Nita nodded, pulled her manual out, and opened the back cover, where she kept her messaging routines. “Dairine Callahan,” she said to the manual.
The back page blanked. Then a single phrase in the Speech came up out of the whiteness: “Recipient is out of ambit or in transit, and is not available. Record a message for delivery when ambit or transit status changes?”
Nita rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Dair, it’s me,” she said. “Have you heard anything from Dad? Call me back in the book as soon as you can. End message.”
The page flickered, spelled the message out in the Speech, and then blanked it. “Saved for delayed send.”
“Thanks,” Nita said. “Now get me Tom Swale or Carl Romeo, and flag it urgent.”
The back page blanked. Then a single phrase came up: “Messaging in abeyance.”
“‘In abeyance’?” Nita said. “What’s that mean?”
“And not even any ‘Try again later,’” Kit muttered. “What’s going on back there?”
Nita shook her head, closed her manual, and picked up her phone again. She punched in the number for Tom’s house, hit the speaker button again. Once again the dialing tone tinkled through its usual sequence, followed by a long silence.
Nita almost hung up, but at last the phone at the other end started ringing. And it rang, and rang, and rang…
She let out a long breath, hung up.
“Maybe they’re out somewhere,” Kit said.
“Why do I not believe it’s that simple?” Nita covered her eyes with one hand. “They always have a wizardry that forwards calls from wizards to their cells,” she said, looking up. “And they’re hardly ever both not there—”
“They were last week,” Kit said, “and you know what that was about.” He was trying hard to sound calm, but he wasn’t sure how well it was working.
Nita rubbed her face. “Look,” she said. “I’m really freaked now. I’m not going to be any good here until I check on things back home and make sure my dad’s okay. It won’t take me long.”
But we just got here! was the first thing Kit wanted to say. He resisted the urge.
“Look, I know what you’re thinking,” Nita said. “I don’t care. What good am I going to be for anything if I’m not sure what’s going on with my dad?! And, Kit, what if we did just have another of those big time lags? If it’s all of a sudden five days later, we’d better find out about it now—because if Dairine and I have to go back and cover for ourselves before school starts making trouble for my dad…”
She looked furious and frustrated. Kit let out a long breath, because she was right. “Okay,” Kit said. “But how’re you going to do this?”
Sker’ret had finished conferring with Filif, and now came toddling over to them. “You could always send a fetch back home to see what’s going on,” Sker’ret said.
Nita thought about that, then shook her head. “No way,” she said. “It’s not just about what I need to see. If my dad’s upset already, dealing with a transparent version of me that can’t get solid when he needs a hug isn’t going to do him any good at all.”
“Ponch can’t take you,” Kit said. “We’re going to need him here. And even if we didn’t, you’d run into the same time lag problem all over again.”
“I’ll do a direct gating,” Nita said. “The only reason we needed Ponch to get here was because we didn’t know where we were going. Now that we’ve got the coordinates for Rashah, I can gate straight in and out.” She glanced at Ronan. “You can cover for that, too?”
I can, said the Champion, sounding uneasy, but we need to keep this kind of thing to a minimum.
“For once the spell won’t have to be terribly complex,” Nita said. “We’ve all got the power now to push gatings through just by brute force, rather than finesse.”
“I can coach you on how to compensate for any equivalent lag,” Sker’ret said, “now that we know how much of it we’re dealing with. In fact, it’d make sense to take that information back to the Crossings—it’ll help my sibs keep things running there for a little longer.” He glanced over at Kit and Ronan and Filif. “Can you spare me? I won’t be gone any longer than Nita is.”
“While we’re still just doing our first on-the-ground surveys,” Kit said, “sure. And it makes sense for you to go out at the same time as Neets.” He glanced over at Ronan. “It means you’ll have only one transit to cover, instead of two.”
“Let’s get ready for it, then,” Sker’ret said. “I’ll get the gating set up.” He scuttled away in the darkness to start altering one of the transit circles.
“I’ll check your spelling,” Filif said, going after him.
Nita watched them go, then glanced back at Kit. “You’re annoyed at me,” she said.
Kit gave Nita a look, hoping she wasn’t going to force him to answer. She returned the look, in spades. Finally Kit said, “Not annoyed. But you’re holding out on me. It’s not just your dad, is it? It’s Tom and Carl, too. Isn’t it?”
For a long moment, Nita didn’t say anything. Then she sighed. “Look, I know we had to run with the information that Ronan and the Champion gave us. But I still feel like we’ve run out on our Seniors, and they probably got worried about us when they came looking for us and couldn’t find us anywhere.”
“You’re not going to tell them anything—”
“Of course I’m not going to tell them anything! But they just need to know we’re okay.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“And that’s still not all of it,” Kit said.
Once again, and for a much longer time, Nita said nothing.
“Look,” Kit said, “don’t say anything if you don’t want to; I guess it’s not really important—”
“You’re eavesdropping on my brains again,” Nita said.
Her tone was resigned. “No,” Kit said, and blushed. “I just overheard—You know how it is. More a feeling than a thought.”
“Yeah,” Nita said. “I know how it is.”
The look she gave him left Kit embarrassed enough to want to glance away; but he didn’t. “A feeling is all it is,” Nita said. “I wish I had something more concrete to go on than a hunch! But that’s all I’ve got. There’s something back that way that needs doing, and I have to go there and find out what it is, and do it. And I hate acting like being on Rashah is freaking me out enough to make me immediately run away!”
“I know that’s not it,” Kit said.
“Do you?” said Nita.
Now it was Kit’s turn to pause. Is it smart to tell her how seriously scared I am? he thought. Is it going to make her feel worse?
“Yeah, I do,” Kit said at last. “I don’t want to spend a minute more here than I have to. But I don’t have any hunches, and you do. So get out of here and do what you have to. And do one thing for me?”
“Sure.”
“Call my mom when you get there? Let her know we’re okay.”
“Yeah,” Nita said. “No problem.”
They turned back to the others. “We’re done here,” Sker’ret said. “Filif’s checked everything over, and we’ve got the coordinates for the cave. We’ll meet you there when we’re finished.”
“Then you two go on,” Kit said. “We won’t do anything too exciting until you get back.”
“Why do I have serious doubts about that?” Nita said. But she smiled, even though the smile was wan. “Look, if Dairine turns up before we get back—”
“I’ll fill her in.”
Nita went over to where Sker’ret was standing in one of the spell diagrams. “You ready?” she said to Ronan.
He lifted the Spear of Light. “Go,” he said.
The Spear flared into life. Nita and Sker’ret began to speak in the Speech together. Under their feet, the spell diagram came alive with light—the spoken words chasing their way around the circle, knotting in the wizard’s knot, then blazing up too blindingly to let a viewer see individual characters.