by Diane Duane
"Oh, my God," he said. "Nita, Dairine, I'm so sorry. This started happening when?" "Yesterday afternoon."
Tom sat down at the table. "Please," he said, gesturing them to seats across from him. "And you say they've got the scans done already. That helps." He looked up then. "It also explains something Carl noticed an hour or so ago..."
Carl had just said good-bye to the Alpheccan, who had vanished most expertly, without even enough disturbance of the air to rustle the curtains. "Yeah, I thought that was you earlier," Carl said, coming over to sit down at the table and looking at Dairine. "It had your signature, with that kind of power expenditure. But something went real wrong, didn't it?"
"It didn't work," Dairine said softly.
"There are only about twenty reasons why it shouldn't have," Carl said, sounding dry. "Inadequate preparation, no concrete circle when so many variables were involved, insufficiently defined intervention locus in both volume and tissue type, other unprotected living entities in the field of possible effects, inadequate protection for the wizardry against 'materials' memory of past traumas in the area; shall I go on? Major screwup, Dairine. I expect better of you." He was frowning.
Nita tried to remember if she'd ever seen Carl frown before, and failed, and got the shivers. "I thought I could just^zx it," Dairine said, looking pale. "I mean—I've done that kind of thing before."
Carl shook his head. "Yes, but you can't go on that way forever. Your power levels are down nine, maybe ten points from mid-Ordeal levels. That's just as it should be. But hasn't it occurred to you that there's another problem? You started very big. This is a small wizardry by comparison—and you haven't yet mastered the reduction in scale to make you much good at the small stuff. Sorry, Dairine, but that's the price you pay for such a spectacular debut. Right now Nita's the only one in your house who's got the kind of control to attempt any kind of intervention on your mother at all. You're going to have to let her handle it. And I warn you not to interfere in whatever intervention Nita may elect. It could kill all three of you. It's going to be hard for you to sit on your hands and watch, but that's just what you're going to have to do."
"It's not fair," Dairine whispered.
"No," said Tom. "So let's agree that it's not, then move past that to some kind of solution. If indeed there is one."
"//'"Nita said.
Tom looked at her steadily, an expression inviting her to calm herself down. "Maybe a Coke or something?" Carl said.
"Please," Nita said. Carl got up to get the drinks. To Tom, Nita said, "I was doing a lot of reading this morning. I kept running into references to spells that had to do with cancer being difficult because the condition is 'intractable,' or 'recalcitrant.'" She shook her head. "I don't get it. A spell always works."
"Except when the problem keeps reconstructing itself afterward," Tom said, "in a different shape. It's like that intervention you and Kit were working on, the Jones Inlet business. If the pollution coming out of the inner waters was always the same, the wizardry would be easy to build. But it's changing all the time."
Nita grimaced. "Yeah, well," she said, "I blew a whole lot of time on detail work on that one, and the spell worked just fine without it. I think I'm having a lame-brain week." She rubbed her face. "Just when I most seriously don't need one!"
"There's not much point in beating yourself up about that right now," Tom said. "The foundations of the wizardry were sound, and it did the job, which is what counts. And you may be able to recycle the subroutines for something else eventually."
Carl came back with four bottles of Coke, distributed them, and sat down. He exchanged glances with Tom for a second longer than absolutely necessary, as information passed from mind to mind.
"Oh boy," Carl said. "Nita, Tom's right. The basic problem is the structure of the malignancy itself—"
"Look, let's take this from the top," Tom said. "Otherwise there are going to be more misunderstandings." He held out his hand, and a compact version of his manual dropped into it. He put it down on the table and started leafing through it. "You've done some medical wizardry in the past," he said to Nita.
"Yeah. Minor healings. Some not so minor."
Tom nodded. "Tissue regeneration is fairly simple," he said. "Naturally there's always a price. Blood, either in actual form or expressed by your agreement to suffer the square of the pain you're intending to heal—that's the normal arrangement. But when you start involving nonhuman life in the healing, things get complicated."
