"I wish," Esta breathed.
"We're going to make it happen," Colene said, beginning to believe. Things had been so complicated, and now the future was starting to come clear. Provos must have joined the Virtual Mode for this: to go to Earth and help rescue Slick and Esta, and bring them back to her own reality where they could live in peace. Provos had a spare floor; she'd probably put Slick there, and let Esta sleep where Colene had, up on the top floor. In that manner Provos would get a family, for all anyone knew a son and a granddaughter. It was a nice world, and they would surely like it. It all made so much sense, in retrospect. And Provos had seen it coming, of course. "Sometimes wishes are granted," Colene told her. "In ways we never expected. I think you have a nice future coming up."
But what of Colene's own future? She had no guarantees about that, because she wasn't going to settle in Provos' reality.
She was headed, she hoped, for Darius' reality, and that looked very nice. So long as Darius hadn't changed his mind in the interim about just which girl he wanted to settle down with. If he had, what then would be Colene's fate?
CHAPTER 16
ANIMA
IT was working! Nona was thrilled. When Seqiro linked her closely with Keli, and Keli changed shape, Nona was able to catch a glimmer of what was happening. Day by day she practiced, and bit by bit she learned. It would be a long time before she was as good as the rabble, but in time she would have it.
Then Seqiro's thought came from the chamber closest to the surface. He had been spending most of his time there, questing out through the rock to the anchor, convinced that though his range was limited, he could sense the one he loved from afar. Nona wished he felt that way about her. Colene! I feel Colene!
It was time. "We must go!" Nona cried.
"But first we must tell Stave," Darius reminded her.
Oh. Yes. Nona had promised. "Where is he?" she asked.
"I know where!" Keli said eagerly.
They went to the dais chamber. There was one of the Stave emulations, eating a meal. "Are you the real Stave?" Nona asked him.
He snapped his fingers, and a ball of fire appeared there. It expanded and formed a face. The face winked. He was the real Stave. "Are you the real Nona?" he asked.
"Of course I am!" she said.
He stood. "Then embrace me. Kiss me. Strip naked."
"I will do no such thing!" she said indignantly.
He nodded. "Then you are the real one."
That set her back. Of course the Null-Nonas would be happy to do any of that sort of thing he asked; they all wanted so desperately to breed. "Yes. Colene has returned, and we must go. I—I owe Keli here a favor. You must choose her next."
He shook his head. "But that is not the real Nona speaking. You don't even have her face perfect."
"I changed it," Nona said, realizing that she was at this moment almost a parody of herself. So she proved herself: she flew up and hovered a body length above the floor.
Stave nodded. "If the rabble could do that, they wouldn't need us. Very well: Keli it is."
Keli ran to him. "Oh, thank you! I want you so much!"
"You almost had me, that first day," he told her.
"Yes! And now at last it shall be!"
Nona turned away. This business disgusted her. Yet she knew that if Stave had not agreed to do this, she herself would have had to be defending her body from rape every day for a thousand days. She knew she owed him her gratitude. It was just that somehow she did not properly feel it.
"Nona!" Stave called after her. "Don't forget! You must rescue me from this!"
She turned back to look at him. Keli was already out of her brown tunic, a fine figure of a naked woman. Was Stave hiding a smile? "Yes, as soon as possible," she agreed grimly.
THE three of them gathered at a chamber near the surface, but not the one closest to the anchor where Colene would arrive. The despots would be watching the place where they had been. But they should have some brief freedom if they emerged at a new spot.
Nona reached out, seeking the bat she had tamed as a familiar. She had thought that she could not penetrate the barrier between the nether realm and the surface, but had found that with concentration and determination it was possible. She found the bat in the cave. She woke it and caused it to fly to a forest thicket not far from the village. There Seqiro was able to reach its mind.
The bat flew to a glade in the forest. It flew around it, questing for danger. There did not seem to be any person there.
