The Genie and the Engineer 3: Ravages of War (26 page)

“Smart thinking,” Merlin added, winking at the Scottie. He
turned back to Paul. “Okay, so you know where you are now. How do you get out?”

Paul looked around at all the Scotties, floating near him.
He could sense their faith in him. They expected him to pull a rabbit out of
the hat, or, in this case, to come up with a bright idea that would extract
them from imprisonment in a pocket universe.

Paul rubbed his jaw. “‘When confronted with a difficult
problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to this question: How
would the Lone Ranger handle this?’”

Ω

They discussed ideas for hours without coming to any
significant conclusions. And they tried a variety of spells, especially
experimenting with different portal spells, trying to find something that would
help them escape. Nothing significant came from their experiments.

Even worse, Merlin informed them that the pocket universe
could not sustain itself forever, that at some time in the future, it would
collapse and disintegrate. The effects on anything living trapped inside would
be fatal. The whole situation reminded Paul of a
Star Trek: The Next
Generation
episode, “Remember Me” where Wesley Crusher accidently trapped
his mother in a warp bubble, which slowly collapsed inward on her. Of course,
in the end, she managed to escape unharmed. Paul was not so sanguine concerning
their circumstances. In their case, they didn’t have The Traveler to help out
in a pinch. Paul’s sense of impending disaster disheartened him.

At his insistence, he and the Scotties took a brief break,
to collect their thoughts before they tried again.

Floating by himself for a minute left him time to think of
the outside world. What was happening out there? Had Daneel 1 and 4th Brigade
of 1st Division, I Corps managed to drill down to the lower mantle? Had they
stopped
Errabêlu
and then hopefully captured the evil wizards? Or had
the worst happened, and
Errabêlu
had won the battle, imprisoning most,
if not all, of the Scotties into pocket universes like this one? The
uncertainty gnawed grievously at him. More than anything else, Paul wanted to
find a way out of this trap, to return to the real world and continue the
fight. The hopelessness of the situation only served to feed his feeling of
despair and misery. There had to be a way out of this trap, there just had to
be!

Paul did not want to spend the last few hours or days of his
life spinning round and round in circles inside a pattern of portals!

Round and round in circles. Hmm. The tiny man at the back of
his head was at it again. A tiny voice was trying to tell him something. Paul
reached forward to grasp the idea, only to have it slip beyond his reach. He
pounded his head with the palms of both hands but it did no good. The idea
disappeared entirely.

Geez! Even his own subconscious mind was working against
him!

Another idea occurred to him, a devious one. He rubbed his
jaw. It might work.

Paul waved a hand. “In the names of Deanna Troi, Dr. Peter
Silberman, and Dr. Alfred Bellows, may a virtual reality avatar of myself be
created, to truthfully answer all questions of my conscious and unconscious
mind.”

A visual copy of himself formed a few feet away, but rotated
at a 45 degree angle, staring indifferently off in another direction, into
empty space.

With a tweak of his fingers, the avatar aligned itself in
his plane and facing him.

Arcee 77 drifted closer, apparently curious. “Dad, what is
going on?”

Paul held up a hand to silence her. “Paul Armstead, do you
know who I am?”

Like a zombie, the avatar nodded slowly. Without any
emotional inflection at all, the image of himself answered. “You are the real
Paul Armstead.”

Paul nodded. “And do you know where we are?”

“Yes. We are trapped inside a complex geometric three
dimensional shape composed of trans-spatial portals.”

“That’s correct.” Paul cocked his head to one side not
knowing what to expect for an answer to his next question. “Do you remember a
few minutes ago, an idea that nearly formed in our subconscious mind, an idea
that might have helped us escape from this trap?”

“Yes, of course,” the avatar replied impassively. “In your
subconscious, you were comparing yourself to a hamster running inside a
spinning cage.”

The mental image came forcefully to his conscious mind, and Paul
instantly realized that this indeed was the idea that had tickled his mental
processes a few minutes earlier. But he failed to see how hamsters would help
their situation.

“Why did I think of hamsters?” Paul asked.

