[Author’ Note: We've returned to Rin's encounter with Karkov, right after the events of episodes 62-66.]
“Put simply, it’s very difficult to find a working combination of protections,” Rin explained.
Karkov’s face lit up. “Then even knowing my protections won’t help.”
Rin smiled. This was precisely what she had hoped for. “Indeed. But be careful what you wish for. Yes, it is harder to find a way to encumber you. But if I do find a way, it may be very bad for you. The more ways there are to encumber you, the greater the chance that at least one of them isn’t horrible.”
Karkov snorted. “Perhaps, but I think it’s pretty clear you’d pick the horrible one. If I’m to be encumbered, I’d rather leave it to chance than malice. But I’ll put my money on there being no combinations.”
“You’d lose.” Rin waved the sphere in her hand.
“Fortunately, we won’t find out. You don’t know all my protections, and without those you’re just groping in the dark.”
She laughed. “Ah, but that’s the advantage of being me. I don’t care. If I try and it doesn’t work, I’ll just try again. And again. And again. Eventually it will work. You yourself said it: what’s behind us always is finite and what remains us always is infinite. One day I will find a way, and it doesn’t matter when that day is.”
“Your forget one important thing.” Karkov’s voice carried a hint of desperation. “I let you find me. What makes you think it will be so easy next time?”
“If it takes me a century to track you down each time, that’s a minor inconvenience and will be easily forgotten in the eternity after I succeed.” Rin grinned. “But it won’t take century. You’re not nearly as subtle as you think. In fact, you stand out like a big sore thumb.”
“None of that matters if there is no way. You’ll just be wasting your time.”
“There’s a way.”
“You seem very sure.” He thought for a few moments. “How long did it take you to craft my Sixteen sphere?”
“Several years. Why do you think I waited so long to make you immortal?”
“I’ll confess I didn’t give it much thought,” Karkov admitted. “I guess I figured you were deciding whether to keep me.”
“We’re not all as cynical as you. Though in retrospect, you could have saved me a lot of trouble by dying of diarrhea before I was done.”
“I’m glad you see me dying with such dignity.”
Rin looked at him intently. “Do you know how hard it was to focus on crafting such a thing, when every moment’s delay put my love at risk? I was sorely tempted just to make you an Eight.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“I decided that if you perished before I was done, our love simply was not meant to be.”
Karkov frowned. “That’s rather unromantic.”
“Is it? Apparently, I should have waited a bit longer.” She gave him a pointed look. “Maybe a century or so.”
Karkov didn’t seem to notice the gibe. “So that’s why it took so long,” he muttered to himself.
Rin stared at him. “You really thought I was too busy or lazy?”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember what I thought back then.”
She studied him. “Was that why?”
“Why what?”
“Why you started hating me?”
A flash of commingled grief and confusion crossed Karkov’s face, then vanished. “I never started hating you. I still haven’t.”
Rin was about to ask why he did do it then but caught herself. No, they had decided not to share their rationales. It was best that way, for some reason which she had understood and agreed with but now couldn’t fathom. Her eyes softened. She was about to say something, but Karkov spoke first.
“And your Thirty-Two? How long did that take?”
However turbulent her feelings, she wasn’t going to fall for such a simple trick. “For unrelated reasons, my replacement sphere took a lot longer. Close to a century, in fact.”
Karkov smirked. “Unrelated reasons? I’d sure like to hear what those unrelated reasons could be.”
“Well, if you must know, I was out of practice. I hadn’t crafted one in a long time, thanks to someone.” She gave Karkov a pointed look. “I also found myself in difficult circumstances, courtesy of that same someone. There was the threat of capture, though apparently I was needlessly worried. And I no longer had the resources of a kingdom at my command. Materials and tools were difficult to come by.”
“So it was much harder than otherwise,” Karkov mused aloud. “It could have been a Sixteen, after all.” Suddenly he met her eyes.
“Come on, tell me,” he demanded with childlike exuberance.
“No.”
“Fine don’t tell me the number, but at least tell me some of the protections.”
Rin glared at him in disbelief. “And why exactly would I tell those to my mortal enemy?”
“I’m not mortal. Besides, I thought you were untouchable. Why would you care?”
