Comet Fall (Wine of the Gods) (2 page)

"I know. But if we don't warn them, try to do something, we're no better, are we? Now, the sky is clear tonight. We'll be able to extend our data six days further. If the circle of uncertainty continues to shrink, most likely it'll exclude a strike, and we can forget the whole problem." The fat boy turned to one of the desks and the computer on it.

"Or at any rate put it aside until the next chunk of Hygiea, be it comet or asteroid comes along." The cynic punched buttons and the long strip on the roof rose then slid aside. The whole dome rotated, and then the telescope swung to point out the open strip.

The fat boy tapped
away at the desk in front of the computer. Apparently the pattern of his finger movement meant something specific.
Rather like a really finicky spell
.

Rectangles midway up the walls lit slightly, bright specs like a picture of the stars, and then red circles.

"All right, here are the projected probability circles. Ninety, Ninety-five and Ninety-nine percent probabilities of a strike if the asteroid's orbit has put it in any of them, right now."

"Scan's complete, overlay them." The cynic said.

The faint spots of stars blurred into short streaks and a faint comet filled and overflowed the inner circle.

"Well, that's it." The fat boy pushed back from the desk
. "A ninety-nine percent chance that the lead comet of the group will hit this planet in six months. Good thing it's a small one."

They both returned their attention to their desk tapping. The rectangles changed,
showing a new batch of stars, circles . . . and the "scan." Most of the stars became streaks. A few dim spots remained.

The t
hin one nodded. "A few chunks of rock. No sign of anything that will hit in four and a half years. Let's check placement for the perihelion in eight and a half years . . . "

Every thing changed again, now the circles were renumbered, the innermost a mere eighty percent. Lefty heard Question's breath catch. Another comet filled the screen, star streaks
barely visible through the haze. The brightest part centered in the circles.

"Well." The thin man rubbed his hands up and down his pant's seam
s. "I hope the orbit will change before then. Because that one's a planet killer."

1367 Early Summer

Karista, Capital of the Kingdom of the West

The Auld Wulf really hated official appearances.
They were in one of the smaller conference rooms in the maze of the palace, a collection of diplomats, bureaucrats and military personnel.

And god
s.

I am not really a god. Just. . . a powerful man who has lived for a god-awful long time.
And for my sins, they call me the God of War.

He stood at
the back of the room, tried to stay out of the business of the government. He could see Lefty, standing quietly at parade rest. The young man had reported to the King before. Often enough to be able to not
look
nervous. Major Lebonift was the highest ranking magic user in the military.

King Rebo looked over his selection of people. He'd obviously had time to read the written report. Lefty's presentation had been for the edification of the
few who hadn't. He'd had to answer a lot of questions. "So, we need to contact these Earth people for exact information. Figure out how to shield hundreds of cities when we have fewer magic users than shielded three cities last time. Try and find all of the gods.
Not
pray so we don't distract you lot." King Rebo sighed. "Rufi, I'm going to place you in charge of everything on the other continent. Leano, you're in charge here. Fossi, you know the magic users better than the rest of us, so please stay here to help your father and brother not step on too many of their toes.

"
Rufi, you'd better keep Major Lebonift, you are going to need his expertise over there." The old king looked edgy, as he glanced at the people standing respectfully at the rear of the room. Gods, wizards, witches, mages.

"Well, I can't order you around, so perhaps I should offer you any help I can provide."

"Thank you, sire." The Auld Wulf nodded politely. "We'll try to figure out a way to shift the comet so it misses, or if that won't work, shift it to hit where it will do the least damage. They did say it was a small one. With this in mind, we'll see if we can talk to these Earth people."

The King shift
ed uneasily. "Good luck. Try to not get them too angry. Just in case throwing ourselves on their mercy turns out to be the only way to survive the big comet. Eight years . . . "

***

The Auld Wulf moved them all back into his winery.

"Going to make us walk home, Wolf?" Harry snorted.

"You're just too used to people coming and going from your place," the Auld Wulf retorted. "I think we need to all pool our knowledge, which in my case involves a hell of a lot of books. Come this way."

Most of them had seen his library before. The door shed attention, but it wasn't sealed.

"These are the reports on the Earth people," he tapped the papers on his desk. "Any of you who haven't read them ought to start there. Then we'll need to get specific."

He walked through
the very crowded shelves he'd sworn he was going to properly catalog Real Soon, to the end wall of the library. He'd been swearing that for a thousand years . . .  He unsealed the entrance.

"Damn. You just beat my junk room cold." Romeau snickered.

The Auld Wulf grinned back. "No this is just the library annex, the
junk
room, well, it even scares me."

