“What do you mean, I should go?” And Nita burst out laughing. “You’re so pitiful when you’re trying to be a good loser, you know that? I was going to tell you that my dad doesn’t want me to go alone. Tom still has an opening, and he’s holding it for you!”
“Wow,” Kit said. The envy instantly dissolved, first in delight, then in mild outrage. “Hey, and you let me stew for a whole, I don’t know, five seconds, thinking I was going to have to sit here while you were gone?”
“That’s to get you back for the chicken thing,” Nita said, and started imitating Kit. “ ‘Oh, I don’t know. I might want it myself… ’” She broke up laughing again.
“Cut it out!” But Kit had to laugh, too. “Okay,” he said. “I have to figure out how to handle this. Where’re we supposed to be going?”
“The manual says it’s some planet called Alaalu.”
“Never heard of it,” Kit said. He put out a hand and felt around for something only he would be able to feel, the tag of a wizardly “zipper” in the air, which controlled entry to the personal otherspace pocket that followed him around. Kit found the tag, pulled it down, and pushed his hand into the opening so that it appeared to vanish while he felt around for his manual. “Alaalu… Our galaxy, or somewhere else?”
“Ours,” Nita said, and Kit heard manual pages rustling again at her end. “Outer Arm Four, around radian one-sixty.”
Kit thought about that for a moment as he felt around and found his manual, then pulled it out of the claudication into local space. “That’s, uh… the Scutum Arm, right? Straight across the Bar from us.”
“Yeah,” Nita said as Kit zipped the pocket up again. “The mirror of the arm we’re in. The system’s a little more than sixty thousand light-years from here.”
Kit put his manual down on the counter and started flipping through it to the galaxography section. “Alaalu, Alaalu,” he muttered, paging through to the section dealing with the Scutum Arm. Kit ran one finger down the long column of planet names and coordinates on the index page and found Alaalu there.
“Got it,” Kit said, and riffled along to the page in question, which had an image of the planet’s star system. Apparently there was only one inhabited planet in the system, an exception to the usual rule. The star around which Alaalu IV circled was about the same size as Earth’s Sun, and in the same general class, a little golden G0.
“Not exactly next door,” Kit said, studying the star’s position about three-quarters of the way down the long arm on the other side of the galaxy’s spiral. He tapped on the image of the star system to zoom in on the planet. “Who lives there?”
“Well, people. Who else? Humanoids, anyway: real tall people, all kind of a tan color.” Nita said. “Check page… ” She glanced at her own manual. “I have it on page nine-sixty-two.”
“Right,” Kit said. For the moment his attention was on the image of the planet, banded blindingly around its equator with a white, two-way highway of swirling weather systems. The view was in real time, and the very slightest shift was visible as Alaalu turned in the amber light of its sun. The planet’s seas were as blue as Earth’s, and huge; there were only three landmasses, none of them large enough to be considered a continent. One was a big, rough-edged crescent, about a third of the way up from the equator toward Alaalu’s north pole—a three-quarter circle with the open end pointing more or less north. Kit wondered if he was looking at a remnant of some gigantic, ancient meteor strike—the rest of the “splash” rim damaged in some recent earthquake or plate movement. The other two landmasses were halfway around the planet from the crescent island. They were irregularly shaped blobs, long and narrow, with great chains of islands large and small strung out from them at either end, and each chain straddling Alaalu’s equator. One island chain ran almost vertically, pointing at the poles; the other crossed the equator more diagonally, like a sword stuck in the planet’s equatorial belt.
At first Kit thought these were relatively short island chains, but then he got a look at the scale indicator plotted against the planet’s globe. “Neets,” he said, “those island chains are nine thousand miles long!”
“I know,” Nita said. “I had to look twice, too. Check the main stats for the planet. Thirty-six thousand miles in diameter… ”
“Wow,” Kit said. He put the manual aside for the moment. There was a ton of technical detail there to digest.
