The Wizardry Cursed

Thirty-five: COSMIC SQUARE DANCE

The blue thing on the screen wove and interwove. It divided, branched and rejoined in a complex, twisting pattern that hinted at an order beyond human imagining.

"How goes the work, Sparrow?"

Wiz jerked his attention away from the screen and saw Duke Aelric standing behind him.

"About like you see. We’re making progress, but it’s slow going." He reached for the keyboard and called up a second program with a couple of quick commands. Now a yellow thing joined the blue one on the screen. It wove in a complex and elaborate pattern that almost matched the blue one. Wiz moved the mouse and the two shapes melded together into a single form that was mostly green. Here and there, however, patches of yellow and blue still stood out vividly.

"The blue is what we’re producing. The yellow is the pattern you gave us," Wiz explained.

The elf duke nodded. "Very good, Sparrow. You make excellent progress."

They watched the shapes for a while without comment.

"Lord, you said there was something stronger behind Craig and Mikey," Wiz said. "What?"

Aelric took his eyes from the screen. "Does it matter, Sparrow? More to the point, do you think you would understand the explanation?"

"Yes," Wiz said levelly. "I think it does matter. As for the explanation, try me."

"Very well." Duke Aelric stared into the screen and stroked the line of his jaw with a long pale forefinger.

"Perhaps it would be easiest to say that the World as it is today exists because of choices, a multitude of choices made since the first instant of primal chaos. But each of those choices meant that other things were not chosen. In that dance of choose and choose again, some became strong and flourishing while others were made weak or even nonexistent. The patterns of the dance are not to the liking of all and there are those who would alter them."

"So they’ve set themselves up against the caller in this cosmic square dance?"

"Cosmic… ? Ah, I see. No Sparrow, there is no caller to this dance. It is blind chance working itself out through the interaction of chaos and such forces as came out of chaos. But yes, there are-those-that would have things work another way and they seek to alter the pattern, given a lever to work through."

"And Mikey and Craig are the lever?"

"So it would seem."

"And we don’t know what it is these others want?"

"I would not wager that they could be said to ’want’ anything at all, any more than a river ’wants’ to run downhill. However I doubt very much that the World could survive in a pattern that would be more to their liking."

They were both silent for a minute.

"Aelric," Wiz said at last. "My Lord?"

"Hmm?"

"If Jerry and Danny and I can match their programmers are you strong enough to fight the ones who are behind them?"

The elf duke looked down at him with eyes gray and cold as a winter’s sea. "No Sparrow, I am not. Not I and all my kind could stand unaided against them."

"Oh," said Wiz in a very small voice.

"Nor is it needful that we do so," Aelric continued. "The World as it is exists because it is stronger and more stable this way than in any other form it could easily reach. To say that a thing came about by chance is not to say that it can be altered effortlessly once it has happened."

"You can’t unscramble an egg," Wiz agreed and then frowned. "Only here you can unscramble an egg."

"That does not mean it is equally easy."

"So there’s something like an energy gradient these others will have to cross before they can settle the universe into another stable state."

The elf duke paused as if tasting Wiz’s words. "That would not be an incorrect way to put it. Perhaps it would be more nearly right to say they seek to create the conditions necessary to tunnel through the gradient to another state."

"Where did you learn about solid-state physics?"

Duke Aelric smiled. "Where did you learn about magic, Sparrow? We teach each other, I think."

Wiz thought that Aelric knew a lot more about physics than he had ever taught Wiz about magic, but he didn’t pursue the point.

"You know this sounds an awful lot like cosmology."

"What is cosmology?"

"One of our sciences. The branch of physics that deals with things like the beginning and end of the universe."

The elf duke smiled. "Then this is cosmology."

Wiz turned that over in his mind and then returned to the main point.

"What you’re saying then is that we can take them."

"What I am saying, Sparrow, is that there is a chance that we can take them. But first and above all else, you must wrest this new lever from their hands."

"That doesn’t sound very hopeful."

"It is not hopeless, Sparrow. Leave it at that."

He nodded with mock gravity. "Now, are there any other matters on which I may set your mind at rest?"

Wiz took a deep breath. "Yes. What does Lisella want?"

Again that marrow-freezing stare. "What the Demoselle Lisella wants is none of your concern, Sparrow. She has not bothered you again, has she? No? Then dismiss her from your mind."

"But you’ve met her here."

"How do you know?"

"Someone saw you."

"Sparrow, you would do well to concentrate on matters of import, not my intrigues by moonlight. What is between the Demoselle and myself is none of yours. Now, is there aught else?"

"Just one other thing. Are those dwarves who are trying to kill me part of the Others’ plan?"

Aelric’s laugh was like the peal of a silver bell. "Believe me, Sparrow, they are not." He sobered. "No, that is a matter between you and others of this world, mortal or non-mortal, I think. But be wary of them, Sparrow. They can be dangerous."