Comet Fall (Wine of the Gods)

by Pam Uphoff

  With luck Arty would get his brains unfrozen and either help, or at least add some survival art. No one was in sight outside. He listened. Ask and Gre were at Rip Crossing. And all the children. Probably Rustle. She's nearly as hard to find as she was as a child. Was that enough of an adrenaline rush that Rustle could jump them all there, or did she bubble them and use the corridors?

  He didn't want to show Arty the corridors, so he jumped to the Earthers' Gate Camp and used those corridors to get to the Rip, then walked to the hot springs in the canyon beyond the witches houses. Where Rustle has made a home, where she has strong enough recognition to grab everyone and bring them here.

  " . . . and I think he was trying to wrap me up for an exhibit, so I'm not going to apologize for stealing his horses." Rustle turned around and looked relieved to see him. "If I hadn't been in such a hurry, I'd have grabbed just the kids instead of everything. Was he trying to wrap me up?"

  "Yes." The Aulf Wulf cleared his throat, to get rid of what even he could hear was a very threatening growl. "We'll have to keep an eye on him. See if he gets better or worse." Wrap Rustle up safe, somewhere. Get myself killed by a pissed off witch . . .

  Rustle twitched. "What was that?"

  "He just moved his building."

  Rustle listened carefully, then blushed. "Didn't disturb the witches a bit, but Lefty's cussing up a storm. Oscar and Bran were peeking inside . . ."

  The Aulf Wulf laughed. "Just as Art moved. I don't know how those two manage things like that."

  "Mom! He wants to be my horsie!" Xen was sitting on the lead horse of the four yearlings. "Dad? I want to get him out but I don't see how."

  The Auld Wulf grinned as the little boy frowned and concentrated hard. "See this little rough spot here? That's where the bubble sealed. Watch, I'll take off the first layer. Scrape at it, and when it rips you can peel it all the way back."

  Xen physically and mentally scraped it, and grabbed it and pulled with a will, and it suddenly popped. The dark coppery yearling snorted and put all four feet to the ground for the first time in fourteen hundred years. He pranced in place, and tossed his head, all without jiggling the boy on his back. "His name is Pyrite, because he's not really gold colored like the rest of them. I want him to meet Phantom."

  Rustle looked blank for a long moment. "Umm, Phantom and the Terrible Twins ought to be in the big barns. I've been meaning to check the weather up on the plains. We left the Wagon at Old Town, in case we needed any more iron. I ought to take the Twins and bring it back. I'd go check, but I really don't have a good recognition spot there."

  "May I?" the Auld Wulf held out a hand and jumped them to their campsite below the rusted chunks and hints of walls.

  The Traveler's wagon was still there. The air was still chilly, but there was no snow on the ground. "I travelled the stuff the Army ordered. Then Verse and Whoop went into labor, and I haven't found the time to bring the wagon home."

  "Do you have the time to bother, right now? I could move it, if you don't want to waste the time."

  "Actually, being far away from everything might be good. I . . . have been doing those dimensional exercises, and noticed something. I've wanted to experiment, and now might be the right time. No distractions. May I show you what I am wondering about?"

  "Of course."

  She sank down into her usual cross-legged meditation pose.

  "What I was noticing about the Earther's gate, are these things." Rustle had her eyes closed, and she poked at something that wasn't a bubble, but looked more like a cone. "They're like tops, or little whirlwinds. Once you start looking for them, they're all over the place. Not as many as there are bubbles, but . . . watch. They seem to stick to things, see this sheet? They come and go, all the time. They bring to mind all the descriptions of the Earther's gate. Which I never got back to really study. I was wondering if we could manipulate these things enough to open a gate, not to a World like Earth, but one nearby. One just different enough that the comet is going to miss it."

  "I . . . never paid any attention to them. They are a little bit like what gates look like from the outside. Whirlpools. But not attached to anything. And gates are more like a doubled whirlpool."

  She could see a ghostly hand about the size of the top reach out and touch one, jerk back instantly. "It's spinning. Fast."

