Nita had to admit that Kit had a point. Michaela had left Nita (and various others) utterly astonished by bragging about Doing It with Mike Kavanagh, when it was well known around school that (a) Mike was totally out of play due to being deep in a Skype-fueled Internet affair with some girl in the south of England, to the point where he wasn’t even interested in putting up the usual playing-the-local-field smokescreen, and (b) Michaela’s cruel, foul mouth was so well known and disliked that nobody wanted to take the chance of hooking up with her for fear of what would be said about it, by everyone, afterward—starting with Michaela.
It took another minute for Kit to fully recover enough breath to say, “Has she ever even done it with anybody?”
Nita shook her head. “Maybe not . . .” But Michaela desperately wanted people to think she had. Nita had come into the girls’ room one afternoon unnoticed and heard one long brag session spinning itself out in excruciating, too-much-information detail, while the group surrounding Michaela down by the sinks at the far end of the room made encouraging (though not necessarily impressed) noises at the graphic stuff. But when they’d noticed Nita coming out of a stall, Michaela had turned their attention to her, and the jeering started. And then in gym class when they were outside . . .
She sighed. It hadn’t been her proudest moment, but at least Michaela hadn’t gotten hurt when she “tripped” in the middle of a hundred-yard dash—just got the wind knocked out of her so hard that she had nothing left to call anybody names with for a while. Nita had been very careful about the placement of the shock-absorbing barrier that cushioned Michaela’s spill on the track; it was a variation of what she used to use to protect herself from bullies. “But that’s why it’s so stupid for her to be in everybody’s face about whether they’ve done it,” Nita said. “Or haven’t.” It was amazing the way the taunts still rang in her ears. He can’t be worth much as a boyfriend if you won’t even talk about him. Maybe he can’t do it, huh? Or else he won’t, he’s never going to. Maybe you’re making it all up so people will think you’re normal. Good luck with that. Nita concentrated on rhythmic breathing and not getting herself riled up again. Maybe I need to grow a thicker skin.
“Your skin is fine,” Kit muttered.
She looked at him sidewise.
“Okay, that one I heard,” he said. He looked vaguely guilty, which was all wrong.
“It’s been coming and going for me too lately,” Nita said. And somehow, never at times when I want it to. “Sorry.”
Kit shook his head. “Don’t be. Same here.”
They did another half block or so in silence. It was odd, Nita thought, that it seemed easier to talk here, out among all these hundreds of people who were passing them by. But they don’t know us. Even though the people standing or walking nearest to them might hear what they were saying, it didn’t matter; they’d never see any of these people again. And it was also, oddly, more comfortable to talk about this stuff out here than someplace more quiet and private, where things might change suddenly.
“You’re irritated again,” Kit said.
“I’m not.”
There was a short silence, but somehow it wasn’t uncomfortable. “You know,” he said, “if ‘boyfriend’ is the wrong word . . .”
“It’s not! It’s just . . .”
She laughed. Kit looked confused. “What?”
“Got a really stupid idea . . .”
“It’s probably not.”
“Is it possible that, sometimes, with a word . . . you might need a while to break it in? Like new shoes.”
Kit gave her a look that suggested he was waiting for more of an explanation.
Nita shrugged. “Just think what we’ve been through the last few years. The dangerous stuff. We’ve saved each other’s lives how many times now? As friends. And now this . . . it’s different. But it’s there.”
She held her breath again. Not that there’s any real doubt, come on, you know there’s not . . .
“Yeah,” Kit said after a moment. “It does take some extra getting used to. Because normally it comes with all these expectations.”
Nita nodded, letting that breath out. “How you should look. What you should sound like when you’re around each other.”
“Or when you’re not.”
“How you should be.”
“God, yeah.”
“But we don’t have to do it the normal way.”
“Normal,” Kit said. “Us?” And he laughed.
Nita smiled. He gets it. “Exactly.”
