by Rick Cook
Every time the beast struck a rock it let out a roar and a gout of flame, making the walls ring and lighting the cavern to its edges. The result was like being in a giant pinball machine during especially active play.
Finally the dragon slid backwards into a tunnel off the main cave. A quick, precisely aimed lightning bolt struck inside the tunnel and collapsed the mouth into a pile of rock. Behind the landslide they could hear the faint roaring of a very unhappy dragon.
“Dragon in the side pocket!” Danny whooped. “Awesome.”
Wiz discovered he could move again. “Let’s get our awes out of here before that dragon digs himself out. Move it people!”
“But the treasure!” Malkin protested.
“Mark it on the map and we’ll pick it up on the way out. Now come on!”
Everyone complied, but Wiz noticed that Malkin and Glandurg clinked suspiciously as they hurried down the tunnel.
###
There was a dragon asleep beside the fire, with only an occasional tail twitch or foot thump to show he was dreaming dragonish dreams.
It was in fact an achingly normal scene for the programmers’ workroom, if you could ignore the whispering shadows outside the windows.
Jerry Andrews stared at the four screens hanging above his desk and bit his lip. As decoration they were spectacular, all neon colors ranging through the whole spectrum with annotations and hypertext links in other glaring colors. As information they were just about useless.
“Shit,” Jerry exclaimed, throwing himself backwards so hard his chair creaked.
The dragon lifted his head questioningly.
“My Lord?” Moira asked as her personality asserted itself.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this frustrated.”
As a hacker’s significant other, Moira recognized the signs. Jerry needed a sounding board. She also knew that a sympathetic ear was more important than cogent advice. A Siamese cat would do the job nicely if it meowed in the appropriate spots.
“A difficult problem?”
Jerry grinned but there was no joy in it. “I don’t even know enough to know that.” He spun around in the chair to face the dragon on the hearth.
“Normally on a job like this where you’ve got a pile of observables—stuff—and no paradigm, you just grab hold of anything that looks likely and see where it leads. You poke and prod at it and see what happens and eventually you can make sense out of what you’re seeing. Here—” he waved a hand expressively. “Here no matter where I grab and how much I poke and prod I don’t get anything that makes sense.”
He spun back around and waved at the light show above his desk. “Ninety percent of this sort of project is getting inside the other guy’s head. Eventually you’ve got to be able to see the code through his eyes, to understand a little of how he thinks. Only here, no matter how hard I try, I can’t make any sense of what I’m seeing. Some of this stuff is truly elegant, some of it is a triumph of development over design, some of it is awfully crude and some of it is pigeon droppings. And there’s no sense to any of it, no rhyme or reason, no overriding structure.”
“Well, Wiz always said you start with what you know.”
Jerry spun back to her. “I know enough to know I’m out of my depth on this. We need help, heavy-duty help from our world.”
“Another programming team?”
Jerry shook his head. “Not that simple. We need someone who can get his mind around this thing.”
“Another wizard programmer?”
“No, we need someone even more powerful. We need a programming legend, a code demigod”
“Do you have anyone in mind?”
Jerry thought for a minute. “That’s a problem. You can’t very well go up to someone like Ken Thompson and ask him to take a sabbatical from Bell Labs to go off to another world to solve a problem involving an evil magician.”
“You mean he might not believe you?”
“I mean the paperwork would be a little excessive. People of this caliber don’t grow on trees and a lot of them are key figures at their companies, teaching at the university level or in jail for getting cute with someone else’s computer. In any event they’re not available.”
“Are there some who are not occupied?”
“Yeah, a few.” He thought for a minute. “Well, Tom Digby isn’t available right now, so the best is probably Taj.”
“Taj?”
“E.T. Tajikawa, the Tajmanian Devil. The guy spends most of his time surfing the far, far end of the bell curve, out three sigmas west of Strange.” Moira didn’t know what that meant but it sounded powerful. So she concentrated on the part she thought she understood.
“E.T. Is that like the movie Wiz likes so much?” Moira asked.
“No, it’s E.T. as in Elvis Twitty.” Jerry shrugged. “His mom was Korean. She didn’t speak English real good but she loved country music and she wanted to give her son an American name.
“Taj used to teach an extension class in debugging down in the Valley. I learned a hell of a lot from him, but for the first four weeks I thought I’d wandered into a ‘Kung Fu’ episode. He started us off with Tai Chi exercises and quotes from Bugs Bunny cartoons. We ended with five minutes of meditation while he rang this little bell. And crazy as it sounds, it all tied together.”
Moira, who didn’t know what Tai Chi was and to whom a lot of programming was a mystery anyway, was willing to take his word for it.
“His power isn’t in his techniques. It’s in the way he sees.”
“That sounds like Patrius,” Moira said.
“The wizard who brought Wiz here in the first place? Yeah, from what I’ve heard of him he would have liked Taj.”
“What would it take to get him?”
“Mostly you’d have to catch his interest. But that’s hard to do. Last I heard he was hip-deep in a six-figure design project for a gaming company.”
“Would it hurt to ask him?”