Darius and Nona climbed onto Seqiro's solid back. Then Darius designated the circles, activated the three icons, and moved them.
They landed in the glade. They staggered, getting reoriented. They seemed to have made it without being spotted.
"But the despots' familiars will be cruising everywhere," Nona said. "They may even be watching for daytime bats."
"I know where the anchor is from here," Darius said. "We can go there immediately."
"But if we go too soon, we shall have to wait there, and they will find us."
Colene is approaching the anchor. She has companions.
Darius was startled. "Companions? Plural? Not just Provos?"
Two others. Male and female. Their minds are not yet clear to me, but both seem unusual.
"Is that good or bad?" This was a complication Darius did not seem to like. Nona was not easy with it either. Why would Colene have brought more people?
It seems bad. The female is young, with much pain.
"Colene must have reason," Darius decided. But his unspoken thoughts, relayed to Nona, indicated that he was nervous about the girl's reasoning. It was not easy to bring others through the Virtual Mode; it was necessary to be tied to them at all times, lest they be lost. Whatever Colene's reason, it would have to be very strong. And why had Provos agreed with it? What future had the old woman seen?
Darius' thoughts made Nona just as nervous. She had come to know Colene as an impulsive but intelligent girl. What strange thing was going on?
They are coming through the anchor.
"Then we go!" Darius said.
He conjured them there. Suddenly they were standing by the anchor, on the slope leading up to the sea and the giant stone instruments.
Colene appeared as she emerged from the anchor. Then two other human figures, and finally Provos.
Despots are approaching.
Nona looked around, but did not see the despots. She trusted the horse's awareness, however. They had to get quickly away from here! But how could they do it with four extra people, two of them strangers? It would take too much time just to explain the situation to them!
"Darius!" Colene called, seeing him. "Where's Angus?"
Seqiro sent out a thought: ANGUS!
There was a motion high in the sky. It became the form of the giant man, flying toward them.
Meanwhile Darius was forging toward Colene. He swept her into his embrace. She met him eagerly, kissing him on forehead, nose, and eyeball before finding the range. Nona wished she had been able to love Stave like that. "Conjure us out of here, stupid!" Colene whispered, her words carried by Seqiro's mind-talk.
"But Angus needs to be told—"
"Provos is handling that. I have to be with you. Move it!"
Nona hoped the girl knew what she was doing. Darius lifted Colene onto Seqiro's back, pressed close to Nona and the horse, and tuned in to the familiar-bat. It had moved, and now was over a field. He conjured them there.
"Okay, folks," Colene said briskly. "I got the info. I know where it is, I think. The despots'll be hot on our trail, so we'd better move right along. But they don't know where we're going. First, to the head."
"But it will take the familiar time to get there," Nona protested.
Colene frowned. "Damn, that's right! Then we'd better use Angus after all. Can't save him for a decoy."
Angus!
The giant heard. He swooped down again.
"Take us to the head!" Colene cried.
&n
bsp; Provos and the two strangers were on the giant's left hand. Darius, Seqiro, and Nona went to the right hand. "No, Nona—you go with the others," Colene said.
Nona did not argue. She went to the left hand and climbed on.
Angus lifted them carefully: four of them in one hand, three in the other, but one of the three was the massive horse. Angus flew up, high into the sky, leaving behind any despot pursuit. Then he leveled off and commenced the flight west.
Colene kissed Darius again. It was almost as if she was afraid he would disappear if she did not constantly demonstrate her feeling for him. "I made icons for my friends, and got their hair, spit, and breath. Here." She handed him two doll figures. "So you can conjure them too, if you have to."
"Thank you," Darius said, bemused. "But why did you bring—?"
"I'll get to that." Colene looked across the hands. "Nona, I'll go over the stuff with you. But first you have to meet my friends, Slick and Esta. Uncle and niece. From Earth. They're going to Provos' reality."
"Hello," Nona said to them, as perplexed as Darius. What a whirlwind of activity Colene was!
