“It might be better to go with an agency,” Jay said, “and assume whatever appearance you want, for Virtu.”
“I’m a little afraid of that.”
“I could try to switch you back, full-time.”
“Wish you could just teach me the trick for going back and forth.”
“Wish I knew how.”
“Death has a piece of the trick,” Dubhe said, “but I doubt he has all of it. Too bad there’s no way you could create a hidden gate just the two of us know about.”
Jay studied him carefully.
“What if that is already the case?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, supposing the servant of a dark enemy of my father’s were to have made friends with me in a form very congenial to a kid—that they become playmates first. And I tried and succeeded in bringing you across in your guise. I could already have done half of what you are asking. I wonder…”
He looked a trifle nervous.
“You’re partly right,” Dubhe finally said. “But it was my idea, not his—and I hadn’t the time to tell him what I wanted to try.”
“So you might say the thought just passed through your head.”
“Yeah. It was tempting.”
“Tempting… or testing. He didn’t try very hard after I got back into Dad’s office.”
“What do you mean? He battered the place! I thought we were lost.”
“Did he? He got through to take my mother. It can’t be a coincidence that she died within a few days of my birth. My father died prematurely, so we can argue that the Lord of Deep Fields got through to him, too.”
Dubhe grunted, noncommittal, but he recalled what he had heard of an earlier siege of Castle Donnerjack and as he recalled he shivered and wrapped his thin, spidery arms around himself.
“It seems that the Lord of Deep Fields can penetrate my father’s defenses,” Jay continued his musing. “He may need to make an effort, but he can do it.”
Dubhe shivered again. “I don’t nearly feel as safe as I did a moment ago.”
“Nothing has changed,” said Jay, in the hard, cool manner he sometimes fell into.
“No, I suppose not,” Dubhe said, looking around, “but it sure feels like it has.”
Jay grinned, wholly a boy again. He bent and hugged the monkey, his arms easily enfolding the skinny form.
“You’ve been growing,” Dubhe commented when the boy let him go. “I remember when we were nearly the same size.”
“It happens.”
“Not always in Virtu.”
“C’mon, Dubhe. Let’s go see if Cookie will give us some ice cream. I’m famished.”
Dubhe stood, his knuckles dragging against the floor.
“Okay. I guess if the Lord of Deep Fields is coming, there’s nothing I can do about it and I’ve always wanted to have ice cream.”
Donnerjack laughed and led the way. Behind them, in the office of John D’Arcy Donnerjack, Senior the computer monitor flickered, showing a skull. Its grin was omnipresent, its laughter harsh and full of triumph.
FOUR
Perhaps it was inevitable that the time would come when John D’Arcy Donnerjack, Junior would encounter the Church of Elish. As Reese Jordan had said, a boy could not be kept from doing what he wanted once he had set his mind on it and Jay Donnerjack, for all the ways that he differed from most boys, was a true boy in this. However, he had attended to Reese’s reasoning when the old man advised him to avoid human society and, his awareness of mortality honed by the battle he had observed between Chumo and Sayjak, he set himself a compromise.
First, he would only observe, not participate—at least at first. Second, he would go in virt disguise, not by crossing the interface. Third, he would go only to those sites that were open to public access, not to anywhere he had to pay. In this way he would leave no electronic trail that could be followed.
This last resolve was easy to keep for he had no money of his own. The Donnerjack Institute maintained the castle through arrangements made before John Senior’s death. Within the castle, the boy wanted for nothing. With the equipment John Senior had installed as his access point into Virtu he need not pay transfer station fees. Since he was not to contact human society, but to restrict his adventuring to the vast wild sites, he was never issued eft tokens, nor was an account set up for him to draw upon as was usual.
Jay understood money in abstract. His education had included examples of money exchanged for goods, but he did not really comprehend it, nor did he understand its potential power. Therefore, he did not feel his loss particularly strongly, except as a blockade to his explorations and, as there was much he could explore without payment, he only rarely considered his lack.
Ironically, his first solo venture into human society was into a casino site. The traditional lures were in use here as they had been long before in Verite. Elaborate virt structures harbored a variety of gambling games. Shows and spectaculars tempted the gamblers to remain.
Initially, Jay was fascinated by the mobs of people, but this fascination wore off quickly. The passion for spending and acquiring eft tokens left him indifferent. His vocabulary grew somewhat, as did his knowledge of the variety of ways people could be convinced to risk their money in an effort to gain more, but that was all.
He planned somewhat better the next time, choosing a public vacation resort. Here he strolled the beaches, joined in an occasional contest of skill (all of which he took care to lose, although in many cases he was the clear victor), and observed the people. Here, however, the people were often disguised in holiday personas. They were too beautiful, too strong, too flawless to be real, and so their appeal swiftly palled.
After several more false starts, he discovered that religious gatherings provided him with what he had been seeking. Many of them were open to the public—at least at their novice levels. Although some participants wore virt personas, the vast majority came as themselves. At first, Jay simply feasted his gaze on the variety—not just of race or fashion, but of mannerism, posture, and bearing. Until he studied the congregations, he had not realized how many ways there were to rejoice or mourn, how much variation there was within the human animal. A small part of him hungered to see the Verite itself, but for now he was content—more than content, even—sated.
When he could tear himself away from studying the crowd, Jay listened to the sermons and prayers. In an effort to understand the themes that were being expounded, on his return to Castle Donnerjack, he read voraciously. The various religions’ treatments of the metaphysical issues of life, death, afterlife, reward, and punishment fed a portion of his maturing psyche that had been sadly starved.
The robots who had raised him either did not care about such issues or—in case of the more sophisticated models such as Dack—had interpretations that focused on their particular form of life. Jay’s virt playmates had rather stringently avoided questions of life and death, and Reese Jordan had lived so long beyond the normal human span that his own take on the issues could not be communicated to a boy young enough to be his great-great-grandson, no matter how brilliant that boy might be.
And so Jay attended Catholic Mass, presided over by the Pope in real-time virt persona. He sat hushed as an electronic bodisatva explained the nature of maya—that illusion was not a matter merely of appearance, but of perception. He danced at a voudon ceremony, but none of the loa selected to ride him.
Islam had retained its exclusivity regarding those who were infidels, but there were educational services for those who were interested in learning about the teaching of Mohammed. Jay listened to many of these lectures. The brutal logic of jihad had a certain appeal, a directness not often found, but Jay was already too widely read to believe that one answer could do for all people.