The Reluctant Sorcerer Page 3

  “Oh, dear,” said Mick. He picked up his pipe and hurried down the trail as quickly as his short, muscular legs could carry him.

  Brewster was stunned by the impact and he blacked out for a short while, but fortunately, his seat belt and his air bag safety system had prevented any serious injury. Nevertheless, Brewster was badly shaken up. Dazed, he tried to focus his vision and figure out what had happened, but everything seemed to be shrouded in a thick, white mist. (In fact, his face was enveloped in the air bag, but he hadn’t quite figured that out yet.) His head was throbbing, he felt dizzy, and his entire body ached. With a high-pitched, whiny-squeaky sound, not unlike that of air escaping from a set of bagpipes, the air bag slowly deflated and Brewster gratefully gulped in a deep lungful of air. Then he heard a dull clunk, followed by a soft whump, as the emergency parachute was automatically deployed-a trifle late. It settled down over the cracked and shattered cockpit, obscuring everything from view.

  For a moment all was still, save for the crackling and sparking of the ruined control panel and electrical systems, then the entire framework of the time machine rocked as something struck it a tremendous blow. Brewster was thrown sideways in his seat, but the belt restrained him as the machine shuddered under the impact. He heard a loud crack as something gave way and the entire cockpit became filled with sparks.

  There was a loud, angry, bellowing sound, followed by the sound of galloping hoofbeats, and then the machine shuddered once again as Robie McMurphy’s enraged bull plowed into it, head down, with the speed of an express train. Of course, Brewster didn’t know exactly what was happening. He was still dazed and stunned, and he couldn’t see anything because of the red and white striped parachute draped over the cockpit. However, in the dim recesses of his mind, perhaps prompted by the instinct for self-preservation, a thought managed to form itself and squirm through the haze that enshrouded his consciousness.

  “The LOX!” As Robie’McMurphy’s bull smashed into the time machine once again, Brewster realized that with all these sparks, if the liquid oxygen tanks ruptured, there was liable to be a very big bang, indeed. Panic and adrenaline coursed through him as he fumbled with his seat belt. The bull attacked the offending machine yet again and Brewster was almost thrown out of his seat.

  “Oh, God,” he said, “the LOX! The LOX!” He shielded his eyes against a fresh burst of sparks from the arcing control panel.

  “Hallo!” a strange voice called out. “I say, is someone in there?” “Get me out of here!” Brewster shouted, desperately trying to force open the damaged door of the cockpit. “The LOX! The LOX!” Mick frowned. Locks? he thought. Faith, the poor chap must be locked up in there. He couldn’t get out. He started tugging on the parachute, trying to pull it free. The contraption was sputtering and sparking and there was a strange smell in the air around it. He sidestepped quickly as the bull made another maddened charge and slammed into the peculiar looking object, sending forth a fresh shower of sparks as it bellowed with rage.

  “Bugger off, you great big stupid thing, you!” Mick yelled at it. He resumed tugging at the parachute as the bull backed off for another go.

  Brewster saw daylight as the chute was pulled away. He also saw flames start licking from the control panel and started kicking at the door with all his might. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Hold on now, I’ll have you out in a flash!” the voice called, and then, with the sound of ripping metal and cracking plastic, the door was torn right off the cockpit hinges. Brewster made a dive for the opening.

  “Quickly, quickly!” he said as he scrambled out, dragging his emergency supply kit with him. “We’ve got to get away! The LOX...” and then he saw the charging bull, bearing straight down at him. “Jesus!” He was suddenly swept off his feet and thrown over a shoulder (a very low shoulder, it seemed) and he gasped with surprise as his rescuer started running with him as if he didn’t weigh a thing. Behind them, the bull’ smashed into the time machine for the final time. It was the final time because, just as Brewster had feared, the liquid oxygen tanks ruptured and the mixture ignited. The resulting explosion hurled them both to the ground, where bits of machinery and very well-cooked beefsteak rained down on them.

  Brewster covered his head and lay there on the ground, the wind knocked out of him. For what seemed like a long time, he didn’t move. And then he heard a voice say, “Great bloody leaping toadstools! What the devil was that?” It was the voice of his unknown benefactor, whom Brewster hadn’t even caught a clear glimpse of yet. He raised himself up slightly and turned his head, then his eyes grew wide at the sight of his rescuer. He did a double take.

