Thirteen : Recruiting Drive

If you eat a live toad first thing in the morning, nothing worse will happen all day long.   

—California saying

To you or the toad.   

—Niven's restatement of California saying

—well, most of the time anyway . . .    

—programmer's caveat to Niven's
restatement of California saying

 

Wiz spent a cold, miserable night in the freezing pit. With the dawn his prospects didn't look any brighter. If he didn't get out of here he was going to die of hunger and thirst. Actually, he'd probably die of the cold before he could die of hunger or thirst.

Face it, he told himself as he looked around for the hundredth time, the only way this could get worse would be for the sorcerers to find you. 

Up above there was a scraping, as if something was clawing at the cover of the pit. With a groaning of hinges the cover moved aside and a shaft of sunlight streamed down into the depths.

Wiz looked up and saw a huge scaled head peering down at him. The dragon cocked its head to one side and ran its forked pink tongue over its ivory fangs.

Okay, Wiz thought, so I was wrong. 

 

The dragon was a late adolescent, not yet grown to the point of acquiring true intelligence, but not far short of it. It was obviously one of the mounts for the Dark League's dragon cavalry, gone feral.

That meant the animal had all the ferocity native to dragonkind and not the least fear of man.

Again the forked tongue licked out, tasting the air in the pit. Then its lips curled back revealing even more of ripping fangs and the animal growled.

Wiz shrank back against the wall as the dragon inhaled deeply. Instinctively he crouched and turned his back even through he knew it wouldn't help him.

With a whoosh the dragon blasted a gout of flame down into the hole.

It was the shape of the trap that saved him. The dragon aimed his fire at Wiz, but Wiz was back out of sight under the overhang. That meant the full force of the dragon fire struck the rock walls of the neck.

The rock was wet, soaked from the eternal damp and the dragon's fire converted a good portion of the moisture into steam. The overhang protected Wiz, but the dragon got a burst of live steam square in the face.

Dragons are not immune to dragon fire, and still less to steam. The beast snapped its head back and roared a high whistling scream like a tea kettle gone berserk. It jerked back from the pit, whipped around and galloped off, roaring and screaming at the top of its lungs.

Son of a bitch! Wiz thought as the dragon's screams faded into the distance. He drew a deep lungful of moist warm air that stank of sulfur and dragon and looked around the pit in wonder.

I'm alive. Son of a bitch! He was still trapped in the pit and he was still hunted, but he was alive.

Wiz threw back his head and laughed at the wonder of it all.

"Rise and shine," Jerry said as he came out of the bedroom. "We need to get an early start today."

It was mid-morning, which didn't strike Moira as particularly early, but she didn't comment. She watched fascinated as Jerry pulled a couple of packages out of the refrigerator's freezer compartment and popped them into the microwave oven.

"Breakfast will be ready in a couple of minutes. The bathroom's over there if you need to freshen up." Moira nodded and went through the door. Most of the fixtures were strange to her, but fortunately Wiz had told her enough about his world that she was able to figure things out.

"Hope you like country breakfast," Jerry said. "I wasn't expecting company and it's all I've got."

The microwave oven beeped and Jerry removed the boxes. Moira opened hers and poked the contents dubiously with her fork. The eggs were tough, the sausage patty tougher and had an odd metallic taste besides. The biscuit and gravy were steaming hot on the surface and icy in the interior. If this was the "fast food" Wiz had raved about there was something seriously wrong with the man's taste buds.

She looked over at Jerry, who was busy shovelling the contents of his box into his mouth.

Well, I have eaten worse, she thought. Wordlessly she began eating what was in front of her.

Jerry drank coffee with his meal. Moira, who had wanted to taste this beverage Wiz had talked about, took one sip and stuck with water.

The day was bright but overcast. Except for the odd stink in the air, it was very pleasant.

"It will take us about an hour and a half to get there," Jerry said as he unlocked the door of his Toyota. "Depending on traffic, of course."

He held the door open for Moira and then went around and slid behind the wheel. Once in he reached back behind himself and pulled a dark cloth strap diagonally across his body. Then he looked at her.

"Strap in."

Moira looked at him, puzzled.

"Reach behind you and pull the belt out, bring it across and buckle it over beside the seat. No, you've got to pull it out smoothly or it won't come all the way."

With much tugging and contortions, Moira got the lap and shoulder belts fastened.

"It's for your own good," Jerry told the hedge witch. "It will protect you in case of a crash."

"A crash?" Moira echoed faintly.

"Yeah, a wreck. Oh, but that almost never happens," he said, catching sight of her face.

