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“I thought he brought them in the car as mouth protectors. You know, like athletes?”
“But only on the trips from your apartment to the restaurant?”
“I suppose I did see a few dogs in those video testimonials that Pffift showed us,” I allowed. “Maybe he’ll blend in.”
“And Brutus would have missed him,” Paul said. “He’s already over on the Ferrymen reservation guarding our supply dump.”
“But what about Death Lord?” I asked. “I thought that you two—”
“I’m coming with you guys, Mr. Ai.”
“I gave him a crystal last week,” Paul told me. “Registered it and everything. They’re both honorary citizens of Library now, so I listed them as auxiliaries for the team, which covers the cost if they need emergency extraction.”
“Did you explain to Death Lord that the Ferrymen have limited the technological advances on their reservations? You’ll probably be setting up shop shaving spokes for wagon wheels and using animal fat to grease wooden axles.”
“So we’ll invent bronze bearings and make a killing. Try looking on the sunny side, even though the sun was a bit too red for my taste.”
“I hope I’m doing the right thing,” I sighed. Sue gave my shoulder a squeeze that I suspect was intended to be comforting. It wasn’t half bad. “We’ll have to get you some in-ear translators until you can learn the local language.”
“Kim put them in for us yesterday,” eBeth told me. “It’s kind of weird, but we’ll get used to it.”
“Hey, check out this video clip,” Donovan called, pointing up at the TV. “There was a traffic jam in that section of depressed highway coming out of the city this evening, and some maniac in a Jeep drove past everybody by sticking to the wall. That’s some crazy traction.”
We all turned our attention to the TV as the announcer introduced clip after clip of eyewitness video recorded on smartphones. In several of them, eBeth and Death Lord were easily identifiable.
“Cool beans,” Helen said again. “Now I triple wish I went with you guys.”
“Why did you wait until you got back here to put on the Imperial stormtrooper costumes?” I demanded.
“Fallback plan, so you’d have to let us come along,” eBeth explained. “It was your mentor’s idea, actually. He phoned earlier today and said you can be insanely stubborn at times. I told him that I hadn’t noticed.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave those Jeep keys with me,” the lieutenant said, returning to the table and holding out his hand for Death Lord to comply. “Police business.”
“Don’t you two need to go pick up your stuff?” I asked.
“I brought it through for them earlier today,” Paul said. “You’ll be pleased to know that eBeth packed light.”
We finished up our drinks and headed down to my office. I quickly put together a catalog of destinations with red suns so that eBeth could show off her portal selection ability to her boyfriend and the lieutenant, who tagged along to find out what was in his basement. The girl grabbed the joystick and screamed past the first sixty options, stopping dead on a rather dusty-looking scene where the only familiar items were several dozen tennis balls that were positioned at random, as if they’d been rolled through the portal. I looked suspiciously at Spot, who chose to scratch vigorously behind an ear.
“This is it?” the lieutenant asked. “You step through a brick wall in my basement and you’re on another world?”
“Just watch us,” eBeth said, and grabbing Death Lord’s hand, pulled the boy through the portal.
“Get out of those costumes and change into regular clothes,” I shouted through the portal after them. “You’re going to frighten the natives.”
“Don’t worry,” Paul said. “The temporary portal is in a ravine outside of town and the others will have secured the area. Can you give me a hand with these crates?”
“Why are you keeping your cloaking device on now that I know what’s there?” the lieutenant asked, as I helped Paul maneuver the invisible train of floating crates through the portal.
“The cloak hides them from the automatic security filters,” Sue explained. “It’s how we move things that aren’t really allowed. It’s been a pleasure knowing you, Lieutenant, and I hope we meet again someday.”
“Drop in any time,” he said, gesturing at the portal. “I don’t suppose I have to worry about an alien invasion?”
“My team and I are the only ones who can operate the portal,” I told him. “Well, my mentor, and the engineers, of course, but they don’t count.”