  At first glance, it looked like a small boy, albeit a rather large and powerfully built small boy, but at second glance, he realized it was a full-grown man. Well, perhaps “full grown” was not quite the proper term, but an adult, at any rate, with a bushy beard, shaggy brown hair that was beginning to turn gray, and a chest and arms like a bodybuilder- on a miniature scale.

  A dwarf, he thought (and it was probably fortunate that he only thought this rather than saying it out loud), then he mentally corrected himself when he saw that the man, while very small, was nevertheless perfectly proportioned, which made him not a dwarf, but a midget. A little person, Brewster mentally corrected himself again. They don’t like to be called midgets, they like to be called little people.

  “My bull!” a new voice suddenly cried out. “What have you done to my prize bull?” A man was running toward them across the field, shaking his fist and, in his other hand, brandishing a very nasty looking pitchfork. He was dressed in a peculiar fashion, tight black breeches and what appeared to be a brown potato sack belted around his waist, with a hole in it for his head and arms. He was wearing high, soft leather moccasins and he had long, shoulder-length hair. For that matter, the little man who’d rescued him was dressed in a peculiar fashion too, thought Brewster. He had on some kind of belted, brown leather jerkin cut in scallops around the hem and sleeves, baggy green trousers tucked into high, laced leather boots, and a large dagger at his waist. Brewster wondered if he hadn’t somehow transported himself to some sort of hippie commune in the country. Or perhaps these were circus people. In fact, he wondered, where had he transported himself? He should have been back in the lab, but this most definitely was not his laboratory. He glanced around. It wasn’t even London. Something had very definitely gone wrong.

  “Mick O’Fallon!” said the farmer as he came running up. “I should have known you’d be at the bottom of this! You and your blasted alchemical mixtures! Now look what you’ve gone and done! You’ve killed my bull!” “S’trewth, and I didn’t touch your bleedin’ bull, Robie McMurphy,” the little man said as he got up to a sitting position. “And have a care, or can you not recognize a wizard when you see one?” The farmer’s eyes grew wide as he gazed at Brewster. “A wizard!” he exclaimed.

  “A master sorcerer, I should think,” said Mick, “judgin’ by the way he blasted that great, big, foolish bull of yours. You’d best show proper respect, else you’re liable to find yourself gettin’ some of the same.” “Beggin’ your pardon. Good Master,” said McMurphy, lowering his gaze and dropping to one knee. “I didn’t know!” “Dropped right out of the sky, he did,” said Mick, “in some kind of magic chariot. Faith, and didn’t I see it myself?” Brewster blinked at them with confusion. “Where am I?” he asked, looking around him. The countryside didn’t look familiar, but then again, he hadn’t spent much time outside of London. Then his gaze fell, on the blasted, smoldering wreckage of his time machine. “Oh, no! Ruined! It’s absolutely ruined!” “Your stupid, bloody bull attacked his magic chariot,” Mick said to the farmer, by way of explanation.

  McMurphy looked chagrined. More than that, he suddenly looked terrified. “Forgive me. Good Master!” he pleaded. “I beg of you, don’t punish me! I shall make amends, somehow, L swear it!” Brewster wasn’t paying very close attention. Now that the fireworks were over, it was dawning on him that he must hav
e seriously miscalculated. Somehow, he had transported himself right out of the city and, worse still, the machine had been utterly destroyed. Now he would have to find out exactly where he was and call Pamela to come and pick him up. He sighed heavily. She was bound to be very much annoyed. He’d have to ask these people if he could use a telephone.

  Then it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t even thanked the little man for pulling him out of the time machine before it exploded and thereby saving his life. He turned back toward him, somewhat sheepishly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the little man, “I’m forgetting my manners. I’m very grateful for your help. The door was stuck and if you hadn’t forced it open...” He swallowed nervously as he considered his narrow escape. “Allow me to introduce myself. The name is Brcwster. Dr. Marvin Brewster. But my friends just call me Doc.” He held out his hand.

  The little -man reached out and clasped him by the forearm, rather than the hand. Brewster assumed this was some sort of new counterculture handshake and he politely did the same.

