Cybermancy (20 page)

“Well?” asked Eris. “I’m waiting.”

“I’ll help.”

I didn’t add that my motives had very little to do with helping her out and were much more about satisfying my own concerns and curiosity, not to mention finding Ahllan. With Eris backing me, I had a far better chance of hacking my way to the truth than I would on my own.

“You’re such a good boy,” she said. “It just makes me want to give you a big wet kiss.” Without crossing the intervening distance she stood above me. Slowly, ever so slowly, she leaned down and put a hand on each arm of my chair, giving me a very clear view down the front of her camisole. “What do you say?”

“That I wish you wouldn’t do that sort of thing,” I said, closing my eyes and turning my head to one side. It was not easy, but it was necessary.

“Pity,” she whispered, moving even closer and taking the pointed tip of my ear gently between her teeth. “But if you insist.”

“—about had it with you!” said Cerice from beyond Eris, finishing the sentence she’d begun so long ago. Then, “What the fuck is going on here!”

Eris stood up and made a show of adjusting her clothes. I put my face in my hands.

“Discord,” I said through my fingers. “That’s what’s going on.” I dropped my hands and glared at Eris. “Can’t you ever give it a rest?”

“No,” she said, and I caught just an echo of her earlier pain, “I can’t. Not for one single second. Now, we have
work
to do.”

The boardroom was gone, replaced by a tile-floored computer center. The big square tiles were all gleaming white and mirrored the grid of the dropped ceiling above. Aluminum racks stood along the walls, each with several large golden apples mounted within and wires trailing down through holes cut into the tiles. Between racks were numerous Formica-topped tables strewn with the electronic detritus typical of labs and equipment rooms everywhere. A faint background hiss whispered of fans that kept the space beneath the floors at a constant positive pressure. A bank of uninterruptible power supplies stood in one corner. In other words, in every respect but one it mimicked the typical corporate computing center. Eris drew attention to that anomaly with a tap of one long black-and-gold-painted fingernail. The big metallic apple rang hollowly in response.

“Multicore Macintosh servers set into my own special case mods,” said Eris. “They’re all cross-linked like a Beowulf cluster, only better since I use my own custom operating software to maximize performance. I call the result a Grendel group.”

“Hold on a second,” said Cerice, stomping over to stand in front of Eris. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“About what was going on?” asked Eris, her voice deceptively sweet. “I thought Ravirn covered it pretty well: Discord.”

“And the part where you paralyzed us?
You know, when we couldn’t move, but we could hear every vicious word you said?”

I was glad Cerice was looking the other way, because though I managed not to say it aloud, I could feel my mouth shaping the words,
oh shit
. So Eris had given me a lecture on why I should dump Cerice right in front of her.
Thank you, Discord.

“What about it?” asked
Eris.
“I didn’t say anything I didn’t want you to hear, child.”

Cerice’s cheeks reddened as though she’d been slapped. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Shara and Melchior ducking under a table. I wished I could join them.

“He is a power,” said Eris. “You are not. The relationship is a risk to you both. Besides, as Tisiphone pointed out so succinctly, you haven’t got a claim.”

“Is that why you were nibbling on his ear?” snapped Cerice.
“Because I haven’t got a claim?
Or is it just that you’re an unmitigated bitch?”

“Oh, the latter definitely.
I’m really only interested in romance as far as it generates outbursts like your current one. Tisiphone, on the other hand, has had quite a sweet spot for the boy since she met him.”

“Oh, she has, has she?” Cerice whirled to glare at me. “And why haven’t you mentioned this before? Who else is sweet on you?
Persephone?
She certainly went out of her way to help you out.”

I’d about had it. “Cerice, I love you, and I owe you my life several times over, but I really don’t like you very much at the moment.” Melchior hissed under the table. “I don’t think I’ve ever given you any reason to doubt my affections. Shit, I just went to Hades and back for the sake of your thesis.”

That wasn’t entirely the case, since my friendship with Shara had played at least as big a role, but her “no one’s lady” comment had hurt, and I was tired of being fair.

“Despite all of that,” I continued, “you won’t, as Tisiphone put it, admit a claim. So why the
hell do
you feel you have the right to get mad at me when some other woman expresses interest in me?” I was yelling now.
“Especially when I haven’t done anything to encourage it?”

“I—” Cerice’s voice started loud, but sank quickly to a whisper. “I—I don’t have that right, do I? Not really. Eris is probably right about Tisiphone, too.” She closed her eyes and fisted her hands for a long moment. “She certainly couldn’t be any worse for you than I’ve been lately. I’m sorry.”

Without another word, she went out the door. I started after her, but Shara caught the cuff of my leathers.

“Let her be. She’s earned some wallowing time.”

“I—” I stopped, and faced Shara. “What do you mean?”

“That she’s been dumping shit all over you since the day I got back.” She took a shaky breath. “I love Cerice. She’s my best friend, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to her faults. The way she’s been treating you lately is a big one. If you two are ever going to work things out, Cerice is going to have to face that. She won’t do it if you keep apologizing every time she has a hissy fit.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, looking after Cerice. It was hard not to follow her, hard to see her hurting even if she’d brought it on herself.

Shara nodded,
then
turned away. “Unpleasant truths have to be faced sooner or later.” The words were almost a whisper, and I didn’t think she was really talking to me. “You can’t get away from yourself, no matter how fast you run.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I went to join Eris at the server rack. “When do you want to start?”

“Now works for me.” She opened her hands. Each held a slender athame, its cable extending into one of the golden apple servers.

“I think I’ll use mine and jack in via Melchior if possible.”

“Good enough,” said Eris. The athame in her left hand vanished, leaving only the cable with its network connector.

