A Wizard of Mars, New Millennium Edition (53 page)

Mamvish paused. “What is it with the gravity here?” she said, shuffling her feet and glancing around her. “I don’t feel quite right. Synesthesias of some kind...”

Nita stopped and gave her a look. “What?”

“I don’t know what’s causing it,” Mamvish said, “but it’s as if—” She looked down at her feet.

Her mouth dropped open. Her eyes wiggled as if they were trying to go around. Nita, caught off guard, tried to choke down her laughter, and failed. “Wait a minute. You mean you didn’t 
notice?
”

A growl started rumbling somewhere inside Mamvish. “What—
am
— I?”

“You’re a thoat. They’re—” 
Oh, god, how can I say it? Never mind, just look at her face! Stop laughing, stop laughing!
“In the stories, they’re a beast of burden. Not very smart. People ride them.”

The growl got louder. It took Nita a few moments to get control of her laughter. “Come on, Mamvish!” Nita said. “You ought to be past being shape-proud by now! A wizard like you has the power to look like anything she wants, and you ought to know the seeming’s not the self.” She started snickering again. “So act the dignity of your role. Snort it up!”

The thoat-eyes could be surprisingly expressive. They flared with annoyance, and then came a brief flurry of furious tantrum-based foot-stamping, even more impressive with all a thoat’s legs than with Mamvish’s own. Dust flew up from the pink-white Martian road until it almost concealed her. “This is so embarrassing, what if anybody ever hears about this, some kind of gratuitous insult, do they even know why I, how can this 
possibly,
 why do I even bother, don’t these people
know
why I—”

Nita turned away, as there was no point in Mamvish being made worse by watching Nita fail to control her grin.
Increasing entropy locally is bad, bad,
 bad. 
She’s a baby wizard still; don’t laugh any more, don’t, just don’t!

Nita got control of herself long before Mamvish did. But finally the stomping and muttering stopped, and Nita turned back to see Mamvish staring morosely at her thoat feet. “I suppose,” she said, “it wasn’t meant personally.”

And what will she do if it ever turns out it was? I’m tempted to tell her ...No, no, no!
 Nita kept her face straight. “Wouldn’t know how it could be,” she said, which was true.

“Hmmmmmfffff,”
 Mamvish said, a huge blown-out exclamation of resignation and annoyance. Then she put her head up high. “Work to do,” she said. “Let’s go do it.”

“Bobo,” Nita said as they got closer to the city, “what about your tap on Kit’s manual? Is there anything about what’s going on in there?”

The tap is not active at the moment, as he could not bring it with him because of the ban. But there is some stored material that he was considering before he came. Information about persons, motivations.

“Let me have it all! And hurry up.”

Nita quickly found herself blushing hot in increasing discomfort as she browsed through entirely too much of Kit’s recent stream-of-consciousness. 
But this is gonna be very useful, I can’t deny that. Even if this really is
 not 
stuff I want to be seeing! Never mind, just make the most of it—

Shortly they came up to the great sheer metal gates and stood there for a moment, looking upward. The gates remained obstinately closed.

“Maybe they don’t know we’re coming...” Nita said. But immediately after she said it, she was certain that wasn’t true.

“Oh, they know,” Mamvish said. “I can hear them.” She flourished her thoat-tail. “So let’s go see how this will proceed.”

And the next second, they were standing in a high Tower room where light poured in from the pink-white sun overhead, and white clouds chased across that blue sky. And in the center of the room stood three people around a broad red sandstone bench: and a fourth one sat there on the bench, wearing at her throat a sharp oblong Shard of light burning fiercely violet even in the full light of day.

Gathered all around the sides of the great circular room were many men and women in the metal harness and light draperies of the Shamaska-Eilitt. All their dark eyes were turned to Mamvish and Nita as they walked up to the bench-throne, and Nita found it very strange to pass among them— like walking through a congress of living, breathing statues in all shades of gray, and all the faces smooth and immobile. Here and there among them were the green metal scorpions, sitting or crouching against the polished floor, watching the newcomers with all their eyes, scissoring their claws gently together. But most of Nita’s attention was on the Throne. There was Iskard, and the dark Rorsik behind him, at a little distance, watching with a cold face; and standing next to the bench-throne, Khretef.

Kit!
 Nita insisted to herself: and she spoke to him silently. 
Kit!
 But he was gray and stony, dressed like one of them, looking like one of them, except that he looked like Kit as well. His eyes didn’t react to hers when she looked into them: she was just another stranger walking in. And on the Throne sat Aurilelde, with the violet-blue fire of the Shard clinging to the smooth gray flesh above her gemmed metal bodice— and about her, an echo of its glow that was coming from something else, something inside her, the faintest possible rosy light—

Oh, no,
 Nita thought. 
Mars’s kernel. She’s got the planet’s kernel
 inside her. 
How long has that been there? And whose good idea was
 that
?!
 But as her glance went to the smug and triumphant-looking Rorsik, she thought she knew.

Mamvish stopped about six feet from the Throne and lifted her head. “In the Powers’ names, and that of the One They serve,” she said, “we are on errantry, and we greet you.”

Some of those around the room bowed, but many looked at Mamvish and Nita with distrust, and the four around the Throne didn’t move at all. Finally, Iskard said, “Fellow wizard, tell us what errand brings you here so that we may speed you on your way.”

Nita’s eyebrows went up, for in the Speech the response had so little genuine greeting in it that it very nearly translated as “Don’t let the door hit you in the fundament on the way out.”

Mamvish blinked in reaction. Then she said, “On the Powers’ behalf and as Species Archivist for this part of the Galaxy, I’ve come to investigate your appearance on this world, which has been vacant for some while under circumstances which we’re investigating. Instances of self-archiving are also within my remit for investigation. Am I to understand that you are descendants of the people of Shamask-Eilith, formerly of this system and also called the First World?”

