A Wizard Alone

Complications

Kit stopped in the middle of the jungle path and looked around him. “We’re lost,” he said.

I don’t know if I’d say we, Ponch said, sounding ever so slightly reproachful.

Kit wiped the rain off his face and turned to look back the way they’d come. It was nearly impossible to see where that was, for the path they’d been following was scarcely any wider than he was. The jungle all around them was a tangle of dark reds and dark greens, huge trees and undergrowth, vines and creepers and strange-looking plants. High above, the upper canopy of broad leaves held away the burning whiteness of the sky. Down here, precious little of that light reached; all the plants were in mud and blood colors, depressing… and the shadows in between them were worse. There were creatures in this jungle that had messy eating habits, and Kit had stopped looking into the shadowy places at the bases of the immense trees unless he absolutely had to.

“Where is he?” Kit said.

Ponch stood there with his nose working. I’m not sure, he said.

“You’re not sure?”

We didn’t do this the usual way

, Ponch said. For one thing, neither of us is awake. For another, you went in first, and I followed you because I didn’t want you going in here alone. And you didn’t bring the leash.

Kit sighed and put out his hand. “Leash,” he said.

Nothing happened.

You tried that before

, Ponch said, and it didn’t work then, either.

Kit sighed and wiped the rain out of his eyes again. At least the rain was warm, which was a good thing because it never really stopped; even when the hot sky above it wasn’t actively raining, the jungle floor got more or less constantly dripped on.

So which way

? Ponch said.

“We might as well keep on down this path,” Kit said. “We’re bound to run into Darryl eventually.”

A high-pitched scream came out of the gloomy creeper-hung darkness ahead of them. Assuming that doesn’t run into him first, Ponch said. Or that it doesn’t run into us first.

“Come on,” Kit said. He slogged down the muddy path, and Ponch padded along behind him, glancing nervously into the shadows of the trees and the undergrowth on either side of the path.

The path made a curve around one unusually large tree. Kit paused, looking at it, and went slowly around the curve. “Darryl?” he shouted. “Where are you?”

There was no answer but another of the bloodcurdling screeches from up in the canopy. Kit knew, in a general sort of way, that there was no guarantee that what he was hearing up there was a carnivore…but there was no guaranteeing that it wasn’t, either. He reached sideways to his otherspace pocket, thinking about the barbecue-lighting laser…and couldn’t find the pocket, let alone the laser.

You tried that before, too

, Ponch said.

“I forgot,” Kit said. He wiped his face again. It wasn’t rain he was wiping away this time, but sweat. The heat here was terrible — stifling, muffling, like wearing a portable electric blanket — but far worse was the humidity. If there was anything in the normal world that Kit really hated, it was hot, humid weather. In this place, though, it seemed like all the spare humidity from any number of jungle planets had been gathered up and dumped here. The sweat was running into his eyes, making them burn. Kit paused long enough to wipe his face again, then continued around the tree, looking at it suspiciously. “I keep expecting Darth Vader to come out of one of these and chase me with a light saber.”

I don’t think that’s a good thing for you to be imagining

, Ponch said, sounding unnerved. Let’s stick to Darryl for now. And once we’ve found him, let’s get out of here!

They went on under the trees. Not far ahead, trees shorter than the gigantic two-hundred-footers were gathered together in a cluster, and the path wound through them. It seemed to Kit that this looked like a perfect place for some kind of ambush… yet somehow he felt unable to take the prospect seriously. He slowed down a little, but kept walking.

Something smells bad here

, Ponch said.

“Everything smells bad here,” said Kit. The whole jungle had a smell like wet laundry that had been left in the washing machine too long, a stagnant scent. Some of the creepers were even festooned with something that might have been mistaken for wet laundry, though the growth was actually some kind of nasty, flabby fungus. Kit looked now with some loathing at the vines hanging from the red-trunked trees ahead of him; they had that fungus all over them, curtaining away the view of whatever might be further down the path.

“You smell anything?” Kit said.

