Fourteen: Raiding on the Parade

Expert: Anyone more than 100 miles from home carrying a briefcase.

The Consultants’ Handbook

It is a truism well-known to lawyers that while the law may be uniform, all judges are not alike. It is a corollary equally well known to prosecutors that some judges are easier than others when it comes to search warrants and such. In San Francisco District Court, Judge David Faraday was what the local federal prosecutors privately-very privately-called a patsy. A law-and-order Nixon appointee, he could be counted on to grant search warrants on nearly any grounds.

So it was hardly surprising that FBI Special Agent George Arnold showed up in Judge Faraday’s office with Special Agent Clueless Pashley in tow to seek warrants to raid Judith’s apartment.

“And this person has been breaking into government computers?” Judge Faraday asked after looking over the papers Pashley and Arnold presented to him.

“Highly sensitive government computers,” Pashley amended. “Your honor this is a major national security case.”

Arnold nodded. “Your honor, if need be, we have a civilian expert on computer networks and security waiting outside who can testify to the importance of this warrant.” Actually it was Ray Whipple cooling his heels in the outer office, but he was an expert in Pashley’s eyes and Arnold was following the lead of the bureau’s out-of-town “expert.”

“I know about computer crime, Mr. Arnold,” Judge Faraday said mildly. “I saw that movie, War Games.” The judge scanned down through the pile of affidavits.

“Search warrant for subject’s apartment, wiretap on subject’s telephone, electronic surveillance of premises. Well, this seems in order,” he said as he reached for his pen. “Very well, gentlemen, the warrants are granted.”

Pashley managed not to cheer.

“Did you get it?” Ray Whipple asked as Pashley and Arnold emerged from the judge’s chambers. Pashley tapped his breast pocket significantly, even though the warrant was really in Arnold’s briefcase.

“When are you going to serve it?” Ray asked as soon as they were out in the corridor.

“I’d like to hold off on the search warrant for a week or so,” Arnold said. “We’ll put the wiretap in place immediately and get a snooping van in the parking lot tonight to start executing the surveillance. That van can pick up the electromagnetic emissions from ordinary computers and decode them from five hundred feet away.”

The astronomer gave a low whistle. “That’s scary.”

“Oh, we’ve got our methods,” Pashley assured him jauntily, missing the expression on Whipple’s face.

“We can lift information right out of a computer without the user knowing it,” Arnold added. “If we listen for a few days we may get to watch this hacker in action before the bust goes down.”

“When’s she going to do something?” Myron Pashley wondered aloud for roughly the eighth time that evening.

George Arnold squirmed around to get a better view of the readout. “So far she’s still watching television.”

Pashley and Arnold were crammed into the surveillance van along with the regular operator and several racks of equipment. “Cramped” was too generous a word for conditions in the van. “Badly ventilated” didn’t really cover the subject either, especially since Pashley had found a Yemeni restaurant near the hotel and dined on a vegetarian dish that was mostly chickpeas and garlic. So far they had been sitting almost in each other’s laps for almost three hours and even Pashley was getting tired of it.

The directional antenna hidden in the van’s roof rack was pointed at Judith Conally’s apartment less than three hundred feet away. At that distance it could easily pick up electronic emanations from Judith’s apartment.

“Wait a minute,” the technician said. “The television’s just gone off.

Hold it, okay, she’s starting to work on the computer.”

“Here we go!” Pashley crowed. For an awful instant Arnold thought Pashley was going to hug him.

“What’s she doing?”

“Looks like loading a program,” the tech said, keeping his eyes fixed on the displays. “Okay, she’s just put a file up on the screen. I got it now.”

Pashley, Arnold and the technician wriggled around until they could all see the display screen.

# include <iostream.h>

template <int T>

struct A{A(){A<T>>1>B;cout<<T%2;}};

struct A<O>{};

void main(){A<99>();}

“It’s screwed up,” Arnold complained.

The tech checked the instruments. “No, that’s what’s on her screen all right.”

“What do you make of this stuff?” Arnold asked.

“Code,” Pashley assured him. “This is all in code. When we raid the place we’ll probably find a code book that translates all these code words.”

Neither Pashley nor Arnold knew it, but it was indeed code they were looking at, although not in the sense they meant. Inside her apartment Judith was settling down to work on one of her private programming projects. Since for preference Judith used C and since her C style was both idiosyncratic and highly personal, it was hardly surprising that the FBI agents couldn’t make sense of it. Since the particular program Judith was laboring over was her entry in this year’s Obfuscated C++ Contest it was to be expected. Since one of the utilities Judith had developed to help her was an uglyprinter, which turned even the best-structured C code into an utter muddle, it was inevitable.

Judith Conally was playing relativistic Tetris when the knock came at the door.

“Damn!” she muttered as the distraction made her miss an especially intricate maneuver in the time direction. The rest of her carefully constructed edifice came tumbling down even before she was out of the chair to answer the door.

Judith had never met Myron Pashley, but as soon as she opened the door she knew what he was. For one thing he was wearing that dark-suit-narrow-tie-white-shirt outfit no one wore anymore but government agents and EDS employees. And EDS employees weren’t allowed to wear wrap-around sunglasses.

“Special Agent Pashley, FBI,” the man announced, holding out his identification. “We have a warrant to search these premises.” He thrust a paper into Judith’s hands and pushed her aside. “Stand out of the way, please.”

He was followed into the apartment by six other men and a woman, all dressed in the same style if not the same clothing. Since Judith’s apartment was not large, it was suddenly very crowded. Judith found herself crammed back against a book case.

One of the agents sat down at her computer and started calling up directories. Others fanned out through the apartment.

After a quick run-through of her more recent sins, Judith relaxed. There was nothing in the apartment which was the least bit incriminating. Then she looked at the search warrant and nearly burst out laughing. A national security case? Get real!

Then she stopped laughing and started worrying. She hadn’t done anything, but what had the people in the other world been up to? Wiz was apparently in some kind of trouble and you never knew what Danny was going to do.  There wasn’t anything illegal here, but the laws didn’t anticipate contact with alternate worlds where magic worked. If someone halfway competent had even a hint of a suspicion something like that was going on, the stuff in this apartment would be enough to blow it sky high. Whether that would mean jail or years in protective custody as a “vital resource” she didn’t know, but she wasn’t eager to find out.

Pashley moved to her desk and Judith’s heart caught in her throat. There, lying on top of the stack of unpaid bills and unanswered mail, was her documentation for the magic compiler for Wiz’s world. With its mixture of programming and magic that book alone would be enough to give the whole show away.

“What’s this?” Pashley demanded, hefting the book.

“That’s the design document for magic in my novels,” Judith told him as blandly as she could. “Do you want it?”

Pashley knew all about seizing writer’s notes after his experiences in North Carolina. “That won’t be necessary.” He turned to put the document back on the desk and missed seeing Judith slump in relief.

The agents went through the apartment like a polite hurricane. They always said “please” and called Judith “ma’am,” but they were relentless and unstoppable. After turning the place upside down, taking her computer, boxing up all her disks and tapes, photographing everything (including the dishes in the kitchen sink and the bra hanging on the bedroom doorknob), giving her a carefully itemized receipt with serial numbers, and making an appointment with Judith to come in for questioning “with your attorney present if you desire,” the agents finally left.

“Hit me,” Wiz said glumly to the demon crouched on his work table.

The demon in the green eyeshade, gaiters and violently checked vest gave Wiz a toothy grin before flipping down a ten. That made twenty-three and Wiz was busted out. The demon gathered the cards in and shuffled them.  Then he cocked an eyebrow at Wiz, waiting for the signal to deal again.

Wiz slumped back in his chair and sighed. It was still early afternoon, but it was not a good day. Not that that was unusual. The townfolk had learned by now that “their” wizard wasn’t available before noon, but as soon as noon arrived there was a small line of them on his doorstep, demanding to see him.

He had tried refusing to see anyone, but that meant either being a prisoner in his house or being stopped on every street corner by someone with a long, incomprehensible tale of woe. So he had gone back to seeing a few people every morning, even though there was nothing he could do for most of them.

This morning’s crowd had included a farmer who wanted him to find the pot of gold his grandfather was supposed to have buried on the farm, a lovesick young man who wanted his beloved to notice him and a nervous middle-aged woman who apparently expected him to guess what she wanted since she never did get around to telling him.

Meanwhile, in spite of the building urgency he was at a complete and utter standstill on the dragon problem. He tried to tell himself he was too overcome with distractions to focus on it, but the fact he was playing blackjack rather than working told him how accurate that was. The truth was he didn’t have even a notion of how to begin.

Wiz knew from experience there was a hierarchy to working on a software problem. There was hacking, there was programming, there was playing, there was doodling and there was what a British friend of his rather inelegantly described as “code wanking.” He had been reduced to code wanking days ago and now he had lost his enthusiasm even for that.

He sighed and looked over at the demon. The demon leered back and riffled the cards suggestively.

“Busy, I see.” Wiz turned to see Malkin standing in the doorway.

“Not really. What’s up?”

“Message from Ol’ Droopy. He wants to know how you’re coming.”

It took Wiz an instant to identify “Ol’ Droopy” as the mayor and somewhat longer to formulate an answer.

“Tell him things are progressing at a satisfactory pace.”

“So I see. Anyway, you can tell him yourself. I’m not your messenger. He just stopped me on the way back here.”

As she moved Wiz noticed a slight bulge in her tunic.

“Wait a minute! Did you steal his chain of office again?”

“Naw. Did that once, didn’t I?” She reached into her tunic and produced a wide leather belt with an ornate gemmed buckle. “I do wonder how far he’ll get before his breeches fall down, though.”

Wiz groaned. “One of these days you’re going to get us all thrown right back in jail.”

“That’s all right,” Malkin said cheerfully. “I’ve still got the keys hidden away.”

Wiz groaned again.

“Besides, you’re a fine one to talk. With your messing about with dragons and the Council you’re likely to get us staked out on The Rock.”

“Well, why do you stay, then?”

Malkin smiled in a peculiarly sunny fashion. “I want to see what’s going to happen next. Hanging around here is more fun than a mummer’s show.  Besides, it gives me a base of operations, so to speak.”

Wiz thought about what that last meant. Then he decided he didn’t want to know. He also remembered why he had never had roommates. Then he thought of the rats in the psych lab. The more he thought about them the more sympathy he felt.

“Of course, if you want me to leave . . .”

“No, no. I need you for background resource. But try to be a little more discreet, will you?”

Malkin draped the belt over her shoulder, buckle resting on her breast.  Wiz noticed it hung nearly down to her knees behind. “Oh, I’m always careful,” Malkin said cheerfully. “You have to be in my business.”

With that she was gone. Wiz sighed again and turned back to the demon, who raised a pair of scaly eyebrows and riffled the cards. Wiz dismissed him with a gesture. Somehow he’d lost all his taste for taking chances-any more chances.

Judith wasn’t the only one upset by the FBI raid. If she was annoyed, the mood in the Wizard’s Keep verged on panic.

Bal-Simba frowned when a breathless Jerry and Danny told him, in alternating choruses, what had happened.

“How serious is this?” the big wizard asked when his visitors finally reached a stopping place.

“Pretty serious,” Jerry told him. “If thekeep.org goes off line we lose our communication link to Wiz.” And probably all chance of finding him, he thought. But he saw the look on Moira’s face and he didn’t say that.

“Is Judith in any danger?” Moira asked.

“Danger? No. She’s probably not even in trouble, well not much. She’s not doing anything illegal. Wiz might be in trouble if they could catch him, but there’s not much chance of that.”

“The Sparrow told me once that you keep records on these devices,” Bal-Simba said. “Is there anything there which would arouse their ire?”

Danny grinned. “There aren’t any records on that machine. We keep all that at this end, just in case. As far as the domain is concerned, Judith’s system isn’t much more than a dumb terminal, even though it’s officially listed as the main server.”

“That was Judith’s idea,” Jerry reminded his younger colleague. “After she saw some of the stuff you’d been up to she didn’t want any record of it on her system.”

“Anyway it was a pretty smart move,” Danny said. “There’s no way they can pin anything on her. There’s even a complete set of domain software on her system.”

“We’ve also got a backup way to reach Judith. We’re setting up a modem link over a regular telephone line. She just calls a phone number we give her and logs in.”

“Can we give that number to Wiz?”

Danny frowned. “That’s going to be trickier. You can bet the FBI has a wiretap on the connection to thekeep.org. If we use the current Internet connection to tell Wiz about the new number we’ll be telling the FBI too.  Since we, ah, weren’t completely aboveboard in getting that number it wouldn’t do to have them tapping that line too. We may be able to rig up a code or something, but it will take more time.”

“Then how do we tell Judith about the number?”

“Easy. We call her, preferably at a friend’s house.”

“Is this like the number we gave Major Gilligan when we sent him back to your World?”

“Not exactly. That was an 800 number.” Danny made a face. “Big mistake. I found out the hard way they monitor those real close. They found us and shut us down in just a couple of weeks. According to some of the people I’ve been talking to on the net they’re not as careful about local numbers, especially the ones that don’t show long-distance charges.”

“Meaning you’ve been hanging around with the phone phreakers again,” Jerry said.

“Be glad I was,” Danny shot back. “Otherwise we’d have worse problems.”

Jerry didn’t have a good answer for that one, so he let it slide.

