Off to Be the Wizard - 2 - Spell or High Water (25 page)

Brit the Younger reached the door to the outside. Phillip was right behind her, calling for her to slow down. They emerged into the open air at the top of the gleaming white staircase that led to the meeting hall. Brit stopped walking and started swiping at the air with her finger.

Phillip ran up behind her panting and said, “Brit, please, we need to talk about this.”

Brit scowled at Phillip, but placed a hand on his shoulder and with the other hand, poked at the interface only she could see. An instant later they were standing on a beach of one of the uninhabited islands near Atlantis.

Phillip spun around and asked, “Where are we?”

“I took us somewhere we could talk in private,” Brit spat. “I certainly wasn’t going to take you back to my place. You’ve been there enough.”

Phillip saw Atlantis shimmering in the distance. They were miles away. He said, “Brit?” Even to himself he sounded
miserable
.

“You slept with her!” Brit shouted.

“No! I never!” Phillip shouted back. Brit stared at him for a moment, then he said, “I mean, well, uh, I don’t, I don’t think
I did.”

She continued to smolder and stare. He continued to
stutter
and stammer, “Uh, ugh, okay, I, I guess, depending on how you look at it, I guess I kinda did, but Brit, that was a long, long
time ago!”

Through gritted teeth, Brit the Younger asked, “When?”

Phillip said, “Brit, you know . . .”

“When?” Brit interrupted. “When did you sleep with her? You say it was a long time ago. When was it, Phillip?”

“Last night.”

Brit turned and stormed off down the beach. Phillip
followed
. “From our point of view! From hers it was decades ago! Over a century!”

Brit kept walking, but she did start talking. “Oh, so now we are the same person!”

“What?”

“Up until now, when you were trying to butter me up, you were sure that she wasn’t really me, but now, when I’m angry, you decide she is!”

“Look,” Phillip shouted, “you’re the one insisting that when I slept with you I also slept with her! I very clearly stated that I didn’t sleep with her!”

“So I suppose I should think better of you for having denied it at first!”

“I still deny it! I only entertained the idea that you’re the same person to show you how silly . . .” Phillip trailed off, but he knew it was a word too late. He took a second to rephrase his thoughts. Brit passed the time by attempting to kill him by staring him to death. Phillip, his voice much quieter and much sadder, said, “Brit, I’m just hoping I can get you to look at this logically.”

Brit spoke in a voice that was also much quieter, but also much angrier. “Phillip. Am I the first woman you’ve ever been in a fight with?”

“No.”

“Am I the first woman you’ve ever told to be more logical?”

“No.”

Brit asked, “Has that ever worked out well for you?” She said, “Don’t answer that. I’ll tell you what. I’ll do as you say, and look at the situation logically. Martin keeps saying we should look at who has something to gain from trying to kill me. Well, it occurs to me that one person has gained. He’s gained an excuse to be around me. He’s gained from me being emotionally vulnerable and grateful to him for his support. And, it just so happens that the attacks started right after I first met him, and he’s the only person who’s been present every single time I’ve been attacked. What does that tell you, logically, Phillip?”

Phillip gaped at her, wounded and confused, then in a small voice he said, “Why am I always a suspect? I’m just about the most harmless person on earth, and yet everyone I get close to is suspicious of me.”

Brit said, “Good question, Phillip.” She started swiping her finger through the air. Phillip realized that she was setting up the teleport back to Atlantis, which meant that the argument was over. He sighed heavily, and held out his hand.

Brit looked down at his hand, laughed mirthlessly, and said, “No, I’ll let you get your own ride back.” She disappeared, and left him standing alone, on a beautiful island, in an ugly mood. He raised his staff into the air, took flight, and swung low over the waves, on a direct heading for Atlantis. In his state of mind, he made even flying look like a miserable ordeal.

25.

On a chilly fall day in Butte, Montana, Jimmy materialized next to a dumpster in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. He closed his brand new laptop and tucked it into his brand new leather suitcase. He straightened the jacket of his brand-new,
blue
-
pinstriped
suit and walked around to the front of the
restaurant
.

He looked up at the restaurant’s sign, which read “Pork Chop John’s.”

Good,
he thought.
I’m where I want to be. Now let’s see
about when.

The sign featured a cartoon drawing of a pig wearing a crown. According to the sign, the pig’s name was “Pork Chop King.”
Not much of a king,
Jimmy thought,
if all he promises is to let people eat his subjects.

