“A pity, but we are straying from your own conversion—and your recent experience. How did you learn you had developed a virt power?”
“I was doing some work and my notepad slipped. I’d just finished the adept training here and I reached out and… well, it stopped.”
“Did you report immediately?”
“No, sir. I didn’t. I practiced for a couple of days. I wanted… I was afraid I’d look like a fool.”
“Did you share this information with anyone who was not a member of the Church?”
“No, sir. I didn’t.”
“Very good. Continue not to do so. We do not wish to be flooded with neophytes who only desire to acquire paranormal abilities.”
“But don’t most people already know about them?”
“We did make the news of our miracles public, but most dismiss them as tabloid fodder. However, if everyone knew someone who has a virt power—someone nice and ordinary like a local librarian who just doesn’t need to get up to get a book off the shelf—we would be inundated by the greedy.”
“I can’t, you realize.”
“Can’t what?”
“Get a book off the shelf. It’s too heavy and my grip isn’t precise enough.”
Kelsey smiled. “Continue your studies, Davis, and you will be able to do that and other things—things even more wonderful. However, I am troubled with the question of your faith. When can you take leave again from your job?”
Eden wanted to say immediately, but he knew that wouldn’t do.
“I just took off a long chunk of time for the last training session, sir. I’ve just about burnt my vacation time.”
“Have you begun a new project?”
“Well, I’m about done with a short one I started when I got back. I’ve been angling for one on early Gothic novels for a professor at Harvard. It involves the Devendra P. Dharma Collection and promises at least one trip to Italy.”
“It sounds quite interesting. However, would you be interested in being hired by us instead?”
“Us?”
“The Church. We could hire you to do some research for us. Some of your work time would be directed to instruction in the faith.”
Eden tried to keep from looking too excited, but he knew his eyes had widened in astonishment.
“Could you really do that? I don’t want to jeopardize my job. It’s taken me a long time—”
“We can do it. I doubt your employers would turn down a lucrative contract that specifically called for your services.”
“I guess you’re right, Mr. Kelsey.”
“Then you will accept?”
“Will the terms be the same as usual for my job?”
“We would be working through your usual employer. You would even have your usual work hours—though we might ask you to donate some time to the Church for your lessons.”
“Consider me hired.”
“Tell me, Mr. Davis. Do you feel the presence of a god here?”
Eden closed his eyes, reached out for that strange tingle he had felt once or twice and had dismissed as part of the aesthetic trims of the Elishites—something like a subaudible hum, perhaps. He would never have worked it into his Davis biography if he hadn’t believed that there was something at work—though he suspected sophisticated programming rather than gods.
“No, Mr. Kelsey. I do not.”
“Honest, too. Very good. Come kneel beside me. We will sing the praises of the divinities who—even if they are not physically present— do have a tendency to listen to those of our Church.”
Taking his place on the kneeler next to Kelsey, Arthur Eden mouthed the appropriate responses. It looked like if he played his cards right and was very careful, he would have the research opportunity of a lifetime. Perhaps he would even meet the founders of this religion, uncover its deepest secrets.
He smiled and raised his voice in song.
SIX
In the evening, as he sat in his lab wondering whether the banshee would howl or a ghost put in its appearance, Donnerjack thought back over the old days, when he and Jordan and Bansa had worked out what was to become the theoretical basis of Virtu. It was raining, as usual, and his mind skipped back over nights of good fellowship and amazing leaps of logic. Of pizza and beer. Was he still capable of the sort of work the three of them had done back then?
Near midnight, he received a message from the CID. It was a holo, from Reese.
The man stood before him, looking as he had just a few hours earlier.
“If you receive this,” he began, “I’ve made it through one more. Don’t know what sort of shape I’ll be in for some time, though. You’ll hear from me eventually. Glad you didn’t get the other message.”
Donnerjack touched a code. “Paracelsus,” he said, “spare me a minute.”
The AI appeared wearing a baseball uniform with a Cleveland Indians insignia. “Hi, boss,” he said.
“Paracelsus,” said Donnerjack, “tell me what happened.”
“Well,” said the other. “We worked something up between us, Sid and I, decided it was the best course of action, and turned it over to the proges to administer. They did, and it worked beautifully.”
“Remind me to call you the next time I’m feeling ill,” Donnerjack said. “In the meantime, when would it be best to talk with Reese?”
“Call him Monday to congratulate him, but give him three weeks before you talk of work.”
“This is a very important job.”
“You want to kill the best man for it?”
“No.”
“Then do as I say, boss. He needs the rest.”
“Done,” Donnerjack responded. “He can’t be replaced. He’s as precious as Bansa would be if he were still around.”
“I’ve heard of Bansa, the man who started the whole thing,” Paracelsus said.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Donnerjack replied. “But he came up with some novel theories as to what happened.”
“He still holds several places in our oldest pantheon,” Paracelsus said, almost defensively.
