Triplet

"Until they get teams in to scrape the residue off the walls," Hart interrupted. "Or were you expecting the bomb to irradiate the Tu

Ravagin stared across the table, a

"Maybe you don't realize just what we're facing here," he bit out, hearing his voice tremble slightly as he fought to control it. "If that demon ever gets out onto Threshold the entire universe is up for grabs. That's not melodramatics; that's hard, cold reality."

"Ravagin—" Danae began.

"Let me finish," he cut her off. "We've already had a solid demonstration of how thoroughly spirits can invade and control electronic devices—that by itself would make them the worst threat the Twenty Worlds has ever faced. Add in the fact that they'll probably still be able to affect people's minds like they do on Karyx—and remember that none of the major control spells work here—and you've got an invasion that would be well-nigh unstoppable."

"Ravagin," Danae said quietly before he could continue, "we all realize what's at stake here. But getting mad at Hart just because he points out logical flaws isn't going to help any."

Ravagin clenched his teeth. "You're right," he admitted as the anger drained reluctantly away.

"You're right. Sorry, Hart."

The other shrugged the apology away. "You're on the right track, though. Closing off the Tu

"Except that it's impossible to do," Danae said.

"It's just a matter of finding the right way—"

"No: not difficult," she cut him off harshly. "Impossible. Mathematically impossible."

Both men looked at her. "What do you mean?" Ravagin asked, frowning.

She took a deep breath. "I've spent the past couple of days researching everything known or postulated about the spatial mathematics of Triplet and the Tu

Tu

"Why?" Ravagin asked.

She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. Maybe it's like a whorl—you know, the way a vector field has to contain at least one point whose vector has zero length."

He took a moment to digest that. "So what happens if the passage isn't there? Do the other dimensions just disappear?"

She shook her head. "On some models the passage simply reestablished itself in the same place, disintegrating whatever blockage I'd put there. On others the blockage stayed but the Tu

"I'm sorry. It's just not going to work.

Ravagin gazed back at her for a moment, then dropped his eyes to his wine glass, bitterness welling up in his throat. Everything he'd pushed for the past two weeks... He took a deep breath. They had just two days left; he couldn't afford to waste any of it in self-pity. "All right, then. One more direct approach scrapped. What else have we got?"

Danae squeezed his hand, and seemed to let out a relieved breath. "I've been thinking about that, between computer runs, she said. "It seems to me that if we can't block off the Hidden Worlds, the next best thing would be to put things back the way they're supposed to be."

"Translation: get the spirits back to Karyx?" Ravagin chewed at his lip. "That's a tall order. We still don't know how any of the spirithandling rules work in Shamsheer."

"We know at least one of them does," Hart reminded him. "You used it against the sky-plane parasite spirit."

"Yeah—and I have no intention of ever doing it again," Ravagin told him, a shiver ru

"I wasn't suggesting you do so," Hart shook his head. "My point was that there clearly are rules that will work in Shamsheer. We may not know what they are; but there ought to be others elsewhere who do."

"Like on Karyx," Danae said thoughtfully. "Gartanis, maybe?"

"He's as likely to know something as any of the other spiritmasters," Ravagin shrugged. "Horribly illegal to take a Karyx native through to Shamsheer, of course."

Hart snorted gently. "You really care about that?"

"I stopped worrying about the legalities a long time ago."

From behind Danae a troop of waiters appeared and began setting out a di

For the most part they ate silently, both from an apparently mutual desire to concentrate on the food and also because the constant bustling to and fro of the waiters would have made coherent conversation difficult in any case. But after about forty-five minutes the steady stream of waiters carrying new plates ceased, and the dessert and caffitina were served, and they got back down to business.

"All right," Ravagin said, poking carefully with his fork at a stiff and astonishingly sturdy creation of cream and fruit flavoring. "It seems to me that before we can tackle the Shamsheer demon there are two or three basic hurdles we have to consider. First of all, in order to get any real control over him, we're almost certainly going to need to know his name. Second, to get that name we're going to have to find the damn fool who brought him into Shamsheer in the first place. And third, once we've got the name, we need to have some idea in mind as to exactly what we're going to do with it. That about cover it?"

"Covers it and a half," Danae snorted, shaking her head. "That's an awful lot of ground to cover in two days, Ravagin. Especially since we haven't got the faintest idea who this damn fool, as you called him, might be."

"Perhaps we can at least narrow down his location," Hart suggested. "You said someone in Ordarl Protectorate told you they'd been experiencing equipment problems?"

"Yes," Ravagin nodded. "And the trolls that first attacked us were from Feymar Protectorate, while the trolls that Simrahi's people cleared out from their territory were from Trassp Protectorate. Take your pick."

Hart made a face. "I see."

"Hang on, it's not quite that bad," Ravagin assured him. "We know that our target must have spent a good deal of time in Karyx to have had the knowledge and insight to pull this off in the first place.

It's also pretty certain he's on Shamsheer at the moment; or if not, that he spent a fair amount of time there in the recent past."

"Why?" Danae asked around a mouthful of cream.

"Because whatever he intended to do with the demon—research or anything else—would have taken some time to accomplish," Ravagin told her. "That points to someone official, either a Courier or someone on staff at one of the way houses."

"Assuming you're right, what sort of numbers are we talking about?" Hart asked. "Ten possibilities?

A thousand?"

Ravagin shrugged. "We're probably starting with something on the order of six or seven hundred altogether. We should be able to drastically narrow that down, though, by checking experience records."