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  Dairine let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, and grinned.

  “How long’s this last, Tom?” Dairine’s dad said.

  “Three weeks, give or take. There’s an informal plenary session to start, then a couple of orientation days for everyone to get to know each other. After that, informal spell assessments lead up to the eighth-finals, where spells are judged against each other theoretically for relative effectiveness. Quarter-finals are for ‘proof of concept,’ the demonstration of single elements of wizardries. That culls out another half of the competitors. All this time the mentors and candidates are working together—they sort out their own schedules and meet whenever they think they need to. After that, semifinals in front of a panel of twenty or so wizards at Advisory or Senior level. Two thirds of the competitors are set aside there. After that, three rounds of pre-finals go forward in groups of fifteen or twenty. And finally, five wizards do their full spell implementations at the big final session on the Moon.”

  “Safer there, is it?” said Dairine’s dad.

  Tom raised his eyebrows. “If something gets out of hand,” he said, “just as well that it happens over on the ‘dark side,’ especially these days. We have to work around the various lunar orbiters, and we usually put a stealth shield over the proceedings to be safe. Not that most of the spells even show, from space. But better to be sure.”

  “And this can be worked around school, I take it?”

  “Oh, yes. In your case, I see that your kids’ school has just gone to split sessions: that’ll make things easier for the three of them.” Dairine’s head came up again at that. “Oh, yes, Kit’s in it, too: he and Nita are a team on this as usual,” said Tom. “I have to go see his dad and mom after we’re done here. But otherwise, except for the big events, it’s up to the mentors and candidates how and where they meet. And of course worldwide worldgating travel’s subsidized for this, for the duration. It’s a bit of a perk.”

  Dairine’s dad nodded. “So I get to go to this?” he said to Dairine. “When you make the final, or your candidate does.” And he grinned. Dairine grinned back.

  “Sure you do,” Tom said. “You count as vital support personnel. No one would think of keeping you away.”

  Tom dusted his hands off and picked up his jacket again. “So I’ll be on my way,” he said. “Unless there are any more boxes you need moved?”

  “Nope,” Dairine’s dad said. “We’re sorted here.”

  “Later, then.” And absolutely without noise, Tom vanished.

  Dairine let out a long breath, staring at where he’d been. When she looked back at them, her dad and Nelaid were both smiling at her. “You two are so mean to me,” she said. “You were always going to say yes! You just let me stand here and squirm.”

  Nelaid looked at Harold, arched an eyebrow. “Has anyone considered introducing the concept of gratitude to this planet?” he started to say, and then was cut off suddenly on finding himself wearing Dairine around his middle, hugging him hard. The whoof of the breath going out of him was satisfying.

  Her dad was the next victim, but he had a few moments to prepare. “You’re going to love this,” she said into his chest.

  “Just make sure you do,” he replied, hugging her back. “That’s the whole point.”

  Not the whole one, Dairine thought. But it’ll do . . .

  4

  Antarctica / Knox Coast

  “WHAT DO YOU WEAR for Antarctica?”

  Carmela stood in the doorway of Nita’s bedroom, looking in with considerable confusion at the clothes hanging about in the air. In some cases they were literally hanging—like the ones that were floating about on their hangers because Nita hadn’t bothered to remove them before the clothes emerged from her closet. Tops and pants and skirts were so thick in the space between her and Carmela that Nita could hardly see anything of Carmela but her feet.

  “Would it be out of bounds for me to pass a comment here?” said Kit’s partially unseen sister.

  “You can pass a comment, you can pass go,” Nita said, pushing through a tangle of tops of various colors. “You can pass anything you like—and maybe you can pass me those pants. Yeah, those right there . . .”

  Carmela moved among the floating garments like someone making her way through the down-hanging branches of a thickly grown forest. “These ones?” She plucked a pair of white Capri pants out of the air and held them up between her hands, turning them back and forth. “These are from last year, Neets.”

  “I know.”

  “And are you sure about wearing white to Antarctica this time of year? It’s getting on toward fall. We must be close to their version of Labor Day. Assuming they have that down there. But then again, no one owns the place, do they?”

  Nita had to stop and laugh, pushing her hair back out of her face. “Antarctica? They say they don’t. Or at least, international law says they don’t. But all the big countries spend their time working around that one. Everybody’s got a scientific base somewhere down there, and while there are people doing science, sometimes they’re accidentally acting as cover for some secret weapons thing or some such . . . And everyone pretends it’s not happening and quietly spies on each other every way they can.”

  “And probably nobody pays any attention to Labor Day. Well, you still don’t get to wear these pants. Your legs aren’t the same length they were last year. And besides, Dairine is having a Capri-pants phase right now, and the last thing you want to look like at a party is your little sister.”

  “Oh, God,” Nita muttered, “this is turning into a nightmare. I can’t make up my mind about anything.”

  Carmela chucked the white pedal pushers onto Nita’s bed, then flopped down on it herself and watched Nita push her clothes around in the air. “Why the stress levels?” she said. “You’re going to be there for—it’s not even a day, is it?”

  “Afternoon until evening,” Nita said.

