The Wizard's Dilemma, New Millennium Edition

  As she did, she caught sight of a sticky-note still stuck to the table. “Uh-oh—”

  “What?”

  “Mom forgot her list—”

  “You mean her ‘lint’?” Her dad chuckled.

  “Yeah. It’s still stuck here.”

  “She’ll call and get me to read it to her, probably. Or I’ll phonecam it to her.”

  There was a soft bang! from the backyard—a sound that could have been mistaken for a car backfiring, except that there weren’t likely to be cars back there. “That Dairine?” Nita’s dad said.

  “Probably,” said Nita. It hadn’t taken her parents long to learn the sound of suddenly displaced air—a sign of a wizard in a hurry or being a little less than slick about appearing out of nothing. At first it seemed to Nita as if her folks, after they’d found out she was a wizard, spent nearly all their time listening for that sound in varying states of nervousness. Now they were starting to get casual about it, which struck her as a healthy development.

  But wait a minute. Maybe it’s Kit, coming back to apologize—Nita started to get up.

  The screen door opened and Dairine came in.

  Nita sat down again. “Hey, Dair,” she said.

  “Hey,” said Dairine, and went on past.

  Nita glanced after her, for Dairine wasn’t usually so terse after a day out. Her little sister paused by the table just long enough to drop her own book bag onto a chair, then went into the living room, pushing that startling red hair out of her eyes. It was getting longer, and, as a result, her resemblance to their mother was stronger than ever. Has she started noticing boys? Nita wondered. Or is something else going on?

  Something scrabbled at the back door. Dairine sighed, came back through the dining room and the kitchen, went to the screen door, and pushed it open. A delicate clatter of many little feet followed, as what appeared to be a slim black-skinned laptop computer came spidering into the kitchen on multiple spindly legs. On the lid of the laptop glowed a white apple with no bite out of it.

  Nita peered at the laptop as it followed Dairine back into the living room. “Am I confused,” she said, “or is he shiny all of a sudden?”

  “You’re always confused,” said Dairine as she headed for her room, “but yeah. Just molted. Probably he’ll go matte later.”

  Nita shook her head and went back to looking at her mom’s list. Dairine’s version of the wizard’s manual had arrived as software for the household’s first computer, and had been through some changes during the course of her Ordeal. Finally she’d wound up with this machine… if machine was the right word for something that was clearly alive in its own right. In the meantime the household’s main computer continued to go through periodic changes, which made some of the neighbors suspect that Nita’s father was making more money as a florist than he really was. For his own part, Nita’s dad shrugged and said, “Your mom says it does the spreadsheets just fine. I don’t want to know what else it might do … and as long as I don’t have to pay extra for it…”

  The phone on the counter rang. Her dad went over and picked it up. “Aha, here she is. Hey, guess what you forgot? Yeah. You want me to read it to you? Or I’ll take a pic and SMS it— Oh. Well, okay, sure. No, she just came in. No, both of them. Sure, I’ll ask.”

  Nita’s dad put his head around the corner. “Honey, your mom forgot a couple other things, too, so she’s coming back. She says, do you want to go clothes shopping? They’re having sales at a couple of the stores in the mall.”

  Nita couldn’t think of anything else to do at the moment. “Sure.”

  Her dad turned his attention back to the phone. Nita went back to her room to change into a top that was easier to get in and out of in a hurry. From upstairs she could hear faint thumping and bumping noises. What’s she doing up there? she thought, and when she finished changing, Nita went up the stairs to Dairine’s room.

  It was never the world’s tidiest space—full of books and entirely too many stuffed animals—but now it was even more disorganized than usual. Everything that had been on Dairine’s desk, including chess pieces and chessboard, schoolbooks, notebooks, pens, papers, paintbrushes, watercolor pads, a digital drawing tablet, a smartphone/MP3 player and its headphones, and much less classifiable junk, was now all over Dairine’s bed. The desk was solely occupied by a truly huge computer monitor sitting up on an angled aluminum base. Centered on the front of the white fascia under the monitor proper was what appeared to be the more normal form of that famous fruity logo, glowing demurely: a good trick, as that there was no sign of any cord leading from the computer to any wall plug, and there were no other cables either. As Nita took it all in, the “bite” in the logo faded away.

