by Diane Duane
A long, long silence. And then, though his eyes stayed squeezed shut, then came words at last, raw and difficult, in a voice unused for so long:
“Holding . . . someone’s . . . place.”
“Take him home,” Dairine gasped. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“You will not,” her father said. “You will stay right here until Nel comes back for you.”
“Okay,” Dairine said, and slumped back onto her dad again.
“Nita? Kit!” she heard him shout.
“Roshaun,” Dairine said, and fainted with a smile on her face.
A crowd of medical wizards was already gathering around Roshaun and Dairine and Penn, Matt being one of the first to arrive. Nita knew she had nothing to add to their expertise: she stood back and let them get on with it. Besides, she was in a state of shock of her own, though she didn’t require medical assistance.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “Oh, I can’t believe it—”
“I think you’d better,” Kit said behind her, hushed.
“But finally . . .” Nita said. So many of the things she’d seen in her head, the terrors, the things she didn’t understand: in terms of this, they made sense. This was what had been coming. This was what she had been afraid of—Wow, was I dim!
“So all that worrying you were doing,” Kit said, “turns out to have been for nothing.”
“Not for nothing,” she said, so torn between annoyance and relief that she was having trouble pushing the words out. “For this. It was all part of the process. Everything counts.” Just for that moment, the vision was staggering, and Nita saw it whole; event and causality with joined hands, dancing, dipping each other, taking turns leading, deadly serious but laughing, too. It was too big for her to take in, but Nita knew suddenly that it wouldn’t always be. I’ll get the hang of this. It may take forever but it’s going to be so much fun when it isn’t scaring me to death . . .
“Oh,” Kit said, “you mean all the times you nearly killed Penn?” Already the teasing was climbing into his voice.
“Yeah, those, apparently,” Nita said, somewhat annoyed with herself. Me and my temper . . .
“The time when you charred all those pancakes?”
“Look, you know that was the burner, it’s got a short in it somewhere, we need to—”
“Or the time after the Cull when you were freaking out on the dance floor?”
So close. And the gold in his eyes . . .
He was laughing now. “Or no, wait, I know, the time when—”
She turned around and grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him.
Kit shut up. His eyes went wide. Then they closed.
Some seconds later Nita pulled back and regarded him with shivery satisfaction. “That worked,” she said.
“Uhh,” Kit said. It was the sound of someone who’d briefly forgotten how to talk. He opened his eyes, and then they widened again at the sight of something behind Nita.
“What?” she said.
From behind her there came a soft throat-clearing noise. Kit made a face that suggested that Nita needed to sort herself out and turn around.
She put a little air between herself and Kit, and turned. Irina was standing there looking at them, jiggling her baby in his sling. Her parakeet was sitting on her head, looking behind her and far above at where that shape of fire had been. “You know,” Irina said, “I don’t know if we should let you participate in any more group projects. Things keep happening.”
Nita blushed. “Look,” she said, “I’m sorry, everything sort of all came together and—”
“If you’re sorry,” Irina said, “I’m not sure I understand why. The Simurgh has been missing for a long, long time; it’s kind of nice to discover where it’s been.”
Nita and Kit stared at each other. “It’s not like stars can’t do without a soul fragment,” Irina said. “Lots of them do. There’s even a technical term for it, because some stars just have it in them to wander, and the attempt to repress that tendency is usually counterproductive. Sooner or later the star Exhales a soul-fragment and lets it go wandering around for a while, and eventually, after getting the urge out of its system, it makes its way back home. Sometimes these stars go a long way away first, and sometimes they get lost. But this is the first case I’ve ever heard of where an Exhalation got lost inside a human.”
“Really?” Nita said.
“Yes,” Irina said. “And by the way, do you know the Chinese name for that star-bird in the old stories?”
They shook their heads.
