Reverse engineering is the sincerest form of
flattery.
—Engineers' saying in Silicon Valley
Wiz screamed.
His very eyes were on fire. Heat singed his hair and beat on his brain through his skull. The flesh melted and ran off his face. The palms of his hands and the soles of his feet throbbed with pain as the awful, searing heat destroyed the nerve endings.
Somewhere far beyond the wall of terrible pain he was aware of Arianne gesturing wildly. Then waves of coolness washed over his body.
"Oh my God," Wiz moaned. "Oh my God."
Arianne held him in a way that combined professionalism and compassion. "You will be all right, my Lord," she said soothingly. "Try to relax."
Wiz relaxed one tiny, knotted muscle. The expected flare of pain did not come. He relaxed a few more muscles and still no pain.
"Jesus," he breathed out raggedly. Arianne released him to another's arms. Moira. Instinctively he reached out to touch her hair.
"I warned you that the psychic effects could be painful," Arianne said.
"Yeah, but . . ." He gasped for breath again. " . . . my God." Moira hugged him to her and he felt her tears on his cheek.
"I'm all right now, darling," he said with a smile he did not feel.
"They will not be if ever we meet," his wife said fiercely.
"I am sorry we did not get you out sooner, my Lord," Arianne told him, "but we did not realize what was happening."
Wiz sucked another racking breath. "Sucker punched. That son-of-a-bitch sucker-punched me."
The tall blonde sorceress shrugged. "Name it as you like. They have no honor."
Wiz was still shaking a few minutes later when the programmers and such of the Mighty as were in the castle assembled hastily in the chambers of the Council of the North. They took their places haphazardly around the long oak table without regard for the carefully established rules of place and precedence. That alone told Wiz how seriously the wizards took this.
"They're programmers, all right," he told the group. "From our world or one very much like it."
"Do your people make war against us?" demanded Juvian.
"Definitely not. I could tell that much just by looking. But they're trained in the same discipline we are."
"That's bad," Jerry said.
"Worse than you know, perhaps," Bal-Simba rumbled. "They have some powerful magical force behind them."
"The Dark League again?"
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."