Moira barely had the belt fastened when Jerry started the car and pulled out in traffic. Moira found herself speeding along at an incredible clip bare inches from another car moving in the same direction. She looked up and saw other vehicles charging toward them, only to whiz by close enough to touch.

Moira gulped and turned white. Jerry, nonchalant and oblivious, kept his eyes on the road.

They came to an intersection and Jerry whipped the car through a right angle turn in the face of oncoming traffic. To Moira it appeared they had missed the truck bearing down on them by a hair's breadth. She stared at the dashboard and tried to ignore the outside world.

There was a tremendous roar in her right ear. Moira jumped at the sound and looked up involuntarily. To her right, barely an arm's length away sat a man who was going faster than they were. His arms were extended to the front and his beard and long hair were whipped into a wild tangle by the wind. The hedge witch caught a glimpse of the complicated black-and-silver contrivance he was sitting on before he flicked away around another car.

Jerry reached a place where the road narrowed, and climbed gently. Instead of slowing on the hill, he speeded up. Moira moaned softly and concentrated hard on her lap. Her hand grasped the door handle until the freckles stood out stark against the white knuckles.

Jerry glanced over at her. "Don't pull on that!" he said sharply. "If the door comes open in traffic we could be in real trouble." Moira jerked her hand off the handle as if it had turned into a snake. She reached forward with both hands to grab the dashboard tightly.

Jerry wasn't a very good driver, but he had been driving the California freeways for almost twenty years. He speeded up smoothly and edged left to merge into the center lane of traffic.

Out the right window Moira saw trees and greenery whizzing by so fast they were a blur. She looked left just in time to see Jerry jerk the wheel and slip the car into a space barely longer than the automobile.

They were sandwiched between two semis—roaring, bellowing monsters that threatened to spread Moira and the car between them like butter on a sandwich. She moaned again and closed her eyes.

"It's not bad today," Jerry said conversationally. "You should see it when the traffic's heavy."

Moira mumbled something and kept her eyes on her lap.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said I hope I never do see that," Moira said more loudly. But she didn't lift her eyes.

Jerry looked at her sympathetically. He was a white knuckle flier himself. "Okay. If there's anything you need, just let me know."

"My Lord," Moira said fiercely, "the only thing I need is for this trip to be over as soon as possible."

 

Wiz ran his hand over the surface of the stone one more time. There had to be a way out of this. After all, the Dark League would need to retrieve anyone captured in the pit, wouldn't they?

He looked over at the spike-and-wood contraption in the pit. Then again, maybe not. It would be perfectly in character for the Dark League to leave a captive to rot in a place like this. Well, he wouldn't get anywhere brooding on that. He would have to see what he could find.

Wiz put both his palms against the wall and pushed. His left hand met unyielding resistance, but the stone under his right hand seemed to shift. He pushed again. Yes, the stone had moved!

A secret door. Wiz didn't know much about dungeons and mantraps, but that fitted perfectly with his conception of them. There must be a passage behind this wall.

He pushed again. The block shifted a little, but nothing else happened. He pushed the stones around it. Some of them also moved but no door opened. He put his fingers on the edge of the block and tugged hard. The stone moved slightly, but that was all.

He dropped his arms. Either he hadn't found the right stones to push or the door was broken. Either way, it seemed like the best thing to do was force the door rather than rely on the mechanism. For that he needed something to pry with.

He looked at the iron spikes of the trap reflectively. The metal was dark and pitted with rust, but it looked strong. Each spike was about three feet long and perhaps two inches around, crudely forged to a point on one end.

He grabbed the end of a spike and tugged. The spike moved ever so slightly. He dug his heels into the stone floor and wrenched back on the spike with all his strength. The spike moved some more.

Eventually he was able to work the spike free of damp and somewhat rotten wood. It was heavier than he expected and his biceps ached from the pulling, but he ignored that and attacked the loose stone in the wall.

The tool was clumsy and there wasn't much of a joint around the stone, but Wiz set to with a will, heedless of the noise he made. His technique was crude and it took a long time before he was able to pry the block part way out of the wall. With hands trembling from eagerness and fatigue, he jammed the bar into the joint and heaved one final time. The block clattered out onto the floor and Wiz thrust his hand into the opening.

Behind the stone was nothing but dirt and rock.

With a groan he threw the iron bar across the trap and slumped to the floor. It wasn't a doorway at all, just a loose stone in the wall. He looked up at the hole in the ceiling. The only way out of here had to be through that hole. That meant he was trapped unless he could climb the overhanging walls or build a ladder.

There was wood in the spiked device, but not nearly enough to reach the surface, even if it were all combined into a single long pole. Stick the spikes into the wall and climb them like a ladder? Not enough spikes. Besides, how would he get past the overhang?"

