Stations of the Tide (3 page)

The bureaucrat blinked, astonished. Before he could frame a response, the commander continued, “However, I am an officer, and I understand my duty.” He popped a lozenge into his mouth and sucked noisily. A rotten-sweet smell filled the cabin. “Make your demands.”

“I’m not making any demands,” the bureaucrat began. “I only—”

“There speaks the voice of power. You maintain a strangle-hold on the technology that could turn Miranda into an earthly paradise. You control manufacturing processes that allow you to undercut our economy at will. We exist at your whim and sufferance and in the form you think good. Then you walk in here carrying this whip and making demands you doubtless prefer to call requests and pretend it is for our own good. Let us not cap this performance with hypocrisy, sir.”

“Technology didn’t exactly make an ‘earthly paradise’ of Earth. Or don’t they teach classical history here?”

“The perfect display of arrogance. You deny us our material heritage, and now you have as good as asked me to thank you for it. Well, sir, I will not. I have my pride. And I—” He paused. In the sudden silence it was observable how his head nodded slightly at irregular intervals, as if he fought off sleep. His mouth opened and shut, opened and shut again. His eyes slid slowly to the side in search of his lost thought. “And, ah. And, ah—”

“The illusionist,” the bureaucrat insisted. “Lieutenant Chu’s impersonator. Have you found him yet?”

Bergier straightened, his fire and granite restored. “No, sir, we have not. We have not found him, for he is not here to be found. He has left the ship.”

“That’s not possible. You docked once, and nobody debarked. I was watching.”

“This is a seaward flight. It is all but empty. On the landward run, yes, perhaps an agile and determined man could evade me. But I have accounted for every passenger and had my crew open every stowage compartment and equipment niche in the
Leviathan.
I went so far as to send an engineer with an airpack up the gas vents. Your man is not here.”

“It’s only logical he’d’ve secured his escape beforehand. Maybe he had a collapsible glider hidden forward,” Chu suggested. “It wouldn’t have been difficult for an athletic man. He could have just opened a window and slipped away.”

More likely, the bureaucrat thought, and the thought struck him with the force of inevitability, more likely he had simply bribed the captain to lie for him. That was how he himself would’ve arranged it. To cover his suspicion, he said, “What bothers me is why Gregorian went to all this trouble to find out how much we know about him. It hardly seems worth his effort.”

Bergier scowled at his screens, said nothing. He touched a control, and the timbre of one engine changed, grew deeper. Slowly, slowly the ship began to turn.

“He was just baiting you,” Chu said. “Nothing more complicated than that.”

“Is that likely?” the bureaucrat said dubiously.

“Magicians are capable of anything. Their thinking isn’t easy to follow. Hey! Maybe that was Gregorian himself? He was wearing gloves, after all.”

“Pictures of Gregorian and of our impersonator,” the bureaucrat said. “Front and side both.” He removed them from his briefcase, shook off the moisture, laid them side by side beside the screens. “No, look at that—it’s absurd to even contemplate. What does his wearing gloves have to do with anything?”

Chu carefully compared the tall, beefy figure of Gregorian with the slight figure of her impersonator. “No,” she agreed. “Just look at those faces.” Gregorian had a dark, animal power, even in the picture. He looked more minotaur than man, so strong-jawed and heavy-browed that he passed through mere homeliness into something profound. His was the sort of face that would seem ugly in repose, then waken to beauty at the twitch of a grin, the slow wink of one eye. It could never have been hidden in the pink roundness of the false Chu’s face.

“Our intruder wore gloves because he was a magician.” Lieutenant Chu wriggled her fingers. “Magicians tattoo their hands, one marking for each piece of lore they master, starting from the middle finger and moving up the wrist. A magus will have ’em up to the elbows. Snakes and moons and whatnot. If you’d seen his hands, you’d never have mistaken him for a Piedmont official.”

Bergier cleared his throat and, when they both turned to him, said, “With the technology you deny us, a single man could operate this ship. Alone, he could manage all functions from baggage to public relations with nary a crewman under him.”

