"And Mikey and Craig are the lever?"
"So it would seem."
"And we don’t know what it is these others want?"
"I would not wager that they could be said to ’want’ anything at all, any more than a river ’wants’ to run downhill. However I doubt very much that the World could survive in a pattern that would be more to their liking."
They were both silent for a minute.
"Aelric," Wiz said at last. "My Lord?"
"Hmm?"
"If Jerry and Danny and I can match their programmers are you strong enough to fight the ones who are behind them?"
The elf duke looked down at him with eyes gray and cold as a winter’s sea. "No Sparrow, I am not. Not I and all my kind could stand unaided against them."
"Oh," said Wiz in a very small voice.
"Nor is it needful that we do so," Aelric continued. "The World as it is exists because it is stronger and more stable this way than in any other form it could easily reach. To say that a thing came about by chance is not to say that it can be altered effortlessly once it has happened."
"You can’t unscramble an egg," Wiz agreed and then frowned. "Only here you can unscramble an egg."
"That does not mean it is equally easy."
"So there’s something like an energy gradient these others will have to cross before they can settle the universe into another stable state."
The elf duke paused as if tasting Wiz’s words. "That would not be an incorrect way to put it. Perhaps it would be more nearly right to say they seek to create the conditions necessary to tunnel through the gradient to another state."
"Where did you learn about solid-state physics?"
Duke Aelric smiled. "Where did you learn about magic, Sparrow? We teach each other, I think."
Wiz thought that Aelric knew a lot more about physics than he had ever taught Wiz about magic, but he didn’t pursue the point.
"You know this sounds an awful lot like cosmology."
"What is cosmology?"
"One of our sciences. The branch of physics that deals with things like the beginning and end of the universe."
The elf duke smiled. "Then this is cosmology."
Wiz turned that over in his mind and then returned to the main point.
"What you’re saying then is that we can take them."
"What I am saying, Sparrow, is that there is a chance that we can take them. But first and above all else, you must wrest this new lever from their hands."
"That doesn’t sound very hopeful."
"It is not hopeless, Sparrow. Leave it at that."
He nodded with mock gravity. "Now, are there any other matters on which I may set your mind at rest?"
Wiz took a deep breath. "Yes. What does Lisella want?"
Again that marrow-freezing stare. "What the Demoselle Lisella wants is none of your concern, Sparrow. She has not bothered you again, has she? No? Then dismiss her from your mind."
"But you’ve met her here."
"How do you know?"
"Someone saw you."
"Sparrow, you would do well to concentrate on matters of import, not my intrigues by moonlight. What is between the Demoselle and myself is none of yours. Now, is there aught else?"
"Just one other thing. Are those dwarves who are trying to kill me part of the Others’ plan?"
Aelric’s laugh was like the peal of a silver bell. "Believe me, Sparrow, they are not." He sobered. "No, that is a matter between you and others of this world, mortal or non-mortal, I think. But be wary of them, Sparrow. They can be dangerous."
Thirty-six: A VISIT WITH MIKEY
Craig couldn’t really name the impulse that drove him to visit Mikey. He hadn’t seen him since Mikey had called his weapons "toys." He didn’t really have anything he needed to talk to him about. But he still decided to go. Maybe he could explain to Mikey about his new robots. Maybe Mikey would apologize for the things he’d said. Maybe whatever, he hadn’t talked to anyone but robots for weeks.
Craig hadn’t been in Mikey’s part of the castle for a while and Mikey had made some changes since then. Where Craig’s work area was modelled on a laboratory, airy and brightly lighted, Mikey’s wing was gloomy as a smoggy twilight. The further he penetrated the dimmer and redder the light became until he felt he was pushing his way through blood-soaked gloom.
He turned the corner and started climbing stairs. The walls fell away as he climbed until the staircase seemed to stretch up into a bleak, blood-lit, starless sky. Come on, he told himself, this is just an illusion. You know you’re still inside the castle. But somehow that only made the illusion stronger. The wind whistled around him, tugging at his jacket and whipping his jeans against his legs. There were hints of shapes in the sky above him, huge dark-on-dark things that shifted and twisted in ways his eye couldn’t quite follow.
Craig shivered and stayed close to the center of the railless staircase. He thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of his windbreaker and kept his eyes on the stairs under his feet.
Suddenly he was there. There was no door, no anteroom. Just a pool of light at the top of the stairs and Mikey hunched over a desk in the middle of it.
As he reached the top Mikey regarded him in a not-quite-hostile manner.
"What brings you here?"
Craig shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I hadn’t seen you in a while and I just felt like coming to see you, you know?"
Mikey grunted and turned back to his work. Craig stood uneasily as the silence stretched out and the wind whipped and whistled around them.
"This is kinda spooky," he said at last.
"I like it," Mikey said without looking up.
The silence dragged out as Craig stared at Mikey’s back.
"You look like you’ve been learning a lot." Craig tried to flog his enthusiasm. "It must have taken some real magic to put this place together."
"Yeah," Mikey said. "I’ve been learning. That and a whole lot more."
"Oh?" Craig asked brightly. "Like what?"
"Like philosophy, man. I’ve really clarified my thinking." He smiled and for an instant the old, charming Mikey flashed through. "You know who really owns something? The person who can trash it. Just fucking ruin it completely. That’s how you know the real owner."
"But what about the guy who can use it? You know, build something with it?"
"So what? If he can’t protect it, he doesn’t really own it. It’s like a computer. The name on the paper may say it belongs to IBM or Pac Bell, but that doesn’t mean shit. The people who really owned those computers were people like me who could get at them any time we wanted to."