Chapter 18

Commander Sterling stared at the glowing-lettered invitation, then shook her head and handed it back to her new XO. “What d’you make of this?”

First Lieutenant John Warren, United States Army, had been assigned to the now joint-military project when Lieutenant Commander Lowe had been appointed to head the NSA. He’d transformed into a wolverine on New Year’s. He took full advantage of the associated reputation when dealing with finicky bureaucrats or recalcitrant subordinates, even though he was actually very easygoing when nothing was going wrong. He took the invitation and peered at it for a moment. “Says you’ve been assigned a TAD over next weekend, ma’am. Doesn’t say why, though. More of that UN guff, maybe?”

Sterling picked at her teeth with a finger-claw. “Maybe. I guess I’ll find out. Thanks, John.” The wolverine nodded and headed back to his office, leaving the bat to think about it. <I can bring anyone who can read the invitation, eh? I guess he’s not on the list.>

---

Katlynn Stormchild (formerly Nancy Ellen Smith, of Pittsburgh) pondered her invitation. “Storm, eh? Cute. Why not? I can always visit the zoo if this is a hoax.” The lynx folded the parchment sheet and returned her attention to the patterns around her. The storm brewing up from the south was going to be a big one, and the last time that had happened, the interloper she’d first sensed at the Pentagon had tried to make it worse. She’d gotten an idea of where he was that time, though. If it happened again, she planned to be ready to retaliate.

---

"Tad..." Stardancer sighed. "Firstly, you can't read the invitation. Secondly, you -need- to stay here regardless. If this is a trap, you are my replacement, and you're one of the Pentagon warders. Three of us at least, and maybe four, have been invited already. One of us has to stay safe."

The unicorn narrowed his eyes at that admission. "Four?"

"I have my suspicions about who Storm and Shadow really are. You should probably think about a nom-de-guerre as well; I have the impression that True Names are of an unhealthy level of interest to some of our adversaries."

---

Katlynn was at the rendezvous first, arriving in the early morning before the gates were open. The cold didn’t bother the lynx, and she preferred to be awake before dawn to feel the day’s weather before the sun began to stir things up. She settled down on a bench to meditate, unconcerned by the stares of early-morning visitors and passing joggers as the capital began to wake up.

Lowe arrived about three hours later, accompanied by Whitford and Stardancer. Katlynn nodded to them as they arrived. “You’re the Diviner, aren’t you, Dr. Lowe? Is this everyone? Which one’s Shadow?”

The wolf shook her head. “Shadow’s not here yet. Stardancer’s here as my guest – Coyote specifically invited her along on my ticket. And this is my bodyguard, John Whitford. And before you ask, yes, he’s on the list, too. My secretary couldn’t read the invitation, but he could.”

Sterling fluttered down from the sky to perch on the gate. “Yep. My XO saw it as a standard military TD order. Is it just me, or is this end of the Zoo very quiet today?”

Katlynn looked up as the bat arrived,. “Ah. -You’re- Shadow. That makes sense.” She took a moment to look for other patrons, but none were to be seen and even the traffic on Connecticut Avenue was sporadic. “Now that you mention it, yes. Nobody’s been by since before Dr. Lowe arrived. You thinking what I’m thinking?”

Sterling frowned. “-I’m- thinking that this is almost everyone who’s tied to the wards on the Pentagon. Where’s that unicorn friend of yours, Stardancer?”

“Tad? As safe as we can manage. Doesn’t really matter, as it turns out – our host gave me the spell book I used, so he can get through the wards when he wants to, anyway. I’m not too worried about that part of it.”

Sterling's frown deepened. “That was not something I wanted to hear.”

Stardancer nodded. “Tell me about it. I’m going to have to figure out how to fix that. Just in case someone -else- has seen that grimoire.”

Lowe had her eyes closed. “He’s here. Somewhere close by, but he’s hard to pin down.” She opened her eyes and stood up. “Coyote? Anyone else joining the party?”

Coyote smiled from a bench on the other side of the entrance walkway, suddenly there. “No, this is everyone. Very good, Diviner. When the press of business is over, we’ll have to match wits sometime. Playing a joke on you is definitely going to be a challenge.”

Lowe eyed him warily. “Indeed. For now, though... ?”

“For now, please come with me.” Coyote led the way into the zoo, entering the Asian exhibit just past the entrance. He walked past the sloth bears and the fishing cats and then turned down a narrow passage.

Katlynn hissed as she came to the turn. “Milady Diviner... this is not a proper place. It goes... elsewhere. The energy patterns bend around it.”

