Dance of Destinies (The Galactic Mage Series Book 5) (10 page)

The teacher talked very fast, and Pernie didn’t even know what half the things she was telling them to do meant. The translation spell worked perfectly fine for most things, but there were some concepts that Pernie simply had no contexts for. Things that were completely alien. Things like “drag and drop” and “copy and paste” meant nothing to Pernie. And when the teacher would give out what were obviously simple requests, Pernie would get lost. She couldn’t find anything to paste anywhere, and there were no symbols that looked like glue bottles or even a dead horse. It was all so confounding, and she knew it was because she didn’t know all the little things.

She’d looked to the girl on her left, but that one was pointedly looking anywhere but at Pernie. She’d looked to the girl on her right, and it was much the same, though Pernie caught her staring out of the corner of her eye every time Pernie turned to look at her. The boy behind her looked just as scared as the girl on the bus had looked, and the girl on the bus was the girl sitting in front of Pernie. There wasn’t even anyone she could ask. And she damn sure wasn’t going to raise her hand and ask out loud. They all wanted her to be stupid, Pernie could tell. And she would rather die than give them that satisfaction. She’d just have to figure it out herself.

Fortunately, the teacher was a nice lady and didn’t say anything about how terrible Pernie was at everything. When it came time to show answers on the big, whole-class monitor that crossed the front of the room, the teacher had mercifully disabled the feed from Pernie’s desk.

It was pretty embarrassing anyway. Pernie knew that the big black rectangle on the wall display—third from the bottom and second from the right—was hers, because it was the only big black rectangle on the whole board. The rest of the surface was lit up with colorful rectangles, each with answers written in bright white Earth letters that glowed. The other students knew it too, but nobody said anything. Pernie thought that was smart of them because she didn’t want to have to break anyone’s leg. She knew that would be a bad way to start out in Earth school.

“Be careful and be patient,” Djoveeve had said. “It’s frightening to go somewhere completely new. Do you remember how you felt when you came to String last year? Well, it will be just the same on Earth. Perhaps even more so. The ways of an alien world will be disorienting. So remember your breathing techniques. Stay calm. Keep your magic in your mouth and your fists in your pockets, little Sava. Promise me.”

That had been the first of the five hundred billion times Djoveeve had made Pernie promise not to do magic or hurt anyone.

After a while, the class broke for what the teacher called “recess.” All the kids got up and started moving toward the door. Pernie stayed where she was and tried to figure out the desktop screen. There had to be a way to make it go back to what the teacher kept calling the home screen. But which stupid icon was it?

She pressed one twice in a row. It opened up a new screen that started playing a video. She knew how to close it, so she did. She double-tapped another, and it opened up four new boxes, which everyone called windows. She tried to close that, but the one she touched started a whirring sound that Pernie could feel vibrating through the desk.

A thin layer of the desktop make a clicking sound, and it swung up, a section all along the far edge of the desk and about two hand widths high. Now there was some kind of contraption being depicted like an illusion spell in the air, sort of hazy, but floating there above the desk. Pernie recognized that it was showing some kind of space machine design.

“Stupid old—” she started, but cut herself off.

A boy coming up the row on her right, headed out to “recess,” stopped and placed a hand on either side of the image floating in the air. “Like this,” he said, moving his hands together until both palms pressed flat. “Holographic stuff all closes like this. Hands together, then push it back into the desk.” He pushed one hand down, flat against the middle of the desk. The little section of the surface closed itself with a few seconds of whirring and another click. “See?”

She looked up at him, frowning. But he only smiled back. “I’m Jeremy,” he said. He reached out a hand for her to shake. “My granddad is the custodian here. Everyone calls him Gabby. That’s why I can afford to come.”

Pernie frowned again, different this time. He could afford to come because everyone called his grandfather Gabby? Pernie was sure she was never going to understand this world.

“Don’t worry,” he said cheerfully. “They all looked at me like that last year.”

“Like what?” she said.

