A Wizard Alone New Millennium Edition (33 page)

“Twice as tough, in fact,” Kit said, and glanced back at the mirror. “Maybe more.”

Darryl laughed at that. “And by the way,” Kit said, looking over at Nita, “thanks.”

“For what?”

“Uh, saving my butt?”

Nita waved a hand. “It was my turn, that’s all. In a few weeks it’ll probably be yours. Weren’t we supposed to have stopped keeping track?”

Kit just smiled a crooked smile at her. But then Nita had a thought, and glanced down at Ponch. “Come to think of it, though, I thought
you
said you weren’t going to take the boss out again without me.”

Ponch dropped his head a little.
He went,
he said.
So I had to go, too.
Then he brightened.
But you got here when I thought you would, so it’s all right!

Nita gave Kit a look. “Your dog has me on a
schedule?
” she said.

Kit shrugged. “He has a very well-developed time sense,” Kit said. “Ask him about feeding time, for example.”

Ponch began to jump up and down in excitement.

“Now you’ve done it,” Nita said. “Darryl, better let us out of here before the Gut That Walks here starts ripping the place up.”

“He can if he wants,” Darryl said. “I’m closing this section down for the moment. That redecoration wan wait. But for now…”

Slowly, all around them, the brightness dimmed down. “I left you a space to slip out through,” Darryl said, as the space darkened, like a stage at the end of a play. “Just behind you there.” He pointed off toward a sliver of bright light in the near distance that cast a long beam across the shining floor. “But in the meantime, just in case the Guy in the Suit comes back?” He looked over at Nita, grinning. “This is what he’ll find.”

Through the now nearly-complete darkness, a spotlight shone down. In the spotlight, a little toy clown rode a tiny bicycle around and around, never stopping, never looking up. Nita looked at it and thought of a windup mouse going around and around in little circles, waiting for the cat.

“Boobytrap,” Darryl said. “It’ll trigger the oversight routine if Anyone drops by. And if It does… I think I can find a way to make It sorry all over again.”

Kit nodded. “So let’s get out of here. You sure you know the way back?”

“In my sleep,” Darryl said, and grinned.

Kit held out a hand. “Welcome to the Art, brother,” he said.

Darryl took the hand, then pulled Kit close and hugged him hard. Then he let go, turned to Nita, and hugged her, too.

“Later,” she said. “Go home! But when you’re ready? Come find us.”

Kit nodded. “We’re in the book.”

Darryl rolled his eyes. “The book,” he said, and grinned. “You guys are so
rigid!
Can’t wait to show you how to swing out and use something a little less concrete.”

And he flashed that astonishing grin at them one last time and vanished with the ease of someone who’s been doing it for years.

Kit and Nita looked at each other. “Your place or mine?” Nita said.

“My folks are going to yell at me,” Kit said, “so let’s do mine first.”

Nita smiled a small wry smile. “You just want me to help you take the heat.”

Mind reader,
Kit said.
Come on.

They headed for the doorway of light and vanished through it together.

***

Some distance away, in a special-ed classroom in Baldwin, the afternoon routine was proceeding as usual when one of the teachers saw something unusual happen.

Darryl McAllister closed the book in his lap, glanced around, sighed and straightened up..

The teacher went over to the boy, and got down beside him where until now he’d been sitting on the floor, gazing down into the open book and rocking. “Hey there, Darryl,” he said. “What’s up?”

There was a pause. “I think,” Darryl said at last, in a voice that cracked a little with not having been used for words for some weeks, “I think I’m done here.”

The teacher’s mouth dropped open.

There was another pause. “So can I go home now?” Darryl said, and smiled.

The explanations to parents, Advisories and others, as usual, took nearly as long as the events themselves had done, so it was several days before Nita and Kit found time to go off and relax. The chosen spot was a favorite one, by the edge of a crater close to a well-known site in Mare Tranquillitatis. They were leaning back against the very top of the upper crater wall, looking down over at the rising half-Earth, while Ponch lay on his back in the moondust, snoring, with his feet in the air.

A fourth figure suddenly stepped into the vacuum nearby, looking around him.

