"That side," Nita said, pointing south, where the building was wider. They headed toward the railing together, crunching across the gravel. Fred perched on Nita's shoulder; she looked at him with affection. (Worried?)
(No. But you are.)
(A little. That sound shook me up.) She paused again, wondering if she heard something behind her. She turned. Nothing; the roof was bare. But still ... Nita turned back and hurried to catch up with Kit, who was looking back at her.
"Something?"
"I don't know. I doubt it. You know how you see things out of the corner of your eye, movements that aren't there? I thought maybe the door moved a little."
"I don't know about you," Kit said, "but I'm not going to turn my back on anything while I'm up here. Fred, keep your eyes open." Kit paused by the railing, examining the ledge below it, maybe six feet wide, then looked up again. (On second thought, do you have eyes?)
(I don't know,) Fred said, confused but courteous as always. (Do you have chelicerae?)
"Good question," Nita said, a touch nervously. "Kit, let's do this and get out of here."
He nodded, unslung his pack, and laid the aspirin, pinecone, and fork on the gravel by the railing. Nita got out the rowan wand and dropped it with the other materials, while Kit went through his book again, stopping at another marked spot. "Okay," he said after a moment. "This is an imaging-and-patency spell for a temporospatial claudication, asdekh class. Purpose: retrieval of an accidentally internalized object, matter-energy quotient..." Kit read a long string of syllables, a description of Nita's pen in the Speech, followed by another symbol group that meant Fred and described the properties of the little personal worldgate that kept his great mass at a great distance.
Nita held her breath, waiting for another onslaught of uncanny feelings, but none ensued. When Kit stopped reading - and the spell turned her loose, it was almost a surprise to see, hanging there in the air, the thing they had been looking for. Puckered, roughly oblong, vaguely radiant, an eight-foot scar on the sky; the worldgate, about a hundred feet out from the edge where they stood and maybe thirty feet below the heliport level.
"Well," Kit said then, sounding very pleased with himself. "There we are. And it looks all right, not much different from the description in the book."
"Now all we have to do is get to it." Nita picked up the rowan wand, which for the second part of the spell would serve as a key to get the pen through the worldgate and out of Fred. She tucked the wand into her belt, leaned on the railing, and looked out at the air.
According to the wizards' manual, air, like the other elements, had a memory and could be convinced in the Speech to revert to something it had been before. It was this memory of being locked in stone as oxides or nitrates, or frozen solid in the deeps of space, that made the air harden briefly for the shielding spell. Nita started that spell in its simplest form and then went on into a more formal one, as much a reminiscence as a convincing—she talked to the air about the old days when starlight wouldn't twinkle because there was nothing to make it do so, and when every shadow was sharp as a razor, and distances didn't look distant because there was no air to soften them. The immobility came down around her as the spell began to say itself along with Nita, matching her cadence. She kept her eyes closed, not looking, for fear something that should be happening might not be. Slowly with her words she began to shape the hardening air into an oblong, pushing it out through the other, thinner air she wasn't including in the spell. It's working better than usual, faster, she thought. Maybe it's all the smog here—this air's half-solid already. She kept talking.
Kit whispered something, but she couldn't make out what and didn't want to try. "I know it's a strain, being solid these days," she whispered in the Speech, "but just for a little while. Just to. make a walkway out to that puckered place in the sky, then you can relax. Nothing too thick, just strong enough to walk on—"
"Nita. Nita!"
The sound of her name in the Speech caught her attention. She opened her eyes. Arrow-straight, sloping down from the lower curb of the railing between her and Kit, the air had gone hard. There was dirt and smog trapped in it, making the sudden walkway more translucent than transparent—but there was no mistaking it for anything but air. It had a more delicate, fragile look than any glass ever could, no matter how thin. The walkway ran smooth and even all the way out to the worldgate, widening beneath it into room enough for two to stand.
"Wow!" Nita said, sagging against the railing and rubbing at her eyes as she let the spell go. She was tired; the spelling was a strain—and that feeling of nervousness left over from the loud noise outside the stairwell came back. She glanced over her shoulder again, wondering just what she was looking for.
