Games Wizards Play

Javits Center: The Cull

DAIRINE AND MEHRNAZ and Spot popped out in the sheltered green space at the far end of the Callahans’ backyard and made their way up through the garden toward the house. At least it’s not raining, Dairine thought. The weather forecast had mentioned a chance of showers, but there didn’t seem to be any in the neighborhood right now. Nothing showed through the leaves of the trees but blue sky and sunshine.

Mehrnaz was staring at everything with absolute delight, and spun around once as they walked toward the back of the house, as if trying to take in everything at once. “Everything’s so small and pretty!” she said. “It’s like something out of a storybook!”

“Seriously?” Dairine said, and laughed at the thought of anyone considering a suburban New York tract house surrounded by chain-link fencing as being at all charming or cute. “Well, let’s get our butts into the storybook house, because I’ve got to change out of this.” She pulled her tunic away from her waist, making a face as she felt it peel away. “I thought I didn’t mind humidity. I mean, it gets humid here, but wow, in your part of the world it’s been raised to an art form. Five minutes outside and look at me!”

“Well, you were the one who wanted more bhajis!”

“Yeah, thanks for reminding me of that, and you are in so much trouble for getting me hooked on the ones with the chilies—”

“Oh, this is my fault, is it?”

“It is, and I’ll tell the world, so don’t play innocent.” They went out the side gate to the driveway, and Dairine led the way up the steps to the house and unlocked the back door. “Come on, I’ll just be a few minutes . . .”

Mehrnaz followed her through the kitchen and dining room, and looked around in wonder. “It’s all so snug! I could wear it like a coat.”

Dairine snickered as she headed up the stairs to her room, because sometimes when the house got full of people, or wizards, or both, it felt that tight. “You seriously don’t like having all that extra space?”

“Sometimes,” Mehrnaz said, following her up. “There are a lot of us, sometimes the place gets awfully full. But it’s so empty when everyone’s out doing things. I start feeling like a bean in a gourd, rattling around . . .”

They chatted while Dairine rifled through her closet for a tank top and a loose shirt to throw over it, now that she was out of an environment where she didn’t feel the need to cover up so completely. Mehrnaz bounced on her bed and gazed around at Dairine’s desk and books and posters, and Spot clambered up on the bed beside her and watched them both curiously. As she ducked out and down the hall to the bathroom to change, Dairine caught a glance from one of his spare eyes as it stalked around to follow her.

She likes you.

Possibly a good thing, Dairine said silently to Spot as she closed the bathroom door.

And she thinks you might be a friend.

Yeah, I was getting that. The funny thing about it was that Dairine didn’t have many of those who were local. All the people I like are from far away, she thought. And sometimes it seems like the farther away they are, the better I like them.

There’s a message there somewhere, Spot said.

Dairine wondered about that while she got out of her sweaty clothes and into the fresh ones. No question, she’s nice. But I don’t want to hurt her feelings, don’t want her expecting anything from me that’s not going to happen. Need to make sure she knows that after this is over, I have to get back to business. Got somebody to find . . .

She paused long enough to splash some water on her face and scrub it dry, then headed back to her room. Mehrnaz had gotten up again and was peering out the side window, past the neighbors’ driveway and into their messy yard, with the kind of rapt and wistful expression Dairine would normally have expected to see on someone looking through a window into Shangri-La or Middle-earth.

“You ready?” Dairine said. “It’s almost twelve-thirty . . . we should get going.”

Mehrnaz turned and suddenly Dairine was thrown off balance by the nervousness in those dark eyes. “Is this going to work?” she said. “Truly?”

Is this going to work . . . ? It was a question Dairine remembered from what seemed too long ago. The stakes had been much higher then. But how do I know what this feels like for her? Except by looking at her.

“I told you it will,” Dairine said. “And I told you I didn’t have time to BS you, Mehrnaz. Let’s go show ’em how it’s done.”

She headed for the stairs, and heard Mehrnaz follow her down, and Spot ticking along on all his legs after her. “Spot, set up the transport spot in the back for Javits, we can pop out in their dedicated transport hot spot—”

But from behind her, as she passed through the dining room, came the sound of a soft chime. It was nothing associated with Dairine’s phone, or with Spot. She turned around. “Was that yours?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mehrnaz said. She’d stopped in the living room, and was staring at her phone and looking a bit shocked. “I lost track of the time, it’s Isha already! Is it all right if we go in about fifteen minutes?”

“Sure,” Dairine said, “but if you—” And then she paused, because Mehrnaz had promptly shoved one arm deep into the empty air and was now was pulling something long and brightly colored out of an otherspace pocket. “Um. Is that a rug?”

“What? Of course it is.”

And suddenly it dawned. “Wait. Do you mean—”

“Well, I’m a Muslimah after all, you knew that. What did you think the hijab’s about? It’s not because I don’t like how my hair looks or something.” Mehrnaz giggled. “Look, I need to wash up real quick. Is there a bathroom downstairs? Do you mind if I use it?”

“What? Sure! Down the way you came and straight back, the door right in front of you.”

Mehrnaz headed out of the living room. “Thanks. Just a few minutes for ablutions, and then I’ll be in here for ten minutes or so, okay?”

“Fine.”

Dairine wandered out and went into the kitchen. I am an idiot, she thought. It’s not like she was going to stop doing her religious stuff just because we’re on the road . . .

Spot paused in the middle of the kitchen floor and looked at her curiously. Should I go wake up the transport spell?

“Sure,” Dairine said. “Put it on standby until we get out there. Fifteen minutes or so . . .”

Right.

Spot headed for the back door, developing a set of manipulating claws as he went, and pushed the screen door open with them. Dairine let out an impatient breath as the door swung closed behind him—she’d been all ready to go. Well, never mind. Time enough for some tea or something.

