Off to Be the Wizard (9 page)

“So, you don’t have to work?”

“No more than a stage magician has to wave a wand and say
abracadabra
.”

“So, what kind of work do you do?”

“You’ll see. I have an appointment for later today. But first, let’s finish the tour.” Phillip swept aside the curtain leading to the next room and beckoned for Martin to follow.

The second room was dark. Thick, dark fabric hung from the walls. On the fabric were crude finger-painted markings and symbols. To the people of this time, they must have looked quite mysterious. Martin recognized many of them: the prism from the cover of
Dark Side of the Moon
, Icarus from the Led Zeppelin album cover, and the Van Halen logo were all instantly familiar. At the back of the room there was another door, partially obscured by the curtains. In the center of the room was the stereotypical crystal ball on a table, only the ball seemed to be partially recessed into the surface. A cloth covered the table and extended all the way to the floor. “Pretty nice, huh?” Phillip asked.

“Yeah. I bet this is pretty convincing,” Martin said.

Phillip nodded. “You haven’t even seen the best part.” He walked around to the far side of the table and sat down. He was just visible in the dim light filtering in around the edges of the curtains. There was an audible click, and suddenly a blue light emanated from the crystal ball, illuminating Phillip’s face eerily from beneath. The light pulsed and flickered irregularly.

“That is really cool.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Come look at it from this side.”

Martin carefully walked around the table until he stood behind Phillip. He looked into the crystal ball and there, distorted in the glass, he saw a blue light and white letters that said:

**** COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2 ****

64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE

READY

Martin laughed out loud. Phillip smiled broadly and pulled aside the tablecloth. There, mounted on a tray beneath the table, was a Commodore 64 with the power light glowing red. Next to it was a box with two circular appendages rising from its top, cradling the handset from an old school dial telephone. They shared a good laugh. “Wait, you haven’t even seen the best part yet! Go back around to the other side and sit down.”

Martin sat in what was presumably the customer’s seat. Phillip’s face, the crystal ball, and the hand-painted glyphs were the only things his dark-adjusted eyes could make out.

Phillip paused and said, “Now watch, as I summon the demons!” He lowered his eyes, then there was a soft clicking noise which Martin instantly recognized as a keyboard. There was a distant, horrifying screeching noise, followed by what could have been the distant tolling of some horrific bell, then a growling shriek of a thousand damned souls. The sound subsided and the crystal ball pulsed blue and white for a moment before settling into a brilliant white light.

Phillip looked up from the crystal ball. “I am now connected to CompuServe!”

When they stopped laughing, Martin shook his head. “I can’t believe you leave this stuff here and live somewhere else. I’d want to guard the computer 24/7.”

“I have good reason to live away from my work.”

“Which is?”

“That there’s almost no real work. Our main job as wizards is to convince people that we’re doing important, mysterious things all the time. It’s not hard, but the downside is that when people don’t know what you do, they don’t know what you don’t do. If I flipped that sign on my door around to say
in
, within twenty minutes some gormless dung-sifter would be in here asking me to magically sift his dung. Even without turning over the sign, soon, I promise you, someone will come knocking just because people saw us come in. The last thing I want is people getting the impression that they can call on me day and night to
magic away
all of their problems. They need to know that when I’m home I’m not at work, and when I’m at work I have more important business to attend to. ”

“So our main job is to look busy.”

“Yes, and sometimes it takes more effort than actually being busy.”

“But still, is it wise to leave the computer …”

“You should get into the habit of calling it
the oracle
, or
the all-seeing eye
, anything but
the computer
. You’ll just confuse people.”

“And calling it gibberish won’t?”

“Oh, it will, but it will confuse them in the way we want it to.”

“Fine. Do you really want to leave
the fount of mystical wisdom
unprotected?”

Phillip nodded sagely. “Martin, you see this door behind me?”

“Yes.”

“Walk through it.”

Martin sensed a trap. He carefully walked around the table to the door. Phillip turned around in his seat to watch. Martin reached his hand out to open the door. His hand nearly touched hunk of rope that passed in this time for a knob and stopped. His hand couldn’t quite reach the door. It was as if an invisible pane of unbreakable glass held him at bay. He explored with his hands. The barrier completely covered the doorway.

“If we ever get tired of being wizards, we could make a killing as mimes, eh?” Phillip said, standing up. He gently pushed Martin aside, then opened and walked through the door. Martin tried to follow, but couldn’t. Phillip came back. As he came through the door, Martin could see a staircase beyond, leading upward. Phillip reached down and turned off his Commodore 64. The crystal ball went dark. Phillip walked back out to the main shop. “If I’m not here, nobody can come into the shop at all. I hope people try, to be honest. It adds to the mystique. If I’m here, as many people as can fit can come into the shop or the crystal ball room.”

