Stations of the Tide

“He had a meeting,” Vasli explained.

“An agent!” The insult made Gregorian’s voice sharp. “He wasn’t even here in person. He sent an agent!”

“What did you expect? He didn’t shake hands — what else could he have been?”

Gregorian looked at him.

Silently Vasli extended his hand. With only a tremble of hesitation, Gregorian took it. The signet ring his clone-father had sent him along with the new offworld clothing whispered permanent agent unique in his otic nerve. “This is your first time offplanet, I take it.”

Withdrawing his hand, Gregorian said, “Deneb. Your people are building a shell about Deneb, aren’t they?”

“A toroidal shell, yes. Not a full sphere but a slice from a sphere; it varies only a degree or two from the ecliptic.” As Vasli spoke, the macroartifact materialized in the air between them. For a second he thought Vasli was employing a pocket projector, and then he realized it was an effect of the runaway visualization caused by the feverdancers. “To warm the outer planets. We do not have your natural resources, you see, no sungrazers, no Midworlds. With the one exception, our planets are naturally inhospitable. So we have taken apart an ice world to create a reflective belt.”

The image swelled, so that he saw the flattened spindle forms of the individual worldlets, saw their interwoven orbits laid out and diagrammed, and the network of traffic-control stations ru

“No, it’s only part of the engine. We’re also rekindling their cores, and imploding a moon here and there to create gateways into our sun’s chromosphere.” Small orbital suns burst into existence about the outer worlds. The ice belt redoubled in brightness where the planets passed near.

The sight dazzled and enraged Gregorian. He shivered with emotion. “That’s what we should be doing! We have the knowledge, we have the power — all we lack is the will to seize control, to make ourselves as powerful as gods!”

“My people are not exactly gods,” the artificial man said dryly. “A project this large kicks up wars in its wake. Millions have died. A far greater number have been displaced, relocated, forced out of lives they were happy in. While I myself feel it is justified, honesty compels me to admit that most of your own people would not agree. We have given up much that your culture yet retains.”

“Everyone dies — the rearrangement of when is a matter of only statistical interest.” In his mind he saw all the Prosperan system, and it seemed a paltry thing, a nugget, an ungerminated seed. “Had I the power, I’d begin demolishing worlds today. I’d take Miranda apart with my bare hands.” He felt the blood rushing through his veins, plumping his cock, the ecstatic rush of possibility through his brain. “I’d tear the stars themselves apart, and in their place build something worth seeing.”

Mouths opened one by one in the wall, closed in unison, and disappeared. More feverdancing. He wiped sweat from his forehead as white spears fell through the ceiling and noiselessly pierced the floor. The room was intolerably stuffy.

He yawned, and for an instant his eyes opened and he stared across a dying campfire at Gregorian. The magician’s head nodded, but he went on talking. Then he was back in Laputa and had missed part of the magician’s story.

“Vasli. You know Korda well, I imagine. He’s capable of murder, isn’t he? He’d kill a man if that man got in his way.”

That white mask scrutinized him. “He can be ruthless. As who would know better than you?”

“Tell me something. Do you think he would kill six? A dozen? A hundred? Would he kill as many people as he could, would he torture them, just for the joy of knowing he had done it?”

“You will have to look within yourself to know for certain,” Vasli said. “My guess would be no.”

Now the feverdancers reached out to bake his skull into blistered cinders. But even as they welled up like a million giggling chrome fleas, shoving the young magician over backward into unconsciousness, bethought, No. Of course not. Somebody who would do such things would be nothing at all like Korda. He’d be a monster, a grotesque. Warped beyond recognition by what he’d done. He’d be somebody else altogether.

He awoke.

The night had grown old. Great masses of stone hulked over him. Lightless alleys breathed softly at his back. Below, the land was faintly visible in the sourceless predawn light. Obsidian clouds mounded and billowed up from the horizon. Lightning danced across them. Yet he could hear no thunder. Was it possible? Was the world to end in silence? The fire was almost dead, coals blanketed in ash.

Gregorian’s chin was slumped on his chest, and a thin line of drool ran down one side of his mouth. He was still unconscious. In all of Ararat, only the bureaucrat was awake and aware. His mouth was gummy, and his gut ached.

Something stumbled in the street behind him.

The bureaucrat straightened. Ararat was still. A sudden gust of wind might dislodge a chunk of coral and send it clattering and rattling down the stony slopes. But this noise was different. It had a purposeful quality. He craned his neck around and stared into the mouth of the alleyway. The blackness moved in his sight. Was that a flicker of motion? It might be no more than the random firing of nerves in his vision.

There was a metallic crash. A dim swoop of movement, clumsy and unsure. Something was there behind him. It was headed his way.

The bureaucrat waited.

Slowly a spiderlike creature emerged from the street. It staggered from side to side, painfully groping its way with one tapping forelimb, like a blind man’s cane. Occasionally it lost its balance and fell. It was his briefcase. Over here, the bureaucrat thought. He didn’t dare speak, for fear of waking Gregorian. Or perhaps, he thought giddily, what he really feared was that this would turn out to be just another hallucination. He held his breath. The thing groped its way toward him.

“Boss? Is that you?” He touched the briefcase’s casing so it could taste his genes, and the device collapsed at his feet. “I had a hell of a time finding you. This place has got my senses all confused.”

“Quiet!” whispered the bureaucrat. “Can you still function?”

“Yes. I’m blind, that’s all.”

“Listen carefully. I want you to make a nerve inductor. Seize control of Gregorian’s nervous system and paralyze his higher motor functions. Then walk him inside. He’s got a plasma torch there somewhere. Bring it out here and cut me free.”

Gregorian’s head rose from his chest. His eyes quietly opened, and he smiled. With dreamlike slowness he touched his belt, lovingly curled fingers about the hilt of his knife.

“That’s proscribed technology,” the briefcase said. “I’m not allowed to manufacture it on a planetary surface.”

Gregorian chuckled.

“Do it anyway.”

“I can’t!”

“This is a perfect example of what I was talking about.” Gregorian released his knife, leaned back. He seemed to be discussing a part of the night’s narration the bureaucrat had missed. “You have in that device sufficient technological power to do almost anything. More than enough to free yourself. Yet you ca

“I’m ordering you for the third time. Do it anyway.”

“All right,” the briefcase said.

“You fucking — I” Gregorian leaped up, knife materializing in one hand. Then he stiffened and, off-balance, fell. He hit the stone hard. Eyes frozen open, he stared straight ahead. His body spasmed, then stilled. One arm continued to tremble uncontrollably.

“This is trickier than you’d—” the briefcase began. “Ah. Here.” The arm stopped trembling. Slowly, awkwardly, the magician rolled on his side, and got to his hands and knees. “Hey! I can see perfectly when I’m looking through his sensorium.” Gregorian’s head swiveled from side to side. “What a place!”