Jake's Women (Wizards) (13 page)

“You are determined to leave us and undertake this errand, Jake?” Esmeralda asked.

“I have to.”

Esmeralda banged her fist on the table.

“Then go, and let us hope you are right about these weapons. It will have the merit of being the first time, if you are.”

23.
      
Conference World

“Are you sure you want to come?”

Retnor gave me a reproachful look. [We agreed.]

“And it gives the Dragons their first look at a Progenitor world?”

Dragons are quite capable of looking guilty.

[Why should you have all the fun?]

“The thing is; the only place I know that isn’t filled with blocking magic stuff is a walkway. You won’t fit.”

[I could take you into glim as soon as we arrive. That way we will not be seen.]

“Can you do that?”

[I can hop in glim. If you open your mind so I can see the location it will be easy.]

Which was all very well, but I’d been opening my mind to him rather a lot lately. And it wasn’t only Retnor that was getting in.

“It isn’t you I don’t trust.”

[I would never search your mind without permission, and without using me as a willing conduit, neither can the Elders.]

There was little else to say. Without further comment I got onto my dragons back (more his neck than his back, really) and I let him see the inside of the Conference building from the walkway.

Retnor took us the scenic route, which involved us slowing down in hop space so we could see where we were going. A universe looks like a star in hop space, surrounded by mist. If you let your mind zero in on a particular one, it grows to reveal galaxies and nebulae. We flew passed thousands of universes before zooming in on an area in which no universes appeared to be present.

“What’s going on?” I am famed for my succinct questions.

[The universes here are very old. They don’t shine brightly enough to be seen through the mist. Look more closely over there.]

Retnor didn’t point, but his telepathic message told me exactly where to look. Not that it mattered, because the act of approaching it caused it to inflate around us. In wasn’t quite pitch black. Faint galaxies flickered at the edge of being seen; all showing at the red end of the spectrum. Then we inflated a galaxy and it looked much more normal once we were inside. Some of the suns glowed yellow like our own. We were still in hop space. The mist that was always part of hop space still blurred our vision.

[The Dragons know of this galaxy. But we abandoned it so long ago that our memory of it is hopelessly out of date. We left when the spread of technological worlds destroyed our habitat.]

Dragons have a habitat? Who knew? I just thought they liked mountains teaming with sheep and goats, nothing as sophisticated as an actual habitat.

We could see no closer in Hop Space. If I was tracking an individual I might be able to see something of the surface of their world, but in normal circumstances seeing a galaxy was about as much as you could see before you had to hop the rest of the way. Retnor hopped us to the location I’d given him.

It looked exactly as I’d last seen it, except that I had a feeling the machinery was switched off. There was still a hum, but it was almost inaudible. Machinery doesn’t have a soul, but sometimes it feels as if it is sleeping when inactive and this place felt fast asleep. There was something else about the scene that bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

[I think this area is deserted. Most of the machinery is powered down.]

“What’s the yellow light about?”

[I see only a white mist. There is no trace of yellow.]

“It’s very faint. It’s only after looking at the walkway and back that I can see it.”

[I still see nothing.]

“Let me try something.”

I slid off my dragon. As I came out of glim the yellow glow vanished. That was interesting in itself. I went to the edge of the walkway and stared down overlaying my magical sight with my normal one.

[You risk detection.]

He had a point, but it seemed to me that this would be the perfect opportunity to try and figure out what drained my magic down there. At the edges of my perceptions I found what I was looking for. The yellow light was the same as magical auras, but almost off the spectrum. It was interfering with the normal magical flow, pushing it away from mass. The heavier something was, the less magic flowed into it.

[Have you finished admiring the view?] He was being a tetchy dragon, and he was still safe in glim.

I stretched my hand down into the field and on the third attempt I found a way to block it. Chalk one up to Jake Morrissey, Wizard Extraordinaire .

[Jake!]

Retnor was getting impatient. I turned and walked towards where my dragon probably was. He materialized for just long enough for me to get onboard. As I suspected, he was a tight fit on the walkway.

“Glim us around. You would think they would keep my possessions somewhere close.”

[Any particular direction?]

“Up. I’d like to see how tall this building is.”

