“Not really. What’s up?”
“Message from Ol’ Droopy. He wants to know how you’re coming.”
It took Wiz an instant to identify “Ol’ Droopy” as the mayor and somewhat longer to formulate an answer.
“Tell him things are progressing at a satisfactory pace.”
“So I see. Anyway, you can tell him yourself. I’m not your messenger. He just stopped me on the way back here.”
As she moved Wiz noticed a slight bulge in her tunic.
“Wait a minute! Did you steal his chain of office again?”
“Naw. Did that once, didn’t I?” She reached into her tunic and produced a wide leather belt with an ornate gemmed buckle. “I do wonder how far he’ll get before his breeches fall down, though.”
Wiz groaned. “One of these days you’re going to get us all thrown right back in jail.”
“That’s all right,” Malkin said cheerfully. “I’ve still got the keys hidden away.”
Wiz groaned again.
“Besides, you’re a fine one to talk. With your messing about with dragons and the Council you’re likely to get us staked out on The Rock.”
“Well, why do you stay, then?”
Malkin smiled in a peculiarly sunny fashion. “I want to see what’s going to happen next. Hanging around here is more fun than a mummer’s show. Besides, it gives me a base of operations, so to speak.”
Wiz thought about what that last meant. Then he decided he didn’t want to know. He also remembered why he had never had roommates. Then he thought of the rats in the psych lab. The more he thought about them the more sympathy he felt.
“Of course, if you want me to leave . . .”
“No, no. I need you for background resource. But try to be a little more discreet, will you?”
Malkin draped the belt over her shoulder, buckle resting on her breast. Wiz noticed it hung nearly down to her knees behind. “Oh, I’m always careful,” Malkin said cheerfully. “You have to be in my business.”
With that she was gone. Wiz sighed again and turned back to the demon, who raised a pair of scaly eyebrows and riffled the cards. Wiz dismissed him with a gesture. Somehow he’d lost all his taste for taking chances-any more chances.
Judith wasn’t the only one upset by the FBI raid. If she was annoyed, the mood in the Wizard’s Keep verged on panic.
Bal-Simba frowned when a breathless Jerry and Danny told him, in alternating choruses, what had happened.
“How serious is this?” the big wizard asked when his visitors finally reached a stopping place.
“Pretty serious,” Jerry told him. “If thekeep.org goes off line we lose our communication link to Wiz.” And probably all chance of finding him, he thought. But he saw the look on Moira’s face and he didn’t say that.
“Is Judith in any danger?” Moira asked.
“Danger? No. She’s probably not even in trouble, well not much. She’s not doing anything illegal. Wiz might be in trouble if they could catch him, but there’s not much chance of that.”
“The Sparrow told me once that you keep records on these devices,” Bal-Simba said. “Is there anything there which would arouse their ire?”
Danny grinned. “There aren’t any records on that machine. We keep all that at this end, just in case. As far as the domain is concerned, Judith’s system isn’t much more than a dumb terminal, even though it’s officially listed as the main server.”
“That was Judith’s idea,” Jerry reminded his younger colleague. “After she saw some of the stuff you’d been up to she didn’t want any record of it on her system.”
“Anyway it was a pretty smart move,” Danny said. “There’s no way they can pin anything on her. There’s even a complete set of domain software on her system.”
“We’ve also got a backup way to reach Judith. We’re setting up a modem link over a regular telephone line. She just calls a phone number we give her and logs in.”
“Can we give that number to Wiz?”
Danny frowned. “That’s going to be trickier. You can bet the FBI has a wiretap on the connection to thekeep.org. If we use the current Internet connection to tell Wiz about the new number we’ll be telling the FBI too. Since we, ah, weren’t completely aboveboard in getting that number it wouldn’t do to have them tapping that line too. We may be able to rig up a code or something, but it will take more time.”