by Диана Дуэйн
"So you remember that shield spell you showed me? The one that makes the air solid? If you change the quantities in the spell a little, you can use it for something else. To walk on, even. You just keep the air hard."
She couldn't keep from grinning. Kit stared at Nita as if she'd gone crazy. Are you suggesting that we walk out to the worldgate and—" He laughed. How are we going to get up there?" There's a heliport on top of the building," Nita said promptly. "They aon t use it for big helicopters any more, but the little ones still land, and there's an elevator in the building that goes right to the top. There's a restaurant up there too; my father had lunch with someone up there once. I bet we could do it."
Kit stared at her. "If you talk the air solid, you 're going to walk on it first! I sa* that spell; it's not that easy."
1 practiced it some. Come on, Kit, you want to waste the timeslide? It's J most ten now! It'll probably be years before these guys are finished digging. Let's do it!"
'They'll never let us up there," Kit said with conviction.
"Oh, yes, they will. They won't have a choice, because Fred'll make a diversion for us. We don't even need anything as big as a Learjet this time. How about it, Fred?"
Fred looked at them reluctantly. (I must admit I have been feeling an urge to burp—)
Kit still looked uncertain. "And when we get up there," he said, "all those stories up, and looking as if we're walking on nothing — what if somebody sees us?"
Nita laughed- "Who are they going to tell? And who's going to believe them?"
Kit nodded and then began to grin slowly too. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah! Let's go, it's getting late."
Back they went into Grand Central, straight across the main concourse this time and up one of the six escalators that led up to the lobby of the Pan Am Building. They paused just outside the revolving doors at the end of the escalators. The Pan Am lobby was a big place, pillared and walled and paved in dark granite, echoing with the sound of people hurrying in and out of the station. They went up the escalator to the next floor, and Nita pointed off to one side, indicating an elevator bank. One elevator had a sign standing by it: copter club — helipad level — express, Also standing by it was a bored-looking uniformed security guard.
"That's it," Nita said.
"So if we can just get him away from there…"
"It's not that simple." She pointed down at the end of the hall between two more banks of elevators. Another guard sat behind a large semicircular desk, watching a row of TV monitors.
"They've got cameras all over the place. We've got to get that guy out of there too. Fred, if you're going to do something, do it right between them. Out in front of that desk."
(Well,) Fred said, sounding interested, (let's see, let's see…) He damped his light down and floated off toward the elevators, nearly invisible unless you were looking for him, and even then looking like an unusually large speck of dust, nothing more. The dustmote stopped just between the desk and the elevator guard, hung in midair, and concentrated so fiercely that Nita and Kit could both feel it thirty feet away.
(T-hupt) bang!
"That'll get their attention," Kit muttered. It did; both the guards started at the noise, began looking around for the source of it — then both went very very slowly over to examine the large barrel cactus in a brass pot that had suddenly appeared in the middle of the shiny floor. "Now," Kit said, and took off toward the elevator with Nita close behind'
Both the guards had their backs turned, and Nita, passing them, saw the elevator keys hanging off one guard's belt. (Fred,) she said hurriedly, (can you erab those real fast, the way you grabbed my pen? Don't swallow them!)
(Once I might make that mistake,) Fred said, (but not twice.) As they slipped into the elevator Fred paused by the guard's belt, and the keys vanished without so much as a jingle. He sailed in to them. (How was that?)
(Great. Quick, Nita, close the door!)
She punched one of the elevator buttons and the doors slid shut; the keys appeared again, and Kit caught them in midair before they fell. "It's always one of these round ones, like they use on coin phones," he said, going through the keys. "Fred, I didn't know you could make live things!" (I didn't know either,) Fred said, sounding unsettled, (and I'm not sure I like it!)
"Here we go/' Kit said, and put one key into the elevator lock, turning it to run, and then pressed the button marked 73—restaurant — helipad. The elevator took off in a hurry; it was one of the highspeed sort.
Nita swallowed repeatedly to pop her ears. "Aren't you going to have to change the spells a little to compensate for the gate being up high now?" she said after a moment. "A little. You just put in the new height coordinate. Oops!"
