Do you want it?
No. Just be quiet for a moment and let’s see how this develops.
But Kit—!
“First things first,” Mamvish said to the room at large. The general rush for the exits had stopped where it was with the appearance of the two new arrivals. “It’s as I thought: what we have here is an incomplete archival.”
She looked at Khretef, and a storm of fiery Speech-characters flared under her skin. Khretef screamed and went down on hands and knees, and the hair rose on the back of Nita’s neck, because the scream had two voices in it, one of them Kit’s. Khretef collapsed, fell flat to the floor, writhed and twisted, rolled away—
— and left a body behind him, dressed as he was, but not gray-skinned.
“Kit!” Nita cried, and ran to him.
He was getting to his knees as she reached him. “Whoa,” Kit said as Nita helped him up one-handed. “That was... so interesting.”
“We’re not done with the interesting stuff yet,” Nita muttered.
Kit looked around the room, saw Irina and Mamvish standing there, and shivered all over. “Yeah, I bet,” he said. And he glanced over at Aurilelde. “You mind if we put some distance between us and her?”
Nita smiled a grim half-smile. “No problem.” They headed over toward Mamvish.
Irina was making her way toward the Throne, where Iskard still stood, and to which Rorsik had just slowly returned. The baby, apparently asleep, took no notice of any of this. The yellow parakeet, however, glared at the two Shamaska, rustled its wings, and made an angry scolding sound as its mistress stopped and folded her arms.
“My name is Irina Mladen,” she said. “I am the Planetary Wizard for Earth. I speak for our world, but also for the system’s other Planetaries, who vest their joint authority in me at this time as presently the system’s most senior among equals. In the Powers’ names and the name of the One they serve, I greet you with reservation, and with regret at the sanction I have come to impose.”
Her voice was chilly, and Nita shivered all over at the sound of it. “What sanction?” Rorsik said. “What are you talking about?”
Iskard had gone pale even for someone of the Shamaska’s stony complexion. Now he put out a hand to try to stop Rorsik from saying anything further. But Irina merely gave Rorsik a look, then turned her attention back to Iskard.
“Regardless of being a wizard for much of your lifetime and fully cognizant of the responsibilities the Art requires of its practitioners,” Irina said, “you have allowed your people in general, and other wizards and talents under your management in particular, to enter into courses of action that have recklessly endangered the conduct of life on an entire neighboring world.”
She turned that cool regard on Khretef, who along with the faint and miserable Aurilelde he was half carrying had now come up alongside the Throne. “In your case, you must be clear that we do understand the terrible urgency of hwanthaet that you’ve been experiencing. The condition can cause irrational responses in even the most stable species when it becomes acute, and we are therefore willing to consider it to a limited extent as an extenuating circumstance for you personally—”
“What’s hwanthaet?” Kit muttered under his breath.
Nita shook her head.
“But this consideration does not exonerate you for your own errors of judgment and lapses in wizardly conduct,” Irina said. “And we have yet to determine whether further sanctions need to be taken against you personally and, if so, what form they should take.” She turned away from Khretef and Aurilelde, glancing just briefly at Kit and Nita as she did so.
“Meanwhile,” she said to Iskard and Rorsik, “as rulers of this city, immediate responsibility for the actions of its inhabitants falls on you. You—” and she indicated Iskard— “were the deviser of the superegg-based conditional stasis and revival routines, called by you the Nascence, which induced matter/spirit hibernation for you and the City of your kindred the Eilitt, and then brought them out of stasis again. Your actions since then have all flowed from a desire to destroy that other City.”
“They have been trying to do the same to us!” Rorsik cried. “They have been trying to destroy us since the First World was young!”
“And you haven’t been making any serious attempts to stop that trend,” Mamvish said. “Rather, you’ve been intent on keeping it going. You have repeatedly failed to question your own motives and assumptions as the Art requires.”
“By irresponsible use of both wizardry and science,” Irina said to Iskard, “you’ve seriously damaged the normal developmental progress of this planet. If major intervention had not taken place, you would have caused significant psychological damage to the inhabitants of the third planet as well. And though you’ve been the aggressors here, it’s not realistic to assume, bearing in mind the past actions of your enemies, that they wouldn’t eventually try to do something very similar if the opportunity arose.” Irina let out an aggrieved breath. “Therefore sanction will be imposed forthwith upon both your cities generally, and upon the major actors personally.”
A terrible silence fell in the room.
“You have two options,” Mamvish said. “You can elect to be rafted to another solar system and resettled on a new world. There the Art will be withdrawn from you, and you will be left to your own devices until the One sees fit to release wizardry into your world once more.”
“Why should we go to any other solar system? This one is ours!” Rorsik shouted. “We were the First People, the originals. We are the true Masters of this system, whatever power you may claim! All of this only comes now because you weaklings desire the use of this world for yourselves, for your—”
And Rorsik suddenly fell silent. His face got quite dark gray, his mouth worked, but not another sound came out of him.
