the crystalline pool. Tell me about it. What we re seeing here, down below… Ponch s answer was a few minutes in coming. They decided, here, what the rest of this world s life would look like, Ponch said. Is that right That s part of it, Kit said. Ponch looked up at him with an expression that was both quizzical and somehow sad. But not all. No, Kit said. Standing there on the brink of the interface, he hesitated, and then sat down in the grass and flowers. Ponch sat down beside him, his tongue hanging out, still giving Kit that uncertain look. You understand it, Ponch said. Make me understand it, too. I think it s important. Kit pulled his knees up, wrapped his arms around them. The universe is running down, he said. It s the Lone Power s doing. It invented entropy, the Great Death that s the shadow over all the smaller ones. Whether the results of that invention are all bad Kit shrugged. It gets too complicated to just say yes or no. But wizards do what they can to slow down the speed of energy running out of the world, that s all. Ponch had looked away and was gazing down into the Display. I think I understand that. Okay. When enough members of a species get to the point where they know they re alive, and they know they can think when they start to understand the world around them, and they realize they can do something about it one way or another then they re offered the Choice. As a species, they can elect to slow down the Great Death, or at least try to slow it down. Or else they can just give in and decide to do nothing about it. They can even go over to Its side, the Lone Power s side, and help make the worlds die faster… Ponch shuddered. How can they do that ! I ve never been real clear about that myself, Kit said. How can they do it How can someone be angry enough, or crazy enough, to say, Sure, if things are going to hell anyway, let s have them go there faster Sometimes it looks like a species can get tricked into it, Kit said. When a Choice happens, there are always representatives from Life s side and Death s side to argue the case. And there are always wizards there: sometimes a lot, sometimes just a few, or even just one. But finally it comes down to what the species itself decides, through its representatives at the Choice. If the Lone One offers them something they like the sound of better than they like the sound of what Life s offering and they go for it, then… Kit shook his head. Then bad things happen to that species, Ponch said. He was still looking down into the Display. Kit glanced over at him, wondering what was going on. Ponch was usually more voluble than this, even when he was upset. That s right, Kit said. And usually bad stuff happens to the other species around them, too, if the one making the Choice has the biggest population of sentient beings on that planet. If they already had death to begin with, then it tends to get a lot worse than just their bodies stopping, or whatever. If they didn t have death…they get it. It was some seconds before Ponch said anything else. Finally, he lifted his head and looked Kit in the eyes again. That s awful. Kit nodded. So all the people in that world have to deal with the results of that Choice until their species ends, he said. And wizards get born to try to make it better, if it went badly. You could say that a wizard s Ordeal is his own version of that Choice. Kit smiled, a small smile and not a happy one. Whether we like it or not, it looks like it s Choices all the way down… Ponch flicked an ear at the Display. Including down there. Definitely down there, Kit said. Most species only have old stories about their Choices, and it s hard to tell whether everything in the stories is true. These guys He shook his head. It s pretty unusual to have such a clear telling. It s nice for the Alaalids. But I can t get over the idea that there s something missing. Something they ve left out Maybe. Yeah. Or else something they didn t think was important. What I wish I could see…is that left-out part. Ponch looked stumped. Let me think about that for a moment, he said. That, Kit thought. The part with the Lone One. In all other Choices that I ve seen, It s been the major player. In world after world, It haunts even the species that came close to winning their Choices. But this one…He sat down. This species has death. They accepted that part of the Lone Power s gift even before the Choice process began. So the heart of their own Choice, and something they accepted or threw out has to be even more important than death. Kit stood there in the bright day, turning that over and over in his mind. Something more important for this species than life and death. More important than what comes after it. What could that be Ponch looked up at him. The thing you want to see, he said, I can take you there. Do it! Together they walked down into the crystal. Once again they found the eight characters of the Choice waiting for them. But this time the air of the past, or the past-made-present, wasn t quite so pellucid. There was uncertainty in it, a kind of haze. Where is that haze coming from Kit said. Me, possibly, Ponch said. But pay attention. I don t know if I can do this more than once. The Lone Power and Druvah had stepped aside, and Kit and Ponch stood nearby, watching, listening. You are the wise one, the Lone Power was saying. You know what day your people are coming to, in the far future. You know to what place they will come: the place from which they will not be able to move without help. My help. I m not so sure about that, Druvah said. I think