“But can they sever the link?” Moira persisted.

“They may think they have already since they don’t know we’re tapped into her line.”

“Can they cut it entirely?”

“Yeah, by disconnecting the line. But they probably won’t do that. There’s no reason for them to do it.” He sighed. “You know there was a time when government agents were pretty dumb about these things. I understand they’ve gotten smarter.”

“But they still might cut us off from Wiz?”

“Theoretically,” Jerry said. “But don’t worry. It would take an absolute idiot to do something like that.”

It was not a good day for Special Agent Pashley. He had spent the morning interviewing Judith Conally with her lawyer present and he felt he was further behind than ever. After two hours of questioning and several very pointed inquiries by Judith’s lawyer as to the exact charge, he had turned her loose. The results from the examination of Judith’s computer and related material hadn’t helped any.

“Technicalities,” he grumbled into his coffee cup. “Tied in knots by damn technicalities.”

“I told you it was a mailbox,” Ray Whipple told him.

“It’s a top secret government mailbox and these hackers are breaking into it!”

“Look,” Ray said slowly and carefully, as if explaining something to a child. “We only know that some messages from that mailbox passed through her system. The messages we have were addressed to other accounts on that domain, she says she never got any messages from that account, there’s no sign of any such messages on her system and she doesn’t know where to find the people the messages were sent to.”

“Yeah, but someone had to send the message in the first place and that person had to break into the mailbox.”

“But she didn’t send mail to herself,” the astronomer said patiently. “The messages weren’t for her and she didn’t know that address was some sort of government secret. Hell, she claims she didn’t even know those accounts were on her machine. That makes her as much a victim as the government.  You can’t arrest her for that. Especially since the thing’s so secret you can’t admit it’s a secret in the first place.”

“Hah!” Pashley said.

Whipple shrugged. “You can’t prove otherwise.”

“Technicalities,” Pashley repeated. “Picky little technicalities. They’re what’s ruining this country.”

“Myron, she’s innocent.”

Pashley snorted. “With a record like hers? She disappears, right out of a locked hospital ward, and no one knows where she’s gone, and she’s innocent?”

“She had a head injury. The hospital screwed up when she came out of the coma, she wandered around for a while before they found her. The hospital admitted they were wrong by settling with her, didn’t they?”

“For all we know she was kidnapped by aliens for experiments or something,” Pashley retorted.

Actually Pashley was closer to the mark than Whipple, although neither of them would have believed the real story. Judith had been taken to Wiz’s World as part of the battle against computer criminal magicians at Caermort. She had been healed there and returned to our world when the situation was stabilized.

Suddenly Pashley brightened. “A brain probe! Maybe she’s jacked into the net directly through her brain. We can find out with an X-ray or MRI or something.” He stood up and strode out into the main office. “Hey John,” he called, “have we got an X-ray machine around here?”

Ray Whipple put his head in his hands and groaned.

* * *

By mutual consent, the programmers and Judith Conally kept word of the FBI raid from Wiz. So naturally Wiz kept sending e-mail and chatting with thekeep.org as if it was still there.

Which it was, of course. In spite of what it said in the paperwork, the real server for the domain had always been in the Wizard’s Keep in another world. True, there was now no computer in Judith’s apartment, but that didn’t matter to the signal. It was tapped off magically between the junction box and the apartment. First, however, it traveled through the local telephone office, where the FBI was monitoring the line.

Clueless Pashley looked at the surveillance report and slammed it down on the table. “We didn’t get it,” he said disgustedly. “Someone’s still using that computer link.”

“But that’s impossible,” Arnold protested. “We got her computer.”

“Well, she’s still on-line. Look at this. She must have another computer in there.”

The other FBI agent went over the transcript and shook his head.

“But we got all the computer equipment in the apartment.”

“Then it’s got to be disguised as something else.” He riffled through the sheaf of pictures of Judith’s apartment. “What about that wall of electronic stuff?”

“That was a stereo system.”

“Are you sure? You can disguise a computer to look like anything. These hackers are diabolical. Come on, let’s go back to the judge.”

This time the agents carried off a complete stereo system, a big-screen television complete with video game console, and anything else in the apartment that looked electronic, including a clock radio. Again they gave Judith an itemized receipt with serial numbers. Then they departed as quickly and officiously as they came.

“This,” Judith said to the bare wall where her stereo had been, “is bloody ridiculous.”

Fifteen: Competition

Utter incompetence never kept anyone from underbidding and over-promising to get the job.

The Consultants’ Handbook

Wiz was having another lousy morning. He had left the house to escape the usual flow of people who wanted him to solve their problems only to run into the mayor at the town hall, who wanted to know how the dragon program was coming, and by the way did he have anything for a head cold? Wiz barely got out of that when he encountered Dieter Hanwassel and a couple of his council flunkies in the square.

“There you are, Wizard.” Dieter made it sound like an accusation.

“Here I am,” Wiz agreed glumly. Then he waited.

“I’m giving you one last chance, Wizard,” Dieter said at last. “You can see things our way or suffer the consequences.”

“Gentlemen, I have already told you I will give your position all the consideration it deserves.”

“You mean you’ll try to stall us,” Dieter said. “Well, we won’t be stalled. You’ll either cooperate or else.”

“I wonder how the rest of the council would take it if they knew what you were proposing?” Wiz asked with a slight smile. “I understand they are not all in favor of increasing taxes.”

The little man turned purple. “Defy me, will you!” Then with a visible effort he controlled himself. “Well, we’ll see.” He turned and stalked up the steps into the town hall. His hangers-on followed. “I’ve a trick that’s worth two of you,” he said to his cronies as they drifted out of earshot. Wiz wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to hear that or not.

Wiz spent another hour or so wandering around town, looking at things and fending off a couple of requests for magical help. Malkin was waiting for him when he got home.

“Messenger came from the council for you just a few minutes ago,” she told him as soon as he walked in the door. “Ol’ Droopy and some of the others want to see you in the mayor’s office right away.”

“Great. I just came from there. Now what?”

The tall woman shrugged. “Nothing good, I’ll warrant.”

There was a group gathered in the mayor’s office by the time Wiz arrived.  Dieter, the mayor, Rolf and several others were talking to a blond young man Wiz didn’t recognize. The stranger’s back was to the door but Dieter’s wasn’t. As soon as Wiz walked into the room he peered around the young man’s shoulder and smiled at Wiz, not at all pleasantly.

“We have found another magician,” Dieter said, gesturing to the young man.

“Llewllyn here is skilled in the new magic.”

On that cue the young man turned and swept a deep bow in Wiz’s direction.  The newcomer was undeniably handsome. Blond hair fell in ringlets to broad shoulders. Pearly teeth peeked between ruby lips as he smiled and his blue eyes sparkled. He was only a little shorter than Wiz, not as heavily built, which made him decidedly slender-but elegant rather than skinny.  Handsome, personable and utterly devoid of sincerity. He reminded Wiz of every used car salesman and mortician he had ever met. Instinctively Wiz looked for the white belt and shoes. Then the significance of what Dieter had just said sunk in.

“The, ah, new magic?”

The young man inclined his head in assent. “Yes, the powerful new magic of the south. I am a direct disciple of the Sparrow, the mightiest of all the southern wizards. It was he who taught me personally.”

“That’s very interesting,” Wiz said noncommittally.

“We are like brothers, the Sparrow and I. Why he even calls me the Eagle-just a joke between us, of course.”

With an effort Wiz managed to keep his mouth closed. To almost everyone in the lands of the North, Wiz Zumwalt was known as the Sparrow, a name Bal-Simba had given him when he first arrived. Apparently this joker not only hadn’t met Wiz, he had never talked to anyone who knew him.

Part of Wiz’s mission had been to teach magic to more than just wizards.  Wizards and apprentices were now teaching the system to hedge witches and others. Obviously this guy had learned the new magic at third or fourth remove-assuming he knew it at all, which Wiz wasn’t willing to grant without proof.

Over Llewllyn’s shoulder Wiz saw Dieter nodding approvingly. The mayor looked worried. Rolf simply smiled benignly. The implication was clear.  This guy was competition and some of the council would love to dump Wiz and sign on Llewllyn. Dieter because he hated Wiz, and Rolf because he saw the young man as easier to manipulate.

Wiz gritted his teeth. His first instinct was to expose the phony. But he remembered the consultants he had seen in his world and how they dealt with these situations. He could always expose Llewllyn, but Dieter could always find another stooge. Maybe there was a more effective way.

Llewllyn, recognizing an opportunity, made a small gesture with his right hand. A sparkle of rainbow light flashed from his finger tips. Several of the councilors gasped and he smiled like a toothpaste commercial.

“There,” said Dieter triumphantly. “You see?”

“Oh it’s all very well, I suppose,” Wiz said carelessly. “Quite remarkable, really, considering.”

“You can, of course, do better?” Dieter shot back.

Wiz smiled at the venomous little man. “Well, since you ask . . .” He thought quickly. Most of the magic he knew either wasn’t spectacular or was much too powerful. But there was a spell he had come up with to amuse Danny’s son, Ian. He tilted his head back and took a deep breath. Then he blew multi-colored bubbles that rose gently to the ceiling and burst into points of rainbow light.

“A conjurer’s trick,” Dieter snorted. He looked expectantly at Llewllyn.  The young man glared at Wiz with what was obviously intended to be an intimidating stare. However Llewllyn was too young and too pretty to intimidate much of anyone. Wiz smiled back.

“May I suggest a compromise?” Rolf put in smoothly.

“What?” the mayor asked suspiciously.

“Why not a competition?”

“Here?” Wiz asked. “Now?”

Dieter smiled. “Here and now. Why not?”

Wiz, who knew a good deal more about wizards’ duels, could have given him a couple of good reasons. First, a wizards’ duel usually started with lightning bolts and moved quickly to earthquakes. After that they tended to get really destructive. That’s why wizards generally had it out on mountain tops or blasted heaths or other pieces of low-value real estate.  Setting up an indoor wizards’ duel was like trying to get ringside seats for a hand grenade fight in a broom closet.

The other reason was that wizards’ duels were almost always to the death.  That might not have bothered Dieter or Rolf, but Wiz didn’t want to kill Llewllyn just because he was a charlatan.

Llewllyn, sensing he had an advantage, decided to push it. “Behold,” he cried, “the power of the new magic!”

He moved his lips as he mumbled a word and letters of glowing rainbow fire appeared in the air between them. Dieter and the others gasped at the display and Mayor Hendrick looked worried. The new magician paused, obviously enjoying the sensation he had created.

Wiz was considerably less impressed but intently interested. All Llewllyn had done was list out the spell. A nice effect, but anyone who understood Wiz’s magic language could read the listing and see how the spell worked.

As Wiz ran through it he was even less impressed. It was really one very simple spell, dressed up by some subroutines. Further, Llewllyn didn’t have the thing written to respond to one command. He had to issue a series of commands and that meant there were opportunities for another magician to interfere. Wiz smiled politely and worked out a couple of lines of code in his head.

Llewllyn smiled at his appreciative audience and made the listing vanish with a flashy swipe of his hand.

“Beozar!” Llewllyn declaimed. “Cautich!” he added. Wiz watched intently, his lips barely moving. “Deodarin.” Llewllyn’s voice rose to a crescendo and he threw wide his arms. “Behold!”

There was a weak pop and then a fizzling sound like a lightbulb burning out.

Llewllyn went pale. “Beozar! Cautich!” He thundered out again. “Deodarin!” and flung his arms out. “Behold!”

This time the fizzle was accompanied by a dim reddish spark that died with the sound.

Dieter shifted uncomfortably and the Mayor frowned.

“Maybe if we drew the curtains to darken the room,” Wiz said helpfully.

Llewllyn had gone pale and he was mumbling, but he didn’t try the spell a third time.

“I’m sure it’s just a temporary problem,” Wiz said. “Why don’t you take off and work on it a little. I’m sure it will be better in the morning.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” Llewllyn said to his now visibly unimpressed audience. “This far north one must allow for the effects of the different stars. Tomorrow would be more propitious.” The mayor and Dieter both scowled at him. “Or maybe even a little later today,” the young man added hastily. “Yes. Now if you’ll excuse me.” As he bowed quickly and turned toward the door the mayor nodded to the guardsman lounging there.

“See that our guest doesn’t wander off,” the mayor commanded. “Meanwhile we will decide what to do with him.”

The guard followed Llewllyn out and there was a strained silence in the room.

“I’m sure he’s quite good, actually.” Wiz sighed for effect. “But magic is tricky, after all, and it is so hard to really master beyond the merely superficial.”

“He ought to be sent to The Rock for impersonating a magician,” Dieter said venomously.

The last thing Wiz wanted was to be responsible for the man’s death. “Oh, surely that’s somewhat extreme,” he said hastily. “After all he was only, ah, ‘overly enthusiastic’ about his skill at magic.”

“He’s a liar and he ought to go to The Rock for trying to fool the council,” Dieter replied.

“Wiz is right,” Rolf put in. “No harm was done. Surely the council can show mercy in this instance.”

“Then what?” Dieter snapped. “Is he going to hang around here and steal chickens?”

Mentioning chickens seemed to have an unusual impact on the councilors, as if they knew something Wiz didn’t.

“Well, I could take him on as a junior assistant,” Wiz said. “He could probably handle some of the minor details, under careful supervision, of course. Naturally I’d need an office on the square here.”

