High Wizardry New Millennium Edition (17 page)

Nita glanced after it, then back at Kit, and shrugged. “Here,” she said, and tossed Kit the gimbal. “Which spell are you thinking of using?”

“That dislocator on page eleven sixty.”

She got out her own manual and found the page. “That’s awful long-range, isn’t it? Her next jump must have been shorter than that.”

“Yeah, but Neets, who wants to leapfrog one step behind the things that are chasing her! We want them, right now. We want to get them off her case so that Dairine can go do whatever it is she needs to do without interference.” He looked grim. “And when we find ‘em—”

Nita sighed. “Forget it,” she said, “they’re dupes.”

Kit looked up at her while getting a grease pencil out of his pack. “Oh, don’t tell me. The Lone One suckered them in…”

“The old story.” Nita filled him in on what the Satrachi had told her as Kit got down on the tiles and began drawing their transit circle. At the end of the story, Kit sighed. “I was hoping it was some of the Lone One’s own people,” he said, “so we could just trash ‘em and not feel guilty.”

Nita had to smile at that. Picchu climbed down from the partition between the booths, where she had been sitting, and clambered onto Nita’s shoulder. “Make sure you get mine right,” she said to Kit. “I don’t want to come out the other side of this transit with fur.”

Kit shot a look at Peach and didn’t need to comment; Nita could imagine what he was thinking. “Come sit over here, then, if you’re so worried,” he said.

To Nita’s amusement Peach did just that, climbing backward down her arm and over onto Kit’s back, where she peered over his shoulder. “Not bad,” she said, looking at the diagram.

Kit ignored this. “So make yourself useful. Is anything bad going to happen to us?”

“Of course it is,” Picchu said.

“You might be more specific.”

“And I might not need to. The Power that invented death is going to be on your tails shortly!
Our
tails,” she added, looking over her shoulder at the splendid three-foot sweep of scarlet feathers behind her. “Even you two should be able to see that coming.”

Kit changed position suddenly, and Picchu scrabbled for balance, flapping her wings and swearing. “Like you should have seen that?”

Nita grinned a little, then let it go: her mind was back on the train of thought she had been playing with out in the terminal. “I was wondering about that, a while back,” she said to Kit. “It invented death, when things were first started. But that wasn’t enough for It. It had to get people to buy into death—not just the dying itself: the fear of it.”

Kit nodded. “But a lot of species have opted out, one way or another. I mean, we’re scared to die. But we still suspect there are reasons not to be scared. A lot of people do. Its hold’s not complete anymore.”

“I know. Kit, do you think—Tom said something was about to ‘tip over.’ Some major change. Do you think what he meant was that the Lone One was about to lose
completely
somewhere?”

“He always said,” Kit said, “that what happens one place, spreads everyplace else. Everything affects everything, sooner or later. The manual says so too, in various places.”

Nita nodded, thinking how unusual it was for the manual to repeat itself about anything. “And the pattern started shifting, a couple thousand years ago,” Kit said. “The Lone Power had always won completely before. Then It started having wins taken away from It after the fact.”

Kit looked reflective. “If somewhere or other, It’s about to lose—
right from the start…”

Nita looked at him sidewise. “Then It starts losing at home, too, in all the little daily battles. Eventually.”

Kit nodded. “Dairine…” he said.

Nita shook her head, still having trouble believing it—but having to admit the likelihood. Somehow, her sister had a chance of actually defeating the Lone Power.
She’s got to be in with a chance: It wouldn’t be wasting energy on her otherwise.
“But why
her?”
Nita said softly.

“Why
you?”
said Picchu, cranky. “What makes either of you so special, that you can even come away from an encounter with That alive? Don’t flatter yourself: It’s eaten stars and seduced whole civilizations in Its time. You were simply exactly the right raw material for that particular situation to use to save Itself.”

“I didn’t mean that, I guess,” Nita said. “I meant, why
now?
The Lone Power’s been pulling this kind of stunt on planets for as long as intelligence has been evolving. It comes in, It tries to get people to accept entropy willingly, and then It bugs off and leaves them to make themselves more miserable than even It could do if It worked at it. Fine. But now all of a sudden It can be beaten. How come?”

