Deep Wizardry-wiz 2 (17 page)

Almost through, Nita thought, exulting. Her words and Kit’s wound about one another, wove together, binding the spell tighter around the circle-squeezing air in, squeezing power in, pushing inward with such force that the circle and its contents had no choice but to be somewhere else than they were.

Almost—Nita matched her words to Kit’s with a laugh in her voice, rushing him, finding that she couldn‘t rush him because he had already matched pace to keep up with her— She laughed at being anticipated so. Faster and faster they went, like two kids seeing who could say the Pledge of Allegiance faster, as all around them the silence began to sing with inturned power, the air shimmered and rang with force like a gong ringing backward, soft at first, then louder, though without sound, without breaking that silence—a hiss, a murmur, an outcry of something about to happen, a shout of inner voices, a silent thunderclap. And the last not-sound, so loud it unmade the world around them and struck them deaf and blind—

Then true silence again, with darkness above and whiteness below—but not the same darkness or whiteness as on the beach.

“We’re here,” Nita whispered. “Mom, Dad, have a look around. Don’t go near the edges of the circle.”

“Be careful how you move,” Kit said. “You only weigh a sixth of what you usually do. If your muscles overreact you could bounce right out of the circle. I almost did, first time.”

Nita watched her mother and father stare around them. She swallowed— partly out of reflex, for her ears were ringing in the silence that surrounded them now. That was to be expected; this stillness was more total than anything experienced on Earth. Her other reason for swallowing was more practical. The sudden transfer to one-sixth gravity tended to upset your stomach unless you were used to it.

Her father was staring at the ground, which had changed from wet beach sand to a mixture of grayish gravel and pebbles, and rocks the size of fists or melons, all covered with a gray-white dust as fine as talc. But Nita’s mother was staring up at the sky with a look of joy so great it was pain—the completely bearable anguish of an impossible dream that suddenly comes true after years of hopeless yearning. Tears were running down her mother’s face at the sight of that sky, so pure a velvet black that the eye insisted on finding light in it where light was not—a night sky set with thousands of stars, all blazing with a cold fierce brilliance that only astronauts ever saw; a night sky that nonetheless had a ravening sun standing noonday high in it, pooling all their shadows black and razor-sharp about their feet.

Nita was blinking hard herself to manage the stinging of her eyes; she knew how her mother felt. “Over there, Mom,” she said very quietly. “Off to the left. Look.”

“Off to the left” was a steep slope that plunged down and down to a deep chasm, filled with absolute blackness ungentled by the presence of air. On the far side of the chasm stretched a flat, rocky plain that seemed to stop too soon, running up against a horizon abnormally close. Out on the plain, not too far away, a dazzling squarish glow of gold sat on four spidery legs. Some thirty yards from the bright platform on legs stood a silvery pole with an American flag standing out from it, held straight by a rod running through the top of it: a necessity—for here where it stood, no wind would ever stir it.

“No,” Nita’s father said, his voice hushed. “Impossible. Tranquillity Base—“

“No,” Kit said, his voice soft too. “That’s going to be a tourist attraction in a few years, when they build the Hilton there—so we don’t go down there for fear of leaving footprints where somebody might find them. This is from Apollo 16. See over there?” He pointed past the abandoned first-stage platform of the LEM Orion at the first Lunar Rover, which sat parked neatly beside a boulder—a delicate-looking little dunebuggy, still in excellent condition, used only once by a couple of astronauts from Pasadena for jaunts to Stone Mountain, on which the four of them stood.

Nita’s father slowly went down on one knee and brushed his hand along the dry, pale lunar soil, turning over the stones that lay there, then picking one up and clutching it hard in his fist.

“Harry,” Nita’s mother said, still looking up. The tone of her voice made her husband look up too—and seeing what she saw, he forgot the rock.

What they saw was part of a disk four times the size of the Moon as seen from the Earth; and it seemed even bigger because of the Moon’s foreshortened horizon. It was not the full Earth so familiar from pictures, but a waning crescent, streaked with cloud swirls and burning with a fierce green-blue radiance—a light with depth, like the fire held in the heart of an opal, that light banished the idea that blue and green were “cool” colors; one could have warmed one’s hands at that crescent. The blackness to which it shaded was ever so faintly touched with silver—a disk more hinted at than seen; the new Earth in the old Earth’s arms.

