A Wizard of Mars, New Millennium Edition (51 page)

“Bobo,” Nita said after a few moments, “I hate this.”

That,
 the peridexis said, 
closely reflects the sound of all wizards everywhere when making difficult but closely considered ethical choices.

“But I don’t see that I 
have
 a choice,” Nita said. “Too many lives depend on it. People on Earth, wizards who might get involved. Even the Shamaska-Eilitt! If this goes wrong somehow, they’re all in danger. At the very least there’s going to be a lot of disruption on Earth. There could be riots. People could get hurt or killed. And there could be other effects I can’t foresee.”

You do have a choice,
 Bobo said, 
and you’re about to tell me what it is.

Nita took a deep breath. “Bug him,” she said. “Put a spinoff on Kit’s manual’s log like the one on Dairine’s. I want the same kind of readout on his thought processes that Spot was giving Dad— the streaming consciousness.”

There was a silence. 
I am required to remind you that there will be a ‘final reckoning’ payment when you decommission this wizardry, and the payment may be personally damaging if oversight determines the wizardry was not successful, or successful in the wrong ways.

“I understand,” Nita said. And she swallowed. “Do it.”

Done,
 the peridexis said.

She looked at the manual, ready to pick it up right away and see what it revealed. But she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. 
Tomorrow,
 she thought. 
Tomorrow morning. Wait for some content to build up and I’ll look at it then.

But she knew that she wouldn’t be eager to look at it in the morning, either...

***

It was two thirty-three in the morning when Kit finally worked up the courage to open his bedroom door and sneak down the hall toward Carmela’s  room. He knew it was two thirty-three because every minute, from about half past midnight on, he had been looking at his propped-up smartphone pn the bedside table and thinking, 
Now.
 Now 
I’m going to do it. No, I’ll wait a few minutes more. Somebody might hear me...

Kit was heartsore. He was angry at Nita and knew that it was wrong for him to be angry at her, but he didn’t want to stop. His guilt at what he was about to do was also terrible, though he hadn’t done it yet. But stronger by far than either of these feelings was the sense that he had to get back to Mars: that if he didn’t, terrible things were going to happen: that the fate of a people rested on what he did or didn’t do.

And even more important than that was the expectation of what he would do to a single heart up there, the imploring look in those eyes. 
I can’t let her down. I can’t fail her. Not after all this time—
And though that thought seemed wrong somehow, he didn’t care.

In any case, sweat was trickling down Kit’s back as he made his way down the hall to Carmela’s bedroom door. 
I am going to get in so much trouble for this,
 he thought. But there was simply too great a compulsion to go through with this, to get back up to Mars and find out...

Find out
what
, exactly? 

Well, among other things, where did three hours of my life just go!?
 He could remember the brief battle with the scorpions under the mountain, all right. The only thing Kit regretted about that was that he wouldn’t be able to use the “curling iron” at any later date: the scorpions would be armored against it. Then he’d gone down into the pit and picked up the Shard, and then—
what?

He had awakened by himself on the cold mountainside, with a strange feeling that somewhere else, in a world or a time more real than this one, something more important than anything else was going on. But even as he regarded that, he got a sense that there were parts of Khretef’s story, or their joint one, that Khretef hadn’t been telling him. Something he was having trouble with— something he didn’t want to come to grips with. And it was important—

Maybe something to do with him dying,
 Kit thought, as he crept cautiously step by step down the hall. 
Well, that would make me nervous, too.
 But there was something else going on, he was sure. Part of it had to do with the Nascence, as Khretef had called it. The Nascence was part of the key to this world. With it properly awakened and energized, the City could make itself safe. And once they were safe, they could turn this world into a paradise—

Kit stopped at that point in the hallway and stepped close to the wall between the door of Carmela’s room and the bathroom. There was a board here that, if you stepped on it, would go off like a gunshot as soon as you lifted your weight off it again. Kit was intent on missing it. Carefully he edged down the hall, trying not to bear his weight too heavily on the floor. Once he was past the dangerous spot, Kit put a hand on Carmela’s bedroom doorknob and very slowly and softly turned it.

It wasn’t locked, but then it wasn’t usually. Kit eased the door open, just a crack, and peered inside, letting his eyes get used to the slightly darker conditions in her bedroom. He knew its layout quite well. The foot of Carmela’s bed was near the door, which swung open to the left. All he had to do was edge in and close the door, then very softly move over to the closet door, feel just to his left for the shelf where the remote was, open the closet door, step in, and close it. Then he could use the remote to wake up the worldgate, and be gone.

Kit slipped in through the door, then quickly and quietly closed it behind him so the light from the nightlight out in the hall wouldn’t disturb Carmela. Once again he stood still, making sure he knew where he was and where everything else was. He looked toward Carmela’s bed. From somewhere in the tangled lump of covers on top of it, a tiny snore emerged.

Kit was suddenly, bizarrely reminded of Ponch, and he couldn’t keep himself from letting out a soft sigh. 
This would be so much simpler if he was still here,
 Kit thought. 
All I’d have to do is put his leash on, say ‘Ponch? Let’s go to Mars!’ And three steps later, we’d be there.
But that couldn’t happen now. Kit shook his head and silently tiptoed over to the bedroom closet.

He put his hand up to the shelf on the left, felt around... and froze. 

Where’s the remote?!

From the bed came a rustle of someone turning over, covers moving and shifting. 
Oh, please don’t wake up right now!!
 Kit thought. But it was easily thirty seconds before the rustling stopped coming from the bed, and the little snore resumed.

