Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) Read online

  “Much better,” Paul commented encouragingly. “Erase those. Try again.”

  “You really are getting the hang of it,” he declared a few minutes later as Capie swept the latest portal out of existence. “I know you’re tired, so why don’t we wait until tomorrow to go to the next step.”

  “Which is what?” Capie asked, leaning away from Paul a little and studying him thoughtfully. “How many steps are there?”

  “Well, bigger portals, of course. And further apart too. And then sending objects through them without disintegrating the object in question—”

  “That can happen?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest and then shuddering slightly. “I’ve stepped through more than a dozen of your portals. Are you saying…?”

  “You can see why it’s important to get it right.” He cocked his head almost imperceptibly to one side. “If I can do it, you can too, guaranteed.”

  “Okay, I’ll practice, if that’s what it takes,” she said with a sigh as she shook her head. “I wouldn’t want to disintegrate myself or anyone else going through a portal.” She lay back down against Paul’s side.

  “I was thinking.” Paul announced after a few moments of watching the crackle of the fire.

  “Does it involve portals, dear?”

  “No, not portals. Pet names. All couples have them. Terms of endearment. What shall I call you?”

  Capie squeezed him gently. “I haven’t given it any thought. I suppose a nickname for you would be nice too.”

  “Dumpling, Lamb-chop, Babushka, Peaches, Gorgeous, Bambi, Poopsie, Honey Cakes, Angel, Cupcake, Sweetiepie, Princess, Sugar, Tootsie Wootsy—any of those tickle your fancy?”

  “Not in the least,” she replied, cuddling even closer to him. “Try some imagination.”

  “Imagination, heh? Okay, I got it. I’ll call you CB.”

  She pulled back and shot him a questioning look. “CB?”

  He stroked her hair. “Yep. My child bride.”

  Capie made a face. “Very funny. I guess it is accurate and original. Still, I would encourage you to try harder. In the meantime, if you call me CB, then I know the perfect name to call you.”

  “You do? That fast?” He leaned forward, with an interested smile. “What name would that be?”

  “Dom.”

  “Dom?” he asked, puzzled. “What sort of name is Dom? Is that an acronym too?”

  “Yep. It stands for Dirty Old Man.”

  Paul laughed, his eyes aglitter. “I like it! And so appropriate too. Dom it is. And I love you too.”

  Leaning forward, they kissed again, tenderly and unhurriedly.

  “I could do that forever,” Paul declared with a blithe smile.

  “It’s my turn now,” Capie said with a candid smile. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  Paul coughed, trying to hide a sudden chuckle. “Personal? But of course, CB. Ask away.”

  “You don’t cuss, do you, Dom?” she asked. “Don’t misunderstand, I love that about you. Some men are so foul mouthed that I can’t stand to be around them. Some women too. But you’ve never…not since I’ve known you. Is there a reason?”

  Paul stroked her hair and stared at the fire. “My father was a drill sergeant in the Marine Corps.”

  Capie smiled. “You must have been proud of him.”

  “Very,” Paul replied.

  “But…oh! I think I see. Did he use a lot of profanity?”

  Paul snorted and gave a short nod. “Much worse than any drunken sailor on leave. I once calculated that he had used the entire family’s allotment of profanity for the next 3.45 generations. The extended family’s allotment, that is.”

  She chuckled. “You sound like Spock when you say that.”

  “That’s a really nice compliment, thanks.”

  “What about your mother? Did she use profanity too?”

  “No, never. And since Dad was always gone on deployment somewhere and since Mom was the one who raised me…”

  “You learned not to cuss either,” she finished for him. “Bravo for good parents. Dad has never cussed either. He says it’s a sign of a weak vocabulary. He uses the Shakespeare insult generator instead.”

  “What did you call it? The what?” Paul asked, craning his neck for a better look at her face. “Is that a joke?”

  “Nope. Google it sometime. Dad gets a real kick out of using it…” and her voice trailed off, a shiver running up her spine.