“Wow,”
Darryl said. He wandered over to where Nita and Kit sat, bouncing a little as first-timers tended to do, because of the lighter gravity.

There was a pause. “Are we really allowed to be up here?” Darryl said, looking about half a mile away, toward where the feet and base of Apollo 11’s lunar lander sat.

“As long as we don’t mess it up,” Kit said. “This is a heritage area.”

Hearing that, Darryl burst out laughing, looking in mischievous admiration at the rough sculptures Kit had been doing on this site for some years. After a few moments he said, “
This
is what you do in a heritage area?”

“I’ll clean it up before they build the hotel here,” Kit said. “After that, I guess I’ll have to amuse myself carving rocks on Mars into faces.”

Darryl snickered.

“How are your folks doing?” Nita said.

Another pause. Nita was getting used to this now: Darryl routinely needed a few moments extra to compose a spoken sentence, though anything that was a joke or that he personally found funny seemed to take less time. “You kidding? They’re in shock,” Darryl said. He sat down on the rock beside Kit. “They were hoping all along that I’d pull through the burnout, but

“I wouldn’t have thought they’d let you out of their sight right now,” Kit said.

“…They haven’t,” Darryl said. “I’m home in bed.”

“Oh,” Nita said, and laughed. “Wow, that two-for-one deal really does come in handy, doesn’t it?”

She’d already had a word with Kit about the genuine source of Darryl’s ability to be in two places at once. They’d agreed that there was no need to be too cagey about mentioning Darryl’s ability to co-locate, as long as they stayed away from discussing the reasons for it. If Darryl just thought it was a personal talent, that was fine.

Darryl nodded. “I looked at the transit spells,” he said after a moment. “But except for the air, they looked like a waste of energy. We’re not supposed to waste. And besides, why go to all that trouble when I can just do this?”

For a moment he was standing behind a large boulder some feet away, while also sitting on the rock beside Kit. Kit shook his head in admiration.

“Slick trick,” Kit said. “I’ll do it my way for the time being, though. Seriously … are your parents coping?”

“They’re coping great.” Darryl’s eyes shone. It was plain to Nita that this was an understatement. “My mom and dad are…” He broke off, shook his head. This was another thing about his speech: strongly emotional content seemed to take a moment longer to compose. “Kind of freaked out, I guess. And I can’t tell them what happened, or why it’d be okay not to be freaked out.”

“Will you ever, you think?” Nita said.

Darryl thought about it. “…Eventually,” he said. “I’m pretty sure. But right now wizardry’d be one shock too many. They’d probably think I was developing some new kind of trouble because of coming out of the burnout so fast.” He produced a wry smile. “They’re still having trouble with that as it is. Not much in the literature about there being any kind of precedent for this.”

“Give them time,” Kit said. “Neither of us came right out to our parents, either. I think you’re probably right, though. Too much strange at once isn’t a good thing for them. There’s going to be enough of that later, once you start getting into your serious work, whatever that turns out to be. For now, just enjoy how happy they are, and take it easy.”

“Well, happy’s good, but the ‘take it easy’ part’s not going to last,” Darryl said, and grinned. “I heard my mom thinking that if I was really going to be this much more functional this fast, she was going to start giving me chores again.”

Nita and Kit groaned in unison.

“But she was still nervous about it,” Darryl said. “I think I get a few weeks of being lazy before they really start expecting me to step up.”

“Take advantage of it while it lasts,” Kit said, and grinned.

Darryl nodded, looked over at the Earth. “So now we get to take care of that,” he said.

“That’s the job,” Nita said.

“I’d better get on with it then,” Darryl said. “You guys come up here often?”

“Often enough,” Kit said.

“I might be needing some advice as I work into this job,” Darryl said.

“Then call any time,” Nita said.

Darryl nodded and threw them a casual salute.
“Dai stih
ó—”
And a second later he was gone.

“That is one nice kid,” Kit said after a moment.

“No argument there,” Nita said. “Come on, your mom said dinner was at six.”

Kit was looking over at the Earth. “It really is the best job, isn’t it?” he said.

