Genie and Engineer 1: The Engineer Wizard (10 page)

“Okay, enough practice!” he chuckled with an evil smirk. “I
could use a snack.”

His first impulse had been to create a portal that would
take him home, straight to his kitchen, where he could fix himself a proper
meal. But truth be told, he was still a little leery of the portals after all
the ones he’d created earlier that had been less than perfect. To trust his
life to one yet? Maybe later, when he had more experience. Besides, there
wasn’t all that much food at home. He’d been so busy worrying about the genie
and his job that he hadn’t shopped for groceries in over a week.

No, it made sense to bring the food here. That way, if his
portal spell didn’t work quite right, all he would lose was a little food.

Paul created an image of the inside of a famous restaurant,
the best place for steaks that he knew of: Morton’s The Steakhouse in Beverly
Hills. With care, he used a display to let him see the target area, and then he
created a portal that was two feet in diameter, linking the kitchen of the
restaurant to a portal in front of him. He was on the verge of reaching through
to grab a loaded dinner plate from a countertop when he stopped.

That would be stealing, and Paul just wasn’t going to allow himself
to do that. His new powers could be used to harm others, and he could easily
see where he might try to rationalize theft and other crimes as “necessary for
the good of the many.” In other words, where the end justified the means.

No, sir. Right then and there, Paul made a firm resolution:
he would not steal.

Firmly clinching his jaw, he closed the portal. There were ways
to feed himself without theft.

He used a magical display to find and then create a portal
for two wild Kei apples in South Africa from a valley over 1,000 kilometers
east of Cape Town. He then searched in India, found and pulled through a wild
banana and two wild mangos from Kerala. These he munched on quickly, appeasing his
hunger, at least for the moment.

Feeling much more sanguine about his situation, Paul contemplated
his next move. The house-sized boulder still gave him the option of returning
to the States, even home to California. But the more he considered that idea,
the less he liked it. He needed a talisman, and he was more likely to find the
materials for one here in the Karakoram Mountains than he was in Southern
California. It made sense to search the terrain here first, before going home.
Because without a talisman, once he went home, it was unlikely that he could
ever come back to his current location. Not that he was that fond of it here,
but if he could find even one of the materials he needed in this place, it was
worth the day or so delay involved. Yes, it was a logical decision. Stay
another day or so and see what could be found here. Then he would go home.

Merlin had explained that the rarer the element, the higher its
magical quotient. The abundance of any particular element in the universe more
or less followed the periodic table, with exceptions, of course. Thus, hydrogen,
the lightest and most abundant of the elements, held the lowest magical
quotient, and the radioactive elements heavier than uranium held the highest.

Gathering together the rarest materials of the four special
categories might take man-years to accomplish, especially since he lacked the
tools and the magical experience to do the job properly. But in reality, he didn’t
need to make the most powerful talisman possible. At least not yet. What he
needed was something that could be created from rare, but more “common
materials,” a small enough talisman to be portable, yet with enough magical
power to allow him to travel short distances. Sort of a step up from the flying
blanket, but not quite a full-scale talisman. Truth be told, he didn’t need a
talisman powerful enough to take him straight to California. It would be easier
to fabricate something that allowed shorter jumps, say 500 miles or more at a
time. He needed to go through the math, play with the numbers, and see what the
possibilities were and what made sense.

So he snapped his fingers, muttered a few words, and created
a large screen in midair, and with effort, he managed to tie it to the Internet.
When he got the link working, he pitched in and performed research on rare
metals, meteorites, gemstones, and volcanic rocks.

According to the web, the rarest non-radioactive elements
were lutetium, tantalum, and thulium—and due to their scarcity, all would
possess significant magical quotients. Unfortunately, as he had surmised, they
would be very difficult to prospect for and he would have to process thousands
of tons of raw ore in order to obtain any sizeable quantity of any of those
metals. There were other rare metals that fell in the same boat: iridium,
rhodium and palladium. Scratch all of them off the list, at least for now.

Gold, on the other hand, was both rare and could be found in
the earth in higher concentrations, as much as 1,000 parts per million. If he could
find a pocket of such close to the surface, he anticipated that he could
extract it.

Paul grimly clapped and rubbed his hands together. He held
no illusions about this task. Even with using portals to mine underneath the
Earth’s surface, this was not going to be easy, especially due to his lack of
wizardly experience. He would start with the gold first.

• • • •

His tired body felt as if it was on fire, and he was barely
able to keep his eyes open. Paul gently massaged one arm as he silently
contemplated the acquisitions piled in front of him. He had the gold (still in
raw ore-form, unfortunately), a sizeable meteorite, several small emeralds, and
a nicely sized chunk of obsidian.

And it had taken him the majority of the day to acquire them,
too.

Finding the materials had been challenging enough. The items
in front of him truly were rare, the obsidian being the easiest to locate. But
the real challenge had been extracting it. In the case of the gold, he had been
forced to mine that precious metal from a location more than 200 feet below
ground and over 300 miles away!

