How Lovely Are Thy Branches: A Young Wizards Christmas (2 page)

Carmela was studying a diagram of the local shopping space that had begun displaying on the plaque that spanned the graceful handlebars of the scooter. Nita’s display had synced up with her manual—all the Crossings’ systems being alert to the presence of wizards and having a raft of custom routines to make their work easier—and was displaying “smart” advertisements for various stores in the area and travel advisories tailored to her point of origin, all translated into English for her convenience.

“Okay,” Carmela said, tracing a route on the scooter’s display, “right there.” The scooter chirped in acquiescence. “Meanwhile,” she said, turning to Nita, “I know exactly what we need.”

“Yeah? What?”

“A Christmas party.”

“Mela,” Nita said, and laughed. “It’s not even
Thanksgiving
yet!”

“And you were just complaining that you didn’t want it to be.”

Nta blinked, as that felt like it should have made some kind of sense.
Just possibly not
Earth
sense.

She sighed and glanced down at the scooter’s display, which was now showing some amusing promotional material. After a moment she raised her eyebrows at the slugline of one feature. “NASA’s going to be glad to hear we’ve got a ruthless and terrible space fleet.”

Carmela snickered. “So will Richard Branson, when he gets the memo,” she said. “And frankly, I know which of them’s going to do better marketing.”

Nita snorted. “Yeah, but Mela, you know as well as I do it’s not true! Is putting something like this out there smart?”

“Why not? If everybody thinks Earth has a big aggressive space fleet, no one’ll bother turning up on our doorstep with one, will they.”

There was something to be said for that line of reasoning, but Nita still had misgivings: some of the more assertive species she knew of might take it as a challenge. “And anyway, who put that
in
here?”

“I’m sure I have no idea,” Carmela said, airily waving a hand.

Nita began to sweat a little, because she knew from experience what it meant when Carmela started handwaving. “Are you trying to tell me that—
What
did you get Sker’ret to let you do?” For it couldn’t escape anyone’s notice who knew the present Master of the Crossings that there was just about nothing he wouldn’t do for Carmela. Installing a worldgate in her closet had merely been a small sign of things to come.

“Who, me? Nothing! …Much. I mean, the small print was such a nuisance to start with…” She glanced over at what Nita was still reading.

Nita squinted to read the block of tiny, tiny print at the bottom of the promotional feature, again displayed in English to ease the handling of some of the more obscure Rirhait idioms. “…Wait. ’Earth’, ‘Mysterious Earth’ and ‘Mother Earth The Legendary Home Of Humankind’ are licensed trademarks of Gaia Protectorate CRLLC, terms and conditions apply, planetary descriptions may change from time to time without notice at management’s discretion—” And then in the tiniest print possible, “—
battle fleet not included’??”

“Legalese,” Carmela said, craning her neck to see ahead of them. “It’s not like the disclaimers actually have any force in law, really, once you’ve—”

“I can’t believe this,” Nita said.
“CRLLC?
Did you
incorporate the entire planet Earth
somewhere?!”

“Here, actually,” Carmela said. “The corporate tax rate here is reeeeeeeeallly low. Especially if you’ve saved the place from alien invasion. At which point it drops to zero. …If not lower.”

Nita’s mouth dropped open.

“Why are you looking so shocked? You cosigned the incorporation documents when we were here last.”

Being reduced to speechlessness around Carmela was hardly a new experience for Nita, but this particular incidence was setting new records for the underlying implications. “But I thought— Wait. You said that—”

“Nonono, wait just a minute! Look there. Is that what I think it is?”

“Uh,” Nita said, and peered ahead, her mind only half on whatever she was supposed to be looking for. The corridor up that way was fairly busy, full of aliens of all shapes and sizes. But after a second she thought she saw what Carmela was looking at, a dark-colored conical shape, hard to see clearly through the throng. “That tall thing sticking up? The green one— Oh. It’s a Demisiv—!”

“In a baseball cap!”
Carmela said, and accelerated away.

…And so it was. Nita went after her, shaking her head and grinning.
What are the odds,
she thought,
that one of my favorite wizardly houseguests should just
happen
to be passing through here while we’re here too?
But the odds didn’t really come into it when you balanced them against the wizardly truism that there were no such things as coincidences. Or rather, when something that
looked
like a coincidence turned up, it was usually a sign from the Powers that Be that you should start paying attention: almost always, something else was going on.

Nita got caught up with Carmela after a few moments. “This is so perfect,” Carmela was saying, confident that Nita was right behind her. “See that, this was an absolutely
great
idea, we’d have missed him if we didn’t have the scoots!”

That was probably true. Within a few moments they were close enough that when Carmela started waving her arms and shouted across the crowd, “Hey,
is that my shrub?!”,
Nita could even through the intervening crowd see all those fir-tree-like branches of Filif’s arch up, as if in surprise, and then start waving back as if a wind had shaken them.

And it took only a few moments more before the two of them had hopped off the scoots and were elbowing their way through the remaining crowd in an impromptu contest to be the first one to hug their fellow wizard. Nita came from behind in the last couple of meters and just barely beat Carmela there.

It was always a little interesting hugging Filif, as you wound up getting a face full of something that felt like pine needles, even though the scent more closely resembled something like cinnamon instead of the kind of cool, green smell you might associate with a conifer. “You are
so
well met,” Filif was saying, “what a fine surprise, but what are you two
doing
here without my knowing about it? I’d thought the Knowledge would have alerted me that you were within physical-meeting range.”

