“It’s just that you find my form unsettling. I know. There is no reason to let an overfastidious sense of tact lead you into falsehood. I believe in truth. I am a humble servant of truth. Were it in my power, I would have no lies or evasions anywhere, nothing concealed, hidden, or locked away from common sight.”
The bureaucrat went to the wall, examined the collection of stone points there: fish points from Miranda, fowling points from Earth, worming points from Govinda. “Forgive me if I seem blunt, but such radical sentiments make you sound like a Free Informationist.”
“That is because I am one.”
The bureaucrat felt as if he’d come face to face with a mythological beast, a talking mountain, say, or Eden’s unicorn. “You are?” he said stupidly.
“Of course I am. I gave up my own world to share what I knew with your people. It takes a radical to so destroy his own life, yes? To exile himself among people who feel uncomfortable in his presence, who fear his most deeply held values as treason, and who were not interested in what he had to say in the first place.”
“Yes, but the concept of Free Information is…”
“Extreme? Dangerous?” He spread his arms. “Do I look dangerous?”
“You would give everyone total access to all information?”
“Yes, all of it.”
“Regardless of the harm it could do?”
“Look. You are like a little boy who is walking along in a low country, and has found a hole in one of the dikes. You plug it with your finger, and for a moment all is well. The sea grows a little stronger, a little bigger. The hole crumbles about the edges. You have to thrust your entire hand within. Then your arm, up to the shoulder. Soon you have climbed entirely within the hole and are plugging it with your body. When it grows bigger, you take a deep breath and puff yourself up with air. But still, the ocean is there, and growing stronger. You have done nothing about your basic problem.”
“What would you have us do with the dangerous information?”
“Master it! Control it!”
“How?”
“I have no idea. I am but a single man. But if you applied all the brain and muscle now wasted in a futile attempt to control—” Abruptly he stopped. For a long moment he stared at the bureaucrat, as if mastering his emotions. His shoulders slumped. “Forgive me. I am taking out my anger on you. I heard just this morning that my original — the Vasli I once was, the man who thought he had so much to share — died, and I haven’t sorted out my feelings yet.”
“I’m sorry,” the bureaucrat said. “This must be a sorrowful time for you.”
Vasli shook his head. “I don’t know whether to cry or laugh. He was myself, and yet he was also the one who condemned me to die here — worldless, disembodied, alone.”
That blind face stared upward through a thousand layers of the floating city into the outer darkness. “I have been imagining what it would be like to walk the fields of Storr again, to smell the chukchuk and rhu. To see the foibles aflame against the western stars, and hear the flowers sing! Then, I think, I could die content.”
“You could always go back.”
“You mistake the signal for the message. It is true that I could have myself copied and that signal transmitted home to Deneb. But I would still be here. I could then kill myself, I suppose, but other than salving the conscience of my agent, what good would it do?” He glanced at the bureaucrat’s surrogate body, tilted one edge of the mask up scornfully. “But I do not expect you to understand.”
The bureaucrat changed the subject. “May I ask,” he said, “just what work your committee is engaged on?”
“The Citizens’ Committee for the Prevention of Genocide, you mean? Why, just that. The destruction of indigenous races is a problem that exists in all colonized systems, my own not the least. It is too late for Miranda, of course, but perhaps some protocols will arise here that may be worth transmitting home.”
“It is possible,” the bureaucrat said cautiously, “that you’re being overpessimistic. I, ah, know of people who have seen haunts, who have actually met and talked with them in recent memory. It’s possible that the race may yet survive.”
“No. It is not.”
The Denebian’s words were spoken with such absolute conviction that the bureaucrat was taken aback. “Why not?”
“There is for all species a minimum sustainable population. Once the population falls below a certain number, it is doomed. It lacks the plasticity necessary to survive the normal variations in its environment. Say, for example, that you have a species of bird reduced to a dozen specimens. You protect them, and they increase in number to a thousand. But they are still, genetically, only a dozen individuals expressed in a myriad of clones. Their genome is brittle. One day the sun will rise wrong and they will all die. A disease, say, that kills one will kill all. Any number of things.
“Your haunts cannot exist in very large numbers, or their existence would be known for certain. Korda think otherwise, but he is a fool. It does not matter if a few individuals have lingered on beyond their time. As a race, they are dead.”
Korda chose that moment to return. “You can go in now,” he said. “The Committee wishes to speak with you. I think you’ll be pleased with what they have to say.” Only one who knew Korda well could have caught that overpolite edge to his voice that meant he had just suffered one of his rare defeats.
With a curt bow to the bureaucrat, Vasli glided away. Korda stared after him.
“I didn’t know haunts were one of your interests,” the bureaucrat remarked.
“They are my only interest,” Korda said unguardedly. Then, catching himself, “My only hobby, I mean.”
But the words were out. Revelation cascaded into the past like a line of dominoes toppling. A thousand small remarks Korda had made, a hundred missed meetings, a dozen odd reversals of policies, all were explained. The bureaucrat carefully did not let his face change expression. “So what is it?” Korda asked. “Just what do you want?”
“I need a flier. The Stone House is acting balky, and I’ve been waiting on them for weeks. If you could pull a few strings, I could wrap this affair up in a day. I know where Gregorian is now.”
“Do you?” Korda looked at him sharply. Then, “Very well, I’ll do it.” He touched a data outlet. “Tomorrow morning at Tower Hill, it’ll be waiting for you.”
“Thank you.”
Korda hesitated oddly, looking away and then back again, as if he couldn’t quite put something into words. Then, in a puzzled tone, he asked, “Why are you staring at my feet?”
“Oh, no reason,” the bureaucrat said. “No reason at all.” But even as he deactivated the surrogate, he was thinking, Lots of people have luxury goods from other star systems. The robot freighters crawl between the stars slowly but regularly. Gre-gorian’s father isn’t alone in wearing outsystem boots. Boots of red leather.
The paintbox was silent when he emerged from the gate. Through the open doorway he could see that evening had come, the pearly gray light failing toward dusk. The bouncer sat in a rickety chair, staring out into the rain. The tunnels leading back into the earth were lightless holes.
For an instant of mingled fear and relief the bureaucrat thought the place closed permanently. Then he realized how early it was still; the women would not be on duty yet.
“Excuse me,” he said to the bouncer. The man looked up incuriously; he was a round little dandy, curly-haired and balding, a ridiculous creation. “I’m looking for someone who works here. The—” He hesitated, realizing that he knew the women here only by the nicknames the young soldiers used for them, the Pig, the Goat, and the Horse. “The tall one with short hair.”
“Try the diner.”
“Thanks.”
In a shadowy doorway alongside the diner the bureaucrat waited for the Horse to emerge. He felt like a ghost — sad, voiceless, and unseen, a melancholy pair of eyes staring into the world of the living. He lacked the stomach to wait in the light.