Interim Errantry

  “So,” said Nita’s voice from behind him, “you took long enough to get here.”

  “Been waiting long?” Kit said as she came up beside him.

  Nita shook her head and took his elbow to guide him down and over to one spread of hexes, where a very large saurian and a single Tevaralti were waiting for them. It was Mamvish, of course, and beside her, golden-feathered, Hesh the Planetary of Tevaral.

  Sweat started popping out on Kit. “Am I in trouble?”

  “I think exactly the opposite,” Nita said. “Come on, stop freaking.”

  Hesh was standing there in typical Tevaralti dress, one of those net-like robes that let the feathers stick out through the netting. “This is he?” he said to Mamvish.

  “This is he,” Mamvish said.

  “Is it Christopher?”

  Kit swallowed. “Kit, actually.”

  Hesh erected his head-crest at Kit in what Kit knew was a gesture of congratulation. “We’ve been continuing to crunch the numbers,” he said, “and I thought it was only right to confirm to you before you left that whatever action it was you took, that action was what began the movement of those of my people who had elected to remain behind.”

  “I told a sibik a story,” Kit said.

  “Whatever the details were,” Hesh said, “that story spread. It spread the way data spreads from sibik to sibik. It spread through scent trails, it spread through contact, it spread through their symbiotic/empathic links. And as it spread among them, it spread along the sibiks’ links to their owners. Then it started spreading along our own links among families and clan-groups and nation-groups, making its way among those of us who until then hadn’t shared the perception that rescue wasn’t a violation of their single-mindedness. They were exposed to the concept, as if from within them, that what was happening was another way of being of one mind.”

  Kit stood there shaking as he started to understand. I was a vector, he thought. An infection, a way to spread a message. Or else the sibik was… or the one who was inside the sibik was. He rubbed his face, briefly overwhelmed. Or both of us together.

  “If that message had come to the uncertain ones any other way, from the outside, it wouldn’t have worked,” Hesh said. “But because it came this way, from their own pets, along our own symbiotic and empathic linkages—along a wholly trusted connection, from our oldest companions in this world and with unprecedented power—those of our people who had previously felt themselves held away from this rescue were now able to accept that it was meant for them too.” Hesh let out a long, shaking breath. “And now we can all be saved.”

  “I’m,” Kit said, and had to stop for a moment; he was reeling. “I’m really glad.”

  “We will, of course,” Hesh said, rather more drily, “need a writeup from you on exactly what happened, or what you think happened, on your side.”

  Kit laughed. Why wasn’t I expecting that? “Sure,” he said. “Would a couple of days from now be okay?”

  Hesh twitched his crest in agreement. “That’s soon enough, I would say.”

  “And in the meantime… Well, we know that Life usually finds a way,” Mamvish said, and grinned at Kit with all her teeth showing—not something you saw often, and always a good sign. “But sometimes it has help.”

  “That’s what wizards are for,” Hesh said. “You did that, and did us proud. Cousin, for all our people, all the Tevaralti across all our new homes: our thanks to you, now and forever. So go—and go very, very well.”

  Kit went away from that conversation very much in the mode of someone who is not going to be able, for a long time, to get his mind wrapped around the concept that he has just saved fifteen million lives. But it was them too, he kept thinking. It was Djam; it was Cheleb; it was Neets, and Ronan, and Dairine. It was Tom, and Carl, and everybody who put me in the place where I needed to be to make this difference. It was all of us. And most especially, it was Ponch.

  “Cut it out,” Nita said as they headed for their hexes.

  He looked at her in surprise. “What?”

  “I can just hear you trying to make it smaller, what you did. Stop it,” she said. “Just let it in. You did a huge thing. Maybe this was more… I don’t know: personal than some of the stuff we’ve done? Fine. And more in your face. Just leave it alone until you can cope with it.”

  “You are so smart,” Kit said softly.

  “Takes one to know one,” said Nita. “Come on!”

