Roger Zelazny - Donnerjack

Daimon accepted them, flipped through “Organizational” and passed it back.

“Publicly available,” he said. Then he looked through the other.

“Not sure what this one is,” he said. “But don’t get your hopes up. Possibly field notes of some sort, not worth entering in the system till they reach a certain point. Still… Let me look it over and get it back to you.”

“All right. Do I ever get a scoop from you?”

“That’s not part of the deal.”

“I know. How do I get in touch with you?”

“You go through Drum.”

“And if he’s not available?”

“Then I’ll be in touch with you.”

Link shrugged.

“It’s your show,” he said.

Daimon turned away, so as to adjust his mask as he raised his cup.

Moon broken on lake’s bottom; black glass hands turning pieces: dream of tea.

Clouds blew up on the way home, and it was raining when Drum dropped him on the corner.

“I think you made a good deal, kid,” the detective told him as he passed him his business card.

“We’ll see,” Link said, glancing toward the sky.

Immediately, Drum looked upward, scanned the heavens. But all that he saw were clouds, a few stars in the canyons between them.

When he looked back, Link was smiling. “Drive carefully,” he said.

Moments later, the blue Spinner was turning a corner.

Raindrops: wet banderillas: Moon in Taurus: black wrist o’er demon

glove.

Inside, Link created a file the old-fashioned way. He wrote out all his recollections of the evening in longhand, in a notebook, one of many on his room’s shelves.

In a garden in Virtu, a garden created by the aion Markon for the pleasure of his beloved Virginia Tallent, the two sat in close converse. That they had been closer still not long before could not be doubted, for Virginia was unclad and still lightly dappled with perspiration. Markon, who had assumed something of a human shape for the convenience of his lover, retained it still and could not precisely be said to be unclad as his skin had never known the caress of fabric.

He smiled at her now from a face whose noble brow and cleft chin did not escape a certain eldritch quality. Certainly the cat’s-eye pupils of his sky-blue eyes, or the utter lack of hair anywhere on his smooth ivory-colored skin, added to the sense of otherness, but Virginia delighted in him. She would have found the aion much diminished if he had limited himself to the colors and tones found naturally in humanity. Indeed, there were times when he assumed a form that was not precisely human, but at those times she found an extra set of arms or other endowments more an advantage than not.

Virginia returned his smile and pillowed her head on his chest, noting absently the lack of nipples as she did so. The greater part of her attention was caught up in what Markon was saying.

“Portents and omens, Virginia. A time of change is upon us again. Just two days hence, Kordalis told me that a man with a scar from the top of his head to the sole of his left foot had crossed the borders of her territory. I, myself, not more than a year ago saw a man bearing a rhomboid box, all of crystal and platinum, on one shoulder, and he limped heavily.”

“Many strange things can be seen in Virtu,” Virginia said, hoping to comfort, for she knew Markon intimately enough to know that the ancient aion was perturbed.

Markon’s voice seemed to reverberate less from his chest than from the trumpet flowers that grew over their bower.

“Strange. Yes, but unlike you little ones of what you call Verite, we who are of the older realm know that the gods exist. Exist and are flawed and contentious. I have told you of our ancient wars?”

“You have.”

“And you believed the truth of those tales?”

“I did.”

“Then let me tell you further that even then those battles were not believed to be the last that we would join. We knew that change would come again, whether we willed it so or not. Among the omens of that change would be the resurfacing of figures from those ancient days. Kordalis and I are not alone in seeing evidence that the Threefold One has entered into Virtu’s affairs once more.”

“The Threefold One? I don’t think you’ve mentioned that name before.”

“The Piper, the Master, and the One Who Waits. What Kordalis saw, what I saw, are two of his aspects. And sporadically, these fifteen years or more, the Piper’s music has been heard.”

“Just music?”

“Some rumors of sightings as well, but the Piper’s music is the stuff of legend. It has the sense of age and tradition but when examined is discovered to be wholly new. Some believe it a metaphor for his relationship to the Master.”

“This is going over my head, Markon.”

“I shall explain in greater detail, more slowly, my love. I would have you understand my fear in the sighting of a train that can transverse realities and in other omens. I have spoken but circumlocutiously before… These are the secrets of the aions’ religion.”

Virginia squeezed the body against which she rested.

“I would not relate or record anything you revealed to me in confidence, Markon.”

“So we agreed long ago. When war comes again to Virtu, what will happen to you?”

“Happen?”

“Realities ripple when aions battle, Virginia. Your little virt form would be unable to withstand the stresses. Yet to return your free spirit to the prison of your body in Verite…”

“A body aging and progressively crippled by atrophy…” Virginia gasped and sat up, did not notice that the human-form vanished when she released it. “Markon! Is this war certain?”

A tendril of vine reached out and caressed her cheek. “I have no reason to believe otherwise. The Highest on Meru gather their forces and make their alliances. Thus far I have not accepted any of the offers to ally myself with one or another of the great ones. I cannot dally forever, though. Fortunately for our poor love, time as seen by the dwellers on Meru and time as experienced by humans is different. You may be gone to Deep Fields before I need worry for your safety.”

Virginia understood his meaning, knew there was truth in it. Her damaged body in Verite could not live eternally. In Virtu she was unchanged, but eventually her flesh would no longer be able to support her spirit.

“Forgive my weakness in confiding to you, Virginia.” Markon spoke with a voice crafted from the wind in the trees. “But you are closer to me, dearer to me, than any in existence. I could not pretend that nothing was amiss and maintain honesty.”

Virginia blinked away her tears. Her own mortality was something she had long meditated on. Markon’s danger was a new and terrible thing to contemplate.

“There is no forgiveness necessary, love,” she said, stroking the fur of a great dire-cat who had emerged from the thickest foliage. “Tell me more. Perhaps I will be able to help.”

Markon did. Virginia listened, requesting clarification from time to time. Eventually, the dire-cat began to purr. Virginia, who had grown accustomed to the varying ways her aion showed his satisfaction, smiled to the sun.

When next Jay Donnerjack came for his lessons in mathematics with Reese Jordan he carried a book in one hand. Mizar came with him, not frolicking precisely, for it was impossible that such a horror as that vaguely canine construct could frolic, but tossing what looked like an old leather shoe up into the air and catching it again with an attitude of satisfaction. Reese was sitting on a rock by the pool’s edge, talking seriously with Caltrice. The genius loci waved shyly then vanished beneath the waters.