by Diane Duane
“Oho,” Tom said. “That’ll keep you busy for the next couple of years… A lot of finicky material there. A lot of memory work, too. Hit the Binding Oath yet?”
“Some references to it,” Nita said. “But I haven’t seen the Oath itself.”
“It’s worth a look,” Tom said. “Our own Oath is based on it. Or maybe I should say closely related. Worth studying for etymological purposes, even if the uses are limited. Meanwhile, we’ve got more immediate problems than research.” He glanced back toward the stairs. “Talk to her, will you?”
“I did.”
“Good. See you later. See you, Kit.” Tom went out the front door and closed it behind him.
“Honey,” Nita’s dad said, “I need to change out of my work clothes. Give me a few minutes.” He headed for the back of the house.
Kit flopped into one of the dining room chairs. “Such a pleasure to get out of the house. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing all afternoon.”
“Why?”
“Carmela. Every five minutes it’s yet another of her slavering horde of boyfriends.”
“I didn’t think she’d gotten up to the ‘horde’ level,” Nita said. “She told me she was just planning to test the wonderful world of dating.”
“Test?” Kit said. “It’s more like she’s holding auditions. There’s a new one on the phone every ten minutes. And I really don’t want to be around when she narrows them down to the ‘short list.’ Being here is a relief… even just for a little while. So are you coming over for dinner?”
Nita sat down and reached across the table for a pen and a pad of sticky notes, pulling off the top note and starting to jot down a list of needed groceries. “We have to go shop first. I’ll come over when we get back. We’ve really got to talk about the next couple of weeks.”
“That business on Mars,” Kit said as he sat down across from her. “We need to get that taken care of before it gets out of hand. And those depth charges in Great South Bay… Way past time to get together with S’reee and the rest of the deep-side team to deal with those before they get any more unstable. Then there’s that gate-relocation thing in the city… ”
Kit paused, glancing toward the back of the house as he heard the bedroom door close. “It was Dairine, yeah?” Kit whispered.
“Yeah.”
“What did she do? What did Tom do?”
“He grounded her. She can’t leave the system.”
Kit whistled softly. “What about your dad?”
“I thought he was going to lose it completely,” Nita said, under her breath. “He sent her to her room. I can’t even remember the last time he did that.”
“What did she do!” Kit said.
Nita finished with the sticky note, then put the pen down and told him.
Kit’s eyes slowly went wide. “Wow,” Kit said at last. “Halfway across the galaxy, he said?”
“Yeah,” said Nita.
“That’d really be something. You don’t get to do a transit like that every day, and this would be a sponsored one! Think of being able to go that far and not have to pay for the energy.”
Nita had been thinking of it, in an idle way. “Halfway across the galaxy” was forty-five thousand light-years or so. If you independently constructed a spell to do that kind of distance, it would really take it out of you. And doing such a transit using a previously set-up world-gate had its costs, too—you needed a good reason to do it, such as being formally on errantry.
“It’s a shame you couldn’t go, anyway,” Kit said.
“Oh, come on,” Nita said. “I couldn’t go now.”
“Why not? It’s spring break. We’ve got two whole weeks off!”
Nita frowned, shook her head. “I don’t know… It wouldn’t be right somehow. My dad—”
“Your dad wouldn’t mind,” Kit said. And then his expression went very amused. “Come to think of it, my dad wouldn’t mind.”
Nita looked at Kit in confusion. “What?”
“You haven’t been over in the past couple of days,” Kit said. “Between Carmela and Ponch—”
“Oh no,” Nita said. “What’s Ponch doing now?”
“Wait till you come over,” Kit said, looking resigned. “It’ll be easier for you to see than for me to explain. But when I told my pop we were going to have to go to Mars, he said, ‘Don’t let me keep you.’”
Nita stared at Kit in surprise. “I bet your mama didn’t say that, though.”
Kit’s grin had a slight edge to it. “No. Mama suggested I go take a look at Neptune while I was at it, and not hurry home.”
Nita snickered. “Seriously,” Kit said. “This would be really neat! If we went to see Tom… ”
They heard the door to Nita’s dad’s bedroom open. “Look,” Nita said, “let’s talk about it later. But I don’t think—”
Nita’s dad came in from the living room. “You ready?” he said to her.
“Yeah,” Nita said, getting up. “Daddy, can I have dinner at Kit’s?”
“Sure,” her dad said. “Kit, she’ll see you later. Neets, let’s get this shopping done.”
***
Fifteen minutes later Nita and her dad walked in the sliding doors of the grocery store. The way things had gone in the old days, on occasions when the whole family went to the store together, it had been Nita’s dad’s job to push the cart and make helpful suggestions: her mom had done the choosing. Nita now sighed a little as her dad went for the cart, and she consciously took on the choosing role for the first time. When shopping before, she had been rather halfhearted about it, which possibly had been the cause of some of the trouble. I guess I owe the fridge a little apology, she thought, and got out the sticky-pad page on which she’d made her list.
They went down the vegetable aisle and got potatoes, celery, tomatoes, and a head of lettuce, which Nita very pointedly handed to her dad. “The crisper this time,” she said. “He’s counting on you.”
