Диана Дуэйн - Lifeboats

“Is that who—” Nita was squinting ahead of them at that crowd.

“What?” Kit said. “Who? Tom? Carl?” He peered ahead too. “Dairine?”

“No!” Nita burst out laughing and broke into a run. “Aunt Annie!”

Kit saw the silver-haired shape in a down jacket and riding jodhpurs turn around at the edge of that crowd, look toward them, and break into a big grin.

“Oh, Nita, sweetie!”

There ensued some fairly heavy-duty hugging and kissing. “It’s so good to see you!”

“Yes, you too, darlin’! I was so sad I couldn’t make it for Christmas, but you know how it is… when the Powers call, we answer. And Kit, how are you, come here, honey!” There was no escaping the hug, not that he particularly wanted to. “God, you’re so much taller, what are they feeding you at home?”

“Enough for two people, my mama says…”

“I bet. Don’t let them guilt you out of it, now! Your body knows what you need.”

Nita laughed at her. “But Aunt Annie, listen, I kept checking the manual after Christmas and there wasn’t anything about what you were doing. I was worried about you!”

“Oh, Nita, it’s all right, there was a privacy lock on the listing until we were all done and debriefed. Heisenberg issues, it’s a long story…”

“Well, okay, but where were you?”

“Down a mine.”

“A mine?”

Her aunt laughed, a very dry and tired sound, as if she was sick of the subject. “You have no idea. Just check the manual… it’s all in there now. Have a look at the late December listings for ‘Kola Borehole management intervention.”

Then Aunt Annie glanced around as people of many species began to pile up behind her. “Pet, I can’t stay, our group’s on its way out. Look here, you message me when you get settled wherever they stick you on Tevaral, and if there’s time we’ll get together. Otherwise catch me when all this is over, yeah? Tualha’s been asking after you. She wants you to see the new kittens.”

“Okay!”

The two of them hugged and kissed again, and then Aunt Annie waved at Kit as one or two older wizards caught her eye and hustled her off. One of them, a tall brawny man with salt-and-pepper hair, caught Kit’s eye.

He leaned over Nita’s shoulder. “Look at him looking at her.”

“Yeah, well, I’m looking at her looking at him.”

“Is she… dating?”

“Don’t ask me,” Nita said. “Looks like we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.” And then she gave Kit an amused look.

“What?”

“It’s just kind of weird,” Nita said. “For me at least. That before you get together with somebody, half the time you don’t even see it? And afterwards… all of a sudden everybody seems to be dating? It’s like it starts following you around.”

“Uh, yeah,” Kit said. Because he had noticed that, to his considerable discomfort. He’d wondered if it was something wrong with him.

They walked on toward the doors. “I didn’t know you were so worried about her,” Kit said after a moment. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I don’t know. It seemed kind of silly at the time. But at least now I know she’s OK.” Nita shrugged. “I just get paranoid sometimes when I don’t hear back from people right away.”

“Unless it’s Dairine.”

“Oh well, Dairine…” Nita laughed. “I hear from her all day and all night, sometimes, when she’s conscious. At least it seems that way. I don’t mind a little peace and quiet where she’s involved! And anyway, if she was in some kind of trouble, Bobo would hear about it from the Mobiles. They’re pretty protective of their ‘mom’… they’ve got her tagged somehow so they know where she is all the time.”

Kit threw Nita a sideways glance as they came up to the auditorium doors, now dilated as widely as they could go to make entrance easy for the large crowd of assorted humanoids heading in. “And how’s she taking that?”

“I think she thinks it’s cute,” Nita said. “And I don’t want to be in the neighborhood the day she stops thinking about it that way, so I’m not rocking the boat. Either way, our Dad likes it, though he’s not saying anything about that to her out loud either…”

Kit nodded and looked around the huge space as they headed in. The two of them had been in here before, every now and then, usually between assignments or secondary to some business Sker’ret had going on that he wanted them to sit in on. But it was very strange to see all the seating configured for humanoids. instead of the usual bizarre assortment of racks and platforms and cradles and other less classifiable shapes.

They found themselves some seating not too close to the front dais, a big open space large enough to take a good-sized crowd of people, and made themselves comfortable between a small group of scaly-skinned four-armed semi-saurian Muthhallat, glittering all emerald-green in the auditorium lighting, and a furry five-person Khelevite clone-clan from beta Ophiuchi, relatively close neighbors to Earth by Crossings standards. They were still exchanging greetings (it could seem a touch repetitive with clones until you were used to it) when the lights went down a bit, at least in the Earth-human visible spectrum. Suddenly Mamvish was standing up on the dais, or seeming to, and things went quiet.

“My cousins from near and far,” Mamvish said, “first of all: I want to thank all of you who’ve dropped whatever you were doing to join us in this intervention. I want you all to know that despite the very large number of fellow wizards here, every one of you singly is going to make a difference. It’s not all that often that we run into a situation that requires so very much hands-on work… and each one of you individually is going to be responsible for saving hundreds of thousands of lives, if not many more. It’s not like the Powers need reminding of this. They know. But sometimes we need reminding.”

Her projection—for Kit could recognize it as exactly the same kind of apparition that had stuck itself through his bedroom wall—turned to look around the room. “I’m hoping you’ll forgive me appearing here in eidolon format, but my corporally-present time is being split about equally between Tevaral and Thesba at the moment. Both bodies are requiring repeated stabilization, and right now the best use of my power levels is feeding the circles of wizards who are presently concentrating on holding the primary and its moon together. This clone of me can handle questions, but I’d ask that you hold the most complicated ones until the end of the prepared presentation—or better still, until you get to Tevaral. I’ll be available at all times for consult while we’re all there.

“So let me first explain the nature of our intervention and what’s caused us to upgrade it to emergency status.”

The walls of the auditorium at that point simply seemed to vanish, leaving the audience apparently sitting suspended in empty space. It was an effect that could have been produced by a particularly good planetarium, but the absolute precision and clarity of it made it clear to Kit that this was a live view of space quite distant from here.

They were looking at a bright blue-white star in the middle distance, and much closer to the point of view, the broad, partly shadowed limb of a green-golden planet. “This is Tevaral,” Mamvish said. “Tevaral has been home to the Tevaralti species for approximately eight hundred and seventy thousand years, and to its avian forebears for significantly longer. While hardly the oldest species in this part of the galaxy, they are certainly one of the oldest, and also a species of unusual longevity in comparison to other humanoid cultures and civilizations.

“Tevaral is a so-called ‘dual world’ that revolves around a common center of gravity with its very large satellite Thesba, a capture that settled into its present relationship with Tevaral approximately two point nine billion years ago, when Tevaral was still cooling after forming up around its primary star, Sendwathesh.”