Nita nodded, and stood up. “None better. And the company’s good, too.”

“The best,” Kit said. “Welcome back.”

Nita smiled. “Come
on,
” she said. “I want some of that chicken you’re always raving about.”

Kit stood up as well, dusting floury pumice dust off him. “Yeah, well, if you think you’re going to get a bigger portion than I am, think again! C’mon, Ponch.”

Ponch rolled over and bounced to his feet in a cloud of silvery dust. Kit and Nita vanished.

Ponch stood there, looking thoughtfully at the half-Earth for some moments; then wagged his tail.

Chicken!
he said silently, leaped up, and vanished.

***

The next morning Nita walked to school quietly by herself, noticing a lot of things that had passed her by recently: the snow, the slush (of which there was a great deal), the icicles hanging down, glittering, from the eaves of people’s houses; the color of the sky, the sound of people’s voices as they said good-bye to each other on their way to work.
If it wasn’t for what’s been going on this past week or so,
she thought,
how much of this would I have noticed?
She had been locked up in her grief as surely as Darryl had locked himself up in the landscapes he’d been constructing to confine the Lone Power.

But he was free now.
And as for me
…

Nita mused as she turned the corner, thinking of Carl’s mention of the concept that right across the fields of existence “all is done for each.” As far as she could tell, that meant that every good thing that happened to everybody had some effect on all the rest of everybody, from here to the edges of the universe. It was like that saying about the chaos-theory butterfly in the rainforest, which, just by waving its little wings, contributes to the hurricane half a hemisphere away—if not actually causing the hurricane. But more specifically, the “all done for each” principle seemed to mean that the Powers That Be had designed the world so that everything that happened in it—every victory, every sacrifice, from the largest to the smallest—was pointed specifically at every separate living thing. At first Nita had found this almost impossible to imagine. Now she found herself wondering if what she’d just been through, besides assisting in Darryl’s self-liberation, had been about helping her find her way out of her own pain as well.
And if he was sent to help me,
way
more than the other way around.

Better concentrate on making sure he didn’t go through all that for nothing, then.

Nita shrugged as she walked in through the gates that led into the parking lot. There was plenty of time to get into the theoretical stuff later. For now, she had work to catch up on. And there was other business to finish.

She went down to the temporary office where she usually found Mr. Millman. There he was, sitting behind the desk and reading something on his smartphone while eating the last couple of bites of a bagel with cream cheese.

He glanced up as Nita came in. “Morning,” he said.

Nita sat down, put her book bag on the floor, reached into her jacket, and came out with the cards.

“Before you start in with those,” Mr. Millman said, “one thing. We left on a slightly jangly note the other day.”

“Did we?” Nita said, refusing for the moment to smile at him, refusing to let him off the hook.

“I think we did. Especially since you cut half your classes shortly thereafter.”

Nita shrugged. Millman’s eyebrows went up as he took note of the gesture. “I just wanted you to know something,” he said. “Whatever the secret is about what’s going on in your life right now—I want you to know that there’s no need for you to tell me, ever, and I have no intention of pressing you.”

Nita looked at him with surprise, because this wasn’t what she’d been thinking. She also looked at him with amused suspicion. “What is this, some kind of reverse psychology?”

Mr. Millman looked at her in shock, and then laughed. “What? Like you’re a three-year-old and you’ll do the opposite of what I suggest? Spare me. This is supposed to have been counseling, not brain surgery. I was merely saying that my intent was just to
counsel
you—not dig around in your skull for juicy tidbits like something out of a horror movie about bad Far Eastern food.”

Nita snickered. “Okay,” she said. “I thought you were going to say something about my anger.”

“Anything that needs to be said,” said Mr. Millman, “I’m sure you’ll take care of it.”

Nita slipped the cards out of their pack and started to shuffle them. It was surprising how easy the false shuffles were when you were really paying attention to them. “Name a card,” she said.

“Five of diamonds,” he said.

Nita nodded, put the deck down on the desk, and cut it twice, to the right, to make three piles. “Turn one card over,” she said.

Millman reached out and turned over the top card of the leftmost deck. The top card was the five of diamonds.