WebMage (33 page)

"Maybe." She grinned.

"Ravirn's going to throw his idiotic life away trying to bust Cerice loose, and you're cracking jokes?" asked Melchior. "How can you do that at a time like this?"

"How could I not?" asked Ahllan.

"She's right, Mel. It doesn't make any difference in the end result, but isn't it better to go to the block laughing rather than crying?"

"No!" snapped Melchior. "You shouldn't go to the block at all. And if you do go, you should snarl and claw the whole way, and spit in the executioner's eye before he swings the blade."

"All that does is raise your blood pressure," I said. "That's no good."

"Why not?" he responded. "It's not like the axe isn't going to lower it right back again."

"Point taken, Mel," I sighed. "But none of this is releasing Cerice from durance vile. Why don't we get this program running before my nerve breaks?"

It was a valid concern. I might believe I had a moral obligation to substitute my neck in the noose for Cerice's. Actually, there was no might about it. Moral considerations aside, I knew now that loved her. If I could buy her life at the cost of mine, it was a bargain.

That didn't mean the prospect left me unmoved. It scared me beyond the capacity for rational thought. Still, I couldn't see any way around it as things stood. And I didn't think the Fates were going to give me a whole lot of time to concoct a better plan. For that matter, with my right knee shot, my left arm mostly useless, and the pile of other injuries I'd acquired along the way, I was in no shape to pull off a strenuous rescue.

"Mel, I'm sorry. Powers know I don't want to do this, but I can't see any other options. I need your support, now more than I've ever needed it before."

"Dammit, that's not fair," he said. "My job has always been to get your ass out of the fire. Now you want me to support you putting it in? I just can't do it." He turned away, and half swam, half flew to the bench where Shara lay.

"He'll come around," said Ahllan. "Just give him a little time."

"Ahllan, I don't have a little time. I should be gone already."

"No, you should not. There are a number of preparations to make first. You have to have a binding deal with the Fates before you surrender yourself into their power. Otherwise, you might just as well not go for all the good it will do Cerice. Frankly, I don't know how you're going to be able to trust a word they say."

"Actually, I think I've got a solution to the reliability problem," I said. "The trick is going to be establishing a secure channel of communication, one that doesn't just let them backtrace me and scoop me up."

"There, I can help. Atropos is the one who thought up these bubble gates. She did it to have a secure retreat. There's no way to get here without knowing the exact location and gate formula, and since we're bouncing around in the primal chaos those change on a minute-to-minute basis. I built this one right after Shara revealed me to Cerice. I knew I might need another bolt-hole one day."

"If that's the case, why don't we begin?"

"Not quite yet," said the Troll. "Melchior was right about one thing. You should have a second look at Orion before you go. It'll give you another bargaining chip, and if you can fix it quickly, you can leave a copy here for me to send to Tyche. The girl
is
powerful, but a complete scatterbrain. If Eris couldn't make the spell work, Tyche never will. She'll need a corrected version if she's going to accomplish anything."

"All right," I said. "But I shouldn't give it more than an hour."

"Agreed. I think the primary reason the Fates took Cerice was to draw you in. As long as they believe you'll come for her, Cerice should be safe enough. But if you don't take the bait quickly, they may try to up the pressure."

"Mel," I said, "are you willing to take one last ride with me? I want to look at Orion."

He turned back to face me. "All right."

A few minutes later I once again slid into Orion's complex architecture. This time though, I knew what to look for. With a virtual Melchior at my side, I dived deep into the angular logic of the code. The flaw was right where I remembered, and it was the work of seconds to extend my consciousness into it. Using cracking tools coded long ago, Melchior and I broke the fissure wide open. The subroutine thus revealed was like an origami crane with a broken wing. Together we carefully unfolded it, looking for the critical mistake that prevented its proper functioning.

