The Wizard from Earth (19 page)

"Carrot, stop with that!  What man of discernment would blame a child for what happened?  Carrot, what attacked you and your mother was lying in wait.  Had you remained in your hut that day, it would have come into the village and slain anyone in its path, until it did what it did."

"You always say that.  But I don't remember the moment and you weren't there."

"Carrot, what I do know is that we share this planet with terrible beings."

"That is only myth.  Like mentors and the Box."

"If  you only knew!  Why the other day, on the roof of the imperial residence – and then also, all the whispers recently about the Sisters of Wisdom!  But never mind, you won't believe any of that either.  Suffice to say there are no wild beasts in North Umbrick then or now which could have attacked as viciously.  If you wish to deal only with facts and reason, then reason from those facts." 

Carrot said nothing as she sobbed.  Ral sighed and handed her a towel. 

"Now I have been a monster too," he said calmly, patting her shoulder.  "I'm angry at my brother who has been dead two years, and you are his greatest victim yet are the one I yell at now.  We haven't seen each other in years, and all this shouting is how you'll remember me."

A smile glimmered.  "I'll remember that you helped Geth and I.  And I have never forgotten how you've always been there when I've needed you.  That's why I came, Uncle.  I knew you would help."

Light was dimming through the curtains, and they hurried to finalize preparations.  Ral gave her clothing, directions, and practical advice for travelers 

"Now, if there are problems, send me a letter.  Let me show you the new stegacipher I drew the other day, you and I shall be the only ones to use it and that should keep the Roman snoops in the dark."

From an even more secretive place, he produced a complex chart in tiny handwriting.  She accepted the sheet, scanned for a moment, handed it back.  

He smiled sheepishly.  "Already memorized?  I've always thought that clever mind is your brightest talent!  You know, Carrot, Britan needs someone smart to rule, and now that Boudica has retired as queen, perhaps you should apply."  He laughed.  "Queen Carrot – at least the rabbits will follow!"

Despite herself, she could not suppress a giggle.  “Queen of the Rabbits – was that your plan all along in giving me the nickname?”

“To be truth, it is indeed about more than the color of your hair.  As a very young child, you insisted on mispronouncing the name as 'Carrot,' but what I named you then was actually, 'Caratacus.'”

“And the significance of that is?”

His smile faded somewhat.  “According to the mentors, on Aereoth in ancient times, a warrior named Caratacus fought the Romans . . . but I am not sure whether it is only history, or also prophecy.”  He shrugged.  “Perhaps it is both.  Perhaps the Hand of Fate intends that the history of Ne'arth is to echo the history of Aereoth.  Rome and Britan both there and here, the most obvious example.  Then take Boudica.  She is mentioned in the Annals of Aereoth, and yet here she is on Ne'arth as well.”

Carrot paused, forming her words carefully, because she knew how reverential her uncle was toward the mentors and their Annals.  But she steeled herself and said:

“I don't see any Hand of Fate with Boudica, only the hands of Romans, who gave the name to their agent because they knew it would appeal to those who believe in the mentors and their histories.  Uncle, they used our own myths to mislead us.  The lesson of Boudica is that we should stop trying to relive the history of Aereoth, and go our own way.”

He made a deep nod.  “Perhaps, but then I wonder if that will be better.”

“It may not be better, but it will be our own way, and being free to choose our way is what makes our lives worth living.  Isn't that why we are both fighters for Britan?”

He broke into laughter and shook his head.  “The words you say, coming from one so young!”

Then the tears were back when they hugged and said farewells, Carrot wondering if she would ever see him again. 

As she wandered the shadow-dappled streets of Londa that evening, she remembered her uncle's comments about the end of the Plague, and it brought thoughts, of all things, about the Wizard. 

She'd convinced herself that wishful thinking had subconsciously triggered her own healing powers when the Wizard had touched her arm.  And now, if the Plague was truly spent, he would be unable to promote his 'cure' this side of the Dark Forest, and so perhaps he had returned to the simpler, more impressionable folk of the Western lands. 

Good riddance to the charlatan
, she thought, but she also found herself missing him.  Sometimes he had seemed to her as such a child, other times as if he truly had fallen from the stars.  She found in him a sunlit aspect, as if he believed all problems could be solved.

