Genie and Engineer 1: The Engineer Wizard (9 page)

Flying for three miles, Paul passed a ‘small’ mountain
ridge. Beyond that, a small stream popped into view, and he banked to follow
its course. There, ahead, was a flat bank on one side of the stream, and he
aimed the flying blanket for a soft landing.

When the blanket was on the ground, Paul crawled over the
rocky ground to the stream, which was full of bubbling, pure, clear, freezing cold
water. Dipping his cupped hands in, Paul sipped greedily, again and again. When
he finally had his fill, he leaned back and wiped his face with a shirtsleeve.

“The best water I’ve ever drank!” he exclaimed, appeased and
feeling self-assured again.

“Well done,” Merlin said, lightly applauding. “One challenge
mastered. Now, for an encore, what do you do for food? And how do you get
home?”

In the excitement of the flight, Paul had forgotten about Merlin.
Apparently, the sage had followed Paul from the mountaintop. With a snap of
Paul’s fingers and a quick mental spell, Merlin disappeared. That was enough of
him for now.

Paul smirked. “There will be time tomorrow to worry about
food. At the moment, I feel pretty good about my accomplishments so far.”

Thirst wasn’t a problem anymore, but it had taken all the
magical ability he possessed and a whole day’s worth of effort to fly to this
stream.

The sun hung low over the mountains, and Paul felt increasingly
tired and cold. Returning to the blanket, he went airborne, climbing steadily, and
returned to the mountaintop. Once there, a smiling, happy Paul Armstead collapsed
of fatigue on the mattress and closed his eyes, falling instantly to sleep.

Northeast quadrant of Pakistan

Karakoram Mountain Range

December

Tuesday, 8:11 a.m. PKT

T
he
next morning, Paul woke up late, his stomach growling in hunger. Rubbing it
with one hand, he cast a spell, forcing the hunger pains to go away. Thankfully
the spell worked as intended. Good. It was time to get control of his weight
anyway, and this was a golden opportunity to start on that objective.

But on second thought, with his newly acquired magical
abilities, what did losing weight have to do with not eating? There ought to be
a half-dozen different spells to make his body lose weight while he continued
to eat a healthy quantity of delicious calories. With a smug nod, Paul grinned,
amused at the idea. There would be time to explore his weight-control options
later, after he took care of his current situation.

The weather today wasn’t quite as perfect as it had been before.
He glanced upward at the cloud cover, which had increased overnight. It was
possible that there was a weather front moving in. He would need to keep an eye
on that possibility, though he had no idea what he would do if a blizzard were
to blow through. It wasn’t like he had a shelter to hide in or adequate
transportation to leave the area. Certainly, his flying blanket lacked the
speed and the range to take him out of harm’s way. And he couldn’t just fly to
the nearest village to seek shelter. No telling what the reaction of its
inhabitants might be if he flew in and landed in the middle of their main
street. Yeah. Right.

Paul shook his head, muttering in disgust. When he had asked
to be given magical powers, he had thought that it would make life much
simpler. With magical powers, he had expected never to want for anything again,
at least not for any material item such as food or money. With magic, a wizard
should be able to just whip up a spell and presto! His need (or want) would be
instantly fulfilled.

The reality of having magical powers seemed to be far
different from his expectations. Far different.

With a mournful shake of his head, Paul pushed his glasses
back up on his nose and got back to the current problem. What should he work on
next? Finding food? Or going home?

Hmm. As he scratched the stubble on his chin, he realized
that both of these goals involved a common solution. He needed to create a
talisman. When he had such a device, he could feed himself
and
go home!
And in either order he so pleased!

Moreover, a talisman would fit in with his long-range goal: to
help the needy of Earth. He would have to have a talisman in order to exercise
that degree of magical power.

So, he would concentrate on fabricating a talisman.

What had Merlin said? Precious metals, gemstones, igneous
rock, and meteorites. All he had was the bedrails—a poor substitute for any of
those other materials. Was there nothing else he could use?

He looked at the head and footboards of the bed.
Theoretically, the carbon in the wood could be used to create diamonds. The
carbon could be extracted by burning the wood, then concentrating it and
forcing the necessary covalent bonds. However, limited to the power of the
bedrails, the task would require hundreds of hours to perform, and only then if
he accessed the power of the diamond as it formed. Possible, but not within the
time constraints he had.

What other materials did he have access to?