Retnor flew us up through floor after floor until I was thoroughly dizzy. The only way I could have found the walkway again was by hopping to it. Eventually we passed through a layer of concrete so thick I wondered if we were travelling through the planet the wrong way and this was its core.

We came out onto a flat plane that went from horizon to horizon. I sensed that outside of glim there was nothing much in the way of air. But Glim, like Hop Space provides its own survival mechanisms.

It was difficult to judge distances, but as we reached an altitude where it was possible to see the curvature of the planet I could see that the surface was not continuous, the concrete had been formed using pieces joined together like a jigsaw. There were protuberances on the surface that looked as though they were made from highly reflective plastic, and others that looked like dark holes. Perhaps they were holes. Without getting closer to them it was impossible to tell.

“How big do you think this damned world is?”

[About the size of Earth’s moon. Perhaps a little bigger.] Of the two of us, Retnor was the least impressed. He probably had race memories of much larger constructs.

Now we had a spaceship’s perspective I noticed a lot of shooting stars, burning up before they reached the surface.

“I didn’t think there was any atmosphere?” My limited education told me that it required an atmosphere for things to burn up.

[There is no atmosphere to speak of. I think light beams from the surface are hitting the meteors. Let us go and take a closer look.]

Retnor took us back towards the planet at a speed that had me holding on tightly, though it didn’t feel fast, it certainly looked it.

I was blinded by a terrible light and felt my skin begin to vaporize. Then we were back in the Bat Cave, coughing and spluttering.

Before I could faint, I healed my skin and eyes. Retnor was making a terrible racket and I healed his skin though the effort nearly drained me of power. Then I lost consciousness.

 
[Jake.]

Mam was nagging me and I wanted it to stop. It was so nice in bed.

“I don’t want to go to school.”

[
JAKE
]

Jesus, there was no need to shout. I struggled to open my eyes. My eyelids wouldn’t move and they
hurt
. I remembered I was a wizard and investigated. Then I started healing them.

[
JAKE
]

“Give me a minute, Fluffy. My eyelids are burnt.”

[Glad you are awake… and calling me Fluffy again. I’ve missed that.]

‘And done.’
I was getting better at this healing thing. I opened my eyes and looked at my dragon. He looked fine except for his eyes. They were white where they weren’t bloody.

Running to his side I put my hands on his beautiful face. Using tendrils of magic I assessed the situation and was horrified by the extent of the damage. I tried to get his cells to regenerate, but some of them were dead and far beyond my powers to heal.

[You saved my life. Never think I am not grateful for that.]

Putting a stasis field over his eyes I tried to think.

[We underestimated the Progenitors. They must not only be able to detect dragons in glim, but also be capable of attacking us.]

“I’m getting Urda. She’s much better at healing than I am.”

[I fear the damage is too great, but I can still see in the magical planes. I shall survive.]

I patted my dragon on the neck and hopped for Salice.

24.
      
Eyes

“What on Earth do you want so many for?” the chemist asked. He was a large man with a friendly smile and I was in the process of buying a whole box of cheap sunglasses.

“Amateur production of Bugsy Malone.” I’d expected that question and had an answer ready. A daft answer, but still an answer. He looked taken aback for a second and then his face lit up with an enthusiastic smile.

“My wife and I like the musical theatre, see. So put us down for a couple of tickets.”

I smiled and nodded, but suddenly felt a little guilty that my lie had got his hopes up. The only production I was doing was
The Dragon and I
and it looked like that was going to be a tragedy. The weight of the book I had borrowed from the town library was slightly comforting.

As soon as I could I ducked into an alley and hopped to the cave. I’d left Fluffy with Jenny and Merlin for company though it didn’t look as though they were having fun. Merlin was crying in his cot.

“I don’t know what’s got into him,” Jenny said, sounding exasperated. “He was fine until I held him up for Retnor to sniff and he’s been crying ever since.”

I switched to magic sight. Tendrils of magic were bouncing against Fluffy’s eyes.

“He wants to heal Fluffy and he can’t.” Daft as it seemed that was what it looked like. “He’s frustrated.”

“Jake, he’s not four weeks old.”

“Watch. I’ll block him so he can’t see Fluffy magically.” It was simple to place a shield around Fluffy so that, to Merlin, it would look as though he had disappeared. After a few annoyed sobs, Merlin stopped crying.