Mold

, Ponch said, his nose wrinkling. And other things. I don’t want to talk about it.

Kit walked forward a little more slowly, looking at those trees, then looked over his shoulder again, back down the path. “I wish Nita were here,” he said.

I don’t

! Ponch said. I wouldn’t want anyone I liked to be here. And I don’t want us to be here, either! We’re not going to find him this way, boss. Let’s go home!

“Just a little while more,” Kit said. He was beginning to agree with Ponch, though. He was so tired. I should have walked out of here the minute I found myself in here, he thought, except I don’t remember how I got in here.

No, wait. I do remember. The dream. I dreamed I saw Darryl running into the jungle. I went after him…

There was a rustling among the trees that lined the path ahead of them. Kit reached sideways for his other-space pocket. Then, as he was feeling around for it, he remembered that it didn’t seem to be there in the dream. I keep forgetting things, he thought. I guess it’s just that I’m so tired. After yesterday, and the days before. But I can’t help it. We can’t leave him stuck in this. We have to find him!

There was definitely something moving around in those trees, though Kit couldn’t see what it was, and he didn’t want to go any closer without some kind of weapon. He had a memory that there should have been wizardries that he could use for self-defense, but he was just too tired to think of any of them right now. Kit looked around him, saw a fallen log to one side of the path. There was a branch sticking out of it that looked big enough to use as a club. He got down on one knee and struggled with the branch for a few moments until it snapped off the log. It was covered with dark brown goo, yet more mold of one kind or another. Kit made a face as he rubbed it off the branch as best he could, rubbed his hands more or less clean on his pants, and then got up. “Come on,” he said to Ponch.

High up in the jungle canopy, one of the invisible monsters started screaming again. Kit wanted to hold his ears against the noise of it, though that would have meant dropping the branch. Shortly the screamer was joined by a second, and they screamed at each other more and more loudly as Kit got closer to the trees.

One big creeper was hanging down over the path. It was well draped with the dirty-laundry fungus, and looked almost like a curtain. They were going to have to push through this. There was no avoiding it. Kit reached out one hand to the creeper, while above him in the trees the intolerable screeching got louder and louder. If there is something in there, Kit thought, I’m not going to be able to hear it if it’s coming for me.

Yet he felt he had to go in. “You ready?” he said to Ponch.

I’m right behind you. Be careful!

Kit pushed the creeper aside. The gloom beyond the curtain of fungus was even worse than that out in the shadow of the trees; it was danker, more stifling and breathless. Kit edged into it, let the curtain fallDarkness. Ponch was close behind him, crowded up against his legs. Any hope that Kit had had that being in this closed-in place might somewhat muffle the awful screeching from outside was in vain; if anything, it seemed worse. He moved softly among the trees, brushing past the downhanging loops and rags of fungus, trying not to touch them more than he had to. Where the fungus brushed him, he got an uncomfortable itchy feeling even through his shirt.

Kit started to move faster, though the weariness that had started to bother him when he came into this place was getting worse all the time. He was sure he could see shadows moving just beyond the trees that hemmed in the path. It might just have been more of the fungus, shifting in the wind, except that there was no wind. Something was moving there. Then, even over the screaming from above, Kit thought he heard a breathing sound—

He couldn’t bear it anymore. He broke into a run, and Ponch plunged along behind him. The awful fungus slapped him in the face and upper body as he ran; Kit swatted it aside as best he could, but somehow it always seemed to get him anyway. Once he nearly throttled himself by running into a creeper that was hanging exactly at throat height. Kit reacted just in time to grab it, and used it to swing himself a little sideways — but then he banged into one of the closer trees and fell, and from above he could hear the screaming, louder than ever, sounding like laughter now.

