Диана Дуэйн - Deep Wizardry

tended to upset your stomach unless you were used to it.
Her father was staring at the ground, which had changed from wet beach sand to a mixture of grayish gravel and pebbles, and rocks the size of fists or melons, all covered with a gray-white dust as fine as talc. But Nita's mother was staring up at the sky with a look of joy so great it was pain—the com-pletely bearable anguish of an impossible dream that suddenly comes true
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after years of hopeless yearning. Tears were running down her mother's face a t the sight of that sky, so pure a velvet black that the eye insisted on finding light in it where light was not—a night sky set with thousands of stars, all blazing with a cold fierce brilliance that only astronauts ever saw; a night sky that nonetheless had a ravening sun standing noonday high in it, pooling all* their shadows black and razor-sharp about their feet. Nita was blinking hard herself to manage the stinging of her eyes; she knew how her mother felt. "Over there, Mom," she said very quietly. "Off to the left. Look." "Off to the left" was a steep slope that plunged down and down to a deep chasm, filled with absolute blackness ungentled by the presence of air. On the far side of the chasm stretched a flat, rocky plain that seemed to stop too soon, running up against a horizon abnormally close. Out on the plain, not too far away, a dazzling squarish glow of gold sat on four spidery legs. Some thirty yards from the bright platform on legs stood a silvery pole with an American flag standing out from it, held straight by a rod running through the top of it: a necessity—for here where it stood, no wind would ever stir it. "No," Nita's father said, his voice hushed. "Impossible. Tranquillity Base—" "No," Kit said, his voice soft too. "That's going to be a tourist attraction in a few years, when they build the Hilton there—so we don't go down there for fear of leaving footprints where somebody might find them. This is from Apollo 16. See over there?" He pointed past the abandoned first-stage plat-form of the LEM Orion at the first Lunar Rover, which sat parked neatly beside a boulder—a delicate-looking little dunebuggy, still in excellent condi-tion, used only once by a couple of astronauts from Pasadena for jaunts to Stone Mountain, on which the four of them stood.
Nita's father slowly went down on one knee and brushed his hand along the dry, pale lunar soil, turning over the stones that lay there, then picking one up and clutching it hard in his fist.
"Harry," Nita's mother said, still looking up. The tone of her voice made her husband look up too—and seeing what she saw, he forgot the rock.
What they saw was part of a disk four times the size of the Moon as seen from the Earth; and it seemed even bigger because of the Moon's foreshort-ened horizon. It was not the
full Earth so familiar from pictures, but a waning crescent, streaked with cloud swirls and burning with a fierce green-Wue radiance—a light with depth, like the fire held in the heart of an opal, 'hat light banished the idea that blue and green were "cool" colors; one could have warmed one's hands at that crescent. The blackness to which it shaded was ever so faintly touched with silver—a disk more hinted at than se en; the new Earth in the old Earth's arms.
There'll be a time," Nita said softly, "when any time someone's elected 266
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to a public office—before they let them start work—they'll bring whoever was elected up here and just make them look at that until they get what it means. …" Kit nodded. "You wanted to know where the power came from," he said to Nita's mother and father. "The grownups who're wizards tell us that what-ever made that made the power too. It's all of a piece."
" 'The grownups who're wizards'?" "And as for 'why,' " Kit said, "that's why." There was no need for him to point to "that." "Not just for the—for what you felt on the way in. That's part of it. But because somebody's gotta take care of that. Not just part of it —not just one country, or one set of rules, or one species, at the expense of the others. But everything that lives, all the kinds of 'people.' All of it, with nothing left out. One whole planet. Somebody's got to make sure it grows as well as it can. Or just that it survives. That's what wizards do." "Daddy," Nita said, "it's like you always say. If you don't do it yourself, it may not get done right. And we can't afford to let that get screwed up. We have to live there. So will other people, later."
Her father shook his head, confused. "Nita," he said, sounding unsure, "you're too young to be thinking about this kind of thing."
She bit her lip. "Dad—that sort of thinking might be one of the reasons why things aren't working so well back there. …"
"Neets," Kit said, "we have to get back. We're losing heat pretty fast." "Mom, Dad," Nita said, "we can come back some other time. It's late, and Kit and I have an early day tomorrow. Got the rock?" she said to Kit. "Uh-huh. Ready?"
Nita's mother reached out and pulled her husband close this time. "Is it going to be like it was before?"
"Huh? No. It just takes a lot of effort to push all this air up out of Earth's gravity well, that's all. You have to reach escape velocity—"
Nita's father blinked. "Wait a minute. I thought this was—magic." He said the word as if for the first time in his life.
Nita shrugged. "Even with magic," she said, "you have to obey the rules. Downhill is a lot
easier than uphill in a wizardry, same as anywhere else. Kit?"
"Ready," he said. They looked at each other, took a breath, and said one short word in
unison.
WHAM!—and air and sand and water blew outward in all directions as they left noon for midnight, standing once again on the long dark beach silvered with moonlight. Kit stepped to the edge of the circle, first scuffing the wizard's knot out of existence, then going around and breaking the circle once at each compass point. "Let's go in," Nita said to her parents. " dead."
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The four of them trudged up the stairs to the front door, back into the living room. Her dad plopped down onto the couch and said, "Nita, wait just a few minutes. I have to ask you something."
Nita looked at him, sighed, and did as she was told. "Tell me again," her dad said, "this stuff about what you're doing underwater. Just very briefly."
It turned out to be more than briefly, since much of what Nita had told her parents had fallen out of their heads the first time, discarded in general disbelief. And it was with growing dismay that Nita watched the unease in her parents' faces, as she told them again about the undersea tremors, the pollution of the water, the slaughter of the whales—and the purposes of the Lone Power, though she tried to tell them as little about that as she could.
"Nita," her father said at last, "what are the chances that you could get hurt doing this 'Song' business? The truth."
She looked at him unhappily. "Pretty good," she said. "And the same for Kit?" her mother said. , "Just about," Kit said. Nita's father shook his head. "Nita. Look. I understand … no. I sort of understand how you and Kit feel about this. Magic. . . ." He raised his hands, dropped them again, in a helpless gesture. "If someone offered me the chance to be a magician, I'd jump at it. . . ." "A wizard," Nita said. And, No, you wouldn't, she thought. Because if you would have, really, you would have been offered it! There are never enough wizards. . . . But her father was still talking. "But this business . . . endangering your-self, or endangering Kit— Your mother and I can't permit it. You're going to have to bow out."

For a moment, as far as Nita was concerned, everything faded out, drowned in a great wash of relief and hope. The perfect excuse. Perfect. My mom and dad won't let me. Sorry, S'reee, Hotshot, Ed. . . .
