A Wizard Abroad, New Millennium Edition (3 page)

“That’s all there is,” Nita said grimly. “Dublin, and everywhere else. Which is filled with potato fields and cow pastures as far as the eye can see.”

“Saw that in the manual, did you?” Kit said. Nita rolled her eyes at him. “You haven’t done any research at
all
, have you.”

Nita snorted, for Kit could be incredibly pedantic; sometimes it came off as funny, but this was not one of those times. “No. I just really haven’t felt like it, okay? Because I’m seriously pissed off about this whole thing.”

“I was looking at the Ireland chapter in the History of Wizardry section of the manual a couple of months ago,” Kit said. “There’s a lot of interesting junk going on over there…”

“Kit, I don’t care
what
kind of junk is going on over there! I go on over 
here. This
is where I do my work. I’m half of a team. What use am I without the rest?” Nita kicked another moon rock, watched it bounce away.

“Oh, I don’t know. You might be good for something. Scrubbing floors...doing the dishes...”

She turned to glare at him, though at the same time Nita felt guilty about it: he really was trying to cheer her up. “Not just trash talk, but
sexist
trash talk?” She laughed at him, though the laugh was kind of edgy. “You’re a dead wizard walking.”

“Had to get your attention somehow. Getting you mad is always good for stopping the self-pity…”

Which was why it really was going to be a pain in the butt to be away from him for a month and a half. Nita ran her hands through her hair in resigned annoyance. “Look, fine, you’ve made your point. I’ll do some research. But right now, what're we going to do about the trees? We’ve got to get this cleared up before I go. No point in wasting all this work.”

Kit leaned back. “I think we can get them to do another session tomorrow. The part of the negotiation about the roots was doing pretty well. I guess if we can get Aras to loosen up a little about the seedling acorns, Uriv might concede a couple of points regarding the percentage of sunlight.”

“Yeah…” Nita said. “And if they don’t see the sense of this pretty quick, we can always threaten to uproot the whole lot of them and plant them about three miles apart. They’ve been having too much fun fighting. Time it stopped.” The smile she turned on him was grim. “You be the good cop… I’ll be the bad cop.”

Kit sighed and looked at Nita with a grin that was a bit sad around the edges. “The missing-you-already thing?” he said. “Got that too.”

Looking at him, Nita saw it was true. The bad mood started falling off her, because if there was anything she hated more than being miserable, it was seeing Kit that way. “It’s only six weeks,” she said.

“Yeah, well… I’d say that six weeks won’t be a problem and we’ll do it standing on our heads,” Kit said. “Except wizards don’t lie, and a lie
that
big could be seen from space. And you wouldn’t believe it anyway.”

Nita’s smile was admiring if not happy. “Nope,” she said. “But I’d give you extra credit for trying.” She sighed, stood up. “Never mind. We’re running out of air. Let’s just get down there and get on with it. The sooner we start, the sooner it’ll be September.”

***

Saturday came.

Kit went with Nita and her parents on the late-afternoon ride to Kennedy Airport. It was a grim, silent sort of ride, broken only by the kind of strained, fake-cheerful conversation people make when they desperately need to say something, anything, to keep the silence from getting too thick. At least it seemed silent to the parents, which was an illusion Nita didn’t mind perpetuating in her present mood. They got cranky enough about her and Kit constantly texting each other under the table at dinnertime or while doing homework. If they found out that the two of them could pass
thoughts
back and forth as well, God only knew how hard they would have freaked.

Telepathy wasn’t all that simple a matter, and the two of them had gone off it somewhat since they got started—partly because mindtouch often got itself tangled up with a lot of other information you didn’t need or want the other person to have. Talking often turned out to be safer. But at this point, habits or not, they were going to have to get a lot better at the mindtouch for quick communications until the digital end of their wizardry got a little better sorted out.

The car could have a breakdown…
Kit said silently.

Nita sighed.
No.

I’m not kidding. It wants to do that already. It can feel how everybody is! It
hates
this. And there’s this one valve that’s kinda loose..

No! If I miss the flight they’ll just reschedule me, and it’ll cost more. Let’s not make this worse than it is.

Not sure that’s possible…

She sighed again, because today it was Kit who was more depressed about what was happening—possibly because he’d been hoping Nita’s folks would have a last-minute change of heart. She’d tried telling him this wasn’t on the cards, but then it was one of Kit’s specialties to always be holding the door open, mentally, for something better to happen.
It’s going to be okay,
she said,
as soon as we get through all this. Honest.

You’re really believing that at the moment,
he said.

Don’t have much choice,
Nita said, as the car took the exit off the Southern State Parkway for Kennedy.
As soon as they’ve dumped me and I’m on the plane, I want to talk to you about that smartphone app, I don’t know if I’ve got it configured right.

Okay—

And then within minutes they were caught up in the inevitable steps of the dance: the airport traffic, the airport parking, the airport shuttle bus, the crowded terminal, the check-in lines, the baggage check-in—Nita’s wheeled suitcase wasn’t too huge and she could handle it herself without too much trouble, though she was privately determined to make it weightless if she had to carry it anywhere alone. And then, of course, after the passport check at the counter, came the passport and boarding-pass check conducted by the unescorted-minor representative from the airline, who talked over Nita’s head to her parents while regarding Nita herself as if she was a cross between a piece of annoying baggage and some kind of small wild animal that might bite her or poop on her without warning. And then came the embarrassing giant nametag / ticket / passport pouch they hung around Nita’s neck as if she was a clueless six-year-old—

Nita concentrated quite hard on staying calm and well-behaved all through this, despite thinking of how many times she and Kit had waltzed on their own through the Crossings Intercontinual Worldgating Facility, many
many
lightyears away, by merely holding up their manuals and saying “We’re on errantry and we greet you, which way’s the 600 cluster?”— that being the group of worldgate hexes that connected through to Grand Central and Earth’s great legacy gates.
This, though…
t
his is making me want to kill people.

