“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. 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 stihó, 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 and 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 Iit. And this is Kiv…”
It went on that way for a while, and Nita despaired of remembering more than a few of the wizards’ names, let alone those of their planets or universes. But shortly she was surrounded by people talking in the Speech and arguing amiably about the best way to find a world kernel in a hurry, and someone brought her what she at first thought was a glass of water, except that there was no glass involved—just the water, holding a tumbler shape by itself. Pralaya raised his eyebrows in amusement as he caught her glance, waggling them in the general direction of the kernel where it sat on the coffee table. Apparently the kernel in the playroom often was used for just that: play.
While Nita was working out where the rim of her invisible glass was, she heard a lot of information and gossip from the alien wizards around her, and she quickly realized that in even a fairly short time she could find out all kinds of useful things, any one of which could possibly help her save her mother. Nita actually had worked up her courage enough to ask a few questions of the most senior of the group that had collected around her—a wizard called Evrysss, who looked more like a giant spiny python than anything else—when her attention was suddenly grabbed by someone walking by at the edge of the group. But what really got Nita’s attention was that it wasn’t an alien. It was a pig. It wasn’t one of the spotty breeds, but plain pink-white, with bristles that looked slightly silvery in this light, so that it glinted a little.
“—and so I said to Hvin, ‘Now, just look here, if you keep straining your shael out of shape trying to get the kernel to deform its laws like that, you’re never going to—’” Evrysss blinked at Nita’s sudden astonished look. “Oh, haven’t you been introduced? Chao?” The pig stopped, looked at the group, glanced up at Nita. “He’neet’, this is the Transcendent Pig.”
Nita’s eyes opened wide as the pig stepped toward her, and she saw that little shining ripples seemed to spread out in the floor from where it stepped, as if solid things went briefly uncertain where it trod. About six possible responses to what Evrysss had said now went through Nita’s head, but fortunately, before she blurted one of them out, she remembered the right one. She looked down at the Pig, and said, “What’s the meaning of life?”
The other wizards chuckled, or hissed or bubbled with laughter, and the Pig gave Nita a wry look out of its little piggy eyes. “I’ll tell you the meaning of my life,” it said, “if you’ll tell me the meaning of yours.”
“Uh… that might take a while. Even assuming I knew.”
“It would for me, too,” said the Pig, “so let’s put it aside for the moment. Come on, sit down, make yourself comfortable.”
She did, settling onto a nearby chromy framework that looked more or less like a human chair. Nita had first come across a reference to the Transcendent Pig when she was doing her earliest reading in the manual, just before she went on Ordeal. The Pig was classified as one of the “insoluble enigmas,” a sort of creature that fell somewhere between wizards and the Powers That Be. Indeed the term creature was possibly inaccurate, for (so the manual said) no one responsible for creation could remember having created it in the first place. At least the Pig’s motives appeared to be benign, and it had been proved again and again to be immensely and inexplicably knowledgeable. Nita thought this was why the manual insisted that every wizard immediately ask the meaning-of-life question when meeting the Pig. There was always a chance the Pig might slip and actually answer it.
Well, not this time, she thought. “Do you come here often?” Nita said, and then cracked up at herself; hearing it, it seemed like the most idiotic thing she could have found to say.
“Don’t feel too silly,” the Pig said dryly. “Everybody tends to concentrate so hard on the mandated question that their minds go blank on anything else. But I wander in and out of here every now and then. I like being at the cutting edge, and out here where no one has to be too afraid of making a mistake, some interesting work’s being done. Not all of it as personal as yours, maybe, but it’s all valuable.”
“You mean you know?” Nita suddenly felt slightly embarrassed.
“Knowing is most of my job,” the Transcendent Pig said. “But then there’s a long tradition of oracular pigs. I should know: I started it.” It paused. “That is, assuming you’re into sequential time.”
“It works all right for me,” Nita said, rather cautiously.
“Well, preference is everything, as far as time’s concerned; you can handle it however you like.”
Nita had to smile at that. “You can, maybe. But you’re built to be everywhen at once.”
It gave her a sly look. “I suppose you might be right,” the Pig said. “If everyone started to believe they could handle it the way I do, everywhen might get crowded.”
Nita laughed. There was something about the Pig that put her at her ease—one thing being that, to her astonishment, it had a New York accent. She spent a while chatting with it about Earth and then about various other planets where her errantry had taken her, and soon realized there was absolutely nowhere she’d been that the Pig didn’t know—it had been there, seen that, and left the T-shirt behind. “Or, rather, I’m there now,” it said. “Or have been there now.”
Nita smiled, reminded of trying to explain the tenses of conditional time to her mother. “My own language isn’t much good for this kind of thing. Guess we should keep it in the Speech.”
“No problem. Who did you come in with?”
“A bunch of people,” Nita said. “Mostly Pralaya and, uh, Pont.”
