The Jekyll Legacy by Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Twenty-One The Journey

Victorian alchemy meets modern science and magic.
What could possibly go wrong?

The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.

 — Laozi Tao Te Ching (c. 604 BCE - c. 531 BCE)

 

Na-Noc was alone in the dark, and he was bereft. The Heart of Virtue, his almost constant companion for many years, except for the brief period in which the interlopers had stolen the precious object from him, the source of his strength and power, was gone. Worse than gone, that upstart Apprentice had poisoned it somehow, so that it burned like the hooves of the centaurs, like the apprentice’s own hands had burned, with just a touch. The man was like a serpent, a basilisk, poisoning everything with some sort of gaze or touch, since everything around him just turned to death.

Life was so unfair. Why couldn’t people just leave him alone?

Just then, the room he was in began to shake, swaying back and forth, up and down with jerky movements, so he was getting nauseous, and then he vomited up some foul substance, filling the little room with a disgusting odor that made him feel even sicker.

Na-Noc began to cry.

The women were getting used to being alive again. Luckily, for at least some of them, the petrification process — however it had been accomplished — had slowed their thoughts so drastically that they’d only experienced a few hours of pain, subjectively, but many had been very confused when they were told that Elvi was Emperor now. One of them had asked, “What happened to Emperor Ingvi?” and had only then broken down in tears when Akcuanrut explained — as kindly as he could — that Ingvi had reigned over two hundred and fifty years ago. It was only then that she’d realized that everything that Phil had explained to them was true, that everyone she’d known was dead, and probably long-forgotten.

There had been a lot of stories like hers, and it was gradually becoming clear to many of the newly-woken that the women who’d shared their peculiar experience were the only real friends they had left in the world. If they hadn’t known each other before, they shared a common bond, that their last memories, if any, were of being taken by a monster, treated very badly, and then they’d passed through a sort of veil, and on the other side of the veil their new lives were waiting for them, right along with Selene and Rhea, the very models of their salvation, and Phil, the father of their children.

Selene’s parents had both been restored to fully-human bodies, of course, and had set up housekeeping in one of the many empty chambers off the throne room, seemingly as happy and contented to be together as two women as they’d always been as husband and wife, although they’d both changed as well, taking on quite a bit of his wives’ personalities in addition to their own, to the point that Phil, at least, had trouble telling them apart, the woman who had been Lucille Utterson — and the man who had been George — having been subsumed in Alice and Sarah, the new names they’d chosen for themselves.

All the women had done the same, in fact, and got along quite well with Selene and Rhea, treating them almost like older sisters — sharing a ‘familial’ outlook, but more in tune, perhaps, with the modern world — so Phil got used to seeing them at all hours, small groups of them talking quietly with their heads together as one or the other of his wives gave them the benefit of their wisdom, but especially they liked to talk about weapons. They all seemed to have inherited Selene and Rhea’s fascination and skills with all sorts of weaponry, and soon enough he’d began noticing rowdy gangs of them playing at juggling daggers in the corridors — sometimes with Rhea, Selene, or both, or neither — shooting well-aimed arrows at bales of hay in the throne room, and practicing their swordplay in the dusty fields outside the gate.

Not one of them, however, had so much as asked him to point their way back to civilization, much less asked for transport out of the wilderness, or for the dowry he’d promised them, but rather seemed perfectly content to set up housekeeping in the temple, one great sisterhood of (mostly) unwed mothers sharing pregnancy stories and folk beliefs on avoiding stretch marks right along with tips on the best way to disembowel a much larger armed opponent using ordinary kitchen implements.

It was more than a little unnerving. In the first place, he felt guilty. One way or another, all these pregnancies were down to him, even though the wizard had arranged the magical mechanics, so all these women carried his babies, at least some of whom he’d never see, if the women left. It hadn’t seemed to bother Thundercloud, but he supposed that centaur stallions had a long history of siring foals they might not have any real part in raising, since the real centaur family centered on the mares, with the stallions treated as expendable — and temporary — sperm delivery systems, to be replaced at need from the ready supply of them who lurked just over the nearest horizon.

On the other hand, he’d started out with one woman in his life — in what he’d thought of as a perfectly ordinary monogamous marriage, despite the fact that the guests had included centaurs and at least one wizard — but his marriage had turned out to have included his wife’s sort-of twin sister almost by default — since they’d refused to be separated from each other when the opportunity to be co-wives had presented itself — and Jewish men — amongst whom he had to include himself — had a very long history of living with powerful women who ruled at home.

The bigamy thing had been a little outside his comfort zone at the time, but he’d later gotten used to it, and then couldn’t imagine it being any other way, despite being a little odd by upstate New York standards — ignoring the historical example of John Noyes and the Oneida Community — because in some ways his wives were two halves of a single woman, seen from very slightly different viewpoints, so his relationship with both of them was enhanced and strengthened by their shared experience of their ‘other half.’ It helped too that neither of his wives felt at all jealous of the other — in fact, rather the opposite, and both were very insistent on ensuring that their sister wife was perfectly happy before they themselves felt truly satisfied — but now those two had many hundreds of almost identical twins wandering around, and even he had trouble sometimes telling whether a woman passing by was truly his wife, Selene, or one of her many twins. He dreaded waking up and finding that one or more of them had secretly traded places with one or another of his two wives, and he couldn’t just laugh it off as a silly idea, either, because Selene and Rhea had conspired together before, just like Rachel and Leah. It hadn’t at all escaped his notice either that Rhea’s name was an ominous portmanteau of those very names. Dealing with magic on a daily basis had taught him that words had power, that the map is not necessarily anything even remotely similar to the territory, but that changes on the map can change the territory in strange and sometimes frightening ways. Having so many essential twins hanging around was an invitation to magical disaster.

