Mamvish paused. “What is it with the gravity here?” she said, shuffling her feet and glancing around her. “I don’t feel quite right. Synesthesias of some kind…”
Nita stopped and gave her a look. “What?”
“I don’t know what’s causing it,” Mamvish said, “but it’s as if—” She looked down at her feet.
Her mouth dropped open. Her eyes wiggled as if they were trying to go around. Nita, caught off guard, tried to choke down her laughter, and failed. “Wait a minute. You mean you didn’t notice?”
A growl started rumbling somewhere inside Mamvish. “What— am— I?”
“You’re a thoat. They’re—” Oh, god, how can I say it? Never mind, just look at her face! Stop laughing, stop laughing! “In the stories, they’re a beast of burden. Not very smart. People ride them.”
The growl got louder. It took Nita a few moments to get control of her laughter. “Come on, Mamvish!” Nita said. “You ought to be past being shape-proud by now! A wizard like you has the power to look like anything she wants, and you ought to know the seeming’s not the self.” She started snickering again. “So act the dignity of your role. Snort it up!”
The thoat-eyes could be surprisingly expressive. They flared with annoyance, and then came a brief flurry of furious tantrum-based foot-stamping, even more impressive with all a thoat’s legs than with Mamvish’s own. Dust flew up from the pink-white Martian road until it almost concealed her. “This is so embarrassing, what if anybody ever hears about this, some kind of gratuitous insult, do they even know why I, how can this possibly, why do I even bother, don’t these people know why I—”
Nita turned away, as there was no point in Mamvish being made worse by watching Nita fail to control her grin. Increasing entropy locally is bad, bad, bad. She’s a baby wizard still; don’t laugh any more, don’t, just don’t!
Nita got control of herself long before Mamvish did. But finally the stomping and muttering stopped, and Nita turned back to see Mamvish staring morosely at her thoat feet. “I suppose,” she said, “it wasn’t meant personally.”
And what will she do if it ever turns out it was? I’m tempted to tell her …No, no, no! Nita kept her face straight. “Wouldn’t know how it could be,” she said, which was true.
“Hmmmmmfffff,” Mamvish said, a huge blown-out exclamation of resignation and annoyance. Then she put her head up high. “Work to do,” she said. “Let’s go do it.”
“Bobo,” Nita said as they got closer to the city, “what about your tap on Kit’s manual? Is there anything about what’s going on in there?”
The tap is not active at the moment, as he could not bring it with him because of the ban. But there is some stored material that he was considering before he came. Information about persons, motivations.
“Let me have it all! And hurry up.”
Nita quickly found herself blushing hot in increasing discomfort as she browsed through entirely too much of Kit’s recent stream-of-consciousness. But this is gonna be very useful, I can’t deny that. Even if this really is not stuff I want to be seeing! Never mind, just make the most of it—
Shortly they came up to the great sheer metal gates and stood there for a moment, looking upward. The gates remained obstinately closed.
“Maybe they don’t know we’re coming…” Nita said. But immediately after she said it, she was certain that wasn’t true.
“Oh, they know,” Mamvish said. “I can hear them.” She flourished her thoat-tail. “So let’s go see how this will proceed.”
And the next second, they were standing in a high Tower room where light poured in from the pink-white sun overhead, and white clouds chased across that blue sky. And in the center of the room stood three people around a broad red sandstone bench: and a fourth one sat there on the bench, wearing at her throat a sharp oblong Shard of light burning fiercely violet even in the full light of day.
Gathered all around the sides of the great circular room were many men and women in the metal harness and light draperies of the Shamaska-Eilitt. All their dark eyes were turned to Mamvish and Nita as they walked up to the bench-throne, and Nita found it very strange to pass among them— like walking through a congress of living, breathing statues in all shades of gray, and all the faces smooth and immobile. Here and there among them were the green metal scorpions, sitting or crouching against the polished floor, watching the newcomers with all their eyes, scissoring their claws gently together. But most of Nita’s attention was on the Throne. There was Iskard, and the dark Rorsik behind him, at a little distance, watching with a cold face; and standing next to the bench-throne, Khretef.
Kit! Nita insisted to herself: and she spoke to him silently. Kit! But he was gray and stony, dressed like one of them, looking like one of them, except that he looked like Kit as well. His eyes didn’t react to hers when she looked into them: she was just another stranger walking in. And on the Throne sat Aurilelde, with the violet-blue fire of the Shard clinging to the smooth gray flesh above her gemmed metal bodice— and about her, an echo of its glow that was coming from something else, something inside her, the faintest possible rosy light—
Oh, no, Nita thought. Mars’s kernel. She’s got the planet’s kernel inside her. How long has that been there? And whose good idea was that?! But as her glance went to the smug and triumphant-looking Rorsik, she thought she knew.
Mamvish stopped about six feet from the Throne and lifted her head. “In the Powers’ names, and that of the One They serve,” she said, “we are on errantry, and we greet you.”
Some of those around the room bowed, but many looked at Mamvish and Nita with distrust, and the four around the Throne didn’t move at all. Finally, Iskard said, “Fellow wizard, tell us what errand brings you here so that we may speed you on your way.”
Nita’s eyebrows went up, for in the Speech the response had so little genuine greeting in it that it very nearly translated as “Don’t let the door hit you in the fundament on the way out.”
Mamvish blinked in reaction. Then she said, “On the Powers’ behalf and as Species Archivist for this part of the Galaxy, I’ve come to investigate your appearance on this world, which has been vacant for some while under circumstances which we’re investigating. Instances of self-archiving are also within my remit for investigation. Am I to understand that you are descendants of the people of Shamask-Eilith, formerly of this system and also called the First World?”
“We are not those people’s descendants,” Rorsik said, sounding outraged. “We are those people.”
“You have, however, built or engineered new bodies for yourselves, to better suit yourself to this world when you reached it.”
“Such was our right,” Iskard said. “A species has the right to survive.”
“But not to interfere with another species’ survival,” said Mamvish. “You must be aware that there is another planet in this system populated with life forms wearing bodies similar to the ones you’ve engineered for yourselves.”
“We know that perfectly well,” Rorsik said.
“You should also know, then, that that culture is both astahfrith, generally unaware of wizardry, and asdurrafrith.” It was the Speech-word for a species that hadn’t yet openly met alien species or didn’t yet believe in them. “The works you’re enacting here at the moment— I speak of the extensive resurrection of former environmental conditions across the planet— endanger the psychological and physical well-being of that planet. Do you accept that?”