Helpless, he watched her diminish. Her own mandolin, formerly a tiny thing in her huge hand, remained as it was, and now was far too large for her to play. It slid off the bank and partway into the sea. He was now too large to be her lover. She diminished to a quarter his height, to an eighth, a sixteenth. All he could do was shield her with his huge hand, preventing her from falling into the sea.
Then, less than a twentieth of his height, she stopped. She was now the same size as a native of this planet. Their problem of size remained; they had in effect changed places.
Suddenly he understood. "The magic makes a person fit the world!" he exclaimed. "It makes folk grow or shrink, depending on the world, so that thereafter they can reside there in comfort."
She sent up an image: "Then join me, beloved!" the image cried.
Immediately, he played the music for himself. He began to shrink. He set down the dulcimer and the two hammers, for they were not affected, and his own cloak became too large for him. He stepped out of it, and back from the brink of the cliff, which was now quite formidable though it had been no more than knee height to him before. His dulcimer slid off, joining her mandolin, partly in the sea. It could not be helped.
He became her size, and stopped. Again he embraced her, and kissed her, and did with her the things they had done only in image before. Then they made new clothing for themselves and walked away from the sea. They were united at last.
CHAPTER 8
SECRET
NONA came out of the story, the understanding forming. Kara the giantess had looked exactly like Nona herself; she had seen it in the picture in Angus' mind. This myth explained not only the coming of the animus but also the origin of mankind on Oria itself.
"No," Angus said, answering her thought. "Mankind was'there on your world and mine long before then. It merely explains the arrival on your world of two whom you call Megaplayers, one of them my size, the other much larger. Perhaps Kara did not look like you; that was my fancy. But it is one of our stories of the way of the universe, and it suggests how those instruments of ours came to your world."
"Must I go to the origin of the universe, as Earle did?" Nona asked, appalled.
"I think not. The animus, as our myth has it, flows from the origin to the smaller worlds. But the anima is opposite. That should flow the other way."
"The other way!" Nona exclaimed, seeing it. "But there are many small worlds, and only one master world. How can we know which one?"
"I suspect that it is no single world, but any world," Angus said. "Each world can be changed from its own proper source. It may be that the animus sweeps all worlds at once, while the anima takes one world at a time, as its folk discover
how to do it. Thus we should be subject to periods of complete animus, followed by gradually increasing anima, until some champion invokes the animus again for all."
"The little world we stopped at on the way here!" Colene exclaimed. "They had just converted to anima! They had found the way."
"Perhaps they can tell you, then," Angus said. "It should be simply a matter of standing over the correct spot, playing your music, and invoicing the anima. But I must warn you—"
"That it won't change everything immediately," Nona said. "That I now understand. But the power of the despots will be curtailed, and the next generation will be ours."
"Note that in the legend, Earle and Kara did not remain to face their people after the change to animus," Angus said. "Had they done so, they might have encountered unkind treatment at the hands of the amazons, who would have wielded considerable power for a time, even without their magic. So they went anonymously to a new world, escaping that consequence."
Nona considered that. She had assumed before coming here that the change would be instant and complete, with the men losing their magic and the women gaining it, according to their orders of birth. That way she would have been queen immediately. That was not actually a role that appealed to her. She desired to be queen no more than she desired to be a theow housewife; both were confining for life. She was doing this not for any personal gain, but for the welfare of her people. It was now apparent that the anima, when long established, was no better than the animus; both were merely vehicles for the transmittal of power. But it seemed best that they be changed every so often, to clear out corruption and give new folk a chance to do better.
So she would not be queen. She might instead be a martyr, as the despots struck savagely in revenge for their loss of heredity. That was even worse. Still, she had to do it, if only because now that she had come here she was known, and her family and friends would suffer if the despots retained power.
"Not so, lovely little lady," Angus said, receiving her thought. "You will be the only person on your world with full magic. You will therefore be queen immediately, having the power. You will have to organize your people and institute the new order, abolishing the old. Then there will be no threat to those close to you."
"But I am no leader!" Nona protested. "I can not be ruthless!"
"Riding the tiger," Colene murmured. In her mind was a picture of a young woman on the back of a monstrous ugly feline, in control only so long as she did not dismount.
"However, interpretation leads to further insights about the spread of man across the worlds," Angus said. "In the legend, they had the secret of size change, and it was presumed that those who crossed between the worlds invoked that magic to become the appropriate size for that world. But their instruments did not follow; Earle did not think to make them conform. Nothing is said about animals and plants, which must have been brought by the colonizing explorers. But there would have been similar magic for them, for all things are in proportion to the size of their worlds. Yet I know of no such magic. No one in real life can change size. Was the magic lost after the initial colonization? The legend suggests otherwise, for Earle and Kara were different sizes, yet each changed to become another size. Why, then, can we not discover or remember the secret? I have quested through the ruins of past times, and found no record of any such magic. I do not believe that it exists."
