it. From there, the system will become self-perpetuating. Syl Anagist will feed upon the life of the planet itself, forever.
(Ignorance is an inaccurate term for what this was. True, no one thought of the Earth as alive in those days—but we should have guessed. Magic is the by-product of life. That there was magic in the Earth to take … We should all have guessed.)
Everything we have done, up to now, has been practice. We could never have activated the full Plutonic Engine here on Earth—too many complications involving the obliqueness of angles, signal speed and resistance, the curvature of the hemisphere. So awkwardly round, planets. Our target is the Earth, after all; lines of sight, lines of force and attraction. If we stay on the planet, all we can really affect is the Moon.
Which is why Zero Site has never been on Earth.
Thus in the small hours of the morning we are brought to a singular sort of vehimal, doubtless genegineered from grasshopper stock or something similar. It is diamond-winged but also has great carbon-fiber legs, steaming now with coiled, stored power. As the conductors usher us aboard this vehimal, I see other vehimals being made ready. A large party means to come with us to watch the great project conclude at last. I sit where I am told, and all of us are strapped in because the vehimal’s thrust can sometimes overcome geomagestric inertial … Hmm. Suffice it to say, the launch can be somewhat alarming. It is nothing compared to plunging into the heart of a living, churning fragment, but I suppose the humans think it a grand, wild thing. The six of us sit, still and cold with purpose as they chatter around us, while the vehimal leaps up to the Moon.
On the Moon is the moonstone—a massive, iridescent white cabochon embedded in the thin gray soil of the place. It is the largest of the fragments, fully as big as a node of Syl Anagist itself; the whole of the Moon is its socket. Arranged around its edges sits a complex of buildings, each sealed against the airless dark, which are not so very different from the buildings we just left. They’re just on the Moon. This is Zero Site, where history will be made.
We are led inside, where permanent Zero Site staff line the halls and stare at us in proud admiration, as one admires precision-made instruments. We are led to cradles that look precisely like the cradles used every day for our practices—although this time, each of us is taken to a separate room of the compound. Adjoining each room is the conductors’ observation chamber, connected via a clear crystal window. I’m used to being observed while I work—but not used to being brought into the observation room itself, as happens today for the very first time.
There I stand, short and plainly dressed and palpably uncomfortable amid tall people in rich, complex clothing, while Gallat introduces me as “Houwha, our finest tuner.” This statement alone proves that either the conductors really have no clue how we function, or that Gallat is nervous and groping for something to say. Perhaps both. Dushwha laughs a cascading microshake—the Moon’s strata are thin and dusty and dead, but not much different from the Earth’s—while I stand there and mouth pleasant greetings, as I am expected to do. Maybe that’s what Gallat really means: I’m the tuner who is best at pretending that he cares about conductor nonsense.
Something catches my attention, though, as the introductions are made and small talk is exchanged and I concentrate on saying correct things at correct times. I turn and notice a stasis column near the back of the room, humming faintly and flickering with its own plutonic energies, generating the field that keeps something within stable. And floating above its cut-crystal surface—
There is a woman in the room who is taller and more elaborately dressed than everyone else. She follows my gaze and says to Gallat, “Do they know about the test bore?”
Gallat twitches and looks at me, then at the stasis column. “No,” he says. He doesn’t name the woman or give her a title, but his tone is very respectful. “They’ve been told only what’s necessary.”
“I would think context is necessary, even with your kind.” Gallat bristles at being lumped in with us, but he says nothing in response to it. The woman looks amused. She bends down to peer into my face, although I’m not that much shorter than