by Rick Cook
"Well…" Wiz didn’t want to break the moment, but he didn’t like the idea of giving away half the World. "I’m not empowered to negotiate directly, but I can take an offer back to the Council of the North."
Mike nodded and his smile grew wider, almost radiant. "Of course. So here’s the offer I want you to take back to your Council."
He flicked his hand up and a wave of fire washed over Wiz.
Wiz screamed as the flames hit him. He dropped to his knees and then fell to the floor, the center of a white-hot ball haloed in orange. Thick black smoke roiled off the body and disappeared.
Then the inferno vanished and nothing remained but a tiny blackened thing lying on the laboratory floor.
Craig was white with shock at what his friend had done. "It wasn’t him," he said dully. "He wasn’t really here after all."
"Shit!" Mikey picked up the charred bit of root and threw it against the wall. "Shit, shit, shit!"
Fifteen: FIRE WITH FIRE
Reverse engineering is the sincerest form of flattery.
Engineers’ saying in Silicon Valley
Wiz screamed.
His very eyes were on fire. Heat singed his hair and beat on his brain through his skull. The flesh melted and ran off his face. The palms of his hands and the soles of his feet throbbed with pain as the awful, searing heat destroyed the nerve endings.
Somewhere far beyond the wall of terrible pain he was aware of Arianne gesturing wildly. Then waves of coolness washed over his body.
"Oh my God," Wiz moaned. "Oh my God."
Arianne held him in a way that combined professionalism and compassion. "You will be all right, my Lord," she said soothingly. "Try to relax."
Wiz relaxed one tiny, knotted muscle. The expected flare of pain did not come. He relaxed a few more muscles and still no pain.
"Jesus," he breathed out raggedly. Arianne released him to another’s arms. Moira. Instinctively he reached out to touch her hair.
"I warned you that the psychic effects could be painful," Arianne said.
"Yeah, but…" He gasped for breath again. "… my God." Moira hugged him to her and he felt her tears on his cheek.
"I’m all right now, darling," he said with a smile he did not feel.
"They will not be if ever we meet," his wife said fiercely.
"I am sorry we did not get you out sooner, my Lord," Arianne told him, "but we did not realize what was happening."
Wiz sucked another racking breath. "Sucker punched. That son-of-a-bitch sucker punched me."
The tall blonde sorceress shrugged. "Name it as you like. They have no honor."
Wiz was still shaking a few minutes later when the programmers and such of the Mighty as were in the castle assembled hastily in the chambers of the Council of the North. They took their places haphazardly around the long oak table without regard for the carefully established rules of place and precedence. That alone told Wiz how seriously the wizards took this.
"They’re programmers, all right," he told the group. "From our world or one very much like it."
"Do your people make war against us?" demanded Juvian.
"Definitely not. I could tell that much just by looking. But they’re trained in the same discipline we are."
"That’s bad," Jerry said.
"Worse than you know, perhaps," Bal-Simba rumbled. "They have some powerful magical force behind them."
"The Dark League again?"
Bal-Simba snorted. "Much more powerful than that. Non-human I think, and mighty even for non-humans."
"Elves?"
"Perhaps."
"That must be what they’ve been up to," Danny said. "They’ve been stalling the negotiations while they got this thing set up."
Wiz frowned. "I don’t know. There was magic all over the place, but it didn’t feel like elf magic."
"May I remind you, Sparrow," Bal-Simba said, "that you have not met many elves?" Then he shook his head. "But you are correct. Elves can make time and space run strangely, but I have never heard of them creating a whole new World."
"Well, whoever it is has found themselves a couple of people who understand programming. They seem to be pretty good at it."
"They are," Danny said.
"You know them?" Wiz demanded.
"One of them. Mikey Baker. Well, I didn’t really know him but I used to see him around on the nets. His handle was ’Panda,’ you know?"
"No, we don’t know. Tell us."
"Well, he was into hacking and phreaking-system breaking and shit like that."
