Stations of the Tide - Michael Swanwick [35]
He felt sad and lost, and he could not stop thinking of Undine. When he closed his eyes, he could taste her tongue, feel the touch of her breasts. The nail tracks lingering on his back stung at the memory of her. He felt utterly ridiculous and more than a little angry at himself. He was not a schoolboy to be haunted so by the vision of her eyes, her cheeks, the warm amusement in her smile.
He sighed, took Gregorian’s notebook from his briefcase, flipped idly through its pages. A new age of magic interpretation of the world is coming, of interpretation in terms of the will and not of the intelligence. There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or the scientific sense. Impatiently he skipped ahead.
What is good? Whatever increases the feeling of power, the will to power, and above all else, power itself. Rereading the words, he could see the young Gregorian in his mind, the doubtless gaunt magician-apprentice, filled with that sourceless teenage hunger for importance and recognition. Men are my slaves.
He put the book back, irritated by the naive posturing tone of its aphorisms. He knew this type of young man all too well; there had been a time when he was one of them. Then something tugged at his mind, and he took the notebook out again. There was an early exercise captioned The Worm Ouroboros. He read through the instructions carefully: The magician places his wand in the chalice of the goddess. The handmaid herself … Yes, under the newly transparent allegory was the same technique Undine had taught him the other day.
The people in the kitchen laughed again.
The bureaucrat found himself wishing the day were over, that the roads were safe to travel again, and he could be off and away. This town had been nothing but disappointing. The archeologists who had worked here were gone, the dig covered over and ground-stabilized, all trace of Gregorian lost in the outmigration of citizens to the Piedmont.
He squinted into the rain. There was a faint smudge of light in the gloom to the east, indistinct, almost nonexistent, and for a second he thought the storm was ending. Then it moved slightly. Not a natural light, then.
Who would be out on a day like this? he wondered.
The light brightened slowly, intensifying, drawing in on itself, picking up a touch of blue coloration. Now he could see it for what it was: the glowing videoscreen face of a surrogate trudging through the rain. Slowly the body took shape beneath that spark of blue—a scarecrow caricature of human form, with a rain slicker tied about the body and a wide-brimmed hat lashed to the headpiece to help keep water out of the mechanism.
Raincoat flapping in the wind, the surrogate approached.
It came straight for the hotel. The bureaucrat saw now that it carried something under one arm, a long, skinny box, exactly the right length to hold a dozen roses or perhaps a short rifle.
The bureaucrat stepped to the edge of the doorway, down onto the top step. Rain spattered his shoes, but an overhanging eave sheltered the rest of him. The surrogate came to the foot of the stoop, and looked up at him, grinning.
It was the false Chu.
* * *
“Who are you?” The bureaucrat said coldly.
“My name is Veilleur. If it matters.” Veilleur smiled with sweet indifference. “I have a message for you from Gregorian. And a gift.”
He frowned down at that arrogant adolescent smirk. This must surely be what Gregorian had been like in his youth. “Tell Gregorian I wish to speak with him in person, on a matter of interest to us both.”
Veilleur pursed his lips with mock regret. “I’m afraid that the master is terribly busy these days. There are so many who desire his help. But if you care to share your matter of concern with me, I’d be happy