A Sudden Wild Magic

That did it. Tod was marched off in disgrace before the High Head himself. And naturally the system was that Brother Wilfrid nipped in through the veil and had his say before Tod got near the High Head.

“Well, what have you got to say?” the High Head asked. He was in worn blue fatigues at that moment, and his office was spread all over with tide charts, but Tod found him unexpectedly impressive even so.

“As what I’ve got to say is probably the opposite of everything Brother Wilfrid told you,” Tod said angrily, “I think I’ll pass on that.”

The High Head surveyed Tod’s incipient black eye and swollen lip, his disordered hair and aggressive anger, and tried to conquer his prejudice against Tod and be equitable. “Servicemen are always brawling,” he said. “I’m prepared to believe your cause was just. But you’re not here for fighting, or the damage to the centaur’s eye.” Tod ground his teeth audibly at this. “You are here for causing acute disturbance in every band and spoke of the Wheel. Can’t you feel what you’ve done? If not, look.” The High Head gestured to his large mirror, which was boiling and tumbling with the mixed rainbows of a large cosmic disorder. “You did that, Gordano, by raising wild magic.”

The injustice of this was almost too much for Tod. “With respect, sir, I did not do any such thing. First, I did not use wild magic, because I have been very well trained from as far back as I can remember. What I did was to draw on my birthright in the ways I have been taught. Second, sir, that cosmic storm was brewing at least an hour ago. I saw it on the speculum quite clearly.”

“Then why did you not report it?” asked the High Head.

“Because I assumed Observer Horn is full of highly trained Brothers who would report it long before I did,” said Tod.

“There is no need to be insolent,” said the High Head.

“Yes there is,” said Tod. “If I speak normally in this damned joyless place, some po-faced prat ups and tells me I’m being insolent. So if I’m insolent, it ought to work the other way round. Sir.”

They stared at each other with considerable dislike, while the High Head wondered which of twenty scathing things to say. And which of thirty condign punishments to order. None of them seemed nasty enough for this nasty piece of work, who could nearly put a serviceman’s eye out and then show no contrition whatsoever, who refused to acknowledge he had caused a cosmic storm, who—

The upper off-center mirror spoke, blazing the sigil of Observer Horn. “Sir, there appears to be a supply capsule out of control outside the atmosphere.”

The Observer sigil was almost instantly joined by sigils in every other mirror. That of Housekeeping blazed, Defense, Maintenance, Observer again, Healing, Calculus. Each sigil brought a new voice, speaking in crisp sequence.

“Housekeeping here, sir. There’s a capsule outside the air that’s definitely not one of ours.”

“Defense Horn, requesting permission to explode a strange capsule, sir. We divine some kind of foreign life aboard it which could be dangerous.”

“This is Maintenance, sir. There’s a capsule plunging straight at our atmosphere. If it gets any closer, it could breach us, sir.”

“Sir, we are now in contact with a mind in distress inside the supposed supply capsule. Person seems human and says the controls don’t answer.”

“Healing, Healing. Be wary. There are dead humans aboard a capsule outside. Be wary. It could be plague.”

“Calculus Horn reports, sir, with some shame, that the cause of the current cosmic storm appears to be a rogue capsule that entered Arth from elsewhere in the multiverse some twenty seconds ago.”

“Ritual Horn, sir. Be wary. Alien magework is affecting our efforts to damp the storm.”

Tod gazed from sigil to sigil, almost admiringly. What a display of order and efficiency. No sigil occupied a glass already in use by another. The voices spoke precisely in turn. It was all so cool that he had to force himself to realize that this must be an emergency, that there must be people in bad trouble outside the citadel.

The High Head snapped an order to Defense Horn to hold off their attack for a while and drew in the air the symbol for the emergency rescue of a transport. As artificial elementals sped howling down the corridors, screaming their orders to the heads and other ranks of the Horns involved, he swung around to Tod again. What those people out there thought they were doing in this capsule, he had no idea, but Edward’s message had not been lost on him. Corpses. Possibly plague. Good. “Gordano, you go to the upper rescue port and tell them to put you into a safety suit. I want you to be first man to board that capsule. Your punishment is to deal with whatever you find inside it.”

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