Codespell (29 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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“Maybe she didn’t,” said Tisiphone, “learn to code that is. Maybe she’s just mirroring your divine spark.” She looked quite bemused.
“Maybe,” I said. “Certainly all I’ve seen her do so far are really spiffy hacks, which
is
my department, but I can’t help feeling there’s more to it since she’s performing magic that’s well beyond what I could manage even with serious goblin help.”
“Do you always start conversations like this?” asked Tisiphone. “The last thing you said to me before dashing back in here and asking about Nemesis and coding was that I’d have to ask very nicely if I wanted to be forgiven.”
“It’s well within his normal range,” said Melchior. “I occasionally suspect that Scattered ought to be his middle name.” The goblin was standing on the workbench, having put aside a soldering pencil and a fragment of circuit board.
I ignored him and decided not to answer Tisiphone’s question. I still wasn’t happy about what she’d done to Cerice, but it was worse than what I’d done only in degree. Besides, apologies were probably not a part of Fury nature, and I didn’t want to push that conflict right now.
Instead, I said, “Look at that self-harmonizing thing Nemesis does. I’ve only ever seen Fates and webtrolls manage that. I sure as hell couldn’t do it. The way she crashed Melchior—same thing.”
“That
was
nasty,” said Melchior, “and there’s no reason to believe she can’t do it again next time we see her. She’s seriously out of our league.”
“Leave that to me,” said Tisiphone. “She’ll have a tough time whistling through a broken jaw.”
“That’d be nice,” I said. “It might be a good idea to have a backup plan, though. It’s too bad we can’t turn Mel into a webtroll.”
“I don’t much like the look.” He mimed big shoulders and dragging knuckles. “Hulking just doesn’t suit my dashing personality.” Then he sighed. “Of course, I wouldn’t mind a little more crash resistance.”
“Maybe we can think of something,” I said. “You’re about due for an upgrade anyway.”
Tisiphone caught hold of my shoulder, hard. “I hate to interrupt, but Shara’s sending again.”
“On it,” said Melchior, as a slightly green Tisiphone began pointing directions. “I wonder what she wants; she isn’t scheduled to check in for another hour.”
“What’s going on out there?”
sent Shara.
“I want to talk to Cerice.”
“What do I tell her?” asked Melchior as he set up the wards.
“Oh hell.” I sighed. I’d known this was coming at some point, but I’d rather hoped it would be later. “Better tell her the truth, that Cerice is with Clotho and that she and I are no longer an us.”
“Will do,” said Melchior. “I’ll break it to her as gently as possible.”
Because of the nature of the system, with Melchior flicking the wards on and off to send information to Shara, we could transmit much faster than we could receive. Now he launched into a long explanation, one that left Tisiphone looking queasier by the minute.
“I hate this,” she whispered, but she didn’t throw up. She
was
getting better at dealing with it, and I said so.
She nodded. “I think at this point, I could actually cope pretty well with not knowing where I was all the time. It’s this flickering back and forth between the two states that makes it so hard. Wait, incoming.”
“I knew it!”
sent Shara.
“Stupid, both of you.”
There was a brief pause.
“Nothing to be done about it while I’m locked in, and you’re locked out. Have to fix that. Soon!”
“Why soon?”
sent Melchior, at my request. “
Has anything changed?”
“Calendar, of course.”
“Huh?” I said. “Ask her what she means.”
“Spring,”
she sent.
Shit. I’d forgotten about that. While we’d been sitting here talking at our glacial pace, the days had gone drifting by, bringing spring ever closer until . . . what? We didn’t know what would happen when Persephone’s annual release date arrived and with it the temporary expiration of Shara’s forced tie to Necessity.
“How much time do we have left?” I asked.
Melchior shrugged. “We’re off the mweb here. I haven’t been able to query the Fateclock.”
I turned to Tisiphone. “Does Necessity run on Olympus Standard Time? How did she decide when to release Persephone? ”
“She has her own internal clock that she keeps synched with the Fateclock. Actually, it’s the other way around. She dictates mweb time, and the Fateclock cues off her.”
“Melchior?”
“On it.”
“Five days,”
sent Shara.
“We’ve got to find some way to get in before time’s up. What if Necessity spits Shara out and can’t draw her back when the time comes? This could be the only shot we’ve got.”
“But how do we find out where she is?” demanded Melchior. “We can’t do thing one until we can get to Shara and Necessity, and all this
point of maximum uncertainty
jazz isn’t very helpful.”
“Not without some way to predict or tune in on the thing,” I said. “How would we do that? Tisiphone?”
“No idea. All I can tell you is that’s how the system works, all chaos flows and quantum uncertainty and the math of randomness.”
Melchior got a thoughtful look. “Actually, that sounds right up your alley, Boss. Isn’t being the Raven all about hacking chaos? You did a pretty good job with Clotho’s quantum computer chip maze.”
“That’s different,” I said.
But was it?
I thought about it for a minute. A while back, Clotho had locked Cerice, Shara, Melchior, and me into a magical hedge maze on the grounds of Clotho House. The maze could assume the shape of any computer chip, and to keep us trapped there, she’d had it take on the form of a quantum processor so that every gate in the maze was simultaneously open and closed. It would have taken most people, most gods even, a lifetime to find their way out. Not the Raven. My power over chaos had allowed me to shape the maze to my whim, and we had been able to escape only a few minutes later. If I could do something like that here . . . but no. What we needed now wasn’t some way to make an already-existing quantum computer do what we wanted, because we didn’t have the computer. Then a thought occurred to me.
