Диана Дуэйн - A Wizard Of Mars

“Good,” Nita said. “Bobo, we need to get over there, anyway— check out the ground; see what we can find out about what’s going on. Because Kit has business on Earth.”

I should be able to inject you three into the space where the wizardry is running, Bobo said. But it sounded dubious.

“I know that tone,” Nita said. “Are you suggesting that doing this might be dangerous for Kit?”

I have insufficient data for such a suggestion. But the wizardry running in the vicinity of Hutton crater is already under some strain. There’s a possibility that it might fail completely if too much stress is put on it— which attempting to inject you into the structure of the wizardry itself might cause. And should it fail, it is difficult to predict what the effects would be on Kit, as the spell presently running is doing so under a structure cloak.

That made Nita stop and think. Such cloaks were used by wizards who were working spells in a competitive environment— one where they were concerned about other wizards discovering and possibly appropriating parts of their spells. It wasn’t a mode that Earth wizards usually found themselves working in these days. WIzardry as practiced on the planet in this day and age was routinely seen as a cooperative effort. But it hadn’t always been this way, and Nita knew that on many other planets it still wasn’t so, for cultural or psychological reasons.

Ronan was frowning. “So even you can’t see the details of what the spell is that’s working inside the cloak,” he said.

No, the peridexis said.

Nita shook her head. “A spell always works,” she said. “Even wizardry itself can’t stop a spell that’s running, or break the rules it’s running under.” And she got a sly look. “But if we can change the conditions of the area where it’s running—”

By simply forcing the issue and presenting your transit into that area as a fait accompli, which would cause the spell to lapse without actually failing. Normally the structure of wizardry itself would not allow such a transit. And Bobo sounded momentarily smug. But since I am wizardry—

Darryl was looking confused. “You said that spell was personality-keyed?” he said. “To Kit?”

There is another personality named in the key as well, Bobo said. But I cannot determine anything further about it due to the cloak.

Nita shook her head. “Don’t know what to make of that. We can ask Kit after we get him out of there. Meanwhile—” She grinned. “Let’s get down there, find out what the rules of the game are, and change ’em. You two ready?”

Ronan and Darryl nodded.

They all vanished.

***

In front of the gates of the mythical Barsoomian city of Helium, Kit was looking with amazement into the eyes of the girl who was holding his hand. “Uh,” he said, “…hi!”

She burst out laughing at him, caught his free hand in her other one, and squeezed them both. The laughter was so delighted and overjoyed that Kit wasn’t made at all uncomfortable by it. What threw him, though, was the look in the stranger’s eyes. It was absolute certainty, comfortable recognition, and a strange sort of unspoken relief at his presence— a sense that now that he was here, everything would be okay. Kit stood there gazing at her and trying to figure out where he normally saw a look like that. Then he realized: Nita looked at him that way.

But Nita wasn’t here… and this was somebody Kit had never met.

She was laughing again. “Oh, Khretef,” she said, “what’s this strange look you’re wearing? You’d think you had never stood here before!” But then she paused, looking at him more closely. “Is there something I’m missing? A long time you’ve been gone, yes, a long journey, but maybe something else needs saying between us?”

Uh— how about ‘Who the heck are you and what’s going on here?’ Kit thought. But aloud he said, “Well, just that I’m on errantry, and I greet you—”

Her eyes didn’t leave his: but some of the joy ebbed out of her expression, and Kit found himself very sorry to see it go. “Well, of course,” she said, her voice trying hard to keep its certainty, “of course you’re a wizard, Khretef; how else could we be here? How else would you have won me? And my father is waiting for you, he’ll have no choice now but to admit that you were right! But what’s the matter? Has something happened on the way—?”

Kit blinked. This was not at all like being shot at by war machines or rubber-suited spacemen: and as those pretty dark eyes searched his for some clue as to what was wrong with him, Kit started wondering whether he preferred the more impersonal style of interaction with these scenarios. He had to work hard to remember the superegg, to keep reminding himself that what was happening here was a key to what had really happened on Mars in the ancient days— something he had to be as tough in handling as he had been with the metal scorpion-beasts.

“My name’s not Khretef,” he said finally, trying not to say it in a way that would hurt her. “It’s Kit.”

She looked actively confused. “Is this some quest-name you’ve taken along the way?” she said softly. “Something wizardly? Of course I don’t understand all the things you have to do in your art, not the way my father would—”

“No,” Kit said. “It’s just my name.” He paused: she knew him and there was no way he was going to be able to ask her this without hurting her, so he just said it. “What’s yours?”

She took a long breath. All this while her eyes had never left his; now at last they glanced away toward the distant, hazy horizon, as if for a moment she couldn’t bear what was happening. But then she steeled herself, looked back at him. She dropped his hands, straightened up, tilted her chin up.

“Perhaps I see,” she said. “This is some matter of spelling that you’re forbidden to describe to me: forbidden even to hint at. Well enough. It won’t be said that Iskard’s daughter is less able for the challenge than the warrior-wizard who went out to save us and now returns.” And without warning, that smile came back to her face and her eyes: though this time there was a little edge of wry challenge on it, something that said, When you’re finished with this game, I’m going to take it out of your hide!

She tossed her head, and that wonderful hair rippled lightly around her. “Aurilelde I am,” she said, and suddenly she seemed significantly taller than Kit, and unquestionably far more regal. “Iskard Tawan Shamaska is my father: the en-Tawa Shamaska are my people, and this is our city Prevek.” She glanced over her shoulder at the walls and the towers, then back to Kit. “And you,” she said, that glint of challenge catching fire in her eye again, “are Khretef Radrahla Eilithen, son of the Ardat Eilittri, whose name is not spoken—” Then she grinned at him. “But Kit we’ll call you, since you say that’s who you are today.”

Kit had to smile back. The difference between this encounter with another Mars and the previous two was getting more pronounced all the time: he had half expected Aurilelde to name herself after a princess of Mars, or rather of Burroughs’s Mars, old Barsoom. But the reconstruction seemed not to be going quite that far this time. “Aurilelde,” he said.

“Kit,” she said. She gave him a level look. “Well, let’s go in and see my father, since you’ve returned,” she said. “But Father will wonder if we’ve fallen out, when he sees the set of your face, and of mine. And so much rides on this. Can you tell me nothing about why you won’t avouch your right name?”

Kit was wondering where to go from here: but since he was inside this scenario, and it wasn’t trying to kill him, it seemed smartest to play along. “I can’t,” he said as they turned toward the city gates. “Maybe it would be simplest just to say that there’s a lot I don’t remember—”