“Get off me!” it said, in Falmer's voice again. “You little parasites! Don't think this is going to help you, Golden!” Scissors snapped and clicked, shredding the smaller fairies in puffs of blue smoke.
I reached the next cage, still carrying the broken strut, and gave the wire at the front a couple of whacks to open a hole. That was enough—watching what was happening, the fairies inside grabbed the edges and tore the enclosure open.
I ran to the third cage and opened it as well, adding another wave to the tide. The puppeteer was almost invisible now under a layer of thrashing, gnawing bodies. The porcelain mask that served it for a face waved about wildly.
“Gol-Gol-Golden!” It stuttered, like skipping record. “I'll k-k-kill her!”
It staggered a step in Sarah's direction, edging around the whirring pit of knives, and struggled to raise an arm with a dozen small fairies hanging off it. There were two more cages to go, but I realized we couldn't wait any longer.
“Delphi, now!”
There was an endless pause, the trembling claw moving inch by inch toward Sarah. Then the ray gun whined, and a beam of brilliant light stabbed out and intersected with the cable holding Sarah off the ground. She dropped past the puppeteer's claw as it snapped closed and landed in a crouch at the struggling thing's feet.
“Sarah, over here!” I shouted. If I could get to her, I could pop us both out of the burrow, which ought to get her back where she belonged—
Sarah had other plans. Her eyes narrowed as the Falmer-thing shifted clumsily toward her, head bent and arms extended. She exploded from her crouch like a coiled spring, an effortless, spinning leap as graceful as a ballerina's, her hair whipping out from her head in a blonde cloud. Her movements were so graceful that it seemed almost accidental when the tip of one extended foot intersected neatly with the puppeteer's face. I heard the porcelain mask shatter with a sound like a gunshot, and it staggered backward, one step, then two, pointed feet skittering on the black glass. One leg slipped, shifted backward for balance, and slid over the edge of the pit.
The puppeteer twisted, arms snapping to try and balance itself, and let out a warbling, desperate scream. One claw tried for a hold on the black glass of the edge of the pit, but there was no halting its momentum. Pixies exploded off of it like a startled flock of starlings, jumping clear in all directions.
“G-G-G-Gol-Gol-”
The Falmer thing's front legs scraped across the glass, raising a tooth-rattling shriek that merged with its own scream. Then it was falling toward the circles of whirring blades.
Sarah landed like a cat, noiseless and graceful. She straightened up, let out a long breath, and smiled[75].
—[75] Another advantage of my current condition—when I've got some time to kill, I can run a simulation and spend a hundred subjective years studying Impressionist painting, or the violin. Or; more relevant, a couple of decades training with Bruce Lee.—
~
“You know, of course, that you're an idiot,” Sarah said in my ear.
I leaned back against the cool glass. We were sitting in Falmer's office, on the floor; I had taken one look at the chair behind the desk, with its mechanical, insectoid aspect, and shuddered. Sarah was plugged in a wall socket, slurping down power[76] as her internal fans droned.
—[76] How could he even tell if I was slurping?—
She was running a detailed system scrub to make sure every trace of the puppeteer's burrow was purged[77].
—[77] Roughly my equivalent of a long, hot bath, although in this case it would also involve going over every inch of my body inside and out with microscopic tweezers.—
“I wasn't in any real danger,” she went on. “My last backup was only seventy-two hours ago, for heaven's sake. You could have destroyed the burrow from the outside and cloned me onto a new system, and I wouldn't have lost more than three or four days.”
“You know I don't trust those things.”
We've never actually reloaded Sarah from backup. She insists that it would work, but I can't help but feel like something would be lost. I might end up with something that sounded like her, but some essential piece would be missing[78]. I'm not eager to try the experiment.
—[78] Typical meatbag thinking.—
Sarah snorted.
“I had hoped that you would rather trust the backup than get actually killed. And Delphi with you, of course. What were you planning to do if she hadn't twisted herself in?”
“I would have thought of something.”
“Or gotten your head cut off.” She made a throat-clearing noise that was, in the absence of both a throat and a need to clear it, almost astoundingly superfluous. “Still. Speaking as the version of myself that wouldn't have been around if you hadn't done it, I suppose I should thank you[79].”
—[79] Sigh. I should find whatever part of myself that's responsible for sentiments like this and edit it out.—
For a moment I wished, very badly, that she still had a body, so I could put my arm around her shoulders and ruffle her hair the way I might have done in the old days. I had to settle for a smile.
“You know I'll always be there to get you out of trouble.”
“Usually trouble you got me into in the first place. But it's good to know.”
Delphi emerged from the bathroom, one hand rubbing her eyes. Transition shock had caught up with her as soon as we'd popped back into real space, and she'd gone skittering for the toilet with one hand over her mouth. I remember that part of my first experience all too vividly.