There’ll be a time,” Nita said softly, “when any time someone’s elected to a public office—before they let them start work—they’ll bring whoever was elected up here and just make them look at that until they get what it means...”

Kit nodded. “You wanted to know where the power came from,” he said to Nita’s mother and father. “The grownups who’re wizards tell us that whatever made that made the power too. It’s all of a piece.”

“ ‘The grownups who’re wizards’?”

“And as for ‘why,’ “ Kit said, “that’s why.” There was no need for him to point to “that.”

“Not just for the—for what you felt on the way in. That’s part of it. But because somebody’s gotta take care of that. Not just part of it —not just one country, or one set of rules, or one species, at the expense of the others. But everything that lives, all the kinds of ‘people.’ All of it, with nothing left out. One whole planet. Somebody’s got to make sure it grows as well as it can. Or just that it survives. That’s what wizards do.”

“Daddy,” Nita said, “it’s like you always say. If you don’t do it yourself, it may not get done right. And we can’t afford to let that get screwed up. We have to live there. So will other people, later.”

Her father shook his head, confused. “Nita,” he said, sounding unsure, “you’re too young to be thinking about this kind of thing.”

She bit her lip. “Dad—that sort of thinking might be one of the reasons why things aren’t working so well back there...”

“Neets,” Kit said, “we have to get back. We’re losing heat pretty fast.”

“Mom, Dad,” Nita said, “we can come back some other time. It’s late, and Kit and I have an early day tomorrow. Got the rock?” she said to Kit.

“Uh-huh. Ready?”

Nita’s mother reached out and pulled her husband close this time. “Is it going to be like it was before?”

“Huh? No. It just takes a lot of effort to push all this air up out of Earth’s gravity well, that’s all. You have to reach escape velocity—“

Nita’s father blinked. “Wait a minute. I thought this was—magic.” He said the word as if for the first time in his life.

Nita shrugged. “Even with magic,” she said, “you have to obey the rules. Downhill is a lot easier than uphill in a wizardry, same as anywhere else. Kit?”

“Ready,” he said. They looked at each other, took a breath, and said one short word in unison.

WHAM!—and air and sand and water blew outward in all directions as they left noon for midnight, standing once again on the long dark beach silvered with moonlight. Kit stepped to the edge of the circle, first scuffing the wizard’s knot out of existence, then going around and breaking the circle once at each compass point. “Let’s go in,” Nita said to her parents. “I’m dead.”

The four of them trudged up the stairs to the front door, back into the living room. Her dad plopped down onto the couch and said, “Nita, wait just a few minutes. I have to ask you something.”

Nita looked at him, sighed, and did as she was told. “Tell me again,” her dad said, “this stuff about what you’re doing underwater. Just very briefly.”

It turned out to be more than briefly, since much of what Nita had told her parents had fallen out of their heads the first time, discarded in general disbelief. And it was with growing dismay that Nita watched the unease in her parents’ faces, as she told them again about the undersea tremors, the pollution of the water, the slaughter of the whales—and the purposes of the Lone Power, though she tried to tell them as little about that as she could.

“Nita,” her father said at last, “what are the chances that you could get hurt doing this ‘Song’ business? The truth.”

She looked at him unhappily. “Pretty good,” she said.

“And the same for Kit?” her mother said.

“Just about,” Kit said.

Nita’s father shook his head. “Nita. Look. I understand ... no. I sort of understand how you and Kit feel about this. Magic...” He raised his hands, dropped them again, in a helpless gesture. “If someone offered me the chance to be a magician, I’d jump at it...”

“A wizard,” Nita said. And, No, you wouldn’t, she thought. Because if you would have, really, you would have been offered it! There are never enough wizards...

But her father was still talking. “But this business ... endangering yourself, or endangering Kit— Your mother and I can’t permit it. You’re going to have to bow out.”

For a moment, as far as Nita was concerned, everything faded out, drowned in a great wash of relief and hope. The perfect excuse. Perfect. My mom and dad won’t let me. Sorry, S’reee, Hotshot, Ed...

Opaque black eyes looked at Nita out of the scene her eager mind was already constructing for her—and hope died. The hair stood up all over Nita —not from fear, but from something more terrible. Without any warning, and for the first time, she understood in her own person what had only been a word to her before: honor. I can’t, she thought. For me—for me—it’s not right.

