Diane Duane - A Wizard Alone

“Impossible. But possibly something painful.” Carl fell silent for a moment. “The manual makes the abdals sound like saints,” Nita said.

“Oh, they are saints,” Carl said. “That aspect of their power doesn’t have anything to do with wizardry as such, though it can coexist with it, the same way you could be, say, a mathematician and a really nice person at the same time.”

Nita made a face. “You haven’t met my statistics teacher.”

“I hear you. I still hate anything more complex than long division. But the trouble with sainthood these days is the robe-and-halo imagery that gets stuck onto it.” Carl got that brooding look again.

“People forget that robes were street clothes once… and still are, in a lot of places. And halos are to that fierce air of innocence what speech balloons in comics are to the sound of the voice itself.

Shorthand. But most people just see an old symbol and don’t bother looking behind it for the meaning. Sainthood starts to look old-fashioned, unattainable… even repellent. Actually, you can see it all around, once you learn to spot it.”

“You make it sound like there are saints all over the place.”

“Of course there are. You don’t think it’s just wizards that keep the universe running, do you?

But saints tend not to be obvious. For one thing, they don’t want to draw the Lone One’s attention to them. Also, they tend to be too busy. Mostly sainthood involves hard work.”

Carl leaned forward to pick up Nita’s manual again, paging through it. “Anyway, I think you can understand why information about the abdals would be pretty carefully controlled, most of the time.

The whole point of the way they function is that they’re not supposed to know what they are. And the more mortals who do know, the more might let it slip. Darryl is important. Far more important, in the larger scheme of things, than you or I, or than just about anybody else I know, or am likely to know. Abdals don’t exactly grow on trees.“ Carl looked suddenly thoughtful. ”Well, actually, some places they do. What I mean is, they’re not commonplace. The One invests a lot of power in them.

There wouldn’t be many of them on a given planet at any one time… and we want to keep the ones we’ve got. Or the one we’ve got, because as far as Earth goes at the moment, Darryl may well be it.

And his presence here, even when he doesn’t seem to be doing anything, is important for the world, because through him, the One channels into the world some of the power we use. If you’ll pardon the plumbing analogy, think of us as faucets and Darryl as the reservoir, or the well. Cut that off, and—“ Carl shook his head.

Nita was silent for some moments, digesting this. “So what do I do now?” she said at last. “I don’t want Kit to think I’m horning in on his assignment or something because I’m worried about him. But I think maybe I am. He was okay when he started this, pretty much… as far as I was able to tell anything clearly about his state of mind when I was so stuck in my own. But now… he doesn’t feel like he usually does. And I can’t tell for sure whether that’s good or bad.”

“I wouldn’t be sure, either,” Carl said. “Well, the first thing you can do is, when he gets up, tell him I want a word with him, pronto. I don’t like to lean on my wizards as a rule, but Kit’s been a little less careful than usual, and with what you’ve discovered about the situation, he’d better sharpen up. The stakes have been raised.”

She came back from Tom and Carl’s the quick way, popping out into the backyard. The snow there was untouched, rather to her surprise. Dairine was as much a snow fiend as their mom had been. It was unusual to find that she hadn’t been out here at least long enough to make a couple of angels. Under more normal circumstances, there would have been a whole snowman by now. But the circumstances aren’t normal

…

Nita went in, shucked her parka off and left it by the back door, and went up the stairs to see what Dairine was up to. She found her in her bedroom, staring at her desk. Spot was sitting in her lap, also staring with its little stalky eyes at the construction sitting there.

Nita looked at the desk. It was covered with tinfoil. On the foil and on a subsidiary bed of newspaper rested what appeared to be a model volcano sculpted out of wet papier-mache. The volcano was extremely broad and flat, of the shield type, and Nita recognized it immediately.

“How does it look?” Dairine said.

“Not bad,” Nita said. “What’s it for?”

“We’re doing a geology unit in our science class.”

Nita raised her eyebrows. “Bending the rules a little, Dair?” she said. “That’s Olympus Mons. It hardly counts as geology.”

“Okay, areology, then.” Dairine sat there wiping her hands on a towel.

“It looks a little bare right now,” Nita said.

Her sister turned a look of withering scorn on her. Spot cocked one eye in Nita’s direction as if to suggest that she’d asked for this. “Of course it looks a little bare,” Dairine said. “I have to paint it first. My real project for today is constructing an airbrush out of nothing but wizardry.”

“Sounds like a moderate challenge,” Nita said.

“And when the volcano’s done, I’m going to make it blow up in class,” Dairine said.

Nita’s eyes widened slightly at the first image that occurred to her.

“With lycopodium powder,” Dairine said, more scornfully than before, if that was possible.

“Sheesh, Neets.”

“Just checking,” Nita said.

“Yes,” Dairine said, “I know you were.” She rolled her eyes. “Tell Dad I’m being good.”

“If you’re good enough, I won’t have to tell him anything,” Nita said. She turned away.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to do it with real lava, though?” Dairine said from behind her as Nita headed to her room.

“There are times,” Nita said, “when I think a nice big lava flow would improve that school a lot.

You know any card tricks?”

The silence in answer to that question was unusually eloquent.

Nita sighed and sat down in her room. You awake yet ? she said silently to Kit.

She waited for a few seconds.

Huh

? Kit said.

Well, that’s half my question answered

, Nita said. You sound pretty tired. You okay ?

I guess so.

Nita raised her eyebrows. This wasn’t exactly a normal response for Kit. Either he was okay or he wasn’t, but the middle ground wasn’t usually an option for him, in Nita’s experience, especially when he sounded as dulled as he did. I’m coming over in a while , she said. There’s some stuff I have to show you .

Okay.

And that was it.

Either he’s exhausted

, Nita thought, or there’s something wrong …

She knew what her present hunch suggested, though. She was starting to get worried about him.

He’s been hitting this problem with Darryl so hard

, Nita thought, that he’s just been wearing himself down. That’s one possibility .

Why don’t I think that’s what’s really going on?

Nita headed downstairs to make herself a sandwich. “By the way,” Dairine said in a piercing voice as Nita went past her door, “someone seems to have eaten all the bananas.”

Nita sighed. “I’ll stop by Brazil on my way home. Or Panama.”

“Costa Rica.”

“Please,” Nita said as she went down the stairs. She had never been any good at remembering which exports came from which countries. It struck her as information that, for someone in junior high, was about as useful as dissecting the history of the gold standard. When I get a job at an import-export firm