Nita and Kit waited, but nothing further seemed to be forthcoming. Finally, Nita said, “You have to ask us to what?”
“You know what’s wrong here,” It said. “Something’s missing. They made it impossible for themselves to achieve it. But they’re not a whole species without it… not really.” She smiled. “And the funny thing is, I even warned them of what they were doing. But none of them believed me. Well, maybe one.” Esemeli’s expression darkened. Then the look passed. “But they froze their species’ nature in place when they made their Choice; they walled it away from any possible assault. Either from me or from other sources.”
Meaning good ones, Nita thought. “And you can’t do anything to them, either.”
“I couldn’t do anything to them a hundred thousand years ago,” It said, just barely annoyed. “You saw it! They made their Choice and rejected me in about fifteen minutes. It happens… but I don’t often get invited to stick around afterward. I saw what they did to themselves, or failed to do. And afterwards I couldn’t do anything but sit here and wait for help to arrive.” Esemeli scowled at them. “And you’re finally here. You took long enough, by the way. Can we please get on with this?”
Nita and Kit looked at each other. “Before we ask you what we should get on with,” Kit said, “tell us why we should believe anything you say! After everything we’ve been through with you—”
“Atomic explosions,” Nita said. “Stars going nova or snuffed out. Being chased all over two different Manhattans by you and your homemade monsters!”
“Nearly being eaten by sharks,” Kit said. “Losing Nita’s mom. ”
The Lone Power actually looked bored, and waved one languid hand in a “spare me” gesture. “You’ve been through all that,” It said. “I admit it. But not with me. Listen—” It sounded more annoyed as It saw the glance Kit threw Nita. “Why are you going to give me trouble about this? It’s not just in your world that there have been changes. I’ve had my share of them. Huge ones… which you were deeply involved in, you and your sister. How is she, by the way?”
“Grounded,” Nita said. “You should count yourself lucky. Otherwise, she’d be here instead of us, and she’d have fried you to a crisp already, just on general principles.”
“No, I doubt that,” the Lone One said. “For one thing, she’s well off her peak power by now, and dealing with all kinds of trouble secondary to that. For another thing, she wouldn’t have been sent here. She wouldn’t have been the beginning of the answer to the Alaalids’ problem. Whereas you two are, unfortunately for me. They would send me creatures with whom I have so much history.” It looked disgusted. “Just common pettiness, that’s all it is with Them… ”
Nita threw Kit a glance. The Lone One sat there for a moment, drumming Its fingers on the arm of Its severely plain throne. “You know how the shift in me happened, a while ago,” the Lone One said. “You two and Dairine were simply party to a change of nature that the Powers That Be and just about all of creation had been pushing on me for aeons… slowly wearing me down until the last big push came. You just happened to be part of the breakthrough, part of the point of the spear. Because you live in Time, it looks to you like that was a thing that happened then and was over with, whereas outside of Time, the event both happened aeons ago and is still happening.”
It gave them an annoyed look, seeing their expressions. “Sorry, even the Speech doesn’t have some of the syntax needed to talk about this kind of thing. Or it does, but since you’re still stuck inside Time, you can’t parse it… Anyway, I did tell you at the time that there would be shadows of me around for a long, long while, doing what they’ve always done. That’s part of the nature of time in physical universes; it helps things persist.” The Lone One looked resigned. “We shadows all partake of the nature of the Power that casts us, but in different degrees, according to the local ‘lighting.’ Some are ‘darker,’ more aggressive than others… fighting the final realization of the shift, trying to make it take as long as possible.” It smiled slightly. “The one that went after your mother, for example: That one was pretty proactive, or maybe I should say abreactive. Others have been less effective.”
“Like the one of you who came after our buddy Darryl a couple months ago,” Kit said.
