“What we want,” said another of the Tawalf.
The rest of the crowd behind them started to join in that nasty snickering noise. Nita’s fingers clenched on the accelerator in anger.
“I dislike this necessity,” Sker’ret said. “But if psychotropic spelling is required to restore the Crossings to its normal function—”
“Sker’, let me,” Nita said. “I don’t like it, either, but maybe I have a way to—”
“Guys,” Carmela said. “Wait a sec.”
Nita and Sker’ret looked at her.
“You get more honey with flies,” Carmela said, and then paused. “Wait a minute, that’s not how it goes. Never mind. Here—”
She reached over her back into the little bag she was wearing, and felt around. The Tawalf watched her with some curiosity.
Then one of them, the one who had spoken first, made a strange sniffing noise—and so did its second-in-command. The two of them stared at Carmela with a sudden total concentration that made Nita raise the accelerator and get ready to fire.
Carmela withdrew something from her bag. It was thin and black, a long slim rectangle with a glint of gold at the ends. She held it up where all the Tawalf could see it.
“I have here,” she said in very clear and New York–accented Speech, “a new bar of Valrhona Caraïbe Single-Estate Grand Cru.”
Nita looked in astonishment from Carmela to the Tawalf. Their eyes, already prominent enough, actually started to bug out of their heads.
“Very aromatic,” Carmela said, waving the chocolate bar under her nose. “Long in the mouth… nice overflavors of candied orange and smoky vanilla. Maybe just a hint of cappuccino.” She waved it at them. “Sorry, guys, help me out here. I don’t know where your nose or whatever you smell with is. Are.”
The two foremost Tawalf each reached out a tentative, spindly magenta foreleg. Carmela waved the chocolate bar cautiously under each one.
The first Tawalf made a grab for it, but not quickly enough. Carmela had already snatched the bar back, and Nita had the accelerator trained on his head.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Carmela said. “Hasty hasty. This is yours, all yours… for a price.” She glanced sideways at Nita.
“Information,” Nita said. “You heard what we asked you.”
“Oh, they’re going to have to tell you a lot more than just what you asked them,” Carmela said, waving the chocolate gently under her nose and gazing thoughtfully at the Tawalf. “You’re going to answer all this nice Rirhait’s questions, aren’t you, boys? Or girls. Or whatever. And when you’ve done that, you can form yourselves a little syndicate, and I’ll give that syndicate free title to… this.”
She held up the chocolate bar.
Every single Tawalf stared at it. Nita and Sker’ret spared each other one sidewise glance.
“We can’t!” squeaked one of the Tawalf in the back.
“Our contracts!” moaned another.
“Oh, come on,” Carmela said. “Your ‘contracts’! Like you expect me to believe that somebody actually paid you this much to come in here and take this place over? I really doubt it.” She snickered. “If someone had given the whole bunch of you the value of even half of this, you’d be the highest-paid mercenaries the universe ever saw!” Carmela waved the chocolate bar in the Tawalf’s direction again.
They swayed toward it as if it had the gravitation of a micro–black hole. Nita raised the accelerator again. The Tawalf saw the look in her eye and swayed back. “But no one’s paid you anything like that much,” Carmela said. “So just think. You cooperate with my friends here, and I’m sure they’ll do what they can to see to it that the authorities here treat you fairly. And afterward, when you’ve paid your debt to society, or whatever your species pays its debts to, on the day they let you all go, they give you … this.”
There was a long, long silence.
Then the Tawalf leader said, “No.”
Nita and Sker’ret gave each other another glance at the sound of the scratchy muttering that started to go up from behind the leader.
“Oh, my,” Carmela said. “That’s too bad. Just think what you all could have had!” She glanced past the Tawalf leader to the others behind him. “But just because he got stubborn— Well. Now I’m just going to have to do… this.”
She moved the chocolate bar to her left hand, and very, very slowly, moved her right hand toward it. Carmela took hold of the outer black paper wrapper between finger and thumb. Ever so gently she started to pull on the paper, as if to unwrap it.