Kit peered over the railing at the walkway. "This better be some pen," he said, and turned his back to the worldgate, watching the roof. "Go ahead."
Nita made sure her backpack was slung properly, checked the rowan wand again, and slowly swung over the guardrail, balancing on the stone in which it was rooted. She was shaking, and her hands were wet. If I don't just do this, she thought, I never will. Just one step down, Callahan, and then a nice solid walkway straight across. Really. Believe. Believe. Ouch!
The air was so transparent that she misjudged the distance down to it—her foot hit before she thought it would, and the jolt went right up her spine. Still holding the railing, Nita lifted that foot a bit, then stomped down hard on the walkway. It was no different from stomping on a sidewalk. She let her weight down on that foot, brought the second down, and stomped with that, too. It was solid.
"Like rock, Kit!" she said, looking up at him, still holding the rail. "C'mon!"
"Sure," Kit said, skeptical. "Let go of the rail first."
Nita made a face at Kit and let go. She held both arms out at first, as she might have on a balance beam in gym, and then waved them experimentally. "See? It works. Fred?"
Fred bobbed down beside her, looking with interest at the hardened air of the walkway. (And it will stay this way?)
(Until I turn it loose. Well?) She took a step backward, farther onto the walkway, and looked up challengingly. "How about it?"
Kit said nothing, just slung his own backpack over his shoulders and swung over the railing as Nita had done, coming down cautiously on the hardened air. He held on to the rail for a moment while conducting his own tests of the air's solidity. "Come on," Nita said. "The wind's not too bad."
"Lead the way."
Nita turned around, still holding her arms a little away from her to be sure of her balance, and started for the worldgate as quickly as she dared, with Fred pacing her cheerfully to the left. Eight or ten steps more and it was becoming almost easy. She even glanced down toward the walkway—and there she stopped very suddenly, her stomach turning right over in her at the sight of the dirty, graveled roof of Grand Central, a long, long, long fall below. "Don't look down," a memory said to her in Machu Picchu's scratchy voice. She swallowed, shaking all over, wishing she had remembered the advice earlier.
"Nita, what's the—"
Something went whack! into the walkway. Nita jumped, lost her balance, and staggered back into Kit. For a few awful seconds they teetered back and forth in wind that gusted suddenly, pushing them toward the edge together—and then Kit sat down hard on the walkway, and Nita half fell on top of him, and they held very still for a few gasps.
"Wh-what—
"I think it was a pigeon," Nita said, not caring whether Kit heard the tremulousness of her voice. "You okay?"
"Sure," Kit said, just as shakily. "I try to have a heart attack every day whether I need one or not. Get off my knee, huh?"
They picked each other up and headed for the gate again. (Even you have trouble with gravity,) Fred said wonderingly as he paced them. (I'm glad I left my mass elsewhere.)
(So are we,) Nita said. She hurried the last twenty steps or so to the widened place at the end of the walkway, with Kit following close.
She knelt
down in a hurry, to make sure the wind wouldn't push her over again, and looked up at the worldgate. Seen this close it was about four feet by eight, the shape of a tear in a piece of cloth. It shone with a palely glowing, shifting, soap-bubble iridescence. Finally, finally, my pen! she thought—but somehow the thought didn't make Nita as happy as it should have. The uneasy feeling that had started in the stairwell was still growing. She glanced over her shoulder at Kit. He was kneeling too, with his back to her, watching the walkway and the rooftop intently. Beside her, Fred hung quietly waiting.
(Now what?) he asked.
Nita sighed, pulled the rowan rod out of her belt, and inserted one end of it delicately into the shimmering veil that was the surface of the worldgate. Though the city skyline could be seen very clearly through the shimmer, the inch or so of the wand that went through it appeared to vanish. (Just perch yourself on the free end here,) Nita said, holding the wand by its middle. (Make contact with it the same way you did with those keys. Okay?)
(Simple enough.) Fred floated to the end of the rod and lit there, a bright, still spark. (All right, I'm ready.)
Nita nodded. "This is a retrieval," she said in the Speech. "Involvement confined to a pen with the following characteristics: m'sedh-zayin six point three—"
(Nita!)
