Tomorrow's Spacemage Read online

  Seven

  The university gave us the run around.

  Tasha had made an appointment for us, but the person never turned up. Assistants pointed us in other directions, and none of them led where I needed to be.

  About to give up, I had an odd thought pop in, and we headed to the library. Libraries were an odd thing for me. My first life didn’t have them, since books hadn't been invented yet. My second life did, but they were phasing them out as everything was digitized. Here though, a very few still existed, as if a few people had made a serious effort to collect up all the unwanted paper books, and put them somewhere in case they were ever needed again.

  The Library was underground, and as it turned out, covered the entire area of the university above it. Fortunately, the universities pad download contained a map, and it led us to the section on ancient history.

  "You're late!"

  A thin man with a bald pate and really long white beard, sat at a table, with a stack of books spread over it. He rose, and came to meet us.

  "But you're forgiven. At least you got here. So many people don’t these days."

  "Excuse me for asking," said Tasha, "but does anyone actually know you're down here?"

  He looked surprised for a moment, before smiling.

  "There's that, for sure. Now, what can I do for you?"

  I explained what had brought us here. Myths and legends.

  "What did you think you’d find?"

  "At least a decent history of the origins of this civilization."

  "You'll be going away frustrated then."

  "Surly there's recorded history of some sort?"

  "Certainly. But it only goes as far back as the beginnings of paper. And a great deal of it was lost down the centuries."

  "How far back do the records go?"

  "The oldest is about fifteen hundred years."

  "Best guess on how much further back civilization goes before paper?"

  "No-one knows. And the guesses are anything from another five hundred years, to several more thousand. There is one notable guestimate suggesting seven thousand years, but it's widely discredited."

  This was not good news, but also wasn’t unexpected.

  "Is there any mention of the boogeyman or the reaper anywhere?"

  "Is that what you’re after?"

  "I'm trying to understand why two different but related civilizations both use the same terms, with the same fear attached."

  "There's nothing tangible I'm afraid. A few historians across the centuries have recorded word of mouth stories, but they amount to nothing. Just tales passed down for scaring children with. If there was ever a real character behind them, it's long lost in the mists of time."

  "Are there any creation myths worth knowing?"

  "Creation? Not that I'm aware of. When books started being written, we as a species had been here for countless generations already, and no-one had been counting. If you mean did we come down from the trees, pop up from holes in the ground, or were seeded here by little grey aliens, you're guess is as good as anyone's."

  I found Tasha looking at me with a glazed over expression. Time to go.

  "THORN!"

  Jen was yelling for me.

  "Time to go. Thank you for your time. I'll be back if I come up with some questions which might have tangible answers."

  "You're welcome. Not many people come down here anymore."

  He sat back down, and started reading where he'd left off.

  "What?" asked Tasha.

  "Jen."

  "Let's go."

  Eight

  I threw up a force wall the moment I saw what was going on.

  Jen didn’t even look at me as I appeared slightly behind her and to one side, as she was intent on moving the ship out of the line of fire from another armed freighter.

  "Give me fire control," said Tasha from my bridge, where the main weapons console was.

  Jess sighed, and pushed a button on her console. The relief was plain on her face.

  Missiles and pulses splashed harmlessly on my wall for half a minute, before the other ship stopped firing and started to run. In the meantime, Tasha had almost taken down their shields with her own. The ships were that close.

  Jen put the ship on a chase course, and finally looked at me.

  "Nice of you to join us."

  "Always a pleasure."

  "Why the delay?"

  "The niceties must be observed."

  Lea choked.

  "Who are you, and what have you done with Thorn?"

  We all laughed.

  "Hey, I'm a respectable judge now."

  "It's us," said Jess, and we all laughed again.

  "So, what's the problem?"

  "We came out of jump," said Jen, "and whoever this is seemed to be waiting for us, and opened fire immediately. No idea why."

  "Seems to have more firepower than most," said Tasha, over the coms.

  "Someone doesn’t like the role you had in the recent peace?" I asked.

  "Or they think you're on this ship when not obviously somewhere else," said Lea.

  "Well they know I'm here now. Maybe I should pay them a visit?"

  "Perhaps they need a judge," laughed Jess.

  I took a quick peek at the bridge of the other ship, chuckled for a moment, winked at Jess, and jumped over there.

  Within seconds of my appearance, shots started hitting the wall I’d put around me. I sent a force punch through the entire ship, and everyone went down.

  Lea appeared next to me, looked surprised for a moment, and hit me on the arm. I ignored it. One thing I'd learned how to do recently, was how to put up a very small force wall directly where each of the girls kept hitting me. To them it looked and felt like they connected, but it no longer hurt me.

  "Can you find this ship's orders? They all look military to me."

  She pulled the captain out of his chair so roughly, he fell face first to the deck. Sitting in his place, she started pulling up log entries. I waited patiently.

