Диана Дуэйн - A Wizard Of Mars

…she opened her eyes again. Standing in front of Kit was a tall, slender young girl, not red-skinned, but gray— as gray as polished stone. Around her head, smooth as a sculpture’s, clung and wavered a long rippling cloud of hair that was more like smoke than anything else and was a deep twilight blue. Her clothing did not change, and under its light veiling and the glint of her ornaments, her body merely hinted at female contours without showing the anatomical details that would have been normal for humans on Earth.

So, Nita thought, this is what the people of the First World made themselves into after they came. This is someone from Shamask-Eilith …and now, by location anyway, a Martian.

The eyes looking into Kit’s were pupilless and solid, and their depths were that same vivid dark blue, almost black: but they were expressive— hopeful and, yes, overjoyed, but also frightened. It’s as if whoever lives behind those eyes is scared this can’t be true, Nita thought. As if she sees something else happening: something much worse than this.

For just a second those indigo eyes glanced in Nita’s direction. Then immediately they looked away again, disturbed and afraid. A sense of déjà vu promptly caught hold of Nita, disturbing and dissolving the vision— but not before she remembered what it had reminded her of. That glimpse in the mirror the other morning: instead of seeing herself, seeing this stranger, with the strange implication that they were somehow connected. Somehow the same.

“Bobo,” Nita said.

At your command, imperious leader.

Nita began to wonder whether Bobo had been spending too much data-grab time slumming on the local nostalgia-TV cable channels. “That name-development and analysis utility I was using on Carmela?”

What about it?

“Run it on Kit’s welcoming committee. Save the analysis for me. I’ll look at it later.”

Running. Power deduction will be deferred until the end of the run.

“Fine.”

Nita scowled as the more accessible illusion of the Martian princess re-manifested itself—copper-skinned, doe-eyed, the perfect humanoid alien, physically gorgeous: a genuine fantasy heroine and a teenage boy’s dream. But younger than she is in the books, Nita thought, walking around the Martian princess figure and Kit as they looked into each other’s eyes and spoke words she couldn’t hear. Someone’s designed this particular apparition just for Kit. How? And why?

She stopped, folded her arms, and stood there for a few moments, trying hard to think straight and not be thrown off by her own feelings, especially when she had no information to go on. Yet suddenly it came back to Nita what that stone had said to her up on top of Elysium Mons. No one’s been here. Just him, and her. The other one.

The other one.

Nita scowled. What’s going on between them? she thought. It wasn’t like she was jealous or anything. But she knew Kit, and this sudden out-of-nowhere relationship made no sense to her. Also, there was no missing the sexy-looking component to this meeting. It was being used on Kit as some kind of way of getting at him, she was sure.

Nita frowned harder. Though she’d occasionally been curious about it, Kit’s fantasy life wasn’t her business. But someone else, someone or something associated with the Shamask-Eilith presence here on Mars, was not above exploiting it for its own purposes. And that was worrying Nita.

Especially now that she thought she knew why Mars had so long been associated with war in human thought. Nita knew from her reading in the manual that all living thought was connected—though the connections could take strange twists and turnings through space-time. Whatever the mechanism, some distant whisper of the ancient conflicts obsessing those who fled here from the First World had over the millennia filtered through into the dreams and imaginings of the beings on the next planet over. We’ve always known, Nita thought, maybe since we started writing things down. Maybe even longer.

Kit had come here looking for the romance and mystery of lost ancient life, and the possibility of resurrecting it, making contact with it, learning its secrets, helping an empty world find its life again. Nita wondered what he’d think when he found out that the Martians weren’t indigenous, but immigrants.

And based on the past behavior of the species that, it now seemed, had lain hidden on Mars for so long— assuming that the history that she and Carmela and S’reee had read or experienced in the cavern was true— the thought of having any close dealings with the Shamaska-Eilitt was making Nita nervous. To these guys, Nita thought, all was fair in war. But what about love?

She let out a long breath. The information in the Cavern of Writings had been short on details about the personal lives of the Shamaska-Eilitt. They might be very nice people, for all I know. But their behavior as a species made her think otherwise.

Still. Nita let out a breath. It’s too soon to judge. And what Kit’s been interacting with here is basically a recording: a wizardry set up to talk to someone who triggers it, and then get them to do …

…what?

Nita watched Kit and the princess start toward the gates together. Let’s just go have a look …she thought, and started to follow them. But as she did, the whole scene started to go hazy.

Uh-oh! she thought. Bobo, wait, we need to pump some energy into this thing! Shift the payout to me. I don’t mind—

But it was too late. The whole view— city, Kit, princess, and all— faded away to bare Martian landscape in a matter of just a few seconds.

Sorry, Bobo said. There wasn’t time: the illusion’s power reserve exhausted itself in something of a rush.

Nita made a face. Almost as if somebody didn’t want me to see something.

No, that’s just paranoid… “Never mind: I can get the details from Kit.”

Of course.

“Do you have that persona analysis for me?”

A pause. Unfortunately, no. The outer spell ran out of power before the full analysis could complete.

Nita let out an annoyed breath. “Can you keep working on whatever you got before the playback went down?”

Of course. Just note that it may take some time to extrapolate the missing data.

“Go for it.”

She turned away and looked toward the Sun. Down low, near the horizon, she could see that little spark of blue-white fire twinkling slightly in the troubled air. “Dust storm coming up,” she said under her breath. “Well, I want some lunch, and I can catch up with Kit afterwards. Let’s get back.”

***

The Rodriguez household was not exactly in an uproar when he got back, but a sense of disruption was clear when Kit came in the back door. There were suitcases in the back hall and in the kitchen, and voices in the living room, laughing and talking very fast: Kit’s mama— the deeper of the two voices, more of a contralto— and Helena’s soprano.

Kit swallowed and headed into the living room. His mama was in scrubs, having apparently come from work over her lunch hour. Carmela was there, too, sprawled on the couch. And in the midst of everything, sitting on the floor and going through the contents of another suitcase and dividing them between two piles destined for the laundry, was Helena.

Kit had always considered her as more or less a larger version of Carmela: a little taller, a little longer-faced, with darker, bigger eyes; broader across the shoulders and in the chest, definitely bigger in the hips. But Helena had dropped some weight since she’d gone away in September, which surprised him—and the new haircut, level with her jawline but short in back, left Kit wondering whether Helena had decided that she wanted to look as little like her little sister as possible.