She filled the kettle and put it on the stove, then fished around for a teabag and a mug. In the middle of this process, though, Dairine heard a sound she hadn’t been expecting: her dad’s car turning into the driveway. Oh great . . . ! But she got down another mug while she sat waiting.

A minute or so later her dad came in through the back screen door with a pile of mail from the shop. He smooched Dairine on the top of the head as he started to go past her, but she put out an arm to stop him. “Not right now, Daddy.”

“I have to change, sweetheart, and then I have to—”

“Okay, fine, but not right this minute. Mehrnaz’ll be in there praying.”

“Oh.” Her dad blinked as the kettle started whistling. “All right. I wanted some coffee anyway, and a sandwich . . .”

They puttered around in the kitchen together for a few minutes. “How’s it all going?” her dad said, pulling the sandwich makings out of the fridge: mayonnaise, mustard, ham.

“Not bad, so far.” Dairine wrinkled her nose. “How can you mix those? So gross.”

Her father grinned benevolently. “So finicky. Your friend in there—” He paused while he started to put the sandwich together. “Mehrnaz, is it?”

“That’s right.”

“Is that an Indian name?”

“Iranian. Her family moved from there to Mumbai after one of the big earthquakes.”

“Oh.” He went rummaging in a drawer for a knife. “I’m behind on all this stuff you gave me to read. Sorry. You two working together all right?”

“Yeah. She’s nice.” Dairine sighed. “Her family situation’s kind of odd, though.”

Her dad put his eyebrows up at that. “Problems?”

“Well, a lot of them are wizards.”

“You’d think that would make everything easier.”

“I did too, at first.”

“But not now?” Dairine’s dad looked thoughtful. “Interesting.” His eyes flicked in the direction of the living room. “Meantime, just so you know, Nelaid’s coming down to the shop tomorrow.”

Dairine snickered. “You should hire him.”

“I have to say, if he didn’t have such a long commute, I’d be tempted. Among other things, he has nothing but praise for a place where people don’t try to assassinate him once a week.”

Aha, Dairine thought. He has told him. And Daddy hasn’t freaked—

“Which surprises me,” her dad went on, intent on eating his sandwich. “I mean, we don’t exactly live in paradise here. It amazes me how many aliens who come to visit seem to like our place better than theirs.”

“The grass is greener on the other side, maybe?”

“Well, when a tree says that to you—or someone who could be mistaken for a tree—you pay attention.” He smiled. “Where is my favorite decorative planting? Has Filif come along to this thing?”

Dairine shook her head. “He’s home on Demisiv, I think. But then this is pretty much an in-system affair. Sker’ret’s the only non-Solar I’ve seen so far, and he was there to ride herd on the worldgating infrastructure.”

Her dad laughed in between bites of his sandwich. “Well, if he’s still in the neighborhood and he feels like a snack, have him stop by. All those boxes in the shop . . .”

“If I see him, I’ll tell him,” Dairine said. And she frowned. “Daddy . . .”

“I know that tone,” her dad said, putting his sandwich back on its plate. “And that face. What’s the problem?”

“Overprotective parents.”

“Meaning not me for a change?” he said. “Wow.”

On sudden impulse Dairine threw her arms around him. “You’re absolutely okay!” she said. “Seriously. Way better than most.”

“Wow,” her dad said again, and hugged her back. “Not every day I get a thumbs-up like that.” He gave her a look. “Maybe I’ll let you off the hook about this week’s shopping. Just this once.”

Dairine snorted, let him go, and picked up her tea. “At least, you got that way once you came out of your state of shock about your kids being wizards.”

“Well, I like to think Nita took the edge off a little and made things easier for you. You didn’t have it all that bad, I think.”

She wasn’t about to admit that he was probably right. “Is that ham okay?”

Her dad threw her a look that said he knew when the subject was being changed on purpose. “Yeah, it’s still fine. Not that it wouldn’t have been nice to have some of the pastrami that was on the last shopping list . . .”

“Oh please, not you too, cut me some slack . . .” Dairine muttered. “And what about this?” She picked up a jar from the counter and shook it at him. “I wondered where all my coffee was going so fast!”

“Your coffee? And who pays for all the groceries, may I ask? Besides, Tom said I should try it. Blame him.”

It was so funny to have her dad using Tom as an excuse that Dairine broke up laughing, and mostly failed at keeping it quiet. And immediately she started to get upset with herself because she wasn’t sure Mehrnaz was finished. But right then Mehrnaz peeked in around the kitchen door, smiling, and said, “All done, and it sounds like a good thing too—what did I miss?”

“Absolutely nothing, just my dad stealing my stuff,” Dairine said. “Dad, Mehrnaz, Mehrnaz, my dad, now come on, we need to get moving or you’re going to get missed!”

She allowed Mehrnaz exactly thirty seconds of putting her hands together and bowing and greeting her dad and being greeted back and all the rest of it before hustling her out the door. Once out, they half ran back down the garden together, Dairine leading the way, for she was starting to get excited now and didn’t care who knew. “This is going to be the hottest thing. I cannot wait. Especially because we’re gonna make Nita’s guy look utterly useless—”

Merhnaz started catching the mood from her and began giggling. “Is your father going to come along later?”

“He said he wants to if he can spare the time from work.”

“Good. He’s so nice! And so handsome.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Dairine said. “Don’t say that in front of him whatever you do . . . he’ll never let me forget it. Anyway, there’s our spot. And there’s my Spot. You ready, big guy?”

All set.

“Then let’s go blow the Invitational open!”

The place was a zoo, as she’d expected. Near the cordoned-off space where Sker’ret or someone else from the Crossings had installed the mini-hexes for the beam-in space was a semicircle of cloth-covered tables: and around these tables easily forty or fifty wizards were crowded in together, checking diagrams and schedules on their manuals or handheld devices and asking the people behind the table for help. On first taking in the hubbub, Mehrnaz froze.

