Pickering returned to his desk to work through his thoughts. Comet -- whatever her name really was -- had cried herself out and talked rationally about what she'd seen. Perhaps `rational' was too strong a word, given how unbelievable her words had been; `coherent' might be more to the point. Finally she began to doze off. He had replaced her shredded T- shirt, outfitting her with one of his pajama tops, and gotten her off to her bed. Now he would set down what he'd heard, records stored off-site in encrypted form.
Such obvious safety precautions were mandatory. This situation could be an
elaborate blackmail scheme. If one believed
Comet's story, one would believe that she was from another world, a world
almost identical to this one, a world so close that the language was the same,
the city names were the same, half the buildings were the same, but at the same
time people could fly and read minds. That conclusion was patently absurd.
There are, Pickering recalled, only 
or 
stars in the galaxy,
and rather fewer visible galaxies than there are stars in our own Milky Way.
The likelihood of such a planetary duplication occurring by chance was
negligible. Comet's story could not be true.
A hoax, the children being either runaways or actors and actresses hired for a practical joke, seemed overcomplicated. The original landing might have been a trick, the children supported by wires lowered by a dirigible hidden in overhanging clouds. The obvious pair of friends did have the resources for such a stunt. The safety factor appeared unacceptable for child actors who could not have used stunt doubles. However, Eclipse and Comet had both flown in this very room, behind the most extensive security system in the state. There was no possibility that someone had hidden wires here. A stage magician had explained to him the usual carnival mind-reading stunts. Aurora's demonstration was far more elegant and seemed impossible to fake. Pi beginning 3.1415 might have been guessed, but he'd started well in from 3. Eclipse had known his inner reaction to Aurora's success. Besides, he'd heard their voices speaking within his mind, at the same moment that his ears insisted that the room was quiet. Telzey's recordings confirmed his memories. Her tapes stored every word spoken in the library. Wherever he remembered a telepathic exchange, there was silence in her acoustic recording.
The fuss over Washington could be a fake, TV pickups being sabotaged, though overlaying six TV channels with hoax broadcasts, different on each channel, would not be inexpensive. The same pair of friends had the needed resources. He had now been called twice by his contacts in Washington, people he knew well. Each described the attack, their details matching the TV films. The missile they described was remarkably similar to Comet in flight. Of course, his callers could have been parties to the hoax, but using the scrambled dedicated line for a hoax would land someone in trouble. Even stretching things a great deaql, a simple hoax seemed implausible. An old murder-mystery principle brought clarification: was there a woman or money involved? Not a woman, surely, but he did have money. Could it be a plot, someone trying to prove that he was insane to separate him from his wealth? Such things had been done. He would have to be very careful to record everything in a way that proved he was sane and never believed Comet's stories. The record would show him playing along with a practical joke. Whenever the special effect appeared impossible to fake, the magic phrases `laser hologram projector' and `metallized aerosols' would be invoked.
Suppose the children were what they appeared to be, namely people with unusual talents. Where had they come from? He had a small group of very strange acquaintances. The acquaintances knew Earth was not home; they were from elsewhere. These children expected to go home to Boston. Comet appeared to be acutely upset that her Boston was not to be found. There were then two issues: where did the children get their powers, and where did they get their ideas about geography?
Aurora's telepathy was seriously inconsistent with modern science. There were perfectly solid group-theoretic proofs that nature didn't have room for additional long-range forces, such as the one needed to explain telepathy. Flight was in principle lawful, but where was the momentum going? A wormhole could simulate teleportation, but his library manifestly had not been shredded by the associated tidal forces.
Rumor said that the New Empire of the Great Inca, or whatever they were calling themselves this week, had unconventional weapons. Could these children be examples? Certainly no one had expected the Empire to conquer Peru overnight until the evening they stormed every major city in the country. Nor, four years later, had they been been expected to win the war they had provoked, overrunning Bolivia, Equador, Columbia, and Chile in a few days while America was lost in the impeachment crisis. Why, though, would the Great Inca be interested in him? His inventions were well-described in patents; licenses were readily available. Indeed, the Empire appeared to be scrupulous about paying him royalties, unlike three dozen other so-called countries he could name. There was no rational reason to suspect the New Empire.
