Galactic Mage 4: Alien Arrivals Read online

  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.”

  A sec
ond bottle hit him, splashing him with lukewarm beer. “Dude, what the hell?”

  Annison’s rage, the full fill of nearly a whole year, came upon him in a wave, the second time in five months, and he lost his temper with the audience. With the utterance of a few brief lines, he hurled the great face of a giant dragon forward from himself. It appeared so suddenly and appeared so solid, so real, the six-member crowd all screamed at once, not that anyone could have heard it for the thunderous roar that came from the dragon’s mouth. Along with the roar, he sent a blast of illusionary fire much like he’d done last time, filling their liquor-soaked minds with more things to be afraid of.

  The people flung themselves over the backs of their seats, stumbling and tripping, falling flat as they tried to straddle and climb over the rows. In moments the theater was empty of patrons again.

  Black Sander’s voice laughed in Annison’s head, and there were rumbles of mirth from the others included in the spell as well, one of which felt tainted with a note of instability.

  The Incredible Spectacularo turned to his right in anticipation of the onslaught to come from Slick Danny, surely charging out at him now. But the man was not. He lay facedown on the ground instead, unmoving.

  Annison barely had time to turn back and look to the other end of the stage when the dart hit him in the neck. He reached up and grabbed it with the reflex of one who’s just been stung by a bee.

  He was vaguely aware of Black Sander’s querulous thoughts mixing with the seer’s tainted ones. Then he slumped forward and fell onto the stage. The last thing Annison saw was a pair of brown leather shoes, polished to a high shine and standing right before his face. For a moment he stared into them, watching in the reflections as the stage lights faded to black.

  Chapter 30

  Annison woke up slowly, his vision returning bit by bit. As he became aware of that fact, he also became aware of a sharp pain in his throat, like a pin stabbing him. He reached for it, or at least he tried to, and found that he was bound tightly to a chair, straps at the wrist, elbows, ankles, waist, chest, and head. He sat reclined in such a way that he might have been at the barber’s for a haircut or at a healer’s for the treatment of a tooth. But he was here for neither.

  A breeze blew gauzy white curtains into the room at an open window, and on the breeze came the smell of ocean air and the shrill laughter of seagulls not far away. He strained to turn his head to look, hoping vainly to get his bearings on a planet where he’d been almost nowhere, but he could not. There were two padded wedges jammed up against his cheeks, making it so that he could not move his head at all. He might as well have been set in clay and baked in place, he was so securely held.

  Something beeped faintly behind him, and from time to time, he could hear the whirring of some small electrical device or another, familiar in a way, but not so much so that he could name it or its function, just some thing of Earth. To his left there was a long counter with jars and boxes along the wall, and above it cabinets, all of it painted a pale yellow. There were pictures on the wall, done in black and white, depicting men in extremely wide-brimmed hats and wearing strangely studded belts that crisscrossed their chests. The men in them looked proud or triumphant, standing before dirty walls or amongst rocky landscapes where tufts of scraggly brush and cactus dominated.

  Panic began to rise, and he quickly started a teleportation spell, but the first word wasn’t even fully shaped before his throat constricted painfully, instantly, his neck and face and upper chest all contracting with the violence of electricity. It stopped almost as quickly as it began, and he lay there panting, the pinprick in his neck throbbing. His head hurt so badly he could hardly keep from vomiting, and he was dimly aware that if he did, he would likely drown in it.

  A door that he could not see opened, and someone came in, a man with brown skin and brown eyes and a very serious look on his face. He wore a wide mustache like the men in the pictures did, though he wore a neatly cut suit of the sort that was in fashion with the well-to-do on Earth, a dark brown jacket in shimmering fabric worn over a shirt that nearly matched the yellow of the walls, and shiny slacks to match the jacket.

  The man peered down at Annison lying there and smiled a wide smile that rounded his cheeks to the point where they shone a little in the sunlight coming through the window. He said something in a language Annison had not learned, though Annison did catch the phrase El Segador.

  The man patted Annison on the cheek, affectionately, as he might a prize racehorse, and then left the room, calling out names that Annison had never heard.

  Annison tried to cry out, but just as when he’d started the teleportation spell, his face and neck and chest were once more wracked by electrical agony. He tried to stop speaking, but in the pain of it, he had a hard time stopping the rasping gahhhh that came out on its own, perpetuating his suffering. And so it went until somehow, without really any volition of his own, the sound in his throat stopped, the muscles having finally seized too tightly to vibrate any more.

