Nona glanced at Provos. The woman seemed unconcerned. That should be a good sign.
Angus made two more pauses, roughly circling the despots' castle. Then he came to the field near the instruments.
There were no despots there. They had been fooled into thinking it wasn't important. Angus stopped near the brink.
"Go!" Colene exclaimed, jumping off the hand. Provos and Nona followed her. Darius and Stave got off the other hand and came to join them.
Provos seemed to know what she was doing. She walked briskly to the brink and reached for Nona's hand.
Nona concentrated, trying to will the anima into being. Would it work without the music?
Provos disappeared.
Colene took Nona's hand. "Keep an eye out for our return," she said. "And watch yourself with my horse, woman."
Nona had to smile. She willed the anima again, and Colene disappeared.
They are coming.
Jona ran back to the giant's hand, paced by Stave and Darius. They climbed on, while Seqiro remained on the other hand. Angus stood.
Indeed, horses were galloping toward them from the village. Nona didn't want to find out what mischief the despots had in mind; death might be the least of it.
Angus reached down toward the sea. For him there was no cliff, merely a rocky bank with old musical instruments leaning against it. He put his hand to the huge hole in the mandolin. The three of them climbed into the hole. Then the other hand brought Seqiro down, and the horse joined them.
An image of Angus appeared with them. "If I do not see you again, I wish you success," he said. "Now conjure yourselves away; I will close my hands about images and pretend I am still carrying you."
"Thank you, good friend!" Nona cried as the image faded.
The hand withdrew, pausing only to make a wave with the lingers. Then they felt the shudder of the ground as Angus tramped away.
Darius faced the horse. "Seqiro, can you find any mind near here in the ground? I must see through that mind's eyes before I conjure us there."
Yes, there is one. The mind is open. Here are the eyes.
"Then take hold," Darius said, doing so himself. He held dolls of all of them, and he was ready to whisper to them, to make them ready for his magic.
Nona and Stave put their hands on the body of the horse.
Darius marked circles, then moved the dolls. There was the wrenching of conjuration.
CHAPTER 9
VIRTUAL
COLENE blinked, looking for Provos. There she was, waiting just ahead. Nothing seemed to have changed, except that all the others were gone. There were no people and no horses, just a sea-edge landscape.
Colene had not seen this place from within the Virtual Mode before. They had been spinning through realities, and stepped out the moment things stabilized. Perhaps it had been involuntary, the result of the spuming; they had been thrown out by centrifugal force. Actually there was no such force, she knew; it was an illusion, an apparent force, the result of inertia diverted. But for all that, it had a measurable effect, just as magic did. Anyway, now the two of them were back on the Virtual Mode, and Colene felt oddly at home here, though she wished Darius and Seqiro were with her.
But it was dangerous too. Fortunately both she and Provos were experienced here, and would not make obvious mistakes. The first of which was to get separated from each other. A person could quickly get lost amidst realities.
Colene closed her eyes and turned around, tuning in on her own anchor, Earth. She could sense where it was, or at least in what direction it was. Provos would be able to sense her own. They could probably sense the other anchors too, if they tried. Without that ability, they could truly get lost.
She felt the direction, and stopped, facing it. She opened her eyes.
She was facing directly out toward the sea.
Oh, no. They couldn't walk that way, and it would be disastrous to try to swim in that cold, choppy water. With magic they had been able to walk under it, but Colene had no magic, and neither did Provos.
Could they make a boat? No, because anything they made would disappear in ten feet, dumping them. The only material that would stay with them would be from an anchor reality—and if they stepped out onto Oria to get it, they would be stuck there again, with the despots waiting. So crossing the sea was out.
But maybe they could go around it. In fact, if they just walked beside it, in due course the realities would change so that there would no longer be a sea there, and they could cross whatever was there. It was frustrating to have to lose time in a detour, but that was just the way it was.
She turned to the other woman. "What do you think, Provos?"
But Provos was already stepping out, knowing where she was going—toward the despots' castle.
Colene hurried to catch up with her. "But that's directly away from—"
She broke off, because the woman had disappeared.
But in a moment she reappeared, as Colene stepped across the same plane of reality. That was the nature of travel through the Virtual Mode: a person saw an entire reality, or at least as much of it as any person saw from one spot, but this was not exactly illusory so much as unapproachable. Because every few steps took the person up another rung of the ladder, as it were, and it was like looking out at another floor of an endless building. Maybe like an elevator with glass walls, which hovered at each floor but gave admittance to none that was not an anchor. That wasn't a perfect analogy either, but would do for now. Each floor was real on its own terms, but might as well be illusion, because the elevator just didn't stop there. And the moment it crossed the line between floors, everything on one floor disappeared, and everything on the next one appeared. The layout of each floor might be almost identical, but the people would change.
Indeed, this new reality looked the same as the last. The castle remained, and the fields and fences. But this was just another sliver of mica in the block, and it had its own identity.
