Rick Cook - The Wizardry Quested

"Are you interested in imaging?" Larry began. "If so we’ve got the hottest product at the show."

"It’s truly revolutionary," The Squirrel picked up. "They’re cracking down on adult GIF files on bulletin boards, right? Okay, with Peeping Tom’s Inverse Steganographic technology you don’t need a GIF. Any data file of more than two megabytes is displayed as an X-rated picture."

Jerry nodded in spite of himself. "GIF," of course, was a standard encoding method for storing and transmitting pictures for personal computers. He was trying to piece the rest together when The Squirrel went charging on.

"You know about steganography, right? How you can encode a message in a picture file like a digitized TV picture so it looks like noise or just part of the picture?"

"I’ve heard of it"

"Well," said The Squirrel triumphantly, "this is the same thing only backwards. Instead of specifying the encoding scheme and using the picture as the variable- the cyphertext- to get the plaintext, we take the file as the given and apply various decoding schemes until we get the appropriate plaintext-the picture. With Peeping Tom’s Inverse Stenographic technology, combined with our easy-to-use Windows front end, you select the kind of picture you want as an output from our menu and Peeping Tom goes until it finds it."

"Are you saying," Jerry said slowly, "that you can always find a dirty picture, ah, ’adult GIF’ in any data file?"

"Guaranteed," Leisure Suit Larry boomed.

"Assuming the file’s big enough," The Squirrel added. "Over two megabytes."

"And this is going to avoid censorship?"

"Hey," Larry said virtuously. "Can we help it if those files contain dirty pictures?’

"Yeah," The Squirrel chimed in, "we just decode them."

There was a flaw in that argument, but just then Jerry didn’t have the time to go looking for it However his curiosity was piqued.

"How big is the program?"

It takes ten Meg of disk space," the big one said.

Yeah, but how big’s the executable, the main program file?"

"About five Meg," The Squirrel put in.

"What happens if you feed it the executable?" Jerry asked. "You Know, let the program examine itself?"

"We didn’t put any pictures in there," Larry said. "Nothing but code." The Squirrel, however, looked puzzled. "Hmm. I never thought of that. Let me try it and see."

"We’re running a show special," Larry said as his companion began pounding the keyboard. "Just $199 for the basic package. Runs under 3.1, NT and Windows 95 and: "

"Jesus Christ! The Squirrel yelped. " Hey, take a look at this!"

Sales pitch forgotten, his partner rushed to join him at the screen. "Wow," Larry said reverently after a minute. "I mean I’d heard the expression, but I didn’t think anyone could really do that."

Between their heads Jerry caught a glimpse of the screen and blanched. He didn’t know if you could get busted for pornography in Las Vegas, but what was on that screen had to violate some law and he didn’t want to be around when the cops figured out which one. "Come on, folks," he said to Bal-Simba and Moira, "I think it’s time we moved on."

The rest of the day wasn’t much more productive. People at one or two of the booths they visited had seen Taj the day before, but no one had seen him today. Jerry guessed he was visiting one of the other exhibit halls, but that didn’t help much.

The fact was that they could spend the rest of the week at the show and never catch sight of E.T. Tajikawa. Jerry had known that before they came, but the physical reality of the place drove the point home like a pile driver. Not only was it too big, it was too spread out and too crazy. It was going to take either bund luck or a really clever piece of strategy if they were going to find him. He explained all this to Bal-Simba and Moira on a snippet of lawn outside the exhibit hall. The late-afternoon sun was casting lengthening shadows over the lengthening lines of showgoers who were trying to get seats on a shuttle bus back to their hotels. The buses roared in and out of the rank constantly but still the lines grew.

"Basically, we’re going to have one more shot to try to find him tonight," Jerry told the pair. That’s at this reception downtown." He didn’t say what they’d do if they didn’t find Taj there and the others didn’t ask.

"How shall we get there?’

Jerry looked at the dragon and sighed. "I’m sorry but there’s only one way. We’ll have to walk again."

It was a hike of several miles and they took it slowly, resting every few blocks for Moira’s sake. The sun sank, the shadows deepened and Las Vegas lit up for the night

"This is truly a wonderland," Bal-Simba said at one of their rest stops, awed by the explosion of colored lights and rivers of traffic around them. "Your world is indeed a fantastic place."

"Well, this is fantastic even by the standards of our world," Jerry said "Lake I told you, Las Vegas is unique."

"Is it all like this? The town, I mean."

"Oh no. Most parts of Las Vegas are really quite normal. It’s supposed to be a pretty nice place to live, actually."

"Will we go there? The normal parts, I mean."

Jerry looked at the twenty-foot-dragon and the giant black wizard dressed like a 1970s pimp. "Nooo, I don’t think so."

It took them several hours to reach the Towne Centre " hotel in the older

"Glitter Gulch" downtown casino district. By now it was full dark and so late Jerry was afraid they might miss the reception completely. An even bigger worry was Moira, who was obviously getting more and more run down. Even with more frequent rests she was nearly punchy by the time they reached the alley behind the hotel.

"Why don’t you wait out here?" Jerry suggested. Moira just nodded.

"Perhaps I had best stay too while you go inside," Bal-Simba said.

Jerry considered. Anyone who found Moira by herself probably wouldn’t ask questions. Bal-Simba, on the other hand, would be expected to answer them. While Jerry had he was much less sure of his ability to concoct a story that wouldn’t get him hauled off to jail by Las Vegas’ finest. Especially in the get-up he was wearing.

"I think you’d better come with me," he said. "Moira, you stay here. No, over here next to the dumpsters. Stay out of that yellow painted area, otherwise they’re likely to tow you away. If anyone comes by, just freeze like a statue. Pretend you’re not alive. We’ll try not to be too long." Moira nodded and sank down in the space beside the dumpsters.

Bal-Simba’s size and appearance may have attracted attention, but it made it remarkably easy for them to get an elevator. In fact as soon as the door opened on the first car the four tourists in the front row took one look at them and bolted. The other passengers pressed back against the walls, leaving them plenty of space.

They paused just outside the elevators and Jerry briefed Bal-Simba on their mission.

"Okay, this is going to be a little tricky since we’re not on the invite list. So we’ll just have to fake our way in. Act like you belong, smile a lot and be noncommittal."

"Will they not know we do not belong?"

"They’ll know we’re not on the guest list, but they can’t be sure we won’t do them some good. We only need a few minutes to find out if Taj is here anyway. Follow my lead. And remember, smile a lot and say as little as you can." Putting his advice into practice Jerry smiled at the people manning the table outside the door and picked up a press kit as if he was interested. Then they walked into a wall of noise.