The Wizard's Dilemma, New Millennium Edition (7 page)

Light. Just a single source of light, pale and silvery. There was no way to tell for sure if it was coming from near or far; it looked small, like a streetlight seen from blocks away. Just seeing it relieved Kit tremendously. It was the first change he had managed to make in this environment. And if he could do that, he could do something else.
Just take a moment and think
what
to do—

Kit realized he was gasping for breath. He also realized that he was able to feel himself gasping. He tried to move his arms, but it was like trying to swim in taffy. As he concentrated on that light, he thought he saw a change in it.
The light’s moving
—But that was wrong. Something dark was moving in front of it.
Oh no, what’s that—

Suddenly Kit could move his hand a little. He reached toward his pocket to fish out something he could use as a weapon if he had to protect himself. It was taking too long. The dark thing was blocking the light, getting closer. Kit strained as hard as he could to get his hand into his pocket, but there was no time, and the dark object got closer, flailing its way toward him. Kit felt around in his mind for one other spell he’d used occasionally when he had to. Not one that he liked to use, but when it came to the choice between surviving and going down without a fight…

The dark shape blotted out the light, leaving it visible only as a faint halo around whatever was coming. Kit said the first half of the spell in his mind and then waited. He wasn’t going to use it unless he absolutely had to, for killing was not something a wizard did unless there was no choice.

The dark shape was closer. Kit felt the spell lying ready in his mind, turning and burning and wanting to get out and do what it had been built for.
But not yet,
Kit thought, setting his teeth.
Not just yet. I want to see—

The black shape was right in front of him now. It launched itself at him. Kit got ready to think the last word of the spell—

—and the dark thing hit him chest high and started washing his face as it knocked him over backward; and the two of them came down hard together on blacktop.

Suddenly everything seemed bright as day in the single light of the streetlight down at the end of the side street. There Kit lay in the road, with a bump that was going to be about the size of a phoenix’s egg starting to form on the back of his head, and on top of him Ponch washed his face frantically, saying, “Did you see it?
Did you see what I found?
Did you? Did you?”

Kit didn’t do anything at first but grab his dog and hug him, thinking,
Oh, God, I almost blew him up; thank you for not letting me blow him up!
Then he sat up, looking around him, and pushed Ponch off with difficulty. “Uh, yeah,” he said, “I think so. But why’re you all wet?”

“It was wet there.”

“Not where
I
was,” Kit said. “But am I glad you came along when you did! Come on, let’s get out of the street before someone sees us.”

Fortunately this was a quiet part of town without much traffic in the evening, and the two of them had the additional protection that most people didn’t recognize wizardry even when it happened right in front of them. Any onlooker would most likely just have seen a kid and his dog suddenly fall over in the middle of the street, where they’d probably been playing, unseen, a moment before.

Kit got up and brushed himself off, feeling weird to be able to move. “Home now?” said Ponch, bouncing around him.

“You better believe it,” Kit said, and they started to walk back down the street.

“I’m hungry!”

“We’ll see about something for you when we get in.”

“Dog biscuits!” Ponch barked, and raced down the street.

Kit went after him. When he came in the back door, his father was just taking the spaghetti pot over to the sink to drain it. “Perfect timing,” he said.

Kit looked in astonishment at the beat-up kitchen wall clock. It was only fifteen minutes since he’d left.

His father looked at him strangely. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Kit shook his head. “Uh … I’m okay. I’ll explain later. Leave mine in the pot for me for a few minutes, will you, Pop?” He grabbed the kitchen cordless phone out of its socket and headed into the living room.

That was when the shakes hit him. Kit just sat there and let it happen—not that he had much choice—and meanwhile enjoyed the wonderful normality of the living room: the slightly tacky lamps his mother refused to get rid of, the fact that the rug needed to be vacuumed. At least there
was
a rug, and a floor it was nailed to—not that terrifying empty nothingness under his feet. Finally Kit composed himself enough to look down at the phone handset and hit one of the speed-dial numbers.

After a few rings someone picked up. A voice said, “Tom Swale.”

“Tom, it’s Kit.”

