Диана Дуэйн - Wizards At War

Sker’ret held all his eyes still, the only time since she’d come home from the holidays that Nita could remember seeing him do that. “Thank you,” Sker’ret said. “Seriously, I thank you. I’ll be back in a while.”

And he poured himself through his own worldgate at some speed, vanishing into the darkness of the interface segment after segment, until nothing was left.

Oh, God, did I insult him somehow? I hope not. But now for my own problems…

Nita went up the cellar stairs and into the kitchen. Outside in the driveway she could still hear Dairine’s and Roshaun’s voices raised, and then Carmela’s laughter. Nita shook her head, amused. Dairine and Roshaun, she thought. I don’t get it. They’re too much alike: he ought to drive her nuts. In fact, it sounds like he is driving her nuts … But maybe that’s it, Nita thought, picking up the wireless phone from its cradle. Maybe she likes the challenge. Looks like she’s picked herself a big one.

Nita stared at the phone, once more envying wizards who practiced in cultures where they didn’t have to work undercover. Though the visual effects of wizardry often went without being noticed by ordinary humans, you couldn’t absolutely count on it. And a “passive” effect, like one’s absence for three weeks when they were supposed to be in school, would definitely get noticed. I’ve got no choice, Nita thought. But I wish I didn’t have to make the call.

Nita fiddled with the phone until it consented to display the number that had been given her for use in emergencies. She looked at the name: Millman, Robert. And right under it, the entry that her dad refused to erase: Mom (cellphone).

Nita sighed and punched the dial button. After a few moments’ silence, the phone at the other end started ringing. It rang seven or eight times, and Nita stood there thinking, What do I say to him, exactly? She had been surprised enough to find out that the school psychologist even knew there were wizards, let alone that he knew some personally. But she had no idea how much they might have told him about what the practice of wizardry was like.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Millman?”

“Speaking; what can—Nita?” There was a second’s hesitation while she imagined him putting on his professional hat in case it was needed. “How’s your break going?”

“Uh, it got kind of complicated.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. But everything else isn’t.”

“I see. What can you tell me about that?”

Professional hat maybe, but not professional voice. He sounded the way he always did, absolutely unruffled, ready to let you set matters out at your own speed. Nita had found Millman surprisingly easy to talk to, even before he let her know that he knew wizards and wizardry existed. “I’m still trying to figure that out,” Nita said.

“You know that what you say is safe with me,” Mr. Millman said.

“Yeah. But it’s your safety I’m concerned about. It wouldn’t be very nice to get you all unstable.”

“I’ll take my chances that I can cope with whatever weirdness you’re about to drop on me. Tell me what you need.”

“Right now … some time off.”

“Meaning time after your spring break ends?”

“Yes.”

“On mental-health grounds, I take it?”

“Yeah.”

There was a brief silence. “Not that such things are impossible to arrange,” Millman said, “but—”

“I wouldn’t be asking you about this unless it was serious.”

“Okay. If I’m right in thinking that this has something to do with your break so far, you should tell me about how that went.”

“Uh…” The question, as always, was just how much to tell him. “We went off-world on sort of a student-exchange program,” Nita said. “It was pretty nice, most of the time.”

“But there were problems.”

“Yeah.” She had to restrain the temptation to yell down the phone, Problems? You bet, because they sent us to Paradise, and we found out the snake was still living in it. And if that wasn’t weird enough, the snake was sort of on our side for a change! Mostly. But even had Nita felt comfortable telling Millman about it, she hadn’t yet found the words to explain, even to herself, why the experience still unnerved her so.

“From the sound of what you’re not saying,” Millman said, “I gather you’re still processing the results. What’s going on that makes you need this extra time off?”

“There’s about to be trouble with the older wizards,” Nita said.

“The Seniors?”

“All the adult wizards. And there’s an incoming threat that we’ve got to find out how to cope with, in a hurry.”

“You couldn’t possibly tell me anything about what’s causing this threat?”

“I wish I could,” Nita said. “Even the older wizards don’t understand it completely yet … and they don’t know what to do about it. That’s what we’re going to have to figure out. And I really don’t know if I feel up to this!”

“But you don’t feel you have any choice, it sounds like.”

“None at all.”

“Dairine’s having to deal with this situation, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Anyone else I should know about?”

“Kit, too,” she said. Millman knew he was a wizard as well, but no more than that.

There was more silence. “This is problematic,” Millman said. “Especially since I haven’t been seeing Kit professionally. The school system would buy into the concept for you and Dairine, since we’ve been working together for a while. But as for Kit… And I’m reluctant to lie about this, not just because lying is wrong, but because it undermines my relationship and my contract with the school.”

“I know,” Nita said.

There was another silence. Finally, in a changed tone of voice, Millman said, “This kind of lost school time is not good, especially with your aptitude tests coming up.”

“If we don’t do something pretty drastic right away,” Nita said, “there may not be a planet to have aptitude tests on for very long. Or there might be a planet… but no one left on it.”

She could just hear Millman thinking. “You need to understand,” he said after a moment, “that just because we share the same privileged information about your special talents, I’m not to be routinely considered as a get-out-of-jail card. This gambit isn’t going to work more than once. Just so you know.”

Nita rolled her eyes. “Being in this situation again is the very, very last thing on my mind.”

“Good.” He was silent for a little longer. “How long do you think you’ll need?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“Well,” Millman said at last, “I can cover for you for ten days, tops. I can pull Kit under the umbrella as well by telling the school that something came up for him over the spring break: something crucial that needs to be sorted out. Would that be true?”

“Yeah,” Nita said. “Absolutely.”

“All right. If his parents will back me up, we’ll be okay for that long. But that’s all I can give you. After ten days, if you don’t show up at school again, you’re likely to find the district superintendent banging on your dad’s door. Or, if someone at school gets too nervous, social services, and possibly the cops.”

Nita swallowed. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll tell Kit.”

“Good. Can you give me some more detail about what exactly is going to be happening to the planet, so that I can help people around here deal with the fallout, if things get sufficiently strange?”

Fallout, Nita thought. I wish he hadn’t used that word. The thought of mushroom clouds sprouting all over the planet was haunting her. “I haven’t had a lot of time yet to go over the pre-mission précis in my manual. But people are going to start losing their sense of what’s underneath reality. Only physical things are going to seem real, after a while. And even those won’t feel right for long. Finally, only violent emotions are going to feel good—”