Pickering continued to ponder alternatives. Having eliminated the obvious ways in which the children could be from this earth, he was left with the possibility that the children were not from this earth, or were from an earth that had been changed. That was the message Comet had given him for her friends; `someone changed the world, and we need to fix it'. Pickering had slight reservations about Comet's ideas for `fixing' a world. If Comet, et al. succeeded, his world would disappear; he might cease to exist.
It seemed more reasonable that someone had tampered with the children than with an entire planet. The children might be not human at all. They might from someplace completely different, and have been given false memories. Why, though, should children from wherever have been given memories that were consistently slightly wrong? Why give them memories of a Roger's Institution and not an MIT? What motive would lead to children with consistent wrong memories? Malice? Confuse the five of them so that they finally suicided, or did some mischief? This might work in a story, but not in real life. Incredibly convoluted plots seldom turned out as their designers planned. Once the children became confused, as was now the case, their acts would be virtually unpredictable.
Pickering tried to summarize his wanderings. A hoax might be a practical joke or a blackmail attempt. If the children had real talents, they might be deceived or lying about their background. If they were telling the truth about their background, they might be from another world, or they might be returning to a world that had been manipulated by time travellers. Of course, there were also fantasy possibilities. For example, they might be illusions or fugitives from near-parallel timelines.
Pickering entered notes in Telzey, both his remarks showing he knew that the children were a hoax, and his hypothetical notes, prefaced ``If I had fallen for this practical joke, I would ...''. The latter, prefatory remarks deleted, would be his gift to whichever friends had made the joke. A few phone calls to the local police established further cover. No one had reported that their children were missing. He left a description of the children with the police, neglecting to explain where they were now. His words implied that he might be able to find them again if anyone was interested.
If the children had run away, and the parents complained that they had not been reached immediately, he would wrap himself in the cloth of piety. He would claim he had given the children shelter, an opportunity to telephone their parents, and had sought to turn their minds to their duty to return to their family, a duty they were more likely to perform if they did not feel that every adult threatened them. Besides, they had fallen into a lake. Turning them away might have risked their lives. No matter what was happening, he would be prepared. A variety of outcomes threatened his physical or legal safety; adequate contingency planning shielded against each of them.
* * * *
Far later, a trail of night lamps brought Cloud through Pickering's darkened house. He remembered foggily where he was, if not how he'd gotten to his bed. There came to him a weave of voices, his and hers, so faint they could not be understood. Was it Alex? The male voice was an adult. Who was the other? Comet? Eclipse, up to her usual no good, the little -- well, not so little, remembered Cloud, she's taller than you -- minx? Cloud reached a doorway. Pickering sat at his desk, his face uplit by the polychrome glow of a CRT, the remainder of the room too dark to see. The wall beyond Pickering was glass, the view being up into the starry sky, out across gardens with crocusses reduced to ghosts, or down to a barely seen lake. Perhaps the slightest gleam made a line between sky and distant hills.
``Good morning, Cloud,'' said Pickering. He spoke the name without looking over his shoulder.
``Hi, Alex. Is it almost morning? I'm, I didn't want to bother you. I didn't want to wake anyone up. But I got real hungry. I couldn't find the kitchen,'' apologized Cloud.
``Perfectly natural. This is a large house. Would you like more light? I prefer to see stars while I'm working, but some people find them distracting,'' Pickering noted amiably.
``I don't want to bother your company,'' Cloud answered.
``There's no one here but us, Cloud.'' Pickering gestured across the desk. The room sprang to full brilliance. Cloud gasped in surprise. He had entered a library crammed with books, maps, filing cabinets, and incomprehensible brilliant-colored boxes. A complete floor and two mezzanines of white-painted wood ended in an arched ceiling. On the ground level, a great walnut table was flanked by a half-dozen armchairs. Pickering's desk was on the lower mezzanine, an island thrusting forward from one wall to give spectacular views of lake and sky. Of Pickering's other guest, the woman Cloud had heard, there was no sign.
