Диана Дуэйн - High Wizardry

"Hey, there's somebody in the driveway! It's a truck! Mom! Mom, the computer's here!"

The first sound Nita heard that morning was her little sister's shrieking. Nita winced and scrunched herself up into a ball under the covers. Then she muttered six syllables, a very simple spell, and soundproofed her room against her sister's noise.

Blessed silence fell. Unfortunately the spell also killed the buzzing of the locusts and the singing of the birds outside the open window. And Nita liked birds. She opened her eyes, blinking at the bright summer sun coming in the window, and sighed.

Nita said one more syllable. The mute-spell came undone, letting in the noise of doors opening and shutting, and Dairine shrieking instructions and suggestions at the immediate planet. Outside the window a catbird was sitting in the elm tree, screaming, "Thief! Thief!" in an enthusiastic but substandard imitation of a blue jay.

So much for sleeping late, Nita thought. She got up and went over to the dresser by the window, pulled a drawer open and rummaged in it for a T-shirt and shorts. "Morning, Birdbrain," she said as she pulled out a "Live Aid" T-shirt.

The catbird hopped down to a branch of the elm right outside Nita's window. "Bob-white! Bob-white!"

it sang at the top of its lungs.

"What's a quail doing in a tree?" Nita said. She pulled the T-shirt on. Listen to those locusts! Hot one today, huh?"

'Highs in the nineties," the bird sang. "Cheer up! Cheer up!"

'Robins are for spring," Nita said. "I'm more in the mood for penguins at the moment. . "

"What's up?".

"Enough with the imitations! I need you to take a message for me. Wfz. ards' business. I'll leave you something nice. Half of one of Mom's muffins? Huh?"

The catbird poured out several delighted bars of song that started as a phoebe's call and ended as the five-note theme from E. T.

"Good," Nita said. "Then here's something new to sing." She had been speaking all along in the Speech of wizards, the language everything alive understands. Now she added music to it, singing random notes with the words. "Kit, you wanna see a disaster? Come on over here and watch my folks try to hook up the Apple."

The bird cocked an interested eye at her. "You need it again?" Nita said.

" 'Kit, you wanna see a disaster?' " "That's my boy. You remember the way?"

In a whir of white-barred wings, the catbird was gone.

"Must be hungry," Nita said to herself, pulling on her shorts, and then socks and sneakers. While pulling a sneaker on, she glanced at the top of the dresser. There among the stickers and the brushes and combs, under the new Alan Parsons album, lay her wizard's manual.

That by itself wasn't so strange; she'd left it there yesterday afternoon. But it was open; she didn't remember having left it that way. Nita leaned over, tying the sneaker, and looked at the page. The

Wizards' Oath-Nita smiled. It didn't seem like only a few months ago that she'd first read and taken that Oath herself: it felt more like years. February, was it? she thought. No, March. Joanne and her crew chased me into the library. And beat the crap out of me later. But I didn't care. I'd found this Nita sighed and flipped the book back to the Oath. Trouble came with wizardry. But other things came too.

Whamwhamwham!

Nita didn't even need to turn around to see who was pounding on her door as it banged open. "Come in!" Nita said, and glared at Dairine, who already was in.

"It's here!"

"I would never have known," Nita said, dropping the Parsons album back on top of the manual. "Dari, sometimes people like to sleep on a Saturday, y'know?"

"When there's a computer here? Nita, sometimes you're such a spud."

Nita folded her arms and leaned against the dresser, ready to start a lec-ture. Her sister, unfortunately, took all the fun out of it by mocking Nita's position and folded arms, leaning against the doorjamb. Funny how someone so little could look so threatening: a little red-haired eleven-year-old stick of a thing in an Admiral Ackbar T-shirt, with a delicate face and watery gray eyes Problem was, there was someone smart behind those eyes. Someone too smart.

Nita let out an annoyed breath. "I won't kill you this time," she said.

"I wasn't worried about that," Dairine said. "And you won't turn me into a toad or anything, either, so don't bother trying that line on me. . C'mon, let's watch Mom 'n' Dad mess it up." And she was out the door.

Nita made a face. It didn't help that Dairine knew she was a wizard. She would sooner have told her parents about her wizardry than have told Dairine.

Of course, her folks had found out too…

Nita headed out the bedroom door and down the stairs.

The living room was full of boxes and packing material, loose-leaf books, and diskette boxes. Only the desk by the window was clean; and on it sat a cream-colored object about the size and shape of a phone book-the keyboard/motherboard console of a shiny new Apple IIIc+. "Harry," Nita's mother was saying, "don't plug anything in, you'll blow it up. Dairine, get out of that. Morning, Nita, there's some pancakes on the stove."

"Okay," Nita said, and headed into the kitchen. While she was still spreading maple syrup between two pancakes, someone banged on the screen door.

"C'mon in," Nita said, her mouth full. "Have a pancake."

Kit came in: Christopher Rodriguez, her fellow-wizard, quick and dark and sharp-eyed, and at thirteen, a year younger than Nita. And also suddenly two inches taller, for he had hit a growth spurt over the summer. Nita couldn't get used to it; she was used to looking down at him. She handed him a pancake.

"A little bird told me there's about to be trouble," Kit said.

"C'mon," Dairine's strident voice came from the living room, "I wanna play Lunar Landed"

" 'About to be?' " Nita said.

Kit grinned around the mouthful of pancake and gestured with his head at the living room, raising his eyebrows.

Nita nodded agreement, her mouth full too, and they headed that way.

"Dairine," Nita's mother was saying, "leave your dad alone." Her mother was sitting cross-legged in jeans and sweatshirt, in the middle of a welter of Styrofoam peanuts and paperwork, going through a loose-leaf binder. "And don't get those manuals out of order, either. Morning, Kit! How're your mom and dad?"

"Fine, Mrs. Callahan. Hi, Mr. Callahan."

"Hi, Kit," said Nita's dad, rather muffled because he was under the desk by the living room window.

"Betty, I've got the three-prong plugs in."

'Oh, good. Then you can set up the external monitor…"

"When can I play?" Dairine hollered.

"At this rate," said her father, "sometime in the next century. Nita, do something with her, will you?"

"It's a little late for birth control," Kit said in Nita's ear. Nita spluttered with laughter.

Dairine flew at her. "Was that something dirty? I'll get you for that, you-"

Queep! something said. All heads turned; but it was just the computer, which Nita's dad had plugged in.

"Harry, you will blow it up," Nita's mother said calmly, from down among the cartons. "We haven't finished reading the instructions yet."

"We don't have to, Betty. We didn't connect the hard disk yet, so we-"

Dairine lost interest in killing Nita. "Can I play now?!"

"See, it says in this manual-"

"Yes, but this one is before that one, Harry-"

"But, look, Betty, it says right here-"

Dairine quietly slipped the plastic wrapping off the monitor and slipped it into its notch at the back of the computer, then started connecting the cables to the screen. Nita glanced at Kit, then back toward the kitchen. He grinned agreement.