WebMage

by Kelly McCullough

  The door opened in front of us, and a tall, lean man gestured for us to enter. He wore a long, gray robe made of some harsh fabric.

  "Take us to the abbot," ordered Lachesis.

  The monk nodded, then turned and led us down a cold stone hallway. The mildew smell of damp stone warred for control of the air with the sharper salt tones of the sea breeze that whistled through every crack. Fluorescent lights were mounted to brackets in the walls at intervals of about fifteen feet, connected by lines of half-inch conduit that twisted along the surface like galvanized steel asps. Larger cousins of these metal snakes ran in thick profusion on the ceiling. At regular intervals fast wireless hubs sprouted from the mass.

  A few short minutes later we were escorted into the abbot's office. It was a large room, but plain. The furniture was all oak and looked as though it had been there for a thousand years and would probably still be there in another thousand. The abbot looked up from where he was scanning long lines of code on a sparkling new Sun workstation.

  "Welcome, your Worship." He bowed to my grandmother, and she inclined her head in acknowledgment. "Is this him?" he asked, with a sort of sad contempt.

  "Yes," said Lachesis. "Though I'm not yet sure if he'll be joining you. It may be that after he has a look around, he'll be less reckless in his behavior."

  "Let us hope so," said the abbot. "I am always glad to help the young men who are brought to us. But it would be a better world if this service we render to the Powers and Incarnations were unnecessary. Brother Torvalds, please conduct this man around the facility while I speak with Fate."

  In the next ten minutes, I got a mighty good look at what my own personal purgatory might look like if I weren't careful. It was clear that when Lachesis had threatened me with a monastery school, I hadn't taken her seriously enough.

  Each student was assigned a windowless cubicle, ten by ten by ten, with a low pallet, a tiny wardrobe, a small bookshelf, and a desk with a straight-backed wooden chair. Each cubicle also had a network port, but according to the brochure Brother Torvalds gave me, it only connected to the local area net. The only web access was through a group of computers in a common area off the dining hall and was closely supervised by the monks.

  The dining hall itself was a long, low room filled with stone tables and matching benches. When I gestured a question at Torvalds about the food, he looked like a kicked basset hound. The thing that really stayed with me, however, was the communal bathrooms. Each doorless shower had only one faucet handle, and not the kind that starts out cold, then gets warm. The toilet consisted of a long marble slab with holes every few feet.

  I was convinced. I did not want to spend even one semester here. Even the prospect of being murdered by my great-aunt Atropos suddenly seemed less scary than it had only hours earlier. On the way to the abbot's office, we passed a line of monks making their way to the chapel. They were chanting in classical Gregorian style.

  "One one oh one oh oh one one oh one," and so on. It was downright creepy.

  "Did you find that instructive?" asked Lachesis, when we returned to the abbot's office. I bobbed my head vigorously. "Good. Then we may return to your current school."

  Brother Torvalds led us back to the gate. From there we quickly reversed the journey that had brought us to this little gray outpost of the abyss. As the Up link returned us to my room, I felt the power of my grandmother's binding spell release its hold on my tongue. She obviously felt it as well because, once again, she gestured for me to keep my mouth closed.

  "Bide a while yet in silence, grandson. I can see how you feel about Saint Turing's. Your eyes speak more eloquently on the subject than ever your mouth could. You don't want to go there, and I don't want to send you. But that's exactly what will happen if you continue down the path you've chosen. It was only by a whisker that I saved you from Atropos's shears. If I didn't believe you would someday be worth every effort I expended on your behalf, I'd as soon have cut you off myself rather than suffer the embarrassment you caused me then. But all of the potential I see in you will have been wasted if you can't learn self-discipline."

