Stations of the Tide (2 page)

The bureaucrat was sensitive to this kind of friction. It arose wherever the moving edge of technology control touched on local pride.

“Excuse me, sir.” A young man entered, carrying a small table. He was wearing an extraordinary gown, all shimmering moons and stars, ogres and ibises, woven into a cloth that dopplered from deepest blue to profoundest red and back again as he moved. He set the table down, drew a cloth away from the top to reveal a fishbowl without any fish, and extended a white-gloved hand. “I’m Lieutenant Chu, your liaison officer.”

They shook. “I thought I was to be assigned somebody from internal security,” the bureaucrat said.

“We like to keep a low profile when we operate in the Tidewater, you understand.” Chu opened the robe. Underneath he was dressed in airship-corps blues. “Currently, I’m posing as an entertainment officer.” He spread his arms, tilted his head coquettishly, as if waiting for a compliment. The bureaucrat decided he did not like Chu.

“This is ludicrous. There’s no need for all this hugger-mugger. I only want to talk with the man, that’s all.”

A disbelieving smile. Chu had cheeks like balls and a small star-shaped mark by his left eye that disappeared when his mouth turned up. “What will you do when you catch up with him then, sir?”

“I’ll interview him to determine whether he’s in possession of contraband technology. Then, if it develops that he is, it’s my job to educate him as to his responsibilities and convince him to return it. That’s all I’m authorized to do.”

“Suppose he says no. What will you do then?”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to beat him up and drag him off to prison, if that’s what you mean.” The bureaucrat patted his stomach. “Just look at this paunch.”

“Perhaps,” Chu said judiciously, “you have some of the offplanet science powers one sees on television. Muscle implants and the like.”

“Proscribed technology is proscribed technology. If we employed it, we’d be no better than criminals ourselves.” The bureaucrat coughed, and with sudden energy said, “Where shall we start?”

The liaison officer straightened with a jerk, like a puppet seized by its strings, immediately all business. “If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d like to learn first how much you know about Gregorian, what leads you have, and so on. Then I can make my own report.”

“He’s a very charming man, to begin with,” the bureaucrat said. “Everyone I’ve spoken with agrees on that. A native Mirandan, born somewhere in the Tidewater. His background is a bit murky. He worked for some years in the bioscience labs in the Outer Circle. Good work, as I understand it, but nothing exceptional. Then, about a month ago, he quit, and returned to Miranda. He’s set himself up as some kind of bush wizard, I understand. A witch doctor or something, you doubtless have more information on that than I do. But shortly after he left, it was discovered that he may have misappropriated a substantial item of proscribed technology. That’s when Technology Transfer got involved.”

“That’s not supposed to be possible.” Chu smiled mockingly. “Tech Transfer’s embargo is supposed to be absolute.”

“It happens.”

“What was stolen?”

“Sorry.”

“That important, eh?” Chu made a thoughtful, clicking noise with his tongue. “Well, what do we know about the man himself?”

“Surprisingly little. His likeness, of course, geneprint, a scattering of standard clearance profiles. Interviews with a few acquaintances. He seems to have had no real friends, and he never discussed his past. In retrospect it seems clear he’d been keeping his record as uncluttered as possible. He must have been planning the theft for years.”

“Do you have a dossier on him?”

“A copy of Gregorian’s dossier,” the bureaucrat said. He opened the briefcase, removed the item, gave it a little shake.

Chu craned curiously. “What else have you got in there?”

“Nothing,” the bureaucrat said. He swiveled the briefcase to show it was empty, then handed over the dossier. It had been printed in the white lotus format currently popular in the high worlds, and folded into a handkerchief-sized square.

“Thank you.” Chu held the dossier over his head and twisted his hand. The square of paper disappeared. He turned his hand back and forth to demonstrate that it was empty.

The bureaucrat smiled. “Do that again.”

“Oh, the first rule of magic is never do the same trick twice in a row. The audience knows what to expect.” His eyes glittered insolently. “But if I might show you one thing more?”

