Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) (18 page)

Daneel began to whine.

Paul stared at his wife for a moment in confusion. He didn’t
dare mention that he had already arranged to have all her things shipped from
the PODS container in Wichita to Perth, Australia. It might not go over too
well.

He sighed. “What’s the real problem, dear? Why don’t you
want to go to Australia?”

She shook her head in resignation. “When do you want to go?”
she asked quietly.

“In a few days,” he replied, glancing around, as if looking
for answers.

“I’ll start packing in the morning,” was her reply and then
she shuffled out of the room.

Puzzled by her reaction and feeling guilty of he knew not
what, Paul went over to Daneel. “Shush, now. It’s okay, everything will be all
right, I promise. Hush, little one,” he soothed the A.I.

Ah, but would it really?

• • • •

Later that afternoon, while a still fuming Capie was in the
bedroom banging suitcases around and dumping clothes into them in a fit of
temper, Paul remained in the relative calm of the garage to box up the A.I.
spare components. Daneel was giggling, playing with a toy fire truck by
himself, his quantum computer sitting on the other end of the workbench.

As Paul loaded one cardboard box with motherboards and qubit
processors, he quietly mulled over his wife’s sudden and bitter reaction to his
announcement of the move to Australia. He was uneasily reminded of some of the rather
nasty arguments he had experienced with his first wife, Marie, even before that
momentous day when she had declared that she wanted a divorce. Those arguments
had been different, yes, in some ways, but at the same time, in other ways, they
were remarkably similar to the one he had just had with Capie. In his first
marriage, Paul had wanted to do certain things and in a specific logical way. Marie
had wanted to do very different things and quite typically in a most illogical
manner. Ah, the major-league fights they had had!

In the other end of the house was heard an exceptionally
loud bang.

“Merlin?” he asked quietly.

The holographic image of the old wizard materialized nearby.

Paul instantly noted that, for once, Merlin was dressed in
his usual cloak and conical hat and not something more, ah, unusual or exotic.

“What’s up, my boy?” the specter asked, impassively. He
clasped his hands behind his back and waited patiently.

“Capie and I are having a, uh, disagreement,” Paul
unwillingly admitted.

Merlin snorted in polite amusement. “No surprise there. Let
me guess. It’s about your game plan, right? The one for dealing with
Errabêlu
.
About what you want to do next, heh?”

Paul blinked several times. “Yes. How did you know?”

But Merlin merely smiled shrewdly and waved a negligent hand
in the air. “Let me make a further guess. You want to do some particular thing.
And she wants to do something totally different, right?”

Paul’s right eyebrow notched up a little. “Your crystal ball
is right on target. So, what’s going on?”

“It’s really quite simple,” came the casual response. “Your
Master Plan? From Capie’s point of view, it is NIH—Not Invented Here. You
didn’t consult with her when you put it together. You’ve been making all the
decisions, dictating what to do next and where to do it. So far, your wife has
gone along with you. But she is an independent person, your Capie. She wants a
say in what’s going on.”

Paul finished wrapping the box of processors, tossing the
empty roll of tape into a garbage can before starting a new box, this one for
computer power supplies. But his hands were on automatic pilot while his mind
considered Merlin’s words carefully.

“She asked why we couldn’t stay in California, instead of
going to Australia.”

“A perfectly legitimate question.”

Paul shook his head in denial. “No, it’s not. Not really.”
And then he rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Look, Australia has all
the raw minerals needed to help me build the spacecraft. Sure, some of that is
here in California and a little more in other parts of North America. But it’s incomplete,
mostly hit and miss, especially the titanium. On the other hand, Australia has
it all!” He stomped around, looking for another roll of packing tape and found
one on the work bench. “Sure, I could bring in everything else I need from
other countries, Central and South America for instance. But it would take
longer, use a heck of a lot more magical energy for the portals, cost a great
deal more. It would probably double— maybe triple the time needed to build the
ship.”

“And that, my friend, is only the first part of the plan
that she would question,” Merlin added with a faint snicker. “Would she not?”

Paul looked up with a dumbfounded expression, and then
sighed in acknowledgement. “You’re right, I’m afraid. Yes, of course she would.
There’s no telling how much she would want to change, how—and yes, of course,
the next thing she’d want to get rid of is the trip to Mars!” he finished,
crossing his arms firmly over his chest.

Merlin offered a bemused smile. “I see! Let me make yet
another guess. You consider Mars to be an indispensible part of your plan,
right? And not open to negotiation?”

