Sunshaker's War (16 page)

“Right,” Calvin said. “But we've talked about this, about my lady's idea that the sun's probably the same for all the Worlds, or at least how the suns of all the Worlds hereabout are probably interrelated, kinda like shadows of each other, and how in our World the earth moves, not the sun. So it was probably
Galunlati
that was moved then. I know over on our side small differences in the tilt of a planet can make a major difference in its weather.”

The discussion that followed was one of the strangest Calvin had ever had. He had explained something of conventional cosmology to Uki before, and the shaman more or less understood it, though he had trouble with the terminology, which did not translate too well. The gist of it was that Calvin's World was the primary World, or at least the most complete one, and its sun was therefore the primary sun—but that there were others, visible in adjoining Worlds like Galunlati or Faerie—suns which probably occupied the same part of space/time occasionally, but not always, rather like a multiple star with the secondaries in other Worlds—except that they occasionally all collapsed back together and occupied the same space but in different dimensions. Sol's gravity was strongest, though, and its solar system was complete with fully realized planets.

But Sandy had theorized more, had decided that gravity might not be confined to one's own universe, but might pass through what Dave called the World Walls and influence other Worlds as well. Thus, while Earth was round, the Worlds that clustered about it did not have to be, as long as Earth remained to anchor them. It was rather like bits of wet paper dropped upon a globe: they held their own shape and substance, but depended on the globe to
hold them and give them strength. Certainly Galunlati was not complete, at least not in the sense Earth was—this Uki had told him. There were places where one could literally walk to the edge and find nothing beyond, though Uki thought the Land as a whole was slowly growing, which also seemed logical to Calvin, if Galunlati was still drawing mass to itself, as all incomplete Worlds probably did.

The part that was hardest to get across though, was the theory Sandy had come up with to explain Straight Tracks. Basically, her thinking was that a large mass like the sun produced gravity “waves” which inevitably encountered the gravity produced by other heavenly bodies as well—and by extension, heavenly bodies in other Worlds. Those interfaces made the waves focus into strips like the “lines” where soap bubbles joined together, and these were the Tracks—essentially accretions of concentrated gravity. Where a bunch of Tracks intersected, mass began to accumulate and eventually formed Worlds—but they still needed the gravity of a large body—like the Earth—to keep them together, otherwise they might start to decay.

“So Galunlati actually depends on your Land for survival? I do not like this,” Uki mused thoughtfully when their discussion had finally wound down. “Yet I think such a thing could be. It would explain much about the differences between the Lands as I perceive them.”

“But not the problem with the sun, I gather.”

The lines in Uki's brow grew even deeper. “Unless something is
changing
the amount of this…
gravity
Nunda Igeyi produces, and that change is tugging Galunlati back and forth. We are smaller than your Land, after all, while Nunda Igeyi is doubtless the same as your own.”

“But what about the pull of our World?” Calvin inserted. “Seems like it would attract Galunlati more than the sun
—either
sun.”

“Hmmm, yes, an interesting notion: Galunlati caught between the pull of two Lands. The problem is how to stop it, for if what you say is true, Galunlati may soon cease to exist. It may burn up—that is what we feared. But if I understand this gravity right, Galunlati could be torn apart as well.”

“Jesus,” Calvin whispered slowly.

“What we must do,” Uki said, “is to find out what is causing Nunda Igeyi to shake and how to stop it. First, though, there is something I must show you.”

Calvin watched silently as Uki removed a pouch from his beaded belt and drew out an earthen jar from which he shook a transparent crystal about the size of his closed fist. A single line of red ran through it from one side to the other, like the septum of a papaya. Calvin recognized it immediately as an ulunsuti. He'd worked with this one once or twice before, usually to help Uki check on the weather in the more distant parts of Wahala, the Quarter that was effectively his kingdom. It had other uses as well, but Calvin had mostly heard of them, not been witness. This should be interesting.

Uki placed the ulunsuti between them on the sand, the wide end exactly centering the Power Wheel. Though Calvin knew what was supposed to happen next, he swallowed nervously.

“Fear is to be overcome, not denied,” Uki told him. “Were you not fearful, you would not truly be a man.”

Calvin nodded and stretched out his arm. Uki took it gently, and Calvin tried to watch without flinching as the shaman drew blood from his palm with an obsidian knife, before handing the blade to him to reciprocate on Uki. Eyes locked with each other's, they lowered their bloody hands to the talisman.

Light flared there, but it was cool light, though Calvin could feel warmth flowing out of the crystal, linking them in some uncanny way.

“Now go into trance,” Uki whispered. “When you are ready, gaze at the ulunsuti and follow where I lead.”

“Right,” Calvin replied softly, and closed his eyes, focusing only on his breathing, letting each breath go longer and deeper, inhaling through his mouth and exhaling more slowly through his nose. He felt himself start to go under, felt his eyes sliding back in his head, and with great effort opened them again.

The blazing crystal filled the world, but very quickly his vision narrowed to the line of red at its center. And then he was falling into it, further and further, only distantly aware of the touch of Uki's mind.

