Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) (41 page)

A light brighter than the sun reached out to envelop the three
of them. Even with the sunglasses and his eyes closed, the light was blindingly
bright.

For nearly a minute, the storm raged on, the light blinding
them as the chutzpah formed.

And suddenly, there was silence.

Paul’s eyes could see nothing but white and black spots.
Even the sunglasses had not been enough to fully protect his eyes. He took off
the glasses and removed the earplugs too. Gradually the spots faded and his eyesight
returned to normal.

The ring and hexagram were gone. The wind was dying, blowing
fitful little gusts. There was no sign of the tornados and even the clouds were
dissolving away like cotton candy in hot water. And the Earth had stopped trembling
as well.

Capie looked at him, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes. She
too had removed her sunglasses and earplugs.

“My goodness grief, Charlie Brown! You sure know how to show
a girl a good time!”

“Dad, that was mind-blowing!” declared Daneel. “Can we do it
again? Soon?”

Paul laughed in relief at the two of them. It felt great to
be alive!

And he looked down at the ground, at his new chutzpah,
anxious to see what the ceremony had created.

The first talisman had been a block of black shiny material,
sort of like a plastic brick, incredibly hard, the edges difficult to see, like
it was made of shadows with gold specks thrown in. This one was different. It
was in the shape of an armband but it was a bright glowing white, as if it were
made of white light itself. There were patterns etched into its surface and
engineering symbols. Paul picked it up and was shocked by its near feather
light weight.

“Oh, let me see,” Capie eagerly requested.

Paul handed it to her and she marveled at the brilliant
white color and the light weight.

“So this is a chutzpah. It’s gorgeous! Will I get one too?”

“Absolutely yes,” he replied, with a huge grin on his face. “Just
as soon as possible!”

She leaned forward and her arms locked around him.

They kissed for a long time.

When Paul finally came up for breath, his face was flushed
with happiness. “We must leave now. I bet there is an army of Oni headed in our
direction. And there’s a certain war in Israel we need to stop! Just as soon as
I get my socks and shoes back on!”

Israeli Northern Command Headquarters

Safed, Israel

October

Wednesday 10:08 a.m. AWST

M
ajor
General Moshe Peretz, commanding officer of the Israel Defense Force, Northern
Sector, was leaning back in his chair at the head of the table feeling extreme
exhaustion from the constant state of emergencies his command—and indeed all of
Israel—had been through for the past few months. He was sipping from his sixth
cup of coffee for the day. It wasn’t helping much.

Another intelligence briefing was in progress in the room, a
captain giving yet another update on the current thinking of the enemy and
possible means of countering such.

Peretz sighed. None of this was making any sense at all. The
Syrian, Lebanese, and Iranian attacks, as devastating and destructive as they
had been, were temporary. As soon as his command was fully mobilized—and that
would happen soon, with the 143
^rd
Etgar Armor Division joining with
his command in the next day or so—Israel would counter attack on the ground.
His other reserve units were already in the field, in transit to their attack
positions. By the end of the week, his forces would break out of the stalemate
they were currently in and advance in force on Damascus. And this time, they
weren’t going to listen to any U.N. nonsense about a cease-fire as soon as they
started inflicting serious casualties on the enemy. He had received that
promise direct from the Chief of Staff himself.

And then the conference room door swung open wide, a staffer
bursting into the room.

“Sirs!” the man shouted, rushing around the end of the
conference table to the window on the far side.

“What’s going on, Sergeant,” Peretz demanded to know,
getting stiffly to his feet.

But the enlisted man unfastened the window, flung it open
and pointed up in the air.

Several of the other officers in the room jumped from their
chairs as well, anxious to look, but not anxious to get in Peretz’s way as the
general stormed up to the window and followed the enlisted man’s pointing
finger.

Which was scarcely needed. Nobody but a blind man could
possibly have missed seeing the gigantic spacecraft hanging above the base. And
what a nasty intimidating sight it was too.

It was hard to judge the scale but the black and gray metal
ship was easily a thousand feet long and a hundred feet wide. There were a
number of projectors extending out the front, which could easily be weapons of
some type.

The design spoke military. It spoke deadly. It spoke power,
effortlessly floating a thousand feet up, with absolutely no visible sign of
support.

