Wizards At War

“You kidding?” Nita muttered. “It’s math, Kit, but not as we know it.”

“—and then you pull in the last twenty sets of figures from the leech-lattice version of the hypersphere-packing readings, paying special attention to the kissing number. Then you just massage the string density quotient—”

Sker’ret was too intent on simultaneous input at both consoles to notice the sudden frantic wreathing of eyes of all the Rirhait surrounding him, and the way the two who had been pacing now froze in place with all their eyes pointing over Sker’ret’s shoulders. “And that’ll hold you for the next two standard periods at least.”

“Good,” said another Rirhait voice from behind Sker’ret—and now it was Sker’ret’s turn to freeze. All his eyes held quite still, looking at what he had been keying in. Then, very slowly, one of them curled up and around to look behind him.

The Stationmaster of the Crossings, a Rirhait somewhat bigger than Sker’ret and of a lighter, more silvery-blue shade, poured into the cubicle and arranged himself among and over some of its interlocking rails and bars, peering with various eyes at the keypads where Sker’ret had been working. “So you’ve changed your mind,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses. We need you here.”

Nita wasn’t sure how someone so smooth-carapaced could seem to bristle, but as Sker’ret curved some more of his eyes around in the Stationmaster’s direction, he was managing it. “Unfortunately, you’re wrong,” Sker’ret said. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

“What?” The Stationmaster pointed all his eyes at once at Sker’ret. The other Rirhait around him all pulled their eyes in close to their bodies.

“You need me more where I’m going,” Sker’ret said. “I’ve spent all the time I can here. This fix will deal with the problem at hand. And now we’re going to head out.”

“Are you insane?” the Stationmaster said. “Look at this place!”

Nita looked. She couldn’t see anything wrong with it, except that it did seem much emptier than usual.

Sker’ret glanced around with various eyes. “This is only a symptom,” said Sker’ret, “of what’s coming. And no one with all their brains in place wastes time treating symptoms. A cure’s what’s needed … and that’s what we’re dealing with now.”

The Stationmaster flowed a little closer to Sker’ret and did something that Nita found briefly alarming: it reared up and grasped Sker’ret’s front end with some of those many little clawed legs. “Listen to me, broodling,” the Stationmaster said. “What’s happening out there is far too big for any species to cure. The world is changing! And there’s nothing we can do. How do you seriously expect to keep space

from expanding?”

“But wizards—”

“If wizards could have stopped it, they’d have done that already,” the Stationmaster said. “We’ve just got to teach our mechanisms to handle the new distances and vectors in the long term … or all this is going to come to a halt, and with it the transport and commerce of three galaxies!” More of the Stationmaster’s legs waved around them at the travelers of many species who were hurrying by, ignoring them.

“Your sibs have better sense,” the Stationmaster said. “They’re not running off on some fool’s errand at a critical time. But you’ve been hard to reason with lately.” The Stationmaster glared with many eyes past Sker’ret at the gaggle of humans and others who were uncomfortably watching all this unfold, and one eye stared straight at Nita. “Something to do with the company you’ve been keeping.”

Nita went very hot and opened her mouth. Before she could say anything, Sker’ret shook off his ancestor’s forelegs and bent every eye on him. “I’ll thank you not to malign wizards of goodwill and friends of mine,” he said. “And as for the long term, there’ll be no long term for anyone or anything

if we don’t move to alter what’s happening.”

“And so you’ll go off and abandon the place to which you owe the most responsibility.”

“We can’t turn inward now!” Sker’ret nearly shouted. “This is no time to try to find ways to dig our own burrow deeper! Turning outward to solve the bigger problem is the only way for us to save ourselves!”

“I have been Master here for nearly two hundred circuits of our sun,” the Stationmaster said, very quietly. “And it’s amusing to hear someone barely out of his fifth decade claim that he understands better than I how to handle the threat that—”

“You don’t understand a tenth of what you think you do!” Sker’ret said. “You’re too scared to raise an eye or three to peer past the obvious conclusions. And your job description has changed, but you haven’t even noticed—even though the truth’s staring you in the head and waving all its eyes at you. You saw the Station’s stats! Gating across the three major galaxies is down almost thirty percent! Everyone’s turning inward, from fear, and that’s just what our old Enemy wants! To drive us apart, each into his own burrow, to keep us away from the interaction that keeps us in touch with the Prime Mover and makes us one—”