  Carmela rolled over on her back and looked at her upside down. “So throw a few things in a bag and go! This fussing is atypical for you.”

  Nita rubbed her face, then dropped her hands helplessly and sat down on the windowsill. “Everything’s so different all of a sudden,” she said. “And it makes no sense, because nothing is that different.”

  “Well,” Carmela said, with the air of someone walking on eggshells, “one thing. The B word.”

  Nita moaned. “There are moments,” she said, “when I wake up and it’s the truest thing in the world. And there are others when I wake up and think, What the hell have I done? I don’t know how to be, I can’t think what to say, I freeze up.” She made a disgusted face. “I blush.”

  “Saves on makeup,” Carmela said.

  Nita snorted. “Only if you can get it to stay in the same place all the time.”

  “And you’re going to tell me,” Carmela said, “that my baby brother is just cruising right along as if nothing’s happened.”

  By and large, this was entirely too true. Nita sighed. “Look. I need a baseline. How many boyfriends have you actually had?”

  Carmela waved a hand airily about. “Many have auditioned for the position,” she said. “Very few have achieved that lofty status.”

  Nita couldn’t restrain the snicker. “Possibly because their having achieved it still doesn’t stop you from flirting with everything else that moves.”

  “What, I should limit my options? Flirtation does not necessarily imply a lesser level of commitment.”

  “And this is why you’re in demand for interstellar negotiations,” Nita said. “Because you can come out with a sentence like that, and people believe it.”

  Carmela simply smiled and didn’t deny anything. “So how many?” Nita said.

  “Three, maybe four. No, three, I’ve stopped counting Bill, he turns out to have just been a self-obsessed dork.” Carmela let out a long sigh that suggested she was more disappointed with herself than with him. “I was way too much for him to handle.”

&nb
sp; Nita refrained from sharing the opinion that for most beings in their local universe, Carmela fell into that category. “Did any of them ever make you spin your wheels like this?”

  “That was usually the signal to get rid of them,” Carmela said. “I don’t mind butterflies in the stomach, but when they start getting big enough to be mistaken for helicopters, I believe in cutting my losses and getting out while I can.”

  “Well. With Kit—”

  Carmela waved her arms. “There’s a sentence that’ll go on and on. Leave it for now. You need to get yourself together or you’re going to be late for this thing. Worse, I’m going to be late for this thing, and I refuse to miss a chance to see people treating Kit like a superhero. Why’re you having so much trouble deciding?”

  “Well . . . there are going to be so many other people there. And I don’t know who they’re going to be! Or I know in a general way, but I don’t know how they’re going to be dressed. I don’t want to make a bad first impression, but I’m not sure what a good first impression’s going to look like! There’ll be kids there from all over the planet, all ages, wearing all kinds of things, and I just—I don’t know!” Nita waved her arms. “Should I look serious? Should I look playful? Should I try to stand out? Should I try not to stand out? I don’t want anyone thinking I’m a showoff—”

  Carmela shook her head and bounced off the bed, pushing the floating clothes off to one side and another. “Forget this stuff,” she said. “We can both spare half an hour. Let’s go to the Crossings and buy you something completely new. Stuff from the Crossings is always classy, and new is always good for taking your mind off yourself when you’re nervous.”

  “Oh, God, ’Mela, are you kidding? No way there’s time—”

  Carmela flung her arms wide. “Will you listen to her, Universe? She has no time to go a few thousand light-years to buy some clothes. There are so many things wrong with that sentence, I scarcely know where to begin.” Then Carmela sighed. “But you know what? This isn’t about the other kids, or the weird new people, or how you’re going to look in front of them. This is about him, isn’t it?”

  That was a thought that brought Nita up short. She opened her mouth, then realized she wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Yeah,” Carmela said. “Because otherwise, if things were what we laughably think of as normal around here, you’d be completely busy obsessing over whoever this new kid is you’re mentoring and how the two of you are going to keep him in line.” She paused. “Is it a ‘him’?”

  “Yeah. I think he’s from San Francisco.”

  “You think.” Carmela looked bemused. “Since when do you not know everything about something like this? You are the queen of research and you’ve known about this Invitational thing for days, and this guy for nearly as long! But instead you’re standing here overthinking yourself into a hole in the ground about how the way you dress might make people think about Kit! Aren’t you?”

  Nita couldn’t find a single way to refute this line of reasoning. Which frankly doesn’t look good . . . she thought. Am I such a total wuss? This is awful.

  “Well, forget that,” Carmela said. “Because why would you dress for him? You dress for you, and let the boys or whatever fall where they may. Here, this flowery dress with the V-neck—” She pushed her way to it and seized it out of the air. “You know you like this one! It does the swirl thing when you spin around. Add those leggings under it, that lace camisole thing, put on some flats in case you’re planning on falling down a crevasse or something, and then finish this up.”

  Nita hesitated. “I’m wondering if it makes me look too . . . girly.”

  Carmela’s eyes went wide. “How are we even having this conversation? I remember you standing there in the Crossings with that magic gun thing and picking off nasty aliens one after another like Clint Eastwood—”

  Nita could remember it too, and the memory was not pleasant. “I hated that.”