“Peng,” Irina said. “Usually these days Anglicized to ‘Penn.’” She paused a moment to let that sink in. “Anyway, the Simurgh used to have a fairly regular schedule—it would journey for twelve thousand years or so, a ‘Simurgh year,’ and then come home to roost. But then it went missing. At least now we know where. And there are those who’ll use today’s events to suggest that one of the reasons the Sun has been behaving so unpredictably of late is that it was starting to suffer ill effects from its Exhalation being gone so long. Or from being in the very near neighborhood but never coming home.” In his sling, Sasha moved a little and made a plaintive noise; Irina jiggled him a bit harder.
“Oh,” Kit said.
“Yes,” Irina said with an air of great patience. “So we’re going to have to wait a while to see if that’s the case. In the meantime, we’ve got to recess for a couple of hours and clean this place up enough to do the remaining two demonstrations. And since the live demo of your mentee’s spell has revealed a serious functional flaw, he’s going to have to revise it and submit it for testing before the manual steering committee allows it to be listed for public use. When he’s up to it, anyway.” She glanced over toward where Penn was sitting, being checked over by the medical staff and looking thoroughly shattered. “In the meantime, I’d appreciate it very much if in the next few days you two would make time for me to debrief you, again—” She gave them both a stern look. “And after that, please go home and try not to do anything destabilizing for the next month or so, all right? I have a family holiday planned.”
“My dad’s going to want to barbecue for you again,” Nita said.
At that, Irina smiled. “That I won’t mind,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’d appreciate it if you did a pre-debrief report for me in your manuals. Nothing too detailed . . . five or ten pages each will do.”
Nita and Kit both groaned.
“Sorry,” Irina said. “If you’re going to routinely be a force for good, you’d better get used to the paperwork.”
And she disappeared without even a puff of dust to mark where she had stood.
Kit heaved a long breath of relief.
“Yeah,” Nita said. She rubbed her face. “Come on, let’s go see if Dair’s recovered a little.”
But one more thing apparently wanted to be handled before she left. Matt extricated himself from among the crowd of medical people, and with him, Penn stood up. The two of them, bouncing very shallowly so as to stay stable, made their way over to Nita and Kit.
“Gonna take this one back to San Francisco,” Matt said, “and let him get some rest.”
“But I . . .” Penn was rubbing the back of his neck in a way that seemed to have nothing to do with trying to put his hair to rights. He looked mortified. “I feel so different.”
“I bet you do,” Nita said. “After having what you had stuck inside you for all your life get out all of a sudden . . .” She shivered. “It has to leave behind, I don’t know . . .”
“A lacuna?” Penn said.
Nita had to laugh at that. But the laughter trailed off as she realized Penn was looking at her as if he’d never really seen her before.
“Yeah,” Penn said. “My head feels, I don’t know, a lot less—crowded.”
“I think you need to talk to our buddy Ronan,” Kit said. “He’s been through something, well, it’s not just like this, but he might be able to shed some light on what it’s going to be like for yo
u now.”
Penn nodded, looking around him in an unfocused way. Then he looked back at Kit and Nita with an extremely unnerved expression. It was like the face of a person of exquisite taste and coolness who had suddenly realized he’d left the house wearing nothing below the waist.
“Have I, uh,” Penn said, “have I been a complete jerk?”
Nita and Kit traded glances and then turned back to him. “Every waking minute,” Nita said.
“To both of us,” said Kit. “But mostly to her.”
“No way, more to him!” Nita said. “You provoked him into a duel!” Then she sighed. “I guess some of your trouble’s been secondary to having a frustrated Exhalation stuck inside you. But I wouldn’t blame her for everything. She had to have some raw material to work with . . .”
A little dejected, Penn looked back and forth between the two of them. “Does this mean you’re not going to mentor me anymore?”
Nita gazed at him in shock and wasn’t surprised to see Kit doing the same. For his part, Kit burst out laughing. “Penn,” he said, “you don’t need us now! You’ve got the full attention of the Invitational’s finals panel, and they’ll put you in touch with wizards who’ll be way better than us at helping you debug your spell for the manual.” He raised his eyebrows at Nita. “Maybe they can set you up with Dairine.”
