“Yes, but first there’s the question of what information a wizard of our People will routinely have access to,” Ith said, “and what they’ll have to ask for authorization from Higher Up to get—”
“I would have thought the Powers would make that distinction themselves.”
“No,” Ith said. “We—upper-level field operatives—are given more autonomy than you might suspect. Surprising amounts of it.” He opened his mouth to grin slightly, the amiable saurian smile that showed all those teeth. “The Powers’ attitude is plainly, ‘You’re living in this universe: why would you be so dumb as to pull down the ceiling of the cavern on yourself? Be cautious running the place—but take what risks you think need to be taken.’ And does it not say in the Estivations, ‘I shall walk Your worlds as You do, as if they are mine … for so indeed they are’?—So I findImust make these decisions—the Powers apparently feeling that one from inside a native ‘psychology’ will be best fitted to understand wizardry’s best implementation for that psychology. Then there’s the matter of how Seniors and Advisories will be chosen, and a very basic one, how the wizardry itself will manifestto my people. We’ve had all kinds of different modalities—voices heard, visions seen—but they’ve been haphazard, and I’ve been told that we should try to keep it to one or two modalities for the whole species, so that legend and tradition regarding their handling will have time to build up around them. At least we don’t have to try to keep wizardry secret, the way the poorehhifdo. My wizardly children will lead normal lives … as far as any wizard’s life can be considered normal.”
“You’re getting pretty organized,” Arhu said.
“Order is a wonderful thing,” Ith said, “when it flows from the roots of a matter rather than being imposed from the top down. And organization usually follows, yes … but not so much so that I can’t slip out for a pastrami sandwich every now and then.” He grinned at Arhu. “And we should try to meet soon in that regard: I’ve found a good place up on Eighty-Sixth between First and Second. Meanwhile, though, I have other business in hand. They tell me you need me,” he said to Rhiow. “And to my people’s Stepmother, I can only say, “Tell me what you need, and it’s yours.” ”
Rhiow put her whiskers forward.
“Meanwhile,” Ith said, turning his head sideways and giving Artie one of those peculiar looks of his, like a very large bird eyeing a very large worm, “is there any more of thatpizza?”
Rhiow laughed.“No! Get your own. There’s probably a fairly decent pizza place not too close from where you’re getting your pastrami.”
“No,” Ith said, “I would say Eighty-Sixth is something of a desert as regardspizza.Now if you go a little further uptown—”
“Don’t!” Rhiow said. He and Arhu looked at her, startled. “Justdon’t,”she said wearily.“Later. Later I will go and look for pizza with you. If there’s still a reality left on Earth that involvespizza.”
“All right,” Ith said. “Back to the subject. While involved in the codification, I have been eagerly searching for a spell which would prevent a second Winter’s fall. Now I see and hear from your interview with Hwallis that there is, or was such a thing. The Whisperer does not know of it, though: or if She did, it is lost.”
“How wouldShelose anything?” Siffha’h said.
“I do not know. But let us see the spell again, what you have of it.”
Rhiow showed it to Ith where she had it laid out on the floor. He looked at it for a few moments, and then chuckled, a deep clicking noise in his throat.“Yes,” he said, “there is a piece of my name, and another piece. And the Bright Serpent’s name, which I would have thought was a new thing: but now it seems it is old, and existed from ancient times. Another piece of information lost, or submerged under formerly more aggressive archetypes. And see here—” he put one claw down on one symbol of the spell, which flared briefly brighter in response. “Yes, this is the Ophidian Word in one of its new variants: my people are certainly involved—either the memory of our old tragedy, or the prophecy of our later intervention against repetitions of it. And here is the symbol for the Winter, and the indicator for the conditional branches of the target designation spell. There are definitely pieces missing: and this—” he tapped another symbol—“seems to indicate how many. Five other major parts. The master structure is hexagonal.” He sat back, looking satisfied. “That makes perfect sense, for the Universe has a broadly hexagonal bent: things tend to come in sixes.” He flexed his claws, giving a little extra wiggle to the sixth claw on each forelimb. “Particle arrays, hyperstring structures—”
Arhu looked accusingly at Rhiow.“I thought you told me everything came in fives.”
“Noteverything,”Rhiow said, in slight desperation.“Things to do with gates.”
Ith looked at her with a cockeyed expression, a sidewise look that had reminded Rhiow more than once of a robin looking at a worm.“Possibly we have a paired underlying symmetry here,” he said. “Dual symmetries of sixes and fives, conjoined at the functional level as elevens? The even and the odd …”
“Or the like and the unlike,” Urruah said, interested. “But together, they make a prime …”
Rhiow rolled her eyes. Since coming into his own, Ith sometimes went off into mathematical conjectures which completely lost her—a side-effect, she thought, of coming of a species which was only now discovering abstract reasoning for its own sake, after having spent so many millennia in the darkness, thinking about nothing but survival and food. It was perhaps some side-gift of his wizardry: or, like Urruah’s never-ending fondness for food andoh’ra,it might just be a hobby. Either way, it tended to make her head hurt.
“Ith, you’re going to have to take it up with the Powers that Be,” Rhiow said, “because I haven’t the faintest idea. Right now we need someone to help us look for that spell, for the other parts of it, and to get them welded together. We may need it very badly in a very short time.”
“Then I will come and do that for you,” Ith said. “I will search everywhere I can think of. The Museum here first, as you say: and then the Museum in New York as well, and elsewhere, if I must.”
Arhu glanced up, looking a little uneasy.“I don’t know if I like the idea of taking the Father of his People away from them just now,” he said. “This could be a dangerous time …”
Ith looked at him with mild surprise.“Do fathers not go out to find food and protect their young, sometimes? The important thing is to come back afterwards … Besides, events in one universe spread to others, sooner or later. By acting now, perhaps I save myself the need to act more desperately later …”
“That may or may not be,” Huff said, “but in any case, it’s still very good of you to come and help us. I mean …” He sounded slightly flustered. “We are, after all, People … and you are, after all …”
“A snake?” Ith dropped his jaw amiably. “Well, People have in the past taken a certain amount of interest in the welfare of another people’s universe: mine. We could have been left to die in the dark, or to live out our lives as slaves, under the Lone Power’s influence. But others risked themselves for us. Perhaps there is no ‘payback’: but paying forward is certainly an option open to us … So let us not speak of it any more.”
He rocked a little on his haunches, reaching back in mind again to the interview with Wallis which Arhu had shown him, and looking down at the fragmentary spell again.“ ‘A person of Power’,” said Ith, “must enact the spell. Does that mean, perhaps, a Person? One of your People? Or could it be just any wizard?”
“It depends if they call themselves persons or not, I suppose,” Rhiow said. “Ith, your guess is as good as mine … But I think we’re going to need the rest of the spell before we can draw any conclusions about that.”