"It’s nothing like that," Jerry said uncomfortably.
"Of course not." The king smiled. "If anyone in this bunch has a choice between a good story and the truth, the good story will win out every time."
"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."
Jerry raised his eyebrows. "That kid? He’s not in the same league with most of the rest of the people and I think he’s a pirate to boot."
"I thought he said he was a programer."
"A pirate is a kind of programmer. He steals other people’s software."
"Nonetheless, I would have him."
Jerry shrugged. "I think he’s going to be more trouble than he’s worth, but okay. I’ll add him to the list." He made a note on the pad and looked up.
"Why do you want him, anyway?"
"A feeling," Moira said. "Just a feeling."
"A premonition?"
Moira smiled. "In this place? No, I just feel that he has something to offer. I do not know, perhaps he reminded me of Wiz."
Jerry made a face. "Now that you mention it, there is a certain resemblance." He scribbled another note on the list. "Okay, then. That’s our team."
"Now what?" Moira asked.
"Now we call them back, explain the terms and give them the contract to sign." He made another face. "This is where it is going to get real interesting."
There was food in the black and white palace after all. Wandering what had been the kitchen, Wiz found half a flat round loaf of bread and several strips of dried meat that had fallen behind a counter
The meat was probably tough before it had been dried and it was certainly stringy. The bread was heavy, and full of what seemed to be sawdust, but after two days and a night in the pit Wiz was in no mood to complain. He wolfed down his find and then curled up in a corner.
Maybe there is justice in the world after all, he thought drowsily as he drifted off.
"… and you receive a signing bonus of two point three ounces of gold and a rate of pay of two point three ounces of gold per week for the duration of the contract," Jerry told the selected group of programmers gathered under the awning.
"Gold?" asked Ali Akhan, the herald.
Jerry shrugged. "Simplifies matters for the employer."
"This guy’s either a libertarian or a drug smuggler," Karl Dershowitz said. Jerry did not reply.
Moira smiled. "We really are…"
"… not at liberty to say," Nancy Sutton finished for her. "We know the drill."
"Okay," said Cindy Naismith, a short, slender woman with close-cropped brown hair. "What about performance penalties?"
"None. We can tell you so little about the project until you get on-site that it wouldn’t be fair. However there is a bonus if the contract is completed on time to the client’s satisfaction."
He pushed the clipboard out into the middle of the table. "If you accept the terms, sign this agreement."
Ali Akhan sat down and began to read through the six-page document. Jerry waited to see what happened when he got to the non-disclosure clause. The contract was something they had whipped together out of the pieces of contracts Jerry had in his computer at home. It was pretty much the standard verbiage—except for the non-disclosure agreement.