Kit breathed again, though with difficulty. Once more he put his hand up to the shelf, felt around more carefully. Then he let out another breath, of relief this time, as he felt the cool plastic of the remote under his hand. 
She just moved it further down the shelf, that’s all.
He grabbed it, held it close to him, and reached for the closet door.

It took him a moment to find the doorknob. Very softly Kit turned it and opened the closet door, slipped in, and eased the closet door closed behind him. It was a matter of a few seconds to wake the remote up, punch in the macro settings he’d laid into it earlier, and wake up the gateway to Mars.

A few seconds later he was looking through the back of the closet at the gleaming city standing in the midst of that red-brown desolation. Just the sight of it suddenly left him feeling less like Kit. Suddenly he felt as if he was in a strange, closed-in place, being kept away from the one place that mattered to him most in the world, because Aurilelde was there.

Hang on, guy,
 Kit thought, 
don’t get all fired up just yet. We’ll have you there in a moment. And then you can start explaining to me what the heck is going on up there!
 And he stepped into the gate—

And found that he was still standing in front of it. 
Now what the— !
 Kit thought.

He stepped forward again. Again he was prevented from going through the gate. 
Oh, no,
 he thought. 
They’ve blocked this, too!

Frustrated, Kit reached out and put his hand up against the gate. But it went through. 
Okay,
 Kit thought, 
so that’s not the problem—

He pressed himself forward against the worldgate interface, very slowly. His face went through; his arms went through; he could see what was on the other side, feel the cold of the Martian atmosphere against his face. But he couldn’t go farther. Something about chest-level was stopping him.

Kit backed up, realizing what it was. His manual wouldn’t pass.
It
knew he was banned, and it wasn’t going anywhere.

Kit cursed under his breath. There was nothing he could do for the moment but reach into his jacket pocket, take out the manual, and very slowly and carefully bend down to leave it leaned up against the inside wall of Carmela’s closet, where it would be unlikely to get kicked through the gate by accident. 
It’ll be safe enough here.
 He pulled out his antenna-wand, stuck it experimentally into the gate: it at least passed. 
So I won’t be unarmed. And I’m still a wizard— it’s not like the manual is
 required 
on the road.
 But all the same Kit felt unnerved at the thought of going to another planet equipped only with the very basic set of spells he had memorized: life support and so forth.

Getting back wouldn’t be a problem: he’d programmed the gate to produce an automatic portal for him three hours from now, picking him up at the border between the City of Shamask and the Martian wilderness. 
I’ll be back before anyone even knows I’m gone ...and if I get into some kind of trouble, I can always yell for Ronan or Darryl, or even Neets.
 But any thought of what might cause such a need, or of the explanations he would make to the others regarding what he was doing and why, seemed very far away.

Right now the imperative of getting to Mars overrode everything else. In the back of his mind, Khretef was fretting, worrying, desperate to get back. Aurilelde needed them, needed 
him,
 before the trouble started... and Khretef seemed very sure that it would start. He also seemed very sure that they were—
he
 was— was the only one who could stop it. 
We stopped it once before,
 Khretef’s voice said in the back of his head. 
But we can’t linger. We need to get going!

Kit nodded, let out one last breath of nervousness and guilt, passed through the gate, and the closet went dark behind him.

*** 

Nita came down for breakfast the next morning feeling very wrung out and weary of mind, for reasons she couldn’t fully understand. Granted, there’d been a lot going on lately, and the seemingly endless drudgery of the end of the school year had been wearing her down. And now there was this craziness with Kit as well. 
Banned. I can’t believe it. What’s the
 matter 
with him?

Coming down the stairs, Nita suddenly found herself thinking, as she’d kept finding herself doing lately, about Ponch. Obviously Kit missed him most of everybody, but it was difficult, sometimes, to look at Kit and realize that that constant, black presence was not ever again going to appear galloping along at his side. 
We’ve been losing so much stuff lately,
 Nita thought. 
This has not been a great year. First Mom, then Ponch…

She sighed, thinking of how she had heard her mom say sometimes that “these things come in threes.” 
Well, I hope they don’t! Two’s more than enough for me, thanks. Especially if losing Ponch is part of what’s left Kit acting so weird. What are we going to
 do 
about him?

In the kitchen, she yawned and put the kettle on to make tea. 
Listen to you,
 she said to herself. 
So depressed, and the day hasn’t even started yet! Probably your blood sugar.
 It was true that over the past couple of days she hadn’t been eating well: there’d been too much going on. 
Really need to do something about that.
 She leaned back against the kitchen counter, waiting for the water to boil.

It was just beginning to produce its pre-boil rumbling when Dairine came wandering into the kitchen in one of those shin-length T-shirts she favored. “You’re up early,” Nita said.

Dairine yawned, then looked at Nita with vague annoyance. “Unlike some people,” she said, “who have a half day today for the completely unfair reason that they’re older than me,
I
have school this morning. But if I get a head start on some of the things I need to do, I can leave early and get back to Wellakh.”

Nita nodded, turning her attention back to the kettle. “So things are going okay?”

“Dad’s lightened up, if that’s what you mean.” She opened the fridge and got out a quart of milk, then started foraging in one of the cupboards for cereal and came out with a box of her preferred oaty loops.

“Good,” Nita said.

Dairine threw her an oblique look. “When I’m working... how much is he seeing of what’s going on?”