Kit snickered. “Just do me one favor. Don’t let Michaela hear that you’re breaking me in.”
It was the kind of remark that she normally would have punched him in the arm for. Well . . . breaking this in too, then. Now Nita quietly laced her fingers through his and squeezed his hand.
Kit grinned at the sidewalk as they came up to the corner of Forty-second and Seventh, then tipped his chin up to regard the traffic. “Where is it again?” Nita said. “Eleventh?”
“And sort of Thirty-sixth: by the Hudson. Not that much farther.”
The Sun was bright and the air was warm and there wasn’t any need to hurry for a change; they were going to be early for the prejudging anyway. “Not a problem,” Nita said, swinging Kit’s hand in hers. “Nice day.”
“Yeah. We don’t get a chance to do this so often when we’re not being chased by something.”
She chuckled. “Yeah.”
“Is it stupid,” Kit said, “to think that when everything’s going nice like this, something’s probably going to happen?”
“With us?” Nita laughed. “Smartest thing is just to say ‘Let’s hurry up and go see what it is.’”
They grinned at each other and started walking faster.
Shortly they were crossing the street in front of Manhattan’s great convention center, the huge gleaming frontage of it almost impossible to look at in the sunshine—like three gigantic green-glass boxes set down side by side next to the river, the middle one the tallest. Nita made without hesitation for the center set of doors.
“Upstairs?” Kit said.
“Level three,” Nita said, “Hall 3D.”
They went up several escalators and came out in a broad, bright metal-and-glass atrium with a food court on one side and some business-oriented stores on the other. On the rear side of the building was the entrance to a huge, high-ceilinged room that stretched in the direction of the river. The view of the room itself was blurred by what seemed to be a translucent curtain hung straight across the entry from the industrial lighting fixtures in the ceiling; and in front of the curtain was a line of five or six tables covered with gold-colored drop cloths, arranged so that they guarded the access to the doors. Out in front of them, and to one side of the gap between a couple of the tables, stood a sign on an easel. It said:
IDAA PRELIMINARY SELECTION SESSION
WELCOME
The amazing thing was that looking at the sign did not make one feel at all welcome. It made you feel as if you first wanted to yawn very hard, then go away and do something else, anything else, because standing here was such a waste of time. The font in which the sign was printed was desperately dry, cold, and offputting. Kit found that the mere sight of it made his eyes feel gritty and tired.
Next to him, Nita yawned, and then laughed out loud, impressed. “Wow!” she said. “Can you feel that?”
“Spell,” Kit said. He started feeling the need to rub incipient sleep out of his eyes. “Really powerful. Directional, too!” He turned sideways, experimenting, and then turned back again toward it, a little at a time. “When you’re not looking at it, it’s way less. But when you start turning back toward it—”
“That is such great work,” Nita said, and rubbed her own eyes. “Somebody knows what they’re doing.”
Kit grinned: even knowing it was a spell didn’t help much—he still felt the urge to go home and take a nap. “Let’s get in past it before we fall asleep on our feet.”
/> It took only the few steps in past the sign and toward the tables for the effect to wear off. As they got close, a slim, dark-haired guy in jeans and a white shirt, with a neat little beard, popped out through a slit in the curtain and started rummaging around among some paperwork as if he’d lost something. He glanced up as they came to the table. “Dai stihó, cousins! How can I help?”
“We’re here for the pre-judging,” Nita said.
He smiled at them. “And nice and early, thank you for that, though if you were hoping for peace and quiet to do your picks in, I’m sorry to tell you that the competitors are way ahead of you.” He kept turning over papers on the table. “Bear with me a second if you would, seems like nothing’s ever where you leave it around here . . .”
Kit looked over his shoulder. “That’s an amazing sign.”
