Wizards At War

“If we don’t do something pretty drastic right away,” Nita said, “there may not be a planet to have aptitude tests on for very long. Or there might be a planet… but no one left on it.”

She could just hear Millman thinking. “You need to understand,” he said after a moment, “that just because we share the same privileged information about your special talents, I’m not to be routinely considered as a get-out-of-jail card. This gambit isn’t going to work more than once. Just so you know.”

Nita rolled her eyes. “Being in this situation again is the very, very last thing on my mind.”

“Good.” He was silent for a little longer. “How long do you think you’ll need?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“Well,” Millman said at last, “I can cover for you for ten days, tops. I can pull Kit under the umbrella as well by telling the school that something came up for him over the spring break: something crucial that needs to be sorted out. Would that be true?”

“Yeah,” Nita said. “Absolutely.”

“All right. If his parents will back me up, we’ll be okay for that long. But that’s all I can give you. After ten days, if you don’t show up at school again, you’re likely to find the district superintendent banging on your dad’s door. Or, if someone at school gets too nervous, social services, and possibly the cops.”

Nita swallowed. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll tell Kit.”

“Good. Can you give me some more detail about what exactly is going to be happening to the planet, so that I can help people around here deal with the fallout, if things get sufficiently strange?”

Fallout, Nita thought. I wish he hadn’t used that word. The thought of mushroom clouds sprouting all over the planet was haunting her. “I haven’t had a lot of time yet to go over the pre-mission précis in my manual. But people are going to start losing their sense of what’s underneath reality. Only physical things are going to seem real, after a while. And even those won’t feel right for long. Finally, only violent emotions are going to feel good—”

She wondered how much sense this was going to make to Millman, if any. But the faint scratching noise she heard in the background suggested that he was taking notes. “Okay,” Dr. Millman murmured. “Any sense yet of what you’ll have to do to reverse this situation?”

“The universe has started expanding too fast,” Nita said, “and we have to stop it before it tears itself apart.”

There was another of those long, thoughtful pauses. “Um,” Millman said. “Okay, I see why you might need a few extra days off for that.”

The complete dryness of his voice was bizarrely reassuring to Nita, so much so that she laughed out loud.

“Better,” Millman said. “Hold that mood. For my own part, I’ll do what I can for people who start having trouble at school. But, meanwhile, keep me posted, all right? If things are going to get a lot worse all of a sudden, I’d appreciate knowing about it. We’re all on the same side here.”

That was the thought that Nita was still having trouble wrapping her brains around. She was much more used to hiding the things going on with her from everyone at school. “I’ll do what I can,” she said.

“So will I,” said Millman, “and together we’ll have to hope it’s enough. But, Nita… for you, this has to seem like an impossible burden.”

She swallowed hard. “Yes,” Nita said.

“Call me if you start to feel the strain. I’ll help for as long as I can.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay. Go well,” he said.

“Yeah. Thanks again.”

Millman hung up.

She sat there staring at the phone for a moment before sticking it back in its cradle. Well, she thought, at least that’s handled.

So. A total of two weeks to save the universe, huh?

It did seem absolutely impossible. But there would be powerful forces working to help them. And when someone believed in you—

Maybe this won’t exactly be a piece of cake, she thought. But at least you know people are rooting for you when you start cutting it up!

Nita picked up her manual, tucked it under her arm, and headed upstairs to her room.

***

One side of the dining room at the Rodriguez house had a sofa against the wall, and on that sofa Kit sprawled, lying flat on his back and reading his own manual. For maybe the tenth time, his arms had become tired enough that he had to rest the book on his stomach. He was having trouble believing how much new data was in that book all of a sudden. The effect wasn’t new: any manual would grow and shrink depending on what information you needed. But this time it felt like there was more stuff in there. It felt more important, and somehow more dangerous.