I had left Gleep at the head of the corridor curled up under a couch set in an alcove. If he saw any Pervects heading towards us he had instructions to cry out. At the sound of "Gleep!" we were to run into the anteroom and pop back to the inn. He would meet us there as soon as he could get away from them. They'd be unlikely to suspect an innocent-looking baby dragon of subterfuge. I hoped.
"Now, Pervect code is very hard to break," Zol explained, as he sat down in the child's chair and flexed his long fingers. I noticed with surprise that he fit into the seat fairly well. "They tend to like permutations of complex numbers as their secure logarithm."
Bunny sat on the desk beside her hero, watching him raptly. I felt a twinge of jealousy, wondering what I would have to do for anyone to admire me like that. Tananda came up and wrapped her arm around me.
"Don't worry, hot stuff," she told me, with a little smile. "She'll snap out of it. She likes you just the way you are."
I flushed. Bunny was my friend. I wasn't trying to im- press her. Was I? Embarrassed, I moved off to take a look out the door. I hoped none of the Pervect Ten was going to get up in the middle of the night to work on their plans for conquest. The hall was empty. My breathing was the loudest thing at this end of the room.
Zol wasn't doing so well. Using all his fingers and thumbs he was pushing the buttons on the board so fast they chattered. I noticed that there was a small symbol in the center of each button. Since I had seen written and printed Pervish I knew they stood for letters of their alphabet, though I couldn't read them. In the screen images and words flashed. I couldn't tell what any of them meant, but one kept coming up time and time again: a big X.
"What's that mean?" I said, pointing.
"Well, in some languages it means do not enter," Zol began, his fingers dancing along. "In Pervish and a few others it is an archaic way of writing 'ten,' which in this case would be appropriate, but I believe it also has the added meaning of 'the unknown variable,' this being the key to the library of documents locked within this computer. There are quite a lot of them. That is one of the few facts I can glean. The rest is protected by the password, which the X indicates. Since I don't know it I have been putting in my guesses as to possible keywords. I've tried over a thousand words in every combination of capital and small-case letters, plus permutations and combinations of profit/loss formulae, which are familiar to every Pervish college graduate, but I've been unlucky so far. Still, there's hope. I'm bounded only by the number of keys here on the keyboard, and there's a finite number of combinations…"
I glanced nervously at the door. "How long do you think it will take you?"
"Oh, well, this is not like cracking a safe, you know," Zol stated, cheerfully as ever. "I might stumble upon the correct key any moment now." "And the longest it could take?"
"Oh…" Zol paused a moment to think. 'Two or three years. At the outside."
"We don't have three years," Wensley whispered. "My people are already suffering because these Pervects won't leave!"
"Naturally not," Zol agreed. "You Wuhses are sensitive souls. You would see the Pervects as nonparticipants in your cooperative lifestyle." His hands never stopped moving, but suddenly images began to pour out of the magik mirror, wreathing the Kobold in colored smoke. I saw faces: Pervects, Imps, Deveels, Klahds, Wuhses and plenty of races that I didn't recognize. "I'm trying to unlock any files that may have been left upon the desktop."
With a skeptical expression I let my eye fall upon the otherwise clear table. Zol smiled. "Just like the books from which you saw the little Pervect reading, there is also a desk, though it exists only inside here."
"Ah," I breathed, enlightened at last. "Magik."
"Yes, indeed," Zol declared. "We Kobolds thrive upon this kind of magik."
The longer he worked, the more agitated the specters surrounding him became. The faces grew ugly and hollow-eyed, threatening him with claws and fangs. They distorted into big blobs with hair scattered on their surfaces.
"Stay away from me now," Zol warned. "Those are viruses. I've been inoculated, but you haven't. If they touch you they will take over your mind. Ah!"
Suddenly the whole end of the room lit up. I recoiled from it, narrowly avoiding a cluster of the blobs.
"That's the map," I confirmed, eyeing the circling blobs.
"It's the only thing in the files that's not password protected," Zol informed me. "But what does it represent?"
"It's not part of Wuh," Wensley stated.
