Cybermancy Read online

  Table of Contents Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  EPILOGUE

  About the Author

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  CYBERMANCY

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / October 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by Kelly McCullough.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-436-27131-8

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York10014

  .

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Laura; you dance in my heart

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, extra-special thanks are owed to Laura McCullough, Stephanie Zvan, Jack Byrne, and Anne Sowards.

  Many thanks also to the Wyrdsmiths: Lyda, Doug, Naomi, Bill, Eleanor, Rosalind, Harry, and Sean. My web guru: Ben. Beta readers: Sara, Karl, Angie, Jonna, Shari, Dave, and Laura R. My extended support structure: Bill and Nancy, James, Tom, Ann, and so many more. My family: Phyllis, Carol, Paul and Jane, Lockwood and Darlene, Judy, Lee C., Kat, Jean, Lee P., and all the rest.

  And in loving memory: Kay Marquez, George Johnson, Ellen Neese.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? The eyes of Cerberus glared down at me, six balls of black fire. There was no dog older or more dangerous. But here I was standing practically in his mouths, trick in hand.

  “Oh, get on with it,” growled the right head, the one called Mort, a mastiff. “We haven’t got all night.”

  Almost against my will, I looked over Cerberus’s shoulder. The River Styx lay behind him, and beyond it the gate to Hades, land of the dead and present residence of a webgoblin by the name of Shara. My lover’s computer-familiar, Shara was the child of her magic, and a dear friend of mine. Her current address would have been hard enough to bear if it weren’t my fault she’d ended up on the wrong side of the river. Knowing I was responsible for her death . . .

  Thoughts for another time. I flipped my last card over, the six of spades. Not much of a card, but enough to take the trick and fulfill our contract.

  “Read it and weep!” said the middle head. A rottweiler named Dave.

  He was my normal partner, if you could call anything about playing bridge with the three-headed dog of the underworld normal. They had to do an elaborate dance that involved a lot of closing of eyes and some sort of special deal with the central intelligence that ran the body and connected the heads in order to even make the game possible. But as far I could tell, none of them were cheating, and they all seemed to enjoy it.

  “I believe that’s three hands in a row,” chortled Dave.

  Bob, the Doberman third head, gave me a gimlet look. “I wish you’d never taught us this game, little Raven.”

  I looked away to hide my expression. I don’t much like being called Raven, and it isn’t the name I was born with. That’s Ravirn, which I still insist on for daily wear. Unfortunately, I’d had a little disagreement with my family’s matriarchs, better known as the Fates. Yes, the crones who measure out the destiny of every living being like threads for a tapestry are my own flesh and blood. I’m thrilled. As a result of our little spat, the name I think of as my real one got taken away.

  It could have been worse certainly. My great-aunt Atropos is the Fate who wields the shears, and she would have preferred to take my birthday away, or at least make sure I didn’t have any more of them. My umpteen-times-great-grandmother, Lachesis, the lady who measures the threads, initially agreed with her.

  Only the intervention of Necessity, the one goddess even the Fates fear, kept me alive. Robbed of the opportunity to remove me from the land of the living, Lachesis cast me out of the family of Fate and revoked my name. Then, for reasons I still don’t understand, Clotho, the spinner, broke with her sister Fates, declared me a legitimate force for chaos, and gave me a new name, Raven.

  It’s better than not owning a name at all, but it feels wrong every time I hear it, a bitter reminder of my outcast status, and I’d prefer not to think about it. That attitude has caused considerable friction with Cerice, my lady fair and a child of Clotho’s House. She insists I’m foolishly ignoring the power of names.

  Perhaps she’s right, but remembering that day and its aftermath still burns my heart. Yes, I took the side of Eris against the houses of Fate. Yes, the Goddess of Discord is my family’s oldest and bitterest enemy. But it was that or let Atropos turn every thinking being in all of the infinite worlds of existence into a gaggle of marionettes dancing to Fate’s every whim. For the crime of choosing free will over slavish destiny, I’d been banished and stripped of my identity. All of which meant that Bob’s little dig bit deep.

