An Unwelcome Quest (Magic 2.0 Book 3)

by Scott Meyer

  Jimmy’s eyes darted to the nearest foot, now just a blob of dark, wet mud on the ground. Jimmy expected to see it crumbling apart and drifting toward the dirt elemental, ready to resume its duties as a foot. Instead he saw the blob of mud stirring slightly and spreading out as it settled.

  “It can’t re-form,” he yelled to the others. “The mud is too heavy! Lead it back into the puddle!”

  The elemental was crawling toward Jimmy. Tyler sprinted toward it and used his sword to hack off one of the creature’s arms, causing it to do an undignified face-plant. Of course, the creature’s arm was bone dry and took little time to reattach itself to the beast’s torso, but the object was to get the creature’s attention. Tyler had accomplished that handily. The elemental turned away from Jimmy and crawled away in pursuit of Tyler, who had run around to the far side of the puddle.

  Later, when they discussed the day’s events, they would theorize that the dry earth that made up the elemental’s body was very loosely packed, and thus the normal capillary action that drew the moisture up into the mass of dirt was accelerated. Whatever the cause, when the creature’s right hand went into the puddle, the dirt that constituted its arm immediately darkened all the way past its elbow.

  The left hand followed the right hand into the water; then the right was lifted to reach forward and continue crawling toward Tyler. As the right arm pitched forward, the sodden blob that had been the creature’s hand flew straight up in the air and landed next to the creature, making a large, muddy splash. The creature pondered the soggy stump where its right hand had been. Then its left hand, still submerged in the foot-deep puddle, disintegrated. Since one-third of the creature’s weight was resting on a hand that now no longer existed, the dirt elemental fell face-first into the water.

  All of the still-exposed parts of the dirt elemental darkened and softened. It rolled onto its back, revealing the damage the moisture had done. It thrashed with its mangled limbs, flinging bits of itself all over the countryside as it struggled to get free. Eventually it stopped trying to get out of the puddle because it had become the puddle. What had been a still body of fetid liquid was now a viscous slick of dark, gummy mud. The force that allowed the creature to re-form when dry was strong enough to keep the mud bubbling and churning but did not seem strong enough to let it rise and be a threat again.

  Gary crouched next to the edge of the mud patch, stuck the end of his sword in the mud, and said, “Whatever particulate-matter simulation he was using to make it clearly wasn’t calibrated for the weight of the mud—just loose, dry dirt. I don’t think it’s going to give us any more trouble.”

  A tendril of mud started to climb Gary’s sword, making its way toward his hand with surprising speed. Gary shrieked and jerked the sword out of the mud, flinging bits of muck far away. The beast was dispersed and subdued, but it wasn’t dead. It was only a matter of time before it re-formed.

  After he’d composed himself, Gary said, “All the same, I think we should keep moving.”

  Before they could move on, there was the issue of Phillip’s arm. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that it was broken. The question was, how badly?

  They looked at the affected region. They poked at it and listened to the volume and ferocity of Phillip’s complaints. Then, falling back on all of their combined experience in the medical profession (none), they determined that it was a clean break in one place. They hoped.

  They asked Phillip if it hurt. He said, “Yes,” which did not surprise them. Phillip asked if there was anything they could to for the pain. They said, “No,” which did not surprise him.

  In the end they cut some excess fur from the hem of Phillip’s increasingly ratty mink coat and made him the world’s most glamorous sling. Normally this would have been difficult since every genuine fur coat is also a leather coat, and leather isn’t famous for being easy to cut. Luckily, they had the Möbius Blade, which sliced through the leather as if it were tissue paper.

  “Glad the Möbius Blade is so sharp,” Tyler said, quickly following with “Man, there’s a sentence I didn’t expect to say.”

  Jimmy said, “I don’t think it’s possible for a blade to be this sharp on its own. I’m betting he used the file to alter the edge. Maybe the molecules along the edge instantly sever certain bonds in any other molecules they touch. Todd has played around with that kind of thing before.”