Picchu began chewing on Kit’s top button. “You know,” she said, “that’s part of the answer. Granted, It’s immortal. But It doesn’t have infinite power. It’s peer to all the Powers, but not to That in Which they move. And even an immortal can get tired.”

Nita thought about that. Five billion years, maybe ten, of constant strife, of incomplete victories, of rage and frustration—and yes, loneliness: for the Lone One, she had discovered to her shock, was ambivalent about Its role— After all that, surely one might not be as strong as one had been at the start of things….

Kit got the button out of Picchu’s mouth, and was nipped for his trouble. “So, after all these near losses, It’s tired enough to be beaten outright?”

Picchu got cranky again. “Of course! It was that tired long ago. The Powers wouldn’t need Dairine for just
that.
They could do it Themselves, or with the help of older wizards. But haven’t you got it through your head? They can’t want to just
beat
the Lone One. They must think there’s a better option.”

Nita looked at Picchu, feeling half frightened. “They want It to
surrender,
” she said.

“I think so,” said Picchu. “I suspect They think Dairine could do something thta would get the Lone One to give in and come back to Its old allegiance. If It does that… the effect spreads. Slowly. But it spreads everywhere.” And Picchu climbed down off Kit’s shoulder and pigeon-toed across the floor, heading for a receptacle with some water in it.

Kit and Nita both sat silent for a little. The possibility seemed a long way from coming true. A world in which the universe’s falling into entropy slowly stopped, affecting people’s relationships with one another, a world gradually losing the fear of death, a world losing hatred, losing terror, losing evil itself… it was ridiculous, impossible, too much to hope for.
But still,
Nita thought,
if there was any chance at all…

“…On the news last night,” Kit said, “did you see that thing about the car in Northern Ireland?”

“No.”

“Something about one of those paramilitary groups over there that won’t go away, even though hardly anyone wants them —” Kit said. “They hijack cars as a protest, or to commit some crime.” There was something about his voice that made Nita look at him hard. “Sometimes they set the cars on fire after they hijack them.” Kit sat looking in front of him at nothing in particular, looking tired. “You know the kind of wire screen you get for station wagons, so your dog can be in the back and not get into everything?”

“Yeah.”

“Someone hijacked a car with one of those in it, the other night. With the dog in it, in the back. Then they set the car on fire. With the dog in it.”

Nita went ashen. Kit just kept looking at nothing in particular, and she knew what he was thinking of: Ponch, in Kit’s dad’s station wagon, lying around in the back too contented and lazy even to try to get into the grocery bags all around him. And someone coming up to the car—”Neets,” Kit said, after a while, “It’s just the Lone Power all over again, that kind of thing. If we really have a chance to stop that kind of thing, I’d do… whatever. I don’t care. Anything.”

She looked at him.
“Anything?”

He was quiet for a long time. “Yeah.”

Eventually Nita nodded. “Me too.”

“I know,” he said.

She looked at him in surprise. “Well, look at what you did with the whales,” he said.

Nita’s mouth had gone dry. She tried to swallow. It didn’t work.

“I mean, you did that already. That’s what it was about. The Power got redeemed, a little: we know that much. Or at least It got the option to change. You did it for that. You almost got yourself killed, and you knew that might happen, and you did it anyway. Oh, I know you did it for me, some.” He said this as if it were unimportant. “I was in trouble, you got me out of it. But mostly you did it to have things in the world be safe, and work.”

She nodded, completely unable to speak.

“It seems like the least I can do,” he said, and went no further, as if Nita should know perfectly well what he meant.

“Kit,” she said.

“Look, I mean, I don’t know if I can be that brave, but—”

“Kit,
shut up.”

He shut, rather astonished.

I’m always one step closer,
sang memory at her from the Moon. “Look,” she said, “I didn’t do it for you ‘some.’ I did it for you ‘pretty much.’”

Kit looked at her with an expression that at first made Nita think Kit thought she was angry with him. But then it became plain that he was embarrassed too. “Well,” he said, “okay. I—thought maybe you did. But I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t know for sure. And I would have felt real stupid if I was wrong.” He had been looking away. Now he looked at her. “So?”

“So,” and her voice stuck again, and she had to clear her throat to unstick it. “I like you, that’s all. A lot. And if you start liking somebody that much, well, I still want to keep the team going. If you do. That’s all.”

He didn’t say anything. Nita stood there burning in a torment of embarrassment and anger at herself.

