by Diane Duane
But where was Kit?
Down the hall Dairine’s door opened, and her sister wandered down past Nita’s door in the direction of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a huge Fordham T-shirt of their dad’s. She looked at Nita vaguely. “What’s for breakfast?”
“Confusion,” Nita said, rather sourly.
“What?”
“Nothing yet. Nobody’s up. And I can’t find Kit.”
Dairine stopped and stared at her, pushing the hair out of her eyes and yawning. “Why? Where is he?”
“Somewhere the manual can’t find him.”
“What?”
“Look at this!” Nita was concerned enough to show Dairine her manual, even though it meant she would see the messages above the strange new notification. Dairine looked at the back page and shook her head.
“Never seen that before,” she said. “You sure it’s not a malfunction or something?”
Nita snorted. “Have you ever seen a manual malfunction?”
“I have to admit,” Dairine said slowly, “if I did, I’d get real worried, considering What powers them. Come on, let’s see if mine’s doing the same thing.”
Nita followed Dairine to her room and glanced at where the pile of stuff from yesterday had mostly been dumped on the floor. “You’d better take care of this before Mom gets up,” Nita said. “She’ll have some new and never-before-seen species of cow.”
“Plenty of time for that,” Dairine said, going over to her bed and knocking one knuckle on the case of the black laptop cuddled down beside her pillow. “She was up till half past forever last night with Dad’s stuff. Spot?”
Spot sprouted his legs again, stretching them one after another like a centipede that thought it was a cat. “Morning,” Dairine said.
“Mrng,” said the laptop in a small scratchy voice.
“Manual functions?”
“Spcfy.”
“Messaging,” Dairine said.
The laptop popped open its lid, and its screen flickered on, showing the usual apple-without-the-bite logo, then blanking down again. A moment later the operating system herald faded into view, a stylized representation of a white book open to a small block of text. This was then replaced by a messaging menu, overlaid on a shimmering blue background subtly watermarked with the manual’s biteless logo. “Main address list,” Dairine said. “Test message.” The screen blanked. “To Kit Rodriguez. Where are you? Send.”
The words displayed themselves on the screen exactly as they had in Nita’s manual, blinked out, and then reappeared with a little blue box underneath them in which was written in the Speech, Error 539426010: Recipient is not in ambit. Please resubmit message later.
“Huh,” Dairine said. “More information.”
The blue box enlarged slightly. No further information available.
“We’ll see about that,” Dairine muttered. “Thanks, cutie.”
“Yr wlcm,” said the laptop, and sat down on the desk again, stretching out its legs.
“Doesn’t waste his words, does he?” Nita said, smiling.
“He’s shy,” Dairine said, with a wry expression. “You should hear him when we’re alone. Let’s try this.”
She went over to the new computer and waved a hand over the top of it. The light behind the in-fascia biteless apple came on; a second later the monitor lit, displaying a broader-format version of Spot’s desktop. A second later the computer’s white keyboard flicked into existence on the desk, and Nita’s eyebrows went up. “What do you need that for when it’ll take spoken input?”
“I type faster than I talk.”
“Impossible.”
Dairine gave Nita a dirty look as she sat down and flexed her finders over the keyboard, which was the standard North American QWERTY type. “Not much good for the Speech.”
“Oh please,” Dairine said, and snapped her fingers over the keyboard. It stretched, and the keys shimmered and reconfigured themselves to display the 418 building-block characters of the Speech. “Eventually we won’t need this, but the new wireless transparent neuro-translation routines are still in pre-alpha.” She looked at Nita with a mischievous expression. “For the time being, though, this one reads your EEG and anticipates you so you don’t have to shift or control-key when you’re rolling. Like autocorrect when you’re texting, but with only a thousandth of a percent false positives. Getting interested finally? I can copy Spot for you and give you his twin…”
“Thanks, but I’ll stick with the manual I know.”
Dairine shook her head in poorly concealed pity. “Luddite.”
“Technodweeb,” Nita said. “Call me sentimental. I like books. They don’t crash.”
“Huh,” Dairine said, as the monitor blanked and then brought up a long, long list. Dairine glanced over at Spot. “You wanna pass it that last error?”
A moment later that same little blue screen appeared on the monitor. “Right,” Dairine said. She glanced over her shoulder at Nita. “Sometimes the beta shows background information that the normal release version doesn’t have in it yet, or doesn’t routinely release. Any additional information on this?” she said to the desktop machine.
The blue box was partly overlapped by another one, in a lighter shade of blue. It contained the words:
For accurate and secure message storage and delivery, manual messaging functions require each party’s manual to supply an encryption key based on the intersection between each wizard’s personal description in the Speech and his present physical location in a given universe. Message dispatch and storage cannot be achieved when one or both addressees are in transit or experiencing transitory states between universes. Please remessage when the condition no longer obtains.
“Oh, well, I guess that’s okay, then,” Dairine said in astonishment heavily tinged with irony. She looked at Nita. “Another universe? That’s normally not a transit you make without permission from seriously high up.”
“Yeah,” Nita said. She opened her manual again and paged through to where Kit’s status report was.
