Carmela turned and looked her up and down. “You sound tired,” she said. “Enough walking! Let’s do the wizardy thing and get hoverscoots.”
Nita blinked. “How’s that so wizardy?”
“Well, it’s all about not wasting energy, isn’t it? No point in wasting perfectly good shopping energy on walking.”
It occurred to Nita that this was one of the more interesting takes she’d recently heard on the concept of not speeding up the heat-death of the Universe. Carmela, though, plainly wasn’t concerned about such details. She merely paused where she was and stamped on the shining white floor.
Immediately two long pieces of the floor material smoothly detached themselves upwards from it, deformed out into long hovering skateboard shapes, and sprouted tall slender grips from their fronts. Underneath the scooters the surface reformed seamlessly and went back to being shining and white.
Nita blinked. “That’s new…” she said. “Used to be Crossings staff had to call for one of these.”
“I’m that,” Carmela said, “more or less. Or anyway I’ve got a similar level of permissions.”
Which was no surprise. To everyone at the Crossings from the highest managerial levels on down these days she was Carmela Rodriguez of Earth, Defender and Protector of Transients and Staff… not to mention Occasional Personal Shopper to Interplanetary Royalty (which counted for a little more on the strictly retail side). Nita had of course spearheaded the defense that had been instrumental in saving the Crossings from the aliens attacking it, and was if anything honored even more highly than Carmela, to an almost embarrassing extent (at least it embarrassed her). Carmela, though, had absolutely no embarrassment about casually reminding the Crossings staff how much they owed her (and Nita), and as a result had for some time now been pulling down a range of increasingly impressive perks.
“Come on, mount up,” Carmela said, “there’s a lot of new stuff on this side of the wing we haven’t seen yet.”
Nita climbed onto the scooter, and both of them started to move along the broad corridor, absolutely shocklessly. She recognized the motive force as another implementation of the frictionless, inertially-dampered transport system the Crossings used for moving people and cargo in and out of the satellite terminals to the major gate clusters at high speed. These scooters, though, were gliding along at just a few miles an hour, with no more fuss or sense of motion than if the two of them were standing still together.
Carmela was studying a diagram of the local shopping space that had begun displaying on the plaque that spanned the graceful handlebars of the scooter. Nita’s display had synced up with her manual—all the Crossings’ systems being alert to the presence of wizards and having a raft of custom routines to make their work easier—and was displaying “smart” advertisements for various stores in the area and travel advisories tailored to her point of origin, all translated into English for her convenience.
“Okay,” Carmela said, tracing a route on the scooter’s display, “right there.” The scooter chirped in acquiescence. “Meanwhile,” she said, turning to Nita, “I know exactly what we need.”
“Yeah? What?”
“A Christmas party.”
“Mela,” Nita said, and laughed. “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet!”
“And you were just complaining that you didn’t want it to be.”
Nita blinked, as that felt like it should have made some kind of sense. Just possibly not Earth sense.
She sighed and glanced down at the scooter’s display, which was now showing some amusing promotional material. After a moment she raised her eyebrows at the slug line of one feature. “NASA’s going to be glad to hear we’ve got a ruthless and terrible space fleet.”
Carmela snickered. “So will Richard Branson, when he gets the memo,” she said. “And frankly, I know which of them’s going to do better marketing.”
Nita snorted. “Yeah, but Mela, you know as well as I do it’s not true! Is putting something like this out there smart?”
“Why not? If everybody thinks Earth has a big aggressive space fleet, no one’ll bother turning up on our doorstep with one, will they.”
There was something to be said for that line of reasoning, but Nita still had misgivings: some of the more assertive species she knew of might take it as a challenge. “And anyway, who put that in here?”
“I’m sure I have no idea,” Carmela said, airily waving a hand.