  The way she said those last few words…

  “Is there a problem?” Paul quietly asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “I’m not sure.” She drew her mouth into a straight line. “Paul, why did you pick the Osthoff? Don’t get me wrong, I love it here. It’s a fabulous place for a honeymoon but with your magical powers—”

  “We could have gone to Paris or Rome or some other better known honeymoon location?”

  “Exactly. Is this about Dad? Did you want to stay close to him in case something happened?”

  Paul nodded in swift agreement. “Very much so, yes. I’m very worried about your father.”

  “Do you think he’s in trouble? Really in trouble? I mean…would the wizards of Errabêlu actually kidnap him in exchange for you? Maybe even…you know…?”

  Paul gritted his teeth before replying. “I’m not going to lie to you, honey, nor will I sugarcoat it. Yes, to all of those questions. The only thing I don’t know is what we can do about it.”

  “There are two of us now,” she pointed out.

  “But neither one of us has a talisman,” Paul reminded her. “And you are brand new at this game.”

  She nodded sadly. “And we won’t know if and when it happens either. It might already be happening, right now at this very minute.”

  Paul felt a shiver go up his spine. “That’s not quite true. I, uh, set up an alarm system, of sorts. We should have some warning, if Errabêlu shows up to abduct your father.”

  “Oh?” Capie gave him a suspicious look. “Is there something you haven’t told me yet?”

  Paul grinned shyly. “You could say that.” And so he told her that, during their confrontation with her father, Christopher Kingsley, in the Adler Planetarium, that Paul had set her father’s smart phone to call a certain number at the press of a single button and that Jaret had inserted a spell into Chris’s mind, to urge him to push that button if the professor felt threatened.

  He held up the burner phone for her to see. “And there has been no such phone call.”

  Capie mulled that over for a minute while staring at the fire. “I suppose I should be mad at you for casting spells on Dad that way. If you could do that, why couldn’t you have cast a spell on him to make him want to come with us?”

  Paul produced a wintry smile, remembering a similar such request he had made of the ex-genie Jaret concerning Paul’s stepson Douglas. Jaret had indicated that only a total replacement of Doug’s personality would have satisfied the intended goal. “‘The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded’, huh?” he said, quoting Obi-wan Kenobi from Star Wars. “Sorry, but magic doesn’t work quite that way. Brainwashing is not an option. A simple unconscious action, yes, like pushing a button, but nothing much more complicated than that. And it’s a really good thing, too. Otherwise, the wizards of Errabêlu would be even more invincible than they are now.”

  Capie took a deep breath. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

  “Let’s call for a little super-intelligent help here.” Paul raised a hand—

  “Wait a minute, Paul,” Capie said, interrupting him. “Let me try.”

  He gave her a small bow. “Of course.”

  She sat up on the sofa and raised both hands into the air. “In the name of Leanansidhe, Nac Mac Feegle and the tooth fairy, may there be a virtual reality hologram of a super-intelligence in the image of Titania, Queen of the Fairies.”

  A small ball of light appeared in midair, growing swiftly in size until it became the image of a mature woman
with long brown hair, blue eyes, with graceful facial features and wearing a long white silky dress.

  Paul cocked an eyebrow. “The tooth fairy I know, but the others?”

  Capie winked at him. “You really need to catch up on your fantasy. Leanansidhe is from The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. You’d like those books since they’re all about a private investigator and wizard who lives in Chicago—”

  “Ouch!” said Paul with a wince.

  “And Nac Mac Feegle are a type of fairy folk from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. And Titania here is the Queen of the Fairies. She was first mentioned in a Shakespearean play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream but has shown up in a bunch of other books, TV shows, comics and even video games.”

  Paul’s eyebrows rose. “I’m impressed.”

  “You should be, mortal,” said Titania in a soprano voice. “My, my, you two. Bored with your honeymoon already?” she asked with a smirk.

  Capie frowned. “But the name ‘Titania’ seems inappropriate. A nickname, perhaps. We could try Nia—”

  “Don’t you dare!” hissed the hologram.

