Simon Hawke - Sorcerer 1 - The Reluctant Sorcerer

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CHAPTER
ONE
"It's alive! It's alive!"
"Darling... come to bed."
"Just a minute," replied Marvin Brewster, staring raptly
at the television set where Colin Clive, in the role of Dr.
Victor Frankenstein, was gripped in a paroxysm of unholy
glee as his creation twitched to life on the laboratory table.
"Darling..." Her voice was low and throaty with a
British accent. "I'm waiting..."
"Ummm." Brewster didn't turn around. If he had, he
would have seen a sight that would have reduced most men
to drooling idiots. His fiancee. Dr. Pamela Fairbum, was
standing in the bedroom doorway, dressed in nothing but a
slinky negligee that was so sheer, it looked like a soft mist
enveloping her lush, voluptuous curves. She stood in a pose
of calculated seduction, one long and lovely leg bent at the
knee, one arm stretched out above her, pressed against the
door frame, her long auburn hair worn loose and cascading
down to her ample, perfumed cleavage....
Whoa, wait a minute. Let me catch my breath.
Sorry about that. Narrators are only human too, you
1
2 • Simon Hawke
know. Okay, now where were we? Oh, right. This gor-
geous, incredibly desirable woman is exuding premarital
lust all over the place and that fool, Brewster, is simply
sitting there and watching a monster movie on TV. Any
other red-blooded male would know exactly what to do,
right? You betcha. Hit that remote control and make a
beeline for the bedroom. Any normal, sensible man hearing
that incredibly sultry and seductive voice would turn around,
take one look, and experience the hormonal equivalent of a
nuclear meltdown. (And considering how beautiful Dr. Pamela
Fairbum was, a lot of women would, as well.) However,
Dr. Marvin Brewster was not exactly normal. Or sensible.
That is to say, he was incredibly intelligent—a genius, in
fact—but he didn't have a lot of street smarts.
Nor was this just any movie. To Marvin Brewster, it was
the movie, the one that had the single most significant
impact on his formative years. The one that had made him
realize exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up. He
first saw it at the age of nine and from that moment on, he
knew. He was going to be a mad scientist.
It wasn't Boris KarlofiFs portrayal of the monster that had
so affected him, nor the idea of creating life from sewn-
together pieces of dead bodies, it was that laboratory. All
that marvelous equipment. The bubbling vials and beakers,
the intricate plumbing and wiring, the spinning dials, the
Jacob's ladder arcing electrical current.... He took one
look at that wonderful laboratory and he fell in love, a love
far deeper and more abiding than he would ever feel for any
woman, even a woman as undeniably womanly as Pamela
Fairbum.
She knew and understood this. Earlier that evening, when
she had spotted the listing for the film, she'd realized what
was liable to happen and she had hidden the TV Guide, but
Brewster had just happened to turn on the tube after their
The Reluctant Sorcerer • 3
late-night dinner, and scanning through the channels, he'd
stumbled on the film. Now Pamela knew there'd be no
prying him away till it was over.
'She sighed with resignation and walked over to the couch
where he was sitting, settled down onto the floor beside
him, and leaned her head against his knee. Without turning
from the television, he offered her the bowl of popcorn. She
took a handful and popped it in her mouth. Even in her
sexiest lingerie, she knew she couldn't compete. She didn't
really mind, however. She understood about obsession. She
had one of her own, and that was her career as a cybernetics
engineer, which was how she had met Brewster.
It had been during a symposium at Cambridge. She'd
spotted him at once. He was the only American present, but
that wasn't what had made him stand out. There was just
something about him, about his rumpled, tweedy, and horn-
rimmed appearance, his curly and unkempt blond hair, his
rather shambling and distracted manner, and his total unself-
consciousness that had struck her as incredibly endearing.
He was part little boy, part unmade t-?d. He had gotten to
her where she lived, where most women live, in fact. Right
smack in her maternal instinct. She wanted to pull him to
her breast and hug him to pieces.
