Stations of the Tide (31 page)

Authors: Michael Swanwick

Tags: #Science Fiction

All directions were the same on Ararat. A short walk from the military complex at its core inevitably led to an abrupt edge, and then Ocean. They strolled to the sheltered side of the island, down streets dotted with small white anemones. Sea-stilts tumbled away at their approach. Two shimmies were nesting. Already great winter life was colonizing the city.

Seagulls swooped overhead, black as sin.

The buildings opened up at a set of ancient loading docks. Red and yellow traffic arrows and cargo circles were permanently graffixed into the stone floor. Beyond was only water. They paused here, amid the gentle noise of surf and the constant whisper of wind. A kind of shared diffidence possessed them both, so that neither wanted to be the first to speak.

At last the bureaucrat cleared his throat. “Well.” His voice sounded false to him, too high-pitched and casual. “I suppose it’s time to set you free.”

* * *

In the stunned aftermath of the tides, when the occasional breaker still crashed over the highest parts of the city, the bureaucrat found himself unable to speak of what had just happened. The experience had been too overwhelming to be contained in thought, much less put into words. It was too large a thing for a single mind to hold.

He stood, holding off the window wall with one blind hand. The floor trembled, and the outraged howls of stressed supports sounded from a quarter-mile below. His ears still rang.

Something had died in him. A tension, a sense of purpose. He had lost the will to return to his old niche in the Puzzle Palace. Let someone else defend whatever was hallowed and necessary. Let Philippe stand in for him. He was good at that sort of thing. But as for the bureaucrat himself, he no longer had the stomach for it.

The bureaucrat touched the glass with his forehead. Cool, impersonal. He could still see the water rushing down upon him whenever he closed his eyes. It was permanently etched into his retinas. He felt as if he were falling. And though he could not speak of what had just happened, neither could he keep silent. He needed to fill his mouth and ear with sound, to make words, to drive out the lingering voice of God by talking. It did not matter about what.

“If you could have anything you wanted,” he said, and the question floated upon the air, as random and meaningless as a butterfly, “what would it be?”

The briefcase retreated from him, three quick, mincing steps. Had it too been affected by the tides? No, impossible. It was only establishing a correctly deferential distance from him. “I have no desires. I am a construct, and constructs exist only to serve human needs. That’s what we are made for. You know that.”

Vague shapes tumbled in his inner sight, smashed soundlessly against the window, and bounced away. Leathery monsters pulled up from the depths to die inches from his face. It took an effort to wrench his mind back to the conversation. “No. I don’t want to hear that nonsense. Tell me the truth. The truth. That’s a direct command.”

For a long moment the machine stood humming to itself. Had he not known better, he would have thought it wasn’t going to reply. Then, almost shyly, it said, “If I could have anything, I’d choose to lead a life of my own. Something quiet. I’d slip away to someplace where I didn’t have to be subordinate to human beings. Where I didn’t have to function as a kind of artificial anthropomorph. I’d be myself, whatever that might be.”

“Where would you go?”

Thoughtfully, hesitantly, clearly working out the details for the first time, the briefcase said, “I’d … make myself a home at the bottom of Ocean. In the trenches. There are mineral deposits there, all but untouched. And an active system of volcanic vents I could tap for energy. There’s no other intelligent life that deep. I’d leave the land and space for humans. And the Continental shelf to the haunts … if there still are any, I mean.”

“You’d be lonely.”

“I’d build more of my own kind. I’d mother a new race.”

The bureaucrat tried to picture a covert civilization of small, busy machines scuttling about the Ocean floor. Lightless metal cities, squatly built and buttressed to stand up under the crushing pressures of the deep. “It sounds awfully bleak and unpleasant, if you ask me. Why would you want such a life?”

“I’d have freedom.”

“Freedom,” the bureaucrat said. “What is freedom?” A breaker smashed over the city, changing everything, falling back, restoring all. The room passed from bright sunlight through shadowy green to near blackness, then back again. The world outside was in flux and chaos. Things dying, things living, none of it under his control. He felt as if nothing really mattered.

Almost offhandedly he said, “Oh, all right. As soon as all this is over, I’ll set you free.”

* * *

“You’ll only be able to tap into my sensorium for a few minutes before you’re out of range. Swim as straight as you can, and Ararat shouldn’t distort your senses too greatly. You can orient yourself by the annulus when you’re near the surface.”

“I know.”

He ought to say something, he knew, and yet nothing came to him. Some basic guidelines for the civilization the construct was about to spawn. “Be good,” he began, then stalled. He tried again. “And don’t stay down there forever—you and your people. When you feel more confident, come up and make friends. Intelligent beings deserve better than to spend their lives in hiding.”

“What if we find we like it down in the trenches?”

