"Putting on a little weight, there, Neets," Dairine said behind her. "Especially up front."
Nita almost turned around and decked her sister. Their mom had just taken Nita to buy her first bra, and her feelings about this were decidedly mixed-a kind of pride combined with embarrassment, because none of the girls she hung out with had one yet, and she had become the focus of some slight envy. It all made her uncomfortable, and Dairine, sensing this, had been running the subject into the ground for days.
She can stuff it right up!, Nita thought fiercely, I am not going to let her get to me! "All muscle, Dair," she said. "Besides, it's where you are that counts. Check this out." She sidestepped to the Mars scale, the needle of which stopped at seven pounds. "Less than the Moon, even."
"But it's bigger than the Moon," Dairine said.
"But not as dense. That's why its atmosphere's so thin even though Mars is that big; its mass is too small to hold it-" Nita heard footsteps, turned around, and saw that she had lost her audience. "Dairine? Where you headed?"
"Bathroom." Dairine's voice came from halfway down the stairs to the lower level.
"Well, hurry up, it's almost closing time."
Kit, on the Saturn scale, moved over to the Jupiter. "What was that all about?" he said. "I don't often hear you think these days, but if your dad had heard your mind right after she said that, he would've washed your head out with soap."
"Oh, crap." She tried the scale for Mercury: three and a half pounds. "I'm growing."
"You don't look any taller."
"Kit!"
"Oh." He looked at her chest. "Oh. I guess." He shrugged. "I didn't notice."
Oh, thank heaven, Nita thought, and immediately after that, He didn't notice? She swallowed and said, "Anyway, she's been riding me. I'm gonna kill her if she keeps it up."
"Maybe she's jealous."
Nita laughed. "Her? Of me?"
"Sure." Kit got off the scales and began to pace off the space between the scales and the doors to the planetarium proper. "Neets, wake up. You're a wizard. Here Dairine's been hot for magic since she was a little kid-any kind, Star Wars, you name it-and all of a sudden, not only does it turn out that there really is such a thing, but you turn up with it. From what you had to tell her to keep her quiet after she found out, Dari knows that you and I do big stuff. She wishes she could get her hands on the power. And there's no guarantee she ever will."
"She was into my manual over the last couple of days, I think...."
"So there you are. If she can't have the magic, she's gonna twist you around whatever other way she can. I hate to say this, Neets, but she's a real brat."
That agreed too well with thoughts Nita had been having, but had rejected. "Well...."
"Ladies and gentlemen," said a woman's voice from the ceiling speakers down the hall, "the planetarium is now closing. Thank you."
Nita sighed. Kit punched her lightly in the arm. "Come on," he said "don't let her get you down. Let's go over to the park and get hot dogs. She starts getting on our nerves, we'll tell her we'll turn her into a fire hydrant and call in every dog in Manhattan to try her out."
"Too late," Nita said. "She already knows we don't do that kind of thing."
"She knows you don't do that kind of thing," Kit said. "She doesn't know that I don't...."
Nita looked at his grim expression and wondered briefly whether the grimness was all faked. "I am starved."
"So c'mon."
They headed down the stairs together and came out on the ground floor, by the front doors. In the stairwell, under an arrow pointing toward the basement level, was a sign they had seen earlier that day, and laughed at:
TO MARS, VENUS, AND LADIES' ROOM
"Wait for me," Nita said. "She's probably trying to break into that Venus exhibit to see where the 'lava' comes from."
Kit rolled his eyes. "Being a fire hydrant may be too good for her."
Nita went down the stairs. "Dari?" she called, annoyed. "Come on before they lock us in."
It was considerably cooler down here. Nita turned right at the bottom of the stairs and walked quickly through the Venus exhibit, rubbing her upper arms at the chill, which went right through her thin T-shirt. Someone had turned off the sluggishly erupting Venerian volcano behind its murky glass wall; no one was to be seen anywhere else, all the way down to the temporary plasterboard wall with the sign that said mars closed for renovations.
