The Wiz Biz (56 page)
Authors: Rick Cook
Twenty-Four: Demons Go Home
Customer support is an art, not a science.
—marketing saying
So are most other forms of torture.
—programmers’ response
“Lady, Lady come quickly!” Mayor Andrew pounded frantically on the door and looked fearfully over his shoulder toward the village square. “We are beset!”
“Unnugh?” Alaina rolled over in her bed and tried to shake the mead fumes from her head. She threw the dirty bedclothes aside and stumbled to the door, cursing as she banged into an overturned stool.
“Not so loud,” she grumbled, fumbling with the bar. “Not so bleeding loud.” She threw open the door and glared at Andrew. “Now what is it?”
In answer he pointed back into the village. Pale translucent shapes floated here and there over the houses, flitting down the streets and hovering before windows. Now and again a bone-chilling shriek broke the night’s silence.
Alaina gathered herself. “Magic, eh? Well we’ll see about that.” She snatched a grubby cloak from the hook beside the door and threw it over her night dress. Barefoot and with her hair in disarray she marched toward the square with the mayor trailing close behind.
One of the ghostly shapes floated down out of the night sky at her, gibbering as it came. Alaina stopped short and flung her arm up to it.
“demon_debug BEGONE”
she commanded in a cracked voice.
“exe”
The pale form stopped in mid-flight, shuddered and dropped to the earth, coalescing and changing form as it did so. By the time it reached the ground it was a small green manlike thing with a bald head, pointed ears and a wide mouth. In the flickering light of the mayor’s torch, Alaina could see that the little creature was bright green.
It blinked once, extended a foot-long tongue and licked one of its eyebrows, like a cat grooming itself. Then it smiled up at her nastily.
“Ya know, Lady,” the little green man said with a distinct Brooklyn accent, “ya really shouldnna have done that.”
###
“I tell you we are overrun with these things!” Alaina screamed into the communications crystal. “They’re everywhere.”
One of the little green men sat on top of the image formed above the crystal, his legs dangling down in front, as if he were sitting on top of a television instead of in mid-air. She brushed at him like shooing a fly, but her hand passed through the little man’s legs. He stuck out a foot-long pink tongue and gave the hedge witch an especially juicy raspberry.
From where he sat in the Councils great hall, Wiz couldn’t see the little green man. But Alaina’s gestures told him clearly what must be happening.
“How long have you had this problem?” he asked sympathetically.
“Since last night. These things are driving us mad and when I call for help, you make me wait for near a day-tenth before anyone will speak to me. Nothing but that terrible music in the background while I wait.”
Alaina put her head in her hands. The day had been the worst of her life. In laying the banshees she had created dozens of the little green men. Now they were all over the village, getting into everything, making rude and obnoxious comments to everyone and not giving anyone a moment’s peace.
Worse, there was nothing you could do to them. Magic didn’t seem to work and physical objects passed completely through them. Mayor Andrew was nursing a broken hand after trying to hit one of the little creatures that happened to be standing in front of a post. He was so angry at Alaina he wouldn’t even come to her for healing.
“I am sorry about the wait,” Wiz told her. “We are very busy here and none of our service representatives, ah wizards, were immediately available.” Out of the corner of his eye, Wiz could see all the communications positions in the great hall filled with wizards talking to people just as he was. But this one was special. Part of the reason Alaina had to wait was he wanted to handle this village himself. “Now, about these little green men. How did they appear?”
“First there was a plague of banshees and when I tried to exorcise them, we got—this.” She waved her hand helplessly. “Oh, I would rather the banshees,” she moaned.
“We have not been able to recreate your problem here,” Wiz told her. “There is nothing in
ddt
that could produce an effect like that.”
“I didn’t use
ddt
, I used
demon_debug,
” Alaina said.
Wiz frowned and pursed his lips. “Well, as you know,
demon_debug
was not our spell. We cannot be responsible for the consequences if users attempt to apply spells with unauthorized modifications.”
Alaina moaned again.
“However,” Wiz went on, “we have encountered this problem before. The spell you used was not thoroughly tested before release and contained some serious bugs that interact destructively with certain kinds of magic. In fact, we find it actually attracts those kinds of magic. You were quite fortunate, you know.”
“Fortunate?” Alaina asked miserably. Now three of the little green menaces were dancing a jig between her and Wiz’s image. They were accompanying themselves with their own singing and none of them had the slightest sense of pitch or rhythm.
