Dr. Kashiwabara looked at her. "There's a certain risk," she said. "As in any surgical procedure. But the tumor's in an area where it won't be too hard to get at, and for this kind of surgery, we use a technique that's more like the way we fix people's noses than anything else. It's not nearly as invasive or traumatic as brain surgery was years ago. I'll sit down with you and show you some diagrams, if you like."
"Thanks," Nita said. "Yes."
The doctor turned back to their dad. "Is there anything else you want to ask me?" "Only when you think the surgery will be scheduled."
"As soon as possible. There's a team of local specialists that we put together for this kind of surgery. I'm getting everyone's schedules sorted out now. I think it'll be Wednesday or Thursday."
"Okay," Nita's dad said. "Thanks, Doctor."
The doctor went off, leaving them together. I saw her face, Nita remembered her dad saying. She was shaking. He was right.,.
"There's no point in us hanging around here," her father said. "Why don't we look at the diagrams Dr. Kashiwabara has for us. Then I'll drop you two home, and come back a little bit later, so I can talk to Mom."
"Daddy, no!" Dairine said. "I want to stay and—"
Dart, Nita said silently, shut up. We need to see Tom, in a hurry. And you and I need to talk. "No, honey," their father said. "I want to see her first. Okay?"
"All right," Dairine said, subdued, but she shot Nita a rebellious look. "Let's go."
Nita held her fire until they were home, and all had had something to eat. When her father was getting ready to go out, she stopped him at the door and said, "We may be going out, Dad. Don't be surprised if we're not here when you get back. There are visiting hours tonight, right?"
"Yes, I think so. You can go then." Her dad exhaled. "I guess it's a good thing that the surgery will happen quickly. We can start... coping, I guess."
"Yeah. And we'll do more than that." She gave him a hug. "Give that to Mom for me." "I will."
She watched him pull out of the driveway and drive off.
Nita started up the stairs and met Dairine halfway down them, shrugging into her jacket, with Spot under her arm. "Not so fast," Nita said. "I want you to tell me what you were doing in there."
"Something," Dairine said. "Which was more than you were."
Nita was tempted to hit her sister—to really hit her, which shocked her. Dairine brushed by her and headed for the back door. Nita grabbed her own jacket and her manual, locked the back door, and went after her.
Dairine was halfway down the driveway already. "Were you crazy, doing a wizardry right there?" Nita whispered as she caught up with her. "And you bombed, didn't you? You crashed and burned."
Dairine was walking fast. "I don't want to talk about it."
"You'd better talk about it! She's my mother, too! What were you trying to do?" "What do you think? I was trying to cure her!"
Nita gulped. "Just like that? Are you nuts? Without even knowing exactly what kind of growth you were operating on yet? Without—"
"Neets, while I've still got the power, I've got to try to do something with it," Dairine said. "Before I lose the edge!"
"That doesn't mean you just do any old thing before you're prepared!" Nita said. "That wizardry just came apartl What if some piece of it got loose and affected someone else in there? What if—"
"It doesn't matter," Dairine muttered, furious. "It didn't work." Nita looked at her, as they crossed the street and headed down the road that led to Tom and Carl's, and saw the tears starting to fill Dairine's eyes again. "It didn't work," Dairine said, more quietly. "How can it not have worked? This isn't even anything like pushing a planet around; this isn't even a middle-sized wizardry— It..." She went quiet.
Nita could feel the tension building all through Dairine, like a coil winding tighter and tighter. "Come on," she said.
When they rang Tom's doorbell, it was a few moments before he answered, and as he opened the screen door, Nita wasn't quite sure what to make of his expression. "It's Grand Central Station around here this morning," Tom said, "in all kinds of ways. Come on in."
"Is this a bad time?" Nita asked timidly.
"Oh, no worse than usual," said Tom. "Come on in; don't just stand there."
He quickly closed the front door behind Nita and Dairine as they went by, which was probably just as well, because otherwise a passerby might have seen the six-foot-long iridescent blue giant slug sitting in the middle of the living-room floor, deep in conversation with Carl. At least it would have looked like a giant slug to anyone who hadn't been to Alphecca VI, but slugs weren't usually encrusted with rubies of such a size. "Hey, ladies," Carl said as they passed, and then went back to his conversation with his guest.
Tom led them into the big combined kitchen-dining room. "Are you two all right?" Tom said. "No, I can tell you're not; it's just about boiling off you. What's happened?"
Briefly Nita told him. Tom's face went blank with shock.
"Oh, my God," he said. "Nita, Dairine, I'm so sorry. This started happening when?" "Yesterday afternoon."
Tom sat down at the table. "Please," he said, gesturing them to seats across from him. "And you say they've got the scans done already. That helps." He looked up then. "It also explains something Carl noticed an hour or so ago..."
Carl had just said good-bye to the Alpheccan, who had vanished most expertly, without even enough disturbance of the air to rustle the curtains. "Yeah, I thought that was you earlier," Carl said, coming over to sit down at the table and looking at Dairine. "It had your signature, with that kind of power expenditure. But something went real wrong, didn't it?"
"It didn't work," Dairine said softly.
"There are only about twenty reasons why it shouldn't have," Carl said, sounding dry. "Inadequate preparation, no concrete circle when so many variables were involved, insufficiently defined intervention locus in both volume and tissue type, other unprotected living entities in the field of possible effects, inadequate protection for the wizardry against 'materials' memory of past traumas in the area; shall I go on? Major screwup, Dairine. I expect better of you." He was frowning.
Nita tried to remember if she'd ever seen Carl frown before, and failed, and got the shivers. "I thought I could just^zx it," Dairine said, looking pale. "I mean—I've done that kind of thing before."
Carl shook his head. "Yes, but you can't go on that way forever. Your power levels are down nine, maybe ten points from mid-Ordeal levels. That's just as it should be. But hasn't it occurred to you that there's another problem? You started very big. This is a small wizardry by comparison—and you haven't yet mastered the reduction in scale to make you much good at the small stuff. Sorry, Dairine, but that's the price you pay for such a spectacular debut. Right now Nita's the only one in your house who's got the kind of control to attempt any kind of intervention on your mother at all. You're going to have to let her handle it. And I warn you not to interfere in whatever intervention Nita may elect. It could kill all three of you. It's going to be hard for you to sit on your hands and watch, but that's just what you're going to have to do."
"It's not fair," Dairine whispered.
"No," said Tom. "So let's agree that it's not, then move past that to some kind of solution. If indeed there is one."
"//'"Nita said.
Tom looked at her steadily, an expression inviting her to calm herself down. "Maybe a Coke or something?" Carl said.
"Please," Nita said. Carl got up to get the drinks. To Tom, Nita said, "I was doing a lot of reading this morning. I kept running into references to spells that had to do with cancer being difficult because the condition is 'intractable,' or 'recalcitrant.'" She shook her head. "I don't get it. A spell always works."