A Wizard of Mars, New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online

one.”
    Nita put her eyebrows up, leaning against the doorsill. “How  is  our favorite centipede?”
    “Busy,” Carmela said. “The Rirhath B government’s still cleaning up the Crossings, and Sker’s having himself a party being King of the Alien Worldgates while his Esteemed Ancestor grows in his new legs and claws and brains and things.” She grinned. “Sker’ret says he needs me to come help get their shopping mall cleaned up.”
    “Cleaned  out,  you mean,” Nita said. The planetary government of Rirhath B had settled a considerable reward on Carmela for “services rendered” in the liberation of the Crossings Worldgating Facility...and Carmela had chosen to take her reward as shopping vouchers. Nita guessed that a whole lot of the Crossings’ shopkeepers were rubbing their hands, claws, or tentacles together at the prospect. “ That  trip I’m taking with you, no matter  what Dairine does. But anyway, the freaking’s gonna happen eventually, no matter what we do...because no matter who goes looking for life, sooner or later they’ll find it. And as far as wizards here go, it looks like the Powers That Be have decided that if we’re old enough to be asking serious questions about the fourth planet, we’re old enough to be told. But only because we didn’t just ask and then run away to play. We started going there and digging around.”
    “How long has this been going on?” Carmela said.
    “Since the 1770s...”
    Carmela banged the side of her head with one hand a couple of times in a my-ears-are-malfunctioning gesture. “Sorry! I thought you said since the Revolutionary War...”
    “Melaaaaa...!” Nita said, laughing, and headed out of her bedroom, making for the bathroom just down the hall. “There were wizards here then!” She pushed the bathroom door shut enough to change clothes in privacy.
    “What, in New York? And they went to  Mars? ”
    Nita pulled off her school pants and pulled on the jeans. “There were wizards all over the world, just like now. And sure they went to Mars! Everybody here was all hot on Mars around then, not just wizards. William Herschel started it. It was in all the papers. There were drawings and everything.” Nita snickered. “Though most of them were of completely made-up stuff that was never there...”
    “Okay,” Carmela said with a sigh, as Nita sat down on the edge of the tub to put on her sneakers. “I am very weirded out now. Not that this is even slightly unusual, but no one has any pity on  my  mental health...”
    Nita grinned as she pulled off her old top, for Carmela’s mental health was more robust than most people’s. She put on the lighter top, bent down to retie one loose sneaker-lace, then straightened and glanced at herself in the mirror. And paused, startled, for there was another figure behind her, looking at her over her shoulder in the mirror: taller, as slender as she was, but extremely pretty, far more so than—
    Nita blinked. The other reflection was gone.
    Now what the heck was  that ?  Nita thought.  And who has hair that color?  For the long, flowing, waving hair of the person she’d thought she’d seen had been the richest and most vivid sky-blue imaginable.
    Nita stared into the mirror for a second more. There was nothing to be seen but her and the black and white tiles of the wall on the far side of the bathtub.  I’ve been watching too much anime,  she thought.
    “You fall  in,  in there?” Carmela called.
    “No...” Nita said, and reached for the mouthwash, looking suspiciously at the mirror. This was one of the unfortunate aspects of changing wizardly specialties...assuming that she  was  actually changing one, not just adding something on. Everything got so unsettled: you saw things, heard things, sensed things that at first didn’t make any sense.  Later  they did, but usually too late to help you sort out whatever the present problem was. Nita took a gulp of mouthwash, rinsed, spat,