by Diane Duane
“So what is it?” Nita said. “Give me a clue!”
It loomed over her, possibly considering what to say. As machine intelligences went, the robot already seemed pretty reticent: Nita’s limited experience with mechanical life-forms suggested that they were big talkers, but this one didn’t seem to be so inclined. It just leaned over her, the size of a small apartment building, and a tongue-tied one at that.
“Oh, wait a minute, now I know what it is,” Nita said. “You want to talk to my sister, right? I’m really sorry, but she’s asleep right now.”
No response from the shining form. “Asleep?” Nita said. “Temporarily nonfunctional? Off-line?”
The robot suddenly began emitting what Nita thought at first were more metal-stress sounds, but after she got past how deafening they were, she found she could catch the occasional word through them, and the words were in the Speech. Oh good, Nita thought, for there were quite a few alien species scattered throughout the Local Group of galaxies who knew one or another of the recensions of the Speech that weren’t usable for wizardry; these functioned as a convenient common tongue.
“[Grind, groan, screech] difficulty [screech-moan-crash] entropy [moan, moan, clunk-crash] communications,” the robot said. And then said nothing more, but just wobbled back and forth amid a whine of gyros, trying to keep its balance.
Nita was getting confused. Why can’t I understand it? “Uh, okay,” she said in the Speech, “I think I got a little of that. Something’s interfering with your communications. What exactly did you want to communicate about? Do you have some other kind of problem that needs to be solved?”
The robot just crouched there, wobbling, for several moments. Then it said, “Solve [scream-of-metal, grind, ratchet] problem [moan, moan, much higher moan, crash] cyclic-insoluble [grind, grind] time [extremely long-duration whirly-noisemaker sound, crash, clunk] no solution [screeeeeeech, crash crash crash] trap [boom].”
Nita revised her original opinion about having conversations with flagpoles. This was more like a dialogue with a garbage truck, that being the only other thing in her immediate experience that sounded anything like this. “I’m really sorry,” she said, “but I’m having a lot of trouble understanding you. Pretty sure it’s s my fault. Can you tell me more clearly how I can help you? Just what is it that you need?”
The huge shape crouched there for a few more moments, then, wobbling, it got up. For a long, long moment it stood over her, gazing down at her from that great height… but Nita still couldn’t be sure. Then the robot turned, and slowly and clumsily went clanking off into the darkness, out of the spotlight where it and Nita had been standing.
Nita broke out in a sudden sweat, feeling that she’d missed something important. “Look,” she called after it hurriedly, feeling incredibly inadequate and useless, “I really am sorry I can’t help you! If you come back later, when my sister’s awake, she should be able to figure out what it is you need. Please, can you come back later?”
But it was gone.
—and Nita found herself staring at the dark ceiling of her bedroom. The sun wasn’t yet up outside, and she was still sweating, and feeling stupid, and wondering what on Earth to make of the experience she’d just had.
At least it wasn’t a nightmare, like that other one, she thought.
But on second thought, considering how spectacularly stupid she felt right now, Nita wasn’t so sure….
There was no chance of getting back to sleep, so Nita showered and got dressed for school, ate a cereal bowl’s worth of breakfast that she didn’t really feel like eating, and then dawdled over a cup of tea until it was time to wake her dad. This was an addition to Nita’s morning routine that she heartily wished she didn’t have to deal with, but her father really needed her to do it. Recently he’d been turning off his alarm clock and going back to sleep without even being aware of having done so.
She knocked at the bedroom door. “Daddy?”
No answer.
“Daddy … it’s six-thirty.”
After a few seconds came the sound Nita had been bracing herself for, the sound she didn’t think her dad knew he made: a low, miserable moan, which spoke entirely too clearly of how he felt, deep down inside, all the time now. But this was the only time of day that sound got out, before he was completely awake. Nita controlled herself as strictly as she could, absolutely intent on not making things any worse for him by sounding miserable herself.