“What the…?” whispered a quiet voice at Peretz’s shoulder. The
general felt the same way.

From one of the projections at the front of the craft, a
very intense pencil thin beam of purple light suddenly appeared, striking the
parade ground two thousand feet from the command building. Peretz held up a
hand, squinting his eyes.

And just as suddenly, the light was gone.

The ship started to move then, pulling away from the ground
and rapidly accelerating in a general eastern direction.

“Wow!” said another soft voice.

The ground where the beam had struck was not visible from
this window, it being on the other side of the other office building on base.
Without a word, Peretz spun on one heel and jogged from the room.

• • • •

The general stood at the side of the pit looking down and
not believing what he saw.

At the point where the beam had touched the ground, there
was now a huge gaping hole. A hundred feet in diameter and fifty feet deep, was
his best guess. Perfectly circular, the bottom of the pit was as flat as a mirror.
It shone like one too, a bright metallic silver. The side walls of the pit were
the same, simply circular instead of flat.

Gingerly, he knelt, reaching over to touch the inside lip of
the pit’s wall. Yep, as smooth as glass.

“Uh, sir, should you do that?” the intelligence captain
asked. “It, ah, might be radioactive or something.”

Getting back to his feet, the general brushed the leg of his
pants and marched back to the command building. He had a few calls to make.
Somebody—Americans? little green Martians? Klingons?—had just sent him a
message.

From the look of things right now, he was guessing that
there wouldn’t be a war after all.

• • • •

“Impressive,” Capie commented, as the
Sirius Effort
moved away from the Tactical Airbase at the Mehrabad International Airport in
Tehran, Iran. Paul had used the incredible power of his new chutzpah to hover
the ship in place, disguised as the USS
Sulaco
from the
Aliens
movie, and then fire a fictitious beam of incredible energy, selectively
vaporizing the F-14’s in their individual hangars.

No one would miss a message such as that.

“And no one was hurt,” he crowed boastfully.

“I can’t wait to have a chutzpah like that,” Daneel said,
with obvious yearning in his voice.

• • • •

Jahan Darvish was furious. He sat at his oak desk in his
lavishly appointed office, his arms folded over his chest as he scowled in
anger. All of his work, all of his planning for the last sixty something years,
up in smoke. Gone, like a fog with the rise of the Sun.

Darvish was the
Errabêlu
wizard of Iran. And it had
been his plan, from the beginning, to launch a war against Israel from Iran, a
plan that he had been formulating and executing ever since Israel became a
state in 1948. A clever plan it had been, audacious in the implementation. Each
and every step had been meticulous carried out very successfully.

Spoiled. All the work gone now. He would have to start all
over again. From the beginning.

He didn’t know who had done it. Perhaps it was that new
wizard that everyone seemed to be talking about these days. Whoever it was had broken
the rules, creating that huge spaceship that floated all over the Middle East,
taking pot shots at things, in some places creating huge funny holes in the
ground and in other places vaporizing a lake or melting a 500 foot long bridge
down to a slag heap in mere seconds.

But they hadn’t limited themselves to such mundane targets,
no! In Syria, they had skewered the cast-iron block engines of three companies
of
Zulfiqar
and T-72S main battle tanks with three inch diameter holes! And
then his precious F-14’s at the Tehran airbase here in Iran! He had been there
himself, trying to stop that strange purple beam of light that had slashed his
planes to ribbons in their hangars! And he hadn’t been able to do it, no matter
how much power he threw into the spells he cast! Nothing he had tried had the
least bit of effect!

He was reluctantly reaching the conclusion that all the
rumors might be true, that it must have been a new wizard, one who commanded
considerable power. No wizard that he knew of on Earth controlled enough
magical power to perform that sort of stunt. The fact that he had personally
witnessed the power of that act of magic was the best proof he could have on
that theory, right? And this new wizard was dangerous. Very dangerous. No
respect for the established rules. No respect for territory or boundaries. No
respect at all for
Errabêlu
either, apparently.