Some grass, a few flowers, dirt, and rocks. Lots and lots of
rocks.

Hmm. Rocks.

If he remembered his basic chemistry correctly, rocks were
made up of silicon and oxygen, both of which were very common elements.
Therefore, on a pound-for-pound basis, they wouldn’t pack much of a magical
punch.

But here in these mountains, the rocks were likely to be available
in a variety of sizes.

He waved an arm in the air. “In the name of the Hubble and
Kepler telescopes and in the name of the Argus Array, let there appear before
me a magnified view of the closest mountainside.”

A circular display appeared at eye level, magnifying the
image of one of the mountains. Maybe the first step in making a talisman was to
find a nice big rock.

• • • •

Paul energized the blanket and flew east down the glacier to
the same small stream as before, which he then followed to the north until it grew
in size to that of a diminutive river. In front of him, on the left bank, were
entire fields of boulders that had been apparently pushed by glaciers out of
the mountains and downward along the slope. Some of them were truly huge, nearly
as large as houses.

He continued to angle the blanket downward, closer to the
river, threading past the smaller boulders as he searched for the perfect one
on which to land the blanket.

As he rounded one really large boulder, the path ahead
became more visible. Enough for him to see the flying insects buzzing in the
air not far from the water—and dead ahead in his flight path!

“Hard a-port!” he yelled, banking in that direction, ducking
his head to one side. But it was too late. A large bug swerved perfectly with
him, on the precise course it needed to fly squarely into his face, impacting
dead center on the right spectacle of his glasses.

The blow stung him and made his head snap backward. For a
moment, he lost control of the blanket, sending it into a spiral. Dazed,
blinking, his eyes suddenly watery, his face stinging as if slapped, Paul tried
to regain control but failed.

In the next instant, he hit a wall of snow, plunging into
its depths, his right arm twisted at an odd angle with a sharp pain. Suddenly,
Paul could neither see nor breathe, and a crushing weight descended upon him.

Fear gripped him in a viselike hold.

For several moments, he fought to push the weight of the
snow off, to get breathing space, but it was all to no avail! Disoriented, in
pain, and scared for his life, he struggled mightily to get free, but he could
feel nothing but cold and wetness everywhere he reached.

A small corner of his mind urged him to stop panicking, to
stop for a moment and think! It was hard! So very hard, but he forced himself
to stop moving and instead found the will to calm down some.
Think, Paul,
think
.
I am buried deeply in the snow, and I have no idea what is up or
down! How do I get out of this mess!

Nothing came to mind.

Paul’s stomach twisted in knots, and he flung his arms and
legs about all the more wildly—

—and he touched a bedrail.

With a surge of relief sweeping through him, Paul reached out
and grabbed it firmly.

Concentrating hard, he frantically visualized an explosion
in the snow around him, hurling it upward and outward in all directions. In
response, a hammer blow struck him, momentarily knocking him senseless. But he
forced himself to ignore the pain and cast another spell, to repeat the
explosion.

The hammer blow struck him again, this time much harder. On
the edge of losing consciousness, Paul fought hard to stay awake.

And then his other questing hand broke the surface of the
snow, into the freezing air above.

The explosive spells had worked! Desperately, he pushed the
snow away from his face, and gasping strenuously, he sucked in the sweet, cold
air, spitting snow from his mouth and wiping away the cold powder from his
nose. For several minutes afterward, he lay unmoving, gradually recovering with
each ragged breath, the panic slowly ebbing away as he regained his strength.

When he felt strong enough, Paul pushed away enough of the
snow around him to allow him to sit up. He had to dig with his poor half-frozen
hands, but he eventually managed to excavate himself completely out of the
snowbank.

He could see again (sort of) with his left eye. The vision
in his right was completely blocked by a gooey blob of smashed insect on the
lens of his glasses. He quickly grabbed a few handfuls of snow and rubbed the
bug carcass off his glasses, and then he used part of his shirt to wipe off the
snow. His right arm twinged with pain at every movement. Apparently, he had strained
his shoulder in the crash-landing.

Sliding his glasses back on, Paul looked up, his face
blanching to a solid white as he realized where it was he had crashed.

Just a few yards to the west, towering above the snowbank,
was a solid wall of granite. If his flight path had taken him just five feet
higher, he would have missed the snow entirely and smashed headlong into
unyielding stone. To the east, a little down the slope, lay the edge of the
field of boulders. If his flight path had been five feet lower....

