Диана Дуэйн - A Wizard Of Mars

She sat back in the chair. Even the guys were clear they were being tested for something. At the very least, that they were wizards. But maybe something else, too. Possibly to see whose mindview was closest to the Martians’?

Nita picked up her tea mug and had a swig. She couldn’t get rid of the feeling that there was something about this situation that Kit was hiding specifically from her. The hurt this was creating in her at the moment was all out of proportion to any real reason for it, but that didn’t make it easier for Nita to bear. And she kept trying to reason his behavior away, and failing.

We’ve been through a lot together. All kinds of crap. But we’ve never gone out of our way to hide stuff from each other.

There could be something bad going on with him and this connection to Miss Martian Princess, Nita thought. Some bad influence. It’s happened before. Sometimes it’s taken some work to get him out of trouble.

Big deal, though! He’s done the same for me.

But why doesn’t it feel like that’s what’s happening this time? It’s something else. I just know it. Something he doesn’t want me to know about.

And what could it be?! She banged her mug down on the table, and tea splashed out of it. Nita didn’t care, just sat staring at the splashed droplets. Crap! Crap, crap, crap !

“You drop something?” her dad said from the living room.

“Huh? Oh no, sorry.”

Nita scowled. If only there was some way to get at what he was really thinking. Something like the live stuff coming out of Dairine’s manual, the “streaming consciousness…

And then she stopped as the idea came into her head.

If it worked on Dairine’s manual, she thought, it would work on Kit’s.

She held still for some moments longer. Then she said, “Bobo?”

You rang?

“You say something, honey?”

“Just talking to Bobo, Daddy.”

“Oh, okay.” And a snort, as if this was now just another amusing part of day-to-day life.

Nita took another drink of her tea. “The thing you did to Spot,” she said. “Or to his manual functions—” She stopped again.

Yes?

“Could you do that to Kit’s manual?”

It was some moments before Bobo said anything. Spot gave consent.

Nita swallowed. That was the point, of course. And Bobo hadn’t actually answered her question. “But you could do it.”

If a wizard feels that a wizardry is not in contravention of the Oath, Bobo said, or is certain beyond any reasonable doubt that a given spell is required to fulfill the conditions of the Oath, then that wizardry can be implemented and will execute.

Nita sat there and just thought for a minute, then two.

She found that she was trembling. Certain beyond any reasonable doubt.

The problem was that doubt was all she had at the moment. It is impossible to serve the Lone Power directly: that was one of the most basic tenets of wizardry. The power itself would refuse to be used in such ways. But there were lots of ways the Lone One could get you to do Its will indirectly. In fact, It preferred those. It liked, whenever It could, to get wizards into situations where they felt that the only way to do right was by doing something that would later turn out to be wrong.

Am I sure I’m really wanting to do this because it’s right? And not just because I’m scared that she’s really the one that he— that Kit and I— that I have to know if he—

She swallowed. “It’s all about the situation you’re in, isn’t it?” Nita said under her breath. “It all comes down to how it looks to you.” She took a long breath. “Free will.”

The Worlds are based on it, Bobo said. The One has no interest in inhabiting a universe full of puppets.

“Even though we get it wrong a whole lot?”

Apparently the benefits are felt to offset the dangers, the peridexis said. Or counterbalance them.

“Doesn’t make me feel any better,” Nita muttered. “Because I’m not sure which side I’m coming down on.”

Yet she did know. It was wrong, wrong to tamper with the private insides of someone’s brain. This was why the psychotropic wizardries tended to backlash so violently on the user. And this would be only a step away from that. It was like stealing Dairine’s diary and reading it, that time.

But I can’t get rid of the feeling that if I don’t stop him from what he’s doing, bad things are going to happen. I think he’s in danger somehow. And I don’t know if it’s just me thinking that because I want to think that… or because it’s real.

Nita hid her face in her hands. If this is what adult wizardry is going to be like, she thought, I prefer the kid kind. More clean-cut. More obvious.

But she had the horrible feeling that her preferences weren’t at all the issue here. And worse, the fact that Bobo still hadn’t clearly answered her question told Nita something she didn’t want to know: that if she told him to bug Kit’s manual— or his brain— and she was convinced that this was the right thing to do, then Bobo would do it.

Nita’s mouth was dry. It suddenly seemed to her that, from the time she took the Oath until now, she had been using some kind of wizardry that had kiddie-gates installed at the top of the stairs. But now she had a way to get the gate off. Now it was entirely up to her what she did with the power. All I have to do is convince myself that what I’m doing is right.

And it would be so easy to do that. Too easy.

Nita put her head down on the table and was tempted to moan, except that in the living room they might have heard her. In there she could hear her dad quietly talking to Dairine: actually talking to her, not angrily, just a normal conversation, despite the uncomfortable way things had been going just a few days ago.

And that’s because of what I did to her manual. Or is it because of what Dad saw there, and it bothered him so much that he didn’t want to see any more?

Oh God, I don’t know what to do about any of this!!

But she did. Right now, at least, Nita was sure that what she was considering was wrong. If it sounds like something the Lone Power would suggest… if it walks like the Lone Power, and quacks like the Lone Power…

And she was suddenly caught completely off guard by the image of the Lone One as an evil duck— a black duck in a shiny black helmet, and maybe even a cape, waddling along to ominous movie music. Nita burst out laughing at the image. She could just hear the noise Its breathing would make, a dreadful asthmatic snerking—

She laughed a lot harder at the thought. “Bobo being funny in there?” her dad said.

Nita couldn’t stop laughing to answer him.

“Stress,” Dairine said, sounding dry. “She’s got that hysterical sound.”

This was possibly true, but Nita was still laughing so hard she could barely breathe. Finally she choked herself back into some kind of control, wiping her eyes and snickering, even though the thoughts behind it were pretty serious. Yeah, I’ll have to watch out… keep an eye on how I’m thinking. This is a really big deal we’re involved in here, and It’ll move in the first second It catches somebody getting careless. Nonetheless, the thought of ultimate Evil coming after her in the shape of a duck was strangely reassuring. Lone One or not, a duck I could handle.

Nita caught the laughter trying to start again, and stopped it. But what a way to get up the Lone One’s nose, she thought… Or beak. She allowed herself a last giggle. It’s so hung up on being taken dead seriously. Pull that line on It, and who knows, It might do that cartoon thing: get so mad, It’ll make a mistake…

Finally Nita sighed and got up to get a sponge so that she could clean the tea off the table before it dried sticky. She picked up the mug and wiped up wet tea from underneath it, and put the mug down again, and then froze as the room abruptly blanked out around her.