Cybermancy (30 page)

Paradise
.
That’s the only way to describe it. We stood on a grand marble balcony hanging over a white sand beach on one side of a huge half-circle bay. But this was not the sterile white marble of Zeus’s Olympus. This was a rich, green marble veined with black, like great slabs of gem-quality malachite.
Neohedonist instead of neoclassical.
A low balustrade of the same marble ran along the edge of the balcony, turning and following a wide flight of stairs down to the beach on my right. The air was humid and tropical, redolent with the smells of greenery and flowers, but not too warm.

Looking directly across the water, I could see mountains reaching down to the far edge of the bay, iron-rich soil exposed here and there by jagged rents in the velvety tropical forest, like a red arm in a tattered emerald sleeve. To my left, the mountains climbed up to a cloud-shrouded peak. To my right the bay opened out into the deep blue sea stretching luxuriously to the horizon. It was one of the most beautiful settings I’d ever seen and I wondered how such a place could be so devoid of people.

“Where are we?” asked Cerice, her tone hushed in wonder.

“Welcome to Raven House,” said a new voice from behind us.

I should have been startled, practically jumping out of my skin. I wasn’t. It was like I’d expected the voice. I let go of Cerice and turned slowly around. I found myself facing a faun in a Hawaiian shirt. He had curly hair and a little soul-patch beard. A thick cluster of leis was wrapped around his equally thick neck. He smiled and stepped forward, lifting one of the leis off and placing it around my neck, then doing the same for Cerice.

“Raven House?” exclaimed Melchior. “That’s ridiculous, there is no such place. And who in Hades’ name are you? You look like the product of a nightmare brought on by eating a pineapple-and-feta-cheese pizza with an ouzo margarita on the side.”

The faun took
a much smaller lei
from around his wrist and popped it none-too-gently over Melchior’s head. “I am the spirit of this place. If you have problems with my appearance, or its appearance, take them up with your partner’s subconscious.
Because this is indeed Raven House.”

Melchior gave me a very hard look as the faun moved on to give Shara
a lei
. “He’s kidding, right? Tell me you didn’t come up with this. Tell me you have more respect for continuity than to do this.” His gesture took in the great house that rose behind the faun.

It was mostly green marble and aqua-tinted glass, in a sort of high modern mix of classical Greek and nouveau-tiki lounge. It should have been an awful kludge, yet it seemed perfectly harmonized with its environment, the greens blending smoothly into the jungle surrounding it. There was a big open porch behind the balcony, with a fountain centering it and low, comfortable furniture scattered in conversation sets.

I turned to the faun. “Can you fix us a couple of daiquiris?”

“Of course, what would you like?”

“What are the options?”

“You name it, we’ve got it.”

“Guava,” I said.
“Cerice?”

“Banana.”

“Done,” said the faun, turning and heading for the bar.

“Looks like paradise to me, Mel. If this is Raven House, I, for one, am in.” I pulled off my leather jacket and slung it over my shoulder.

The webgoblin put his face in his hands. “A faun in a Hawaiian shirt fixing daiquiris is your idea of a power’s proper home. That’s crazy.”

“That’s chaos,” the faun called over his shoulder, “and the Raven is a power of it.”

“Could be worse,” said Shara, shaking her head. “He could be wearing a kilt.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s a good thing I’m more of a surfer than a golfer.”

Just then the faun returned.

“What should we call you?” I asked, taking my drink.

“I’m tempted to say ‘Id—Id Runamuck.’ But that would be cruel. My name is Haemun. Is there anything else I can get you?”

“Food would be good.
Rice, fish, something simple.”

“I’ll get right on it.” Haemun headed for the depths of the house.

“Now,” said Cerice, “I think it’s my turn to talk. At least I think that’s where we were before we left the maze. Just let me get out of this armor.”

She reached to her side and popped the buckles on her breastplate, letting it fall on the thick carpet that set our cluster of furniture off from its surroundings. Her shoulder pieces and bracers followed quickly. Underneath, she wore a thin silk blouse.

“Oh, that’s so much better.” Cerice rolled her shoulders, which did interesting things to the rest of her torso. “Could I impose on you to scratch my back before I make an emotional spectacle of myself?” I stood up and obliged as she peeled off the rest of her gear. “Nice,” she almost purred. “Thank you.” Then she turned and gave me a gentle push toward my chair. “Now, I have some things that need saying.”

“This is where it gets mushy,” said Melchior. “I’ll pass. Shara, you want to help me explore this dump?”

She nodded, and they wandered off together. I smiled after them. Despite Melchior’s harsh words, I knew he was trying to give us some privacy. I appreciated it.

I took a seat and a sip of my drink,
then
looked at Cerice. “The floor is yours.”

“Right.
Where to start . . .” She sipped her drink as well then looked me in the eyes. “How about with this, I love you. I love your reckless abandon. I love that you don’t plot out your hacks and cracks, you just do them. I love the sloppy way you put together spells. I love your courage and the way you never take danger seriously.” She laughed and took another drink. “I guess I love all the things about you that drive me absolutely crazy, and I haven’t the foggiest idea how a House of Fate produced someone like you.”

“You’re not alone there, just ask Lachesis. Perhaps I’m a genetic throwback to the Titans.”

“Whatever the reason, I appreciate it. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m a little bit on the anal-retentive side.” She said this with a self-knowing smile and held up her hands a few millimeters apart.
“Or maybe a lot.”
She spread her arms into a gesture like someone talking about the one that got away. “I plan everything.” She looked at her feet. “Did you know that there’s a spreadsheet tucked away in Shara’s memory entitled ‘Life Plan’ and that the subsheet ‘College’ has a list of what schools I wanted to go to and when?”

“I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“I wrote it when I was thirteen. It included a four-year break between high school and freshman year of college.”

