Sydney adjusted her jacket, took a deep breath, and placed a hand on the ornate iron door handle. "You can do this," she whispered to herself, "it's just a garden party." She stood for several more seconds before finally swinging the massive wooden doors open.
The courtyard of Castle Crow had been transformed. A brilliant summer sun shone down on a riot of greenery and fountains. Party guests wandered the stone paths that twisted among the shrubs and flowers. Classical music played softly from an unseen source.
Roger bounded up the steps to the doorway where Sydney still stood. "There you are. A timely entrance. Your sister was threatening to send her beastly crows to fetch you if you delayed much longer." He turned and surveyed the garden. "Miss Mel has outdone herself, wouldn't you say?"
"Um... yeah. It's amazing." Sydney truthfully was impressed with Mel's work on the courtyard, she just wished it wasn't so full of people.
Roger offered his hand. "May I escort you to the festivities? Refreshments are being served down by the reflecting pool."
Sydney took the offered hand and started down the stairs. "It looks like a good turnout. Did everyone come?"
"Almost everyone," Roger replied. "The Countess has taken to her rooms, still insisting this is all a French plot of some sort. That asian fellow, Nandan... he is wandering around the east end of the Island, spending his time in 'quiet contemplation' no doubt. I've had a devilish time trying to get his story, but he seems harmless enough."
"You actually got him to talk?"
"Just a little. I went through all the languages I know, and it appears we have Mandarin Chinese in common, though I suspect it's not his native tongue, and I'm not exactly fluent in it either."
"Still, it's lucky languages are kind of your jam, otherwise I don't know what we'd do with this mixed bag of refugees."
"Don't give me too much credit," he insisted, "that remarkable library of yours has been invaluable. My deficiencies as a translator would be far more apparent without those references."
Unsure how to respond, she simply squeezed his hand in reply.
Mel ran up to them as they approached the center of the courtyard. "Well it's about time," she admonished. "Here, try this." She shoved a cracker holding a waxy yellowish lump of something in front of Sydney's face.
Sydney took a cautious nibble. "Oh my god it's cheese! It actually tastes like cheese. How did you manage it?"
"Lots of trial and error," Mel admitted. "I started with your version of milk, made hundreds of different versions with random changes, then crowd sourced it to the crows for taste testing. Whatever they ignored got thrown out. The stuff they pecked at the most became the starting point for a new random series. Rinse... repeat. Eventually I took over the taste testing myself and selected toward cheesiness."
"It reminded me of a well aged Gruyère," Roger volunteered, "a bit smokey on the front end but sharper on the back. It's definitely a welcome change from tea biscuits."
Sydney felt a tiny dagger poke her heart. "I thought you liked my tea cookies."
"Oh I do," Roger assured her, "but one does appreciate variety now and again."
A flurry of thoughts swirled in Sydney's mind, none of them related to cookies or cheese.
Mel just beamed. "I also made a fruit tray and something almost like wine. Come on." She dragged them further into the courtyard.
They joined Samantha and Peter near a table heaped with fruit. A short, dark haired fellow was engaging Peter in an animated conversation, his wine glass flinging drops of amber fluid as he gestured to emphasize some point.
"He conocido rocas más inteligentes que tú," the shorter fellow shouted before downing the last of his drink and storming off.
"He conocido rocas con mejores modales," Peter shouted after him.
"What ever did you say to Antonio to get him so agitated," Roger asked.
Peter shook his head. "I have no idea. My Spanish isn't that good, so I didn't get half of what he was saying. He was going on about King Ferdinand and the revolution, but I'm not even sure if he was for or against."
"Oh he was for the revolution," Samantha assured them, "You don't need to understand the words to recognize a rebel when you see one."
Mel plucked a pear from a nearby table and tossed it to Sydney. "Give this a try too. Tell me what you think."
Sydney took a bite. Juice dribbled down her chin as flavors exploded into her mouth. "Wow," was all she could manage.
