A Magic King (17 page)

"Then I choose to go back home to my water bed and my rehydrator and have this whole strange nightmare over."

His smile became a little crooked. "I said you always have choices. I didn't say they would include the one you want."

Jane turned away, facing the uneven void of colors swirling around her. No longer red or gray, it seemed to shimmer with the conflicting emotions that churned within her.

"Just get it over with."

"Stop fighting me, Jane. Relax and let me talk to you."

"I'm afraid. I'm not sure I'll like the answers." Never in her life had she spoken truer words. She felt terrified, but not for her physical body. Whatever was happening to her body was secondary to what was going on in her mind. From the very beginning of this strange adventure, she'd had odd thoughts, stray inklings as something would seem familiar, but then again not. It was bewildering and alarming.

She thought briefly of Daken. There were moments when she wasn't even sure he was real. But person or fantasy, right now she longed for his solid presence, his steady comfort.

"Daken is with you. You can't see him, but he is here, worried and frightened for you. If you look within your heart, you'll feel him."

Jane closed her eyes, trying to do as the figure said. It took a long time. She was keyed up, frightened that if she looked, really looked, she'd find herself in a mental ward surrounded by rubber walls. Or maybe worse, that she wasn't. That she was here, in this strange void, talking with a ghost and there was no going back.

Ghost?

She opened her eyes, and in that moment she found both Daken and Dr. Beavesly. The first in her heart. The other in her mind.

"Dr. Beavesly?" Pencil-pusher Beavesly? Her former boss in Boston was now a ghost? Her brain shut down and with it went her defenses. But even in that mind-numbing confusion, she felt a sense of peace and security. She felt Daken's hand clutching hers. She felt his steady concern and silent devotion.

He was here with her. As was her former boss now turned ghost.

"Wow, this is some hallucination."

Dr. Beavesly stepped forward, his form clear to her now. She saw his thin frame, his rusty brown hair as neat as an eraser, and his long, almost pointy fingers. All the features that gave him his pencil nickname. She also saw his soft smile and an inner glow; the type an artist would draw to show an unearthly energy center. A way to say this man is different.

"Are you really a ghost? And you're talking to me in my mind?"

"I survived that first bomb. Many did."

Jane took a deep breath. "Bomb? Nuclear? I thought it was a horrendous explosion. But why?"

"It wasn't on purpose. Someone put up a faulty defense satellite that ended up firing because of some crossed circuits."

"You're kidding." It couldn't be possible. The entire disaster was because some technician somewhere put wire A into slot B?

"Of course,"
Dr. Beavesly continued,
"once one went off—"

"They all go off. And we obliterate ourselves. What stupidity."

"Agreed."

Jane sighed. She could hardly believe it, but it made such perverse sense. The world blown up because someone couldn't control their own technology.

"I realized immediately what had happened. I knew it like I knew my own name. Then I started running for my car. I had to get here, to the college, to save what I could. I must have had a heart attack. I remember my chest hurt, and I fell down, but then I got up again and kept running, not even realizing I'd died."

Jane listened to him, trying to watch the play of emotion on his strange face, but she couldn't. She watched the scene play in the background exactly as he described. She saw a flash of light as the bomb hit, felt the shockwaves roll through the landscape that appeared around her. She saw Dr. Beavesly run from his house to his car, but he never made it. He clutched his chest and fell, his breath coming in tortured gasps until it stopped completely. He died.

Then it was as if another Dr. Beavesly stepped out of his body. He was dressed as he would for work—a neat pin-striped suit, glasses, briefcase, and a serious expression, all as they should be for a professional, except he was running.

And run he did. Faster than a man could run, he sped on foot toward the college. The panorama around her followed him, rolling out beneath his feet as he practically flew to the University. He passed the library. It had a jagged hole torn through the center, as though space had ripped, dragging the brick and mortar apart like old, worn cotton.

"I was in there!"

She stepped forward, inspecting the debris of a building torn apart from inside. She couldn't touch the brick and mortar around her, but she knew these were the remains of the rip in space that had stolen her.

She twisted around to Dr. Beavesly. "But where did I go? Where am I?"

"Listen to the rest, Jane."
He pointed to the image of himself, still running, heading for the building that housed the main computer. The building was still intact, though in the distance, she saw another bright flash of light. Another bomb detonating, this time further west.

Dr. Beavesly ran to the door and went through, not even noticing the door hadn't moved. Like a camera mounted directly behind him, Jane watched the panorama shift, following him down into the basement, around the narrow hallway, into the Op's office, then through a low metal doorway into the back main computer room.

It was dark. The emergency lighting flickered, casting his movements into a strange strobe effect. With the power so uncertain, there was nothing he could do. The mainframe had already crashed, and the Operator had already shut down everything.

Dr. Beavesly sat down next to the terrified, shivering boy. Charlie, she thought. His name was Charlie.

"Charlie died of radiation a week later. He went up top too soon looking for food. He never came back."

"What about you?"

"I was already dead, although I didn't realize it then. I just sat waiting for power, or news, or something. Mostly, I think I was waiting for you."

"Me?"

"You knew the system better than anyone, and I knew you'd find your way here eventually. You took your job seriously."

"You mean I had nothing else in my life other than my job," Jane said dryly.

"Yes."