“No!” at least half the Tawalf screeched. And the second-in-command shouted, “You’ll ruin it!”
“Right here in front of you,” Carmela said. “While you watch. And with the greatest possible pleasure.” She smiled ever so sweetly. “I’m going to pull the wrapping off, and shred it. I’m going to rip off the foil and crumple it up into a little ball. And then I’m going to take the unspeakably valuable stuff inside … and I am going to break it up into those nice little squares… and I am going to eat… it… all.”
The leader of the Tawalf began to whimper. His second-in-command exchanged meaningful glances with the others.
“The information,” Carmela said.
The noise level among the Tawalf began to increase.
“You can have a moment to think,” Carmela said, and turned away. Nita and Sker’ret stayed as they were, facing the increasingly shaken Tawalf, though Sker’ret turned a few of his eyes toward Carmela.
“And without even laying a finger on them,” Nita said under her breath. “I’m impressed.”
“Yeah, well, it’s just the usual problem with aliens and chocolate,” Carmela said, very amused. “Is it a collectible, or a controlled substance? Or both? And whichever way the species sees it, it’s always worth a lot more in the original packaging.”
“This is cruel,” Sker’ret said. His tone, like Nita’s, was one of reluctant admiration. “I’m not sure you’re not speeding up entropy somewhat.”
“I’d say they had it coming,” Carmela said, “since they seem to have done a fair amount of speeding it up around here themselves.”
The muttering among the Tawalf got louder. Nita, watching the leader and his second-in-command as their subordinates pressed in around them, got the idea that greed, fear, and peer pressure were operating among the aliens in entirely too human a manner. Finally, the noise began to die down a little. Nita glanced at Sker’ret. “Well?” Sker’ret said.
The Tawalf leader’s voice, when he spoke, was surprisingly small. “All right,” he said. “We’ll tell you what you want to know. If we have your word as wizards that you will comply with the agreement as it’s been presented.”
“Oh, yeah, all of a sudden the nicey-niceness of wizards becomes a good thing,” Nita said, though not so far under her breath that she couldn’t be heard.
The look that Sker’ret flashed her was equally ironic, but they were of the same mind. “In the Powers’ names, and the Name of That which They serve,” Sker’ret said, “and as the Crossings’ legal representative present, I give my word.”
Carmela carefully handed Sker’ret the chocolate bar. “Don’t crease the paper!” she said, as he delicately took it in a forward handling-claw. “So. All you guys behave now,” she said to the Tawalf. “If you don’t, I’ll hear about it, and I’ll refuse to relinquish title.”
There was a lot of broken-spirited muttering from the Tawalf. “I’m going to transfer you to a secure holding facility,” Sker’ret said, moving over to the nearest gate-cluster standard and tapping at it so that it extruded its own control console. “We’ll be along to see that you have nourishment shortly, and to start your questioning. Everyone into the zone, please.”
A pad came alive, glowing red. The Tawalf spidered their way onto it and huddled there. A moment later they vanished.
Nita and Sker’ret looked at each other. Nita let out a long breath. She could hear the tiny multiple hiss as Sker’ret pushed a sigh out
of the little spiracles all down the length of his body.
“You should get on home to do what you need to,” he said. “I’ll pop a gate open for you now.”
Nita looked around her, concerned. “Are you going to be able to manage here?”
“I’ll call the planetary authorities,” Sker’ret said. “They’ll send me plenty of staff until I can get the systems back up again, and get a clearer sense of what happened here. The logs should help me figure it out. And assuming that my ancestor is all right—”
He fell silent.
“I’m sure he is,” Nita said. “He’s too mean to—” She stopped herself. “I mean—”
“I know,” Sker’ret said, amused. “Go find out where your own ancestor is. I’ll meet you here afterward, and we can go back together.”
“Yeah,” Nita said.
She turned to Carmela. “One thing before I go,” Nita said. “Are your pop and mom okay?”
