High Wizardry New Millennium Edition Read Online Free PDF Page B

riding me, and I swear, if she keeps it up much longer…”
    “She’s probably jealous.”
    Nita laughed. “What, of me?”
    “Who else?” Kit got off the scales and wandered over to the railing between them and the glass curtain-wall, one face of the clear cube surrounding the Great Sphere. “Neets, why’re you surprised? You’re a wizard. You’re the one who told me how hot Dairine’s been for magic since she was a little kid. Any kind… Star Wars, you name it. And now all of a sudden not only does it turn out that there really is such a thing, but you turn up with it! And from what we had to tell her to keep her quiet after she found out, Dari knows that you and I do serious stuff.” Kit wandered back over toward her. “She wishes she could get her hands on the power… and there’s no guarantee she ever will.”
    Nita walked away from the scales and made her way over to the railing by the glass wall. Kit beside her. “I think she’s been into my manual in the last couple days.”
    “So there you go,” Kit said. “If she can’t have the magic, she’s gonna try to punish you for having it. Hate to say this, but she’s acting like even more of a brat than usual.”
    That agreed too well with thoughts Nita had been trying to reject. “Yeah….”
    “Ladies and gentlemen,” said a woman’s voice from speakers high up in the cube, “the planetarium is now closing. Thank you.” And some of the lights high above them started to gently dim.
    Nita sighed. Kit punched her lightly in the arm. “Come on,” he said, “don’t let her get to you. Let’s go over to the park and get a couple of dirty-water hot dogs to take the edge off before we go home. If she starts getting on our nerves, we’ll tell her I’m about to turn her into a fire hydrant and then call in every dog on the upper West Side to try her out.”
    “Too late,” Nita said. “She already knows we don’t do that kind of thing.”
    “She knows you don’t do that kind of thing,” Kit said. “But she may not know that I don’t….”
    Nita looked at his grim expression and wondered briefly whether the grimness was all faked. “I really am starved.”
    “So c’mon.”
    They headed down the inside of the cube together and came to the stairwell leading to the level below. There, under an arrow pointing toward the first floor level, was a sign they’d seen earlier that day and laughed at:
    TO MARS, VENUS, AND LADIES’ ROOM
    “Wait for me,” Nita said. “Once she’s done in there, she’ll probably try to break into ‘Venus’ to see how they’re doing the lava.”
    Kit rolled his eyes. “Being a fire hydrant may be too good for her.”
    Nita went down the stairs. “Dari?” she called, annoyed. “Come on before they lock us in.”
    It was considerably cooler down here: probably something to do with the air conditioning. Nita turned right at the bottom of the stairs and walked quickly through the Venus exhibit, rubbing her upper arms at the chill, which went right through her thin T-shirt. The sluggishly erupting Venerian volcano behind its glass wall had already been turned off. No one else, visitor or staff, was to be seen from where Nita stood all the way down to the temporary plasterboard wall with the AmHist logo and the laser-printed sign that said MARS CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE.
    “Still in the toilet,” Nita muttered, annoyed. Reading, probably. One of these days she’s gonna fall in… She went back the way she’d come and went on past the stairs to the ladies’ room.
    It was not only cold down here, there was a serious draft. She grabbed the handle of the door and pulled; it resisted her slightly, and there was a faint hoo noise, air sliding through the door crack as she tugged. “Dari? Come on, we’re leaving!” Nita pulled harder, the door came open—
    Air blew hard past her and ruffled her hair into her eyes. Bitter cold smote the front of her, and in it the humidity in the air condensed out instantly,