“Dad,” she said unhappily, “you didn’t get it. I’m sworn to the Song. If I back out now, the whole thing will be sabotaged.”

Her father got up, a sign that he intended this argument to be over shortly. “Come on, Neets. Surely someone else could do it—“

“No.”

“Nita,” said her mother, looking stern, “you don’t understand. We’re not letting you do this. Or Kit either, while he’s under our roof. You’re going to have to find a replacement. Or the—the whales will. Whoever. You’re not going.”

I must not have said it right, they’re not understanding! “Mom—“ Nita said, searching frantically for words. “This isn’t just some cute thing that Kit and I are doing because it’ll be fun! If we don’t stop the forces that are beginning to move, there are going to be massive earthquakes all up and down the East Coast. That’s not a maybe. It’s a will! You think the Island would survive something like that? The whole place is nothing but rocks and trash the glaciers dumped in the ocean; it’ll break up and wash away like a sandcastle at high tide! And you think Manhattan’ll survive? It’s already got four unstable geological faults of its own, right through the bedrock! And none of the buildings there are earthquake-proof; one quake’ll leave the place looking like somebody kicked over a pile of blocks!” Nita was waving her arms in the air now, so upset that she was beyond caring whether she looked silly or not. “Millions of people could die—“

“Could,” her father said, seizing on the word. He was pacing now.

Kit shook his head. “Will,” he said, and there was such a weight of certainty and misery on the word that Nita’s father stopped pacing, and her mother closed her mouth, and they both stared at Kit in amazement. “You’re saying,” Kit said, gazing at them out of eyes suddenly gone dark and fierce, “that you don’t care whether ten million people, more than ten million people, would die, just so long as we two don’t get hurt.”

Nita’s mother spluttered, to Nita’s great satisfaction. That one had sunk in. “No, we aren’t, we just—“

“You don’t even care that ten million people might die,” Nita said. “Just so Kit and I are okay, you’re willing to run that risk.”

“No, I—“ Nita’s father saw what was being done to him. “Young lady, no more out of you! Just the quakes going on off the coast now, by the reports we’ve heard, are too dangerous for you to be down there.”

“Daddy, believe me, we’ve survived a lot worse!”

“Yes—and your mother and I didn’t know about it then! Now we do.” Her father turned away. “The answer is no, and that’s final!”

From many fights Nita had overheard between her folks, Nita knew that when her dad said that, it never was. “Daddy,” she said. “I’m sorry. I really am. I love you, and I wish like anything I could do what you want. But I can’t.”

“Nita!” There was that rage again, full-blown, worse than before. Her father was on his feet, standing right over her, glaring at her. “You will do as I tell you!”

Hot all over, Nita shot to her feet—standing on the chair—and in sheer desperation shouted right back in his face. “Don’t you get it? There are some things in the world more important than doing what you tell me!”

Her father and mother stared at her, stunned.

“Besides,” Kit said quietly from out of her range of vision, “how would you stop us?”

Nita’s father turned away to stare at Kit now.

“Look,” Kit said. “Mr. Callahan, Mrs. Callahan—we gave our word that we’d do this.” What is this ‘we’? Nita thought, bemused. “And the wizardry we’re doing is mainly directed against the One who invented the broken promise. Breaking our word will play right into Its hands and cause a lot of people to die, at best. Maybe destroy this world, sooner or later, at worst.”

“But we have only your word on that!” Nita’s mother said.

“Uh-huh. But isn’t our word any good? And why would we lie to you about this? Considering that we’re going through all this crap for the sake of telling you the truth.”

Nita’s mother closed her mouth.

“She didn’t have to tell you,” Kit said, sounding angry for the first time. “But it would’ve been lying, in a way—and Nita thinks you’re worth not lying to.” He paused, then said, “I do too. We may just be kids, but we’re old enough to tell the truth. And to take it. Are you?”

The question wasn’t a taunt: It was honestly meant. “Even if you’re not, we’ll still have to do what we have to,” Nita said, though saying it made her unhappy. “When you two wake up in the morning, this could all seem like a dream to you—if it had to. I guess you’d better make up your minds, because we have to get some sleep or we won’t be worth dead fish tomorrow.”