“You and Dubhe most of all,” Drum said thoughtfully, “since you’re both wearing all the existence you have.”
“Right, but I’m not certain how much protection virt forms are going to be. Remember, the Lord of Deep Fields slew my father even though my father was in Verite at the time. He claimed my mother as well.”
Dubhe peeled a banana. “This conversation is not making me feel really good, Jay. Tell us the good news.”
“You don’t have to come along, Dubhe. Death has had his use of you.”
“Don’t worry, I’m coming. If he wins, I don’t want him angry with me. If he loses… well, I’m not certain I want to continue existing in a universe where Earthma has control over the forces of both creation and destruction.”
“Universes,” Virginia reminded him. “Tell us what you have in mind,
Jay-“
“Castle Donnerjack is haunted.”
His words were met with three unbelieving stares.
“No, really, not by virt ghosts or projections, but by authentic Scottish ghosts—all of whom date back to the earlier history of the castle.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Dubhe said, reaching for another banana. “I’ve met them.”
“Go on,” Alice said. “I’m certain this will make sense in a minute.”
Jay grinned at her. “It will. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that the only troops who would be very effective in this conflict between Deaths would be those who were already dead.”
“Doesn’t that mean that the current Lord of Deep Fields already has an edge?” Drum said. “He’ll have lots of resources to draw on. Earthma’s imitation would have many fewer.”
“My old boss does have a catalog of sorts,” Dubhe said. “His Elysian Fields… He offered to put your father and mother there once. Your dad refused.”
“I’m not certain that those will be very effective,” Jay said, trying to keep his voice steady at this newest reminder of his father’s stubborn-ness. “They’re all Virtuan. They’ll be susceptible to whatever Earthma’s child can bring to bear.”
“But Veritean ghosts,” Drum interrupted, “may operate on different rules.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Jay said.
“We have just one problem,” Alice said. “I don’t think that we can hook ghosts up to transfer couches. How are we ever going to get them into Virtu?”
“I don’t plan to use conventional transfer mechanics,” Jay said. “Even if they would work, they would translate the ghosts into virt form. We need the real thing—a crossover, just like I can do.”
“You’re not planning on using Bansa’s device, are you?” Virginia asked.
“No,” Jay said. “In the tunnels beneath Castle Donnerjack, there’s an entry into a place called the Eldritch lands. From what I was told, they are the shadowlands that permeate so much of Celtic legends.”
“Legend,” Alice said, her eyes gleaming. “Are they connected to Virtu?”
“Give the lady a cigar!” Jay said.
(And one obligingly rolled from a humidor built into the club car’s wall. The Brass Babboon laughed loudly and raced on.)
“Isn’t that way open only during the full moon?” Dubhe asked worriedly. “It’s a bit much to hope that it will be open now.”
“That’s what we were told,” Jay agreed. “We’re just going to have to deal with that when we get there.”
Dack was simultaneously dusting the flowers on the bedframe in the master bedroom, doing the household accounts, and wondering if he should tell Jay about the calls inquiring about him when his audio receptors detected noise from the area of the Great Stage. There had been several disturbances in the last several days. Twice the projectors had glowed as they repelled some assault. Winged bulls had soared over the battlements, but had vanished when they touched the violet static field.
Therefore, when he heard the sounds, he hurried into Donnerjack’s office in time to see Jay walking onto the receiving area tugging Dubhe through the interface with him. In the background, Dack could see a horrid train he vaguely recognized from some of Donnerjack Senior’s design notes pulling away.
“Dack!” Jay hugged the robot as he had when he was much younger. “In a couple of hours a girl will arrive—Alice Hazzard. Let her in.”
“That is contrary to your father’s instructions,” the robot said.
The bracelet spoke. “Most of what Jay is doing is contrary to my instructions and my wishes. However, he has presented me with a convincing argument as to why I should permit him to do so.”
“And that is, sir, if I may ask?”
“Self-mutilation.”
“Jay!”
“It wouldn’t listen otherwise,” Jay said, “and I still haven’t gotten into too much trouble.”
There was a rude sound from the general vicinity of the bracelet. Jay chose to ignore it.
“Dack, do you happen to remember what phase the moon is in?”
“Waning gibbous. I recall that it was full around the time you left on your last jaunt.”
Jay considered everything he had been through on that “jaunt”: the visit to Reese, seeking Tranto, the first encounter with the Brass Babboon and that first ride through realities, his meeting with the Lord of Deep Fields, the journey to Meru, and the events that occurred there.
“It has been only a few days, hasn’t it? Well, that’s good.”
“Can I get you something to eat?”
“I ate on the train.”
“But can virtual food nourish your Veritean form?”
“It always has before.” Jay saw that Dack was worried, relented. “Okay, I’ll come and have something. Do you know where the bottle of Laphroaig whisky is?”
“In the parlor cabinet. It’s rather early for drinking, Jay.”
“It’s not for me. I’m going to need it for a friend.”
Dack sighed. Humans were so often incomprehensible.
* * *
“Hi, Gwen. It’s Alice. Is my mom in?”
