The Wizard's Dilemma, New Millennium Edition (35 page)

Ponch pulled Kit toward the furniture, still sniffing. There were some people there: aliens, which didn’t surprise Kit particularly—hominids were not at all in the majority in his home universe. As he approached, a few of them looked at him with slight surprise, and one of them pointed a greater than usual number of eyes at him. It was a Sulamid, Kit noticed, an alien native to the far side of his own galaxy, one of a people who—unusually—were almost all wizards, a fact that apparently had something to do with the way their brains were divided.

The looks they were giving him—furred people, one tall cadaverous hominid, a four-legged alien, another one that looked like five or six oversized blue ball bearings in company, and the Sulamid with its many stalky eyes—were speculative. “I’m on errantry,” Kit said, “and I greet you.”

Ponch barked. To Kit’s bemusement, every wizard present looked in what seemed to be surprise at Ponch. The Sulamid bent over in half and then straightened up again, its eyes and various of its tentacles tying themselves in graceful knots.

“I’m looking for another of my species,” Kit said. “My colleague thinks she was just here. Have you seen her?”

Various looks were exchanged. “You just missed them,” said the ball bearings. “They were here with more of us: Pralaya. They just left. They were on an intervention. Pralaya was going to assist them.”

The whole group of them were still looking at him. Kit started to feel uneasy, for he thought he knew what they were thinking:
This other wizard is trying to interfere somehow.
“Did she say anything about what she was going to be doing?” Kit said, somehow knowing that it was useless to do so. These other wizards were not going to help him; they were uncertain why he was here, uncertain whether he might somehow foul an intervention in progress.

“No,” said first the ball-bearing wizard and then the others.

“She has gone into the dark,” said the Sulamid, “all too accompanied. And her destination is an unknown.”

The other wizards threw the Sulamid an odd look and began, one after another, to vanish. Shortly the space was empty except for Kit and Ponch and the Sulamid, which was standing not far away, its tentacles wreathing gently, looking at Kit with a lot of its eyes.

“How do you know?” Kit said after a moment.

“Vision is useless without comprehension,” said the Sulamid. “Comprehension is bootless without compassion.”

“Uh, yeah,” Kit said.

The Sulamid bowed once again, if a bow was what it was. It was not directed at Kit but at Ponch. “Pathfinder, seer for the seer in the dark,” said the Sulamid, “tracker in the night-places:
wait.”

And it vanished, too.

Kit could only stand there and look around him at the light and the empty furniture. “Well, thanks loads, guys,” he said.
Why were they all so freaked out? What’s the matter with them?

But he and Ponch were not quite alone; not everyone who’d been there originally had left. Behind Kit someone coughed, or maybe it was more like a snort. He and Ponch both turned.

Behind them, looking at them thoughtfully, was what Kit had initially mistaken for a four-footed alien of some kind. But it was actually a pig.

Kit looked at it in astonishment. Ponch instantly barked once, excitedly, and started to run toward the pig, possibly thinking that it could be chased like a squirrel. Kit hurriedly grabbed Ponch by the collar and made him sit down. And to the Pig he said, “What’s the meaning of life?”

“You know, a friend of yours was asking me the same thing the other day,” said the Transcendent Pig, ambling over, sitting down, and looking Ponch over in an amiable way. “
Is
asking,” it added.

The statement was slightly confusing, even taking into account the multidirectional time tenses in the Speech. At least Kit knew that he wasn’t the only one confused by the Pig. Every other wizard was, too, and even the Powers That Be weren’t sure where the Pig had come from, and tended to describe it as a concrete expression of the universe’s innate sense of humor, a sort of positive chaos.

“Is she?” was all Kit could think to say.

“Yes. And you know,” said the Pig, “it’s all just a big plot, isn’t it? You’re all just hoping that I might actually slip and answer the question, and
tell
one of you.”

Kit blinked at that. “Uh, well—”

“Or else it’s a practical joke planted by Someone high up,” the Pig muttered, settling down with its trotters under it, a position that made it look peculiarly like a cat. “Wouldn’t put it past Them.
Or
Their boss.”

