f the whole place when he retires, doesn t it It would mean that if I were normal, Sker ret said. But I m not, am I I m a wizard. Now there was no mistaking the bitterness. I m supposed to run the Crossings, and become one of the most powerful beings for light-years around. It s as much a political position as anything else: Control worldgates and you control so much else. No one argues with the Stationmasters. But you can do that and be a wizard, Dairine said. Can t you Sker ret looked at her with several eyes. I want to, he said. But they don t want me to. As far as my parent is concerned, to be a wizard is a distraction from what I m supposed to be doing, from the business of life, and the real world. He snorted, a most peculiar, rather metallic sound. Not precisely a waste of time we know as well as anybody else how useful wizards are. But my parent is furious with me. He wants me to reject the wizardry, to give it up. And I can t! Dairine drew a deep breath. Wizardry does not live in the unwilling heart. That was one of the first laws of the Art. You could give it up, if you were unwilling or unable to hold by the strictures embodied in the Wizard s Oath. It could leave you of its own volition, if pain or illness or changes in your life made it impossible for you to keep the Oath any longer. But the prospect was horrible to imagine, at least for Dairine. To actually have the people around you trying to force you to give up wizardry, to give up that most intimate connection with the universe and What had made it She shuddered. You go your own way, she said to Sker ret. You do what your heart tells you. Hearts, Sker ret said. Whatever. You do that! That s how They talk to you. Don t let anyone push you around. That s easy to say, Sker ret said, when your father s not the Stationmaster of the Crossings. Dairine gave Sker ret a look. I have news for you, she said. I think you re tougher than he thinks you are. I think there s room in the universe for you to be exactly what you want to be. Your father sorry, your parent may be the most powerful entity for light-years around, but if he were sure of that, he wouldn t be pressuring you so hard. So I think you still may have some bargaining room left. He looked at her, all those stalked eyes weaving in a gesture of uncertainty. There s no harm in trying, Dairine said. Dig your feet in. There are enough of those to make anybody think twice. Anyway, what s the worst the family can do Disown me, Sker ret said. Dairine swallowed. So what she said. You ll always be a wizard. You have a bigger family than just your family. And you ll always have a place to stay: You can sleep in my basement anytime. They locked eyes for a few moments. Shortly Dairine said, You really need to stop moving them around like that. You re making me seasick. Sker ret laughed. So did Dairine. They spent half an hour or so swapping music between Spot and Sker ret s manual, and after checking the sound quality, they headed upstairs again, where Sker ret wandered into the living room to see what the others were doing. Dairine got the urge for some milk and opened the fridge, pouring herself a glass. Then, hearing laughter coming from the living room, she leaned in through the door to the dining room to see what was happening in there. The aliens were watching cartoons. Carmela was still sitting cross-legged on the floor, rocking back and forth in amusement, while Roshaun sat in Dairine s dad s easy chair That s probably the closest he can get to a throne, she thought and was laughing, too. Not as hard as the others, perhaps, but he was plainly enjoying himself. Someone needs to tell me what mice are, he was saying to Carmela. And why do they bang the cats over the head with these hammers so often Is it class warfare of some kind I don t think so, Carmela said. It s one of those cross-species things. The cartoons and the laughter went on for a while, and Dairine sat down at the table, scrolling through Spot s manual functions while listening to the Rirhait music. It was surprisingly symphonic, though written in the key of M, and only occasionally did it become so weird that she had to skip ahead. The music combined strangely but amusingly with the bonks, hoots, and shrieks of the cartoons in the living room, and the metallic, hissing, or humanoid laughter of the room s living inhabitants. Finally, a little peace came with a station break. Enough of that, Carmela said. Let s look at some of the news. She changed the channels. the Suffolk County Pine Barrens, said an announcer s voice suddenly, recent dry conditions have combined with a passing driver s carelessness to produce the season s first brushfire. Some fifty acres south and east of Pilgrim State Hospital, at the edges of Brentwood and Deer Park, were blackened after a There was a sudden terrible rustling in the living room. What the Dairine s dad said. He got up, and collided halfway through the living room door with Filif. The effect was much like that of a man trying to catch a falling Christmas tree, except that the tree was still trying to fall after he had caught it. No, Filif said, and the word was mixed with a high, keening whine, entirely like the sound that Dairine had heard green pinewood make in the outdoor fireplace, sometimes, when her dad was burning brush. Oh no, Filif said. And he hastened into the kitchen and leaned against one of the counters there, rustling uncontrollably. What s the matter, son Dairine s dad said, alarmed. It s here, Filif said, broken voiced. Death Her father went a little pale. Death in Its