  “I know, you kept apologizing. Okay, maybe not something that Eastwood would have done. But still! Very you, and your reactions didn’t ruin your aim, either. And now you’re standing here worrying that a flowery dress is somehow going to damage your intergalactic image?! Wow, have you got the wrong number.”

  Nita slumped against the cool of the window. “It’s just that there’ve been a couple of, I don’t know, strange moments with Kit lately—”

  “When you’ve been around my little brother as long as I have, you’ll see that most of his moments are strange. The wizardry’s just been a blip.”

  Nita put her eyebrows up at that, but still had to smile. “I thought he might come out with me to check out this whalesark—I told you I was working on that?—and he comes out with this line about ‘No, don’t have time, but you know, I’ve been thinking I should get out there again, get back in touch with my nature side . . .’”

  “His nature side!” Carmela snorted with laughter. “What is he talking about?”

  “Well, look where he was just the other day when the news came down. Off shooting up the Moon . . . His gaming group’s into this very tech-wizardly stuff at the moment. Though the last session might not have gone as smoothly as he was expecting. I hear one of his team’s been giving him trouble.” Nita laughed under her breath and then assumed someone else’s face and voice. “‘Where’s Nita, are you excluding her from this, don’t tell me you see this as some kind of boy thing . . .’” She grinned. “Lissa’s like a buzz saw. All edges and spinning. You don’t mess with Lissa . . .”

  “Yet Little Brother keeps doing that,” Carmela said. “Could be a sign that he’s as confused as you are right now? But seriously: ‘his nature side’? Like the Moon’s not nature.”

  “Yeah, well, you know how some of the guys at school are. They talk like worrying about how the planet’s doing is stupid, like it’s . . .”

  “I can hear the world ‘girly’ hovering in the air.” Carmela rolled her eyes. “Idiots.”

  “But it wasn’t just that one thing.” Nita sighed. “Every now and then it seems like stuff that never bothered him before is becoming an issue. Roles . . . what people think . . .”

  Carmela narrowed her eyes. “The only people whose opinions matter here are your fellow wizards’, yeah?” Nita opened her mouth. “And not about your clothes! We’re past that now. There’re going to be a lot of people at this thing who think of you as famous. Your dress is not going to be the issue. Nita Callahan is going to be the issue! The only thing you have to worry about is how to smile graciously while not tripping over the bodies of everybody who wants to worship at your feet.”

  “That’s . . . an interesting image.”

  “Yeah. As I said, wear flats. No point in injuring them with heels while they’re abasing themselves.”

  Nita pushed away from the window with a smile and started pulling her clothes back down out of the air, the ones on hangers first. “Seriously, though . . .” She shook her head. “You think things’ll get easier when you finally break down and say it. ‘Boyfriend.’ And then you find your troubles have just begun . . .”

  “Oh, Neets! ‘Troubles’!”

  Nita laughed too. “Too grim?”

  “You should hear yourself.” Carmela started pulling down some of the floating clothes and folding them neatly over one arm. “You’re having a crisis of confidence. That’s all.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve ever had one of those.”

  “Yeah. I thought I was wrong about something, once. I got over it.”

  Nita burst out laughing. “It’s just . . . This is when I’m supposed to be giving someone else advice about how to do stuff. Not the best time for a crisis, you know?”

  “Knowing the way your life runs,” Carmela said, folding another top over her arm, “something much more gripping and involved will come up almost immediately and you’ll forget all about this.”

  “Good.” Nita let out a breath. “Because the idea that I’m getting cold feet embarrasses me.”

 
; Carmela waved a hand again, dismissive. “That’s not where you are. I think maybe your feet are just now warming up. You know what I mean? The two of you have been through a lot. And now suddenly it happens that you’re in this part of your life where everybody starts paying so much attention to Life Plans and what you’re going to do with yourself from now on until the end of time, and everything starts feeling so permanent.”

  “Or not permanent,” Nita said very softly.

  Carmela went quiet and just looked at Nita for a moment. “You’re afraid that just saying it has jinxed it somehow. That what you had was perfect, and you’ve screwed it up.”

  Nita paused, then nodded. “Even though he said ‘about time.’”

  “And he hasn’t said it since, I bet.”

  Nita shook her head. Then she laughed at herself. “I must sound so needy.”

  “No. You know what the problem is? You two are too used to reading each other’s minds in a crisis. You hit the talking part and you choke. And here I thought wizardry was all about, you know, Speech.”

  They looked at each other and then both burst out laughing at the same time. “Come on,” Nita said. “We ought to get out of here in the next hour or so. Your worldgate or mine? I’ve got a subsidy.”

  “Let’s take mine. As it happens, I know the entity who’s in charge of your subsidy, and you want to make sure he’s got you hooked up to the VIP handling routines.”

  Nita grinned and picked up the camisole and leggings Carmela had pointed out to her. “Is Sker’ret going to be there himself, you think?”

  “In the later stages, yeah. It’s a big deal, and the Earth worldgates are kind of special in the master gating system: he’ll be wanting to make sure that Chur doesn’t get overloaded again.”