Chronicles of Wizard Prang
by Stafford Beer

Contents

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Wizard Prang awakened with a start.

A cat was sitting on his face! That's enough to wake anyone up, never mind a wizard.

"Dear me," thought Wizard Prang, who always slept with the window open. "It's that blessed marmalade cat!" It was.

He blessed the cat again and the cat puffed.

Wizard Prang pulled on his robe, picked up the cat, stroked its fur and tickled behind its ears. The cat's purring became deafening.

They went together to the front door, as it was known. There is no back door to Wizard Prang's cottage but we cannot bother about every mystery. That would take all one's life.

The wizard opened the door, and told the happy cat "Goodbye Felix!" He closed the door softly.

Fifteen minutes later, Wizard Prang arrived at the little store on the comer where two roads intersected nearly a mile away.

The little store was closed.

"How come" thought the wizard?

The answer came into his enlightened head at once. It was the middle of the night. Of course the little store was closed.

"Why did I come down here then?" he asked himself.

His enlightened head had no reply.

Even without information, he took the decision as to what to do. He went back home.

When he opened the door, the cat had stopped purring.

"Hello Felix," said the wizard absentmindedly.

He went back to bed, carefully shutting the bedroom door.

"If I don't shut the window," the wizard ruminated, "the blessed cat may come in again."

But Wizard Prang always slept with the window open, so he decided to risk it.

He slept undisturbed, and awoke in the morning to a beautiful spring day. The scented air blew into the room, tickled his nose, and replenished his blessing ability.

The risk had been worth taking.

Wizard Prang busied himself with breakfast, opening windows, sweeping out the only room he had to live in rather than to sleep in. (The meditation room was tiny, and on a different plane.)

His apprentice was not coming today, and so his breakfast consisted only of an infusion of tea. When his apprentice was present, he was (as we know) threatened by toast.

The reason Pemy was not present was that he had given her the day off.

His friend Magician Logician was coming, after all, and no one can absorb more than one other person at a time. Not properly, that is.

The magician was English, but he had been on a visit to North Wales, to the island of Anglesey in fact, and had communicated that he would visit his old friend Prang on the way back to England. Wizard Prang was absolutely delighted.

He had to admit to himself, however, that he hoped that people in the village did not see his extraordinary friend. There was no real reason why they should: he was a magician, after all. He did nothing about waiting for buses. Even so, his appearance would certainly cause comment, thought the wizard.

Now Wizard Prang was a perfectly ordinary looking fellow. All his robes (well, both of them) were unfussy. They swept smoothly to the floor, while the sleeves fell away from his wrists without cuffs or frills of any kind. The material was simple too. The wizard spun and wove the wool himself, and left its natural colouring. No stars and moons and conical hats for Wizard Prang. His long white beard was not trimmed and pomaded: it just flowed down as it naturally grew to his waist.

Magician Logician on the other hand wore elaborate vestments consisting of trousers, waistcoat and jacket. These were made out of very expensive dark blue or grey cloth, with a subdued stripe. The pattern of the subdued stripe was always complicated. The wizard had never asked the magician about it, but assumed it had cabalistic significance. He wore a strip of richly embroidered silk tied in a knot around his neck.

Most extraordinary of all was the fact that the magician had no beard. This was not because nature had failed to provide one. Oh no; the magician had shaved it off. Wizard Prang had asked about that and the vestments in general.

"Well, old chap," the English magician had said in his quaint language, "you know how often you mess up your spells, don't you?"

Wizard Prang was rather hurt, but tried not to show it. After all, it was true.

"I was just the same," the magician had continued urbanely.

"The problem is that spells are confoundedly complicated you leave bits out, get the permutations in the wrong order, things like that."

"True enough" the wizard thought ruefully.

"Right ho," the magician had said. "What you need are computers."

"Oh come on," Wizard Prang had replied. "Bob Amser is always telling me that. He lent me his Gooseberry computer, but it was useless. Bob Amser is always ..."

Magician Logician interrupted because he thought the wizard had finished.

"You Silly Billy," he had said. "A Gooseberry wouldn't do it."

"Exactly," said the wizard. "it had only a thousand megabytes of memory!"

"So," the magician was triumphant, "you need the whoppers the really big mainframes!"

Out had come the explanation. To gain access to large computers, you had to wear vestments, and you had to shave off your beard. Magician Logician had even changed his name. In the bank where he was doing his spells he was known as Logician Magician.

"Bob Amser works in the bank in the village, and he has a beard," grumbled the wizard. "Bob Amser is always..."