“Like they look at you. But it’s okay. I’m not afraid of Prosperions. I’ve already read everything on them. I am going to go there someday.”

“Humph,” Pernie said. But she decided he was probably nice. “So what does this thing do?” She pointed to the green ball with the little white line. “It keeps opening other stuff, and I can’t make it go away.”

“Oh, that’s your global-net access icon …” he began. They spent their recess getting Pernie settled in on her desk.

Chapter 11

“I
assure you, my friend,” the man called Jefe repeated, “we have no concerns about the accident. We are all in new territory with this.” He smiled reassuringly beneath a mustache that was thick and long, the shiny black ends pulled out and waxed, shaped into upward-curving hooks. Black Sander watched Jefe’s eyes for signs that the words hid the reality, but there was nothing glimmering in those brown orbs but glee. The man was happy with what he’d gotten, despite the damage to some of the contents in the crate.

“I appreciate your patience with us,” Black Sander said. He looked behind him at the wreckage of the wooden crate and the body of the boy. Pieces of the older orphan lay in a gory heap on the basement floor. Part of him hung out of the cinder-block wall, strips of red meat looking like something wolves have been chewing on. Black Sander knew the rest of the body was somewhere in the earth outside the basement, pulped most likely and fertilizing the lawn. “We have to be careful which teleporters we employ, and the War Queen has her eye on everything. My employer assures us that there is another we can bring in for future casts, and we’ll make smaller loads from here on out.”

“Yes, yes, I understand completely.” Jefe stepped to Black Sander and put a hand on his shoulder. He had to reach up to do it, as he was a good deal shorter than the Prosperion. “I have read about your TGS operation. It seems your transportation guild has all its teleporters working on platforms. It is good that you have found any of them for our work here.”

“The TGS has always been a stingy and controlling entity. As a subset of the Teleporters Guild, it’s got astonishing authority even over its own parent guild. It always has, being the primary means of modern travel across Prosperion, but with the mechanisms for traveling across the stars being put in place, I am sure the TGS will become nothing but unbearable in time. My sources tell me they even make the Queen uncomfortable.”

“Yes, I can imagine it is true. They are in a position of great importance in the galaxy now. And it’s a kind of importance that your War Queen will have a hard time controlling one day. The NTA cabrones here on Earth are at their mercy as well. Your TGS will be a great force in the galaxy very soon.” His eyes glinted as he said it, and Black Sander had to grin. Here was a man who understood power.

“They will. Of that there is no doubt. We’ve taken steps to get our people on the inside.”

“This is good,” agreed Jefe. The blue-eyed El Segador standing beside him nodded as well. “But now is a good time to set plans in motion for the alternatives.”

Black Sander grinned again. “You would have us move more quickly than my employer would. You are the dragon to her dire rat.”

Both Earth men laughed at that. They said something together in the language they called Spanish, and then Jefe said, “I like that. I like the things you say, Prosperion.” He looked back to the wreckage, then to the young orphan and the old prostitute, the latter now on her feet, though looking wobbly. She leaned against a wire birdcage that had been brought down to replace the one that had been destroyed by the errant teleport. Only one of the little birds had survived.

“Jefe,” said El Segador, “let’s take those two upstairs and get them set up. Doctor Gaspar is anxious to get started with the new specimens, and we need to get their magic neutralized.”

“Yes,” agreed Jefe. “Besides, I think our friend Annison will like to have some company.”

Black Sander could hardly believe that Annison was still alive. He’d been held captive on this world for months and months now, with his skull opened up and his brain cut into parts, all of them wired together by Jefe’s team of scientists and kept functioning somehow. It was all in pursuit of learning about how Prosperion magic worked.

Black Sander accompanied them, following along as they mounted a short staircase and moved through the bowels of Jefe’s mansion. The basement, one of three, sat beneath three stories of construction meant to emulate an older style of architecture, obviously from some period in Earth’s history, for there were no buildings like it elsewhere that Black Sander had been to. He hadn’t been on Earth often, or long, having only first arrived a little over a month ago, but he’d seen enough of it in person and on the information system they called the global net to know that this place was different.

