by Rick Cook
"Yeah, a wreck. Oh, but that almost never happens," he said, catching sight of her face.
Moira barely had the belt fastened when Jerry started the car and pulled out in traffic. Moira found herself speeding along at an incredible clip bare inches from another car moving in the same direction. She looked up and saw other vehicles charging toward them, only to whiz by close enough to touch.
Moira gulped and turned white. Jerry, nonchalant and oblivious, kept his eyes on the road.
They came to an intersection and Jerry whipped the car through a right angle turn in the face of oncoming traffic. To Moira it appeared they had missed the truck bearing down on them by a hair’s breadth. She stared at the dashboard and tried to ignore the outside world.
There was a tremendous roar in her right ear. Moira jumped at the sound and looked up involuntarily. To her right, barely an arm’s length away sat a man who was going faster than they were. His arms were extended to the front and his beard and long hair were whipped into a wild tangle by the wind. The hedge witch caught a glimpse of the complicated black-and-silver contrivance he was sitting on before he flicked away around another car.
Jerry reached a place where the road narrowed, and climbed gently. Instead of slowing on the hill, he speeded up. Moira moaned softly and concentrated hard on her lap. Her hand grasped the door handle until the freckles stood out stark against the white knuckles.
Jerry glanced over at her. "Don’t pull on that!" he said sharply. "If the door comes open in traffic we could be in real trouble." Moira jerked her hand off the handle as if it had turned into a snake. She reached forward with both hands to grab the dashboard tightly.
Jerry wasn’t a very good driver, but he had been driving the California freeways for almost twenty years. He speeded up smoothly and edged left to merge into the center lane of traffic.
Out the right window Moira saw trees and greenery whizzing by so fast they were a blur. She looked left just in time to see Jerry jerk the wheel and slip the car into a space barely longer than the automobile.
They were sandwiched between two semis—roaring, bellowing monsters that threatened to spread Moira and the car between them like butter on a sandwich. She moaned again and closed her eyes.
"It’s not bad today," Jerry said conversationally. "You should see it when the traffic’s heavy."
Moira mumbled something and kept her eyes on her lap.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said I hope I never do see that," Moira said more loudly. But she didn’t lift her eyes.
Jerry looked at her sympathetically. He was a white knuckle flier himself. "Okay. If there’s anything you need, just let me know."
"My Lord," Moira said fiercely, "the only thing I need is for this trip to be over as soon as possible."
Wiz ran his hand over the surface of the stone one more time. There had to be a way out of this. After all, the Dark League would need to retrieve anyone captured in the pit, wouldn’t they?
He looked over at the spike-and-wood contraption in the pit. Then again, maybe not. It would be perfectly in character for the Dark League to leave a captive to rot in a place like this. Well, he wouldn’t get anywhere brooding on that. He would have to see what he could find.
Wiz put both his palms against the wall and pushed. His left hand met unyielding resistance, but the stone under his right hand seemed to shift. He pushed again. Yes, the stone had moved!
A secret door. Wiz didn’t know much about dungeons and mantraps, but that fitted perfectly with his conception of them. There must be a passage behind this wall.
He pushed again. The block shifted a little, but nothing else happened. He pushed the stones around it. Some of them also moved but no door opened. He put his fingers on the edge of the block and tugged hard. The stone moved slightly, but that was all.
He dropped his arms. Either he hadn’t found the right stones to push or the door was broken. Either way, it seemed like the best thing to do was force the door rather than rely on the mechanism. For that he needed something to pry with.
He looked at the iron spikes of the trap reflectively. The metal was dark and pitted with rust, but it looked strong. Each spike was about three feet long and perhaps two inches around, crudely forged to a point on one end.
He grabbed the end of a spike and tugged. The spike moved ever so slightly. He dug his heels into the stone floor and wrenched back on the spike with all his strength. The spike moved some more.
Eventually he was able to work the spike free of damp and somewhat rotten wood. It was heavier than he expected and his biceps ached from the pulling, but he ignored that and attacked the loose stone in the wall.
The tool was clumsy and there wasn’t much of a joint around the stone, but Wiz set to with a will, heedless of the noise he made. His technique was crude and it took a long time before he was able to pry the block part way out of the wall. With hands trembling from eagerness and fatigue, he jammed the bar into the joint and heaved one final time. The block clattered out onto the floor and Wiz thrust his hand into the opening.
Behind the stone was nothing but dirt and rock.
With a groan he threw the iron bar across the trap and slumped to the floor. It wasn’t a doorway at all, just a loose stone in the wall. He looked up at the hole in the ceiling. The only way out of here had to be through that hole. That meant he was trapped unless he could climb the overhanging walls or build a ladder.
There was wood in the spiked device, but not nearly enough to reach the surface, even if it were all combined into a single long pole. Stick the spikes into the wall and climb them like a ladder? Not enough spikes. Besides, how would he get past the overhang?"
Magic? With that demon on the loose he’d never live to complete the first spell.
And that was it, some half-rotten wood, a few pieces of iron and a block of stone levered from the wall.
A block of stone? Just one?
