The lock of the booth melted loose and the door fell in molten globs to the floor. Dairine sat up straight, determined to look dirty at the BEMs, if she could do nothing else.
The door swung open.
And 'Multiple transit,' said the computer, 'executing now,' and the jump-sickness grabbed Dairine and twisted her outside in. Perhaps not understanding, the BEMs fluted in rage and triumph and reached into the booth. But Dairine's insides went cold as dimly she felt one of them swing a huge soft hand through where her middle was: or rather, where it no longer was completely-the transit had begun. A second later, heat not wholly felt stitched through her arms and legs as shots meant to cripple her tore through where they almost were, and fried the back of the stall like an egg. Then starlight and the ancient black silence pierced through her brain; the spell tore Dairine free of the planet and flung her off Rirhath B into the long night.
She never found out anything about the man who helped her. Nor did he ever find out anything more about her. Pausing by the door of the pay toilet, after being released from station security some hours later, and being tele-Pathically sensitive (as so many hominids are), he could sense only that some considerable power had been successfully exercised there. Satisfied with that, he smiled to himself and went on about his travels, just one more of the billions of hominids moving about the worlds. But many millions of light-years later, in some baking wilderness under a barren, brilliant sky, a bitterly weary Dairine sat down on a stone and cried for a while in shock at the utter strangeness of the universe, where unexpected evil lives side by side with unexpected kindness, and neither ever seems quite overcome by the other. .
Enables
It took Nita a few minutes to pull her supplies together and get ready for the trip. Every wizard has favorite spells, so familiar and well used that diagrams and physical ingredients like eye of newt aren't needed for them. But most spells, and particularly the most powerful ones, need help in bending spacesome specific kind of matter placed in specific relationship to the wizard and the words being used and the diagram or formula asserting the wizard's intent. Some of the kinds of matter used for these purposes can be odder even than eye of newt (which used to be used for teleportation spells until polyethylene was invented). And this being the case, most wizards have a cache, a place where they keep the exotica necessary in their work.
Nita's cache was buried in a vacant lot next door to her house, all carefully wrapped in a plastic garbage bag. Being a wizard, she had no need to dig the bag up: a variant of the spell Kit had used on the bricks let her feel around under the ground for the moment it took her to find what she wanted. The objects didn't look like much-half a (seemingly) broken printed-circuit board; a plastic packet containing about two teaspoonsful of dirt; and a gimbal from a 6 Philco Pilot television set.
That last piece she juggled appreciatively from hand to hand for a moment. It was certainly unlikely looking, a busted bit of junk that any normal Person would trash without a second thought. But the configuration into which the space-time continuum bent itself around this gimbal was unique, and invested with a power that the informed wizard could exploit. Everything bent spacetime, of course: anything consisting of either matter or energy had no choice. But some things bent it in ways that produced specific physical effects. . and no one, not even the wizards specializing in theoretical research, had any idea yet as to why. The atoms and mass and inherent sPatiotemporal configuration of, say, water, bent existence around them to produce an effect of wetness. The electrons and plasma and matter and gravity of a star produced effects of heat and light. And a busted-off piece of gimbal from an ancient TV set…
Nita smiled a bit, put the gimbal carefully in her pocket, and said three more words.
Her room was dark. She flipped the light on and went digging in the mess off to one side for her knapsack. Into it she stuffed her manual, the gimbal and packet and circuit board.
'Nita?'
'Uh-huh,' she said.
The stairs creaked. Then her mother was standing in the doorway, looking upset.
'You said you were going to clean your room today,' her mother said in a tired voice.
Nita looked up… then went hurriedly to her mother and grabbed her and hugged her hard. 'Oh, thanks,' she said, 'thanks, thanks for saying something normal!'
Her mother laughed, a sound that had no happiness about it at all, and hugged her back. After a moment her mother said, 'She won't be normal when she gets back, will she?'
Nita took a moment to answer. 'She won't be like she was, not completely. She can't. She's on Ordeal, Mums: it changes you. That's what it's about.' Nita tried to smile, but it felt broken. 'She might be better.'
'Better? Dairine?' her mother said, sounding a touch dry. Nita's smile began to feel less broken, for that sounded more like her mother.
'Oh, c'mon, Mom, she's not that bad-' Then Nita stopped herself. What am I saying! 'Look, Mom,' she said, 'she's real smart. Sometimes that makes me want to stuff her in the toilet, but it's going to come in handy for her now. She's not stupid, and if the wizards' software in the computer is anything like our manuals, she'll have some help if she can keep her head and figure out what to ask for. If we get a move on, we'll catch up with her pretty quick.'
'If you can find her.'
Nita's father loomed up in the doorway in the darkness, a big silver-haired shadow.
Nita swallowed. 'Daddy, she'll leave a trail. Using wizardry changes the shape of the space-time continuum. . it's like cutting through a room full of smoke with a knife. You can see where the knife's been. Knowing Dairine, she won't be making any effort to cover her trail… at least not just yet-We can follow her. If she's in trouble, we'll get her out of it. But I can't stay to talk about it. Kit needs me quick, and I can't do a lot for Dari without him. Some. . but not as much. We work best as a team.'
Her mother gave her father a look that Nita could make nothing of. 'When do you think you three will be back?' said her father.
'I don't know,' Nita said. She thought to say something, stopped herself, then realized that they had a right to know. 'Mums, Dad, look. We might not be able to bring her back right away. It's her Ordeal.
Until she solves the problem she's supposed to be the answer to, if we pull her back, awful things could happen. If we'd copped out of ours, this whole world would be different. And believe me, you wouldn't have liked the difference.' She swallowed at the thought of something like that leaning, threatening darkness waiting for Dairine to confront it… something like that, but much worse.
They stood and looked at her.
'I've gotta go,' she said, and slung her knapsack on, and hugged them hard, first her dad and then her mom again. Her father took a long time to let her go. Her mother's eyes were still troubled, and there was nothing Nita could do about it, nothing at all.
'I'll clean up in here as soon as I get home,' Nita said, 'I promise.'
The trouble didn't go out of her mother's face, but half her mouth made a smile.
Nita said three words, and was gone.
Our home Galaxy is a hundred thousand light-years across, five thousand light-years thick at the core.
The billion stars that make it up are scattered through some four quadrillion cubic miles of space. It is so vast that a thought can take as long as two seconds to cross it.
But Dairine was finding the entirety of the Milky Way much too small to get lost in. She got out of it as soon as she could.
The program the computer was still writing to take her to safety was a multiple-jump program, and that suited her fine: her pursuers seemed to have trouble following her. But not enough trouble. She came out, after that first jump from Rirhath B, on some cold world whose sky she never saw: only a ceiling of gray.
She was standing in a bleak place, full of what at first sight looked like old twisted, wind-warped trees, barren of any leaves, all leaning into a screaming wind that smelled of salt water. Dairine clutched the computer to her and stared around her, still gasping from her terror in a rest room twelve trillion miles away.
With a slow creaking sound, one of the trees pulled several of its roots out of the ground and began to walk