“Hey there, fella, long time no hear. What’s up?”

“Tom—” Kit paused, not exactly sure how to start this. “I need to ask you something about your dogs.”

“Oh no,” Tom said, sounding concerned. “What have they done now?”

“Nothing,” Kit said. “And I want to know how they do it.”

There was a pause. “Can we start this conversation again?” Tom said. “Because you lost me somewhere. Like at the beginning.”

“Uh, right. Annie and Monty—”

“You’re saying they
didn’t
do anything?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Okay. This conversation now makes sense to Sherlock Holmes, if no one else. Keep working on
me,
though.”

Kit laughed. “Okay. Tom, your dogs are always turning up in your backyard with… you know. Weird things.”

“Including you, once, as I recall.”

“Hey, don’t get cute.”

Kit was then immediately mortified by the tone he’d taken with his Senior wizard, a genuinely nice man who had a lot to do in both his jobs and really didn’t need to be sassed. But Tom just burst out laughing. “Okay, I deserved that. Are you asking me how they do it?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s my reluctant duty to tell you that I’m not sure. Wizards’ pets tend to get strange. You know that.”

“But do they
always?”

“Well, except for our macaw—who was strange to start with and who then turned out to be one of the Powers That Be in a bird suit—yes, mostly they do.”

“Are there any theories about why?”

“Loads. The most popular one is that wizards bend the shape of certain aspects of space-time awry around them, so that we’re sort of the local equivalent of gravity lenses… and creatures associated with us for long periods tend to acquire some wizardly qualities themselves. Is this helping you?”

There was a lot of barking going on in the background. “I think so.”

“Good, because as you can probably hear, the non-weird part of our local canines’ lifestyle has kicked in with a vengeance, and they say they want their dinners. But they can wait a few minutes. As far as wizards’ dogs are concerned, the development of ‘finding’ behaviors seems to be relatively common. It may be an outgrowth of the retrieving or herding behaviors that some dogs have had bred into them. Does Ponch have any Labrador in him?”

“Uh, there might be some in there.” This had been a topic of idle discussion around Kit’s house for a long time, his father mostly referring to Ponch, when the subject came up, as “the Grab Bag.” “But he’s mostly Border collie. Some German shepherd, too.”

“Sounds about right.”

“But Tom—” Kit was wondering how to phrase this. “That the dogs might be able to find things, that I can understand. But how can they find
places?
Because Ponch has started finding them.”

There was quite a long pause. “That could be interesting,” Tom said. “Has he taken you to any of these places?”

“Just once. Just now.”

“Are you all right?”

“Now I am. I think,” Kit said, starting to shake again.

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” Kit said. “It’s all right. It was just… a nothing place. No sound, no light or movement But Ponch got in there, and he knew how to get out again. He got
me
out, in fact, because I couldn’t do much of anything.”

“That’s interesting,” Tom said. “Would you consider going there again?”

“Not right now!” Kit said. “But later on, yeah. I want to find out where that was! And how it happened.”

“Well, pack animals do prefer to work in groups. From Ponch’s point of view, you two probably constitute a small pack, and maybe that’s why he’s able to share his new talent with you. But until now, to the best of my knowledge, no wizard’s found out exactly where the dogs go to get the things they bring back, because no one’s been able to go along. If you really want to follow up on this—”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Then be careful. You should treat this as an unstable worldgating; you may not be able to get back the same way you left. Better check the manual for a tracing-and-homing spell to keep in place. And make sure you take enough air along. Even though Ponch seems unaffected after short jaunts, there’s no guaranteeing that the two of you will stay that way if you linger.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“One other thing. I’d confine the wizardry to just the two of you.”

Kit was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You’re saying that I should leave Nita out of this…”

Tom paused, too. “Well, it’s possible that the only one who’s going to be safe with Ponch as you start investigating this will be you. The semisymbiotic relationship might be what got you out of your bad situation last time. You don’t want to endanger anyone else until you’re sure what’s going on.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“But there’s something else,” Tom said. “I just had a look at the manual. Nita’s assignment status has changed. It says, ‘independent assignment, indeterminate period, subject confidential.’ You know what that’s about?”

