Диана Дуэйн - Wizards At War

She wondered how much sense this was going to make to Millman, if any. But the faint scratching noise she heard in the background suggested that he was taking notes. “Okay,” Dr. Millman murmured. “Any sense yet of what you’ll have to do to reverse this situation?”

“The universe has started expanding too fast,” Nita said, “and we have to stop it before it tears itself apart.”

There was another of those long, thoughtful pauses. “Um,” Millman said. “Okay, I see why you might need a few extra days off for that.”

The complete dryness of his voice was bizarrely reassuring to Nita, so much so that she laughed out loud.

“Better,” Millman said. “Hold that mood. For my own part, I’ll do what I can for people who start having trouble at school. But, meanwhile, keep me posted, all right? If things are going to get a lot worse all of a sudden, I’d appreciate knowing about it. We’re all on the same side here.”

That was the thought that Nita was still having trouble wrapping her brains around. She was much more used to hiding the things going on with her from everyone at school. “I’ll do what I can,” she said.

“So will I,” said Millman, “and together we’ll have to hope it’s enough. But, Nita… for you, this has to seem like an impossible burden.”

She swallowed hard. “Yes,” Nita said.

“Call me if you start to feel the strain. I’ll help for as long as I can.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay. Go well,” he said.

“Yeah. Thanks again.”

Millman hung up.

She sat there staring at the phone for a moment before sticking it back in its cradle. Well, she thought, at least that’s handled.

So. A total of two weeks to save the universe, huh?

It did seem absolutely impossible. But there would be powerful forces working to help them. And when someone believed in you—

Maybe this won’t exactly be a piece of cake, she thought. But at least you know people are rooting for you when you start cutting it up!

Nita picked up her manual, tucked it under her arm, and headed upstairs to her room.

***

One side of the dining room at the Rodriguez house had a sofa against the wall, and on that sofa Kit sprawled, lying flat on his back and reading his own manual. For maybe the tenth time, his arms had become tired enough that he had to rest the book on his stomach. He was having trouble believing how much new data was in that book all of a sudden. The effect wasn’t new: any manual would grow and shrink depending on what information you needed. But this time it felt like there was more stuff in there. It felt more important, and somehow more dangerous.

He turned a page and looked once more at the image he’d kept revisiting: a slowly rotating image of the galaxy, seen as if from several hundred thousand light-years away. It was displaying in negative, the stars black against white space, and the space was full of slowly growing fuzzy dark patches.

From the living room came the sound of laughter: Carmela, long since back from dumping her load of teen magazines at Nita’s place, was now sitting in front of the entertainment system’s big screen and talking to someone in the Speech. “No,” she said. “You’ve got to be kidding. It’s too early here to even think about grenfelzing…”

Kit let his manual fall closed. “‘Mela?” he said over the sound of alien laughter from the TV.

“Kit, I’m talking to somebody. Can’t it wait?”

“If I wait, I’ll forget. What is grenfelzing, exactly?”

“It’s kind of like emmfozing,” his sister said after a moment, “but with chocolate.”

Kit covered his eyes. “Sorry I asked,” he said. Since he’d made the mistake of using wizardry to configure the entertainment system, Carmela had been spending what seemed like hours every day talking to the various alien species whose hundreds and thousands of interactive channels had suddenly become available along with the more commonplace Earth cable. ‘Mela’s grasp of the wizardly Speech had been getting more acute. But at the same time it seemed to Kit that Carmela’s sense of humor was getting weird, even for her.

Well, at least she’s not turning into a wizard, Kit thought. It’s much too late for that.

He turned his attention back to his manual. “Did that last message go through?”

Received, the manual page said.

“Okay,” he said to the manual, “show me again where all this started.”

The image of the galaxy reset itself. “Zoom in on that,” Kit said.

The spiral grew and swelled past the ability of the page to show it all. Shortly after that, the page was full of the empty space between the Milky Way and the next galaxy over. “There’s nothing there at all,” he said softly.

Ponch was lying upside down on the floor with his feet in the air. Now he glanced up. Where? Ponch said.

“Here.” Kit put the manual down on the floor, stood up. “Walk-in, please?” he said to the manual.

The imagery spread out of the book format and surrounded Kit, obscuring the dining room. He walked into the space between the Milky Way’s spiral and the spot that Tom had shown them earlier. Ponch got up off the now-invisible dining room rug, shook himself, and wandered into the negative-image intergalactic brightness, standing beside Kit with his tail idly waving.

“This is where it began,” Kit said. “You sense anything?”

Ponch stretched out his head and sniffed. I don’t smell anything, he said. But it’s hard for me to scent through this. Your manual has its own way of telling what’s happening. It’s not like the way I scent things.

Kit shook his head. “The manual doesn’t detect anything, either,” he said after a moment. He reached out a hand and poked it into the brightness. The manual obediently rolled down a menu showing Kit a list, in the specialized characters of the Speech, for the various forces and energies that had been operating in that part of space when the stretching had happened. “Light, gravity, string structure, everything was behaving itself.” He shook his head and closed the Walk-in. “Then this came out of nowhere…”

In the living room, the laughter started again. Kit rolled his eyes, picked up his manual, and slapped it shut. “How am I supposed to save the universe with all this noise?” he hollered.

“Go save it somewhere else?” Carmela said. “I mean, even if you go read in your own room, and shut the door so that the sound of other people having lives doesn’t bother you, you’ll still be in this universe. Right? And you should be able to save it just fine from there.”

Kit gave Ponch a helpless look. “She has a point…”

I don’t think it would be smart for you to admit that, Ponch said, glancing in Carmela’s direction.

“Come on,” Kit said, getting up.

He went through the living room as quietly as he could. Carmela, sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, didn’t look up as he passed. As Kit went up the stairs, behind him she said, “You’re tense. I forgive you.”

I hate it when she forgives me and she’s right, Kit thought. But aloud he just said, “Thanks,” and went up the stairs.

Ponch trotted up behind him, his nails clicking on the wood of the steps. So you were serious before, when you said about us having to save the universe?

They came out on the landing, and Kit paused there for a moment with his hand on the banister. Ponch went under his arm and paused, too, looking up at him. “Yeah,” Kit said.

I wasn’t sure if you were joking, Ponch said.