“‘He’?” Nita’s dad said, turning the lettuce over several times in his hands and looking at it closely. “How can you tell?”
“If you’re a wizard, you can look at the gender equivalent of the word lettuce in the Speech,” Nita said. “Or, on the other hand, you can just ask him.”
“I’d probably prefer to pass on that second option,” Nita’s dad said as they came to the cold cuts and prepackaged meats. “I don’t know if I’d want to talk to something I might eat.”
“Daddy, this might sound weird to you,” Nita said, looking for her preferred brand of bologna, “but some things are less upset about being eaten than they are about being wasted.”
“Ouch.”
Nita looked at her dad in shock. “Daddy, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”
Her dad smiled as they turned into the next aisle. “I didn’t think you did. But sometimes ‘ouch’ is a healthy reaction. Or so I hear.”
“You’ve been talking to Tom again,” Nita said.
“No, Millman. Never mind. We need some pizzas.” Her father paused in front of a freezer case.
“Yeah.” Nita picked a pizza from the freezer compartment. The front of it was full of images of ancient stone ovens. Nita turned it over and started reading the ingredients. “This is disgusting,” Nita said. “Look at all the junk they put in this!”
“That’s probably why they call it junk food.”
“Used to be that just meant the empty calories,” Nita said. “These days… ” Not even this year’s unit on organic chemistry had prepared her to cope with some of the ingredient names on that label. Nita made a face and put the package back. “I’m not sure I want to be eating so many things I can’t pronounce.”
“Home cooking means a lot more work… ”
“I know,” Nita said. “I’m starting to get why Mom was so intense about it. Guess I’m just going to have to learn.”
They turned into the paper-towels-and-toilet-paper aisle, and Nita’s dad put a couple of the giant economy-size bundles of toilet
paper in the cart. “It has been tough, hasn’t it?” her dad said.
Nita sighed and nodded. “It hurts sometimes,” she said after a moment. “Hurts pretty bad.” Then, having a sudden thought, she added, “But not so much that I need to leave the planet for extended periods.”
Her father looked thoughtful. “You sure about that?”
Nita looked at him, uncertain what was going through his mind. “What are other kids at school doing over spring break?” her dad said.
Nita shrugged. “Some of them are going away,” she said. Among a few of her friends there had been excited talk of family vacations, trips to Florida or even, in one or two cases, to Europe. These by themselves had left Nita unimpressed, for travel by itself was no problem for a wizard. You could be planets or star-systems away from home in a matter of minutes or hours, depending on whether you used private or public transport. But the idea of being able to get away with the family, even for just a few days, had an entirely different attraction. Unfortunately, this was the busy time of year for Nita’s dad. The Easter rush had been wearing him down, and he was tired too, Nita knew, but no florist in his right mind took a vacation right now.
“It doesn’t matter, Daddy,” Nita said. “Kit and I have a lot of stuff we’ve been planning to do. We might need to travel, but not far. No farther than Mars, anyway. It’ll be nice to just kind of take it easy for a while. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worrying,” said her dad. But there was a strangely neutral sound to his voice, and Nita didn’t know quite what to make of it.
“Daddy,” Nita said, “are you okay?”
“Sure, honey,” he said.
Nita wasn’t so sure, but she didn’t say anything. She and her dad went to the checkout, dealt with bagging and paying for the groceries, and carted everything out to the car. Then they headed for home. They were only a few minutes away from the supermarket when Nita’s dad said, “There were going to be aliens in the house?”
Nita’s thoughts had been occupied with the weather on Mars this time of year, and the question took her by surprise. “Uh, yeah,” she said. “It is an exchange program.”
“Not incredibly strange aliens, I take it.”
“Well, they’d have to be able to handle the basic environment,” Nita said. “Our atmosphere, our gravity. That doesn’t mean they’d be humanoid; there’s a lot of variation in body structures among the kinds of carbon-based life that breathe oxygen. Anyway, whoever these guys were supposed to be, they might look pretty weird. But that wouldn’t matter. If they’re wizards, we’d have the most important stuff in common.”
Her dad looked thoughtful. “They wouldn’t be, you know, saving the world or anything while they were here?”
Nita wondered what he was getting at. “I don’t think so,” she said. “The manual says it’s supposed to be a chance to see what the practice of wizardry looks like in some place really different, so that you get some new ideas about how to handle it at home. You’re never formally sent out on errantry when you’re on one of these, the manual says. If something minor comes up in passing, sure, you handle it. Otherwise… ” She shrugged. “Pretty much you take it easy.”
Her dad nodded, stopped the car at a traffic light. “We did get the milk, didn’t we?”
“Plenty.”
“I keep having this feeling that I’ve forgotten something.”
Nita pulled out her Post-it note and once again compared it against the list in her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so… ”
Her dad brooded briefly. “This is going to drive me crazy until I remember what it is I think I forgot,” he said. “Never mind. Nita, why don’t you go?”
“Where, to Mars?”
“No. On this exchange.”