Magic? With that demon on the loose he'd never live to complete the first spell.

And that was it, some half-rotten wood, a few pieces of iron and a block of stone levered from the wall.

A block of stone? Just one?   

Wiz stood up and began to try the wall again. He found another loose stone, and then another and another. Most of the wall seemed to be loose, almost every other block could be pried free.

It was the cold, Wiz realized, the cold and the damp working at the stones. When this place was built the City of Night was kept magically warm. But with the fall of the League the magic had vanished and the stones had been subjected to alternate freezing and thawing. The walls of the trap had not been mortared and the working of the water had shifted the stones. The fact that most of the courtyard was paved in dark stone probably helped warm things up.

He picked up the spike and eyed the wall. This wasn't as elegant as a hidden passage and it was sure going to take a lot longer, but it would work. Besides, he thought as he attacked the first stone, I don't have anything better to do. 

The real problem was going to be to get out enough of the blocks to do some good without bringing the whole place down on his head, but he had some ideas on that and it would be a while before he really had to worry.

 

Moira did not look up when they turned off the freeway and headed up a poorly paved road. She did not know how long they rocked along before they turned again onto a dirt road and rattled over a cattle crossing. The dust tickled her nose and made her cough, but she still didn't look up.

"Well, here we are," Jerry said. You can look now." Moira kept staring at the dashboard, as if she intended to memorize every wrinkle and crack in the vinyl.

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

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

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

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

"What is this place?"

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

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

"Well, ah, not exactly."

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

As they topped the rise Moira gawked at what was spread out in the small valley below.

Nestled in among the live oaks and chaparral was an encampment of hundreds of tents of different shapes, sizes and colors. What seemed like thousands of people in clothing of every shade and hue milled about the valley like ants in an anthill.

In the center of the valley was a cleared space with perhaps two hundred men whaling away at each other with wooden weapons. The smack of wood on wood, the clank and clatter of steel and the shouts echoed off the hillsides.

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

"Excuse me, My Lord, My Lady," came a voice behind them, "but you're blocking the trail."

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

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

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

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

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

"Where is the hiring block, My lord?"

"The what?"

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

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

"Then how are we to find the ones we need?"

"We'll have to ask. I think we need to find a herald first."

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

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

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

"ACM?" Moira asked.

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

"No machine operators?" the herald asked. "Employment or contract?"

"Contract. Probably three to six months."

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

"A black site?"

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

"Kind of dark gray, actually."

Her eyebrows went up. "SDI, right?"

Jerry smiled, as he had seen so many recruiters do. "I am really not at liberty to say.

"Now," he went on, "I should also warn you that there is an element of physical risk in this."

The other's eyes narrowed. "This is legal, isn't it?"

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

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

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

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

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

"His Majesty, King Alfonso of Seville," the herald announced.

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

"Your Majesty."

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

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

"Jerry Andrews."

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

"How did you find out?"

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

"It's nothing like that," Jerry said uncomfortably.

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

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

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

"Then why are you here?"

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

 

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

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

Without waiting for an invitation he sat down. "Thorkil du Libre Dragonwatcher. I understand you're looking for programmers."

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

"Yeah," he said flushing, "and I'm damn good."

"Do you have a degree?"

"I attended Cal Tech."

"Yes, but do you have a degree?"

The kid fidgeted under Jerry's stare.

"Okay, so maybe I don't, but I'm good."

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

"We need people with experience."

"I've got experience," he protested. "I've worked in TOS 1.4, AmigaDOS and ProDOS."

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

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

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

"Okay," he said, making a mark on the clipboard, "I'll let you know later."

 

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

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

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

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

"Are they of the Mighty?"

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

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

"How will you select them?"

"Well, Moira, it's your show. You've got the ultimate say in who we choose."

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

Jerry raised his eyebrows. "That kid? He's not in the same league with most of the rest of the people and I think he's a pirate to boot."

"I thought he said he was a programer."

"A pirate is a kind of programmer. He steals other people's software."

"Nonetheless, I would have him."

Jerry shrugged. "I think he's going to be more trouble than he's worth, but okay. I'll add him to the list." He made a note on the pad and looked up.

"Why do you want him, anyway?"

"A feeling," Moira said. "Just a feeling."

"A premonition?"

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

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

"Now what?" Moira asked.

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

"Gold?" asked Ali Akhan, the herald.

Jerry shrugged. "Simplifies matters for the employer."

"This guy's either a libertarian or a drug smuggler," Karl Dershowitz said. Jerry did not reply.

