Stations of the Tide - Michael Swanwick [94]
“You will have to look within yourself to know for certain,” Vasli said. “My guess would be no.”
Now the feverdancers reached out to bake his skull into blistered cinders. But even as they welled up like a million giggling chrome fleas, shoving the young magician over backward into unconsciousness, he thought, No. Of course not. Somebody who would do such things would be nothing at all like Korda. He’d be a monster, a grotesque. Warped beyond recognition by what he’d done. He’d be somebody else altogether.
* * *
He awoke.
The night had grown old. Great masses of stone hulked over him. Lightless alleys breathed softly at his back. Below, the land was faintly visible in the sourceless predawn light. Obsidian clouds mounded and billowed up from the horizon. Lightning danced across them. Yet he could hear no thunder. Was it possible? Was the world to end in silence? The fire was almost dead, coals blanketed in ash.
Gregorian’s chin was slumped on his chest, and a thin line of drool ran down one side of his mouth. He was still unconscious. In all of Ararat, only the bureaucrat was awake and aware. His mouth was gummy, and his gut ached.
Something stumbled in the street behind him.
The bureaucrat straightened. Ararat was still. A sudden gust of wind might dislodge a chunk of coral and send it clattering and rattling down the stony slopes. But this noise was different. It had a purposeful quality. He craned his neck around and stared into the mouth of the alleyway. The blackness moved in his sight. Was that a flicker of motion? It might be no more than the random firing of nerves in his vision.
There was a metallic crash. A dim swoop of movement, clumsy and unsure. Something was there behind him. It was headed his way.
The bureaucrat waited.
Slowly a spiderlike creature emerged from the street. It staggered from side to side, painfully groping its way with one tapping forelimb, like a blind man’s cane. Occasionally it lost its balance and fell. It was his briefcase.
Over here, the bureaucrat thought. He didn’t dare speak, for fear of waking Gregorian. Or perhaps, he thought giddily, what he really feared was that this would turn out to be just another hallucination. He held his breath. The thing groped its way toward him.
* * *
“Boss? Is that you?” He touched the briefcase’s casing so it could taste his genes, and the device collapsed at his feet. “I had a hell of a time finding you. This place has got my senses all confused.”
“Quiet!” whispered the bureaucrat. “Can you still function?”
“Yes. I’m blind, that’s all.”
“Listen carefully. I want you to make a nerve inductor. Seize control of Gregorian’s nervous system and paralyze his higher motor functions. Then walk him inside. He’s got a plasma torch there somewhere. Bring it out here and cut me free.”
Gregorian’s head rose from his chest. His eyes quietly opened, and he smiled. With dreamlike slowness he touched his belt, lovingly curled fingers about the hilt of his knife.
“That’s proscribed technology,” the briefcase said. “I’m not allowed to manufacture it on a planetary surface.”
Gregorian chuckled.
“Do it anyway.”
“I can’t!”
“This is a perfect example of what I was talking about.” Gregorian released his knife, leaned back. He seemed to be discussing a part of the night’s narration the bureaucrat had missed. “You have in that device sufficient technological power to do almost anything. More than enough to free yourself. Yet you cannot use it. And why? Because of a meaningless, bureaucratic rule. Because of a cultural failure of nerve. You have shackled your own hands, and you have no one to blame but yourself for your failure.”
“I’m ordering you for the third time. Do it anyway.”
“All right,” the briefcase said.
“You fucking—!” Gregorian leaped up, knife materializing in one hand. Then he stiffened and, off-balance, fell. He hit the stone hard. Eyes frozen open, he stared straight