The Reign of the Brown Magician. Lawrence Watt-Evans

always worked. And they never needed reloading.

      Still, swords seemed more appropriate to Shadow’s world. Shadow itself relied on its super-scientific “magic,” but its slaves didn’t seem to, and in fact much of the “magic” didn’t seem to operate in normal space.

      Or maybe these had been members of Raven’s resistance movement. Bascombe didn’t think much of Raven of Stormcrack Keep—the man was obsessive and abysmally ignorant, determined to fight Shadow’s science with…

      With swords.

      This was all getting very complicated—Shadow, Earth, and Raven were all possibilities.

      If the telepaths hadn’t made it all up.

      “Lieutenant,” Bascombe said, “I want one of these corpses brought here to Base One, as fast as possible. Make sure the sword comes with it, and someone who saw everything as it was first found—not a telepath.”

      “Yes, sir.” The messenger turned to go.

      “And,” Bascombe added loudly, “send the telepath Carrie Hall up here.”

      * * * *

      Major Reginald Johnston sat at his desk, staring at the fancy silver pen he’d gotten as an award two years before, rolling it between his fingers as he tried to think it all through logically.

      Sherlock Holmes always said that when you had eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however unlikely, had to be the truth—but how did you know what was really impossible?

      Which was impossible, and which merely incredibly unlikely?

      The three of them were all reasonably consistent in their stories. Details varied, of course, but not to the point of finding any actual contradictions. Deranian insisted that the whole thing was a dream or hallucination, and would only talk about it with a psychologist, and only on those terms; Jewell didn’t claim to understand any of it, only to be reporting what she thought she had experienced; but Thorpe, if that was really her name, was the tough one, as she claimed to actually be from one of these other universes.

      And that should have been easy to disprove, but it wasn’t.

      So either it was all true, and the United States had blown a chance to make peaceful contact with aliens not just from another planet, but from another universe entirely, or else the whole thing was the most elaborate and inexplicable hoax Johnston had ever heard of.

      It didn’t make sense as a hoax—but a Galactic Empire in another universe? Wizards and castles in a third?

      If it was a hoax, how did the hoaxers get that spaceship there? Why hadn’t anything leaked in the months since it crashed? Who was Proserpine Thorpe? Where did she and the others come from? Where did they go?

      What did Sherlock Holmes say to do after you had eliminated the impossible, and found there was nothing left?

      For months, ever since that impossible spaceship had fallen out of nowhere and the case had been dumped in his lap, Johnston had been looking for an explanation. He had thought that when he found some of the missing people he would have that explanation.

      He supposed he did have an explanation now—but he didn’t like it, and he didn’t want to believe it.

      All the same, he had to cover the bases. If it is true, he asked himself, tapping his fancy silver pen on the worn spot on the blotter, if it is true, what do I do about it?

      A Galactic Empire. An all-powerful wizard.

      Hell, it was simple enough, really; the first thing any commander does is collect information, scout out the territory. Even when the territory was in another universe, that rule still held.

      And you pass the information up the chain of command, keep headquarters informed—but how in hell could he tell anyone about this one? If he didn’t really believe it, how could he convince anyone higher up?

      And that brought him to the first rule, not of military strategy, but of political strategy: CYA.

      He would file the appropriate reports, full of qualifiers and ambiguity, and other than that he wouldn’t say a damn thing to anyone until he could provide proof. He would investigate the hell out of everything, have the Brown house searched right down to the foundations, have Jewell and Deranian and Thorpe watched every minute, send someone to check out whether there was any research being done on…on what? Other dimensions?

      The Golden Fleece Award people on that senator’s staff might know—research like that would be right up their alley.

      He put down the pen and reached for the intercom.

      * * * *

      Pel looked over the motley crew he had gathered before his throne. Colored light flickered across black clothing, black leather, glossy black fur—Shadow’s color scheme had been pretty limited. Maybe she saw enough colors from the matrix, Pel thought.

      He counted nine fetches—kitchen help, mostly, but since Pel could draw all the energy he needed from the matrix, he didn’t need to eat, so why should he maintain a kitchen?

      There were four hairless, black-skinned homunculi, human in appearance except for their color; three of them, two male and one female, were naked. Pel had no idea what purpose they had served, why Shadow had created them, but he had found them and been able to make them obey him.

      There were about a dozen other creatures, but most of them Pel had no name for; Shadow had apparently been fond of experimenting, and had often been generous with claws, teeth, scales, and tentacles. Two could reasonably be called hounds, and one resembled a panther, but the others weren’t so easily classified.

      Hundreds of other creatures lived in the fortress—if they were really alive—and there were literally thousands more in the surrounding marsh and the forests beyond, but Pel hadn’t yet managed to gain control of all those.

      He didn’t see much use for the sluglike marsh-monsters, in any case. The dragon might have been nice, but he had killed that—which reminded him, he should incinerate the remains before they began to stink.

      Most of the rest of Shadow’s creatures he just hadn’t gotten to yet.

      So he had about two dozen obedient servants, of various shapes, none of them particularly appealing.

      “All right,” he said, “I want all of you to go out of this place, and go out to the villages, and bring back people. Alive. Don’t hurt them. I want to talk to them. Understand?”

      Roughly a score of heads nodded.

      Pel hesitated.

      “No children,” he added. He didn’t want to terrorize any kids. “Adults only. For that matter, make it men only.” This was a primitive and sexist world he was in; he didn’t want to worry about the sexual politics of the situation. He looked at some of the non-humanoid creatures, and asked, “Can you tell men from women?”

      The bobbing movements, hissings, and grunts looked and sounded like agreement.

      “Good. Okay, then go.” He sat back on the throne as his audience turned away.

      He didn’t know how to send them after anyone in particular, but he figured that out of any random group of men they might bring in there would be someone he could make use of, as a messenger at the very least, maybe as a deputy or more.

      And he had to send several of the things because he didn’t know whether he could trust any one of them to do the job, or how people would react. If he only sent one, as a trial, it might get killed by some panicky peasant, or it might fall in a bog somewhere—he wasn’t sure how bright most of these creatures were.

      Besides, he wouldn’t mind having enough of a sample of the population to be at least slightly representative. You didn’t test a new product on just one potential buyer; he wanted to have a few people brought in.

      They might even find poor Tom Sawyer, if he was still alive out there somewhere.