  Their hexes for the Crossings were called, and they headed over for them. There was no rush this time, no crush of wizards coming through behind them in haste. A lot of people had left already. Those who were leaving now weren’t in a rush. For the moment, for at least the next thirty-plus hours, the “weather report” for Thesba was relatively calm. Many more wizards had been added to the team tasked with keeping it from disintegrating; those others who were leaving, decommissioning gates or shutting down other services, could safely take their time.

  There was a multispecies sanitary facility nearby, and as they passed it Kit said, “Just two minutes…”

  “Should’ve gone before you left,” Nita said and snickered.

  Kit ducked into the facility, used it—because it made sense: sometimes it could be an awfully long walk to one in the Crossings—and then pulled out his phone one last time.

  WE’RE DONE HERE. LOTS TO TELL YOU, BUT I’M NOT GOING TO DO IT NOW. EVERYTHING’S GREAT. ON MY WAY HOME, SEE YOU SOON. ALSO: PLEASE TELL ME THAT THERE ARE SALTINES. AND TELL MAMA SHE’S GOING TO NEED TO BUY MORE KETCHUP.

  He hit “send” and hurried out to the hex rosette again. The information standard on one of the hexes was already running a countdown, and Nita was standing there, arms folded, looking a touch impatient. Kit trotted over to her and turned around inside the hex to look his last on Tevaral. Above them, through the building’s clear ceiling, Thesba burned pale in a bright noon sky as the herald-standard counted down the seconds till their gate went patent.

  Four: three: two: one…

  “Last one off the planet,” Nita said softly as they looked their last on Tevaral, “turn out the lights…”

  And the momentary darkness of gate transport fell over them, putting the lights out.

  ELEVEN

  Wednesday

  Some while later they were standing in line near the 400 hexes in the Crossings, waiting to catch one of the dedicated gate hexes back to Grand Central. There the local gating staff were waiting to process them through the locally anchored timeslide that would return Earth-based interveners who’d needed a timeslide to their departure time on February 2nd.

  …Or at least Kit was standing in line at the moment. He was holding Nita’s place, as she’d gone off to the various-kinds-of-ladies’ room.

  “Penny for them,” said the voice behind him.

  Kit turned and saw Tom there, in his winter jacket with a backpack over his shoulder. “Hi. …Uh, sorry, what?”

  “You’re looking thoughtful. Or maybe it’s just fatigue.” Tom yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Wouldn’t be just you. This has been a real slog.”

  “Maybe you’re just not used to going out on errantry like the rest of us,” Kit said with a grin.

  “Hey now,” Tom said, and gave him a mock-warning look. “…But seriously: I know that expression. What’s on your mind?”

  “Well,” Kit said. “I was talking to one of the Fourth…”

  “Or possibly more than one of them,” Tom said. “Difficult to tell, I imagine. How did that go?”

  “Like you suggested,” Kit said. “Weirdly.”

  “But something came of it.”

  “Maybe,” Kit said. “I’d be happier if I understood just what. Or how.”

  “Tell me about it,” Tom said with a sigh. “The story of all our lives…”

  But Kit took Tom at his word for the moment, and told him about his conversation with the Fourth. Tom listened to the details without reaction, and finally shook his head. “So?” he said at last.

/>   “So the question is… how did it know what it knew? This multidimensional thing they’ve got—does it mean they can see ahead in time somehow?”

  “More like ‘ahead in space’, actually,” Tom said. “If I understand it right. Which I may not.” He chewed his lip for a moment. “But the two get so tangled up. Time’s such an odd thing… So malleable, some ways, even though people tend to think of it as immutable. There are so many ways the natural universe twists it around. It’s easy to forget that every time we look up at the sky, we’re looking back in time. Eight minutes, for the Sun; hours, days, for the outer planets. Years, for the stars… hundreds of years, thousands. Time and our perceptions are always messing with each other. Add other universes to the mix, and our intersections with them, and things get even odder. Then add wizardry, and shake…” He shrugged. “Time’s arrow may be in flight, but when it gets sucked into a tornado, who knows where it’ll come down?”

  Kit blinked. “Want to mix a few more metaphors in there?”

