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“-and of course we expect you to send a liaison from your local wizards,” the alien said, rippling the hair on its three heads politely. Two of the human crewmembers shook their head in an attempt at a polite response, but it wasn’t quite the same.
The human expedition leader smiled, bemused. “I’m sorry,” she said, ”but there seems to be some sort of cultural misunderstanding- on our planet we don’t have wizards.”
The alien tilted their central head in the local equivalent of raised eyebrows. “Gentlebeing, everywhere has wizards.”
“Well, yes, I suppose we have street performers and actors, but no one has believed in wizards and witches for decades. That’s for stories. And children’s parties.” The expedition leader laughed. There had been a wizard at her niece’s birthday party, the last family gathering she’d been able to go to before leaving earth. Reception had been… mixed, and she had spent 20 minutes talking her niece out of hiding in the loquat tree so the ‘creepy wizard’ wouldn’t vanish her too. “It would be highly irregular to send someone from that occupation to a diplomatic meeting.”
“Oh, oh no, you misunderstand! Possibly a translation issue?” The alien tapped their translation device on the side, and it flashed through a rainbow of colors. “I don’t mean magicians”, they said, their voice now resembling nothing so much as the old Queen of England. “Wizards. Envoys of life. Fluent in the Speech, forbidden to lie, able to provide basic shielding and transportation and tweak the laws of the universe- useful to have when attempting diplomacy! Does your species not ask them to this purpose?”
The expedition leader smiled, gesturing her arms placatingly and glancing at her crewmates for support. “We will do our best to fullfill this role, but I’m afraid that we don’t have that sort of social role or those specific iterations of technology. I can ask among our religious leaders and scientists and see who will best fit but-“
“Well I’m afraid that just won’t do,” the alien’s leftmost head said, as their other heads whispered amongst themselves. “We simply can’t proceed with negotiations without the involvement of wizards. My people will consult their Sharing to find an appropriate individual from your species, but until then I am afraid that our talks will have to cease.” The alien shook their head in a gesture picked up from the human crew. “A planet without wizards. Imagine.”
“Surely there is some alternative we can work out!,” the expedition leader said, trying not to betray her desperateness. These were the first aliens that had ever hung around long enough to be talked to, and she wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip through her fingers! “If we acknowledge our cultural differences and work through them-“
Her second-in-command stepped forward, a slight red-haired girl who could do incredible things with computers. “I apologize for my reticence, gentlebeings,” she said, but her words seemed to have- strange echoes to them. “My planet is sevarfrith-,” and the word held overtones of ‘hidden for safety’ and ‘truth kept secret’, “-and I was unsure as to the correct time for me to introduce myself, but I have finally received confirmation from my planetary authority that I should do as I see fit. To that end, I say that I am on errantry, and I greet you.”
The expedition leader stared at her. “Callahan, what are you-“
“Ahhhh!” said the alien, rippling it’s hair gleefully, “I knew you had some wizards among you! Welcome, welcome, I will introduce you to our local authorities!”
“Sevarfrith?” asked another head. “Really? How does that even work? How did you get all the way out here if you weren’t using wizardry?”
Callahan chuckled. “A lot of math, mostly. You’d be surprised at the things people can figure out if left alone long enough.”
The other crewmembers gaped. The expedition leader froze for a moment, then bowed politely at the alien. “One moment, please, I need to have a word with my subordinate,” she said, getting the inflections right only by dint of sheer repetition, then grabbed her second in command by the arm and dragged her a handful of meters away.
“What do you think you are doing?” she hissed, and Callahan shrugged, spreading her hands placatingly.
“It didn’t seem like we were getting anywhere as it was, and this was as good a time to let the cat out of the bag as any. This close to the intergalactic economy it had to happen sometime soon, and I did finally get confirmation to go ahead.”
“They are going to figure this out!” the expedition leader said. “they are going to realize that wizards don’t exist, and they are never going to trust us again. You are going to go back there, and apologize to them, and then we are going to beg for more time and send a data-packet home to wait for a decision from mission control.”
Callahan stared at her. “Oh,” she said. “Right. You think I’m lying?”
“Don’t play coy with me Callahan, I don’t know what you think you’re going to get away with, but-“
“I really am a wizard,” said Callahan, “and I can prove it.”
The expedition leader scowled, but gestured a dramatic ‘go ahead’.
“Heh, this is weird, usually I take people to Earth's moon to convince them- a bit of a family tradition- but I guess that’s a bit far away right now.”
The expedition leader looked up at the myriad stars of the Andromeda Galaxy that hung above the barren little planetoid they were standing on, then looked back at Callahan. “Really?,” she said dryly, “You think?”
Callahan laughed, then pulled out her comlink. “Spot, you got that spell on file?”
