“Yeah.”
“Depressed?”
“A little, I guess. Virtu is so big. Ambry could be anywhere.”
“Well, finding him was only part of your original plan, wasn’t it?”
Alice looked startled. Drum grinned at her.
“I seem to remember a spitfire claiming she was going to march right up to Skyga and demand that her father be returned. Even if we can’t find Ambry, this is where Skyga hangs his hat.”
Although Alice did not seem particularly reassured by this reminder, Virginia straightened, her eyes narrowed.
“Yes, that’s right, and if you go up top, I’m going to give that bitch Earthma what for.”
Dubhe cleared his throat; his binoculars were once again focused on the factor)’, but his ears moved to follow the conversation.
“I doubt a tongue-lashing would do much more than make Earthma laugh, Virginia. As much as you despise her, she is one of the Highest Three.”
Sliding her CF rifle from its holster, Virginia gave the monkey a completely humorless grin.
“Who said a tongue-lashing was what I had in mind?”
Dubhe shivered and Drum smiled grimly.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, ‘Ginnie. Let’s hope that we can find another way.”
Virginia Tallent replaced her weapon, but her blue eyes glinted like those of Markon’s dire-cats, focused and completely merciless.
Randall Kelsey was standing on top of a partially completed ziggurat, supervising the smoothing out of the worst of the construction damage from the Celebration site, when he saw a man appear from nowhere directly in the broad crescent of land that was due to be terraced, fitted with seats, and become the grandstand area.
Momentarily, he forgot that he was not in Virtu where such things could be possible. Even as he remembered, the driver of the earthmover was trying to brake her vehicle. From his lofty vantage, Kelsey knew the machine could not be stopped in time—momentum, mass, and several other immutable rules could not be argued with. Nor could the young man—unless he was a championship runner—hope to cross enough of the broken ground to escape.
Kelsey focused his binoculars on the man in the field. He was young, dark-haired, muscular but not muscle-bound. His expression as the towering yellow-and-orange machine moved toward him was a mixture of terror and calculation without a trace of the resignation that Kelsey knew he would feel at such a time himself.
Even as Kelsey watched, the young man backpedaled, turned to one side, ran a few steps, and vanished.
The earthmover rumbled over the place where the youth had stood. Randall Kelsey, standing atop a ziggurat meant to bring gods into the real world, found himself momentarily transfixed with wonder. The beeping of the radio at his belt brought him to himself.
“Uh, chief,” Kelsey recognized the voice as one Marta, a tough, unflappable member of the faithful, “did you see what I thought I saw?”
“A young man, dark-haired—appeared and vanished?”
“That’s it. I thought I was going crazy.”
“Not unless I am, too.”
Kelsey thought quickly. He had no idea what the manifestation might have been—someone with a virt power playing games, a malfunction of the transfer equipment that was being set up, even a minion of one of the gods—Seaga or Skyga—checking out the situation. Still, more witnesses than just Marta must have seen the manifestation. He had to have a story put together.
“The gods must be eager to join us,” he said, his tones schooled to express awe and just a touch of humor. “We’d better get back to work.”
“Yes, sir!”
Marta clicked off. Below, her machine rumbled back into life. She’d be telling the story all over the cafeteria and barracks tonight. No matter. Let her dine out on how she almost ran over a demideity. The full implications of the problem were for their mutual superiors to handle.
Kelsey took some comfort from this.
Jay D’Arcy Donnerjack really wanted to take the time to consider what he had seen in the Verite, but he had crossed back into Virtu and right into trouble. His initial relief when he found himself within an enormous room of what must be the factory diminished to nothing when he realized that what he had at first taken for two statues were living and breathing creatures.
They stood solidly on four leonine feet, winged lions with the heads of bearded men, those heads turning a small way to regard him with a mixture of contempt and curiosity. In the well-lit room, Jay could see those expressions clearly, and that thick, curving claws were extending from their paws.
“Intruder,” said the one, studying Jay. “Perhaps we may get some fun out of this guard detail after all.”
“Young enough to be tender and sweet,” the other agreed.
Jay backed up a few steps, analyzing the place in which he found himself. Judging from what he had seen of it from the outside (and he had his father’s gift for perspective), the room ran the full length of the building, although it was somewhat narrower. A few doors interrupted the back wall, suggesting storerooms or perhaps offices.
The long room in which lie found himself seemed devoted to a huge Rube Goldberg device of twisting tubes of copper and glass, gold wires of varying degrees of thickness, large gears cut from malachite or jasper and faced with arcane symbols, and cogs and wheels of slowly melting ice. It was surrounded by conveyer belts that carried in materials through panels in the back wall, and others that carried away sealed boxes about ten centimeters square.
These boxes were carried off to an area near the rightside door and dropped into crates which, when full, were stacked near the door by an automated forklift.
There were no workers evident, but Jay suspected that the impossible machine was itself a lesser aion, perhaps infused with the essence of one of the more mechanically inclined deities—Hephaestus or Goibnui, perhaps.
The two winged lions stood one apiece by the doors to the outside, conducting their leisurely discussion as if he was no real threat to them. Jay didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted.
“Were we not told to report any intruders so that they might be questioned?” the first said.
“We were so told,” the second said, “but I’m hungry and bored. They didn’t really expect any intruders. We’re being punished for the games we played with Bel Marduk at the Celebration.”
“I know.” Despite his lack of a lion’s head, the creature gave a very convincing growl.
“Is Bel Marduk being punished?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, is he standing here with us, all hours with nothing to do but watch the machine make boxes?”
“No.”
“Then he is not being punished.”
Jay decided that this was a good time to cut in.
“I’ve heard that Bel Marduk is expected to appear at the next Celebration—the great one in California. Are you the two who performed with him in Central Park?”
“We are,” said the first who was, in fact, Little Storm.
“I was greatly impressed by your magnificence,” Jay said.
“You were?” said Little Wind. “Were you there?”
Jay knew he needed to be careful. If he admitted to presence, then he was admitting to his Veritean origin.
“I watched,” lie answered, careful not to lie. He’d hate to run into a base polygraph program—it would be a good thing to outfit a guard with. “The entire spectacle brought the power and eminence of the divine home to me.”