  “Really? When?” Tyler asked.

  “Before he came to us. I found out all about it while I was working my way back. He killed a man by negating all of the molecular bonds in his body. Reduced him to a puddle of goo. The mess was horrendous. That’s how I think the blade works. Even if I’m wrong, it’s a pretty good idea. We should remember it for when we get out of this.”

  From thin air somewhere above them, Todd’s voice called out, “Good guess, Merlin. Sorry, you go by Jimmy these days. Anyway, right on the nose! Glad you approve. It took a lot of tweaking to get it right. At first it affected any molecules it touched, so the blade kept tearing itself apart. I made the effect directional. It only cuts things that hit it head on, which fixed the cutting-itself-to-bits problem, but then I found that if I dropped the prototype just right, it would cut all the way to the center of the earth.”

  “How’d you learn that?”

  “I dropped it just right and it cut all the way to the center of the earth. At least I assume so. The hole closed itself back up. Anyway, I see what you mean, it might be useful for you”— Todd laughed—“when you get out of this. Especially Phillip. He looks great.”

  Phillip told Todd what he thought of his opinion, but Todd had either left or decided not to answer.

  They fitted Phillip’s new fur sling; then Jimmy helped Phillip to his feet, saying, “All right, Phillip, upsy-daisy. We’ll handle carrying the blade. You just take the lead and keep an eye out for wolves.”

  Phillip asked Tyler and Gary if they agreed. They did, vigorously. He shrugged, winced in pain, then watched while the others lifted the Möbius Blade. When they had the blade in hand, Phillip resumed the path to the Chasm of Certain Doom. The others followed. Tyler and Jimmy exchanged an uncertain look.

  “Hey,” Gary said, “what was that?”

  Tyler said, “What?”

  “What was that look?” Gary asked.

  “Nothing,” Tyler said. “There was no look. Shut up.”

  Without turning, or even slowing down, Phillip said, “Don’t worry about it, Gary. It just meant that Jimmy and Tyler aren’t sure how long I’m going to last with a broken arm.”

  “Oh,” Gary said. “Okay.”

  25.

  “Brake!” Roy bellowed.

  “I’m braking! I’m braking!” Martin called back, pulling with all of his weight on the metal bar that now protruded through the bed of the cart, just in front of the rear axle. Martin pulled hard on the bar, bracing his feet on the rear wall of the cart’s bed and hanging off the back of the cart in his desperation to slow it down. Sparks showered the sides of the path as the metal rims of the rear wheels ground against the metal pads on Roy’s “improved” brakes.

  Martin knew that if his hands slipped, or the bar broke, he’d fall backward into the cart’s wake and watch, helplessly choking on dust, as the cart careened away without any brakes, save for the emergency brake Brit, Roy, and Gwen had cooked up. They’d explained how it worked to him. He suspected falling backward out of the cart was the safer option.

  At the front of the cart, Roy had both hands full wrestling the tiller he had connected to the front wheels. Modern people are accustomed to vehicles with power or at least rack-and-pinion steering. This cart was never designed to be steered from the driver’s seat, and the basic geometry of the axle put Roy at a mechanical disadvantage.

  Roy stopped shouting for more brakes while he guided the cart around a turn, barely managing to keep all four wheels on the ground. The path ahea
d was fairly straight, so he ventured a look at his passengers.

  Gwen and Brit were in the middle of the cart, between the driver’s bench and the brakeman’s position. They were both holding on to the sides of the cart, crouched as if prepared to jump over the side at the slightest provocation but moving only when necessary to either shift their weight to the inside of a corner or to dodge any of the loose items rolling around in the back of the cart. It had been decided that they should bring along some tools and lumber to repair the cart, should it break before they ran out of hill. They had stacked their supplies carefully in the center of the bed, an arrangement that had lasted until the first sharp turn.

