The Wiz Biz

by Rick Cook

“How?” she asked suspiciously.

  Wiz spread his arms. “I just want to make myself useful.”

  Moira snorted skeptically, as if she felt his offer was a ruse to get close to her. Since that was partially true, Wiz reddened.

  “Very well, weed that section over there.” She nodded her head toward a part of the border on the other side of the garden.

  The border contained tall fennel plants, their feathery pale green foliage smelling strongly of licorice. Sprouting thickly around them were broad-leafed seedlings, each with two or three yellow-green leaves.

  Even though the smell of licorice made Wiz slightly nauseous, he set to work with a will, pulling up the tiny plants without damaging the fennel. The summer sun beat strongly on his back and before he had weeded five feet he was sweating heavily. The border was wide and he had to reach to get the weeds at the far side. In ten feet his shoulders were twinging from the reaching and by the time he had done twenty feet his back was sore as well. He took to stopping frequently to rest his aching muscles and to watch Moira at work on the other side of the garden.

  Moira worked steadily and mechanically, flicking the weeds out of the bed with a practiced twist of her wrist. Her long red hair hung down beside her face and every so often she would reach up and brush it out of the way, but she never broke the rhythm of her work. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek and her skirt and blouse were grimed and stained, but she still took Wiz’s breath away.

  At last Wiz reached the end of the fennel and went to Moira for further instructions.

  “It took you long enough,” she said as he approached.

  There were a lot of weeds,” said Wiz, bending over backwards in an effort to get the kinks out of his back. “I don’t think that patch had been weeded in some time.”

  Moira looked up at him sharply. “I weeded it myself not three days ago.”

  “Well, weeds must come up quickly here. They were all over the place.”

  Moira got to her feet and went over to examine Wiz’s handiwork. At the sight of the clean bare earth under the fennel plants she sucked in her breath and clenched her teeth.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Those,” she said pointing to Wiz’s piles of “weeds,” “were lettuces. They were planted there so the fennel could shade them.” She sighed and stooped to gather the wilted plants into her apron. “I hope you like salad, Sparrow, because there is going to be a lot of it tonight.”

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

  “It is not your fault, Sparrow,” she said in a resigned voice. “I should have known better than to trust you with such a task.”

  That made Wiz feel even worse.

  “Go back inside. I will finish up here.”

  “Lady, I’m really sorry.”

  “I know you are, Sparrow. Now go.”

  ###

  Finally, by appealing to Shiara, Wiz got a regular job. Under a shed roof against the palisade was a woodpile and next to the woodpile stood an old tree stump with an axe in it. Wiz’s job was to chop firewood for Heart’s Ease.

  The axe was shaped like a giant tomahawk with no poll and a perfectly round straight haft. The design made it hard to handle and it took Wiz two or three hours a day to chop enough wood for the hearths and kitchen fires. He didn’t see how Ugo had been able to get the wood chopped with all his other work. Except, Wiz thought glumly, he’s probably a lot more efficient at it, than I am.

  The goblin servant came by the wood pile several times to check Wiz’s progress and sniffed disapprovingly at what he saw. He also very ostentatiously examined the axe for damage each time and strictly forbade Wiz to sharpen it.

  ###

  Worse than the boredom, Moira avoided him. She wasn’t obvious about it and she was always distantly polite when they met, but she contrived to spend as little time in his company as she could. Wiz took to standing on the battlements of the keep and watching her as she worked in the garden far below. From the occasional glance she threw his way he knew she saw him, but she never asked him to stop.

  He had been closer to her when they were on the run, Wiz thought miserably. About the only time he could count on seeing her was when they sat down to dinner.

  But the worst thing of all was that there were no computers. Because of the magical changes that let him speak the local language, Wiz couldn’t even write out programs. He took to running over algorithms mentally, or sitting and sorting piles of things algorithmically. At night his dreams of Moira alternated with dreams of working at a keyboard again and watching the glowing golden lines of ASCII characters march across the screen.

  One morning Moira found him sitting at the table in the hall practicing with broom straws.

  “What are you doing, Sparrow?” she asked, eyeing the row of different length straws on the table before him.

  “I’m working a variation on the shell sort.”

  “Those aren’t shells,” Moira pointed out.

  “No, the algorithm—the method—was named for the man who invented it. His name was Shell.”

  “Is this magic?” she demanded.

  “No. It’s just a procedure for sorting things. You see, you set up two empty piles—”

  “How can piles be empty?”

  “Well, actually you establish storage space for two empty piles, then you—”

  “Wait a minute. Why don’t you just put things in order?”

  “This is a way of putting them in order.”

  “You don’t need two piles to lay out straws in order.”

  “No, look. Suppose you needed to tell someone to lay out straws in order.”

  “Then I would just tell them to lay them out in order. I don’t need two piles for that either.”

  “Yeah, but suppose the person didn’t know how to order something.”

  “Sparrow, I don’t think anyone is that stupid.”

  “Well, just suppose, okay?”

  She sighed. “All right, I am working with someone who is very stupid. Now what?”