Nita blinked. "Excuse me? My mother was human the last time I looked!"
Carl gave Tom an ironic look. "What my distracted colleague here means is that it's not just your mother you have to heal, but also whatever's attacking her. If you don't heal the cause of the tumor or the cancer, it just comes back somewhere else, in some worse form."
"What could be worse than a brain tumor?!" Dairine said.
"Don't ask," Tom said, still leafing through the manual. "There are too many ways the Lone Power could answer that question." He glanced up then. "Your main problem is that cancer cells are tough for wizards to treat because they're neither all inanimate nor all biological life. They're a hybrid.. .which causes problems when trying to write a spell that will eradicate them without hurting normal cells. It's exactly the same thing that makes chemotherapy slightly dangerous. It poisons the good cells as well as the bad ones unless it's very carefully managed."
"The other part of the problem," Carl said, "is that the viruses and malignant cells mutate as they spread. That makes cancer as intractable for wizards to treat as for doctors. Even if you could wave your hands in the air and say, 'Disease go away!' all you can do is make the disease go away that's there today. After that, all it takes is one virus that you missed, hidden away in just one cell somewhere, to start breeding again. They get smarter and nastier after an incomplete eradication. What comes back will kill you faster than what was there originally. Worse, you can never get them all. A spell complex enough to do that, accurately naming and describing each and every cell, and what you think might be hiding in it, would take you years to write. By which time..." He shook his head.
"I thought maybe you did spells like that," Nita said in a small voice.
Tom smiled, even though the smile was sad. "That's a much higher compliment than I deserve. No, a wizardry that complex is well beyond my competence... which is a shame, because if it wasn't, I wouldn't rest by day or night until I had it for you."
Nita gulped.
"A lot of wizards have spent a lot of time on this one, Nita," said Carl. "There are ways to attempt a cure, but the price is high. If it weren't, there wouldn't be much cancer; we'd be stomping it out with ease wherever we found it. As it is, look at the world around you, and see how far we've got."
That thought wasn't one she cared for. "You say there are ways to 'attempt' a cure," Nita said. "It sounds like it doesn't work very often."
"That's because of the most basic part of the problem," Carl said. "It leaves us, in some ways, even less able to do anything than the medical people. We're wizards. Viruses, though they're not exactly organic life, are life regardless. And we cannot just go around killing things without dealing with the consequences, at every level."
"Oh, come onl" Dairine said.
"Not at all," Carl said. "Where do you draw the line, Dairine? Where in the Oath does it say, Til protect this life over here but not that one, which is just a germ and happens to be annoying me at the moment?' There's no such dichotomy. You respect all life, or none of it. Of course, that doesn't mean that wizards never kill. But killing increases entropy locally, and it's always to be resisted. Sometimes, yes, you must kill in order to save another life. But you must first make your peace with the life-form you're killing."
"If I'm just going to be killing a bunch of viruses," Nita said, "I should be able to manage that."
Carl shook his head. "It may not be so easy. Viruses have their own worldview: 'Reproduce at any cost.' Which also can mean 'k
ill your host.' In dealing with that kind of thing, a wizard is handicapped right from the start."
"Blame the Speech," Tom said. "It's the basis on which every wizardry is predicated... but here, it's also our weak spot, if this is a weakness. Everything that lives knows the Speech and can use it to tell you how life feels for it, how its universe makes it behave..."
Nita stared at the table, her heart sinking. Tom was right. It was hard to be angry at something—a rock, a tree—that you could hear saying to you, This is how I'm made; it's not my fault; you see how the world is, the way things are; what else can I do? And for the simplest things—and viruses are about as simple as things get—it would be hard to explain to them why they shouldn't be doing this, why they should all just stop reproducing themselves and essentially commit suicide so that your mother didn't have to die. Their world was such a simple one, it wouldn't allow for much in the way of—
Nita's eyes went wide.
