Matthew produced a large waterskin from his bag and proceeded to fil the coffee pot with it. Karen watched him incredulously. “You’re realy serious about having coffee, now?”
“Mm hmm,” he replied. “There’s nothing else we can do while we wait.” Without a filter or other equipment, he was forced to simply measure out some of the coffee grounds in one hand and dump them into the water in the pot. Then he used his magic to heat the liquid until it was close to
the boiling point. “How long do you think we should wait?” he asked Karen. The water had already turned a medium shade of brown.
“A few minutes I guess,” she answered. “I don’t like coffee, and even if I did I doubt I would have experimented with old-fashioned methods like boiling grounds.”
Folowing her advice, he waited a short time, during which he took the mugs they had rescued and rinsed them out with some more water from
the waterskin . Once they were clean, he poured his makeshift coffee into two of them. He attempted to use his power to filter the grounds out as he poured, but he underestimated the difficulty. Both cups wound up with a significant amount of grounds settling to the bottom.
Karen eyed him dubiously, but then he handed her the china cup her aunt had last used. Raising his mug, he toasted, “To Roberta and Annie.”
She stared at the cup, touched, and then lifted it for a smal sip. Despite the sentiment, the bitter liquid stil made her grimace.
Matthew took a larger swalow and promptly burned his tongue. Blowing at his mug to cool it, he admitted, “It was better when she made it,
but I stil like it.”
“She used cream and sugar,” noted Karen. She forced herself to take another sip. “Do they have tea in your world?”
Matt grinned at her. “Talk to Gram’s mother when we get back. She’s a big believer in tea.”
“Which one was she?” asked Karen.
“Lady Hightower,” he said, supplying the name for her.
Her face lit up. “Oh yes, I remember her. Piercing blue eyes. If Gram is her son, though, why is he ‘Thornbear,’ but she’s ‘Lady Hightower’?”
“She inherited the title from her father,” explained Matt. “Since it’s the highest title she possesses, that’s what she’s caled, until she hands it down to her son someday. Then he’l be ‘Lord Hightower,’ even though his name is Thornbear. Also, it’s a nice touch, since it saves some
confusion. Her mother-in-law is stil caled Lady Thornbear.”
“Sounds confusing.”
“We don’t have computers,” said Matthew, finishing his coffee. “So we spend our time sitting around thinking up complicated titles to amuse ourselves.” He cleaned his cup and then relieved Karen of hers, drinking the second half that she couldn’t finish.
Once everything was packed away again, they talked a while longer, until Gary warned them they should probably move again.
“How long before it’s safe to go back?” asked Matthew.
“Without falout, the area around it is probably reasonably safe, other than fires and other folow-on events that occurred after the blast,” said Gary. “It won’t be safe to spend any significant amount of time in the quarter mile around the immediate blast for several years, though.”
“Years?” Matthew was shocked.
“That’s a lot better than the result after a normal atomic blast,” said the android. “The end result is we wil have to circle around and come at the facility from another direction.”
“I need to reclaim the Fool’s Tesseract.”
“If that just requires you to stick your hand through the ring-gate for a moment, it wil probably be safe by tomorrow. Today the area might be hot enough to scorch your hand for hours at least,” added the machine.
“I can protect my hand from heat,” said Matt.
“But does that protection include ionizing radiation?” asked Gary.
He answered with a blank stare.
“Exactly. You don’t know,” concluded the android. “Give it a day and it won’t be an issue.”
“Wel, we can’t keep teleporting around every half hour,” put in Karen. “I’l need to rest sometime.”
“Back to Lothion, then,” said Matthew finaly. “We can rest properly there and come back tomorrow.”
With the decision made, they left only a minute later.
***
Matthew stood dripping on the shore. He was thoroughly soaked, from his wet hair to his squelching boots. Why does it always have to be
the ocean?
This time they hadn’t had to travel, at least. Karen had teleported them to the coast they had first found after their last ocean arrival. Her preference would have been Castle Cameron, but Matthew didn’t want to traumatize his family with another leave taking, so they would be
camping overnight in the wilderness.
He brought out his enchanted flying construct and they flew along the coast until they found a river. There they washed and dried themselves before settling in for a meal of dry bread and hard cheese.
Morning couldn’t come soon enough.
Chapter 50
The next day, they were back in Karen’s world.
They had landed in the ocean this time, so their first teleport was back to Karen’s home town. There they managed to rinse themselves off in a public fountain before having to take flight once more. ANSIS was becoming exceptionaly good at pinpointing their location.
The next jump was to England. Karen took them to Tintagel in southeastern England, where they had shown up during their first visit there.
They spent a few minutes waiting while Gary used the better network connections there to update himself on the situation. It wasn’t good.
“It’s over,” he told them sadly.
“Define over,” said Karen tensely.
“I lost,” he answered. “What you see is al that’s left of me. I had to disconnect from the network abruptly. ANSIS controls everything now.