Moira smiled. "We really are . . ."

" . . . not at liberty to say," Nancy Sutton finished for her. "We know the drill."

"Okay," said Cindy Naismith, a short, slender woman with close-cropped brown hair. "What about performance penalties?"

"None. We can tell you so little about the project until you get on-site that it wouldn't be fair. However there is a bonus if the contract is completed on time to the client's satisfaction."

He pushed the clipboard out into the middle of the table. "If you accept the terms, sign this agreement."

Ali Akhan sat down and began to read through the six-page document. Jerry waited to see what happened when he got to the non-disclosure clause. The contract was something they had whipped together out of the pieces of contracts Jerry had in his computer at home. It was pretty much the standard verbiage—except for the non-disclosure agreement.

" . . . if this agreement is breached, employee will immediately be struck by lightning and hereby agrees to forfeit his immortal soul . . ." Ali Akhan read out. He looked up angrily. "What kind of shit is this? I mean it's very funny, but who's gonna believe that nonsense?"

Moira smiled sweetly. "Oh, I think we can contrive to convince, My Lord."

"This is weird," he muttered, reaching for a pen. Then he looked up and grinned. "You don't want me to sign in blood do you?"

"Oh no, that will not be necessary," Moira told him seriously.

Ali Akhan gave her a funny look and then signed his name. Taking the contract back, Jerry saw that his real name was Larry Fox.

Several other people looked at them strangely after they finished reading the contract, but none of them refused to sign it—much to Jerry's surprise. Either things were slow in the Valley or these people were stranger than most computer types.

Considering the milieu . . .

"Fine then," he told the assembled group. "We will meet at the back parking lot of Los Alamitos Mall at seven o'clock Wednesday morning. Have someone drive you or leave your cars at home. Transportation will be provided from the meeting point to our destination.

"Come packed and ready to leave. Oh yeah. Don't have anyone wait for you. Security, you know."

Several people looked at him strangely.

"Gotta be SDI," someone muttered.

 

"I wish we could leave sooner," Moira said as the newly formed team dispersed.

"I know, but we've got to give people time to get their affairs in order. Three days is really pushing it."

"Oh, I know, but I just wish . . ." She looked up at him. "Besides, I miss Wiz terribly."

Jerry studied her expression. "I'm getting kind of anxious to see him myself."

 

Wiz stayed at the black and white palace for as long as he dared. But there wasn't any more food to be found in the kitchen or the palace storerooms. Besides, the Dark League's search was working its way down into the waterfront neighborhood. He could hear the wizards calling to each other as they searched the streets and warehouses.

With the search moving to the waterfront, he decided the best thing he could do was to head back to the top of the town. Maybe there would be places up there heated by the volcano.

 

"Is there aught else to do here?" Moira asked after the last of their new employees had signed and left.

"Well, we could head back tonight, but there are a couple of more people here I'd like to talk to. The king has offered us space in his motorhome. Would you mind spending the night?"

"If we left now we would have to drive back the way we came in darkness?"

"Yes."

"Then let us stay the night," Moira said firmly. She wasn't looking forward to the return trip in daylight and the idea of doing it at night was more than she could stand.

While none of the city of Night was warm, there were definitely some parts that were colder than others. Whether because of the natural microclimate or magic, Wiz didn't know. But this street was especially cold.

Water had trickled down the street and frozen into a layer of glare ice, dark, shiny and unbelievably slick.

Wiz picked his way up the edge of the street carefully. The last thing he needed now was a broken leg.

He was so busy watching his step that he forgot to watch where he was going. He turned the corner and literally collided with a black-robe wizard.

They were both knocked flat, but Wiz recovered quicker. He spun onto his hands and knees and took off like a sprinter around the corner.

The wizard pounded around the corner hot on his heels and shouting at the top of his lungs. "I have found him. To me! To me! I have found HHHHIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMMM . . ." 

Wiz ducked into a doorway and looked back to see the wizard go sliding by, flat on his back with his arms and legs waving in the air like a big black beetle. He almost laughed. Then he thought better of it and took off running as fast as he could.

When he stopped running he was more than a half a mile from the icy street. He sank to his heels with his head between his knees while he gasped in great lungfuls of the frigid air. Gradually his breath came back and he began to study his surroundings.

Behind him was a gate big enough to lead an elephant through. Through it he could see a courtyard with rooms opening onto it.

One place is as good as another, he thought. Keeping a wary eye for traps, he started exploring the building.

Nearly three hours later, Wiz stepped through the last smashed door and wrinkled his nose. The storeroom had been thoroughly ransacked, more than once from the looks of it. Besides, it smelled as if something had been lairing here.