“Of course.” said the comlink, in the chirpy little voice it always used. Callahan was the only one who had managed to get her comlink to do that. As the mission computer specialist it made sense that she’d mess around occasionally, but whenever anyone asked her how she had done it, she just grinned widely and said-
“Magic?” the expedition leader asked, quietly.
Callahan smiled at her. “Hey!” she called back to the alien, in that same echoing voice. It sounded like- Spanish? Had she known that Callahan spoke Spanish? Had she known that the aliens did? “I’m gonna do a quick spell over here! Any local complications I should be aware of?”
“You should be fine, wizard,” the alien called back. “My others will keep a nose out for any problems!”
“Awesome, thanks!”
And then Callahan reached into her comlink and pulled out what looked like a holographic display of an elaborately diagrammed circle, only no earthly holographic displays thus far had managed to be so bright and vivid. She threw it at the ground, and it spread out around both of them, shimmering in the dust and tripled moonlight.
“This just effects the local area temporarily,” Callahan said, “so I won’t need your Name, which should save us some time. I have the feeling you want answers sooner than later, yes?”
“Ideally,” the expedition leader drawled, and Callahan laughed.
“Okay, stay still until the spell takes, okay?”
And then she started reading, declaring basic parameters like the programmer she was, laying out visual specifications and reciting in that echoing voice a story, one about trees and sunlight and colors glistening and skies refracting light so that only the blue remained, about the murmur of cars in the background and the buzz of insects in the distance, the movement of a light breeze against your skin and the slight give of grass under your feet.
And, as she described these things, they faded into existence.
It was earth, someone’s backyard. There were flowers beside them, lovingly landscaped, and sunlight filtered through trees arching overhead. A wooden fence, old and covered in moss ringed the yard. A squirrel glared at her from up in a tree. Children laughed in the distance.
The expedition leader sat down, right into the grass, and Callahan sat with her, more slowly.
“This- this can’t be real.” The grass prickled at the expedition leader's hands, and she clutched it tighter, digging her fingernails into the dirt. The scent of sun and grass and trees struck her in the heart, and she had to fight back tears.
“It’s not, not really. It’s an impression. Like a photograph, but better. I made it before we left to help with homesickness. Wizards can do lots of things, but going all the way back to Earth just to visit is a bit much even for me. And it wouldn’t have been fair to the rest of the crew besides, even when we were still close enough for me to do it.” Callahan shrugged. “The things we’re doing on this expedition are important. I wasn’t about to mess it up. So I have this, to help me get by.”
The squirrel chittered down at them. The expedition leader dug up a handful of earth and let it trickle through her fingers. Quietly, and just a bit hysterically, she began to laugh.
“Wizards,” she managed finally, a handful of minutes later, leaning back and looking at the blue blue sky. “Like they were saying?”
“Yep.” Callahan said. “We’re all over. On Earth we’ve been working behind the scenes, but a lot of places people know all about us and what we do.”
“Are you human?”
Callahan laughed. “Yeah, I’m as human as you. We can be any species, as long as the Powers give us power to work with. Mostly we just make things better. Life gives us tools to help people, and we use them.”
“And work as negotiators?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“You?”
Callahan made a face, like she knew exactly what a terrible idea that was. She probably did. There was a reason they didn’t let her write the main reports back to earth. “Yeahhh, that’s not so much my thing, but I’ll do what I gotta. Usually my stuff involves more in the way of stars and computers and explosions.”
The expedition leader wasn’t really sure what her face did at that last one, but Callahan raised her eyebrows and then started laughing, her hair glimmering in the utterly realistic sunlight. “No worries boss, I’ll keep the explosions to an absolute minimum. I’m known to have good judgement sometimes!”
The expedition leader shook her head, rolling her eyes.
They sat their for a minute longer, but the expedition leader had only asked for a moment, and she should really go deal with their diplomatic situation now that she had the information to make that actually happen. She dug her fingers into the grass for a moment longer.
“I can put this up for you again whenever you want it," Callahan said, softly, as though she weren’t sure if her offer was welcome.
The expedition leader’s head whipped up, and she made eye contact with Callahan. “really?”
“Yeah. It’s no problem, within reason. I don’t have to keep things a secret anymore, so I can do this sort of thing anytime. I know you miss plants that aren’t in hydroponics.”
“I love the ones in hydroponics too,” said the expedition leader, staring at the burgeoning flowerbeds around them. “but they aren’t quite the same.”
“I got you.” They sat a moment longer.
“We should go back.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry I thought you were lying to them.”
“Hey, no worries, it was a logical assumption.”
“Still.”
“It’s fine. ...Are you ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Let's go. I got your back.”