EIGHT
Magus
2063. July 26th.
Three weeks after crashing the Geyr ship and hiding in the Chinese countryside, Magus had come to the conclusion that no one was looking for him. No Ayviline had come to track him down. No Geyrs. He was safe. And, surprisingly, if he kept his head covered, he looked almost exactly like one of the people on this planet. He couldn’t have found a better hiding place if he had tried.
And so, after only a bit of trepidation, he had walked into the Chinese city of Ining and immersed himself in its culture. Day after day, he had put himself into a mind-opening trance and either sat on the sidewalk or walked the streets, taking in everything about the people there that he could, reading their thoughts. He was absorbing everything – the language, the customs, the state of technology (which was somewhere between Anduran and Geyr), the sins and virtues of the people here, the politics.
And the people never noticed him spying on them like this, prying into their minds. His skin was slightly darker than most of theirs, but with all of the variation in people’s skin tones on this planet, no one seemed to notice.
Now, after his weeks of researching the people of Ining, he had the information he needed. He had a plan.
He was standing outside of Yi Chen’s mansion, while Hui, one of Chen’s guards, carried his message inside.
“There is a man here to see you, Lord Chen,” Hui said in Mandarin. “He says he has something for you.”
Yi Chen looked up. His eyes were droopy, and his face slack. ‘Lord’ Chen was in desperate need of sleep, but the authorities would not give it to him. Neither would his rivals, the Zhangs. “Who is it?”
“He would not say, Lord Chen. He only said he had something for you and insisted on seeing you. He is an Arabian.”
An Arabian? Chen thought. Who did he know from the Middle East? “I assume you at least disarmed him, Hui? We wouldn’t want another episode like last time, now would we?”
“No, Lord Chen,” Hui bowed. A Zhang messenger had come to see Lord Chen two weeks ago. Hui had patted the messenger down but had failed to find the switchblade hidden in the messenger’s orifice, and Hui still bore the cut from Chen’s blade for his mistake. “We used the scanner on him. He has no weapons.”
Chen rubbed his chin for a moment and then said, “Bring him in.”
Hui led Magus in a few moments later, followed by Wen and Hong, two more of Chen’s men.
Magus wore a hood, but Chen could see that his visitor had long black hair, a black mustache and goatee, and bright blue eyes.
The Andurian bowed. “Lord Chen.”
Chen did not bow. He leaned back lazily in his chair. “You said you have something for me, Mr….?”
“Magus. Call me Magus.”
“You have something for me, Mr. Magus?”
“Indeed, I do.” Magus reached into his robe, and all three of Chen’s men immediately pulled their guns. Magus, smiling, raised a hand to calm them, and proceeded to pull out a small vial of blue liquid. He held it up triumphantly and then gently laid it on Chen’s desk.
Chen reached over and picked it up. “What is this?”
“A new drug,” Magus answered. “Unlike anything this world has ever created.”
Chen squinted at the man before him. He didn’t know Magus, didn’t trust him. It was too obvious to be the police trying to trap him, but he better play it carefully anyway. “A new drug, huh?” he asked. “What do I want with this?” and he reached out to hand it back.
“It is better than anything you have,” Magus said, ignoring Chen’s gesture. “It will make you a lot of money.”
Chen brought the vial back to himself and motioned for Hui to come over to the desk. “Take it,” Chen ordered. “See what it does.”
“You…want me to…?” Hui began.
“Take it!” Chen snapped.
Hui had no desire to be the guinea pig, but he also had no desire to feel Chen’s wrath again.
“You take it intravenously,” Magus informed Hui as he pulled a syringe out of his robe. Chen’s jaw hardened as he shot a glance at Hui.
Hui took the syringe, filled it with the blue liquid, and injected it into his arm, between all the other lines he had there. A few seconds later, he was swaying where he stood.
“Hui?” Chen asked.
“Oh… It’s good…” Hui said sleepily.
“How good, Hui?” Chen asked, rubbing his hand down his face. “I need details.”
“Better’n everything.”
Chen turned back to Magus. “You bring me this new drug, Mr. Magus. Why? What do you get?”
“I get your money when you buy it from me.”
Chen laughed and picked up the bottle, shaking its remaining contents. “But now that I have your sample,” Chen said, “why would I buy it from you, hmm? I can have my people analyze it and then we can make it ourselves.”
“Well, Lord Chen,” Magus said smiling, “I think that’s where you’re wrong. Your people will not figure out how to make it. You are welcome to try, of course, but I can guarantee that you will fail. I promise you that. So, the deal I am proposing is that I will make it and you will buy it and sell it for a profit. You’re my distributor.”