Nita began to sweat a little, because she knew from experience what it meant when Carmela started handwaving. “Are you trying to tell me that— What did you get Sker’ret to let you do?” For it couldn’t escape anyone’s notice who knew the present Master of the Crossings that there was just about nothing he wouldn’t do for Carmela. Installing a worldgate in her closet had merely been a small sign of things to come.
“Who, me? Nothing! …Much. I mean, the small print was such a nuisance to start with…” She glanced over at what Nita was still reading.
Nita squinted to read the block of tiny, tiny print at the bottom of the promotional feature, again displayed in English to ease the handling of some of the more obscure Rirhait idioms. “…Wait. ‘Earth’, ‘Mysterious Earth’ and ‘Mother Earth The Legendary Home Of Humankind’ are licensed trademarks of Gaia Protectorate CRLLC, terms and conditions apply, planetary descriptions may change from time to time without notice at management’s discretion—” And then in the tiniest print possible, “—battle fleet not included’??”
“Legalese,” Carmela said, craning her neck to see ahead of them. “It’s not like the disclaimers actually have any force in law, really, once you’ve—”
“I can’t believe this,” Nita said. “CRLLC? Did you incorporate the entire planet Earth somewhere?!”
“Here, actually,” Carmela said. “The corporate tax rate here is reeeeeeeeallly low. Especially if you’ve saved the place from alien invasion. At which point it drops to zero. …If not lower.”
Nita’s mouth dropped open.
“And why are you looking so shocked? You cosigned the incorporation documents when we were here last.”
Being reduced to speechlessness around Carmela was hardly a new experience for Nita, but this particular incidence was setting new records for the underlying implications. “But I thought— Wait. You said that—”
“Nonono, wait just a minute! Look there. Is that what I think it is?”
“Uh,” Nita said, and peered ahead, her mind only half on whatever she was supposed to be looking for. The corridor up that way was fairly busy, full of aliens of all shapes and sizes. But after a second she thought she saw what Carmela was looking at, a dark-colored conical shape, hard to see clearly through the throng. “That tall thing sticking up? The green one— Oh. It’s a Demisiv—!”
“In a baseball cap!” Carmela said, and accelerated away.
…And so it was. Nita went after her, shaking her head and grinning. What are the odds, she thought, that one of my favorite wizardly houseguests should just happen to be passing through here while we’re here too? But the odds didn’t really come into it when you balanced them against the wizardly truism that there were no such things as coincidences. Or rather, when something that looked like a coincidence turned up, it was usually a sign from the Powers that Be that you should start paying attention: almost always, something else was going on.
Nita got caught up with Carmela after a few moments. “This is so perfect,” Carmela was saying, confident that Nita was right behind her. “See that, this was an absolutely great idea, we’d have missed him if we didn’t have the scoots!”
That was probably true. Within a few moments they were close enough that when Carmela started waving her arms and shouted across the crowd, “Hey, is that my shrub?!”, Nita could even through the intervening crowd see all those fir-tree-like branches of Filif’s arch up, as if in surprise, and then start waving back as if a wind had shaken them.
And it took only a few moments more before the two of them had h
opped off the scoots and were elbowing their way through the remaining crowd in an impromptu contest to be the first one to hug their fellow wizard. Nita came from behind in the last couple of meters and beat Carmela there by a nose.
It was always a little interesting hugging Filif, as you wound up getting a face full of something that felt like pine needles, even though the scent more closely resembled something like cinnamon instead of the kind of cool, green smell you might associate with a conifer. “You are so well met,” Filif was saying, “what a fine surprise, but what are you two doing here without my knowing about it? I’d thought the Knowledge would have alerted me that you were within physical-meeting range.”
“Might ask you the same question!” Nita said. The instrumentality that managed the wizards’ manuals (and the many other ways that the Art’s practitioners accessed spells and other wizardly data) would normally notify you, if you’d asked it, as to the presence in your physical neighborhood of other wizards with whom you’d worked. Nita had a good number of these alerts embedded in your manual, not least for those wizards who (however briefly) had lived in her basement. “Should’ve had a notifier go off.”
