Khretef was looking around him, then down at his arms and the sword he held. “That works very well.”
“And the scorpions are metallic, mostly?” Kit said. “How are they powered?”
“Cold power cells,” Khretef said. “They would be far below your ambient temperature or mine.”
“We’ll be seeing dark blots as we come up with them, then,” Kit said. “Can they see in the heat wavelengths?”
“I wouldn’t be sure,” Khretef said. “I never had one of the substitutes: I much preferred the real creatures.”
They walked on cautiously together. “Yeah,” Kit said. “I saw your guy. I could see why you’d prefer the real thing—”
He stopped still as Khretef held out the hand with the sword, a gesture of alarm. Silence would probably be better than speech now, Khretef said. They’re in the next chamber. Though they’re expecting us to come in through another entrance, we’ll have little time to deal with them.
They can’t hear thought, though?
No. That only the original creatures could manage, and not always.
Good. Kit looked up ahead toward the glow of warmth that came from the archway before them. Warmer ...Does the ground drop off in there?
There’s a deep pit. The Shard is down at the bottom of it, protected by the final spell-shield, the one proof against any Shamaska.
Kit thought. Okay, he said. Are these like the ones up on the surface? Do they learn from past experience?
They do. That’s what killed me. It was a development I hadn’t been expecting, and when I used the fire-sword the second time, it was ineffective. It should only have taken a second to bring up another spell, but in that second—
He went silent. Kit could feel him wincing from the memory. Right, Kit said. I think I’ve got something useful.
He reached out beside him, opened his otherspace pocket, and felt around in it, bringing out a device that Khretef looked at curiously: a smooth metal rod about a foot and a half long, with what looked like white ceramic striping down the side of it, a half-sheath of more ceramic down its length, and a thick handle with various controls. Kit touched one of the controls. At the butt end of the device, a tiny blue light came on.
What is it? Khretef said.
Something never used on this planet before, Kit said. Should take them by surprise. Come on.
Silently they made their way down the length of the gallery, toward the glow of heat. Tell me something, Kit said. When you got here from the First World, did you find any signs of any species having been here before you?
None, said Khretef. There was no evidence of any life more advanced than simple one-celled or multicelled organisms.
Kit sighed. Pity, he said.
As they drew near to the entrance to the next chamber, Khretef held up the sword in warning again, then waved Kit to one side of the narrow gallery and flattened himself against the other. Together they inched toward the entrance, peered through.
Beyond the archway, a crowd of green metal scorpions was moving about a near-circular cave, almost obscuring the floor except in one spot—the center, where the circular pit Khretef had mentioned fell sheerly away. Kit looked the situation over. Nasty, he said. Fight them and they take you down before you’re anywhere near the Shard. Try to avoid them by jumping into the pit, and they all just pile on top of you.
Khretef nodded. Fortunately there’s no need to take them all on. He pointed at the largest one, the scorpion that Kit had earlier heard roaring. It let out another uneasy roar even as they watched.
They’re all linked, he said. It handles their processing. Take out that largest one, and they’ll all go together.
Kit nodded. I did that by accident before, he said. Good to know. Got a self-defense shield? Good. Put it up—
He glanced around one last time, then spoke the words in the Speech that activated his own shield, thumbed the setting on Carmela’s portable dissociator up to “overkill,” and stepped out of the gallery.
Instantly the scorpions all raised their claws and turned toward him, and the biggest one crouched down. But Kit was already shouting the Mason’s Word, the version with the additional syllables for the Martian ecology, and was running up the hardened air. It was squishier than usual because of the thinness of the atmosphere, but he didn’t let that stop him. He just ran up the air high enough to get a clear shot at the biggest scorpion.
It tried to leap into the pit as its lesser associates rushed Kit’s skywalk: but it had no time. The dissociator field hit it and tore it into thousands of microscopic fragments, all of which promptly flashed into plasma and sizzled away to nothing, leaving behind only a blinding flare of heat. All the remaining scorpions promptly crashed to the stony floor in a metallic clamor of collapsing claws and joints.
Kit looked over his shoulder and saw Khretef emerging from the gallery. “You all right?” he said.
“Much more so than the last time,” Khretef said drily, but with a grin. “That was nicely done!”
“Yeah,” Kit said, shoving the dissociator back into his otherspace pocket. “I’m gonna get it from my sister when she finds out I borrowed this without asking, but I’ll make it up to her later...”
He said a few more words of the Speech under his breath, changed the angle of his skywalking steps so that they led down into the pit, and walked down into it. There at the bottom, the Shard shone as he’d seen it in his earlier vision. It looked like nothing but a little round, red sandstone pebble, but it burned with an intense blue-violet fire. Around it was a shell of paler, bluer brilliance, sparking with hot green lights. “Is that the anti-Shamaska wizardry?” Kit said.
Khretef nodded. “Since you’re not Shamaska, either,” he said, “it can do you no harm.”
