The Wiz Biz

by Rick Cook

  “Come on, end of the line. Are you all right?”

  “I think,” Moira said judiciously, “that Wiz was far braver than I ever knew.”

  She tore her eyes away from the dashboard and looked around. They were in a small valley. The brown hills above them were crowned with the gray-green of live oak trees. There was dust everywhere. The stink was still in the air, but not as strong here as in the city.

  The field before them was crammed with vehicles standing cheek-by-jowl and all covered with a thin film of dust. A steady stream of people filtered out of the field, stopped at a table by the path and then headed over a low hill. Most of them were weighted down with bags, boxes, bundles and long poles of some light-colored wood.

  “What is this place?”

  “It’s a war. These people come here to pretend to be living in ancient times. Um, something like your place but with no magic.”

  Moira looked around, bemused. “They come here to pretend to be peasants?”

  “Well, ah, not exactly.”

  “And why would the Mighty of your world wish to pretend there is no magic?”

  “Actually,” Jerry explained, “some of them are pretending there is magic.”

  Moira opened her mouth to ask another question and then thought better of it. This was remarkably similar to conversations she had sometimes with Wiz.

  “It gets a little complicated. But we’ve got a better chance of finding what we need here than anyplace else I can think of.”

  Moira nodded and followed him across the field toward the table. She wondered what awaited them at the end of that path.

  ###

  Wiz leaned back against the wall and examined his handiwork. Even with the iron bar and the frost-loosened stones it had been a rough job to pry the blocks loose. His knuckles were scraped, his palms were blistered and his shoulders and arms ached from pulling on the prybar.

  He had taken the stones in more or less checkerboard around the walls and piled them in the center of the pit directly under the trap door. Standing on the pile, he could reach up to the narrow neck of the pit. He still had a long way to go before he would have enough blocks to reach the top of the trap.

  This is going to take forever, he thought, rubbing his shoulders and looking up. But the sooner he got to it the quicker it would be done. Anyway, it took his mind off how cold and hungry he was.

  Sighing, Wiz picked up the bar again and went back to work.

  ###

  “Morning, My Lord, My Lady,” said one of the three large young men sitting at the table. “Site fee’s five bucks.”

  While Jerry peeled off several gray-green paper oblongs, Moira studied him, trying to make sense out of what she was seeing.

  He was not a guardsman, of that Moira was sure. He had the body of a man but the face was still that of a child. He was dressed in a simple tunic over the sort of blue trousers Wiz called “jeans.” He wore a red leather belt with a cheap, gaudy sword thrust scabberdless through it like a boy pretending to be a warrior, she thought, but with more self-importance, as if he expected people to take him seriously.

  “Okay,” the man said. “Medievals are required on site. You’ll have to stop by the hospitaller and get a loaner costume.” He looked over at Moira in her long green wool skirt and scoop-neck blouse. “Your friend’s fine.”

  Jerry was fitted with a slightly-too-small tunic in purplish gray, trimmed with a darker purple zig-zags and tied about the middle with a piece of brown cord. The color made him look ill, but the woman with the trunk of clothing had nothing else that would fit someone of his girth.

  As they topped the rise, Moira gawked at what was spread out in the small valley below. Nestled in among the live oaks and chaparral was an encampment of hundreds of tents of different shapes, sizes and colors. What seemed like thousands of people in clothing of every shade and hue milled about the valley like ants in an anthill. In the center of the valley was a cleared space with perhaps two hundred men whaling away at each other with wooden weapons. The smack of wood on wood, the clank and clatter of steel and the shouts echoed off the hillsides.

  For an instant, she thought they were actually hurting each other. Then she saw a warrior who had dropped like a sack of sand under the blow of a pole-ax roll out of the fight, stand up and walk off the field. As the fighter came away from the battle, he took off his helm and shook out a mane of long blond hair. Moira realized with a shock it was a woman.

  “Excuse me, My Lord, My Lady,” came a voice behind them, “but you’re blocking the trail.”

  As they stepped aside a boy of perhaps fourteen struggled past them loaded down with several bundles and a half-dozen pole weapons. When he passed, Moira saw the heads were padding wrapped with some kind of silvery material.

  At the bottom of the hill was a market. There were booths along the trail, and tables with cloths spread over them. The smell of roasting meat rose from the food stands and people milled and jostled through the throng, admiring wares, talking, eating and sometimes buying.

  Most of the people seemed to be dressed in rags and patches, although here and there a man or a woman might be more substantially dressed. Everyone and everything was covered with fine brownish dust.

  Many of the men and a few of the women were wearing what she recognized as armor, mostly concoctions of padded cloth, leather and light metal that looked as if it would come apart at the first serious blow.

  Moira looked around eagerly, but missed the thing she had expected to see.

  “Where is the hiring block, My Lord?”

  “The what?”

  “The hiring block. This is a hiring fair, is it not?”

  “No, not exactly. In fact most people come here to forget their jobs.”

  “Then how are we to find the ones we need?”

  “We’ll have to ask. I think we need to find a herald first.”

