“Don’t waste your breath.” Chu held it open to the light so that he could see the interior, blackened and blistered. “It’s dead.”
“Idiots.” The bureaucrat took patch lines from his own briefcase and wired the two together. “They must’ve overloaded it. It’s a delicate piece of equipment; if you order it to keep making copies of something and don’t take care to keep it supplied with the elements it needs, it’ll dismantle itself trying to follow instructions. I need a full readout of this thing’s memory.”
His briefcase was silent for a second, then said, “There’s nothing left but the identification number. It managed to disassemble all its insulation before it died, and the protected memory rotted out.”
“Shit.”
“Give me a hand with this crate,” Chu said.
Grunting and puffing, they wrestled the crate outside, and let it fall to the ground with a crash. The bureaucrat went back in for his briefcase, took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “Won’t all this noise alert the counterfeiters?”
“I’m counting on it.”
“Hah?”
Chu took out a cheroot, lit it. “You think the nationals are going to arrest anybody over this? With the jubilee tides so close? A petty little counterfeiting ring that’s probably not even cheating Mirandans? Face it, these things are being sold to offplanet tourists. Hereabouts that amounts to a victimless crime. The briefcase might have been a bigger noise, but it’s
dead.
Anyway, the hot rumor is that the Stone House is going to announce a general amnesty on crimes committed in the Tidewater, a few days before the tides. To make things easier for the evacuation authority. So the national police aren’t going to be very excited about this. I figure there’s only two things we can do. The first is to throw this crap in the river, so they can’t make any more profit off it.”
“And the second?”
“That’s to make so much noise hauling it out that anyone involved will know we’re on to them.
They
don’t know about the amnesty. I figure that barkeep must be a mile away by now, and running fast. Wait here, and I’ll go requisition a wheelbarrow.”
* * *
When they came back from the river, the bar was empty and the bartender gone. He had left without even turning off the television. Chu went behind the bar, found a bottle of remscela and poured them both a shot. “To crime,” she said.
“I still hate to see them get away.”
“Enforcement is a dirty business, sonny,” Chu said scornfully. “And there’s a lot more dirt down here than you have up in Cloud-wonderland. Buck up, and enjoy your drink like a grown-up.”
On the television a man was arguing with old Ahab about the man’s twin brother, long ago lost at sea.
Murderer
! Ahab shouted.
He was your twin, and your responsibility!
Since when am I my brother’s keeper
?
Unseen by either, a mermaid peered in at them through a window, her face open with wonder, and with pain.
5
Dogs Among the Roses
The strings of waxflowers were all lit now, red-blue-yellow-white fuzzglobes of light swaying overhead, and the music was hot and urgent, a magnetic field in which the revelers swirled and eddied, caught in its invisible lines of force and sent spinning away in a rush of laughter. Among the fantasias were lesser costumes, representational rather than interpretive, angels with carnal smiles, clowns, and sentimental devils with goatees and pitchforks. A satyr stumbled drunkenly by on short stilts, hairy and near-naked, waving panpipes to keep from falling.
The bureaucrat found Chu behind the bandstand, hustling a red-faced young roisterer. She leaned against him, one palm casually resting on his rump, and teased a paper cup from his hand. “No, you don’t need any more of that,” she said patiently. “We can find better uses for—” The bureaucrat backed away unnoticed.
He let the crowds sweep him down the main street of a transformed Rose Hall, past dance stands, rides, and peepshows. Pushing through a cluster of surrogates—kept to the fringes since they weren’t physically present—he watched the fantasia presentations for a time, shoved up against the stage with a rowdy group of soldiers with central evac armbands who hooted, whistled, and cheered on their favorites. The event was too esoteric for his offworld tastes, and he drifted on, through the odors of roast boar, fermented cider, and a dozen fairy foods.
Children materialized underfoot and, laughing, were gone.
Somebody hailed him by name, and the bureaucrat turned to face Death. Flickering blue light showed through the sockets of the skull mask, and the bureaucrat could see between metal ribs through to the cape. Death handed him a cup of beer.