  “Tiana.”

  “Over my dead body!”

  Capie smiled. “How about Tia.”

  The specter huffed but gave no other reply.

  “Right,” Capie said. “Tia it is then. Tia, we are worried about my father. Do we have any way to protect him, to keep him safe?”

  Tia’s eyes narrowed in thought. “That’s a good question. Let’s see. I can only think of three possibilities that might work.”

  Capie blinked her eyes in surprise. “Three? Really? What are they?”

  The hologram tugged a little on the end of one braid of brown hair. “You could kidnap him yourself and take him someplace where he would be safe.”

  Capie shuddered, looking away from Tia and at the fire instead. “Not my first choice, no. He would be absolutely livid with us if we did that. What’s the next choice?”

  “Give him magical powers and let him defend himself,” Tia declared.

  “That’s not too good either,” Paul noted with a frown. “That would make him even more of a target for Errabêlu, equal to capturing and killing us. What’s the third option?”

  Tia shrugged half-heartedly. “Trick him. In today’s language, run a confidence game on him. Make him think that going with you is his only option and that it’s his idea.”

  “But how…” Capie started to say then gasped. “You mean, use our magic to scare him?”

  Paul grunted and then chuckled grimly. “Of course. If we could show him how much danger he is in….” Then he looked at Capie sharply. “It could work, in theory. We could use disguise and holographic spells, make us look like Ruggiero and a couple of Oni. Then we kidnap him, threaten him, and scare the pants off of him.”

  “But not actually hurt him,” Capie said, her tone hard.

  Paul gave her an assenting nod. “No, of course we wouldn’t hurt him. Since he would be held as a kidnap victim there is no need to do anything harmful to him. But we could have our ‘Ruggiero’ hologram tell him that as soon as they have their hands on you and me, that all three of us would be executed.”

  Briefly looking at the floor, Capie rubbed her forehead with one hand. “I’m really not very crazy about this idea. It seems…underhanded and dishonest.” But then she reluctantly nodded. “If he even suspects it is us—”

  “If I may?” interrupted Tia. “I suggest that you run test simulations. Create holographic characters, one of them just like your father, and use magic to run them through the possibilities. Right now, neither one of you is good at deception. Practice a little.”

  Paul stood up and walked over to the fireplace, watching the flames as they did their dance. “Speaking of practice, Capie needs to work on honing all of her magical skills a little more, especially portal spells. Before we try anything on her father.”

  Capie raised her eyebrows and offered a sour look. “Slave driver!”

  “And as long as we are going to Chicago,” Paul countered, turning back around to face her, “we need to recover some stuff from there anyway, like the computer, the emerald and my old gold band.”

  “And my belongings?” asked Capie as she stood and moved into Paul’s arms. “By the way, you never told me where you put the things from my house. Where are they?”

  “Reasonably safe,” Paul said with a glance upward at the ceiling.

  “Define ‘reasonably’,” Capie said, her jaw set in sudden suspicion.

  “Well, five miles west of your house, there’s a certain government facility—”

  “Fermi Labs. They have a particle accelerator…” And then her eyes opened wide in shock and she pulled back away from Paul. “You didn’t! Please tell me that you didn’t put my things in there!”

  “They shut down the accelerator in 2011—”

  “All of my things, the jewelry, the stuffed animals, my vase, my china, the candelabra,—”

  Paul put one hand on her shoulder. “Dear—”

  “It will all glow in the dark now!”

  “It’s fine, dear! I promise, there’s no radiation where I put it. But it might be discovered by maintenance workers in a few days, so yes; we do need to retrieve it all before that happens.”

  She squinted at him through narrowed eyes. “If there’s even a single item that is even partially radioactive—”

  “I promise you, dear, it’s all fine!”

  She grunted and folded her arms across her chest.

  “I think we should concentrate on your father first,” Paul quickly added. “Afterwards, we can get your items, and then we can swing by my old place and pick up my stuff from that small cave under Bauer Road. The computer isn’t safe there for very long either, due to possible water damage.”