“It is, isn’t it? Sarima Okeke did those for us.” The guy paused, apparently surprised at their blank faces. “You don’t know Okeke’s work? She’s a graphics wizard—best there is, if you ask me. Specializes in fonts. Every one of the letters in that sign is a microprinted spell in the Speech. Embedded diagram, condensed phrasing . . . just a work of art. Fuel the spell and print out a few words, and any nonwizard who views it gets the overwhelming urge to take themselves someplace more interesting. The font on that one there—Ennui Sans? Brand new, Okeke designed it for this event. But after this they’re putting it in the manual for anyone who needs to use it to keep nonwizards out of things.”
“It works really well,” Nita said.
“You haven’t seen anything,” the guy said. “That’s the light version. If we’d printed that sign in Ennui Overextended, you’d be asleep right now, wizard or no wizard. One of the Planetaries actually dozed off looking at one of those this morning; had to take it down. Okeke has a gift.”
The guy went back to his rummaging around, this time starting to take apart another pile of paperwork. “Wait, there are Planetaries here?” Kit said. “I mean besides Irina?”
“Yeah, unusual to see them so early, but seems like some people in this round have aroused a bit more curiosity than expected.” The table guy, whose nametag said J. W. BYNKIJ, kept on pushing papers around on the table. Some kind of Slavic name maybe? Kit thought.
Then Mr. Bynkij straightened, having found what he was after. “Aha! Usual thing, people borrow things and don’t put them back where they found them . . .”
It was a WizPad, to judge by the Biteless Apple on the back. Mr. Bynkij tapped at it briefly, and in mid-tap looked up thoughtfully at Kit. “Hey, don’t I remember you? . . . Of course I do. You were shooting up aliens on the Moon. Great to see you here.” He glanced down at the tablet, apparently scrolling up and down a list. “Right! So you are Callahan—” He reached elbow-deep into the empty air beside him and pulled out a plastic laminated badge on a long blue woven strap, which he handed to Nita.
“Hey, nice,” she said. “And we get lanyards too.”
“Lanyards for all,” said Mr. Bynkij as he turned back toward the hole in the air and shoved his arm into it up to the shoulder, groping around. “Aaaand Rodriguez.” He pulled out another and handed it to Kit. “Do not lose the lanyards. The badges are what always fall off, even with wizardry, seems to be some kind of natural law about that, and therefore the access routines and nothing-to-see-here spells are woven into the lanyards instead. Please be aware that while you’re wearing these, almost all nonwizards will find you boring to the point of attempting to avoid you. Only exceptions to this rule locally are the center’s concession staff, who have the effect dialed back about eighty percent so they won’t care about you particularly but also won’t fall asleep in the middle of making you a latte. If you’re expecting a nonwizardly guest, let me or whoever’s working up here know and we’ll get them a waiver pin for their lanyard. Need one of those now?”
They both shook their heads. “Fine.” Mr. Bynkij looked at his pad again. “The only other thing is to make sure you’ve received your mentor’s-picks tokens . . .”
“Got ’em,” Kit said. Nita nodded.
“Then go on in and start fulfilling your function.” He looked over his shoulder toward the curtain, then turned back to them. “You want to watch out . . . it’s a little busted loose in there. Some of the youngest ones are bouncing off the walls.” He grinned. “Personally, I think hardhats would do you guys more good than the lanyards, but . . .” He shrugged and waved a hand back toward the curtain.
“Thanks!” they both said, and headed in.
As they passed through the curtain, the sound inside the room burst all around them as if someone had hit the unmute button on a remote. Kit froze for a moment—feeling slightly relieved when Nita did, too—as he found himself looking across the biggest crowd of wizards he’d ever seen when the world wasn’t ending.
The space itself was sixty or seventy feet wide and easily more than a couple of hundred feet long, and almost entirely full of people. Full of wizards! Kit told himself. It was too easy, in normal times, to think of other wizards either in small groups or scattered all over the planet in the abstract, the way you might think of acquaintances on the Internet: mostly invisible and distant. But they’re not distant now! Kit thought. The place was alive with them, and all up and down that huge space, from floor to ceiling, the air glowed and flashed with wizardries laid out on show or now in progress, like a small but very enthusiastic fireworks displays.
