Read A Wizard of Mars, New Millennium Edition for Free Online Page B

rules for how it runs.”
    Carmela considered this. “So a kernel’s kind of like a soul?”
    “No. But souls can get hooked up to them. Anyway, a planet’s kernel usually just bops around inside the planet, doing its own thing and keeping the gravity and such working right. If there are wizards on the planet, one of the strongest ones gets told to keep an eye on the kernel and make sure it keeps working right.” Nita dropped the pink top back in the drawer.
    “But there’s no people there, you said. So no wizards—”
    “Not now,” Nita said. She put the green top down on the dresser and shut the drawer. “But once upon a time...”
    “There  were  people?”
    “We don’t know,” Nita said. “But everybody  feels  like there should have been.”
    “Whoa!” Carmela said, sounding both amused and skeptical. “Sounds kind of vague for you, Miss Neets. You’re usually Hard Science Girl.”
    “Yeah, well, everybody’s vague about this,” Nita said, sitting down on her desk chair and pulling off her shoes. “Mysterious stuff, and nothing in the manual to tell us what happened.” Then she wrinkled her nose and got up again, opening a different dresser drawer to get at the socks. “But when a species feels the effect of a neighboring planet this strongly, it usually means they’ve got past history.”
    “What? Like somebody there invaded us before?”
    Nita pulled off her old socks, put on a new pair. “Not necessarily. Maybe they could have ...or they meant to. But it never happened.” Then she grinned, looking up. “Or else it  did  happen ...and we’re all Martians.”
    Carmela gave Nita a very wide-eyed look.  “¿Que?”
    “There are lots of meteorites from Mars lying around on Earth,” Nita said, getting up and feeling around under her dresser for her favorite beat-up sneakers. “Some people think that life here might have been started by some little bug on a shooting star that survived the ride in through the atmosphere. Splashed down into a nice warm sea... and then umpty million years later...” She grinned, gestured around her: her bedroom, her clothes, her teen magazines. “Us.”
    “And what do wizards say about that?” Carmela said.
    Nita shook her head. “Jury’s out,” she said. “The manual doesn’t normally tell much about a species’ origins until the species has already discovered a lot of the truth itself. Culture-shock issues.”
    “ I  wouldn’t be shocked,” Carmela said, sitting up and folding her legs under her. “As far as I’m concerned, half the people in school act like Martians already.”
    Nita snickered, wandering over to the door of her room and chucking the used socks out at the laundry basket in the hall. They bounced off the wall and went in. “But lots of people  would  be bothered,” Nita said. “Worldview stuff, religious stuff... Hey, look, even wizards are only human. We’re not all perfect at having both the real  and  the true in our heads at the same time without them blowing each other up! Especially since both the real and the true keep changing all the time.” She headed back to the dresser to pick up the jeans and the top she’d decided on. “But some people think that finding the truth for themselves is cooler than just sitting around with what people tell them is true. They think it’s okay to find out where you really came from, even if at first it gets you upset.”
    Carmela sat quiet for a moment. “You know,” she said, “if people here found out there really  were  Martians...”
    Nita bent down for her sneakers. “They’d freak,” Nita said, heading for the door. “And they’d do it big! Even if the little probes we’ve sent there don’t find anything bigger than germs, some people will still freak, because they think we’re—they’re— the most important things in the universe, all the life there is.” She snorted.
    “Yeah,” Carmela said. “Sker’ret would laugh all his legs off at that