“Do you want me to make some coffee?” Nita said.
“Uh,” her dad said. “Yes, sweetheart. Thanks.”
Nita went down to the kitchen and did that. She had mixed feelings about making her dad’s coffee: that had always been what her mother did, first thing. Nita also wasn’t sure if she was making it strong enough—her mom had always joked that her dad didn’t want any coffee that didn’t actually start to dissolve the cup. Nita, being new at this, was still experimenting with slight changes to the package directions, a little more each morning, and secretly dreading the day when she would get it right, and that would most forcibly remind her dad of who had not made it.
She started the coffee machine and went quietly back up to her room. By then her dad was already in the shower. Nita sat down at her desk, picked up her book bag from beside it, and shoved in the textbooks she’d be needing today. She had a chemistry test that afternoon, so she picked up the relevant book from beside her bed and started reading.
It was hard to concentrate, even in the early morning stillness. In fact, it was hard to concentrate most times, but this was something that Nita had been pushing her way through by dint of sheer stubbornness. The rest of her life might be going to pieces, but at least her grades were still okay, and she was going to keep them that way. What Nita missed, though, was the sheer effortless enjoyment she had always gotten from science before. This stuff was harder than the science she’d loved as a kid. That by itself isn’t so much of a problem. I’m learning it. Though I’m not used to having to work at it. But the shadow of pain that hung over everything was also interfering… and about that, there wasn’t anything she could do.
“Sweetie?”
Nita looked up. Her dad was standing in her bedroom doorway, looking at her with some concern. “Sorry, Dad, didn’t hear you.”
He came over and gave her a hug and a kiss. “I didn’t mean to distract you. I just wanted to make sure you’ll see that Dairine gets out.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t let her sweet-talk you.”
Nita raised her eyebrows at the unlikeliness of this. “I won’t.”
“Okay. See you later.”
He went out. Nita heard the back door lock shut behind him, heard the car start. She glanced out the window into the gray, early morning light, and saw the car backing out of the driveway, turning in the street, vanishing from sight. The engine noise faded down the street.
Nita sat there and thought of her dad’s still, pale face as he spoke to her. Sad all the time; he was so sad. Nita longed to see him looking some other way … yet for so long now she’d routinely felt sad herself, because she could understand his problem. It’s only been a month, she thought, and already I can’t remember what it’s like not to be sad.
The school shrink had warned her about that. Mr. Millman, fortunately, had turned out to be very different from what Nita had expected, or dreaded, when she’d been sent to see him after her mom had died. The other kids at school tended to speak of “the shrink” in whispers that were half scorn, half fear. Having to go see him, in many of their minds, still meant one of three things: that you needed an IQ test—probably to prove that you needed to be put in a slower track than the one you were in; that you were crazy, or about to become so; or that you were going alcoholic or doing hard drugs, or had some other kind of weird thing going on that was likely to make you a danger to yourself or others.
Nita had been surprised that the crueler mouths around school hadn’t immediately started to spread one or another of these r
umors about her. But it hadn’t happened, apparently because her mother was well known and liked in town by a lot of people, and this attitude had spread down to at least some of their kids. It seemed that those kids at school who knew her at all thought that though Nita was a geek, it was still a shame about her mother, and counseling after her mom died so young wouldn’t count as a black mark against her.
So nice of them, Nita had thought when she first heard about this. But she had to admit to a certain amount of relief that mockery wasn’t going to be added to the whispers of pity that she’d already had more than enough of. Not that she wasn’t used to half the kids she knew making fun of her as an irredeemable nerdette. But having to deal with a new level of jeering, as well as the pain, was something she could do without right now.
She still had no energy to speak of. Sleep never came easily anymore, and she kept waking up too early. But once she was awake, she didn’t really want to do anything. If Nita had had her way, she’d have stayed home from school half the time. But she didn’t have her way, especially since Dairine was already in trouble with the principal at her school for all the time she’d been losing—so much so that their dad had to go see the principal about it this afternoon. Nita was completely unwilling to add to his problems, so she made sure she got to school on time—but she found it hard to care about anything that happened there.
