The Reign of the Brown Magician

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  That wasn’t exactly her idea of a normal life.

  One step at a time, she told herself, suppressing a shudder. One step at a time.

  * * * *

  “I just don’t want to talk about it,” Ted Deranian insisted, for one final time.

  “All right, that’s fine,” the woman in the blue Air Force captain’s uniform said. “When you’re ready, though, give us a call. Any time.” She shook his hand and started to turn away.

  “It wasn’t…” Ted began. She turned back. He hesitated.

  “Was it really…” he began again.

  “Most of it, anyway,” she said, understanding his incomplete question. “I don’t know the details; maybe part of it was illusion. Most of it was real, though, yes; you’ve had an unprecedented experience, one you weren’t prepared for, and you’ve been trying to handle it, trying to cope with things no one should ever have to cope with.” She didn’t mention that this was a modified version of the standard speech she gave to people who had cracked under the stress of combat or long imprisonment.

  She’d never had to counsel anyone who’d fallen into another universe before.

  “You go on home,” she told him. “Take time off if you need it—we’ll certify whatever you need, as far as that goes. You can tell people the truth, or tell them that you’ve been held hostage by terrorists—that’s the easiest cover story, and we’ll back you up. Or just tell them it’s none of their business. And call any­time—you’ve got the card.” He patted his pocket and nodded. “And we’d like to see you again in a month or so.”

  “Thank you,” Ted said.

  He turned and left, closing the door carefully behind him.

  * * * *

  “Who did you say this was?” Bob Heyworth leaned back in his chair. Tom Boyle glanced at him from the next desk, and Heyworth waved him away. Boyle went back to typing.

  “My name’s Ray Aldridge, I’m a professional psychic from California—maybe you’ve heard…no, I guess you haven’t.”

  “I’m not much into psychics, I’m afraid,” Heyworth said. “You want me to connect you to someone a bit more in that line?”

  “No, this isn’t about me,” the voice on the phone said. “I mean, I hope you’ll mention my name, but that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “What is it, then?”

  Heyworth could hear the hesitation before the voice said, “The government’s in contact with aliens.”

  Heyworth grimaced, and asked, “How do you know?”

  Tom Boyle glanced at him again, and Heyworth drew rings in the air by his ear to indicate that the caller was a nut.

  That wasn’t anything unusual; Boyle turned away.

  “They told me,” Aldridge answered. “They brought me here to see if I could help them.”

  Heyworth made a wordless noise that meant roughly, “Go on.”

  “See, they think that some psychic messages I reported back in the spring might have been a genuine contact with these people, who come from a galactic empire in another universe, so they brought me here to see if I’d get any more messages.”

  “And have you?”

  “No, but…listen, I know you think psychics are all fakes, and I’m not going to try to convince you of that part, because most of it is fake, but look, the FBI brought me here, to talk to people from Air Force intelligence, and they’ve got people who came from this other universe, and they’ve been talking about how they have some kind of ship out in Maryland, in a place called Goshen—look, I’m afraid they might be trying to cover it all up, and I don’t want that.”

  Heyworth blinked.

  He had seen the phony spaceship in Goshen; the paper had been getting calls about it ever since someone had dumped it there months ago, back in April or May, and like most of the reporters he had eventually gotten curious enough to drive out and take a look at it.

  And like all the others, he hadn’t found anyone who knew anything about it. The lady who owned the place was never home, the government men who stopped by every so often to check on the place wouldn’t talk—no one could make a story out of it. Jessie Wilber from Style had tried to do a sort of human interest piece on the neighborhood reaction to this mysterious object, but it hadn’t gone anywhere; most of the neighbors wouldn’t talk about it, and the feds had given her a friendly warning that there were privacy considerations, that Ms. Jewell, the home owner, was lawyer-happy.

  So at first, when Heyworth made the connection, he thought this might be something interesting after all, that maybe somebody would finally explain that silly contraption and make it something more than a back-page filler.

