Diane Duane - A Wizard Alone

It needs to—”

And Kit saw Darryl catch sight of Ponch.

Darryl froze.

Kit turned to look toward him, dulled, not understanding what he was seeing. Darryl and Ponch looked at each other. Ponch stood there with his head up, his tail wagging. It was a speculative look on Ponch’s part. He was no more sure what Darryl was reacting to than Kit was.

“You,” Darryl said. “ You have to go.”

Up in the trees, the screaming was scaling up again. “Go on,” Darryl said — not to Kit, now, but to Ponch. “Don’t wait. I recognize you — what you’re becoming. But you can’t stay. It’ll be here soon. This time you’re here the wrong way, you’ve been sucked in with him, and It’ll see the two of you for sure. Go on!”

We will

, Ponch said.

Above them, the gloom started abruptly to get darker. But we won’t leave you here , Ponch said.

We’ll be back .

Ponch turned around and grabbed Kit by the wrist, gently, with his teeth. He pulled Kit back into the dimness of the stand of trees that surrounded the path.

The darkness increased behind them, and the screaming. Finally the blackness became total, and Kit staggered through it, blinded, deafened, being led by the hand, aware of nothing except that he was being led, and hoping it was to somewhere better.

Eventually Kit found that he was looking at the wall by his bed. He’d been looking at it for a long time; there was no telling how long. Ponch was licking his ear, and there was no way to tell for sure how long that had been going on, either, except that the side of his head felt pretty wet.

I don’t think we should go there like that again

, Ponch said.

It took Kit a long time to collect his thoughts enough to answer. I think maybe you’re right about that

, he said. But at the same time, he found it hard to get excited about the concept. It just didn’t seem to matter that much.

Nothing seemed to matter that much.

Kit lay there for a long time, staring at the wall.

As Nita came through the dining room again, the phone rang.

She hurried over to answer it before it woke Dairine. “Hello?”

“Nita, it’s Carl.”

“Hi, Carl. What’s up?”

“Uh, have you seen Kit today?”

He sounded reluctant to be asking. “Haven’t seen him,” Nita said. “Heard from him, though. I think he had a late night last night.”

“Tom was expecting him for a debrief,” Carl said. “That hasn’t happened yet, though, and Tom was called away, so I need to handle it. You have any idea where Kit is at the moment?”

“I think he’s still asleep.” She paused a moment, checked to see if that was true. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s still out of it.”

“Okay,” Carl said, but he sounded uncomfortable to Nita. “It can wait a few hours, I suppose… but when he wakes up, make sure he gets in touch with me, all right?”

“Sure. I want to talk to him, too, because I found Darryl last night, and I think he’s an abdal.”

“You think he’s a what?”

“An abdal. You know… one of the Pillars.”

There was a brief silence at that. “Would you mind coming over here and telling me how you came to that conclusion?” Carl said.

There was something peculiar about his tone of voice. “I’m not in trouble, am I?” Nita said.

“What? No. But do me a favor? Bring your manual with you.”

“Okay. See you in a while.”

Nita pulled on her boots and parka and then made her way over to Tom and Carl’s house the quick way, popping out into six inches of untouched snow, and was very glad she’d remembered the boots. Carl was standing inside the door, looking out at the backyard, as Nita came up to the sliding doors. He pushed one aside for her. “It’s pretty out there, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. But cold.” She came in and stomped her boots on the tile floor of the kitchen to get rid of the snow as Carl closed the door. “Where’d Tom go? Anything important?”

“He’s meeting with the Sector Advisories,” Carl said. “Administrative business… something to do with reorganizing some planets’ worldgating systems. Nothing wildly exciting, but he’ll be gone for a couple of days.”

Nita went to the table, taking off her coat and hanging it over one of the chairs. “You’ve got some wires hanging down there,” she said as she sat down, noting the tangle extending from underneath the cupboards.

“Yeah. I’ve made a mess, and now I have to clean it up. Does your mom or dad know a good electrician?” Carl said wearily. And then stopped, and looked at Nita in shock, and passed a hand over his eyes.

“Oh, Nita,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Habit…”

“I know,” she said. “I know.” She swallowed. “It’s okay. I'll ask Dad. He just had a guy doing some stuff to our garage. He thinks he’s pretty good.”

“Thanks.”

Nita reached into the empty air beside her and pulled her manual out of the claudication that followed her around. “Here,” she said. “Is something wrong with it?”

Carl sat down. “I don’t think so,” he said, “but there’s something I want to check. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

Carl opened Nita’s manual, turned to one particular page, and spoke to it softly under his breath.

Nita watched this curiously. The page filled up with characters in the Speech, cleared itself, and filled again, while Nita told Carl about the dreams she’d started having, how she’d decided to look into them more closely, and what she’d found. Well before she was finished, Carl had pushed her manual to one side and was giving Nita his undivided attention. When she finished, he let out a long breath.

“Well,” he said.

“What were you looking for?” Nita said, feeling slightly nervous.

“It’s all right. It’s nothing bad.” Carl folded his arms and sat back in the chair. “It’s just that the information you’ve been given normally isn’t made public.”

“Been given?” Nita said.

Carl nodded. “But someone at a higher level has seen to it that you got it. So I see from the authorization logs.”

Nita thought about that for a moment. “So he is an abdal?” she said.

Carl got a brooding look. “Tell me how he seemed to you, in twenty-five words or less.”

“Innocent,” Nita said. “He’s absolutely innocent. But he’s fierce about it. It just rolls off him.”

She shook her head. The impact of his personality, as communicated by just that one brief direct glance of Darryl’s eyes, was difficult to describe without sounding silly. If it was light, it would have been blinding. “And it’s not just the innocence. Even when he was screaming, I still liked him a lot.

He’s really good . And he just doesn’t notice, doesn’t seem to get it…”

“That would seem to clinch it, wouldn’t it?” Carl said. “The definition out of the manual, practically word for word.”

“That’s what I thought. And it scared me somehow.” Carl smiled a little. “Possibly a healthy response,” he said. “And one that convinces me you’re right. You met him out of the flesh, without the protective coloration that a body provides for a spirit like that. At such times you would get the full impact…and I imagine it’s an eye-opener.”

Nita nodded. “I never thought goodness could be so tough ,” she said. “So strong. But then again…I guess goodness isn’t something I’d think about a whole lot, anyway. Nobody uses the word much unless it’s in a commercial, and then they’re just trying to convince you that something has a lot of milk in it.”

Carl nodded, looking wry. “Virtue,” he said. “The real thing. It’s not some kind of cuddly teddy bear you can keep on the shelf until you need a hug. It’s dangerous, which is why it makes people so nervous. Virtue has its own agenda, and believe me, it’s not always yours. The word itself means strength, power. And when it gets loose, you’d better watch out.” “Something bad might happen…”