Stations of the Tide (28 page)

A speck of white floated in the air before him. A second appeared and then a third, too small to be flowers, too large for pollen. It was bitterly cold. He looked up. When had the leaves fallen? The bare-limbed trees were black skeletons against the gray sky. More white specks darted by.

Then they were everywhere, filling all the empty space between him and the city with their millions, and in so doing, defining that space, lending it dimension and making explicit the distance he had yet to go.

“Snow,” he said wonderingly.

*   *   *

It was unpleasant, the cold, but the bureaucrat saw no reason to turn back. He could put up with a bit of discomfort. He forced his pace, hoping the exertion would generate a little heat. The television banged against his thigh as he trotted ahead. His breath puffed out in little gusts of steam. Soft, feathery flakes piled up, coating the trees, the land, the trail. Behind, fleeing footprints softened, grew indistinct, disappeared.

He flicked on the television. A gray dragon of stormclouds doubled and redoubled upon itself, creeping down the screen upon Continent.
They’re melting!
an excited voice cried.
We have some magnificent views of the icecaps from orbit—

He thumbed over to the next channel—
find shelter immediately.
The trail wound through the trees, flat and level and monotonous. Out of breath, the bureaucrat lapsed back into a trudging gait. The television chattered on in the happy drone of people caught on the fringes of disaster. It spoke of near-miraculous rescues in Sand Province and perilous airlifts along the Shore. He was told that the militia were on alert, with flying squads in six-hour rotations. Reminded that he must be out of the Tidewater before the first wave of jubilee tides hit. That might be in as little as twelve hours or as much as eighteen. He was not to stop for sleep. He was not to stop for food. He must leave at once.

The snow was falling so thickly now he could barely see the trees to either side of him. His toes and the soles of his feet ached with the cold.
Hypothermia tips!
the television cried. Do not rub frostbitten skin. Thaw it gently with warm water. He could not really follow the gist of the advice; there were too many unfamiliar words.

The announcers sounded giddily excited. Their faces were flushed, their eyes bright. Natural disasters did that to people, made them feel significant, reassured them that their actions mattered. He switched channels again, and found a woman explaining the precession of the poles. Charts and globes helped demonstrate that Miranda was now entering great winter and receiving less insolation than ever.
However, the warming effects were inevitable well over a decade ago. Delicate natural feedback mechanisms assure—

The handle of the television set stung like ice. He could no longer bear to hold it. With an effort he forced his hand open and let go. The television dropped to the trail, and he shoved his hand under his armpit. He hurried forward, hugging himself for warmth. For a time the voices called after him down the trail. By slow degrees they faded away, and were gone.

Now he was truly alone.

*   *   *

It wasn’t until he stumbled and fell that he realized the danger he was in.

He hit the ground hard and for a moment did not move, almost enjoying the sting of pain that ran along his body, all but anesthetizing one arm and the side of his face. It baffled him that mere weather could do this to him. Finally, though, he realized that the time had come to turn back. Or die.

Dizzily he stood. He’d gotten a little turned around, and when he got to his feet, he was not sure which way was which. The snow fell chokingly thick, powdering his suit and catching on his eyelashes. He could hardly see. A few gray lines to either side of the trail, trees evidently, and nothing more. The impression he had made when he fell had already been obliterated.

He started back.

It was even odds that he was headed for the flier. He wished he could be sure, but he was disoriented and it was hard to think. His attention was all taken up by the cold that sank its fangs in his flesh and did not let go. Icy needles of pain lacerated his muscles. His face stiffened with cold. He gritted his teeth, lips pulling back in an involuntary snarl, and forced himself on.

Some time later, he realized that he was surely headed in the wrong direction, because he hadn’t come upon the jettisoned television yet. He put off admitting this for as long as possible, because the thought of retracing his steps was heartbreaking. Finally, though, he had no choice but to admit his error, turn, and go back.

It was wonderfully silent.

The bureaucrat had lost all sensation in his feet long ago. Now the aching coldness was creeping up his legs, numbing his calf muscles. His knees burned from touching the cold trousers cloth. His ears were afire. A savage pain in both eyes and the center of his forehead set his head buzzing, demon voices droning meaningless words in overlapping chorus.

Then the paralyzing numbness crept higher, his knees buckled, and he fell.

He did not get up.

For a timeless long time he lay there, hallucinating the sounds of phantom machines. He was beginning to feel blessedly warm. The television had said something about that. Get up, you bastard, he thought. You’ve got to get up. There was a crunching noise, and he saw boots, black leather boots, before his face. A massive man squatted, and lifted him gently in his arms. Over the man’s shoulder he saw a blur of color in the swirling white that was surely a car or truck of some sort.

The bureaucrat looked up into a broad face, full of strength and warmth, and implacable as a stone. He looked like somebody’s father. The lips curled into a smile that involved all the man’s face, cheeks forming merry balls, and the man winked.

It was Gregorian.

13

A View from a Height

Three men sat around the campfire.

The night was cold. The bureaucrat smoked black hashish laced with amphetamines to keep awake. Gregorian held the pipe to his mouth, urging him to suck in deeply and hold the smoke for as long as possible. The hash made the bureaucrat’s head buzz. His feet were impossibly distant, a full day’s travel down the giant’s causeway of his legs. Marooned on the mountainside, he still felt monstrously calm and alert, wired into the celestial telegraph with a direct line to the old wisdom lying at the base of his skull like moonstones in an amalgam of coprolites and saber-tooth bones. For an instant he lost hold of external reality, and plunged deep into the submarine caverns of perception, a privateer in search of booty. Then he exhaled. Oceans of smoke gushed out into the world.

The snow had stopped long ago.

