Stations of the Tide (17 page)

“Yes, my own thought had been trending that way. But isn’t that unnecessarily difficult? There must be a thousand simpler ways of jiggering the machines.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Graft a patch of your skin, make it a glove, and have an accomplice wear it. Or record your own transmission and send it out again on time delay. Only they none of them work. The system is better protected than you give it credit for.”

A chime sounded. Philippe held a conch shell to his ear. “It’s for you,” he said. When the bureaucrat took the call, his own voice said, “I’m back from the map room. Do you want to take my report?”

“Please.”

He absorbed:

The map room was copied from a fifteenth-century Venetian palazzo, star charts with the Seven Sisters prominent replacing Mediterranean coasts on the walls. Globes of the planets revolved overhead, half-shrouded in clouds. Hands behind back, the bureaucrat examined a model of the system: Prospero at the center, hot Mercutio, and then the circle of sungrazing asteroids known as the Thrinacians, the median planets, the gas giants Gargantua, Pantagruel, and Falstaff, and finally the Thulean stargrazers, those distant, cold, and sparsely peopled rocks where dangerous things were kept.

The room expanded to make space for several researchers entering at the same time. “Can I help you sir?” the curator asked him. Ignoring it, he went to the reference desk and rattled a small leather drum.

The human overseer came out of the back office, a short, stocky woman with goggles a thumb’s-length thick. She pushed them back on her forehead, where they looked like a snail’s eyestalks. “Hello, Simone,” the bureaucrat said.

“My God, it’s you! How long has it been?”

“Too long.” The bureaucrat moved to give her a hug, and Simone flinched away slightly. He extended a hand.

They shook (the cartographer was unique), and Simone said, “What can I do for you?”

“Have you ever heard of a place called Ararat? On Miranda, somewhere near the Tidewater coast. Supposedly a lost city.”

Simone grinned a cynical grin from so deep in the past the bureaucrat’s heart ached. “Have I ever heard of Ararat? The single greatest mystery of Mirandan topography? I should guess.”

“Tell me about it.”

“First human city on Miranda, planetside capital during the first great year, population several hundred thousand by the time the climatologists determined it would be inundated in their lifetimes.”

“Must’ve been pretty rough on the inhabitants.”

Simone shrugged. “History’s not my forte. All I know is they built the place up—stone buildings with carbon-whisker anchors sunk an eighth of a mile into the bedrock. The idea was that Ararat would survive the great winter intact and come great spring their grandchildren could scrape off the kelp and coral and move back in.”

“So what happened?”

“It got lost.”

“How do you lose a city?”

“You classify it.” Simone slid open a map drawer. The bureaucrat stared down onto a miniature landscape, rivers wandering over flatlands, forests blue-green with mist. Roads were white scratches on the land, thin scars connecting toy cities. Patches of clouds floated here and there. “Here’s the Tidewater one great year ago. This is the most accurate map we have.”

“It’s half-covered with clouds.”

“That’s because it only shows information I feel is reliable.”

“Where’s Ararat?”

“Hidden by the clouds. Now on our closed shelves we have hundreds of maps that do indeed show the location of Ararat. The only trouble is that they none of them agree with each other.” A splay of red lights shone through the clouds, some alone and isolated, others clustered so closely their clouds were stained pink. “You see?”

“Well, who classified Ararat?”

“That’s classified too.”

“Why was it classified?”

“It could be almost anything. System Defense, say, could have an installation there, or use it as a navigational reference point. There are a hundred planetary factions with a vested interest in keeping functions consolidated in the Piedmont. I’ve seen a Psychology Control report that says Ararat as a lost city is a stabilizing archetype, and that its rediscovery would be a destabilizer. Even Technology Transfer could be involved. Ararat had a reputation for pushing the edge of planetary tech—those carbon-whisker anchors, for example.”

“So how do I find it?”

She slid the drawer shut. “You don’t.”

“Simone.” The bureaucrat took her hand, squeezed.

She drew away. “It’s just not there to be done.” Then, in a brighter tone, she said, “Tell you what. I remember how interested you were in my work. As long as you’re here, let me show you something special.”

The bureaucrat had never cared for Simone’s work, and she knew it. “All right,” he said. She opened a cabinet and ducked within. He followed.

They stepped into a ghost world. Perfect trees stood in uniform stands against a paper-white sky. They stood on a simplified road, looking into a small town of outlined buildings. “It’s Lightfoot,” the bureaucrat said, amazed.

“One-to-one scale,” Simone said proudly. “What do you think?”

“The river’s shifted a little to the north since this was made.”

The cartographer pulled down her goggles and stared at him through them. “Yes, I see,” she said at last. “I’ll add your update.”

The river jumped, and Simone led the bureaucrat into town. He followed her down a street that was nothing more than two lines and into a schematic house, all air and outline. They went up the stairs and into a room with quickly sketched-in furniture. Simone opened a dresser drawer and withdrew a hand-drawn map. She smoothed it out on the bed.

“This is exactly the kind of place where we used to meet,” the bureaucrat said reminiscently. “Do you remember? All that fumbling and groping because we were too young and fearful to make love physically.”

For a moment he thought Simone was going to snap at him. Then she laughed. “Oh yes. I remember. Still, it had its moments. You were so pretty then, naked.”

“I’ve put on a little weight since, I’m afraid.”

For an instant, there was a warm sense of unison and camaraderie between them. Then Simone coughed and tapped the paper with a fingernail. “My predecessor left me this. He knew how hard it is to work with inadequate data.” With a touch of bitterness she added, “Lots of information gets passed along this way. It’s as if the truth has gone underground.”

The bureaucrat bent over the map of the Tidewater and traced the river’s course with a finger. It hadn’t changed much since the map was drawn. Ararat was clearly marked. It stood south of the river several hundred miles, not far from the coast. Salt marsh edged it on three sides. No roads touched on it. “If this is classified, how come it still exists?”

“You don’t hide information by destroying it. You hide it by swamping it with bad information. Do you have the map memorized yet?”

“Yes.”

“Then put it back in the drawer, and we’ll go.”

She led him from the house, down the road, away from Lightfoot and out of the map and cabinet altogether back into the map room proper. “Thank you,” the bureaucrat said. “That was enormously enlightening.”

Simone looked at him wistfully. “Do you realize that we’ve never met?”

*   *   *

The bureaucrat returned the conch shell to Philippe’s desk. The further Philippe looked up from his work and said, “It doesn’t work out, there can’t be a traitor in the Division.”

“Why not?”

Both Philippes spoke at once.

“It just—”

“—wouldn’t—”

“—work out, you see. There are too many safeguards—”

“—checks and balances—”

“—oversight committees. No, I’m afraid—”

“—it’s just not possible.”

The two looked at each other and burst out laughing. It occurred to the bureaucrat that a man who liked his own company this much might wish there were more of himself in the physical universe as well as in the conventional realm. The further Philippe waved a hand amiably and said, “Oh, all right, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“Something I’ve been wanting to mention, though,” the first said. “Though I’m afraid if I tell you now, what with your talk of traitors and such, that you’ll misconstrue it badly.”

“What is it?”

“I’m concerned about Korda. The old man is simply not himself these days. I think he’s losing his touch.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Little things, mostly. An obsession with your current case—you know, the magician thing. But then I caught him in a rather serious breach of etiquette.”

“Yes?”

“He was trying to break into your desk.”

*   *   *

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 for the principle of its operation. “I wanted Philippe to think we weren’t getting along. There’s something odd about Philippe, you know. I don’t know what to make of his behavior of late.”