The Inadequate Adept - Simon Hawke, ebook
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THE INADEQUATE ADEPTTHE INADEQUATE ADEPTCopyright © 1993 by Simon Hawkee-book ver. 1.0For Leanne Christine Harper,with special thanks to Pat McGiveney, Darla Dunn, Doug and Tomi Lewis of TheLittle Bookshop of Horrors in Arvada, Co., Joe DeRose and the staff of Muddy'sCafe in Denver, Co., H. Trask Emery, David Marringly, Brian Thomsen, MauroDiPreta, Fred Cleaver, Chris Zinck, the Mad Scientists Club of Denver and allthe understanding friends who supported me during this madness. You all know whoyou are, and some of you have asked not to be identified. It's okay, Iunderstand.CHAPTER ONEOnce upon a time...No. Let's try that again.Long, long ago, in a universe far, far away...Nah, that doesn't work, either.Oh, hell, you think it's easy being the narrator? You try it. Only don't sendyour manuscripts to me, whatever you do. I've got enough problems of my own.Such as trying to figure out how to begin this book, for instance.Let's see now, according to conventional wisdom, you're supposed to begin astory with a narrative hook. What's a narrative hook, you ask? It's a slam-bangopening sentence that's so compelling, it "hooks" your interest right away andmakes it damn near impossible not to read on further. Well... I guess I'vealready blown that.On the other hand, another tried-and-true technique is to get into the actionright away, just plunge the reader headfirst into the story with the speed of anexpress train and never let up for an instant. Hmmm... too late for that, Isuppose.Well, there's always the classic approach used by all those literary authors.You know, Dickens and that whole crowd. First, you set the scene with lots ofcolorful, evocative, descriptive writing, then you gradually introduce the maincharacters as you develop the plot, but then that's a rather dated approach andmodern readers aren't really all that patient with-"Get on with it," said Warrick.What?"I said, get on with it," Warrick Morgannan repeated, looking up toward theceiling as he sat behind his massive desk, bent over his ancient vellum tomesand scrolls."Get on with what, Master?" asked his troll familiar, Teddy."I wasn't speaking to you," said Warrick.The hairy, little troll glanced around the sorcerer's sanctorum apprehensively,noting that the two of them seemed to be alone."But, Master..." he whined, plaintively, "there is no one else here!""Of course, there is no one else here," snapped Warrick irritably. "I wasspeaking to the voice in the ether.""The voice in the ether, Master?" said Teddy, picking his nose nervously."Yes, you know, the one that calls itself the narrator," Warrick replied.Teddy swallowed hard and seemed to shrink into himself, which isn't easy to dowhen you're only two feet tall. He'd heard his master speak of this narratorbefore, this mysterious voice in the ether that only he could hear, and italways made him feel frightened. Now, the fact is, there's not much thatfrightens trolls, because although they may be rather small, they are extremelystrong and aggressive. However, Teddy had no idea what to make of thisinvisible, omniscient presence that his master kept referring to. It made himvery nervous."What is it saying, Master?" Teddy asked."It's talking about your nerves now," said Warrick with a wry grimace."My nerves?" said Teddy, becoming increasingly more nervous."Yes, and wasting a great deal of time, I might add," said Warrick, frowning."If there is one thing I cannot stand, 'tis a storyteller who hems and haws andcannot seem to get the tale started properly."Of course, not being a storyteller himself, Warrick was not really in a positionto appreciate the difficulties involved with beginning the second novel in aseries, while at the same time trying to take into account the reader who maynot have read the first one."Well, why don't you simply do one of those 'in the last episode' things?" askedWarrick impatiently. "Now do get on with it, will you? I have work to do."Ahem... In our last episode, we met Dr. Marvin Brewster, a brilliant, ifpathologically vague, American scientist in London, in the employ of EnGulfCoInternational, one of those huge, multinational conglomerates that ownscompanies all over the world and has lots of large buildings with bad art intheir lobbies. Brewster had what many men might call an enviable life. He wasmaking a great deal of money doing what he loved, working out of his own privateresearch laboratory with virtually unlimited funding, and he had become engagedto a highly intelligent and socially prominent British cybernetics engineernamed Dr. Pamela Fairburn, who also happened to be drop-dead gorgeous.Pamela patiently kept trying to get her absent-minded fiance to the altar, onlyBrewster kept failing to