Wizard's Holiday, New Millennium Edition Read Online Free PDF Page A

“She doesn’t tell me everything she does. And I can’t always guess. Which may be a good thing, since if I’d known about this, I’d have—” Reamed her out, Nita was about to say, and then she stopped, because she didn’t know if it was strictly true.
    She looked over at Tom. “I’ve seen the section in the manual about this exchange thing,” Nita said, “but when I read it, it never occurred to me that you could just sign yourself up for one. I thought someone had to nominate you.”
    “Oh, not always,” Tom said. “You can sign up for it yourself, if you have the spare time and think the circumstances warrant it.”
    “Which plainly Dairine did,” Nita’s dad said.
    “Harry,” Tom said, “I think all we have here is a case of Dairine doing what she usually does: pushing the envelope. Testing. It’s not that unusual for an early-latency wizard. You come into your power in a big way, then it drops off in a big way, and afterward you’re likely to spend a while plunging around trying to redefine yourself as more than a wonder child. There’s always the fear, ‘Was that all I had? Was the way I was when I started out as good as I’m ever going to get?’ Takes a while to put that to bed.”
    Nita’s dad sighed, leaned back in his chair and drank some coffee, then made a face: It had gone cold. “This hasn’t made trouble for you, has it? If it has, I’m sorry.”
    Tom shook his head. “Nothing major,” he said. “Not compared with some of the sanctioning I have to deal with. The adult wizards are worse than the kids, in some ways: as you get older, there’s an unfortunate tendency to start to lose the innate hunger for rules that you have when you’re young. Some of us start trying to bend them in ways that aren’t always innocuous… ”
    Nita’s dad abruptly burst out laughing. “Whoa, you lost me. Kids have an innate hunger for rules?”
    Tom looked wry. “Played hopscotch lately?” he said. “One toe over that chalk line and you are dead. But let me extend the metaphor more toward adult experience, because one of the places where the rule-hunger does persist is sports. You’re a soccer fan, Harry; I see you up at the high school refereeing on weekends. About this weird and complex regulation called the offside rule—”
    “I can explain that,” Nita’s dad said.
    “And what’s more, you’ll enjoy explaining it,” Tom said. “Possibly as much as you enjoy enforcing it on the would-be violators.”
    Nita’s dad opened his mouth and then shut it again, grinning. “You might be able to convince me about this eventually,” he said.
    Tom just smiled. “Anyway, this isn’t anything that I don’t deal with more remotely, twenty or thirty times a week. It just happens that we live around the corner, so I have an excuse to exert my influence personally… and to drink your coffee, which even when it doesn’t come out of a fancy capsule machine is way better than Carl’s. He thinks any coffee that doesn’t eat the pot is a waste.” Tom sighed and leaned back in his chair. “As far as this particular problem goes, it’s no big deal. Since we’ve had the energy authorized for an excursus, I need to think about what to do with it. But that’s the least of my worries at the moment.”
    He ran one hand through his hair as he spoke. Nita looked at it in slight shock; she saw something she’d never noticed before. All of a sudden there was some silver showing there, above the ears, and sprinkled in salt-and-pepper fashion through the rest of Tom’s hair. When did that start? Is he okay?
    “Interesting times?” Nita’s dad said.
    Tom nodded. “Interesting times. The world isn’t quite what it used to be, these days… ”
    “Noticed that,” Nita’s dad said. “Come on, that cup’s gone cold on you… let me stick it in the microwave. More milk?”
    Her dad and Tom went back into the kitchen. Nita got up and headed upstairs. Her sister was in her room, sitting at