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.