“Can I set up force fields like that?” Martin asked, his eyes wide.

“You’ll be able to do it after you’ve passed the trials.”

“How many people can go upstairs?”

“Only me.”

“Why? What’s up there?”

“Nothing.”

“No, seriously, what’s up there?”

Phillip lost any trace of a smile. “Oh,
seriously
! You’re asking me
seriously
what’s upstairs. Then I’ll tell you. There is
seriously
nothing upstairs.”

“Nothing, or nothing you want to tell me about?”

“From your point of view, those are the same thing. Now, if you’re finished wasting our time over nothing, we have work to do.”

“You said we didn’t really do any work.”

“No, I said we work at looking busy. You want to do something every day. Preferably, it’ll be something easy that you can make a big deal out of.” Phillip made sure his powder blue pointed hat was on tight. He grabbed his staff. There was a knock at the door. “Ugh, never fails. Someone always shows up right as you’re trying to get going. You ready?”

Martin looked himself over. “I don’t think so.”

Phillip said “Perfect! You’re an apprentice. You’re supposed to look confused. Follow my lead,” and he pushed the door open.

There was a small, filthy man preparing to knock again. Phillip practically toppled him over. “Oh, sorry Hubert. I’m in a rush!”

The man held up the dirtiest hands Martin had ever seen, beseeching Phillip. “Please sir, it’s about the dung.”

“I know it is. Look, Hubert, we’ve been through this. I can’t use my powers to sift the dung for you. I have other matters to which I must attend.”

“But Master Wizard, the dung …”

“Yes, you’ve told me. In the future you’ll know to check the dung’s viscosity before you agree to sift it.”

Hubert looked lost. “Viscosity?”

“Yes, you know. Its … you’ve been in the dung sifting business your whole life. What word do you use to describe how easy or hard it is to sift a pool of dung?”

“Ah, you mean its
siftability
.”

“Yes. I suppose I do. I have to go now Hubert. My apprentice and I must help contain an ancient evil.”

Hubert turned to Martin. “Oh, Mr. Phillip has an apprentice!” He attempted to shake hands with Martin. Martin, for his part, had never in his entire life wanted so badly to not shake a hand. He considered bowing, but that would only bring his face closer to the hand. He was so off balance that he just blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“Do you really sift dung for a living?” Martin asked.

“Oh yes, the business was passed on to me by my father,’ Hubert replied.

“You must hate him.”

“Oh yes, very much!”

Phillip growled loud enough for everybody to hear, “Come, apprentice, we must contain the ancient evil!”

Hubert said, “You just said that.”

Phillip grabbed Martin’s hand, said, “It bears repeating,” and pointed his staff toward the sky. Like a shot Phillip and Martin left the ground and sailed off beyond the rooftops.

“Do we have to hold hands?” Martin asked.

“Oh, grow up.”

Chapter 13.

Once the shock of taking flight and of holding hands with another grown man had subsided, Martin really enjoyed flying. It was much smoother than his rudimentary hover program. They zoomed over the rooftops until they reached the edge of town. Now they were gliding along over the forest about twenty feet over the treetops.

Martin was trailing along behind Phillip in a posture that suggested he was hanging by one hand, but in truth, he didn’t feel his weight at all. Gentle wind resistance had pushed him back but his grip was in no danger of failing. Phillip was holding onto Martin with his left hand. His right was extended before them, holding his staff at the midpoint and extending its two halves to their sides like wings. Martin watched. It became clear that Phillip was steering by tilting the staff.

“Is this as fast as we can go?”

“We can go much faster, but if you get above thirty-five miles an hour the wind becomes unpleasant. Besides, we aren’t going far.”

The rest of the trip was spent in silence. Before he agreed to training, Martin had seen a brief sample of what Phillip could do, and of course, he was keen to avoid going back to his time to deal with the small army of federal agents converging on his parents’ house, but this was the first thing he’d seen that made him actively want the training. He wondered how long it would be before he learned to fly, and what other things he would learn.

The trees ended and a patchwork of small farms spread out before them. They veered to the left, lost some altitude, then came to a gentle landing next to a rundown stone hut with a shaggy-looking thatched roof. “All right,” Phillip said, straightening his robe, “don’t say a word. Just follow my lead and do as I say. This won’t take long.”

Phillip knocked on the door. From inside there was the sound of yelling, a cat hissing and objects falling. Slowly, the sounds got louder. Finally the door opened, revealing an old woman. She was small and thin-boned, but she didn’t look fragile. She seemed to be made of twisted wire and beef jerky. Her dress was the color of mud, and she was barefoot. A cat was perched on her shoulder, deploying every claw it had to stay there, hissing nonstop.

