Wizard's Holiday, New Millennium Edition (8 page)

Beyond, in the living room, the entertainment system was making a sound like a fire siren bewailing its lot. “No,” Kit said, “just ‘Mela’s chat application again. Come on.”

“By the way, the K-9 Corps is out there again,” Nita said as she and Kit headed through the dining room. “Hi, Mrs. R.”

“Hi, Nita,” Kit’s mama said from the sofa, where she was still lying with her feet up on the arm and her eyes closed. “Dinner in half an hour.”

“Thanks!”

“At least they’re just sitting there now,” Kit said softly. “They were howling before.”

“I missed that. Where’s Ponch?”

“Out back somewhere. He got them to be quiet, and after that he took off. H’s never real social after he has to go talk to them. Don’t ask me why…”

They went into the living room. There Carmela was sitting cross-legged on the rug in front of the TV, her phone now on the floor nearby but, miraculously, not in use. “Hi, ‘Mela,” Nita said. She peered at the screen. “‘Multispecies General Discussion,’” she read off the channel-indicator band at the bottom. “What’s it like?”

“Interesting, mostly.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Grenfelzing.
Which for some reason Kit doesn’t want me to get involved with. He thinks it’ll stunt my growth.”

“Anything that would keep you from needing to buy new clothes every other week would be welcome,” said Kit’s pop from behind the paper. “If
grenfelzing
has that effect, bring it on.”

Kit looked at the screen, which Nita was studying with interest. It was divided into three main parts: a status bar along the bottom; a constantly scrolling column down one side; and the main part of the screen, subdivided into eight squares, each of which featured a live image, or what looked like one. The scrolling column was full of words in the Speech, moving very fast indeed, and the audio was screeching or blatting or warbling or hooting with any number of alien-sounding voices, all talking (it seemed) at once.

“Which one is supposed to be you?” Nita said, looking at the screen.

“That one.” Carmela pointed at what appeared to be a portrait of a pink octopus. “I picked it off a screenful of sample cover faces.”

‘“Mela,” Nita said, “you know what would be better? Go off-line and pick something more humanoid. Otherwise, if Pink Octopus Guy turns up at school someday and wants to sit next to you, the explanation you’re going to find yourself making is going to sound like something out of a lame sitcom.”

“Oh,” Carmela said. “Okay.” She tossed the remote to Kit. “But do aliens really turn up on Earth just like that?”

“There’s no other possible way to explain
you,”
Kit said.

“Ooooooooo,”
Carmela said, standing up without uncrossing her legs. “I feel unloved now. Nita, come see my catalogs!”

“I’ll come up in a while,” Nita said. “Thanks.”

Carmela wandered upstairs. Kit glanced at his pop. “Uh, Popi,” Kit said, “uh, is it okay if I go halfway across the galaxy for a couple of weeks?”

“Sure,” Kit’s father said from behind the paper. “Is Nita going with you?”

“Uh, yeah, Pop.”

“Her dad said it’s okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine. Dress warm,” Kit’s father said, and turned to the comics section.

Kit and Nita exchanged a bemused glance. Finally, Kit turned toward the kitchen.

“You’ll want to fill Mama in on the details,” Kit’s father said, in a tone of voice suggesting complete unconcern.

Kit couldn’t bear it anymore. He looked over his shoulder and saw his father just peering over the top of the newspaper at him, waiting for his reaction. His father bent the paper down just enough to let Kit see his grin, then let the paper pop up again and went on with his reading.

“I’ve been had,” Kit muttered to Nita as they went back into the kitchen.

Nita rolled her eyes. “The story of our lives…”

Kit’s mama was up off the couch now, and looked up as she poured herself some coffee. “In case you were wondering,” she said as they came in, “Tom was on the phone a while ago.”

“Oh,” Kit said.

“He gave us the basics,” Kit’s mama said, leaning against the counter. “I gather that this isn’t going to be at all dangerous, and that you’ll be able to come home at night if you want to, or if we want you to.”

“Uh, yeah,” Kit said.

“Well, let’s think about this,” his mother said. “Your grades have been okay… ” Kit was already beginning to grin when his mama glanced up at him and said, “I emphasize the ‘okay’. Not brilliant. I’m still not entirely pleased with your midterm grades, especially that history test.”