“I don’t know that we need two wizards now,” Mayor Hendrick said.

“Consultants, please,” Wiz corrected. “And it would have certain advantages.” Like keeping this guy where I can watch him. If Llewllyn stayed around he was likely to be trouble and he obviously intended to stick around.

The mayor rubbed his chin. “Still . . .”

“I say let’s put it to a vote,” Dieter snapped.

Obviously the hassle of another council vote didn’t appeal to the mayor.

“Oh, all right, but only under the wizard’s supervision.”

Wiz nodded. “Naturally.”

Dieter looked at him suspiciously, but he only nodded.

“Now there is the matter of the fee.”

The mayor frowned. “I thought we settled that.”

“For the basic dragon situation, yes. However, on closer inspection it has become obvious that job will require services not covered in the original contract.”

“I don’t remember us signing any contract,” Dieter said sourly.

Wiz smiled a superior smile. “Oh, you don’t sign a contract with a wizard.  It is implicitly made manifest. Here, let me show you.” He made a sweeping gesture at the wall and under his breath muttered list apl.man exe. The wall was covered with fiery letters as the command list for Jerry’s version of APL appeared. The reflected light cast a sickly pallor on the mayor, Dieter and the others. Surreptitiously one or two of the council members made signs to ward off evil.

“Now here in section three, paragraph five, sub-paragraph C, item three, you can clearly see . . .”

“All right, Wizard, I see,” the mayor said hastily. Dieter and the others didn’t seem disposed to argue the point, so Wiz gestured again and the “contract” disappeared.

“I think under the circumstances an additional four gold pieces a week would be reasonable, don’t you?” he said blandly.

The mayor obviously didn’t think it was all that reasonable, but he nodded nonetheless.

“Very good. Now if you gentlemen will excuse me I need to go find my new assistant.”

Wiz found Llewllyn in the hall looking like he couldn’t decide whether to bolt or brazen it out.

“How did you do that?” Llewllyn asked. “Interfere with my spell, I mean.”

Wiz just smiled.

“Come now. Fellow professionals and all that.”

Wiz thought that Llewllyn’s racket had more in common with a bunco game than magic. Then he remembered what line of work he was in just now. “Oh it’s quite simple really. I guess the Sparrow forgot to tell you that.”

The young man’s eyes widened. “You know the Sparrow?”

“Well enough,” Wiz told him.

“Oh,” he said in a small voice, eyes shifting left and right. Then he straightened and his voice firmed. “I wonder that I never met you when I was with him,” Llewllyn said. “But you must tell me about him sometime-ah, about your experiences with him, I mean.”

“Oh, it wasn’t very interesting,” Wiz said. “You know the Sparrow. Dull as dishwater, really.”

“Well, yes, of course, but . . .”

“That wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m afraid your performance just now offended several rather powerful members of the council.”

Llewllyn looked even more apprehensive. “Oh, but surely . . .”

“I know you didn’t intend to, of course. But, you know how clients, ah, councilors are. So very, very petty about things like results.

“Now,” Wiz went on, “in spite of that I managed to convince them that you have potential. That given supervision and a little guidance you could be an asset to the operation here. So as an alternative I got them to agree to let me take you on as a junior assistant.”

Llewllyn was more apprehensive than ever. “Alternative?” he asked faintly.

Wiz smiled. “Why dwell on unpleasantness? Especially when it need never happen?”

“Of course. Assistant you say?”

“Junior assistant, but still a consultant with all the rights, privileges and duties thereof.” He smiled even more broadly. “I’m sure the Sparrow would advise you to take it, were he here.”

The young man’s eyes widened. “You don’t mean he is likely to come here, do you?”

“Llewllyn,” Wiz said sincerely, “I can guarantee the Sparrow will never get any closer to this place than he is right now.”

“Oh.” The young man sighed. “I mean, what a pity.”

“I know what you meant,” Wiz said. “Now let’s get on with it, shall we?”

“Uh, a moment, My Lord. What about my remuneration?”

Wiz did a quick calculation in his head, based on what junior consultants in his world made versus what the consulting companies charged. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll pay you one gold piece a week. You’ll work in the office here under my supervision. Your primary job will be client contact and low-level problem solving. Be in the office for at least four day-tenths a day, five days a week. You can set your own office hours, but keep them.”

Llewllyn’s nose wrinkled. “That sounds like a clerk, not a magician.”

“It’s a consultant. And the less magic you use the better.”

“I don’t know . . .”

Wiz shrugged. “Consider the alternative.”

Llewllyn’s face fell. “The alternative?”

“Dieter thinks you sold him a bill of goods. As my assistant you are under my protection. Otherwise . . .” Again the shrug.

Llewllyn swept a graceful bow to Wiz. “My Lord,” he said grandly, “you have a new assistant.”

Wiz tried to look happy.

Anna was upstairs cleaning when Wiz got back, but Malkin was in the kitchen, brewing a pot of herb tea.

“What do you know about a magician named Llewllyn?”

“Never heard of him,” the tall woman said cheerfully, cocking one leg over the corner of the table and sitting on the freshly scrubbed surface.

“Slender, long blond hair, really white teeth. Handsome and a born con man.”

“Oh, him.” Malkin said. “He’s from around here. Used to hold himself out as a bard but I never heard of anyone who paid him for his singing. I’m kind of surprised he showed his face in these parts. Here, you want some of this? It’s a mixture Anna made up.”

“Thanks,” Wiz said and poured himself a mug of the tea. It was mostly peppermint with a lemony-orangey overtone. A little weak but not bad, he decided. “I take it he had a good reason for leaving.”

The thief gave a snort of laughter. “Only a due regard for his own skin.  Seems he’d been stealing old man Colbach’s chickens and bouncing his daughter at the same time.” She grinned and shook her head. “I don’t know which made him the madder.”

Wiz took another sip of tea. “I’m surprised he came back at all.”

“Well, thinking on it, he’s safe enough. The girl’s married respectable now and the first child looked like her husband, so no one much cares on that score. Farmer Colbach probably still harbors a grudge about the chickens but he don’t come to town much. Besides, he’s not likely to push it because it would just remind folks about his daughter.” She took another sip from her cup. “I guess you ran into him.”

“Actually I hired him as my assistant.”

Malkin looked down at him hard. “Then you’ve got mighty strange tastes in your assistants.”

Wiz looked back very deliberately. “I know,” he said.

Sixteen: Black Bag Job

Forget what you read in the papers. These are not very bright guys.

Deep Throat to Woodward

 All The President’s Men

Another morning, another surveillance report. By now Pashley was beside himself.

“Look at this!” he shouted. “She’s still on the net.”

“Take it easy,” Arnold said. “Just simmer down and let’s think.” Pashley paused and took a deep breath. His face turned a lighter shade of red.

“Now, how is she doing it? We got every piece of electronic equipment in the place.”

“You’re sure she hasn’t brought a computer back in?” Ray Whipple asked. He was spending a lot more time than he liked at the FBI office and was even discovering he had common interests with some of the agents.

“No way,” Arnold said. “We’ve been watching.”

“What has the van turned up?”

“Absolutely nothing. If there’s a computer in there it’s got Tempest-class emissions security. We know there’s no computer in there.”

Pashley was frantically thumbing through the eight-by-ten glossy color photographs of Judith’s apartment the agents had taken on the first raid.  Suddenly his head snapped up.

“Wait a minute! There is another computer in here.” He stood up so fast he nearly knocked the chair over. “Come on, let’s go back to the judge.”

“You want a warrant to seize what?” Judge David Faraday said in an utterly bewildered voice.

“A toaster,” Special Agent Pashley repeated confidently. “We believe it is a vital piece of evidence in this hacker case.”

“But it’s a toaster!” Judge Faraday almost wailed.

“Yes, Your Honor, but there’s a computer hidden inside.” He stepped up to the desk and held out a repair manual. “As you can see here there is a microcontroller-that’s a computer-in the toaster. Further,” he pulled out a couple of clippings, “this is the exact make and model which hackers at a hackers’ convention actually connected to a communications network, like a telephone system.”

“This happened in 1990,” Judge Faraday said as he glanced at the clipping.

“Yes, sir, at a secret hackers’ convention called InterOp, which was held not far from here.”

“This clipping is from the San Jose Mercury.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So this secret convention of,” he ran his finger down the clipping, “ten thousand or so computer criminals was covered by the local newspapers.”

Pashley was oblivious to the change in Judge Faraday’s voice. “Yes, sir.  There were some television stories, but we couldn’t get the tape as evidence. But you can see it talks about the toaster oven right here.”

“Mr. Pashley,” Judge Faraday said mildly.

“Yes, sir?”

“Get out of my sight.” The judge’s voice rose. “Get out of this courthouse!” His face got red and a vein began to throb in his temple.  “Don’t ever let me see you again. On anything.” Judge Faraday was screaming now. “IS THAT CLEAR?”

“But do we get the warrant?” Pashley asked over his shoulder as Arnold hustled him out of the judge’s office.

Ray Whipple shifted nervously on the chill vinyl seat. There was something going on here but he wasn’t sure what.

Uncharacteristically, Pashley had sought him out to offer him a lift back to the hotel. Instead of driving him nuts with innane chatter while he drove, Pashley wasn’t saying anything. Whipple didn’t find that to be much of an improvement.

Ray’s knowledge of the city was minimal and his sense of direction useless for finding anything smaller than a star, but eventually even he realized they were heading in the wrong direction.

“Where are we going?”

Pashley didn’t take his eyes off the road. “I’ve got a little errand to run.”

Two more turns in quick succession brought them into a neighborhood the astrophysicist recognized vaguely. Then another turn and Whipple went cold as he realized where they were. By that time Pashley had turned off the headlights and pulled over to the curb less than a block away from Judith’s apartment.

“What are we doing here?”

“We’re here to get that toaster,” Pashley said.

Whipple went even colder. “I thought the judge denied the warrant.”

Pashley thrust out his jaw and gave the astronomer a steely stare. “There are issues of national security at stake. I’m not going to let a technicality stop me.”

“That’s burglary!”

“No sweat. It’s what we call a ‘black bag job’ in the FBI.”

It occurred to Ray that that was also what the Watergate Plumbers called it at the Nixon White House.

“What if she’s home?”

“She isn’t. She’s off playing games with some friends. You just wait here and if you see her coming honk the horn, okay?”

“I dunno about this.”

“Look,” Pashley said in the voice exasperated mothers use on small children, “just sit here and blow the horn if she comes. Nice and simple.  What can go wrong?”

Ray’s suddenly overheated imagination came up with dozens of possibilities. “Leave the keys in the ignition, okay?”

Pashley shook his head. “Sorry. You’re not a government employee. You can’t legally drive this car.”

Whipple decided to pass on that. “I don’t want to drive it, I just want to be able to honk the horn.”

Pashley tossed the keys on the seat. “All right then, but don’t go anywhere.” He got out of the car and started up the sidewalk, his trench coat flapping against his knees.

“I wonder how big the astrophysical library is at Folsom Prison,” Whipple muttered and settled in to wait.

Clueless Pashley was muttering too as he turned into the apartment complex. “Damn pissants and their technicalities! Ruin the damn country.”

There was another problem Pashley hadn’t mentioned to Whipple. Since Judge Faraday had turned him down for the warrant the mood at the local FBI office had turned decidedly chilly. The surveillance team had been withdrawn and the electronic listening van was back in the government garage. Pashley suspected it had something to do with the fact that AIC Weinberg was almost ready to come back to work. For some reason Weinberg didn’t seem to like this investigation.

Actually the incident with Judge Faraday had pushed Janovsky to visit Weinberg in the hospital and tell him what Pashley had been up to.  Weinberg hadn’t been able to fully brief his second-in-command on Pashley because he was still hooked up to a cardiac monitor when Janovsky told his story, and the monitor thought Weinberg was having a heart attack. The emergency team hustled Janovsky out of the room before Weinberg could get out anything coherent, but Janovsky got the drift.

Pashley skulked by the gate for a couple of minutes, oblivious to the way the street lights highlighted him. It wasn’t quite 10 P.M. but the court was deserted and most of the porch lights were off. The apartments had their drapes drawn tightly against the chill evening and he could faintly hear the sound of a television yammering out some game show at the top of its electronic lungs.

Judith’s apartment was on the ground floor about halfway back. Her porch light was on but the tall bushes to either side of the door gave him some cover. With a final look around Pashley dropped to one knee and produced a black vinyl case containing a dozen lock picks. He selected one, put the tension wrench in the keyhole and went to work.

If Pashley wasn’t smart, he was clever with his hands. He also knew how to pick locks. Unfortunately lock picking is not like riding a bicycle. You need to keep doing it to keep in practice and Pashley hadn’t practiced for a couple of years. It took him longer than he expected to tickle the tumblers and get the lock to turn.

Meanwhile Ray Whipple was getting more nervous by the minute. “Think about the Hubble,” he breathed, like an acolyte reciting a mantra. “Think about time on the Hubble.” He thought about it. He thought hard about that observing time. Then he thought about doing time-three-to-five as an accessory to burglary. Somehow he thought about that time more than he thought about the time on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Judith’s drapes were drawn and her apartment was dark. Pashley had forgotten a flashlight, so he groped blindly toward the kitchen. The first thing he found was a coffee table loaded with magazines. He found it by tripping on it and knocking the coffee table completely over, making an unholy racket in the process. His further progress was somewhat impeded because he kept stepping on magazines and nearly slipping on their slick pages.