  "The spin bounces them away from those sheet things. I wonder if they'd stick if we stopped them?" She reached out herself, mentally wrapping a hand gently around a bubble, and maneuvering it over to the nearest top. She bumped the top several times with the bubble, and the top wobbled and slowed. She pushed it over to a sheet, dimmly glimpsed in the fog of bubbles. She suddenly realized that it was huge, a mountain looming suddenly out of a fog bank. She poked it with the tip of the top, but it was indifferent to it.

  :: Turn it around. With gates, it's the broad end that touches the world. :: the Auld Wulf suggested.

  She turned it and it tried to spin again, but stopped when it bumped into the sheet. She released it and it stuck there. The Auld Wulf grabbed the point carefully and tugged. It stayed attached. She reached for it . . . and everything faded. She flopped back in the hard rock, shivering, weak. She fumbled out her little flask of that wine, and took a sip. Crawled over to the Auld Wulf, as he sat up shakily.

  "That was more work than it looked like." He took a swig. "Better." He eyed the flask as he climbed to his feet. "But perhaps, not the best idea."

  "Oh. I like the idea, you're the one with inhibitions . . . " She stood up and stepped closer.

  He caught her as she reached for him, kissed her as he sank back down to the ground, and they were both fumbling with belts and boots and pants.

  And they were both laughing. "Oh, that was undignified." "Hasty." "Scared the poor horses."

  Or would have if there had been any around.

  No matter. Dinner before anything else. Fortunately there was plenty still in the wagon, no hunting required.

  Rustle leaned on him. "I don't suppose I could persuade you to take a long slow horse powered trip?"

  "What? You mean, take our time? Just clomp along?" He wrapped himself around her hungrily. "I thought we were in the middle of an emergency?"

  "We are, so I really really need to work out some things about these gates. And practice long distance manipulations, without interruptions. I had an idea." She nestled in comfortably. "And this way, I'm in charge of the main distraction. Although maybe just until that tiny little bit of wine wears off. And no doubt people will still call us eight times a day."

  "Hmm, and Xen and his new horse?"

  "He was gelded, like Sun Gold. So he can be a kid's horse for another ten or fifteen years. At some point Nil will no doubt inveigle Xen into helping with the never ending breeding project." She reached out mentally, just skimming the surface thoughts of the distant boy. "At the moment, Xen is taking him on a tour of the neighborhood, no saddle or bridle, talking a mile a minute." She reached deeper, to talk to Ask.

  "Ask is going to stay in the Rip Crossing Inn with all the kids until Verse and Whoop come home. She says she'll send Phantom and the Twins out to me—that horse has gotten quite a reputation."

  "With cause."

  "We're finished in New Tokyo, aren't we?"

  "Yep. All the gods are accounted for, except Chance, and he's around somewhere. Turned up in Scoone eight hundred years ago. Dydit's mother birded him."

  "So, he's my grandfather? Does Dad know?" Rustle unclipped the wagon's doors and climbed in.

  The Auld Wulf looked in. "Perfect for two. I think driving back is an excellent idea."

  ***

  On the third day, Rustle stirred out of a meditative trance at the rattle of stones and stood up to pet Phantom as he led his girlfriends into camp. They were shaggy with winter coats still unshed. "That was a fast trip, don't you like being a wild horse?"

  He shook his head and looked suggestively at the wagon.

  "No oats, eh?"

  Nod. />
  Wolf laughed and grabbed brushes while she doled out oats.

  Then back to work.

  :: If it is something akin to a corridor . . . Or, since it looks like one end of a gate, maybe we need two of them? Where's another one? :: She looked around, hunted through the bubbles, and bumped another one over to the first. She slowed its spin also, and touched the tails together. They bumped past each other with supreme indifference, but the first tail started twisting slightly, and she bumped the second top until its tail spun slowly in the opposite direction. Now they twisted and tangled, and she pulled, and failed to separate them.

  :: Over here. There's another sheet right behind us. If we pull . . . ::

  The top of the second top stuck to the new sheet. It sat there, immobile.

  :: Well. That was unspectacular. :: she flinched at a sudden pain and lost her dimensional sight, and shot out of her meditation state, one hand to her sword.

