by Diane Duane
Nita’s eyes widened slightly at the first image that occurred to her.
“With lycopodium powder,” Dairine said, more scornfully than before, if that was possible.
“Sheesh, Neets.”
“Just checking,” Nita said.
“Yes,” Dairine said, “I know you were.” She rolled her eyes. “Tell Dad I’m being good.”
“If you’re good enough, I won’t have to tell him anything,” Nita said. She turned away.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to do it with real lava, though?” Dairine said from behind her as Nita headed to her room.
“There are times,” Nita said, “when I think a nice big lava flow would improve that school a lot.
You know any card tricks?”
The silence in answer to that question was unusually eloquent.
Nita sighed and sat down in her room. You awake yet? she said silently to Kit.
She waited for a few seconds.
Huh
? Kit said.
Well, that’s half my question answered
, Nita said. You sound pretty tired. You okay?
I guess so.
Nita raised her eyebrows. This wasn’t exactly a normal response for Kit. Either he was okay or he wasn’t, but the middle ground wasn’t usually an option for him, in Nita’s experience, especially when he sounded as dulled as he did. I’m coming over in a while, she said. There’s some stuff I have to show you.
Okay.
And that was it.
Either he’s exhausted
, Nita thought, or there’s something wrong…
She knew what her present hunch suggested, though. She was starting to get worried about him.
He’s been hitting this problem with Darryl so hard
, Nita thought, that he’s just been wearing himself down. That’s one possibility.
Why don’t I think that’s what’s really going on?
Nita headed downstairs to make herself a sandwich. “By the way,” Dairine said in a piercing voice as Nita went past her door, “someone seems to have eaten all the bananas.”
Nita sighed. “I’ll stop by Brazil on my way home. Or Panama.”
“Costa Rica.”
“Please,” Nita said as she went down the stairs. She had never been any good at remembering which exports came from which countries. It struck her as information that, for someone in junior high, was about as useful as dissecting the history of the gold standard. When I get a job at an import-export firm
, Nita thought, turning the corner into the kitchen, then I'll worry about who exports bauxite and who exports tin. Not before.
She opened a can of tuna fish, drained it, mashed it in a bowl with mayonnaise and Tabasco sauce, made herself a sandwich with it, and ingested the sandwich without paying it much attention.
Darryl was on her mind. He‘s more important than all of us, Carl said. The thought was sobering.
She and Kit had done some moderately important and useful things in their time working together, but what Carl seemed to be describing was a different level of function, one in which just being there, just being alive and breathing, could be more important to the world than any amount of running around doing things. It made a strange kind of sense when Nita put it together with what Tom had been saying about the Powers finding the difference between active and passive work
“illusory.” If just by being here, Darryl is channeling the One’s power into the world, then if something were to happen to him suddenly
…
It was a scarier thought than any Nita had had in quite some time. Whatever else I do, she thought, I’ve got to find a way to help him.
Because he doesn’t know it, but he’s helped me…
Nita went to get her coat, and then went out to walk over to Kit’s.
“Hola, Carmela. Que-pasa?” Nita said as she came in Kit’s back door.
“Watasbi wa ureshii!” Carmela said, more or less dancing past Nita into the living room, with the TV remote in her hand.
Nita blinked as she slipped off her coat and dropped it on the floor beside the dining room sofa.
The Japanese thing was something Carmela had been working on for a while, and now that she was getting good at it, you never quite knew which language you were going to get from her. “Let me guess. You’re saying you’re going to turn into a giant robot?”
“No,” Carmela said, “that would be, Watashi, imakara sugo-ku o-kina robotto ni namno!”
“I’m impressed,” Nita said.
“If I really did turn into a giant robot, I bet you would be,” Carmela said, heading back into the living room.
Nita followed her. “Oh,” she said. “Is this the new TV?”
“Ohayo gozaimas‘!” shouted the TV and the DVD player together.
“Oh,” Nita said. “Hi, cousins. Nice to meet you.”
“Dozo yoroshikul
“Uh, yeah.” To Carmela she said, “Don’t you find that a little unusual?”
“I’m used to it now. Kit says he thinks we’re having some kind of wizardry leakage in the house,” Carmela said, very matter-of-fact. “Mama can hear Ponch. And Pop and I can hear the TV when it shouts at the DVD. Mostly it’s friendly shouting now, since Kit fixed the remote.” Carmela plunked herself back down on the sofa, stretching out her legs.
“Fixed it,” Nita said, still having some trouble with this concept.
“It was a lot worse before. He said he was going to ask Tom what was going on. Meanwhile, in case you’re wondering, Kit’s in his room. Mama and Pop are out shopping, and they did not take Kit with them because they are annoyed with him.” She lowered her voice. “But also because he slept real late, and he looks like hell. Mama thinks he’s coming down with something.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” Nita said. “Uh, have you been having any trouble with—?” She glanced in the general direction of the TV and DVD while turning enough to conceal the look.
“Trouble? Not at all. Weird stuff turns up sometimes, but all the regular TV’s there, the cable and all. I don’t care how many aliens I see, as long as I’ve got my MTV and the shopping channels.”
