The Wizard from Earth (6 page)

6.

Matt awoke, choking and coughing and wheezing.  His lungs were on fire, his head pounded, his eyes stung.  He tried to flail but his arms were rubbery noodles.  He tried to speak but his tongue was a bloated dead fish.

"Ivan!" he subvocalized.  "Ivan!"

"I am here, Matt."

"Can't breathe.  Help!"

"I cannot help you at this time."

"Stop pain!  Hurts!  Stop pain!  Please!"

"I cannot help you at this time."

Matt tried to scream, but all he managed was a gurgle.  He tried to writhe but he seemed paralyzed and the attempt to move only resulted in more pain.  He tried to breathe but it was like his lungs were filled with mud. 

"Put . . . me . . . back . . . to . . . sleep!"

"I cannot help you at this time."

He tried to look around but he was blind.  His ears rang so loud he could hear nothing but ringing.

He felt like he was forever drowning, and after seeming hours he could take no more.  "Bee Three See Seven . . . See Nine Jee Seven Jee . . . ."

"Euthanasia protocol is unavailable at this time."

The pain finally become unendurable and he passed out. 

He awoke to a heavy male voice declaring,  "I have restored consciousness." 

The pain was gone – most of it.  He breathed freely – and was there a greater pleasure?

He opened his eyes.  He was still in the pod, which was drained of biogel.  The cover plate had been removed.  An old-style medical robot was hovering half a dozen appendages with sharp-pointed accoutrements above his face.  The straps on his chest and arms were undone and Matt managed to stiffly bend the upper part of his body so that, had he been in gravity and had there been an 'up,' he would have been sitting up in the pod. 

The pod rested in a cradle inside a chamber so tiny that his hair nearly brushed the roof.  The walls of the chamber had numerous holes and slots, but no windows, signage, or controls that a human hand could work.  The air that he was unevenly breathing was stuffy and a few degrees too cool – but he had the feeling that he should be glad there was any air at all.

"Ivan, are you there?"

"Yes, Matt.  However, my systems are in a state of regeneration and I am operating at limited capacity at this time."

"Is this Tian Orbital Station?"

"We are in a station, but it is smaller than Tian Orbital Station.  Also, Tian Orbital Station is in the Alpha Centauri system and this is the Delta Pavonis system.  Therefore I do not believe this is Tian Orbital Station."

Delta Pavonis
, Matt thought.  So the conversation with Ivan hadn't been a dream.

For a long time, Matt said nothing.  The medic puttered.  Ivan waited.

"Ivan, is anyone around that we can talk to?"

"I have not been able to contact a human or hypothetical alien intelligence.  The only advanced AI I have been able to contact is a station keeper, but he is task-oriented." 

'Task-oriented' was almost a derogatory term among neural implant AIs, Matt knew.  A 'task-oriented' AI was one who had been specifically programmed not to become an actualized personality.  Sure, you could talk to it, and it would use the 'I' pronoun, but it wasn't going to provide the big picture.  It didn't care about big pictures.  It cared about its assigned tasks. 

Matt hesitated, then blurted The Big Question.  "What year is this?"

"By Standard Calendar, it is 2834."

"Did you say . . . two . . . eight . . . three . . . four?"

"Yes, it is the Standard Calendar Year 2834."

"Is there any chance you're mistaken?"

"There is always a chance that I am mistaken.  However, my internal chronometer never shut down and is in agreement with the pod navigation chronometer and the station keeper chronometer.  Therefore, I believe that the probability that I am mistaken about the Standard Year being 2834 is small."

"That's . . . that's almost seven centuries.  All right, I'm going to assume that you are correct, that we are in the Delta Pavonis System and that it is the year 2834.  Now, I know you told me, but I was in a daze at the time.  So can we review again how we got here?"

Ivan opened a display window in Matt's vision and downloaded a summary from the pod computer.  Matt paged through the graphics, studying them voraciously.   

His trip to Alpha Centauri had been uneventful until the pod had entered the inner layers of the Centauri Oort Cloud.  Its course had been intercepted by a cloud of micro-meteoroids that had been too small and moving too fast to have been detected in time by Centauri Mission Control. 

The magsail was made of a molecular film only a few atoms thick.  The millions of micro-meteoroids had no trouble punching holes in it.  Sail cables and the pod itself presented such small targets that they had not been damaged, but the sail itself received the brunt of the effect of the impacts.  In a split second, more than half the sail was lost, and so more than half the sail's ability to interact with the stellar magnetic field and decelerate was lost as well.