Cloud approached Pickering to a comfortable distance and sat. For a moment, Pickering gave him an odd look which swiftly faded into his usual smile. ``Where's Comet?'' asked Cloud. ``Did she go somewhere? It must have been hours that I was asleep.''
``The three of you fell completely asleep, so completely I had to carry Star and Aurora to bed. It's five in the morning; Comet went flying and returned after midnight.'' That boy, thought Pickering, is sitting on thin air. Furthermore, he's not using the trick for any obvious purpose; apparently I'm not supposed to find it unusual. We pretend to know this is a practical joke; let us play along with the joke.
``I told her before dinner to wake me up if I fell asleep! Why didn't she? I told her what to do. I said we were going to leave,'' said Cloud.
``I think she could not have awakened you, short of tossing you into the lake,'' explained Pickering. ``Maybe not then. Eclipse carried you to bed. She seems to have real muscle for a girl her age.''
``Eclipse carried me to bed? Did she drop me twice?'' Cloud's voice dripped sarcasm.
``You know, for a group of children running away together you really hate each other, some of you. She seems to care about you four, though she knows it's not reciprocated. After all, she and Aurora rescued Comet,'' noted Pickering.
``Rescued? Is Comet in trouble?'' asked Cloud. Worry lined his face. ``Is she GR? What can I do?''
``She is sound asleep. I had to talk her down first. That took until two in the morning. She was in tears. I let her talk. I'm not good at listening. Not to children. I've never had children, and Comet was terrified. Would you like something to eat?''
``Food?'' Cloud sounded enthusiastic. ``Great! What happened to Comet? But, I've really got to get everyone up and go home.''
Pickering looked grim. ``Go home? You're free to leave, but your home is not -- accessible. Comet recorded a message to you.''
``I can't get there? Why not? All we've got to do is fly northeast!'' pronounced Cloud.
``Comet tried that. A Boston suburb, I gather?'' observed Pickering, searching the boy's face for a response. ``She failed. She reached Boston and Washington. But not your Boston, not your Washington. She reached my Boston and my Washington.''
``Huh?'' asked a baffled Cloud.
``She tried to go home,'' said Pickering. ``Her house was there, filled with strangers. She stopped at the place you'd call RTI. The buildings were different; the school's name was wrong. Wrong to her -- I've always known The Other School On The Other Coast as MIT. She went to Washington. Washington thought she was a cruise missile, and tried to shoot her down.''
``Shoot her down? Comet? What's wrong with FedCorps? She's practically their mascot,'' answered a disbelieving Cloud.
Pickering activated the wall display, sending video disc paging back to the news broadcast. Once again, Comet flew over Washington to meet a hail of gunfire. ``Aurora and Eclipse rescued Comet, brought her back, and healed her. Your FedCorps isn't mad at Comet. My Washington didn't know what a ball of light with glittery tail might be, except that it appeared to be headed at our most sensitive government buildings.''
``Where was FedCorps? I can't do mentalics myself, but Comet is as nice a person as you meet. Why didn't anyone look into her mind and see she was friendly?'' complained Cloud.
``My Washington has no telepaths,'' said Pickering. ``There aren't any. Comet thinks someone played tricks with time, reached back into the past and changed the world. Sometime after you left Earth for the Eye of Mars, wherever that is. I confess a disbelief in time travel. However, the world you left doesn't exist any more. Not here.'' Pickering took in Cloud's frown. ``I have the same objections to time travel that you do. Let's get you something to eat, and we can talk.''
* * * *
They sat in the breakfast room, Cloud taking polite bites from a ham and cheese sandwich while waiting for the pot to heat for tea. Cloud had listened to Comet's tape message with growing astonishment. Now he was reduced to passive eating while he adjusted to her words.
``...so that's what Comet and Eclipse told me,'' said Pickering. ``I understand that you and Eclipse don't see eye-to-eye, but Comet says she saw the same things Eclipse did.''
``It's Eclipse's opinions I don't like. Her morals,'' said Cloud, ``She hasn't got any. None! Eclipse's facts? I never caught her lying. Go back to Comet in Washington. They shot at her. The film showed guns and rockets. Where were your public personas? If someone did that over my Washington, he'd have a stack of personas flying after him and he'd have rammed the civic force field on the way out. On video there's no one in the sky. Except Comet. No civic force field.'' I don't, decided Cloud, believe this. It just does not make sense.
