Darkness: spider silk between crimson and gold.
Dr. Lydia Hazzard walked her patient to the door of the consulting room and turned the young man over to an orderly who would make certain that prescriptions were dispensed and billing was duly addressed. Touching the intercom call button set flush with the top of her walnut veneer desk, she signaled the reception area that she was free to take her next patient.
“No one left, Doctor,” the AP said politely. “The rest can be handled by automata.”
“Thank you, Delia,” Lydia said. “I’m going to slip out the back way.”
“Very good. Have a pleasant evening.”
“See you tomorrow.”
Returning to her apartment, Lydia saw with guilty pleasure that Alice was out. It was not that she didn’t love her daughter or enjoy her company, but Alice was so intense and, by necessity, Lydia had been a single parent.
Her own parents had been helpful, but they were so over-protective (having never been able to forget the peculiar fashion in which their grandchild had been conceived) and yet so inclined to spoil the girl, that Lydia had spent some of her money for an AP nursemaid and had taken on herself the full responsibility for making certain that Alice did not become egocentric and asocial as was often the case with children left too much in the care of APs.
She supposed that she had done well enough. Alice, admittedly, was a peculiar young woman, but she cultivated her own resources and, as Link, had already made some contributions to society about which her mother felt ridiculous pride. Sometimes Lydia wished that Alice spent more time with people her own age, but then she would recall how during her own long-ago virt holiday the thing she had craved most of all was privacy.
Now, luxuriating in her empty apartment, she left a note for Alice, then made a light meal of salad and bread. Nibbling on the heel of the loaf, she walked into her suite. There, in a small room, was one of the indulgences that her parents had insisted that she have—a private virt transfer couch of the latest model.
Given her experience with the public transfer facility, Lydia had not protested, although she was quite certain that Ambry, rather than any flaw in the transfer facility’s equipment, had been responsible for her “disappearance” and ensuing pregnancy. Nor did she worry terribly about the transfer facility having been forced to pay damages. Through one of fate’s little ironies, they had been insured by Hazzard Insurance, so Abel and Carla’s own company had provided the seed fund for the annuity that would, one day soon, make their granddaughter ridiculously wealthy.
Lydia Hazzard fully approved of irony. As far as she was concerned, it was one of the things that real life did far better than art.
Stripping, she placed the transfer couch links against various key points and went to find her husband. Her last thought as the drugs carried her across the abyss between the universes was that all those who pitied her for her solitary state would be amazed at how rich a married life she actually had.
Irony again.
She strolled to a site behind the North Wind, a place that was on no one’s maps of Virtu and whose resident spirit arrogantly refused to acknowledge any power but its own. This genius loci, however, was friendly to them both and directed her (by means of a rolling pebble, a bird hopping from branch to branch, a sudden bursting of a climbing rose into flower) to Wolfer Martin D’Ambry’s side.
He was tending to his bagpipes when she came up to him and, hearing her footsteps, put them aside with unaffected joy.
“Lydia!”
They embraced and, as she rested her head against his shoulder, Lydia thought about how little Ambry had changed since she had first met him. His beard remained neat, though she never saw him trim it, and he maintained his preference for clothing of a rough, archaic style.
She, however, had permitted her virt persona to resemble her RT self. In the years that had passed, her apparent age had caught up to his. If things proceeded in a similar fashion, it would surpass it—although she had reached the years where change was small and gradual. Idly, she wondered if someday her vanity would cause her to arrest those changes—at least in Virtu.
Eventually, Ambry released her, though he still kept hold of her hand, and seated her on a rock beside him. Beneath his delight at her arrival, Lydia could see the thing that had changed in the years since their first meeting. When she had met him, Wolfer Martin D’Ambry had been a figure of mystery, but essentially a carefree sort, content to play his bagpipes and win friends among the genius loci of the wilder sites.
Now, worry darkened the eyes beneath the heavy brows. He still played his pipes, but with care, for, as he had confided in her, he was a renegade from a being whose power was great enough to drag him back into service if it could lock onto him. Once, she had wondered aloud why he did not simply give up his pipes if this was what would draw his old master to him. Ambry had looked shocked then and had told her that he was the Piper—if he did not play he could cease to exist.
Hating his distress, Lydia did not question further. Virtu held mysteries she was only beginning to understand, despite her initiation into secrets that most Veriteans could only guess at.
“I am glad that you came to me, love,” Ambry said. “More so than usual.”
“Why?”
I am of a mind to consult a physician.” Can you grow ill? I have never considered that. What is wrong?”
Ambry scratched his left jawline, just above his beard. It struck Lydia as a shy gesture, telegraphing a need for a sort of comfort that she had not seen in him before. She put her arms around him and squeezed, just as she might have squeezed Alice when Alice was small. He laughed, deep within his throat, but she could tell that he was pleased. “I have been finding gaps within my memory.” He hastened to clarify. “Not gaps such as a failing computer program might develop—at least I do not think so. I have not seen the moire—the dark warping— that often presages a fatal deficiency in a proge.”
Lydia felt odd to hear her lover describe himself in such a fashion, but she kept her peace. Ambry continued.
“I come to myself in places to which I do not recall traveling. Sometimes I am walking with a cane. Once I found myself laboring over an odd piece of equipment in our old cottage.”
Frowning, Lydia dragged her hands through her hair, a habit that in Verite often left her looking disheveled. Here the genius loci sent a zephyr to set it straight.
“If I heard a story like this from a patient in RT, my first inclination would be to ask if he had been experimenting with any new drugs. Virtu has its analogues of such—have you tried any?”
Ambry shook his head. “Nothing but the dark stout I have always enjoyed.”
“Another possibility is a mental disorder,” Lydia said, more hesitantly, trying to maintain her physician’s detachment. “Is there a history of such in your… would you call it a family?”
Wolfer Martin D’Ambry tilted his head to one side, stroked her hand.
“There are indeed those native to Virtu who belong to what can only be considered families. Reproduction proges are as old as the first simple copy programs. I, however, have never known my origin. I have no memory of not being, yet after a point, I have difficulty retrieving data in any organized fashion. Normally, it takes an event like my old master seeking to reclaim me to remind me that I have ever done more than play my pipes, sail my boat with its red sails, and love my Lady Lydia.”
Lydia glared at a rabbit that appeared to be listening too attentively to their conversation. It loped off.