The elevator began to slow down quickly, and Nita's stomach churned for a moment. She and Kit both pressed themselves against the sides of the elevator, so they wouldn't be immediately visible to anyone who might hap-pen to be standing right outside the door. But when the doors slid open, no one was there. They peered out and saw a long carpeted corridor with a plate-glass door at one end. Through it could be seen tables and chairs and, more dimly, through a window, a hazy view of the East Side skyline. A muffled sound of plates and silverware being handled came down the hall to them.
(It's early for lunch,) Nita said, relieved. (Let's go before someone sees us.) (What about these keys?) (Hmm…)
(Look, let's leave them in the elevator lock. That way the guard downstairs'll just think he left them there. If they discover they're missing they'll start looking for whoever took them — and this would be the first place they'd look.) Ueah, but how are we going to get down?)
Well walk on air,) Kit said, his voice teasing. Nita rolled her eyes at the eiling. (Or we'll go down with the people coming out from lunch, if that °esn t work. Let's just get out of here first, okay? Which way do we go to get on the heliport?). There are stairs.) slipped out of the elevator just as it chimed and its doors shut again—probably the guard had called it from downstairs. The corridor off to the left was featureless except for one door at its very end. helipad access, the door said in large red letters. Nita tried the knob, then let her hand fall in exasperation. (Locked, Crud!) (Well, wait a moment,) Kit said, and tried the knob himself. "You don't really want to be locked, do you?" he said aloud in the Speech, very quietly. Again Nita was amazed by how natural the wizards' language sounded when you heard it, and how nice it was to hear — as if, after being lost in a foreign country for a long time, someone should suddenly speak warmly to you in English. "You 've been locked for a couple of days now," Kit went on, his voice friendly and persuasive, not casting a spell, just talking—though in the Speech, the two were often dangerously close. "It must be pretty dull being locked, no one using you, no one paying any attention. Now we need to use you at least a couple of times this morning, so we thought we'd ask—" Kt-chk! said the lock, and the knob turned in Kit's hand. "Thank you,"he said. "We'll be back later." He went through the door into the stairwell, Nita and Fred following, and as the door swung to behind them and locked itself again, there was a decidedly friendly sound to the click. Kit grinned trium-phantly at Nita as they climbed the stairs. "How about that?"
"Not bad," Nita said, determined to learn how to do it herself, if possible, "You've been practicing too."
"Not really—some of this stuffjust seems to come naturally as you work with it more. My mother locked herself out of the car at the supermarket last week and I was pulling on the car door and talking at it — you know how you do when you're trying to get something to work. And then it worked. I almost fell over, the door came open so fast. It's the Speech that does it, I think. Everything loves to hear it." "Remember what Carl said, though."
"I know. I won't overdo it. You think we ought to call him later, let him know what happened to the gate?"
They came to the top of the stairs, paused before the next closed door, breathing hard from the exertion of climbing the stairs fast. "Probably hfi knows, if he's looked at his book thi
s morning," Nita said. "Look, before we do anything else, let's set the timeslide. This is a good place for it; we're out of sight. When we're tired of running around the city, we can just activate it and we'll be back here at quarter of eleven. Then we just go downstairs, int° Grand Central and downstairs to the shuttle, and then home in time for lunch."
"Sounds good." They began rummaging in their backpacks, and before too long had produced the eight and a half sugar cubes, the lithium-cadrniu"1 battery—a fat one, bigger than a D cell and far heavier — a specific grated-circuit chip salvaged from the innards of a dead pocket calculator, .. handle of a broken glass teacup. "You might want to back away a little, Fred s° y°ur emissions don't interfere with the spell," Kit said.