Irina raised her eyebrows. “Or,” she said, “if a majority of your people have come to agree with this being, then you may elect to be locked again into the same state of stasis in which you lay until your recent revival. Your dormancy site will be guarded and spell-locked until all other species in this system for whom your discovery would be an issue have reached a sufficient level of cultural maturity for the discovery of your presence no longer to be problematic. At that time your stasis will be broken and your suitability for settlement on this planet will be reevaluated.”
The silence in the room, if possible, grew even more deadly. “Even the first option will require that you return to stasis for a while,” said Mamvish, “because though there are thousands of planets that might suit you, coming up with the best match will take time— and there’s no chance whatsoever that we’ll leave your species at large on this planet or anywhere in this system until your new home is found and prepped.”
Iskard stood quiet for some time, considering. Finally, still looking pale, he lifted up his head. “We cannot and will not leave this system,” he said. “We are the First People, and you have no right to force us to leave for some strange new home elsewhere.”
“It may not seem that way to you,” said Mamvish. “But the Powers That Be see it differently. Primacy of development doesn’t imply either moral or spiritual primacy in any species, in any system. I’ve seen many come and go. And rarely, I’m sad to say, have I seen a people less considerate of other species, or more hate-filled toward its own, as you folk. By your recent actions you’ve forfeited the right to live your lives as you’ve been living them. You will therefore continue them somewhere else, or you will not continue them at all until far into the future.”
Nita was watching Iskard’s face, waiting for him to see sense. But no change showed there at all. “Do what the Powers command you,” he said at last. “But never hope to get us to agree to it.”
Irina glanced over at Mamvish and exchanged a long look with her. Nita felt something itching at the back of her mind, but the sensation passed. To Kit, she said silently, You getting the same feeling from these guys that I am?
They’d sooner
be dead than do it anybody else’s way, Kit said. So sad.
Nita looked at him with some surprise. They just did to you what they did, she said, and you can still be sorry for them?
Kit shrugged. It’s not so much them, he said. I was one of them for a little. Maybe I get it...
He stepped out into the middle of the gathering. “Irina,” Kit said.
She looked at him in surprise.
“They can’t help it,” he said. “The stasis was terrible for them; I could feel it when I was inside Khretef. It wasn’t just like being asleep and not dreaming: they could feel it all. Time didn’t go by faster to them: it went slower. They could feel every minute, every second.” He looked over at Khretef.
The Eilitt wizard bowed his head. “It made them worse,” Kit said. “They were angry before, and when they came out now, they were a little crazy, too. I caught some of that, maybe.” Kit looked embarrassed. “But it’s not entirely their fault. And...” He looked more embarrassed still. “They still know how to love each other. But being scared about whether they’re going to survive at all can really get in the way.”
Irina was watching Kit with some perplexity. “Kit,” she said, unfolding her arms enough to shift the baby-sling, “they can’t stay in the system as it’s now constituted while they’re free and able to act. The Powers have withdrawn that right from them. And they won’t accept rafting out, or stasis until the situation changes—”
“I know,” Kit said. “But there’s another way.”
Irina and Mamvish looked at each other, then back at Kit. “What?”
“Timeslide,” he said. “Into the past.”
Irina gave him an odd look, then glanced over at Mamvish. Mamvish’s eyes on both sides were going around.
“To reposition a sanctioned species far enough back not to be a threat to the timelines of associated planets,” Mamvish said, “would take a tremendous amount of power. Even for a Planetary and a Species Archivist.”
“What if the power wasn’t so much of a problem?” Kit said.
He looked, not at Iskard or Rorsik, but at Khretef. “What if you were here,” Kit said, “but long, long ago, before anybody on Earth was able to notice you? Millions of years back? No carbon-based species lasts that long.” He looked at Mamvish: one eye fixed on him in a way that suggested he was right. “And nobody would have to go into stasis. Your cities could be relocated here on the planet in real time.”
Khretef looked at Kit oddly. “But the Eilitt would still try to attack us...”
“Not if your relocation was in time as well as space,” Kit said. “Put one city down in one spot ...And the other one, five hundred thousand years away...”
Irina was looking at him now, and the expression was more thoughtful. Once again she glanced over at Mamvish, and Nita felt that odd itching at the back of her mind.
It ceased. Iskard now was looking at Kit as if he couldn’t understand why Kit was being so helpful. “If this could be done...” Iskard said. “We would accept it.”
Irina turned to Kit, looking troubled. “I’m a Planetary, Kit,” she said, “not one of the Powers That Be. The problem with this is finding enough energy to fuel the spell. Pushing thousands of living beings and the mass of two ancient cities back a million years or two would require—” She shook her head.
“Wait,” Kit said. “Just wait, okay? I need to transit back to my house.” And then he looked annoyed. “By the way, since these guys were doing hwanthaet or whatever it is on me to make me so crazy to be back here, can I please be ungrounded?”
Irina gave him a dry look. “Go,” she said, and waved a hand.
Kit vanished.
***
He appeared in his kitchen and turned to head toward the back door— and found that standing there, looking at him wide-eyed, with yet another armful of laundry, was Helena.
“Uh—” Kit said.
