“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.”