(Right.) Fred retreated high up into one ceiling-corner of the stairwell, flaring bright with interest. There was a brief smell of burning as he accidentally vaporized a cobweb. "All right," Kit said, thumbing through his manual to a page marked with bit of ripped-up newspaper, "here we go. This is a timeslide inauguration," he said aloud in the Speech. "Claudication type mesarrh-gimel-veignt-six, authorization group—" Nita swallowed, feeling the strangeness set in as it had during their first spell together, feeling the walls lean in to listen. But it was not a silence that fell this time. As Kit spoke, she became aware of a roaring away at the edge of her hearing and a blurring at the limits of her vision. Both effects grew and strengthened to the overwhelming point almost before she realized what was happening. And then it was too late. She was seeing and hearing everything that would happen for miles and miles around at quarter to eleven, as if the building were transparent, as if she had eyes that could pierce stone and ears that could hear a leaf fall blocks away. The words and thoughts of a million minds poured down on her in a roaring onslaught like a wave crashing down on a swimmer, and she was washed away, helpless. Too many sights, commonplace and strange, glad and frightening, jostled and crowded all around her, and squeezing her eyes shut made no difference—the sights were in her mind. I'll go crazy, I'll go crazy, stop it! But she was caught in the spell and couldn't budge. Stop it, oh, let it stop—
It stopped. She was staring at the floor between her and Kit as she had been doing when the flood of feelings swept over her. Everything was the same as it had been, except that the sugar was gone. Kit was looking at her in concern. "You all right?" he said. "You look a little green."
"Uh, yeah." Nita rubbed her head, which ached slightly as if with the memory of a very loud sound.
"What happened to the sugar?"
It went away. That means the spell took." Kit began gathering up the rest the materials and stowing them, He looked at her again. "Are you sure you're okay?"
Yeah, I'm fine." She got up, looked around restlessly. "C'mon, let's go."
K-'t got up too, shrugging into his backpack. "Yeah. Which way is the—" crack! went something against the door outside, and Nita's insides con-r'cted. She and Kit both threw themselves against the wall behind the door,
ere they would be hidden if it opened. For a few seconds neither of them Ad to breathe.
Nothing happened. was that?) Kit asked.
(I don't know. It sounded like a shot. Lord, Kit what if there's somebody up here with a gun or something—)
(What's a gun?) Fred said.
(You don't want to know,) Kit said. (Then again, if there was somebodv out there with a gun, I doubt they could hurt you. Fred, would you go out there and have a quick look around? See who's there?)
(Why not?) Fred floated down from the ceiling, looked the door over, put his light out, and slipped through the keyhole. For a little while there was silence, broken only by the faint faraway rattle of a helicopter going by, blocks away.
Then the lock glowed a little from inside, and Fred popped back in. (1 don't see anyone out there,) he said.
Kit looked at Nita. (Then what made that noise?)
She was as puzzled as he was. She shrugged. (Well, if Fred says there's nothing out there—)
(I suppose. But let's keep our eyes open.)
Kit coaxed the door open as he had the first one, and the three of them stepped cautiously out onto the roof.
Most of it was occupied by the helipad proper, the long wide expanse of bare tarmac ornamented with its big yellow square-and-H symbol and sur-rounded by blue low-intensity landing lights. At one end of the oblong pad was a small glass-walled building decorated with the Pan Am logo, a dis-tended orange windsock, and an anemometer, its three little cups spinning energetically in the brisk morning wind. Beyond the helipad, the roof was graveled, and various low-set ventilator stacks poked up here and there. A yard-high guardrail edged the roof. Rising up on all sides was Manhattan, a stony forest of buildings in all shapes and heights. To the west glimmered the Hudson River and the Palisades on the New Jersey side; on the other side of the building lay the East River and Brooklyn and Queens, veiled in mist and pinkish smog. The Sun would have felt warm if the wind had stopped blow-ing. No one was up there at all.
Nita took a few steps off the paved walkway that led to the little glass building and scuffed at the gravel suspiciously. "This wind is pretty stiff," she said. "Maybe a good gust of it caught some of this gravel and threw it at the door." But even as she said it, she didn't believe it.
"Maybe," Kit said. His voice made it plain that he didn't believe it either "Come on, let's find the gate."