  “That was uncalled for,” said Dave, taking my side. “I didn’t hear you complaining last week when you and Mort took three rubbers in a row.”

  “I’m sorry, Ravirn,” said Bob.

  “It’s all right,” I answ
ered.

  It wasn’t really, but I let it slide. I liked Cerberus far more than I did many of my closer cousins. Why did all of my problems have to involve family ties? The whole giant inbred Greek pantheon was a divine mess. Cerberus might be a distant enough cousin that friendship was more important to our relationship than blood, but the damned blood was still there. That mix of loyalties would make what I had to do to him in the coming days both harder and easier.

  “Hurry up and deal,” said Mort, jolting me back into the moment.

  He had a calculating expression on his face, and I couldn’t help worrying that my look over the Styx had given too much away. But nothing seemed to come of it. An hour and a bit later it had gotten very late or started to get early, depending on how you looked at it. Part of the reason Cerberus and I get along is that we’re both night people, me because I sleep deepest between 4:00 A.M. and noon, him because he’s a raving insomniac. Anyway, it was time to pack it in. The last game had been mine and Dave’s, but we’d lost the evening. Bob and Mort were quite pleased with themselves—himself? I was never quite sure how to think of the three of them: as Mort, Dave, and Bob, my buddies? Or as Cerberus, dread guardian of the underworld?

  Thoughts for another late night, I guess. I packed up the cards as Mort and Bob good-naturedly ribbed their fellow head. I was just getting ready to drop the deck into my shoulder bag when all three suddenly stopped what they were doing and turned to look at me as one. I froze. Something about their collective expression made me shrink inwardly.

  “Ravirn,” said Dave, “we like you.”

  I nodded, forcing myself to smile. I could hear the but he didn’t voice.

  “You’re a good friend,” said Mort.

  For a moment, I was transported back to my first crush. It ended as such things all too often do, with the dreaded “friends” speech. The thought almost made me giggle. I liked the hound of hell, too, just not that way.

  “Don’t think that makes us blind,” said Bob.

  I realized then that they were doing the scary three-mouths-speaking-as-one thing the Furies do when they are about to pronounce judgment, and any thought of laughter died. This was Cerberus, not my canine friends.

  “I didn’t think it would,” I managed to say through a mouth gone terribly dry.

  “Good!” said all three in perfect unison, their voices as solemn and final as the closing of a sepulchre. “We must oppose any who dare the underworld gate, no matter who they are, or how we feel about them. None may pass within save through death or the will of Hades, and for the dead the passage is one way.”

  “Ah, how exactly would this relate to me?” I asked, though I thought I knew.

  “Cerberus has spoken.” The three heads nodded.

  “Guys . . . I’m really not sure I get where you’re going with this,” I said.

  “We don’t get a lot of company,” said the left head, reverting once more to my buddy, Bob.

  “Nobody comes here for fun,” said Mort.

  “Are you questioning my card-playing motives?” I assumed my best hurt-innocence expression. “I know we didn’t start off on the best foot, but I thought that was all in the past.”

  If I hadn’t done some fast talking when I tried to make that initial contact, I’d have ended up as doggy chow. Fortunately, on my second and subsequent visits, the trio had proved much more friendly. That made this sudden shift in canine attitude all the more surprising.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” said Dave, “and don’t take us for fools.”

  “Orpheus was the last to come and go unsanctioned and unscathed,” said Bob.

  Another demigod cousin of mine, Orpheus had played a tune of such beauty and wonder that it put Cerberus into a deep sleep, allowing the musician to pass into the underworld and retrieve his beloved bride, Euridice. It was a great triumph but short-lived, since Apollo cut his head off and made it into an oracle not long after.

  “He wasn’t the last to try,” said Mort. “There have been others.”

  “Many passed the gate alive,” said Dave. “In is easy. Out is the problem. None of them made it back, though there have been thousands.”

  “Tens of thousands,” said Bob. “They failed, and they died. Their names are forgotten.”