“Looks like a nice place, anyway,” Nita said. “A peaceful planet, no recent wars, not a lot of intraspecies hostility of any kind. Warm climate at the equator, but not too hot.”
“Somewhere that life really is a beach,” Kit said, starting to smile in anticipation. “Could this actually be a vacation for a change?”
“Looks that way. Oh, there’d be some cultural stuff. We’d have to travel around on their planet, find out what it’s like living in one of their families. That kind of thing.”
“Sounds boring. In a good way.”
“I don’t know about you,” Nita said, sounding a little sharp, “but I could use some good boring about now.”
“No argument there,” Kit said. Recent months had featured too many excitements by half.
“But you know what’s really weird about this place?”
“What, besides that it’s peaceful?”
“Yeah. Know how many wizards it has?”
“How many?”
“One.”
Kit blinked.
“One?” he said. “For the whole planet?”
“Yup.”
“And how many people live there?”
“It says a billion and a half.”
Kit stared at the manual, not knowing what to make of this. “They haven’t had a big catastrophe or something that’s wiped out all their wizards?”
“Nope. The manual says one wizard is all they need.”
Kit shook his head. “Wow,” he said again. He had trouble even imagining any world so peaceful and orderly that one wizard was enough to help keep things running smoothly.
“So go ask your folks! Wouldn’t they like to get rid of you for a couple of weeks?”
Kit fell silent, listening to his home. The TV was now shouting with a cacophony of alien voices, the audio expression of yet another chat room, and his sister was alternately shouting at the screen in the Speech and talking into her smartphone. “Come on over and we’ll find out,” Kit said. “I think this’ll go all right.”
Outside, without warning, the howling started… in chorus.
“Kit!” his father said.
“Just hurry up,” Kit said. “I need some moral support!”
***
To Kit, it seemed to take hours for Nita to arrive. His brain was buzzing with plans and possibilities that couldn’t start getting handled until he’d settled things with his folks. But it was really only about ten minutes before Nita bounced in the back door, grinning. “Here,” she said, and handed Kit a chicken, wrapped in plastic wrap on a little cardboard tray.
“Thanks,” Kit said, and stowed it in the fridge.
“What’s that noise? Opera?”
Beyond, in the living room, the entertainment system was making a sound like a fire siren bewailing its lot. “No,” Kit said, “just ‘Mela’s chat application again. Come on.”
“By the way, the K-9 Corps is out there again,” Nita said as she and Kit headed through the dining room. “Hi, Mrs. R.”
“Hi, Nita,” Kit’s mama said from the sofa, where she was still lying with her feet up on the arm and her eyes closed. “Dinner in half an hour.”
“Thanks!”
“At least they’re just sitting there now,” Kit said softly. “They were howling before.”
“I missed that. Where’s Ponch?”
“Out back somewhere. He got them to be quiet, and after that he took off. H’s never real social after he has to go talk to them. Don’t ask me why…”
They went into the living room. There Carmela was sitting cross-legged on the rug in front o
f the TV, her phone now on the floor nearby but, miraculously, not in use. “Hi, ‘Mela,” Nita said. She peered at the screen. “‘Multispecies General Discussion,’” she read off the channel-indicator band at the bottom. “What’s it like?”
“Interesting, mostly.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Grenfelzing. Which for some reason Kit doesn’t want me to get involved with. He thinks it’ll stunt my growth.”
“Anything that would keep you from needing to buy new clothes every other week would be welcome,” said Kit’s pop from behind the paper. “If grenfelzing has that effect, bring it on.”
Kit looked at the screen, which Nita was studying with interest. It was divided into three main parts: a status bar along the bottom; a constantly scrolling column down one side; and the main part of the screen, subdivided into eight squares, each of which featured a live image, or what looked like one. The scrolling column was full of words in the Speech, moving very fast indeed, and the audio was screeching or blatting or warbling or hooting with any number of alien-sounding voices, all talking (it seemed) at once.