“Because hamsters in a cage makes you think of water wheels
and those make you think of electric generators,” the avatar answered.

Stunned, Paul’s jaw dropped open. Geez, he could be such a
first class idiot!

He waved a hand and the avatar disappeared.

“What was all that about?” Arcee 77 asked.

“Get everyone over here,” Paul grimly ordered. “I know how
to break us out of this trap now.”

Ω

Crowded together, the Scotties and Merlin waited patiently
for Paul to explain his idea.

He told them of his mental image of hamsters and how it compared
with an electric generator.

“But Dad,” Omega 777 protested. “We are not in an electric
generator! And even if we were, how would that help?”

“Patience, grasshopper,” Paul said, eliciting a snicker from
all the Scotties present. “We aren’t generating electricity. That is true. But
our constant passage through all these portals is generating something else!”

“Neutrinos!” chorused several Scotties at once.

“Sure but how does that help?” Rachael 222 asked.

“If we string ourselves out in a long line, each of us can
map the level of neutrinos we generate as our bodies transit through the
various portals,” Paul explained. “Not all the portals will be equal. Some will
generate neutrinos with different energy levels than others. It will take some
computational power on our part, but eventually we can map the entire portal
structure of our pocket universe.”

“And this will help how, exactly?” Merlin asked, looking a
bit puzzled.

“We only need to break one portal link in the entire
structure to let us escape,” Paul told them smugly. “If we know how the
structure is built, we can focus all of our efforts on one portal link. Break
that and we escape.”

The Scotties all grew hands and arms and clapped for joy.

Merlin beamed from ear to ear. “Taught that boy everything
he knows! Does an old man proud, so he does!”

Ω

It did take a while. Fortunately, the geometric shape was
less complex than Paul feared. A hectohexecontadihedron with 306 portals.
However, there were a large number of possible trans-portal pathways.
Errabêlu
could have shoved them down enough of these pathways and kept them away from
the open doorway until they were ready to close and lock it shut. It all made
sense.

The Scotties did all the hard math, since they were, in
essence, computers. Their calculations also identified what they believed to be
the weakest portal length in the entire structure.

In order to focus their energies on that one portal, they
again strung themselves out in a single line, one aligned with the shortest
pathway around the hectohexecontadihedron using the least number of portals
possible but a pathway that included their target portal. Then they began
moving quickly through that pathway, achieving a fairly significant speed. As
it happened, a Scottie passed through that portal every half second.

Timing their passage, each Scottie that passed through the
portal cast a burst of magical energy at the exact moment of passage. The
stress placed on that portal began to accumulate, especially since the entire
structure was weakening with age anyway.

Paul yelled, “‘Full power! Give me
everything
you’ve
got!’”

“‘If I were holding anything back, I would tell you!’”
simultaneously chorused the Scotties, quoting Lennier’s response to Sheridan in
the
Babylon 5
episode “Messages From Earth.”

In less than five minutes, the portal link broke, revealing an
access to the outside world.

The Scotties began to scramble madly, diving through the
open portal in wild abandon. Paul stopped to help pull through some of the
injured and unconscious units.

When it was his turn, Paul was no less enthusiastic to see
the real world again.

His exit through the portal left him crawling in wet green grass.
As he got to his feet, Paul found he was only a few yards away from several graves.
Glancing around, he recognized the cemetery as the Stonewall Memory Gardens, a
couple of miles south of Stony Ridge.

The sky above them was blue and clear of cloud formations.

Paul turned to Arcee 77, a few yards away, who he noticed
was hovering near the grave of US Congressman Jay W. Johnson.

“Let me know when you have a link with anyone else,” Paul
requested, as he looked around the cemetery again, noting how quiet and
peaceful everything seemed to be. Internally, he was vastly relieved at their
escape, indeed almost euphoric. “We’ve been out of contact for nearly a day. It
would seem things have been happening in the meantime.”

