The Genie and the Engineer 3: Ravages of War (31 page)

Atlantic Ocean, Bahamas

Eleuthera Island

Double Bay Beach

Tuesday, 2:09 p.m. EDT

August

“D
addy! Daddy!”
the young freckled-faced redheaded girl shrieked in delight, flying through the
air and throwing her small arms around Paul’s neck. “Lookie what I found!” she
twittered in delight.

Behind her, suspended in mid-air, dripping both water and
sand, was a seashell. As seashells went it was decent enough, though far from a
perfect specimen by any means. Still, it was the largest one that Alisha Christie
Armstead had produced so far today for her father’s inspection.

Paul hugged his daughter tightly. “That’s wonderful!” he
cried, with a huge smile. “That’s a perfect seashell! Where did you find it?!”

“Underwater, silly!” Alisha said, with a shy smile as she pulled
back out of Paul’s embrace. “I had to hold my breath and everything!”

“What a big girl you are now,” Paul praised her. “We’ll take
this one home and put it on top of your dressing table.”

“Not that one!” Alisha cried and then giggled. “I’m going to
find one biggest and bestest!” And she spun on one heel, laughing as she ran up
the beach. “Joccie! Selmie! Race you to the water!”

Behind her, airborne, two black Scottie cubes, Jocasta 1 and
Selma 1 flew along, lazily trailing the hyper-active young girl toward the
water. They had no trouble keeping up, even when Alisha, rubbing the talisman
armband on her left wrist, lifted off the beach sand, sailing twenty feet into
the air, clearing the breaking waves and diving into the clear turquoise tinted
water fifty feet off the beach.

“Careful, that smile might break your face,” Capie said as
she assumed a sitting position on a nearby beach towel.

Paul displayed a wide grin in amusement at his beautiful
wife. “She definitely is a daddy’s girl, isn’t she?”

“And you wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?” Capie
replied, in challenge.

Paul’s smile was all the reply his wife needed.

“And what will we do with two of them?” he asked, nodding at
the pregnant status of his wife.

“Ah, no!” Capie responded with a phony frown. “This one’s a
boy! He kicks too much to be a girl!”

With a laugh, Paul got to his feet and helped Capie to hers.
“Let’s take a walk while Alisha is seashell hunting.” He took her hand and
together they strolled down the beach, leaving a string of footsteps in the
warm white sand.

Five years had passed since Earth had been liberated from
the clutches of the wizards of
Errabêlu
. Five peaceful and productive
years.

Oh, to be sure, there were still wizards unaccounted for at
large out in the world. Twenty-nine by Daneel 1’s latest count. But apparently,
they weren’t much of a threat. There hadn’t been so much as a peep out of any
of them during those five years. Apparently, all twenty-nine of them had
quickly figured out what had happened to the other wizards of
Errabêlu
and had decided to keep as low a profile as possible, lest they too have their
magical powers stripped from them.

The same sort of thing had seemingly happened to their
government puppets around the world. The voices of the people were finally
being heard and more responsible individuals were being elected and appointed
to represent their constituents. And the changes in the world in just five
short years had been striking! Gone were the totalitarian dictatorships of
North Korea, Syria, Zimbabwe, and Uganda. Others were on their way down as
well.

In the United States, President McCluskie had been soundly
defeated in her re-election bid. The new President was Derek Smith, a former chemist,
data analyst, and rock climber from Portland, Maine. Paul had personally met
the man and was favorably impressed.

True, paradise had not yet descended on the world. There
were still problems in the Middle East and a few other corners of the globe.
People were still people. But even the press, clueless though they might
otherwise be, had noticed a big downward shift in armed conflicts. All the
talking heads were endlessly chattering like magpies about the growing trend of
reasonableness and the peace initiatives around the world.

One of the larger developments in Asia was China’s
announcement to leave Nepal, including the retraction of hundreds of thousands
of Chinese residents from the embattled country. Paul was particularly proud of
that accomplishment and had personally praised the Scottie team that had
“encouraged” the Chinese government in their decision.

The warm sea air blew gently over the water, stirring Paul’s
hair. In addition, the warmth of the sun on his face likewise buoyed his
spirits. He glanced over at Capie, grinning at her radiant, pregnant figure in
her maternity outfit as they ambled along the beach. He squeezed her hand
gently, eliciting a warm smile in return.

Two more days. Just two days and they would go back to work,
helping the poor and needy of Earth. To be sure, in five years, they had helped
quite a few of the Normals, delivering life-saving vaccine, averting droughts,
floods and pestilence as well as providing many other forms of sundry assistance.
And the Scotties were an enormous asset in that effort as well. But, since the
Scotties couldn’t reveal themselves to humans, and since Paul and Capie could
not reveal their magical powers, those restrictions limited all that could be
done for the needy of the Earth. However, even within those limits, there were
still an ample number of opportunities available and Paul intended to see that they
gave the maximum assistance possible.

On the other hand, Paul and the Scotties were still dealing
with the problem of all the Oni. The original estimate by Uncle Sam had been
surprisingly close, the actual Oni population coming in at 43,210 individuals.
And, just like the wizards of
Errabêlu
, the Scotties had similarly
stripped the Oni of their magical powers, rendering them “harmless”…well, in
that one particular regard.

But the problem had then become what to do with the Oni
after that. It wasn’t as if they could be released into the general population
of Earth. Their presence alone would create panic among Normals. And, too,
there was the problem that without magical powers, the Oni were simply unable
to fend for themselves in a human society. They lacked the ability for speech
as well as lacking the intellect needed to interact appropriately with humans.