“Which one is supposed to be you?” Nita said, looking at the screen.
“That one.” Carmela pointed at what appeared to be a portrait of a pink octopus. “I picked it off a screenful of sample cover faces.”
‘“Mela,” Nita said, “you know what would be better? Go off-line and pick something more humanoid. Otherwise, if Pink Octopus Guy turns up at school someday and wants to sit next to you, the explanation you’re going to find yourself making is going to sound like something out of a lame sitcom.”
“Oh,” Carmela said. “Okay.” She tossed the remote to Kit. “But do aliens really turn up on Earth just like that?”
“There’s no other possible way to explain you,” Kit said.
“Ooooooooo,” Carmela said, standing up without uncrossing her legs. “I feel unloved now. Nita, come see my catalogs!”
“I’ll come up in a while,” Nita said. “Thanks.”
Carmela wandered upstairs. Kit glanced at his pop. “Uh, Popi,” Kit said, “uh, is it okay if I go halfway across the galaxy for a couple of weeks?”
“Sure,” Kit’s father said from behind the paper. “Is Nita going with you?”
“Uh, yeah, Pop.”
“Her dad said it’s okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Fine. Dress warm,” Kit’s father said, and turned to the comics section.
Kit and Nita exchanged a bemused glance. Finally, Kit turned toward the kitchen.
“You’ll want to fill Mama in on the details,” Kit’s father said, in a tone of voice suggesting complete unconcern.
Kit couldn’t bear it anymore. He looked over his shoulder and saw his father just peering over the top of the newspaper at him, waiting for his reaction. His father bent the paper down just enough to let Kit see his grin, then let the paper pop up again and went on with his reading.
“I’ve been had,” Kit muttered to Nita as they went back into the kitchen.
Nita rolled her eyes. “The story of our lives…”
Kit’s mama was up off the couch now, and looked up as she poured herself some coffee. “In case you were wondering,” she said as they came in, “Tom was on the phone a while ago.”
“Oh,” Kit said.
“He gave us the basics,” Kit’s mama said, leaning against the counter. “I gather that this isn’t going to be at all dangerous, and that you’ll be able to come home at night if you want to, or if we want you to.”
“Uh, yeah,” Kit said.
“Well, let’s think about this,” his mother said. “Your grades have been okay… ” Kit was already beginning to grin when his mama glanced up at him and said, “I emphasize the ‘okay’. Not brilliant. I’m still not entirely pleased with your midterm grades, especially that history test.”
“Mama,” Kit said, “my history teacher is a date freak. He doesn’t care if you understand anything about history except when things happened!”
“Aha, the appeal to vague generalities as opposed to concrete data,” Kit’s mother said. “Sorry, honey. Not having the dates is like knowing why someone’s having a cardiac arrest but not being real sure where their heart is. You’re just going to have to work harder at that, even if you can’t see the point right now.”
“You’re gonna tell me that it’ll all make sense someday,” Kit said.
“It sure will,” his mother said, “and on that day you’ll suddenly realize that your mom wasn’t really as dumb as you secretly thought she was at the very moment you were also trying to wheedle her into letting you go jaunting off halfway across the galaxy.”
I think this is a real good time not to say anything, Kit thought.
“Okay,” Kit’s mama said. “I want a commitment from you that you’re going to work a lot harder in that history class, and see if maybe the guy’s really all that fixated on dates. Otherwise, the next time you want to go out on a recreational run like this, the answer is going to be no. Even if you work in other worlds, you have to live in this one… and Tom says even wizards need day jobs.”
“I promise, Mama,” Kit said.
His mother had another drink of coffee, then looked reflectively into the cup. “Of course,” she said, “you’d promise to turn into a three-headed gorilla as long as you could go on this trip.”
“Mama!”
Her grin broke out at full strength. “I know,” she said. “Wizards don’t lie. But if I don’t get to tease you sometimes, life won’t be worth living. When do you leave?”
