Диана Дуэйн - A Wizard Of Mars

Kit paused, then, bouncing in place for a moment in the midst of the wide boulevard. The shining, unbroken expanse of the huge gates before him had suddenly developed a dark seam. They’re opening—

He headed toward the gates again, picking up the pace. Ahead of him the gates continued to open, revealing an interior at first shadowed by the walls, then glinting in the sunlight that the opening was letting in, so that Kit got a slowly broadening view of the massive bases of the towers inside.

Down at ground level, tiny against the gates, a single form slipped out through the widening opening and made its way toward him. It was bouncing along as Kit was, but so gracefully that the motion was more like a dance. Something dark was waving along behind it. What is that, some kind of veil—?

But as the two of them drew closer together, Kit realized that what he was seeing was long, long dark hair, rippling as easily as water or smoke in the morning breeze and the lighter gravity. The figure approaching him was just slightly taller than he was, coppery-skinned like everyone else here, and wearing the same kind of handsome ornaments around throat and wrists and ankles and waist, flashing blindingly pink-white where the clear sunlight caught them—

She slowed down as she got closer. Kit became aware that he was staring …and he didn’t care. Here was someone who’d also been a drawing in the margin of his notebook, and once again this unexpected and stunningly fleshed-out reality far surpassed the uncertain, much-corrected sketch.

She couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than he was. Wide, dark eyes; a heartshaped face; long, long slender legs— and besides the gorgeous jewelry, she wasn’t wearing a whole lot. This is definitely not exactly Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Kit thought, wavering between embarrassment and a slightly hungry fascination, because she’s actually got some clothes on …though calling a few wisps and drifts of something like blue smoke “clothes” might be stretching the point. Kit started wondering whether the inaccuracy was due to the power running this illusion, or some backstage piece of his mind chickening out on him. But then the thought went out of his head as the girl approaching him got close enough to see his face clearly.

Her whole face changed. Her expression had been merely hopeful before: now it became one of unalloyed joy. She hurried to him, exerting such perfect control over her movements in the light gravity that she came to an effortless, bounceless halt right in front of Kit, close enough to reach out and take his hand— which she did.

Kit blushed all over. What is this? said one part of his mind: while the rest of him, mind and body together, said Wow, look at her, she’s— just wow…!

That was when she spoke, in a soft, small voice that was almost inaudible with astonishment. “You are here at last!” the girl said. “I cannot believe it. You’re here at last.”

She stood there holding Kit’s hand as if she never wanted to let go of it, gazing into his eyes, and put up her other hand to touch his face.

“Welcome home, my warrior,” she said. “Oh, welcome home!”

10: Burroughs

Nita appeared in a puff of browny-beige dust and came down on the ground with a slight jar. She glanced around the stony red landscape, taking it all in; the little Spirit rover off to one side, and the still-settling smoke from what appeared to be a recent explosion. What the heck have they been doing here? she thought. “Kit?”

“You just missed him,” said a voice from behind her.

She turned. Sitting there on a large sandstony-looking rock were Ronan and Darryl, looking at her with amusement. Darryl turned to Ronan. “You owe me a fiver,” he said.

Ronan rolled his eyes, dug around in his pocket for a moment, and came up with a bill, which he stuffed into Darryl’s held-out hand. Darryl accepted it with a smirk, then stared at it as he unrolled it. “Wait a minute,” Darryl said, annoyed, “this isn’t even from Earth!”

“So stop whinging,” Ronan said, “and go get it changed!” He gave Nita an ironical look. “You’d think he couldn’t even get off the planet, the way he carries on.”

Nita gave them a look and stepped away for a moment, as they were plainly in one of those boy moods that involved being as unhelpful as possible. The rover was sitting quietly by itself, for all the world as if it was having a perfectly ordinary day; whatever had been going on around here, it seemed unaffected. “Where’d he go?”

“A crater called Hutton,” Ronan said. “About five minutes ago.”

“He was okay when we talked to him last,” Darryl said.

Nita turned back toward them. “Was okay?” she said. “You mean you’re not in touch with him now?”

Ronan stood up and dusted himself off. “No,” he said. “We’ve been trying to reach him since just before you turned up.”

She stared at them in concern and surprise. “Well, if you can’t reach him,” Nita said, “why the heck haven’t you gone over there to find out what’s going on?”

“Because we can’t,” Ronan said, sounding annoyed. “The site’s blocked for transit.”

Nita let out a long breath as annoyed as Ronan’s. “Dammit,” she said, “this keeps happening…” And she didn’t like the sound of it. “Okay,” she said under her breath, “we’ll see about that. Bobo?”

But that was when her phone went off, loudly starting to sing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” from deep in her jeans pocket. “Now what?” Nita muttered, pulling the phone out and hitting the “answer” button. “Yeah?”

“Neets?” Carmela’s voice said. “I dropped S’reee off in Great South Bay, and I’m back home now. But I find that we have a little situation going on here…”

“Here, too,” Nita said. “You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”

“Three words,” Carmela said. “Helena’s home early.”

“Oh God,” Nita said.

“I’ve been trying to get through to Kit,” Carmela said, “but I can’t reach his phone. Neither can Mama or Pop. I tried using the closet to get over there, but it won’t let me: keeps blathering about some kind of local limitation. And the Aged Parents are going to throw some kind of non-tasteful fit if he doesn’t turn up pretty soon, because we’re supposed to be having a big happy family reunion right about now, and we are, as you might say, missing an element. You have any luck reaching him yet?”

“Working on that right now,” Nita said. “Give me ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Okay,” Carmela said. “Just tell him this is not negotiable, and he needs to hurry.”

“Gotcha,” Nita said. She hung up and stuffed the phone in her pocket, then turned to Darryl and Ronan. “You two coming?” she said.

Darryl jumped up, dusting himself off. “Now, where were we?” Nita said.

You were about to let me do what I do best, Bobo said. Handle the fiddly stuff for you.

Nita briefly made a wry face at the concept of wizardry itself wanting her to view it as a laborsaving device. “Okay,” she said, “get handling. But what’s going on over there? Why’s that site blocked?”

The wizardry running over there is personality-keyed, Bobo said after a moment. It has been built to exclude intrusions until it has run its course.

“Oh, great,” Nita said.

“Problem?” Darryl said.

“Yeah,” Nita said. “You might say that. Bobo, do you mind allowing these two to hear you as well? Just so they’ll stop staring at me as if I’ve gone insane.”

Ronan and Darryl suddenly acquired extremely innocent expressions. That’s not a problem, the peridexis said in a pleasant tenor, like that of a very high-end television announcer.