  A man in a green cloak with crossed trumpets approached them. “Excuse me, My Lord, but did I hear you say you needed a herald?”

  “Uh, yeah, I have an announcement I’d like you to make. We’re looking to hire a number of programmers and other computer specialists for a rather special job.”

  “And so you came here?” The herald nodded. “Smart move. I think there are more computer types per square foot at one of these wars than at anything this side of an ACM meeting.”

  “ACM?” Moira asked.

  “Association for Computing Machinery, a professional group,” Jerry told her. “Anyway,” he said turning back to the herald, “we’re looking for systems-level programmers, systems analysts, documentation specialists, people with real-time or process-control experience—if we can find them—and compiler writers.”

  “No machine operators?” the herald asked. “Employment or contract?”

  “Contract. Probably three to six months.”

  “Well, normally they frown on even mentioning computers at these events,” the herald said. “King Alfonso is a particular stickler for authenticity so you’re not going to get it announced at court. But I don’t think there’d be any real objection if I announced it in the merchant’s area and the non-medieval camping area.”

  “Great. Uh, is there any place I can sit and talk to people?”

  “You can borrow my pavilion,” the herald said. “I want to talk to you about this anyway. I’m looking for a change myself.”

  ###

  The herald’s pavilion turned out to be an aluminum-framed camping tent hung with banners and set well off to the side of the encampment.

  Moira sat at a folding table under an awning, sipping lemonade from a wooden goblet and watching the knot of people who had gathered in response to the herald’s announcement.

  They didn’t look like the Mighty Moira was used to. There wasn’t a full gray beard among them and none of them showed the stately bearing and serene self-control she associated with powerful magicians.

  The first one into the tent was a dumpy dark-haired woman in a blue-and
-silver gown whose long dagged sleeves nearly trailed in the dust. Far too elaborate for such a place, Moira thought, especially since these people did not have cleaning spells.

  Behind her were a tall dark-haired woman with piercing dark eyes and a shorter, sandy haired man with a neat spade beard who seemed to be her husband.

  Next to them was a lean man going bald on top with his remaining hair pulled back into a pony tail.

  She wondered how Jerry was explaining her world’s needs to them.

  “You certainly seem qualified, Ms. Connally,” Jerry said to the woman sitting across from him. “I can’t tell you the nature of the job until you sign the nondisclosure agreement.”

  “Judith, please,” the dark-haired woman in the blue-and-silver brocade gown corrected.

  “I can tell you it is a short-term contract, probably about six months. The assignment requires that you live onsite until it is completed. The site is remote and rugged and contact with the outside world is very limited.”

  “A black site?”

  Jerry recognized the reference to an ultra-secret project where the programmers were kept totally isolated.

  “Kind of dark gray, actually.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “SDI, right?”

  Jerry smiled, as he had seen so many recruiters do. “I am really not at liberty to say. Now,” he went on, “I should also warn you that there is an element of physical risk in this.”

  The other’s eyes narrowed. “This is legal, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Jerry said. “That is, there is absolutely no law against what we are doing.” At least not in California, he added mentally. I think Massachusetts still has a law against practicing witchcraft.

  “Now, tell me a little bit more about your background.”

  The interviews went quickly. Jerry wasn’t interested in playing interviewer games, there was no application to fill out and no one had brought a resume to an SCA war. Besides, Jerry was a programmer himself, not some personnel bozo who only had the vaguest notion of what the job entailed.

  And nobody is going to ask me to fill out an EEOC report on this one.

  He had just talked to the eighth candidate when the herald, who went by the name of Ali Ahkan, stuck his head into the tent with a peculiar expression on his face.

  “His Majesty, King Alfonso of Seville,” the herald announced.

  Jerry wasn’t up on the etiquette, but he stood up as the king entered.

  “Your Majesty.”

  King Alfonso turned out to be a tall, rather lean man in his mid-twenties with an olive complexion and dark unruly hair. .He was wearing a crown of sheet brass set with agates, dark hose, a black velvet doublet and riding boots. A broadsword hung from his hip on a white belt. His clothes were powdered with the brownish dust from the site.

  The king stuck out his hand. “Karl Dershowitz,” said the king with a distinctly Texas drawl.

  “Jerry Andrews.”

  “So tell me,” said the king, pulling up the stool, “what’s this super-secret job you’re recruiting for?”

  “How did you find out?”

  He shrugged. “It’s all over camp. Did you know you’re with the CIA and you’re recruiting programmers who are expert swordsmen to fight their way into Afghanistan so they can tap into the Russians’ SDI computer network?”

  “It’s nothing like that,” Jerry said uncomfortably.

  “Of course not.” The king smiled. “If anyone in this bunch has a choice between a good story and the truth, the good story will win out every time.”

  “Look, I’m sorry if we’re interfering with your event, but we needed some people with special talents in a hurry.”

  The king waved that off. “What interference? You’re off in a corner in someone’s pavilion talking to people one at a time. Oh, a couple of people did come to me to complain about the announcement you had the heralds make.” He snorted. “Down in Texas, we called them pissants.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because my current contract just ran out and the job sounds interesting—Afghanistan or no. Could you tell me about it?”