"Don't tell me she's still in the toilet," Nita muttered, annoyed. Reading, probably. One of these days she's gonna fall in. She went back the way she had come, past the stairs, to the ladies' room. It was not only cold down here, there was a draft. She grabbed the handle of the door and pulled; it resisted her slightly, and there was a faint hoo noise, air sliding through the door crack as she tugged. "Dari? Come on, we're leaving!" Nita pulled harder, the door came open-
Air blew hard past her and ruffled her hair into her eyes. Bitter cold smote the front of her, and in it the humidity in the air condensed out instantly, whipping past Nita through the sucking air as stinging, dust-fine snow.
Nita was looking through the doorway into a low rust-red wasteland: nothing but stones in all sizes, cracked, tumbled, piled, with dun dust blowing between them. Close, much too close to be normal, lay a horizon hazed in blood-brown, shading up through translucent brick color, rose, violet, a hard dark blue, and above everything, black with stars showing. Low in the crystalline rose burned a small pinkish sun, fierce, distant-looking, and cold. Nita flinched from the unsoftened sight of it, from the long, harsh shadows it laid out behind every smallest stone. She slammed the ladies' room door shut. Air kept moaning past her, through the cracks, out into the dry red wasteland.
"Mars," she breathed, and terror grabbed her heart and squeezed. "She went to Mars...!"
Chapter 4
Escape Key
THAT MORNING DAIRINE HAD awakened with the Oath's words ringing in her ears to find herself not in a galaxy far far away, but in her own bed. She had lain there for a long few minutes in bitter annoyance before she heard the wheels of the truck in the driveway. It was the computer, of course: and to this lesser excitement she had gratefully surrendered herself.
Dairine was good with computers. It was just one more kind of knowledge, good for using to keep people and the World off your back; and computers were really surprisingly easy to work with once you got it through your head that they were utterly stupid things, unable to do anything you didn't tell them how to do, in language they understood. In her few months' work with the Apples at school, Dairine had become an accomplished hacker.
She utterly disdained the "phreaking," the breaking and entering of electronic bulletin boards and systems that interested a few of her malicious classmates. It could get you thrown in jail. What fascinated Dairine was advanced programming, the true hacking-getting a computer to sing, or talk, or play involved and clever games, or make you a sandwich. All these things were possible, with the right peripherals and a smart programmer. That she was; and the computer-tireless listener, absolutely obedient to orders, and endlessly forgiving of mistakes-was the perfect companion. They worked well together. Even her teachers had noticed that the machines "behaved" better around Dairine than around anyone else. She never noticed this herself, having taken it for granted.
So while her mother and father sat arguing over the manuals, of course Dairine took matters into her own hands. The Apple IIIc+ was easy to set up: a plug and cable for the screen, the printer cable attached to the printer port and the computer's interface; the power cord to the wall. Dairine slipped a system disk into the drive, shut the drive door, and turned the computer on, "booted it up"-ready to look for the "Copy" utility in the disk's directory. The first thing you always did with a brand-new system disk full of programs was copy it; working on the original disk could cost you a lot of money to replace if you hurt or wiped it accidentally.
The Apple logo came up on the screen, and below it the A> prompt that said t
he computer's basic operating system, called DOS, was ready to accept commands to its "A" or onboard disk drive and the disk inside it. Dairine was about to start typing when something about the logo caught her eye. It was the famous striped Apple, all right: but it had no bite out of it.
She stared for a second. Pirated software? she thought, but that was ridiculous. Her dad had bought the computer and its system software from an approved dealer, and the various warranties, manuals and end-user agreements were all over the floor. Huh. Maybe they changed the logo. Oh, well. Let's see the directory....
DIR A: , she typed on the keyboard, and hit the carriage return.
PASSWORD? Said the screen, and sat there apparently waiting for a response, for the A> prompt hadn't come back.
That was no response she'd ever seen on the machines at school, dir a: , she typed, again, and the carriage return.
PASSWORD?
