? her sister said.
Nita held the charm between her fingers and said the two words that released the clamp on the power flow at her end. Her right hand started filling with a hot white glow, the representation of what Dairine’s wizardry was sending her. Nita let
Nita spoke the air in front of her dark, and then said the explosive’s actuator word in the Speech.
The result was a dazzling flash and impact like lightning striking six feet away. Dark though the air had been, Nita still had to shake her head and blink a few times, trying to get rid of the afterimages. When she managed it, she looked up…
… and saw that the wall was standing right where it had been, without so much as a dent in it.
Nita stared.
The amount of power she’d planted in that explosive had been huge. She felt somehow cheated and really angry at the same time. “Okay,” she said, “no more Miss Nice Girl. Let’s try something a little more emphatic.”
She reached down to the bracelet again and found the charm for the particle-beam accelerator.
As she touched it, the accelerator wizardry sprang into being in her hands, ready to fire — a long, narrow conical shape with a blunt stock. Nita snugged the stock of it up against her shoulder, and carefully took aim again at the base of the wall. She had invested a great deal of energy in this wizardry; now she would see what it was worth—
The world flickered, went abruptly bright.
! someone shouted into her mind. It was Dairine.
Nita looked around her in complete confusion. She was lying in bed, aiming the linac weapon at her ceiling.
, Nita thought. She hurriedly lowered the accelerator and let the wizardry relapse. She lay there for a few moments while her pulse got back to normal, and then sat up and looked over at the small figure slumped in the chair by her desk.
“Dairine,
“Giving me grief, apparently,” Dairine said, looking ragged. “I
Nita sagged against the pillows again, and shook her head. “I know he was there, but I couldn’t get near him. We’re going to need more power in that thing this time, Dari. Charge it up. I’m going out again.”
Dairine shook her head. “Nita,” she said. “It’s nearly three in the morning. And I’m wrecked. It’s a strain holding that thing open.“ She looked miserable at having to admit such a thing. ”I have to get at least
Nita was so angry that she had to put her hands over her face to keep from screaming, or otherwise letting Dairine see how she felt. After a few seconds she felt sufficiently in control to uncover her face again.
“Okay,” she said. “You’re right. I have an early morning, too. We’ll try it again tomorrow.” And she let out a long breath. “But thanks, Dair. You did good.”
“Well do better tomorrow,” Dairine said. “We’ll find him then, and get him home. G’night.”
She wandered off toward her room, closing Nita’s door behind her.
Nita lay there for a while more.
Of course, no answer came.
She tried to sleep again, normally, but that was impossible for her now. All Nita could do was think about what Kit’s parents must be going through, and wait for six-thirty to come…
The mirrors went on forever.
Kit and Ponch stood in a brittle glory of reflected light. Overhead was a bright gray sky, featureless. All around them, mirrors stood, as many mirrors as trees in a forest, set at a thousand different angles: tall ones, small ones, mirrors that reflected clearly, mirrors that bent the reflection awry; shadowy mirrors, dazzling ones, mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors, until the mind that looked at them began to flinch and sicken, hunting something that wasn’t just another reflection of itself.
Kit and Ponch wandered among them, searching for something, but Kit had forgotten what it was they were looking for, along with everything else. Ponch wasn’t sure what his master wanted—
wasn’t even all that sure, anymore, why they were there. Together the two of them wandered through the glittering wasteland, seeing their shapes slide and hide in the mirrors, images chasing images but never meeting, never touching, fleeing one another as soon as any got close enough to make contact. “—don’t want to—” “—when do you think he might—” “—that hurts, why do you have to—” Splinters of conversation and fragments of personality hid in the reflections and fled from mirror to mirror. Kit and Ponch moved slowly among them, looking in some, avoiding others.
Some had too many eyes to look into comfortably. Not all the eyes seemed human. It was as if alien logics looked out of some of them, either irrational or briefly revealing rationalities that were more painful than the human kind, and these were the glances that made Kit and Ponch shy away most hurriedly, looking for somewhere to hide. But there was nowhere. Light and merciless reflection filled everything; and everywhere the two of them walked, a soft rush of sound ran under all other sensation, like water running under the mirrored floor, a river of words and noises trapped there under the unforgiving ice. All they could do was walk and walk, the thoughts in their minds being washed away as fast as they formed by the relentless flow of sound. They could hear the voices of other wanderers, elsewhere in the maze, but there was no way to find them, no way even to tell where they were.
“—have to get out, if they don’t they’ll—” —find him, and when I do find him I’ll—“ They walked for a long time, seeking those other voices but never finding them. Finally, exhausted, Kit sat down against the ”trunk“ of a mirror-tree, leaned back, and closed his eyes. His mind was full of the painful rush of voices and noise; it was a relief just to sit here, his eyes closed so that he didn’t have to see the eyes in the mirrors, his body rocking a little and letting the motion distract him from the myriad other distractions around him that were fraying the fabric of his mind. Ponch sat down next to him, on guard and frightened, but not so frightened that he would leave his friend.
Finally someone came. Kit didn’t open his eyes; every time he did, he saw other eyes staring at him, and he couldn’t bear the invasiveness of their gaze. But he heard the footsteps even through the rush of noise.
Whoever it was stood there, not looking at them straight on — that much Kit could feel on his skin, even without looking.
“I asked you not to come,” it said.
, said Ponch.
“I’ve filled this whole place with one version of what happened to me,” said whoever was speaking. “The Other followed me right in here, the way It always does… and now what happened to me has happened to It.” There was a kind of sorrowful amusement about the speaker’s voice. “I did a really good job this time. I don’t know