Behind the Bitmask Page 17

  It struck me that I hadn’t written a spellscript in some time. I’d unpacked my laptop first thing when I’d moved into my new lodgings, but so far I’d done little with it. I’d wiped out Sigmar’s accursed FreeBSD installation, upgraded ThaumOS to being the primary operating system, and run some previously installed scripts to make sure that I hadn’t missed any bugs or booby traps (of the ‘If Sigmar had placed a bomb inside the laptop, why wouldn’t he have detonated it by now?’ type). It was time to unpack my clothes, and I wanted to see if I could use magic to automate it. I’d barely started when I realized this was going to be a difficult task. I had to figure out how to levitate dozens of garments and doohickeys out of their boxes, insert hangars as appropriate, and put everything in an appropriate place. This needed gobs of magic. My laptop gave me something less than that, so it looked like I had an overnight job on my hands.

  After making sure all my boxes and bureaus were open, I compiled the script after giving it a quick inspection and ran it. A pastel skirt lazily rose out of one of the boxes and hung in the air until it was joined by a hangar; it then floated into the closet and hooked itself. This seemed to be about the right behavior, so I went to bed for the night, confident that everything would be about right (if possibly open to further optimization) in the morning.

  Turns out, I was wrong. After an exceedingly strange dream about one of my old elementary school classmates refusing to stop poking me, I suddenly woke to find myself floating in the middle of my bedroom with a free-floating hangar trying to jam itself into the waistband of my pajama pants. A couple of pinches and some confused flailing later, I realized that the script was trying to hang my pajamas up with me still inside of them. I floated there for a few minutes before I figured out how to solve the problem. To get back to the ground, I needed to slip out of my pants. Then I’d need to strip off everything else as quickly as possible to avoid getting clotheslined again. That turned out easier than expected. I landed clumsily on my butt, and was soon naked as a bird. My pajama bottoms lazily drifted into the closet.

  I trotted over to my laptop, looked at the code, and despite being addled from waking up in the middle of the night to...that, I was able to confirm that I’d missed some important failsafes in my haste to get unpacked. Most obviously, I’d managed to gob enough magic into my surroundings that a mere plastic clothes hangar could spirit me away in the middle of the night. I really should’ve paid more attention to that one.

  In short, I had at least two problems. First, I was out of practice with actually writing new code. Second, I needed to improve my code reviewing techniques. It was far too late at night for me to reasonably fix either, so I paused the script. I could return to it in the morning, once I’d had some sleep (or at least a cup of coffee). I didn’t want any more wild surprises. I had a hunch that ambient magic levels were much higher here than what you got on Earth. I needed to figure out how to master these wild forces if I were to thrive in the depths of hell. Luckily, I was able to sleep through the night, though even in the realm of dreams, I was unable to escape the idea of being magically levitated, carried around, prodded. I guess the so-called Lord of Vice was rubbing off on me.

  I thought I’d grown out of saying this, but Agnus is absolutely disgusting. He pulled me into his throne room today for our second meeting, and I realized I had no idea a sentient being could be so much of a slob, daemonic or not. When I stood before Agnus to make my case, he was noisily eating a huge plate of nachos drowning in cheese and a noxious black liquid that I’m guessing was some sort of daemonic hot sauce. He immediately acknowledged my presence by dropping a huge glob of sauce on his trousers.

  “Charlotte! So good to see you again!” he slobbered. This was not going to end well.

  “Are you in the middle of something?” I asked. “I can wait if you need more time to finish your meal.”

  “No, no, it’s fine. I can eat and work at the same time; it’s one of my many talents!” Agnus immediately shoved his bloated face into the pile of nachos and didn’t surface for at least a minute.

  “Sorry about that. These things are just so damned good! They make them in the cafeteria, so maybe check them out the next time you’re feeling hungry. I’d avoid the sauce if I was you, though – it seems to make humans mutate perhaps more than they’d like...” His words were punctuated with shards of corn chips. He belched up a cloud of noxious smoke, and continued on as if he hadn’t just facerolled his meal.