“I’d never have guessed that part. You actually put free time into the list?”

She blushed. “Not free time. I laid out a travel agenda involving visits to all the major mythological sites, when I was going, and for how long, as well as an extended tour of the prime minus one DecLocus with stops in all the big capitals and visits to fifty colleges with great comp-sci departments, just in case I changed my mind about under-grading at a version of MIT.”

“You didn’t change your mind,” I said. I remembered visiting her there the year I was first looking for schools.

“Of course not.”
She looked at her feet again. “In fact, when I was fifteen, I added a tentative course schedule to my file. The only reason I changed anything when I finally started taking classes was because some of the things I’d picked out were no longer offered. I always knew exactly what I wanted to do and be.”

“That’s what makes you a great programmer, Cerice. You can hold a thousand lines of code in your head and see whether it’ll do what you want it to.”

“But it didn’t really prepare me for the messiness that is real life. When I discovered that Shara was really an independent being, it completely threw me for a loop. It changed all of my plans and assumptions. I couldn’t just fit smoothly into Clotho’s IT machine anymore. I loved Shara, and I had to do something for her, for her and for all the other webgoblins and trolls with the same problems. So, you know what I did?”

“I can guess. You revised your ‘College Plan’ sheet.”

Cerice laughed. “I did indeed. I changed my Ph.D. thesis subject and went looking for a new advisor, though I stayed with the same school. My proximate plans changed, but my methods stayed exactly the same. I changed the plan, but I still had one. Everything was going to be fine.”

“Then I came along.”

She nodded. “And then you came along. I’d always liked you when we met at joint court events, or when you visited me at MIT, but you were
too wild
to consider as even practice boyfriend material. I had other plans on the romance front.”

“But?”
I asked before finishing my drink.

“But I kept finding things wrong with the guys on the good-boy demi-immortals list. Either they didn’t really turn my crank, or they treated their familiars like shit, or they had inherited their brains from wherever Zeus got his. All along I kept thinking back to you. Then came the day I overheard Atropos and Clotho vote to send Moric and his brothers to kill you. It was another break point. I had to warn you, but that meant some major spontaneous hacking and straight-up defiance of Clotho. I felt sooo guilty. But I couldn’t let them do it.”

I was about to say something, but a subtle cough made me turn my head to find that Haemun had returned. “I’ve put together dinner and set up a table. It’s out on the terrace, where you can watch the sun go down.” He gestured with one hand, collecting our empty glasses with the other. “I’ll just refill these, shall I?”

“Please,”
said
Cerice, rising and offering me her hand.

Together, we walked out to find a small round table with two place settings side by side facing west. A small bamboo basket had its lid cracked to expose steaming rice, and a warming dish held two grilled ahi steaks beside it, but it hardly registered. The sun had sunk quite low, dipping toward the water while we’d talked on the porch. It was a beautiful evening, with just enough cloud cover to provide the sun a canvas on which to splash a gorgeous abstract painting in blood and fire.

We sat down and, by a sort of mutual unspoken agreement, said nothing as the sun slid the rest of the way into the ocean. It was a half disc just sticking out of the water when Haemun arrived with our drinks. He delivered them so quietly and so smoothly that I barely noticed their arrival or his departure.

I absently reached for mine but stopped midway. The sun had reached the point where it seems to drop precipitously before vanishing. For just an instant after the disc disappeared, the light shone back brightly through the water in a brilliant green flash like some giant solar wink. It took my breath away.

“Gorgeous,” said Cerice. “I’ve read about the green flash, but I’ve never seen it.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it before. It’s wonderful.” I finished my earlier gesture and collected my drink. “I’m glad that I saw it with you.”

“So am I,” said Cerice.

Then she reached for the serving dishes. It had been a long time since our last meal, and we paid more attention to the food than conversation for a little while. When we slowed down, Cerice caught my eye.

“Where was I?”

“Moric and company had just been dispatched to kill me.”

“
Right,
and I’d defied Clotho. As awful as that made me feel, I couldn’t convince myself that I’d been
wrong,
or stop thinking about you. I had to find you and talk to you.”

“And you did, with a little help from Ahllan.”

“I did. Then one thing led to another, and we ended up in bed and I panicked. I wanted you so badly, but you just didn’t fit into the plan. I tried to shut you out at first, but you kept coming back, and pretty soon it killed me every time you left. So guess what I did?”

“Revised the plan?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Uh-huh, now it included a sheet under ‘Ravirn, reforming of.’ Then it turned out Atropos and the other Fates were trying to kill free will, and I got caught up in the fight because I couldn’t let them kill you in the process, and then somehow you won. But you became Raven doing it. Everything was totally messed up and the plan was shot and I panicked again.”

“And shit flows downhill.” It came out harsher than I’d intended, but I had to say it.

“It does,” said Cerice. “It flowed all over you, and I’m so sorry about that. If I’ve lost you, I don’t know what I’ll do about that. But I do know I’m done with plans. The best things in my life are you and Shara and the things I’ve done and learned in helping you oppose Fate. If I’d followed the plan, I’d never have experienced any of it.”

“Cerice, I . . .” Again, I didn’t know what to say, but I felt I had to say something. I did love her. No matter what happened between us, that much was true.

“Please,” she said, “don’t answer me yet. We’ve reached one of the bad places in the story again. Soon, too soon, we’ll leave here and try to fix the Persephone mess. That’s going to be dangerous. You could die. Melchior could die. Shara could die. I could die. No matter what, everything’s going to be different afterward. Answer me then. For now, I just want to make love to you and let tomorrow worry about tomorrow. Is that all right?”

“
Yes,
and more than all right.” I rose and helped Cerice from her chair. “Shall we find out if this barn has a master suite somewhere?”