The Wiz Biz II: Cursed & Consulted (64 page)

By the time Wiz left fifteen minutes later Llewllyn and the girl were head-to-head across the table. He hadn't given her any advice that Wiz could see, just a lot of encouragement, but she seemed to think he had the answer to everything from her love life to the riddle of Dark Matter—or she would have if she'd known what Dark Matter was, Wiz thought.

Obviously his new assistant had a future in this end of the business. Now if Wiz could just keep him from bilking the customers or trying to practice unauthorized magic, he'd have one less thing to worry about.

That morning the director of the FBI had a
lot
of things to worry about. As her assistants filled her in on Clueless Pashley's latest exploit, she stubbed out her cigarette and lit a new one. She was back up to a pack-and-a-half a day and headed rapidly for two packs. Her fingers were stained, her breath stank, she had burn holes in her clothes and twice she had nearly set her desk on fire when she missed an ash tray.

"Where is this clown now?" she asked Paul Rutherford when he finished his report.

"The local office bailed him out," her assistant said. "They've got him stashed in a safe house to keep him away from the newspapers."

This was a public relations disaster.

"Senator Halliburton's office called this morning. His committee wants to hold hearings on violating civil rights in national security cases. This Judith Conally and the science fiction writer are going to be his star witnesses."

A public relations disaster and a political nightmare, the director amended. "Could this get any worse?"

"Only if Pashley gets back out on the street," Rutherford ventured. The director glared at him and he wilted. "Uh, no ma'am, I don't think it's likely to get much worse."

Unbidden a snatch of a country song came into the director's head.
You gotta know when to hold 'em, and know when to fold 'em.
She hated country music.

"All right." She mashed out the half-smoked cigarette. "Settle!"

"Settle?"

"That writer's case against us. Tell the Justice Department to settle with him. And settle with this Conally woman. Make apologies, blame it on a rogue agent. But settle."

"Ma'am," Rutherford said carefully, "that sets a very bad precedent."

"It will set a worse precedent if the director of the FBI murders an agent," she growled. "Just pay whatever it takes."

At ——— Bullshit Is Our Most Important Product

—graffiti on the lavatory wall
at a major consultantcy
 

Wiz got home just after noon to find the mayor sniffling on his doorstep. At first Wiz thought someone had died. Then His Honor produced a well-used handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose again.

Wiz invited the man in. As they crossed the threshold Malkin was just coming up from the kitchen. They eyed each other with mutual distaste for a moment and the mayor put a protective hand on his chain of office.

"You wanted to see me, Your Honor?" Wiz asked, as much to break the tension as anything else.

"I came to warn you, Wizard." He stopped, his face screwed up and he sneezed thunderously.

"What? That it's pollen season?"

The mayor sniffled and wiped his watering eyes. "No, it's Dieter. He's moving against you in the council. At our next meeting, two days from today, he plans to call for your resignation."

There was nothing Wiz would have liked better than to resign. But since his resignation would doubtless be followed immediately by his condemnation to The Rock, it didn't seem like a good idea to follow his desires.

The mayor looked even more like a basset hound than usual. "He's gathering votes on the council. I'll support you, of course, but it will be close, I'll tell you that."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Could you perhaps be at the meeting? You know, talk to them the way you did before."

"Of course. Can you get me some time on the agenda before the vote?"

After the mayor departed, sniffling and mumbling, Malkin looked at her boss. "Well, O great Wizard, what are you going to do now?"

"I am going to do what any consultant does when he gets into trouble," Wiz said. "I am going to give a presentation."

Malkin snorted. "If I was you I'd give a thought to a quick escape. You heard the mayor. Dieter's got enough votes on the council to have your guts for garters."

"Maybe now he does. But the council will have to take a formal vote and they won't do that until they hear me out because there's always the chance I'll come up with a miracle. A successful presentation doesn't just impart information. It changes attitudes."