own self, Filif said. The Ravager, the Kindler of Wildfires. I thought… Filif sounded stricken. I was beginning to think perhaps this was one of the places where the Lone Power hadn t come. Here and there you do find places like that, worlds or planets or continua It forgot or hasn t been to yet…places where the Bargain was done differently. Filif looked around him with all his berries. It s so terrible, he said. I never knew I didn t know It was here, too. I thought this was paradise! Her dad looked at Dairine rather helplessly, then did all he could do in such circumstances: He hugged a tree, not to draw strength from it, but the other way around. It s not going to get you here, son, Dairine s dad said. Nothing like that is going to get you here. And as for the powers of darkness, yeah, they re here, too. But we know they re here. And we fight as we can. There was a long silence. Finally, Filif pulled himself away. That s all we can do, he said. Isn t it That s all, Dairine s dad said. Slowly he went back into the living room, leaving Dairine and her dad gazing after him. There are really places like that Dairine s dad said after a few moments. Places where they just haven t taken delivery on Death Dairine nodded. Here and there, she said, and she turned away. For her, too, the subject was too close for comfort. She went to rinse out the empty milk glass and put it in the sink. After a little while she wandered outside and looked up at the sky. The Moon was coming up in the east, and as it slid slowly up through the twilight, her dad put his head out the back door and looked at her. You all right he said. Dairine breathed in, breathed out. Yeah, she said. Are you Her dad let out a long breath. How do other places get to operate like that, he said, when we don t Dairine shook her head. It s a long story, she said. But right now I really wish we were one of them… Her dad nodded and vanished back inside. She came back in, thought about another glass of milk, fetched Spot into the kitchen from the dining room, got another glass, and went back into the fridge for more milk. While she was pouring, Sker ret came back in. Ah, Sker ret said, the got stuff. Yup, Dairine said. Don t tell me you re hungry again! Not again, Sker ret said. Still. Dairine glanced at her dad. Daddy, she said, have we got any scrap metal…or wood Or matter of any kind, Sker ret said, with the air of someone trying to be helpful. Let me see what I can find, Dairine s dad said. Now that you mention it, I ve been thinking of replacing the old woodshed, but I keep putting it off. If I had to replace it because somebody, uh, ate it… Dairine snickered. Her dad got up and came into the kitchen, putting the kettle on to boil. Then he picked up his cell phone and dialed. After a moment he snorted. It s still not working. He looked over at Sker ret. I m tempted to give this to you as an hors d oeuvre. No, Daddy, Dairine said. It s probably still just the Sun. The effect can last a day or so, sometimes. Roshaun wandered in while Dairine and her dad were looking again at Spot s display from the SOHO satellite. Do these people know they re feeding their data to wizards her dad said, as he took the kettle off the stove, put decaf instant coffee into a mug, and made himself one last cup of coffee before bed. I don t think they d mind, Dairine said. It s more or less a public service. That smells wonderful, Roshaun said. What is it And then his eye fell on Spot s display. Roshaun froze. It s coffee, Dairine s father said. Well, it s sort of coffee. How much you can really consider something to be coffee when there s no caffeine in it is a moot point. He wandered out of the kitchen, and so entirely missed seeing Roshaun s ashen expression. Is that your star Roshaun said, very softly. Huh Dairine looked over her shoulder. Yeah. It s just a CME. You don t have to look all worried about it. But he did look worried about it. Dairine, how many of these have you had lately Dairine stopped dead. She couldn t remember Roshaun having ever spoken her name directly to her before, not once. I don t know, she said, after taking a moment to get over the initial shock. We re in a sunspot maximum now, and we expect a lot of them. One or two a week, we ve been having, but Roshaun looked stricken. Dear Aethyrs, that s the first sign, he said. I ve seen this before. Don t you know what this means No, Dairine said. Should I Are you insane! he shouted at her. Your star is about to start having a crisis! And if you want to have a star for much longer, or you want your planet to be in any state to notice that it has a star, you ll shut up and listen!!. Completely astounded, Dairine shut up. I wondered why the thing pained me to look at it, Roshaun said. It s going to bubblestorm. Your Sun s got to be fixed before it goes into a catastrophic flare cycle Are you crazy You can t just run off and fix the Sun! We don t even know if it s really broken or not! I do, Roshaun said. It s broken. And if somebody doesn t fix it right away This kind of thing happens all the time here. This is normal! This is not normal, Roshaun said angrily. You don t know what you re talking about. This kind of behavior is very, very abnormal in a star of this class, and it has to be dealt with before it starts to accelerate toward a crisis process that can no longer be stopped! Her father appeared in the kitchen again. I assume, he said softly, that someone is going to get a grip on himself or herself and explain all this shouting to me Roshaun is completely out of his mind, Dairine said, and thinks