“It’s okay,” Dairine said, “nothing to worry about, there are still lots of people checking in, we’re not late. Go on!” She nudged Mehrnaz from behind.

Mehrnaz moved forward into the group that was gathered around the tables with the hesitant determination of someone walking into a tiger’s lair for a chat while uncertain whether the tiger was in a conversational mood. Behind her, Dairine found herself feeling unexpectedly upset on Mehrnaz’s behalf. Uncertainty wasn’t that much a part of Dairine’s makeup most of the time. She tended to plunge into things and deal with the coping part when she was in the midst of the situation; how other people managed their own nerves wasn’t normally an issue for her. But suddenly that seemed to have changed. She wants to be able to deal with this, but because of how her life’s been, she has trouble with it. And what made it worse was that Dairine knew it would be wrong for her to try to shield Mehrnaz from what was going on all around them. It was the Powers who dumped her into this, or got the Seniors to. And she said yes. So she’ll either cope or she’ll melt down. All I can do is what the people around her haven’t been doing: give her space to do one or the other . . .

The crowd closed in around Mehrnaz and blocked her from sight, and Dairine stayed where she was and gazed around, prepared for any impulsive screaming or fleeing that might ensue. None did, though, and she let herself be distracted by the unfolding craziness. In her arms, Spot wriggled.

“Want to get down?”

Yes, please.

Dairine glanced around again. “Don’t get stepped on.”

All Spot’s currently visible eyes rotated on their stalks in the gesture he used to simulate an eyeroll. If it happens, it won’t happen twice.

Dairine chuckled. Got an eye on something?

I can feel some computer-associated projects in here. Might as well have a look to see if there’s anything that might be of interest to the cousins at the other end of space . . .

“Go on,” Dairine said, and watched Spot spider himself away through the crowd, drawing the occasional curious glance from bystanders as he went.

A few moments later Mehrnaz slid out of the crush of people with a couple of badges on lanyards and handed one of them to Dairine. “They’ve got some fairly heavy-duty wizardries wound up in these lanyards,” she said, almost breathless with excitement. “The nonwizards outside will barely notice us if we go out.”

“Smart,” Dairine said. “Come on, let’s check the directory over there and get you set up.”

They found the location that had been assigned to Mehrnaz without too much trouble. Mehrnaz stopped before the empty space and looked from one side to the other at the wizards who were already set up; and as she did, Dairine saw her go several shades paler in the space of about a second.

Don’t let her freeze, Dairine thought. “Right,” Dairine said, “this floating table thing they’ve got, do you want to keep it? Or push it out of the way, or vanish it? And what about the sign over it? Is it too big?”

“I’m, I’m not sure . . .” Mehrnaz said, and she started wringing her hands.

“Well, who do we ask?” Dairine said. “Come on, we need to get this show on the road. Table, yes or no? And let’s have the text you want on the sign.”

Mehrnaz gulped and recited her project’s title, watching as the letters and characters in English and the Speech flowed into being on the surface of the hanging sign, then began to scroll sideways. Moments later the table was covered with the written description of Mehrnaz’s spell. And seeing this happening, people who’d been passing by now paused, and some started gathering around.

Dairine looked at Mehrnaz as more and more wizards stopped in front of her stand to see what would happen next. And Mehrnaz looked back at Dairine with an expression that was getting more scared by the second. It was as if she’d imagined everything else about this experience except this: real people, standing around and staring at her, waiting for her to do something.

Dairine held her breath, for that second or so as frozen as Mehrnaz’s was. I can’t help her past this. I can’t. She’s got to do it herself. But the moment kept stretching into a breathless strangled silence, as if everyone around the two of them was waiting for some kind of explosion to occur.

. . . And then Mehrnaz let that breath go. She reached out into the empty air and snatched her wizardry out of it in a tangle of light, whirled herself around once, and spun the complex webwork of the spell around her head as she did, letting it unfurl in air—then cast it outward in front of the first group of onlookers. They all made room and watched the spell-web spin out, settle to the floor, and start annotating itself, and they all went “Ooooo!” And there was a patter of applause from some of the older wizards standing in the back of the group.

Mehrnaz’s glance met Dairine’s, and Mehrnaz grinned. “Fellow wizards and other cousins,” she said, “here’s what I’ve got to show you today . . .”

And she was off, and suddenly it was all as easy and calm as it had been in Mehrnaz’s home, except that there were a lot more people than Dairine being impressed. She’s got this, Dairine thought. She was made for this. The nerves were a blip . . .

She stood there watching Mehrnaz speak for a minute or so more, in the groove now, concise, confident, smiling, having fun. She doesn’t need me, Dairine said silently to Spot.

No, Spot said from somewhere down the long hall.

Fine. I’m gonna wander.

She quietly made her way off around and behind Mehrnaz and around the side of the crowd. Then, some yards down the corridor on that side of the huge hall, Dairine threw a look over her shoulder at Mehrnaz to see if she’d registered Dairine’s having left the immediate area. If she had noticed, it didn’t show; she was talking animatedly to the people who were watching her, gesturing at the spell that lay before them and already pointing out the most intriguing aspects.

Excellent, Dairine thought. Let’s go see what Neets’s guy’s doing.

There was another of the big directories hanging off to one side about halfway down the corridor. Dairine paused in front of it long enough to see that Penn was over on the other side almost directly opposite her. I could cut across . . . But why not see some more interesting stuff first?

So Dairine started out the long way, taking her time. But as she passed the tenth or twelfth or twentieth project where she wanted to stop and stare at some fabulous idea she’d never thought of and really should have, she found herself starting to speed up. And it was annoyance that was making her do it. If only they held this thing more than once every eleven years, Dairine thought. I could have been in something like this. I’d have blown them away—

“Excuse me,” someone said from behind her in a rich, deep Caribbean accent.

