Cook, Rick - Wizardry 04 - The Wizardry Consulted

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ONE
FLUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON
True, it is nonsense. But it is important nonsense.
—Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein On His Life's Work
(Quoted on the title page of The Consultants' Handbook)
"You know one of the nice things about peace?" Wiz
Zumwalt remarked to his cubicle mate. "It's boring."
Jerry Andrews turned away from the glowing letters
of golden fire hanging in the air above his desk.
"Are you being sarcastic?"
William Irving Zumwalt, "Wiz" or "Sparrow" to one
and all, twisted his wiry frame in his chair and brushed
a lock of dark hair off his forehead. Like Jerry he was
dressed in the flowing linen shirt, breeches and high,
soft boots that were this world's equivalent of jeans and
a T-shirt. In spite of the clothes he still managed to look
like a programmer.
"Heck no! I was just thinking how nice it is. No one's
trying to kill me, no one's trying to destroy the world.
No dwarf assassins, no elvish magic. Just peace and quiet.
It's boring, but you know something? I like being bored."
Wiz sighed and looked out the traceried window into
the rose garden below Now that there were only three
1
2 Rick Cook
programmers left in the World, the Stablemaster had
reclaimed their old quarters for his cows. In place of the
Bull Pen, Danny, Jerry and Wiz had a spacious workroom
in the main tower, with windows surrounded by climbing
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roses, and a view of the rose garden and the western wall
of the Wizard's Keep. Beyond the towers of the west wall,
the green hills ran off into the purple distance.
In Wiz's time in this world peace had been a scarce
commodity. His first weeks after being shanghaied here
were spent running for his life from the Dark League
of the South. What with one thing and another, espe-
cially a red-haired hedge witch, he had discovered that
the magic in this world could be made to work like a
computer program. That led to a hacked-together magic
language and a battle of magic that destroyed the Dark
League. Then he'd been kidnapped by a remnant of
the Dark League and spent weeks dodging wizards in
the freezing, deserted City of Night. That was when
Jerry, Danny and some other programmers were brought
here from San Jose to help him. That in turn led to a
couple of computer criminals finding their way to this
world and that had ended in another enormous battle.
In between there had been the job of teaching this
world's wizards how to program and months of delicate,
wearing negotiations with the non-humans of the world
who were upset by humans' new magical powers. It had
only been in the last few months that teaching and
negotiating had tapered off and Wiz could get back to
serious programming.
"Yep," he repeated, taking his eyes away from the
landscape. "It's wonderful."
"You sound as if you're trying to convince yourself."
Jerry sounded amused.
"I'm already convinced," Wiz said firmly. "I'm bored
and I like it."
Jerry leaned back in his chair, which squeaked in
THE WIZARDRY CONSULTED 3
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protest, and put his ham-like hands behind his head. He
was several inches taller than Wiz and a lot heavier,
although he had dropped perhaps forty pounds since com-
ing to this world a couple of years ago. Even powerful wiz-
ards here got more physical exercise than their software
counterparts in Cupertino. Like Wiz he was tanned, but
unlike his friend, who drew his dark hair back in a shoul-
der-length ponytail. Jerry's lighter brown hair was neatly
trimmed above his collar. "I'd rather think of it as having
enough time to work on interesting projects. Now that
we've got wizards and apprentices trained in the basics
of the magic compiler we've got the time for refinements."
"Speaking of which, what is that you've been hack-
ing on so furiously?"
"Kind of an experiment," Jerry said, turning back to
the code. "I'm trying to see how well the magic compiler
works in a more conventional computer language."
"You're translating the thing into C?"
"Well, no," Jerry said. "I thought I'd try something
that was a little less tied to computer architecture. Some-
thing more general."
Wiz looked over his shoulder at the lines of lumi-
nescent characters suspended in midair. Then he
squinted and leaned closer.
The magic compiler was written in a combination of
this world's runes, the English alphabet and various
made-up symbols. To the uninitiated a spell listing looked
like someone's graphics card had barfed on the screen.
But even compared to that, this listing was strange. In
addition to the "normal" symbols, there were tiny
squares, triangles, right angles and things that were even
less comprehensible. Wiz scanned the display several
times, frowning.
"If I didn't know better, I'd swear that was . . ."
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"Yep," Jerry said proudly. "APL."
Wiz groaned.
4 Rick Cook
"Hey, you're a fine one to complain. Who wrote
the first spell interpreter in a hacked-up version of
Forth?"
"That was different," Wiz said with some dignity.
"Forth was exceptionally well suited to what I needed
to do."
