Annie and Mark exchanged a complicated look, the air thickening with the feeling of mental communication that I wasn’t privy to, and then they walked away, toward their respective teams.
James didn’t follow. Instead, he walked quickly toward me, almost but not quite breaking into a run, and when he was close enough, wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me into a one-sided embrace. I stood frozen, arms at my sides, blinking at him. He wasn’t of the blood of Kairos; he had no natural resistance to telepathic influence, and he didn’t even have the potential minimal protection from carrying his own anti-telepathy charm anymore. I started to recoil.
He didn’t let go. “You’re not forcing me to hug you, no matter how much you were thinking you needed a hug just now,” he said. “You’re not forcing me to do anything, except go and find you a bunch of Sharpies.” He pulled back, relaxing his grip as he got himself far enough away to see my face. “I’m a sorcerer, remember? And I spent years before I met Antimony and the others studying the journals of all the sorcerers who came before me, trying to find a way out of the situation the crossroads had put us all into. I research. I study. It’s what I do. And I know you’re doing your best right now, and I know if there’s any possible way for you to get us all home safely, you’re going to find it, but I read the notes Betsy made on the first ritual, and all the test runs they did before they committed to the final version, and they had a lot more time and a lot more resources than you do, and one of them still died.” His thoughts turned grave as he looked at me. “They knew it was a risk. They wrote down that it was a risk. So I believe you know what you’re doing, but I also believe you’re risking your life right now, and I know you’re doing it so we can go home, and I just wanted to make sure you knew how much we appreciated it. That’s all.”
James let me go then. He turned and trotted over to where his smaller detachment of warriors was waiting. He didn’t need as many because he wasn’t going as far, or at least that was the logic, and the mound only had so many warriors willing to go into the territory of the hunters in the dark when they didn’t absolutely have to. We were a fun novelty, sure, but as our only incubus wasn’t interested in staying and helping Kenneth lead the community, they weren’t as interested in us as they’d been when we first met.
Familiarity breeds contempt, I guess. I watched James go, stroking Greg with one hand, then lowered my shields, first halfway, and then completely, opening myself to the campus. It wasn’t hard to find my friends. They were torches against the dark field of the school, burning so brightly that I couldn’t have missed them if I’d been trying. I was attuned to them: it was always going to be like this, even after we made it home. I could never really lose track of any of them again.
Not even Mark. Mark, our proof that cuckoos could be redeemed, who was hurrying toward the edge of the campus with urgency and no small amount of fear, whose own shields were down to make him the most tempting target possible. I wondered whether he realized that he had more family than just his beloved Cici now, because there was no way we were getting home and then letting him just walk away as if none of this had ever happened. Like James before him, the poor boy was going to be stuck with us for the rest of his life.
That’s how the family survives. We abandoned the idea that blood was the only thing that mattered a long time ago.
It felt weird to be standing here waiting with Greg while everyone else was running around getting things ready for me to start doing my job. I turned to focus on my spider, resting my forehead against the spot above his eyes. Not his “forehead,” per se, since he didn’t have a skull and his anatomy didn’t really accommodate the idea of a brainpan, but a spot where I wouldn’t brush against or obstruct any of his eyes. He waved his pedipalps, brushing them against my collarbone. I closed my eyes.
“This has to work, Greg,” I said. “If it doesn’t, I don’t have a plan B. This is our only shot.”
He couldn’t understand my words—and only partially understood my tone—but his response was still a wave of trust and reassurance. He knew I was going to do the right thing. No matter what else happened here today, the giant spider trusted me completely.
That was good, since I was standing here in the open, with the remaining warriors and the mantids to protect me. And I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I didn’t have another way to get us out of here. Even with all my preparations and precautions, there was still a decent chance that performing this ritual would either kill or shatter me, and if I didn’t get a stable doorway back to our home dimension before that happened . . .
Well, at least the existence of Kenneth and the other part-Lilu proved this dimension wouldn’t kill my people through allergic reaction or misaligned timestreams or anything else ridiculous and Star Trek-y. They’d be able to live here until James and Annie could study the written materials in enough detail to let them cobble together some version of the spells Alice used to move between dimensions. There’s always another way if you have time and stubbornness on your side.
But not for me. This was my only shot at getting out of here, and I wanted to get out of here more than anything. I wanted to go home. I wanted to find out how much of my own life I’d destroyed. I wanted to fix what could be fixed. And I wanted to see the cuckoo kids settled into whatever waited for them, and given the chance to grow up to be their own people, not broken reflections of the diaspora.
One of the warriors shouted something. I opened my eyes, pulling away from Greg, and turned. A small group of husked-out cuckoos was shambling toward us.
Despite myself, I laughed. “They survived! They survived! Greg, look! Some of them made it through the night!”
The big spider tensed. He wasn’t smart, but he knew a predator when he saw one approaching, and he didn’t like it. In that regard, he was currently smarter than I was, since I was laughing and clapping my hands as the husks shambled closer.
The four warriors who had been assigned to watch me moved into position in front of me and Greg.
