The song was gradually reaching its end, and to her surprise Nita found that though when they’d first started dancing she’d wished it was already over, now she was wishing very much that it wouldn’t stop. Make up your mind, she told herself.
—The rest of our lives,
I can see it in your eyes . . .
And it’s real, and it’s true,
It’s just me and you,
Could it be, could it be
that it’s you? . . .
As the song came to its end, Kit bent his head down to Nita’s, touched the side of his nose very gently to the side of hers. And then he looked at her, not moving; waiting. His eyes weren’t just brown, she saw: there was gold in them. So close.
“Here?” he said.
She breathed out. She could feel him do the same. “Not here,” she said. It was stupid, and she wasn’t going to say it, but somewhere out in that crowd she could feel Penn watching them. “Not the right reason. Not for this.”
But still he leaned his forehead against hers, and they smiled at each other.
“Home?” he said.
“Home,” Nita said.
12
Mumbai / Shanghai / Elsewhere
THE MORNING SUN was streaming in the windows of Mehrnaz’s upstairs flat. Everything looked bright and cheerful; tea was laid out on the table before them, along with a basket of sweet breads and two or three plates of cookies and—set aside, as if someone didn’t want the more posh and proper foods to suffer by contagion—a brown paper bag of onion bhajis. It was the best breakfast imaginable, except that Dairine knew that the early morning sunlight meant that for her it was really just past midnight. Her stomach was growling, and her head ached, and she didn’t understand everything that was going on—which was worst of all.
Next to her on the couch, Spot flipped his lid open to display the restructured Invitational schedule. “By the final count,” Dairine said, “they threw out two hundred and eighty of three hundred and thirty projects. That leaves only fifty or so, which is a semifinal kind of total. This was one of those years where the judges seem to have come down hard on everybody. It’s happened often enough before, but not in the last few decades.”
“What made them do that?” Mehrnaz said.
Dairine shrugged. “Bad catering? Insomnia? Sunspots? No idea. Check the manual, you’ll see all kinds of theories about why over-deselection might have happened before. But theories are all anyone’s got.”
She leaned back against the sofa pillows. “So what the Intervention management committee is doing,” she said, “is removing the quarter-final stage entirely. We’re going straight on to the semis. They’ll be happening on the original schedule, which is good, because it gives you more time to prepare. Five extra days, in our case. And since this is the first time you’ll be going in front of a live judging panel and having to defend your spell instead of laying it out for examination and talking it up, the extra time is good.”
Mehrnaz, sitting cross-legged on the sofa across from Dairine, shook her head. “It still doesn’t seem like a lot of time . . .”
“But it’s a better schedule,” Dairine said.
Mehrnaz didn’t say anything, just reached out for her cup of tea and drank some of it in silence.
“So you should take today off,” Dairine said, “because I’m sure going to. You did a great job yesterday. You were brilliant, you had everyone eating out of your hand, they couldn’t get enough of you. But in the next stage what you’re going to need is the ability to describe your spell in very fine detail, to be questioned on it by experts and not panic . . . and to make absolutely sure that it’s structurally sound. They are going to test it everywhere that it could be weak, and if they find anything significant you’ll be out on your butt.”
Dairine stretched her legs out. “I told you about the aschetic space that my sister has access to, didn’t I?”
Mehrnaz put the teacup down. “Yes, you did. It sounds intriguing.”
“Well, I think the best thing we can do for you is take you and your spell in there and reproduce the very worst earthquake conditions we can find, and test the spell against them. I know yours is kind of regionally specific, because you designed it to intervene in earthquakes around that one slipstrike fault in Iran, and the spell has its historical behavior and tendencies built in. But if we test it against a bunch of other sets of conditions—against San Francisco and Wellington and Tokyo, say—then we can both improve the spell and probably impress the judges, because their intention’s always going to be to see how useful this spell is in more than one place.”
Mehrnaz nodded and poured more tea.
Dairine took a breath and reached for the bag of bhajis and a couple of the paper napkins sitting by it. “I love these things,” she said “but they are so greasy . . .”
She fished a bhaji out of the bag, doing her best to look casual, as she’d spent the last few hours trying to work out the best way to approach the problem. I’m going to have to come at this sideways, or I’m not going to find out what’s happening here. “There’s one thing we have to sort out first,” she said. “It would seriously help if you could tell me more about what your problem was last night. Because I get the feeling that we’re going to need to handle whatever was going on there before we go much further.”
Mehrnaz put her face in her hands. “I panicked,” she said into her hands.
Dairine was tempted to believe her. Though at the time, she’d found herself possessed of the feeling that Mehrnaz was prepared for this panic.
Mehrnaz dropped her hands now, looking extremely embarrassed. “Maybe it was the time zone lag,” she said. “Maybe it was blood sugar, or fatigue, or too much excitement. Or all the people around. Everything just seemed to be too much to bear, all of a sudden. I had to get out . . .”
Dairine sat quiet. She wasn’t tempted to try to make Mehrnaz repeat any of this in the Speech. If you volunteered to speak so, that was one thing. Otherwise, it turned into a rather insulting sort of lie detector test. “Well,” she said, “that won’t be a problem the next time. You get a panel of seven expert wizards and a quiet room to present your spell and an associated intervention plan. Other than that, if you’re having trouble managing stress, there are steps we can take to help you get a handle on that.” She sighed. “So is your mom pleased? She should be.”
“Oh yes,” Mehrnaz said. “Frankly, I think she expected me to be knocked out.”
Dairine kept what she was thinking off her face. My money says she was hoping you’d be knocked out, she thought. And I don’t know where that comes from . . . but I think it has something to do with your meltdown. “Well, what we expect doesn’t always happen,” Dairine said. “So she’d better fasten her seatbelt, because I think things are going to get interesting.”
“You truly think I have a chance of making it through?” Mehrnaz said.
Dairine laughed. “After a Cull like that, are you kidding? I’m beginning to think the people who survived that could walk away from a meteor strike.” She folded her legs under her and fished another bhaji out of the bag. “The competition’s going to be tough, but all you have to do is beat four out of five of the people you’re up against. After that you’re in the finals, and whether you win or lose, you’re covered with glory.”