“Correctamundo,” Paul asserted, with a clenched jaw. “No
trip to Mars means no super-talismans. No super-talismans means no army of
Scotties. No army means absolutely no chance at winning this war. We might as
well commit suicide and save
Errabêlu
the effort in hunting us down and
killing us. At least that way no Normals would get hurt in the process.”

“Why not tell her all of that?” Merlin asked coolly, with a
gleam in one eye.

Paul snorted and pounded a fist into an open palm. “I can
tell that you’ve never seen

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
, where Odo explained to
Quark why he had never “coupled” before. He said, and I quote, because it
involved “too many compromises.” It’s going to be hard enough as it is,
surviving the upcoming war. Compromises would mean the continued slavery of the
human race.”

“If you explain it logically to her—“

“Logically? Hah!” scoffed Paul as he threw the roll of tape
against the garage wall, the sudden slamming noise startling Daneel.

“That’s one thing that Marie taught me, Merlin,” Paul
snarled, his nostrils flaring. “Logic, my friend, is a worthless weapon to use
in an argument of emotions.”

“Ooh, that’s a good one. I may quote you on that one,”
Merlin observed as he clasped his hands behind his back again. “Your cynicism
is getting better. So, what are you going to do, if you aren’t prepared to
compromise on your game plan?”

Paul gritted his teeth in frustration and closed his eyes.
“I haven’t a clue.”

Balcony Bar and Restaurant

Maritana Street

Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

August

Monday 5:14 p.m. AWST

T
he
Balcony Bar and Restaurant, part of the Palace Hotel, was a two story structure
on Maritana Street, one of the main thoroughfares through the city. With a
beaming smile and a “G’Day,” the waitress, Ella, welcomed Capie and Paul and
found them a table with a floral covered tablecloth next to one of the front
windows on the second floor. From that spot, the two of them could look out past
the covered balcony and see the light pedestrian and vehicle traffic on the street
below. They studied the menus for a few minutes, noting a great many
similarities to foods in the States but also quite a few differences.

There were a few other people having an early dinner around
them, but the atmosphere was un-crowded, relaxed, and the smells in the air
enticing.

Daneel was safely ensconced back in Room 208 of the York
Hotel on Hannan Street, sound asleep, at least for the next hour or so. His
late afternoon ‘nap’ was a daily routine, since he didn’t seem to need more
than an hour’s sleep every twenty-four hours. The only way Paul and Capie survived
was tag team babysitting during the night. That and a lot of magical spells to
keep themselves awake when watching the A.I. And just to make sure everything
was okay right now, Paul had created a small magical display of the sleeping A.I.
on his fake cell phone, now lying on the table. If anything happened, he would
know immediately.

Capie was frowning as she looked out the window.

“It’s so brown and dusty here,” she complained.

Ella arrived and handed out their drinks.

Paul smiled and waved a spoon at the window. “Compared to
Illinois and Wisconsin, yes. But compared to Southern California, ‘Captain,
this is the garden spot of Ceti Alpha six!’” he said, quoting from
Star Trek
II: The Wrath of Kahn
.

“And what would we like to eat tonight?” Ella asked, holding
pencil to paper.

After they gave their orders, the waitress left, taking the
menus with her.

“So,” Capie said, running a fingertip around the rim of her
glass. “You signed a lease on a commercial building here in town. And the
utilities will be turned on tomorrow. And you’re going to use that place as our
base of operations.”

“It’s not perfect, no,” Paul granted to her with a small
tight smile. “It’s a bit exposed here, from a security point of view, because we
have neighbors and we are in a small town. On the other hand, any Oni or
wizards in Australia will be near the capital city of Canberra, in the
Australian Capital Territory, literally on the other side of the continent, which
is roughly 2,000 miles away. Kalgoorlie is ready made for us. We have power,
water, a large building to operate in, and a good sized lot. The town gives us
access to food, supplies, and quite a few materials. And Western Australia has
almost all the mineral wealth we need. Titanium especially but other minerals
too including copper, gold, silver, vanadium, manganese, iron, carbon, aluminum,
tantalum, and platinum. And too, Australia has rare earth elements like
scandium, yttrium, and gadolinium. On top of all that, Australia is one of only
two places on Earth with a considerable quantity of komatiite rock, which we will
need for the super-talismans we’re going to make. The only thing we need that Australia
doesn’t have is the pallasite meteorite.”

His wife quietly studied the slow moving traffic on the
street below them.

