by Rick Cook
"I hate asymptotically converging algorithms," he growled. "The closer you get to the solution the longer they take."
"If you've got a better algorithm it's not too late," Jerry said mildly.
Wiz just snorted. "I'm just on edge. It's a combination of being a little kid waiting for Christmas and the fact that the longer we're here the riskier it gets."
"Plus, Moira's not here," Danny said from the table where he and June were sitting. "When's she due back anyway?"
"She said probably late this afternoon." Wiz swiveled back to the monitor, but the shape still looked the same. Irritably he started flipping through the views, each of which showed three of the shape's dimensions at a time. But the effect started to give him a headache.
June stiffened and grabbed Danny's arm.
"Noise," she said.
"I don't hear anything," Jerry told her.
Danny was frowning and listening hard. "I do. Kind of a whine."
"Are we losing a bearing on the disk drive?" asked Wiz. He bent and pressed his ear to the case. "No, I don't think it's coming from there."
By now the whine was louder.
"I think it's coming from outside," Jerry said and all four of them moved to the window.
There was a flash and the window blew in with a roar.
Pieces of glass the size and shape of knives scythed toward them in a glittering rain. But they shattered or bounced off when they struck the four immobile figures. Clouds of dust from the explosion roiled through the empty window frames. But not one of the four moved so much as a muscle.
They stood still and silent as the doors to the computer room flew open and three hulking robots marched in, tracking mud behind them.
Then came Craig in a suit of power armor and lastly Mikey wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
* * *
"What's wrong with them?" Craig's voice was tinny through the battle armor's speaker.
"They were like that when I came in." Mikey looked them up and down and smiled nastily. "It's a spell of some sort." He turned his back on the group and went to the computer console. The screen still showed the weaving blue form of the key.
"Son of a bitch," Mikey said, open-mouthed.
Craig stomped up to peer over Mikey's shoulder. "What is it?"
"Something that makes this whole business worthwhile. Something that gives us just what we need."
Mikey smiled. Not one of his half-sneers or tight little mouth quirks, but a big broad smile like a child on Christmas Day.
He left the console and went around in front of the impromptu sculpture garden where he could stare directly into Wiz's eyes.
"Thanks for the computer. It will save us a lot of trouble."
He turned to Craig. "Have the robots pack all this up and load it on the ship. Then search the place and grab anything else that looks useful."
"What about them?"
Mikey looked at the frozen group. "Finish them."
Craig raised his arm and pointed the laser in his suit's right forearm at the group. A brilliant beam of red light shot out and played across Wiz and his friends. The wall behind them smoked and scorched but the four statues were unaffected.
"What the hell?" Craig raised both arms and two laser beams converged in a spot of blinding incandescence that moved over the forms. The concrete wall behind them pocked and spalled and the aluminum window frame with its remaining shards of glass melted and ran. But still Wiz and his friends were unharmed.
"Oh shit, just leave them," Mikey said. "Later we'll see how well that spell stands up to a nuclear fireball. If that doesn't work we'll just drop them in the Sun. But get the computer on board first."
With one last look at the object on the screen, he left the computer room.
Quickly Craig brought the system down, cursing the clumsiness of his armor's steel fingers on the keyboard. For a space there was no sound save the clicking of the keyboard. Neither the programmers nor the robots stirred.
Gradually the room began to fill with dense black smoke from a fire elsewhere in the Mousehole. Craig, protected by his armor, barely noticed.
After several minutes the system blinked and died. Craig ordered the robots to begin dismantling and removing the computer. Then he went over to stand in front of the four motionless figures.
"Greatest wizard in the world, huh?" he said to Wiz. "Man, you were easy." Wiz did not twitch. Not even the look in his eyes changed.
Craig turned from one to the other, savoring the moment. So this was what it felt like to be a winner, a real winner. He tried to burn the feeling into his memory so he could relive it over and over for the rest of his life.
But why have just a memory? Why not a souvenir to help keep the memory fresh. In fact, why not four souvenirs?
As the robots returned from moving the computer, Craig gave them new orders.
Outside the Mousehole was a ship, a golden cigar shape lying on its side and pressing into the earth. One by one the robots carried their burdens up the gangway and carefully stowed them in one of the holds.
"Okay," Mikey said as he came back into what had been the computer center. "Let's get going. Hey! Where's Zumwalt and the others?"
"On the ship. I'm gonna build a trophy room and they're going to be my first trophies."
Mikey snorted and shook his head.
"Have it your way. Just make damn sure they stay frozen. Now have you got everything? Then let's haul ass."
As soon as they were aboard the gangway withdrew into their ship and the airlock doors swung shut. With an ear-piercing whine the golden craft rocked slightly and then rose straight up.
In the cockpit, Craig and Mikey lounged back in their acceleration couches and watched the ground fall away. Once they were high above the valley, Mikey used the mouse to line the crosshairs up on the now-deserted Mousehole. Then he pressed the left button quickly three times.
"Bombs awaaaay," he called as three dots detached themselves from the ship and plummeted to Earth.