“The nonsense!” she said to herself.  “Curing the Plague with a handshake!”

She admitted it was strange, though, that the Plague had ended around that same time.  At any rate, she concluded it was just as well that he was out of harm's way – and hers.

She put further thought about the Wizard out of mind until some time after sunset, when while waiting dockside to speak with a captain whose ship she'd heard was bound for Rome, a flash of familiar blue under torchlight caught her eye.  A Roman soldier was wearing the Wizard's garment and making odd but familiar pointing gestures to the chuckles of his two comrades.

A little flirting got herself invited to a tavern.  For Carrot's metabolism, alcohol was no more inebriating than water, and she easily out-drank the trio.  Then, tactfully, she inquired as to the fate of the strange clothing's previous owner.   

"Off to Palras!" the wearer slurred. 

"Pardon, but what is that?" Carrot asked.

"The worst place in the Empire!  In all the world!"

"A prison colony on a forsaken island," the second said.  "A slave mine.  They work them to death on purpose.  Life is short there."

"It produces silver for the Emperor's treasury," the third said.  "So it's guarded better than the Bay of Rome.  No one ever escapes.  No one ever returns."

They stared somberly at nothing, then toasted, "Hadron!" and downed their mugs. 

Carrot muttered into her beer, "Hog-dung," and diplomatically drank as well. 

Poor Wizard
, she thought.  Healer or hoaxer, he was beyond help now.  She decided it would be best to think no more about him, and so from then on she didn't.  At least not consciously. 

22.

Matt felt warm, fuzzy, and detached.  He assumed he was dreaming.  

The scene was in a large tent.  It was night and the only illumination came from a trickle of light pouring in from a flickering torch outside.   

In his dreamlike state, Matt himself seemed to be hovering over a body sprawled on the dirt.  The body was that of a young man wearing underwear and nothing more.  The face looked very familiar, except that it was wet and ashen and bloodied.  The eyes were closed and the mouth open, the tongue swollen. 

Several men in tattered grimy clothing were gathered around the body, squatting at a distance.  They were speaking softly.

"Is he dead?"

"Getting there."

"So we'll sleep tonight with a corpse."

"You haven't been here long, if you think that's rare."

"I think he's stopped breathing."

"I don't see his chest moving."

Overcoming revulsion, one man extended his hand to the still figure's nostrils.  "No breath."  An ear was pressed to the chest.  "No heartbeat."

Others tried it too.

"Nope, nothing." 

"He's gone." 

"A sad end.  He rescues a child and that is his reward."

"Why are they so late bringing the food?"

"They punish everyone even when only one prisoner breaks the rules."

"He had no business having his punishment inflicted on us!  Selfish fool!"

The voices became faint and the scene faded into darkness.  Matt sensed that he was moving rapidly away.  There was no upward or downward, just forward.  Faster and faster . . .  

Ahead was a star.  It grew into a circle of bright light.  Matt grasped that he was in a tunnel and the light was the opening.  He burst through.   

Then he was clothed in a white robe and standing in a featureless room with walls and ceiling and floor of dazzling white.  There seemed to be no specific source of light, just light everywhere and no shadow. 

Another man was in the room, standing about two meters away.  He was shorter than Matt, and a little older.  He had dark short well-combed hair.  He had very dark irises.  His shirt was white while his pants, shoes, and narrow tie were black.

The man was facing Matt attentively.  His expression was concerned.  Matt felt himself being washed with waves of unconditional loyalty.   

"Greetings, Matt," the man said.

Matt slowly smiled.  The voice sounded very familiar.  The name tag over the shirt pocket also helped.   

"I get it.  You're Ivan and I'm dead."

"I am the default avatar for your neural implant matrix and you are in a state of clinical death.  This generic virtual reality environment has been designed to assist hosts with critical brain injuries to more easily comprehend the nature of their life-threatening situation."

Matt felt at one with the universe, which is another way of saying he was having trouble focusing.

"Okay . . . yeah . . . so what's up?"

"Your natural brain activity has ceased and I am sustaining your current state of limited consciousness through artificial electrochemical stimulation.  We have approximately one minute until I will no longer be able to support your life functions without the initiation of massively invasive procedures.  Before I can commence those procedures, I am required to ask the host the following question:  Do you wish to continue living?"