"But folk are different sizes!" Nona protested. "We differ from you, and from the tiny folk of the little world we passed. We know this is the case."
"Folk are different," he agreed. "But there may be no magic about that."
Nona shook her head, confused. "But there has to be! How else could they become the right sizes?"
Angus glanced at the others. "I wonder whether any of your companions from other realms have ideas on this?"
"Sure," the intense young Colene said immediately. "Evolution." Nona heard the word, but the concept was too complicated to fathom.
Angus, however, was interested. "This is a science concept?"
"It sure is," Colene agreed. "It means that plants and animals change little by little, over the millennia, the fittest surviving, the unfit dying. They grow small or large, depending on what works best. In this reality it would mean that they evolve to fit the worlds they are on; there must be an advantage to being the right size for each."
"Then how would you interpret the presence of small musical instruments here, or large ones on the little world of Oria?"
"Easy. The people brought them along when they settled. But each generation changed in size, while the instruments didn't, so finally the people couldn't play them, and had to make new ones that matched their size. I admit I find the acoustics hard to believe; the longer strings and larger sounding chambers in the large instruments should play deeper notes than the small ones, but that doesn't seem to be the case. But then big people like you should collapse under their own weight—square-cube ratio, you know—but you don't, and Jupiter doesn't have any stronger gravity than Oria; we're the same weight here as we are there. But even so, you should feel twice as much strain on your feet, and you don't, so science just doesn't apply. So okay, the rest of science doesn't work here, but maybe evolution does. That hammered dulcimer Nona just played belonged to your distant ancestors, who
were small when they came here. And those big instruments on Oria belonged to folk your size, before they evolved down to regular size for that world."
"I can't make sense of this!" Nona said, her mind awhirl. "There must be size spells!"
"I admit it is difficult to believe," Angus said. "But it is just one of those impossible things we are constrained to accept. The archaeological evidence indicates that Colene is correct. We have found small bones and tools, and larger ones, and larger still, and the smallest are the oldest. It happened gradually, for people and animals and trees too."
"But Earle and Kara—"
"A legend is only a story," Angus said. "A simplified memory, an attempt to explain what we otherwise have difficulty understanding. We see the relics of past times, and they are the wrong size, so we suggest that magic was responsible. But in this case there seems to be another explanation, and Colene's ready appreciation of it satisfies me that she is indeed from a different kind of place."
"But if it happened slowly," Nona said, trying hard to reason out the consequences of this incredible notion, "then Earle—Kara—"
"Did not invoke magic to change size," Angus finished. "True. If they existed at all, it was not in the fashion described. That must be a happy ending put on to satisfy more recent listeners. But it does suggest that there was travel in each direction. Small folk came from Oria to Jupiter, and colonized it, and slowly grew large. Then, later, large folk must have returned to Oria and colonized it again, and slowly grown small. The myth and the physical remnants agree on this; only the particular manner and timing of it remain obscure."
"But then the Megaplayers—"
He smiled sadly. "Are merely your name for ordinary folk like me, on this larger world. I have no magic to help you, pretty little woman. Even if I went to Oria, I would have no more power than you, except that I could step on despots. In fact I would have less, for I can not compel loyalty to your cause by playing a melody, and I could not bring the anima to Oria no matter how hard I tried. None of the folk of Jupiter could,"
"But my mother told me to seek the Megaplayers!" Nona was near tears of confusion and frustration.
"Perhaps she spoke wisely," Angus said. "I can not do such magic myself, but I may be able to advise you in such a way as to enable you to do it yourself. Though I believe there is no magic of living size change, there obviously is the magic of animus and anima, and location is surely vital to it. I believe if you ask the folk of the smaller world you passed, they will tell you that they had a woman of the appropriate lineage, and that she stood at the appropriate site and invoked the anima for her world. That is what you must do."
"I can change it right on Oria?" Nona asked, amazed.
"That is my belief. You are the ninth of the ninth. There is surely a corresponding site on your world that will resonate to your magic. Unfortunately I do not know where that would be. There are so many rads on each world, and so many rads on each rad, that a person could spend a lifetime traveling to each one and trying to invoke the magic, and die before finding the right one."
"The ninth of the ninth," Nona said. "That must be the one."
"Undoubtedly. But where does the count start, and in what direction does it proceed?"
Nona was unable to answer. She had no idea how to count rads. She had never thought of such a thing before.
"Maybe the little folk on that world we passed," Colene said. "Since they did do it, they have to know."
"Yes, and they might even be willing to tell you," Angus said. "But their world is not the same as yours, so their site on it would differ accordingly. It would not work for you. And it may be that they did not do it by counting, but found it by chance."
Colene nodded soberly. "Probably wasted effort," she agreed. "What we need is a solid, sensible system of counting, and I guess that doesn't exist in this universe. Otherwise these changeovers would be more common than they are."
"Such a system does exist in your universe?" Angus inquired.
