“That seems rather snobby.”
“So, we are the inbetweens. Neither AI (though what else are we other than artificial intelligences?) nor human, and somewhat scorned by the majority of both groups.”
“Oh. I never knew.”
“I was touched by your kindness to Dack—your consideration for his concern for you even though he was being a dreadful nag—or I would have never mentioned such things to you. Somehow, I did not think you would be one to scorn a person, no matter the origin of intelligence.”
“Thanks.”
“Dack did have a point about jet lag. It can really mess up organics. If you want to sleep, it might be a good idea.”
“I’m too excited, but I’ll try closing my eyes.”
Jay did so, leaning back his chair and thinking. Already, hardly out of home, he had learned something about Verite he would not have found in his studies. Ignorance of the issue had kept him from reading what commentaries might be available, but in any case, people rarely wrote about prejudices until they had begun to be addressed as detrimental. He wondered what Angus and the Duncan said about the robots when they returned home to the village. Did they resent them for doing jobs that, in the past, would have been given to human members of the castle’s fiefdom? It was an unsettling thought.
After a time, he drifted off to sleep, excitement, last-minute packing, and a celebratory drink with the crusader ghost having kept him awake far later than was his wont. When he awoke, Milburn was coming into a landing pattern over New York City.
* * *
“The crowd mills below, replacing Central Park’s green spaces with the swirling colors of summer dresses, shorts, and bright shirts. Mylar balloons in the shapes of winged lions, winged bulls, and ziggurats bob over the throng, their strings clutched by hands still sticky from the free ice cream provided by the Church of Elish. Towering over all of this is the great ziggurat that will be the focus of today’s celebration…”
Desmond Drum sighed. “Do you really need to do this? You know that every major newsfeed will have reporters and photographers here.”
Link huffed. “I want to record my own impressions, in my own style.”
The grin that quirked at the corner of Drum’s mouth was comment enough on Link’s pretensions to style, but the reporter turned his back on him and continued his muttered narration.
“The great ziggurat that will be the focus of today’s celebration should be dwarfed by the skyscrapers that tower clifflike over the park’s green oasis…”
“I thought you said it wasn’t green.”
“Shut up… green oasis, but something of the ancient grandeur of the lost culture of Ancient Babylon clings to even this modern recreation.”
Link clicked off his recorder. For today’s adventure he was clad in khaki trousers, a loose short-sleeved button-down shirt over a dark tee-shirt, leather loafers, and a jaunty fedora with a “Press” card stuck in the brim. Except for his anachronistic wrist recorder, he was the archetype of the questing reporter: Clark Kent, Woodward and Bernstein, and, of course, Lincoln Steffens.
Drum was dressed more sensibly in Bermuda shorts, a tee-shirt with the Mets logo, and running shoes. A baseball cap with a duplicate of the Mets logo was pulled almost to his eyebrows, making the sunglasses that hung from a lanyard about his neck superfluous.
“Want a balloon, kid?” he asked, gesturing lazily to where a vendor was making her way through the crowd.
Like all of those working for the Church of Elish this busy day, she wore iridescent green tights printed with tongues of flame that appeared to be licking up her legs and a flame-colored tunic printed in green with the words: “I Burn with the Truth.” Not all of the vendors looked good in the tights, but this lady (a blonde with a high giggle that made one wonder if she had been nipping helium from her wares) was all leg.
Drum winked at Link. “I bet that the Truth isn’t all she’s burning with, kid.”
Link blushed, then quickly recovered. In the weeks since their meeting with Daimon, Link had noticed that Drum delighted in needling him about some matters. He could talk quite calmly about all manner of decadence, but if Drum asked him if he’d like a call girl (Drum claimed to know several very obliging ladies) or even a virt jaunt, Link would get pink and nervous.
So Drum had taken it upon himself to harass Link. He justified his banter by saying that it wouldn’t do if Link fell apart at some key juncture, and Drum had been in the business long enough to know that undercover work wasn’t all skulking about reading other people’s mail.