The Lone One waved Its hand again, looking annoyed this time. “When it comes right down to it, there’s not a lot you can do to someone like that, a creature the One’s using as a direct power conduit,” It said. “They tend to be too contaminated with innocence, anyway. Assaulting them’s like beating your head against the wall. I’d have thought that fragment of myself would have been smarter to cut its losses and go after an easier target.” It laughed a little breath of laughter. “Small loss. That’s not my problem.”
“No,” Kit said. “Your problem is that you’re stuck here.”
The Lone One looked more annoyed than before. “Yes,” It said, “you would notice that. And doubtless it’s going to amuse you all out of proportion that I’m going to ask for your help in getting out of here.”
Nita’s eyes widened. “Oh, sure,” she said, “we turn you loose and you go manifest on some other planet and make their lives miserable… ”
Esemeli gave Nita a look that suggested she needed her brain augmented. “I’m already everywhere,” the Lone One said. “I don’t have to ‘go’ anyplace. What you need to get through your heads is that this particular manifestation has had its turn to do its job, and has failed. I offered the Alaalids their Choice, and they turned me down. And that was that.”
There’s a little more to it than that, Neets! Kit said silently.
I believe you. But don’t interrupt It! It’s on a roll; It might drop something useful… “I mean, look around you!” the Lone One said. “Does this look like a place where I’ve been particularly successful?”
It actually sounded aggrieved, which could have made Nita burst out laughing had she not had a serious case of creeps about this whole situation. “And then,” the Lone Power said, “to add insult to injury, when they realized I was stuck here, they built me this place so I’d have somewhere to stay! They felt sorry for me.”
For just a moment Its eyes held a hint of the kind of balked fury that Nita was used to seeing in the Lone Power. This faded, but what it faded into was a glint of nasty amusement that, though much less intense than the first expression, still looked natural on Its face. “The joke, though, is that the Alaalids missed something when they made their Choice,” It said. “What’s even funnier is that they brought it on themselves. And you noticed it, didn’t you?”
It looked at Nita. “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “I spent some time feeling around for this world’s kernel, its heart. And I can’t find it. It’s been hidden a lot more securely than they usually are… and besides, there’s something else that’s not right about it. Something’s missing.”
“You are smart for a mortal sometimes,” the Lone One said. “It’s a real pity you won’t see things my way: we could do well together.” Nita bristled. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I offered the Alaalids eternal life, as usual. Unfortunately, they were smart enough not to buy into that one.” Esemeli rolled her eyes in annoyance. “And they realized that since they were physical beings, they were going to need time to move through, as well. So they also didn’t make the mistake of trying to shut entropy out of their world-system entirely. A shame… I’ve had endless fun with the species that’ve tried that approach. Literally endless.” The Lone One smiled. Nita shivered. “But then they tried to do an end run around me, instead. They worked a wizardry on their world’s kernel, the purpose being to freeze or lock down the other, lesser side effects of entropy, besides mere timeflow, everywhere in this whole pocket of space-time. And you can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because one of those lesser side effects, on the macrocosmic level, is change,” the Lone One said. “They didn’t foresee the consequences to themselves. Did I say, ‘You can’t do th
at’? I meant you can, but it’s stupid. And after they set that wizardry into their kernel, it was too late for them to do anything about it. There’s some room for small, personal change… just. But as for the big changes that every species needs to go through every now and then, to avoid stagnating and just dying away—those are all shut away from them. They can’t evolve. And you’ve seen what their world’s become as a result! It hardly even counts as a world anymore. It’s a theme park. They’ve turned it into ‘Nice Land.’”
Kit gave the Lone One a dry look. “You wouldn’t have a lot of time for ‘nice,’ of course. So forgive me if I think your opinion’s a little biased.”
It gave Kit an annoyed look. “All right, so I’m ambivalent,” the Lone One said. “But isn’t ambivalence preferable to pure evil?”
