Jim Baen's Universe

Science Fiction Stories

Maker of Worlds

Written by Norman Spinrad

Illustrated by Jennifer Miller

An inviting green and blue planet, fleeced with slowly swirling whirlwinds of cloud, rolls majestically through the starry firmament, palpably a thing alive. Gazing down upon it from the ship’s main observation dome, you can all but feel its heartbeating warmth, like a puppy in your arms.

"A difficult mission this time," the captain tells you uneasily. "Their civilization is advanced enough to join the Federation of Planets, all right, but it's based on, well, magic."

"Magic?"

 The captain looks like a decloaked superhero in his blue spandex jumpsuit but doesn't seem exactly confident. "Magic," he repeats. "Magic works down there. That's the bad news—you've got to convince them that our technology is superior to their magic. The good news is that the whole planet is ruled by whoever is currently their most powerful wizard—"

"—wizard?—"

"—the Magus Majoris, they call him. Or her. Or it. So there's only one entity you have to convince. Of course you'll have to get to he, she, or it first.... Unfortunately, the prime directive forbids taking down any technology more advanced than that of the natives, which in this case means nothing except the communicator implanted in your skull—"

"—nothing—?"

"Well, you can't get there without the anti-gravity belt of course, so we've had to bend the prime directive a bit for that," the captain admits. "And we'll supply the special effects from up here. Just ask for what you want as if you're, uh, saying the magic words, and we'll do the rest from the ship."

****

The starship is big; it bristles with gun turrets, rocket launchers, telescopes, sat dishes, transparent domes, things that look like speakers, things that don't look like anything, all in a crazy-quilt framework of girders, walkways, escalators, flyways, like a Jules Verne space cruiser cobbled together by Rube Goldberg.

You're standing on the end of a spring-steel diving board thrust out into the vacuum, and you're wearing a blue jumpsuit, with a broad metal belt with a big steel buckle sporting a little board of fingertip keys. Breathing is no problem, and space feels like a warm tropical sea. The hull of the ship sends good vibrations up through your feet as it circles the magic planet like a hydrofoil planing through space.

You tap a command on the anti-gravity control keyboard, raise your arms above your head, bounce once, twice, thrice on the board, and dive off into the wine-dark sea of space, soaring like Superman towards the waiting world below. You descend into the atmosphere in a gliding spiral through a pastel pink cloud deck, and then you're cruising high above what seems to be a rain forest canopy, an interlocking mosaic of huge blue lilypads and fantastic towers of multicolored flowers whose sultry aromas waft up to embrace you as you descend.

The leaf you come down on is springy and bounces you a few feet into the balmy tropical air. You float down gently and bounce again, once, twice, thrice, before you settle down. When you do, you see that the canopy is dotted with clusters of buildings made of flowers from horizon to horizon.

You bounce towards the nearest one like a kid skipping in delightful slow motion across a series of trampolines, each bound floating you across several meters, and you can twist, and turn, and change vector in midair like an Olympic-class gymnast.

The buildings are built of flowers, entirely of flowers, no stems, no vines, just flowers of a thousand shapes and hues floating magically in the air. They float absolutely still in formations, creating houses large and small, something that might be a town hall or a temple. Nothing connects them to each other or the canopy, no frameworks. Aerial floral bowers envelope and intoxicate you with perfumes, with flavors that taste like candied incense, as you bound into the enchanted village.

The inhabitants seem enchanted too. Many of them look like fairies, with iridescent dragonfly wings, thinly graceful bodies, blue, green, rose, golden; entirely naked but displaying neither nipples nor navels nor anything but smooth blank pubes. Others seem like flocks of angels, in flowing white or pastel robes, with many-colored feathered wings. There are human bats with neon wings, dolphin people swimming through the air, human Frisbees, manta rays with electric tails. Their sweet voices are a profusion of songs which yet merges into a perfectly harmonic symphony with narry a discordant note.