Lowe paused, glancing at her wrist-link. “It’s not on the map of the Zoo, either. What’s this all about, Coyote?”

Coyote sighed theatrically. “So suspicious, you youngsters. The invitations -said- that transportation would be provided. It’d take all day to fly out to the Canadian Rockies, and then there’s all that tedious border-crossing business...” He waved at the tunnel. “It’s just a short-cut.”

Whitford growled, the first time he'd spoken all morning. “Then you are going to lead, and I'll be right behind you.”

The white wolf flicked her ears at them both. "Behave." She turned her gaze on Coyote again. "Assuming this actually goes to Canada. Does it?"

Coyote narrowed his eyes as he looked at Lowe. “You -are- going to be a challenge, Diviner. I mean you no harm, and today at least I bear no mischief – will you accept that?”

Lowe sighed. “I don’t -know- that, Coyote. And I have duties, we all do, that preclude carelessness. I do not mean to insult you, but your reputation precedes you.”

The whinny that echoed down the tunnel startled all of them, and the melodious tenor was chiding. “Coyote. Stop acting like you’ve been offended, and get your scruffy butt over here. Anyone who’s not suspicious of you is not worthy to be an Immortal.” Coyote managed to look embarrassed and ducked down the tunnel, waving for them to follow. The tunnel turned out to be short, three right angle turns, and then they exited from a crack in a cliff to a mountain meadow. Cerrunos stood there waiting for them, a unicorn stallion out of medieval legend rather than modern fairy tales – huge, powerful, and dangerous, his horn a weapon rather than an adornment. “We’re actually in Montana, as it happens.” He nodded to each of them in turn. “Diviner. Guardian. Storm. Shadow. Dancer. Welcome, children. You have all proven worthy of the abilities the Convergence has granted you, both in your strength of will and in your compassion for those who do not have your power. It is time for us to meet.”

Stardancer curtsied, so low she was almost kneeling. “Milord. Art thou truly the Horned King?”

Cerrunos shook his head, and came forward to touch her cheek gently with the side of his horn. “Nay, daughter witch. I am the Eldest, but I am no avatar of the Godhead. I require no worship, only such respect as I have earned for myself over the years. Stand, or sit, as ye choose, and speak with me.”

Stardancer trembled at the touch, and stood when he asked, but said nothing, staring at him in fascination. The unicorn regarded her for a while, then whinnied and shook out his mane. “So. And the rest of you?”

Lowe shrugged. “I have many questions, Eldest. Foremost among them is - what -are- the Immortals? It’s not literally true, I assume, or we wouldn’t have been able to kill Quetzalcoatl.”

“What are we? Even I am not certain. But there are a few of us in every cycle who can tap into the magic even while it is dormant. We can be killed, but we do not die of old age, and over time we develop our abilities to a very high degree indeed.”

“Cycles?” Sterling asked.

The unicorn nodded. “The universe cycles between electricity and mana, between machines and magic. When it changes, there is a brief coexistence of the two, and then the shift finalizes. It is frequently disastrous for any advanced civilizations that have developed to be dependent on the other power source. But the knowledge is not wholly lost, some of us try to keep it preserved, and with luck, in time, we will manage a culture which uses both equally well.”

Lowe frowned. “You said this was the eighteenth convergence? How long do these cycles last? And how long does the shift take?”

“The eighteenth that I have lived through. It varies. The change is generally twenty to thirty years. The entire cycle runs three to six thousand years, usually split more or less evenly between the machine and magic portions. This last one was at the short end – the last vestiges of magic died out about fifteen hundred years ago.”

Whitford nodded. “The end of the Roman Empire.”

Lowe added, “And the Jin Dynasty era. The Mayans, too, if I remember correctly. Where did Quetzalcoatl come into things?”

Cerrunos snorted. “He was their patron back during the last cycle – Kukulcan, he called himself back then. Demanded sacrifices constantly – I always had the impression that his magic was necromantic. When he went to sleep, the priesthood kept things going until their people realized he wasn’t backing them up any more and abandoned the cities en masse. Then later, the Aztecs apparently found some of the old writings and tried to call him up using even –more- gruesome sacrifices.”

The white wolf frowned. “Patron?”

The unicorn nodded. “The shift, as I said, can be rather disastrous. Some of us try to lessen the shock when the magic dies out, make sure that people know how to do things without it. So we end up being respected elders once things settle down, and sometimes the legend gains religious status.”

Lowe nodded. “Some, but not all?”

“Aye. Kraken and Spider just gorge themselves on death and hibernate. Quetzalcoatl did the same this last cycle. He wasn’t always that way, but...”

