Genie and Engineer 1: The Engineer Wizard (12 page)

Paul groaned and shook his head in disagreement. “But
that’s…no good! If they…can follow me…here…then they…can follow…me anywhere…on
Earth I go!”

His own words surprised him and Paul blinked several times
before abruptly barking in laughter.

Anywhere on Earth
?

What Paul needed was a place that he could escape to where
he could survive but the monsters chasing him could not. And there was such a
place.

Paul forced himself to stop for a moment while concentrating
hard on developing his idea into a full-blown plan. It was tough. The terror he
felt was constantly getting in the way.

“No, no, that won’t work…,” he wheezed quietly. “Ah, but
that could…yes, not a bad idea, that. But if I could…Hmm, if only I had a
rocket-pack like in the Disney film
The Rocketeer.
”

He looked up sharply at Merlin. “Can wizards fly? I need
to…move fast. Can I fly? Fast?”

Merlin tugged a little on his beard while gazing towards the
setting sun on the western horizon. “Normally, for the purpose of flying, a
wizard creates a vehicle of some sort, like your flying blanket. But yes, there
is no reason why you couldn’t fly like a bird, if you wish. Faster than a hawk,
if you want.”

“Or Ironman, I hope,” Paul muttered to himself.

Taking a bright yellow mechanical pencil from his pocket,
Paul leaned over and stuck it vertically into the sand, the end with the eraser
on it pointing straight up. Then, with a wry grin, he sluggishly climbed to his
feet, talisman in hand, and took a few deep breaths, both to calm himself and
to give him strength. Turning westward, he stumbled across the sand, toward the
western twilight. Taking an enormous deep breath, he mumbled, “Up, up, and
away!” as he lunged into the air, arms stretched forth.

And was gratefully surprised when he hung in mid-air and
didn’t crash back to the ground.

Assuming the standard superheroes’ airborne position, Paul
started flying.

Tapping more energy from the talisman accelerated his speed
until he hit eighty miles per hour. Flying more than a mile away from the pencil
in the sand, he finally slowed to a stop and hit the sand feet first. Spinning
on one heel, Paul turned back around, facing eastward. The panic which had
threatened to overwhelm him earlier was receding somewhat. But he still felt
the desperate need for urgency. There couldn’t be much time left now before the
Oni showed up.

Raising his right hand, Paul hurriedly intoned a new spell, “In
the name of Joseph Priestley and Aquaman, let the air around me be purged of nitrogen
and let the oxygen gather to me. Let my lungs drink of that oxygen, enough that
it saturates my tissues.”

With several deep breaths, the oxygen helped rejuvenate a
few tired muscles.

After another deep breath and with a determined look in his
eyes, Paul began running straight east, back toward his pencil and the portal
that had brought him to this forsaken desert. Once again, he lifted nimbly into
the air in flight picking up speed, pushing himself at better than three gee’s
of acceleration. The sand dunes beneath him flew by swiftly as he closed the
distance between himself and the pencil. With yet another spell, Paul gathered
additional oxygen and filtered out the nitrogen, all to aid his breathing and
to prepare himself for what was about to happen next.

Eighty mph. Ninety mph. One hundred mph. The tiny form of
the upright pencil rapidly approached. Briefly closing his eyes, Paul grunted in
the effort to cast yet another spell, this one a new portal, which opened
directly in front of him, just short of the pencil in the sand.

The other side of this new portal was located 456.78 miles
out in deep space, directly above his head and far, far outside the outer edge
of the earth’s atmosphere.

An instant blast of explosive decompression sucked the surrounding
air around Paul from Earth through the portal. Sand too was hurled through the
hole in bucket lots, swirling in the Coriolis Effect as it whipped by in
hurricane gale force winds.

And then Paul streaked through the portal, the cyclone
knocking him about, twisting and spinning him violently in corkscrew fashion.

But then he was through, sailing wildly through empty space,
holding tightly to his talisman and the oxygen bubble he had formed.

• • • •

A typical human could last fifteen to twenty seconds in the
vacuum of space without a spacesuit before falling unconscious. Thirty seconds and
the blood and all the water in the body would begin to boil and all the body
tissues would bulge outward from the internal pressure. In less than a minute,
death would occur.