Matt's pod had streaked into the Alpha Centauri system with a retained velocity .06 c – that is, eighteen thousand kilometers per second.  That was far too fast for the thorium-propulsion retrieval tugs to capture.  Had matters been left at that, the pod would have departed the Alpha Centauri system in a few days to escape into the depths of unknown space, its position calculable to within kilometers though beyond the ability of human technology to retrieve.  Matt should have never been seen or heard of again.

But then in his stupor, he had somehow managed to instruct Ivan to plot a course here instead.  Alternately charging and de-charging the remnants of the magsail, Ivan had steered the pod on a hyperbolic passage near the sun that was Alpha Centauri, bending their trajectory so that they headed on toward the sun that was known as Delta Pavonis. 

Then Ivan had utilized the damaged sail to decelerate the pod during its passage out of the Centauri Oort Cloud to a velocity of approximately two and a half percent lightspeed.  At the time it must have seemed a prudent measure, for the slower the pod moved, the easier it would have been for a rescue mission to intercept.  But no intercept mission had been sent, and the end result of the reduced velocity was that it had taken more than six centuries to cross the sixteen light years between Alpha Centauri and Delta Pavonis.

Once it had entered the fringes of the Delta Pavonis System, the magsail decelerated against the molecular wisps of the DP Oort Cloud.  Entering the realm of the planetary system, the magsail interacted with the natural proton wind and photon flux from the star itself  and decelerated further to a velocity sufficiently low enough for tug retrieval – that is, assuming a tug had been launched and outraced him there.  Ivan's record of the pod AI's camera telemetry indeed showed the approach of tiny robots and a tug barely larger than the pod.  They had made a rendezvous with the pod during its hyperbolic departure from the sun, and detached it from the magsail (which had proceeded outward again on a cometary trajectory into deep space). 

The tug had vectored the pod to this station and, in delicate choreography, robots had inserted it into this very compartment.  The pod camera showed the compartment's exterior door closing.  Interior lights flickered on.  A rustle of tiny particles indicated the pumping of air.  Out of a slot came a medical robot, which undid the cover plate . . . . 

Matt punched the virtual display, causing it to vanish. 

"Bottom line," he whispered.  "Six hundred and eighty-four years, Delta Pavonis System.  I guess I'd better get used to it."

He waited for Ivan to give a snappy comeback.  But Ivan was programmed to give snappy comebacks only in known, safe environments. 

Matt examined his hands.  They were encrusted with dried biogel.  Was biogel supposed to crust like that?  He had never seen it do that in the videos of star traveler revival.  Maybe it did crust, after the passage of centuries.  Biogel doesn't last forever, after all.  And neither do star pods.

Neither do neural implants
, he thought. 

His fingernails were too long.  He ran them through his hair.  It too was too long, and tangled, and coated with biogel dust.  The ventilators were purring, but the whole chamber reeked of the minty stale smell of biogel dust well past shelf life.   

"There have got to be people," Matt said.  "But there's nobody contacting us at all?"

"The station keeper says he has received no contact at this time.  I have asked him if he has records of prior contact, and he says no, and that he does not keep long term records."

"Medical science had extended human life indefinitely, they said," Matt mumbled.  "My family should still be alive.  My friends too.  Especially Synth, she should be fully ascended and all metal and energy by now so at least she would have lasted.  My mom . . . nobody left a message?"

"I don't know if this is relevant," Ivan said, "but it could be argued that the presence of this station in this star system is a message."

Matt was prepared to technically agree with that, but surely family and friends wouldn't be so cryptically laconic.  Unless, over centuries, their post-Singularity trans-humanism had evolved so far that they could no longer relate to the feelings of a scared more-or-less baseline-human kid.     

He remembered then.  He reached down to the floor of the pod.  He opened the tiny compartment in the middle.  The box of mementoes, all that he had been allowed to bring with him from Earth, was there.  He opened the box.  There should have been a dried flower and blades of grass from Seattle in the bag.  There were colorless, withered fragments.  The pages of the old-fashioned book of poems were faded into unreadability and crumbled with the slightest touch.

Daring not to destroy more, Matt put everything back and returned the box to the compartment.

Bee . . . Three . . . See . . . Seven . . . no, he would find out what was going on first.  That was the most important thing he had to do.  It was the only thing he had to do.  

