by Rick Cook
"What do you think you’re doing?" Wiz demanded of the cat. The cat continued to study Wiz with its great yellow eyes as if to say, "I live here. What’s your excuse?"
Wiz opened his mouth to say more and then shut it again when he realized there wasn’t anything he could say. Not only is arguing with a cat a lost cause, this cat was halfway up the stairs and could easily outrun him if he tried to give chase. Wiz didn’t like looking foolish any more than the average cat does, so he decided to leave it for now.
Wiz didn’t dislike cats, but from observing his friends who had cats he had arrived at a couple of conclusions. The first was that cats, not being pack animals like dogs or people, do not have consciences. That meant that if you had a cat you were sharing your life with a furry little sociopath.
The second was that every animal had evolved to exploit an ecological niche and in the case of cats that niche was people.
"Well, all right," Wiz told the cat. "But don’t get the idea you’re staying."
"Who are you shouting at?" asked Malkin as she came in the door with a basket of food.
Wiz nodded toward the stairs. "That."
Malkin studied the cat and the cat studied Malkin. "I think that’s Widder Hackett’s cat," the tall girl said finally. "Handsome enough."
"So is a leopard, but that doesn’t mean I want to share quarters with one."
Malkin grinned at him. "Looks like he’s decided to share quarters with you. And if you’re planning on catching him to throw him out you can do it yourself. He’s a scrapper, that one, and I’ve no fancy to get myself clawed up to put out an animal that will come right back in every time you open the door."
"Hmmf," Wiz snorted, weighing his ambivalence toward cats against the obvious trouble it would take to get rid of this one. "Does he have a name?"
"Widder Hackett called him Precious, but I think his name is Bobo."
"Bobo, huh? Looks more like Bubba to me." The cat narrowed his yellow eyes and glared at him as if to say "Watch it, bud."
It turned out there was a stove in the kitchen. It was a ceramic tile box next to the fireplace that Wiz had dismissed as a waist-high work counter. There was also a wooden hand pump that drew water into the sink. Malkin got a fire going with the help of a fire-starting spell from Wiz and she quickly threw together a grain-and-vegetable porridge that turned out surprisingly well. They ate in the kitchen under the glow of a magic light globe Wiz conjured up.
The only excitement came when Bobo cornered and caught a rat in the upstairs hallway. He came trotting down the stairs, head high, with the limp furry corpse dangling from his mouth and settled himself under the sink to eat with the humans. Wiz turned his back to the sink and tried to ignore the occasional crunching noises from Bobo’s direction.
"Cat’s got his uses," Malkin observed.
"Unfortunately I don’t have a violin that needs stringing."
"I don’t suppose you’ve got a spell to clean dishes either," Malkin said as she scraped the last of the stew from her bowl.
"I can probably whip one up tomorrow."
"Let it be for tonight then. But one way or another, Wizard, you’ll clean those dishes tomorrow. And tomorrow it’s your turn to cook."
"Who’s the boss in this outfit anyway?"
"Depends," Malkin said lazily, "on who needs who the worst, don’t it?"
Tomorrow, Wiz thought. I’ll worry about this tomorrow.
Actually there was a lot to worry about tomorrow, Wiz admitted to himself as he crawled into bed later that evening. He had to get things set up here so he could work, and he had to figure out a way to keep Dieter pacified. And he still didn’t have the faintest idea how he was going to solve the village’s dragon problem. That last was really beginning to gnaw at him.
Well, Wiz thought as he drifted off to sleep, it could be worse I suppose.
"Look at this mess!"
Wiz jerked bolt upright in bed.
"Look at it, I tell you," the voice repeated.
Wiz looked around frantically, but the room was empty.
backslash light exe! he called out into the darkness. The room filled with the warm yellow glow of a magic globe, but there was still no sign of anyone else in the room.
"I don’t suppose you’re going to do anything about it, are you?" the voice rasped again. It was a particularly unpleasant voice. It reminded Wiz of a rusty door hinge or slowly pulling an old nail out of a piece of very hard wood.
