Rick Cook - Wizardry Compiled

Moira stood open-mouthed. "You mean that’s what Wiz was trying to show me?" she asked incredulously. "That’s all there is to it?"

Karl shrugged. "Pretty much."

"But that’s so simple . Why didn’t he just say that?"

"Probably because he never thought of it that way. From what everyone says Wiz was a master class hacker and hackers just don’t think in those terms." He grinned. "We have a saying about people like your Wiz. Ask them what time it is and they’ll tell you how to build a clock." Jerry put the scroll back on the pile.

"Now I’d like to ask you something. What did you mean just now when you said you don’t think the way we do?"

"We do not generalize the way your people do."

"Who says so?"

"Why, Wiz."

"I think Wiz is wrong. You don’t generalize the way Wiz does, but then most people don’t. You’re oriented to language, not mathematics. One of the things that confuses it is you’re very careful in your speech. You don’t use metaphors and similes in the way we do, probably because your language can directly affect the world around you. You can make magic by accident."

Moira thought hard.

"Then you think we can learn this new magic?"

"I’m sure of it. Oh, you’ll probably struggle like an English major in a calculus class, but you can get it if you’re willing to work at it."

"How is it you are so much more skilled at explaining all this?" Moira asked.

"Oh, that. I was a high school teacher for a while."

"A teacher? Then why did you become—whatever you are?"

Karl grinned ruefully. "Kind of a long story. Seems I started out to be an engineer and in my junior year I decided I’d rather be a teacher. So I switched majors and got my degree in education."

He looked out the window and sighed. "Well, after I had taught math for a couple of years, our high school got an inspection by the accreditation commission. I had more than enough math courses to teach math, but most of them were taken as engineering courses. So the accreditation commission decided they didn’t count. I could either go back to college and take twenty-four hours of math courses I’d already had or I wouldn’t be certified to teach math and that would count against the school’s rating."

"You mean you were not a good teacher?" Moira asked.

"Oh no. I was a very good teacher. The accreditation commission rated my classroom performance ’superior’. But I had taken all my math courses with an ENG prefix instead of a MA prefix."

The hedge witch frowned. "Forgive me, My Lord, but I do not understand."

Karl sighed. "Neither did I. That’s why I took a job as a software engineer—for twice as much money."

Moira thought hard for a moment.

"My Lord would you be willing to take on an additional duty? Would you be willing to teach this to others?"

Karl’s mouth quirked. "In my copious spare time?"

"It would do much to ease the suspicion and mistrust."

Karl thought about it for a moment. "I guess I can spare an hour or so a day."

"Thank you, My Lord. In the meantime, you can expect a formal visit from representatives of the Council sometime very soon."

"Ducky," Karl said with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. "Just what we need. A project review."

"We’ve got a good team," Jerry told the wizards as they walked toward the converted cow barn, now known universally as the Bullpen.

The late afternoon sun slanted golden across the court and the air smelled of warm flagstones and dust, with just a tinge of manure to remind them of the Bullpen’s original purpose.

Jerry kept up a flow of half-defensive small talk, Bal-Simba was soothing and the other two, Malus and Petronus, were distinctly cold.

"Have you had trouble adapting?" Bal-Simba asked.

"Some. It turns out that there’s a strong psychological component here. What a piece of code—a spell—does is constrained by its structure, but its manifestation, the demon it creates, is strongly influenced by the outlook and attitude of the programmer." He sighed. "It’s tough, but we’re making good progress."

"We have confidence in you, of course," the giant black magician told him. "But the Council has a responsibility to oversee any use of magic in the North."

"And to see that magic is used wisely and safely," Malus said pointedly.

"Naturally we’re glad to have you, but there probably won’t be much to see," Jerry told him. I hope, he added to himself.

Bal-Simba nodded amicably. Actually the visit was about as casual as a surprise inspection by a team of Defense Department auditors, but part of the game was to pretend otherwise.

"There have been certain questions about your performance," Bal-Simba said as they approached the door. "I fear you have not made the best possible impression."

"With all due respect, Lord, we didn’t choose our programmers to make a good impression. You need a difficult job done on a very tight schedule and we got the best people we could. I’m sorry that we aren’t more presentable, but the most talented people are often a little eccentric."

Bal-Simba nodded, thinking of some of the peculiarities of his fellow wizards.

"Some say your people are as flighty as the Little Folk," Petronus said as they reached the door to the barn.

"That’s because they don’t know them," Jerry said, reaching out to open the small door set in the larger one. "People who do what we do tend to be very concentrated on their work. They may seem a little strange to anyone on the outside, but their main goal is always to get the job done. We’ve got a good team here and they’re a pretty serious bunch."

He motioned Bal-Simba and the others ahead of him. The black giant ducked his head and stepped over the sill.

They stood together at the threshold to let their eyes adjust to the dim light. The barn still smelled of hay, grain and cattle, a dusty odor that tickled the back of the nose but not unpleasantly.

"Welcome to the…" Jerry’s head jerked back as something zoomed past his nose, climbing almost straight up.

It was a Mirage jet fighter no bigger than his thumb. As it topped out of its climb it fired two toothpick-sized missiles toward the ceiling. There above them a half-dozen tiny airplanes were mixing it up in an aerial melee. One of the Mirage’s missiles caught a miniature Mig-21 and blew its tail away. A tiny ejection seat popped out of the plane as it spiraled helplessly toward the flagstone floor and an equally tiny parachute blossomed carrying the pilot down to safety.

Jerry and the wizards gaped.

A two-inch-long F-16 peeled off from the dogfight and dove at Jerry’s head.

"Now cut that out!" Jerry roared. The fighters vanished with soft pops and there was a snickering from one corner of the Bullpen.

Bal-Simba stared off at the wall and carefully avoided saying anything.

"Ah, yes," Jerry said. "Well, ah, this is where we work."

The central aisle of the barn was taken up by a plank-and-sawhorse table piled high with books, scrolls, blank sheets of parchment, inkpots, quills and wooden tablets marked and unmarked. At the far end of the barn the whitewashed wall was streaked and smudged from being used as an impromptu whiteboard. Next to the wall sat a waist-high brazier warming an enormous pot of blackmoss tea.