Wiz stood up and began to try the wall again. He found another loose stone, and then another and another. Most of the wall seemed to be loose, almost every other block could be pried free.
It was the cold, Wiz realized, the cold and the damp working at the stones. When this place was built the City of Night was kept magically warm. But with the fall of the League the magic had vanished and the stones had been subjected to alternate freezing and thawing. The walls of the trap had not been mortared and the working of the water had shifted the stones. The fact that most of the courtyard was paved in dark stone probably helped warm things up.
He picked up the spike and eyed the wall. This wasn’t as elegant as a hidden passage and it was sure going to take a lot longer, but it would work. Besides, he thought as he attacked the first stone, I don’t have anything better to do.
The real problem was going to be to get out enough of the blocks to do some good without bringing the whole place down on his head, but he had some ideas on that and it would be a while before he really had to worry.
Moira did not look up when they turned off the freeway and headed up a poorly paved road. She did not know how long they rocked along before they turned again onto a dirt road and rattled over a cattle crossing. The dust tickled her nose and made her cough, but she still didn’t look up.
"Well, here we are," Jerry said. You can look now." Moira kept staring at the dashboard, as if she intended to memorize every wrinkle and crack in the vinyl.
"Come on, end of the line. Are you all right?"
"I think," Moira said judiciously, "that Wiz was far braver than I ever knew."
She tore her eyes away from the dashboard and looked around. They were in a small valley. The brown hills above them were crowned with the gray-green of live oak trees. There was dust everywhere. The stink was still in the air, but not as strong here as in the city.
The field before them was crammed with vehicles standing cheek-by-jowl and all covered with a thin film of dust. A steady stream of people filtered out of the field, stopped at a table by the path an
d then headed over a low hill. Most of them were weighted down with bags, boxes, bundles and long poles of some light-colored wood.
"What is this place?"
"It’s a war. These people come here to pretend to be living in ancient times. Um, something like your place but with no magic."
Moira looked around, bemused. "They come here to pretend to be peasants?"
"Well, ah, not exactly."
"And why would the Mighty of your world wish to pretend there is no magic?"
"Actually," Jerry explained, "some of them are pretending there is magic."
Moira opened her mouth to ask another question and then thought better of it. This was remarkably similar to conversations she had sometimes with Wiz.
"It gets a little complicated. But we’ve got a better chance of finding what we need here than anyplace else I can think of."
Moira nodded and followed him across the field toward the table. She wondered what awaited them at the end of that path.
Wiz leaned back against the wall and examined his handiwork. Even with the iron bar and the frost-loosened stones it had been a rough job to pry the blocks loose. His knuckles were scraped, his palms were blistered and his shoulders and arms ached from pulling on the prybar.
He had taken the stones in more or less checker-board around the walls and piled them in the center of the pit directly under the trap door. Standing on the pile, he could reach up to the narrow neck of the pit. He still had a long way to go before he would have enough blocks to reach the top of the trap.
This is going to take forever, he thought, rubbing his shoulders and looking up. But the sooner he got to it the quicker it would be done. Anyway, it took his mind off how cold and hungry he was.
Sighing, Wiz picked up the bar again and went back to work.
"Morning, My Lord, My Lady," said one of the three large young men sitting at the table. "Site fee’s five bucks."
While Jerry peeled off several gray-green paper oblongs, Moira studied him, trying to make sense out of what she was seeing.
He was not a guardsman, of that Moira was sure. He had the body of a man but the face was still that of a child. He was dressed in a simple tunic over the sort of blue trousers Wiz called "jeans." He wore a red leather belt with a cheap, gaudy sword thrust scabberdless through it. Like a boy pretending to be a warrior, she thought, but with more self-importance, as if he expected people to take him seriously.
"Okay," the man said. "Medievals are required on site. You’ll have to stop by the hospitaller and get a loaner costume." He looked over at Moira in her long green wool skirt and scoop-neck blouse. "Your friend’s fine."
Jerry was fitted with a slightly-too-small tunic in purplish gray, trimmed with a darker purple zig-zags and tied about the middle with a piece of brown cord. The color made him look ill, but the woman with the trunk of clothing had nothing else that would fit someone of his girth.
As they topped the rise Moira gawked at what was spread out in the small valley below.
Nestled in among the live oaks and chaparral was an encampment of hundreds of tents of different shapes, sizes and colors. What seemed like thousands of people in clothing of every shade and hue milled about the valley like ants in an anthill.
In the center of the valley was a cleared space with perhaps two hundred men whaling away at each other with wooden weapons. The smack of wood on wood, the clank and clatter of steel and the shouts echoed off the hillsides.
For an instant she thought they were actually hurting each other. Then she saw a warrior who had dropped like a sack of sand under the blow of a pole-ax roll out of the fight, stand up and walk off the field. As the fighter came away from the battle, he took off his helm and shook out a mane of long blond hair. Moira realized with a shock it was a woman.
"Excuse me, My Lord, My Lady," came a voice behind them, "but you’re blocking the trail."