“Hello, Miss Abigail, how does this day find you?” Phillip asked slowly and loudly, smiling like a used car salesman. Her reply was loud and made up mostly of vowel sounds.

“I see,” Phillip said. “I’m told that you have need of my services again.” She nodded and emitted more vowel sounds, punctuated with a few sprays of saliva. The cat hissed its agreement.

“Your goat again, I assume?”

This time the vowels were yelled at greater volume and the saliva was launched with more force. She gestured wildly, flailing her arms while the hissing cat tried desperately to keep its perch.

“Of course, I’ll be happy to help. I’ll let you know when it’s done,” Phillip said. She nodded, the cat hissed, and the old woman shut the door. Phillip turned back to Martin. “There, the worst is over. Follow me.” Phillip walked around to the back of the house. There were two patches of ground surrounded by rough, wood fences. A gate connected the two fenced areas. The gate was open. In one pen there was a goat, standing still, staring at Phillip and Martin.

“What now?” Martin asked.

“Now we move the goat from one pen to the other. Usually the goat moves to the other pen on its own, but every now and then it refuses, and Miss Abigail sends one of her neighbors into town to get me. I got word yesterday that I was needed, so here we are.”

Martin shook his head. “So, when you said we were going to contain an ancient evil, you meant we were going to put a goat in a pen.”

“No, I meant we were going to do what Miss Abigail wants so she won’t come into town herself to get me.”

“How will the townsfolk react if they find out that Miss Abigail is the ancient evil?”

“They know Miss Abigail. I expect they’ll thank me. Now, on to business. Marty, how would you go about moving that goat?”

“Well, we could go in there and shove it. Could be that just trying would scare it so that it flees into the other pen.”

“Yes, but I suspect Miss Abigail tried that. No, she sent for a wizard, so we have to be sure to move the goat the way you’d expect a wizard would.” Phillip held his staff with one hand and pointed at the goat with the other. In a deep, booming voice, he said, “Levi objekto!” Slowly, he raised his hand, and the goat lifted into the air, staying in perfect alignment with his hand. Phillip moved his arm smoothly, changing his aim from the airspace above one pen to the airspace above the other, and the goat moved through the air. It would have been almost majestic if the goat weren’t flailing its legs wildly and bleating at the top of its lungs. Phillip started lowering the screaming, squirming goat, then stopped short.

“Martin, would you please go close the gate? If I put him down and the gate’s still open he’ll just run back to the other pen.” Martin climbed over the fence, keeping an eye on the levitating goat. It was impressive just how constantly and loudly the goat could bleat. As he closed the gate and tied a slipknot in the rope that held the gate shut, he heard Phillip laugh and the bleating getting louder. He turned and saw that the goat was gliding up behind him, a whirling tornado of hooves and teeth. Martin fled, and the flying murder goat followed him against its will. Martin realized that Phillip was using the goat to chase him around the pen.

Martin yelled, “Dude! Not cool,” as he vaulted the fence. Phillip put the goat down as gently as he could, but it was difficult to do while laughing. “I really don’t appreciate being treated like that,” Martin said.

“That’s all right. I appreciate it more than enough for both of us.”

Martin shook his head. “I don’t know, man. The goat didn’t seem to like that.”

“You wanted to go in and shove it by hand. Would that be more fun for the goat? Or you, for that matter?”

Martin conceded the point.

Phillip went back to the hovel’s front door and knocked. There was a distant, dismissive sounding shout and some hissing. Phillip yelled goodbye through the closed door and soon they were back in the air.

“So, what now?” Martin yelled over the wind as they flew above the treetops.

Phillip yelled back, “We’re done with work for the day. Everyone saw us leave on important business. Miss Abigail can tell people that we levitated her goat, if anyone can understand her. The illusion has been maintained. If we weren’t in training, we’d be free to take the rest of the day off.”

“So we’re going to start my training, then?” Martin asked, not bothering to hide his excitement.

“Yes,” Phillip said as he steered them to a landing in a clearing. “Step one is to find you a staff.”

They spent nearly an hour poking around the undergrowth looking for a fallen branch that was tall enough, thick enough, and straight enough. It was a pleasant way to spend a day, and they fell easily into conversation.

“Preferably, you want it slightly thicker at the top, with a good place to mount some sort of mysterious object,” Phillip said as he poked through the underbrush with the end of his staff.

“Like that bottle of red stuff on yours. I was going to ask you what the deal was with that.”

Phillip held his staff by the end and extended it so that its top and the corked bottle were closer to Martin’s face. “When the locals ask me what it is, I tell them it’s a vial of dragon’s blood. Since you’re asking, I’ll admit that it’s a salad dressing cruet I bought in a department store. The red stuff is Tabasco sauce.”

“Really?”

