Arhu gave Urruah a look which 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 todothis? 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?”
Everyone looked at each other. No one looked willing to suggest 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, whichwewould 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 hasadvantages?”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.Thatat 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 ofthesegates. 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 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 a while,” 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 findthemsomehow. And when we do … are they native to the same universe Mr. Illingworth is?”
It was a problem which had been nagging at Rhiow. Theoretically, the number of potential alternate universes was almost infinite. Even postulating a completely cooperativeehhif,once found—and that itself was none too likely—the two teams would then have to identify correctly which universe was thatehhif’shome. If they accidentally sent theehhif“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 which, 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 which 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 areyourgates, 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 itwasn’tego.“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.”