Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 24

"Which contention do you mean?" he said, as innocently as he could. "He has so many of them."

That got him another smile from Pekka. Like the first, it didn't last long. "You know which one," she said. "No matter how many strange ideas Ilmarinen comes up with, only one really matters to us now."

And that was also true. Fernao sighed. He didn't like admitting, even to himself, how true it was. Here, though, he had no choice. Pointing out the window- the double-glazed window that helped hold winter at bay- in the direction of the latest release of sorcerous energy the Kuusaman experimental team had touched off, he said, "That was fresh grass, summer grass, he pulled up from the middle of the crater."

"I know," Pekka said softly. "Fresh grass in the middle of- this." She pointed out the window, too, at the snow swirling past in the grip of the whistling wind. More softly still, she added, "It can mean just one thing."

Fernao sighed again. "The calculations suggested it all along. So did the other experimental results. No wonder Ilmarinen got angry at us when we didn't want to face what that meant."

Pekka's laugh was more rueful than anything else. "If Ilmarinen had not got angry over that, he would have got angry over something else," she said. "Getting angry, and getting other people angry, is what he enjoys more than anything else these days. But…" She stopped; she didn't want to say what followed logically from Ilmarinen's grass, either. In the end, she did: "We really do seem to be drawing our energy in these experiments by twisting time itself."

There. It was out. Fernao didn't want to hear it, any more than he'd wanted to say it. But now that Pekka had said it, he could only nod. "Aye. That is what the numbers say, sure enough." For once, he was glad to be speaking classical Kaunian. It let him sound more detached, more objective- and a lot less frightened- than he really was.

"I think the numbers also say we can only draw energy from it when we send one set of animals racing forward and the other racing back," Pekka said. "We cannot do any more meddling than that… can we?" She sounded frightened, too, as if she were pleading for reassurance.

Fernao gave her what reassurance he could: "I read the calculations the same way. So does Siuntio. And so does Ilmarinen, for all his bluff and bluster."

"I know," Pekka said. "I have had long talks with both of them- talks much more worried than this one." Maybe she found Kaunian distancing, too. But she added, "What if the Algarvians are also calculating- calculating and coming up with different answers?"

For effect, Fernao tried a few words of Kuusaman: "Then we're all in trouble." Pekka let out a startled laugh, then nodded. Fernao wished he could have gone on in her language, but had to drop back into classical Kaunian: "But most of their mages are busy with their murderous magic, and the rest really should get the same results we have."

"Powers above, I hope so!" Pekka exclaimed. "The energy release is dreadful enough as is, but the world could not stand having its past revised and edited."