“Fortunate,” Wiz said solemnly. “It might have been dragons.”
“Eh?” said Alaina, straining to hear over the caterwauling.
“I said it might have been dragons,”
Wiz shouted.
Now the green creatures had split up. Two of them were playing nose flutes which droned together like out-of-tune bagpipes while the third took center stage to perform a solo—and extremely rude—version of the Highland fling.
“Help us, Lord,”
Alaina shouted hoarsely over the racket of the demons. Wiz winced and muted the sound from his crystal.
“As it happens we do have a beta version of
ddt
Release 2.0. It should be very effective against these secondary demons.” He pursed his lips severely. “However I would strongly suggest that you do not use any unauthorized spells from now on. The incompatibility problems are likely to become much more severe.”
“Anything,” Alaina said fervently. “Anything at all. I’ll burn every copy of
demon_debug
I can get my hands on. Just rid us of these monsters!”
“I’ll get a messenger off with
ddt
Release 2.0 right away,” Wiz told the hedge witch. “And remember, no unauthorized spells.”
He left Alaina blubbering thanks as the image faded.
“That’ll hold her,” he said as he turned away from the now-dead crystal to Moira. “What’s the matter?” he asked as he caught her look.
“Wiz, this is cruel.”
“What they did to that rock creature was ten times worse,” Wiz said. “At least these demons won’t hurt them and they’ll vanish at a touch of Release 2.0. Besides, I want to make sure that new spell gets spread to every part of the human inhabited world—and that no one tries to use
demon_debug
again.”
“Still, you make them suffer needlessly.”
Wiz rose and held her close. “Not needlessly. If we don’t stop them there won’t be any magical beings at all left anywhere inside the Fringe.”
“And would that be such a bad thing?”
He took her arms. “You don’t mean that. Magic is just as much a part of this World as humans are. You don’t handle something by destroying it. You come to terms with it and learn to use it.”
Moira sighed and Wiz felt her relax in his grip. “Oh, you are right, of course. But I wish there were some other way.”
“So do I,” Wiz said. “I don’t like this either.”
Except in certain selected cases.
###
“Well, what do you think?” Jerry asked the group gathered around the long table in the Bull Pen.
Moira gave a little gasp. “It is beautiful.”
“It should be accurate enough to do the job,” Wiz said judiciously as he looked over the map.
The little red dragon wandered over, sniffed at the map, decided it wasn’t good enough to eat or interesting enough to play with, and returned to his nap on top of the nearby books.
He was the only one in the room who was not impressed. It was a very special map. The parchment it was drawn on was made from the skin of a wild ox from the Wild Wood. The inks used in the drawing were made of pigments taken from the wood itself. Black from the oak galls, browns and full reds from the earth of the Wild Wood and the blues and the greens from minerals taken from its rocks. The pens and brushes used to draw the map were also made from Wild Wood products. Hairs from the tails of forest martens and squirrels, pens from the quills of forest birds and elder bushes. Even the water to mix the inks and the pumice to pounce the skin had come from the Wild Wood.
Unlike any other map ever seen in the World it was also accurate and to scale, thanks to modified versions of Wiz’s searching demons and an Emac Jerry had hacked to do the cartography.
The effect was breathtaking. The mountains seemed to rise up out of the parchment and the brooks and rivers appeared to flow in their beds. Even the forests seemed to be alive.
They all admired the map silently for a moment Then Jerry picked up the wand that lay beside the map. It was made of ebony and ivory and was about the size and shape of a conductor’s baton.
“I still feel silly waving a magic wand around,” he said to no one in particular.
“Just think of it as a funny looking mouse,” Wiz advised.
“Okay, phase two.” Jerry took the wand and drew it along the line on the map. Where the wand passed a trail of glowing green remained.
There was a stirring in the air, but nothing else changed.
“That’s it?” Judith asked.
“That’s it,” Jerry said. “You wanted lightning bolts maybe?”
“Is it permanent?” Moira asked.
“Until it’s reversed,” Jerry said. “But we can reverse it any time.”
“This will work until the Council can come up with some kind of policy they can enforce,” Wiz said. “It also establishes our good intentions with the elves and the other non-mortals. As long as the barriers in place I don’t think we will have a war.”