Kit could already feel as much. He reached down, picked up the pebble, and jumped at the jolt of power that ran through him from it. “Wow. Aurilelde’s dad packed a whole lot of the kernel into that...” he said. He stood up, wobbling slightly.
“And more than just the kernel,” Khretef said. “One other thing as well. Me.”
Kit’s eyes widened. But it was too late. His consciousness whited out: and a moment later, when vision returned, there was only one of him standing there— Khretef.
He looked down at the little shining thing in his hand with a great rush of excitement... but also fear.
Now to get this back to her, he thought, and put everything right. Finally, finally we’ll be free!
And he vanished.
13: Oceanidum Mons
“Indeterminate?” Nita said to the peridexis. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The peridexis paused for a moment. No, it said, that was an error: sorry. He’s now showing in the neighborhood of Olympus Mons. There was a momentary difficulty in reading his status.
“Not usual for you,” Nita said. “Well, everything else has been crazy here...” She let out a long breath, which actually froze out of the air and started drifting down as tiny flakes of snow.
You want to be paying more attention to your life support, Bobo said.
Nita rolled her eyes. “You’re always saying you want to handle that for me,” she said. “You deal with it.”
Immediately she started feeling the air warming up around her, and started to smell the odd gunpowdery smell of Mars dust. “Thanks,” she said. Kit? she said inside her head.
No answer.
Once again she started to wonder if he was annoyed with her for breaking in on his boy-trip the day before. Nita pulled out her manual, flipped it open to the messaging section. There on her contacts list his name appeared as usual. Location: Olympus Mons— and a set of coordinates. Mission status: independent investigation; occupied; please do not disturb. “Well, fine,” she said under her breath, starting to feel annoyed. “Messaging, please?”
The space under Kit’s name cleared. “Kit,” she said to the manual, “sorry about yesterday. Give me a call or drop me a note when you’re done.” She tappe
d the page: the message inserted itself and began to flash bright and dark, with the notation appearing beside it, Holding for delivery.
Nita shut the manual and put it away. No point in getting all cranky about this. He wants to be too busy for me? Fine. “Okay,” she said, “might as well head home. Want to handle the gating?”
No problem. Off to one side, dust and snow whirled away from a flat place among the stones; a circle of light appeared there. Nita stepped through—
— and came out in her bedroom as usual. She sighed and tossed her manual onto the desk while she pulled off her outdoor clothes, then grabbed it again and headed downstairs.
Her dad was in the living room, reading the Sunday paper. Dairine was actually in the same room with him, stretched out on the floor and paging through the travel section, while Spot looked over her shoulder with stalked eyes. All of them glanced up as Nita came in. “You hungry?” her dad said. “I’ll make you something.”
“No, it’s okay,” Nita said. She dropped her manual on the dining room table and wandered into the kitchen, glancing at the clock. Two thirty. Okay, I’ll give him till five. He has to be back then, anyway, Carmela says. And I want lunch.
She rummaged around in the fridge for the makings of a chicken sandwich, put the kettle on, assembled the sandwich—all except the mustard she wanted, which Dairine had apparently finished, so that Nita had to make do with mayonnaise— and then wandered back into the dining room and sat down, staring morosely at the manual while she ate half the sandwich.
What is it with him? she thought.
But Nita had her suspicions. Right there as if in front of her, she could just see the Martian princess. It’s not fair, she thought. She was pretty. She was stacked. Nita squirmed uneasily in the chair. She had nothing on. Almost. And it looked good on her!
“Dammit!” Nita said under her breath.
She scowled at the rest of her sandwich, then picked it up and ate it, annoyed. How am I supposed to compete with that?
Are you crazy? You’re not in a competition, said some part of her brain that was taking desperate refuge in rationality. She was a hallucination. She was a character in a book that the wizardry used to communicate with him...
Yeah, and I know just what she was communicating! answered back another part of Nita’s mind, one that had no intention of being thrown off the track by logic, especially as logic when used on boys lately seemed to produce only indifferent results. You saw him looking at Janie Lowell the other morning. Her and that alleged skirt.
Nita dropped the rest of the sandwich on the plate and put her head in her hands. This is dumb. I don’t want to wear that kind of skirt, anyway. If “skirt” is the word we’re looking for, and not “belt”! I just want— She groaned. I don’t know what I want.
Kit, you’re an idiot!
And this statement embarrassed Nit profoundly, since it both flowed naturally from what she was feeling right now and made no sense whatsoever.
“Aaaaaagh,” she said under her breath after a moment, which also made no sense, but at least discharged some tension. Nita picked up the rest of the sandwich, ate it while glowering at the table, and then noticed that the kettle was screaming for her attention.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said, and scrambled up to turn off the stove and get the kettle off the hot ring and find herself a tea bag. “Sorry...”
The kettle regarded her with mute accusation. She picked it up and poured hot water onto the tea bag in her mug. “Maybe I’m the idiot,” she muttered, putting the kettle down.
It didn’t respond. She immediately felt somehow inadequate, as Kit always got immediate responses out of the household appliances: they were very forthcoming with him. “Never mind,” she said, and patted it on the handle as she went out. “Different wizards, different specialties...” But she still felt it watching her as she went out.
