“Yeah, ask about the time I knocked Kit up—”
“Matt,” Nita said.
“Mmm?”
“Kindly shut them up.”
The twychild dissolved in laughter and took themselves away.
Nita had to wipe her eyes, she’d been laughing so hard. “Okay,” she said. “I should get down there again. I think we’re probably about ready to start. You going to stick around afterward?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Matt said. “Cleanup’s half the fun. I’ll see you up here after your guy kicks ass.”
Nita high-fived him. “We’ll see how it goes,” she said. Matt and Doki waved and headed off.
Nita went bouncing along a ways farther until she found her dad’s spot. He and Nelaid were already stretched out on the loungers—Nelaid hanging out somewhat over the end of his: no one on Earth had yet made a lounger long enough to take a Wellakhit—and both looked extremely relaxed.
“They about ready to start?” her dad asked.
“Very soon now,” Nita said. “You guys all set?”
“We have all the comforts of home,” Nelaid said. “It’s hard to think how our enjoyment could be enhanced.”
“Well, stay comfy,” Nita said, and bent down to smooch her dad on the head. “I’m going to go downside and make sure our bundle of nerves is ready to go.”
“You think he has a chance of winning?” her father said.
Nita shook her head. “One in five,” she said. “Keep your fingers crossed.”
And she vanished.
In Antarctica, on the Knox Coast, it was around sundown, under a rising full Moon.
“It’s not so much a green room as a blue room,” someone had said when the space was getting set up, and that observation had provoked an immediate change of name for the venue and a fair amount of laughter. But there wasn’t any laughter right now. The space that had been so full of cheerfulness and nerves when they’d all first met inside it weeks ago was now simply full of nerves: bundles of them. There were five of these, along with eight others, their mentors, and one woman with a baby and a parakeet.
Everyone was sitting over in one of the conversation pits that was big enough to take fifteen or twenty people. Centrally positioned in the group, standing, was Irina. “The first thing you all need to know,” she said, “is how extraordinarily proud I am of you. All five of you have risen superbly to the challenge. Wizards who’ve done the Invitational for a century and more are all agreed that this is the single best group of finalists’ spells they’ve ever seen. All of you are going in the manual; and all of your spells are going to be named after you, which as you know, in this business, is about as famous as anybody gets.” She smiled. “The work you’ve done is going to make a difference to people all over this planet, and in some cases to people on other planets as well, where the technologies can logically be extended so far. You have increased knowledge, and there is nothing in the world more valuable than that.”
Off to one side, Dairine was sitting beside Mehrnaz and rubbing her back to try to work a few of the knots out of it. Mehrnaz was thrumming with tension; her hands were clasped together until the knuckles went white, and there were circles under her eyes. She hadn’t slept well for the last few nights.
“I told you you should’ve come and stayed in my basement,” Dairine said. “Plenty of room, good food—”
“No bhajis,” Mehrnaz said.
“Which is fine.”
“I was afraid you’d get ruined for them . . .”
“My fault, not yours,” Dairine said. “Meanwhile, my sister makes pretty good pancakes when the stove’s not acting up. Promise me you’ll come.”
“I promise I will,” Mehrnaz said, “assuming I survive . . .”
Nita appeared quietly at the far end of the room and walked down toward the conversation pit. Irina turned toward her. “How is it up there?”
“I think they’re about as ready as they’re going to be,” Nita said. She looked over at Kit and Penn. Penn was hunched over, rubbing his hands together. Kit was watching him, not touching him or getting too close; but he had a concerned look in his eye as he glanced up at Nita.
“All right,” Irina said. “Roll call. Joona?”
Joona Tiilikainen, with his tilted dark eyes and his close-cropped dark hair, exchanged a glance with Susila Pertiwi next to him. “All set.”
“Rick?”
Rick Maxwell, a tall, raw-boned blond guy with a broad Midwest accent, nodded. “Ready when you are.”
“Susila?”
Susila threw her long dark hair back over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“Mehrnaz?”
Next to Dairine, Mehrnaz nodded hard twice. “Yes.”
“Penn?”
He raised his head, tilted his chin up. Dairine saw Nita smile at that for some reason. “Let’s do it.”
“Then let’s go topside,” Irina said. “Everybody into the transit hex: and the Powers be with you!”
A moment later, darkness full of stars was arching over them.
Kit took a deep breath. Beside him, Penn took one too, almost certainly for very different reasons.
A roar of welcome went up from the spectators at the sight of the group appearing in the hex. Kit looked all around, wondering where Nita’s dad and Nelaid might be. Three thousand people didn’t seem like a lot when you thought of a modern sports stadium; but packed into this bubbled-over intimate space, the crowd seemed huge.
“Cousins and friends and welcome guests.” Irina’s voice rang out, artificially amplified by wizardry. “Please acknowledge and greet the participants in the final round of the 1241st Interventional Development, Assessment and Adjudication Sessions: the Wizards’ Invitational!”
A thunder of applause, a huge cheer.
“Our competitors are the best of the best, chosen by a rigorous testing and evaluation scheme from among a field of more than three hundred of the best and brightest young wizards from around the world. Over the past fourteen days they and their custom-designed interventions have passed through day-long all-comers evaluations and viva voce panel judgings designed to reveal weaknesses and hidden strengths, and determine how effective these spells will be when used in daily practice. The contestants will now demonstrate their spells live, activating for the first time what have until now been strictly theoretical interventions untested at full scale in physical reality.”
Irina looked around at the contestants. “We’ll start with the usual random number selection to determine the order of presentation. Each competitor’s manual or similar instrumentation has been requested to generate a random number. Low number goes first, next to lowest number goes next, and so forth. Will you please display your manuals.”
They did. Irina walked down the line of five finalists, regarding the book or roll or device that each one held out to her.
“All right,” she said. “First will be Rick Maxwell, who will be demonstrating a magma management and redirection technique for volcanoes located near urban centers, intended to prevent pyroclastic flow and similar dangerous phenomena.” Rick waved at the crowd and the cheering began.
After a moment the crowd settled down. “Presenting second will be Joona Tiilikainen, who will demonstrate a new Atlantic conveyor protocol for deep ocean convection management.” Joona waved and jogged around a little like a Rocky clone, which produced some laughter and more cheering.
“Presenting third will be Penn Shao-Feng—”
“Third,” Penn was muttering, “third is good, third is a great spot—”
“Yes it is,” Kit murmured. “Now just hang onto yourself, don’t lose it. You’re gonna be fine, right? Stay focused.”
“Presenting fourth,” Irina said, “will be Mehrnaz Farrahi, who will demonstrate an energy cancellation and displacement protocol for management of slipstrike and similar earthquake faults—” Kit saw Dairine put both hands on Mehrnaz’s shoulders from behind, holding her down as if she was likely to ascend into the air; and she leaned over and whispered something in her ear.