The Wiz Biz II: Cursed & Consulted (15 page)

The robot lurched drunkenly down the corridor and caromed off the wall, knocking off chips of malachite and bending a golden wall sconce.

At the end of the hall was a bronze portal. The robot stopped before it and made a motioning gesture with its arm that nearly took Wiz's head off.
Then it froze.

Wiz recovered from the accidental assault, realized his guide had signaled him through the door, saw that the robot wasn't likely to make any other dangerous moves, and stepped past.

The room was as out-of-scale as everything else in the castle. One whole side and half the ceiling was picture-window-size panes of glass giving a panoramic eagle's-eye view of red desert and sere mountains. The place was fitted out like a laboratory, or perhaps a control room, with panels of dials and switches everywhere, the odd arc of electricity here and there and huge pieces of unidentifiable apparatus scattered about. The whole room reeked of electricity and danger.

There were two humans waiting for him there.

The younger one reminded Wiz a little of the way Danny had looked when they first met, kind of soft and unformed. The other one was a few years older, harder and leaner. He was sitting on one of the control consoles with his legs dangling. Even though he was relaxed, there was something predatory in the way he looked at Wiz.

For a minute no one said anything.

"Uh, hi. I'm Wiz Zumwalt. From Cupertino." His voice was almost lost in the huge room.

"We know who you are," the older one said. He reached behind him, picked up a beer bottle and took a swig. No one made a move to offer Wiz a drink.

"Lurch there is really something," Wiz said brightly.

"He's an early model," the younger one said. "The ones we build now are a lot better."

His companion grinned nastily.
"Much
better."

"Very impressive."

The silence stretched on.

"I'm Craig Scott," the young one said at last. "This is Mikey Baker."

"Craig talks too much," Mikey said conversationally. "Don't you, Craig?"

Craig wilted.

"Pleased to meet you," Wiz said.

"Yeah?"

Again the silence stretched out.

"Anyway, I thought we should meet, you know, talk."

"So talk."

"You know you upset a lot of people when you showed up."

Mikey smiled. A not at all pleasant smile. "No shit? Well, we're going to upset a lot more people, aren't we Craig?"

"We sure are."

"What are you going to do? What do you want?"

"We're going to build a whole new order," Craig said. "We're going to combine magic and technology into a system that really works for mankind. When we get done things will be better than they have ever been."

"Only you won't be around to see it, man," Mikey said.

"We're going to . . ."

"You talk too much, Craig," Mikey repeated without heat. "Now shut up and let the grownups talk, will you?"

He took another pull on his beer.

"You see, you're squatting on a prime piece of real estate, you and your friends. Now it so happens we need that place. So in just a little while we're going to come over and take it."

Wiz went cold. "Hey look, we can negotiate . . ." But Mikey cut him off with a sharp bark of laughter.

"What's to negotiate?" he said, sliding off the table and stalking over to Wiz. "We're here and you're history." He jammed his face into Wiz's, so close Wiz could see the pores on his skin. "We're gonna get your whole flicking
world
before we're through, baby, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it."

"The hell there isn't,"
Wiz flared back. "Technology doesn't work over there, remember? And we've got magic the likes of which you've never seen."

Mikey smiled. "Wanna bet?"

Then his expression softened. "But maybe you're right. Maybe we should negotiate this thing like adults." He smiled again, a more relaxed, gentle smile. "After all, there's plenty for both of us. Two whole worlds, right?"

"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!"
 

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, you 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."

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.