Wizard's Blood [Part Two] (33 page)

“
I’ll go find her. I also want to talk with Asari a bit.”

“
Good luck. I think he is in Seret. He spends most of his two-days there with Tomas. Tomas helped him after Asari learned of his uncle’s death. While the business was gone by the time Asari returned to Carta, a significant inheritance was left for him. It took some legal wrangling to get matters cleared with the lawyers. He has become moderately wealthy. These days I think Asari has a girlfriend there. He hasn’t confided in anyone I know, but why else would he be there every off day?”

Jolan wondered if Asari had gotten back with Ashreye. Jolan knew Tomas was still single, his plans having changed with regards to the young woman Jolan had met a couple of years back. Tomas was now regarded as a very eligible bachelor. Perhaps Asari was grabbing some of the castoffs. If he didn’t see him when he stopped by to talk with Buris, he would catch up with him on the next trip.

Tishe hadn’t had any news beyond showing him a working refrigerator, and confirming that Asari was currently in Seret. She hadn’t yet contacted Shyar, but would keep trying. Buris had the very large bag of Karonabark he’d wanted, and handed it over with a questioning look. Smiling, Jolan took it and explained he would be gone for at least a week because he had to take another course back on Earth.

Back on Earth he went to see Gene and handed over the Karonabark to have Gene’s chemist extract the active ingredient for him. He wanted a concentrated supply, and had asked the man to create an injectable solution for him. Gene had ordered a couple of tranquilizer pistols, and was having all of the darts coppered. They might have a very effective delivery system soon, especially if they could mix some of the animal tranquilizer with the karonabark and be able to put the wizards out at the same time they disabled them.

They jointly agreed they could release the detective in California that had been keeping an eye on Ryltas for them. They had probably learned all they were going to by now, and the longer the man continued to follow Ryltas, the more chance of his being discovered. The main result of the man’s efforts supported Randy’s belief that Ryltas was the only Ale’aldan wizard here on Earth.

Randy was about to leave and get ready for his trip in the morning when Gene brought him a surprise.

“
You mentioned this a while back, but it has sort of gotten lost in everything else that is going on. I did a bit of research and this is a highly regarded model.” He opened the large plastic box he had retrieved from the other room and showed Randy a very small two-tone pistol. This one was another Kimber, but had a very small barrel and a shorter grip than Randy had seen before.

“
It’s from their custom shop. It’s called a CDP, and is made with a composite frame, so it’s quite light. Add to the light weight the fact it is so small, it should fit your desire to have something easy to carry, yet still be effective. It’s a .45 like your other pistols. It’ll probably bounce a bit when you shoot it, but I thought you could take it along for your course and see what you think.”

Randy didn’t know what to say. He picked up the beautiful little pistol and was amazed at how light it was. He could drop it into a pocket easily. Gene had taken care of him again, and Randy had to admit his own mind hadn’t been focused very much on Gene’s request to find a way to bring him to Gaea. He promised himself to follow-up on that the next trip there.

Immediately on his return from the pistol training course he’d said hello to Janie and headed for the Nexus and returned to Gaea, where he soon found himself playing human recorder once again. This time it was a two-way transfer, as he unloaded copies of what he had learned from his recent training and received the contents of the two crystals Oscar had recorded so many years ago.

Jolan hadn’t excelled at the pistol course, and had left with a rating of “almost safe out in public” rather than “top gunslinger”, but once again he had learned a great deal. He had learned about proper holds and sighting, and how to place his shots in proper two-shot groups. The concept of firing in the approximate direction was driven out of him. He could still hear the instructor repeating his favorite line, “You can’t miss fast enough to win a gunfight.” His group size had improved and, given what he had learned, he simply needed lots of practice to become a reasonable shot. Asari would benefit greatly from the downloaded information, and Jolan had made sure they had a couple of spare crystals in case he wanted to pass the information to others. The small pistol that Gene had given him performed better than he’d expected, and was now safely stashed with Vaen along with his other treasures. He had decided to ask Janie to try and buy a couple of the full sized CDP’s to pass along to Samm for his team leaders, another request that had almost slipped away.

The downloads of Oscar’s materials he would allow to settle while he scanned through the material to see what he had learned. The next trip he would transfer select material into crystals so Vaen could distribute it appropriately, and then he hoped his transfer activities would be completed.

After his return to Earth from that quick trip, Randy had settled into the garage workshop and carefully taken the small amulet apart. It was snowing outside as he worked in the small shop, another thing that was going to make getting things done harder. Winter was going to be setting in hard pretty soon. It was good they were about finished here. He wanted to see what he could do with the damaged amplifier and scratch the itch in his mind the device caused. Then he needed to get serious about what he was going to do about Ryltas.

It took a jeweler’s screwdriver to fit the small slots he carefully cut in the screws that held the sections together. Randy assumed Oscar must have used magic to tighten the screws originally, since there was nothing he could see to grab onto, yet each of the screws was secure and flush with the surface. Trying to be as careful as possible, it took him longer than seemed reasonable, but finally he had the screws removed, and carefully pried the two sections apart. As he’d seen under the magnifier, the two parts were unequal in thickness, one acting more like a cover on top of a thicker base.

The hexagonal exterior was mirrored by the internal layout. It looked very much like some of the microstrip circuits he had seen back at the lab when he was a graduate student. The central “button” which was the part Oscar said he found, had six radial channels fanning out to a hexagonal channel halfway from the center of the device. The channels extended through the outer hexagonal channel and continued to the outer perimeter of the device, where they ended in solid silver plugs that Randy had been able to observe before opening the device. Extending a bit out from the outer channel midway along the straight sections, were six short channels which appeared to have a small block positioned partway down the length. Three of these shorter channels were badly burned, and the silver coating that covered the inside of the channel had been vaporized showing the bare ceramic underneath.

