“Older?” Nelaid said. “More responsible?” He smiled. Again there was pain in the smile, but it was distant enough, Nita thought, that Nelaid could now also find it funny.
“A father figure?” Nita said, taking the chance.
After a long moment’s stillness, Nelaid nodded. “Perhaps, when the present problem is settled, he and I might speak. At his convenience.”
Nita bowed to Nelaid, and not one of those all-purpose half-bows, either. In the middle of it, the air went bang! behind her as Dairine reappeared. “You drop something?” her sister said.
Nita straightened, catching a glint of humor in Nelaid’s eyes, but this hid itself as quickly as the pain had. “No. Where’s Spot?”
Spot popped out of the air between the two of them, dropped to the ground. Nelaid looked over Nita’s head and said to Dairine, “You did moderately well with the last exercise, but you have much work to do yet before it’s perfect, and perfection is what’s required. Let me know when you’re at liberty to deal with the situation.”
Dairine bowed, too: a somewhat cursory gesture, but more than most entities would get from her, no matter how many planets they virtually ruled. Nita pulled the transit circle out of her charm bracelet, dropped it to the floor, nodded goodbye to Nelaid, and activated the spell.
A few blinks later they were standing in their backyard. The long afternoon shadows were not too far along from where Nita had left them. “Go upstairs and sort yourself out,” Nita said as they headed toward the house. “Be quiet about it. Then come down. Don’t make him come up after you. Okay?”
“Will you cut it out? It’s not like I don’t know how to handle him!”
Nita caught her sister by the shoulder. “Handling’s not what he needs right now. Just play it straight, so we can both get back to business. Please?”
Dairine gave her a quick look of rebellion— but that was all, a moment’s indulgence of habit— and vanished.
Nita sighed and headed through the gate, up the driveway, and into the house. Her dad was still at the dining room table, working on another cup of coffee: he looked surprised to see Nita come in the door. “She’ll be down in a minute,” Nita said, and flopped into a chair.
Her dad blinked. “Just like that?”
Nita shrugged.
Her dad stared down into his cup, looked up again after a few moments. “You think I was a little abrupt with you before?”
Nita said nothing, just gave him back one of his favorite expressions, a wide-eyed look with the eyebrows right up.
Her dad laughed, a brief, embarrassed sound. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay.”
He was looking at the table again, a little unfocused. “Roshaun,” her father said, sounding reluctant. “Just what happened with him up there on the Moon?”
Nita shook her head, wishing she had more clarity on the subject. “He vanished.”
“But wizards vanish all the time.”
“Not like this,” Nita said. “It was a lot more …final.”
“But not final enough for Dairine.”
“No. Dad—” There was no way to say this that wasn’t going to pain both of them, so she just said it. “Even for humans, there’s dead, and then there’s dead dead. Other species handle mortality other ways. They have to. Their souls are different shapes from ours. But no matter what shape your soul is, when you’re a wizard, weird things can happen to change the way things work…” She shook her head. “The only thing I’m sure of is that Roshaun’s not dead the way we think about dead.”
“And so Dairine actually has some chance of finding him?”
Nita nodded. “If anyone can, yeah. But he’s still lost. And all this time she’s been spending on his home planet… I think she feels like she owes a debt to his mom and dad. Like she got Roshaun involved with our planet …and then Nelaid and Miril lost their son because of what she did.”
Her dad sat silent for a moment. “It’s honorable, what she’s doing,” he said at last. “But at the same time— Nita, she’s just thirteen!”
“And I was how old when I started?”
Her father rolled his eyes. “She needs way more watching than you ever did.”
“So that’s just what you’ll be doing, whenever you want,” Nita said. “And she’s going to explain everything you see. It’ll be the next best thing to standing over her shoulder, watching.” And Nita grinned. “Might be more data than you want.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” her dad said. But as he leaned back in the chair, he looked more relaxed.
Nita stood up. “So am I off the hook?”
Her dad’s look was meant to be stern, but Nita wasn’t fooled. “For the moment. We’ll see how this works out.”
Nita went over and hugged and kissed him, because he was really being very good. Then she headed for the back door before he changed his mind. “By the way—”
In the kitchen doorway, hearing the stairs creak as Dairine came down them, Nita paused. “Yeah?”
“I keep meaning to ask you. What is on Mars?”
“Besides a rock with your cell phone number carved on it?” Nita grinned. “We’re not sure. But we’re gonna find out.”
“Well, all right. But don’t get us invaded, now.”
“Daddy!”
He gave her a mischievous look. “Well, you can’t blame me. It’s kind of the first thing that comes to mind, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Nita said. “I know.” And she vanished.
5: Nili Patera
It was dark. Kit found himself staring at his bedroom ceiling, his eyes wide open. He was wide awake, but he couldn’t think why.
He lay there on his back under the covers for a few seconds, listening to the house. It was still, devoid of any of the little middle-of-the-night sounds that it made as the weather got warmer. And one other sound was missing, from the braided rug by the side of his bed: a small, faint whistling snore.
Kit sighed. Ponch, he thought. But his dog’s midnight snore was a sound he would not hear again. He turned his head on the pillow, fumbled for his smartphone and peered at the digital clock on its display. 3:38.
Which is what time on Mars? He closed his eyes again for a moment, trying to do the math for the time at Nili Patera. But math was no match for the image of the green-brown sandy soil under his knees, and the strange shining blue-green superegg in his lap. He could just feel the faint sense of some quiet power running under the surface of it, mute, waiting.
That was it, he thought, pushing himself up on his elbows. It wasn’t ready. It was waiting for something.
And what if it’s ready now?
Kit sat up in the quiet, gazing into the darkness, his heart pounding as if he’d been running somewhere. It was weird. Then, No, it’s not, he thought. Kit had had a lot of trouble getting to sleep when he’d finally gotten home and turned in. He’d been as wired as if he was seven years old and the next day was going to be Christmas. Well, what do I expect? I was on Mars. I actually touched an alien artifact that someone left there. I felt that it was alive—
And waiting.
He looked again at the phone. Mamvish said we should do some analysis first, Kit thought. Irina said, take your time…
Kit sat there for a few moments, listening to his heart pound. Then he threw the covers off, got up, and went to the desk by the window.
The manual was there where he usually left it when he was home. Analysis… Kit thought. He flipped the manual’s cover open and paged through to the Mars project section, then tapped the open pages so they’d glow in the dark.
The only new things on the main project page were the manual-generated précis of what the group who went up to Mars yesterday had found, and beside it, a few “read, noted” symbols from research team members who’d flagged the entry to let other team members know they’d seen it. Kit shook his head, unbelieving. Twenty-six other wizards working on this project and nobody has anything interesting to say? Kit thought, frowning. Even just ‘Hey, wow’? Come on, people…!