He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

This niggling feeling that some awkward surprise was waiting to ambush him prompted some considerable consternation, then, when he strolled out from their bedchamber one morning to discover all the women silently assembled, obviously waiting for him to appear. Both Rhea and Selene were conspicuously absent. He’d looked quickly around him, hoping to find some safety or comfort there, or somewhere, until he realized that neither of his wives were present. ‘Dang!’ he thought, feeling a bit hard done by and abandoned. ‘Not again!’

One of the women stepped forward and said, “If you please, Sir Wizard, Selene and Rhea have been telling us about the legends of your world, in particular about the Amazon women and the Valkyries.”

“Yes?” he said guardedly, thinking about the Amazons in particular, who were rumored to kidnap men for bed partners, and then either enslave or slay them when they’d served their purpose. The Valkyries, on the other hand, merely grabbed wounded warriors and carried them up to the Scandinavian afterlife. He wasn’t anxious to experience any of these scenarios.

She cleared her throat, a little nervously. “Well, we’ve decided we don’t want to get married, or leave behind our sisters, and we were wondering if we could just continue living here like Amazons, or Valkyries. Would that be alright with you?”

He blinked. They were asking for something that he hadn’t even imagined, but it made sense, when he came to think of it. His own wives were nearly inseparable, and sought each other out when they’d been too long apart, and these women were spun from the same magical web. “Of course you can,” he said promptly. “I consecrated the entire temple for the purpose of providing for the welfare and healing of the community, so you’d have the right to live here, even if I objected, because all of you constitute the majority of our community in any case. I may have one vote, and my wives of course have another two of their own, but we could no more legally decide what could or could not be done with the property without your consent than we could fly to the moons.”

Now it was her turn to look puzzled. “But isn’t this held by you from the Emperor?”

He furrowed his brows a little. “I suppose it was, in the narrow sense, but the title was necessarily passed irrevocably from the Emperor to me, and I promptly turned around and passed it to a general religious and charitable purpose which is always administered by trustees and a community organization. I just haven’t bothered to set one up yet, although you could do this on your own as well, since you’re the community, not me. Akcuanrut and I arranged all this very carefully to fulfill both legal and religious requirements before we sprang our trap on Na-Noc, and then used the fact of its consecration to free you all.”

“So all this is ours?”

“Well, sort of, but not really. It belongs to the community in trust, but ultimately to God, the supreme ruler of the Universe, whatever that means to you. So there are limitations on even community rights. You couldn’t legally, for example — even collectively — sell the property and pocket the profits for your personal gain without risking the immediate return of the Dark Gods and their creatures to the temple, although you could legally sell the property so you could use the funds to purchase other property which would be dedicated to the same purpose, although that too might risk the return of the Dark Gods to this temple. I wouldn’t do it, and I’d advise against it in the most forceful terms, but it would ultimately be the decision of the trustees, that is to say, you all, or your authorized representatives.”

“So we can stay then?”

He blinked in his own discovery, somehow pleased, then realized that he was profoundly relieved. “This is your home, dear hearts. Of course you can stay.”

There was an excited chorus of women’s voices, but not the usual disorganized hubbub one might hear in other crowds, because all their voices were identical in tone and basic pitch, so the overall effect was melodious even without trying to stay on key.

Without realizing at first that he’d done so, because the emotion welled up from so deep within his heart, Phillip Cohn, rational young man of the Twenty-First Century of the Common Era, both smiled and wept for joy.

Later that evening, Selen and Rhea finally resurfaced from wherever they’d been hiding. “So,” Selene said casually, “I hear the girls are planning to stay?”

Phil rolled his eyes. “You knew they were all along, didn’t you? The two of you left me twisting in the wind, so of course I was imagining all sorts of wild scenarios when I saw what amounted to a peaceful lynch mob outside our door. Where were you, anyway?”

“Oh, out and about,” Rhea said airily. “We had things to do with Acky, and we didn’t want to spring too many things on you at once.”

“Really? I thought that he was preparing to leave with the Heart, taking it back to the Imperial College of Wizards for safekeeping.”

“Oh, he is,” Selene said with equal insouciance, “but he’s also been doing obstetric evaluations for all the girls, which take a little time, even using the latest magical hocus-pocus, so he’s fallen a little behind schedule. He sent Na-Noc on ahead, so the Wizards down south could get a head start on working with him, but kept back the Heart so its proximity to Na-Noc couldn’t build up a lethal potential.”

“I don’t think there’s any danger, but I suppose there’s no harm in being extra careful,” Phil said.

“We thought not, and it gave us time to do an actual head count on the girls, so you’ll be pleased to know that we now have six hundred and forty-five girls on board, and six hundred and forty-nine babies on the way.” She smiled benignly.

“I guess that means that we have a few multiple pregnancies then. Who’re the lucky girls?” He smiled.

“Well, as it turned out, both Rhea and I were pregnant already,” Selene positively beamed, “and Acky told us that the fertility spell he used is absolutely foolproof.” She smiled again, and Rhea smiled with her, but with just a tiny hesitation.

