“Probably a good reason for the world’s history to be blocked,” Filif said, “at least from the Lone One’s point of view. It would be a fair guess that we’d have a better idea where to start looking for the Instrumentality if we knew more about when this process started, and what this world has been through.”
Ronan ran his hands through his hair and looked harried. “All right,” he said. “Where do we go from here? We’ve got to figure out what the Instrumentality is, and where it is … and what to do about it. While walking around in the middle of a war zone full of giant bugs who can see us even when we’re invisible.”
“And just how did that happen?” Nita said to Ronan. “And how was that thing able to get through my shield-spell?”
“The Lone One can break a working wizardry when it’s directly present,” Ronan said. “It was party to wizardry’s creation, so It can easily interfere, if It’s got a local foothold in a willing soul. That’s what avatars are all about. They can be worked through a lot more effectively than the merely overshadowed.”
“But did that avatar recognize us as wizards?” Kit said.
Possibly not, said the Champion. Avatars don’t have to be conscious of their status.
“With such creatures about, it’s a shame there’s nowhere quieter to do our reconnaissance,” Filif said. “Say, the other continent.”
Ponch had been lying stretched out, looking down with a brooding expression at Rashah as the planet rotated in seeming serenity beneath them. But what we’re looking for is down where I brought you out, he said. Why go elsewhere? We’d just be wasting our time.
“That being something we don’t have a lot of,” Nita said. “So let’s get busy.” She glanced over at Ronan. “I do want to call my dad in a little bit, though, to make sure what day it is back home. Is it going to be safe?”
I can cover you, the Defender said. But putting forth power as a cloak is itself a detectable usage, if anyone’s looking for such. So keep it short.
Nita nodded. “But as for the Instrumentality,” she said, “what do we do when we find it? Just take it? What if it’s something that belongs to the Yaldiv? What if they don’t want to let us have it? Or they won’t tell us how it works?”
“One thing at a time,” Sker’ret said. “We’ve got to go down there and do some research.” He was looking through his own manual. “I can set up short-range transits for us from here to the surface in such a way that they ought to be undetectable. You’ll want to look over my shoulder to make sure I don’t miss anything,” Sker’ret said to Ronan. “But what then? We’re going to have to walk some places. We’re going to have to go into the Yaldiv cities and pass unnoticed. And as you say, the usual invisibility doesn’t seem to be enough. These creatures, the warrior-foragers anyway, have a better-than-usual sense of smell, as well as what looks like an innate sensitivity to force fields. Merely visual disguises aren’t going to do the job.”
Filif suddenly shook every frond he owned, and all his berries blazed. “Well, it’s plain that there’s no such thing as coincidence,” he said. “Have a look at this.”
A moment later, Kit found himself looking at another Nita. He glanced over at the original one. Her jaw had dropped.
“How does it look?” Filif said. And, bizarrely, his voice sounded like Nita’s.
“Wow!” Kit said.
“Does it feel right?” Filif said. He held out an arm.
Kit pinched it experimentally. “Yeah…”
“Does it smell right?”
“I wouldn’t answer that if I were you,” Nita said. She got up and went over to Filif, looking at him up close and very carefully. “It’s almost like a mirror,” she said.
“It’s a mochteroof,” Filif said.
The word was plainly in the Speech, but Kit had never heard it used before. “Some kind of seeming?” he said.
“About halfway between a seeming and a full shape-change,” Filif said… and once again the voice was Nita’s. “It’s less likely to leave you with the side effects that a complete change would. Yet it looks and feels solid. It’ll pass all the common sensory tests—touch, smell, taste.”
Kit was impressed. “When’d you start work on this?”
“When I started to realize I didn’t want to look, sound, or smell too much like a vegetable,” Filif said, “in a world full of herbivores.”
Nita suddenly looked embarrassed. “Uh. Sorry. We, uh—”
“Don’t apologize!” Filif said. “I found soon enough that plants on your world aren’t like they are on mine. And I got caught up on my research and discovered you were built to eat the way you do. Just look at your teeth! Anyway, when Roshaun and Sker’ret and I started going out visiting places with Dairine, I built myself a wizardry that was mostly a strictly visual illusion. It worked well enough when we first went to the mall, but it failed when I got distracted. So afterward I took the work I’d done and used it to construct something more robust—an overlay that wasn’t as taxing as a full shape-change but could still cope with being touched, and would react properly to all the other senses.”
Nita leaned close to Filif and pushed his/her bangs aside to stare at his/her forehead. “What?” Kit said.
“He’s even got my zit!” Nita said, straightening up. She sounded rueful but impressed. “You’ve really been working hard on this, Fil.”
“I noticed you looking at it,” Filif said, “and inserted it. The image self-updates when you do that. Otherwise, it just runs true to your last memory of a given template. Here, look at this.”
And suddenly the other-Nita turned into Carmela.
Kit made an exaggerated choking noise and fell over. “Oh, no,” he said. “Not her, not here! No way.”
“What’s the matter?” Filif said, sounding confused. “Did I get something wrong?”
Nita snickered. “No,” she said, and got up to stretch. “I’d say you got it just right.” She looked at Kit in amusement. “No wonder ‘Mela spends so much time bugging you! You give her these huge reactions. If you didn’t make such a fuss, she wouldn’t have nearly so much fun.”
Kit rolled his eyes. Filif went back to being a tree again, and Ronan, too, stood up and had a stretch. “All right,” he said. “So all we need to do now is decide where to start looking for the Instrumentality.”
Kit looked up at Ronan. “You saw where Ponch brought us out. I think we should have some faith in his talent, and start our work near there. One of the cities isn’t too far from our landing site.”
“We’ll have a lot less trouble getting lost in the crowd where there are a lot more Yaldiv,” Nita said. She touched Sker’ret’s rotating globe with one finger. The view of the planet in her own manual and in the larger display expanded to show the cities’ locations. “Yup, that’s the bigger of the two cities.”
“So all we have to do now is tailor versions of Filif’s mochteroof for ourselves,” Sker’ret said.
Ronan nodded slowly. “Right you are,” he said. “And since it looks like the Yaldiv are diurnal—a lot of them go out of the city to work in the forest in the daytime, then come back when it starts to get dark—when they do, we’ll go back in with them.”
“Makes sense,” Sker’ret said. “We’ll need someplace near our target city to use as a base, though, somewhere to put up the pup tents. A cave or something similar.”
“My very thought,” Ronan said. “I’ll go see what I can find. Back in a tick.”
He vanished.
Nita stood looking down at the planet’s surface, while off to one side Sker’ret started laying down his short-transit routines, a lacy filigree of glowing lines embedded in the invisible surface they stood on. Kit wandered over to Nita. “You okay now?” he said.