Диана Дуэйн - A Wizard Of Mars

Looking up at it, Nita nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Besides, there are still some craters up there that don’t have names…”

She was expecting a snicker, but none came. After a moment she got a strange feeling and turned to find Kit watching her. “What?” she said.

“Charcoal’s ready,” Kit said. “Don’t you want a burger?” And he headed back to the group at the rear of the backyard.

Nita smiled slightly and followed him.

***

Much later, in the dark, someone spoke Nita’s name.

She woke up in the middle of the night and turned over, eyes open in the dark. What?

But no one was there to have said anything. Nita sighed. Just another of those dreams, she thought. She closed her eyes again, completely worn out but for the moment also completely happy. Nothing to do tomorrow, she thought. School’s over. This is so great! I can sleep as late as I want. And I’m going to start that all over again right now…

But perversely, it didn’t happen. Outside her closed eyes, she could tell that there was light. I hate this, Nita thought, resigned. This has been one of those sleeps where you wake up and you don’t feel like you’ve been to sleep at all. She felt vaguely cheated, but there was no point in trying to go back to sleep under these circumstances. She sighed and opened her eyes again.

Red dirt all around, and stones and rust-beige rubble, and a light dusting of snow—

Nita sat up and stared around her. Her first thought was that Dairine had finally gotten around to getting revenge on her for sending her bed to Pluto that time. But as Nita looked around, she started getting the slightly rainbowy, shivery feeling around the edges of things, what Tom called “temporal aberration,” that told her this wasn’t a real physical experience: it was vision. Oh, okay, she thought, and got up. Let’s see what this is about.

There was no mistaking the view; this was Kit’s preferred landing spot on Mars, at the top of Elysium Mons. Nita stood there feeling under her bare feet the cool gritty dust of another world. This is what visions are really good for,she thought, not having to worry about force fields, or the real temperature, or whether you brought enough air. For the morning around her felt no chillier than an early spring morning on Earth.

The Sun was just up and actually felt warm on her skin. Overhead the sky was lightening, swiftly going from violet to blue. Silhouetted against it, a couple of hundred yards away where the tableland dropped off, Kit was standing, looking southward across the plains of Elysium Planitia. Nita just watched him for a moment, then felt a draft and looked down at herself.

Oh, no, she thought, seeing the gossamer draperies again, and the gleaming wrought and gemmed metal of the bodice. I have got to talk him out of this look for me: it does not work!!

But second thoughts did intrude, and surreptitiously Nita glanced down. Well, okay, maybe the top isn’t bad—

Down by her foot she saw a small rock that she recognized. Nita reached down to pick it up. “So,” she said to it, “what’s new up here?”

Water snow and gas snow, said the rock. And then some changes in the terrain. It sounded bemused.

“Yeah, I just bet,” Nita said, and put the rock carefully down. “Later…”

She wandered over to where Kit was standing. He, too, was in “Martian” harness and metallic kilt, his wand stuck in his belt, and he was gazing across at the spires of the city that from this height could just be glimpsed away many miles to the south, where the highlands of Aeolis Mensae ran down to the plains of Elysium. “It’s a nice location,” Kit said. “Pretty close to the equator. The weather’s as good as it’s going to get anywhere on the planet…”

And without warning they were standing up somewhere high in that city, looking down at the proud, calm people in the streets, and the little busy flying craft zipping around among the towers, more of the Shamaska going about their business. Nita looked over her shoulder and saw that the spot where they were standing was a terrace of the Scarlet Tower: and toward them came gracefully bounce-walking two people, a Shamaska female and an Eilitt male. Behind them a multi-legged, many-clawed green lizard creature was scrambling along to keep up on the polished floor.

“We thought we might see you here eventually,” Aurilelde said, smiling at Nita and Kit as they got closer. “We’re so glad you came!”

“Just look at it,” Khretef said to Kit. “It’s grown.” He gestured toward the City’s outskirts. “There have been plenty of raw materials to work with: it’s a rich world. We’ll do well here.”

“You’re running things now?” Kit said to him.

Khretef nodded. “In more ways than one. I’m the Master of the City here now, it seems. Iskard didn’t want the position: he was tired. And happy to pass rule to Aurilelde once we’d moved and were finally safe in our new home, for the stress of the old life had taken its toll. He’s got a place in the uplands now.”

“And he’s been so glad that there’s no need to fear the Eilitt anymore,” Aurilelde said. “We all have. Now we can be at peace at last.” She looked at Nita with embarrassment. “Fear can make you do such terrible things. I can’t believe the way I was thinking…”

If I was awake, Nita thought, you’d better believe I’d have something to say about that! But this didn’t seem to be the place or the time. “It was all a long time ago,” Nita said. “Or a long time from now. Let’s just forget about it. It turned out okay in the end.”

They looked out across the City. Khretef’s scorpion-pet now caught up with them, put his front end up under one of Kit’s hands, and wriggled like a puppy. Kit looked down at it, grinning, and scratched it on top of the head between the eyes. After a moment it came over to her, and Nita looked down at it, now bemused that she could ever have seen these creatures as strange or threatening. And then she caught something in its eyes, a familiar look—

I get around, said the large Presence behind the odd alien gaze. There are a lot more kinds of dogs in the universe than just the Earth ones.

Nita smiled at him, then looked over at Khretef and Aurilelde. “So the story has a happy ending,” she said.

“Ending? I don’t know that I’d call it that,” Aurilelde said. “We have our whole lives ahead of us.”

Knowing what she now knew, Nita held her smile in place and said nothing. But Khretef, who had been exchanging some silent comment with Kit, now caught her eye. “And besides,” he said, “even a short life would be a good one in this world. Once you find happiness, why sit around worrying that it might not last forever? You make what you can out of it. No point in worrying away the gift.”

He looked out to the horizon. Nita followed his glance, and realized she was not looking at the Mars of half a million years ago. Looking northward, Nita saw that Elysium Planitia was no dry plain any longer, but a mighty sea. Against the vast empty northern horizon, Elysium Mons stood up lone and splendid on its tremendous lowlying pedestal-island, silhouetted against the rose-colored afternoon. To either side of the highlands, great waterfalls poured down through chasms in the upper tablelands, draining the upland lakes around the craters Lasswitz and Wien.

Not our Mars, Nita thought. Not exactly theirs, either. But the one they found together after their time on Mars finally ended…

Kit put out a hand to Khretef. “Dai stihó,” he said. “You found your way through. Good luck with the rest of it.”

“And to you, brother,” Khretef said, clasping Kit’s arm. “Watch over your world.”

Nita looked at Aurilelde’s outheld hand, and took it in the same clasp. “Take good care of him,” she said.