Or anywhere else, she thought. Even though she was up before dawn half the time, the predawn sky, even with the new comet passing through, didn’t attract her as it used to. Nita leaned on the sill of the window by her desk, looking out at the bare branches of the tree out in the middle of the backyard. She could see the slow words its branches inscribed against the brightening sky in the wind, but she couldn’t bring herself to care much what they said. She felt as if there was some kind of thick skin between her and the world, muffling the way she knew she ought to feel about things … and she didn’t know what to do to get rid of it. What really frightened Nita were the times when she clearly perceived that separation from the world as something unnatural for her, and still didn’t care if the remoteness never got better—the times she was content to just sit and stare out at the world, and watch it go by.
She found herself doing that right now, staring vaguely at the clutter on her desk—pens and pencils, school notebooks, sticky pads, overdue library books, a few CDs belonging to the downstairs computer. And her manual, closed, sitting there looking like just one more of the library books. Overdue, she thought, glancing past it at the other books. That’s not like me, either. I’m so obsessive about getting them back on time, usually … I should take them back after school today.
But taking them back just seemed like too much trouble. It could wait another day, or two, or three, for the little fine it would cost her. Maybe I’ll feel more like it over the weekend.
Nita let out a long breath as she looked at her manual. It wasn’t as if it was alive in any way, as if it had anything with which to look at her…
…but it was looking at her, and she wasn’t sure what to make of its expression.
She flipped it idly open to the back section, where the status listings were. Turning a few pages brought her to Kit’s listing, which she scanned with brief, weary interest. Then she paged along to her own.
CALLAHAN, Juanita L. 243 E. Clinton Avenue Hempstead, NY 11575 (516) 555-6786 power rating: 6.76 +/- .5 assignment status: optional
Nita stared at that for a long moment, never having seen anything like it on her listing before.
“Optional”?
Since when am I “optional”?!
She sat there looking at the listing for a few seconds longer. Jeez, she thought, I sounded more like Dairine just then than me…
It was still a strange listing. And the longer she looked at it, the less she liked it.
But that brought her to her next order of business for the morning. Reluctantly, Nita got up and went across the hall to Dairine’s room. “Dari…,” she said, knocking on the door and knowing what was going to come next.
“Ngggg,” said a voice from inside.
“Get up.”
“In a minute.”
“Don’t make me laugh, Dari. Say it in the Speech.”
“Ngggg.”
Nita grimaced. Dairine was twisty and shifty in all kinds of ways, but even now, even angry and upset with life as she was, she would not dare say anything in the Speech that wasn’t true. “Dairiiiiiiiiine…”
A pause. “Must you be so disgustingly responsible at this hour of the morning?”
“Yes,” Nita said, unimpressed by either the volume or the sentiment. “Get up, Dair. I have things to do besides deal with you all morning.”
“Then go do them, and give them my regards.”
“Not a chance. Get up.”
“No.”
And so it went for another fifteen minutes or so. Nita’s temper started fraying. I might have seen the day break, she thought, but I’m still going to be late for Millman, thanks to Dairine. Again.
I’ve had about enough of this!
Nita held out her hand for her manual, which obligingly picked itself up off her desk and came cruising along into the hall. She plucked it out of the air and began paging through it. Okay, today’s the day, she thought. Today I actually use that spell instead of just thinking about it. But I have to add something fast. Nita spent a moment wondering under which category she would find the addition she was contemplating for the wizardry she had in mind. Well, it’s a teleport, but now it’s complex rather than strictly inanimate… “Dairine,” Nita said. “This is just another cheap attempt not to go to school.”
“It’s not an attempt.”