"Don’t call it hacking," Wiz said sharply. "People like that aren’t ’hackers,’ they’re worms."
Danny shrugged. Unlike Wiz and Jerry he didn’t have the true hackers’ deep contempt for computer vandals who used their skills to break into computer systems. Nor was he offended that the media insisted on calling those criminals "hackers."
"Whatever. Anyway, no one liked him much."
"I can see why. But was he any good?"
"Oh, I guess so. But he was like nasty-nice, you know? Real sweet and easy-going on the surface and just rotten underneath."
"He sure as hell wasn’t sweet to me!"
"He wasn’t like that before. It seems like he’s changed a lot."
"Well, what else do you know about him?"
"Not a lot. The people I knew didn’t like him so I steered clear of him. There’s a rumor he had something to do with the Jesse James Virus."
Wiz looked puzzled. "The Jesse James Virus?"
"That was after you left." Jerry shook his head. "A variation on the Panama Virus. Very sophisticated and real nasty. If this guy was behind it, he’s got talent."
"I’d say there’s a lot of talent behind that place," Wiz said. "Face it. We’re not unique. There are a lot of competent programmers who could do pretty much what we’ve done if they knew about this place and how to get here."
"Yeah," Danny said, "but how did they find out about this world?"
"Perhaps they did not," Moira said. "Perhaps they were brought here as the wizard Patrius brought you here."
"Mikey told me they came here voluntarily."
"I wouldn’t trust anything that guy said," Danny put in.
"Maybe, but someone turned them on to magic programming and our magic compiler. They didn’t pick that up on their own."
No one said anything for a minute.
"There’s only one place they could have gotten the compiler," Wiz said at last. "It had to come from here."
Bal-Simba frowned like a thundercloud. "A traitor?"
"Not exactly," Jerry said. "I’ve been studying the code from that recon drone we found. The compiler they’re using isn’t exactly our compiler. It doesn’t have the extensions we’ve added in the last year and it’s got a couple of features we don’t."
"So they got an earlier version of the code and they’ve been working on it independently," Wiz said. "Can you tell roughly when they got their version?"
"No ’roughly’ about it. I know exactly when. They’re working with the last version the full programming team worked on."
"One of the programmers after all," Wiz said. "But we’d ruled that out."
"I fail to see how," Bal-Simba said. "That-ah-’nondisclosure agreement’ you had them sign is not enforceable in your world."
"Meaning we can’t sic that demon named Guido on them," Wiz agreed. "But we thought of this before and we checked."
"Between Worlds?" Bal-Simba looked skeptical.
"Even in our world there are ways of checking, although they aren’t absolutely accurate."
"We had to make a couple of phone calls," Danny said.
Arianne looked at him strangely but said nothing.
"And you checked everyone?"
"Not everyone. One person, Judith Conally, is very ill. She was hurt in an accident a few months back and she’s still in a coma."
"She’s out then," Wiz said. "People in comas don’t talk."
"That’s not true, y
ou know," Bronwyn said from where she sat at the end of the table.
"Huh?"
"People in comas can sometimes talk. It is not common, but…" She shrugged.
"If she talked," Moira said slowly, "there might have been ears to hear."
"Well, we pretty well know that no one else did," Jerry said.
"I think," Bal-Simba said, "it is time for another Great Summoning from your world."
Sixteen: RESCUE
Three A.M. is a bad time in hospitals. Normal life processes are at their lowest ebb. If it is busy it is because things have gone to hell and if it’s quiet it’s hard to stay alert. Fortunately things were quiet on Neuro, so the nursing supervisor was having trouble staying awake when Sheila came up to the station.
"We’ve lost Conally." Sheila’s voice was so low and tight the supervisor had trouble understanding her.
The super looked up from her charts. "What?"
"Conally, the patient in 314. We’ve lost her."
The supervisor looked sharply at the young nurse. She seemed to be taking this one very hard.
"Too bad," the supervisor said sympathetically, reaching for the phone. "I’ll get a resident up here to pronounce and then we’ll…"
Sheila shook her head. "You don’t understand. She’s not dead, she’s gone! Not in her room."