Time slowed to a crawl for him at that instant, as his mind started working, and he realized that his next words would affect him for the rest of his life, whether for good or ill. It didn’t take him at all long to choose, “That’s terrific, darlings!” he smiled with all his heart — it wasn’t difficult — and said, “You mean to say that you’re both having twins?” and gathered both his beautiful girls into his arms. “How wonderful! I’ve always regretted being an only child!”

“So you’re not upset at all, dear? About us being pregnant with twins I mean?” Selene asked. They were relaxing in bed the next morning, having whiled away some few hours the previous evening.

“Not at all, sweet hearts. On this world, I’m an adult, even enrolled in one of the most prestigious local colleges, evidently on full scholarship, so my career’s just ticking along famously. Acky’s already taught me how to conjure all sorts of metals, so money’s not a problem, and I’ve got the two most wonderful wives in all the worlds, and now I’m going to be a father. What’s not to like?”

“But don’t you miss Earth?” Rhea asked.

“Not really. This world is enough for me, at least it is with the two of you in it, my dearest loves, and now we know that all four of your parents are safe and sound, and seem to be very happy, even though their lives have changed, but who’s to say that those new lives aren’t better than their old ones? Your own parents, Selene, are much younger than before, and so have long lives ahead of them, and they seem very happy together. Your mother, Rhea, seems to have really come into her own as Thundercloud, the visionary leader of an entire race into freedom and a land of their own. I believe your father is happier too, and couldn’t be happier about her own pregnancy. I do wish that I could let my parents know that we’re all safe and happy, and I wish that they could meet you both, especially now that they’re going to be grandparents, but I can’t say that I regret any part of this adventure, since we managed to save the world and all. That last bit justifies any sacrifice, I think, and if that means that we can never go back…” he shrugged, “…there are others who’ve given their full measure of devotion without even the comfort of knowing that it made a real difference.”

Rhea smiled and snuggled into his left side. “I’m so lucky that Na-Noc poisoned me. Remind me to thank him, if we ever meet him when he’s in a better mood. I’d always heard the near-death experiences could change your life, and it sure did mine.”

“Maybe not so much, Rhea, dear,” said Selene. “I was missing you a lot. It might have taken a while, but I think we would have wound up together anyway.”

“Really?” Rhea asked, eyes wide.

“Really truly. Haven’t you had the feeling, sometimes, that we were led here for a reason? That everything that’s happened has been intended? Your Dad said it — it seems like a lifetime ago — that all our changes seemed to have been designed to help us survive and succeed in completing our task, and I don’t think that task is over yet, because we’re still changing, if not in form, in our associations with other people.”

“What do you mean, Selene?” Phil asked.

“I mean, we have the beginnings of two small armies now, Thundercloud’s herd of centaurs, and our growing band of Amazon sisters, and almost all of us essentially one family, related in one way or another to the Lanyons and the Uttersons. I can’t help thinking that there’s some purpose behind it, and that we three will play an important part.”

“You’ve forgotten something, Selene,” Rhea said.

“What’s that?” she said.

“Phil,” she said.

Phil tried to demur, “But I’m just….”

“…the best ‘apprentice’ Acky has ever seen,” Rhea continued, “the man who brought together the Lanyons and the Uttersons, who’ve never intermarried before — despite the close association of our families — over more than a century of family history, the man who fathered six hundred and forty-nine babies on six hundred and forty-seven women, including all three of the available Uttersons.” Here, she smiled. “It’s not every guy who manages to knock up his bride, the bride’s mother, and the bride’s father in the span of a very few days. It’s a record I suspect will never be broken, so perhaps we should contact the Guiness people when we get back.”

Phil was scandalized. “Of course we won’t, Rhea.”

“It was a joke, Dear, but I’ve been thinking about this; I don’t think there’s any reason we can’t go back to Earth and still be married, no matter what secular law says, since you said that under Jewish religious law, at least, it’s relatively unexceptional, just forbidden except in drastic circumstances, but you could hardly find anything more desperate than dying, so I think we get a pass. Anyway, I don’t care all that much about what the civil law says — since it really only exists to protect wives in cases of divorce or death — and I know you’ll fulfill your obligations to both of us, willy-nilly, as long as we’re all alive, and the rest is just a matter of insurance, estate planning, and legal directives of support and care. Any time you want to take us back to meet your parents is fine by both of us, but I think Selene and I should leave explaining about the other six hundred and forty-five grandchildren to you. There are limits to our powers of persuasion without hints of lethal force creeping in.” She smiled, without the least hint of the fierce lioness behind her smile.

“I take full responsibility, of course, and you’re absolutely right about planning. In fact, it might be a good idea for all of us to have advance directives and wills drawn up immediately to cover any eventuality — since we live in dangerous times. We should probably ask Sarah Utterson for advice, since she’s the lawyer of the family. She’ll have probably already thought of it herself, since she and Alice are in much the same situation if we ever wind up back on Earth. Whatever we do, we should probably ask Acky to keep copies, and carry a couple around with his signature and seal that we can file with your father’s law firm, Selene, if and when we wind up passing though town. We should probably get Acky to sign medical reports asserting your change of sex as well, since it might otherwise be difficult to prove who we say we are. In fact, the same probably goes for all the Earth people who’ve changed using either the Jekyll formula or magic, assuming there’s any real difference.”