  “Honored to be makin’ your acquaintance, Brewster Doc,” the little man said. “As it happens, I do a bit of brewin’ on the side myself, y’know. Of course, I’m strictly a layman, a dabbler, as it were. I am a craftsman, by trade, an armorer.” “You don’t say,” said Brewster absently. “Listen, do you mind if I use your phone? I’ll make it collect, but I need to call London.” The little man frowned. “Fone?” he said quizzically. He shook his head. “Faith, and I have no such thing, I fear. And I know of no Lunden hereabouts.” Now it was Brewster’s turn to frown. “You don’t know London?” “I know of no one by that name. Good Brewster,” Mick replied.

  “No, no, I mean the city,” Brewster said. “London, the city.” The little man and the farmer exchanged puzzled glances. “I know of no such city,” said Mick. “Is it very far?” “I don’t know,” Brewster replied. “I’m not quite sure where I am, you see. I seem to have miscalculated, somehow. What is this place?” “My farm,” McMurphy said, trying to be helpful.

  “No, no, I mean what town’ said Brewster.

  “ ‘Town’?” McMurphy said. He looked around, uncertainly. “But.. .there is no town here, Good Master. The nearest village would be Brigand’s Roost, I suppose.” “Brigand’s Roost?” Brewster frowned again. He had never even heard of it.

  “Well,” said McMurphy, “until the brigands came, it used to be called Turkey’s Roost, but the brigands shot most of the turkeys and ate them.” Brewster was having some difficulty following the conversation. “ ‘Brigands’^. What do you mean, ‘brigands’?” “He means Black Shannon’s brigands,” Mick said. “They used to live in the forest, and then they were called the Forest Brigands, only Shannon decided the forest lacked certain amenities, so they took over Turkey’s Roost, which is now called Brigand’s Roost, you see.” Brewster didn’t see at all. “What, you mean they actually took over a town?” “Only a small village, really,” said Mick, “and not much of one, at that.” “What are they, some sort of motorcycle gang?” asked Brewster.

  McMurphy and Mick both looked blank. Clearly, they had no idea what he was talking about.

  Brewster began to have an unsettling feeling about all this. They didn’t know about London, they didn’t seem to have telephones or know what motorcycles were, they had brigands, and the clothing they were wearing was either very hip or very out-of-date.

  “What.. .year is this?” asked Brewster.

  They both looked blank again. They exchanged puzzled glances. McMurphy looked at Mick and shrugged. Mick shook his head.

  “Forgive me, Brewster,” Mick said, “I don’t understand.” “Oh, boy,” said Brewster.

  Mick stiffened and drew himself up to his full height, all three feet of it. “I am no boy, Brewster,” he said with affronted dignity. “I am one of the little people.” “What?” said Brewster. “Oh. No, I’m sorry, you misunderstood. I know you are a little person, I was merely saying ‘Oh, boy’ as an expression.” “An expression of what?” asked Mick. “Dismay, I think,” Brewster replied. The full import of what had happened to him was only beginning to register. (It would take a while yet, but let’s bring him along slowly, shall we? He’s a nice enough fella, even if he doesn’t have a lot of street smarts, and we don’t want to give it to him all at once.) Now let me think, he thought, and proceeded to do just that.

  He had set the machine to take him back ten minutes into the past, at the exact same location from which he had departed. Obviously, this was not the exact same location from which he had departed, so it stood to reason that it probably wasn’t ten minutes in the past, either.

  The reason he had crashed, he deduced, was that he had been located on the top floor of the headquarters building of EnGulfCo International when he had left. He had arrived at some point in space and time where that building did not exist. Ergo, he’d had a bit of a drop. Fortunately, he happened to arrive over a mountain, otherwise, the drop would have been a great deal more significant. Fortunately, also, that the steel torus had kept the machine from tumbling, otherwise the tanks might have ruptured on the way down the mountain slope and the results would have been fatal. And it was fortunate that the little man named Mick had been there to force the door loose, but right about there, the few fortunate things about this entire episode ended.

