"I don't know about you," Kit said, "but I'm not going to turn my back on anything while I'm up here. Fred, keep your eyes open." Kit paused by the railing, examining the ledge below it,
maybe six feet wide, then looked up again. "On second thought, do you have eyes?" (I don't know,) Fred said, confused but courteous as always. (Do you have chelicerae?) "Good question," Nita said, a touch nervously. "Kit, let's do this and get out of here." He nodded, unslung his pack, and laid the aspirin, pine cone, and fork on the gravel by the railing. Nita got out the rowan wand and dropped it with the other materials, while Kit went through his book again, stopping at another marked spot. "Okay," he said after a moment. "This is an imaging-and-patency spell for a. temporospatial claudication, asdekh class. Purpose: retrieval of an accidentally internalized object, matter-energy quotient…" Kit read a long string of syllables, a description in the Speech of Nita's pen, followed by another symbol group that meant Fred and described the proper-ties of the little personal worldgate that kept his great mass at a great dis-tance.
Nita held her breath, waiting for another onslaught of uncanny feelings, but none ensued. When Kit stopped reading and the spell turned her loose, it was almost a surprise to see, hanging there in the air, the thing they had been looking for. Puckered, roughly oblong, vaguely radiant, an eight-foot scar on the sky; the worldgate, about a hundred feet out from the edge where they stood and maybe thirty feet below the heliport level. 'Well," Kit said then, sounding very pleased with himself. "There we are. And it looks all right, not much different from the description in the book." Now all we have to do is get to it." Nita picked up the rowan wand, wnich for the second part of the spell would serve as a key to get the pen through the worldgate and out of Fred. She tucked the wand into her belt, leaned on the railing, and looked out at the air.
According to the wizards' manual, air, like the other elements, had a "lemory and could be convinced in the Speech to revert to something it had eeji before. It was this memory of being locked in stone as oxides or nitrates, 'frozen solid in the deeps of space, that made the air harden briefly for the eAding spell. Nita started that spell in its simplest form and then went on into a more formal one, as much a reminiscence as a convincing — she talked to the air about the old days when starlight wouldn't twinkle because there was nothing to make it do so, and when every shadow was sharp as a razor and distances didn't look distant because there was no air to soften theirj. The immobility came down around her as the spell began to say itself alone with Nita, matching her cadence. She kept her eyes closed, not looking, for fear something that should be happening might not be. Slowly with her words she began to shape the hardening air into an oblong, pushing it out through the other, thinner air she wasn't including in the spell. It's working better than usual, faster, she thought. Maybe it's all the smog here — this air's half solid already. She kept talking.
Kit whispered something, but she couldn't make out what and didn't want to try. "/know it's a strain, being solid these days," she whispered in the Speech, "but just for a little while, lust to make a walkway out to that puckered place in the sky, then you can relax. Nothing too thick, lust strong enough to walk on—" "Nita. Nita!"
The sound of her name in the Speech caught her attention. She opened her eyes. Arrow-straight, sloping down from the lower curb of the railing between her and Kit, the air had gone hard. There was dirt and smog trapped in it, making the sudden walkway more translucent than transparent — but there was no mistaking it for anything but air. It had a more delicate, fragile look than any glass ever could, no matter how thin. The walkway ran smooth and even all the way out to the worldgate, widening beneath it into room enough for two to stand. "Wow!" Nita said, sagging against the railing and rubbing at her eyes as she let the spell go. She was tired; the spelling was a strain — and that feeling of nervousness left over from the loud noise outside the stairwell came back. She glanced over her shoulder again, wondering just what she was looking for.
Kit peered over the railing at the walkway. "This better be some pen," he said, and turned his back to the worldgate, watching the roof. "Go ahead.'
Nita made sure her backpack was slung properly, checked the rowan wand again, and slowly swung over the guardrail, balancing on the stone in which it was rooted. She was shaking, and her hands were wet. If I don't just do this, she thought, I never will. Just one step down, Callahan, and then a nice solid walkway straight across. Really. Believe. Believe. Ouch! The air was so transparent that she misjudged the distance down to it— her foot hit before she thought it would, and the jolt went right up her spine-Still holding the railing, Nita lifted that foot a bit, then stomped down hard on the walkway. It was no different from stomping on a sidewalk. She let he' weight down on that foot, brought the second down, and stomped with that too. It was solid. fjj rock, Kit!" she said, looking up at him, still holding the rail.
"Sure," Kit said, skeptical. "Let go of the rail first."
Nita made a face at Kit and let go. She held both arms out at first, as she might have on a balance beam in gym, and then waved them experimentally. "See? It works. Fred?" Fred bobbed down beside her, looking with interest at the hardened air of the walkway. (And it will stay this way?)
"Until I turn it loose. Well?" She took a step backward, farther onto the walkway, and looked up challengingly. "How about it?"
Kit said nothing, just slung his own backpack over his shoulders and swung over the railing as Nita had done, coming down cautiously on the hardened air. He held on to the rail for a moment while conducting his own tests of the air's solidity. "Come on," Nita said. "The wind's not too bad."
"Lead the way."
Nita turned around, still holding her arms a little away from her to be sure of her balance, and started for the worldgate as quickly as she dared, with Fred pacing her cheerfully to the left. Eight or ten steps more and it was becoming almost easy. She even glanced down toward the walkway — and there she stopped very suddenly, her stomach turning right over in her at the sight of the dirty, graveled roof of Grand Central, a long, long, long fall below. "Don't look down," a memory said to her in Machu Picchu's scratchy voice. She swallowed, shaking all over, wishing she had remembered the advice earlier. "Nita, what's the—"
Something went whack! into the walkway. Nita jumped, lost her balance, and staggered back into Kit. For a few awful seconds they teetered back and forth in wind that gusted suddenly, pushing them toward the edge together — and then Kit sat down hard on the walkway, and Nita half fell on top of aim, and they held very still for a few gasps. "Wh-what—"
'I think it was a pigeon," Nita said, not caring whether Kit heard the trernulousness of her voice. "You okay?"
Sure," Kit said, just as shakily. "I try to have a heart attack every day Aether I need one or not. Get off my knee, huh?"
They picked each other up and headed for the gate again. {Even you have ouble with gravity,) Fred said wonderingly as he paced them. (I'm glad I left my mass elsewhere.) So are we," Nita said. She hurried the last twenty steps or so to the 'uened place at the end of the walkway, with Kit following close. knelt down in a hurry, to make sure the wind wouldn't push her over, and looked up at the worldgate. Seen this close it was about four feet by eight, the shape of a tear in a piece of cloth. It shone with a glowing, shifting, soap-bubble iridescence. Finally, finally, my pen! she thought — but somehow, the thought didn't make Nita as happy as it should have. The uneasy feeling that had started in the stairwell was still growing She glanced over her shoulder at Kit. He was kneeling too, with his back to her, watching the walkway and the rooftop intently. Beside her, Fred hune i • quietly waiting.