Void: Book Five of the Nightlord series Read online

  “You’re no Rocket Ranger. The Rocket Rangers don’t approve of stealing.”

  “I stole the badge from a real Rocket Ranger, so it’s okay.”

  “I’m not sure that’s how it works.”

  The cab dropped us off at Mary’s villa. Petros, her house-servant, let us in. Mary signed with him for a bit—he was a deaf-mute—and he went away again.

  “Need me for anything else?” I asked.

  “Not at the moment. I’ll shout if something comes up,” she assured me, holding up one hand and rattling the communications bracelet on her wrist.

  “Fair enough. I’ll be at The Manor.”

  “Enjoy your boring English countryside. Say hello to Trixie for me.”

  “I will, both.”

  I stepped into the shift-booth, exited in Apocalyptica, had a quick change of clothes in Diogenes’ wardrobe department—much of silo one is devoted to wardrobe and equipment for otherworldly journeys—and headed back up the hall to The Manor door.

  Someday, I’m going to tie all the shift-booths together. Walk into one booth, insert the appropriate key, and it takes you to the shift-booth you want. No more having to route through Apocalyptica to get where you’re going, much less trudge back and forth down the hall.

  Or, even better, I’ll enchant an independent, free-standing box—say, a telephone booth, or an old-style British police box—to swap its space with identical space in another universe. It’ll be expensive in power terms, and navigating it will be tricky, at best… Maybe I can even grab some space from somewhere, cram it into the box, and make it bigger on the inside!

  Someday, someday. I’m sure it can be done, even if I don’t know how, yet.

  Then again, maybe I shouldn’t. I’m pretty sure people would expect someone who, clearly, isn’t me. Besides, Apocalyptica is where we keep all the information on the worlds we go to regularly, along with the wardrobe and weaponry department. And I think Diogenes gets lonely. He denies it, claiming he’s merely a complex of programs, but I’m not sure I believe him.

  The Manor, Wednesday, September 27th, 1939

  Seventeen years ago, local time, it was 1922. I flat-out bought a Stately Home of England. I’ve always wanted one. I never realized how awful they were to live in, though. Mine is a big pile of rocks with leaded windows, heavy doors, and old furniture. Fireplaces are everywhere, which dates the architecture, but one of the previous owners added radiators to various rooms and a furnace in the basement for central heat and hot water. If it hadn’t had running water, I simply wouldn’t have bought the place.

  That was quite a while ago. The place didn’t have gas heat, nor gaslights, nor any other fancy modern conveniences. I’ve cheated, however, and paid to have an electric line run out to the house—then added a semi-portable reactor from Apocalyptica. The power line is mostly an excuse for where the electricity comes from.

  The manor and the grounds are a relatively flat, clear spot in what is otherwise a bunch of tree-covered hills. Once you get off the lawn, the place is surrounded by apple trees. There used to be a thriving orchard, but nobody has tended it in a generation. Now it’s an apple tree forest with a few other trees encroaching. There’s a sizable lawn immediately around the house and along the drive, as well as an enormous garden out back. I can’t call it a farm, exactly, but the garden grows some unreasonable number of vegetables.

  I don’t use most of the house. I have one wing where I eat, work, read, and allow people to think I sleep. I have stairs down to a walled-off, private section of basement, as well as stairs up to other rooms. My wing even has a flat roof so I can go up when the urge strikes. It’s like having a lavish wizard’s tower as well as a Stately Home all in the same package.

  As for the rest of the place, it’s mostly full of old furniture, old paintings, old books, old fixtures, and dusty sheets. I bought it at an estate sale, lock, stock, and barrel. The previous owner didn’t come back from the trenches in France, and there wasn’t a clear line of inheritance. I believe the idea was to sell it all and split the money among the various claimants, but the lawyer—sorry; the solicitor—told me it wasn’t my affair.

  Mr. and Mrs. Gillespie are an elderly couple I hired as caretakers. Shortly after I bought the house I realized I couldn’t cope with the lawn care, to say nothing of the rest of it. They live on the top floor, presumably where the servants’ quarters are. I’ve tried to get them to take rooms lower down so they can avoid all those stairs, but they just look at me with pitying expressions and tell me, “That may be all right, away over in America, but t’ain’t how things are done proper here, young master.”

