Diane Duane - The Wizard's Dilemma

He sighed and went on by, and a few minutes later they were back at Kit's house. It was still quiet inside as he went down the driveway and into the back, and he and Ponch took themselves into the back of the yard, among the sassafras trees, where they were out of view from the Macarthurs' and Kings' houses.

"You ready?" Kit said to Ponch.

"Let's go!"

And they stepped together once more into the dark__

For Nita, the afternoon took its own sweet time going by. There was still no sign of Kit. Her mother had gone off to the shop after lunch, and Dairine went off, too, and took Spot with her. Nita sighed and tried to watch TV, but there was nothing on. She tried to do some work with the manual, but every time she touched it, its cover was still and fizzless under her hands, and she put it down as quickly as she picked it up. She even dallied with the idea of doing some work on a science report that was due in a couple of weeks, but the thought of actually starting it before she needed to was repulsive. When I first got into wizardry, I'd never have thought it was possible to be bored again, Nita thought, but it seems that a wizard really can do anything, given enough time.

Around four o'clock she was back in her bedroom, having just finished a bologna sandwich, when she heard a whoomp! of displaced air in the backyard. Nita looked hurriedly out the back window but saw that it was only Dairine, with Spot spidering along behind her. She sighed, slumped a little, and took down a book to read.

She had read no more than a page or two when Dairine came in, looking out of sorts. "Where've you been?" Nita asked, chucking the book away, since it was obvious she wasn't going to get any reading done, either.

"Europa." "Again?"

Dairine frowned. "Neets," she said wearily, and sat on her bed, "I'm having some problems."

"You?"

"Please," Dairine said. She was staring at the bedspread as if it were written over with the secrets of the universe instead of a slightly faded stars-and-moons pattern. After a while she said in a low voice, as if embarrassed, "I'm not getting the results I was getting a while ago."

Nita pushed back from her desk and folded her arms, putting her feet up. This was a problem she'd come to know all too well. "Dair, it happens to all of us. You get a little older...you lose your initial edge and your first big blast of power, and start feeling your way to where your specialty's going to be. It's not always what you first thought it'd be. Tom says it's real common for a first specialty to shift, and for your power levels to jump around a lot when you're new to the Art."

Her sister sat there, still staring at the quilt. This worn-down look wasn't something Nita was used to seeing in her sister. Dairine's energy levels were usually such that you wanted to hook her up to wires and make serious money by selling power to the electric company. "I don't care if it is normal," Dairine said. "I hate it."

"You think you're the only one? I wasn't wild about my first flush wearing off, either. But you get used to it."

"Why do we have to get used to it?" Dairine burst out. "What good am I if I'm not effective?"

"You mean, what good are you if you can't solve every problem you come up against in three seconds?" Nita said. "Well, obviously, none at all. Guess you'd better go straight to the bathroom and flush yourself."

Dairine stared at her sister. "Or find a black hole and jump in," Nita said, leaning back and closing her eyes. "Tom says there's a lot of interest in the time-dilation effects, especially on the middle-sized ones.

Be sure to file a report with the Powers when you get back. Assuming this universe is still here."

Nita waited for the explosion. There wasn't one. She opened her eyes again to find Dairine staring at her as if she were something from Mars. Actually, Dairine had stared at things from Mars with a lot less astonishment.

"What?" Dairine said.

Nita had to smile, even though Dairine's whining was annoying her. "Sorry. I was going to say, you remind me of me when I was your age."

Dairine made a face. "There's a horrible thought." 117

She wrapped her arms around her knees, and put her face down against them. "The last thing I want is to be that normal again." She produced an elaborate shudder, turning normal into a swear word.

"You want to watch that, Dari," Nita said. "Just because we're wizards doesn't mean we're any better than 'normal' people. The minute you start acting like there's a 'them' and an 'us,' you're in trouble. The only thing that makes wizards different is that we have the power to do more than usual to help. And helping other people, as part of keeping the world running, is the only reason the power exists in the first place." It was a lesson Nita had learned at some cost, having done enough dumb things in her time until she got it straight.

Dairine gave Nita a noncommittal look. "Edgy, aren't we? Still nothing from Kit?"

Nita made a face. "No. But just let it sit for the time being, okay? Meanwhile, what was their problem? The amoebas or whatever they are?"

"They call themselves hnlt," Dairine said. "And how they manage to do that when they've only got one cell each, I don't know."

" 'Life knows its way,'" Nita said, quoting a proverb commonplace to wizards in more than one star system. "And personality arrives right behind it. Sooner than you'd think, a lot of the time."

"Yeah. Well, they have this—I mean, there's a—" Then Dairine made a wry face at how ineffective English was for describing this kind of problem. She

dropped into the Speech for a couple sentences' worth of description of something that seemed to be happening to the gravity on Europa. Apparently the sea bottom far down under the surface ice was being cata-strophically shifted in ways that were destroying some of the hnlt habitats.

After a moment, Nita nodded. "That's a nasty one. So what did you do?"

Dairine looked glum. "I suggested they wait a little while and see what happens," she said. "The Sun's real active now, and the activity is pushing Jupiter's atmosphere around a lot harder than usual, even the densest parts down deep. That's what's causing the gravitational and magnetic anomalies. It'll probably quiet down by itself when the sunspot cycle starts to taper off."

"Makes sense. Good call."

"But Neets, what's the point") I couldn't do anything. I couldn'tl Only a few months ago I could— I could do everything up to and including pushing planets around. And now, because I can't, a lot of the bnlt are going to die before the Sun quiets down. All I can do is help them relocate their habitats elsewhere on Europa. But those other places are going to be just as vulnerable. No matter what I do, I'm not going to be able to save them all..."

Nita shook her head; not that she didn't feel sorry for her sister. "Dari, it's just the way things go. You started at a higher-than-usual power level, so you're having a bigger-than-usual crash."

"Why don't you try finding some more awful way of putting that?" Dairine muttered. "Take your time."

Nita understood how Dairine felt; she'd been down this road herself. "You'll be finding your next few years' working-level in a while. But as for the way you were last month..." Nita sighed at the memory of the way she'd been when she got started. "Entropy's running. The energy runs out of everything... even us. We have to learn not to blow it all over the landscape, that's all."

Dairine was silent for a few moments. Finally she leaned against the wall and nodded. "I guess I'll just have to keep working on it. Where's Mom?"

"Late," Nita said. "She's probably still looking for Dad's paperwork. She said he started burying it all in those old carnation boxes in the back again."

"Uh-oh. And after she got him the new filing cabinets." Dairine snickered. "I bet he got yelled at."