She was later to discover that Brewster often had that
effect on women and part of his charm was that he was
totally oblivious to it. He was simply clueless. He was the
kind of man women wanted to mother into bed, only he was
so preoccupied and absentminded that if they succeeded, he
would probably forget why he was there. Pamela Fairbum
could have had any man she wanted. She could walk into a
crowded room and every man present would immediately go
on point. All she'd need to do to insure most men's undying
and slavish devotion would be to flutter her eyelashes and
act stupid. But with Marvin Brewster, she could be herself.
4 • Simon Hawke
Her intelligence did not intimidate him. More often than
not, it was the other way around. She could talk about her
work with him, and he could easily follow the discussion
and make acute and often brilliant observations, but then his
eyes would suddenly go dreamy and he'd launch into a
flight of technical verbosity that would leave her absolutely
breathless as his words tumbled over one another until he
became hopelessly tongue-tied and had to resort to scrib-
bling complicated equations on whatever surface was avail-
able. Even on the rare occasions when she was able to make
out his cramped scrawl, most of the time she could make no
sense of it.
Often, it was because his mind simply worked so quickly
that it would outrace his written calculations and he'd leave
things out, jumping on ahead, with no awareness that she
couldn't follow him. His brain would simply shift into warp
speed and he would rocket off into that rarified atmosphere
where only geniuses and angels fly and he'd finish off with a
triumphant, "There, you see?" And, of course, she wouldn't
see at all, but she would simply stare at him, eyes shining,
and she would say, "I love you."
They became engaged one year after their first meeting.
She had proposed to him, primarily because she'd realized
the thought would never have occurred to him. He needed
her, but he was simply too preoccupied to notice. The
ordinary details of everyday life were not Marvin Brewster's
strong point. He was the classic absentminded professor.
His socks hardly ever matched. He wore loafers because he
would often forget to tie his shoelaces. He was simply
hopeless about clothes. Until she came along, he was
dressed by an understanding local haberdashery. He would
come in and simply say, "I need some ties," or a sport coat
or a shirt or two, and the helpful female sales clerk would
pick out something appropriate for him.
The Reluctant Sorcerer • 5
It was the same with groceries. There was a young
woman who managed the local market who would call from
time to time and say, "Dr. Brewster? This is Sheila. You
haven't been in for a while and I thought you might be
running out." And he would walk over to the refrigerator or
the cupboard, stare into it absently for a moment or two,
then say distractedly, "Yes, I suppose I must be." Sheila
would then take the shopping cart around during her lunch
break, pick out his groceries for him, and have them
delivered. He never had to pay for them, either. The branch
manager at the local bank, also an attractive young woman,
had seen to it that he had accounts everywhere and that the
bills were sent directly to the bank.
The multinational conglomerate that employed Brewster
for an astronomical salary (that was still a pittance com-
pared to the profits they took in from the dozen or so patents
he'd turned over to them) always deposited his checks
directly into his accounts, so that Brewster never had to deal
with the various mundane tasks of shopping and record
keeping and checkbook balancing that plague most lesser
mortals.
How does one get a deal like this? The answer is, one
doesn't. It's not the sort of thing you can manage to
arrange, unless you happen to be born with a certain
indefinable and helpless charm that women find simply
irresistible. Ask any woman in London who knows him how
she feels about Dr. Marvin Brewster, and whether she's
sixteen or sixty, she'll sigh and her eyes will get all soft and
misty and she'll say, "He's such a dear man...."
When Pamela discovered just how many women felt this
way about her intended, she became a bit alarmed. She
seized the reins and took firm control of Marvin Brewster's
life. If there was any mothering to be done here, by God,
she was going to be the one to do it! She moved in on
6 • Simon Hawke
Marvin Brewster like Grant moved in on Richmond. Now
all she had to do was figure out how to get him to the altar.
He had already missed three scheduled weddings.