"Huh," she said to herself, as possibilities flickered through her head. Did Dad have the software encrypted somehow so that Nita and I can't get into it? But why? He wants us to use it. She let out a breath. Maybe it just wants an ID code for the user-there're some programs that do that. She squinted at the screen a moment, then smiled and typed in a private joke: the code name that a certain untrained farmboy used in his fighter run on the Death Star, a name that suited Dairine since she had inherited her mother's red hair. red five, she typed, and hit the carriage return.
PASSWORD RED FIVE ACCEPTED.
A>
Weird, Dairine thought, and typed again.
DIR A:
The disk drive whirred. The screen wiped itself and displayed a list: mostly Program command files, or data files holding information for the programs, to judge by their suffixes.
ASSIST.COM 22008K
CHANGE.COM 2310K
COPY.COM 1032K
COPY.DAT 4404K
GO.COM 5048K
GO.DAT 3580K
HIDE.COM 1244K
MANUAL.COM 3248K
MANUAL.DAT 10662K
MBASIC.COM 7052K
MENU.COM 256K
SEEK.COM 6608K
SUPPORT.COM 5120K
SUPPORT.DAT 3218K
A>
Dairine gazed at the screen, perplexed. A K was a kilobyte, a thousand little pieces or bytes of information; and the disk drive itself was supposed to hold only 800k. How could the disk possibly have all these files on it, and such big ones?
Maybe this is a bad disk, Dairine thought. It happened sometimes, that a disk was damaged on its way from the factory. Or maybe something was wrong with the directory. Well, let's see if something'll run. Beside the A> prompt she typed "copy" and hit the carriage return.
The disk drive whirred. The screen wiped itself again, then said:
IIIC COPY UTILITY
5430K FREE
RADIUS?
Dairine stared again. Radius meant nothing to her. She hit the carriage return, hoping the computer would (as some programs did) supply its own data as a result.
DEFAULT RADIUS, the screen said.
It was all right, then; the program had been instructed to supply a value of its own if the user didn't specify one. Dairine let out a breath, and resolved to have a look at this thing's manual. Maybe the company had made changes in the software.
COPY UTILITY READY, said the screen. PRESS ENTER TO BEGIN.
Dairine hit the carriage return. The disk drive whirred.
There were two computers on the desk.
She gaped. Hesitantly she put out a hand to the second computer, which was sitting next to the first, and sticking over the edge of the desk a little. It was solid, and its screen matched that of the original computer exactly. They both said:
COPY SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED
DESCRIPTION FILE "APPLIIIC.DSC" CREATED
HARD COPY "APPLIIIC.CPY" CREATED
A>
Oh, Lord! Dairine thought. She didn't dare turn around or make any outward sign: behind her, her mother and father were arguing peaceably over the contents of the Apple manuals. Desperately, Dairine brought up the directory again, stared at it, and then, for lack of any better idea, typed:
HIDE
The disk drives whirred again. Dairine thought she had never heard such a loud noise in her life, but her parents still didn't notice anything. The screen cleared itself, then said:
IIIC HIDE UTILITY
CHOOSE ONE:
(1) HIDE FROM COPY UTILITY
(2) HIDE FROM CHANGE UTILITY
(3) HIDE FROM MBASIC
(4) EXIT TO SYSTEM
Dairine typed "1." The screen cleared again.
HIDE FROM "COPY" UTILITY
Last copy description file in memory:
APPLIIIC.DSK
Last hard copy created:
APPLIIIC.CPY FROM APPLIIIC.CPY (ORIGINAL)
Name of hard copy to hide?
I'd sooner have the original...! Dairine hurriedly typed APPLIIIC.ORG. The screen said:
HIDE OPTIONS:
(a) Hide in realspace (invisibility option)
(b) Hide in realspace (size reduction)
(c) Hide in otherspace (retrievable pocket)
(d) Discard in otherspace (nonretrievable pocket)
(e) Timed storage (coordinate-specific claudication)
(f) Exit to main menu
Dairine typed "c."
PASSWORD FOR RETRIEVAL?
Dairine swallowed: behind her, her father was muttering about getting some coffee. "RED FIVE," she typed.