“Might ask you the same question!” Nita said. The instrumentality that managed the wizards’ manuals (and the many other ways that the Art’s practitioners accessed spells and other wizardly data) would normally notify you, if you’d asked it, as to the presence in your physical neighborhood of other wizards with whom you’d worked. Nita had a good number of these alerts embedded in your manual, not least for those wizards who (however briefly) had lived in her basement. “Should’ve had a notifier go off.”

“Well, I only just got here,” Filif said. “Just out of the gate, in fact. Maybe that’s the problem. Anyway, the Master and I have business—some Interconnect Project details to sort out: I’ve been doing liaison work for the Demisiv side of the Project Authority.” He rustled a little, half-turning as Nita let go of him (and Carmela did not), and all the eye-berries on the free side of him glowed a little brighter as he tried to peer through the crowd. “He must’ve been delayed—he was in some other meeting, and said it might keep him a bit late.”

“Well, never mind that,” Carmela said, hugging him again—or
still
—and then letting him go. “Your
business
business can wait. And if he’s coming along to find you, good! Two birds with one stone.”

Filif half-turned in the other direction, and looked around him with more of his eyes. “Not sure I see any birds,” he said, sounding dubious. “Or for that matter, stones.”

Nita laughed. Sometimes the wizardly Speech did fairly well at translating human idiom, but sometimes it completely failed. “She means she wants to talk to both of you at once.”

“Well, that’s certainly preferable to hominid-on-avian violence,” Filif said. “Ah, now, here he comes. Not
so
delayed, then.”

Nita peered around her, not bothering to look up, because there wouldn’t have been any point in trying to see the Master of the Crossings
over
the heads of any crowd: when he was moving at any speed, he moved low. To her own amusement, though, it was the sound of lots of sharp little legs clicking and clattering against the smooth floor that told her which way to look (in this case, behind her). Nita turned and saw him coming, and grinned, and as he caught sight of her through the crowd that parted before him, Sker’ret was already half rearing up so that his front three pairs of legs were off the ground and the head with all those stalked eyes was on a level with Nita’s. She held her arms open, and when he more or less crashed into them, she grabbed him and hugged him to her and thumped his dorsal carapace. “Sker’!”

“Our saviors return,” Sker’ret laughed in her ear. “It’s been forever.”

“It’s been
last week,”
Nita said. “Getting amnesic from overwork?”

“No, I mean when the two of you were last here
together.”

“Two weeks then. Maybe three.”

“Pedant,” Sker’ret said affectionately, gave her a squeeze and let her go.

“And what about me?” Carmela demanded. “You’re late for my daily dose of alien snuggles!”

“And whose fault is that?
Anyway,
you’re
the alien.”

“No surprise at this sudden appearance then, my cousin?” Filif said.

“Excuse me?” Sker’ret said as he headed for Carmela. “I am the
Master
of this facility, coz. Of
course
I knew she was here: she’s got a facility-independent wizardly tracker routine associated with her. How else can I find her in a hurry if more invaders arrive and we need saving?”

“My favorite stalker,” Carmela said, and hugged Sker’ret as if hugging giant purple metallic centipedes was the most normal thing in the world. Which, for her, it naturally was.

“And why does her tracker work better than the Knowledge-based routines you’ve got hooked up to me?” Filif said, bending over in a sort of half-bow to Sker’ret so that they could brush their upper limbs together.

“Because she can do a lot more damage in a much shorter time than you routinely would,” Sker’ret said.

Carmela burst out laughing. “Oh, Sker’, you say that like it was a
bad
thing!”

“So tell us,” Filif said. “What damage are you contemplating now?”

“We’re having a Christmas party. And both of
you
are invited.”

All Filif’s berries on the side facing Sker’ret, and all Sker’ret’s stalked eyes, exchanged a bemused glance.

“And Christmas would be what?” Sker’ret said. “Is it a holiday of some sort?”

“Don’t you remember? Remember how excited Filif got about this?”

“Um…” Sker’ret was making a kind of thoughtful null sound that even in a Rirhait perfectly communicated a sense of
I don’t want you to feel hurt but due to being
really
busy I have no idea what you’re talking about at the moment.

“Fil,” Carmela said. “Explain it to him. Remember that time of year we told you about, the last time you came visiting? The time of year when we bring trees into the house and
decorate
them?”

Filif looked astounded.
“Wait. This
is that time? Then what are you doing here? Mostly your folk are with family at such times, I thought!”

“No no no, it’s not right this minute!” Carmela said. “Fifty days or so yet. Hold still.” She reached into her shoulderbag and came out with a small sleek tablet. “How’s your schedule around JD
2455550.52
…?”

“Well, let me check…”

“I’m free,” said Sker’ret immediately. “One or another of my relief people can take those shifts for me. Powers forbid I should miss a party of
yours!”

Nita wanted to start shouting practical, sensible things like
No, wait, this is all going way too fast, are you nuts…?
But she took a deep breath, stood there hating Thanksgiving enough to be willing to think about anything else, especially when it involved going straight on past it, and peered over Carmela’s shoulder at the tablet. “That’s really gorgeous. Where’d you get that?”

“It’s part of her detached staff package,” Sker’ret said. “Didn’t you get yours, Nita? I’ll see that it comes to you.”

“Okay, Sker’, thanks,” she said. “What day is that?” Nita said to Carmela.

“December 20th,” Carmela said. “And hey, the next day is the Winter Solstice. Very symbolic!” she said to Filif, elbowing him somewhere among his fronds and needles. “We’re having a sleepover on Almost The Longest Night! We can stay up all night and watch movies and eat popcorn and all kinds of things.”

“Mela,” Nita said. “Your mama and pop… you haven’t even
asked
them yet!”