Ptolemy's Gate

impossible to predict the outcome.
    For the first time Kitty felt a faint anxiety. She noted several patches of boiling darkness curling and uncurling among the lights; they stirred echoes of old earthbound fears—of nothingness and solitude, of being alone amid infinity.
    This is no good, Kitty thought. I need a body.
    With mounting disquiet, she watched the remorseless movement flowing all around, the images flickering near and far, the crackles of light and senseless trails of color. One merry dancing blue-green coil caught her attention.
    Stand STILL! She thought furiously.
    Was it her imagination, or had a little portion of the flowing coil deviated from its course, slowing for an instant? The motion was so quick, she could not be sure.
    Kitty spied another random wisp and willed it to halt and attend to her. The results were immediate and satisfactory: a sizable tendril of matter solidified into something resembling the rolled tip of a fern frond, colorless and glassy. When she relaxed her attention, the coil unfurled and vanished back into the general swirl.
    Kitty tried again, this time willing a patch of matter to form a thicker, more compact object. Once more she had success, and by concentrating further was able to mold the glassy lump into something approaching a block, unevenly squared. Again, when she desisted, the block dissolved to nothing.
    The malleability of the substance all around reminded Kitty of something she had seen before. What was it? With difficulty, her mind grasped at a memory—that of the djinni Bartimaeus, changing form. He needed to occupy a shape of some kind when he came to Earth, though his choices were always fluid. Perhaps, now that the positions were reversed, she should try the same.
    She could make herself a shape. . . And with this inspiration, the object of her visit came back to her. Yes, it was Bartimaeus she had come to find.
    Kitty's anxiety faded; she was enthused. She set to work straightaway, building herself a body.
    Unfortunately this was easier thought than done. She had no difficulty, by applying her will once more, in forming a patch of the flowing energies into something approximating a human shape. It had a bulbous head of sorts, a stumpy torso, and four uneven limbs, all dully see-through, so that the rushing colors and lights behind were distorted on its surfaces. But when Kitty tried to improve this rough marionette into something more refined and accurate, she discovered she was unable to concentrate on it all at once. While she sh aped and evened out the legs, the head slumped like melted butter; when she hastened to repair this and add a token face, the bottom half dripped and sagged. So it went, until her series of rushed improvements had entirely ruined the figurine, and it had stabilized as a pinheaded blob with enormous buttocks. Kitty regarded it with dissatisfaction.
    It also proved overly complex to maneuver. Although she was able to direct it back and forth—it floated among the raging energies like a bird amid a storm—Kitty found she could not individually direct its limbs. While she struggled to do so, the body's substance dribbled away from its extremities, like thread unraveling from a spindle. After a time Kitty gave up in disgust and allowed the figure to dissolve into nothing.
    Despite this setback she felt pleased with her idea in principle, and immediately began work again. In quick succession she tried a variety of other surrogate bodies, testing each for ease of control. The first, a stick figure—rather like a child's drawing—contained less substance than its predecessor; Kitty was able to prevent it from unraveling, but found the savage energies all around made it crumple like a cranefly. The second, a snaking sausage with a questing tendril at its front, was more stable, but aesthetically unsound. The third, a simple ball of swirling matter, was far stronger and easier to maintain, and with it she progressed a considerable distance, floating serenely through the chaos.
    Lack of limbs is the key, Kitty thought. A sphere is good. It imposes order.
    The shape certainly had some effect on her surroundings, since it was not long before Kitty began to notice a slight change in the fabric through which her ball was passing. Up until then the coils of color, the shimmering lights, the intermittent images had all been entirely neutral and unresponsive, flowing randomly where they would. But now—perhaps because of the new