  Tom grinned. “I’ll work on that. But you know, causality can be as much an illusion as time, in some situations. This might be one.”

  He moved forward with Kit as the line shuffled forward. “And whether you like it or not, you’re the star of the hour,” Tom said. “While they’ll be debating the actual mechanism for a while, it’s plain where and when the change started: where you were. The timeline of increased gate accesses, in particular, starts spiking soon after you returned little Besht’s pet the second time. Then the ripples start to spread.” He shrugged. “You can’t argue with the stats. So?”

  “I told it a story,” Kit said. “Or I told Ponch a story, and he passed it on.”

  “Must have been some story,” Tom said. “Care to share?”

  So Kit repeated it for him. Tom was quiet for a while, and then just said, “Interesting. Not so much a joke, though. A parable. Those tend to have a certain punch.”

  “Um,” Kit said, and considered that for a moment.. “Okay.”

  “And the other party wasn’t just your dog… not that you don’t know that… but an aspect of the One. Getting a bit theoretical—” Hands in the small of his back, Tom stretched. “It’s not like the One isn’t paying attention to all of us all the time. That’s what It’s there for, apparently. Or, if you need another take on it, that’s what we’re here for. To be given attention to. You, however… have a lot more of the attention of one of Its aspects than is possibly strictly usual. And every now and then, if the right set of circumstances come together in the right order and the right shape, if all the pieces of the puzzle snap together correctly… unusual results can occur. Extremely good results, you’d have to admit.”

  “Okay,” Kit said. He wasn’t sure he knew how he felt about any of this just yet. He shook his head. “It’s just that it was, I don’t know… Such a little thing.”

  Tom gave him a look. “There are no little things,” he said. “Only things whose full relevance hasn’t yet become plain. Give it time.” And he glanced at his watch. “Speaking of which—” He patted Kit on his shoulder. “They’re calling my gate. See you at home.”

  And he was off.

  And when Kit and Nita caught their own gate, maybe twenty minutes later, and got into Grand Central and the shielded end of Platform 23, they found that the reverse timeslide had already been implemented for them. It was ten minutes after their initial departure time from GCT.

  Kit stared at his watch. “This is so weird. It does not at all feel like it, but it’s Wednesday again.”

  “And you still have a test on Friday.”

  “I was hoping you would wait at least five minutes before reminding me of that,” Kit said. “Five minutes?! …But no.”

  “And I am completely shattered,” Nita said in horrified realization. “Why am I feeling it all now? I was fine five minutes ago…”

  “Five minutes ago,” Kit said, “tomorrow wasn’t a school day.”

  “Ow,” Nita said. “Revenge. You are so mean to me.”

  “You started it…”

  “No I didn’t.” She sighed. “Anyway, it’s timeslide backlash. We’ve had it before. Just not when we weren’t also completely wrecked by other things.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Kit said.

  “I am. As usual. …But you know what I really want before I crash?”

  “Tell me,” Kit said, as they walked around toward the protected transport area.

  “Pointlessly crunchy chocolate cereal with no nutritive value.”

  “Go for it. All I want is some saltines.”

  “Why did I know you were going to say that? Never mind. Let’s go.”

  Kit had almost forgotten how good it felt to be free to do a beam-me-up spell. Moments later they popped out in Nita’s favored landing spot out in the sassafras-shielded part of her back yard. Within a few minutes after that Nita was having her cereal in a house that was blessedly quiet, as her pop was at work and Dairine wasn’t back yet. Kit waited only long enough to see that she was sitting down, as he could tell she was fading already.

  “My folks are waiting,” Kit said. “I should go.”

  “Oh God,” Nita moaned, dropping her head onto the table beside the cereal bowl. “Tomorrow really is a school day. I hate this!”

  “Yeah,” Kit said. “Look, you really are wrecked. So am I.” He reached out and rubbed her arm. “See you tomorrow morning?”

  “Yeah.”