The first time she'd been left waiting at the altar, the
wedding had completely slipped his mind and a frantic
search that included a check of half the pubs and all the
hospitals in London eventually found him deep in the stacks
of the science library—about eight hours too late. The
second time, once again, all the guests arrived, and Pamela
once more donned her wedding gown, and once again, no
Brewster. This time, he had driven off to Liverpool, to an
electronics warehouse, to pick up some obscure part for a
piece of lab equipment that was "absolutely vital" and
somehow he got sidetracked and no one saw or heard
anything from him for two days. The last time—"Shall we
try for three?" the minister had wryly asked—they located
him in his high-security, private laboratory high atop the
corporate headquarters building of EnGulfCo International,
only no one could get in past the retinal pattern scanner and
they couldn't even take the elevator up to the right floor
because the special palm scanner pad would only respond to
Marvin Brewster's hand. They had called and called, but
Brewster had been distracted by the ringing of the phone,
and absentmindedly, he had simply turned it off. The last
time, when the wedding invitations were sent out, most of
the guests sent back their regrets and their assurances that
they would be with them in spirit—whenever they finally
got around to getting married. Pamela's father still wasn't
speaking to her. Still, she was undaunted. One of these
days, she'd get it done, only it would require proper
planning. Perhaps next time she'd hire some security guards
to baby-sit him and deliver him to church on time.
She sat there with him, munching popcorn while Boris
Karloff lumbered through the film in his built-up boots and
The Reluctant Sorcerer • 7
makeup, and during the commercials, Brewster would be-
come absorbed in double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking
some kind of circuit board and switch assembly he had put
together on the coffee table.
Perhaps, thought Pamela, if she got pregnant, she could
command more of his attention. Marvin was always won-
derful with children. Probably because, in many ways, he
was still something of a child himself, she thought with a
smile. The children in the neighborhood all idolized him,
and like most of Brewster's friends, they called him Doc.
Pamela drew the line at that. She never called him Doc, it
seemed too flippant. But whenever she introduced him as Dr.
Marvin Brewster, he would invariably add, "But my friends
all call me Doc." When they were finally married, she
would put a stop to that. A man of his position needed to be
treated with proper respect.
What did Brewster think of all this planning for his
future? Actually, he gave it very little thought at all. He was
more concerned with the past. Not his own past, but the past
in general. As in time. Specifically, as in time travel.
He did not really discuss this particular obsession with his
fiancee, nor with his colleagues, because as any good mad
scientist knows, when you get into the sort of stuff that
"man was not meant to know," you're simply asking for
trouble. It was one thing for theoretical physicists to debate
whether or not Einstein was right, and to play all sorts of
fanciful games (often in science fiction novels) with hyperspace
and warps in the space/time continuum, but when you
actually came out and said that you could do it, and
revealed a working prototype, that was when they broke out
the torches and the pitchforks.
No, Marvin Brewster would not make Dr. Victor
Frankenstein's mistake. First he'd do it and make absolutely
sure it worked, and then he would publish and take out the
8 • Simon Hawke
patent, which EnGulfCo would at once appropriate, since
he'd done it on their premises and with their funding, but
that was fine, Brewster didn't really mind that. The money
he would make would not be insignificant and money
wasn't really what the whole thing was about. Proving
Einstein wrong. That was what the whole thing was about.
If it had seemed to Pamela that Brewster was much more
than typically preoccupied during the past month or two,
and letting little things (such as the occasional wedding) slip
his mind, then it was because Brewster was wrestling with a
problem that had him on the threshold, as it were, of the
greatest achievement of his life.
High atop the corporate headquarters building of EnGulfCo
International, in his top secret laboratory where no one else,
not even the EnGulfCo CEO, could gain admittance, Marvin
Brewster had built himself a time machine.
H. G. Wells would have been proud. It even looked right.
About the size of a small helicopter, the front of the
machine was dominated by a plastic bubble that had, in
fact, been lifted from a chopper. It had a door in its left
side, edged by a pressure seal, and the frame of the machine
was also taken from a helicopter, so that it sat on skids.
