Kit was wobbling on his feet, wavering, as Darryl once more finished hauling him upright. “So go on, go,” Darryl said, pushing at him. “Go!”
From behind him Kit could faintly catch a whimpering noise: Darryl’s gaze went to it. Kit turned, almost robotically following the look.
Ponch was there, and Darryl was looking at him, and their gazes locked. Ponch was standing there with his head up, his tail wagging. It was a speculative look on Ponch’s part.
“Oh no,” Darryl said, and looked around him in genuine alarm. “You definitely can’t take the chance you might get stuck in here with It. You both really have to go right now!”
Up in the trees, the screaming was starting to scale up again. “Go on,” Darryl said—not to Kit, now, but to Ponch. “Hurry up! I know you, I know what you’re becoming. But you can’t stay as you are. You’re here the wrong way too, right now, and if you stay It’ll see the two of you for sure. So go on!”
All right, Ponch said. We will.
Above them, the gloom started abruptly to get darker. But we won’t leave you here, Ponch said. We’ll be back.
Ponch turned around and grabbed Kit by the wrist, gently, with his teeth. He pulled Kit back into the dimness of the stand of trees that surrounded the path.
The darkness increased behind them, and the screaming. Finally the blackness became total, and Kit staggered through it, blinded, deafened, being led by the hand, aware of nothing except that he was being led, and hoping it was to somewhere better.
Eventually Kit found that he was sitting on his bed, staring at the wall. He’d been looking at it for a long time; there was no telling how long. Ponch was up on the bed by him, licking his ear, and there was no way to tell for sure how long that had been going on, either, except that the side of his head felt pretty wet.
I don’t think we should go there like that again, Ponch said.
It took Kit a long time to collect his thoughts enough to answer. I think maybe you’re right about that, he said. But at the same time, he found it hard to get excited about the concept. It just didn’t seem to matter that much. Nothing seemed to matter that much.
Kit lay there for a long time, staring at the wall.
***
As Nita came through the dining room again, the phone rang.
She hurried over to answer it before it woke Dairine. “Hello?”
“Nita, it’s Carl.”
“Hi, Carl. What’s up?”
“Uh, have you seen Kit today?”
He sounded reluctant to be asking. “Haven’t seen him,” Nita said. “Heard from him, though. I think he had a late night last night.”
“Tom was expecting him for a debrief,” Carl said. “That hasn’t happened yet, though, and Tom was called away, so I need to handle it. You have any idea where Kit is at the moment?”
“I think he’s still asleep.” She paused a moment, checked to see if that was true. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s still out of it.”
“Okay,” Carl said, but he sounded uncomfortable to Nita. “It can wait a few hours, I suppose. But when he wakes up, make sure he gets in touch with me, all right?”
“Sure. I want to talk to him, too, because I found Darryl last night, and I think he’s an abdal.”
“You think he’s a what?”
“An abdal. You know. One of the Pillars.”
There was a brief silence at that. “Would you mind coming over here and telling me how you came to that conclusion?” Carl said.
There was something peculiar about his tone of voice. “I’m not in trouble, am I?” Nita said.
“What? No. But do me a favor? Bring your manual with you.”
“Okay. See you in a while.”
Nita pulled on her boots and parka and then made her way over to Tom and Carl’s house the quick way, popping out into six inches of untouched snow, and was very glad she’d remembered the boots. Carl was standing inside the door, looking out at the backyard, as Nita came up to the sliding doors. He pushed one aside for her. “It’s pretty out there, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. But cold.” She came in and stomped her boots on the tile floor of the kitchen to get rid of the snow as Carl closed the door. “Where’d Tom go? Anything important?”
“He’s meeting with the Sector Advisories,” Carl said. “Administrative business… something to do with reorganizing some planets’ worldgating systems. Nothing wildly exciting, but he’ll be gone for a couple of days.”
Nita went to the table, taking off her coat and hanging it over one of the chairs. “You’ve got some wires hanging down there,” she said as she sat down, noting the tangle extending from underneath the cupboards.
“Yeah. I’ve made a mess, and now I have to clean it up. Does your mom or dad know a good electrician?” Carl said wearily. And then stopped, and looked at Nita in shock, and passed a hand over his eyes.
“Oh, Nita,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Habit…”
“I know,” she said. “I know.” She swallowed. “It’s okay. I’ll ask Dad. He just had a guy doing some stuff to our garage. Dad thinks he’s pretty good.”
“Thanks.”
Nita reached into the empty air beside her and pulled her manual out of the claudication that followed her around. “Here,” she said. “Is something wrong with it?”
Carl sat down. “I don’t think so,” he said, “but there’s something I want to check. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
Carl opened Nita’s manual, turned to one particular page, and spoke to it softly under his breath. Nita watched this curiously. The page filled up with characters in the Speech, cleared itself, and filled again, while Nita told Carl about the dreams she’d started having, how she’d decided to look into them more closely, and what she’d found. Well before she was finished, Carl had pushed her manual to one side and was giving Nita his undivided attention. When she finished, he let out a long breath.
“Well,” he said.
“What were you looking for?” Nita said, feeling slightly nervous.
