“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. But I learn things while I’m away. Bits. Pieces. I come back knowing more than I knew. You are a very strange person.”
“I am not of the Verite. I am from Virtu.”
“I have never walked that land, but I know somewhat of it, in my fashion. I know, too, that you come here from an even stranger realm— one from which I never learned the path of return. You hae walked Deep Fields and come back. I dinna think it possible. You have, however, brought a wee bit of it with you. It is as if its dark dust clings to your shoes. Perhaps this is why I find it easier’t’ talk’t’ you than most warm ones: we share something.”
“Why do you wander, dragging a chain? The dead do not do that in Virtu.”
“It marks my suffering at the end of life.”
“But that was centuries ago. How long do you have to do it?”
“I was never clear on that.”
“Couldn’t you just stop?’
“Oh, I hae, many times. But I always wake up and find myself at it again. Bad habit, but I dinna ken how to break it.”
“There must be some form of therapy that would help you.”
“I wouldn’t know about such things, ma’am.”
He turned and began moving, rattling, up the hall. His outline grew faint.
“Must you go?” she asked.
“No choice. The dreaming’s calling.” He halted, as with great effort, and turned then. “It will be a boy,” he said, “and ‘twas for you the banshee wailed. Mostly you,” he added, turning away again. “Him, too, though, and your man.”
He gave a quick wail, and the sound fell off abruptly along with the rattling of his chains.
“Wait!” she cried. “Come back!”
But he faded with each step and was gone in moments. She shed her first tears in Verite.
Donnerjack looked up from the flow of equations on half of his screen, turning his attention back to the text he was composing on the other half.
“I am persuaded,” he said, “that there is indeed a fourth level of complexity within Virtu. Our own experience indicates it as well as certain other anomalies which have come to my attention. I’ve discussed the possibility with several colleagues, and they all say I’m heading up a blind trail. But they are wrong. I am certain it can be made to fit the general theory of the place. It is the only explanation that will unify the data. Look here!”
He froze the flow of figures, reversed it.
“John,” Ayradyss said, “I’m pregnant.”
“Impossible,” he answered. “We just don’t mix at that level.”
“It appears that we do.”
“How do you know?”
“The medic unit said so. So did the ghost.”
He froze the action on his screen and rose.
“I’d better check that machine over. Ghost, did you say?”
“Yes. I met him upstairs.”
“You mean as in specter, spook, haunt, disembodied manifestation?”
“Yes. That’s what he indicated he was.”
“This place is too new to have a ghost—if there were such things as ghosts. We haven’t had any violent deaths on the premises.”
“He says he’s a carryover from the old castle that used to occupy this site.”
“What’s his name?”
“He couldn’t recall.”
“Hm. A nameless horror, then. And he remarked that you’re pregnant?”
“Yes. He said it will be a boy.”
“Well, no way of checking on the ghost. Let’s have a look at the machine.”
A half-hour later, Donnerjack rose from the console, closed the unit, closed his tool kit, and rolled down his sleeves.
“All right,” he said. “Everything seems to be in good order. Interface with it, and let’s get some readings.”
She moved to do this, and he began a run-through on a standard series. When it reached the crucial point it responded, “…and you are still pregnant.”
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
“What should we do?” she asked.
He scratched his head.
“I’ll order a med robot with OB/GYN and full pediatric programming,” he said, “while we think about it. These readings show it as fairly far along. Who’d’ve thought… ?”
“I meant…” she began. “I meant, what should we do about—the other?”
He met her gaze and stared.
“You promised him to the Lord of Deep Fields,” she said, “to secure my release.”
“It seemed a situation that would never occur.”
“But since it has, what are we to do?”
“We do have time to think about it. It might be negotiable.”
“I’ve got a feeling that it isn’t.”
“Well, it would still seem the first thing to try.”
“And the second?”
“I’ll be thinking.”
* * *
Pregnant.
Floating in a warm bath, Ayradyss contemplated the concept for some time. It wasn’t that she had never considered the possibility—self-replicating proges, both parthenogenetic and gender-related, were common in Virtu. They saved the genius loci from wasting all their energy on basic programming, made opportunity for art. But she had never seriously considered the possibility for herself—certainly not once she had given her heart to John, for while those of Virtu and Verite often made love, they never made babies.
Closing her eyes until she gazed out from between her lashes, she gazed down the length of her nude body. There were no changes that she could see, but as the morning sickness proved, the changes were happening. Protectively, she laced her fingers over her still-flat abdomen.
What would the baby—the boy—be like? She and John were both dark-haired, dark-eyed, so likely he would be also. She hoped he would have his father’s build: tall and powerful without being in the least bit bulky. A small smile played about her lips as she imagined the baby, the boy, the young man, her son.
The bath water gradually chilled. She contemplated twisting the tap with her toes to add a bit more heat, then, looking at her pruning fingertips (something that never happened in Virtu), she decided that perhaps she had soaked long enough. Standing calf-deep in the bath, she let the water run down her, forming little beads against her lightly oiled skin (John had made her a gift of some jasmine-scented bath oil when they were in Jamaica).