The note of pure terror in Kit's mind-voice caused Nita to do the unforgivable-break off in the middle of a spell and look over her shoulder. Shapes were pouring out of the little glass shelter building, which had been empty, and was still somehow empty even as Nita looked. She got a first impression of grizzled coats, red tongues that lolled and slavered, fangs that gleamed in the sunlight, and she thought, Wolves!
But their eyes changed her mind as ten or twelve of the creatures loped across the roof toward the transparent walkway, giving tongue in an awful mindless cacophony of snarls and barks and shuddering howls. The eyes. People's eyes, blue, brown, green, but with almost all the intelligence gone out of them, nothing left but a hot deadly cunning and an awful desire for the taste of blood. From her reading in the wizards' manual, she knew what they were: perytons. Wolves would have been preferable—wolves were sociable creatures. These had been people once, people so used to hating that at the end of life they'd found a way to keep doing it, by hunting the souls of others through their nightmares. And once a peryton caught you...
Nita started to hitch backward in total panic and then froze, realizing that there was nowhere to go. She and Kit were trapped. Another second and the perytons would be on the bridge, and at their throats, for eternity. Kit whipped his head around toward Nita and the worldgate. "Jump through and break the spell!" he yelled.
"But—" And she grabbed his arm, pushed the rowan wand through her belt, and yelled, "Come on, Fred!" The first three perytons leaped the guardrail and landed on the bridge, running. Nita threw herself and Kit at the worldgate, being careful of the edges, as she knew she must, while screaming in absolute terror the word that would dissolve the walkway proper.
For a fraction of a second she caught the sound of screams other than her own, howls of creatures unseen but falling. Then the shimmer broke against her face like water, shutting out sound, and light, and finally thought. Blinded, deafened, and alone, she fell forever....
Exocontinual Protocols
SHE LAY WITH HER face pressed against the cold harsh gravel, feeling the grit of it against her cheek, the hot tears as they leaked between her lashes, and that awful chill wind that wouldn't stop tugging at her clothes. Very slowly Nita opened her eyes, blinked, and gradually realized that the problem with the place where she lay was not her blurred vision. It was just very dim there. She leaned on her, skinned hands, pushed herself up, and looked to see where she was.
Dark gray gravel was all around. Farther off, something smooth and dark, with navy blue bumps. The helipad. Farther still, the railing, and beyond it the sky, dark. That was odd—it had been morning. The sound of a moan made Nita turn her head. Kit was close by, lying on his side with his hands over his face. Sitting on his shoulder, looking faint as a spark about to go out, was Fred.
Nita sat up straighter, even though it made her head spin. She had fallen a long way; she didn't want to remember how far.... "Kit," she whispered. "You okay? Fred?"
Kit turned over, pushed himself up on his hands to a sitting position, and groaned again. Fred clung to him. "I don't think I busted anything," Kit said, slow and uncertain. "I hurt all over. Fred, what about you?"
(The Sun is gone,) Fred said, sounding absolutely horrified.
Kit looked out across the helipad into the darkness and rubbed his eyes. "Me and my bright ideas. What have I got us into?"
"As much my bright idea as yours," Nita said. "If it weren't for me, we wouldn't have been out by that worldgate in the first place. Anyway, Kit, where else could we have gone? Those perytons—"
Kit shuddered. "Don't even talk about them. I'd sooner be here than have them get me." He got to his knees, then stood up, swaying for a moment. "Oooh. C'mon, let's see where the worldgate went."
He headed off across the gravel. Nita got up on her knees too, then caught sight of a bit of glitter lying a few feet away and grabbed at it happily. Her pen, none the worse for wear. She clipped it securely to the pocket of her shirt and went after Kit and Fred.
Kit was heading for the south-facing railing. "I guess since you only called for a retrieval, the gate dumped us back on top of the..."
His voice trailed off suddenly as he reached the railing. Nita came up beside him and saw why.