Kit staggered to his feet and wobbled down the path again. His body didn’t seem to be working right, and he couldn’t understand why, unless it was just the weariness that was getting to him. His legs almost seemed to belong to someone else. His brain was full of noise that he couldn’t stop. He knew Ponch was behind him, but he had to keep reminding himself of that. He couldn’t get rid of the idea that he was all alone here, had been alone forever…

… except for something that hated him. It was hiding in the shadows. It was up in the furious brightness above the trees. It was dripping from every leaf, underfoot in every square inch of mud, looking at him with cruel, small, burning eyes from up among the branches of the trees. Kit ran, but his body wouldn’t obey him, wouldn’t let him run fast enough; he staggered along like some broken mechanical thing, and the screaming voices up above all laughed at him, and eyes, eyes he didn’t dare meet, eyes whose contact was infinite pain, were staring at him from all around in the dark. He would come out into the open again in a moment, but there would be no respite for him then, either, no escape. The worst of the eyes would be there, waiting for him, in the shape of what was going to kill him at last.

Kit tried to stop, but he couldn’t. Ponch blundered into him from behind. Kit’s own momentum combined with the push from Ponch sent him forward, through the last curtain of creeper and fungus, down onto the path, and he was helpless in front of the merciless thing that waited.

Hands came down, grabbed him by the arms. “No!” Kit cried—

— and then realized that nothing had happened to him, and that he was facedown in the mud, and that the screaming above him was just screaming again — and that the hands were Darryl’s.

Darryl was stronger than Kit would have expected. He hauled Kit nearly upright, but Kit didn’t have the strength to stay that way; he collapsed down onto his butt again in a most undignified manner, and stayed there for a few moments, just panting and trying to get his breath back.

“Have to get up now,” Darryl said. “It’s coming.”

Kit tried, and had trouble. Once again Darryl reached down to him and took Kit by the forearms.

This time he swung him right up to his feet. Kit staggered a little, but managed to stay there, marveling again at how strong the youngster was. “Thanks,” Kit said. “Darryl, I’ve been trying to catch up with you for a long time. I’m on errantry, and do I ever greet you! Now can we go somewhere quiet and have a talk, because—”

“No,” Darryl said.

“You don’t understand,” Kit said, getting his breath again, but only slowly. “You really ought to get out of here while you’ve got the chance. It’s not here yet, but I think It’s coming—”

“That’s just why I can’t leave,” Darryl said. “There are still things I have to do here, and in all the other heres. It doesn’t matter whether—” He stopped, as if searching for words. “It doesn’t matter what else might be here. It doesn’t matter if there’s a way out. I can’t take it. I have to find the thing that still needs to be done before I can go.”

Kit had been tired enough to start with, but now the exhaustion was coming down on him hard.

He means it doesn’t matter who else is here

, Kit thought, but he doesn’t really believe in anyone else. Not me, for sure. Maybe the Lone Power… but in some way that I don’t understand, which is a problem, because when the Lone One gets here —

“I said I’d stay until what I came to do was done,” Darryl said. “The Silence said, ‘So here’s what it’s all about. Here are the words. What’re you going to do about them?’ They were clear that first time, but after that it was hard to hear them all at once. Every time I tried to make sense of them, the noise would get in the way. Once or twice the shouting got so loud that I thought I’d die of it. Maybe only once or twice after that, it got quiet enough for me to think. But finally I knew those words were what needed saying, though I had trouble visualizing what they meant. It took a long time to picture them, longer to say them… days and days. I kept forgetting. But finally I got them all together and said them. ‘In Life’s name…’“

Kit sat there listening to the words. Part of him knew them better than he knew almost anything else. But another part of him thought, wearily, Why does that sound familiar? And the roaring and screeching in his head were once again making it hard to pay attention, hard to care about anything.

“…I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way…”

It was amazing the way the incessant howling of the world could weary you, until you would do anything to distract yourself from the noise of it — bang your head on a wall, hammer your fists on a table, scream to drown it out. That noise got into your head and wouldn’t let you alone, wouldn’t let you be. In the face of that torment, you quickly got to the point where the pain was itself reassuring, something you could rely on, something less stressful than trying to think anything or do anything through the cacophony of life. And when you come right down to it, it doesn’t really matter. Nothing matters that much. Nothing’s worth that much struggle___

“…To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life…”

Not that any of those matter

The world seemed dim and far away, this world, any world.

