the high points emerged in Dairine s consciousness. Now, in that mode, Spot said, It s not as if they re using a private gating complex. There may be delays at the other end Yeah, Dairine said. She sat on the step again this was probably the fourth or fifth time she d stood and sat down and picked Spot up. Let me see that briefing pack again. Spot obligingly flipped up his screen and went into wizard s manual mode. On the screen appeared Dairine s version, in the Speech, of the briefing pack that the Powers That Be, or their administrative assistants, had sent her dad. Dairine had read it through once last night, mostly with an eye to seeing how good the translation was. Even considering the source, she was concerned that a Speech-to-text utility couldn t be perfect. There were words in the Speech that simply didn t go into English, and Dairine had wanted to make sure there wasn t anything in her dad s version of the briefing that he was going to misconstrue. To her relief, though, the material had been translated as perfectly as could have been expected, the translation being more a simplification than anything else. Each of the visitors had his or its own page in the package. There were 3-D live pictures of them embedded in the briefing pack, though even in manual-based documents there was never any guarantee that the image would be an exact rendition of any being s state or likeness when it actually arrived. But even if the documentation hadn t exactly and accurately portrayed them, they were still, to put it mildly, a mixed bunch. The Rirhait was more like a giant metallic purple centipede than anything else; one of twenty-four of its parents first brood hatched out, very newly become a wizard within the past Rirhait year, which was about two Earth years. It was interested enough in other worlds and other scholia of wizardry to have applied for this excursus almost as soon as it hit post-Ordeal status. It was probably incorrect: Sker ret (that being the part of his name that Dairine could most easily pronounce, the rest being all consonants) was more or less a he. She keyed ahead to the next page. All of the visitors, in fact, were he s, though with the next one, it was hard to say exactly what made him that way. Maybe it s the berries, Dairine thought, studying his picture. Filifermanhathrhumneits elhhessaiffnth was his whole name, a word that to Dairine sounded oddly like wind in branches and that was probably appropriate because he was a tree. If there are trees that walk, Dairine thought. But, plainly, on his world, Demisiv, there were…though walking probably wasn t the right word for it. They got around, anyway, and could be surprisingly mobile when they needed to be. As far as Dairine could tell from the manual s description of the Demisiv people, they spent all their lives wading around through the ground, and the whole surface of their sealess planet was one great migratory forest, with mighty bands of trees rooting only briefly and then getting on the move again, hunting other skies to grow under, new ground to grow in. Maybe the concept of a tree with wanderlust isn t so weird, Dairine thought as she studied Filif s image, which looked rather like a Christmas tree with red berries. His whole people seem to have it, in a way. He s just wandering farther than usual… She keyed ahead to the last page in the info packet and looked at it rather speculatively. Roshaun ke Nelaid (am Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz…) det Wellakhit, said the entry beside the live image of someone who was obviously humanoid. Good thing Neets isn t here, Dairine thought, studying that picture one more time, because he s really hot. The manual gave only a head shot unless you requested another view of a subject, and right then Dairine didn t bother. Roshaun-and-all-the-rest-of-the-names was handsome, almost perfectly so and it was the disbelief in his apparent perfection that kept Dairine looking at him rather longer than she intended. He had a long, fair-skinned face with a very thoughtful expression. This was partially concealed by surprisingly long, blond hair, most of which was tied behind his head, but he also had very long bangs, which he was probably always pushing out of his eyes, and a long lock of hair hanging down in front of each ear. The eyes were a startling green, a shade not normally achieved on Earth without the assistance of contact lenses. He s definitely a looker, Dairine thought, though the handsomeness was a little less striking now, on her second or third glance, than it had been at the first. What is it with his name, though It goes on and on. She looked at the referral to the planet Wellakh, turned to that page, and tried to find something that explained the name structure. She scanned down the planet s entry, skipping the usual information about size and location and so forth, looking for anything that could give her a hint. Something s coming, Spot said. Through him she could feel the faint troubling of local space that meant a worldgating was incoming: a kind of curdling or shivering in the air. Dairine stood up. Well, finally, she said. How many Are they all together, or are they coming separately Separately, I think, Spot said. Where s the locus of emergence Out in the backyard, where you and Nita usually vanish. Right, Dairine said. She snapped Spot s lid shut and headed through the backyard to the part farthest to its rear, where the sassafras trees had been growing wild for as long as Dairine could remember. Though her dad was careful about the landscaping, he had