She turned in surprise to see a very tall, dark, skinny young guy wearing a polo shirt and, unbelievably, Bermuda shorts. He was clutching what appeared to be a thick, beat-up paperback book as he looked down at her. “Ah, excuse me, cousin, but is it possible that you are, ah, Dairine Callahan?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said.

“Could you, I mean, would you, if you have a minute it would be lovely if you would, um, maybe just sign—”

He cracked open the paperback and held it out to her, laid open at what was revealed to be a blank manual page. It took Dairine a moment to realize that she was being asked for her autograph.

She blinked. “Sure,” Dairine said, “sure, of course—” It struck her as she took the manual that this was exactly what she’d predicted would be happening to Nita sometime during the Invitational. It hadn’t occurred to her that she might be a victim too.

Dairine scribbled her signature with one finger; light trailed after it and burnt her name into the manual interface, glowing there softly when she finished. “So listen, cousin,” she said, tilting her face up to look at the guy, “how come you’re so interested in—”

But the guy snatched the manual out of her hands, his face set in an expression of terrified admiration. “Uh, thank you, thank you very much,” he said, and then he turned, fled, and became lost in the crowd a few seconds later.

Dairine stood with her mouth hanging open. What was that about? she thought, completely confused.

. . . And why is it always the tall ones? The ones who’re going to give me neck strain?

She stood there for a moment more, waiting to see if maybe Panic-Stricken Bermudian Guy was going to come back. But he didn’t, and finally Dairine turned and walked on, trying to work out what had just happened. Okay, I did some pretty cool and dangerous stuff out on Ordeal, and later, but why would anybody be scared of me? I’m nothing to be scared of . . .

She kept trying to find her balance again, and found it, and then someone else stopped her—a tanned, nearly white-haired, beach-babe-looking girl who might have been Carmela’s age or older. She was sporting a bright print sundress and a broad Aussie accent, and this time it was some kind of tablet that was held out for Dairine to sign. And the girl talked at her politely for about five minutes and never met Dairine’s eyes once.

Finally Dairine extricated herself and hurried away as a horrible idea hit her. It’s not me these guys are talking to. It’s my power rating. Or what it was. How is it they can’t see past that? Because I’m not that person anymore. I was only that person for about six months. Not that that didn’t piss her off to a greater or lesser degree most days. It was simply extra annoying that no one seemed to be looking past the history, past the stuff in the manual, to perceive who Dairine was now.

She frowned at herself. Great. Jumping the gun a little here? From a sample of two? Anyway, look, no one else cares, they’re all staring at the projects. This isn’t about me.

And she scowled harder as she made her way along the display spaces full of eager and excited kids . . . But it could have been. It could have been about something I had some control over, something smart I made or did, instead of something that was an accident, the luck of the draw, just the way things went when I was under pressure and thought we were all going to die. Dammit—

Dairine’s mood, which had been wobbly in response to Mehrnaz’s nervousness, now started to veer toward the foul end of the spectrum. Blood sugar? she wondered. Ought to do something about that.

But she didn’t. Instead she headed straight toward Nita’s guy. And sure enough, just past a project about covert parasitic wizardly use of the “waste” wind power between city skyscrapers, there he was, with his solar management wizardry rotating flashily in and out of the floor as a big bright glowing globe.

She came quietly up behind the crowd that was watching him. Which is the problem, Dairine thought. It’s the spell they should be looking at . . . not that he’s making it as easy as it should be. Penn was extravagantly kitted out in dark skinny jeans and a blindingly bright orange and green urban-camo shirt under a tuxedo jacket that was about a size too small for him, and . . . Is that a top hat? He looks like a clown. Who dresses like that when they’re doing a serious presentation? Dairine thought. Come on. It’s gonna take you five minutes to stop analyzing his dress sense and pay any attention to the spell he’s laid out.

And the thing that was the most distracting after his clothes was his presentation—which was as slick as that of a late-night talk show host trying to sell you some kind of slice ’n’ dice gadget—and the way he played constantly to the crowd. They should be looking at the spell, Dairine thought, not so much at him. It’s like no one paid attention to him when he was little and he’s making up for it now . . .

But for the moment that was fine, as Penn was so preoccupied with the responsiveness of the people in front of him that he never noticed Dairine slipping quietly around the side and behind him to take a closer look at the wizardry proper. It was tidier than it had been, which was certainly Nita’s work: she’d told the guy at least part of what needed doing, and he’d done it. So he’s at least that smart. But it’s a shame his delivery doesn’t at all match the style of the spell. There’s this . . . disconnect somehow . . .

Penn was gesturing and waving at the spell while he went on talking. Maybe he doesn’t so much sound like an infomercial as one of those telemarketers, Dairine thought, having occasionally picked up the house phone and wound up stuck talking to one. Like he’s reading the same script to everybody and couldn’t care less about making it personal. “ . . . With a nod to some traditional legacy structures that date back to the last major shift in the Sun’s internal dynamics, around the year 1010 and roughly coinciding with the period called the Oort Minimum, when the Sun’s subsurface speeds and flow patterns altered . . .”

Dairine rolled her eyes. Nice excuse for not finding a more elegant way to get rid of the legacy structures. It’s like I told Neets, this guy’s lazy . . .

“ . . . possibly secondary to missing structural or energic elements which have ‘aged themselves out’ of Solar structure as similar surface-weather elements have been aging out on Jupiter and Saturn. My wizardry takes those changes into account and adds a ‘total recall’ function that alerts a supervising wizard while at the same time autonomously amending the boilerplate on the fly if there’s any kind of reassertion shift toward the older subsurface states. Not that anything like that’s happened for a while, but good wizardly practice suggests it should be taken into account in spell construction. But it’s just a safety feature. Let’s look instead at these power structures . . .”

Which are still too fragile, Dairine thought, slipping around to the far side to check out that section of the wizardry. Dammit, he needs to stop this thing rotating. Is he afraid someone’s going to get a close look at it? If the judges get that idea, they’re gonna chuck him out on his ear. Hope he has the sense to stop it and lay it out flat when they come along.

