But the strangest and most unpredictable power might very well be wizards themselves: bending the universe to their will, finding solutions where no one had found them before, driven by their own needs. Wizards were making it up as they went along— just as, in Their own time, the Powers That Be had done. And they’re looking to us for the answers as much as we are to them, Nita thought. We’re all helping each other out here, trying to make sense of the universe, trying to make things work. The thought left her feeling both very intimidated and, strangely, much less powerless. What we write in the manual is as important as what we find there already.
Nita flipped back to the general Mars pages, glancing at the maps that were showing the hot spots in the last day’s activity. That side of Mars featured some very striking terrain, and one feature, or set of features, now caught her eye as it had once or twice before. Olympus Mons, of course, was famous, both on Earth and elsewhere among inhabited worlds: as one of the biggest volcanoes anywhere, it drew a fair number of tourists, both Earth-based and alien. But not far from it were three other volcanoes strung along in a line, labeled collectively as Tharsis Montes, the Tharsis Mountains. The features taken all together always reminded Nita of the end-knob of a sword and the sword’s hilt or crosspiece.
There ought to be something marking the point, she thought, letting her gaze run along the line of where the blade would be. It led across the Martian equator, missing the vast irregular crevasse of Mariner Valley, then passing through highland country and ending in a huge low-lying circular splat of a basin—some ancient impact crater that had once filled up with lava, and then probably later with water. Argyre Planitia, said the label on the map.
Should really have been another volcano, Nita thought. She yawned and flipped back to the messaging area in the manual. Kit’s listing there was dark now: he was awake. Nita tapped on his name. “What’s going on over there?” she said.
There was a pause before she got an answer back. “Nothing much,” Kit said. “Just got up. Gotta go to church...”
Nita smiled at that. “I bet. How was Helena?”
There was a short laugh at the other end. “Not as bad as she might have been,” he said. “Just as well. I couldn’t have taken much more excitement yesterday.”
“I hear you there,” Nita said. “But today’s another day. There’s a ton of new stuff in the manual.”
“Yeah, I saw some of that.”
Nita was slightly taken aback at how bored he sounded about it. “So when are you going back?”
“Well, there’s church first. I kind of have to do that to keep Helena calm. Though I may have a different problem with her now.”
“Oh? What?”
“She thinks I’m a mutant.”
Nita’s mouth dropped open. Then she laughed. “Oh, come on, she has to have been joking!”
“Nope.”
Nita got control of herself. “Denial is such a wonderful thing,” she said. “Well, never mind. What time’s Mamvish getting in? She has to want to have a look at what’s been happening.”
“I don’t know. Haven’t heard anything from her.”
That made Nita blink. “Huh. Well, she’s busy, I guess. But you’ll be going over, won’t you?”
“Sometime in the afternoon, maybe,” Kit said. “I haven’t decided yet.”
There was something in his tone of voice, even in this disembodied form, that made Nita think Kit either wasn’t particularly excited about going to Mars today— which was insane—or wasn’t particularly interested in having Nita with him. That by itself wouldn’t normally have rung any alarm bells for her. But today was different, in that Nita had seen exactly who Kit had been talking to in the lost city before heading back to Earth with Darryl and Ronan. She was instantly suspicious, and instantly annoyed with herself for feeling suspicious. It’s not me he wants to be seeing, said that suspicion. It’s her—
“Okay,” Nita said, trying to sound casual. “Well, let me know when you make up your mind. We could save some energy by going together.”
“Yeah,” Kit said, but he sounded noticeably unenthusiastic. “Look, they’re getting ready to head out. I have to go.”
“Sure,” Nita said. “Call me later—”
“Right,” Kit said: and his name grayed out. Unavailable.
Nita felt a small, tight frown forming between her eyebrows. She sat back in her chair, staring at her manual.
This is what I was warning Carmela about, she thought. Did I get so busy warning her that it didn’t occur to me I might be messing up, too? Did I maybe do wrong by going up there at all and horning in on their male-bonding trip?
It was always possible. Nita swore under her breath. Are boys another species? she wondered. And if they are, why do I have so much trouble figuring out what’s going on in their brains? Because I sure don’t have this kind of trouble with the other alien species I deal with, and they have all kinds of legs and tentacles and things...
Nita leaned forward again and put her head down on her arms, the frown deepening at the thought of her beautiful rival. None of this would be bothering me the way it is if it wasn’t for her. What is going on with her? And why’s she coming after my—
There Nita stopped. From what seemed about a thousand years ago came the memory of Dairine’s voice: Nita’s got a boyfriend! Nita’s got a boyfriend! At the time it had been an annoyance, like being accused of having a large and unusually noticeable pimple—especially since there had been much more interesting things going on. Now, though, as she’d occasionally done over the last year or so, Nita held the word up against her and looked at it, the way she might have looked at a new skirt she was thinking about buying. Boyfriend. Is it really that bad?
She tried to consider the word dispassionately. It’s not as if he’s not good-looking. Especially since he hit that growth spurt and got so tall. This in particular had been turning some of the girls’ heads at school, as Kit’s early stockiness had shaken down into a leaner look. And he’s funny. And smart. And he’s a wizard.
