(Is that it? Can we get out now? Before that what's-its-name—)
The what's-its-name shook itself with a ripple of rage and hunger that Kit and Nita could feel even at a distance. It headed toward them again, quickly, done with playing with them.
(Uh-oh!) Kit said. (Let's get outta here!)
(What do we—)
(What in the—) said a voice that neither of them recognized.
(Out!) Kit said, and hooked the spell into the added power that the newcomer provided, and pulled....
...Plain pale daylight came down around them, heavy as a collapsed tent. Gravity yanked at them. Kit fell over sideways and lay there panting on the ground like someone who's run a race. Nita sagged, covered her face, bent over double right down to the ground, struggling for breath.
Eventually she began to recover, but she put off moving or opening her eyes. The book had warned that spelling had its prices, and one of them was the physical exhaustion that goes along with any large, mostly mental work of creation. Nita felt as if she had just been through about a hundred English tests with essay questions, one after another. "Kit?" she said, worried by his silence.
"Nnngggg," Kit said, and rolled over into a sort of crouch, holding his head in his hands. "Ooooh. Turn off the Sun."
"It's not that bad," Nita said, opening her eyes. Then she winced and shut them in a hurry. It was.
"How long've we been here?" Kit muttered. "The Sun shouldn't be showing here yet."
"It's—" Nita said. She opened her eyes again to check her watch and was distracted by a bright light to her right that was entirely too low to be the Sun. She squinted at it and then forgot what she had started to say.
Hanging in midair about three feet away from her, inside the circle, was a spark of eye-searing white fire. It looked no bigger than a pinhead, but it was brilliant all out of proportion to its size, and was giving off light about as bright as that of a two-hundred-watt bulb without a shade. The light bobbed gently in midair, up and down, looking like a will-o'-the-wisp plugged into too powerful a current and about to blow out. Nita sat there with her mouth open and stared.
The bright point dimmed slightly, appeared to describe a small tight circle so that it could take in Kit, the drawn circle, trees and leaves and sky; then it came to rest again, staring back at Nita. Though she couldn't catch what Kit was feeling, now that the spell was over, she could feel the light's emotions quite clearly—amazement, growing swiftly into unbelieving pleasure. Suddenly it blazed up white-hot again.
(Dear Artificer,) it said in bemused delight, (I've blown my quanta and gone to the Good Place!)
Nita sat there in silence for a moment, thinking a great many things at once. Uhh, ... she thought. And, So I wanted to be a wizard, huh? Serves me right. Something falls into my world and thinks it's gone to Heaven. Boy, is it gonna get a shock. And, What in the world is it, anyway?
"Kit," Nita said. "Excuse me a moment," she added, nodding with abrupt courtesy at the light source. "Kit." She turned slightly and reached down to shake him by the shoulder. "Kit. C'mon, get up. We have company."
"Mmmp?" Kit said, scrubbing at his eyes and starting to straighten up. "Oh no, the binding didn't blow, did it?"
"Nope. It's the extra power you called in. I think it came back with us."
"Well, it—oh," Kit said, as he finally managed to focus on the sedately hovering brightness. "Oh. It's—uh..."
"Right," Nita said. "It says," she added, "that it's blown its quanta. Is that dangerous?" she asked the light.
(Dangerous?) It laughed inside, a crackling sound like an overstimulated Geiger counter. (Artificer, child, it means I'm dead.) "Child" wasn't precisely the concept it used; Nita got a fleeting impression of a huge volume of dust and gas contracting gradually toward a common center, slow, confused, and nebulous. She wasn't flattered.
"Maybe you won't like hearing this," Nita said, "but I'm not sure this is the Good Place. It doesn't seem that way to us, anyhow."
The light drew a figure eight in the air, a shrug. (It looks that way to me,) it said. (Look how orderly everything is! And how much life there is in just one place! Where I come from, even a spore's worth of life is scarcer than atoms in a comet's tail.)
"Excuse me," Kit asked, "but what are you?"
It said something Nita could make little sense of. The concept she got looked like page after page of mathematical equations. Kit raised his eyebrows. "It uses the Speech, too," he commented as he listened.
