“A life is a shallow place in time.”
“Still…”
“Do you think me a proge-generated simulacrum? Some toy of human imagination? I came into being when the first living thing died, and I will not say where or when that was. Neither man nor machine ever wrote a program for me.”
Donnerjack drew back as a moire flowed between them.
“You make it sound as if you really are Death.’
The only reply was the continuing smile.
“And I almost get the feeling you are discussing an experiment you would be curious to perform.”
“Even if that were so, it would not get you a fire sale price on my services.”
“What then? What do you want?”
“Yes, you will build for me. But I want one thing more. You spoke of myths, legends, fairy tales. There are reasons for them, you know.”
“Yes?”
“You have wandered into something you do not understand. If you would play it out, give me my price and you shall walk away with her, back to your own realm.”
“Give her to me and you shall have your price.”
Death stood slowly, stepped to the left of his throne, and raised his right arm. The Orfeo reversed itself, repeating backwards the passage just completed. The figure of a woman moved out from behind the throne.
Donnerjack’s breath caught in his throat.
“Ayradyss!” he said.
“She is aware of you at some level, but she cannot yet reply,” Death said, leading her forward. “You will take her by the hand and follow the trail of bones. It will be a long, dangerous, and difficult way. But you will win back to Verite if you do not depart the trail for any reason. High Powers may attempt to interfere. Stay on the trail.”
He placed her hand in his.
“And now, your price?”
“Your firstborn, of course.”
“What you ask is entirely impossible. First, that we should ever have offspring. Second, that I should be able to deliver it here if we could— physically, in toto.”
“Agree to the conditions and I will take care of the details.”
Donnerjack regarded the pale, vacant-eyed form of his love.
“I agree,” he said.
“Then walk the way of bones back to the light.”
“Amen,” said Donnerjack as he turned away, leading Ayradyss, “and goodbye.”
“I’ll be seeing you,” Death said.
TWO
Lydia Hazzard was seventeen years old with several months vacation ahead of her before beginning her university studies. In that she was the elder of two daughters in a well-to-do family—Hazzard Insurance, third generation—her parents, Carla and Abel, had given her the present of a summer in Virtu, before her life got hardball, red in tooth and claw, and otherwise preoccupied with things academic. She was 5’6”, narrow of waist, large of bust, with hands and legs of a swimsuit model; her hair was shoulder-length and very blond, her cheekbones high, teeth dazzling, complexion pink and smooth, eyes of jungle green with a hint of green splashed above them. This was only in Virtu and it cost extra, but her parents were in a generous mood.
In her home in Bayonne, New Jersey, Verite, she was 5‘9”, with nondescript brownish hair, a bit skinny and gawky with terrible posture, possessed of a volatile complexion and a tendency to chew her fingernails to the quick. Her smile, thanks to orthodontics, was quite fetching, however, and her eyes were indeed jungle green. For that matter, her voice was pleasantly husky and she had a high IQ.
At first she traveled with her friend Gwen, who’d been given for a graduation present a week in the generic resorts of Virtu—Beach, Mountain, Desert, Seashore, Cruise, Casino, Safari—and they had tried a half-day in each to learn their favorites.
Both found Casino intimidating, because once the package plays were used up one played with one’s own money (or one’s parents’) efted on the spot from Casino’s account to one’s own or (more usually) the other way around. This—both Gwen and Lydia had had impressed upon them—was a no-no. They were in Virtu to experience the exotic, to acquire additional social graces, and to get laid in congenial surroundings by good-looking partners in total safety from pregnancy and disease— bodies bucking and heaving against micromanipulable forcefields back in Verite—senses knowing they had spent themselves beneath stars and their partners on South Pacific beaches where waves beat counterpoint and breezes bore the aromas of flowers. Did it matter whether one’s partner was a construct out of Virtu or a fellow idealized vacationer from Verite? They felt the same, and the uncertainty piqued the sense of romance to the fullest. Either were free to lie or to tease, so of course they did. It spiced the game to wonder whether an address someone had given you back home might be real, whether the man or woman you mounted, stroked, sucked on, might be even more fun on the other side. Or whether it was all a dream and such a person did not even exist in the Verite.
She walked the beaches a lot after Gwen’s week was up. They were some of her favorite places when she wanted to be alone, and she realized that, for a time, she did want to be alone. She requested solitude in Virtu, and it was not sifted-seeming tourist beaches that she sought. They were more wild, pebbly strands, sometimes possessed of a vaguely Aegean feeling; other times they were pounded by chill breakers which bespoke the North Sea. And she was fascinated by the lives and deaths she noted in tidal pools along her ways. Underwater forests might sway as in invisible winds, tiny crustaceans scuttle among stones, fishes hover and bend, minuscule red armies and blue armies take up positions for battle…
Occasionally, she saw a red sail. But while the vessel sometimes came near to shore, it never lay to anchor in her sight, nor did she ever glimpse its crew. When the flotsam, driftwood, shells, smells, pools, and sounds of the shore attained a certain level of intensity, she would climb the pale cliffs and hike inland. There lay rocky hills and higher prominences, twisted trees along their slopes. Pink and yellow flowers bloomed in meadows; pockets of fog filled dells and crevices in stone walls till late in the day; a number of vine-covered ruins, always of stone, occurred in the lower valley; thistles of a soft red occasionally punctuated the sloping prospect; and she came upon a hill at eve where she seemed to hear music from under the ground. There, in a sheltered depression to the northwest, she wrapped herself in her cloak to spend the night.
Lying under the stars, she heard the music rise out of the ground and deepen, grow more wild. For a long time, she simply listened, as if in attendance at some odd concert. Abruptly, then, its character shifted.
Louder, more powerful, it came, no longer from beneath the ground, but from somewhere nearby. Had she been drowsing? She searched hastily for a break in her consciousness, could not be certain whether one had occurred.
Rising, she paced the hilltop, seeking the direction of the music. It seemed to be coming from the southwest, to her right.
The world grew brighter as she headed in that direction, climbing…
It grew louder still as she reached her hill’s summit. There, from across the valley, backlighted by a recently risen moon, she beheld a form atop the next height: a piper. He stood stock-still, the skirls and wailings on his pipes filling the air between them.
She seated herself. As the moon rose higher she saw that the piper was a man. Their hilltops seemed to drift closer together. This later struck her as peculiar, in that her solitude-order was still in effect. She had not intended on lifting it for a couple of more days, following a conditioning visit to Verite. Strange…
How long she sat, she could never tell. The moon had risen higher, and the piper had turned somewhat, so that its light fell across his face from the left, both illuminating and shadowing. He was high of cheekbone, heavy of brow, and he wore a small beard. He seemed to have on rough, dark leggings and a dark green, moist-looking satin shirt. There was a cap on his head, and the hilt of some sort of weapon at his side.