“Yeah, okay,” Carmela muttered. But she shot Nita a sly look. “See that? Hung up on my little brother as you unfortunately are, I got you to admit it. He is utterly hot.”
“I am not—” Nita exhaled in exasperation. “Forget it. As for Ronan—yeah, he has his moments.”
“Without a doubt,” Carmela said. “And how many of his moments have you had?”
Nita gave Carmela an evil look as they turned a corner. “It’s possible to be too nosy,” she said, “even around people as perfect as Kit and me.”
Carmela looked thoughtful. “‘Perfect,’” she said experimentally. “‘Kit.’” Then she shook her head. “Sorry, Neets, one of those words is in the wrong sentence…”
Nita grinned. “As for Ronan, better enjoy him while you can. After this is over there’s no guarantee he’ll be with us that much longer…”
Nita checked behind them. There was no sign of pursuit, not even any sign of workers. But all the same, Nita thought, and reached down to her charm bracelet, making sure her accelerator was recharged, loaded, and ready to go.
And just in case the more techie kinds of spell are the first to fail—Nita reached into her otherspace pocket and pulled out her old standby, yet another in a series of peeled rowan wands soaked in full moonlight. Nita shoved it into the belt of her jeans and sighed. Just the touch of it brought back the feel of her backyard on an early autumn evening as she sat against the trunk of her buddy Liused the rowan tree, discussing the finer points of how most artistically to begin dropping your leaves in the fall…
Nita moved a little faster to catch up with Kit and Ponch and Carmela. The three of them were up near an intersection, pausing while Ponch picked yet another turn, moving right and up a slight incline into a wide and still-empty corridor. Kit was saying, “—don’t get how this can possibly have happened. You’re too old! And you haven’t had anything that looks like an Ordeal.”
Carmela looked down at Kit as if from a great height. “Oh, yeah? Well, you haven’t had you for a little brother all these years. It’s felt pretty ordeal-ish to me!”
“I don’t mean that kind of ordeal! Wizardry doesn’t just get passed out on street corners to just anybody who comes along!”
“Oh yeah, like I need this experience to learn that,” Carmela said. “You should hear yourself go on and on about it. Suffer suffer, pain pain, responsibility responsibility.” She waved her hands in exaggerated distress, and the mochteroof‘s claws waved around every which way. “Not like you’re not having insane and crazy fun, secretly, every minute of the day!”
They came to the next intersection. Ponch paused there a moment, then crowded back against Kit. Somebody’s down there, Ponch said. Some workers, I think. Wait a moment, they’re going by—
Ponch peered around the corner. “I can’t believe this,” Kit muttered, just briefly turning his head to look back toward Carmela. “You’re one of us and you’re still clueless! It could only happen to me. Would you just please open the manual and read that first page again, the one with the little block of text on it, you know the one—” Carmela reached behind her. “Anything to shut you up.”
“The first page!” Kit said. “The one that says, ‘In Life’s name, and for Life’s sake, I assert that I will use the Art which is Its gift—’”
“—in compliance with FCC regulation part 15, section 209(c), which states that any unwanted RF emissions from an intentional radiator shall not exceed the level of the—”
Openmouthed, Kit stared at Carmela. “What?”
“Right here,” Carmela said, pushing what she held up against the side of her mochteroof. “The first page—”
What Carmela was bracing against the side of her mochteroof for Kit to see was a paper booklet, in which the lettering neither moved around nor changed, but held almost bizarrely still.
“I said I found the manual,” Carmela said.
Kit stared at the paper booklet.
“For the TV,” Carmela said, with the slow distinct delivery of someone speaking in a kindly way to the mentally disadvantaged.
Nita took her hands off the spell-controls for her mochteroof and put them over her mouth in a desperate attempt to keep herself from bursting out laughing.
Very slowly, Kit looked up at his sister.
“Have I ever told you how wonderful you are?” he said.
“Not lately,” Carmela said, slapping the TV manual shut and stuffing it out of sight. “And boy, had you better start making up for lost time, because I am feeling real unappreciated right now. I show up and shoot the butts off eight million hostile aliens to find out where you are so I can give you a hand, and what do I get from you? Bupkis!” She glanced back at Nita. “That’s my new word for this week,” she said.
Nita took her hands away from her mouth and concentrated on looking completely unconcerned. “Where’d you hear it?” she said.
“One of the cable channels. It’s alien, I think.”
Kit, meanwhile, was grinning in a helpless way and looking up. “Oh, thank you,” he said—and not, Nita thought, to Carmela. “Thank you so much.”
“A little bit late,” Carmela said, “but better than never. Sincere-sounding, anyway.” Then abruptly she looked at Kit and said, “Wait a minute. ‘One of us’?” And she laughed. “You thought I was talking about a wizard’s manual? I don’t need a wizard’s manual. I’m just fine the way I am. You can check that with the Power thingies.”
“Thingies?” Kit said.
They’re gone, Ponch said. Come on.
“How close are we?” Dairine said from the end of the line. “I think I hear some action behind us.”
Just a few minutes’ walk, Ponch said. Up a level, and then a left turn.
They followed Ponch up the long ramp to the next level of the city, where a number of corridors came together in a small, central concourse or crossroads, under an arched-over papery dome. Down one of the other corridors, Nita could see shadowy figures moving: workers, she thought. Nonetheless, she was walking more softly now, and she noticed that the others were, too. They all know that, sooner or later, we’re going to wind up walking into a trap. And, indeed, the one subject none of them had so far discussed was one that in more normal times would have been one of the first to come up: how are we getting out of here?
They paused again. Ponch looked around him and chose their way, one of the left-hand passages. The relative dimness of a side corridor shut down around them as they went. But this is more serious than any of us getting out, Nita thought. This is a whole universe’s worth of trouble, solved or messed up in one shot … and they all know it. It was a relief to know they realized it. And a strange feeling swelled up in Nita: pride in all of them.
They stopped outside an arched doorway. On the wall to either side of it was written, in the Yaldiv charactery, GRUBBERY 14.
Memeki slipped past Nita, went to the doorway. Inside, in the dimness, nothing moved. Nita could dimly see a central pit area that heaved gently with many, many small, caterpillarish forms … every one of them alive, inside, with one of those angry, evil little dark-fire sparks. On the far side of the room, past the main pit, were many smaller archways, each big enough to take a single entering Yaldiv. Many of those were walled up. Nita had already seen from Memeki’s mind what happened here, as each Favored Yaldah came to her time, entered, and was immured. The newly emerged grubs would be tenderly carried out by the ministering handmaidens, fed and tended… and the empty shell that was all that was left of their mother would be given to a worker to dump into the oily swamp.