The concept of using portals for mining was straightforward
enough. Just create a portal, one end above ground, and send the other one to digging
into the earth for the gold ore. No problem, right? As one end of the portal dug
into the ground, the rock and dirt would pour out of the other end (the one
above ground) until the gold was reached. A simple enough concept.

But as always, the devil was in the details, and it had
taken considerable practice to move one end of the portal while keeping the
other end fixed. Also, guiding the portal underground, where Paul could not see
where it was going, had turned into a difficult trial. Almost like threading a
needle from the far side of a large room.

Still, with persistence, his efforts had finally paid off
and he had what he needed.

All the use of magic involved had made him exceedingly tired.
With a wave of his hand and a few words, he created a portal and retrieved an
old sleeping bag from a dump in Macon, Georgia and then, with another portal, a
half-dozen discarded pillows from Salina, Kansas. Both the sleeping bag and
pillows held distinctive, unpleasant odors, but fortunately, another quick
spell took care of that problem.

With the sun setting slowly behind the mountains to the
west, Paul stretched out as best he could in the sleeping bag on the hard,
rocky ground, his hand against the house-rock (to keep the spell alive for
heat). He fell quickly and contentedly into a deep sleep.

Northeast quadrant of Pakistan

Karakoram Mountain Range

December

Wednesday, 4:23 a.m. PKT

P
aul
awoke in the wee hours of the morning, long before daybreak. Every muscle
loudly protested its abuse. At first, he was a bit cranky, feeling more than a
degree of self-pity, stranded as he was in one of the most desolate locations
on Earth, his muscles sore, his body cold. But then he remembered the gold he
had acquired the previous evening, and his spirits picked up appreciably.

With one hand to the boulder, he cast a spell, bringing
forth a chipped, white china cup and saucer from a dumpster in the downtown
sector of Newark, New Jersey. He obtained the hot chocolate to fill his cup by
snatching a teaspoonful at a time through a series of small portals from the
leftover cups of dozens of patrons in several restaurants scattered around the
greater Perth, Australia metropolitan area. His logic was that taking that
which others were discarding was not theft but instead came under the heading
of salvage. After reheating the liquid with another spell, he gingerly sniffed
and sipped it, drinking in its aroma and warmth.

As a thin sliver of light appeared in the east, he retrieved
a discarded, dirty plate and fork from a garbage can in an alley in downtown Dallas,
Texas. Afterward, he washed them in the icy water of the stream and then, with
an anticipatory grin, brought through a nice breakfast of eggs, bacon, and
toast (all leftovers, of course) from a variety of restaurants along the east
coast of Australia via a series of small portals. After wolfing that down, he almost
felt human again.

Gathering together his talisman ingredients from the day
before, he sat at the house-rock and closed his eyes.

“In the names of Houdini, Copperfield, and Bill Bixby, I command
these materials to form together to create a talisman.”

Nothing happened.

Paul sighed in renewed frustration. Obviously, he was doing
something else wrong.

“To paraphrase Thomas Edison, this is not another failure. It’s
just that I’ve found one more of ten thousand ways that my magic doesn’t work!”

He needed some of that super intelligent help now.

By snapping his fingers and invoking a spell, Merlin
appeared a few yards away. The sage studied Paul and the materials in front of
him.

“My, my, you have some of the precious materials you need.
Not the best ones, it would appear, but adequate to create a modest talisman. I
admit, I am surprised. I guess even a blind anteater can find an anthill now
and again. You’ve done well, young man. Now you need to create the symbols and
hold the ceremony.”

Paul shook his head. “I’m not ready to invest that sort of
time or effort. Later. Right now, just like you said, I just want something modest,
something that will let me move around, even if it’s limited.”

Merlin appeared as disappointed as a young child would be in
discovering that all his Christmas presents was clothing instead of shiny new
toys. “Always in a hurry, the young. I’m sorry, but no shortcuts here. You must
make time for the symbols and ceremony.”

“Symbols
and
ceremony?” Paul asked with a frown and a
raised eyebrow.

“Aye. Your magic will come to naught without those. Use the pentagram
as a minimum. And have the ceremony as you make the talisman.”

“Why?” Paul asked, increasingly confused by Merlin’s replies.
“What difference do symbols and ceremony make to performing magical spells? I
just don’t see the logic involved.”

Merlin sighed in frustration. “That’s the way it works. Do
or not, as you wish. But the spells won’t work without them.”

Paul sighed deeply, thoroughly annoyed. Merlin was right.
What difference did the reason make? If that was what it took to make the spell
work, then that was what he would do.

“All right, I’ll do it,” he grunted irritably, gracelessly
conceding defeat to Merlin’s counsel. And with a thought, Paul snapped his
fingers to send Merlin on his way.

He glanced around, still irritated at the waste of time. First,
he would need to clear off a spot of ground to work with since this location
wasn’t level enough or large enough to suit his purposes. And then he would
have to find something to create the symbols with. Oh, and then for the
ceremony....

• • • •

Paul set a large black boom box down next to the house-rock
and turned to inspect the work he had just finished.

