Wizards At War

The envisioning routine backed out several steps farther. A smallish, ocean-girdled planet circled a giant white sun, the fourth of its eight worlds. Another jump, and the star dwindled down to just one of a drift of thousands in an irregular galaxy’s core.

Several long strings of characters in the Speech appeared by that galaxy, tagging it and numerous others around it that were visible only as tiny cloudy whorls or disks.

Okay, Dairine said. Store that. And she waited until the data was stored, and then said the word that cut the wizard’s knot and dissolved the spell.

The space between the towers reappeared. Slowly the spell diagram faded, leaving only the image of the “found” galaxy, and the outlines of the circles in which all the spell’s participants had stood. Dairine let out a long breath. She was a little tired, but nothing like as exhausted as she should have been after such an effort.

“I can’t get over that,” Dairine said, as Beanpole and Logo and the others made their way over toward her and Roshaun. “It was like the wizardry was helping me, somehow…”

“It’s the power-increase effect, the peridexis,” Beanpole said. “We’ve been taking advantage of it, too.”

Dairine walked out of her circle to where the image of the tagged galaxy burned just under the surface. She bent down to look at the annotations. “It’s fairly close to our own galaxy. At least we won’t have any more really big transits to deal with when we get back.”

“That’s well enough,” Roshaun said, settling the torc with the Sunstone about his neck. “We may know where the person with access to the Instrumentality can be found. But if we can’t get them to give it to us, or learn how to use it to stop the expansion, this will all have been for nothing.”

“I’m not gonna throw our own universe in the trash just yet,” Dairine said. She peered down at the tagging characters next to the galaxy. “Good, it’s got a New General Catalog number: NGC 5518. It’s in Boötes, somewhere.” Then she stopped. “What’s this?” she said over her shoulder to the mobiles.

Spot came over to her from his own circle, and put out several eyes to examine the word in the Speech that Dairine was indicating. “Enthusiasmic,” he said.

Dairine frowned. “You mean enthusiastic.”

“It says enthusiasmic,” Spot said.

“That’s not a word!”

“It is now,” said Spot.

Roshaun came to look over Dairine’s shoulder. “And what is that word next to it supposed to be?” he said. “Incorporation?” He looked bemused.

“So this is a word that didn’t have a meaning until just recently?” Dairine said to Spot. “A word for something new.”

“So I believe,” Spot said.

Dairine shook her head. “Enthusiasmic incorporation,” she said. “Of the hesper—” Then Dairine blinked, and a moment later her eyes widened.

“That’s not a word in the Speech,” said Gigo, sounding perplexed.

“No,” Dairine said. “It’s not. But it’s a word we know in English. Or part of one.” She swallowed. “Enthusiasmic incorporation of the Hesper—”

She hurriedly bent down and picked Spot up. “Quick,” she said. “You have to message Nita for me. Or one of the others. I don’t care where they are. Just get me one of those guys!”

The ground underneath all their various feet or treads or wheels came alive with the kind of display that would have shown on Spot’s screen, had it been open—the apple-without-a-bite imagery of the manual software’s Earth-sourced version, rippling bluely under the surface. And then the message, both written in the Speech and seemingly speaking itself into their bones: Messaging refused. Please try again later.

“Refused?” Roshaun said.

“They’re somewhere where they can’t take an incoming communication, because they’re scared they might be overheard,” Dairine said. She bit her lip.

“Perhaps we should simply go to them,” Roshaun said.

“You’re exactly right,” Dairine said, putting Spot down again. She turned to the mobiles. “Guys, I hate to spell and run, but we’ve got to find them right away—because if they don’t realize what they’re dealing with, they’re going to mess it up. And if it gets messed up this once, then the whole universe is screwed up forever.”

“Even more screwed up than it is at the moment?” Roshaun said.

“You have no idea,” Dairine said. “Come on, let’s open up a gate and get going!”

8: Active Defense

Kit came half awake to the sound of something bumping on the floor, very fast, and something jingling. He opened one eye.

Dim light—the wizard-light he’d left hovering near the ceiling in case he needed to get up in the middle of the night—showed him Ponch, sitting by where the door of the pup tent would be when Kit spoke it open. Ponch was scratching behind his collar, turning it around and around as he scratched.