“So, aren’t you going to get me a balloon, old man?” Link asked, getting to his feet. “Well, I’ll get you one.”
He sauntered, a touch overly casual, to the balloon vender, handed over his eft stick, which was returned to him along with a string. Balloon glinting silver and bronze over his head, Link returned to Drum.
“Here,” he said, bending and tying the string to Drum’s wrist. “A memory from our shared past.”
Drum glanced up, and seeing the winged bull bobbing over his head, guffawed.
“Good shot, kid. Looks like something’s starting to happen up by the ziggurat, better warm up your official Dick Tracy wrist radio.”
“Fuck you,” Link said amiably, but he did activate the recorder.
* * *
John D’Arcy Donnerjack, Junior stared at the crowd, his eyes so wide that he could feel his lids aching. Dripping with sweat, ice cream staining the front of his tee-shirt, his right hand clasping the string holding a ziggurat balloon, his official souvenir sun hat a size too small and squeezing his brow, he was having a wonderful, terrifying time.
At first, when he had been yelled at for walking out in traffic (in the virt New York he had visited with Dubhe this had been acceptable, but apparently he’d done something wrong), when he had forgotten to give his eft stick to a pretzel vendor before taking one of his wares, when he had stepped into a pile of dog shit (in Virtu only the most faithful simulations had bothered with such details), he had regretted not accepting Milburn’s offer of a guide—human or android. Now, free to gape like a rube, to forget his manners, to eavesdrop, to wonder at the clamor of the sounds and the pungency of the smells, he was quite happy to be on his own.
Jay was sorry that Dubhe, with his dry sarcasm, was not with him. The monkey would certainly have something humorously cruel to say about the fat woman in the bright print dress who waddled by, an ice cream cone in each hand. Or about the herd of children running full tilt through the crowd, their anxious father dodging in their wake through the temporary gaps. Or…
Contentedly, he settled himself onto the concrete base of a statue (skinning his knee in the process). The Elishite ziggurat was distant but visible from here, and Milburn had thoughtfully provided him with a pair of binoculars. Anchoring his balloon string to a belt loop on his shorts, he took these from their case and adjusted the focus. Perfect.
* * *
Randall Kelsey adjusted the fit of his priest’s robe and the heavy artificial beard that fell in luxuriant, ropelike coils to the middle of his chest. Sweat ran from beneath beard and the matching wig that, bound by a simple, striking fillet around his brow, gave him dark hair to his shoulders. For once, he was glad that he was not one of the high priests, since their costumes included conical headpieces as well. At least some air penetrated to his scalp.
“This show is a heck of a lot more comfortable in virt, eh?” said Juan, one of his associates, touching up the dark line around his eyes. “This is what we get for staying fit in Verite.”
Kelsey chuckled. It was true that many of the priests who performed the services in Virtu had been ruled unfit to take part in today’s celebration. In virt form a paunch or poor posture mattered not at all. Here, it would ruin the effect, making the celebrants seem like children costumed for Halloween rather than impressive bringers of the Truth.
He figured that was why he had been included. Certainly, his stock with the elders had never b
een the same since the Emmanuel Davis incident, but his fidelity had been unquestioned and he did keep himself in shape.
How ironic that at the very moment when he was sincerely coming to doubt the wisdom of remaining with the Church, he should be entrusted with a role in this most public ceremony. The gods—whoever they were—apparently did have a sense of humor.
“We’re on,” said Juan, tugging at his sleeve. “It’s showtime.”
* * *
The prayers that the heavily costumed priests and the scantily clad priestesses were reciting from a dais at the midlevel of the ziggurat were similar to those that Jay had heard in the virt service—certainly not different enough to distract him from watching the celebrants and the crowd. The celebrants seemed less composed than they did in Virtu. Part of this must have to do with their being obviously uncomfortable. The males were, without exception, dripping with sweat. The females wore their transparent shifts and gaudy jewelry with various degrees of composure. Still, Jay felt that there was something more—a degree of tense excitement that could not be dismissed as physical discomfort. Something important was about to happen. Jay’s own heart beat more rapidly in sympathy.
