“You’re gonna love them,” Dairine was saying to Roshaun as the two of them came down the driveway. “They’re unbelievably terrific.”
“Who?” Kit said. “Your little one-celled buddies on Titan?”
Dairine turned a don’t-get-cute expression on Kit. “Them, too,” she said. “But they weren’t who I was talking about.”
“Uh-oh,” Nita said, glancing at Kit. Then she looked back at Dairine. “Something tells me you’re thinking about doing some traveling.”
Dairine looked over her shoulder, back up the driveway. Twenty feet or so behind her, Spot was sitting in the middle of the driveway, staring with all his eyes at the sky. They all looked upward to see what he was looking at, but nothing was immediately obvious.
“It’s a long way there, and a long way back,” Dairine said, looking back at Kit and Nita. “It’s not somewhere I’ve been for a while, except virtually. Not enough energy available for the transit. But now”—she laced her fingers together and cracked her knuckles—”now it’s a whole new ball game.”
“Don’t do that,” Nita said. “You know it’s bad for your hands.”
“Like the state of my finger joints is going to matter if the world comes to an end?!” Dairine said.
Nita made a face. Kit had to admit that Dairine had a point. “Doing your own spell to get there’s going to cost you a lot of power,” Nita said.
“It would if I was going to do one,” Dairine said. “But why should I, when the visitors’ worldgates in the cellar are fully subsidized?” She grinned at Roshaun.
“And on checking mine,” Roshaun said, “I find that as of your Seniors’ talk with us, the subsidy has been extended indefinitely. We’ve retro-engineered those gates before.”
“Yeah, but this is going to be a much longer jump,” Dairine said. “If you’re not careful how you restate the spell’s power statements, you’re gonna make a mess. Better let me handle it.”
Roshaun frowned. “I should remind you that when I restated them last time—”
Kit took Nita by the elbow and steered her casually away; they headed down to the end of the driveway. They’re at it again, he said silently. How many times is this now since we got back?
Don’t ask me. I stopped counting yesterday.
They looked up and down the street, while behind them the argument started to escalate. “What’s your dad going to make of all this?” Kit said.
Nita shook her head. “He’s already dealt with the houseguests saving the solar system. After that, maybe saving the universe won’t seem like such a stretch.”
But she didn’t sound certain, and the uncertainty was catching. Kit looked around at the maple trees, the street with its potholes, the across-the-street neighbor washing his car in the driveway, the front-fender rattle of a kid riding by on a mountain bike—and found that everything suddenly felt peculiarly fragile and undependable, as if something far more solid and deadly might break through at any moment. Kit stuffed his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders a little. The day that had seemed mild earlier seemed chilly now, as the spring breeze whistled down the street and rustled the maple leaves.
“Well,” Kit said, “even if our parents don’t completely get what’s happening, it’s not like they can stop us.”
“I know,” Nita said. “But I’m so used to them coping, now. I’m getting spoiled for being open about it … it saves so much time.” She rubbed her forehead for a moment. “Time. What are we going to do about school?”
“Still thinking about that one,” Kit said.
Nita looked around, shook her head. “I can’t think straight,” she said. “I’m in shock. And now I’m wondering if I’m going to lose it totally when it starts to sink in. Dairine’s right for once: They’ve just told us the world might end in—what, a few weeks? A couple of months?”
“Something like that.” Kit’s mouth was dry again.
She looked up and down the street. “Makes everything look different,” she said. “Look, here comes Carmela…”
Kit glanced to the left, down toward the corner, where his street crossed Nita’s. Carmela had just come around the corner lugging a big pile of what Kit could eventually see were more teen magazines, and Ponch was trotting after her. As they came down the block, Nita said, “When she finds out, is she going to be able to cope with this?”
Kit had to laugh. “Carmela? Neets, how would I know? I don’t know if I can cope with it yet.”
She looked at him and shook her head. “You will,” Nita said.
Kit shrugged. Her certainty was reassuring. He just hoped it was justified.
“You guys done with your big meeting?” Carmela said as she came up to them.
“Yeah, we’re done,” Kit said.
“Roshaun still here?”
Ponch jumped up on Kit and started trying to lick his face, as usual. “Having a discussion with Dairine,” Nita said.
Carmela snickered. “I’ll just bet.” She went on up the driveway.
I went home and got some food, Ponch said. Your pop forgot that you fed me.
“Yet another criminal mastermind,” Kit said. “What are we going to do with you?”
Give me enough food that I don’t need to manipulate you. Did you miss me?
“Didn’t even notice you were gone,” Kit said, which was true, if not terribly tactful.
Ponch snapped at Kit’s face playfully. I didn’t think you’d mind if I went. Tom and Carl are nice, but they weren’t bringing their dogs.
“No problem,” Kit said. He looked over at Nita. “Look, I’m gonna go home and give my mom and pop the news. The sooner they find out, the sooner they’ll get over it. I hope.”
“Yeah.” Nita let out a long breath. “Telling my dad’s gonna be fun, too … at least I have a few hours to figure out how to explain it. There should be a stripped-down version of the story in the manuals.”
