by Rick Cook
The Guild Hall was a massive stone-and-timber building across the main square from the Town Hall. The private dining room on the second floor was paneled below and decorated with murals above. The paintings showed muscular folk going about the business of commerce in a style that reminded Wiz of WPA post office art.
The table was just a little bit too small so the two were forced close together. Not close enough to be uncomfortable but enough to encourage intimacy. The linen was starched and perfectly pressed, the liveried waiters were expert and unobtrusive and the food was very good, if rich.
It was all so well handled that it took Wiz a while to figure out what it was about the place. It wasn’t just that it was old: The room and the Guild Hall felt, well, faded, like some once-great old downtown hotel. The murals were dulled with time and lack of cleaning and the paneling below them showed wormholes here and there. Like a lot of other things in this town, the Guild Hall obviously wasn’t what it once was.
By the end of the first course Rolf was on a first-name basis with Wiz. Once or twice in his career in Silicon Valley Wiz had been wooed by some very high-powered headhunters. That was what this meeting with Rolf was like. The man was working on him, trying to bring him around to-what?-and in spite of his cynicism, Wiz found himself responding to the man’s charm. If Dieter was born to sell used cars in San Jose, he thought, Rolf could sell bonds on Wall Street. Wiz smiled, pleasantly, tried to enjoy the meal and waited for the shoe to drop.
"I noticed you’ve already met Dieter," Rolf said casually as they worked their way through a dessert that was mostly berries, whipped cream and some kind of strong liqueur.
"After a fashion. He came to see me the first day."
Rolf smiled knowingly. "He is dynamic, isn’t he?"
Wiz put down his spoon. "He is also about as subtle as a hand grenade in a barrel of oatmeal."
Rolf chuckled. "I think I understand the reference, but what is a ’hand grenade’?"
Wiz thought about how to explain high explosives to a culture that didn’t even have gunpowder. Then he thought about what Moira said about his explanations. "Let’s just say it’s something that doesn’t belong in an oatmeal barrel."
Again that engaging toothpaste smile. "You know one of the things I enjoy so much about you, Wiz? Your outlook is refreshing." He gestured from the wrist. "Like a breath of clean air into a musty closet that has been closed up too long."
Considering his performance this morning a breath of hot air was more like it, Wiz thought. But he made an appropriately modest reply.
"Refreshing nonetheless, Wiz. We have been a backwater for too long. It has narrowed us, cramped our vision." He leaned forward over the table. "Wiz, we need to change and I think you are going to help us make the changes we need so badly."
He used my name twice in two sentences, Wiz thought. Here it comes.
"Wiz, that is one of the reasons I hoped we could meet. I wanted to offer you my support in your program. You’re going to do great things for us, I know. In fact I’d go so far as to say your coming marks a new beginning for this town and its people."
Great, Wiz thought. I am not only supposed to slay dragons, I’m supposed to work bloody miracles.
"You understand I have a very limited brief. I am a consultant on dragon problems, not a general management consultant."
"Your formal brief, true. But I think you underrate your importance just now. As a wizard of great power, a defeater of dragons and an outsider with new ideas, the whole Council is compelled to listen to you." He paused and cocked an eyebrow. "And very frankly I doubt the present regime will allow you to do much about dragons."
That was so true that Wiz could only nod.
"Where do you fit in all this?"
"Fundamentally I think we want the same things."
Just then what Wiz really wanted was to go home to the Wizard’s Keep and Moira. But that wasn’t one of his options until he got this mess straightened out and he couldn’t do that unless he stayed alive. He jerked his attention back to what Rolf was saying.
"You bring us change. But the change has to start at the top. We need new blood on the Council and especially we need a new mayor." He waved a hand in a self-deprecating gesture. "Oh, not necessarily me. But someone with the vision to see the way we must go and the determination to see that we can get there."
"What’s wrong with Mayor Hastlebone?"
Rolf sighed. "I am afraid he is too much under Dieter’s influence. He can see nothing but old solutions to our problems."
