The Wizard's Dilemma, New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online

way, toward the end of the road that led to the junior-senior high school. He saw Ponch sniffing and wagging his tail near the big tree in front of the Wilkinsons’ house. Ponch cocked a leg at the tree and, after a few seconds’ meditation, bounded off down the street. Kit went after him, swinging the leash in the dusk.
    From farther down the street came a sound of furious yapping. It was the Akambes’ dog, whose real name was Grarrhah but whose human family had unfortunately decided to call her Tinkerbell. She was one of those tiny, delicate, silky-furred terriers who looked like she might unravel if you could figure out which thread to pull, but her personality seemed to have been transplanted from a dog three or four times her size. She was never allowed out of the backyard, and whenever one of the other neighborhood dogs went by, she would claw at the locked gate and yell at them in Cyene, “You lookin’ at me? I can take you! Come over here and say that! Stop me before I tear ‘im apart!” and other such futile provocations.
    Kit sighed as Ponch went past, and as he followed, the noise scaled up and up. There was no point in going over and talking to Grarrhah. She took her watchdog role terribly seriously, and would work herself into such a lather that she’d already be prostrate and foaming at the mouth from overexcitement and frustration by the time you got to the gate. Making a poor creature like this more crazy than she was already was no part of a wizard’s business, so Kit just walked by as Grarrhah shrieked at him from behind the gate, “Thief! Thief! Burglars! Joyriders, ram raiders, walk-by shooters; lemme at ‘em, I’ll rip ‘em to shreds!”
    Kit walked on, wondering if there was something he could do for her. Then he grinned sourly. What a laugh! I don’t even know what to do about Neets.
    All at once he changed his mind about letting things wait until the next day. Kit reached into his pocket and pulled out the manual. Among its many bundled messaging functions, it had a provision for text and recorded media messaging for times when wizards were having trouble getting in touch with each other directly. Kit flipped to the back pages where such messages were composed and stored. “New message,” he said. “For Nita—”
    The page glowed softly in the dusk and displayed the long string of characters in the Speech that was Nita’s name, along with the equivalent ID/locator string for her manual.
    There the book sat, ready to take his message… and Kit couldn’t think what to say. I’m sorry? For what? I just told her what I thought. I wasn’t nasty about it. And I was right, too.
    He was strongly tempted to tell her so, but then Kit came up against a bizarre notion that doing so under the present circumstances would be somehow unfair. He spent another couple of minutes trying to find something useful to say. But Kit wasn’t sure what was bothering Nita, and he was still annoyed enough at the way she’d behaved to feel like it wasn’t his job to be the understanding one.
    Kit frowned, opened his mouth and then closed it again, discarding that potential message as well. Finally all he could find to say was, “If you need some time by yourself, feel free.”
    He looked at the page as the words transcribed themselves in the Speech. Then the transcription stopped and the blank space further down the page displayed one word:
    More?
    “No more,” Kit said. “Send it.”
    Sent .
    He stood there a moment, half hoping he’d get an answer right back. But there was no response, no hint of the subtle fizz or itch of the manual’s covers that indicated an answer. Maybe she’s out. Maybe she’s busy with something else.
    Or maybe she just doesn’t want to answer…
    He closed the manual, shoved it back into his pocket and started walking again. When Kit reached the streetlight where Jackson Street met Conlon, he looked around. “Ponch?” he said, then listened for the jingle of Ponch’s