“They’re just fine,” Carmela said.
“Do they know you’ve left?”
“Sure. I left them a note on the fridge, the way Kit does.”
Nita was uncertain what the Rodriguezes’ response to that was going to be, but right now she had other concerns. “Look, I don’t think I’m going to have to be gone long. Are you sure you’re going to be okay here?”
“Haven’t I been okay so far?” Carmela said.
Even in her present stressed-out condition, Nita had to grin. “Just possibly you have,” she said. “Keep an eye on him, okay? Help him out however you can.”
“Now you know I live to do just that,” Carmela said.
“Got a gate for you,” Sker’ret said, training one eye on Nita while another one gazed at the red-lit hexagon of one of the pads in the nearest cluster. “There’s that spot out at the far end of your backyard that’s seen a lot of traffic—”
“Perfect,” Nita said. She headed for the pad.
“Better lose the accelerator,” Sker’ret said. “If anybody in your neighborhood’s sensitive enough to see the wizardry, they might talk.”
Nita nodded, tossed the accelerator up into the air, snapped her fingers at it; the spell resolved itself into its component words in the Speech, a long tangled drift of words and symbols that hung wavering in the air like glowing weeds in water. Nita snagged the spell, wrapped it back around the charm on her charm bracelet that usually held it, and made sure it had sunk into the charm’s matrix again before she stepped across the boundary line into the gating hex. “Go,” she said. “I’ll be back soon.”
Sker’ret hit a control on his console, and Nita vanished.
11: Acceptable Losses
The cave in the outcropping on Rashah had become a busy place. The fifth of seven Yaldiv-shaped mochteroofs stood on the floor on its delicate walking-legs, at the center of a circle of bright floating wizard-lights. All the mochteroofs’ underlying spell structures were exposed, a wire-frame of wizardry. Filif was looking it over, checking all the fine details to make sure everything was in place. The other four mochteroofs stood complete—images of giant bugs all still and shining, each one waiting for a wizard to step into it and bring it to life. Off to one side of the circle of lights, Dairine and Kit and Roshaun and Ronan and Ponch sat or sprawled on blankets or pads from the pup tents, waiting for Filif to finish.
“Each one of these is going to have to be a little different,” Filif said, drifting around the mochteroof and poking the occasional frond into it here and there to test its disguise routines. “After all, if we all looked exactly identical, that could provoke as much attention as all of us just walking around in our own shapes.”
Dairine smiled. Filif was fussing, and typically for him, he seemed not to have noticed that no one was paying much attention. But Dairine didn’t think he minded. Also typically of him, he had understood about the Hesper more quickly than any of them, even Ronan. Ronan was having problems, and Dairine was getting increasingly tempted to kick him, except that it wouldn’t have helped.
Then again, maybe it’s not just Ronan, she thought. His invisible friend may have reason to feel odd about all this, too…
“Fil?” Dairine said. “How much longer, do you think?”
“Perhaps twenty minutes,” Filif said, poking another frond into the mochteroof. “Planet dusk is coming. When it does, we’ll be ready for it.”
“‘Enthusiasmic,’” Ronan said, shaking his head. “You sure it didn’t say ‘enthusiastic’?”
Dairine glanced over at Spot. Spot grew some legs and toddled over to where Ronan sat cross-legged with the Spear across his lap. The mobile flipped his screen open and showed Ronan the word that had appeared under the surface of the mobiles’ world.
“See,” Dairine said. “It’s got the root word for a spirit, not just a mortal soul but one that’s a lot more powerful. One that can confer immortality on its vessel, once it gets properly seated.” She shook her head. “And ‘incorporation,’ over there—it doesn’t have anything to do with industry. There’s the ‘ensoulment’ root, but with that procedural suffix. It’s not something that’s finished with; it’s an ongoing process.”
“One that could get derailed,” Kit said.
“We’d better hope not,” said Spot.
“But think of it,” Roshaun said. “A new Power, never seen before. Not just a redeemed version of the Isolate, but something truly new. A version of the Lone Power that never fell.”
