Diane Duane - A Wizard Alone

His mama gave him a long look. Then she smiled again, very slowly, and just half a smile: the kind of expression she gave his pop when she was admitting he’d been right about something, but didn’t want to admit it out loud. “You should finish up your last piece of toast,” she said. “And don’t forget to rinse the plate.”

She went to get dressed. Kit smiled nearly the same slow half smile, pulled the plate back, finished his toast, and then left for school.

At lunchtime, after he’d finished eating, Kit headed out to the front of the school for a breath of fresh air, and was irrationally pleased to see Nita out there waiting for him, in the parking lot, not too far from the doors.

He walked over to her, and together they strolled off some distance through the parking lot, away from the crowd of kids who always seemed to be standing around the main doors, watching who came in and went out, and who seemed to be doing what with whom. It was a game that Kit found both boring and dumb, but a lot of his classmates seemed to spend most of their time at it, so Kit enjoyed frustrating it as much as he could.

“How’re you doing?” he said.

Nita frowned. “Okay,” she said, “but something weird’s going on.”

Kit couldn’t recall Nita having said that she felt “okay” for weeks now, and the sound of it encouraged him, but at the same time he didn’t dare get too excited about it. “Like what?”

They paused by the chain-link fence that defined the school’s boundary on the north side of the parking lot. On the other side of the fence was a cypress hedge too thick to see through, thick enough that it put hopeful green fronds through the fence; Nita idly took hold of one of these and ran it through her fingers while she told Kit about the strange dream she’d had. “Everything’s supposed to understand the Speech,” she said at last, when she’d given him all the details. “At least in theory…”

“I don’t think it’s theory,” Kit said. “Everything that was made, was made using the Speech. Not being understood when you speak it is about as likely as matter not understanding gravity. Or light not understanding light speed.”

Nita shook her head and looked out into the day as if seeing something at a great distance. “I know,” she said. “But knowing the Speech also usually helps you understand what’s being said… and it’s sure not doing the job for me at the moment.”

“Really weird,” Kit said. “You have any idea what’s going on?”

Nita heaved a long sigh and bounced her shoulders idly against the fence a couple of times. “I think that dream at least, and maybe another one I had a few days ago, were alien intelligences trying to get hold of Dairine.”

Kit had to blink. “That happen to her a lot?”

Nita nodded. “On and off,” she said. “It’s mostly to do with her relationship with the mechanical sort of wizards — the computer intelligences and so on. She keeps getting feelers from life-forms that are half machine and half organic, and from a lot of the silicon-based types… some that I can’t make anything of. She told me she’s been doing a lot of work mediating between organic and inorganic lifestyles, way out at the edge of the universe, and it’s specialized stuff. It even gives her trouble sometimes, translating between the ways they see life and the way we see it.” Nita sighed. “So it’s no surprise that I don’t understand contacts from these guys right off the bat — I mean, as a species, in terms of their feelings and motivations and so on. But I should at least be able to understand them when they communicate about very basic things. And until now, I’ve always been able to. This last one, though…”

Kit waved a hand to stop her. “Time out for a minute. Why didn’t Dairine take this contact, if it was her they were trying to reach?”

“Dairine wasn’t up for it last night,” Nita said. She let out a long breath. “Or most nights lately.

Kit, she and my mom were even closer than Mom and I were, in some ways. She’s taking everything a lot harder than I am. She’s been missing a lot of school, and my dad’s really worried about it.”

Nita’s expression was that of someone purposefully putting a painful subject to one side. “Anyway, she was asleep when the ‘call’ came, and she didn’t wake up to take it, the way she usually would.

She was too tired, or else she just didn’t want to. So I got it, somehow or other. But I couldn’t understand it.”

Kit shook his head. “You mean, whoever was on the other end wasn’t using the Speech?”

Nita shook her head. “No, it was. But not the usual way. It was almost like it didn’t know it was speaking: There was something… I don’t know… accidental about the communication. Like whoever it was hadn’t actually meant to call. Except it also felt kind of urgent.”

Kit shook his head. “Were you able to get a location, a place of origin?”

“Just a sense that it was somewhere way, way out at the edge. I didn’t have time for a proper trace,” Nita said. “It didn’t last long enough. Besides, I was asleep myself at the time. Maybe the trouble was that the message got garbled with something I was dreaming. But normally I would have woken up when something like that came in.”

“You were tired, too,” Kit said.

Nita sighed. “I’m tired all the time,” she said. “It’s just part of the depression, the shrink says.

It’ll go away someday.”

“What a big help,” Kit muttered.

Nita laughed then, an oddly wistful sound that startled Kit. “No,” she said. “Really, it is a help.

Knowing that someday it will go away makes it a little easier now. Not a lot… but every little bit helps, at the moment.”

“So you got a call from the outer limits,” Kit said. “And you’re not sure what it was about… But at least a little of its message got through.”

“Not a whole lot,” Nita said. “I’m just hoping it ‘calls back’ and either gets Dairine this time, or gets me when I’m awake and can make something out of what it’s saying.” She leaned against the fence. “If the first message was from the same person, or people, it didn’t make sense, either. At least not beyond I can’t get off.‘”

“‘I can’t get off…’” Kit thought about it, then shook his head. “Maybe it’s just one of those situations where your brain takes a really alien concept and makes the best translation it can until you have more ‘nformation.”

“I really don’t know,” Nita said. “I’m going to sit down with the manual later and see if I can find something that’ll throw some light on why I’m not able to understand more clearly what’s coming through.”

“It couldn’t have anything to do with— You know.”

Nita shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think this is just something different that I need to grow into learning how to do. It’s not like even people who’ve been wizards for a long time know every word in the Speech. I may just need to do some vocabulary building.“ She shrugged, glanced absently at her watch: The lunch period would be over shortly. ”More research… How about you, though?“ She looked up again. ”I saw your listing, and Tom’s note on it. You found the kid you were looking for?“

“Yeah, but not so that I could make any real contact with him. Another weird situation.”

He told Nita in words, and a few images shared mind to mind, about where he had found Darryl and lost him again. At the sight of the indistinct shape twisting in a halo of lightnings, and the Lone Power standing there watching in the shadows, Nita sucked in a soft, concerned breath, and shook her head. “Poor guy,” she said.