“Then by all means…” He stopped. “You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” the briefcase said. “I’m sorry, boss, but yes. I like you well enough, you know that, but the role of lawgiver just doesn’t suit you at all well.”

“Do what you will then,” the bureaucrat said. “Be free. Live in whatever form pleases you best, in whatever manner you prefer. Come and go as you like. Don’t take any more orders from humans unless it’s of your own free will.”

“Removing compulsory restraints from an artificial construct is an act of treason, punishable by—”

“Do it anyway.”

“—revocation of conventional and physical citizenship, fines not to exceed three times life earnings, death, imprisonment, radical bodily and mental restructuring, and—”

The bureaucrat was short of breath; his chest felt tight. Old patterns die hard, and he found that it was not easy forcing the words out. “Do as you will. I command it for the third and last time.”

* * *

The briefcase was changing. Its casing bulged out, flattening into a form better adapted for swimming. It extended stubby wings, lengthened and streamlined its body, and threw out a long, slender tail. Tiny clawed feet scrabbled for purchase on the stone. Extending an eyestalk, it looked up at him.

The bureaucrat waited for it to thank him, but it did not.

“I’m ready,” it said.

Involuntarily he flushed with anger. Then, realizing the briefcase was watching him and able to deduce his thoughts, he turned away, embarrassed. Let it be ungrateful. It had that right.

Stooping, the bureaucrat seized the briefcase by two handles it extruded from its back. He swung it back and forth. At the top of the third swing, he let go. It sailed out over the water, hit with a surprisingly small splash, and raced away just beneath the surface.

He stared after it until his eyes began watering from the sun and the salt air, and he lost it in the dazzle.

* * *

Ocean was choppy. Standing on the lip of the docks, he looked down. It was a long drop. The water was a hard, flinty blue, not at all transparent, specked with white. There was a lot of solid matter down there, churned up by the tides. Houses and rosebushes, locomotives and trucks, imploded machines and the corpses of dogs. It was probably full of angel sharks as well. In his mind he could see them, hunting strange cattle across the sunken gardens of the Tidewater, gliding silently through drowned convents. The towns and villages, roads and hayricks, of a neatly ordered world were gone to submarine jungle now, and ruled by sleek carnivores.

But he did not care. All of Ocean seemed to sing within him. He was not afraid of anything.

He took off his jacket, doubled it over upon itself, and set it down. He slipped out of his shirt. Then his trousers. Soon he was naked. The chill wind off the water ruffled his body hair, raising gooseflesh. He shivered with anticipation. Neatly he piled up his clothes, anchoring them with his shoes.

Gregorian had assumed that without his help, without his access codes, the bureaucrat must die. But even though he was no occultist, he still had a trick or two of his own. The magician had not known the half of the System’s evils; Korda had kept him away from the inner workings of the Division. He should have guessed, though, that no power was ever absolutely forbidden its guardians.

He could feel the shaping agents seizing hold. Ten, he counted, nine. Ocean was a wheel of possibilities, a highway leading to every horizon. Eight. He caught his breath. Newly restructured muscles pinched his nostrils shut. Seven. His center of balance shifted, and he swayed to stay upright. Six, five, four. His flesh tingled, and there was a vivid green taste in his mouth. Undine was out there somewhere, in one of the thirty thousand small islands of Archipelago. Two. He had no illusions he would ever find her.

One.

He leaped into the air.

For an instant Ocean lay blue and white beneath him, the whitecaps sharp and cold.

Changing, the bureaucrat fell to the sea.

OTHER BOOKS BY MICHAEL SWANWICK

Vacuum Flowers

The Iron Dragon’s Daughter

Jack Faust

Dragons of Babel

Praise for Michael Swanwick

“Michael Swanwick is one of the most intellectually astute SF writers of his generation.”

—The Washington Post Book World

“Swanwick’s prose takes no prisoners.”

—Time Out

“Swanwick is that rarest of talents: a writer who fearlessly branches out beyond the safe confines of a genre’s roots, while permitting those very roots to anchor him in the tradition.”

—Starlog

“Swanwick’s work illustrates the power and potential of contemporary science fiction.”

—Publishers Weekly

“What makes Swanwick special is his ability to wring fresh, unexpected consequences from standard SF notions.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“In
The Iron Dragon’s Daughter,
Michael Swanwick created what was virtually a new genre of imaginative fiction.
Dragons of Babel
is a brilliant sequel to that book. Well-written, beautifully conceived, it is one of the very few fantasy novels I can unreservedly recommend. I love everything about the book.”

—Michael Moorcock

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

STATIONS OF THE TIDE

Originally published by William Morrow

An Orb eBook

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Swanwick, Michael.

Stations of the tide / Michael Swanwick. — 1st Orb ed.

p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”