“Melchior, you up for this?”

He glanced at Shara, who had returned to a place under the table, where she sat with her back against the wall and her chin resting on her drawn-up knees. She made a vague shooing gesture, and Melchior joined us, hopping up onto the low table beside the rack. He gave Eris a sidelong glance.

“What will your role be?”

“Support,” said the goddess. “I’ve already had a couple of goes without any success. I, and Grendel here”—she patted the rack—“are just here to provide computing muscle.”

“All right,
then
let’s do it.” Melchior melted quickly into his laptop shape.
Whenever you’re ready.

I plugged Eris’s cable into one of his networking ports, then pulled out my athame and attached its cable to a second port in his side. I studied that slender blade for a long moment, holding it point down above my palm and thinking about what it meant.

For jacking in, a hard connection from body to computer still remained the best way. A wireless hookup didn’t have the same resonance with the life thread, or the silver cord, as it was sometimes referred to in fluffy New Age circles. Whatever you called it, the strand that Clotho spun for you at your birth embodied the vital essence of your soul, your anima. The house of the anima in the body was the bloodstream, the internal network that pumped life with every heartbeat. The athame and the cable attached to it provided a symbolic and sorcerous link to a node on the mweb, in this case Melchior, and through him to the network that connected the infinity of possible worlds.

Of course, all of that was just a way of keeping my mind on something other than how much the whole process hurt. It didn’t really help much. With a sigh and a grimace, I stabbed the blade through my hand,
then
surfed the bitter wave of pain into the world of the mweb.

I arrived in a small room wallpapered with pebbled blue leather. There was only one exit, a wide-open and jagged-framed window overlooking an orchard. Stepping close to the window, I could see a thousand identically rendered trees standing in neat geometric rows. Each tree had a set of six hexalaterally symmetric branches dripping with golden apples. The symmetry repeated itself in the roots and the placement of the fruit.

It all had the eerie unreal feel of a poorly thought-out video game. You know the kind, where the programmer rendered one side of one tree, then got bored with the process and just duplicated that single side over and over again in a total failure of imagination. An average three-year-old with the most rudimentary of computer skills would have done better. It seemed utterly unlike anything Eris could have had a hand in, yet I knew I stood on the threshold of her server farm.

With deep misgivings I said, “Melchior, Red Carpet. Please.”

The window opened even wider, and a long roll of lush carpeting appeared in front of me. It quickly unrolled itself, forming a bridge to the orchard, a bridge whose far end opened in a split like a snake’s forked tongue. As I started across, I paused a moment to look back. Melchior’s head towered above me, his tongue providing the carpet I now walked.

“Show-off,” I whispered. The giant face winked an eye at me.

When I reached the end of the carpet, I extended a foot above the flat green field that stretched between the trees. It looked more like a fuzzy bath mat than a lawn. At least it did until I stepped onto it. At that moment many things happened all at once.

The green sheet began to bubble and eddy like antifreeze in an overheated car. To the touch it remained solid. I could feel the occasional bubble press against the bottom of my booted feet, like a rock suddenly growing beneath me—but to all outward appearances it had become a liquid.

The trees started a slow and chaotic dance, slipping from their rigid positioning into an ever-changing geometric relationship that owed very little to the simple shapes of Euclid’s imagination. They also lost their symmetry, twisting and growing into gnarled forms straight out of some cautionary Grimmsian fairy tale. The apples themselves became detached from the branches, though they remained clustered around the trees in thick clouds, glowing now like a swarm of mating fireflies.

“Like it?” a voice whispered in my ear.

I jumped a good thirty feet into the air, unbound as I was by physical restraints. Turning, I flew back down to land beside Eris, who now wore a black-and-gold dress with a huge train that twisted off between the trees.

“Don’t do that! You just about scared me out of my skin.”

“I was hoping that I might,” she said, with a wicked smile. “I thought it might prove enlightening. Or failing that, entertaining. Sso, sshall we be going?” she asked, her voice taking on a sort of hissing undertone.

“I thought you were just providing backup.”

“That, and transsportation.”
She twisted suddenly, and a portion of the train of her dress slid around in an s-curve, bumping against my calf.

It felt a lot more substantial than any dress should have, and I looked down to find that the portion touching my leg had a saddle straddling it. Only in that instant did I realize it wasn’t a dress. An enormous snake’s body descended from Eris’s torso and trailed out behind her.

“You’re not serious,” I said.
“A lamia?”

“You’re going on a quest. That means you need a loyal steed, and this sounded like more fun than a sphinx. Hop on, and we can get going.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Oh come on, it’ll be fun. How often are you going to get the chance to ride a goddess? Barring coming to your senses about Tisiphone, that is.” She licked her lips with her now-forked tongue. “Look, you can argue all you want. In fact, I’d enjoy it. I live to argue. But this
is
the best way for me to accompany you. We both know you’re going to get in that saddle eventually, so why not just admit it and enjoy the ride.”

“All right.
Melchior?”

“Here, Boss.” A tiny blue bat with Melchior’s head on its shoulders landed on my wrist. It wasn’t the real Melchior, of course, just an icon representing his attention.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said, swinging a leg over Eris’s elongated body.

Instead of sinking into the seat as I’d intended, the saddle rose up to meet me, and stirrups slid out to catch and cradle my feet. That’s when I noticed that the saddle was actually grafted onto her body.

“Hi ho, nutjob, away,” I said very quietly, and we suddenly shot forward.

I had to throw my arms around Eris’s waist to stay on. Her flesh was warm and soft and very feminine. I tried not to think about it. We left the orchard shortly thereafter through a fat pipe that represented one of the remaining lines of the damaged mweb.