Opaque black eyes looked at Nita out of the scene her eager mind was already constructing for her—and hope died. The hair stood up all over Nita —not from fear, but from something more terrible. Without any warning, and for the first time, she understood in her own person what had only been a word to her before: honor. I can't, she thought. For me—for me—it's not right.
"Dad," she said unhappily, "you didn't get it. I'm sworn to the Song. If I back out now, the whole thing will be sabotaged."
Her father got up, a sign that he intended this argument to be over shortly. Come on, Neets. Surely someone else could do it—" "No."
"Nita," said her mother, looking stern, "you don't understand. We're not letting you do this. Or Kit either, while he's under our roof. You're going to
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have to find a replacement. Or the—the whales will. Whoever. You're not going." I must not have said it right, they're not understanding! "Mom—" Nita said, searching frantically for words. "This isn't just some cute thing that Kit and I are doing because it'll be fun! If we don't stop the forces that are beginning to move, there are going to be massive earthquakes all up and down the East Coast. That's not a maybe. It's a will! You think the Island would survive something like that? The whole place is nothing but rocks and trash the glaciers dumped in the ocean; it'll break up and wash away like a sandcastle at high tide! And you think Manhattan'11 survive? It's already got four unstable geological faults of its own, right through the bedrock! And none of the buildings there are earthquake-proof; one quake'll leave the place looking like somebody kicked over a pile of blocks!" Nita was waving her arms in the air now, so upset that she was beyond caring whether she looked silly or not. "Millions of people could die—"
"Could," her father said, seizing on the word. He was pacing now. Kit shook his head. "Will," he said, and there was such a weight of cer-tainty and misery on the word that Nita's father stopped pacing, and her mother closed her mouth, and they both stared at Kit in amazement. "You're saying," Kit said, gazing at them out of eyes suddenly gone dark and fierce, "that you don't care whether ten million people, more than ten million people, would die, just so long as we two don't get hurt."
Nita's mother spluttered, to Nita's great satisfaction. That one had sunk in. "No, we aren't, we just—"
"You don't even care that ten million people might die," Nita said. "Just so Kit and I are okay, you're willing to run that risk."
"No, I—" Nita's father saw what was being done to him. "Young lady, no more out of you! Just the quakes going on off the coast now, by the reports we've heard, are too dangerous for you to be down there."
"Daddy, believe me, we've survived a lot worse!" "Yes—and your mother and I didn't know about it then! Now we do." Her father turned away. "The answer is no, and that's final!"
From many fights Nita had overheard between her folks, Nita knew that when her dad said that, it never was. "Daddy," she said. "I'm sorry. I really am. I love you, and I wish like anything I could do what you want. But I can't"
"Nita!" There was that rage again, full-blown, worse than before. Her father was on his feet, standing right over her, glaring at her. "You will do as I tell you!" Hot all over, Nita shot to her feet—standing on the chair—and in sheer desperation shouted right back in his face. "Don'tyou get it? There are some things in the world more important than doing what you tell me!"
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Her father and mother stared at her, stunned.
"Besides," Kit said quietly from out of her range of vision, "how would you stop us?"
Nita's father turned away to stare at Kit now. "Look," Kit said. "Mr. Callahan, Mrs. Callahan—we gave our word that we'd do this." What is this 'we'? Nita thought, bemused. "And the wizardry we're doing is mainly directed against the One who invented the broken promise. Breaking our word will play right into Its hands and cause a lot of people to die, at best. Maybe destroy this world, sooner or later, at worst."
"But we have only your word on that!" Nita's mother said. "Uh-huh. But isn't our word any good? And why would we lie to you about this? Considering that we're going through all this crap for the sake of telling you the truth."
Nita's mother closed her mouth. "She didn't have to tell you," Kit said, sounding angry for the first time. "But it would've
been lying, in a way—and Nita thinks you're worth not lying to." He paused, then said, "I do too. We may just be kids, but we're old enough to tell the truth. And to take it. Are you?"
The question wasn't a taunt: It was honestly meant. "Even if you're not, we'll still have to do what we have to," Nita said, though saying it made her unhappy. "When you two wake up in the morning, this could all seem like a dream to you—if it had to. I guess you'd better make up your minds, because we have to get some sleep or we won't be worth dead fish tomorrow." Her parents were staring at each other. "Betty . . ." said Nita's father. "We need more time," Nita's mother said. "I don't think we've got it." Her mother looked back at her father. "If they're right about this," she said, "it would be wrong of us to stop them if they want to help."
"But we're responsible for them!" "Apparently," Nita's mother said, in a peculiar mixture of pride and pain, "they've learned that lesson better than we suspected, Harry. Because now they seem to be making themselves responsible for us. And a lot of other People."
"I guess there comes a time when you can't do anything but trust," her father said at last, sounding reluctant. "It just seems—so soon. . . . Nita— is all this on the level?" "Oh, Daddy." She loved him, right then, and hurt for him, more than she could have told him. "I wish it weren't. But it is."
Nita's father was silent for several long breaths. "Millions of lives," he said u nder his breath.
And another silence, which he finally broke as if it were a physical thing, do you need to be up?"
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"Sixish. I'll set my alarm, Daddy." Nita got stiffly down from the chair aching all over. Behind her, Kit got up and brushed past her as Nita hugged first her dad good night. Maybe the last time she would ever hug him . . or the second-to-the-last— Oh, don't think of that now!
Her mother had caught Kit on the way past and hugged him—and now wouldn't let Nita past without one either. She held her for a moment at arm's length. "Thank you for—up there, baby," she said, nodding once at the ceiling. Her eyes were wet, but she was smiling.
"It's okay, Mom. Any time." Is this what it feels like when your heart breaks? Oh, Lord, don't let me cry.
"And thank you for trusting us." Nita swallowed. "You taught me how," she said. And then she couldn't stand it any more. She broke away and headed for her room, Kit right behind her.
She knew there was one hurdle left between her and bed. Actually, the hurdle was on the bed: sitting there crosslegged in the dark, looking at her with cool interest as they came in.
"Well?" Dairine said, as Nita flopped down on her stomach beside her, and the bed bounced them both once or twice. "I saw you disappear. Where'd'ja take them?" "The Moon." "Oh, come on, Neets."
"Dairine," Kit said from the doorway. "Catch." Nita glanced up, saw her sister reach up and pick something out of the air: an irregular piece of pale, grainy stone, about the size and shape of an eraser. Dairine peered at it, rubbing it between her fingers. "What is this? Pumice?" There was a moment of shocked silence; then Dairine's voice scaled up to an aggrieved shriek. "You did go to the Moon! And you didn't take me! You, you —" Apparently she couldn't find anything sufficiently dirty to call them. "I'm gonna kill you!"
"Dari, shut up, they're in shock out there!" Nita said. This argument did little to save her. Far more effective was Kit's wrestling Dairine down flat, stuffing her under the bedcovers and a couple of pillows, and more or less sitting on her until she shut up and stopped struggling.
