by Diane Duane
, she thought, glancing around, and I greet you. Wherever you are…
I am errantry, the Silence said.
Nita held very still. There was something familiar about that voice… though it wasn’t a voice as such.
Then she remembered her earlier thought. “The Silence told me about that,” the clown-Darryl had said to her. You are the manual, she thought. Darryl’s version of it.
The Silence sang agreement.
Right
, Nita said, lowering the weapon again. Sorry, you startled me. How can I hear you now? I couldn’t before.
You are fully inside him now
… because you have the heart.
Nita wondered about that phrasing, and then smiled. The heart of Darryl’s universe: the kernel.
Yes, I do
, she said. Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with it.
He will know. He has full access now, as you’ve discovered.
Nita nodded and watched the four figures walking among the trees for a few minutes… She was looking things over, assessing where the weak point in this scenario might be. That was how she saw something start to happen, something that initially scared her — an encounter that she normally would have done anything to prevent. The Lone Power in Its dark majesty came striding down between the mirrored pillars, to Nita’s eye looking very much like someone who’s trying to act like he knows where he’s going when he doesn’t. Toward It, ambling, unhurried, maybe even unseeing, came Kit and Ponch. Nita sucked in her breath and lifted the linac weapon into an aiming line, pointing it at the Lone One.
She watched with profound unease as Kit and the Lone Power got closer and closer to each other. They were no more than a few paces apart when the Lone One made a single sudden move.
It looked at Itself in a mirror as It passed, and smiled faintly. And Kit walked right on by It, unnoticing, unnoticed.
Nita had to just stand there for a few moments, calming herself down, nearly lost in admiration at the sheer power of the otherworld Darryl had created. It’s like that fairy tale about the guy who does some magic creature a good turn
, she thought, and as a reward it gives him a bag that nothing can get out of. The guy lives a bad life, and when the devil comes for him, he tricks it into the bag, and it’s stuck there until he lets it out
But in this case, Darryl was in the bag, too — and apparently thought this a reasonable price to pay to keep part of the Lone Power out of circulation for days or weeks or even years at a time.
Carl had been completely right. If that’s not a saint, Nita thought, I don’t know what is.
I need to get them out of here
, she said to the Silence.
You will have to break this paradigm
, the Silence said. Break the mirrors. That will release them.
But it will also release the Lone Power back into Its full potency.
For just a breath of time, Nita weighed the pros and cons of the problem. Keeping It stuck in here, even just a fragment of It, couldn’t be a bad thing.
But keeping Kit here as well, and Ponch? And Darryl?
The price was much too high. Especially, Nita thought, putting aside her personal concerns for the moment, in Darryl's case.
Nita sighed. Besides, she thought, like in the fairy tale, the Powers That Be will make them let the devil out of the bag eventually. It’s still one of the Powers, and part of the world. Keep the Lone Power in here forever and It’ll never be able to change
…
Nita stuck the linac weapon under her armpit and held it there against her side while she reached into her “pocket” again, found that tangle of light, and spent a few careful moments adjusting several of its properties. She altered the universe’s time flow first, so it matched their home universe, then made a few additional changes that might come in handy later. When that was done, she put the kernel away and considered the maze of half-mirrored trees. It was vast, possibly even infinite, but Nita didn’t let herself worry about that. All these mirrors, the Silence whispered to her, were clones of another one. At the center of the maze was the key to the secret, the way out.
We’re short on time here, Nita said silently. Tell me.
In her mind’s eye, she saw it.
Nita grinned.
She unlimbered the linac weapon again and started to make her way toward the spot she’d been shown. If she’d tried to search for it by sight, she might have passed it many times. But she closed her eyes again, so as not to be bewildered by the reflections, and found it the way the Silence showed her — by walking slowly, bumping into things sometimes, feeling her way. Once she bumped into a tall shape that burned her to be near. Out of reflex, she said, “Excuse me,” to the Lone Power, and slipped on past It toward the heart of the maze.
It should be near here, shouldn’t it
? Nita thought.
You’re close. Keep going
…
She walked now through the darkness behind her eyes, slowly, taking her time. A few minutes later Nita came to the place she’d been looking for, and opened her eyes. They’d been closed so long now that she had to blink a little in the light as she looked at the one mirror — among however many uncounted millions in that place — that had no reflection in it at all, not even of any other mirror.
This one was a plain bathroom mirror about three feet by two, hanging on a taller mirror-pillar and held in a steel frame — one that probably had a medicine cabinet behind it in the real world. Nita walked up to the rectangular mirror and waved at it, then jumped up and down in front of it. In the mirror, nothing showed at all.
That’s the way it’s supposed to be with vampires
, Nita thought, intrigued. But, here, the mirrors themselves were vampiric, sucking up fragments of personality, snatches of conversation, the glances of eyes, leaving the originals devoid of words and glances afterward. Nita once more shook her head in admiration. Darryl had done a fantastic job constructing this trap. Even the Lone One, once inside this universe that so perfectly mirrored Darryl’s autism, was vulnerable to it, slowly losing moments of Its vast existence, being worn down.