They cluster around as you enter the village, trilling and laughing, pointing and tittering to each other. Then a beautiful green fairy, who appears by her features and long flowing green hair to be female, comes to a still helicopter hover and speaks in a diva's silvery singing voice.

"Who are you?"

"I am sent by the people of the stars to welcome your planet to our great federation of worlds."

"What's a federation?" asks a blue bat-man

"A government of many planets that brings their peoples together in peace and harmony and prosperity."

"What's a government?"

"A system of laws administered by rulers elected by the people which—"

"You're going to challenge the Magus Majoris!" cries a blue male fairy as if he's been told there's going to be a bout with the Heavyweight Champion, and there's clapping, and cheers.

"I come in peace, I've only come to talk."

Raucous trilling laughter.

"What spell binds you to such a silly form?" asks the green fairy.

Giggles wash over you, but they seem entirely benign.

"No spell binds me, no spell can," you tell her. "I command... powers greater than any magic."

"Oooh, a boast!" an angel croons delightedly. "Everyone loves a good boast!"

"Almost as much as a good riddle," croaks a dolphin man, leaping and diving in excitement.

"You say your magic is more powerful than the magic of the Magus Majoris, but you don't seek to challenge her? How can this be?"

"A good riddle!" says the dolphin man.

"It's simple. I'm forbidden to do anyone here harm except in self-defense, and I'm forbidden to overthrow or change any government... any rule... by superior force."

"The star man wouldn't harm the Magus Majoris!" taunts a manta woman, snapping her tail like a bullwhip. "Look at the poor thing! He wouldn't get halfway through the Forest of Fright."

Uproarious laughter.

"Will any of you be so kind as to tell me where to find the Magus Majoris?"

The dolphin man gives over his cavorting and floats in the airy sea before you, holding position with easy little strokes of his flutes. "I will," he says. "If you can answer your own riddle—"

"I've already—"

"No, no, the first one—how can there be magic greater than any magic?"

"We call that power science and technology. Mastery of the laws of mass and energy."

"Another riddle!"

"Another silly boast!"

"Tell me something magic cannot do, and I will prove it."

There is a long pregnant silence.

"Kiss yourself on the cheek," the green fairy says, to delighted laughter.

"Pixels bubble, toil, and double!" you chant, waving your hands like a stage magician.

****

A bored-looking projection tech in a loose-fitting blue jumpsuit sits before a complex control puffing on a cigar. It’s a large desklike affair, littered with cups, ashtrays, glasses, bottles, with a video screen that shows the very scene in the village of flowers. The air smells of tobacco smoke, beer fumes, stale coffee.

The captain stands behind him

"At least she didn't tell him to kiss his own butt!" the tech drawls.

"Do it," the captain commands.

The tech opens a second window on his monitor, and drops down a cut-and-paste command box. He selects the image of the ambassador in the first window, copies it, and pastes it into the second. He types a few commands, and it leaps off the screen and into the air, becoming three-dimensional and full-size. The simulacrum dances, prances, bows.

"Ready to rock and roll,” says the tech.

"Project," the captain commands.

****

“Pixels bubble, send me my double!”

A beam of glittering multicolored pixels lances down from the sky and shimmers beside you. It coalesces into a perfect opaque three-dimensional image of yourself. The magic villagers ooh and aah.

Your doppelganger bows to you, embraces you in a bear hug, and kisses you on the cheek.

The magic villagers cheer and applaud.

Your doppelganger steps back with a wink, blows a ring with the smoke from a cigar that appears in its mouth, twirls it around its finger, blows you a second kiss, and disappears.

"The Palace of the Magus Majoris lies in the middle of the Forest of Fright," the dolphin man tells you.

"Follow the setting sun," says the green fairy.

"You can't miss it," says a bat-woman.

"But you can't fly there," the dolphin man tells you with a sardonic laugh.

"I need no wings to fly."

