Since Jerry slept mornings he didn’t find it until he came into the workroom about mid-afternoon. He was still yawning over his second mug of blackmoss tea when he sat down at his terminal. He looked over the job he had left running, found it was progressing satisfactorily and punched up a list of his mail.
Jerry called the message up and started reading. By the time he had finished the first screen he was biting his lip.
“Danny! Moira! You’d better come look at this.”
Hi Jerry and everyone (especially Moira!):
I can’t tell you where I am or what I’m doing, but I’m safe-at least for now.
I don’t know how long this job is going to take, but I’ll have to stick with it until I’m done.
As to what I’m doing, let’s just say I’m taking a lesson from Charlie Bowen.
Say hi to everyone for me and don’t worry about me.
Give my love to Moira.
PS: Please don’t try to find me. It’s very important.
W
“Who’s Charlie Bowen?” Danny asked.
“Someone Wiz used to work with at Seer Software,” Jerry told him, abstractedly. “Another programmer.”
“A real hotshot, huh?”
“No, that’s the funny thing. He was a lousy programmer. He wrote their accounts payable routine and he made a royal mess of it. The module kept fouling up assigning purchase order numbers, choking on invoices and if there was the least little problem in the paperwork, it kicked the thing out and it had to be processed manually. It was taking Seer Software six or eight months to pay even a simple bill and they kept having to explain to everyone it was the software’s fault.”
Danny took a swig of tea. “So did they fire him?”
“That’s the other funny thing,” Jerry said. “They promoted him.”
Just then Moira came dashing into the room, face flushed and flour up to her elbows. “You’ve heard from Wiz!” she panted.
Jerry gestured to the message on the screen. She craned forward to read it over Jerry’s shoulder. As she read her face fell and then she started to frown, deeper and deeper as she read along. By the time she reached the bottom she was scowling.
“There is something very wrong here. Why didn’t he tell us where he is?”
Jerry shrugged. “He said he didn’t want us to know.”
“He also said he did not want us to worry,” Moira said grimly. “Those are mutually exclusive and he knows that.”
“Then maybe,” Danny said slowly, “he can’t tell us.”
Jerry frowned. “You mean he doesn’t know where he is? That’s crazy. Wiz’s magic could tell him in an instant.”
“So maybe he knows and can’t tell us,” Danny said, groping.
“A geas!” Moira exclaimed. “Of course! He cannot tell us because he is magically forbidden to do so.”
“He doesn’t sound like anything is stopping him,” Jerry objected. “It sounds more like he’s being secretive of his own free will.”
“That is the problem with a geas,” Moira told him. “You do not necessarily know you are under it. Everything seems normal to you and you think you have the best reasons in the world for doing what you do, no matter how badly you want to do the opposite.”
Jerry rubbed his chin. “Well, it sure fits with Wiz’s behavior. He wants to tell us, so he contacts us. But he can’t so he comes in through the net and then won’t say where he is.”
“Is there any way to trace him?” the hedge witch asked. She gestured at the message header. “Wiz told me once that gives the location of the sender.”
“Normally it does,” Jerry said. “But take a look at it.”
Danny frowned as he ran his finger along the line. The further he went, the deeper his frown became. “That can’t be natural,” he said at last.
“It isn’t! That isn’t a routing path, it’s a shaggy dog story.”
“Meaning what?” Moira demanded.
“Meaning he deliberately set up this routing to be as difficult and obscure as he could make it,” Danny said before Jerry could answer. “See, normally a message is routed automatically by the most efficient path-given the location of the source, location of the destination, topology of the net and the amount of traffic. But you can force the route by using bang paths.”