Young Wizards: Lifeboats by Diane Duane

Author:Diane Duane [Duane, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Errantry Press
Published: 2015-09-20T23:00:00+00:00

SEVEN:

Saturday

Kit woke later than planned, sprawled face first on his bed, hardly having moved an inch from the way he’d fallen onto it. His annoyance at realizing he hadn’t been able to stay awake even long enough to get his clothes off was only exceeded by his horror at realizing what time it was: easily two hours into his shift. “Djammmm,” Kit said under his breath, suspecting that his shiftmate had decided to let him sleep late after the unsettling events of the predawn period. But it doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t the alarm in my manual go off? I don’t get it…

Then something occurred to Kit. He knew somebody who worked closely with the power that ran the wizards’ manuals: in fact, someone who had that instrumentality (apparently) inside her head.

“Bobo?” Kit said.

Nothing.

He sighed. “Never mind,” Kit said out loud. “Looks like weird’s the keyword for this whole damn intervention...”

Kit got dressed in fresh clothes, put his head out the puptent’s portal and saw that the wind was up again; so he reached back in for his vest and threw it on before he venturing outside.

To his surprise, Djam was not sitting on the Stone Throne: Cheleb was. “Earlier than I thought I’d see you,” Cheleb said, sounding quite cheerful. “Plainly name of planet Earth should be more correctly translated as Stone. Seems to be what you’re made of.”

“Always nice to be complimented,” Kit said, “assuming I can figure out why. And whether I deserved it. Where’s Djam?”

“Asleep,” Cheleb said. “Apparently visitor last night had same effect on him as had on you; just took longer to set in.” Hae shook haes head. “So sorry to have missed it. Never had a chance to see a Fourth before, probably never will again.”

Kit didn’t know what to make of this, so he just went and sat down by Cheleb for a moment and looked over his shoulder at the gate-monitoring diagrams laid out on the stone. “They behaving themselves?”

“Even better than when being shouted at by your good self,” Cheleb said. “Didn’t think it was possible. But then again, Fourth…”

Kit shook his head. “How’s the sibik situation?”

“Not even one.”

“Yet,” Kit said.

“All right, so far. But pleasant change, frankly. Cute things, but can get a bit overbearing.” Cheleb sighed and stretched. “Any advancement on token-internalization side of things?”

“What? Oh.” Kit smiled. “Been working on it. I’ll be thinking more about it over the course of the day.”

“Good plan,” Cheleb said. “Had it strongly suggested to me by immediate gate-management supervisor upstream that you two should take day off, secondary to exciting events of last night. So maybe should go visit one’s errantry-partner and work on the project a little.”

Kit opened his mouth. “By suggested, I mean ordered,” said Cheleb. “Check own version of Knowledge.”

Kit stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Chel, I really, really want to take you up on this, but this ought to be my shift.”

“Isn’t anymore,” Cheleb said. “Made of stone Earth wizard may be, but should know that before arrival of you two, had been handling triple shifts myself.

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