Genie and Engineer 1: The Engineer Wizard (18 page)

—along a thick bed of grass into the base of the stone wall
of the Tour Moncade in Orthez, France. The stone keep, part of the remains of
the castle Chateau Moncade, towered above him, the top of the building
thrusting into a clear blue sky. From nearby, he heard shouting, but he ignored
it as he cackled with nervous delight, created another portal where the old one
had been, and rolled through it—

—onto the gritty asphalt parking lot in front of the Notre
Dame Cathedral in Dax, France. The twin towers of the church building, high
over the arched double wooden doors marking the entrance, were impressive, even
with Paul’s limited knowledge of architecture.

Several people were scattered around the entrance—men in
suits and women in long dresses—staring at him in stunned surprise. They were
either on their way to a church meeting or just getting out of one. But it was
of no importance, so again, with a profound sense of relief and mirth, Paul cast
a spell, and another portal appeared—

—dropping him onto the soft sandy beach of Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
This time, there were only two women and an elderly man nearby to notice his
abrupt arrival, though there were lots of other people visible in the distance.
The three French watched him in shock as he climbed to his feet, roaring with
laughter. He shook the small piece of talisman at the sky and then pointed it
out to sea and concentrated. Still cackling wildly, Paul formed another portal
leading further down the coast of Biscay Bay, to an isolated stretch of rocky
coastline near Akarteg, Spain. Then, a foot beyond that portal, Paul formed
another portal, leading ten more miles further along the coastline. Not finished,
Paul did it again for a third time, out yet another ten miles, this time all
the way to the stone pier on the southern tip of Santa Clara Island in the
Bahia of La Concha, across the small bay from the city of San Sebastian, Spain.
With sweat streaming from his brow, Paul created a ball of water two feet in
diameter from the surf water beside him, floated it into the air, and then
heaved it hard through the first portal where it cascaded through the second
and then the third. With a snap of his fingers, all three of the portals
instantly clapped shut.

Still grinning fiercely, Paul turned to face the three people
and bowed twice. They smiled back and clapped their hands in appreciation,
entertained by the show he had put on. He bowed again and hysterically waved
his hand at them before he turned and created yet another portal for him to
duck through.

Pyrenees Mountains

2.4 miles east of Isaba, Spain

January

Sunday, 9:45 a.m. CET

P
aul
steadily, but slowly pushed his way up the rocky slope, toward the escarpment
of Ibon de Ezcaurre, the westernmost part of the Aragonese Pyrenees, part of a
natural border separating Spain from France. He was above the tree line now,
more than 5,000 feet above sea level. Just ahead were some really lovely specimens
of granite rock. True, they were not as large as the house-sized boulders he
had found in the Himalayas. But they were still large enough to command a great
deal of magical power.

Physically, he was tired. Emotionally, he was drained.
Confined as he had been for a week, his stamina was not up to a hike up a
mountainside. The thrill of his escape had worn off now, leaving him with a
growing awareness that he was a hunted man, on the run. And his hunters were
evil wizards. Who knew what their full capabilities were? Just how safe was he,
and how long could he avoid being recaptured?

He had planned his escape carefully. Judging from everything
Merlin had told him as a prisoner, Ruggiero and Celeste would have a very hard
time finding his current whereabouts. So he should be fairly safe. Well, on
second thought, maybe he should confirm that.

“Join me for a walk, Merlin?” Paul suggested, huffing and
puffing a bit.

Merlin popped up out of thin air, floating along beside
Paul, casting his eyes around him, scowling at everything in sight, and then
back at Paul.

“Funny, but you don’t strike me as the mountaineering type,”
he observed sarcastically.

Paul ignored the jibe but stopped to catch his breath. “Okay,
Merlin. My escape back there. How good was it?” he asked, curiously soliciting the
man’s opinion.

“Not bad,” the timeless wizard replied promptly. “Seven
sequential jumps with the portals overlapping each other. Fairly short jumps as
well. And that false trail down the Spanish coastline was a nice touch. It will
take the Oni a few minutes to recover before they can even start chasing you.
They will not be able to track your portals this time, because of the overlap
and because you adequately disguised them. However, depending on resources and
their organization, it might take them only a day, but not more than two days,
before they track you here.”

Paul was disappointed, tugging on one earlobe and casting
his eyes downward. “Eh? How will they...oh, this piece of talisman? You’re
telling me that they can track this?” He nodded to the small crystal in the
palm of his hand.

Merlin sighed. “It’s my fault. There is more that I need to
tell you about the tracking methods used by wizards.”

“Pray, do tell,” Paul replied sarcastically, no longer
feeling quite so pleased with his escape and even more apprehensive about his
safety. With a glance uphill, he resumed his climb. “Please, start talking.”