show up for his weddings. It wasn't that Brewster wasgun-shy about marriage, it was simply that he couldn't seem to keep his mind onlittle things like weddings when he was on the verge of perfecting the greatestscientific discovery the world had ever seen. Assuming, of course, the worldwould ever get a chance to see it. And therein lies our tale.For those of you who were thoughtless enough to miss our first installment (TheReluctant Sorcerer, Warner Books), never fear, your faithful narrator will bringyou up to date. The rest of you, hang in there while we wait for the latearrivals to catch up. Or simply skip ahead to the next chapter. It's okay, Idon't mind.What Brewster had constructed in his top-secret laboratory, high atop thecorporate headquarters building of EnGulfCo International, was the world's firstworking model of a time machine. We'll skip the details of how he did it,because that was covered in our first episode (The Reluctant Sorcerer, WarnerBooks), aside from which, explaining time travel always gives your narrator afrightful headache. Suffice it to say that the thing worked, which should haveassured Brewster's fame and fortune and made him as much of a household name as,say, Gene Roddenberry, or maybe even Isaac Asimov, except for one, minor, littleproblem....Brewster lost it. That's right, the time machine. He lost it. How do you losesomething the size of a small helicopter? (Yes, that's how big it was, and ifyou'd read our first episode-The Reluctant Sorcerer, Warner Books-you'd haveknown that already.) Well, it had to do with a faulty counter in a timing switchthat was part of the auto-return module. It's really rather complicated, but ifyou've ever owned a British sports car, then you'll understand how little thingslike that can really screw up the whole works.As a result of this malfunction, Brewster accidentally sent his time machine offon a one-way trip. To get it back, he had to build a second time machine, goback in time with it and find the first one... well, you get the idea. It seemedsimple and straightforward enough. So Brewster built a second time machine andthat was when his trouble really started.Due to some kind of freak temporal version of an atmospheric skip (either that,or the bizarre machinations of the plot), Brewster wound up in a paralleluniverse that suspiciously resembled the setting of a fantasy novel. And sincehe'd crash-landed his second time machine, Brewster was stuck there, with onlyone chance to make it back. Unless he could find the first time machine he'dbuilt, there was no way for him to get back home again. Unfortunately, the firsttime machine was nowhere to be found.(The reason it was nowhere to be found: three brigands had found it in theRedwood Forest and sold it to a nearby sorcerer, who managed to stumble onto aspell that tapped into its energy field.) However, the time machine was notdesigned to be operated by magical remote control, and as a result, it hadn'tfunctioned quite the way it was supposed to.There was a temporal phase loop, or maybe a short circuit, and the sorcererdisappeared, while the time machine remained exactly where it was. When thesorcerer did not return, his frightened apprentice took this mysterious andterrible device to Warrick Morgannan, the most powerful wizard in all thetwenty-seven kingdoms, and the bane of your faithful narrator's existence."What?" said Warrick, glancing up from his vellum tomes and scrolls.Nothing. Go back to work.Warrick scowled and went back to his paperwork again while Teddy the Trollcontinued to sweep the floor, nervously glancing up toward the ceiling.Now where were we? Right, we were discussing Brewster's strange predicament. Thefirst person Brewster ran into in this primitive and magical new world was MickO'Fallon, whom he first took to be a midget, but who actually happened to be aleprechaun. Mick witnessed Brewster's dramatic arrival in his world andnaturally assumed that Brewster was a mighty sorcerer. He also mistakenlyassumed that "Brewster" was a title, not a name, as in "one who brews." In otherwords, an alchemist. And since Brewster habitually told everyone he met to callhim "Doc," Mick called him "Brewster Doc," and the name, as well as the mistakenassumption it engendered, stuck.An amateur alchemist himself, Mick was seeking the secret of the Philosopher'sStone, which in this particular universe had nothing to do with turning basemetals into gold, but into a much rarer metal known as nickallirium, the chiefmedium of exchange in the twenty-seven kingdoms. The secret of makingnickallirium was controlled by the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild, which meant theyalso controlled the economy in all the twenty-seven kingdoms. They guar...
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