Wizard's Holiday, New Millennium Edition (15 page)

Sker’ret was doing the same with his own customized worldgate. He reared up with it held in his front mandibles and plastered it against the gray cement of the wall. That darkness, too, ran down to create a lower, more archlike shape, black as a cutout piece of night. Standing in front of it, Sker’ret thrust a front claw into it; the claw vanished up to the second joint.

Roshaun turned away, heading back up the steps. “Aren’t you going to set up your gate?” Dairine said.

“It can wait awhile,” Roshaun said. “I’m in no hurry.”

He was halfway up the stairs already, glinting golden in silhouette from the sunlight still coming in through the screen door. Dairine raised her eyebrows, and said to the other two, “Come on, and I’ll give you the grand tour of the house.”

“There’s more?” Filif said, sounding surprised.

“Sure,” Dairine said. “I’ll show you.”

By the time she and the other two were up the stairs, Roshaun had already opened the oven door, and was looking in. “If this is a food preparation area,” he said, “it can’t be meant to service very many people.”

“It’s not,” Dairine said. “There are only three of us here.”

“I know about that,” Sker’ret said. “There’s you, and your sire, and your sister.” He said both the relationship words as if they were strange new alien concepts.

Yes,
Dairine thought.
And if you knew it, why doesn’t Roshaun know it?
“That’s right.”

Roshaun closed the oven door and looked around him, still with that faintly fancier-than-thou attitude, but also with a slight air of confusion. “Even so,” he said, looking into the dining room as if he expected to see something there and didn’t see it, “surely you don’t prepare your food yourselves?”

“Uh, sure we do,” Dairine said.
Did I miss something about this guy’s profile?
she thought.
I should go back and have another look, because he’s
really
behaving strangely…
“My sister’s better at it that I am, but I should be able to manage something.”

Sker’ret was up on his hind legs, or some of them, carefully inserting a couple of claws into a cupboard door. “I’ll be glad to help you,” he said. “What’s in here? Is this where you keep the food?”

He pulled the cupboard door open—literally. It came off its hinges, and Sker’ret put his head end into the cupboard, holding the door off to one side as he rummaged around. “What are all these bright-colored things?” he said, taking out packages and jars and cans, holding them up, and staring at them with many stalked eyes.

“Uh, yeah, those are all kinds of food. It’s just that, no,
wait
, you want to watch out for the ones in the glass—”

Crash!
went two of the jars that Sker’ret was holding in his claws. It became increasingly apparent that Sker’ret didn’t know his own strength. The shower of broken glass, various kinds of canning juices, and things like asparagus and peas and peaches in a jar, was shortly joined by more leakage from cans that Sker’ret was holding with his other claws. Roshaun and Filif looked on this, fascinated, but neither saying anything. “Oh, I’m sorry, these are very fragile, aren’t they?” Sker’ret said. “Were those supposed to do that?”

“Not exactly,” Dairine said, hoping against hope that she could stop this catastrophe before it got much further along,
and
get it cleaned up before her dad got home. “Why don’t you let me take care of that, and I’ll just—

Crash!
“Oh no,” Sker’ret said, “I
am
sorry about that.” Several more jars and bottles fell down and either smashed on the counter or bounced off the floor; a few glass jars bounced and then smashed when they came down the second time.

Both Filif and Roshaun crowded carefully back out of the way, and looked at Dairine to see what she would do. Dairine let out a long breath and started carefully across the wet, glass-crunchy floor toward the basement steps, where a mop and broom were kept.

His claws clutched full of the remains of various cans and bottles, Sker’ret looked after Dairine with a number of its eyes. “Where are you going?”

“Well,” Dairine said, “I could do a wizardry, but sometimes a mop makes more sense… ”

“What’s a mop?” Filif said.

“It’s a thing we use to clean up the floor if something wet’s gotten on it—”

“To clean it up?” Sker’ret said, sounding shocked. “But we haven’t
had
anything yet!”

Dairine opened her mouth to say something, and then completely forgot what, as Sker’ret began to eat.

He ate the glass. He ate the cans. He ate the asparagus, and the peas, and the canned tomatoes, and every other foodstuff that had fallen on the floor. He slurped up every bit of liquid. And when he was done, he looked around him, and with his foreclaws, he picked up the torn-off cupboard door, which he had carefully set aside while dealing with the canned goods.