“Well, I only just got here,” Filif said. “Just out of the gate, in fact. Maybe that’s the problem. Anyway, the Master and I have business—some Interconnect Project details to sort out: I’ve been doing liaison work for the Demisiv side of the Project Authority.” He rustled a little, half-turning as Nita let go of him (and Carmela did not), and all the eye-berries on the free side of him glowed a little brighter as he tried to peer through the crowd. “He must’ve been delayed—he was in some other meeting, and said it might keep him a bit late.”
“Well, never mind that,” Carmela said, hugging him again—or still—and then letting him go. “Your business business can wait. And if he’s coming along to find you, good! Two birds with one stone.”
Filif half-turned in the other direction, and looked around him with more of his eyes. “Not sure I see any birds,” he said, sounding dubious. “Or for that matter, stones.”
Nita laughed. Sometimes the wizardly Speech did fairly well at translating human idiom, but sometimes it completely failed. “She means she wants to talk to both of you at once.”
“Well, that’s certainly preferable to hominid-on-avian violence,” Filif said. “Ah, now, here he comes. Not so delayed, then.”
Nita peered around her, not bothering to look up, because there wouldn’t have been any point in trying to see the Master of the Crossings over the heads of any crowd: when he was moving at any speed, he moved low. To her own amusement, though, it was the sound of lots of sharp little legs clicking and clattering against the smooth floor that told her which way to look (in this case, behind her). Nita turned and saw him coming, and grinned, and as he caught sight of her through the crowd that parted before him, Sker’ret was already half rearing up so that his front three pairs of legs were off the ground and the head with all those stalked eyes was on a level with Nita’s. She held her arms open, and when he more or less crashed into them, she grabbed him and hugged him to her and thumped his dorsal carapace. “Sker’!”
“Our saviors return,” Sker’ret laughed in her ear. “It’s been forever.”
“It’s been last week,” Nita said. “Getting amnesic from overwork?”
“No, I mean when the two of you were last here together.”
“Two weeks then. Maybe three.”
“Pedant,” Sker’ret said affectionately, gave her a squeeze and let her go.
“And what about me?” Carmela demanded. “You’re late for my daily dose of alien snuggles!”
“And whose fault is that? Anyway, you’re the alien.”
“No surprise at this sudden appearance then, my cousin?” Filif said.
“Excuse me?” Sker’ret said as he headed for Carmela. “I am the Master of this facility, coz. Of course I knew she was here: she’s got a facility-independent wizardly tracker routine associated with her. How else can I find her in a hurry if more invaders arrive and we need saving?”
“My favorite stalker,” Carmela said, and hugged Sker’ret as if hugging giant purple metallic centipedes was the most normal thing in the world. Which, for her, it naturally was.
“And why does her tracker work better than the Knowledge-based routines you’ve got hooked up to me?” Filif said, bending over in a sort of half-bow to Sker’ret so that they could brush their upper limbs together.
“Because she can do a lot more damage in a much shorter time than you routinely would,” Sker’ret said.
Carmela burst out laughing. “Oh, Sker’, you say that like it was a bad thing!”
“So tell us,” Filif said. “What damage are you contemplating now?”
“We’re having a Christmas party. And both of you are invited.”
All Filif’s berries on the side facing Sker’ret, and all Sker’ret’s stalked eyes, exchanged a bemused glance.
“And Christmas would be what?” Sker’ret said. “Is it a holiday of some sort?”
“Don’t you remember? Remember how excited Filif got about this?”
“Um…” Sker’ret was making a kind of thoughtful null sound that even in a Rirhait perfectly communicated a sense of I don’t want you to feel hurt but due to being really busy I have no idea what you’re talking about at the moment.
“Fil,” Carmela said. “Explain it to him. Remember that time of year we told you about, the last time you came visiting? The time of year when we bring trees into the house and decorate them?”
Filif looked astounded. “Wait. This is that time? Then what are you doing here? Mostly your folk are with family at such times, I thought!”