the Sun is broken. And he wants to go fix it. Which he is not going to do, because you ve got to get permission from at least a regional-level wizard if you re going to screw around with a system s primary! I don t care. Unless something is done Dairine had awful visions of Roshaun going off and doing something on the sly, and messing up Sol past all repair. Look, she said, we really need to at least talk to Tom and Carl about this before you go off and start playing around with my star. My star, not yours, right Thank you. She went over to the phone, picked it up, dialed. Hi there, said Tom s voice. Tom It s Dairine. Listen, I know the drill. Leave a name and number and we ll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks. Beep! Dairine swallowed. Tom, it s Dairine. I need to talk to you right away. I ll get you via Spot. Bye. She hung up. Where are they she thought. She d never called Tom and Carl s house before and failed to get one or the other of them, except when they were on vacation, and they always warned everybody about that first. Spot Yes Message both Tom and Carl right away. Flag it emergency and high-urgent. I need to talk to them right now. Spot sat silent for a moment. Then he said, The message has been bounced. What The bounce message says, Subjects are on assignment, unavailable. Oh no, Dairine thought. Oh no. What does that mean She sat there and stared into space for a moment. It may be nothing, she thought. There may be all kinds of times they go off on assignment together and I don t know anything about it. It s not like Nita or Kit or I call them every five minutes to see where they are. But the cold feeling at the bottom of Dairine s gut told her that this was not just nothing. She remembered something Tom had said once, when Dairine s dad had asked him why he wasn t off the planet more: Harry, would you normally open the door and get out of a car you were driving They re not there, are they her dad said. No. Roshaun was looking at her in increasing anger. We re just going to have to do something, then. No we are not, Dairine said. We are going up to at least planetary level on this one. She turned back to Spot and began firing off messages in all directions. But there was no response. It wasn t as if the Planetary Wizard for Earth wouldn t talk to her; wizards at even that level were remarkably accessible to their colleagues. But again and again Spot simply said, Subjects are on assignment, unavailable. What can I do to help her dad said. Daddy… Dairine shook her head. Nothing right now. Go on…I ll let you know what happens. Silently, her dad kissed her, and went. An hour later, Dairine was still sitting in the dining room, in shock, realizing that no one in the upper wizardly structure was available at all. Good lord, she thought, where is everybody Who s minding the planet ! And, horrified, she knew the answer, at least for the moment. We are… * * * * Travel-Related Stress DAIRINE S FIRST URGE WAS to go off and physically look for somebody in the echelons above the planetary level. But she couldn t. The limitations that Tom had put on her ability to use wizardry for transit were still in place, whether he was here or not. She was limited to Sol System, and couldn t even get around the prohibition by going elsewhere on the planet and using a fixed gate. All of the worldgates had monitoring wizardries built into them that would recognize Dairine s banned status and refuse her access. Roshaun was looking at her from where he d sat down across the table. All the time Dairine had been trying to find someone higher up the wizardly command structure, he had simply sat there, not saying a word, watching her. It was perhaps the longest time she d ever seen him be quiet. Now he said, You re wasting time. She looked at him with profound misgivings. There was no arguing that he was an expert of sorts in this business; it was his specialty as a wizard. Even Spot s manual functions confirmed that. But You don t trust me, Roshaun said. Not as far as I could throw you, Dairine said. And why not Roshaun said. Because I m not like you Maybe not. But I am still a wizard. The Powers That Be trust me, if you don t. And why Dairine said. That s what I want to know! You are the least wizardlike wizard I ve ever met! You don t even use wizardry if you can help it! You re a whole lot more interested in being a prince than in being a wizard, the way it looks to me! The rules say that wizardry can t live long in the unwilling heart. How long do you think you re likely to be one of us if you keep acting the way you do How long is it going to be before the act becomes the reality He stared at her, and it took Dairine several breaths to realize how stricken, and then furious, the look in his eyes was becoming. That s it, he said, and stood up. That s it. I m off home. I m weary of your arrogance, and your bad manners, and your mistrust, and your Dairine jumped up, too. You re weary of my arrogance Why, you stuck-up, self-centered, self-important don t have to explain myself to the likes of you, you parochial, controlling little always so sure you re right, then go ahead, go home and be right there, where all your people are so busy bowing and scraping to you that none of them has the nerve to confront you when you re Suddenly Dairine s face was full of greenery, and a number of berries were looking at her from very, very close, in a chilly, annoyed sort of way. You should stop this now, Filif said. Filif s silent speech was forceful. It was like running suddenly into a tree. Across from her, be