He crumpled up the wrapper of the fifth or sixth of Dairine’s trail-mix bars, and tossed it away. Dairine smiled half a smile. He had been eating more or less constantly since they got here: first a lot of his own food, and then (without having asked permission) one after another of Dairine’s trail-mix bars. She was putting up with it because he seemed distracted, but also because she had used this opportunity to push off on him a lot of the bars that contained dried cranberries, which she hated.
“This moment has been a very long time coming,” said the Champion after a few moments. “If the embodiment survives long enough to come to Its full power, then the universe is truly changed.”
“If it does,” Kit said. “But no wonder the Pullulus is happening now. If It knows about this, the Lone Power must be completely freaked. A completely new Power is coming into the game. One that’s going to be the Lone One’s very own dedicated enemy…”
Ponch lifted his head, and his tail banged against the floor. I told you I smelled something brand-new! he said. That’s part of what I was following.
If It knows, the Champion said. Great efforts have been made to keep It from discovering all the details. Or any of the other Powers, for that matter. If, as seems to be the case, the efforts to keep the secret have been successful … then our job is to make sure that the ensoulment goes through without a hitch.
“All we have to do now is find out who’s going to be the Hesper,” Kit said. “Get to it, and find out what we have to do to help it.”
“Probably get it past being physical, and out the other side,” Dairine said. “The soul inside the Yaldiv body might belong to a new Power, but all its strength’s going to be trapped inside, useless, until it gets clear about who and what it is. It’s got to make the connection to the part of it that lives where the other real Powers do, outside of time. And there’s no telling what that’s going to look like.”
“Probably like a bomb going off,” Kit muttered, and threw Ronan a slightly amused look. The area on the mobiles’ world where the Champion had exited its former, merely physical form had looked like a war zone afterward. “This neighborhood may not be the safest place to be.”
“Who cares?” Dairine said. “It’s what we’ve got to do!”
Ronan nodded. “But the odd thing,” he said, “is that this seems such an unlikely place for this to happen. I mean, a major power for good turns up incarnated in somebody from this species? They’re all supposed to be aresh-hav, all ‘lost.’”
“Then this is the very best place for that Power to do it,” K
it said.
Dairine’s eyebrows went up. All the others, except for Filif, busy with the sixth mochteroof, looked at Kit.
He looked a little abashed by all the sudden attention. “Well, think about it,” he said. “If the Lone Power thinks that it owns this planet and everyone on it, thinks It has a foothold in every living soul—”
Roshaun’s eyes were suddenly alight; Dairine suspected his thoughts had been trending in the same direction. “Then It will be far less suspicious of what happens here,” Roshaun said. “It will perhaps hardly be suspicious at all. And more—” He reached into one of the pockets of those baggy trousers of his and came up with a lollipop. Dairine rolled her eyes. “What if the Isolate has had some whisper of news that this event was about to happen somewhere in our space-time?”
Crunch! went the lollipop. Dairine winced. “And not Itself being sure of the location, the Isolate would desire above everything that no one else, most especially wizards, should find out where the Hesper’s embodiment was to happen. If they did, they might be able to help it.” His expression went grimly amused.
“So It creates this big distraction,” Kit said.
“This diversionary tactic,” Roshaun said. He waved the shattered lollipop on its stick in a little circle that indicated their whole home universe being pushed apart by the dark matter of the Pullulus. “So that no wizard has time to waste following up any rumors that they might hear.”
“And the Lone Power’s looking all over the place for the Hesper,” Kit said. He was starting to grin. “But It doesn’t know that Its plan’s already backfired. The Hesper’s about to manifest right under Its nose.”
“In one of the places It thinks It doesn’t have to worry about,” Dairine said. And she grinned. “You think the Powers That Be read Sherlock Holmes?”
To hide something in such plain sight, the Champion said, and Dairine was oddly excited by the amusement in its voice as Ronan looked over at her. The One is such a gambler.