I don’t know what Celestia said to Major Hiller. Maybe she had some dirt on him, or maybe he just thought her suggestions were good ideas. At any rate, the Canadians let us go about our business.
Andy was still carrying the sphere. We were given permission to leave the country without getting searched or anything. It was considerably easier than the last time we’d been shipwrecked.
The experimental doorway facility was near Ottawa, so they pretty much just drove us to the New York border and kicked us out. Luckily, David Goldstein had made arrangements for transportation to Norfolk. It was faster to get tickets for Amtrak than it was to get duplicate identification for us all to use the doorways.
Penny traveled on the train with us. She hadn’t requested to return to Equestria, and in fact didn’t say much of anything. Until she asked that question again.
“Mr. Carter, if you knew my father was already dead, then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Being completely honest, I thought you would react badly. You had already snuck aboard by the time I realized who you were, and I thought that telling you would have affected the mission.”
Somehow, the two of us had ended up sitting next to each other, and when she turned to glare at me her face was only inches from mine. “If you had told me, I wouldn’t have risked my life by going into that situation looking for him when he wasn’t there.”
Her voice had remained remarkably level. Despite that, I saw Nika giving me disapproving looks from across the aisle. I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry. Given the opportunity to do it over, I would have made different choices.”
Penny looked away for a few seconds. “If I didn’t know about it…how did you find out?”
“After you told me he was missing, I talked to Celestia.”
“She knew? Why didn’t she tell me?”
I raised my eyebrows. “You know her?”
“Well…we’ve met, but it was a long time ago after I was taken and the first time the sphere was taken.” Her expression flashed anger. “My father, though, communicated regularly with her on his project.”
I decided to go out on a limb. “I take it that you don’t care for his work.”
“It’s caused so much trouble,” she admitted. “I was nearly sacrificed by a cult, and now both my parents are dead.”
“Both?”
“My mother was killed when I was taken. The past few years, it’s just been dad and I.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” And I was. Something like that would make a deep impression on anyone. I hesitantly reached my fingers forward, gently realigning a few feathers in her wings that had gotten tousled.
Penny did not flinch at my touch. She asked, “You got the sphere back?”
“That’s right.”
“Can I ask you a favor?”
I tried to avoid doing favors for just anyone. After learning what Penny had been through, I couldn’t really say no. “What can I do for you?”
“You have a boat, right?”
“I do.”
“Can we go out on the ocean and deep-six this Celestiadamned sphere before it ruins any more lives?”
I nodded. “Yes, we can.”
Penny seemed impressed by Traveler. My Traveler, that is. I was somewhat surprised at her knowledge of turbine engines and slightly frightened by what she knew about fire control systems for military-grade weapons.
We took a day trip out past the continental shelf and chucked the glass ball into three thousand feet of water. None of us were sorry to see it go. We all might be in the business of weapons, but it had become clear that this thing was much more trouble and pain than it was worth.
As we were headed home with the sunset in front of us, Penny stood with Nika and I on the bridge wing. The weather was pleasant, and Penny’s mood seemed to have improved.
“Thank you for this,” she said. “I’m sorry for what it must have cost in fuel and maintenance to get a ship this size moving, even for just one day.”
I shrugged. “I agreed with what you wanted. And anyway, the real loss of funds is going to come from Canterlot. I was hired to get the device back, not throw it away.”
“This may not be the best time to ask you about employment, then,” she said.
“You don’t have anything better to do?” I asked.
“I don’t really have much family left. I’m finished with high school. I love sailing.”
I considered that. “Where did you get all your experience?”
“Self training on any vessel that would have me, mostly. On the weekends I used to be volunteer crew for any boat I could find.”
“What started that?”
She cut her eyes to the side as if someone might be listening in on our conversation out in the middle of the ocean. “This is highly classified information, both by your government and Equestria’s. You probably have the clearance. Anyway, back in 2005, USS Cushing had a little problem. That was the cult, trying to bring about a new age of Nighmare Moon. I spent some time on the ship, and decided I liked it.”