He scanned the portion of the crowd nearest to him. Many people were muttering the prayers along with the High Priest, coming in louder on the responses. Against this drone, the quiet conversations of those who were merely observing gradually faded to respectful silence punctuated by an occasional child’s cry. Many people were rooting in pockets or purses for the programs that had been distributed throughout the park, peer pressure pushing most to participate at least in the responses.
Within the increasingly focused gathering, heads bent over sheets of paper, or over hands twisting in complex mudras, two people stood out in contrast. They sat on a blanket spread out on the grass beneath a gnarled sapling. Like Jay, the older man was observing the ziggurat through binoculars. His companion, a younger man—almost a boy—held binoculars in one hand and a wristband recorder to his lips. While the older man remained silent except for an occasional comment, the youth’s lips moved constantly.
Jay noted the “Press” card in the younger man’s hat. Why, if he was with the media, hadn’t he availed himself of the reserved seating nearer to the ziggurat? Shrugging, Jay filed this minor mystery away and returned his attention to the ziggurat.
The prayer service was reaching its climax. If something was going to change from the usual, it would be now.
* * *
Randall Kelsey raised and lowered his hands in the prescribed patterns, shook his rattle, wailed a ululating cry. Beside him, Juan de las Vegas did the same. They might have been one man or the entire row of priests, extensions of the High Priest. A Broadway choreographer would have swelled with pride at the precision of their motions.
But Kelsey had no energy to waste on such thoughts. The High Priest (a nice fellow named Sven, a man chosen for this part in today’s celebration as much for his stature of nearly seven feet and correspondingly broad shoulders and booming voice as for his devotion and knowledge of ritual) was mounting the steps of the ziggurat. Mounting toward the shrine from which (so said all the rumors—including those leaked to the media corps) would emerge gods in the flesh, showering blessings on the people of the Verite.
The pitch of the chorus rose, shrilled, rose again to a high note sustained by the priestesses. Kelsey wondered if he was the only one who was nervous, but couldn’t very well turn to look. He must be impassive passion, devotion come to flesh and blood, a holy man singing forth the gods from mythology into reality.
And then the miracles commenced and Randall Kelsey’s anxiety fell from him to be replaced by awe and by terror.
First emerged a pair of winged lions with the heads of wise, bearded men. Kelsey knew them—two lesser deities of wind and storm. They had been among the first to attempt the crossover via patrons in Verite. Today, however, they were not making the effort via their patrons (or “serfs,” as Kelsey had once heard one say scornfully), though those blessed two stood by, waiting to strengthen the contact if needed.
The winged ones launched into the air—impossibly aloft. Kelsey knew that within the media corps there would be those equipped to unmask a hoax, to detect a robot, a hologram, a balloon. They would strive in vain. The gods, Little Storm, Little Wind, were truly among them, soaring over the entranced, enthralled, entertained throng.
This would be enough—enough to establish the Church of Elish as a major player among the religions of the world, the bringer of an old truth made new, but Kelsey knew from the pounding of the drums, the clanging of the cymbals, the tootling of the flutes, that what he had dreaded was about to happen.
A shadow darkened the doorway of the shrine, then into the sunlight of a New York City afternoon in summer stepped Bel Marduk.
Nine feet tall stood Lord Marduk, Bel Marduk, Belos, Merodach— son of Ea the Sea and Damkina the Sky. In one hand he held the bow with which he had slain Chaos in the person of the dragon Tiamat. In the other he held the pine cone, emblem of his multifaceted nature, for he was also a creator: bringer of law, crafter of the calendar, and husband of Zerpanitum.
Bel Marduk mounted the ziggurat to stand upon its flattened apex so that the gathered worshipers might look upon him. In all things he was doubly blessed—two heads, four eyes, two mouths, four ears. The bulge beneath his robe suggested that duality did not stop at the head. When he breathed, fire blossomed from his lips.
