brightness. 'Athene was one. And Thor. And Prometheus. And Michael.'
'But you're a girl!'
Nita threw Kit a wry look. The Power grinned. 'These things are relative,' she said. 'But even in your world it's a byword. Men will fight bravely and be heroes, but for last-ditch defense against any odds. . get a Mother.' She smiled. 'Ask Dairine.'
Dairine grinned back.
'I was the winged defender,' She said. 'He was my twin brother, the beautiful one. Then. . the disagreement happened, and there was war in Heaven, and all the roles changed. I led the others in casting Him out.' She shook her head sadly. 'But I always wanted Him back… as did all the other Powers as well. So my role changed again. I became Prometheus, and many another. I was sent to you again and again, to put the Power in your hands. . wizardry, and other powers. I never had to steal it: it was given me. . from what Source, you well know. I had to help undo the evils my brother was doing, and again and again I intervened, in many worlds. But We nhad a plan: that one day, someone else would intervene, and He would stop doing them himself. All it took was the entropy He himself had invented….'
She looked at Dairine. 'Billions of years, it took. All the redemptions there have ever been went toward this; from the greatest to the least. And finally in the fullness of time you came along, and took my role, of your own will, and woke up a race powerful enough to change the whole Universe, and gave them the fire.' She glanced up at the mobiles and smiled. 'How could he resist such a bait? He took the gamble: he always does. And losing, he won…'
'He killed you, though,' Kit said.
'I struck him down once. I had to come where he could do the same to me, without my doing anything to stop him. Now the balance is even.'
The Defender reached down and put a hand into the shadow. 'And we are going where such matters are transcended. . where all his old pains will shift. Not forgotten, but transformed. Life in this universe will never have such a friend. And as for His inventions. . look closely at Death, and see what it can become.'
The long, prone darkness began to burn, from inside, the way a mountain seems to do with sunset.
'Brother,' the Defender said. 'They're waiting.'
The light began to shift. Nita looked up and around in wonder. The planet seemed to be going transparent around them. Or not specifically transparent: it was as if, one by one, other vistas were being added to it; seacoasts, forests, landscapes she couldn't understand, cities, empty spaces that were dark and yet burned; ten other worlds, twenty, a hundred, in an ever deepening overlay that enriched without confusing. Alternate universes? Nita thought, and then thought perhaps not: it was too simple an explanation. .
She looked at the Defender and found the same change and enriching in Her, and in the steadily brighter- burning form She bent over. Nita felt inclined to squeeze her eyes shut, not from pain but from a feeling of sheer insufficiency, of being involved in matters too high for her. 'Never think it,' said the Defender, beneficent lightnings flickering about Her as other forms and other names came and went in glory; 'never think We were made to be less than equals in the One. Someday you will surpass Us, and still be Our equals, and both You and We will rejoice at it. Brother. . up, and see the way home. Let them see what they have triumphed over.'
The Lone Power rose up, slowly, like one discovering walking after a life of lameness. And Kit and Nita and Dairine all gazed, and speech left them. Nita's eyes filled with tears as she wondered how darkness could be so bright. Lightbringer He was, and star of the morning; and like the morning star, He needed the darkness, and shone brighter in it, and made it blessed. .
'Home,' He said, gazing upward; just the one word. All eyes followed His. Nita found herself looking into endless layered vistas that were not a mere radiant mirror, like Timeheart, not a repair, a consolation for the marred world, but something deeper, closer to the true heart of things, fiercer, more dangerous and more beautiful, something that had never gone wrong to begin with, that the Lone One had never had power to touch; a reality that burned like fire, but still was sweeter than water after thirst, and fed the thirst itself, and quenched it again in delight and more desire; a state so much more solid and real than mere physical being and thought that Nita held on to herself for delight and terror, afraid she would fade away in the face of it like a mist in full sun. Yet she wanted to see and feel more of it-for she knew that there was more. How many more realities like this, piled one on another in splendor, towered up into the burning depths of creation, each more concrete, more utterly real than the last? Even the Lone One and the Defender looked stilled and diminished in all Their strength and beauty as They gazed up into the light.
'Yes,' the Defender said, 'it's greater since you left. If these rough sketch-universes expand, how should that of which they're studies not be doing so as well? But there's room for you. There was always room.
You'll see.'
They turned to look at Nita and Dairine and Kit and the mobiles. 'Best make your farewells,' the Defender said.
Dairine turned to the mobiles. Four or five whole seconds it took to say everything that she wanted to say to them: most of it not needing words.
'Don't forget to kill that spell,' she said finally.
'Shall we come to see you?' Gigo said, bumping up against her knee.
'You better not, for the moment, guys,' Dairine said. 'I've got a lot of explaining to do at home. And I don't know when I'll be back… it may take a while.' She bent to pick up the computer. 'But you won't miss me, huh? I'm here, I'm with you.
I'm in you.'
'We will come, later,' said another voice from down by her knee. It was Logo, healed as the One Who had been in it was healed. 'We'll come to where you live, when we're wiser in being human, and wake your quicklife up.'
Dairine grinned. 'Just what we need. . real computer wizards. Okay, you guys. It's a fair swap. It's gonna take a while for me to learn to be a computer…'
She paused, to make the usual effort: and the words came out easily, easily. 'I love you, you know that?'
They didn't have to answer.
The light was growing past even a wizard's ability to handle it, even the ability of one being sustained by two of the Powers That Be. 'Time,' said the Defender. 'Brother, will you do the honors, or shall I?'
'Let me.'
And darkness surrounded them.
Nita had been afraid of the dark when she was little. For a terrible moment, that fear swept down on her again — and then shifted completely. Something was looking at her: but not a thing like the things she imagined under the bed when she was little. Some-One. Not a physical presence: it needed none; but a still, dark regard weighing on her soul-dark, and benign, and inexpressibly joyous. It was no less a weight for all that, and terrible, but not in any way that made her afraid. It bore down on her, considering her in endless calm, knowing her inside out; and the dark splendor of Its scrutiny so scorched and pierced her with some deeper kind of light that she would have gladly gone swimming in a sun for relief from it. Her skin and her bones and her brains cried out to be out of there. But her heart sang with irrational joy, to match the Other's, even while rationality cursed and twisted under the weight of being completely known. .
It spoke to her, not with words but as if she thought to herself. shadows are still abroad in the world. As I have done evil, for some time ye they still shall. Stop them. Stop me.
We will. Always.
Then the worlds are saved, as long as you save them all over again, eve day.
Deal, said another thought, as if her own mind spoke to itself; but thought was Kit's.
And light broke out again.
Backyard light. Nita's and Dairine's backyard, dark with evening; and hanging low in the west, the evening star. Voices floated out the windows from inside; Tom and Carl, still talking to the Callahans. In the elm tree, a mockingbird was doing blue jay imitations and demanding muffins.
The three looked at each other and sighed. Dairine headed around the house to the screen door, yanked it open, and hollered, 'Hi, Mom, hi, Dad, we're home!'
Pandemonium broke out inside. Kit paused in the doorway. 'What are we going to tell Tom?' he said.
