Interim Errantry

by Diane Duane

  “Oh.”

  “But no,” Nita said with some regret. “Says here she’s on sabbatical right now. Personal leave.”

  “For what?”

  “Uh, the manual won’t say. It’s one of those confidentiality things. But I suspect it’s about private time with her honey.”

  “Her what??”

  “She’s dating. A very nice bull from up around Vancouver somewhere. He’s a food critic.”

  “A what??”

  “You want to know where the best North Atlantic krill is,” Nita said, “Hwii’ish is your go-to guy.” It had taken her a while to understand that all the Earth’s oceans throbbed with a vast network of cetacean communication, a sort of sonic version of the Internet; and that Hwii’ish was essentially a foodblogger, and fairly famous among his own kind. But he didn’t care about fame: what he was interested in was wizards, most specifically S’reee. “But who knows?” Nita said. “Send her an invite anyway. She might be able to get away.”

  Carmela made a note.

  “Tom and Carl?”

  “For a sleepover?”

  “Huh? Oh, no, just for the evening party.”

  “Sure, if we can get them.” Nita flipped from Tom’s page to Carl’s. “It lists them as ‘on call’, but they might be able to get away.”

  “The Twychild?” That was Tran Liem Tuyet and Tran Hung Nguyet, a special kind of twin, both of them favorites of Nita’s from the big group they’d met up with during the Pullulus War.

  “Uh, they’re greyed out then. Maybe a family thing? It doesn’t say.”

  “Okay. We should have two different invites, maybe? One for people we’d like to see but we don’t know if they can make it, one for those whose calendars say they’re free.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “What about Matt?”

  “Who— Oh, the Aussie guy! Yeah, can’t miss a chance to watch him pester Ronan about how grateful he should be for Matt saving his life.”

  “And Ronan really is grateful but he makes this big song and dance about not caring…”

  “He’s free.”

  “Good. Sleepover list. …Rhiow and Hwaith and their bunch?”

  Nita turned pages. “Uh, no. ‘Emergencies only.’ It’s a bad time for them, the North American gates are crazy busy at the holidays, and they still always malfunction even when a full team of gate techs are riding herd on them.”

  “We’ll save Rhiow some of that cream she likes,” Carmela said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.” Carmela stared at the tablet. “Any of the Mars-team guys? Kit likes them a lot.”

  Nita nodded. “Um, yeah. What’s his face? The tall one. The German guy who Doesn’t Drive Tanks.”

  “Marcus,” said Carmela, and made a note. While the Mars investigating team had been hunting for the planet’s lost kernel, and any hint of what had happened to the (then so-called) Old Martian species, Marcus—who besides being a wizard with a linguistics specialty also drove armored personnel carriers for the German Army—had lectured anyone who’d hold still on the essential difference between vehicles with wheels and vehicles with tracks. You got a sense that he had to spend a lot of time with people who were unclear on the concept, and so he tended to be proactive about it.

  “Looks like he’s free until the 24th,” Nita said.

  “Okay. Who else have we got from Mars? What’s her name with the curls?”

  “Lissa?…Uh, no, she’s grayed out. Shame, I like her, she’s nice. Maybe next time.”

  They both sat quiet, thinking for a moment. “Mamvish?” Carmela said then.

  “Wow, if we could get her…!” Nita flipped a page, studied the manual. “’On errantry, unavailable except for emergencies.’ Well, no surprise there.” The Species Archivist to the Powers that Be was in demand all over the Galaxy, all the time.

  Carmela sighed. “Shame. But then she wouldn’t like this time of year, this far north. No fresh tomatoes…”

  “We’ll catch her in the summer, if we’re lucky.”

  Nita stretched again. “Anyway, that sounds like a good number. How many is that now?”

  “Uh, let me count.” Carmela was silent for a moment. “For the party, sort of sixteen? If everyone shows up. For the sleepover, eleven? Again, if everyone’s able to make it.”

  Nita nodded. “Good crowd. Should be fun.”

  Carmela sat up, touched the tablet in a couple of places and typed busily for a minute or two. Then she looked over at Nita. “Last minute thoughts?”

