and space run strangely, but I have never heard of them creating a whole
new World.”
“Well, whoever it is has found themselves a couple of people who
understand programming. They seem to be pretty good at it.”
“They are,” Danny said.
“You know them?” Wiz demanded.
“One of them. Mikey Baker. Well, I didn’t really know him but I used to
see him around on the nets. His handle was ‘Panda,’ you know?”
“No, we don’t know. Tell us.”
“Well, he was into hacking and phreaking-system breaking and shit like
that.”
“Don’t call it hacking,” Wiz said sharply. “People like that aren’t
‘hackers,’ they’re worms.”
Danny shrugged. Unlike Wiz and Jerry he didn’t have the true hackers’ deep
contempt for computer vandals who used their skills to break into computer
systems. Nor was he offended that the media insisted on calling those
criminals “hackers.”
“Whatever. Anyway, no one liked him much.”
“I can see why. But was he any good?”
“Oh, I guess so. But he was like nasty-nice, you know? Real sweet and
easy-going on the surface and just rotten underneath.”
“He sure as hell wasn’t sweet to me!”
“He wasn’t like that before. It seems like he’s changed a lot.”
“Well, what else do you know about him?”
“Not a lot. The people I knew didn’t like him so I steered clear of him.
There’s a rumor he had something to do with the Jesse James Virus.”
Wiz looked puzzled. “The Jesse James Virus?”
“That was after you left.” Jerry shook his head. “A variation on the
Panama Virus. Very sophisticated and real nasty. If this guy was behind
it, he’s got talent.”
“I’d say there’s a lot of talent behind that place,” Wiz said. “Face it.
We’re not unique. There are a lot of competent programmers who could do
pretty much what we’ve done if they knew about this place and how to get
here.”
“Yeah,” Danny said, “but how did they find out about this world?”
“Perhaps they did not,” Moira said. “Perhaps they were brought here as the
wizard Patrius brought you here.”
“Mikey told me they came here voluntarily.”
“I wouldn’t trust anything that guy said,” Danny put in.
“Maybe, but someone turned them on to magic programming and our magic
compiler. They didn’t pick that up on their own.”
No one said anything for a minute.
“There’s only one place they could have gotten the compiler,” Wiz said at
last. “It had to come from here.”
Bal-Simba frowned like a thundercloud. “A traitor?”
“Not exactly,” Jerry said. “I’ve been studying the code from that recon
drone we found. The compiler they’re using isn’t exactly our compiler. It
doesn’t have the extensions we’ve added in the last year and it’s got a
couple of features we don’t.”
“So they got an earlier version of the code and they’ve been working on it
independently,” Wiz said. “Can you tell roughly when they got their
version?”
“No ‘roughly’ about it. I know exactly when. They’re working with the last
version the full programming team worked on.”
“One of the programmers after all,” Wiz said. “But we’d ruled that out.”
“I fail to see how,” Bal-Simba said. “That-ah-‘nondisclosure agreement’
you had them sign is not enforceable in your world.”
“Meaning we can’t sic that demon named Guido on them,” Wiz agreed. “But we
thought of this before and we checked.”
“Between Worlds?” Bal-Simba looked skeptical.
“Even in our world there are ways of checking, although they aren’t
absolutely accurate.”
“We had to make a couple of phone calls,” Danny said.
Arianne looked at him strangely but said nothing.
“And you checked everyone?”
“Not everyone. One person, Judith Conally, is very ill. She was hurt in an
accident a few months back and she’s still in a coma.”
“She’s out then,” Wiz said. “People in comas don’t talk.”
“That’s not true, you know,” Bronwyn said from where she sat at the end of
the table.
“Huh?”
“People in comas can sometimes talk. It is not common, but . . .” She
shrugged.
“If she talked,” Moira said slowly, “there might have been ears to hear.”
“Well, we pretty well know that no one else did,” Jerry said.
“I think,” Bal-Simba said, “it is time for another Great Summoning from