“Isn’t there something you could do with magic?” Selene asked.

He grimaced and shook his head. “Not that I know of,” he admitted. “If there is, it’s more than I’m capable of right now, since records and identity documents are all tied into computer databases these days, so having a plastic card or paper document doesn’t really matter if the authorities can’t verify it electronically, other than as an automated ticket to a false ID charge, and possibly a stint in jail.”

“Drat!” Rhea said. “You’d think at least one of us would have been given the mystical power to cloud men’s minds, or something like those science babes who can dive inside a computer network and hack it from the inside out, like that Borg woman, what’s-er-face….”

Phil rolled his eyes in a slightly-exaggerated manner. “Honey, what we have is the ability to churn out almost unlimited quantities of money, which will open more doors than Batman on his best day.”

That piqued Rhea’s interest. “Uhm, what does ‘unlimited’ mean, exactly.”

“As much as we need,” he said, “basically. Why? Planning an around-the-world luxury cruise?”

“Well, it would be cool to have one of those new game consoles, wouldn’t it? I mean, if we go back to Earth. I do like it here, and I like the centaurs too. I think the whole herd is going to stay with our girls, no matter what we do, because quite a few of them used to be centaurs, and we all seem to have a special affinity with them now. With a few centaurs armed with bows, and a few barbarian babes armed with lances and swords, we’ll have a heavy cavalry that can’t be beat! All the local horses are puny by comparison, and the guys are mostly clumsy oafs, so even if they adopt our tactics they won’t be any good at it.”

Phil laughed in delight. His wives and their endless fascination with weapons and tactics were an endless source of amusement to him, whose only real interest in sports had been to build a ‘well-rounded’ resume for college, and possibly a scholarship. “Not a problem, Sweetheart. We can have a game console in every room if you like, but I do think it’s a good idea to live modestly overall, so one doesn’t stand out from one’s neighbors. Showy mansions and private jets attract the attention of kidnappers and burglars, all of whom I’d like to avoid, especially once our babies are born, however certain I am that either of you could ‘take out’ the bad guys at the drop of a hat.”

“What am I going to do with a private jet?” she asked, puzzled.

“Here? Not so much, I guess, since there are no airports and no fuel, but if we go back to Earth….”

“If we go back to Earth, it will be for a visit, not to stay. It wouldn’t be fair to Wildflower and Thundercloud, who’re pretty much stuck here, unless your ‘unlimited’ bankroll extends to buying Wyoming as a home range for them, and our mandatory wardrobe isn’t exactly unnoticeable in everyday life. Can you imagine us in the supermarket at the checkout counter? I can just see us having a nice conversation with the nextdoorsikeh about our fine taste in throwing knives, or being stopped on the street by the cops for the same reason. They’ll be really pleased when they discover that they can’t even take our knives away and have them stay taken.”

“She’s right, Sweetie,” Selene said. “We’re adapted to this world, not upstate New York. We’d stick out like sore thumbs there, and you’d need a small fortune just to keep us in clothes, since we could only wear them for about ten minutes before they started turning themselves into leather bustiers and hot pants. I don’t particularly relish the idea of going through a New York winter dressed like this either, although I suppose our archetypes would allow us to wear wolfskins or something, in which case all the animal rights activists would throw ketchup on us, or something worse.”

He frowned slightly. “You’re right, of course, but maybe we could do something like dye natural furs hot pink, so they would look fake and be real. Maybe a cape?”

“Ooooh!” Rhea cooed. “ Wouldn’t we both be fanboy wet dreams in fur capes! I’d look good in hot pink, but I really think Selene ought to have vibrant green…. And whips! We ought to have matching black leather whips!”

“Rhea! Be serious!” Selene said.

“Who’s joking? There’s nothing saying that we can’t accessorize, is there? We can carry things around without having them disappear on us, can’t we? Even action figures sometimes come with changes of clothes. I think we could pull off several different looks without violating the ‘buxom barbarian babe’ trademark.”

“Maybe. I guess we haven’t really pushed the limits of the characters, though, and all our experiments have been with modern clothing. In the videos, Red Warrioress had several outfits besides the chainmail and fur bikini numbers, including some that were quite elegant. It’s like she had outfits for kicking ass, other outfits for lounging around the house, and still others for fancy dress occasions,”

“Exactly! I’ll bet we can do barbarian chic just as easily! We just haven’t tried.”

“We’ll have to get some fabrics and try different designs. Even if we’re stuck with leather, what’s wrong with leather skirts? I get really tired of having to practically strip naked when I have to pee, so having the freedom to wear skirts would be a welcome relief.”

“We could do a lot of boho-chic things with fur and leather, although I do like the dreamy quasi-Medieval Pre-Raphaelite look, maybe something with a heavy silk damask. Oooh! I saw a Rossetti painting once with a woman in a beautiful silk lampas brocade gown, all red and gold. If it’s Medieval, that’s practically barbaric anyway. They hadn’t invented forks yet, much less indoor plumbing.”

“And skirts would be much more pleasant when we start showing, and you know we’re going to be huge. My bladder hurts just thinking about it.”

“Oh, golly. We’re going to need nursing bras too! That settles it, we’ve got to go back to Earth sometime soon, if we can possibly arrange it between saving the Universe and all.”