“Nooooo,” Nita said, glancing sideways at the small crowd around her. “I think Dairine is going to be busy. Better talk to Irina and see who she recommends.”
“Okay,” Penn said. “Well, listen . . . I’m really sorry. I wish this had gone better.”
Nita shook her head and smiled, glancing over again at Dairine. “Penn,” she said, “don’t sell yourself too short. You’ve been a pain in the butt, but this has gone way better than you think. So you get going, okay? And go incredibly well.”
He smiled sheepishly, and looked surprised and pleased when Kit put a fist up to bump. But when Nita moved forward and put her arms around him and gave him a big squeeze, his mouth fell open.
“Go on,” she said as she let him go, noting with amusement Kit’s slightly widened eyes. “Get out of here and go get some rest.”
“Yeah,” Penn said. “Yeah. Dai stihó . . .”
He and Matt moved off together and dropped out of sight. When they were gone, Kit regarded her with astonishment. “You willingly touched him,” he said.
“Yes, I did,” Nita said. “Doesn’t mean I’m ever going to do it again . . .”
“Good,” Kit said, with such emphasis that Nita gave him a cockeyed look.
“Not the jealousy thing!” Nita said. “You have zero need for that. Meanwhile, we have other things to think about.” And she looked around them. “One of them being that I think I’ve got my sister back . . .”
Dairine was sitting up among her own medical people, who were leaving her one by one. She looked white and drawn and incredibly tired, but her eyes were bright, and the grin of absolute joy spread across her face gave Nita a pang of happiness. She dropped to her knees in the moondust and threw her arms around her sister and whispered in her ear, “I am so happy.”
Dairine hugged her back. “So am I,” she said. “You have no idea.”
“And still in big trouble,” their dad remarked.
Dairine threw her hands in the air. “Okay!” she said. “Okay! I did a dangerous thing! But look how well it turned out!”
Her father covered his eyes and shook his head. “You are plainly too drunk on adrenaline and happiness for us to have this conversation right now,” he said. “And I am too relieved to see Roshaun back, and happy for Nelaid and Miril, and amazed that I have lived to see a Phoenix rise from the ashes, more or less, and blown away that I’m standing on the surface of the Moon while this whole thing is going on, even though I keep falling down every time I try to get anywhere—”
“That would be because your pockets are full of Moon rocks,” Nita said. “They still have mass, Daddy, and when you—”
“Don’t interrupt.—And I’m completely covered with dust and need a shower—”
“Yes, you do. So why don’t you take Dairine home? Nelaid’ll come and get her as soon as they’ve got Roshaun sorted out.”
Nita’s sister was staring at her with a thoughtful kind of astonishment. “And this has been really good for you,” Dairine said, “because I have never heard you speak so much good sense at any one time in my life.” She leaned up against Nita. “And you were the one who told me to stick with this, even though I was jet-lagged out of my mind. Now I’m wondering if I’d even have made all these connections without being so wired from exhaustion and pissed off at Mehrnaz’s people!” And she laughed wearily. “Maybe not. Maybe the Powers know what they’re doing . . .”
Nita smiled at her. “From you,” she said, “that’s some concession.”
A movement off to one side caught Nita’s eye. She turned and saw Mehrnaz Moon-bouncing in their direction, and within a few moments she had joined Nita on her knees next to Dairine and thrown her arms around her. “I told you,” she said, “I told you how awesome you were. Do you believe me now?” She turned to Nita. “She went in the Sun! That is so amazing!”
Dairine laughed. “You think that was amazing,” she said to Nita, “you should have heard me tell off her aunt. That was something.”
Mehrnaz clapped her hands in delight. “It truly was! You should have seen her face afterward. It would have curdled milk for hours.”
“The only problem I have with that now,” Dairine said, “is that it’s probably going to make more trouble for you with your family.”