He wiggled back
to where he vaguely remembered stacking history books . . . "All right, here's a historical overview. Now mind you
this
is the history of the World all us gods came from, and ends several years before we were exiled. How it will mesh with the history of the world Never and Question visited, I don't know."

Never smiled. "I'll let you know." She
held her hand out for the book; her eyes drifted toward all the others back there.

"Dydit." He frowned at the wizard. "Stop looking so damned nervy. We need to analyze these gates of theirs, I doubt we can duplicate them, but we need to not be completely helpless in the hands of these people.

"I know you've been bashed so many times you see nearly everything as a potential attack. So you've been dodging lessons. Justice is gobbling them up."

"We're the only ones who can see these dimensions?" Dydit's face was stiff and inexpressive.

"The only adults, there's a pack of kids, but we're out of time."

Harry sighed. "Th
e comet was so far away, and so fast when it was close enough to push . . . I had a couple hundred friends and their families crammed in the Tavern."

The Auld Wulf twitched his shoulders. "When we failed to pus
h the comet far enough away, I traveled the winery, closed two bubbles around it and rode it out. I wound up in, hmm, probably not far from Cadent, so I was actually pretty far from the hit. We kept checking, I had the place crammed full too. We'd open the bubble, look out . . . With two levels of  bubbles closed, almost no time would pass for us, while it streamed by for the outside. It was nearly a century, outside, before we decided it was time to come out and face the mess."

"Three cities." Harry said. "Only three cities survived.
Towns, really. Maybe a hundred thousand people, total. We need to do better this time."

"So," Dydit glared. "Where do we start?"

"With lessons with Gisele and Harry."

Eventually they all trickled home, most of t
hem with reading material. The Auld Wulf sighed and gave a corner the beady eye.

Rustle unw
arped the light, let it flow naturally. At fourteen she was still slender and childish of figure. "What can I do to help?"

"This
time the comet should be small." He rubbed his face, more tired than he liked to admit. He'd been genetically engineered to live forever, but his body seemed to cycle through phases, and he was old now. In the past, he'd stay like this until something happened, generally a injury, and that would trigger a renewal process. He'd sleep for most of a year, and occasionally even longer, then reemerge looking and feeling young again. If he'd known he'd be trying to do something of this magnitude, he'd have jumped off a cliff or something a year ago . . . "But they come in so fast, there isn't much time to do anything."

He walked back to the library. "I need to catalogue and sort all this."

"I'll do it!" She was all bright-eyed and eager. Thank god she looked so young, Dydit and Never's daughter. Not a complication he could afford. He could use some female companionship, but he'd better look elsewhere for the next decade . . . or at least four or five years.

"Certainly. I think there are some astronomy texts in here somewhere. You could read up on comets, when you find them."

***

They'd kept a watch on the Earth people's Gate Camp since shortly after their arrival
seven years ago. So they knew the routine the Earth Troops kept and appeared a day before their regular contact home, on a hill, in plain sight.

The Auld Wulf and Dydit
waited until they'd been spotted—almost immediately—and an officer had been fetched, any necessary appeals to authority taken care of, and then sauntered down to the camp.

The officer who came to meet them was a stranger. He looked tough and experienced, but also curious.

"If you cross this line, you enter the jurisdiction of Earth, and are subject to our laws."

The Auld Wulf halted at the line. "We do not recognize your ownership of a square millimeter of our World. We allow you to remain, as we can better keep track of your movements this way. We are here today on an information gathering mission. Possibly to pass information along to you.

"Are you aware that in another five months a close pass of Comet Horse may result in another disaster here?" He paused. "I see that this is not news. As you have a rather nice observatory, we were wondering if you were interested in selling information."

"Selling? Why should we sell you anything?"

"Our brief encounter with your civilization showed that it is aggressively expansionist with little regard for the rights of the people of other worlds, interested only in exploiting economic opportunity. I understand that gold is a valuable commodity in your World." He shrugged. "Name your price. We'll be back in eight days."

"I think you should remain here for eight days." The officer placed his hand on the handle of his pistol.

The Auld Wulf sighed. "If you step over this line, within which we have, so far, allowed your illegal occupation of our World, you place yourself under the writ of our laws."

"What? The two of you against a hundred of us?"

"The odds
are
a bit worse than seven years ago, when thirteen of us defeated four hundred of your troops. How is Colonel Elton, these days?" Dydit asked.

The officer glowered. No doubt he'd gotten the whole briefing before
he was posted out here.

"So why don't you simply carry the message? If you have detailed information, we're willing to buy. Nice and simple." The Auld Wulf nodded politely and
traveled them back to the deep gully where their observers were based, and he'd installed a multidimensional corridor to Karista. They stepped through to the Army base outside of Karista, then he travelled them three quarters of the way to their eventual destination.