  ###

  The next candidate was as unimpressive as the king—Karl, Jerry corrected himself—had been impressive.

  At first he thought the kid had wandered in by mistake. He was slightly plump in the face. A downy blond beard decorated his cheeks. His eyes were brown, dark in contrast to his skin and hair. He was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a satin tunic that had probably once been purple but was now faded and stained to something resembling blue. A cheap hunting knife was clipped to his belt and a wooden goblet hung from a leather thong.

  Without waiting for an invitation he sat down. “Thorkil du Libre Dragonwatcher. I understand you’re looking for programmers.”

  Jerry eyed him without enthusiasm. “We are. Are you a programmer?”

  “Yeah,” he said flushing, “and I’m damn good.”

  “Do you have a degree?”

  “I attended Cal-Tech.”

  “Yes, but do you have a degree?”

  The kid fidgeted under Jerry’s stare.

  “Okay, so maybe I don’t, but I’m good.”

  Jerry sighed to himself. Well, if you wanted to find frogs you had to kiss a few toads—or however that saying went.

  “We need people with experience.”

  “I’ve got experience,” he protested. “I’ve worked in TOS 1.4, AmigaDOS and ProDOS.”

  Jerry, who didn’t consider a computer a computer unless it ran at least BSD Unix, winced. “Those are game machines.”

  “The Amiga’s no game machine,” the kid flared. “Neither is the ST. Besides, I’ve done real-time programming in Forth on a Trash 80 Model I.”

  That was slightly more interesting. From Moira’s confused recitation of what Wiz had done, Jerry knew he had used the Forth language for some of the programming. Besides, anyone who could do anything useful in real time on something as limited as a Model I clearly had talent.

  “Okay,” he said, making a mark on the clipboard, “I’ll let you know later.”

  ###

  Panting, Wiz jammed his prybar into the joint and leaned on it with all his strength again. The stone shifted more. He dropped the bar, got his fingers on the edge and tugged at the stone. The rock moved slightly and its neighbors shifted with it. Instinctively, Wiz jumped backwards, lost his balance and went tumbling down the side of the rock pile. With a crash and a roar a whole section of the heck gave way. Stones cascaded down into the pit and went bouncing in every direction.

  Coughing from the dust, Wiz looked up. The side of the neck had slumped in on itself. Half the pit was full of blocks and rubble and the vertical wall had collapsed into a steep incline that led out of the trap and into the courtyard.

  Wiz shook his head to clear it. Well, that works too. Slowly and carefully, he climbed up the pile of rubble and out of the pit.

  ###

  “Better than I expected,” Jerry told Moira at the end of three hours. “We’ve got systems programmers, documentation specialists, real-time programmers and people with control and simulation experience here.”

  “Are they of the Mighty?”

  “Well, they’re a pretty high-powered bunch, especially considering we had to put together the team at such short notice. That first one, Judith Connally, has done real-time programming on military projects. Mike and Nancy Sutton, the husband and wife team, are a process control programmer and a documentation specialist respectively.”

  He made a face. “If I know Wiz, we’re gonna need a documentation specialist. Anyway, we’ve got some good potential here.”

  “How will you select them?”

  “Well, Moira, it’s your show. You’ve got the ultimate say in who we choose.”

  “I will be guided by you in this, Lord,” Moira said. “I know little of such matters. But there is one I would like included. The young one. Thorkil du Libre Dragonwatcher.”

  Jerry raised his e
yebrows. “That kid? He’s not in the same league with most of the rest of the people and I think he’s a pirate to boot.”

  “I thought he said he was a programmer.”

  “A pirate is a land of programmer. He steals other people’s software.”

  “Nonetheless, I would have him.”

  Jerry shrugged. “I think he’s going to be more trouble than he’s worth, but okay. I’ll add him to the list.” He made a note on the pad and looked up. “Why do you want him, anyway?”

  “A feeling,” Moira said. “Just a feeling.”

  “A premonition?”

  Moira smiled. “In this place? No, I just feel that he has something to offer. I do not know, perhaps he reminded me of Wiz.”

  Jerry made a face. “Now that you mention it, there is a certain resemblance.” He scribbled another note on the list. “Okay, then. That’s our team.”

  “Now what?” Moira asked.

  “Now we call them back, explain the terms and give them the contract to sign.” He made another face. “This is where it is going to get real interesting.”

  ###

  There was food in the black and white palace after all. Wondering what had been the kitchen, Wiz found half a flat round loaf of bread and several strips of dried meat that had fallen behind a counter.

  The meat was probably tough before it had been dried and it was certainly stringy. The bread was heavy, and full of what seemed to be sawdust, but after two days and a night in the pit, Wiz was in no mood to complain. He wolfed down his find and then curled up in a corner.

  Maybe there is justice in the world after all, he thought drowsily as he drifted off.

  ###

  “. . . and you receive a signing bonus of two point three ounces of gold and a rate of pay of two point three ounces of gold per week for the duration of the contract,” Jerry told the selected group of programmers gathered under the awning.