I frowned. I had been told stories about Nightmare Moon, but as a non-Equestrian they hadn’t had the same effect on me. I had heard of the destroyer named Cushing before, as it had been transferred to the Equestrian Navy at about the same time Penny had described.
She went on. “There was a lot of magical fallout—literally and figuratively—from that incident, and in the end it was decided to just sign the ship over to Equestria. I’m pretty sure Princess Celestia did some careful bargaining and got the better deal.”
I nodded. “Sounds like her.”
“So how do you know the Princess?” asked Penny. “Do you do a lot of operations for her?”
“No, this is the first time.”
“I was meaning to ask, why did she hire a human, anyway?”
Nika bumped my arm. I caught her hint. Penny had just broken national security to tell me a little about herself. Doing the same shouldn’t hurt too much.
“Actually, I’m a pony. To keep suspicion of this operation away from Equestria, Celestia transformed me. Also, I think it amused her.”
Penny stared at me for a moment. “Okay, I suppose that makes sense. I thought you knew an awful lot about feathers for a human. But…what about you, Ms. Ivanova? Why fake the Russian accent?”
“It’s not fake,” she explained. “I am from Russia. Sean Carter—Sail Canvas—is the only pony on the crew.”
“So wait, you two…” Penny’s mouth dropped open, fumbling for words.
“Yeah, the romance was awkward for a while,” I acknowledged.
A couple of days later, Penny and I were in Canterlot to meet with Celestia. She didn’t jerk us around this time, although I wasn’t sure if that was because Penny was present or if Celestia’s attitude had changed.
She was visibly upset when I told her what had been done with the device. “Mr. Canvas, I can understand mistakes, but you deliberately disobeyed your contract.”
Penny broke in. “With my father dead, I should be the one to inherit his work. I chose to get rid of it. Why does Equestria need something like that? Certainly not strategic deterrence—that only works when the whole world knows you have it. This way, we can just put everything behind us and forget about it.”
Celestia reluctantly seemed to agree with that, but there was still the issue of the contract. “I can’t pay you for this. Despite recovering the sphere, you didn’t return it as stipulated.”
I nodded. “I suspected as much.”
“Mr. Canvas, may I ask you why you seem so hostile? I don’t think you’ve ever been pleasant any time we’ve spoken.”
I considered that for a moment. “You’re the leader of a country, several thousand years old, and one of the most powerful magical beings in existence. Truthfully, you’re probably more humble about it than you could be, but I still get the feeling that you like to flaunt it.”
“You’re not used to be controlled?” she asked. “Is that because you grew up wealthy? Are you unable to accept that sometimes you can’t do whatever you want?”
Her words stung, but I knew that they were true. While I should have just nodded quietly and accepted it, I couldn’t go down without a fight. Namely, pointing out something that had been bugging me for a while. “At least I’ve been completely truthful with you the whole time.”
Celestia bowed her head slightly in admission. “While concealing reality is against my personal morals, sometimes it is necessary. I know you aren’t naive enough to believe otherwise, Mr. Canvas.”
She had a point. I nodded, even if I didn’t like it.
“For instance, what good came of your boat, Corsair, sinking?”
I thought. “The CIA and Navy let me off on the debts I owed them. The Chinese became less suspicious of me. I was freed up to do this job for you.”
“Mr. Canvas, I ordered Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle to sink your boat.”
I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t thought of that before. I never saw an incoming torpedo with my own eyes. The damage was careful not to injure anyone. We were close to shore when it happened. It had been timed so the new ship was almost complete when the old one went down.
Strangely enough, I decided that it was a reasonable tradeoff. I still didn’t like Celestia, but I had come away with an advantage because of what she had done.
“I have a proposal, if you’re willing to listen,” said Celestia, interupting my thoughts. “Since adding Ponyville to our fleet, we have a number of weapons that I believe are compatible with your ship. I’m willing to arm you if it would keep your services on retainer for Equestria.”