“Uh, Boss,” said Melchior. “I don’t like the expression you’ve got on your face. I’ve seen it before, and every time it’s meant trouble for me. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that several problems might just solve each other.”
“Like what?” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Like we need a quantum computer that can connect to the mweb and touch chaos at the same time. Like Nemesis is an evil bastard of a hacker, and you need crash protection and an upgrade. Like I’m a chaos power, and you’re fundamentally a creature of order, a conflict that’s already causing problems.”
“You’re not suggesting . . . ?”
“That we upgrade you into a brand-new type of webgoblin, the very first quantum laptop. Oh yes, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”
Melchior sat down on the bench with a little thump. “I knew I wasn’t going to like what came of that look.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to do it?” I asked. “You’re my partner now, not my servant. If you don’t want to try this, I won’t force you.”
“No, the reason I don’t like it is that you’re right. It would solve a lot of problems all in one go, and we really don’t have time to look for a better answer.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m saying that. Or this: we’d better start working on the plans.”
That was going to be an interesting problem. I’d coded Melchior myself years ago, crafted him by magic from blueprints drafted by Lachesis, then modified to suit my needs. This was a bigger problem.
“We’ll be able to use some of your original specs, since we won’t want to make any changes in the goblin side of you,” I said. “Or will we? If you’ve ever wanted to be a little taller or a little prettier, now’s the time to speak up.”
Melchior made an
eeping
noise and shook his head. “Thanks, but I’d rather not change anything we don’t absolutely have to.” He forced a smile and tossed his head. “Besides, I’m beautiful just the way I am.”
“Done, though the head-tossing thing would work better if you had hair. We could include that in the new plans—thick, luxurious hair . . .”
“No thanks.” He rubbed the top of his head. “This is much-lower maintenance.”
“Uh, guys.” Tisiphone put a hand on my arm.
“What is it?” I asked.
“That.” She pointed toward the back wall. A ball of blue light was slowly growing there—the spinnerette. I felt a whisper on my skin as of invisible plumage ruffling.
“I wish I knew what that thing wanted,” I said.
“And whose side it’s on,” said Melchior. “Every time it’s shown up, Nemesis has been right behind it.”
“Has she?” Tisiphone smiled. It wasn’t the kind of smile I’d have wanted directed my way. “Good.”
The spider-centaur faded into view, and Tisiphone started toward it, claws extended. I caught the tip of her wing as she went by me. It was hot, but it didn’t burn me. Tisiphone had taught it not to.
“Wait a moment,” I said. “Let’s see what it wants.” Cerice’s comment about spinnerette activity had started my curiosity bump itching.
Tisiphone looked back at me. “Can’t we just take it apart and figure out our answer from the pieces? It’d be simpler.”
“Call that plan B,” said Melchior.
“Oh, all right, but if it tries anything, I’m going to tie its legs in knots.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed.
I stepped around Tisiphone. This was the first chance I’d gotten to really look at the thing. Female, at least the human part of it, and about eight feet tall, though I suspected it could easily go higher if it fully extended its long spider legs. The spider body was massive, a shiny black ovoid as big as a golf cart. The woman’s torso above that, likewise black, was similarly large—sized for a seven-foot female linebacker. The head was an attractive woman’s with the exception of the arachnid mandibles growing out of her cheeks.
“******?” she chittered at me.
It was obviously a question, but beyond that . . . I had no idea what she’d said, though again, the voice sounded almost familiar.
“******?” Louder this time, less querulous.
“I don’t understand you,” I answered.
“******!”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “Afraid not.”
“****** . . .”
She shrugged. Then, without any warning, she was leaning down toward me. I assume she’d crossed the intervening distance, but if so, it was too fast for me to follow. Big, shiny black hands caught my shoulders, lifting me off the ground. A bubble of blue light formed around us, and the world began to fade.

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Fire engulfed me, and I fell. When the flames subsided, I found Tisiphone standing over me, her wings spread like a shield between me and the world. The spinnerette clung to the ceiling on the far side of the room, though whether she had leaped there or been thrown I didn’t know.
“*********?” she chittered—a new question.
Tisiphone growled and moved toward her.
“Wait,” I said. “We still don’t know what she wants.”
“
I don’t care
what she wants,” said Tisiphone, though she checked her advance.
“*********?” The question she chittered this time sounded almost exasperated. She dropped back to the floor and reached a hand out toward Tisiphone.
“That’s it,” she said, and her internal fires flared higher. “You have ten seconds to get out of here. After that, I start taking you apart.”
“*********!”
Tisiphone stalked forward and the spinnerette retreated. "*********?” Then she was gone, fading away in a bubble of blue light.
“OK, that tears it,” I said. “We’ve got to find out what those things are up to.”
Melchior raised an eyebrow. “So, when exactly do you plan to slip that into our schedule?”
He had a point. We were already overbooked—what with having to design or steal a new chipset for Melchior’s upgrade and only days to do it in.
“I’ll look into it,” said Tisiphone. “I’m not going to be much help with the upgrades, and I want to have a word with that thing or its boss anyway.” She paused and sniffed the air, then smiled gleefully. “I’d better get going while the trail’s fresh. Oh, this will be fun.”
She sliced a hole in reality and plunged through.
“Not much for long good-byes, is she?” asked Melchior. “No smoochies or anything. You sure do have a fine eye for the romantics.”
“Mel?”
“Yeah.”
“Shove it.”
He grinned and, somewhat ruefully, I grinned back. As usual, he had a point. Tisiphone was a challenging lover on all sorts of levels, witness her treatment of Cerice.

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