our Choice will still remain our own. Now tell me what you want. The destruction of hopes, It said. The devaluation of life. The end of things, early or late. The dissolution of the created. What else No, Druvah said. I mean, what do you want of me You wouldn t have called me aside unless I had the ability to do something you want. I want you to let me into the heart of things, It said. You want me to betray my people, Druvah said. Nothing of the kind! But I can give you the power to make sure they won t destroy themselves. They will, eventually. You know it. They re very happy with the way they are. But to every species comes a time when the way they are is not enough…when if they re going to go on living, they have to become something more, something different from what they ve always been. If your fellow wizards enact the wizardry they re building at the moment, they ll also find that they ve built themselves a trap from which there s no escape. And you know that s what they re doing, too. You re trying to save them. But they re not listening to you. They re likely to listen to me even less, Druvah said, if I talk to you much longer. Why should you care about that Ictanik said. You re the oldest of the wizards on this world, the wisest and the strongest. And you re the power source for this spell, the one without whom a wizardry of this scope and importance simply can t happen. If they become offended, why, you just walk away from the spell And leave the future of my world unprotected from disasters and pain and sudden death, and alienated from the One Druvah said. I don t think so. Whatever the One may do for you, Ictanik said, without me included in your world, your species will never be able to change, or grow. I suspect that to be true, Druvah said, and for the first time, he looked troubled. But I don t trust you. There I can help you, Ictanik said. I will gladly give you enough power so that, for the rest of your life, if indeed you don t trust me, you can step in to right whatever wrongs you think have been done. Druvah was silent for a while, gazing off into the distance. Then he looked up again. You re very cunning, he said. But what s one lifetime against the lifetime of a world I m not so irresponsible as to cast away responsibility for what happens in Alaalu after I leave it. If you re going to give me power in return for changes I make in the wizardry we re about to work, then it will be this way that by your gift, I ll be able to live here in the state of being I please, in the shape and way I please, until the last of the Alaalids passes from the world. Uh-oh, Kit thought. He recognized the veiled cruelty in the smile on the Lone One s face, having seen it before. Whatever Druvah was asking for, it was something that the Lone Power thought suited Its own desires perfectly. After the Choice is done, the Lone One said, what you ve asked for will be yours. Before, Druvah said. I know perfectly well who you are. And I know that the gifts of the Powers can t be recalled once bestowed. The Lone One looked somewhat taken aback. My way, or not at all, Druvah said. Ictanik looked at him, narrow-eyed, furious. Finally, she said, Very well. And when you give me this power, Druvah said, what am I supposed to do for you Just a small thing, the Lone One said. Simply leave me a foothold in your world…a place where my essence can lie dormant until the day comes when you do need it for the Change that is to come. With you as the eternal guardian of your world, I won t be able to do any harm. Kit knew that innocent look, and he went cold at the sight of it. The Lone One s going to make sure something happens to Druvah, sooner or later, Kit thought. Probably sooner. It ll find a loophole in the promise It s made, and It ll kill him somehow. And then the Alaalids will be stuck with It in their world forever. He had the urge to go over to Druvah and shake him and say, Don t do it! But Druvah was hundreds of thousands of years away from Kit. He said to the Lone One, I agree. Pay me my price now, or I do nothing for you. The Lone Power looked at him for a long moment, then closed Its eyes. The ferocity of the released power staggered Kit where he stood, even at this remove in time and space. Druvah, though, did not stagger. He went rigid as ironwood, and then, as the rigor passed, he looked at Ictanik with the slightest smile. Now, he said, to work. Druvah went back to the other six wizards, who looked at him dubiously. Well, he said, I ve listened to Its words. Now you ll listen to mine in turn. I am the power source for this Choice, this work we do to protect our world for all the generations that will come after. The spell we ve built so far has many good things about it. Lives will be long in our world, and there will be peace and prosperity and joy for an endless-seeming time. The Lone One will have no more part in our world than entropy, Its child, makes absolutely necessary. Our world s center, its kernel, It will never be able to reach, and this world will be a good one, a glad one, for a very long time. But not forever. I see the doings of the day after forever, when our people realize they must change and cannot, and there won t be any release from the trap our present wizardry will have built for them. You only say this because the Lone One has said it to you, Seseil cried. Power passed between you, just then. She has bought you! Many will say that, Druvah said. Only the day after forever will reveal the truth. So for now, if you want to enact the Choice we ve made here, the wizardry that