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dianeduaneThe Crossings Intercontinual Worldgating Facility in the evening can seem like a relatively calm place for those who don’t know the venue as well as Nita and Kit do. After sunset the elective daytime ceiling removes itself from over the worldgating facility’s vast shining interior and lets in the huge night sky of Rirhath B’s native cluster: the multicolor swell-and-shrink of a couple of hundred short-term variable stars, slow and placid as breathing. It could even seem romantic, if the place wasn’t exactly as busy in the evenings as it is when the ferocious system primary is up. The transit of three galaxies goes on untroubled through the place as it has for thousands of years now, and business goes on there as well, just as cutthroat as always.
It has a tendency to go on out in the open, as the Crossings management has (after some of the ructions of more recent years) taken a liking to the concept that there’s no harm in most of the place’s business being carried out in plain view. The ability to hear what’s happening, of course, is strictly controlled by the management, who determine what translation modules are operating at any given time and in any specific area, and whether sound waves (in species that use sound to communicate) are allowed to travel past the area where business is being discussed. The privacy of other modes of communication — light, gesture, various forms of expanded sensoria, thought — are managed by other means, either science or wizardry, depending on what makes most sense. In fact, wizardry is much more in evidence than it used to be, since the Stationmaster’s position passed to a wizard in the wake of the events of the Pullulus War.
This is the case on this particular evening, when a rather fraught business meeting is taking place out in the middle of the Crossings’ main concourse, hard by the Master’s office. That office has stood for nearly a thousand years on the same spot where the first worldgate spontaneously popped open in a muddy riverside cave. Of course now acres of polished white floor stretch around that spot on all sides—the main concourse area is about the same size as London inside the M25—and the office itself is an openwork construction of blue and silver chrome and self-programming hybrid management consoles. On-demand meeting spaces are erected around the Stationmaster’s office at need, and right now one of these, with a language-specific cone of silence erected over and around it, is mostly filled with an elliptical, centerless forcefield table.
On either side of the center of the ellipse stand a number of chairs shaped like unusually longlegged camel saddles: these are occupied by six two-meter-tall creatures who look like annoyed blue preying mantises. These are flailing their triple-jointed arms around and shrieking in a manner reminiscent of what rabid peacocks would sound like if peacocks could be rabid. At the far end of the table is a young Rirhait male with his shining, manylegged magenta self draped over a rack unusually plain and utilitarian for a being of his rank and seniority (especially the Master of this facility). At the other end of the table, inside a spell-ellipse whose broad arcs and inner detail are faintly visible through the topmost layer of the polished white floor, are two hominid wizards, one male, one female, both past latency age but not so far so as to be less than extremely dangerous should the mood move them. If the shrieking blue aliens keep looking at one of them and shrieking more loudly than even these circumstances require, this will be the reason. One of these two wizards has reason to bear them a grudge, and the five-minute discussion they’ve just had with her is making them nervous...
Nita and Kit have their own “cone of silence” over the spell diagram which is also handling translation and ritual/confrontational distancing, and both of them are being careful to stay well inside it: Sker’ret’s spell is tailored specifically to them and this space, and neither of them cares to mess with its parameters while business is still ongoing. Kit is avoiding the barely-visible edges of Sker’s spell-ellipse, holding position at one focus of it. Nita is pacing around and around her own focus of the ellipse, as if tethered. The fidgeting is unusual for her, and Kit’s wondering what’s behind it. Normally she likes being in the Crossings, but tonight (it’s actually mid-afternoon back home, but he thinks “tonight” for the moment) she looks like she’d rather be anywhere else, anywhere at all.
This is peculiar, since she not only came here willingly, but she even went out of her way to dress for it, in a skirt and a short jackety top in a shades of dark sky-blue that closely match the colors of the Tawalf across the table. This is a concession she didn’t have to make — the equivalent of formal business wear -- and it’s the color, not the clothes, that matter. As far as the Tawalf are concerned she could have painted herself blue, which would have been interesting. In fact Kit thinks that option would have been a whole lot more interesting than the skirt and jacket, but this is a thought he is wisely intent on keeping to himself for the foreseeable future… say, into their early- or mid-twenties. He’s holding onto this intention not just because of the general appropriateness of it, but because he understands exactly why the Tawalf are so upset right now, and he has no desire to put himself on the receiving end of what Nita just spent ten straight minutes doing to them.
