“Octium-and-a-half?” Jerry asked as he held the door open for Taj.
“It’s a P8 with a couple of extra ALUs, a bigger look ahead cache and another pipeline. Even in simulation the original was a slug, barely 300 MIPS. Anyway,” Taj went on without a break, “there are stories about that dragon all over the show. There’s also a bidding war going on for the video game rights. If you guys don’t have an agent…”
“Right now we’ve got bigger problems,” Jerry said.
All through this Bal-Simba had been behind Tajikawa, studying his ears closely for signs of points.
“What’s with him?”
“He thinks you’re an elf.”
Taj looked over his shoulder at the wizard. “I’ve got some friends who are Radical Faeries. Does that count?”
When they got to the truck, Jerry rolled up the back and Fluffy’s head jerked erect.
“My God!” Tajikawa said.
“Get on in. We don’t want too many people to see this.” He and Bal-Simba followed the Tajmanian Devil into the truck and rolled down the back behind them.
By that time Taj was already examining the dragon. “Someone did a hell of a job on this skin,” he said. Then he reached out and grabbed Fluffy’s foreleg just above the joint and kneaded the flesh experimentally. The dragon drew back its head and hissed, giving Taj a faceful of sulfurous breath and a close look at a dragon’s dental equipment.
Taj didn’t so much jump back as levitate retrograde. “My God!” he yelped. “It’s real!”
“I’m sorry, My Lord,” Moira said contritely. “I am not always the master of this body’s reflexes.”
“But you’re a real dragon!”
“Actually,” Moira said sadly, “I am a witch, trapped in a dragon’s body.”
“That’s part of the problem,” Jerry said. “But only part of it.”
“So? Don’t you need a wizard or something to handle this, not a programmer.”
Jerry jerked his head at Bal-Simba. “Actually he’s a wizard. But where we’re from a programmer is also a wizard. That’s part of the problem as well.”
Taj cocked his head and Jerry congratulated himself. The trick had always been to get Tajikawa to buy into the deal once they found him. So far that part was going nicely.
“I know you’ve been up to something,” Taj said. “There are all kinds of rumors about you and Wiz Zumwalt flying around the net.” He looked behind Jerry at the twenty-foot dragon. “But I guess the rumors didn’t have the half of it.”
“We’ve got a really weird problem.”
Taj looked at the dragon again. “I’ll bet.”
“No, I mean really weird. And we need help.”
“No kidding?” Taj sounded intrigued. “Tell me about it.”
“It’s so weird I can’t even describe it to you. You’ve got to experience it.”
“No kidding,” Taj said again.
Jerry tried to keep a poker face but he was smiling inside. Gotcha!
Blue eyes crying in the rain…
Michael Francis Xavier Gilligan concentrated on the way the neon lights reflected off the ice in his highball. It hadn’t been raining when they had parted, but Karin’s blue eyes had been full of tears. So had Gilligan’s.
A smattering of computer chatter drifted over from the group in suits at the next table. That was the other thing. The whole damn town was full of computer types.
Lines were terrible, traffic was more than normally awful, there were no rental cars to be had and hotel rooms were at a premium.
It was too damn early to be drinking, he knew, but what the hell else was there to do in this place? What I get for volunteering to come in a week early, he thought sourly.
Gilligan was in Las Vegas on business as well. Next week, after the computer show ended, was the Western Air Show. The aerospace company he joined after leaving the Air Force had needed someone to come in early and get things set and ready. It seemed like a good idea at the time. An extra week in sunny, exciting Las Vegas at company expense plus an opportunity to visit some of his old Air Force buddies stationed at Nellis.
It hadn’t worked out that way. Not only was the town jammed, but it wasn’t as exciting as he remembered from his last tour here. Half the people he had known at Nellis were gone, assigned to other bases scattered halfway around the world. But worse than that was the gulf that had opened between him and the other pilots. Oh, they still liked him well enough, but he didn’t strap his ass into a high-performance jet every day and let it hang out. He wasn’t a member of the fraternity any more and that left an awkward hole in the relationship. After a couple of painfully clumsy visits, Gilligan had begun avoiding the base and his old friends.