"I don't recognize it, either," Tananda frowned. "It's certainly not Trollia or Klahd." "I'll have to compare it with maps of the other dimensions I've visited," Zol remarked.
"How?" I asked. "You can't memorize something like that."
"I don't have to," the Kobold assured me. "Coley will remember it for us." From his shoulder bag he removed a silverbacked book. When he opened it I saw it had no pages. It was a computer, but in miniature. He held the shiny screen toward the map. I peered at the bright surface with interest. Unlike the computers I had seen on Perv, this one featured color images as well as words. At the moment it had a picture on it of shutterbugs, those tiny denizens of Nikkonia who could capture images on the translucent cells of their wings. They looked so real I reached out to touch them and found my hand stopped by a clear barrier. The shutterbugs looked up at me and gestured impatiently for me to get out of their way. I dodged to one side. One of them held up his thumb, squinted one eye shut, then began fluttering his wings. Zol watched it until it looked up at him to signal that it had finished.
"And a backup, please."
The second shutterbug stepped forward, framed the scene with its hands, then began fluttering. In a moment it, too, was finished. Zol clapped the covers of his miniature computer closed and put it back in his satchel.
"Now, to Kobol!"
TEN
"Interface is a breeze!"
— w. gates
"What a lovely place," Bunny breathed, gazing all around her as Zol led us toward a round building I could just see above the tops of the trees. It was daylight in this part of Kobol. We had arrived in a garden surrounded by high hedges. Arched doorways carved directly into the dense green bushes led from section to section. Every plant, every tree appeared to have been planted and tended with mathematical precision. I couldn't see a leaf out of place. Even the flowerbeds were neat, not a dead or faded bloom in sight. Wensley felt nervous in such utter tidiness. He stayed by Tananda, who seemed perfectly happy to cuddle close to him. I had my hand on Gleep's collar so he wouldn't go running off through the maze. I would get in trouble if he destroyed the precise perfection of this placid scene by punching holes through the hedges.
"Yes," Zol smiled, guiding her along the shady lanes on paths of clipped green grass. "We always have gardens, not that most of us spend too much time in one, but they are here for our mathematicians to take mental health breaks. Numbers can become all-consuming, you know."
"There really was no need for me to come with you," Wensley babbled, looking around him in dismay. "I trust your judgment. You know I do. I… someone needs to keep watch on the castle. I can do that while you are away. It would be very nice if I could go back, just for a while…"
"Don't you want to help in your own dimension's defense?" I asked, fixing him with a gaze that made him wriggle like a worm on a hook.
"Well, of course," Wensley managed, "but is this a matter of Wuh? It would seem to me that my people's concern is mainly with the well being of our own dimension. Not that others are unimportant, of course. Wuhses have compassion for others. We might just be concerned that you are dividing your attention. That's your business, of course. I would never be the one to tell you that you are not doing the job you promised us you would do."
That was the most direct statement I had heard him almost make. "This is connected to Wuh," I assured him as positively as I could. "We're trying to figure out a place where they are vulnerable. Now, they're stronger than we are, they're experienced, they'r
e better magicians, they understand technology and they have all of you under their control. Does it sound like we have any lever to pry them out of Wuh?"
"Er… not that I could discern," Wensley admitted.
"Right! That's what we're doing here. We're looking for a weakness, and in the meantime saving another species who don't know what's hitting them."
"Bravo, Master Skeeve!" Zol cheered. "Well said! And we of Kobol will do our best to facilitate your aims. Count upon us!"
Wensley looked discontented, but he stopped grumbling, especially when Tananda melted a little closer to him.
We passed a niche where a Kobol female sat on a bench. She wore a long, shapeless white garment with a high neck and wide sleeves. In her fingers she had a single blue-petaled flower which she raised to her nose occasionally to sniff. Her large black eyes, fixed in the distance, came back into focus as she acknowledged Zol's cheerful greeting.
"This is Ruta," Zol introduced us, "one of our most talented programmers."
"©," she replied, her cheeks turning a deep gray. "Too kind, Zol."
"What did she say?" I asked, as we passed.
"She smiled at us," Zol answered.
"Why didn't she just smile?"
"She did, in our language."