Merlin floated along with him. “Think submarine warfare.
There are two methods available. Passive and active. Normally, two opposing
submarines listen for each other in passive mode. Whichever side has the best
listening gear and makes the least amount of noise usually finds his opponent
first. In a real shooting war, he who first sees his opponent wins.”

Paul nodded as the implications rang home. “You are saying
the Oni use passive mode searching so that they don’t give themselves away
while conducting a search.”

“Precisely,” Merlin replied, walking around an outcropping as
they climbed. “The gemstone that Celeste told you about does not emit any magical
energy. It simply senses and measures any energy of a wizard’s spell. You’ve
already seen that a gemstone can track the portals of a wizard, but it detects
other spells too. Let’s use this situation as an example. The Oni could start
at the last known portal location you used, perhaps in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and
then spiral out in widening circles, using the gemstone to detect the use of
any magical energy generated. The more energy you use and the more often you
use it greatly increases the chances of them finding you.”

An Iberian wild goat perched on a ledge over their heads
bleated at them. Paul glanced up as the creature clattered away.

“Give me some numbers, Merlin,” he requested, determined to
get the complete picture of his situation. “Let’s say that I didn’t cast any
spells at all. How close would they have to be to detect me?”

“Assuming they didn’t recognize you on sight, and assuming
you were using no magical spells at all, they could stand within arm’s reach of
you without knowing you were a wizard. Unless they touched you, and yes, I am
referring to skin-on-skin contact. Then they would know.”

Paul nodded pensively. “Yes, Celeste and Ruggiero both touched
me and knew how powerful a wizard I was.” After a little more thought, he asked,
“So, when the Oni make a passive search, they are assuming I am using magic at
some level, else they would have to touch every person in the area.”

“That’s correct,” Merlin affirmed.

“It would take them some time to cover these mountains with
a passive search,” Paul remarked slowly, still thinking Merlin’s information
through. “How much magic could I use without such a search finding me?”

Merlin shrugged. “It depends on luck and the power of the
spells you use. You could use any spell within the confines of your body, such
as the healing spell you used on your arm, and escape notice. Anything outside of
your body and you run a risk.”

Paul nibbled a little on his lower lip. “Okay, what’s this
active scanning you mentioned? Is that like active sonar?”

“Similar, yes. A wizard can use his talisman to send out a
pulse of magical energy and then listen for a response. Based on the type of
reflection and the time interval between sending and receiving it, the wizard
can find items of magical power, such as a talisman. It doesn’t work for
detecting wizards. Now, that piece of talisman you have can be used as a homing
beacon since Ruggiero will know its magical signature, and he will be able to
find it even if it
is
currently in rugged, isolated country.”

“So, I need to get rid of it as soon as possible,” mused
Paul. “Well, as soon as I reach a decently sized boulder, I’ll do that.” He
paused for a moment, taking a better look at the face of the cliff now facing
him. “Yes, and I think we’ll try that one first.”

The boulder in question, almost pure granite in composition,
massed nearly six tons. Paul laid his hand on its cold, gritty surface and was
reassured by the power available.

With a nod of his head, he opened a small portal to the
middle of the Atlantic Ocean, more than two thousand miles to the west.

“Ah, may I make a suggestion?” Merlin asked, interrupting Paul
before he could send the chunk of talisman through.

“You disapprove of something?” Paul responded with a
questioning look.

“Not out at sea,” Merlin said with a small shake of his head.
“Ruggiero will instantly know that you dumped it there. But if you are careful of
where you send it, he might actually waste time retrieving it and doing a
search of the area as well, just to make sure that you aren’t somewhere in the
vicinity.”

“Good idea,” Paul nodded in appreciation. “Let’s see.” With
a thought, he created a display in midair, showing a map of the western
Mediterranean area. A twitch of his pinky caused the map to zoom in to Spain.

“Madrid would be a good place, I think,” Paul remarked with
an evil smile. “Ruggiero could waste a lot of time searching a city of that
size. I’ll just drop this rock...yes, in a trash bin...ah, along the Paseo de
Uruguay! Good spot! Almost dead center of the city! Let him spin his wheels searching
for me there!”

With the talisman fragment now disposed of, Paul closed the
small portal and moved on to a more important issue.

Where would he go? To one of the American consulates in
Europe? But then what would he tell them? That he had escaped captivity from an
evil magical wizard? Yeah, right.

Since he had no money, no passport, no identification, no
food, and no adequate clothing, (not to mention he also didn’t know a single
soul in all of Europe), his best bet was to just get out of Dodge as fast as
possible.

Stretching forth his hand, he touched the boulder in front
of him again, intending to creating a portal that would take him directly to
his home in Mojave.

But he hesitated.

“Merlin? A portal from here to California? Could they detect
that?” he asked with a frown, taking a small step backward.

