“How do you know?”
“Someone saw you.”
“Sparrow, you would do well to concentrate on matters of import, not my
intrigues by moonlight. What is between the Demoselle and myself is none
of yours. Now, is there aught else?”
“Just one other thing. Are those dwarves who are trying to kill me part of
the Others’ plan?”
Aelric’s laugh was like the peal of a silver bell. “Believe me, Sparrow,
they are not.” He sobered. “No, that is a matter between you and others of
this world, mortal or non-mortal, I think. But be wary of them, Sparrow.
They can be dangerous.”
Thirty-six: A VISIT WITH MIKEY
Craig couldn’t really name the impulse that drove him to visit Mikey. He
hadn’t seen him since Mikey had called his weapons “toys.” He didn’t
really have anything he needed to talk to him about. But he still decided
to go. Maybe he could explain to Mikey about his new robots. Maybe Mikey
would apologize for the things he’d said. Maybe whatever, he hadn’t talked
to anyone but robots for weeks.
Craig hadn’t been in Mikey’s part of the castle for a while and Mikey had
made some changes since then. Where Craig’s work area was modelled on a
laboratory, airy and brightly lighted, Mikey’s wing was gloomy as a smoggy
twilight. The further he penetrated the dimmer and redder the light became
until he felt he was pushing his way through blood-soaked gloom.
He turned the corner and started climbing stairs. The walls fell away as
he climbed until the staircase seemed to stretch up into a bleak,
blood-lit, starless sky. Come on, he told himself, this is just an
illusion. You know you’re still inside the castle. But somehow that only
made the illusion stronger. The wind whistled around him, tugging at his
jacket and whipping his jeans against his legs. There were hints of shapes
in the sky above him, huge dark-on-dark things that shifted and twisted in
ways his eye couldn’t quite follow.
Craig shivered and stayed close to the center of the railless staircase.
He thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of his windbreaker and kept
his eyes on the stairs under his feet.
Suddenly he was there. There was no door, no anteroom. Just a pool of
light at the top of the stairs and Mikey hunched over a desk in the middle
of it.
As he reached the top Mikey regarded him in a not-quite-hostile manner.
“What brings you here?”
Craig shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I hadn’t seen you in a while and I
just felt like coming to see you, you know?”
Mikey grunted and turned back to his work. Craig stood uneasily as the
silence stretched out and the wind whipped and whistled around them.
“This is kinda spooky,” he said at last.
“I like it,” Mikey said without looking up.
The silence dragged out as Craig stared at Mikey’s back.
“You look like you’ve been learning a lot.” Craig tried to flog his
enthusiasm. “It must have taken some real magic to put this place
together.”
“Yeah,” Mikey said. “I’ve been learning. That and a whole lot more.”
“Oh?” Craig asked brightly. “Like what?”
“Like philosophy, man. I’ve really clarified my thinking.” He smiled and
for an instant the old, charming Mikey flashed through. “You know who
really owns something? The person who can trash it. Just fucking ruin it
completely. That’s how you know the real owner.”
“But what about the guy who can use it? You know, build something with
it?”
“So what? If he can’t protect it, he doesn’t really own it. It’s like a
computer. The name on the paper may say it belongs to IBM or Pac Bell, but
that doesn’t mean shit. The people who really owned those computers were
people like me who could get at them any time we wanted to.”
Craig laughed nervously. “Man, you’re getting heavy.”
Mikey smiled. “Heavy times. Our friends now, they understand that. You
know what those guys are really? They’re the greatest goddamn hackers of
all!” The smile grew wider, dreamier. “Man, this is gonna be great.”
“Yeah, but there are people out there, you know?”
“So? If they can’t protect it, they don’t own it. Simple as that.”