The Wizardry Cursed

Thirty-six: A VISIT WITH MIKEY

Craig couldn’t really name the impulse that drove him to visit Mikey. He hadn’t seen him since Mikey had called his weapons "toys." He didn’t really have anything he needed to talk to him about. But he still decided to go. Maybe he could explain to Mikey about his new robots. Maybe Mikey would apologize for the things he’d said. Maybe whatever, he hadn’t talked to anyone but robots for weeks.

Craig hadn’t been in Mikey’s part of the castle for a while and Mikey had made some changes since then. Where Craig’s work area was modelled on a laboratory, airy and brightly lighted, Mikey’s wing was gloomy as a smoggy twilight. The further he penetrated the dimmer and redder the light became until he felt he was pushing his way through blood-soaked gloom.

He turned the corner and started climbing stairs. The walls fell away as he climbed until the staircase seemed to stretch up into a bleak, blood-lit, starless sky. Come on, he told himself, this is just an illusion. You know you’re still inside the castle. But somehow that only made the illusion stronger. The wind whistled around him, tugging at his jacket and whipping his jeans against his legs. There were hints of shapes in the sky above him, huge dark-on-dark things that shifted and twisted in ways his eye couldn’t quite follow.

Craig shivered and stayed close to the center of the railless staircase. He thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of his windbreaker and kept his eyes on the stairs under his feet.

Suddenly he was there. There was no door, no anteroom. Just a pool of light at the top of the stairs and Mikey hunched over a desk in the middle of it.

As he reached the top Mikey regarded him in a not-quite-hostile manner.

"What brings you here?"

Craig shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I hadn’t seen you in a while and I just felt like coming to see you, you know?"

Mikey grunted and turned back to his work. Craig stood uneasily as the silence stretched out and the wind whipped and whistled around them.

"This is kinda spooky," he said at last.

"I like it," Mikey said without looking up.

The silence dragged out as Craig stared at Mikey’s back.

"You look like you’ve been learning a lot." Craig tried to flog his enthusiasm. "It must have taken some real magic to put this place together."

"Yeah," Mikey said. "I’ve been learning. That and a whole lot more."

"Oh?" Craig asked brightly. "Like what?"

"Like philosophy, man. I’ve really clarified my thinking." He smiled and for an instant the old, charming Mikey flashed through. "You know who really owns something? The person who can trash it. Just fucking ruin it completely. That’s how you know the real owner."

"But what about the guy who can use it? You know, build something with it?"

"So what? If he can’t protect it, he doesn’t really own it. It’s like a computer. The name on the paper may say it belongs to IBM or Pac Bell, but that doesn’t mean shit. The people who really owned those computers were people like me who could get at them any time we wanted to."

Craig laughed nervously. "Man, you’re getting heavy."

Mikey smiled. "Heavy times. Our friends now, they understand that. You know what those guys are really? They’re the greatest goddamn hackers of all!" The smile grew wider, dreamier. "Man, this is gonna be great."

"Yeah, but there are people out there, you know?"

"So? If they can’t protect it, they don’t own it. Simple as that."

"Yeah," said Craig desperately, "but you don’t have to destroy something to prove you own it, right? I mean it’s enough to know that you can do it, isn’t it?"

"Yeah," Mikey said with the same dreamy smile. "Sometimes that’s enough."

"So all this is really theoretical, isn’t it?" Craig pressed. "I mean it’s not like you’re actually gonna destroy anything, are you?"

Mikey came out of his trance and regarded him closely. "Sure it’s all theoretical." He turned away from Craig and back to the crystal thing on his desk. "Just theoretical."

Craig hesitated, torn between a desire to press his companion for more assurances and the fear he might not get them. Finally he turned away, mumbled something about needing to get back to work, and started down the dark and twisting stairs.

Mikey didn’t even grunt goodbye.