Wizards At War

“I don’t have time for metaphysics right now,” the Stationmaster said. “I need to keep this place running. If you’re going to forget where your real place is and go running off Mover-knows-where, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. But you’re jeopardizing your positions here. All of them.”

There was an unnervingly final sound to that. Nita swallowed, waiting to see what Sker’ret would do.

He disentangled himself from the support framework and dropped back to the horizontal position. “Perhaps I am,” he said. “But at least, when we succeed in what we’re doing, there’ll still be a place for my replacement to have a position at. And a place for my sibs to learn whether you value them as you do me.”

All his eyes were fixed on all his ancestor’s. There was a terrible silence. Then slowly, one after one, the Stationmaster turned those eyes away.

Sker’ret didn’t flinch. “We need a gate,” he said after a moment.

“The one-seventies are all idle,” said the Stationmaster, in a tone of voice that made Nita wonder how she’d ever thought it sounded rude before. “Use one of them. And don’t let us delay you.”

He turned and swept off down the far side of the concourse. With reluctant backward looks, Sker’ret’s sibs went pouring after him. A few seconds later, only Nita, Kit, Filif, Ponch, and Ronan stood there.

“Wow,” Kit said softly.

Sker’ret glanced over at Nita with some of his eyes; the rest of them were still on his esteemed ancestor and his sibs as they hurried away across the shining floor.

Nita shook her head as Sker’ret flowed out of the cubicle structure, and hunkered down beside him as he paused, still looking down the concourse. She rested one hand on the carapace-segment just behind his head. “What I said about our basement,” she said, “I meant it.”

“Thank you,” Sker’ret said, and the strange eyes that Nita had previously had so much trouble reading now seemed full of gratitude and weariness. “But everything is still all wrong.”

“Wrong how?”

Sker’ret paused. “None of that sounded like what my ancestor would say,” he said at last. “You don’t get to be Stationmaster of the Crossings by saying how things can’t be fixed. You find ways to fix things, no matter what it takes. ‘Broken’ isn’t an option. And the bigger the problem, the more committed you are to fixing it.” Sker’ret shook his head, and the ripple of it went all the way down his body. “That’s the kind of thing he would always say to me. And all of a sudden, to hear him sound like he did just now—” Sker’ret sounded confused. “He’d given up. He didn’t sound … like him, somehow.”

Kit looked at Nita. “Tom warned us,” he said, “that there would be changes because of the way space was stretching. Ethical changes, personality shifts.”

Everyone looked uncomfortable. “It’s going to get worse,” Nita said. “We’ve just got to get on with what we’re doing. Though it really is freaky.” She glanced at Kit. “You see any adult human wizards here while you were on your own? I didn’t.”

Kit shook his head. “Sker’, where are the one-seventies?”

“Hang a right, thirty stads down on your left,” Sker’ret said. “It’s one of the bigger clusters.”

“Let’s go,” Nita said.

Their group left the cubicle and followed Sker’ret as he led the way around the corner and down yet another of those seemingly endless, shining white corridors, all the gate hexes and squares lining either side of it alight… and many of them empty. For someone who knew the Crossings as well as Nita did, the effect was unnerving. It was like going into Grand Central Terminal at what should have been rush hour and finding it deserted.

“This way.” Sker’ret turned off into a large circular area, maybe a quarter mile across, that budded off the transverse concourse. The area was completely surfaced with gate hexes, nested fairly closely together, outlined in many different colors depending on the species intended to use them.

“Here we are,” Sker’ret said. He led them over to the large gate at the center of the hex grouping, went to its kiosk-column, reared up against it, and tapped his uppermost legs against it. The column extruded a console like the ones he had been working with at the central resource station.

The embedded outline of the largest hex came alive with a clear fierce blue. Sker’ret turned to Kit. “What have you got for me?”

Kit looked at Ponch. Nita could feel something of the communication between them; it was like watching someone whisper to someone else, while not being able to hear what they were saying. And still, at one remove, it smelled of cocoa and motor oil. Weird, she thought, as Kit turned to Sker’ret.

“I’m not sure I can handle this keyboard,” he said.

“Just speak it to me in the Speech,” Sker’ret said. “I can do the input.”

Kit recited a long string of words, numbers, and variable statements to Sker’ret. Sker’ret’s little end-of-leg claws danced over the keypad.

“Done,” Sker’ret said. “Everybody into the zone, please. Thirty seconds to the transit.”