The Wiz Biz II: Cursed & Consulted (44 page)

"Don't tell them," Wiz said. "The last thing this world needs is gnomes of Zurich."

"But those are not gnomes, they are dwarves," Moira said. Wiz and Jerry broke up laughing and she jammed her elbow into Wiz's ribs, making him splutter. "Oh all right! You and your silly name jokes."

"I wonder how they expect to get off this island?" Wiz said, massaging the suddenly sore spot on his short ribs.

"Burrow for all I care," Moira said. "I do not understand how they got here in the first place."

" . . . and you should have seen the wizards' faces when that dragon rider and her dragon, popped up in the chantry next to Major Gilligan," Judith said laughing. The others laughed too and she helped herself to more bread and cheese.

They looked like a halloween party. There was Wiz in his usual tight pants, open-necked shirt and sleeveless tunic. Mick Gilligan was sitting next to him in his Air Force green flight suit. Then came Moira in a long gown of russet velveteen with forest green lining showing in the insides of the flowing dagged sleeves. Jerry was beside her in a medieval-looking tunic with a most un-medieval patch pocket full of felt-tip pens. Finally there was Judith wearing the open-backed hospital gown she had arrived in, now artfully dirtied and torn.

It had been barely twenty-four hours since Caermort had fallen and none of them had gotten much sleep. But everyone agreed that the sooner they got Mick and Judith back to their own World the better.

Pots of blackmoss tea and pitchers of chilled fruit juice shared the table with platters that had held small cakes and other delicacies. There was a sun dial very conspicuously planted in the middle and everyone made small talk while they waited for the shadow to shorten.

"How is Danny?" Judith asked.

"Bronwyn says he will recover well enough," Moira told her. "There is sickness in his blood and the burns were of a dangerous kind. Still, she can pull him through." She bit her lip. "But the energies released did something to him she cannot repair. He will have no more children."

"Damn," Wiz said softly.

"I'm so sorry," Judith said.

Moira shrugged. "Such things happen. Considering the carnage all about them they got off lightly."

"And June?" Judith asked.

Moira smiled. "With him night and day, of course. They have brought the cradle into the sick room so she may tend both of her men at once."

"What about Duke Aelric?"

Wiz shrugged. "He took the key and vanished. I imagine we won't see him for a while."

Judith poured herself another cup of fruit juice, drained it and sighed. "My one chance to meet an elf. Gone."

The all fell silent for a moment.

"Well, anyway, I'm glad I got a chance to see you again," Judith said as she put her cup back on the table.

"And we are glad to see you, my Lady," Moira said. "I only wish it could have been a more pleasant visit."

Judith nodded and looked again at the creeping shadow of the sun dial.

"What are you going to tell them?" Wiz asked.

She looked down at the carefully soiled hospital gown. "That when I woke up I was wandering around downtown San Jose in this."

"That doesn't explain anything."

Judith's eyes twinkled. "I know. That's the best kind of explanation."

"They'll probably think you halfway came out of the coma, wandered out of the hospital and you've just been roaming around ever since," Jerry said.

Judith smiled. "How would I know? I was in a coma."

Wiz turned to Major Gilligan. "I wish I could reward you for your help, but I think anything we gave you would just complicate your life."

"I've been rewarded already," Gilligan told him. "And yeah, it would be a little hard to explain showing up with a bag of gold or something."
As if this isn't going to be hard enough to explain,
he thought.

"Okay, we understand you want to go back to the Air Force as if you'd crashed in the ocean."

"I've pretty much got to."

"You know we would put you down just about anywhere in the world."

Gilligan shook his head. "I've got a duty to go back and it will be easier if it looks like I just crashed."

"We'll put you and your gear down on an uninhabited island not too far from where you disappeared. From there you can use your radio to get help."

"How far is that island from where I went down?"

"About 200 miles."

Gilligan frowned. "That's thin."

"We could put you and your raft in the water about where you crashed."