"So what is it?"
Kit looked confused. "Its name says that it came from way out in space somewhere, and it has a mass equal to—to five or six blue-white giant stars and a few thousand-odd planets, and it emits all up and down the matter-energy spectrum, all kinds of light and radiation and even some subatomic particles." He shrugged. "You have any idea what that is?"
Nita stared at the light in growing disbelief. "Where's all your mass?" she asked. "If you have that much, the gravity should have crushed us up against you the minute you showed up."
(Elsewhere,) the light said offhandedly. (I have a singularity-class temporospatial claudication.)
"A warp," Nita whispered. "A tunnel through space-time. Are you a white hole?"
It stopped bobbing, stared at her as if she had said something derogatory. (Do I look like a hole?)
"Do I look like a cloud of gas?" Nita snapped back, and then sighed—her mouth was getting the better of her again. "I'm sorry. That's just what we call your kind of—uh—creature. Because you act like a hole in the Universe that light and radiation come through. I know you're not, really. But, Kit," she said, turning, "where's my pen? And where's the power you were after? Didn't the spell work?"
"Spells always work," Kit said. "That's what the book says. When you ask for something, you always get back something that'll help you solve your problem, or be the solution itself." He looked entirely confused. "I asked for that power aura for me, and your pen for you—that was all. If we got a white hole, it means he's the answer—"
"If he's the answer," Nita said, bemused, "I'm not sure I understand the question."
(This is all fascinating,) the white hole said, (but I have to find a functional-Advisory nexus in a hurry. I found out that the Naming of Lights has gone missing, and I managed to find a paradimensional net with enough empty loci to get me to an Advisory in a hurry. But something seems to have gone wrong. Somehow I don't think you're Advisories.)
"Uh, no," Kit said. "I think we called you—
(You called me?) The white hole regarded Kit with mixed reverence and amazement. (You're one of the Powers born of Life? Oh, I'm sorry I didn't recognize You—I know You can take any shape but somehow I'd always thought of You as being bigger. A quasar, or a mega-nova.) The white hole made a feeling of rueful amusement. (It's confusing being dead!)
"Oh, brother," Kit said. "Look, I'm not—you're not—just not. We made a spell and we called you. I don't think you're dead."
(If you say so,) the white hole said, polite but doubtful. (You called me, though? Me personally? I don't think we've met before.)
"No, we haven't," Nita said. "But we were doing this spell, and we found something, but something found us, too, and we wouldn't have been able to get back here unless we called in some extra power—so we did, and it was you, I guess. You're not mad, are, you?" she asked timidly. The thought of what a live, intelligent white hole might be able to do if it got annoyed scared her badly.
(Mad? No. As I said, I was trying to get out of my own space to get the news to someone who could use it, and then all of a sudden there was a paranet with enough loci to handle all the dimensions I carry, so I grabbed it.) The white hole made another small circle, looking around him curiously. (Maybe it did work. Are there Advisories in this—on this—What is this, anyway?)
Kit looked at Nita. "Huh?"
(This,) the white hole said, (all of this.) He made another circle.
"Oh! A planet," Nita said. "See, there's our star." She pointed,
and the white hole rotated slightly to look.
(Artificer within us,) he said, (maybe I have blown my quanta, after all. I always wanted to see a planet, but I never got around to it. Habit, I guess. You get used to sitting around emitting X rays after a while, and you don't think of doing anything else. You want to see some?) he asked suddenly. He sounded a little insecure.
"Uh, maybe you'd better not," Nita said.
(How come? They're really pretty.)
"We can't see them—and besides, we're not built to take hard radiation. Our atmosphere shuts most of it out."
(A real planet,) the white hole said, wondering and delighted, (with a real atmosphere. Well! If this is a planet, there has to be an Advisory around here somewhere. Could you help me find one?)
"Uhh—" Kit looked uncertainly at the white hole. "Sure. But do you think you could help me find some power? And Nita get her pen back?"
The white hole looked Kit up and down. (Some potential, some potential,) he muttered. (I could probably have you emitting light pretty quickly, if we worked together on a regular basis. Maybe even some alpha. We'll see. What's a pen?)