Suddenly he was somewhere else. It was dark at first, but then the darkness was lit by countless hazy spheres—one of which swam nearer, and he saw that it was itself made up of a seeming infinity of glowing, shifting strands. He stared at it and became aware that it was twinned—no
triplicated—
no, that there was a whole
series
of spheres and half-spheres and fragmentary spheres, some of them superimposed upon each other, others overlapping, others standing alone at a little distance, each made of filaments of a different color but connected to those of all the others as well. And then he looked beyond the spheres and saw straight lines of light flowing out from the spheres to make a vast webwork like a three dimensional fiber-optic spiderweb a-glimmer in the black. At places those lines crossed, and made brighter spots, and sometimes they merged with those spun from several spheres and made very bright spots indeed. One of those intrigued him, and he willed himself closer, saw that it was also a sphere of white, but that threads of red flowed into it from one of the other spheres, so that the white sphere had a splotch of red on one side, and then he saw lines of gold coming in from another of the overlapping spheres, and saw that they joined into several splotches. He understood—he thought.

And with that realization, he was back in the Power Wheel.

“God Almighty,” he gasped.

“You have seen what few men have,” Uki told him. “You have seen the pattern of the Lands.”

“And the white's ours, right? And the red's, maybe Galunlati, so the gold must be…”

“What you call Faerie. But now enter the ulunsuti once more, for I would show you another marvel.”

Calvin swallowed and slipped back into trance. This time Uki took him close to what he supposed was the sun of Galunlati, though he could sense the greater strength of the nearby earthly sun as well. But now Uki brought him near one of the strands of red that reached from that sun
to
Galunlati, and Calvin saw that it did not run straight, but kept bowing and shifting out of true, rather like the wavelengths in a string. They swept toward the sun again, and then were inside it, and Calvin could see a thousand tiny filaments reaching from a golden sphere there to shake the red. Uki brought him nearer yet, then carried him along a golden strand back to the sphere that was the earth, until suddenly they could go no further.

Again Calvin returned to himself. He stared at Uki curiously, too stunned to speak.

“I have shown you as much as I can,” Uki said. “Something disturbs Nunda Igeyi—the red threads you saw; yet the disturbance does not come from our Land or from your Land. It comes from that place that lies on the
other
side of your Land from this. What I would have you do is find out what is causing it.”

“How?” Calvin wondered. “Why can't you find out here?”

“Because though the ulunsuti can show us the pattern of the Lands, it can only
look
into those, like yours, that lie beside it, which Faerie does not. I therefore ask that you use the ulunsuti I gave to your friend Alec McLean to spy into the Lands that I cannot reach and see if the source of this disturbance can be found there.”

“Hold—” Calvin cried, looking down and shaking his head. “This is too much, I've gotta think.”

“Think then,” Uki told him, “but do not think long, for the fate of three Lands may depend on your finding out what is shaking Nunda Igeyi.”

“Yeah, I know,” Calvin groaned. “It's just—just a lot to have to swallow all at once. But I'll see what I can do. And now I think of it, I bet this has something to do with the weather in my World as well.”

“I have no doubt,” Uki said. “For weather depends on very little things indeed: dust, the weight of the air, the direction of the wind…”

“And magic?” Calvin smiled.

“If you wish,” Uki replied. “And now I think it is time you were gone. If you learn aught, return here; I will be waiting with eagerness.” He fished in another pouch and produced an uktena scale identical to that Calvin had burned to arrive there.

Calvin took it and pulled out his cigarette lighter, but Uki shook his head. “The old way would be better.”

“Whatever,” Calvin grunted apprehensively, and stood. At a sign from Uki, Calvin squared his shoulders and closed his eyes, and at a word, he raised the scale above his head, clutching a point with either hand.

Uki clapped his hands a certain way, and Calvin had only time to feel the air go still and thin and cold when a bolt of lightning stabbed down from the heavens to engulf the scale—and spread to enfold him as well, consuming him with the familiar agony.

Before he could even gasp, he was standing once more in the center of his Power Wheel. It looked exactly the same as before, except that the sky was lighter. By the length of the long tree shadows and the filigree of red on their topmost branches, he guessed it was almost dawn.

Sandy met him halfway to the cabin: a tall figure in denim and plaid taking shape from a remnant of mist.

“You look like death,” she said. “I was just coming to look for you.”

“I
feel
like death too,” he sighed. “And you couldn't have found me until just now.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Coffee's on.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist. “Good. And then I'd best be goin'.”

“Going where?”

“Down to Georgia—to try to save the world.”

A low chuckle. “Damn, and I've still got papers to grade!”

“I'll be back, love, never fear. And then we've gotta do a lot of talkin'. I may just have found the key to your questions. Trouble is, the room beyond's full of a whole lot bigger puzzles.”

She stopped in place and regarded him seriously. “You weren't lying, were you? About having to save the world?”

“No,” he whispered sadly. “But I wish to hell I was.”

Chapter IX: Company

(Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Saturday, June 14—morning)

David would have liked to have stayed in bed much later the morning after his dream than he was allowed, but as it was, the sun was shining fitfully through the grimy window in the eastern wall when he was awakened by the sound of something smashing downstairs. Glass, it sounded like, and there were words close on its heels, heated words accented with profanity. Which meant that, sunshine or no, it was still business as usual at Sullivan Manor—though given the temperaments of his folks, it was hard to tell if this was an ordinary disagreement or a magically induced one. Having no desire to make his debut in the middle of an altercation, he vented a mournful groan and dragged the covers back over his head.

A door slammed and he winced, then heard footsteps coming up the stairs. He tensed, suddenly alarmed, since he'd gone back to bed bare-assed. Not that it mattered, really, at least not as far as Liz was concerned, though the notion of her catching him naked in bed in his own house with his folks downstairs was suddenly a lot more alarming than the both of them that way by the lake or up on Lookout, or in his long-lost magical boat under the stars. He sat up quickly, checked the cover—and breathed a vast sigh of relief when the head that emerged at the top of the stairwell proved to be that of his younger brother.