She opened the door to Falmer's office and came inside. I waved her over, and she put her back against the wall and slid down until she was sitting beside me.
“Is it always as bad as that?” she said. “My stomach feels like I just got off a roller coaster.”
“It gets easier. Or maybe you get used to it.”
“Great. I guess I had better get used it, since I'll be looking for a new job.” She sighed. “Too bad. Apart from the boss being a carnivorous fairy, this wasn't a bad gig.”
“Actually,” I said, “I've been meaning to talk to you about that.”
Delphi cocked her head to look at me, her queue squashed against the glass. Even haggard from exhaustion and lack of sleep, she was lovely. I tried to concentrate on the matter at hand.
“We still have the problem of the SS AntiFae code. It's out there on millions of systems, and if word gets out that there's a weakness, some clever fairy on the Wildernet is going to find it. If we call in the cops and fold the company, we may end up with widespread chaos.”
“I don't think we have a choice,” Delphi said. “Falmer's gone. It's his company; you can't exactly cover that up. The investors would have a fit.”
“The interesting thing about the investors,” I said, “is that I know a lot of them. There's quite a bit of overlap between the antifae development community and the debuggers, of course, and I have friends in some interesting places. I put in a few calls before we came over here.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What are you planning, John Golden?”
“How would you like to run the company?”
“What?”
“We'll put it out that Falmer died in an accident, and the investors tapped you. My friends can walk you through PR stuff. The important thing is that someone has to manage the new release of SS AntiFae, rip out all the fairy code, and make sure everybody upgrades.”
“Everybody never upgrades,” Delphi muttered. “There's always some guy running Windows 3.1 on a slide rule or something.”
“Nearly everybody. You know what I mean.”
“All right. Why me?”
“Who else?” I said. “My friends trust me, and I trust you to get the job done right. You'll need to stick with it for at least a year. After that, you can keep at it, find a new job, or set up shop as a debugger.” I grinned. “I'll be happy to provide a reference, if you need one.”
There was a long pause.
“It feels like there
should be a catch,” she said.
“Think of it as doing me a favor. If not for you, I'd have to stick around and clean up this mess somehow[80].”
—[80] A moment of accidental honesty!—
I shrugged. “Or think of it as thanks for saving my life in there. Whichever works for you.”
“Maybe a bit of both,” she answered. Delphi pushed herself up from the glass and clambered to her feet.
I grunted and tried to rise myself, but my legs were protesting their recent unfair treatment. She smiled, and held out a hand to help me.
That put us face to face, I couldn't help noticing. She looked up at me, and I felt my tongue thicken until it filled my entire throat, making speech all but impossible. I swallowed hard.
“I had another question,” I said. “Not contingent on your answer to the previous one, you understand. Totally separate.”
“Okay. Understood.”
A longish pause.
“And that question is...?” she prompted.
“If I... That is...[81]” I swallowed again. “Would you like to go out for dinner with me? Not now. Sometime later.”
—[81] He's actually sort of cute when he stammers.—
“Go out to dinner.” She looked over my face as though searching for something incriminating. “You mean, go on a date? With you?”
“Yes. That was the idea.”
A half-smile played at the corner of her mouth. “I read somewhere that it's a bad idea to fall into a relationship based only on a shared experience of a stressful situation.”
“Um. Probably?”
“So I'm hardly in a fit state of mind to be making that sort of decision.”
I gave an inward sigh. “You're right. Sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. It's just that I'm scheduled to leave tomorrow afternoon—”
“Why don't you give me a call,” she interrupted, “the next time you're in town? And we can see what happens[82].”
—[82] They did end up going on a date, eventually, and as best I can tell they hit it off, though that business with the brain-sucking game-leeches complicated things a little. But that's another story. (See John Golden and the Heroes of ProgressQuest, if you're interested.)—
From the Author
Let me quickly thank everyone who read this story in its early stages and helped make it better. My gratitude to Nicole DesRosiers, Seth Fishman, Elisabeth Fracalossi, Nasri Hajj, Lu Huan, Konstantin Koptev, and Cat Rambo. From Ragnarok Publications, my thanks to Tim Marquitz for his hard work getting the story into shape, to J.M. Martin for his excellent cover, to Melanie Meadors for her publicity efforts, and to the enthusiastic members of the Ragnarok Street Team for test reading, specifically Dawn Mosher and Margaret Taylor for their feedback, and to everyone out there spreading the word. Thank you all!
If you enjoyed this story, please consider posting a review. They really do help books get seen by more folks. Also, you can look forward to John Golden and the Heroes of Mazaroth coming in August! You might also enjoy my other work…
The Shadow Campaigns (a military fantasy series from Roc)
• The Thousand Names
• The Shadow Throne (July 2014)
and
The Forbidden Library, middle-grade fantasy from Kathy Dawson Books (April 2014)
www.djangowexler.com | www.ragnarokpub.com
John Golden: Freelance Debugger Page 7