“But I don’t think anyone else should be here now,” Darryl said, and he came over to Kit. Kit turned his head away.

“There was— Someone was… here before,” Darryl said. “In other ‘heres.’ It was…” He paused, as if hunting for the right term. “It was appreciated. But this isn’t the right way to be here. It’s dangerous like this. It’s a way to get linked to me… by a link that can’t be broken, to keep getting sucked back into the trap I’ve set—” Darryl turned him around, pushed him. “Go,” Darryl said. “Go.

It needs to—”

And Kit saw Darryl catch sight of Ponch.

Darryl froze.

Kit turned to look toward him, dulled, not understanding what he was seeing. Darryl and Ponch looked at each other. Ponch stood there with his head up, his tail wagging. It was a speculative look on Ponch’s part. He was no more sure what Darryl was reacting to than Kit was.

“You,” Darryl said. “You have to go.”

Up in the trees, the screaming was scaling up again. “Go on,” Darryl said — not to Kit, now, but to Ponch. “Don’t wait. I recognize you — what you’re becoming. But you can’t stay. It’ll be here soon. This time you’re here the wrong way, you’ve been sucked in with him, and It’ll see the two of you for sure. Go on!”

We will

, Ponch said.

Above them, the gloom started abruptly to get darker. But we won’t leave you here, Ponch said.

We’ll be back.

Ponch turned around and grabbed Kit by the wrist, gently, with his teeth. He pulled Kit back into the dimness of the stand of trees that surrounded the path.

The darkness increased behind them, and the screaming. Finally the blackness became total, and Kit staggered through it, blinded, deafened, being led by the hand, aware of nothing except that he was being led, and hoping it was to somewhere better.

Eventually Kit found that he was looking at the wall by his bed. He’d been looking at it for a long time; there was no telling how long. Ponch was licking his ear, and there was no way to tell for sure how long that had been going on, either, except that the side of his head felt pretty wet.

I don’t think we should go there like that again

, Ponch said.

It took Kit a long time to collect his thoughts enough to answer. I think maybe you’re right about that

, he said. But at the same time, he found it hard to get excited about the concept. It just didn’t seem to matter that much.

Nothing seemed to matter that much.

Kit lay there for a long time, staring at the wall.

As Nita came through the dining room again, the phone rang.

She hurried over to answer it before it woke Dairine. “Hello?”

“Nita, it’s Carl.”

“Hi, Carl. What’s up?”

“Uh, have you seen Kit today?”

He sounded reluctant to be asking. “Haven’t seen him,” Nita said. “Heard from him, though. I think he had a late night last night.”

“Tom was expecting him for a debrief,” Carl said. “That hasn’t happened yet, though, and Tom was called away, so I need to handle it. You have any idea where Kit is at the moment?”

“I think he’s still asleep.” She paused a moment, checked to see if that was true. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s still out of it.”

“Okay,” Carl said, but he sounded uncomfortable to Nita. “It can wait a few hours, I suppose… but when he wakes up, make sure he gets in touch with me, all right?”

“Sure. I want to talk to him, too, because I found Darryl last night, and I think he’s an abdal.”

“You think he’s a what?”

“An abdal. You know… one of the Pillars.”

There was a brief silence at that. “Would you mind coming over here and telling me how you came to that conclusion?” Carl said.

There was something peculiar about his tone of voice. “I’m not in trouble, am I?” Nita said.

“What? No. But do me a favor? Bring your manual with you.”

“Okay. See you in a while.”

Nita pulled on her boots and parka and then made her way over to Tom and Carl’s house the quick way, popping out into six inches of untouched snow, and was very glad she’d remembered the boots. Carl was standing inside the door, looking out at the backyard, as Nita came up to the sliding doors. He pushed one aside for her. “It’s pretty out there, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. But cold.” She came in and stomped her boots on the tile floor of the kitchen to get rid of the snow as Carl closed the door. “Where’d Tom go? Anything important?”