"So is this," Jerry informed him. "APL is an extremely
elegant language. You can express a whole series of
complex mathematical operations in a single line of code
simply, unambiguously and logically."
Wiz tore his eyes away from the mess above Jerry's desk
and poured himself another mug ofblackmoss tea." If
you've got a computer that can produce hieroglyphics and
if you never need to remember what you did."
"Nonsense. It's no harder to write understandable
code in APL than anything else. You can even write
incomprehensible code in C."
"I rest my case."
Before Jerry could reply the door banged open and
Danny limped in.
"How's the back?" Wiz asked, grateful for a respite
from what promised to be a full-scale language debate.
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"Getting better," the young programmer said, plop-
ping himself down in his chair. He leaned forward almost
forty-five degrees. "See? No pain."
Considering the extent of his injuries, Danny was
lucky to be alive, much less walking around. A blast from
a guard's weapon had nearly burned him in half dur-
ing the great battle for Caer Mort almost three years
before. Magic had saved him and magic had healed him,
but not even the world's most skillful healers could
restore him fully in safety. So for months he had been
going to the healers in the Wizard's Keep for a
combination of'physical therapy, massage and healing
magic. Gradually but steadily he was improving.
The third member of the software development team
THE WIZARDRY CONSULTED 5
was several years younger with fresh good looks that
made him look younger still. Even before his ordeal he
had been slender, but the rigors of his recovery had taken
flesh off his bones until he was positively skinny, despite
the best efforts of his wife June and the castle cooks
to feed him up.
He looked over at the characters above Jerry's desk.
"What's that?" he asked, levering himself out of the chair
and limping over to join them.
"APL," Wiz told him. "He could have been doing
something useful and he's been writing an APL
interpreter."
"Well, whatever makes you happy," Danny said with
a shrug.
"Like figuring out how to tap into our world's tele-
phone system, I suppose," Jerry retorted.
"Hey, we needed an Internet connection. We have
to keep up with what's going on back in the real world.
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Besides," he added, "you're the one who's on that thing
four hours a night."
"I have a lot of newsgroups I have to keep up with,"
Jerry said virtuously. "There's a lot going on there."
"Well, better keep it away from the wizards," Wiz
said. "I'm not sure what they'd make of some of those
newsgroups."
"You mean like the alt.sex groups?" Danny asked.
"I was thinking more of cemp.language.flames, but
yeah, the alt.sex groups too. Especially alt.sex.gerbils.
duct-tape."
"That's bogus," Jerry said. "The real name is alt.sex.
bestiality.hamster.duct-tape."
It was Danny's turn to look smug. "You mean that's
another group. Just because it's not in the official alt
hierarchy you can't find it."
Wiz wasn't sure whether he was joking or not. The
Internet, an international computer network originally
6 Rick Cook
built around universities and research institutions, was
famous for the depth and breadth of the knowledge con-
tained in its newsgroups. However, even Internet's
staunchest advocates had to admit that not all the
newsgroups were research-related—or even serious.
Hidden away in various places in the sprawling multi-
dimensional message space were some decidedly odd
things, including some highly unofficial newsgroups. But
you needed to know how to use the net to get to them.
Dannys knowledge of the ins and outs of the net was
extensive.
Danny was no sooner settled back in his chair than
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there was a discreet knock at the door. In all the Wizards
Keep there was only one person who knocked so deli-
cately, so discreetly and so exquisitely.
"Come in Wulfram," Wiz called.
"Excuse me. My Lord." The castle seneschal was calm,
dignified and more than a little bit stuffy. "But..."
Before he could finish the door banged open again
and two children and a dragon charged into the room.
"UncaWiz, UncaWiz," shouted Caitlin, the daugh-
ter of one of the guardsmen. She was a couple of years
older than Danny's son lan, with dark curly hair, flash-
ing dark eyes and a single black eyebrow stark against
her pale, fair skin. She was utterly charming, she knew
it and she used it shamelessly.
Right on her heels came lan. He was barely three
and well into the head-down-and-charge stage of child-
hood locomotion. Without pausing he ran fall-tilt across
the room and bounced into Danny's lap.
But the real attraction was the third member of the
group, who charged into the room just as heedlessly,
got his feet tangled up with the rug and his own tail,
caromed off a pile of manuscripts and executed a neat
bank shot to end up beside lan and Danny.
