Stations of the Tide - Michael Swanwick [61]
Ramshackle stairs twisted crookedly about the trunk, with landings where planked walks ran atop the branches deep into leafy obscurity. They had been painted once, red and green, yellow and orange, but the carnival colors had faded, bleached by a thousand suns as pale as the skeletons in the boneyard of an abandoned church. Small signs pointed down this branch or that to railinged platforms: THE SHIP VIEW. ABELARD’S. FRESH EELS. JULES ZEE’S. THE AERIE. FLAVORED BEERS.
Drawn upward more by capillary action than actual will, he climbed the stairs.
A drunk staggered down past him. Twisted bits of river wood were nailed to the railings in a weak attempt at decoration, and chalky shells leaned against the uprights.
The bureaucrat was hesitating at the third landing, wondering which way to go, when a dog-headed man carrying a tray of hands pushed by him. He stepped back in alarm, and the man halted and pulled the mask from his face. “Can I help you, sir?”
“Ah, I was wondering—” He saw now that the hands were metal, modulars being taken to be flash-cleaned between clients.
“The Atlantis is down that way. Take the walk straight ahead, turn left, and follow the signs. You can’t miss it.”
Bemused, the bureaucrat followed the instructions and came to a long platform with scattered tables. Clusters of surrogates and the occasional lone human lounged against the railing, staring out into the forest. He stared too.
The tree had been cut back to open a view of the forest interior. Golden light slanted into the greenery, whimseys dancing like dust motes within it. Ahead, rising from the earth like a phantom, was the landlocked corpse of an ocean vessel. The Atlantis.
It was enormous beyond scale. The ship had foundered keel first with its bow upward sometime during the last great winter, and the currents had half buried it, so that it seemed frozen in the instant of going under. A million orchid crabs were traversing its barnacled remains, and it was covered with flowers, as impossible a creation as any mnemonic address in the Puzzle Palace.
The ghost of a memory tugged at his mind. He had heard of this ship before. Something.
The bureaucrat found an empty table, scraped up a chair, and sat. A light breeze ruffled his hair. Leaves rustled as a feathered serpent leaped into the air, a scissor-tailed finch perhaps, or a robin. He felt oddly at peace, put in mind of humanity’s gentle, arboreal origins. He wondered why people put so little effort into returning home, when it was so easily done.
At that moment he glanced down at the table. An outlined crow stared back at him. Before he could react, a beaked shadow fell across it. He looked up into the eyes of a crow-headed man.
Gregorian! the bureaucrat thought, with a thrill of alarm. Then he remembered the Black Beast that had haunted Dr. Orphelin and looked about him. Faded drawings of birds and animals were everywhere on the railings and tables. He’d attuned himself to such things, and was now generating his own omens. “Welcome to the Haunt’s Roost,” the waiter said.
The bureaucrat pointed to a Flavored Beers sign. “Have you got lime? Or maybe orange?”
The head lifted disdainfully. “That’s only line-feed. For the surrogate trade. No real person would drink that crap.”
“Oh. Uh, well, give me a glass of lager, then. And an explanation for that ship out there.”
The waiter bowed, left, and returned with a beer and an interactive. The set looked out of place, its forced orange-and-purple housing a jarring contrast to the restaurant’s studied artlessness. He might have been back home in an environmental retreat, trees and faraway glint of river reduced to calculated effect. The beer was thin.
He turned on the set. A smiling young woman in a brocaded vest appeared on its screen. Her braids were tipped with small silver bells. “Hello,” she said. “My name is Marivaud Quinet and