Rosemary Kirstein - Steerswoman 04 (40 page)

It was how much time they had left. Rowan was disturbed to
note that nearly two hours had passed.

Pages began to merge. Will would pull one out of the air,
lay it over another, and the two would blend into each other like soap bubbles.
These he set aside. He had run out of convenient space in front, and had begun
sending them to stand over the wood panels behind him. He was lit from three
sides, by pure blue and red light, moving, and on one side, by the sweet light
of the world itself, shining from his immediate right.

Twice dragon eyes flickered to life, then closed. Rowan drew
his attention to them by pointing silently; he merely spared a glance each
time, and continued to work.

Rowan watched the dragon eyes, watched the time, watched the
world, watched the man working magic.

He moved quickly; she did not think she had ever seen anyone
move with such precision, speed, and concentration.

With less than an hour left, there came a moment when none
of the searchers presently asked for attention; Willam cast about, almost
petulantly, as if he had grown so accustomed to speed that he could not now do
without it.

He found nothing to do. He sat back, blinking, and noticed
Rowan again. He checked the searchers one more time, then reached for the pages
waiting behind him, pulled them forward, spoke quickly. “This is what I’ve got
so far. The Guidestar that fell—Kieran was using it a lot, I don’t know what
for, yet. I’ve found some pieces of commands, some of them with dates and times
still attached. It looks like he accessed the Guidestar almost every day.” A
searcher signaled red; he stood to see it closer, not bothering with the
translator square. “Right”—he nodded as he read—“and this is one from the night
he changed. And it doesn’t look any different from the others—” Another
searcher turned red. “And … that’s another.” He paused. “Same night.” His
gaze narrowed. “I can see the commands, but what follows them makes no sense.
And it’s that way with each one, so far.”

“Your translator square is no help?”

He was confused a moment; then he reasoned out what she was
referring to. “No, that’s for words. I don’t need it for commands. It just
confuses things …” As if to confirm this, he picked up the translator, moved
it on the page. “No.” He set it aside to hang in mid-air. “It looks … it
looks like this ought to be a pointer, to where something is stored”—he glanced
aside at another searcher—“but when I look in the place, it’s either empty, or
has something else in it … and there are prefixes before that, that I just
don’t recognize.”

Another searcher called for him. He glanced at it, glanced
again, then brought it close. “And here’s another.” He set it beside the first,
read, comparing the two. “Same thing,” he said, helplessly. “Call to the
Guidestar … access … these prefixes, the pointers—”

He stopped short. He glanced back and forth. “No, that can’t
be right.”

He sat back, puzzling. He asked, apparently of himself: “How
much storage space did Kieran have?” He sat up, plied his lap board again.

The light behind Rowan altered. She looked back.

Where the bookcase had been there now stood an entire wall
of oak-faced filing cabinets.

Will muttered, derisively, “Oh, that’s stupid; just tell me
…” The cabinets disappeared. Rowan remained staring at the bookcases. And the
very peculiar thing about it was how very prosaic it was, amid all this
embodiment of abstraction. Merely bookcases, and then filing cabinets, here and
then gone.

A noise from Willam called her back, and she berated herself
for neglecting her dragon watch. But nothing there had changed.

Will had three more red-lettered searchers standing beside
the first two. He noticed her, said: “From the same night,” and went back to
studying them, with frustration and urgency. “They
can’t
be pointers,”
he declared, “because they’re pointing nowhere! There are no such places. They
must be some commands I don’t know …” He scanned the waiting red searchers.
“More.” He brought three forward. “Same night.” He gazed at them helplessly,
shaking his head. “It makes no sense. But look”—as if Rowan could discern
anything by just looking—“some of them have times, and some of the times are
just, just
moments
apart! What was he
doing?”

He had struck some kind of wall in his understanding; Rowan
recalled the many times she had done so herself. And because she had been
thinking of her earlier, she now thought again of Keridwen, during Rowan’s
training.
When you reach a dead end,
the teacher had said,
you’ve
made a wrong
turn. Go
back.

“Tell me what a pointer is,” Rowan said.

