by Diane Duane
Nita sighed and scooted after her.
Of course, even when you’re a wizard, getting the basic permissions settled for a house party for an indeterminate number of wizardly or wizard-friendly guests isn’t necessarily that easy.
In the Rodriguezes’ living room a man was sitting in the easy chair closest to the entertainment system, with a tabloid newspaper open in front of his face. In front of him, sitting crosslegged on the floor in a position that was supposed to read as subordinate, and wearing what was meant to be a winsome smile, was his younger daughter.
“Daaaaddyyyyy…”
“I just got home, Carmela. From a shift that felt three hours longer than it really was. During which every single machine I touched found a new and interesting way to screw up.” Kit’s pop worked with the printing-press machines at the big Long Island newspaper, and since the operation had gone digital, he had been complaining more or less nonstop about the crankiness of the new equipment he worked with compared with the beautiful, reliable old printing presses of old. Kit had told Nita often enough that her dad had complained just as hard and as constantly about the old printing presses, way back when, but this didn’t seem like a good time to remind anybody of that. “My head is aching, even my ears are aching, and the aspirin hasn’t kicked in yet, so if we could, you know, let this wait half an hour…”
“But all you have to do right now is say ‘yes’ and then it’ll be quiet!”
The newspaper behind which Juan Rodriguez was presently concealing himself rustled in a very brisk way. “Let’s try it the other way around, shall we? Let’s try having the quiet now, and then maybe the ‘yes’ will happen later!”
“Okay, right on time, that was the appeal to reason,” Kit said in Nita’s ear. They were lurking in the kitchen, pretending to be getting something to eat while listening to the conversation through the pass-through window between the kitchen and the living room. ”Let’s see if she’s buying it.”
“Seriously, pop-pop, it won’t be a big deal! I’m going to take care of all the food and drinks myself, and I’ll clean the house, before and after—”
“Uh oh,” Kit said, very low. “Reverting to what she used to call him when she was eight. Helpless baby daughter and responsible cleaner of the house? Not a good match.”
“That we’re having this discussion right now tells me that it’s a big deal already,” Kit’s pop said. “And that I should be wondering just why you’re leaning on this so hard. And whether I should go off the whole idea right now, so as not to indulge your instant gratification issues.”
“But daaaaaaaddy—”
Kit rolled his eyes at Nita. “Nope, logic’s the only thing that could have saved her there…”
The newspaper being held up between Juan and his middle child dropped just long enough for her, and the two in the kitchen, to get a glimpse of eyes that were rather dangerously narrowed. “Answer hazy,” Kit’s pop said, rather pointedly, “ask again later.” And he went back behind the newspaper again.
Carmela picked herself silently up off the floor and swanned off toward the back of the house and the stairs to her bedroom in a manner that just narrowly avoided being a flounce.
Nita and Kit turned their attention back toward the sandwiches that they were theoretically constructing. Nita hadn’t actually gotten much further than the bread. “How’s this going, you think?” she said, very low.
“Hard to tell,” Kit murmured, opening a cupboard and pretending to rummage around in it. “Sometimes she gets a lot of mileage out of the ‘I’m your favorite daughter’ thing. Some days, nothing at all. Especially when he starts thinking about her and Helena being in college.”
“Tuition,” Nita said, and groaned under her breath.
“Student loans,” Kit said. “It’s a good thing she’s just going to SUNY. But this still looks like a ‘nothing at all’ day.”
“Don’t think I don’t hear you two lurking in there!” Kit’s pop said.
“Not lurking, pop,” Kit said. “Nita’s getting a sandwich. She didn’t have time to eat anything at the Crossings.”
“Because we were busy meeting with the friends who’re going to come!” Carmela said, swinging back into the living room and flopping down onto the nearby couch, where she lay staring at the ceiling in a vaguely hopeless way.
“Who you want to have come,” her pop said, “and who you really should thought about not wanting to disappoint before you issued an invitation that you don’t know if you’re going to be allowed to fulfill!” He turned a page, and the paper rustled quite hard.
