Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) (30 page)

When she had finished, a sorrowful Paul had shared his part
of the story with her, including how Daneel had saved both of them and paid the
ultimate price for having done so.

At nightfall, they watched a reddened sun sink slowly behind
an inky tempestuous sea. By mutual agreement, they portaled to the Four Seasons
Resort at Bali Jimbaran Bay, in Indonesia, an international five-star hotel
with spectacular vistas of Jimbaran Bay and Mount Agung. After dining at the
exquisite Oceanside restaurant, they retired for the night to an elegant and
charming villa. Despite the superlative accommodations, neither one of them
slept at all well that night.

• • • •

“Thank you, Dom,” Capie sincerely told her husband two days
later.

Fresh from their return from Indonesia and parts of Western
Australia, the two of them were standing in the Staging Area, not doing much of
anything at the moment. Just standing there, in the late afternoon sun, looking
at the
Sirius Effort
and all the hardware and supplies just lying
around.

Paul cocked his head to one side, puzzled. “For what, CB?”

“For not saying ‘I told you so,’” Capie said, with a heavy
sigh.

“You did what you felt to be right,” Paul said, folding his
arms and giving her a shrug of his shoulders. “What you felt to be necessary.”

She sighed, looking down at the ground. “So, what do we do
now?” she plaintively asked. “All this effort. All of this cost. All of the
time spent. Was it all for nothing?” Capie strolled over to the ship, reaching
out to lightly touch one of the engine nozzles.

Paul shrugged listlessly before replying. “Daneel’s hardware
is still intact. I can resurrect his files from storage, use the California
supercomputers to rebuild him.”

“But why?” Capie challenged him, but in a deadpan voice,
lacking any real emotional tones. “If he can’t handle magical powers, what’s
the point? What’s the point of all of this?” She nodded at the ship. “Or the
trip to Mars. If there are no Scotties, if there can never
be
any
Scotties, then why bother. Face it, Paul. You need to re-evaluate your plan. We
might possibly need a totally new one.”

Paul grimaced but said nothing.

Capie turned from the ship and sighed. Obviously, her husband
needed time to reach the same conclusion that she had.

“Let’s stay in Hotel York tonight,” she suggested with a
small smile. “In the morning, when you are ready, we need to talk, make some
decisions.”

Paul again failed to say anything, simply nodding.

Capie formed the portal back to Kalgoorlie, taking Paul by
the hand, and with another understanding smile, led him through.

• • • •

The next morning, as Paul ducked into the bathroom for his
morning shower, Capie rolled gently out of bed and walked over to the room’s
single window.

Pulling open the heavy curtains, she noted with surprise a
large picture frame sitting on the window ledge, the back of the frame in her
direction.

“What’s this?” she asked, touching her throat in surprise.
“Did Paul do this? I wonder.”

And she reached out, grasping the frame and turning it
around. It was actually quite heavy and bulky but she managed to spin it around
without the use of a magical spell.

“It’s a mirror! Oh, a perfectly lovely mirror too! I wonder
if Paul was planning to give it to me as a gift and he forgot, during
everything that has happened. Such a nice frame too!”

She gripped the mirror, lugging it from the window sill over
to the room’s small desk, parking it there so that it leaned against the wall
but now facing the room.

“There!” she declared with a cocky smile, stepping back
farther away from the desk to admire her handiwork. “Much better than the
bathroom mirror. I can do my hair and makeup in here.”

Seeing the mirror reminded her of the small Truth Mirror
that had been used to interrogate her and her smile faded away, her lips
curling, her eyes cold and hard.

“Hamadi! That venomed beetle-headed varlet! That churlish
lily-livered toad! That villainous misbegotten scullion!”

“Me lady, whoa! That last one, never have I heard before!
Inventive! Appropriate too!” exclaimed Ariel-Leira as she materialized in the
center of the mirror. This time, she was wearing a long flowing white dress,
with lots of lace and loose folds. Combined with her jet black hair and eyelashes,
the effect was quite stunning.

Capie froze stock still in total surprise, her mouth
dropping slowly open, her eyes as large and as round as DVDs.