The channel itself was very oddly shaped. It had six sides, but with an assortment of shapes. The removed cover had made the sixth side, and was one of two flat surfaces, the other being directly opposite. Two of the opposing surfaces were domed shaped, and the remaining pair was an oval on one side and a peaked triangle on the other. Randy had never seen anything like it. If it was some kind of amplifier, he could see no active devices, and there was no obvious input or output.

While the physicist in him raged at not understanding the principle behind the device, his more practical engineering side only cared that he make it work. After all, whatever had caused it to burn could easily have damaged the central component. Randy could see nothing that indicated damage, and no way to open it. Fearing that fooling around with the small metallic looking button might damage a non replaceable part, he decided to see what he could do about repairing the device to see if the amplifier could be salvaged. It didn’t take long to see that the ceramic base had been cracked around the burned areas and would need to be completely replaced.

From Oscar’s notes and his own experience with the microcircuits, this was not a task for knives and files. This would need to be precision formed. It took him two days, and a couple of trips to a precision tool shop, to get the necessary measuring tools and carefully create a drawing of the dimensions of the device. Not knowing what might be critical, he wanted an exact duplicate of the original. That done, he removed the core, and placed it in a secure padded drawer in his tool box.

Next came the matter of getting a replacement made. There were firms that could do the job here, but it would be expensive, time consuming, and would probably generate a million questions he didn’t want to answer. Originally it had been made on Gaea, using magic to remove the material to form the channels. He was certain Buris would have someone who could do the job, and they would probably have better luck finding an exact match for the base ceramic material. That meant another trip to Gaea.

He had to wait a full day for the replacement to be made, and then hurried back to Earth to try and reassemble the device. Before doing so he carefully repeated his measurements to be sure an accurate copy had been made, and was pleased with the quality of workmanship. He thought even Shyar would have approved. Carefully he slipped the core into place, aligning the six small holes to the six radial channels. Then he carefully reattached the lid, this time using new screws he’d had Buris create with slots to make assembly and disassembly easier.

Randy looked at the device. The last time it had been activated, something he now knew how to do, it had burned up. It had worked on Gaea. Shaking his head, he walked out in the cold and made the jump to Gaea, stepping out into the Nexus chamber. This should be far enough, he thought, and attempted to draw power through the device. He didn’t try to draw much, but could sense it was working, which suggested the core was intact. When he tried to draw more power, he was disappointed to find he really couldn’t get much of a boost. Nothing like the gain Oscar’s notes had led him to expect.

Tuning, he thought. The stubs were for tuning, and simple mechanical duplication wasn’t going to result in a properly tuned device. The immediate question was what did he measure to look for proper tuning? He could simply play with the positions of the stubs and see what happened, but suspected that would be a long trial and error effort, with no guarantee of success. He had learned that he could regulate the draw on the device, and decided to go home and carefully see what a small draw would do there. Oscar had apparently attempted a significant draw when he activated the device and burned it out.

Back on Earth once again, Randy held the device and pondered the wisdom of his intended action. He’d rebuilt it once. The second time should go quicker, he reasoned. Carefully, he tried to draw the smallest amount of power. He could sense the device working, but other than a slight warmth in his hand, could sense no power gain.

Gene had a small lab, and after a few purchases to augment the equipment he had, Randy was able to set up a spectrum analyzer and several other instruments. Since the interior of the device looked like waveguide, he wanted to see if he could see anything that resembled electro-magnetic waves. He and Gene fiddled for the entire day, and finally found the smallest indication of something at a frequency he wouldn’t have expected. A repeat measurement in another of the channels showed something present at the frequency as well. Throwing caution to the wind, Randy broke one of the stubs free, and jury-rigged a means of precisely moving the stub. It took time to get back to the starting point, but eventually he was able to see that a small movement changed the tuning. The signal dropped off sharply, and just about the time he was about to start moving back, he suddenly found the level coming back up. He continued moving the plug the same direction, and found a significant improvement in the signal.

The next day they repeated the process for the five other channels. Soon he had all of the channels aligned to the peak he had found. Carefully closing the device, Randy held his breath and tried to draw power. He was rewarded with a marked increase in flow, and easily picked up a wrench on the table and moved it across to the toolbox. He grinned at Gene, who had never seen him this strong before.

“
It works,” Gene said in awe.

“
Seems to,” Randy agreed. “I’d like to see how much I can draw, but I think we need to go slowly. So far it doesn’t seem to be warm.”

“
Why does it work for you, and didn’t for Oscar?” Gene asked.

A good question. “I’m going to try something,” Randy said. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

Randy headed home, and made the jump to Gaea. Forewarned, and being cautious, he tried to draw power through the device. Very quickly he could feel it getting hot, and he halted the attempt.

“
Dragons!” he cursed. “It has to be tuned differently here than on Earth. Wondering why that could be, he recalled some of the oddities he had seen in some of the books back in the library in Ygooro, and wondered if there could be something subtle but fundamentally different in Gaea’s universe. Whatever the reason, if he was correct, he would have to bring the test equipment for tuning to Buris’ lab.

Back on Earth, Randy and Gene bought duplicates of the critical items, and Randy made yet another trip. After setting up, he repeated the measurements and found that, as he had expected, the tuning blocks had to be positioned differently for the device to work properly on Gaea. He could have it properly aligned for one place. He could set it up and change it if needed once he knew where it would be, but that seemed clumsy. Back on Earth, he talked with Gene about the problem. Gene suggested they could install a small battery, a couple of active devices and a switch, then they should be able to set it up for both locations, with the switch controlling the tuning. The dead battery default would be for Gaea.