“To be straight, then. I want you to secrete a duplicate of the crossover gear within one of the secondary ziggurats. That way, if we are forced into a clinch, Seaga can send some of his minions through to push back those of Skyga before they can spread into the Verite.”
“Odd. A moment ago you said that you wanted the Verite to be free from meddling gods. Now you are telling me that you want to supply another powerful figure with crossover access.”
“Only so that the minions of Skyga can be pushed back—and only as a last resort at that.”
“So you said.”
“Do you doubt me?”
“Not really. It’s just that this is a great deal to comprehend all at once. We have some weeks before the Celebration. Can I have time to think?”
“You will not speak of this.”
“Of course not. We had already agreed on that. Besides, I am impressed by the danger that these gods of old offer to the Verite. I will not dismiss your considerations lightly. I promise that.”
“Then I will need to be satisfied with your need to consider. Sometimes I forget that humans do not have multiple processing units.”
Kelsey yawned elaborately. “Or that we have lungs and muscles and sensory equipment that get tired after a hard day’s work. Can you have the transition aion call me a cab?”
“Very well. And thank you.”
“My pleasure, I assure you.”
Look back over your shoulder. Run, run away. Far, far away.
Bar the gates.
White-knuckled, look out from between the iron posts.
Are you safe at last?
Can you be safe until it is past? Call the ghosts.
Call the five-limbed demons.
Array the horrors. Beyond the gate, order lurks.
Press it back into its bottle.
Chaos is fecund. Chaos is powerful. Chaos…
(oh, my sweet seven-limbed demons) Chaos
is terrified.
When Alice Hazzard came home from a completely frustrating day spent searching for clues to a story she knew was there, she found a message from her mother. Written in dark green ink on a sheet of pale ivory paper, it rested, hard copy, in the little-used mail basket just inside the front door of the apartment.
Lydia had hand-drawn tiny peacock orchids around the edges of the sheet of paper, something she did when she was fidgeting on the phone or while waiting for a patient. She had sketched their angular yet soft six-petaled shape and spiky leaves perfectly, black pencil shadings for the darker center (deep red in reality), silver-grey for the antennalike stamen and pistils. The flower was the only thing she could draw, but she took great pride in this small achievement.
Alice smiled and felt a pang of homesickness (odd, since she was home; Lydia was away), and read the message:
Alice,
Won’t you come and join me? I’d like yon to visit for a few days, celebrate my birthday with me, meet an old friend I think yon should know. I’m at a private address, but if yon come to the campus of AVU at seven this evening, I will meet yon by the swan pond. Sorry about the secrecy, but that’s how it has to be.
Alice was intrigued, puzzled. With the edge of her finger she touched just one of the penciled peacock orchids. It smudged. Mom’s then, not some weird practical joke.
She considered. Both she and Drum were stumped on the Elshie case. A vacation might give her a new perspective. Knowing that Mom would ask, she checked her schoolwork. Except for a writing assignment, she was all caught up. With a few keystrokes, she transferred a copy of the Virtropolis article to her teacher’s mailbox. Certainly a publishable article would serve to fulfill the assignment.
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.