“But.” Lowe chuckled. “How old -are- you, anyway?”

Coyote grinned. “Don’t let him get away with that ‘old enough to know better’ chestnut. He doesn’t.”

Cerrunos sighted along his horn in Coyote’s direction. “Behave.” He turned back to Lowe with an equine shrug. “Thing is, I don’t really know any more, not precisely. But long, long ago, I was the inventor of the tools now called Aterian.”

Lowe’s jaw dropped. “But that’s... ” A quick check on her computer-link confirmed her memory. “That’s over eighty -thousand- years ago.”

The unicorn sighed. “It was. I’ve lived to see the stars themselves change in the night, and the North Stars circle three times around the sky. I was here when Mazama erupted, and I tried to stop Baal from dropping that meteor on Lys, which they now name Arizona. They don’t call me Eldest for my vanity, young Diviner.”

Lowe shook her head, stunned. The unicorn could shield against her empathic sense, but he wasn’t doing so now, and she could tell he spoke the truth. “But that means...” She went down on one knee, her head bowed to the stallion. “All of us owe you a debt we can never truly repay, Eldest. You were the first true innovator. All that we have become, is from you showing the way.”

She looked up at the stallion when Cerrunos lifted her chin with his horn, snorting embarrassment. “I said no obeisance, daughter. That was long ago, and I have long since been repaid by how my children have built on my start. By now, you are all my descendants, anyway. What kind of father would mistreat his children for pride?”

Lowe stood up again, slowly. Sterling muttered "Mine," then sketched a brief bow herself. "You didn't object when we dropped a half a megaton on top of Quetzalcoatl, though."

The unicorn nodded. “Touche. I am ancestor to Hitler and Stalin as much as Ghandi and Jefferson. All I can do is to try and protect my children from each other.”

Lowe frowned as a detail came back to her attention. “Wait. You said that the Immortals act as patrons for the change, but you said when the –magic- part of the cycle dies down. What about the machine half of the cycle?”

The unicorn shook his mane out again, and shuffled his hooves. “It’s never come up before. This is the first machine-oriented civilization to reach anything close to the levels that the magic-based ones do. Magic is more instinctive than mathematics and science.”

Coyote chuckled. “Reached? Surpassed. Even Lemuria didn’t come close to this, grass-breath. There’s over seven billion people, and more than half of them are dependent on machines to live. Tell her why you’re coming out of the closet this early.”

Cerrunos whickered at the irreverent canid. “Remind me again why I keep you around, Coyote?”

“Because I keep you from getting a swelled head, Eldest. And because I'm your actual grandson, not just a figurative one. Now tell them.”

The unicorn sighed. “You’re an annoying upstart, Coyote.” He winked at his guests. “This is only his third Convergence, you know. But he’s right. We need your help, Diviner. Merlin and Nimue and Morgana are missing. Creya, Spider, Ashanti, and Rakasha won't be anything but a hindrance. They –enjoy- death. Haroun may be helpful, or maybe not. Wei Lung, Coyote, Pele, and I are pretty much it – the rest of the Immortals are either too young to have a chance of remembering this, or are too narrow in their interests to be helpful. We need to figure out how to rebuild a High Magic society in twenty years, or we’re going to see a charnel house that will make the World Wars look like a picnic.”

---

“We spent the rest of the morning discussing what we might do, sir. Electricity is the problem – electromagnetism behaves differently when the shift is complete, and magic uses the equivalent parts of nature instead. Electronics will probably fail first, followed by signal transmission, and last of all brute electrical current. But there’s electricity in everything these days, and electronics in most of it.”

The President and his science advisor - a white-haired elderly gentleman with bright blue eyes, Dr. Morris Carpenter – sat with them at one end of the conference table in the office that had replaced the damaged Cabinet meeting room. The President frowned. “So what’s the most important thing? What should we start with?”

The wolf grinned. “Fortunately, the most important thing is also the easiest. Transportation and logistics. We have to be ready to rebuild the transportation network without using electrically-controlled motors. And while the technology is officially obsolete, we can do it without too much trouble if we start soon. Pressure, Cerrunos assures us, is unaffected by the change, as is heat. Pee-vee over tee is still valid. We need to start rebuilding the rail network as soon as possible.”

The President looked at her blankly, and Carpenter cleared his throat. “Pressure, volume and temperature, Mr. President. She’s talking about steam engines.”

He nodded in comprehension. “Steam engines? Back to the nineteenth century, then?”