Where before there had been several large rocks and a ton of
gravel, there was now a circular piece of ground roughly several hundred square
feet in size covered over with a few inches of fresh dirt. Using three
partially emptied white spray cans of paint retrieved from a landfill near
North Las Vegas, Nevada, Paul had painted a large pentagram on the ground. The
boom box and a set of scratched CDs had been retrieved from another landfill,
this one near Detroit, Michigan. Paul had then distributed the gold, the
meteorite, the obsidian, and the emeralds, placing them at the apexes of the pentagram,
leaving the fifth apex open for himself and the boom box, right at the foot of
the house-rock. As an afterthought, he had retrieved several used mismatched
incense candles from different trash bins around the world and placed one of
them at each apex.

The boom box was in sad shape, but with a few quick spells, it
was able to play again, drawing its power through the house-rock. After
repairing one of the scratched CDs, Paul was able to get it to play properly
too.

Then he resumed his place on the ground next to the house-rock,
his left hand laid on its gritty surface.

With a smug smile, he pointed at each candle, lighting them
one by one with heat from the Earth’s core. Then he pushed the play button on
the boom box.

With “Rockin’ Robin” playing in the background, Paul closed his
eyes in concentration, stretching forth his right hand toward the center of the
circle, and said:

“
In days of old

magicians spoke of

earth, air, water, and fire

In days of new

scientists work magic

electricity, optics, magnetism, radiation,

Let the power of old

and the power of new

Meld into one without flaw

In a wizard’s tool

for the cause of good

for the aid of many

Be it here

Engage
”

Cautiously, he opened his eyes and blinked in surprise at
the brilliance of four impossibly white globes, each of his objects, at the
other apexes of the pentagram. Slowly, in concert, they began creeping toward
the center of the pentagram. Paul watched, mesmerized, his jaw hanging open,
his eyes wide.

The meteorite, the obsidian, the gold ore, and the emeralds—all
merged at the center of the pentagram. And as they did so, the light
intensified even further, becoming blindingly white. Paul was forced to close
his eyes and turn away.

For five minutes, it went on. The boom box followed up with
“Yes, We Have No Bananas” and then “When the Saints Come Marching In.” Paul started
to wonder how long this was going to take but then noted that the light had
begun to fade. Slowly, the radiance dampened down to a soft glow, and Paul was
able to open his eyes again.

The ceremony seemed to be complete, so he took his hand from
the rock, slowly climbed to his feet, and walked over to the newly formed object
in the center of the pentagram.

It was flat, an inch thick and six inches square, solid
black in color with a surface as smooth as glass, speckled with gold flakes,
crystal and shiny white dots. The newly created talisman silently called out to
him, imploring him to pick it up.

With an unconsciously directed motion, Paul did just that,
bringing his creation up close, holding it in both hands, studying it intently.
It was surprisingly lightweight and beautiful. It also seemed to hum, just
beyond the edge of his hearing, lightly vibrating in his hands.

Paul grinned, a tingle of excitement coursing through his
body.

He could feel the talisman’s power, similar to the boulder,
but nowhere near as strong and yet different. It was as if the talisman sang
quietly, a clear beautiful melody, one which if he could hear it more clearly,
would hypnotize Paul. He clasped it to his chest and felt its warmth.

As he studied the talisman, it occurred to him how awkward
it might get carrying it around in one hand all the time. What he needed was
some sort of pouch, perhaps a way to strap it to his belt. But it would also
need to stay in contact with his skin somehow so that he could use its power on
a constant basis. Well, he would think more about that later, when he had the time.

So, okay, his first talisman was done. He could now move
about freely and perform most of the simple feats of magic. To prove it, he
eagerly snapped his fingers. A large portal appeared, and with only a trace of
his former reluctance to trust a portal, he stepped through to the mountaintop
oasis. And he was more than a bit gratified to find that it worked perfectly
and without any ill effects.

But it wouldn’t be right to leave all that mess behind in
the riverbed. Not that anyone would see it, as isolated as that location was.
Still, it was the principle of the matter.

So he went back and cleaned up the mess, humming merrily to
himself as he did so, sending everything back to where it came from. He also
returned the excavated rocks and gravel to their original configurations.
There! Right as rain.

He returned to the mountaintop, where he prepared an
elaborate dinner at a nicely decorated table, listening to several selections
of classical music playing in the background while he enjoyed his meal. As he savored
the last bite, he came to a decision. It was time to go home now. Indeed, it
was probably past time to go since it would be difficult to explain his absence
to his neighbors or to the local authorities. And that was assuming he didn’t
ever go back to his old job. Still, he needed a base of operations, and his
California house held considerable sentimental value. It would make a decent place
to live, at least until he had fully developed a plan on how to begin his
mission of mercy to the rest of the planet.

Sure, Paul could leave now, but he was pretty tired and it
had already been a very long day. He would wait and leave first thing in the
morning. For now, he used a spell to reassemble the bed and curled up in the
blanket, his new talisman tucked tightly into one hand, up against one cheek.
Feeling a deep warmth of satisfaction, he fell fast asleep.