"What are you carrying on about?" came another voice. Wiz whirled and saw Malkin in the doorway, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
"There’s someone in the room. I can hear her but I can’t see her."
There was a loud snort from the corner.
"There," Wiz said.
Malkin’s eyes narrowed. "I didn’t hear anything."
"It was a snort. A definite snort."
"Are you sure you’ve been getting enough rest?"
"I tell you there’s someone here. It sounds like an old woman and she’s complaining that the house is dirty."
"Well, look at this place!" the voice came again. "It’s a pigsty, an absolute pigsty! And what are you doing about it, I’d like to know? You’re sitting there in the dirt and not making a move to clean it up."
"Probably Widder Hackett," Malkin said judiciously. "I guess them as said the place was haunted was right."
"You’re taking this awfully calmly."
Malkin shrugged. "So far she’s not bothering me."
"Why is it I can hear her and you can’t?"
"Because you’re the owner, dummy," the old lady’s voice grated. "No one but the owner sees or hears the ghost. Them’s the rules."
Suddenly things clicked. "When you died without heirs," Wiz said into empty air, "who inherited this place?"
"Why, the council, of course," the voice said. "Not that any of that pack of layabouts lifted a finger to keep my house up. Crooked as a dog’s hind leg, every last one of them, and don’t think I didn’t tell them so!"
Malkin was obviously only hearing half the exchange, but she kept swiveling her head from Wiz to the corner he was looking at, like the spectator at a ping-pong match.
"Which explains why they gave the place to me."
"And what are you going to do about it?" the ghost demanded again.
"Well, this is all kind of new to me," Wiz temporized. "We don’t have ghosts where I come from. Except on TV-and you can usually fix those by getting cable."
The ghost of Widder Hackett ignored his sally. "A right uncivilized place, it sounds like. Well, we do things better here. And that means taking care of my house."
Wiz thought about pointing out that death usually severs right of ownership. Then he decided it probably didn’t apply here.
"Look, it’s the middle of the night. I can’t do anything about it right now, can I? I promise you I’ll get started on it first thing in the morning."
"I suppose that’s the best I can expect from someone like you. All right then, but first thing in the morning, mind."
I couldn’t get a ghost that rattles chains or moans, Wiz thought as he tried to get comfortable again in his haunted house. I’ve got to get one that nags at 80 dB. I don’t suppose there are OSHA noise regulations for ghosts either.
Wiz finally drifted off to sleep while musing on the most effective kind of hearing protectors to use against ghost noises.
Wiz was having a wonderful dream, about a place with Moira and no dragons, when a rocket went off beside his head. He was bolt upright with the covers off before he realized that what he had heard was a voice and not a particularly violent explosion.
"Well?" came the voice again.
"Well what?" Wiz was not at his best early in the morning and one glance at the rosy hue of sunlight painted on the wall told him it was very early morning.
"Well, it’s morning," said the voice in a particularly unpleasant tone. "What are you going to do about the house?"
"Ah, the house. Right." He realized he recognized the vo
ice. He also realized he didn’t have any caffeine in the house. The third realization, less than thirty seconds later, was that this was not shaping up to be a good day.
True to his word of the night before he fixed breakfast for himself and Malkin. But Malkin apparently liked to sleep late as much as Wiz did and since she didn’t have a complaining ghost dogging her footsteps she could stay in bed. Wiz left a pot of oat porridge on the stove for her, put down a saucer of milk for Bobo after the cat jumped in his lap three times trying to get at his porridge and milk, left the dishes in the sink (over Widder Hackett’s strenuous objections) and dragged his way upstairs.
Since he still didn’t have a handle on the dragon problem, much less the more immediate stuff, he relied on routine. Maybe something would come to him while he worked.
The first order of business, Wiz decided, was to set up a workroom. In the back of his mind he knew that a programmer’s work space wasn’t really appropriate to someone who was supposed to be a consultant on dragons, but it didn’t really matter. It would make the place more homey and help him think about his real problem-once he figured out which of the mountains of problems he faced was the real one.