Kit gave the Pig a look. “Oh, come on! The Powers…” His voice trailed off as the Pig gave him the same look right back. “I mean, the One… wouldn’t play
jokes—
”

“Wouldn’t It?” said the Transcendent Pig. “Been out in the real world lately?”

“Uh…”

“Right. Life being all the other things it is, if it’s not funny sometimes, what’s it worth? But you changed the subject.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Maybe you didn’t,” the Pig said. “I’ll allow you that one. You were saying?”

Kit took a long breath. Beside him Ponch lay down but never took his eyes off the Pig. “You’re really well traveled,” Kit said.

“Omnipresence will do that for you,” said the Pig, and it yawned.

“You said you’d seen Nita—” Kit wondered why such simple terms as
my friend
and
my partner
kept sticking in his throat.
What’s the matter with me?

Because one might not be true anymore. And
— He absolutely refused to deal with the thought that the other might not be, either.

“Yes. I’m with her now, in fact.”

“You are?”

The Pig gave Kit a wry look. “It wouldn’t be a terribly useful kind of transcendence if I
wasn’t.
Being everywhere at once is part of the job description.”

“Where is she? What’s she doing?” Kit said after a moment.

The Pig gave him another of those long dry looks. “Oh, come on, now. You know the drill, or you should. You tell me three truths that I don’t know, and I tell you one.”

Kit raised his eyebrows. “That doesn’t sound real fair.”

“If you knew how much trouble a human being can get into with just
one
truth,” the Pig said, “you wouldn’t be asking for more.”

“Got a point there,” Kit said. In a flash the thought went through his head that it was possible he didn’t need to venture his time or his power on this gamble. Yet somehow he felt that the time spent would be worth his while. “So let’s get going.”

“An admirable attitude,” said the Transcendent Pig. “First truth.”

“I’m looking for the wizard who’s meant to be my partner,” Kit said.

“The first part I know perfectly well. The second part is conditional. ‘Meant’? What exactly would it be that’s doing the meaning?”

“I think the day we find that out for sure,” Kit said, only half joking, “it might all be over.”

The Pig raised its eyebrows. “I’m tempted to give you that one,” it said. “From a member of
Homo sapiens,
the secondary insight is relatively unusual these days.” It acquired a considering look. “But a half-truth is a half-truth. Give me a whole one this time.”

Kit thought for a little while more, wondering what he would add on at the end of all this to make an extra half-truth.
Worry about it shortly.
He said, “My dog makes alternate universes, ones that no one’s ever seen before. They’re new.”

The Pig blinked. “That
is
news. Continuous creation?”

“You’ve got me.”

“Yes, but let’s leave that issue out of it for the moment.”

Kit blinked, too. “I thought continuous creation had been discredited, though.”

The Pig smiled. “The moment any scientist says anything’s impossible, you should start wondering. Science, like life, finds ways. But, anyway, you own a brain, and you still think continuous creation’s been discredited? So where did
your
last bright idea come from?”

“Um,” Kit said.

“Right,” said the Pig. “Next truth.”

Kit took a long deep breath. “I think,” he said, with the utmost reluctance, “that my partnership with Nita is about to get totally screwed up if I don’t do something, and I’m not sure what to do. I have to find her, I know that. It’s vital. But after that—”

“I’ll grant you that,” the Pig said. “So that’s two and a half. What else have you got?”

Kit sat there scouring his mind for some moments, unable to think of even one truth, let alone two. The Pig started to get up.

“Wait a minute!” Kit said, and the Pig looked at him.

It was a desperate move, but it was all Kit could think of. “Here,” Kit said.

He looked all around then. For some reason he felt like he didn’t want anyone but the Pig to see this.

“It’s all right,” said the Transcendent Pig. “We’re alone. Yes, I’m sure; don’t give me that look. What is it?”

Kit pulled his personal claudication open, slipped his hand into it, and came out with that little spark, carefully cupped in both hands. He held the hands just a little bit apart so that the Pig could see in.

It peered between his fingers, and looked at Kit with an odd, speculative expression. “Now, isn’t that something,” it said. “A glede.”

“A what?”