Phil rolled his eyes. Somehow, in all his tentative fantasies about marriage, somewhere off in what he’d imagined to be the distant future, he hadn’t imagined exactly this scenario.

Akcuanrut made the announcement over dinner three days later, “The chest containing Na-Noc has arrived at the Emperor’s Court, and is safely guarded and attended, so it’s time to leave this pleasant spot, together with all who choose to do battle with the Dark.”

“Are we going south to the capital?” Rhea asked.

“At first, we will,” he answered. “After consultation with the full College of Wizards, we’ll decide what to do next, but I believe that we will be focused first on tracking down the source of the evil in this world with a view toward eliminating the threat and destroying the Heart, without quibbling over which task to accomplish first.”

“But haven’t we eliminated the Heart as a threat already?” Selene asked. “It certainly didn’t do Na-Noc any good. In fact, it burned him, almost as if it weren’t evil at all.”

Phil took that question himself. “We neutralized it, but only on a temporary basis, using an obscure provision of Jewish law and a technicality.”

“Technicality?”

“A nifty one, to be sure, but one that can be worked around. First, I consecrated the Heart to the Altar in Jerusalem, which no longer exists on our Earth. Because of that, taking the Heart to Earth would ‘cut’ the link which makes it sacred, and thus subject it to the ordinary rules for charitable donations, by means of which it could be resold for profit, or even stolen, and rededicated to evil. Alternatively, the object could be taken to a world in which the Altar does exist, and a ruling would have to be made upon whether it was fit for the altar. I suspect that the decision could go either way, since as a creature, the Heart is a perfect and unblemished exemplar of itself. On the other hand, it’s of a sort not specifically mentioned in the Law as kosher for slaughter, so either strict or lenient rulings could be made. The Heart is clearly inimical to Life, so I think that an exception should be made, but one can’t depend on finding a priestly expert prepared to apply the Law ‘creatively,’ since historically many Temple Priests were very conservative.”

“But how can this Temple both exist and not exist?”

“Because the answer depends on where you are. Call it ‘quantum uncertainty.’ On Earth, the question is decided, and the Temple doesn’t exist. On this planet, we don’t know how it relates to the timeline of the Temple, that is, we don’t know if we’ve gone backward in time, forward, or even if our timelines are parallel at all. That’s the technicality I mentioned. Until someone makes an actual observation, the existence or non-existence of the Temple is undecided, like Schrödinger’s famous cat in the box.”

“Schrödinger?” said Rhea.

“Erwin Schrödinger was a very famous physicist on Earth and one of the first theoreticians who addressed quantum phenomena in detail. He was the guy who said that quantum phenomena were inherently ‘entangled’ with each other, what he called Verschränkung, because he was born in Austria, and developed an equation that mathematically described how the quantum state of a physical system changes over time, a accomplishment for which he won a Nobel Prize. Very clever fellow.”

“So what about the cat?” she asked.

“No one knows. Since it was only a ‘thought experiment,’ and the formulation is paradoxical, the experiment can’t actually be performed in any meaningful way. The only ‘interesting’ part of it is during the experiment, because the quantum wave collapses into ordinary reality at the very instant anyone actually observes the result, which is no more mysterious, really, than tossing a coin, except that the likelihood of the coin being heads or tails at any given time can be calculated with much more certainty than the instantaneous detection status of a Geiger counter.”

Akcuanrut interrupted this deep discussion with one simple observation, “Who cares? All magic is deeply personal and deeply situational. The outcome may depend on many factors, from what one had for lunch to whether a particular bird flew overhead at a particular time. Because this is a magical task, the destruction of an immensely powerful magic artifact, the undertaking will be fraught with peril, and the outcome will depend upon luck as well as skill, which I believe is all that you really imply with your anecdotes of Shrydinger and quintims.”

Phil laughed. “Probably,” he said. “You put it much more elegantly, Master Wizard.”

“Just as it should be, Apprentice Phillip.”

“Just so, Master, and now on to the business of our trip south with the Heart. I think we ought to take three hundred of our new sisters with us as a military deterrent to idle curiosity and potential brigands, and a matching number of Thundercloud’s herd, with whom they seem to have bonded, leaving the rest behind to guard the Temple from any intrusion.”

“That seems prudent, since my own guards left with the remaining portion of Na-Noc, although it seems unlikely that any brigand would dare to accost any Wizard of the Emperor’s College.”

“They might, perhaps, if impelled by the Dark Gods,” Phil said.

“True.”

“I’d also like to leave sufficient quantities of gold and silver to allow those who remain behind to purchase necessary supplies, as well as to supply the dowries I promised them if I don’t return for any reason.”

“Why don’t you let me handle that, since they’ll find it easier to use the coinage of the Emperor than raw metal.”

“Can you do that?”

“Of course. I designed the current coinage, both gold and silver, and will give you a complete set to aid your own visualizations. It’s quite attractive, if I do say so myself.” He smiled.

“Doesn’t that compete with the official mint?”

“Not at all. The College of Wizards is the official mint, and our expenditures boost the local economy wherever we travel, which means that we, and the Emperor, are very popular among the people we serve. Our world is overflowing with bounty of every sort, and coins merely encourage that abundance to be spread widely.”

“But doesn’t that lead to inflation, where it takes more and more money to buy a given item?”