  “Whaddaya think?” Dairine said.

  “Looks like a newer version of Dad’s,” Nita said, sitting down on Dairine’s bed. “Way bigger screen, though: you’ll make him jealous. How’d you score this?”

  “Connections,” Dairine said.

  Nita rolled her eyes, for Dairine’s wizardly connections had been getting on her nerves for months. Her sister’s crazy post-Ordeal power levels and the extremely unusual events and creatures associated with the Ordeal itself had attracted a lot of attention since last year, and meant that strange offers and privileges were dropped on Dairine with boring regularity. It’s going to be so interesting to see how she takes being a normal wizard when that finally comes her way, Nita thought… though with some resignation, because it was hard to tell when that would happen: Dairine’s power levels were only now starting to settle. “Is it online?”

  Dairine threw Nita a you-must-be-joking, way-more-than-just-that look. Wizards had been bound together by a vast worlds-spanning informational web centuries before one small planet’s machine-based version of networking had started calling itself World Wide. “Oh, yeah, wirelessly,” Dairine said, “but the real action’s on the four-W side. Got access to the developers’ side of the wizardly WWW, and the beta group on the online version of the manual.” She glanced fondly over at her laptop, who had scrambled up onto the desk chair and was scratching itself with some of its legs. “They voted me in. …Spot, cut it out.”

  Nita raised her eyebrows and leaned back. “Coming from the machine intelligences, that sounds like a compliment. Just make sure you don’t mess up Dad’s accounting software when you port it over.” She cocked an eye at the laptop, which was still scratching. “Is that because of the molting?”

  “Yeah, bad habit….” Dairine leaned down, picked Spot up off the chair and put him up on the desk, where he scratched a bit more, then settled. “He starts scratching when the old skin’s ready to go and it takes him a few days to cut it out.” Dairine leaned against the desk. “He’s been acting more like an organic life-form lately. I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or not, but there’s nothing wrong with his processing functions, or his implementation of the manual, and he’s okay when we talk.” Dairine looked at the laptop thoughtfully. “I thought Kit was going to be with you. He said he wanted to see the new machine when it came in.”

  “Huh?”

  Dairine sat in her desk chair, gave Nita a look. “Something going on?”

  Nita didn’t answer immediately.

  “Oh, come on. You know it’s no use, Neets! Mom and Dad you might be able to hide it from for a while, but where I’m concerned, you might as well have it tattooed on your forehead.”

  Nita stared at the bedspread, what she could see of it. “I had a fight with Kit. I can’t believe him sometimes. He’s gotten so—I don’t know—he doesn’t listen, and he—”

  “Neets,” Dairine said. “Level with me. PMS?”

  Nita’s jaw dropped. Dairine snickered. “No,” Nita said when Dairine finally ran down.

  “Well, if that’s not it, what is the problem?”

  Nita crossed her legs, frowning at the floor. “I don’t know,” she said. “Since I got back, it’s like … like Kit doesn’t trust me anymore. In the old days—”

&nb
sp; “When dinosaurs walked the earth.”

  “Dair… nobody likes a smart-ass.” Nita sighed. “Before I went away, if I’d given him the spell I gave him today, after all that work, he’d have said, fine, let’s do it! Now, all of a sudden, everything’s too much trouble. He doesn’t even want to try.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to blow energy on something that looks like it’s going to fail,” Dairine said.

  “Boy, and I thought he was the winner of the tactlessness sweepstakes right now,” Nita said. “You should call him up and offer to coach him.”

  “He’ll have to make an appointment,” Dairine said, pushing the pillows into a configuration she could lean on. “I’ve been busy.” But her face clouded as she said it.