She examined the power structures and saw changes that had been made, but wasn’t at all sure they’d been strengthened enough not to snap off when submerged in the Sun’s roiling structure. Well . . . not my problem. Unquestionably, the guy had some good ideas, but he seriously needed a teacher, someone who’d shake him out of his bad habits. The thought of what Nelaid would do to him made Dairine grin.

She turned away: she’d seen enough. Put him up one to one against Mehrnaz and she wins, Dairine thought, walking quietly away around the far side of the crowd, while Penn carried on with his one-man show. She’s got five times the smarts that he has and easily ten times the sincerity. Her spell looks like her personality, like they’re connected somehow. His, even after Kit and Nita got him to tidy it . . . it’s all over the place, scattered. It’s like it has nothing to do with him. Or not enough to do with him. She made a face as she walked off, wanting to be more engaged with the other projects around her; but her thoughts kept drifting back to work she’d been doing with Nelaid on the management of solar radiation before it got to the surface of the star and started getting out of hand. Wonder why Thahit’s management wizardry doesn’t have something like that—these legacy structures that remember previous physical states. Is it too stable to need these? But that seemed unlikely. The main problem with Wellakh’s primary lay in how unstable it was.

Or maybe there’s something like that buried in the stellar simulator back on Wellakh, and now it’s taken for granted. Which was likely enough. Even if she’d built it herself, once a spell was in place, Dairine didn’t often bother looking twice at its diagramming unless something had stopped working or needed to be changed or debugged. And the interactive simulator on which she worked with Nelaid was a going concern, one that generations of wizards before him had fine-tuned before it had been settled into its present configuration. Tinkering around under its hood would have been the last thing on Dairine’s mind, especially when she and Nelaid first got started, for the Sunlord-in-Abeyance had been touchy enough about Dairine and about her connection to his very missing son. They’d got past the worst of it eventually, but at all times the thought of the third party in the relationship, the one who was not there, hovered over all their dealings with each other.

Dairine finally shrugged as she kept walking. He’d love this, she thought. Roshaun would be stalking around through this and approving the good projects in that oh-so-high-and-mighty way of his, and disdaining the bad ones. And what he’d make of Penn . . .

She had to snicker then, imagining the most likely response: the scornfully raised eyebrow, the long, thoughtful, judging gaze down Roshaun’s lengthy, slightly nostril-flared nose . . . and then the crunch of another lollipop destroyed in a moment’s princely (no, kingly now) irritability at everything that was wrong about Penn. The guy’s a dork, she thought, unwilling to waste any more time on analysis. He’ll get culled, and everybody’ll be relieved, especially Nita, it sounds like. Because he seems like such an overentitled, underperforming dork.

Why do you dislike him so much? something said in the back of Dairine’s head.

Not just something: Spot. He was still over on the side of the room, but he would have had to have been light-years and light-years away before he couldn’t hear her think.

Dairine laughed. “Don’t know,” she said. “Don’t care. Did you see that skyscraper thing next to him, though? They had a smart computer working as part of that.”

I’ll have a look.

“Right. Meet you up by the gate hex afterward? I’ll go see how Mehrnaz is doing.”

Right.

She wandered on down the concourse to pause in front of another display, something to do with making schools safe against attacks by people with firearms. But as she looked the project précis over, it occurred to Dairine that she’d been speaking to Spot in English, and what she’d said to him might not have been strictly true. She did care. And the question was a fair one, if a little annoying.

Why do I dislike Penn so much?

Over on the opposite side of the concourse, Kit was making his final pass through the exhibits, checking out a last couple of possibilities for token dropping. As time had started to get short before the formal judging began, he and Nita had split up to handle separately the picks that they couldn’t agree on. As a result, Kit kept running into other people who were also immersed in last-minute choices, and kept accidentally eavesdropping on conversations that even in this context were unusual. Some of the oddest ones—and the least inhibited—occurred when the competitor wasn’t onsite to explain things.

“Why would you want to do that to water?”

“To show off?”

“Yeah, well, an eighth matter-state sounds interesting, but what’s it for?”

Or at another stand:

“. . . Well, if you ask them the earthworms will tell you they’re okay with this, but you have to wonder if they’re just sparing his feelings.”

“Yeah, this wouldn’t constitute quality time for them, would it?” And leaning over the tank, a whisper: “Come on guys, come clean . . .”

And at another:

“Just think about it, though. It’s an idea whose time has come. Lightning as an antimissile weapon . . .”

“Won’t help you with ICBMs.”

“Depends on which way you’re pointing the lightning, doesn’t it?”

That was one of the last places where Kit dropped a token as he came to the far end of the exhibition hall, at the other end from where he and Nita had come in. That whole area down by the restrooms had been set aside as a casual meet-and-greet space, where people could deal with personal or medical needs, get a drink or a bite to eat without having to go out to the food court, and generally take a break from the chaos of the main space.

Kit went and got himself a cola, feeling that he could use a little kick from the caffeine, and moved over to one side to drink it and look at the people around him. There was something so terrific about being in a place full of wizards who weren’t in a life-or-death situation: you kept seeing unexpected things, or things that perhaps shouldn’t have been unexpected.

He found himself watching a couple of wizards doing what he at first mistook for the beginning of a dance, and then for a session of tai chi. But suddenly he realized they were signing. They were leaving long bright trails of power in the air as they traced out words and phrases in a Speech-recension he’d never seen before—something very condensed though no less fluid or graceful than the written forms of the Speech he was used to, and nonetheless looking completely different.

Of course there’s a way to use the Speech without speaking, Kit thought. Why would the Powers leave anybody out of wizardry just because they can’t hear? Why has this never occurred to me?

“I’m an idiot,” he said to himself.

“A moment of realization there?” came an amused voice from beside and behind him.

Kit turned to see Tom ambling over with something latte-looking in one hand. “Hey!”