Gregorian finished off the pipe, knocked out the coals against the heel of his boot, and carefully scraped the bowl clean. “Do you know how Ararat was lost?” he asked. “It’s an interesting story.”

“Tell me,” the bureaucrat said.

Their companion said nothing.

“To understand you must first know that the upper reaches of the city lie above the great winter high-tide mark. Oh, the jubilee tides smash over it all right—but it’s built to withstand the force. When the storms subside, it’s an island. A useful little place militarily—isolated, easily fortified, easily defended. System Defense used it as a planning center during the Third Unification. That’s when it was hardened. There are probably a lot of these secret places scattered about.”

The magician took a branch from the flames and stirred the fire, sending sparks swirling madly up the smoke into the sky. “As a standard procedure, System Defense masked their involvement with a civilian caretaker organization under the nominal auspices of Cultural Dissemination Oversight, with control exerted through yet another civilian front. During the reorganization at the end of the violent phase of Unification…”

The explanation went on and on. The bureaucrat listened only with the surface of his mind, letting the words pass over him in murmurous waves while he studied his opponent. Squatting before the fire, Gregorian seemed more beast than man. The flames threw red shadows up on his face, and the cool greenish light from the window wall ignited his hair from behind. Sometimes the light reached his teeth and lit up the grin. But none of it ever reached his eyes.

Decades passed. Organizations arose and fell, were folded into one another, shed responsibility, picked up new authority, and split off from parent bodies. By the time Ocean receded and great spring began, Ararat was so deeply entangled in the political substance of the System that it could be neither softened nor declassified.

“The stupidity of it—the waste! An entire city, the work of thousands of lifetimes, lost through mere regulation. And yet this is but the smallest fraction of the invisible empire of Ignorance imposed on us by the powers above.”

In person Gregorian’s voice was eerily familiar, just as his features could be decoded as a more rugged, more compelling version of Korda’s own. “That sounds like something your father might say,” the bureaucrat remarked.

Gregorian looked up sharply. “I don’t need you here!” He pointed to the still figure across the fire from him. “Pouffe is enough company for me. If you want to die early, I can—”

“It was only an observation!”

The magician eased back, his rage gone as abruptly as it had arisen. “Yes, that’s true. Yes. Well, of course the information all came from Korda originally. It was one of his projects. He spent years trying to have Ararat declassified, tilting at windmills and fighting phantoms. Old Laocoön strangled by red tape.” He threw back his head and laughed. “But what do you and I care about that? More fool he for having wasted his life. I don’t suppose you remembered to bring my notebook?”

“I left it in my briefcase. Back in the flier.”

“Ah, well. It was of purely sentimental value. We must all learn to give things up.”

“Tell me something,” the bureaucrat said carefully. Gregorian nodded his great head. “What did Earth’s agent give you—was it proscribed technology? Or was it nothing at all?”

Gregorian pondered the question with mocking seriousness, and then, as if delivering the punch line of a particularly good joke, said, “Nothing at all. I wanted to force Korda to send somebody after me when I disappeared. It was bait, that was all.”

“Then I can go now.”

Gregorian chuckled. The fire leaned away under a sudden gust of wind, and he was a black silhouette against the window wall. A tattoo of a comet flared to life, swam across his arm, and slowly faded. A second marking fired and a third, crawling about under his skin like fire-worms on an embered log. “Stay,” he said. “We have so much to talk about.”

The magician leaned back again, in no particular hurry to get down to specifics. The city fell away quickly here, to vague silver and gray lands stretching flat and away toward Ocean, invisible at the horizon. Strange winds and smells were astir. Cinnamyrtle and isolarch haunted the nose.

The fire had been built on a high terrace, in a crumbling depression of stone that Gregorian called a “whale wallow.” Like all of Ararat, it was heavily eroded. Hooks protruded from rounded walls, their purpose lost. Rooms were choked with coral and mud. Fag ends of braided cables and the ribs of sea creatures jutted from among the barnacles. Here and there sheets of adamantine stood exposed, perfect and incorruptible. But these Perimeter Defense retrofits were rare, jarring intrusions in the aged city.

The bureaucrat leaned back against a carbon-whisker strut. The chains that shackled him to it rattled when he moved. To one side he could see into the command room with its stacked crates of food and survival gear. To the other, he could look out into the wide and windy world. At his back he felt the empty streets, narrow and dark, staring at him. “I want to take you up on your offer,” he said.

Lazily Gregorian said, “Now what offer do you mean?”

“I want to be your apprentice.”

“Oh, that. No, that was never meant seriously. It was intended to make you confident enough to chase me here, that was all.”

“Nevertheless.”

“You don’t know what’s involved, little brother. I might ask you to do anything, to—oh, crucify a dog, say. Or assassinate a stranger. The process changes you. I might even order you to fuck old Pouffe. Would you be willing to do that? Right here and now?”

Pouffe sat opposite the two of them, his back to the land. His face was puffy and unhealthy in the window light. His eyes were two dim stars, unblinking. The bureaucrat hesitated. “If necessary.”

“You’re not even a convincing liar. No, you must remain as you are, chained to that strut. You must stay there until the tides come. And then you must die. There is no way out. Only I could release you, and my will is unwavering.”

They both fell silent. The bureaucrat imagined he could hear Ocean, soft as a whisper in the distance.

“Tell me,” Gregorian said, “do you think that any haunts have survived into the current age?”

Surprised, the bureaucrat said, “You sent your father the head of one.”

“That? Nothing but a cheap trick I brewed up with what remains of Korda’s old lab equipment. I had all these rich old corpses left over from my money-raising endeavors, and it seemed a good use for one. But you—they tell me you spoke with a fox-headed haunt back in Cobbs Creek. What do you think? Was it real? Be honest now, there’s no reason not to.”