After a few more bumps and stumbles Pashley found the doorway to the kitchen. He made his way through, kicking over the trash can and strewing garbage all over the floor. He felt his way along the counter and after knocking off a box of corn flakes, a stack of dirty dishes and two glass canisters, he finally found the toaster. He yanked the cord out of the wall, sending an array of cans, jars and bottles crashing to the floor and made for the door with his prize.

The police car at the end of the block made Ray Whipple’s heart pound.  Then a helicopter came over, low and without lights. Ray knew a losing cause when he saw one. With a twinge of regret he silently bid farewell to time on the Hubble. Then he started the car and slowly, carefully drove away.

Pashley saw the policemen as soon as they saw him, which was as soon as he stepped out of Judith’s apartment. They were just coming in the front gate so he whirled and ran for the back gate, toaster tucked in the crook of his elbow like a quarterback running for daylight and the policemen pounding after him.

Without breaking stride Pashley straight-armed the gate, knocking it open, and sprinted into the apartment parking lot. He was nearly blinded by the sudden glare of the police helicopter’s spotlight, but he ran on, dodging between parked cars. There was a six-foot concrete block wall at the back of the parking lot and Pashley scrambled over, almost into the arms of two more policemen.

“Drop that toaster!” Pashley whirled and found himself with his back to the wall facing two cops with drawn guns. Reluctantly he set the toaster down and raised his hands.

“You don’t understand,” Pashley shouted over the noise of the helicopter.

“I’m an FBI agent on a secret mission.”

One of the cops was short, chunky and Asian. The other cop was tall, lean and black. Neither of them looked the least bit friendly. “Turn around, spread your legs and put your hands against the wall.” As Pashley complied the black cop moved toward him cautiously, well to one side and out of his partner’s line of fire. Keeping his eye on Pashley he nudged the toaster away with his foot.

“Be careful with that. It’s vital evidence in a national security matter.”

The cops just looked at each other.

“Man,” the Asian muttered to his partner, “these designer drugs are bad stuff.”

Things got a little complicated once they got Pashley back to the station.  While the police definitely had him on burglary, the dwelling was unoccupied. That bumped the offense down to something one step above a misdemeanor. The value of the toaster was less than a hundred dollars so it didn’t even qualify as grand theft. For a while the police thought they had Pashley on a charge of impersonating an FBI agent. Then they found out he was an FBI agent. Pashley’s urgent insistence that the toaster was vital evidence in a national security case didn’t help.

True to his word, the mayor found an office for Wiz and Llewllyn in the town hall. Granted, the room was so small the rough trestle table practically formed a barricade across it, but it was conveniently located just inside the main entrance. Both the location and the row of pegs for hanging cloaks and hats hinted at its former use. With Llewllyn sitting in the rickety chair and Wiz standing beside him the place was decidedly claustrophobic. Still, it would do.

Word had obviously spread about the new consulting service. A man was waiting for them when they arrived that morning. Wiz had wanted to spend a few minutes briefing Llewllyn, but obviously he wasn’t going to get the chance.

Llewllyn, however, seemed to have no doubts at all. “Come in,” he called to the man waiting in the hall. “Never mind my associate here,” he said, with a dismissive wave of his hand at Wiz. “What is the nature of your problem?”

“I’ve been hexed is my problem,” the man declared. “Werner the Butcher, he put a curse on me.”

It took Wiz a minute to realize that “butcher” was the hexer’s occupation, not a nickname.

“How do you know?” he asked.

The man looked at Llewllyn and he nodded for him to answer Wiz’s question.

“Me business is gone to blazes, that’s how I know. Hardly a customer since that black-hearted miscreant cursed me. Worse, I can’t get to sleep no more. I toss and turn through the night. I want that curse lifted.”

“When did you notice you were having trouble sleeping?” Wiz asked.

“After I was cursed, of course!” The man looked at Llewllyn. “He simple or something?”

“No,” Llewllyn assured him, “merely an assistant.”

Wiz cleared his throat.

“Ah, associate actually,” the sometime bard amended hastily. “A specialist in another area, but quite competent I assure you.”

The man snorted and turned his attention completely to Llewllyn.

“Ah, yes,” the young man said, “it so happens I have a special amulet, hewn from the heart of the black oak that grows by the Southern Swamp, prepared by the great wizard Actantos himself. A sure cure. And I can let you have it for just . . .”

Wiz cleared his throat more forcefully.

“But I’m sure you don’t need anything so powerful,” he finished hurriedly.

“Now suppose you tell me what led up to the cursing.”

“Will this really help?” The man sounded skeptical.

“Magic is a matter of information,” Llewllyn assured him. “The more information the more effective the magic.”

“Well, Werner’s a surly one. Got his skill in magic from his gran on his

momma’s side. She was a first cousin once removed of Old Lady Fressen, and

. . .”

Llewllyn cut short his reminiscences. “On the other hand, there is such a thing as too much information. Perhaps you can skip ahead to the day the curse was laid.”

“That was nigh on two week ago, when I caught Werner picking my whiffleberries.”

“He was in your orchard?”

“No, no. The whiffleberry bush is right by the garden wall and some of it hangs over into his garden. Well, since time immemorial there’s been an agreement that what’s on his side of the wall belongs to him. But I look out this afternoon and here’s Werner poaching. He had a whole limb pulled over to his side, he did and he was clearly taking berries that were on my side of the wall.”

“And you confronted the, ah, miscreant?”

“Of course I confronted him! I’ll not stand for anyone taking what’s mine.  Well, he denied it, he did, claimed the berries were on his side of the wall and never mind my pointing out the branch near broken off where he’d pulled on it so hard. He protested he wasn’t poaching and I pointed out to him that a man’d put his thumb on the scales when folks was buying, as everyone knows he does, mind you, why a man like that couldn’t be trusted nohow.”

To Wiz it sounded like both parties needed a good talking to and he couldn’t for the life of him see what whiffleberries had to do with magic or curses. Of course, he admitted, he’d never heard of whiffleberries before and maybe they had some magic property and . . . Then something Llewllyn said, or rather the way he said it, jerked his attention back to the conversation.

“So you expected him to steal the berries when you weren’t looking?”

Llewllyn asked in a carefully neutral voice.

“Stayed in the back of the house the whole day to watch the bush,” their client confirmed. “Only came into the shop in front when a customer called. Even watched most of that first night, expecting him to come sneaking over the wall.”

“And you still think he will plunder your whiffleberry bush?” Llewllyn prompted in the same tone.

“The berries are still there, ain’t they? As soon as his miserable curse has me worn down I expect he’ll come creeping over the wall some night and make off with the whole lot of them.”

“Hmm,” Llewllyn said, and rubbed his chin. “Hmm,” he said again.

Their client leaned forward anxiously. “Can you help me?”

“Oh, of course,” Llewllyn said with an airy wave of his hand. “Not that it is not a difficult problem, mind you, but you have come to the right place. I have the perfect answer for you.” He leaned over the table toward the man.

“First, I shall place a curse on the whiffleberries. By magic or by stealth the thief may make off with them, but they will do him no good.  For if he should partake of the stolen fruit, his bowels shall loosen, his intestines shall bloat and he shall pass the night in the most intense suffering. Fear not, for your berries shall be guarded by the most puissant magic.”

Llewllyn held up a finger. “But understand, such curses are most powerful.  To protect yourself you must not go into your garden, nay, even look into your garden for the next fortnight.”

The man shifted uneasily. “That might be hard. The privy’s back there.”

“Oh, for that, of course. But do not linger and do not so much as look out your back window at the whiffleberry bush for fourteen days, you understand? I’d suggest you spend your time in your shop as much as you can. Fear not, business will pick up as soon as I lift the curse.”

The man nodded.

“Now as for the curse on you, I must lift it gradually lest the powers invoked rend you limb from limb.” The man went slightly pale and nodded again.

“You must stuff your pillow with catnip and place a sprig of tansy under it. This evening I will perform certain mystical operations to banish the invisible demons which are plaguing you. You must drink a cup of wine each night and go to bed at your accustomed time. Over the next two or three nights the curse will dissipate.”

“That’s all?”

“For you, yes. My part will be much more difficult, but never fear, it will be accomplished.”

The man stood and reached for the purse on his belt. “Wonderful! What do I owe you?”

Wiz cleared his throat again.

“Oh, nothing,” Llewllyn told him. “Our fees are paid by the town council.”

“Then may Fortuna smile upon the honorable council!” the man exclaimed and hurried out.

“Okay,” Wiz said after the man was out of earshot. “I understand about the pillow. Catnip’s good for helping you sleep. I understand why you told him to spend time in his shop, to get his business back, and I understand why you told him not to keep watching that bush, to relieve his anxiety . . .”

Llewllyn arched an eyebrow. “Do you not believe in the Sparrow’s magic?”

“What I just saw was another branch of magic, what I call applied psychology-which by the way you have a talent for-“ Llewllyn acknowledged the compliment with a gracious nod, “-but what was that business about a curse on anyone who steals those whiffleberries? The bloating, suffering and stuff?”

“Those are the usual effects of eating green whiffleberries,” Llewllyn said dryly. “And if you were from these parts, and if you were not distracted by some stupid neighborhood feud, you would know that whiffleberries will not ripen for another moon or so.”

Wiz looked at his assistant. “You may have more talent for this than I thought.”

Next, not at all to Wiz’s surprise, was the chicken man. He strutted through the door, neck out like a bantam rooster, and two chickens clutched in his skinny hand. He nodded to the two consultants and plunked the two birds down on the table. The birds squawked and shifted and tried to stand up, something they couldn’t quite manage with their feet tied together. So they settled for sitting on the table and complaining in an undertone.

“I’m here about my chickens,” he announced. “They still won’t lay eggs.” He jabbed a bony finger at Wiz, “And don’t give me none of your lip about dragons, boy, the mayor hisself says you’re to help me.”

I’ll bet the mayor loved having someone to palm you off on, Wiz thought, but he only nodded pleasantly. “I wouldn’t dream of it now that the council has renegotiated the contract. My associate here will take care of your problem.”

The man scowled at Llewllyn. “He’s younger than you are,” he grumbled.

“Prettier too.”

Llewllyn simply nodded and picked up one of the chickens. “Hmm,” he said stroking the bird’s feathers. He prodded the fowl gently. “Ah, yess.” Then he studied the bird’s eyes. “Quite so,” he said, lifting the chicken higher to study its feet. “Uh huh.”

By this point the chicken was thoroughly confused by these goings-on, and Wiz and the bird’s owner weren’t much better.

“Yes,” Llewllyn said at last, “I see the problem clearly.”

“If you can do that you’re better than the rest of them so-called magicians,” the chicken man said. “But what are you going to do about it?  That’s what I want to know.”

The bard put the chicken down on the table. “Why my good man, I’m going to solve your problem. That’s what we wizards, ah, consultants, are here for.  Now this is a difficult case. The causes are obviously complex and subtle.  I will not go into the boring details, but suffice it to say that the cure is straightforward. Simply pluck a sprig of tansy and place it above the door to your henhouse.”

“That’s it? That’s all?”

Llewllyn smiled a superior smile. “The secret is in knowing the cure, not in performing it.” Then he leaned over the clucking chickens and waggled his finger under the man’s nose. “But this is most important. Do not go into the hen house until the moon has waned and waxed again. Feed and water your chickens outside the coop but otherwise do not go near them.”

“Why?”

“Because during this delicate period it would not be safe. You might contract the dread-“ his voice lowered to a near whisper “-chicken pox.”

“Oh, right. Of course. I’ll do just as you say. Thank you sir. Thank you.”

With that the man gathered his chickens and strutted out.

“Chicken pox, huh?” Wiz said when the man had left, birds dangling.

Llewllyn shrugged. “Not my most inspired invention, I will admit, but it should suffice.”

“And tansy?”

“The stuff’s a roadside weed around here and it stinks. The smell makes them think it’s powerful. Like putting alum in medicine so it will taste bad.”

“What do you think he’s going to do if his chickens don’t improve?”

“Oh, they will improve.” Llewllyn’s face screwed up as if he was thinking of something unpleasant. “My Lord, I have a certain experience with chickens. The only thing wrong with those birds is that he is pestering them to death. If he leaves them alone they will settle down and all will be well. And if not-“ Again the shrug. “I will simply tell him he must obtain a coal black cock without a speck of white upon him. That should occupy him for a few moons.”

Their next client was a heavyset young woman with a bad complexion and a red nose. She ventured through the door as if she was afraid that the two men would bite her. In one plump hand she held a handkerchief which looked as if it had seen recent use. Wiz decided that was a bad sign.

Llewllyn didn’t seem to notice. He rose and made a sweeping bow to their client. “Come in young lady. Please sit and tell us what has brought you to us.”

The young woman twisted her hanky and bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she said in an undertone. “It’s such a small thing, really.”

Llewllyn’s smile grew even brighter. “There is no problem too small for us, dear lady. We are here to serve your every wish. Please be seated and tell us about it.”

Thus encouraged the girl eased herself down into the chair.

“Well, I, I hardly know where to begin.”