For several seconds, she was unable to say a word.

“Your tongue, cat got?” Ariel-Leira asked with a knowing
smirk. 

“Who the heck are you?” Capie was finally able to whisper.

“Me, little ole?” the mirror woman asked in feigned
innocence, and an arrogant chuckle. “Mirror folk, never met before? Shame it
is. Loss is yours.”

Paul picked that moment to pop open the bathroom door and
walk into the room, sans clothing or even a bath towel.

“Honey, have you seen my razor? I could have sworn—”

“Whooot whooo!”

The wolf whistle, not from Capie to his left, instead came
from his right, from the desk. Belatedly, he realized that the mirror woman was
there, with her eyebrows raised and displaying a wide wicked grin.

“Oh, my…!” Paul blurted out, his face turning red as he spun
and dashed back through the open bathroom doorway.

“New sights, he promised!” the mirror woman loudly and
laughingly proclaimed in a wide stance, fists on hips, elbows wide. “Nice
delivery! Not bad, the derriere either!”

Capie shook her head, flushing her confusion away. “Hey,
that’s my husband you’re talking about!”

Leaning forward slightly, Ariel-Leira took a closer look at
Capie, nodding with a smile. “Woman in stasis field, you are! Meet you nice is.
Very poorly treated by Hamadi, you were. Your husband and you, helped to
escape, I did. Great fortune, you had, catching him. For a wizard, none too
shabby.”

And then she smiled.

“Woman to woman, we should talk. For you, information I
have, interested you might be in!”

• • • •

Much to the amusement of both women, Paul’s first act, when
emerging from the bathroom fully dressed, was to take the mirror and return it
to the window ledge, facing outward. Then bowing deeply, he escorted a grinning
Capie into the bathroom in order for her to take her turn.

While his wife was thus occupied, Paul took the opportunity
to go online, surfing the web for news updates, checking his bank accounts and
also his email.

It was when Paul checked his newest email account, the one
under the name of Peter Newmann, that he noticed a new message from Daneel,
only a few hours old, where the subject line said ‘Surprise! Please read right
away!’

A new email from Daneel? What was going on here?

He opened the message, but it consisted solely of a link to
a Google Drive video file. He clicked on it and a popup appeared.

“Hi, Dad,” Daneel said, his image inside the window.

Paul froze, not comprehending at all what he was seeing.

“Huh? What?” he blurted out, rubbing his chin with one hand.

“Dad, this is a recorded message, one that I am
creating…well, that I created just before we left Australia to look for Mom.”

Paul continued to sit there, staring bug-eyed at the
display, his mouth dropping open.

“Daneel? Daneel, is that really you?
DANEEL
!?”

“What did you say, honey?” Capie asked, emerging from the
bathroom, wearing a white terry cloth bathrobe and running a comb through her
hair. She touched her throat in surprise when she saw the image on the
holographic screen. “Is that Daneel?”

“If you are seeing this,” the image of Daneel said, “then
that probably means that something happened to me during the search for Mom. I
can only hope that you were successful, that you found Mom and brought her
back.”

Paul shook the cobwebs out of his head and forced himself to
think. So this was a recording he was watching, one that Daneel had made before
they went to Romania? That made sense. But how? Oh sure, this was probably a
triggered email, waiting to send itself to his account in the event that Daneel
didn’t erase it later on. Reaching out slowly, Paul tried to touch the image of
his son. But this was just a video image. Of course. How had he forgotten that?

“It’s a recording from Daneel,” Paul explained to Capie as
she moved around the bed, getting a closer look.

“I hope that I did not let you down in any way,” their son
said before giving a mournful sigh. “That’s the problem with these pre-recorded
messages. I really don’t know what to say since I don’t know what happened. So
let me get to the point. I created a download of all of my coding, archiving it
in several computers on the net. The IP numbers will be sent to you in another
email. I know that you have most of the spare components needed to put together
a new quantum computer. So, if you are still interested in the Scottie
program…. Well, I guess that’s up to you.”