purposely left the back of the lot a casual, partial wilderness of trees of all sizes, self-seeding, and blocking the view of the yard from the neighbors lots. About fifteen feet in among them, well sheltered by growth of all sizes, was an empty patch about six feet in diameter, which Nita had talked into staying that way. There the ground was bare of everything but fallen leaves, and just outside that spot Dairine now stationed herself, putting Spot down. How long she said. Any moment Her hair blew back in the abrupt breeze of an appearance, which made only a very small Whumff sound as the air displaced. Standing in front of her, low down in that rough circle of brown and gold leaves, was the Rirhait, gleaming softly in the sunlight that was filtering through the new leaves. Likening him to a centipede, Dairine thought, was probably a little simplistic. The body wasn t a series of smooth sections but looked rather as if a number of metallic purple beach balls had been stuck together, flattening a little at the ends. Then someone had attached three pairs of legs to each beach ball two pointing down, and a third pointing up. When we get friendly, I ve got to ask him what those extra ones are for, Dairine thought. At one end of the centipede, stalked eyes Dairine thought there were about eight of them were fastened to the top of the last beach ball, and there were some scissory mouth parts underneath. The Rirhait was doing something Dairine herself had done often enough: shifting a little from foot to foot to check the gravity, to see if he needed to adjust his wizardry to compensate. In the Rirhait s case, this produced an effect something like a spectator wave. All the while he looked around with his own version of an expression Dairine had worn, herself, often enough that first glance in which you try to get your bearings in an alien environment as quickly as possible, getting the scale of things, while trying not to look as if you re completely freaked out. How she would tell if a Rirhait was freaked out, Dairine wasn t sure. For the moment, the best approach was to keep it from getting that way to start with. Dai stih ! she said right away in the Speech, to give her guest something to fix on. Are you Sker ret That s me, the Rirhait said after a moment. And you d be Darren Dairine, she said. Maybe you want to move over But the Rirhait was already pouring himself out of the circle and over toward Dairine. She looked curiously down at him as he came: He reminded her strangely of a favorite pull toy she d had when she was about four. Were you waiting long he said. No, Dairine said. How was the trip at your end The usual, Sker ret said. You hurry to get to the gating facility and then you sit around and wait forever. Dairine had to laugh. Sker ret looked up at her with all its eyes, in shock. Sorry he said. No, she said, it s all right. I was laughing. That s a happy sound. Thanks, I was wondering, Sker ret said. I thought you had something in your throat. The air in front of them trembled. There was another, even more demure explosion of air and sound, more a pop! than anything else. And there stood a tree. Except he wasn t a tree. Dai stih ! Dairine said, and was delighted to see the branches of the tree shiver in unison and look at her with all their berries. Dai! the tree said. I hope you ll forgive me, Dairine said, but your name s kind of a mouthful for me. Will Filif be all right We use that at home, Filif said. His voice was absolutely the rustling of wind in leaves. Dairine wondered how he did it, because all she could see were needles, which wouldn t rustle terribly well. The tree part of Filif seemed fine; Dairine cast a glance down at his roots and saw that they were shrouded in a kind of portable haze. She recognized this instantly as a decency field, used by some wizards to conceal a part of themselves that they didn t feel it appropriate to show to other people, either of their own species or another one. How was your trip Dairine said. Is there anything you need right now No, I m fine, Filif said. There was a diffident sound to his voice that made Dairine wonder whether this was strictly the truth but he was using the Speech, so it couldn t be a lie. Good, she said. We ll go in, in a little while, and get you guys settled in. You have your pup tents all setup Oh, yes, the two said in unison. Dairine looked around her. Speaking of which, where s our third guy Filif and Sker ret looked at each other. We weren t early, were we Sker ret said. No, Dairine said. Roshaun of the multiple names seems to be BANG! The wind blew Dairine s hair back, and a tall figure imploded into the space in the middle of the circle of leaves. He was nearly as tall as Dairine s dad and was dressed in what even Dairine, the consummate T-shirt and baggy pants fan, was willing to describe as splendid robes. He was wearing an undertunic and hose and boots in some golden fabric or substance. There was an overtunic or long jacket in scarlet, all embroidered over in gold; and he was wearing gauntlets of gold, and a strange sort of scarf of gold over the outer jacket. And there was a fillet of gold bound around his head, but it was a more reddish gold, which wonderfully set off all that hair, which, it turned out, went right down his back and was long enough for him to sit on. There he stood, looking around imperiously at all of them, his thumbs hooked in the broad golden belt under the overtunic. Dairine s first thought, which she couldn t control, was, Noisy arrival. Sloppy technique. Her second thought was, Maybe it