“Wouldn’t put it past him. Who is he?”
“The Piper, the Master, the One Who Waits.”
“I think I know him as the Piper.”
“You do?”
“Well… I heard him playing, saw him. What can you tell me about his other personae?”
“The Master is a geometrician who had to do with the creation of the universe. The One Who Waits will figure in the closing or change of Virtu.”
“None of my business, actually, but do you believe in these beings?”
“Yes.”
“Do many others of your sort?”
“Yes.”
“Why would an AI care to worship anything? You’re as self-sufficient as anything in the business. What do you need gods for, unless they’re truly real?”
“They are as real—more real, I believe—than many figures in other religions.”
“Well, buying that they exist, what do they do for you?”
“I guess the same sort of things that beings in other religions do for their followers.”
“It can’t be healing since you guys don’t get sick.”
“No. Spiritual comfort and understanding, I suppose. A dealing with the right feelings for those things which lie beyond reason.”
“That sounds worthwhile, I’d say. But how do you know your gods are authentic?”
“I might ask how anyone knows that about any religion. You would have to respond that most religions require a leap of faith at some point.”
“I might.”
“But I have seen the Piper and know that he is real.”
“I, too, have met the Piper—or at least heard him play.”
Paracelsus stared. Finally, “Where?” he asked.
“Through my Stage and beyond.”
“Did he tell you anything?”
“Not precisely, but an entity I met there said that the Piper was a lingering remnant of Skyga
’s mental army.”
“Remarkable. I never heard that story,” Paracelsus said. “He does not usually manifest for those of the Verite.”
“It was as if he came seeking me,” said Donnerjack.
“Then you are unusually blessed.”
“Tell me, does Death figure in the pantheon?”
“Yes, but we don’t talk about him much.”
“Why not?”
“What’s to say? He’s Lord of Deep Fields. He gets you in the end.”
“True. Though right now my relationship with him is a bit different. I’m doing a Virtuelle engineering job for him in partial payment of a debt.”
“I did not know that your sort ever got involved at that level. But then, you are who you are, when it comes to reputation. However, the Piper’s presence is a riddle. I would suspect it has to do with your contract.”
“If it does,” Donnerjack said, “he did not reveal it to me.”
“If you meet him again, perhaps you should ask.”
“I will. If he’s interested, maybe the others are, too. How would I recognize the Master or the One Who Waits?”
“The Master limps and usually carries some strange piece of equipment. The One Who Waits is said to have a scar that runs from the top of his head to the sole of his left foot. It is supposed to have come of his having inadvertently gotten in the way of the Creation—though some say it was on purpose.”
“Thank you, Paracelsus. Could you get me a copy of your catechism or whatever it is that contains these items?”
“I’m afraid that’s a no-no. Since we’re all AIs we just transfer data to converts.”
“You mean that no one other than an AI has ever been interested?”
“That’s right. We generally discourage them. Normally, I would have answered a few of your questions and then started changing the subject. But you’d met the Piper and that made a difference.”
“Is there a policy against admitting the people of Verite?”
“No, no discrimination. But we always felt it was our thing.”
“Hm,” Donnerjack said. “Would you have any qualms about discussing it occasionally?”
“All but certain secret parts which aren’t really that interesting.”
“I don’t want to know your secrets. I just want to know whether I may ask you about it.”
Paracelsus nodded.
“What about the Elishite religion?” Donnerjack asked. “Is there any connection between yours and theirs?”
“Yes. We recognize their deities, but we feel that our pantheon supersedes theirs and that our moral code is superior.”
“Your Trinity is more potent than Enlil, Enki, and Ea and all the rest?”
“Some of us like to think so. Others say that they’re versions of each other under different names.”
“We have similar anthropological and theological problems in Verite.”
“1 don’t really think it matters, one way or the other, though.”
“Me neither.”
“I’ll ask you further another time how Bansa figures in your religion—”
“—and you and Jordan,” Paracelsus said.
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“But I absolutely must get some work done before I’m too tired to do it.”
“I understand, boss.”
“Talk to you later, then.”
Paracelsus went out like a light.
Donnerjack moved to his desk and reviewed some designs for Death’s palace. Then he moved onto his real work.
The first full moon following Ayradyss’s initial exploration of the caverns beneath Castle Donnerjack passed without the caoineag successfully managing to take Ayradyss into the secret places. The failure was not for lack of effort—something sought to block their way, something shadowy yet solid, taloned and fanged. Ayradyss caught a glimpse of gimlet eye, forked tongue, wings that were less wings than animate darkness.
“It reminded me of the moire,” she said to her companions when they had retreated back to her parlor, where she had made herself a nest of pillows on the nig before the fire. She wrapped her fingers around a mug of hot cider to warm the fear from them. “But the moire is without malice. It just is—a warping, an indication that the end is come for a proge. This was…”
She shivered and fell silent. Although the room smelled comfortingly familiar, of spices, of the burning wood fire, of the lemon oil the robots rubbed into the antiques, she felt cast adrift. It was as when the moire had touched her in Virtu, and though John pressed her to him as closely as he could, she had become nothing.
