“Wait,” said the professor, all seriousness this time. “One question before we go.”
“Yes?” asked Altin.
“How far down are you taking us?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “It’s very far.”
“Oh, shit,” Orli said to that. “I can’t believe I didn’t even think of it.”
“That’s what you’re paying me for,” the professor said in a voice that was now low and smooth. He raised an eyebrow and overdid nonchalance.
“Think of what?” Altin asked.
“The pressure.” She turned to look at Professor Bryant with widening eyes before she looked back at Altin. “Remember when we were falling down that crevice? The long one, and we just fell and fell for what felt like forever?”
He nodded, flinching at the memory. “How could I forget?”
“Well, do you remember how our spacesuits kept stiffening and eventually that alarm went off?”
Again he nodded.
“Well, the suits had time to adjust to the pressure. This is going to be instant.”
Altin’s brow only furrowed for a moment. By the time his brow had unfurrowed, however, Rabin’s and Prakesh’s frown lines were so deep they looked like tire tracks.
“By Hestra, that’s likely a bad thing to go hopping right into, isn’t it?” Altin said as he noted the twins and their matching chevron-rumpled horror.
“We can set the suits for it if we know where we’re going,” the professor said. “Orli, do you remember how far down it was?”
“No. I never looked. Or if I did, I was too busy freaking out to remember it.”
“Well, I can find out easily enough.” He went to a stack of crates at the back of the chamber and opened one. He pulled out a small plastic case and opened that. There was a device Altin didn’t recognize inside. The professor pressed a button to activate it, then keyed in a few numbers using a number pad that was large enough to accommodate spacesuit gloves. “Depth measure,” he said into it. He waited for a half second, then said, “Record.” He tapped the keys on it twice more and said, “Five seconds,” to some prompt that went unseen or unheard by the rest in the dim little room. When he was done, he closed the device back up inside the case with all its lights still on.
“Can you send this down there?” he asked Altin as he brought the case to him. “It’s in a box, so it should be fine electronically, right?”
“Well, it’s a small box, so the relative area around it is rather tight, but it’s likely to be all right. I won’t destroy it, I shouldn’t think.”
“Well, we’ve got another if you do. ‘Two is one, and one is none,’ as we say in my line of work. You don’t get much done in the field if your only one of anything breaks.”
“Very reasonable,” Altin said, taking the case from him. “Let’s see what happens then.”
A moment later, Altin had teleported what was essentially a high-tech plumb line down into the depths of Red Fire. A moment right after that, he brought it back. The professor opened it up and read the measurement, which he followed with a long whistle. “Wow,” he said. “You guys went that far?”
“H-how far?” asked Rabin in echo of his brother, who actually beat him to it that time.
“Eighteen point six miles.”
“Oh, crap,” said the twins, still in unison.
Watching them react, and even noting the concern in Orli’s pretty blue eyes, Altin suggested, “We could walk, you know. You plan on using your gravity sled to travel up and down the cliff face when we get inside; you said as much yourself. We could just unload it a few extra times along the way and use it ourselves, like one of your ‘elevators,’ for some of the larger drops. Or we could simply bring the other one. We’ve got two, you know.” He even started moving toward the door to get it, but the professor stepped in front of him with a confident smile. He glanced to Orli and winked, giving the slightest nod, eyes slightly narrowed, lips in a tight, nonchalant smile of supreme confidence. “I’ve got it,” he said as he began setting the controls on Altin’s suit. As he worked the settings, he turned a second time to Orli and winked again. “This is what you pay me for.”
“We’re all going to die,” said the twins.
Chapter 29
T
he Incredible Spectacularo stood upon the creaking stage, playing to a crowd of six. The small table upon which he’d placed his frayed top hat stood between him and his audience. “Behold,” he said, squinting into the lights and looking to see if the bulbous-nosed man called El Segador was there. It was too bright to tell.
“Behold,” he said again, forgetting he’d just said it. He reached into the hat, muttering as he did the words to a simple illusion spell. When he pulled his hand out, he held by the ears a white rabbit, which wriggled its nose, fanning its whiskers innocuously. As usual, the audience was not impressed, but then The Incredible Spectacularo flung the illusionary rabbit out into the audience, where it spread its ears and began to flap them like the wings of a bird. This made the people duck and gasp at first, but then laughter followed as the rabbit flew about their heads. The wizard sang into the illusion the gentle air currents of the flapping wings, and the sound of them, and soon the audience was laughing and clapping as the little rabbit did loops and twirls in the air above their heads.
After two or three minutes of it, he brought the illusion back and had it settle in his arms, where he held it, infant-like, for a moment before stooping down as if to deposit it somewhere beneath the folds of the tablecloth, which draped to the ground.
The people were still clapping when he stood back up, three of them standing as they applauded. He tried to smile, but it was all so pathetic it nauseated him. Still, it paid the rent, and for the time, the work kept him out of trouble and out of being vaporized by a rampaging Galactic Mage or being dissected by the inquisitive scientists at the NTA. But now he had that damnable El Segador
to worry about. The fact that the man had found Annison was troubling. If he could find him, so could the NTA. Assuming they were still looking for him, which he could not confirm. He liked to think he’d made a clean getaway.
When the war was over and all the Hostile orbs went still and turned gray, the fleet people had come to the prison where all the Prosperion crew from the
Aspect
had been held. Annison had stayed among them for the time even though he could have teleported out, mostly because he’d had no place else to go. But when they came and opened the doors and told everyone they were going back onto a ship and heading home, that’s when Annison had disappeared. Literally. A quick invisibility spell followed by a teleport to the last place on Earth he could recall, a speck of land viewed through a porthole just before the landing craft flew over the walls at Fort Minot. From there he’d run.