As they stepped aside a boy of perhaps fourteen struggled past them loaded down with several bundles and a half-dozen pole weapons. When he passed, Moira saw the heads were padding wrapped with some kind of silvery material.
At the bottom of the hill was a market. There were booths along the trail, and tables with cloths spread over them. The smell of roasting meat rose from the food stands and people milled and jostled through the throng, admiring wares, talking, eating and sometimes buying.
Most of the people seemed to be dressed in rags and patches, although here and there a man or a woman might be more substantially dressed. Everyone and everything was covered with fine brownish dust.
Many of the men and a few of the women were wearing what she recognized as armor, mostly concoctions of padded cloth, leather and light metal that looked as if it would come apart at the first serious blow.
Moira looked around eagerly, but missed the thing she had expected to see.
"Where is the hiring block, My lord?"
"The what?"
"The hiring block. This is a hiring fair, is it not?"
"No, not exactly. In fact most people come here to forget their jobs."
"Then how are we to find the ones we need?"
"We’ll have to ask. I think we need to find a herald first."
A man in a green cloak with crossed trumpets approached them. "Excuse me, My Lord, but did I hear you say you needed a herald?"
"Uh, yeah, I have an announcement I’d like you to make. We’re looking to hire a number of programmers and other computer specialists for a rather special job."
"And so you came here?" The herald nodded. "Smart move. I think there are more computer types per square foot at one of these wars than at anything this side of an ACM meeting."
"ACM?" Moira asked.
"Association for Computing Machinery, a professional group," Jerry told her. "Anyway," he said turning back to the herald, "we’re looking for systems-level programmers, systems analysts, documentation specialists, people with real-time or process control experience—if we can find them—and compiler writers."
"No machine operators?" the herald asked. "Employment or contract?"
"Contract. Probably three to six months."
"Well, normally they frown on even mentioning computers at these events," the said. "King Alfonso is a particular stickler for authenticity so you’re not going to get it announced at court. But I don’t think there’d be any real objection if I announced it in the merchant’s area and the non-medieval camping area."
"Great. Uh, is there any place I can sit and talk to people?"
"You can borrow my pavilion," the herald said. "I want to talk to you about this anyway. I’m looking for a change myself."
The herald’s pavilion turned out to be an aluminum-framed camping tent hung with banners and set well off to the side of the encampment.
Moira sat at a folding table under an awning, sipping lemonade from a wooden goblet and watching the knot of people who had gathered in response to the herald’s announcement.
They didn’t look like the Mighty Moira was used to. There wasn’t a full gray beard among them and none of them showed the stately bearing and serene self-control she associated with powerful magicians.
The first one into the tent was a dumpy dark-haired woman in a blue-and-silver gown whose long dagged sleeves nearly trailed in the dust. Far too elaborate for such a place, Moira thought, especially since these people did not have cleaning spells.
Behind her were a tall dark-haired woman with piercing dark eyes and a shorter, sandy haired man with a neat spade beard who seemed to be her husband.
Next to them was a lean man going bald on top with his remaining hair pulled back into a pony tail.
She wondered how Jerry was explaining her world’s needs to them.
"You certainly seem qualified, Ms. Connally," Jerry said to the woman sitting across from him. "I can’t tell you the nature of the job until you sign the nondisclosure agreement."
"Judith, please," the dark-haired woman in the blue-and-silver brocade gown corrected.
"I can tell you it is a short-term contract, probably about six months. The assignment requires that you live on-site until it is completed. The site is remote and rugged and contact with the outside world is very limited."
"A black site?"
Jerry recognized the reference to an ultra-secret project where the programmers were kept totally isolated.
"Kind of dark gray, actually."
Her eyebrows went up. "SDI, right?"
Jerry smiled, as he had seen so many recruiters do. "I am really not at liberty to say.
"Now," he went on, "I should also warn you that there is an element of physical risk in this."
The other’s eyes narrowed. "This is legal, isn’t it?"
"Yes," Jerry said, "That is, there is absolutely no law against what we are doing." At least not in California, he added mentally. I think Massachusetts still has a law against practicing witchcraft.
"Now, tell me a little bit more about your background."
The interviews went quickly. Jerry wasn’t interested in playing interviewer games, there was no application to fill out and no one had brought a resume to an SCA war. Besides, Jerry was a programmer himself, not some personnel bozo who only had the vaguest notion of what the job entailed.
And nobody is going to ask me to fill out an EEOC report on this one.
He had just talked to the eighth candidate when the herald, who went by the name of Ali Ahkan, stuck his head into the tent with a peculiar expression on his face.
"His Majesty, King Alfonso of Seville," the herald announced.
Jerry wasn’t up on the etiquette, but he stood up as the king entered.
"Your Majesty."
King Alfonso turned out to be a tall, rather lean man in his mid-twenties with an olive complexion and dark unruly hair. He was wearing a crown of sheet brass set with agates, dark hose, a black velvet doublet and riding boots. A broadsword hung from his hip on a white belt. His clothes were powdered with the brownish dust from the site.
The king stuck out his hand. "Karl Dershowitz," said the king with a distinctly Texas drawl.