[I am sorry I upset him.]

“It wasn’t you. It was your injury.”

Jenny managed to pull herself together. “Is he linked to Retnor through my link to him?”

I looked. “No. I think he just likes dragons.”

“Takes after his father and mother then,” Jenny said with pride in her voice.

[And I like him.]

Before we could get together for a group hug, Urda arrived in the cave with Anna. Since she had left hospital I doubt Anna had been more than twenty feet from her sister. The girl had always been shy, now she was positively withdrawn. She ran to cuddle Fluffy as soon as she saw him. He was hardly a cuddly toy, but then I was calling him Fluffy again, so who was I to raise a protest?

Urda gave me a workmanlike nod and Fluffy dropped his head so she could look closely at his eyes. After a few moments she left him to stand in front of me. I could see she was close to crying.

“There is nothing I can do for him, Lord Wizard. Some parts of the body are easy to heal, but once the eyes are dead there is nothing to do but remove them.”

I put my arms out and Urda slipped into them and burst into tears.

[Dragon with very good hearing standing here.]

“You’ll be fine.” I said, putting on my cheerful voice.

Urda’s sobbing got louder. Anna held tight to Fluffy.

[You could do the glasses, assuming you remembered.]

I handed Urda over to Jenny who took her to our extremely charred sofa. The bag with the sunglasses in was a few feet away and I pulled it to me with a sliver of magic.

While it was just about possible for a wizard to conjure physical things from nothing, in practice it was much easier to steal material from anything nearby. I really didn’t know enough about plastics to create dark glasses that would look good, so the easiest way for me to create a pair of protective cups over Fluffy’s eyes was to use some ready made material. The glasses evaporated and cups of dark plastic formed over my dragon’s eyes. I used magic to order the atoms to line up for maximum strength. Finally I glued them to his scales at the molecular level.

[I take it, it is done? I can feel them. Jake, let me see.]

It turns out that magical sight isn’t much good for walking around a room. Fluffy had banged his head on the cave roof and his shoulder on stone walls dozens of times. He could see living things well, but inanimate objects were a problem. To see like he used to do he could use my eyes, but only if I allowed him to.

I let him into my mind and he took control of my eyes. That is a spooky kind of thing and I clenched my fingers into fists to stop myself taking control back. Fluffy did face on and profile looks. A claw preened his scales, something he does when he’s pleased.

[Cool. Even better than the bow tie I wore at your wedding.]

“I have an idea to fix your eyes.”

Fluffy let go of my eyes and seemed to shrink in on himself.

[No one can fix eyes. It has never been done. The Dragons know these things.]

“I will.”

[Dragons have been known to live for decades after going blind.]

Yeah, for beings that measure their age in millennia that must be truly something.

“We might only be able to number our lives in heartbeats with the Progenitors after us.”

Okay, that was lame attempt to change the subject. But as they had shot at us, it might be vaguely accurate.

[The Elders think it was an automatic system designed to stop rubble from space damaging the Conference World. This was my fault, Jake. I knew that light could penetrate glim. That’s how we see. We could have flown through a star and my mind would have limited the light to something safe, but I wasn’t prepared for that beam of light and it burnt us.]

“But how did they see us in the first place?”

[If someone was to look closely at a dragon in glim they might see that the background looks a little darker. Enough of a difference for a Progenitor machine to detect.]

I wasn’t sure I was annoyed or pleased. On the one hand this meant they probably didn’t even know they had shot at us, on the other hand they probably didn’t even know they had shot us. Which I found annoying. When I die, I want the person who does it to know what he’s done, and hopefully, feel bad about it.

“You said you had an idea, Jake?” Jenny asked.

Anna had joined her sister and Jenny on the sofa and they were indulging in a group hug. I felt slightly envious of them.

I took the book out of the bag where the glasses had been.

“Borrowed this book from the town library.”

“Nicked it you mean,” Jenny said indignantly. “That’s a reference book.”

“I’ll put it back when I’ve finished with it.” Sheesh, woman are always so focused on the minor details.

“It’s on stem cell research,” I explained to a row of blank faces.

“Aren’t they the things babies have?” Jenny asked. “Some mothers freeze the umbilical cord when a baby is born to help him later. The NHS doesn’t offer it.”

