“Uh, they’re greyed out then. Maybe a family thing? It doesn’t say.”
“Okay. We should have two different invites, maybe? One for people we’d like to see but we don’t know if they can make it, one for those whose calendars say they’re free.”
“Makes sense.”
“What about Matt?”
“Who— Oh, the Aussie guy! Yeah, can’t miss a chance to watch him pester Ronan about how grateful he should be for Matt saving his life.”
“And Ronan really is grateful but he makes this big song and dance about not caring…”
“He’s free.”
“Good. Sleepover list. …Rhiow and Hwaith and their bunch?”
Nita turned pages. “Uh, no. ‘Emergencies only.’ It’s a bad time for them, the North American gates are crazy busy at the holidays, and they still always malfunction even when a full team of gate techs are riding herd on them.”
“We’ll save Rhiow some of that cream she likes,” Carmela said.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Carmela stared at the tablet. “Any of the Mars-team guys? Kit likes them a lot.”
Nita nodded. “Um, yeah. What’s his face? The tall one. The German guy who Doesn’t Drive Tanks.”
“Marcus,” said Carmela, and made a note. While the Mars investigating team had been hunting for the planet’s lost kernel, and any hint of what had happened to the (then so-called) Old Martian species, Marcus—who besides being a wizard with a linguistics specialty also drove armored personnel carriers for the German Army—had lectured anyone who’d hold still on the essential difference between vehicles with wheels and vehicles with tracks. You got a sense that he had to spend a lot of time with people who were unclear on the concept, and so he tended to be proactive about it.
“Looks like he’s free until the 24th,” Nita said.
“Okay. Who else have we got from Mars? What’s her name with the curls?”
“Lissa?…Uh, no, she’s grayed out. Shame, I like her, she’s nice. Maybe next time.”
They both sat quiet, thinking for a moment. “Mamvish?” Carmela said then.
“Wow, if we could get her…!” Nita flipped a page, studied the manual. “’On errantry, unavailable except for emergencies.’ Well, no surprise there.” The Species Archivist to the Powers that Be was in demand all over the Galaxy, all the time.
Carmela sighed. “Shame. But then she wouldn’t like this time of year, this far north. No fresh tomatoes…”
“We’ll catch her in the summer, if we’re lucky.”
Nita stretched again. “Anyway, that sounds like a good number. How many is that now?”
“Uh, let me count.” Carmela was silent for a moment. “For the party, sort of sixteen? If everyone shows up. For the sleepover, eleven? Again, if everyone’s able to make it.”
Nita nodded. “Good crowd. Should be fun.”
Carmela sat up, touched the tablet in a couple of places and typed busily for a minute or two. Then she looked over at Nita. “Last minute thoughts?”
“None right now. Probably I’ll have one the minute you send the invites out.”
“We’ll see.” Carmela typed a last few words and then hit a spot on the tablet with one finger. The tablet chimed.
“All gone out?”
Carmela nodded, tossed the tablet to one side and rolled over on her back in a good simulation of a collapse for someone who was already lying down. “I,” she announced, “am exhaaaauuuuuuusted!”
“And you haven’t even done anything yet,” Nita said.
“Excuse me! I sent the invitations!”
Nita snickered. And then, without warning, a chill ran down her spine. She shivered.
Carmela saw it. “What?”
“Well,” Nita said. “Except for the food and the drinks and the decorations and some little presents for everybody, we have only one thing left to worry about.”
“Oh?”
“The weather…”
2:
Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful
Monday, December 20, 2010, 7:00 AM
Off to the left side of Nita’s head, her radio alarm went off. Eyes still closed, she stuck a hand out from under the covers and felt around until she found the button. The insistent buzzing stopped, leaving her with the faint sound of somebody from the local all-news station talking in a cheerful tinny voice about lane closures on the Major Deegan Expressway.
She opened her eyes. It was still very dim in the room. Winter mornings weren’t exactly her favorites: she hated getting up when it was still dark.
Nita sat up in bed, rubbed her eyes. Is the sun even up yet? she wondered.
7:16, said Bobo from somewhere in the back of her head.
“Thanks,” Nita said, and rubbed her hands up and down her arms. It was chilly: the central heating hadn’t come on yet, and in weather as cold as it had been the last few days, even a flannel nightie couldn’t do a lot for you once you got out from under the covers. Shortest day tomorrow, she thought. Longest night… “And an eclipse of the moon,” she said aloud.
While that’s true, Bobo said, I wouldn’t quote you long odds on seeing it.
Nita got out of bed and went straight to the closet for the beat-up wooly-chenille bathrobe she favored on mornings like this. “Well, yeah, probably going to be too busy…”
That’s not the problem.
“Oh?” Nita said, and went to the back window to tilt the Venetian blinds open.
The back yard looked someone’s old black and white photograph of a winter scene: softly lit in a shadowless dove-gray, the dark shapes of bare shrubs and leafless trees seemed charcoal-sketched against an indistinct background barely visible in the pre-dawn twilight. But what was slightly visible now in that grayness was movement; a gentle down-sifting of light near the window. Ever so lightly, ever so slightly, it had begun to snow. There was maybe an inch of it on the ground already.
Nita smiled a little to see it. Snow for Christmas…
But possibly, Bobo said, a little more than you might have had in mind.
“Oh?”
You’ll want to check your manual… but we have incoming.
“Uh, okay.” It was unusual to hear Bobo sound quite so concerned.
Nita picked the manual up off her bedside table and went to do bathroom things, then headed downstairs to see if her dad had made tea yet. He had: and he was standing there in the kitchen dressed in his black cold-weather parka just finishing what was in his Mets mug. He looked tired and a little bleary, which was no surprise this time of year—the runup to Christmas was always crazy for florists. “You okay?” Nita said, getting a mug for herself and filling it from the pot.
“Yeah,” her dad said. “But God, am I getting sick of poinsettias.”
This was something that Nita had heard repeatedly for the last few weeks. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “When do you think you’ll be done today?”
“Probably five,” her dad said. “I don’t see any point in working late hours this week. I know what orders I’ve got due out and I’ve got enough time budgeted for them. If it gets busy toward the end of the day, Mikey can keep the shop open a little later. I don’t want to miss the excitement.” He smiled a little. “When do people start getting here again?”
“Not till about four,” Nita said, and yawned. “That’s when Filif’s coming: we’ll take him over to Kit’s and get him settled in. Or get Kit’s pop settled, anyway…”
“Not still nervous, is he?” said Nita’s dad. “I’ve told him once or twice already, you couldn’t ask for a nicer house guest. Should I call him and calm him down?”
“Might not be a bad idea, if you get a moment today.”
“Will do.” Her dad kissed her goodbye. “Tell Dairine I said to put the garbage out.”
“I’ll tell her.” And Nita made a small face, since telling Dairine to go anywhere near a garbage can was rarely all that effective. There were few chores she hated more.
Her dad headed out. After a few minutes she heard the car starting up, and (as it pulled out of the garage into the driveway) the snow tires whining and slipping in the new snow, even though her dad had salted the driveway last night. Wet snow, Nita thought. Whatever we get, it’ll stick. The thought of that snow piling up on Filif’s branches made her smile. Do they even get snow on Demisiv? she thought. I know so little about the place…