  “None right now. Probably I’ll have one the minute you send the invites out.”

  “We’ll see.” Carmela typed a last few words and then hit a spot on the tablet with one finger. The tablet chimed.

  “All gone out?”

  Carmela nodded, tossed the tablet to one side and rolled over on her back in a good simulation of a collapse for someone who was already lying down. “I,” she announced, “am exhaaaauuuuuuusted!”

  “And you haven’t even done anything yet,” Nita said.

  “Excuse me! I sent the invitations!”

  Nita snickered. And then, without warning, a chill ran down her spine. She shivered.

  Carmela saw it. “What?”

  “Well,” Nita said. “Except for the food and the drinks and the decorations and some little presents for everybody, we have only one thing left to worry about.”

  “Oh?”

  “The weather…”

  2: Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful

  Monday, December 20, 2010, 7:00 AM

  Off to the left side of Nita’s head, her radio alarm went off. Eyes still closed, she stuck a hand out from under the covers and felt around until she found the button. The insistent buzzing stopped, leaving her with the faint sound of somebody from the local all-news station talking in a cheerful tinny voice about lane closures on the Major Deegan Expressway.

  She opened her eyes. It was still very dim in the room. Winter mornings weren’t exactly her favorites: she hated getting up when it was still dark.

  Nita sat up in bed, rubbed her eyes. Is the sun even up yet? she wondered.

  7:16, said Bobo from somewhere in the back of her head.

  “Thanks,” Nita said, and rubbed her hands up and down her arms. It was chilly: the central heating hadn’t come on yet, and in weather as cold as it had been the last few days, even a flannel nightie couldn’t do a lot for you once you got out from under the covers. Shortest day tomorrow, she thought. Longest night… “And an eclipse of the moon,” she said aloud.

  While that’s true, Bobo said, I wouldn’t quote you long odds on seeing it.

  Nita got out of bed and went straight to the closet for the beat-up wooly-chenille bathrobe she favored on mornings like this. “Well, yeah, probably going to be too busy…”

  That’s not the problem.

  “Oh?” Nita said, and went to the back window to tilt the Venetian blinds open.

  The back yard looked someone’s old black and white photograph of a winter scene: softly lit in a shadowless dove-gray, the dark shapes of bare shrubs and leafless trees seemed charcoal-sketched against an indistinct background barely visible in the pre-dawn twilight. But what was slightly visible now in that grayness was movement; a gentle down-sifting of light near the window. Ever so lightly, ever so slightly, it had begun to snow. There was maybe an inch of it on the ground already.

  Nita smiled a little to see it. Snow for Christmas…

  But possibly, Bobo said, a little more than you might have had in mind.

  “Oh?”

  You’ll want to check your manual… but we have incoming.

  “Uh, okay.” It was unusual to hear Bobo sound quite so concerned.

  Nita picked the manual up off her bedside table and went to do bathroom things, then headed downstairs to see if her dad had made tea yet. He had: and he was standing there in the kitchen dressed in his black cold-weather parka just finishing what was in his Mets mug. He looked tired and a little bl
eary, which was no surprise this time of year—the runup to Christmas was always crazy for florists. “You okay?” Nita said, getting a mug for herself and filling it from the pot.

  “Yeah,” her dad said. “But God, am I getting sick of poinsettias.”

  This was something that Nita had heard repeatedly for the last few weeks. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “When do you think you’ll be done today?”

  “Probably five,” her dad said. “I don’t see any point in working late hours this week. I know what orders I’ve got due out and I’ve got enough time budgeted for them. If it gets busy toward the end of the day, Mikey can keep the shop open a little later. I don’t want to miss the excitement.” He smiled a little. “When do people start getting here again?”

  “Not till about four,” Nita said, and yawned. “That’s when Filif’s coming: we’ll take him over to Kit’s and get him settled in. Or get Kit’s pop settled, anyway…”

  “Not still nervous, is he?” said Nita’s dad. “I’ve told him once or twice already, you couldn’t ask for a nicer house guest. Should I call him and calm him down?”

  “Might not be a bad idea, if you get a moment today.”