She reached out to the seemingly empty air and slipped her hand into the otherspace pocket where she kept her own manual. Then her eyes went wide.
“What?” Kit said.
Nita pulled her manual out, and Kit suddenly understood her reaction. Nita’s wizard’s manual normally looked like a hardcover library book—buckram-bound, a little beat up, and the size of a largish paperback. But now it was twice its normal size, and three times its normal thickness. It looked more like a phone book now.
“It looks like Tom’s,” Kit said.
“Yeah,” Nita said, looking both intrigued and troubled. “Great. See you afterward?”
“Yeah. The usual place?”
“Sure.”
He lifted a hand, a half wave, then turned and headed down the sidewalk toward the corner. Ponch followed him, trotting along and looking up at him. So what was it about?
“Look out for the tree!”
I know where all the trees are, Ponch said, just barely avoiding the maple he’d been about to run straight into. What happened? Are you all right?
“Huh? I’m fine,” Kit said. “But we have to save the universe.”
Ponch looked up at him, swinging his tail widely from side to side as they walked along. Oh, Ponch said. Okay.
Kit smiled. He felt weak in the knees at the moment, but there was something about Ponch’s matter-of-fact acceptance of the seemingly impossible that made him feel better—for the moment, anyway. “Come on,” he said. “We need to talk to Mama and Pop. And then I’ve got a couple of calls to make.”
3: Initial Reconnaissance
Nita let out a long breath as she went back up the driveway. Kit’s uncertainty disturbed her… possibly because she was feeling more than her own share. I’m so used to having Kit to backstop me, she thought. Whenever I get nervous, he’s always there to help me get a grip. But for a while I may have to do the gripping.
Across from the back door, Roshaun was leaning against the fence that ran just this side of the lilac bushes, with yet another lollipop sticking out of his face. Carmela was leanin
g against the fence, too, on one side of him. Spot seemed to have wandered off.
On the other side of Roshaun, her arms folded, eyes narrowed in annoyance, Dairine was saying, “He’s never done this before. How am I supposed to depend on Spot if he can’t even remember things from one moment to the next? He’s my version of the manual! What if this memory loss thing starts extending to his reference functions? The little spells I can keep in my head, sure, but how’m I supposed to do wizardry if he can’t feed me the complicated ones?” She let out a long breath. “I’m going to ask Spot’s people to check him out. If they can figure out what’s going on with him…”
Roshaun took the lollipop out and examined it. It was a red-and-white-striped one. “Everything is changing,” he said. “We are all going to have to learn new ways to be wizards, I think, if we are to bring our worlds safely through this.” He glanced at Nita’s manual. “Some of us have already started work, it seems.”
“It’s going to take me a while just to get used to how much it weighs now,” Nita said, hefting the manual. She glanced around. “Sker’ret went out. He seem okay to you?”
“He was fine.”
“Where’s Filif?”
“He might have gone through his gate downstairs,” Dairine said. “Where are you headed?”
“Gotta make a call,” Nita said, and went up the steps.
Inside the back door she paused and looked down the basement steps. “Filif?” she called.
No answer. Nita raised her eyebrows and went down the wooden stairs, reaching up for the string that hung down from the bulb at the stairs’ bottom. The basement was unfinished—some painted metal posts supporting the joists of the upstairs floor, a concrete floor underfoot, mostly covered with many cardboard and wooden boxes containing old books, kitchenware and magazines, and much other junk: off to the left, the oil burner and various yard tools; off to the right, an ancient busted chest freezer; more boxes, and the washing machine and dryer. Cellar windows high in the cinderblock walls let in a little daylight, except for three yard-wide circular spots on the wall at the back of the house. In those, complete darkness reigned, the visual effect of worldgates in standby mode: two of them Filif’s and Sker’ret’s original ones, and the third a replacement for Roshaun’s, which had become nonfunctional after being stuck into the core of the Sun.
From behind her came a faint clattering noise. Nita glanced that way and saw that Sker’ret was pouring himself down the stairs. “Hey,” she said, “have you seen Filif?”
“He said he was going to the Crossings to have a look around, while he still had free time,” Sker’ret said. “I’ll be meeting him. Do you need him, Senior?”
“Oh, please, don’t you start,” Nita said. “Look at this thing!” She showed him her manual.
He pointed several eyes at it. “It looks like the inside of my head feels at the moment,” Sker’ret said. “I wish my people got our wizardry like that. It looks so much more manageable.”
“Yeah, well, I wish my people didn’t have to keep it a secret,” Nita said. “Like yours don’t.”
Sker’ret chuckled at her. “We’ve all got our little problems.”
“The question is how much longer we’re gonna have them,” Nita said. “Years and years, I hope. How long will you be?”
“Not long.”
“Good. And listen—I meant to ask you earlier.” Then she stopped herself. Maybe this is too nosy … No, we have to start keeping an eye on each other; we may be getting into some dangerous places soon. “Sker’ret,” she said, “if you don’t want to go back to your own people for some reason… no matter what happens in the next few weeks… stay with us. We’re glad to have you here.”