“A stem cell can grow a whole organ, like a liver, or a kidney, or an eye.”

Jenny stood up. “You want to use something from Merlin to help Retnor? Not if it risks Merlin.”

[I would not allow that.] Fluffy kicked in.

“I am confused,” Urda said. Her sister looked baffled enough for both of them.

I shouted. I don’t normally shout, but this was getting silly.

“We are not taking anything from anybody.”

Silence descended, though Jenny sniffed loudly.

“This book tells me enough to figure out how to turn an eye cell into a stem cell,”
I hope
. “Then we stand back and give Fluffy time to regrow his eyes.”

“How long will that take?” Urda asked.

“Days, weeks, possibly months. I don’t know. This isn’t like magical healing, though we might be able to help it along.”

“We should study this book,” Urda suggested.

Three hours later, we still didn’t have a clue about anything in the book. While notionally written in English, every sentence contained at least three words none of us knew.

“Damn it. I’m going to find an expert.”

I hopped to the local college. A search through the campus guide showed that stem cell research wasn’t on the curriculum. However, I found the name of a lecturer who might know something on the subject.

I knocked on the door and entered. The woman inside looked shocked, as if people usually waited. I slapped a compulsion on her and her eyes glazed over.

“What do you know about stem cell research?”

“Very little,” she answered in a monotone. I’d probably overdone the compulsion, but I was filled with dread that if I didn’t act soon Fluffy’s eyes would be gone forever.

“Do you know anybody who does?”

She nodded, “My brother in Cambridge.”

“Call him.”

Instead of reaching for the phone she picked up her tablet. I moved round her desk so I could watch over her shoulder. A guy appeared on the screen. He looked to be in his forties and had a stubble type beard.

“Hi sis, who’s your young friend?”

It shouldn’t be possible, but I tried it anyway. To my surprise I saw the compulsion take hold.

“Show me your room.”

He panned his camera around the room. I’d never tried what I was about to do, but I was feeling desperate. Touching the woman’s tablet, I felt through the internet for the device at the other end. I felt dizzy because it seemed we were connected via half the cities on the planet, not to mention a few dozen server farms. I hopped.

Amazingly I landed in the right office, though about three feet off the floor. I sprawled across the carpet as I fell and knocked over a chair. My victim waited quietly behind his desk.

“Have you anything on turning cells into stem cells?”

He grunted and reached for a box file and started to open it. I reached over and stopped him.

“Put your hand on the box and think about what’s inside.”

I put my hand on the box and absorbed what he knew. My head spun with scientific gobbledegook.

“A science dictionary with all the definitions of the terms used in the papers in it?”

He pulled a thick tome from the bookcase to his right. We repeated the process and I had it all.

This was worse than Valhallan. I knew stuff, but I wasn’t sure what I knew. It would have to do.

“Thanks. You will remember none of this.”

I returned to the lecturer’s office and spoke to her.

“You will remember nothing to do with me.”

As I hopped out of the room I heard her say to her tablet, “James, how lovely to see you. Why did you call?”

I probed with magical sight into the depths of Fluffy’s left eye. I now knew what all the bits were and what they were supposed to do. The devastation was incredible. I excised all the dead cells in his eye socket and then picked one of the few remaining healthy ones.

‘Become an eye,’ I told it. Not that I spoke and not that I used those words. I changed chemical markers and activated certain genes, but what that amounted to was the instruction to become an eye. I also sterilized the air behind the plastic and the plastic itself. Bacteria vanished and white blood cells with microphages activated flooded the area. Then I did the same thing to the other eye.

[It itches.] Fluffy complained as he saw me reengage with my body.

“I saw what you did, Jake,” Urda said with awe. “If this works I think you have invented a new form of healing magic.”

I sat down on the sofa.

“Give me a moment to get my breath and I shall be on my way to get the Knife of Truth.”

Jenny placed a hand on my crotch. “You are going nowhere today. Do you understand?” She gave a warning squeeze and I gasped.

[You cannot find the knife. That world is big beyond belief. Where would you look?]

I tapped my head. “I’ve had an idea, Fluffy. That knife was in my possession for a few months and it must be partially imprinted to me. If I can find people using one of their possessions, I should also be able to hop to one of my own.”

“That’s insane,” Jenny said and Urda nodded.