“And what is that on the end, floating in water?”
“That’s feta. Goes on the gyros.”
“It looks wonderful. I would have that on my pizza as well.”
Jerry and Mario exchanged looks, but the counterman marked the order down.
“By the way lady, what’s your name?”
“Why do you wish to know?”
“Because,” Mario said, “if you eat that, I’m gonna put it on the menu and name it after you.”
Even deathtraps need regular maintenance. This one had not been touched since the City of Night fell and it might have been damaged by the earthquakes touched off by the attack. That, and an instinct to keep his feet together, saved Wiz.
Wiz shook his head and climbed slowly to his feet. He was bruised, stunned and his ankles ached from the shock of landing, but he was alive and basically unhurt. He looked up and saw a strip of daylight disappearing as the trap door swung slowly closed with a creaking of unoiled hinges. The door didn’t close all the way and by the dim light coming though the remaining crack, Wiz took stock of his surroundings.
On either side of the pit was a contrivance of rotting wood and rusty iron spikes as long as his arm. Wiz wasn’t at all sure what it was supposed to do and he didn’t want to think about it too closely. Whatever it was, it wasn’t working and that had saved him.
Still, his position was precarious enough. The trap was shaped like a bottle, narrow above where the trap door was and wider down at the bottom. Even if the pit had not been twenty feet deep It would have been impossible to climb back out.
Wiz looked around. He didn’t think he was going to get out of this without help and right now he didn’t have the faintest idea where he could find help.
” . . . so you see, My Lord,” Moira said, “Wiz needs help.”
They had taken a booth in the back while they waited for their pizza and Moira filled Jerry in on his cubicle-mate’s adventures and current plight.
Jerry considered. The more he considered, the less likely the whole thing became. There was no way that Wiz Zumwalt could ever have landed someone like the redheaded dish sitting across from him. The rest of her story didn’t sound too plausible either.
Still . . . When a beautiful woman drops into your lap out of thin air, the event demands some explanation. Hers was no more outrageous than any other theory Jerry could come up with.
“Okay, I believe you,” Jerry said. “But it’s not going to be as simple as you think.”
“Pizza’s ready,” Mario called from the counter.
“Excuse me, I’ll get them.”
Moira fidgeted until he returned with the two steaming pizzas and paraphernalia. He set them down and shook a dash of red pepper flakes onto his.
“Want some?”
Moira looked at the shaker and liberally lashed her pizza with them.
“Careful, those are hot.”
The hedge witch frowned and shook some flakes into her palm and popped a hefty pinch into her mouth.
“So they are,” she agreed and added some more to her pizza.
Jerry sighed and took a bite of his own pizza. A couple of slices of pepperoni fell off the heaped toppings and onto the table.
“What is that?” Moira asked, pointing and wrinkling her nose.
“That’s pepperoni,” Jerry said. Here,” he picked a slice off his pizza, “taste it.”
The hedge witch drew away. “Thank you, no. It smells spoiled. I do not mean to be discourteous, My Lord, but I do not see how you can eat that.”
Jerry eyed Moira’s anchovy, onion, garlic and feta cheese pizza and said nothing.
They ate in silence for a few minutes, Jerry devouring about half his pie and Moira finishing her first slice.
“My Lord,” Moira asked finally, “would you be willing to help us?”
“Oh sure. My deal with ZetaSoft is about through. But it isn’t that simple.”
He took another enormous bite of pizza and dribbled sausage crumbs and a piece of mushroom back onto his plate.
“If what you say is true you’re going to need a lot more than me,” Jerry said around the mouthful of pizza. “You’re talking about taking a one-man program and turning it into full production software, with documentation, a bullet-proof user interface and probably a suite of programmers’ tools as well.”