Wizards at War, New Millennium Edition (8 page)

Diversion of tropical disturbance/incipient cyclone “Pewa” (NOAA) aka CP102010 (JTWC) approved JD 2455307.2625. Cyclone centerpoint latitude: 21:11:15N, longitude 141:55:30E, SSE of Iwo Jima. Storm heat energy release presently holding at only 1.6 × 1012 watts/day, making it ideal for “bounce-away” intervention within thirty hours (cutoff time/latest implementation 2455312.8900). Intervention team is scouting for available backup wizards with past experience in tropical-latitude hydro and meteo work (usual SE Asia specs on assignment to master [interim] crisis evaluation group Earth). Seniors are urgently requested to check their local talent for availability.

Kit shook his head, for this was just one small problem on a planet full of them. On all the pages that followed were status reports on more interventions of every kind. Wizards all over the world were doing spells for everything, from melting back an overaggressive glacier to stopping a small southeast Asian “bush war” from breaking out by giving all the potential combatants a brief, profound case of amnesia. The fighters in question had instantly forgotten what they’d come for; by the time the spell wore off, all of them had wandered hours and miles away from the battlefield, and were universally so freaked out that they had no desire to find their way back..

Sweet,
Kit thought, reading that précis with admiration.
And smart. But that spell must have really cost the wizards. The psychotropic wizardries are so tough to work.

The trouble was that the smart people who thought up that solution were the very ones whose expertise the Earth would shortly be losing—the typical adult wizards who worked the spells that kept Life going, or stopped bad things from happening, unnoticed by anyone but other wizards, their Seniors, and the Powers That Be.
It’s going to be us carrying the weight now. And either doing what the real Seniors have been doing… or screwing it up.

Kit made himself breathe.
Don’t get too hung up on how big it looks,
he thought.
Take it a piece at a time. That has to be what Tom and Carl did. They weren’t born Seniors.

Ponch jumped up on the bed and walked up to just behind Kit, flopping down. The springs creaked under them both as he settled himself with his head over Kit’s shoulder. Kit turned over a few more pages, looking at team wizardries going on all over the planet.
There are so many things happening,
Ponch said, looking down at the pages.

Kit turned his head to look at Ponch in some surprise. “Can you read this?”

I see things happening on the page there,
Ponch said.
Those marks—when I look at them, I see the ice melting. Is that reading?

“Maybe not exactly the way I understand it,” Kit said, “but, yeah, I think so.” He turned another page.

Look at all the spells. Everybody’s so busy.

“This is what the wizardly world’s like every day,” Kit said. “And for us, it’s about to get a lot busier than this if we’re going to solve this problem.”

What if you can’t?

It was a thought that had been coming up for Kit about every ten minutes. “We have to,” he said. “We don’t have a get-out clause. We have to do everything to make the ‘end of the world’ not happen.
Everything.
” He was surprised to find himself shaking.

From outside in the hall came a loud popping sound and a puff of displaced air that stirred some of the papers on Kit’s desk. A second later, Nita looked in Kit’s door. “Hey,” she said.

“Thought you were going to meet me ‘upstairs,’” Kit said, jerking a thumb toward the ceiling, or, rather, toward something beyond it.

“I thought I’d check here first.” She came over to the bed and looked down over his shoulder at the manual. “Yeah,” she said, seeing what Kit was looking at. “I’ve been spending a while with that. Any ideas?”

“I’ve got a few,” Kit said. “But we need to talk to the others—” Kit tipped the cover of the manual shut and got up. “You tell your dad yet?”

“Not yet. You talk to your mom and pop?”

“Yeah, but I think it’s not the kind of conversation you can have just once. My pop just said, ‘I trust you to do the right thing. You’ll figure it out. You always have before.’”

“Oh, God,” Nita said. “Well, at least Millman has us covered.”

“Millman?” Kit gave her a surprised look. “You and Dairine, yeah, but—”

“No, you, too, if your folks’ll go along with it. But only ten days.”

I should eat first!
Ponch said. He scrambled off the bed, turned several times in an excited circle, and shot out the bedroom door and down the stairs, making small enthusiastic woofing noises to himself.

