Диана Дуэйн - A Wizard Of Mars

“It can’t be,” Nita said to herself. “Can’t be…”

Carmela was shaking her head as she peered at the smallest markings, furthest from the engraved Sun. “They keep finding these little bitty ones way out at the edge. I can never keep track of how many there are.”

“Dwarf planets,” Nita said. “Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.”

Carmela glanced at Nita, picking up on something in her voice. “What’s the matter with them?”

Nita made a face. “Pluto’s still a planet to me,” she said. “Call me stubborn. But there’s another problem. Look at that fifth one. It’s further out than the others, and not in line. Like it doesn’t belong here…”

“There’s another diagram over here, in this next column,” Carmela said. “This one’s got twelve.”

Nita went over to look at the second diagram. This one showed an empty place where the fifth world’s orbit had been: a gap. “So that’s where the asteroid belt would be?” Carmela said.

“It looks like this gap would match their orbit…” Nita said.

“And the furthest worldlet is missing,” S’reee said. “A captured world that got lost again, perhaps?”

“It happens,” Nita said. “That far out in the system, the Sun’s gravity’s not so big a deal as it is closer in.” But her main attention was on the empty space between Mars and Jupiter.

Carmela was looking at that, too. “So the asteroids are actually from this fifth planet blowing up?”

Nita shook her head. “Mela, a lot of people have had that idea, but it doesn’t work, because all the stuff in the asteroid belt put together isn’t enough to make a planet, even a small one. Definitely not enough to make a planet the size of the one in that picture.”

Carmela glanced over to the right of the second image, where there was another column full of writing. After a second she shrugged and started to walk away— then paused and turned back, giving the column a strange look. “That was weird. Just out of the corner of my eye, I saw something.” She put up a hand to touch the characters, squinting.

“More light?” Nita said, lifting the wand.

Carmela waved her away. “Less might be better.”

Nita shook the rowan wand down to a fainter light. “Yeah,” Carmela said. She tilted her head to one side, looking at the characters. “Something— went, went to the—” She paused again. “It found the— something or other. I don’t know what that is. Then— but the sword—” Carmela grimaced in annoyance. “Dammit, it won’t hold still—”

“Can you actually read this stuff?” Nita said.

Carmela’s annoyance was fading into perplexity. “Some of it. Most of it looks like nonsense marks.” She shook her head. “Until it jumps, somehow, and parts make sense. I don’t get it.”

“I wonder,” S’reee said, drifting over to peer over Carmela’s shoulder. “K!aarmii’lha, you came to understand the Speech pretty quickly, didn’t you, for someone who’s not a wizard? Were you studying other languages first?”

“Yeah,” Carmela said, looking over her shoulder at her. “I did German in school, and then I started picking up Japanese, for manga and anime. And Italian, and some French. And when I started hearing Kit using the Speech, I started seeing it on the alien cable channels, and I don’t know, I just—” She shrugged. “Started picking it up.”

“You know,” S’reee said, “you may have some version of the steganographic gift.”

Nita glanced over at S’reee. “Is that good?”

“Possibly good for us,” S’reee said as Carmela worked her way down the graven wall, her lips moving as she traced the symbols with one finger. “Other linguistic gifts can come with it. But mostly it implies the ability to pull context out of writings when the writers’ culture has left no other trace. It’s an intuition rather than a skill. K!aarmii’lha, do you mind donating what you see to the manual system?”

“Huh?” She was peering more closely at some of the characters. “No, sure. What do I need to do?”

“Nothing,” S’reee said. “I’ll have a word with the Sea—”

Tell her there’s no need, the peridexis said in Nita’s head. I’ll have the data assumed into the system as she works.

“Bobo’s on it, S’reee,” Nita said. “He’ll handle it the same way the manuals pull in data off TV and the Web on demand.” She went over to stand by Carmela, reaching out to the incised characters again: but they had nothing to say to her.

“What do you see, K!aarmii’lha?” S’reee said.

“Weird stuff…”

S’reee made a long, bubbling moan of laughter. “More detail, please?”

Carmela stood with hands on hips, staring at the wall. “This part is something about food,” she said. “For all I know, I’m looking at somebody’s shopping list.” She turned away. “This thing needs an index. Or a table of contents. If I were an index, where would I be?”

“By the door?” Nita said.

Carmela headed back to the doorway, where she began studying its edges. After a moment, she said, “Nope. If there is an index, they’re not thinking about it the way we do.”

“Let me go topside and see if there’s anything different from what’s here,” S’reee said. She angled her body up and swam upward through the darkness toward the zenith of the bubble-dome, her little school of lightfish darting upward with her.

Carmela leaned against the wall, gazing into the darkness, thinking. “Maybe they wouldn’t put an index out at the edges,” she said, “but in the middle?”

“Makes sense to run with your hunches on this one,” Nita said. Together they walked across the great expanse of dark floor. Nita pulled out her manual, holding the wand underneath it to light the floor where they were walking, and started paging through the book in search of “steganography.”

Carmela craned her neck up to see where S’reee was headed. “How high do you think that is?”

Nita paused, glanced up. “Two hundred feet?”

“Might be.”

Nita shook her head and kept walking, her attention on the manual. “Well,” Carmela said, “I guess the shopping can wait a while longer.”

Nita snickered. “You sure? Don’t let us keep you. We’ve only stumbled into some kind of alien library thousands of years old. You really sure you wouldn’t rather be trying on designer exoskeletons or something at the Crossings?”

“Oh, Juanita Louise…” Carmela said, shaking her head as they made their way through the darkness. “You are mean to tease me.”

“Carmela, you just keep on saying that word!”

“Yup. And I’ll say it again unless you appease me,” Carmela said, peering through the dimness at the floor ahead of them.

Nita rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. Every time you say my middle name, I’ll say yours!”

“Like I care!” Carmela laughed, glancing around them. “Go on! I’ll help you. Emeda! Emeda, Emeda, Emeda!”

Nita shook her head, the irritation passing; it was hard to think petty, mundane thoughts for long when surrounded by such massive and ancient strangeness. “Mine’s just a pain, but yours is weird,” Nita said.

“Why did they hang that on you?”

“It’s my aunts’ and uncle’s fault,” Carmela said. “Mama said they were fighting so much over which one was going to be my middle name, she took all their initials and made a new name out of them.”

Nita cracked up. “I bet that shut them up.”

“Nope,” Carmela said. “Auntie Emma and Tante Elle are still arguing over which of them is the first E. And I won’t tell them, because it’s too much fun listening to them fight.” She paused, looking ahead. “Neets, you see that?”