Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

And then she was in the inner grove. There were occasional side paths, evidence of cabins hidden deeper in the forest. Her trees were very old here, their huge branches high above her head. Miri walked the bike along the ancient path. The people of the inner grove were higher rank — not in the category of Lena, but still powers to be respected. Miri kept her eyes on the ground and hoped that none of them would talk to her.

She made the final turn, walked another fifty feet, to a wide, timbered cabin. When she looked up, she could see breaks in the tree cover, but they didn't reveal sky. Instead she was looking up into sun-touched green. The highest crown of the forest canopy stood right above this place. The witchery of witches. The source of elder wisdom. She leaned her bike against the timbers and reached up to hit the massive brass knocker. The sound boomed loud in her ears. She ignored the junky twentieth-century melody that actually played; that was the old doorbell that Lena had brought from Palo Alto.

A moment passed. Miri heard footsteps from within. Footsteps? The huge door creaked inwards, and Miri's envisioning was confronted with a significant challenge: a woman, not much older-looking than the teachers at school. What are you doing here ! Miri stared for a moment, speechless. She rarely hit surprises this big. After a moment she recovered herself and nodded respectfully. "Xiu Xiang?"

"Yes. You're Miri, aren't you? Lena's granddaughter?" She stepped aside and gestured Miri in.

"um, I didn't know you'd recognize me." Miri stepped indoors, imagining madly. Xiu Xiang looked too young to be a real witch. Okay, I'll make her be Lena's apprentice, a watchamagoogle — a newbie witch !

Newbie Xiang smiled. "Lena has shown me pictures of you. We even saw you at school once. Lena told me you would come around, um, sooner or later."

"So… she'll see me?"

"I'll ask her."

Miri gave a little bow. "Thank you, ma'am."

Newbie Xiang led Miri to an upholstered chair next to a book-laden desk. "I'll be right back."

Miri settled in the chair. Oops. It was hard plastic. As for the desk… well those were real books, the kind some people used for just-in-time reading. The pages were whatever you wanted, but they were real pages. Of course these were not the thick and hoary things of Miri's imaging, but they were piled deep. There was a view-page on top, very much out of place, and a confession of ineptitude. Miri quickly morphed it into a glowing grimoire. She edged forward in her chair and looked at the books. Mechanics and electrical engineering. These would be Newbie Xiang's; Miri had studied the background of all the students in Robert's classes. The box of toys under the desk must be things she had built in shop class. Miri recognized the warped transport tray from the news.

What an incredible coincidence that Xiu Xiang was rooming with Lena…

There were sounds behind her. The inner door was opening. It was Newbie Xiang, with the senior witch right behind her. Miri was ready with imagery for this. Lena's real chair had six small wheels on articulated axles, very practical and dull. But Mistress Gu's chair had tall wooden wheels, sheathed in silver, and canted outward. Little blue sparks chased each other around the rims as it moved. And Miri imaged Lena dressed in heavy black, a black that absorbed the room's light in the classical magical way. A black that obscured the details of what it clothed. Lena's pointy, brimmed hat was hung jauntily from the chair's high backpost. And that was where Miri's special effects ended. The rest she always kept the way that Lena really was. In fact, all her vision was to give her grandmother the proper frame, one that would reveal how wonderful she truly was.

The senior witch looked Miri up and down and then said, "Didn't Bob tell you to let me be?" But she didn't sound as angry as Miri had feared. "Yes. But I miss you so much."

"Oh." She leaned forward slightly. "How is your mom, Miri? Is she okay?"

"Alice is fine." Lena knew way too much about Alice, but she had no need-to-know. Besides, she couldn't help Alice. "I wanted to talk to you about some other things."

Mistress Gu sighed, and closed her deep-set eyes. When she opened them, she might have been smiling. "Well, I'm glad to see you, kiddo. It's just that I don't want to argue with you or Bob. And most of all, I don't want You-Know-Who to know that I'm still around."

"I'll only argue a little bit, Lena." As much as will make positive headway and still leave me welcome to come visit again . "You don't have to worry about You-Know-Who." Mistress Gu's own wording was straight out of fantasy tradition, though it was sad that Robert should be cast as ultimate evil. "I promise I won't reveal you to him." At least, not without your permission . "I took precautions coming here. Besides, You-Know-Who is no good at snooping."

Lena shook her head. "That's what you think."

Newbie Xiang sat down beside the wheelchair and watched them silently. Maybe she could help. "You see You-Know-Who every day, don't you, ma'am?" Miri said.

"Yes," said Xiang, "in shop class and Louise Chumlig's Search and Analysis."

"Ms. Chumlig's not so bad" — at least for the bonehead classes . Miri was fast enough to squelch the additional comment, but she felt herself blush even so.

Newbie Xiang didn't seem to notice. "In fact, she's quite good. I've been telling Lena." She glanced at the senior witch. "Louise knows things about asking questions that took me a lifetime to understand. And more than anyone, she's shown me the importance of analysis packages." She pointed at the old grimoire. Miri was a little taken aback. Yes, Ms. Chumlig was a nice person, but she was full of cliches, and she droned .

But even a junior witch is not someone you contradict, and Miri was very anxious to be congenial. She dipped her head, "Yes, ma'am. Anyway, you see a lot of You-Know-Who. Is he really such a terrible person?"

Xiu Xiang shook her head. "He is strange. He looks so young . Robert — I mean 'You-Know-Who' — can be very gracious, and then suddenly cut you dead. I've seen him do that to several children. The old people steer clear of him. I think Winston Blount hates him."

Yes. Miri had watched Winston Blount in the UCSD library last Saturday. Most of her attention had been absorbed in the battle for the persona of Zulfikar Sharif, but she had not missed Blount's hostility.

Newbie Xiang glanced at the frail lady in the wheelchair. "I'm afraid Lena is right about him. He uses people. He admired my shop project and then walked off with it."

Lena cackled. That was something an elderly person could do well. In Miri's opinion it was the only positive thing about old age. "Xiu, Xiu. You told me you were thrilled to see him chop that car."

Newbie Xiang looked embarrassed. "Well, yes. I got into science with model rockets and homemade RF controllers. I'd have been nothing without hands-on experience. Nowadays, our access to real things is muffled by layers of automated bureaucracy — and I guess my own SHE is partly to blame. So both Robert and I wanted to break something, and I cheered him for acting . But what I wanted was of no concern to him. I was just a convenient tool."

Lena laughed again. "You're so lucky. You learned in days what took me years." She raised a clawed hand to wipe at her hair. Modern medicine had not completely failed Lena Gu. Five years ago she'd had Parkinson's. Miri remembered the tremors. Modern medicine had reversed her Parkinson's, kept her mind sharp, stopped various ills large and small. But her abnormal osteoporosis was still beyond cure. As far back as the second grade, Miri had been able to understand the technical "why" of that. The moral "why" was something even Alice couldn't explain.