“Is it relevant?”

Chu shrugged. “It’s instructive, anyway.”

“Oh, go ahead,” the bureaucrat said. “As long as it doesn’t take too long.”

Chu opened a cage and lifted out a rainbird. “Thank you.” With a gesture, he dimmed the windows, suffusing the lounge with twilight. “I open my act with this illusion. Thusly:”

He bowed deeply and swept out a hand. His movements were all jerky, distinct, artificial. “Welcome, dear friends, countrymen, and offworlders. It is my duty and pleasure today to entertain and enlighten you with legerdemain and scientific patter.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Then I go into a little rant about the mutability of life here, and its myriad forms of adaptation to the jubilee tides. Where Terran flora and fauna—most particularly including ourselves—cannot face the return of Ocean, to the native biota the tides are merely a passing and regular event. Evolution, endless eons of periodic flooding, blah blah blah. Sometimes I compare Nature to a magician—myself by implication—working changes on a handful of tricks. All of which leads in to the observation that much of the animal life here is dimorphic, which means simply that it has two distinct forms, depending on which season of the great year is in effect.

“Then I demonstrate.” He held the rainbird perched on his forefinger, gently stroking its head. The long tailfeathers hung down like teardrops. “The rainbird is a typical shapeshifter. When the living change comes over the Tidewater, when Ocean rises to drown half of Continent, it adapts by transforming into a more appropriate configuration.” Suddenly he plunged both hands deep into the bowl of water. The bird struggled wildly, and disappeared in a swirl of bubbles and sand.

The illusionist lifted his hands from the water. The bureaucrat noted that he had not so much as gotten his sleeves wet.

When the water cleared, a multicolored fish was swimming in great agitation in the water, long fins trailing behind. “Behold!” Chu cried. “The sparrowfish—in great summer morph an aviform, and a pisciform for the great winter. One of the marvelous tricks that Nature here plays.”

The bureaucrat applauded. “Very neatly done,” he said with only slight irony.

“I also do tricks with a jar of liquid helium. Shattering roses and the like.”

“I doubt that will be necessary. You said there was a point to your demonstration?”

“Absolutely.” The illusionist’s eyes glittered. “It’s this: Gregorian is going to be a very difficult man to catch. He’s a magician, you see, and native to the Tidewater. He can change his own form, or that of his enemy, whichever he pleases. He can kill with a thought. More importantly, he understands the land here, and you don’t. He can tap its power and use it against you.”

“You don’t actually believe that Gregorian is a magician? That he has supernatural powers, I mean.”

“Implicitly.”

In the face of that fanatical certainty, the bureaucrat did not know what to say. “Ahem. Yes. Thank you for your concern. Now, what say we get down to business?”

“Oh yes, sir, immediately, sir.” The young man touched a pocket, and then another. His expression changed, grew pained. In an embarrassed voice he said, “Ah … I’m afraid I left my materials in the forward stowage. If you would wait?”

“Of course.” The bureaucrat tried not to be pleased by the young man’s obvious discomfort.

With Chu gone, the bureaucrat returned to his contemplation of the passing forest below. The airship soared and curved, dipped its nose and sank low in the air. The bureaucrat remembered his first sighting of it back in Port Richmond, angling in for a docking. Complex with flukes, elevators, and lifting planes, the great airship somehow transcended the antique awkwardness of its design. It descended slowly, gracefully, rotor blades thundering. Barnacles covered its underbelly, and mooring ropes hung from its jaws like strings of kelp.

A few minutes later the
Leviathan
docked at a heliostat tower at the edge of a dusty little river town. A lone figure in crisp white climbed the rope ladder, and then the heliostat cast off again. Nobody debarked.

The lounge door opened, and a slim woman in the uniform of internal security entered. She strode forward, hand extended, to offer her credentials. “Lieutenant-Liaison Emilie Chu,” she said. Then, “Sir? Are you quite all right?”