"We'll take you next time," Nita said, and then the pain hit her again. "Kit," she said, husky– voiced. "Remind me to see that the runt here gets to the Moon in the near future. Next week, maybe. If she behaves." "Right," Kit said. "You give up, runt?" "Hwhmffm hnnoo rrhhrhn ffwmhhnhhuh," said the blankets. "Keep talking like that and your mouth'll get stuck that way," Kit said, and let Dairine out. Nita's sister extricated herself from the covers with icy dignity that lasted
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just until she was sitting where she had been, back in control and smoothing her ruffled pajamas. "Mom 'n' Dad didn't kill you," she said to Nita. "Nope. You gave me good advice, runt." "Huh? What advice?"
"Last night, I suspect," Kit said. "That stuff about 'Either keep your mouth shut, or tell the truth—' "
Nita nodded, looking from Kit to Dairine, while Dairine modestly polished her nails on her
Yoda pajamas. And Nita stared at her, and then started to laugh, so hard that she got the hiccups and fell over sideways, and Dairine looked at her as if she'd gone nuts, and Kit sat down and punched her once or twice, worriedly, in the shoulder. "Neets? You okay?" "Oh, Kit," she managed to gasp at last, between bubbles of laughter. "What Picchu said—" "Huh?"
"What Peach said. 'Do what the night tells you—' " She went off into the giggles again.
Kit looked down at her, perplexed. "You lost me." Nita pushed herself upright, reached out and tugged a couple of times, weakly, at one of Dairine's pajama-sleeves. " 'Do what the night tells you.' Not night like when it gets dark. 'Knight'! Do what the knight tells you! As in the Junior Jedi here—" She went over sideways again and strangled her last few whoops of laughter in a convenient pillow. "It was good advice," he said to Dairine. "Thanks, Dari." "Uh, sure," said Dairine, amazed at another compliment. Nita sat up again after a little while, wiping her eyes. "Yeah," she said. "Even if I took it before I remembered you said it … it was good advice." She thought she would let her sister have just one more compliment—espe-cially since it was true, and information she might never have another chance to give her. "You're gonna be one hot wizard someday," Nita said.
Dairine sat speechless. "Neets," Kit said, "we've had a long day. And tomorrow'll be longer. I'm sacking out. Dairine—"
"Right," Nita said. She lay down again, feeling glad, afraid, excited, shaky, light—a hundred things at once. She never noticed when Dairine got off her bed; she never heard Kit leave. She fell into sleep as if into a hole.
Foregathering Song
Nita sat hunched in a miserable little bundle on the beach, her arms around her knees—staring at the bright morning sea and not seeing it.
She had gone to bed with the feeling that everything would be all right when she woke up in the morning. But she'd awakened to a pair of parents torn among insane curiosity, worry, approval, and disapproval, who drank cup after cup of coffee and stared at the lump of lunar pumice in the middle of the table, and made little sense when they talked. She hardly knew them. Her mom and dad alternated between talking to her, hanging on every word she said, and talking over her head about her, as if she weren't there. And they kept touching her like a delicate thing that might break—though there was an undercurrent of anger in the touches that said her parents had suddenly discovered she was in some ways stronger than they were, and they didn't like it. Nita sighed. I'd give anything for one of Dad's hugs that squeeze the air out and make you go squeak! she thought. Or to hear Mom do Donald Duck voices at me. But fat chance of that. . . .
She let out a long, unhappy breath. Kit was finishing his breakfast at a leisurely pace and handling endless questions about wizardry from her parents —covering for her. Just as well: She had other business to attend to before they left.
"Tom," she said, almost mourning, under her breath. She had been down to Friedman's already and had "minded the store" under Dog's watchful eye for a long time, waiting for Tom to return her call. She needed expert help, in a hurry. I've gone as far as I can on my own, she thought. I need advice! Oh, Tom, where are you? As she'd expected. Nothing—
The last thing she expected was the sudden explosion of air that occurred
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about twenty feet down the beach from her, flinging sand in all directions. No, Nita corrected herself. The last thing she expected was what the explo-sion produced: a man with one towel wrapped around his waist and another draped around his neck—tall, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, with dark hair and the kind of face one sees in cigarette ads, but never hopes to see smile. It was not Tom, but Carl. He looked around him, saw Nita, and came over to her in a hurry, looking grave. "What'samatter, Nita?" he said, casual as always, but concerned. "I heard that even though it wasn't meant for me." She looked up at him wanly and tried to smile just a little; but the smile was a dismal failure. "Uh, no. Look, no one was answering the phone—and then I was just thinking—" "That wasn't what I would call 'just' thinking," Carl said, sitting down on the sand beside her. "Sometimes I forget what kind of power wizards have when they're kids. . . ." Nita saw that Carl's hair was wet. "I got you out of the shower," she said. "I'm sorry. …" "No, I was out already. It's okay." "Where's Tom?" Nita said. "He has a breakfast meeting with some people at ABC; he asked me to take his calls.
Not that I had much choice, in your case. . . . You've got big trouble, huh? Tell me about it."
She did. It took her a while. Though she braced herself for it, the look of shock on Carl's face when he heard about Nita's accepting the Silent Lord's part was so terrible, she started to leak tears again. Carl sat still while she finished the story. "Do your folks know?" he said at last. "No," Nita said. "And I don't think I'm going to tell them. I think Dad suspects—and Mom knows he does and doesn't want to talk to him about it."
Carl let out a long breath. "I don't know what to tell you," he said. This was not the most encouraging thing Nita had ever heard. A Senior Wizard always knew what to tell you. "Carl," she said, tears still thick in her voice, "what can I do? I can't—I can't just die!"
It was the first time she had actually said the word out loud. It left her shaking all over like the aftermath of a particularly large wizardry, and the tears started coming again. Carl was quiet. "Well, yeah, you can," he said at last, gently. "People do it all the time—sometimes for much less cause." "But there must be something I could do!"
Carl looked down at the sand. "What did you say you were going to do?" Nita didn't say anything; they both knew the answer very well. "You know what caused this?" Carl said.
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"Remember the blank-check sorcery you did while in the other Manhat-tan, that time? The open-ended request for help?" "Uh-huh."
"That kind of spell always says that at some later date you'll be called upon to return the energy you use." Carl looked somber. "You got your help. But it must have taken a lot of energy to seal a whole piece of another space away from every other space, forever. . .
к
Nita scrubbed at her eyes, not much liking this line of reasoning. "But the spell never said anyone was going to have to die to pay back the price!"
"No. All it said was that you were going to have to pay back the exact amount of energy used up at some future date. And it must have been a very great amount, to require
lifeprice to be paid. There's no higher payment that can be made." Carl fell silent a moment, then said, "Well, one." And his face shut as if a door had closed behind his eyes.
