A Wizard of Mars, New Millennium Edition (12 page)

Irina patted Mamvish on the flank, waved to the rest of them, and then she was gone.

A leading role!
 Kit thought. 
A leading role!

“Yeah, well, you heard her reading you the pre-riot version of the Riot Act,” Ronan said under his breath. “So don’t get cocky.”

Kit threw Ronan a smug look that suggested the advice might already be a bit late. Ronan rolled his eyes.

“Is she really the most senior wizard on Earth?” Carmela said. “She doesn’t look old enough.”

Kit winced in embarrassment at someone as sketchily informed about wizardry as Carmela making such judgments... even though the thought had crossed his mind as well. Mamvish, though, cocked an indulgent eye at her. “Seniority,” Mamvish said, “takes many forms. Irina is quite special. No one understands the Earth the way she does: and as a result, it listens to her.” She waved her tail in a way that to Kit somehow communicated a strange level of concern. “If for some reason the Earth needed to be destroyed in a hurry,
she’d
 be the one that the Powers would talk to.”

“She takes care of the Earth’s kernel?” Darryl said, awed.

“She may occasionally 
be
 the Earth’s kernel,” said Mamvish. “Certainly she’s the planet’s foremost geomancer. And when you possess and exercise power at so central a level, the difference between what you do and what you are does start to blur.” She waved her tail again, turning as she did so.

Another brief storm of Speech-characters broke out under Mamvish’s hide, and the newly deposited red dust went sliding away sideways from the outcropping and the dune, blown there by a more concentrated and focused wind than the one that had dropped it there. “Let’s tuck the egg back in where we found it,” Mamvish said to Kit. “It’ll be safe enough here. Your manuals, and my version of the Knowledge, have stored all the data we acquired from the egg today. The rest of the investigative team will now have the data, too. Our next task is to work out how to open the egg, or read its interior, so that we don’t lose any potential clues to just what happened on this world.”

“You mean,” Carmela said, “maybe the species that lived here destroyed themselves or something?”

Mamvish waved her tail uncertainly. “It’s too soon to say. When both the planets and the species in a given system have such ambivalences about another of the system’s worlds, it could be an indicator that something catastrophic occurred. But with so little information in the manual to guide us, we have to be careful not to jump to conclusions.”

“Isn’t it kind of weird that there 
isn’t
 anything?” Darryl said.

“Not at all. Sometimes the Powers That Be purposely conceal information for one reason or another. But in this case They tell me They’ve done no such thing. Which leaves us with other possibilities. The Lone Power might have interfered, causing that information to be hidden. Or the species in question may itself have found a way to redact the data, for reasons of their own.” Mamvish waved her tail again. “We’ll take our time and find the truth. Meanwhile, I’ve got other business to take care of... so let’s seal this up and call it a day.”

Kit nodded and went to kneel in front of the outcropping again. He put one hand on that cold brownish stone and said the Mason’s Word, feeling the stone go soft under his skin. Then carefully he slipped the egg back into the heart of the outcropping.

When it was completely concealed, he paused for just a moment more with his hands on the smooth alien metal, unwilling to take his hands away: he thought he felt the egg tingling slightly in his grip. 
Am I imagining that?
 But a moment later the sensation had faded. 
Probably something to do with using the Mason’s Word: you always get a little fizz, something to do with the gas atoms in the oxides or nitrates or whatever coming unbound.

Kit pulled his arms out of the stone, stood up, and dusted his hands on his pants. As usual, the gesture was fruitless: there always seemed to be more dust to get rid of. “Yeah,” Carmela said, “and when you get home, make sure you stay away from the DVDs until you’ve washed up...”

Kit silently gritted his teeth. 
I can’t wait to dump her,
 he thought. 
And then we have to find a way to keep her from tagging along everywhere we go, or this thing’s gonna turn into a disaster...

“So,” Mamvish said. “Keep doing what you’re doing, cousins: and keep me informed. I’ll leave the shield here to protect what we’ve found. 
Dai stihó!”

And she was gone, without the slightest movement of the air inside the shield.

“Now there goes a professional,” Ronan said, shaking his head in admiration. “Irina’s right: we’re lucky to have her around.” He stretched, glanced around. “Meanwhile, I’ve got to get back myself. Conference call tonight?”

“Yeah,” Kit said. “Put a note in my manual— we’ll set a time. Big D?” He glanced at Darryl.

“Any time after dinner’s fine,” Darryl said. He waved and vanished, making a careless pop in the air.

Ronan rolled his eyes again. “Sloppy,” he said. “See you later—”

A second later Ronan, too, was gone, more silently. Kit looked at Carmela. “Well,” he said, “let’s get you back.” He reached into his otherspace pocket and pulled out the ready-set transit spell he used to get back to his bedroom from Mars. Uncoiling the long sentence in the Speech, he ran the glowing line of light through his hands until he found the part he was looking for. “We need to put your personal info in this,” he said. “Now, how much do you weigh this week?”

His sister glared at him. “Could you start with a more tactless question?”

“Sure. Your IQ?”

Carmela glowered. Kit grinned as he dropped the spell to the ground, and it stretched into a circle around the two of them and joined one end to another like a snake biting its tail. His hands were still tingling slightly as he started reciting the first part of the transit spell and the world started to go silent around them. It was strange that even as the silence built and the universe leaned in to listen to what Kit wanted, he could still hear that hissing, the dust whirling by...

Nita appeared as quietly as she could in the shade of the sassafras trees at the “wild” rear of her backyard. In between the bigger trees were tall thickets of smaller sassafras and wild mulberry scrub, screening the space from any possible view from the houses behind or to either side: but right now, the possibility of any neighbors noticing her was the least of her worries. Nita glanced up through the leaves at the late afternoon light, letting out a long, annoyed breath. 
Since when do I appear out here like someone who’s afraid to go in the house?