``Force field? I've heard rumors the Empire -- the New Incan Empire, so- called -- can put invisible walls in the air. I imagine our Air Force scrambled aircraft to shoot Comet down.''
``No! Not airplanes. Personas are people like me, defending their country,'' repeated Cloud.
``Personae? Comet kept using that word,'' Pickering answered.
``Yeah!''
``For hypothesis, someone changed your world into mine.'' Pickering paused. ``In my world, a persona is something you -- steer(?) in a game-by-rule (?). Comet said those were the words. We'd say `rolegame'. In your world, the five of you are personae. Or do you say `personas'?''
``Either. Eclipse'd say personae. It's the fancy plural, like we still spoke Latin or Atlanticean like they did three thousand years ago, instead of Modern English. Most people say `personas','' said Cloud.
``Atlanticean?'' asked Pickering.
``Atlanticea? From Atlantis. They spoke it there. You see it on ancient ruins. I took it in school as my third language, instead of Latin.''
``I see,'' said Pickering. ``Except Atlantis is a fairy tale.'' Cloud boggled. ``In any event, personas: Comet flies, Aurora reads minds, you hover, Eclipse teleports. Star does something. Do you each do other things? I saw Aurora heal Comet.''
``That's what personas are. People with gifts. Gifts! You know, flight, telepathy, teleportation?'' He caught a baffled gleam in Pickering's eye. ``GR, mayhaps you don't know. So what do you call a mentalist? Someone who reads minds? Someone like Aurora or Eclipse.''
``We call them charlatans. Hoaxters. Frauds,'' Pickering opened. `` `Teleport' is a word in tales of the fantastic. Did I describe your powers correctly?''
``Our gifts? I make things heavy or light, call fog and cloud and lightning. Star is a blaster, like that ray gadget that hit Comet. It works the other way; his screens are almost unbreakable once he's called them. Comet flies, and she's real fast. Aurora does telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience. Oh, Eclipse. You said she teleported?''
``The girls agreed,'' answered Pickering. ``Here to Washington and back, and not moving when she returned. I gather that's difficult when the midpoint was moving sixty miles a second? The kinetic energy involved, three of them and that speed, matches a tenth-kiloton explosion.''
``Difficult? Impossible?'' Cloud swallowed. He didn't want to hear that Eclipse could teleport, no matter that it made a member of his League sound utterly frigid. He reminded himself that Eclipse wasn't in the Greater Medford Persona League. She was only Comet's friend. ``Most personas, their gifts are in a group. Star does light and energy. Most things I do are in clouds. Aurora does mind tricks. Eclipse flies, blasts, reads minds, ... She's best at finding excuses not to risk her oh-so-precious neck.'' Cloud smiled at making a joke at Eclipse's expense. ``She does what she wants. That's why we're all mad at her. That's why Manjukuo put a hundred tons of gold on her head.''
``Manjukuo?'' Pickering stretched his memories. ``There's been no such country in fifty years. A hundred tons of gold? For a twelve-year-old girl? What did she do?'' Pickering felt unconvinced. Eclipse seemed to have healthy, mature personality. Why did the other children so hate her?
``Eclipse got the Namestone, the Heavensgate. People have been trying to take it out of the Maze for thousands of years. She got it, and kept it herself, and won't let people use it, even after the League of Nations and the High Programmers told her to,'' said Cloud. ``She's greedy and stubborn.''
``One thing at a time?'' asked Pickering. ``Comet said your world had lots of personae, some weak, some incredibly powerful. She said history mentions personae as far back as you have history. We have no history of personae, except fairy tales and religious myths. So you're clearly not from my world, however loud and often you say you are. Comet didn't take history seriously.''
``What good is history? If it made sense you'd study history -- old history, not modern history -- in school. In college you could even major in history. You'd memorize all the Emperors of Rome, the Grand Marshals of Marik, all that stuff. But you can't do a history major. There's no such thing. My big brother -- he's in college -- he told me about majors.'' Cloud suddenly stopped, recognizing he'd said more than he wished about his family.
