The Wizard's Dilemma, New Millennium Edition (11 page)

And she somehow still just couldn’t believe it. Nita tapped the page so that the diagram would spring up out of it and hang there glowing in the air in front of her, and then she sat and stared at it as it rotated gently, displaying all the curves and tangles of the spell diagram.
It works. He was right.

Nita sat there in the grip of an attack of complete chagrin.
What an utter dork I’ve been,
she thought.
I’m going straight over there to apologize. No, I’m not going to wait even that long.

She flipped back to the messaging pages, touched the message from Kit to wake up the reply function. “Kit?” she said in the Speech. “Can we talk?”

Send?

“Send it,” Nita said.

Then she waited. But to her complete astonishment, the page just flashed once, leaving her message sitting where it was. And down the page a little notification appeared:

Message cannot be dispatched at this time. Please try again later.

What
?? “How come?”

The notification blanked out, replaced by the words:
Addressee is not in ambit. Please try again later.

Nita stared. She had never seen such a description before and didn’t have any idea what it meant.

She put the manual down on the desk. “Keep trying,” Nita said, and started rummaging around on her desk for her phone.
Where
is
that thing?
Lately she’d got out of the habit of leaving it in one usual place when it wasn’t in one of her pockets or her bags or stuffed in her claudication.
Gotta stop doing that. Did I leave it down on the table again?

Nita pulled on some jeans and a T-shirt and went downstairs. It was quiet; there was no smell of anyone having been making breakfast down there.
I may be the only one up. And there was her phone, on the table.
She grabbed it, speed-dialed Kit’s number.

It rang a couple of times, then someone picked up. “Hello?”

It was Kit’s sister. “Hola, Carmela!”

“‘Ola, Nita,” said Carmela, in a somewhat odd voice—she had her mouth full. There was a pause while she swallowed. “Sorry, you missed him; he’s not here.”

“Where’d he go, do you know?”

“Nope. He left a note on the fridge; must’ve been early… said he was going out to do some wizard thing and he’d be back later.”

“Today, you think?”

“Oh yeah, today. If he was gonna be gone longer than tonight, he sure would have told Pop and Mama, and they would’ve screamed, and I would’ve heard it.”

Nita had to chuckle. “Okay, Mela. If he comes in, tell him I called?”

“Sure, Neets. No problem.”

“Thanks. Bye-bye.”

“Byeeee…”

Nita hung up and shoved her phone into her pocket.
He’s out on errantry. But
where?
I should have been able to find him. It shouldn’t matter if he was on the Moon, or even halfway out of the galaxy. His manual still would’ve taken the message. It’s not like the manuals care about distance or lightspeed.

After a few moments Nita went back upstairs to see what her manual might be showing. The last page still hadn’t changed.

I don’t believe this
, Nita thought.
I ought to call Tom and Carl and see what they say. Where
is
he that the manual can’t find him?!

She picked up the manual and pulled out her phone again, then paused as she realized she’d have to Tom and Carl what had been going on. She was too embarrassed.

But
where
was Kit?

Down the hall Dairine’s door opened, and her sister wandered down past Nita’s door in the direction of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a huge Fordham T-shirt of their dad’s. She looked at Nita vaguely. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Confusion,” Nita said, rather sourly.

“What?”

“Nothing yet. Nobody’s up. And I can’t find Kit.”

Dairine stopped and stared at her, pushing the hair out of her eyes and yawning. “Why? Where is he?”

“Somewhere the manual can’t find him.”

“
What?
”

“Look at this!” Nita was concerned enough to show Dairine her manual, even though it meant she would see the messages above the strange new notification. Dairine looked at the back page and shook her head.

“Never seen
that
before,” she said. “You sure it’s not a malfunction or something?”

Nita snorted. “Have you ever seen a manual malfunction?”

“I have to admit,” Dairine said slowly, “if I did, I’d get real worried, considering What powers them. Come on, let’s see if mine’s doing the same thing.”

Nita followed Dairine to her room and glanced at where the pile of stuff from yesterday had mostly been dumped on the floor. “You’d better take care of this before Mom gets up,” Nita said. “She’ll have some new and never-before-seen species of cow.”