  She shook her head sadly. "But you won't learn it at the monastery. If I thought for a moment that would work, you'd already have started your academic career at Saint Turing's. But discipline applied from the outside is not the same thing at all." She shook her head again in a way that clearly conveyed her disappointment. "I'm not entirely sure that you can master it. However, I feel there is a slim chance that the threat of the monastery might supply you with the right motivation to learn at least some part of the lesson. So, here are the conditions you will abide by if you don't wish to find yourself locked up with the other delinquents. You will finish out this semester. You will do it with a 4.0 grade-point average. And you will not do any hacking in that time. To give you a little help with that last, I will be placing strict limits on your mweb access."

  Crossing to the place where Melchior stood statue-still, Lachesis placed a hand firmly on his bald blue head and whistled a quick string of hex.

  "I want to see you rescheduling your midterms today, Ravirn. If I don't, you'll be moving into Saint Turing's tomorrow. Don't make me regret the decision to leave you here. Now, is there anything you want to say to me?"

  That I didn't break into Atropos.web on a lark, I thought. That even as we speak she's probably plotting her next attempt on my life. That Atropos is trying to overthrow the balance between Chaos and Order. But I didn't say any of it. How could I? Atropos's curse lurked in the back of my throat, just waiting to exert its malign influence on every word I spoke against her.

  "Only that I won't let you down whatever happens," I finally said, straightening my shoulders. That was a promise I felt I could keep, even if I didn't do it in the way she might expect. She nodded once, acknowledging my words.

  "See that you don't, grandson."

  Then she whistled the spell that reactivated her ltp link. As she was about to step into the light she spoke again, "Believe it or not, Ravirn, I'm fond of you. Or perhaps, what I should say is that I'm fond of the man you might someday become if you ever get around to growing up."

  "Grandmother," I said, on a sudden impulse.

  "Yes?"

  "Thank you."

  "You're welcome," she said, with a half smile, before vanishing with the light.

  As soon as she was gone, Melchior collapsed. I quickly moved to his side, and started rubbing his limbs, knowing how stiff and sore he must be. He was soaked with sweat and smelled like a soggy spice jar. . "Are you OK?" I asked.

  "Yeah, I'm just bloody dandy. Four hours frozen in place while your grandmother took you off to who knows where. Every minute of which, by the way, I spent worrying that Rod would revive from his alcoholic stupor, or that one of his yahoo buddies would show up. Then, when you finally do come back, Lachesis uses her authority as system administrator and matriarch of your family to whistle a bunch of untested code into my head. I've never felt better. How the hell are you?"

  "Calm down, Mel. I haven't been having the time of my life either. I've just been on a field trip to hacker hell, which is going to be our new home if I don't ace this entire semester."

  "What?" His voice whined like a hard drive about to frag itself in a particularly spectacular fashion. "Why didn't your grandmother just nail your feet to the floor? Atropos wants to kill you, and Lachesis orders you to stay in one place and play target for two months. We were only stopping home to pick up a few things. We weren't supposed to actually stay here."

  "It's all right, Mel. We'll survive."

  Melchior snorted and shook his head. "You'll be lucky to live out the week."

  I shrugged my shoulders glumly. It wasn't as though I disagreed with him.

  * * * *

  I spent the next day apologizing to my various professors and begging them to let me take makeup exams. Two of my profs agreed to my request, but only if I took their tests on the spot. A third handed me a really ugly take-home exam with a one
-week deadline. The fourth gave me an extension on the paper I owed her, but demanded I have it in her office by the time she arrived the next morning. She was an early riser, so I finished the paper that night, and slid it under her door around four-forty in the morning. Afterward I fell exhausted into my bed without having done a thing about Atropos.

  But in direct contradiction to Melchior's dire prediction, the next week went by without a single attempt on my life. So did the following one. I even got caught up on my homework. I only had one significant problem. I couldn't get in touch with Cerice. The spell my grandmother had put on Melchior to prevent me from hacking via the mweb also kept me from sending e-mail between worlds. As days sped past with no contact, I imagined her getting madder and madder and I felt like a complete rat. There had to be something I could do. The question was what.

