Rick Cook - The Wizardry Cursed

He turned the corner and started climbing stairs. The walls fell away as he climbed until the staircase seemed to stretch up into a bleak, blood-lit, starless sky. Come on, he told himself, this is just an illusion. You know you’re still inside the castle. But somehow that only made the illusion stronger. The wind whistled around him, tugging at his jacket and whipping his jeans against his legs. There were hints of shapes in the sky above him, huge dark-on-dark things that shifted and twisted in ways his eye couldn’t quite follow.

Craig shivered and stayed close to the center of the railless staircase. He thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of his windbreaker and kept his eyes on the stairs under his feet.

Suddenly he was there. There was no door, no anteroom. Just a pool of light at the top of the stairs and Mikey hunched over a desk in the middle of it.

As he reached the top Mikey regarded him in a not-quite-hostile manner.

"What brings you here?"

Craig shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I hadn’t seen you in a while and I just felt like coming to see you, you know?"

Mikey grunted and turned back to his work. Craig stood uneasily as the silence stretched out and the wind whipped and whistled around them.

"This is kinda spooky," he said at last.

"I like it," Mikey said without looking up.

The silence dragged out as Craig stared at Mikey’s back.

"You look like you’ve been learning a lot." Craig tried to flog his enthusiasm. "It must have taken some real magic to put this place together."

"Yeah," Mikey said. "I’ve been learning. That and a whole lot more."

"Oh?" Craig asked brightly. "Like what?"

"Like philosophy, man. I’ve really clarified my thinking." He smiled and for an instant the old, charming Mikey flashed through. "You know who really owns something? The person who can trash it. Just fucking ruin it completely. That’s how you know the real owner."

"But what about the guy who can use it? You know, build something with it?"

"So what? If he can’t protect it, he doesn’t really own it. It’s like a computer. The name on the paper may say it belongs to IBM or Pac Bell, but that doesn’t mean shit. The people who really owned those computers were people like me who could get at them any time we wanted to."

Craig laughed nervously. "Man, you’re getting heavy."

Mikey smiled. "Heavy times. Our friends now, they understand that. You know what those guys are really? They’re the greatest goddamn hackers of all!" The smile grew wider, dreamier. "Man, this is gonna be great."

"Yeah, but there are people out there, you know?"

"So? If they can’t protect it, they don’t own it. Simple as that."

"Yeah," said Craig desperately, "but you don’t have to destroy something to prove you own it, right? I mean it’s enough to know that you can do it, isn’t it?"

"Yeah," Mikey said with the same dreamy smile. "Sometimes that’s enough."

"So all this is really theoretical, isn’t it?" Craig pressed. "I mean it’s not like you’re actually gonna destroy anything, are you?"

Mikey came out of his trance and regarded him closely. "Sure it’s all theoretical." He turned away from Craig and back to the crystal thing on his desk. "Just theoretical."

Craig hesitated, torn between a desire to press his companion for more assurances and the fear he might not get them. Finally he turned away, mumbled something about needing to get back to work, and started down the dark and twisting stairs.

Mikey didn’t even grunt goodbye.

Jerry and Danny listened intently when Wiz related what Duke Aelric had told him.

"That’s weird," Danny said when Wiz had finished. "I wonder how much of it is true."

Jerry leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the console. "What I want to know is what stirred these things up. If they’ve been around forever why did they pick now to start causing trouble?"

"Duke Aelric talked about that some when he first joined us," Wiz said. "He thinks it’s because of us. Our brand of magic apparently triggered something." He glanced past Jerry’s feet to the console screen where the convoluted blue shape slowly rotated.

"I think the whole thing’s crazy," Danny said. "Is he still around?"

"Aelric? I don’t think so. I think he left again right after I talked to him."

"Pity," Jerry said. "I would have liked to ask him some questions about this."

"Bet you wouldn’t get any straight answers."

Before Wiz could reply the door opened and Moira came into the computer room carrying a wicker basket with a cloth over it.

"Forgive me, my Lords, but I thought you might enjoy some refreshment," she said as she put the basket down on the console.

Wiz started to object to covering up the stacks of papers, but then Moira folded back the cloth and he goggled instead.

"Doughnuts! Where did you learn to make doughnuts?"

"Jerry took me to a doughnut shop while I was in your world. I liked them, but it took me some little time to master the recipe."

Wiz grabbed a chocolate-frosted chocolate a fraction ahead of Jerry’s and Danny’s reaching hands. He took half of it in one bite and closed his eyes in bliss.

"You sure got it right. This is wonderful."

"You said it," Danny enthused, spewing crumbs from his second choice over Moira’s skirt.

The hedge witch dimpled and bobbed a curtsey. "Thank you, my Lords. Now, if you will excuse me, I must see to the unpacking of our latest load of supplies."

"Won’t you have some with us?" Wiz asked his wife.

"Thank you, no. I, ah, sampled several while I was making them. I fear I am more than somewhat full." She turned toward the door. "Do not eat too many and ruin your appetites. June is preparing something special for dinner." Behind her Wiz nodded and reached for his third doughnut.

For several minutes the only sound in the computer room was working jaws. Eventually a combination of sated appetites and an increasingly limited selection made the three more talkative.

"If she can whip up doughnuts why can’t she make coffee to go with them?" Danny asked.

"She didn’t like coffee when she tried it," Jerry told him. "She liked doughnuts."

"Okay, but why so many maple ones? Everyone hates maple."

"I think they were her favorites."

"Anyway," Wiz put in, "isn’t there something about looking gift horses in the mouth?"

"Yeah. Sorry," Danny said perfunctorily.

"You know," Jerry said after a moment, "what Aelric said almost makes sense in a quantum mechanical sort of way."

Wiz looked around. "I’m not sure anything makes sense here," he said.

"They’ve been saying that about quantum mechanics for years," Jerry said. "Anyway, this might, if you looked at it right."

Wiz picked through the basket and selected a jelly doughnut as the best of the remaining batch. Then he turned back to his friends. "I’ll bite. What does quantum mechanics have to do with these bad guys?"