Interesting how for a change, instead of coming first, that idea came last. Once again Nita wondered whether the B-word was something she might safely say out loud, one of these days when the moment seemed right. It was a word she’d heard other girls at school use about Kit where Nita was concerned, though some of them meant it mockingly, in the “nerds of a feather flock together” mode. But that thought immediately cast a long shadow of fear across the whole train of thought: the idea that Kit might hear the word ...and not agree. Where would Nita be then?
Everything would be ruined. Was it worth chucking years of shared wizardry, a partnership that until now had pretty much worked fine, over a word?
She sighed and mentally put the word back on the rack. Then Nita went back to listlessly flipping pages in the manual. Finally she shut the manual and got up, wandering into the kitchen to find herself a banana.
I’ll give him a couple of hours, Nita thought, and try him again later. There’s always the explosive thing that S’reee and I were discussing: she needs some more data on how fast we could dissolve them.
And on this this she dutifully got to work, researching seawater chemistry until well after noon, and finding out more than she ever wanted to about the unstable nitrates involved in solid explosives. Then she stuffed her manual into her backpack, let her dad know she was going out, and headed over to Kit’s.
The Rodriguezes had not yet returned from church, but Carmela was home: Nita found her and numerous cushions and notebooks strewn all over the living room. “I thought you’d have gone with them!” Nita said, unslinging her backpack.
“No,” Carmela said, “I don’t always go. Today was all about placating Helena, anyway.” She smiled slightly. “I wasn’t needed for that.”
“They having a special service or something today?” Nita said. “Seems like a long time.”
“Oh, no,” Carmela said, “church is over. Mama and Pop and Helena are having brunch at the pa
ncake place. Kit ditched brunch: he hates that place.”
Nita blinked at that. “So he’s been back here?”
“Sure,” Carmela said. “You missed him by about an hour. And you’ll never guess where he’s gone!”
Nita rolled her eyes, exasperated. “So much for splitting the energy costs of getting up there today,” she said. “I’m starting to think we should install some kind of commuter worldgate here. You think you can work out a bulk discount for me with the Crossings?”
Carmela waved her hand, a gesture suggesting that this was no problem at all. “Neets, come on, you didn’t push the Crossings management for a tenth of the perks you could have had for getting rid of the aliens there—”
“I was on errantry,” Nita said, frowning. “Wizards don’t charge for that. I found a problem; I helped solve it.”
“Who said anything about charging? You should just have let them be a little more grateful to you.” Carmela waggled her eyebrows. “I know for a fact that the Stationmaster would give you at least a transit discount for jumps from here to Mars. You wouldn’t even need to hub through the Crossings: Mars is right next door by their standards. The power outlay would be minimal. But meantime, don’t sweat yourself about it— you need your wizardry for other stuff. Mi closet, su closet.”
“Thanks,” Nita said. “Want to set me up? I’ll go see him.”
“Unless it’s something very Mars-based, don’t bother,” Carmela said. “He’ll be back here at six. He has to: we have a Big-Deal Family Dinner tonight at seven, and we’re going out someplace serious, with tablecloths and everything. Besides, I want you to look at something.” She picked up the remote.
Nita looked around, concerned. “Is that smart at the moment?” she said in an undertone. “What if Helena comes back all of a sudden?”
Carmela shrugged. “The question’s more like, will she even notice? She hasn’t been here all that much since she arrived. She keeps going out with all these friends who keep turning up. I never knew she had so many.” And she grinned. “Maybe because she didn’t want to invite them over before, when she thought anybody who got involved with Kit might wind up going to hell.”
Nita had to snicker at that. “You mean they finally got things sorted out? This I have to hear about. He said she thought he was a mutant.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know about sorted,” Carmela said. “Might still be a few issues. Mutancy being one of them. But I’d say the worst is over. Meanwhile, take a look at this. I’ve been working on it since we got back.”
Nita had half noticed Carmela rubbing her eyes, and now looked at her with some concern. “What?? You slept, right?”
“Huh? Yeah, a little. But this thing was making me crazy. I got up early to take another run at it.”
Nita shook her head. “Mela,” she said, “school’s out, nearly! Cut yourself some slack!”
“But this isn’t school,” Carmela said, looking up at Nita, and Nita noticed that there were actually circles under her eyes. “And slack’s not what we need right now, is it? My little brother’s acting slightly weird, and this has something to do with it.”
Nita made a sideways smile— not at Carmela’s concern for Kit, which was always there: but for the sudden memory of S’reee saying to her, Oh, hNii’t, middle-aged so soon! You’ve hit the part of your wizardry where you can’t stop working! —and of what Nelaid had said about Dairine. It hadn’t occurred to Nita that something similar might happen to Carmela: falling in love with the serious part of wizardry, as you realized this wasn’t anything like a lot of the stuff they gave you to do in school— well-meant busywork that had nothing to do with what your life was going to be about. This was important work, work on reality— stuff you had to get right. And when you first realized that, it was hard to do anything else for a while.
