All right, Filif said. And then we can come back another time for the decorations?
Absolutely, Dairine said.
She went up to the food court. There sat Roshaun, Carmela, and Sker’ret, ingesting large ice-cream sundaes. They all looked up at her in surprise.
“Where’s Filif?” Carmela said.
“About to be taken home,” Dairine said. “The fast way. Meet me back there later, okay?”
“Sure,” Carmela said. Dairine turned and headed off again…but not before catching sight of Roshaun’s amused smirk.
I am going to get him for that, Dairine thought, heading back to where Filif waited. And as for the rest of this…I am never applying for anything again. Cultural exchange—!
She snorted at her own stupidity and went off to find an invisible tree.
****
Taking in the Sights “Dad?” Nita said.
“I can hear you fine, honey,” Nita’s dad said. “Whatever Tom did to the phone, you don’t have to shout. How are you?”
“I’m fine! Everything’s fine.”
Nita was sitting on the beach with her manual in her lap, while a hundred yards away Kit and Ponch were running along the pink sand, racing. Ponch was winning—this not even the new venue could change. The sun was up, and warm already; the wind was just strong enough to take the sun’s heat away, but not so strong as to chill; the waves slipped up and down the beach, whispering.
“What’s it like?” said her dad’s voice from the manual.
Nita laughed. “Like the Hamptons,” she said. “Except they don’t have money here.”
There was a pause at her dad’s end. “That takes a stretch of the imagination,” he said, sounding somewhat dry, for the resorts and wealthy residential communities of the Hamptons, out at the end of Long Island, were (in the Callahan household, at least) often described by the head of the household as a place where people had
“more money than sense.” “No money, huh? What do they use instead?”
“It’s a barter economy, but with exceptions. For things that are hard to get locally, they have other ways of dealing with getting stuff around. But when the dust settles, everybody here seems to have what they need. And that’s good, because the people here are really, really nice.”
“How’s the family you’re with?”
“They’re the best,” Nita said. “They remind me of us.”
Her dad chuckled. “No higher praise, I guess…A barter economy. Are they farmers, then?”
“No. Well, they have sheep,” Nita said, looking back toward the grassland. “If sheep fly…” From where she sat, she could see yet another of Kuwilin’s small flocks of flying sheep landing, while the first flock he’d been feeding took off. A scatter of feed, a flurry of golden wings, and off they went, and another little flock wheeled down out of that blue, blue sky to take their place. It was like feeding pigeons, except that the effect would have been unfortunate if the sheep had tried to land on you the same way pigeons did.
Nita laughed again as exactly that thing started to happen to Quelt’s tapi, who waved the sheep off with a weary familiarity. “But you haven’t been just sitting there looking at sheep, I hope.”
“Oh, no,” Nita said. “We’ve been doing tourist things. The stuff that nobody here does unless they have visitors.”
Her father laughed. “They have that there, too?”
“Oh, yeah. We went to the Cities to do an errand for Quelt’s mom.”
“Which city?”
“The Cities. It’s just what they call it…Don’t ask me why. As if they were interchangeable.”
“They are,” Kit said, running past. “Modular. They put them where they need them.” Ponch ran past him with a stick of ironwood in his mouth; Kit threw Nita a resigned glance and trotted off after him.
“But they’re really pretty,” Nita said. “It’s as if they did New York, but in pink and peach and cream colors. And there’s no garbage.”
Her father whistled. “A city with no garbage…”
Nita shrugged. “People here don’t seem to litter. I don’t know if they even have a word for it. They don’t throw a lot of stuff away. Come to think of it, they don’t have a lot of stuff, period.”
“They don’t sound deprived, though…”
“Nope. Did I tell you, we’re famous here?”
“No.”
“They like us because we’re short. And wizards are a big deal here. It’s going to be strange to come back and have to keep quiet about it again.”
“That would be a sore point around here at the moment,” Nita’s dad said.
“Oh? How’s Dairine doing?”
“I haven’t seen her as yet today,” Nita’s dad said. “She wasn’t up when I headed to the store this morning. I think the past couple of days have been a little wearing for her.”
“Uh-oh,” Nita said. “How are you doing, Daddy? Are the guests too weird?”
“Not really,” her father said. “One of them’s just a tree. That I can cope with. Another one’s a giant centipede. That’s all right, too. That boy has a healthy appetite and everything interests him. He’s a whiz with machinery, too: Yesterday he fixed my lawn mower when it stalled. The third one—” There was a sudden pause. “Oh, good morning to you, too. Yes, right out there. No, not that way!”
Nita heard a crash. “They’re not making trouble for you, are they, Daddy?”
“It’s not the usual kind of trouble,” her dad said, “and I don’t mind.” There was a pause. “Yes, go ahead, just don’t tell Dairine I gave it to you.”
There were loud crunching noises in the background. “Is that static?” Nita said.
“No, honey, it’s fine.”
“You didn’t say anything about the third guest.”
“That may have been on purpose,” Nita’s dad said.
Nita looked down the beach. “What’s he doing?”
“Being himself,” Nita’s dad said, “for which I suppose I shouldn’t blame him. But if he were my son—” There was another pause. “Oh,” her father said, “there you are.”
There was a clunk and rustle as if the phone had been taken out of Nita’s
dad’s hand. “This was the dumbest idea in the world,” Dairine said loudly. “I just
want you to know I confess to having been really stupid.”
Nita wasn’t sure what to make of that. Dairine’s confessions could sometimes be extremely heartfelt, but she was also extremely good at retracting them later when circumstances changed. “Well,” Nita said, “things are terrific here, so I don’t know if I necessarily accept your evaluation of the whole thing.”
“It’s good where you are?”
“It’s super.”
“I hate you,” Dairine said. And there was another clunk and rustle of the phone as it was passed back to their father.
“I’m not sure what to make of that,” he said a moment later.
“I am,” Nita said. “When she calms down, tell her I feel sorry for her, and I’ll send her a postcard later. We got the portable worldgates plugged in last night, so I can come right home if you need me. And I can send you a postcard, too.” Nita had spent a little time that morning designing a wizardry that would “take pictures” of the surroundings and deliver them home through the portable gate.
“I don’t know if she’ll thank you…”
“I’ll take my chances. What about the third one?”
“The third what?”
“Wizard, Daddy. What’s his problem?”