Nita put her head down on her knees again. This wasn't working the way it was
supposed to. "Carl, there has to be something you, we could do—"
The surf crashed for a long time between her words and his. "Nita," Carl said finally, "no.
What you absolutely do not want is 'something you could do.' What you really want is for
me to get you off the hook somehow, so you don't have to carry through with your
promise."
Her head snapped up in shock. "You mean— Carl, don't you care if I die J or not?" "I care a whole lot." The pain in Carl's voice made it plain that he did. "But unfortunately I also have to tell you the truth. That's what Seniors are for; why do you think we're given so much power to work with? We're paid for what we do—and a lot of it isn't pleasant."
"Then tell me some truth! Tell me what to do—" "No," he said gently. "Never that. Nine-tenths of the power of wizardry comes from making up your own mind what you're going to do. The rest of it is just mechanics." Carl looked at her with a professional calm that reminded Nita of her family doctor. "What I can do is go over your options with you." She nodded.
"So first—what you'd like to do. You want to break your word and not sing the Song. That'd be easy enough to do. You would simply disappear—stay on land for the next week or so and not have anything further to do with the whales with whom you've been working. That would keep you out of the Song proper; you'd be alive three days from now."
Carl looked out to sea as he spoke, nothing in his expression or his tone of voice hinting at either praise or condemnation. "There would naturally be results of that action. For one, you took the Celebrant's Oath in front of witnesses and called on the Powers of wizardry themselves to bring certain
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things about if you break the Oath. They will bring those things about, Nita —the Powers don't forget. You'll lose your wizardry. You'll forget that there is any such thing as magic in the world. Any relationships you have with other wizards will immediately collapse. You would never have met Kit, for example, or me, or Tom, except for your wizardry. So we'll cease to exist for you."
Nita held still as stone. "There'll also be effects on the Song itself as a result of your leaving. Even if the group
manages to find a replacement wizard to sing the Silent One—" Nita thought of Kit and froze. "—the Song itself will still have been sabo-taged by your betrayal of your Oath. It won't be effective. The undersea tremors, the pollution and the attacks on the whales and all the rest of it will continue. Or the Lone Power will enter into the wizardry and throw it completely out of control—in which case I don't want to think of what will happen to New York and the Island, sooner or later. If all the other wizards in the area worked together, we might be able to slow it down. But not for long."
Carl took a breath. "And on top of everything else, breaking the Cele-brant's Oath will also be a violation of the Wizard's Oath, your oath to assist in slowing down the death of the Universe. In your last moment as a wizard, as you lose your magic, you will know beyond all doubt that the Universe around you is going to die sooner because of your actions. And all through your life there'll always be something at the bottom of your heart that feels sad . . . and you'll never be able to get rid of it, or even understand it." Nita didn't move.
"That was all the 'bad' stuff. On the 'good' side I can tell you that you probably wouldn't die of the upheavals that will start happening. What you did in Manhattan with Kit wouldn't be forgotten by the Powers either; they pay their debts. I imagine your folks would get a sudden urge to go visit some relatives out of state—something like that—and be a good distance inland when the trouble started. And after the trouble, you would go on to live what would seem a perfectly normal life . . . after all, most people think it's normal to have a nameless sorrow at the bottom of your soul. You'd grow up, and find a job, and get married, or not, and work and play and do all the other things that mortals and wizards do. And then you'd die." Nita was silent.
"Now the second option," Carl said. "You go down there and keep your word—though you're not happy about it, to say the least. You sing the Song, and when the time comes you dive into that coral or whatever and cut yourself up, and the Master-Shark comes after you and eats you. You experi-ence about two or three minutes of extreme pain, pain like being hit by a car or burned all over, until you go into shock, or your brain runs out of oxygen,
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whichever comes first; and you die. Your parents and friends then have to deal with the fact of your death."
Nita's tears started again. "The 'good' side to this option," said Carl, "is that the Song will be successfully completed, millions of people will continue to live their lives untroubled, and the Lone
Power will have suffered another severe setback. My estimate is that It couldn't interfere in any large way with the Sea's affairs—and, to some extent, with the land's—for some forty to fifty years thereafter. Possibly more." Nita nodded slowly. "So if—" "Wait. There's a third option," Carl said. "Huh?"
He looked at her with an expression she couldn't fully decipher. "Sing the Song and make the Sacrifice—but do it willingly. Rather than just doing it because you have to, to keep terrible things from happening."
"Does it make a difference?" Carl nodded. "If you can make the Sacrifice willingly, the wizardry will gain such power as you can barely imagine. The Lone One's power is always based on Its desire to have Its own way in everything. Nothing undermines Its workings faster than power turned toward having something be the way someone else wants it."
Carl looked hard at her. "I have to make real sure you understand this. I'm not talking about the sort of fakery most people mean when they talk about 'sacrifice'—none of that 'unselfishness' business, which usually has the desire for other people to feel guilty or sad hidden at the bottom of it. No being a 'martyr.' That would sabotage a wizardry almost as badly as running out on it. But to willingly give up one's life for the sake of the joy and well-being of others will instantly destroy whatever power the Lone One has currently amassed." He glanced away. "That doesn't mean you couldn't be afraid and still have it work, by the way."
"Great," Nita said with a nervous laugh. "The important thing is that, other times when the Sacrifice has been made willingly, there have been fewer wars afterward, less crime, for a long while. The Death of things, of the world as whole, has been slowed. . . •"
Nita thought of people beating and shooting and stealing from each other; she thought of A-bombs and H-bombs, and people starving and poor—anfl she thought of all that slowed down. But all those troubles and possibilities seemed remote right now compared to her own problem, her own life. "I don't know if I could do that," Nita said, scarcely above a whisper.
There was a long pause. "I don't know if I could either," said Carl, just as quietly. She sat still for a long time. "I think—"
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"Don't say it," Carl said, shaking his head. "You couldn't possibly have decided already. And even if you have—" He glanced away. "You may change your mind later . . . and then you'll be saved the embarrassment of having to justify it to me."
"Later—" She looked at him in distress and confusion. "You mean you would still talk to
me if I—" She stopped. "Wait a minute. If I don't do it, I won't know you! And if I do do
it—"
"There's always Timeheart," Carl said softly. Nita nodded, silent. She had been there once, in that "place" to which only wizards can find their way while still alive; that terrible and beautiful place where things that are loved are preserved, deathless, perfect, yet still growing and becoming more themselves through moment after timeless mo-ment. "After we— After we're alive, then—" "What's loved," Carl said, "lives."
She looked at him in a few moments' sorrowful wonder. "But sure," she said. "You're a Senior. You must go there all the time."
"No." He looked out over the sea. "In fact, the higher you're promoted, when you're a wizard, the more work you have to do—and the less time you get to spend outside this world, except on business." He breathed out and shook his head. "I haven't been to Timeheart for a long time, except in dreams. …"
Now it was his turn to sound wistful. Nita reached out and thumped Carl's shoulder once or twice, hesitantly.