Okay
, Nita thought. Here we go. The one thing she made certain of was that her other weapons were all ready to use as soon as she was finished with the linac. I'll only get one shot with this, she thought. If it’s a good one, all I have to worry about is what’s handy to use next, when all hell breaks loose
…
Nita glanced around her to make sure no one was about to come wandering through one of the many openings of the maze that led into this central area. Then she lifted the linac weapon again, narrowed her eyes, took careful aim at the bathroom mirror, and fired.
The blast of energy that came out of the linac weapon didn’t radiate in the visible spectrum, but the air in its path did, ionizing and spitting blue lightnings where the particle beam passed. The mirror leaped and split into thousands of fragments as the blast hit it, and the fragments in turn went white-hot and vaporized in the air—
— and as they did, every other mirror in that world shattered.
The noise was deafening, terrifying. Tons of razory glass exploded into millions of pieces and came raining down on the glassy floor. The fragments vanished as they hit it, as if falling into water.
Moments later there was nothing remaining inside that whole space but five figures, standing on a dark floor and looking around in various degrees of surprise.
Nita stood there and chucked away the linac weapon, which vanished as soon as she let go of it, its wizardry now spent. She walked over to Kit and Ponch while reaching to her charm bracelet and activating one of the charms.
Ponch was shaking himself all over, as if he were wet He turned and saw Nita, and began wagging his tail so furiously that it was mostly wagging him. He jumped up and put his forepaws all over her and started jumping up so that he could lick her face.
“Yeah, yeah, big guy, how you doing?�
�� Nita said, sort of holding him by the ears and scratching them at the same time, in a mostly futile effort to keep his tongue out of her nose. “Kit? Give me a hand with this guy, will you?”
Kit was standing there, blinking at her, looking completely astonished. “What are you doing in here?” he said. Then he paused. “Come to think of it, what am I doing in here? I was home… I was lying down—”
The energy bolt came at them from behind.
And it splashed.
Nita looked over her shoulder at the Lone Power and couldn’t restrain a grin. The alterations she’d made in the kernel had worked. And Kit was all right. Now she had backup — and she felt how good it was to have that again, after she’d been alone. Now then! she thought.
“Well, I guess if you’re going to omit the formalities, so will I,” Nita said, turning to face the Lone One. “I have to say, I would have expected a slightly higher level of function from you. But you’ve been running on half-speed ever since you got in here, poor baby. Take a few moments and try to pull your brains back together. We’ll wait.”
The Lone Power’s expression set cold, as Nita had known it would; there are few things the Eldest hates more than being made fun of.
“Your insolence,” It said, “is going to be short-lived.”
“Compared to the age of the universe, yeah, I guess so,” Nita said. “But I think we’re going to walk out of here today, because you miscalculated. You never considered what might happen if Darryl ever realized that the door swings both ways. Or that the door can be locked. Ever since he took the Oath, ever since you decided to stop him from being a wizard, he’s been keeping you stuck in here with him on purpose! He’s been getting better and better at it all the time, and you never even suspected, because you thought you were in control. But this is his masterwork, no matter what I did to the fun-house mirrors, which were just a local feature. And you’re still sealed in here until he lets you go.”
The Lone Power looked at Darryl.
Nita looked over at him, too. “Darryl?” she said. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, though he sounded somewhat surprised. “I didn’t know anyone else would be able to see what was happening.”
“The Lone Power couldn’t,” Kit said. “You built this place in such a way that It wouldn’t be able to tell what was happening. But you weren’t expecting us inside your worldview. You left a loophole.”
“And once we got in — though we came and went— our points of view stayed behind, at least a little,” Nita said to the Lone Power. “While only you were in here, Darryl believed what you believed about this space, and about his Ordeal—”
Darryl had walked over toward Nita and Kit while Nita was speaking… and the smile growing on his face now was rapidly becoming a match for Nita’s: angry, but still very amused. “I may be autistic,” Darryl said to the Lone One, grim, “but I’m not stupid. You’ve invested a lot of energy in your little cat-and-mouse game. Well, I can play this game, too. Maybe I’ll just amuse myself playing with you for the rest of my natural life. It’s sure been fun so far!”
The Lone One’s expression was indescribable. Nita felt like laughing out loud, but this would have been the wrong moment.
“You cannot,” It said after a moment. “Now that I am alerted to this game of yours, it will never work again, even if I did allow you to escape with either life or soul intact.” It raised Its hands, clenched Its fists—
And nothing happened.
Nita smiled gently, and from her pocket, she pulled out the kernel to Darryl’s internal universe.
The Lone One looked at it in sudden furious surprise.
“You really are running slow today,” Nita said. “You taught me how to deal with these things when you were inside my old ‘friend’ Pralaya. How to find them…how to manage them. Of course, you were doing it for your own reasons. Maybe it didn’t occur to you that I was going to walk away after the dirty deal you offered me! Or that I was going to survive the consequences. Well, I did…and I remember everything you showed me, very well.” She smiled. “Now I— excuse me, we — just have to decide what else to do with this besides making you temporarily powerless.”