Jimmy entered the restaurant and casually perused the menu, which was made of plastic-tab letters and hung on the wall above the electronic cash register. It still thrilled Jimmy to see things like cash registers work in his vicinity.

Jimmy ordered a fried pork chop sandwich and a
ten-piece
order of pork nuggets. He paid with an extremely beat-up
twenty-dollar
bill he’d purloined from Agent Miller’s wallet when nobody was
looking
. It was wrinkled and filthy and taped together, but it was also minted in 1998, and would not arouse suspicion.

As he waited for his meal, he nonchalantly picked up the top copy from the stack of
Penny Press
classified ads next to the door. The issue was dated September 21, 2003, just as he’d expected.

Jimmy ate his sandwich and pork nuggets. He had the
dining
room to himself for most of the meal, but toward the end two men drove up in a dirt-encrusted Geo Metro. One was a bit heavy with thinning hair and a beard. The other was thin with shoulder-length hair, black-rimmed glasses, and an inhaler. They loudly discussed which fried pork items to purchase, and whether they wanted to get a fried egg on top for an extra dollar. Jimmy
discarded
his last three pork nuggets and left, grateful to not have to listen to their inane chatter anymore.

Jimmy walked across the parking lot, across the street, across another parking lot, and up to the entrance of a small apartment building. It looked like it had originally been a motel, but had been converted to more permanent housing within the last few years.

Jimmy walked to the door of the unit farthest from the office and closest to the road. The room where plumbing noise would be least likely to bother the neighbors. Jimmy put his ear to the door, hearing nothing, as he’d expected.

Jimmy raised a fist to knock politely on the door, but then thought better of it. He turned his fist sideways, shifted his weight and pounded on the door loud enough to be sure he’d be heard even from the far corner of the apartment.

After a moment passed with no answer, Jimmy pounded again. In the far distance, Jimmy heard a faint voice say, “One minute! I’m in the bathroom!”

“Yes,” Jimmy muttered, “I expect you are.”

Jimmy waited patiently for a moment, then heard the
deadbolt
and saw the doorknob turn. The door swung open, and for the first time in thirty years, from Jimmy’s point of view, he was standing face to face with Tyler.

Back when he was chairman of the wizards of Camelot, Jimmy had made a point of talking to every wizard in his area about their lives, their interests, and where and when they had come from. Knowing that Tyler was from Butte, Montana, had made finding his address simple.

Tyler had not aged a day. Literally, that was one of the chief perks of being a wizard. Jimmy had aged quite severely, which was one of the chief drawbacks of being an ex-wizard who had spent thirty years mostly outdoors. For a moment Jimmy was worried that Tyler wouldn’t recognize him, but that fear evaporated when Tyler said, “Oh, it’s you.”

Jimmy said, “Tyler, it is so good to see you again!”

Tyler silently turned around and retreated back into his apartment. At first, Jimmy wasn’t sure if he was being invited in, or being told to go away, but Tyler hadn’t shut the door, and eventually he gave an irritated look back over his shoulder, as if to say,
Well, what are you waiting for?

Jimmy was surprised by Tyler’s robe. It was different than he remembered. It was still red and purple vertical stripes, but now it had gold decorative accents, and much fancier cuffs. Jimmy asked Tyler what time he was living in currently.

Tyler said, “The Renaissance,” but offered no further
information
.

Jimmy did some fast mental math, and realized that Tyler had lived through at least three hundred years of European history since they’d last seen each other.

While Tyler’s robe was a surprise, his apartment looked exactly as Jimmy had expected. It was packed half full of bulk-packaged rolls of toilet paper and paper towels. The other half was mostly filled with full garbage bags, stuffed with empty
packaging
, used paper towels, and hundreds of cardboard tubes.

Tyler’s bathroom habits were legendary amongst the wizards. He was the only time traveler who had never gotten used to using the bathroom facilities of the distant past, simply because he had never tried. Instead, anytime he had to move his bowels, he simply teleported and time traveled back to this apartment, and used his modern bathroom
, like a civilized person
. He would appear, use the restroom, disappear, then, as far as the apartment was
concerned
, reappear immediately, and use the restroom again. After another round of lightning-speed mind math, Jimmy
figured
that if Tyler hadn’t skipped any large chunks of history, his toilet must have been in constant use for well over a year by now. He considered asking to see the toilet, then decided that, should the opportunity arise, he would specifically ask not to see it.