Next to him, Nita let out a breath. “My God . . .”
“Yeah,” Kit murmured. “Come on!”
They started making their way through the crowds. There were as many older wizards as young ones there, gathering in groups down the length of the room to watch contestants who were doing presentations, or to examine setups from which the presenting wizards had stepped away. Kit could see some people standing well up over the heads of the crowd, as if they were on ladders. It took him a moment to realize that levitation was being extensively employed by people looking for someone or something in particular.
“What a zoo!” Nita muttered beside him. “And it’s like this now? What’s it going to turn into later?”
“No kidding. If we’re supposed to pick favorite projects, we’d better get going before you can’t even move in here anymore.”
Nita stared around them. “There has to be some kind of directory . . .”
As it happened, a pair of them hung transparently in the air, one on each side of that end of the room—tall, immaterial signs that could have been mistaken for holograms, except that they were constructs of wizardry. Each was densely lettered in two columns, one in the Speech and one that shifted into English as they approached. “It must have felt our manuals getting close,” Kit said.
“Yeah, nice . . .”
Three hundred and twelve names of competitors were listed on the floating directory, along with the names of their mentors’ and their projects. The great majority of these were highlighted with overlaying green bars that (according to the key at the bottom of the display) meant the competitor was onsite. A brighter green meant they were actively presenting. As Kit and Nita watched, a pair of lines flared brighter than all the others, the upper one the brighter of the pair.
“Wait,” Kit said, reading it. “Penn’s here already?”
Nita’s eyes widened. “Mr. Laid-Back, No Hurry? You’re kidding.” Nita peered at the list. “What number is he?”
The directory promptly faded out all the other listings, enlarged Penn’s name and the name of his project, and displayed a map of the floor of the exhibition space with Penn’s spot highlighted. He was about a third of the way down on the right-hand side.
Kit peered around the directory. “Yeah, you can just make him out past that—what is that? Looks like somebody’s got a bunch of scale-model skyscrapers down there. Wonder what that’s about . . .” But sure enough, a couple of spaces past that competitor’s display, there was Penn, his spell set out in its showier spherical 3D configuration, rotating gently into an
d out of the floor. He was talking animatedly to a group of adult and younger wizards gathered around him, and gesturing at his spell in a very smooth and choreographed manner, like a game-show host indicating the virtues of Door Number One.
“I can’t believe it,” Nita said. “It’s got to be eight in the morning for him. Didn’t think getting up this early was his style. If he’s showing some initiative finally . . .” She shrugged, and turned her attention back to the directory. “As for Dair . . .”
A second later the directory was showing them the space set aside for Dairine and her mentee; but it was dimmed down to show that they weren’t there yet, and a countdown clock over their spot showed an ETA of about an hour later. “Well, who knows,” Nita said under her breath. “Lunchtime’s when they said contestants should plan to be here, and there’s a lot of time zones between here and India. They might be stopping at home first.”
Kit nodded. “So which side first?”
“This one,” Nita said.
Because you want to have a look at Penn right now and get him over with, Kit thought. And if Nita by chance overheard the thought, she gave no sign of it.
They started wandering down the right-hand side of the big room, taking in the competitors’ exhibits. Some of them at first glance looked like the kinds of displays you might see at a high school science fair—a desk- or table-like space with a sign overhead saying what it was supposed to be. But in most of these cases, the signs were floating in the air unsupported, and so were some of the tables. Much more work, however, was being displayed on the beige-and-brown-patterned tile of the floor, or hovering in the air . . . and there, any resemblance to a mundane science fair ended in a hurry. “Is that a mobile meteor shield?” Nita said. “That’s a pick right there!”
“What, the first thing you see?”
“Why not? It’s not like we’ve got a limit on how many of these things we can give.”
“Oh come on, at least wait till you’ve seen a few!”