John DeChancie Castle 04 Castle War

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Jeremy sat down on an upturned wooden bucket and stared off into the
bedsprings and the fenders and the piles of old tires.
A few moments later Isis returned with a strange look on her face. Jeremy
stood up.
He wants you.
Jeremy s mouth dropped open again.
He steeled himself and went into the garage, where Luster awaited him with an
enigmatic smile.
Take us for a ride, Luster said.
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Castle War
Huh?
Take us for a ride in that there spaceship of yores.
Oh. Well, I can t do that. First, I don t know if we can get back home.
Second, I might not be able to bring you back here.
That s fine by me.
Really? But &
Shore would like to ride in that thing. Besides, you owe Dolbert and me
forty-seven fifty.
Uh, yeah. Well, heck, okay. There s room for two if you squeeze.
Dolbert! C mon. These here space people say they ll take us for a ride.
Dolbert came out of the oily shadows tittering his delight.
Stand by to engage thrusters, Jeremy said.
Standing by, the Toshiba said. But we re not going to have any better luck
this time than we did before.
You have coordinates for the castle.
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Thing is, we re going to have to negotiate the interuniversal medium again,
and it s all screwed up.
We re not going to hang around in it this time. We have the readings. Don t
we, Isis?
We have tons of good data, Isis said.
So, what s the problem? Jeremy said.
The problem is that the supercontinuum is undergoing so much instability that
it s going to make vector analysis an iffy proposition. That means there ll be
no computing our relative velocity and therefore our momentum at the point of
entry into the metrical frame of the destination subcontinuum.
Spit that out again in English.
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We don t have any goddamn brakes on this thing.
Oh. Well, do the best you can.
R-r-roger!
Engage thrusters!
Engaged!
The inside of the garage disappeared from view, replaced by a shifting,
inchoate nothingness.
Shore is pretty, space, Luster said.
That s nonspace, Jeremy said.
Shore is pretty, anyway.
Hold on to your chitterlings, brothers and sisters, the Toshiba said gaily.
It s going to be a rough ride.
Thirty-one
Temple
Uncle Mordecai!
The man in the electric-blue leisure suit squinted through thick-lensed
glasses. What are you telling me, I m related to you?
Not by blood. You married my aunt Jacinda.
Jackie! Good woman, rest her soul. You re ?
Incarnadine.
I thought you looked familiar. You were young when I saw you last. You still
look young. How old are you now?
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Three hundred fifty-six.
A baby. Still at the castle?
It s home.
I enjoyed it when I lived there.
Incarnadine looked around at the opulence of the temple. You have a nice
place here.
It used to be a good business back in the old days. Now nothing. Bad
location.
To say nothing of those protection spells.
Hey, I got quite an investment here. You should see the insurance premiums I
gotta pay for vandalism.
It s murder today to run a business.
Yeah, I ll bet. Uncle Mordy, you don t live here, do you?
Here, in this barn? No. I got a place in Palm Beach. I m retired now.
Incarnadine was astonished. You have a portal between here and Earth?
For years. Why?
Incarnadine turned to Jonath, who was still prostrate on the stone floor of
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the sanctuary. You think I m a powerful magician? Here s one who can do
something I can t. He turned back to Mordecai. You re the only magician I
know who can punch a portal between universes without castle power.
Mordecai shrugged. It s a simple trick.
I ll bet. Where is it?
Right in the back. Let s go back to the house where we can talk, I can offer
you a drink, whatever.
Come on. Oh, your helper, here. You re invited, too, pal.
Incarnadine helped Jonath up, then introduced him.
A pleasure, Mordecai said. Come on back.
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Mordecai led them behind the base of the statue, through a doorway, and into a
less voluminous chamber. Set into the base of the far wall was a small square
opening.
I just found out I got problems with this thing. When I heard the alarm go
off in the temple I came running and found that it shrank on me. Look at that.
Like a cat door. I had to crawl through the damn thing. You know what s going
on?
Yeah, Incarnadine said. The reason I m here. The interuniversal medium is
undergoing stress, and anomalies like this are happening all over.
Well, let s get in here before it chops someone in half. Mordecai got down
on his hands and knees and crawled through the opening.
The room on the other side was a large paneled game room with a bar, couches
and chairs, and a pool table. Mordecai led his guests through it and up the
stairs to the first floor of a very large house. A
hallway came out into a spacious living room with a view of a manicured lawn
and garden. The property ended at a canal and slip, where a large cabin
cruiser was moored.
Decorator Swedish modern furniture graced the room, and modern paintings, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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