“A glede. Or a dragon’s eye, it’s called sometimes.” The Pig turned its head this way and that, looking at the little spark. “The idea was, you might draw a dragon, but the eyes were where the soul was—some people thought—and the drawing wouldn’t come to life until the eyes were added.”

The Pig flicked one ear thoughtfully. “Fine, put it away. Where’d you find it?”

“In the dark,” said Kit. “When I stopped making things, and just let the night be what it was.” He tucked the glede away.

When he finished doing that, Kit found the Pig watching him closely. “Over time,” the Pig said, “and outside it, too, other beings have moved over and through that darkness one way or another. Some of them have found or brought back objects like that—what the void brings forth in silence. The question, afterward, has always been what to do with them.”

“What
do
I do with it?” Kit said.

The Transcendent Pig shrugged a transcendently porcine shrug, glancing away. “That’s hardly one of the traditional questions.”

Kit snorted. “Don’t you get
tired
of the traditional questions?”

It glanced back at him, its eyes squinted closed a little in what Kit realized was the beginnings of a smile. “Tired? I can’t get tired,” the Pig said. “But bored?
Hooboy.
”

“So?”

The Pig was quiet for a little while. “Now, if I was a stinker,” it said at last, “I would demand a whole third truth from you, and then tell you one of the truths you originally asked for: where she is. But there’s the glede to consider; things like that don’t turn up often. And besides, I’ve always been a sucker for young—well, for people in your situation.”

Kit waited, not able to make much of this.

The Pig raised its eyebrows. “You got lucky today, but don’t try to take advantage. So think for a moment, and then ask your question.”

Kit thought for what seemed to him like hours but was probably no more than a matter of minutes. Finally he looked up and said, “How can I save her?”

The Pig rolled its eyes. “
Her
her, or
her,
her mother?”

Kit merely smiled.

The Transcendent Pig let out an exasperated breath. “The last time someone asked me a question phrased that way,” said the Pig, “Atlantis sank. You know that story?”

“Several versions of it. And don’t change the subject!” Kit said, severe.

The Pig gave him a shocked look, and then laughed out loud. “You simian-descended, equivocating, pronoun-starved little mortal twerp,” it said. “Maybe the universe
does
favor younger wizards because they haven’t properly mastered the Speech’s plurals yet. We really have to look into that.”

It chuckled briefly, then composed itself. “All right. As you know,” the Pig said, “Nita is attempting an intervention to save her mother’s life. Unfortunately that intervention has been contaminated by the Lone Power from the start and therefore has little chance of succeeding, and much chance of backfiring. With results such as you should be able to imagine.”

Kit swallowed, or tried to; his mouth had suddenly gone dry. “Oh, my God,” Kit said.

“Yes,” the Pig said.

Then all of a sudden something boiled over in the back of Kit’s head. “Now just
wait
a minute,” he said, annoyed. “First of all, I knew that. And second, you
knew
the Lone One was talking to her? And you didn’t
tell
her?”

“She didn’t ask,” the Pig said. “Questions are important, and there’s not a lot I can do without them. Don’t look so shocked! The Powers That Be have the same problem. But it wasn’t
my
business to tell her. For one thing, on some level, she
knows.
That One can never make Itself
completely
unrecognizable—and that’s Its own fault. You set yourself apart from all previous creation, fine, but you’re going to look and feel different to all creation afterward. What’s more important is that the way she deals with the realization, when she comes up with it herself, is likely to be crucial to what she’s working on.
That
I wouldn’t interfere with, even if I could.” It gave Kit a look. “And if you were smart, neither would you.”

“So?” Kit said.

The Pig cocked its head at him with a considering air. “Well,” it said, “if I were you—which could happen, transcendence being what it is—I’d listen carefully to my hunches, when everything goes dark. You never know, you might hear something useful.”

“Okay,” Kit said. “Thanks.”

“That’s it?” the Pig said.

“Thanks a
lot,
” Kit said.

“Well, I can’t fault your manners,” the Pig said. “Be being you, youngster. Go well!” And it wandered away, the floor rippling uncertainly after it as it went. A moment or so later it was simply gone, without doing a transit or gating as such.

I guess if you’re transcendent, you don’t need to,
Kit thought. He looked down at Ponch. “What do you make of that?” he said.