There were two parlors on the ground floor, one on each side of the entrance hall. Both of them were full of furniture swathed in dusty sheets and it looked like it would be a backbreaking job to move it out. Besides, the front windows were right on the street, which meant working there would be like working in a department store window, unless he kept the drapes drawn all the time, in which case he’d need artificial light. On top of all that he had a strong suspicion the ghost would have something to say if he starting moving the furniture around in the parlor-probably quite a lot to say, in fact.
The second floor, with his and Malkin’s bedrooms, had more possibilities. The upstairs front room had obviously been some sort of a sitting room rather than a bedroom. Now it was stark and bare with only a sturdy wooden chair sitting in one corner and a sturdier table against the opposite wall. But light flooded in when Wiz forced open the protesting shutters. It was clearly the best room in the house to serve as his workroom. Without another thought he grabbed one end of the heavy oak table and started to tug it over to the window.
"Don’t drag that!" Widder Hackett yelled. "You’ll gouge the floor."
The sudden noise made Wiz drop the table. One leg landed on his foot and the other hit the floor with a resounding thump. The scream of outrage in his ear almost made him forget the pain in his foot. "You ninny! Look what you’ve done. That mark will never come out! Oh, my beautiful floor."
It was amazing, Wiz thought, that even when he was hopping around holding one foot the ghost’s voice seemed to stay right in his ear.
Finally Widder Hackett ran down and the pain in Wiz’s foot subsided to a dull throb. Gingerly, favoring his injured foot, Wiz took the table in the middle and heaved it clear of the floor. He delicately staggered across the room and gently lowered it before the window, bending over in a position that put his lower back in dire peril. He straightened to ease the protesting back muscles and reached out to push the table up against the wall. A sharp sound from Widder Hackett stopped him and he ended up carefully lifting the end to slide it into position.
"And be sure you carry the chair too!" the old lady’s ghost added.
With the chair and table in place, Wiz sat down to rest his aching foot and to try to get some work done. Even though setting up his magical workstation went smoothly it still wasn’t easy. Every couple of minutes Widder Hackett would be back to complain about another outrage to her beloved house and Wiz’s lack of action, not to mention morals, character and general deportment. Since the ghost’s voice combined the worst features of a foghorn, a screech owl and a table saw ripping lumber full of nails, Wiz was quickly developing a semi-permanent twitch. He had always pictured ghosts as having high, reedy voices that were just on the edge of audibility. Apparently it took more than dying to modulate Widder Hackett’s tones.
"I’m surprised they didn’t let me out of jail just to give me the house," he muttered as he leaned back to examine the fruits of several hours of not-very-productive work.
"Don’t put your feet on the table!" Widder Hackett roared. Wiz jerked his feet back to the floor. "And sit up in that chair. You’re putting weight on it wrong and you’ll break it like as not."
Wiz had gone to public schools, but he had Catholic friends who had gone to parochial schools. From what they had told him Widder Hackett had a lot in common with the nuns.
Bobo sauntered through the door and jumped up on the table to sniff at Wiz’s magical spells. He decided that fiery letters probably weren’t good to eat. Then he decided he needed petting and Wiz’s hand was just lying on the table not doing anything so Bobo butted his head against it until he got a response.
Wiz sighed and scratched the cat under the chin. "I don’t know, Bubba. What do you think I ought to do?"
The cat gazed deep into Wiz’s eyes. "Feed me." The thought came crystal sharp into Wiz’s mind. Wiz sighed again.
"You know, it’s probably a good thing cat lovers don’t know what their cats are thinking."
"Feed me now," Bobo’s thought came clear again. There was no response except some distracted petting. The cat gave Wiz a look that clearly indicated he thought Wiz was mentally retarded for not getting the message. Then he jumped down from the table and stalked out the door, tail high.