“He’s meeting with the Sector Advisories,” Carl said. “Administrative business… something to do with reorganizing some planets’ worldgating systems. Nothing wildly exciting, but he’ll be gone for a couple of days.”

Nita went to the table, taking off her coat and hanging it over one of the chairs. “You’ve got some wires hanging down there,” she said as she sat down, noting the tangle extending from underneath the cupboards.

“Yeah. I’ve made a mess, and now I have to clean it up. Does your mom or dad know a good electrician?” Carl said wearily. And then stopped, and looked at Nita in shock, and passed a hand over his eyes.

“Oh, Nita,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Habit…”

“I know,” she said. “I know.” She swallowed. “It’s okay. I'll ask Dad. He just had a guy doing some stuff to our garage. He thinks he’s pretty good.”

“Thanks.”

Nita reached into the empty air beside her and pulled her manual out of the claudication that followed her around. “Here,” she said. “Is something wrong with it?”

Carl sat down. “I don’t think so,” he said, “but there’s something I want to check. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

Carl opened Nita’s manual, turned to one particular page, and spoke to it softly under his breath.

Nita watched this curiously. The page filled up with characters in the Speech, cleared itself, and filled again, while Nita told Carl about the dreams she’d started having, how she’d decided to look into them more closely, and what she’d found. Well before she was finished, Carl had pushed her manual to one side and was giving Nita his undivided attention. When she finished, he let out a long breath.

“Well,” he said.

“What were you looking for?” Nita said, feeling slightly nervous.

“It’s all right. It’s nothing bad.” Carl folded his arms and sat back in the chair. “It’s just that the information you’ve been given normally isn’t made public.”

“Been given?” Nita said.

Carl nodded. “But someone at a higher level has seen to it that you got it. So I see from the authorization logs.”

Nita thought about that for a moment. “So he is an abdal?” she said.

Carl got a brooding look. “Tell me how he seemed to you, in twenty-five words or less.”

“Innocent,” Nita said. “He’s absolutely innocent. But he’s fierce about it. It just rolls off him.”

She shook her head. The impact of his personality, as communicated by just that one brief direct glance of Darryl’s eyes, was difficult to describe without sounding silly. If it was light, it would have been blinding. “And it’s not just the innocence. Even when he was screaming, I still liked him a lot.

He’s really good. And he just doesn’t notice, doesn’t seem to get it…”

“That would seem to clinch it, wouldn’t it?” Carl said. “The definition out of the manual, practically word for word.”

“That’s what I thought. And it scared me somehow.” Carl smiled a little. “Possibly a healthy response,” he said. “And one that convinces me you’re right. You met him out of the flesh, without the protective coloration that a body provides for a spirit like that. At such times you would get the full impact…and I imagine it’s an eye-opener.”

Nita nodded. “I never thought goodness could be so tough,” she said. “So strong. But then again…I guess goodness isn’t something I’d think about a whole lot, anyway. Nobody uses the word much unless it’s in a commercial, and then they’re just trying to convince you that something has a lot of milk in it.”

Carl nodded, looking wry. “Virtue,” he said. “The real thing. It’s not some kind of cuddly teddy bear you can keep on the shelf until you need a hug. It’s dangerous, which is why it makes people so nervous. Virtue has its own agenda, and believe me, it’s not always yours. The word itself means strength, power. And when it gets loose, you’d better watch out.” “Something bad might happen…”

“Impossible. But possibly something painful.” Carl fell silent for a moment. “The manual makes the abdals sound like saints,” Nita said.

“Oh, they are saints,” Carl said. “That aspect of their power doesn’t have anything to do with wizardry as such, though it can coexist with it, the same way you could be, say, a mathematician and a really nice person at the same time.”

Nita made a face. “You haven’t met my statistics teacher.”

“I hear you. I still hate anything more complex than long division. But the trouble with sainthood these days is the robe-and-halo imagery that gets stuck onto it.” Carl got that brooding look again.

