blood and fighting with all that overpowering restraint was far worse than the alchemist's foundry. We are lucky to have survived.'
He was not Kestrel, Astron thought. Words of denial started to form in his throat but his tongue felt strange and he only managed a cough instead.
'What is it?' Phoebe asked as she held wide her arms and stepped forward, beckoning.
Astron motioned for her to stop and took a cautious step backward.
'What is it?' Phoebe repeated. 'Tell me everything is all right. I can stand no more chaos and surprise.'
Astron looked at the tension etched deeply in Phoebe's face. The events had been unsettling, perhaps more so to a human than to one of his own kind. Whatever was decided upon to do next, he would certainly need her aid. And he knew from struggles through the flame in eons past how fragile was the will to survive. It was perhaps best to explain all that had happened at a better time. He wrinkled his nose and then slowly began to speak. The tenor of the first words startled him, but he held all the tiny muscles that were alive in his face rigidly taut.
'Do not be concerned.' He measured his words carefully. 'For the moment, we are safe. Take a minute to bring your stembr-your feelings under control and then we can proceed.'
'But we are separated from the others. What are we to do?'
'To the origin,' Astron said quickly. His thoughts seemed to rush forward without the benefit of deliberation. 'There is no change in our intent. There you will summon a demon to get us home.'
Phoebe pulled a folded map from a pocket in her gown and began to open it, but then shrugged. 'It is kind that you still show faith in my ability, Kestrel,' she said softly with eyes lowered, 'but in truth, the reality of my abilities has become clearer with each passing moment. Reaching the origin may be all well and good; but without Nimbia fully recovered, there is little point for such a journey.' She looked out over the sands back in the direction from which they had come. 'And how can we proceed the way we want when these forces of symmetry flip us from node to node? Without Astron, how do we stand a chance? He seemed to have a knack for figuring out these mathematical things.'
'Yes, the devil,' Astron said grimly. He shook his head to keep his thoughts straight. 'Once a djinn is under your command, you can task him to soar over this desert until he finds the others. But if the demon were here, the first thing he would do is-' Astron stopped and for the first time looked critically about the oasis.
It was very much like all the rest, a quiet circular pool of water surrounded by six trees at the vertices of a hexagon. Strewn all about, however, was the debris left by the reflectives who had occupied it before the battle and the transformations. At the adjacent subnode on the left stood a pile of branches hacked from the treetops to make soft beds. Denuded branches and an axe were tossed in a heap nearby. At the next subnode around the periphery was one of the devices of the chronoids in obvious disrepair. Stacks of gears, springs, and ticking escapements were scattered about a nearly empty framework. Directly across the pond, three or four thick leather vests stood in a heap next to a pile of eyelets, buckles, and sewing thongs. Two nicked and rusting swords rested against the tree behind. A ring of stones outlined the cooking pit at the subnode adjacent to the armory and the remains of parchment maps gently stirred at the fifth. Just like the rotators, the reflectives carefully organized their camps so as to maximize their freedom from the compelling forces of symmetry.
'From the looks of things this node served as a camp for perhaps a dozen,' Phoebe said.
'And yet when the battle began, evidently it was occupied only by two,' Astron replied. 'Otherwise now you and I would not be the only occupants.' He waved his arm out over the bleached sands. 'The rest must have dispersed to yet other nodes and then converged back to where the rotators attacked. Perhaps it had something to do with the working of the devices of the chronoids.'
He looked over the disarray a second time. 'One thing is for sure. There is more than enough here to break up the symmetries between the subnodes for the two of us. We can move about with comparative ease.'
Astron's voice trailed off. The glimmer of an idea popped into his mind. Slowly he paced off the two longest and straightest tree branches and dragged them around the periphery to the dismantled device of the chronoids. There he rummaged through the stacks of debris until he found six gear wheels of approximately the same size.
'What are you doing?' Phoebe called out.
Astron ignored the question. 'Go across to the armory and start cutting the vests into leather strips. We will concern ourselves about your abilities later. For now, let us get this thing built before some part of my mind is able to convince me otherwise.'
Astron unbuckled the harness from his chest with a deep sigh. His muscles ached. What had been the pleasant longing in his stomach had turned into an insistent discomfort. He looked over his shoulder in the dimming daylight and saw Phoebe unfastening the half-dozen belts that held her to the long wooden frame. She had not complained during the entire trek, and surely the strains on her body must have been the same as his.
'Go and gather some fruits.' He waved at the node that was before them. 'I will pull the engine the rest of the way.'
Astron looked at the deserted node and then back at the horizon the way they had came. The node that he and Phoebe had been transported to was well out of sight. Even though a good portion of the time had been consumed in constructing the bizarre apparatus that fettered them, they still had managed to walk from one node to another. After a rest, they might be able to manage two moves, rather than one.
Astron ducked under the branch on his left and smiled at his handiwork. The felled tree branches had been bound by leather straps to form the irregular framework of a long box. If stood on end, it would tower three times the height of a mundane djinn. At front and rear, a row of gears from the device of the chronoids formed a framework for the smaller branches jammed between their teeth. Like giant rolling pins, they spread the weight across the sand and allowed Phoebe and him to push the contraption along the bleached path from one node to the next. Sometimes, with a burst of energy, they were able to sprint forward against their harnesses and then raise their feet and coast for a few moments before friction brought them to a halt.
Far more important than the practicalities, however, were the other additions to the craft. Five more gear wheels of odd sizes were hung along the sides at haphazard positions. Here and there, small clusters of greenery sprouted at odd angles. The rusted swords all pointed skyward from three of the four top corners and the cooking pots swung from the cross struts. Even though it gave them some difficulty in steering, the harnesses which bound them to the frame were offset from one another. Astron was near the center of the very front while Phoebe was halfway to the rear and nearly touching the left side.
At first Phoebe had protested adding all the extra weight and the number of belts that she had to wrap around her waist. But when the first tug of the symmetries had come and passed over them with barely a ripple she understood the intent. They were not two single individuals but coupled together as one. Their engine was in all probability unlike anything else in the realm. Totally unique, there was no increase in symmetry in moving it to a particular node or switching it with anything else. They could move between nodes as they chose without constraints or regard to the actions of others.
'There is ripe fruit enough that we can provision for several moves,' Phoebe said as she returned to the engine. She untied several of the canisters still gently swinging from the frame and beckoned Astron to the subnode where she had laid out a cloth.
Astron finished pulling the engine to the water's edge and then sat down across from the meal that Phoebe had prepared. With a dedicated savagery that surprised himself, he began to gobble down the slices almost as fast as Phoebe could prepare them, hardly bothering to sprinkle on the flours from the canisters that balanced the meal. Only dimly was he aware of the cool pleasure of the juices that dripped over his hands or the tartness that tingled in his mouth.
When he was finally done, he leaned backward with a feeling of contentment totally unlike anything he had experienced before. He shook his head in wonder. The sensations were quite pleasurable ones, but such a weakness it must be for humans. Without food and drink, their thoughts would soon be driven to distraction; they would abandon all reason, just as if their minds were seized by the most powerful of stembrains. And unlike his own kind, there would be no hope for remaining in control.
Astron looked at Phoebe through half-closed eyes. There was much risk in this quest for his prince and yet much reward as well. He had learned things that no other cataloguer could have even suspected. Even Palodad probably had no notion of the concept of hunger or of how it truly tugged at one's will.
Phoebe smiled back at Astron and swept the remains of their meal aside. Deftly, she closed the distance