My greater, super-inteligent self is no more, but that’s not the real tragedy. The CC centers were taken. Of the ten bilion uploaded humans they held, there is nothing left, other than digital files and cold data.”
Karen sat down abruptly, though it was more of a controled fal.
Matthew had a hard time wrapping his head around the number, and worse, he felt little sadness. Seeing Karen’s reaction told him it was a
serious blow to her, but he couldn’t find the same emotion in himself. It was too foreign. He hadn’t known any of those people, and the idea of humans living in some digital computer world sounded like a fantasy.
Rationaly, he knew it had been real, that they had been real, but it didn’t reach his heart or gut.
“What about the organics?” asked Karen. “The people like me?”
“I don’t know,” answered her virtual father. “I had to disconnect before I could discover much. The entire network is hostile territory for me now.”
“Any news about the egg?” asked Matthew.
“No,” said Gary. “Al I learned was that they’ve mobilized a significant military force to defend the facility. I think the Fool’s Tesseract has ANSIS spooked. After the blast, it’s just been sitting there, impervious to anything they throw at it. It must have them worried.”
“Time to reclaim it, then,” said Matt. Bringing out the ring-gate, he activated it and started to reach through it to grab hold of his staff. A sudden wicked thought occurred to him, though.
As the others were watching him, he pushed his arm through until it was almost to his shoulder, then he jerked suddenly and screamed, “It
burns!”
Karen was so startled she yelped, and though Gary didn’t show it outwardly, he was somewhat frightened as wel. They both glared when
Matthew drew his arm back out and wiggled his fingers to show them it was unharmed, laughing al the while.
“That took ten years off my life, asshole!” Karen swore.
Gary added, “I
didn’t find it amusing either.”
Matthew couldn’t stop laughing. When he finaly colected himself and regained his composure, he apologized, “I’m sorry. Maybe it’s al the
stress we’ve been under. I couldn’t help myself.”
“I’m starting to sympathize with your sisters,” complained Karen.
He grinned at her and reached into the ring-gate once more. He started to say the command to deactivate it, but a sudden flash of foresight stopped him. A shiver ran down his spine as he withdrew his arm. If he had deactivated the Fool’s Tesseract, he might have lost his hand and he would have been screaming for real.
“What now?” asked Karen.
“I can’t,” he told her. “I’l be burned. There’s something extremely hot around it.”
“That shouldn’t be,” said the android. “Unless they’ve done something.”
“Wel, we can’t tel from here,” Matt informed them. “Maybe we should teleport back to one of the areas we were yesterday, a mile or so
away from the last place where we left the FT.”
“It wil be dangerous,” said Gary.
“Everything on this world is dangerous,” returned Matt.
Karen nodded. “Let’s do it.”
She took them to the point at which they had abandoned the pert, a couple of miles from where they had eventualy been forced to leave the
Fool’s Tesseract. The wrecked remains of the pert were stil there, but the scenery was vastly different. In every direction within view, the trees had been flattened, as though a giant hand had pushed them al over in the same direction.
And then burned them.
It was a scorched and blackened world, like some artist’s vision of hel.
“Goddamn,” said Karen softly, adding a long whistle at the end. “It realy was like a nuke.”
Matt was stunned as wel, so stunned he almost failed to react to the next flash of insight. Shoving Karen to one side he erected a powerful shield—and nearly lost it under the force of whatever projectile struck. Reacting purely on instinct, he sent a powerful, though unfocused, line of fire back at the source of the attack. It splashed across hardened metal armor and failed to penetrate.
They had been fired upon by a four-legged metal monstrosity; at least that’s how it appeared to the young wizard from Lothion. It stood taler than a horse, with a strange torso that seemed capable of rotating in any direction above the legs. Two arms were equipped with some sort of weapons.
“They’ve brought in the armored cavalry,” declared Gary.
Matthew had no time to wonder what that meant. The thing that had fired upon them looked nothing like a mounted horse soldier to him, but he couldn’t stop to ask for clarification. Its other arm had lined up on them, and it held a circular array of gun barrels that were just beginning to spin, emitting a high-pitched whine.
He ran sideways, but then dropped flat as another vision warned him of his impending death. The creature’s aim was perfect, and it could swing its weapon far faster than he could run. His magesight only barely perceived the blur of high-velocity bulets tearing through the air just above his head and neck.
It was only a second before it adjusted its aim downward, and Matt had no time to move. Instead he ripped a portion of the ground upward,
reinforcing it with a strong shield. Bulets tore into the soft earth and struck the shield, but not with enough force to put him in danger of them penetrating.
The thing continued firing, driling into his defense with a seemingly limitless number of bulets. He couldn’t move, so he used his power to draw up more earth, reinforcing his defense until the bulets stopped and the whine of the spinning gun barrels faded. The monster’s torso turned, bringing its other weapon around.
Whatever the other weapon was, he knew he wouldn’t survive it. Reaching into his pack, he drew out a long, slender rod he had prepared.