"Dieter does have some ideas for doing things differently," Wiz pointed out.
"Dieter’s solutions are more of the same old medicine. More taxes to strangle the life out of what little trade we have left." He shook his head. "No, money will not solve our problems. Not without a complete restructuring and a reawakening of civic discipline."
He leaned across the table and touched Wiz’s hand. "Wiz, we must-what was your phrase?-reinvent ourselves. Yes, ’reinvent.’ A new city, a new culture rising out of the ashes of the old. Why, the possibilities are…" Rolf trailed off, seemingly transfixed by something infinitely far off over Wiz’s right shoulder. Then his attention snapped back to Wiz and he was all business again. "… rather remarkable," he finished smoothly.
A chill ran down Wiz’s spine. "Look, I’m flattered that you think so highly of me, but…"
Rolf held up a hand. "When someone says they are flattered it means they are preparing to turn you down. Don’t, I beg of you. You don’t have to say yes, but leave the matter undecided, please."
"I will certainly try to keep an open mind."
Let’s see, Wiz thought as he made his way back across the square. I’ve been in town less than ten days and I’ve already made two powerful enemies. At least Rolf would be his enemy as soon as he figured out that Wiz had no intention of supporting his schemes. Dieter wanted to loot the town. Wiz suspected Rolf’s desires ran deeper and more dangerously. The man didn’t want money, he wanted power. Probably a lot more power than a mayor had ever had before.
Of the two Rolf was probably the more dangerous. Dieter’s hostility was open. With Rolf you’d never see the knife coming until it was buried in your back. You could see Dieter coming, but that didn’t mean you could dodge. He touched the ring of protection on his finger. It would place him in stasis if he was under immediate physical threat. If the damn spell had any sense I’d have been frozen solid a couple of days ago, he thought sourly.
Not a living soul was waiting to greet Wiz when he got home. Widder Hackett, however, was.
"Well Mr. Wizard, I hope you enjoyed your stroll around town because there’s been the netherworld to pay while you’ve been gone."
"What’s wrong?"
"That demon of yours is holding the girl prisoner up in the upstairs parlor," Widder Hackett said. "What the fiend has planned for her," the ghost continued virtuously, "I wouldn’t want to guess.
"It’s what comes from consorting with them low-class demons," Widder Hackett added as Wiz pounded up the stairs to rescue Anna.
He came into the room and found a hysterical maid facing off with a very determined scaly green demon.
"What’s going on here?"
"I, I was just trying to… and it, it…" Anna was hyperventilating and for a minute Wiz thought she was going to faint on him.
Wiz recognized the demon. It was the one he had set to guard his desk and it manifested if anyone tried to touch his papers or equipment. Apparently Anna, not knowing better, had tried to clean off the desk.
He put his arm around her shoulders to comfort her, and to catch her if she did faint. Anna was trembling like a leaf and she pressed her face into his shoulder so she wouldn’t have to look at the demon.
"Hey, it’s all right. He won’t hurt you if you don’t try to touch anything on the desk."
"But he won’t let me leave!"
Wiz looked around and realized that to get to the door they would have to pass the desk. The
demon wouldn’t attack unless someone tried to touch the things on the desk but it would certainly come alert if anyone but Wiz got close. I’ll have to turn the sensitivity down on the spell, he thought.
Malkin stuck her head in the door to see what the commotion was, saw Wiz and Anna, and disappeared before Wiz could say anything.
"He won’t hurt you if you don’t touch what’s on the desk," he told her. "Look, I’ll dismiss him, okay?" A quick gesture and the demon vanished, looking smug. "There, it’s fine." He gently pried her face out of his shoulder and turned her toward the desk. "See? No more demon." With his arm still around her shoulder he walked her past the desk to the door.
"Now, you don’t have to clean around the desk, all right? That’s not part of your job anyway and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that before. Are you okay now?" Anna sniffled and nodded.
Wiz drew a line on the floor in softly glowing blue light. "Look, anything inside this line I will take care of, okay? Just don’t touch any of it and I’ll make sure the demon doesn’t bother you."