The style of the main building as well as the outbuildings and the furnishings all around matched perfectly with the style depicted in the large, colorful paintings and murals that were everywhere. They matched too with many smaller images, little square depictions in shades of gray that featured men in hats with brims so wide they made Black Sander’s wide-brimmed hat seem a skullcap by comparison. These were all dark, rugged-looking men, often with wide mustaches like Jefe’s, though not curled like the one he wore, and almost all of them carried weapons that looked like a cross between the laser rifles of modern-day Earth and something more in keeping with the stock of a Prosperion crossbow. Black Sander knew these images were images out of time, for the men in them often stood beside horses, which was certainly something he saw nothing of during his time upon the strange, technological world.

He wondered, now that he had come across this planet powered by plastic and electricity, if one day his world might seem the same. He wondered if the paintings and portraits of his people and their horses might someday fade to black and gray. He wondered what that future Prosperion might look like.

They arrived in the room where Black Sander and his two hosts had first met. Inside, just as he had been on Black Sander’s first foray onto the compound, lay Annison, strapped to what looked to Black Sander like an elaborate, technological version of a barber’s chair. Though he wouldn’t have thought it possible, he thought Annison had actually lost more weight. The thin blue sheet that covered his body revealed nothing more than the lines of a skeleton. The face that he’d once known to be fleshy and alive was now so gaunt, the cheekbones so prominent, the man was indistinguishable from one who’d been dead for months.

Annison no longer moved. His eyes were open, but they were rolled up so far that his pupils were out of sight. He looked as if he’d gotten glass replacements and the ocularist forgot to paint the irises and black dots. As before, his brain was cut up and its parts separated out and placed into trays, each sitting in a bath of some fluid that was obviously meant to keep the tissue alive. Thin wires, like silver thread, connected the pieces to one another and to what remained of his brain still inside the open cavity of his skull. This too was liquid filled.

All of it was attached to monitoring equipment set up around and behind him. The machines that had been damaged or destroyed during the initial skirmish that ensued when Black Sander had arrived had all been repaired or replaced. Some tables had been moved or removed as well, and now there were four more barber’s chairs set up with their own monitoring stations around them.

“I see you are open and ready for business,” he remarked upon seeing the empty chairs.

“We are,” said Jefe. “And we are putting in another lab just like this one in the room next door. I will fill this whole floor of my house up with them when we are done. I will know how magic works,” he said.

“What is it you want it for?” Black Sander asked. “If I may ask. If that is too bold, then forgive me and leave me to my ignorance. I am certainly not at liberty to speak of my employer’s aims, so in this there can be no fair exchange.”

“I am not ashamed to admit it,” Jefe said. “I take my country back.”

“How so?”

“Long ago this land belonged to my people. Men came from across the ocean and took it from us. Over the course of centuries, they drove us farther and farther west and south. They humiliated us. They used us like slaves and stole our resources. They used us.”

He paused and said something in Spanish to El Segador, who pushed the two captive Prosperion casters toward the chairs. The slender woman called Doctor Gaspar came in right after with two other men. They set to work binding the magic users down—not that any force was required, as both were too shocked (or rummy) to resist.

“But they thought we were stupid,” Jefe went on. “That was their mistake. They thought we were barbarians. They used us for their politics. In time they let my grandfathers grow strong because they thought my grandfathers were weak. They let us build an army right on the border they imposed upon us. And then the weather changed. They tried to stop it and made it worse. So the climate changed and the seas climbed and the hunger came. The diseases came, and the world filled up with war. They tried to contain it. They had all the best technology. The biggest guns. But they were weak with pride. They were divided and disorganized. We were used to being hungry. And we worked like surgeons.” He pointed to the doctor, who was now looking at the orphan boy. He smiled. “We came in and took our land back. Most of it, anyway.”