it said. a creator's manual. And underneath, in smaller letters, Volume 108—Natural and Supernatural Laws,
Nita gulped. Beside her, Fred was dancing about in the air in great agiW' tion. (What is it?) she asked him. (It's in here.)
(Where?) Kit said.
(One of those. I can't tell which, it's so dark down that end of the room.) Fred indicated a bookcase on the farthest wall. (It's worst over there.) Nita stopped dead when she saw the room's second door, which gave on the inner office and was wide open.
Nita got ready to scoot past the door. The man who sat at the desk in the elegant office had his back to it and was staring out the window into the dimness. His warty secretary handed him the phone, and he swiveled around in the high-backed chair to take it, showing himself in profile. Nita stared at him, confused, as he picked up the phone. A businessman, young, maybe thirty, and very handsome — red-gold hair and a clean-lined face above a trim, dark three-piece suit. This was the Witherer, the Kindler of Wildfires, the one who decreed darkness, the Starsnuffer? "Hi, Michael," he said. He had a pleasant voice, warm and deep. "Oh, nothing much—" (Never mind him,) Kit said. (We've got to get that Book.) (We can't go past the door till he turns around.)
"— the answer to that is pretty obvious, Mike. I can't do a bloody thing with this place unless I can get some more power for it. I can't afford street lights, I can barely afford a little electricity, much less a star. The entropy rating—"
The young man swiveled in his chair again, leaning back and looking out the window. Nita realized with a chill that he had a superb view of the downtown skyline, including the top of the Pan Am Building, where even now wisps of smoke curled black against the lowering gray. She tapped Kit on the elbow, and together they slipped past the doorway to the bookshelf. (Fred, do you have even a little idea—)
(Maybe one of those up there.) He indicated a shelf just within reach. Kit and Nita started taking down one book after another, looking at them. Nita was shaking — she had no clear idea what they were looking for.
(What if it's one of those up there, out of reach?) (You'll stand on my shoulders. Kit, hurry!)
"— Michael, don't you think you could talk to the rest of Them and get me just a little more energy? — Well, They've never given me what I asked or, have They? All I wanted was my own Universe where everything works—Which brings me to the reason for this call. Who's this new operative you turned loose in here? This Universe is at a very delicate stage, interference will-."
1 hey were down to the second-to-last shelf, and none of the books had what they were looking for. Nita was sweating worse. (Fred, are you sure—} («s dark there, it's all dark. What do you want from me?)
Kit, kneeling by the bottom shelf, suddenly jumped as if shocked. (Huh?) Nita said. (It stung me. Nita!) Kit grabbed at the volume his hand had brushed, yanked it out of the case, and knelt there, juggling it like a hot potato. He managed to get it open and held it out, showing Nita not the usual clean page, close-printed with the fine small symbols of the Speech, but a block of transparency like many pages of thinnest glass laid together. Beneath the smooth surface, characters and symbols seethed as if boiling up from a great depth and sinking down again. Nita found herself squinting, fit hurts to look at.)
(It hurts to hold!) Kit shut the book hurriedly and held it out to Fred for him to check, for externally it looked no different from any other book there. (Is this what we're looking for?) Fred's faint glimmer went out like a blown candle flame with the nearness of the book. (The darkness — it blinds—}
Kit bundled the book into his backpack and rubbed his hands on his jacket. {Now if we can just get out of here…)
"— oh, come on, Mike," the voice was saying in the other office. "Don't get cute with me. I had an incident on top of one of my buildings. One of my favorite constructs got shot up and the site stinks of wizardry. Your brand, moonlight and noon-forged metal." The voice of the handsome young man in the three-piece suit was still pleasant enough, but Nita, peering around the edge of the door, saw his face going hard and sharp as the edge of a knife. He swiveled around in his chair again to look out the window at that thin plume of ascending smoke, and Nita waved Kit past the door, then scuttled after him herself. " — that's a dumb question to be asking me, Michael If I knew, would I tell you where the bright Book was? And how likely is it that I know at all? You people keep such close tabs on it, at least that's what I hear. Anyway, if it's not read from every so often, don't / go ffft! like everything else? — You're absolutely right, that's not a responsive answer. Why should / be responsive, you're not being very helpful—"
Kit and Nita peeked back into the hall. Fred floated up to hang between them. (1 get a feeling—) Kit started to say, but the sudden coldness in the voice of the man on the phone silenced him. " — Look, Mike, I've had about enough of this silliness. The Bright Powers got miffed because I wanted to work on projects of my own instead of following-the-leader like you do, working from Their blueprints instead of drawing up your own. You can do what you please, but I thought when 1 settled down in this little pittance of a Universe that They would let me be and let me do things my way. They said They didn't need me when They threw me out — well, I've done pretty well without Them too. Maybe They don't like that, because now all of a sudden I'm getting interference. You say this operative isn't one of your sweetness-and-Light types? Fine. Then you won't mind if when
I catch him, her, or it, I make his stay interesting and permanent. Whoever's disrupting my status quo will wish he'd never been born, spawned, or engendered. And when you see the rest of Them, you tell Them from me that—hello? Hello?"
The phone slammed down. There was no sound for a few seconds. "Akthanath," the young man's voice finally said into the silence, "someone's soul is going to writhe for this."
The slow cold of the words got into Nita's spine. She and Kit slipped around the door and ran for it, down the hall and into the elevator. "—he's playing it close to the chest," that angry voice floated down the hall to them. "I don't know what's going on. The Eldest still has it safe?—Good, then see that guards are mounted at the usual accesses. And have Garm send a pack of his people hacktime to the most recent gate opening. I want to know which universe these agents are coming from."
In the elevator, Kit whipped out the antenna and rapped the control panel with it. "Down!" Doors closed, and down it went, Nita leaned back against one wall of the elevator, panting. Now she knew why that first crowd of perytons had come howling after them on top of the Pan Am Building, but the solution of that small mystery made her feel no better at all. "Kit, they'll be waiting down-stairs, for sure."
He bit his lip. "Yeah. Well, we won't be where they think we'll be, that's all. If we get off a couple of floors too high and take the stairs—"