“Why should it? The metal has intrinsic value, because it can be wrought by artisans into objects of great beauty. The more coins are available, the more objects artists are able to create from them, so this coin…” he produced an example and handed it to Phil… “is in its least valuable form. I don’t see how it’s any different from digging up metal from a mine and then melting it and pouring it into molds, which is difficult and dangerous work. Not only that, but any crude metal stamping process to create a design could be easily duplicated by a trickster who wanted to fool people by using lesser metals. My designs, on the other hand, are impossible to form without magic, and therefore a guarantee of quality, since all the wizards possessing sufficient skill are members of the Imperial College, so it’s easy for any Wizard — even those of lesser skill — to trace the lineage of any coin, and contact its originator at will.”

While the wizard had been speaking, Phil had been examining the coin. The wizard was right; the coin was a perfect three-dimensional sculpture with an interior structure that might have been reproducible in molded metal, but then would have required polishing with miniature tools which he imagined would be difficult to come by on this primitive world, and the effort involved would probably be more than the coin was worth. He tried to create a duplicate, and succeeded after a few false starts. The shape of it was wicked hard to visualize. “You’re right, Master Wizard. I spoke without thought, based on the crude physical processes in use on my own world, where most of our money is printed on paper.”

“But that’s insane! Who on your world would trust a coin made out of paper? Any spark could set it aflame! then pffft! your coin is gone.”

“Well, that’s a problem, I must confess. People have to be more careful of their money on my world, so most things are actually purchased through electronic funds transfers, a process of communication through which the buyer verifies that funds are available by means of messages that fly through the air, like the television you saw when you visited our world.”

Akcuanrut was profoundly uninterested in the so-called ‘television.’ He could have produced a better illusion of life when he was a mere apprentice. “It seems a waste of time. Do you have to carry around these ‘television’ things wherever you go, just to buy something?”

“Unh, no. Never mind. Your solution seems easier, for this world at least, and there are many people on our own world who argue for the gold standard, even today, without taking into account the practical difficulties, not least of which is the fact that there’s a total world economy of roughly eighty trillion dollars, while the total amount of gold produced every year is only fifty million ounces, more or less, and there have only been ten billion ounces of gold mined in the entire history of the world, a pile about the size of a small eight-floor office building, a cube of gold about eighty feet on each side, a pile that would easily fit inside the throne room, yet who would trade the entire world for a pile of gold, however large or small? Even figuring only the value of the world economy, that would make gold worth about one million six hundred thousand dollars an ounce — vastly more than its ‘real’ value, even depending upon fluctuations in the world supply of stupidity — and limits world economic growth to approximately six and a quarter ten-millionths of one percent a year at most — even discounting the tremendous costs of production and environmental degradation — a recipe for economic stagnation that’s just a tiny bit above zero — or less than zero once all costs are factored in — and so guarantees increasing world poverty as the population increases, not to mention the uncomfortable fact than anyone who sold the entire world for any amount of money would be an utter fool. In short, it’s a false equation designed by greedy idiots who’ve never managed to grasp any mathematics beyond the scope of their fingers and toes. Your way at least allows for substantial growth with no adverse impact at all that I can see, since your world supply of gold can be adjusted at will — limited only by the supply of available wizards — with zero environmental impact, no streams poisoned by mining waste products, no lives lost in dangerous excavations, and no real temptation to steal another country’s treasure, since it would be cheaper to make your own.”

“Exactly, O Apprentice Phillip. You’re well on your way to Mastery, I believe, although you’ll have to be examined by a panel of Wizards to claim the title fairly.”

“Why, thank you, Master wizard. I’m flattered by your regard.”

“No flattery intended, young man, just a simple statement of fact. You have a gift for magic that should have been treasured and nurtured since your childhood, were it not that the inexplicable scarcity of magic in your world prevented anyone from noticing.”

Rhea looked toward Selene and said, “That’s quite some husband you picked for us, Sis. How did we get so lucky?”

Selene looked back and answered, “I’m beginning to think that ‘luck’ had nothing to do with it, that we merely trod the paths of our separate destinies until we arrived at a common point.”

“Zivugim,” Phil said quietly, “One’s true life partners in every sense, more than just foreordained, since mere destiny can lead one to the wrong spouse. It’s said that it’s just as difficult to find the perfect life partner as it is to split the Red Sea in twain, and so requires a miracle.”

Rhea looked skeptical. “It really says that? Where?”

“In the Babylonian Talmud: Sotah 2-A, I think it is,” he said. “The actual word is from Greek, the same root from which we derive ‘conjugal,’ ‘zygote,’ ‘yoke,’ and ‘yoga.’ It’s a pervasive concept all through Indo-European philosophy and science.”

“Yolk? Like an egg?”

“No, ‘yoke,’ as in ‘join together’ for a common purpose. ‘Conjugal’ refers of course to marriage. A ‘zygote’ is the fertilized ovum that eventually develops into a new life. And ‘Yoga’ is a Sanskrit word referring to the union of the soul with God.”

“But how does ‘yolk’ come in?”

“It doesn’t, not really, other than by pure coincidence. Our English word ‘yolk’ is from a word that meant ‘yellow,’ which is why there’s an ‘L’ in it, from Middle English yolke, yelke, from Old English geoloca, derivative of geolu yellow. An egg, however, is not necessarily fertilized, just as a spermatozoa can’t grow into an embryo without joining with an ovum to form a zygote, the union of the male and female gametes to form a single new cell which is capable of division and growth, the which miracle we see, through an odd circumstance of fate, not two, but four examples of before us.”

