Damn, he thought for about the thousandth time, I wish we knew what we are fighting.
“Well,” E.T. Tajikawa said, “there’s your weapon.”
On the table sat a golden globe about the size of a softball.
“Behold the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch,” Taj said with a sweeping gesture. “It’s what you might call an anti-takeover device—a poison pill.”
“You intend to poison the Enemy?” Bal-Simba asked.
“Actually we’re going to hand him a retrovirus and he’s going to do a number on himself.”
Both Bal-Simba and Jerry waited for him to continue.
“It started with those indeterminate instructions, the ones you call I’ll Do As I Damn Well Please, IDAIDWP.”
His audience looked apprehensive. “Go on,” the big wizard said slowly.”
“Okay, first I divided them into two categories: Regular IDAIDWP and FU-IDAIDWP.”
“Foo ida id wip?” Jerry asked.
“Eff you ida id wip,” Taj corrected. “What you might call IDAIDWP with an attitude. Anyway, I rolled the FU-IDAIDWPs into the nastiest package I could dream up, added some interface code to make it easy for the Enemy to absorb and wrapped it in the prettiest package I could find.” He gestured. “Viola.”
“That’s voila.”
Taj gave him his satanic grin. “Not the way I play it.”
Taj looked at Jerry. “Okay, you say this thing’s instinct is to absorb whatever’s tossed at it.”
“Well, humans that attack it, anyway.”
“Close enough. Essentially what this thing does is to insert a sequence with a bunch of indeterminate instructions into the thing’s code. You feed it to The Blob out there and the critter self-destructs.”
“Nasty,” Jerry said. “I like it.” He paused. “What’s the downside?”
Taj pursed his lips. “Well, there is one tiring that might be a problem. It’s got to be absorbed all at once so we’ve got to get pretty close to make it work”
“How close?”
“For immediate effect? About hand grenade range.”
For a minute no one said anything. “So we’ve got to jump down this thing’s throat, right?”
Taj shrugged. “If you want it to work right away and if you want to be sure you get the main bad guy”
No one said anything. There’s another problem,” Taj added helpfully. This things been bred to learn quick. If you don’t make it the first time it will be a whole lot harder the next time.” He paused and looked hard at them. “Basically I’d say we’ve got one shot at this.”
Another pause. “I believe,” said Bal-Simba, “this is what Charlie would call a sporty proposition.”
NINETEEN – OPERATIONAL PLAN
With the weapon came the stirrings of a plan. Soon the Wizards’ Keep was abuzz with preparations. Since the Watchers were still unable to establish communication with Wiz and his party, the first order of business was to combine an attack on the Enemy with a rescue operation. In his or her own way everyone readied themselves for what was to come.
“So this is what the enemy stronghold looks like?” Kuznetsov asked Jerry as they walked down the stonewalled tunnel.
“Something like this. Only smaller and not as neat.”
The Russian sized up the space with the professional interest of an engineer who had been given the job of building the place—or a sapper who had the job of blowing it up.
Kuznetsov had wanted to see what the “battlefield” would look like. The closest thing Jerry could come up with was the cellars and storerooms under the Wizards’ Keep. It wasn’t that close to the tunnels beneath the City of Night, but Kuznetsov assured him it would help.
“Now there’re a lot more levels and twists and turns,” Jerry added as Kuznetsov knelt down to examine the way the stones fit. He produced a knife and scratched at the space between the rocks, held the scrapings to his nose and sniffed them.
“But just this mortar? No concrete?”
Jerry thought for an instant. “I’ve never seen concrete in this World.”
Kuznetsov grunted, stood up, and then said something quickly to Vasily. The other Russian nodded and set off down the tunnel.
“And these lamps.” Kuznetsov indicated the magic glow light that floated above their head. This is standard illumination?”
“Yeah. What’s Vasily doing?”