“Carmela,” Ronan said in what Kit was beginning to think of as the Tone of Great Forbearance, “don’t you think I’m a little— old for you?”
His tone of voice suggested that Ronan expected no answer but “yes.” Carmela, however, just looked at him brightly and said, “That’s okay. In ten years you won’t be.”
Ronan opened his mouth and closed it again.
Kit didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But right now the laughter was threatening to win. “Ronan, don’t we have places to be?”
“Oh,” Ronan said, “uh, yes.”
Carmela just smiled. “Nice save, Kit,” she said, “but it’s just temporary.” She waved the fingers of one hand at them in a toodle-oo gesture as she wandered back into the living room.
Kit watched her go with slight relief. Then again, why am I relieved? She’s got a worldgate in her closet. The sooner we’re out of here, the better. “Let’s go out back,” Kit said. “It’s shielded there; the neighbors won’t see us.”
They headed out the back door together. Under his breath, Ronan said, “Your sister—” He shook his head. “We have a word for her where I come from—”
“Maybe I don’t want to hear it,” Kit said. “She is my sister.” Not that Kit wasn’t finding it peculiar to suddenly be concerned about how Carmela dressed or acted around other people. He wasn’t used to thinking about how girls looked in their clothes— except what about Janie Lowell in chemistry the other day? said one eager and interested part of his brain from the background. That skirt she was wearing, it hardly even covered her—
Kit made a face. Other girls were a different matter. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to be seeing his sister that way, and he wasn’t sure he wanted anybody else seeing her that way, either. And just a few months ago, I wouldn’t have cared one way or another. This is so weird…
Ronan was shaking his head as they headed into the backyard. “Leaving words about her out of it,” Darryl said to Ronan, “they have any words where you come from for the expression on your face when she said that?”
“Probably they do,” Ronan said as they made their way down through the yard. “‘Gobsmacked’ would be one. Carmela”— Ronan shook his head— “is a whole bucket of gobsmack.”
Kit grinned. “Cousin, I hear you there!”
“When’s she going away to college?” said Darryl as they came to the weedy, tree-screened rear of Kit’s backyard.
“Not a second too soon for me,” Kit said. “No— that’s not true. I don’t know…” He and Carmela had always gotten along better than he and Helena did. And it wasn’t just that Carmela hadn’t completely blown a gasket when she found out he was a wizard, or that later she’d started indepedently picking up the Speech. There’s something else going on. Maybe we’re just closer in age…
In among the trees, Kit had a spell circle laid into the ground under the carpet of leaf mold. “I need to make a couple of changes to this before we go,” he said to the others. “I don’t want her tracking us.”
“We don’t need that,” Darryl said. “I’ll transit us the way I brought Ronan in from Dublin. I doubt she can track my kind of transit: it’s real atypical.”
“If you can go transatlantic on a personal transit without even breaking a sweat,” Kit said, “‘atypical’ would be the word.”
“It’s to do with that bilocation stunt I stumbled onto during my Ordeal,” Darryl said. “Seems I don’t need the usual spells to gate around in the neighborhood. I can go a long way without needing a spell, as long as I leave one of me on Earth and have coordinates to work with.” He rolled his eyes. “Tom said he didn’t understand it, and shoved me off on Carl. Carl gave me five different theories and then wound up saying he thinks I’m bypassing string-structure issues by selectively shredding the interstitial structure of local space-time.” Darryl grinned. “Whatever that means! I don’t think he understands it, either. Shredding—” He shrugged. “He wants to call it that, it’s fine by me.”
“Okay, shred-guy,” Kit said. “Does the ground suit?” It was the question you asked another wizard when he or she was going to be responsible for a spell.
Darryl glanced around. “Yeah, it’s fine. Where on Mars are we going, exactly?”
Kit flipped opened his manual. “A little crater called Stokes.”
“Show me. Carl says I need to be careful about coordinates while I’m still getting the hang of this.”
Kit nodded, thinking that Tom and Carl were wisely covering all the angles with Darryl. While they wanted him to be cautious about what he was doing, they also didn’t want him thinking too hard about whether his ability to do it might be unusual. Making it sound like something normal is smart…
Kit found his marked map and tapped on it to bring it into higher definition, zooming in on the spot he wanted. “Right there.”
Darryl studied the map. “Okay. And about— one second from now,” he said. “They said I needed to specify temporal coordinates, too. Guess they’re nervous I might overshoot.”
“Probably something to do with you just being hot off your Ordeal,” Ronan said. “You young superpowered hotshots, you want keeping an eye on until you settle down into more realistic power levels…”
Darryl nodded as he took a last look at the map. Kit shot Ronan a quick approving look over Darryl’s head. Ronan raised an eyebrow in response, eyed the map in turn. “Not far from the north pole. We need to bring any extra heat with us?”
“No, I factored plenty into the spell,” Kit said.
“Okay,” Darryl said, “we’re good to go. You guys ready? Life support’s set? Don’t make me come all the way back here for more air, now. It’s fifty-four million miles to Mars…”
“We’ve got air for three people for four hours,” Kit said, “and a heavy-duty force-field bubble.”
Ronan suddenly got a wicked look on his face. “And since it’s got to be dark there somewhere…” He pulled out a pair of black-lensed aviator sunglasses and put them on.
Darryl snickered. “Some of us,” he said, “have been watching too many old movies.”
“Old? That movie was young when I was!”
“So were the dinosaurs. Ready to shred?” And Darryl reached up and put a hand each on Kit’s and Ronan’s shoulders.
“Hit it,” Ronan said.
Between one blink and the next, Earth went away.
6: Arsia Mons
Nita was standing near the edge of a gigantic lake, looking out across the still water, waiting for someone.
Where is he? she thought. He’s so late.
The strange many-legged creature sitting off to one side on the gravelly red ground at her feet looked up at her.You’ve always known he might be someday, it said.
Nita scowled. Not that way, she said in her mind. Not funny… She peered out across the lake, shading her eyes from the low sun and the pinkish glitter dancing on the water in the crater. I don’t like the way that looks, she said as the speed of the ripples out on the water increased. There has to be a lot more of that coming—
The creature sitting next to her shrugged. He won’t notice it where he is, it said. The water would have to rise a lot higher to bother him there.
The usual place? Nita said.
The creature nodded. Up on his mountain.
Nita turned and walked a few steps over to the transit circle she had left ready to go, blazing on the ground. What about the other one you were supposed to be meeting here? said the creature that still sat by the lake’s edge, unmoving, gazing back at her with ironic golden eyes.
Can’t wait, Nita said. Come on, let’s go.
She stepped into the circle. It blazed up around her; the transit was instantaneous. Nita emerged barely a blink later from a flicker of darkness to a spot near the edge of the broad, dish-shaped depression on top of that ancient volcano. The view was amazing; she could understand why Kit loved this place so much. But she looked all around the crater and couldn’t see him anywhere. There was no question of Kit being hidden behind anything. There were no big boulders, large objects, or outcroppings: just pebbles, sand, fist-sized stones, and cracks and crevasses caused by the contrast between the day’s relative warmth and the night’s ferocious cold.