“What’d she do with it?”
“Buried it in the garden.”
“The garden?” Wiz yelped. “Didn’t you hear them say they were going to dig up the garden?”
“I didn’t say our garden,” the Widder Hackett said gleefully. “Old Trescott’s garden next door.” She cackled so hard she went into a coughing fit. “Oh, I’d love to see the look on Mrs. High-and-Mighty’s face if they was to dig up the loot under her cherry tree. Say, why don’t you . . .”
“Uh, let’s save that for an emergency, shall we?” Wiz said hastily.
Eighteen: Presentation
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Clarke’s Law
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Anderson’s Reformulation of Clarke’s Law
Any sufficiently advanced anything is indistinguishable from utter nonsense.
Digby’s Generalization of Clarke’s Law
Especially if it is sufficiently advanced nonsense to begin with.
Zumwalt’s Corollary to Digby’s Generalization of Clarke’s Law
The council kept Wiz and Malkin waiting for over an hour. While Wiz fidgeted in a too-hard chair in the hall and Malkin ostentatiously checked the place for escape routes, the councilors met behind closed doors. Every so often the sound of shouting or an especially ringing bit of oratory would penetrate through the thick carved doors. Wiz fiddled with his notes and tried not to think about the corners he had to cut.
Some of the pieces, such as the buzzword generator, were beautiful. But other details he had been forced to leave to demons because of the time he lost to the sheriff and his searchers.
True to his word, the sheriff had spent most of the rest of the day digging up the garden. Or, more correctly, the sheriff lounged under a tree while his men dug holes more or less at random in the garden. They didn’t find anything but they didn’t quit until nearly sundown. Wiz was on pins and needles all day, afraid there was something Malkin had overlooked. But in her own way Malkin was as thoroughly professional as Wiz. There was nothing and the sheriff left empty-handed.
At last the doors swung open and the usher beckoned them within. The expression on the man’s face did nothing for Wiz’s confidence.
The council was seated around a long U-shaped table. Their mood was a cross between a lynch mob and the crowd at a formal execution. Which is to say some of them were looking forward to what they were going to do, some of them would reluctantly do their duty and some of them were there for the show.
Wiz started talking before he even reached the center of the U. “Gentlemen, I cannot tell you what a pleasure it is to come before you today,” he said as he strode into the room. His confidence was of a piece with his sincerity, but so far they seemed to be buying it.
He gestured grandly and the daylight streaming in through the windows dimmed to twilight. Another gesture and a demon appeared at the back of the room with a slide projector. The projector was already on and a slide flashed on the wall bearing the words “Success And Prosperity” in vivid red and yellow on a bright blue background-a combination carefully chosen to be arresting without quite giving the viewers a headache. There was a brief murmur from the council and Wiz charged on before they could recover.
“My research has shown that you face a unique set of opportunities. To meet them I propose a dynamic, proactive reinvention of the organization to empower the teams using 60-second skills to address for success the strategic planning requirements in light of the Theory Z competitive strategy in time to produce a win-win-win situation.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have spent so much time on the buzzword generator, Wiz thought. But damn! The output was lovely. If the slide-picking demon had done its job nearly as well, they just might, might get out of this with a whole skin.
All the while the demon was flashing slides on the wall, medieval streets crammed with modern tourists, waving fields of grain, several interior shots of the Cloisters medieval museum in New York City. Happy children. Wiz thought he glimpsed a shot of Mickey Mouse at Disneyland but he wasn’t sure.