With the oxygen in his tissues and in the bubble around him,
Paul was optimistically hoping for more time than that. Exerting even more magical
effort, and with his jaw clinched shut, he continued to accelerate eastward as
rapidly as possible through the darkness of space, heading further into the
night, the huge crescent of Earth shining up at him from below.

Ten seconds, twenty seconds. His grip on the bubble was
failing, the oxygen escaping through the gaps, his muscles weakening from the
strain. Thirty seconds went by like eons. His lungs were hurting, a deep
stabbing pain from the lack of oxygen, the need to breathe! Paul estimated that
he had now traveled nearly three miles through the emptiness of space. It was
not nearly as far as he thought he needed to go, not in order to be totally
safe, but he could feel the pressure building in his tissues, the pain in his
eyes, and see his vision rapidly tunneling. If he waited any longer, he would
fall unconscious and quickly die.

No! It would just have to be enough! He could wait no
longer, travel not one foot further.

Summoning all the magical power he had left, Paul quickly
created another portal, this one leading back to Earth’s surface, back to the
Algerian Desert.

This time, the explosive decompression worked against him, and
it took all of his inertia and all of his rapidly vanishing magical power for
him to thread the hole and safely reemerge on Earth. But Paul had misjudged the
portal’s location, and to his surprise, he dropped six feet to the ground,
hitting the sand with a stunning impact that knocked the breath out of him and
sent his glasses flying. Over his head, the portal slammed shut.

The strain of the leap through space had been too much, the
crash-landing too violent. Paul lost the fight to stay conscious as he lay
sprawled out in the sand, his talisman lying a couple of feet away.

• • • •

Groggily, he awoke a few minutes later, feeling terribly
weak and disoriented. Suddenly realizing that he no longer had his glasses or
his talisman, he frantically scrambled around on hand and knees, doing his best
to find them.

As he searched, the engineering/analytical corner of his
mind mocked him. If he had his glasses, he could easily find the talisman. If
he had the talisman, he could cast a spell on his eyesight to allow him to find
his glasses. But without either one, he was forced to search using his normal
and rather poor nearsighted vision.

He found the glasses first, and he blew most of the sand off
the lenses before putting them back on. 20/20 eyesight restored, Paul resumed
the hunt for the talisman.

Out of the corner of one eye, to the west, he saw a flash of
light, and fearing the worst, he again dropped prone, doing his best not to
move—not even to breathe too loudly! Suddenly aware that the sand in his
clothes was itching him fiercely, he resisted the urge to scratch. He dared not
move at all.

Scanning the horizon, Paul could see nothing at first. Then
he realized that there was a small hump of sand only a few feet away, blocking
part of his view. Edging his head up a little higher, he was able to see the
horizon better.

He could see his pursuers too. They were less than a hundred
yards away, highlighted against the twilight on the western horizon, emerging
from a portal that was very close to where his yellow pencil stuck up out of
the sand. Again, following the same pattern as before, two of the beasts fanned
out, studying the horizon toward the west. Paul eased himself back down, staying
out of sight, and waited. The third creature would be scanning for him with that
device it had. If Paul understood the sequence of events correctly, the beast
wasn’t really scanning for him, but for the evidence of his magic. Otherwise, these
monsters could not have followed him all the way from the mountain retreat.

Cautiously, Paul eased his head up again.

One of the creatures was pulling the pencil from the sand
and studying it. But then it tossed the yellow object to the ground and
gestured to the others. They stepped away from Paul, heading toward the fading
glow on the western horizon. They had obviously detected the trail of the
portal that Paul had created to take himself into Earth’s orbit. One of the
beasts raised and waved an arm in front of the group.

With a loud bang, for the third time that day, explosive
decompression rang out across the desert, sand and typhoon winds flying across
the dunes, jerking the three helpless figures off their feet and hurling them
though the portal in the blink of an eye. Barely a second later, the portal clamped
shut behind them. With a loud echoing bang, the sand and the windstorm died
instantly.