Bobo sauntered into the room, looked at the line and sniffed.
"Now just go on down to the kitchen and rest for a while. You’ll be okay?"
Anna sniffled and nodded.
"I’m sorry to be so much trouble My Lord, it’s just that…"
"I know," Wiz said encouragingly, "it wasn’t your fault. Now go on."
Still sniffling, Anna made her way downstairs toward the kitchen.
"Malkin," Wiz called, "can you come in here a minute?"
"What’s up?" the slender thief asked as she strode into the room. Malkin showed no fear but Wiz noticed she kept just far enough away from the desk to keep from triggering the demon. For an instant he wondered how she knew the distance so exactly.
"Uh, about what you just saw. It wasn’t really what it looked like."
Malkin waved a lazy hand. "Forget about it."
"But I wanted to explain…"
"No need," Malkin said. "The child’s safe with you."
The way she said it, Wiz wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or insulted.
"You’d better be careful though. The little ninny doesn’t have the sense to be afraid of magic. She’s likely to blunder into something you’d rather she didn’t."
"I’ll take extra precautions," Wiz assured her. "What about you? Aren’t you afraid of being around all this magic?"
Malkin laughed. "Afraid? Not hardly. I respect it is all." The way she said it, and the way she smiled, left Wiz with a slightly uneasy feeling in the bottom of his stomach. He decided at the same time he turned down the demon’s sensitivity he was going to increase the protection.
Eleven: Meanwhile, Back at the Observatory
Just because someone is hard-working and ambitious doesn’t mean that person has the least idea what is going on.
The Consultants’ Handbook
It was another sunny day in the desert. Of course, it’s almost always sunny in the desert, which is why this particular desert mountaintop sprouted telescopes like lawns sprout toadstools. With telescopes come astronomers, naturally, and just now this particular astronomer’s mood was anything but sunny.
"You," Ray Whipple said, "have got to do something about that FBI agent."
There was a pause while the observatory director took his artfully scuffed ostrich-skin cowboy boots off the corner of his desk. "What’s the problem?" he asked mildly. Actually he had a pretty good idea what the problem was and he was only surprised it had taken this long to happen.
"He found an eighty-seven-cent error in someone’s account and now he’s convinced he’s on the trail of the mother of all conspiracies."
The director made a show of lighting his pipe. "That’s his job after all."
"But the man’s an idiot!" Ray protested.
"I know. So does his supervisor. She asked us to keep him here as a ’special favor’ to the Bureau."
"He’s chasing all over the net looking for some imaginary ’hacker’ he thinks he’s found and he’s dragging me with him!"
"He’s not breaking down any doors or shooting people, is he? It’s safer for everyone if he stays here where he’s out of the way and mostly harmless."
"But I’ve got to deal with him," Ray groaned.
"Look," the director said sympathetically, "I know this is hard on you. I’ll tell you what. When this is over I’ll make it up to you. How would you like some extra observing time? How would you like to get your project up on Hubble next year?"
Ray’s eyes widened. Time on the Hubble Space Telescope was somewhat more precious than gold in the astronomical community. "You could do that?"
"Just keep our agent happy and keep him out of everyone’s hair."
In the event, Clueless Pashley kept himself out of everyone’s hair for the next three days. He was so busy tramping through the Internet in pursuit of his master hacker and screwing up his account that he was only an electronic pest for everyone but Whipple.
Pashley’s performance on the Internet was reminiscent of the old saw about a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters, which is to say it was nearly random and mostly produced garbage. However, as in the case of the monkeys, there is always the element of blind chance and sheer, dumb luck. Pashley’s original error was, as his office-mate surmised, an accounting glitch. But in the course of his thrashing around, Special Agent Myron Pashley stumbled and fell face-first into a heap of gold.
Not surprisingly it started with a total disaster.
