“Are you a medic?” Tinker asked her.
“I’m the ship’s xenobiologist,” Gracie said.
“You’re kidding.”
Gracie looked up in surprise, and Tinker found herself talking about Lain, and then about Esme. “Have you told her? I don’t think she’s realized who you are yet.”
Tinker shook her head. “Right now, it’s all too weird. I don’t even want to think about it. Besides, I’m kind of ticked at her. Not about leaving me. About everyone having to lie to me about it because — I don’t know — some strange family stuff. I didn’t know the truth for eighteen years. She can not know for a couple of days. I’ll tell her later.”
Xiao Chen flew into the area, carrying a set of clothes. “These should fit our scarecrow.”
“I don’t know if I like that nickname.” Tinker took the clothes and drifted awkwardly as she checked the pant size against her waist.
Xiao Chen laughed. “I am sorry. Just so long, we did not know your name, just that you were the scarecrow.”
“Did tell everyone about your dream?” Tinker asked Gracie.
Xiao Chen, though, answered. “All of us that slept that night shared Wai Szi’s dream — that is her ability. She is our dream crow.”
“In some ways, we are more bird than human,” Gracie said.
“Can you see the future? How am I going to get us out of this mess?”
Gracie shook her head. “Where one person can determine the future, the way is clear, but we’re in a tangle of possibilities. Many people can push the future one way or another. This is a time when everyone will determine the end.”
Since there were no private places, Tinker turned her back and they pretended to ignore her, talking in Chinese, as she changed. She tried not to feel like they were talking about her. Certainly with the ship falling out of orbit, they had plenty of things to discuss. At least with the dress on, she was able to change panties and pull on her pants without flashing them. The pants were a little loose, but Xiao Chen had included a length of nylon cord to serve as a belt.
Tinker turned back around and pulled on the knotted cord. “I look the part of the scarecrow now.”
The tengu laughed.
“I’ve been greedy.” Gracie reached out and squeezed Tinker’s hand. “I’ve kept you here too long. Thank you for letting me see you.”
Tinker hugged her goodbye and returned to the task of finding out how to get them back home to Windwolf.
Impatience, it turned out, had been trying to teach her a spell. It incorporated math, something that Elvish spells didn’t do, and used magic to manipulate time and space. It took everything she knew and pushed it in a new direction using an entirely new symbol set. Jim translated the words and then, later, the number system that Impatience used but looked mystified by most of what he was saying.
“You understand this?” Jin asked.
“Yes, yes. The roots of elfin magic is here, but taken to another order of understanding. This is recognizing the quantum nature of magic and its effects across boundaries of realities. My god, I really screwed up. I never considered that I could warp the fabric of space and time on this kind of scale.”
“What?” Jin cried in surprise. “You made this mess?”
“I had help. Okay, here’s what happened.” She found a marker in her pocket and drew a planet on the nearest wall. “The oni forced me to build a down-sized gate on Elfhome. I set up a resonance between my gate and the orbital gate.” She drew both gates in their proper positions and the wavy resonance line between them. “Now Leo’s gate was flawed. The time coordinate was never set.” She drew the ships entering the orbital gate. “So the default time coordinate became the moment of the gate’s destruction — or around midnight eastern standard time, seven — eight days ago.”
She totally lost track of space since she landed on the spaceship.
Jin understood the result. “Thus the collision.”
“Yeah. Old news. This is the important part — all the ships, when they passed through the gate, must have picked up the resonance signature.” She drew a ship on the other side of the gate, labeled it Dahe Hao and continued the wavy line to it. “As long as there are objects in orbit, the resonance will continue, which is why the discontinuity hasn’t collapsed. It’s because of this link, that when I fell into the Ghostlands, I ended up onboard. For every action, though, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Basically the power spike originates here on Elfhome and travels in this direction.” She drew an arrow parallel to the wavy line through the planet. “The multi-universe is trying to drag the Dahe Hao back along this line.” She drew a second arrow from the ship running beside the resonance path toward the planet. “Again, as long as the discontinuity continues, the Dahe Hao will be affected by this force.”
She turned and was startled to find her audience had grown from Jin to about twenty crew members. “Um, well, this isn’t all bad. We can use this force to our advantage. The entire ship and everyone on it is keyed to this location.” She underlined Turtle Creek. “Now if you look at this section of the text.” She pointed to the screen. “This is a spell. It creates a sphere of hyperphase. All we need to do is cast this spell which will step the ship into hyperphase and follow the line of force back to Pittsburgh.”
“That’s all?” Esme said.
Tinker turned back and found her audience had grown again. Esme and another twenty crewmembers crowded the small area. “My biggest concern is power. If the amount of magic we feed into the spell is too small, it will just punch a hole in the middle of the ship. We need enough power that we can guarantee that the entire ship goes. Even if we think we have sufficient magic, we probably should gather everyone close to the spell, and close all the hatches between the sections of the ship.”
“What we’ve collected isn’t enough?” Esme asked.
“I don’t think so and access time on it is slow. The spell is set up to mimic how the dragons cast magic with their mane. With elf magic, there’s a timing ring around the spell that controls the power coming in. It makes the magic a slow steady burn. This spell takes all the free magic and converts it in one burst.” Tinker sketched the ship and put an ‘x’ roughly center of the ship. “It’s kind of like dropping a stone into a pool of water. Splash!” She drew in the initial impact in a large circle around the ‘x’. “That’s the rock hitting the surface. There seems to be some resulting ripples in the fabric of space.” She added larger circles around the first, and then shaded in the space between the circles. “I’m not sure what the ripples will do, but I can’t imagine the delay factor will be good for the structural integrity of the ship.”
“In other words,” Jin sought to clarify what she said. “Part the ship returns to Pittsburgh seconds before the next section goes?”
“Yes. Leo’s gate, however flawed, did transfer all the ship to the same second. These ripples would have a different time coordinate, so probably we’re looking at pieces of the ship arriving in Pittsburgh — unless we hit it with a damn big rock.”
“So where do we get it?”
“I don’t know. If we could tap the spring under Turtle Creek, that would work, but I don’t see any evidence that power is seeping through.”
There was no sign of Malice in Oakland when Wolf and the others returned to the enclaves. Maynard had set up a command center in the building across the street from Poppymeadow’s. He and the NSA agents had set up lookout posts across the city, linked by radio.
“Unless it can go invisible, it hasn’t appeared in the city yet,” Maynard tapped three points on the map. “Between the Cathedral of Learning, the USX building and Mount Washington, we can see for miles — and Stormsong said that this thing was huge.”