“She’s just finishing with a patient. I’ll get her.”
Alice waited, drumming on the desktop until Lydia Hazzard, looking more worn than her patients alone could account for, appeared on the screen.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, honey. Are you at home? Did you find Ambry?”
“I’m at home, but not for long. I’ll be leaving almost immediately for Scotland.”
“Scotland? Why?”
“First, your other question. Yes, I found Ambry. He’s… well, do you remember about the Master?”
“Yes.”
“He’s become the Master.”
“Good lord!”
“And the One Who Waits—sort of a merging of the two.”
“My poor Piper…”
“Weird stuff is coming to a head, Mom. That’s why I’m going to Scotland. Do you remember Jay MacDougal?”
“The boy who came into the clinic with you and Drum on the day of the riot.”
“That’s right. He’s actually Jay Donnerjack—the son of John and—”
“Ayradyss!”
“You remember! Good. Drum and I are going to help him out with some stuff. It’s sort of related to a bequest his parents left him.”
“Bequest? Are they dead?”
“Yes, both of them died before he was a year old.”
“Poor kid!”
“And he grew up all alone in the castle in Scotland with a bunch of robots and aions for company.” Alice decided against mentioning the ghosts for now.
Lydia raised her eyebrows, but opted to be polite. “Jay seemed normal enough for all that. What is this bequest?”
“I can’t really discuss it here, but I think if I help him it might give me a line on Ambry.”
“So it’s in Virtu?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you should be safe enough there.”
Lydia chose not to mention her own disappearance during a visit to that
supposedly “safe” world of art. Alice decided not to mention moon portals and the fact that they were going to Deep Fields. There was an uncomfortable silence while they both considered things unsaid.
“I suppose waiting for Ambry in the Land Behind the North Wind won’t do much good now.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Your grandparents called. They’ve gotten us all tickets to the Elishite Celebration in California. My sister will be there, too. What should I tell them for you?”
“Are you going?”
“Probably. I haven’t done anything with them recently—I’ve spent too much time in virt.”
“Mom, I think it would be best if you didn’t go.”
“Why not?”
“Remember how their last Celebration ended with a riot? I have a bad feeling that this one might end with something worse.”
Lydia Hazzard studied her daughter’s expression. “Is this just a vague feeling, or do you have some privileged information?”
“Privileged information.”
“Connected to your trip to Scotland?”
“I can’t say, Mom.”
“I see.” Lydia considered. “Very well. I’ll do my best to dissuade your grandparents and Aunt Cindy. If they don’t go, I won’t, but I’m not letting them go without me.”
“Fair enough. Mom, try really hard to convince them not to go.”
“I promise, sweetie. How long until you leave for Scotland?”
“Jay was making arrangements to have one of the Donnerjack Institute’s private vehicles pick me up. I expect to hear from them anytime now.”
“Be careful, dear.”
“You, too. I’ll call when I get a chance, Mom.”
“Love you.”
“You, too.”
Two versions of the same face looking into blank screens, two very different minds thinking of things unsaid. Sometimes love is in silence.
* * *
Ben Kwinan waited in the virt meeting room as one after another the Church Elders flickered out.
“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did but she did it backwards and in high heels,” he said conversationally to the two who remained. “And now apparently we’re going to have to do it at double-time as well.”
“Move the Celebration up?” Randall Kelsey barely kept from shouting. “And I came to this meeting prepared to present reasons why we couldn’t be done—not at the level of complexity planned—on time! Move things up?”
Aoud Araf moved over to the liquor cabinet. “I need a ginger ale. Anything for you fellows?”
“Something a lot stronger than ginger ale,” Kelsey said. “Who cares if it’s virtual! Right now even a programmed high would be welcome.”
“Gin and tonic?”
“If you agree to hold the tonic,” Kelsey said, then he returned to the original subject. “Move the Celebration up?”
“At least your department can cut corners,” Ben Kwinan comforted. “Just be glad you’re not in ticketing. Think of the refunds, the rescheduling, the bribing of transportation executives. For once I am sorry that I don’t need sleep. I won’t get a break until this is over.”
“Or poor me,” Aoud Araf said. “Security will need to be just as perfect as if we were working from our original plans. There will be no forgiveness if this Celebration ends in a riot.”
“I’ll have you sent layout changes automatically,” Kelsey promised, calming somewhat. “You heard most of what we’ll need to do during the meeting, but there is always a difference between conception and execution.”
Araf set down his empty ginger ale glass.
“I’d better head out. Be talking with you both.”
Once they were alone, Kwinan looked at Kelsey.
“And?”
“And what?” Kelsey’s tone wasn’t quite belligerent.
“Will you be able to do your part?”
“I can only try. I won’t make promises.”
“You realize there can only be one reason for the changing of the Celebration date.”
“What?”
“The gods grow restless.”
“I thought the reasons were that we were already sold out, that if we went ahead now there would be opportunity for a second Celebration while we were still trendy.”
“That is the official reason. You and I know that great things…”
“Not here.”
“Very well. Would you like to come to my hogan?”