“People forget that robes were street clothes once… and still are, in a lot of places. And halos are to that fierce air of innocence what speech balloons in comics are to the sound of the voice itself.

Shorthand. But most people just see an old symbol and don’t bother looking behind it for the meaning. Sainthood starts to look old-fashioned, unattainable… even repellent. Actually, you can see it all around, once you learn to spot it.”

“You make it sound like there are saints all over the place.”

“Of course there are. You don’t think it’s just wizards that keep the universe running, do you?

But saints tend not to be obvious. For one thing, they don’t want to draw the Lone One’s attention to them. Also, they tend to be too busy. Mostly sainthood involves hard work.”

Carl leaned forward to pick up Nita’s manual again, paging through it. “Anyway, I think you can understand why information about the abdals would be pretty carefully controlled, most of the time.

The whole point of the way they function is that they’re not supposed to know what they are. And the more mortals who do know, the more might let it slip. Darryl is important. Far more important, in the larger scheme of things, than you or I, or than just about anybody else I know, or am likely to know. Abdals don’t exactly grow on trees.“ Carl looked suddenly thoughtful. ”Well, actually, some places they do. What I mean is, they’re not commonplace. The One invests a lot of power in them.

There wouldn’t be many of them on a given planet at any one time… and we want to keep the ones we’ve got. Or the one we’ve got, because as far as Earth goes at the moment, Darryl may well be it.

And his presence here, even when he doesn’t seem to be doing anything, is important for the world, because through him, the One channels into the world some of the power we use. If you’ll pardon the plumbing analogy, think of us as faucets and Darryl as the reservoir, or the well. Cut that off, and—“ Carl shook his head.

Nita was silent for some moments, digesting this. “So what do I do now?” she said at last. “I don’t want Kit to think I’m horning in on his assignment or something because I’m worried about him. But I think maybe I am. He was okay when he started this, pretty much… as far as I was able to tell anything clearly about his state of mind when I was so stuck in my own. But now… he doesn’t feel like he usually does. And I can’t tell for sure whether that’s good or bad.”

“I wouldn’t be sure, either,” Carl said. “Well, the first thing you can do is, when he gets up, tell him I want a word with him, pronto. I don’t like to lean on my wizards as a rule, but Kit’s been a little less careful than usual, and with what you’ve discovered about the situation, he’d better sharpen up. The stakes have been raised.”

She came back from Tom and Carl’s the quick way, popping out into the backyard. The snow there was untouched, rather to her surprise. Dairine was as much a snow fiend as their mom had been. It was unusual to find that she hadn’t been out here at least long enough to make a couple of angels. Under more normal circumstances, there would have been a whole snowman by now. But the circumstances aren’t normal

…

Nita went in, shucked her parka off and left it by the back door, and went up the stairs to see what Dairine was up to. She found her in her bedroom, staring at her desk. Spot was sitting in her lap, also staring with its little stalky eyes at the construction sitting there.

Nita looked at the desk. It was covered with tinfoil. On the foil and on a subsidiary bed of newspaper rested what appeared to be a model volcano sculpted out of wet papier-mache. The volcano was extremely broad and flat, of the shield type, and Nita recognized it immediately.

“How does it look?” Dairine said.

“Not bad,” Nita said. “What’s it for?”

“We’re doing a geology unit in our science class.”

Nita raised her eyebrows. “Bending the rules a little, Dair?” she said. “That’s Olympus Mons. It hardly counts as geology.”

“Okay, areology, then.” Dairine sat there wiping her hands on a towel.

“It looks a little bare right now,” Nita said.

Her sister turned a look of withering scorn on her. Spot cocked one eye in Nita’s direction as if to suggest that she’d asked for this. “Of course it looks a little bare,” Dairine said. “I have to paint it first. My real project for today is constructing an airbrush out of nothing but wizardry.”

“Sounds like a moderate challenge,” Nita said.

“And when the volcano’s done, I’m going to make it blow up in class,” Dairine said.

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.