Was he pouting? Did men actually do that? She wondered whether Karkov had become modern in more than just appearance.
“Fine, I’ll tell you one if you promise not to bother me about it anymore,” Rin groaned.
“Two. You have to tell me two.” It was like dealing with a kid. With a sigh, she nodded agreement.
“I cannot be entombed,” she began. “Nothing can envelope or physically bind or restrain me.”
“Yes, yes, I have that too,” Karkov waved impatiently. “Even the Eights probably have that. Given what happened, I’m sure it was the first you added to your new sphere. That doesn’t count. Tell me two that I don’t have.”
“‘What happened’? You mean what you did to me.” There was a surprising lack of irritation in her voice. Was he wearing her down?
“Fine, but it still doesn’t count.”
“Okay, but you’re a fool if you think knowing them will give you any great insight. I could just be a Sixteen with different protections than you.” Rin wondered what magic the man possessed that made her so pliable. She had come there for a single, simple purpose — so why was she allowing him to drag this out?
“That certainly could be the case.” Karkov smiled. “I can imagine many other possibilities.”
Rin rolled her eyes. “Imagine what you like, it doesn’t matter to me. However, remember what you promised. You’ll stop bugging the crap out of me with this stuff. After this, we drop the subject of my sphere and protections. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure.”
Despite her complaints, Rin was pleased. Karkov obviously didn’t get it or he wouldn’t have so readily agreed.
“Very well.” She grinned mischievously. “I cannot be recognized. You don’t have that one, so it counts.”
Karkov huffed and sat back in his chair. Rin decided to throw him a bone.
“This negotiation was uncharacteristically sloppy of you. So I will add this: it differs from a protection I do not have, which may be described as ‘I cannot be known.’ That prevents anybody from recognizing you ever. It’s an encumberment of sorts, though not a full one. In fact, some may consider it a positive protection. There is one Protege who has it, but neither you nor I would ever recognize him, remember him, or know him — even if he tried to make himself known to us. We simply would forget a few moments later.”
“Did you intend it that way?” Karkov asked, apparently mollified by the additional detail.
Rin shrugged. “That’s all I will say about it. I know she’s an Eight and I know her protections, and that’s all I know about her. That doesn’t mean I can’t find her, mind you. It just means it won’t be easy.”
“I thought you said ‘he.’ Is it a man or a woman?”
“I told you — I don’t know. I don’t even know what I told you their gender was. Do you remember?”
Karkov looked surprised. “I see. That does feel really weird.” A smug grin spread across his mouth. “And exactly how do you plan to hunt that one?”
Rin actually had no idea, and this had long troubled her. She had concluded it may be impossible, but accepting this would obviate the absolutism of her purpose. If that Protege must be spared by necessity, why couldn’t she spare others by choice? This led to a host of inconvenient doubts, which she always stifled the same way.
Rin cleared her throat. “I’ll find a way.”
“No doubt. And what about the other?”
“Other?”
“You promised two protections.”
Rin was relieved. Mere moments after mentioning the unknowable Protege, she had realized the catastrophic and entirely unnecessary misstep it entailed. She could have kept her mouth shut and everything would have been fine. Instead, she voluntarily offered Karkov the perfect escape. Yet, he apparently failed to recognize the priceless opportunity he had been handed.
All Karkov had to do was ask over and over and with unwavering conviction why he must be destroyed when the mission itself was unattainable. If all the Proteges couldn’t be destroyed, why should any be? He could demand a reprieve until she solved the problem, if ever. To persist in destroying him in the face of that would besmirch the purity of her purpose. She would be engaging in private, petty revenge. Nothing more.
Fortunately, he had not grasped this lifeline. Skeptical as he seemed of her ability to hunt the Protege in question, he had contented himself with mere derision. That made putting up with the rest of his malarkey much more palatable.
In fact, Rin’s consternation at her blunder vanished and she found herself in a much better mood. She decided to reward Karkov with some real information. A consolation prize, even though he didn’t know he needed consoling. Hopefully, it also would further distract him. Even if he hadn’t immediately spotted the chink in her armor, it was best to create as much mental distance from it as possible. She just had to pick the right protection. A really juicy one with lots of nuance. Rin thought for a few moments.
“I cannot be lost. I know you don’t have that one.”
