He’d purposely been trying to give Nita some space today. Some remark she’d made to him earlier about the two of them “living sheltered lives” had stuck with him. She doesn’t need me looking over her shoulder all the time. There have to be people here she’d rather be talking to without me standing there hanging on every word! Still, his eyes kept roving, seeking her out . . .
Like now. Across the room Kit caught sight of Nita talking briefly to Penn as he was coming off the dance floor. Something inside him squeezed uncomfortably at that. First of all, she looked so good. She’d dressed for summery weather in a little flowery skirt and a kind of low-cut pink top and pink flats, and she looked altogether . . .
Hot. The word you’re looking for is hot. Admit it.
The problem was, he had trouble admitting it. There were lots of girls he thought of That Way, but it wasn’t until recently that he’d ever found himself looking at Nita That Way.
And it was so strange. Sometimes it was all perfectly natural, and he saw her looking back at him and got the sense that she really liked him looking at her That Way. On Mars, for example: the old Martians’ casual daywear, what there was of it, had suited Nita brilliantly—the glint of precious metals in the bodice and hip harness, the flow of translucent veils in that thin Martian wind. Mmf! he thought, flushing a little at the thought.
Then Kit laughed at himself. I’m like some cartoon character with my eyes bugging out. But at the same time, there was no point in pretending otherwise: he liked the feeling. And he’d started wondering, in a casual way, what kinds of feelings she might like. It wasn’t something he spent more than a few hours a week on the Internet researching, and he always made sure to scrub his search history very thoroughly afterward. Where Carmela was concerned, Internet privacy was a concept that afflicted only lesser minds.
He saw Nita make a laughing, dismissive gesture at Penn, a sort of go-away wave, turn her back on him, and walk off. Better, Kit thought. Because as for him . . . even if she were interested in him, which she’s not, he’s nowhere near good enough for her. He doesn’t even know how to see her as a human being. The things he says, honestly . . . somebody should kick him.
Kit sighed and kept on wandering. Why do I see her more clearly when we’re around other people? It’s weird.
Meantime, there were additional distractions. The music of all the voices around him, all the different accents, sometimes using the Speech, sometimes in English, fascinated him. One group of voices, briefly laughing raucously, got his attention, and one voice, recently gone deeper than he remembered it, dominated.
“She is getting hotter by the minute,” it said, “but a wise wizard wouldn’t get too closely involved. She’s armed and dangerous. In fact she’s dangerous whether she’s armed or not.”
“Terrific, though.”
“A real looker.”
“You’d have to wonder what she’d be like.”
“Just look at her, are you kidding?”
“Now, now, kind of objectifying there . . .”
“I would say the divine Ms. Rodriguez is absolutely worth objectifying.”
“With that hair . . .”
“And that butt . . .”
“I can think of somewhere she could sit that down!”
Kit’s eyes widened. He slipped quietly close to the group from behind.
“Excuse me,” he said softly, “but are some of you guys discussing hitting on my sister?”
A shocked silence fell as all eyes present turned toward him. Some of them went confused. Some went embarrassed. “More than hitting on her!” Kit said. “That was sex being discussed!”
The silence got deeper.
“I mean, seriously, have a little respect,” Kit muttered into it.
Most of the group looked abashed. Ronan looked innocent.
“No, he’s absolutely right!” Matt said, looking around. “Completely inappropriate! So cut it out and let’s talk about something besides Carmela’s sex life.”
Kit breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Let’s talk about Kit’s sex life.”
Kit stopped breathing.
Penn, Nita thought, shaking her head.
She visited one of the drinks tables again—I am so smoothied out, no more of those—and found some kind of unfamiliar Australian lemonade, extremely sharp and very refreshing. With this she strolled to the outside terrace and leaned on the railing there, watching the lights of the city twinkle on the water of the lake across the road.
Down the railing, something moved. Nita glanced that way and got a glimpse in the dimness of an orange jumpsuit. “Liss!”