###
Einrich topped the rise and stopped. The path ahead of him lay clear, but he could not go that way. His ox
whuffed
and stamped nervously, catching his master’s indecision.
The peasant scanned the forest. The trees here were no different than the ones in the valley behind them. The same huge old giants sheltering an undergrowth of ferns. But it was different and he could not go that way.
The trail ran on ahead as it ran behind, winding between the big trees, skirting logs and avoiding the thickly grown patches where a tree had fallen and saplings and busy new growth competed for the light. But he could not follow the trail on.
Einrich frowned and without knowing quite why, turned back. The valley behind was far enough.
Twenty-Five: Project’s End
Programming is like pinball. The reward for doing it well is the opportunity to do it again.
—programmers’ saying
“. . . and a fifty-percent bonus for successful completion of contract,” the clerk said, adding a second, smaller stack of golden cartwheels to the stack already on the table. “Sign here please.” Karl bent down and marked the leatherbound ledger next to his name. Behind him the other programmers were lined up to receive their pay.
“Hey, I like this,” one of them said. “No invoicing, no hassles with the bookkeeping department and nobody trying to hang onto the money a few days more to improve their cash flow. Why can’t all assignments be like this?”
“Speak for yourself. When I get home I’m going to hit the hot tub for about two days solid.”
“I’m for a Big Mac first,” someone else said. “No, make that six Big Macs.”
At the side of the room Bal-Simba smiled. “I am almost sorry to see them go. They have certainly enlivened this place.”
“Um, yes,” said Malus, who was standing between Bal-Simba and Wiz. He didn’t say it with a lot of conviction. “Uh, they are
all
going back, aren’t they?”
Wiz shook his head. “No. I learned my lesson. Jerry’s going to stay behind on a long-term contract to help with the programming. He isn’t the teacher that Karl is, but he’s a lot better than I am. In another year or so he can leave and we’ll be able to use our own people.”
“Oh,” said Malus. “But just one, you say?”
“Just one.”
Moira, who was standing behind them, grinned at the byplay and turned her attention back to the programmers. They were all glad to be going, she saw. The work had been interesting, but the job was done. Now it was time to move on to other things.
Moira felt a pang. She would miss them, with their strange jokes and their casual insanities and their odd, warped way of looking at the universe. She would miss the camaraderie she had shared with them and even their cheerful way of working themselves into blind exhaustion to meet their goals.
But much as she liked them, they were not of her World. Malus was right. They did not belong here and it would be hard on everyone if they stayed.
Still, it hurt to say goodbye.
“Lady?” a voice said softly. Moira turned and saw it was Judith. She had changed from the long dress and girdle she had worn around the keep and back into her slacks and unicorn T-shirt, the first time she had worn that outfit since arrival.
“I wanted to thank you before we left.”
“Thank me?” Moira said blankly.
“For your advice. You know, up on the battlements that day. About romance and where you can find it.”
Moira bobbed a curtsey. “I am glad it pleased you, My Lady.”
Judith made a little face. “I don’t know that it pleased me, but it helped. You were right. If I want to see the romance in the world I am going to have to stop looking for someone else to create it for me.” She smiled wryly. “If I can’t count on anyone else to make my dreams real I’ll have to do it myself.”
“How will you do that?”
“I’m going to write a fantasy trilogy,” said Judith. “It’s going to be full of romance and color and heroics.”
“And dragons?”
Judith grinned. “Oh yes. Lots of dragons.”
“Well, you’ll have the money to do it,” Nancy said as she and Mike joined them. “If you’re not extravagant you can live for a while on what tins job paid, even at Bay Area prices.”
“Are you planning to live at ease on your new wealth?” Moira asked.
“Nope,” Mike said. “We’re going to open a shop specializing in real-time programming and process control,” Mike said.
“Yeah,” Nancy added. “After this gig
anything
is gonna be easy.” She looked over at Judith. “We were hoping to get you to join us, but I guess not.”
“Oh, all this talking about leaving reminds me,” Moira said. “Will you excuse me, My Ladies, My Lord?”
“You will be here to see us off, won’t you?”
“Oh yes,” Moira said. “But there is one other detail that must be attended to. Please excuse me.” She grasped Judith’s hands in hers. “And good luck.”
###
“My Lords, Ladies, may I have your attention for a moment?”
