“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 first 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.”