  "Nothing specific. But you’re right, this is not a normal freighter. There are no trading records at all, and what there is, only goes back two weeks."

  "So military took over the ship, and are pretending to be traders to get to you?"

  "More likely to get you through us."

  "They obviously didn’t get the memo."

  "Or someone left instructions in the event they didn’t survive an encounter with you. And didn’t, so the instructions were activated."

  "Could be. The question is, what do I do with them?"

  "There's no unit identification here, so technically they're rogue." She checked something. "No mercenary or bounty hunter credentials either."

  "So I can either wait for them to wake up and find out what they've done, or I can just penal colony them for attacking someone without formal cause."

  "Your call."

  I sighed. I'd thought I was passed this now.

  Lea vanished as I sent her back to the ship. I checked the penal colony beach, found it empty up the end I kept making people appear from, stripped the crew of their guns, pads, and pocket contents, before dumping them all in the water next to the beach. Copies of the ship's data storage units appeared next to Jess, the rest I’d taken dropped on top of what was already in a container in my main storage area, and as I jumped back, I sent the ship to park next to all my other ones.

  Jen had us pointed at the system station already, and resuming normal speed.

  "What were you up to when I called you?"

  "Checking historical references."

  "And what next?"

  "The same, but for our orange coloured cousins."

  "Can we come?"

  "Why? It's going to be boring."

  "Maybe for you, but I can load up with trade goods to take there, and save time if you jump us."

  "How long to load up?"

  "Couple of days."

  "There wasn’t any urgency was there?" asked Tasha from t
he doorway.

  "No, I guess not. Fine, call me when you're loaded up, and outside station scanner range."

  I didn't give her a chance to say any more, jumping Tasha and I home.

  "I think they miss us," said Tasha, her eyes going to the still erupting volcano in the distance.

  "I wouldn't have thought so."

  "You think too much, my love."

  Nine

  "Was that you?"

  Tasha was in the front doorway of the house, yelling down to me, lying comfortably on the beach listening to whale song. I startled, and looked around at her.

  "Was what me?"

  "Better come look."

  I sighed. I couldn’t get enough whale song, and interrupting me wasn’t a good idea. Even for Tasha. She knew that, so it must be something important.

  She had the main screen frozen when I came in, and touched her pad once I was looking at it. A riot was in progress, with a talking head giving a rundown of people numbers and damage. I looked at Tasha.

  "It's taken a few days, but people have suddenly realized most of the guns on the home world are missing. The police and military still have theirs, as do gun club ranges, but every privately owned gun stored at home, or on someone's person, apparently went missing a few days ago. Those who know of you are assuming it was you. The government is being blamed though."

  She looked me in the eyes.

  "You're doing?"

  "Not that I'm aware of. Why's the government being blamed?"

  "It's no secret the current coalition of parties has been in favour of removing guns from society for a long time. But no-one has been game to actually try to do it."

  She paused, head tilted as she thought.

  "No, that’s not quite true. One of the smaller planets did it a decade ago. Declared private guns illegal, announced an amnesty while guns were handed in and destroyed, and followed through on prosecuting anyone found to still have one. A lot of people lost their livelihoods, but the violent crime rates there dropped dramatically, and have stayed down ever since."

  "It wasn’t overturned in the parliament?"

  "No. They tried, but the courts ruled the planetary laws were constitutional, and could only be changed at the planet level. The only way of overruling was to pass a law guaranteeing the right for everyone to carry a gun on every planet, but this has been tried a number of times, and never passed either. Some say it should be in the constitution, but it wasn’t done when the constitution was written, and no-one has had the numbers to add it one way or the other since."

  "And this concerns me, why?"

  "Because some are saying you've exceeded your authority again."

  "It wasn’t me."

  I knew saying it, I was wrong. It had to have been me.

  "Are you sure? Has guns come up at any time since all this started?"

  I thought for a moment.

  "Actually yes. The makers of the collars compared them to guns. I made the observation they shouldn't get me started in that direction."

  "Were you angry at the time?"

  "Yes."

  "I rest my case."

  Damn. My magic often did activate even without conscious intent. It was quite possible merely thinking for a moment about vanishing guns, might have made it happen.

  I sighed.

  "I guess you better message the PM and tell her what presumably happened. She can use it as an argument for not making me angry if anyone comes before me."

  She nodded, and busied herself with the message. She looked up at me, and nodded again when it was sent.

  "What happened to gun shops?"

  "Empty."

  "Manufacturers?"

  "Empty. Except for those supplying the police and military."

  "Obviously I've had an issue there I didn’t know about. So who's rioting?"

  "Both sides of the gun lobby."

  "They should just stop, and go home. It's not worth the agro."

  "I think they disagree."

  One of the other screens was showing real time rioting. A change caught my eye, as the fighting stopped, and the crowds began to disperse.

  Tasha looked at me as if seeing me for the first time.