“It’s getting warm in there again,” she said. “Even here they don’t seem to have the hang of the air-conditioning . . .”
Nita laughed and made her way down the terrace. “More kinds of heat going ’round in there than one,” Nita said.
“Uh oh,” Lissa said. “Don’t tell me. Penn?”
“He keeps getting weird with me and I’m not sure how to handle it.”
Lissa sighed. “Well, I don’t know that I’m the right one to be asking for advice,” she said, “as I’ve got absolutely no interest in any boys that way, so I’m short on data.”
That made Nita blink. Oh my God, is she like Matt and again I haven’t noticed? “Yeah, I know, he—”
“Or any girls, either. Or anybody.”
“Oh,” Nita said. I am such an idiot. She’s a virgin and she’s perfectly okay with me knowing that, she is so brave—And then she lost her train of thought, because Lissa had kind of an unexpected smile on her face.
“Because the sex thing,” Lissa said, “I don’t do that.”
“Yeah, I thought I was getting that,” Nita said.
“I didn’t say I hadn’t done it,” Lissa said. “I didn’t say I couldn’t do it. I said, I don’t do it.”
“Uh. You’re . . . you’re, uh, celibate?” Nita had meant it to come out as a statement. But instead it came out as a question as Lissa’s smile changed again and she seemed positively amused.
“Nope, I’m ace,” she said. Nita blinked.
“Asexual,” Lissa said.
Nita took a breath. “Wow” was all she could think of to say. I keep saying that lately. To everything. I am the least interesting person in the world.
But Lissa was grinning, and now she burst out laughing. “That is the best reaction,” she said, “the very best—!” And peal after peal of her laughter rang out and she wrapped her arms around herself. “Perfect, just perfect, what a breath of fresh air!”
Nita felt both relieved and somehow obscurely annoyed. “Have I been some kind of idiot again?” she said. “Please say no.”
“No,” Lissa said.
“Relationship and physicality,” said a dark voice from off to one side, sounding a touch amused. “Always so fraught . . .”
They both looked farther down the railing. Darkness loomed in darkness there, wrapped in shadows.
“Uh, hi,” Lissa said, sounding uncertain.
“Pluto, Lissa,” Nita said. “Lissa, Pluto.”
Lissa’s eyes went wide in the darkness and the near-full moonlight on the water. “As in the Planetary?”
“That’s him,” Nita said. “Come on over, elder cousin, don’t be shy. . . .”
The shadows moved closer, coming to rest at Nita’s left elbow. “I wouldn’t like to intrude.”
“You’re not.” She looked up into that darkness, trying again to catch a glimpse of the difficult-to-see eyes. “Relationships, though . . . Don’t tell me you’ve got trouble that way. Sounded like you didn’t mind what Jupiter and Saturn had going . . .”
“Of course not. They’re of consenting age,” Pluto said. “When one’s over two billion or so, what one does with another body is one’s own business.”
Lissa spluttered with delight.
“But out in the further reaches it can be different, the distances are so great. One can feel a bit left out. Even in my origina
l system, I was the furthest distant. The last formed . . . all the best elements pretty much gone at that point.” He paused. “You gather yourself together as best you can from what’s available. And then start circling, doing the eternal Round: trying to find out what’s going to happen in your life . . .”
Nita looked over at Lissa. “Left out . . . You ever feel that way?”
Lissa shook her head. “About sex? No. Do you feel dragged in?”
Nita laughed helplessly. “God yes! And not by Kit. By other people.”
Lissa nodded. “So did I until I realized it just wasn’t for me. But once I found a special friend, someone who mattered without the sex being what it was about . . .” She smiled. “Things got sorted.”
Nita looked over to the darkness at her elbow. “You’re so far out there,” she said, “and you can’t do the resonance thing quite the way Jupiter and Saturn do . . .”
