High Wizardry New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online

held her breath.
    There was a sleek black portable computer in her lap, and on its lid a biteless apple glowed.
    Dairine flipped up the lid and found that the machine had been on standby all this while, the screen showing the same galaxy wallpaper and the same grouping of icons as it had before—the ones that had disappeared from the home machine the moment her Dad looked at it. Now, though, she clicked and typed hurriedly, using the Cloaking program to put the books she’d bought in an otherspace pocket and get them out of her way. The books having tidily vanished, Dairine went back to the main screen.
    Assistance, she thought. Maybe some kind of tutorial? Or a help menu? This isn’t the time to claim not to need help.
    She clicked on the Assistance icon. A small dialogue window appeared.
    Active or passive mode?
    Dairine was out of her depth again. But active’s always got to be better… She clicked on it.
    The screen cleared again.

    Utility options:
    (1) General Data & Logistics— Manual
    (2) Travel— Transport
    (3) Intervention— Change (see also Manual )
    (4) Duplication— Adaptive Copy
    (5) Preservation— Cloaking, Seek
    (6) Outside assistance—(routine) Support
    (7) Emergency— Assist
    Exit to system

    Dairine chewed her lip and thought. Just to see what would happen, she clicked on “2”. The screen cleared.
    General Transport Utility
    Input? Keyboard | Verbal
    Dairine clicked on “2”. Because hey, who wants to have to type all the time?
    “Inside local solar system or outside?” the computer said very quietly, but so suddenly that Dairine jumped and almost let it fall off her lap. The computer’s voice was masculine: a light restrained tenor with a cultured sound.
    “Um,” she said. Her mouth suddenly felt very dry. “Inside,” Dairine said, and swallowed.
    “Planet?”
    Planet?!
    Dairine gazed toward the door of the ladies’ room, immediately thinking of the displays outside with a sudden and terrible desire. Closed for maintenance, huh? We’ll see about that.
    “Mars,” Dairine said.
    The portable’s hard drive worked briefly and softly: the faintest possible chitter chitter that she felt through her lap more than heard. “Coordinates?”
    Dairine knew that areographers used some kind of latitude-longitude system for Mars, but didn’t know anything else about it. “Default,” she said, on a hunch.
    “Default coordinates confirmed,” said the computer, “last recorded transit. Atmosphere?”
    Last recorded—?! “Uh, atmosphere? Yes,” Dairine said. Atmosphere’s got to be a good idea…
    “Atmosphere parameters?”
    “Umm…” She thought back to what she remembered about this from science class. “Fifteen percent oxygen, eighty percent nitrogen, five per-cent carbon dioxide.”
    “Mix proportions approximate Terran sea-level parameters. Default to those proportions and that pressure, or specify other?”
    “Default.”
    “Estimated time to spend at transit location?”
    Like I have the slightest idea how long I want to spend off planet my first time! Days! Weeks! …But I haven’t had lunch. “…One hour.”
    “Transit data complete,” said the computer calmly. “Ready to transit. Verbal confirmation required. Transit command ‘run.’ ”
    “Run,” Dairine said.
    And everything slewed sideways and upside down.
    Or no, the world stayed the same—but Dairine’s frame of reference suddenly became huger than the whole Earth and the space that contained it, so that her planet seemed only one moving, whirling point plunging along its path through a terrible complexity of forces, among which gravity was a puny local thing and not to be regarded. Up was some other way now; down had nothing to do with the floor. Her stomach rebelled.
    And her eyes were seeing things they had never been made to see. Lines and sparks and traces of white fire seemed to tear through her head from her eyes to the back of her skull; they pinned her to the rolling Earth like a feebly