“Uh-huh.” We’ll see about that. Okay, here we go. The shape of the wizardry’s a little weird now, but if I constrain the feeder end of the spell like this—and this— Yeah. Quick and dirty, but it’ll do the job. “You really ought to think about the consequences of your actions,” Nita said, “especially insofar as they affect what Dad’s gonna have to say to you when school calls him at work to find out where you are.”
“Nita, that’s my problem, not yours, so why don’t you just butt out for a change instead of trying to run everybody’s life. You’re no replacement for Mom, no matter what you may think you’re doing, and—”
A tirade, Nita thought, already halfway through the spell. Good. She paused just long enough to admit to herself that the remark about their mom did, indeed, really hurt, and then went on with the spell. Dairine was meanwhile still in full flow. “…when you come to your senses again, some time in the next decade if we’re lucky, you may discover that—OW!”
From inside Dairine’s bedroom came a loud thump, the sound of a body hitting the floor—or, more accurately, parts of a body hitting the floor, and parts of it coming down hard on some of the many and varied things that Dairine routinely shoved underneath her bed. One-handed, Nita snapped her manual shut with a feeling of profound satisfaction.
“Where’s my bed?!” Dairine shrieked.
“It’s on Pluto,” Nita said. “On the winter side, somewhere nice and dark and quiet, where you won’t find it if you look all day—which you’re not going to have time to do, because you’ll be in school.”
“Hah! I’ll sleep in your bed!”
“You hate my bed,” Nita said. “My mattress is too hard for you. And what’s more, my bed and every other piece of furniture in this house have been instructed that after I leave, they’re to teleport any living creature they touch right into the part of school where you’re scheduled to be at that particular moment in time. How you explain your appearance there is going to be your problem.”
“I’ll take the wizardry apart.”
“I’ve password-locked it. If you want, you can spend all day trying to unlock it from outside the house … and then still have to explain to Dad why you weren’t in school again. After he’s just spent an hour discussing the same subject with your principal. Meanwhile, if you
want to sleep anywhere, you can do it on Pluto, if you like—but you’re not doing it in this house till after you get back from school.”
The bedroom door was flung open, and Dairine stormed through it, past Nita and toward the bathroom, head down, in a fury, refusing to give her sister so much as a glance. The severity of the effect was somewhat lessened by the dust bunnies that parted company with Dairine’s pajamas along the way, floating gently in the air behind her.
“I wish I knew what alien force has kidnapped my sister and left this vindictive thug of a pod person in her place,” Dairine said to the air, slamming the bathroom door shut. “Because when I find out, I’m going to hunt it down and kick however many rear ends it has from here to Alphecca!”
Nita stood there for a moment, watching a final dust bunny float toward the floor. “Enjoy your day,” she said sweetly, and went to get her book bag.
***
Her meetings with Mr. Millman were always about an hour before homeroom, so that they were finished ten or fifteen minutes before other students started to arrive for the day. The covert quality of the meetings was enhanced by the fact that Mr. Millman didn’t even have his own office, because he traveled from school to school in the district every day. Neither he nor anyone else in school knew where he was going to be from one session to the next. Nita most often found him in a spare office down in the administrative wing of the school, a room furnished with a metal desk and a few wooden chairs and not much else. Today he was there, sitting behind the old beat-up desk with the office door open, and working intently on one of those metal-ring puzzles in which the five constituent rings have to be interlaced.
This kind of behavior was typical of Mr. Millman, and was one of the redeeming features of having to deal with him. Whatever you might imagine a school shrink as being like, or looking like, he wasn’t that. He was young. He had a large, frizzy black beard that made him look more like an off-duty pirate or an escaped Renaissance artist than a psychologist, and his long lanky build and loose-limbed walk made him look like a refugee from a Cheech and Chong movie. Though he wore a suit, he did so as if it had an invisible sign on the back of it saying, THEY MADE ME WEAR THIS: DON’T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. He looked up at Nita from the ring-puzzle with a resigned expression. “Morning, Nita. You any good at these?”
