Nita smiled slightly as she turned another page. At leastDairine seemed to be back to normal for the moment.Of course, it might be a ploy to lull me into a false sense of security . But Nita thought her sister knew better than to bother trying to mislead her just now, when Nita s fuse was shorter than usual. Next time, it might not be justDairine s bed that wound up down a crevasse andDairine s present power levels weren t what they had been a while ago. Nita s couple of years more experience as a wizard might be enough temporarily to keepDairine in line.
She raised her eyebrows and went back to the vocabulary list. Ireally wish there were ways to just magically make all this informationgo into my head , Nita thought.Oh well
Dairinefinished her cereal and went to get dressed, and Nita kept reading, turning page after page in the manual, looking for a hint as to what she might have been missing. It was at least an hour later whenDairine came by again, dressed, with the backpack she used as a book bag over her shoulder; Nita glanced up just long enough to seeDairine putting her coat on, and to notice the small, glowing, rose-colored eye looking at her from inside the bag.
Have you been upgrading Spot again Nita said.
He s been upgrading himself, Dairine said. Wireless, optical some other stuff. She looked affectionately at the bag as she shouldered it, and the little eyeon its silvery stalk disappeared back down between the backpack and its flap.
I wouldn t let anybody see him, if I were you, Nita said.
They can t. But he can see them.Gottago,Neets .
See you
Dairineleft. Nita spent some moments more reading the manual in the quiet, until suddenly she realized that if she didn t get out of there,she was the one who was going to be in trouble for being late. She ran off to get her own backpack, and her manual went floating after her.
The rest of the day went by fairly quickly, partly because Nita s concerns about the communications between her and her aliens kept bringing Nita back to the manual in every free moment that wasn t taken up with class work. She hardly thought seriously about anything else until just before her lunch period, when Nita suddenly remembered that today was when the time and day for her next session with Mr.Millman would be posted.
When the bell rang, she made her way down into the corridor in the south wing of the school, where the administrative offices were, and from there into the main office, where the bulletin board for the special services messages was located. Nita found the pinned-up folded message that saidN. CALLAHAN , pulled it off the board, and headed out into the corridor, opening it.
The message said, Dear Nita: 7:30 A.M., Monday. Hope the magic s going okay. Don t forget to bring some cards. I want to find out how to keep them from falling out of my sleeve. R.Millman.
Nita looked at this and was tempted to shred the note right down to its component atoms.What in the worldsmade me say that to him , she thought, shoving the note into the pocket of her jeans and stalking off down the hall.
By the time she got to the cafeteria, though, she d shrugged off the annoyance and was once again worrying at the clown-robot-knight problem. Nita got herself a sandwich and a fruit juice, sat down by herself off to one side, and spent another half hour studying how species that didn t understand plurals handled the Speech. It was complex. Mostly they wound up repeating singular forms with aredactive or virtual plural, which
It s sounding a little dry in there,Neets
Nita smiled.You have no idea , she said, and shut the manual. Nita disposed of her lunch tray and went out of the cafeteria, into the small side parking lot. Kit was leaning against the chain-link fence on the far side, hugging himself a little against the cold, watching a boys gym class out in the athletic field running easy laps to cool down after soccer practice.
Nita went to lean against the fence beside him. You know any card tricks she said under her breath.
He looked at her oddly. No. Why
I did something incredibly stupid. I mentioned magic toMillman at our last meeting. He thought I meant magician stuff, though, the sawing-people-in-half kind of magic. Now he wants me to show him some.
Kit stared at Nita,then burst out laughing. You should do some wizardry, and let him thinkit s magic. I bet you can do all kinds of fancy card tricks when you canreally make them vanish.
I hadn t thought of it that way. Nita frowned. I m not sure I like the idea, though. Making the real thing look like somethingfake It s too much like lying.
Kit nodded. What made you mention magic to him at all, though
I wish I could remember. It was an impulse, and I felt like such a dork afterward. She sighed. Never mind. Now I have to learn card tricks in my endless free time.