Tyler sat on a bale of rolls of toilet paper, and looked sullen. Jimmy knew that of all the wizards, Tyler had the most reason to hold a grudge against him. He’d put Tyler through a torturous ordeal. He’d “ghosted” Tyler, making him invisible and insubstantial, and as a side effect, making him feel as if he had spent many days suffocating. After being caught, Jimmy had tried to kill Tyler and all of the other wizards and had never shown any real contrition after he failed. He chose to let Tyler set the tone for this conversation, and he did so by staying quiet until Tyler chose to speak.

“I knew you’d show up eventually,” Tyler said.

“How’d you know that?” Jimmy asked.

“Because you showed up in my past and told me that you’d visited me in the future.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “That’s a pretty good hint.”

“You said,” Tyler continued, ignoring him, “that you’d come to me in the future and convince me to help you.”

Jimmy said, “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Tyler remained expressionless. “I always wondered what you, of all people, could have possibly said to me that convinced me to help you.”

Jimmy was on shaky ground here. Clearly, Tyler remembered some interaction between them that had taken place in Tyler’s past, but was still in the future, from Jimmy’s point of view. “I never told past-you what I say right now to make you want to help me?” Jimmy asked. “Interesting.”

Tyler winced. “Me telling you that just now is why you won’t tell me, isn’t it?”

Jimmy said, “Probably. Sorry.”

Tyler sank slightly, and rolled his eyes. “Okay,” he said, “you’re here now. At least I’ll find out. Go ahead, say what you’re going to say. Say whatever it is that convinces me to help you, the man I hate most in this world.”

Jimmy shrugged, took a breath, and said, “Well, Tyler, you’ve lived through my future. You know what I have planned. You already know that you will give me the information that I need, and clearly, it can’t work out too badly for you, since you’re still here, so, I guess the best reason you have to help me is that you know it’s going to happen, and you might as well get it over with.”

Tyler sagged even further and said, “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

26.

For the second day in a row, Brit the Younger traveled to the
summit
meetings on foot, accompanied only by Gwen.

For the second day in a row, Phillip and Martin were waiting at the door when they arrived.

For the second day in a row, Brit pretended not to see Phillip as she passed.

For the second day in a row, Gwen made eye contact with
Martin
, who nodded a polite but curt greeting and went on
his way.

All four of them were particularly edgy this morning, because for the second day in a row, there had been no further attempt on Brit the Younger’s life. There were a few theories as to why this might be, and none of them was particularly pleasant.

It might be that the attempted murderer was taking his time, planning his next attempt, an attempt that might have some chance at success. Perhaps the perpetrator had given up and would make no further attempt, which would be a good thing except that they might never find out who it was and would never be sure that they wouldn’t strike again. It could be that whoever it was was in fact planning another, possibly deadlier attack and was waiting to make them think he or she had given up so that they’d drop their guard.

The sad fact was that no matter which of those possibilities was true, their course of action was the same. They had to go on about their business, remain ever vigilant, and slowly go insane from the suspense.

What was worse was that the sharp decline in attempted Brit-killings had started at almost the same moment as when Brit’s electronic surveillance system had started. If and when another attempt was made, Brit would be able to look back through the database her new program was creating and find out who was using magic at that precise moment. All of the
sorceresses
in Atlantis and every delegate in town for the summit were
registered
and easily identifiable. The next time someone tried to kill Brit, they’d know who did it, which put them in the strange position of hoping for a violent attack that never seemed to come.

Brit took her seat next to her fellow delegate, Ida, the
president
of Atlantis. Once seated, Brit fell into her new
routine
of making a point to look everywhere,
anywhere
but at
Phillip
. She wasn’t angry at Phillip specifically. She was angry at the
situation
.
Unfortunately
for Phillip, he was the only part of the situation that cared that she was angry; therefore, when she chose to
withdraw
from the situation, it effectively meant that she was withdrawing from him. She missed him, but she knew that making up with Phillip would just give Brit the Elder a happy memory of making up with Phillip, and that felt like
Phillip
was cheating on her. She knew that made no sense, and that just made her angrier, both at herself for acting crazy and at Brit the Elder for making her crazy.

Most people can’t have their cake and eat it too. Phillip couldn’t have his cake without eating it too, and as such, he would get no cake at all.

Phillip and Martin sat at their table and waited for the day’s meetings to begin. Beside them, Gilbert and Sid, the tuxedo-clad dandies representing London in the late 1800s, sat down with broad smiles on their faces, placing their top hats on the table in front of them, their white gloves folded and tucked neatly inside.

“Well,” Gilbert said, “I think that went well for our friends from Camelot today. Brit the Younger is clearly warming up to Phillip.”