  Aha, Nita thought. “I was going to ask you about that—”

  The open window let in the sound of a car pulling into the driveway below. Dairine looked out the window. Below, a car door opened and shut, though the car’s engine didn’t turn off. “There’s Mom,” Dairine said.

  Nita shook her head, rubbed her eyes, got up.

  “But one thing,” Dairine said. “Was Kit clear that the guy you were seeing over there—”

  “I wasn’t seeing him!”

  “Yeah, right. Ronan. You sure Kit isn’t confused about that?”

  Nita stared. “Of course he isn’t.”

  “You sure you’re not confused about it?”

  For that, Nita had no instant answer.

  “Nita?” her mother called up the stairs.

  “Later,” Nita said to Dairine. “And don’t think you’re getting off easy. I want a few words with you about ‘busy.’”

  Dairine made a noncommittal face and got up to do something to the new computer as Nita went out.

  ***

  In the darkness, Kit stood very still. He had never seen or experienced a blackness so profound; and with it came a bizarre, anechoic silence in which not even his ears rang.

  “Ponch?” he said.

  Or tried to say. No sound came out. Kit tried to speak again, tried to shout … and heard nothing, felt nothing. It was the kind of effect you might expect from being in a vacuum. But he knew that feeling, having been there once or twice. This was different, and creepier by far.

  Well, hang on, Kit thought. Don’t panic. Nothing bad has happened yet.

  But that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to. Come to think of it, am I even breathing? Kit couldn’t feel the rise of his chest, couldn’t feel or hear a pulse. What happens if there’s nothing to breathe here? What happens if I suffocate?

  True, he didn’t feel short of breath. Yet, said the back of his mind. Kit tried to swallow, and couldn’t feel it happening. Slowly, old fears were creeping up his spine, making his neck hairs stand on end in their wake. It was a long time since Kit had gotten over being afraid of the dark… but no dark he’d had to cope with as a little kid had ever been as dark as this. And those darknesses had been scary because of the possibility that there was something hiding in them. This one was frightening, and getting more so by the minute, because of the sheer certainty that there was nothing in it.

  I’ve had enough of this. Which way is out?!

  …But no! Kit thought then. I’m not leaving without my dog. I’m not leaving Ponch here and running away!

  But how do you run away when you can’t move? And how do you find something when you can’t go after it? The horror of being trapped here, wherever here was, rose in him. I’m not going to put up with this, Kit thought. I’m not going to just stand here and be terrified! He tried to strain every muscle, tried to strain even one, and couldn’t move any of them. It was as if his body suddenly belonged to someone else.

  So I can’t move. But I can still think—

  There was a spell Kit knew as well as his transit spells, so well that he didn’t even bother keeping it in compacted form anymore; he could say it in one breath. It was the spell he used to make a small light for reading books that weren’t his manual under the covers at night. Kit could see the spell in his mind, fifty-nine characters in the Speech, twenty-one syllables. Kit pronounced them clearly in his mind, said the last word that tied the knot in the spell, and turned it loose—

  Light. Just a single source of light, pale and silvery. There was no way to tell for sure if it was coming from near or far; it looked small, like a streetlight seen from blocks away. Just seeing it relieved Kit tremendously. It was the first change he had managed to make in this environment. And if he could do that, he could do something else. Just take a moment and think what to do—

  Kit realized he was gasping for breath. He also realized that he was able to feel himself gasping. He tried to move his arms, but it was like trying to swim in taffy. As he concentrated on that light, he thought he saw a change in it. The light’s moving—But that was wrong. Something dark was moving in front of it. Oh no, what’s that—

  Suddenly Kit could move his hand a little. He reached toward his pocket to fish out something he could use as a weapon if he had to protect himself. It was taking too long. The dark thing was blocking the light, getting closer. Kit strained as hard as he could to get his hand into his pocket, but there was no time, and the dark object got closer, flailing its way toward him. Kit felt around in his mind for one other spell he’d used occasionally when he had to. Not one that he liked to use, but when it came to the choice between surviving and going down without a fight…

  The dark shape blotted out the light, leaving it visible only as a faint halo around whatever was coming. Kit said the first half of the spell in his mind and then waited. He wasn’t going to use it unless he absolutely had to, for killing was not something a wizard did unless there was no choice.