“It’s all right. It’s nothing bad.” Carl folded his arms and sat back in the chair. “It’s just that the information you’ve been given normally isn’t made public.”
“Been given?” Nita said.
Carl nodded. “But someone at a higher level has seen to it that you got it. So I see from the authorization logs.”
Nita thought about that for a moment. “So he is an abdal?” she said.
Carl got a brooding look. “Tell me how he seemed to you, in twenty-five words or less.”
“Innocent,” Nita said. “He’s absolutely innocent. But he’s fierce about it. It just rolls off him.” She shook her head. The impact of his personality was difficult to describe without sounding silly. If it was light, it would have been blinding. “And it’s not just the innocence. Even with the screaming, I still liked him a lot. He’s really good. And he just doesn’t notice, doesn’t seem to get it…”
“That would seem to clinch it, wouldn’t it?” Carl said. “The definition out of the manual, practically word for word.”
“That’s what I thought. But you know what was weird? The way Darryl was, even though it was good… It scared me somehow.”
Carl smiled a little. “Possibly a healthy response,” he said. “And one that convinces me you’re right. You met him out of the flesh, without the protective coloration that a body provides for a spirit like that. At such times you’d get the full impact. And I imagine it’s an eye-opener.”
Nita nodded. “I never thought goodness could be so tough,” she said. “So strong. But then again, I guess goodness isn’t something I’d think about a whole lot, anyway. Nobody uses the word much unless it’s in a commercial, and then they’re just trying to convince you that something has a lot of milk in it.”
Carl nodded, looking wry. “Virtue,” he said. “The real thing. It’s not some kind of cuddly teddy bear you can keep on the shelf until you need a hug. It’s dangerous, which is why it ma
kes people so nervous. Virtue has its own agenda, and believe me, it’s not always yours. The word itself means strength, power. And when it gets loose, you’d better watch out.”
“Something bad might happen…?”
“Impossible. But possibly something painful.” And Carl fell silent for a moment, his eyes gone thoughtful and a little distant.
“The manual makes the abdals sound like saints,” Nita said.
“Oh, they are saints,” Carl said, looking at her again. “That aspect of their power doesn’t have anything to do with wizardry as such, though it can coexist with it, the same way you could be, say, a mathematician and a really nice person at the same time.”
Nita made a face. “You haven’t met my statistics teacher.”
“I hear you. I still hate anything more complex than long division. But the trouble with sainthood these days is the robe-and-halo imagery that gets stuck onto it.” Carl got that thoughtful look again. “People forget that robes were street clothes once. Still are, in a lot of places. And halos are to that fierce air of innocence what speech balloons in comics are to the sound of the voice itself. Shorthand. But most people just see an old symbol and don’t bother looking behind it for the meaning. Sainthood starts to look old-fashioned, unattainable… even repellent. Actually, you can see it all around, once you learn to spot it.”
“You make it sound like there are saints all over the place.”
“Of course there are. You don’t think it’s just wizards that keep the universe running, do you? But saints tend not to be obvious. For one thing, they don’t want to draw the Lone One’s attention to them. Also, they tend to be too busy. Mostly sainthood involves hard work.”
Carl leaned forward to pick up Nita’s manual again, paging through it. “Anyway, I think you can understand why information about the abdals would be pretty carefully controlled, most of the time. The whole point of the way they function is that they’re not supposed to know what they are. And the more mortals who do know, the more might let it slip. Darryl is important. Far more important, in the larger scheme of things, than you or I, or than just about anybody else I know, or am likely to know. Abdals don’t exactly grow on trees.”
Then Carl looked briefly amused. “Well, actually, some places they do. I mean, they’re not commonplace. The One invests a lot of power in them. There wouldn’t be many of them on any given planet at any one time… and we want to keep the ones we’ve got. Or the one we’ve got, because as far as Earth goes at the moment, Darryl may well be it. And his presence here, even when he doesn’t seem to be doing anything in particular, is important for the world, because through him, the One channels into the world some of the power we use. If you’ll pardon the plumbing analogy, think of us as faucets and Darryl as the water main that feeds water down from the reservoir. Cut that off, and—” Carl shook his head.
Nita was silent for some moments, digesting this. “So what do I do now?” she said. “I don’t want Kit to think I’m horning in on his assignment or something because I’m worried about him. But I think maybe I am. He was okay when he started this, pretty much… as far as I was able to tell anything clearly about his state of mind when I was so stuck in my own. But now he doesn’t feel like he usually does. And I can’t tell for sure whether that’s good or bad.”
“I wouldn’t be sure, either,” Carl said. “Well, the first thing you can do, when he gets up, is tell him I want a word with him, pronto. I don’t like to lean on my wizards as a rule, but Kit’s been less careful than usual, and with what you’ve discovered about the situation, he’d better sharpen up. The stakes have been raised.”
***
Nita came back from Tom and Carl’s the quick way, popping out into the backyard. The snow there was untouched, rather to her surprise, as Dairine was as much a snow fiend as their mom had been. It was unusual to find that she hadn’t been out here at least long enough to make a couple of angels. Under more normal circumstances, there would have been a whole snowman by now. But the circumstances aren’t normal…
Nita went in, shucked her parka off and left it by the back door, and went up the stairs to see what Dairine was up to. She found her in her bedroom, staring at her desk. Spot was sitting in her lap, also staring with its little stalky eyes at the construction sitting there.