  "You're really scary sometimes, you know that?"

  Ten

  "You're late!"

  A thin man with a bald pate and really long white beard, sat at a table, with a stack of books spread over it. He rose, and came to meet us. I had an intense feeling of déjà vu. The only thing different was his vibrant orange skin colour, particularly obvious on the top of his head.

  The marshal was now interim, as yet unnamed, head of state, with elections only weeks away. They'd gone for simplicity, with each planet having ten representatives in a single house, with the head of state being the speaker for the house, elected separately. Each planet was organizing its own local government. A referendum on what to call the head of state was included with the election of representatives.

  The man was too busy to see me, but his office was very accommodating. I was after all, the only Inquisitor left in the records, and upsetting them had never been a good thing to do.

  All the same, it took over a day to track down who kept the archives of all ancient history, and almost another one to find where he was.

  Not only was the man similar to the last one, the conversation went much the same way. Just to make sure someone wasn’t paying a cosmic joke on me, I cast my sight to see what the other one was doing, and sure enough he was still at his table of books. They didn’t look at all alike, but the similarity was haunting.

  The similarity stopped once I asked the question I hadn't been able to last time.

  "Why was magic, and even the mention of magic, banned here?"

  The man shook his head.

  "There is no documentation of this at all, even among the inquisitor's original books. But it's come down through history in both the former king's line, and by the marshal's since, and through the inquisitors, in which this is part of their training."

  "Any speculation?"

  "Nothing official."

  "And unofficial?"

  "A few early tomes have survived, buried deep in the archives where inquisitors could never find them. At best, what is in them is pure speculation."

  "And?"

  "Some said before recorded history began, we met a sorcerer of great power, who ignited a war which killed most of our people, and banished the rest. Those few of us who know about it, totally in secret since we didn’t want to be executed for heresy, don’t consider this likely."

  "What is considered likely?"

  "Another theory is we originally had sorcerers who created a war which destroyed everything. When the war ended, the sorcerers on both sides were dead or gone, and the first king is said to have executed the last surviving magic users himself, and issued a decree forbidding magic forever. This isn’t really given any credence either. Although now the inquisitors are gone, I've had the chance to skip through their records, and for the first few centuries after paper was discovered, there are records of suspected magic users being executed. There are none in the last five hundred years though, so we either never had magic and it was something to use to keep people fearful, or we had some, and they were killed when discovered. When the last died, so obviously did whatever creates a magic user in children."

  "Explains a lot," said Tasha.

  "Perhaps."

  I could feel my frown getting more and more serious.

  "Could the boogeyman have been a magician originally?"

  The man shrugged.

  "Possibly. So too could the reaper. But both could also have simply been the inquisitors using them to keep people afraid, and thus under control."

  "It is a political tool after all," said Tasha. "Still the thing politicians do to get elected. Spread fear about their opponents. Nothing at all unusual about it."

  "You're not helping."

  She grinned at me.

  "Do you believe in ma
gic?"

  I asked him this last question just to see how he reacted.

  "Of course not. There is no magic. Never has been."

  "Thank you for your time."

  "You're welcome. Nice to see someone interested in what I do."

  I took Tasha back to the ship, but left my sight behind. He blinked at the suddenly empty space in front of him, shook his head, sat, and went back to his reading.

  Eleven

  "Did you find what you wanted?" asked Jen.

  "Not really. Seems what passes for an archive in both societies, doesn’t know anything reliably before when paper was invented."

  "But we did get some potential clues," said Tasha.

  We were sitting in Jen's living area on the ship, drinks at hand. The ship had been unloaded, and Jen had asked us here to figure out what we did next. I assumed if nothing was the answer, or I took Tasha home, which might be the same thing, she'd load up with as much variety of trade stuff as she could find, and head back to her own homeworld, trading on the way.

  "Potential?" asked Lea.

  "Very thin ones," I added. "There is something about the first king killing the last of the magic users, after the end of a major war started by magic users, which killed most of them first. Another snippet suggests the survivors were those banished after a major war."

  "The theme is," interrupted Tasha, "there was a major war, with probably magic users on both sides, and it resulted in magic ceasing to exist."

  "Which suggests the war happened after Thorn left, and something happened to scatter people across this part of the galaxy."

  Jen was looking speculatively at me.

  "Or someone happened," she said eventually, into what had become a silence.

  I picked up my glass, and looked into its depths. It wasn’t something I really wanted to think about.

  "Thorn," said Tasha, "why don’t you want to go back?"

  There was a murmur of quiet yes's from the others.

  "You'd only ask that if you hadn't thought it out."

  "What's to think out?" asked Lea.

  "The consequences."

  "What consequences?"

  I sighed. I had thought about it, a lot, after my last attempt, which stranded me five years back. Having reached certain conclusions, I hadn't wanted to think about it anymore. They really hadn't figured it though.