Diane Duane - A Wizard Alone

“It could have been that a lot more boys are autistic than girls,” Nita said. “Or that Darryl and I already had something in common.”

She wouldn’t say it out loud. She didn’t have to.

The pain

, Darryl said silently. The pain of being alone .

Nita had to glance away.

“Yeah,” Darryl said. “But giving it up…” He looked distressed. “I don’t know if I can! It’s part of me.”

“So?” Kit said. “Is it a part you need?”

‘ No! Darryl said.

And then he fell silent.

“I hear a but coming,” Nita said.

“I don’t know if I know how to live without it,” Darryl said.

They were all silent for a few breaths.

“It’s how I stood being alive,” Darryl said. “It’s how I didn’t have to see the Lone Power at the bottom of everyone’s soul, all the time. If I go back without it, I’m going to have to see that. Every day. Every time I look at my mom, or my dad…”

“Believe me,” Nita said, very softly, “I’d look at my mom all day and every day no matter how much It looked out of her, if she were here to look at. Some things are a lot more important than others, Darryl.”

“We all see It sometimes,” Kit said. “We all run into It every day, in the people we know, in the things that happen around us. There’s no escape. That’s life. That’s Life: what we serve. It’s worth it.”

Darryl was silent. “I don’t know if I can stand how much it’s going to hurt,” he said. “I might lose it. I might fall back into being that way… and that would kill my folks.”

“I’m guessing your folks are tougher than you think,” Nita said, remembering the voices she’d heard on the way in. “Give them a chance. Give yourself a chance. If it does happen…” She grinned.

“You’re a wizard. Listen to the Silence. Pick yourself up and do what it tells you. You’ll get out again… because you’re tough, too. Tougher than you think.”

Darryl looked at Nita with eyes that were beginning to believe. “Besides,” Kit said, “imagine how funny it’ll be when It finally gets back in here, and locks Itself in, and then discovers that what It’s locked in with isn’t you. It’s your autism.“

Darryl looked from Kit to Nita with that expression of absolute delight, edged again with mischief.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Let’s do it.”

“I don’t think there’s a lot of ‘let’s’ about this,” Kit said. “I think you get to do this part yourself.

Otherwise, it’s not going to take.”

“Use the kernel,” Nita said. “You set the configuration into it for the way you want this world to behave. The Silence will show you how. I had to take classes to find out, but this is your own world that you made. You’re not going to need authorizations to work with it.”

Darryl nodded, looking down at the kernel for a moment.

Then, “Oh,” he said. “Oh!”

He was quiet for a long time. While he was concentrating, Kit bent his head over to Nita’s and said, “Thanks.”

“It was my turn to save you,” Nita said, “that’s all. Now I want a few weeks off.”

Kit smiled a crooked smile at her.

Nita looked down at Ponch. “I thought you said you weren’t going to take the boss out again without me,” Nita said.

Ponch dropped his head a little. He went , he said. So I had to go, too . Then he brightened. But you got here when I thought you would, so it’s all right !

Nita gave Kit a look. “Your dog has me on a schedule” she said.

Kit shrugged. “He has a very well-developed time sense,” Kit said. “Ask him about feeding time, for example.”

Ponch began to jump up and down in excitement.

“Speaking of time,” Darryl said suddenly, “I think this looks right…”

Nita glanced over at the kernel in his hands, judging the way the tangle of light looked and felt.

“The parameters feel right,” she said. “You ready?”

Darryl nodded, looking nervous and elated.

“Do it!” Nita said.

Slowly, all around them, the brightness dimmed down. “I left you a space to slip through,” Darryl said, as the space darkened, like a stage at the end of a play. “Just behind you there. But this is what’U be left inside.”

Darkness, and a spotlight.

In the spotlight, a clown rode a tiny bicycle around and around, never stopping, never looking up. Its eyes were empty. It was a machine, just a fragment of personality without the soul that had once animated it: hopeless, mindless, animate but insensate. Kit looked at it and thought of a windup mouse going around and around in little circles, waiting for the cat.

“Let’s get out of here,” Kit said. “Darryl? You know the way back?”

“In my sleep,” he said, and grinned.

Kit held out a hand. “Welcome to the Art, brother,” he said.

Darryl took the hand, then pulled Kit close and hugged him hard. He let go, turned to Nita. He hugged her, too.

“Later,” she said. “Go home.”

Darryl vanished with the ease of someone who’s been doing it for years.

Kit and Nita looked at each other. “Your place or mine?” Nita said.

“My folks are going to yell at me,” Kit said, “so let’s do mine first.”

Nita smiled a small wry smile. “You just want me to help you take the heat.”

Mind reader

, Kit said. Come on .

They vanished, too.

Some distance away, in a special-ed classroom in Baldwin, the afternoon routine was proceeding as usual when one of the teachers saw something unusual happen.

Darryl McAllister looked at him, looked at him straight on.

The teacher went over to the boy, and got down beside him where he had been sitting on the floor and rocking. “Hey there, Darryl,” he said. “What’s up?”

“I don’t think,” Darryl said, in a voice that cracked and creaked with not having been used for words for a long time, “I don’t think I need to be here anymore.”

The teacher’s mouth dropped open.

“Can I go home now?” Darryl said, and smiled.

The explanations to parents, Seniors, and others, as usual, took nearly as long as the events themselves had done, so it was several days before Nita and Kit found time to go off and relax. The chosen spot was a favorite one, by the edge of a crater close to a well-known site in Mare Tranquillitatis. They were leaning back against the very top of the upper crater wall, looking down over at the rising half-Earth, while Ponch lay on his back in the moondust, snoring, with his feet in the air.

A fourth figure suddenly stepped into the vacuum nearby, looking around him.

“Wow,” Darryl said. He wandered over to where Nita and Kit sat, bouncing a little as first-timers tended to do, because of the lighter gravity.

“Are we allowed to be up here?” Darryl said, looking about half a mile away, toward where the feet and base of Apollo 11 ‘s lunar lander sat.

“As long as we don’t mess it up,” Kit said. “This is a heritage area.”

Hearing that, Darryl burst out laughing, looking in mischievous admiration at the rough sculptures Kit had been doing on this site for some years. “ This is what you do in a heritage area?”

“I’ll clean it up before they build the hotel here,” Kit said. “After that, I guess I’ll have to amuse myself carving rocks on Mars into faces.”

Darryl snickered.

“How are your folks doing?” Nita said.

“You kidding? They’re in shock,” Darryl said. He sat down on the rock beside Kit.

“I wouldn’t have thought they’d let you out of their sight right now,” Kit said.