Not good,
Kit said while looking in a different direction for a moment.
Killing people speeds up entropy a whole lot.

Thanks loads for the reminder…

And then there was nothing for Nita to do except go through security, as the flight was in an hour and the unaccompanied-minor lady was looking more impatient every second. Nita looked at her mom and dad, who were just now, very late in the process, acquiring a sudden stricken look that said
My God we’re sending our baby away!
Nita sighed: she’d finally gotten herself settled into a sort of chronic annoyance with them that was almost good-humored, and now she was being forced into being
sorry
for them. It felt somehow unfair.

All she could do was go to them, and hug them. Her mom was sniffling and trying to hold it in. Her dad was smiling, and it was so, so fake. Nonetheless she held it together as best she could, for their sake. “Have a good time now,” her father said.

She sighed and said, “I’ll try, daddy. Mommy...” Nita was surprised at herself; she didn’t usually call her mother “Mommy.” They hugged again, hard.

“You be good, now,” her Mom said. “Don’t—” She trailed off. The “don’t” was a huge one, and Nita could hear in it all the things parents always say: 
don’t get in trouble, don’t forget to wash
—but most specifically, 
Don’t get into anything dangerous, like the last time! Or the time before that. Or the time before that—

“I’ll try, Mom,” she said. It was all she could guarantee.

Then she looked at Kit. 
“Dai,”
 he said.

“Dai stihó,”
 she replied. It was the greeting and farewell of one wizard to another in the wizardly Speech: it meant as much “‘Bye for forever” as “‘Bye for now,” since in a wizard’s case there was no telling which option might apply. For Nita, at the moment, it felt rather more like the first. Kit had gradually assumed something of the holding-it-together expression that her Dad was wearing, and somehow she found it even harder to deal with on Kit.
Hug?

Yeah.

So they did. And then the unaccompanied-minor lady cleared her throat and looked at her watch again, and there was nothing further to be done: it was time. Nita pulled herself together, grabbed her little carry-on bag with its backpack straps, waved at everyone a little weakly, and allowed herself to be shepherded along through the fast-access security gate for airline personnel, and into the line for the X-ray machines and the metal detectors. Just while she stood in the gateway she had time for one last look back. Her Mom and Dad and Kit were smiling and waving. For the moment Nita took the expressions at face value, and smiled and waved back. Then the unattended-minor lady nudged her through to the other side of the frosted-glass security-area door, and they were left behind.

***

After that came the rest of the security checks, and Nita spent the next fifteen or twenty minutes rolling her eyes as she found herself lined up behind people who apparently weren’t clear that you should take metal things off before you went into a metal detector. When her turn came she passed through without incident, and the X-ray people weren’t even slightly interested in her hand luggage. After that came a long slog down to her gate, during which Nita tried politely enough to make some conversation with her bodyguard. But shortly she gave this up as wasted effort, realizing that compared to this woman, the trees had been absolutely garrulous, even
before
she started talking to them in the Speech.

And then at last came the gate, where a huge crowd of people was milling aimlessly around. As Nita glanced out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the waiting jet—it was a big green and white 737—Ms. I Can’t-Wait-To-Dump-You went straight to the podium through the crowd of people trying to get onto the plane first, plainly intent on making sure that Nita was on the plane before any of them.
The last place I want to be…
she thought.

Heard that,
said the voice in her head.

I’m only about half a mile from you,
Nita said silently, as her minder gestured her over to the jetway gate and tapped a combination into the its keypad.
Let’s see how we do over three thousand.

One way or another, we’ll manage.

Give me a few,
Nita said as she headed down the broad empty jetway with her impatient guardian by her side
.

One thing at a time. I think I’m about to be duct-taped into my seat.
Nita was watching the unaccompanied-minor lady confer in relieved haste with the flight attendant in the turquoise-green uniform who met them at the door. “This is Joanie Callanin—”

“Juanita Callahan,”
Nita said.

The flight attendant gave Nita’s giant ugly hang-around-the-neck label a single glance and smiled a smile that said I know who you are, ignore her. “Have a nice flight,” said the unaccompanied-minor lady, and took herself away more or less as if she thought Nita had the plague.

“Come on,” said the flight attendant, “we’ll get you settled. First time?”

“Yes,” Nita said, and happily headed to the right and down the aisle after the attendant. Shortly thereafter she was in the seat that had been booked for her—a window seat—watching the beginnings of sunset settle in over the runways of Kennedy Airport.

You’re not going to believe this,
Kit said to her about ten minutes later,
but the trees want a consult.

Nita started laughing softly to herself, and then reached down for something in her lap: a book she’d been planning to pretend to read if something like this happened.
So, so typical,
she said silently, opening the book at random.

I’m heading straight back there: beaming out. Your mom and dad are on their way home in the car.

Okay,
Nita said.
Let me know how it goes.
And she leaned back in the seat, running one hand down the window of the plane as people started slowly to get on, the people with children first.

You’d like the plane,
she added. Her sensitivity was running high—perhaps because of her own nervousness and distress at leaving—but the plane was alive in the way that mechanical things usually seemed to her as a result of working with Kit. That had been his strength from the start, and probably would be for a while—the ability to feel what a rock was saying, reading the secret thoughts of an elevator or an icebox, the odd thing-thoughts that run in the currents of energy which occur naturally or are built into physical objects, manmade or not. She could hear the plane straining against the chocks behind its many wheels, its engines hungry to eat cold, cold air at 30 below and push it out behind. There was a sense of purpose about it, of restraint, and of eagerness to get out of there, to be gone.