Therefore, Paul had been forced to fall back on a more
imperfect solution. The Oni were transported to a few uninhabited islands
scattered around the globe. The most unfortunate side-effect of that decision
was that the Oni and their island locations required constant support and
supervision by the Scotties. The islands were too small, their ecologies too
limited to supply all the water, food, and other resources that 43,210 Oni
required. Also, there were too many humans (treasure hunters, vacationers,
geologists, environmentalists, oceanographers and other marine specialists)
wandering the globe, some of whom, eventually speaking, would visit one or more
of these impromptu prisons—unless the Scotties were present to ward them off,
of course.

Fortunately, not many of the Scotties were needed to act as
prison wardens or guards. A platoon or so for each of the island prisons was
sufficient. And with Daneel 1’s rotation of the duty, no one Scottie was going
to get stuck with that responsibility for more than a few days per year.

There was one positive aspect to the problem. Paul had been
surprised to discover that the average life expectancy of a “de-frocked” Oni
was a mere forty years. True, with magical powers, they had generally lived to
be much older, on average 350 years old. But without their powers, the Oni lifespan
was much shorter. And since they were also sex-less and totally lacking in the
ability to reproduce, then there really was no long term problem to be dealt
with. Sooner or later, the Oni would die off and the need to guard them would
simply go away. Personally, Paul planned to have a party on the day the last
one died.

His prediction concerning the world’s reaction to the
unexplained magical incidents of the war with
Errabêlu
had been largely
correct. Most of the evidence (such as the wonderful cell phone videos of
Godzilla storming the beaches of Tokyo!) had been suppressed by the governments
of Earth. In a few cases, the Scotties had pitched in and helped a little as
well. To be sure, there were a lot of stories floating around, especially on
the internet. But the public at large treated them in the same manner that they
had always dealt with ghost stories, UFO sightings, and other unexplained
phenomena of the past. It was all ignored.

Indeed, it looked as if international affairs were
proceeding along a great deal more successfully than personal ones. To be
specific, Capie and he were worried about Alisha. No two people had been more
shocked than they had been when they discovered, two weeks after she was born,
that Alisha didn’t have any magical mental barriers; that she had, instead,
been born a full wizard.

Many times since her birth, Paul had asked himself if Alisha’s
lack of a magical barrier was some type of accident or, like with recessive
genes, a very rare event. Otherwise, all that the wizards of
Errabêlu
had needed to do to create a few more wizards to swell their ranks was to have
a few children…

Which they apparently hadn’t been interested in. The having
the children part, that is. Being parents probably didn’t fit in very well with
their lifestyles. So, by opting not to have children, they had probably unintentionally
cut themselves off from adding wizards to their ranks. For which Paul was
profoundly grateful.

But none of that helped Paul with the problem of how to
raise Alisha. Needless to say, her magical abilities had created a whole host
of problems with raising her, not the least of which was to keep her away from
Normals. And especially away from Normal children. Even now, she was too young
to understand that she was “different” from other children and that she needed
to hide her magical abilities.

It helped that all of the Scotties wanted to spend time with
her, to be her friend and play games. And Alisha never seemed to tire of their
company. But both Paul and Capie knew that their daughter needed to spend time
with other children too and to learn to bridge the differences between them. If
nothing else, such contact would keep her from becoming arrogant, haughty, and
superior like unto the wizards of
Errabêlu
.

The one option they had was to immerse Alisha in stories of
nobility. In a way, Alisha was of “noble” birth, which made her situation
roughly akin to that of a princess, destined for a higher level of
responsibilities. So they had started her early on stories with those themes.
One of the first had been Mark Twain’s
The Prince and the Pauper
, but
there were many other similar stories that emphasized the duties of royalty.

Alisha loved them all. But she was too young yet to realize
how they would personally impact her. And later, her brother to be. When Alisha
did finally understand…well, Paul felt pretty gloomy about it. That would be
the day she would understand how she had been robbed of a “normal” childhood.

“Thinking about Alisha, again, aren’t you?” Capie asked, half
in accusation.

“Something like that,” Paul admitted, glancing down at the
white sand.

Capie hugged him tightly. “It will be okay. It will help
when Junior is born.”

Paul gripped his chest with one hand, feigning a heart
attack. “We will NOT call him Junior! I was thinking maybe Christopher Kenneth
Armstead instead.”

“After our fathers? The name Chris is fine with me. But I
thought you didn’t get along with your father.”

Paul thought back, to the near-death experience he had undergone
in Chicago. “Now that I’m a father myself, let’s say I’ve had a change of
heart.”

She nodded and they walked a ways further.

“So, when do you start building starships?” she asked with
feigned nonchalance.

Paul came to a sudden stop, as if he had hit a brick wall.
He stared wide-eyed at his wife.

“Starships? What are you talking about?” he asked with
contrived innocence.

Capie grinned mischievously at him. “You think I wouldn’t
find out? That little research team you put together with Gerty 2 and the money
you funneled to Japan? Ha, you silly man! I know all your tricks! And don’t
think you’re going anywhere without me or the kids! So…answer the question.
When do you start building them?”

Paul grunted and looked imploringly up into the sky. “I was
thinking maybe four years on lab research, looking at the science behind
portals. Then a few more years for the preliminary hardware…”

THE END?