  “Will do.” Her dad kissed her goodbye. “Tell Dairine I said to put the garbage out.”

  “I’ll tell her.” And Nita made a small face, since telling Dairine to go anywhere near a garbage can was rarely all that effective. There were few chores she hated more.

  Her dad headed out. After a few minutes she heard the car starting up, and (as it pulled out of the garage into the driveway) the snow tires whining and slipping in the new snow, even though her dad had salted the driveway last night. Wet snow, Nita thought. Whatever we get, it’ll stick. The thought of that snow piling up on Filif’s branches made her smile. Do they even get snow on Demisiv? she thought. I know so little about the place…

  Something to look into. Meanwhile… She stretched. Breakfast. And then… Christmas!

  She spent the first half of the day just puttering around the house and relaxing, rejoicing in not even having to look at the clock, despite the low-level buzz of anticipation already building inside her as time for the arrival of friends and guests got closer. It was the first real day of the holidays for her, the first weekday that Nita didn’t have to go to school, and wouldn’t have to go again until the first week in January; and the calm of it felt like heaven. Miraculously (or actually due to hard work and some forethought) she was all sorted out for her between-semesters work: no reports to write, no projects to agonize over. And nothing to procrastinate over, either! Or to get stressed over because you know you’re procrastinating. It was perfect.

  …Well, nearly perfect. Every now and then the thought of the one person who wouldn’t be there for Christmas this year came up to meet her as she looked at some window decoration that wasn’t quite right and needed to be straightened, or some spot where another traditional Christmassy item—that glass bowl full of fake poinsettia flowers, the other bowl full of shiny ball ornaments—was dusty and needed attention. Nita kept waiting for one or another of these moments to turn into pain, and kept being surprised when they didn’t. It wasn’t that she didn’t miss her mom. Because I do, every day. It was just that for some reason, her sense that her mom was okay was stronger than usual. Initially Nita was tempted to spend more time trying to figure this out. But why? Why do I want to keep poking at it like a tooth where the filling fell out? Mom would tell me to let it be. So I will.

  She had more tea, and after a while wandered upstairs to her bedroom again and put a few last wrapping- or ribbon-touches on a couple of gifts she’d picked up for other party guests. It wasn’t mandatory for people to bring each other things, but along the line she’d seen a thing or two that seemed right for one or another of the people who were coming. And there was one special gift that she kept stealing peeks at, half in admiration and half in nervousness that he wouldn’t like it. Finally, she laughed at herself—very softly, so as not to wake Dairine, who apparently still wasn’t up yet—and closed the little box. Then she felt around underneath her bed for the bedroom slippers with the waterproof soles, the ones that wouldn’t mind being out in the snow. What the heck, she thought, garbage is garbage, it needs to be out…

  She pulled the full plastic bag out of the kitchen garbage pail and quietly went outside to where the big garbage cans sat next to the garage. The snow was still falling gently out of a solid gray sky, mostly straight down, in a persistent, purposeful kind of way. Only the occasional tiniest breath of breeze stirred the snow around and made it swirl as it came down. Then it straightened out again, doing a credible imitation of snow globe snow. I meant to look at that weather report, she thought, as she put the kitchen garbage in the big can, shook the snow off the garbage can lid, and quietly put it back in place. In a moment. Right now, despite the way the cold bit at her through her bathrobe and the flannel nightgown, Nita was quite content to stand in the snow—maybe two inches deep, now—and let the silence soak into her bones. There was no sound anywhere; even the normal traffic noise that would have drifted over from the nearby Southern State Parkway was completely muted.

  She glanced down at the tracks her dad’s car had left in the driveway snow. They were already filling up again, and the salt underneath them didn’t seem to be having much effect. Nita briefly considered doing a small wizardry to talk the driveway into believing it was warmer than its surroundings so that the snow would stay melted. But is it really necessary? she thought. Sometimes it was harder for wizard to wait a little while and not spend energy that might not have actually been required to improve a situation. Then she grinned at herself. And maybe, she thought, I’m just feeling lazy. And every now and then, why not?