“Thanks, Mama!” Kit said, and jumped at her and hugged her harder than necessary, if only to get her back for the teasing.
“It’s some time in the next couple of days, Mrs. R.,” Nita said. “I didn’t check the exact date—I was looking at the rest of the info package. We can tell you in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” Kit’s mama said. “Get that sorted out and you can fill us in over dinner.”
They went up to Kit’s room—or, rather, Kit ran up the steps three at a time in his excitement, and Nita came up after him. As Kit passed Carmela’s room, she put her head out and looked him up and down as if he were nuts. “What’s going on with you?” she said.
“I get to go away for spring break!” Kit said.
“Oh, really? Where to?”
“Sixty-two thousand light-years away,” Kit said casually. “The other side of the galaxy.”
“Great!” Carmela said. “I’ll give you a shopping list.”
“You do your own shopping,” Kit said as he and Nita went into his room. He glanced over at Nita and saw her grinning. “What’s so funny?”
“Your whole family teases you,” Nita said. “I’ve never seen them get so coordinated about it before.”
“Neither have I,” Kit said. “I don’t know whether I should be worried or not.”
“This is new,” Nita said, looking up at a double-hemisphere map of the Moon on the wall at the head of Kit’s bed. The map had a lot of different-colored pins stuck in it, in both hemispheres, though there were about twice as many on the “near side” of the Moon as on the “far side.” “Are you trying to win a Visited Every Crater competition or something?”
Kit threw her a look. “Go ahead and laugh,” he said. “I’m trying to get to know the Moon before it becomes just another tourist destination.” But his attention was on his desk by the window.
It was covered with schoolbooks brought home over spring break (the school did locker cleaning then) and notebooks and pens and DVDs and various other detritus. What it was not strewn with were the three objects that had just appeared, between one breath and the next, and were floating a few inches above the cluttered surface. They were silvery packages about the size of paperback books, wrapped with “sheet” force fields that sizzled slightly blue at the corners; and they were bobbing slightly in the draft from the nearby window, as its weather stripping had come loose again. “When are you go
ing to fix that?” Nita said.
“Later,” said Kit. He inspected the little floating packages to see if they had notations on them. One did. A single string of characters in the Speech was attached to it and was waving gently in the draft: read this first.
“Is this what you got?” Kit said.
Nita nodded. “That one’s the mission statement,” she said.
Kit took hold of the wizardly package, pulled it into the middle of the room, and pulled the string of characters out until the normally curved characters of the Speech went straight with the tension of the pull. As they did, the package unfolded itself in the air, a sheet of semishadow on which many more characters in the Speech swiftly spread themselves in blocks of text and columns, small illustrations and diagrams, and various live and still images.
SPONSORED ELECTIVE/NONINTERVENTIONAL EXCURSUS PROGRAM, said the header, NOMINEE AUTHORIZATIONS AND ANCILLARY DATA. NOTE: WHERE CULTURAL CORRESPONDENCES ARE NOT EXACT, LOCAL ANALOGUES ARE SUBSTITUTED. Beneath the header, divided into various sections, was a tremendous amount of other information about the world where they’d be staying, the family they’d be staying with, the culture, the locality where the family lived, the planet’s history, the climate, the flora and fauna, on and on and on…
“It’s gonna take me all night to read this!” Kit said.
“Relax,” Nita said. “It’s not like there’s a test! You don’t have to inhale it all at once. We’ve got a little time for that.”
“Yeah,” Kit said. It was just beginning to sink in how very far from home they were going. Kit was delighted—but at the same time all of a sudden it was making him twitch.
He scanned down the data. Addendum to authorization: You may be accompanied by your adjunct Talent if desired. “Hey,” Kit said, “I can bring Ponch!”
“Great! And there are the dates,” Nita said, pointing to one side where the duration of the trip was expressed, as usual on Earth, in Julian-day format—2455290.3333 to 2455304.3333, it said. She had her manual out and was paging through it.