The Pig smiled at Nita’s slightly embarrassed look as she used the “slang” version of Pont’s name “Oh,” the Pig said, “you’re another one who can’t manage the music of the spheres? Don’t worry about it, cousin. No one expects anybody else to handle home languages perfectly. The Speech is all anyone here really needs.”
Nita nodded. “You hear that word so much around here,” she said then, “and with wizards generally: hrasht…” It was the word in the Speech that translated as “cousin.”
“Oh, the term’s accurate enough,” the Pig said. “We’re all children of brothers and sisters, of kindred creatures who’re children of that odd couple Life and Time. All related, mostly by just trying to live our
lives and get by in the face of tremendous odds. But in a lot of cases, trying to do more than just get by.” The Transcendent Pig looked around. “This is one of the places where you come to push past the usual definitions of what’s possible.” It gave her a thoughtful look. “And if you’re lucky, you both pull off what you’re seeking and get to enjoy it afterward.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Nita said.
“Trying to save a life is always worthwhile,” said the Pig. “But the bigger work can be a lot easier sometimes. Nonetheless, I’d say you’re in the right place for advice.” It looked over at the wildly assorted group of beings standing around a tall table, all in the light, waving their manipulatory appendages at one another and talking at high speed.
“Got any to spare?” Nita said.
The Transcendent Pig waggled its eyebrows at her. “Not for free. You know the price.”
“Uh, yeah. I’ll pass.” Nita still wasn’t completely clear about the price she would pay for this particular work of wizardry. Taking on another obligation seemed unwise, especially when it was known to be—in wizardly terms—an extremely expensive one.
“So will we all,” the Pig said, and got up, quirking its tail at her. “Keep your ears open, all the same. You never know what one of your cousins’ll mention that could turn out to be really useful later on.”
The Transcendent Pig wandered off. In her turn Nita got up off the more-or-less chair she’d been sitting on and went over to listen again to some of the other wizards who were talking in a group. What she had come to think of as “the kernel,” they were calling by as many other names as there were species in the group: the World-Soul, the Cosmic Egg, the Shard, and numerous others. Some of the wizards were knowledgeable about the structure of the kernel itself, in ways Nita was certain she would never have time to master. Pont, in particular, were in the midst of a long talk with one of the other wizards—a storklike alien about six feet tall who seemed to have had some kind of accident in a paint store, one where they sold iridescent paint that didn’t keep the same color for more than a minute. “If you’re having so much trouble dealing with the place’s kernel,” Pont were saying, “you should get help. Go in as a team! It’s always an option for any of us, once we’re done with the orientation runs.”
The other wizard, Kkirl, stretched her wings in a sudden blaze of scarlet and green, then folded them again. “I have concerns,” she said. “The kernel of the planet in question is unstable. It won’t stay where it’s put; whether the turmoil on that world is itself a reflection of the kernel’s instability, or the other way around, I cannot tell, though I have been working with it for many cycles now—”
“Planets have kernels?” Nita said.
“Not of the same power and complexity you’d find in a universe-type kernel,” Kkirl said, “but much smaller, more delicate ones, easily deranged if mishandled. I’ve spent as long as I dare assessing the situation and trying to make small adjustments. There’s no more time, for the planet is inhabited by some hundreds of thousands of my people. If that world’s destruction by earthquakes and crustal disturbances is to be avoided, something must be done now. In the past two cycles, the quakes have become severe enough to threaten large parts of the surface of the planet. The Powers sanctioned an intervention that would deal with the kernel itself, and I was here to prepare one final test sequence. I don’t really need it. But I’m still not sure it’s safe to go on with the intervention by myself, let alone with—”
“Kkirl, what use is a meeting like this unless you use it to your advantage?” Pont said. “The Powers Themselves might have thrown us in your way. Let us—some of us, anyway—help you out! You can tell us how to proceed, and we’ll be guided by you. Or, if nothing else, we can just lend you power. These aren’t circumstances where anyone would be tempted to improvise.”
Kkirl looked around, her feathers a little ruffled, uncertain. Several other wizards had been listening to their conversation, Pralaya among them. Now Pralaya stood up on its hindmost legs in order to look Kkirl in the eye more easily, and said, “Cousin, if your people’s lives are in danger, letting your uncertainty hobble you is playing right into the Lone Power’s desires. And delay could be fatal. Judging from what you’ve told us, it’s becoming fatal already. You have to move past the uncertainty. What else are we all here for?”
Kkirl stood there silent. Finally she looked up, rustled her wings, and said, “You’re right. I see no other way. And there’s no point putting it off anymore. Who will come?”
“We will,” Pont said. “What about you others?”
“I’ll come,” Pralaya said. “Of course. Who else?”
Mmemyn said, I am free to come; and another wizard that Nita had met only briefly, a long graceful silvery fishlike creature in a bubble of water, said, “I, too.”
