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

spell?”
    “Safe enough for this,” Nita said, watching the Speech-characters knit themselves into a little thorny circlet on the page, bristling with attachment-spurs that would hook into the larger spell. “We’re not going out of atmosphere, and less than fifty-eight thousand miles total. Not enough for significant error to build up.” Then Nita wrinkled her nose. “Wasn’t that kind of gross?”
    “What, the book? Come on. I don’t know why that parents’ group keeps trying to ban it. You’d think school kids had never heard that people pee.” Carmela snickered. “Maybe the grownups are just trying to keep word from getting out.”
    Nita smiled slightly as the diagnostic fitted another level of meaning into the long sentence-acronym it was assembling from the data that came with Carmela’s physical presence. A broad spectrum of information about her was being summed up and pulled into the construct: it’d be interesting to analyze it all in detail later on, though some of the information was already giving Nita second thoughts. “Your favorite color is  this  shade of yellow?” Nita said, putting her finger on one part of the Speech construct and pulling that set of characters off to one side, out into the air. She had to wince at the little bead of light that came to life at the tail end of the character chain. It was a particularly eye-watering shade of citrus yellow-green.
    “This week, yeah,” Carmela said. “Next week, who knows?”
    Nita shrugged: at least the routine was picking up its data correctly. “Okay,” she said, and let go of the character string: it snapped back into the circlet where it belonged. “Great— we’re set. Two seconds...”
    Nita turned back to the center of the manual. “Gating circles, please?” she said in the Speech. The manual fell open at the place where she stored her transit circles. “Thank you.” She reached into the page and pulled one out, an on-Earth transit routine that had her own Speech-name and the transit’s starting location, her bedroom, woven into it already. With a flick of her wrist she dropped it to the floor around the spot near the window where the two of them stood. Then Nita turned back to the page where she’d generated Carmela’s shorthand name. Carefully she lifted the long string of glowing characters out of the page and dropped it near Carmela, where there was a receptor socket ready to take it in the larger transit circle.
    Carmela looked down at it all suspiciously. “Are you sure this is safe?” she said.
    Nita gave Carmela an amused look. “ This  from somebody who let a  TV remote  install a worldgate in her bedroom closet? Come on. You should really have Sker’ret check that, anyway. He’s the expert.”
    Nita shut the manual, looked at the spell that lay burning on the floor around them, and started to say the words of the Wizard’s Knot that would fasten the spell closed and start it going.
    You’re forgetting something...
    Nita’s jaw dropped. “Oh, wow, you’re right!” she said. “Mela, wait right here. Don’t touch anything!”
    She jumped over the edge of the spell-circle and ran downstairs. Nita trotted through the kitchen, shut and locked the back door— something else she’d forgotten— and then picked up the plastic shopping bag of tomatoes from beside the sink.  You’re welcome, said the peridexis.
    Nita rolled her eyes. “Everybody gives me a hard time,” she said, heading back upstairs. “Thanks, Bobo.”
    In Nita’s bedroom, Carmela was standing there with her arms folded and an  I’m-waiting-patiently,- what-do-you- mean- don’t-touch-anything?  expression on her face. “Does your invisible friend possibly have a secret identity?” she said. “A  cute  one?”
    Nita gave Carmela a look. “You behave,” she said, “or I’m going to let your mama and pop know just what they’re trying to turn loose on the poor unsuspecting nerdboys of CalTech.”
    “Please,”