  “Well, you want a method, a recipe that you can give this person that will let them sort things no matter how many there are to be sorted. It should be simple, fast and infallible. Now suppose the person who is going to be doing the sorting can compare straws and say that one is longer than another one, okay?”

  “Hold on,” Moira cut in. “You want to do this as quickly as possible, correct?”

  “Right.”

  “And your very stupid person can tell when one straw is longer than another one, correct?”

  “Right.”

  “Then why not just lay the straws down on the table one by one and put them in the right order as you do so? Look at the straws and put each one in its proper place.”

  “Because you can’t always do that,” Wiz said a little desperately. “You can only compare one pair of straws at a time.”

  “That’s stupid! You can see all the straws on the table can’t you?”

  “You just don’t understand,” Wiz said despairingly.

  “You’re right,” the red-headed witch agreed. “I don’t understand why a grown man would waste his time on this foolishness. Or why you would want to sort straws at all.” With that she turned away and went about her business.

  “It’s not foolishness,” Wiz said to her back. “It’s . . .” Oh, hell, maybe it is foolishness here. He slumped back in the chair. After all, what good is an algorithm without a computer on which to execute it? But dammit, these people were so damn literal-minded! It wasn’t that Moira didn’t understand the algorithm—although that was a big part of it, he admitted. To Moira the method was just a way to sort straws. She didn’t seem to generalize, to see the universality of the technique.

  Come to that, most of the people here didn’t generalize the way he did. They didn’t think mathematically and they almost never went looking for underlying common factors or processes. This is what it must have been like back in the Middle Ages, before the rise of mathematics revolutionized Wes
tern thought.

  Well, he thought, looking around the great hall with its fireplace and tapestries, this isn’t exactly Cupertino. This is the Middle Ages, pretty much. So here I am, a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Full of all kinds of modern knowledge. And that and a quarter—or whatever they use here for quarters—will get me a cup of coffee—or whatever they drink here for coffee.

  If he had been a civil engineer or something he could have put his knowledge to use. He might at least have shown people how to build better bridges or catapults or whatever. But he wasn’t even a hardware type. Strictly software. And the only thing his knowledge was good for was sorting straws.

  With a disgusted motion, Wiz swept the half-sorted straws onto the floor. He dragged the heavy carved chair from the table to a place by the window and sat with his feet propped on the window ledge staring out.

  Back home he could look out over the freeway and housetops to rolling golden hills marked with dark slashes where clumps of oaks and eucalyptus grew. Here all he could see was trees and off, in the distance, mountains covered with more trees. He missed that combination of open vistas and people close by. He even missed the rivers of automobiles that poured down the freeway.

  He did a quick calculation and realized they were coming down to the wire on the project at work. Probably cursing him for disappearing at a critical point. I wonder who they got to replace me? The thought of a stranger working at his terminal, rearranging his carefully piled stacks of printouts made him ache. He got up and started to pace the length of the hall.

  He had left half a box of fried chicken in his desk drawer, he remembered. Will they find that before it starts to stink up the office? And what about my apartment? The rent should be due by now. The bills will be piling up in the mailbox. How do they handle stuff like that when someone disappears? Wiz didn’t have a cat because the apartment didn’t allow pets. For the first time he was glad of it. At least there was no one who was really dependent on me.

  Ugo came in with a load of wood for the evening’s fire. As he dropped it by the fireplace, he saw the chair against the window.

  “You move?” he demanded.

  “Yes.”

  He scowled and pointed at the chair. “Do not move things. It would confuse the Lady.” He shifted it back to its place by the table.

  “I’m sorry,” Wiz said contritely.

  “Do not move things,” the goblin said sternly and continued on his way.

  “Damn!” Wiz said to the empty air.

  “Do not curse, Sparrow.”

  Wiz turned and saw Moira had come back into the hall.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No, just a little homesick.”

  “I am sorry, Sparrow. I, too, wish to go home.”

  “At least you can get there from here,” he said sullenly.

  Moira compressed her lips. “Not while the Mighty bid me here to watch over you.”

  “You don’t do much watching. The only time I see you is at meals.”

  “Oh? Do you feel the need for a nursemaid, Sparrow?”

  “I’m in love with you. I want to be close to you. Is that so hard to understand?”

  Moira dropped her eyes. “That was none of my doing.”

  “All right, you don’t love me,” Wiz said bitterly. “Then take this damn spell off me!”

  “Do not use language like that,” Moira said sharply.

  “Sorry,” Wiz snapped, “but that’s what it is.”

  The red-headed witch sighed. “Sparrow, if I had my way you never would have been bound to me in the first place. If it were in my power to remove the spell I would do so in an instant. But I cannot.

  “I did not put the spell on you; Patrius did. It is not an infatuation spell I know and I do not have the faintest idea how to release you. Bal-Simba or one of the other Mighty could perhaps remove it. When Bal-Simba comes here I will ask him to take the spell off. More, I will beg him to take it off.”

  She softened. “I am sorry, Sparrow, but that is the best that I can do.”

