Диана Джонс - A Sudden Wild Magic

“So this is what we’ve got,” she said, and her voice was as clear and compelling as her eyes. “Another universe, one of many next door to this one, and in it a world probably much like ours, where they seem to have found some way of manipulating our world to their advantage. Their pattern seems to be to orchestrate a crisis — like a world war or an epidemic; AIDS, I suppose, is a good example — and then study what we do about it. If we solve the problem, they import our findings into their world.”

Maureen, by contrast, was all reds and browns in the light — copper hair, tawny freckles, yellow eyes — and a brown jumpsuit clothing her long body, which was never wholly still. She writhed from a lotus position while Amanda was speaking and turned her kitchen chair backward, to sit astride it with her freckled forearms on its rickety back. “Don’t forget their little habit of keeping us busy while they set up their experiments,” she said. “That’s the thing that really gets up my nose!”

“I was coming to that,” Amanda replied. “There’s no question that the pirate universe knows something about the way the Ring is organized. Either they tested us out during World War Two or we gave ourselves away keeping Hitler out. And since then they’ve flung things like Chernobyl at us from time to time to see if we were still on our toes, and finding we were—”

“Just about,” Maureen commented, hitching her knees under her chin. “That one was a real closie.”

“I know, but we did deal with it,” said Amanda, “and I’ve no doubt that gave them the conditions for their latest experiment. Now they’ve handed us global warming, with the superpowers at least at an understanding, so that they can deal with it, while the Ring here in Britain is going to have its hands full with the country half underwater. That way, they can study how the Ring holds back the water, and make sure we haven’t much left over to interfere with the technological approach. My guess is they want both magic and science out of this one.” She turned across her shoulder to look at Mark in the doorway. “I hope you agree with my summary.”

She said it with a strong and kindly smile, including him in the conversation because she had plainly known all along he was leaning in the doorway. He wished she would not treat him so kindly. It seemed to have something to do with the fact that she was both a professor of theology and a feminist, and it never failed to make him feel inadequate. “Perfectly,” he said. “I couldn’t have put it anywhere near as well.”

Maureen turned as he spoke and half smiled too, looking up at him under her eyelids, full of the secret knowledge of that bed they had shared in Somerset. “We took a look at this other universe while you were asleep,” she said, and her voice was full of the secret as well. It did not seem to perturb her that Amanda’s brilliant eyes met Gladys’s knowing ones across her, in perfect understanding of that secret.

It embarrassed Mark. “I was with you,” he said curtly, coming to sit at the end of the table. “It seems rather well defended.”

“I’ll say!” said Maureen. “Mile-thick stoppers strewn with traps the whole way round. I saw it like a cell wall with hormone triggers against invading microorganisms.”

“It was more like the ramparts of a prehistoric hill-fort to me,” Amanda observed, “with sharpened stakes and pitfalls all over it. There was a culvert under the walls to take in what they learnt from us.”

“Funny the way everyone sees things differently,” Maureen said. “It’s something I never quite get over at this level. Gladys said it was like the barbed wire on the Normandy beaches to her. Isn’t that right?” she asked Gladys.

Mark turned to Gladys, startled that he and she had seen so much the same. “Or a very thorny wood,” she said, dumping on the table a fat teapot clothed in a striped cozy. “Anyone but Mark take sugar? Good. Well let’s get on and decide what we’re going to do about these blessed pirates.”

There was a short silence. Maureen’s long hands, faintly mauve under the freckles, fidgeted around a mug with a picture of Garfield on it. “I’m too mad to think properly,” she confessed. “I just want them stopped.”

“One possible way is to stop their culvert. I expect we can find it,” Amanda pointed out. “Stuff is bleeding off to them quite fast, and we ought to be able to trace where it goes.”

“Out of the question,” said Mark. “As soon as they realize we’ve stopped it, it’ll be war. And they’ll fight us with our own weapons, not to speak of their own, which we don’t know about. I’m willing to bet they’ll know as soon as we find the outlet. They have to be good to have had us under observation all this time without our knowing they had.”

“Then I’ll throw out another thought,” Amanda said imperturbably. She seldom lost an argument, and never admitted it if she did. “How

about putting up defenses even bigger than theirs?”

“Heavy job” was Maureen’s comment. “Worldwide — it might work.”

“They see those and it means war again,” Mark pointed out.

“Well, anything we do and they notice is going to mean war,” Amanda said in her most brisk and reasonable way. “Do you want to look into the possibility of rendering our universe invisible to theirs?”

“Which, if they find us doing, they’ll just pirate too,” Maureen observed. “I’m sure it would suit them very well to be invisible to us. Not wanting to be critical, Amanda, but they might even be hoping we’ll think of that.” She turned and stretched her legs the opposite way.

“And,” added Mark, “none of these suggestions help with the greenhouse effect.”

“We seem to be stuck with that, even if the pirates did start it,” Amanda said. “I’d assumed — and since I’m simply throwing out ideas, I’m perfectly open to criticism, Maureen, though I wish you and Mark could contrive to be constructive for a change! — I’d assumed we’d get the pirates off our backs and then turn our attention to readjusting the climate.” Her hands clenched around her cup fractionally. She was irritated.

Aware that she despised him, Mark found himself protesting, “I wasn’t being destructive, Amanda! I just wondered if there wasn’t a way to deal with both things at once. For instance, if we were simply to do nothing?”

Amanda’s shapely black eyebrows came to a sharp point, exactly in the middle. An astounded crease grew between them, above her elegant nose. “Do nothing ? At all?”

Maureen took this up eagerly. “Mark has got a point, Amanda. You must see that. If we did nothing and made sure none of the Rings all over the world did nothing, and just let the climate get hotter and the seas higher, then the pirates would have to stop the greenhouse effect themselves, don’t you see? It’s not in their interests to let everyone here die!” She was climbing about all over her chair in her vehemence, beating her mug on the table — and yet Mark was uneasily aware that it was all because the idea was his in the first place. Maureen was taking sides like a child in a school playground. There was even a faint jeering tone to her voice.

Amanda responded to the jeer. “Oh, perfect, Maureen! So we call their bluff. The only result, as far as I can see, would be that our world dies and the pirates simply start exploiting another one.”

“I didn’t mean—” Maureen and Mark began together.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Gladys interrupted. “We’re not in business to do nothing, are we, Jimbo? It’s obvious what we’ve got to do! We have to go into that universe and stop those pirates at their fun and games, for once and for all!”