“There are differences,” Pluto said. “Neptune and I have an old periorbital relationship; the occasional amiable gravitational interaction . . . two neighbors waving as they pass on opposite sies of the street.” There was a slight smile to be sensed inside that darkness. “But there are many other consolations, other ways to fulfill your passions and be intimate with the universe in singularity: for even great distance need not imply isolation. In my place, you learn darkness, and the uses of it. Cold, and the mastery of it. Emptiness, and the secrets it holds. You learn strength: the certainty of iron, the stability of stone. You hold those places, those states, as a reference for others. Let stone melt to magma elsewhere, let iron melt to slag: you know solidity, and hold the reference true. And because that’s what Life’s given you to do, you do it well and steadfastly. There’s joy in that.” He was silent for a bit: but then, all his words seemed to Nita to rise out of a great silence. “And if sometimes you yearn for closeness to the inner circle, you learn to know that you already have that closeness in the work Life’s given you. You guard the outer boundary of the circles of Life, sweeping up matter that could come to threaten lives closer to the warm heart of things. In their name you hold the space of Strength in Emptiness, and gladly make your rounds . . . and maintain.”
Lissa nodded. “I did that for a long time,” she said. “Just kind of waited, you know? I always knew something else was going on with me but I didn’t know the words for it. It wasn’t anything to do with not being able to be in love! God, I crushed as hard as anyone else. But the whole physical end of things? Pff.” She waved a hand in the air. “No interest.”
“But then things changed,” Nita said.
“Yeah, I found the Special One,” Lissa said. “The one who got that there were other ways to be close.” Her voice went quiet and musing. “Kind of sudden and unexpected. But I should have expected it, really. Change is what life’s about . . .”
“It was so for me as well,” Pluto said. “When I was a far smaller planitesimal, my star died. Oh, nothing spectacular! It swelled, it ate its inner worlds; then everything collapsed and went cold. So I waited: maintained, as I’d always done. And things shifted, as they always do. Turbulence in the starstream, gravitational fields shifting; benevolent chaos brushes up against you. A black hole wandered by from the madder spaces near the Galaxy’s heart. It knocked me loose and sent me tumbling out into the dark. And then I traveled hopefully, as they say, for a long time. And finally, there came that first brush of gravity and warmth, out at the edge of the Sun’s radiopause. Such a kind eager little star, so small and solid and golden. It reached for me and drew me in, and so I found a home again in the outer reaches, among many others; some of whom have become one with me since.”
“All that time by yourself, though . . .” Nita said.
“It was worth that wait,” Pluto said. “I am home now.”
“Definitely worth it,” Lissa said, “even if finding the way takes a while. There’s always somebody that you’re the Special One for.”
“Patience,” Pluto said, “is key . . .”
They were all quiet for a few moments. “Your Penn guy—he’s looking for the Special One, too, maybe? But not waiting. Just grabbing at whatever gets close enough . . .”
“Could be,” Nita said. “Or trying to find something to replace something he’s lost. Not that I want to get close enough to find out. Because—” She paused. “There’s something else. Gut feeling—a visionary’s supposed to trust that, I think.” She shivered. “But right now I feel like a TV with a busted remote. Half the time, I get every channel but the one I want. And some of the ones I see, right now, I really don’t like.”
“But without getting into that,” Lissa said, “you were going to say you think Penn’s got something different going on with him.”
“Maybe.” And it flared again in Nita’s mind, that image of the stranger-Kit, staring at her with empty eyes. And Carmela, near tears, grabbing her, shaking her, begging her not to let them get Kit, whatever she did. Nita shivered. “And I don’t know where to go with that.”
Lissa shook her head.
“Stay in the Now,” said the dark regard fixed on Nita from the other side. “The Now is where all useful work is done. To plan for the future, to anticipate it: these are prudent. But to live in it? For those of us grounded in the world of time and matter, that’s mere folly. The Now is where we and the One brush shoulders. The only place.” And then Nita got a sudden sense of uncertainty from that otherwise very solid and grounded presence. “Was that the right idiom? ‘Shoulders’?”
“It’s usually ‘rub,’” she said, and smiled. “Close, though.”