“Plenty of time for that,” Dairine said, going over to her bed and knocking one knuckle on the case of the black laptop cuddled down beside her pillow. “She was up till half past forever last night with Dad’s stuff. Spot?”

Spot sprouted his legs again, stretching them one after another like a centipede that thought it was a cat. “Morning,” Dairine said.

“
Mrng
,” said the laptop in a small scratchy voice.

“Manual functions?”

“
Spcfy
.”

“Messaging,” Dairine said.

The laptop popped open its lid, and its screen flickered on, showing the usual apple-without-the-bite logo, then blanking down again. A moment later the operating system herald faded into view, a stylized representation of a white book open to a small block of text. This was then replaced by a messaging menu, overlaid on a shimmering blue background subtly watermarked with the manual’s biteless logo. “Main address list,” Dairine said. “Test message.” The screen blanked. “To Kit Rodriguez. Where are you? Send.”

The words displayed themselves on the screen exactly as they had in Nita’s manual, blinked out, and then reappeared with a little blue box underneath them in which was written in the Speech,
Error 539426010: Recipient is not in ambit. Please resubmit message later.

“Huh,” Dairine said. “More information.”

The blue box enlarged slightly.
No further information available.

“We’ll see about
that,
” Dairine muttered. “Thanks, cutie.”

“
Yr wlcm,
” said the laptop, and sat down on the desk again, stretching out its legs.

“Doesn’t waste his words, does he?” Nita said, smiling.

“He’s shy,” Dairine said, with a wry expression. “You should hear him when we’re alone. Let’s try this.”

She went over to the new computer and waved a hand over the top of it. The light behind the in-fascia biteless apple came on; a second later the monitor lit, displaying a broader-format version of Spot’s desktop. A second later the computer’s white keyboard flicked into existence on the desk, and Nita’s eyebrows went up. “What do you need that for when it’ll take spoken input?”

“I type faster than I talk.”

“Impossible.”

Dairine gave Nita a dirty look as she sat down and flexed her finders over the keyboard, which was the standard North American QWERTY type. “Not much good for the Speech.”

“Oh please,” Dairine said, and snapped her fingers over the keyboard. It stretched, and the keys shimmered and reconfigured themselves to display the 418 building-block characters of the Speech. “Eventually we won’t need this, but the new wireless transparent neuro-translation routines are still in pre-alpha.” She looked at Nita with a mischievous expression. “For the time being, though, this one reads your EEG and anticipates you so you don’t have to shift or control-key when you’re rolling. Like autocorrect when you’re texting, but with only a thousandth of a percent false positives. Getting interested finally? I can copy Spot for you and give you his twin…”

“Thanks, but I’ll stick with the manual I know.”

Dairine shook her head in poorly concealed pity. “Luddite.”

“Technodweeb,” Nita said. “Call me sentimental. I like books. They don’t crash.”

“Huh,” Dairine said, as the monitor blanked and then brought up a long, long list. Dairine glanced over at Spot. “You wanna pass it that last error?”

A moment later that same little blue screen appeared on the monitor. “Right,” Dairine said. She glanced over her shoulder at Nita. “Sometimes the beta shows background information that the normal release version doesn’t have in it yet, or doesn’t routinely release. Any additional information on this?” she said to the desktop machine.

The blue box was partly overlapped by another one, in a lighter shade of blue. It contained the words:

For accurate and secure message storage and delivery, manual messaging functions require each party’s manual to supply an encryption key based on the intersection between each wizard’s personal description in the Speech and his present physical location in a given universe. Message dispatch and storage cannot be achieved when one or both addressees are in transit or experiencing transitory states between universes. Please remessage when the condition no longer obtains.

“Oh, well, I guess that’s okay, then,” Dairine said in astonishment heavily tinged with irony. She looked at Nita. “Another
universe
? That’s normally not a transit you make without permission from seriously high up.”

“Yeah,” Nita said. She opened her manual again and paged through to where Kit’s status report was.