“Really. If they don’t believe it’s dragon’s blood I pull the cork and let them smell it. That usually convinces them. One time I got caught putting some on my dinner. I thought I was in trouble, but everyone just thought I ate dragon blood, so in the end it helped sell the image.”

They lapsed into silence for a while before Martin spoke again.

“What can you tell me about the trials?”

“Not much. Sorry. If I tell you what the trials entail, you’ll only concentrate on those parts of the training, and it’s never a good idea to teach you the test. All I can tell you is when you’re ready we will go see the chairman, there will be a feast in your honor, all the wizards who can make it will attend, then the next morning, you will face the trials. If you pass, you’ll be given full access to our shell program and you’ll be a wizard.”

“And if I fail, I get sent back to my time without any access to the file.”

“Yes, but focusing on failure just makes you more likely to fail.
When
you succeed, you’ll have tremendous powers and the freedom to go anywhere, and do almost anything you want.”

“Almost anything?”

“Yes, as I said earlier, we sort of self-regulate, but there are certain things that are taboo. We’ll cover all that later. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”

Martin reached down into a bush and pulled up a likely looking stick. “How about this one?”

“Not straight enough.”

Martin threw the stick back. “So, who’s the chairman?”

Martin thought Phillip hadn’t heard him and was about to repeat the question when Phillip said, “Jimmy’s his name, but the locals call him Merlin.”

Martin was thunderstruck. “So, there really is a Merlin?”

“No! There really isn’t a Merlin! There really is a Jimmy, who found the file two years after I did and turned up in this time less than a week after me. I got here and found that they already had the Arthur legend and Merlin, so I just made a nice low-key life for myself in Leadchurch. Jimmy makes a beeline for London and becomes the court magician and advisor to King Stephen. Stephen had just lost Brittany to the Plantagenets, so he was willing to listen to suggestions. Eventually Jimmy convinced him that the Arthur legend was actually a prophecy, and talked him into the changing the name of his son, the heir apparent, to Arthur. Since the kid’s name was Eustace, he didn’t argue. Then, to top it all off, Jimmy changed the name of London to Camelot.”

“He can’t do that!” Martin shouted.

“Well, don’t tell him that when you meet him. He’ll be very disappointed, since he already did it nine years ago.”

“But, we can’t just change the past like that!”

“Martin, we can’t not change the past. In theory, everything we do has an effect, whether it’s a small thing, like talking to a tailor you meet on the road, or a big silly thing, like introducing an inn full of peasants to the marvels of cling film.”

Martin blushed a bit. “Yeah, I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

“I know, we talked about that. Thankfully, you are thinking now.”

“And I’m horrified.”

“Yes, that’s how I know you’re thinking.”

“So, Phillip, how are we going to fix it?”

“Fix what? The timeline? The space-time continuum? Gnarly, unfillable plot holes?”

“Yes. All those things!”

Phillip sat on a conveniently placed log. “They don’t exist.” He indicated a spot on the log next to him. “Have a seat. This is pretty heavy stuff.”

Martin sat beside him.

“You knew time travel was possible, which means you tried it, which means you almost certainly met yourself.”

“Yes.”

“Thought you’d be taller, right?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a cliché for a reason. I’m sure you figured out that cause always preceded effect from your point of view, so you couldn’t really mess up your own future.”

“Yes. So that’s how it is with the timeline, eh? We can’t do anything that messes it up because we’ve already done everything, right?”

“Well there are two answers to that question.
We don’t know,
and
No, certainly not.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about the file and how things work. Most wizards spend their spare time trying to figure things out, and it can be a full time job if you let it be.”

“Most wizards?”

“Some of us have other projects.”

“Is that what you have upstairs in your shop? A project?”

“I told you, there’s nothing up there. Don’t change the subject. Anyway, when I came back here, I was extremely careful. I knew my actions didn’t seem to make any difference to the timeline, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Then Jimmy shows up and starts changing huge things willy-nilly.”

“What happened?”

“Aside from Jimmy and me having a huge argument, nothing. Martin, nothing we do seems to affect the future at all. In the last ten years the entire country has called London Camelot. All of the official dispatches, all of the ledgers all say Camelot, yet if you go back to your time, you’ll find Camelot’s still a myth and London’s still London.”

“How’s that possible?”

“We just don’t know. Some think that something happens later that erases all of this from history and puts things right. Whatever it is, in the future it’s already happened, so we see the fixed reality, but back here it hasn’t happened yet, so we’re free to muck about all we want.”

“That’s a good explanation.”

“But it’s not true, and I’ll tell you why. Predetermination. If that explanation is true, it means that everything we do was set in stone hundreds of years before we were born. It means we’re not individuals, just robots running through pre-programmed responses, and I can’t accept that.”