A Sudden Wild Magic

I don’t believe this! she thought. She was so tired. “What the hell are you talking about?” As she spoke she realized he was right about the wards round the flat. She could feel them hemming the place in, thick and heavy and strange to her.

Joe stood up. He was thickset, black-haired and with black stubble on his chin, but he was not as drunk as she had assumed. Perhaps not drunk at all. She wondered how she had ever fancied him. “This project of yours,” he said. “I waited until you’d done whatever it was, because I knew you’d be easier to catch then. Now I want you to tell me exactly what you’ve been doing so that I can report to the High Head.”

“You’re raving,” said Maureen.

“No way,” he said. “And don’t try any tricks with witchcraft. I learnt my mageworking on Arth, and I know things you’ve never even dreamt of.”

“The same goes for me!” she snapped. “You’ve no idea of half the things I know!” And, as he took a heavy step toward her, she added, “And don’t think you can overpower me physically, either. I’m a professional dancer, remember. I’m much stronger than I look.”

Joe gave her a look of contempt that somehow deepened the strangeness she had seen in his face. “I know that. I came prepared to wait it out. Look. Take a look.” The sharp smell of his sweat mingled with the smoke-fug as he moved sideways away from her, always making sure not to turn his back, she noticed, and kicked open the doors to the kitchen and the bathroom.

Maureen moved, equally warily, to the center of the room. She was so tired that she seemed to be functioning on animal instincts alone. Her main feeling was exasperation and outrage. The kitchen was piled with boxes of groceries. She could see fruit, vegetables, potato crisps. The bath was full of packs of lager. How typical of Joe!

“See?” he said. “We’ll be quite comfortable while we wait for you to tell me. I got all this stuff mostly so that you’d see I’m in earnest. But it would be much easier if you’d tell me everything straightaway.” Still keeping himself facing her, he retreated sideways and settled himself back in the corner of the sofa. “Well?”

There were reserves of strength in everyone, Maureen told herself. She ought still to have a charge of power from the ritual too. She drew on both, or tried to, and told herself she felt better for it. “Piss off,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do,” he said. “You’ve just performed a very big ritual of some kind. I want to know what it was supposed to do. The real world needs to know. They sent me over here to find out what you were doing, and find out is what I’m going to do. I don’t want to be stuck in your stinking world for any longer than I have to be.”

He’s a spy from the pirate universe, Maureen thought. She was beyond either surprise or alarm. The thought came to her simply as a sort of summing up of all the things she had seen since she first unlocked her front door. She thought of the capsule. It might be in Laputa-Blish by now, or it might not. No one knew how long a transition between universes should take, or even whether they had got the transition right. Even assuming the very best, that the capsule had got there almost instantly and the team had succeeded in entering that fortress, the virus- magic needed time in which to take effect. They had had six hours. They needed at least six more. I’ll just have to wait it out, she thought. “Damned if I tell you anything,” she said.

“Really?” Joe said. “You have to sleep sometime. I can work on your head then.”

“So do you have to sleep,” she said. But her spirit sank. She was so weary. There was a sort of hollow weakness under her breastbone that she suspected was despair. “It seems to be deadlock,” she said, and seated herself grimly facing him at the other end of the sofa. He gazed at her jeeringly. And she realized what the odd thing was about his face. There were all sorts of foreign thoughts in it. She could see the alien consciousness behind his face pushing the features she had thought she knew well into a completely new shape. She tried to tell herself that this did not scare her — not at all. She was just so tired.

IV Arth

1

Tod was not happy. It did not make him feel any better to know he had not expected to be happy in Arth. He was only there because his father had insisted on it.

“It’s your legal obligation, I’m afraid, son,” the Pentarch told him. “I wouldn’t bother you with it if it wasn’t. Hated my stint in the place. Stupid rules and out-of-date notions. They say it’s even more of a back number these days. Lost its point, to my mind, as soon as all the new technology came in. But the law still says that the heir to a Pentarchy has to have his year in Arth. If you don’t, you don’t qualify as my heir, son, and the king could roll me up as well as you. He might, too. I’ve had several polite inquiries from the Royal Office about you. You’ll have to go.”