Brewster had replaced the gearbox with high-power alterna-
tors and a turboshaft engine, mounted vertically. The intake
for the turbine extended out the top of the machine and just
behind it was a can for a ballistic parachute. The back of the
machine also housed the tanks for fuel and liquid oxygen
and environmental gas. Flanking the power systems were
the primary capacitor banks, housed in two cabinets on the
sides of the machine.
Externally, the time machine did not appear much differ-
ent from a helicopter with the rotor blades and tail removed,
except for one particular, distinguishing feature. Encircling
the entire assembly and the frame, positioned diagonally so
The Keluctant Sorcerer • 9
that it ran around the top of the bubble and behind the back
skids, was a stainless-steel tube three inches in diameter, a
torus encircled by loops of superconducting wire, the interi-
or of which was filled with a small amount of a rare
substance known by the innocuous name of Buckyballs.
Not just anyone could play with Buckyballs. The exist-
ence of this substance had first been postulated by Buckminster
Fuller (hence, the name) and it was, in fact, an incredibly
dense black powder composed of a single atom of iron
surrounded by diamond, the ash from a supernova. Its
density rendered it extremely heavy. A mere handful weighed
about two hundred pounds. It was magnetic and completely
frictionless. Needless to say, this wasn't the sort of stuff one
could pick up at the local Radio Shack. In fact, one couldn't
really pick it up at all without a forklift. It sort of had to fall
into one's hands—like, from outer space—which this partic-
ular batch had done, contained inside a meteor, a small
piece of an asteroid that had been floating around in the Big
Empty for a length of time that had more zeroes in it than
even Carl Sagan could imagine.
Brewster got his hands on this stuff with some difficulty.
The meteor in question had fallen on a small Pacific Island
that now had one very large hole. It had wiped out a small
village, and a number of small villagers who were descended
from a group of canoe-worshipers that had settled on this
island some three thousand years ago and lived there in
abject poverty and squalor ever since. One of their legends
had it that someday their wealth would fall from the skies. It
did. Now the survivors of this windfall were all living in
luxury apartments and driving Mercedes-Benz convertibles.
This had, needless to say, cost EnGulfCo quite a bundle, but
they figured that if Brewster needed this stuff, chances were
that he was onto something that was liable to be very
10 • Simon Hawke
profitable in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime,
they had obtained exclusive offshore drilling rights.
What made this substance special was that if it was
started spinning on the inside of the tube, with magnetic
coils preventing it from contacting the sides, somewhat like
in a cyclotron, theory had it that if the Buckyballs went fast
enough, at the speed approaching that of light, it would
create a warp in space/time. And whatever was inside the
field would drop through.
To where? Good question. This was what Brewster in-
tended to find out. You see, he had done this before. A
couple of times, in fact. The first time traveler in history
was a lop-eared rabbit Brewster had purchased in a pet shop
and named Bugs. (What else?) The experiment that Brewster
had set up went something like this:
(Actually, it went exactly like this, but it's complicated,
so pay close attention.) He placed Bugs inside a cage and
then he placed the cage inside the time machine, which he
then programmed to travel back in time ten minutes for ten
seconds. Before he did this, he used a forklift (which he'd
needed for the Buckyballs, remember?) to move the time
machine about fifteen feet to one side, so that when it
appeared ten minutes in the past, it would not appear on the
exact same spot where it had been sitting earlier. (Confus-
ing? Wait. It gets worse.)
Theoretically (that is, assuming it all worked), Brewster
should have wound up with two time machines sitting side
by side, about fifteen feet apart. Now, this might seem like
something of a paradox, since if he sent the machine back
ten minutes into the past, then it should have made the
journey and appeared ten minutes before it had ever left.
Which meant that there would be two time machines and
two lop-eared rabbits named Bugs sitting on the floor of
The Reluctant Sorcerer • 11
Brewster's laboratory ten minutes before he'd ever sent the
first one back.