It was fun to watch, though, he thinks. Sker’ret must have thought so too: he hadn’t said a word the whole time, and though his stalky eyes tied themselves into knots a few times, they were cheerful knots.
The shrieking continues, while Sker’ret’s spell-circle continues to manage translation for them. As Nita comes around her focus of the ellipse one more time, Kit sees her roll her eyes at the continuing recitation by the Tawalf. “Not moving yet…” she mutters. “Why won’t they just get on with it?”
“They want you to hear them scream,” Kit says.
Nita’s mouth goes tight. “It’s getting more and more mutual,” she says. “Wish Carmela was here…”
Kit shrugs. Carmela had been here with Nita the last time the two of them and the Tawalf had all been here at once. This was actually a different group of Tawalf from the last time — those guys had been banned, possibly understandably, as they had tried to take over the Crossings and had done their best to kill Sker’ret, Nita and (in a late development) Carmela. But at this they had failed. Now their planetary government’s representatives were back on site, accusing Nita, the Crossings management, and the planetary government of Rirhath B of general malfeasance, judgmental dyslogism, culpable misuse of power, barratry, choleric erinascity, geasonic glaikery, hautance and mycterism, second-degree accismus, and the bright Powers only know what the hell else. They are also claiming that, considering how grievously they’ve suffered from all this, they’ve been insufficiently bribed to go away and promise not to try to destroy the Crossings some more at a later date.
“She’s got a test,” Kit says. “Statistics, I think.” That being what had left Nita stuck with being the one who has to handle this exciting legal procedure.
“Pity. Statistics is what I’m thinking of turning these guys into.”
Her tone was starting to concern Kit, but this wasn’t the moment to take a chance on jarring her out of her focus. Nita had until now been busy handling this situation exactly according to the instructions that had been given her by the Crossings’ legal advisors. Their advice was that, whatever Nita had done to the original Tawalf malefactors the last time they met, she must now threaten to do twice as much to their planetary representatives, and maybe extra at the weekend. This, unsurprisingly, Nita had been extremely willing to do. She’d stood up and produced a long and eloquent description of what the Tawalf had personally put her through on her way to meet up with the team of wizards who’d gone out in search of the Hesper. Then had come the discussion of what she intended to do to them in return. She’d missed very few possibilities in a long and creative catalogue of threats, up to and including invoking the nuclear option (a.k.a Dairine). Then she’d turned her back on the creatures at the table and gone back to the spell-ellipse, and as soon as the Tawalf started shrieking, she’d started pacing. And is still at it.
“Neets…”
“I hate this,” she says. “And the deal we had to do with these guys the last time. Straightforward bribery, that’s all it was.”
“That’s us making a value judgment, wouldn’t you say? Seems like in their culture it's a perfectly okay thing.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to be wild about enabling more of it,” Nita mutters.
But there’s something else going on, and Kit is concerned. Normally Nita is all about getting into other creatures’ cultures: the weirder the better. Now, though, she’s all raw nerve endings, and getting more raw by the moment. This is… unusual.
You okay? he says silently.
And to Kit’s shock—because in this kind of mood, Nita is never short of a smart answer—she has no immediate answer for him. She’s holding onto something very, very tight, and doesn’t want him to know what it is.
“When we’re done here,” she finally says, “yeah.”
But she doesn’t say it in the Speech. The excuse could of course be that the Crossings machine-assisted translators enabled in this space are sensitive to the Speech and might render it in realtime, where the Tawalf could hear it. But Kit suspects something else is going on. Reluctant as wizards are to lie in any language of discourse, to do it consciously in the Speech is impossible.