"Oh, sure, it must. They know a lot about fractals. I never got into it deeply, but the library has whole books—" She paused with realization. "I could probably find out, on Earth! If I got to the right library, or maybe found the right person. Only I can't get back to Earth, because we can't use our anchor. That's why we were trying to help Nona, so she could get rid of the animus and it would stop interfering with our access to the Virtual Mode."
"I am not clear about the nature of this anchor," Angus said. "I gather it is a portal."
Nona was glad to hear the question, because the concept confused her too. She had seen the party appear, and understood that they could not go back, but it was alien magic. Seqiro had explained the Virtual Mode to her, but her comprehension remained limited.
"It is a connection to a particular reality," Darius said. "The Virtual Mode is like a slanting ramp, crossing many levels, and each level is a reality—an entire universe. But it has to be anchored in five places, or it spins wildly. Each anchor ties it to one reality, and all of us on the Mode can pass through those anchors and remain in their realities. We came through Nona's anchor, and so we are here. But the animus prevents us from returning through it and resuming our journey to my home reality."
Angus' brow furrowed. "Is this anchor a place or a person?"
"Both. The person makes it, by committing to it when the Virtual Mode offers. But it is also the place where that person stands when that commitment is made."
"What happens when the person moves away from that place?"
"Nothing," Darius said. "The person can go anywhere in the anchored reality, or in the Virtual Mode, which is like a reality of its own made from thin strips of all the other realities it crosses. Nona could go to any of our home realities, just as we came to hers. But only Nona, of all those native to her reality, can use that anchor, and only she can free it. Except for the interference of the animus."
"Free it?" Angus asked.
"She committed it; she can uncommit it. Then she will be left in her own reality, and the rest of us will be on the Virtual Mode seeking other realities."
"Suppose she frees it when the rest of you are on this side of the anchor?"
Darius paused. So did the others; their mutual surprise was shared by Seqiro, so that all knew that all felt it.
"We could be trapped!" Colene said after a moment.
"I'm not sure of that," Darius said. "It would leave a Virtual Mode with no anchor people on it." But he was uneasy. His memory, now shared by the others, suggested that many people had entered Virtual Modes, and few had returned to their original anchors. Was this what happened?
"I think Nona is more critical to your welfare than you thought," Angus said. "At least while you are in her reality. But from what you say, you are not necessarily safe while on the Mode, because you are always in some slice of reality, and if one of you was killed, control over that anchor would be lost and you would be destabilized."
"It's no safe place," Colene agreed. "Only someone desperate or halfway suicidal should risk it." There was an undercurrent there that appalled Nona; the girl was speaking of herself.
"I have a conjecture," Angus said. "Nona is the key person for the anima. She has full magic, and the ability to enlist others with her music. When she stands on the correct spot and invokes the anima, it will spread across her world. This suggests that she has the power to nullify the animus. That power is normally limited, but can still nullify it for particular people when she tries, as we have seen here. We have all become anima. That may not matter for those of you of other universes, but it does for me. I am helping her now because she has brought me into the anima, at least in spirit. My powers are at her disposal."
"But I seek no power over you," Nona protested. "I only want to make my world better."
"You have it, nonetheless," Angus said. "If you were my size, and wished to marry me, I would marry you, even as Kara married Earle after he brought her into the animus. But that is not my thought. It is tha
t if you can nullify the animus for single people elsewhere, and for the entire world at the nines spot, you must be able to have effect at the site of this anchor. You should be able to nullify the animus and allow the others to return to their Virtual Mode."
Again they paused in surprise. That did make sense.
"We can go back!" Colene exclaimed.
"No," Provos said almost at the same time. "Her power was not that great. She was able to enable only the smaller part of the group to pass."
"She remembers!" Colene said.
"But she has already forgotten mentioning it," Darius added. "She can't remember what she has told us, so doesn't speak often." Indeed, Provos was looking perplexed, catching on that she must have said something, but not yet knowing what it was. It was yet to be triggered by their prior dialogue.
"But that means that only one or two of us can pass through," Colene said. "Which ones?"
"You must be one," Angus pointed out. "Since you alone know the way around your world. You will go and return with the information. Assuming one other can go with you, which should it be?"
"Seqiro!" Colene said instantly.
"Both," Provos said.
"Is that number or mass?" Darius asked, asking the question the woman had just answered. Then, realizing that he would have to say more for her to understand the question, he added: "The people who pass back through the anchor."
"Which means the horse is too big," Nona said, catching on to the peculiarities of this dialogue. "So it must be you, Darius. Unless—"
"I did," Provos said.
"Who else went through the anchor with Colene?" Darius asked, quickly making the question fit the answer.
And that seemed to be it. Colene and Provos would go, leaving Darius and Seqiro behind. Nona realized that one thing was sure: Colene would do her utmost to return, rather than to be cut off from her man and her horse. And Provos, with her memory of things to come, should be able to help her considerably.