Nita sighed and went back into the dining room, where she sat down at the end of the table and drank the tea. Finally she reached out to her manual again and opened it, going back to the Mars data for the previous day. In particular, the reports on the meetings with the scorpion creatures were now in there, both the encounter in the Cavern and those that had happened out in the Martian terrain, and Nita read them both over with interest. So weird, though, she thought. The encounters were so different.
Across the table, Dairine had left a pad and a few pens from something else she’d been doing. On impulse Nita reached out and pulled them over as she looked over the details of power levels and personnel, topography and coordinates. What a crowd of us, she thought. But our two groups got such different results.
Did one group have a higher aggregate power level or something? But the groups’ power levels weren’t really all that different, when you averaged things out. Okay, Carmela’s not a wizard. But she has her own specialties. And S’reee and I were there: a more senior talent and a lesser one. And on the other side there were Kit and Ronan, and Darryl, who’s not an older talent, but in his own way as powerful as a Senior: maybe more so.
She picked up the pen and started making a list on the top page of the pad, comparing power levels and matching them off against one another: Kit, Nita, Ronan, Carmela, Darryl, S’reee. Nita shook her head and tapped the names idly with her pen, looking for some other factor that could be operating: ages, origins, wizardly specialties. Newer wizard, older one. Younger person, older one. Boy, girl, boy, girl, boy...
Nita stopped. She stared at the lists.
Our team was all girls. Theirs was all guys.
Her first thought was that this was just a coincidence. But the scorpions walked right past us! And we didn’t get what the guys got, this weird re-creation of somebody else’s Mars. We got what had actually been left there. We identified ourselves as wizards and they let us right in. Almost ignored us, even. Whereas the guys had all these hoops to jump through. Something to prove.
Nita stared at the manual page, shaking her head. Why? Just because they were guys? It doesn’t make sense. There has to be something else going on.
She sat back in the chair. Even the guys were clear they were being tested for something. At the very least, that they were wizards. But maybe something else, too. Possibly to see whose mindview was closest to the Martians’?
Nita picked up her tea mug and had a swig. She couldn’t get rid of the feeling that there was something about this situation that Kit was hiding specifically from her. The hurt this was creating in her at the moment was all out of proportion to any real reason for it, but that didn’t make it easier for Nita to bear. And she kept trying to reason his behavior away, and failing.
We’ve been through a lot together. All kinds of crap. But we’ve never gone out of our way to hide stuff from each other.
There could be something bad going on with him and this connection to Miss Martian Princess, Nita thought. Some bad influence. It’s happened before. Sometimes it’s taken some work to get him out of trouble.
Big deal, though! He’s done the same for me.
But why doesn’t it feel like that’s what’s happening this time? It’s something else. I just know it. Something he doesn’t want me to know about.
And what could it be?! She banged her mug down on the table, and tea splashed out of it. Nita didn’t care, just sat staring at the splashed droplets. Crap! Crap, crap, crap !
“You drop something?” her dad said from the living room.
“Huh? Oh no, sorry.”
Nita scowled. If only there was some way to get at what he was really thinking. Something like the live stuff coming out of Dairine’s manual, the “streaming consciousness...
And then she stopped as the idea came into her head.
If it worked on Dairine’s manual, she thought, it would work on Kit’s.
She held still for some moments longer. Then she said, “Bobo?”
You rang?
“You say something, honey?”
“Just talking to Bobo, Daddy.”
“Oh, okay.” And a snort, as if this was now just another amusing part of day-to-day life.
Nita took another drink of her tea. “The thing you did to Spot,” she said. “Or to his manual functions—” She stopped again.
Yes?
“Could you do that to Kit’s manual?”
It was some moments before Bobo said anything. Spot gave consent.
Nita swallowed. That was the point, of course. And Bobo hadn’t actually answered her question. “But you could do it.”
If a wizard feels that a wizardry is not in contravention of the Oath, Bobo said, or is certain beyond any reasonable doubt that a given spell is required to fulfill the conditions of the Oath, then that wizardry can be implemented and will execute.
Nita sat there and just thought for a minute, then two.
She found that she was trembling. Certain beyond any reasonable doubt.
The problem was that doubt was all she had at the moment. It is impossible to serve the Lone Power directly: that was one of the most basic tenets of wizardry. The power itself would refuse to be used in such ways. But there were lots of ways the Lone One could get you to do Its will indirectly. In fact, It preferred those. It liked, whenever It could, to get wizards into situations where they felt that the only way to do right was by doing something that would later turn out to be wrong.
Am I sure I’m really wanting to do this because it’s right? And not just because I’m scared that she’s really the one that he— that Kit and I— that I have to know if he—
She swallowed. “It’s all about the situation you’re in, isn’t it?” Nita said under her breath. “It all comes down to how it looks to you.” She took a long breath. “Free will.”
The Worlds are based on it, Bobo said. The One has no interest in inhabiting a universe full of puppets.