  “So as we learned recently, you’ve basically declared yourself at war with Sigmar. While he wouldn’t deign to attack you here, you understand that I can’t directly assist you in any way. It would violate the tenuous neutrality I’ve established in the last few years, and it’d just be bad for everyone here,” he said, recapitulating our last (and marginally less loathsome) discussion.

  “Really, though, I think you’re here because you’ve got a bit of a hospital bill, and I’m dangling a job offer over your head,” continued Agnus. I nodded.

  “You want me to be a security guard or something?” I asked. Agnus snorted at this, spraying more crumbs on the floor.

  “I’m offering you more than that! I’ve been following your development some time, and I figure we would’ve met on some sort of diplomatic mission were it not for your little vendetta.”

  “So, you’ve been spying on me.”

  “Just making sure Sigmar would respect my sovereignty, really. In retrospect, I had nothing to worry about! He likes cartoons!”

  Agnus pulled a brochure from his shirt pocket it and handed it to me. It was oddly crumpled and slightly greasy (presumably from the nachos), so I tried to read it quickly. The brochure claimed that for a nominal fee, you could subscribe to Agnus’s media review and delivery service, so you could have the honor of being the first in hell to get your hands on the finest paintings, the boldest symphonies, cutting edge literature, and anything else humanity’s artists had to offer. I was about to ask Agnus how he dealt with the copper cables snaking their way into his realm, but he crammed a giant handful of nachos into his face again.

  “Great business model, eh? I don’t get much money from the deliveries except from other titans anymore, but I’ve been able to invest what I get from hosting reviews into my surroundings,” he said once he’d swallowed some (unfortunately not all) of the nachos.

  “And the other titans just let you be?” I asked; he nodded as if to suggest I was a fool for thinking otherwise. I also noticed my right foot tapping against my will. Surely Agnus was going to get to the point and tell me just what he wanted me to do?

  “I figure running an army has to make you a good administrator and a fine tactician. The hardest battles I have to fight are in the realm known as cyberspace,” Agnus continued, with a flourish of his dirty hands. A few stray tortilla chips fell to the floor. My jaw dropped. If Agnus had been spying on me somehow, he wasn’t good enough at it to have known about Sarah McGeer or anyone else I’d tried to delegate the coven’s busywork to. Maybe it was best not to tell him. He was still talking.

  “...you see, getting more people and more creatives to settle here means a bigger revenue stream for me, but it makes me a bigger target for computer crime. That’s why I set up a department entirely for cybersecurity. If you run that for me, it’ll let you lay low and pay off your debts pretty quickly,” he said. Did he know how much he was pressuring me? I had to figure that out.

  “What if I say no?” I countered, even though I had the feeling Agnus might be giving me a good deal.

  “If we can’t work something out, I’ll just toss you out on the streets. Can’t have subjects that aren’t contributing to the common good, you know?” I wasn’t inclined to take any threats Agnus made seriously when he was covered in crumbs, but I couldn’t overlook the possibility. After all, I’d learned the hard way Sigmar had hidden reserves of bestial ferocity, and Agnus might have similar tastes, for all his jollity. The decis
ion made itself after I thought about that.

  “Alright, I’ll bite. Can you tell me more about this security position?” Agnus smiled at me, but the nachos seemed to be getting the better of him now as he was suddenly having trouble focusing, and one of the hands he’d been using to eat was now rubbing his stomach.

  “It’ll give you a chance to protect my citizens from Sigmar. You’ll have to put actually hunting him on hold while you work here, though. Nothing personal, it’s just a necessary cost of neutrality.”

  “Yes, and speaking of costs, how much are you going to pay me?” I asked.