Nita stared at him. He glanced back at her. Then the light changed to green, and her dad turned his attention back to his driving.
“Are you kidding?” Nita said.
“No,” said her dad, turning the corner off Nassau Road onto their street.
At first Nita didn’t know what to say. “Uh, I don’t know if I can,” she said at last. “Tom may already have used the energy for something else.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” her father said.
“Did you talk to him about this?” Nita said, still very confused.
“In generalities, yes,” her dad said. “I doubt you would have heard it, as you were occupied. I could hear you sneaking up the stairs.”
“Uh, yeah,” Nita said, “okay… ”
“Well?”
Nita was flummoxed. “But, Daddy,” she said at last, “what about the aliens?”
“They’re wizards, you said.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And they’ll be able to disguise themselves, so the neighbors won’t get into a panic and call the cops or the FBI or anything like that?”
“Daddy, you’ve been watching too much TV. I don’t think the FBI really does aliens.”
“All right, Area 51 or Warehouse whatever-it-is—”
“Daddy…”
He chuckled a little. “Okay. So these other wizards can cover up for themselves?”
“Well, sure, that would be part of it, lots of times you have to do that when you’re on another planet, but—”
“And Dairine’ll be here. From what you’ve told me, she doesn’t have any trouble with aliens.”
Nita considered that. Dairine’s response to aliens could range from partying with them to blowing them up, but so far she didn’t seem to have misjudged how to handle any given situation involving sentient beings who weren’t human. It was her own species she seemed to have trouble with. “No, she does okay.”
“I hear another ‘but’ coming,” her father said, as they paused at the last traffic light before their block.
“I don’t know if this is a good time to go away and leave you alone,” Nita said at last.
“If Dairine’s here, I won’t be alone,” her dad said.
“I mean—”
“Sweetie,” said her dad, “I think maybe a break would be a smart thing for you right now. Dairine and I would be capable of coping here. And among other things, it’ll give me a chance to practice talking to her without a mediator. Possibly a useful life skill.”
Nita smiled half a smile. “You really have been talking to Millman,” she said.
“About this? No. Some things I can figure out for myself. I am forty-one, you know.”
“Uh, yeah,” Nita said, and then was quiet for a moment.
“You need time to think about it?” her dad said. “Maybe the thought of going so far away scares you a little?”
“Daddy!” Nita said, scandalized. “I’ve been a lot farther away than this.”
“On ‘business,’ yes,” her dad said. “But this is different. Honey, you ought to be a little kinder to yourself. Go on, goof off a little! You deserve it. And maybe I could use a little controlled weirdness. Sounds like that’s what we’d be in for.” And he threw Nita a slightly wicked sidelong look. “Also, it’s a way to give Dairine a little something on the sly to make up for me, and your friends the Powers That Be, slapping her down so hard. Yeah?”
You are such a softie, Nita thought, with a sudden great rush of love for her dad. She took a breath. “Okay,” Nita said. “Thanks, Daddy!”
“One thing,” her dad said. “I really would be happier if Kit was with you. You two’ve been pretty good backup for each other in the past, and he’s worked hard, too. I don’t think a break from routine would hurt him, either. Obviously it’s going to be up to his folks, but when you go over there, see what they think.”
Without knowing how she knew, Nita was already certain of what they’d think. “You talked to them about me going already!” Nita said. “When you didn’t even know what I was going to say!”
Her dad shot her another amused look. “We have many mysterious modes of communication,” he said as he signaled the turn into their driveway. “Aided by t
he fact that not even teenagers who are wizards can keep an eye on their parents every minute of the day.”
Nita had to grin as the car splashed through the puddle at the bottom of the driveway. “Let’s get this stuff unpacked,” her dad said. “Then you’d better go talk to Kit and make plans.”
3: Planning Your Trip
Kit was sitting in his room, riffling through his wizard’s manual, frowning in concentration and trying not to be distracted by the sound of his dog’s snoring, when his sister stuck her head in through the open doorway. “You busy?” Carmela said.
Kit sighed, pushed back from the desk. “No. What is it?”
“You are busy,” his sister said, walking carefully around Ponch, who had stretched his big black self right across the rug in the middle of the floor and was lying there with his paws in the air, taking up most of the spare floor space in the room. “Good, I’ll hang around and make you crazy.” She leaned over Kit’s shoulder, so far over that her single long dark braid hung down in front of his face. “What’s that little red glowing thing in the air there?”
“Just a wizardry. I’m playing with the speed of light.”
“I thought that was supposed to be a law,” Carmela said. “You shouldn’t break laws.”
“I’m not. I’m not even bending this one,” Kit said. “Just bending space.”
“For the fun of it,” his sister said in wonder. “You make my brains bleed sometimes, you know that?”
“Not half as much as I wish I did,” Kit said. “‘Mela, what is it?”
She turned away, sat down on Kit’s bed, and grinned. “I wanted to know what you thought of Mark.”
Endless possible answers spun through Kit’s mind, all of them true, but none of them particularly kind. He settled for one of the less injurious ones. “He looks like a dork,” Kit said.