“No,” Jerry said slowly. “No, it wouldn’t hurt.” He brightened. “Thanks, Moira, you’re a genius.”
Moira took the compliment without comment. “You had best ask Bal-Simba before you talk about bringing another through from your world.”
“Right. I’m sure he won’t have any problem with it.”
In a matter of minutes Bal-Simba was summoned and he listened carefully, if somewhat sleepily, to Jerry’s proposal.
“If you think it will aid us, by all means ask this person to come here,” he said when Jerry finally wound down.
“Even if he can’t physically come to us we can probably do a lot over the Internet. But it would be better if he can get free for a while.” He looked at Bal-Simba. “Can we still do a Great Summoning to bring someone over from our world?”
“Almost certainly. The shadows do not seem able to block that path.”
“Well, let’s find out then.” Jerry picked up the telephone sitting incongruously on his desk and began punching in the number. “I’ll put it on the speaker. I hope it’s late enough in the day that he’s up.”
“Hallo,” came a female voice with a hint of Scandinavian accent. In the background he heard the steady click of computer keys.
“Is Taj there? This is Jerry Andrews, [email protected], I’m land of a friend of his.”
The keystrokes didn’t even slow. “Oh yah, I remember you, I think. From alt.romp.lang.theory.wild_blue. This is Sigurd, you know, [email protected].”
Jerry remembered Tajikawa’s girlfriend/soulmate/companion/secretary/keeper. “Hi, Sigurd. Is Taj there?”
“He’s at Comdex. He’s not gonna be back until, like, a week from Sunday.”
“Oh. Well, is there any way to reach him?”
“I don’t think so. He said he was gonna beg crash space off a friend. Didn’t say who and I don’t think he knew himself.”
“Didn’t he take a cellular phone?”
“Well, kinda. He’s got a loaner from MMCC—you know, the Mini-Microcell-Co
mmunications Consortium—that’s running a demonstration network at the show. They’re setting up stations at all the major hotels. Only, one of their crates got lost in transit, then they had a problem with some weird connectors and had to have replacements airfreighted from Taiwan. Plus their directory software apparently has some kind of suicide pact with their hard drives and . . .”
“So their phones aren’t working,” Jerry cut in.
“I understand the hotel books are giving eight to three that they won’t have them working before the show ends.”
“Well, what about e-mail? Is he going to be on-line?”
“Well, he took his laptop but I don’t think he’s got the modem working. It’s a new machine with a Type III PC Card modem, only the card services for Linux are, like, flat-lined. He was going to hack a driver but he didn’t have time before he left.”
“That’s too bad. Look, do you know who’s he’s going to be seeing? It’s really important that I reach him.”
“He wanted to check out some scientific visualization software, but other than that he didn’t say. I’m sorry.”
“If he does check in have him contact me. It really is a matter of life and death. Have him send to [email protected].”
“Okay, let me open a window here.” There was a brief pause then more clicking of keys as she took the address. “If I hear from him I’ll sure give him the message.”
“Shit,” said Jerry as he broke the connection.
“What now?” Bal-Simba asked. “Will another serve?”
“There aren’t any others in Taj’s class,” Jerry said, “at least none that I know of who are available.”
“Is there any other way to contact him?”
“We can put out the word on the Net, but I’m not sure how long that will take and we’ll probably get a lot of bogus reports. Taj is pretty famous.” He thought. “Comdex only lasts a week so he should be home next Monday at the latest.”
Bal-Simba considered. “I am not sure we can wait that long. These things press us relentlessly and ever closer despite our efforts.”
“Can we hide Moira somewhere?”
“I do not think there is any place in the World where these things could not find her,” Bal-Simba told him.
“Okay, then. There’s only one thing to do.”
Wizard and dragon looked at the programmer expectantly.
“We,” said Jerry, “are going to Comdex.”
Part II:
Queen of the Strip
Twelve
Another Quest
For a minute no one said anything. For a long minute.
“That does not seem terribly practical,” Bal-Simba said at last. “A dragon cannot survive where there is no magic.”
“Normally no, but I think I have an answer to that. You know how our method of getting into the other world’s telephone system works?”
Bal-Simba looked at him. “No.”
“Basically we use magical energy to influence semiconductors on an atomic level—well, really it’s subatomic because what we’re doing is analogous to actualizing virtual particles out of the quantum froth. You see . . .”
Moira cleared her throat significantly. It was especially impressive coming from a dragon.
Jerry took the hint. “An, right. Anyway, we have found we can leak a little magic across if the conditions are right. That’s how we signal back to this World for a Great Summoning to bring someone through from our world. We can apply the same principle to draw magical energy from this World to support the dragon’s metabolism.”
Bal-Simba only nodded. “I will take your word for it. But tell me, are there any other difficulties?”
“Well, one. The magic flow messes up the signaling scheme for a Grand Summoning. There are only a few points on our world where we will be able to signal you that we’re ready to return. Vortex points, they’re called. There’s a big one out in the desert about a hundred and fifty miles north of Las Vegas. That area’s practically uninhabited so we won’t have any trouble getting back through it.” He stopped. “There was another one a few hundred miles away in Sedona, Arizona, but they built a McDonald’s on top of it.”
