A Local Habitation

“Nothing is long enough,” said Elliot. I knew he was thinking of Yui. We could have argued for hours. We didn’t have them. We had to reach Connor and Quentin, and the halls weren’t helping—they seemed to be continuing to unspool, long past the point when we should have reached our destination. I was trying not to let that worry me. It wasn’t working.

“How was a computer company supposed to save Faerie?” I asked, lowering my voice to conserve my breath. I had to be missing something in all the circuitry and strangeness. I just didn’t know what it was.

“We were going to take it inside, away from everything that could hurt or change it,” said Alex, expression pleading with me to understand. “We were going to save it.”

“Inside where?” growled Tybalt.

“The machines,” said Elliot, and actually smiled. “April was the key. She’s a perfect blend of magic and technology. Whatever you do to her, she comes back whole. We have her on disk. We can bring her back to life a thousand times, and she’ll always be the same, and she’ll always keep going. Jan looked at her and knew that we could do it again.”

“That is sick,” said Tybalt, looking disgusted.

I didn’t disagree. “You were going to turn us into machines ?” There’s a difference between immortality and stasis. For people who’d been so fast to embrace new mortal technologies, the inhabitants of Tamed Lightning seemed awfully fuzzy on the distinction.

“Not quite. There were problems. We—” Elliot stopped, frowning. “Where are we?”

The room was huge, filled with filing cabinets. Conflicting views of the grounds showed through windows on all four walls, and from the skylight overhead. I’d never seen it before, and it definitely wasn’t between Jan’s office and the futon room. “Elliot . . .”

“This shouldn’t be here,” Alex said. “That hall doesn’t lead to the west sunroom. Ever.”

Elliot’s shock was fading, replaced by resignation. “Jan is dead, and April was her heir,” he said. “April is assuming her mother’s position. The knowe is changing to suit her.”

“Is she doing this consciously?” I asked.

“I doubt it,” said Elliot. “The knowe is reacting to her panic. They’re still syncing up.”

“Great,” I said bleakly, staring up at the glass ceiling. If the knowe was reacting to April, I wouldn’t be able to sweet-talk it anymore. It had a new mistress, and it wasn’t going to listen to some half-blood interloper who owed it no fealty. But somewhere in that changing landscape, my friends were in danger. “Now what?”

Elliot shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“I think . . .” said Alex, hesitantly. “I think maybe I do.”

“So speak,” snarled Tybalt.

“We go out the window.”

Right.

THIRTY

“ARE YOU SURE THIS WILL WORK?” The only window showing a ground- floor view of the grounds was large enough for us to fit through one at a time, but I didn’t trust it not to jump to the third floor while I was only halfway out. Call me paranoid. I’m frequently right.

“We’re in a Shallowing,” Alex said, hoisting himself onto the windowsill. “We can twist space in knots inside the knowe, but we can’t change the shape of the buildings without violating the laws of physics.”

“You have eight miles of hallway in a two-story building,” I said. “The laws of physics have already been violated. What happens if they decide to press charges?”

“He’s right,” Elliot said. “The outside stays the same shape and size, no matter what we do in here. The windows connect randomly to the landscaping, but they do connect. And they do it from whatever floor they look out on.”

“So even though this is a second- floor window, it’s actually on the ground floor.”

“Yes.”

“That makes no sense.” I shook my head. “I’ll trust you, though—it’s not like I have a choice. Which brings me to my next issue—it’s night out there.”

“Yes,” Elliot said. “It is.”

I glanced to Alex. “What’s going to happen to . . . ?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” said Alex, wanly, and slid out the window.

It was a six- foot drop to the ground. We heard a thump as he hit the ground, followed by silence. Elliot and I exchanged a wide-eyed glance, rushing to lean out the window. Tybalt stayed where he was and yawned.

“Perhaps he’ll stay dead this time,” he said, nonchalantly.

“Tybalt,” I snapped. He gave me a look, as if to say “what?” then began studying his nails.

Terrie was lying facedown in the grass. I grabbed the windowsill with my good hand and vaulted outside, landing next to her and checking her wrist for a pulse. It was weak, but it was there. “She’s alive,” I reported, looking up.

Elliot was leaning out the window. “What happened?”

I slid my arms under Terrie’s shoulders and stood, balancing her limp form against my knee. “Alex is alive, and Terrie isn’t. I guess he’s going to be having a lot of early nights.”

“We could put her back inside . . .” said Elliot, sliding awkwardly out the window.

“The shock might kill her again,” I said. “Tybalt, get down here and help me with her.”

“Ah, it’s time for the ‘here kitty, kitty’ again,” he said mildly, and jumped from the window, making it look effortless. He grabbed Terrie’s legs. “What shall we do with her? Is there a wood chipper available?”

“Tybalt, behave.”

“Why?” he asked, sounding honestly interested.

“I don’t have time for this. Come on.” With Tybalt’s help, I was able to shift her into the brush along the building, looking back at Elliot as we got her out of sight. “How is it night out here? The sun just came up.”

“The land is suggestible in a Shallowing. If we went back in and came out a door, it would be daylight.”

“Right.” I straightened, stepping out of the bushes. “Lead the way, and keep talking.”

Elliot started to walk. “I mentioned that there were problems, yes? They were mostly in the upload process. We were planning to copy people into the machines without killing them or changing them in any way. We’d just have an extra ‘version’ of them, and of everything in Faerie, that would live inside our computers.”

“How would that save Faerie?” asked Tybalt, pacing me.

“Our ideals and culture would endure, even if nothing else did.” He shook his head. “It didn’t work. Yui was in charge of magical integration. She said the system refused to release the data. She could make it copy, but she couldn’t make it interact.”

“It was frozen?” I asked.

“Basically. I don’t quite understand where things went wrong—I worked in an administrative capacity, and I never used the actual equipment.”

Cats were slinking out of the bushes, falling into formation behind Tybalt. I ignored them, saying, “Somebody might have come up with a new process.”

“It’s possible.”

“Would Yui have volunteered to test it?”

“Absolutely not. Barbara died before Yui; even if her death was caused by the development team, Yui wouldn’t have agreed to test a process that had already killed someone.”

“What was Terrie’s involvement?”

“She worked on the software with Jan, creating the virtual environment. Gordan designed the hardware interfaces.”

“Gordan’s the one who determined how the machines hooked up to the subjects?”

“Well, yes.”