“Begin wherever you feel like, dear lady,” Llewllyn said gently. “The magic will tell me the rest.”

“There is the young man,” the girl said in a low voice.

“Ah,” Llewllyn nodded. “A special young man? Perhaps one who does not notice you?”

“How did you know?” the girl asked.

“Magic tells me many things. But do go on.”

“Well,” the girl relaxed in her chair, “he’s our neighbor you see . . .”

By the time Wiz left fifteen minutes later Llewllyn and the girl were head-to-head across the table. He hadn’t given her any advice that Wiz could see, just a lot of encouragement, but she seemed to think he had the answer to everything from her love life to the riddle of Dark Matter-or she would have if she’d known what Dark Matter was, Wiz thought.

Obviously his new assistant had a future in this end of the business. Now if Wiz could just keep him from bilking the customers or trying to practice unauthorized magic, he’d have one less thing to worry about.

That morning the director of the FBI had a lot of things to worry about.  As her assistants filled her in on Clueless Pashley’s latest exploit, she stubbed out her cigarette and lit a new one. She was back up to a pack-and-a-half a day and headed rapidly for two packs. Her fingers were stained, her breath stank, she had burn holes in her clothes and twice she had nearly set her desk on fire when she missed an ash tray.

“Where is this clown now?” she asked Paul Rutherford when he finished his report.

“The local office bailed him out,” her assistant said. “They’ve got him stashed in a safe house to keep him away from the newspapers.”

This was a public relations disaster.

“Senator Halliburton’s office called this morning. His committee wants to hold hearings on violating civil rights in national security cases. This Judith Conally and the science fiction writer are going to be his star witnesses.”

A public relations disaster and a political nightmare, the director amended. “Could this get any worse?”

“Only if Pashley gets back out on the street,” Rutherford ventured. The director glared at him and he wilted. “Uh, no ma’am, I don’t think it’s likely to get much worse.”

Unbidden a snatch of a country song came into the director’s head. You gotta know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em. She hated country music.

“All right.” She mashed out the half-smoked cigarette. “Settle!”

“Settle?”

“That writer’s case against us. Tell the Justice Department to settle with him. And settle with this Conally woman. Make apologies, blame it on a rogue agent. But settle.”

“Ma’am,” Rutherford said carefully, “that sets a very bad precedent.”

“It will set a worse precedent if the director of the FBI murders an agent,” she growled. “Just pay whatever it takes.”

Seventeen: Invitation To an Auto-de-Fe

At --- Bullshit Is Our Most Important Product

graffiti on the lavatory wall at a major consultantcy

Wiz got home just after noon to find the mayor sniffling on his doorstep.  At first Wiz thought someone had died. Then His Honor produced a well-used handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose again.

Wiz invited the man in. As they crossed the threshold Malkin was just coming up from the kitchen. They eyed each other with mutual distaste for a moment and the mayor put a protective hand on his chain of office.

“You wanted to see me, Your Honor?” Wiz asked, as much to break the tension as anything else.

“I came to warn you, Wizard.” He stopped, his face screwed up and he sneezed thunderously.

“What? That it’s pollen season?”

The mayor sniffled and wiped his watering eyes. “No, it’s Dieter. He’s moving against you in the council. At our next meeting, two days from today, he plans to call for your resignation.”

There was nothing Wiz would have liked better than to resign. But since his resignation would doubtless be followed immediately by his condemnation to The Rock, it didn’t seem like a good idea to follow his desires.

The mayor looked even more like a basset hound than usual. “He’s gathering votes on the council. I’ll support you, of course, but it will be close, I’ll tell you that.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Could you perhaps be at the meeting? You know, talk to them the way you did before.”

“Of course. Can you get me some time on the agenda before the vote?”

After the mayor departed, sniffling and mumbling, Malkin looked at her boss. “Well, O great Wizard, what are you going to do now?”

“I am going to do what any consultant does when he gets into trouble,” Wiz said. “I am going to give a presentation.”

Malkin snorted. “If I was you I’d give a thought to a quick escape. You heard the mayor. Dieter’s got enough votes on the council to have your guts for garters.”

“Maybe now he does. But the council will have to take a formal vote and they won’t do that until they hear me out because there’s always the chance I’ll come up with a miracle. A successful presentation doesn’t just impart information. It changes attitudes.”

“Look,” Malkin said slowly and carefully, as if explaining something to a small and none-too-bright child, “Dieter wants to be cock of this dungheap and get more money from taxes. Ol’ Droopy wants to stay cock of the dungheap and he doesn’t want more taxes. Cross either one of them and you’re a dragon’s breakfast. Now how in blazes is this presentation of yours going to change any of that?”

“Presentations don’t change things,” Wiz said airily, “they just change perceptions.”

“And just how do they do that?” she demanded.

“Generally by confusing the issue.”

The tall girl chewed on that for a while. “Well,” she said at last, “if you’re set on this, I want to be there when you make this presentation of yours.”

Wiz quirked a smile. “An expression of loyalty?”

“No, I want to see which way it goes so I can get out of here while they’re still busy tearing you to pieces.”

“Oh, it won’t come to that,” Wiz assured her. I hope! “Before this is over I’ll have them eating out of my hand.”

Malkin eyed him under raised brows. “Maybe, but my question is how many fingers you’re going to have left on that hand.”

Bright colors and pretty pictures, Wiz thought. That’s the essence of a successful presentation. He looked at the code taking shape in glowing characters above his desk and sighed. Especially when you don’t have any content.

The conventional wisdom was that the more images, graphically displayed numbers and visual tricks you packed into a presentation, the more effective the presentation. Of course the logical implication of that is that the average executive has the attention span of a three-year-old and the analytical skills of a magpie. Normally Wiz would have found that a very depressing reflection. Just now it was comforting. The only thing standing between him and doom in an utterly impossible situation was his ability to sling creative bullshit.

It would certainly be well-illustrated bullshit. Using the spell Danny had developed so long ago and far away, he had set up an Internet connection back to what he still thought of as the “real world” and set an ftp demon to downloading graphics files from sites all around the world. He already had a library of hundreds of images and they were still coming in.

Even so, it was slow going. Wiz was the sort of programmer who had always preferred substance to form. Here the substance was that he had to use form to cover the fact that he had no substance. That meant writing a bunch of new tools. With the council meeting the day after tomorrow Wiz was going to have to bust his butt to save his neck.

Well, that worked too. As a programmer he was no stranger to all-nighters to meet tight deadlines. This was just one more all-nighter. He tried not to think about the stakes.

The day turned to evening and evening shaded into night and still Wiz toiled away, developing the routines to give a presentation that would knock the Council’s eyes out.

Anna brought him sandwiches and tea along about dinner time, but otherwise he worked undisturbed until well into the evening.

“Get your head out of your spells, Wizard,” the ghost of Widder Hackett rasped in his ear. “You’ve got a problem.”

“It’s a tight schedule, but that’s not a problem,” Wiz said without turning to look at his invisible kibitzer.

“Oh, no?” Widder Hackett grated. “Just you look at that window.” Wiz moved to open the shutter.

“No, you dummy!” the voice rasped in his ear. “Don’t want him to see you.

Look through the crack.”

Putting his eye to the crack between the shutters and peering out into the moonlit street Wiz saw they had a visitor. Or more precisely, he realized, they had a watcher. One of the Watch, the tall skinny one, was leaning against the house on the other side of the street.

“What’s he doing there?”

“Watching is what,” Widder Hackett snapped. “There’s another behind and two more at each end of the street. My own house watched by the police like some common den of thieves. I never thought in all my living days . .  . I never!”

Wiz forbore to mention that Widder Hackett’s living days had ended some time before. “I’m going down there to find out what this is all about.”

Widder Hackett snorted. “What makes you think he’ll tell you anything?”

“If he won’t the council will.”

Subtlety wasn’t Wiz’s strong point and he was both too curious and too angry to be circumspect. As soon as he opened the front door the guardsman stepped back into the shadows.

light exe Wiz commanded and a sphere of brilliant white light appeared over his shoulder. The light was behind Wiz, but it shone right into the eyes of the now-revealed watcher, who squinted and turned his head away.  Without a word Wiz strode across the street. The globe of light floated right with him.

“Good evening,” Wiz said crisply.

“Evening, My Lord,” the guard said, trying to shield his eyes with his hands “Uh, would you mind . . .”

“Sorry I can’t turn it off,” Wiz lied. “Now, what are you doing here?”

“Well, I’m ah, watching, My Lord. So to speak.”

“Watching for what?”

“Criminals, begging My Lord’s pardon. We’ve had criminals around here in this neighborhood and we thought . . .”

“ ‘We’ being the council? Is that it?” Meaning Dieter, Wiz thought. But why?

“Well, ah, as to that, My Lord, I really couldn’t say. All I know is I’m supposed to keep watch here until the thieves are apprehended.”

Thieves, eh? Suddenly it fell into place. “I appreciate your concern, but it isn’t necessary. Tell the sheriff I can guard my own property.”

“That’s as may be,” the guardsman said stolidly, “but I have my orders, My Lord.”

“Oh well, if you want to watch, I’m sure you may. But I will tell you now you won’t find anything.”

“That’s as may be, My Lord.”

Wiz nodded and returned to his house. He left the light globe on until he was back inside.

“Where’s Malkin?” he demanded into thin air as soon as the door closed behind him.

“How would I know?” Widder Hackett rasped. “Out tarting it up I have no doubt.”

“She didn’t go out the door. I would have known.”

“She usually doesn’t,” Widder Hackett said with obvious satisfaction.

With that there was nothing to do but wait until Malkin got back. Wiz went back to his programming, pausing every so often to peer through the crack in the shutters at his watchers.

It wasn’t a terribly productive evening. Between fuming over the watch, worrying about Malkin and starting at every squeak of a floorboard or rattle of a windowpane, Wiz didn’t do nearly the amount of work he had planned. Since it was well after midnight when he heard Malkin on the stairs he lost most of the night’s work.

When Wiz confronted her in the hallway she was dressed in dark trousers, dark soft boots and a dark pullover. Her dark hair was stuffed up under a dark knit cap and there was a dark burlap sack over her shoulder.

“Where have you been?”

“Oh, out and about,” Malkin said nonchalantly. She set the sack on the floor with an audible clank. “Sightseeing, you might say.”

“And the stuff in the bag is souvenirs, right? In case you don’t know it, lady, there is a cop across the street watching this place and two more at each end of the block.”

“And two more on the street behind,” Malkin added. “But they never watch the roofs. Half of them’s too fat to climb and the rest is scared of heights.”

“So you’ve been coming and going over the roofs.”

“Sometimes. The sewer’s good too, if you don’t mind a few rats.”

“Are you trying to get us all killed? The cops are on to you, the place is being watched, half the council is looking for an excuse to put me away-and you with me. Lady, we are just one small slip from disaster here.”

Malkin’s eyes glowed. “I know,” she said breathlessly. “Isn’t it exciting?”

“An adrenaline junkie,” Wiz groaned. “I had to get hooked up with a kleptomaniac adrenaline junkie.”

“Serves you right for hiring folks out of jail.”

Wiz growled in frustration.

“Besides, I don’t see what you’re so worried about. I got in safe with the stuff didn’t I? They never saw me.”

“Did it ever occur to you that their next logical move is going to be to search the house?”

“Law says they can’t search no private home held freehold without a warrant signed by the mayor upon presentation of probable cause. Said probable cause to be solely within the discretion of the mayor. They gave you this place so you have it freehold.” She grinned. “And you think the mayor’s going to issue a warrant to search this place? You being his ally and all? Old Iron Pants will have to wait a month of blue moons before that happens.”

As it happened the month of blue moons ended at about seven o’clock the next morning. Wiz was pulled groggily awake by the sound of a thunderous pounding on the door. Stumbling downstairs he found Anna confronting a gang of armed ruffians. When he looked a little closer he realized that the lead ruffian was the sheriff and that he was brandishing a piece of paper as if it were a shield before him.

“Stand aside, Wizard,” he announced before Wiz was even off the stairs.

“We’re here to search the place for stolen goods. Got a warrant.”

Wiz’s brain was at best severely challenged at this time of the morning, especially when his blood caffeine level was low, but that woke him up and sent his mind into high gear.

“The mayor signed a search warrant?”

The sheriff grinned nastily. “Mayor’s home with a cold. A real bad cold that’s got him incapacitated. So this was signed by three council members like the law provides. All legal and proper.”

Meaning Dieter, Wiz thought, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Well, I can’t stop you from searching,” he said standing aside from the door. “But I can’t protect you either,” he added as the sheriff and his men pushed into the hall. “This is a wizard’s house, you know,” he shouted to their backs as they thundered up the stairs.

For the next two hours the sheriff’s men went over the house eaves to cellars. They found a notebook Wiz had lost, an old copper pan that had belonged to Widder Hackett, a number of rats and an indignant pigeon who was trying to nest in the attic, but not one bit of stolen property.

The only excitement came when Bobo decided that for some inexplicable reason the sheriff’s highly polished boots belonged to him, and proceeded to mark his property in the time-honored tomcat fashion. Luckily for Bobo he was a good deal faster than the sheriff or any of his men.

Meanwhile Malkin stood around looking smug, Anna was wide-eyed with terror and Widder Hackett hurled abuse at the searchers at the top of her nonexistent lungs. Unfortunately the searchers couldn’t hear her. Even more unfortunately Wiz could. By the time the sheriff’s men finished, Wiz was a nervous wreck.