The waitress dropped off an appetizer and some homemade
bread, and stopped at the next table to take an order.

Capie looked back at Paul. “So you are going to be busy
building the ship. What am I going to do?”

“We will continue sharing the babysitting of Daneel, at
least for the next month or so. You can also buy all the supplies we need, CB,”
he said, with a grin. “A shop-till-you-drop sort of mission. Lots of food,
clothing, soaps, toothpaste, and every other supply we might need for six
months on Mars. Buy what you can here and then do the rest of the shopping in
Perth.”

“We don’t have that much cash with us,” Capie pointed out.

“No, we don’t. Please set up an account here in town, under
our names of Peter and Catlin Neumann, and transfer in $100,000 from our new
Cayman Island account. We can always get more if we run low.”

The waitress moved away from the other table.

“But you are not going to build the ship in the building we
leased, right?”

“No, it is too small a building and the ship too large,”
Paul noted absently, chewing on a bite of his stuffed sausage roll. “We need the
building as a buildup area for the most part. I can build parts for the ship
and we can store the supplies there that you buy. Now, for the ship, I intend to
set up a construction site southwest of town, in the pit of an open mine, after
I pump the water out of it. I’ll assemble the ship there.”

“Why do we need to build a ship at all?” she asked as she
tilted the salt shaker back and forth between her hands on the tabletop.
“Couldn’t we just portal to Mars? It would save a lot of time.”

Paul cocked his head to one side, studying the expression on
her face closely.

“Yes, it would, dear,” he agreed cautiously. “And the answer
to that question is both yes and no.”

“I hate that answer.” And then she dolefully sighed. “Why is
it both yes and no?”

Taking a quick sip of his drink, Paul considered how to word
his reply.

“As you know, a talisman is not the source of the power we
use for magical spells. The talisman it just an amplifier.”

“Right,” Capie said, griping a bit. “It’s the Earth that
provides the power. You told me that already.”

“Correct. So yes, with the appropriate talisman, the Earth
can easily provide the energy necessary for us to portal to Mars.”

Capie blinked twice. “So why…oh, I get it. But not the power
to portal back.”

“That’s right. To portal back, we would need Mars to provide
the energy for the portal and Mars is not a good energy source. The gravity there
is only one third of Earth’s. It has virtually no magnetic field to speak of,
no Van Allen belts. It gets only half the sunlight that the Earth does, and it’s
cold. And the jury is still out on whether it has a molten core or not. Even if
it does, it must be really small. So, yes, we could get there. But getting back
to Earth is, ah, problematic.”

“Building a spaceship is going to take a long time,” Capie
grumbled in a low voice.

“It won’t be as bad as all that, my love,” Paul said, in a
positive tone. “McDougall’s talisman is going to be of enormous help to us. And
time is one of the primary reasons that we will use a retired airliner converted
into the spacecraft, in order to speed up the process.”

Capie produced a weak thin smile. “Tell the truth now. I’m
sure you would rather have built one of your own, from scratch.”

“You are quite right about that. A spacecraft designed and
built from the ground up would have been far superior,” Paul admitted without a
hint of modesty. “Ah, but the time element! Two or three years for the design,
another two to construct it. No, a converted airliner might be crude, but it
will get us there and save us a lot of design/construction time. And, as I was
saying, McDougall’s talisman will help out a lot. Likewise, you will have one
of the Oni talismans or two, if you like, and that will help you quite a bit
with the shopping—”

“But you still need to put together your super-talisman too,
right? And your final hardware design for the A.I.?” she challenged him. “You can’t
leave Daneel as a free-floating collection of circuit boards dangling a bunch
of wires around like that.”

“Well, yes, you do have a point, I agree,” Paul answered
with a shrug as he picked up another stuffed sausage roll. “I’ll whip up
something for Daneel, as a temporary arrangement. An A.I. final design will
just have to wait until after we get to Mars. And I don’t intend to hold the
super-talisman ceremony until we are nearly ready to leave Earth. The energy
released by that spell is going to panic all the wizards of this planet.
They’re going to turn Earth upside down looking for us and I would prefer not to
stick around and let them accidently find us.”

She sighed and looked down at the table. “Fine. Do you want
me to go with you to Alice Springs tomorrow to buy the airplane?”

“Yes, please,” Paul responded with a grateful smile. “That’s
first on our list of things to do. Then on Wednesday you can start the buying
spree.”

Capie waved a negligent hand. “Great. Lots and lots of shopping.
I’ll need your help some, working up a shopping list.”

