When she looked back at Darryl, though, he was eyeing her a little strangely. “Listen, though,” he said. “I saw something the other day, just when I was waking up.”
“Lucid dreaming?” Nita said. It was one of a number of techniques that visionary wizards used to more clearly hear what the universe was trying to tell them.
“Not like that,” Darryl said. “I just get these hints, you know? Like something whispering in my ear. So far it’s turned out to be smart for me to pay attention. But I don’t think this hint was for me.”
“Why? Do you get ‘wrong numbers’?” Nita said. “I get them sometimes.”
Darryl shook his head. “First time,” he said.
Nita found that interesting, in an uncomfortable way. “What did you see?”
“Bugs,” Darryl said. “Giant bugs.”
Kit and Nita looked at each other. “Like him?” Nita said, nodding past S’reee. Over that way, Sker’ret and Filif were deep in discussion of something or other.
Darrell gazed over at Sker’ret for a moment. “No, not really. He’s a nice guy; you can feel it from here. These bugs—” He shivered. “I don’t know where they are, but running into them wouldn’t be fun. Our ‘old friend’ owns them, body and soul. They’re deadly. And I think if you hang around where they are, somebody’s going to get killed.”
“No problem,” Kit said. “If we see any giant bugs, we’ll give them a miss.”
Nita swallowed. “Now,” she said to Darryl, “you’re going to tell us a way to beat this, right?”
Darryl’s expression was stricken. “Don’t know for sure that there is one,” he said. “Like I said, it was just a hint. It felt like someone could have said more… and wasn’t saying.”
“Okay,” Nita said. “Thanks. We’ll keep our eyes open.”
She looked around again, out toward the center of the crater, where hundreds more wizards were milling around. “Ronan?” she said.
“Yeah,” Ronan said, and glanced over at Kit. “We should get started. Where’s your adjunct talent?”
Kit looked around, then ducked to look under S’reee. “Playing with rocks, as usual,” he said. “Hey, Ponch!”
Moondust flew up in a cloud as Ponch ran underneath S’reee to Kit. I’m here!
“Let’s go hunting.”
Oh boy!
“You going to be here later?” Kit said to Darryl.
“I’ll be one of the last ones out,” Darryl said. “Somebody has to clean up all the footprints when we’re done.”
Nita squeezed his shoulder. “Later,” she said, and went off to where Dairine and Roshaun were deep in conversation and, to judge by their expressions, having one more disagreement. As Nita bounced over, they looked up at her almost in relief.
“You heading out now?” she said.
“Yeah,” Dairine said. “Roshaun’s carrying his subsidized portal; we’ll use that. We’re going back to his place on Wellakh first.”
“All right,” Nita said. “Message me when you’re done there. But meantime, listen—”
“Yeah, I’ll be careful,” Dairine said. She turned away.
Nita took her sister gently by the arm, turned her back toward her. “Dair,” she said. “Giant bugs.”
“Huh?” Dairine turned to glance over at Sker’ret.
“Not cute bugs. Nasty ones,” Nita said. “Darryl says they’re bad news, and some of us are probably going to run into them. If you do, avoid them. Understand?”
Dairine gave her a dry look. “With all this extra power we’ve suddenly got, I think can handle it.”
Nita let out an annoyed breath and turned to Roshaun. “I’m not kidding,” she said. “Watch your backs, okay?”
“We will do nothing obviously foolhardy,” Roshaun said. “But under the circumstances, no situation any of us goes into is likely to lack its dangers.” He looked down at Nita from that regal height of his, an effect still somewhat altered by the big floppy T-shirt he hadn’t changed out of yet.
“Yeah,” Nita said. “I know.” She glanced at Dairine. “Take care of yourself.”
“You, too,” Dairine said. She hesitated, and then she came over and gave Nita a hug.
Nita hugged her back, then pushed her away, trying to make it look casual. S’reee was now talking to Filif and Sker’ret; Nita turned back to them. “What about you guys?”
“We’ll go with you and Kit and Ronan,” Sker’ret said.
