Diane Duane - A Wizard Alone

, Nita thought, turning the corner into the kitchen, then I'll worry about who exports bauxite and who exports tin. Not before .

She opened a can of tuna fish, drained it, mashed it in a bowl with mayonnaise and Tabasco sauce, made herself a sandwich with it, and ingested the sandwich without paying it much attention.

Darryl was on her mind. He‘s more important than all of us, Carl said . The thought was sobering.

She and Kit had done some moderately important and useful things in their time working together, but what Carl seemed to be describing was a different level of function, one in which just being there, just being alive and breathing, could be more important to the world than any amount of running around doing things. It made a strange kind of sense when Nita put it together with what Tom had been saying about the Powers finding the difference between active and passive work

“illusory.” If just by being here, Darryl is channeling the One’s power into the world, then if something were to happen to him suddenly

…

It was a scarier thought than any Nita had had in quite some time. Whatever else I do , she thought, I’ve got to find a way to help him .

Because he doesn’t know it, but he’s helped me…

Nita went to get her coat, and then went out to walk over to Kit’s.

“ Hola, Carmela. Que-pasa ?” Nita said as she came in Kit’s back door.

“ Watasbi wa ureshii !” Carmela said, more or less dancing past Nita into the living room, with the TV remote in her hand.

Nita blinked as she slipped off her coat and dropped it on the floor beside the dining room sofa.

The Japanese thing was something Carmela had been working on for a while, and now that she was getting good at it, you never quite knew which language you were going to get from her. “Let me guess. You’re saying you’re going to turn into a giant robot?”

“No,” Carmela said, “that would be, Watashi, imakara sugo-ku o-kina robotto ni namno !”

“I’m impressed,” Nita said.

“If I really did turn into a giant robot, I bet you would be,” Carmela said, heading back into the living room.

Nita followed her. “Oh,” she said. “Is this the new TV?”

“ Ohayo gozaimas‘ !” shouted the TV and the DVD player together.

“Oh,” Nita said. “Hi, cousins. Nice to meet you.”

“Dozo yoroshikul

“Uh, yeah.” To Carmela she said, “Don’t you find that a little unusual?”

“I’m used to it now. Kit says he thinks we’re having some kind of wizardry leakage in the house,” Carmela said, very matter-of-fact. “Mama can hear Ponch. And Pop and I can hear the TV when it shouts at the DVD. Mostly it’s friendly shouting now, since Kit fixed the remote.” Carmela plunked herself back down on the sofa, stretching out her legs.

“ Fixed it,” Nita said, still having some trouble with this concept.

“It was a lot worse before. He said he was going to ask Tom what was going on. Meanwhile, in case you’re wondering, Kit’s in his room. Mama and Pop are out shopping, and they did not take Kit with them because they are annoyed with him.” She lowered her voice. “But also because he slept real late, and he looks like hell. Mama thinks he’s coming down with something.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” Nita said. “Uh, have you been having any trouble with—?” She glanced in the general direction of the TV and DVD while turning enough to conceal the look.

“Trouble? Not at all. Weird stuff turns up sometimes, but all the regular TV’s there, the cable and all. I don’t care how many aliens I see, as long as I’ve got my MTV and the shopping channels.”

Nita grinned. This was Dairine’s attitude as well, though it was the music channels that interested her more than the shopping. “Half the time, with some of those videos, you can’t tell what planet they’re from anyway,” Nita said.

Carmela snickered. “Later,” Nita said, and went back to Kit’s room.

He was lying on the bed, his manual open and facedown on his chest, looking up at the ceiling.

Ponch was lying next to him on the bed, with his head on Kit’s chest. Ponch’s eyes shifted to Nita as she came into view, but he didn’t move or say anything.

Nita paused in the door and knocked on the door frame. “Hey,” she said.

Kit glanced over at her. It was the least-interested glance that Nita could remember seeing from him in some time. Why doesn’t he just come out and say that he wishes I wasn’t here ? Nita thought, shocked. But it occurred to her then that she’d been distant enough with him lately. Maybe he was giving her a taste of her own medicine. That wouldn’t normally he his style, either. But if he’s really feeling sick, maybe he’s just saying what’s on his mind, stuff he’d keep to himself otherwise .

Nita felt briefly guilty, then put the feeling aside. “You look kind of out of it,” she said.

“Yeah,” Kit said. “I feel that way, too. I didn’t sleep real well after I got in last night.”

“Late?” Nita said, going over to sit in the chair by his desk.

“Yeah.”

She waited a moment to let him tell her what he’d been doing, but he just turned his head away and looked up at the ceiling again. He wasn’t going to tell her. “You have any luck with Darryl?”

she said.

“Not really.”

Nita started feeling around for something sarcastic and angry to say to Kit, and then she stopped herself. He didn’t push me when I didn’t want to talk , she thought. I’m not going to push him now .

But there’s still something that needs saying

. “Kit,” she said, “about Darryl… I’m getting the feeling that you going after him the way you are isn’t doing you any good.”

“Uh-huh.”

Nita pursed her lips. That was the same “uh-huh” that she used on Dairine, as code for the message, “I am not listening to you. Bug off.”

He doesn’t mean to be rude. He just doesn’t want to tell me what’s on his mind, or hear what’s on mine.

Did I sound like this? He should have hit me on the head with something until I paid attention.

Nita let out a breath. “Okay,” she said, “forget about it for now. But I have a message for you.

You need to go see Carl.”

That finally made Kit look at her again. “Huh? How come?”

“Tom’s out of town,” Nita said. “Some Advisory or Senior thing. Carl’s handling his interventions for the next day or so. You owed Tom a debrief on what’s up with Darryl, and Carl wants to know where it is. Just between you and me, I think he’s steamed. So if I were you, I’d get over there and take your medicine.”

“I’ve taken enough medicine for one weekend,” Kit muttered.

“After you got in late?”

“Yeah. My pop didn’t say much, but my mama did.”

“Tore a few strips off you, huh?”

“It wasn’t my fault, Neets,” Kit said. “The timing got blown, that’s all.” He sighed. “But it doesn’t really matter.”

Nita looked at Kit with concern. That was a theme she’d been singing too much herself lately, and Nita wasn’t going to be indifferent to it when someone else started in on it.

“They didn’t ground you or anything?”

“No. Anyway, they would have done that how , exactly?” Kit said.

Nita had to smile, despite her worrying. It was extremely difficult to ground a wizard without the wizard’s consent. Still, you had to live with your parents… and rubbing their noses in the fact that they couldn’t control you no matter how much they wanted to wasn’t a great way to make that life an easy one.