She slowly looked up from the table at Tom. "What about— Tom, is it possible to change a cancer virus's perception of the world—change the way the universe seems for them, is for them—so that they're more sentient? So that a wizard could deal with them to best effect? Talk them out of being there... talk them out of killing? Something like that?"
Tom and Carl looked at each other. Tom's look was dubious. But Carl's expression was strangely intrigued. He nodded slowly.
"You know the rules," he said. "'If they're old enough to ask...'" "'... they're old enough to be told.'"
Tom folded his hands and looked at them. "Nita," he said, "I couldn't ask about this before. Who are you thinking of doing this wizardry for? Your mother or you?"
Nita sat silent, then she opened her mouth.
"Don't," Carl said. "You're still in shock; you can't possibly have a clear answer to the question yet. You're going to have to find out as you do your work. But the question matters. Wizardry, finally, is about service to other beings. Our own needs come second. If you start fooling yourself about that, the deception is going to go straight to the heart of any spell you write, and ruin it. And maybe you as well."
"Okay," Tom said. "Let that rest for the moment." To Nita he said, "Are you clear about what you're suggesting you want to do?"
"I guess it would mean changing the way things behave in the universe, locally," Nita said. "Inside my mom." And she gulped. When she put it that way, it suddenly became clear how many, many ways there were to screw it up.
"Changing the structure of the universe itself," Tom said. "Yes. You get to play God on a local level." "You're going to tell me that it's seriously dangerous," Nita said, "and the price is awful."
"Anything worth having demands a commensurate price," Carl said. "What is your mother's life worth to you?... And yes, this option has dangers. But I see that's not likely to stop you in the present situation."
He leaned back a little in his chair, folding his arms, looking at Nita. "We have to warn you clearly," Carl said. "You think you've been through a lot in your career so far. I have news for you. You haven't yet played with anything like this. When you start altering the natural laws of universes, it's like throwing a rock into a pond. Ripples spread, and the first thing in the local system to be affected, the first thing the ripples hit, is you. You're going to need practice handling that, keeping yourself as you are in the face of everything changing, before trying it for real... and unfortunately, in this universe, everything is for real."
"I don't care," Nita said. "If there's a chance I might be able to save my mom, I have to try. What do I need to do?"
"Go somewhere it's not for real," Carl said. "One of the universes where you can practice." Nita stared at him, confused. "Like learning to fly a plane in a simulator?"
"It wouldn't be a simulation," Tom said. "It'll be real enough. As Carl said, figures of speech aside, it's always for real. But if you have to make mistakes while you're learning how to manipulate local changes in universal structure, there are places set aside where you can make them and not kill anybody in the process."
"Or where, if you kill yourself making one of those mistakes, you won't take anyone else with you," said Carl.
There was a moment's silence at that. "Where?" Nita said. "I want to go."
"Of course you do, right this minute," Carl said, rubbing his face. "It's going to take time to set up." "There may not be a lot of time, Carl! My mom—"
"Is not going to die today, or tomorrow," Tom said, "as far as the doctors can tell. Isn't that so?"
"Yes, but—" Nita stopped. For a moment she had been ready to shout that they weren't being very considerate of her. But that would have been untrue. As her Senior wizards, their job was to be tough with her when she needed it. Anything else would have been really inconsiderate.
"Good," Carl said. "Get a grip. You're going to need it, where you're going. The aschetic continua, the 'prac- I tice' universes, are flexible places—at least the early ones in the sequence—but if you indulge yourself in sloppy thinking while you're in one, it can be fatal."
"Where are they?" Nita said. "How do I get there?"
"It's a worldgating," Tom said. "Nonstandard, but you'd be using existing gates." He glanced at Carl. "Penn Station?"
"Penn's down right now. It'd have to be Grand Central."
Nita nodded; she had a fair amount of experience with the worldgates there. "What do I do when I get there?"
"Your manual will have most of the details," Carl said. "You'll practice changing the natures and rules of the nonpopulated spaces that the course makes available to you. You'll start with easy ones, then move up to universes that more strenuously resist your efforts to change them, then ones that will be almost impossible to change."