“Well?” the sheriff demanded as he strode into Wiz’s workroom. “Are you done in here?”

The two guards who had been tapping the floor for loose boards nodded in unison and stood up. “Every place but this table,” the guard in front said. “You want us to dig up the garden next?”

“What’s wrong with this table?” demanded the sheriff.

“Looks as if it’s magic like.”

“That’s my desk,” Wiz added. “You’d better not touch it.”

“Bah!” barked the sheriff.

“Hey, I won’t be responsible . . .” Wiz began, but the sheriff was already reaching for the pile of parchments.

No one but the very brave, the very skilled or the very foolish messes with a wizard’s working equipment. The sheriff might have been brave but he was certainly not at all skilled.

As soon as his hand moved over the top of the table there was a twisting in the air and a small green demon materialized below the glowing letters.  A small green demon with a very large mouth. Lined with large, pointed and very sharp teeth. Before the sheriff could react the creature chomped down hard on the proferred hand.

The sheriff yelped and jerked his arm away. On the back of his hand in a neat semicircle were eight round puncture marks. “It bit me!” he screamed.

“Actually there are eight of them, so that’s a byte,” Wiz said, examining the wounds.

The sheriff pulled his hand back. “That’s what I said!” He pointed toward the table with his good hand. “Arrest that thing!” he commanded.

The demon crouched on the edge of the table and grinned at them. It had an unusually large grin that showed off its pearly white and pointy teeth to excellent advantage. All three rows of them.

The guards shifted back and forth but made no move toward the grinning entity crouched on the table.

“I dunno,” the first one demurred.

“Law says we’re only supposed to arrest people,” the second one said.

“Don’t say nothing about things like that.”

“You can arrest strayed livestock,” the sheriff retorted. “Well, impound them anyway.” He gestured at the demon again. “Impound that thing.”

“Don’t know that it’s rightly livestock,” the first guard said.

“Don’t think it’s strayed either,” his companion added.

“It’s right where it’s supposed to be,” Wiz added helpfully.

“Well, then,” said the second guard.

The sheriff was nearly beside himself with fury. “This is an outrage! A complete outrage against the majesty of the law.” He was bouncing up and down and his face was so red Wiz was afraid he was going to have a stroke.  He decided it was time to pour some oil on the water.

“Look sheriff, you can see there’s nothing on that desk but papers. No stolen property, right? Now I’m sorry the demon hurt you, but I’m sure he won’t do it again. Why don’t you and your men go down into the kitchen and Anna will see to your wound.”

“But, but, but . . .”

“It looks nasty, sheriff. The only cure for a demon byte is to have it flushed by a beautiful woman. I’m sure she can find some ale for you and your men while she tends to it.”

The sheriff glared at the demon, who glared back. He glared at Wiz, who smiled. Then he glared at his two subordinates. Without a word he turned and stalked out of the room with the guards close on his heels.

Wiz collapsed against the wall and let his breath out in a great whoosh.

“Don’t know what you’re so worried about,” Widder Hackett’s voice rasped in his ear. “Malkin had the stuff out of the house before they got in the door.”

“What’d she do with it?”

“Buried it in the garden.”

“The garden?” Wiz yelped. “Didn’t you hear them say they were going to dig up the garden?”

“I didn’t say our garden,” the Widder Hackett said gleefully. “Old Trescott’s garden next door.” She cackled so hard she went into a coughing fit. “Oh, I’d love to see the look on Mrs. High-and-Mighty’s face if they was to dig up the loot under her cherry tree. Say, why don’t you . . .”

“Uh, let’s save that for an emergency, shall we?” Wiz said hastily.

Eighteen: Presentation

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Clarke’s Law

Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

Anderson’s Reformulation of Clarke’s Law

Any sufficiently advanced anything is indistinguishable from utter nonsense.

Digby’s Generalization of Clarke’s Law

Especially if it is sufficiently advanced nonsense to begin with.

Zumwalt’s Corollary to Digby’s Generalization of Clarke’s Law

The council kept Wiz and Malkin waiting for over an hour. While Wiz fidgeted in a too-hard chair in the hall and Malkin ostentatiously checked the place for escape routes, the councilors met behind closed doors. Every so often the sound of shouting or an especially ringing bit of oratory would penetrate through the thick carved doors. Wiz fiddled with his notes and tried not to think about the corners he had to cut.

Some of the pieces, such as the buzzword generator, were beautiful. But other details he had been forced to leave to demons because of the time he lost to the sheriff and his searchers.

True to his word, the sheriff had spent most of the rest of the day digging up the garden. Or, more correctly, the sheriff lounged under a tree while his men dug holes more or less at random in the garden. They didn’t find anything but they didn’t quit until nearly sundown. Wiz was on pins and needles all day, afraid there was something Malkin had overlooked. But in her own way Malkin was as thoroughly professional as Wiz. There was nothing and the sheriff left empty-handed.

At last the doors swung open and the usher beckoned them within. The expression on the man’s face did nothing for Wiz’s confidence.

The council was seated around a long U-shaped table. Their mood was a cross between a lynch mob and the crowd at a formal execution. Which is to say some of them were looking forward to what they were going to do, some of them would reluctantly do their duty and some of them were there for the show.

Wiz started talking before he even reached the center of the U.  “Gentlemen, I cannot tell you what a pleasure it is to come before you today,” he said as he strode into the room. His confidence was of a piece with his sincerity, but so far they seemed to be buying it.

He gestured grandly and the daylight streaming in through the windows dimmed to twilight. Another gesture and a demon appeared at the back of the room with a slide projector. The projector was already on and a slide flashed on the wall bearing the words “Success And Prosperity” in vivid red and yellow on a bright blue background-a combination carefully chosen to be arresting without quite giving the viewers a headache. There was a brief murmur from the council and Wiz charged on before they could recover.

“My research has shown that you face a unique set of opportunities. To meet them I propose a dynamic, proactive reinvention of the organization to empower the teams using 60-second skills to address for success the strategic planning requirements in light of the Theory Z competitive strategy in time to produce a win-win-win situation.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have spent so much time on the buzzword generator, Wiz thought. But damn! The output was lovely. If the slide-picking demon had done its job nearly as well, they just might, might get out of this with a whole skin.

All the while the demon was flashing slides on the wall, medieval streets crammed with modern tourists, waving fields of grain, several interior shots of the Cloisters medieval museum in New York City. Happy children.  Wiz thought he glimpsed a shot of Mickey Mouse at Disneyland but he wasn’t sure.

The torrent of words and pictures had the desired effect. Everyone was so stunned no one thought to ask about dragons.

“Clearly,” Wiz continued, “what is called for is to install a reorganization that promotes a new strategic vision, a tightly focused vision that energizes the new tomorrow.

“While continuing the traditions of the past-“ the mayor smiled and nodded “-we must meet the challenges of the future-“ it was Dieter’s turn to smile “-and provide bold new approaches to the organization’s needs.” That brought a nod from Rolf.

“We must empower ourselves to consistently use our organizational resources to install this vision. This means using team management-focused techniques to create the need to change and to produce organizational systems which reinforce the vision.”

The picture on the screen showed a USDA map of the United States with the dates of the average last frosts marked.

“That doesn’t look like anything around here,” one of the more alert councilmen put in.

“Those are magical isoclines,” Wiz said hastily.

“Still don’t look like the country around here.”

“It’s a transmorphic projection. Maybe we’d better come back to this later. Next.”

The next slide was a pie chart, showing sales of Sara Lee pies for 1993.

The trouble with trusting a demon’s judgment, Wiz realized belatedly, is that it doesn’t have any. He was damn glad none of his audience could read English.

Wiz smiled brightly. “By now you are doubtless interested in the specifics of my recommended action plan. As soon as I have finished, my assistant,” a nod to Malkin, “will distribute copies of the white paper emphasizing the highlights. Meanwhile, let us examine the critical challenges we must meet to empower our vision of empowerment.”

The demon flashed up a slide showing someone going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

“The first challenge is organizational. The traditional organization emphasizes musty, sterile parliamentarianism at the expense of action which would clearly reflect the true makeup of the council.” That brought nods from the mayor, Dieter and Rolf, all of whom were absolutely convinced the council was really behind them.

“This means your present decision-making process is diffuse and suboptimal. We must proactively react to counteract this tendency with a broader vision which is only available at the top.” The mayor beamed and Dieter frowned.

“However, given the present organization this is clearly impossible because of the workload such a top-down environment imposes on the mayor.  Therefore the key to repositioning the products and services to build a corporate advantage is install an action-direction vision by creatively teaming together. To that end, we create an Office of the Mayor to actualize the latency by creative teaming. Working directly with the mayor on this critical team will be innovation powerhouses representing the major resources within the present council. While the mayor will clearly be the team leader he will benefit from the synergy and creative flow of ideas from the team structure.”

Again smiles from the critical three. The mayor saw it as a way to subordinate his main rivals to him and the other two saw it as giving them a power base close to the top. That alone should guarantee absolute gridlock, Wiz thought as he paused for breath.

That was a mistake. “What about the rest of the council?” demanded one of the councilmen off to the side. “What about money?” demanded another.

“Yes, money. What about money? What about taxes?” several other voices chimed in.

“I’m glad you raised that critical point,” Wiz said brightly. “That is the second platform of my recommendations, but perhaps we can deal with it out of turn.

“The important fiscal consideration is to provide revenue enhancement without increasing taxes. In fact, as you can see clearly from this revenue elasticity chart-“ up went a phase diagram of the melting point of lead-tin-antimony solder alloys “-the projected revenue needs can be met with a decrease in current taxes.

“Clearly what is needed is a proactive, projective infrastructure investment of the revenue stream.”

“There ain’t no revenue,” one of the councilors objected.

“That is precisely why you apply the revenues projectively,” Wiz assured him. “As you can see from this next chart-“ up flashed a bar chart showing the amount of track laid by the Indian railways from 1850 to 1900 “-the revenues can be applied to development in a fashion which will encourage and develop the trade.”

That produced an approving mutter from Dieter’s faction. The mayor’s people sat in puzzled silence and Rolf’s followers looked to their leader for their cue.

“Let us go back to the organization for a moment,” Rolf said smoothly. “I believe there is more.”

“There is indeed,” Wiz said, relieved that he didn’t have to do his New Age Bugaloo around the difference between “revenue enhancement” and “tax increase.”

Up on the screen flashed an organizational chart of the Supreme Soviet.

“Now this,” Wiz said, gesturing with his pointer, “is your present structure. I’m sure all of you can see the inefficiencies and conflict potential implied here so I won’t dwell on them. Next slide,” he commanded before anyone could object.

Up on the screen flashed the current Miss July, blond, pneumatic and airbrushed to perfection.

Wiz closed his jaw with an audible snap. “Uh, that was just to make sure you were awake. Next slide.”

Up came an even more baroque organizational chart. Glancing at the legend Wiz saw it was for General Motors circa 1965.

“Here is my recommendation. A more modern, teaming approach to today’s challenges. Rather than concentrating the burdens, it spreads them throughout the organization to make management more effective.

“As you can see, this emphasizes creative teaming to empower all the members of the council to make the crucial decisions needed to create tomorrow. By establishing internal task forces, the Office of the Mayor can be freed from the day-to-day detail of running operations to concentrate on developing an action-directed migration plan to create tomorrow. These teams will prioritize opportunities for infrastructure enhancements using the new revenue stream as it comes on-line.” That got a stir of approval as the council members considered the opportunities for graft. “Naturally, every council member will have several team assignments to fully tap into the organization’s creative resources. I won’t bore you with the details of these teams,” mainly because I didn’t have time to work them out, “but I would like to point out the compensation committee, which will determine remuneration for the council members.”

“You mean we’ll get paid for sitting on the council?” someone asked.

“It seems only fair,” Wiz said blandly.

“And just who’s going to be on this compensation committee?” demanded a voice from the side of the room.

Wiz tapped the image at random with his pointer. “That is up to the personnel committee, here.”

“And who’s on the personnel committee?”

“That is the responsibility of the organizational committee. As a consultant it would be unethical of me to advise you on the makeup of these committees. I’m sure you will be able to work out these details among yourselves.”

A quick glance from the mayor to Dieter to Rolf showed them all deep in thought. Rolf was smiling benignly, Dieter was looking sideways at the other two and the mayor was rubbing his chin and nodding.

“Gentlemen, the tide has turned.” Up came a tidal chart for New Bedford, MA. “Opportunity awaits us. Fortune favors the brave.”

Up came the GM organizational chart once more.

“More importantly we must team together to form an empowerment matrix which will reinvent the corporation, uh, organization, in an entrepreneurial model to reach beyond the present to grasp the opportunities of the future!”

They didn’t quite give him a standing ovation, but there were one or two tentative claps from the back of the room.

Wiz let out his breath with what he hoped was a not-too-audible sigh.

“Very well. Are there any questions?”

“Can we go back to that last-but-two slide?” came a tremulous voice from the back of the room.

Malkin didn’t have much to say on the way home. That was fine with Wiz. He was weak with relief and completely exhausted from everything that had happened in the last three days. What he wanted now was sleep, not conversation.

