by Rick Cook
"Jerry Andrews."
"So tell me," said the king, pulling up the stool, "what’s this super-secret job you’re recruiting for?"
"How did you find out?"
He shrugged. "It’s all over camp. Did you know you’re with the CIA and you’re recruiting programmers who are expert swordsmen to fight their way into Afghanistan so they can tap into the Russians’ SDI computer network?"
"It’s nothing like that," Jerry said uncomfortably.
"Of course not." The king smiled. "If anyone in this bunch has a choice between a good story and the truth, the good story will win out every time."
"Look, I’m sorry if we’re interfering with your event, but we needed some people with special talents in a hurry."
The king waved that off. "What interference? You’re off in a corner in someone’s pavilion talking to people one at a time. Oh, a couple of people did come to me to complain about the announcement you had the heralds make." He snorted. "Down in Texas we called them piss ants."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because my current contract just ran out and the job sounds interesting—Afghanistan or no. Could you tell me about it?"
The next candidate was as unimpressive as the king—Karl, Jerry corrected himself—had been impressive.
At first he thought the kid had wandered in by mistake. He was slightly plump in the face. A downy blond beard decorated his cheeks. His eyes were brown, dark in contrast to his skin and hair. He was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a satin tunic that had probably once been purple but was now faded and stained to something resembling blue. A cheap hunting knife was clipped to his belt and a wooden goblet hung from a leather thong.
Without waiting for an invitation he sat down. "Thorkil du Libre Dragonwatcher. I understand you’re looking for programmers."
Jerry eyed him without enthusiasm. "We are. Are you a programmer?"
"Yeah," he said flushing, "and I’m damn good."
"Do you have a degree?"
"I attended Cal Tech."
"Yes, but do you have a degree?"
The kid fidgeted under Jerry’s stare.
"Okay, so maybe I don’t, but I’m good."
Jerry sighed to himself. Well, if you wanted to find frogs you had to kiss a few toads—or however that saying went.
"We need people with experience."
"I’ve got experience," he protested. "I’ve worked in TOS 1.4, AmigaDOS and ProDOS."
Jerry, who didn’t consider a computer a computer unless it ran at least BSD Unix, winced. "Those are game machines."
"The Amiga’s no game machine," the kid flared. "Neither is the ST. Besides, I’ve done real-time programming in Forth on a Trash 80 Model I."
That was slightly more interesting. From Moira’s confused recitation of what Wiz had done, Jerry knew he had used the Forth language for some of the programming. Besides, anyone who could do anything useful in real time on something as limited as a Model I clearly had talent.
"Okay," he said, making a mark on the clipboard, "I’ll let you know later."
Panting, Wiz jammed his pry bar into the joint and leaned on it with all his strength again. The stone shifted more. He dropped the bar, got his fingers on the edge and tugged at the stone. The rock moved slightly and its neighbors shifted with it. Instinctively Wiz jumped backwards, lost his balance and went tumbling down the side of the rock pile. With a crash and a roar a whole section of the neck gave way. Stones cascaded down into the pit and went bouncing in every direction.
Coughing from the dust, Wiz looked up. The side of the neck had slumped in on itself. Half the pit was full of blocks and rubble and the vertical wall had collapsed into a steep incline that led out of the trap and into the courtyard.
Wiz shook his head to clear it. Well, that works too. Slowly and carefully, he climbed up the pile of rubble and out of the pit.
* * *
"Better than I expected," Jerry told Moira at the end of three hours. "We’ve got systems programmers, documentation specialists, real-time programmers and people with control and simulation experience here."
"Are they of the Mighty?"
"Well, they’re a pretty high-powered bunch, especially considering we had to put together the team at such short notice. That first one, Judith Connally, has done real-time programming on military projects. Mike and Nancy Sutton, the husband and wife team, are a process control programmer and a documentation specialist respectively."
He made a face. "If I know Wiz, we’re gonna need a documentation specialist. Anyway, we’ve got some good potential here."
"How will you select them?"
"Well, Moira, it’s your show. You’ve got the ultimate say in who we choose."
"I will be guided by you in this, Lord," Moira said. "I know little of such matters. But there is one I would like included. The young one. Thorkil du Libre Dragonwatcher."
Jerry raised his eyebrows. "That kid? He’s not in the same league with most of the rest of the people and I think he’s a pirate to boot."
"I thought he said he was a programer."
"A pirate is a kind of programmer. He steals other people’s software."
"Nonetheless, I would have him."
Jerry shrugged. "I think he’s going to be more trouble than he’s worth, but okay. I’ll add him to the list." He made a note on the pad and looked up.
"Why do you want him, anyway?"
"A feeling," Moira said. "Just a feeling."
"A premonition?"
Moira smiled. "In this place? No, I just feel that he has something to offer. I do not know, perhaps he reminded me of Wiz."
Jerry made a face. "Now that you mention it, there is a certain resemblance." He scribbled another note on the list. "Okay, then. That’s our team."
"Now what?" Moira asked.
"Now we call them back, explain the terms and give them the contract to sign." He made another face. "This is where it is going to get real interesting."