The god looked out over New York City and found a world that had not believed in him, but soon would repair that failing. He smiled two smiles and breathed out more fire. Then with a wave of the hand which held the pine cone, he summoned Little Storm and Little Wind to him.
“This isn’t in the script,” Juan muttered to Kelsey as Bel Marduk set his feet one each upon the backs of the lesser gods and commanded them to bear him into the sky.
“This isn’t on our script,” Kelsey hissed back. “That maneuver looks rehearsed. What in God’s name does he think he’s doing?”
“God’s name is right,” Juan replied. “I think he’s exerting his divine right.”
“Shit.”
Helplessly, the priests and priestesses of the Church of Elish watched as the Greater God and his lesser minions toured over the crowd. They must hide their fear and dismay, taking their cue from Sven, the High Priest, who stood with his arms folded, incanting the lay in praise of Bel Marduk (which fortunately was quite long, Marduk’s deeds being more numerous than those of any other deity in the pantheon—if one left out Ishtar’s various mischiefs). They must raise their voices in song and hope that all would turn for a profit.
All indeed might have gone well but for the accident to the balloon vendor. It happened thusly.
Tandy Rae Dallas, acolyte of the Church, she of the long legs and blond hair, the same who had earlier in the day sold balloons to both Jay Donnerjack and Link Crain, was standing staring up into the sky, watching the miracle. It had been a good day. She had sold out of her first bunch of balloons and had time to make a good dent in a second before the service started. Those that remained drifted gently above her head, evoking images of a divine aura to those sophisticated in such things.
An underling in the Church, Tandy Rae had no idea that Marduk’s actions were at all exceptional. She watched along with the rest of the crowd, admiring the grace with which the god maintained his balance on his dual mounts. Having done trick riding for a rodeo, she knew how difficult this could be.
Absorbed as she was, she did not sense the sneak thief (or perhaps merely a mischief maker) behind her until it was too late. A single snick of a knife blade released her balloons from their anchor, and before she could do more than wildly grab for one, they had risen into the air.
Cries of dismay, command, and simple surprise rose after the balloons. Perhaps they were what drew Little Wind and Little Storm to the vicinity, but for whatever combination of reasons, the two deities swept directly into the flight of myla
r shapes.
They balked. Bel Marduk—slightly unbalanced—breathed fire, setting the balloons and their contents alight. Someone in the crowd screamed, someone pushed, someone punched. With a single smooth motion Marduk strung his bow. Little Storm lived up to his name and peed a mighty stream of strongly scented urine (a thousand cat boxes in a drop) over the crowd.
“Holy fuckin’, holy fuckin’, holy fucking shit!” Randall Kelsey cried, looking down from his perch on the ziggurat. “Call Aoud Aral! We’ve got a riot on our hands.”
* * *
When the riot first began, Jay Donnerjack watched with interest, thinking it another part of the entertainment. Only when he saw a child torn from its mother, an old man knocked down, a vendor abandoning his ice cream wagon to flee did he realize that this was for real and that no genius loci would intervene if events progressed beyond the program.
On his perch upon the statue’s base, he had been spared the attentions of the mob. Now he rose to his feet, looking not so much to escape as to make amends for his previous stupidity. In many a virtventure, he had been the hero, but unlike those from Verite who played the programs, he had crossed the interface in body as well as mind. The skills he had learned exploring the jungle that harbored Sayjak and Tranto or hunting with Mizar were his in Verite as well as in Virtu.
Glancing around, he saw that the young man with the wrist recorder stood straddling his older companion from whose head blood ran. Jay could easily guess what had happened and admired the youth for not leaving his friend to the mercy of the crowd.
Climbing a small way up the statue, Jay swung over into a tree and then crossed into the tree that had sheltered the two men. These were not the forest giants he was accustomed to climb. Their less elastic boughs creaked enormously at his weight, but he arrived safely and dropped down onto the now-muddied picnic blanket.
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