However, Malkin did have one observation. “I don’t know if you’re the greatest wizard I’ve ever met,” she told him as soon as they came through the front door, “but you are sure the luckiest.” With that she turned and went up the stairs.

Wiz started to reply, but then he realized that she was right and that left him with nothing to say.

After a minute he also realized he was hungry. He vaguely remembered eating something after the sheriff’s men got through searching the house, but he wasn’t sure if he’d had anything since then. Rather than going upstairs to bed, he went downstairs to the kitchen.

Down in the kitchen his assistant wizard was enchanting his maid.

“ . . . so we escaped before the bandits even realized what had happened.”

“That’s so exciting,” Anna breathed.

Llewllyn waved a hand dismissively. “Oh tut. All in a day’s work for a journeying wizard.”

He had a wonderful rich voice and talked enchantingly with hand gestures, smiles and just the right amount of eye contact. If you treated the content as some kind of fairy tale, it was great.

Anna obviously thought it was great. She sat at the table with her chin in both hands, her pale blue eyes fastened rapturously on his face. He didn’t have his arm around her waist yet but things were definitely moving in that direction.

Wiz cleared his throat. Both of them started and turned toward the door.  Anna blushed and for an instant Llewllyn looked flustered. “Ah, My Lord, how was the meeting with the Council?” he asked before Wiz could say anything.

“Productive. Very productive.” Produced more confusion than anything I’ve seen since the last Total Quality Management seminar. “Can I see you upstairs Llewllyn?”

The young man turned and bowed to the still-blushing Anna. “Forgive me My Lady, but duty calls.”

“Okay,” Wiz said as soon as they were in the front room, “the council’s going to be reorganizing following a proposal I presented to them. Since you’re the one in the office most of the time they’ll probably be coming to you with questions. Refer any and all questions to me. Don’t try to answer them yourself. The situation’s kind of, ah, delicate.”

Llewllyn smiled knowingly. “Am I to be permitted to know the nature of this plan?”

“Malkin’s got copies of the materials I gave the council. You can get one from her.”

“Very good, My Lord. Is there aught else?”

“Yes. One other thing.” Wiz thrust his face very close to Llewllyn’s. “If you mistreat Anna in any way I will personally break you in two.”

The younger man’s eyes widened. “By magic?”

Wiz flexed his muscles. “That wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.”

“And you think that I . . . ? For shame.”

“Spare me the speeches. Just don’t, okay?”

With that he turned on his heel and went upstairs to his workroom.

Wiz ran into Malkin in the upstairs hall. “Our favorite house pest was in the kitchen,” Wiz told her. “I filled him in and he’s probably going to ask you for a copy of that presentation. Give it to him, but don’t let him get any ideas about doing anything on his own, especially answering questions.”

The tall woman nodded.

“Oh yeah, one other thing. Llewllyn seems to be making a play for Anna.”

Malkin snorted. “You finally noticed that did you? You may,” she said, stressing the word may, “be a mighty wizard, but you’re still blind as any other man. Well, you have nothing to worry about on that score.”

“I know,” Wiz said. “I told him I’d break him in two if I caught him messing with Anna.”

Malkin grinned nastily. “I told him I’d have his balls for earrings and do it with a dull butter knife.” The grin got broader and nastier. “Slowly.  With a red-hot butter knife.”

Looking at her expression, Wiz felt a certain tightness in a very sensitive spot. “Oh,” he said in a very small voice.

Nineteen: Contact

Networking is a vitally important part of the

consultant’s craft. Never lose touch with former clients or colleagues.

The Consultants’ Handbook

Danny swore a particularly sulfurous oath just as Moira walked into the programmers’ workroom.

“I’m sorry, My Lords,” she said and turned to go.

Jerry looked up. “Oh, hi Moira. No, that’s all right. We weren’t swearing at you. We were swearing at the system.”

“More problems?” she asked in the resigned voice Jerry and Danny had come to know all too well since the search for Wiz started.

“I’m afraid so. We’ve been checking the sites on that wacko routing path of Wiz’s and checking them regularly. But now we keep pinging and we keep getting nonsense.”

Danny went over the routing list item by item. Then he stopped dead. “Wait a minute! According to this he’s going through shark.vax.”

“That’s the North Australia Oceanographic Institute. So?”

“So shark.vax is down. They had a typhoon or something. There was a message about it on the net.”

“Let me see that!” Jerry grabbed the tablet from Danny’s hand. He traced down it and frowned. The frown grew deeper as he compared the tablet to the screen.

“Ping shark.vax.” Danny nodded and typed frantically.

“What is it?” Moira demanded, pressing close.

“I think . . .” Jerry began, but Danny cut him off. “See. shark.vax isn’t there. But how is he using it if it’s not there?”

“Magic?” Moira suggested.

Jerry slammed his hand down on the table so hard a pile of manuscripts slid onto the floor. “No, a gimmicked router table! He got into one of those routers and redid the table.”

“Slick. No wonder we couldn’t find him.”

“Does this help?”

“Yes, it helps a lot. All we’ve got to do now is find the router he tricked and see where the entries in the table really lead. With that we can find the switch he’s using and from there we can trace him back to this world.”

“But not quickly?”

Jerry forced a smile. “Oh, it’s not automatic, but we’ll find him. He can’t keep hiding like this for much longer.”

Twenty: The Prancing Pig

Good advice is where you find it.

The Consultants’ Handbook

I can’t keep going on like this, Wiz Zumwalt thought wearily. It wasn’t just that he had lost another solitaire game. He was stuck on the project and stuck fast. Even if he could keep a lid on things with the town council, which was doubtful, he still hadn’t made any real progress on protecting humans from dragons.

In fact, he realized, a lot of what he had done since he came here was in the nature of avoiding work on the problem hoping something would bubble up from his subconscious. But his subconscious was as flat as an open can of Coke left on a programmer’s desk over the weekend.

Maybe his subconscious didn’t have enough to work on. The truth of the matter was that he didn’t know much about dragons and he hadn’t really learned much about them since he came here.

“Hey, Malkin,” he called over his shoulder, at the same time he clicked his mouse to deal another game.

“What?” came a voice in his ear.

Wiz jumped. There was Malkin at his shoulder.

“I wish you wouldn’t sneak up on me like that when I’m working.”

The tall thief shrugged. “I’m not sneaking. It’s my normal way of walking.

Kind of a professional asset, you might say.”

“You might say sneaking, too,” Wiz retorted. “Anyway, I wanted to ask you about dragons.”

“Why ask me? You’re supposed to be the expert.”

“Yeah, but I’ve noticed the people around here don’t talk much about dragons, or even seem to know very much about them.”

“They don’t know because they don’t want to know. As far as most folks hereabouts are concerned the time you learn anything about dragons is usually when someone gets eaten.”

“Still, there must be someone.”

“Well now, since you mention it, there is one fellow who probably knows more than most.”

“I wonder if I can talk to him.”

Malkin shrugged. “Easy enough. If you’re up for a little walk.”

When they left the house they turned away from the main square and the town hall and headed downhill, toward the river. Wiz, who hadn’t been this way much, looked around with interest.

“There’s a lot I don’t understand about the way humans and dragons relate to each other here,” he told her.

“It’s simple enough. Dragons eat humans when they feel like it.”

“Yeah, but beyond that. For instance why haven’t the dragons attacked the town?”

In answer Malkin pointed to a stretch of the street before them. The paving bricks were rougher, darker and shinier. Vitrified, Wiz saw, as if fired at too high a heat. Looking further he realized there was more than one such patch on the street or on the sides of buildings.

“Folks salvage what they can when they rebuild,” Malkin told him. “Usually there’s only bricks and not too many of them.”

The tall woman led him further down into the city. Soon he could smell the river and the mud flats that lined it. They must be almost to the end of the town, Wiz thought.

The river flowed under the bridge between mud banks that took up most of the bed. In spring it must be a torrent, but now, in late summer, there was only enough water to fill a narrow channel.

In the failing light Wiz could see that the earth the town sat on wasn’t ordinary dirt at all. It was heavily mixed with bits of brick, old paving stones and rubble. Here and there vitrified pieces glinted dully in the light of the setting sun.

Wiz realized the entire hill the town sat on was composed of the remains of earlier towns, like ancient Troy. Except here it wasn’t earthquakes and human enemies who had laid down layer after layer of debris to serve as the base for the builders, it was dragons.

“Malkin, look at that.”

“What?”

“The river banks. That’s not dirt. That’s rubble from older towns.”

“So?”

“So this place has been destroyed and rebuilt a number of times.”

Malkin shrugged and kept walking, unconcerned by her hometown’s history.

How many times had the town been destroyed by dragon fire? Wiz wondered as they proceeded across the bridge. How many times had the survivors returned to try to rebuild?

Yet Malkin didn’t seem to care. To her it was just a fact of life, even though it could happen again at any time.

That, Wiz decided, was the scariest thing of all.

The stone bridge was wide enough for two wagons abreast, and well-maintained. The town on the other side of it wasn’t. Almost as soon as they stepped off the bridge the streets narrowed into muddy lanes and began to twist like the tracks of a herd of drunken cows. The aroma told Wiz they weren’t cleaned regularly either. The smell of sun-warmed garbage and ripe raw sewage held a compost-like overtone that suggested they hadn’t ever been cleaned.

“Bog Side,” Malkin explained as Wiz tried to shut off direct communication between his nose and his gorge. “It’s the place to come for entertainment.”

The tall tumbledown houses and maze of narrow garbage-strewn byways didn’t look like Wiz’s definition of Disneyland. The characters who swaggered or skulked or slunk along the streets didn’t remind him much of Mickey and Snow White either. In fact, they made the inhabitants of North Beach and Sunset Strip seem innocuous. Wiz found himself pressing close to Malkin for protection.

Malkin swaggered along, ignoring the others or shouldering them out of her way like so many gawking tourists in a shopping mall. A couple of the more flashily dressed women eyed Wiz and a few of the larger men looked him up and down speculatively, but either Wiz’s reputation as a powerful wizard had preceded him or they knew Malkin too well to try anything. Except for an occasional hand lightly brushing his belt for the pouch that wasn’t there, no one interfered with them.

Malkin led him deeper into the twisty maze of lanes and alleys, between houses that sagged out over the street to support each other like staggering drunks, down alleys over piles of garbage and through open spaces where buildings had collapsed into heaps of broken brick and rotted timbers. Once they passed a long row of substantial brick buildings, sturdy and windowless but stained with time and marred by graffiti and abuse.

“Almost there,” Malkin said as she turned into an alley even narrower and more noisome than the last. Wiz was utterly lost, but from the overtone of mud and long-dead fish permeating the general stench, he thought they had doubled back toward the river.

The alley suddenly opened out into a square facing the river and Wiz blinked as he stepped from the gloom into the mellow light of the setting sun. Not that the view was much of an improvement. The open space was small and piled more than head-high with rubble and garbage. The buildings on either side leaned alarmingly and one of them had already slumped down into a pile of brick spilling out into the square. The opposite side was formed by the burned-out shell of another of the windowless brick buildings. Looking at the blackened brick and fire-damaged mortar Wiz wondered how much longer it would stay standing.

Halfway down the square, Malkin turned suddenly and ducked into a low doorway. Hanging out over the door was a carved wooden sign depicting a rampant and wildly concupiscent pig, its head turned sideways and its tongue thrust out. The hooves, tongue and other parts were picked out in gold leaf, now faded to a mellow brown. Whether through lack of skill or excess of it, the sign carver had turned the conventional heraldic pose into a gesture of pornographic defiance.

Wiz ducked through the doorway and nearly fell headfirst down the short flight of uneven stone stairs that led into the room.

The place was long, narrow and mostly dark. The reek of old beer and stale urine told Wiz it was a tavern even before his eyes adjusted well enough to see the barrels stacked along one wall. A few mutton-tallow lamps added more stench than light to the scene, and here and there the fading rays of the sun peeked through cracks in the bricks. The three or four patrons scattered around at the rough tables and benches all possessed a mien that did not encourage casual acquaintance and a manner that made Wiz want to stay as far away from them as possible. The only one who paid any attention to the newcomers was the barkeep, a big man in a dirty white smock who looked them up and down and then went back to picking his teeth with a double-edged dagger.

It was definitely not the kind of drinking establishment Wiz was used to.  There wasn’t a fern in sight, although Wiz thought he detected a smear of moss growing out of a seep of moisture on one wall.

Malkin put her hands on her hips, looked around and breathed a deep, contented sigh. She plopped herself down on the nearest bench and bellowed for the barkeep.

“Hi, Cully! Jacks of your best for me and the wizard here.” The big man grunted acknowledgement and turned to his barrels. It seemed Malkin was known, if not welcomed, in this place.

“Come here often?” Wiz asked casually.

“Often enough. The Prancing Pig’s the place to be if you want to meet folks in the Bog Side.”

Glancing around, Wiz couldn’t imagine going up to anyone in this place and asking him his sign.

Cully slapped down two leather mugs before them. From the stuff that slopped on the table Wiz could see the contents were beer. He picked his up and took a sip. It was thick, potent and flavored with some kind of bitter herb besides hops. The pine pitch used to seal the leather gave it a resiny aftertaste. Wiz was no judge of beer, but the stuff wasn’t bad.

“This is the real city,” Malkin said. “The folks down here don’t put on airs and there’s none of that social scramble and bicker, bicker, bicker you get on the other side of the bridge. Folks in the Bog Side stick together.”

