The next few hours were spent watering plants, packing her virtual wardrobe (remembering Mom’s present), and leaving messages for her grandparents, Gwen. and Drum to let them know that she was joining her mother. At 6:45, she linked into her transfer couch and set the coordinates for the campus of AVU.
Her mother was kneeling at the edge of the water, feeding the swans. Ail of them were white, except for a particularly magnificent black male. He had deigned to take a square of bread directly from Lydia’s palm. Alice stood quietly, recalling, from experience, that the programmed swans could be as touchy and territorial as their RT counterparts.
When the swan swam away, Lydia rose, dusted breadcrumbs from her palms, and turned with a smile to Alice.
“Do you remember…”
“When I was five and the swan bit me?” Alice chuckled. “I’ll never forget.”
“Nor I… I was worried that you would develop an aversion to virt then and there. It couldn’t have been more than your first or second trip.”
“No such luck. Only thing I developed was an aversion to swans.”
They laughed.
“Well, Alice, if you’ll come with me…”
Alice fell into step. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll know soon enough, Curiosity.”
“Mom!”
“Pretend that I’m a client.”
Alice did so, although she was hard-pressed to still her questions when Mom led the way down one of the paths that went around the lake. These rambles didn’t go anywhere, just wandered through willows and reeds. Mostly they were used for study groups who met in the conveniently placed gazebos, or for the occasional courting couple that didn’t choose a more private site.
She had run up and down these very paths when she was a little girl come to campus with her student mother, had collected handfuls of twigs and pebbles, which she had then deposited on her tolerant parent’s lap— interrupting serious discussions of organic chemistry, physiology, anatomy. The paths went nowhere, she knew that as certainly as she knew anything. So where was her mother taking her?
Singing softly, so softly that Alice had to strain to hear, Lydia Hazzard walked on, her A-line skirt swinging slightly with the sway of her hips. Alice hurried after, biting her tongue, wondering when the paths had been extended, wondering what justification had been given to the budget committees for such inefficient use of programming, wondering…
A rose garden now… Could this be a project for a horticultural class? Certainly the bushes were magnificently programmed—the rounded, slightly serrated leaves each distinct and different. And the flowers were marvelous. Alice had never paid much attention to roses— knew vaguely that they came in red and white and yellow… maybe pink.
She lost herself in variations she had never thought to imagine: pale green; white tipped with bloodred; sunset orange; a delicate, silvery purple; another orange—this one burnt; a pink that glowed with a hint of yellow. Nor were the colors the only variation. Some blossoms possessed petals like fat hearts, soft as velvet; others had tiny petals, fragile and thin; others were pointed, almost sharp. The garden smelled of rose perfume, thick and heavy without ever becoming overwhelming.
Lost in contemplation of the roses, Alice did not precisely notice when the bagpipes began to play. Shrill, but commanding, skirling, a twisting, tootling thing that would not conventionally be called a melody, but could be nothing else, the bagpipes called out to her. The tune sounded familiar, although she knew she had never heard it before. It drew her from her contemplation of roses, and looking around, Alice realized that she had transferred sites.
She turned around and stared back the way she had come. The rose garden extended, apparently into infinity, although there was a vivid blue line that might, just might, be an ocean. Alice realized that she could never find her way back. Beneath the sound of the bagpipes, she heard her mother laugh.
“Neat trick?”
“I’m astonished,” Alice assured her. “Now can you tell me where we are?”
“We call it the Land Behind the North Wind. As you may have guessed, this is one of the wild sites of Virtu—one of the lost areas, to be more precise.”
“I knew they existed… I never knew how to find one, though.”
“Most people don’t. The semiwild sites are enough to keep the VSD busy. These areas are dismissed as mythological—or useless.”
“How did you learn your way here?”
“Come over the hill. I’ll introduce you to the friend who I’ve been staying with.”
“Is he the one playing the bagpipes?”