“Been here a while, yeah?”

“How can you tell?”

“You’ve got that spell-shocked look.”

Kit laughed. “Yeah. At first we thought we’d come in early and beat the crowd . . .”

“Good luck with that,” Tom said. “I’m not absolutely sure, but if you asked the setup staff, I bet they’d tell you that some of these kids were lined up waiting to get in before dawn.”

“Wonder what the people who live around here made of that . . .”

Tom chuckled. “Probably not much. Some of the trade shows that come in here, like that big comics convention—they’ve got so many out-of-the-ordinary people attending them and wandering around outside that our group probably looks dull by comparison.”

“I guess so,” Kit said. “It’s just weird to be doing something wizardly right out in the open.”

“Well,” Tom said, gazing around, “it’s not like New York’s not a big tourist destination. Lots of wizards want to come to town for reasons that have nothing to do with the Art. And since all the contestants and mentors involved are on travel subsidy, it kind of makes sense to have this part of the event someplace they might not have the time or energy to spare to get to otherwise. If they’re going to take the time and effort to contribute, the supervisory structure may as well give them something back.”

Kit nodded. “Anyway,” Tom went on, “seen anything particularly worthwhile? The end of pick time is upon us. Not much more than five minutes now . . .”

“A lot of things.” And then Kit had to laugh. “You know what kept distracting me, though? Wondering if someone was about to slip somehow and blow everything up.”

Tom’s grin was edged with good-natured irony. “As if working with you two when you got started wasn’t like juggling chainsaws sometimes,” he said. “And don’t even get me started on Dairine.” He took another swig of his coffee. “But don’t worry yourself too much. There’s a proctoring task force full of very smart Senior Wizards hidden away under the surface of every Invitational. They’ve signed off on every wizardry individually, and all of the projects taken together, before any of them are allowed into the same room.”

Kit put his eyebrows up as the thought occurred to him that Tom’s expertise was writing specialized spells and debugging them. “And if I wondered if maybe you were one of the proctors . . .”

Tom smiled slyly. “If I thought you were going to run around announcing the fact, I’d refuse to confirm or deny. But why would you bother? Since the proctors aren’t involved in the judging, none of the contestants are going to care.”

Kit grinned. “Okay. But seriously . . . how much effect do our picks have on the judging?”

“Exactly what it says in the rules description in the manual,” Tom said. “‘Picks may come to constitute significant weighting on the judges’ choice.’”

“May.”

“Look, we may be wizards but we’re not omniscient, any more than the Powers are,” Tom said. “If something about some spell snags the attention of a whole lot of wizards, even for reasons they can’t fully articulate, it merits extra attention from the judges. Any spell may have a secret message buried in it: a hint at something else useful that that wizard’s doing. Or something they’re not doing that they ought to be—that we all ought to be. You can’t tell until you look closely, sometimes in a group. Or sometimes only when someone drags you over to a wizardry and makes you look at it extra hard. So we make sure that can happen, if people feel strongly enough about it.”

Kit nodded. “Neets did that to me once or twice. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Well, you know by now that sometimes she’s worth listening to.”

“Uh, don’t let her hear you say ‘sometimes.’”

Tom smiled lightly. “I hear you there.”

“So what now?”

“Besides the judging?”

“No—I mean, are they going to throw us out of here for that?”

“No need . . . it’d only increase the stress. Not to mention the ferocity of the last-minute politicking.” He gulped down the last of his coffee and chucked the empty cup into a nearby wet-recycle bin. “Because nothing’s more dangerous than a wizard who feels passionately about something. And in this crowd . . .”

He looked down the length of the hall. Kit, following his glance, noticed something else: the noise level was rising. It was already considerably louder than when he’d started talking to Tom. Additionally, he could see people on both sides standing around some spell-displays and arguing.

“I’d say there’s some passion,” Tom said.

The sound of a soft chime echoing through the huge room made everything a touch quieter for a few seconds . . . and immediately, as it faded, the noise of the crowd rose again, louder this time. “Five-minute warning?” Kit said.

Tom nodded.

Over the heads of some people arguing down by one of the nearest exhibits, the one with the lightning, Kit caught sight of Nita and waved at her. She nodded at him, with an amused sideways glance at the people who were more and more loudly arguing the pros and cons of the antimissile defense. Nita rolled her eyes as she passed them. Directly behind her, some other wizard, a swarthy teen in a three-piece suit, walked by and said in a carrying voice, “Increasing entropyyyyy, people . . . !”

The argument got only marginally quieter as Nita walked by it, then started to scale up again. She came over to Kit and Tom, shaking her head.

“I’m ready for a break,” she said.

“You’ll be getting one,” Tom said, “and so will they. Half an hour.”

“They’re going to judge all this in half an hour?”

“The judges have been working all day,” Tom said. “This is just the crosscheck session, where last-minute developments get dealt with and the picks are factored in. If you’re going to get something to drink and find a quiet place, this is the time to do it, because it’ll get pretty unquiet back here for that half-hour.”

He glanced around him. “Catch you two at the party later?”

“Sure,” Nita said.

Tom vanished.

Over at what Kit was now thinking of as the Tame Lightning stand, the argument was getting even louder. Nita was observing this with dubious interest: two wizards, one a big broad-shouldered weightlifting kind of guy and one slimmer and shaggy-haired, were standing almost chest to chest and waving their arms and alternately pointing at the spell and shouting at each other. The argument seemed to have something to do with ionization. The stand’s owner, perhaps fortunately, didn’t seem to be anywhere close by.

“Have you ever seen anything like that before?” Nita said, sounding scandalized.

“In the middle of a baseball game maybe,” Kit said. “Not with wizards.”

Nita shook her head. “Don’t think anyone’s planning to kick dirt over anybody’s shoes . . .”

