Rick Cook - The Wizardry Cursed

Bal-Simba snorted. "Much more powerful than that. Non-human I think, and mighty even for non-humans."

"Elves?"

"Perhaps."

"That must be what they’ve been up to," Danny said. "They’ve been stalling the negotiations while they got this thing set up."

Wiz frowned. "I don’t know. There was magic all over the place, but it didn’t feel like elf magic."

"May I remind you, Sparrow," Bal-Simba said, "that you have not met many elves?" Then he shook his head. "But you are correct. Elves can make time and space run strangely, but I have never heard of them creating a whole new World."

"Well, whoever it is has found themselves a couple of people who understand programming. They seem to be pretty good at it."

"They are," Danny said.

"You know them?" Wiz demanded.

"One of them. Mikey Baker. Well, I didn’t really know him but I used to see him around on the nets. His handle was ’Panda,’ you know?"

"No, we don’t know. Tell us."

"Well, he was into hacking and phreaking-system breaking and shit like that."

"Don’t call it hacking," Wiz said sharply. "People like that aren’t ’hackers,’ they’re worms."

Danny shrugged. Unlike Wiz and Jerry he didn’t have the true hackers’ deep contempt for computer vandals who used their skills to break into computer systems. Nor was he offended that the media insisted on calling those criminals "hackers."

"Whatever. Anyway, no one liked him much."

"I can see why. But was he any good?"

"Oh, I guess so. But he was like nasty-nice, you know? Real sweet and easy-going on the surface and just rotten underneath."

"He sure as hell wasn’t sweet to me!"

"He wasn’t like that before. It seems like he’s changed a lot."

"Well, what else do you know about him?"

"Not a lot. The people I knew didn’t like him so I steered clear of him. There’s a rumor he had something to do with the Jesse James Virus."

Wiz looked puzzled. "The Jesse James Virus?"

"That was after you left." Jerry shook his head. "A variation on the Panama Virus. Very sophisticated and real nasty. If this guy was behind it, he’s got talent."

"I’d say there’s a lot of talent behind that place," Wiz said. "Face it. We’re not unique. There are a lot of competent programmers who could do pretty much what we’ve done if they knew about this place and how to get here."

"Yeah," Danny said, "but how did they find out about this world?"

"Perhaps they did not," Moira said. "Perhaps they were brought here as the wizard Patrius brought you here."

"Mikey told me they came here voluntarily."

"I wouldn’t trust anything that guy said," Danny put in.

"Maybe, but someone turned them on to magic programming and our magic compiler. They didn’t pick that up on their own."

No one said anything for a minute.

"There’s only one place they could have gotten the compiler," Wiz said at last. "It had to come from here."

Bal-Simba frowned like a thundercloud. "A traitor?"

"Not exactly," Jerry said. "I’ve been studying the code from that recon drone we found. The compiler they’re using isn’t exactly our compiler. It doesn’t have the extensions we’ve added in the last year and it’s got a couple of features we don’t."

"So they got an earlier version of the code and they’ve been working on it independently," Wiz said. "Can you tell roughly when they got their version?"

"No ’roughly’ about it. I know exactly when. They’re working with the last version the full programming team worked on."

"One of the programmers after all," Wiz said. "But we’d ruled that out."

"I fail to see how," Bal-Simba said. "That-ah-’nondisclosure agreement’ you had them sign is not enforceable in your world."

"Meaning we can’t sic that demon named Guido on them," Wiz agreed. "But we thought of this before and we checked."

"Between Worlds?" Bal-Simba looked skeptical.

"Even in our world there are ways of checking, although they aren’t absolutely accurate."

"We had to make a couple of phone calls," Danny said.

Arianne looked at him strangely but said nothing.

"And you checked everyone?"

"Not everyone. One person, Judith Conally, is very ill. She was hurt in an accident a few months back and she’s still in a coma."

"She’s out then," Wiz said. "People in comas don’t talk."

"That’s not true, you know," Bronwyn said from where she sat at the end of the table.

"Huh?"

"People in comas can sometimes talk. It is not common, but…" She shrugged.

"If she talked," Moira said slowly, "there might have been ears to hear."

"Well, we pretty well know that no one else did," Jerry said.

"I think," Bal-Simba said, "it is time for another Great Summoning from your world."

Three A.M. is a bad time in hospitals. Normal life processes are at their lowest ebb. If it is busy it is because things have gone to hell and if it’s quiet it’s hard to stay alert. Fortunately things were quiet on Neuro, so the nursing supervisor was having trouble staying awake when Sheila came up to the station.

"We’ve lost Conally." Sheila’s voice was so low and tight the supervisor had trouble understanding her.

The super looked up from her charts. "What?"

"Conally, the patient in 314. We’ve lost her."

The supervisor looked sharply at the young nurse. She seemed to be taking this one very hard.

"Too bad," the supervisor said sympathetically, reaching for the phone. "I’ll get a resident up here to pronounce and then we’ll…"

Sheila shook her head. "You don’t understand. She’s not dead, she’s gone! Not in her room."

It was the supervisor’s turn to go white.

The bed was in place, the bedclothes rumpled but not thrown back and the bed was empty.

"Did you check the other rooms?"

"I’ve looked everywhere in the ward. I can’t find her."

It wasn’t unknown for Neuro patients to get out of bed and wander around. That was why the unit was built secure. Except for emergency exits with alarms, the only way in or out was past the nurse’s station and the door could not be opened from the inside unless someone at the nurse’s station buzzed you out.

"Well, search again."

"I’ve already got Doreen and Lupe doing that."

"We’d better alert security to search the rest of the hospital," the supervisor said at last.

As she turned away from the empty bed she thought regretfully of the cigarettes she had left in her locker. This was going to be a bitch of a night.

Bronwyn looked up from the still form, her lips pressed into a tight bloodless line. "What have those damned barbarians done to her?" she demanded.

"How should I know?" Wiz said. "I’m not a doctor."

"Neither are any of them by the look of it. They kept her clean and fed, but they did nothing to heal the damage to her brain."

"I don’t think we can," Wiz said. "Head injuries are hard for us to handle."

"Barbarians," Bronwyn repeated and motioned her assistant to her. "Now leave us. And don’t expect to talk to this one for a couple of days at least."