Nita grinned. This was Dairine’s attitude as well, though it was the music channels that interested her more than the shopping. “Half the time, with some of those videos, you can’t tell what planet they’re from anyway,” Nita said.
Carmela snickered. “Later,” Nita said, and went back to Kit’s room.
He was lying on the bed, his manual open and facedown on his chest, looking up at the ceiling.
Ponch was lying next to him on the bed, with his head on Kit’s chest. Ponch’s eyes shifted to Nita as she came into view, but he didn’t move or say anything.
Nita paused in the door and knocked on the door frame. “Hey,” she said.
Kit glanced over at her. It was the least-interested glance that Nita could remember seeing from him in some time. Why doesn’t he just come out and say that he wishes I wasn’t here? Nita thought, shocked. But it occurred to her then that she’d been distant enough with him lately. Maybe he was giving her a taste of her own medicine. That wouldn’t normally he his style, either. But if he’s really feeling sick, maybe he’s just saying what’s on his mind, stuff he’d keep to himself otherwise.
Nita felt briefly guilty, then put the feeling aside. “You look kind of out of it,” she said.
“Yeah,” Kit said. “I feel that way, too. I didn’t sleep real well after I got in last night.”
“Late?” Nita said, going over to sit in the chair by his desk.
“Yeah.”
She waited a moment to let him tell her what he’d been doing, but he just turned his head away and looked up at the ceiling again. He wasn’t going to tell her. “You have any luck with Darryl?”
she said.
“Not really.”
Nita started feeling around for something sarcastic and angry to say to Kit, and then she stopped herself. He didn’t push me when I didn’t
want to talk, she thought. I’m not going to push him now.
But there’s still something that needs saying
. “Kit,” she said, “about Darryl… I’m getting the feeling that you going after him the way you are isn’t doing you any good.”
“Uh-huh.”
Nita pursed her lips. That was the same “uh-huh” that she used on Dairine, as code for the message, “I am not listening to you. Bug off.”
He doesn’t mean to be rude. He just doesn’t want to tell me what’s on his mind, or hear what’s on mine.
Did I sound like this? He should have hit me on the head with something until I paid attention.
Nita let out a breath. “Okay,” she said, “forget about it for now. But I have a message for you.
You need to go see Carl.”
That finally made Kit look at her again. “Huh? How come?”
“Tom’s out of town,” Nita said. “Some Advisory or Senior thing. Carl’s handling his interventions for the next day or so. You owed Tom a debrief on what’s up with Darryl, and Carl wants to know where it is. Just between you and me, I think he’s steamed. So if I were you, I’d get over there and take your medicine.”
“I’ve taken enough medicine for one weekend,” Kit muttered.
“After you got in late?”
“Yeah. My pop didn’t say much, but my mama did.”
“Tore a few strips off you, huh?”
“It wasn’t my fault, Neets,” Kit said. “The timing got blown, that’s all.” He sighed. “But it doesn’t really matter.”
Nita looked at Kit with concern. That was a theme she’d been singing too much herself lately, and Nita wasn’t going to be indifferent to it when someone else started in on it.
“They didn’t ground you or anything?”
“No. Anyway, they would have done that how, exactly?” Kit said.
Nita had to smile, despite her worrying. It was extremely difficult to ground a wizard without the wizard’s consent. Still, you had to live with your parents… and rubbing their noses in the fact that they couldn’t control you no matter how much they wanted to wasn’t a great way to make that life an easy one.
Kit sighed. “Neets, I’m sorry, I’m just…” He trailed off. It wasn’t that he was too tired to pursue the thought. It was just that he didn’t care.
“Okay,” Nita said, and got up. At least he talked to me a little. It’s possible he really is coming down with something… Well, we’ll see
. “Look… call me when you feel better. There’s stuff we have to discuss about Darryl.”
“Sure.”
“But go see Carl first.”
Kit turned his attention to the ceiling again.
Nita gave him one last look as she turned away. As she did, Ponch glanced up at her. His eyes had been all for Kit until now, but the look Ponch gave her had even more concern in it than Nita was feeling.
Nita met the gaze, glanced fractionally at the door, and went out.
That could have turned into an argument
, Nita thought, if he’d had enough energy to bother. But he didn’t
She passed through the living room, where Carmela was curled up on the sofa, watching the TV, where models in frilly things pounded up and down a catwalk. Nita paused briefly, eyed the things the models were almost wearing.
“Not for me,” Carmela said, not taking her eyes off the screen. “Drafty. How is he?”
“He looks tired,” Nita said. “Anyway, tell your mama and pop I said hi.”
“Sure, no problem.”
Nita got her coat and headed out the back door. She didn’t shut it right away, because after about half a minute, Ponch came trotting out of the dining room and headed outside, past Nita.
She closed the door, brushed some stray snow off the back steps, and sat down. Ponch sat down next to her.
“Ponch,” Nita said in the Speech. “What’s with the boss?”
He’s sad
, Ponch said. But there’s more to it than that.
Ponch looked down the driveway toward the street. I’m sad, too, he said. And I’m afraid.
Something’s happening to him, and I don’t know how to stop it.
Somewhere down the street, a dog began to howl in a high little voice, like something out of a cartoon.