Chen nodded. “If you don’t think I can figure out your secret, why not sell it yourself?”
“You know how to sell, Lord Chen,” Magus said. “You have the contacts. You have the men.” You’re my puppet, my stand-in between me and the law. You’re my money-maker so I can figure out a way to get back home and kill the Ayvilines.
2066. November 12th.
Three and a half years later. Business was good for Magus. Lord Chen was continuing to distribute his blue drug, now called Cruise. The profits provided Magus with as much money as he would ever need.
Now, it was time to start building his army to take back to Anduris. He would hit them using the same thing they had tried to arrest him for – genetic manipulation.
Anduran law, and thus the Ayvilines, said that life was sacred – all life, especially conscious life. If it moved, then no one was to take it, eat it, or tamper with it in any way because Zedek Kessed Himself had created it, and destroying or altering Zedek Kessed‘s creation would be an inexcusable insult to His Divinity.
Well, fine, Magus thought. For the sake of argument, let’s say that Zedek Kessed exists. Albeit that we never see Him, He never interacts with His supposed creation, and the only reason we believe in Him is because of the stories and the fact that the Ayvilines tell us to. But let’s say He does exist and that, in fact, He was the One who created all of Anduris. Does that mean that we can’t improve on His creation? If we have the knowledge to do it, then why not? Because then the Ayvilines wouldn’t be so special anymore, would they?
If Magus could give regular people powers like the Ayvilines had through genetic manipulation and alchemy, that would mean that the Ayvilines would be forced to give up their privileged authority. Anduris would be a democracy – everyone would have a vote – instead of a twelve-pronged, tyrannical oligarchy.
No one on Earth had the knowledge to build a superhuman like Magus wanted, so he had planned to raise funds from his Cruise concoction to build himself a laboratory in which to work.
But then he thought better of it. If he owned and operated his own lab, that would put him much closer to being discovered by the terrestrial law agencies. Although now a primarily atheistic society, what he had wanted to do on Anduris was also illegal here.
So why not do what he had done with the Cruise? No drug lord had known how to make the stuff. Magus made it for Chen and then stepped back. The only way the law would get to him was if Chen gave him up. And even if he did, the authorities would find no evidence. Without Magus’ knowledge, the materials he used were completely innocuous. Besides, he didn’t have a name or a registered identification number here. He didn’t exist on this planet.
Still, he could play it even safer with the superhumans. He could give the knowledge of how to engineer them to a human scientist – even without that scientist knowing where the information came from – and then collect his prize later. The question now was, Who to give it to? It has to be someone both willing and able to use the information, someone with the resources already in place.
Magus, in a trance, was searching for that person now, his mind roaming the earth. This was the third night in a row he had searched like this.
Finally, in the early hours of the morning, he found the LifeSpace at GenRes, where eight two-year-olds were currently locked together inside an artificial environment and being constantly monitored by a male attendant.
The attendant was awake. Magus entered his thoughts. He was sick. His name was Charlie. Was he the owner of GenRes, the principal operator? No. A man named Luca Temlane was. And Luca fit the criteria. He was moneyed. The size of the building and the quality of the equipment ensured that. And he had a willingness to bend the rules for the greater good, as evidenced by these eight sequestered children.
So where is this Luca? Charlie didn’t know. At home, probably. Did Charlie know the address? No. But he knew the direction and which neighborhood it was. Good enough.
Magus directed his mind onward, searching Luca’s neighborhood until he found him, asleep in bed with a woman named Susan next to him. Charlie’s mind had been filled with intimate memories of this Susan.
Entering Luca’s dreams, Magus projected vision after vision of how to engineer more perfect humans, all with different and complimentary abilities, as the Ayvilines had.
2071. August 25th.
Four years later. Magus, like most of the world, had just finished watching the President of the United States’ brief address. He felt sorry for all the American lives that had been lost in the attack. And for all of the Chinese lives that were soon to be lost in America’s counter-attack.
But it was necessary. He couldn’t rely on the Chinese government alone to rebuild the Geyr ship. If he had understood it himself, he could have implanted the knowledge into some Chinese engineer’s mind, but, like all other Andurians, he was completely unfamiliar with Geyr technology, and it didn’t seem as if the Chinese were making much progress on their own. If he was ever going to get back to Anduris, he needed to get as many different people working on that ship as possible, and that was why he had leaked the information about the crashed spacecraft to the American Force Intelligence Office.
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