"No one can fly there,” says the green fairy. “The only way to the Palace of the Might is through the Forest of Fright."

"And before you can reach the palace to challenge the Magus Majoris, you've got to get through the wizards of the Forest of Fright who are all trying to get there first," says the dolphin man. "No one's done it in a thousand years, and you won't even make it halfway."

"We'll see about that!" you declare, and you bounce once, twice, thrice on the leafy springboard, bound up into the air, soar up to the level of fleecy clouds, and sail off on the invisible wings of your anti-gravity belt towards the setting sun.

It's sunset as you fly over the forest. In the middle of the forest is a palace constructed entirely of light; spires, facets, brilliantly shining in ever-shifting colors from within, glorious, tantalizing, inviting.

The Palace of Might.

Somber purple shadows envelope the thick wood of gnarly trees below. Lightnings and sudden sheets of flame flicker and dance through the Forest of Fright, mists of black and umber and bruised blue puff into existence and dissipate just as quickly. The air reeks of sulfur and boiling blood. Shouts and cries and piercing screams.

No place anyone would want to go. But the Palace of Might calls you to it like a moth to the flame.

You fly above the palace, and begin your descent. But a hundred yards above it, you’re frozen in the air like a fly in amber. A roaring, cackling laughter assaults you from below, and an invisible hand tosses you away.

You try again, once, twice, thrice. You cannot penetrate the dome of magic over the Magus Majoris' palace, and each time you try, the invisible hand throws you further back, and the third time drops you to the ground at the edge of the wood.

The boles of the trees are thick and twisted with blueish gray bark, the branches writhe like serpents, the thick foliage is a bruised reddish brown, clustered in great lumps like contused brains. There is no underbrush; the ground beneath them is a random network of pathways paved with grayish ash. Flashes of light from within, guttural grunts, shrieks and howls.

"Sat map overlay..." you command, and a window opens in the upper left-hand quadrant of your field of vision.

The Forest of Fright is in white, blank and featureless. The Palace of Might is centered in red gunsight crosshairs. A bright blue dot at the southern end of the forest elongates into a dotted blue line as you enter the forest, the path towards the gold star marking the Palace of the Magus Majoris.

It's somber and dim inside the forest, the frozen sunset casting twisted streams of bloody light through the dark tree-crowns. The air is cold and dank, reeking of rot and brimstone. Sickly yellowish and gray mists surge just off the ashy surface though there is absolutely no wind.

You follow the dotted blue line through the curving and branching pathways between the trees. The dots solidify into a blue line trailing behind you, snaking and tacking as you advance, but following your wandering way along the indicated vector to the palace.

When it shows that you’ve advanced a few hundred yards inside the forest, a creature emerges from the shadows; a neon-blue human skeleton wearing a cloak of utter black nothingness with the head of a greenly scaled lizard.

"You shall not pass, challenger," it hisses through drool-sheened teeth. "I will challenge the Magus Majoris."

"Let me pass and I will do you no harm," you say as you advance a few steps.

The apparition laughs menacingly. "Show me your puny magic, wizard."

"You don't want to force me to do this..."

"Here is mine!" it roars, and it waves its arms and intones some spell in a language that sounds vaguely like gargling in Russian. A blinding flash of light and it is transformed into a tree-high steel thing like a giant medieval knight, every inch of its armor bristling with foot-long blades. At the end of its arms, round buzz-saw blades whirl soundlessly.

"You can't say I didn't try." You shrug. "Laser," you command.

****

A female tech sits in a cocooning chair within a Plexiglas blister on the hull of the starship, gripping a joystick equipped with control buttons and wearing earphones. There's a transparent crystal barrel sprouting from the hull immediately below her and a monitor screen showing the scene within the forest, the razor-festooned monstrosity advancing towards the blinking dot at the end of the blue line.

"Take it out," orders the captain.