will protect our world, let s do so. But I will only power the wizardry if we add to it this stricture: that, come the day after forever, when the children of the children of a thousand millennia from now finally realize they need to change their world and themselves, our descendants in power will be able to repeal this Choice, this protection, and make another that suits them better. Never! We know what s best for them So parents always say of their children, Druvah said. Sometimes they re even right. Nonetheless, if we make a Choice-wizardry today, or ever, this is how it s going to have to be. However, so that no such change of our whole world will be made lightly, let us add this to the stricture: The decision must be unanimous. Kit saw Seseil smile then. Under his breath, the Alaalid said to one of the other wizards near him, That will never happen. So let us do as he asks. So the wizardry went forward. Kit watched it through to the end, watched the actual implementation of the massive working that was meant to keep this world safe from the Lone Power s malice forever. It shook the earth when it was done, and thundered against the sky, and rooted itself into Alaalu s star and into the fabric of all the space in Alaalu s system, right out to the heliopause. When it was over, all the wizards went away to their homes, well satisfied that they had made their world safe from the evils of the universe until their star should come naturally to the end of its life span and go cold. Only Druvah was left. He stood and watched his colleagues go, and finally turned his own back and walked off the way Ictanik had gone. Kit watched him go with a strange feeling. The silence that fell after that mighty working was deafening. In it, only the wind blew. Everything seemed finished, and Kit almost expected to look up into that piercingly blue sky and see hanging there the words THE END. But the way he felt, if there were going to be words written in the heavens, they could only be TO BE CONTINUED. We need to get up out of this, Ponch said from beside Kit, panting. It s over. They stepped up out of the pool. Kit had to struggle, gasping, up the last six or ten feet of the climb; and when they came out onto the surface, he looked down and found everything beneath them empty just water. No wizards, no past. I think maybe I broke it, Ponch said, apologetic. Oh, great, Kit muttered. Well…never mind. We found out what we needed to. Let s get back and tell Nita. And then we have to talk to Quelt. We ve got to do something. They ve made a terrible mistake, and we have to help them somehow. If they ll let us, Ponch said. In Dairine Callahan s kitchen, hectic planning was in progress. This data source is useful, Prince Roshaun said, looking over Dairine s shoulder at Spot s rendition of the SOHO satellite s data feed. But does it have history If we re going to avoid collapsing your star, I need data for at least the past fifty years. Dairine laughed weakly. We ve barely been in space that long, she said. The satellite s only a few years old. For earlier data, you re going to need the manual. We ll use both, Roshaun said, running a finger down Spot s screen and bringing up an array of solar views and a great many complicated-looking charts and graphs. We don t have a lot of time. Here, they have ultrasound data. And magnetographs. Good. He went quiet for a moment, studying the images. The star s active side is pointing away from us right now. That buys us time… But it won t stay that way forever, Filif said, looking over Roshaun s shoulder. The star rotates… What s the period Roshaun said to Dairine. Six hundred hours, Dairine said. Just a little less, actually. And the spot that s starting to bubblestorm has gone around more than three quarters of the way already Roshaun was silent for a moment. Then he said, We have perhaps nineteen hours before that particular crisis point rotates toward us again. And maybe twenty-six or twenty-eight hours before it boils over He shook his head, looking at the data. It s going to take nearly that long to design the wizardry, he said. And then we have to go implant it. We have to go to the Sun Filif said. The excitement in his voice was astonishing and Dairine found it difficult to reconcile with the creature who had only hours earlier been emotionally shattered by the fact of a forest fire. We don t have much choice, Roshaun said. We re just four wizards against a star that weighs, oh, nine hundred octillion tons or so. We d need a lot more power than we ve got to just sit here and throw the wizardry at it from a distance. It makes more sense to do the serious work up close. Filif was trembling, and not with fear. Can you Roshaun said to him. Watch me! Filif said. Dairine shook her head. Better show me where to get started, then, she said to Roshaun. He looked at her with an expression she d never seen on his face before: just the faintest glimmer of respect. At another time, this might have either annoyed her or pleased her, but right now Dairine found that she hardly cared one way or another. They spent the next twelve hours and more constructing the wizardry first the rough version, then the real one. Dairine had never been involved in such a detailed, exacting, exhausting piece of work in her life, not even when Nita had called her in to assist with a big group wizardry in Ireland. This time, there were many fewer wizards involved, and the work the four of them were doing was, in its way, far more complex. Conceptually, it wasn t that much of a problem. We have to go into the S