“Not unless I misunderstand your choice of words. What does it do?”
“Well, technically, I didn’t promise to tell you that,” Rin teased. However, she didn’t allow Karkov time to protest before explaining anyway.
“With ‘I cannot be entombed’ you can’t be imprisoned or trapped by physical barriers. But suppose you found yourself in a wide open space, a labyrinth, or a stream? What if you were floating in space? No action on your part could resolve the situation. In an ocean you may be able to swim to safety, but perhaps not. Maybe somebody could devise a trap where you perpetually must struggle in the current. If floating in space, you could spend eternity adrift.”
Karkov nodded.
“Such things are not a concern for me,” she continued. “If I am in such a situation for any reasonable period of time, I will be returned home. And if home does not exist or is problematic for some reason, I’ll end up in a place I consider desirable.”
“What’s ‘reasonable’ or ‘desirable?’” Karkov asked, clearly fascinated by the idea. “For that matter, what’s ‘home’? Where you last lived?”
Rin shrugged again. “I don’t know. It only happened once.”
“A shipwreck?”
She shook her head. “No, I’ve been in several of those and always found a way to make progress. I could swim or sink myself to the bottom and walk. Both were slow, but I wasn’t helpless.”
“So what was it, then?”
“I was canoeing on a river and capsized beneath a waterfall. I am a strong swimmer, but was unable to make headway in any direction, even down. After a few minutes I felt very sleepy. I awoke in a field in what is now Bulgaria.”
“Interesting.” During the silence which ensued, Rin assumed Karkov was pondering this protection. However, when he finally spoke it was clear his mind had been on something else entirely.
“So you added entirely new protections. They sound more complex than the usual ones, so I guess it makes sense that crafting a Sixteen could take that long.”
Rin was glad to have gotten that out of the way. Even better, Karkov seemed to have reached the desired conclusion. He knew a bit more than before, but was it really anything he could use? If nothing else, it made his own relative impotence clearer.
To her dismay, rather than changing the subject Rin found herself doing precisely the opposite.
“Bear in mind that mine was based on a Four sphere, though,” she pointed out. “There were fewer constraints, and it was more like crafting a new sphere from scratch. Besides, there was another element at play.”
“What’s that?” Karkov glanced up from his reverie.
Rin realized the absurdity of what she was doing. She was leading Karkov directly back to his original supposition that she was a Thirty-Two. But she also felt an enthusiasm she hadn’t experienced in a great many years. She was proud of her work, and wanted someone to understand what was involved. That she wasn’t some dumb instrument of the gods, but a genius who had mastered every nuance of the gift she had been given. All the better if the one who understood this was her greatest love or enemy or both. Besides, what harm was there in telling such things to the poor bastard? Soon enough, he wouldn’t be in a position to do anything.
“There is a vast difference in difficulty between creating a positive replacement sphere and a negative one,” she explained. “Positive protections may overlap, but they tend to do so sympathetically. Either they come into play under different conditions or one subsumes another or they complement one another. It is rare for them to conflict. But adverse protections almost inevitably conflict with existing positive ones. Finding combinations which do not is a challenging task. The more existing protections, the harder it is. And it’s made even worse by the number constraint.”
“Number constraint?”
“The number of protections a sphere confers must be a power of two. You obviously remembered that, since you assumed I was a Thirty-Two instead of some other number.”
Karkov nodded. “Oh, that’s what you mean. I always wondered why that was true. I suppose it means the second protection must partner with the first, the next two each must partner with previous ones, and so on. It’s the only reason I can think of.”
“I have no idea what you’re babbling about. My point is that to encumber an Eight sphere, I can’t just add a single adverse protection. I must find eight additional protections which do not conflict. Either a small number of adverse protections must contend with additional positive protections or a larger number must avoid conflict overall. One bad protection would have to avoid conflict with fifteen, not just eight, positive ones. Finding two such bad protections would reduce the problem slightly, but is extremely difficult in its own right. The problem becomes exponentially more difficult as the number of protections rises.”
“Precisely,” Karkov announced with verve after a moment’s thought. “And that is why I very much doubt you could craft such a sphere for me.”
Rin smiled. “Good, then I guess you won’t mind answering my question.”