“Uh oh, the getting-permission-first thing,” Kit murmured.
“Yeah,” Nita murmured back, “I hit her with that. Didn’t count for much at the time. She was too buzzed.”
“If she’s smart, she won’t push him…”
Possibly realizing this, Carmela merely made a little disappointed moaning sound and went quiet.
“Anyway, there’s plenty of time to think about this,” Kit’s pop said. “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet.”
“But some of the guests need time to get their schedules sorted because they’ll be coming such a long way. Ireland! Germany!”
“16 Aurigae,” Nita added helpfully.
The newspaper rustled again, and this time the right-hand page twitched aside just enough for Nita to catch a glimpse of Kit’s pop’s eyes looking toward her over the tops of his reading glasses. “Sixteen what?”
“Aurigae. It’s a star about two hundred and thirty light years from here,” Nita said. “An orange giant.”
“About two hundred and thirty?” Kit’s pop said.
“Give or take,” Nita said. “That’s where Filif comes from.”
“So this is one of the three who stayed in your basement in their little holes in the wall,” said Kit’s mama as she appeared through the door on the far side of the living room that led to the back bedrooms.
“Elective access gated spaces,” Kit said. “Puptents, we call them. They don’t take up any space in our space: just somewhere else. It’s like taking your home with you, a little.”
His mama leaned on the passthrough’s shelf. “And the one we’re discussing, 16 Aurigae Guy—? This is the one who looks like a Christmas tree?”
Nita raised her eyebrows at Kit. His mother had always seemed to have the superpower of being able to hear—or overhear—any conversation that took place under the Rodriguezes’ roof, no matter how far away she was in the house. Sometimes it was really useful, and sometimes it was a pain in the butt, but Nita had learned to deal with it.
“He’s a Demisiv,” Nita said. “That’s both the planet and the species. They’re carbon-based like us, but they evolved… really differently.”
“To wind up looking like they do, I’d imagine so.”
Nita shrugged. “They’re related to trees the same way we’re related to the tetrapods.” She noticed Kit’s pop giving her a slightly confused look from behind the paper, and added, “You know, one of those fish species that got out of the water a long time ago, developed legs out of their fins and started walking around. There’ve been a lot of branches in the evolutionary tree between them and us. Same number of branches, pretty much, between Filif and his species’ ancestors.”
“A lot of water under the bridge for his people, then,” Kit’s pop said.
“Five hundred million years,” Kit said, “give or take.”
“Huh,” said Kit’s pop: a neutral sort of sound. He went back behind the paper again, turned another page.
Kit’s mama came into the kitchen and stood still in front of the stove for a few seconds, giving the cooktop a long thoughtful look. “Spaghetti and meatballs?” she said.
“Sounds good, Mama.”
“Then don’t overdo the sandwiches, you two.” Kit’s mama got down on one knee and started going through the cupboard under the counter: Kit and Nita moved to either side to get out of her way. “So what else does Mr. Christmas Tree Wizard do besides get all excited
over the thought of being decorated?”
“He’s been working with the authorities at the Crossings as a go-between for the Interconnect Project,” Nita said. “The Demisiv have been a big part of the Project for a long time. It’s a group of species who specialize in long-distance intergalactic transit: keeping it running, helping people get around. They also do emergency work… help move populations who have to find new worlds to live on, because their stars have blown up or they’ve had planetary natural disasters or whatever.”
“So… kind of a humanitarian organization?”
That wasn’t a comparison Nita had thought to make. “Yeah,” she said.
“For a whole lot of values of ‘human,’” Kit added.
Kit’s mama didn’t say anything for a moment, just kept looking around in the cupboard. “Juan,” she said, “are we out of spaghetti again?”
“There’s fettucini…”
“It’s not the same.” She got up, sighing, and opened an upper cupboard. “Okay, we’ll do it with fusilli. But you said you were getting spaghetti on the way back from work…”
The paper rustled. “Sorry. My head was killing me and I just wanted to get home.”