Three blinding, shattering explosions came as one, making the ship's screens darken for an instant and filling the world below them with boiling, churning dust. The ship rose and fell slightly in the blast wave and then sailed serenely out of the billowing mushroom cloud, made a right-angle turn and headed north.
The cloud of smoke rose high in the air behind them.
* * *
From the hillside where he lay, Glandurg cursed as the airship vanished in the distance. "Balked again!" Then he straightened. "Come. We must follow these strangers to their lair."
"Don't see why," Snorri grumbled. "Seems like this Sparrow is bloody well finished."
"He was alive when he was taken from his abode."
"Didn't look none too healthy," Thorfin said. "All stiff like that."
"But he was alive. To fulfill the quest we must kill him ourselves or make certain of his death."
"Lot of extra work, if you ask me," Snorri said.
Glandurg turned on him, red-faced. "Who's leading this quest, you or me?"
"Oh you are," Snorri said sullenly. The other dwarves stood in a silence Glandurg chose to interpret as assent.
"Too right I am! And I say we track the wizard down."
"How far do you reckon they'll take him?"
"That's immaterial. We will follow our prey to the ends of the World."
"We're a good bit beyond those already," Thorfin muttered.
Glandurg ignored the remark. "Besides, I doubt these newcomers will have their lair ensorcelled against us. We should be able to penetrate easily."
"Does this mean griffins again?" Gimli asked plaintively.
"We would be too easy to see. No, we shall follow on foot. Now quickly." He looked down at the cloud of smoke roiling out of the valley. "There is nothing left here for us."
Gathering their packs the dwarves set out toward the north, following Glandurg's magic indicator toward an unseen foe.
* * *
There was no sign of life in the r
oom where Wiz had met Craig and Mikey. Now the glass wall showed the night sky clear but oddly devoid of stars. There were just a few sprinkled around, making it hard to tell where the sky left off and the shadow of the mountains began.
Aside from the weak starlight, the only illumination came from the console monitor which spilled a squarish puddle of pale light onto the tiled floor. The only motion was the slow ceaseless rotation of the strange shape on the computer screen as the system ground inexorably closer to the final solution.
The door opened and a robot guard clanked in, sensors swiveling left and right as it probed the darkness, the laser turrets on its shoulders tracking restlessly back and forth. It was the very picture of mechanized death, even if a thin stream of oil was leaking from a blown knee seal, leaving oily footprints in its wake. Every time the robot took a step the piston in the leaking hydraulic damper slammed against the stop, making a distinct "clank." But the noise only made the black metal thing more menacing.
Twice it circled the computer, alert for any sign of life or anything out of order. Finding nothing, it clanked around the room once more and left. The dim light glinted faintly off its shiny black carapace as it turned the corner and the sound of its passage faded into the silence and stillness of the night.
Long after the guard's last echo died something moved in the deepest dark at the base of the computer. Slowly and oh so cautiously a smaller patch of darkness separated itself from the computer's shadow. As it scuttled along the base of the wall a stray glimmer of light caught it and resolved the patch into a tiny manlike figure.
The gremlin squeaked inaudibly at the light and scurried back into the shadows. There it paused, casting this way and that, its leaflike ears flapping and its long pointed nose quivering.
Machines! It was in the middle of an enormous collection of machines with a variety and complexity it had never imagined. In every direction beyond these stone walls was a gremlin king's ransom of machines. The computer that had been such a regal home just a few days ago was shabby and threadbare by comparison.
A broad, snaggle-toothed and beatific smile spread over the little creature's face.
Suddenly it was a very happy gremlin.
Forty-one: LOSS
"Nothing?" Bal-Simba demanded. "Nothing at all left?"
Dragon Leader shook his head. "A smoking crater, Lord. We landed and searched for survivors, but we found only one."
He gestured at the brownie standing on the council table.
"Breachean, my Lord." The little man hung his head. "It is my great shame that when the invaders came I ran away."
"It is our good fortune that you did," Bal-Simba said kindly. "Else there would be none to tell us what happened."
"I cannot tell you much, my Lord. I was outside when the metal creatures arrived and I ran. From the top of the hill I saw them carry out the thing the gremlins loved and put it in their ship. But then I ran over the hill and saw nothing more until the explosion."
"The computer?" Moira demanded from her place behind Bal-Simba's chair. "They took the computer?"
"Aye, my Lady. The metal things carried it out."
"But you saw no people?"
"No, Lady, either yours or my own."
The giant black wizard was silent for a moment, his head sunk on his chest. Up and down the long table the wizards of the Council of the North simply stared. One seat at the table was conspicuously vacant.
"Very well," he said at last. "Thank you, Breachean. Dragon Leader, keep what watch you can on the area in case someone else did survive, but do not endanger your riders."
Dragon Leader saluted and left with the brownie at his heels.
Bal-Simba sighed and looked back at Moira. "Child, I am sorry," he said simply.
The hedge witch was white, her freckles standing out vividly. "They will pay for this," she said softly. "By the World, the sea and the sky above they will pay!"
"Indeed they shall," the wizard Juvian said from his place near the head of the table. "Lady, the Council extends its deepest sympathies to you in your bereavement."
"He is not dead," Moira said fiercely. "The others perhaps, but not Wiz. I would know if he was."