It was a simple thing really, a tiny loop of logic that forced the spell to write and rewrite the same bit of data over and over again. Worse, if it
did
ever manage to move on, it would do the same for each location searched. Under normal circumstances, that would have caused an overflow of the spell's memory resources, an error that would have caught Eris's attention. In this case however, it didn't blow the memory's capacity. Instead, it dug a self-perpetuating pit in one tiny part of it, a much more subtle problem.

The patch we put on the spell didn't really fix the problem. I wasn't a good enough programmer to remaster Eris's intricate work. Instead, it did what most of my code did; it jury-rigged a work-around. Now, when the program hit the flawed subroutine, it would go through once, necessary for the proper function of the spell, then the patch would kick the write function on to the next data band. It worked a bit like tapping the side of CD player to make it skip.

When we finished, I had Mel copy a duplicate of the patched program to his DASD memory. It pretty much absorbed all of his free space, but he could hold it. Then I popped out Eris's crystal, loaded a blank one provided by Ahllan, and burned a new copy.

"There you go," I said, holding the spell up for Ahllan to look at. "No matter what happens to me now, there's a way to pull the source code on Puppeteer."

"That still doesn't provide us with a counterspell," said Melchior. "From what Eris said about the way these things work, the second Orion is ran, it'll be like goosing Atropos and the other Fates. They're going to know Puppeteer is in the hands of the enemy, and they're going to be furious. Unless someone can code a counter pretty damn quickly at that point, things are likely to get very ugly. With neither you nor Eris available for that duty, there isn't going to be a whole lot of point. If Ahllan is right, Tyche isn't going to be much help."

"Get Cerice to do it," I replied. "I may be able to out-hack her, but as far as straight coding is concerned, she's better than I'll ever be." I handed the crystal to Ahllan. "See that it gets to whoever needs it."

"I will," she said. "In exchange, I've got a couple of things for you." Seemingly from nowhere she produced an intimidating-looking device that was all leather and chrome.

"What is it?" I asked.

"An orthopedic knee brace. After your refusal to get your leg properly fixed the first time you collapsed on my doorstep, I did a little shopping. I had a feeling you might need this eventually. It's not exactly like armoring you for battle, but it's similar," she said, bending down to put it on me.

I examined the brace while Ahllan strapped it in place. It was an articulated leather sleeve that strapped around the leg. Two pneumatic pistons ran from just above the joint to just below it, one on the inside of the leg, the other on the outside. They looked rather like the devices that hold the hatchback of a car open. It wasn't pretty, but it would keep my weight off the joint. When she was done, she handed me a cane. Its shaft was a highly polished cylinder of ebony, its head a perfect sphere of emerald glass.

"Thank you," I said. "You've saved me a serious indignity. I wasn't looking forward to arriving at the Temple of Fate using a wheelchair."

"Bad bargaining position," she said, "to say nothing of how much harder it would be to make a break for it should you get the chance."

"Not likely, but I'll keep it in mind. Now, if you'll provide me with a link, I've a call to make."

"Certainly." Her eyes began to glow.

"Wait," interjected Melchior. "I'll do it." His voice was thick with emotion.

"Thank you, Mel. It means a lot."

"You're welcome," he replied. "I have a condition though."

"What's that?" I asked.

"I want you to take me with you."

"I can't do that," I said. "The price is high enough already."

"It's far
too
high, if you ask me, but that's not what I meant. I'm planning on coming back. One of us doing the noble sacrifice routine is more than enough. Cerice may not know about Shara, and I don't want to think about how she's going to respond when she finds out about you. Someone's going to need to be there for her, if for no other reason than to give her a ride. I expect she'd rather not rely on the good graces of the Fates for that. So I'll be coming, too. You can negotiate my free passage when you make your deal."

"That's fair," I said. "Ahllan, is there anything special we need to do to make a visual transfer protocol link from here untraceable? Or does the nature of the bubble do everything for us?"

"There's a little more to it than that, but Melchior knows what to do."

"In that case; Melchior, Vlink; [email protected] to [email protected] Please." That "please" was feeling more natural all the time. It was too bad I wasn't going to be around long enough for it to become routine.