“Well, tomorrow then.”
“I’ll make a note.”
Kit’s mama rummaged around for a big pot and started filling it with water. “Well,” she said while the faucet was running. “He sounds like a good influence. One thing, though.”
Kit and Nita looked at each other. “Yeah?”
“Is your friend a needle-shedding type?”
“Not that I’ve ever noticed,” Kit said.
“The occasional berry,” Nita said. “But only when he’s in trans.”
Kit’s mama put her eyebrows up. “Doesn’t sound like a problem,” she said. She put the pot on the stove and turned on the heat under it. “How many people are we talking?”
“We’re still working that out,” Nita said. “Wanted to get the okay from you first.”
“You did, at least,” Kit’s mama said, and flashed a grin at Nita.
Nita did her best to produce a We-are-so-busted expression that would acknowledge the realities of the situation without assigning blame to any specific party. Kit simultaneously looked elsewhere and looked innocent.
“And this is supposed to be a one-night sleepover? On the twentieth?”
“That’s right,” Kit said. “We wouldn’t be up here all that much. Mostly in the puptents: there’ll be more room.”
Nita heard another newspaper page turn, but purposely didn’t look that way, because Kit’s mama was doing so.
A second passed. “The carol-singing thing’s the night after,” Kit’s mama said. “Don’t forget.”
“We won’t,” Kit said.
His mama headed out of the kitchen and through the living room again. ”Just try to keep the other collateral damage to a minimum, yeah?” she said to Carmela as she passed by the couch. “It wouldn’t be good to freak the neighbors.”
“At least any more than they have been already,” muttered Kit’s pop from behind the paper.
“Oh Mama thank you!” Carmela shrieked and bounded up off the couch to grab her and hug her as she passed through.
“Don’t thank me,” said Kit’s mama. “Thank your Pop.”
The logic of this might not have been instantly obvious to the casual bystander, but Nita had seen enough of these family discussions at Kit’s house to understand that with his folks, parental consensus was often reached by some mechanism she didn’t understand and probably wasn’t meant to. “Thanks, Mr. Rodriguez!” Nita immediately said over the noise of Carmela diving past the newspaper, seizing her Pop and covering his face with smooches.
“You’re welcome,” Kit’s pop said as soon as Carmela let him loose and more or less went dancing out of the living room and up the stairs to get her tablet and start making notes and plans.
Kit’s pop shook his head, shook the paper back out into something like a readable configuration, and went back to his reading. As he did, Kit turned to Nita and said silently, She just lay there with her sad face on and let us run interference for her, didn’t she!
Yep, Nita said. She owes us one.
Good, Kit said. And meanwhile… “Looks like we get to have a party!”
A second later the sound system up in Carmela’s room fired up with a raucous British-accented voice more or less screaming over a noisy drum solo, “It’s CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIISTMAAAAAAAAS!!”
Nita snickered. “Ronan,” she said, “has a lot to answer for…”
An hour or so later, Nita was upstairs in Carmela’s bedroom, sprawled in her desk chair with her manual open in her lap, while Carmela was lying on her stomach on her bed and scribbling notes in her tablet at about a mile a minute. That thing must have some handwriting recognition program, Nita thought. But then, it’s Crossings tech… it would have.
Having gotten the “yes” from their folks, Carmela was now acting oddly at a loss, as if she’d secretly expected to be turned down and now wasn’t sure what she should be doing. “Decorations,” she was muttering.
Nita glanced up at that. “I thought you decided you were going to use your normal ones.”
“What? Oh. Not for Filif! For the house.”
“We’ve got lots of time yet to think about that.”
“Not if we don’t want to miss the holiday rush! The sooner the better. Anyway, the stuff’s starting to turn up in the stores already anyway…”
Nita sighed, as that was all too true. “Still.”