  I’ve given up arguing, partly because Mr. Gillespie doesn’t hear too well and I dislike to shout at him.

  When I’m in residence—which is often—Mrs. Gillespie insists on being cook as well as caretaker. I was trying to be the reclusive genius, locked away in his laboratory, but I made the mistake of giving her a set of keys. She came right into the east wing and announced she’d set the dining table, which obligated me to eat. She’s an excellent cook, but I originally intended to take all my meals—both sorts—with Diogenes. The best-laid plans of mice and vampire overlords, I guess.

  Since then, I’ve changed the locks to my private wing so as not to make a fuss about getting those keys back. She didn’t comment, but she parked a laundry basket by the door. I don’t think she’d take it too well to know I magically clean my clothes and linens. First, she wouldn’t approve of “witchcraft.” Second, she would feel left out if she couldn’t do the laundry. It’s possible the priority of the offenses is incorrect. I’ve given up telling her I didn’t hire her as a personal servant. Every time I bring it up, she nods and agrees and goes right on acting like my grandmother.

  I bought an electric washing machine last year. That’ll show her. Then again, I also bought an electric clothes dryer which she only uses when it rains. The rest of the time, she still hangs everything on a line. She also deals with fireplaces and wood stoves and thinks the electric lights may be witchcraft, but darn convenient witchcraft.

  I wonder what she would think if she knew I was lobbing the occasional regenerative spell at her and her husband? I’ve seen her groaning a bit as she straightens up, and I’ve seen him limp on days when the damp gets to his knees. I may not be able to turn back their clocks, but is it all right to alleviate the symptoms? They’re not making any deals; I’m doing it for free. Would it still make me a witch?

  Add it to the list of things I don’t want to tell them.

  Mr. Gillespie is somewhat simpler. He handles everything to do with the outdoors and the general maintenance. He touches his cap and smiles whenever he sees me. Aside from the occasional passing comment about “maiden’s math”—whatever that means—he generally only wants tools and lumber.

  I have no idea how he manages to make a lawn turn so deeply green. If he putters about anywhere near the grass it grows an inch, which is disturbing. He mows the lawn with a scythe, so it’s almost a wasted effort.

  I, on the other hand, have a black thumb. If I do anything to the grass beyond running a mower over it, I risk its life. Even Diogenes took the extraordinary step of banishing me from his underground hydroponic farms, claiming my presence at night causes a small but statistically significant decrease in crop yields.

  Is that a side effect of being a psychic vampire? Am I constantly draining a minute amount of energy from everything around me? Or is it a more mortal, human thing? I never did manage to keep a houseplant alive for a week. Maybe I should conduct some tests. Maybe I will, someday, when I feel more motivated.

  Mr. Gillespie is also the one who tries to report on the place and request equipment or materials. I don’t know what accent he has, but it’s a struggle for me to follow it. I finally simplified matters and told him to use his judgment and gave them a bigger caretaking budget. At least when he tries to explain where he’s spending money, there are receipts. I can read those. I try to stay out of his way. It
’s not too hard. He’s old and not very fast.

  He may not be fast, but he’s utterly without fear. I think he would have made a good member of the Green Lantern Corps. With tools and materials now in hand, Mr. Gillespie took himself up on a rickety wooden ladder to work on gutters three storeys from the ground! I couldn’t order him not to—it’s part of his job—but I immediately had Diogenes fabricate an extendable carbon-fiber ladder. I still try not to watch whenever he’s off the ground. I suppose I shouldn’t worry. He’s been doing this sort of thing for at least fifty years. He may be old and slow, but anyone who makes it to old age in a hazardous occupation is not a person to trifle with.

  Despite everything else they do, the two of them spend hours in their garden together. They’ve been married “nigh on forty-three years,” and they seem just as happy with each other as two teenagers. Maybe gardening is the secret to a happy marriage.