“Great. Let’s move out…”
Kit stood just past the boundary of S’reee’s force field, having detached his own; inside it, beside him, Ponch was gazing upslope. At first Kit thought Ponch had seen someone coming, but then realized that it was the setting Earth that held his dog’s attention. Ponch was staring at the world the way he might watch a tree after he’d seen a squirrel go up it.
“What?” Kit said. “What’s the matter?”
It’s small, Ponch said. I never thought it was small before.
Kit nodded. “That’s the way the astronauts saw it,” he said. “Like a little thing. Fragile. I never thought the world was small until I saw it that way myself. It surprises everybody when they see their own world that way for the first time, all by itself in the dark.” Kit looked curiously at Ponch. “But you’ve been here before.”
I didn’t notice it then, Ponch said. Now I do.
He sounded concerned. “It’s okay,” Kit said. “It’s a point-of-view thing. You get used to it.”
I wonder if that’s wise…
Kit wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. He looked up and saw Ronan heading over to bump his own now-detached force field against Kit’s.
“You two ready?” Ronan said.
Kit nodded. Ronan stepped through the interface between their two force fields and went over to Ponch. “So, big fella,” Ronan said. “You ready for it?” He got down on one knee by Ponch. Kit hunkered down across from him.
Ponch sat down, his tail thumping. Show me what you want me to find.
Ronan and Ponch locked eyes.
Since the time that Ponch began to reveal his ability to find things—stepping between realities, even sometimes out of his own home universe to track them down—Kit had started trying to use the wizardly link between them to “overhear” what Ponch was seeing and hearing. It wasn’t always easy. Even a dog who had become much less doggy than usual—because of the frequent use of wizardry in his neighborhood—still sometimes had trouble explaining to Kit just what was going on with him. Now, as Ronan looked into Ponch’s eyes, Kit listened hard.
What flowed into Ponch’s mind—tentatively at first, and then with more assurance as the Winged Defender became clearer about how to communicate—affected Kit in two different ways at once. Half the message came through as a blinding, confusing series of images overlaying one another: light forms and dark ones, strange shapes that seemed to have too many sides, colors Kit couldn’t name. But the rest Kit experienced as Ponch was experiencing it—as scent. And this perception left Kit half dazzled, for Ponch’s sense of smell was endlessly more powerful and complex than any human’s, making Kit feel like a blind person who’s suddenly been given new eyes. The complex of scents was a strange mixture, and Kit could make nothing of it. Against a, unusually strong background of the unique dry gunpowder-smell of moondust, now Kit thought he smelled metal, flowers, strange green scents like those of growing things, a smell like dry cocoa and another one like old motor oil, those two aromas strongly overlaying many more.
Kit was aware that to Ponch, these scents weren’t evidence of concrete things but of conditions, thoughts, emotions. The acrid taste of fear, a distant smoky frustration and anger mingling with that fear, concealing itself within it. It’s not so much that he can smell emotions, Kit thought. From his point of view, emotions are scents. There was information of all kinds buried in the miasma of odors—particularly in one that got stronger by the moment. Kit was unnerved to realize that Ponch had classified this scent as being very like dried
blood. But blood on the surface of an old wound. Something that’s not over with yet. Something that’s waiting… Whatever was waiting sizzled behind it all like electricity: powerful, dangerous, yet also suppressed, muzzled—
Kit blinked himself back to the here and now: the powdery gray soil underfoot, the Earth setting over the rim of Spring Lake crater. He looked down at Ponch. Ponch had his head cocked to one side; he was whuffling at the air. Ronan sat back on his heels. “Can you track that?”
Ponch glanced up once more at the Earth hanging low by the crater’s rim. I can find what you’re looking for, he said, craning his neck back to look at Kit and Ronan. But we have to go closer to where it comes from, and get away from where there are so many people.
“How come you can’t just ‘walk’ us there?” Kit said.
Ponch stood up and shook himself. Because it’s a real place with life in it, he said, looking across at Kit. Finding a place that’s already there is different from just making one up. And it’s inside the same universe with us. There are a lot of other places that smell sort of the same way: I have to make sure I find the right one. Once we’re away from here—Ponch looked around and down at the wizards —I can do a lot better.