He reached over the table to gently squeeze her hand.
“You’ve got it, CB.”

• • • •

Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory and with a
population of just under 30,000 people, lay nearly dead center of the
Australian continent and in a very desert-dry climate. Which made it the perfect
location for an aircraft boneyard.

Paul was quite familiar with such installations. One of the
largest such boneyards in the world was located in Mojave California, his
‘hometown.’ Hundreds of planes of all sizes and types were shipped and stored
there in the Californian desert, mostly because they had reached the end of
their service life or had become uneconomical to maintain in an operational
status. Ostensibly, the majority of those planes were supposedly stored against
the day that they would be needed again, but in practice, this was almost never
the case. Eventually, each such plane typically found itself stripped of all
serviceable parts and then scrapped for materials.

Alice Springs had, fairly recently, been selected to join
the short list of such locations around the world. And, although the selection
of aircraft stored there was, as yet, rather limited, they did have one plane
that Paul was very much interested in. A Boeing 737-400.

Capie and Paul arrived via portal on Tuesday morning, at 9
a.m. sharp near the front entrance of the Asia Pacific Aircraft Storage Ltd
office. They were careful not to let anyone observe them arriving in such a
fashion.

Daneel ‘floated’ along in midair behind them, electrically
powered through a spell that Paul had cast, drawing on all the sunlight energy
freely available in the unclouded blue skies in the Australian outback. On his
monitor screen, he was hopping up and down, having learned to walk only a few
hours previously. With each bounce, he clapped his hands and gleefully giggled.
Another spell Paul had placed around the A.I. would keep any Normal in the area
from either hearing the toddler screeching in delight or seeing the hardware hovering
in thin air without any visible means of support.

“How do I look?” Paul asked Capie, twisting slightly back and
forth in front of her.

Wearing a bright green and yellow flowered Hawaiian shirt,
with baggie white shorts that barely reached his knees, together with white
tennis shoes and socks, dark sunglasses and an Aussie canvas snap up hat,
Paul’s appearance was decidedly odd.

“Like a gauche tourist,” she replied, rolling her eyes.

“That’s the intent,” he said with a huge grin. “By the way,
I love that business suit on you. Shall we go in?”

The outer office was modern and air conditioned, with glass
and stainless steel everywhere in sight. With a flick of his wrist, Paul moved
Daneel over to a far corner of the room, out of the way.

An obvious receptionist, a middle aged brunette, stepped
around her desk and approached them.

“Good morning,” she greeted them with a frozen professional
smile. “By chance are you Paul DeWitt and Karen Knight?”

Paul nodded, a huge smile on his face. “We are them, yes
indeed, little lady.”

“Mr. Street is in a teleconference right now. If you’ll take
a seat, he’ll be with you shortly. Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Drink!” screeched Daneel, clapping his hands some more and
laughing. “Mommy, drink!”

“No thanks,” Capie replied with a small smile and a shake of
her head. Paul declined as well, and they took two thinly padded metal chairs
across from the receptionist’s desk. The woman failed to notice Paul waving at
Daneel.

“Hi, Daddy!” the A.I. cackled, then returned to his game of
hopping up and down.

They only had to wait a couple of minutes before a stocky
man in a business suit emerged from the inner office. His smile was courteous
but professional as he extended his hand to Paul.

“Mr. DeWitt? Ms. Knight? I’m Corey Street. Pleasure to have the
two of you here. Care to step into my office? Can we offer you something to
drink? No? Right this way.”

“Drink!” yelled Daneel again.

The inner office was pretty typical for a mid-level manager,
with a standard desk, filing cabinets, two chairs for visitors, a desktop
computer, a few licenses hung on the wall, and two family pictures on the desk.

Corey dropped into his office chair, waving a hand at the
two thinly padded metal chairs on the other side of his desk. Once again, Paul
put Daneel into a corner, away from any accidental contact by the Normals in
the office.

“Is this about the emails and letters that you sent?” the
company agent asked. “If so, I’m sorry to say that my answer is still the same.
The 737 is not for sale. I’m under contract to sell it to another party. I’m
sorry.”

But Paul already knew this would be Corey’s answer and was
prepared to cope with the problem.

“I quite understand your contract, sir,” Paul answered
pleasantly. “You’ve promised to sell the jet to a startup airline firm in Southeast
Asia. They intend to restore it to limited service as a cargo plane. The good
news is that I have the solution and it’s quite simple.”