“Don’t bluster. There’s no need to be afraid of me.”
“I fear you? You know nothing.”
“I know all there is to know about you. You think a few accidental differences in upbringing and experience can make any serious difference in personality? It is not so. I am your alpha and omega, young man, and you are no more than myself writ pretty.” Korda spread his arms. “Do these old jowls and age spots disgust you? I am only what you yourself will in time become.”
“Never!”
“It is inevitable.” Korda glanced down at the desk. “I have arranged a line of credit that will allow you to access the Extension. You will study bioscience control, that ought to be useful — it will teach you the folly of thinking you can go against your genetic inheritance, for one thing. Vasli will disburse funds to cover your living expenses, with a little more for sweetening. There’s no reason we should see a great deal of each other in the next few years.”
“And in return you expect — what?”
“When you have the proper background, we will ask you to do a little field research,” Vasli said. “Nothing strenuous. We are interested in determining the possible survival of Mirandan indigenes. I don’t doubt you will find the work rewarding.”
They knew he wouldn’t turn down the education, the money, the connections Korda was offering him. The alternative was to sink back down into Midworlds obscurity, to being nothing but an unknown pharmaceur in a land no civilized person ever gave a second thought. “What’s to make me do your bidding after I’ve taken my degree?”
“Oh, I think that when the time comes, you’ll be cooperative enough. We’re giving you the chance to accomplish something. How often do you think such opportunities come along?” Then, before he could respond, Korda said, “Enough. Vasli, you can handle any details.”
The life went out of him.
Gregorian struggled up out of the chair. He touched Korda’s cheek. It was cool, inert. The man he had been speaking with had been nothing more than a mannequin, a surrogate shaped in Korda’s form so that only he could employ it. The device was built into the desk. It didn’t even have any legs.
“He had a meeting,” Vasli explained.
“An agent!” The insult made Gregorian’s voice sharp. “He wasn’t even here in person. He sent an agent!”
“What did you expect? He didn’t shake hands — what else could he have been?”
Gregorian looked at him.
Silently Vasli extended his hand. With only a tremble of hesitation, Gregorian took it. The signet ring his clone-father had sent him along with the new offworld clothing whispered permanent agent unique in his otic nerve. “This is your first time offplanet, I take it.”
Withdrawing his hand, Gregorian said, “Deneb. Your people are building a shell about Deneb, aren’t they?”
“A toroidal shell, yes. Not a full sphere but a slice from a sphere; it varies only a degree or two from the ecliptic.” As Vasli spoke, the macroartifact materialized in the air between them. For a second he thought Vasli was employing a pocket projector, and then he realized it was an effect of the runaway visualization caused by the feverdancers. “To warm the outer planets. We do not have your natural resources, you see, no sungrazers, no Midworlds. With the one exception, our planets are naturally inhospitable. So we have taken apart an ice world to create a reflective belt.”
The image swelled, so that he saw the flattened spindle forms of the individual worldlets, saw their interwoven orbits laid out and diagrammed, and the network of traffic-control stations running through its infrastructure. “Surely that’s not enough to make the outer planets habitable.”
“No, it’s only part of the engine. We’re also rekindling their cores, and imploding a moon here and there to create gateways into our sun’s chromosphere.” Small orbital suns burst into existence about the outer worlds. The ice belt redoubled in brightness where the planets passed near.
The sight dazzled and enraged Gregorian. He shivered with emotion. “That’s what we should be doing! We have the knowledge, we have the power — all we lack is the will to seize control, to make ourselves as powerful as gods!”
“My people are not exactly gods,” the artificial man said dryly. “A project this large kicks up wars in its wake. Millions have died. A far greater number have been displaced, relocated, forced out of lives they were happy in. While I myself feel it is justified, honesty compels me to admit that most of your own people would not agree. We have given up much that your culture yet retains.”
“Everyone dies — the rearrangement of when is a matter of only statistical interest.” In his mind he saw all the Prosperan system, and it seemed a paltry thing, a nugget, an ungerminated seed. “Had I the power, I’d begin demolishing worlds today. I’d take Miranda apart with my bare hands.” He felt the blood rushing through his veins, plumping his cock, the ecstatic rush of possibility through his brain. “I’d tear the stars themselves apart, and in their place build something worth seeing.”
Mouths opened one by one in the wall, closed in unison, and disappeared. More feverdancing. He wiped sweat from his forehead as white spears fell through the ceiling and noiselessly pierced the floor. The room was intolerably stuffy.
He yawned, and for an instant his eyes opened and he stared across a dying campfire at Gregorian. The magician’s head nodded, but he went on talking. Then he was back in Laputa and had missed part of the magician’s story.
“Vasli. You know Korda well, I imagine. He’s capable of murder, isn’t he? He’d kill a man if that man got in his way.”
That white mask scrutinized him. “He can be ruthless. As who would know better than you?”
“Tell me something. Do you think he would kill six? A dozen? A hundred? Would he kill as many people as he could, would he torture them, just for the joy of knowing he had done it?”
“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, bethought, 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.