Time slowed to a crawl, and the seconds dragged by, Paul
holding his breath in dread. Would the monsters escape? Just how powerful were
they? They had been launched through their portal into space, the same as he
had been, but they had been hurled in the opposite direction, toward the west.
They would have to overcome their speed in that direction, the one thrust upon
them by the decompression wave when they entered the portal,
and
then
they would have to cross three miles in empty space back to the east before
they could follow Paul’s return portal to Earth. Could they do that? Did they
have that much magical power? Or perhaps they would simply give up the chase
and return to Earth? Even if they tried to do that, did they have the ability
to punch through a decompression barrier in another portal back to Earth? Paul’s
heart beat loudly in his chest, his hands clammy and cold.

Suddenly, another portal appeared, a hundred yards farther
west, and for the fourth time that evening, explosive decompression sucked wind
and sand in a screaming, howling rage though a portal into space. Then it just
as abruptly ended, the portal now snapped closed. As the sand in the air
cleared, Paul’s eyes anxiously swept back and forth, looking for any sign that
the beasts had successfully returned.

But there was nothing to see. The devilish monsters weren’t
there. There was nothing visible except sand. Even the yellow mechanical pencil
was gone.

Northern Africa

Western Sahara Desert

Fifty miles east of the Atlantic Coastline

December

Wednesday, 6:18 p.m. WT

F
or
several minutes, Paul lay prone on the sand, his heart thundering in his chest.
His very close brush with death, with being violently murdered by those ugly
monsters, tore at the foundation of his sanity and threatened to send him
screaming in mindless terror. The entire sequence of the chase repeated itself
over and over again in his mind as he tried to grapple with the reality of it—and
indeed the implications involved.

With the passage of time, his ragged breathing slowed, the
adrenalin gradually dissipating in his bloodstream.

And he was not ashamed to admit what happened next. He started
to cry. Great big alligator tears, too, as his mother used to call them. In
great tearing sobs, he let all his fears and the terror of the last hour take
total control of his emotions, and he curled into a fetal ball on the sand.
With his arm wrapped around his legs, he bawled like a baby.

That too slowly passed, and eventually, Paul was able to
take control of himself once again, wiping the tears from his face with the
back of his right hand.

Taking a quick look around, he spotted his talisman lying in
the sand, and with effort, he snagged it. Stumbling to his feet, he began to
wobble away across the desert, giving no real thought to where he was going. He
just wanted to get away from those creatures, as far away from the last place
he had seen them as he could get. Such was his poor mental state that the idea
of using a portal to leave the vicinity never occurred to him.

With his thoughts focused inward, Paul was completely
oblivious to the passage of time. He didn’t take note of how long he wandered
in the darkness. Collapsing to the ground to rest for a minute, he leaned back,
lying prone on the cool desert sand. His last thoughts were of his bed in
California and how much he missed being home.

• • • •

Paul dreamed that he was being chased, that somehow,
thoroughly terrified, he was moving in very slow motion while an unseen evil
pursued him, drawing ever closer.

He jerked awake, his mind momentarily unable to deal with
the reality of seeing nothing but desert sand. It took a few seconds for the
memories of the previous day to seep back into his conscious mind. When it did,
he groaned loudly in anguish.

It was dawn, the sun just peeking over the east horizon. Still
exhausted, both physically and mentally, from the fight the previous night, Paul
struggled to a sitting position and stared eastward. The sand in his clothes
itched him, and his mouth and throat were desert dry.

“Hello, Paul,” said a well-modulated, feminine, alto voice.

Leaping to his feet, he spun, tightly gripping his talisman,
and prepared to let loose a blast of plasma.

But he instantly froze, his muscles unable to move an inch.

In front of him, kneeling on a blanket on the sand, was the
most incredibly beautiful woman he had ever seen. Miss Universe looked like Jabba
the Hutt from
Star Wars
by comparison.

A willowy figure with perfect curves was topped by a finely
shaped head with long, stunning blonde hair done up in an unfamiliar, yet
alluring fashion. Sparkling green eyes, a trim nose, and a flashing smile
combined to form a classically perfect feminine visage. Her clothing consisted
of a red evening dress, expertly tailored to flaunt her figure in a sensuous,
yet sophisticated style. Paul’s jaw slowly dropped in astonishment, and he
found himself unable to utter a sound as he gaped at her.

She seemed amused by his reaction—or rather the lack
thereof. She nodded at his left arm.

“Did the Oni do that?” she purred graciously.

Paul somehow managed to rub two tiny brain cells together.

“Oni?” he croaked through parched lips.