"Yeah, I know... it's a little over the top," Mel admitted, "I think I need to ease back on the isoamyl acetate."
Sydney took another bite. "I used isoamyl acetate in some of the tea cookies. Isn't that..."
"Artificial banana flavoring. Yes, it is. Turns out a pear is just a weirdly shaped banana-apple. Who knew."
"Well, I'm glad to see you're putting those Internet files to good use. Any chance you can wrangle us some pizza for the next party?"
Mel grinned. "Way ahead of you, sis. Why else do you think I was working so hard to make cheese?"
"Pizza," Samantha sighed, "what I wouldn't give for a Mama Rotoni's garlic feast pizza right now."
Peter snatched a glass of wine from a passing waiter. "And beer," he suggested, "this pear wine is OK, but I miss beer."
"There's no pleasing some people," Mel declared, but she was grinning as she said it.
"Well I for one am very impressed with everything you've accomplished," Roger insisted, "and I look forward to your future culinary inventions."
"I made the waiters," Sydney interjected, then felt embarrassed for having said it.
Samantha peered at a passing waiter. "Really? They totally look like they came with the castle."
"I repurposed some of the aliens from the Wonderland. Imagine them all blue with bumps on their foreheads."
Roger pointed at someone on the far end of the courtyard. "It looks like Mister Nandan decided to join the party. Now if only we could coax the Countess from her rooms."
Sydney squinted at the bald, robed figure. "Well, I wouldn't exactly say he's joined the party. More like he's by himself communing with some rose bushes."
"He is an odd fellow," Roger admitted, "I tried asking him..." Roger's eyes narrowed. His gaze was cast upward. "What in bloody blazes is that?"
Sydney turned to look. A large, pulsing triangle hung in the distant air, its interior a riot of flickering colors marring the otherwise clear blue sky. As she watched, another triangle joined it, connected to the first triangle along one edge to form a diamond. Then another triangle appeared. And another. "Mel, I think something is very wrong with the Island of Crows."
Mel stared at the spreading chaos. She reached her hand into the air and pulled a data screen into existence like she was drawing down a window shade. "It's an exploit of some kind. A worm. It's propagating through the texture map memory, including the sky sphere."
A chill ran down Sidney's spine. "A worm? How? When did those pasty bastards get the chance?"
Mel shook her head. "I don't think it's them. It's not like something our alien friends would make. It's not like anything I've seen before." She slid the window over to Sydney to look at.
Sydney's eyes drank in the data map. It had a tangled, branching structure reminiscent of a cognitive download but with orderly sections like something coded from scratch. "It's sophisticated. The level of parallelism is insane."
A murmur of alarmed voices was growing. The croquet match had stopped, the players and spectators all staring or pointing at the sky. People were emerging from the hedge maze, heading toward the reflecting pool with fear and questions in their eyes. Only the waiters seemed unphased by events.
The south tower of the castle transformed into a swirling tangle of glowing lines. Somebody screamed.
Samantha gasped. "Oh my god. The Countess. Her rooms were in the tower."
Mel opened another window. "She's OK. She's in the wine cellar. She's going to be disappointed. All the wine is pear."
"I think we have bigger concerns than a limited wine selection," Roger insisted.
Mel nodded agreement. "It's moved from the texture maps into the object model memory. The tower is just the beginning. The whole castle will go, then the island."
"And then us," Sydney realized. "If that worm consumes all the memory..."
"You should transfer back to your ship and then sever the link. I'll deal with this." Mel became very still, a sign that she had entered shadowspace.
Sydney concentrated, invoking the sequence of mental images that her sister had taught her. The world slowed around her. Color drained away from everything except her and Mel.
"You're getting better at that," Mel observed. "Your face used to get all scrunched up like you were constipated."
Sydney began to form a biting reply, but the words froze in her throat.
A bald, brightly robed figure was striding toward them.