“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.
Wolfer Martin D’Ambry was such a master, and the piece he had composed for Lydia spoke not only of the times of separation but also of reunion. It rejoiced at the discovery of a daughter and so skillfully mimicked her intensity that Alice sat up and laughed in recognition. It was when the music drifted into defiance of fate, of old masters and new summonings, that the fog began to rise.
Initially, the three humans accepted the meteorologic anomaly (the day to this point had been fine and clear) as an effect generated by the genius loci to accompany Ambry’s music. Doubt surfaced when the fog solidified into a swirling mass of tentacles, all of which oriented on Wolfer Martin D’Ambry.
“Ambry!” Lydia screamed.
Alice’s response, perhaps because she had known her father for such a brief time, was less panicked. Leaping to her feet, she tore hard green apples from the tree nearest to her and pelted them with considerable skill at the foggy monstrosity. Her target defused its mass in sections, permitting the apples to pass through.