Диана Дуэйн - Wizard's Holiday

Nita’s thoughts had been occupied with the weather on Mars this time of year, and the question took her by surprise. “Uh, yeah,” she said. “It is an exchange program.”

“Not incredibly strange aliens, I take it.”

“Well, they’d have to be able to handle the basic environment,” Nita said. “Our atmosphere, our gravity. That doesn’t mean they’d be humanoid; there’s a lot of variation in body structures among the kinds of carbon-based life that breathe oxygen. Anyway, whoever these guys were supposed to be, they might look pretty weird. But that wouldn’t matter. If they’re wizards, we’d have the most important stuff in common.”

Her dad looked thoughtful. “They wouldn’t be, you know, saving the world or anything while they were here?”

Nita wondered what he was getting at. “I don’t think so,” she said. “The manual says it’s supposed to be a chance to see what the practice of wizardry looks like in some place really different, so that you get some new ideas about how to handle it at home. You’re never formally sent out on errantry when you’re on one of these, or so the manual says. If something minor comes up in passing, sure, you handle it. Otherwise…” She shrugged. “Pretty much you take it easy.”

Her dad nodded, stopped the car at a traffic light. “We did get the milk, didn’t we?”

“Plenty.”

“I keep having this feeling that I’ve forgotten something.”

Nita pulled out her Post-it note and once again compared it against the list in her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so…”

Her dad brooded briefly. “This is going to drive me crazy until I remember what it is I think I forgot,” he said. “Never mind. Nita, why don’t you go?”

“Where, to Mars?”

“No. On this exchange.”

Nita stared at him.

He glanced back at her. Then the traffic light changed to green, and her dad turned his attention back to his driving.

“Are you kidding?” Nita said.

“No,” said her dad, turning the corner off Nassau Road onto their street.

At first Nita didn’t know what to say. “Uh, I don’t know if I can,” she said at last. “Tom may already have used the energy for something else.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” her father said.

“Did you talk to him about this?” Nita said, still very confused.

“In generalities, yes,” her dad said. “I doubt you would have heard it, as you were occupied. I could hear you sneaking up the stairs.”

“Uh, yeah,” Nita said, “okay…”

“Well?”

Nita was flummoxed. “But, Daddy,” she said at last, “what about the aliens?”

“They’re wizards, you said.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And they’ll be able to disguise themselves, so the neighbors won’t get into a panic and call the cops or the FBI or anything like that?”

“Daddy, I think you’ve been watching too much TV. I don’t think the FBI really does aliens.”

“So these other wizards can cover up for themselves?”

“Well, sure, that would be part of it, lots of times you have to do that when you’re on another planet, but—”

“And Dairine will be here. From what you’ve told me, Dairine doesn’t have any trouble with aliens.”

Nita thought about that. Dairine’s response to aliens could range from partying with them to blowing them up, but so far she didn’t seem to have misjudged how to handle any given situation involving sentient beings who weren’t human. It was her own species she seemed to have trouble with. “No, she does okay.”

“I hear another ‘but’ coming,” her father said, as they paused at the last traffic light before their block.

“I don’t know if this is a good time to go away and leave you alone,” Nita said at last.

“If Dairine’s here, I won’t be alone,” her dad said.

“I mean—”

“Sweetie,” said her dad, “I think maybe a break would be a smart thing for you right now. Dairine and I would be capable of coping here. And among other things, it’ll give me a chance to practice talking to her without a mediator. Possibly a useful life skill.”

Nita smiled half a smile. “You really have been talking to Millman,” she said.

“About this? No. Some things I can figure out for myself. I am forty-one, you know.”

“Uh, yeah,” Nita said, and then was quiet for a moment.

“You need time to think about this?” her dad said. “Maybe the thought of going so far away scares you a little?”

“Daddy!” Nita said. “I’ve been a lot farther away than this.”

“On ‘business,’ yes,” her dad said. “But this is different. Honey, you ought to be a little kinder to yourself. Go on, goof off a little! You deserve it. And maybe I could use a little controlled weirdness. Sounds like that’s what we’d be in for.” And he threw Nita a sly look. “Also, it’s a way to give Dairine a little something on the sly to make up for me, and your friends the Powers That Be, slapping her down so hard. Yeah?”

You are such a softie, Nita thought, with a sudden great rush of love for her dad. “Okay,” Nita said. “Thanks, Daddy!”

“One thing,” her dad said. “I really would be happier if Kit was with you. You two’ve been pretty good backup for each other in the past, and he’s worked hard, too. I don’t think a break from routine would hurt him, either. Obviously it’s going to be up to his folks, but when you go over there, see what they think.”

Without knowing how she knew, Nita was already certain of what they’d think. “You talked to them about me going already!” Nita said. “When you didn’t even know what I was going to say!”

Her dad shot her another amused look. “We have many mysterious modes of communication,” he said as he signaled the turn into their driveway. “Aided by the fact that not even children who are wizards can keep an eye on their parents every minute of the day.”

Nita had to grin as the car splashed through the puddle at the bottom of the driveway. “Let’s get this stuff unpacked,” her dad said. “Then you’d better go talk to Kit and make plans.”

Planning Your Trip Kit was sitting in his room, riffling through his wizard’s manual, frowning in concentration and trying not to be distracted by the sound of his dog’s snoring, when his sister stuck her head in through the open doorway. “You busy?” Carmela said.

Kit sighed, pushed back from the desk. “No. What is it?”

“You are busy,” his sister said, walking carefully around Ponch, who had stretched his big black self right across the rug in the middle of the floor and was lying there with his paws in the air, taking up most of the spare floor space in the room. “Good, I’ll hang around and make you crazy.” She leaned over his shoulder, so far over that her single long dark braid hung down in front of Kit’s face. “What’s that little red glowing thing in the air there?”

“Just a wizardry. I’m playing with the speed of light.”

“I thought that was supposed to be a law,” Carmela said. “You shouldn’t break laws.”

“I’m not. I’m not even bending this one,” Kit said. “Just bending space.”

“For the fun of it,” his sister said in wonder. “You make my brains bleed sometimes, you know that?”

“Not half as much as I wish I did,” Kit said. “‘Mela, what is it?”

She turned away, sat down on Kit’s bed, and grinned. “I wanted to know what you thought of Mark.”

Endless possible answers spun through Kit’s mind, all of them true, but none of them particularly kind. He settled for one of the less injurious ones. “He looks like a dork,” Kit said.

“How cruel!” Carmela cried. Then she smiled, and the smile was wicked. “True, but cruel.”