Диана Дуэйн - A Wizard Of Mars

They continued their walk up the broad, paved way toward the city gates. About halfway there, Nita started feeling undressed. She looked down at her sweatshirt and jeans—

Or where they should have been. They were a lot less “here” now. It wasn’t that the ornaments and delicate draperies, the gems and gleaming precious metals weren’t pretty in a very exotic way. But for Nita, the thought of anybody seeing her dressed like this, especially Kit, immediately brought on a blush.

Mamvish glanced at her. “What’s the matter?”

“I, uh—” Nita grabbed at what was draped around her hips and passed for a skirt, at least in places. It was hard to get hold of, more like being dressed in faded blue-denim fog than anything else— and its opacity was subject to change without notice. “This isn’t exactly, I mean, it’s not what I usually—”

“Oh, come on, Nita,” Mamvish said as she ambled along, “it’s their reality, for the moment. We must play here if we’re to win here. What is it your people say? Snort it up?”

“Suck it up,” Nita said, and suited the action to the word, pulling in her stomach. It only hangs over a little bit, she thought. And the top doesn’t really look that bad. If there was just a little more fog between the metal bits, it might actually—

“You need to stop allowing yourself to get so self-absorbed,” Mamvish said as they got closer to the gates. “You’re a wizard! You should be well past the point in your practice where body taboos are an issue. You’ve been off-world enough now, spent time on the High Road: act the dignity of your role and stop looking like a nervous teenager!”

I am a nervous teenager! Nita thought. But she said nothing more for the moment, just concentrated on trying to walk tall. Her mother always used to say to her, When you’re embarrassed, make yourself taller. It covers.

And the covering, Nita thought as she tried to get rid of the last vestiges of panic, is exactly what I need about now!The chilly wind was playing with the long, diaphanous draperies about her hips, and no attempt of Nita’s would get them to lie down. Finally she gave up trying. She had everything she needed. What had happened to the sandwich she wasn’t sure, but her manual was in a little pouch hanging on the right side of her low-slung belt, and her wand was in an elaborately chased metal sheath on the left. And Mamvish is right. I’m a wizard. Clothes don’t make any difference to that! Though she was left uncertain whether the goosebumps she was suffering were due to the clothes or her emotional state . .

Mamvish paused. “What is it with the gravity here?” she said, shuffling her feet and glancing around her. “I don’t feel quite right. Synesthesias of some kind…”

Nita stopped and gave her a look. “What?”

“I don’t know what’s causing it,” Mamvish said, “but it’s as if—” She looked down at her feet.

Her mouth dropped open. Her eyes wiggled as if they were trying to go around. Nita, caught off guard, tried to choke down her laughter, and failed. “Wait a minute. You mean you didn’t notice?”

A growl started rumbling somewhere inside Mamvish. “What— am— I?”

“You’re a thoat. They’re—” Oh, god, how can I say it? Never mind, just look at her face! Stop laughing, stop laughing! “In the stories, they’re a beast of burden. Not very smart. People ride them.”

The growl got louder. It took Nita a few moments to get control of her laughter. “Come on, Mamvish!” Nita said. “You ought to be past being shape-proud by now! A wizard like you has the power to look like anything she wants, and you ought to know the seeming’s not the self.” She started snickering again. “So act the dignity of your role. Snort it up!”

The thoat-eyes could be surprisingly expressive. They flared with annoyance, and then came a brief flurry of furious tantrum-based foot-stamping, even more impressive with all a thoat’s legs than with Mamvish’s own. Dust flew up from the pink-white Martian road until it almost concealed her. “This is so embarrassing, what if anybody ever hears about this, some kind of gratuitous insult, do they even know why I, how can this possibly, why do I even bother, don’t these people know why I—”

Nita turned away, as there was no point in Mamvish being made worse by watching Nita fail to control her grin. Increasing entropy locally is bad, bad, bad. She’s a baby wizard still; don’t laugh any more, don’t, just don’t!

Nita got control of herself long before Mamvish did. But finally the stomping and muttering stopped, and Nita turned back to see Mamvish staring morosely at her thoat feet. “I suppose,” she said, “it wasn’t meant personally.”

And what will she do if it ever turns out it was? I’m tempted to tell her …No, no, no! Nita kept her face straight. “Wouldn’t know how it could be,” she said, which was true.

“Hmmmmmfffff,” Mamvish said, a huge blown-out exclamation of resignation and annoyance. Then she put her head up high. “Work to do,” she said. “Let’s go do it.”

“Bobo,” Nita said as they got closer to the city, “what about your tap on Kit’s manual? Is there anything about what’s going on in there?”

The tap is not active at the moment, as he could not bring it with him because of the ban. But there is some stored material that he was considering before he came. Information about persons, motivations.

“Let me have it all! And hurry up.”

Nita quickly found herself blushing hot in increasing discomfort as she browsed through entirely too much of Kit’s recent stream-of-consciousness. But this is gonna be very useful, I can’t deny that. Even if this really is not stuff I want to be seeing! Never mind, just make the most of it—

Shortly they came up to the great sheer metal gates and stood there for a moment, looking upward. The gates remained obstinately closed.

“Maybe they don’t know we’re coming…” Nita said. But immediately after she said it, she was certain that wasn’t true.

“Oh, they know,” Mamvish said. “I can hear them.” She flourished her thoat-tail. “So let’s go see how this will proceed.”

And the next second, they were standing in a high Tower room where light poured in from the pink-white sun overhead, and white clouds chased across that blue sky. And in the center of the room stood three people around a broad red sandstone bench: and a fourth one sat there on the bench, wearing at her throat a sharp oblong Shard of light burning fiercely violet even in the full light of day.

Gathered all around the sides of the great circular room were many men and women in the metal harness and light draperies of the Shamaska-Eilitt. All their dark eyes were turned to Mamvish and Nita as they walked up to the bench-throne, and Nita found it very strange to pass among them— like walking through a congress of living, breathing statues in all shades of gray, and all the faces smooth and immobile. Here and there among them were the green metal scorpions, sitting or crouching against the polished floor, watching the newcomers with all their eyes, scissoring their claws gently together. But most of Nita’s attention was on the Throne. There was Iskard, and the dark Rorsik behind him, at a little distance, watching with a cold face; and standing next to the bench-throne, Khretef.

Kit! Nita insisted to herself: and she spoke to him silently. Kit! But he was gray and stony, dressed like one of them, looking like one of them, except that he looked like Kit as well. His eyes didn’t react to hers when she looked into them: she was just another stranger walking in. And on the Throne sat Aurilelde, with the violet-blue fire of the Shard clinging to the smooth gray flesh above her gemmed metal bodice— and about her, an echo of its glow that was coming from something else, something inside her, the faintest possible rosy light—