take away its freedom to move and grow.
The pain they feel is worse than anything a human can imagine. Imprisoning a fairy isn't like putting a human in prison—it's more like pulling a fish out of the water, except that the fish can't die, only go on suffering forever.
Fortunately for the fairies, confinement is the one punishment most humans can't inflict on them. Merely cutting off their burrows doesn't do it—inside, they're still free, and they're patient enough to wait for the burrow to grow an ectoplasmic lifeline. The only thing that can imprison a fairy inside its burrow is another, more powerful fairy. Or one of us, a debugger, though our informal society has a ban on such treatment [57] .
— [57] This may surprise you, if you're familiar with the irresponsible and generally amoral behavior typical of most debuggers. Truthfully, it's less out of compassion and more from a sense of realpolitik . Debuggers fight the fairies when they infest our systems, but from the fairy's point of view their human opponents aren't doing any real harm. The last thing the debuggers want is to make fairy-kind as a whole angry with them—the incidental infestations and damage from the dregs of the Wildernet are nothing compared to what Oberon and the Court could accomplish if they ever got really angry.—
Whoever had done this was either a debugger gone very, very bad, or a fairy purposefully putting its own kin through untold torment. Neither possibility was a pleasant one. I swallowed.
“Sarah,” I said. “Some kind of weapon. Now.”
“Got it. Right hand.”
I opened my hand, and a sleek black pistol dropped into it. That surprised me for a moment, but it shouldn't have—the metaphor of this burrow was obviously more in a science-fiction mode, and my tools would be shaped according. I curled my fingers around the grip and crept forward, toward the first of the cages.
Something on the ceiling moved with a hydraulic whirr. I jumped backward. At the confluence of the cables, what I'd taken for a lighting fixture began to unfold itself into a pair of multiple-articulated arms tipped with thick, grasping pads.
The top of a cage across the way from me flipped open, and the arms shot out to grab the first pathetic creature that managed to struggle through the opening, jamming the rest of the prisoners back inside. They carried the thing, a blue-skinned pixie, over the central pit, and I heard a deep, sinister buzz.
I edged closer and saw my light reflected in row after row of rotating knives, like the world's most dangerous salad prep device. The arms dropped the fairy, and I managed to turn away just in time. Blood or no blood, some things are not pleasant to watch.
“Sarah,” I said. “I know how he's doing it. The fairy code in SS AntiFae.”
“How?”
“He's feeding fairies into some kind of blender and using the bits that come out the other side.” Like any burrow, this one was a metaphor, and its direction was clear. “No wonder Jiiya couldn't figure out how it was put together. What kind of a nut job would think of— [58] ”
— [58] The coming of the fairies has brought mankind a certain measure of humility. No matter how deranged and twisted our psychopaths, the worst of the fairies leave humanity in their dust.—
“ John?” It was Delphi's voice, coming through the earpiece I'd lent her. “Are you there?”
“ This is worse than we thought,” I said grimly.
“ John, someone's at the door.” She sounded worried, but under control. “I think it's Mr. Falmer.”
~
I popped myself out of the burrow, materializing amid the tangle of wires and buzzing machines. Delphi was on the other side of the room, out of sight from the hole I'd kicked in the wall. She caught my eye and tapped her ear urgently.
Right —Sarah's earpiece. Delphi still had it, but fortunately I keep an emergency backup in my back pocket, a flimsy little thing with a crummy extendable mic [59] . I dug it out and jammed it
The pain they feel is worse than anything a human can imagine. Imprisoning a fairy isn't like putting a human in prison—it's more like pulling a fish out of the water, except that the fish can't die, only go on suffering forever.
Fortunately for the fairies, confinement is the one punishment most humans can't inflict on them. Merely cutting off their burrows doesn't do it—inside, they're still free, and they're patient enough to wait for the burrow to grow an ectoplasmic lifeline. The only thing that can imprison a fairy inside its burrow is another, more powerful fairy. Or one of us, a debugger, though our informal society has a ban on such treatment [57] .
— [57] This may surprise you, if you're familiar with the irresponsible and generally amoral behavior typical of most debuggers. Truthfully, it's less out of compassion and more from a sense of realpolitik . Debuggers fight the fairies when they infest our systems, but from the fairy's point of view their human opponents aren't doing any real harm. The last thing the debuggers want is to make fairy-kind as a whole angry with them—the incidental infestations and damage from the dregs of the Wildernet are nothing compared to what Oberon and the Court could accomplish if they ever got really angry.—
Whoever had done this was either a debugger gone very, very bad, or a fairy purposefully putting its own kin through untold torment. Neither possibility was a pleasant one. I swallowed.
“Sarah,” I said. “Some kind of weapon. Now.”
“Got it. Right hand.”
I opened my hand, and a sleek black pistol dropped into it. That surprised me for a moment, but it shouldn't have—the metaphor of this burrow was obviously more in a science-fiction mode, and my tools would be shaped according. I curled my fingers around the grip and crept forward, toward the first of the cages.
Something on the ceiling moved with a hydraulic whirr. I jumped backward. At the confluence of the cables, what I'd taken for a lighting fixture began to unfold itself into a pair of multiple-articulated arms tipped with thick, grasping pads.
The top of a cage across the way from me flipped open, and the arms shot out to grab the first pathetic creature that managed to struggle through the opening, jamming the rest of the prisoners back inside. They carried the thing, a blue-skinned pixie, over the central pit, and I heard a deep, sinister buzz.
I edged closer and saw my light reflected in row after row of rotating knives, like the world's most dangerous salad prep device. The arms dropped the fairy, and I managed to turn away just in time. Blood or no blood, some things are not pleasant to watch.
“Sarah,” I said. “I know how he's doing it. The fairy code in SS AntiFae.”
“How?”
“He's feeding fairies into some kind of blender and using the bits that come out the other side.” Like any burrow, this one was a metaphor, and its direction was clear. “No wonder Jiiya couldn't figure out how it was put together. What kind of a nut job would think of— [58] ”
— [58] The coming of the fairies has brought mankind a certain measure of humility. No matter how deranged and twisted our psychopaths, the worst of the fairies leave humanity in their dust.—
“ John?” It was Delphi's voice, coming through the earpiece I'd lent her. “Are you there?”
“ This is worse than we thought,” I said grimly.
“ John, someone's at the door.” She sounded worried, but under control. “I think it's Mr. Falmer.”
~
I popped myself out of the burrow, materializing amid the tangle of wires and buzzing machines. Delphi was on the other side of the room, out of sight from the hole I'd kicked in the wall. She caught my eye and tapped her ear urgently.
Right —Sarah's earpiece. Delphi still had it, but fortunately I keep an emergency backup in my back pocket, a flimsy little thing with a crummy extendable mic [59] . I dug it out and jammed it
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