“And who are you?” he said, smiling.
Death took his elbow, strolled him away from the bright center of the celebration. “Oh, do let me have my mysteries. It’s jubilee, after all.” The tattered black cape Death wore smelled musty; the costumier had taken advantage of his distant customer’s limited senses. “I’m a friend, anyway.”
They came to a footbridge over the little stream marking the end of town. The light here faded to gloom, and the clustered buildings were silent and oppressively dark. “Have you located Gregorian yet?” the surrogate asked.
“Just who
are
you?” the bureaucrat asked, not smiling.
“No, of course you haven’t.” Death looked to the side distractedly. “Excuse me, somebody’s just … No, I don’t have time to … Okay, just leave it right there.” Then, directly again. “I’m sorry about that. Listen, I don’t have the time, I’m afraid. Just tell Gregorian, when you find him, that someone he knows—his sponsor, tell him that his old sponsor will take him in again, if he gives up this folly. Do you understand? That’s what you want too, isn’t it?”
“Maybe it isn’t. Why don’t you tell me who you are and what you actually want, and maybe we can work together on this.”
“No, no.” Death shook his head. “It’s a long shot, anyway, probably won’t work. But if you have trouble dealing with him, it’s an argument you can use. I mean it, he’ll know that my word is good.” He turned away.
“Wait,” the bureaucrat said. “Who are you?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you his father?”
Death turned to look at him. For a long moment it said nothing; then, “I’m sorry. I have to leave now.” The surrogate swayed as if about to fall, and then locking gyros froze into place and it stood there, a statue.
He touched the metal skull. It was inert, lacking the almost subliminal hum of an active unit. Slowly he walked away, turning now and again to look back, but it remained dead.
In the thick of things again, he drained off his spiced beer and picked up a powdered fairy cruller from a drunken teenager who waved away his money: “It’s been paid for!” There was a banner on the stand reading
TIDEWATER PRODUCE AND ANIMAL BY-PRODUCTS COLLECTIVE.
He raised the pastry in toast, and wandered into the fairway again, feeling distant and a trifle wistful. All these happy people.
The crowd swirled about him, as changing-unchanging as waves crashing on the beach, endlessly fascinating even as the eye grabs and fails to comprehend. Faces contorted with laughter that was too shrill, too manic, skin too flushed, beaded with sweat. What am I doing here? the bureaucrat asked himself. I’m not going to accomplish anything tonight. The forced gaiety depressed him.
The evening was growing late. The children had evaporated, and the adults remaining were louder and drunker. Sucking powdered sugar from his fingers, the bureaucrat almost stumbled into a brawl. Two drunks were pushing a surrogate around, flattening its ribs and ripping off its arms and legs one by one. The thing struggled on the ground, protesting loudly as they tore off its last remaining limb, then went dead as the operator gave up on the evening as a bad cause. The bureaucrat skirted the laughing spectators and continued down the road.
A woman in a green-and-blue fantasia, Spirit of the Waters perhaps, or Sky and Ocean, emerald plumes flying up from her headdress, came toward him. Her costume was cut low, and she had to hold up the spangled skirt with one hand to keep it from brushing the ground. The crowd parted like water before her, cleaved by an almost tangible aura of beauty. She looked straight at him, her eyes blazing green as the soul of the forest. Nearby, a chanteuse sang that the heart was like a little bird, looking for a nest. She set the crowds swirling like brightly painted metal bobbins. The green woman was swept to him, a mermaid cast up by the sea.
Automatically the bureaucrat took a step backward to let this vision by. But she stopped him with a touch of one green leather glove. “You,” she said, and those green eyes and crisp white teeth seemed about to tear into him, “I want you.”
She put an arm about his waist and led him away.
By the edge of the jubilee the woman paused to pluck a waxflower from one sagging string. She cupped it in both hands, and bent at stream’s edge to place it in the water. Other flowers bobbed and whirled on the stream, spinning slowly, a stately ballroom dance.
