Where you going came the voice from upstairs.
Tom s.
Tom and Carl s backyard was already going twilit, this time of year, even so soon after school. Nita paused there a moment, looking up at the sky, which was clear for a change after several days worth of cloudy weather, and wished that spring would hurry up she hatedthese short days. She meandered over to thekoi pond and glanced down into it. The pond wasn t heated, but it didn t freeze, either; into the pond and the ground beneath it, Carl had set a small utility wizardry that acted on the same general principle as a heat pump, keeping the water at an even sixty degrees Fahrenheit. All the same, at this time of the year thekoi were naturally a little sluggish. Right now they were mostly gathered together under the weeds and water lilies down at one end of the pond. Nita peered down, able to see nothing but the occasional flick of tail or fin, and once a coppery eye glancing back up at her. Hey, she said. Got any words of wisdom The singlekoi that had looked back, a white one with an orange patch on its head, drifted up to just beneath the surface and regarded her. Then it stuck its mouth up into the air.
Seen in plain daylight
thefirefly s just one more bug;
butnight restores it
Nita raised her eyebrows. Thekoi gave her a look that suggested she was a waste of its time, and drifted straight back under the lily pads again.
If you listen to them for too long, Tom said as he pushed open the patio door, you won t be able to say anything that takes more than seventeen syllables.
I should sendDairine over, Nita said.
Eventheir powers have limits, Tom said, as Nita came in. I just made some tea. Can I interest you
Yeah.It s cold. Nita slipped out of her parka, draped it over one of Tom s dining room chairs.
They re predicting snow, Tom said, pouring each of them a mug of tea and bringing them over to the table.
That s funny. It s clear.
For the moment.There s a storm working its way up the coast, though. Four to six inches, they said.
Nita gave him a wry look. Why couldn t this happen on Monday and get us a day off from school she said.
There are about thirty different answers to that, from the strictly meteorological mode down to the ethical, Tom said, looking equally wry, but they all factor down more or less to mean, Just because. So cope with it.
Nita nodded and smiled a little, but the smile fell off almost immediately. I need to ask you something.
That s what I m here for, Tom said, though Annie and Monty doubtless have a different opinion. Anyway, what s up
She looked at him across the table. Am I using wizardry to avoid life Nita said.
Tom raised his eyebrows. Wizardryis Life, he said. Or, at the very least, in service of Life.By definition. So, equally by definition, the answer to that question is no. Want to try rephrasing
Nita sat for a moment and thought. I ve been spending a lot of time with the manual.
So dowe all.
No, I mean alot of time.For me, anyway.
And this means
Nita paused, wondering how to phrase this. My last really big wizardry, she said, didn t work.
Uh, there we d have to disagree.
I don t mean in terms of wizardry, Nita said. I mean in terms of what the pissed-off places in the back of my brain think about it. My mom still died.
Mmm, Tom said. His expression was noncommittal.
What I want to know is is it possible to use research as a way to put off doing other stuff you should be doing
Again, anything s possible. What is it you think you should be doing
Nita shook her head, pushed her teacup back and forth on the table mat. I don t know.Something more active.
You think research is passive
Compared to what I ve been doing up until now, yeah.
Nita reached sideways into the air for her manual, came out with it, opened it to the listings area, and pushed it over to Tom, tapping on her listing. Optional , Nita said. I m not real wild about that.
I m not sure I read that construct the same way, Tom said. I d translate it more as meaning your options are open: that you re not concretely assigned to anything at the moment. Maybe a better rendering would be freelance. He glanced at her manual. But then you seem to be taking a look at the vocabulary end of things at the moment.
Please, Nita said. I feel so ignorant.Me with my whole six hundred and fifty words.
Maybe it ll be some consolation to you that the average English-speaking person s day-to-day vocabulary is only a thousand or fifteen hundred words, Tom said. But I understand how you feel. And the Speech is so much more complex than English in terms ofspecialized vocabulary. It has to be, if you re going to name things properly. And so that means doing vocabulary-building all the time.
He knocked one knuckle on the tabletop a couple of times. Immediately his version of the manual appeared on the table seven or eight thick volumes like phone books. This one, Tom said, pulling a single volume out of the stack while the ones above it considerately remained hovering in place over where the middle one had been this one ismy vocabulary work for this year.
Nita looked at it in horror as Tom dropped it to the table and flipped it open. Remind me never to become aSenior , she said.
As if you can avoid it when it happens, Tom said, sounding resigned. Nita, you wouldn t be the first wizard to get confused about the apparent differences between active and passive work in wizardry. But the Powers That Be don t see the distinction orThey see it as largely illusory. He paged through the book, stopping about halfway through to glance at something.
If you go through this, you ll see often enough where it says that wizards are told only what they need to know for the work at hand. Which leaves you with the question: What do they find in it when thereis no work at hand no official assignment You d be surprised. But it s never anything that goes to waste. Sooner or later, every wizard s work, however minor, does someone, somewhere, some good. It s an extension of the all is done for each principle.
So what I m doing isn t like withdrawal or anything Nita said. Not unhealthy
Oh, no.Don t forget, there are wizards who do nothingbut read the manual. Tom looked thoughtful. I wouldn t be that far down the road. My job tends more toward focused research. But I still spend maybe seventy percent of my theoretically inactive time reading these things. It s a big universe out there. Just this planet, for example: Think how much you can discover about it just by going to the library, or rummaging around on the Web. Then imagine you have access to a book that contains most of the salient facts about youruniverse . Wouldn tyou spend a lot of time between the covers
Uh, Nita said. Well, I guess I have been.
So, at the very least, even if you didn t have a goal you were working toward, which I think you have, I wouldn t consider your time wasted, Tom said. As for you not being on active assignment, that s between you and the Powers. They value the work we do sufficiently to avoid pushing us to function when it wouldn t be appropriate to the wizard s own best interests.
Emergencies do come up; butroutinely , if being on duty would impair your own status, you re not called up. He eyed Nita. If you re starting to feel the need to get back into the saddle, of course, that s not necessarily a bad thing. You d be the one to tell me.
Nita examined the floor in some detail for a few moments before she said anything. It s not like I actually feel all that much better, she said, hardly above a whisper. She was watching herself with great care to see if she was going to start crying again; she couldn t have borne it right this minute. Every now and then I forget to hurt but the rest of the time I keep seeing those last few hours with my mom, over and over. Then she frowned. But I can t just sit around. It s not bringing my mother back. And I keep getting the feeling she d be annoyed with me for, I don t know, for indulging myself in just sitting around and feeling bad when I should be busy with something important.Because this is important.
Tom nodded. I don t think I can argue with that, he said. Meanwhile, tell me what you ve been up to.
Nita spent a few minutes describing the contacts she d been having from the aliens, especially the last one the knight and the cryptic message he, or it, had left her.