Sker’ret held all his eyes still, the only time since she’d come home from the holidays that Nita could remember seeing him do that. “Thank you,” Sker’ret said. “Seriously, I thank you. I’ll be back in a while.”
And he poured himself through his own worldgate at some speed, vanishing into the darkness of the interface segment after segment, until nothing was left.
Oh, God, did I insult him somehow? I hope not. But now for my own problems…
Nita went up the cellar stairs and into the kitchen. Outside in the driveway she could still hear Dairine’s and Roshaun’s voices raised, and then Carmela’s laughter. Nita shook her head, amused. Dairine and Roshaun, she thought. I don’t get it. They’re too much alike: he ought to drive her nuts. In fact, it sounds like he is driving her nuts … But maybe that’s it, Nita thought, picking up the wireless phone from its cradle. Maybe she likes the challenge. Looks like she’s picked herself a big one.
Nita stared at the phone, once more envying wizards who practiced in cultures where they didn’t have to work undercover. Though the visual effects of wizardry often went without being noticed by ordinary humans, you couldn’t absolutely count on it. And a “passive” effect, like one’s absence for three weeks when they were supposed to be in school, would definitely get noticed. I’ve got no choice, Nita thought. But I wish I didn’t have to make the call.
Nita fiddled with the phone until it consented to display the number that had been given her for use in emergencies. She looked at the name: Millman, Robert. And right under it, the entry that her dad refused to erase: Mom (cellphone).
Nita sighed and punched the dial button. After a few moments’ silence, the phone at the other end started ringing. It rang seven or eight times, and Nita stood there thinking, What do I say to him, exactly? She had been surprised enough to find out that the school psychologist even knew there were wizards, let alone that he knew some personally. But she had no idea how much they might have told him about what the practice of wizardry was like.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Millman?”
“Speaking; what can—Nita?” There was a second’s hesitation while she imagined him putting on his professional hat in case it was needed. “How’s your break going?”
“Uh, it got kind of complicated.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. But everything else isn’t.”
“I see. What can you tell me about that?”
Professional hat maybe, but not professional voice. He sounded the way he always did, absolutely unruffled, ready to let you set matters out at your own speed. Nita had found Millman surprisingly easy to talk to, even before he let her know that he knew wizards and wizardry existed. “I’m still trying to figure that out,” Nita said.
“You know that what you say is safe with me,” Mr. Millman said.
“Yeah. But it’s your safety I’m concerned about. It wouldn’t be very nice to get you all unstable.”
“I’ll take my chances that I can cope with whatever weirdness you’re about to drop on me. Tell me what you need.”
“Right now … some time off.”
“Meaning time after your spring break ends?”
“Yes.”
“On mental-health grounds, I take it?”
“Yeah.”
There was a brief silence. “Not that such things are impossible to arrange,” Millman said, “but—”
“I wouldn’t be asking you about this unless it was serious.”
“Okay. If I’m right in thinking that this has something to do with your break so far, you should tell me about how that went.”
“Uh…” The question, as always, was just how much to tell him. “We went off-world on sort of a student-exchange program,” Nita said. “It was pretty nice, most of the time.”
“But there were problems.”
“Yeah.” She had to restrain the temptation to yell down the phone, Problems? You bet, because they sent us to Paradise, and we found out the snake was still living in it. And if that wasn’t weird enough, the snake was sort of on our side for a change! Mostly. But even had Nita felt comfortable telling Millman about it, she hadn’t yet found the words to explain, even to herself, why the experience still unnerved her so.
“From the sound of w
hat you’re not saying,” Millman said, “I gather you’re still processing the results. What’s going on that makes you need this extra time off?”
“There’s about to be trouble with the older wizards,” Nita said.
“The Seniors?”
“All the adult wizards. And there’s an incoming threat that we’ve got to find out how to cope with, in a hurry.”
“You couldn’t possibly tell me anything about what’s causing this threat?”
“I wish I could,” Nita said. “Even the older wizards don’t understand it completely yet … and they don’t know what to do about it. That’s what we’re going to have to figure out. And I really don’t know if I feel up to this!”
“But you don’t feel you have any choice, it sounds like.”
“None at all.”
“Dairine’s having to deal with this situation, too?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyone else I should know about?”
“Kit, too,” she said. Millman knew he was a wizard as well, but no more than that.
There was more silence. “This is problematic,” Millman said. “Especially since I haven’t been seeing Kit professionally. The school system would buy into the concept for you and Dairine, since we’ve been working together for a while. But as for Kit… And I’m reluctant to lie about this, not just because lying is wrong, but because it undermines my relationship and my contract with the school.”
“I know,” Nita said.
There was another silence. Finally, in a changed tone of voice, Millman said, “This kind of lost school time is not good, especially with your aptitude tests coming up.”
“If we don’t do something pretty drastic right away,” Nita said, “there may not be a planet to have aptitude tests on for very long. Or there might be a planet… but no one left on it.”
She could just hear Millman thinking. “You need to understand,” he said after a moment, “that just because we share the same privileged information about your special talents, I’m not to be routinely considered as a get-out-of-jail card. This gambit isn’t going to work more than once. Just so you know.”