I need them alive, I sent, putting as much urgency into the thought as I could manage. I needed them to understand, despite the language barriers, that I meant it.
One of the warriors nodded. I didn’t know whether that was a gesture native to their culture or something they had picked up from their previous extra-dimensional visitors, and I didn’t actually care. They knew what the gesture meant, I knew what the gesture meant, our minimal ability to communicate was bolstered by its mutuality.
They moved forward as a solid line, polearms at the ready, and met the husks in the middle of the quad. The husked-out cuckoos had no fear, no sense of self-preservation, and no weapons. The warriors had polearms, nets, and the strong instruction not to kill. It was not as one-sided a battle as it would have been if they’d been allowed to stab with impunity, but they did their best, netting when they could, and aiming for the legs when the nets were not an option. By the time James and his warriors emerged from the maintenance building with my supplies, all nine of the husks were on the ground, some trying to drag themselves toward me and Greg or the warriors, others writhing helplessly against the nets that held them. Their mouths were still moving, gnashing at the air, and their hands clawed and clutched at everything within reach.
James stopped when he saw the bodies on the ground. “That was fast,” he said.
“They must have heard us show up,” I said. “Bring those whiteboards over here.”
All together, they’d managed to scavenge up six whiteboards and eight big packs of unopened Sharpies. I tore the first pack open and uncapped a marker, inhaling briefly. Huffing markers is bad, even for a cuckoo, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying that first chemical hit of math about to be done.
James watched me, radiating wariness, although it was hard to say whether that was because he thought I was about to shove the Sharpie up my nose or something, or because of the nine functional zombie
s on the ground not far away. Plus we had the giant insects and arachnids, and the jarringly orange sky, and really, this dimension was an endless cornucopia of things to be wary of. I lowered the marker and offered him the closest thing I could muster to a reassuring smile.
“None of us were hurt,” I said. “The warriors did exactly what they were supposed to do, and now we have proof that some of the damaged cuckoos survived the night.”
“Is this going to be enough?”
“No. I need at least fifty, preferably more.” We had no way of knowing how many of them would have been able to get to cover when night fell, or whether they would have been able to understand on any level that they needed to; they didn’t really have the capacity to understand anything else. Hiding from giant spiders wouldn’t have occurred to them naturally.
But if they’d been trying to get into the buildings where the surviving students were holed up, they could have been in parking garages or under awnings or in other places the spiders wouldn’t necessarily have checked.
I wasn’t counting on hundreds of survivors. But given the number we’d started with, it wasn’t so unreasonable of me to hope for fifty. Especially when we already had nine.
“It’s a good start,” I said, with all the cheer I could muster, and recapped the Sharpie so I could start moving the whiteboards into position. “Help me with these, won’t you?”
“Sure.” James fell in beside me, and for a few minutes we were quiet, pushing whiteboards into a circle large enough to encompass the two of us, plus Greg, and leave me with the space I needed to move around. James shot a look at my spider, radiating still more nervousness, and asked, “When are you going to tell, um, him that he should leave?”
“I don’t know exactly.” I moved toward the first whiteboard. It was pristine, the surface glimmering white and perfect, having never known the touch of ink. I was going to destroy that, and when this was over, we were going to destroy it, because leaving a bunch of dimension-ripping math lying around for people to discover isn’t just irresponsible, it’s sloppy. But soon, the work would begin, and even knowing this might be the last work I ever got the chance to do didn’t make me any less eager to get started.
“He can’t come back to Earth with us. He’ll die.”
“No, he won’t.” I could see the equation glimmering in my mind when I closed my eyes, flawless and crystalline and ready to be written down. It wasn’t like the one that had brought us here, which had been large and complex enough to be both alive and hostile; this was an inanimate thing, sculpted by masters, and the doors it opened would be controllable ones. “He has lungs. He’s not internally built exactly like the spiders back home, and we’ve seen nothing to indicate that physics works any differently here. He’d be fine. Except for the not being able to feed him, and him terrifying anyone who gets near him, and him not having any options for mates or colonies of his own kind . . .”
“Okay, okay, I got it,” said James.
“But I’ll let him know when it’s time for him to get off campus.” Right now, Greg was happy where he was. He liked being near me; I had led him safely into the territory of his greatest enemies, and had even fed him while he was there. I made him feel safe and powerful in a way the other spiders didn’t.
And sure, some of that was psychic manipulation of his little spider mind, but it was nice to have someone around whose thoughts about me weren’t conflicted in the slightest, but simple and utterly devoted. I had warped his emotions. I had never implanted or deleted any of his memories, and somehow, that made all the difference.
“You know you can’t take him home with you.”
I managed not to bristle. “I know.”
“Okay.” James pushed the last whiteboard into place and stepped out of the circle, joining the combined group of his warriors and my own. “There weren’t any more whiteboards in there. Is this going to be enough for what you need?”
“I hope so.” Based on the math I already had, the modifications I’d committed to memory, and the places where I thought it might be necessary to expand the scope or modify the structure of the equation further, depending on how many people were still alive, I would have a whole whiteboard open at the end. I hoped. “Did you get me any dry-erase markers, or just the Sharpies?”