Before it fired, he leapt sideways from behind his earthen berm and unleashed a powerful stroke of lightning.
The lightning didn’t destroy the metal monster, but it went stil after the strike. The exterior was scorched and smoking, but the electronics inside had failed under the electrical assault. Matt stared at it for a long second before remembering his companions.
Rushing back, he found Karen nursing a bloody arm. It wasn’t serious—a ricochet had torn through the skin—but it was sobering for him. He
realized she might just as easily have been kiled. Gary, on the other hand, had taken a bulet straight through his torso, but fortunately it hadn’t hit anything important.
Matt took Karen’s arm in his hand and looked into her eyes. “Watch what I do. You’l need to learn this too someday soon.” Drawing his
finger across the wound, he sealed the skin, stopping the bleeding. It wasn’t done with much finesse, but it would do. He had forgotten to block the nerves, though, so she hissed with pain as the skin was drawn back together. “Hopefuly with more skil,” he added.
He turned to the android and asked, “What was that thing?”
“A tortus,” answered Gary. “A standard part of modern armored cavalry divisions. They replaced tanks and some of the light armor vehicles
after the demon war.”
“It certainly wasn’t slow like a tortoise,” said Matt. He didn’t bother asking about the ‘cavalry’ part, either; there would be time for that later.
The rush of adrenaline and fear had made certain things clear to him.
Leaning over, he gave Karen a brief kiss. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I can’t take you with me.”
She wasn’t having that. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “No way in hel are you…” The words cut off suddenly when he voiced the
command for her belt and she was shifted back to his own world.
A lonely feeling crept over him as he looked at the empty space she had occupied. He hoped she didn’t land in the ocean. Either way, she was going to be mad as a wet hen when she saw him again. He chuckled at the inadvertent pun. “Heh—wet hen.”
“Thank you,” said Gary. “I know that was hard for you, but it was making me sick worrying about her.”
He ignored the words, and asked a question instead, “You said they were al dead, right?”
Gary shifted mental gears quickly. “The uploaded humans, yes, and probably the organics as wel, though I can’t be sure. If not, they soon wil be. Why?”
“How long can you survive in the ocean?”
“Until my power runs out, a few months at least. These military androids are fuly sealed. There’s even a flotation bladder for use in the event of…,” began the machine.
“I’m sending you back too,” said Matt abruptly. “Try to get back to Lothion if you can.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Gary. “Once the radioisotope generator in this unit fails, I wil cease to be. You may as wel let me continue with you.”
“Lothion,” insisted Matt. “Karen wil need you. We wil worry about your battery later.” Then he voiced the command to send Gary back to his world.
Matthew stood and looked around, alone, just as he had been when he had first come to this world. He started walking east, a direction that was perpendicular to the lay of the falen trees. After traveling several miles, he would head north and eventualy west, circling back to approach the place where Desacus’s egg was held from the other direction.
It was foolish and stupid, but he wasn’t leaving without it. He no longer had anyone to worry about but himself, and if things went badly, he wouldn’t have to listen to their complaints anyway.
His aythar was low, so he puled out another iron sphere and began drawing the power out of it. It might be a long walk.
Chapter 51
Considering the number of miles he had to traverse and the lack of roads or other signs of civilization, at least as he knew them, Matt thought seriously about using his flying construct. Something told him it would be too dangerous, though. If he were targeted in the air, there
was no way he would be able to evade a missile or protect himself in time.
He missed the dragon-bond. The weeks since Desacus’s death made him realize how much he had come to rely on it. The heightened senses,
and more importantly at the moment , the strength, speed, and stamina—al would have been welcome to him.
He covered almost a quarter mile before the next attack came.
There was no warning, either by sight or sound. The enemy was targeting him from too far away for that. One moment al was peaceful, the
next he experienced a compeling urge to jump to his left. The earth was thrown into the air as a hypervelocity projectile slammed into the place he had been standing. It struck with such force and energy that the soil flung up by its impact struck his shield with what would have been lethal force if it had hit him directly.
A second later the sound reached him, a loud heavy clack folowed by a soft boom. His ears guided his eyes until he spotted a smal puff of
dust or smoke in the distance. That’s where it was fired from. Whether it was a tortus or some other armored weapon, he didn’t know. It was more than a mile distant, much too far for his stunted magesight to explore in this world.
He started running.
Not in the direction of his enemy; that would have delayed him. It would have also taken him far too long to reach them. He kept to his
predetermined path, running a straight course with no deviations. Zig-zagging would be pointless in the face of such an accurate and quick weapon.
He could only trust his strange warning sense to save him if it fired again.
It did.
This time he stopped dead stil, just in time for another projectile to crack through the air right in front of his face. It came at a lower angle this time and passed some twenty yards before exploding against a tree to his right.
The tree’s trunk disintegrated in an explosion of splinters and wooden shards, while the upper portion seemed to take a second before it started faling over, as if it were just as surprised as he was by the destruction of its support.