“What? Oh, that.” Rhiow laughed. “No, I’m still doing analysis on it, when I have the time. Not much, lately. The gates seem to take up most of it… and that’s the problem now.”
“All right.” He blinked and looked vague for a moment, then said, “I keep a sound-damper spell emplaced around the desks: it’s active now, he won’t hear. Tell me your troubles.”
She told him about their earlier failure with the gate. Ehef settled down into a pose that Rhiow had become very familiar with over the years: paws tucked in and folded together at the wrists, eyes half-closed as he listened. Only once or twice did he speak, to ask a technical question about the structure of the gate. Finally he opened one eye, then the second, and looked up.
So did Rhiow. It was very quiet downstairs.
“He couldn’t get out of here, could he?” she said.
“Not without help. Or not without turning himself into a mouse,” said Ehef, “which fortunately he can’t do yet, though I bet that won’t last long. But never mind. Pretty unsettling, Rhi, but you have to see where this line of reasoning is going to take you.”
“I wasn’t sure,” she said. “I thought a second opinion—”
“You hoped I would get you off the hook somehow,” Ehef said with that slightly cockeyed grin that showed off the broken upper canine. “You’ve already talked this through with Saash, I know—otherwise you wouldn’t waste my time—and she couldn’t suggest anything at our level of realitythat could cause such a malfunction.” He glanced up at Saash: she lashed her tail “no.” “So the problem has to be farther in, at a more central, more senior level. Somewhere in the Old Downside.”
This agreed with Rhiow’s opinion, and it was not at all reassuring. Wizards most frequently tend to rank universes in terms of their distance to or from the most central reality known—the one that all universes mirror, to greater degree or lesser, and about which all worlds and dimensions are arranged. That most senior reality had many names, across existence. Wizards of the People called itAuhw-t,the Hearth:ehhifwizards called it Timeheart. It was the core-reality of the universes: some said it was theseed-reality,parent of all others. Whether this was the case or not, worlds situated closer to the Hearth had an increased power to affect worlds farther out in life’s structure. The Old Downside was certainly much more central than the universe in which Earth moved, so that what happened there was bound to happen here, sooner or later. And a failure in the effect of the laws of wizardry in a universe so central to the scheme of things had bad implications for the effectiveness of wizardry here and now, on Earth, in the long term.
“You mean,” Rhiow said, “that something is changing the way the Downside gating structures behave?”
Ehef shrugged his tail.“Possible.”
“Or else something’s changing the locks on the gates,” Saash said suddenly, with a peculiar and disturbed look on her face.
“That would probably be the lesser of the two evils,” Ehef said, “but neither one’s any good. Worldgating’s one of the things that keeps this planet running … not that the world at large notices, or ought to. If wizards in high-population areas like this have to start diverting energy from specialized wizardries just to handle ‘rapid transit,’ they’re not going to be able to do their jobs at peak effectiveness … and the results are going to start to show in a hurry. Someone’s going to have to find out what’s going wrong, and fast.” Ehef looked up at Rhiow. “And you found the problem … so you know what that means.Youget to fix it.”
Rhiow hissed very softly.“Which means a trip Downside.Hiouh.Well, you can tell the Powers from me that they’re going to have to find someone else to mind the baby while we do what we’re doing. He’s on Ordeal, but he doesn’t understand the ramifications of the Oath as yet, and we’re not going to have time to teach himanddo this at the same time. Nor can we take the chance that he might sabotage something we’re doing in a moment of high spirits—”
“Sony, Rhi,” Ehef said. “You’re stuck with him. The ‘you found the problem, you fix it’ rule applies to Arhu as well. Your team must have something to offer him that no other wizards now working have; otherwise he wouldn’t be here with you.”
“Maybe they do,” Rhiow said, starting to get angry, “but whataboutmy team, then? How’re they supposed to cope, having to do their jobs—and particularly nasty ones, now— while playing milk-dam to a half-feral kitten? He’s an unknown quantity, Ehef: he soundsoddsometimes. And I have no idea what he’s going to do from one moment to the next, even when he’snotsounding odd. Why should my team be endangered, having to look out forhim?They’re past their own Ordeals, trained, experienced, and necessary—who’s looking out fortheirneeds?”
“The same Ones who look after them usually,” Ehef said. “No wizard is sent a problem that is inappropriate to him or to his needs. Problems sent to a team are always appropriate to thewholeteam … whether it looks that way, at this end of causality, or not. Right now, you can question that appropriateness … what wizard doesn’t, occasionally? But afterward, things always look different.”
“They’ll look alotmore different if we’re dead,” Urruah said softly.
“Yeah, well, we all take that chance, don’t we? But even crossing the street’s not safe around here, you know that. At least if you die on errantry, you know it was for a purpose. More assurance than most People get. Or most other sentient beings of whatever kind.” He glanced up at the stairway to the next level of the stacks, where scampering sounds could be heard again. “As for him, he’s almost certainly part of the solution to this problem. Look at him: almosttooyoung to be doing this kind of thing … and all the more powerful for it. You know how it is with the youngest wizards: they don’t know what’s impossible, so they have less trouble doing it. And just as well. We learn our limits too soon as it is…”
“If we survive to find them,” Saash said, dry-voiced.
“Yeah, well. I didn’t hold out much hope foryouwhen we first met,” Ehef said. “You’d jump at the sight of your own shadow.” Saash glanced away. “And look at you now. Nice work, that, yesterday: you kept cool. So keep cool now. That might be what this youngster’s been sent to you for. But there’s no way to tell which of you will make the difference for him.” He glanced at Urruah, somewhat ironically.
Urruah closed his eyes, a youmust-be-joking expression, and turned his head away.
Rhiow opened her mouth, then closed it again, seeing Ehef’s expression—annoyed, but also very concerned. “Rhiow,” he said, “you know the Powers don’t waste energy: that’s what all this is about If you found the problem,you’re meant to solve it.You’re going to have to go down there, and I’m glad it’s not me, that’s all I can say.”
Rhiow made a face not much different from Arhu’s earlier one. “I was hoping you could suggest something else.”
“Of course you were. If I were in your place, I would too! But it’s my job to advise you correctly, and you know as well as I do that that’s the correct advice. Prepare an intervention, and get your tails down there. Look around. See what’s the matter… then come home and report.”
Down below, the soft sound of squeaking began again. Ehef wrinkled his nose.“I wish they could do that more quietly,” he muttered.
“Oh?” Rhiow said, breathing out in annoyance. “Like toms do?”
“Heh. Rhi, I’ll help every way I can. But my going along wouldn’t be useful in an intervention like this. Adding someone else on wouldn’t help… might hurt.”
“And him?” Urruah flicked an ear at the stacks above them. “Hesure got added on.”
“Not by me. ByThem.You gonna argue with the hard-to-see type standing out there between those two big guys out front? Or with the Queen? I don’t mink so. She has Her reasons.”