Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Catastrophe

Max looked up, gazed at Karlini with a very thoughtful expression. “Not all of the gods don’t like me,” he said eventually. “Most of them don’t like each other very much, that’s probably the key point.” He was silent for another moment. “Not that it’s much use in any given situation.”

“But how -”

“I think maybe you’re better off not knowing too much about it,” Max said, “don’t you think?” He took a bite from his roll.

“You made that remark about quantum energy states, not me,” said Karlini. “If you didn’t think we should know about it, why did you bring it up in the first place? It couldn’t be that you were just showing off, now could it?”

Max opened his mouth, then closed it and chewed his roll with a meditative expression. “Your point is well taken,” he said. “I do have certain tendencies, as you know, and as you also know, I try to resist them, not always with success.”

He swallowed the roll and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “As it happens, I have been doing some fresh research, and some of it has turned out to involve the gods. I will show you some of it later, as long as you’re so eager to know. That way, at least somebody may be able to use it, in case this damn-fool errand of yours turns out to be as nasty as it probably will. Are you satisfied?”

Karlini looked across at an étagère holding a dazzling array of dried goods and condiments, somewhat if uncharacteristically embarrassed. A tremor ran through the room, rattling the table and breaking the silence. Max sighed and shook his head, looking around for the possibility of a pastry. “What a place you’ve got here,” he said. “The crowning touch last night was the seagull. I could swear there was a seagull flying around outside my room, screeching like crazy. Now, really - you know how far this place is from the coast? No seagull could survive the trip. Any seagull that tried to fly here would be on its grandchildren by now.”

Karlini held out his arm. A seagull flapped down from the ceiling and perched. It screeched once. “It was sitting on the bed this morning,” Roni said. “I don’t think it’s anyone we know.”

Max sighed again and climbed to his feet. “I’m going to have to stop trying to guess what’s coming next. Well, we might as well get started.”

Max flopped back on the rug and panted. “Every time - I forget - how exhausting - this nonsense is,” he gasped. Symbols faded from the air around him.

“Well?” Karlini said. “What happened?”

“Didn’t you - see it?”

“I saw something,” Karlini said, “but I don’t exactly know what it really was. It looked like …”

Max lifted himself on an elbow and accepted a mug from Ronibet. He appeared to have lost about three pounds since breakfast. “You saw a sort of matrix outline of the castle, right? Like you were looking at it from three directions at the same time, only the views were superimposed?”

“Yes, right. What was it?”

“That was the field spell on the walls of the castle. That’s what you triggered, and that’s what holds the place together when it shifts.”

“But why was the geometry so distorted?” Ronibet asked.

“Well,” Max said, swallowing a chunk of hard candy from a large bowl seated next to him on the floor, “that’s the second quantum level for you. Things are pretty strange there. Did you see that big glowing mass at the base of the castle matrix?”

“The thing that looked like a jewel with tendrils coming out of the facets?” Roni said.

“Yeah. That’s the power reservoir. It permeates the rock foundation at the base of the castle.”

“I probed the rock,” Karlini said, “and I didn’t find a thing.”

“You need different techniques.” Max selected another candy, a blue one, popped it in his mouth, and started to suck on it. “There’s a lot going on in the reservoir, but I couldn’t disentangle it all. One thing I did see was that the thing’s on a deadman trigger. The rock is unstable and the field holds it together. If the reservoir runs down enough the rock falls apart.”

“And if the rock falls apart -”

“Right,” Max said. “The castle falls in.” The seagull strolled over to Max, dipped its head into the candy bowl, selected a green piece of crystal, tossed it into the air, and caught it neatly on the downswing. Its beak made crunching noises.

“Uh, Max,” Karlini said, “then how close is this reservoir to the danger point?”

“I can barely even tell the thing is there. But it’s anybody’s guess how many more jumps this place can take without coming apart. Did you see that little pulsing dot about three-quarters of the way up?”

“I wondered about that. What was it?”

“You.”

Karlini buried his head in his hands and mumbled something unpleasant.

“One thing I don’t understand,” Roni said quickly. “If operating on this second quantum level is so hard, how do the gods do it? Some of them don’t sound too smart.”

Max watched patterns form and dissolve in his mug. “I think it’s something in their auras. Somehow the aura gives them a leg up, maybe filters their perception for all I know, probably pumps their energy up too. There could be an aural stabilizing factor that gives a god easy access to the second level, but damned if I know how it works.”

“Does it have something to do with the coupling problem?”

“Maybe,” Max said. “I don’t think so, but it’s hard to tell. There’s more than one way to deal with coupling.”

Karlini snorted. “Of course there’s more than one way, that’s what -”

Roni looked at him. “That’s not what Max is saying. I know Max. Max is saying that he’s thought of a new approach to coupling, something that’s pretty hot. Isn’t that right, Max?”

“… I wish I didn’t like you, Roni, otherwise I could just be jealous you’re so sharp, it’d be simpler. Yeah, I thought of something new, but it isn’t all worked out yet.” He climbed to his feet and glared at Karlini. “Why don’t you tell me about this setup in Roosing Oolvaya?”

The seagull screeched. “… All right, Max,” Karlini said. “This is the way things look.” He rose and went over to a bookcase. The shelves had books stuffed in at every angle, each book leaning on the others around it for mutual support. Karlini ran his finger along the spines of several volumes of bound notepaper. “Maybe this is it,” he said, wrenched out a folio from the bottom of a stack of ten, and watched the stack collapse down into the space. The rows the stack had been supporting folded in from both sides.

“No, I guess it isn’t this one,” Karlini said, paging through it.

“Do you remember the time he left his hat right in front of him on the table in a restaurant?” Max said to Roni. “That big sombrero thing with the tasseled fringes, and bright pink to boot? It was right under his chin, and he still forgot it.”

“That was our first anniversary,” Roni said, smiling at Karlini. “I think he’s gotten worse, if that’s possible. Try the book on the lectern, dear.”

“Huh?” Karlini said. “Oh, okay … yes, that’s certainly it. How do you do it, Roni?”

“It’s a concept known as ‘order’,” Max said.

“Yes, you’ve always liked that sort of thing, haven’t you, Max,” Karlini said with an air of distraction, ruffling vellum. He stopped, leafed back two pages, set the book back on the lectern, and started sketching in the air. A series of symbolic equations took shape, winding around each other.

Max squinted. “Have I seen that one before?”

Karlini paused and made a small twirly gesture. The equations halted. He reached carefully around them and pointed to one term. “You see that statement, Max? That’s the root. It’s a corollary to your lousy Discontinuity Proposition.”