"Look," Malkin said slowly and carefully, as if explaining something to a small and none-too-bright child, "Dieter wants to be cock of this dungheap and get more money from taxes. Ol' Droopy wants to stay cock of the dungheap and he doesn't want more taxes. Cross either one of them and you're a dragon's breakfast. Now how in blazes is this presentation of yours going to change any of that?"

"Presentations don't change things," Wiz said airily, "they just change perceptions."

"And just how do they do that?" she demanded.

"Generally by confusing the issue."

The tall girl chewed on that for a while. "Well," she said at last, "if you're set on this, I want to be there when you make this presentation of yours."

Wiz quirked a smile. "An expression of loyalty?"

"No, I want to see which way it goes so I can get out of here while they're still busy tearing you to pieces."

"Oh, it won't come to that," Wiz assured her.
I hope!
"Before this is over I'll have them eating out of my hand."

Malkin eyed him under raised brows. "Maybe, but my question is how many fingers you're going to have left on that hand."

Bright colors and pretty pictures, Wiz thought. That's the essence of a successful presentation. He looked at the code taking shape in glowing characters above his desk and sighed. Especially when you don't have any content. 

The conventional wisdom was that the more images, graphically displayed numbers and visual tricks you packed into a presentation, the more effective the presentation. Of course the logical implication of that is that the average executive has the attention span of a three-year-old and the analytical skills of a magpie. Normally Wiz would have found that a very depressing reflection. Just now it was comforting. The only thing standing between him and doom in an utterly impossible situation was his ability to sling creative bullshit.

It would certainly be well-illustrated bullshit. Using the spell Danny had developed so long ago and far away, he had set up an Internet connection back to what he still thought of as the "real world" and set an ftp demon to downloading graphics files from sites all around the world. He already had a library of hundreds of images and they were still coming in.

Even so, it was slow going. Wiz was the sort of programmer who had always preferred substance to form. Here the substance was that he had to use form to cover the fact that he had no substance. That meant writing a bunch of new tools. With the council meeting the day after tomorrow Wiz was going to have to bust his butt to save his neck.

Well, that worked too. As a programmer he was no stranger to all-nighters to meet tight deadlines. This was just one more all-nighter. He tried not to think about the stakes.

The day turned to evening and evening shaded into night and still Wiz toiled away, developing the routines to give a presentation that would knock the Council's eyes out.

Anna brought him sandwiches and tea along about dinner time, but otherwise he worked undisturbed until well into the evening.

"Get your head out of your spells, Wizard," the ghost of Widder Hackett rasped in his ear. "You've got a problem."

"It's a tight schedule, but that's not a problem," Wiz said without turning to look at his invisible kibitzer.

"Oh, no?" Widder Hackett grated. "Just you look at that window." Wiz moved to open the shutter.

"No, you dummy!" the voice rasped in his ear. "Don't want him to see you. Look through the crack."

Putting his eye to the crack between the shutters and peering out into the moonlit street Wiz saw they had a visitor. Or more precisely, he realized, they had a watcher. One of the Watch, the tall skinny one, was leaning against the house on the other side of the street.

"What's he doing there?"

"Watching is what," Widder Hackett snapped. "There's another behind and two more at each end of the street. My own house watched by the police like some common den of thieves. I never thought in all my living days . . . I never!"

Wiz forbore to mention that Widder Hackett's living days had ended some time before. "I'm going down there to find out what this is all about."

Widder Hackett snorted. "What makes you think he'll tell you anything?"

"If he won't the council will."

Subtlety wasn't Wiz's strong point and he was both too curious and too angry to be circumspect. As soon as he opened the front door the guardsman stepped back into the shadows.

light exe
Wiz commanded and a sphere of brilliant white light appeared over his shoulder. The light was behind Wiz, but it shone right into the eyes of the now-revealed watcher, who squinted and turned his head away. Without a word Wiz strode across the street. The globe of light floated right with him.

"Good evening," Wiz said crisply.

"Evening, My Lord," the guard said, trying to shield his eyes with his hands "Uh, would you mind . . ."