“No. Unlike you, I do need my sleep. In a few hours, I’m going to be running around in the mud collecting information so that my bosses can confirm what buildings can be completed, what flower arrangements can be omitted, a thousand other details that need a trained observer on the ground.”
Kwinan’s grin was wry. “And don’t forget, you must be fitted for your new priest’s robes.”
“Let them use my others as a pattern. I have work to do.”
Moving toward the bar, Kelsey poured another quick shot, downed it, and walked over to pat Kwinan on the shoulder.
“I’ll see what I can do, Ben.”
“Prepare ye the way of the Lord!” Kwinan half chanted, half sung.
Kelsey frowned at the aion’s levity.
“And let’s hope that when it’s all done we’re not left with voices crying out in the wilderness.”
“Amen to that, my friend. Amen to that.”
* * *
He dwelt in Deep Fields and wondered for how long he would continue to do so.
The assaults had begun soon after he had felt the ending of the aion Markon. At the time the void left by the genius loci imploded within the silence of Death’s realm, the Lord of the Lost, assisted by the phant, Tranto, had been at work raising a gate house just across the moat from the palace.
As this involved razing a number of existing attempts—Death was eager to improve upon John D’Arcy Donnerjack’s design, but he had not the gift of creation—the raising of the gatehouse had also involved a good many puns. Tranto, glowing with the energy of the strange attractors he had consumed, was enthusiastic about shoving the piles of broken building materials from side to side, heaping marble on cinder block, plaster on preformed plastics.
Only with great difficulty did the Lord of the Lost convince the inebriated phant to join him within the relative safety of the palace’s walls. Phecda coiled around her master’s head. Mizar, who had fought his way through the earliest assaults at the expense of another tail and some handfuls of the tapestry print on his left haunch, sat on Death’s feet.
“Would it surprise you, Tranto, to learn that I have made some foolish decisions in my time?”
Until the disruption caused by a dragon of moire (its texture subtly greener than that more usually seen) disintegrating the gatehouse to ash had ended, the phant waited to reply.
“You exist, after your fashion. You move through time and through space. Not even those on Highest Meru claim infallibility—that is left for lesser deities and pontiffs. No, lord, I would not be surprised.”
“Kindness, Tranto. Very well, let me tell you of my foolishness. My strength is in destruction, decay, entropy, discordance. Occasionally, I manage to summon something into existence, but either it is like Mizar, a dismal mocker)- of the living creature it mimics…”
Death’s dog thumped his remaining tails on the floor to indicate that he felt no insult in these words. Mizar had seen other dogs and thought them poor, weak creatures. He preferred himself as he was, but he could see his maker’s point.
“…Or it is like Dubhe or Phecda, a creature salvaged just before entropy has completed its work and given an opportunity to make a pact with me—a strange new life in return for service. Once, not so long ago as we count these things, I was tempted with the possibility of becoming a creator.”
Tranto grunted. Out on the field of rubble and debris a legion of department store mannequins had arisen and was opposing an acid cloud that crumpled them with a caress.
“Earthma machinated a meeting with me by taking on the guise of a failing proge. She asked me what I desired more than anything else in Virtu. Many beings—proges and aions alike—attempt to barter with me when they see the moire. I thought nothing of the question. Perhaps she had woven an imperative of some sort into her entreaty, but I answered her honestly.”
Tranto grunted again, picked up a strange attractor in the delicate fingers at the tip of his trunk and paused before he popped it into his mouth.
“You told her of your desire to create.”
“And then she revealed herself to me as a goddess Most High. We made a deal. She would give me three seeds of creation if I would give her one of destruction. I thought I was well ahead on the deal, believed she had some game in mind with an opponent among the dwellers on Meru—perhaps Seaga or Skyga.
“I used one of Earthma’s seeds to give John D’Arcy Donnerjack back his bride. Another was used so that the Palace of Bones he designed for me would maintain its shape and form. I believe that Earthma used the seed I gave her to give the power of death to the thing that now ravages my fields and seeks to dethrone me.”
Phecda looked down into Death’s dark eye socket.
“Yet it is not merely a clone of you, is it, lord? I analyze the presence of other forces.”
“No, it is not just mine. It is hers; perhaps one or both of the other Great Ones made an unwitting contribution as well. That would explain its power and why neither of the others has moved against it.”
The acid cloud had dissolved the last of the mannequins and was eddying toward the moat. Tranto moved to a cannon set in the battlements, adjusted the aim slightly, placed a match against the touch hole. It fired a ball made of compacted pliant feces—which at this point was largely reprocessed strange attractors.
The acid cloud took the cannon ball in the center and retreated slightly.
“Well shot,” the Lord of Deep Fields commented.
“And well shat,” Phecda added.
“How long can we hold out?” Tranto asked.
“Long enough, I hope. I have not exhausted my resources, but if Earthma’s bastard can draw for power upon its mother and perhaps one of its other fathers, then I fear I am in danger of being replaced. However, this palace may resist better than other elements of Deep Fields, since at its foundation lies Earthma’s own power. Whatever the case, surrender is not an option.”
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