Her sly smile grew a little larger. “Tall, horned brutes
with red skin and a face no mother would lay claim to. Except, of course, they
don’t have mothers. Those Oni.”

So that’s what they are called
, a small voice in the
back of Paul’s mind noted with interest.

“Yeah,” he replied dully.
Great, what a brilliant comeback.
I’m sure I’ve impressed her with my witty conversation and cosmopolitan charm
.

She nodded and smiled at him again. Paul thought his heart
might stop.

“We will have to attend to that arm soon,” she suggested
smugly. “The pain must be horrible. But in the meantime, we must leave this
place.”

“You know my name,” Paul stated, blinking in surprise at his
own belated observation.

The beautiful woman stood in one graceful motion as if she
had trained for it all her life.

“Yes, Paul Armstead, I know who you are.”

A tiny corner of Paul’s mind noticed that the blanket on the
sand was identical to the one that he had been flying around on the day before,
the one that had burned in the mountaintop attack. He silently wondered if
there was some single store on this side of the planet where everyone shopped
for their linens. Maybe at AmazonEast.com?

“Who are you?” he asked, afraid that the woman might laugh
at his questions. “Are you a—well, a wizard?”

Her smile deepened, and his heart really did skip two beats.

With a flick of her wrist, the blanket rose from the sand,
shook itself off like a dog shedding fleas, folded itself neatly, and tucked
itself under her right arm.

“My name is Celeste,” she assertively answered. “And yes, I
am a wizard, just like you. But we must not dally here any longer.” She held
forth a hand.

For reasons that even he was unsure of, Paul hesitated to
take it.

She sensed his reluctance. “Paul, if I had wanted to hurt
you, I could have done so anytime while you were asleep. We need to fix your arm
and tend to your other wounds. Also, I know you have many questions that you
would like answered. I promise to answer them—well, most of them, anyway. And
there are more Oni on the way here, too.”

That did it. Paul tucked his talisman into his belt and
reached out to take her hand.

“Your place or mine?” he asked as innocently as possible.

• • • •

Her portal deposited the two of them on the wide sidewalk of
a narrow residential street in a city unfamiliar to Paul. The buildings here
were old, four to six stories tall, many with balconies looking out over the
sidewalks, their entrances double-doored and framed with innate iron
scrollwork. Most of these residences were crowded together, giving the
appearance that they were all the same structure. However, there were a few
residences that occupied larger lots with actual yards that even sported a few
trees and shrubs. The city had a decidedly European feel to it. The sight of a
civilized city bolstered Paul’s spirits and helped diminish the memories of the
terror he had lived through the previous day.

There were people here, too—not many, but a few. An elderly
couple was strolling down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. A
delivery man, box in hand, was standing at the front door of a nearby house. One
younger man with long dark hair was riding a motorcycle. A few cars, mostly
small European makes, were moving sedately down the road, their drivers focused
on nothing in particular. Everything seemed perfectly normal—an average day in a
European city somewhere. No one seemed to notice Paul or Celeste at all.

“‘You would think they had people beaming down every day,’” Paul
quipped in ironic amusement, quoting Captain Kirk in the
Star Trek
episode “Errand of Mercy.”

Celeste didn’t seem to get the joke but smiled anyway. “I
cast a spell around us, allowing us to walk among them unnoticed. Come, we are
almost there.”

“Wait a minute! My feet! I don’t have any shoes, remember?”
he petulantly reminded her.

She smiled and snapped her fingers. A pair of black slip-on
shoes appeared on the pavement in front of him, and he knelt to put them on.
They were a perfect fit.

“Thanks. Where are we?” Paul asked, curiously looking around
for any clue as to their location. He saw nothing definitive.

“16
^th
Arrondissement, Paris, France,” she replied
as she stepped through a covered arch, past a wrought iron fence, and to the
doorway of one of the more stately buildings on the street. The landscaped
yard, with a carefully sculptured hedge and manicured shrubs, was impressive.
Paul glanced up at the outside of the white three-story structure, noting the
narrow windows, the balconies, and the ivy-coated walls. In Paris, this was a
veritable mansion, and he nodded in appreciation.

“Come,” Celeste urged him, waving him to the front door. She
opened it and pulled him inside.

It was unlocked? Ah, well, maybe it had been locked. What did
a wizard need with keys?