  He had clearly traveled a lot further back into the past than he’d intended. He wasn’t quite sure how. In the initial experiments he had conducted with Bugs, everything seemed to have worked perfectly. But then, for all he knew, Bugs had also traveled back further into the past than he’d thought. The encouraging thing was that Bugs had made it back, and in one piece. The discouraging thing was that unlike Bugs, Brewster no longer had a ride. Unless...

  There was still that first time machine, the one that had departed on a one-way trip, thanks to the faulty switch in the auto-return module. The settings on both machines had been the same. Therefore, it stood to reason that the first machine was here, as well. Wherever “here” was. At least, Brewster earnestly hoped that was the case; otherwise, he was stuck.

  Brewster approached the still-smoking wreckage of what used to be his time machine and stared at it disconsolately.

  “I am truly sorry about your chariot, Good Brewster,” said McMurphy uneasily. “If there is any way that I can make amends, you have but to ask and I shall do it, if ‘tis within my power.” “Hmmm,” said Brewster. “Perhaps there is. You wouldn’t happen to have seen another, uh, chariot like that around here anywhere, would you?” McMurphy frowned. “I do not think so. Good Master. What did it look like?” “Oh, yes, of course, you didn’t really see it, did you?” Brewster said. He turned to Mick. “K>” got a good look at it, though, didn’t you? Would you recognize one that was just like it if you saw it?” “Aye, that I would,” said Mick confidently.

  “So then you’ve seen one before?” asked Brewster eagerly.

  “I can say with certitude that I have not,” Mick replied.

  “Oh,” said Brewster, his spirits falling. He sighed. Now what? * * * “Well, ‘tis not much, but ‘tis home,” said Mick as Brewster ducked down low to get through the tiny doorway. “Bit close for someone your size,” added Mick apologetically, “but I don’t get much company, you see.” “Oh, it’s... charming,” said Brewster, bent over almost completely double to avoid banging his head on the ceiling.

  The little thatch-roofed cabin in the woods looked like a child’s playhouse, set in a clearing next to a somewhat larger structure made of stone that housed Mick’s forge and shop.

  “You’d likely be more comfortable in the smithy,” Mick said, “but I’ll have to clean it up some. Still, at least there’s room for a human to stretch out in there.” “You’re very kind,” said Brewster. “I really appreciate your hospitality. I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.” “Oh, ‘tis no trouble at all. Good Brewster,” Mick replied. “ Tis not every day I have the privilege to entertain a great personage such as yourself.”
“I wish you’d call me Doc,” said Brewster. “All my friends call me Doc.” “Well, ‘tis a privilege, indeed,” said Mick. “Doc it shall be, then. My fall name is Michael Timothy O’Fallon, at your service, but most people call me Mick. Are you a drinkin’ man?” “Yes, I think I could use a drink,” said Brewster, sitting down cross-legged behind a large, albeit very low, table.

  “I have just the thing,” said Mick, producing a pair of tankards, which he filled from a large ceramic jug. Brewster noticed that although most things in the little cabin were on a miniature scale, the tankards were certainly man-sized.

  Mick raised his tankard solemnly and offered a toast. “May your path be free of dragons, and may your life be long. May you never lack for maidens that will fill your heart with song. May your courage never waver and your blade be ever true, and should your enemy be braver, may he not run as fast as you.” He looked at Brewster expectantly.

  “Uh... over the lips and past the gums, look out, stomach, here it comes,” Brewster said rather lamely.

  Mick beamed and drained his tankard at one gulp, then smacked his lips, patted his middle, and said, “Ahhhhh.” Brewster took a sip and gagged. It felt as if he’d swallowed drain cleaner. The noxious liquid burned its way down his esophagus like sulphuric acid spiked with white phosphorus. His eyes bugged out and he made a sound like the death rattle of a horse as he clutched at his throat and fought for breath.

  “Good, eh?” Mick said, grinning at him. “ ‘Tis my special recipie. Brewed from the root of the peregrine bush. ‘Tis a lengthy process, unless you don’t count the time it takes to chase down the damn bushes and wrestle ‘em to me ground. Thorny little bastards, too.” Brewster was turning an interesting shade of mottled purple.

  “Of course, ‘tis the agin’ process that makes all the difference,” Mick continued, refilling his own tankard. He held the jug up and raised his eyebrows, but all Brewster could manage was a violent shake of his head and an emphysemic wheeze.