Slick nodded, and the girl just looked at her. "They're not up on your language," Colene explained. "And Seqiro hasn't fully fathomed them yet. But you don't have to wait for that. I can translate. Esta needs your help." Then, to the girl: "Es, show her. It's okay."
The girl worked open her shirt and showed her chest. It was a mass of scars. Nona was appalled. How could such mutilation have come about?
"You don't want to know," Colene said. "Just heal her as well as you can."
Nona thought of the memory Seqiro had shared with her, of Colene's experience with rape, and knew that Colene was not teasing. It was best not to inquire.
She took the girl's hand in her own. "I must touch you, to heal you," she said. Colene picked up her thought and spoke in the girl's strange language.
Esta spoke. "Touch roe, I don't care," Colene translated. Nona realized that it was not the language the horse understood, but the mind. Seqiro had access to Colene's mind, but not Esta's mind, so Esta's words were meaningless.
Nona sat behind the girl, her legs spread outside, and drew Esta back into Nona herself. This was what she had done with Darius, when healing his rat bite. She reached around and put her hands inside the girl's shirt, against the bare scarred skin of her chest. She concentrated.
"Something is happening!" Esta exclaimed, surprised. This time Nona understood her directly; perhaps their close contact facilitated Seqiro's entry into the girl's mind.
"I am healing you, with my magic," Nona responded.
"I feel it! I feel it! It feels so good!"
"I told you she could do it," Colene said. "She healed Darius."
"The pain—it's going! Can you heal my mind too?"
"No," Nona said sadly. "Only your body."
"But Provos can heal your mind," Colene said. "She will take you back to her reality, where the folk remember only the future. If you can be like them, you will lose your past, and it won't affect you any more. I think it will be that way, because the longer you are in that reality, the more you will become of it, at least in body and culture. That's why Provos came for you; she remembered that you needed her."
"That's why she came?" Darius asked, surprised. "But she can't remember in other realities. She has to be in them before she can remember."
"I know. I was with her. We went to her reality—and to yours. She must remember what it will be like in her reality after she gets back. And she remembers Slick and Esta being with her. She knew them both, the moment she saw them. She hugged them like old friends. Like family members." Colene paused.
"Yes, of course," Provos said.
"Isn't that so, Provos?" Colene asked. Nona knew that the girl had deliberately timed it, to let the woman answer before the question came. "That you remember Slick and Esta with you from now on?"
"It is true," Provos agreed.
"Isn't it true that Slick and Esta have a happy life coming in your reality, with him earning an honest living and her growing up and marrying a local boy and being happy ever after?"
Provos smiled, nodding.
"You have a family now," Colene said evenly. "A son and granddaughter, as far as you know, even if you don't remember marrying or losing your husband. But you love them and they love you, and it doesn't matter where they may have come from."
"Yes, my dear," Provos said to Esta.
Esta stared at Provos. She spoke. Colene translated in her mind as she heard the words, so that Seqiro could send the meaning to the others immediately. To Nona, it was as if she now understood Esta. "I will forget how I have lived? I will remember what is to happen?"
The girl looked across at Colene. "It is a nice place? Where she lives?"
"A real nice place," Colene assured her. "The kind of place you'll want to spend the rest of your life." Nona understood from the peripheral thoughts that they had had this dialogue before, but that Esta needed repeated reassurance. The girl was horribly insecure, and afraid that anything good was illusory. She had suffered terribly, and could not quite believe that this was over.
Nona released the girl; her body had been healed. Esta crawled across Angus' hand to Provos, who had already spread her arms. They hugged.
Slick shook his head. "I never dreamed of such a thing. It's like magic."
"It's magic, dummy," Colene said. "Get used to it. After flying across a planet on the hand of a giant, you shouldn't find it all that difficult."
"A barber," Provos said, looking up.
Colene smiled. "What kind of job will Slick have?" she asked the woman. Slick choked, and Nona wondered why, until she caught Colene's thought: Slick had made his former living by slicing people's throats.