“Okay,” Kit said. He thought for a moment; then said to Ronan, “I have an idea.”
“Yeah?”
Let’s hear it, said the other version of Ronan’s voice, the one both older and edgier.
Ronan, Kit said silently, you said your ‘partner’ was going to be able to protect us from being overheard. Are you both sure?
“Yes,” and Yes, they said.
Okay. A custom worldgating from here would be pretty easy for You-Know-Who to trace. Let’s lay a false trail and go out through the Crossings. Some of the wizards here’ll be going that way. And if Ponch’s problem is that all the life here and on Earth is drowning out the scent, then Rirhath B will be a good place for him to try again. Their population’s a lot smaller.
“Makes sense,” Ronan said. He looked down at Ponch. “That suit you?”
Ponch was already wagging his tail. Blue food!!
Ronan looked at Kit, confused. “Am I missing something?”
Kit had to laugh. “Uh, he thinks that when we hit the Crossings he’s going to get a treat.”
Ronan nodded and stood up. “All right. Well, let me know when you’re ready.” He disengaged his force-field bubble from theirs, and headed off toward the center of the crater.
Nita came up behind Kit and bumped her bubble into his. As she slipped into his bubble, she glanced the way Kit was looking. “Got a problem?”
“I don’t know. Does Ronan seem kind of abrupt to you sometimes?”
Nita laughed silently. “More like always. But more now than before. Probably something to do with his passenger.”
“I guess so.”
“Look, we should think about where we’re going, and how. Dairine and Roshaun are heading off by themselves, so it looks like our group is you, me, Ponch, Ronan, Sker’ret, and Filif.”
“Okay. Did S’reee mention if anybody around here has a gate to the Crossings running already?”
“No,” Nita said. She reached into her otherspace pocket for her manual. “Let’s do a scan…”
“In a minute. Did you ask anyone else to meet us here?”
Nita looked surprised. “No.”
“Then who’s that?” Kit looked toward the center of the crater. One force-field bubble was moving toward them. As the bubble got closer, Kit could see that the occupants were two kids of maybe twelve or thirteen, a boy and a girl. The girl was wearing a dark off-the-shoulder top splashed with a bright tropical pattern over a miniskirt and leggings and ballet shoes, and had very long, straight, dark hair worn loose; the boy’s hair was cropped very short, and he was wearing something that at first glance looked like a suit—though as they got closer, Kit saw that it was actually one of those dark Far Eastern collarless jackets, worn somewhat incongruously over boot-cut denim. Both of the kids looked lean and perhaps a little small for their ages. They were Asian, delicately featured, handsome, though there was something a little fierce about both their faces.
They bumped their common bubble up against Kit’s. “Can we come in?” the girl said.
“Sure.”
Their bubble merged with Kit’s. “You’re the ones who did the Song of the Twelve, right?” the girl said. “Dai stihó!”
“Dai,” Nita and Kit both said. And Kit laughed, and said, “Well, maybe you both know who we are—”
“I’m Tran Liem Tuyet,” said the boy.
“I’m Tran Hung Nguyet,” said the girl.
“We’re a twychild,” they said together.
Then they both burst out laughing. “Sorry, bad habit!”
“Twin wizards!” Kit said. “Yeah, I guess you would hear each other think most of the time.”
“Constantly,” they both said.
“But twychilding is more than just being twins, isn’t it?” Nita said. “I read about it in the manual a while back. You guys bounce spells back and forth between you, right? And they get stronger.” And then Kit was surprised to see Nita blush. “Sorry, I don’t know which of your names it’s okay to use.”
“The last one’s like the Western first name,” said the girl. “Nguyet’s fine for me. But as for the spells, yeah, that’s how it goes. The output multiplies, sometimes even squares.”
Kit grinned. “You sure you aren’t breaking the laws of thermodynamics or something?”
Tuyet snickered. “Probably,” he said. “Nguyet breaks most things.”
Nguyet glared at him. “I do not!”
