Codespell (35 page)

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Authors: Kelly Mccullough

Tags: #Computer Hackers, #Magic, #Fantasy Fiction, #Computers, #Contemporary, #General, #Fantasy, #Wizards, #Fiction

BOOK: Codespell
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“You know,” I said, putting the issues of the spinnerettes aside for the moment, “for someone who claims to be lazy, that all sounds like a
lot
of work.”
Zeus chuckled. “You’d be surprised. All I had to do to make Nemesis work for me was give the faerie-ring network a tiny nudge so that it spat what was left of your cousin Dairn out at the right place for him to meet and offer himself to Nemesis—less work than you expended sending your Haemun here to protect him. I didn’t have to do much more with the Furies. They want the same thing I do, and they’re willing to do all the sweaty running-around parts.”
I opened my mouth to ask another question, then closed it with a snap when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Boss?”
I spun in my chair and found Melchior—in goblin shape—staring at me from a distance of inches. I snatched him into a hug.
“What did I miss?” he asked, when I loosened up enough to let him breathe.
“Everything,” I said, suppressing tears once again. “How are you? All the right parts in all the right places?” I set him down and tapped his shoulders and hips.
“Sort of,” he said, “but I feel really, really strange.”
“Could you be any vaguer?” I asked.
“I don’t know, I could try if you really want me to . . .” He winked. “It is actually hard to explain. Maybe it’d be better if I showed you.”
With that, he changed back into laptop shape. Only he didn’t. Unlike the old change, this was instantaneous, complete, and—strangest by far—no change at all. On the desk in front of me stood something that was Melchior, the open laptop, and both simultaneously. At least that was how I saw it. I imagine someone who wasn’t a chaos power would have been getting a really nasty flickering effect as their eyes tried to process the three overlapping entities as distinct images. Even for me, it was a little rough on the digestion.
“I don’t suppose you want to stop that,” I said. “It’s kind of hard to look at.”
“You think you’ve got problems,” he said as he suddenly became only the webgoblin. “Imagine how it feels from the inside.”
“I’d rather not, if that’s all right with you. How are you doing it?”
"I’m not sure. I was all set to transform the old way when . . .” He frowned. “It’s strange really. I just got this wild impulse to try something different and, presto!” He snapped his fingers and shifted back and forth again. “Is that what it’s like to be the Raven? All weird intuitions and sudden impulses?” He shuddered.
“It does have moments like that, yes. While we’re on the subject of weirdness, that was no hour. How can you be back with me so soon?”
“Blame me,” said Zeus. “I maybe should have mentioned it before, but creative processes, like births—even electronic births—tend to go more quickly and easily in my presence. It can be a bother really. Take a nap in a just-planted field, wake up to find very confused farmers harvesting all around you. Oh well, at least it doesn’t involve any work. Now, where were we?”
“Arranging for me to get from here to Necessity, if that’s possible. It looks like it’s my turn to pay up.” If he’d saved that one to increase my gratitude, it had worked.
“So quick to agree to my terms?” mused Zeus. “And that despite all the trouble I’ve caused you. It almost makes me want to ask for more.”
I growled. “Don’t push your luck. At the moment, our needs and wants on the subjects of Necessity and Nemesis are in concert. That doesn’t mean I’m going to forget or forgive the fact that you’ve endangered my life and the lives of my friends. I’m putting it aside, not dropping it.”
"Uh, Boss?”
“Yes, Melchior?”
“Please tell me that you’re not threatening Zeus.”
“All right. Melchior, I’m not threatening Zeus.”
“You’re lying,” he said with a sigh.
“I’m lying, but not much. It’s not like I’m planning genuine retaliation or anything. I’m just making vague, menacing sounds in the hopes that it’ll make him think twice about pulling this kind of crap on me again later. It not like I have any real power to harm him.”
“You are aware that I’m still in the room, right?” asked Zeus.
“Of course I am. This is as close as I can get to admitting Mel’s right that threats were a bad idea and maybe I should retract them. It saves face, you see?”
“Even when you explain it like that?” Zeus sounded bemused.
“Oh, especially when I explain it,” I answered. “That makes it all a joke between friends. Speaking of which, now that we’re past the parts you didn’t want her to hear, maybe we should call Megaera back. Unless, that is, you’ve done more double-crossing of the Furies that you don’t want them to know about.” I cocked my head to one side and took my chin between finger and thumb. “You know, I hadn’t thought about that.”
“What?” asked Zeus, suddenly sounding more than a little wary.
“Assuming I get Necessity fully repaired, neither she nor the Furies are going to be particularly pleased about the way you’ve brought Nemesis into all this. They’re bad enemies. I know
I
wouldn’t want my girlfriend, Tisiphone, really mad at me.”
“That’s a much better threat,” said Zeus with a tight smile. “I especially like the subtlety of mentioning, as if in passing, that you’re romantically linked to one of the Furies. For such a young godling, you’re learning how to play the game quite quickly. I will have to watch you more closely in the future.”
“I’m a fast learner, and I keep ending up across the table from the best—you for example. Now, where were we?”
Melchior put his face in his hands.
“I was calling Megaera back so that we could see about getting you on your way,” said Zeus. “At least, I presume that’s why you wanted her back. You think you’ll need her to get to Necessity.”
I nodded. That, and I was worried about Tisiphone. I hoped Megaera would be able to tell me whether she was all right or not.
A few minutes later, Megaera nodded cautiously to the latter question, though she looked worried. “I think so. Tisiphone’s angry, and she’s in some pain, but not a lot.” My expression must have shown my shock, because she laughed and directed her gaze my way. “We heal very quickly. Even with the injuries you described, I would expect her to bounce back fully within a matter of hours at most. No, it’s not her physical condition that concerns me. It’s the weakness of the link between us. I can’t tell where she is, and that’s never happened before.”
