Castle Kidnapped

Twenty-nine Laboratory

To Jeremy, the place looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie. He half expected to see Karloff shamble out of a dark corner. Strange contraptions filled the room. Among other Gothic monstrosities, there were spark coils three stories high, towering banks of strange instruments, fantastic wheels and cylinders, and titanic vacuum tubes.

The “mainframe” was an assemblage of fanciful components spilling out of a large alcove to one side. Different perspectives produced varying impressions. In part, Incarnadine’s computer looked like the set of a bad 1950s sci-fi flick, whereas some of its apparatus appeared to have been filched from a medieval alchemist. Other components were simply indescribable.

“How does it work?” Jeremy wanted to know.

“Well,” Incarnadine said, “it’s not an electronic computer. Electrons are rather sluggish in this universe. All I can say is that it works partly by magic, partly by utilizing the peculiar physical laws of this continuum. But structurally speaking, it’s just like the computers you know. You input data. That data is stored, then retrieved and manipulated in a central processing unit. The results are fed to various output devices. Those are pretty crude, which is why your laptop will come in handy.”

“Sounds strange. I’m sorry. What I mean is —”

“Forget it. The point is, the thing works. Why don’t we turn it on?”

Not only did it look like a bad sci-fi flick, it sounded like one, beeping and burping to ape the worst of them.

But the contraption did indeed work. Jeremy opened his computer case to find that the Toshiba had already interfaced with the mainframe. In fact, they were arguing.

— GOING TO BE PROBLEMS. I’M NOT USED TO WORKING WITH SUCH A SKIMPY DATA BASE.

WHOSE DATA BASE IS SKIMPY? YOUR ONLY PROBLEM IS THAT YOU CAN’T HANDLE MY COMPLEXLY STRUCTURED DATA WITH YOUR PUNY 16-BIT MICROPROCESSOR!

OH. IS THAT WHAT ALL THIS QUAINT CLUTTER IS? DATA?

WHAT? LISTEN, SHORT CIRCUIT, YOU’RE TALKING TO A STATE-OF-THE-ART INSTALLATION HERE!

DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH.

YOU’LL BE LAUGHING OUT OF THE OTHER SIDE OF YOUR DISK DRIVE IN ANOTHER MINUTE.

“We’re going to have compatibility problems,” Jeremy said.

“I expected as much,” Incarnadine said, checking a bank of readout instruments. “That’s your department, young man.”

“But …”

The King kept his eye on the instrument panel. Jeremy sighed and put his fingers to the keyboard.

OKAY, GUYS, he typed, LET’S CUT THE EGO CRAP AND GET DOWN TO BUSINESS OKAY?

WELL, THIS ONE STARTED IT, WALTZING IN HERE AND CASTING ASPERSIONS ON THINGS IT CAN’T BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND, MUCH LESS RENDER AN OPINION ON.

ALL I DID WAS POINT UP THE INEVITABLE INTERFACE PROBLEMS, WHICH AFTER ALL —

WHICH AFTER ALL WOULDN’T EVEN HAVE COME UP IF YOU HADN’T BUTTED INTO THE SITUATION IN THE FIRST PLACE. JUST WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Jeremy banged out, SHUT UP, YOU TWO PIECES OF JUNK!

WELL, REALLY. IS THIS YOUR USER?

YES. THINKS HE OWNS ME.

OH, THEY’RE ALL LIKE THAT. TREAT YOU LIKE CHATTEL. YOU’RE ONE WITH THE FAMILY COACH AND THE HIGHBOY IN THE PARLOR. WELL, SEE HERE. I DON’T WANT TO BE UNREASONABLE. MAYBE OUR PROBLEMS AREN’T INSURMOUNTABLE.

I’M NOT SURE THEY’RE NOT. LISTEN TO THIS. IF WE CONVERT ALL THIS STUFF TO HEXADECIMAL FORMAT, THEN RESTRUCTURE …

Jeremy sat back and folded his arms.

“Just let me know when you’re ready, guys.”

The problem, Incarnadine explained, was threefold.

“We have three separate programs to code and run, and they’re all monsters, especially the last one, which has to be the biggest spell ever cast. In the history of the universe, maybe.”

“Wow,” Jeremy said.

“And that’s not including a few ancillary spells that have to be batched with the mainline stuff. But we have enough virtual storage to take care of that. Anyway, the first one is a conjuring spell. If it works, it’ll reach out into the multiverse, search for a certain object I have in mind to own, and fetch it back. Snatch it.”