“Yes. How did you know it was a ‘he’?”
“Mom… I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re blushing.”
Lydia raised a hand to her cheek. “I am? Well, there’s hope for this old lady after all. Come along.”
Side by side, they climbed a hill that changed character as they mounted its slopes. At first it was as soft and green as the paths through the rose garden. The higher slopes were covered in heather, tiny purple blossoms partially opened, fat bees hovering over them as if the fanning of their wings could ease the flowers open. Grey rocks veined sometimes with jet, sometimes with pink feldspar, periodically interrupted the heather.
“It’s very peaceful here,” Alice observed.
“I’ve always thought so. Of course, the weather is not always so pleasant. The genius loci is attentive to the needs of her internal ecology—it rains, it sleets. Today, however, the weather has been arranged to welcome you.”
“Me?”
“The genius loci is a friend of Ambry’s, and Ambry…”
The bagpipe music stopped abruptly and a man stood up from where he had been seated to the lee of a hulking boulder. His hair and beard were ruffled by the wind, and in his vaguely medieval costume (complete with a huge sword and a dagger), he would have been threatening but for the shyness in his courtly bow.
“Miz Alice,” he said, “I am Wolfer Martin D’Ambry. After all these years, I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”
All these years. Alice let the words tease her. She had assumed that whoever her mother wanted her to meet was a relatively recent involvement, but this… She felt the truth at the fringes of her mind and gave Ambry a warm smile.
“I’m pleased to meet you, too. What should I call you?”
“Your mother calls me ‘Ambry’—I’d be pleased if you would do the same.”
“And I am Alice—not ‘Miz Alice.’ “
They walked then, Ambry slightly ahead, his bagpipes tucked under one arm, Alice and Lydia following together. Leaving the hilltop, they came down into an orchard valley. Beneath the spreading apple, peach, and apricot trees, tall Asiatic lilies grew, interspersed with bleeding heart, lily of the valley, and her mother’s favorite peacock orchids. A small brook ran through the center of the orchard, tumbling over polished cobblestones. At the verge of the orchard nestled a slate-roofed cottage.
“Is that where you live?” Alice asked Ambry.
“For now, it is,” he answered, “and where you will be staying as well. Come along and I’ll give you a glass of lemonade. The genius loci imports the lemons from a neighboring site.”
“How nice of her. I didn’t know that the sites traded with each other.”
“Oh, they do. As I understand it, a site can be designed to violate the laws of physics and nature as understood in Verite, but the further from the norm, the more difficult it is to maintain. The Lady of the North Wind prefers to import lemons rather than maintain tropics.”
Ambry opened the door to the cottage and stood back to let the ladies enter. Coming in after, he set his bagpipes on a stand.
“The lemonade’s in the kitchen,” he said. “We can take it outside and sit in the garden if you’d like.”
“I would,” Alice replied. “So, if the physical laws of Verite are the baseline in Virtu, then I guess that the Church of Elish is all wrong when they say that Virtu is the firs
t reality.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Ambry said. “I suspect the issue is a great deal more complicated than merely ‘who came first.’ The two universes are connected—that is a fact. That they can influence each other to some extent—that is another fact. Beyond those two points, I would not care to lay any wagers.”
As Lydia listened to the conversation her initial nervousness gave way to pleasure. She knew her daughter well enough to know that Alice had taken to Ambry, that she wasn’t just being polite to her mother’s friend. However, she also knew Alice well enough to tell that the girl’s intense curiosity had been awakened. When Alice artfully turned the conversation away from universe theory, Lydia was unsurprised.
“So, Mom, where is your patient? I didn’t know that you did virtual medicine.”
“I don’t, and you know very well that I don’t,” Lydia replied, knowing that she was being baited. “I fibbed. My ‘patient’ is Ambry and I am not so much treating him as helping him with his doctor’s orders.”
“II it isn’t too rude to ask,” Alice said, “is Ambry from somewhere in the Verite?”
