“Try to get some results on the latest experiment before the flooding at home gets much worse,” Edward said. “And drink that coffee since I troubled to bring it.” As the High Head stared at the mug as if it were an object from otherworld, he added, “I’ve got the assorted jailbirds, morons, and cripples lined up in the exercise hall. Want to come and give them your induction talk?”
“Give me five minutes,” said the High Head. He picked up the mug and drank absentmindedly. “I know I’ve been telling you all along that I’ve got a bad feeling about this flooding project, and I suppose this may be why. But I have a horrible sense that there’s worse to come. Do you?”
Edward shrugged. “Foreknowledge is not a thing I get much. Except about death, of course. I do feel a certain amount of death coming, I’m sorry to say. But,” he added, sidling his apologetic length toward the doorway, “that’s not unusual for a community the size of Arth. I’ll have a Duty Mage put those servicemen through some exercises while they wait. It’s always possible half of them will die of that.”
2
Bad feeling or not, the High Head got swiftly to work to push his project onward. Using the correct imagery, he bent his mind to the necessary spoke of the Great Wheel. There, he deftly and expertly hooked up the threads of thought belonging to his otherworld agents and led the whole bundle to the specially crafted spindles on his worktop. The spindles spared him trouble by translating to matter again and giving him the result in his main reflector.
There were a good many agents out there. They were necessary, not only for information, but to balance the continuous stream of ideas that had lately been flowing from otherworld to Arth and the Pentarchy. The High Head, being in a hurry, took most of them into his mirror in clusters, each twist of thread representing a center of intelligent activity in that world. Most reported, as they had been doing all this past month, that the effects of Arth’s project had been noticed. Otherworld seemed aware that its climate might be getting hotter and its seas rising. But not much yet was being done about it. Otherworld ran about wringing its hands and talked of planting appropriate vegetation or banning certain technology it believed harmful.
“For the Goddess’s sake!” the High Head exclaimed. “What in hellband’s use is that?” And he sent messages along the threads. Get them moving. Tell them the effect is going to double in their next decade.
Then he teased out the threads from the Islands. The magecraft of this site was usually among the strongest. Arth had run various tests recently and proved it currently to be in excellent working order. This was why Observer Horn regularly focused there. The High Head had great hopes of results here soon. First he focused again on the spot where observers had reported activity, but fine-tune it as he might, he found he could receive precisely nothing. Interesting. Every place in otherworld normally put out a certain amount of meaningless activity. The spokes of the Wheel were full of it, and junior mages had to learn to tune it out. But this area was not even putting out that. Most interesting. They must be using wards at least of the strength Arth had used against Leathe. Sadly, every single one of his Island agents was outside this area of silence, but this did not unduly perturb the High Head. This was the Islands pattern. When big mageworkings were afoot, they always closed down. Something was really happening at last!
In strong excitement, he flicked his two most important agents aside from the cluster. The first was serving as lover to a female known to be at or near the center of any magework performed. His image materialized in the reflector much as the High Head had seen him last on Arth — though this probably had little to do with the way the agent looked now, and was almost certainly simply the man’s image of himself. Strange transmogrifications befell those who made the transition and became one with otherworld. This agent was — in his own mind at least — somewhat unshaven, bored, and a little drunk.
“Gods of the Wheel!” this agent said. “All I needed was you! What do you want?”
The High Head indicated he needed anything that might cast light on the area of silence slightly to westward of his agent. Was magework afoot?
“Do you indeed?” said his agent. “Then you’re as wise as I am. It’s obvious something’s up. Bloody Maureen’s pretending to have something wrong with her shoulder so that she can keep going off to that hag’s place in Herefordshire, but that’s all I know. You’d think someone who talks as much as that girl does would give something away, but not she! She’s also collecting money. Cash is pouring in from all over the country — I’d no idea witches were good for so much. But she says it’s for her new Green World Campaign — products made in conditions that don’t hurt the ecology — you know the sort of thing. They’re supposed to be buying a derelict factory somewhere up in the Midlands. Then they make green soap. The gods know if that’s true or not. I’ve not been allowed near the factory — or the money, worse luck!”
He was, the High Head indicated, to investigate the factory.
“All right, all right! I know I should, and I’ve been trying. The bitch keeps putting me off. If I get you stuff on the factory, can I get shot of Maureen and come home? I really hate this world!”
The High Head of Arth forbore to indicate, even by so much as a flicker in the most distant spoke of the Wheel, that this agent was not coming home, ever. When a man underwent the ritual to make him one with otherworld, a change happened that seemed to be irreversible — but one could not let an agent know this, naturally. Instead, the High Head reminded his agent that he was serving as observer in the field as the result of misdemeanors as yet unexpiated and — because agents must be humored — inquired what exactly was so hateful in his position.
“I have to work in this music shop. I hate their music!” was the reply. “Let me tell you—”
The High Head cut into the stream of complaints he knew was about to follow by promising that, once the agent had firm information on the Maureen-female’s purposes, the waves of the correct spokes would adjust themselves so that all would be well. He was careful not to promise that the agent could then come home, although he was well aware that he left the agent with that impression. Such prevarications were a regrettable necessity. He cut the agent off, still grumbling, and turned to the second one, the one set to monitor the most important male mageworker.
He had far less hope of anything concrete from this one. The inescapable fact that the Brotherhood of Arth was an all-male company made it impossible to place this agent as a lover. This male mageworker was decidedly heterosexual. So the agent had been attached to the mageworker’s female partner instead, which was easy to do, because on Arth the agent had been blond, smooth, and handsome. As the image formed on the reflector was as handsome as ever, the assumption was that, whatever this agent had become, it still counted as good-looking in other world terms.
“I’m awfully afraid I can’t give you very much to go on yet, sir, more’s the pity,” this second agent said. He was always very polite. He was one of those who hoped to ingratiate himself in order to get forgiven and recalled to Arth. Poor misguided Brother. “The woman I watch complains her husband is always away and too tired to talk when he comes home.
She thinks he’s got a new lover.”
The High Head requested his agent to play on the female’s fears to make her find out where the male really went.
“Oh, I did, sir,” the agent said eagerly. “It doesn’t take much doing, actually — she wants to know as much as we do. Last time he went, she took rather a risk, to my mind, and tried tracing him by witchcraft. But all it told her was that he seemed to go to that old woman’s house in Herefordshire, and she didn’t believe that for a moment. It looks as if he’s being too clever for us, sir.”