Surrogates, waiters, even human customers, rushed to stare down over the rail. In the crush the bureaucrat was ignored.
Slowly he pulled himself up. His legs and spine ached. One knee trembled. It felt wet. He clutched the rail with both hands and looked down. Long way down to the ground. His assailant lay unmoving atop the broken surrogate. He looked tiny as a doll. The bull mask had fallen away, revealing familiar round features.
It was Veilleur — the false Chu.
The bureaucrat stared. He’s dead, he thought. That could have been me. A metal hand took his elbow and pulled him back. “This way,” Pouffe said quietly. “Before anybody thinks to connect you with him down there.”
He was led to a secluded table back among the leaves.
“You travel in fast company. Can you tell me what that was all about?”
“No,” the bureaucrat said. “I — I know who was behind it, but not the specifics, no.” He took a deep breath. “I can’t stop shuddering,” he said. Then, “I owe you my life, shopkeeper.”
“That’s right, you do. It was all that combat training back when I was a young man. Fuckin’ surrogates are so weak, it’s next to impossible to overpower someone with one. You got to turn their own strength against them.” That smug, self-satisfied smirk floated on the screen. “You know how to repay me.”
The bureaucrat sighed, stared down at his hands on the table. Weak, mortal hands. He gathered himself together. “Look—”
“No, you look! I spent four years in the Caverns — that’s what they call the military brig on Caliban. Do you have any idea what it was like there?”
“Pretty grim, I’d imagine.”
“No, it’s not! That’s the hell of it. It’s all perfectly humane and bland and impersonal. Some snot-nosed tech plugs you into a simple visualization program, hooks up an IV feed and a physical-therapy program so your body don’t rot, and then leaves you imprisoned inside your own skull.
“It’s like a monastery in there, or maybe a nice clean hotel. Nothing to hurt or alarm you. Your emotions are cranked way down low. You’re as comfy as a mouth sucking on a tit. You don’t feel anything but warm, don’t hear nothing but soft, comfortable noises. Nothing can hurt you. Nothing can reach you. You can’t escape.
“Four years!
“When you get out, they give you three months’ intensive rehab before you can accept the evidence of your own eyes. Even then, you still have nights when you wake up and don’t believe you exist anymore.
“I came out of that place and went to ground. I swore I’d never again go anywhere I couldn’t go in person. That was a lifetime ago, and I’ve kept that vow right up to this very day. Do you hear what I’m telling you?”
“You’re saying this is important to you.”
“Damn right, it’s important!”
“Is your life important to you? Then give up this childish fantasy. These notions of coral castles and mermaids singing. Shopkeeper, this is the real world. You must make the best of what there is.”
Somewhere far away, a truck horn was honking regularly, insistently. The bureaucrat realized that he had been hearing it for some time. The migration must have cleared the road.
He stood. “I have to leave now.”
When he tried to walk away, Pouffe danced after him. “We haven’t talked money yet! I haven’t told you how much I can pay.”
“Please. This is futile.”
“No, you’ve got to listen to me.” Pouffe was crying now, desperate hot tears running down his rutted face. “You’ve got to listen.”
“Is this man bothering you, sir?” a waiter asked.
The bureaucrat hesitated for a second. Then he nodded, and the waiter turned the surrogate off.
Back on the ground, he could not find the New Born King. The truck was gone. Chu stood on the running board of another, the Lion Heart, leaning on the horn. She stepped down at his approach. “You look odd. Pale.”
“I should,” he said flatly. “One of Gregorian’s people just tried to kill me.”
When he was done telling his story, Chu slammed her fist into her hand, over and over again. “That sonofabitch!” she said. “The fucking nerve of him.” She was genuinely angry.
The bureaucrat was surprised and a little flattered by Chu’s show of emotion. He had never been quite sure that she accepted him, and always suspected she thought of him as merely an offworld buffoon, someone to be tolerated rather than respected. He felt an unexpected glow of gratitude. “I remember you telling me once not to take any of this personally.”
“Yeah, well, when somebody tries to kill your partner, that kind of changes the game. Gregorian is going to pay for this. I’ll see that he does.” She wheeled sharply away, and stepped on a crab. “Shit!” She kicked the mutilated body away. “What a fucking glorious day.”
“Say.” The bureaucrat peered around. “Where’s Mintou-chian?”
“Gone,” Chu said. She stood on one foot, wiping the sole of her shoe with a handkerchief. Then she threw the cloth into the weeds. “He took your briefcase with him too.”
“What?”
“It was the damnedest thing. Soon as the crabs dwindled, he fired up the truck, snatched the briefcase, and lit off like his ass was on fire.” Chu shook her head. “That was when I started honking the horn here, trying to call you back.”
“Didn’t he know that my briefcase will come back to me?”
“Obviously not.”
It took the briefcase half an hour to find its way back to him. Chu had already made arrangements with the Lion Heart’s driver, and had gone off to view the corpse of her impersonator. “Oughta be good for a few laughs,” she said grimly. “Maybe I’ll cut off an ear for a souvenir.”
The briefcase daintily picked its way down the road. When it reached the bureaucrat, it set itself down and retracted its legs. He picked it up. “Hard time getting away?”
“No. Mintouchian didn’t even bother strapping me down. I waited until he’d gone a couple of miles downriver and was feeling confident, then rolled down the window and jumped.”
“Hum.” The bureaucrat was silent for a moment. Then he said, “We’ll be here a few hours more than planned. There’s been a touch of violence, and we still have to deal with the nationals. Probably have to make a statement, maybe file a field report.”
The briefcase, familiar with his moods, said nothing.
The bureaucrat thought about Gregorian, of the magician’s abrupt shift from a distant mocking disdain to outright enmity. He’d almost died just now. He thought about Mintouchian, and about Dr. Orphelin’s warning that he had a traitor with him. Everything was changed, horribly changed.
“Did Mintouchian look surprised when you jumped?”
“He looked like he’d swallowed a toad. You should’ve been there — it would’ve made you laugh.”
“I suppose.”
But he doubted it. The bureaucrat didn’t feel like laughing. He didn’t feel like laughing at all.
10. A Service for the Dead
That morning, the doctor wind swept a swarm of barnacle flies inland, and when the bureaucrat awoke, the houseboat was encrusted with their shells. He had to lean on the door to break it open. The salt smell of Ocean was everywhere, like the scent of a lover who has visited in the night and is gone, leaving only this ambiguous promise of return.
He scowled and spat over the houseboat’s edge.
The bottom tread of his stoop was missing. The bureaucrat hopped down onto the bare patch worn into the black earth beneath. He began to thread his way through the scattered hulks of the boats’ graveyard.
“Hey!”
He looked up. A golden-haired boy stood naked atop a cradled yacht with a stove-in bow, pissing into the rosebushes. One of the gang of scavengers who lived there. He waved with his free hand. The census bracelet glittered dully on his wrist. “That thing you were looking for? We found a whole pile of them. Come on over and take your pick.”