Диана Дуэйн - Lifeboats

Now, though, Mamvish looked harried and worried: her conical eyes, so much like those of an iguana or chameleon, were revolving out of phase with one another, in directions Kit had never seen them go before. And a layer or two down in her extraordinary hide, always an indicator of what was going on in her thoughts and emotions, such a violently-colored whirl and blaze of crimson and golden Speech-characters was roiling under the surface that she looked like she might be about to catch fire.

Kit was so flummoxed by all of this that he didn’t even think to say “Dai stihó” to her before anything else. What came out instead was, “Mamvish, would you hold still, you’re knocking all my stuff down!”

“Oh,” Mamvish said, looking around her in shock. Her eyes bugged out a bit more than usual then, the expression fairly abashed, as she tried to move as little as possible. Nonetheless she managed to jostle the bookshelf at the far end of the room, right by the left side of her massive head, and knock some of Kit’s older model airplanes off the top shelf. “Sorry, Kit. Sorry! Kind of in a hurry here—!”

Kit winced as the models hit the floor and shattered, then tried to get control of himself: there certainly had to be more important things to think about than assorted busted plastic when Mamvish’s head was sticking through his wall. More or less… “It’s okay,” Kit said. “What’s up?”

Mamvish rolled her iridescent eyes some more—always a sight worth watching, even when she appeared to be mostly annoyed at herself—and went entirely still except for the storm of Speech-symbols swirling under her skin. “Christopher Kellen Rodriguez,” she said, “well met in haste and on the business of the Powers we jointly serve! In my capacity as Species Archivist to the Powers that Be and chief among senior rafting coordinators for the galactic subregion locally referred to as the Orion Arm, by seniority granted and Wizard’s Right asserted, I formally request and require your assistance in an intervention classified as physically and temporally urgent for the survival of a significant portion of a sentient species ranked at aggregated centrality-level two hundred or above. Said intervention will for logistical purposes be staged out of the Crossings Intercontinual Worldgating Facility at Rirhath B, and will take place in and around the immediate neighborhood of a star manual-designated as ‘Sendwathesh’ and locally identified as 11848 Cephei, a type A8 star in a circumstellar microassociation with the star locally identified as mu Cephei, also known as Erakis. This intervention’s duration is estimated to be on the close order of seventy-two to ninety-six hours local time, plus or minus twenty-four to forty-eight hours. The anticipated level of difficulty does not exceed ‘moderately dangerous’, though instabilities in the local situation may at short notice require its reclassification to ‘critical’, ‘extremely critical’, or ‘disaster’. Will you assist?”

Then Mamvish stopped, panting, and her eyes rolled desperately around as if she was concerned about moving any other part of her, for fear she’d accidentally make something else fall down.

“Wow,” Kit said, and for some moments didn’t know what to say: it had been quite a while since (in the wizardly sense) he’d been drafted. As always, the Powers left the final choice to participate in a Wizard’s Right situation with the wizard being requisitioned for the project. But the truth was that a responsible wizard didn’t refuse such a call when it came. No one invoked Wizard’s Right unless there was the prospect of serious loss of life, and a plan to keep it from happening.

Kit went ever so briefly hot with pride at the thought that there was something going on in which he’d somehow been identified as important. “Mamvish, sure, of course,” he said, and paused to start doing the kind of math in his head that he mercifully didn’t have trouble with. “…But wait. Four days? And it might be six or seven, but it also might be just two?”

“I wouldn’t bet on the two,” Mamvish said, sounding very annoyed for a moment. “Nothing about this project has gone the way it was expected to so far—” Her projection twitched in frustration, and another model, a World War II Spitfire that Kit was particularly fond of, fell off the top of the bookshelf and crashed to the floor.

Kit sighed. It’s a good thing I can restore those to their previous energy state with a little work… he thought. Or a lot… “Mam, what’s this about?” he said. “Who else is in on this?”

Her eyes revolved faster. “Everyone, nearly,” she said.

Kit blinked, not very sure how to take that.

“It’s so annoying because there’s just no time for personal briefings!” Mamvish said. “I’m requisitioning everybody else on this planet who’s qualified for this and not otherwise occupied, right this minute, and then I have five or six other planets to visit before I can get back to the Crossings and start holding the orientations—we’re going to have to do them a couple or few thousand beings at a time, there’s no other way. Right now speed’s of the essence: the sooner we can get all the necessary wizards emplaced, the better it’s going to be for everybody. How soon can you be there?”

Oh God, this is going to get complicated.

“Mamvish,” Kit said, “obviously this is incredibly serious and I really want to come—” He glanced back at his math notebook with complete loathing: anything that would get him away from this, up to and including a planetary disaster, was welcome. “But we’re in the middle of the school week and I really doubt my folks are going to let me take four days off…”

“Oh no, it’s all right, I know you’re in a time-structured learning situation! And the sooner that’s done with, the happier I’ll be… we could use you out here full time! But for this intervention, your local timeflow won’t be a problem. Timeslides have been authorized for everyone who participates: you’ll be away from your local time coordinates for a maximum of ten minutes. Ideally less, depending on the strain on local temporality due to multiple slides terminating in your area. Call it fifteen minutes at most.”

“Whoa,” Kit said. Senior wizards tended to be very twitchy about handing out free passes for what was essentially personal time travel. Whatever was going on out there must be pretty dire. “But I’ve still got to talk to my mama and pop, I can’t do this without them saying it’s okay—”

“You do that,” Mamvish said. “If you need me to, I’ll talk to them as well.”

What is going on? Kit thought. Well, never mind, better get busy. “Popi’ll be home pretty soon,” Kit said. “Mama hasn’t left for work yet—I’ll talk to her now.”

“Very well,” Mamvish said. “I’ve dropped a preliminary precis in your manual. Very preliminary: everything’s changing so fast… Dai stihó, cousin. And hurry!”

And she was gone. Kit stared at the far wall, where the photo of him and Ponch was hanging again: and at his bookshelf, where the model planes were sitting as if nothing had happened to them at all, probably right down to the placement of the individual grains of dust that had coated them (because even with wizardry, Kit was terrible at dusting).

He sat back down in his chair and looked at his manual. The text page was blank.

“Neets?” he said.

There was a pause: and then a voice spoke from the page. “Well,” Nita said, “somehow I don’t think I’m all that busy any more…”

“Giant saurian wizard head just got stuck through your wall?” Kit said.

Nita snickered. “She was in so much of a rush she messed up her coordinates. I got her butt end first.”