“I was going to ask you how he was taking all this,” Nita said as they went after him, “but I guess that’s my answer.”

“As long as the end of the world doesn’t mess up his mealtimes,” Kit said, “he’ll be fine.”

“Hah,” Nita said. “Anyway, you’ve been looking the problem over again—”

“Yeah. I hate to say it, but I think Tom and Carl and the other Senior Wizards were running down a blind alley.” They went down the stairs into the living room. “I think whatever started that part of space expanding was done from somewhere a long way off. No point in wasting time sniffing around out there.”

“
Ohaiyo gozaimasu!
” yelled the big-screen TV and the DVR and the DVD player all together as the two of them came into the living room.

Kit stopped just long enough to bow to them. “Hey, guys,” he said. “Anything good on today?”

“…On insponder 2186043, the Gratuitous Transaction Channel presents the sixth-rerun thirteenth episode of
How Much for Just the Planet?
In this episode, Mexev finally hears from Anielle, who reads her an electronic communication from Turun, alleging that Nisb had a clandestine meeting with Keniphna at which they discussed the possible bribery of Twell—”

Kit gave Nita a look. “This is what happens when
certain people
leave the Galactic TV guide turned up to ‘verbose.’” He looked back toward the big screen and the other equipment. “Guys,” he said in the Speech, “back it down to ‘vaguely tantalizing,’ will you?”

“Ahem,” the DVR said, sounding put out. “The Planetary Acquisitions team is menaced by a strange alien force.”

Nita snickered.

Kit rolled his eyes and led the way into the dining room. “Remind me never to use wizardry on anything electronic again,” he said. “Anyway, even if the Seniors managed to stop the expansion in that one part of space, what were they going to do then? Patch all the other spots one at a time? Even if there were enough wizards to do it, it’d be like sticking Band-Aids on a sponge. The leakage just starts happening somewhere else.”

“I think you’re right,” said Nita. “Small-scale solutions won’t work on this problem. We need to stop wasting time on finicky analysis of the affected space, and find the source of what made it misbehave.”

“Wherever that might be,” Kit said. He collapsed onto the sofa. “So what now?”

“I think first we should start getting in touch with the younger wizards who’ve been picked for these intervention teams Tom was talking about,” Nita said. “I know he said he’d be in touch, but somehow I don’t feel comfortable just sitting around and waiting.”

“Neither do I,” Kit said. “I had an idea about that, too—”

The back door creaked open. “Another charming bijoux residence,” said a cool voice from just outside. “The overall understatement is most effective.”

A few moments later Dairine came in, followed by Roshaun, who gazed around him with the vague, polite interest of someone visiting a theme park, or some kind of historical recreation. Behind them came Filif and Sker’ret, who also looked around at everything, but with more interest. As the screen door slammed shut behind them, Ponch ran over to the new arrivals and started jumping up and down among them in excitement, slurping Sker’ret and sticking his nose in among Filif’s fronds.

“You did have your disguises on when you came over here, didn’t you?” Kit said.

“Please,” Dairine said, putting Spot down. He went spidering away past them all and into the living room. “What’s tough now is getting the seemings
off
them.” She glanced over at Roshaun in his baggy T-shirt. “Some of us are becoming real fashion victims.”

The back door creaked open again, and Carmela came in. “‘Mela,” Kit said, “have you seen Mama and Pop?”

“They went out for a while,” Carmela said. “Pop said something about ‘bracing himself for the rest of the explanation.’”

“Okay,” Kit said. Then he blinked, for an odd humming sound was coming from the living room. Kit headed in there, with Nita in tow. Spot was crouched down in front of the TV, staring at it with his own stalky eyes, and images and words in the Speech were flickering across the wide screen much too quickly for Kit to follow. “What’re you guys up to?” Kit said.

“
Dataaaaa…,
” said the TV and the DVR and the DVD all together, and fell silent again.

“Maybe we don’t really want to know,” Nita said. “It might be some kind of relationship thing. The secret life of machines.”

The two of them wandered back into the dining room, where Carmela had just finished getting some glasses down from one of the cupboards. “Boy,” she said with satisfaction as she went back into the kitchen, “this is a whole lot more interesting than just spending the day grenfelzing.”