"Sorry I can't turn it off," Wiz lied. "Now, what are you doing here?"

"Well, I'm ah, watching, My Lord. So to speak."

"Watching for what?"

"Criminals, begging My Lord's pardon. We've had criminals around here in this neighborhood and we thought . . ."

" 'We' being the council? Is that it?"
Meaning Dieter
, Wiz thought.
But why?
 

"Well, ah, as to that, My Lord, I really couldn't say. All I know is I'm supposed to keep watch here until the thieves are apprehended."

Thieves, eh?
Suddenly it fell into place. "I appreciate your concern, but it isn't necessary. Tell the sheriff I can guard my own property."

"That's as may be," the guardsman said stolidly, "but I have my orders, My Lord."

"Oh well, if you want to watch, I'm sure you may. But I will tell you now you won't find anything."

"That's as may be, My Lord."

Wiz nodded and returned to his house. He left the light globe on until he was back inside.

"Where's Malkin?" he demanded into thin air as soon as the door closed behind him.

"How would I know?" Widder Hackett rasped. "Out tarting it up I have no doubt."

"She didn't go out the door. I would have known."

"She usually doesn't," Widder Hackett said with obvious satisfaction.

With that there was nothing to do but wait until Malkin got back. Wiz went back to his programming, pausing every so often to peer through the crack in the shutters at his watchers.

It wasn't a terribly productive evening. Between fuming over the watch, worrying about Malkin and starting at every squeak of a floorboard or rattle of a windowpane, Wiz didn't do nearly the amount of work he had planned. Since it was well after midnight when he heard Malkin on the stairs he lost most of the night's work.

When Wiz confronted her in the hallway she was dressed in dark trousers, dark soft boots and a dark pullover. Her dark hair was stuffed up under a dark knit cap and there was a dark burlap sack over her shoulder.

"Where have you been?"

"Oh, out and about," Malkin said nonchalantly. She set the sack on the floor with an audible clank. "Sightseeing, you might say."

"And the stuff in the bag is souvenirs, right? In case you don't know it, lady, there is a cop across the street watching this place and two more at each end of the block."

"And two more on the street behind," Malkin added. "But they never watch the roofs. Half of them's too fat to climb and the rest is scared of heights."

"So you've been coming and going over the roofs."

"Sometimes. The sewer's good too, if you don't mind a few rats."

"Are you trying to get us all killed? The cops are on to you, the place is being watched, half the council is looking for an excuse to put me away—and you with me. Lady, we are just one small slip from disaster here."

Malkin's eyes glowed. "I know," she said breathlessly. "Isn't it exciting?"

"An adrenaline junkie," Wiz groaned. "I had to get hooked up with a kleptomaniac adrenaline junkie."

"Serves you right for hiring folks out of jail."

Wiz growled in frustration.

"Besides, I don't see what you're so worried about. I got in safe with the stuff didn't I? They never saw me."

"Did it ever occur to you that their next logical move is going to be to search the house?"

"Law says they can't search no private home held freehold without a warrant signed by the mayor upon presentation of probable cause. Said probable cause to be solely within the discretion of the mayor. They gave you this place so you have it freehold." She grinned. "And you think the mayor's going to issue a warrant to search this place? You being his ally and all? Old Iron Pants will have to wait a month of blue moons before that happens."

As it happened the month of blue moons ended at about seven o'clock the next morning. Wiz was pulled groggily awake by the sound of a thunderous pounding on the door. Stumbling downstairs he found Anna confronting a gang of armed ruffians. When he looked a little closer he realized that the lead ruffian was the sheriff and that he was brandishing a piece of paper as if it were a shield before him.

"Stand aside, Wizard," he announced before Wiz was even off the stairs. "We're here to search the place for stolen goods. Got a warrant."

Wiz's brain was at best severely challenged at this time of the morning, especially when his blood caffeine level was low, but that woke him up and sent his mind into high gear.