by Diane Duane
But Carmela merely glanced over her shoulder at the approaching group. “Ah, ah, ah,” she said under her breath, and reached out sideways to take Roshaun’s hand in hers. Roshaun’s eyes went wide, and he stopped absolutely still, as if he’d been frozen that way.
Dairine slowed down a little, caught between surprise and admiration. She may not be a wizard, she thought, but she’s got some moves. Just loudly enough to be heard, as the five passed close by, Carmela said to Roshaun, “Don’t mind them. They’re just wonder-struck by your profound majesty and glory and all that yadda yadda. We don’t get a lot of princes around here, and when they see somebody like you and contrast your elevated station with their tiny antlike lives, it’s really hard for them to cope.”
Carmela said all this not in English, but in perfect Japanese, the language she’d been studying when she first started to pick up the Speech. As wizards, Dairine and Roshaun had no problem understanding her; they heard the language “through” the Speech and made sense of it that way. But the five guys were completely thrown off. They saw what seemed like a Japanese translator of some kind—who looked at them as coolly as if they were members of an alien species—who was apparently carefully translating what they’d said for someone who looked like a living anime star: someone whose expression was better suited to the last half hour of a samurai movie than anything else… the part where things really break loose.
Dairine saw faint unease ripple through the guys as they found themselves facing something they didn’t understand. The guys passed close to Carmela and Roshaun, who watched them with expressions of clinical interest and complete disdain, and didn’t stop—just headed on down the mall. It took a few moments for them to get their composure back, and as they did one of them muttered something under his breath.
Roshaun looked at Carmela in curiosity as Dairine came over to them. “‘Duckhead’?” he said. “He called me a duckhead. A… duck? That’s some kind of flying creature, isn’t it?”
Carmela had let go of Roshaun’s hand and was gazing after the five nonplussed guys with barely concealed amusement. Now she glanced over at Dairine, not saying anything.
“Uh,” Dairine said. “Yeah, it is. They swim, too.”
Roshaun looked thoughtful. “I see. The idiom suggests that a humanoid can share the same attributes of flexibility… the ability to adapt to multiple environments. I like that. Evidently they saw they’d misjudged me, even if it took them a few moments.”
Dairine was ever so glad that what Roshaun had said had come out as a statement rather than a question, but then it didn’t seem to be Roshaun’s style to ask a lot of questions. Saved by a personal blind spot, Dairine thought with relief. Normally she hated being saved by anyone or anything, but right now she was willing to make an exception.
Then Dairine remembered Sker’ret. She looked around in panic and saw him proceeding quickly up the mall ahead of them, looking in windows, while a shiny silver Mylar balloon bobbed and trailed along behind him. Hey, he’s got the hang of money already, she thought. Maybe this isn’t going all that badly.
Ahead of her, Carmela was now actually strolling along arm in arm with Roshaun, pointing out things in the store windows to him. How does she do it? Dairine wondered. She’s got him eating out of her hand. Maybe I don’t want to know… She hurried off after Sker’ret.
He was going up one of the escalators at some speed. Dairine thought she knew why. The smell of fast food was coming from somewhere up ahead, and Sker’ret had targeted on that with the intensity of a heat-seeking missile looking for the tailpipe of a jet. “Sker’ret,” she called after him, “this is really no time for that. We can do this later! In fact we can all do it together!”
“Do what?” Sker’ret said.
“Eat,” Dairine said. “Again.”
Sker’ret was standing in the middle of the food court when Dairine caught up with him. His disguise was firmly in place, but Dairine could still dimly perceive, underneath the illusion, all his eyes writhing in every possible direction, looking around at all the goodies. Sker’ret turned slowly in a circle, looking at the kosher hot dog place, the McDonald’s, the Chinese fast food place, the burrito joint. “This is wonderful!” he said. “Every planet should have places like this!”
“Oh, come on, Sker’ret,” Dairine said. “Rirhath B has places like this! Even the Crossings has some.”