Probably there were despots there, and even maybe a gruff king, a voluptuous queen, and a dastardly knave. But their names would differ, and they would look different. Probably magic worked. But not quite as it did in Nona's reality. And of course no one had visited from the Virtual Mode. No girl from Earth, no telepathic horse.
They crossed the next border between realities, and the next. There was no sensation, merely the spot disorientation of seeing the scenery shift slightly. One reality had a field of sheep; then they were gone and it was an overgrown pasture. The distant castle remained on the top of its hill—actually a fortified rad, but who really cared?—and looked much the same. But why was Provos going there? What did she remember?
In fact, as Colene understood it, Provos had very little memory when traveling through the Virtual Mode, because her memory was of her future in a particular reality, and they were in any one reality only a few seconds. How could she know where to go?
Colene paced the woman, bothered. Obviously Provos did remember enough to make her certain of her direction, but it couldn't be of these transitory realities. Was it of one beyond, where they did stay, so she was merely headed for it? Colene had not had more than passing association with the woman before; Provos had traveled with Darius. But unless Colene had gotten things muddled, Provos' memory did not work that way. She had to be in a specific reality before she started to remember its future.
So why was the woman heading so purposefully somewhere? Colene wished she could at least ask.
Well, maybe she could. She waved a hand, signaling Provos. When Provos looked at her, she asked, "What are you up to?" and plastered a really confused look on her face to get the message across.
"You are tired?" Provos asked. She spoke in her own language, but Colene understood well enough. It really did seem that she was developing telepathy, from her association with Seqiro. It had been wonderful, verifying this with Nona, and it made her feel a lot better about leaving Darius and Seqiro with her. Nona was a decent person. That had come through a
long with the symbols she had been thinking. So now Colene could understand Provos, but Provos couldn't understand Colene. Because it seemed that Colene's little bit of telepathy was just one-way: receiving. But that didn't matter all that much, because Provos didn't remember the past anyway, so most dialogue with her was truncated.
But she hadn't answered the right question. Colene pondered a moment, then decided that her luck might be better if she made it the right question. "I have a concern." That could be taken as an indication she was tired.
"My home," Provos answered.
"Where are we going?" Colene asked, getting the feel of it. She pointed ahead, making her query-face. This was information, but it still didn't address the issue. It was Colene's home they were supposed to go to, and she was sure the woman understood that, because Seqiro's telepathy had made it plain.
"Because we need supplies," Provos replied, touching her back.
It was like an exploding lightbulb. "Why are we doing this?" she asked, spreading her hands in simulated bafflement. Because the despots had taken their supplies. They had had to change to local tunics, and of course Seqiro had been stripped of his burden. Without Nona's magic, Colene wouldn't even have panties now. Since they could not eat on the Virtual Mode, because food, like other things, disappeared with the crossing of the realities, they had to carry their supplies with them, and these supplies had to be from one of the anchor realities. They had headed almost naked into the Mode, and would never survive it—unless they got supplies. So Provos was heading for her own anchor, which must be close, where she could get those supplies. She didn't need to remember the realities they passed on the way; all she had to remember was that they spent a while at her home getting stocked up.
Suddenly Colene was very glad it was Provos she was with. None of the others had thought of this aspect, in their focus on the immediate problems of Oria. Had Seqiro come here, they would have been stuck, because they did not dare return to his reality. They had barely escaped it before, and could not sneak back. Not with unfriendly telepathic horses there. Assuming it was even within reach. But Provos, with her future memory, must have known that her own anchor was close enough, and could be used to solve this problem.
Colene wanted to thank her for that insight and action, but didn't see how she could do it now without confusing things. She should have done it at the outset. So she just kept the pace.
Now the castle was changing, by small stages, as they advanced toward it. So was the landscape. The contours of the Mandelbrot set fuzzed, becoming more like conventional earthly hills and valleys. They were leaving the region of fractals. Maybe that was just as well, because that was one weird universe! If they had gone into anything even stranger, they might have had a real problem getting through.
Provos continued purposefully down through the valley, then on up the hill. The woman was a determined walker! The castle loomed larger, and not just because it was closer. It now covered a more extensive section of the hill, and the walls towered up several stories. Against what kind of enemy were these ramparts intended to defend?
They stepped into one more reality—and there was a dragon before them. A big wingless fire-breathing creature with metallic scales. Both of them abruptly stopped. The dragon was between them and the castle.
The dragon heard them, and turned its head. Its near eye fixed on them.
Of course they could escape it merely by stepping into an adjacent reality. But if they stepped back, the monster might be lurking for them the moment they resumed forward progress. It would be better to step forward, seemingly into it, but crossing to a new reality before reaching it. Except that Colene's logic warred with her common sense. Nobody walked toward a horrendous fantasy dragon!
Then the dragon uttered not a roar but a squeak. It turned tail and fled toward the castle. Astonished, they watched it go. It remained visible because it had no reality boundaries to cross; it was in its own universe, and they could see it as long as they stood where they were.