Nita stood there with the universe’s kernel, the heart of the world, in her hand, juggling it like someone juggling a grenade with the pin pulled. “Make your stay here permanent, maybe?” she said, glancing over at Darryl. “By just wiping the whole place out?”
“You wouldn’t dare,” the Lone One said.
“I’d dare a whole lot at the moment, so don’t push me!” Nita said. “Doesn’t it strike you as likely that I’d have just a whole lot of fun killing you off? Oh, sure, it wouldn’t be the whole you.
Here you’re just a fragment of your greater self; I know that. And I’d die, too. And so would Kit, and Darryl. But the power that the One has invested in Darryl won’t be lost.”
“That power is lost now! Boy”—the Lone Power turned Its baleful gaze on Darryl—“you are one of the—”
Then Its face suddenly went white, as if a whole universe had suddenly taken It by the throat and squeezed.
“You’re not going to be able to discuss certain subjects,” Nita said, “so don’t bother. Now, I think we were discussing what happens when we blow up this universe with you inside it. The damage done to you by the total destruction of even just this fragment of you… well.”
She smiled.
The Lone One trained that deadly look on Nita now. “If you did such a thing,” the Lone Power said, “your father and sister would—”
“Spare me,” Nita said. Her eyes narrowed. “Life hasn’t been so wonderful for me lately that I need to cling to it for my own sake. And if I went out taking you down, my dad and Dairine would grieve, yeah, but they’d applaud, too… because they’d find out soon enough that what I did lessened your clout in this part of the solar system.” Nita grinned. “You’ve underestimated me one time too many. Someone needs to teach you that this kind of behavior isn’t going to get you anywhere. I think today we’re the ones to do it.”
She turned as the Lone One lunged at her and tossed the kernel to Kit. He fielded it expertly.
“Nice little universe you’ve got here,” Kit said, tossing it up in front of him, and then Hacky Sacking it into the air a few more times, from his knee and elbow, and once from his head, while the Lone Power came toward him, a look of furious uncertainty on Its face. “It’d be a shame if something happened to it. Whoa!”
He flipped the kernel to Darryl. Darryl caught it, looked it over, and tossed it lightly in one hand.
The kernel, which had been glowing only softly while Nita and Kit had been holding it, now blazed like a star in the possession of its rightful master and creator.
“I’ve learned a lot from listening to the Silence for the past few months,” Darryl said. “About wizardry, and a lot of other things. But that hasn’t changed the fact that I haven’t lived long enough to be really attached to life. Maybe this is the other thing that makes wizards so powerful when they’re young. It’s not that we don’t know about death. It’s not that we don’t believe in it. It’s that we’re still able to let life go, if the price is right.”
He looked at the other two, looked in their eyes.
Nita nodded. She glanced at Kit.
Kit hesitated a moment… then set his jaw, and nodded, too.
The three of them looked at the Lone Power. It stood in the middle of them, trembling with rage… or with something else.
“You want to bargain,” It said.
“Our terms,” Darryl said. “Not yours.”
“What’s the price for my freedom?” It said at last.
“Once they leave, they stay unharmed,” Darryl said. “No more than your usual attentions in the future. If you refuse, you stay in here with me until I die… and I chase you around and around forever.”
It stood there, silent, brooding. “But you stay here, even if I go?” It said.
“This is
my world,” Darryl said. “Where else would I go? I’ll stay here.”
Nita and Kit looked at each other in shock.
“I can still make something of this place, with time,” Darryl said. “Everything has its price. I’ll stay.”
The Lone Power’s face was expressionless. “On the Oath, and in Life’s name, you say it?”
“Darryl!” Nita cried.
“Don’t!” Kit cried in the same moment.
“On my Oath,” Darryl said, very deliberately, “and in the One’s name, I say it.”
The Lone Power stood there, staring at the floor. Then, slowly, It began to smile.
“Fooled,” It said. “Fooled again.”
It started to chuckle. “You’ve bound yourself to my will after all,” It said. “What makes you think that just because you cast me out once, you can do it again? Manipulate your world’s kernel as you please. I have something better to manipulate. Entropy is my tool. I’ll wear away at the fringes of this place, at the edges of your life, until sooner or later you let your guard over the kernel’s parameters drop. I’ll be in here again within seconds. Then you’ll still be trapped here forever… and I’ll stay here with you, making every moment a torment, and reminding you every second of the rest of your life of the price of mocking the Eldest. Despair now, for you won’t have time later.”
“I’ll get around to the despair thing when I’m good and ready,” Darryl said. “Meantime, get your butt out of my world.”
It gave them an ironic bow. “Once again,” It said to Nita, “despite all the brave words, you’ve gotten someone else to save your little life at his expense. One of these days, someone will refuse you. I’ll be waiting for you then. And for you,” It said, glancing at Kit, “when she betrays you at last.”
“Out,” Darryl said.
It looked from one to another of them. But It looked hardest and most cruelly at Darryl. “Don’t get too comfortable here,” It said. “I’ll be along any day.”
And It was gone.
They stood there, in the sudden silence, staring at each other.
Then, as if by prearranged signal, they all began to laugh.
“Oh, Neets!” Kit said, and he grabbed her and swung her around. “What a bluff! You were terrific!”