  The dark shape was closer. Kit felt the spell lying ready in his mind, turning and burning and wanting to get out and do what it had been built for. But not yet, Kit thought, setting his teeth.Not just yet. I want to see—

  The black shape was right in front of him now. It launched itself at him. Kit got ready to think the last word of the spell—

  —and the dark thing hit him chest high and started washing his face as it knocked him over backward; and the two of them came down hard together on blacktop.

  Suddenly everything seemed bright as day in the single light of the streetlight down at the end of the side street. There Kit lay in the road, with a bump that was going to be about the size of a phoenix’s egg starting to form on the back of his head, and on top of him Ponch washed his face frantically, saying, “Did you see it? Did you see what I found? Did you? Did you?”

  Kit didn’t do anything at first but grab his dog and hug him, thinking, Oh, God, I almost blew him up; thank you for not letting me blow him up! Then he sat up, looking around him, and pushed Ponch off with difficulty. “Uh, yeah,” he said, “I think so. But why’re you all wet?”

  “It was wet there.”

  “Not where I was,” Kit said. “But am I glad you came along when you did! Come on, let’s get out of the street before someone sees us.”

  Fortunately this was a quiet part of town without much traffic in the evening, and the two of them had the additional protection that most people didn’t recognize wizardry even when it happened right in front of them. Any onlooker would most likely just have seen a kid and his dog suddenly fall over in the middle of the street, where they’d probably been playing, unseen, a moment before.

  Kit got up and brushed himself off, feeling weird to be able to move. “Home now?” said Ponch, bouncing around him.

  “You better believe it,” Kit said, and they started to walk back down the street.

  “I’m hungry!”

  “We’ll see about something for you when we get in.”

  “Dog biscuits!” Ponch barked, and raced down the street.

  Kit went after him. When he came in the back door, his father was just taking the spaghetti pot over to the sink to drain it. “Perfect timing,” he said.

  Kit looked in astonishment at the beat-u
p kitchen wall clock. It was only fifteen minutes since he’d left.

  His father looked at him strangely. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Kit shook his head. “Uh … I’m okay. I’ll explain later. Leave mine in the pot for me for a few minutes, will you, Pop?” He grabbed the kitchen cordless phone out of its socket and headed into the living room.

  That was when the shakes hit him. Kit just sat there and let it happen—not that he had much choice—and meanwhile enjoyed the wonderful normality of the living room: the slightly tacky lamps his mother refused to get rid of, the fact that the rug needed to be vacuumed. At least there was a rug, and a floor it was nailed to—not that terrifying empty nothingness under his feet. Finally Kit composed himself enough to look down at the phone handset and hit one of the speed-dial numbers.

  After a few rings someone picked up. A voice said, “Tom Swale.”

  “Tom, it’s Kit.”

  “Hey there, fella, long time no hear. What’s up?”

  “Tom—” Kit paused, not exactly sure how to start this. “I need to ask you something about your dogs.”

  “Oh no,” Tom said, sounding concerned. “What have they done now?”

  “Nothing,” Kit said. “And I want to know how they do it.”

  There was a pause. “Can we start this conversation again?” Tom said. “Because you lost me somewhere. Like at the beginning.”

  “Uh, right. Annie and Monty—”

  “You’re saying they didn’t do anything?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Okay. This conversation now makes sense to Sherlock Holmes, if no one else. Keep working on me, though.”

  Kit laughed. “Okay. Tom, your dogs are always turning up in your backyard with… you know. Weird things.”