“Not as far as I know,” Ambry answered. “I am a complex proge— and my programming may be disintegrating.”
“No!”
“I have not yet seen the moire,” Ambry reassured her, “so the damage may not be terminal. When I consulted a doctor his diagnosis was that I am suffering from… it is difficult to explain.”
“Try me. I’m not afraid to ask questions if I don’t understand.”
“She’s not, Ambry,” Lydia added. “I think her first sentence was ‘Why, Mom?’ “
Ambry grinned. “Very well. You must first understand, Alice, that I do not recall my origin. This is not uncommon for natives of Virtu. Often a proge is created for a specific purpose and when that purpose is fulfilled or the proge evolves beyond it, existence independent of original function is achieved. My doctor and I believe that this happened to me long ago.
“My illness may have one of two sources. Either my secondary imperatives are decaying or my creator is trying to recall me to service. Whatever the cause, the result is that I have been suffering bouts of amnesia after which I awaken in a strange site.”
“I’ve been staying with him,” Lydia explained, “because I know him well enough to note any changes in his personality. If Ambry starts acting peculiarly I can try to get him to snap out of the spell or, if that fails, call a doctor.”
“Wow!” Alice weighed several questions, let one rise to the top. “Ambry, have you had any of these bouts since Mom has been with you?”
“There may have been a minor one, but if so, she was able to bring me around.”
“Do you have any idea what your original programming was designed to make you?” Alice grinned. “Sorry if that’s rude. I don’t know a better way to ask. Drum says that I have no tact.”
“Is Drum your boyfriend?”
Oddly, Alice blushed.
“No, he’s just a buddy, a detective I’ve been working with on a case.”
Lydia noted the blush and grinned, flustering Alice more, but forbore from commenting.
“Your question is not rude,” Ambry assured her, returning to the main thread of the conversation. “In Virtu such identifications are common—rather like family designations. As best as I know, my original design was as a warrior and a musician—a bagpiper for an elite regiment.”
“So, you haven’t changed much.”
“Actually, I have changed a great deal. I have lost my taste for fighting. In the days when I served my creator, I had no other life. Now, I do.”
“I don’t think it is terribly just that your creator should simply be able to call you back into service,” Alice said. “There should be some form of manumission. In Verite, an AP can be manumitted in several ways—”
Lydia, seeing the crusader’s fire light her daughter’s eyes, interrupted.
“Alice, I’m not certain that this is a particularly polite topic of conversation.”
“But, Mom! We’re talking about an intelligent person who is effectively a slave to the whims of his creator! I thought you’d care …”
“I do care, hut I don’t think that this discussion considers how Ambry might—”
Lydia’s explanation was interrupted by a cascade of laughter from Ambry. Alice turned, surprised. Lydia looked annoyed.
“Ambry, what’s so funny?”
The Phantom Piper of the Lost Legion of Skyga grinned at his wife.
“I’m sorry, my dear, but Alice is so like you when you were her age—especially when she’s impassioned—that watching the two of you argue is like watching you argue with a mirror.”
Immediately recognizing the humor of the situation, Lydia grinned. Alice’s agile mind had fastened on Ambry’s speech to provide another support for the construct she was weaving.
“You’ve known my mother since she was my age?”
“Within a year or so, yes.”
“Do we really look so much alike?”
Ambry paused, glancing back and forth between them.
“When incidentals are omitted—you wear your hair shorter, I think Lydia was a little thinner—you could be twins. There are differences, though, that go beyond the physical. I don’t think that anyone who knew you both well could mistake one for the other when you started talking.”
“Oh?”
“Lydia was quieter, a little less sophisticated. I remember thinking that she was trying to fold into herself.”
“I also had acne,” Lydia added, reminiscentlv. Then she frowned.
“Ambry, when I met you, 1 was in virt disguise. How would you know what I looked like?”
