“I am not sure they are hiding from us,” Malus said slowly.
“Do you mean you believe that rubbish, that, that ‘spell compiler’?” Honorious snorted. “If so, I have an elixir of Immortality I wish to discuss with you.”
The pudgy little wizard frowned. “I did not believe it when there was just the Sparrow and his wild talk. But now? All these newcomers can work magic, all their magic feels like the Sparrow’s.”
“They are all from his land,” Agricolus pointed out.
“And they all claim that anyone can learn this magic,” Malus countered. “Perhaps they are telling the truth.”
“If they are telling the truth then why can not any of us grasp the essence of this thing?” Agricolus demanded.
“Perhaps we have not tried hard enough,” Malus said. “We can hardly be said to have approached the Sparrow’s magic with the same openness we would apply to learning a new spell from one of the Mighty.”
Honorious snorted again.
“Well,” the little wizard said, “I do not put it forward as fact, only as speculation.” He put both hands on the arms of his chair and levered himself erect. “My Lords, I must return to my own work.”
“There may be something in what he says,” Agricolus said after a moment.
“Fortuna!” exclaimed Honorious. “Not you too?”
Agricolus shrugged. “I pride myself on having an open mind.”
“And I find myself in a world gone mad!” Honorious retorted, ostentatiously picking up the scroll he had laid aside when the conversation began.
“My Lord, I think we have a problem,” Moira told Karl when she found him in the Bull Pen the next morning.
“You mean another problem,” he said looking up from the stack of wood strips he was pawing through. “What now? Can’t you get us more parchment?”
“No, not that—although that will be a problem if your people don’t start using slates for simple notes. This is more serious, I think.”
“Won’t it wait until Jerry gets in, eh? Well, lay it on me.”
“Some members of the Council have formally petitioned to have your work stopped until they are satisfied that what you do is safe and effective.” She made a face. “Forever, in other words.”
“But why?”
“Oh, many reasons. Jealousy is one of them. Some of the Council fears any change. But mostly I think because none of them understand what you do.”
“But they must have some idea. I thought Wiz had been teaching classes all along.”
“Oh, he was. That is part of the problem. Your magic is so complicated and your ways of thinking so alien none of our wizards were able to learn what Wiz tried to teach them.
“Some of them claim his teaching was a smoke screen, designed to hide the real secret of his magic. But I know that is not so. He struggled hard to teach us and none of us could learn.”
Jerry tapped a scroll thoughtfully against his cheek. “Well, programming sure isn’t the easiest thing around, but it’s not near that hard.”
“For you perhaps. For us even the simplest things dissolve into confusion.”
“Give me an example.”
Moira paused and frowned. Very prettily, Karl thought. For the hundredth time he regretted she was taken.
“Well, there are these variables that are named one thing, called another thing and have a value of something else. Wiz must have explained that to me once a moon and I still don’t think I understand it.”
“Oh boy, I’m not surprised at that one,” Karl told her. “It’s near the trickiest notion in programming and it’s something that confuses a lot of people. But it’s still not that hard for someone who’s got what it takes to be a wizard.”
“Very well then,” Moira said. “Can you explain it to me?”
Karl sighed. The clearest explanation he had ever seen n the subject started with a quotation from Tweedledee and Tweedledum in Alice in Wonderland—and the quotation was very apt.
He thought for a minute.
“Okay, look,” he said. “You have a true name, right? A name that is uniquely yours and must be kept secret because it identifies you exactly?”
Moira thought for a moment and decided to ignore the rude and prying nature of the question. “I do,” she admitted.