  I was worrying at the problem as I walked to my differential equations class in my third week back. An early blizzard had arrived the night before and was still going full force. Visibility was terrible and the mall was almost empty. I was just passing the pillars of Ford Hall on my way to Vincent when something caused me to look up. I found myself eye-to-eye with a hideously distorted face. It was perhaps fifteen feet away and closing fast. Loose folds of dead gray skin almost buried its eyes. Beneath was a broad flat nose and a huge round mouth.

  While my brain was trying to make sense of this, my reflexes kicked in. Slapping a palm against the nearest pillar, I pushed as hard as I could. Since the building wasn't going anywhere, I ended up throwing myself backwards just as the heavy stone gargoyle dropped into the space I had so recently occupied. It brushed against the tips of my out-thrust fingers, tearing skin and numbing my hand and half my forearm. It also spun me halfway around.

  Still spinning, I curled my body into a tight ball and tried to turn the fall into a controlled tumble. But my book bag got in the way, and I ended up landing hard on my back as the bits of stone that were all that remained of the gargoyle rained down around me. If it hadn't been for the snow I might have broken my tailbone.

  It felt like hours before I was able to roll over and get to my feet, but it couldn't have been more than a few seconds, because the gawkers that always seem magically to appear around the site of any accident hadn't yet arrived.

  That suited me fine. I was already on academic probation as a result of the broken windows in my room and missed class time. In addition, I'd had a number of long discussions with the campus cops and the Dean of Students on the subject of how the front hall of the Weisman got trashed. They would have expelled me if Ravi Latcher's grandmother hadn't been a major donor, or if they'd had even a shred of proof. I suspected that having further destruction of university property linked to my name, even if I was clearly the victim in this case, might be enough to prematurely end my academic year and send me to Saint Turing's.

  I hurried on to Vincent, where I sat through the whole lecture and even took notes. But I have no memory of what was taught, and it wasn't until the students for the next hour started to file in that I realized class was over. Then I got up and walked dazedly back to my room in Comstock and crawled into bed. An hour later, memory brought me awake in a cold sweat. Ford Hall doesn't have gargoyles.

  I got an e-mail from Cerice the next morning. She was wondering why I hadn't gotten in touch. She was not very happy with me. I didn't blame her, and I told her so in my response. The problem came when I ordered Melchior to send it.

  "Error," he replied. "Cross-locus smtp server not available. Tried to send. Local processor responded User Ravirn 001 Access denied. For more information see sent messages log."

  "I can't even reply to someone else's cross-locus message? Lachesis couldn't have intended that. It means I won't be able to respond to her either."

  "Sorry, Boss," said Melchior. "But all outgoing messages get routed the same way regardless of whether they're totally new or replies. You should know that."

  "I do. I guess I just hadn't thought it through. Chaos and Discord! How am I going to let Cerice know what's up?" My life was getting more joyful by the minute. "She'll think I'm deliberately dodging her, when the actual problem is that the Fates are quite literally conspiring against me."

  I stood up and began to pace. I wasn't entirely sure where Cerice and I might be going, or even where I wanted us to go, but I knew that if she thought I was blowing her off, it'd be a mighty short trip. It was yet another problem to add to my ever-growing list. I wanted to scream. I decided to take a walk instead. Maybe I could think of something along the way.

  "Melchior, Laptop. Execute." He folded and compressed until he was back in computer mode, and I scooped him into my bag.

  There had to be something I could do about Cerice and my other troubles. But what? I meandered past Coffman Union and out onto the mall. It was cold and dark, a perfect accompaniment to my mood, and the icy wind was flat and lifeless, with only exhaust fumes and the occasional bit of sidestream cigarette smoke to flavor it. The temperature had frozen all the moisture out of the air, leaving it too dry to carry subtler smells.

  It wasn't until I made the long climb up the stairs in the dorm that I thought of something. I avoided the elevators because someone might have some clever ideas about cables and metal cutters. The plan occurred to me as I passed the fourth floor. That gave me plenty of time to think on my way to twenty. It seemed like a bad idea and possibly ineffective then, and it wasn't any better when I reached my room, but it was the only idea I had.