``Your schools don't teach ancient history?'' the older man asked in surprise.
``Your schools do?'' Cloud responded. They nodded at each other. ``Bizarre!'' continued Cloud. ``Eclipse'll love that. She thinks history is good for something. That's a weird idea, even for her. Even her being a girl. Let's stay with personas. What do you do to criminals? How do you fight wars? Or don't you have wars?'' Cloud tried to imagine how the world could work, if there were no gifts or personas to wield them.
``There's a constabulary,'' said Pickering. ``Policemen. Sheriffs. State Troopers. They arrest criminals. An army and a navy and an air force. They fight wars. That's who shot at Comet. The Army. I gather you have policemen and armies, too.''
``Yeah. Armies. Bailiffs. But what if the crooks are ...Oh! No personas. No criminals who tear bank vaults in half. No League of Terror and Injustice, ah, League of Terran Justice. How do you fight space invaders?'' wondered Cloud.
``We don't have -- if you ask experts, the virtually unanimous concensus is that there is no evidence for the existence of any sentient species other than our own. A saucer cultist would disagree.'' Alex made his answer slowly and carefully, choosing every word with care.
``Hmm! We've been invaded. Several times. If someone changed history, they changed lots of things, not just the Brahmins winning the last All-League Series,'' said Cloud.
``There comes a point at which a hypothesis becomes so complex that radical alternatives must be considered,'' said Pickering.
``Of course!'' Cloud agreed emphatically. Whatever Alex meant, it sounded so profound it had to be true. ``Such as what?'' Now if only Alex could repeat his last suggestion, mayhaps in Modern English this time?
``Well,'' continued Pickering as he prepared tea, set out a trivet and mugs, and searched out sugar and milk, ``my first reaction was that the five of you were a hoax. Or runaways. But you aren't runaways -- Telzey and I checked carefully. Your parents might not have told the police that you fly, so we looked for reports of missing, non-flying children. However, you did a series of things that are impossible to fake. Flight. Comet over Washington. Mind-reading. The teleport step could have been tampering with my computer. `Hoax' seems unlikely.'' In any event, thought Pickering, I am pretending to believe the five of them, so that if this is a very expensive practical joke it won't have fallen flat.
``A hoax? Who's Telzey?'' Cloud helped himself to another sandwich.
``Hoax. You could all be actors and actresses paid to dress oddly, pretending to be people from comic books -- UltraGirl's friends -- as a gentle practical joke on an old man. Oh. Telzey is my home's other permanent resident. You heard her talking. She's not a person. She's an electronic being,'' answered Pickering.
Cloud felt his hair rise as looked over his shoulder. Nothing was there. ``Telzey is an artificial intelligence? A disembodied cyborg? Meet them all the time. But I'm not a hoax.''
``I accept that. Comet's caused far too much trouble for a hoax. Indeed, if things get much worse I may have to toss her out of bed,'' said Pickering apologetically.
``Is it something I can do instead? Please?'' Cloud's tone was totally serious. ``If she was rude, she was dog-tired. Please forgive her. Please? She's always real polite. If you want us to go, we go, but Comet really earned her sleep. Even before what happened in Washington.''
``Oh. No. Not bad manners. Not something you did here. You've all been fine guests. A credit to your parents. Comet's flight over Washington frightened my government. Badly. I've been phoned by Washington thrice now. If things keep going, we may have a general war in another day or two.''
Cloud stared aghast at the ceiling. Comet might have started a war? He kept nibbling at his sandwich, pausing once and again to sip carob tea.
``Is it fair to ask,'' said Pickering, ``where you thought you were going, when you came here? Why you're away from your parents? Why you hate Eclipse?''
``Mmph,'' Cloud swallowed another section of sandwich. ``We were going home. I tried to save the world. I didn't, I think. Comet ran out of steam at the end. I should have stopped her on the way, made her take a rest. I didn't. I broke our falls. Eclipse? She stole the Namestone and kept it for herself.''
``I've heard that said before. Lesser Maze. Namestone. Kept it for herself.'' Pickering settled himself in his chair.