“Neets. Cut me some slack. You’re my best friend.”

Her head snapped up. “Thought it was Richie Sussman.”

Kit shrugged. “We just play World of Warcraft a lot. But it’s the truth.” He looked at her. “Isn’t it true for you?”

“Yeah, but—”

“So why does that have to change? Look, we’ve got junk to do. Let’s shake on it. We’ll be best friends forever. And a team.”

He said it so casually. But then that was how Kit did things: the only thing that wasn’t casual was the way he worked to do what he said he would. “What if something happens?” Nita said. “What if—”

Kit finished one symbol inside the circle, shut the book, and stood up. “Look,” he said, “something always happens. You still have to promise stuff anyway. If you have to work to make the promises true…” He shrugged, hefted the manual. “It’s like a spell. You have to say the words every time you want the results. Neets, come on.” And he held out a hand.

They shook on it. Nita felt oddly light, as if her knapsack had been full of rocks and someone had come up behind her and dumped them out.

“Okay,” Kit said. “Peach, where—oh,
God.”

Picchu was sitting in the water receptacle across the birthing-room floor, flapping around and showering everything within range. “Do you mean I’m going to have to go halfway across the Galaxy with a soggy bird sitting on me?” Kit said. “No way. Neets, it’s your turn to carry her.”

“You’re getting a lot like Tom,” said Picchu.

“Thanks!”

“Wasn’t intended as a compliment.” And Peach shook her feathers, scattering water and glaring at Kit. “So stop your complaining. Powers only know when I’m going to have another chance for a bath.” She stepped up onto the edge of the low basin and shook herself again, all over.

Nita wiped a drop out of her eye. “Come on,” she said, and bent down to get Peach off the edge of the basin, settling her on her shoulder. “Kit, we set?”

“Yup. You want to do a defense spell, do it now. Peach? Any bad feelings about what’s coming up?”

“All of them,” Picchu said, “but nothing specific. Let’s go.”

They all three got into the spell circle. Kit knotted it closed with the figure-eight Wizard’s Knot, dropped the gimbal into the circle on the spot marked out for it, then picked up his manual and began to read. Nita silently recited her favorite shieldspell, the one that could stop anything from a thrown punch to an ICBM, and for safety’s sake set it at ICBM level. Then she got her own manual open and caught up with Kit. The air began to sing the note ears sing in silence; the air pushed in harder and harder around them, Nita’s ears popped, and the spell took hold and threw them off the planet—not before Nita saw a portly Me!thai gentleman peek in the door to see if it was safe to come in and have his child…

*

There was a long, long darkness between the world winking out and flashing back into existence again. Nita could never remember its having taken so long before—but then the jump from Earth to Rirhath had been a short one, no more than fifteen or twenty light-years. Nita held her breath and maintained control, even while the back of her brain was screaming frantically,
He made a mistake in the spell somewhere, you distracted him and he misspelled something else: you’re stuck in this and you’re never going to get out,
never—

It broke. Nita was as dizzy as she had been the last time, but she was determined not to wobble. Her ears stopped ringing as she blinked and tried to get her bearings. “Heads up, Neets,” Kit was saying.

It was dark. They stood on some barren unlit moon out in the middle of space. Nothing was in the sky but unfamiliar stars and the flaming, motionless curtain of an emission nebula, flung across the darkness like a transparent gauze burning in hydrogen red and oxygen blue. Kit pointed toward the horizon where the nebula dipped lowest. Amid a clutter of equipment and portable shelters of some kind, there stood a small crowd of Satrachi. They had apparently not noticed their pursuers’ appearance.

“Right,” Nita said. “Let’s do this—”

“No! Move us!” Picchu screeched.
“Do it now!”

Kit’s eyes widened. He started rereading the spell, changing the end coordinates by a significant amount. Peach was still flapping her wings and screaming. “No, no, not far enough—”

Nita snatched the gimbal up from the ground and tied it into her shield-spell.
Can it take the strain of two spells at once? We’ll find out. It’ll abort the one it can’t manage, anyway.
She gulped.
Physical forces—
She started reciting in the Speech, naming every force in the universe that she could think of, tying their names into her shield and forbidding them entrance.
Can I pull this off? Is this one of the spells that has a limit on the number of added variables? Oh God, I hope not—