  * * * *

  "This is crazy," said Melchior, his voice dripping with disapproval as he peered at me out of the open top of my shoulder bag.

  "Tell me something I don't know," I replied before I dropped the last couple of feet, landing lightly on the dead, snow-dusted grass.

  We were on a tiny island in the Mississippi. Oval, and perhaps fifteen feet by twenty-five, it was mostly filled by the support pier of an aging railroad bridge. Even with the previous day's blizzard, the sheltering bulk of the stone pier and the deck of the bridge overhead kept the island largely free of drifts. Darkness and gently falling snow provided a curtain that hid the city around us from view. Cold black water rushed by on both sides, gurgling and sighing to itself, muffling the sounds of the urban landscape. Completely isolated, the island was ideal for my purposes.

  "You could wait until she comes to you," said Mel. He had his little hands stuffed in his armpits to keep warm.

  "If she comes to me, Mel, not when. And that's a big if. You read the e-mail. Cerice is mad already, and no doubt getting madder with every passing hour that I don't respond. Responsibility is not a word that has been associated with my name on a very regular basis."

  "You can say that again," Melchior affirmed.

  "See. If everyone agrees I'm irresponsible, even my familiar—"

  "Especially your familiar." I shot him a nasty look, but it slid off like water off hot Teflon. "OK," said Melchior. "I see your point. But I still think this is cracked. We're talking pure raw magic here, not code. It's very chancy stuff."

  "Objection noted, Mel. But by the time I've got full mweb access again it might be too late to explain myself. For that matter, I might not live that long." I started pacing back and forth across the confined space.

  "Excuse me for asking, but isn't the Cassandra curse going to cause you some problems in the explanation department?"

  I sighed. It was a good point. Unfortunately, I hadn't yet figured out what to do about it. "I expect it will make this almost impossible," I said. "But I've still got to try. Look, this is about more than my relationship with Cerice."

  Melchior raised a skeptical eyebrow at me.

  "It is," I said, though I wondered if he wasn't right. "She's important to me. Very important, even. But more than that, somebody besides thee and me needs to know what's going on with Atropos."

  "Wetware," said Melchior with a sniff. "Can't live with 'em. Can't debug 'em. If that's what you want to believe about your motives, nothing I say is goi
ng to change it."

  If I'd had a good response I'd have made it. Instead, I said, "Oh, shut up and pass me the athame."

  The webgoblin sighed and shook his head, but handed over the slim dagger. With a blade only five inches long and less than a quarter of an inch across, it looked like a letter opener. But no letter opener was ever as sharp as that little knife. Made of magically hardened iron to maximize its affinity for blood, the athame made my father's straight razor look dull.

  It was so sharp that I felt only the slightest dragging sensation as I ran it lightly across the palm of my left hand. However, bright blood immediately welled up and soon filled my cupped palm. Before it could overflow, I took a length of hemp rope and slowly and methodically worked my hand along its entire length, staining it rusty red. When I was done, I whistled the short spell that closed athame-inflicted wounds.

  I spliced the two ends of the rope together with a marlinespike, making a continuous loop, and placed it in a rough circle on the brown grass. The next step was very scary. It involved playing with the primal chaos again, and I didn't like the idea.

  My earliest ancestors, the Titans, formed themselves from the stuff using nothing but their own demiurge, but the Titan blood runs thin in my veins. It's been diluted over the generations. Still, it was the link formed by that descent that I called on to open a tiny hole between the ordered frame of my current Decision Locus and the churning stuff between the worlds.

  Like the ocean pouring through a break in the tide wall of reality, pure chaos rushed into the gap. But I had judged things carefully, and the way was only open for a microsecond. An enormous, but tightly focused and finite, burst of raw energy poured into the endless loop of my bloodstained rope. It struck about six inches from the splice and raced around the circle, crumpling the hemp into a line of charred ash behind it. I held my breath as the chaos charge came around to the splice, but it jumped across without hesitating.