“Then what happened?”
He stirred.“After a while, I felt better, and I saw I could get away—none ofthemwere there. I walked out into the street. It was quiet. It was late, just the steam coming up out of the street, you know how it does. I walked a long time until I saw inside there, inside those doors. It was all bright and warm, but the doors were shut. I thought,It’s no use, there’s no way to get in.But then—” Now he sounded dreamily mystified, though at a remove. “Then someone— men I heardhowto get in, if I wanted to. I knew more than I knew a minute before: a way to move, and words to say. And she said,Do that, and then go in and see what happens. I dare you.So I did. I said the words, and I walked in through the doors …throughthem!… and then on under the sky-roof, and on down through those littler doors, down into the dark…”
Arhu trailed off, and shivered.“I’m tired,” he said, and closed his eyes.
Saash, lying beside him, looked at Rhiow thoughtfully, then started to wash the top of Arhu’s head.
Rhiow sat down and let out a breath.Well,she said silently to the others, in the form of the Speech that goes privately from mind to mind,it would appear that the Powers That Be have sent us a brand-new wizard.
Not a wizard yet,Urruah said, his eyes narrowing.An overgrown kitten on Ordeal. And since when do the Powers dump a probationer on already-established wizards? The whole point of Ordeal is that you have to survive it alone.
None of us,Saash said,ever does itcompletelyalone. There’s always advice, at first: from Them, or other wizards. That’s most likely why he’s been sent to us. Who else has he got?
That’s the problem,Rhiow said.Youknowthere are no accidents in our line of work. This kit was sent to us. He’s going to have to stay with us, at least until he’s started to take this seriously.
No way!Urruah hissed.
Rhiow stared at him.You heard him,she said.“Isaid it, though some of it was pretty stupid.” He’s not clear yet about the meaning of the Oath he’s taken. If he hadn’t met us, that would be his problem, and the Powers’: he’d live or die according to the conditions of his Ordeal and his use of the wizardry bestowed on him. But we found him—youfound him!—and under the conditions of our own Oaths, we can’t let him go until he understands what he’s brought on himself. After he does, he’s the Powers’ business: he and They will decide whether he lives and becomes a wizard, or dies. But for the time being, we’re a pride in the nurturing sense as well as the professional one… and that’s how it will be. You have any problems with that?
She stared until Urruah dropped his eyes, though he growled in his throat as he did it. Rhiow cared not a dropped whisker for his noise. Urruah was still young in his wizardry but also profoundly committed to it, and though he could be lazy, tempery, and self-indulgent, he wouldn’t attempt to deny responsibilities he knew were incumbent on him.
“So,” Rhiow said aloud. “Saash, you seem to have become queen for the day…”
Saash made a small ironic smile, suggestive of someone enjoying a job more than she had expected.“It’s all right, I can manage him. He’ll sleep sound for a while… I made one of the small healing wizardries to start the wounds cleaning themselves out.”
“Make sure you sleep, too. I’ll make rounds in the Terminal in a while; Har’lh wanted the gates double-checked. Urruah, it would help if you held yourself ready while Saash is awake, in case she needs anything.”
“All right,” he said, and he brightened. “It’ll beehhiflunchtime soon, and they’ll be throwing lots of nice leftovers in that Dumpster around the corner. Then there’s this alley, with the Gristede’s. Thirty-eighth, you think, Saash?…”
Rhiow’s whiskers went forward in amusement as she turned to jump down. For the moment, she wasn’t sure which was motivating Urruah more: the desire for food or the prospect of a good scrap with a tough pride. “Eat hearty,” she said, “and keep your ears unshredded. Call if you need anything: you’ll know where to find me.”
“Working,” Urruah said, in a voice of good-natured pity.
Chapter Three
An hour later Rhiow strolled across the concourse again, under a“sky” glowing blue with reflection from brilliant sunshine glancing blindingly from the polished acreage of floor. She had checked the main tunnel gates first, and finished with the Lexington Avenue local gate, near the left-hand end of the platform. All their logs were reporting as they shouldhave, including the malfunctioning gate’s log, which now showed eight accesses since its repair. Things were back to normal.
For the time being,Rhiow thought, as she headed one last time toward the upper-level track gates. The problem with worldgates was that they were inherently unstable. Space didn’t like to be broached, however briefly: it strove to re-seal itself by any means. Standing worldgates needed constant adjustment and maintenance to compensate for changes in local string structure caused by everything from seasonal changes in the Earth’s orbit to anomalies in local conditions—solar wind, sunspots, shifts in the ionosphere or the planet’s magnetic field. After a while you learned to anticipate the gates’ quirks, and you routinely prepared for trouble before the full and new of the Moon, at the solstices, during close cometary passes. And every now and then, like today, the gates would find a new and totally unexpected way to make your life interesting.
Part of Rhiow’s mind kept worrying at the problem of the malfunctioning gate’s lost logs while she made her way over to the gate that was best for long-range accesses, the one near Track 32. Besides that, though, she was thinking about Arhu and about all those rats. There’d been no reason for so many of them to be down there. What had attracted them? Where had they gotten in from? … Probably some passageway to the outside needed to be blocked up. Somewhere under these streets, in the tangle of tunnels and conduits too complex for even one of the People to know, the rats must have found entirely too suitable a breeding-place. As she passed through the door to the platform, Rhiow’s mouth quirked with distaste at the taint of dead rat that still lingered in the tunnel air. To her, rats were a symbol of the entropy that wizards spent their lives slowing: a persistent, hungry force, implacable, that might be fought to a standstill, but rarely more, and which would quickly grow past control if ignored…
Halfway down the platform, a slender blond-haired she-ehhifin dark skirt and jacket stood waiting, a briefcase under one arm. Rhiow smiled at the sight of her, knowing immediately that she was not waiting for the train—though she would claim to be, should anyone question her. The odds of her being noticed at all in so busy a place were minimal. If shewerenoticed, her manner of leaving wouldn’t surprise anyone. She would simply be there one moment, and gone the next, and anyone watching would assume that they’d simply somehow missed seeing her walk away. Even if someone looked at that wizard right at the moment she passed the gate, the nature of wizardry itself would protect her. Almost no nonwizardly creature is willing to see the “impossible,” even right under its nose, and shortly it finds all kinds of explanations for the strange thing it saw. This useful tendency meant that many short-duration wizardries didn’t have to be concealed at all. Other kinds were simply invisible to most species, like the glowing, shimmering webwork of the gate where it hung face-on to the platform, the surface of the web slowly beginning to pucker inward in the beginning of patency.
Rhiow strolled on down to theshe-ehhif.At the flicker of motion, seen out the corner of an eye, the woman turned and saw Rhiow coming, and raised her eyebrows.“Dai stiho,”the woman said.“Was this one down this morning?”
“For a change, no,” Rhiow said. “This will come in phase in about thirty seconds. Got far to go?”