Off to Be the Wizard - 2 - Spell or High Water (12 page)

Phillip leaned back, looking first at the glass in his hand, then at the woman who had given it to him. He thought for a long moment, then said, “I’ve been thinking I should give . . .”
Phillip
paused. Calling Brit the Elder
Brit
while talking to Brit the Younger seemed wrong, somehow, “my host a thank-you gift. Do you think a bottle of good Scotch would be nice?”

“Yeah,” Brit said, “that’d be great. I’d love it if you gave her a bottle of Scotch. She hates the stuff.”

Phillip looked at her for a long moment, then said, “I’m sorry. I have to admit, I’m having a lot of trouble getting my head around this.”

Brit said, “Yeah, join the club.” She took another sip.

Phillip looked into his drink again, but nothing he saw there made the situation easier to understand. He looked at the woman across from him again, enjoying her drink and
seemingly
not much else. Finally, he thought
, If we’re going to talk, let’s
really tal
k
.

“There are those who say that because nothing we do seems to change the future, it means that whatever we do now has to be what we did in the past. Essentially, they say that all of our decisions were made for us, and that all we can do is play our parts. They tell us that any effort we make to change the course of history, or our own destiny, is futile, and ultimately results in us becoming the very thing we struggled to keep from
becoming
.”

Brit peered at him over the rim of her glass, pulled the drink down from her mouth without actually taking a drink, then asked Phillip, “That’s what they say. What do you say?”

Phillip smiled. “Usually, something loud and insulting. I am my own man. I make my own decisions. If the universe expects me to do anything different, it should prepare for a fight. I reject the idea that just because we can see the future that we’re doomed to create it. I say free will and imagination are deeply linked, and if you don’t believe you have one it just means that you lack the other.” Phillip realized he was raising his voice. He took a deep breath.

“I get a little crazy when this topic comes up,” Phillip said. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop now.”

“No,” Brit said, “please, go on.”

The evening was wearing on, and Martin felt overwhelmed. He’d met too many people, made too much small talk, and found too little of it interesting. He was under-stimulated. He decided to retreat to the nearest balcony and get some air.

When he got outside he was surprised to find Gwen there, leaning forward on the railing with her back to the door.
Martin
walked up, quietly enough to not demand her attention, but loudly enough to avoid startling her. He leaned back onto the railing so that he and Gwen were next to one another, but
facing
opposite directions. She looked up at the city, a thousand flickering light boxes, heaped all around them. He looked through the door into the party they were both
avoiding
.

Martin asked, “Who’s that jerk who’s been hanging around with you and Phillip this afternoon?”

Gwen chuckled. “Oh, he’s just this guy I kind of almost had a thing with.”

“He seems kinda needy.”

Gwen turned to face Martin, but remained leaning casually on the rail. “He’s not so bad. He’s smart, and he’s cute, and he makes me smile, which counts for a lot. He just needs to learn to cool it sometimes.”

Martin turned to look at her. “Is that why you didn’t want me to come here?”

Gwen said, “For example, this would be a good time to cool it,” and turned her face back to the city, and away from Martin.

“Gwen, seriously, if you don’t want me around, I’ll keep my distance. I’m not interested in forcing my company on someone who doesn’t want it. I can avoid you for the next two weeks, if that’s what you want.”

Gwen asked, “Do you want to avoid me, Martin?”

“I want us both to be happy. Being around you makes me happy, so that’s one of us, but if it makes you unhappy, well, that’s a problem.”

“Having you around doesn’t make me unhappy.”

“Good.” Martin said. “Not the highest praise I’ve ever heard. Wouldn’t look good on a greeting card, but it’s a start.”

Gwen smiled. “Having you around makes me happy, Martin. Really. It’s just, we only knew each other for a couple of weeks, then I had to move here. I thought I might invite you out to visit and see how things went, but then I got here, and . . . you’ve seen this place. Would you invite a guy here?”

“No, I would not,” Martin admitted. “I have to admit, I was happy to hear that you haven’t claimed a servant yet. I had some ideas about what a female-led society would be like. None of them featured ‘scantily clad beefcake and sexual service provider’ as a viable career path.”

Gwen said, “Well, the sex-with-servants thing doesn’t
happen
as often as the men would have you believe.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“I mean, it does happen,” Gwen said, “often, just not quite as often as they say. It’s pretty bad, I agree, but don’t judge the girls too harshly. If you think about it, it’s the same arrangement as a wealthy old man and his trophy wife, only our way is more emotionally honest. Besides, a lot of the girls aren’t romantically involved with their servants. They just picked a man they enjoy hanging around with.

“By the way,” Gwen said, “One of the guards is acting weird. I think he’s trying to imitate you.”

