Wizard's Holiday, New Millennium Edition (29 page)

Filif, wanting some relaxation, joined Roshaun and Carmela in the living room. Dairine’s dad was sitting at the dining room table, making some notes on a pad about supplies for the store. As Dairine and Sker’ret came in, his head jerked up, a little guiltily, Dairine thought, to make sure Filif wasn’t in sight. “You okay, Daddy?” she said, bending over to hug him and give him a kiss.

“Huh? Oh, fine,” he said. “How was your day? You guys have a nice lunch?”

Sker’ret looked most satisfied. “Very filling.”

“Oxygen bottles, mostly,” Dairine said.

Her dad glanced up at that, amused. “Nothing wrong with a little roughage in the diet. Where are you off to?”

“Just down to Sker’ret’s pup-tent. He’s going to lend me some music. Stick your head in and yell if you need me.”

“Okay.”

They went down the basement stairs more or less together—it always being a question, when Sker’ret was on forty legs and she was on two, who was ahead and who was behind at any one time, if not both at once. On the mountain, Dairine and Sker’ret had started discussing popular music while Sker’ret ingested carefully chosen chunks of garbage—including some climbing expedition’s ancient and very broken tape recorder—and Sker’ret had suggested that when they got back, they could use one of the manual’s data transfer options to pass some favorite selections back and forth. Dairine promptly had Spot grab a wide and peculiar assortment from her desktop computer at home—everything from boy bands to Beethoven—and was curious to see what Sker’ret was going to pass to her in return.

They slipped in through his pup-tent access. Dairine looked around and saw several of the sitting/lying racks Sker’ret’s people preferred, sort of a cross between a giant step stool and monkey bars. Dairine looked around at the stacks and racks of storage. “Very organized,” she said.

“Not what my parent says,” Sker’ret said.

Dairine snickered. “None of us is ever neat enough for our parents. One of those universal traits.” Sker’ret laughed and started rummaging around for his own version of the manual, a little flat data pad.

Dairine sat partly down on one of the racks—it was impossible for a human to get really comfortable on one of them, no matter how she tried—and perched there, swinging her leg, while Spot spidered around, peering into everything. “You told me before that they wouldn’t let you into the restaurants in the Crossings,” Dairine said. “Why not? Did you misbehave in there or something?”

Sker’ret’s laugh acquired something of an edge. Dairine heard a hint of bitterness about it. “Oh, no,” he said. “It’s just that families of employees aren’t expected to use the same facilities as the patrons.”

Dairine stared at him a moment. Abruptly, the data slipped into place. “Oh no,” she said. “You’re not just
some
Rirhait, are you? You’re related to the Stationmaster … ”

“I’m the youngest of his first brood,” Sker’ret said.

Dairine breathed out. “That means you inherit management of 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’s 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 was
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, “Sker’, really need to stop moving all those eyes 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 apparently written in the key of M, and only occasionally did it become so weird that Dairine 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 descended in there with a commercial 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.

Dairine’s dad went after him, alarmed. “What’s the matter, son?”

“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.

Filif went slowly 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 rinsed 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 headed back into the dining room. Thinking about another glass of milk, Dairine fetched Spot into the kitchen from the dining room, got another glass, and went back to 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. “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 just blew off a CME. That’s a—”

“I know what that is.” His eyes didn’t move from the screen.

“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 coming up on a sunspot maximum now, and you kind of expect a fair number of CMEs even though the maximums have been less intense for the last few cycles than they originally thought they’d be. One or two a week, we’ve been having, but—”

“Unusually flat maxima?” Roshaun said.
“How many cycles?”

“Well, three or four, now. In fact there are some people who think the whole cycle is shifting and both maxima and minima are flattening out—”

“While you’re still getting so many eruptions like this?” Roshaun looked stricken. “Dear Aethyrs, that’s the first sign—” He stared at Dairine. “I’ve seen this before. Don’t you know what this means?”

“No,” Dairine said. “Should I?”

“Yes you should!”
Roshaun shouted. “Your star’s 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!”