There was more silence. “This is problematic,” Millman said. “Especially since I haven’t been seeing Kit professionally. The school system would buy into the concept for you and Dairine, since we’ve been working together for a while. But as for Kit… And I’m reluctant to lie about this, not just because lying is wrong, but because it undermines my relationship and my contract with the school.”
“I know,” Nita said.
There was another silence. Finally, in a changed tone of voice, Millman said, “This kind of lost school time is not good, especially with your aptitude tests coming up.”
“If we don’t do something pretty drastic right away,” Nita said, “there may not be a planet to have aptitude tests on for very long. Or there might be a planet… but no one left on it.”
She could just hear Millman thinking. “You need to understand,” he said after a moment, “that just because we share the same privileged information about your special talents, I’m not to be routinely considered as a get-out-of-jail card. This gambit isn’t going to work more than once. Just so you know.”
Nita rolled her eyes. “Being in this situation again is the very, very last thing on my mind.”
“Good.” He was silent for a little longer. “How long do you think you’ll need?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“Well,” Millman said at last, “I can cover for you for ten days, tops. I can pull Kit under the umbrella as well by telling the school that something came up for him over the spring break: something crucial that needs to be sorted out. Would that be true?”
“Yeah,” Nita said. “Absolutely.”
“All right. If his parents will back me up, we’ll be okay for that long. But that’s all I can give you. After ten days, if you don’t show up at school again, you’re likely to find the district superintendent banging on your dad’s door. Or, if someone at school gets too nervous, social services, and possibly the cops.”
Nita swallowed. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll tell Kit.”
“Good. Can you give me some more detail about what exactly is going to be happening to the planet, so that I can help people around here deal with the fallout, if things get sufficiently strange?”
Fallout, Nita thought. I wish he hadn’t used that word. The thought of mushroom clouds sprouting all over the planet was haunting her. “I haven’t had a lot of time yet to go over the pre-mission précis in my manual. But people are going to start losing their sense of what’s underneath reality. Only physical things are going to seem real, after a while. And even those won’t feel right for long. Finally, only violent emotions are going to feel good—”
She wondered how much sense this was going to make to Millman, if any. But the faint scratching noise she heard in the background suggested that he was taking notes. “Okay,” Dr. Millman murmured. “Any sense yet of what you’ll have to do to reverse this situation?”
“The universe has started expanding too fast,” Nita said, “and we have to stop it before it tears itself apart.”
There was another of those long, thoughtful pauses. “Um,” Millman said. “Okay, I see why you might need a few extra days off for that.”
The complete dryness of his voice was bizarrely reassuring to Nita, so much so that she laughed out loud.
“Better,” Millman said. “Hold that mood. For my own part, I’ll do what I can for people who start having trouble at school. But, meanwhile, keep me posted, all right? If things are going to get a lot worse all of a sudden, I’d appreciate knowing about it. We’re all on the same side here.”
That was the thought that Nita was still having trouble wrapping her brains around. She was much more used to hiding the things going on with her from everyone at school. “I’ll do what I can,” she said.
“So will I,” said Millman, “and together we’ll have to hope it’s enough. But, Nita… for you, this has to seem like an impossible burden.”
She swallowed hard. “Yes,” Nita said.
“Call me if you start to feel the strain. I’ll help for as long as I can.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay. Go well,” he said.
“Yeah. Thanks again.”
Millman hung up.
She sat there staring at the phone for a moment before sticking it back in its cradle. Well, she thought, at least that’s handled.
So. A total of two weeks to save the universe, huh?
It did seem absolutely impossible. But there would be powerful forces working to help them. And when someone believed in you—
Maybe this won’t exactly be a piece of cake, she thought. But at least you know people are rooting for you when you start cutting it up!
Nita picked up her manual, tucked it under her arm, and headed upstairs to her room.
***
One side of the dining room at the Rodriguez house had a sofa against the wall, and on that sofa Kit sprawled, lying flat on his back and reading his own manual. For maybe the tenth time, his arms had become tired enough that he had to rest the book on his stomach. He was having trouble believing how much new data was in that book all of a sudden. The effect wasn’t new: any manual would grow and shrink depending on what information you needed. But this time it felt like there was more stuff in there. It felt more important, and somehow more dangerous.
He turned a page and looked once more at the image he’d kept revisiting: a slowly rotating image of the galaxy, seen as if from several hundred thousand light-years away. It was displaying in negative, the stars black against white space, and the space was full of slowly growing fuzzy dark patches.
From the living room came the sound of laughter: Carmela, long since back from dumping her load of teen magazines at Nita’s place, was now sitting in front of the entertainment system’s big screen and talking to someone in the Speech. “No,” she said. “You’ve got to be kidding. It’s too early here to even think about grenfelzing…”
Kit let his manual fall closed. “‘Mela?” he said over the sound of alien laughter from the TV.
“Kit, I’m talking to somebody. Can’t it wait?”
“If I wait, I’ll forget. What is grenfelzing, exactly?”
“It’s kind of like emmfozing,” his sister said after a moment, “but with chocolate.”
Kit covered his eyes. “Sorry I asked,” he said. Since he’d made the mistake of using wizardry to configure the entertainment system, Carmela had been spending what seemed like hours every day talking to the various alien species whose hundreds and thousands of interactive channels had suddenly become available along with the more commonplace Earth cable. ‘Mela’s grasp of the wizardly Speech had been getting more acute. But at the same time it seemed to Kit that Carmela’s sense of humor was getting weird, even for her.
Well, at least she’s not turning into a wizard, Kit thought. It’s much too late for that.
He turned his attention back to his manual. “Did that last message go through?”
Received, the manual page said.
“Okay,” he said to the manual, “show me again where all this started.”
The image of the galaxy reset itself. “Zoom in on that,” Kit said.
The spiral grew and swelled past the ability of the page to show it all. Shortly after that, the page was full of the empty space between the Milky Way and the next galaxy over. “There’s nothing there at all,” he said softly.
Ponch was lying upside down on the floor with his feet in the air. Now he glanced up. Where? Ponch said.
“Here.” Kit put the manual down on the floor, stood up. “Walk-in, please?” he said to the manual.