“I suppose waiting for Ambry in the Land Behind the North Wind won’t do much good now.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Your grandparents called. They’ve gotten us all tickets to the Elishite Celebration in California. My sister will be there, too. What should I tell them for you?”
“Are you going?”
“Probably. I haven’t done anything with them recently—I’ve spent too much time in virt.”
“Mom, I think it would be best if you didn’t go.”
“Why not?”
“Remember how their last Celebration ended with a riot? I have a bad feeling that this one might end with something worse.”
Lydia Hazzard studied her daughter’s expression. “Is this just a vague feeling, or do you have some privileged information?”
“Privileged information.”
“Connected to your trip to Scotland?”
“I can’t say, Mom.”
“I see.” Lydia considered. “Very well. I’ll do my best to dissuade your grandparents and Aunt Cindy. If they don’t go, I won’t, but I’m not letting them go without me.”
“Fair enough. Mom, try really hard to convince them not to go.”
“I promise, sweetie. How long until you leave for Scotland?”
“Jay was making arrangements to have one of the Donnerjack Institute’s private vehicles pick me up. I expect to hear from them anytime now.”
“Be careful, dear.”
“You, too. I’ll call when I get a chance, Mom.”
“Love you.”
“You, too.”
Two versions of the same face looking into blank screens, two very different minds thinking of things unsaid. Sometimes love is in silence.
Ben Kwinan waited in the virt meeting room as one after another the Church Elders flickered out.
“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did but she did it backwards and in high heels,” he said conversationally to the two who remained. “And now apparently we’re going to have to do it at double-time as well.”
“Move the Celebration up?” Randall Kelsey barely kept from shouting. “And I came to this meeting prepared to present reasons why we couldn’t be done—not at the level of complexity planned—on time! Move things up?”
Aoud Araf moved over to the liquor cabinet. “I need a ginger ale. Anything for you fellows?”
“Something a lot stronger than ginger ale,” Kelsey said. “Who cares if it’s virtual! Right now even a programmed high would be welcome.”
“Gin and tonic?”
“If you agree to hold the tonic,” Kelsey said, then he returned to the original subject. “Move the Celebration up?”
“At least your department can cut corners,” Ben Kwinan comforted. “Just be glad you’re not in ticketing. Think of the refunds, the rescheduling, the bribing of transportation executives. For once I am sorry that I don’t need sleep. I won’t get a break until this is over.”
“Or poor me,” Aoud Araf said. “Security will need to be just as perfect as if we were working from our original plans. There will be no forgiveness if this Celebration ends in a riot.”
“I’ll have you sent layout changes automatically,” Kelsey promised, calming somewhat. “You heard most of what we’ll need to do during the meeting, but there is always a difference between conception and execution.”
Araf set down his empty ginger ale glass.
“I’d better head out. Be talking with you both.”
Once they were alone, Kwinan looked at Kelsey.
“And?”
“And what?” Kelsey’s tone wasn’t quite belligerent.
“Will you be able to do your part?”
“I can only try. I won’t make promises.”
“You realize there can only be one reason for the changing of the Celebration date.”
“What?”
“The gods grow restless.”
“I thought the reasons were that we were already sold out, that if we went ahead now there would be opportunity for a second Celebration while we were still trendy.”
“That is the official reason. You and I know that great things…”
“Not here.”
“Very well. Would you like to come to my hogan?”
“No. Unlike you, I do need my sleep. In a few hours, I’m going to be running around in the mud collecting information so that my bosses can confirm what buildings can be completed, what flower arrangements can be omitted, a thousand other details that need a trained observer on the ground.”
Kwinan’s grin was wry. “And don’t forget, you must be fitted for your new priest’s robes.”
“Let them use my others as a pattern. I have work to do.”
Moving toward the bar, Kelsey poured another quick shot, downed it, and walked over to pat Kwinan on the shoulder.
“I’ll see what I can do, Ben.”
“Prepare ye the way of the Lord!” Kwinan half chanted, half sung.
Kelsey frowned at the aion’s levity.
“And let’s hope that when it’s all done we’re not left with voices crying out in the wilderness.”
“Amen to that, my friend. Amen to that.”
He dwelt in Deep Fields and wondered for how long he would continue to do so.
The assaults had begun soon after he had felt the ending of the aion Markon. At the time the void left by the genius loci imploded within the silence of Death’s realm, the Lord of the Lost, assisted by the phant, Tranto, had been at work raising a gate house just across the moat from the palace.
As this involved razing a number of existing attempts—Death was eager to improve upon John D’Arcy Donnerjack’s design, but he had not the gift of creation—the raising of the gatehouse had also involved a good many puns. Tranto, glowing with the energy of the strange attractors he had consumed, was enthusiastic about shoving the piles of broken building materials from side to side, heaping marble on cinder block, plaster on preformed plastics.
Only with great difficulty did the Lord of the Lost convince the inebriated phant to join him within the relative safety of the palace’s walls. Phecda coiled around her master’s head. Mizar, who had fought his way through the earliest assaults at the expense of another tail and some handfuls of the tapestry print on his left haunch, sat on Death’s feet.
“Would it surprise you, Tranto, to learn that I have made some foolish decisions in my time?”
Until the disruption caused by a dragon of moire (its texture subtly greener than that more usually seen) disintegrating the gatehouse to ash had ended, the phant waited to reply.
“You exist, after your fashion. You move through time and through space. Not even those on Highest Meru claim infallibility—that is left for lesser deities and pontiffs. No, lord, I would not be surprised.”
“Kindness, Tranto. Very well, let me tell you of my foolishness. My strength is in destruction, decay, entropy, discordance. Occasionally, I manage to summon something into existence, but either it is like Mizar, a dismal mocker)- of the living creature it mimics…”
Death’s dog thumped his remaining tails on the floor to indicate that he felt no insult in these words. Mizar had seen other dogs and thought them poor, weak creatures. He preferred himself as he was, but he could see his maker’s point.
“…Or it is like Dubhe or Phecda, a creature salvaged just before entropy has completed its work and given an opportunity to make a pact with me—a strange new life in return for service. Once, not so long ago as we count these things, I was tempted with the possibility of becoming a creator.”