Roshaun looked baffled. “Grenfelzing? What is that?”

“It’s like emmfozing, except that—”

“Okay, hold it right there. I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” Kit said. “Since when do aliens know about
chocolate?!
”

Carmela gave him a pitying look as she came in with a carton of fruit juice and a bottle of cola. “Poor little brother,” she said. “You mean you actually don’t
know
why Earth has so many UFO sightings?”

“Thought it was something to do with human beings thinking they’re the center of the universe.” Kit snorted. “Like other species have so much time to waste kidnapping us. Not to mention making weird patterns in wheat fields.”

“Oh, no, those are just people with boards and ropes,” Carmela said, ducking back into the kitchen. She came out a moment later with a bottle of spring water, which she put down in front of Filif. “And, very occasionally, sentient ball lightning. But most of the aliens are here for cocoa plants. The only reason people get abducted is when they have chocolate on them.”

Nita looked at Kit. “
Please
tell me she’s making this up!” she said.

Kit could only shrug. “She spends half her time watching the alien versions of the Discovery Channel. It could be true.”

“It
is
true,” Carmela said. “For silicon-based life-forms, one of the chemicals in chocolate is an aphrodisiac.”

“Oh, now,
wait
a minute!” Kit said, and covered his eyes with one hand.

“But most warm-blooded carbon-based species just really like the taste,” Carmela said. “Every time a new species finds out about chocolate, they send someone here to get cocoa plants so they can take them home and genetically tailor them to their physiologies.” Carmela smiled a bright and infuriating smile. “See, I
don’t
‘waste’ all my time in alien chat areas. I’ve been doing educational things. Like telling my chat buddies which brands of chocolate are best.”

Kit was left with the image of some intergalactic SWAT team turning up on his doorstep and arresting his sister for being a cocoa pusher. “Why do I get the feeling that you are totally out of control?”

“
Your
control,” said Carmela, and wandered off, smiling angelically. “You’re just now noticing?”

Kit clutched his head as Nita stifled a laugh. “It’s not funny,” Kit muttered. “And here I was just hoping we might survive the next month or so! Now I have to worry about my sister getting our whole planet put on probation for corrupting underage species or something.”

The doorbell rang.

Aha,
Kit thought, and braced himself.

Nita’s amusement at the way Carmela was putting Kit through the wringer was diverted by a weird feeling she couldn’t quite analyze. It was like feeling the sun on sunburned skin; and it felt directional, so that she could get a sense, in her mind anyway, of where it was coming from. She turned to look toward the front door.
Now what the—

“Probably just another of the thundering herd,” Carmela said, frowning, and heading that way herself.

“Don’t let any of your would-be boyfriends in here!” Kit said.

“Are you kidding?” Carmela said. “There’s a lot cooler stuff happening in here than mere
guys
.”She vanished around the corner into the living room.

“Someone’s being unusually cooperative today,” Kit said under his breath. “I bet I know why.”

Nita looked at him.
Oh no,
she said silently.
She doesn’t think that just because she knows about what’s going on, that she might get to go along
with—

If she gets that idea,
Kit said,
believe me, I’ll get her past it.
Way
past it. We have more than enough problems.

Nita heard Carmela open the front door. The silence that followed was entirely uncharacteristic, so much so that Nita looked in that direction, still wondering at that uneasy “sunburn” sensation.

A voice at the front door said, “Uh, is Kit here?”

Nita’s eyes went wide.

Oh… my… God,
she thought.

“Or Nita?” the voice said.

“Uh, yeah,” Carmela said, after another of those unusually long pauses. “Yeah. Can I tell her who’s asking for her?”

Nita stood there for several seconds more getting used to what was happening, and then got up and headed for the Rodriguezes’ front door.

Carmela stood there looking up at a tall dark figure dressed in black jeans, black shirt, a black leather jacket over it all, and with that shaggy longish dark hair hanging down over one eye, in just the way Nita remembered.

“Ronan,” Nita said.

Ronan Nolan Junior glanced over Carmela’s head at Nita, and actually smiled, though as usual for him it was a rather grim and edgy smile. “Hey,” he said, “
dai stihó.
”