A Sudden Wild Magic

“Curse. Thought I’d disconnected.” She took the tea with her and shuffled off to hunt through the jangling jungle for the phone and answer it.

It was Amanda’s voice, high with agitation. “Zillah’s gone! She hasn’t slept in her bed. So’s Marcus. Gladys, she’s taken Marcus and gone! I can’t feel where she is. All I get when I try for her is nothing. Gladys, where is she?”

Gladys held the tea mug against her ear, warming it against Amanda’s insistence. “Lovely bell-like voice,” she muttered. “Clear and high. Like a damned carillon or an alarm clock.”

“Oh, sorry,” Amanda said without much contrition. “You must be so tired after last night — but, Gladys, can’t you try for Zillah? Can you get any idea where she is?”

“Just a moment.” Gladys sighed and took a warm, warming gulp of tea. Zillah. Amanda’s younger sister, the one with the little boy — Mark’s child, Gladys had always suspected. “Damn it, Amanda, I only met your sister twice.” Reddish hair. Sense of unrealized abilities about her that could be even stronger than Amanda’s. In fact, Gladys recalled, where Zillah’s abilities were concerned, the sky was the limit, if only the silly girl could bring herself to realize it! At least someone with that kind of strength ought to be fairly easy to trace. She drank more tea and put her mind to it. The trace was there. It led—“Oh, all the powers, Amanda! She went in that capsule and took the child!”

A sharp silence on the other end was followed by an even sharper cry of horror. “Gladys! Are you sure? Are you still in contact with the capsule?”

“No.” Gladys sighed again and tried to explain. “They went out of contact as soon as they crossed over, Amanda. All I know is that the trace leads to the capsule and stops.”

“But she was inside the capsule the other day — and so was Marcus. Mightn’t that be what you’re feeling? I mean, she definitely wasn’t there, or in the warehouse, when I left the team there. I know she was at home with Marcus. I could feel. There was no way for her to get there. The team wouldn’t have let her on board if she did go there.”

Hope, Gladys thought, was a heavy thing and would do no good here. “Amanda, I’m sure. I don’t know how Zillah did it, but that is what she did.”

“Really sure? Gladys, please try and trace her further! I have the strongest precognitions of disaster for the capsule anyway!”

So had Gladys. Some of the foreknowledge was, to her regret, the result of calculations she wished she had not had to make. “I can’t try to trace her now. For one thing, I’m tired to death. For another, I know I was lucky to make contact with the Laputa-Blish thing anyway. I got in on them when they were exchanging messages and people with their home universe, and I’m going to have to wait for them to start doing that again before I can see anything clear about our folk. Don’t worry. I’ll keep trying. I’ll let you know as soon as I find them again.”

“And can we fetch her back? Gladys, I don’t know what Zillah thought she was doing, but if she did go there—! Gladys, she hasn’t a clue — really. She didn’t know it was supposed to be an attack.”

“Well, obviously, or she wouldn’t have taken Marcus. Amanda, do try to get some sleep. There’s nothing you can do until we know more.”

It took a while to persuade Amanda. Gladys put the phone down at last and made her way back to the kitchen, rolling like a badger from foot to foot out of weariness. “Nothing we can do,” she repeated to herself, pouring more tea. It had gone strong and orange and tepid by then. She drank it all the same, full of guilt and sorrow. Cats were appearing, on windowsills, on the draining board, out of cupboards, treading warily with sympathy. “Don’t tell Amanda,” she said to them guiltily. “Nothing we can do.” It was something Maureen had accepted — but then Maureen was like that — but they had both tacitly agreed that there was no point in telling Amanda that the only way for the raiding party to get back was to force the inhabitants of Laputa-Blish to tell them how. Which meant they had to win first. Now, with this feeling of disaster she had, winning did not seem likely. “Did it ever?” she asked Jimbo, crouching beside her aching feet. Never had she felt so weary and old.

“I’ll get onto it first thing tomorrow,” she said. “Not now, not now.”

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