"Jerry, I think you’d better look at this."
Judith was standing at the entrance to Jerry’s stall with an odd look on her face.
"We got the voting module working and, well, I think you’d better see the result."
Jerry followed her over to her own stall where Karl was looking bemused at three small demons standing together on the table.
"We know that any spell above a certain level of complexity generates a demon as its physical manifestation," Judith explained. "So we expected this thing would produce demons. But watch what happens when we feed it correct code.
"emac." An Emac popped up on the desk next to the trio of demons.
"backslash test1 exe." Judith said and the Emac gabbled at the demons. The demons stood motionless and then the one on the left hummed.
"Okayyy," it sang in a vibrant bass.
"Okayyy," the middle one chimed in a rich baritone.
"Okayyyy," said the third demon in a fine clear tenor.
"Okaayyyyyy," the three demon voices blended in perfect harmony. Then the sound died away and they fell silent.
For a moment none of the programmers said anything.
"The question is, is that a bug or a feature?" Karl asked.
"I guess that depends on how you feel about music," Jerry said. "Anyway, we don’t have time to fix it, so we’ll call it a feature."
Judith looked at the demons and shook her head. "I’m glad we didn’t build four processors. I’m not sure I could take a barbershop quartet."
"I don’t thing you’d get a barbershop quartet," Jerry said judiciously. "A gospel group seems more likely."
"Worse."
By nature and training Danny needed a lot of time to himself. It had always been his refuge in times of trouble and his joy in times of special happiness.
The castle was too crowded for him to be really alone. But he had found a place on the rooftops where he could look down on the Bull Pen and the courtyards. From here he was hidden from view by any of the wizard’s towers and could see out beyond the Wizards’ Lodge, over the tile and slate rooftops of the town and off into the rolling blue distance.
Nearly every morning before he settled down to work, Danny would climb the narrow stairs to the attic and then go up the wooden ladder and out through the trap door that took him to his favorite place on the roof. He was not experienced enough in the ways of this World to know that the scuff-marks on the slates meant someone else came here too.
Today Danny had changed his pattern. It was late afternoon, normally a time when he would be settled in the Bull Pen and hard at work. But today his code had turned to shit and Cindy Naismith got on his case for something he said. So he left and came back up here for a while.
He wouldn’t be missed, he knew. Not for some little time. Programmers set their own hours and besides, the rest of the team didn’t like him very much.
Well, fuck ’em. That wasn’t anything new to Danny.
Besides, he told himself, it wasn’t like he was goofing off. He was still thinking about the problem, and he needed to clear his head, didn’t he?
There was a soft scrabbling noise on the slate roof behind him.
Danny turned and there was a thin brown-haired girl with enormous doe eyes.
"Hi," Danny said, half-resenting the interruption.
The girl moved back up the roof, away from him.
"Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you." The girl froze.
"You okay?"
No response. If he moved toward her she would have fled, but he kept his place. She sat down on the roof behind and above him and looked out over the city.
Well, if she didn’t want to talk… Danny turned back to watch the clouds himself. It wasn’t as good as being completely alone, but it wasn’t bad either.
Danny had taken to computers as a way to shut out the endless arguments that raged through his home. Later, after the divorce, the computer had become a way out of the loneliness, a friend who never turned its back on you or put you down.
At first he hadn’t cared for programming, just racking up scores on video games. He had taken out his frustrations destroying aliens and monsters by the thousands and scoring points by the millions. Then he found out you could gimmick some of the games by editing character files. From that it was one small step to cracking copy protection to get games he couldn’t afford to buy and one thing led to another. By the time he was sixteen, Danny was a very competent, if unsystematic, programmer.
He was also very, very lonely.
Now here he was in a world something like the one those games were based on. Full of monsters and where magic worked. And he was still just as alone and just as cut off as he ever had been. Well, fuck ’em. He’d get by, just like he always had.
Without thinking, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the sandwich he had stashed there—smoked meat and sharp cheese on a long roll.
Danny heard the girl shift on the roof behind him.
"Want some?" She obviously did, but she was afraid to approach him.
"Here." He broke off half the sandwich and held it out to her. She looked at him intently but didn’t move. He considered tossing the sandwich up to her, but realized it would probably come apart in the air. He settled for reaching back and stretching out his hand.
"Come on, I won’t hurt you."
Slowly, cautiously, the girl crept down the roof toward him. Finally she was close enough to stretch out and snatch the sandwich from him. Then she scrabbled quickly back up the roof. The entire performance reminded Danny feeding a particularly shy squirrel.
"What’s your name?" he asked.
"June," the girl said around a mouthful of sandwich. "I am June."
"This is just like being at fighter practice."
Karl, Judith and several of the other team members were sitting on a low wall by the drill field watching the guardsmen practice. Under the arches of the colonnade Jerry was sitting on a bench watching girls.
Just then a flight of dragon cavalry swept over the castle.
"Okay," Karl amended, "it’s almost like being at fighter practice."
Out on the field Donal was practicing spear work against multiple opponents.
"Tricky move with the spear," Karl said to no one in particular as Donal dodged and spun between two opposing swordsmen.
"Why does he keep the butt low like that?" Judith asked.
"He is trying to keep the point directed at his opponent’s eyes," a guardsman who was lounging nearby said. "That makes it hard to judge the length of the spear."
Karl nodded. "And it sets him up to make a quick jab to the face, which will make almost anyone flinch."
The guardsman, a sandy-haired older man, looked closely at Karl. "You sound as if you know something of the art, My Lord."
"I’m a fighter. Well, an SCA fighter," he amended quickly. "We used to fight with rattan weapons. For sport."
"Would not your magic gain you more than weapons skill in war?"
"We don’t use swords and spears in war any more," Karl told him. "No, we do it strictly for fun."
The guardsman’s seamed face crinkled into a frown. "A most peculiar sport, if you do not mind my saying so, Lord."
"That’s what a lot of people in my world thought," Karl sighed. "By the way, I’m Karl Dershowitz." He extended his hand and the other man clasped it.
"I am called Shamus MacMurragh. I command the guardsmen of the castle."
"Pleased to meet you."