“The three nights of the full moon are gone, Ayradyss,” the caoineag said, “and we need not return to those places when the moon comes full again. The guardian you saw cannot cross into Castle Donnerjack. It belongs to the eldritch realms. You are safe—and, believe me, though I stand to gain from your ending, I would not lead you into it. I have had my taste for betrayal burnt from me these long centuries past.”
“That’s right, you betrayed your father.”
Ayradyss pulled herself to a sitting position. She had come to the lovely stage of her pregnancy—the glow was upon her, coloring her skin, her eyes, causing her hair to fall longer and fuller than it had even in Virtu. The awkwardness had gone as well—she had centered herself around her growing baby and moved with a peculiar grace that made it seem impossible that she would ever become ponderous.
“I did, and not merely by omission.” The caoineag’s expression was impassive, the expression on her thin, fine-boned face imperious. “My mother had died some years before and clearly he meant to take another wife. My kin from my mother’s clan did not care for this, nor did I. They spoke to me, hinted at their plans, and although I did not raise hand against my father, I looked the other way when I knew the}’ were coming for him.”
“Did you know that they meant to kill him?”
“I suspected.”
“And that was enough?”
“Enough?”
“Enough to make you the wailing woman.”
“It must be, for I am here.”
“As I will be.”
“Do you regret your choice?”
“No.”
* * *
In the weeks that followed his interview with Paracelsus, Donnerjack worked with a cold concentration. So intense was his absorption that he almost refused a call from Reese Jordan.
“Oh, Reese. Sorry, sorry. I’ve been distracted.”
“They’ve gotten me back into working order,” the other announced. “I’m ready to help you.”
“Glad to hear that. I’m going to risk sending you all my notes on everything I’ve been doing recently.”
“Oh, excellent. When I’ve reviewed them we’ll confer?”
“I trust. If anything prevents it, do what you would with them.”
“What could prevent it?”
“I will include excerpts from my journal, also. I think they’ll give you a pretty good idea. Glad you’re up and about.”
Donnerjack broke the connection and returned to work.
* * *
As the moon waned and grew fat again, Ayradyss visited the tunnels and caverns repeatedly. She invited John to join her on some of these expeditions. They brought a picnic and she showed him the demicaverns, the hidden beach, the claymores stuck in the floor. (He agreed with her that they should remain there; together they made up stories about how the swords had come to that place, laughing as they added detail after fantastic detail).
She did not bring him near the place that led to the eldritch realms. Testing her courage, she had gone there once after the moon was clearly thinning and found nothing remarkable there but a tunnel that terminated in an unremarkable bit of rough rock. Voit’s probes found no openings, nor did his densitometer readings show any significant spaces behind.
For days at a time, she put the mystery from her. Very cautiously, she had spoken to John—hinting at her loneliness. He
took more time from his work and they made occasional trips. Not wishing to undergo more ID checks than absolutely necessary, they picked isolated places: Loch Ness, Dove Cottage, the British Museum. Had they wished, they probably could have ventured safely into once-popular tourist areas, for the development of Virtu had dealt a heavy blow to the conventional tourist industry. But, as on their honeymoon, they chose places where questions would not be asked and gloried in each other as much as in the sights.
Outside the parlor window, once again the moon was nearly full.
“How many days?” Ayradyss asked the caoineag.
“Until the moon portal is open again? Two perhaps. Do you wish to venture that way again?”
“I do.”
“Very well. I have spoken with some of the others. There is a charm against the guardian I learned from the Lady of the Gallery. It comes from after my time, but it may be efficacious. The crusader and the blindfolded prisoner insist on coming with us.”
“I don’t mind. I’m rather touched.”
“They like you, Ayradyss. We all do.”
“And John?”
“He is a different matter. We do not dislike him—far from—but he is mortal. You are other.”
“Because of Deep Fields?”
“Yes, but more. Your heritage in Verite—Mermaid Beneath the Seven Dancing Moons, Angel of the Forsaken Hope—you belong to legend, just as each of us do. It makes us kin.”
“John belongs to legend—in Virtu, that is.”
“This may be so, but he is unaware of his legend, knows himself to be John D’Arcy Donnerjack, a man of great achievement, yes, but just a man. You know the fluidity of being myth.”
“Strange. I never really thought of it. There are many such as myself in Virtu.”
“But not in Verite.”
“No. That is true. These eldritch realms that the tunnels open into— what are they?”
“Myth, I suppose, but very real, very solid myth, just as the guardian you glimpsed is impossible yet all the more possible for being impossible. It is the way of that place.”
“When the moon is full, we will endeavor to go there again. You will teach me the charm?”
“Let us go to the Lady of the Gallery. She said she would teach you personally.”
Donnerjack Page 17