"Yeah," Carl said. Slowly he stood up and brushed the sand off his towel, then looked down at her. "Nita," he said—and his voice was not impassive any more, "I'm sorry." "Yeah," she said.
"Call us before you start the song, if you can, okay?" The New York accent was pronounced and raspy, as if Carl's nose were stuffed. "Right."
He turned away, then paused and looked back at her. And everything suddenly became too much for Nita. She went to Carl in a rush, threw her arms around him at about waist height, and began to bawl. "Oh, honey," Carl said, and got down on one knee and held Nita tight, which was what she needed. But the helpless expression on his face, when she finally got some control over herself and looked up, almost hurt her more than her own pain.
After a while she pushed him away. Carl resisted her for a moment. Nita," he said. "If
you— If you do. . . ." He paused. ". . . Thank you," " e finally said, looking at her hard. "Thank you. For the ten million lives that'll keep on living. They'll never know. But the wizards will . . . and won't ever forget."
278 SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL WIZARD "A lot of good that'd do me!" Nita said, caught between desperate laugh-ter and tears. "Sweetheart," Carl said, "if you're in this world for comfort, you've come to the wrong place . . . whether you're wizard or just plain mortal. And if you're doing what you're doing because of the way other people will feel about it—you're definitely in the wrong business. What you do has to be done because of how you 'II feel about you . . . the way you did it last night, with your folks." His voice was rueful. "There are no other rewards … if only because no matter what you do, no one will ever think the things about you that you want them to think. Not even the Powers."
"Right," Nita said again. They let go of each other. Carl turned and walked away quickly. The air slammed itself shut behind him, and he was gone. Nita walked back to the house.
She kept her good-byes brief. "We may be back tonight," she said to her mother and father as they stood together on the beach, "or we may not. S'reee says it'll depend on how much of the rehearsal we get finished."
"Rehearsal—" Her mother looked at her curiously. "Uh-huh. It's like I told you," Kit said. "Everyone who sings has his own part—but there's some ensemble singing, and it has to be done right."
"Kit, we're late," Nita said. "Mom—" She grabbed her mother and hugged her hard. "Don't worry if we don't come back tonight, Mom, please," she said. "We may just go straight into the Song—and that's a day and a half by itself. Look for us Monday morning." Us! her mind screamed, but she ignored it. "Dad—" She turned to him, hugged him too, and saw, out of the corner of her eye, her mother hugging Kit.
Nita glanced up and down the beach. "It's all clear, Kit," she said. She shrugged out of the towel wrapped around her, leaving it with her mother, then sprinted for the water. A few fast hops over several breakers, and there was depth enough to dive and stroke out to twenty-foot water. Nita leaped into the whaleshape as if it were an escape rather than a trap from which she might never return. Once a humpback, she felt normal again—and felt a twinge of nervousness; there was something S'reee had warned her about that. . . . No matter. Nita surfaced and blew good-bye at her mother and father, then turned for Kit, who was treading water beside her, to take her dorsal fin and be towed out to depth. Out in the fifty-foot water Kit wrapped the whalesark about him and made the change with a swiftness that was almost savage. The sperm whale that appeared in his place had a bitter, angry look to its movements when it began to swim away from shore.
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"Kit," Nita said as they went, "you okay?"
It was some time before he answered. "No," he said. "Why should I be? \Vhen you're going to—" He didn't finish the sentence. "Kit, look—"
"No, you look. Don't you see that there's nothing I can do about all this? And I don't like it!" His song was another of the scraping sperm-whale battlecries, soft but very heartfelt, and the rage in it chattered right down Nita's skin like nails down a blackboard. "There's not much I can do about it myself," she said, "and I don't like it either. Let's not talk about it for now, please! My brain still hurts enough from last night."
"Neets," he said, "we've got to talk about it sometime. Tomorrow's it." "Fine. Before tomorrow. Meanwhile, we've got today to worry about. Are we even going the right way?" x
He laughed at her then, a painful sound. "Boy, are you preoccupied," Kit said. "Clean your ears out and listen!"
She stopped everything but the ticks and clicks a humpback uses to find its way, and listened—and was tempted to laugh herself. The sea had a racket hidden in it. From the southwest was coming an insane assortment of long, odd, wild sounds. Sweet high flutings that cut sharply through the interven-ing distance; clear horncalls, as if someone hunted under the waves; outer-spacy whistles and warbles like the electronic cries of orbiting satellites; deep bass scrapes and rumbles, lawn-mower buzzes and halftone moans and soulful sighs. And many of those sounds, sooner or later, came back to the same main theme—a series of long wistful notes, slowly ascending into pitches too high and keen for human ears, then whispering away, lost in the quiet breath-ing of the water. Nita had never heard that main theme before, but she recognized it in-stantly from her reading and her wizard's-sense of the Sea. It was the loss/ gain/sorrow motif that ran all through the Song of the Twelve; and what she heard now, attenuated by distance but otherwise clear, was the sound of its singers, tuning up for the performance in which that mournful phrase would become not just a motif but a reality.
"Kit," Nita said with a shiver, "that's a lot more than ten whales! Who are all those other voices?"
He bubbled, a shrug. "Let's find out." She whistled agreement and struck off after Kit, due west, away from the south shore of
the island and out across the Atlantic-to-Ambrose shipping a Pproaches once more. Song echoed more and more loudly in the sunlit shallows through which they swam; but
underneath them Nita and Kit were Verv aware of the depths from which no echo returned—the abyss of Hudson Canyon, far below them, waiting.
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"This is it," Kit said at last, practically in Nita's ear, as they came to the fringes of the area S'reee's instructions had mentioned—fifteen miles east-northeast of Barnegat, New Jersey, right over the remains of an old sunken tanker six fathoms down in the water. And floating, soaring, or slowly fluking through the diffuse green-golden radiance of the water, were the whales.
Nita had to gulp once to find her composure. Hundreds of whales had gathered and were milling about, whales of every kind—minke whales, sei whales, sperm whales, dolphins of more kinds than she knew existed, in a profusion of shapes and colors, flashing through the water; several blues, grave-voiced, gliding with huge slow grace; fin whales, hardly smaller than the blues, bowhead whales and pygmy rights and humpbacks, many of them; gray whales and pygmy sperms and narwhals with their long single spiral teeth, like unicorn horns; belugas and killers and scamperdowns and bottle-nosed whales— "Kit," Nita sang, faint-voiced, "S'reee didn't tell me there were going to be people here!" "Me either. I guess spectators at the rehearsal are so common, she forgot. . . ." Kit sounded unconcerned.
