"04 - The Wizardry Consulted (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Rick)

The Wizardry Consulted

by Rick Cook

The Wizardry Consulted (c) 1995


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 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 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, especially 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