Thanks.
Kit hung up, and saw the look his mother was giving him. When s it going to be ready, Mama he said. I won t be late.Not too late, anyway.
About six.It doesn t matter if you re a little late It ll keep. She gave him a warning look. You re not going anywhere sudden, are you This had become her code phrase for Kit leaving on wizardly business.
Nope, Kit said. Tom just needs some advice, it looks like.
His father wandered back into the kitchen. The TV working okay now Kit said.
Working his pop said. Well, yeah. But possibly not the way the manufacturer intended.
Kit looked at his pop, uncomprehending. His father went back into the living room. Kit followed.
Where the TV normally would have shown a channel number, the screen was now displaying the number 0000566478. The picture seemed to be of a piece of furniture that looked rather like a set of chrome parallel bars. From the bars hung a creature with quite a few tentacles and manystalky eyes, which werenot in the usual places. The creature was talking fast and loud in a voice like a fire engine s siren, while waving around a large, shiny object that might have been an eggbeater, except that, in Kit s experience, eggbeaters didn t usually have pulse lasers built into them. Characters flashed on the screen, both in the Speech and in other languages. Kit stood and looked at this with complete astonishment. His father, next to him, was doing the same.
You didn t hack into that new pay-per-view system, did you his father said. I don t want the cops in here.
No way, Kit said, picking up the remote and looking at it accusingly. The remote sat there in his hand as undemonstratively as any genuinely inanimate object might except that Kit was less certain than ever that there reallywere any such things as inanimate objects.
He shook the remote to see if anything rattled. Nothing did. I told you to behave, he said in the Speech.
But not likewhat the remote said in a sanctimonious tone.
His father was still watching the creature on the parallel bars, which pointed the laser eggbeater at what looked like a nearby abstract sculpture. This vanished in a flare of actinic green light, leaving Kit uneasily wondering what kind of sculpture screamed. Nice special effects, Kit s father said, though he sounded a little dubious. Almost too realistic.
It s not special effects,Pop , Kit said. It s some other planet s cable. He hit the reveal control on the remote, but nothing was revealed except, at the bottom of the screen, many more strings of characters flashing on and off in various colors. Shoppingchannel, looks like. Kit handed the remote back to his father.
This is ashopping channel his pop said.
Kit headed for the coat hooks by the kitchen door and pulled his parka off one of them. Popi, I ve got to get to Tom s. I ll be back pretty soon. It s all right to look at it, but if any phone numbers that you can read appear do me a big favor, okay Don t order anything !
Kit opened the back door.Ponch threw one last longing look at what Kit s mama was doing with the chicken,then threw himself past Kit, hitting the screen door with abang !and flying out into the driveway.
Kit followed him. At the driveway s end, he paused, looking up briefly. It was almost dark already; the bare branches of the maples were showing black against an indigo sky. January was too new for any lengthening of days to be perceptible yet, and the shortness of the daylight hours was depressing. But at least the holidays were over. Kit could hardly remember a year when he d been less interested in them. For his own family s sake, he d done his best to act as if he was, but his heart hadn t been in the celebrations, or the presents. He hadn t been able to stop thinking about the one present Nita most desperately wanted, one that not even the Powers That Be could give her.
Kit sighed and looked down the street.Ponch was down there near curbside in the rapidly falling dark, saluting one of the neighbor s trees. Back this way, please he said, and waited untilPonch was finished and came galloping back up the street toward him.
Kit made his way into the backyard again, withPonch bouncing along beside him, wagging his tail. Where did the meaning of life thing come from all of a sudden Kit said.
I heard you ask about it,Ponch said.
The question had, indeed, come up once or twice recently in the course of business, around the timePonch started talking regularly. So Kit said, as they made their way past the beat-up birdbath into the tangle of sassafras at the back of the yard, where they were out of sight of the houses on either side. Come to any conclusions
Just that your mama s easy to shake down for dog biscuits.
Kit grinned. You didn t need to start talking to her to find that out, he said. He reached into his pocket, felt around for the zipper in it that facilitated access to the alternate space where he kept some of his spells ready, and pulled one out a long chain of strung-together words in the Speech thatglowed a very faint blue in the swiftly falling darkness. I d keep it in the family, though, Kit said toPonch . Don t start asking strangers complicated philosophical questions It ll confuse them.
It may be too late,Ponch said.
Kit wondered what that was supposed to mean, then shrugged. He dropped the spell-chain to the ground around them in a circle. The transit wizardry knotted itself together at the ends in the figure-eight wizard s knot, and from it a brief shimmering curtain of light went up and blanked the night away as displaced air wentthump !and Kit s ears popped. A moment later he andPonch were standing together in Tom s backyard, behind the high privet hedge blocking the view from Tom s neighbors houses. Across the patio, lights were on in the house, and banging noises were coming from the kitchen.
Kit andPonch made their way past the stuccokoi pond toward the sliding porch doors,Ponch shaking his head emphatically. Are your ears bothering you Kit said, as the sound of barking came from further inside the house.
Only lately,Ponch said.
Sorry. I ll have a look at the spell later. Kit pushed the patio door to one side and went into Tom s dining room. That space flowed into the living room area, where Tom s desk sat in a corner, past the sofas and the entertainment center. But at the moment all the action was in the kitchen, off to the left, where big, dark-haired Carl, his fellow Advisory wizard, was doing something to the strip lighting that ran below the upper kitchen cupboards. Tom was leaning against the refrigerator, holding a cup of coffee, with the expression of a man who wants nothing to do with whatever s happening.
Hi, Kit, he said, asPonch ran through the kitchen and out the other side, heading toward the bedrooms, where the sheepdogs Annie and Monty were barking at something. Coke
Yeah, thanks. Kit sat down at the table and watched Carl, who was bent over sideways under the upper cupboards and making faces.
I told him to call an expert, Tom said as he fished a can of Coke out of the refrigerator and sat down with Kit at the dining room table, where a number of volumes of theSenior version of the wizard s manual were piled up.
We re expert enough to change the laws of physics temporarily, Carl muttered. How hard can wiring be
With adunk !all the lights in the house went out.
Carl moaned. Kit could just see Tom make a flicking motion with one finger at the circuit-breaker box near the kitchen door, and the lights came back on again. You should stick to physics, Tom said.
Just one more time, Carl said, and went down the stairs to the basement.
This will be the sixth one more time in the past two hours, Tom said. I m hoping he ll see sense before he blows up the transformer at the end of the street. Or maybe the local power station.
Iheard that! said the voice from the basement.
Kit snickered, but not too loudly.
Anyway, Tom said, thanks for coming over. Briefly, one of our wizards is missing, and I d like you to look into it.
This was a new one on Kit. Missing Anybody I know
Hard for me to tell.Here s the listing. Tom pulled down the topmost manual and opened it; the pages riffled themselves to a spot he had bookmarked. It was a page in the master wizards address listing for the New
Yorkarea, and one block of information glowed a soft rose. Kit leaned over to look at it. In the Speech, it said:
McALLISTER, Darryl
18355HempsteadTurnpike
Baldwin,NY11568
(516)555-7384
powerrating: 5.6 +/- .3
status: on Ordeal