Three of the mages positioned themselves at the center of the circle. They sat cross-legged, holding hands in a ring around Pita. One was a young Asian elf with a crew cut and a suit that hung sloppily on his lank frame, as if he had dressed up in his father’s clothes. The other two were a blond human woman in a white lab coat with a bright red Mitsuhama logo over the pocket, and a Native Amedcan in a beaded leather jacket with the words “Renraku: Interface With the Best” emblazoned across the back.
The Amerind smiled at Pita reassuringly. “Null perspiration, kid,” he whispered. “Nothing to worry about.” Then he, like the other two mages, snuggled welder’s goggles over his eyes.
Pita glanced at Anwar, who was using a remote to lower his auto-adjust tripod. The round glass eye of the lens seemed to be staring at Pita, boring into her thoughts. She closed her eyes, shutting it out and concentrating. The three mages had spent the afternoon with her, running over the steps of the spell, discussing the wording of the command Pita would give the spirit when it arrived. She toyed with the idea of probing their thoughts, to make sure they hadn’t left anything out. But she was afraid that she would find that they were as nervous as she was.
As the mages began their chant, something soft and warm settled on Pita’s lap. She opened her eyes, startled, and saw that her lap was empty. Yet if she reached down, brushed lightly with her fingertips against the air, she could feel the soft fur of a cat. Closing her eyes again, she stroked the air-and was rewarded with a vibration that set her fingertips tingling. In her mind’s eye she saw a rainbow-colored cat sitting in her lap, gazing up at her with glittering eyes of gold.
Pita concentrated on the feel of the radiant fur beneath her fingers, and focused on Cat’s, throbbing purr. It flowed up from her fingertips and along her arm, then into her chest. From there it radiated outward until her entire body was softly vibrating.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Begin,” a voice beside her urged.
Pita raised her arm, concentrating on the patch of red where the spirit had burned its true name. She felt the hairs there rise, and the skin begin to warm. She pictured her arm as a cyberdeck screen, flashing a single word over and over again: “Come. Come. Come.” At the same time, her lips parted. A word was on her tongue-a word she could neither pronounce nor understand. A name.
Slowly, the room began to brighten, and Pita felt a warmth on her head and arms. She turned her closed eyes toward it, savoring the spirit’s presence like summer sunlight. Even Anwar’s whispered. “Oh my God!” didn’t faze her.
Now she could feel the heat intensifying, could see a bright whirl of light through her closed eyelids. The welder’s goggles they’d given her hung about her neck. untouched. She didn’t need to wear them, didn’t need to open her eyes to see the spirit. Not when she and it were…
One.
This time, she felt no fear. Cat was close by, a warm presence in her lap. And the spirit was a familiar echo in her sluggish mortal mind. Play? it whispered in a voice as quick as a flash of sunlight on metal, It tugged at her, seeking direction.
Pita looked around her, saw only a vortex of spinning fragments of light. They spread in an infinitely wide rainbow, shading from a deep violet that she felt more as a hum than a color, to an intense crimson that blazed with heat. Individual photons spun crazy spirals around her, cutting the air like brilliant dervishes. She was captivated by their beauty, swept up in their dance. The spirit seemed to be trying to tell her something, trying to communicate. Its words rushed past at a frantic pace that no mortal mind could comprehend. If only she could understand its message, Pita knew that she would be conveyed to the source of all light, the source of all…
Her brain sluggishly sent out a signal that-had nanoseconds not been crawling along like seconds-would have caused her to shake her head.
She struggled to form a word-thought. Not the convoluted command that the mages had instructed her to give, but a single message: Go.
The spirit paused for a nanosecond, then blazed brightly with anger. No. Stay. Play.
Pita felt a wash of horror as she realized what she’d done. When she’d controlled the spirit before, she’d been responding to the call of her totem. Like a cat playing with its prey, she’d directed the spirit to use its destructive energies against the cops. It had enjoyed the experience, and now wanted to repeat it. And it didn’t care who the target was. Pita had unleashed a monster-one that would strike out at the innocent, as well as the guilty.
She tried again. Leave.
The burn on her arm began to throb in time with the light that strobed overhead. The sensation drew Pita back toward her body, back toward herself. The spirit flared with laughter, tilted and spun…
The purring. Concentrate on the purring. Centering herself, wrapping her will around the calm place that Cat had created for her. Pita lashed out. She raked the spirit with claws, tore at it with her teeth. Her hair was on end, was on fire, but she didn’t care. She used the throbbing in her arm, blending anger with calm, blending hot fire with icy determination. Summoning every ounce of her will, she screamed at the thing one last time: GO HOME!
Something snapped.
Pita fell into her body from an impossible height. Down, down into darkness. When she opened her eyes, the laboratory was in utter darkness, except for a tiny red eye that stared at her. Then the portacam’s auto-light came on. washing Pita with a beam of light. She threw up her arm to shield her eyes-and saw that her skin was whole. Healed. The pale pink scar of the spirit’s burn had utterly vanished.
The room’s lights came on then, and everyone started talking at once. Dimly. Pita was aware of the three mages leaping to their feet, of executives rushing into the room and congratulating them with slaps on the back and hearty handshakes. Anwar was standing somewhere beside her, talking excitedly into his microphone and helping Pita to her feet.
“It’s too soon to tell yet, folks, if the spellcasting was successful,” he touched the audio pickup in his ear, listening to it. “The reports are only just starting to come in from the deckers who are monitoring the Matrix. But you saw what happened here today, live on Orks First! trideo. The spirit is under control. And it took an ork to do it.”
Pita murmured something in response to Anwar’s questions, then staggered. She was bone weary; wrestling with the spirit had utterly drained her. When someone else reached out to steady her, she clasped the proffered arm. And looked up into the face of John Chang.
“Well?” he whispered, pulling her off to the side and out of camera range. “We saw you control the spirit. It responded beautifully. How did it react to the new commands?”
“I didn’t give it those commands,” Pita whispered back.
“What?’ Donald Acres had also crowded close, and now was sputtering with rage.
“What do you mean you didn’t-” He broke off as Anwar homed in, thrusting his microphone up to Pita’s mouth.
“I banished it,” Pita answered. “I sent the spirit home-wherever that might be. It’s never coming back.”
Chang’s face went pale. “But that was the only… We weren’t able to bind any of the other…” His hand clenched Pita’s shirt. “You were supposed to-”
“Yes?” Anwar asked, shifting the microphone. “Is there anything you’d like to add, Mr. Chang?”
The executive shook his head, hid his discomfort with a smooth smile, then abruptly turned away.
The pirate broadcaster wrapped a heavy arm around Pita’s shoulders and walked her toward the camera. Technicians scurried along after Pita, peeling off the sensors that had been attached to her skin.