The city was changed. A shiver ran all through Nita, like the odd feeling that comes with an attack of déjà vu—but this was true memory, not the illusion of it. She recognized the place from her first spell with Kit—the lowering, sullen-feeling gloom, the shadowed island held prisoner between its dark, icy rivers. Frowning buildings hunched themselves against the oppressive, slaty sky. Traffic moved, but very little of it, and it did so in the dark. Few headlights or taillights showed anywhere. The usual bright stream of cars and trucks and buses was here only dimly seen motion and a faint sound of snarling engines. And the sky! It wasn't clouded over; it wasn't night. It was empty. Just a featureless grayness, hanging too low, like a ceiling. Simply by looking at it Nita knew that Fred was right. There was no Sun behind it, and there were no stars—only this wall of gloom, shutting them in, imprisoning them with the presence Nita remembered from the spell, that she could feel faintly even now. It wasn't aware of her, but ... She pushed back away from the rail, remembering the rowan's words. (The Other. The Witherer, the Kindler of Wildfires—)
"Kit," she said, whispering, this time doing it to keep from perhaps being overheard by that. "I think we better get out of here."
He backed away from the rail too, a step at a time. "Well," he said, very low, "now we know what your pen was doing in New York City..."
"The sooner it's out of here, the happier I'll be. Kit—where did the worldgate go?"
He shook his head, came back to stand beside her. "Wherever it went, it's not out there now."
Nita let out an unhappy breath. "Why should it be? Everything else is changed." She looked back at the helipad. The stairwell was still there, but its door had been ripped away and lay buckled on the gravel. The helipad itself had no design painted on it for a helicopter to center on when landing. The glass of the small building by the pad was smashed in some places and filmed all around; the building was full of rubble and trash, a ruin. "Where are we?" Nita said.
"The place we saw in the spell. Manhattan—"
"But different." Nita chewed her lip nervously. "Is this an alternate world, maybe? The next universe over? The worldgate was just set for a retrieval, but we jumped through; maybe we messed up its workings. Carl said this one was easy to mess up."
"I wonder how much trouble you get in for busting a worldgate," Kit muttered.
"I think we're in enough trouble right now. We have to find the thing."
(See if you can find m
e the Sun and the stars and the rest of the Universe while you're at it,) Fred said. He sounded truly miserable, much worse than when he had swallowed the pen. (I don't know how long I can bear this silence.)
Kit stood silent for a moment, staring out at that grim cold cityscape. "There is a spell we can use to find it that doesn't need anything but words," he said. "Good thing. We don't have much in the way of supplies. We'll need your help, though, Fred. Your claudication was connected to the worldgate's when we went through. You can be used to trace it."
(Anything to get us out of this place,) Fred said.
"Well," Nita said, "let's find a place to get set up."
The faint rattling noise of helicopter rotors interrupted her. She looked westward along the long axis of the roof, toward the dark half-hidden blot that was Central Park, or another version of it.
A small flying shape came wheeling around the corner of a skyscraper a few blocks away and cruised steadily toward the roof where they stood, the sharp chatter of its blades ricocheting more and more loudly off the blank dark faces of neighboring skyscrapers. "We better get under cover," Kit said. Nita started for the stairwell, and Kit headed after her, but a bit more slowly. He kept throwing glances over his shoulder at the approaching chopper, both worried by it and interested in it. Nita looked over her shoulder too, to tell him to hurry—and then realized how close the chopper was, how fast it was coming. A standard two-seat helicopter, wiry skeleton, glass bubble protecting the seats, oval doors on each side. But the bubble's glass was filmed over except for the doors, which glittered oddly. They had a faceted look. No pilot could see out of that, Nita thought, confused. And the skids, the landing skids are wrong somehow. The helicopter came sweeping over their heads, low, too low.
"KIT!" Nita yelled. She spun around and tackled him, knocking him flat, as the skids made a lightning jab at the place where he had been a moment before, and hit the gravel with a screech of metal. The helicopter soared on past them, refolding its skids, not yet able to slow down from the speed of its first attack. The thunderous rattling of its rotors mixed with another sound, a high frustrated shriek like that of a predator that has missed its kill—and almost immediately they heard something else too, an even higher pitched squealing, ratchety and metallic, produced by several sources and seeming to come from inside the ruined glass shelter.