Rick Cook - The Wizardry Quested

His audience looked apprehensive. "Go on," the big wizard said slowly."

"Okay, first I divided them into two categories: Regular IDAIDWP and FU-IDAIDWP."

"Foo ida id wip?" Jerry asked.

"Eff you ida id wip," Taj corrected. "What you might call IDAIDWP with an attitude. Anyway, I rolled the FU-IDAIDWPs into the nastiest package I could dream up, added some interface code to make it easy for the Enemy to absorb and wrapped it in the prettiest package I could find." He gestured. "Viola."

"That’s voila."

Taj gave him his satanic grin. "Not the way I play it."

Taj looked at Jerry. "Okay, you say this thing’s instinct is to absorb whatever’s tossed at it."

"Well, humans that attack it, anyway."

"Close enough. Essentially what this thing does is to insert a sequence with a bunch of indeterminate instructions into the thing’s code. You feed it to The Blob out there and the critter self-destructs."

"Nasty," Jerry said. "I like it." He paused. "What’s the downside?" Taj pursed his lips. "Well, there is one tiring that might be a problem. It’s got to be absorbed all at once so we’ve got to get pretty close to make it work"

"How close?"

"For immediate effect? About hand grenade range."

For a minute no one said anything. "So we’ve got to jump down this thing’s throat, right?"

Taj shrugged. "If you want it to work right away and if you want to be sure you get the main bad guy"

No one said anything. There’s another problem, " Taj added helpfully. This things been bred to learn quick. If you don’t make it the first time it will be a whole lot harder the next time." He paused and looked hard at them. "Basically I’d say we’ve got one shot at this."

Another pause. "I believe," said Bal-Simba, "this is what Charlie would call a sporty proposition."

With the weapon came the stirrings of a plan. Soon the Wizards’ Keep was abuzz with preparations. Since the Watchers were still unable to establish communication with Wiz and his party, the first order of business was to combine an attack on the Enemy with a rescue operation. In his or her own way everyone readied themselves for what was to come.

"So this is what the enemy stronghold looks like?" Kuznetsov asked Jerry as they walked down the stonewalled tunnel.

"Something like this. Only smaller and not as neat."

The Russian sized up the space with the professional interest of an engineer who had been given the job of building the place-or a sapper who had the job of blowing it up.

Kuznetsov had wanted to see what the "battlefield" would look like. The closest thing Jerry could come up with was the cellars and storerooms under the Wizards’ Keep. It wasn’t that close to the tunnels beneath the City of Night, but Kuznetsov assured him it would help.

"Now there’re a lot more levels and twists and turns," Jerry added as Kuznetsov knelt down to examine the way the stones fit. He produced a knife and scratched at the space between the rocks, held the scrapings to his nose and sniffed them.

"But just this mortar? No concrete?"

Jerry thought for an instant. "I’ve never seen concrete in this World." Kuznetsov grunted, stood up, and then said something quickly to Vasily. The other Russian nodded and set off down the tunnel.

"And these lamps." Kuznetsov indicated the magic glow light that floated above their head. This is standard illumination?"

"Yeah. What’s Vasily doing?"

"We are seeing how close enemy can get before we see him. This is very important in urban combat."

"This isn’t exactly a city."

Kuznetsov grinned. "I believe your saying is ’Close enough for government work.’

" He looked down the tunnel and motioned to his partner. Peering out past the edges of the light, Jerry couldn’t see him, but apparently Kuznetsov could.

"Now he comes back hiding behind cover and in shadows," Kuznetsov said without taking his eyes off the tunnel. "The way an enemy would approach."

By straining his eyes Jerry thought he could detect an occasional flicker of movement down the corridor. Finally, when Vasily was almost on them he caught a glimpse of him sidling along a wall and whipping into an open storeroom.

"He’s really good."

"He was a specialist," Kuznetsov said, and smiled as if he had made a joke. There was an explosion of Russian from the storeroom and Vasily came charging out with no attempt to hide.

He pointed back to the room and spat out something long and complicated in Russian.

Kuznetsov whistled. "Da shto ve gavorete?"

"Po Pravda!" Vasily confirmed.

"What was that about?’ Jerry asked.

The Russian looked at Jerry strangely. "Let us say we just discovered that our paths have crossed before, indirectly. You might even say that you are the ones who got us started in our present line of work." He waved away Jerry’s frown.

"Never mind. It was another time and another country."

The Russians were silent as they climbed the stairs from the cellar. They declined Jerry’s offer of a warming drink.

"Comrade Major, do you realize what this means?" Vasily hissed in Russian as soon as Jerry turned the corner.

"It means we have solved another mystery my friend. Now we know how the computer disappeared from the airplane."

Kuznetsov sighed and grinned. "It takes you back, does it not, to the days when the world was young, our hearts were pure and there was no problem in human relations which could not be solved by the application of sufficient quantities of high explosive?"

He sighed once more. "Life was so much simpler then."

"Complexity?" Bal-Simba echoed in bewilderment.

"Complexity," Taj repeated with a satanic grin. The weakness of all centralized systems is that they cannot handle complexity beyond a certain level."

"And you are certain of this?"

He spread his hands. "It’s inherent in the state equations. If we wanna give this boy indigestion we start by giving him a nervous breakdown."

"What in the world are you doing?" Jerry asked as he walked into the workroom.

"Origami," Taj said cheerfully. "Great way to relax."

Jerry looked over the collection of cranes and other creatures scattered over the benchtop.

"Parchment’s kind of scarce. We can’t waste it on stuff like that."

"Oh, it’s not a waste," Taj said cheerfully. Then he held up his latest creation. "See, here’s a dragon."

Jerry looked past the long-necked shape at the litter of parchment scraps on the table. "It’s still not a very good use for parchment."

Taj smiled evilly. "Wanna bet?"

The rhythmic scrape-scrape-scrape told Gilligan that Vasily was sharpening something. When he got close he saw it wasn’t a knife or a sword. It was a small shovel with a two-foot handle. An entrenching tool in fact

"Where’d you find that?"

"Castle smith made it for me," the Russian told him. He laid the stone aside and sighted down the shovel blade, turning it slightly so the light struck the edge.

"Almost ready now."

"Going to dig your way out of trouble?"

In a single cat-like motion Vasily twisted and hurled the entrenching tool overhand. It flew end-over-end and buried itself in a post twenty feet away with a twang. The shovel stuck there with its handle vibrating from the force of the impact.