s something cultural, dressing up so fancy. But the back of her mind answered instantly and without reason: Yeah, sure. He s showing off. And why The new arrival looked around. And where is the welcoming committee he said. Dairine didn t know quite what she d been expecting from the final arrival, but this wasn t it. Dai stih , she said after a moment. That tall, blond figure turned his attention to her, and Dairine abruptly felt so short, so insignificant, so very minor. However, the feeling immediately kicked her into a most profound state of annoyance. Yes, he said after a moment, may you also go well. And you would be You re the newcomer, Dairine said, and I am your host. It s for you to introduce yourself. Where this made-up rule had come from, she had no idea, but she felt disinclined to make things easy for this guy. He stood there and continued to look down at Dairine, way down, as if from some inaccessible mountain peak. I, he said, am Roshaun ke Nelaid am Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am det Wellakhit. And he looked at her as if he expected her to know what it meant. Pleased to meet you, cousin, Dairine said, feeling that it was just barely true and desperately hoping that at some point it would be more so. But at the moment she was having all kinds of doubts. I m Dairine Callahan. Welcome to Earth. Roshaun looked around at the scrubby wooded surroundings with those green, green eyes. This is perhaps a public park he said. No, Dairine said. It s part of the property that belongs to our house. We use this area for coming and going on business, because our planet is sevarfrith. The Rirhait and the Demisiv each nodded or twitched briefly. Sevarfrith was a syllabic acronym for several words in the Speech that, taken together, meant a world where wizardry must be conducted under cover. There were numerous longer forms of the acronym that indicated the general or specific reason for the restriction, but the simple version often was used as shorthand. Dairine knew that this information would have been in the visitors own orientation packs, but it seemed like a good time to mention it. That s a shame for you, isn t it the Rirhait said. I m sorry about your trouble. It s okay, Dairine said. It s more of a logistical problem than anything else. You get used to it after a while. The best thing to do is treat it as if it s a game. For the first day or so, while you guys are getting used to being here, I ve taken the liberty of setting up a wizardry around the perimeter so that the people who live in the immediate vicinity won t see anything, in case somebody s visual overlay slips. If you look around, you can see it I ve left the perimeter visually active for anyone who uses the Speech. She gestured around her, indicating the paired lines of blue green light that ran around the backyard from the left rear corner of the house, down the property line and above the chain-link fence, right around the back of the property, where they were standing, and up the right side toward the garage. Inside that, you re safe in your own shape. At night, though, there may be some leakage of light from inside the space, and we can t be certain that some of the neighbors might not be able to see you; so it s better to be careful. The Demisiv looked up through the leaves of the trees at the shifting light of the sky above, where clouds were racing by in a stiff wind. That s fine, Filif said. We wouldn t want to frighten anybody. Come on this way, Dairine said, and led them out of the woods. Oh, she said, and this is my associate, Spot. Spot put up a selection of stalked eyes and looked around him, fixing on each of the aliens in turn. Dai stih , he said. Dai, said Filif and Sker ret. Roshaun peered down at the small laptop in Dairine s arms. Is it sentient he said. I m beginning to think he s more sentient than you are, Dairine thought. And immediately after that, she thought, What is the matter with me We like to think so, Dairine said, as politely as she could. Though since he and I started working together a couple of years ago, there ve been a few discussions over which of us is more sentient. They made their way up the lawn toward the house. It s spring here! Filif said. I love the colors. Yeah, Dairine said. They haven t really started yet, though. In a few weeks there ll be a lot more flowers here. Oh, Roshaun said, so the look of the place will improve, then I m glad to hear it. At home, we would have had the groundskeepers reprimanded. Dairine flushed as hot as if someone had insulted her, or her dad, or Nita, to her face. There was something insufferably superior about Roshaun s delivery. I have to be imagining this, Dairine thought. I ve known this guy exactly two minutes. It s much too soon to believe that he s a complete turkey. Nonetheless, as Roshaun looked around the Callahan backyard, as he took in the slightly beat-up lawn furniture and the artfully ragged plantings, he radiated a sense that all of this was below him, somehow. I don t get it, Dairine thought. Where is he getting this attitude All the wizards I ve ever known have been nice! Well, Spot said in her head, how many wizards have you known That brought her up short. Well…she said. Sker ret, oblivious to what was going on inside Dairine s head, was looking around him in all directions, a job made easier by stalked eyes that went every which way. Do you have an indoor dwelling place here, it said, or do you stay outside His tone of Speech was entirely different, suggesting a cheerful interest. Not this time of year, Dairine sai