Free A Wizard of Mars, New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane

enough via manual. I’m sorry if I moved quickly, there! It’s really hard for me to help myself around these things. It’s something to do with the bioflavinoids.”
    “You should grow them at home!” Nita said.
    “They’re not the same,” Mamvish said, sounding sorrowful as she hunkered down on the rocky beach again. “There’s something in the water here. Or the air. Or the spectrum of this particular sunlight. Tomatoes are just happiest on Earth...” She sighed. “But it doesn’t matter. They’re a tremendous compensation for other slight annoyances.” One eye glanced back toward the Komodo dragon, which was disappearing into the brush up near the cliff. “And, after all, who knows if I’d ever have found out about Mars at all without the tomatoes?”
    “Tomatoes are all very well,” Ronan said, sitting up and stretching himself in the sunshine, “but as for these folks, you should just move them. If they don’t have the smarts to agree to leave on their own, then change their minds for them—”
     
    “Don’t tempt me,” Mamvish said, waving her tail in annoyance. “Unfortunately this issue goes right to the heart of the Wizard’s Oath: ‘I shall change no creature unless it, or the system of which it is a part, is threatened.’” She looked around her. “And they are. These are the only ones left of these creatures, except for the few hundred on the other island, and those few others scattered about the planet in zoos. But if I change their minds for them, will they still be the creatures they are?” A long, deep fluting sigh came out of her. “Never mind. They’re a problem for another day… though one that has its resonances with what we’re about to start.”
    Nita opened her mouth, but Carmela, sitting up on that boulder, put up her hand and starting waving it around like some back-of-the-classroom kid desperate to be called on. “Excuse me,” she said in the Speech, “but what are we about to start?”
    Nita threw a glance sidewise at Kit. He was covering his face and groaning softly. One of Mamvish’s eyes was suddenly regarding Carmela; the other one was looking in what seemed mild confusion from Nita, to Kit, to Darryl, to Ronan. “Has this planet gone astahfrith without my noticing?” she said. “I have been busy…”
    Nita snickered, for this was probably an understatement. “No,” she said. “We still have to hide our wizardry, mostly. But there are people who’re in on the secret and aren’t freaked by it. Mamvish, this is Kit’s sister Carmela. Mela, this is Mamvish fsh Wimsih fsh Mentaff.”
    “Hey,” Carmela said in the Speech, “Life says, ‘hi there.’”
    Mamvish’s eye actually tried to lean farther out of her skull in Carmela’s direction. “And It greets you by me as well. You’re not a wizard, though . . .”
    “Don’t need to be,” Carmela said, sounding utterly certain. “Too much work. I’m just a tourist training to be a galactic personal shopper.”
    This was all news to Nita, but she tried to keep her grin restrained and out of Kit’s sight: his reaction to Carmela’s ever-growing ability with the Speech had been becoming increasingly pained. Mamvish looked unfocused for a moment, or as much more unfocused as one could be expected to look when her eyes were already pointing in different directions. Then she said, “Oh! You’re the one who shot up the Crossings during the intervention last month.”
    “That would be me,” Carmela said. “But Neets was there first. And our colleague with all the legs.”
    “Sker’ret is a great talent,” Mamvish said, “and an invaluable resource. His people have been instrumental in your world’s development, you know that? At least as far as worldgates go. It’s good to see that you’re so well connected.”
    One of Mamvish’s rear legs came up to scratch behind where one of her ears might have been, had she had any on the outside. “Meanwhile, I don’t see why you’d need to be