Heads turned toward the dais where Moira was standing alone. “While you are all gathered here, and before you depart, there is one other denizen of our World we wish you to meet.”
She gestured toward the side of the stage and a demon lurched out from behind the curtains. Nearly everyone in the room, programmers and wizards alike, gasped.
It was twelve feet tall, horned and fanged, with a barbed tail sticking out from underneath the jacket of its pin-striped suit. Its forest green skin contrasted vividly with its dark purple shirt and its stark white tie. Under one arm it carried a violin case big enough to hold a bull fiddle.
Moira smiled sweetly. “I am certain you all remember the non-disclosure agreement you signed when you took this job?”
The programmers gulped and nodded.
“This is Guido,” Moira said. “He is our contract enforcer.”
Guido favored the group with a smile that showed all three rows of daggerlike teeth.
Nobody said anything.
“Naturally we will insist on strict observance of the non-disclosure clause,” Moira said and smiled sweetly again.
“Can that thing reach us when we get home?” Karl whispered to Jerry.
“You want to find out?”
Karl thought a minute. “No, not really.”
Neither of them said anything as the demon clumped back behind the curtain.
“Boy, that’s one way to get everyone’s attention,” Karl said.
Jerry scanned the room, counting people with his forefinger. “Not everyone. Danny’s missing.”
“The little twerp’s probably late as usual.”
“Hey, Fox,” Jerry called across the room. “Where’s Danny?”
Larry shrugged. “I dunno. He collected his money and split.”
“Well, if he doesn’t get back here soon he’s going to miss the bus. Damn! I’d better go find him.”
Moira had come up to Jerry at the end of the exchange. “No, My Lord, you stay here. I will go find him.”
Danny turned out to be in the first place Moira checked, which was his room. He was wearing an open-throated collarless shirt, light leather jerkin and trousers tucked into high soft boots. He was stuffing his belongings into a leather traveler’s pack. June stood next to him, so close he nearly bumped into her every time he turned to take more things form the cupboard.
“That is hardly appropriate for your world,” Moira said, eyeing his clothing.
“I’m not going back,” Danny said defiantly. “I’m going to stay here.” June stood close and squeezed his hand hard.
Moira looked hard at June. She had a definite glow about her that meant only one thing to the hedge witch’s trained eye.
“You are pregnant!” she said accusingly.
June smiled shyly and nodded.
“You see,” Danny said triumphantly. “I can’t go back.”
Fortuna!
Moira thought.
Didn’t the little ninny have enough sense to take precautions?
“You cannot stay, either. How to you plan to support yourself—and your family?”
“I’m staying,” he said gruffly. “Here at the keep or someplace else, but there’s nothing back there for me. And I can work. It’s not like I’m lazy or anything. Look,” he went on, almost pleading. “Wiz is going to need help, right? I mean like there’s still a shitload of stuff to do. Well, I can help him.”
Moira realized she was completely out of her depth.
“I think we had better talk to Wiz about this,” she said finally. “I don’t think he is going to like it.”
Wiz didn’t like it. He scowled through the whole recitation, or as much as you can scowl while you’re eating an apple. When Danny finally ran down he continued to scowl and kept on eating. Then he tossed the core of that apple away, selected another one from the bowl and took a hefty bite out of it while he tried to think. Danny stood silent and held one of June’s hands in both of his, as if he were afraid she would vanish if he let go.
“Won’t there be trouble if you don’t go back?” Wiz asked at last.
Danny shook his head vigorously. “Nah. My dad doesn’t want anything to do with me since I dropped out of school and my mom’s remarried. I’m over eighteen, so what could they do anyway?”
“You realize that if you don’t go back now it may be a long time before you get another chance?”
“I don’t want to go back. I want to say here with June.”
Wiz thought for about as long as it took him to finish the apple.
“Leave us alone for a few minutes, will you?”
The couple left the room, still joined at the fingers.
“What do you think?” Wiz asked as soon as the door closed behind them.
Jerry shrugged. “I don’t know how much help he’d be, but I don’t think it would be a problem to have him around. He’s got more sense than most hackers his age.” He caught the look in Moira’s eye. “Programming sense,” he amended.
“Moira?”
“I doubt it will last. Both are children in more than just years and neither has a strong family upbringing. Still, they deserve the chance to try and I am not sure what June would do if they were parted forcibly.” She looked at Wiz. “It has to be your decision, Lord. Ultimately you would be the one responsible for him.”