The round, flattened building had a silvery gray shell not unlike the book in Zol's satchel. It loomed over us as we stopped at a curved, translucent panel. Zol placed his open hand on a pale blue square beside it.
"Zol Icty and four visitors," he announced, beaming at us. "Excuse me. Five visitors." He winked at Gleep. A humming sound erupted out of nowhere. I felt as if someone was touching me on the back. When I jumped around to see who it was, the touch moved to my front, but no one was there. Gleep swiveled his long neck to peer over his back and under his belly. By the expression on their faces Bunny, Tananda and Wensley had also felt it. Only Zol looked calm. He gestured as the translucent panel slid sideways. It was a door.
"This way," our host directed us. He led us down an immaculately clean, white-walled corridor. Oddly, this surprisingly clean place reminded me of the Bazaar, because loud, unintelligible noises, music and shouting poured out of every door. Tananda, Gleep and I stuck close together, on guard in case anything jumped out at us. Bunny walked with Zol, hanging on his every word. "I confess I am a trifle peckish after all that work. Would you like something to eat while I and my friends analyze the map?" "Yeah!" I replied avidly. Zol smiled and pushed through one of the identical doors. The room beyond was filled with Kobolds, all staring into screens like his and playing upon keyboards as though they were pianos. At the far end of the room was a long table filled with brightly colored packages.
"Help yourselves," he offered. "The amount of nourishment in each bag is approximately equal to one-sixth of a Kobold's daily needs, therefore Master Skeeve will need twelve, Mistress Tananda nine, and Mistress Bunny eight. Gleep can have as many as he likes."
The packages were easy to tear open. The food inside was mostly what was sold in taverns at the Bazaar as snacks to eat with beer: sweet or salty, crunchy morsels. I munched on golden twists that smelled faintly of meat. Gleep ate the packages wrapper and all, licking his chops happily. Tananda picked through the packets and chose bags of tiny cookies and some pork rinds. Bunny waited and selected what Zol did.
"Take as many as you like," Zol invited, tearing open a bag of cheese pretzels. "And here! Have something to drink."
He filled mugs for us from a keg set in a cradle at the end of the table. I took a deep draught, and nearly choked. The beverage looked like ale, but tasted sweet and fizzy, filling my nose, lungs and stomach with bubbles. I lowered the tankard in a hurry, and let out a tremendous belch. I smacked my lips, waiting for the familiar sensation of warmth and well-being. It was not forthcoming.
"Not very strong, is it?" I asked.
"Oh, this isn't liquor," Zol explained. "Liquor is consumed on Kobol, and it's very good, but you cannot do complex mathematical calculations if you are drunk. We wait until after we log out."
My mother had taught me the basics of arithmetic when I was a child, and I'd picked up a lot about bookkeeping, percentages and commissions in my years working in and around the Bazaar, but nothing I had ever done or seen remotely resembled the work I observed going on around me.
"What are they doing?" I inquired.
"They are helping to maintain our reality. Field agents such as I gather up factual information. These analysts translate it into formulae that we are working on to explain how everything fits together. They help us decide what crops to grow, what professions to take up, what parcels of land to develop… oh, everything. We call it the Unified Field Theory."
I gazed around me. All the noise I had noticed coming in was not coining from the Kobolds, but rather from the computers. While line after line of tiny characters spun out on the shining surface of some, other Kobolds were using their mirrors to spy upon the actions of travelers such as my own companions. Where those travelers encountered opposition, say meeting up with other-dimensional beings, bloody battles always seemed to ensue. None of the parties I saw ever tried to avoid conflict, instead drawing sword or raising wand against one another immediately. I watched being after being die, until I was nearly weeping for the unnecessary loss of life.
"Don't worry," Zol assured me, touching my arm sympathetically. "Those aren't real. They are only make-believe characters in a game. Kobolds use such things to relax their minds when they are not working. It's only a game."
"A game?" I reiterated, shocked. "Why don't they play a real game, like dragon poker?"
"Too easy," Zol shrugged. "The odds are fully calculable, and that's not relaxation to a Kobold."
"Too easy?" I sputtered.
"Why don't they just go and relax… when they want to relax?" Bunny said, her eyes fixed on the busy Kobolds.