Akcuanrut interrupted, “I see that declarations of undying love and ardent desire have changed since I was a young man. I highly recommend couching these curiously bloodless sentiments in more appropriate language, preferably in private, so that your lives together will be blessed.”

Phil, Selene, and Rhea all blushed and fell silent as the wizard swept out the door.

“I’m sorry, Sweethearts. I’m essentially a science nerd. If I didn’t play football and have perfect vision, I’d be a skinny kid with glasses held together with sticky tape and bad hair.”

“Don’t forget the pocket protector with ten different colored pens and pencils,” Rhea added. “Heck, when it comes to that, we were all science nerds. Selene here was the only approximately normal kid between the three of us, and she hung out with me, so she was probably suspect too.”

“Oddly enough, I can barely remember either of you as Jack and Hastie, although I know intellectually that we were on the same football team, and must have taken quite a few of the same classes over the years. Instead, I have vague memories of you both as younger versions of yourselves, just as beautiful, and way out of my league. You were both cheerleaders, and I was on the second-string squad who sat on the bench waiting for one of the guys to break a leg or something.”

“I was a cheerleader?” Rhea asked, not at all displeased. “I bet I looked hot in those cute outfits.”

“Sure were, and sure did,” he said. All the guys on the bench were in love with you, and half the rest of the male student body.

“Okay, this is seriously weird,” Selene said. “It’s like history is being rewritten on us, because I’m starting to remember the exact same thing, but I know that it’s not true.”

“Maybe it is, Honey,” Rhea said. “We’re setting out to change the world, so maybe the world is changing on us the closer we come to success. Wasn’t it in one of Lewis Carroll’s books where the White Queen says, ‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards’? Maybe it’s a poor sort of causality that only works forwards as well. Look at our bodies, Selene, we have breasts and hips that imply menarche, puberty, and normal development as young women, and our brains have obviously done the same, because we think like young women, as far as I can tell. I remember learning how to paint my nails, curling my hair — I wasn’t happy with it — and having sleepovers with my girlfriends. How does all that happen without a real history to match?”

“Through the Looking Glass,” Selene said.

“That’s the one,” she said.

“We seem to have stepped right through.”

Akcuanrut filled their quarters with a nice assortment of gold and silver coins before they left, enough to meet the needs of all their remaining number for the foreseeable future, plus enough to pay out the dowries of any of the sisters who wanted to leave, although that didn’t seem likely at present. And then they set off to see the wizards.

Sarah and Alice Utterson stayed behind, but saw them off with good wishes and fond farewells. Despite their newfound skills with knives and whatnot, they preferred, they’d said, to stay at home. Be sure to write, they’d said, as they waved their hankies very prettily. “Bye, bye!”

Selene wasn’t a bit surprised. Her parents had always been homebodies. “I will if I can,” she said, “Bye, bye,” she said, bleakly.

It was surprising, to Selene at least, how long it took for more than three hundred mounted riders to leave the temple. “This is really spoiling my exit,” she muttered to Rhea as their little band of adventurers rode out, led by Thundercloud, Wildflower, and Windflyer, with Akcuanrut mounted on one of the few actual horses they had left, together with his remaining guards, also on horseback, and the wagon, the same one they’d used for Bluebell, carrying supplies and the small sealed casket with the Heart of Virtue safe inside. The ancient centaurs carved rampant beside the doors of the temple seemed particularly fierce, their bronze eyes glinting in the early morning light, somehow sculpted in such a manner that they appeared to stare directly at the viewer, and then follow their movement with singular purpose. Their teeth were clenched tight, as if they thirsted for the blood of their enemies, and their eyes still followed as they finally rode down the valley into the dust left behind by many hooves.

Her parents had gone inside by then.

Selene and Rhea were singing the old Katie Melua song ‘On the Road Again’ about three hours later, tired of eating dust and trying to keep their spirits up. “This whole double column thing is stupid,” Rhea complained, when they’d finished the last verse they remembered. “Some sort of macho military thing, I suppose, but it reminds me of an idiot John Wayne movie. The centaurs have the right idea, moving gracefully in a sort of loose flowing mass, like a flock of birds, but not in the sky,” she added unnecessarily. “Who told them we have to travel like this? The centaurs can’t even grab a bite to eat along the way, because everything is trampled, and what isn’t trampled has dung on it.”

“I don’t know. Phil maybe?”

“He’d better not’ve. It’s dumb.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t sound like him. He’s usually pretty much of a ‘go with the flow’ kind of guy. I can’t imagine him as some sort of quasi-militarist tyrant.”

“In which case, he should’ve noticed that it’s stupid. I’m going to ride up and tell’im.”

“Good idea. Let’s both go.” They told their centaur friends what they planned to do, and the nearby mares thought it was a good idea too, so they broke into a gallop, covering the ground to the front of the column, more than a mile and a half, in about twenty minutes, since the front of the long line of centaurs and then horses kept on moving while they were catching up.

“Hey!” Rhea called out as they came up to Phil and Acky. “Wait up!”

They shuffled to a confused halt as the troops and horses behind them tried to figure out what they were doing.

Phil turned on his centaur, more than a little confused. “What’s wrong, Sweeties?”

