Stations of the Tide - Michael Swanwick [27]
“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