“Rowan—”

“Humor me. Talk quickly, if you must.”

He seemed to realize that he had been short with her.
“Sorry. A pointer is a number that tells you where some piece of information is
stored, like, like a number written on the front of a box.”

The vanished file cabinets; the number of drawers was
limited. “And these particular pointers are pointing to locations you can’t
find?”

“Which is why they can’t really be pointers.”

Marel had sent his clerk into his old files for the records
of deliveries … “If the locations are not in this building, where else might
they be?”

He looked at her, astonished; then looked to his right.

The world itself stood before him, or a portion of it, as if
this room were high in the sky, and the square an open window, looking down

A mistake; Rowan ought not think of the view as down; her
stomach twisted; she shut her eyes; she gripped the sides of the stepladder.

“How are the dragons?”

She forced her eyes open, suddenly terrified that she might
have missed something. “Just the same one.”

“Good—” He was standing; he leaned across the desk, his body
passing through ghostly pages; he gripped edges of the dragon lattice, shifted
it, turned it to angle toward Rowan from her right. “Here—” He turned back,
took hold of the window open on the world, and moved it.

Toward Rowan. She felt she was falling

“Here.” He released it. It stood on her left, a hole in the
air, terrifying. “Wait—” Will played the lap board, still standing. “Waitwaitwait
… there.” He leaned forward again, spoke quickly. “What you’re looking for is
structures—buildings, or roads—someplace where they shouldn’t be. Take your
hand—” He took it himself; it was limp in his grip. “Flat, like this.” He
arranged her fingers, moved her hand forward. “And touch it, so—” She was
touching nothing, she felt nothing, only air—“And move, like this—”

The entire world shifted under her hand—or the window did.
The view slid up; she was twisting in the sky, she was spinning, falling

Instinctively, her hand pulled back sharply. Willam caught
it again, brought it back. “Go slow … move smoothly.”

Color slipped, left to right: blue, brown, green, white,
weird, dizzying. In pure animal reflex, she flailed, jerked back, escaped
Willam’s hand.

He startled. “Rowan?” She turned to him, wild-eyed.

He had half climbed across the top of the desk and was
leaning out toward her. “Rowan? Rowan, I’m sorry,” he said. He made to reach to
her again, then dropped his hand. “I’m pushing you too fast, I know. It’s just
… you were doing so well …”

He remained, waiting: a human form seeming to emerge from
layer after ordered layer of cold, glowing symbols. The light of the world
itself painted his copper gaze with blue, with white; Rowan could almost read
the map of the world, reversed, in Willam’s eyes.

And to his left, the numbers above the dragon eyes showed
thirty-five minutes remaining.

Then thirty-four.

“I’m looking for Slado’s place,” Rowan said.

“Yes ..”

“Let me try.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He smiled, relieved. “Good. Someone has to.” He moved back
to his chair but remained standing, reaching down to the board. “I tried asking
for it by name, but I don’t think the name Corvus called it is its true name
… It’s important to have the true name …” His fingers moved faster, his
voice grew distracted. “But …” One of the many pages erased itself, then
spawned new writing. “Maybe I can find out if these pointers do fit …”

Rowan turned back to the magic window. Awkward, the
steerswoman moved the world with her hand.

It was hard. Touch gave her no cue, no support. Her arm trembled,
jumped. The view of the world leapt west, north, wildly. The sight was too
strange; her vision seemed to fragment and reassemble randomly, dizzying. Her
skin was damp; she tasted bile. She fought, focused, forced herself.

This was not the world. It was a map. She knew maps.

She tried again. The lovely colors jittered, jerked, a view
all strangeness, no country that she knew, but then: “There’s something here.”

Willam glanced, dismissed it. “That’s not it. That’s the
Grid. It collects power. Keep trying.”

There was now no foreshortening, no compression of perspective.
She was looking straight down. She knew where she must be: directly beneath the
Western Guidestar. By clumsy leaps, she began to work back toward the Inland
Sea.

She noticed that the soft pad of Will’s fingertips against
his lap board had ceased. She glanced at him.