The dragon charged up to the castle—and inside. No one challenged it. The drawbridge cranked up after it.
It was a dragon castle. And the dragons were terrified of people.
Colene exchanged a glance with Provos, who presumably remembered a similar occurrence in the near future.
Sure enough, in a moment another dragon arrived. The drawbridge lowered to let it in, then lifted again.
"We don't want to meet them," Provos said firmly.
"I wonder what sort of people live in this reality?" Colene said musingly. She realized that they must be getting closer to the beginning of the woman's experiences on the Mode, because in the past she had usually managed to wait for a question before answering it. Now she did not, as if she had not yet learned to. Maybe she had discovered, early in the experience of the others but late in her own with them, how to give her answer before hearing the question, just as the others were learning to ask their questions after hearing the answer. The convolutions of such interactions might become as devious and intricate as those of the filaments of the Mandelbrot set.
They resumed their march. The castle shifted several more times, then disappeared entirely before they reached it. They crossed over a wooded hill, and kept going. Colene was getting tired, but did not complain. She wanted to reach Provos' safe anchor before nightfall, if they could. Not all dragons might be chickens.
They trekked into the valley beyond, forging through thickening forestland. The trees had gradually changed, and now they had yellow trunks and blue leaves. Colene didn't worry about it; if that was the only odd thing about this region, they were well off. Trees were trees.
Then they came to it: the anchor. It was no more visible than the one on Oria, but Colene could tell; there was a feel about the region. Provos had oriented on it unerringly, because it was her own, but now that it was close, Colene could spot it also. It was just a place in a glade in the forest.
They stepped through. Colene felt a kind of finning around her, and knew that she had entered the anchor reality. This was where Provos lived.
Provos paused, as if remembering. Indeed, that must be what she was doing: assimilating the future experience she would have in this place she had left behind. Colene would take similar stock of her past experience when she set foot back on her own reality of Earth. Everything was comfortable, for Provos.
But the pause was brief. This meant, as Colene figured it, that they would not be here long. That was the way she wanted it; she hoped to get to Earth, get the information, and return to Oria as fast as possible, because she felt alone and naked without Seqiro, and tense and depressed without Darius. Without them she was incomplete.
Then Provos led the way through the glade, along a path through the blue-trunked trees, and to a cleared region. There was a house. It was odd, by Colene's definition: it seemed to be about ten feet on a side, square in cross section, and reached up six stories. There were guy wires holding it in place against the wind. In the distance were other houses, of similar type.
Yet as they walked toward it, she realized that it did make sense on its terms. On Earth houses tended to sprawl across the landscape; only in cities did they become taller than they were wide. But on Earth much of the natural terrain had been destroyed by man's advance. Here a house took up no more space than it had to, and the trees and other vegetation remained. This was a nice region. The field seemed to consist of cultivated plants of a number of kinds, all mixed in together: wheat, beans, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes, and roses. No weeds. How did they manage that? Did they remember where the weeds would be growing, and take them out before they got started?
They came to the door—and it wasn't a door, but a window, screened by light mesh instead of glass. Provos opened the mesh and stepped inside, and Colene followed.
The chamber was cubical, maybe eight feet on a side, with the furniture set into the walls. There were cabinets and a closet against one wall, a narrow table with built-in chairs on either side aga
inst the next, a thin sink and stove against the third, and a thin stairway climbing the fourth. That was all; the center was bare.
Provos went to the stairs and climbed. Colene followed, feeling increasingly out of place. Just how well did any of their party know Provos? Could she, Colene, find herself trapped in this towerlike edifice? But she reminded herself that Seqiro had known what was in the minds of all of them, and had accepted Provos; the woman had to be okay.
The stair was strange. Each step was just about one foot square and one foot high—but the steps for the left and right feet were offset by six inches. It was like two sets of stairs, one for the right foot, the other for the left foot. Each stairway rose at a forty-five-degree angle, so that by the time it crossed from one side of the house to the other it also reached the next floor. But the ascent was not steep, because only six inches separated the height of the alternate feet. This was efficient and effective. Bttt only just big enough; it was essentially one-way. Two people could not pass each other at all conveniently, because the full width of the sides together was only two feet. But then how often did people need to pass on a stair, especially if this was a residence for one person, as it seemed to be?
The second floor was comfortably set up with shelving on three walls, with books, and a thick soft mat on the floor. Evidently the library or living room.
The stair turned the corner and continued on up. Provos showed the way.
The third floor was a bathroom: sink, tub, toilet, all close enough to what Colene knew to be no trouble. That was a relief!
The fourth floor was storage; there were bins and boxes and jars, and what might be a deep-freeze. Colene wasn't sure what kind of technology existed on this world, but surely they knew how to store their food.
The fifth floor was empty. It was a spare room, perhaps available for expansion when there was a family.
The sixth floor was the bedroom: clothing hung on one side, and a cushion bed was on the other.