down.
“Has he gone yet?” Danny demanded sullenly.
“No, and he’s not going.”
Danny bounced up off the bed. “Fuck that shit! He’s going if I have to
throw him out of here on his goddamn ass!”
Wiz moved in front of the door. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re going
to sit down and we’re going to talk.”
“Fuck that.” Danny tried to force his way past Wiz, but Wiz grabbed him
and pushed him back into the room.
“Listen to me. This is a war, not a popularity contest. Right now we need
all the help we can get and he’s about the most potent help we’re likely
to find.
“Maybe something happened between June and Aelric once. But that’s over.
Now we need each other. That means if you’re going to be part of the team
you’re going to have to work with him.” He looked hard at Danny. “Right
now Aelric is a lot more valuable to this project than you are. If you
can’t handle it, I’ll have to replace you.”
“With who?” Danny sneered.
“With one of the wizards we’ve been training. Malus, maybe. He may not be
as talented as you are, but he can get along with Aelric.”
Danny didn’t say anything.
“Well?”
“I still don’t like him,” Danny said sullenly.
“You don’t have to like him. You have to work with him. Now, can you do
that?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Just keep him the hell away from June.”
Wiz released Danny’s shoulders. “He doesn’t have to come anywhere near
June.”
“Okay then,” Danny said. “Anything else?”
“Not now. We’ll have a staff meeting at noon tomorrow to figure out
approaches.”
Duke Aelric did not stay the night in the Wizard’s Keep but he returned
early the next morning. Again they met in the Wizard’s Day Room: Wiz,
Jerry, a sullen but cooperative Danny, and Bal-Simba as the head of the
Council of the North. The huge wizard said little and Aelric generally
ignored him.
Yesterday Wiz and Jerry had done most of the talking as they filled Duke
Aelric in. Today it was the elf duke who dominated.
“Lord, it sounds as if the simplest approach would be to close off the
gate into our World somehow,” Jerry said when Aelric had finished.
“Simple indeed,” Aelric said with a trace of amusement, “if we but had the
key.”
“Is there a key?”
In response Aelric lifted a finger and an elaborate, convoluted shape
blossomed in the center of the table.
“That is a simple representation,” he told them. “There are actually
eleven directions, not just three. The narrow part at the top represents
the situation when the gate was first opened. Here at the bottom,” he
gestured at the wildly intertwined strands that seemed to grow out of the
table top, “is the situation as it is now. If I knew the total shape, it
would be possible to construct the key and so close the door beyond
opening again. But . . .” He smiled slightly and shrugged.
“Wait a minute!” Jerry said thinking hard. He scribbled frantically on a
slate while the others watched in silence. “That’s a fractal!”
“I do not know that word,” Aelric said.
“It’s a self-similar figure with fractional dimensions.”
Aelric arched an eyebrow.
“Just a minute,” Wiz put in. “Are you sure that’s a fractal?”
“Pretty sure. Look.” He passed the tablet over to Wiz.
“Yeah,” Wiz said slowly. Then he looked back at the elf. “Look, when you
say ‘know the shape,’ do you mean ‘describe mathematically’?”
Aelric frowned. “I do not understand you, Sparrow. When I say ‘know the
shape,’ I use the words as mortal magicians do, I think.”
Wiz turned to Bal-Simba. “Lord . . .”
“If the Sparrow means what I believe he means, then yes. A mathematical
description is sufficiently precise.”
Aelric turned back to Wiz. “Can you do this?”
Wiz nodded. “Fractals have another characteristic. They are generated by
iteratively applying a function-that means applying the function over and
over-and a lot of those functions are pretty simple.”
“There are image compression systems that use fractals,” Jerry said.
“Rather than store the actual image they store functions that generate