Nita looked at the desk. It was covered with tinfoil. On the foil and on a subsidiary bed of newspaper rested what appeared to be a model volcano sculpted out of wet papier-mâché. The volcano was extremely broad and flat, of the shield type, and Nita recognized it immediately.
“How does it look?” Dairine said.
“Not bad,” Nita said. “What’s it for?”
“Science class geology unit.”
Nita raised her eyebrows. “Bending the rules a little, Dair?” she said. “That’s Olympus Mons. It hardly counts as geology.”
“Okay, areology, then.” Dairine sat there wiping her hands on a towel.
“Looks a little bare right now,” Nita said.
Her sister turned a look of withering scorn on her. Spot cocked one eye in Nita’s direction as if to suggest that she’d asked for this. “Of course it looks a little bare,” Dairine said. “I have to paint it first. My real project for today is constructing an airbrush out of nothing but wizardry.”
“Sounds like a moderate challenge,” Nita said.
“And when the volcano’s done, I’m going to make it blow up in class,” Dairine said.
Nita’s eyes widened slightly at the first image that occurred to her.
“With lycopodium powder,” Dairine said, more scornfully than before, if that was possible. “Sheesh, Neets.”
“Just checking,” Nita said.
“Yes,” Dairine said, “I know you were.” She rolled her eyes. “Tell Dad I’m being good.”
“If you’re good enough, I won’t have to tell him anything.” Nita turned away.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to do it with real lava, though?” Dairine said from behind her as Nita headed to her room.
“There are times,” Nita said, “when I think a nice big lava flow would improve that school a lot. You know any card tricks?”
The silence in answer to that question was unusually eloquent.
Nita sighed and sat down in her room. You awake yet? she said silently to Kit.
She waited for a few seconds.
Huh? Kit said.
Well, that’s half my question answered, Nita said. You sound wrecked. You okay?
I guess so.
Nita raised her eyebrows. This wasn’t exactly a normal response for Kit. Either he was okay or he wasn’t, but the middle ground wasn’t usually an option for him, in Nita’s experience, especially when he sounded as dulled as he did. I’m coming over in a while, she said. There’s some stuff I have to show you.
Okay.
And that was it: he dropped the connection.
Nita blinked. Either he’s really exhausted, or there’s something really wrong…
She knew what her present hunch suggested, though. She was seriously getting worried about him now. He’s been hitting this problem with Darryl so hard, Nita thought, that he’s just been wearing himself down. That’s one possibility.
So why don’t I think that’s what’s really going on?
Nita headed downstairs to make herself a sandwich. “By the way,” Dairine said in a piercing voice as Nita went past her door, “someone seems to have eaten all the bananas.”
Nita sighed. “I’ll stop by Brazil on my way home. Or Panama.”
“Costa Rica.”
“Please,” Nita said as she went down the stairs. She had never been any good at remembering which exports came from which countries. It struck her as information that, for someone in junior high, was about as useful as dissecting the history of the gold standard. When I get a job at an import-export firm, Nita thought, turning the corner into the kitchen, then I’ll worry about who exports bauxite and who exports tin. Not before.
She rum
maged around in the cupboards to find a can of tuna fish; opened it, drained it, mashed it in a bowl with mayonnaise and Tabasco sauce, made herself a sandwich with it, and ingested the sandwich without paying it much attention, for Darryl was on her mind. He’s more important than all of us, Carl said. The thought was sobering. She and Kit had done some moderately important and useful things in their time working together, but what Carl seemed to be describing was a different level of function—one in which just being there, just being alive and breathing, could be more important to the world than any amount of running around doing things. It made a strange kind of sense when Nita put it together with what Tom had been saying about the Powers finding the difference between active and passive work “illusory.” If just by being here, Darryl is channeling the One’s power into the world, then if something were to happen to him suddenly…
It was a scarier thought than any Nita had had in quite some time. Whatever else I do, she thought, I’ve got to find a way to help him. Because he doesn’t know it, but he’s helped me…
Nita went to get her coat, and then went out to walk over to Kit’s.
***
“Hola, Carmela. ¿Qué pasa?” Nita said as she came in Kit’s back door.
“Watashi wa ureshii!” Carmela said, more or less dancing past Nita into the living room, with the TV remote in her hand.
Nita blinked as she slipped off her coat and dropped it on the floor beside the dining room sofa. The Japanese thing was something Carmela had been working on for a while, and now that she was getting good at it, you never quite knew which language you were going to get from her. “Let me guess. You’re saying you’re going to turn into a giant robot?”
“No,” Carmela said, “that would be, Watashi, imakara sugo-ku o-kina robotto ni naruno!”
“I’m impressed,” Nita said.
“If I really did turn into a giant robot, I bet you would be,” Carmela said, heading back into the living room.
Nita followed her. “Oh,” she said. “Is this the new entertainment center?”