“Look, I’m sorry if we’re interfering with your event, but we needed some people with special talents in a hurry.”
The king waved that off. “What interference? You’re off in a corner in someone’s pavilion talking to people one at a time. Oh, a couple of people did come to me to complain about the announcement you had the heralds make.” He snorted. “Down in Texas we called them piss ants.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because my current contract just ran out and the job sounds interesting—Afghanistan or no. Could you tell me about it?”
The next candidate was as unimpressive as the king—Karl, Jerry corrected himself—had been impressive.
At first he thought the kid had wandered in by mistake. He was slightly plump in the face. A downy blond beard decorated his cheeks. His eyes were brown, dark in contrast to his skin and hair. He was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a satin tunic that had probably once been purple but was now faded and stained to something resembling blue. A cheap hunting knife was clipped to his belt and a wooden goblet hung from a leather thong.
Without waiting for an invitation he sat down. “Thorkil du Libre Dragonwatcher. I understand you’re looking for programmers.”
Jerry eyed him without enthusiasm. “We are. Are you a programmer?”
“Yeah,” he said flushing, “and I’m damn good.”
“Do you have a degree?”
“I attended Cal Tech.”
“Yes, but do you have a degree?”
The kid fidgeted under Jerry’s stare.
“Okay, so maybe I don’t, but I’m good.”
Jerry sighed to himself. Well, if you wanted to find frogs you had to kiss a few toads—or however that saying went.
“We need people with experience.”
“I’ve got experience,” he protested. “I’ve worked in TOS 1.4, AmigaDOS and ProDOS.”
Jerry, who didn’t consider a computer a computer unless it ran at least BSD Unix, winced. “Those are game machines.”
“The Amiga’s no game machine,” the kid flared. “Neither is the ST. Besides, I’ve done real-time programming in Forth on a Trash 80 Model I.”
That was slightly more interesting. From Moira’s confused recitation of what Wiz had done, Jerry knew he had used the Forth language for some of the programming. Besides, anyone who could do anything useful in real time on something as limited as a Model I clearly had talent.
“Okay,” he said, making a mark on the clipboard, “I’ll let you know later.”
Panting, Wiz jammed his pry bar into the joint and leaned on it with all his strength again. The stone shifted more. He dropped the bar, got his fingers on the edge and tugged at the stone. The rock moved slightly and its neighbors shifted with it. Instinctively Wiz jumped backwards, lost his balance and went tumbling down the side of the rock pile. With a crash and a roar a whole section of the neck gave way. Stones cascaded down into the pit and went bouncing in every direction.
Coughing from the dust, Wiz looked up. The side of the neck had slumped in on itself. Half the pit was full of blocks and rubble and the vertical wall had collapsed into a steep incline that led out of the trap and into the courtyard.
Wiz shook his head to clear it. Well, that works too. Slowly and carefully, he climbed up the pile of rubble and out of the pit.
* * *
“Better than I expected,” Jerry told Moira at the end of three hours. “We’ve got systems programmers, documentation specialists, real-time programmers and people with control and simulation experience here.”
“Are they of the Mighty?”
“Well, they’re a pretty high-powered bunch, especially considering we had to put together the team at such short notice. That first one, Judith Connally, has done real-time programming on military projects. Mike and Nancy Sutton, the husband and wife team, are a process control programmer and a documentation specialist respectively.”
He made a face. “If I know Wiz, we’re gonna need a documentation specialist. Anyway, we’ve got some good potential here.”
“How will you select them?”
“Well, Moira, it’s your show. You’ve got the ultimate say in who we choose.”
“I will be guided by you in this, Lord,” Moira said. “I know little of such matters. But there is one I would like included. The young one. Thorkil du Libre Dragonwatcher.”