Paris, France

Castille Paris Hotel, Duplex Suite

33 – 37 rue Cambon

Friday, 7:02 a.m. CEST

June

T
he early
morning sun was just beginning to peak through the gaps in the window drapes.
Paul lay fully stretched out in bed, enjoying the luxurious feel of the sheets,
and the sublime softness of the pillow. Most of all, of course, he enjoyed
having Capie at his side, snuggled up warmly against him, her left hand on his
chest, as she softly breathed in his left ear. His degree of happiness and
contentment seemed to know no bounds.

Too bad his wife was still asleep. Well, it wouldn’t be long
before she woke up.

Paul was glad that the last three days were behind them now
and, starting the previous evening, that the two of them were now enjoying a well-earned
vacation.

When they—meaning 1st Division, I Corps and Paul—had escaped
from the pocket universe trap on Saturday, they did indeed discover that many
things had happened.

First, Daneel 1, Gort 737 and 4th Brigade had, to be sure,
drilled 650 miles straight down and managed to tap the power of Earth’s lower
mantle, far larger than the upper mantle and thus a far greater source of
energy for their magical spells. It had been a very near thing.
Errabêlu
had managed to imprison nearly thirty thousand Scotties in pocket universes
scattered around the area, and to injure and incapacitate a few thousand more.
With Paul’s disappearance, Daneel 1 had been on the verge of canceling the
operation entirely, on his own authority. It was only the rapid progress of the
crustal drill that had encouraged the Scottie to stay in the fight for as long
as he had.

With their one major advantage negated,
Errabêlu
’s
resistance collapsed and the remaining Scotties were able to quickly surround
Stony Ridge, closing off all avenues of escape and capturing over a hundred
wizards and ten thousand Oni. All of the captives were stripped of their
talismans and moved to the Azkaban prison, now guarded by several battalions of
Scotties. The back of the organization was broken now,
Errabêlu
’s
existence a thing of the past.

For nearly a day following the battle, Daneel 1 and the remaining
Scotties had searched relentlessly for Paul and the missing Scottie units.
Capie had been contacted, of course, and had rushed to help in the search. The
nature of the pocket universe traps were unknown to them, so they had no real
idea of where to look. Attempts were made to interrogate the captive wizards of
Errabêlu
but, as it turned out, most of those individuals did not know
the secret either. Only a few of the Conclave within
Errabêlu
possessed
that knowledge. And not one of them had been captured.

While thousands of Scotties were searching for Paul, other
thousands were recovering the injured from the battlefield. The butcher’s bill
was terribly high. 4,321 Scotties sustained injuries to one degree or another,
432 of them would require major work including new hardware components for
their repair. And 43 Scotties suffered catastrophic damage and would need a
complete rebuild of their hardware and reconstruction of their personalities
using their stored backup memory files. That part still saddened Paul the most.

After his escape and armed with the knowledge of how to find
and break open the pocket universes, Daneel 1 led the search efforts himself.
The good news was that he had been able to find all the missing Scotties,
including the pocket universe, nearly on the verge of collapse, containing
Bishop 911 and his platoon. Fortunately, none of the platoon was injured, only
badly frightened. It would take a few weeks to put everyone back to rights,
especially the 43 Scotties that needed a virtually complete rebuild.

The worst part of the last three days was the tongue-lashing
that Capie had given him, for heading off into the heart of the battle. He
endured it as stoically and as quietly as he could. After all, he understood in
his heart that she scolded him out of her love for him and out of her fear of
nearly having lost him. She had every right to be mad at him.

Nevertheless and notwithstanding, Paul felt that he had made
the right move. Had he not personally joined the battle, he might never have
discovered the nature of the pocket universes that
Errabêlu
had created.
At the very least, Paul would have lost Bishop, his platoon, Jarvis 186 and
most of I Corps, 1st Division, and probably would have lost a lot of other
Scotties from the other divisions as well, before those that were left could
have secured a proper withdrawal. And without knowing how they were trapped and
without his having access to the area, all those captured Scotties would likely
have died when their pocket universes collapsed a couple of days later.

Moreover, the war might have stalemated then and there, with
Errabêlu
still in control of most of the other countries. That outcome
would have been a pathway to disaster.