When she had adjusted to the cooler air, she stepped out onto the bath rug (this from China, its fat flowers cut out to contrast against the deeper plush). While she combed her hair out from the coil she had twisted it into to keep it out of the water, she meditated on what to do with the rest of her day.
John was busy in his office, patiently working on his design for
Death’s Palace of Bones. She disliked going near when he was working on that particular project—instinctively she felt that Death was watching her, and even if John stubbornly refused to dwell upon it, she knew that the palace was only part of the price agreed upon for her return from Deep Fields. She did not blame John for agreeing to Death’s terms— after all, they had seemed impossible to meet. Death might have as soon asked for the moon, but she feared for her unborn son, dreaded the portent in the banshee’s wail.
Banshee. Was that her cry? Ayradyss stood perfectly still, listening. No, what she had heard was just the winter wind chasing the mists through the castle’s turrets.
Quickly she hurried to her closet, took out a long tartan skirt, an Irish cable-knit sweater, heavy stockings, comfortable shoes. The ghosts liked to haunt the regions of the castle that had been recreated to follow John’s fancy of what a Scottish castle should look like. She would go seeking them, ask them about the portents. Who better to ask about Death and his plans than those who walked the line between life and whatever in Verite passed for Deep Fields?
John must have his plans for defeating Death—she was certain of that. Scientist and poet h
e might be, but he also bore something of a warrior’s soul. Verite-born, Ayradyss knew a few of the details of the religion practiced by many of her aion kin. John had his place in their pantheon—did he know?—a demigod of sorts. Still, his plans, his abilities, did not mean that she could not investigate on her own.
The unborn child was her son, too; he was being claimed as ransom for her life. It was her place, as much as John’s, to defend him from Death. Face set, she hurried from the bedroom suite, up the stone stairs, out onto the battlements. Her long, full skirts snapped in the wind as her wings had in Virtu, but this time she did not mourn her wings—she had something more precious within her, something she was determined to protect.
“Banshee!” she cried. “Banshee!”
The wind took the words from her lips so quickly she barely heard them. Arms outspread, she spun. Her skirts belled round and full, her hair whipped out massy and dark. A cyclone of tartan and ebony, she danced in the wind.
Rain began to fall, stinging and cold. Turning to hail, it pebbled the slick stone, cobbled the flags with tiny lumps of ice. Still she danced, her head light and swimming now, her feet gliding on the ice. Ayradyss waltzed with the wind and weather.
She felt a firm pressure at her back, a hand clasp her icy fingers, but her streaming eyes could discover nothing of her partner. Crystals were forming both in her hair and along the thick cables of her sweater: jewels from the Winter King’s hoard. An orchestra played, too: ringing hail, the moan of stone, the shriller howl of the gusts that tore through the crenelations.
Almost now, almost, she could see her partner. His face was white, the cheekbones high, so high, the teeth so white, even against the whiteness of his face. All of him was white but the darkness of his eyes, and these were as dark as the pit, dark as night, dark as…
“Dinna ye ken’t’ cum oot of th’ rain?” said a harsh voice, a clatter of iron underlying the words.
Ayradyss felt the Winter King spin her away, handing her off to this new partner. She reached obediently to take the hand she saw before her, but her numbed fingers met with nothing, not even resistance. Letting her hand fall, she slowed her dancing steps—slipping and sliding as she did this thing.
“Lass, yer wet to the bone and half ice,” chided the voice, her mind asserting the program that sorted the strange burred words into something easier to understand. “What are you doing oot here in such weather? I’ll have a word with that husband of yours for not looking out better for you! Laird of the castle or nae, see if I don’t!”
Ayradyss let herself be guided to the heated interior of the castle. As the ice melted from her hair and her fingers pricked at the warmth, she recognized her interrogator.
“Ghost!” she said happily. “I was hoping to find you!”
“Find me!” the crusader ghost groused. “Lass, ye almost joined me! Get yourself into some dry clothes before you kill yourself and your bairn!”
“But it’s about my baby I want to talk to you,” Ayradyss protested, wringing out her streaming hair, shivering as the warmth of the castle forced sensation into hands and toes.
“Do you? Do you now?” The ghost’s expression remained severe, but something in its burred tones softened. “Dry off first, drink some soup to warm your insides, and you might find me in the long gallery.”
As a means of ending discussion, the ghost faded out. His chain lingered behind him a moment longer, then vanished as well. Ayradyss shivered, sneezed, and gathering her wet skirts in both hands, hurried down to the master bedroom.
Some time later, hair completely dry, clad in fresh warm clothing from the skin out, and a pint of thick beef and barley soup inside of her (and a second helping in a heavy pottery mug in her hand) she climbed the stair to the long gallery.
It was a good place to meet with a ghost, she thought. Although she and John had selected a Persian runner to cover the floor, the bare stone was still visible along the sides. The tapestries and portraits (oils that she had purchased in various antique shops, giggling at the expressions on some of the faces—why would anyone wish to be remembered as seeming so severe?) relieved the dark stone but did little to alleviate the corridor’s gloom. Not even discretely arrayed artificial light could do so. It was as if the gallery had decided that it was meant to be a shadowed, haunted place and consciously defied any efforts to make it otherwise.