Kit considered that one for a moment. “See? You’re buying it already,” the Lone One said. “I was getting bored with absolute evil, anyway. I find that you can do lots more damage with ambivalence. And it’s not as easily detectable from a distance, not anywhere near as memorable. Pure evil sticks out the way pure anything sticks out in a world full of mixtures and melanges and shades of gray. Ambivalence can be discounted, or explained away, or mistaken for confusion or a mind not completely made up yet.”
“Sometimes it really is… ” Kit said.
“Oh, sure. But how often? The rest of the time, in humans, it’s usually more about the refusal to make a choice. People are eager to excuse it, though. Ambivalence is seen as a sign of maturity, whereas actually taking a stance on one side or another is easy to describe as simplistic. Or unsophisticated. Or juvenile.” It smiled that nasty, sarcastic smile again.
Nita looked at It and asked herself, as she had been doing about once every ten seconds during this conversation, how likely the Lone One was to be telling the truth at any given moment. Yet it really did go through some kind of transformation at the end of Dairine’s Ordeal, she thought. Other Powers have told us It has the chance to be otherwise now. ‘I’m getting bored with absolute evil’—could that be the beginning of a change?
But whether it is or not, it’s still important to be careful! “Let me get this straight,” Nita said, “You’re telling us that in some ways, entropy would have been at the root of that big species-wide change. And when they froze it, or locked it down, they locked you in.”
Esemeli looked at Nita with those ironic golden eyes and smiled. Nita shivered again. “The point is,” It said after a moment, “these people don’t need to be physical anymore. They’ve passed all the tests and dealt with all the issues that rise out of the life that spirit lives when trapped inside matter.” The Lone Power made little whoop-te-doo circles in the air with one shapely finger. “In fact, they passed them quite a long time ago. So they’ve long been ready for the next thing… whatever that turns out to mean for them. But they’re as locked in now as I am. Alaalu needs to be made unsafe again. Once that happens, they can move on.”
“To what?”
“How should I know?” the Lone One said, Its tone suddenly shifting enough so that she sounded grumpy. “With what they did to local space-time, I can’t look far enough ahead to see any more.”
“You did see once, though,” Kit said.
“That was before they set their Choice in stone,” It said. “They would have evolved, and become glorious and wise and powerful and all the rest of it, blah de blah de blah.” It waved one hand in annoyance. “And now, who knows what’ll happen, after they’ve kept themselves from their destiny for so long? But nothing’s going to happen if they don’t take the kiddie gate off this part of space-time and give themselves a chance to fall downstairs like any other species.”
“They’re not going to do that,” Kit said.
“You’re a veritable fount of observation,” the Lone Power said.
Its tone is really starting to annoy me, Kit said silently to Nita. You know what’s weird? It bothers me less when It’s a guy.
Hah. At least It’s just sitting there. Would you rather have It insulting you or trying to blow you up?
Ask me again when we leave. Assuming that we do…
“So what are we supposed to do about all this?” Nita said.
“Unlock the kiddie gate,” said the Lone One. “Find a way to break the wizardry on the kernel. Let them out.”
“Which will also let you out.”
It looked demure. “An unavoidable side effect.”
Nita sighed and got up. As she passed him, Ponch rolled over and lay looking at the Lone Power upside down, further increasing the surreal quality of the entire encounter, from Nita’s point of view. “Look,” she said, “before we agree to help you, of all beings, with anything, we need to have some questions answered, even if it upsets you. We’re still not entirely clear about what happened with you a while back, at the end of Dairine’s Ordeal. We know what it looked like, and felt like… ”
It tsked at her. “And a wizard is supposed to trust her feelings… ”
“Not without taking a look at them occasionally to see how they measure up against reality,” Kit said.
“It looked,” Nita said, “like you were thinking about turning over a new leaf. Giving up being the force behind evil in the worlds.”
The Lone One just nodded slightly. Its expression was unreadable.
“It also looked like the other Powers That Be… and the One… were actually willing to take you back,” Kit said.
“You were there,” It said.
