Nita’s mouth dropped open again. “Who told you about ‘Louise’?”
Carmela grinned.
“Did Kit tell you? I’ll kill him!”
Carmela laughed. “Kit doesn’t tell me anything.” Her look got, if possible, more wicked. “That’s gonna change.”
Sker’ret was staring at them both in good-natured confusion. “Look,” Nita said. “‘Mela, there’s something you need to know about where we’re going. You’re not real big on bugs—”
“Oh, I’ve heard this one before,” she said, and snickered, reaching down to yank in an affectionate way on some of Sker’ret’s eyes. “It won’t work, Neets.”
“No, listen to me. These are not cute bugs. These are big bugs! They —” It had taken Nita a while to come to terms with some of the things she’d seen about the Yaldiv in their précis in the manual. Now she simply said, “They eat each other, and anything else that’s alive enough. They’ll eat us, given half a chance! And we have to make sure that they do not know we’re there under any circumstances.”
“Kit’s there?” Carmela said. “And Ponch?”
“Yeah.”
“And my favorite Christmas tree?”
“Yeah.”
“And Dairine and Roshaun?”
“They might be there by now—”
“And Ronan?”
“Uh,” Nita said.
“That sounded like a yes,” Carmela said, and smiled a supremely predatory smile. “Let’s go.”
Nita rubbed her face, finding more dirt and more sweat … and a final annoying sting that told her her zit was still in residence. She sighed.
“Okay,” Nita said. “You can come with us! But I have to get back to Earth first. That was what this trip was all about.”
“You go right ahead,” Carmela said. “Sker’ret and I will tidy up here.”
Sker’ret looked up at Carmela, confused.
Carmela looked around at the burned and broken wreckage all over the place. “Sker’,” Carmela said, “Just think of all the stuff here you can eat!”
Most of Sker’ret’s eyes went very wide.
“It wasn’t allowed before,” Sker’ret said in a hushed tone, like someone suddenly presented with a landscape full of infinite possibilities. “I mean, I’m station staff, and we have to control our habits where Crossings property is concerned. My ancestor would—”
“Your not-so-illustrious ancestor,” Carmela said, disapproving, “isn’t here, is he?” She glanced around. “So don’t sweat it. If I were you, I’d just tuck in now; later on you can blame the mess on the purple guys. Assuming there is a later.” She glanced over at Nita. “I gather from the TV that that’s the problem? End of the world, everything’s on the table, a million-to-one chance of fixing it all?”
“Quadrillion,” Nita said, not wanting to later be caught in an understatement.
Carmela spun her curling iron around on what could have been mistaken for a hanging loop, and shoved it into its holster. “Sounds good,” she said. “Let’s go deal with it. I’ve got nothing here but solutions.”
They paused halfway down the corridor. Far down, at the end of it, Nita could see a lot of tall, thin, purple shapes crowded together. “Think we should put the shields back up?” she said.
“We won’t need them,” Sker’ret said. “I’ve put a damping field over this whole wing. No energy weapon will work. But the damper won’t bother wizardries.”
“You mean I can’t use my curling iron?” Carmela said, and produced a pout.
“‘Mela,” Nita said, “you won’t need it. If I’m reading these guys’ physical attributes correctly, you could break one of them in half like a pencil. They’re on the fragile side.”
“It’s why they like these big weapons so much,” Sker’ret said, sounding annoyed as he eyed the damage behind them. “I have a feeling that when I get at the system logs, the damping fields will have been the first things shut down.”
The three of them walked toward the crowd of Tawalf, in step, taking their time. The crowd clustered closer together as they approached. As the three of them got closer, Nita looked at the Tawalf and found herself feeling strangely sorry for them. They look kind of helpless and pitiful, she thought, without their big fancy weapons. Which is good for me, since now I have to make sure I’m not influenced by the fact that they would have blown me away without a second thought.
Sker’ret and Nita stopped; Carmela did, too, stepping a little away to watch what they did. The Tawalf glared at them.
“We are on errantry, and we greet you,” Sker’ret said.
“Not that you particularly merit greeting,” Nita said.
“And, additionally,” Sker’ret said, “I represent the constituted authority of the Crossings, an independent political entity of Rirhath B. I inform you that you are now to be placed in Crossings custody for a number of local and planetary infractions. You have the right to send to your homeworld through our independent travelers’ representative—when we manage to locate it—for whatever legal assistance you require. Meanwhile, we have the right to require of you all pertinent details concerning your presence here, your actions while here, and information concerning those of our station staff who were involved in attempting to prevent your access.”
There was a long silence. Then one of the Tawalf said, “There weren’t any.”
Knowledge of the Speech made the words understandable, but the sense was still ambiguous. “Weren’t any what?” Sker’ret said.
“Attempts to prevent our access,” the Tawalf said.
“Where are the station staff?” Nita said.
The Tawalf who had spoken looked at Nita scornfully, and then threw a strange look at Carmela. Maybe it’s the pants, Nita thought. They certainly made her eyes vibrate when she looked at them.
“We don’t know,” the Tawalf said.
“Somehow I doubt that,” Nita said.
“They ran off somewhere,” said another Tawalf, looking sullen—insofar as it was possible to look sullen with such expressionless eyes, like polished pebbles. “Probably hiding elsewhere on the planet.”
Nita glanced at Sker’ret. What do you think?
I don’t know what to think. It doesn’t seem in character. But then my ancestor wasn’t behaving as usual when I saw him last, either.
“Where did you people come in from?” Sker’ret said. “Who sent you?”
None of them would answer.
“Oh, come on,” Sker’ret said. “No Tawalf does something unless valuta‘s changed hands. You didn’t just turn up here with a pile of heavy weapons because you felt like it!”
The Tawalf glowered at him. “We’ve been bought once,” one of them said. “We can’t break our contracts.”
“And saying anything would be breaking them.”
Nita frowned. “You don’t have to say anything,” she said.
They all glared at her now, and Nita hoped her bluff wasn’t about to be called. Wizardries designed to get into people’s minds and take out information forcibly were almost as hard on the wizard as they were on the victim. But we have to get this place secure and running before we move on.
You have the power if you need it, the peridexis said in the back of her mind.
I know I do. But I really don’t know if I want it for this. Yet it seemed to Nita that she might have no choice, and time was flying.