“I have an idea,” Kit said, though he was uncertain.

“It sounds like she’s chasing down something of her own,” Tom said. “Usually when there’s a formal status change like that, it’s unwise to interrupt the other person unless you need their help on something critical to an ongoing project.”

“Uh, yeah,” Kit said.
Now, how much does he know?
“We just wound up a project, so nothing’s going on.” He felt guilty at the way he’d put that—but there were lots of things that “we” could mean.

“Okay. I saw the precis on that last one, though. Nice work; we’ll see how it holds up. But as regards Ponch, let me know when you find something out. The manual will want an annotation from you on the subject, though it’ll ‘trap’ the raw data as you go. And if you find anything in Ponch’s behavior that has to do with more-normal worldgating, tell the gating team in New York—though the fact that a dog’s involved is probably going to make them laugh, if it doesn’t actually ruffle their fur.”

“So to speak. Okay, Tom. Thanks!”

“Right. Best to Nita.” And Tom hung up, to the sound of more impatient barking.

Ow,
Kit thought. The last few words made him hurt inside.

But he took a moment to get over it, then got up and went back into the kitchen to return the phone and see about some spaghetti.

After dinner Kit went upstairs to his bedroom, pausing by the door to Carmela’s room, at the sound of a faint hissing noise coming from inside. He knocked on the door.

“Come in!” his sister shouted.

Slightly surprised, Kit stuck his head in the door. His sister was lying on her bed, on her stomach, and the source of the hissing was the earphones she was wearing. On the screen, it looked as if a young boy in a down vest and baseball cap was being electrocuted by a long-tailed yellow teddy bear. “Oh,” Kit said, now understanding why Carmela had shouted.

“What?” His sister pulled one of the earphones out.

“Nothing,” Kit said. “I heard something going
‘sssssssss’
in here. Thought maybe it was your brains escaping.”

His sister rolled her eyes.

“Isn’t that stuff a little below your age group?” Kit said.

Carmela rolled her eyes and ostentatiously put the earphone back in. “Not when you’re using it to learn Japanese. Now go away.”

Kit grinned and (mostly for his own amusement) closed her door and did as he’d been told. Carmela was no more of a nuisance to Kit than she had to be at her age. She had even taken his wizardry pretty calmly, for an otherwise excitable fifteen-year-old, when Kit had told the family about it. After the shock wore off, “I always
knew
you were weird!” had been Carmela’s main response. Still, Kit kept an eye on her, and always put his manual away where she wouldn’t find it; the thought of her turning into an older version of Dairine terrified him.
Still, wizardry finds its way. If it’s gonna happen, there’s no way
I
can stop it.

His older sister, Helena, seemed safe from this fate, being too old for even very late-onset wizardry. She had just left for her first year of college at Amherst, apparently relieved to get out of what she described as “a genuine madhouse.” Kit loved her dearly but was also slightly (and guiltily) relieved to be seeing less of her, for she was the only member of the family who seemed to be trying to pretend that Kit’s wizardry had never really happened.
Maybe she’ll sort it out over the next year or so.

Meantime, I’ve got other problems….

He pushed his door open and looked around at his room. It was a welter of bookshelves; the usual messy bed; a worktable, where he made models; the desk, where the monitor and keyboard for his pitifully ancient desktop computer sat; and some rock posters, including one from a hilariously overcostumed and overmade-up metal group — a present from Helena when she cleared out her room: “a souvenir,” she’d said, “of a journey into the hopelessly retro.”

Kit tossed his jacket onto the bed and plopped down into the desk chair, where he put out his hand and whistled for his manual. It dropped into his hand from the little pouch of otherspace where he kept it. Kit pushed the PC’s keyboard to one side and opened the manual.

First he turned to the back page, the messaging area. There was nothing there, but he’d known there wouldn’t be; he hadn’t felt the “fizz” of notification when he picked up the manual. Then Kit paged backward to the active wizards’ listing for the New York area. Yes, there it was, between CAILLEBERT, ARMINA, and CALLANIN, EOIN: