Genie and Engineer 1: The Engineer Wizard (15 page)

The main course arrived (known as
Zurcher Eintopt
,
Celeste informed Paul—a sort of pork stew, which was quite delicious), and the
conversation switched to the war among the wizards
as well as world
affairs in general. Paul kept his mouth shut except to ask an occasional
question or two. He just didn’t know enough about magic and wizards to carry on
a decent conversation.

Eventually, dinner ended and the three wizards retired to
the living room, where Ruggiero lit a pipe and offered Paul an after-dinner
glass of brandy. As a true Californian, Paul did drink an occasional glass of wine,
but never anything stronger, so he politely declined the doctor’s offer. Paul could
tell that the man was disappointed in him.

Ruggiero turned to Celeste. “My dear, I hate to impose on
you, but we have a few items of business to discuss. Would you mind if we met
in the library for a half hour or so before we retire for the evening?”

She smiled radiantly. “Of course not, Duncan.”

This time, Paul did feel a stab to his heart, instantly recognizing
it for the jealous reaction that it was. He quickly beat it down and silently berated
himself. He had no cause to develop a crush on this woman! In Methuselah’s
name, she was nearly 450 years his senior! And as a sixty-one-year-old man himself,
the last thing Paul wanted to do was act like some love-sick junior high school
student pining away over the head cheerleader!
Geez, man, get a grip
! he
silently yelled at himself.

Ruggiero swung back in Paul’s direction. “Mr. Armstead, we
know that you have experienced a most trying time and need a great deal of rest
in order to recover properly. I thank you for your time this evening and for
honestly answering our questions. Again, welcome to this humble abode, and don’t
hesitate to call on us for anything you desire.”

The doctor reached out and shook hands with Paul again, very
firmly.

“It truly has been a great pleasure to meet you,” Ruggiero
said with a big smile on his face.

Paul had been politely, but firmly dismissed.

Paris, France

16
^th
Arrondissement

December

Thursday, 9:01 p.m. CET

U
pstairs,
Paul sulkily changed back into the red pajamas and yanked back the covers on
the bed. He hadn’t liked the way Ruggiero had so easily gotten rid of him. Like
he was some sort of wayward child, sent up to bed on a school night. And he didn’t
much feel like sleeping, not after that afternoon nap. So instead, he plopped
down on one corner of the mattress, stroking his chin with his right hand and thinking
about the things Celeste and Ruggiero had told him. Wizards that controlled the
governments of the world. Wars and rumors of wars instigated by them with selfish
goals.

In truth, events on a personal scale had moved so incredibly
fast! In three days, he had gone from being an overworked, underappreciated, second-rate
contract employee to a full-blown wizard
and
a target of magically adept
monsters. He had been lucky, very lucky, to have escaped their attack and
luckier still to have been found and rescued by some “good” wizards. And they
had promised to replace his severed arm, to teach him how to properly develop
his new magical talents, and to adopt him into their group.

Okay, true, it was not what he had envisioned when he was
offered magical powers. He was mystified and a bit put out with the wizard/genie
for not explaining what he was getting Paul into. Why had the wizard/genie not mentioned
the other wizards of the world or the Oni? Why had there been no warnings of
the danger Paul would face as a newly minted wizard? If he ever saw the man again,
he would surely demand some answers.

In the meantime, it appeared that Paul was in good hands and
that he had a long productive future ahead of him. Right?

The more he sat and thought about the whole mess, the less
he was able to convince himself that he was actually safe. After all, what did
he really know about Celeste and Ruggiero? Of course, Celeste had rescued him
from the desert and treated him extremely well. Yet, on the other hand, he had only
known her for a day and Ruggiero for a mere couple of hours. And he was
literally putting his life in their hands.

He admitted candidly to himself that part of his emotional
response to Ruggiero was resentment. Paul suspected that Celeste and the good
doctor were playing house—that they were actually lovers! It was the way
Celeste looked at the man. But aside from those twangs of jealousy, he felt
something more. It wasn’t anything he could put into words. Just a gut reaction
to some of the things Ruggiero had said at dinner. Paul was old enough—and yes,
he had been the victim of enough con jobs—to recognize when someone was being
less than honest with him. And Ruggiero certainly had that effect on him. He
didn’t seem trustworthy in some way.

Paul pushed his glasses up on his nose as he remembered that
Ruggiero had asked Celeste to meet him in the library. They would probably talk
about Paul, too. If so, he would be very interested to know what they were
saying.