  He lay there panting, tears running from the corners of his eyes. He closed them and tried to calm himself. He tried to remember what had happened to him. He remembered the rabbit, and that someone had reached him telepathically. Black Sander had been involved. It hurt his head to think of it. In a few hazy moments he recalled it all, and he immediately sent out a telepathic call to the strange seer again, intent on finding Black Sander and begging for help. Black Sander could come get him. He sent the request across the mana stream, sent on waves of terror and absolute urgency.

  He pushed rather brutishly against the mind of the man whose thoughts he’d only ever touched once, the Z-class seer who had found him across all that space. On Prosperion his approach might have gotten him a reprimand from the Seers Guild, whose bailiwick telepathy was. As he concentrated on the thoughts he sent, as he hung there in impatient misery, he noticed the whirring growing more incessant from the back of the room. No sooner had this thought struck him than the door opened again.

  In came two women and three men, two of whom he recognized. One was El Segador, and the other was the man in the brown suit with the wide mustache. One of the women went around him and disappeared, but he could hear the now-familiar sound of someone tapping on the glass panel of a computer console. He’d been on this miserable world long enough to recognize that.

  “He’s trying to use it,” she said. “Look at all this activity, only partly in the frontal cortex. It’s all down here, like base functions.”

  “Well, stop it,” demanded El Segador. “You’re supposed to have set it for that.”

  The second woman, wearing a white coat that hung to her knees, came forward and touched something just out of sight behind Annison’s chair. Again came the painful electrocution in his throat. His face cramped, and he jerked about in his restraints until after a few seconds she released whatever it was she’d touched.

  The man in the brown suit was laughing, and he came right up and leaned down into Annison’s face. He smelled like cigar smoke, and tattoos ran all the way up his neck and wrapped around his ears. Small x’s had been inked at the outer corners of his eyes, three on the right, two on the left. He said something else in the language Annison didn’t understand. He patted him on the face again, not quite a slap, once more like a fine thoroughbred. He stood up and spoke to the woman, then said something else to El Segador before he went out. He could not possibly have looked happier.

  “Jefe likes you,” said El Segador. “He says it’s been a long time since he had a gringo he liked.”

  “Well, damn it,” said the woman in the white coat next to him. El Segador looked up with the question in his eyes. She saw it, then directed his gaze downward with her own.

  He laughed and shook his head as he looked briefly at Annison’s lap. “You pissed yourself already, Prosperion? We’re hardly even started yet.”

  Chapter 31

  Altin leaned forward, the spotlight of his spacesuit shining into the hole that the profe
ssor had cut out with the machine, cut straight into the cave wall where the old heart chamber had been. Water still ran out of it as he looked, and Professor Bryant was accepting compliments from the team about how perfectly this hole matched the readings, or at least the partial readings, taken from Doctor Singh’s carefully excised heart stone back on the moon where Yellow Fire was.

  The crystal bed in which Red Fire’s heart had lain prior to Orli’s blowing it to pieces with mining explosives was laid bare and ragged by the blast. The plain stone, the rocky components that made up the planet prior to its having become host to a Hostile, was visible in places, particularly where they’d had to excavate room for the water saw and its mounts prior to beginning. They knew from the work on Yellow Fire that the barest tip of the heart stone would need to touch this rocky stuff, but all the rest of Yellow Fire had been nestled into the Liquefying stone. This was going to be a problem that had to be resolved.

  Before they’d started the cut, Professor Bryant and his team had concluded that the crystal bed here would need to be regrown before the transplantation would work. “It’s dead,” he’d said. “And I mean dead dead, not dormant dead. In fact, I’ll bet Orli and the whole Glistening Lady crew a massage and a steam bath that the circuit is open right now, in a way it isn’t open back on Yellow Fire. Look.” He’d made his point by pointing a laser at the crystals all around, and to Altin’s and Orli’s horror, it acted differently. As in, it shone right through them, altered some by the dull gray of the crystals, sure, but it went right on through. The crystals might as well all have been formations of quartz or salt.

  Live Liquefying Stone didn’t work like that. Light went in, but it didn’t come out. At least not exactly. Not like that. The dead crystals on Yellow Fire hadn’t either. They had no glow, but they didn’t let light right through. They’d just been sort of dull.