that never permanently dirtied, and thought about a life with him. She realized that when she thought fondly of him, it was not about rescues or feats or even 'virtual' excursions. What made her smile were their times spent simply talking. Whether it was about starships or simply the recipe of ice cream . . . .

  Her daydreams fashioned a future for when they returned to Britan. Matt could be an itinerant healer, and as he traveled from village to village, he would need someone to protect him from Romans and brigands. But she would be more than just a bodyguard!

  Villages had children, and yes, as she had thought many times before, she could teach. After all those hours in the library of Archimedes and the archives of Ivan, she had worlds of knowledge inside her – and hadn't Matt himself said that learnin
g and teaching were everything?

  See, she thought, I don't need legions to give me something to do!

  In the end, they spent over a week in repair, ballasting, and fueling the airship on the island, and it would have been faster to Britan to have taken the Eureka. Not that Geth was complaining.

  Once they had boarded, it was Carrot, under her father's direction, who spun the props. She undid the knots and climbed the mooring rope as the airship ascended. A handful of islanders waved, then descended to the beach to resume fishing as if nothing special had happened.

  Watching them from the rear of the gondola, Carrot felt a little sad. They seemed happy in their circumscribed lives, but in a way their utter lack of intellectual curiosity made them also seem an evolutionary step down from a species that had once bridged stars.

  Matt tapped her shoulder. "We've got a job for you."

  Finally, she thought. But they only wanted her to hold a hand-drawn map before her father while he sighted landmarks.

  "I wonder what is going on in Britan now,” Geth said. “Even without their fleet, the Romans are capable of great mischief.”

  By then they all knew of Matt's sky view, and waited for his a satellite intel report.

  "I don't see troop movements,” Matt replied. “A lot of soldiers on the streets of Londa, but Ivan's survey doesn't spot any soldiers more than a hundred klicks outside the city."

  "Perhaps they are preparing for an attack," Geth said.

  “It seems we should steer clear of Londa and environs,” Archimedes said. “Do you Britanians have any idea of a safe place to land?"

  "There is nothing for us in Umbrick any longer," Geth said, glancing at Carrot. "For us to show there would only attract Roman attention and endanger lives."

  "Yes," Carrot said quietly. She realized her only friends were with her or in Kresidala by now.

  "How about Fish Lake?" Matt said.

  "Where?" Geth asked.

  "Where we met him," Carrot said.

  "The people know me and like me," Matt said. "And it's far enough from Londa that if the Romans march, we'll see them coming from a long way."