"Not bad," Nita said, determined to learn how to do it herself, if possible, "You've been practicing too."
"Not really—some of this stuffjust seems to come naturally as you work with it more. My mother locked herself out of the car at the supermarket last week and I was pulling on the car door and talking at it — you know how you do when you're trying to get something to work. And then it worked. I almost fell over, the door came open so fast. It's the Speech that does it, I think. Everything loves to hear it." "Remember what Carl said, though."
"I know. I won't overdo it. You think we ought to call him later, let him know what happened to the gate?"
They came to the top of the stairs, paused before the next closed door, breathing hard from the exertion of climbing the stairs fast. "Probably hfi knows, if he's looked at his book this morning," Nita said. "Look, before we do anything else, let's set the timeslide. This is a good place for it; we're out of sight. When we're tired of running around the city, we can just activate it and we'll be back here at quarter of eleven. Then we just go downstairs, int° Grand Central and downstairs to the shuttle, and then home in time for lunch."
"Sounds good." They began rummaging in their backpacks, and before too long had produced the eight and a half sugar cubes, the lithium-cadrniu"1 battery—a fat one, bigger than a D cell and far heavier — a specific grated-circuit chip salvaged from the innards of a dead pocket calculator, .. handle of a broken glass teacup. "You might want to back away a little, Fred s° y°ur emissions don't interfere with the spell," Kit said.
(Right.) Fred retreated high up into one ceiling-corner of the stairwell, flaring bright with interest. There was a brief smell of burning as he accidentally vaporized a cobweb. "All right," Kit said, thumbing through his manual to a page marked with bit of ripped-up newspaper, "here we go. This is a timeslide inauguration," he said aloud in the Speech. "Claudication type mesarrh-gimel-veignt-six, authorization group—" Nita swallowed, feeling the strangeness set in as it had during their first spell together, feeling the walls lean in to listen. But it was not a silence that fell this time. As Kit spoke, she became aware of a roaring away at the edge of her hearing and a blurring at the limits of her vision. Both effects grew and strengthened to the overwhelming point almost before she realized what was happening. And then it was too late. She was seeing and hearing everything that would happen for miles and miles around at quarter to eleven, as if the building were transparent, as if she had eyes that could pierce stone and ears that could hear a leaf fall blocks away. The words and thoughts of a million minds poured down on her in a roaring onslaught like a wave crashing down on a swimmer, and she was washed away, helpless. Too many sights, commonplace and strange, glad and frightening, jostled and crowded all around her, and squeezing her eyes shut made no difference—the sights were in her mind. I'll go crazy, I'll go crazy, stop it! But she was caught in the spell and couldn't budge. Stop it, oh, let it stop—
It stopped. She was staring at the floor between her and Kit as she had been doing when the flood of feelings swept over her. Everything was the same as it had been, except that the sugar was gone. Kit was looking at her in concern. "You all right?" he said. "You look a little green."
"Uh, yeah." Nita rubbed her head, which ached slightly as if with the memory of a very loud sound.
"What happened to the sugar?"
It went away. That means the spell took." Kit began gathering up the rest the materials and stowing them, He looked at her again. "Are you sure you're okay?"
Yeah, I'm fine." She got up, looked around restlessly. "C'mon, let's go."
K-'t got up too, shrugging into his backpack. "Yeah. Which way is the—" crack! went something against the door outside, and Nita's insides con-r'cted. She and Kit both threw themselves against the wall behind the door,
ere they would be hidden if it opened. For a few seconds neither of them Ad to breathe.
Nothing happened. was that?) Kit asked.
(I don't know. It sounded like a shot. Lord, Kit what if there's somebody up here with a gun or something—)
(What's a gun?) Fred said.
(You don't want to know,) Kit said. (Then again, if there was somebodv out there with a gun, I doubt they could hurt you. Fred, would you go out there and have a quick look around? See who's there?)
(Why not?) Fred floated down from the ceiling, looked the door over, put his light out, and slipped through the keyhole. For a little while there was silence, broken only by the faint faraway rattle of a helicopter going by, blocks away.
Then the lock glowed a little from inside, and Fred popped back in. (1 don't see anyone out there,) he said.
Kit looked at Nita. (Then what made that noise?)
She was as puzzled as he was. She shrugged. (Well, if Fred says there's nothing out there—)
(I suppose. But let's keep our eyes open.)
Kit coaxed the door open as he had the first one, and the three of them stepped cautiously out onto the roof.
Most of it was occupied by the helipad proper, the long wide expanse of bare tarmac ornamented with its big yellow square-and-H symbol and sur-rounded by blue low-intensity landing lights. At one end of the oblong pad was a small glass-walled building decorated with the Pan Am logo, a dis-tended orange windsock, and an anemometer, its three little cups spinning energetically in the brisk morning wind. Beyond the helipad, the roof was graveled, and various low-set ventilator stacks poked up here and there. A yard-high guardrail edged the roof. Rising up on all sides was Manhattan, a stony forest of buildings in all shapes and heights. To the west glimmered the Hudson River and the Palisades on the New Jersey side; on the other side of the building lay the East River and Brooklyn and Queens, veiled in mist and pinkish smog. The Sun would have felt warm if the wind had stopped blow-ing. No one was up there at all.
Nita took a few steps off the paved walkway that led to the little glass building and scuffed at the gravel suspiciously. "This wind is pretty stiff," she said. "Maybe a good gust of it caught some of this gravel and threw it at the door." But even as she said it, she didn't believe it.
"Maybe," Kit said. His voice made it plain that he didn't believe it either "Come on, let's find the gate."
"That side," Nita said, pointing south, where the building was wider. They headed toward the railing together, crunching across the gravel. Fred perche" on Nita's shoulder; she looked at him with affection. "Worried?" (No. But you are.)
"A little. That sound shook me up." She paused again, wondering if s"e heard something behind her. She turned. Nothing; the roof was bare. But still— Nita turned back and hurried to catch up with Kit, who was looking back at her.
"Something?"
"I don't know. I doubt it. You know how you see things out of the corner Of your eye,
movements that aren't there? I thought maybe the door moved a little."