The wizards did not point out that psychic bonds worked poorly between the Worlds.
"Remember the elf Lisella's prophecy," another wizard said. "All would suffer great loss, the mightiest among them would perish and our enemy would gain his heart's desire."
"The first part is fulfilled," Bal-Simba said. "Let us see if we can prevent the rest from coming true."
"We still have the wizards and apprentices that Jerry was training," Arianne pointed out.
"Even the best of them is more promising than skillful," Bal-Simba told her. "They are but half trained and none of them is close to being a match for any of the off-worlders." He nodded to Malus and Juvian. "Meaning no offense, my Lords."
"None taken," Juvian replied. "You speak only the simple truth."
"What about the elf?" Honorious asked.
"Aelric? There is no sign. Perhaps he perished or perhaps he has returned to his own domains."
"Well then," Agricolus said. "We must still face these others. What chance have we?"
"If they have the computer they can take the Sparrow's work and turn it against us," Bal-Simba said grimly. "Now time is on their side. We must deny them as much of it as we can."
"You mean attack them now?" Arianne asked.
"As soon as we can. They will only grow stronger."
The wizards shifted in their chairs. Arianne opened her mouth as if to ask another question and then thought better of it.
"Well," said Juvian at last. "I see no way to better our position by waiting."
No one at the table was under any illusion about their chances. That was written in their faces. However cowards do not gain the magical power that lifts a man or woman into the ranks of the Mighty, still less are they chosen to sit on the Council of the North.
"Very true," said Malus with a completely uncharacteristic seriousness. "With the Sparrow and his friends gone there is no one left who is truly a master of the new magic."
"No, wait!" Moira shouted. "There is another!"
Forty-two: A NEW PLAYER
Judith was awake and sitting up in bed when Bronwyn and Moira came in.
"Hey Bronwyn, look at this." She held up her right arm, clenched a shaky fist and beamed. "Not bad, eh?"
Then she caught her visitors' mood and sobered. "Is something wrong?"
"A great deal, I am afraid," Bronwyn told her.
Moira stepped up to the bed. "My Lady, you know that Wiz and the others were hiding in the halfway world to use a computer?"
Judith nodded, eyes wide.
"They were . . ." Moira stopped and took a deep, ragged breath. "They were discovered there and apparently overwhelmed."
"Oh shit!" Judith breathed. Her eyes began to fill with tears. "I'm really sorry, Moira."
Moira reached out and patted her hand. Then she gathered herself. "Our one chance now is to strike quickly against these other two wizards from your world, but we have no one who is expert with the new magic."
"You have me," Judith said quietly. "I may not be in Wiz's league, but I helped write the compiler and I'm a pretty damn good programmer."
Moira sighed. "Thank you, my Lady. I had hoped you would say that."
"There is more," Bronwyn put in sharply. "Lady, before you can do anything, you must be further healed. The spells to do so are dangerous and could harm you."
Judith didn't say anything.
"I know this is difficult," Moira said sympathetically. "Craig is your friend."
"Ex-friend," Judith said coldly. She looked up at Moira, her face white and her lips pressed into a bloodless line.
"Do you understand what he did to me?" she asked, her voice shaking. "He came to me when I was helpless and he used me! He pried things out of me I never intended to tell anyone. Then he took that information and he turned it again
st my friends." Her eyes glittered with a mixture of tears and rage.
"I feel like I've been raped. If there is anything I can do to get back at that son of a bitch, I'm for it."
"Even at the cost of your health?" Bronwyn asked sharply. "Understand Lady, this healing spell could leave you worse than you are now with no hope of recovery."
"I don't care if it leaves me confined to a goddamn iron lung! If I can take that slimy little bastard down with me it will be worth it."
Bronwyn nodded and motioned Moira to one side.
"Well?" Moira demanded. "She is willing."
"She is blinded by anger," Bronwyn said coldly. "She is not thinking rationally." She held up a hand to cut off the protest. "But nevertheless I will do it."
It was the work of a few moments to prepare for the spell. Bronwyn summoned her two most senior assistants and they prepared the brazier and candles while the chief healer traced the warding circle about the bed.
Judith sat in the center of things and watched. "This isn't the spell you used on Wiz, is it?" she asked.
Bronwyn finished the warding circle and looked up. "You are more seriously ill, Lady." She stepped back and regarded Judith carefully. "You may still withdraw."
"Not on your life."
Bronwyn nodded. One assistant reached into the sleeve of his robe and pulled out a packet of herbs which he threw on the brazier. As the fragrant smoke billowed up, Bronwyn and her other assistant raised their wands and began the chant. The first assistant joined in in a minor key. Judith's eyes widened and her mouth formed a little "O" of surprise as the spell took effect. She lay back on the pillows and jerked spasmodically, her breath coming in short gasps. Moira caught her breath, but Bronwyn and her assistants continued the chant uninterrupted.
The chant soared, dropped and finally died away like the after note of a great bell. Judith twitched once more and lay still. The smoke dissipated and Bronwyn ritually defaced the circle before stepping to the bedside.
"Is she all right?" Moira demanded.
"Only time will tell that," the healer said.
"But the convulsions . . ."