To Visit the Queen (16 page)

Rhiow, busy washing her face after finishing a greasy but delectable half of a sausage, was glad of the excuse not to be looking at Huff when he said that. He had already achieved at least "portly" status, but he was not genuinely overweight— yet.
And who am I to stare at
him
in this regard? If I had unlimited access to food like this, who knows what I'd look like in a few months.
All the same, she wished she had the opportunity to find out.

Everyone was washing now but Fhrio: he had finished first and was hunkered down with his eyes half closed, perhaps consulting with the Whisperer about the status of his gates.
Or perhaps,
Rhiow thought,
wondering how much face he's lost, and how to get it back.
She sighed, and scrubbed her face harder.

Urruah was in comfort: after a chunk of burger, two fish sticks from someone's finicky child, and a big piece of gravy-soaked crust from someone's steak and kidney pie, he was lying on one side and putting his stomach fur in order. "So, Huff," he said, pausing and looking up, "let's consider options."

"I don't know that we have many," Huff said. He was taking his time about putting his broad snow-white bib in order: it had somehow gotten some ketchup on it after that last piece of hamburger, and Rhiow suspected that he would be pinkish there for a day or two. "We've got to try to trace back along the same path that Mr. Illingworth came by. But the modality is going to be difficult, considering how our problem gate is behaving." He sounded meditative.

"I think we're going to have to construct a timeslide," Urruah said. "To access what the
ehhif
wizards call a piece of time."

"You started to tell me about that once," Arhu said suddenly to Urruah. "And then you yelled at him," he said, turning to Rhiow. "And me."

"With reason," Rhiow said. "It wasn't germane to the problem at hand: and messing around with time without a specific goal, and approval from the Powers, is like playing in traffic. Worse, actually. But temporal claudication theory's been a hobby of Urruah's for a long time."

Urruah shook himself, then sat up and licked a paw as meditatively as Huff, started rubbing behind one ear, even though he had already washed there. "I started getting interested in it when I was still freelance," he said to Arhu. "Sometimes the Whisperer will talk about it, for whatever reasons. Can't be boredom, I wouldn't think: maybe it's her way of encouraging research, or just curiosity. She's sneaky that way."

"Temporal claudication," Arhu said. "I thought it was supposed to be 'temporospatial.' "

"It is," Urruah said. "Oh, there's no way you can ever completely lose the spatial coordinate-set on any temporospatial transit spell, no matter how still you try to hold it: not a planet-based one, anyway. But a timeslide's emphasis is always mainly on temporal change. You can either mount it 'freestanding,' by bending space locally and temporarily with spells and equipment tailored to that specific spot, or you can start a timeslide in 'parasitic' relationship to an existing worldgate, using the gate's power source to run the slide. There are more involved 'half and half' implementations for use when you want some of the gate's own functions to augment those of the timeslide, but that kind of implementation is kind of fiddly."

"A claudication is a squeezing, a constriction," Huff said to Arhu. "Squeeze space, and you enable things to pop from one side of the 'squeezed' area to another: that's worldgating at its simplest. Squeeze time as well— or squeeze the temporal component of the time/space pair harder than the spatial one— and you pop from one time to another. Present to past, and back again. That's a timeslide."

"You still have to control the spatial component very exactly," Urruah said, "or else you pop out at the right
time,
all right, but somewhere very different in the planet's orbit, not forgetting that the planet's primary has moved too, and taken its whole solar system with it, since the time you're aiming for. Hanging out there in the cold, dark vacuum and feeling very silly... assuming you remembered to bring some air with you." Urruah put his whiskers forward, amused by the image. Arhu licked his nose, twice, very fast. "You must choose a spot at one end of the timeslide," Urruah said, "ideally your 'present' end, as de facto anchor, and the other as the spot to which the anchor chain is fastened, and not lose control of either of them, despite their individual movements through space, which continue through the duration of the slide. There has to be enough flex in the connection to cope with unpredictable movements of the body... or bodies, since the temporal element means you have to treat this as a two-body problem. Then when you're done, you have to unhook both ends of the timeslide without causing temporal backlash at either insertion point. It's delicate work, my kit: you'll break a few claws on this one, if it's what we go for."