He searched for a hatch handle, twisting and flailing as he whirled and stared with futility at one smooth wall after another. 

"
Somebody
has to be around!  Somebody has to be alive!  Somebody will talk to me!  Somebody will tell me what's going on! 
I need to get out of here and see what's –
"

The medic had the last words.  "Patient is agitated.  Revoking consciousness."     

7.

Hardly anyone noticed the woman leading the litter through the streets of Rome that afternoon.  She was tall and thin, attractive without, perhaps, being beautiful.  The cut of her dress was middle class, the wife of a merchant or lawyer perhaps.  She wore a plain shawl and no jewelry.

What did distinguish her from the general crowd was her intense stare.  Her black eyes did not meet gazes.  They sized up targets. 

Behind her a pair of lackeys carried a small litter bearing a windowless black passenger box.  They followed her every turn through the streets with precision, though she did not look back and they did not communicate.

At the waterfront she stopped at the foot of a private pier, where a tall man resplendent in a purple fringed robe and flowing cape paced irritably.

"Damn Inoldia," General Mardu Valarion said.  "I have dinner with a prominent senator this evening."

"No one in the Senate would care about a little lame boy who stuttered if it were not for me," Inoldia replied. 

She gave a curt nod to the litter bearers.  The lowered the litter.  Out stepped a small female form draped in a black cloak with a black, opaque veil.

"Follow me," Inoldia said to the hidden figure.  She led down the pier to the waiting galley.

"That's not the point," Valarion said, rushing to catch up.  "Our interests are both served if I maintain promptness in my appointments with the prominent members of Roman – "

"I asked for your boat," Inoldia replied.  "Not for your company."

She boarded the yacht.  The veiled figure followed.  Valarion huffed aboard and signaled to the captain to loose the moorings. 

"Oh, I'm not going to miss this.  A chance to see Cordant Island up close!"

"We're not going to Cordant Island.  We're going to the Island of the Sisters."

"Well, yes, that's what used to be known as Cordant Island before you moved in."

Inoldia realized that she had been caught in ignorance.  But she covered with,  "Now it's the Island of the Sisters of Wisdom."

They cast off.  The rowers gained rhythm and the galley skimmed across the bay.  The captains of other boats saw the blue pennant with the white star and steered clear.  It was a beautiful morning and the water was smooth, and they made good time passing between channel markers into open waters.   

Inoldia stood at the prow, watching the four pinnacles in the east.  Valarion cautiously approached and nodded to the veiled figure.  "May I inquire as to the identify of our guest?"

"That's not for you to know."

"One of your spies, right?"

Inoldia's face snapped a gaze on him so quickly that he stepped back.

"Who told you?"

"Damn, Inoldia, you think all men are idiots."

Inoldia didn't bother to answer that, because of course it was true.  But her glare deepened and she repeated,  "Who told you that she was a spy?"

"It's – it's obvious.  Why would you conceal her identity otherwise?  It's also obvious that she must be of great importance if you're personally escorting her to see your head sister or whoever is in charge there.  I would guess then that she is placed within the household of – "

"Enough!" Inoldia hissed. 

Valarion was silent, but Inoldia knew that state would only be temporary.  She wondered,
Is there a more talkative man of senatorial rank? 

"We should discuss the matter of Britan," he said.

"Not now."

"I know the Plague is running its course, but – "

"She can hear."

Valarion glanced back at the veiled figure.  She was standing near the stern, on the opposite side of the boat. 

"She's too far to . . . unless . . . oh."

At a distance of three kilometers, a reflector atop one of the towers flashed a challenge.  Inoldia provided the boat's signalman with the pass code, and the boat was approved for approach.

The four towers were encompassed by six high walls in a hexagonal arrangement.  The walls were sheer and met the sea with a shore of jagged rocks.  Valarion's eyes rested on the battlements.  Inoldia wondered if he was so foolish as to contemplate a siege of the island.

Guards met them at the marina, allowing Inoldia and the veiled figure to disembark, but not Valarion. 

"You will wait," Inoldia said.

Valarion provided a scowl, but nodded to his bodyguards to stand down.

The guards at the gate bowed reverently and Inoldia and her charge were allowed through the arch into the main courtyard.  Inoldia wove through the workers and guards, noting that no hooded figures were to be seen, further confirmation that this was to be a meeting of the full Council. 