Inside, Paul was suitably impressed by the sumptuousness of
the furnishings and the size of the rooms. The large entrance hall held a
circular carpeted staircase, starting on the right and spiraling up to an
apparent landing over his head. Past the staircase and up one floor, he could
see a banister-lined catwalk with three wood-paneled doors. Presumably, there
were bedrooms up there somewhere too. To his right, on the ground floor, a pair
of ornately carved doors apparently led to another room, though they were
closed. To his left was an outsized archway, leading into a formal living room.

Celeste released his hand and tossed the blanket on a small
wooden table but guided him through the archway to the left. The living room
was magnificent. A huge fireplace sat to his right, in the wall between the
entrance hall and the living room. A modest fire burned within. To the left of
the fireplace, there was another archway leading into a wood-paneled dining
room complete with an elaborate set of dining-room furniture. Further to his left,
on the far wall of the living room, were two painted portraits of people
dressed in nineteenth century clothing. Also along the wall was a bookcase
filled with old thick books. To his far left, a bay window lined with white
satin curtains sat facing the street, a small, but well-decorated Christmas
tree planted in front of it.

In the middle of the room, a diminutive coffee table was
situated strategically in front of the fireplace, bracketed by a pair of
overstuffed, black leather chairs. A French sofa and two more overstuffed
chairs flanked with small wooden end tables sat near the center of the room as
well. The floor was furnished with forest green, thick pile carpeting
emblazoned with an imperial coat of arms formed in gold-colored thread.
Overhead, an arched ceiling with crown molding supported a huge crystal
chandelier.

The room reeked of wealth.

“Nice digs,” he mumbled admiringly. He wouldn’t have minded
living in a place half as nice.

Celeste warmly smiled again. “Thanks. We like it. We will be
safe here. Please, come this way.”

They went through the dining room and into a hallway, where
she led him to a huge bathroom, with an old-fashioned claw-foot bathtub and a
two-sink lavatory.

She turned toward Paul and touched his face. He blushed at
her touch and looked away.

Smiling sweetly, she said, “You may take a bath in here. Use
all the hot water you want. You will not be disturbed, I promise. And while you
are doing that, I will hunt up some clothes for you...” she glanced down and
grimaced, “...hopefully better than what you are wearing now. After that, we
will get you something to eat, take care of some of your wounds, and start
answering your questions. Does that sound fair?”

Paul’s mouth quirked, and he smiled awkwardly, feeling like
a thirteen-year-old again. “I love it when a plan comes together. Yes. And
thank you for rescuing me.”

Celeste hesitated. “You are welcome. Enjoy your bath.” And then
she was gone.

Normally, Paul was a shower man, but this bathroom was not
equipped for that. The water was easy to start in the tub, and it was certainly
hot enough. One-handed and with a little magical help, he took off his clothing
and appreciatively lowered himself into the rising water, still clutching his
talisman. The hot water helped ease his tired muscles, soothing away some of
the aches and pains he had.

With great care, he focused on cleaning the stump of his left
arm and then examining the damage. He ground his teeth, both distressed and
nauseated by the mutilation: the torn purple skin, the exposed biceps, muscle
tissue, and humerus bone. If not for his magical spells, a wound like this
would have already been seriously infected (not to mention the pain he would have
had to deal with). Indeed, he would have probably already bled to death. His
stomach heaved at the sight of the damage, and he cast a spell to quell his
queasiness.

His only consolation at this point was the hope that his magical
powers might somehow be able to grow a new arm. Tenderly, he worked on the
injury.

Taking his time, he took one of the longest baths he could
remember, soaking long past the point when his fingertips turned wrinkly.

Afterward, he drained the tub and dried off with a huge,
thick green towel. On a chair next to the door, he found new clothes. Whether
Celeste had snuck them in when he wasn’t looking or she had used magic to
portal them in, he didn’t know. But he slowly dressed in the clothing anyway.
Everything fit perfectly.

Standing in front of the mirror mounted to the back of the
bathroom door, Paul critically examined his image. He had to admit, the clothes
were nicely styled, a distinct improvement over what he normally wore. But he
noted with a frown, he was still a short, fat, bald man and now missing half an
arm, to boot. He sighed, still gripping his talisman, and left the room.