The waving and shrieking around the table is now scaling up in volume and urgency, to the point where Kit is beginning to agree with Nita that dropping Dairine on these guys from a height would be a good idea… and then a tenor bleat louder than an Amtrak train blasts through the space, and Kit and Nita both freeze where they are, astonished. The source of the noise is Sker’ret, who has raised himself up on his end-of-table rack and is staring at the Tawalf with one eye for each of them and the remaining two tying themselves into a tasteful bowknot. Shocked into silence, all the Tawalf collapse into their camel-saddle chairs and lean their upper limbs on the table in positions of ritual patience.
Sker’ret now undoes those knotted eyes and points them at Nita. “Are you ready for the restitution phase?” he says.
“Oh boy am I,” Nita says. “Restitution,” Kit knows, is at best a euphemism for what comes next. Nita turns and reaches two-handed into the empty air beside her, into the temporospatial claudication waiting there. A second later she comes out with a foot-square block of something so dark a brown it’s almost black. With this in her hands, she walks over to the table and plunks the cube down in front of Sker’ret.
All the Tawalf lean toward it as if it’s something infinitely attractive. And to members of this most acquisitive species, doubtless it is.
“Five kilograms of Tobago Estate single-estate dark chocolate,” she says, “with chipotle chilies.”
The Tawalf stare, then bend their heads together and mutter in hushed tones of awe and ill-concealed greed. Chocolate is of course one of the most valuable substances one can acquire or trade for, in this galaxy and numerous others. Drug, aphrodisiac substance, or peerless mood elevator depending on one’s species, fabulously collectible as all of those because it occurs in its original natural form on only one planet, the stuff is beyond price in most places.
Kit watches all this unfolding, more or less as had been planned. But most of his concern is elsewhere at the moment. Nita’s standing there with her arms folded and her eyes on the cube, not the Tawalf.
“Are you willing,” Sker’ret says, “to quit the claim against the Facility?”
There’s a long pause as the Tawalf try hard not to sound too eager. But finally one of them, possibly the head of delegation, squawks agreement. The whole lot of them rise, another of them picks up the cube of chocolate, and they all leave the table and head down the Concourse, not looking back.
Sker’ret hits a control on one of the consoles hung about his rack, and the table and the chairs and the cone of silence around it all vanish away. So does the spell-ellipse that Nita and Kit have been in for most of the time.
Sker’ret immediately goes to Nita and rears up to take her hands in some of his front claws. “Security theater,” he mutters. “The things I have to go through to keep this place running. Cousin, thanks so much.”
Nita smiles a little: too little for Kit’s taste. “No problem.”
“That was even more terrific than I was expecting,” Sker’ret says, looking after the Tawalf who’re bearing the chocolate away down the Concourse above their heads, as if it was some kind of idol for veneration. “What you just gave them… that much chocolate, that kind of chocolate… that’s worth about five times their yearly gross planetary product! Where did you source that stuff?”
“Tom has a friend with a connection in the Caribbean,” Nita says.
“Well, make sure you bill me for that,” Sker’ret said. “We owe you one. Another one.”
Nita rubs the shiny dome of his head affectionately. “It’s okay,” she says, “you know that. We were all in that problem together before, you and me and Carmela… and now we’re out of it.” She sighs. “You done with me now?”
“Until they pull this stunt again,” Sker’ret says. “Probably not for a few years.”
“Carmela can take that one,” Nita says. “I’m heading home. What gate?”
“Anything in the 600 cluster,” Sker’ret says, waving some claws in the direction of those gates, a few Manhattan short-blocks’ distance down the main Concourse. “They’re in sync with Grand Central just now: pick one and configure it.”
“Will do,” Nita says. “Go well, Sker’.”
“You too,” he says, and vanishes.
And Nita and Kit are left standing by themselves in the middle of that wide white floor, with the stars blooming and fading, blooming and fading in the dark sky overhead.
Nita lets out a long, long sigh and rubs her face.
“Now,” Kit says, very low. “Tell me what that was about.”
“That what?” Nita says, trying to sound offhand.