  Kit walked home and found his mama and pop standing in the kitchen, looking expectantly at the back door. Kit looked at them blearily. It’s so weird, he thought. It feels like I left them standing here a hundred years ago…

  “Twenty minutes,” his pop said. “You’re late.”

  “Give me a break! I walked over from Nita’s.”

  His pop smiled. “Ever the gentleman. How’re you feeling?”

  “Wrecked.” Because there still wasn’t a better word for it. “You got the texts?”

  “Yeah. Still reading them, actually…”

  His mama was looking at him curiously. “I don’t know, Juan,” she said, looking thoughtfully at Kit. “But it looks like someone’s filled out a bit. What’ve you been eating?”

  Kit thought it would probably be better not to get into the cheese-in-a-can too much. They were going to have enough to say about all the saltines. “Vegetables,” Kit said.

  His mama’s eyebrows went up, and she stepped forward and put the back of her hand against his forehead for a moment, then reached down to take Kit’s pulse.

  Kit laughed and pushed her away. “Mama!”

  “Just checking,” said his mother.

  Kit grinned, then yawned. It was all hitting him at once. “Gonna crash,” he said. “Make sure I don’t miss the alarm in the morning?”

  “I’ll make sure,” his mama said, and kissed him. “See you in the morning, sweetie.”

  Out she went, the door shutting behind her: moments later the car started and she was gone, off to work. Kit stood there wobbling slightly as he got his coat off and tossed it over one of the dining room chairs. “So,” his pop said, scrolling down through the texts, “world saved as planned?”

  “Not as planned,” Kit said. “Absolutely not. But saved? Yeah.”

  “Good,” Kit’s pop said, “because it’s hard to tell from some of these. This one has a lot to do with marshmallows.”

  “Oh.” Kit started laughing again. “Yeah, they were kind of a problem that night. Was that Friday? Saturday? I can’t remember.”

  “I don’t know,” his pop said, “it’s got all these JD numbers over it...”

  “I’ll give you a better timeline tomorrow,” Kit said. “There’s all this paperwork they’re going to make me do. They make you write it all up when you save the world…”

  “Such a nuisance,” Kit’s Popi said, and came over and gave him a hug. “Go on, get some sleep, you look like you need it.”

  “Yeah,” Kit said, able to summon up at least enough e
nergy to hug his pop back. Then he hauled himself up the stairs to his room.

  He paused in the doorway, looking at everything. As so often happened after spending a lot of time away in a new place, everything familiar also looked somehow small and strange. And the knitted-rag rug by the bed was still empty. Yet at the same time… not so empty: Ponch’s presence still made itself very much felt even though his physicality might be absent.

  Or not so absent, some places. Tentacles! “You goofy mutt,” Kit said. “What am I going to do with you?…”

  Kit shuffled in and stood for a moment looking at his desk with vague disgust—the math books and notebooks still scattered across it where he’d left them, a hundred years ago. Dammit, Kit thought, calculus still exists. But that was a problem for another day. And now I have to make my bed.

  He turned, prepared to throw the portal against his closet door and go in and fish his blanket out. But then he realized he was already staring at a bed all made up with blankets and sheets. I have the best mama in the world, he thought. Any world. Oh God I’m wrecked.

  He fell onto the bed face first, arms spread, reveling in the marvelous smell of sheets and pillowcases and blankets and in not having to move.

  “Better get some rest,” Carmela said from down the hall in her room, “because you have to start studying for your test again tomorrow.”

  “I hate you,” Kit said. “I completely forgot about calculus for almost a week. It was wonderful.”

  “It’s still there, though,” Carmela said from the hallway.

  “Yes. And so are you. Better if you didn’t remind me.”

  “Better if you were nicer to me,” Carmela said, sticking her head in the door, “or when I’m a wealthy cocoa smuggler I won’t buy you your own starship.”

  “Who needs a starship when we’ve got worldgates?” Kit said, not looking up. “The technology’s way inferior.”

  “Snobby,” Carmela said. “Starships are cool.” She trotted down the stairs.

  Kit turned his head. “Only if you can afford to pay the crew!” he shouted after her. But a moment later the back door banged shut.