A little over a week ago, there had been the simultaneous
destruction of several talismans. According to reports, that had occurred in
Australia, of all places. And then, far worse, a few days later, that magical
disturbance of stupendous proportions that had taken place in the American
northwest. The Earth had rung like a bell with that one! It was like nothing
Darvish had ever felt before nor even heard of in legend. It simply
had
to be the rogue wizard’s doing. All of these events, happening at virtually the
same time, were all connected. He was convinced of that.

Darvish snickered once. That disturbance, in the western
United States—he wondered what Clarke had thought about that since it had
happened on his turf. What was that old reprobate up to now?

And confound it, where was Hamadi, his partner in crime, the
Errabêlu
of Syria? Disappeared? Gone? Had the
Errabêlu
in Israel—what
was his name?—done Hamadi in? Or maybe it had been this new wizard? Perhaps it
had been.

At the next gathering of the Conclave of Magi, he intended
to submit a proposal to deal with this new threat. All of the wizards of
Errabêlu
needed to join forces, long enough to kill this new wizard. The sooner the
better.

Darvish sighed, leaning forward, picking up a pencil and
putting it to the paper pad in front of him on the desk. He might as well get
started. If it took him fifty years, he would attack and wipe out Israel. It
was his destiny, his right, and his duty to do so.

Roselawn Memory Gardens Cemetery

3045 State Road 67

Lake Geneva, WI

November

Saturday 4:01 p.m. CDT

C
apie
wiped a tear away as she stood at the foot of her parents’ grave, her mother
buried on the right and her father on the left. She still found it hard to
believe sometimes that her father was really gone, even though his death was
now months in the past. There were still so many active memories of him that
she held dear to her heart.

The words for the tombstone had been very hard to choose. In
the end, she had settled for:

In Loving Memory

Christopher Edgar Kingsley

We will miss you

“Are you going to be okay, Mom?” Daneel 1 asked, floating
several feet away. In his display, he watched her with deep concern.

“What he said,” Paul echoed anxiously, standing on the other
side of the grave, with Daneel 2 at his side.

The golden framed mirror, with Ariel-Leira displayed, had
been retrieved from the Graylands facility and was floating above and behind
the headstone. “She is, of course. Strong lady, she be.”

Capie smiled sadly, staring at her father’s final resting
place. “Thanks. And yes, I’m okay. I just wanted to pay my respects one last
time before we leave. Thanks for bringing me here, Paul. For coming with me.
And for understanding.”

With a gentle smile, Paul stepped around to her, putting his
arm over her shoulders. “Take all the time you need. I understand completely.”

Daneel 2 created a life-sized hologram of himself,
projecting it near his parents, in an effort to physically be with them. Both
Paul and Capie turned to him, giving him a big smile. Not to be outdone, Daneel
1 did the same. All four of them gathered together in a big family hug.

 Ariel-Leira watched, grinning widely. “To go where no
mirror has gone before, I can’t believe I’m going. Excited, I am!”

 “I’m ready to go now,” Capie announced, turning her head to
face Paul. “I have all the research materials I need for the MBE Drug Project.
And Mars is waiting. The people of Earth are waiting. They want to be free of
Errabêlu
.
Let’s help them achieve that.”

With a grin, Paul nodded, waving a hand. All four of them
and the mirror levitated into the air, ascending the fifty feet that it took to
reach the tail end of the
Sirius Effort
, hovering above the cemetery. Higher
they went, up the side of the ship, stopping not far from the nose. Opening a
portal through the hull of the ship, Paul and the two Daneels flew in, the
mirror following along smartly.

At the brink of the portal, Capie paused and turned to look
down toward the cemetery.

And sadly but with determination whispered, “‘By Grabthar’s
hammer, by the Sons of Warvan, you shall be avenged!’” quoting Dr. Lazarus from
Galaxy Quest
. “I promise that you won’t be forgotten, Dad. Like the man
said, you didn’t die for nothing.”

She stepped inside with grim determination, the portal
snapping closed behind her.

The
Sirius Effort,
now fully repaired, as shiny as a
new coin and also fully loaded with all the supplies that the Armsteads could
possibly need or want on Mars, lifted quietly and gracefully away from the
surface of the planet Earth, accelerating steadily towards orbit. As the ship
gained altitude, its fusion engines kicked in, thrusting it out faster towards
the blackness of space.

They would be the first humans, mirror-woman and Scotties to
go out that far.