“And another thing,” Carmela muttered, hurriedly flipping over virtual pages in her tablet and starting to make another set of notes. “Allergies. Food allergies…”
She can plan an invasion and not turn a hair, Nita thought, but she can’t stay focused on a guest list? This really is a big deal for her. “Mela, you’re coming at this backwards.”
“Huh?”
“Guest list first. Food allergies later.”
“I’m just trying to get ahead of things…”
“Right now the only one you’re getting ahead of is yourself. Deep breath!”
Carmela took it, though for some moments she seemed reluctant to let it out again.
“Mela!” Nita said. “Relax.”
She let that breath out with some difficulty. “I just want it to be nice for him,” Carmela said. “He’s so special… and I don’t want him to be disappointed.”
Her first alien crush, Nita thought, and just smiled. “He won’t be,” she said. “You know him. Always ready for something new, and in love with it when it arrives, whatever it is.”
“And oh gosh, he’s going to need something to root in. Maybe one of those custom compounds they’ve got at the Demisiv sleepstore at the Crossings…”
“Mela!” Nita said. “Daddy just puts him in the flower bed when he turns up. With maybe some bark chips! So later for custom bedding. Guest list!”
Carmela let out another heavy sigh and turned to a clean “page.” “Guest list,” she said.
Nita stretched in the chair and glanced down at her manual. She’d long since told the list of active wizards she knew personally to arrange itself to the front of the main directory. Now she started paging through that section, checking people’s public calendars, where available, against the sleepover / party dates. “So. Filif.”
“Goes without saying.”
“Sker’ret.”
“Ditto.”
Both of them paused then, thinking of one of the original puptent group who would not be there: Roshaun. More or less in unison, they sighed.
“Yeah,” Carmela said. “Well. …You and me and Mom and Pop and Dairine and your Dad and Kit.”
“Uh huh.”
“And Spot.”
“Right.”
“Ronan.”
“Mmm,” Carmela said. Nita glanced at Carmela with amusement, not entirely sure whether the sound was simple acknowledgement or approval. Ronan wasn’t particularly
forthcoming about how he actually took Carmela’s more or less continuous flirting with him, but Nita noticed that he never really came out and told her to stop it.
And having mentioned Ronan and Kit in the same breath, naturally the next thought was—
“Darryl?” Carmela said, beating Nita to it.
“I don’t know.” Nita looked over his listing in the manual. “He’s showing availability, but that might just be for errantry. The dates are starred, and the star says ‘subject to preparedness issues.’”
“Meaning he’ll bow out if he feels overstimmed.”
“Well, sure. But the whole holiday time might be iffy for him. We were talking a couple weeks ago and he told me that as far as his personal well-being goes, and the way he’s been doing better at managing it, he’s been trying not to freak his parents out too much. Trying to break them in gradually.”
Carmela snorted with laughter. “Darryl?”
Nita smiled. In the matter of handling his autism, as with his handling of nearly everything else, it was hard to imagine Darryl doing anything “gradually”. These days he tended to jump in enthusiastically with both feet and then deal with the fine details as they came up. “He told me at one point,” Nita said, “that he was thinking about trying to get his parents to perceive wizardry as just a new way to be non-neurotypical.”
“If anyone can do that, he can,” Carmela said. “So if he’s trying to ease them into the idea that the holidays are less of a chore for him these days and he doesn’t need all that supervision, maybe we should just let him decide what to do about this? Put him down for ‘maybe yes maybe no’ and let him get back to us?”
“Yeah. If he needs to blow us off, he will and he won’t feel guilty about it.”
Carmela scribbled for a moment. Nita stretched, propping her feet up on Carmela’s desk and thinking. “S’reee…” she turned a page in the manual.
Carmela looked up. “Um. How do you invite a humpback whale to a sleepover?”
“The usual way! You put her in a people suit.”
Carmela blinked. “Oh. Yeah.”
“Especially because it’s easier for S’reee than for most whales. When she got hurt that time and I healed her, we got blood-tied. So she has less trouble shapechanging to human these days, the way I have less trouble going whale when I need to.”