 “From here? Easily,” Merlin declared with a malicious grin.
“That would use a lot of energy. I don’t recommend it.”

“Even if I disguise the energies involved?”

“It’s far too much energy to disguise with the techniques I
showed you,” Merlin assured him.

Paul lowered his hand and considered his alternatives. If he
still had his talisman, he could have made smaller jumps, each one using a much
smaller packet of energy and therefore being easier to hide from detection. Then
he frowned. To keep the energy low enough, his portal hops needed to be short,
say 20 miles at a time. He would have had to make hundreds of such jumps to
cross the thousands of miles of ocean and the continental United States. He was
already fairly tired due to his escape and to the portals he had thus far
created that morning. Using short portal hops, he would never have made it ten
percent of the way across the Atlantic before exhausting himself, falling into
the ocean, and drowning.

It was obvious. Even if he had a talisman, he couldn’t go
home using portals.

“Merlin, I need another way home,” he said sadly.

The hologram merely shrugged. “Sorry, not my expertise.”

Paul gave him a startled glance. Was Merlin trying to tell
him that he didn’t see a magical solution to this problem either? Or that Paul
needed a different sort of super-genius to solve this particular problem? Well,
that last possibility was easily tested.

Snapping his fingers, he said, “In the name of James Bond,
Emma Peel, and Agent J, may a virtual reality image of a field-experienced CIA
agent appear before me.”

A hologram of a man wearing a black business suit, black
sunglasses, and a black fedora hat appeared before him. The CIA agent took off
his glasses, letting his eyes swiftly sweep over the area, studying the empty
mountainside.

He discreetly whispered in Paul’s direction. “Ah, the Aragonese
Pyrenees. I played cat-and-mouse with a Russian agent here once, back in the
90s. No one seems to be nearby. So far, so good. What do you need?”

“I want to get to the States,” Paul responded in an amused
tone. “And I don’t want to leave a trail that can be followed. Also, I don’t
have any papers, passport, or money.”

The hologram nodded in understanding. “That makes it something
of a challenge, so it’s a good thing that you are a wizard. Let’s see. First, I’d
suggest you catch a plane and fly into Canada or Mexico. Then you can cross the
U.S. border fairly easy.”

Paul grunted in irritation. So far, the CIA guy hadn’t told him
anything that he hadn’t already figured out on his own. “In principle, it
sounds easy enough,” Paul said sarcastically. “But how do I do that without a passport
or money?”

The hologram shrugged. “What? You never saw that old
Humphrey Bogart movie,
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
? You mined gold
from the Himalayas. There’s gold in these mountains too.”

Paul jerked a little in surprise and kicked himself mentally.
Gee, he must really be tired. He hadn’t even consider the possibility of mining
gold here. And he had seen the movie, even if it was another one of those
socially significant films that the critics raved about but for which he was
indifferent. It might have helped if they’d thrown in a Yeti or a Sasquatch or
two.

The CIA man went on, “And you only need a passport if you
intend to fly as a passenger.”

Paul again jerked a little in surprise. “There’s another way
to fly? Oh. You don’t mean....”

The Agent grinned. “As cargo. Yeah. I’ve done it a few
times. It may not be comfortable, but you don’t need a passport, and you won’t
leave a record of your flight, either.”

Giving him a dubious look, Paul said, “But won’t the cargo
hold be unpressurized?”

The spy smiled smugly. “If you take the wrong flight, it
might. Choose wisely, grasshopper.”

Paul minutely shook his head. “Okay. But I don’t like the
idea of flying out of Spain, Portugal, or even France. Too obvious.”

“Then I suggest the Frankfurt International in Germany,”
Merlin interrupted. Even Paul was surprised by the Middle Age wizard’s proposal.
“It’s decently sized, and it even has clothing stores—which you obviously need—and
provides connections to almost every other country in the world. And it’s far
enough away not to be too obvious.”

“Where is the cargo terminal in Frankfurt?” Paul asked,
intrigued by the whole idea.

“There are two of them,” came the quick reply from the CIA spy.
“I suggest CargoCity Nord. It’s the larger of the two. Once you get there, you
can check out the flight schedules. They’ll be posted.”

Paul thanked the CIA agent and let the hologram fade from
sight.

With a nod, Paul thought about the plan and found no fault
with it.

It had been quite difficult to mine gold in the Karakoram
Mountains, but Paul had learned a lot about magical spells since then.
Including the use of filtering techniques on portals.

“Merlin, I think I’ll search this area for gold. If I find
any, I’ll use a filter setting on the portal, one that will allow atoms of gold
through the portal but will let everything else stay underground.”

The old wizard nodded in appreciation. “It will let you keep
energy expenditure low, since only the gold will be transported. Still, you
should keep the distances short. Even doing an active scan for gold could
expose your position here. You should keep the scans short-ranged and low-powered.”