  It bothers me that I’ll have to pack up and leave in a couple of years. I’ve been reasonably happy here, enjoying the quiet, but the Second World War is scheduled to start in 1941 and I have no intention of becoming involved.

  When I stepped out of the shift-booth, I was already dressed in tweed. It’s a local thing. I wear my armored underwear under everything, of course, but it’s just my habitual paranoia. I’ve never needed it in The Manor. My cloak, in these parts, typically pretends to be a vest—or a “weskit,” although I’m not sure what the difference is, if there is one. Mrs. Gillespie approves, however, of my somber wardrobe choices, claiming “dark colors do give a young man a serious air, if I may say so, as does a weskit, young master, even an American.”

  I nod and agree and thank her for her advice.

  Anyway, I have two hobbies in The Manor. One is simply sitting on a windowseat, sometimes reading, sometimes watching it rain, which it does rather often. Mary says I like watching the world weep because I won’t. She thinks I’m depressed. She could be right, but I prefer to think of it as simply not happy. There’s a difference between being actively sad and not happy. If the scale of happiness runs from positive ten—as happy as one can be—down to negative ten—as sad as one can be—then I think I’m hovering around zero. I’m not sad. I’m neutral. Zero. Neither.

  Maybe she’s right and I’m lying to myself. I’ve gotten good at lying.

  Regardless, I like the rain. We get some good thunderstorms around here.

  My other hobby is technomagical experimentation. There are any number of things I don’t want to do where they might interact badly with Diogenes. He’s a hybrid of technology and magic and I don’t like risking his existence with my experiments in magical technology. Magicology? Mana-ology? Thaumatology? Whatever, it’s a technological approach to magical effects.

  My current experiment is a third-generation prototype. It’s an orichalcum-based spell diagram printed on a circuit board and connected to an electromagical transformer. The idea is to raise a power shield around an area and produce magical energy inside it. It’s rather like an Ascension Sphere, except the containment field doesn’t grow stronger by feeding on the local, external power level. It has a limit based on the settings of the spell diagram, instead. When the magical power density rises beyond the containment level, it starts leaking out, like pouring water into a cup when it’s already full.

  The first prototype overloaded, burst like a bubble, set fire to my worktable, and released a shockwave of magical energy. The residents of Millbeck and Applethwaite were quite convinced the fairies were “abroad o’the e’en” for weeks afterward. I learned a lot from that prototype, including the fact there are fairies in the woods, lots of them, and there is a wide variety of them. They’re not usually active in this low-magic environment, though, which makes me wonder when the magic started fading and why. I’m also a bit unclear on where they go when the magic fades, but fairy ecology isn’t my biggest concern.

  The second prototype had some safety features. Once it reached capacity, power leaked out through the containment shield rather than rupturing it, but it kept running at full power all the time. The highest concentration of magic was inside the shield, but a steady stream of the excess magic radiated outward into the vicinity.

  Now it seems I’ve got it right. I can specify a diameter and leave it running until it’s at capacity. It then goes into maintenance mode, keeping the “pressure” up and holding the containment shield steady. I tested it by casting a light spell inside the containment shell, thus draining a bit of the power. The transformer kicked on, brought the power level up again, and went back into standby mode.

  Someday, when we find a world with an Atlantean civilization, I’m going to have questions, but also a head start. And if we don’t, eventually I’ll have a technomagical science all my own.

  Whistling cheerily, I locked the door to the third-floor lab and went down to the ground floor. The other doors connecting to my wing are locked and bolted; the only real entry is through one ground-floor door.

  The main dining table is several people long, so one end of it makes a good mail drop. Mrs. Gillespie has better handwriting than her husband. She left me a note to say they’d harnessed Lazy and Loafer to drive into Keswick for shopping day.

  I’m tempted to get a local automobile, but Mr. Gillespie does love those horses. I like horses and I tolerate the cyborg things Diogenes and Mary put together for me, but I don’t feel like making friends with them. I still have some raw places that don’t need poking. I know it’s something I should get over, but it’s not going away. I may have to live with it, and for a terribly long time.