“Not the door!” Dairine yelled.

Sker’ret’s head turned in some alarm. “No?”

“No,” Dairine said, trying to calm herself. “Sorry; that’s part of the kitchen.”

“Oh,” Sker’ret said. “My apologies. I didn’t realize.” Carefully he set the door aside again, and turned his attention downward.

“No, no, no, no,” Dairine said.
“Leave the floor!”

Somewhat bemused, Sker’ret cocked a few eyes back at Dairine, shrugged some of his legs, and began to levitate.

Roshaun was leaning against the counter by the kitchen sink, his arms folded, watching this spectacle with insufferable amusement. Dairine desperately wanted to punch him in the nose, even though he hadn’t said a word. Filif was watching, too, though with a far less superior air.
Maybe it’s the berries,
Dairine thought.
It’s hard to look supercilious when you have berries hanging off you.

The back door opened. All four of the occupants of the kitchen looked up, startled.

Dairine’s father came in, closed the door behind him, and looked at his daughter, the young man, the centipede, and the tree. “Hello, everybody,” Harry Callahan said.

Filif, Roshaun, and the gently floating Sker’ret all looked at Dairine’s dad. Then they all looked at Dairine, waiting to take their cue from her.

Dairine had rarely been more embarrassed to have her father turn up without warning…or more relieved. “Daddy!” she said. “Who’s in the store?”

“Mike’s there for the rest of the day,” her dad said. Mike was his new assistant, whom he’d taken on a few weeks back: a young guy just out of high school who had been looking for a job and was good with flowers. “It’s been a slow afternoon, anyway. I’m not needed there. Who’re your friends?”

Dairine looked at her dad sidewise, admiring his cool, especially since she knew he’d done his reading and knew perfectly well who these people were. There he stood, acting like a man who had aliens in his house every day. And he’d looked right at the cupboard door and not even mentioned it. “This is Filif,” she said. “Filif, this is my father.”

“I am honored to meet the stock from which the shoot proceeds,” Filif said. He rustled all over, bending a little bit like a tree in a wind.

Dairine was relieved to see that her dad must have the briefing pack somewhere about his person, as he was plainly understanding the Speech that Filif was using. “Well, you’re very welcome,” Dairine’s father said.

“And this is Sker’ret… ”

“Well met on the journey,” Sker’ret said.

Dairine’s dad reached out to take the claw that Sker’ret offered him. “You don’t have to float there like that, son,” he said. “The floor’s not so clean in here that you need to be afraid to walk on it.” He glanced to one side. “Something wrong with the cupboard?”

“It came off,” Sker’ret said.

“That happens,” Dairine’s dad said. “Just leave it there for the time being; we’ll put it back where it belongs later.” He turned to Roshaun.

“And this is Roshaun,” Dairine said.

“…ke Nelaid am Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am det Wellakhit,” Roshaun said, and to Dairine’s mortification, looked at her dad as if expecting him to bow.

Her dad’s response took just a fraction of a second longer this time. “Make yourself right at home,” he said to Roshaun. “But then I see you already have.” He turned away from Roshaun with exactly the same matter-of-fact motion that Dairine had seen her dad use with customers who were wasting his time at the counter. “So let’s all go into the living room and sit down. What’s on the agenda, Dairine?”

She recognized the code—her father rarely called her by her whole name unless there was trouble of some kind. At least for once, the cause of the trouble wasn’t her…or if it was, she was only the indirect cause. All of them followed her dad into the living room, and Dairine said, “They’ve spent the day traveling, and I was thinking maybe some food would be nice… ”

“Absolutely. I could do with some dinner myself. We can sit and relax and get acquainted. Any thoughts?”

“Well, I thought maybe something neutral.” She glanced at Roshaun, who was looking around their living room with an expression of badly concealed confusion, as if he’d found people living in a hole in the ground and liking it. “Some fruit drinks to start with, maybe, and then… ” Dairine was grasping at possibilities; this was more Nita’s specialty than hers. “I don’t know, maybe something vegetarian… ”

“That sounds nice,” Filif said. “Something to do with my people. What’s it mean?”

“Huh? Vegetarian? Oh, around here it means people who eat only vegetables… ” Then Dairine heard what she was saying, and stopped short.