“This whole marching in columns thing is wrong, is what,” Rhea complained. “The centaurs can’t grab little snacks along the way because by the time we see anything green someone has either eaten, trampled, or crapped on it. Weren’t you guys paying attention to anything but your noses up here? All you have to do is look behind you to see what’s wrong, and it’s terrible tactics besides, because it’s so obviously unnatural.” She looked at Phil with particular scorn. “You might as well be blowing bugles and announcing yourself as the incredibly stupid escorts to something extremely valuable, because you’re letting more than half of your forces get tired and hungry while you strut along here as the ‘leader of the pack,’ like you were in some sort of stupid motorcycle gang.” To say that Rhea was ticked off would be grossly understating the case. In fact, she was furious, and the dusty ride to the front of the column hadn’t improved her mood one tiny little bit.

Selene merely glared at him, which was even scarier.

“Uhm….”

“Don’t say a word!” Rhea cut him off. “We’re going to call a halt right now so everyone can recover from y’all’s stupidity, and then we’re moving forward as a loose herd, like both centaurs and horses do when they’re left to their own devices. Thundercloud, Mom, your natural place is to the rear or side, so you can keep an eye on everyone, which you can’t do right now unless you’ve got eyes on the back of your butt, and I’d suggest we put the cart and other luggage in the middle of the herd, to conceal it from view as much as possible. I’m going to pass the word to all the centaurs to use their magic to conceal the fact that they have riders, so they’ll look like an ordinary herd of wild horses from a distance.”

Phil said, “Unh…. Okay.”

“Don’t get us wrong, Phil, we love you, and we love how you’re blossoming in your wizard work with Acky, but we’re the military strategists in the family, not you, and not Acky. We have a mission to accomplish, to deliver the Heart and our heavy cavalry troop to the Imperial city as quickly as possible without compromising our strength in case of attack along the way. Please let us do that, while you and Acky concentrate on wizardry and other sneaky and/or mysterious stuff.”

“Uhm…. Okay,” he said again.

“Excellent plan, Rhea,” Acky said. “It was getting on toward lunch in any case, and I was actually feeling a little faint.”

“Oh, goodie, then we’ve rescued you as well.” She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Then she rode back to where the Acky’s troops were waiting patiently and called out, “You men-at-arms! New marching orders! We’re going to be moving forward in a bunch — as best we can, depending upon terrain — and we want to keep our main strength concealed as much as possible, so we’d like to keep the wizard’s wagon, the pack horses, and you all in the center of the herd. That way, if anyone dares to attack us, we’ll be able to call upon your services as a rather nasty surprise for any brigands we encounter along the way.” Rhea could be surprisingly diplomatic, when she put her mind to it. It was a skill she’d practiced for those many occasions when she wanted to persuade people to do something against their better judgement.

Several of the men nodded sagely to each other, acknowledging the wisdom of this tactic, although one did shout back, “Do you have the Wizard’s authority to change our regular orders?”

In answer she shouted, “Wizard! Are my orders to be followed by your troops?”

“Yes!” he shouted back, and nodded vigorously, in case anyone failed to hear.

“Okay by you?” she asked her interlocutor.

“Yes, Ma’am!” he said promptly.

“The wizard would like a nice meal as well,” she improvised, “once you get situated, so we’ll have a good long break in our journey if you manage to take your time in preparing it.”

He nodded sagely, well-accustomed to military protocols. “Thank you, Ma’am! We appreciate it.”

“As do I, Soldier. As do I.”

It wasn’t until the third day that Rhea and Selene became nervous about their situation, despite Master Wizard Akcuanrut’s assurance that they’d had no trouble on the journey north. Before them was a range of high mountains, nothing to rival the Sierra Nevadas, but definitely more rugged and imposing than the Adirondacks. As they approached, the low river valley they’d been following became steeper and more narrow as they climbed up from the plains. The meandering river was now a rushing torrent, passing through rock formations that were deeply undercut. In some places the rocky beach at the side of the cascade was so narrow that there was barely room for a single horse to walk beside the tumultuous cataracts and rapids, so they’d had to dismantle the cart to carry it over the rougher sections. Worse, though, was the fact that their troop had been forced back into a narrow column, sometimes single file, so their flanks were heavily exposed to any sort of attack and reïnforcements would be difficult to bring to bear. The cliffs above them posed their own threat, since an enemy could simply drop boulders down on their heads, if they once achieved their heights. The whole situation gave both women the creeps. “Some fun, eh, Selene?” Rhea observed loudly, casting wary glances at the cliffs above them and trying to be heard above the constant ‘white noise’ of water eating away at the rock which tried to constrain it.

“Lovely scenery. Remind me not to go to Niagara Falls, if we ever have a honeymoon.” She was looking at the bend ahead, where the thundering river turned a dogleg corner, leaving them a view dominated by the rock wall they were approaching. The river itself told them that there was something around the bend, but they wouldn’t know what until they got there.

“Don’t let’s go to Niagara Falls for our honeymoon, Rhea, it’ll be entirely too noisy and damp. Leather bustiers become extremely irritating when they’re wet, which is something they never taught us in Home Ec.” They were walking along a rocky ledge of solid rock worn smooth by some higher level of river flow when, ‘snap!’ an entire section of the rock fell out from under them as they both hurtled down into the dark, a darkness quickly filled with vague squat shapes, like lumpy children, but these children were all waving long knives whose edges caught what little light there was.

“Oh, crap,” they said in unison, and started fighting, back to back.

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved