“You did tell haem, I hope,” Nita said, very seriously indeed, “that among members of our species this gesture has to be reciprocated by the other party—”
“In a similar manner,” Kit said.
“—on or around February 14th.”
“I, uh, might have neglected to mention.”
“And so of course we can’t do anything right now,” Nita said, “not only because February 14th is a while away yet, but because we’re in the middle of a planetary disaster and it would be incredibly inappropriate to distract one another from our Wizardly Duties.”
He could actually hear the capitalization. Kit merely nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It’s so sad.”
“But duty comes first,” Nita said, nodding in unison with him. “Still, we will be strong.”
“Yes, we will,” Kit said with all the sincerity he could muster.
Nita gestured with her eyes in Cheleb’s direction, and then turned her head to look at haem. Warned, Kit did it in unison with her.
Cheleb was practically vibrating with emotion. “So beautiful,” hae said, positively starry-eyed—which with haes eyes, took a lot of work.
“Thank you,” Kit said.
“But we really ought to be alone right now,” Nita said.
“Yes, yes, of course!” Cheleb said, and vanished back into the stone circle, overjoyed.
Nita waited until he was safely gone, and then said, “Sometime real soon, tomorrow maybe, I’m going to need you to explain what that was all about,” she said. Her voice was shaking with laughter that she was refusing to let out.
“I will,” Kit said. “But first I need to tell you that you are so smart.”
She grinned. “Takes one to know one.” Then she sighed. “Shame, though. If your tentacly guys got in there and ate your candy, they probably got all the rest of the saltines, too…”
Kit sighed. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Besides, I gave Mamvish my ketchup. Not much point in getting all hung up about the saltines when there’s no ketchup to put on them…”
She pulled him close again. Kit cooperated, wholeheartedly. After a moment she said, a bit breathlessly, “When we get home, after all this crap is handled… let’s talk about this, yeah? A long, long talk.”
“Yeah.”
And Nita vanished back into the circle to pick up her things and make for the short-transport pad.
There were only a few more goodnights after that as people went back on shift or headed back to their puptents to rest. Ronan was last to go. He and Djam made it through most of The Phantom Menace before Djam ran out of energy and Ronan ran out of sardonic epithets (temporarily) for Jar Jar Binks. Finally there was just Cheleb again, stretched out on the tidied Throne Rock and keeping an eye on the glowing matrix of gate-function graphs.
Kit paused by the display and looked it over. “No problems?”
“Nothing at all,” Cheleb said. “Go rest, cousin. Had busy day, you have.” Haes expression was difficult to read, but Kit had the feeling Cheleb felt hae’d been part of something special.
And hae was, Kit thought, but maybe not the way hae thinks. Doesn’t matter.
He walked back to his puptent’s portal and considered staying up just long enough to head over to Ronan’s gate complex for a pre-bedtime shower… then decided against it. In the morning. Right now I’m about ready to crash.
Wearily Kit stepped through into his puptent, sealed it up behind him, and just stood there for a moment in the soft light, looking around at the mess the sibiks had made of things. Fortunately it wasn’t too bad: the packaging had mostly defeated them. The saltines, though, as Nita said, had suffered. There was just one package left. Kit picked it up and stuffed it into his otherspace pocket before anything else happened to it, and then tidied some other rubbish away before getting undressed, pulling on pajamas and flopping down on the bed again.
The moment he was horizontal Kit realized that he wasn’t going to be conscious long: he was still feeling run down after his encounter with the Fourth. He stuffed his manual under his pillow in the usual place and felt around under there to find his phone and text his dad.
LONG DAY, BUT WE HAD A CAMPFIRE PICNIC AT THE END OF IT. MET SORT OF A DINOSAUR WHO LIKES HIS STEAK EVEN RARER THAN MAMA. DISCOVERED THAT MARSHMALLOW FLUFF IS NO GOOD IN S’MORES, & MINI MARSHMALLOWS ARE ALSO USELESS. NITA STOPPED A FLOOD, MY PUPTENT WAS INVADED BY MORE SPACE OCTOPUSES, AND RONAN IS TEACHING INNOCENT ALIENS IRISH SWEAR WORDS. IN OTHER WORDS, EVERYTHING NORMAL. WORLD STILL ENDING.
He looked at the text, considering adding the words “I’m tired”, but then decided not to: his Mama might fret. The image of her and Mamvish’s egg-dam doing so in unison, though, made him smile.
Kit shoved the phone under his pillow with the manual and buried his face in the pillow… and for a long time, knew nothing more.
EIGHT:
Sunday
Later, but no telling exactly how much later, Kit was standing out in the dark, fuming, because it really annoyed him that Thesba was following him even into his dreams.
This is a real pain in the ass, he said to himself. Who do I complain to about this?
Kit was one of those people who didn’t often remember his dreams, but when he did, what he remembered was detailed and vivid. His dreams arrived in IMAX and Dolby THX surround sound. If there was a downside to this, it was that his dreams usually weren’t terribly coherent. Irrational and sheerly idiotic things had a way of happening without a lot of logic being involved.
This was the case right now, for example, because Thesba was leaning over him and staring. Kit found this offensive, especially from an entire moon: the attention seemed disproportionate. “Look,” he said, “I know you’re going to destroy this whole place, right? Fine. But when I’m sleeping, at least, can you please let me be?” And then he started to get angry. “…Except no, you know what? It’s not fine, and somebody needs to tell you. Everyone here is really pissed off at you, and I just think you should know.”
Not everyone, said the person standing next to him.
Annoyed, Kit turned to regard him. His companion was watching Thesba with as much interest as Kit was, and he was human—or at least Kit thought he was. The general height and shape was right, but it was hard to tell in more detail because of the clothes. The person was dressed in long dark robes and had on a broad-brimmed, slouchy hat, also charcoal-dark. Thesba’s light falling across the hat’s wide brim cast his face in shadow.
Great, Kit thought. Just what I needed: a cartoon wizard. “Oh really?” Kit said.
Yes, really. This is merely an operation of the natural. It is what is.
“Well,” Kit said quite forcefully, “maybe so, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still suck.”
True. Yet such operations are incapable of altering their actions when nothing is brought to bear against them save perception. Perception without comprehension can have little effective result.
“Um, okay,” Kit said. That just meant that there was something he was supposed to be comprehending. Unfortunately right now he had no idea what that was.
He turned more fully toward the robed figure and noticed that in one hand—at least he assumed it was a hand; he couldn’t quite make it out under the long baggy sleeve of the robe—it was holding by a rounded wire handle one of those old-style Coleman camping lanterns, the kind that ran on kerosene and that you had to pump up to pressure and then light with a match. The lantern was lit, but someone had turned it right down so that the fabric-like mantle inside the clear glass chimney was just glowing a faint orange, almost the same shade or color temperature as Thesba’s glow from above. “That’s not going to do you much good in the dark if you don’t turn it up,” Kit said.
Seer for the seer in the dark, said the figure beside him, you say true. But if any light is to be shed here, you must shed it.