Like most astronomers, Ray Whipple was used to working at night and sleeping during the day. Even though his current job was "temporary system administrator for administrative support services" (or, as he put it, "computer janitor") he saw no reason to change his habits.
Pashley, on the other hand was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise type who was in the office religiously at 7 A.M. This particular day he managed to be in the office all of thirty minutes before he did something especially stupid and crashed the entire system. Which of course resulted in Ray having to drag himself out of bed and drive back up the mountain at an ungodly-o-clock in the morning to fix what Pashley had done.
To add insult to injury, Whipple had to listen to Pashley the entire time he was trying to bring the system back up.
"I almost had him," Pashley kept insisting. "I was onto something and the hacker crashed the system to cover his tracks."
Ray knew damn well what had caused the crash almost as soon as he sat down at his terminal, but yelling at Pashley wouldn’t get him any closer to time on the Hubble. To try to shut out his office-mate, he kept his attention glued to the screen as the system booted back up.
Because he was concentrating so intently on his workstation he actually read the list of demon processes as it scrolled up. The last one was one he didn’t recognize.
Whipple frowned. He should have known all the demons on the system and here was one he’d never seen. He called it up and found it was a perl script that scanned for incoming traffic with a particular name in the "from" field and forwarded information about it to a site he’d never heard of, thekeep.org.
This was getting stranger and stranger. A quick check of the mail queue showed a couple of messages with the right name in the "from" field that hadn’t yet been forwarded when the system went down. He called one of those up and scanned through it. Then he came to the routing.
"What the hell?" he exclaimed.
"What?" demanded Pashley, hurrying over to peer over his shoulder. "What did you find?"
The routing was absurd. It looked as if the message touched every continent, including Antarctica, and was routed through the weirdest collection of sites he had ever seen.
This was completely lost on Pashley, but he did pick up on something else.
"Look at the name," Pashley said, jabbing his finger at the screen so it blocked most of Ray Whipple’s view. "Thekeep. One of those fantasy names is a sure tipoff that it’s a hacker site. I’ll bet we’ll find this is a major hacke
r nexus."
Whipple, who had played D&D until he got into graduate school, kept quiet. He had learned that arguing with Pashley on one of these subjects was useless.
"Whatever it is, someone got into our system," Whipple said.
"YES!" Pashley shouted in his ear. "I told you we had a hacker on the loose."
Ray Whipple gritted his teeth. "It looks like you’re right."
Meanwhile the programmers at thekeep.org pursued their own search for Pashley’s "hacker." It was slow, tedious work. There were a lot of systems on Wiz’s routing list and not all of them were easy to plant a search demon in. A few were flat impossible so the programmers had to resort to other shifts. Fortunately Wiz was so homesick he e-mailed a message almost every day. Unfortunately it still took inordinate amounts of time and work.
"You know what I really resent?" Danny said one evening as the pair was hard at work. "All that work we put into dragon-slaying spells that we’ll probably never have the chance to use."
"That is a consequence to be sought rather than mourned," Bal-Simba rumbled from his extra-large chair where he sat reviewing a scroll with Moira and Arianne.
"Well, yeah," Danny agreed. Then he added disconsolately, "But I’ve got such a good one."
"I was even hoping to learn something," Jerry said. "I have this theory about the black-body temperature of dragons."
"Most dragons are not black," Moira told him. "Why you should be interested in just the black ones, I do not know. Much less their temperature."
"No, you don’t understand. See, a black body temperature is a physical property of all things, even dragons, no matter what their color. And…"
"My Lord, if this is another one of your explanations I am in no mood to hear it."
"But," Jerry said plaintively, "it’s such an interesting question."
"The only question I am interested in regarding dragons is how to get Wiz back," Moira told him firmly.
Ray Whipple had an easier time of it. Being a legitimate system administrator at a legitimate site, not to mention being actually in this world and being able to invoke the name of the FBI, Whipple had resources Danny and Jerry didn’t. By using them and calling in a few favors, Ray was able to trace Wiz back to the system he had broken into very much faster than the people at the Wizard’s Keep.