Rick Cook - The Wizardry Cursed

Mikey went back into the kitchenette and opened the refrigerator. "Want a beer?"

Craig plopped himself down on the leather-and-chrome sofa. "No thanks." Then he saw what was on television and his jaw dropped.

A luscious brunette was squatting before a man who was hung like a horse. The man’s pants were down around his ankles and the woman was completely naked. The camera closed in tight on the man’s crotch and the woman’s mouth.

"X channel," Mikey said as he came back into the living room with a beer in his hand. "Satellite feed."

"Wow. I thought you couldn’t get those here."

Mike smiled. "They’re up on the satellites if you know where to look."

Craig watched the action on the screen some more. "Wow."

"How’d you find me?"

Craig tore his eyes away from the television.

"The day you-uh-came over to my place. I got your license number." He shrugged. To any true system breaker the rest was obvious.

Mikey grunted. "Pretty cute. So what brings you here?"

Craig tore his eyes away again.

"You know Judith Conally?"

"No."

"Well, I game with her and…"

Mikey grinned. "Is she a good fuck?"

Craig colored. "I never… I mean, I don’t know her that well."

Mikey’s grin got even wider. "So if she’s not a good fuck why play games with her?"

Craig stopped dead. That was the thing about Panda. He had a way of derailing your train of thought. And you could never be quite sure when he was kidding.

"Well, she’s in the hospital, see? She had a real bad accident. I’ve been going to see her and sometimes she, like, talks, you know? Like she doesn’t know what she’s saying.

"Anyway," he hurried on, "she’s been talking about this world where magic works and there are dragons and wizards and all that kind of shit."

Mikey popped the top of the beer. "So?"

"So I don’t think it’s just a story."

"Get real!" Mike took a hefty swig from the can and turned back toward the TV. A skinny blonde with a haystack hairdo and basketball breasts was being caressed from behind by a black man.

"No, listen man. She went someplace last year, her and a bunch of other people. They were recruited at an SCA war and they were gone for maybe six months. Everyone who went has been real secretive. It was right after Judith came back that she started trying to write fantasy.

"And," he concluded triumphantly, "they got paid in gold! I remember Judith bitching about how hard it was to get it changed into money."

Mike turned back to his visitor. "And you think they went to Middle Earth or something?" he said contemptuously.

"They sure as hell didn’t go to Redmond, Washington. Microsoft doesn’t pay its people in gold."

Mikey turned back to the television. "Bullshit."

"Wait, there’s more. They were recruited to, like, program magic. Over there you can hack magic the way you can computers. Programmers are super-wizards in that world."

"And you believe her. This cunt’s wacked out of her mind in the hospital and you still believe her."

"I’m telling you it all fits!" Craig said desperately. "It’s gotta be true."

"It’s still bullshit. And even if it’s true, so what? What’s that got to do with us?"

"Don’t you see, we can go there too!"

Mikey set the beer down. "Why the fuck would we want to do that?"

Craig stopped with his mouth open. In all his planning, in all his imagining this meeting, that question never occurred to him. "Well," he said lamely, "it would be an adventure."

Mikey snorted.

"There’s gotta be all kinds of treasure and stuff laying around. They paid all those people in gold, man! And we’d be wizards. Super-powerful wizards over there."

Mikey stared at the television and said nothing. On the screen the blonde was pistoning up and down on the black man. Her breasts were flapping like tethered balloons, but not a strand of her haystack hair was out of place.

"So what do you want me to do?"

"I, uh, need help figuring out how to make the stuff work. I need someone who’s even better than I am and Panda’s the best!"

Mikey accepted the compliment without comment. For a long time he sat and drank his beer, watching the screen and saying nothing while Craig fidgeted in silence.

Finally he tilted the bottle and drained the last drops. "I want to talk to your friend."

Craig hesitated. "She’s kind of hard to talk to."

Mikey smiled a 1,000-watt smile. All of a sudden he looked about fifteen and utterly charming. "I think I can get through to her."

"Hi, Sheila, we’re here to see Judith."

The young black nurse stood up from the filing cabinet and turned around. "Hi, Craig. One of you will have to stay here. Rules say only one visitor at a time."

"Oh, come on Sheila, it would only be for a couple of minutes."

"Please," Mikey said, flashing one of his winning smiles. "We’ll only be a few minutes and I really think it would do her good to see us both."

He looked so sincere, so innocent and so vulnerable that Sheila hesitated and then nodded. "Well, all right. But don’t tire her out. And if the supervisor comes around, you snuck by me. Okay?"

"Did you catch the ass on that nurse?" Mikey asked in an undervoice as they headed for Judith’s room.

Judith had a roommate now, an elderly Italian woman who lay spread-eagled beneath the sheets and breathed in great, wracking gasps. Otherwise everything was exactly as it had been on Craig’s first visit.

"Hi, Judith," Craig said brightly. "This is Mikey. He’s a friend."

There was no response from the bed. Mikey glared at Craig.

"It takes a little bit to get her talking," he whispered. Then he turned back to Judith.

"Mikey’s interested in dragons, Judith. Dragons and wizards and magic. You know, the stuff you saw in the other place."

The woman’s eyelids fluttered.

"You remember the dragons you saw. The ones you could ride on."

Judith’s lips moved. Out of the corner of his eye Craig could see Mikey sitting impassively.

"You remember the flying dragons, don’t you, Judith?" Craig went on with a tinge of desperation. "The ones you rode?"

"… not ride," Judith mumbled. "Mad at me…"

Craig threw a triumphant look at Mikey, but Mikey’s expression didn’t change.

"Magic, Judith. You did magic there."

"… spell compiler… full of spaghetti code. Worked asses off to fix it." Her arms twitched restlessly against the soft restraints that tied them to the bed.

"The magic compiler, how did it work?"

"Weird language… hacked together." She drifted off into incomprehensibility.

"Have you got a copy of the code?" Mikey put in sharply.

Judith tossed and mumbled. "… secret. All secret…"

Mikey leaned closer to the bed.

"Have you got notes?" he demanded. "Where are your notes?"

"… notebook… projects."

"Where’s the notebook, Judith?" Mikey persisted. "Where did you put it?"

Judith began to move her whole body against the bed.

"Hey, she’s getting upset. I think we’d better leave her alone."

Mikey ignored him. "Tell me!" he hissed, grabbing Judith’s hand and squeezing hard. Judith moaned and tried to pull away from his grip.