A Wizard Alone New Millennium Edition (2 page)

There was first a shocked silence, then some muttering and grumbling about unbearable insults and who owed whom an apology. “You both do,” Kit said. “You were really disrespectful to each other. Now get on with it, and then settle down to work. You’ll have a great time. The new cable package has a lot of new channels.”

Reluctantly, they did it. About ten minutes later the DVD began sorting through and classifying the channels it found on the TV. “Thank you, guys,” Kit said, taking a few moments to tidy up the paperwork scattered all over the floor, while thinking longingly of the oncoming generation of wireless electronics that would all communicate seamlessly and effortlessly with one another. “See, that wasn’t so bad. But someday all this will be so much simpler,” Kit said, patting the top of the DVD player.

“No, it won’t,” the remote control said darkly.

Kit rolled his eyes and decided to let the distant unborn future of electronics fend for itself. “
You
just behave,” he said to the remote, “or you’re gonna wind up in the Cuisinart.”

He walked out of the living room, ignoring the indignant shrieks of wounded ego from the remote. This had been only the latest episode in a series of almost constant excitements lately, which had begun when his dad broke down after years of resistance and decided to get a full-size entertainment center. It was going to be wonderful when everything was installed and everything worked. But in the meantime, Kit had become resigned to having a lot of learning experiences.

From the back door at the far side of the kitchen came a scratching noise: his dog letting the world know he wanted to come back in. The scratching stopped as the door opened. Kit turned to his pop, who had just come into the dining room again, and handed him the remote. “I think it’s fixed now,” he said. “Just do this from now on: instead of using this button to bring the system up, the one the manual tells you to, press this, and then this.” He showed his pop how to do it.

“Okay. But why?”

“They may not remember the little talking-to I just gave them—it depends on how the system resets when you turn it off. This should remind them … I hardwired it in.”

“What was the problem?”

“Something cultural.”

“Between the remote and the DVD player? But they’re both Japanese.”

“Looks like it’s more complicated than that.” There seemed to be no point in suggesting to his pop that the universal remote and the DVD were both unsatisfied with their active or passive modes. Apparently doing what you had been built to do was a prospect no more popular among machines than it was among living things. Everything had its own ideas about what it really should be doing in the world, and the more memory you installed in the hardware, the more ideas it got.

Kit realized how thirsty all this talking to machinery had made him. He went to the fridge and rummaged around to see if there was some of his mom’s iced tea in there. There wasn’t, only a can of the lemon soft drink that Nita particularly liked and that his mom kept for her.

The sight of it made Kit briefly uncomfortable. But neither wizardry nor friendship was exclusively about comfort. He took the lemon fizz out, popped the can’s top, and took a long swig.
Neets?
he said silently.

Yeah,
she said in his mind.

There wasn’t much enthusiasm there, but there hadn’t been much enthusiasm in her about anything for some weeks. At least it wasn’t as bad for her now as it had been right after her mother’s funeral. But clearly Kit wondered whether the bitter pain she’d been in then was, in its way, healthier than her current gray, dull tone of mind, like an overcast that showed no signs of lifting. Then he immediately felt guilty for even being tempted to play psychiatrist. She had a right to grieve at whatever speed was right for her.

Busy today?

Not really.

Kit waited. Normally Nita would now come forth with at least some explanation of what “not really” involved. But she wasn’t anything like normal right now, and no explanation came—just that sense of weariness, the same tired
why-bother
feeling that kept rearing up at the back of Kit’s mind. Whether he was catching it directly from her via their private channels of communication, or whether it was something of his own, he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t as if
he
didn’t miss Nita’s mother, too.

I finished fixing the TV,
Kit said, determined to keep the conversation going, no matter how uncomfortable it made him. Someone around here had to try to keep at least the appearance of normalcy going.
Now I’m bored again, and I feel like getting out of here before something happens to break the mood. Wanna go to the moon?

There was a pause.
No,
Nita said.
Thanks. I just don’t feel up to it today.
And there it was, the sudden hot feeling of eyes filling with tears, without warning; and Nita frowning, clenching her eyes shut, rather helplessly, unable to stop it, determined to stop it.
You go ahead. Thanks, though.

