Stations of the Tide - Michael Swanwick [45]
“It was maddening.
“There came a day when my isolation was complete, my life shattered, my ambition gone. I lived alone in a hut by the salt marshes. Still the Black Beast left his sign. I would return from gathering herbs to find the word ‘crow’ scrawled above my bed. I would hear the cries of crows in the middle of the night. Mocking laughter followed me down the street. Finally I was driven to contemplate killing myself, just to get it over with. I held the knife to my heart and carefully judged the angle of thrust.
“Then the door opened—it should have been locked, but it opened anyway—and Gregorian stood before me. He grinned down at my fear, all teeth and malice, and said, Surrender.
“So I bowed down to him. He took me to a star-shaped room in the Puzzle Palace with a vaulted ceiling where five great wooden beams came together, and between them was blue plaster with gilt stars. There, he copied from me what herb lore I held—it was all he valued of what I knew—and cut away the bulk of my emotions, leaving me little more than the gray capacity for regret. And when I was no conceivable rival to him anymore, I asked the question, the one that had ruined my life: Who was the Black Beast?
“He leaned forward and whispered in my ear.
“You are, he said.”
* * *
With sudden energy Orphelin stood and snapped shut his bag. “My diagnosis is that you were given three drops of tincture of angelroot. It is an intensive hallucinogen that leaves the user open to spiritual influences at the height of its action, but has no serious aftereffects. You’re experiencing a touch of vitamin depletion. Have Mother Le Marie cook up a plate of yams and you’ll be fine.”
“Wait! Are you saying that Gregorian tapped your agent in the Puzzle Palace?” It was rare, but it happened, the bureaucrat knew. “Was that the forfeit when you lost to him in suicide?”
“You would believe that, of course,” Orphelin said. “I know your type. Your eyes were closed long ago.” He opened the door, unmuffling screams from the room across the hall.
Mother Le Marie stood just outside, back to them, staring through the door at a badly bruised woman lying unconscious on the floor. On the screen a door opened, and a figure entered. Mother Le Marie gaped. “Now there’s a character I never thought they would actually show.”
“What, you mean the mermaid?”
“No, no, the offworlder. Look—Miriam’s had a miscarriage, and he’s arrived too late. But he’s put the child in biostasis, and now he’s taking it to the Upper World to be healed and brought to term. It’s going to live forever now. You can bet the offworlder’s going to give his bastard that ray treatment.”
“That’s nonsense. Immortality? The technology simply doesn’t exist.”
“Not down here it doesn’t.”
The bureaucrat felt a thrill of horror. She believes this, he thought. They all do. They actually believe that the knowledge exists to keep them alive forever and that it’s being withheld from them.
Orphelin took a pamphlet from a coat pocket. “I advise that you read this and think seriously about its implications.”
The bureaucrat accepted it, looked at the title. The Anti-Man. Curious, he opened it at random and read: “All affections and bonds of the will are reduced to two, namely aversion and desire, or hatred and love. Yet hatred itself is reduced to love, whence it follows that the will’s only bond is Eros.” Odd. He flipped to the credit page:
A. Gregorian
Angrily, he crushed the pamphlet in his hand. “Gregorian sent you to me! Why? What does he want of me?”
“Would you believe it?” Orphelin said. “I have not seen Gregorian from that day onward. Yet I constantly find myself doing his work. A magician does not send messages, you know—he orchestrates reality. I do not enjoy being forced into his games, and I cannot tell you what he wants of you because I do not know. One thing I do know, however: You have a Black Beast of your own. The two people who were here, the ones who held me? One of them