The magician had interrupted him again.

"You're so naive, you dear old thing," he had said. "Banks encourage young men to wear beards. This notifies everyone that they are 'techies'. Techies are brilliantly clever, and utterly trustworthy. They are interested only in their technology. But if you want command of a world wide network of giant mainframes in order to cast a really hefty spell ... Well, it's not enough to look like a techie. You have to look like a banker."

"What good is that?" the wizard had asked.

Magician Logician had laughed. "You disappear, and nobody knows what you are up to. You just think how much personal power you use up just to disappear. I disappear in the bank because I look like everyone else!"

It's a neat trick, thought Wizard Prang as he prepared for his friend's visit. And to have the title of Logician in a bank would really impress the financial community. They believe in logic, they talk about logic, but they have no idea how to do it. If they knew that Logician Magician was really Magician Logician, he wondered as he counted out six bottles of wine, what then?

The wizard went down to the brook and filled a bucket with sparkling water to go with the wine. The magic the magician exercised was seven point four times more powerful than logic, he reflected. He cleared the table of a messed up spell, and massaged its coarse surface with beeswax.

"Bankers don't believe in magic, and can't do It," he said aloud; "they believe in logic and can't do that either. So what does the factor seven point four mean inside a bank?"

"It is the precise measure of What No one Can Explain," a voice behind him said.

Wizard Prang turned and embraced Magician Logician most heartily. They patted each other's backs. The wizard did his best to ignore the magician's after shave lotion.

They relaxed by the log fire, and drank their wine and water.

"Where did you go in Anglesey?" the wizard asked.

The magician had hoped he would ask that. It had taken a long time to learn the famous name, which is the longest place name in the whole world. Even if you know It, It is difficult for an Englishman to pronounce.

"I went to Lianfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwymdrobwllllandysiliogogogoch," he said.

"Oh great," said the wizard. "We call it Llanfair P.G. in Wales."

He did not mean to be deflating. It's a fact. They do call it that in Wales.

"It's a pity to reduce such a wonderful name to beggary" the magician was really put down. "Fifty eight letters, after all."

"That's not so much," said Wizard Prang. "My name has seventy three letters." He sounded smug.

"P R A N G," the magician answered acidly, "makes five in my book."

"You couldn't remember seventy-three letters," asserted the wizard adding hastily: "at least I couldn't."

"You can't remember your own name?"

"Yes I can." said the wizard loudly, "it's Prang."

"What's going on here?" The magician was refusing to be drawn. He spoke laconically. He poured himself more wine and a little less water.

"Brains running normally can cope with seven things, plus or minus two," said Wizard Prang. "I always plump for the minus side, to make life easier for everyone. Seven minus two is five. P R A N G. Hey presto."

"Don't say that," said Magician Logician uncomfortably. "Does it mean that Prang is the start of your name?"

"Gracious me, no." The wizard was emphatic: "That would not encompass my real name properly, now would it? Seven, I can handle. Fourteen is double capacity. I could just nuke that by a strong effort of recall. The fourteenth letter of my name is P. The fifteenth is R."

"Oh," interrupted the magician, "then we get the A N G up to the eighteenth letter."

"No, no, no"; the wizard was testy, "in what sense would that encompass the remaining fifty five letters?"

"Carry on" the magician was resigned.

"If you ask anyone what's the next number after 1,2,3, they usually say 4. Actually, it's 5."

"Huh. A Fibonacci series!"

"Exactly!" The wizard pretended not to be peeved that he had not caught out his old friend.

"1 plus 2 is 3. 2 plus 3 is 5. 3 plus 5 is 8. Fibonacci: the series runs 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, ... Well, I started out with P = 14 and R = 15. The next number is 14 + 15 = 29. The twenty ninth letter of my name is A. 15 + 29 = 44, and that letter is an N. 29 + 44 is 73. That is G and my name is encompassed. Seventy three letters in five. Better than Llanfair P.G. PRANG."

This time the wizard filled both glasses.

"So that's how you 'make life easier for everyone', is it?" Magician Logician almost snarled.

"Yes," the wizard said innocently.

The magician was quiet for some time, after which he remembered he was also a logician. "Well done," he said.

Evening fell, eventually. Many iterations later the two friends parted. Magician Logician sailed down the path in a happy mood. Wizard Prang called to him and he turned around.

"You look good sailing," he shouted, "but when you reach the public road, please remember to walk!"

"OK," the magician called back, waving.

Chapter Two

Table of Contents

Chapter Four