“We’d better get downstairs before B.B. has the place down around our ears,” Jay said, grabbing his clothes.
Dubhe laughed. “Deep Fields is always coming down around someone’s ears—the trick is getting something to stay.”
“Still…” Jay stuffed his arms in his shirt and buttoned it up crooked. “I’d hate to have something happen to this palace. My dad designed it and… well, the Lord of Entropy seems so proud of it.”
“You noticed,” Dubhe muttered. “Next thing you’ll be telling me that you would have preferred to grow up here.”
“Let’s not take it that far… but it might have been cool. Did you see that horse thing he had?”
Jumping onto Jay’s back saved Dubhe the necessity of replying. The youth tore out the door and down the spiral stair to the main floor at a breakneck pace that left Dubhe’s tail flapping behind them. At the front door, they found Death watching the Brass Babboon fart bottle rockets.
“Exuberant, isn’t it?” the Lord of the Lost commented. “I must admit, I envy John D’Arcy Donnerjack his talent for creation. I must be, by definition, derivative.”
Jay steeled himself to look directly into the shadowed cassock, pretending to meet eyes that he could not see.
“Sir, you just spoke of my father in the present tense. Is he… well, is he alive somewhere?”
“Not that I know of,” Death said, cool and pitiless. “He did not come to me, but then, being a creature of the Verite he would not have even though I was the agent of his ending.”
Jay stiffened. “You killed my father?”
“Yes. Does that shock you, Jay?”
“I… I… Yes.”
“Does the fact that I killed him shock you or that I would admit the fact to you? You knew that we were enemies, that he designed that noisy train out there to effect my destruction—at least on a temporary level— although I suspect that he would have been pleased to have managed it in a more permanent fashion.”
“But he did that to save me!”
“From what?”
“From death.”
“From Death or from dying?”
Jay paused. “Dying, I guess. I never really knew him. You made certain of that. Maybe he just thought he’d made a bad deal.”
“Yet, I also made certain that you were born, my boy.”
“For your purposes!”
“And now that you know something of those purposes, are they so ignoble? Moreover, your father never asked me if I intended your dying. He assumed the worst of me and I permitted him to do so.”
Jay was so angry that he was nearly driven to tears. Feeling them pooling hot beneath his eyes made him angrier, so that his question came out as a shriek.
“Why?”
“Because, Jay D’Arcy Donnerjack, even Death may grow weary of people assuming the worst of him. I treated John D’Arcy Donnerjack honorably—returned to him his bride, gave him an opportunity for a child. Yet, even before your birth, I found him in arms against me. When I would not renounce my claim on you, he armed his castle against me. I sought to reclaim Ayradyss after the fashion of a repossession rather than from any evil nature.”
“How can I believe you!”
“Have I ever lied to you, Jay, even when I would benefit from doing so?”
Jay looked at his shoes, at the gargoyles on the palace walls, anywhere but that shadowed cassock with its white hints of bone.
“Not that I know of, sir.”
“Very well, then, I do not ask you to like me, but you did surrender to me. I have given you a task. Your train awaits. Go and do as I have told you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jay turned away, securing his father’s engineer’s cap on his head, wiping a tear or two away with a quick rub of the back of his hand.
“And, Jay…”
“Yes, sir?”
“Good luck.”
Desmond Drum stretched and reached for his kimono. Noriko, the geisha who had just finished giving him the best massage of his life, rose to assist him. Then she bowed formally and folded back a screen at the far end of the room, revealing a hot tub crafted to resemble a natural mineral spring, complete with waterfall.
“If Drum-san desires,” she said.
“Just some tea, darling. I have an appointment in just a bit.”
“Appointment here?”
“Don’t be hurt. It’s not another woman, just boring business.”
“Ah.”
Noriko smiled, departed, returned momentarily with the tea tray. Even after she had poured, making an art form of every tiny movement, she seemed inclined to remain with him. Drum did not protest, knowing that she was lonely.
Virtual brothels had all but ruined the RT sex trade. Crass red-light districts, with their attendant crime and disease, had vanished everywhere that virt access was cheap. Even more elegant places like this tea house had to be subsidized by the Japanese government in order to survive.
The Floating World and its blossoms, having survived shifting morality and fashion, were faced with extinction at the hands of computer technology. A haiku tried to form within Drum’s mind, something about snow and cherry blossoms. He let his mind drift, taking cadence from the plunking notes Noriko was pulling from her samisen.
Another woman brought him a message scroll on a porcelain salver. He glanced at the words and followed her from the rooms. Behind him, Noriko’s samisen continued to drop audible tears.
“Hello, Drum,” Daimon greeted him without rising. Today he wore a lighter cotton kimono printed with white chrysanthemums on a dark blue background. His hands, as always, were gloved, and his face concealed by a stylized mask.
“Conichiwa, Daimon-san,” Drum answered. “You’re becoming a bit predictable with the Japanese thing, you know. Bad thing, if you’re hiding.”
“I am hiding, but I believe that any great enthusiasm for the search is gone. If I were to make myself obvious… but in my retirement, I am left alone. In any case, I am not too foolish. As a historic recreation, this place is not equipped with any computer access at all, not even for mundane matters of bookkeeping. I doubt that I am the only one who finds it attractive for this reason.”
Drum nodded. “Must make a good place for any number of clandestine operations. Have you reviewed what I sent on last time?”
“I have. I must admit, I expected Mr. Crain to accompany you.”
“Link’s busy. He’s taking a few days to celebrate his mother’s birthday.”
“How sweet.” Daimon sounded wistful.
“Are you content with the investigation thus far?”
“Content? I have yet to find what 1 would need to destroy the Church of Elish and without that I must remain a prisoner.”
“Perhaps you should settle for finding something that you could use to blackmail them to preserve your safety.”
“Something in the line of ‘If I die, this will be released’? Yes, I have contemplated this option. I will admit to being a coward. I never believed that they would persist both in their enmity and in their mission. The riot in Central Park should have been enough to weaken them!”
“Instead they grow stronger. Their virt crossovers are now no longer limited to psi powers and lesser projections. The gods…”
“Terrify me. Do they terrify anyone else?”
“Me. Link. Anyone who thinks about the implications. Most everyone considers divine manifestation another entertainment gig. Europeans and Americans don’t believe in gods anymore, Daimon, haven’t since the nineteenth century. That’s where the Elshies are strongest.”