There was food in the black and white palace after all. Wandering what had been the kitchen, Wiz found half a flat round loaf of bread and several strips of dried meat that had fallen behind a counter
The meat was probably tough before it had been dried and it was certainly stringy. The bread was heavy, and full of what seemed to be sawdust, but after two days and a night in the pit Wiz was in no mood to complain. He wolfed down his find and then curled up in a corner.
Maybe there is justice in the world after all, he thought drowsily as he drifted off.
"… and you receive a signing bonus of two point three ounces of gold and a rate of pay of two point three ounces of gold per week for the duration of the contract," Jerry told the selected group of programmers gathered under the awning.
"Gold?" asked Ali Akhan, the herald.
Jerry shrugged. "Simplifies matters for the employer."
"This guy’s either a libertarian or a drug smuggler," Karl Dershowitz said. Jerry did not reply.
Moira smiled. "We really are…"
"… not at liberty to say," Nancy Sutton finished for her. "We know the drill."
"Okay," said Cindy Naismith, a short, slender woman with close-cropped brown hair. "What about performance penalties?"
"None. We can tell you so little about the project until you get on-site that it wouldn’t be fair. However there is a bonus if the contract is completed on time to the client’s satisfaction."
He pushed the clipboard out into the middle of the table. "If you accept the terms, sign this agreement."
Ali Akhan sat down and began to read through the six-page document. Jerry waited to see what happened when he got to the non-disclosure clause. The contract was something they had whipped together out of the pieces of contracts Jerry had in his computer at home. It was pretty much the standard verbiage—except for the non-disclosure agreement.
"… if this agreement is breached, employee will immediately be struck by lightning and hereby agrees to forfeit his immortal soul…" Ali Akhan read out. He looked
up angrily. "What kind of shit is this? I mean it’s very funny, but who’s gonna believe that nonsense?"
Moira smiled sweetly. "Oh, I think we can contrive to convince, My Lord."
"This is weird," he muttered, reaching for a pen. Then he looked up and grinned. "You don’t want me to sign in blood do you?"
"Oh no, that will not be necessary," Moira told him seriously.
Ali Akhan gave her a funny look and then signed his name. Taking the contract back, Jerry saw that his real name was Larry Fox.
Several other people looked at them strangely after they finished reading the contract, but none of them refused to sign it—much to Jerry’s surprise. Either things were slow in the Valley or these people were stranger than most computer types.
Considering the milieu…
"Fine then," he told the assembled group. "We will meet at the back parking lot of Los Alamitos Mall at seven o’clock Wednesday morning. Have someone drive you or leave your cars at home. Transportation will be provided from the meeting point to our destination.
"Come packed and ready to leave. Oh yeah. Don’t have anyone wait for you. Security, you know."
Several people looked at him strangely.
"Gotta be SDI," someone muttered.
"I wish we could leave sooner," Moira said as the newly formed team dispersed.
"I know, but we’ve got to give people time to get their affairs in order. Three days is really pushing it."
"Oh, I know, but I just wish…" She looked up at him. "Besides, I miss Wiz terribly."
Jerry studied her expression. "I’m getting kind of anxious to see him myself."
Wiz stayed at the black and white palace for as long as he dared. But there wasn’t any more food to be found in the kitchen or the palace storerooms. Besides, the Dark League’s search was working its way down into the waterfront neighborhood. He could hear the wizards calling to each other as they searched the streets and warehouses.
With the search moving to the waterfront, he decided the best thing he could do was to head back to the top of the town. Maybe there would be places up there heated by the volcano.
"Is there aught else to do here?" Moira asked after the last of their new employees had signed and left.
"Well, we could head back tonight, but there are a couple of more people here I’d like to talk to. The king has offered us space in his motorhome. Would you mind spending the night?"
"If we left now we would have to drive back the way we came in darkness?"
"Yes."
"Then let us stay the night," Moira said firmly. She wasn’t looking forward to the return trip in daylight and the idea of doing it at night was more than she could stand.
While none of the city of Night was warm, there were definitely some parts that were colder than others. Whether because of the natural microclimate or magic, Wiz didn’t know. But this street was especially cold.
Water had trickled down the street and frozen into a layer of glare ice, dark, shiny and unbelievably slick.
Wiz picked his way up the edge of the street carefully. The last thing he needed now was a broken leg.
He was so busy watching his step that he forgot to watch where he was going. He turned the corner and literally collided with a black-robe wizard.
They were both knocked flat, but Wiz recovered quicker. He spun onto his hands and knees and took off like a sprinter around the corner.
The wizard pounded around the corner hot on his heels and shouting at the top of his lungs. "I have found him. To me! To me! I have found HHHHIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMMM…"
Wiz ducked into a doorway and looked back to see the wizard go sliding by, flat on his back with his arms and legs waving in the air like a big black beetle. He almost laughed. Then he thought better of it and took off running as fast as he could.
When he stopped running he was more than a half a mile from the icy street. He sank to his heels with his head between his knees while he gasped in great lungfuls of the frigid air. Gradually his breath came back and he began to study his surroundings.