“What do you mean?” Sid asked. “I thought she ignored him again.”

“Oh yes! You are right Sidney. She ignored him. Quite so. A finer demonstration of the art of ignoration, I’ve never seen. But did you not notice how she ignored him?”

“Sorry Gil, it seems I’m ignorant of the art of ignorance. Please enlighten me, that I may take note of her future ignorances.”

“See, Sid, that’s your problem right there. You fell into the all-too-common trap of watching the ignorer. In this case, as in all cases, it is worthwhile to pay close attention to the ignored. Regard our friend, Phillip, the object of the lovely Brit’s
inattention
.” Both magicians turned to study Phillip in mock
studiousness
.

Gilbert continued, “Note the ostentatious sky-blue wizard robe. Observe the ridiculous matching pointy hat. Take a mental picture of his clichéd wizard staff, festooned nonsensically with its bottle of what appears to be V-8 juice. Would you not think any rational person would find it difficult to ignore a man with such a buffoonish appearance, even if he weren’t accompanied everywhere by an assistant who dresses like a disco traffic cone?”

“I see your point,” Sid said. “It’d be easier to ignore a thumb in your eye.”

“Indeed! That, Sidney my friend, is why the fact that the enchanting Miss Brit is going to the trouble to actively ignore Phillip must be interpreted as an act of love.”

“Love?” Sid asked.

“Indeed!” Gilbert said, rapping his cane on the table for emphasis. “In fact, in Phillip’s case, I suspect it’s the only act of love he ever receives.”

Sid shook his head. “I think you’re right that to ignore a
buffoon
like Phillip would take so much effort that it could only be motivated by love, but I don’t think it follows that Brit must logically love Phillip. She might love ignoring him.”

Gilbert considered this. “I will admit, it would be a pleasure to ignore Phillip.”

Gilbert and Sid looked at Phillip and Martin, who did not look back, or move in any way.

“Oh dear,” Gilbert said. “Phillip and Martin appear to be ignoring us.”

“Which, by your reasoning, means that they love us?”

“I fear so, Sidney.”

“What do we do?”

“We’ll just have to signal our lack of interest in the only way they seem to understand, by continuing to watch every move they make.”

Brit the Elder called the meeting to order. As she started her daily opening remarks, Martin leaned over to Phillip and
whispered
, “What could we have done to those guys to make them hate us this much?”

Phillip muttered, “I don’t know, but we have a few hundred years to come up with something good.”

The day’s meetings included a debate on how to best prevent the abuse of power.

A delegate from the United States in the 1890s, whose
costume
indicated some experience as a traveling patent
medicine
dealer, was arguing in favor of draconian punishments for any time traveler, sorcerer, or wizard, who was found
abusing
their power, up to and including, in extreme cases, death. He argued that one could never stop all abuse, but that fear of
punishment
would keep the vast majority of people in line, and that those who did still abuse their powers would do so more quietly, and to a lesser degree.

He, said, “I know that most of you have no stomach for violence.” He paused to smooth his thinning hair. Martin was impressed at how comfortable he looked. This man was clearly used to speaking to large groups of people. “The beauty of capital punishment,” he continued, “is that you only have to do it once to make your point.”

Toward the back of the hall, someone let out a quiet cough that echoed through the hall. The man speaking shrugged, as if the cougher had made a valid point. “Okay, once in a while. Occasionally. We’ll only have to kill people occasionally, but only people who deserve it. Evil people, who really have it coming. People who we can all agree need to be put down like rabid dogs, and we will do it humanely, and without taking any pleasure
in it.”

There was a long silence. Martin was still impressed with how relaxed the patent medicine salesman from the Old West seemed. Clearly, he was used to large groups of people not
believing
him. The silence was broken, not by crowd noise, or Brit the Elder’s gavel, but by a hollow popping noise followed by a groaning creak.

All eyes turned to the source of the noise, one of the large statues (Hedy Lamarr, in this case) that decorated the outer perimeter of the room. It had been damaged at its thinnest point, near the base, and to nobody’s surprise, it was slowly toppling over, directly toward the table where Brit the Younger and President Ida sat.

The delegates from the surrounding tables instinctively scattered, as did Ida. Brit had been through this before, and did not look concerned. She just rolled her eyes and said, “Really?! We’re back to this?”