But there was nothing here now and a storeroom seemed like the best place to find food. The buildings around this courtyard had apparently been barracks, with the workrooms, armories and storerooms that supported the soldiers. The armories had been stripped to the walls and the barracks were deserted, but there was a chance there might be something left in the storerooms.

This one didn't look promising, he admitted as he poked among the rubble. There were bolts of cloth that had been pulled off the shelves, torn and trampled. Boxes of iron rivets had been broken open and the rivets scattered across the floor. Bundles of leather thongs, cracked and rotted hung from pegs on one wall. It didn't seem like the kind of place where food had been kept.

Still, he was here and a quick check of the other buildings showed nothing more promising. The barracks kitchen had been easy to locate, but there was nothing to eat there. What hadn't been carried off had been consumed by rats or larger animals.

The City of Night was more complex than he had ever imagined, Wiz thought vaguely as he poked the piles of rubbish in the corners and turned over debris on the floor. Somewhere there had to be food storehouses to feed the people who had lived here. But he didn't have the faintest notion where.

Wiz stopped short. There, on the very top shelf was a pottery jar with a familiar shape.

Pickled fish, he realized. There were some districts along the Freshened Sea where salted fish was packed in vinegar with garlic, onions, vegetables, and spices and sealed in crocks to age and ferment. To the people of those districts pickled fish was a delicacy. Everyone else made jokes about it, especially about its tendency to produce gas.

Apparently the jokes about pickled fish were universal and whoever used this room had kept a personal cache here rather than listen to them.

With shaking hands he took the jar off the shelf. It was full and the clay seal around the lid was unbroken. Quickly he smashed the lid with a piece of wood from the floor.

The contents were dark brown, definitely past their prime and Wiz had made his share of jokes about pickled fish. But this was the most delicious thing he had ever eaten. Heedless of the promissory rumblings of his stomach, he finished the entire crock.

 

At 7:00 a.m. the group gathered in the back parking lot of the shopping center.

They were carrying everything from designer luggage to backpacks. One or two of them had laptop computers under their arms. Jerry wondered how well those would work where they were going. A couple more had apparently believed the Afghanistan story enough to bring cases of liquor with them. That, at least, would be useful, he decided.

"Okay, people," he called out. "Moira here, will . . ." he looked around. "Where's Moira?"

"Here, Lord." Moira came trotting up with a large flat box under her arm.

"What's in the box?" Jerry asked her.

"A present." She handed it to him. "Will you hold it for me?" Be careful not to tip it." Then she looked up and frowned at the sky.

"The haze will make it hard to tell the time," she said. "That complicates matters. Perhaps it would be best to wait for the afternoon time."

"That's smog and it's not going to clear today," Jerry told her. "If you need to tell the time, use my watch." He stripped it off his meaty wrist and handed it to her.

Moira shook her head. I must know the time in day-tenths after sunrise," she said. "Not the time by your local system."

"Day-tenths?"

"One tenth of the time between sunrise and set."

"Wait a minute," said a small man with the face of an intelligent mouse and a mop of brown hair. He stripped off his own wristwatch, and began punching the tiny buttons beneath the face.

"There you go," he said handing the watch. "I haven't set it against the Naval Observatory in a couple of months so it may be a tenth of a second off, but I hope it will do."

Moira studied the madly spinning numbers on the display. They looked something like the numbers Wiz used, but she didn't know them well enough to use them.

She handed the watch to Jerry. "Here, My Lord. Tell me when it is two day-tenths."

"Coming up on it now."

"Hey, guys!"

Thorkil du Libre Dragonwatcher—Danny Gavin, Jerry reminded himself—came running across the parking lot with a backpack slung over one shoulder and bouncing against his hip.

"You are late," Moira said severely.

"Hey, I'm sorry. I had to hitch, okay?"

Moira opened her mouth to say something else, but Jerry interrupted her.

"Time in thirty seconds."

Moira handed her box to Jerry and gestured them all into a tight group. Then she drew out the golden cord Bal-Simba had given her and laid a circle perhaps fifteen feet in diameter in the dusty surface of the parking lot, muttering as she did so.

"Now," she said, turning to the programmers. "You must all stand close together and above all, stay within the circle. Do not step outside it or break it in any way."

Checking the watch Jerry had given her, she raised her wand and began to chant.

At first no one said anything. Then the astonishment began to wear off and the cracks started.

"Is this where the flying saucer shows up?" someone asked.

"Scotty, beam me up," someone else called out.

Moira ignored them and went on with the chant.

"Next stop Oz," Judith chimed in.

And then the world dissolved.