She slipped out from under the trees, heading up between the flower beds of the garden. Close to the house, not far from the chain-link fence and its gate, a tall, broad-crowned rowan tree stood in the middle of the yard, all covered with white flowers: an old rope swing hung from one branch. As she walked under the rowan, a long, leafy twig dropped down toward her: she put up a hand absent-mindedly and highfived it. “Liused...” she said in the Speech.

Sounding a little under the weather,
 the tree said.

“Ask me in an hour or so and I’ll give you a more detailed weather report.”

She opened the gate to the driveway. Her home life had once seemed so much more casual. 
Where’s your sister, dear? She’s on one of Jupiter’s moons, Mom... Oh, well. I guess that’s all right. Just as long as she’s not creating life again.
 After the shock of discovering that their daughters were wizards, Nita’s mom and dad had eventually become almost relaxed about it all. But along with Nita’s mother, those days were now gone. Her dad had become much more the heavy parent in the last six months. 

You have to expect some changes,
 her counselor Mr. Millman had said. 
People handle their love and their loss in a hundred different ways. The results can be annoying until you understand what’s going on.
 Though Nita was starting to understand, the annoyance was a long way from abating. In Nita’s dad’s case, she suspected his new sternness about wizardly doings was because he knew the tendency toward wizardry had come down to his kids through his side of the family, and he was feeling as if this was somehow all his fault.

If only I could brainfix my dad and make him think that everything was just fine with Dairine.
 Well, Nita 
could
brainfix him, but it would be the wrong thing to do, would be in complete contravention of the Wizard’s Oath, and would make her feel like a criminal. Nor was it any consolation that psychotropic spellings, the wizardries that could be used to change people’s minds about things, were such a nuisance to work, had such a horrible backlash on the wizard who worked them, and worked for so short a time before everything went back to the way it had been before. The irony wasn’t lost on Nita that a wizard could so easily change concrete physical matter, but practically had to sweat blood to change something as immaterial as someone else’s thought.

Or if I could only clone my sister. Make an extra one who’d stay home and behave, so Dad wouldn’t notice what was going on with the real one
...

Then Nita groaned, not believing she was seriously 
having
 this idea. The last time there’d been a cloned Dairine around, during her sister’s Ordeal, the complications had been nearly endless.
One of her’s enough for
any
universe! Or the whole sheaf of them. Besides, a Dairine that hangs around behaving all the time? Instantly identifiable as a fake.

She paused on the back doorstep, trying to devise some kind of strategy for handling her dad. His stern moods could be hard to derail—

“You could come in, you know,” said a voice from the kitchen, through the screen door. “It’s not 
you
 I’m going to ground.”

That sounded promising, but it didn’t seem smart to relax just yet. Nita went in.

Her dad was rooting around in a cupboard next to the stove; a full coffee cup stood on the counter. “Are we out of sugar?”

“We just got a whole bag last week,” Nita said, leaning against the counter. “Is sugar why I came all the way back from Mars? We were just getting to the good part!”

“And you can go back,” her dad said, coming down with a crumpled up, near-empty bag of store-brand sugar, “as soon as you sort things out here at home.”

“What ‘things’?”

“Your sister,” her father said, “was missing from school today.”

Thought so.
 Nita rolled her eyes. “Daddy, there’s only two days of school left before summer. You know that she—”

“I 
don’t
 know that she,” her dad said, sounding annoyed, letting the cupboard door fall shut and pulling a spoon out of the silverware drawer, which he hip-slammed shut. “And I really dislike getting these calls from school telling me she’s nowhere to be found, after she promised she’d stop cutting classes to run all over the galaxy!”

Nita went into the dining room and flopped down in a chair. 
This is
 not 
my fault, why am I having to deal with this?

“So where is she?” her dad said. “Did she mention to you where she was headed?”

“No. I have no idea.”

“It’s not just that she wasn’t at school,” her dad said. “She also hasn’t done her chores. The kitchen was a mess when I came in, and the garbage didn’t go out this morning for the guys to pick up, after it was
already
a pickup late because of her ‘forgetting’ it last week. The thing’s nearly overflowing! And this happens even after I had a big thing with her after that about not leaving the planet before she’s done her work at home! For a few days it looked like she was going with the program. But now...”

Nita buried her head in her arms. 
This is a disaster. I can see it coming now: here goes my whole summer...

In the kitchen, the spoon clinked in the cup for a few moments: then her dad followed Nita in and sat down beside her. He turned the mug around and around on the table between his hands. “Honey, your mom was always better than I was at knowing what was going on in Dairine’s head. Or at least having a clue.” She could hear from his voice that it cost her father something to make this admission. “I don’t have her to help me out now. So you’re going to have to step into the gap and give me a hand.”

Nita wanted to laugh helplessly, but this didn’t seem to be the moment. “I can check the manual to find out where she is, sure. But as for figuring out why she does what she does day by day, by reading her mind or something, it’s not going to happen, Daddy! It’s easy to keep someone out of your head if you know they’re trying to listen. And even when you 
can
 hear somebody’s thoughts, you can’t always tell what the thoughts mean to 
them.
”

Her dad looked frustrated. “Then what use is mind reading?”

“Not a lot,” Nita said. “Talking still works best. Which is what wizardry’s about to begin with.”

“Well, talking’s not working real well with Dairine at the moment,” Nita’s dad said. “She keeps telling me she’ll stay in touch, be back home for meals, and then it doesn’t happen. This has to stop. And
you’re
 going to see that it does.”