No way they could have done that from scratch just now, Urruah said silently to Rhiow, going over to examine the circle. They’ve been practicing for this! For how long, I wonder?
Arhu’s got the Eye, Rhiow said, and I’ve been sure for some time that he doesn’t tell us everything he foresees. Who knows when he might have seen this? It’s handy now…
Aufwi came over to Rhiow. “All’s secure back at the Station now,” he said.
“The gate’s locked down?” Rhiow said.
“Absolutely.”
“You’re sure this time?” Urruah said.
Aufwi looked a little annoyed. “I yanked every power connection but its standby. If it can function in spite of that–”
Rhiow put her tail up against Aufwi’s. “He’s teasing you, Aufwi,” she said. “Ignore him. Once we’ve slid back to where and when we need to be, and had a look at Hwaith’s gate, you can use that to jump forward to ‘now’ again– then wake yours up and lock it on a nearby set of coordinates to do your comparison.”
“Exactly what I had in mind.”
“Good,” Rhiow said, and followed Urruah over to the circle. Helen came behind them, looking over the complex series of nested and interlocking circles and ellipses, either containing long sentences in the Speech or being comprised of them. She nodded at what she saw. “Done without any physical elements at all?” she said. “Very slick.”
“Now why would we use concrete spatial interruptors? Chips and batteries and so on?” Siffha’h put her ears back in disdain. “Inelegant. A brute-force solution.”
“Plugins and carry-ons,” Arhu said, looking smugly around the circle, “are for newbies.”
“Oh, yeah, well, plug this in, oh expert one,” Urruah said, and took a swipe at Arhu in passing as he went to his own. “Must be nice to know everything so young.”
“He just sees everything,” Siffha’h said, resuming her prowl around the circle, and eyeing the spell diagram with care. “Whereas I–”
She ducked just in time for Rhiow’s paw went through the air where her head had been. “You see what I put up with,” Rhiow said to Helen, and started to pace around the circle after Siffha’h. “But I see they’ve been quick and added a circle for you, Helen. Is it big enough?”
“Looks fine.”
“Then you’ll want to add in your personal data. Sif, let’s have a look at the coordinates–”
“Over here,” Siffha’h said. She had laid the spatial and temporal fixes into a small inner circle of their own. Rhiow put a paw down on each of the sets of coordinates in sequence, seeing each group of words and characters in the Speech glow bright in turn. She closed her eyes for a moment to regard her own mental “workspace” and the copy of the coordinates that the Whisperer had left there. “The time’s right,” Rhiow said. “As for the location–”
“The other side of the Hollywood Hills,” Aufwi said, “near Mount Cahuenga. Hwaith’s put us a good ways from where he said the quake activity was occurring.”
“All right,” Rhiow said. She stepped into the spot she could see had been marked out for her, and bent down to check her name and her personality data: it was all as it should have been. “Let’s go, then. Everybody check your info one last time. Then let’s slide.” Rhiow looked at the anchor-end duration data written in the center of the circle. “The slide’s got a five-minute return aperture: short enough so we don’t have to worry about leaving it for this brief period, and plenty wide enough to give us room to come back and forth several times, if we have to, without meeting ourselves unnecessarily.” She looked around.
Siffha’h settled herself in her customary place, the central “powersource” circle that would drive the wizardry as a whole: Arhu was nearby in a separate circle of his own, watching the spell’s progress indicators. Urruah sat in his own circle opposite Rhiow’s, out at the edge, where he could keep an eye on things. Aufwi and Helen settled themselves into their circles on either side of Rhiow.
“Ready?” she said.
Tails were waved, ears put forward, one head nodded. “Let’s go, then,” Rhiow said, and looked down.
The initial words of the spell burned bright in front of her and all the others. All together, they began to read, and the world leaned in to hear. This is a timeslide inauguration. Claudication type unmiq-beth-quaternary-five with reflection, authorization groups–
Instead of the usual growing, listening silence, a sense of inward pressure began to build around them all, as the inbuilt persuasiveness of the language that had made the world now started talking the “now” out of being the present, and into becoming the past.
