Диана Дуэйн - So You Want To Be A Wizard

"Kit Rodriguez," Kit said from beside her, reaching out to shake hands too. "Good to meet you. Call me Tom, What can I do for you?" "Are you the Advisory?" Kit said.

Tom's eyebrows went up. "You kids have a spelling problem?"

Nita grinned at the pun and glanced over her shoulder. "Fred?" Fred bobbed up between her and Kit, regarding Tom, who looked back at the unsteady spark of light with only moderate surprise. "He's a white hole," Nita said. "He swallowed my space pen."

(Y-hup!) Fred said, and bang! went the air between Kit and Nita as they stepped hurriedly off to either side. Fourteen one-kilogram bricks of 999-fine Swiss gold fell clattering to the patio's brown tiles.

"I can see this is going to take some explaining," Tom said, "Come on in." They followed him into the house. A big comfortable living room opened onto a den on one side and a bright kitchen-dining room on the other. "Carl, we've got company," Tom called as they entered the kitchen.

"Wha?" replied a muffled voice — muffled because the upper half of its owner was mostly in the cabinet under the double sink. The rest of him was sprawled across the kitchen floor. This by itself wasn't so odd; what was odd was the assortment of wrenches and other tools floating in the air just outside the cabinet doors. From under the sink came a sound like a wrench slipping off a pipe, and a sudden soft thump as it hit something else. Probably its user, for "Nnngg!" said the voice under the sink, and all the tools fell clattering to the kitchen floor. The voice broke into some most creative swearing.

Tom frowned and smiled both at once. "Such language in front of guests! You ought to sleep outside with Annie. Come on out of there, we're needed for a consultation." "You really arc wizards!" Nita said, reassured but still surprised. She had rarely seen two more normal-looking people.

Tom chuckled. "Sure we are. Not that we do too much freelancing these days — better to leave that to the younger practitioners, like you two."

The other man got out from under the sink, brushing himself off, He was at least as tall as Tom, and as broad-shouldered, but his dark hair was shorter and he had an impressive mustache. "Carl Romeo," he said in a voice with a pronounced Brooklyn accent, and shook hands with Kit and Nita. "Who's this?" he said, indicating Fred. Fred hiccuped; the resulting explosion produced six black star sapphires the size of tennis balls. Fred here," Tom said, "has a small problem." I wish / had problems like that," Carl remarked. "Something to drink, paple? Soda?" After a few minutes the four of them were settled around the kitchen table, with Fred hovering nearby. "It said in the book that you specialize in temporospatial claudications," Kit said. Karl does. Maintenance and repair; he keeps the worldgates at Grand Central Station and Rockefeller Center working. You've come to the right Place."

"His personal gate is acting up, huh?" Carl said. "I'd better get the books." He got up. "Fred, what're the entasis figures on your warp?"

Fred mentally rattled off a number of symbols in the Speech, as he had when Kit asked him what he was. "Right," Carl said, and went off to the den. "What do you do?" Nita said to Tom.

"Research, mostly. Also we're something of a clearinghouse for news and gossip in the Business. If someone needs details on a rare spell, or wants to know how power balances are running in a particular place, I can usually find out for them." "But you do other things too." Kit looked around at the house.

"Oh, sure, we work. I write for a living — after all, some of the things I see in the Business make good stories. And Carl sells commercial time for WNXT in the city. As well as regular time, on the side."

Kit and Nita looked at each other, puzzled. Tom chuckled. "Well, he does claudications, gatings, doesn't he? Temporospatial — time and space. If you can squeeze space — claudicate it — so that you pop out of one place and into another, why can't you squeeze time the same way? Haven't you heard the saying about 'buying time'? Carl's the one you buy it from. Want to buy a piece of next Thursday?"

"I can get it for you wholesale," Carl said as he came back into the room. In his arms he was carrying several hardbound books as thick as telephone directories. On his shoulder, more interesting, was a splendid scarlet-blue-and-yellow macaw, which regarded Kit and Nita and Fred out of beady black eyes. "Kit, Nita, Fred," Carl said, "Machu Picchu. Peach for short." He sat down, put the books on the table, and began riffling through the one on top of the stack; Tom pulled one out of lower in the pile and began doing the same. "All right," Tom said, "the whole story, from the beginning."

They told him, and it took a while. When they got to Fred's part of the story, and the fact that the Naming of Lights was missing, Tom and Carl became very quiet and just looked at one another for a moment. "Damn,' Tom said, "I wondered why the entry in the Materia Magica hadn't been updated in so long. This is news, all right. We'll have to call a regional Advisories' meeting."

Fred hiccuped again, and the explosion left behind it a year's back issues of TV Guide. "Later," Carl said. "The situation here looks like it's deteriorating." He paused at one page of the book he was looking through, ran his finger down a column. The macaw peered over his shoulder as if interested. "Alpha-rai-eri' tath-eight, you said?" (Right.)

"I can fix you," Carl said. "Take about five minutes." He got up and headed for the den again. "What is the Naming of Lights: 3" Kit said to Tom. "We tried to get Fred to tell us last night, but it kept coming out in symbols that weren't in our books."

"Well, this is a pretty advanced subject. A novice's manual wouldn't have much information on the Naming of Lights any more than the instruction manual for a rifle would have information on atomic bombs… ." Tom took a drink. "It's a book. At least that's what it looks like when it's in or near this Universe. The Book of Night with Moon, it's called here, since in these parts you need moonlight to read it. It's always been most carefully accounted for; the Senior wizards keep an eye on it. If it's suddenly gone missing, we've got trouble. "Why?" Nita said.

"Well, if you've gotten even this far in wizardry, you know how the wizards' symbology, the Speech, affects the things you use it on. When you use it, you define what you're speaking about. That's why it's dangerous to use the Speech carelessly. You can accidentally redefine something, change its nature. Something, or someone—" He paused, took another drink of his soda. "The Book of Night with Moon is written in the Speech. In it, every-thing's described. Everything. You, me, Fred, Carl … this house, this town, this world. This Universe and everything in it. All the Universes. …" Kit looked skeptical. "How could a book that big get lost?"

"Who said it was big? You'll notice something about your manuals after a while," Tom said. "They won't get any bigger, but there'll be more and more inside them as you learn more, or need to know more. Even in plain old math "t s true that the inside can be bigger than the outside; it's definitely true in wizardry. But believe me, the Book of Night with Moon has everything described in it. It's one of the reasons we're all here—the power of those descriptions helps keep everything that is, in existence." Tom looked worried. And every now and then the Senior wizards have to go get the Book and r£ad from it, to remind the worlds what they are, to preserve everything alive Orinanimate—"

Have you read from it?" Nita said, made uneasy by the disturbed look on Tom's face. Tom glanced at her in shock, then began to laugh. "Me? No, no. I hope I never have to." But if it's a good Book, if it preserves things—" Kit said. " s good—at least, yes, it preserves, or lets things grow the way they want t reading it, being the vessel for all that power—I wouldn't want to.