Matt tried to think but he was having difficulty doing so just then.  He wondered why. 

"So what are my options?"

"You can either say no or yes.  If you say no or fail to make a response in time, I will cease all efforts to sustain your life functions and you will immediately die beyond my powers to revive."

"Then what?"

"I lack sufficient data to satisfactorily answer that question.  As for your other choice, if you say yes, I will commence actions to save your life and you will resume living as before."

"I forget, what was I living as before?"

"At present, you are a slave at a silver mine."

That didn't sound too fun, but instinctively Matt knew that as long as he was alive, he would have options.  If he chose life now, perhaps he could choose better options later.  He wasn't sure death worked the same way.   

"How much . . . . "

"Are you asking how much time do we have before I can no longer sustain your neural activity?"

"Yeah."

"Approximately five seconds."

"Okay, for now, let's go with . . . Yes." 

"I understand that you wish to continue living.  Commencing cardiac restart procedure."

Matt's body arched with the electric shock.  His eyes fluttered open.  He vision cleared.  He was in a prisoner's tent at the mining camp.  The last thing he remembered for sure was being at the Shaft Four entrance.  Then he'd had a strange dream, but the details were hazy.

With difficulty, he propped himself up on his elbows.  The other men in the tent were clinging to the sides and staring at him with wide eyes over open mouths.

"What happened?" he asked Ivan aloud.

"You were severely beaten," Ivan replied.  "You received blunt force trauma to your body, which resulted in bone fractures, spinal paralysis, and internal bleeding.  You lost consciousness and were brought to this place.  I have revived you from clinical death and am currently repairing damage sustained from the attack."

Ivan popped a window which showed a slowly-rotating wire-mesh model of Matt's body.  Arrows pointed to symbols on Matt's skull and within his brain.

Ivan continued,  "The most serious injuries were fractures to your spine and head, here, here, and here, which induced cerebral hemorrhage.  Please be advised this damage may impair your judgment and other high-level thought processes until neuro-structural repairs can be accomplished.  Do you wish further explanation?"

"Not right now." 

Matt delicately probed his head.  It felt all right, but Ivan was undoubtedly blocking the pain.  When Matt pulled his fingers away, he found powdered blood on their tips.  He hair felt . . . congealed. 

He added,  "When will . . . what's that word again . . . repairs . . . be done?"

"Estimated time for completion of restoration of full mental and physical functions is six to eight days."

"Days!  Just to recover from a brain injury?"

"Please note that I will not have any external medical assistance during the recuperation process.  Also note, standard medical procedure in cases of severe brain injury is to euthanize the injury victim and replace by a clone with host memories downloaded from most-recent archive.  That option is currently not available on Delta Pavonis III."

"I'm not sorry for that."

For Matt was almost certain that when he had failed to arrive on Tian centuries earlier, his archival clone had been printed and taken over his life there.  Matt wouldn't have wanted another version of himself wandering this world even if it were technologically possible.

Ivan continued,  "Meanwhile, prior to your full recovery, I am re-routing some of your neural activity through my matrix.  You are therefore now capable of consciousness, mobility, and verbalization, although not at peak efficiency."

While Matt and Ivan conversed, the prisoners whispered among themselves, but none came closer.  Matt had almost half the floor space in the tent to himself.

At last the guards arrived with the dinner slop.  They wordlessly distributed the bowls, never taking their eyes from Matt.  Guards who were not detailed to the tent came and peeked in.  Matt heard murmuring outside, but mainly he concentrated on eating.  Doing more seemed to hurt his head just then. 

The prisoners ate in silence.  Dinner ended.  The guards collected the bowls and hurried away.  The prisoners continued staring.

"I'm okay," Matt said.  "If anybody cares."

"You were dead and now you're alive," a prisoner said, spreading his arms and raising his chin.  "Praise to Pandora!"

Matt ignored him and tried to think.  Thinking was a little easier now.  And he could remember.  Mostly, he remembered being thrashed. 

"Why did they do that to me?" he asked.

“You stepped out of line,” a senior prisoner replied.

“That's it?”

“The way they think is, if they let one prisoner step out of line, the rest will try too.  Then you've got a riot, and then a revolt.”

“That's ridiculous!”