"That side," Nita said, pointing south, where the building was wider. They headed toward the railing together, crunching across the gravel. Fred perche" on Nita's shoulder; she looked at him with affection. "Worried?" (No. But you are.)
"A little. That sound shook me up." She paused again, wondering if s"e heard something behind her. She turned. Nothing; the roof was bare. But still— Nita turned back and hurried to catch up with Kit, who was looking back at her.
"Something?"
"I don't know. I doubt it. You know how you see things out of the corner Of your eye,
movements that aren't there? I thought maybe the door moved a little."
"I don't know about you," Kit said, "but I'm not going to turn my back on anything while I'm up here. Fred, keep your eyes open." Kit paused by the railing, examining the ledge below it,
maybe six feet wide, then looked up again. "On second thought, do you have eyes?" (I don't know,) Fred said, confused but courteous as always. (Do you have chelicerae?) "Good question," Nita said, a touch nervously. "Kit, let's do this and get out of here." He nodded, unslung his pack, and laid the aspirin, pine cone, and fork on the gravel by the railing. Nita got out the rowan wand and dropped it with the other materials, while Kit went through his book again, stopping at another marked spot. "Okay," he said after a moment. "This is an imaging-and-patency spell for a. temporospatial claudication, asdekh class. Purpose: retrieval of an accidentally internalized object, matter-energy quotient…" Kit read a long string of syllables, a description in the Speech of Nita's pen, followed by another symbol group that meant Fred and described the proper-ties of the little personal worldgate that kept his great mass at a great dis-tance.
Nita held her breath, waiting for another onslaught of uncanny feelings, but none ensued. When Kit stopped reading and the spell turned her loose, it was almost a surprise to see, hanging there in the air, the thing they had been looking for. Puckered, roughly oblong, vaguely radiant, an eight-foot scar on the sky; the worldgate, about a hundred feet out from the edge where they stood and maybe thirty feet below the heliport level. 'Well," Kit said then, sounding very pleased with himself. "There we are. And it looks all right, not much different from the description in the book." Now all we have to do is get to it." Nita picked up the rowan wand, wnich for the second part of the spell would serve as a key to get the pen through the worldgate and out of Fred. She tucked the wand into her belt, leaned on the railing, and looked out at the air.
According to the wizards' manual, air, like the other elements, had a "lemory and could be convinced in the Speech to revert to something it had eeji
before. It was this memory of being locked in stone as oxides or nitrates, 'frozen solid in the deeps of space, that made the air harden briefly for the eAding spell. Nita started that spell in its simplest form and then went on into a more formal one, as much a reminiscence as a convincing — she talked to the air about the old days when starlight wouldn't twinkle because there was nothing to make it do so, and when every shadow was sharp as a razor and distances didn't look distant because there was no air to soften theirj. The immobility came down around her as the spell began to say itself alone with Nita, matching her cadence. She kept her eyes closed, not looking, for fear something that should be happening might not be. Slowly with her words she began to shape the hardening air into an oblong, pushing it out through the other, thinner air she wasn't including in the spell. It's working better than usual, faster, she thought. Maybe it's all the smog here — this air's half solid already. She kept talking.
Kit whispered something, but she couldn't make out what and didn't want to try. "/know it's a strain, being solid these days," she whispered in the Speech, "but just for a little while, lust to make a walkway out to that puckered place in the sky, then you can relax. Nothing too thick, lust strong enough to walk on—" "Nita. Nita!"
The sound of her name in the Speech caught her attention. She opened her eyes. Arrow-straight, sloping down from the lower curb of the railing between her and Kit, the air had gone hard. There was dirt and smog trapped in it, making the sudden walkway more translucent than transparent — but there was no mistaking it for anything but air. It had a more delicate, fragile look than any glass ever could, no matter how thin. The walkway ran smooth and even all the way out to the worldgate, widening beneath it into room enough for two to stand. "Wow!" Nita said, sagging against the railing and rubbing at her eyes as she let the spell go. She was tired; the spelling was a strain — and that feeling of nervousness left over from the loud noise outside the stairwell came back. She glanced over her shoulder again, wondering just what she was looking for.