Kit wondered if it would break out into a full-fledged shoving match before or after the prejudging session ended. “Can it be that all these enlightened, magical people we’ve been working with are actually just human beings after all?”

“‘Just human beings’?”

“You know what I mean.”

Looking bemused, Nita watched the argument roll on. “Maybe it’s true that the worst brings out the best in everybody . . .”

“Yeah. And now I’m beginning to think, also vice versa. You wouldn’t have seen any of this while the Pullulus situation was going on.”

Nita snickered. “Well, the universe was about to end! Kind of a different situation . . .”

“Not to judge by some of these guys . . . It’s like that saying about football.”

“What?”

“Something of Ronan’s. ‘Football isn’t a matter of life and death. It’s way more important than that.’”

“The winning thing.”

“The being-seen-to-be-winning thing . . .”

Nita shook her head again. “I always thought wizards didn’t do this kind of stuff.”

Kit shrugged. “Maybe it’s just the numbers? We haven’t worked with all that many other wizards really. Maybe we needed a bigger statistical sample.”

Nita’s expression was amused. “Maybe somebody thinks it’s important that we all find out that other wizards are just people.”

“Then maybe this should happen more than once every eleven years.”

She laughed. Right on the end of the laugh came a second chime, louder. “That’s it,” Kit said, as the room started to break out in applause. “Should we go find Penn?”

“Probably a good idea, if it’s going to get as crowded down here as Tom thinks.”

They made their way down the long concourse, mostly against the stream of wizards and other attendees who were gravitating toward the relaxation area (or in some cases, levitating toward it). “Did you see Dairine at all while you were going around?” Kit said.

“Once at a distance, but she was busy,” Nita said. “There were about a hundred people around her mentee. It was a real crush, she was answering questions or something . . . I let her be. She didn’t look like she needed help.”

Kit nodded. Penn’s project had attracted a fair amount of attention, too. But does that even mean anything? he wondered. “Do we have a plan now?” he said.

“For what to do if he gets culled?” Nita said. She exhaled in a way that suggested she was annoyed at herself. “Resist the urge to celebrate?”

“Yeah,” Kit said, “mostly.”

“And if he makes it past . . .”

It was Kit’s turn to shake his head. He’ll be insufferable, he thought, twice as bad as before. Three times.

“We’re going to have to spend a while thinking about how to handle that,” Nita said. “Because I’m wondering if in some ways we’ve been too hard on him.”

Kit blinked. He stopped and stared at her. “What?”

“You saw him,” Nita said. “Yeah, sure, Mr. I’m a Tough Guy, I Can Handle Anything? When somebody put a real sun underneath him, that changed real fast. What was that about?”

“Him forgetting to treat you like you were the wizardly version of arm candy, for one thing,” Kit said. “I remember that.”

Nita gave him a look that was both surprised and perplexed. Kit swallowed. Uh oh, did I sound too angry just then?

“Yeah,” Nita said, “okay. No argument. But the other thing still worries me. If he goes through to the next round, he’s going to be exposed to a lot more examination, a lot more pressure. We need to find out what was going on with that before one of the judges does, and fails him on it. Because if he passes this, he’ll be building himself up and up in his head until the next round . . .”

Kit sighed as the still-rotating globe of Penn’s spell diagram came into view. He was fairly sure he knew what she was thinking: And when he gets dropped out, which is likely, he’ll fall hard. This was as much about Nita not wanting the two of them to look bad as anything else.

At least I sure hope it is . . .

He didn’t have a chance to take that thought any further. Penn was heading toward them, grinning, pumping one fist in the air. Kit found himself half wishing that in the excitement Penn would knock that ridiculous top hat off himself.

“A hundred and eighty-three tokens!” Penn shouted at them. “Are we brilliant or what?”

“It’s not what we think we are—” Kit said.

“For certain values of ‘we,’” said Nita, sounding a bit dry. “The question’s going to be how brilliant the judges think we are. Or you, rather.”

“But you saw me out there! No one else came close to that level of class.”

“That’s so true,” Nita said in that innocent tone of voice that Kit had been hearing way too much lately. “Penn, have you had anything to eat all day?”

“Aww, that’s so nurturing of you!” Penn said. “Better watch out, can’t have you getting Kit nervous!”

Kit closed his eyes for a second. He doesn’t just have a gift for saying the wrong thing, he thought, he’s got a superpower. He opened his eyes and was surprised to see Penn still standing there and not scorched to a crisp.

Nita was regarding Penn the way someone might look at an incompletely housebroken puppy who miraculously hadn’t yet made a mess on the rug. “You have half an hour to get down to the far end and eat a sandwich and have a smoothie or something,” she said. “If you pass out from blood sugar issues in front of all these people when the results come out, you don’t want them thinking you fainted from shock.”

“Wow, of course, you’re absolutely right. As my lady commands,” Penn said, and bowed deeply to Nita, sweeping his hat off. He reset it at a jaunty angle and set off down the concourse, nodding regally at everyone he passed.

Kit and Nita watched him go. Then Nita looked up at Kit.

“The Powers That Be,” she said, “seriously owe me for this one.”

“Let me know when you figure out how to collect,” Kit said, and they headed after their mentee.

A little while thereafter it seemed to Nita as if all three hundred or so of the competitors were milling around down in the chill-out space, talking and laughing and looking relieved that it was all over—though there were also a lot of people standing around quietly with friends or relatives and looking tense. It was like the aftermath of any big test at school, the SATs or something similar; relief, anxiety, people talking about what they’d done well and more often what they thought they’d screwed up.

Nita spent a few moments glancing around to see where Penn had gone. Probably looking for someone else to compare token numbers with, she thought. At least he’d had the sandwich and the smoothie, and was coming down somewhat from the buzz of his final hour of presentation, as she had hoped. But he’d really gotten into the swing of his presentation toward the end. And if nothing else, he’ll never be afraid of hecklers again. If I thought we’d given him a hard time . . . Nita shook her head. There were people who’d picked up on the prescripted quality of Penn’s delivery and started asking him questions in exactly the same tone of voice. Which was when he completely dropped it and started sounding like a normal person. Didn’t think he had it in him . . .