``St. Brendan's Island is in the Atlantic, north of the Bermudas. The Lesser Maze is there. I guess not now, since you've never heard of the Maze. The Maze is full of walls, tunnels, and deadly traps. Creatures that eat armies. The tomb of its creator is inside. In his hands lay his Precious, the Glorious Namestone. With the Namestone you could create Utopia, bring Heaven on Earth. But you had to get the Namestone to use it,'' answered Cloud.
``This was difficult? When you can fly? Teleport to the tomb? Line up warships and bombard?'' wondered Pickering.
``People tried that. After the Great War, the British lost a fleet of battleships. Cortez, the guy who conquered Mexico, lost a big army. von Kranwitz sent German personas, first league types. One of them got out alive. The Maze repairs itself. If you teleport in, you end up someplace else. You've got to walk the Maze.''
``I see,'' said Pickering.
``So Eclipse did it. She took the Maze, by herself, and grabbed the Namestone.''
Pickering tried to fill in the rest of the story. ``And she told people she had this rock. And was retaining personal control over its applications.''
``She didn't need to tell,'' said Cloud. ``When she took the Namestone, the Maze caused a Solar eclipse everywhere, all at once. She got asked for the Stone, politely. She wouldn't even use it herself the way other people wanted, except there was this school in East Dakota she turned to marble and gold with diamond windows. The Grand Master of Tibet went on video. All across the world. He begged her for it. A billion people were watching. She said if people wanted Utopia, they should make it themselves. The honest way: hard working. Then the League of Nations went after her. I told her to hand it over before they got angry. She wouldn't listen. Not even to me. She told the League to fire off. That took real frigidkeit. She walked into the Peace Palace in Geneva, filled with a hundred kings and princes and presidents, all their persona bodyguards, every video and tesla net in the world. She told them `no'. Politely -- she's always polite.'' He took another sip of tea. ''But 'No.' ''
``They made her a criminal,'' Cloud continued. ``The League invented a new crime. Just for her. `Crimes Against the Future', it's called. Manjukuo put the gold on her head. A ton for each pound she weighs. I think they rounded up. The French put up the Mona Lisa. `All' you have to do is grab her and recover the Namestone. Of course, FedCorps and half the persona leagues in the world are totally mad at her. They had members die in the Maze while they watched on video. The Maze sent out pictures of people trying and dying to make people afraid. Eclipse walked the Maze, all alone, when she was all of twelve. Barely. She came out, Namestone in her hands, with this big grin on her face, like the Maze was no great trade.''
``The maze broadcasts televisions? It's hundreds of years old, and knows raster standards?'' Something was not quite right, thought Pickering.
``In 2003, for Eclipse, it did video. Ultravideo in the USA, of course. When the British lost their battleships, it was tesla broadcasts. Every edison theatre in the world found a newsreel in the projection booth, half an hour after it happened. When Cortes lost an army, a day later this book appeared in libraries, showing the whole thing complete with woodcuts of the dragons and basilisks,'' explained Cloud.
``I see,'' said Pickering. ``Dragons. Basilisks. Does Eclipse commonly steal things?''
``Eclipse? It wasn't stealing, not exactly, `cause the Namestone was a prize. But everyone assumed they'd get to use it when someone got it. They didn't.''
``So is she a good person? Not counting the Namestone,'' Pickering inquired.
``Ask me if von Kranwitz was good, if you don't count murdering the Jews and Poles and starting the war. I admit she's good to us, except in the Tunnels. And Aurora keeps saying she was GR there, too. Aurora's real bright; I trust her even though she's a girl. I've got to think.'' He yawned deeply. ``The four of us have to talk. Your cities aren't getting eaten by sky octopi, are they?'' Pickering shook his head. ``Mayhaps I did it, after all.'' He yawned again. ``Now I just have to find home. That's my most important duty -- take care of my League, all three of them. Home's got to be here someplace.'' Eyelids sagging, he let Pickering lead him back to his bed.
