Диана Дуэйн - High Wizardry

"Any really big wound would spurt anyway," Kit said, straightening up and starting to through his manual. "I think they missed her. The tiles don't remember her screaming, and not even Dairine's that stoic." He kept turning over pages.

"How far did she go?"

"A long jump," Kit said. "Multistage, from the feel of it. They must have freaked her out pretty good." He looked up. "That computer she's got leaves a definite sense of what it's been doing behind it. Can you feel it?"

Nita let her eyes go unfocused for a moment and blanked her mind out, as she might do to hear the thinking of some particularly quiet tree. Some residue of Dairine's emotion still hung about the strings in the space-time configuration of the area, like tatters on a barbed-wire fence: fear and defiance, all tangled up together; and alongside her tatters, others, ordered and regular, a weave less vivid and complex in different ways. "It feels alive," Nita said to Kit after a while. "Do computers usually feel that way?"

"I don't know," Kit said, sounding annoyed. "I never tried feeling one before this. . You got your widget?" he said. "We're gonna need it to catch up with her and her friends."

"Yeah." She unslung her pack and started rummaging for the gimbal.

"Well, I have things to do," said the Master. "If you need anything, ask one of the security people, they're all over." And without staying for farewells, it went flowing out the door in a hundred-legged scurry.

Nita glanced after it, then back at Kit, and shrugged. "Here," she said, and tossed him the gimbal.

"Which spell are you thinking of using?"

"That dislocator on page 1160."

She got out her own manual and found the page. "That's awful long-range, isn't it? Her next jump must have been shorter than that."

"Yeah, but Neets, who wants to leapfrog one step behind the things that are chasing her! We want them, right now-we want them off her rear end, so she can do whatever it is she needs to do without interference." He looked grim. "And when we find 'em-"

Nita sighed. "Forget it," she said, "they're dupes."

Kit looked up at her while getting a grease pencil out of his pack. "It suckered them in?"

She filled him in on what the Satrachi had told her as Kit got down on the tiles and began drawing their transit circle. Kit sighed a little. "I was hoping it was some of the Lone One's own people," he said, "so we could just trash 'em and not feel guilty."

Nita had to smile a little at that. Picchu climbed down from the partition between the booths, where he had been sitting, and clambered onto Nita's shoulder. "Get mine right," she said to Kit. "I don't want to come out the other side of this transit with fur."

Kif shot a look at Picchu, and didn't need to comment; Nita could imagine what he was thinking. "Come sit over here, then, if you're so worried," he said.

To Nita's amusement Peach did just that, climbing backward down her arm and over onto Kit's back, where she peered over his shoulder. "Not bad," she said, looking at the diagram.

Kit ignored this. "So make yourself useful. Is anything bad going to happen to us?"

"Of course it is," Picchu said., "You might be more specific."

"And I might not need to. The Power that invented death is going to be on your tails shortly. Our tails," she added, looking over her shoulder at the splendid three-foot sweep of scarlet feathers behind her.

"Even you two should be able to see that coming."

Kit changed position suddenly, and Picchu scrabbled for balance, flapping her wings and swearing.

"Like you should have seen that?"

Nita grinned a little, then let it go: her mind was back on the train of thought she had been playing with out in the terminal. "I was wondering about that, a while back," she said to Kit. "It invented death, when things were first started. But that wasn't enough for It. It had to get people to buy into death-not just the dying itself: the fear of it."

Kit nodded. "But a lot of species have opted out, one way or another. I mean, we're scared to die. But we still suspect there are reasons not to be scared. A lot of people do. Its hold isn't complete anymore."

"I know. Kit, do you think-Tom said something was about to 'tip over.' Some major change. Do you think what he meant was that the Lone One was about to lose completely somewhere?"

"He always said," Kit said, "that what happens one place, spreads everyplace else. Everything affects everything, sooner or later. The manual says so too. A few times."

Nita nodded, thinking how unusual it was for the manual to repeat itself about anything. "And the pattern started shifting, a couple thousand years ago," Kit said. "The Lone Power had always won completely before. Then It started having wins taken away from It after the fact."

Kit looked reflective. "If somewhere or other, It's about to lose-right from the start…"

Nita looked at him sidewise. "Then It starts losing at home, too, in all the little daily battles. Eventually."

Kit nodded. "Dairine," he said.

Nita shook her head, still having trouble believing it-but having to admit the likelihood. Somehow, her sister had a chance of actually defeating the Lone Power. She must have a chance: It wouldn't be wasting energy on her otherwise. "Why her?" Nita said softly.

"Why you?" said Picchu, cranky. "What makes either of you so special, that you can even come away from an encounter with That alive? Don't flatter yourself: It's eaten stars and seduced whole civilizations in Its time. You were simply exactly the right raw material for that particular situation to use to save Itself."

"I didn't mean that, I guess," she said. "I meant, why now? The Lone Power has been pulling this kind of stunt on planets for as long as intelligence has been evolving. It comes in, It tries to get people to accept entropy willingly, and then It bugs off and leaves them to make themselves more miserable than even It could do if It worked at it. Fine. But now all of a sudden It can be beaten. How come?"

Picchu began chewing on Kit's top button. "You know," she said, "that's part of the answer. Granted, It's immortal. But It doesn't have infinite power. It's peer to all the Powers, but not to That in Which they move. And even an immortal can get tired."

Nita thought about that. Five billion years, maybe ten, of constant strife, of incomplete victories, of rage and frustration-and yes, loneliness: for the Lone One, she had discovered to her shock, was ambivalent about Its role- after all that, surely one might not be as strong as one had been at the start of things. .

Kit got the button out of Picchu's mouth, and was nipped for his trouble. "So, after all these near losses, It's tired enough to be beaten outright?"

Picchu got cranky again. "Of course! It was that tired long ago. The Powers wouldn't need Dairine for just that. They could do it Themselves, or with the help of older wizards. But haven't you got it through your head?.They can't want to just beat the Lone One. They must think there's a better option."

Nita looked at Picchu, feeling half frightened. "They want It to surrender," she said.

"I think so," said Picchu. "I suspect They think she could get the Lone One to give in and come back to Its old allegiance. If It does that… the effect spreads. Slowly. But it spreads everywhere."

Picchu climbed down off Kit's shoulder and pigeon-toed across the floor, heading for a receptacle with some water in it. Kit and Nita both sat silent. The possibility seemed a long way from coming true. A world in which the universe's falling into entropy slowly stopped, affecting people's relationships with one another, a world gradually losing the fear of death, a world losing hatred, losing terror, losing evil itself…

it was ridiculous, impossible, too much to hope for. But still, Nita thought, if there was any chance at all