Ponyville was ex-Cushing, the destroyer Penny had told me about. I wondered how Celestia knew what weapons my ship was equipped with, but remembered that her three secret agents had been aboard and took notes. Gun ammunition and a few missiles were compatible between the two vessels.
I sighed. It felt like I was getting hooked again, but it was really good bait. “I suppose I’ll make that deal.”
Celestia nodded. “I’ll have the arrangements drawn up.”
The meeting seemed to be over, but we hadn’t touched on something very important. I said, “So about this species-switching thing…”
“I was meaning to ask,” she said. “How was your experience?”
“I can’t say that I hated it, but it’s not who I am. On top of that, I can’t really go about as Sean Carter for the rest of my life. Too many people know me as a pony and would wonder what happened.”
“What about your girlfriend?” asked Celestia.
I paused. A sudden thought had just struck me. “You can’t make me choose one or the other. In fact, I would bet swapping back and forth isn’t impossible.”
“You assume a lot,” she said. “You are, however, correct.”
She tapped a button on the intercom box on her desk. “Twilight, please come in.”
A purple unicorn mare entered with a small box. She nodded to Penny as if the two of them knew each other.
“This is Twilight Sparkle, magical researcher and colleague of Penny’s father,” introduced Celestia. I thought I might have heard her name somewhere before, but couldn’t remember where.
“When Princess Celestia told me about your situation, I thought there might be something we could do,” said Twilight. She opened the box and took out a modest-looking necklace. “With the right enchantments and a lot of work, we were able to come up with this. Putting it on over your head changes you. If you take it off by unclasping it you stay the same. Putting it on with the clasp and slipping it off changes you back.”
“This sounds like science fiction,” I commented.
For some reason, Twilight appeared to take that as a compliment. She handed over the necklace and I put it on. While the transition was a little jarring, it did work as advertized. Despite being told what would happen, the look on Penny’s face was priceless.
I struggled out of my clothes. That was something I didn’t particularly like about being human. “I suppose I should thank you. I figured that the technology—er, magic I suppose—existed, but didn’t know you were actually working on it.”
The look on Celestia’s face suggested that there was a lot I didn’t know. At the moment, however, I wasn’t particularly inclined to ask. I might end up as yet another species.
“We’re pretty limited in our ability to produce these things,” said Twilight. “Not only that, but it gives us a big advantage in deception. This is not something that’s going to go public for quite a while—if ever.”
“I wouldn’t want to tell anyone anyway,” I said. I frowned. “Are you saying that someday I might run into Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo as people?”
Celestia smiled impishly. “Be ready, Mr. Canvas. I’ll have a job for you eventually.”
Penny and I left. There seemed to be a lot on her mind, and she didn’t say much. The two of us went back through the doorway to Norfolk. Her previous inquiry about employment had evolved into formal service with the company. She was young, but legal age. I had floated the idea of on-the-job training for taking care of her college. University-level education in Equestria was not nearly as common as Earth, mostly because the special talents of ponies typically did not require higher learning.
Penny’s talent was actually money managing. While I already had an accountant, I figured we could work something out. Regardless of her cutie mark, she was still an excellent sailor.
Back at the boat, I went to find Nika. The gift from Celestia was a pretty big deal, especially in terms of the effect it would have on our relationship.
After I explained how the magic functioned, she looked thoughtful. “Would it work on someone else?”
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try.” Unclasping it, I passed it to her. She put it around her neck, and then slipped it off over her head. Then she dropped to the floor in a pile of ill-fitting clothing.
There were a few mild swears in Russian as I untangled her. As a pony raised on Earth, I might have had a grip on human customs and mindset, which made it stranger to see Nika as a mare than it was to find myself as a man.
She had turned into a pegasus. Nika examined her wings and turned to me with a mischievous look. “Want to have sex on a cloud?”
I grinned. “You’re the perfect one for me.”