Cybermancy Read Online Free PDF Page B

back.”
    He settled down to wait, his eyes a poignant mix of angry and woeful, and I realized I’d just kicked a dog. I felt like a world-class heel.
    “Good-bye for now.” Mort shook his great head. “See you in a bit.”
    “We’ll have to kill you.” Bob sounded almost tearful. “But after that you can still play bridge with us, at least until you drink Lethe’s waters of forgetfulness.”
    “You won’t make it past us again,” said Dave. But then he smiled a sad/friendly smile. “No one but Orpheus has. Still, I wouldn’t eat any pomegranates if I were you. Now, move before the boss shows up. We’ll only kill you on the way out. Hades will kill you anywhere. Get out of here, Raven.”
    It was a slap in the face, and it stung, but I figured I’d earned it. I got going without another word. The underworld is a bit like a subway station with the trains all permanently delayed. Lots of bored and grumpy people sitting around doing nothing, forever. But there is a way out. All you have to do is let the Lethe wash your memories away. Then they send your blank soul back for another go-round in a fresh body. Hades may be the personification of death, but he’s also big on recycling.
    Once I felt sure Hades wasn’t going to take a personal interest in me, I found a quiet corner and pulled my laptop out of the freezer bags I’d used to keep him dry. Run Melchior. Please.
    “Kind of reminds me of the
149th Street
station in the Bronx,” he said once he assumed his webgoblin shape. “But the view is better, and it doesn’t feel quite so hopeless.”
    “I thought 51st and Lexington in Midtown,” I said.
    “It’s not that bad,” he replied with a wink. “Mind you, I wouldn’t want to winter here every year the way Persephone does.”
    “Yeah. Remind me not to join Hades’ fruit-of-the-month club.”
    I might make light of the situation, but it really was that bad. In fact, it was much, much worse. Hades is the land of the dead. I’d always known that, but you can’t really understand what it means until you’re there. Life is something we all take for granted at a very deep level. Oh, not in the sense of never questioning our mortality or anything like that, but rather that it surrounds us all the time.
    Biologists will tell you that no matter where you go, you’re surrounded by living things. Even in the deepest, darkest caves and basements, you’ll find spores, molds, tiny plants, bugs. You can find bacteria at the bottom of the ocean, or inside of stones, or in near-boiling water. There is no place completely devoid of life. No place, that is, except Hades. Here there are souls, but not a single living creature other than Hades himself and, for a few months a year, Persephone. You can feel it in your bones and your blood. In every breath that you draw there. The absence of life is a palpable thing.
    I had never realized until that moment that we all carry a sort of sense of life within us, a deep psychic connection to the biosphere around us. We may not see the web of life, or be aware of it in any conscious way, but when it’s gone, it’s as obvious as if the sun had blinked out. A darkness of anima as scary as any loss of light.
    I found myself shivering, and not from cold. “We need to find Shara and get out of here.”
    Did we ever! The so-very-alive Shara would be beyond suffering here. It was a good thing Cerice couldn’t know how Hades really felt. She was almost around the bend from grief and stress as it was.
    “I’ll work on the Shara problem if you’ll cover our exit,” said Melchior.
    “Actually, I have an idea or two on the subject,” I said.
    Cerberus himself had given me the hint, though he was right about my not being another Orpheus. I couldn’t carry a tune in an amphora, but there was more than one way to fleece the golden sheep. Melchior gave me a questioning look, but I didn’t elaborate. I wasn’t sure any of it would work, and besides, why ruin my reputation for