Easy for you, Nita thought. You like crowds! She sang a few notes of sonar, trying nervously to hear some familiar shape. One shape at least Nita recog-nized, accompanied by the slow, calm, downscaling note of the Blue, as Aroooon passed by, a gold-tinged shadow in the background of greenness and the confusion of bodies. And there was Hotshot's high chatter, some ways off, accompanied by several other dolphin voices very like his—members of his pod.
Stillness swept over the spectators as she approached with Kit, and they recognized who she was. And a single note began to go up from them, starting at the fringes of the circle, working its way inward even to the Celebrants, until she heard even Aroooon's giant voice taking it up. One note, held in every range from the dolphins' dog-whistle trilling to the water-shaking thunder of the blues. One thought, one concept in the Speech, trumpeting through the water with such force that Nita began to shake at the sound of it. Praise. They knew she was the Silent One. They knew what she was going to do for them. They were thanking her.
Stunned, Nita forgot to swim—just drifted there in painful joy. From behind, as the note slowly ebbed away, Kit nudged her. "Get the lead out, Neets," he sang, just for her hearing. "You're the star of this show-So start acting like it! Go in there and let them know you're here."
She swam slowly through the spectator whales, into the clear water in the center of their great circle, where the Celebrants were gathered.
One by one, as she circled above the weed-covered remnant of the trawler* Nita quickly
identified the whales she knew. Aroooon, yes, swimming on more or less by himself to tideward, singing his deep scrape of notes with the
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absent concentration of a perfectionist who has time to hunt perfection; Hotshot, doing barrel rolls near the surface and chattering through the quick bright harmonies of some part of the Wanderer's song; Areinnye, aloof from both Wanderer and Blue, running again and again over a phrase of the Gray Lord's song and paying no further attention to Nita after a quick glance.
There were also five other whales whom Nita didn't know, exactly as Kit had pegged them. A beluga, dolphin-sized but whale-shaped, lazing near the surface and singing some longing phrase from the Gazer's song; a pilot whale, long and slim and gray, silent for the moment and looking at Nita with interest; a right whale, with its huge, strange, bent-out-of-shape baleen mouth, listening to the beluga; a killer whale, the sharp blacks and whites of its hide a contrast to the grays and quiet mottlings of most of the others. And—thank Heaven! —S'reee, swimming toward Nita from beside the killer. Nita had been shaken by the sight of the killer—killer whales being one of a humpback's most persistent natural enemies—but just now her composure was so unraveled, there wasn't much more damage that could be done to it. As S'reee came up to greet her, Nita managed to sing in some-thing like a calm voice, and as if she were actually in charge, "Well, we're late. Should we get started?"
"Good idea," said S'reee, brushing skin briefly and reassuringly with Nita. "Introductions first, though." "Yes, please."
S'reee led Nita off to the north, where several of the singers were working together. "We've been through the first part of the Song already this morn-ing," said S'reee, "the name-songs and so forth. I've heard you do yours, so there was no need for you to be here till late. We're up to the division now, the 'temptation' part. These are the people singing the Undecided group—"
"Hi, Hotshot," Nita sang as she and S'reee soared into the heart of the group. The dolphin chattered a greeting back and busied himself with his singing again, continuing his spirals near the surface, above the heads of the right whale and a whale whose song Nita hadn't heard on the way in, a Sowerby's beaked whale. She immediately suspected why she hadn't heard it; the whale, undoubtedly there to celebrate the Forager's part, was busy eating —ripping up the long kelp and redweed stirring around the shattered deck-Plates of the wreck. It didn't even look up as she and S'reee approached. The r 'ght whale was less preoccupied; it swam toward Nita and S'reee at a slow P a ce that might have been either courtesy or caution.
"HNii't, this is T!h!ki," said S'reee. Nita clicked his name back at him in greeting, swimming forward to brush skin politely with him. "He's singing f he Listener." Tlhlki rolled away from Nita and came about, looking at her curiously.
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When he spoke, his song revealed both great surprise and some unease. "S'reee—this is a human!"
"Tlhlki," Nita said, wry-voiced, with a look at S'reee, "are you going to be mad at me for things I haven't done too?"
The right whale looked at her with that cockeyed upward stare that rights have—their eyes being placed high in their flat-topped heads. "Oh," he said, sounding wry himself, "you've run afoul of Areinnye, have you. No fear, Silent Lord—hNii't, was it? No fear." Tlhlki's song put her instantly at ease. It had an amiable and intelligent sound to it, the song of a mind that didn't tend toward blind animosities. "If you're going to do the Sea such a service as you're doing, I could hardly do less than treat you with honor. For Sea's sake don't think Areinnye is typical. . . .
"However," Tlhlki added, gazing down at the calmly feeding beaked whale, "some of us practically have to have a bite taken out of us to get us to start honoring and stop eating." He drifted down a fathom or so and bumped nose-first into the beaked whale. "Roots! Heads up, you bottom-grubber, here comes the Master-Shark!" "Huh? Where? Where?" the shocked song came drifting up from the bottom. The kelp was thrashed about by frantic fluking, and through it rose the beaked whale, its mouth full of weed, streamers of which trailed back and whipped around in all directions as the whale tried to tell where the shark was coming from. "Where—what— Oh," the beaked whale said after a moment, as the echoes from its initial excited squeaking came back and told it that the Master-Shark was nowhere in the area. "Ki," it said slowly, "I'm going to get you for that."
"Later. Meantime, here's S'reee, and hNii't with her," said T!h!ki. "HNii't's singing the Silent Lord. HNii't, this is Roots."
"Oh," said Roots, "well met. Pleasure to sing with you. Would you excuse me?" She flipped her tail, politely enough, before Nita could sing a note, and a second later was head-down in the kelp again, ripping it up faster than before, as if making up for lost time. Nita glanced with mild amusement at S'reee as Hotshot spiraled down to join them. "She's a great conversationalist," Hotshot whistled, his song con-spiratorially quiet. "Really. Ask her about food." "I kind of suspected," Nita said. "Speaking of the Master-Shark, though, where is Ed this morning?"
S'reee waved one long fin in a shrug. "He has a late appearance, as you do, so it doesn't really matter if he shows up late. Meanwhile, we have to meet the others. Ki, are you finished with Roots?"
"Shortly. We're going through the last part of the second duet. I'll catch up with you people later." The right whale glided downward toward the weeds, and S'reee led Nita off to the west, where the Blue drifted in the
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water, and the beluga beside him, a tiny white shape against Aroooon's hugeness. "Aroooon and I are two of the Untouched," said S'reee. "The third, after the Singer and the Blue, is the Gazer. That's Iniihwit."
"HNii't," Aroooon's great voice hailed them as Nita approached. Nita bent her body into a bow of respect as she coasted through the water. "Sir," she said.