  She went back in the house, took off the outside slippers and left them by the door to melt their snow off on the doormat; then found her other slippers which had somehow migrated to the dining room, put them on, and wandered into the living room. It was bright enough, even though no lights were on; the picture window was letting in that pale gray snow light, restful. Perfect to read by, she thought. She went upstairs very softly, pulled a book out of her to-read pile, went downstairs again into the kitchen for more tea, and curled up on the couch with the book and just read.

  The next thing she knew the kitchen door was opening.Her dad had come home for lunch, and even two rooms over Nita could tell from the sound of the way he tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter that he was in a bad mood. Oh great, she thought, what’s this about?

  She put the book down and picked up the empty tea mug sitting by her, and wandered into the kitchen. Her dad was staring into the refrigerator, scowling. Nita leaned around him and peered into his face. “What?”

  “Don’t get me started,” he muttered.

  “About what?”

  “Football.”

  Nita rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, the miracle…”

  “Not miraculous,” said her dad, and started rummaging around in the fridge a lot harder than he needed to.

  Nita snickered. For her, the only sport of interest was baseball. But come the end of baseball season her dad normally started paying attention to football, for which Nita had no time whatsoever. Apparently the Philadelphia Eagles had played the Giants at the Meadowlands over the weekend and had abruptly come from behind in the last quarter to badly beat the Giants, her dad’s favorites. Now, every time he heard the local news teams on TV or radio referring to this as “the Miracle in the Meadowlands,” he positively growled.

  “Daddy, you really want to shake this mood,” Nita said. “If Fil turns up here and sees you upset like this, he’s going to want to know why you’re upset! And then you’re going to have to explain football to him. And he always gets freaked when he thinks he hasn’t done enough research on something.”

  “Well,” her dad said, and sighed. “I take it that on this visit your job is going to be explaining Christmas to him?”

  “Well, he’ll have arrived doing t
he basic reading, you know that.”

  Her dad laughed a little. “Not sure how basic basic is, but the subject can get complicated…”

  “Tell me about it,” Nita said. And then the front doorbell rang.

  Her dad glanced at her. “And you not dressed yet,” he said. “Let me get it. Probably it’s the first batch of kids wanting to shovel the driveway.” He went past her to answer the door.

  Nita heard him open it, and then something unexpected happened; her dad started laughing. Curious, she went into the living room and peered around towards the door to see what was going on. Then she understood his surprise, because standing there in bright red ski coveralls and big boots and a parka and a woolly Christmas hat was Tom Swale, with a snow shovel over his shoulder.

  “I don’t even know what the going rate for this is anymore,” Nita’s dad said, and laughed again, feeling around in his pockets. “Is five dollars enough, or has inflation hit this too?”

  Tom roared with laughter. “Just leave that there, Tom,” said Nita’s dad. “Come on in. Coffee?”

  “No, it’s okay, I won’t be keeping you,” Tom said, leaning the snow shovel up against the side of Nita’s front porch underneath the mailbox. He stepped in the door that Nita’s dad held open for him, and all the snow obligingly fell off him before he crossed the threshold.

  “You sure,” Nita’s dad said. “I mean, that trick has to be good for at least a ten if you’ll do it to the sidewalks and the driveway. Maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement.”

  Tom followed her dad into the dining room,smiling at Nita. “It’s okay, Harry, I’m not shilling for business. At least, not this kind of business. I was just doing our sidewalk, and then it occurred to me to wonder whether Nita had seen the weather report, and I thought I’d just walk over and check.”

  “Yeah,” Nita said. “Bobo did mention something about a storm coming.”

  “The storm,” Tom said. “The snowstorm of the decade, if not the millennium… a category 2 nor’easter with snow. There won’t have been a snowstorm this powerful since the sixties, if our own weather forecasters are worth their salt. Even the non-wizardly forecasters are starting to get really concerned, and with reason. The temperatures are going to drop quite hard on the twenty-first, and the wind’s going to pick up. Blizzard conditions at the very least, and super-blizzard at worst.” He sighed. “A lot of us are having to change our schedules at the last minute, because all the local services are going to be under tremendous pressure and the going to need all the help they can get on this one, at least from wizards expert in handling this kind of weather.”