A Wizard Alone

the area for all this time, as far as I can tell,” Tom said. “If he were, certainly there would have been something about it in the news, and there’s been nothing. But at the same time, this is not a normal duration for a human Ordeal. We need to find out what’s going on, but quietly. Do you or Nita know him well enough to look in on him and see what’s happening? Or do you know anyone who does?”

Kit shook his head. “I can check with Neets, but she’s sure never mentioned him to me,” Kit said. “Why bring me in on this, though? You’re a Senior; you’d probably be able to tell a lot better than I can what’s going on with him.”

“Well,” Tom said, “let’s put it this way. How come you chose to do a direct transit here rather than just walk over and knock on the front door?”

Kit was briefly surprised that Tom would bother asking so obvious a question. “It’s not exactly like you’ve got any kids of your own,” he said. “And if the neighbors keep seeing kids wandering in and out of here every five minutes—”

“Say no more,” Tom said. “We’re on the same wavelength. It’s just another facet of the way wizards have to behave in our culture. Attracting attention to yourself is usually unwise. In this particular situation, if people start noticing you in the neighborhood around the object of our mutual interest, they won’t think too much about it — it’s not far enough from your own stamping grounds to provoke suspicion. Whereas if Carl or I went to investigate personally, notice might be taken. This kind of initial fact-finding is better suited to a wizard of your age.”

“Besides,” Carl said, peering up at the bottom of the cupboard, “lately you’ve been evincing a certain talent for finding things.”

“Well, Ponch has,” Kit said.

“I’m not sure he’d be producing these results without you as part of the team,” Carl said, as he applied duct tape liberally to the cupboard’s underside. “Let’s not get overly tangled up in details at the moment.”

“From a man in your position, that has a hollow ring,” Tom said.

“Sure, go ahead, mock me in my torment.”

“Anyway, are you willing?” Tom said. “To go over there during the next couple of days? See what the kid’s doing, physically, talk to him if you can, try to get a sense of what his state of mind is.”

“Sure,” Kit said. “Am I allowed to tell him I’m a wizard, if he asks?”

“I’ll leave that up to you,” Tom said. “Normally I would suggest that you try to avoid it if possible. You don’t want to take the chance of altering his perception of his Ordeal, maybe even making him think you’re supposed to be involved in it somehow. But if you can come by any sense of why his Ordeal’s taking him so long, I’d be glad to hear it.”

Carl straightened up. “Okay,” he said. The strip lights under the cupboards were now actually on. He looked at the light they cast on the counter with some satisfaction. “At least now I’m going to be able to see what I’m cooking without getting blinded.” He went over to the wall, turned the dimmer switch.

Clunk!

“I could stop by the supermarket on the way home and get you some candles,” Kit said as he got up. “Fire still works.”

“Very funny,” Carl said. “I hope that someday, when duct tape is sticking to your gray hairs—”

“Kit,” Tom said, “ignore the whimpering from the sidelines for the moment… Be careful not to get sucked in. This youngster may seem very, very stuck when you meet him, and you’ve got to resist the temptation to give him help he doesn’t need. You could end up endangering yourself, not to mention altering the focus of his Ordeal… which could make him fail it. Or worse.”

“I’ll watch out.”

“Okay. Go see what you can find out. You may want to leave your manual on record when you’re talking to him; it may pick up some nuance that you miss at first.” He paused. “Listen to that,” he said.

Kit listened, puzzled. “I don’t hear anything.”

“What the master of sarcasm over there means is that the dogs have stopped barking,” Carl said.

“They’ve been having some kind of metaphysical discussion for days now. And they’re loud about it.”

“Have they been asking you about the meaning of life?” Kit said.

Both Tom and Carl gave Kit a look. “Uh, yes,” Tom said.

Kit covered his face. “It’s my fault,” he said. “A new kind of blackmail, and I know where they got it. They probably want dog biscuits.”

“New tactic,” Tom said wearily, getting up. “Old problem. I’ll bear it in mind.”

Ponch came lolloping back into the dining room. Kit got up, too. “I’ll get in touch as soon as I find anything out,” Kit said, opening the patio door to let Ponch out.

“Thanks, fella,” Tom said. “Dai stiho.”

“Yeah, you go well, too. Well enough not to electrocute somebody, anyway!”

They headed back the way they’d come, Kit pausing briefly in Tom’s backyard with the spellchain in his hands to adjust the variable that determined how much and how fast the air displaced around their transiting mass when they “came out of nowhere.” Ponch was bouncing up and down around him, making it difficult for Kit to remember where in the structure of the spell the variable actually was. “Would you sit down?” he said under his breath to Ponch, while passing the softly glowing chain of words through his hands until the little barbed bit sticking out from the variable scratched his skin. Kit held the word up in front of his eyes, squinting at it like someone threading a needle, and managed to catch the delicate outward-hooked tail of the spell character between finger and thumb.

Chicken! Ponch was shouting in his head. Hurry up! It’s chicken!

“And philosophy goes right out the window, huh?” Kit said as he twiddled the massdisplacement variable; it shaded down from a bright blue to a darker one. “You’re a bad influence on those guys, you know that?”

Me? Never. Chicken!

“Right,” Kit said, folding the variable’s tail back in and shaking the spell through a quick sine wave to unkink it. It fell smoothly to the ground and knotted itself. “Now sit down or you’re gonna wind up in two different places, and not in one piece!”

Ponch sat down but still managed to bounce a little.

The spell flared up, its blue a little darker this time. A second later they were standing in Kit’s backyard again, without the ear-popping effect this time, and the light faded out of the spell.

“Better?” Kit said, winding the spell-chain up and sticking it back in his “pocket.”

It’s fine. I’m hungry

! Ponch shouted, and ran for the house.

Kit breathed out, feeling hungry, too, and tired. This, at least, had nothing to do with the emotional climate. No wizardry is without its price, and this was the normal reaction to a transit wizardry: a small but significant deduction from Kit’s personal energy supply. It was one of the reasons why, as they got older, a lot of wizards spent as much time as they could making sure they were in decent physical shape.

Kit went after Ponch and was surprised not to see his mama and pop eating in the kitchen, as they usually did. He wandered into the living room and found them there on the sofa. Kit’s pop was finishing the last of what must have been a second helping of arroz con polio, watching the TV screen, while Kit’s mama sat next to him, cross-legged, punching the scan button on the remote and looking at the TV with an expression of extreme bemusement.

His father looked up. “Five billion channels and nothing on,” he said in a kind of horrified astonishment.

“The story of modern life,” Kit said, resigned, and headed to the kitchen to get himself a plate.

“Just be-cause a species is more scientifically advanced than us doesn’t mean its TV is any better, believe me.”

His father absorbed this assessment with a thoughtful look. “Maybe that should make me feel better. I’ll let you know. What did Tom have to say?”

“It’s complicated,” Kit said. “A missing persons case.”

“And are you likely to go missing?” his pop said.

“Not right away,” Kit said. “I have to do some detective work here first.”