“Not like this,” Sker’ret said, a little sadly. He stopped spinning, training all his available eyes on the kosher hot dog place. “Besides, I’m not allowed to go into the ones in the Crossings.”
For the moment, Dairine concealed her surprise. Sker’ret made his way back toward the escalator, stepping sadly onto the downward-running side and riding it back the way he’d come with an expression of deep sorrow. Dairine followed him, wondering what that had been about. Something else to ask him about later…
They rejoined the group and then set about systematically wandering through the entire mall, wing by wing, until everyone had seen everything. Even Roshaun was beginning to get a little tired as they got near the end of the “crawl”—a source of irrational pleasure for Dairine. Some of that otherwise indelible arrogance had fallen off him; he looked like he just wanted to sit down for a while.
“Goodness,” Carmela said, as Roshaun sat down on the bench at the base of one of the escalators, “we have to do something about your stamina. If you’re going to become serious about mall crawling, you can’t poop out after an hour like that.”
“I have not ‘pooped out,’” Roshaun said. “But my feet do pain me somewhat. And keeping up the disguise takes a certain amount of energy. Perhaps a restorative?”
“Food!” Sker’ret said.
Dairine chuckled. “Mela,” she said “could you take these guys upstairs and get them something? Ice cream, probably. Filif… ” She looked over at him; he was gazing down the length of the mall with a yearning expression. “I’m going to be your personal shopper for a little while. You and I should go off and see about some of those decorations we were discussing.” That way, I don’t have to worry about you stumbling into the salad bar, which to you is probably going to look like the site of a mass murder.
Filif was delighted. “Yes!” he said. “Let’s go!”
“You have enough cash on you?” Dairine said to Carmela. “I’ve got some to spare…”
“It’s okay,” Carmela said. “I’m fairly loaded today.” She turned to Roshaun and Sker’ret. “Come on, boys,” she said. They got up, and she shepherded them away.
“Come on,” Dairine said to Filif. Together they headed down the center of the shopping mall, toward the place that Dairine had spotted Filif looking at with most interest earlier. Well, she thought, the second-most interest.
The store she had in mind was a chain sportswear shop specializing in bright colors—indeed, colors that were almost too bright for Dairine to look at. But she had noticed several times now that whenever Filif stopped to look in any window for long, it had been one where Day-Glo colors were splashed onto things with abandon. Now, as they headed down the mall together, Dairine became aware of some looks from other kids on spring break who were passing by on the other side of the mall, and looking curiously at Filif. “Hey, kid,” one of them shouted at him, “you walk like a dweeb!”
There was a gust of laughter from the other kids. Dairine ostentatiously ignored them, but she stole a glance at Filif and saw that this was slightly true: His mimicked “gait” was already somewhat less polished than it had been when they left home. He, too, was getting tired. “Hey,” Dairine said, “never mind this. We’ll get you out of here and come back another time. But right now maybe we should get you back home, where you can get that off—”
“Oh, no,” Filif said. “Not until we see the decorations!”
She smiled at him. He was so intense about it. “Okay,” Dairine said. “Just hang on.”
They went into the sportswear store, a tremendous place full of sneakers and wo
rkout clothes and shorts and bathing suits—all in the year’s popular colors, any one of which, Dairine thought, seemed likely to burn out her retinas. “Look at the mannequins,” Dairine said. “See those models of people, up on top of the racks and in the windows? Those give you an idea how we wear these things. And over there”—she pointed—”are places to try things on, if you see something you like… We can always do that another time, though. There are hats, and T-shirts, and shorts… all kinds of things.”
Filif nodded. “I see,” he said.
“Okay,” Dairine said. “Look around a little, and see what you think of things. We’ll go in a little while and catch up with the others.”