The idea of attempting to eavesdrop on a private
conversation made him hesitate for a few seconds. It wouldn’t be ethical, not
really. On the other hand, his situation verged on the precarious. Maybe this
organization Ruggiero was trying to recruit Paul for was trustworthy and maybe
not. Any information that Paul obtained, virtuously or not, might have quite an
immediate impact on his life expectancy. It seemed like the smart thing to do.

His intentions therefore rationalized, at least to himself,
Paul rose to his feet and began to pace. So, how could he spy on them and
listen in on their conversation? He wasn’t about to sneak downstairs and listen
in at the keyhole. If he had more experience with magical powers, there was probably
some spell that would let him do it.

Yet, on the other hand, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.
Paul remembered how distinctly he had “sensed” the magic employed at dinner to
bring the food in from the kitchen. With all his years of experience, Ruggiero
would be sure to detect any spells Paul might use to spy on Celeste and
himself. No, that wouldn’t do at all. Paul could just hear Ruggiero lecturing
him for trying to use a spell any rookie wizard could instantly detect.

He was on the verge of casting the whole idea into the
mental trash bin when an old, half-remembered “made-for-TV” movie came to mind.

The two of them were in the library, right? Since it was at
the front of the house, that room had a bay window facing the front street. A bay
window, to be sure, as were all the windows on the front of the house. But nevertheless,
a nice glass window.

A laser. In the old TV movie, they had used a laser
reflected off a window to measure the tiny vibrations induced by sound waves.
So, yes, it was theoretically possible to listen to a conversation, say one
that was taking place in a library, from the outside of the house, perhaps from
hundreds of feet away.

Well, no, not that far. The street in front of the house was
not anywhere near that wide. Fifty or sixty feet, then. A magical spell could
create the laser beam, reflect it off the library window and then, using another
spell, capture and convert the modulated laser light back to an audio signal.

His eyes narrowed in deep thought. But how to do that from
the upstairs bedroom? Ideally, he needed to be physically present across the
street to generate the laser. And surely, Ruggiero and Celeste would notice if he
snuck out of the house, especially if he had to use a magical spell in the
process.

Unless...unless he used a portal. Sure, that just might
work. He could create a small portal, perhaps ¼ of an inch in diameter in order
to keep the energy involved to a very low level, open the portal from the
bedroom to the street, and then fire the laser beam through it. Getting the aim
right might be a bit tricky, but another quick (and small!) spell could help
him with that. And with a portal that small and far away from the library,
there seemed to be a decent chance that neither Celeste nor Ruggiero would
notice. After all, Paul had already used several small spells to help himself
change clothes and clean his glasses, not to mention the ones he was using to
heal his arm and control his weight, and there had been no reaction. There was
undoubtedly some risk involved, but Paul could always claim that he was still
learning to use his powers and had simply made a mistake. If they really were
the “good’” guys, then at most, Ruggiero might grumble but otherwise wouldn’t
do anything about it except berate him for his lack of trust.

Returning to his seat on the corner of the bed, Paul made
himself comfortable and grabbed his talisman from the nightstand.

Closing his eyes, he muttered, “In the name of Sam Spade,
Columbo, and Scooby-Doo, may there be a very small portal, one end a foot in
front of my face, and the other on the side of the street opposite this house.”

With some twiddling of his fingers, Paul adjusted the size
of the portal and moved the other end to get a straight-on shot of the library
window.

“Let’s see now. In the names of Sir Isaac Newton, James
Maxwell, and Zefram Cochrane, let there be an infrared CO
₂
laser
beam emitted through this hole straight at the lower left quadrant of the
library window pane, reflecting back through this portal, and let the sound
vibrations from the reflected beam be audible to me.”

“There!” he smirked. “Now a few more adjustments....”

For a minute, Paul tweaked the position of the portal, the
aim and center frequency of the laser, and the audio conversion settings. The
frequency of the laser was in the low infrared band and well outside the
visible light spectrum, making it highly unlikely that anyone in the library
would see it.

At first, he could hear nothing with his spell. Then a
growing murmur of voices could be sensed, but the words were scrambled and completely
unintelligible.

Paul twitched his fingers, adjusting the flow of sounds. Quite
suddenly, the voices became crystal clear.

“You were gone too long, my love,” Celeste’s voice whispered,
ardor dripping from every word.

“I have missed you as well,” Ruggiero muttered
affectionately.

Paul heard kissing. Oh, this was too much! He started to close
the portal.

“Duncan, tell me true,” Celeste quietly said, “now that you
have met Paul, what do you think of him?”

“You like him, don’t you?” Ruggiero asked, answering her
question with a question.

Paul’s hand froze in mid-wave, and he leaned closer to the
portal to hear her reply.

