“I’m looking to find something, uh …” — the bureaucrat waved a hand, groping for the right phrase — “of rather dubious value.”
“Then you’re in the right place. Here is where we store all the damned children of science, the outdated, obscure, and impolite information that belongs nowhere else. Flat and hollow worlds, rains of frogs, visitations of angels. Paracelsus’s alchemical system in one bottle and Isaac Newton’s in another, Pythagorean numerology corked here, phrenology there, shoulder to punt with demonology, astrology, and methods of repelling sharks. It’s all rather something of a lumber room now, but much of this information was once quite important. Some of it used to be the best there was.”
“Do you handle magic?”
“Magic of all sorts, sir. Necromancy, geomancy, ritual sacrifice, divination by means of the study of entrails, omens, crystals, dreams, or pools of ink, animism, fetishism, social Darwinism, psychohistory, continuous creation, Lamarckian genetics, psionics, and more. Indeed, what is magic but impossible science?”
“Not long ago I met a man with three eyes—” He described Dr. Orphelin’s third eye.
The shopkeeper tilted its head back thoughtfully. “I believe we have what you’re looking for.” It ran its fingers over a line of bottles, hesitated over one, yanked another out, and swirled it around. Something like a marble rattled and rolled within. With a flourish it uncorked the bottle and poured a glass eye out onto the counter. “There.”
The bureaucrat examined the eye carefully. It was perfectly human, blue, with a rounded T-shaped indentation on its back. “How does it work?”
“Simple yoga. You are in the Tidewater now. Can I take it you are aware of the kind of bodily control their mystics are reputed to have?”
He nodded.
“Good. The eye is swallowed. The adept keeps it in his stomach until he needs it. Then it’s regurgitated up into the mouth. The smooth side is pushed against the lips — open the mouth and it looks real — and manipulated by the tongue. It can be moved back and forth and up and down using the indentations in the back.” The eye was returned to the bottle and the recorked bottle to the shelf. “It was simply a conjuring trick.”
“Then how come I fell for it?”
The goat’s head dipped quizzically. “Was that a real question, or rhetorical?”
The question took the bureaucrat by surprise; he had been no more than talking to himself. Nonetheless, he said, “Answer me.”
“Very well, sir. Conjuring is like teaching, engineering, or theater in that it’s a form of data manipulation, a means of making reality do what one desires. Like theater, however, it is also an art of illusion. Both aim to convince an audience that what is false is so. Meaning heightens this illusion. In a drama meaning is manipulated by the plot, but normally conjuring has no added meaning. It is performed openly as a series of agile distractions. When a context and meaning are provided, the effect changes. I assume that when you saw the third eye produced, there was an implicit significance to the action?”
“He said he was examining me for spiritual influences.”
“Exactly, and this distorted your response. Had you seen this trick performed on a stage, it would have seemed difficult, but not baffling. Knowing that it was a trick, your mind would have been engaged in the problem of solving it. Meaning, however, diverts the mind from the challenge, and the puzzle becomes secondary to the mystery. You were so distracted by the impossibility of what you saw that the question became not, How did he do that?, but rather, Did I see that?”
“Oh.”
“Will that be all, sir?”
“No. I need to know exactly what a magician on the Tidewater can and cannot do — his skills, abilities, whatever you call them. Something simple, succinct, and comprehensive.”
“We have nothing like that.”
“Don’t give me that. There was outright rebellion in White-marsh not a lifetime ago. We must have had agents there. Reports, councils, conclusions.”
“Yes, of course. On our closed shelves.”
“Damn it, I have a very serious need for that information.”
The goat’s head shook itself dolorously and spread its gloves wide. “I can do nothing for you. Apply to the agency that suppressed it.”
“Who was that?”
A glove floated down to light a slim white candle. It drew a sheet of paper from a drawer and held it over the clear flame. Sooty letters appeared on the paper. “The order of restraint came from the Division of Technology Transfer.”
The information stream ended. As he handed his briefcase the phone, the bureaucrat could hear the last of his agent unraveling itself back into oblivion.
“I suppose what disturbs us all,” Philippe said, “is the public nature of your statements. The Stone House is furious with us, you know. They’re simply livid. We have to provide them with some coherent explanation for your actions.”
Muschg’s briefcase whispered in her ear, and she said, “Tell us about this native woman you became involved with.”
“Well.” Philippe and Korda looked as bemused as the bureaucrat felt; intentionally or not, Muschg was driving the three of them closer together. “Sometimes fieldwork gets complicated. If we tried to play it by the book, nothing would get done. That’s why we have field operations — because book methods have failed.”
“What was your involvement with her?”
“I was involved,” the bureaucrat admitted. “There was an emotional component to our relationship.”
“And then Gregorian killed her.”
“Yes.”
“In order to trick you into making angry statements he could use in his commercials.”
“Apparently so.”
Muschg leaned back, eyebrows raised skeptically. “You see our problem,” Philippe said. “It sounds a highly unlikely scenario.”
“This case grows murkier the longer we look at it,” Korda grumbled. “I can’t help but wonder if a probe might not be called for.”
A tense wariness took the group. The bureaucrat met their eyes and smiled thoughtfully. “Yes,” he agreed. “A full depart-
mental probe might be just the thing to settle matters once and for all.”
The others stirred uneasily, doubtless mindful of all the dirty little secrets that accreted to one in the Puzzle Palace, did anyhow if one tried to accomplish anything at all, things no one would care to see come to light. Orimoto’s face in particular was as tightly clenched as a fist. Korda cleared his throat. “This is after all just an informal hearing,” he said.
“Let’s not reject this too hastily; it’s an option we should explore,” the bureaucrat said. His briefcase handed around copies of the bottle shop’s list of suppressed materials. “There’s a preponderance of evidence that someone within the Division is cooperating with Gregorian.” He began ticking off points on his fingers. “Item: Evidence important to this case has been suppressed by order of Technology Transfer. Item: Gregorian was able to pass off one of his people as my planetside liaison, and this required information that could only have come from the Stone House or from one of us. Item: The—”
“Excuse me, boss.” His briefcase held out the phone. With a twinge of exasperation the bureaucrat took the call. Himself again. “Go ahead,” he said.
He absorbed:
Philippe was alone in his office with himself. They both looked up when the bureaucrat entered.
“How pleasant to see you again.” Philippe’s office was posh to the point of vulgarity, a lexitor’s modspace from twenty-third-century Luna. His desk was a massive chunk of volcanic rock floating a foot above the floor, with crystal-tipped rods, hanks of rooster feathers, and small fetishes scattered about its surface. French doors opened onto a balcony overlooking an antique city of brick and wrought iron, muted by the faint blue haze from a million groundcars.