“It’s about Darryl, isn’t it?”
We were there again this morning.
“Again? I thought you went last night.”
We did. I took him there. But the second time we went, he started to go by himself. I had to follow him
Ponch licked his nose nervously. It wasn’t easy. He wasn ‘t going the way I go.
“Was he dreaming?”
Yes.
“Lucid dreaming, though? The guided kind?”
No. He was worried. His dream took him there without him wanting to be there, at first. Then he couldn’t get out. They were getting alike…
Nita pondered this. Her own nonlucid dreaming had brought her to Darryl, or Darryl to her, and those dreams hadn’t been good, either. But this experience, at least as Ponch described it, sounded slightly different. I bet their minds are starting to get locked together because of all the time Kit’s spending in there
, Nita thought. This is not good…
And reality doesn’t feel terribly real to Darryl
, Ponch said. I think it’s starting to feel the same way to Kit.
“That would make a nasty kind of sense,” Nita said. “Ponch, I don’t think you should take him back in there for a while. At least not until he’s feeling better. And when you go, I want to go with him.”
I want you to do that, too.
Nita lifted her head, listening, realizing that the howling of dogs down the street had increased.
Three or four more dogs had joined the first one. “What’s the matter with the dogs?” Nita said. “Is someone using one of those silent whistles or something?”
No. I think it’s because I’m afraid
, Ponch said. I think they hear me being that way, and they’re upset for me.
“But that’s not all, is it,” Nita said, looking thoughtfully at Ponch. “Something else is happening to you besides just being afraid for the boss. Isn’t it?”
There was a long pause. I don’t know, Ponch said. I don’t know what it means. I don’t have the words. But I’m frightened for me, too
He licked his nose again.
The howling down the street got a lot louder, and Nita suddenly found herself thinking that it wouldn’t be smart right now to press the question any further. She put an arm around Ponch and roughed his fur up a little. “We’re both nervous about a lot of things, big guy,” she said. 'I'll be glad when the boss is better. But listen. Right now, as soon as he gets up, Kit needs to go see Carl. He’s not in the mood to listen to me right now. I know how that is. But he needs to go, anyway. Will you nag him? Get him to go over there?“
I will.
“That’s my boy.” She rubbed Ponch behind the ears and pulled the door open for him. He went back into the house.
Nita shut the door and headed home. She was almost halfway there before, as she went over the conversation with Ponch in her mind, she realized that at least once Ponch had answered a thought in her mind — not something she’d actually said out loud.
Nita shook her head, sighed, and walked in the direction of the neighborhood deli, to see if they had any bananas.
Entrapments
Kit and Carl were sitting together in Tom and Carl’s dining room, later that afternoon.
“Kit,” Carl said, “it’s all very interesting what you’ve told me. It throws a lot of light on Darryl's problem. I’m going to look into this myself, as far as possible. In the meantime”—he frowned—“I want to know why it took you so long to get in here and tell Tom or me about this. We’ve been working together on power-sensitive issues long enough that you ought to know better than to let a situation of this kind go for so long without a debrief.”
Carl shook his head. “Not good enough,” he said. “The manual, powerful as it is, is context-poor when reporting on experiences like this. Especially considering that what you’ve been doing with Ponch is unique as far as I can tell. For maximum effectiveness in assessing Darryl’s status, I need to know how things looked and felt to you after the fact, as well as during it. So you’d better start getting serious about this, Kit. It’s not like you to let things slide.“
“Okay,” Kit said.
Carl looked at him with an expression that suggested he was expecting to hear something else.
At last he said, “Which brings me to the next thing on the list. The Powers certainly don’t expect you to work on a project so hard that you neglect your own well-being. Neither do I. You look terrible; you’ve been spending too much time chasing around outside of your home space, and it’s affecting you. I appreciate your efforts, believe me… but I want you to take a couple of days off.”
“But—”
“No buts,” Carl said.
Now it was Kit’s turn to frown. Possibly Carl read the expression as rebelliousness. “Kit,” he said, “as a Senior, it’s not beyond my abilities to put a freeze on your wizardly exertions for the next day or three. I would prefer not to have to do that: It’s undignified for both of us, and it also sends a signal to the Powers that there might be a problem with the way you’re using the Art. I would much prefer to hear you tell me that you won’t do any further exploration of Darryl’s inner worlds until Tom and I have had some time to work out what seems to be the best way to proceed. This may sound cruel to you, but he’s been holding his own for the past three months, at least; I would guess he’ll hang on for a day or two more. You, on the other hand, need to leave his problem with me for the next couple of days.”
Kit let out a long breath. “So,” Carl said, “do I have your word?”
“Mmf,” Kit said.
Carl gave him an exasperated look. “Even among nonwizards,” Carl said, “it’s considered impolite to grunt.”
“I promise,” Kit said.
“Good,” Carl said. “Thanks.” He relaxed a little. “Kit, go home, get some rest. It’s not that you did a bad job… it’s just that you got a little too wrapped up in this one. Take two days or so and get your objectivity back. Then you and Tom and I will sit down and work out what to do next.” And he saw Kit out the sliding doors into the backyard.