“That same technology would make your job superfluous,” the bureaucrat pointed out. “Do you think for an instant that your government would pay for an expensive luxury like this airship if they could have a fleet of fast, cheap, atmosphere-destroying shuttles?”

“Tyranny always has its rationale.”

Before the bureaucrat could respond, Chu interjected, “We’ve located Gregorian’s mother.”

“Have we?”

“Yes.” Chu grinned so cockily the bureaucrat realized this must be something she had dug up on her own initiative. “She lives in a river town just below Lightfoot. There’s no heliostat station there, but if we can’t find somebody to rent us a boat, it’s not a long walk. That’ll be the best place to start our investigation. After that we’ll tackle the television spots, see if we can trace the money. All television is broadcast from the Piedmont, but if you want to follow up on the ads, there’s a gate at the heliostat station, that’s no problem.”

“We’ll visit the mother first thing tomorrow morning,” the bureaucrat said. “But I’ve dealt with planetside banks before, and I very seriously doubt we’ll be able to follow the money.”

Bergier looked at him scornfully. “Money can always be traced. It leaves a trail of slime behind it wherever it goes.”

The bureaucrat smiled, unconvinced. “That’s very aphoristic.”

“Don’t you dare laugh at me! I had five wives in the Tidewater when I was younger.” Bergier popped another lozenge, mouthed it liquidly. “I had them placed where they could do the most good, spaced out along my route distant enough that not one suspected the existence of the others.” The bureaucrat saw that the commander did not observe how Chu rolled her eyes when he said this. “But then I discovered that my Ysolt was unfaithful. It drove me half mad with jealousy. That was not long after the witch cults were put down. I returned to her that day after an absence of weeks. Oh, she was hot. Her period had just begun. The whole house smelled of her.” His nostrils flared. “You have no idea what she was like at such times. I walked in the door, and she slammed me to the floor and ripped open my uniform. She was naked. It was like being raped by a whirlwind. All I could think was that we must avoid scandalizing the neighbors.

“It would have made a fish laugh to see me struggling beneath that little hellcat, I should imagine. Red-faced, half-undressed, and flailing out with one arm to close the door.

“Well and good. I was a young man. But the things she did to me! From somewhere she had acquired skills I had not taught her, ideas that were not mine. Some of them things such as I had never experienced. We had been married for years. Now, all at once, she had acquired new tastes. Where had she learned them, hey? Where?”

“Maybe she read a book,” Chu said dryly.

“Bah! She had a lover! It was obvious. She was not a subtle woman, Ysolt. She was like a child, showing off a new toy. Why don’t we see what happens if, she said … Let’s pretend you’re the woman and I’m the man … This time I’m not going to move at all, and you can … It took her hours to demonstrate everything she had learned—‘thought of,’ she said—and I had a lot of time to mull over what I should do.

“It was dark when I left her. She was sleeping it off, her long black hair sticking to her sweaty little breasts. What an angelic smile she had! I went out to discover who had cuckolded me, and I brought along a gun. He would not be difficult to find, I determined. A man with such skill as Ysolt mirrored would be known in the right quarters.

“I went down to the riverbank, to the jugs and paintpots, and asked a few questions. They said yes, a man with the kind of skill I described had been through recently.” A hidden speaker mumbled respectfully, and Bergier touched the controls. “Trim the port aerostat manually if you have to. Yes. No. You have your orders.” He was silent for a long, forlorn moment, and the bureaucrat thought he had lost the thread of his tale. But then he began again.

“But I could not find the man. Everyone had heard of him—word had gone round like the latest dirty joke—and many hinted they had slept with him, but he was not to be found. There were a lot of odd types afoot in those days, after the suppression of Whitemarsh, and a sex-artist was the least of them. I learned that he was of moderate size, polite dress, wry humor. That he spoke little, lived off the largess of women, had dark eyes, rarely blinked. But the river lands swarmed with people who had something to hide. A cautious man could hide there forever, and he was the most evasive creature in the world. He moved unseen and unnoted through the night world, made no promises, had no friends, established no rhythms. It was like punching empty air! He was not to be found.