“Mama,” Kit said, “my history teacher is a date freak. He doesn’t care if you understand anything about history except
when
things happened!”

“Aha, the appeal to vague generalities as opposed to concrete data,” Kit’s mother said. “Sorry, honey. Not having the dates is like knowing why someone’s having a cardiac arrest but not being real sure where their heart is. You’re just going to have to work harder at that, even if you can’t see the point right now.”

“You’re gonna tell me that it’ll all make sense someday,” Kit said.

“It sure will,” his mother said, “and on that day you’ll suddenly realize that your mom wasn’t really as dumb as you secretly thought she was at the very moment you were also trying to wheedle her into letting you go jaunting off halfway across the galaxy.”

I think this is a real good time not to say anything,
Kit thought.

“Okay,” Kit’s mama said. “I want a commitment from you that you’re going to work a lot harder in that history class, and see if maybe the guy’s really all
that
fixated on dates. Otherwise, the next time you want to go out on a recreational run like this, the answer is going to be no. Even if you work in other worlds, you have to live in this one… and Tom says even wizards need day jobs.”

“I promise, Mama,” Kit said.

His mother had another drink of coffee, then looked reflectively into the cup. “Of course,” she said, “you’d promise to turn into a three-headed gorilla as long as you could go on this trip.”

“Mama!”

Her grin broke out at full strength. “I know,” she said. “Wizards don’t lie. But if I don’t get to tease you sometimes, life won’t be worth living. When do you leave?”

“Thanks, Mama!” Kit said, and jumped at her and hugged her harder than necessary, if only to get her back for the teasing.

“It’s some time in the next couple of days, Mrs. R.,” Nita said. “I didn’t check the exact date—I was looking at the rest of the info package. We can tell you in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” Kit’s mama said. “Get that sorted out and you can fill us in over dinner.”

They went up to Kit’s room—or, rather, Kit ran up the steps three at a time in his excitement, and Nita came up after him. As Kit passed Carmela’s room, she put her head out and looked him up and down as if he were nuts. “What’s going on with you?” she said.

“I get to go away for spring break!” Kit said.

“Oh, really? Where to?”

“Sixty-two thousand light-years away,” Kit said casually. “The other side of the galaxy.”

“Great!” Carmela said. “I’ll give you a shopping list.”

“You do your
own
shopping,” Kit said as he and Nita went into his room. He glanced over at Nita and saw her grinning. “What’s so funny?”

“Your whole family teases you,” Nita said. “I’ve never seen them get so
coordinated
about it before.”

“Neither have I,” Kit said. “I don’t know whether I should be worried or not.”

“This is new,” Nita said, looking up at a double-hemisphere map of the Moon on the wall at the head of Kit’s bed. The map had a lot of different-colored pins stuck in it, in both hemispheres, though there were about twice as many on the “near side” of the Moon as on the “far side.” “Are you trying to win a Visited Every Crater competition or something?”

Kit threw her a look. “Go ahead and laugh,” he said. “I’m trying to get to know the Moon before it becomes just another tourist destination.” But his attention was on his desk by the window.

It was covered with schoolbooks brought home over spring break (the school did locker cleaning then) and notebooks and pens and DVDs and various other detritus. What it was
not
strewn with were the three objects that had just appeared, between one breath and the next, and were floating a few inches
above
the cluttered surface. They were silvery packages about the size of paperback books, wrapped with “sheet” force fields that sizzled slightly blue at the corners; and they were bobbing slightly in the draft from the nearby window, as its weather stripping had come loose again. “When
are
you going to fix that?” Nita said.

“Later,” said Kit. He inspected the little floating packages to see if they had notations on them. One did. A single string of characters in the Speech was attached to it and was waving gently in the draft: read this first.

“Is this what you got?” Kit said.

Nita nodded. “That one’s the mission statement,” she said.

Kit took hold of the wizardly package, pulled it into the middle of the room, and pulled the string of characters out until the normally curved characters of the Speech went straight with the tension of the pull. As they did, the package unfolded itself in the air, a sheet of semishadow on which many more characters in the Speech swiftly spread themselves in blocks of text and columns, small illustrations and diagrams, and various live and still images.