  “Except by us,” said Mort. “We do not forget.” He looked sad but determined. With a move so fast I barely saw it, his head darted forward, and he caught the slab of basalt we’d been using as a table in his massive jaws.

  “Don’t make us turn you into a memory,” said Bob. While he spoke, Mort’s jaws began to close, crushing the stone as a lesser dog might a rotten bone. “We’d hate to have to kill you.”

  The noise was terrible, but I had no trouble hearing Dave’s voice. “But we would kill you. Never doubt it. You’re no Orpheus.” He pronounced the name with a heavy emphasis that rang oddly.

  “Of course not,” I replied. “I couldn’t play a lyre to save my life, and my singing voice is only good for attracting harpies.”

  Mort made a last effort, and the rock burst completely asunder, showering me with shards and dust. “Let whoever it is you lost go, Ravirn.”

  Without another word, Cerberus swung his giant bulldog’s body around and stalked back toward the river and the cave Hades had dug for his kennel. I wiped sweat from my face and let out a little sigh of relief.

  A faint bing came from my shoulder bag as Cerberus passed out of sight. I unzipped it and dropped the cards inside, reaching down to retrieve the bright blue clamshell of my laptop with the same movement. Setting it on a rock, I flipped up the lid.

  Large red letters read, That went well! A small goblin-head logo below and to the left of the screen was sadly shaking itself back and forth, an unmistakable sarcastic not.

  “On the contrary, Mel. For the first time in ages and despite everything, I think this all might just work out.”

  The laptop made a rude noise. Melchior is not what you’d call the most reverent of creatures in either of his forms, laptop or webgoblin. When I’d first programmed the spell that gave my familiar life, I’d put in a subroutine designed to provide a touch of sarcasm and back talk. He’d long since exceeded his specs.

  I’m never quite sure how to feel about that. Mixing magic with computer code has changed the way my family works at every level, merging hacker with sorcerer, and forever scrambling the logical and the irrational into one big WYSIWYG mess. I’m sometimes tempted to agree with the traditionalists in the pantheon that all this newfangled computer stuff is a royal pain. Then I actually have to perform a spell, and I’m reminded just how much less dangerous magic has become since the advent of the mweb and the birth of digital sorcery.

  I typed, Run Melchior. Please. There was a time when I’d issued actual commands to my computer the way most people did. Sometimes I missed it. He could be a nasty and stubborn little piece of hardware.

  The red letters returned. Fat chance. The logo raised a skeptical eyebrow. I’m not getting anywhere near Rover.

  I sighed. Hades, as part of the whole original Olympus-home-of-the-gods milieu, was located in the basement of the central structure of reality. My next destination had a less ritzy address, and getting there required temporarily converting my flesh-and-blood analogue body into a string of ones and zeros and electronically transmitting it from point a to point b.

  That meant running a spell. Melchior, I typed. Mtp:// mweb.DecLocus.prime.minus0208/harvard.edu~theyard. Please.

  Executing. Connecting to prime.minus0208. A brief pause followed. Connected. Initiating Gate procedure.

  The eyes and mouth of the logo opened and bright laser-like beams shot forth, one blue, one green, one red. Together they stitched a hexagonal pattern of light on the ground. A green glow began to climb upward in the area above the hexagon as though the edges of the diagram delineated the walls of an invisible glass eight feet in height. I eyed it a little more warily than I once would have.

  The digital me would make the trip via the mweb,
the magical computer network that tied all of the infinite worlds of possibility into one gigantic matrix. When I was a boy, I’d been led to believe the Fates had created the system, but I’d since learned that wasn’t quite true. Necessity, the shadowy and enormously powerful entity sometimes called the Fate of the Gods, was responsible for spinning the mweb from the Primal Chaos, though she left its day-to-day administration to my grandmother and her sisters.

  In another context, that firm hand on the reins might have provided a certain amount of reassurance to a traveler about to embark on a little jaunt between the worlds. Unfortunately, I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that Fate hates me. So all the hazards inherent to mweb-based travel go double for me.