Maybe this fellow was a zombie. Maybe his master had sent him after hair and fingernail clippings.
He didn’t smell like a corpse; there was an odd, meaty, slightly sweet odor clinging to him, all right, but Johnston had smelled corpses, and this odor was definitely not the stink of a dead body.
Maybe, if he was a zombie, the odor had something to do with the magic that had brought him back from the dead.
“Put him back on the couch,” Johnston ordered.
The airmen grabbed the stranger by the arms and hauled him into the family room. He didn’t resist, didn’t protest, just went along as if it didn’t matter in the slightest what he did, or what happened to him.
The lieutenant’s theory that the man was autistic did seem to fit-but so did the idea that he was a zombie.
“Come on,” Johnston said. “I want to see the basement.”
* * * *
“So that dead woman we found on Beckett was Shadow, and an Earthman is running the show in her world now,” Albright said.
“If Hall is right about what she picked up from Thorpe, yes,” Bascombe replied.
“But Thorpe’s a renegade-we can’t trust anything she says,” Markham pointed out.
“She’s a telepath, and she was talking to another telepath,” Albright said. “I can’t lie to a telepath; can she?”
“And this doesn’t account for Thorpe’s brief appearance in normal space in an unnamed system a hundred light-years from Beckett,” Bascombe pointed out.
“That could have been anything,” Albright said, waving it away. “It had to be Shadow sending her through, for some reason, and Shadow’s dead, so what does it matter?”
“It might,” Bascombe said. “Somehow.”
“I doubt it,” Albright replied.
“Suppose we wait before we leap to conclusions,” Markham suggested. “Under-Secretary Bascombe has sent a scouting party into Shadow’s universe, after all; why don’t we wait and see whether this man Best can confirm Shadow’s demise?”
“And if Shadow is dead?” Albright asked. “What do we do about this Earthman who replaced her?”
“Why don’t we just wait until we hear from Best?” Markham answered.
* * * *
Johnston crossed the basement, ignoring the card table, radio, folding chairs, and video set-up-which, of course, had run out of tape at the crucial moment.
He stared at the bare concrete wall; it appeared perfectly ordinary in the light of the bare bulbs overhead. Johnston glanced up at the lights, then turned his attention back to the wall.
“There’s no opening now,” he said. “I wonder how he expected to get back?”
“I don’t know,” the lieutenant said. “I don’t know how the hell he got in here in the first place.”
“You didn’t see any opening here?” Johnston asked, gesturing at the blank wall.
“No, sir-not a thing.”
Johnston frowned. He put out a hand, not knowing what he was looking for, and attempted to tap the wall.
His hand vanished into seemingly-solid concrete; astonished, he staggered, thrown off-balance. Both hands went out, grabbing at concrete that wasn’t there, and he stumbled forward, through the wall.
He caught himself just short of going down on one knee and stared at the blaze of shimmering, shifting color before him. The cool, dusty air of the Browns’ basement was suddenly thin, sharp, clean, crackling with electricity and redolent of sweat and cold meat; he felt suddenly heavy, the way he sometimes felt the loss of buoyancy upon climbing out of a pool.
He couldn’t see anything but colors, as if he were trapped in some incredible light show.
None of them, Jewell and Thorpe and Deranian, had mentioned anything like this inside the portals; they’d said the transition was instantaneous. If he’d gone through a portal, shouldn’t he have come out somewhere?
“Hello?” he said.
* * * *
As he settled back on the dark wood of his throne, Pel had the uneasy feeling that there was something Susan was not telling him.
He didn’t know what it could be; he believed her when she said she didn’t remember being dead, and he believed her explanation of why she had tried to shoot Shadow, but he was sure there was something that she was not saying about her recent experiences.
Did she know something about why the fetch was taking so long? He didn’t see how she could; after all, he was the magician, not her. He was the one who could turn a dead body into a fetch, or bring it back to life entirely. He could sense everything that touched magic, through all the world, and she was just an ordinary human being-a lawyer.
What could she know that he didn’t?
He was trying to think of some way to ask her when a man stumbled out of the portal.
Startled, Pel let his partial suppression of the matrix’ visual manifestations slip. He could still see perfectly well, of course, but anyone else would be blinded by the barrage of light, color, and shadow.
He thought for a moment that the fetch had returned, and wondered why he had been startled, but then he got a better look at the new arrival.
It was a man of medium height, middle-aged, a few pounds overweight, and wearing the uniform of an officer in the United States Air Force.
He was unquestionably alive, and not a fetch. He was staring blindly into the matrix glare, eyes watering.
“Hello?” he said.
Pel was in no mood for new complications; for several seconds he considered magically shoving the stranger back through the portal, or even just flash-frying him-burning him to ash would actually be much easier, since it just meant unleashing a little wild energy, where pushing him meant directing controlled energy while maintaining the portal.
But burning him would be murder, and Pel was astonished that it had taken him so long, a good three or four seconds, to realize this.
Besides, this man might know what had become of the fetch, and where the hairbrushes and wastebaskets were.
“Hello,” Pel said, letting the matrix amplify and distort his voice into an echoing roar. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, as he began fighting down the matrix glow.
“Major Reginald Johnston, U.S. Air Force,” the stranger said, squinting through glare. “And you, I take it, are Pellinore Brown?”
Chapter Nine
“I want my fetch,” Pel said. “And those hairbrushes, and stuff.”
“No problem,” Johnston said. “You keep the portal open, and I’ll send him right through.” He reached inside his uniform jacket. “Let me leave my card-if you or Ms. Nguyen comes back to Earth, I’d appreciate a call.”
Pel blinked at him, at the proffered business card-the little white pasteboard rectangle seemed weirdly out of place here in Faerie, in Shadow’s throne room, lit by the light of the great matrix.
He accepted it, not with his hand, but with a tendril of magical energy. From Johnston’s point of view the card simply sailed through the air to Pel of its own volition, but Pel could see the strands of magic supporting it, the twisted shape of the air that carried it to him.
“And if there’s anyone you’d like me to contact-your firm, perhaps, Ms. Nguyen?”
Susan didn’t reply; Pel glanced at her sharply as he picked the card out of the air.
“Sure, tell them she’s okay,” he said.
Pel remembered that he had two sisters, a mother, and some friends back on Earth who might be worrying about him; he was about to mention that when Johnston spoke again.
“While I understand why you’re staying here, Mr. Brown,” Johnston said, “why is Ms. Nguyen? You aren’t holding her against her will, are you?”
“No!” Pel snapped. He frowned and glanced at Susan again.
She wasn’t moving; she was just standing there, watching the two men.
“She’s free to go,” Pel said. “If she wants to go back to Earth, she can.” He hesitated, then added, “I admit I enjoy her company here, though.”