Behind him was a gate big enough to lead an elephant through. Through it he could see a courtyard with rooms opening onto it.
One place is as good as another, he thought. Keeping a wary eye for traps, he started exploring the building.
Nearly three hours later, Wiz stepped through the last smashed door and wrinkled his nose. The storeroom had been thoroughly ransacked, more than once from the looks of it. Besides, it smelled as if something had been lairing here.
But there was nothing here now and a storeroom seemed like the best place to find food. The buildings around this courtyard had apparently been barracks, with the workrooms, armories and storerooms that supported the soldiers. The armories had been stripped to the walls and the barracks were deserted, but there was a chance there might be something left in the storerooms.
This one didn’t look promising, he admitted as he poked among the rubble. There were bolts of cloth that had been pulled off the shelves, torn and trampled. Boxes of iron rivets had been broken open and the rivets scattered across the floor. Bundles of leather thongs, cracked and rotted hung from pegs on one wall. It didn’t seem like the kind of place where food had been kept.
Still, he was here and a quick check of the other buildings showed nothing more promising. The barracks kitchen had been easy to locate, but there was nothing to eat there. What hadn’t been carried off had been consumed by rats or larger animals.
The City of Night was more complex than he had ever imagined, Wiz thought vaguely as he poked the piles of rubbish in the corners and turned over debris on the floor. Somewhere there had to be food storehouses to feed the people who had lived here. But he didn’t have the faintest notion where.
Wiz stopped short. There, on the very top shelf was a pottery jar with a familiar shape.
Pickled fish, he realized. There were some districts along the Freshened Sea where salted fish was packed in vinegar with garlic, onions, vegetables, and spices and sealed in crocks to age and ferment. To the people of those districts pickled fish was a delicacy. Everyone else made jokes about it, especially about its tendency to produce gas.
Apparently the jokes about pickled fish were universal and whoever used this room had kept a personal cache here rather than listen to them.
With shaking hands he took the jar off the shelf. It was full and the clay seal around the lid was unbroken. Quickly he smashed the lid with a piece of wood from the floor.
The contents were dark brown, definitely past their prime and Wiz had made his share of jokes about pickled fish. But this was the most delicious thing he had ever eaten. Heedless of the promissory rumblings of his stomach, he finished the entire crock.
At 7:00 a.m. the group gathered in the back parking lot of the shopping center.
They were carrying everything from designer luggage to backpacks. One or two of them had laptop computers under their arms. Jerry wondered how well those would work where they were going. A couple more had apparently believed the Afghanistan story enough to bring cases of liquor with them. That, at least, would be useful, he decided.
"Okay, people," he called out. "Moira here, will…" he looked around. "Where’s Moira?"
"Here, Lord." Moira came trotting up with a large flat box under her arm.
"What’s in the box?" Jerry asked her.
"A present." She handed it to him. "Will you hold it for me?" Be careful not to tip it." Then she looked up and frowned at the sky.
"The haze will make it hard to tell the time," she said. "That complicates matters. Perhaps it would be best to wait for the afternoon time."
"That’s smog and it’s not going to clear today," Jerry told her. "If you need to tell the time, use my watch." He stripped it off his meaty wrist and handed it to her.
Moira shook her head. I must know the time in day-tenths after sunrise," she said. "Not the time by your local system."
"Day-tenths?"
"One tenth of the time bet
ween sunrise and set."
"Wait a minute," said a small man with the face of an intelligent mouse and a mop of brown hair. He stripped off his own wristwatch, and began punching the tiny buttons beneath the face.
"There you go," he said handing the watch. "I haven’t set it against the Naval Observatory in a couple of months so it may be a tenth of a second off, but I hope it will do."
Moira studied the madly spinning numbers on the display. They looked something like the numbers Wiz used, but she didn’t know them well enough to use them.
She handed the watch to Jerry. "Here, My Lord. Tell me when it is two day-tenths."
"Coming up on it now."
"Hey, guys!"
Thorkil du Libre Dragonwatcher—Danny Gavin, Jerry reminded himself—came running across the parking lot with a backpack slung over one shoulder and bouncing against his hip.
"You are late," Moira said severely.
"Hey, I’m sorry. I had to hitch, okay?"
Moira opened her mouth to say something else, but Jerry interrupted her.
"Time in thirty seconds."
Moira handed her box to Jerry and gestured them all into a tight group. Then she drew out the golden cord Bal-Simba had given her and laid a circle perhaps fifteen feet in diameter in the dusty surface of the parking lot, muttering as she did so.
"Now," she said, turning to the programmers. "You must all stand close together and above all, stay within the circle. Do not step outside it or break it in any way."
Checking the watch Jerry had given her, she raised her wand and began to chant.
At first no one said anything. Then the astonishment began to wear off and the cracks started.
"Is this where the flying saucer shows up?" someone asked.
"Scotty, beam me up," someone else called out.
Moira ignored them and went on with the chant.
"Next stop Oz," Judith chimed in.
And then the world dissolved.
Part III: COMPILE
Fourteen: Employee Orientation
You never find out the whole story until after you’ve signed the contract.