“I may have lost touch with you when you returned to the Verite, my love, but I have had opportunities since to summon old files. However, when you and Alice were bickering, the similarities that struck me were more of personality—of force of personality—than of physical shape.”
Alice took a deep breath and asked the question she had been holding back since she had first met Ambry:
“Are you my father?”
The answer came immediately, without hesitation. A faint smile tilted the corner of Ambry’s mouth.
“Yes, Alice, I am your father.”
For once, Alice Hazzard was at a loss for words or action. She stared at the dapper, bearded man. then glanced at her mother. Lydia reached out, almost defiantly, to squeeze Ambry’s hand.
“Alice, the medical technicians would say that it is impossible… that there can be no fertile breeding between Virtu and Verite. What my heart tells me is that I came to Virtu on holiday, was spirited away by a charming gentleman, and fell in love with him. Together we made a child, a child that happened to be born in the Verite. You can read all my medical records with their wise theories about psychosomatic conversions and parthenogenesis if you wish—they’re accurate as much as they can be. However, to me, Ambry has always been your father—and my husband.”
To give herself some distance from the mixture of emotions roiling in her breast, Alice donned the thoughtful expression she normally reserved for Link Crain.
“It seems to me,” she said, thinking aloud, “that an adopted child becomes the child of the parents who raised it—no matter who contributed the genetic material. And I always wanted a dad… and I really like Ambry… Mom?”
Sniffing away a few tears she hadn’t realized were running down her face, Lydia hugged her daughter.
“You like Ambry?”
“Would I have said I did if I didn’t?”
Laughter replaced the tears.
“No, Alice, not you. Tact has never been one of your gifts.”
“I prefer to think of myself as honest!” Alice pulled herself up in mock indignation, a move that managed to put her close enough that Ambry could easily be included in the hug.
They sat together for a time, each glad the moment for revelation was over, each considering what this would mean for the
future. Delighted by the drama that had unfolded within its heart, the genius loci tossed flower petal confetti into the air and invited the birds to compose arias in celebration.
Days passed in the Land Behind the North Wind, days filled with discovery, picnics, long talks, and occasional arguments. By mutual agreement, Alice and Ambry decided that she would continue to call her father “Ambry” rather than “Dad.”
Lydia was perhaps the most nervous about the new family grouping. She had long desired, yet dreaded, the introduction of her daughter and her husband. Their acceptance of each other was a balm, but some days needed to pass before she could relax when Alice began on one of her harangues (her indignation about the enslavement of Virtu’s proge population had increased rather than otherwise when she had learned of her relationship to Ambry), or when Ambry would calmly lecture their headstrong daughter about some point of fact or etiquette that she had missed.
Eventually, even Lydia forgot to worry, and the days fluttered by, punctuated by quick visits to the Verite (now that Alice could share the watch, Lydia sporadically returned to tend her clinic). The homecomings were of a sort she had dreamed of since she was nineteen.
And in this fashion the days went by until Lydia’s birthday. Early in the day, she visited with her parents and sister—a departure encouraged by Alice and Ambry, as it gave them opportunity to prepare for her party. Upon her return, they picnicked in the orchard, then, cake and ice cream and Alice’s gift of pottery all gone by, Ambry fetched his bagpipes from the cottage.
“My gift for you is a musical composition, love,” he said, grinning fey yet merry, “as they all have been.”
Lydia nodded, leaning back against the trunk of an apricot tree and setting her cake plate in the grass. (A small line of ants marched up and began gathering crumbs). Half-dozing in the sun, Alice lazily ferried the lucky ant or two over to their hill.
One of the fallacies commonly held about the music of the bagpipes is that it is all loud, strident stuff, filled with wails and screeches designed to set the teeth on edge and drive warriors into battle (some say so that they won’t be forced to listen any longer). Actually, in skilled hands, the pipes are capable of haunting subtlety, of sobbing as well as shouting, of something like laughter.
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