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held.
    “Damned if I know,” Humphrey said. “But you’re young; we have your entire lifetime to find out. At least we have an answer for what you are.”
    “Actually, what we have is another question,” Mrs. Chen said. “I’m far from certain that this should have been done in this way, Mr. May. If Thea is indeed not just an Element mage but one with poly-Element abilities, and you had any inkling about this, it should have been done under controlled conditions so we could establish parameters.”
    “Mrs. Chen,” Humphrey said, looking up with a wide grin, “the whole point of Elemental magic is that it functions under its own rules. What parameters? No two Elementals that we have today—and we have precious few as it is—function in quite the same way. And now we’ve got a brand-new one to learn from.”
    “And do you realize that you could have lost herby doing a stunt like this?” Mrs. Chen said. “Even if you knew she was going to pass this test, she could have had a combination of Elemental gifts that might have been wholly incompatible with the cube. It could quite easily have killed her in the backwash. I’ve seen Elemental magic at work, and it’s not something to treat lightly. Not at all.”
    “I can take care of myself,” Thea said, finally lifting her eyes off the cube. “What does the star mean? You really don’t know?”
    “Yes, and that’s another thing,” Mrs. Chen said. “That star. That was a wild card, even for Elemental magic.”
    “There is indeed truth in what you are saying,” Humphrey said, suddenly serious. “But there is more riding on the possibilities of this cube than you realize, especially now that I’m aware that it might be Tesla’s own work. And what we have done here, after all, is found the needle in the haystack that Thea’s gift has always been. Why was Thea not tested for Elemental magic long ago?”
    “You know that it manifests when it chooses,” Mrs. Chen said. “That’s the real test for Elementals. They just…start doing.”
    “Like I did,” Thea said softly.
    “The more I think about the cube and what those wretchedly fragmented tapes told us…” Humphrey hesitated. “This thing could be bigger than anyone knew. And it makes sense to me now why the Alphiri want it so badly…except they lack the capacity required to open something like this.”
    “But they have no way of knowing that, do they?” Thea said. “The Alphiri probably know it’s valuable, but they have no real idea why. They have no idea that even we are having trouble cracking it. It holds the very magic they’ve been searching for—but you need that magic to get at the magic.”
    “If you succeed in getting that thing cracked open, Thea, then you and this cube—and its possible contents—become the most valuable things that the Human Polity has possessed in a very long time.” Humphrey turned toward Mrs. Chen. “That was partly my reason for the whole behind-the-scenes approach,” he said. “I could not do this in public, in the blaze of inevitable publicity. In one sense I was working against the Bureau itself on this. Rafe, you never heard this conversation.”
    “No, sir. I certainly haven’t,” said Rafe instantly. “Not a word of it.”
    Humphrey flashed him an approving grin, andthen turned his attention back to Thea.
    “Can you sense anything at all? Do you know how to open it?” he asked.
    Thea stared at the cube, which still glowed in her hands with a pale, milky light.
    “It’s…as though I’m missing vital senses,” she said at last, and let out the breath she had not been aware she had been holding. “I keep losing something—if I think I can see the cube clearly I cease being able to touch it, and it feels like I’m not even holding anything; it’s got a faint music to it, but the moment I think I hear that, then I lose a certain scent that it had just a second ago, and then that becomes the key….”
    “Some schools of thought have