CHOOSE INPUT OPTION: VERBAL OR KEYBOARD?
VERBAL, she typed, very fast. The drives whirred.
HIDING HARD COPY OF FILE APPLIIIC.ORG
As silently as it had come, the second computer vanished.
A>
Dairine's father turned around and saw her at the computer. "What are you doing?!"
"Uh," Dairine said. She couldn't remember when she had last been at a loss for words. Her father, though, wasn't even slightly concerned with this. Several seconds later Dairine found herself going to New York with Nita and Kit.
At the moment, even the thought of the New York Public Library seemed a bit tame.
It took her hours to get free of Nita and Kit. All the while her mind was raging, turning over and over the thought of what power she had been offered when she took the Oath, and when she finally got down to the ladies' room and sat down in one of the stalls, her heart was hammering with excitement and sweat stood out on her.
"Red five," she whispered, and held her breath.
There was a computer in her lap.
She flipped up the little liquid-crystal screen and was shocked to find the A> prompt staring at her: shocked partly because she hadn't booted the computer up, and partly because it couldn't be running-there were no batteries in it yet-or were there? But Dairine wasn't one to argue the point. She typed hurriedly, using the hide.com program to put the books she'd bought in a "pocket" and get them out of her way. Then she brought up the directory again. assist.com, said the first entry. Maybe that was a "help menu," a series of screens that would explain how to get the most out of the computer. She typed "assist" and the carriage return.
The screen cleared, then said at the top:
ACTIVE OR PASSIVE MODE?
Dairine was out of her depth again. "active," she typed, on a guess, and entered it. The screen cleared again.
UTILITY OPTIONS:
(1) General Data & Logistics-manual, menu
(2) Travel-go.com
(3) Intervention-change (see also manual)
(3a) Duplication-copy
(3b) Preservation-hide, seek
(4) Outside assistance-(routine) support
(4a) (emergency) assist
(5) Other programming-mbasic
(6) Exit to system
Dairine chewed her lip and thought. Just to see what would happen, she hit "2" and the carriage return. The screen cleared.
TRAVEL UTILITY
Input? (1) keyboard, (2) verbal
/>
2, Dairine typed.
"Inside solar system or outside solar system?" the computer said very quietly, but so suddenly that Dairine almost dropped it.
"Inside," she said, and swallowed.
"Planet?"
She gazed at the ladies' room door, thinking of the dioramas outside with a sudden terrible desire. "Mars," Dairine said.
The disk drive chirred briefly. "Coordinates?"
Dairine knew that aerographers used some kind of latitude-longitude system for Mars, but she knew nothing else about it. "Default," she said, on a hunch.
"Default coordinates confirmed," said the computer, "last recorded transit. Atmosphere?"
Last recorded- "Uh, atmosphere? Yes," she said.
"Parameters?"
"Umm.... Fifteen percent oxygen, eighty percent nitrogen, five percent carbon dioxide."
"Mix proportions approximate Terran sea-level parameters. Default to those?"
"Mmm... Yes."
"Estimated time in transit?"
She thought. "One hour."
"Data complete," said the computer. "Ready to transit. Transit command 'run.' "
"Run," Dairine said.
And everything slewed sideways and upside down. Or no, the world stayed the same-but Dairine's frame of reference suddenly became huger than the whole Earth and the space that contained it, so that her planet seemed only one moving, whirling point plunging along its path through a terrible complexity of forces, among which gravity was a puny local thing and not to be regarded. Up was some other way now; down had nothing to do with the floor. Her stomach rebelled.
And her eyes were seeing things they had never been made to see. Lines and sparks and traces of white fire seemed to tear through her head from her eyes to the back of her skull; they pinned her to the rolling Earth like a feebly fluttering moth to a card. A terrible silence with a deadly sea-roar at the bottom of it, more terrible than the stillness of her Oath-taking, flattened her down with its sheer cold ancientness, a vast weight of years without sound or light or life. Cosmic rays, she thought desperately, clutching at reason: faster-than-light particles, maybe that's what the light is. But the dark-it's death, death itself, I'm going to die—