  With the house to myself, I did a little maintenance on the magic of the place. I have a low-grade repair spell permeating the structure of the house. It’s only powered by the solar-conversion spell covering the roof, so it doesn’t have the power to do much. It’s only there to reduce the wear and tear of time on the house and, as a secondary effect, on Mr. Gillespie. In theory, it will run forever, but it’s good to double-check your work periodically. I went up to the roof—it’s pitched over the main house, but the wings were added later and are flat-topped—and had a look around, confirmed all was in order, and headed down again.

  Someone tugged the bell-pull at the front door, ringing the announcing bells.

  My manor house sat at the end of an extremely long driveway. To reach the front door, one followed the road up from the village, turned at the gate in the hedgerow, continued for over a quarter-mile up the drive to the roundabout in front of the house, and parked under the portico. I liked the portico; it was a big, serious roof capable of keeping a stagecoach and an eight-horse team dry in a driving rain. But the long walk from the gate, to say nothing of the long walk from the nearest village, made casual visitors rare.

  I unbolted the heavy front door and swung it open.

  The young man on the front porch was in the near vicinity of eight years old, nine at the outside. He was muddy from the knees down but otherwise reasonably clean. He didn’t have a hat, but he had a cardboard box and a small suitcase. He was sweating and struck me as more than a little tired.

  “May I help you?”

  “I’d like to speak with his lordship, if I may.”

  Polite kid, at least. I couldn’t fault him for assuming I was a servant. I answered the door in shirtsleeves and a vest—hardly the height of formal attire.

  “Who is calling, please?”

  “James Dreyfus.”

  “Do come in. Shall I take your coat?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Perhaps the young gentleman would care to avail himself of the mud room before entering the house proper?”

  “Oh? Oh! Yes, please.”

  I showed him into a small room off the main entry, noting the Gillespies had once again relocated their “Wellies,” or waterproof boots, to the servants’ entrance in back. I tried to explain how they’re allowed and expected to use the front door, but it’s hard to argue with a man whose answer to anything he disagrees with is, “Eh? W
hat’ee say?”

  I swear, one day I’m going to fix his hearing instead of his knees.

  The mud room has what I think of as a “floor sink,” an area with a raised lip and a drain. Dreyfus was not slow to make use of it in cleaning his shoes and socks. I brought him a towel while he washed.

  Dried and with much cleaner feet, I showed him into the main dining room and seated him. A quick trip to the pantry found us some sausage, cheese, and biscuits—a sort of cross between a cracker and a cookie. I encouraged him to eat and added some apple cider to the table. Then I sat down at the head of the table, putting the corner between us, and munched a little, myself.

  He was mostly through his fifth biscuit-with-extras when the penny dropped. I wasn’t off consulting with His Lordship about a guest. I was sitting at the head of the table. I was eating at the dining table. Therefore, I was either a servant determined to be fired on the spot, or…

  He swallowed, looked left and right as though about to bolt, and put the rest of the cracker-biscuit down.

  “Oh,” I added, “there is no lord of Applewood Hall. I’m an American. All I did was buy the place. I own it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Eat your lunch. It’s a long walk from the villages, and a muddy one, today.”

  “There’s no lord?”

  “Not unless one of ’em insisted on being buried in the basement. Come to think of it, I haven’t looked in all the suits of armor around the place, either. Could be one standing propped up in a hallway, I suppose. Why do you need one?”

  “I’m looking for my family, sir.”

  “Seems like a good thing to do. By the way, my name is Duncan. Duncan Kearne. Since you’ve been well-mannered, James, I’d like you to call me ‘Duncan.’ Now, how did you come to misplace your family?”

  James explained about Operation Pied Piper. With the prospect of a war in the near future, His Majesty’s government had the bright idea to remove children from areas likely to be bombed. It was simple in design. Kids were shipped out of cities and away from industrial centers to be absorbed into the countryside, in little towns and villages. Each had a cardboard identification card, a gas mask, and a small suitcase of possessions. Once any shipment of children arrived somewhere, they were lined up for display and individual families could pick and choose among them.