2

Witch Cults of Whitemarsh

Gregorian kissed the old woman and threw her from the cliff. She fell toward the cold gray water headfirst, twisting. There was a small white splash as she hit, plunging deep beneath the chop. She did not surface. A little distance away, something dark and sleek as an otter broke water, dove, and disappeared.

“It’s a trick,” the real Lieutenant Chu said. On the screen Gregorian’s face appeared: heavy, mature, confident. His lips moved soundlessly. Be all that you were meant to be. The bureaucrat had killed the sound after the fifth repetition, but he knew the words by heart. Give up your weaknesses. Dare to live forever. The commercial ended, skipped to the beginning, and began again.

“A trick? How so?”

“A bird cannot change into a fish in an instant. That kind of adaptation takes time.” Lieutenant Chu rolled up her sleeve and reached into the fishbowl. The sparrowfish jerked away, bright fins swirling. Dark sand puffed up, obscuring the tank for an instant. “The sparrowfish is a burrower. It was in the sand when he thrust the rainbird into the water. One quick movement, like this,” she demonstrated, “and the bird is strangled. Plunge it into the dirt, and simultaneously the fish is startled into swimming.”

She set the small corpse down on the table. “Simple, when you know how it’s done.”

Gregorian kissed the old woman and threw her from the cliff. She fell toward the cold gray water headfirst, twisting. There was a small white splash as she hit, plunging deep beneath the chop. She did not surface. A little distance away, something dark and sleek as an otter broke water, dove, and disappeared.

The bureaucrat snapped off the television.

The government liaison leaned straight-backed against a window, the creases of her uniform imperially crisp, smoking a thin black cigarillo. Emilie Chu was thin herself, a whippet of a woman, with cynical eyes and the perpetual hint of a sneer to her lips. “No word from Bergier. It appears my impersonator has escaped.” She stroked her almost-invisible mustache with cool amusement.

“We don’t know that he’s gone yet,” the bureaucrat reminded her. The windows were clear now, and in the fresh, bright air the encounter with the false Chu seemed unlikely, the stuff of travelers’ tales. “Let’s go see the commander.”

The rear observatory was filled with uniformed schoolgirls on a day trip from the Laserfield Academy, who nudged each other and giggled as the bureaucrat followed Chu up an access ladder and through a hatch into the interior of the gas bag. The hatch closed, and the bureaucrat stood within the triangular strutting of the keel. It was dark between the looming gas cells, and a thin line of overhead lights provided more a sense of dimension than illumination. A crewman dropped to the walkway before them. “Passengers are not—” She saw Chu’s uniform and stiffened.

“Commander-Pilot Bergier, please,” the bureaucrat said.

“You want to see the commander?” She stared, as if he were a sphinx materialized from nothing to confront her with a particularly outrageous riddle.

“If it isn’t too much trouble,” Chu said with quiet menace.

The woman spun on her heel. She led them through the gullet of the airship to the prow, where stairs so steep they had to be climbed on all fours like a ladder rose to the pilothouse. On the dark wooden door was the faintest gleam of elfinbone inlay forming a large, pale rose-and-phallus design. The crewman gave three quick raps, and then seized a strut and swung up into the shadows, as agile as any monkey. A deep voice rumbled, “Enter.”

They opened the door and stepped within.

The pilothouse was small. Its windshield was shuttered, leaving it lit only by a triad of navigation screens to the fore. It had a lived-in smell of body sweat and stale clothing. Commander Bergier stood hunched over the screens, looking like an aging eagle, his face a pale beak, suddenly noble when he raised his chin, a scrawny-bearded poet brooding over the bright terrain of his world. Turning, he raised eyes fixed on some distant tragedy more compelling than present danger could ever be. Two dark cuplines curved under each eye. “Yes?” he said.

Lieutenant Chu saluted crisply, and the bureaucrat, remembering in time that all airship commanders held parallel commissions in internal security, offered his credentials. Bergier glanced down at them, handed them back. “Not everyone welcomes your sort on our planet, sir,” the commander said. “You keep us in poverty, you live off our labor, you exploit our resources, and you pay us with nothing but condescension.”