She turned away in thought, breaking off the silent communication between them. Kit found that he, too, was scowling against the pain, and he let out a long breath of aggravation at his own helplessness.
Why is it so embarrassing to be sad?
he thought, annoyed.
And not just for me.
Nita’s overwhelming pain embarrassed her as badly as it did him, so Kit had to be careful not to “notice” it. Yet there wasn’t anything he seemed able to do for her at the moment. He felt like an idiot—unable to think of anything useful to say, and just as idiotic when he was tempted to keep saying the same things over and over: “It’ll pass,” “You’ll come out of it eventually.” They all sounded heartless and stupid.
And besides, how quick would
I
come out of it if it were
my
mama who died?

Kit let out a long breath. There was nothing to do but keep letting Nita know that he was there, one day at a time. So he’d taken care of today’s responsibility.

The phone rang, mercifully relieving Kit of his guilt for thinking that doing the right thing for his best friend was some kind of awful burden.

“
Igotitlgotitlgotit!
” Carmela shrieked from upstairs. “
HolaMiguelque—
” A pause. “Oh. Sorry.
Kit!!
”

“What?”

“
Tom
ás El Jefe.
”

“Oh.” Kit went to get the portable phone from its cradle in the kitchen. His mother, deep in the business of deboning a chicken, glanced at him as he passed and said nothing, but her smile had a little edge of ruefulness about it. She was still getting her head around the concept that a man she routinely saw at hospital fund-raisers, a successful writer for commercial television and a pillar of the community, was also one of two Senior wizards for the New York metropolitan area. Ponch, Kit’s big black Labrador-cum-Border-collie-cum-whatever, was now lying on the floor with his head down on his paws, carefully watching every move Kit’s mother made that had anything to do with the chicken. As Kit stepped over him, the dog spared him no more than an upward glance, then turned his attention straight back to the food.

Kit smiled slightly, picked up the phone and hit the “go” button. His sister was saying, “And so then I told him—Oh,
finally!
Kit, don’t hog the line; I’m expecting a call. Why can’t you two just do the magic telepathy thing like you do with Nita? It’d be cheaper!”

“
Vamos,
” Kit said, trying not to sound too severe.

“Bye, sweetie,” Tom Swale said on the other end.

“Bye-bye, Mr. Tom,” Carmela said, and hung up the upstairs phone.

Kit grinned. “‘Magic telepathy,’” he said. “Like she cares that much about the phone bill.”

Tom laughed. “Explaining the differences of communications between you and me and you and Nita might make more trouble than it’s worth,” he said. “Better let her get away with it just this once. Am I interrupting anything?”

“I just finished dealing with a hardware conflict,” Kit said. “Handled now, I think. What’s up?”

“I wouldn’t mind a consultation, if you have the time.”

He wants a consultation from
me?
That’s new.
“Sure,” Kit said. “I’ll be right over.”

“Thanks.”

Kit hung up, and saw the look his mother was giving him. “When’s it going to be ready, Mama?” he said. “I won’t be late. Not too late, anyway.”

“About six. It doesn’t matter if you’re a little late… It’ll keep.” She gave him a warning look. “You’re not going anywhere sudden, are you?” This had become her code phrase for Kit leaving on wizardly business.

“Nope,” Kit said. “Tom just needs some advice, it looks like.”

His father wandered back into the kitchen. “The TV working okay now?” Kit said.

“Working?” his pop said. “Well, yeah. But possibly not the way the manufacturer intended.”

Kit looked at his pop, uncomprehending. His father went back into the living room. Kit followed.

Where the TV normally would have shown a channel number, the screen was now displaying the number 0000566478. The picture seemed to be of a piece of furniture that looked rather like a set of chrome parallel bars. From the bars hung a creature with quite a few tentacles and many stalky eyes, none of these in the usual places. The creature was talking fast and loud in a voice like a fire engine’s siren, while waving around a large, shiny object that might have been an eggbeater; except that, in Kit’s experience, eggbeaters didn’t usually have pulse lasers built into them. Characters flashed on the screen, both in the Speech and in other languages.