Filif made his way off among the racks, delighted. Dairine watched him begin unhooking shirts and shorts from the racks, holding them up to the light, admiring the colors. For all I know, Dairine thought, maybe there’s not a lot of bright color in his world. And his people seem to go about their lives just walking around in the dirt… She turned, looked at a T-shirt, and then turned her attention back to the mall outside, listening carefully. There were no sounds of screaming, or of people running. The disguises must still be holding okay upstairs. I just hope Carmela yells for me if Sker’ret gets out of hand. That boy’s got an appetite…
She walked idly between the racks of T-shirts, then started looking at some bathing suits. In the background, over the insipid chain-store Muzak, she could hear one of the staff saying to somebody in the changing room, “Sir, can I give you a hand with that? No? All right. You, sir, how are you doing in there? You need that in a twelve? Fine… ”
Dairine sighed and turned her attention back to the T-shirts. I can’t believe how garish the colors are this year, she thought. Maybe next year the style will change and things’ll calm down a little bit. She yawned again.
“Sir?” said the cheerful voice in the background. “How are you in there? Those sizes all right? Fine. Call me if you need anything. Hello? Sir—?”
Dairine stretched, pulled a bathing suit off the rack, looked in astonishment at the garish print. Not on your life, she thought, and put it back, blinking. Her eyes still felt grainy; she hadn’t had a lot of sleep the previous night. The thought of going upstairs and having an ice cream herself, a big one, was looking increasingly attractive. “Sir?” said the voice in the background. “Would you like some—”
And then came the shriek, and Dairine suddenly realized what she had been hearing, or rather, not hearing.
She hurried toward the changing room, flung the outer curtain open. Past it she saw one of the staff standing half in and half out of one of the changing rooms, the curtain held in his hand, frozen. And one after another, other people’s heads popped out of the other changing rooms, staring at the sales guy.
Oh no, Dairine thought. Spot!
She put out her hand, and an instant later Spot was in it. Dairine flipped his lid open as she came up behind the staff guy, pushing the curtain aside. The poor man was staring at something he probably had not seen in a changing room before—a Christmas tree wearing Day-Glo orange Jams and several baseball caps, all brightly colored. The top one was on backwards. “I like the root covers,” Filif said thoughtfully, “but I’m not entirely sure about the hat.”
There were about twelve things that Dairine was not sure of at that moment, almost all of them being why she had let Filif out of her sight. Blood sugar! But there was no time for that now; there was movement in the other cubicles— You know which spell I need, she said silently to Spot. His screen cleared and came up with the general-purpose invisibility spell—a quick one that Dairine had used on herself often enough and had had some practice in throwing over other things in a hurry.
Silently she read the words, felt the air in front of her twist itself out of shape and into another refractive configuration entirely, under the influence of the Speech. A moment later, both she and the sales guy, and the three heads peering in from behind them, were all staring at what appeared to be empty space.
“Are you okay?” Dairine said to the sales guy.
He looked at her as if she’d come out of nowhere. “I, uh…” He shook his head. “Maybe I had a little too much of… something or other last night… ” He stared once again at the mirror in the “empty” cubicle, and then turned and let the curtain fall. The other customers went away, and after that the shop guy wandered back out onto the sales floor, shaking his head.
Dairine rolled her eyes, relieved. Silently she said to Filif, I wish you’d asked me for help!
I didn’t need any help, Filif said. I’m doing fine!
You have no idea, Dairine said. I’m leaving that invisibility over you for now. You need to put that stuff down and come out with me. We’ll come back for this later, under more controlled circumstances. Let’s go!
She reached through the field of invisibility until she could feel a branch or three, and took hold of them, cautiously, being careful not to squish any of the berries. Trying as hard as she could to look casual about it, trying equally hard not to look as if she was leading something invisible away by the hand or branch, Dairine made her way out of the sportswear store and out into the center of the mall again. There she looked around, took a moment to recollect her wits, and said, You stay invisible for a few minutes, okay? I’ll be back for you. We’re going home. Don’t let anybody bump into you!
