He felt just a flash of anger, replaced almost immediately by fear. She left early because she was afraid for me, he thought.
One more error in judgment. Now what? Kit thought, going cold with fear. Go over to see Tom and Carl, get permission to follow her—
Why? I can find her, Ponch said in Kit's head. Kit looked at Ponch in astonishment. How? The way I found the squirrels.
"But that was making a new universe," Kit said. "Neets is in an old one, a universe that exists already!"
"We can make some of that one as if it's new," Ponch said, in a tone of voice suggesting that he was surprised this wasn't obvious. "The part she's in."
Kit couldn't think of anything to say.
"I know her scent," Ponch said, impatient. "We can be where she's gone. Let's go!" Kit was uncertain, but time was short. He reached
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into his claudication and rummaged around it to find the wizardry leash, then slipped it around Ponch's neck and said, "Okay, big guy, give it your best shot." Ponch stepped forward, and together they vanished.
They walked for a long time in the dark, an experience Kit was glad no longer unsettled him. Every now and then would come a flicker of light, and he could just see, or sense, Ponch putting his head out into that light and sniffing, the way he might have put his head out a dog door, then pulling back again, turning away. Having trouble? Kit asked silently, the third or fourth time this happened. No. The world just twists, is all And something doesn't want us to be where she is.
Kit swallowed. But finally they came out into the light and stayed there, and Kit looked around him in surprise, even though his experience of alternate universes had been expanded a lot lately. It was a huge place, a flat space, and its emptiness made it seem to echo in the mind. The sourceless lighting and the shining floor with the assortment of weird chairs, beds, hammocks, frames, and tables in the middle of it made it all look much like a furniture showroom.
Ponch pulled Kit toward the furniture, still sniffing. There were some people there: aliens, which didn't surprise Kit particularly—hominids were not at all in the majority in his home universe. As he approached, a few of them looked at him with slight surprise, and one of them pointed a greater than usual number of eyes at him. It was a Sulamid, Kit noticed, an alien native to
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the far side of his own galaxy, one of a people who— unusually—were almost all wizards, a fact that apparently had something to do with the way their brains were divided.
The looks they were giving him—furred people, one tall cadaverous hominid, a four-legged alien, another one that looked like five or six oversized blue ball bearings in company, and the Sulamid with its many stalky eyes—were speculative. "I'm on errantry," Kit said, "and I greet you."
Ponch barked. To Kit's bemusement, every wizard present looked in what seemed to be surprise at Ponch. The Sulamid bent over in half and then straightened up again, its eyes and various of its tentacles tying themselves in graceful knots.
"I'm looking for another of my species," Kit said. "My colleague thinks she was just here. Have you seen her?"
Various looks were exchanged. "You just missed them," said the ball bearings. "They were here with more of us: Pralaya. They just left. They were on an intervention. Pralaya was going to assist them."
The whole group of them were still looking at him. Kit started to feel uneasy, for he thought he knew what they were thinking: This other wizard is trying to interfere somehow. "Did she say anything about what she was going to be doing?" Kit said, somehow knowing that it was useless to do so. These other wizards were not going to help him; they were uncertain why he was here, uncertain whether he might somehow foul an intervention in progress.
No," said first the ball-bearing wizard and then the others.
"She has gone into the dark," said the Sulamid, "all too accompanied. And her destination is an unknown."
The other wizards threw the Sulamid an odd look and began, one after another, to vanish. Shortly the space was empty except for Kit and Ponch and the Sulamid, which was standing not far away, its tentacles wreathing gently, looking at Kit with a lot of its eyes.
"How do you know?" Kit said after a moment.
"Vision is useless without comprehension," said the Sulamid. "Comprehension is bootless without compassion."
"Uh, yeah," Kit said.
The Sulamid bowed once again, if a bow was what it was. It was not directed at Kit but at Ponch. "Pathfinder, seer for the seer in the dark," said the Sulamid, "tracker in the night-places, wait."
And it vanished, too.
Kit could only stand there and look around him at the light and the empty furniture. "Well, thanks loads, guys," he said. 'Why were they all so freaked out? What's the matter with them?
But he and Ponch were not quite alone; not everyone who'd been there originally had left. Behind Kit someone coughed, or maybe it was more like a snort. He and Ponch both turned.
Behind them, looking at them thoughtfully, was what Kit had initially mistaken for a four-footed alien of some kind. But it was actually a pig.
Kit looked at it in astonishment. Ponch instantly
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barked once, excitedly, and started to run toward the pig, possibly thinking that it could be chased like a squirrel. Kit hurriedly grabbed Ponch by the collar and made him sit down. And to the Pig he said, "What's the meaning of life?"
"You know, a friend of yours was asking me the same thing the other day," said the Transcendent Pig, ambling over, sitting down, and looking Ponch over in an amiable way. "Is asking," it added.
The statement was slightly confusing, even taking into account the multidirectional time tenses in the Speech. At least Kit knew that he wasn't the only one confused by the Pig. Every other wizard was, too, and even the Powers That Be weren't sure where the Pig had come from, and tended to describe it as a concrete expression of the universe's innate sense of humor, a sort of positive chaos.
"Is she?" was all Kit could think to say.
"Yes. And you know," said the Pig, "it's all just a big plot, isn't it? You're all just hoping that I might actually slip and answer the question, and tell one of you."
Kit blinked at that. "Uh, well—"
"Or else it's a practical joke planted by Someone high up," the Pig muttered, settling down with its trotters under it, a position that made it look peculiarly like a cat. "Wouldn't put it past Them. Or Their Boss."
Kit gave the Pig a look. "Oh, come on! The Powers ..." His voice trailed off as the Pig gave him the same look right back. "I mean, the One... wouldn't play jokes—"
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"Wouldn't It?" said the Transcendent Pig. "Been out in the real world lately?" "Uh..."
"Right. Life being all the other things it is, if it's not funny sometimes, what's it worth? But you changed the subject."
"No, I didn't."
"Maybe you didn't," the Pig said. "I'll allow you that one. You were saying?"
Kit took a long breath. Beside him Ponch lay down but never took his eyes off the Pig. "You're really well traveled," Kit said.
"Omnipresence will do that for you," said the Pig, and it yawned.
"You said you'd seen Nita—" Kit wondered why such simple terms as my friend and my fanner kept sticking in his throat. What's the matter with me?
Because one might not be true anymore. And— He absolutely refused to deal with the thought that the other might not be, either. "Yes. I'm with her now, in fact." "You are?"
The Pig gave Kit a wry look. "It wouldn't be a terribly useful kind of transcendence if I wasn't. Being everywhere at once is part of the job description."
"Where is she? What's she doing?" Kit said after a moment.
The Pig gave him another of those long dry looks. "Oh, come on, now. You know the drill, or you should. You tell me three truths that I don't know, and I tell you one."