And from inside, then, came a sudden roar of applause.
“Huh,” Lissa said. “What’s going on in there?” She peered toward the doors. “Some kind of big circle—”
A bare second later, something went through the back of Nita’s mind like a hot needle: the feel of a spell getting ready to fire.
“Oh my God,” Nita said softly. “Kit. What is he doing?”
The evening was wandering gently along to what Kit thought was probably going to be its conclusion. The dance floor was emptier than it had been; people had started saying their good nights an hour or so before. Matt and the other guys whom Kit had been speaking to earlier, except for Ronan, had already left. Carmela had left as well, apparently for the Crossings, to talk to Sker’ret about furthering one or another of her nefarious schemes.
Kit yawned—it had been a long day—and headed over to the drinks table to see if he could find one of those canned iced coffees before going to find Nita. He was rummaging around in the very depleted magical cold drinks bin, unable to locate anything there but beer, which he didn’t want—when the voice said from behind him, “Looking for a nightcap?”
Penn. Kit sighed. From what Nita had told him about his state this morning, he was pretty much fully recovered now, getting bolder and braggier by the hour as he forgot how embarrassed he’d been. Kit moved the last few cans around, found one of the little skinny beige-and-brown coffee cans, grabbed it, and popped its top. “Nope,” he said, having a drink, “I think I’m about done. Gonna find Nita and call it a night.”
“I can see why you might want to,” Penn said. “Finally, I can see it. She was so strong with me this morning, and I never saw that in her before.” He had a sip out of the bottle he was carrying. “I guess I’m big enough to admit I was a bit wrong about some stuff. Her power levels, anyway. And what she knows how to do with them. The manual doesn’t lie, after all.”
“So you can read,” Kit said, amused. “Nice to hear.”
“Yeah, I can,” Penn said. “But can you read what’s going on right in front of you? You don’t deserve her, Kit. You’ve been taking her for granted for a long time.”
He was getting loud, and some heads were beginning to turn. Kit’s mouth quirked a little in distaste. “Penn,” he said, “this isn’t a conversation I want to have with you. We’ve got a lot of work to do in the next few days before the finals . . . so let’s finish th
is up for tonight and head home, okay?”
Penn gave Kit a narrow-eyed look. “Yeah, I bet you don’t want to have this conversation,” he said, more loudly. “Because what I’m saying’s true, isn’t it? Anybody who appreciated what he had would’ve made a move by now.”
More heads were turning nearby. Even some people on the dance floor now, sensing the sudden tension in the room, had stopped to stare. In the increasing quiet, Kit’s voice became a lot more audible. “Another wizard,” Kit said, “another person, isn’t someone you can have. They might share themselves with you. But if you’re going to get all grabby-hands about them, then you deserve to be dumped on your butt.”
Kit couldn’t help glancing at the bottle Penn was holding. Penn’s expression went belligerent. “Oh, come on,” he said. “I don’t need to be drinking to be brave enough to take you on!”
“Not what I was thinking,” Kit said. He shook his head. “I don’t want to do this, Penn . . .”
“Of course you don’t. Nobody likes to lose.”
The silence around them was increasing. “If you don’t want me as your mentor,” Kit said, “say the word and I’ll step away.”
“Go right ahead,” Penn said. “Nita’s committed. I’ll keep her.”
Kit just looked at him.
“And why shouldn’t I? Because admit it, you’re on the downhill slide. Your high-powered days are behind you now. That’s why you’re mentoring, after all.” Penn smiled. “Those who can’t do . . . teach.”
Around them, the quiet went dead silent.
Kit felt the flush rising to his face. And to think we had the idea that maybe he was done being a jerk, he thought. Okay, then. He’s spoiling for it. Time to teach him some manners.
“Fine,” Kit said, raising his voice into the stillness. “I really don’t need to be listening to this. We’ve got hard work ahead of us at the finals, and there’s no point in letting stuff fester. So let’s find someplace where the ground suits.”