To his great relief, the look with which his sister was favoring him was more bemused than scared or angry. “So that noise is traditional, then,” she said.
“Huh?”
“When you appear,” Helena said. “It’s in the mutant comic books, too. ‘Bamf!’” And she then started looking even more bemused. “Does this mean the comics people actually know mutants?”
“Uh, they might,” Kit said.
Helena nodded, apparently pleased at having worked this out for herself. She started heading toward the cellar stairs with her laundry, then paused as something occurred to her. “When you appear out of nowhere like that,” she said, “there’s no chance you could appear where somebody else already is, is there? Like, you know, a transporter accident?”
Kit was briefly annoyed, then realized it was a fair question. “No. There’s an automatic offset, it—” He stopped, as there was no point in explaining the safeguards built into the spell: Helena was thinking in a different idiom now, and he was just going to have to get used to it. “It can’t happen. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay.” Helena headed for the stairs and was halfway down them as Kit stepped down onto the landing and reached in among the coats and so forth to pull out what he’d come back for. Helena stopped on the stairs, looked up at the glowing thing that Kit was carefully unwinding from the hook where it had been hanging.
“What’s that? Oh, don’t tell me!” Helena said, sounding genuinely impressed. “Wonder Woman’s magic lasso? Is that real, too?” And then she paused. “I thought it was supposed to be gold.”
Not for the first time when dealing with one of his sisters, Kit was left briefly speechless.
Helena got a musing look. “And if that can be real, maybe other stuff from the comics could be real, too? Like… I can’t remember: what are those guys called who have the green glowy rings? Like them. Wouldn’t it be great if there was this interplanetary brotherhood with all kinds of creatures, you know, banding together and using their powers to fight evil?”
She sighed, then smiled at Kit. “Never mind, I know, it’s probably more secret stuff,” Helena said, turning and heading down the stairs again. “Guess I’ve just got to get used to it. What a world.” She moved out of sight, and Kit heard the clunk of the washer’s lid being opened. “I should really start getting back into comics. My brother the mutant...”
Kit stared down at her, dumbfounded: then heaved a sigh and vanished again.
Back on Mars, Kit went to Irina and handed her what he’d brought from home.
Irina took the long, slender, pale cord from him. Then she started, her eyes going wide. In its sling, the baby woke up. On her head, the parakeet was shocked into the air and fluttered there for several moments before settling again and staring down at what she held.
Irina ran the cord through her hands, noting, as did everyone else, the way the faint bluish glow about it overrode every other light in that great room. As she moved her hands apart while holding it, the cord stretched: the glow got brighter.
“It was my dog’s,” Kit said. “Before he, well, graduated, he really used to get around. Other universes, other times. Sometimes a lot further. This leash was the only way I could keep up with him. Anchor one end of it in one reality, fasten it to something in another— and it’ll pull the other thing through.”
Mamvish came over to look at Ponch’s old leash. It had been powerful enough when Kit had used it for doggie-walking before the affair with the Pullulus earlier in the year. What it would be able to do now, after having been even briefly affiliated with the canine version of the One, even Kit could only guess.
But apparently Irina had some idea. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again, letting out a long, surprised breath and glancing over at Mamvish. “This artifact,” she said, “has a power rating even higher than yours. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”
Mamvish swung her tail. “And it’s built for transits,” she said. “With this, and your power and mine, we can pull it off. I’d say the solution suits.”
Irina turned back
to Kit. “You understand that probably it won’t survive this wizardry.”
Kit nodded. “I don’t need it anymore. And Ponch sure doesn’t. If it can do some good here, then let’s go.”
***
After that it seemed to Nita that things happened nearly as quickly as her decommissioning of the passthrough wizardry had. There was a brief consultation about temporospatial coordinates, and then a transit out to the city limits, past the farthest buildings, at the end of the white road. Mamvish and Irina stood there conferring to resolve the last few issues, while Iskard watched from the road.
Kit had taken Khretef off to one side, and together the two of them stood for a good while looking down at Kit’s manual while Kit turned the pages, shifting from section to section as he constructed a spell. After a few moments he pulled a long glowing string of speech-characters out of the manual—a deactivated spell, set for storage and later use by another wizard.
Nita watched Kit checking the center section of the spell one last time before passing it to Khretef, and knew what it was. Her mouth went dry at the prospect of handing another being so much personal information. But it’s his business. And Khretef, too, looked at the spell with some disquiet: but also, Nita thought, with a touch of guilt. He and Kit exchanged a long glance before Khretef took the spell and made it vanish into his own unseen version of the manual: and he bowed to Kit, quite deeply.
Finally Kit headed back to where Nita waited. “He’s got what he needs to build into the Nascence,” Kit said as they joined her. “So the superegg’ll recognize me and behave the way it ought to, and start all this going.” He glanced over at Irina, who nodded at him. “Irina and Mamvish have stoked the Nascence wizardry up so it can’t be cracked by any amount of brute-force wizardry in backtime ...and they’ve stuck a heavy-duty cloaking routine on it so they won’t recognize the presence of their own spell routines in the superegg when we find it on the uptime leg.”