The statue came down directly on top of her with a deafening crash, followed by the now-familiar cloud of dust and flying debris. One could just make out the form of Brit, sitting on the floor in the rubble. Her chair was destroyed but she was unharmed, as expected. What nobody expected was the hail of arrows that zipped over their heads from the back of the room, plunged into the heart of the dust cloud, and struck Brit the Younger.

Despite the familiarity of the attack, Martin was instantly in full panic mode. He knew the instant it started that this time was different somehow. In a frenzied half-second of observation, Martin saw that there were more arrows than ever before, easily a hundred of them, if not more. The arrows didn’t seem to have conventional, sharp arrowheads, which in the past had bounced off of Brit’s skin harmlessly. Instead these arrows were tipped with some formless black material. Martin suspected tar. Whatever it was, the arrows were clinging to Brit, rather than bouncing off. The arrows each seemed to trail a thin cable, no bigger around than Martin’s pinky finger. On their own, the ropes were most likely not very strong, but the hundred of them together were likely quite strong indeed, an idea that was reinforced when the cables pulled tight and dragged Brit across the floor with great speed.

Brit tumbled sideways. Martin’s eyes followed the ropes, and saw them terminate at the far end of the hall, disappearing into a seemingly unbroken section of the wall. Martin glanced back to Brit, and saw that Phillip had already sprinted the distance between them and was lunging to grab her. He got a grip on Brit’s outstretched hand and planted his feet on the floor. Phillip’s staff tumbled to the ground. He discarded it to grip Brit’s free hand with both of his own.

The ropes pulled tight, lifting Brit off of the ground. She tried to extend her other arm, but couldn’t. Her entire left side was covered with the tar arrows, and she wasn’t strong enough to fight the pull from the ropes.

Phillip slid across the floor like a water-skier, barely slowing Brit’s progress toward the wall. Without thinking, Martin reached into his pocket, and in one deft motion withdrew and threw his beanbag with all of his might. It shot forward like a line drive and hit Phillip square in the back. As the beanbag made contact, Martin said “Bamf,” and was instantly standing behind Phillip.

Phillip was still moving forward quite quickly, so Martin dove, and seized Phillip by the ankles with his free arm, which caused Phillip to fall forward and, without being able to catch himself with his hands, land directly on his face. Brit also fell fast and landed hard, then the three of them slid across the floor with no discernible change in their speed.

Martin didn’t have time to think. He just knew on an
instinctive
level that he needed to do anything he could to slow them down. His brain ran through everything it knew looking for an idea, and when it got one, he acted on it without hesitation.

Martin kept his left arm hooked around Phillip’s ankles, and with his right, he pointed his staff in Phillip and Brit’s general direction and said, “
Ekskuzi vin
!”

A foul-smelling jet of purple smoke erupted from Brit’s ribcage. In the cavernous hall, the sound was more like a pulse jet than a whoopee cushion. The spell had landed, as Martin had hoped, in a place on Brit’s body that aimed at least a bit toward the wall, so their progress did slow. Unfortunately, the jet also vectored toward the side, so most of its thrust sent Brit sliding across the hall.

Brit slid in an arc, pushing through a tangled mass of tables, chairs, and slow-moving delegates. Most of the objects Brit went through fell directly on Phillip and Martin as they were carried along helplessly behind her.

Phillip coughed in the thick, malodorous vapor trail, and shouted, “Ugh, wha . . . what is that?!”

“Something Gary invented!” Martin replied.

“Oof! Shoulda guessed.”

The three of them came to a crashing, clattering halt in a
massive
heap of jumbled furniture against the wall, but while their sideways motion had stopped, they were still being pulled relentlessly toward the portal in the wall. They were dragged
painfully
through the thicket of table and chair legs. Martin tried to hook his legs into the furniture, but that just resulted in a
portion
of the pile being dragged along with them and did
nothing
to slow them down. He kicked his legs free and attempted to get traction against the wall and the floor, trying to wedge himself between them somehow, but it was no good. He became aware that
someone
had grasped his left leg. He peeked down and saw Gwen hugging his leg to her torso with both arms, but she could get no more traction than he could, and they were all sliding toward the portal.

The purple jet sputtered out and their speed increased.
Martin
caught a quick glimpse of the path ahead and saw that the ropes, rather that extending straight out of the wall, now bent at the edge of the otherwise invisible portal and stretched along the wall until they attached to Brit.

Martin felt the stretching force on his spine increase, and their progress slowed again. He glanced toward his feet and, to his surprise, saw that Gilbert had taken hold of Gwen’s waist and Sid had hold of his. Sadly, their shiny black dress shoes provided almost no traction at all.