“Do you suppose she’s with Necessity?” asked Melchior.
Megaera turned to him so quickly that she blurred. “What makes you ask that?”
“The impression I got from Tisiphone was that right at the moment you can find anything in the multiverse but Necessity. Since you can’t find Tisiphone now . . .”
“How would she get there?” asked Zeus. “That’s a problem no one’s been able to solve for some time.”
“Which is why you brought Ravirn into the equation,” said Melchior, “for his skills—skills currently mirrored by Nemesis as part of her quarrel with him. If Tisiphone is with Nemesis—”
“She’d never betray Necessity that way!” snarled Megaera.
“Who says she’s anything but a key?” I said very quietly. “Tisiphone told me that I’d have to bring a Fury along when I went to fix Necessity, that without her, I wouldn’t be able to get past the physical security, or even get in for that matter. What did she mean?”
“She shouldn’t have told you that,” said Megaera.
“It was when she was trying to convince me to take the job, and you didn’t answer the question.”
Megaera closed her mouth and crossed her arms.
“If I’m going to crack my way into Necessity for you, I need to know,” I said.
“Tell him,” said Zeus.
“All right, but under protest. Necessity’s physical form is a computer. You know that. Tisiphone told you that she exists at the point of maximum improbability? The place where DecLoci are formed, where new Earths split away from the old?”
“She did.”
“Did you ever wonder about what physical shape such a place might take?” asked Megaera.
“Not really. I was mostly focused on finding a way to get there. I figured that sort of thing could take care of itself. Are you going to get to the point anytime soon, or should I get myself a drink?”
"What was the first DecLocus to split off from the world of Olympus?” asked Megaera as though she hadn’t heard me.
"I don’t know.” I shrugged. "Prime +1, I guess, the place where humanity first came into existence.”
“No,” said Megaera. “It was Prime/?, the decision point, where Necessity made her home. The alternate Olympus.”
“Wait a second,” interjected Melchior. “Are you suggesting that Necessity has an entire copy of the planet Earth to herself?”
“Close,” said Megaera. “Though I don’t see why that should surprise you given the empty world where Raven House sits. No, Necessity has an entire universe to herself. The Earth is merely the vessel that houses her spirit.”
“A planetwide computer?” I gasped.
Megaera nodded. “One that is within its own closed universe with no faerie rings and no physical entry other than this.” She extended one claw and cut a tiny slice in the stuff of reality. “With the mweb portals shut, you would need a living Fury to open the way if you wanted to enter the House of Necessity.”
“Nemesis has a living Fury,” I said, though my stomach dropped at the thought, “for now. We’ve got to find out where they are and get moving.”
“You’ll be taking me with you,” said Megaera, “of course. How soon can we leave?”
“That depends on whether Melchior’s upgrade actually bought us anything.” I looked at him.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. What are we hoping for?”
“Deep insights into multidimensional quantum uncertainty, ” I replied.
“Oh, good,” said Melchior. “Then we’re screwed. Unless feeling really strange counts as a deep insight.”
“Probably not, but maybe it’ll be a place to start. In the meantime, why don’t we check in with Shara and find out whether Nemesis and Tisiphone are really there. Megaera? ”
“You want me to play signal fire like Tisiphone did, don’t you?”
“Unless you’ve got a better suggestion.”
She sighed. “Better get me a barf bag then. I was only getting it secondhand when you ran Tisiphone through the ringer, but that was bad enough to send me running for the porcelain more than once.”
“Wait,” I said. “You were feeling what Tisiphone felt?” I didn’t like that idea at all.
“Echoes of it. We are all part of the same being.”
“Even when we . . .” I couldn’t help it; I blushed.
“Only a little, by accident. I mostly tried to block it out. Believe me, I like the idea even less than you do. Your hands on my—ugh!” She shivered. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it, and you can’t make me. Not if you want to keep all of your bits where they currently reside. Let’s just make the damn call, OK?”
A few minutes later we had Megaera positioned in a small pentagram drawn on Zeus’s pristine white marble floor with permanent ink. He’d winced at that, but hadn’t suggested we stop.
“Here goes,” said Mel. Then he began sending,
“Shara, are Tisiphone and Nemesis with you?”
Several long seconds ticked past before Megaera—looking even greener than her normal seaweed-and-saltwater self—jerked and pointed to her left.
I barely noticed, because at the very same moment Melchior jumped a good foot into the air.
“What’s wrong?” I caught him by the shoulder.
He held up a hand. “Hang on a second!” Then he started pointing in synch with Megaera. “I can hear her! I can hear Shara! It’s like she’s right”—he turned slowly in place— “over . . . there.”
He pointed—sort of. His finger was doing something quantum, simultaneously aimed at something that was both of this dimension and outside it.
“Megaera, can you follow his bearing?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She looked even greener than usual. “Not from here, but maybe within chaos.”
“Hang on a second,” said Melchior. “I’ll tell her we’re on the way and to keep sending.” His expression went thoughtful and abstracted. “There.”
“Then let’s go.” I scooped him up and stepped in close to the Fury.
With a distinct look of distaste, she put her left hand on my right hip and tore a hole in the universe with her right one. Then, pulling me tight against her, she leaped into nowhere.
It wasn’t until the hole closed behind us that I realized we’d forgotten to say good-bye to Zeus. Somehow, I figured he’d get over it.
Once again, the creation-in-destruction that was chaos tugged at my sense of self. The sheer power of it felt seductive and intoxicating—pure raw magic, forever and always only a hairbreadth away from the real world. All that separated the two was the swipe of a Fury’s claws. I tore my attention free of the dance and forced myself to think of other things as a queasy Megaera began to follow Melchior’s guidance through the joyous madness.

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