“Oh yeah? What about that lamp last week?”
“That was an accident!”
The ground under all their feet suddenly began to vibrate. Kit and Nita looked at each other in alarm. “Guys!” Kit said.
The ground’s shuddering stopped. The twins looked at each other. “Uh, sorry…”
“It’s him doing it,” Nguyet said. “He’s younger.”
“Oh, yeah, right, two minutes younger!” Tuyet laughed. “That makes me more powerful.”
“Are you two going out, or staying in?” Kit said.
“Staying in,” Tuyet said. “That’s what we wanted to check with you. We’re putting together a notification list in the manuals so that wizards who’re staying home can cover for the ones who’re going on the road when the trouble starts. S’reee told us you guys were probably going off-world, so we added you to the list. You going through the Crossings?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ve got a custom gate wizardry set out in the middle of the crater,” Nguyet said. “Been a lot of traffic through there in the past few hours, in both directions. You can never tell … it might confuse Somebody.” She grinned. When she did, that fierce look in Nguyet’s face got fiercer. Kit liked it: it made her otherwise extremely delicate, “porcelain” prettiness look more like the kind of porcelain that’s made into high-tech knives.
“I hope so,” Kit said.
Tuyet’s grin was even more feral than his sister’s. “We’ll keep an eye on things here,” he said. “Get out there and make It crazy.”
“That’s the plan,” Nita said. “Good luck, you two.”
The twychild waved and headed on out of the force field, making their way down toward S’reee. “That was interesting,” Kit said.
“Yeah,” Nita said. “Imagine how it must have been for them. Joint Ordeals. Never having to find someone to help you with a spell…” She shook her head.
“Having another wizard in your head with you all day, instead of by invitation?” Kit said. “A little too weird for me.”
“But if you’ve been used to it all your life,” Nita said, “even before you knew you were wizards, then maybe we’re the ones that would seem weird to them.” She tucked her manual away. “Never mind. Here come the others.”
The center of Spring Lake Crater was empty except for one thing: a large hemisph
erical force-field bubble. Inside it, laid out on the pockmarked, dusty gray surface, was a huge circle of blue light; and that outer circle was subdivided into about twenty smaller ones of various sizes. The diagram was a duplicate in pure wizardry of the more concrete and “mechanical” gating circles and pads of the worldgating facility at the Crossings. Everyone knew the drill, at this point, and one after another, Filif and Sker’ret and Nita and Ronan went out into the diagram and stood in the middle of one of the subsidiary circles. With Ponch bouncing along behind him, Kit made his way out to an unoccupied circle and stood in it.
“Everybody ready?” Sker’ret said. “I’ll do the master transport routine—”
He began to recite a long phrase in the Speech, rattling it off with the assurance of someone who’d done it many times before. As Sker’ret spoke, and that familiar silence of a listening universe began to build around them all, Kit gazed back the way they’d come for a last look at the near-full Earth, the edge of its globe just touching the edge of Spring Lake Crater. A thought came unbidden: What if this is the last time you see that?
He shook his head. Silly idea. We’ve been in bad places before and made it home, even when we thought we wouldn’t.
But there’s something about this time that’s different, the back of his mind said to him. Everything’s changing. The things you thought you could always depend on aren’t dependable anymore. Maybe it’s smarter not to take anything for granted now.
Kit swallowed as the glow of the working worldgating wizardry rose all around them like a burning mist, beginning to obscure the view.
See you later, he said silently to the fading Earth… and hoped very much, as they all vanished, that he would.
5: Target of Opportunity
Dairine stepped through the brief darkness of Roshaun’s portable worldgate into the huge, high-ceilinged, overdone space he called home, and waited for Roshaun to come out behind her. Sunlight poured through those tall crystalline “patio” doors off to the left, but it was a fainter color than it had been when she was here before. This light was a weary, dulling, late-afternoon orange that burned, but burned cool. In it, every bright surface in the room gleamed coppery, and the silver gilt of Roshaun’s long flowing hair briefly matched the red of Dairine’s as he came out of the worldgate.