Rick Cook - The Wizardry Consulted

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.

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."