  “Great,” Wiz said. “In the meantime I’ve got a case of terminal puppy love combined with the moby hots for you. I’ve got to live under the same roof with you and have nothing to do with you. Da . . . darn it, before this happened you weren’t even my type! I like willowy brunettes.”

  Moira reddened. “I suppose you think this is easy for me! To have you trailing after me like a puppy dog, or a bull and me a cow in season? To have to stay here when there are people elsewhere who need me? To have to tiptoe around avoiding you for both our sakes? Do you think I enjoy any of it?” she shouted, her freckles vivid against her flushed skin, her bosom heaving and her green eyes flashing like emeralds in candlelight. Wiz could only stare, but Moira didn’t notice.

  “Sparrow, believe me when I tell you I want nothing so much as to be rid of you and gone from this place.” She turned on her heel and slammed out the door.

  “Damn that old wizard anyway!” Wiz said viciously in his teeth. Then he went off to the woodpile to turn logs into kindling.

  ###

  Moira didn’t exactly apologize and neither did Wiz. But the outburst seemed to clear the air slightly and for a while things at Heart’s Ease were a little less strained.

  Other than that, life went on as before. Wiz chopped wood and moped about, Moira stayed out of his way, Shiara was as beautiful and gracious as ever and Ugo grumbled.

  In addition to cutting firewood and sighing after Moira, Wiz did try to learn more about his new world and his new home.

  “Ugo, why is Heart’s Ease so special?” Wiz asked one morning when the little wood goblin came out to the wood pile to collect his work.

  “Because the Lady live here,” said Ugo in a tone that indicated only an idiot would ask such a question.

  Wiz put the axe down and wiped his brow. “I mean besides that. Moira said there was something about the way it was built.”

  “No magic,” Ugo told him. “Every stone raised by hand. Every board and beam felled by axe and shaped by adze. All joined with pegs and nails. No magic anywhere in the building.”

  “Why not?”

  “The Lady does not like magic,” the goblin servant said, gathering in an armload of wood. “It hurts her now.” With that he turned away to his duties.

  Pumping Ugo for information was never very satisfactory, Wiz thought as he washed and changed for dinner. But then damn little around here is.

  Wiz pulled a clean shirt out of his chest and paused in front of the mirror before putting it on. The days at the woodpile had put muscle on his frame and the sun had darkened his normally pasty torso. He still wasn’t going to win any body-building contests, but he had to admit he looked a lot better than he normally did.

  “Pretty good for someone who’s totally useless,” he told himself.

  “Are you sure?” the mirror asked soundlessly.

  Wiz jumped and gasped. Then he stared. The mirror was angled so it did not catch the full brightness of the sun. It’s surface was dark and cloudy as always.

  “Are you sure you’re so useless?” the mirror repeated. The words formed in Wiz’s mind.

  “Well, yeah I’m sure,” Wiz said aloud.

  “You shouldn’t be,” the mirror said. “You were brought from a long way at the cost of a man’s life. There are a lot of people who are looking very hard for you. I’d say that makes you pretty important.”

  Great! Wiz thought. Now I’m getting a pep talk from a goddamn mirror.

  “You need it from someone, bub. You’ve been sulking like a twelve-year-old ever since you got to Heart’s Ease. You need to pull out of it.”

  “What’s the use? I don’t fit in here and I never will.”

  “With that attitude you’re damn straight you never will,” the mirror told him. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been a fish out of water. You’re the guy who spent two years doing software maintenance in a COBOL shop and
managed to fit in pretty well.”

  “Well yeah, but that was different.”

  “Not that different. Wiz, old son, you’ve never exactly been a fount of social graces, but you’ve always gotten by. And you have never, never, given up before.”

  “So I should beat my head against a stone wall?”

  “How do you know it’s a stone wall? Face it, you haven’t tried all that hard. There’s got to be something here for you. All you have to do is find it.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “Patrius was. He must have had a reason to bring you here.”

  “Moira says Patrius made a mistake.”

  “Moira may be beautiful, but she’s not always right.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Moira is a consideration, though. If you were someone here, it might change her attitude.”

  “If you’re going to offer to play me a game, I refuse,” Wiz told the mirror.

  “No offer,” the mirror told him. “Only the observation.”

  “Okay, but what could make me special here?”

  The mirror was silent.

  “Well?” Wiz demanded.

  “I don’t know the answer to that.”

  “Great. Then why the hell bring it up?”

  “Because you have two choices,” the mirror bored on inexorably. “You can believe you will never amount to anything here, never fit in, and dissolve in your own bile. Or you can believe you have a place here and try to find it. Which do you prefer?”

  “All right. But how? What do I have to do?”

  “You’ll think of something,” the mirror told him.

  “You’ll think of something,” Wiz mimicked. “Thanks a lot!”

  “Sparrow?” Wiz turned and there was Shiara standing in the open door.

  “Who are you talking to?” she asked. Wiz flushed and opened his mouth to deny it. Then he changed his mind. After all, magic worked here.

  “I was talking to the mirror, Lady.”

  Shiara frowned. “The mirror?”

  “Well, it talked to me first,” he said defensively.