And to the north, the snowbank quickly petered out to a bed
of dirt and gravel. Crashing there would have also not been very healthy.

A near thing. A very near thing, indeed. Gulping with a
suddenly dry throat, he gave a prayer of thanks for his fortune of having
avoided serious injuries, perhaps even death itself.

Taking a huge breath, he cast a glance down toward the
river, noting that several of the flying bugs were still in the air, hovering
over the riverbank, close to a few scraggly green plants growing at the water’s
edge.

Suppressing a sudden desire to scream obscenities at the
insects, Paul continued to brush the snow from his clothes.

“An addendum to the manufacturer’s note,” he muttered
sarcastically. “Next year’s model of the flying blanket should also include a windshield.”

• • • •

On foot, Paul found the boulder he wanted, a little farther
from the water, with a nice smooth section of dirt flanking it. He reassembled
his flying blanket in that location.

Turning to face the boulder, Paul was impressed with its size,
an easy twenty feet in diameter with a third of it still buried in the ground.

And at more than 100 tons, it was more than large enough to
suit his purposes. When he put one hand on its cold, gritty surface, he giddily
sensed the nearly 300 megajoules available at his disposal.

Grinning wildly, he snapped the fingers of his other hand
and uttered a quick incantation, creating a bubble of warm, dry air around him.
He used another spell to suck the moisture from his wet clothes and a third
spell to ease the pain in his right arm.

Then he sat at the foot of the boulder, keeping his hand in
contact with it. It was now time to experiment with portals, which was essential
in his plan to build a talisman.

• • • •

Merlin had told him that a trans-spatial portal connected
two areas of space-time directly and that such a portal could be used to
transport a material object from one location to the other, without the need
for it to travel through the intervening space.

There were ample examples of similar devices in science
fiction. The wormholes of
Stargate SG-1
and the fold-points in Michael
McCollum’s
Antares
series were but two of such cases in point that came
almost effortlessly to mind. Paul had no idea how far back the basic idea went.
Perhaps Lewis Carroll was the first to use it in
Through the Looking-Glass
and What Alice Found There
. Maybe it went back further than that.

It didn’t really matter. Paul’s immediate need, now that he
had the power to create a portal, was to master the use of them in order to move
stuff around. Including the most important item of all—himself.

Raising his free hand, he pointed to a clear area a few
yards away. “In the name of
Stargate Atlantis
puddle jumpers,
Star
Trek’s
“The Guardian of Forever,” and
The Time Tunnel
, may there be
a portal over there.”

A brilliant flash of light caused him to wince in surprise.
When he looked back, a strange sight greeted him.

There were two elliptically shaped circles, roughly ten feet
apart. Both of them were a light silver color, their edges a very soft white.
The one closest to him was the most circular, perhaps the diameter of a
grapefruit, tilted thirty degrees from the vertical and positioned a good ten
or so feet off the ground. The second circle was far more elliptical and much
larger, perhaps fifteen feet long by three feet wide. It lay nearly horizontal,
only a few inches off the ground. Presumably, these two circles were the same
portal, simply viewed from two different perspectives.

Paul shook his head in disappointment with a wry half-smirk.
“‘Oh, yeah. Nothing piques my interest more than repeated failure,’” he said,
quoting Jack O’Neill’s sarcastic comment from a
Stargate SG-1
episode.

Yeah. Obviously, it was going to take some practice to get
it right. Working on a talisman would just have to wait a bit longer.

• • • •

For two hours, he struggled with portals, creating one after
another, each one improving on the one before. Well, most of the time, anyway. Casting
all the spells involved was hard work. Twice, he stopped to walk down to the
water for a drink and to take a short break.

There seemed to be a certain knack to creating portals that
worked properly. Grimly, he patted himself on the back for the progress he was
making, but he vowed to keep at it until he had mastered the skills involved.

When he was confident that the portal spells were working
properly, he worked on separating the endpoints of the portals farther away
from each other. This turned out to be easier than he expected. For portals
connecting to a location out of line-of-sight, Paul also discovered that he
needed to be somewhat familiar with that location to accurately visualize what
the terrain looked like. That was a little difficult to do, especially for
locations he had never been to or previously seen, but he worked it out. Fairly
soon, he was opening small portals to remote locations such as New Delhi,
Tokyo, the Black Sea, a South African beach, Machu Picchu, San Francisco Bay,
and Anchorage, Alaska.