Wizard's Holiday, New Millennium Edition (16 page)

“I think if we can get him to stick to the spaghetti and leave the plates and the table alone,” Dairine said, “we’ll be doing okay.”

Dairine’s dad reached up into another cupboard and came down with a couple of odd plates from an old set, which Dairine knew for a fact her dad hated, and had been looking for an excuse to get rid of. “And in case of accidents—” he said.

Dairine grinned, and went looking for a pot for the spaghetti.

***

As it turned out, the plates survived dinner, though Dairine’s temper almost didn’t.

And the problem, as she’d suspected it would be, had been Roshaun. Filif came in to “sit” at the table in a large bucket of potting soil that Dairine’s dad brought in for him, and Sker’ret more or less draped himself over the seat and through the open back of one of the dining room chairs, leaving his front end free to deal with the spaghetti. Dairine’s dad only had to warn Sker’ret once that they were only eating things on top of the tablecloth and inside containers. This led to a lively discussion of what humans ate, and Dairine sat there in mostly mute appreciation of how her father somehow confined himself entirely to discussing how things tasted, without ever going near the subject of what they
were.
Dairine spent most of her time ingesting spaghetti—she found that she was ravenous—and forcing herself not to glare at Roshaun.

It took him exactly five seconds to master the fork and spoon, though he let it be known that at his home, his people used several different kinds of tongs to handle slippery foods like this. He let a number of things be known over the course of dinner, dispensing the occasional fact or opinion as if he expected everybody to be eagerly awaiting his every word… and paying precious little attention to anyone else’s opinions, if they came up. His clothes, his possessions, the size of his house, which apparently would have dwarfed Dairine’s, all these came up for brief and tasteful mention. What did not come out was anything personal, anything revealing of the inner nature of the entity who sat there at the table, managing the fork and spoon with the grace of someone who’d been using them for years, and never had never gotten spaghetti sauce or any other sauce on him, not once.

Dairine sat there listening to it all, and stewed. Sker’ret didn’t seem to notice Roshaun’s attitude, or if he did, he didn’t reveal it during his workmanlike and concentrated assault on the food. Filif mostly sat quietly listening to the others, and rustled occasionally whenever anyone said anything with sufficient emphasis to suggest that they wanted a response from the listeners. Dairine and her dad concentrated on keeping the conversation going along in a relatively friendly fashion, but Dairine increasingly felt like she was doing weight training, and with weights that were getting heavier every minute.

But they made it through the main course without a murder, and then through dessert (her dad’s chocolate pudding) without any serious incidents. And at the end of it all, “Well,” Dairine’s dad said, looking around the table, “it’s been a long day, and I’m sure that it would be a good thing if we all got some rest now.”

“But it’s not even dark yet,” Filif said.

“I know,” Dairine’s dad said, in a very kindly voice. “But there’s the time difference to think of; there has to be at least
some
time difference between your planet and this one. And whatever it is, I’m sure it means that you need some rest now. I know I do.” And he stood up.

The others stood up with him. “I think I might withdraw,” Roshaun said graciously. “Your local night is how long?”

“Eight hours,” Dairine said, while thinking grimly,
It was in your orientation pack, if you’d bothered to read it.
“I’ll walk you to the stairs, guys. You all saw where my room is. If you need anything, I’ll be awake about an hour and a half after the sun comes up. You all have everything you need in your pup tents?”

“More than enough,” Filif said.

“Me, too,” Sker’ret said.

“A sufficiency,” said Roshaun, and turned away from Dairine with no further acknowledgment. “Your best of rest, then.”

Dairine went with their three guests to the stairs, saw them safely down. “Good night, everybody,” she said, closing the door to the cellar stairs.

Her dad was standing there by the sink, having just put a stack of dishes down beside it, and presently washing a couple of glasses by hand. As Dairine turned away from the basement door, he glanced over at her. “A harder day than you were expecting?”

“Uh, yeah,” said Dairine. “Did it show?”