Ahead lay the green dome of the council building.  Guards bowed as she entered.  She stopped at the side room and draped herself with an oversized coarse brown habit, lastly pulling the hood over her head. 

They continued into the dark chamber and stood in the center.  The doors were sealed.  Then another smaller door opened at the far end, and the nine members of the Council of Sisters emerged in their coarse hooded habits and mounted their elevated platforms and sat at their benches.  

"This is in regard to the matter of Archimedes meeting this morning with the Emperor," the High Priestess said. 

Her voice was firm yet creaked with dryness.  It always made Inoldia think of an ancient door slowly opening to a sepulcher that had been sealed for as long as time had been. 

The High Priestess continued,  "The spy will give her complete report."

The voice of a young woman spoke from beneath the veil.  It was soft and weak and cracked with tension.  But the narrative was thorough and precise in its details.

The girl stated,  "And then he said something about dancing faeries and Moonstar.  Then – then there was comment made of – of – of . . . of how the whole city was astir with the beholding of the app – 'apprition.'"

Her hands were writhing and Inoldia smelled the girl's terror even from meters away.  Unlike her hearing, the girl's eyes were those of a normal human, and the chamber must have seemed almost totally dark.  Even if it had been alight, the hoods would have obscured the faces of the Sisters in shadow.   

"Go on," the High Priestess said. 

The girl half-turned toward Inoldia.  "There was mention of Valarion, and a – a . . . consort-witch."

There was no reaction from the council, but Inoldia twisted a small smile.  She hardly needed the speaker to be identified for that jibe.  In all of Rome, only one man was impudent enough to publicly call her a witch.  The irony was that she really didn't mind.  It was the word 'consort' that insulted her, and too many in Rome used that in reference to her and Valarion.

"Surely there is more to their meeting," the High Priestess said.  "Our spies at the imperial treasury report that Archimedes visited them afterward.  Tell what you may know of that."

"The – the Emperor wanted the old man to build something that was very expensive."

Oh-so-slightly, the entire council leaned forward, and Inoldia found herself doing so too.  For all their scorn of Archimedes, they like all of Rome were fascinated by the continuous flow of inventions created by the greatest scientist in the history of Ne'arth. 

"And what is this device that the Emperor wanted built?"

"The old man called it a . . . 'tala-skoop.'  That's all I know."

The hoods of the council priestesses twisted toward each other, but even Inoldia could not fathom the conversation.  She could, however, sense the waves of confusion and concern.  There was no mortal who could upset them as did Archimedes, which was why they had given orders for the acolytes at the city temple to signal them every time Archimedes had an audience with Hadron. 

"Wait in the room at the end of the hall," the High Priestess said.  "You are not to hear what we say.  So seal the door tightly, or it will be your life." 

The girl departed and, on cue, Inoldia stepped forward.  "It is obviously a weapon of some  – "

"We did not say you could speak."

For an instant, Inoldia quivered more than the girl.

"As we have related to you before, the signs in the heavens are not without cause.  You will accelerate our plans with the General with respect to the conquest of Britan.  Our highest priority is still to find our lost mother.  Do not take direct action yet against Archimedes, but for now uncover what he is doing and report.  And see to the girl's needs.  Tell her to increase the dosage two-fold."

Inoldia bowed.  “I will do as the council wishes.”

“Yes, you will.  You are dismissed.”

Inoldia bowed ever more deeply and back-stepped out of the council chamber.  In the anteroom she removed the thick robe, straightened her regular robe, and tracked the girl's emanations to a well-insulated inner room.  She affected a smile, which only seemed to alarm the girl more. 

"You have done well," Inoldia said, bequeathing a bag of coins. 

"I thank the Sisters for all they have done for me.  I – I – would still be deaf, if not – "

Inoldia cupped the girl's ears and let power flow.  "You have the best hearing in Rome now."

With the girl veiled once more and in accompaniment, Inoldia strode through the temple vestibule into the courtyard, through the gate and down to the dock, and onto the ship.  Valarion quietly stared at the walls.

"You've had as close a look as we allow," Inoldia said.  "And what do you think?"

"The other day I stood outside the Temple of Wisdom and watched for a time as the crowds submitted their donations.  I see where their money has been spent, but surely you don't pay for all this through the contributions of your followers."

"We have other sources of revenue."

"I'm sure you do.  Say – "

"No more questions I hope.  Or would you prefer to be replaced in our plans?" 

And the second most powerful man in the Empire said nothing more for the duration of the return trip.