“I will, sweetie.”
Carmela looked up at Kit and just waved at him. “Bring me stuff,” she said.
“If I remember,” Kit said, very offhandedly. Nita controlled her smile; she’d already seen the shopping list Carmela had given him.
“Come on,” Kit said to her. With Ponch bouncing around them, he and Nita went out the back door and headed into Kit’s backyard, making their way to the cover of the sassafras woods out in the back. To anyone who might have been watching, they vanished among the leaves. And then, a few seconds later, with just the slightest pop! of displaced air, they vanished much more thoroughly.
Nita and Kit and Ponch arrived in Grand Central Terminal, where they normally went when making a transit at peak times—into a dark and quiet place away from the Main Concourse proper but still inside the terminal, near one of the northernmost of the westward-pointing tracks. The platform between tracks eleven and thirteen was a spot where wheeled wire freight baskets and the occasional locked mail container were left for later pickup. There was rarely anyone there in the middle of the day, and the area was only dimly lit by the red eyes of infrared spots, while hidden security cameras passed pictures of what the spots showed them to the train master’s office.
No security camera, of course, can do anything about a wizard who is both invisible and shielded against infrared leakage. Nita and Kit popped out of nowhere into the dark, being careful to minimize the air displacement when they did—there was no point in appearing invisibly while also making a noise like a gunshot.
Carefully, Nita and Kit made their way toward where the train gates opened onto the Main Concourse, and then down to where platform thirty-three joined the main strip of platforms on the upper level. It was still hard to be careful enough,
though.
“Ow!”
“Sorry, I didn’t see you.”
Nita had to snicker softly at that. “It’s mutual. There’s the door—”
“Yeah. Are we away from the cameras now?”
“Wait a sec…Yeah, no new ones since we were here last. Let’s lose these.”
They both stepped into the shadows, dumped the spells that cloaked them, and flicked back into visibility. Kit slipped out of his backpack, brushed himself down, and put the backpack over one shoulder again.
“Itchy?” Nita said.
“Yeah, being invisible does that to me…It didn’t used to.” He glanced down at Ponch. “I think I’m catching it from somebody.”
It’s not my fault, Ponch said, sounding virtuous. Maybe you‘re just starting to feel your skin for a change.
Kit rolled his eyes. “Come on,” he said.
They went out through the gate for the platform between tracks fifteen and sixteen and paused just past it, looking up and down the length of the Main Concourse. It was a bright day; the scattered light of the sunbeams striking through the great south windows washed through the dusty early-afternoon air and lit up the turquoise of the painted sky high above them, washing out its stars. As they walked across the Concourse, good smells came from every direction—most obviously from the steak restaurant at one end of the Concourse terrace and the “progressive American” restaurant at the other.
“Whaddaya think,” Kit said. “Food hall?”
Nita gave him a pretend-shocked look. “You mean you’re not going to just sit down on the stairs here and eat your bag lunch?”
Kit gave Nita a look. “I’m saving it for when I’m feeling homesick. Meanwhile…”
“Aha,” said a voice from just below knee level. “I heard you were coming through this morning.”
Nita looked down. Standing by them was a big, stocky, silvery gray tabby cat, waving his tail, and Nita knew only she and Kit and Ponch could see him because he was using a form of selective invisibility that left him visible to wizards but invisible to other humans. “Hey, Urruah!” Nita said. “Dai stihó!”
Urruah was one of the feline wizards who kept the New York worldgates running properly, cats being much better than other Earthly species at seeing the superstrings on which the gates’ structures were hung. “Ponch,” Kit said, “would you come sit over here so it doesn’t look like we’re talking to the floor? Thanks.”
Ponch sat down next to Urruah, gazing at him. For a moment or so their gazes locked, then Ponch put down his ears, which had been up, and let his tongue hang out.
Urruah’s whiskers went forward. “Nice doggy,” he said.
Woof, woof, Ponch said, his eyes glinting. The irony was audible.
“Good to see you,” Kit said. “Where’s Rhiow today?”
“Our esteemed team leader,” Urruah said, “is over in the FF’arhleih Building—that’s the old post office over on Eighth Avenue—getting the substrates
ready for when we move the worldgates over.”
“I didn’t think the new Penn Station was going to be ready for months yet,” Nita said.
“It’s not,” Urruah said. “But the more time you give the worldgate substrates to root, the less trouble the gates give you when you put them in place. We’re getting ready to install a ‘mirror’ substrate in the new building. Meanwhile, I see you’re going somewhere for pleasure today…”
“A sponsored noninterventional excursus,” Nita said.
Urruah grinned. “I did one of those once,” he said. “The species was aquatic: I didn’t feel dry for weeks afterward. Nice people, though. Where are they sending you?
“Alaalu.”
“Never heard of it,” Urruah said. “But why should I? There are a billion homeworlds out there, and no time to see them all. By the way, were you issued subsidized jump-throughs?”
“You mean the custom worldgates? Yeah,” Kit said.
“And they’re wrapped up tight?” Urruah said. “You haven’t tried to commission them?”
“Huh? No,” Nita said. “The docs said you absolutely shouldn’t do that.”
“Okay, good,” Urruah said. “That’s fine.”
“But why shouldn’t you?” Kit said.
Urruah gave him a look. “You mean, why shouldn’t you take an open worldgate through an open worldgate? Please. Temporal eversions are bad enough. Those you can patch, or revert, if you know how. Even simple spatial ones, if the effect isn’t spread over too much area. But a multidimensional one—”
“Everything turns inside out?” Nita said, guessing.
Urruah gave her a pitying look. “The reality would be much more complex, much worse, and very much less reversible. Since I assume you like this planet as it is, and not as eighth-dimensional origami, let’s not do it. When are you two scheduled back?”
“Two weeks.”
“Well, have a good time,” Urruah said. “Try not to destroy your host civilization or anything. Are you going via the Crossings?”
“Yeah,” Kit said.
“I hoped so. Would you mind doing an errand as you pass through?”
“Sure,” Nita said, “no problem.”
“Great—I appreciate it. Stop by the Stationmaster’s office when you get there and tell him we’d appreciate it if they’d route the elective main trunk nontypical traffic around us for the next thirty-six hours. We’re doing some maintenance on the local gate substrates.”
Kit had his manual open and was making a note. “Thirty-six hours…Got it.”
“That should be plenty of time. I’ll message him when the maintenance is done, and one of us will drop by in a day or three to discuss some other matters.” Urruah got up and stretched. “Meanwhile, your transit gate will be off platform eighteen. We just moved it over there from thirty; the Metro-North staff are doing track welding today. The locus’ll be patent for the Crossings in about six minutes,
after the two-twenty to Croton-Harmon gets out of your way. If you hurry, you can catch it.”
“Thanks,” Nita said. “Dai, big guy.”
“Dai,” Urruah said to her and Kit, and waved his tail at Ponch as he turned.