“We are not those people’s descendants,” Rorsik said, sounding outraged. “We 
are
 those people.”

“You have, however, built or engineered new bodies for yourselves, to better suit yourself to this world when you reached it.”

“Such was our right,” Iskard said. “A species has the right to survive.”

“But not to interfere with another species’ survival,” said Mamvish. “You must be aware that there is another planet in this system populated with life forms wearing bodies similar to the ones you’ve engineered for yourselves.”

“We know that perfectly well,” Rorsik said.

“You should also know, then, that that culture is both 
astahfrith,
generally unaware of wizardry, and 
asdurrafrith.
” It was the Speech-word for a species that hadn’t yet openly met alien species or didn’t yet believe in them. “The works you’re enacting here at the moment— I speak of the extensive resurrection of former environmental conditions across the planet— endanger the psychological and physical well-being of that planet. Do you accept that?”

“We not only accept it,” said Rorsik, “but we embrace it. The other planet is no concern of ours. If they are not strong enough to accept the return of the People of the First World to the system where we were the First Life, then they should learn such strength. Or possibly vacate that world in favor of a people better suited to occupy it.”

Nita blinked, unable to believe what she was hearing. “Kit,” she said. “Listen to them! They’re talking about invading the Earth! 
What are you doing here with these guys?
”

Khretef shifted uneasily but said nothing.

Aurilelde looked at Nita with what was supposed to look like understanding, but Nita didn’t miss the slight edge of contempt in the expression. “He came to us first because I called him,” she said. “Because he was a fragment, as this was once a fragment—” She touched the Shard that lay between her breasts. “And is now reunited with the kernel from which it was severed. For a long time the test lay waiting, while all of us and our cities lay in stasis, and while Khretef’s soul waited and worked to be reborn. Finally he was. And sure enough he found his way here along with others— my hero, my warrior, my other half— and took the test, and freed the power that we needed to be alive again.”

She looked up at him and took his hand. “As Kit, he finished the quest that once was his bane: broke open the Nascence and brought home the Shard, the tool to use the Nascence’s power.”

Nita folded her arms, getting more annoyed by the moment at Aurilelde’s manner. “There were more tests than just that one. And not just for guys.”

“Those were of no concern to me,” Aurilelde said. “Knowing what daughters of another world might make of the ancient Daughters’ tales of past years mattered far less than finding the male wizard in whom our savior would lie hidden. Only to him and his kind would the real tests present themselves—especially to the right one. Now that he has come again through them, we all live once more. And he lives as Khretef.” She smiled up at him.

Khretef smiled back, which Nita found hard to bear. But she looked Aurilelde in the eye. “So nothing we found matters, huh?” she said. “Even the 
Red Rede?
”

For a second Aurilelde’s expression changed, as if she was at a loss. “You don’t know what it means,” Nita said. “Or not all of it. You 
think
 you do, though. You’ve convinced yourself that you understand it. I wouldn’t be so sure.”

Then she stopped, because she had no idea what she’d meant by that and was desperate not to be asked.

Aurilelde forced that superior smile again. “The Rede is no issue to me, or our people. All that matters is changing this world so that we can live in it again.”

“So,” Mamvish said, “you will not stop.”

Slowly Aurilelde stood up, looking at them. Nita was watching the Shard. 
Has that dumped its power into the main body of the kernel now,
 she wondered, 
or is it just immaterially connected? If somebody could grab it—

Aurilelde was laughing. “Stop? We will do no such thing! We’ve spent enough terrible endless years waiting trapped half alive in the cold and dark, waiting to be freed in a better time. That time has come! And if you think an overgrown 
slessth
 and a scrawny bad-mannered brat-child who was never even off her own planet until a few years ago are going to stop the rebirth of a mighty race that ruled this system hundreds of millions of years before your planet was even solid, then you’d better think again.”

Nita’s eyes narrowed. “One last time,” she said. “Before we start dealing with you, I want to talk to Kit.”

Aurilelde simply squeezed Khretef’s hand, then smiled at Nita. “But you still don’t understand, do you? He returned to us as soon as he was able to, some hours ago. And as soon as that happened, he was absorbed.”

She smiled up at Khretef again. “The more senior soul always has priority in any such meeting. It didn’t take much doing: he was young and inexperienced, and not as wholly there as either of us are.” She looked at Nita with what was perhaps meant to be kindness. “If you really want so to be with him,” she said, “maybe you should consider submitting yourself to the same fate. I dare say I could fit you in somewhere.”

Nita flushed with fury. But she knew what to do with that. “Don’t count on it,” she said.

“And why wouldn’t I? Surely you can see my Khretef far exceeds the incomplete fragment you’ve fastened onto! He’s a child of the First World, a warrior, a great wizard, greater than anything you or your poor Kit would ever have been. You two are just shadows. Khretef and I are the substance, the originals. And Khretef lived for me. He 
died
 for me! Whereas your little Kit seems merely to have been saved from dying for you once or twice. Sometimes even
by
you—”

Nita looked at Aurilelde and concentrated on holding still. “If you think you’re holding some kind of moral high ground because somebody’s died for you,” she said, her voice shaking, “I’ve been there, and what you’re displaying now looks nothing like it. And as for the possibility that I might want to make up any part of 
you
—” She laughed. “
That’s
not gonna happen. So turn him loose, and then we’ll talk about what happens to this planet.”

Aurilelde regarded her quietly. “No,” she said after a moment, “if that’s your response, the talking’s over. So, to wreak aright—” She made a casual gesture at Nita.