"Okay," she said. Normally she wouldn't have been enthusiastic about spending any significant part of her morning talking to a zit, but if she talked the pimple out of happening right now, it'd take her less effort than if she waited until later. "Uh, excuse me," she said in the wizardly Speech– and then stopped. Wait a minute. I don't know the word for "pimple." Nita frowned. For a moment she considered the tube of facial scrub on the shelf by the sink, then shook her head and reached out toward what otherwise looked like empty air beside her. Into that "empty air," the pocket of otherspace where she normally kept her wizard's manual, Nita's arm disappeared up to the shoulder. She felt around for a moment-/ really have to clean this thing out; there's too much stuff in here-and then pulled out what to most people would have looked like a small hardbound library book an inch or so thick. Nita started paging through it. Let's see. Pimple, pimple… see "aposteme." She shook her head, turning more pages. What's an aposteme? Sometimes I really wonder about the indexing in this thing. "Nita?" came a shout, faintly, from the other end of the house. "What, Daddy?" she shouted back. "Phone!" Nita raised her eyebrows. At this hour of the morn ing? It's not Kit; he wouldn't bother with the phone. "Thanks!" The word for "phone," at least, she knew perfectly well. Nita held out her hand. "If you would?" she said in the Speech to the handset in question. The portable phone from the kitchen appeared in her hand, its hold button blinking. She hit the button, meanwhile balancing her manual on the edge of the sink while she kept paging through it. "Hello?" "Nita," Tom Swale's voice said. "Good morning." "Hey, how are you?" Nita said. "A little pressed for time at the moment," said her local Senior Wizard. "How was your holiday?" "Not bad," she said. "Listen, what's the Speech word for 'pimple'?" There was a pause at the other end. "I used to know that," Tom said. "But you don't anymore?" "I'll look it up.