“Well enough. I’ll draw up the transit circle, then,” Kkirl said. “You will want to plug in your names and bring appropriate breathing media: the atmosphere is a reducing one, and there’s a lot of oxygen.” She glanced over at the “fish.” “Not a problem for you, Neme, except for the acid in the air.”
The various wizards started to get ready, adjusting their life-support wizardries, and Nita was surprised when one of Pont rolled over to her. “You know,” it said, “you might come along as well.”
Nita looked down at it, and over at the others, surprised. “Me? I’m just getting started. I didn’t even get the kernel this time.”
“Just an accident of timing,” Pralaya said, glancing up.
Kkirl paused in the act of starting to pace out the circle. “And you’re probably the youngest of us here,” said Kkirl, “so that whatever you might lack in expertise, you’d surely make up in power. Do come, hNeet! The kernel won’t be where I left it in any case; looking for it will be extra practice for you.”
Her mother’s predicament went through Nita’s mind. But these people were trying to help her, to help her mom. It was the least she could do to help them. “Yeah,” she said. “Sure, I’ll come.”
Kkirl went back to pacing out her transit circle, and it appeared on the floor before them. The wizards who were going produced their names in the Speech and started plugging them into the spell, in the empty spots Kkirl was now adding for them.
Nita looked over the diagram carefully as it completed itself. The coordinates for the solar system in question had an additional set of vector and frame coordinates in front of it, which Nita thought must be the determinators for an entirely different universe. Otherwise the diagram made perfect sense, and the long-form description of the planet itself made it plain why Kkirl was working on it It’s tearing itself apart, Nita thought, bending down to look at it closely. The planet was big to start with, and then it captured all these moons, even a little “wandering planet” passing through its solar system … and now the gravitational stresses from some of the more massive moons have thrown everything out of whack. This was a problem of the same kind as Dairine’s, just as insoluble by brute force. Inherent in the transit circle, though, and written as an adjunct to it, Nita could see Kkirl’s intended solution. The planet itself was going to have both its crust structure and its gravitational and magnetic fields reorganized and rebalanced. That could be done only by using the kernel, which when itself rewritten would in turn rewrite the whole under-crust stucture of the planet. It’s like the kernel is the master copy of a DNA molecule. Or messenger RNA. Rewrite it and turn it loose, and every other molecule in a body gets changed in response. This was fairly close to one of the options Nita had in mind for her mother. Her heart leaped as she saw from Kkirl’s diagram that she’d been on the right track, and began to see how she could implement a similar solution herself.
“See something that doesn’t work?” Kkirl said, coming around behind her and looking over Nita’s shoulder at the diagram.
“No.” Nita said. “It looks fine.”
“I’m glad. It’s taken awhile. But the conditional statements there
were the worst part. Fortunately the solution is adjudged to be ethical—see the GO/NO GO toggle down at the end? If that one tiny little knot won’t knot, you might as well give up and go home.”
Nita nodded. “Okay,” she said, and reached into the back of her mind to pull out the constantly updated graphic version of her personal description. It manifested itself in the usual long graceful string of glowing writing in the Speech, but as she ran it briefly through her hands, Nita noticed some changes here and there, particularly in the sections that had to do with family and emotional relationships. Mom, she thought. She let the written version of her name slide glowing to the floor and snug itself into the spot waiting for it in Kkirl’s wizardry.
Then, suddenly getting the feeling that someone was behind her, Nita looked over her shoulder. Dazel was towering up behind her and leaning over her, looking down at her with a number of its eyes, while its many, many pink and dark-violet tentacles wreathed slowly in the air. It said nothing. The rest of its eyes were arching down over her to look carefully at her name in the Speech.
“Uh, hi,” Nita said.
“Yes,” Dazel said. It said nothing further, but more and more of its eyes curled down in front of her to look at her name, where it lay glowing against the white floor, until only eye was left still looking at Nita, hanging there on its thin, shiny pink stalk about three inches in front of her nose. The eye’s pupil was triangular, and the rest of the eye was bloodshot, if blood were purple.
“Uh, right. Excuse me,” Nita said, and slowly and carefully edged sideways out from underneath all those overarching eyes, trying hard not to make it look as if she was creeped out.
The eyes watched her go, but otherwise Dazel didn’t move, except for those tentacles, which never seemed to stop their silent wreathing and twisting in the air. Nita made her way over to where Pralaya and Pont were settling some final details with Kkirl and a couple of other wizards, and sat down on a little stepstool-looking piece of furniture near Pralaya. As several of Pont rolled off to say something to a couple of wizards on the other side of the gathering, Nita bent over with her elbows on her knees and looked sideways at Pralaya. “Is it just me,” Nita said softly, “or is there something a little, I don’t know… unusual about him?” She glanced at Dazel.