She wanted to run. But she couldn’t. Now she was the frozen one, a statue herself. No! Nita thought, and tried and tried to move; but she had stayed here too long, and the statues’ immobility had spread to her. And that single moving figure was closer now. Much closer. Only a few hundred feet away—
In terror she stood there, rooted to the sand, and watched him come. He was only as tall as she was, but Nita felt as afraid of him as if he’d been a hundred times taller. He was dark-skinned, wearing pale, long, loose clothes like the statues wore. He had long, dark reddish hair-stuff that hung down his back, and his eyes were dark, too, unreadable. He came to stand right in front of Nita, and nothing she could do made her able to move so much as a muscle, though she desperately wanted to get away.
“I’ve been waiting for you a long time,” the man said. “You know what has to be done.”
Nita couldn’t speak, couldn’t even shake her head.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’ll be morning soon.” And sure enough, dawn was coming on. In fact, it seemed to be coming on with a rush, as if something had held it back, waiting for this man to arrive. Now the whole eastern sky went pale with light, paler, bright, blinding, and the Sun leaped into the sky as if over a wall, and the whole beach went up in a single cry of terror as at last, at last, the statues spoke—
It was the Sun that woke her up, finally, streaming very early into her room through the east-facing blinds that she’d forgotten to close. The briefing folder, programmed not to waste energy, had folded itself up again after Nita fell asleep and was hovering in the air over her head, a neat little dark package. Nita plucked it out of the air, threw off the covers, got up, and stuffed the folder into her backpack, which was hanging over the back of her desk chair. Then she got into her jeans and threw on a baggy T-shirt stolen from her dad.
“Everything is fine…”
Wow, Nita thought. That’s one for the book. She got her manual, opened it to her “dream log” pages, and added a record of what she could remember of the dream. Most of it, I think. It was vivid.
When she finished, she went down for breakfast. Dairine was there ahead of her, which was moderately unusual. She was sitting at the dining room table, halfway through a bowl of cornflakes, with a folder spread out on the table next to the bowl. Spot was crouched off to one side, with no legs in evidence, but he had put up a pair of stalked eyes and was regarding the cornflakes with a dubious expression. “Morning,” Nita said.
“Yeah.”
Nita put a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster, started them toasting, and went to get a mug from the dish drainer. “What’s that you’re reading?”
“An orientation pack with information on the incoming guests. Dad’s got one, too.”
Nita was surprised. “When did that come in?”
“Last night.”
“It is in English, isn’t it?”
“No,” Dairine said. “It’s got a Speech-to-text converter, though. Very neat. He started in on it last night. I think he’s reading the rest of it in bed right now.”
“Great. How many guests are we getting?”
“Three, it looks like.”
Nita opened the cupboard over the counter and rummaged around a little for the dark tea she liked. “Where from?”
“All over. There’s a Demisiv, a Rirhait, and somebody from Wellakh, which I’ve never heard of.”
“Wellakh,” Nita said. “Don’t think I’ve heard of it, either.” Then it hit her. “Three? Where are they all going to stay? We’ve only got one extra bedroom, and I don’t have the bunk beds in mine anymore.” She found the tea bags and fished one out of the box. “Assuming they can even use beds, and don’t need racks or hooks or something…”
“They’ll stay in the pup tents. That’s what they’re for,” Dairine said. “They can put as much of their own stuff in there as they like, if it turns out they need it. Beds, furniture, whatever. In fact”—and Dairine looked up at Nita—“I’ve been looking over the docs, and they could do a lot more than that if they liked…”
Nita looked around the corner of the kitchen door at Dairine. The expression on her sister’s face was one Nita had seen entirely too often—the amused look of someone who’s figured out a new way to put something over on the universe. It’s too early in the morning for this, Nita thought, picking up the kettle and going over to the sink to fill it. “How do you mean?” she said.
“The pup tents have a ‘back door,’” Dairine said.
“What, like the main access?”
“No, it’s different,” Dairine said. There was a pause and some crunching. “If you change the permeability of the pup tent’s matter-void interface—”
“Whoa, wait a minute!” Nita said. “That’s reverse engineering! The custom gate interface said you weren’t supposed to do that.”
“Oh, to the gate, yeah. But the pup tents—”
“Dairine!”
There was a pause for more crunching. “I said you could do that,” Dairine said. “I didn’t say I was going to.”
This declaration wasn’t specific enough to give Nita any relief, but she sighed and put the kettle on the stove, turning the burner on. And if she does start gimmicking things while I’m not here, well, that’s just her problem. The thought of not having to be involved in cleaning up after some trouble of Dairine’s made Nita feel oddly cheerful.
Her toast popped up. Nita got a plate and reached into the fridge for the butter. “So how are you guys doing your big transit to this planet?” Dairine said. “What’s its name again?”
“Alaalu. We’ll use public transport to start with. We’ll short-gate it to Grand
Central around two, and then go over to the Crossings from there. After that we just pick up a scheduled service for Alaalu. The manual says there are outbound gatings from the Crossings about once every two hours, or on demand. No big deal.”
“Leaving early, huh?” Dairine said, reaching out to the cornflake box in front of her to pour another bowl. “Can’t bear to see Dad freaking out over the new arrivals?”
“Actually,” Nita said, cutting her toast in halves, “I think he’ll do just fine… and the sooner I’m out of here, the happier he’ll be. One less thing for him to concentrate on.”
“Hnh,” Dairine said, a noise which suggested both that she was chewing and that she didn’t know whether to believe Nita or not.
Nita sat down and started eating her toast. “You packed yet?” Dairine said.
Nita shook her head. “After breakfast,” she said, picking up the second piece.
She munched in silence for a little while, and then looked up to find Dairine looking at her with an expression that on anyone else might have been somewhat wistful. “What?”
“This is turning out okay after all, isn’t it?” Dairine said.
“I think so,” Nita said. “And Dad’s calming down a little.”
Dairine snickered into her cereal. “I think so. Anyway, it’ll be fun to have some other wizards here to hang out with. And Carmela’s been wanting to get some more practice with the Speech: This’ll be a great way.” Dairine poured more milk on her cornflakes. “It’ll be good for them to meet a normal Earth person…”
Nita smiled slightly as she finished her toast. “Don’t let Kit hear you call her that.”
“Yeah.” Dairine took another spoonful of cornflakes. “Go on, you should start packing. It’s gonna take you longer than you think.”
It annoyed Nita to have to admit that her sister was right. After her dad went off to work, she spent the rest of the morning and the very beginning of the afternoon putting things into her pup tent and taking them out again. The things that stayed in included Nita’s desk, which, she discovered, was too heavy to drag in so that she wound up having to levitate it; a lot of books and CDs and her own little desktop CD player and sound system; a lot of clothes in cardboard boxes, including every swimsuit she owned, and much other junk from her dresser drawers that Nita had gradually realized she couldn’t do without. That recurring realization was what stopped her, eventually, as she stood in front of her dresser holding her third stack of underwear. Am I insane? I can always come back.