As a result of this Nita didn't go to the church by herself all that often. Now, though, as she came down the sidewalk in front of it, she stopped and stood there.
Why not, Nita thought. After all, it's the One. And no wizard worthy of the name could fail to acknowledge his or her most basic relationship with the uttermost source of wizardry, the Power most central to the Powers, Their ancient source.
She went in. She was half terrified that she would run into somebody her family knew or that, indeed, she would run into anybody at all. But there was no one there this time of the afternoon.
The place was fairly modern: high white ceiling, stained glass with a modern-art look to it, simple statues, and an altar that was little more than a table. Generally Nita didn't pay much attention to the statues and pictures; she knew they were all just symbols of something bigger, as imperfect as matter and perception were liable to make such things. But today, as she found a pew near the back and slipped into it, everything seemed, somehow, to be looking at her.
Nita pulled down the kneeler and knelt, folding her hands on the back of the pew in front of her. Then after a moment, she put her head down against her hands.
Please, please, don't let my mother die. I'll do whatever it takes. Whatever.
But if You do let her die—
She stopped herself. Threatening the One was fairly stupid, not to mention useless, and (possibly worst of all) rude. Yet her fear was slopping back and forth into anger, about once every five minutes, it seemed. Nita couldn't remember a time when her emotions had seemed so totally out of her control. She tried to get command of herself now. It was hard.
Just.. .please. Don't let her die. If You don't, I'll do... whatever has to be done. I don't care what it is. I'm on Your side, remember? I haven't done so badly before. I
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can do this for her. Let what I'm going to do work,.. let me help her. Help me help her.
I haven't asked You for much, ever. Just give me this one thing. I'll do whatever it takes if You just let me save her, help me save her, let her live!
The cry from her heart left her trembling with her emotion. But the silence around her went on, went deep, continued. No answers were forthcoming.
And I was expecting what, exactly? Nita thought, getting angry—at herself, now—and getting up off her knees. A wave of embarrassment, of annoyance at her own gullibility and hopelessness, went through her.
She got up and went out the front door... and stopped. A long black hearse had driven up and was now parking down at the end of the church sidewalk. Someone was getting ready for a funeral.
For a moment Nita stood there transfixed with horror. Then she hurried away past the hearse, refusing to look at it more than once, and more determined than ever to make all of this work.
That afternoon when she and her dad and Dairine got to the hospital, they made it no farther than the nursing station. The head nurse there, Mrs. Jefferson, came out from behind the desk and took them straight into that little room across the hall, which Nita irrationally was now beginning to fear.
"What's the matter?" Nita's father said, as soon as the door was closed.
"Your wife's had another bout of seizures," Mrs. Jef
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ferson said. "About an hour ago. They were quickly controlled again—no damage was done as far as we can tell —but she's exhausted. The doctor wanted her kept sedated for the rest of the day, so she's sleeping again. She'll be better tomorrow."
"But she won't be that much better until the surgery happens," Nita's dad said, sounding bleak.
Mrs. Jefferson just looked at him. "It's been scheduled for Friday now," she said. "Did Dr. Kashiwabara get through to you?"
"About that? Yes." Nita's father swallowed. "But between now and then—"
"We're keeping a close eye on her," Mrs. Jefferson said. "One of us was with her when it started this morning, which is why we were able to stabilize her so quickly." She paused. "She'd been hallucinating a little..."
Nita's dad rubbed his eyes, looking even more stricken. "Hallucinating how?"
The nurse hesitated. "Is Mrs. Callahan interested in the space program? Or astronomy?" "Uh, yes, somewhat," Nita's father said warily.
"Oh, good." The nurse looked slightly relieved. "She was talking about the Moon a lot, when she first came to, after the seizures last night. Something about walking on the Moon. And she also kept repeating something about looking for the light, needing to use the light, and how 'all the little dark things' were trying to hide the light from her. That seems to have something to do with some of the guided imagery work
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that her crisis counselor was doing with her, or it may have been a response to some of the optical symptoms she's been having." The nurse shook her head. "Anyway, it's common enough for people to be confused afterward. I wouldn't worry too much about it."
Nita's heart was cold inside her.
"Can we sit with her for just a few minutes?" Nita's father said. "We won't try to wake her up."
The head nurse was about to say no... but then she stopped. "All right," she said. "Please keep it brief; if the doctor finds out that I let you..."
"We won't be long."
The three of them slipped into the room where Nita's mom was staying. Her roommates were gone; there was just the single bed now that had its curtains drawn around it. They slipped in through the curtains, stood there quietly.
Nita looked silently at her mom and thought about how drawn her face looked, almost sunken in; there were circles under her eyes. It was painful to see her like this. Got to hurry with what I'm doing, Nita thought, though she felt as tired as her mother looked. Got to.
Her dad was looking down at her mom as if she was the only thing in the world that mattered. Her mom and dad had known each other for a long time before they got married; apparently it had been a joke among their friends, that all of them knew her mom and dad were an item long before they knew it themselves. Here were two old friends, and suddenly one of them was really sick, might even—
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Nita forcibly turned away from the thought and looked at her father's face. No, she thought. No.
She was back in the practice universes almost as soon as she could get upstairs to her room and through her transit circle to Grand Central. Now that she knew where the playroom was, too, she made that space her first stop. On her next-to-last chance to practice, having another wizard along to give her a few lastminute pointers would be welcome.
But the playroom was empty when she got there. The central area still shone with that sourceless pale radiance, and the assorted alien furniture still sitting around glinted in the light. As she walked, Nita felt around her for the kernel and sensed it immediately. It had wandered away from the seating area, rolling out into the huge white expanse of the floor.
Nita went after it, only partly to have a little more practice in manipulating it. The glance she had had at her manual before leaving had made it plain that the next practice universe she encountered was going to be much more difficult, more closely tailored to her own problem. Whatever Power handled access to the practice universes had noticed Nita's looming deadline and was forcing the pace... and she was feeling the tension. She was also aware that she was stalling. But only a little, she thought, as she spotted the kernel's vague little star of light, maybe a quarter mile away.
Nita hiked toward it, hearing nothing but its faint buzz in all that great, flat empty space. In this darkness,
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bare of the sounds of fellow wizards, it was all too easy to hear other things: the machines around her mother's bed in the hospital, the whisper of the nurses saying things to each other that they thought— incorrectly— Nita and Dairine couldn't hear. Nita reached the kernel, picked it up, and turned it over in her hands, holding it carefully; for all its power, it looked like such a fragile thing. Holding it she could feel how every little detail of this "pocket" universe was anchored in it, endlessly malleable. The more you believed in that malleability, the more easily the kernel could be changed. That's something I've got to exploit, she thought. Not be afraid to improvise.