It was the supervisor’s turn to go white.
The bed was in place, the bedclothes rumpled but not thrown back and the bed was empty.
"Did you check the other rooms?"
"I’ve looked everywhere in the ward. I can’t find her."
It wasn’t unknown for Neuro patients to get out of bed and wander around. That was why the unit was built secure. Except for emergency exits with alarms, the only way in or out was past the nurse’s station and the door could not be opened from the inside unless someone at the nurse’s station buzzed you out.
"Well, search again."
"I’ve already got Doreen and Lupe doing that."
"We’d better alert security to search the rest of the hospital," the supervisor said at last.
As she turned away from the empty bed she thought regretfully of the cigarettes she had left in her locker. This was going to be a bitch of a night.
Bronwyn looked up from the still form, her lips pressed into a tight bloodless line. "What have those damned barbarians done to her?" she demanded.
"How should I know?" Wiz said. "I’m not a doctor."
"Neither are any of them by the look of it. They kept her clean and fed, but they did nothing to heal the damage to her brain."
"I don’t think we can," Wiz said. "Head injuries are hard for us to handle."
"Barbarians," Bronwyn repeated and motioned her assistant to her. "Now leave us. And don’t expect to talk to this one for a couple of days at least."
In the event, it was three days before Bronwyn would let Wiz and Moira in to see her patient.
Judith was lying in bed propped up with pillows. She still looked terrible, but she was conscious.
"Hi, Judith. How are you feeling?"
"Wiz, Moira," she said weakly. "I dreamed about you." Then she frowned. "I feel funny. Arms and legs don’t move right and my eyes don’t wanna focus."
"That is normal," Bronwyn said. "Magic can only do so much safely. You must heal the rest of the way naturally. That will take time and work on your part."
"Not complaining," Judith said muzzily.
"You said you dreamed about us," Moira said gently.
"Dreamed about this place a lot. I think."
"Do you remember answering questions about this World?"
Judith’s eyes flicked from side to side, as if searching. "I, I might have. It seems like I went over and over things about this place."
"She will never have complete memory of that time," Bronwyn whispered in Wiz’s ear. "There was too much damage."
"Did you have any notes about our system of magic?" Wiz asked.
"Notes?" Judith seemed confused. Then she pressed her fingers to her forehead in an effort to think. "Yes, I did make some notes after I got back, but I didn’t show them to anybody. They’re in my apartment."
"We’ll check on that," Wiz said.
"What’s wrong?" Judith asked.
"We think you talked while you were in the hospital," Wiz told her. "We think someone got most of the system of magic out of you. I’ll bet we won’t find those notes in your apartment either. Do you know a guy named Mikey Baker?"
"No."
"What about Craig Scott?"
"Yes," Judith said hoarsely. "He’s a friend of mine. We furp together all the time."
"Furp?" Moira asked.
"FRP-fantasy role playing games," Wiz explained absently.
"What’s happened? What’s wrong?"
"Craig and this Mikey character are here. They’re raising all kinds of hell."
Judith went even whiter. "No! I couldn’t have!"
"That is enough," Bronwyn said firmly. "She needs to rest."
"Right," Wiz said. "Listen, you just concentrate on getting well and don’t worry, okay." He patted her hand and left.
"Moira?" Judith said weakly as the hedge witch turned to go.
"Yes, my Lady?"
"I screwed up, didn’t I? I really screwed up."
Moira smiled and patted her shoulder. "It is all right," she told her. "It doesn’t really matter."
Then she turned away so Judith would not see how much that statement cost her.
Seventeen: A NEW ALLY
Wiz was in the middle of analyzing a module from the crashed recon drone when Bal-Simba found him in the Bull Pen.
"My Lord, you have a visitor."
There was something in the way he said it that made Wiz snap around, the intricacies of the code forgotten.
"Who?"
"Duke Aelric."