  Both Gwen and Brit were wide-eyed, their mouths agape. Somehow, even with the wind and the rattling and the grinding drowning them out, Roy could tell that Gwen was screaming, but Brit was laughing.

  “How’re you two doing?” he asked.

  Gwen shrieked, “I’m terrified!”

  “Fear means you’re making progress,” Roy yelled.

  Roy turned back to the path ahead just in time to almost not make the next turn.

  “Relax,” Brit said, between laughing jags. “We aren’t really going that fast. I think we’re doing something like twenty miles an hour. It just feels much faster because the vehicle is fundamentally unsound.”

  “Why didn’t you say so to begin with?” Gwen asked.

  “Say what,” Brit asked, “that the vehicle was unsound? I did. All three of us did. We discussed at length that we’d have to try to keep things slow and be ready to bail out because this cart was never designed to be used this way. You just weren’t there. You were outside, working on the emergency brake.”

  When Brit had proposed her idea for the last-ditch emergency brake, Roy had actually laughed out loud, not because it was ridiculous but because there was no reason it couldn’t work, despite being ridiculous. He and Brit brainstormed the elements necessary to make it work and determined that the handiwork of someone who knew how to work with fabric was called for. Gwen took the sewing kit Brit the Elder had sent, Roy’s trench coat for material, and some general instructions for what she would make. Then she found a quiet, pleasant spot under a tree to do her work. As such, she had not been privy to any of the later design conversations.

  At one point, Brit had decided to take a break from the hammering and the bending, and Martin’s incessant humming of the theme from The A-Team, to check on Gwen’s progress.

  “How’s it going?” Brit asked, sitting on the shady ground next to Gwen.

  “Well, I think,” Gwen answered.

  Brit nodded. “Will it work?”

  “The emergency brake?” Gwen asked. “Yeah, I think it might, if we’re going straight. If we’re turning, no way.”

  “Yeah,” Brit said. “That is one design flaw, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Gwen said, “The good news is that this old trench coat is made out of good, strong material. It was a shame to cut it up.”

  “At least he has the coat Brit the Elder sent for him, so he’ll stay warm and dry. We’ll get Roy a new trench when this is all over. You can make him one if you want, or we could just zip back to the twenty-first century and buy him one.”

  Gwen shook her head. “No, we’ll want to go to the twentieth century. Better craftsmanship then.”

  “Ah yes,” Brit said. “Those skilled lady seamstresses with their nimble little woman hands.”

  Gwen chuckled lightly. “He’s getting better. He’s still kind of weird around us, but he’s treating us like useful members of the team now.”

  Brit smiled. “I knew he’d come around eventually. The smart ones usually do.”

  “I suppose. I just wish he would relax,” Gwen said, squinting at her stitching.

  “Well,” Brit sighed, “the awkwardness is partly our fault.”

  Gwen looked up from her sewing and squinted at Brit.

  “Not women in general,” Brit clarified. “Us, specifically, and in this one situation.”

  Brit could tell by the continued intensity of Gwen’s squint that more clarification was needed.

  “I’m just saying that I think, in the long run, Atlantis might have been a mistake. It made sense at the time. Early history was generally hostile toward women—more so the further back you went. Adding magical powers to the mix certainly didn’t simplify things. When we started traveling through time, it seemed smart to create a separate place where women could go to be in charge of their own destinies, and be treated with the respect they deserved.”

  “Made sense to me,” Gwen said. “That’s why I moved there.”

  Brit said, “Yeah, but I think you had it right the first time, when you were living among the male time travelers, interacting with them. Proving your worth. I made Atlantis. It was my idea, and it was constructed by Brit the Elder, who is me, probably. Anyway, by keeping women separate from men I’ve doomed women to being non-players in the men’s stories. The male wizards can’t see women as their equals because they never really interact with women who are their equals, aside from the very rare woman of equal or greater status who gets involved.”