It was then that she noticed that the sound level in the room had changed—all the conversations going increasingly muted. Irina was in the middle of the room.

She was standing in an empty space at the center of things, and quiet was spreading out around her through the crowd like a single ripple in a pond. That quiet spent a few moments becoming deeper, finally turning into a silence broken only by the faint rustle of a few people still moving around. Then they too were still.

“Well,” Irina said into the silence, “we’re ready. I want to thank everyone for having done a tremendous job. You know you all have—otherwise you wouldn’t have made it even this far. To those of you who won’t be going along with us any further in this journey, I want to thank you for committing yourselves to make the effort even though you had no certainty of the result, and were very likely to suffer pain if things didn’t go your way. You committed yourselves anyway—and that is the heart of errantry.” She sounded somber, but not sad. “So: time to reveal the results.”

And almost before she’d finished speaking, the room started to fill with every possible kind of audio alert as those who had such things hooked up to their manuals heard them go off.

It was lower-key than Nita had expected. There was no big list posted, no dramatic calling of names. And (as she saw when people near them started comparing results in their manuals) there was no big deal made over the issue of rankings, or where anyone stood in the standings of those who had made it: only the bare fact of whether or not they’d gone through. All through the room, cries of excitement or moans of disappointment began filling the air at the same time as people’s manuals, or whatever instrumentalities they used to manage their wizardry, gave them a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Here and there, groups of friends started to cluster, jumping up and down or commiserating with sad hugs.

Nita looked around to see if she could find Penn. From behind her, Kit leaned in to say very low by her ear, “Just look for the one making a big fuss.”

And sure enough, there, past a couple of small groups of hugging teenagers, was one guy, all by himself, leaping and whooping and waving his manual in the air. “We should go congratulate him,” Nita said.

“He should be congratulating you,” Kit said. “Care to bet on that happening?”

Nita laughed. “Wouldn’t waste my money,” she said. “Come on.”

As Penn spotted them coming toward him, he assumed an expression that was impossible to describe in any other way than smug. “Did I tell you?” he shouted. “Did I tell you how it was going to go?”

“You did,” Kit said, and bumped fists with him. “Now we start the heavy lifting.”

“Not right now,” Penn said. “Tonight we celebrate!” He held out his hand to Nita. “Well?”

She took it. “You did good,” she said.

He started to lift her hand. Nita gave him a look. He stopped, but he didn’t let it go. “Don’t get cute,” Nita said. “You’ll spoil it.”

Penn dropped her hand and grinned. “But I am cute,” he said. “By definition.”

“We’re using such different dictionaries,” Nita said, and turned away. “Come on . . . let’s go to the losers’ party.”

On the far side of the room, Dairine and Mehrnaz were standing quietly together, watching the crowd.

Dairine had been carefully controlling her own excitement. When the end-chime had rung and she’d turned to Mehrnaz to congratulate her on the latest of a final series of presentations, each one better than the last, she’d caught a look on Mehrnaz’s face that was more than relief. It was fear.

“It’s going to be okay,” Dairine had said. But Mehrnaz’s face hadn’t dropped that terrified look. “Whatever happens, you’ve done great. Seriously!”

“I think I could use some water,” Mehrnaz said, sounding a little faint.

They’d made their way down into the crowd and each of them had grabbed and quickly downed a whole bottle of water. “Even though it’s not hot in here, the air-conditioning makes it so dry . . .” Dairine said. “You forget how much sometimes.”

“I guess so,” Mehrnaz said, sounding flat and distracted. She was looking into the middle distance at nothing in particular.

“Mehrnaz,” Dairine said, and was moved to put an arm around her and hug her one-armed. “Come on. You got the job done. Now we just have to wait for the result, okay? Don’t act like the world’s ending. You did a brilliant job.”

“I did my best, anyway,” Mehrnaz said, sounding dubious.

“Which is all anyone’s expecting,” Dairine said.

That was when silence fell over the room. From where they were standing, their view of Irina wasn’t very good, but her voice carried perfectly. And then the audio alerts started going off.

Mehrnaz nearly jumped out of her skin when her little pink diary-manual began playing a music-box version of “Anitra’s Dance.” Her eyes went wide and round. She yanked the diary open.

And she stared at it and froze.

“What?” Dairine said, and looked over her shoulder. “What—Wait! You made it! You made it!”

Dairine would have started jumping up and down with delight, except that Mehrnaz was still standing there immobile. “Wow, look at the numbers,” she said, “way more people got culled than—since when do they cull more than half the participants? They hardly ever—”

But Mehrnaz still wasn’t moving. The face she finally turned to Dairine was stricken.

“You made it!” Dairine said. “Look, that was the worst Cull in the last ten Invitationals and you survived it!”

She trailed off as Mehrnaz closed her manual. “You’re upset?” Dairine said. “Why are you upset?”

Mehrnaz finally found her voice. “I didn’t—It didn’t go the way I wanted it to go.” She sounded wretched.

Dairine was flabbergasted. “You made it through the Cull, girl, how could this not be the way you wanted it to go?”

“It’s just that now things are going to get really difficult.”

“That’s kind of the whole idea,” Dairine said, with a sinking feeling in her gut. What have I missed here? What’s the matter?

“Yes, but not the way it’s going to get, Dairine. You don’t understand. You don’t get it at all.”

She turned and walked away with a terrible rigidity to her spine: away from the crowd and down toward the doors that led out of the room.

“Mehrnaz? Wait!” Dairine yelled.

She wasn’t waiting. She simply disappeared into thin air.

“Spot!”

He was there already, having caught her concern.

“Find her,” Dairine said, snatching him up. “We’ve got a problem.”

Together, they vanished.