* * * * *
Awake! Gasping for breath, heart hammering against her rib cage, Eclipse shuddered into consciousness. For minutes she stared at her pillow, trying to descend from the heights of total panic. ``You won,'' she whispered to herself. ``You won. That's not what happened. You won.'' Memories tore through churning remnants of dreams, setting down the night terror. Gradually her breathing slowed, her pulse beating less and less insistently against her skull.
*?* A thought tinged with Aurora's mindset touched Eclipse. *Eclipse? What's wrong?*
``I,'' *I, don't worry. Only a dream,* answered Eclipse, choking down a gasp for air, still more focused on her fear than on Aurora's voice.
*What happened? That was only a dream? I woke up,* said Aurora.
*Lesser Maze.* For an instant Eclipse had been back in the Maze, locked in hand-to-hand combat with one of its guardians. The trap was power and its undisciplined use. Any gift she invoked would be available at doubled level to the Guardian. The choice of contest was hers; the requirement was to win by drawing on natural strengths and skills. In the last century, an American Master of Games, cheated of his opportunity to play for the world chess championship, had come to this room, knowing his life was the forfeit for defeat. He crushed the defender over the chessboard, and taunted the World Champion to try the same.
Hand-to-hand against a man a foot taller and twice her weight sounded impossible to third parties. No, she told them, say `interesting' or `challenging'. She drew on skills with Sarnathi hand- fighting. A Sarnathi trader had always to appear unarmed but never be without weapons. He had pinned her against a wall. A desperate twist let her reach a boot and withdraw its steel shank, edges polished to razor sharpness. The rules gave them both the same garb -- but that only helped if you knew the garb's uses. He -- it? -- made a grab for his own feet, then shuddered in death as she drove the steel up under his ribcage, piercing his heart.
In the dream, her move failed, boots staying perpetually just out of reach, leaving her to be battered through unconsciousness into death.
*That was the Maze?* asked Aurora. *You did that?*
*That was a piece. A small piece. Messy, not the worst. I have dreams. -- Oh, drat! I woke you up. Was I broadcasting, Aurora? All I need, half the world chasing me,* No need to tell her it's another world out there. *is to set `come hither' beacons if I dream.*
*Broadcast? Mentalic? No, not at all. We shook hands to be a League, remember? Right before the Eye? I can tell if Brian or Trisha or Cloud are in trouble, no matter what. It works for you, too. If you're close and not hiding. It's not telepathy, it's a tap. I know where they are. With you I only know something's wrong. Your screens are polished steel.*
*Oh, right. You told me. I didn't understand. My fault,* apologized Eclipse.
*You want me to stop? Mayhaps I should've stopped already?* Her tone carried the apology she dared not speak.
*Don't apologize. Aurora?* Eclipse's thoughts swirled around her, warm and comforting as a mother's hug. *You're fine. You're great. Keep it until we get home.* An introspective pause. *Well, jettison the tap if someone serious is chasing me? Mayhaps you can't track me through a tap, but [meaningful shrug].*
*Are you GR now? For sure? I get bad dreams, too. After Sao Paulo I saw sky octopusses every night. Reaching for me. I woke up. I couldn't call Dad. He'd ask what I'd been dreaming. And why. He'd learn I'm a persona. So I had to be brave. Keep very quiet. Or wake up Trisha.* said Aurora.
*Oh, Aurora! That's terrible. You were very brave to lie there quiet,* responded Eclipse, her thoughts warmly sympathetic.
*I hid under blankets. So nothing could see me. I guess that doesn't work, does it? I hid anyway. Once I was too frightened. I woke up Trisha,* added Aurora guiltily.
*Quiet's GR. Once I woke up screaming,'' said Eclipse. ``Top of my lungs. That was the solid shadows. I scared Gwen -- you've never met my cat -- I spent half an hour cuddling her so she could sleep. But I'm GR. Now.* It was even true. Aurora had distracted her from her own horror, letting breath and pulse slow. Her memories -- the triumphant instant when her blade sank its own length into the Guardian's chest -- had supplanted nightmares. *Thanks a lot. Sleep well.*
*You, too. Sleep tight. Good night.* Aurora was immediately sound asleep. Eclipse rolled over and stretched, searching for a position that triggered a few less aches and pains. A week here, never calling a gift, would be fine.