Nita and Kit looked thoughtfully at It for a few moments. “Even though we were,” Nita said, “sometimes it’s hard to believe what seemed to have happened… especially when we keep running into other versions of you who don’t seem to have heard the word yet.”
“We’ve been over that.”
“And it would be easy to believe that it was all an illusion of some kind,” Kit said. “I mean, lots of people might never believe that you could ever be forgiven for what you’ve been… what you’ve done.”
“That could be so,” the Lone One said softly. “As there might also be those who’ve become a little smug, over time, about their own redemptions… enough so that they’d feel comfortable dictating to the One their own minuscule ideas about who else ought to qualify for forgiveness.” It laughed, a suddenly bitter sound. “And it’s a fool’s game, because there is no sounding the One, no grasping It.” It looked, and sounded, angry, and scornful, and a little haunted… even disturbed. “All we can be sure of is that, whether we like it or not, the One means us all well, more so than we can ever comprehend. And the details of that meaning are sometimes going to be impossible for any created being to fathom… even the Powers That Be.” It leaned back in Its throne and scowled. “It has no taste, no discrimination… that’s what’s so infuriating,” the Lone Power muttered under Its breath. “It’ll redeem just anybody…”
“Even you? Well, whatever,” Nita said. “But you can still understand why we’d have trouble trusting you. Me, in particular.”
Esemeli sighed and looked at Nita with those lazy, thoughtful eyes. The uncomfortable moment had sealed itself right over again, leaving Nita feeling both sorry for this particular version of the Lone One and still rather cautious. “Yes, well,” It said. “If you’re so enlightened, being a wizard and all, you’ll get past it and get on with the work at hand, won’t you?”
The mockery was almost a relief after Its unsettled tone of a few moments before. “Well, I’m not sure exactly what we’re supposed to do,” Kit said.
“I have an idea,” Nita said. “But I’m not sure I like it. We’re going to need to investigate the species’ Choice more closely.”
“The only way you’re going to do that now,” the Lone One said, smiling slightly, “is to find Druvah.”
“As if he’s around here somewhere,” Kit said, annoyed.
“Oh, he is,” Esemeli said. “Somewhere… ”
Nita thought again of the incessant good-natured whispering in the ai
r: the whispers of the “dead.” “So we have to find him, is that it?” Nita said. “And then we have to find the planet’s kernel? And after that, since this is Quelt’s world, not ours, we’re going to have to tell her what’s wrong here, and get her in on fixing it. Thereby turning you loose… ” Nita looked over at Esemeli.
“Once this world is set free to pursue its proper course,” the Lone One said, “there won’t be any need for me to hang around here anymore, I assure you.”
Nita didn’t quite glance at Kit, but she knew what he was thinking: the Lone One’s assurances weren’t necessarily something they were going to feel comfortable depending on. “And what exactly is going to happen when the world is set free?”
“Well, there are a lot of different ways that can go… ”
Nita gave It a stern look. “Really? Then you’d better start listing them.”
It laughed at her then, and there again was that old, malicious humor that was almost a relief to hear. “Why should I do your work for you?” the Lone Power said. “You should be grateful that I’ve consented to give you even this little interview. It’s more than the other Powers would do. They leave you with hints and riddles, and make you work everything out for yourselves.”
Which, considering who we’re dealing with, may be the best way to proceed, Nita thought, grimacing slightly to herself. “Kit,” she said then, “I don’t know about you, but I’m enjoying this vacation. I think this planet is just fine the way it is, and I don’t see why we should waste any more of our time playing Twenty Questions in a deserted bandstand with a Power That Has Been! I’m gonna go lie on the beach for a while, and after that I’m gonna go back home and get on with my life.”
She turned to go, but not before catching just a glimpse of the expression on Esemeli’s face as It became suddenly alarmed. “Yeah,” Kit said, sounding infinitely bored. “Let’s go. C’mon, Ponch. Bye,” he said to the Lone Power, waving, and turned to follow Nita toward the entry.