That small, calm eye dwelt gravely on her. "Are you well, Silent Lord?" said the Blue. "As well as I can be, sir," Nita said. "Under the circumstances." "That's well," said Aroooon. "Iniihwit, here is the human I spoke of." The beluga swam away from Aroooon to touch skin with Nita. Iniihwit was male, much smaller than Nita as whales went, though big for a beluga. But what struck her more than his smallness was the abstracted, contempla­tive sound of his song when he did speak. There were long silent days of calm behind it, days spent floating on the surface alone, watching the changes of sea and sky, saying little, seeing much. "HNii't," he said, "well met. And well met now, for there's something you must hear. You too, Senior." л "The weather?" S'reee said, sounding worried. \
"Yes indeed. It looks as if that storm is not going to pass us by." Nita looked at S'reee in surprise. "What storm? It's clear." "For now," said Iniihwit. "Nevertheless, there's weather coming, and there's no telling what it will stir up in the depths."
"Is there any chance we can beat it?" S'reee said, sounding very worried indeed. "None," the beluga said. "It will be here in half a light. We'll have to take our chances with the storm, I fear."
S'reee hung still in the water, thinking. "Well enough," she said. "Come on, hNii't; let's speak to Areinnye and the others singing the Undecided. We'll start the group rehearsal,
then go straight into the Song. Time's swim-rning."
S'reee fluked hard and soared off, leaving Nita in shock for a moment. We won't be going home tonight, she thought. No good-byes. No last explana-tions. I'll never set foot on land again. . . . "Neets?" Kit's voice said from behind her. "Right," she said.
She went after S'reee to see the three whales singing the Undecided. Areinnye greeted Nita with cool cordiality and went back to her practicing. And here's the Sounder," S'reee was saying. "Fluke, this is hNii't."
Nita brushed skin with the Sounder, who was a pilot whale; small and bottled gray, built along the same general lines as a sperm, though barely a Quarter the size. Fluke's eyes were small, his vision poor, and he had an
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owlish, shortsighted look about him that reminded Nita of Dairine in her glasses. The likeness was made stronger by a shrill, ratchety voice and a tendency toward chuckles. "Fluke?" Nita said.
"I was one," the Sounder said. "I'm a triplet. And a runt, as you can see. There was nothing to do to hold my own with my brother and sister except become a wizard in self– defense."
Nita made a small amused noise, thinking that there might not be so much difference between the motivations and family lives of humans and whales. "And here's Fang," said S'reee.
Nita found herself looking at the brilliant white and deep black of the killer whale. Her feelings were decidedly mixed. The humpback-shape had its own ideas about the Killer, mostly prejudiced by the thought of blood in the water. But Nita's human memories insisted that killers were affable creatures, friendly to humans; she remembered her Uncle Jerry, her mother's older brother, telling about how he'd once ridden a killer whale at an aquatic park in Hawaii and had had a great time. This killer whale edged closer to Nita now, staring at her out of small black eyes—not opaque ones like Ed's, but sharp, clever ones, with merriment in them. "Well?" the killer said, his voice teasing. "Shark got your tongue?"
The joke was so horrible, and somehow so funny, that Nita burst out laughing, liking this creature instantly. "Fang, is it?" "It is. HNii't, is it?"
"More or less." There was a kind of wicked amusement about Fang's song, which by itself was funny to listen to—sweet whistles and flutings peppered liberally with spits and fizzes. "Fang, are you from these waters originally?"
"Indeed not. I came down from Baffin Bay for the Song." Nita swung her tail in surprise. "That's in Canada! Fifteen hundred miles!" "What? Oh, a great many lengths, yes. I didn't swim it, hNii't. Any more than you and K!t there went where you went last night by swimming."
"I suppose," she said, "that a wizardry done like that—on such short notice, and taking the wizards such a distance—might have been noticed."
Fang snorted bubbles. " 'Might'! I should say so. By everybody. But it's understandable that you might want to indulge yourselves, anyway. Seeing that you and your partner won't have much more time to work together in the flesh." Fang's voice was kind, even matter-of-fact; but Nita wanted to keep away from that subject for the moment. "Right. Speaking of which, S'reee, hadn't we better start?" "Might as well."
S'reee swam off to a spot roughly above the wreck, whistling, and slowly the whole group began to drift in toward her. The voices of the whales
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gathered around to watch the Celebrants began to quiet, like those of an audience at a concert.
"From the top," S'reee said. She paused a few seconds, then lifted up her voice in the Invocation.
" 'Blood in the water I sing, and one who shed it: deadliest hunger I sing, and one who fed it— weaving the ancientmost song of the Sea's sending: . 'm singing the tragedy, singing the joy unending.' "
Joy. . . . Nita thought, trying to concentrate. But the thought of whose blood was being sung about made it hard.
The shadow that fell over Nita somewhere in the middle of the first song of the Betrayed whales, though, got her attention immediately. A stream-lined shape as pale as bleached bone glided slowly over her, blocking the jade light; one dead-black, unreflecting eye glanced down. "Nita."
"Ed," she said, none too enthusiastically. His relentless reality was no pleasant sight. "Come swim with me."
He arched away through the water, northward toward Ambrose Light. The gathered spectators drew back as Nita silently followed.
Shortly they were well to the north, still able to hear the ongoing practice Song, but out of hearing range for standard conversation. "So, Silent Lord," Ed said, slowing. "You were busy last night."
"Yes," Nita said, and waited. She had a feeling that something odd was going on inside that chill mind.
Ed looked at her. "You are angry. . . ." "Damn right I am!" Nita sang, loudly, not caring for the moment about what Ed might think of her distress.
"Explain this anger to me," said the Master-Shark. "Normally the Silent Lord does not find the outcome of the Song so frightful. In fact, whales sometimes compete for the privilege of singing your part. The Silent Lord dies indeed, but the death is not so terrible—it merely comes sooner than it wight have otherwise, by predator or old age. And it buys the renewal of life, and holds off the Great Death, for the whole Sea—and for years." Ed glanced at her, sedate. "And even if the Silent One should happen to suffer somewhat, what of it? For there is still Timeheart, is there not? . . . the Heart of the Sea." Nita nodded, saying nothing. "It is no ending, this A °ng, but a passage into something else. How they extol that passage, and *hat lies at its end." There was faint, scornful amusement in Ed's voice as he ''fted his voice in a verse of the Song—one of the Blue's cantos—not singing, exactly, for sharks have no song; chanting, rather. " '. . . Past mortal song—
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" '—that Sea whereof our own seas merely hint, poor shadows sidewise-cast from what is real— where Time and swift-finned Joy are foes no more, but lovers; where old friend swims by old friend, senior to Death, undying evermore— partner to Songs unheard and Voices hid; songs past our knowing, perilously fair—' "
Ed broke off. "You are a wizard," he said. "You have known that place, supposedly." "Yes." Timeheart had looked like a bright city, skyscrapered in crystal and fire, power trembling in its streets and stones, unseen but undeniably there. And beyond the city stretched a whole universe, sited beyond and within all other worlds, beyond and within all times. Death did not touch that place. "Yes, I was there."
