Stations of the Tide - Michael Swanwick [76]
The bureaucrat felt old and cynical. “Tell me, Esme,” he said, and though he meant it gently, it did not come out that way. “Which do you think would be the easier thing for Gregorian to do—kill his mother? Or simply lie to you?” Her face was a flame. He could no longer read it. He was no longer certain she was motivated by anything so simple and clean as a desire for revenge. But the time was past when he might influence her actions. He pointed to the far door. “You can leave now.”
As soon as she was gone, the bureaucrat opened the box. He sucked some air through his teeth when he saw what it contained, but he felt no surprise, only a pervasive sense of melancholy. Then he went out to the bar and to the surrogate waiting there. “This is for you,” he said. “From your son.”
Korda stared blankly up at him.
* * *
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Spare me. You’ve been caught consorting with the enemy, using proscribed technology, violating the embargo, abuse of public trust—it goes on and on. Don’t think I can’t prove it. A word from me, and Philippe will be all over you. There won’t be anything left but the tooth marks on your bones.”
Korda placed his hands facedown on the bar, ducked his head. Trying to regain his control. “What do you want to know?” he asked at last.
“Tell me everything,” the bureaucrat said. “From the beginning.”
* * *
Failure brought the young Korda to the hunting lodge in Shanghai. He had entered public service in an age when the Puzzle Palace was new, and the culture filled with tales of dangerous technologies controlled, and societies rebuilt. He intended to outdo them all. But the wild horse of technology had already been broken to harness and reined in. The walls had been built, the universe contained. There were no new worlds to conquer, and the old ones had been safely bricked away. Like many another of his generation, the revelation left him lost and embittered.
Every day Korda skiffed into the marshes, or shambled into the low coral hills, and with intense self-loathing killed as many creatures as he could. Some days the marsh waters would be carpeted with feathers, and still he found no peace. He killed several behemoths, but he took no trophies, and of course they were not good to eat.
One hot afternoon, passing through a meadow with his rifle over his shoulder, he saw a woman digging for eels. She paused in her work, casually took off her blouse, and used it to mop the sweat from her face and breasts. Korda stopped and stared.
The woman noticed him and smiled. From the distance she had seemed at first plain, but now with a subtle shifting of light he saw that she was very beautiful. Come back at sunset, she said, with some jenny-hens, and I will cook them for you.
When he returned, the woman had built a fire. She sat on a blanket alongside it. He laid his catch at her feet. Some time later, when they had both eaten their fill of the food that satisfies but does not nourish, they made love.
Even then, without the acuity of hindsight and retrospection, it seemed to him that the woman’s face changed as they made love. The flickering flames made it hard to tell. But it would seem by turns rounder, squarer, more slender. It was as if she held a thousand faces drowning just beneath her skin, and they crowded up, reaching for the surface, when passion broke her control. She rode him fiercely, as if he were an animal she had determined to use up in a single gallop. She taught him to control his orgasm, so that he might last the hours she desired.
“Did she give you a tattoo?” the bureaucrat asked.
Korda looked puzzled. “No, of course not.”
The coals were dying by the time the woman was done with him. He lay back slowly beneath her, eyes closing, sinking backward into unconsciousness and sleep. But as he fell away from the world, he had a vision of her face in orgasm, flattening out, elongating, growing skull-like