Free The Wizard from Earth by S.J. Ryan Page B

remembered then.  He reached down to the floor of the pod.  He opened the tiny compartment in the middle.  The box of mementoes, all that he had been allowed to bring with him from Earth, was there.  He opened the box.  There should have been a dried flower and blades of grass from Seattle in the bag.  There were colorless, withered fragments.  The pages of the old-fashioned book of poems were faded into unreadability and crumbled with the slightest touch.
    Daring not to destroy more, Matt put everything back and returned the box to the compartment.
    Bee . . . Three . . . See . . . Seven . . . no, he would find out what was going on first.  That was the most important thing he had to do.  It was the only thing he had to do.  
    He searched for a hatch handle, twisting and flailing as he whirled and stared with futility at one smooth wall after another. 
    " Somebody has to be around!  Somebody has to be alive!  Somebody will talk to me!  Somebody will tell me what's going on!  I need to get out of here and see what's – "
    The medic had the last words.  "Patient is agitated.  Revoking consciousness."     
     

 
    7.
    Hardly anyone noticed the woman leading the litter through the streets of Rome that afternoon.  She was tall and thin, attractive without, perhaps, being beautiful.  The cut of her dress was middle class, the wife of a merchant or lawyer perhaps.  She wore a plain shawl and no jewelry.
    What did distinguish her from the general crowd was her intense stare.  Her black eyes did not meet gazes.  They sized up targets. 
    Behind her a pair of lackeys carried a small litter bearing a windowless black passenger box.  They followed her every turn through the streets with precision, though she did not look back and they did not communicate.
    At the waterfront she stopped at the foot of a private pier, where a tall man resplendent in a purple fringed robe and flowing cape paced irritably.
    "Damn Inoldia," General Mardu Valarion said.  "I have dinner with a prominent senator this evening."
    "No one in the Senate would care about a little lame boy who stuttered if it were not for me," Inoldia replied. 
    She gave a curt nod to the litter bearers.  The lowered the litter.  Out stepped a small female form draped in a black cloak with a black, opaque veil.
    "Follow me," Inoldia said to the hidden figure.  She led down the pier to the waiting galley.
    "That's not the point," Valarion said, rushing to catch up.  "Our interests are both served if I maintain promptness in my appointments with the prominent members of Roman – "
    "I asked for your boat," Inoldia replied.  "Not for your company."
    She boarded the yacht.  The veiled figure followed.  Valarion huffed aboard and signaled to the captain to loose the moorings. 
    "Oh, I'm not going to miss this.  A chance to see Cordant Island up close!"
    "We're not going to Cordant Island.  We're going to the Island of the Sisters."
    "Well, yes, that's what used to be known as Cordant Island before you moved in."
    Inoldia realized that she had been caught in ignorance.  But she covered with,  "Now it's the Island of the Sisters of Wisdom."
    They cast off.  The rowers gained rhythm and the galley skimmed across the bay.  The captains of other boats saw the blue pennant with the white star and steered clear.  It was a beautiful morning and the water was smooth, and they made good time passing between channel markers into open waters.   
    Inoldia stood at the prow, watching the four pinnacles in the east.  Valarion cautiously approached and nodded to the veiled figure.  "May I inquire as to the identify of our guest?"
    "That's not for you to know."
    "One of your spies, right?"
    Inoldia's face snapped a gaze on him so quickly that he stepped back.
    "Who told you?"
    "Damn, Inoldia, you think all men are idiots."
    Inoldia didn't bother to answer that, because of course it was true.  But her glare deepened and she repeated,  "Who told you that