But... wait a minute. That doesn't make sense. (At least,
not logically, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do
with temporal physics, but let's not get into that right now,
because you're probably confused enough.) Before Brewster
sent the machine back into the past, there had to be a past in
which he hadn't sent it back at all. The moment that he sent
it back, he would, in effect, have altered history. At least his
history, which meant that the moment he programmed the
machine and tripped the switch to send it back ten minutes
for ten seconds, at the very instant that it disappeared, he
should have suddenly acquired a memory of standing in the
lab and seeing two time machines, standing side by side. At
least, that's how he thought it would work. He was not
exactly sure. But then, in scientific experiments, one never
is, is one?
The problem was, that wasn't how it worked in practice.
What happened was that Brewster had programmed the
machine, entered the auto-return sequence, and tripped the
timer switch to send it back. And it had disappeared. Only
Brewster did not suddenly acquire a memory of having seen
two time machines sitting side by side, ten minutes earlier.
The machine had simply disappeared, complete with Bugs,
and reappeared on the exact same spot ten seconds later.
Where had it been? Brewster had no way of knowing. He
had repeated the experiment with more or less the same
results.
This posed certain problems. Did this mean that there was
a sort of linear factor to time, where there was now a past in
which Brewster had, in fact, seen a pair of time machines
sitting side by side, complete with two rabbit passengers,
but he could not remember it because he only had that
experience further back along the timestream? And since he
12 • Simon Hawke
had repeated the experiment, did this suggest that there were
now two past segments of the timestream, one in which he
had seen two time machines and two rabbits, and another,
slightly further back, in which he had seen three time
machines and three rabbits? The whole thing gave Brewster
quite a headache. (And if you feel like putting down the
book right now and taking a couple of aspirin, your narrator
doesn't mind at all. Go ahead. I'll wait.)
The only solution to this dilemma that Brewster could
devise was to actually get inside the time machine himself,
so that he could find out where it went after he tripped the
switch. (A video camera might have been an excellent
solution to this problem, but he had tried that and discovered
that the temporal field caused interference.) He had actually
planned to make the trip himself all along, though he would
have liked having some solid data before he made the
attempt. However, Bugs seemed none the worse for wear
after his two journeys, so Brewster felt the risk was justi-
fied. After all, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
He had set everything up again, carefully following the
same procedure, and he had programmed in the sequence,
complete with auto-return commands. He had then set the
timer, and turned around to pick up his notepad and his pen
before getting into the machine... only when he turned
around again, the thing had disappeared. The trouble was,
this time, it did not come back. This was why Brewster had
been so distracted during the past two months, while Pamela
had been trying to get him to the church. She wanted him to
say "I do," only he kept repeating, "I don't get it."
The first time he had missed the wedding, he'd been
sequestered in the library, combing through the work of
Albert Einstein to see if maybe there was something he'd
missed. There wasn't. The second time he blew it, when
he'd made the trip to Liverpool, he had gone to pick up the
The Reluctant Sorcerer • 13
special microchip component that would allow him to as-
semble several more circuit boards for the auto-return mod-
ules, so he could run tests to see where the thing might have
malfunctioned. The third time, the occasion of Pamela's
breakdown in communications with her father, he'd been
locked up in the lab, putting the circuit boards together and
assembling the modules. And so far as he could tell, there
were no problems in the wiring or the assembly.
He found the whole experience extremely frustrating and
he had taken to carrying at least one of the modules around
with him, taking it apart and putting it back together again
repeatedly, running tests and scratching his head and gener-
ally being off in the ozone somewhere, which Pamela found
rather trying. However, she was a patient woman and she
knew that as soon as Brewster managed to clear up whatev-
er problem was presently occupying his attention, there
would be a space of time, however short, in which he would
be receptive to new ideas. Such as getting married, for
instance. So Pamela didn't press. But the moment he worked
out whatever it was that he was working on, she was going
to pounce.
