A Wizard of Mars, New Millennium Edition Read Online Free PDF

with you. It’s been so hot so early this year, the backyard’s getting overrun with these.” He sighed. “And in another week it’ll be the zucchini. I’ve really got to check in with the global warming intervention group...”
    “Tomatoes??”  Nita said. “What kind of spell uses tomatoes?”
    “And tell Mamvish we send our best,” Tom said. “I’d love to go see her myself, but I have to get back to work. Carl and I and all the other Seniors are still hip-deep in the on-planet cleanup from last month’s business.”
    “I feel for you,” Nita said, not entirely sincerely. “Tom, there are a ton of these! My arms are breaking!”
    Tom just laughed. “So levitate them.”
    The spell to make them float would have cost as much energy as just carrying them, or more. Nita just gave Tom an annoyed look, boosted the overstuffed bag up from the bottom, and shifted it to her other arm. Tom picked up his cola again and went over to the table, gesturing at the stack of manuals. Several of them picked themselves up off one in the middle of the stack: Tom pulled it out, and the others settled back onto the stack once more.
    “Obviously our manuals will update with a précis of what you all decide to do about whatever she’s here for,” Tom said, sitting down. “Especially since Mamvish won’t have come all this way just for fun. But do me a favor and drop me a note to fill in any details you think we should know about.”
    “Okay,” Nita said, and shifted the bag to the other arm again. Tom was already paging through his own manual, wearing a distracted look... which frankly didn’t surprise Nita, considering what all the wizards on the planet had been through of late.  So why hang around and pester him? Let’s go find out what the tomatoes are good for.
    She hefted the bag again to resettle it over her hip, then wandered out of the house and over to the fishpond again, peering in. One of the koi came drifting up to the surface: it was Doitsu. “Hey,” Nita said. “I forgot to ask you:
    “Wha’d you think of the mealworms?
    Did they satisfy
    That deep-down desire for ‘yum’?”
    Doitsu gave her a look and just hung there in the water, fanning his fins and saying nothing.
    “Okay,” Nita said. “See if I go out of my way to bring  you  stuff from the bait shop again.”
    Doitsu eyed Nita from under the water. “The mealworms were lovely,” he said. “But your scansion’s execrable. ‘Wha’d’?”
    Nita rolled her eyes. “I’m just getting the hang of this! Cut me some slack.”
    “When you can construct a haiku without apostrophes, sure,” Doitsu said. “And not a moment sooner. If you’re going to be an oracular, you’ve got standards to maintain. So get out there and make me  not  want to spit in your eye.” And he vanished down into the water again.
    Nita shifted the bag of tomatoes to the other arm. “I’m getting trash-talked by  fish, ” she said under her breath. “Something’s wrong with this picture.” She sighed and took the flagstone path around the side of the house, heading for home.
    It wasn’t too long a walk, which was a good thing: though she kept shifting the tomato bag from hand to hand, both her arms were still killing her by the time she got close to her house. As Nita came down the sidewalk in the early sunset light, she looked at her front yard— all covered with ground ivy, and with the single big maple tree standing up out of the middle of it, shading everything— and thought,  Why does it look so little these days? And the house, too.  It was a standard enough bungalow for this neighborhood— white-shingled, black-roofed, two stories, with the attic partly converted—but lately it had seemed much smaller than it had this time last year. As Nita walked up the driveway, the memory of the Crossings Intercontinual Worldgating Facility came back to her unbidden: that vast main concourse illuminated with its strange sourceless night lighting, its