SPONSORED ELECTIVE/NONINTERVENTIONAL EXCURSUS PROGRAM
, said the header,
NOMINEE AUTHORIZATIONS AND ANCILLARY DATA. NOTE: WHERE CULTURAL CORRESPONDENCES ARE NOT EXACT, LOCAL ANALOGUES ARE SUBSTITUTED
. Beneath the header, divided into various sections, was a tremendous amount of other information about the world where they’d be staying, the family they’d be staying with, the culture, the locality where the family lived, the planet’s history, the climate, the flora and fauna, on and on and on…

“It’s gonna take me all night to read this!” Kit said.

“Relax,” Nita said. “It’s not like there’s a test! You don’t have to inhale it all at once. We’ve got a little time for that.”

“Yeah,” Kit said. It was just beginning to sink in how very far from home they were going. Kit was
delighted
—but at the same time all of a sudden it was making him twitch.

He scanned down the data.
Addendum to authorization: You may be accompanied by your adjunct Talent if desired.
“Hey,” Kit said, “I can bring Ponch!”

“Great! And there are the dates,” Nita said, pointing to one side where the duration of the trip was expressed, as usual on Earth, in Julian-day format—2455290.3333 to 2455304.3333, it said. She had her manual out and was paging through it.

“It sounds close,” Kit said.

Nita raised her eyebrows. “No kidding,” she said. “That first date’s tomorrow at three in the afternoon. Didn’t realize it was so soon!”

“You won’t hear me complaining,” Kit said. “What’s the other date?”

“Exactly two weeks later. Friday after next.”

“And then school starts again the Monday after,” Kit said. “Good thing I finished my break work early.”

Nita made a face. “Wish I had,” she said. “I’ve got a few reports to do… I’m going to have to bring them with me.” Then she grinned again. “Fortunately, that’s not a problem. See that one there, the big one?” She pointed at another of the packages floating over the desk.

Kit went to it, brought it into the middle of the room, and pulled its “tag.” Instead of unfolding itself, the package rolled itself up tight into a narrow cylindrical shape, losing its “wrapping” in the process. There it hung in the air, a silvery rod about three feet long and half an inch wide.

“What is that?” he said.

“A pup tent,” Nita said. “Watch this—”

There was another of those little threads of words in the Speech hanging down from the middle of it. Nita pulled on the thread. As if it were a window shade, a pale sheet of shadow pulled down out of the rod.

“That’s really slick,” Kit said. “What’s it for? Shelter?”

“Storage,” Nita said, “for the things you need to bring with you. It’s a claudication, but a lot bigger than our little pockets.” She finished pulling the access interface down to floor level and straightened up again.

“Hey,” Kit said, looking through the shadow. He put a hand through the shadow: The hand vanished. Then he put his head in through the access.

Inside was just a gray space about the size of Kit’s living room, with a ceiling about ten feet high. The space was softly illuminated by a light that came from nowhere. Through the walls of the “pup tent,” he could faintly see his own room. It was a good trick, because from the outside there was nothing to be seen but the rod and the rectangular doorway hanging down from it.

When he pulled his head out, Nita was snickering. “You should see how you look when just your head vanishes,” she said.

Kit thought about that for a moment. “What did my neck look like?”

“A guillotine ad…”

Kit raised his eyebrows. “Mama would probably be interested.”

“We can show her later. Anyway, clothes and books and things can go in there… ”

“Some spare food?” Kit said. “In case you wake up in the middle of the night and need potato chips or something?”

Nita gave him a look that was only slightly dirty. Potato chips were a recent weakness of Nita’s, one that Kit had started actively teasing her about. “Yeah,” she said. “A case or so of those… and see if I give
you
any.”

Kit grinned. “Okay,” he said. “What’s that last one? Did you open yours?”

“Nope,” Nita said. “It says not to. In fact, it just about screams not to. Check it out.”

Kit picked up the last package. It, too, had a “tag” of characters in the Speech hanging from it, but as Kit started to pull on it, a little half-transparent window appeared in the air, like a floating page of the manual. Nita peered over his shoulder at it.

DANGER!—CUSTOM PORTABLE WORLDGATING LOCUS—DANGER!

DO NOT IMPLEMENT WITHOUT READING INSTRUCTIONS!