  But Capie was still giving him a fierce scowl.

  Paul gulped and rubbed his hands together. “So, let’s get Uncle Sam in here. We need his strategic skills and we need a plan, if our con job on your father is going to have any chance of success.”

  • • • •

  In the seven months since Jaret, the ex-genie, had given Paul his powers, the electrical engineer had learned a great deal about their use. Magic was just as prevalent in the physical universe as magnetic fields, gravity, or electromagnetic radiation. Moreover, magic could be tapped directly by the human mind, employing energy from any number of sources to perform whatever spell the user might create.

  The limiting factor was the human mind’s ability to draw on sufficient amounts of energy. Without external aid, this imposed a cap of about ten joules on any spell. To utilize more power an amplifier was required.

  All the elements in the periodic table had a magical quotient, the ability to funnel and amplify energy for magical spells. The rarer the element, the higher the magical quotient. Thus a homogeneous object such as Capie’s gold wrist band or Paul’s tantalum block could serve as a portable amplifier, an amulet, to magnify the power of a spell.

  One of Paul’s discoveries in experimenting with his powers, was that rare isotopes possessed higher magical quotients than the more common ones. Thus, tantalum 181, which already had a higher magical quotient than that of gold, was not as powerful as tantalum 180m, the far rarer isotope.

  Through a magical synthesis of rare materials of two or more groups (precious metals, precious gems, basal rocks, and meteorites) into a talisman, even greater amounts of power could be funneled into and controlled by a spell. Unfortunately, the creation of a such a talisman could be detected anywhere on Earth, which was why Paul could not afford to create one just yet, lest the evil wizards of Errabêlu track his location.

  • • • •

  The newlyweds spent Sunday evening and then Monday morning in conference with Tia, Merlin, and Uncle Sam, diligently endeavoring to develop a workable plan to snatch Capie’s father and then scare him within an inch of his life. Each of the ideas for their duplicitous plot was tested in an evolving tenth-scale holographic
simulation they were running in the center of the living room. At the same time, Capie was doing her best to practice her magical spells, and was achieving decent progress in the effort.

  “By far, the principle problem,” Uncle Sam was saying to the group scattered around the living room, “is that Professor Kingsley is certain to be under constant scrutiny by at least one Oni and probably more. They will be conducting such a ‘stake-out’ in hopes that they can capture you, Paul, or failing that, to capture you, Capie.”

  Paul tugged an earlobe thoughtfully. “That’s why you’ve proposed this particular plan. It’s not fast; it will take more than half a day or so, just to put everything into place.”

  “Exactly. Now, as you travel around southern Wisconsin and the northern Illinois area,” Uncle Sam interposed, “you must keep magical energy levels low, but especially near Chris Kingsley’s home and the Observatory, as well as the two homes you both formerly lived in. Any one of them or all of them might be watched.”

  “During the summer months, Dad usually works until ten or eleven at night,” Capie informed the group. “He oversees the telescope schedule and the graduate students. In other words, he’ll be at his house right now, getting ready to leave and, after 3 p.m., at work until late tonight.”

  Tia smiled encouragingly. “So there will likely not be any Oni at your father’s house once he leaves an hour from now. They will then be at the Observatory, watching him there. However, they could have a microportal open to the house, and a spell cast there to sound an alarm if you show up. Care must be taken when you enter the place.”

  “So Paul and I have a few hours to get down to Dad’s house and sneak inside,” Capie acknowledged with a thoughtful frown. “Then we will hide in the basement until after Dad gets home and goes to sleep.”

  “Exactly,” Uncle Sam agreed firmly. “Then in the morning, you will go to your father’s bedroom and cast a spell on him, to keep him asleep for another hour or so. You will turn his alarm clock off too. Then Paul, in disguise, will pretend to be your father, first in the kitchen and then as he leaves the house. Paul will take your father’s Ford Escape and drive it to the O’Hare International Airport. In all probability, the Oni should follow him.”