James solemnly held up a pack of dry-erase markers. I beamed at him.
“Good man. Good, good—” A spike of panic lanced through me, bright and bitter as licking a battery. I clutched the sides of my head, barely managing not to fall to my knees in the middle of the quad. Greg picked up my distress, which I was broadcasting on all channels, as it were, and rushed to steady me with his two forelimbs. James was only a few steps behind, which was impressive, given how many more legs Greg had than he did.
I gratefully let the two of them support me. “Get ready,” I said. “Mark is on his way back.”
“Mark?”
“Mark.”
The spike of panic repeated, less fresh but substantially closer. Mark was heading back to us at a dead run, apparently, and while I couldn’t quite make out any specific thoughts at this distance, he was radiating panic loudly enough that he was probably freaking out everyone left on campus.
The warriors were starting to shift from one foot to another, looking anxiously around as they picked up on Mark’s broadcast. Since it was purely emotional, the language barrier didn’t matter as much as it normally would have done. Since they knew they were hanging out with telepaths, they turned toward me, asking a series of sharp, interrogative questions in their own language.
“I understand why they don’t all speak English, but don’t you think they could have figured out by now that we don’t speak whatever it is they do?” asked James, sounding flustered.
I took a deep breath, pushing Mark’s panic away from myself, back toward its origin, where it belonged. To say that I didn’t have time for this would have been a massive understatement. “Shut up and let me try to calm them down,” I said, voice tight.
James didn’t say anything, just moved closer to Greg, like he thought my uneasy, unbalanced spider would protect him. And maybe he would. Greg had accepted James as a part of the same colony that I belonged to, and believed my whole colony was inadequate to defend ourselves, needing him if we wanted to stay alive for more than a few more hours. He wouldn’t let James come to any harm.
I took a step toward the warriors. The fear is coming from, and I flashed a picture of Mark, my companion. It is not your own. Resist it.
One of them turned and shook his polearm at me in a menacing, honestly unnerving fashion. I pushed my way deeper into his mind, filtering through his thoughts to try and gauge what he was trying to say. I struggled for calm. This was a lot harder than it had been yesterday, when nobody had been panicking and nobody had been yelling, and there hadn’t been another cuckoo broadcasting incoherently at everybody.
The warrior was demanding to know why I couldn’t make the waves of fear now pushing their way stop, and when I presented the image of Mark again, the warrior advanced on me, polearm at the ready. I took a step back, trying to keep my own alarm from broadcasting.
Greg moved faster than the eye could follow. One instant he was standing in the quad, and the next, he was between me and the warrior, forelegs raised in clear threat. The warrior shouted something, and the rest of them clustered around him, all of them ready to attack my poor spider for the crime of defending me.
“All of you, stop this!” I shouted, and pushed myself between Greg and them. Greg put his forefeet on my shoulders, effectively pinning me where I was, and loomed over me, hissing steadily, like a souffle in the process of deflating. The warriors continued to shout and mutter, stabbing their polearms at us.
It was a bad situation, and it could have gone on for a lot longer, had one of the mantids not noticed the commotion. It turned its head to watch us, slow thoughts forming
in its insectile mind. I couldn’t fully pull my attention off the scene to focus on its confusion, not without freeing Greg to attack, and maybe I should have, because what the mantis saw was a group of its people, who had been around it since it was a newly-hatched nymph, who smelled like home and safety and domestication, being menaced by one of the hunters in the night.
The domesticated insects still weren’t smart by the standards of anyone who worked with mammals, but they had been bred for loyalty and a degree of possessiveness that would have been alien to any Earth insects. I wanted to reject the evidence of its mind as impossible, but I was a bug who felt love; slightly different evolutionary paths could make a huge difference. It looked at us, and it reached its decision.
I heard it decide a split second before it moved, and gathered my thoughts, shoving them at Greg as hard as I possibly could. RUN, NOW!
He didn’t want to abandon me. His capacity for loyalty and devotion was less than the mantis’, but he still had it, and I had inculcated a level of affection for me that should have been impossible given his neurological limitations. My command was too loud for him to ignore, and he leapt before the mantis could strike, but didn’t flee as he should have done, instead adhering to the front of the student store and continuing to watch us all warily, fully ready to leap again.
I began to relax now that Greg was at least temporarily out of danger, and the mantis struck.
Like Greg, it moved faster than the eye could follow, stabbing and scything down with its razor-sharp forearms. My size saved me, but didn’t spare me; those forearms were designed for hunting prey much closer to its own size. It was like Godzilla trying to target a single person in a crowd. There was no time for me to dodge, and the tip of its left arm slammed into my abdomen. I howled in agony, losing my grasp on Greg’s mind.
He moved in an instant, flinging himself across the distance between us and biting at the arm that held me. The mantis was too big for him to battle on his own, and looked at him quizzically for a long moment. Too long: he bit down, and the mantis’ pain briefly overwhelmed my own, flaring hot and penetrating in my mind.
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