Lowe nodded. “With the biggest and grandest steamships and steam locomotives we can build. As a plus, they’ll quite happily run on coal rather than oil. Saves having to import quite so much.”

Sterling grinned. “Get all those hobbyists and Park Service folks from Steamtown together and tell them they’re getting a Department-level budget.”

The President frowned, considering it. “Railways are a lot less flexible than roads, though. What about steam powered trucks and cars?”

Lowe shrugged. “No reason we can’t build them. They just can’t use electronic instruments or controls. But rail is efficient, and that might be critical when the old infrastructure stops working, especially if it happens suddenly. You know people won’t give up what they're used to until they must.

Carpenter frowned. “No. Transportation isn’t first. It’s second. Food production is first. Right now, we’ve got massive amounts of electrical mechanization in agriculture, and less than two percent of the population growing food for the rest. Pre-mechanization, the best that was ever managed was an even split between farmers and cities. Steam railways are good, but first we need steam tractors and combines, or there won’t be food to ship. Steam-driven farm equipment gets first priority. Railway locomotives we already know how to build.”

The President paled. “Food first. After that, railways. What about nuclear power?”

Lowe sucked her lower lip, mentally squirming at the question. “That’s one we can’t answer yet, sir. Cerrunos doesn’t know. Coyote hasn’t got a clue, either. Pele – to be honest, I doubt she cares that much. Maybe the Eldest can get her to make geothermal sites to replace nuclear power plants, but she’ll be giving us benign neglect most of the time, unless we want to go into geological engineering. Wei Lung is an unknown quantity at this point. Cerrunos isn’t sure if he knows what happens to nukes, or whether he’d tell anyone if he did. We’re going to have to assume they’ll fail, though, so we’ll have to decommission the submarine fleet. One thing that’s likely to happen, though, is a cold snap in the climate. The Eldest said that’s already happening, and is common right around the time of a Convergence.”

Carpenter nodded. “Makes sense that the sun would hiccup when this happens. It would explain the 1500-year solar overcycle, and it won’t help food production a bit, either. But ... something still works about the same way, since the sun doesn’t just go out, so I think we can assume that nuclear reactions are not strongly affected. Fusion still works, so uranium and plutonium will probably still fission... if we can figure out some kind of magical control system, it could work out. What do we use the energy for, though, if electricity is no good?”

Lowe tapped the copy of the handout in front of her. “Page twenty-eight. A list of ancient records to find and archeological site locations the Eldest suggested we investigate as soon as possible. The Lemurian civilization used transmitted magical energy to do some of the things we use electrical power for. They were only just getting started when their cycle shifted back to electricity and things collapsed, and he doesn’t remember – or never learned, maybe – how they did it. Stardancer needs to put together a Manhattan Project for this, right away.”

The witch started when her name was mentioned. “I... oh, right, right. Crash research in mana transmission. Check.”

The President looked at her. “Ms. Stardancer, are you all right?”

Lowe chuckled. “She’s still shook up from meeting with Cerrunos, sir. She’ll get over it. Sooner or later. Coyote volunteered to make it sooner.”

The witch blushed, her cheeks going nearly as red as her hair. “Not –him-. I... maybe I’ll ask Tad.”

Carpenter chuckled as he figured it out. The President glared at him. “You, too? Will one of you please explain what’s going on?”

Lowe smiled at the witch, her eyes gentle, before answering the question. “Something that the legends got –almost- right, sir. Unicorns and virgins. But the fascination goes in the other direction. She needs to ... eliminate that distraction, or she won’t be able to function when he’s trying to work with her. He was apologetic about it when he realized what had happened.”

Sterling snorted. “He was being polite. You didn’t hear what he whispered to Coyote just before we came back.”

Stardancer blushed even harder and tried to sink under the table. Lowe rolled her eyes. “He was talking to Coyote. I’ve already gotten the impression you have to be blunt with him, or he’ll play with the words until he’s twisted your request into a knot.”

The bat sniffed. “Maybe. But ‘By Ishtar’s tits, get her laid’ didn’t strike me as the most respectful way to put it. And when I glanced back, Coyote was waggling his eyebrows like he thought he was the second coming of Groucho Marx.”

Lowe cleared her throat. “At any rate. Once food and transportation are ready, and power transmission is converted, we need to mass-produce lighting and heating equipment using mana, and figure out a way to restore the communications grid. Cerrunos had a few suggestions, Dr. Carpenter – some of the younger scientists should be able to apply their techniques to what is essentially a new form of energy and somewhat different physical laws than they grew up with. Finding that sort of flexibly brilliant mind is going to be your job...”