"They seem to like it," Tananda commented. "Look, they're all smiling. They get pleasure from these devices." She eyed the nearest Kobold up and down with a speculative eye. He was grinning vacantly at his code. His fingers seemed to stroke the buttons on the board sensuously. Tananda moved closer to him.
"Mistress Tananda, I have always said that the folk of Trollia understand physical sensation better than any other dimension," Zol smiled, admiringly. "It is true. And the computers enjoy the contact as well. Kobolds become one with their machines, joined at the fingertips. The more a Kobold interacts, the better the computer understands him or her. There is an important symbiotic relationship between us and our computers. In fact, we can't leave them for long, Master Skeeve. If one doesn't pay a great deal of attention to one's unit, it becomes lonely, in extreme cases taking its own life. The others mourn, and sometimes suicide in sympathy. And a Kobol left alone after its computer dies is a sad and terrible thing. It takes intervention by such social researchers as myself to bring them back and introduce them to a new unit. Still, you never forget your first computer." Zol sighed reminiscently.
A fetching unit with a red case alone on a table started blinking its screen at me. I moved closer to look. In the mirror I could see my reflection, only my image's hands reached out and started to fondle the button board. Hypnotized, I began to follow suit.
"Don't do that!" Zol ordered. I halted, my fingers in mid air. The screen signaled frantically. "Not unless you're planning to make a lifetime commitment to it."
"A lifetime…? Oh! Like attaching a dragon." Gleep, hearing the word, trotted over and leaned his head against my leg. I moved my hands away from the keyboard to pet him. A sad face appeared in the screen.
Zol shook his head. "No, much more comprehensive than that. You two wouldn't be able to live without one another." "Me and a machine?" I was aghast. The face in the mirror became even sadder.
"It's a natural symbiosis. Your creativity interacting with the computer's. It's really very fulfilling. We've been interactive for centuries."
"What about marriage?" Bunny asked, curiously. "Don't men and wom
en marry on Kobol?"
"Oh, of course! When a couple of Kobolds have compatible systems, they can have a long and happy life together," Zol explained. "Computers don't interfere with personal relationships. They can enhance them."
"It would make accounting a breeze," Bunny murmured, looking at the red-cased computer. The face didn't look at her. In fact, it cut her dead. Occasionally, when it could catch my eye, it gave me dreamy looks like the ones with which Bunny favored Zol. "Can it be adapted to work in an all magikal environment?"
"Naturally," Zol replied. "Mine is fit for travel. It's a dual-power system. When lines of force are available, it uses them. When only electricity is to be had, well, then, it plugs in." He smiles. "I can see it intrigues you."
I frowned as she regarded the author with adoration. 'Td love one!" she cooed.
"Bunny, I don't think you ought to… er, get involved… with anything strange."
She turned to me. "Why not? Zol wouldn't let anything hurt me. Would you?"
"Of course not," Zol exclaimed. "Master Skeeve, I see your concern, but it is groundless. Come with us! I will take you to the adoption center. If Mistress Bunny can find a computer that wishes to bond with her, it will be perfectly safe. But, I must caution you," he said to Bunny, "not to be disappointed if you don't form a relationship today. It is possible that the computer for you hasn't been manufactured yet."
"I'll take that chance," Bunny declared. Resolutely she straightened her spine and tightened her hands into fists. "She's acting like she's in a spell," I whispered to Tananda, as we followed them back into the wide hallway.
"If it looks like there'll be trouble, we'll jump her out of here," Tananda whispered back. "Hang in there, tiger. This may turn out to be handy."
ELEVEN
"Completely user-friendly."
— mac
The adoption center looked exactly like the last room we'd been in, down to the fast-food buffet, except for a huge round table in the middle of the room. On it lay dozens of silverbound books, magik-mirrors-on-a-stick, multicolored, handsized round objects like powder compacts, and one big silver scroll. I eyed them the way I had learned to shop in the Bazaar: look, but stay well away from touching. As I had learned my first visit to Deva, looking is usually free, but you never know what constitutes touching until the stall owner comes up and forcibly tries to extort payment for what he refers to as "used merchandise."
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