"And just when are you going to do something about the disgraceful condition of the front parlor?" demanded a now-familiar voice beside his ear.
Wiz sighed again. He had a feeling it was going to be a long, long day.
Eight: Calling Home
The problem with being a miracle worker is that everyone expects you to work miracles.
The Consultants’ Handbook
Two hours later Wiz started his latest creation running and then let out a long, whooshing sigh.
"You all right?" Malkin asked in a voice that showed more curiosity than compassion.
"Yeah, fine. But if I’m going to get anything done around here I’m going to have to hire a housekeeper."
Malkin crossed her arms over her chest. "Good luck. Not many as will want to work for a strange wizard in a haunted house."
"Well put an ad in the paper will you? Or have the town crier announce it or whatever you do here."
"I’ll take the news to the market." She looked over at the rapidly scrolling letters of golden fire above his desk under the window. "Meanwhile, what’s that?"
"It’s a workstation. I just built it."
Malkin looked at the gray box and keyboard sitting on the table and the letters of golden fire hanging above it.
"Built it out of what?"
"Well, actually it’s a program, a spell you’d call it. See, we’ve found that in this world a sufficiently complex program, or spell, produces a physical manifestation, what you’d call a demon."
Malkin regarded the things on the desk. "Don’t look like no demon I’ve ever heard tell of," she said. "But you’re the wizard. What’s it good for?"
"Well, what you see here is really just a user interface. It virtualizes what I was used to in my world and that makes it easier for me to relate to."
"Seems to me any relations you had with a demon would have to be illegitimate," the tall thief said. "But what’s it good for?"
"Just about anything I want it to be. Right now I’m setting up an Internet connection so I can talk to my friends."
"More magic, eh?"
"No, it’s technology. I need a machine on the other side," Wiz explained to the uncomprehending but fascinated woman. "So I’ve created a little dialer demon to troll the net for systems I can set up accounts on."
Malkin cocked an eye at him. "I see. So it’s demons and trolls but it’s not magic."
"No, it’s… Okay, have it your way. It’s magic."
Just then the system emitted a bell-like tone. "Boy there’s luck. Less than five minutes a
nd I’ve found one. Uh, excuse me will you?" With that he turned back to the console.
"Now what are you doing?" Malkin asked. "Magic aside."
"I guess the easiest way to explain it is to say I’m breaking into something that’s locked. Something a good ways from here."
For once the tall thief seemed impressed. "Burglary without being there," Malkin said wonderingly. "Wizard, I think I’d like this world of yours."
Wiz thought about Malkin as a computer criminal. Then he shuddered and turned his attention back to the computer.
Exploiting a hole in the system’s security was easy. In a matter of minutes Wiz had two new accounts set up. The final wrinkle was a simple little shell script to take messages from one account and pass them to the other. Anyone who tried to trace him back could only follow him as far as this machine.
"There, that’ll give me more protection," he told Malkin as he leaned back from the keyboard. Not a lot, he admitted to himself. But until he got Widder Hackett off his back he wasn’t going to be able to do much better.
"Protection from who?"
"From anyone at the Wizard’s Keep who might want to find me."
His erstwhile assistant regarded him with a look Wiz was coming to know all too well. "These folks are your friends, right?"
"Of course."
"Then I’d think you’d be yelling to them for help instead of hiding from them."
"I can’t," Wiz said miserably. "I can’t let them find me."
Malkin muttered something about "wizards" and left the room.
The first order of business, Wiz decided, was to tell everyone he was all right. He quickly composed an e-mail message and sent it over the net to thekeep.org, the Wizard’s Keep’s Internet node.
He typed furiously for several minutes, stopping frequently to erase a revealing phrase or to re-read his work to make sure he wasn’t giving too much away. Then he spent some time planning the exact path the message would take to reach its destination. At last he hit the final "enter" to send the message on its way and settled back in his chair with a sigh of contentment.
He was promptly jerked erect by Widder Hackett’s screech at air-raid-siren intensity.