Arhu gave Urruah a look that suggested the usage of claws might be more imminent. "I can handle it," he said.

"We'll see," said Rhiow. "You're good with static worldgates, for a beginner. Whether you'll do as well with a timeslide is another question."

"In any case," Urruah said, "I think options one and three are closed to us."

Fhrio looked up from his ruminations at that. "Why?"

"Well," said Urruah, flicking his tail, "for one thing, how often are we going to have to
do
this? Does anyone want to give me odds that we'll find out what's causing the trouble— from solving the original gate malfunction, to finding out what in Iau's name Mr. Illingworth was talking about— and fix it all, with just one trip?"

They all looked at each other. No one looked willing to suggest that they were witless enough to believe that this might happen.

"Right," Urruah said. "So there's no sense in running around trying to acquire three or four or five sets of the specialized equipment we'd need to execute a freestanding timeslide repeatedly from the same spot. We'd only waste huge amounts of energy, which the Powers hate, and drive ourselves crazy, which
we
would hate. Type three, the half-and-half timeslide implementations, are a nuisance to maintain; they get out of kilter at the drop of a whisker, and they fail without warning, which we do not need in these circumstances. This leaves us with type two, which has certain advantages in our case."

"A parasitic linkage has
advantages?"
Auhlae said, sounding dubious. "With a malfunctioning gate?"

"It does if you're trying to fix the malfunction," Urruah said. "It'll function as a diagnostic, for the power source, anyway. A clumsy one, but rugged. Nor will it be liable to the same kinds of failures that the malfunctioning gate is having."

"No, just different ones," Fhrio said.

Urruah shrugged his tail. "Who wants all mice to taste the same? Variety keeps you young. We parasitize the gate's power source and use it to power the slide.
That
at least we'll be able to control precisely. It's a simple structure to build and troubleshoot: anything goes wrong with it, we'll know about it in seconds, and be able to fix it in minutes. You try doing that with one of
these
gates. They're complex."

"Tell me about it," Huff said wearily. "The others have been failing sporadically because of the extra strain due to this troublesome one being taken offline. They're just not built for larger access numbers than they're carrying at the moment."

"We can get you some help for that," Rhiow said. "We have authorizations to get assistance from the other congener gates in this bundle. The teams at Chur and its daughter-complex at Samnaun in the Alps will take some of the strain until we've resolved this: we can install a couple of direct access portals in the near neighborhood of the functioning gates."

"They may have to stay there awhile," Huff said. "We have all these incursions to resolve as well."

"The Whisperer says we'll have as much support time from the other gates as we need," Rhiow said. "It'll be all right."

"And meanwhile, at least we have one illicit gate transit that we caught live and can use for its coordinates," Urruah said. "More than that: Mr. Illingworth, whenever he is, will still be carrying some hint of wizardly 'transit residue' about him that we can isolate and track— and possibly get a better sense of who or what pushed him through that gate. Maybe even why, if we're lucky."

"The oldest lostlings' residue will have already worn off, though," Auhlae said. "Even after all the other problems are solved, we're still going to have to find
them
somehow. And when we do... are they native to the same universe Mr. Illingworth is?"

It was a problem that had been nagging at Rhiow. Theoretically, the number of potential alternate universes was almost infinite. Even postulating a completely cooperative
ehhif,
once found— and that itself was none too likely— the two teams would then have to identify correctly which universe was that
ehhif
's home. If they accidentally sent the
ehhif
back to the wrong world, their own home universe's problem would be solved, but the same problem of growing instability would be created for some other world.

"It's something we're going to have to sort out," Rhiow said, "but at the far end of this process, not the near end. I'd say what we must now do is construct Urruah's parasitic timeslide, plug into it the coordinates he saved from Mr. Illingworth's transit, and see where it takes us: then find out what we can about that universe, especially about this Queen of theirs, and what happened to her. You said there had been other attempts on her life," she said to Huff.