“When they’re not slitting each others’ throats you mean.”

Malkin shrugged. “That’s in the way of business.” She took a long pull on her mug and slapped it down with a lusty sigh.

Wiz followed with a smaller pull on his tankard. “That reminds me. Those big buildings on this side of the river. Are those warehouses?”

Malkin shrugged. “Some were. A long time ago. Farmers’d bring in wool.  Some of it would be spun and woven here and more would be traded downriver as it was.”

“What happened?”

Malkin looked at him as if he was a touch slow. “Dragons is what happened.  You can’t grow much wool when there’s dragons using your flocks as a lunch counter, not to mention snapping up the crew of a riverboat or two. The farmers still graze sheep, but there’s not so much wool as there used to be. Not so many come to buy, either.”

It made sense, Wiz thought as he took another pull on the oddly flavored beer. Dragons matured slowly and few survived to adulthood. But in a place with little natural magic there was nothing to threaten an adult dragon and they lived a very long time. Over the centuries there would be a slow, steady increase in population and that would mean more dragons to bedevil their human neighbors.

“It couldn’t have all been one-sided, though. Otherwise people would never have gotten established in the valley. You had to have ways of fighting back.”

Malkin snorted into her mug. “Buying peace, more like. Used to be the council would make a deal with dragons. So many sheep, or cattle, or maidens a year and the dragons would leave the rest alone-mostly.”

“But that doesn’t work any more?”

“Seems like there’s a different dragon every year.”

Population pressure again, Wiz thought. Somehow Malthusian economics looked different when you were part of the consumable resource instead of the expanding population. Pretty clearly buying off the dragons wasn’t the answer. All that got you was more dragons exploiting the resource.

“You must have had other ways of fighting back.”

Malkin thumped down her now-empty mug and considered. “There’s children’s tales of heroes who could kill dragons. I suppose they’re true because there used to be statues to them in half the squares in town.”

“Used to be?”

“Dragons didn’t like it. They’d swoop down and melt the statues where they stood. Burn down a lot of the town in the process.” Again the shrug. “That was a long time ago, too.”

It didn’t feel like a solution to Wiz, but he persisted. “Still, you could kill dragons.”

“A hero could. Had to be a hero who would face a dragon in single combat.  Sometimes the dragon’d win and burn the town. Sometimes the human would win and we’d be free of dragons for a bit. But heroing ain’t what it used to be. Not so many of them any more and there’s more dragons, seems like.”

“I understand why you have more dragons, but why aren’t there more heroes?”

“ ‘Cause win or lose most of them are only good for one fight.” She jerked her head back toward the bar. “Cully here. He’s the only one around now.”

“Cully fought a dragon?”

Malkin nodded. “He’s the one I want you to meet. Hey, Cully,” she called over her shoulder. “The wizard here wants to meet you. And bring us a couple more while you’re at it.”

As the bartender made his way over with a pitcher of beer Wiz looked at him closely. He was a big man, run to fat now in late middle age and his skin blotchy from sampling too much of his wares. He moved with a pronounced limp with his withered left arm pressed close to his side. For all that he must have been formidable in his youth.

“So you’re the wizard, eh?” Cully said as he plopped the pitcher of beer down on the table. Wiz saw he had brought a jack for himself.

“More a consultant just now,” Wiz said. “I’m working with the council on their dragon problem.”

“Scared a dragon right out of the Baggot Place,” Malkin put in.

“Frightened him so bad he flew away without harming anyone.”

Cully looked Wiz up and down. “So I heard,” he said in a tone that wasn’t quite a challenge.

“It’s a skill,” Wiz shrugged. “But you actually fought a dragon and won.”

Cully filled his own jack and passed the pitcher to Malkin. “Aye. It’s a dragon’s treasure that got me this place. And as for winning-“ He shrugged his good arm. “Well, I’m here and the dragon ain’t.”

Wiz leaned forward. “Did you have some kind of special weapon?”

“What’s the matter, Wizard? Your own methods not good enough?”

“Oh, my methodology for dragon abatement is perfectly adequate. But like any practitioner I seek to add to my knowledge base.”

The big man digested that while he drained most of his tankard.

“Oh, aye, there’s all kinds of lore on killing dragons.” Cully grinned.  Since half his face was a mass of burn scars the result was not only lopsided, it was something to terrify small children. “Thing is, most of it don’t work.” He twitched his bad arm and Wiz saw the skin was mostly scar tissue. “That’s how I got like this, following some of that advice.”

Wiz wondered if the dragons exchanged tips on fighting humans.

“Still, you beat a dragon in a single combat.”

Cully’s grin grew even more lopsided. “I never said it was a straight-up fight. That’s not in the rules, you see.”

“There are rules?”

“Of a sort. If you don’t follow them the dragon won’t fight you. It’s his choice, you know, seeing as how he can fly and you can’t.”

“What are the rules?”

“Only show up at the appointed place at the appointed time, all by yourself. After that anything goes.”

“How’d you do it?”

“How do you do it, Wizard?” Cully shot back.

“I do what any good consultant does. Mostly I talk them to death.”

Cully considered. “That’s a new one anyway. I wish you the luck of it.” He paused. “As for me, I started by hiding in some rocks and braining him with a boulder. Then?” The big man shrugged. “Then it was just one hell of a fight.” He looked over Wiz’s shoulder as if seeing something miles away.  “One hell of a fight.”

The mood held for a long minute as Wiz considered the implications.

“And no one’s done it since you?”

Cully’s eyes focused back on Wiz. “Not for more than forty years. There’s some as have tried. But none with any luck, you see.”

“Are the dragons getting smarter?”

“There’s them as says that,” Cully admitted. “Or maybe those would-be dragon slayers is getting dumber. Or softer.” He let out a gusty sigh and drained the last of his beer. “I’ll tell you one thing, Wizard. Dragon slaying ain’t what it used to be.” Then he grinned again. “But then neither’s much else.”

Again silence as both men sat lost in thought, Cully in his memories and Wiz in the implications of what he had learned. He needed to absorb all this and the heavy beer was going to his head.

“Well,” he said, pushing his end of the bench back from the table, “thanks a lot Cully. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

The big man grinned his terrifying grin. “Any time you need advice on killing dragons, come and see me.”

“Thanks, Cully.” Wiz turned to go but the tavern keeper cleared his throat.

“You forgot to pay for the beer.”

In a sinking instant Wiz realized he didn’t have any money with him. But Malkin reached into her belt pouch and flipped a silver coin down on the table.

Cully scooped up the coin, bit it, and nodded. “He’s got you paying for him, eh?”

“Wizards don’t use money,” Malkin said carelessly.

“Yeah?” the big man said skeptically. “What do they use then?”

“Plastic,” Wiz blurted. “Ah, little cards, like so,” he opened his fingers. “When you want something you just show them your plastic.”

Cully looked at him with eyes narrowed and Wiz felt foolish.

“And they take this plastic stuff? Just like that?”

“Well,” said Wiz, remembering the times he had gone over his limit, “mostly.”

For the first time the big man’s face showed respect. “You must be a mighty wizard indeed.”

“Where’d you get that silver?” Wiz asked as he and Malkin emerged into the cool evening air.

“One of those pickpockets back at the bridge wasn’t as good as he thought he was,” Malkin said with a radiant smile. “He had money in his pouch too.”

“You picked a pickpocket’s pocket while he was trying to pick your pocket?”

“It was a challenge.”

Wiz just sighed and followed his guide back down the alley, his head full of beer fumes and his mind full of dragons.

So the dragons were getting harder to kill, eh? That made sense too, in a way. The older, more powerful dragons staked out their territories in the center of the Dragon Lands and forced the younger ones to the periphery.  That meant that the dragons the humans faced were less powerful and less experienced-less intelligent too, if Griswold was any example. But as population pressure increased bigger, smarter and more dangerous dragons were trying to grab territory on the edge. They’d be harder for human warriors to beat.

He nearly stumbled into a sewage pit and he had to rush to keep up with Malkin.

“Cully is the last of the dragon slayers, huh?”

Malkin nodded. “Far as anyone knows.” Her tone changed slightly. “He may be my father too. Big enough anyway.”

“You didn’t know your father?”

“Nah,” Malkin said. “Left or died or something before I was born.”

“Didn’t your mother tell you anything about him?”

A snort of laughter in the dark. “Barely knew my mother. I was too young to ask questions like that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what? She ‘prenticed me to Mother Massiter when I was bare old enough to walk. I was a slavey there for a few years. Then I came into some growth, discovered my talent and I’ve been on my own ever since.”

“But don’t you ever wonder . . .”

Malkin’s voice roughened. “The world’s full of wondering, Wizard. Now let it be and we’ll be home soon enough.”

They walked along in silence, each wrapped in thought, until they emerged at the foot of the bridge that led out of the Bog Side. There was but a sliver of moon and the bridge was dark. Wiz listened to the water rushing along beneath them and considered what he’d learned. No wonder these people need help, he thought. They’re losing to the dragons and they don’t even know it yet.

He never even saw the shadow that detached itself from the gloom and brought the raised club down on his head with skull-smashing force.

Wiz never saw the blow coming, nor the four cloaked figures that came charging out of the dark. He didn’t have to. The protective spell in his ring sensed the danger and wrapped him in a stasis field, leaving him frozen in the center of the band of attackers.

The first man’s club bounced out of his numbed fingers. Before he could bend to retrieve it, a second, smaller figure twisted in and struck with the speed of a cobra. His dagger flashed down, struck the magic field, skittered off and buried itself in the wielder’s thigh. The man screamed and fell back. The other two stopped their headlong charge and stared at the motionless figure of the wizard, considering their next move.

“I’m struck down,” wailed the little one with the knife. “Laid low by a cowardly wizard’s blow.”

“Ah, it’s nothing but a scratch,” growled the man with the club.

“A scratch?” the wounded man yelped. “A scratch?” His voice went higher and quavered. “It’s a Fortuna great wound in me leg, it is. Nigh mortal, I tell you.”

“Well, stand away and we’ll finish him,” said a third man. “All of us striking together.” He hefted his cudgel and fitted his actions to his words.

The fourth and last assassin had a sword. The three remaining men struck Wiz simultaneously and in turns. They hit him high. They hit him low. They pounded and hammered and thrust and sliced and hacked and hewed. Wiz just stood there, frozen in time and oblivious to their efforts.

“Doesn’t seem to matter what we do,” the shortest one gasped at last. “It hurts us worse than it does him.” He rubbed his shoulder. “Got me bursitis going again, it has.”

“We could set him on fire,” the tall one with the sword said speculatively.

“Not likely he’d burn,” said the third. “He’s an expert on dragons after all.”

“Let’s throw him in the river then.”

“Don’t look at me,” the aggrieved voice came out of the shadows. “I’m wounded out of commission.”

“Three of us can handle him all right. Come on boys.”

The men clustered around Wiz and tried to jerk him aloft. But the stasis spell worked in proportion to the applied acceleration and Wiz would not move.

“He’s heavy as lead,” one of them grunted.

“Let’s tip him, then,” said the man with the sword. “Maybe we can move him that way.”

By slowly tilting the frozen Wiz back on his heels and working him forward inch by painful inch the thugs got Wiz to the stone rail.

“Now,” the tall one panted, “how we going to get him over the railing?”

“Maybe we could hoist him up and tip him like?” the one with the sword said dubiously.

“Won’t do any good if he lands in the mud bank,” the third said, having regained his breath.

The two looked at each other and then leaned over the rail to peer down to the river.

A strong hand grasped each man by the belt and boosted both assassins up and over the rail before they knew what had happened. The third man rushed to the aid of his friends only to be seized and propelled over the stone railing after them. Three splashes from below confirmed that they had indeed been over the river and not the mud bank.

“Now,” said Malkin, turning to face the fourth thug.

“No need.” The man hobbled to his feet and held out a hand to ward her off. “No need. I’m going.” With that he hoisted himself over the stone rail and disappeared into the darkness below.

With the threat vanished, the spell relaxed its grip and time speeded up to normal for Wiz. He blinked as his eyes refocused, realized he was facing in a different direction and then saw Malkin looking over the bridge railing.

“Something happened didn’t it?”

Malkin looked at him oddly. “Four Bog Side bullies just tried to kill you is all. I guess that qualifies as ‘something’-at least for normal folk.”

She strode ahead briskly. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder. “Let’s get off this bridge before something else happens.”

“Who?” said Wiz as he caught up beside her.

“Hired help,” Malkin told him. “And not of the best, either. Seems as if someone wants you dead, but they don’t want to spend a lot of money on the project.”

“Dieter?”

Malkin considered. “Mayhap. But as like Mayor Hastlebone. Or one of the others.”

“Wait a minute. The mayor’s my strongest supporter.”

“He’s tied his wagon to your star and that’s a fact. But mayhap he’s afraid your star will fall and wants to hedge his bet. After all, if you die accidental-like, you can’t rightly be said to have failed, now can you?”

“Hendrick?”

“Or maybe one of the common folk, who’s afraid of dragons.”

“Well, if they’re afraid of dragons,” Wiz said despairingly, “don’t they want me to succeed?”

“They’re likely afraid you’ll stir the dragons up to burn the town again.”

“Great. Try to do them a favor and they try to kill you.”

Malkin grinned. “You expected gratitude?”