Spot took his favorite blanket in his mouth, shook his head back and forth to get it settled over his back, and then trotted through the portal without a backward glance. We manhandled Helen’s oversized roll-aways through the narrow office space, and then she walked through the portal as well, followed by Sue with her cats. Or maybe they were our cats now. I’m still confused.
“Good luck,” the lieutenant said, offering me a firm handshake.
“You too. Listen, there are going to be plenty of alien tourists showing up on this world, but you’ll get an influx of shady types too, some of them selling shares in asteroid mining operations and the like. Don’t believe any of it.”
“Thanks. I’ll let you lock the door,” he said. “I presume this thing will shut itself down after you go through?”
“I’ll close it from the other side.” I shut the door after the lieutenant and threw the deadbolt, even though there was nobody left on the planet who could access the portal other than myself. My phone vibrated in my pocket. I knew I had forgotten something.
“If It Breaks. Mark speaking,” I answered reflexively.
“Just calling to say goodbye,” Pffift said. “My crew have been working overtime growing body parts in the vats and I should be able to pass as human within a few days. Any words of wisdom you’d care to pass along?”
“Technically, I shouldn’t be helping you at all, but I guess I can share an edited version of my memories from the last month or so to give you an idea of how things really work here.” I remotely hacked into the high-speed network of the Hanker’s lander just to show that I could and shot him the download. “Pffift? I’m trusting you to keep this confidential. Alright?”
Postscript
The Regent of Eniniac licked her crystal ball clean at the appointed time and stared into the haze. Her magic pierced the vast distances of the void, and a familiar face slowly came into focus.
“Hello, Dearest,” she spoke through her mind.
“My one and only love,” came the reply. “Once again your wisdom has proved superior to my own. I never realized how much I needed a vacation until you forced me to take one.”
“Are you eating well?”
“Like a king,” the Archmage replied. “All of my needs are catered to as well as if I were staying at a luxury resort.”
“I received a surprise visit from the Library representative on the League’s executive council seeking our support for an upcoming vote. He mentioned running into you on some backwater planet and said he’d never seen you looking so relaxed.”
“I was meaning to ask you to pick out a nice gift to express my thanks to him for not blowing my cover. Maybe one of those decorative wooden bowls the Ferrymen are selling—even AI must need a place to put little things. Is it possible to purchase such goods on Eniniac?”
“They opened a reservation-direct outlet store here over a thousand years ago,” the regent replied patiently. Her husband had never been good with practical matters, and as much as she missed him, it was easier running a planet of mages without his well-meaning interference. “I buy hand-woven baskets from the Ferrymen to give out as baby gifts to our staff, and the outlet sells lovely retirement rugs as well.”
“Oh. Listen, my love. The inhabitants at my last stop developed a form of distributed cryptocurrency with no magical protection. It’s widely used for criminal activities and is completely anonymous, so I raided the
wallets of all the cybercriminals and invested the proceeds in jaw exercisers that the natives use for a strange game with racquets. I prefer the used ones myself. The new ones have a strange odor and too much fur on them.”
“Do I need to dispatch a ship to pick up a cargo?”
“No. The natives are utterly reliant on their world-wide network for business, even though it’s entirely unsecure. I was able to arrange for collection and warehousing, and I contracted directly with a Hanker exploration vessel to deliver the shipment as soon as they reach capacity.”
“That’s nice, dear. As I’ve gotten older I’ve found that gnawing bones hurts my teeth.”
“And that’s not all. I’ve had an idea for an invention that could reduce our scribal costs by fifty percent…”
Spot went on to describe the process of manufacturing carbon paper using hard wax and powdered ink to get around the technology ban that would prevent the use of the polymer-based coatings currently employed on Earth. He decided to save the miracle of the ballpoint pen for a future treat.
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About the Author
E. M. Foner lives in Northampton, MA with an imaginary German Shepherd who’s been trained to bite bankers. The author welcomes reader comments at [email protected].
Also by the author:
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