Kit raised his eyebrows. You make any headway with your aliens
Yeah.Or rather, I m not sure.
Not sure they re aliens
Not sure they re aliens, plural. Then again, let s not get into the plural thing. I m having enough trouble with it. Nita rubbed her face. I seem to have been talking to the same one at least twice. I m not sure if I was talking to him, or it, the first time, the time with the clown on the bike.
But you understood him this time, anyway.
I m not sure of that, either. I think I did but I keep thinking he was holding something back, or having trouble saying something. And it could have been important. She sighed. I m just going to have to keep trying. What about you Did you have time to go after your Ordeal kid again
Not yet.Ponch is still worn-out from the last time. I m going to try to get in touch with Darryl again tonight, maybe tomorrow. You sure you don t want to come along
He sounded almost wistful. Nita gave it a moment s thought, but then shook her head: She mightfeel more like working today, but she still wasn t sure of her ability to be of use in a crisis situation. Give me a little more time, she said. I want to work on this Speech problem for the moment. I think if I bear down on it hard enough, I may make a breakthrough.
I wouldn t want to derail you, Kit said. But keep me posted.
You okay Nita said.
Kit looked at her a little strangely. Why
You lookkinda worn-out yourself.
He looked surprised at that,then shrugged. WhatPonch does, he said, it takes a lot out of me, too, maybe more than I realize. I do feel a little run-down.It s okay: I ll get a good night s sleep tonight and be fine tomorrow.
Whatis going on withPonch Nita said. You were still looking for answers to that
Kit shook his head. I think I m going to be looking for answers for a while. Trouble is, every time I try to settle down to work it out with the manual, something new goes wrong with the TV. Or something else interrupts me.
The bell rang. See that The story of my life, Kit said.
Not just yours, Nita said. Look, call me later.
You ought to take a look at what I m working on from the inside ; maybe you can make some sense of it.
Right, Kit said.
They parted company and went off to their classes. Nita more or less sleepwalked through her afternoon algebra and statistics class, grateful not to be called on. Her mind was still tangled up in virtual plurals, non-pronominal pronouns, and the question of what could bethat wrong with Kit s TV that it would prove a distraction to him. The second-to-last period that afternoon was a study hall, and Nita got no more than three sentences into an essay on the abandonment of the gold standard before ditching the essay to return to the manual again; the gold standard made even virtual plurals look good by comparison.
Toward the end of that period, though, and during the next one a music appreciation class full ofjangly , early twentieth-century twelve-tone music, which Nita found impossible foranyone to appreciate she started wondering exactly what was going on with her. Sure, she might occasionally detest her homework more than occasionally, especially in the case of her present social studies class: Her teacher had a great love of saddling her students with essays on apparently useless subjects. But detesting the homework didn t mean Nita didn t get it done.
Oh, come on. It s not like the universe is going to come apart because I m less than excited about the gold standard and feel more like working on wizardry.
Yet the excuse sounded hollow. More to the point, it sounded like an excuse. When the bell rang for the last time that day, at two-forty-five, Nita walked out through the exuberant Friday afternoon rush to the lockers in a somber mood. She looked for Kit in the parking lot, didn t see him, and wasn t surprised: He had quicker, quieter ways of getting home than the other kids here.
She could have taken that same way home, but didn t. She walked home slowly, thinking. Nita paused only long enough in her house to dump her books and change out of her school clothes into something more comfortable looser jeans, a floppier sweatshirt and to check onDairine . Her sister was lying on her stomach, on her bed, with Spot lying on the bed next to her; the little computer had put out a couple ofstalky eyes to look at a bookDairine was reading.
School okay Nita said.
Dairinegave Nita the kind of look that someone in theMiddle Ages might have given a relative who asked if the black plague was okay. Her only other answer was to bounce herself up and down on the mattress a little. The bed creaked loudly.