"It's like weight lifting," Nita said. "Light stuff first, then heavier." "In a way."
"When you finish the course," Tom said, "if you've done it correctly, you'll be in a position to come back and recast your mother's physical situation as an alternate universe... and change its rules. If you still want to."
If? Nita decided not to press the point. She'd noticed over time that sometimes Tom and Carl spent a lot of effort warning you about things that weren't going to happen. "Yes. I want to do it."
Tom and Carl looked at each other. "All right," Tom said. "You're going to have to construct a carrying matrix for the spells you'll take with you—sort of a wizardry backpack. Normally you'd read the manual and construct the spells you need, on the spot, but that won't work where you're going. In the practice universes, time runs at different speeds, so the manual can be unpredictable about updating... and you can't wait for it when you're in the middle of some wizardry where speed of execution is crucial. Your manual will have details on what the matrix needs to do. What it looks like is up to you."
"And one last thing," Carl said. He looked sad but also stern. "If you go forward on this course, there's going to come a time when you're going to have to ask your mother whether this is a price she wants you to pay."
"I know that," Nita said. "I'm used to asking my mom for permission for stuff. I don't think this'll be a problem." She looked up at them. "But what is the price?"
Tom shook his head. "You'll find out as you go along." "Yeah," Nita said. "Okay. I'll get started as soon as I get home."
And then, to Nita's complete shock, she broke down and began to cry. Tom and Carl sat quietly and let her, while Dairine sat there looking stricken. After a moment Tom got up and got Nita a tissue, and she blew her nose and wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said, "that keeps happening all of a sudden."
"Don't be sorry," Tom said. "It's normal. And so is not giving up."
She sniffed once or twice more and then nodded.
"Go do what you have to," Tom said. She and Dairine got up. "And Nita," Carl said. On her way to the front door, she looked back at him.
"Be careful," Carl said. "There are occupational hazards to being a god."
Sunday Afternoon and Evening
NITA AND DAIRINE
WALKED home, and Nita went up to her room and settled in to work. The moment she sat down at her desk, she saw that her manual already had several new sections in it, subsequent to the usual one that dealt with worldgatings and other spatial and temporal dislocations.
The first new section had general information about the practice universes: their history, their locations relative to the hundreds of thousands of known alternate universes, their qualities. They're playpens, Nita thought as she read. Places where the structure that holds science to matter, and wizardry to both of them, has some squish to it; where the hard corners on things aren't so hard, so you can stretch your muscles and find out how to exploit the squish that exists elsewhere. There was no concrete data about how the practice universes had been established, but they were very old, having apparently been sealed off to prevent settlement at a time almost too ancient to be conceived. One of the Powers That Be, or Someone higher up, foresaw the need.
While it was useful that no one lived in those universes to get hurt by wizards twisting natural laws around, there seemed to be a downside as well. You couldn't stay in them for long. The manual got emphatic about the need not to exceed the assigned duration of scheduled sessions—
Universes not permanently inhabited by intelligent life have only a limited toleration for the presence of sentients. The behavior of local physics within these universes can become skewed or deranged when overloaded by too many sentient-hours of use in a given period. In extreme cases such over-inhabition can cause an aschetic continuum to implode—
Boy, there's a 'welcome I won't overstay, Nita thought, though not without a moment's curiosity about what it was like inside a universe when it imploded. Something to get Dairine to investigate, maybe. Nita managed just a flicker of a grim smile at the thought.
Access scheduling is arranged through manual functions from the originating universe. Payment for the gating is determined by duration spent in the aschesocontinuum and deducted from the practitioner at the end of each session. Access is through local main-line gating facilities of complexity level XI or better; the gating type is a diazo-Riemannian timeslide, which, regardless of duration spent in the aschetic continuum, returns practitioners to the originating universe an average of +.10 planetary rotations along duration axis, variation +/- .005 rotation.