“You mean, to the guests? In Filif’s and Sker’ret’s case, I don’t think so. They seem like nice kids.” Her father put one glass down on the drainer, picked up the other to rinse it out. “I’d like to know what’s going on with Roshaun, though.”

“So would I,” Dairine muttered. She was sufficiently shell-shocked at the moment, and sufficiently in need of something grindingly ordinary, that she actually found herself picking up a dish towel to help her dad finish up at the sink. “Daddy, it’s driving me crazy.”

He looked at her with slight concern. Dairine understood why. It wasn’t in her nature to make a lot of admissions of that kind, even in the family. Dairine let out a long breath and said, “I’ve never met a wizard who wasn’t… ”

“Good?” her father said. “Nice?”

Dairine shook her head. “It’s not just that,” she said. “All the wizards I know—know at all closely—their wizardry’s really important to them. Maybe it’s not the main thing their life is about: No one says it has to be. But it’s important. This guy, though… it feels like he wants you to think that wizardry’s a hobby for him. How can anyone be that way? Wizardry’s about talking the universe
right
when it goes wrong… finding out what’s going on in people’s heads and helping them make the world happen. Finding out how things want to be, and helping them
be
that way. How can anything be more important than that?” She waved her arms in the air, frustrated. “Sure, it’s about having fun, too—you’d have to be incredibly obtuse and clueless not to have fun being a wizard. And there are a billion ways to do it! But
this
guy—”

She shook her head. Much more quietly Dairine said, “I really don’t like him. And I really don’t
like
that I really don’t like him. The worst part is that I don’t have any reasons for it. He’s one of my own kind, a wizard, and he rubs me the wrong way.”

Her father sighed. “You know,” he said, “there’ve been people I’ve worked with, occasionally, over the years, that I’ve had the same problem with. And I’ve
never
known what to do about it.”

“Wait for them to go away?” Dairine said.

“Sometimes they do,” her dad said. “Sometimes you’re just stuck with them.”

Dairine sighed in turn. “Two weeks… ”

“It’s only been a few hours,” her dad said. “Don’t give up yet. Things may improve.”

“From your mouth to the Powers’ ears,” Dairine muttered. But she found it hard to believe that Roshaun was going to shift his behavior in any way that would matter.

Her dad handed her the glass from the drainer. “Before I turn in,” he said, “anything I should know about the downstairs?”

“They’ve got a pup tent each,” Dairine said, “and they’re probably sleeping in them. So if you go down there, make sure you turn on the light so you don’t stumble into any place you don’t want to be. They’ve also got a worldgate each, fastened to the bare wall, in case they need to get home in a hurry for some emergency. I wouldn’t lean any tools against those. You might not get them back.”

Her dad nodded. “It’s strange,” he said, “hearing them speak. It sounds like English… but it runs deeper, somehow. You hear undertones.”

“That’s the Speech,” Dairine said. “Everything understands it somewhat. But you’re hearing it with better understanding than a nonspeaker usually gets.” She finished drying the glass, put it up on the counter. “If it starts to bother you… ”

Her father shook his head. “I’ll let you know,” he said. “But no problems so far.” He finished with the last glass, handed it to Dairine, and leaned against the counter. “So what are we going to do with them for two weeks? Regardless of where Nita and Kit might be, it’s too cold for
us
to go to the beach… though you might take them out that way once to show them the sea. I get a feeling there aren’t many oceans where Filif comes from.”

“You’re getting to like him already,” Dairine said, and smiled.

“I’m not used to having the plants talk back,” her dad said. “Or, if they do, being able to understand them. It’s an experience.”

Dairine nodded. “Well, we can help them get used to suburban life gradually,” she said. “Carmela wants to come talk to the visitors, anyway. And once they’ve got their disguise routines sorted out, we can take them around the neighborhood, to start with. They can even go over to the Rodriguezes’ and see Kit’s weird TV. For all I know, they may be able to see some program they’re missing.”

Dairine’s dad chuckled at that. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s try to keep them out of sight until we’re sure their disguises are going to stay in place. I really don’t want a UFO scandal erupting on my doorstep.”