"Connecting to the mweb," said Melchior, his voice flat and abstracted. "Searching for phalla.troll. Connect. Communicating with host. Link established."

Light burst from Melchior's mouth and eyes, shaping itself into a three-dimensional image of my grandmother. From out of a set face, Fate's eyes glared at me. Only this time, there was a difference in that gaze. Where in the past they'd always seemed all-knowing, and all-judging, there was now a chink in that icy certainty, a faint hint that there were things beyond their power to predict. In tandem with that, there was a deep and abiding anger directed at the source of the uncertainty.

It was a strange sight, made stranger by the fact that it was aimed at me. Eris's virus had rendered me a man without a destiny. There was no way for the Fates to know exactly what I would do now. It gave me a bittersweet sense of power. For perhaps the first time in my life I was truly independent of my family's authority. At the same time, it severed a safety line I'd never really realized was there, a sort of invisible security blanket, and I knew I'd never be able to get it back. I suppose all normal children go through the same sort of thing when they finally strike out on their own, but it was not something I'd been prepared for, growing up in the house of Fate.

For one brief, agonizing moment I wanted to ask my grandmother to make everything better, to make it all not have happened. But it was too late for that. My own choices and those of the Fates had opened a gulf between my grandmother and me that could never be wholly bridged. Still, I felt my throat choked with tears unshed.

" 'How sharper than a serpent's tooth' to have a thankless grandson," said Lachesis, her voice a silken, strangling cord.

The quote was exactly what I needed. It hurt, but it also made me mad. As anger rose to drive back sorrow, I found my voice. "Spare me the Shakespearean dramatics, Grandmother. It was Atropos who set my feet on this path, not lack of gratitude. I share the fault, of course, but so, I think, do you. Or am I wrong in believing that you knew of her plans before I did?"

"Where did you hear that?" said Lachesis.

"From Discord," I replied, noting she hadn't denied the accusation.

"And you believed the goddess of strife?" she asked, again avoiding an answer.

"I did," I said, "but based on logic, not persuasion. You needn't deny it. For that matter, it really doesn't matter whether you confirm it. Either way, I'm convinced of the truth of the matter."

"You've grown, boy," said my grandmother. "But not in the way I'd hoped. You have failed in your loyalty to the interests of Fate. I should have been more firm in my discipline. Then you might have made the proper choice when Atropos made her offer."

I took a deep breath before speaking again, but my voice came out ragged anyway. "You did know."

She nodded. I was absolutely certain .Lachesis knew about Puppeteer, but it still hurt to have it confirmed.

"I made the only choice I could," I said after a moment.

"No," said my grandmother. "You could have put your family first."

"I did," I said. "I chose every one of them who isn't a Fate. There are only the three of you, and there are several hundred of us. I also opted for the interests of all of the other countless souls out there who would have ended up dangling like puppets from your fingers."

"Never puppets," replied Lachesis. "Errant children rather. Children who need a bit of firm guidance. Just as you do." She shook her head sadly. "If only Atropos had come to me first, I might have been able to present the thing to you in its proper light. She has always been too sure of her methods. And now, you're ruined. How can I bring you back to your senses?"

"I've never left them," I said. "Everything I've done, I've done with my eyes wide open. But none of that really matters. It's all in the past, and I've called you to discuss the present. I have a proposition for you."

"What is it?" she asked. Her voice shifted instantly from soft lament to businesslike efficiency, making me doubt the sincerity of the former.

"You have something I want very badly."

"Cerice, you mean?"

"Yes," I said.

"But she is in the care of her grandmother," replied Lachesis. "What better place for her could there be?"

"Almost anywhere," I responded. "I want to buy her freedom."

"I don't know if that's possible," said Lachesis. "She seems to have been infected by the virus of rebellion, for which I hold you responsible. She needs to be cured or quarantined."

"Killed or imprisoned, you mean," I said.

"Your words, not mine," replied Lachesis.

"I note you don't deny them. But, again, that doesn't matter. What does is that I have something you want even more than Cerice."

"And what might that be?" she asked.