“No no no, it’s not right this minute!” Carmela said. “Fifty days or so yet. Hold still.” She reached into her shoulderbag and came out with a small sleek tablet. “How’s your schedule around JD 2455550.52…?”
“Well, let me check…”
“I’m free,” said Sker’ret immediately. “One or another of my relief people can take those shifts for me. Powers forbid I should miss a party of yours!”
Nita wanted to start shouting practical, sensible things like No, wait, this is all going way too fast, are you nuts…? But she took a deep breath, stood there hating Thanksgiving enough to be willing to think about anything else, especially when it involved going straight on past it, and peered over Carmela’s shoulder at the tablet. “That’s really gorgeous. Where’d you get that?”
“It’s part of her detached staff package,” Sker’ret said. “Didn’t you get yours, Nita? I’ll see that it comes to you.”
“Okay, Sker’, thanks,” she said. “What day is that?” Nita said to Carmela.
“December 20th. And hey, the next day is the Winter Solstice. Very symbolic!” Carmela said to Filif, elbowing him somewhere among his fronds and needles. “We’re having a sleepover on Almost The Longest Night! We can stay up all night and watch movies and eat popcorn and all kinds of things.”
“Mela,” Nita said. “Your mama and pop… you haven’t even asked them yet!”
“They’ll say yes,” Carmela said, waving a hand. “We’re going to do it exactly the way you did yours when Sker’ and Fil came to visit the first time. Elective-access ‘puptent’ accesses in the basement…”
“I can always spare powering structures for ten or twenty of those,” Sker’ret said. “Let me know what you need. If the party’s heavily attended we can always install a temporary secondary gating hub like the one in your closet.”
Nita rubbed her eyes for a moment. It’s always possible they will say yes right off the bat… And certainly since she became a wizard, stranger things had happened.
Carmela was talking to Filif a mile a minute about popcorn garlands and boughs of holly and snow and Christmas cookies. “And a star, Fil, an actual star for the top of you instead of a baseball cap…”
“But I like my baseball cap!” The protest didn’t have a lot of energy behind it: Fili
f was already starting to shake with excitement.
“Just a temporary thing. Something festive! For the season. And lights, Fil, all colors of lights, and glass balls and ribbons and…”
If she does get her mom and pop to say yes to this, Nita thought, this is going to be amazing. And it’s been such a crazy year. I could use some amazing right about now…
“Sker’,” Nita said very softly, watching the armwaving continue and Filif’s delighted, excited vibrations increase. “Tell me something.”
“Anything.”
“Remember that paperwork I cosigned with Mela when we were here last, after Mars…?”
“Yes?”
“Is it possible…” Nita’s mouth went dry. She tried swallowing, had to work at it. “…that as far as the intergalactic community is concerned, I’m, uh, one of the people who… rules the Earth?”
Sker’ret burst out in one of his ratchety laughs. “What? Rules? Oh, no! Not at all.”
“Okay, that’s a relief,” Nita said. “Good.” And she sagged a little.
“But you are on the governing board.”
Nita’s mouth dropped open again. Then she closed it, because she simply could not find a reply.
“We should go,” she said after a moment. “You two have business, and we’ve got a guest list to write.”
“Of course. I’ll let you get on with it. And we’ll see you at your place again! This is going to be so exciting. In… fifty days?”
“Sounds about right,” Nita said.
There was more hugging, and then Filif and Sker’ret took themselves off down the concourse. Carmela kicked her hoverscoot back into levitation mode, climbed aboard, and said to Nita, “So that’s settled. Come on, Neets, we’ve got the far end of the concourse to look over…” And off she went, already humming “Feliz Navidad… Feliz Navidad… Prospero Año y Felicidad…”
This is going to be interesting, Nita thought. “Mela, wait up!”
“I want to wish you a merry Christmas… I want to wish you a merry Christmas… from the bottom of my ooh wow look at that!”