Paul could only stare in disbelief as the image of Daneel
snapped off, the display once again showing a Google email page.

Daneel’s coding was still intact!?
Hallelujah
! Daneel
was still
ALIVE
!

“Does that mean that Daneel is still alive? That you can put
him back together again?” Capie asked incredulously, her hand up to her mouth.

“Yes!” Paul answered with enthusiasm. “Well, sort of. Humpty
Dumpty really can be put back together again! I still have his quantum computer
too. Nothing wrong with the hardware, at least not until we get to the Scottie
stage. We’ll figure that part out later!”

He turned to face her, leaning forward to take her into his
arms. “I can have him back together and running again by this evening! Maybe
earlier than that! Oh, this is great news!”

Tears came to Capie’s eyes and she hugged Paul back fiercely.
He abruptly pulled away.

“So the sooner I get started—”

And he snapped open a portal, practically diving through it.

“I’ll be in the Staging Area if you need me,” came the echo
of his voice just before the portal closed.

• • • •

Paul finished rebuilding the quantum computer in
midafternoon, considerably beating his original estimate. He could have built a
new unit out of spare parts (he had two complete sets, built back in San Jose),
which he had brought with him to Australia, just in case Daneel needed a spare
part or two.

But Daneel’s original set worked just as well. After all,
his death had apparently been an incompatibility problem between his software
coding and his magical powers. A sudden thought made Paul rub his chin in
thought. Okay, maybe it could have been a conflict with his hardware instead.
That was for later to find out. What was important now was to restore Daneel as
he was
before
he had been given magical powers.

So all that was needed to accomplish that was to download
the coding from the sites Daneel had given him and feed the files through a LAN
port to the old hardware, reconfigure all the file pointers and then initialize
the programs. Capie came out to watch, anxious to see their son again too.

By mid afternoon, Paul had Daneel back up and fully
functional again. All three had quite a little tearful reunion, as Paul told
the youngster the story of what had happened in Romania.

Both Paul and Capie were so incredibly glad to have their
son back again!

To celebrate Daneel’s return, they partied in Perth that
evening, spending the night at the luxury resort of Seashells in Yallingup near
the extreme southwestern tip of Western Australia. The accommodations were
sumptuous, charming, and elegant. And, with a few spells, a number of holographic
individuals joined their party in the resort’s largest conference room where
there was dancing, games, lots of music and various acts of entertainment.

Of the three of them, Daneel enjoyed the party the most.

• • • •

Late the next morning, the three of them were relaxing at a
large white round wooden table on their hotel room’s spacious balcony,
contemplating the scenic views available over manicured lawns in front of them.
At the same time, they grazed on a rather sumptuous room-service-delivered Aussie
brekkie of poached eggs, avocado toast, pork sausage, hash browns, and beans,
with occasional sips from their mixed fruit smoothies.

As Capie set down her drink, she discreetly surveyed her
husband across the table.

“I suppose,” she said, idly running a finger along the lip
of the glass, “with Daneel back that you want to keep working on the ship and
finish getting ready to go to Mars.”

Paul nodded, a tight grin on his face, strongly suspecting
what his wife was going to say next and not liking it. “Yes, I do.”

“Even though you don’t know what went wrong when you gave
Daneel his magical powers.”

Paul winced and then squirmed a bit in his seat. “With
Daneel’s help, we’ll figure out the problem and take all the right precautions
this time.”

Capie frowned and looked him in the eye. “I am uncomfortable
with that strategy. You know that, right?”

He stiffened and turned his head away from her. “Yes, I know
that. But I defy you to come up with a better more workable plan.”

“Ah, before Transylvania, I would have taken you up on that
offer,” she said, with a tight smile of her own. “However, over the last couple
of days, I have had time to think this whole mess over and to reach certain
different conclusions.”

“And those are?” Paul asked warily, one eyebrow raised.

“Bear with me on this, please, my dear,” she told him with a
sly smile. “We know, of course, from all the terrorist acts in the Middle East,
that
Errabêlu
wants to start a war, at least some of the wizards do.”