"At least three or four," Huff said. "We've got to discover whether this assassination is one of the attempts that, in our world, failed: or if it's a new one, never recorded."

"Perhaps never recorded," Urruah said, "because in the past someone else has already stopped it.... Us, perhaps?"

"That would be reassuring," Auhlae said. "But somehow I don't think we can count on it."

There was quiet for a moment. Huff sat gazing thoughtfully at the floor, a weary reddish carpet that over much time had become an amalgam of stomped-in chewing gum, spilled beer, and other substances that Rhiow's nose flatly refused to identify, this far along in their evolution. "Well," Huff said finally, "I concur. It only remains to decide exactly who makes the first incursion into the past."

"Assuming that none of you are particularly eager," Urruah said, "I think it should be us."

The London team looked at him with expressions varying from Huff's thoughtful interest to Auhlae's surprise to Siffha'h's faint confusion: Fhrio put his whiskers forward, positively (and, to Rhiow's mind, oddly) amused.

"Why?" Huff said. "Though I think probably none of us are all that eager..."

"
I
am!" Siffha'h said.

"Hush," Auhlae said. "You're young for this kind of work yet, Siffha'h."

"I am not! I've got all my teeth— "

"No."

"Why not?"

"Not now."

"As for the 'why'..." Urruah said.

"We're more expendable than you are," Arhu said dryly.

"Arhu!" Rhiow said.

"I wouldn't have put it quite that way," Urruah said, putting his whiskers forward, "but in a way he's right. When it comes down to the feet and the tail of it, Huff, these are
your
gates, and you know them better than we do. If something goes wrong with a timeslide anchored to one of your gates' power sources, you have a better chance to successfully troubleshoot the situation than we would. And another matter: The Powers sent us to intervene. Implicit in that, to my mind, is the suggestion that we may be best equipped, one way or another, to deal with whatever problems we uncover while working with you."

"Or it might just be ego," Fhrio said, one ear forward and one ear back. It was a joke, Rhiow thought,
just.

"Urruah? Ego?" Rhiow said, and then stopped herself from saying "Perish the thought," since that could have implied that it
wasn't
ego. "Well, Fhrio, if you want to relieve him of the glory, I'm sure you're welcome to change places with him, and he'll stay here and mind your gates for you."

Huff threw Rhiow a very covert and very amused look as Fhrio put his other ear forward. "Oh, no indeed," he said, "I wouldn't want to deprive him...."

"All right, then," Rhiow said to Huff. "I think we'll need some hours to put together what spells we want to carry with us, and to make sure things back at home are all right before we set out. If you can keep the gate in inactive mode until we get back, that'll probably be best."

"No problem with that," Fhrio said. "I'll just disconnect it from the power source entirely until you get back— when? tomorrow?—to set up the parasitic timeslide."

"Tomorrow let it be," Rhiow said, "about this time, if that suits you all."

They all got up. "And meanwhile, thanks for the work you've done," Huff said. "We're farther along than we were, though the problem looks worse than it did: at least there's been a change in status, which
you
were begging for, Fhrio, as I remember. So you may owe Arhu one after all."

"Though, Fhrio, I must admit that he overstepped the bounds," Rhiow said. "And my apologies to you for that."

Fhrio took a not entirely ceremonial swipe at Arhu's ear. "Let him behave himself after this, then."

"I will do so," Arhu said with abrupt and brittle clarity, "insofar as
you
so do as well, when we come into the dark and you cannot find the way..."

Rhiow blinked. It was not anything like Arhu's usual turn of phrase; she heard foretelling in it, and her fur stood up on her. She hoped Fhrio's was doing the same, for there was no mistaking the Whisperer's Dam when She chose to speak out loud... as she sometimes did, using Arhu as Her throat.

The resonances trembling around his words faded themselves out on the air, leaving the London team looking at one another. "I'm sorry," Rhiow said, "but it's another recent development. Arhu is a visionary, though the talent is still training. When it comes out so forcefully, though, we've learned to listen."