'Harry, Nita tells me she took you two to the Moon once, to prove a point. Imagine power like that. . used irresponsibly. I need to make sure that's not going to happen, or I'll have to put a lock on some of her power. And there are other problems. The power may be very necessary for something. . ' Carl looked stern but unhappy. 'Where is she, Harry?'
'Dairine,' Nita's dad said, raising his voice.
'Yo,' came Dairine's voice from upstairs, her all-purpose reply.
'Come on down here a minute.'
'Do I have to? I'm reading.'
'Now.'
The ceiling creaked a little, the sound of Dairine moving around her room. 'What have I done to deserve this?' said Nita's father to the immediate universe.
'Harry,' Carl said glancing at the computer screen and away again, 'this may come as a shock to you. .'
'Carl, I'm beyond shocking. I've walked on the Moon without a spacesuit and seen my eldest daughter turn into a whale. That my youngest should go to Mars on a whim. .'
'Well, as to what you've done to deserve it… you have a right to know the answer. The tendency for wizardry comes down to the kids through your side of the family.'
That was a surprise to Nita, and as for her father, he looked stricken, and her mother looked at him with an expression that was faintly accusing. Carl said, 'You're related to the first mayor of New York, aren't you?'
'Uh, yeah… he was-'
'-a wizard, and one of the best to grace this continent. One of the youngest Seniors in Earth's history, in fact. The talent in your line is considerable; too bad it missed you, but it does skip generations without warning. Was there something odd about one of your grandparents?'
'Why, my-' Nita's father swallowed and looked as if he was suddenly remembering something. 'I saw my grandmother disappear once. I was about six. Later I always thought I'd imagined it. . ' He swallowed again. 'Well, that's the answer to why me. The next question is, why Dairine?'
'She's needed somewhere,' said Carl. 'The Powers value the status quo too highly to violate it without need. It's what we're defending, after all. Somewhere out there is a life-or-death problem to which only Dairine is the answer.'
'We just need to make sure she knows it,' said Tom, 'and knows to be careful. There are forces out there that aren't friendly to wizards-' He broke off suddenly as he glanced over at the computer screen.
'Carl, you should see this.'
They all looked at the screen. USER LOG, it said, and under the heading were listed a lot of numbers and what Nita vaguely recognized as program names. 'Look at that,' Tom said, pointing to one. 'Those are the spells she did today, using the computer. Eighty-eight gigabytes of storage, all in one session, the latest one-at : hours. What utility uses that kind of memory?'
'That's what. . about ten of five?' Nita's mother said. 'She wasn't even here then…'
The stairs creaked as Dairine came down them into the living room. She paused a moment, halfway, as well she might have done with all those eyes and all those expressions trained on her. . her father's bewildered annoyance, her mother's indignant surprise, Tom's and Carl's cool assessment, and Nita's and Kit's expectant looks. Dairine hesitantly walked the rest of the way down.
'I came back,' she said abruptly.
Nita waited for more. Dairine said nothing.
Nita's parents exchanged glances, evidently having the same thought: that a Dairine who said so little wasn't normal. 'Baby. .' her mother said, sounding uncertain, 'you have some explaining to do.'
But Carl stepped forward and said, 'She may not be able to explain much of anything, Betty. Dairine's had a busy day with the computer. Isn't that so Dairine?'
'I don't want to talk about it,' Dairine said.
'I think it's more like you can't,' said Carl.
'Look at the user log, Harry,' Tom said from behind Nita and Kit. 'Eighty-eight gigs spent on one program. A copy program. And run, as you say, when she wasn't even here. There's only one answer to that.'
Slowly, as if he were looking at a work of art, Carl walked around Dairine. She watched him nervously.
'Even with unlimited available memory and a computer running wizard's software,' Carl said, 'there's only so much fidelity a copy can achieve. Making hard copies of dumb machinery, even a computer itself, that's easy. Harry, look at the log: you'll see that this isn't the machine you bought. It's an exact copy of it.
Dairine made it.'
Carl kept walking around Dairine. She didn't move, didn't speak. 'Carl, come on,' Nita's father said from behind her, 'cut it out. You're scaring her.'
'I think not,' Carl said. 'There's only so much you can do with eighty gigs, as I said. Especially when the original is a living thing. The copy's responses are limited. See, there's something that lives inside the hardware, inside the meat and nervous tissue, that can't be copied. Brain can be copied. But mind-not so well. And soul-not at all. Those are strictly one to a customer, at least on this planet.'
The air was singing with tension. Nita glanced at Kit, and Kit nodded, for he knew as well as she did the feel of a spell in the working. Carl was using no words or gestures to assist in the spell, nothing but the slow certain pressure of his mind as he thought in the Speech. 'She copied the computer and took it to the city with her,' Carl said, 'and got away when she could. And when she left Earth, she decided-I'd imagine-that she wanted some time to sightsee. But, of course, you would object to that. So she copied something else, to buy herself some time.'
The spell built and built in power, and the air sang the note ears sing in silence, but much louder.
'Nothing not its own original can exist in this room,' Carl said, 'once I turn the spell loose. Harry, you're having trouble believing this, are you? You think I would treat your real daughter this way?'
Nita's father said nothing.
'Run,' Carl said softly.
Dairine vanished. Air imploded into the place where she had been: manuals ruffled their pages in the sudden wind, papers flew up and slowly settled. Behind them, the Apple simply went away; its monitor fell two inches to the desk with a loud thump, its screen gone dark, and the hard-drive cable slithered off the desk like a stunned snake and fell in coils to the floor.
Nita's father put his face in his hands.
Her mother looked sharply at Tom and Carl. 'I've known you two too long to think you were toying with us,' she said as Carl sat down slowly on the sofa, looking a bit pale. 'You said something a moment ago about forces that weren't friendly. .'
'Nita's told you some of what wizards are for,' Tom said, looking at Carl in concern, then up again.
'Balance. Maintenance of the status quo; protecting life- There are forces that are ambivalent toward life.
One in particular. that held Itself aloof from creation, a long time ago, and when everyone else was done, created something none of the other forces had thought of: death. And the longest Death… the running-down of the Universe. The other Powers cast It out. . and they've been dealing with the problem, and the Lone Power, ever since.'
'Entropy,' Nita's mother said, looking thoughtful. 'That's an old story.'
'It's the only story,' Tom said. 'Every sentient species has it, or learns it.' He looked over at Nita's father, who was recovering somewhat. 'I'm not about to pass judgment on whether the Lone One's invention was a good idea or not. There are cases for both sides, and the argument has been going on since time was set running. Every being that's ever lived has argued the case for one side or the other, whether it's been aware of it or not. But wizards fight the great Death, and the lesser ones, consciously.
and the Entity that invented death takes our interference very personally. New wizards always meet it in one form or another, on their Ordeals. Some survive, if they're careful. Nita and Kit were careful. . and they had each other's help.'
' 'Careful' is not Dairine's style,' Nita's mother said, sounding rueful. 'And she's alone.'
'Not for long,' Tom said. 'We'll track her, and see that she has help. But I think Nita will have to go.
She knows Dairine's mind fairly well.'
