Stations of the Tide - Michael Swanwick [54]
* * *
The bureaucrat handed the phone back to his briefcase. Philippe, he noted, was just finishing off a call of his own, his other two agents doubtless warning him of the bureaucrat’s visit.
“Let’s put it to a vote,” Korda said. They all laid hands down on the table. “Well, that settles that.”
The bureaucrat hadn’t expected the probe to go through. Now, however, they couldn’t probe him alone without going on record explaining why they’d exempted themselves.
Korda seized control of the agenda again. “Frankly,” he said, “we’ve been thinking of taking you off the case, and putting—”
“Philippe?”
“—someone in your place. It would give you a chance to rest, and to regain your perspective. You are, after all, just a trifle overinvolved.”
“I couldn’t take it anyway,” Philippe said suddenly. “The planetside assignment, I mean. I’m hideously swamped with work as it is.”
Korda looked startled.
Cagey old Philippe, though, was not about to be caught planetside when there was talk of a traitor in the Division. Even assuming it wasn’t he, Philippe would want to be at his desk when the accusations broke out into office warfare.
“Have you any other agents who could step in?” Muschg asked. “Just so we know what we’re talking about.”
Korda twisted slightly. “Well, yes, but. None that have the background and clearances this particular case requires.”
“Your options seem limited.” Muschg flashed sharp little teeth in a smile. Philippe leaned back, eyes narrowing, as he saw the direction of her intent. “Perhaps you ought to have Analysis Design restructure your clearance process.”
Nobody spoke. The silence sustained itself for a long moment, and then Korda reluctantly said, “Perhaps I should. I’ll schedule a meeting.”
A tension went out of the air. Their business here was over then, and they all knew it; the magic moment had arrived when it was understood that nothing more would be established, discovered, or decided today. But the meeting, having once begun, must drag on for several more long hours before it could be ended. The engines of protocol had enormous inertial mass; once set in motion they took forever to grind to a stop.
The five of them proceded to dutifully chew the scraps of the agenda until all had been gnawed to nothing-at-all.
* * *
The dueling hall was high-ceilinged and narrow. The bureaucrat’s footsteps bounced from its ceiling and walls. A cold, sourceless, wintery light glistened on the hardwood lanes. He stooped to pick up a quicksilver ball that had not been touched in decades, and he sighed.
He could see his fingertips reflected on the ball’s surface. In the Puzzle Palace he was unmarked. Undine’s serpent had been tattooed under his skin after his last scan; what marks he bore could not be seen here.
The walls were lined with narrow canvas benches. He sat down on one, staring into the programmed reflection of his face on the dueling ball. Even thus distorted, it was clear he was not at all the man he had once been.
Restless, he stood and assumed a dueler’s stance. He cocked his arm. He threw the ball as hard as he could, and followed it with his thought. It flew, changing, and became a metal hawk, a dagger, molten steel, a warhead, a stream of acid, a spear, a syringe: seven figures of terror. When it hit the target, it sank into the face and disappeared. The dummy crumbled.
Korda entered. “Your desk told me you were here.” He eased himself down on the bench, did not meet the bureaucrat’s eyes. After a while, he said, “That Muschg. She sandbagged me. It’s going to take half a year going through the restructuring process.”
“You can hardly expect me to be sympathetic to your problems. Under the circumstances.”
“I, ah, may have been a trifle out of line during the meeting. It must have seemed I’d stepped out of bounds. I know you hadn’t done anything to warrant a probe.”
“No, I hadn’t.”
“Anyway, I knew you’d slip out of it. It was too simple a trap to catch a fox like you.”
“Yes, I wondered about that too.”
Korda called the ball to his hand and turned it over and over, as if searching