“It’s not,” Mehrnaz said. “There are people in my family who have been wanting to do that for decades. And Irina called my mother herself and told her—” Mehrnaz blushed. “Well, a lot of good things about me. So it’s all going to be okay. The World Earthquake Management Group has already messaged me about my spell, they want to use it as a jumping-off point for some other implementations . . .” Then her expression changed and she said nervously, “But I have to present next and you won’t be here!”
“Listen,” Dairine said, “you know I’m always right. Didn’t I tell you that you were going to make a difference in people’s lives? And see, you’re doing it already. So now I’m telling you you’re going to be fine, and I’m right about that too. So go get an energy drink or something and get ready to present. I have to go, I have to . . . but I’ll watch on the live manual hookup.” She patted Mehrnaz’s back. “And don’t forget your spell-casting thing! You’re such a star.”
“You made me shine,” Mehrnaz said, and leaned over and kissed Dairine’s forehead.
Dairine smiled. “Go on, get out of here before I faint some more.”
Mehrnaz bounced up, made a little baby-wave at Dairine, bowed to everyone else, and vanished.
“I think that’s all the cute I can stand for one day,” Dairine said. “Can I please go home and have some coffee before I leave for Wellakh?”
Nita rolled her eyes at her dad. “She’s all yours . . .”
Nita wandered back to where Kit had been watching this farewell and others. “I’ve just about had it,” she said. “Too much excitement. Shall we stick around for Mehrnaz and the other guy, or should we wander?”
“You could convince me,” Kit said—and then paused, suddenly going stiff and tense. “Except . . .”
Nita stared at him. “What’s the matter?”
Kit pointed. About fifty yards away, a tall dark shape draped all in shadows was standing quite still and watching them.
Nita laughed. “Feel around you,” she said. “It’s not our old friend. This is . . . someone different. Come on . . .”
She bounced over to him, Kit following her. When they came to a stop and the dust was settling, Nita said, “Pluto, Kit. Kit, Pluto.” She smiled. “See, I got it in the right order that time.”
Kit’s eyes widened. “Excellent Planetary,” he said, with a bow, “greetings, and may our orbits cross
without too great a perturbation.”
He bowed to Kit in turn. “Always a pleasure to meet a cousin who is learned in the protocols,” he said. “I hope you’ll forgive me.” He turned to Nita. “Third time’s the charm, they say. May I have a word?”
“Sure,” she said, mystified, and moved a short distance away.
He followed her in his drift of shadows. “My own sphere calls me,” he said, “and I won’t be here much longer: just until the last two have presented. But before I leave I feel I should warn you that some of us who’ve been here have not merely been scouting new talent. Some of us are investigating possible future colleagues.”
Nita stared.
The shadowy shape looked down at her with an amused glint in its darker-than-dark eyes. “There is a sort of . . . I think in your idiom the phrase would be ‘steering committee.’ Those of us who have experience of more than one solar system lead it, as we’re thought to be less invested in the inevitable in-system politicking: more objective. In years when the Invitational’s held, normally one or another of us will be in attendance, looking for wizards who might be suited to such a role. Ideally, these are individuals who are not overawed by size or power, who’ve survived fairly broad or deep experience acquired rather early. Frequent change of specialties can be an indicator in some cases, or dissatisfaction with one area of study that leads to research into another. Sometimes personal crises are involved, but that’s not necessarily a diagnostic.”
“Uh. Pluto . . .”
“Call me Aidoneus if you like,” said the Planetary, enthroning itself on a nearby rock. (There was no way, Nita thought, in which the way it settled itself in majesty amidst its enfurling shadows could merely be thought of as “sitting down.”) “Still one of your words, but perhaps a bit more targeted. The other word has more to do with concept surrounding wealth. Not really my department . . .”
“Wow. Aidoneus. Okay.” Nita was fighting to keep about four different things from coming out of her mouth, any one of which would have made her sound like a needy six-year-old if it turned out that she was wrong. “Uh, when you say ‘such a role’—”