Sipping from her mug, Ayradyss walked slowly down the corridor, the sound of her footfalls swallowed by the carpet. Coming to a window with a deep stone sill, she set her mug down. She was digging after a piece of beef with her spoon when she heard the clanking of the ghost’s chain.
“Thank you for coming, sir,” she said politely, taking her skirts in hand to give him a deep curtsy.
“I had no choice, now, did I?” the ghost said grouchily. “If I dinna cum, y’would go dancing in the wind and snow again like a daft thing.”
“Not so daft,” Ayradyss said, tossing her head and arching her eyebrows at him. “I did find you now, didn’t I?”
“That you did. Now, what’s this about asking me about your bairn? I had none of my own while I lived and there will be none now that I’ve died.”
“But you knew that my baby would be a boy,” Ayradyss protested, “and you knew that the banshee wailed for him—and for me and for John.”
The ghost shook its chain, paced a few steps, glowered at her from beneath bushy brows.
“You’re taking liberties, lass, liberties, indeed. Ghosts and supernatural manifestations are not to be interrogated so. We give omens—interpreting them, that’s another provenance.”
Ayradyss stirred her soup deliberately, ate one spoonful, then another. It was growing cold, the barley gluey. She pushed the mug back into the recess. Looking up into the opaque window, its lead-joined panes all diamonds and angles, she said as if to herself:
“I wonder if the Winter King would tell me what I need to know?
He smiled so when we danced. Perhaps he knows why Death wants my baby.”
There was a solid iron crash behind her as if a chain had been dropped directly onto bare stone.
“That Winter King most certainly knows why Death wants your bairn, lass, but I dinna think that he would tell you straight.”
“Can you?”
“I dinna ken the answer, lass.”
“Can you help me learn it?”
A long silence. Ayradyss watched the nicker of the snowfall behind the heavy glass, seeing more the shadow as it opaqued the light than the actual snowfall itself. The wind howled without and she was glad that the architects had sacrificed historical verisimilitude to insulation.
“Can you help me, Ghost?”
“No more dancing with the Winter King?”
“No more.”
“You’ll stay warm and dry and eat the best food so the bairn grows strong?”
“I will.”
“Aye, then I’ll help you look for the answers, lass. I canna promise that we’ll find them, but I can help you look.”
Ayradyss turned and studied the ghost. He stood bent within his shabby tunic, his breeches sagging. His feet, she noticed, were bare and disfigured with corns. The ankle around which the chain was fastened, oddly, was as smooth as the one without.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Dinna ken,” came the voice, fading as the ghost faded. “Dinna ken. Some things ‘tis better not to know.”
Ayradyss contemplated this for a long moment, then gathered up her mug of cold soup. The sky outside was growing dark. She would pull John from his calculations. They could build a fire in the parlor off their bedroom, dine by candlelight by the hearth. Afterwards, perhaps they could return to the jigsaw puzzle they had been doing—a Monet bridge scene that had them quite baffled.
Humming softly, she descended the stair, not hearing the banshee’s wail intermixed with that of the wind.
* * *
John D’Arcy Donnerjack continued his work, incorporating suggested change
s. Mornings, when he would return to his studio, he would learn whether his designs had been accepted. Or he would find new lists of specifications. At the end of his work session, when he left his changes and their catalogue on the machine at the customary address, he appended a personal note for the first time: “How serious were you on the firstborn business?”
The following morning at the end of the new listing he found the response: “Totally serious.”
That day, when he completed his work he added a new message: “What would you take instead?”
The next day’s reply was: “I will not bargain over that which is my due.”
He responded: “What about the most comprehensive music library in the world?”
The reply was: “Do not tempt me, Donnerjack.”
“Can we get together and talk about it?” Donnerjack asked.
“No,” came the reply.
“There must be something that you want more.”
“Nothing that you can give me.”
“I’d try to get it for you.”
“Discussion ended.”
Donnerjack returned to his work, executing brilliant design revisions, incorporating the desired changes, suggesting additional ones of his own. Many of these latter were approved.
One day, when he had left the full field interface open to the Great Stage, he heard bagpipe music. He moved to the nearest window and looked outside but could find no clue as to its source. He stepped out into the hallway, but it seemed fainter there.
Returning, he realized that the sounds seemed to be coming from the vicinity of the Stage.
He entered there and was startled. It was as if he had stepped ashore and hiked some miles to the east. He had set the scan on drift, as was his custom, and the landscape which surrounded him now was a replica of the Scottish Highlands. And it was obvious that this was the source of the music.
He waved his hand in one of the key areas and a menu appeared in the air before him. He stabbed the spoked semicircle icon with his forefinger and when its hardened holo manifested he took hold of it, and turning the wheel, pushed in for acceleration and steered in what he took to be the direction of the music.
He bore to the right, and Virtu rushed past him. Hills, hills, hills. The piping was coming from here, but it could take forever to search among those crags and ridges.
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