Gilligan thought about the freezing, fogbound Bering Sea and how long it would take to get rescued.

"I'll take my chances on the island."

"Okay, one other thing. We could heal your burns completely, but you'd be left with marks you didn't have when you took off." He looked Gilligan over. "Or we can partially heal you, so it will look as if you were burned when your plane went down."

"I've already been over this with your medics. I want to look like I was injured when I bailed out."

"You understand that once you're on the other side the pain spells won't work. Those burns will hurt."

Not half as much as some other things will hurt, Gilligan thought. But he just nodded.

Wiz nodded in return. "Very well, then. Your equipment's in the next room. You might want to check it over and make sure you've got everything you need while you've still got time. Bronwyn will meet you there for the healing."

Just about all his gear was there in a neat pile, even the things he had discarded when he came ashore on the island. It was all restored by magic. Somehow they had even managed to refill the magazines of his pistol.

"Mick."

He turned around and saw Karin in the door. His equipment forgotten, he took her in his arms and kissed her. The burns made him clumsy but neither of them noticed. "Where have you been? Why didn't you come with me?"

"Looking after Stigi and telling my superiors what had happened," she said in a small voice. "I could not come until my squadron leader released me."

He held her in his good arm close to his unburned side.

"Listen to me. I've got two more years left on this tour."
If they don't courtmartial me over this,
he thought. "I'll serve out my time and resign my commission. Then somehow,
somehow,
I'll find a way to come back."

Karin looked deep into his eyes. "I will be waiting."

There was a discreet cough behind them.

"Time, my Lord," Arianne said. "Trooper, if you wish to accompany him to the chantry you may."

The wizards and others were already assembled when Gilligan and Karin came into the chantry.

As they came in, Wiz handed Gilligan a small wooden tablet. "Before you go, you might want to memorize this."

Gilligan looked down at it. "Is this what I think it is?"

"Yep, it's an 800 number. Direct line to the Wizard's Keep from any phone in the USA. Just don't use it unless you really need to."

Gilligan looked up at Wiz. "I'm not going to ask how you did this."

Wiz shrugged. "It wouldn't do any good. It was one of Danny's projects. We figured we might need to contact people over there again and Danny set this up."

Gilligan stared intently at the scrap of wood and his lips moved as he burned the number into his memory. After a minute he handed the tablet back to Wiz.

"Is this legal?"

Wiz hesitated. "Like I said, it was one of Danny's projects."

This time there were two circles of blue-robed wizards in the chantry. Bal-Simba stood at the head of one of them and Arianne led the other.

Mick and Karin embraced for one final time, then Arianne waved him to the center of her circle, next to his gear. Judith took her position in the other and the chants began.

I hope to God I can pull this off,
Major Michael Francis Xavier Gilligan thought fervently as he faced the three men across the table. He had managed to get his blues on over his bandages and the meeting was in an office rather than his hospital room, but he still felt lousy from the burns and spacey from the pain killers.

This wasn't a formal inquiry. Gilligan had only been back at the base for twelve hours. It was more of preliminary attempt to find out what had happened over the Bering Sea.

"Now Major Gilligan," the debriefing officer began, "you say you can't remember anything from the time you bailed out until you found yourself on the island?"

"Nossir. I think I cracked my head on the way out, but the first thing I really remember is being on that island with the radio." He paused. "Ah, I was delirious most of the time, sir."

The debriefing officer didn't respond, but the black man behind him, the one wearing the flight suit with no insignia, half-nodded. Obviously he had already seen a report of Gilligan's description of his "hallucinations."

It was thin and he knew it. Especially in light of what must be on Smitty's tape. But it was the best story he could come up with and he'd stick to it for as long as he could.

"The cold salt water apparently restricted the damage from those burns. You're extremely lucky, do you know that?"

A flash memory of blue eyes and a little dusting of freckles over a straight nose. "I figure I'm about the luckiest man in the Air Force," Gilligan said sincerely.