Dairine hit a couple of keys; the monitor changed to show the same view. Under the listing for the water wizardry, Kit’s status report said:
Present project: access-routine investigation and stabilization, training assignment with adjunct talent; situation presently in development. Detail reference: in abeyance due to possible Heisenberg-related effects; update expected c. Julian day 2455097.1041.
“Adjunct?” Dairine muttered.
The thought went through Nita like a spear: He’s working with someone else! At first it seemed ridiculous. But considering how I treated him… why shouldn’t he want to work with other people? I’ve brought this on myself. I am a total idiot!
“Whatever else is going on,” Dairine said, “the Powers That Be know about it. Look, here’s an authorization code. They must have some way of keeping tabs on him if They’ve even got a projected update time in there. Point six … that’s after dinner, I guess. Try again then.”
Nita closed her manual, feeling slightly relieved. “Yeah…”
“But Neets, look,” Dairine said, “if you’re worried, why not just try to shoot him a thought? No matter what the manual’s doing, it’s not like your brain is broken.”
“Unusual sentiment from you,” Nita said.
Dairine’s smile was slightly sardonic. “Maybe I’m mellowing in my old age,” she said. There was more of an edge than usual on the expression, but Nita got the feeling it wasn’t directed at her for a change.
She sat down on the bed, pushing the area rug around with her feet. “Never mind. If he’s in another universe, I doubt I’ve got the range to reach him.”
“Probably you’re right,” Dairine said. “But that’s not why you’re not about to try, is it?”
Nita looked at her sister and found Dairine regarding her with an expression that actually could have been described as understanding. “You’re afraid you’re gonna find that he’s shut you out on purpose,” Dairine said,
“and you couldn’t stand it.”
Nita didn’t say anything. Dairine glanced away, looking at the computer, and hit a key to clear the screen.
“Well,” Nita said at last, “lately it’s been harder than usual to hear him thinking, anyway. And he’s been having the same trouble with me.”
There were things that that could mean for wizards, especially if they’d been working closely together for some time … and Nita knew Dairine understood the implications. “Neets,” Dairine said at last, “if you’re really that worried, you should take the chance, anyway. It’ll beat just sitting here busting a gut.”
“I hate it when you’re right,” Nita said finally.
“Which is always,” Dairine said, “but never mind; I’m used to it by now.” She went back to tapping at the keyboard.
Nita let out a long breath and closed her eyes.
Kit?
Nothing.
Kit? Where are you?!
Still nothing. Nita opened her eyes, as upset with herself, now, as with the situation. She must have sounded completely pitiful and helpless, if he’d heard her.
But I don’t think he did. And that by itself was strange. Even when you called someone mind to mind and they refused contact, there was always a sense that they were still there. This time there was no such sense. And the manual, as Nita opened it once more to the page she’d marked, and looked at it again, still reported Kit as out there, doing something….
“Nothing?” Dairine said.
“Not a refusal,” Nita said, trying to keep relief out of her voice. “Just nothing. Maybe he really is just out of range.”
Dairine nodded. “Just have to wait till he gets back, then.”
Nita sighed and headed downstairs. As she came into the dining room, she heard someone in the kitchen. Turning the corner, she saw that it was her mother, standing there by the counter and looking bleary as she drank a mug of tea and gazed out the window.
“Mom, you look pooped!” Nita said.
Her mother laughed. “I guess. Even after I went to bed last night I had numbers going around and around in my head. Took me a while to get to sleep. …Never mind, I’ll have a nap before dinner. Speaking of which, where has Kit been the past day or so?”
Nita tried to think of what to say. Her mother glanced at her, glanced away again. “Just so I can keep the leftovers from piling up,” her mother said. “I just like to know when I’m supposed to be cooking for five. You think he might be along tonight?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Nita said. “I’ll tell you when I find out.”
“Okay. I’m going to the shop later, if you want me.” Her mom had another drink of tea, then put the mug aside. “Some paperwork was missing from what your dad gave me yesterday, and I need to go root around in his alleged filing system. Did we miss anything from shopping last night?”
“I think we need more milk.”
“I think we need to buy your sister a cow,” her mother said, and went off to get dressed.
Nita went up to her room to kill some time until she could reach Kit. It was annoying to be mad at someone, but it was even worse to discover that you were wrong to be mad at them, and worse yet not to be able to apologize to them and get it over with. I’m never gonna make this mistake again!
Or at least I sure hope I won’t … because it just hurts too much.
***
When Kit got over to Tom and Carl’s place with Ponch, he wasn’t surprised to find Tom already working—sitting out on the patio in jeans and T-shirt and a light jacket, typing away on his netbook at the table next to the big square koi pond. “It’s the only quiet time I get before the phone starts ringing,” Tom said, letting Kit in the side gate. “Come on in, tell me what you found…”
Over a cup of tea, while Ponch sprawled under the table, Kit described what Ponch had been doing, and Tom looked at the “hard” report in his Senior’s version of the manual, which was presently about the size of a phone book. Tom shook his head, turning over pages and reading what Kit could see even from across the table was a very abstruse analysis indeed, in very small print.