As she crouched over the sphere of light, he saw that her arms above the gloves were covered with stars and triangles, snakes and eyes, gnostic tattoos of uncertain meaning.
* * *
Her name, she said, was Undine. They strolled down Cheesefactory Road beyond the ruck of houses, deep into a forest of roses. Thorny vines were everywhere; they climbed pillars formed by trees that had been choked by their profusion, sprawled along the ground, exploded into bloodspeckled bushes large as hills. The air was heavy with their scent, almost cloying. “I should have trimmed these back some,” the woman said as they ducked under a looping arch of the small pink flowers. “But so close to the jubilee tides, who’d bother?”
“Are these native?” asked the bureaucrat, amazed at their extent. The flowers were everywhere he looked.
“Oh, no, these are feral Earth stock. The original industrielle had them planted along the roadside; she liked their look. But without any natural enemies, they just exploded. This extends, oh, kilometers around. On the Piedmont they’d be a problem; here, the tides will just wash them away.”
They walked some way in silence. “You’re a witch,” the bureaucrat said suddenly.
“Oh, you’ve noticed?” He could feel her amused smile burning in the night air beside his face. The tip of her tongue touched the edge of his ear, gently traced the swirls down into its dark center, withdrew. “When I heard you were looking for Gregorian, I decided to have a look at you. I studied with Gregorian when we were children. Ask me anything you want.” They came to a clearing in the rosebushes, and a small unpainted hut. “Here we are.”
“Will you tell me where Gregorian is?”
“That’s not what you want.” That smile again, those unblinking green eyes. “Not at the moment.”
* * *
“This must have a thousand eyelets,” he said, clumsily unhooking the back of the fantasia. A slice of flesh appeared just below the downy nape of Undine’s neck, widened, reached downward. The tips of his fingers brushed pale skin, and she shivered slightly. A single waxflower burned on a nightstand beneath a sentimental holo of Krishna dancing. The flame leaped and fell, throwing warm shadows through the room. “There. That’s the last of them.”
The witch turned, reached hands to shoulders, lowered the gown. Large breasts, the faintest trifle overripe, floated into view, tipped with apricot nipples. Slowly she let the cloth slip down, over a full, soft belly, its deep navel aswim in shadow. A tuft of hair appeared, and, laughing, she held the dress so that only the very topmost hint of her vagina showed.
“Oh, the heart is like a little bird,” she sang softly, swaying in time to the music, “that perches in your hand.”
This woman was a trap. The bureaucrat could feel it. Gregorian had his hooks set in her just below the skin. If he were to kiss her, the barbs would pierce his own flesh, too deep and painful to rip out, and the magician would be able to play him like a fish, wearing him down, tiring him out, until he lost the will to fight and sank to the bottom of his life and died.
“And if you do not seize it…” She was waiting.
He should leave now. He should turn and flee.
Instead, he reached for her face, touched it lightly, wonderingly. Her lips turned to his, and they kissed deeply. The costume rustled as it fell to the floor. Her hands reached inside his jacket to undo his shirt. “Don’t be so gentle,” she said.
They tumbled to the bed, and she slid him within her. She was wet and open already, slippery and warm and fine. Her soft, wide belly touched him, then her breasts. She was just past her prime, poised on the instant before the long slide into age, and especially arousing to him for that. She’ll never be so beautiful again, he thought, so ripe and full of juices. She clasped her legs about his waist and rocked him like a ship on the water, gently at first, then faster, as if a storm were building.
Undine, he thought for no reason. Ysolt, Esme, Theodora—the women here have names like dried flowers or autumn leaves.
A gust of wind sent the flowerlight scurrying for the corners, hurrying back again. Undine kissed him furiously on the face, the neck, the eyes. The bed creaking beneath them, they rolled over and over one another, now on the bottom, now on top, and over again, until he lost track of who was on top and who on the bottom, of where his body ended and hers began, of exactly which body belonged to whom. And then at last she was Ocean herself, and he lost all sense of self, and drowned.