The Reign of the Brown Magician. Lawrence Watt-Evans

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СКАЧАТЬ paused, staring out over the marsh.

      On the battlements? Did he want to stay here, if he once managed to bring his wife and daughter back from the dead?

      Probably not. It was lonely here. Controlling the matrix gave him power, it let him move and reshape matter anywhere in this world, and at least in theory it could let him see through the eyes of others, hear through their ears; it made him the unquestioned final authority; but it cut him off from everyone else at the same time. No one had even remembered that his predecessor, Shadow, was human—they’d all called her “it,” and treated her as a force of nature.

      He didn’t think he was at that extreme, but the men he had had dragged in hadn’t exactly treated him as another like themselves. He had had the power of life and death over them; when he hadn’t made a conscious effort, they hadn’t even been able to see him through the seething aura of magical energy that was the visible manifestation of the matrix.

      And when they did see him, those peasants in their homespun and leather…

      He looked down at himself, at the battered purple slacks he still wore. He remembered Raven of Stormcrack Keep, with his black velvet cloak and high boots; Valadrakul of Warricken, with his braids and knee-length vest; Elani, with her red robes.

      He didn’t belong here. He belonged back on Earth—but with his wife and daughter, and it was only in this world that anyone had the power to revive them.

      He had the power.

      All he had to do was learn how to use it.

      And that, of course…

      He stopped in mid-thought, and stared down at the causeway that connected the fortress to drier land to the east of the marsh. He wasn’t sure whether he had seen them first with his eyes or through the matrix, and now he needed a moment to convince himself that they were real, and not some damnable illusion the matrix had created.

      They were real—there were people approaching the fortress. Six of them—or really, four people and two fetches.

      There was only one explanation, one sort of people who would be coming here.

      Wizards!

      At last, wizards were coming!

      Now maybe he could learn this resurrection business and get on with it!

      * * * *

      The scientist cleared his throat and glanced nervously at Bascombe.

      Bascombe glared back.

      “Well, sir, it’s simple enough to get people to either of the other universes, really; the space-warp generator is completely functional. The problems arise when you require that they arrive safely and be able to get back…”

      “I don’t care if they can get back,” Bascombe interrupted. “We don’t need to worry about that. Cahn and his men got back, most of them, without any help from us.”

      “Well, in that case, it’s just a matter of landing them safely, and as I understand it, no one was seriously injured in the previous warp transitions…”

      “I don’t want them…Wait a minute.” Bascombe glowered at the man; the poor twit was almost a caricature of a scientist, probably didn’t even like to be called that, wanted to be referred to as a physicist, or an electronician, or something—as if all these arcane distinctions made any difference to anyone normal!

      But he had a point; Cahn and Carson had both arrived intact. Bascombe considered their arrivals to be unsatisfactory, but he had to stop and think for a moment to put into words, simple words a scientist could understand, exactly what had been wrong with those landings.

      “All right,” he said, “I want them to arrive quietly, without throwing away any more ships, without attracting a lot of unwanted attention. Can you do that?”

      “Well, sir,” the scientist said, “I don’t see why we couldn’t put them in space suits, with a simple anti-gravity unit to get…”

      “Anti-gravity doesn’t work there. What else have we got? Isn’t there any way to fly without using anti-gravity?”

      The scientist blinked.

      “Um,” he said.

      “Care to be a bit more explicit?” Bascombe let the sarcasm drip from his words.

      “Well, we…I mean, AG is so cheap and convenient, that we…there were experiments, but…” His voice trailed off.

      Bascombe decided the time was ripe for a suggestion, to get the man thinking positively again. “Why can’t we just make the warps come out at ground level?” he asked.

      “Oh, because…well, we were sending ships before, and the control isn’t fine enough, and solid matter…the interaction…it’s not safe.”

      “So we have to make these holes in mid-air, and let our men just fall through?”

      “Well, I—” The scientist stopped dead this time, rather than trailing off.

      “You what?”

      “Well, there’s no reason they couldn’t climb through. With ropes.”

      “Ropes?” Startled, Bascombe considered the idea.

      It seemed very obvious now, so obvious that he wondered how they had missed seeing it sooner. Maybe because it was too simple—getting to another universe involved huge machines, vast quantities of energy, super-science of all sorts; plain old rope didn’t fit the image.

      They could even have saved most of Carson’s group, if they had wanted to.

      But then, Bascombe remembered, they hadn’t particularly wanted to.

      “Ropes,” he said.

      * * * *

      “At least they didn’t cancel my credit cards,” Amy said, glancing up as she continued to pull wads of newspaper out of her new purse. “It’s a good thing I didn’t have all of them with me.”

      Prossie nodded, then looked down at herself.

      Amy had had to guess at the telepath’s sizes to some extent, since Imperial standards did not use the same systems as J.C. Penney, but the clothes seemed to fit fairly well.

      Prossie didn’t look very enthusiastic about the outfit she wore, though.

      “Is something wrong?” Amy asked, putting down the purse. She had deliberately gotten something simple and casual for her guest, since Prossie was obviously not ready to go looking for a white-collar job here on Earth, but maybe that had been a mistake.

      “It’s just so strange,” Prossie said. “I’ve worn a uniform since I was six; except on Zeta Leo III, I’ve never seen myself in any color but purple.”

      Amy shuddered at the mention of the slavers’ planet. She asked, “Even off-duty? Didn’t you ever have, you know, a furlough СКАЧАТЬ