  “Like you and me,” Gwen said.

  “Exactly. It’s no wonder they treat strong, independent women as oddities. We are oddities in their world, and I’m the one who made it that way. It wasn’t my intention, but that’s what happened.”

  Gwen thought about this for a moment, then said, “Okay, say you’re right. What do we do about it?”

  Brit said, “Well, we can’t fix the past.”

  “We’re time travelers,” Gwen reminded her.

  “Yes, and as you’ve seen, all that really means is that we can mess up the past, not fix it.”

  “True.”

  “We can’t fix the past, but we can improve things going forward. I’m going to make sure that the sorceresses of Atlantis mix and integrate with the other wizard communities in the future, and I’m going to try to remember this lesson and not make the same mistake again.”

  “Should you find yourself in a position to create another society from your imagination again,” Gwen said.

  “Yeah,” Brit said. “If it comes up.”

  In the distance, Martin emerged from the blacksmith shop and called out, “Hey, guys, if you’ve got a sec, Roy and I would like your opinion about something.”

  Brit and Gwen listened to Roy and Martin’s disagreement and offered their opinions. Discussion ensued, and consensus was reached. This process was repeated many times. They all worked hard, the men doing more than half of the grunt labor and the women doing more than half of the irritating, fiddly work. When it was done, they rested. The next morning they set out in the cart, which they’d heavily modified into what was possibly the world’s first four-person all-terrain soapbox derby car.

  It was almost certainly a mistake, but it was a mistake they’d made together.

  The cart rattled down the winding path. They were moving fast. Fast enough to feel that they’d be seriously injured if the cart fell apart but slow enough that they all doubted whether they’d catch up to the others before that happened.

  Roy yelled to his passengers “Lean right!” and threw the tiller all the way to the left, slamming the cart into a hard right turn. Gwen, who was sitting on the right side of the cart to begin with, pushed her weight into the side of the cart’s bed as hard as she dared, fearing that the ancient wood might fail to support her weight. Brit scurried from her position in the left side of the bed to Gwen’s side, using her body weight as ballast to help keep the inside wheels of the cart on the ground as they maneuvered through the turn.

  Martin was putting most of his weight into the brake lever. His feet lost traction as they careened around the corner, causing him to fall out the back of the cart. He still had a firm grip on the brake handle, and now that his full weight was bear
ing down on the lever, the cart’s speed slowed noticeably. They were really designed to be parking brakes, not to slow a vehicle already in motion. Roy and Brit had beefed them up as well as they could, but they all knew the brakes wouldn’t last forever.

  Roy yelled, “Good work,” while Martin struggled to get his feet back into the cart.

  Looking down at his sneakers as they scrambled against the back of the cart, a sudden streak of gray in his peripheral vision caught Martin’s attention. Once he got both feet back on the cart he ventured a quick look at the path behind and saw that there were four wolves chasing them. He quickly theorized that they must have spawned at the same speed they would if the group walked by, but since they were rolling past at many times their walking speed the wolves didn’t really spring into action until the cart was well past. That meant that the longer they rolled down this hill, the more wolves would gather behind them and the more important it would be to keep rolling.

  Martin saw that the wolves were gaining on them. He eased off the brakes.

  They were out of the turn and back on a relatively straight bit of path. Brit crawled back to her side of the cart.

  “At this rate,” she yelled to anyone who was listening, “we should catch up to the others in no time.”

  “Hell,” Roy said, “I half-expect to crash into them.”

  26.

  Phillip had always been a morning person, but Todd’s quest was helping him get over that. It had shown him that what he had always perceived as the “promise of a new day” could also be taken as a threat.

  Phillip sat up, grudgingly admitting to himself that he was awake. The night air had been frigid. The ground was lumpy with rocks. His bedroll and all the bits of him that were exposed were covered with cold, clammy dew, part of the Scapa’s ongoing attempt to give life just enough of a foothold to keep suffering.