Roger Zelazny - Donnerjack

“Yes.” Lydia sounded as if she was trying not to sob.

“Then you’d better tell me all about Ambry’s past—everything you know.”

“Alice…”

“Mom, I’m going after him.”

“Alice!”

“No, don’t say I can’t. Don’t even suggest that you’ll find him. You’re a great doctor—one of the best—but finding missing people, getting the story… that’s what I’m good at.”

“Alice…”

“We can argue, but it won’t find Ambry and it does waste time.”

Lydia sighed. “Are you planning on doing this alone?”

“No. If you don’t mind, I was going to call Drum and ask him to help.”

“How much are you going to fill him in on?”

“Everything you’ll let me tell him. He can’t do his job with partial data.”

Lydia bit her lip, paced a few steps.

“I can’t stop you, can I?”

“Not really—certainly not if you’re considering running off. The minute you’re gone, so am I.”

“I suppose that someone should be here in case Ambry gets a message out.”

“True. And, Mom, you know his haunts. You’ll be able to check there—to warn the genius loci to be on the alert for him.”

“I’m convinced. Call Drum. I’ll fill you both in together.”

Alice dropped the green apple she still held and hugged her mother. Her fingers were sticky with the sour juice.

“I’ll find him, Mom. I promise.”

“I don’t doubt it, Alice.” Lydia squeezed her daughter harder. “What worries me is what will happen when you do.”

“I’ll bring him back. I didn’t just find my dad to lose him to some… master programmer with delusions of godhood!”

Armored in indignation, Alice Hazzard went into the cottage to place a Virtu-to-Verite call to Desmond Drum. Outside, Lydia picked up the plate that held the remnants of her birthday cake. The ants were marching. She imagined she could hear the pipes that drove them on.

Tranto remained in Deep Fields when Jay departed for Mount Meru.

“I am hard to overlook, my friend,” the phant said ruefully, “even within my chosen site. With their varied abilities and knowledges, Mizar and Dubhe will be able to assist you. I fear I should only be an impediment. On this journey, if you need to resort to brute force, then you are indeed already lost.”

Jay punched the phant above one wrinkled knee.

“That’s it—be encouraging! Don’t worry, Tranto. We’ll be back before you and the Lord of the Palace get tired of each other’s company.”

Death grinned his bone-white grin. “Tranto informs me that he is quite willing to assist me with some projects I had in mind. My usual workers have an unsettling tendency to fall apart. I look forward to the assistance of a trained construction proge.”

“Then we’ll be leaving as soon as the Brass Babboon returns for us,” Jay said. “I sent a signal up the line about an hour ago.”

“Rest until it arrives,” Death advised. “You will not have opportunity thereafter.”

“I’m not certain I could sleep,” Jay admitted. “I’m too nervous.”

“Oh, I think you will have no trouble,” Death said. “As many a poet and philosopher has noted, Death and Sleep are close kin. You will find my palace very restful. Go up the stair on the right. You will find the room your father—although unknowing—designed for you.”

Hearing the command underlying Death’s polite invitation, Jay obeyed. He found the room, furnished with bunk beds and decorated in a style popular for boys at about the time he had been born. A curving windowseat overlooked the front of the palace. Assuring himself that he would certainly hear the Brass Babboon’s arrival from here, he undressed and stretched out on the padded bench.

Despite his doubts, he slept deeply and well, not awakening until the Brass Babboon, spitting fireworks and blasting “The 1812 Overture,” churned to a stop before the palace.

Dubhe swung down from the top bunk and onto Jay’s shoulder.

“I should have know he’d like that one. Brace yourself, the cannon salute is coming.”

Jay did and was glad to have done so for the Brass Babboon accompanied the recorded cannons with mortar fire from his smoke stack and wild laughter. The decaying forms of Deep Fields reared up in response to the unaccustomed noise, detached arms and legs, wheels and gears, spinning and cavorting, tumbling and twirling in a Danse Macabre such as Deep Fields had never seen.

“We’d better get downstairs before B.B. has the place down around our ears,” Jay said, grabbing his clothes.

Dubhe laughed. “Deep Fields is always coming down around someone’s ears—the trick is getting something to stay .”

“Still…” Jay stuffed his arms in his shirt and buttoned it up crooked. “I’d hate to have something happen to this palace. My dad designed it and… well, the Lord of Entropy seems so proud of it.”

“You noticed,” Dubhe muttered. “Next thing you’ll be telling me that you would have preferred to grow up here.”

“Let’s not take it that far… but it might have been cool. Did you see that horse thing he had?”

Jumping onto Jay’s back saved Dubhe the necessity of replying. The youth tore out the door and down the spiral stair to the main floor at a breakneck pace that left Dubhe’s tail flapping behind them. At the front door, they found Death watching the Brass Babboon fart bottle rockets.

“Exuberant, isn’t it?” the Lord of the Lost commented. “I must admit, I envy John D’Arcy Donnerjack his talent for creation. I must be, by definition, derivative.”

Jay steeled himself to look directly into the shadowed cassock, pretending to meet eyes that he could not see.

“Sir, you just spoke of my father in the present tense. Is he… well, is he alive somewhere?”

“Not that I know of,” Death said, cool and pitiless. “He did not come to me, but then, being a creature of the Verite he would not have even though I was the agent of his ending.”

Jay stiffened. “You killed my father?”

“Yes. Does that shock you, Jay?”

“I… I… Yes.”

“Does the fact that I killed him shock you or that I would admit the fact to you? You knew that we were enemies, that he designed that noisy train out there to effect my destruction—at least on a temporary level— although I suspect that he would have been pleased to have managed it in a more permanent fashion.”

“But he did that to save me!”

“From what?”

“From death.”

“From Death or from dying?”

Jay paused. “Dying, I guess. I never really knew him. You made certain of that. Maybe he just thought he’d made a bad deal.”

“Yet, I also made certain that you were born, my boy.”

“For your purposes!”

“And now that you know something of those purposes, are they so ignoble? Moreover, your father never asked me if I intended your dying. He assumed the worst of me and I permitted him to do so.”

Jay was so angry that he was nearly driven to tears. Feeling them pooling hot beneath his eyes made him angrier, so that his question came out as a shriek.

“Why?”

“Because, Jay D’Arcy Donnerjack, even Death may grow weary of people assuming the worst of him. I treated John D’Arcy Donnerjack honorably—returned to him his bride, gave him an opportunity for a child. Yet, even before your birth, I found him in arms against me. When I would not renounce my claim on you, he armed his castle against me. I sought to reclaim Ayradyss after the fashion of a repossession rather than from any evil nature.”

“How can I believe you!”

“Have I ever lied to you, Jay, even when I would benefit from doing so?”