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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 ruggeder, 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 Laocoon 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. Ci
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.”
“They told me it was a nature spirit—”
“Bah!”
“But… Well, if he wasn’t one of your people in a mask, then I can’t imagine what else he could have been. Other than an actual haunt. He was a living being, that much I’m sure of, as solid as you or me.”
“Ahhhh.” The groan rested uneasily somewhere between satisfaction and pain. Then, casually, Gregorian drew an enormous knife from his belt. Its blade was blackened steel, its hilt elfinbone. “He’ll be ready now.”
Gregorian walked over to Pouffe, and crouched. He cut a long sliver of flesh from the old shopkeeper’s forehead. It bled hardly at all. The flesh was faintly luminous, not with the bright light of Undine’s iridobacteria but with a softer, greenish quality. It glowed in the magician’s fingers, lit up the inside of his mouth, and disappeared. He chewed noisily.
“The feverdancers are at their peak now. Ten minutes earlier and they’d still be infectious. An hour later and their toxins will begin to break down.” He spat out the sliver into his palm, and cut it in two with his knife. “Here.” He held one half to the bureaucrat’s lips. “Take. Eat.”
The bureaucrat turned away in disgust.
“Eat!” The flesh had no strong smell; or else the woodsmoke drowned it out. “I brought you here because this sacrament works best when shared. If you won’t partake, I have no use for you.” He did not reply. “Think. So long as you live, there is hope. A meteorite might strike me dead. Korda might arrive with a detachment of marines. Who can say? I might even change my mind. With death, all possibilities end. Open your mouth.”
He obeyed. The cool flesh was pressed onto his tongue. It felt rubbery. “Chew. Chew and don’t swallow until it’s gone.” Vomit rose in his throat, but he choked it down. The flesh had little flavor, but that little was distinctive. He would taste it in his mouth for the rest of his life.