"What's your name?" Kit asked. "I mean, we can't just call you 'hey you' all the time."
(True,) the white hole said. (My name is Khairelikoblepharehglukumeilichephreidosd'enagouni—) and at the same time he went flickering through a pattern of colors that was evidently the visual translation.
"Ky—elik—" Nita began.
"Fred," Kit said quickly. "Well," he added as they looked at him again, "if we have to yell for help or something, the other way's too long. And that was the only part I got, anyway."
"Is that okay with you?" Nita asked.
The white hole made his figure-eight shrug again. (Better than having my truename mangled, I guess,) he said, and chuckled silently. (Fred, then. And you are?)
"Nita."
"Kit."
(I see why you like them short,) Fred said. (All right. Tell me what a 'pen' is, and I'll try to help you find it. But we really must get to an Advisory as fast as we can.)
"Okay," Kit said. "Let's break the circle and go talk."
"Sounds good," Nita said, and began to erase the diagrams they had drawn. Kit cut the wizards' knot and scuffed the circle open in a few places, while Nita took a moment to wave her hand through the now empty air. "Not bad for a first spell," she said with satisfaction.
(I meant to ask,) Fred said politely, (what's a spell?)
Nita sighed, and smiled, and picked up her book, motioning Fred to follow her over to where Kit sat. It was going to be a long afternoon, but she didn't care. Magic was loose in the world.
Research and Development
THEY WERE AT THE schoolyard early the next morning, to be sure they wouldn't miss Joanne and her crew. Nita and Kit sat on the curb by the front door to the school, staring across at the packed dirt and dull grass of the athletic field next to the building. Kit leafed through his wizards' manual, while Fred hung over his shoulder and looked around with mild interest at everything. (Will it be long?) he said, his light flickering slightly.
"No," Nita said. She was shaking. After the other day, she didn't want anything to do with Joanne at all. But she wanted that pen back, so...
"Look, it'll be all right," Kit said, paging through his manual. "Just do it the way we decided last night. Get close to her, keep her busy for a little while. Fred'll do the rest."
"It's keeping her busy that worries me," Nita muttered. "Her idea of busy usually involves her fists and my face."
(I don't understand,) Fred said, and Nita had to laugh briefly—she and Kit had heard that phrase about a hundred times since Fred arrived. He used it on almost everything. (What are you afraid of?)
"This," Nita said, pointing to her black eye. "And this—" uncovering a bruise. "And this, and this—"
Fred regarded her with a moment's discomfiture. (I thought you came that way. Joanne makes this happen?)
"Uh-huh. And it hurts getting this way."
(But she only changes your outsides. Aren't your insides still the same afterward?)
Nita had to stop and think about that one.
"Okay," Kit said suddenly, "here's the Advisory list for our area." He ran a finger down the page. "And here's the one in town. Twenty-seven Hundred Rose—"
"That's up the hill past the school. What's the name?"
"Lessee. 'Swale, T.B., and Romeo, C.J. Research Advisories, temporospatial adjustments, entastics, nonspecific scryings—'"
"Wait a minute," Nita said hurriedly. "'Swale'? You mean Crazy Swale? We can't go in there, Kit, that place is haunted! Everybody knows that! Weird noises are always coming out of there—"
"If it's haunted," Kit said, "it's haunted by wizards. We might as well go after school, it's only five or six blocks up the road."
They were quiet for a while. It was about twenty minutes before the bell would ring for the doors to open, and a few early kids were gathering around the doors. "Maybe we could rig you a defense against getting hit," Kit said, as he kept looking through his manual. "How about this?" He pointed at one page, and both Nita and Fred looked at the formula he was indicating. All it needed was the right words. It would be something of a strain to carry the shield for long, but Nita wouldn't have to; and any attempt to hit her would just glance off.
(The problem is,) Fred said, (that spell will alter the field slightly around this Joanne person. I'm going to have a hard enough time matching my pattern to that of your pen so that I can, get it off her—if indeed she has it. Her own field is going to interfere, and so will yours, Nita. More stress on the space in the area and I might not be able to get your pen back at all.)
