Nita threw a look at Dairine, who just nodded once. There were ways to add so much energy to another human being that they might have a whole solar system's worth of lag and not be affected. This was one of the simplest wizardries, and not beyond Dairine's abilities right now, no matter what else might be going on. "I think it'll be okay, Daddy," Nita said, dumping her schoolbooks on the table. "Let's go see Mom."
They drove to the hospital and found her mother, surrounded by a large pile of paperbacks, talking brightly to the lady in the next bed. "The only good thing about this," her mom said as they pulled the curtain around her bed for some privacy, "is that I'm really getting caught up on my reading."
Nita was about to throw a small silence-circle around them all, until she noticed that Dairine was walking quietly around the bed, doing it already. She made a mental note to herself to let Dairine do everything wizardly that she was capable of right now. As her dad pulled a chair over to the bed, Dr. Kashi-wabara stuck her head in past the curtain and greeted them all, and Nita's dad immediately went out into the hall with her.
Nita sat down in the chair, looking idly at the books as she took her mom's hand. Many of them were of a type of techno-thriller that her mother didn't usually read. "Your tastes changing, Mom?"
Tuesday Morning and Afternoon
"No, honey." Her mother's smile was a little rueful. "I just read the parts with all the shooting and blowing things up, and then I imagine doing that to the tumor...when I'm not hitting it with lightning bolts and setting it on fire. Guided imagery's a good tool to use to help deal with this, they say. Whether it actually makes it go away or not, it's a way to constructively use the tension. One of the therapists has been coaching me in how to do it. It gives me something to do when my eyes give out."
Nita nodded, feeling her mom's pulse as Dairine sat down on the other side of the bed. There was a faint resonance to that other pulse she'd felt and heard in the practice universe, not merely a sound or sensation but a direct sensation of the inner life—under threat, but still strong. "So what have you been doing?" her mother said.
"A lot." Nita explained to her mother as quickly and simply as she could about the practice universes, and the work she was doing there so that she could learn how to rewrite the rules inside the miniuniverse that was her mom's body, and then talk the cancer cells out of what they were doing. Her mother nodded as she listened.
"In a way it sounds like what the therapist's been showing me how to do," said Nita's mom. "Though your version might be more effective. Okay, honey, I don't see that it can hurt... You go ahead. But you realize that they're still going to have to operate."
"Yeah, I know. I thought about trying to take the 223
tumor out, but it makes more sense to let the doctors do it. They've had more practice."
Her mother gave her a slightly cockeyed look. "Well, I think it's considerate of you to let them do something." She reached over to the other side of the bed and ruffled Dairine's hair. "Are you helping with this, sweetie?"
"No," Dairine said, and abruptly got up and went out through the curtain. Her mother looked after Dairine with concern. "Oh no... what did I say?"
"Uhm," Nita said. "Mom, she can't help." Softly she . explained the problem. "She's really upset; she feels useless. And helpless." j.
"That I can sympathize with," Nita's mother said, squirming a little in the bed. "Poor baby." She sighed. "I guess it's tougher to deal with than running around from planet to planet, having fun."
Nita found this idea more than usually exasperating. "Uh, excuse me... 'fun'? Mom, I've nearly had a ton of bricks dropped on me by a white hole, I've nearly been eaten by a great white shark, and the Lone Power's nuked me, dropped a small star on me, and tried to r
have me ripped apart by perytons. And Dairine may I
have had even more 'fun' than I have, not that I'd admit it to her. Wizardry has its moments, but it's not just fun. So gimme a break!"
Nita's mother looked at her thoughtfully. "If I haven't been taking it seriously enough, I'm sorry. It's still kind of hard to get used to. But, honey... if wizardry is
Tuesday Morning and Afternoon
so scary for you, so painful... why do you keep on doing it?"
Nita shook her head, not knowing where to begin. The rush you got from talking the universe out of acting one way and into acting another, with only the Speech and your intention for tools; to know what song the whales sing, and to help them sing it; to stand in the sky and look down on the world where you worked, and to be able to make a difference to it, and to know that you did—even in the Speech there were no words for that. And helping others do the same thing—particularly when spelling with a partner — "It doesn't always hurt," Nita said. "There's so much about it that's terrific. Remember when we took you to the Moon?"
Her mother's gaze went remote with memory. "Yes," she said. Her glance went back to Nita then. "You know, sweetie, sometimes I wake up and think I just dreamed that. Then Dairine comes in with that computer walking behind her..."
Nita smiled. "Yeah. There's a lot more like the Moon where that came from, Mom. And here, too. Life on Earth isn't a finished thing. New kinds of life keep turning up all the time. We have to be here for them, to help them get settled in."
"New kinds of life," her mother murmured. "It just keeps on finding a way," Nita said.
And so does death, said a small cold voice in the back of her mind.
Nita gulped. "The hurt—I guess it balances out, even though you have to work at seeing it that way.
But, Mom, a lot of energy goes into making wizards what they are. We have a responsibility to life, to What made it possible for us to be wizards in the first place. If you just take that power and use it while everything's going okay, and then, afterward, decide you don't like the hard part, and just dump it all and walk off—" She shook her head. "Things die faster if you do that. And it does happen. 'Wizardry does not live in the unwilling heart.' But sometimes... sometimes it's real hard to stay willing."
"Like now," her mother said.
"I am not going to just let this thing kill you without doing something to stop it," Nita said to her mother in the Speech, in which it is, if not impossible, at least most unwise to lie.
Her mother shivered. "I heard that. Good trick when it's not in a language I know."
"But you do know it," Nita said. "Everything knows it. On some level, even your cancer knows it... and I'm gonna do everything I can to talk it out of what it's doing to you." Nita tried hard to sound certain of what she was doing.
Her mother looked at her. "That's why you're looking so tired."
"Uh, yeah. You spend time in those other universes, which you don't spend here... and it wears you out a little."
"I suppose I shouldn't ask you if you've been doing your homework," her mother said. Nita swallowed. "Mom, right now I'm doing the only homework that matters."
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Her mother was silent. Then, softly, she said, "Honey, what if—what you're planning—"
Doesn't work? Nita couldn't bear to hear it, wouldn't have it said. "Mom, we won't know if that's a problem till I've done it. Meanwhile, let the doctors do their thing. If nothing else—"
"It might buy you some time?"
Nita's smile was slightly lopsided with pain. "I've bought too much time as it is," she said. "It's how I spend it that counts now."
Just then one of the nurses put her head in the door. "Mrs. Callahan, your medication..."
"Laura, can it wait half an hour? I still haven't seen my husband and my other daughter, and I'd like to be able to speak English to them, for a little while at least."
The nurse looked at her watch. "I'll check. I think that'll be all right." She went off. "Is this the stuff to prevent the seizures?"
Her mother winced. "It's not just that now, honey. My eyes are bothering me, and the headaches are getting bad. They try to keep me from reading, but if I can't at least do that, I'll go completely nuts just lying here. Do me a favor? Go find Dairine and let me spend some time with her before Daddy comes back."