Little Red Dragon, or LRD to the programmers, was
THE WIZARDRY CONSULTED 7
little only in comparison to the eighty-foot cavalry mounts
in the aeries below the castle. He—Wiz thought he was
a he—was nearly ten feet long from snout to tail tip. His
scales were darkening from scarlet to maroon and the blue
edges were going from turquoise toward navy and his
combination of exuberance, dragonish temper and size
was making him increasingly hard to handle. Dragons do
not become intelligent until they are nearly full-grown.
LRD was a long way from full grown and somewhat fur-
ther than that from intelligent. But LRD and lan were
inseparable, so the dragon was allowed in the program-
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mers' workroom and their quarters in the Wizard's Keep.
The seneschal knew when he was outclassed. With
an exquisite sigh of resignation he stepped away from
the door to await the wizards' pleasure.
"The dragon's got a new name!" Caitlin announced.
"We had to come tell you because you can't call him
LRD any more."
"Not LRD?" asked Danny, looking down at his son
squirming in his lap.
"No! Fuf-fee," lan pronounced distinctly, reaching
up and hugging the scaly monster s neck. LRD looked
pleased.
"I beg your pardon?" Wiz said.
"He means Fluffy," Caitlin said with five-year-old
superiority.
"Fluffy!" lan repeated with three-year-old emphasis.
"Okaaay," Wiz said, "his name's Fluffy."
"He's taking us on a adventure," Caitlin announced.
"We're going across the river to hunt for mushrooms."
"All by yourselves?" Danny asked. "What does Shauna
say?"
"Oh, Shauna can come too," Caitlin said. "Fluffy says
it's all right."
"Where is Shauna anyway?" Wiz put in.
"Here, My Lord," the nursemaid said, puffing with
8 Rick Cook
exertion as she came into the room. She dropped a per-
functory curtsy to Wiz. "Sorry, My Lord, we were down
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in the orchard and they just took off running. The whole
pack of them." She turned toward her charges and planted
her hands on her ample hips. "No manners in the lot of
them. Just up and whooping off like a tribe of savages.
They ought to be ashamed of themselves, bursting in here
like that and disturbing wizards at their work. Why it
would have served them right if they'd interrupted a pow-
erful spell and been turned into a parcel of frogs!"
The boy, the girl and the dragon recognized their cue
and they all managed to look properly abashed.
"Maybe it would be a good idea to take them over
to the woods," Danny said. "Let them run off some of
this energy."
"Well. . ."
"Please Shauna," Caitlin wheedled.
"Peese," lan chimed in.
"Whuf," added the dragon.
Shauna considered and then relented. "Well, all right,
My Lord. But just to get them out of your hair." She
turned and glared fiercely at the children. "And this time
that beast—" She jerked her head at the dragon. "That
beast has to swim the river. Near to upset the boat last
time, he did, and the boatmen won't take him any more."
"Come on," Caitlin whooped and dashed for the door.
lan jumped out of Danny's lap and pounded after her
and the dragon followed, nearly knocking Shauna down
as he charged past.
"Here now!" she yelled. "Just slow down, the lot of
you." With an apologetic glance over her shoulder, she
followed her charges out the door, calling to them to
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come back.
The racket died down as dragon, children and nurse-
maid vanished down the corridor.
At that point Wiz's wife Moira came into the room,
THE WIZARDRY CONSULTED 9
a wide-brimmed straw hat thrown back over her shoul-
ders, setting off her freckled, slightly flushed skin and
cascade of red hair. She was wearing a peasant blouse,
a brightly colored skirt and she had a basket of fresh
flowers in her hand. To Wiz she looked like a vision out
of a Monet painting.
"Was that LRD?" Moira asked as she came over to
kiss her husband hello.
"No, that was Fluffy."
Moira arched her coppery eyebrows over great green
eyes. "Love, even for you that is incomprehensible."
"Wasn't my idea." Wiz shrugged. "Caitlin and lan
insist LRD's name is Fluffy."
"Where did they get that, I wonder?"
Wiz shrugged again. "Maybe the dragon told them."
Moira just sighed and shook her head.
"Normalcy," Wiz sighed. "Its wonderful."
Jerry snorted with laughter.
"What's so funny?"
"Two kids go tearing out of here chased by a dragon,
and you say it's normal."
"The dragon doesn't bother me, I just think of it as
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摘要：

file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Cook,%2\0Rick%20-%20The%20Wizardry%20Consulted.txtONEFLUFFTHEMAGICDRAGONTrue,itisnonsense.Butitisimportantnonsense.—PhilosopherLudwigWittgensteinOnHisLife'sWork(QuotedonthetitlepageofTheConsultants'Handbook)"Youknowoneofthenicethingsab...

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