The debriefing officer nodded and the man sitting next to him in the flight suit with no insignia remained impassive.

Step by step they went over Gilligan's story—what there was of it.

"And you say you don't remember anything after you sent your wingman back?"

"Nossir, not a thing."

"Perhaps this will refresh your memory," the man in the flight suit said. He leaned forward and handed Gilligan a folder.

Here it comes,
Gilligan thought as he opened the folder. Then he looked at the photograph.

"Nossir," he said, fighting to keep his composure. "I'm sorry. This doesn't look familiar to me at all."

The picture was obviously the result of a lot of work with an image processor. The image had long, thin wings and a small tail set at the end of a tapering, torpedo-shaped fuselage. Just forward of the wings was a central turret with what was obviously intended to be a sensor array. The wings and body were marked with what were clearly intended to be phase-array antennas. On top of the wings were heavily baffled intakes for jet engines buried in the body. The tail showed additional inlets for cooling air to dilute the jet exhaust coming from the shielded tailpipe.

The man with no insignia frowned. "Pity. Some of the details are conjectural and we were hoping you'd be able to fill them in for us."

"I'm sorry, sir. I don't remember anything like this."

"Well, it doesn't matter much.
Aviation Week
ran that picture in last week's issue." His face showed he didn't care for that at all. "We know now the thing isn't Soviet, so in the next week or two the Japanese or the South Koreans or the Israelis or whoever the hell else really did build it will let the information leak out." He shook his head. "It's a small world, Major, and you can't keep secrets long."

"Yes sir," said Major Mick Gilligan, thinking of another World entirely. "It is a very small world."

The now-useless computer sat in a cellar at the Wizard's Keep. The pieces had been unpacked and set together in a pale imitation of a working system. It looked strangely out of place in the low room with the beamed ceiling and the rough masonry walls.

Wiz was sitting at the console with his back to the door, idly tapping on the keyboard with one hand.

"What are you doing, love?" Moira asked as she came up behind him.

Wiz shook himself out of his reverie and stood to kiss her.

"Just thinking," Wiz said after the kiss. "When I was back in Cupertino I dreamed of having one of these things all to myself. Now I've got one and it won't work here."

"I wonder if it is worth keeping?" Moira said with a housewife's practicality.

"I wouldn't feel right throwing it away. Maybe we can find a use for it."

"As a haven for gremlins, no doubt."

"I don't guess the gremlins are interested in machinery that doesn't work."

"Just as well," Moira said. "Else there would not be a moment's peace."

They stood arm in arm looking at the computer for a while.

"Well," Wiz said heavily. "At least that's over."

"Not quite, mortal."

Wiz and Moira whirled. There stood the elf Lisella.

Lisella smiled, cold and beautiful as the full moon at midwinter. "I mean you no harm, mortal. I come with a message. Duke Aelric bids you to him."

Moira moved in front of Wiz like a terrier protecting her master.

"Why does not the duke deliver his invitation himself?"

Ice blue eyes locked onto flashing green. "Because he is dying, Lady."

Duke Aelric lay on snowy linen in a cavern with softly glowing walls. He was so still and composed that at first Wiz thought they were too late. But as they approached he turned his head toward them.

"So Sparrow, we meet again." His voice was as firm as ever but he sounded weary, as if tired out by a great exertion.

"Yes, Lord," Wiz said numbly. Even this close he could not see a mark on the elf duke, but his normally pale skin was now almost chalk white.

"I wanted to see you once more to thank you. You have performed a great service for the whole World, including the ever-living."

"We almost screwed it up, Lord."

"You did very well indeed." His eyes flicked to Lisella. "Much better than some expected."

He stopped speaking and he seemed to drift for a moment. Then his eyes focused and he turned his attention back to Wiz. "You have my personal thanks as well." He sounded even wearier. "Ennui is part of the price the ever-living must pay." He smiled slightly. "Our association has been many things, perhaps, but it has never been boring."

"No, Lord." Wiz smiled through his tears. "It was not boring."