"So you know it awaits you after the Sacrifice, after the change of being. But you don't seem to take the change so calmly."
"How can I? I'm human!" "Yes. But make me understand. Why does that make your attitude so different? Why are you so angry about something that would happen to you sooner or later anyway?" "Because I'm too young for this," Nita said. "All the things I'll never have a chance to do—grow up, work, live—"
"This," Ed said mildly, looking around him at the green-burning sea, the swift fish flashing in it, the dazzling wrinkled mirror of the surface seen from beneath, "this is not living?" "Of course it is! But there's a lot more to it! And getting murdered by a shark is hardly what I call living!"
"I assure you," Ed said, "it's nothing as personal as murder. I would have done the same for any wizard singing the Silent Lord. I have done the same, many times. And doubtless shall again. . . ." His voice trailed off.
Nita caught something odd in Ed's voice. He sounded almost . . . wist-ful?
"Look," she said, her own voice small. "Tell me something. . . . Does it really have to hurt
a lot?"
"Sprat," said Ed dispassionately, "what in this life doesn't? Even love hurts sometimes. You may have noticed. . . ."
"Love—what would you know about that?" Nita said, too pained to care about being scornful, even to the Master-Shark.
"And who are you to think I would know nothing about it? Because I kill without remorse, I must also be ignorant of love, is that it?" There was a long, frightening pause, while Ed began to swim a wide circle
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about Nita. "You're thinking I am so old an order of life that I can know nothing but the blind white rut, the circling, the joining that leaves the joined forever scarred. Oh yes, I know that. In its time . . . it's very good."
The rich and hungry pleasure in his voice disturbed Nita. Ed was circling closer and closer as he spoke, swimming as if he were asleep. "And, yes … sometimes we wish the closeness of the joining wouldn't end. But what would my kind do with the warm-blood sort of joining, the long companion-ships? What would I do with a mate?" He said it as if it were an alien word. "Soon enough one or the other of us would fall into distress—and the other partner would end it. There's an end to mating and mate, and to the love that passed between. That price is too high for me to pay, even once. I swim alone." He was swimming so close to Nita now that his sides almost touched hers, and she pulled her tail and fins in tight and shrank away from the razory hide, not daring to move otherwise. Then Ed woke up and broke the circle, gliding lazily outward and away as if nothing had happened. "But, Sprat, the matter of my loves—or their lack—is hardly what's bothering you." "No," she burst out bitterly, "love! I've never had a chance to. And now— now—" "Then you're well cast for the Silent Lord's part," Ed said, his voice sounding far away. "How does the line go? 'Not old enough to love as yet,/ but old enough to die, indeed—' That has always been the Silent Lord's business—to sacrifice love for life . . . instead of, as in lesser spngs, the other way around. …"
Ed trailed off, paused to snap up a sea bass that passed him by too slowly. When his eyes were more or less sane again and the water had carried the blood away, Ed said, "Is it truly so much to you, Sprat? Have you truly had no time to love?" Mom and Dad, Nita thought ruefully. Dairine. That's not love, I don't love Dairine!—do I? She hardened her heart and said, "No, Pale One. Not that way. No one . . . that way." "Well then," said the Master-Shark, "the Song will be sung from the heart, it seems. You will still offer the Sacrifice?" "I don't want to—" "Answer the question, Sprat." It was a long while before Nita spoke. "I'll do what I said I would," she s aid at last. The notes of the song whispered away into the water like the last notes of a dirge. She was glad Ed said nothing for a while, for her insides gripped and churned as she finally found out what real, grownup fear was. Not the kind that happens suddenly, that leaves you too busy with action to think about being afraid—but the kind that she had been holding off by not officially
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"deciding": the kind that swims up as slowly as a shark circling, letting you see it and realize in detail what's going to happen to you.
"I am big enough to take a humpback in two bites," Ed said into her silence. "And there is no need for me to be leisurely about it. You will speak to the Heart of the Sea without having to say too much to me on the way."
Nita looked up at him in amazement. "But I thought you didn't believe— I mean, you'd never—"
"I am no wizard, Nita," Ed said. "The Sea doesn't speak to me as it does to you. I will never experience those high wild joys the Blue sings of—the Sea That Burns, the Voices. The only voices I hear cry out from water that burns with blood. But might I not sometimes wonder what other joys there are? —and wish I might feel them too?" The dry, remote pain in his voice astonished her. And Nita thought abruptly of that long line of titles in the commentaries in her manual: as if only one shark had ever been Master. Sharks don't die of natural causes, she thought. Could it be that, all these years, there has been just one Master? And all around him, people die and die, and he—can't— —and wants to? And so he understands how it is to want to get out of something and be stuck with it.
Nita was terribly moved—she wasn't sure why. She swam close to the Pale One's huge head for a moment and glided side by side with him, matching his course and the movements of his body.
"I wish I could help," she said. "As if the Master could feel distress," Ed said, with good-natured scorn. The wound in his voice had healed without a scar.
"And as if someone else might want to end it," Nita said, sarcastic, but gentle about it. Ed was silent for a long while. "I mean, it's dumb to suffer," Nita said, rather desperately, into that silence. "But if you have to do it, you might as well intend it to do someone some good."
In silence they swam a few lengths more through the darkening water, while Nita's fear began to build in her again, and one astonished part of her mind shouted at her, You 're running around talking about doing nice things for someone who's going to kill you? You 're crazy!
Ed spoke at last. "It's well said. And we will cause it to be well made, this Sacrifice. You, young and never loving; I, old and never loved." Calm, utterly calm, that voice. "Such a Song the Sea will never have seen."
"HNii't?" came a questioning note through the water, from southward of Ambrose: S'reee's voice. "It's almost your time—" "I have to go," Nita said. "Ed—" "Silent Lord?"
She had no idea why she was saying it. "I'm sorry!"
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"This once, I think," the passionless voice said, "so am I. Go on, Sprat. I w jll not miss my cue."
Nita looked at him. Opaque eyes, depthless, merciless, lingered on her as Ed curved past. "Coming!" Nita sang in S'reee's direction, loud, and tore off southward. No pale shadow followed.
The next few hours, while the water darkened further, ran together for Nita in a blur of music, and annoying repetitions, and words that would have been frightening if she hadn't been too busy to be frightened. And some-thing was growing in her, slowly, but getting stronger and stronger—an odd elation. She sang on, not questioning it, riding its tide and
hoping it would last through what she had to do. Again and again, with the other Celebrants listening and offering suggestions, she rehearsed what would be the last things she would ever say:
". . . Sea, hear me now, and take my words and make them ever law!—"
"Right, now swim off a little. No one hears this part. Upward, and toward the center, where the peak will be. Right there—"
" 'Must I accept the barren Gift?