  Instead of giving me the information I was seeking, Agnus doubled over, and then vomited all over me. I screamed, more out of disgust than out of surprise or fear, and also because I was expecting Agnus’s titan stomach to be full of flesh-searing acid. A moment passed before I realized I wasn’t dying of acid burns or mutagenic hot sauce and screamed even louder.

  “Oops! I think I ate too much, too quickly. It happens sometimes,” he said, not even pausing to wipe puke from his mouth. If I didn’t get out of here soon, I was also going to throw up. To his credit, Agnus did, after much hand waving and a few phone calls, manage to conjure up a small shower stall for me, complete with towels, some nice scented soap, and some basic replacement clothing (a fuzzy black bathrobe with a rainbow check mark on the left breast). Apparently this happened a lot; I was just glad to get out of my soiled clothes and clean myself off.

  “Don’t worry about my health! I find that food tastes better the second time down-”

  I blocked out anything else Agnus said until I was done cleaning up for my own sanity. No sooner had I finished washing and exited the shower (robed) did the doors to his court open again, this time to admit another woman. While I had to deal with a mess of diplomatic protocol just to get into his court (arguably an improvement over my introduction to the place, since Agnus’s brain flat out didn’t care when coked up), our visitor just strolled in as if she owned the place...or for that matter, owned Agnus, who later assured me that was in no way the case when I asked about it.

  “Agnus, has the latest book by Stephen Baxter published yet? I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out,” she said, cutting off Agnus as he tried to explain what was expected of me.

  “Not yet, but I will keep you informed. I’ll tell you if anything else you might be interested in shows up,” responded Agnus, cutting me off as I was about to ask who this interloper was. Fortunately, they had the sense to include me when I was in the middle of important business.

  “Azure, this is Charlotte Metaxas. She is a skilled sorceress, and I am hoping to gain the use of her services while she is present at my court,” he said, gesturing towards me. Azure did something that I didn’t expect – she shook my hand. It was the strangest handshake of my life; I’m not sure how, but I sensed questions in her grasp. I managed to look her in the eyes for a moment, but that just deepened my sense of being interrogated, so I blushed and turned away. That’s beyond uncharacteristic of me, but to be fair, I was still in a robe.

  “Are you the girl who tried to kill Sigmar’s process? That takes...uh...ovaries.” I was no longer able to speak. A few of Agnus’s subjects had deigned to comment on the insurrection that had brought me here, but Azure was the first to not immediately condemn it as folly. I looked at her again, and the firm, determined pose she’d initially had when she was greeting Agnus had softened into something warmer and more inviting. I preferred that, but how could she know that?

  “You don’t have to talk about it. It can’t have been a pleasant experience,” Azure said, interrupting my thought process. This time, she was dead wrong. Up until the moment it was clear I’d been totally outmatched by Sigmar’s powers, I’d been having the time of my life. Right?

  “My only regret is that I failed. I’m not done yet, and I’m not going to fail a second time,” I informed her. It was my turn to strike an assertive pose.

  “That’s the spirit!” said Agnus, who had waddled back to his throne as we exchanged introductions.

  “Agnus, is this lady your girlfriend or something?” I asked him. Azure placed her hands on her hips and looked indignant at my remark.

  “Where did you find her? I was going to ask the exact same thing!” she interjected, completely derailing my train of thought. They started trading personal stories. Agnus’s exploits in the past were worse than I could’ve imagined, but Azure didn’t bat an eyelash (how did she maintain them?). Azure, on the other hand, seemed mundane by comparison. According to the tales she spun, she spent her days playing corporate executive and reading sci-fi, like the sort of person I could’ve become had I not been sucked down the path of magic.

  “Azure, titan to titan, I think you should get to know Charlotte. She’s about to become a very important person in my organization,” Agnus said, in a stage whisper that was probably louder than his actual voice.

