Wizards At War

“Ahem,” the DVR said, sounding put out. “The Planetary Acquisitions team is menaced by a strange alien force.”

Nita snickered.

Kit rolled his eyes and led the way into the dining room. “Remind me never to use wizardry on anything electronic again,” he said. “Anyway, even if the Seniors managed to stop the expansion in that one part of space, what were they going to do then? Patch all the other spots one at a time? Even if there were enough wizards to do it, it’d be like sticking Band-Aids on a sponge. The leakage just starts happening somewhere else.”

“I think you’re right,” said Nita. “Small-scale solutions won’t work on this problem. We need to stop wasting time on finicky analysis of the affected space, and find the source of what made it misbehave.”

“Wherever that might be,” Kit said. He collapsed onto the sofa. “So what now?”

“I think first we should start getting in touch with the younger wizards who’ve been picked for these intervention teams Tom was talking about,” Nita said. “I know he said he’d be in touch, but somehow I don’t feel comfortable just sitting around and waiting.”

“Neither do I,” Kit said. “I had an idea about that, too—”

The back door creaked open. “Another charming bijoux residence,” said a cool voice from just outside. “The overall understatement is most effective.”

A few moments later Dairine came in, followed by Roshaun, who gazed around him with the vague, polite interest of someone visiting a theme park, or some kind of historical recreation. Behind them came Filif and Sker’ret, who also looked around at everything, but with more interest. As the screen door slammed shut behind them, Ponch ran over to the new arrivals and started jumping up and down among them in excitement, slurping Sker’ret and sticking his nose in among Filif’s fronds.

“You did have your disguises on when you came over here, didn’t you?” Kit said.

“Please,” Dairine said, putting Spot down. He went spidering away past them all and into the living room. “What’s tough now is getting the seemings off them.” She glanced over at Roshaun in his baggy T-shirt. “Some of us are becoming real fashion victims.”

The back door creaked open again, and Carmela came in. “‘Mela,” Kit said, “have you seen Mama and Pop?”

“They went out for a while,” Carmela said. “Pop said something about ‘bracing himself for the rest of the explanation.’”

“Okay,” Kit said. Then he blinked, for an odd humming sound was coming from the living room. Kit headed in there, with Nita in tow. Spot was crouched down in front of the TV, staring at it with his own stalky eyes, and images and words in the Speech were flickering across the wide screen much too quickly for Kit to follow. “What’re you guys up to?” Kit said.

“Dataaaaa…,” said the TV and the DVR and the DVD all together, and fell silent again.

“Maybe we don’t really want to know,” Nita said. “It might be some kind of relationship thing. The secret life of machines.”

The two of them wandered back into the dining room, where Carmela had just finished getting some glasses down from one of the cupboards. “Boy,” she said with satisfaction as she went back into the kitchen, “this is a whole lot more interesting than just spending the day grenfelzing.”

Roshaun looked baffled. “Grenfelzing? What is that?”

“It’s like emmfozing, except that—”

“Okay, hold it right there. I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” Kit said. “Since when do aliens know about chocolate?!”

Carmela gave him a pitying look as she came in with a carton of fruit juice and a bottle of cola. “Poor little brother,” she said. “You mean you actually don’t know why Earth has so many UFO sightings?”

“Thought it was something to do with human beings thinking they’re the center of the universe.” Kit snorted. “Like other species have so much time to waste kidnapping us. Not to mention making weird patterns in wheat fields.”

“Oh, no, those are just people with boards and ropes,” Carmela said, ducking back into the kitchen. She came out a moment later with a bottle of spring water, which she put down in front of Filif. “And, very occasionally, sentient ball lightning. But most of the aliens are here for cocoa plants. The only reason people get abducted is when they have chocolate on them.”

Nita looked at Kit. “Please tell me she’s making this up!” she said.

Kit could only shrug. “She spends half her time watching the alien versions of the Discovery Channel. It could be true.”

“It is true,” Carmela said. “For silicon-based life-forms, one of the chemicals in chocolate is an aphrodisiac.”

“Oh, now, wait a minute!” Kit said, and covered his eyes with one hand.