She maneuver her joystick, the laser barrel moves, and the target is centered in black crosshairs. She presses a button, and the laser barrel glows bright yellow—

****

You point an imperious finger at the magical apparition dancing towards you, buzz-saw hands reaching out to slash and drag you to its blade-encrusted breast.

A beam of hard yellow light spears down from the sky and vaporizes it.

****

As you advance deeper into the Forest of Fright, the cries and explosions of wizardly combat echo all around you, growing ever denser and closer as you proceed, but the heads-up display in the upper left-hand quadrant of your field of vision marks the points of conflict with flashing red stars, and you are able to avoid them.

But the red stars grow more and more numerous as you approach the Palace of Might, clogging the way before you, and then you emerge onto a vast plain surrounding the palace, where the trees of the forest have been blasted to flinders, and the ground is pitted with jagged and sickly glowing craters and littered with bleached human skeletons and rotting corpses.

The Palace of Might is now revealed in its fully glory, a small mountain rage of peaks and spires and domes, a city constructed entirely of ever-changing light, an enormous jeweled diadem.

But between you and the palace of the Magus Majoris is a fearsome battleground where hundreds of wizards are locked in magical mortal combat. Some retain human form. Others are blurs of lightning and motion hovering on the brink of visibility. Many have transformed themselves into monstrous creatures, all fangs, and claws, and wicked spines. Things with writhing steel tentacles, things that are all profusions of mouths, things that leap and bound and sting like great insects. Tongues of flame, bolts of lightning, sudden explosions. The reek of burning and decaying flesh, of ionized molecules and hot ash. The din is tremendous as flame and lightning sear invisible shields, as monsters tear each other to pieces, as spells triumph, and spells are broken, and the dead and the dying are abruptly returned to human form.

"Drones!" you command. "Let there be drones!"

****

A male tech sits in a Plexiglas blister on the hull of the starship behind a telescoping robot gantry arm he controls with Waldo gloves.

“Send down a drone pod! orders the captain. "Prime directive be damned!”

The tech makes passes with his hands and big bay doors open on the hull of the ship below him. More hand passes and some hand clenching, and the robot arm levers out a rack of drone pods: silvery missiles looking like oversized torpedoes.

The tech mimes a pistol with his right hand, points it at the planet below, and pulls the trigger.

****

A meteor trail arches down from the sky. A silvery elongated ovoid comes to a hover over the battleground before you. Bomb bay doors open in its belly. Scores of drones, metal cylinders the size of hawks with laser turrets fore and aft, emerge from their hive, rotors buzzing angrily like a cloud of killer wasps.

The drones form up in a gutturally humming protective hemisphere around you, and you advance into the battlefield of contending magics. A creature like a huge octopus slithers towards you, its tentacles tipped with clattering claws. Mini-laser beams from the drones slice it to pieces in a moment, leaving a human form motionless on the shattered ground. A whirlwind ball of lancing lightnings attacks, brings down a drone, only to be netted in quick flashing laser beams and quartered like an orange, leaving another wizard lying naked of his spell. A dragon with the wings of a bat belches a gout of flame at you, you sidestep, feeling the heat of its passage, two drones fall as globs of molten metal, lasers slice and pierce and the dragon roars and explodes.

And then they are all around you, you are the center of unwelcome attention, dragons and flying sharks, insectoid horrors, teeth and lightnings, lasers flicking, spells breaking, drones falling, wizards littering the ground—

****

"Shall I send down another pod, Captain?" the launch tech says into his throat-mike. "Or two or three?

A long silence.

"Negative," says the captain. "It's a real mess down there. We're losing too many drones...."

Another pause. "Go to a Pathmaker. Set it to maximum width."

“Copy that, Pathmaker at maximum width.”

Another bay opens in the hull, the tech reaches into it with his Waldo-controlled robot arm and fishes out a black jaggedly stealthed missile much larger than a drone pod. He points his finger at the planet below.

“Bombs away!”

****

"Get out