Roger Zelazny - Donnerjack

Alice,

Won’t you come and join me? I’d like yon to visit for a few days, celebrate my birthday with me, meet an old friend I think yon should know. I’m at a private address, but if yon come to the campus of AVU at seven this evening, I will meet yon by the swan pond. Sorry about the secrecy, but that’s how it has to be.

Alice was intrigued, puzzled. With the edge of her finger she touched just one of the penciled peacock orchids. It smudged. Mom’s then, not some weird practical joke.

She considered. Both she and Drum were stumped on the Elshie case. A vacation might give her a new perspective. Knowing that Mom would ask, she checked her schoolwork. Except for a writing assignment, she was all caught up. With a few keystrokes, she transferred a copy of the Virtropolis article to her teacher’s mailbox. Certainly a publishable article would serve to fulfill the assignment.

The next few hours were spent watering plants, packing her virtual wardrobe (remembering Mom’s present), and leaving messages for her grandparents, Gwen. and Drum to let them know that she was joining her mother. At 6:45, she linked into her transfer couch and set the coordinates for the campus of AVU.

Her mother was kneeling at the edge of the water, feeding the swans. Ail of them were white, except for a particularly magnificent black male. He had deigned to take a square of bread directly from Lydia’s palm. Alice stood quietly, recalling, from experience, that the programmed swans could be as touchy and territorial as their RT counterparts.

When the swan swam away, Lydia rose, dusted breadcrumbs from her palms, and turned with a smile to Alice.

“Do you remember…”

“When I was five and the swan bit me?” Alice chuckled. “I’ll never forget.”

“Nor I… I was worried that you would develop an aversion to virt then and there. It couldn’t have been more than your first or second trip.”

“No such luck. Only thing I developed was an aversion to swans.”

They laughed.

“Well, Alice, if you’ll come with me…”

Alice fell into step. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll know soon enough, Curiosity.”

“Mom!”

“Pretend that I’m a client.”

Alice did so, although she was hard-pressed to still her questions when Mom led the way down one of the paths that went around the lake. These rambles didn’t go anywhere, just wandered through willows and reeds. Mostly they were used for study groups who met in the conveniently placed gazebos, or for the occasional courting couple that didn’t choose a more private site.

She had run up and down these very paths when she was a little girl come to campus with her student mother, had collected handfuls of twigs and pebbles, which she had then deposited on her tolerant parent’s lap— interrupting serious discussions of organic chemistry, physiology, anatomy. The paths went nowhere, she knew that as certainly as she knew anything. So where was her mother taking her?

Singing softly, so softly that Alice had to strain to hear, Lydia Hazzard walked on, her A-line skirt swinging slightly with the sway of her hips. Alice hurried after, biting her tongue, wondering when the paths had been extended, wondering what justification had been given to the budget committees for such inefficient use of programming, wondering…

A rose garden now… Could this be a project for a horticultural class? Certainly the bushes were magnificently programmed—the rounded, slightly serrated leaves each distinct and different. And the flowers were marvelous. Alice had never paid much attention to roses— knew vaguely that they came in red and white and yellow… maybe pink.

She lost herself in variations she had never thought to imagine: pale green; white tipped with bloodred; sunset orange; a delicate, silvery purple; another orange—this one burnt; a pink that glowed with a hint of yellow. Nor were the colors the only variation. Some blossoms possessed petals like fat hearts, soft as velvet; others had tiny petals, fragile and thin; others were pointed, almost sharp. The garden smelled of rose perfume, thick and heavy without ever becoming overwhelming.

Lost in contemplation of the roses, Alice did not precisely notice when the bagpipes began to play. Shrill, but commanding, skirling, a twisting, tootling thing that would not conventionally be called a melody, but could be nothing else, the bagpipes called out to her. The tune sounded familiar, although she knew she had never heard it before. It drew her from her contemplation of roses, and looking around, Alice realized that she had transferred sites.

She turned around and stared back the way she had come. The rose garden extended, apparently into infinity, although there was a vivid blue line that might, just might, be an ocean. Alice realized that she could never find her way back. Beneath the sound of the bagpipes, she heard her mother laugh.

“Neat trick?”

“I’m astonished,” Alice assured her. “Now can you tell me where we are?”

“We call it the Land Behind the North Wind. As you may have guessed, this is one of the wild sites of Virtu—one of the lost areas, to be more precise.”

“I knew they existed… I never knew how to find one, though.”

“Most people don’t. The semiwild sites are enough to keep the VSD busy. These areas are dismissed as mythological—or useless.”

“How did you learn your way here?”

“Come over the hill. I’ll introduce you to the friend who I’ve been staying with.”

“Is he the one playing the bagpipes?”

“Yes. How did you know it was a ‘he’?”

“Mom… I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re blushing.”

Lydia raised a hand to her cheek. “I am? Well, there’s hope for this old lady after all. Come along.”

Side by side, they climbed a hill that changed character as they mounted its slopes. At first it was as soft and green as the paths through the rose garden. The higher slopes were covered in heather, tiny purple blossoms partially opened, fat bees hovering over them as if the fanning of their wings could ease the flowers open. Grey rocks veined sometimes with jet, sometimes with pink feldspar, periodically interrupted the heather.

“It’s very peaceful here,” Alice observed.

“I’ve always thought so. Of course, the weather is not always so pleasant. The genius loci is attentive to the needs of her internal ecology—it rains, it sleets. Today, however, the weather has been arranged to welcome you.”

“Me?”

“The genius loci is a friend of Ambry’s, and Ambry…”

The bagpipe music stopped abruptly and a man stood up from where he had been seated to the lee of a hulking boulder. His hair and beard were ruffled by the wind, and in his vaguely medieval costume (complete with a huge sword and a dagger), he would have been threatening but for the shyness in his courtly bow.

“Miz Alice,” he said, “I am Wolfer Martin D’Ambry. After all these years, I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”

All these years . Alice let the words tease her. She had assumed that whoever her mother wanted her to meet was a relatively recent involvement, but this… She felt the truth at the fringes of her mind and gave Ambry a warm smile.

“I’m pleased to meet you, too. What should I call you?”

“Your mother calls me ‘Ambry’—I’d be pleased if you would do the same.”

“And I am Alice—not ‘Miz Alice.’ “

They walked then, Ambry slightly ahead, his bagpipes tucked under one arm, Alice and Lydia following together. Leaving the hilltop, they came down into an orchard valley. Beneath the spreading apple, peach, and apricot trees, tall Asiatic lilies grew, interspersed with bleeding heart, lily of the valley, and her mother’s favorite peacock orchids. A small brook ran through the center of the orchard, tumbling over polished cobblestones. At the verge of the orchard nestled a slate-roofed cottage.