Kit stood and looked at this with complete astonishment. His father, next to him, was doing the same. “You didn’t hack into that new premium movie channel or something, did you?” his pop said. “I don’t want the cops in here.”

“No way,” Kit said, picking up the remote and looking at it accusingly. The remote sat there in his hand as undemonstratively as any genuinely inanimate object might … except that Kit was less certain than ever that there really
were
any such things as inanimate objects.

He shook the remote to see if anything rattled. Nothing did. “I told you to behave,” he said in the Speech.

“But not like
what,
” the remote said in a sanctimonious tone.

His father was still watching the creature on the parallel bars, which pointed the laser eggbeater at what looked like a nearby abstract sculpture. This vanished in a flare of actinic green light, leaving Kit uneasily wondering what kind of sculpture screamed. “Nice special effects,” Kit’s father said, though he sounded a little dubious. “Very realistic.”

“It’s not special effects, Pop,” Kit said. “It’s some other planet’s cable.” He hit the reveal control on the remote, but nothing was revealed except, at the bottom of the screen, many more strings of characters flashing on and off in various colors. “Shopping channel, looks like.” Kit handed the remote back to his father.

“This is a
shopping
channel?” his pop said.

Kit headed for the coat hooks by the kitchen door and pulled his parka off one of them. “Popi, I’ve got to get to Tom’s. Be back in a while. It’s okay to look at that, but if any phone numbers that you can read appear—do me a big favor?
Don’t order anything!
”

Kit opened the back door. Ponch threw one last longing look at what Kit’s mama was doing with the chicken, then threw himself past Kit, hitting the screen door with a
bang!
and flying out into the driveway.

Kit followed him. At the driveway’s end, he paused, looking up briefly. It was almost dark already; the bare branches of the maples were showing black against an indigo sky. January was too new for any lengthening of days to be perceptible yet, and the shortness of the daylight hours was depressing. But at least the holidays were over. Kit could hardly remember a year when he’d been less interested in them. For his own family’s sake, he’d done his best to act as if he was, but his heart hadn’t been in the celebrations, or the presents. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the one present Nita most desperately wanted, one that not even the Powers That Be could give her.

Kit sighed and looked down the street. Ponch was down there near curbside in the rapidly falling dark, saluting one of the neighbor’s trees. “Back this way, please?” he said, and waited until Ponch was finished and came galloping back up the street toward him.

Kit made his way into the backyard again, with Ponch bouncing along beside him, wagging his tail. “Where did the ‘meaning of life’ thing come from all of a sudden?” Kit said.

I heard you ask about it,
Ponch said.

The question had, indeed, come up once or twice recently in the course of business, around the time Ponch started talking regularly. “So?” Kit said, as they made their way past the beat-up birdbath into the tangle of sassafras at the back of the yard, where they were out of sight of the houses on either side. “Come to any conclusions?”

Just that your mama’s easy to shake down for dog biscuits.

Kit grinned. “You didn’t need to start talking to her to find that out,” he said. He reached into his pocket, felt around for the “zipper” in it that facilitated access to the alternate space where he kept some of his spells ready, and pulled one out—a long chain of strung-together words in the Speech that glowed a very faint blue in the swiftly falling darkness. “I’d keep it in the family, though,” Kit said to Ponch. “Don’t start asking strangers complicated philosophical questions … It’ll confuse them.”

It may be too late,
Ponch said.

Kit wondered what that was supposed to mean, then shrugged. He dropped the spell-chain to the ground around them in a circle. The transit wizardry knotted itself together at the ends in the figure-eight wizard’s knot, and from it a brief shimmering curtain of light went up and blanked the night away as displaced air went
thump!
and Kit’s ears popped. A moment later he and Ponch were standing together in Tom’s backyard, behind the high privet hedge blocking the view from Tom’s neighbors’ houses. Across the patio, lights were on in the house, and banging noises were coming from the kitchen.