“It's how they think.  And you must agree, the system works.”

“Believe me, there are easier ways to mine silver.”

Matt noticed that his chest was bare.  A corner of his shirt was sticking out from behind where a man sat. 

"Give it back," he said. 
Vultures
, he thought. 

Another man blurted, "You're the Wizard of the Westlands, are you not?"

If Matt's IQ had been above one hundred just then, he might have hesitated to answer.  Instead he said,  "I was."

The man trembled with hysterical anger as he jabbed at finger at Matt's nose.  "Then you're the one who brought us here!  You summoned a fireball to stop Boudica from leading us to victory!  You are one of the mentors, the evil wizard-demons warned of in the prophecies of Pandora!"

Matt concluded that the speaker was clearly deranged from the harsh conditions of the camp, but other faces were registering confusion as well.  The torment and stress of their living conditions had brought them to rage, and they needed an object to vent their rage upon.  The guilt of the object didn't matter, its accessibility and vulnerability did. 

Just then, due to Ivan's ongoing diligence, Matt's IQ popped into the normal range, and he calmly replied, ever so slowly:

"Do you want to mess . . . with a person . . . who calls fire from the sky . . . and rises from the dead?"

Even the crazy person dropped the subject.

Eventually the men spread out and went to sleep on the dirt.  Matt lay on his back and gazed at the tent roof.  He observed the discoloration of the fabric, the unevenness of the threaded seams.  Such evidence of organic origin and handcrafting would have made the tent an exhibition piece on Earth in the twenty-second century.  

His ability to process abstract thought gradually returned, and he realized even if he did not yet know for sure what he wanted to do with his life, it wasn't to be a slave in a mine.  When he fully healed, he would try escaping without regard for the physical dangers.  After his synthetic Near Death Experience, tedium seemed a harsher sentence than death.  

The following morning, Matt woke early with his head clear.  He had time to think.

"Dad always said that if you work hard and do a good job, someone will notice," he subvocaled idly.  "So I'm going to work hard and do a good job of driving them crazy."

The rest of the prisoners were awakened at dawn.  They were all forced into lines and marched to their assigned shafts.  The Shaft Four foreman behaved as brutishly to the other prisoners, but he froze speechless when he saw Matt standing straight and strong without bruises or wounds.  He steadfastly avoided Matt's gaze, which was Matt's first objective confirmation that the psychological balance of power had shifted.  

Matt halted in front of the foreman, bringing the whole line to a halt as well.  The foreman couldn't ignore him then. 

"What are you wanting?" the foreman mumbled.

"Nothing," Matt said. 

In fact, he was wanting to smash a rock into the foreman's skull.  Once, he would have been shocked at such intense negative emotion.  That was in another life.

He resumed walking, stooping to enter the shaft.  Inside the gallery, he stopped to re-align a lamp that the tumult of bodies had knocked askew.  An overseer approached, whip drawn.  Matt calmly raised his arm and opened his hand as if he intended to snatch the whip in mid-snap.  The overseer backed away.  Seeing the overseer's confused expression, a twisted smile grew on Matt's lips.   

Exiting from the mouth of the shaft that afternoon, Matt stepped out of line and walked up to the foreman and jabbed his thumb at the pump. 

"The way that's squeaking, it's going to break down unless you lubricate it now."

The foreman touched his club, but Matt didn't flinch.  Instead, the Wizard from Earth merely tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. 

The foreman sputtered,  "You – you – mind to your shovel, Britanian, or I'll have you thrashed again!"

Matt shrugged.  "If the pump fails, it will be your own beating.  I'll try to heal your injuries, but be aware I can only do so much."

The foreman growled, but when Matt returned from the tailings pit, the pump was throbbing squeaklessly.

Matt knew he was technically helping the hated Empire by making the mining operation more efficient.  But now he understood that Rome wasn't built on economic efficiency, it was built on fear of authority.  By undermining the authority of the guards, he was gnawing at the foundation of the authority of the Empire itself. 

Moreover, so long as he was being 'constructive,' there was nothing they could do in retaliation without acknowledging the sham of the Empire's pretense of necessity.  Nothing they could do, that is, except beat him again, but failing to make a lasting impression the first time had already put question to their power, and they feared to risk doing so again.