“Leave that to me.”

“All right,” her dad said. He had been washing the last couple of dishes; he racked them up in the drainer. “I’m going to turn in, sweetie. It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah.”

Her dad grabbed Dairine and hugged her hard. “A long day for you, too,” he said. “No, leave those last two. Throw in the towel and go to bed.”

Dairine hung up the dish towel, but not before tossing a last amused glance at the two dishes still in the drainer. “You’re just hoping that Sker’ret will wake up with an urge for something in the middle of the night… ”

Her dad grinned at her and went to bed.

***

Dairine took herself to bed after him, first walking through the house and making sure that doors were locked and lights turned off. Once up in her room, the tiredness came down over her as if someone had put a sack over her head. She kept blinking to keep her eyes open. But before she got undressed for bed, before she even thought of doing anything else, she turned to Spot, who was sitting on her desk as usual, and flipped his lid open. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Get me Roshaun’s profile.”

It’s right here,
Spot said.

Dairine looked at the profile, once again examining that picture of Roshaun. She knew she was imagining it, but on this examination, after meeting the original, that picture seemed to have something that had been missing before: just the slightest sneer.

She glanced down the column of material in the Speech that was the public part of Roshaun’s name. There, embedded in the long intertwined tracery of characters, would be information about his personality, his abilities, his power levels and level of accomplishment as a wizard, and much else. But now that she looked at it, there was something strange about that long series of names he flaunted around.
Some family thing,
she’d thought at first. But now she was having doubts.

Dairine read Roshaun’s full name again, slowly, not as a phrase in an alien language this time, worth savoring for the exotic sounds, but this time translating each word.
Roshaun ke Nelaid,
it began, those two words simply being proper names and a patronymic article, with a string of more proper names following them. But then it went on: “Roshaun of the princes’ line of Seriv, son of the Sun Lord, beloved of the Sun Lord, son of the great King, descendant of the Inheritors of the Great Land, the Throne-destined—”

Dairine sat there at her desk and was appalled, realizing that Roshaun had actually given her the
short
version of his name. It went on for about six more epithets, which sounded impressive but were difficult to decipher, and ended in the words
am me’stardet Wellakhir,
“royal and kingly Masters, Guardians, and Guarantors of Wellakh.”

Oh my god,
Dairine thought. The situation was worse than she’d thought it could possibly be.
They’ve sent me some kind of planetary prince,
she thought.
The Powers That Be really
did
think I was getting out of hand, and this is my punishment. I’m going to get to spend two weeks’ worth of holiday baby-sitting spoiled royalty.

She tried to read the rest of Roshaun’s profile— “Power level 6.0-6.8 ± 0.5; Specialty: stellar dynamics, stellar atmospheres and kinetics, consultant level 3.6… ”—but she couldn’t concentrate. Very gently she put Spot’s lid down. Normally, her next line would have been,
What have I done to deserve this?
But she
knew
what she had done.
Boy,
Dairine thought,
when the Powers That Be get annoyed with you, they don’t play around.
She put her face down in her hands and moaned.

Then she opened Spot’s lid again and looked one more time at that endless name. That by itself was bad… very bad. It was also full of reasons for Roshaun’s self-importance.
Still,
Dairine thought,
it’s no excuse for him to be such a snot. Maybe we can do something about that, given enough time.

But there was something even stranger about the name—not anything specifically
bad…
just odd. Not once in that whole epic string of words was the word
wizard
mentioned, not even as a footnote.

Now what am I supposed to make of that?
Dairine thought. Because even if he
was
the king of a world somewhere, or in line to be one, if he was also a wizard, that fact was more than worthy of being mentioned in the same breath.

Dairine lay there and brooded over it for a while.

You’re worried about Roshaun,
Spot said.

About him? No,
Dairine said.
But he raises questions.

Like how to avoid killing him,
Spot said. And behind the words, Dairine could hear that very characteristic, machine-accented laugh of his. It was something Spot had learned from her. It was one of the
first
things Spot had learned from her.