He found his way into the back of a horseless wagon a few days later, which he had since learned were called trucks, and one thing leading to another, he got himself well away from Fort Minot. He drifted generally south for several weeks before he found himself here in this place called “Des Moines,” in an outskirt near the dumps where “the dregs” lived. The dregs like him. People nobody wanted anymore.
But he was nervous after that meeting with El Segador. He knew the people of this world were all blanks, and he could handle himself well enough if he needed to, but they did have a lot of technology. Far more than Annison understood. And the news programs that he watched on what they called the global net suggested that there were already new technologies being made to detect magic as it was being cast. Security companies were selling protection to cowering homeowners who feared losing all their valuables to Prosperion thieves. Global net ads promising security from that threat—and at the same time implanting the idea of it—ran almost constantly. Others warned that magic-using perverts were watching wives and daughters as they bathed. Prosperion pedophiles were only a spell cast away from ruining lives and families.
Buy now
! It was an incredible campaign, and the profits were surely pouring into the companies selling the protective devices and “insurance” policies. Annison could only shake his head as he watched. He knew a great number of criminals, it was true, but by the noise the Earth people’s global net made about it, every Prosperion above the age of two would have to be a criminal to justify all that fear. And they’d all have to get here. It was a strange phenomenon, and he found it odd that the people on this world were so easily put to fright.
He also thought it odd that, given the way El Segador made him feel, people on Earth weren’t at least as afraid of their own as they were of Prosperions. He certainly was. Yet, even with that fear, Annison hadn’t left the dregs. He hadn’t even ruled out talking to the man. He just hadn’t acted yet. His banishment from Prosperion had left him almost anesthetized, and it seemed every day of his life since had happened in a numbing fog, time passing like molasses through an hourglass.
It was in that state of absentmindedness that he looked up at his audience and smiled. “Oh, you liked that?” he said. “Well, here, perhaps Mr. Wiggles should take a bow.” He knelt down and from a box beneath the table took out the real rabbit Slick Danny had given him. He stood and presented the rabbit to them, gazing upon it with affection he did not feel. He forced himself to coo, “Oh, look, Mr. Wiggles, they love you.” He walked forward to the edge of the stage and held the rabbit out so that the people in the front row could come forward and pet it. Two of them did, and with it, the effect of the magic act was set. The flying rabbit had been real. They turned back to the others in the theater and mouthed silent things like “Oh my God” and “Amazing.”
The Incredible Spectacularo bowed, turned with a flourish of his cape, and then put the rabbit back in the box. He glanced offstage to where Slick Danny stood in the wings, nodding with a big smile. This had been his idea, and he hoped it would bring bigger crowds.
Annison rolled his eyes but smiled back at his employer feebly. He faced the audience again and prepared to do his last trick. That’s when he felt the gentle pressure in his head.
He’d kept up the telepathic block for the entire year since he’d been on this world. There was nobody left he really wanted to talk to. And if Sir Altin Meade found out where he was, Annison was not vain enough to think he’d stand a chance against the man in a fight. Not a Seven, and damn sure not a Seven with a Z. So he’d blocked his mind, and in all that time, nobody had bothered to come knocking at all. So the sense of it, so long absent, startled him.
What if it was Altin Meade? Perhaps it would be a merciful thing. Lord Thadius hadn’t lasted a second, from what Annison had heard while aboard the ship. One massive burst of energy and the dapper lord was little more than bloody spray. So, what if it was Altin knocking in his mind? Could it be any worse than whatever El Segador had planned?
With a hard swallow, he opened up the mental gate and let the thoughts come through. But whoever it was didn’t say anything. There was only the silent presence of someone there inside his mind. Totally unfamiliar to him, but solidly connected. He knew immediately it was a seer’s sense. Seers made the best telepaths, and this one was immensely strong, the contact smooth and even soothing in a way, though, paradoxically, with a frenetic undertone.
“Go on,” shouted someone in the audience. “What are you waiting for?”
“Turn around,” finally came the voice in his head. “My name is Kalafrand. I need to see.”
The two voices, the one external and the one internal, came simultaneously, and for a moment more he stood there as if in a daze.
“Turn around. All the way around,” said the telepath he’d let in. “We can send a teleporter if we can get a proper sense of place. So look at everything, and go slowly; indirect sight takes time.”
“Who are you?” Annison thought back at him.
“Kalafrand. Seer for the marchioness.”
“Are you a Z?” He knew how much power it took to look into a stranger’s mind for an indirect sight spell, especially one that reached this far.
“I am. And I’ve got a few other channelers helping me. And a conduit.”
Annison nodded, but wondered why.
“Hey, dumbass, do another trick,” someone yelled from the audience. The others shouted in agreement.
From just offstage, Slick Danny hissed at him to cast something as well.
“What do you want?” Annison asked inside his mind. “I’m not supposed to speak to anyone on Kurr. If the Queen’s diviners catch me, they’ll send the Royal Assassin.”
“You’ll be able to hire your own assassin,” came a different voice into his head, a familiar one this time. It startled him. The conduit, whose role it was to orchestrate large, multi-magician spells, had obviously brought yet another magician in, someone Annison knew.
“Who is this?” Annison asked.
A plastic bottle, half-filled with fizzing soda, struck him in the chest. “Hey, wake up, asshole. I paid good money for this.”
“I see you’re doing very well for yourself there on Earth,” sent Black Sander, his thoughts as snide as his speaking voice ever was. “A fine use of your skills.”
Annison nearly gushed with relief when he recognized the voice. Sarcasm was the least of his worries. “Black Sander! For the love of the gods, it’s good to hear a friendly mind. I feared you’d been caught or killed.”