“Okay,” Nita said. “Let’s see what you’ve got. But what’s been taking you so long with this?”
Carmela made a fake-pouting face. “Oh, Juanita L—”
“Don’t say it!” Nita said. Then she grinned. “I’m teasing! You know I’d never rush you. But you were cruising right along there when we were in the library cavern.”
“Yeah,” Carmela said, “I know.” She slumped back among the cushions she’d been lying on. “The wizardry was helping me. Now I’m running slower. Still, something started coming up. You know how it is when you’re reading something, and you can see that whoever wrote it has been really picking the words so that you’ll feel the way they want you to feel about something? Whether that’s the right way or not.”
Nita nodded, remembering one morning when one of her English teachers, Mr. Neary, had gone on about this at length. “Loading the adjectives?”
“That’s part of it.” Carmela scowled at her notebooks, and the TV, and the world in general. “When I was looking at most of the stuff written there— and I’ve been back a couple of times to check this, just to make sure that the invasion of the giant scorpion guys hadn’t messed up how I was seeing things right afterwards— a lot of it was like that. All loaded. ‘We are right; they were wrong; they started it; we had no choice!’ And that was making me suspicious. But then I found this thing. Stumbled on it, really. It was off by itself with some stuff I couldn’t read at all.”
Carmela dropped the remote, then flipped through the notepad to the symbols she had copied out there in red ink, and handed the pad to Nita. “This was the only material I could find there that wasn’t loaded like everything else. It was very, I don’t know, very dry. Very matter-of-fact. Not like the other stuff, where they want you to think the way they were thinking. It wants you to figure out what it means by yourself.” She scowled down at it. “I think it’s important. But don’t ask me why.”
“You have to follow your hunches,” Nita said. “And the sooner you figure it out—”
“Believe me,” Carmela said, “you’ll be the first to know.”
“Not Kit?” Nita said.
Carmela gave her an amused, sideways look. “Don’t know if he’s listening to me at the moment. I gave him some advice yesterday that he might have had trouble taking.”
“Oh,” Nita said. “Helena?”
“Yeah. Anyway, I’ve got about half of it now,” Carmela said, flipping through the notepad’s pages. Nita could see that they were completely covered with a combination of blocky or scrawly Shamaska-Eilitt characters, notes in English and the Speech, and the aimless arrow-ended curlicues that she’d previously seen Carmela make all over a page when she was trying to figure something out. But finally Carmela came to one page that had a neat block of the Shamaska characters on it in red ink: and underneath it, also in red, a number of lines in English. She handed the pad to Nita.
She gazed down at what Carmela had written. “It has a meter,” Carmela said, “though it’s a weird one: real short lines. You can see where I broke them. The rhyme is there most of the time in the original, so I kept it. It’s weird, too: they don’t rhyme the way we do...”
Nita nodded and read.
The one departed | is the one who returns
From the straitened circle | and the shortened night,
When the blue star rises | and the water burns:
Then the word long-lost | comes again to light
To be spoke by the watcher | who silent yearns
For the lost one found.
Carmela fell silent, scowling at the page. Nita looked at her. “And?”
“That’s all I’ve got so far,” Carmela said. “There are some weird verbs in the rest that I don’t understand yet. This—” She pointed at one line near the end of the Shamaska block. “That’s the word for the First World. And there’s ‘departed’ again.” She indicated the last line. “But the rest of it I don’t get yet.” Carmela looked uncharacteristically annoyed.
“You shouldn’t be so tough on yourself,” Nita said. “This is more than I could ever have gotten out of what we saw.”
“Yeah, well.” Carmela was frown
ing. “It’s just that this is something important; I know it is.” She leaned back among the pillows again, staring at the pad. “You know how everything looked in there? Green, green, green?”
“Yeah—”
“This was all by itself, in red. Completely different from all the other stuff. Even the font looks more serious somehow.”
Nita shook her head, uncertain how a font could be serious. But Carmela was much more attuned to that kind of thing than she was, and it was probably smart to take her word for it. She turned her attention back to the verse. “Did you misspell ‘straightened’ here?”
Carmela shook her head. “Nope. Different word. The Shamaska word means something that’s been made narrower or smaller...”
“Oh.” Nita looked at the rest of the verse. “A smaller circle... A shortened night.” She let out a breath. “Could that have something to do with Mars’s orbit? It’s a lot narrower than Shamask-Eilith’s would have been.”
“Might be. But what’s ‘the blue star’? And since when does water burn?”
Nita shook her head. “There are a lot of bluish stars that would stand out if you saw them from Mars. Sirius, Rigel, Deneb... And water burning? That can happen, when the conditions are right. It did that down by Caryn Peak during the Song of the Twelve: under enough pressure, when the heat’s high enough, it doesn’t have a choice. It just catches fire.”
“Weird,” Carmela said. She was still frowning at the pad as Nita handed it back to her. “But I don’t think we’re gonna be able to make any real sense of this till I get the rest of it figured out.”