Time sped up. Across the panorama, she saw dust settle on the equipment, cockroaches scurry around. But no people. And through it all, Dr. Beavesly tended the equipment, somehow keeping the room neat, the equipment as safe as possible.

"Where is everybody? Did they all die?"

"No. Part of the building collapsed above me. Only sections of the basement survived intact, though the solar collectors continued for years. I stayed there, devoting myself to the wires and chips. Eventually, I think I became a part of them."

As Jane watched, she saw his figure, slowly becoming part of the computer. He reached into machinery, checking power flow, rerouting software. Soon, his form became indistinct as he spent more and more time within the hardware.

"It took a long time before I ventured outside again. Time had little meaning to me, and I think it must have been years. Eventually, I left to explore the land, but I was too much part of the equipment I nurtured. I traveled along the telephone wires, old power lines, whatever I could find."

The view followed him, still neat and tidy in his pinstriped suit, pushing through the debris of a nine-story building, now collapsed in on itself. He traveled along old metal and exposed wires, occasionally dropping below ground before surfacing somewhere else.

Once outside, Jane had to restrain her gasp of horror. The land was dead, scarred by radiation; filth and destruction everywhere she turned. The few people she saw were sick, their eyes feverish with hatred from the daily struggle to survive. They banded together in tiny knots of gangs, preying on one another like vermin.

Dr. Beavesly saw it all, but they never saw him.

"That's when I began to realize I was dead. It wasn't a clear thought. It would take even longer before it crystallized into a conscious possibility. Actually, I think only now, as I breathe and think and feel with you, do I really understand. I'm dead."
He looked surprised.
"I'm really dead."

The Dr. Beavesly in the landscape continued to walk, moving silently and swiftly through the world. There was snow everywhere. Snow and blood and filth. But time continued swiftly, sliding by her as the snow at first covered the sick and the dead alike, eventually melting to reveal a brown and dead land.

"Where are the people?" she asked. "Did they all die?"

"Most. But a few survived. Others changed."

"What do you mean—changed?"

He pointed and she saw a young man, dying from grotesque lesions covering his skin. He crawled to a dirty river that moved brown and sluggish through the mud. The man didn't make it there in time.

Just as with Dr. Beavesly, she saw the man fall, dropping to the ground to die, but his spirit continued to crawl, finally making it into the river.

"He joined with the river. He uses his energies, his spirit to cleanse the water and keep it alive."

Jane tensed, a sudden flash of insight making her shake. "That's the river I bathed in, the one Daken cleansed. That's—"

"That's the Old One who spoke to you. Yes."

Jane turned slowly, watching the images flow through her landscape. "Did everyone do that?"

"Many did, and they still live here today. Others found a different way."

This time, she saw a woman, weak from starvation, drop wearily beneath a twisted and sickly sapling. She wasn't on the verge of death, but she was gravely ill. She lay still beneath the sapling, and Jane began to think the woman had indeed died. But then there was a blurring. The images grew indistinct as though both tree and woman flowed together.

Time passed, and still the woman didn't move. The tree grew stronger, and the woman never died.

"She was the first dryad."

"A what?"

"Tree and woman, together. She kept her body, but she is part of the tree too. They both strengthen each other."

"That's not possible."

"Of course, it is. You forget, Jane, this land literally pulsed with radiation. It burned in the air, saturated the ground."

Looking up, Jane could almost see the heat hovering in the air, surrounding and filling everything. "Everything should have died."

"Died or changed."

"But—"

"The radiation is what the people today call the source of power. Magic."

"Magic!" Jane nearly laughed at the word. The life she understood was grounded in science, not fairy tales.

"People changed. They adapted, learning how to tap into all that radiation as a type of personal power."

"And that power let them—" She waved at the woman-tree. "Let them do that?"

"It was the only way to survive. And it worked. Some became dryads or other spirits of the earth. Some linked with animals becoming cat people, spider walkers, moles. The list goes on and on."

Jane shuddered and her mind balked at the types of creatures that could emerge. "All from radiation?"

"It was a combining of life forces. It was the only way to survive."

"And everyone did this?"

"Almost. A few, like the kings, changed their genetic code or mutated in other ways."

Her heart lodged in her throat and beat painfully fast. "The kings? Like Daken?"

"His ancestors were truly blessed. They became the healers."

"Doctors?"

"No. They actually thrive on radiation, drawing on it and their own energies to heal others."

"That's what he did to the river?" She had a vivid flash of Daken lying exhausted in a crystal clear river. "He draws on the radiation as an energy source—"

"And shapes it. That is his particular magic."

"And the other stuff. The language spell. How does that work?"

"Just as Daken can shape the radiation around him, others have learned to shape and control it in specific ways. Therefore, a world of magic."
Scattered about her were people, some old, some young, accidentally discovering what she would call magic spells. A boy stares at a pile of sticks and suddenly they burst into flames. An old man desperate for a way across a ravine shapes with his hands what looks like a glowing energy wave. Like a surfer, he rides it across the chasm. A mother uses a glowing needle and thread to stitch closed a hole in a pair of socks.

Jane felt the first workings of awe seep through her system. "It's an ability to shape and use the radiation. Wow."

Dr. Beavesly turned, and they both watched as the land slowly recovered, becoming lush and green again.
"Wow,"
he agreed softly.

A thought tugged at Jane as the concepts began to take root. "But the radiation is dissipating, right? I mean, eventually it will fade away."