“Oh, yeah, that would be Ampyx. How’s his impression?”

“Pretty insulting.”

Martin laughed. “Good. If we play this right, we could have him wearing silver sequins by the end of the week.”

Inside the hall, the party was beginning to wind down. The conversation was getting quiet, and the crowd was getting sparse. Phillip had spent the better part of an hour telling Brit the Younger all of his theories that explained their apparent lack of impact on the future, while still allowing for free will. He had many possible explanations, but in the end, she shook her head and said that none of them really applied to her.

“See,” she explained, “I decided to come back here and see if there was an Atlantis, and about a second before I left I thought,
if there isn’t one, I could just go back in time a little further and build Atlantis myself
.”

“And what happened?” Phillip asked.

“Exactly that, I guess. I got here and found the city pretty much as you see it, only there was this huge welcoming
ceremony
all set up waiting for me. There was music and cheering, and some woman who looks exactly like me walks up and hugs me, and says that she’s me, and that there was no Atlantis before I came along, so I went back in time to build the city so it’d be here when I got here.”

Phillip’s face twisted in concentration. “That just makes no sense.”

“Yeah,” Brit said. “I noticed.”

“But, if she’s you, and she got here and found no Atlantis, then you’d have found no Atlantis when you got here.”

Brit said, “Yes, but she didn’t get here and find no Atlantis. She found Atlantis as you see it now, and another woman who looked just like her and claimed to be her, and to have built
Atlantis
. Then, fifty years later, she went back in time, built Atlantis, and waited for me to show up.”

Phillip said, “So her memories do match your memories.”

“No,” Brit said. “Her memories match my present. Everything I do, she’s done. Everything I think, she’s thought. If I do
something
right, she gets the credit. If I do something wrong, she’s the first to admit it, usually before or while I’m doing it. That’s why none of your theories work in my case. You’re explaining why we have no effect on the future. The future isn’t my problem. She isn’t in the future. She’s here now, and as long as she’s here, nothing I do affects the present.”

Phillip looked at her, sitting there, staring miserably at the empty glasses in front of her. She made it sound so futile.
I’m sure that’s just the booze talking
, he thought, then he thought,
No, it’s her talking, but it’s the booze thinking
.

He wasn’t far wrong. The alcohol in her system was
affecting
her thinking. Brit looked at Phillip and thought,
He’s cute, in a rumpled, worn in kind of way. Older me wanted me to get to know him. I don’t know why, but I tend to think I wouldn’t like it if I did.

They made eye contact. They smiled. Then, there was a
hollow
, popping noise, like someone opening a bottle of
champagne
. Phillip looked alarmed, then in one movement stood up and swung his staff very fast overhand toward Brit’s head. Brit instinctively cringed, shielding her head with both arms. Phillip shouted something she didn’t quite catch, then her world was nothing but noise and confusion.

Gwen and Martin heard the crash from the balcony. They ran into the hall and found chaos. The lights came up. Martin could see that one of the large goddess statues that stood around the circumference of the room had fallen. There was a base, a pair of sculpted feet, and a nasty, ragged break at the thinnest part of the goddess’ ankles. In front of that there was a field of dust, shards of broken statue, crushed tables and chairs, and in the middle of it all stood Phillip, his staff held far out in front of himself like an axe stopped mid-swing. The debris on the floor was piled thick everywhere except for a perfect circle radiating outward from the tip of Phillip’s staff. Inside the circle, free from any damage, were Phillip, the table he’d been sitting at, the chair that had been opposite him, and in the chair, directly under the tip of the staff, and as such, at the center of the protected circle, Brit the Younger, looking confused.

Phillip said, “
Forigi ŝildo
,” and for an instant the outline of a dome of energy could be seen covering Phillip and Brit, before it disappeared. Phillip practically ran around the table and took Brit by the hand, helping her up.

“Are you all right?” He asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

Martin and Gwen slid to a stop after running across the hall. “Are you two okay?” Martin asked.

“Yes. We’re both fine,” Phillip said. “Was anybody hurt?”

By this time, everyone who was still in attendance was
standing
around looking at the damage. Nobody seemed injured. It seemed that Phillip and Brit the Younger were the only people who had been in the statue’s landing zone.

Gwen looked at the damaged statue’s base and asked, “What happened?”

From across the room, a woman’s voice called out, “I’ll tell you exactly what happened.” Everyone turned to see Brit the Elder walking serenely through the crowd. She reached the debris field, and said, “Just as I remembered it, Phillip was
listening
to me, complaining about the trivial things that seemed like
problems
to me at that age.”

Brit the Elder walked to the table and looked at the three empty whiskey glasses in front of Brit the Younger’s chair and shook her head. Brit the Younger’s face turned bright red.