Wiz’s jaw dropped. Only once before had the elf duke sent his image into the Wizard’s Keep. The times Wiz had met him it had been in his own elf hill. No mortal understood how the elf hierarchy worked, but Aelric was called "duke" and stood high among the elves. Whatever this was, it had to be important.
Without another word Wiz left his code and hurried out the door of the Bull Pen, but when he turned toward the main keep and the Watcher’s Hall, Bal-Simba placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Not there. The main gate."
"Why did he send his image there?"
Bal-Simba looked at him strangely.
"He did not send his image, my Lord. He is here in person."
* * *
There was no room in the Wizard’s Keep deemed grand enough for receiving an elf, but the Wizard’s Day Room was quickly put right, Malus was awakened from his afternoon nap and shooed out, and Wiz and Duke Aelric retired there.
Even in leather breeches, boots and a simple tunic of dark blue velvet brocaded in silver, Duke Aelric was as out of place as a president in a pig sty. But he contrived to put Wiz so much at his ease in the short walk from the main gate that Wiz didn’t notice-almost.
"What can we do for you, my Lord?" Wiz asked after his guest had been seated and refused refreshment.
"It is more a question of what I can do for you, Sparrow," Duke Aelric said. "Or perhaps what we can do for each other."
"Oh?" was all Wiz could think of to say.
"You have already met the new arrivals from your world?"
"Mikey and Craig?" Wiz said grimly. "Yeah, I’ve met them."
"Then you agree they must be dealt with?"
"Yeah. That’s what you might call at the top of my to-do list."
"I also want to see them dealt with. And what is behind them. Better to work together on this, do you not agree?"
"I’d be honored, Lord. But why… ?"
Aelric cocked a silvery eyebrow. "Why am I interested? Because what you are doing is important. And because I think you will need my help. In fact, you will need all the help you can get."
The way he said it made Wiz’s blood run cold
. He knew the business with Craig and Mikey was serious, but if Duke Aelric was interested it had to be even more serious than he imagined.
You will meet your greatest challenge, Lisella had said. He forced the rest of the prophecy out of his mind.
"Okay, what do you suggest?"
"First, I think, we must pool our knowledge. There are things I can tell you which will help and other things I wish to learn from you."
"Sure." Wiz reached for the silver bell to summon a servant. "Let me get the rest of the team in here."
Duke Aelric made small talk while they waited. Wiz was too astonished by the whole situation to do more than respond half-heartedly. He was very glad when Jerry burst into the room.
"They said you wanted to…" He stopped short and goggled at the guest. Duke Aelric rose and bowed exquisitely, obviously amused by Jerry’s reaction.
"This is, uh, Duke Aelric," Wiz said lamely. "I’ve told you about him."
"Honored."
"Ye… yeah," Jerry replied weakly. "Uh, forgive me. They didn’t tell me… I mean, they just said Wiz wanted to see me."
The door opened behind him and Danny came in with June beside him.
"And this is Danny…" Wiz began, but he was cut short by June’s shriek. She shrank back against Danny, white and open-mouthed.
Aelric bowed again. "My Lord, my Lady."
June turned away and buried her face in Danny’s shoulder.
"Uh, Danny, why don’t you take June back to your room?" Wiz said desperately. "I’ll talk to you later, okay?" Danny threw Aelric a venomous glance and led his shaking wife out.
"Now then," Wiz said, turning back to Duke Aelric, "here’s what we know so far."
It was several hours later when Wiz hunted up Moira.
"How is our guest?" she asked as soon as he came into their apartment.
Wiz kissed her perfunctorily. "You heard, huh?"
Moira looked at him. "Not much of a greeting, my Lord."
"I’ve got a problem. You know June saw Aelric and nearly went into hysterics?"
Moira nodded. "So I had heard."
"It’s the same thing that happened the last time she met an elf," Wiz went on. "At the time I thought it was just Lisella. The way she popped up was enough to scare anyone and June’s easy to frighten. But Aelric was just sitting there and she’s more afraid of him than she was of Lisella."