“I like it!”
“If the ‘lapse’ to my memory occurs…”
“As you said, that is not likely. In any case, Ambry, the more I think about it, the more I think that Alice should get to know you.” She grew suddenly serious. “Then if the worst happens…”
“Yes. I agree. We can talk with our host genius loci and make arrangements to bring Alice here.”
Lydia pulled him to his feet. “I can hardly wait!”
Ambry laughed and took her hand. Together they went to seek the genius loci who resided behind the North Wind and ask her permission to hold a birthday party. The genius loci was delighted with the idea and promised to help Lydia blow out every candle on her cake.
It had not taken long for Markon and Virginia to realize that there was more to Earthma’s little bundle of joy than they had been told. Within a few days of the goddess depositing her offspring in their care, Markon had begun to feel listless. Initially, he had tried to dismiss this as the strain of rehabilitating all the entities that had been damaged in the assault by Sayjak’s band, but soon he was forced to admit that there was something more.
Virginia immediately suspected that Earthma was responsible. She glowered at the sealed, sarcophaguslike forcefield that held Earthma’s child. The reddish light that cycled over it—fading from the hue of dried blood to rosy pink and then darkening again—did not appear to notice her regard.
“Where does it hurt?” she asked Markon, trying to sound flippant but merely sounding worried. “I mean, is there any location or time where the listlessness seems more dominant?”
Markon attempted to run a diagnostic, a routine task made nearly impossible by the fact that lie was having increasing difficulty finding energy to do anything other than keep his normal systems running at peak.
“I cannot tell,” he said, at last, “but I do seem more affected in initiating new programs rather than in maintaining standard subroutines.”
“Can you localize a source for the drain?”
“I fear I do not have the energy.”
Virginia chewed her thumbnail as Markon lapsed into the somewhat comatose state that had become more and more usual. Her training for the Virtu Survey Department had not prepared her for anything like this. Indeed, many of the upper division heads at VSD still resisted the idea that the genius loci were anything other than specialized location proges.
However, her lifelong role as an invalid had given her more than enough experience with doctors and their diagnostic techniques. Taking up the pack which contained her Survey Kit, she began a methodical sweep through Markon’s site. The task was neither quickly nor easily accomplished—indeed, it would have been impossible for anyone else— but Markon had reprogrammed his standard defenses so that the dire-cats purred rather than pounced when she came near and the barbed thornvines parted to let her walk unimpeded.
When her survey was completed and she felt that she had enough data to support her initial hypothesis, she returned to the central grove. At her gentle probing, Markon awoke from his quiescence.
“Markon, how would we contact Earthma?”
“It is usual to pray to those on Highest Meru.” The genius loci’s voice sounded vague.
“No, I mean how would we contact her in an emergency?”
“Emergency?”
“Like if the baby fell on its head.”
“Earthma’s offspring is unlikely to do such a thing. I do not believe that, at this stage in its development, it has even taken on a set shape.”
“Markon! Please. I want to reach Earthma—to speak with her. Is there any way I can contact her short of burning incense?”
Markon did not respond. The question was simply too difficult. It was not that the aion could not think of ways that Earthma could be reached. He simply could not differentiate better ways (such as contacting a lesser messenger deity) from the worse ways (setting off a destructive reaction within his site—which was certain to bring her). Unable to advise clearly, he lapsed into a slow examination of probabilities.
Frustrated, Virginia knew better than to be angry with Markon—she knew who deserved her wrath and she almost forgot how terribly powerful Earthma was as she rehearsed the tongue-lashing she would deliver. Her anger gained force as she realized that she could think of no better way to contact Earthma than through Markon’s suggestion of prayer.
Virginia’s parents had been foot-washing Baptists, devout worshipers in a punishing god who they believed had sent them their damaged child as a torment for the sins of their youth. Since those transgressions had rarely exceeded anything more sinful than an occasional lapse in manners, they may have felt that there was an injustice in their assigned penance—something of a misrouting on a cosmic scale. This may have explained why they prayed so long and hard over their invalid daughter.
National Health had taken over Virginia’s care when her nerve debilitation had progressed to the point that her parents could no longer care for her. She had been one of their greater successes—earning her own living in Virtu and paying for her own care. Still, even as she came to think of her lithe and healthy virt body as her “real” self, she never quite forgot her parents’ well-meaning prayers with their veiled accusation that Virginia’s illness, her continued decline (but persistent refusal to die), was somehow worse for them than it was for her.
All of this came boiling back as Virginia considered how to pray. She hadn’t liked Earthma. Even for Markon, she would be unable to call out to her as “good” or “holy” with any conviction, but some of the rhetoric of punishment and damnation from her youth she could employ with sincerity.
First, Virginia knelt, her hands folded against a large rock. This, she knew, was the posture for humble prayer—a posture that could substitute for devotion.
“Earthma.” She tasted the name. Yes, this would do.
“Earthma! Earthma! Great and terrible force that underlies the shape of Virtu. Earthma! Great mother of mossy mane and swelling belly. Hear me!”
Virginia repeated the words. They fell from her tongue easily, as if she had learned them long ago and was only now remembering them. The rhythm became a chant. She called, but she did not plead. She described, but she did not grovel.
Her voice became hoarse and a tiny spring bubbled from the cold stone to kiss her lips. She drank, accepting Markon’s gift, rejoicing that he had at least this much control. When her throat was soothed, she continued her chant, coloring it with the events she recalled from Markon’s tales of the battles of the Genesis Scramble.
Over and over, she called, not letting herself despair, though her knees grew sore (and moss grew out of the damp earth beneath them to cushion her), and her lips tired of shaping the words. To despair was to admit she could do nothing and she would not accept this as long as Markon needed her.
Virginia had paused to drink when she became aware of a golden light permeating the grove. Raising her head, her lips still shaping the words of her chant, she turned and saw the messenger.
His form was that of a young man, clad only in a brief golden kilt that might have been woven from light rather than from coarse matter. His feet fluttered above the ground in winged sandals and his pale hair was lit with a halo. Her mind struggled to recall old lessons and she came up with a name.
“Mercury?”
“Well, that beats being called ‘The Flash,’ as I have been in my time. Yes, ‘Mercury’ will do as a name for me. Who are you? You’re a Veritean, but you pray to the secret deities of Virtu and your prayers have the force of an aion behind them.”