  Phantom had her shirt and a pinch of skin in his teeth and was dragging her across the ground. He let her go as she got her feet under her. "What the hell do . . . you . . . "

  She bolted forward to grab the Auld Wulf as he pulled himself awake, inches away from what could only be a gate.

  Phantom snorted and danced and shook his head threateningly at the foggy circle. Like most things, the size translated poorly from the dimensional view to the real. The gate was only a bit smaller than the Earth people's gate. But it lacked the energetic lights and movement of their gate. Bright fog swirled slowly. Phantom shoved her away from it.

  "Quit that." She looked around. "I suppose the twins bolted?"

  Phantom laid his ears back and snorted at the gate.

  "They didn't!" She stared into the fog. "Neigh to them."

  She winced as he neighed practically in her ear. She thought she heard answering whinnies.

  The Auld Wulf walked up with a bucket, and poured a measure of oats into it. Shook it.

  "Terrible! Twin! Oats!" Phantom neighed again, and a dark splotch formed in the fogs and trotted out, a brown and white pinto, followed by another. They were chewing the long grass sticking out of their mouths, luscious green growth they certainly hadn't found in the middle of this lava strip. Rustle reached out and pulled a stem from Twin's mouth. It was strange stuff, with four strings of seeds at the tip of a long stem.

  "Gamma Grass," the Auld Wulf commented.

  "Where does it grow? I've never seen it before."

  "It's a pretty common . . . Earth plant. Now that you mention it . . . I don't know when I've last seen any."

  They both looked at the gate.

  "I'll go, and you can rescue me."

  "No," the Auld Wulf said. "You're better at figuring out the dimensional stuff. I'll go and you can rescue me." He stepped through the gate.

  Rustle shifted uneasily, but he came right back. Grinning.

  "Any change?" he asked.

  "No, it seemed perfectly stable. I want to look at it from the other side too, and we should see how long it lasts."

  "And we should catch the mares, before they disappear forever—there are rolling hills of grass as far as I can see over there."

  They explored the far side, examined the gate, poked and prodded it for two days. It was a stable, open door to a beautiful—and empty—world.

  "No birds, no animals, no animals that depend on animals, no mosquitoes, even." He pointed out.

  "I recognized all the constellations, but Never said that she recognized them from Earth." Rustle frowned. "The Moon was in the same phase, but it was just a bit wrong, turned just a bit, I think."

  "Could it have gotten hit instead of the World?" the Aulf Wulf frowned at the gate, still open without effort on their part. "Or maybe they were both hit hard, and all the animals killed."

  "Tomorrow, let's see if we can make another one, one to a different sheet. And then we can think about disassembly, and reassembly in a better location."

  ***

  Havi grinned as he spotted Deal all over Richie. The young man had proven to be irresistible to the women of Rip Crossing. Right now he and Deal were picking peaches a great deal slower than one would usually expect. Fortunately Richie was an enthusiastic worker, and was pulling his weight with no problem. They'd split up the fields on paper, if not always on the ground, and everyone knew who owned which square mile. Any slackers had found that they had trouble getting reciprocal help with their own land, although frankly there'd been very little of that. Rustle's square was all pasture. She and the witches produced all their metal goods, and Rustle traveled people and goods all over. Ask, Verse and Whoop had all contributed to the witch daughter's mixed lands, with their orchards, gardens and pastures, and they turned out for sowing, harvest and haying. Not to mention the stone fences, and the immense Inn down in the Rip. So no problem there.

  Lazy goat boys were his only 'problem' and they were getting so clever with magic, cutting crops, especially hay that one could hardly accuse them of laziness.

  He'd have to talk to the god about buying into the township. They could sell him a square and start developing it. They didn't really need any more crop land, as a whole, but if Richie had no particular sort of farming he'd like to try, they could just fence more pasture. Who knew what an actual Old God might be able to do? Definitely an asset to hang onto.