So yeah, Paul had made the right choice. However, he found
it prudent not to argue any of that with Capie.

Some additional bad news arrived the previous evening from
Daneel 1. He had opened a microportal to the hotel and displayed his image for
Paul on a small 32 inch view screen. Paul remembered his exact words, quoting
as he did from the
Star Trek
episode “Space Seed.”

“Dad,” Daneel 1 said, “‘I have collected some names and made
some counts. By my estimate, there were some 80 or 90 of these young supermen
unaccounted for when they were finally defeated. Would you reveal to war-weary
populations that some 80 Napoleons might still be alive?’”

Of course, Paul had already known that they had not captured
all of the
Errabêlu
wizards. But he had not known that there were that
many missing!

The organization itself might be defunct, but the war would
go on, at least until they could capture more of those missing wizards. The one
thing he was sure of was that they would not be found in interstellar space on
a nuclear-powered DY-100 class ship!

Paul felt confident that it was only a matter of time before
the remaining wizards made their next move. In the meantime, Daneel 1 had
positioned a string of Scotties in low Earth orbit, watching ever diligently
for the bursts of neutrinos that would mark the use of magical energy emissions.
Maybe they would get lucky and catch more of them before they could create any additional
mayhem.

Maybe, but deep inside his soul, Paul doubted it.

Ω

On Wednesday morning, Capie and Paul reluctantly finished up
their mini-vacation in Paris. She grudgingly left for Africa, returning to her
humanitarian efforts, this time taking all of the remaining 55 gallon drums of MBE
Drug from the Mount Logan storage and a full Division of Scotties with her.
Paul half-heartedly left Paris via portal for Washington DC. His intent was to
check up on how repairs were coming on all their injured Scotties. He figured a
trip to see the injured might help lift their spirits.

Of course, Paul took Daneel 1 and Daneel 2 with him. He
suspected that they would enjoy the visit as well.

Before leaving Paris, Rommie 451 dropped by to tell him that
all her team’s preparations were made and that they were ready to remove Yuan
Wu and Hamadi’s magical powers whenever Paul was ready to have it done.

However, first things first. The trip to Virginia would come
first to the warehouse they had rented in Landmark. Later, he would coordinate
with Daneel 3 on strategic efforts to find and apprehend the still missing
Errabêlu
wizards.

His Scotties came first.

It turned out to be a good thing, his visit to the injured
Scotties. They cheered him up more than he did them. That had not been Paul’s
intent, but it was certainly the end result.

Many of the injured units would be back in full service
before the month was over with. In some cases, a few Scotties would have an
extended wait, there being a real shortage of some special parts needed for
their complete repair. New fabrication shops were being set up around the globe
by teams of Scotties, just to make critical replacement parts, up to and
including new CPUs themselves. If the Scotties were going to stay in service
for the next few hundred years, they would need a constant source of such components.

Ω

At 2 p.m., Daneels 1, 2, 3, and Paul portaled to the Azkaban
prison. Rommie 451, Talos 22, and Daryl 71 met them in the warden’s office. 

“Hi, Dad. Welcome to the Rock again,” Daryl 71 said, his
face beaming from his holographic face.

Paul grimaced at the poor pun. “Ha-ha, son.” He glanced
around the room. “I understand you’ve made some improvements.”

“Yep, that we have. We had to—what with all the new
prisoners we’ve been sent. The prison has been expanded; most of the new space
is underground, of course. We’ve more than tripled our room.” He extruded an
arm from the side of his cube and used it to point in several different
directions. “There are tunnels leading from this chamber to all of the wings of
the prison. We’ve segregated the prisoners into three groups: men, women, and
Oni. After the first week, we discovered that the Oni were just too violent as
prisoners. They were constantly causing us trouble so we’ve put all of them
into stasis fields. It cut down on our food and water needs too. Now the prison
population is more manageable. I’d love to give you the fifty cent tour, let
you see everything.”