The attempt is a total failure. Kit takes a long breath, because here is where she either takes the upcoming sentiment at face value, or misunderstands his concern and lets him have it, which in her present mood could be memorable.
“You were shaking,” he said. “I could see.”
Nita holds quite still.
“What for?” Kit says.
She won’t say anything.
“Neets,” Kit says.
She sighs.
“Last Instance,” she says after a moment.
“What?”
“When we were in that fight with the Tawalf force that was trying to take this place,” she says, “there was a time when things got… really bad. Really bad. Everything Sker’ and Carmela and I tried, failed. We couldn’t get the best of them. But we couldn’t let them have the Crossings, either. So—I was about to— I was ready. To invoke Last Instance.”
Kit swallowed. What Nita was discussing was one of the most powerful things a wizard can ever do… but also one of the most final. It was the act of giving your wizardry and your life up to the Powers that Be in aid of one last conscious act.
“I didn’t do it,” Nita says. “But I was about two seconds from starting the invocation before things changed.” Nita said. “And it was, well, kind of hard to look at the Tawalf now without being reminded of that. Again and again. And again.”
Kit begins to realize that there were some things that didn’t come through clearly in their joint debrief after the Pullulus War. Granted, the events surrounding the emergence of the Hesper had all happened in something of a rush. But the hair is nonetheless standing up all over him... because Nita’s pulled this sort of stunt before. Spells that expend a year of your life with every deadly bolt thrown at an enemy; signing on for sacrificial magics that are likely to be the end of you… And it’s not about her occasionally hot temper, not stuff she hasn’t thought through. She’s just that brave, and she thinks she has to be alone when she does it. And that’s all wrong. Kit really wants to shout at her: Will you cut this crap out? But Nita’s been shouted at by experts over the course of her wizardly career, and sheer volume seems ineffective at dissuading her.
“You’ve really got to stop doing this stuff by yourself without telling me,” Kit says, intense, but quite low.
Nita at least has the grace at the moment to look a bit embarrassed. “Well,” she said, “it's easy for you to say that at this end of things. You weren’t there at the time…”
“No. But you weren’t in a big rush to tell me about it later, either.”
“It’s okay. Nothing happened.”
“But something could’ve.”
She doesn’t answer: just turns away, looks down the Concourse.
Kit is standing a little behind her, looking over her shoulder at the dwindling shapes of the Tawalf as they head off in the direction of their homeward worldgate. It suddenly occurs to him how weird it is to be taller than Nita, actually able to see over her when standing behind her. On a sudden urge he puts both hands on her shoulders and cranes his neck a little as if having to work to see over.
She turns her head, gives him a look: but there’s something in the expression that isn’t about Kit stopping doing what he’s doing.
Quite carefully, Kit slides his hands around Nita at collarbone level, locks one hand around the other wrist, and leans his forehead against the back of Nita’s.
She doesn’t do anything for a second. Then she leans her head back against Kit’s, reaches her hands up to hold onto his, and lets out an annoyed breath, muttering a word in the Speech that suggests there’s something wrong with the design of the Tawalf’s DNA-equivalent. It doesn’t sound like much as human insults go, but it’d doubtless provoke a lot more screaming if any of them heard it.
Kit grins a bit and doesn’t say anything.
They just stay that way for a while, and above everything the stars of Rirhath B’s home cluster silently inhale and exhale their light into nearby space, while the two of them stand there amid the murmur of the Crossings going about its business.
“I’ve got an idea,” Nita says finally.
“Mmm?”
“Let’s go get something to eat.”
“Okay.”
“Something blue.”
Kit groans. He’s been monumentally sick here in the past due to not reading the menus carefully enough as to exactly what was making the food blue. Nita, knowing this, snickers. But she doesn’t move, and neither does Kit.
“Okay,” he says finally. “That place with the crunchy fried stuff?”
“Two of the basic food groups right there,” says Nita. “Let’s go.”
And after a little careful disentanglement they make their way side by side down the Concourse in their turn, heading for the food hall just past the 600-cluster hexes, and completely ignoring the faint scent of chocolate.
(To the master post with links to the other days of the challenge)