  He fussed at the long drawn out town. It had seemed like a good idea at the time to do a double row of sections, with the road down the middle. That way anyone who wanted to expand could just take the section behind theirs. But it made for a settled area twenty-eight miles long by four miles wide. They'd all built toward the middle, but still it was fourteen miles from the furthest Witches houses to the school, which made it terribly inconvenient. Once the kids were older, they'd ride in themselves, like he and Rustle had. At the moment, little Xen on that yearling was a bit scary. Okay, technically the boy was almost six, but he was sized like a three or four year old. And nowhere in sight, at the moment.

  He looked out at the clomp of hooves, and spotted the Traveler's wagon coming down the road. He carried his basket of fruit to the end of the row.

  "Hey, can that be my sister? You take the slow route home?"

  He spotted Phantom, being ridden by the Auld Wulf, with Xen on Pyrite beside him.

  "Ah, that's where he'd gone off to. I might have known."

  "Yep. He was suppose to tell someone, but like as not he told one of the dogs. Hi, Richie, the girls dragged you home did they?" The Auld Wulf's eyes twinkled.

  The other god draped himself over the fence. "Yeah, I fought long and hard, but they got me in the end. Where did you get all these gorgeous young women?"

  The Terrible Twins protested the stop, so close to home. "I'll be back," Rustle promised, and let them move out. The Auld Wulf swung off Phantom and let him follow. "Go on Xen, see where your Mom wants to put all the horses."

  He grinned back at Richie, "Rustle said she thought you'd fit in."

  Richie snorted in amusement. "Let's see, orgy on the beach, five guys, five girls, four days. Travel to Ash and drop off three girls, long fond farewell. Travel to Rip Crossing and pick up three girls and four guys and compare various hot springs, three days. Travel to Summer Camp, home of fourteen more women and ten guys . . . and none of these women are married. Half of them want to get pregnant. The other half are pregnant, and still hot. They have no qualms about sharing, including just joining right in . . . Wolf, I think I've had more sex in three weeks than in my entire other almost four hundred years of conscious life." He hopped the fence and slung an arm familiarly around the other god's neck. "So, how are we going to save the World? There is no way a comet is going to be allowed near Rip Crossing."

  "There are several options. The scariest one is waiting until the comet is close enough that we can try to push it. Since it is closing in on the World at about seventy-five thousand miles per hour that will give us about six hours to slow it and push it south enough to miss, assuming the witches can affect it
from lunar distance, which is far from assured.

  "The next option is to shield as much, and as many people as we can, like we did last time. And if we overdo it, like Arty, we risk not being released for a very long time.

  "Then there's a trick Rustle and I came up with—mainly Rustle, smart woman. She can open gates to very nearby Worlds. What we need to do is shanghai the Earth Astronomers and see if we can identify one of those Worlds that the Comet is going to miss, and move as many people as possible to that World.

  "Or we ask the Earth people for help—and you can bet it'll have a big price tag. And frankly they don't seem to be listening."

  Havi bit his lip and looked around. "Can we do some of each? Shield some areas, move some people to those other worlds, send some people to Earth, and still try to shift the Comet?"

  The Auld Wulf blinked. "Of course. No need for one option to exclude others. I think I'll go study their gate again. Maybe we can figure out how they steer it."

  Chapter Thirty-two

  1375 Mid Summer

  Gate Camp, Asia

  "Never's report emphasized that most of the mechanism was on the far side, that this is just a 'stabilizer' or a 'location lock.' They call it an anchor." The Auld Wulf prowled around the big vertical ring of metal and ceramics. It was inside a thin building on the west side of the army camp. Today the doors were wide open. According to their usual schedule, the gate should be opening at any time.

  Dydit nodded. "Yes, we remember their adventures with the clarity of past terror. Wretched women."

  Sparks ran across the ring, and sucked down into a spiral that ignored the presence of the back of the building as it reached out and joined up with a violent, sucking tornado that reached for them.

  Lefty bumped the Auld Wulf over to the side as a colored streak compacted itself into a truck driving out of the hole. Five of them came through, and then two tanker trucks, an armored gyp and a normal gyp with a red flag. The out bound traffic drove into the whirlpool, stretching and twisting.