All right, Filif said. And then we can come back another time for the decorations?
Absolutely, Dairine said.
She went up to the food court. There sat Roshaun, Carmela, and Sker’ret, all ingesting large ice-cream sundaes. They all looked up at her in surprise. “Where’s Filif?” Carmela said.
“About to be taken home,” Dairine said. “The fast way. Meet me back there later, okay?”
“Sure,” Carmela said. Dairine turned and headed off again… but not before catching sight of Roshaun’s amused smirk.
I am going to get him for that, Dairine thought, heading back to where Filif waited. And as for the rest of this… I am never applying for anything again. Cultural exchange—!
She snorted at her own stupidity and went off to find an invisible tree.
8: Taking in the Sights
“Dad?” Nita said.
“I can hear you fine, honey,” Nita’s dad said. “Whatever Tom did to the phone, you don’t have to shout. How are you?”
“I’m fine! Everything’s fine.”
Nita was sitting on the beach with her manual in her lap, while a hundred yards away Kit and Ponch were running along the pink sand, racing. Ponch was winning—this not even the new venue could change. The sun was up, and warm already; the wind was just strong enough to take the sun’s heat away, but not so strong as to chill; the waves slipped up and down the beach, whispering.
“What’s it like?” said her dad’s voice from the manual.
Nita laughed. “Like the Hamptons,” she said. “Except they don’t have money here.”
There was a pause at her dad’s end. “That takes a stretch of the imagination,” he said, sounding somewhat dry, for the resorts and wealthy residential communities of the Hamptons, out at the end of Long Island, were (in the Callahan household, at least) often described by the head of the household as a place where people had “more money than sense.” “No money, huh? What do they use instead?”
“It’s a barter economy, but with exceptions. For things that are hard to get locally, they have other ways of dealing with getting stuff around. But when the dust settles, everybody here seems to have what they need. And that’s good, because the people here are really, really nice.”
“How’s the family you’re with?”
“They’re the best,” Nita said. “They remind me of us.”
Her dad chuckled. “No higher praise, I guess… A barter economy. Are they farmers, then?”
“No. Well, they have sheep,” Nita said, looking back toward the grassland. “If sheep fly…” From where she sat, she could see yet another of Kuwilin�
�s small flocks of flying sheep landing, while the first flock he’d been feeding took off. A scatter of feed, a flurry of golden wings, and off they went, and another little flock wheeled down out of that blue, blue sky to take their place. It was like feeding pigeons, except that the effect would have been unfortunate if the sheep had tried to land on you the same way pigeons did.
Nita laughed again as exactly that thing started to happen to Quelt’s tapi, who waved the sheep off with a weary familiarity. “But you haven’t been just sitting there looking at sheep, I hope.”
“Oh, no,” Nita said. “We’ve been doing tourist things. The stuff that nobody here does unless they have visitors.”
Her father laughed. “They have that there, too?”
“Oh, yeah. We went to the Cities to do an errand for Quelt’s mom.”
“Which city?”
“The Cities. It’s just what they call it… Don’t ask me why. As if they were interchangeable.”
“They are,” Kit said, running past. “Modular. They put them where they need them.” Ponch ran past him with a stick of ironwood in his mouth; Kit threw Nita a resigned glance and trotted off after him.
“But they’re really pretty,” Nita said. “It’s as if they did New York, but in pink and peach and cream colors. And there’s no garbage.”
Her father whistled. “A city with no garbage…!”
Nita shrugged. “People here don’t seem to litter. I don’t know if they even have a word for it. They don’t throw a lot of stuff away. Come to think of it, they don’t have a lot of stuff, period.”
“They don’t sound deprived, though… ”
“Nope. Did I tell you, we’re famous here?”
“No.”
“They like us because we’re short. And wizards are a big deal here. It’s going to be strange to come back and have to keep quiet about it again.”
“That would be a sore point around here at the moment,” Nita’s dad said.