Bal-Simba rubbed his chin. “This spell of yours does not sound stable.”
“It will hold for a few days. Once we get on the ground that should be all we need to find Taj. Meanwhile it will take the pressure off the Wizards’ Keep.”
Bal-Simba turned to the dragon. “My Lady, how do you feel about this?”
“I am not sure,” Moira said. “This is the first I have heard of such a thing. It seems . . .” She fell silent for a minute and then the dragon’s head came erect, chin out in a gesture that was achingly Moira. “It seems to me this is our best chance, is it not?” Jerry and Bal-Simba nodded. “Then this is what we should do.”
Jerry felt a sudden pang of conscience. “Uh, I ought to point out this is still experimental. Things could go wrong.”
The dragon snorted. “My Lord,” Moira’s voice said bitterly, “they could not go any more wrong than they have already.”
###
Another day, another maze, Wiz thought, looking around. In the light of the magic globe he could see no less than six different tunnels leading off from the one they were in, including one in the roof. The whole area was like that, twisty, turning, branching and rebranching. He had been in the lead with the magic Moira locator for most of the morning as the group picked their way along, stopping every few feet while he consulted the device to see which way to go. It seemed as if they had barely made a quarter of a mile the whole day and Wiz was fuming with impatience.
“I mislike this place,” Malkin said quietly over Wiz’s shoulder. She had taken the number-two position to let Wiz guide the party.
“Not my favorite piece of geography either, but what’s your point?”
The tall thief looked past him, eyes never still as they talked. “There are far too many openings here. Ideal for an ambush.”
Wiz hadn’t thought of that. “Danny hasn’t seen anything on the magic detector.” Malkin looked at him as if he was stupid. “Okay, pass the word to close up, and no straggling.”
There was a sound behind them, a scuffle and then Danny yelled. They both whirled to see June locked in a deadly embrace with a tall figure in rags. Her knife was flashing as she struck home again and again but the thing kept its grip on her.
There was another sound and Wiz and Malkin whirled again to face a new danger from the front. A figure in black armor was closing, almost on top of them, sword raised.
Like a striking snake Malkin’s rapier darted over Wiz’s shoulder and thrust into the attacker’s face. The armored figure never flinched and brought his own sword down in a vicious overhead blow aimed at Wiz’s skull.
The cut was clumsily made and poorly aimed. The sword slid along Malkin’s rapier and off past her side. Before the attacker could recover Wiz hit it square on with a lightning bolt and it burst into flames.
Even that didn’t stop it. Slowly, deliberately, it brought its sword back and above its fiery body to strike again. Then it tottered and fell backwards as fire reduced its substance to ashes.
Beyond it there were other figures in the corridor. Wiz didn’t hesitate. He sent bolt after bolt of lightning flashing down the tunnel to consume the others even as they shuffled forward.
And then it was quiet again. There was no sound but the labored breathing of the adventurers and June’s knife, striking again and again into the dismembered body of her foe. Danny went to his wife’s side and gently pulled her off the still quivering body.
“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s dead.”
“A long time dead,” Malkin amended, studying the body. “This was not a living man. It’s an animated corpse.”
“Zombie?”
“Why not?” Wiz said grimly. “The Enemy probably had a lot of corpses to work with here.”
“I would suggest,” Malkin said with equal grimness, “that we
get out of this place as quickly as we can. We do not want to be set upon from all sides at once by things like this.”
###
Night had fallen over the Wizards’ Keep, though its inhabitants needed magic or a sand glass to tell them that. Outside, the unremitting gray fog beat against the castle, pushing, squeezing, trying to insinuate its tentacles into the structure.
The great hall was lit by magical glow lamps. At each of the eight cardinal points stood one of the Mighty, staff in hand. Within the inscribed circle stood two men, a woman and a dragon.
“May Fortuna aid you all,” Arianne said to Bal-Simba, Jerry and Moira as she finished giving them final instructions.
“We’ll be all right,” Jerry said. “I just hope you can do something on this end while we’re gone.”
“The other wizards say that given time they will be able to control this thing, at least here.”
Silence fell over the group. Unconsciously they turned to watch the sand trickle out of the glass.
“There is still time, My Lady,” Bal-Simba said quietly. Moira shook her head. The big wizard breathed a gusty sigh. “Well, then. I believe we are ready.”
“Merry part,” Arianne said to them.
“Merry meet again, Lady,” Bal-Simba replied.
Arianne stepped out of the circle, being careful not to scuff it. As the sand ran from the glass the wizards threw back their robes to expose their arms and raised their staffs. As the final grains fell to the bottom they began to chant.
###
The world wavered, dissolved and suddenly they were in a narrow alley between blind wooden walls. It took a moment for Jerry to realize the walls were really shipping containers stacked six high.
Jerry and Bal-Simba were dizzy and a little disoriented. Moira seemed to be worse affected. The dragon leaned drunkenly against the crates, making little pawing motions with his front claws.