“Looks too late for that, Bex,” Matt said. “Kit’s just gonna have to take his medicine . . .”
Kit looked up over his shoulder at Nita. “Neets? Want in?”
She shook her head. “Not me,” she said. It was a matter of embarrassment to her that though she was good at all kinds of things, no matter how many times she tried to master the rules of poker, she always forgot them five minutes after she’d learned them. “You enjoy yourselves . . .”
“Don’t worry,” Matt said, stepping back into the circle and sitting down again, “I’ll clean him out pretty quick if you’re in a rush.”
“Wouldn’t be too sure of that if I were you,” Kit said.
“No, it’s okay,” Nita said to Matt. “I’m going to lounge around for a while and let my dinner settle . . . I’ll come back in a bit.” She raised her eyebrows at Kit. “Don’t let him have it all his way . . .”
Kit grinned. He and Dairine played regularly, and Dairine had pronounced him “pretty competent,” which Nita suspected meant “extremely good.” Matt may get a surprise . . . but then Kit’s surprised him before.
And it was surprisingly restful to wander around and take it easy. For the moment, at least, Penn was not in evidence. Maybe the long day finally caught up with him.
Or he found somebody to go home with . . . Because there was that sense with Penn that the thought of sex in general, or of hooking up in particular, was always imminent. It was as if he thought that all the innuendo made him interesting. When what it mostly makes him is a lot tougher to be around, Nita thought. You hate to say anything to him for fear it’s going to bring something like that up . . . Who wants to hear somebody talking about that all the time?
She stopped by the drinks table. The young wizard who’d served her earlier was still standing there, and he smiled at her.
Nita raised her eyebrows at him. “You know what I want.”
Without hesitation he handed her a bottle of Cel-Ray, and said, “Just so you can thank me later in life, my name is Frank.”
Nita saluted Frank with the bottle and ambled on. It seemed to her that over the last hour or so, the general atmosphere of the party had gone edgier, crazier. She could see that most of the adult wizards seemed to have abandoned the field. That was probably why the tall, dark, shadow-draped shape standing near a padded bench in the room’s most dimly-lit corner caught her attention.
So very tall, she thought. Nobody’s that tall, at least nobody from this planet. And so very dark. Nobody’s that—
As the thought came to her, Nita stopped where she was and stared. For a second she thought she was looking at the Lone Power. Except what would he be doing here?
But a moment’s more inspection disabused her entirely of the idea. About this figure, there was nothing of that sense of nasty evil amusement that the Lone Power normally wore. A great still feeling of deep cold seemed wrapped around it, yes. But the cold was . . . uninflected. It didn’t mean anything: it just was.
Nita swallowed. One of these days this curiosity’s going to get me in trouble, she thought. But she didn’t think this was going to be one of those days. Slowly, casually, she made her way over toward that corner.
She knew from the way it turned slightly that the figure was watching her come. Humanoid, she thought. That much its cloak of shadows couldn’t conceal. But there was no way to tell much more from that distance.
So Nita walked up to it, parked herself next to it, and nodded hello. “Dai stihó,” she said, then leaned against the wall and looked out toward the room while taking a sip of her soda.
“And to you also,” said the shadow-wrapped form, “dai stihó, young cousin.”
Such a very soft voice, such a dark voice; and no way to see the face it belonged to or guess what thoughts were going on behind it. But something in the voice reminded her strongly of Jupiter . . . a quality that said there was much more going on here than just the physical appearance. I think I’m two for two tonight, Nita thought. And is it possible . . . ? Only one way to find out.
“Why’re you over here all by yourself?” She looked into the shadow. “You should come on out and mingle.”
“That’s very kind of you,” the voice said quietly. “But I’m . . . not that much of a mingler. I’m not from around here.”
The words gave her an odd anticipatory feeling in the pit of her stomach . . . though nothing like what Nita felt when Kit was in question, not the always hard-to-analyze stomach flip. It felt a little like fear, yet there was nothing bad about it. Awe, Nita thought. Jovie had this feeling about him too, but you had to sit with him a while to feel it, and his was funnier. This is stronger. More serious.
“. . . You’re a capture,” Nita said.
It was a guess, but an educated one, and the shadow-veiled head bowed in assent. “Insofar as any capture is ever nonconsensual at such a level,” he said. “I knew what I was being captured by.” A glint of very dark eyes, more felt than seen. “Or rather, whom.”
And when he agreed, that clinched it. “Then I know who you are.”
“Do you indeed,” the darkness said, sounding not so much surprised as interested.
“Yes,” Nita said. “Yes I do. And I just want you to know one thing.”
“That being?”
“You’ll always be a planet to me.”
The dark shape looked at her in astonishment. Then slowly it bowed, and its shadows flared outward around it, almost winglike.
“I’m so sorry about what happened,” Nita said. “I sure wasn’t consulted.”
The darkness shrugged, though it was a most understated, fractional shrug. “It was merely a shift in terminology,” Pluto said. “A classification issue. Ontologically it’s not particularly significant: I bear no one ill will for it.”
“Still,” Nita said. “I feel like you were robbed of something. Status, or . . .” She paused. “I don’t know. And though I understood the reasons for it when it happened, it made me sad.”
Again one of those bows, though not quite as deep this time. “I appreciate your concern.” The darkness straightened. “At a time when you surely have much else on your mind . . .”
Nita’s glance slid sideways to the spot across the room where she’d left Kit.
“Relationship,” that regal darkness murmured. “So often an issue.”
Nita burst out laughing, thinking about Dairine’s line that what was going on with her could be seen from space. Apparently it could.
“You know,” she said, “forgive me, but this is weirder than usual. With Jupiter, with Saturn—that they can think and talk, and be wizardly, and even that they can cram their consciousness down into shapes like these if they want to—” She flapped her arms a little. “It makes sense once you manage to wrap your brain around it. They’re life forms. But you, you’re—well—you’re a rocky body covered with ice.”
“Well,” Pluto said, “since we’re apparently speaking frankly, as is the wont of good cousins who seek truth together, you’re a sloppy skin-contained sack of carbon compounds and water, slathered all over a silicate frame.” She caught a glint of amusement from the eyes hidden inside those enveloping shadows. “But not just carbon compounds and water. True, you have highly evolved organs in which various structures and chemical processes mediate emotion and intellection. Yet no one has yet succeeded in determining the location of mind. Unless I’m behind in the news . . .”