  Then he decided that no, this phony psychic had heard about the ship and had just figured it would be a good way to cash in; really, it was a wonder there weren’t half a dozen cults popping up around it already.

  But on the other hand—the psychic knew that the government agency watching the ship was Air Force, not one of the civilian outfits, even though the people who checked on it usually weren’t in uniform. Heyworth only knew that himself because, in the proper reportorial manner, he had demanded to see ID before allowing himself to be chased away.

  But he did know it. So this Aldridge had done his homework, that was all.

  “We wouldn’t want that either, Mr. Aldridge,” Heyworth said. “I don’t think we want to talk about it over the phone, though—you never know who could be listening. Is there somewhere I could meet you?”

  The relief was plain in Aldridge’s voice as he began babbling about a possible rendezvous.

  Heyworth didn’t know, when he hung up the phone, whether he would bother to show up. Standing a nuisance up was one of the best ways to get rid of him (or her)—but there was always a chance he might get something interesting out of this, and so far it had been a slow day.

  He would call a couple of contacts, and see if the Air Force might really have been talking to Aldridge, and if there was anything new on the Goshen spaceship.

  * * * *

  “If your reports are accurate, and this isn’t all an elaborate fraud,” the man in the gray suit said, “then you’re right. It’s hardly just an intelligence matter any­more, and it certainly isn’t just an Air Force matter.”

  “My reports are as accurate as I can make ’em,” Johnston replied with a shrug. “And if it’s a fraud, they’ve sure suckered me.”

  The man in the gray suit made it quite plain, without saying a word, that he didn’t consider that to be evidence one way or the other. After a moment of silence, he added, “I’d heard rumors about this spaceship; we all took it for granted that it was a fake.”

  “So did I,” Johnston said, as he pulled the car into Amy Jewell’s driveway. He brought the vehicle to a stop inches from a previous arrival’s bumper, shifted to PARK, set the brake, and turned off the engine. “If it were just the ship, I’d still think it was a fake, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have called in the State Department.”

  “Just what was it that convinced you, then?” the man from the State Department asked as he opened the passenger door.

  Johnston waited until they were both standing, then gestured at the rope ladder that dangled unsupported in the air.

  “That, among other things,” he said, as the State man gawked.

  * * * *

  Ron Wilkins ambled slowly along the causeway across Shadowmarsh, considering the fortress that towered before him and trying to decide if this was really a smart move.

  He sure as hell wouldn’t have tried it if he thought Shadow was still alive and still in there.

  All the reports, though, said that Shadow was dead, and the Brown Magician was in charge, and Wilkins could only figure that the Brown Magician was Pel Brown, which meant that somehow or other he and Raven and the rest had pulled it off, had defeated Shadow.

  Which was pretty goddamned incredible.

  Wilkins had noticed that nobody ever mentioned Raven, though, nor any of the others. He figured that this probably meant one of
two things; either all the others were dead, or some were dead and some had wound up in other universes.

  Like back in the Galactic Empire.

  Getting back to the Empire sounded like a pretty good idea.

  Oh, he might be up for desertion, or something, but nobody over there could know exactly what had happened here, not even the bloody mind-readers; the chain of command had been broken, Lieutenant Dibbs had told Wilkins and the others they could choose for themselves, and it couldn’t very well be desertion to walk out on a bunch of crazies committing group suicide, could it? Raven wasn’t an officer. Nobody in the whole bunch was except Thorpe, and she was a Special, a mutant, not in the direct chain of command at all, not authorized to give orders.

  So Wilkins didn’t see that he’d broken any laws, and he didn’t think he was important enough to be framed, so going home sounded real good.

  Someplace with indoor plumbing, and decent food, and clean women who didn’t scream if you so much as touched them…

  Of course, if he was wrong about Brown being in charge, then he was walking right into Shadow’s lap and was probably as good as dead—but hey, if he’d wanted to live forever, he would never have signed up to be a soldier.