3 3 0 THE LANGUAGE OF POWER

He sat quiet, and very still, as if caught in a pause beyond
which he could not pass. He noticed her regard with a flick of his eyes, said:
“Wherever it is that Slado does live, the pointers aren’t pointing there,
either.”

Then he leaned back slowly and gave himself to thought. Rowan
turned back to the world.

She must work quickly. She could not work quickly. She
worked, the only way she was able

“Rowan, stop.”

“No, I can do this—”

“No. Stop. Now.”

She stopped. She turned back to him. He remained motionless.

An entire minute spun by.

Then: “Rowan, you have to leave.”

“No.”

He pushed his chair back, picked up his burlap sack, set it
in his lap. “Please.” But there was no pleading in his voice. He spoke quietly.
He began drawing a number of small objects from his sack, setting them on the
desk.

“Why—” Rowan began.

“There’s no time to explain,” he said. “Just go.” He was assembling
something, attaching the objects to each other, moving smoothly, swiftly,
calmly.

Too calmly. It was that deep calm that he possessed when he
knew for certain exactly what he must do. It did not comfort Rowan; he seemed
to her at that moment like one who had made some ultimate decision, some final
choice from which there could be no turning back.

It frightened her; and she would not leave him here alone.
“Tell me I’ll die if I stay,” Rowan said. He looked up. “And don’t lie to a
steerswoman.”

“Rowan, there’s no time to—”

“Then don’t explain. Will, whatever you need to do, just do
it, and explain later.” A small panel opened itself on the top of the desk, but
Will had expected it, was already reaching for it. He pulled out a length of
cord, attached it to his construction, tapped the lap board. There was a brief
hum overhead, and a creak, and a rattle, then silence. He ignored the sounds.

“Rowan—”

“There’s no time,” she pointed out: twenty-six minutes remained.
“Just do it. Whatever it is. I’ll be right here.”

At this he flashed her one glance, a glance she could not
read; then he turned back to his work. “You mustn’t speak,” he said, his hands
continuing their quick work. “No matter what happens, not a word. Don’t make
any noise at all, none. Try not to move, breathe quietly—I have to trust you to
do all that.”

She did not reply. She composed herself for both silence and
stillness.

And above all, calm.

The final component of Willam’s device was a short rod. He
attached it. Immediately, it glowed at the tip: a tiny red star.

At this, he stopped. He sat gazing at the little star,
seeming to wait.

Presently, the star turned green.

Willam drew a breath, released it, sent Rowan one bleak
glance. Then he closed his eyes, as if to clear his thoughts, as if to steady
himself, as if to dismiss from his mind all thoughts of the steerswoman’s
presence.

He opened his eyes. He spoke to the small green star. Willam
said: “Corvus—I’m in.”

The paper cone spoke. “I trust this isn’t trivial.” The voice
resembled that of the wizard Corvus. “You were only to contact me if—”

Willam interrupted: “Sir, the information we need is at Farside.”

A pause. “That can’t be right.” The voice was thin, distant,
with a continuous hiss behind it, like an ocean wave endlessly breaking.

“It is. I’m sure.” Willam spoke quickly. “Kieran was
accessing Gee-Three a lot—as near as I can tell, at least once almost every
night. But there was one night where he was using it for hours on end. Half the
night. Until just before dawn—”

“The night Gee-Three came down?” the cone asked.

“No. No, that was later, that was Slado, Kieran was already
dead.” Willam became urgent. “Sir, the updates are almost done, there’s no time
to explain how I know this. The Guidestar falling—that was just what happened.
This is why.” The paper cone remained silent but for the quiet, unending hiss.
“I found fragments here, with pointers, addresses for files, but the addresses
are too high. There’s just not that much storage here. They’re even wrong for
Central.”

Still no reply. The young man waited, sitting alone in the
near-dark, watching the small green star. All about him, and above, the ranks
of letters of pure light stood, written on the air. Strange servants: simple,
tireless, still innocently following Willam’s last orders.

Willam said, helplessly, “Sir—tell me how to talk to
Farside.”