The Hazzards’ fortune, influence, and the threat of a considerable lawsuit against the virtual vacation outfit that had “lost” Lydia for those ten months kept publicity about Alice’s unusual birth to a minimum. Family friends were permitted to assume that Lydia had been impregnated in a more conventional fashion and any busybody interested in scandal found little material.
Only Lydia knew how much she missed Wolfer Martin D’Ambry. He had told her that he could not visit her in Verite, but that when she returned to Virtu he would find her. However, although she had been attending classes in a virtual campus for almost two terms now and had gone away on a virtual weekend with her friend, Gwen, and her younger sister, Cindy, she had not seen him, nor had there been any messages. For now, she was content to wait and hope.
But a year is a long time to wait, especially when you are just nineteen. Although Lydia tried hard to believe that Ambry would find her again, her ability to hope was worn very thin.
As young Donnerjack grew in size and mobility, the only thing that puzzled Dack was that occasionally the boy came back with a leaf or a stick in his hand. He had no idea where they came from, for he knew there was no way of breaking the physical boundary between the worlds. At first, he did not think much about it, being able to rationalize answers on each occasion. Later, though, considering that Donnerjack had been one of the great authorities on Virtu and that much of his final work had been secret, he wondered whether the man might have developed some limited direct access to Virtu via the Great Stage.
Nightmare visions plagued him then. He knew that Donnerjack had wanted his son to play on the Stage. But if he could break the interface and wander off into Virtu, the Stage meantime undergoing several phase shifts, the boy could become hopelessly lost in that other world. It was a terrible dilemma. And, of course, the boy had not done so…
Dack resolved to keep him under surveillance for a time. Beginning the next day, therefore, he joined him on the Stage, staying as far away from him as he could while still keeping him in sight. Dack stood or crouched stock-still most of the time, and when he had to move it was always with great deliberation.
The boy hummed little snatches of song as he toddled or crawled from place to place. Some of these Dack recognized, others he did not. After a time, a mainly rocky scene shifted to a meadowlike one and young Donnerjack made his way into it, offstage.
Moving like a silver and bronze ghost, Dack followed, able to take his time as the boy wandered back and forth and occasionally paused for long stretches to watch a flower, bird, or some crawling denizen of the place.
Dack drew nearer, then grew immobile again. The boy began humming, then singing:
Butterfly, butterfly. Flutterby, flutterby. Come to me, come to me. I’m lonely todee.
He sang it over and over, and after a time the large black insect seemed to emerge from a hole in a nearby tree. It stitched the air in young Donnerjack’s direction, darting about his head almost playfully. Finally, it settled on a nearby twig and seemed to regard him through jewel-like eyes.
“Hi, Al—Ali—” the boy addressed it.
“Alioth,” a small voice corrected him, and Back immediately adjusted his hearing to accommodate it.
“Alioth,” the boy repeated. “Pretty flutterby!”
There followed the tiniest of laughs, then, “Thank you, John. You know how to make an old butterfly feel good.”
The boy laughed himself then. He was not sure why, but Alioth had indicated that something was funny.
“People did not always laugh at the black butterfly,” the insect stated. “Not in the dawn days when my wings filled half the heavens and there was a sound like thunder when I flapped them.”
“Why?” the boy asked.
“I was a mount of the gods in the great civil wars in the days of formation.”
The boy looked confused, his infant vocabulary, precocious as it was at times, struggling with a concept for which he lacked words.
“But you’re little!” The boy moved his hands as if to grasp and squash the apparently fragile butterfly.
“I wouldn’t advise trying that. No, the wars were over and the world had settled into its course of becoming the way that it is. I limited myself and looked for friends and congenial surroundings. When I found them I retired. Virtu no longer had need of its giant thunderbug. It is more fun consorting with flowers than destroying citadels, anyway.”
“What is Virtu?”
“The other half of the world. You are visiting it at the moment.”
“Why?”
“‘Why what?”
“Why two?”
“You’re talking to one who was there in the earliest times, and I’m still not sure. I’ve heard many versions of how things came to pass, and why. But I don’t really know, and I don’t think anyone else does.”
“Why?”
“It’s always that way with anything big. More and more stories grow up about it as time goes on. Then no one’s sure which is right.”
“Why?”
“Because people are always looking for the story behind the story. They’re never happy just to stop with what they’ve got.”
“Why?”
“I sometimes think they like lies.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re sort of fun. You’ll see.”
“Oh. You’re pretty.”
Alioth did a little aerial dance, then landed on the boy’s shoulder.
“I think it is best just to enjoy the moment. Everything else is somewhere within it.”
“Why?”
“Enough ‘whys’! You’ll understand soon enough. You’re already doing it. Life came before words, and that’s the trouble with words. Look at the flowers and breathe the air. Enjoy the feelings they give you.”
Young Donnerjack laughed again, and suddenly he sprang to his feet and ran through the field. Alioth followed. The ground was damp on his feet, and overhead grey clouds butted one another.
“Go home now,” said Alioth. “Soon it will rain.”
“Rain?”
“Water from the sky. You may not be able to get wet but there’s lots of energy tossed about in storms, and that’s a strange bracelet you wear. Go home now. I’ll see you again.”
“Bye-bye, Alioth.”
Dack followed discretely, pondering. The butterfly certainly seemed to mean the boy no harm—but like the strange cyberdog it made him uneasy, seeming to represent great heaps of the unknown.
Seated on a bench on the sunshiny campus of AVU, Lydia Hazzard discussed course selections for next fall with her best friend, Gwen. Out on the rolling green lawn, a couple of muscular frat boys tossed a Frisbee back and forth.
“I’m never going to be able to juggle all courses I want to take with those I need for my major,” Gwen said despairingly.
“Try my schedule,” Lydia said. “Whoever designed the premed curriculum was a sadist. They don’t want us to learn what we need to be med students; they just want us to quit.”
“I hear med school is worse.”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you dump the premed and just go for bio or chem or something, Lydia? I mean, your folks are loaded. After you were so— sick—a couple of years ago they’ll give you anything you want. But you’ve been working like crazy—catching up what you missed, taking care of Alice, I mean, what’s it worth?”
“It? Worth?”
“Life. I mean, you don’t need the money, you’ve got a really cute kid, why not take it a bit easier?”
“But I want to be a doctor, Gwen. My parents can’t hand me a medical degree.”