Dairine hit a couple of keys; the monitor changed to show the same view. Under the listing for the water wizardry, Kit’s status report said:

Present project: access-routine investigation and stabilization, training assignment with adjunct talent; situation presently in development. Detail reference: in abeyance due to possible Heisenberg-related effects; update expected c. Julian day 2455097.1041.

“
Adjunct?
” Dairine muttered.

The thought went through Nita like a spear:
He’s working with someone else!
At first it seemed ridiculous.
But considering how I treated him… why
shouldn’t
he want to work with other people? I’ve brought this on myself. I am a total idiot!

“Whatever else is going on,” Dairine said, “the Powers That Be know about it. Look, here’s an authorization code. They must have some way of keeping tabs on him if They’ve even got a projected update time in there. Point six … that’s after dinner, I guess. Try again then.”

Nita closed her manual, feeling slightly relieved. “Yeah…”

“But Neets, look,” Dairine said, “if you’re worried, why not just try to shoot him a thought? No matter what the manual’s doing, it’s not like your
brain
is broken.”

“Unusual sentiment from you,” Nita said.

Dairine’s smile was slightly sardonic. “Maybe I’m mellowing in my old age,” she said. There was more of an edge than usual on the expression, but Nita got the feeling it wasn’t directed at her for a change.

She sat down on the bed, pushing the area rug around with her feet. “Never mind. If he’s in another universe, I doubt I’ve got the range to reach him.”

“Probably you’re right,” Dairine said. “But that’s not why you’re not about to try, is it?”

Nita looked at her sister and found Dairine regarding her with an expression that actually could have been described as
understanding.
“You’re afraid you’re gonna find that he’s shut you out on purpose,” Dairine said, “and you couldn’t stand it.”

Nita didn’t say anything. Dairine glanced away, looking at the computer, and hit a key to clear the screen.

“Well,” Nita said at last, “lately it’s been harder than usual to hear him thinking, anyway. And he’s been having the same trouble with me.”

There were things that that could mean for wizards, especially if they’d been working closely together for some time … and Nita knew Dairine understood the implications. “Neets,” Dairine said at last, “if you’re really that worried, you should take the chance, anyway. It’ll beat just sitting here busting a gut.”

“I hate it when you’re right,” Nita said finally.

“Which is always,” Dairine said, “but never mind; I’m used to it by now.” She went back to tapping at the keyboard.

Nita let out a long breath and closed her eyes.

Kit?

Nothing.

Kit? Where are you?!

Still nothing. Nita opened her eyes, as upset with herself, now, as with the situation. She must have sounded completely pitiful and helpless, if he’d heard her.

But I don’t think he did.
And that by itself was strange. Even when you called someone mind to mind and they refused contact, there was always a sense that they were still
there.
This time there was no such sense. And the manual, as Nita opened it once more to the page she’d marked, and looked at it again, still reported Kit as out there, doing
something….

“Nothing?” Dairine said.

“Not a refusal,” Nita said, trying to keep relief out of her voice. “Just nothing. Maybe he really is just out of range.”

Dairine nodded. “Just have to wait till he gets back, then.”

Nita sighed and headed downstairs. As she came into the dining room, she heard someone in the kitchen. Turning the corner, she saw that it was her mother, standing there by the counter and looking bleary as she drank a mug of tea and gazed out the window.

“Mom, you look pooped!” Nita said.

Her mother laughed. “I guess. Even after I went to bed last night I had numbers going around and around in my head. Took me a while to get to sleep. …Never mind, I’ll have a nap before dinner. Speaking of which, where
has
Kit been the past day or so?”

Nita tried to think of what to say. Her mother glanced at her, glanced away again. “Just so I can keep the leftovers from piling up,” her mother said. “I just like to know when I’m supposed to be cooking for five. You think he might be along tonight?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Nita said. “I’ll tell you when I find out.”

“Okay. I’m going to the shop later, if you want me.” Her mom had another drink of tea, then put the mug aside. “Some paperwork was missing from what your dad gave me yesterday, and I need to go root around in his alleged filing system. Did we miss anything from shopping last night?”