Paul raised a hand and smiled. “Well, we aren’t really here
for that. Perhaps at a later date.” He turned to Rommie 451. “You’re ready?”

“Yep,” Rommie 451 answered, if anything, with a larger smile
than that of Daryl 71. “We’ve created a whole separate wing of rooms for this
project.”

Daryl 71 couldn’t seem to restrain himself. “I’ve got to
say, it’s exciting, the work she is doing. Just thrilling. It gives me goosebumps.
Well, if I had real skin, it would give me goosebumps. Turning wizards into
Normals. What an idea! Brilliant, positively brilliant. Oh, yes, just come this
way and I’ll lead you right to the lab.”

Rommie 451 smiled and her image produced a small shrug. Paul
nodded in the direction of the corridor and they fell into step behind Daryl 71.

He escorted the group to a large unfurnished gray rock room
several floors down, guarded by a team of Scotties. Hamadi and Wu were chained
to chairs which had been carved from solid rock. Both of the
Errabêlu
wizards wore tired, pained expressions.

The Daneels joined the other Scottie cubes but declined to
project their human images, preferring instead to observe Paul’s interview of
the two prisoners.

With a quick spell, Paul sat on an invisible cushioned chair
in front of the two dejected looking wizards and smiled pleasantly at them.

“Hello,” he said pleasantly. Yuan refused to meet his gaze. Hamadi
produced a small shrug but didn’t reply.

“Akbar? May I call you Akbar?” Paul politely asked Hamadi.
“I would like to talk with you for a few minutes. I can either talk to you or
to your avatar. Which would you prefer?”

At the mention of the word ‘avatar’, both men flinched.

“I can speak for myself,” Hamadi replied frostily. “What is
it you want?”

Paul considered how best to approach the subject. “Back in
Transylvania, you threatened to kill both my wife and I. Were you serious?”

The
Errabêlu
wizard wrinkled his nose in distain. “It
wasn’t anything personal! Just business. It would have been quick and as
painless as possible. It still will be too, once I am rescued, I promise you
that, despite all the pain and inconvenience you’ve caused me.”

Paul chewed on his answer for a moment. “You expect to be
rescued?”

Hamadi stared back at him in astonishment. “Of course I do! Silly
question. Do you really think you can win this war? Crazy you are! Nobody can
stand up to the wizards of
Errabêlu
. I admit that your metal monsters
here are quite formidable so it should be quite a battle, yes. But the outcome isn’t
even in question.”

It was more or less what Paul expected the other man would
say. Even as a prisoner, Hamadi’s arrogance and condescension knew no bounds.

“And when you’re back in Europe,” Paul went on, “you will
continue with your preparations for World War III, correct?”

Hamadi chuckled softly for a moment. “So you know about
that, do you? Well, I guess it isn’t much of a secret. The signs are
everywhere; any fool can see that! But it’s for the good of
Errabêlu
, yes?
To be sure, Normies are going to die. Can’t be helped. But their loss isn’t
important. It’s the way things are, the way the human race has been for most of
Earth’s history. You’ll see. Oh, I forgot, you won’t be there. Well, take my
word for it. It will.”

His words verified Paul’s theory. The only effective ways to
stop the wizards from starting World War III would be to imprison them all or
kill them…or, thanks to Rommie 451 and Talos 22, strip them of their powers. It
was time to test the theory and Hamadi had just proven to Paul that, in his
case, it was fully justified.

Paul turned to Yuan Wu. “And you? Do you agree with him?”

Wu continued to stare straight ahead, ignoring him.

Paul signaled to the three Daneels. “I would like your
inputs, please. As I see it, there are three choices. Imprisonment, death, or
conversion. I vote for conversion. Opinions, please?”

Hamadi glanced around, puzzled. “What’s this conversion
business?”

Daneel 1 spoke one word firmly. “Conversion.”

Daneels 2 and 3 said in unison, “We agree.”

Hamadi was growing increasingly agitated. “What’s this
conversion nonsense?!”

Paul nodded at Rommie 451 and stood up. She grew two arms from
her cube and approached Yuan Wu first.