But she hadn’t stopped soon enough. Filif stood there frozen in shock, and the decency field around his roots almost went away. “You… eat…
vegetables?”

Oh, great,
Dairine thought, in a complete fury with herself.
Why didn’t I just come right out and say, “Hi there, we’re cannibals”? Except I just did.
“But they’re not, you know, the
people
kind of vegetables,” Dairine said, though the look Filif was turning on her made her wonder whether she was going to have any success with this approach. “They don’t… They’re not alive, I mean, not the way you’re alive… I mean, they don’t
think..
.”

Then Dairine stopped herself again, this time because she was getting onto conceptually shaky ground. When you were a wizard, you quickly discovered that thought and sentience didn’t necessarily have anything to do with each other, and sometimes they manifested independently.

Her father leaned over her shoulder and looked down at Filif with an unusually calm expression. “What do you do for nourishment at home, son?” he said.

“Normally,” Filif said, having recovered enough to tremble a little, “we root.”

“I’ve got just the place for you,” Dairine’s dad said. “You come on outside with me. Dairine, you take care of these two for the moment.”

Her dad went out the back door, closely followed by Filif. She sagged a little with relief and turned back to the others. Sker’ret was looking out the front window of the living room with great interest, but Roshaun was leaning against the polished wooden breakfront, snickering.

“That was interesting,” he said. His tone of voice suggested not that he was trying to restrain his amusement, but that he was intending to let it loose full force as soon as he had an excuse. He found Earth funny, he found Dairine’s dad funny, and he found Dairine funny.

Dairine just looked at him.
It would be so very bad,
she thought,
to punch out a guest on his first day in the house. Very,
very
bad. But really satisfying…
“Come on and see the rest of the house,” Dairine said, rather more to Sker’ret than to Roshaun; and she led them off on the grand tour.

The tour (along with a lot of explaining, especially in the bathroom) took about fifteen minutes, after which Dairine left Roshaun and Sker’ret in the living room and went into the kitchen again. Her dad was standing there with a screwdriver; he was in the final stages of refastening the cupboard door. “Could have sworn Nita and I brought home canned stuff to replace everything we used last week,” he said.

“You did,” Dairine said. “I think we may need more. Where’s Filif? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” her father said, swinging the door back and forth a couple of times.

“He didn’t go outside the yard, did he? I put a force field around the edges of things that’ll keep the neighbors from seeing anything. But if he went out—”

“He didn’t. He may get around, but he didn’t feel like going anywhere right now, except under the sky. I get the feeling he doesn’t particularly like being indoors.”

“No,” Dairine said, “I think maybe you’re right.”

“And he’s enough of a conifer for me to know his tastes, at least a little,” her dad said, opening the cutlery drawer where the screwdrivers lived and dropping in the one he’d been using. “Anyway, we chatted enough for me to confirm that he likes his soil acidic. I plugged him into that new bed I was getting ready for the rhododendrons and told him to kick back for a while. He should do fine.”

“You’re taking this pretty well,” Dairine said, before she could stop herself.

“I don’t know that we have much choice at this point,” her dad said, sounding somewhat resigned. “I agreed to this, after all, so I may as well try to enjoy it. Now then—what about dinner?”

“Sounds good.” But Dairine immediately started worrying again, as that produced a whole new level of problems.
Filif…

Her dad was ahead of her. “What have we got in the house that’s not recognizably a vegetable?” He thought for a moment. “Pasta?”

“Spaghetti and meatballs,” Dairine said.

“How’s Filif likely to handle the sight of tomato sauce?” Dairine’s dad said.

Dairine thought about that. Tomatoes were vegetables … but a jar of spaghetti sauce might pass if no one actually discussed what went into it. Of course, even pasta had been a vegetable once

Her father was way ahead of her. “Since Filif isn’t going to be eating what we are,” Dairine’s dad said, “and since I’m not operating under the restrictions you are, I’m prepared to prevaricate if I have to. But let’s see if we can’t just steer the conversation in other directions if the history of food comes up. Meanwhile, utensils… ” Her dad started rummaging through the flatware drawer for a matched set. “I suspect Roshaun can use a fork and a spoon on his spaghetti. If he hasn’t had the experience before, we’ll teach him. And as for Sker’ret—”