  Azure smirked, looking at me. This was a titan? But she seemed so normal! She seemed like the kind of girl who would mark me as her rival; we’d then have no choice but to converse politely at parties, while calling each other “bitch” and “slut” in private, and always plotting the other’s downfall. I looked into her eyes again. This time I was able to hold my gaze for a while longer before I shrunk away. At least, I now recognized the raw magic emanating from Azure.

  “Sounds good to me. Anyone who goes after a titan has to have interesting stories,” she responded.

  “Why don’t you two go to the local Starbucks once Charlotte’s done cleaning up?” Agnus suggested. His focus was already wavering; a finger was drifting ever closer to his nose. “We can finish up after that.”

  How did Agnus manage to get a Starbucks to set up shop in his realm? I’m never going to understand his motivations. Ever. Agnus found me some real clothing and sent us off. Despite the looming threat of spiraling bankruptcy my hospital bills represented, I’d managed to keep my wallet and its various credit and debit cards on my person. I made the magnanimous offer of paying for Azure’s coffee, but she politely refused, pulling a few dollars out of her own wallet.

  “Exactly who is Stephen Baxter?” I asked Azure once we’d found a table. I noticed she’d ordered a larger cup of coffee than I did.

  “He writes science fiction. I’m a big fan of science fiction,” she explained before taking the lid off her drink and drinking at least half of it in one go. I winced – even if Azure was a titan, the coffee within had to be flesh-searingly hot. Apparently she noticed, as she immediately started laughing at me once she’d put her cup down.

  “Food and drinks are better when they’re searing hot. You should try it if you haven’t,” Azure said.

  “Definitely not. Extreme heat kills my species,” I quipped. “I even have to blow on my food sometimes to make sure it doesn’t hurt my tongue.”

  “Isn’t there a spell for that?” There were almost certainly ways for a girl to protect herself from the heat, or at least to raise her tolerance to superhuman levels, but I grew up in Minnesota. The vast majority of my temperature-related magical efforts had gone into cold tolerance. Between my upbringing and my magical abilities, I laughed at blizzards that would freeze my coven allies solid.

  After chugging the first half of her cup, Azure slowed down a little; she started sipping only when I did, almost as if she didn’t want to miss the scintillating conversation we definitely weren’t having. I wasn’t exactly sure how you broke the ice (or extinguished a firewall, now that I think about it) with a titan, but I had to try something.

  “Why do you rely on Agnus for your media needs? Seems like you’d fit in just fine with the science fiction crowd,” I asked her. I’m not usually one to comment on physical appearances, but even compared to Agnus, the only reason I knew Azure was a titan was because I could sense the magical energy crackling around her – not as much as Sigmar could put out, but acceptably tangible
by the low standards of auras.

  “You kidding? Humans and I get along too well, if anything!” she said. Azure had a sassy look in her eyes as she informed me that, “the last time I went to a convention, I got groped by everyone! Women, men, even cats and dogs were trying to get a piece of me! I nearly caused a riot.”

  Hold on, what? Did her hair just turn blue for a second?

  “So in short, I may have intentionally cast a lust spell on everyone because I thought it’d be amusing and would result in some cute couples. Something about humans and their thoughts fry my judgment. Used to be I could stick to hell to stay away from them, but look around us! Pretty much everyone here is human!”

  I scanned my surroundings. Maybe Azure was exaggerating, but there were certainly lots of humans here.

  “It might be a magic thing. Don’t worry about it,” she continued. With that, she drained her coffee. After meeting more reprehensible people and daemonspawn in a year than most people even encounter in their lifetimes, Azure almost seemed fair and balanced. The one time she decides to cause trouble doesn’t end with a circle of death. Still, I felt like there was something she wasn’t telling me.

  “I know what we should do!” she exclaimed as I tried to catch up with how I was feeling. “We should go to the movie theater and watch something! Just because you’re technically in hiding doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time!”

  “Is there any type of business that Agnus doesn’t have down here?” I asked because if a Starbucks was one thing, a cinema was beginning to push the limits of credibility.