“This is a new one on me,” he said at last. “I’ll ask Carl to have a look later; the worldgating and timesliding end of things is more his department. But I’m not even sure that what Ponch is doing is either of those. And I can’t find any close cognates to this kind of behavior in any other wizards’ reports.”
“Really?” Kit said. “How far does that go back?”
“All the way,” Tom said absently. “Well, nearly. Some of the material before the first hundredth of a second of the life of this universe is a little sketchy. Privacy issues, possibly.”
He shook his head and closed the book. “Kit, I’m not sure where you were. I’m not sure it can even be classified as a where, as a physical universe that, given the right geometries, can be described in terms of its direction and distance from other neighboring universes. Ponch’s place might be another dimension, another continuum even, completely out of the local sheaf of universes. Or an entirely different state of being, not physical the way we understand it at all.” He shrugged. “He’s found something very unusual that’s going to take some exploring before we begin to understand it. At least your whole experience is stored in the manual, and you’ll want to add notes to it later. It’ll help the other wizards who’ll be starting analysis on it.”
“I thought your version of the manual was going to be able to explain this.”
Tom leaned back. “There’s never any guarantee of that. We’re told new things about the universe all the time. But we’re not routinely told what they mean. Wizardry is like science that way. We’re expected to figure out the meaning of the raw data ourselves.”
“So what do I do?”
“Well, what were you thinking of doing?”
“What Ponch suggested,” Kit said. “Going into that, that ‘state,’ I guess, and seeing if I could do what he was doing: make things.”
“Probably not a bad idea,” Tom said. “You seem to have come out of this all right. But don’t get careless. Exploratory wizardry can be dangerous, even though you are working for the Good Guys.”
The patio door slid open, and there was Carl, in jeans and flip-flops and an NYPD T-shirt. “I heard voices,” he said.
“Sorry, we didn’t mean to disturb you—”
“Not your voices,” Carl said, rueful. “The voices of certain fur-bearing persons who’re in the kitchen right now, eating anything that doesn’t run away fast enough.”
“Dog biscuits!” Ponch said, and immediately got up and went over to jump on Carl in a neighborly way.
“Go on in. They’ll show you where the box is,” Carl said, and Ponch ran into the house. “If there’s anything they know, it’s that.”
“Where’s ours?” came a chorus of voices from the koi pond.
“It’s too early. And you’re all overweight, anyway,” Carl said, sitting down at the table.
A noise of boos and bubbly razzes came from the pond.
“Everybody’s a critic,” Carl said. “What have we got?”
“Take a look,” Tom said, and pushed his copy of the manual over to Carl.
“Huh,” Carl said after a moment’s reading. Then he looked over his shoulder in the direction of the continuing racket. “Will you guys hold it down?” He glanced over at Kit. “See, if you’d waited half an hour, you could have had all the fish breath you wanted.”
Kit laughed. “What do you make of this?” Tom said.
Carl shook his head. “Once again, the universes remind us of their most basic law; they’re not only stranger than we imagine, they’re stranger than we can imagine. Which is what makes them so much fun.” He turned a page. “I really don’t understand this, but there are a couple of people I can call later. You going to go back there?” he said to Kit.
“Yeah, when I get back home.”
“All right. Try an experiment Try to affect the space where you find y
ourself, the way Ponch did, and see how that works. But also, see if you can bring something back with you. It doesn’t have to be anything big. A leaf, a pebble. But something to analyze might help us determine the nature of the space, or whatever, that it comes from.”
“Just test it first to make sure it’s not antimatter,” Tom said.
“Uh, yeah,” Kit said. He had no desire to be totally annihilated.
“It’s just a thought,” Carl said. “Antimatter universes are well outnumbered by orthomatter ones, but you can’t tell just by looking.”
“I’ll make a note,” Kit said.
“Anything from Nita?” said Tom.
“Uh, not yet,” Kit said. “I think, besides whatever she’s working on, she may be wanting to take a little holiday from group spelling. We were having a rough time there for a while.”
“Happens all the time,” Carl said, leaning back in his chair. “You get stuck at different stages of mastery, and things can get a little bumpy. It passes, as a rule. But it can be tough when one partner or member of a group is working faster than the other, or in a different paradigm.”
Kit thought about that. “I, uh… Listen, do you guys ever fight?”
Carl and Tom looked at each other in astonishment, and then at Kit, and both laughed. “Oh, Kit! Constantly!” Tom said. “And it’s not just about the joint practice, either. There aren’t enough hours in the day for all the stuff we have to deal with. Finding time just to be friends can be tough, but it has to be made. And when we don’t make it, we get sore at each other more easily.”
“It always came so naturally with Neets,” Kit said. “I guess maybe I didn’t think much about having to work on it.”
“Believe it, you have to,” said Carl. “And then we have what we laughably call ‘normal lives’ as well. I have a job and an office to go to, Tom has to sit here and hit his deadlines, and there are bills to pay and work to do around the house and everything else. But first and foremost comes the wizardry, and keeping it part of ‘normal life’ is always a challenge. Sure, we bite each other sometimes. Sometimes it takes a while to patch things up. Don’t let it throw you. But don’t let it take too long, either.”