  But he wasn’t in any hurry to be wrong. He was perfectly willing to take his time, just in case God decided to give him a sign or something.

  So he was walking down the causeway toward the fortress, but walking slowly.

  He had the feeling that someone was watching him, as he strolled, and every so often he glimpsed things moving in the marsh to either side. The sky was gray and overcast. Combine that with the heavy gravity, the low oxygen content of the air, and the off-color sunlight of this planet—if it really was a planet—and the whole place was about as oppressive and unpleasant as he ever cared to see. Leaving it would be a relief.

  But he wasn’t going to rush into anything.

  * * * *

  Spaceman Second Class Thomas Sawyer, Imperial Military, paused for a moment in his work and leaned on his wooden shovel. Alison and Goody Fitzsimmons were gossiping again, exchanging the latest tales about the Brown Magician across the stableyard fence.

  For a moment Sawyer once again considered trying to contact this legendary Pelbrun who had usurped Shadow’s role. It almost had to be Mr. Brown.

  But that would mean going into that fortress, and Sawyer couldn’t bring himself to do that. He’d backed out at the very gate once before—and there was a good chance that Brown remembered and resented that. True, he’d apparently somehow won his battle against Shadow, but how many had died in the process? How many might have lived if there’d been another hand, such as Sawyer’s, to help?

  Better not to risk it. Life here wasn’t all that bad. Rough, perhaps, but not too bad. Alison was a fine young woman, and he thought she was warming to him—that held some promise for the future, maybe more than he’d had in the Empire.

  He stood, hefted the shovel, then scooped and lifted more manure into the oxcart.

  * * * *

  Pel sat in his throne, physical eyes closed, and concentrated on the matrix, on bending his magical perceptions in a direction outside the three rational dimensions of normal space.

  He had located the reality of the Galactic Empire, and found the place (place?) where the portal had been that allowed Shadow and her hundred fetches to step through.

  He didn’t want that, though; he wanted to find wherever Nancy and Rachel were.

  Where their bodies were, rather.

  Nancy had died aboard a spaceship, the Emerald Princess; Rachel had reportedly died on the rebel planet, Zeta Leo III. But Pel didn’t know what had become of their remains. So far as he could recall, no one at Base One had told him, and he had been too distraught to ask.

  He cursed himself for that now.

  It seemed possible that both were on Zeta Leo III. Nancy’s corpse might have been jettisoned somewhere in space, though.

  Or both might have been brought to Base One. That seemed like the sort of thing the Empire would do.

  He didn’t know where to start; he had a whole galaxy to search. Admittedly, the galaxies of Imperial space appeared to be much smaller than those of Earth’s universe, but still, there were thousands of worlds there.

  As he groped about, in great sweeping arcs through non-space, he felt odd little tugs and discontinuities, like snags in the fabric of space. At first he thought they were natural; then he thought he was doing something wrong; and then he realized that those were the places where Shadow had opened portals into the Empire.

  He paused and considered.

  It was interesting to see that portals left a permanent mark in what he could only think of as the shape of space itself. One might even think of it as permanent damage, and he wondered whether he might have hold of something that could destroy entire universes if misused, or even just over­used.

  He smiled wryly. Stand aside, atom bomb—magic could wreck universes, not just a planet or two!

  More importantly, as far as he was concerned, these snags were places Shadow had penetrated into the Empire, and while some of those penetrations had been botched scouting expeditions that ended in a bunch of dead monsters, hadn’t she managed to plant spies in the Imperial military?

  The Empire had certainly thought so.

  A portal that had been used to plant a spy would presumably come out somewhere useful. Someone could step through and ask questions, maybe learn something useful. If he could make contact with the Imperial military, get a message to General Hart at Base One, he could ask them to deliver the remains of his wife and daughter.

  He had helped dispose of Shadow, after all, and after they had sent him here, to almost certain death, instead of just sending him home. They owed him one.

