Диана Дуэйн - A Wizard Of Mars

Kit gazed at this in amazement …then made his way back to Aurilelde and sat down again. “Maybe you want to start from the beginning,” Kit said. “And tell me about this as if I don’t know anything. Because I don’t—”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “No,” she said, “I understand that. A lot of us had trouble remembering, when we woke up from the long sleep.” She shook her head. “It was a hard time. Everyone was afraid. Everyone was horrified, and in grief. Nobody wants to see their planet destroyed…” She reached out to his face: then paused. “May I?”

Kit looked at her, perplexed. “May you what?”

“I can’t let you see what I see without asking leave first. I may not be a wizard—” and her eyes glinted at him, amused— “but that much I know is the law. The mind is the outer fastness of the soul, and access to another’s mind must be requested.”

Kit nodded. Aurilelde reached out, simply touched the side of his head, then looked away. All around them the view of the Tower washed out in a wave of dark.

We lived on the first world for a long time,Aurilelde said as they looked down on a distant world in Earth’s solar system. We were all alone in this system. That aloneness gave some of us— ideas. And those ideas were possibly fed by the one you know, the one all wizards know: the one who lies in the darkness, waiting.

The Lone Power.

Yes, Aurilelde said. Because we were the first ones to come to life in this system, at the bottom of all our lives, and all our joys, there was always a shadow of fear. We knew we would bear the weight of the Darkness’s enmity: it would come for us and try to destroy us. Even the Red Rede spoke of it.

The Red Rede?

One of my ancestors wrote it, Aurilelde said. Then she laughed. Or I did! Some people say we’re all the same person, the Seers in the Dark. They say we come back, again and again, to get it right— to stop making the mistakes we made the last time. So after our world was destroyed, it was hard to know how that could still happen… how the Darkness might return and attempt to destroy us once more. You’d have thought once would be enough.

Kit saw it as she saw it. Out in the darkness, blocking away the stars, the shadow grew. We could not divert the planet, Aurilelde said sadly. All our wizards tried. It was a mighty effort, in which many died. Even then they could only deflect it enough to avoid a direct impact. Through her vision, Kit saw the rogue planet approach. And in retrospect, she said, there are those who said it might have been wiser if we hadn’t. If we’d just let the Doom out of the Darkness end everything, there and then.

Together, they watched the rogue world come plunging in through the system. Kit was horrified. You couldn’t just sit there and let all your people be doomed! he said.

But look what happened, said Aurilelde, as the last-ditch forces crafted by the planet’s wizards lashed out. Shamask-Eilith shattered; the rogue world’s course, perturbed by the forces applied to it by the wizards and by Shamask-Eilith’s fragmented mass, now shifted, heading for the inner worlds. A second later, Kit saw it plunging in toward a new world much closer to the Sun, a world where the surface was still molten. As he watched, the rogue planet struck the edge of that new young world, and a vast gout of magma and barely solidified stone splashed outward in its wake as the rogue planet blundered on. Behind it, the Earth shuddered, nearly disintegrated, and then slowly, painfully began to reform itself.

See what we almost did to your world? Aurilelde said. Because of the blow the rogue planet struck yours, the silicon-based life that had just arisen there was all but wiped out. Life found another way, but— She sounded sad. It might have been better if we’d left well enough alone.

But you couldn’t have known that, Kit said. You were trying to save yourselves!

She looked at him sadly. That’s what you said the last time, she said. You were always the pragmatist.

Kit looked at her and shook his head. Aurilelde, he said, you can’t be sure it was me. I don’t remember any of that! Of being— what’s-his-name, Khretef—

I am sure, she said. And she looked at him sadly. I understand. You’ve been a long time in your present life; the old one must seem like a dream, if that. She fell silent.

Kit, watching the young Earth slowly coalesce, and watching the splashed-out rock gradually form itself into the Moon, shook his head at himself. How come I never used the manual to take a look at this moment in time myself? he wondered. How come I had to wait for someone else to show it to me? Considering how much Kit liked the Moon, it seemed like a missed opportunity. But then again, in recent months, Mars had come to occupy the forefront of his mind—

Kit let out a breath, looked over at Aurilelde again. How come you showed yourself to me that other way first? he said. This way is prettier—

Even as Kit spoke, he was surprised that something like that had come out of his mouth. But it was true. This shape had a fitness about it that the sultry look of the previous Aurilelde had not.

She just looked at him, though, and smiled sadly. It was the way best suited to you right then, she said. I knew that as soon as you were ready, you would want to see me as I was again. You were never one for false seemings.

The sorrow of her expression was painful to see. When we were ready to settle in the New World, you were the first one to come and tell me that you liked my new form even better than my old one. And Aurilelde smiled. Even my father didn’t think to do that.

She sighed, looking at the scattering fragments of the First World as the ships and the two surviving cities, one from Shamask, one from Eilith, fled it. But there was so much ambivalence about having to change our shape, our way of living. Many of us said that if we changed our form, it would change our minds, the way we thought: we’d no longer be the people we were. Others said— she looked down— that maybe that would be a good thing. That since our people awakened in the First World, we’d done nothing but cause each other grief. And truly, we were never a peaceful species. Some people said that was because we were in the wrong shape: that when we took the new one, things would settle down. We would find the way of life the One had always meant for us.

She shook her head. But no one wanted to decide on the new forms right away, so soon after the disaster, and not without careful assessment of which other world in the system would be best for us. The refuge-cities and the ships were built so that all the survivors could sleep for many years, allowing the system to settle after the disaster. For none of us wanted to leave the system: this was our home! We were the First Life here. We dared not abandon the place.

Aurilelde looked even sadder, as if touching on a memory that still hurt. The Sun— even at this distance, the Sun cried out to us,‘Don’t go!’ And we couldn’t. But there were no other worlds ready. The other solid ones were too close to the Sun, not yet settled out of the molten state. The outer ones were places where not even we could have lived— and our old forms were used to the cold. So our last wizards swept all but the least fragments of Shamask-Eilith into a nullspace portal to ensure that the new inner worlds, our homes to be, would take no harm from them …

Aurilelde shrugged. And then we slept. A long time, out in the darkness, the ships and the cities slid in long slow orbits far from the Sun, waiting. How many years— She shook her head. If I ever knew the actual count, Aurilelde said, I’ve forgotten. But eventually we woke. The city-ships knew, because the wizardry and science built into them told them, that the system was ready for us again. And so we woke, and looked about us. We saw the beginnings of your kind of life on your world—She looked at Kit with a strange affectionate expression, almost the way someone might look at a pet, some life form not quite up to their standard.