and power, small and bright, from which came the singing whine she'd been tracking.
As the creature flashed past, dark cheerful eyes blinked at her, and it grinned. Then it was heading toward the blue-lighted roil of surface. Nita let out a breath of slight annoyance and went after it, bobbing up to the surface in her bubble of air.
The other wizard was already clambering up out of the water with the kernel. This it showed to the other wizards, and one of them said, "All right, you've proved your point."
"Twenty-four minutes," the otter creature said to the furry three-legged wizard. "But it nearly didn't do me any good!" It turned its long sleek head to look at Nita as she climbed up onto the jetty and banished the bubble wizardry. "Look what I passed on the way up!"
"Dai stiho," Nita said. "Hey, you beat me fairly. I just got here late."
"Didn't think They were going to let anybody else in here, this cycle," said the furry creature. "Oh well. Dai, cousin!"
"Here's Pralaya," said Pont, indicating the "otter." "And that's Mmemyn"—one of Pont rolled over to the massive three-legged creature with the strange fur— "and here's Dazel. What was the matter with you two?" Pont said to them. "Why'd you just let Pralaya take the kernel?"
I did not wish to dissolve, said a slow silent voice that seemed to come from Mmemyn in a diffuse sort of way. / did not anticipate the replay of this scenario putting the kernel under water.
Late Tuesday Evening
Nita realized that Mmemyn's voice came from the weird patchy fur that mostly covered it. "Neither did I," said Dazel. "But it was plain by the time I got here that no effort would have brought me to the kernel before Pralaya got to it. Next time out, though, the outcome will be different."
"It will if Nita here does as well next time as they did on this run," Pont said. "They got the scent of that kernel right away and went straight across the city—a downhill roll all the way. Very direct."
"In this continuum, that's not easy," Pralaya said, putting down the kernel on the stone, where it lay glowing. "You've made a good start, cousin! What project are you working on that They've let you in for practice?"
"I'm... I'm trying to save my mother's life," Nita said. And suddenly the strangeness of it all caught up with her, as it hadn't done almost since she first became a wizard—the alien feel of another space and creatures all around her who were strangers to her in a way that few humans ever had to deal with. She found it hard to look at them; she couldn't do anything but stand there, trying to hang on to her composure.
The other wizards looked at one another, silent. Pont said, "In the Five's names, why are we keeping them standing here like this when they're distressed? It's all too new for them! Come on, everyone—if this run's done, let's go to the playpen for a while. We can show them the rest of us, and replay a couple of other runs, and let them get a feel for how it's done."
Pont bumped against Nita's legs. She looked down. 263
They said, "Come with us, Nita. There's more to this sheaf of universes and dimensions than just places to play hunt-the-kernel. Come relax; tell us the why of what you're hunting, and maybe we can help with the how."
Pont are right, said Mmemyn. Will you come? «Uh, yes," Nita said. "Sure, let's go."
And instantly the world faded around them all and vanished. Late Tuesday Alight, Wednesday Morning
NITA BLINKED AND LOOKED around her. It was dark.
Not entirely dark, though. It was as if she and Pont and the others were standing on a shining white dance floor—one that was miles and miles from one side to the other. If the curvature of the last space had surprised Nita, this place had a similar effect, but exactly in reverse. You could feel the flatness of this place in the air, on your skin, in your bones. You could practically see the ruler lines embedded in everything.
Next to her, sitting up on his hind legs, Pralaya made a little raspy chuckle. "Yes, it's a good thing it never rains here," he said, glancing around. "You'd go crazy waiting for the water to run off."
"Don't know what you're complaining about," Pont said, rolling past them toward a light source off to one side, where Nita could see shapes silhouetted. "Lovely
265
place, this: no ups, no downs. Paradise." The rest of Pont went past Nita, making a feeling like a shrug. "You always could find a square thing where a round one should be, Pralaya."
"Just a natural talent," Pralaya said, looking after Pont with amusement. He gave Nita a wry look.
The two of them went after Pont, Dazel and Mmemyn bringing up the rear. "You two obviously have history," Nita said.
"Oh, some," Pralaya said, pattering along six-footedly beside Nita as they made their way toward the light. "We're neighbors. Their home universe isn't too far from mine, the way the local sheaf of worlds is presently structured. We started running into one another pretty frequently in here when I began this series of workouts. If you're here more than once or twice, you'll start recognizing the present batch of regulars pretty quickly."
"I think it's going to be more than once or twice," Nita said. "I don't have much time left, and I'm a long way from where I need to be."
"You're new at this, to be so sure," Pralaya said, as they got closer to the light. "Feel the kernel?" "Huh?" Nita paused. She hadn't realized this was another practice universe.
"Don't stop," Pralaya said. "Some places you're not going to have the leisure. You have to learn to sense on the move. Come on!"
Nita tried "listening" as they went. It was hard to do while your other senses were interfering, but this
Late Tuesday Night, Wednesday Morning
discovery obscurely annoyed her; she could just hear Dairine saying, Can't walk and chew gum at the same time, huh?
The annoyance focused her just enough to let Nita "hear" the kernel, just for a second, as a sort of difference in texture in the feel of the local space. "It's right there in front of us," Nita said, surprised. "Right in the middle of everybody."
"Not bad," Pralaya said. "This kernel's tough to sense; it's a fairly low-power one. We usually keep it locked in one spot—there are so many of us in and out of this space that no one feels like hunting for it every time."
"I thought everybody's time here was really limited."
"Oh, in the aschesis-universes proper, of course it is," Pralaya said. He paused for just a moment to scratch behind his ear with the middle set of paws, bending himself nearly into a half circle as he did so, then picked up the pace again. "But this isn't one of those. This is a pocket of space pinched off from the main aschesis sheaf. The Powers let us use it to relax in between finishing up a seeking run and going home again. It's useful, since sometimes when you finish a run, you're almost too tired to gate straight..."
They came to the fringes of the lighted area. Fifteen or twenty creatures of various sorts were standing or sitting around on what would have passed for nice furniture on several planets Nita knew. On one piece of furniture, an ordinary-looking occasional table done in shiny metal, sat this space's kernel, a brilliant and compact little webwork of light about the size of a baseball.
267
Pont were presently rolling under that table toward a group standing together and talking on the far side of the table, and the wizards assembled there had turned toward them and were greeting them.
"We've got more victims," Pont were saying to them. "Look, all; here's Nita."
All those strange eyes turned on her, and there were polite bows and limbs waving and wings flapping and a lot of voices saying "Dai stiho, cousin!"
"Uh, I'm on errantry, and I greet you," she said.
A chorus of replies, mostly amused variants on the theme "So are we!' went up around the group. Pont came rolling back to her ard said, "You're in luck: a lot of the present class of practicers are here. Here are Lalezh; they're from Dorint. And that's Nirissaet; they're from Algavred XI—watch the tails! And that's Buerti, they're from lit. And this is Kiv..."