“After a few days, I changed my tactics. I decided Ysolt should find him for me. So I made myself impotent. You understand how? With my fist. Old Mother Hand and her five daughters. By the time Ysolt got to me, there was nothing could make the old soldier stand erect for her. It drove her to distraction. And I, of course, feigned embarrassment, humiliation, distress. After a time I simply refused to try.

“Sure enough, she was driven back to her lover, to this man of extraordinary skill and knowledge. She returned to me with breathing exercises and relaxation techniques that ought to have worked, but did not. All this time, I acted cold and distant toward her. It was only natural she would assume that I was blaming her for my disability. By the time the corps called me back to duty, she was ready to do anything to effect my cure.

“When next I returned, she had ‘discovered’ a man who could aid me in my distress. She knew I didn’t approve of the witch cultists. But he could prepare a potion for me. It would cost a great deal. She did not like that part. A man should not charge for such a thing. But a husband’s happiness was so important to his wife.… She finally persuaded me.

“That night I filled a small, heavy box with silver and went as directed to a small garage just below the docks. There was a blue light over the side door. I went in.

“The minute the door closed, someone threw on every light in the place. My eyes crawled. Then the bright sting of vision resolved into automobiles, racks of grease guns, welding tanks. There were six waiting for me, two of them women. They sat in truck cabs and atop hoods, looking at me with unfriendly eyes, as unblinking as owls.”

The speaker murmured again, and Bergier jerked his head to the side. “Why are you bothering me with this? I don’t want to be disturbed with routine.” Then, returning to his story, “One of the women asked to see my money. I opened my box, took out a moleskin bag containing eighty
fleur-de-vie
dollars, and threw it at her feet. She untied the bag, saw the flash of mint silver, and drew in her breath. This came from Whitemarsh, she said.

“I said nothing.

“The cultists traded glances. I slid a hand inside my coat and clutched my revolver. We need the money, a man said. The government dogs are slavering over our shoulders. I can smell their filthy breath.

“The woman held up a handful of silver, flashing like so many mirrors. There was a coinmaker disappeared just before the rape of Whitemarsh, she said. They took his stock and gave it away to whoever wanted it. I was there, but felt I didn’t need it. She shrugged. How quickly things change.

“I knew they thought I’d robbed a brother fugitive. I don’t suppose you know much about the suppression of Whitemarsh?”

“No,” the bureaucrat said.

“Only hearsay,” Chu said. “It’s not exactly the sort of history they teach in school.”

“They should,” the commander said. “Let the children know what government is all about. This was back when the Tidewater was young, and communes and utopian communities were as common as mushrooms. Harmless, most of them were, pallid things here and gone in a month. But the Whitemarsh cults were different; they spread like marsh-fire. Men and women went naked in public daylight. They would not eat meat. They participated in ritual orgies. They refused to serve in the militia. Factories closed for want of laborers. Crops went unharvested. Children were not properly schooled. Private citizens minted their own coinage. They had no leaders. They paid no taxes. No government would have tolerated it.

“We fell on them with fire and steel. In a single day we destroyed the cults, drove the survivors into hiding, and showed them such horror they would never dare rise again. So you understand that I was in great danger. But I did not show fear. I asked them, did they want the money or not?

“One of the men took the bag, weighed it in his hand. Then, as I had hoped, he slid a handful of coins into each of his trousers pockets. We will divide this evenly, he said. So long as the spirit is alive, Whitemarsh is not dead. He threw me a greasy bundle of herbs, and said sneeringly, This would make a corpse rise, much less your limp little self.

“I dropped the bundle in my lead box and left. At home I beat Ysolt until she bled and threw her out in the street. I waited a week, and then reported to internal security that fugitive cultists were hiding in my area. They ran a scan and found the coins, and with the coins the cultists. I still did not know which specific one had defiled my Ysolt, but they all still held most of the coins, so he had been punished. Oh yes, he had been punished well.”