Wiz grabbed another apple from the bowl and took two bites. “I’d just as soon he went back. He’s got potential, but sometimes he’s so obnoxious I want to kick his ass from one end of the castle to the other.” He sighed. “On the other hand, I don’t like playing the ogre by separating them and he sure can’t take her back to Cupertino.” He stood silent for a moment, chewing reflectively.
“Okay, if we can paper this over so he’s not missed, I guess he can stay.” He looked sharply at Moira. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“You’ve got that look in your eye.”
“Oh, nothing,” Moira said. “It is just that I got an odd feeling . . .” She shook herself. “No, nothing at all.”
Wiz knew better than to pursue that. “All right, bring them back in here.”
“Okay,” Wiz said as he faced the pair. “You can stay. If,” he waggled a finger at Danny.
“If
we can arrange this so you won’t be missed. You can’t just drop out of sight.”
“That’s easy,” Danny said. “I’ll write my mom a letter telling her I’ve taken a long-term contract overseas.” He grinned. “That’s even true. Then I’ll throw in a couple of more letters to be mailed on her birthday and stuff. That way she won’t worry and we’ll just gradually lose touch.”
Wiz wondered what Danny’s mother would make of getting letters on parchment, but he decided not to ask.
“All right. Get those letters written and get them back here before it is time to leave. We’ll see they get sent.”
“I hope I’m not going to regret this,” Wiz said after the pair raced out of the room.
“I wouldn’t lay you odds,” Jerry told him.
###
Again the programmers—less two—gathered in a tight knot inside the circle inscribed on the chantry floor. As the sundial’s shadow shortened, they chattered among themselves and called goodbyes to the friends who had come to see them off. Wiz, Moira and Jerry stood on the dais next to Bal-Simba and waved back until the shadow reached its mark and the wizard motioned them to silence.
Once again the six-part chant welled up and the air shimmered and twisted about the group in the center of the room. The voices grew stronger and the people grew fainter until at last there was nothing but emptiness where they had been. The chant itself died away and nothing was left but the echoes.
In unison the wizards dropped their arms and at Bal-Simba’s dismissal stepped away from their places. As the others filed out of the chantry the huge black wizard stepped down from the dais and ritually defaced the circle with his staff.
Wiz, Moira and Jerry remained for a couple of minutes more, looking at the place where their friends had been.
“Well, come on,” Wiz said finally. “We’ve got a full day ahead of us tomorrow.”
“How do you feel?” Moira asked Wiz as they walked hand in hand back to their apartment.
“Tired, hungry and very glad it’s over.” He frowned and sighed. “Only it isn’t over. We’re going to have to arrange some sort of meeting with the non-mortals to work out a treaty, and we’ve got a pile of work to do on the software.”
They came to the door and paused. “But at least it’s over for today and yes, I’m very glad of that.” He bent his head down to kiss her and she responded enthusiastically.
“But first, food,” he said as he pushed open the door to their rooms with his foot. “What’s for dinner?”
Moira smiled mysteriously. “Something very special.”
“Special or not, I hope there’s a lot of it. I’m starved again.”
“Sit down and I will bring it to you.”
Wiz plopped himself down at the table and poured out a large glass of fruit juice from the pitcher sitting on it. He tasted it and then added several dollops of honey.
“Here it is,” Moira said as she came through the door with a large flat box in her hands.
“Pizza!” Wiz said lovingly, caressing the cardboard as she set it on the table. “A real pizza from Little Italy!”
“I got it when I visited your world,” Moira told him. “I have kept it hot and fresh by magic since we returned.”
Wiz opened the box and breathed deeply. “Pepperoni, sausage and mushrooms. With extra cheese! This is wonderful.”
“Best of all, the cooks say that now that they know what a pizza is supposed to be, they can make them.”
“Wonderful,” Wiz said, concentrating on separating a slice of pizza without losing the toppings.
“I thought you would be pleased.”
“Oh, you have your compensations, wench,” he said mock loftily as he lifted the steaming slice to his mouth.
Moira smiled sweetly, waited until just the right moment and jabbed her elbow into his ribs—hard.
And Wiz Zumwalt—mightiest sorcerer in all the World, conqueror of demons, twice victor over the Dark League and keeper of the World’s balance—tried to breath tomato sauce through his nose.