  Of course, he couldn’t go through such a portal himself—that was what had brought Shadow to ruin. He could send someone, though.

  Fetches weren’t very bright, and couldn’t talk, and could hardly blend into a crowd if there was a problem; the locals here would be hopelessly out of place in a relatively civilized space-faring universe of spaceships and aircars.

  He could wait for that Imperial spy, or whatever he was, to arrive—but Pel thought it would be better if one of his own people took care of things.

  “Susan!” he called.

  Chapter Twelve

  The State Department man and the deputy from the Imperial Department of Science were chatting quietly on one corner of Amy Jewell’s patio, the Imperial’s purple space suit an odd contrast with the Earthman’s gray jacket. Major Johnston had been carefully not listening to them even before he got into the argument with the newly-arrived FBI agent-in-charge, but he did wonder just what they were saying.

  The first official contact between the governments of the United States of America and the Galactic Empire was taking place just a few feet away, and here he was in a stupid jurisdictional dispute.

  “The Bureau dumped it on us back in April,” Johnston pointed out.

  “An error,” the agent insisted. “We’re correcting that.”

  “Seems to me that it’s not really your concern any more than it’s an Air Force matter, at this point. State and the CIA might have a claim, but why you? There’s a spacecraft involved, which would mean either Air Force or NASA, but no one’s committed any federal crimes. And we do have seniority here.”

  “Domestic espionage is a matter for the Bureau,” the FBI man argued.

  Johnston had been keeping half his attention on watching Lieutenant Austin and his two men climb the ladder; now he dropped the argument completely to watch as Spaceman Farmer—a name and rank combination that Earthpeople found funny, but the Imperials apparently didn’t—vanished into thin air upon reaching the top. Farmer’s bulky purple space suit just disappeared, as if erased.

  Barrington followed, and Austin was nearing the top when an AP distracted Johnston.

  “Sir, there are reporters out front.”

  “What reporters
?” Johnston asked, turning away.

  “Heyworth, from the Post.”

  “Any video? Photographers?”

  “Not that I saw, sir.”

  Johnston nodded.

  He’d known it wouldn’t stay quiet forever; everything leaked eventually. In this particular case he hadn’t even tried for real secrecy; relying on normal discretion and the high unbelievability factor had seemed like a better idea. The nut theories that had been circulating for decades about a government cover-up of alien spaceships had been about the best protection he could have asked for, and classifying anything would only have made people suspect that there was something real this time.

  But with the FBI and State involved, and the four psychic contacts, something had to leak, and sooner or later someone would check it out. Johnston did wonder whether it had been the paranoid Miletti or the publicity-hungry Aldridge who called Heyworth—they seemed the most likely candidates.

  If it was either of them, it was probably Aldridge; Miletti would more likely have just called more lawyers.

  “Should I allow them back here, sir?”

  Johnston glanced up in time to see Austin’s purple-booted feet disappear. “I don’t think we can legally stop them,” he said. “You tell Heyworth that this is private property, and he’s trespassing at his own risk, but if that doesn’t keep him out, then let him past.” He wished he’d brought Ms. Jewell along, so she could order the reporters away, but he hadn’t thought of it; she was, as far as he knew, in the hotel in Crystal City, a good forty minutes away.

  The AP turned and headed back around the side of the house; Johnston watched him go, then glanced at the diplomats.

  They were shaking hands; then the State Department man watched as the Imperial representative turned and trotted out toward the rope ladder, lifting his bubble helmet into place as he went.

  Johnston blinked.

  “If we had our men in place here,” the FBI man said, “I think we could find a way to keep these reporters out.”

  “Oh, I could find a way,” Johnston answered. “For awhile. If I told the APs to keep ’em out, they would, legal or not, but why antagonize the press? They’ll find out sooner or later, and if we treat them nicely maybe they’ll make us look good in their reports.”