Slick recovered in a moment. "I wonder whether there will be a woman for me," he mused.
"She is a hairdresser," Provos replied.
Colene smiled. "That's not your answer. Here, I'll do it. Provos, what kind of job does Slick's wife do?"
Nona smiled. That showed how the two would meet.
"Beautiful," Provos said.
This time Slick put the question himself. "What will my wife look like?"
Darius interceded. "You had better leave something to discover, or you will be bored before it happens." Then he turned to Colene. "You visited my reality?"
"We sure did," Colene replied, pleased. "I met Kublai, and Prima, and Keren. Keren and I, we really understand each other. And Ella." She fixed him with an irate gaze. "You won't be taking off her diaper any more once I get there, you damned horny man."
Darius looked abashed, but Nona did not fathom the reason. A diaper was for a baby, but Ella didn't sound like a baby. Then Colene laughed, and hugged him. Whatever it was, it was all right, or at least tolerable.
So it was that they passed the time, coming to know each other better, while Angus carried them west toward the head. After a while Colene settled down to business.
"I have the stuff on the rads," she told Nona. "But it's a bit tricky. Let me see if I can make it clear."
Colene concentrated, and a picture formed in Nona's mind. It was an outline of Oria. with its body, head, and rads. "What we want is R1/R2/R3 and so on up to /R9. Don't worry about what it's called; I figured it out by studying the newsletter the prof gave me in my reality. Rl is the Body, /R2 is the Head, and /R3 is here." On her mental picture the largest rad on the head glowed. "Then we climb onto /R3 and look for /R4 on it." The rad expanded in the image, until it filled the mental screen. The /R4 that now glowed on that was about halfway between the small head of /R3 and the large curve of the surface of /R2. "We'll keep getting farther around on each next rad," Colene said. "But we'll get there. The ninth rad on the eighth rad is going to be pretty small, though."
"Just so long as you know the way!" Nona said, thrilled at this confirmation that the girl's quest for information had been successful. It seemed so sensible now.
"Just so long as the despots don't
know the way," Colene said. "Because if they do, they'll stop us."
"But we must succeed, because Provos remembers that we do," Nona said.
"I'm not so sure of that. Provos remembers what's in her own reality, because that's where she'll return to settle. But she's just passing by this one, and maybe what she remembers is subject to change."
"But surely her memories of her own world are fixed, because she isn't there to change things," Nona protested, though she wasn't sure of her logic. "So the right things must happen here, so that she and her friends can go there."
"I see Colene's point," Darius said. "Provos, Slick, and Esta may indeed be guaranteed their arrival at her reality. But the rest of us are not destined for her reality, and so her memory offers us no guarantee. She may take them with her after we succeed here—or fail. Nona can pass just the three of them through the anchor, and the rest of us may be bound here, if the animus continues."
That made uncomfortable sense. There was indeed no guarantee for the success of her mission. Anything could happen—including death for several of them.
They crossed the sea that circled Oria between the Body and the Head and flew across the lesser mass of the Head. Nona remembered the story of Earle and Kara, flying similarly across the worlds. Would she herself someday be the stuff of a legend? Perhaps so, if she succeeded in bringing the anima.
Night came, as the ninety-eight-ray star disappeared behind the world. The myriad other stars now showed more clearly, large and small. It was beautiful, as it always was. Perhaps in the pristine early days of the world all of the patterns of glow had been visible all the time, but now much of it could be seen only in the dark.
Angus found an isolated place and came down to the surface. He was tired and needed to rest, and the rest of them needed food and sanitary relief. Nona took the leaf of a plant and transformed it into fruit. Seqiro accepted grain she made for him, then wandered away to graze, keeping in mind-touch. He was alert for other human beings, especially despots. The despots of this region would not be the same as those of Nona's region, but they surely had spread the word. No despot, anywhere on Oria, could be trusted to be other than an enemy.