“He’s sweet, humble,” she replied softly.

“And gullible and naïve?” Ruggiero’s voice added.

“Yes, those too,” she acknowledged readily enough.

“He’s developing a crush on you,” Ruggiero observed.

“I noticed,” Celeste willingly admitted. “But he’ll get over
it.”

Paul’s shoulders slumped, his face going slack. Well, he had
asked for it by eavesdropping on their conversation. He was almost tempted to
end the spell, but he hesitated.

“I disagree with your assessment of his character,” Ruggiero
said. “Would you like to hear my reasons why?”

“Yes, of course.”

Paul heard a rustling noise that sounded like the movement
of clothing.

“Let’s put aside the fact that he is supposedly the first
new wizard in over four hundred years,” the doctor began. “Instead, let us
consider the tale he told us. First, he claims to have given a genie two of his
wishes. How wonderfully generous of him to do so.” Ruggiero’s sarcasm reflected
his disbelief. “Though I can’t imagine anyone on Earth being quite that
foolish. Second, he claims that he received his powers from that same genie. I
checked. It’s never happened before in recorded history, a genie bestowing
magical powers on a Normie, not once. Third, where is this supposed
genie-turned-wizard? Where did he go? There have been no accounts, no rumors of
such a personage.”

The wizard sighed heavily. “Fourth, there is the talisman Paul
is carrying that he claims to have made without any assistance from anyone
else. It’s good. Too good for someone who has had no training in how to
construct one, let alone someone who has only exercised magical powers for two
days. And then there is item number five, that business about escaping the Oni
by letting his molecules fall through the earth. That, my love, is sheer
nonsense. I’ve never heard of a spell like that, have you? No, I thought not.
Yes, modern science has proven that matter is composed of atoms and molecules,
but they are all linked closely together. Matter is solid.” And Paul heard a
thump as Ruggiero smacked something hard, possibly a table or a desk. “You know
as well as I do that if any two objects tried to occupy the same space at the same
time, there would be a very large explosion. If Mr. Armstead had really tried to
do that, there would likely be a hefty sized hole in the ground and he would
not be walking around afterward.

“And then, sixth, there is his clever story of portaling
into outer space to trap the Oni that were chasing him. And it really is a
clever story. It only has one flaw. Without a—what do you call it? Ah, yes, a
spacesuit—without one of those, a person would die instantly, violently in
space. Yes, a spell would provide a degree of protection, but nothing like what
Mr. Armstead claims.”

Silence reigned for several seconds.

“Then, you don’t think he is anything special?” asked
Celeste, a touch of sadness in her voice.

“Not hardly, no,” Ruggiero answered firmly. “You touched
him, did you not, when you treated his injured arm? I shook his hand twice.
Tell me, did you feel any unusual powers? How would you rate his magical
potency?”

Paul could almost see Celeste biting her lower lip. “No,
nothing unusual about his powers. Average for a new wizard, I suppose. Perhaps
a little less.”

“Yes, I agree,” Ruggiero concurred. “In time and with
experience, he might become a decent wizard. Assuming he is what he appears to
be.”

“You don’t think he is?” Celeste inquired with a degree of surprise
reflected in her voice.

“No, my dear, I don’t. I think he is a spy. It would answer
a lot of questions. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say that Shirazi or Clarke
or Karlsen took one of their cohorts, and using magic, they altered his
appearance so that we would not recognize him. Then they gave him a cover story
and dropped him on that mountaintop with a cleverly constructed talisman. After
that, they pretended to have their Oni chase him out to the desert. The Oni
portaled away, leaving Mr. Armstead unconscious on the sand. Whoever sent him
would count on us to notice the construction of the new talisman and
investigate, following the trail to the desert. And we rescued him, bringing
him safely into our midst. Isn’t that a much more plausible and likely scenario
than the fable he told us?”

More silence this time.

“So you think he is a spy. What about his arm? I mean, if he
was a spy, would he voluntarily submit to having his arm shredded like that?”

“Why not? No doubt, it was painful, but any wizard worth his
salt could grow another one in a few months,” Ruggiero countered.

“Does that mean you plan to kill him?” Celeste asked without
a single hint in her voice that she might find such a fate for Paul to be
objectionable in any way.

Ruggiero sighed. “Yes. I don’t believe we have a choice. But
before I do, I would like to string him along for a bit while we are pretending
to wait for his new arm to be delivered. I want to get as much information out
of him as we can before we get rid of his body. We’ll try a little gentle
persuasion at first, and if that doesn’t work, we can graduate to more
persuasive measures.”

“Ah?” Celeste uttered.