A Sudden Wild Magic

It would not have cheered them to know that, when the High Head returned to his office and tried to get on with the normal business of the day, he was no happier than they were. For one thing, he had acted like a tyrant, and he hated it. For another, the vibrations continued in unabated wild fluctuations. He promised himself revenge on Zillah, not to speak of the gualdian and the centaur, when the search parties finally ran them to earth. They had been lurking down there for three days now. True, there was unfortunately plenty of food in the depths — but surely it was only a matter of time before someone tracked them down! When they did, he would find it a pleasure to make them pay for all this necessary tyranny. The whole of Arth would revile them. And meanwhile, with all this going on, all the experiments with otherworld were in almost complete abeyance. He would have Lady Marceny on his tail any minute now. He groaned at the thought.

In their own quarters, the women groaned too. “More wasting time!” Roz strode angrily up and down the bare blue room. “I’m sick of you lot sitting about like a wet week! What are all these rituals about? You realize they’re excluding us, don’t you?”

“We don’t count as mages,” Helen said dryly. She was sitting upright against the wall, twiddling her long thumbs.

This irritated Roz. Most things irritated her by then. “I count myself a perfectly good female mage,” she said. “When I think of all I’ve learnt—”

“Have you learnt a way to get home?” asked Sandra, slumped beside Helen.

“Well, no,” Roz conceded. “But that’s obviously a closely guarded—”

“I’ve told you,” Flan called from her corner. “The only way to get home is to get turned into a reptile. I saw—”

“Flan!” Helen said warningly, and sighed. Sandra was in tears again. Tears rolled down her face, across her mouth, and dripped unheeded off her chin.

“I want to go home,” Sandra said. “I didn’t mean for him to lose his post for being mad. I liked him — a lot. He’s a nice guy once you get used to—”

“Oh, do please bloody well spare me your nervous breakdowns, you two!” Roz snapped. She was not happy either. It was bad enough to have to hide in here for doing the job she had been sent to do, but she did not deserve the way the cadets were behaving. Whenever any of them saw her now, they fell into lockstep behind her. And they seemed to be whispering something like “Haw, haw, haw!” Roz refused to be paranoid about silly boys, but it was horribly depressing that there did not seem to be any real way home. And—

They all looked up as Judy came in, wandering among the veils looking obscurely nervous. Flan was galvanized, and uncurled from her corner with a bounce.

“At last! Did he know what happened to Zillah?”

Judy shook her head, and Flan curled up again.

“So where have you been?” Roz demanded. “It can’t have taken you two whole days just to make sure he didn’t know!”

“Nowhere,” said Judy. “With Edward. And wandering. Thinking. I decided in the end I’d better come and warn you. We may be in trouble when Edward decides what to do. I told him we all came from the otherworld.”

“You what?” said all four as one woman.

“Told him where we come from,” said Judy. “I was sick of pretending. Edward thinks he’ll have to tell High Horns.”

“Christ!” said Roz. “And didn’t you even have the nous to swear him to secrecy first? Honestly! What kind of a bunch of women have I got myself mixed up with? Not one of you has a scrap of patriotism. Not one of you even has a spine! Sandra goes and falls in love — in love! — with the man she’s supposed to be seducing in order to save her world. And our poor world goes out of the window at once. Flan sees a ritual and thinks Zillah’s been put through it, so Flan curls up and decides to die. Our world goes out of the window again. Helen gets turned out of the kitchen, so what does Helen do? Helen sits and twiddles her thumbs. Our world goes out of the window a third time. And then, to crown it all, little Judy goes and prattles to her Edward about exactly where we come from. World out of the window for good. Lord! Are you lot trying to be traitors? Well, I’m not. I’m a patriot. I love my world. I came here to do a job, and I want it done. Thanks to Judy, we’ve got a real crisis on. So let’s have some action, shall we?”

“Speech!” Flan murmured rudely. “What a lot of good you did!” Judy simply turned around and walked out of the room again. Sandra got up and bolted after her, sobbing.

Helen unfolded herself and advanced on Roz. “And what action do you suggest? Haven’t you noticed that we’ve all worked like stink in our own ways, and it’s all come to nothing? That’s what’s the matter!” She stalked past Roz and out through the veiling too.