fairies, anyway. I don't know if you could use it for regular traffic.”
“ You think Falmer planted it here?”
“No, actually,” I said. “I think he wants to keep this room completely isolated. But a fairy burrow can grow this stuff if it gets strong enough. That's why they can get past air-gaps when you don't pay attention. Oberon's Law, and all that. I think the burrow in here grew this strand and finally hooked it in to your network three days ago, when you first noticed the infestation. Whatever he was keeping in here escaped.”
“Jesus. I thought all you had to do to keep fairies out was to maintain your direwalls and keep your antifae up to date.”
“It is, under normal circumstances.” I looked over the heap of machines. “This is...not exactly normal.”
I hunted around in the cable tangle until I found a network switch with an open port, and set Sarah's bag down beside it and patched her in.
“ Yuck,” she said. “This topology is awful. And it's practically jammed with fairy garbage [56] .”
— [56] Disgusting just being plugged into it. Imagine stepping slowly into a stream of sewage.—
“ Can you map the burrow?”
“ Easily. I think this place is nothing but burrow. Any of these machines should have plenty of space for an entrance.”
“ All right. Then I'm going in.”
I took out the earpiece and handed it to Delphi. She frowned.
“ What can I do from here?”
Not much, unfortunately. One reason why debuggers tend to be loners—it's hard for anyone to help out. “Keep watch. If anyone turns up, you can tell Sarah, and she'll tell me.”
She looked unhappy, but put the earpiece on. I laid my hand against the front of one of the humming towers and t wisted myself inside its world.
~
At first I thought I was out under the night sky, or some fairy simulacrum thereof. I blinked, trying to adjust to the darkness, and noticed that the tiny lights I'd taken for stars were scattered all around me as well as above, and that they glowed the firefly-green of power LEDs. They were arranged in irregular strands, like rivers.
“ Sarah?” I said. “Light, please.”
The familiar glow blossomed over me.
I was standing on a hard metal grating , which was heaped high with corrugated black cables as thick as my arm. These cables were gathered in bunches, like a pack of snakes fighting and mating at the same time, and it was from inside them that the green lights glowed. Similar tangles of cables wound across the ceiling, twisting over and under one another and occasionally hanging down in loops.
All the cables converged on a central hillock, an extrusion of the floor made of smooth black glass. Cables plunged into it; green lights dimly visible inside, so that it looked like an enormous, faintly glowing blister. From where I was standing I could see there was a depression or pit in the middle, but not what was inside.
What really caught my attention, were the gunmetal-gray blocks arrang ed in a ring around the central—mechanism? Altar? These were made of what looked like chicken wire wrapped around metal struts, and inside I could dimly see a large number of small, humanoid shapes. Pixies, I guessed, like the ones I'd met in the other burrow, though there were a few larger and smaller creatures mixed in. A grab bag of fairies, packed into the pens like chickens waiting to be slaughtered.
My mouth was dry. In most situations, it's hard to feel much sympathy for fairies. They don't bleed or feel pain, and they can't really die, so you can't torture them, exploit them, or even threaten them, because they're not afraid. There is, however, one important exception, and that is captivity.
Fairies are creatures of chaos, of the whirling sea of meaning and metaphor. It is in their nature to jump from person to person, from network to network, to push the edges of their burrows deeper into their host system and try to spread. The worst thing you can do to a fairy is confine it, lock it up,
“ You think Falmer planted it here?”
“No, actually,” I said. “I think he wants to keep this room completely isolated. But a fairy burrow can grow this stuff if it gets strong enough. That's why they can get past air-gaps when you don't pay attention. Oberon's Law, and all that. I think the burrow in here grew this strand and finally hooked it in to your network three days ago, when you first noticed the infestation. Whatever he was keeping in here escaped.”
“Jesus. I thought all you had to do to keep fairies out was to maintain your direwalls and keep your antifae up to date.”
“It is, under normal circumstances.” I looked over the heap of machines. “This is...not exactly normal.”
I hunted around in the cable tangle until I found a network switch with an open port, and set Sarah's bag down beside it and patched her in.
“ Yuck,” she said. “This topology is awful. And it's practically jammed with fairy garbage [56] .”
— [56] Disgusting just being plugged into it. Imagine stepping slowly into a stream of sewage.—
“ Can you map the burrow?”
“ Easily. I think this place is nothing but burrow. Any of these machines should have plenty of space for an entrance.”
“ All right. Then I'm going in.”
I took out the earpiece and handed it to Delphi. She frowned.
“ What can I do from here?”
Not much, unfortunately. One reason why debuggers tend to be loners—it's hard for anyone to help out. “Keep watch. If anyone turns up, you can tell Sarah, and she'll tell me.”
She looked unhappy, but put the earpiece on. I laid my hand against the front of one of the humming towers and t wisted myself inside its world.
~
At first I thought I was out under the night sky, or some fairy simulacrum thereof. I blinked, trying to adjust to the darkness, and noticed that the tiny lights I'd taken for stars were scattered all around me as well as above, and that they glowed the firefly-green of power LEDs. They were arranged in irregular strands, like rivers.
“ Sarah?” I said. “Light, please.”
The familiar glow blossomed over me.
I was standing on a hard metal grating , which was heaped high with corrugated black cables as thick as my arm. These cables were gathered in bunches, like a pack of snakes fighting and mating at the same time, and it was from inside them that the green lights glowed. Similar tangles of cables wound across the ceiling, twisting over and under one another and occasionally hanging down in loops.
All the cables converged on a central hillock, an extrusion of the floor made of smooth black glass. Cables plunged into it; green lights dimly visible inside, so that it looked like an enormous, faintly glowing blister. From where I was standing I could see there was a depression or pit in the middle, but not what was inside.
What really caught my attention, were the gunmetal-gray blocks arrang ed in a ring around the central—mechanism? Altar? These were made of what looked like chicken wire wrapped around metal struts, and inside I could dimly see a large number of small, humanoid shapes. Pixies, I guessed, like the ones I'd met in the other burrow, though there were a few larger and smaller creatures mixed in. A grab bag of fairies, packed into the pens like chickens waiting to be slaughtered.
My mouth was dry. In most situations, it's hard to feel much sympathy for fairies. They don't bleed or feel pain, and they can't really die, so you can't torture them, exploit them, or even threaten them, because they're not afraid. There is, however, one important exception, and that is captivity.
Fairies are creatures of chaos, of the whirling sea of meaning and metaphor. It is in their nature to jump from person to person, from network to network, to push the edges of their burrows deeper into their host system and try to spread. The worst thing you can do to a fairy is confine it, lock it up,
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