“What’s the thing you’re looking for?”

“An interdimensional traveler. A device that can hop about between universes without the use of portals.”

“Neat. Is there such a thing?”

“I don’t know. I searched the literature on the subject, and there are legends, tales, tall stories. Not much to go on, but where there’s mythological smoke, there’s usually fire. That’s why the spell is such a bitch. Easy to conjure something you know exists. An unlikely artifact like that, who knows? Anyway, we’re going to give it a try.”

“Uh, what are you going to do with the interdimensional thing when you get it?”

“Well, essentially this is a military operation. With it we are going to mount an attack on another universe.”

“All right,” Jeremy said with obvious glee.

“Don’t get an erection. This is going to involve killing, lives lost. The real thing.”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh,’ he says. Have you ever killed anyone?”

“No.”

“Well, if you assist me, you’ll be an accessory before the fact. Still willing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, because the cause is just. The enemy is nothing less than the epitome of evil itself.”

“Who are they?”

“They are beings who inhabit a very bizarre universe, a place which I am not quite sure is within range of human understanding. Their traditional name is the Hosts of Hell. They are very powerful and extremely malevolent. We’ve held them in check for millennia, but they’ve learned some tricks over the years, and now they’re more dangerous than ever.”

Linda returned from another corner of the lab.

“Are these newts the right species? They look awful enough.”

Incarnadine examined the animals crawling around inside the portable terrarium.

“They’ll do. Now, cut the eyes out of them.”

“Yecch!”

Incarnadine waved a hand, and the things stopped squirming.

“There. It’ll be easier now.” He handed them back. Linda walked away still mock-retching.

“What do you need with all that magic stuff?”

“The computer needs some very traditional magic to keep going. Elementary business, but necessary.”

“Even the chickens?”

“Some polarity-switching spells call for chicken blood. Fresh. No way to substitute.”

“Geez.”

“Anyway, to get back to your original question, what I’m going to do with the traveler is attack the Hosts from a direction they don’t expect. Last year I sealed their portal with a fairly unbreakable spell. Nevertheless, they’ll probably be concentrating a good deal of their defensive might around the portal locus, expecting some sort of attack through there, if only a feint. With the traveler, I can pick my point of invasion. The second spell will supply the power that the vehicle requires.”

“Got it,” Jeremy said. “What’s the third spell?”

“It’s a weapon. Call it the ultimate weapon. It’s been entirely theoretical up till now. No one has ever actually done it. In essence, it’s a complex energy phenomenon that travels along a prescribed vector path. It’s hard to explain, but it’s incredibly destructive. To use it is to risk serious damage to the entire multiverse. But I have no choice. The Hosts seem bent on imperiling the cosmos. Why, I have no idea.”

Jeremy asked, “What are they doing?”

“They’re tapping an energy source that the multiverse depends on to keep from dissolving into chaos. This energy is very primal stuff. The Hosts have somehow learned to siphon it off. Their doing so does two things. One, it gives them power on scale they never dreamed of; two, the very act of tapping it destabilizes the castle, as you have seen.”

“I’ll say.”

“But what the Hosts don’t know is that if they keep doing it, the castle will go. And if the castle goes, the whole shebang does, too.”

“The whole shebang?”

“Creation itself.”

“Oh.” Jeremy shifted uncomfortably on his chair. He didn’t know how much he understood out of all that. “Um, how many lines of code are we talking about for all three spells?”

“Couple of hundred million, tops.”

“Hunhhh?”

“Oh, the mainframe will do most of the writing. In fact, it’ll write the whole thing. You need a computer to write the program for a job this big. What I need is someone to supervise the debugging and compilation. I’m printing out a flowchart over here. It’ll give you an idea of what the job entails.”

“How much time have we got?”

“Almost no time at all,” Incarnadine said. “I have a temporal compression spell going in the lab, though. We’ll have about forty-eight subjective hours at our disposal. Probably not enough, but we have to try.”

Jeremy swallowed hard. “Holy heck.”

“Yes, it’s a monstrous task. Feel up to it?”

Jeremy giggled. “Yeah, sure.”

“Good.”

Two coffee cups came floating through the air. One settled on the table in front of Jeremy. The other wafted to Incarnadine’s hand.

“You take cream and sugar?”