Wizards At War

The trouble was that the smart people who thought up that solution were the very ones whose expertise the Earth would shortly be losing—the typical adult wizards who worked the spells that kept Life going, or stopped bad things from happening, unnoticed by anyone but other wizards, their Seniors, and the Powers That Be. It’s going to be us carrying the weight now. And either doing what the real Seniors have been doing… or screwing it up.

Kit made himself breathe. Don’t get too hung up on how big it looks, he thought. Take it a piece at a time. That has to be what Tom and Carl did. They weren’t born Seniors.

Ponch jumped up on the bed and walked up to just behind Kit, flopping down. The springs creaked under them both as he settled himself with his head over Kit’s shoulder. Kit turned over a few more pages, looking at team wizardries going on all over the planet. There are so many things happening, Ponch said, looking down at the pages.

Kit turned his head to look at Ponch in some surprise. “Can you read this?”

I see things happening on the page there, Ponch said. Those marks—when I look at them, I see the ice melting. Is that reading?

“Maybe not exactly the way I understand it,” Kit said, “but, yeah, I think so.” He turned another page.

Look at all the spells. Everybody’s so busy.

“This is what the wizardly world’s like every day,” Kit said. “And for us, it’s about to get a lot busier than this if we’re going to solve this problem.”

What if you can’t?

It was a thought that had been coming up for Kit about every ten minutes. “We have to,” he said. “We don’t have a get-out clause. We have to do everything to make the ‘end of the world’ not happen. Everything.” He was surprised to find himself shaking.

From outside in the hall came a loud popping sound and a puff of displaced air that stirred some of the papers on Kit’s desk. A second later, Nita looked in Kit’s door. “Hey,” she said.

“Thought you were going to meet me ‘upstairs,’” Kit said, jerking a thumb toward the ceiling, or, rather, toward something beyond it.

“I thought I’d check here first.” She came over to the bed and looked down over his shoulder at the manual. “Yeah,” she said, seeing what Kit was looking at. “I’ve been spending a while with that. Any ideas?”

“I’ve got a few,” Kit said. “But we need to talk to the others—” Kit tipped the cover of the manual shut and got up. “You tell your dad yet?”

“Not yet. You talk to your mom and pop?”

“Yeah, but I think it’s not the kind of conversation you can have just once. My pop just said, ‘I trust you to do the right thing. You’ll figure it out. You always have before.’”

“Oh, God,” Nita said. “Well, at least Millman has us covered.”

“Millman?” Kit gave her a surprised look. “You and Dairine, yeah, but—”

“No, you, too, if your folks’ll go along with it. But only ten days.”

I should eat first! Ponch said. He scrambled off the bed, turned several times in an excited circle, and shot out the bedroom door and down the stairs, making small enthusiastic woofing noises to himself.

“I was going to ask you how he was taking all this,” Nita said as they went after him, “but I guess that’s my answer.”

“As long as the end of the world doesn’t mess up his mealtimes,” Kit said, “he’ll be fine.”

“Hah,” Nita said. “Anyway, you’ve been looking the problem over again—”

“Yeah. I hate to say it, but I think Tom and Carl and the other Senior Wizards were running down a blind alley.” They went down the stairs into the living room. “I think whatever started that part of space expanding was done from somewhere a long way off. No point in wasting time sniffing around out there.”

“Ohaiyo gozaimasu!” yelled the big-screen TV and the DVR and the DVD player all together as the two of them came into the living room.

Kit stopped just long enough to bow to them. “Hey, guys,” he said. “Anything good on today?”

“…On insponder 2186043, the Gratuitous Transaction Channel presents the sixth-rerun thirteenth episode of How Much for Just the Planet? In this episode, Mexev finally hears from Anielle, who reads her an electronic communication from Turun, alleging that Nisb had a clandestine meeting with Keniphna at which they discussed the possible bribery of Twell—”

Kit gave Nita a look. “This is what happens when certain people leave the Galactic TV guide turned up to ‘verbose.’” He looked back toward the big screen and the other equipment. “Guys,” he said in the Speech, “back it down to ‘vaguely tantalizing,’ will you?”