Nita shook her head. She could tolerate another black eye if it meant getting that pen back. "Forget it," she said, still shaking, and leaned forward a bit, elbows on knees and face in hands, trying to relax. Above her the old maple trees were muttering morning thoughts in the early sunlight, languid observations on the weather and the decreasing quality of the tenant birds who built nests in their branches. Out in the field the grass was singing a scratchy soprano chorus—(grow-growgrowgrowgrowgrow)—which broke off abruptly and turned into an annoyed mob sound of boos and razzes as one of the groundskeepers, way across the field, started up a lawn mower. I'm good with plants, Nita thought. I guess I take after Dad. I wonder if I'll ever be able to hear people this way.
Kit nudged her. "You're on," he said, and Nita looked up and saw Joanne walking into the schoolyard. Their eyes met. Joanne recognized her handiwork on Nita's face and smiled. Now or never! Nita thought, and got right up before she had a chance to chicken out and blow everything. She walked over to Joanne without a pause, fast, to keep the tremor in her knees from showing. Oh, Fred, please be behind me. And what in the world can I say to her?
"I want my pen back, Joanne," she said—or rather it fell out of her mouth, and she went hot at her own stupidity. Yet the momentary shocked look on Joanne's face made her think that maybe saying what was on her mind hadn't been so stupid after all. Joanne's shock didn't last; a second later she was smiling again. "Callahan," she said slowly, "are you looking for another black eye to match that one?"
"Lllp. No," Nita said, "just my pen, thanks."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Joanne said, and then grinned. "You always were a little odd. I guess you've finally flipped out."
"I had a space pen on me the other day, and it was gone afterward. One of you took it. I want it back." Nita was shaking worse than ever, but she was also surprised that the fist hadn't hit yet. And there over Joanne's shoulder was a flicker, a pinpoint of light, hardly to be seen, looking at her.
(Don't react. Make me a picture of the thing now.)
"What makes you think I would want anything of yours?" Joanne was saying, still with that smile. Nita looked straight at her and thought about the pen. Silver barrel, grooved all around the lower half to keep the user's fingers from slipping. Her initials engraved on it. Hers, her
pen.
(Enough. Now then—)
"But now that I think of it, I do remember finding a pen on the ground last week. Let's see." Joanne was enjoying this so much that she actually flipped open the top of her backpack and began rummaging around. "Let's see, here—" She came up with something. Silver barrel, grooved—and Nita went hot again, not with embarrassment this time.
"It's mine!"
"Come and get it, then," Joanne said, dropping her backpack, keeping her smile, holding the pen back a little.
And a spark of white light seemed to light on the end of the pen as Joanne held it up, and then both were gone with a pop and a breath of air. Joanne spun to see who had plucked the pen out of her fingers, then whirled on Nita again. Nita smiled and held out her hands, empty.
Joanne was not amused. She stepped in close, and Nita took a few hurried steps back, unable to stop grinning even though she knew she was going to get hit. Heads were turning all around the schoolyard at the prospect of a fight. "Callahan," Joanne hissed, "you're in for it now!"
The eight-thirty bell went off so suddenly they both jumped. Joanne stared at Nita for a long long moment, then turned and went to pick up her backpack. "Why hurry things?" she said, straightening. "Callahan, if I were you, I'd sleep here tonight. Because when you try to leave..."
She walked off toward the doors. Nita stood where she was, still shaking, but with amazement and triumph as much as with fear. Kit came up beside her when Joanne was gone, and Fred appeared, a bright point between them.
"You were great!" Kit said.
"I'm gonna get killed tonight," Nita said, but she couldn't be terrified about it just yet. "Fred, have you got it?"
The point of light was flickering, and there was something about the way it did so that made Nita wonder if something was wrong. (Yes,) Fred said, the thought coming with a faint queasy feeling to it. (And that's the problem.)
"Are you okay?" Kit asked. "Where'd it go?"
(I swallowed it,) Fred said, sounding genuinely miserable now.
"But that was what you were going to do," Nita said, puzzled. "Catch it in your own energy field, you said, make a little pocket and hold it there."