The commercial ended and Brewster set the little black
box that he had reassembled back down on the coffee table.
Almost absently, he tripped a little switch on it. And an
instant after he did it, it quietly clicked back to its original
position.
"Damn!" Brewster suddenly exclaimed, leaping to his
feet and sending popcorn tumbling all over the rug and
Pamela's hair. "Thafs it!"
"Marvin!" Pamela protested, brushing greasy kernels of
unpopped corn out of her hair, but Brewster was already
rushing across the room and flinging open the front door of
their apartment. "Marvin, where are you going? Marvin!
Your shoes!"
14 • Simon Hawkc
The door slammed shut behind him. She sighed heavily.
A moment later he came barging back in his stocking feet,
swept up his brown tasseled loafers, pecked her on the
cheek, and said, "I've just got to check this out, dear, but it
may take a while. Love you. Don't wait up."
' 'Marvin..."
But he'd stormed out again, carrying the little black box
under his arm, only this time forgetting to close the door
behind him.
"Oh, Marvin..." she said. With an air of resignation,
she got up and closed the door. She was more or less
accustomed to this sort of thing, but this time, whatever it
was that had been frustrating him so, he must have gotten it
licked, because he had run out in the middle of the movie,
and he'd never done that before.
"Don't wait up," he'd said. Like hell she wouldn't wait
up. If it took all night, she'd wait for him to return,
doubtless brimming over with enthusiasm over whatever
gadget it was that he'd finally managed to get working,
wanting to tell her all about it. She would sit there and she'd
listen and she'd share his pleasure and then, when he
stopped to catch his breath (by then it would be dawn, most
likely), she would put a tie and freshly laundered shirt on
him, take him by the hand, and lead him down the nearest
aisle she could find.
She picked up a handful of spilled popcorn from the
carpet and popped it in her mouth, then glanced at the clock
atop the mantelpiece. Almost two A.M. It was late.
Too late, in fact.
Brewster rode the elevator up to his private laboratory
atop the corporate headquarters building of EnGulfCo Inter-
national, all the while thinking. God, it was so simple!
A faulty counter in the timing switch, that was all it was.
The Reluctant Sorcerer • 15
He was certain of it. He had tried everything else that he
could think of in an attempt to reproduce the malfunction
that had sent the first time machine off on the journey from
which it had never returned and now he was certain that he
had it. Everything else had checked out perfectly, with each
and every one of the duplicate circuit boards for the auto-
return module he had assembled, but this one had a faulty
timing switch. The moment he tripped it, instead of the
counter sequentially going backward from "30" to "O,"
the settings he'd selected, it went from "30" directly to
"O," without going through all the numbers in between, so
no sooner had he tripped the switch than it clicked back
again to its original position. That must have been what
happened with the original machine. Some of the switches
had been faulty and the auto-return had simply turned itself
off an instant after he'd activated it. Damned English elec-
tronics, he thought, should have gone with Japanese compo-
nents. No wonder the damn thing hadn't come back. It had
departed on a one-way trip!
He passed the scanner and entered his laboratory, where
the second time machine, the one he'd painstakingly re-
created during the past two months, sat waiting in the center
of the room. He stood there for a moment, staring at it and
chewing on his lower lip. He had to be right this time. He'd
used up the very last of the Buckyballs in putting the second
one together. If it didn't work right this time, that would be
the end of it, at least until another obliging meteor containing
fragments of a supernova from some other galaxy happened
to smack into some unsuspecting piece of earthly real estate.
And that could take a while.
"It has to work this time," he mumbled to himself, "it
has to!"
摘要：

CHAPTERONE"It'salive!It'salive!""Darling...cometobed.""Justaminute,"repliedMarvinBrewster,staringraptlyatthetelevisionsetwhereColinClive,intheroleofDr.VictorFrankenstein,wasgrippedinaparoxysmofunholygleeashiscreationtwitchedtolifeonthelaboratorytable."Darling..."HervoicewaslowandthroatywithaBritisha...

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