“Philippe!” There was a cold prickling at the back of his neck, as if sharks were circling overhead. “You gave my post to Philippe?”
“I thought you liked Philippe.”
“I like him fine,” the bureaucrat said. “But is he right for the job?”
“Don’t take it so personally. There’s work to be done, and Philippe is very good at this sort of thing. Should the Division grind to a halt just because you’re away? Frankly that’s not an attitude I want to encourage.” The surrogate reopened the writing desk, removed a television set, and switched it on. The sound boomed, and he turned it down to the mumbling edge of inaudibility. He flipped through the channels, piling image upon image, dissatisfied with them all.
The Leviathan broke free of the clouds. Sunlight flooded the lounge, and the bureaucrat blinked, dazzled. The airship’s shadow on the bright land below was wrapped in a diffuse rainbow. The ship lifted joyously, searching for the top of the sky.
“Are you looking for something on that thing, or just fidgeting with it because you know it’s annoying?”
Korda looked hurt. He straightened, turning his back on the set. “I thought I might find one of Gregorian’s commercials. It would give you some idea what you’re up against. Never mind. I really do have to be getting back to work. Be a good lad, and see if you can’t handle this thing in an exemplary fashion, hmm? I’m relying on you.”
They shook hands, and Korda’s face vanished from the surrogate. On automatic, the device returned itself to storage.
“Philippe!” the bureaucrat said. “Those bastards!” He felt sickly aware that he was losing ground rapidly. He had to wrap this thing up, and get back to the Puzzle Palace as quickly as possible. Philippe was the acquisitive type. He leaned forward and snapped off the television.
When the screen went dead, everything was subtly changed, as if a cloud had passed from the sun, or a window opened into a stuffy room.
He sat for a time, thinking. The lounge was all air and light, with sprays of orchids arranged in sconces between the windows and rainbirds singing in the wicker cages hung between the pots of vines. It was appointed for the tourist trade, but, ironically, planetary authority had closed down the resorts in the Tidewater to discourage those selfsame tourists, experience having shown offworlders to be less tractable to evacuation officers than were natives. Yet for all their obvious luxury, the fixtures had been designed with economy of weight foremost and built of the lightest materials available, cost be damned. They’d never recover the added expense with fuel savings; it had all been done to spite the offworld battery manufacturers.
The bureaucrat was sensitive to this kind of friction. It arose wherever the moving edge of technology control touched on local pride.
“Excuse me, sir.” A young man entered, carrying a small table. He was wearing an extraordinary gown, all shimmering moons and stars, ogres and ibises, woven into a cloth that dopplered from deepest blue to profoundest red and back again as he moved. He set the table down, drew a cloth away from the top to reveal a fishbowl without any fish, and extended a white-gloved hand. “I’m Lieutenant Chu, your liaison officer.”
They shook. “I thought I was to be assigned somebody from internal security,” the bureaucrat said.
“We like to keep a low profile when we operate in the Tidewater, you understand.” Chu opened the robe. Underneath he was dressed in airship-corps blues. “Currently, I’m posing as an entertainment officer.” He spread his arms, tilted his head coquettishly, as if waiting for a compliment. The bureaucrat decided he did not like Chu.
“This is ludicrous. There’s no need for all this hugger-mugger. I only want to talk with the man, that’s all.”
A disbelieving smile. Chu had cheeks like balls and a small star-shaped mark by his left eye that disappeared when his mouth turned up. “What will you do when you catch up with him then, sir?”
“I’ll interview him to determine whether he’s in possession of contraband technology. Then, if it develops that he is, it’s my job to educate him as to his responsibilities and convince him to return it. That’s all I’m authorized to do.”
“Suppose he says no. What will you do then?”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to beat him up and drag him off to prison, if that’s what you mean.” The bureaucrat patted his stomach. “Just look at this paunch.”
“Perhaps,” Chu said judiciously, “you have some of the offplanet science powers one sees on television. Muscle implants and the like.”
“Proscribed technology is proscribed technology. If we employed it, we’d be no better than criminals ourselves.” The bureaucrat coughed, and with sudden energy said, “Where shall we start?”
The liaison officer straightened with a jerk, like a puppet seized by its strings, immediately all business. “If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d like to learn first how much you know about Gregorian, what leads you have, and so on. Then I can make my own report.”
“He’s a very charming man, to begin with,” the bureaucrat said. “Everyone I’ve spoken with agrees on that. A native Mi-randan, born somewhere in the Tidewater. His background is a bit murky. He worked for some years in the bioscience labs in the Outer Circle. Good work, as I understand it, but nothing exceptional. Then, about a month ago, he quit, and returned to Miranda. He’s set himself up as some kind of bush wizard, I understand. A witch doctor or something, you doubtless have more information on that than I do. But shortly after he left, it was discovered that he may have misappropriated a substantial item of proscribed technology. That’s when Technology Transfer got involved.”
“That’s not supposed to be possible.” Chu smiled mockingly. Tech Transfer’s embargo is supposed to be absolute.”
“It happens.”
“What was stolen?”
“Sorry.”
“That important, eh?” Chu made a thoughtful, clicking noise with his tongue. “Well, what do we know about the man himself?”
“Surprisingly little. His likeness, of course, geneprint, a scattering of standard clearance profiles. Interviews with a few acquaintances. He seems to have had no real friends, and he never discussed his past. In retrospect it seems clear he’d been keeping his record as uncluttered as possible. He must have been planning the theft for years.”
“Do you have a dossier on him?”
“A copy of Gregorian’s dossier,” the bureaucrat said. He opened the briefcase, removed the item, gave it a little shake.
Chu craned curiously. “What else have you got in there?”
“Nothing,” the bureaucrat said. He swiveled the briefcase to show it was empty, then handed over the dossier. It had been printed in the white lotus format currently popular in the high worlds, and folded into a handkerchief-sized square.
“Thank you.” Chu held the dossier over his head and twisted his hand. The square of paper disappeared. He turned his hand back and forth to demonstrate that it was empty.
The bureaucrat smiled. “Do that again.”
“Oh, the first rule of magic is never do the same trick twice in a row. The audience knows what to expect.” His eyes glittered insolently. “But if I might show you one thing more?”
“Is it relevant?”
Chu shrugged. “It’s instructive, anyway.”
“Oh, go ahead,” the bureaucrat said. “As long as it doesn’t take too long.”
Chu opened a cage and lifted out a rainbird. “Thank you.” With a gesture, he dimmed the windows, suffusing the lounge with twilight. “I open my act with this illusion. Thusly:”
He bowed deeply and swept out a hand. His movements were all jerky, distinct, artificial. “Welcome, dear friends, countrymen, and offworlders. It is my duty and pleasure today to entertain and enlighten you with legerdemain and scientific patter.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Then I go into a little rant about the mutability of life here, and its myriad forms of adaptation to the jubilee tides. Where Terran flora and fauna — most particularly including ourselves — cannot face the return of Ocean, to the native biota the tides are merely a passing and regular event. Evolution, endless eons of periodic flooding, blah blah blah. Sometimes I compare Nature to a magician — myself by implication — working changes on a handful of tricks. All of which leads in to the observation that much of the animal life here is dimorphic, which means simply that it has two distinct forms, depending on which season of the great year is in effect.