“Having a good time?”
“To tell the truth, I just arrived.”
The surrogate leaned forward unsteadily, slapping an overfa-miliar hand on his shoulder. A round, unhealthy face leered from the screen. “Should’ve been here before the locals were cleared away. You could rent a woman to carry you around on her back like a horse. Slap ’em on the rump to make ’em move!” He winked. “Y’know, the tower up there used to be—”
“—a television transmitter. Yes, I know the whole story.”
Mouth stupidly open, the surrogate stared at him long enough for the bureaucrat to realize the conversation had grown tedious. “No, no, a whorehouse. You could buy anything you wanted. Anything! I remember a time my wife and I—”
The bureaucrat set down his drink. “You’ll excuse me. I have someplace to be.”
The tower’s lounge floor was thronged.
Black skeletons lounged against a central ring bar. Others chatted in the scattered booths. The interior was warm and dim, cluttered with flying brass pigs and poncing felt mannequins, and lit only by the glowing facescreens of the patrons themselves, and by a wheel of televisions set into the edges of the ceiling.
All but invisible, the bureaucrat paused by a clump of surrogates staring up at the screens. Crowded slum buildings were burning. Mobs surged through narrow streets, chanting and shaking fists. Under smoky skies, police slashed at them with electric lances. It was a tiny vision of madness, a glimpse of the end of the world. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Rioting in the Fan,” one said. “That’s the part of Port Richmond just below the falls. Evacuation authority caught a kid torching a warehouse and beat him to death.”
“It’s disgusting,” said another. “They’re behaving just like animals. Worse than animals, because they’re enjoying it.”
“Thing is, people have been coming down from the Piedmont to join in. Adolescents, especially — it’s kind of a rite of passage for them. They’ve shut down the incline to keep them out.”
“They should all be whipped. It comes from living on a planet, away from the constraints of civilization.”
Another surrogate spoke up. “Oh, I think there’s a touch of the savage in us all. If I were a few years younger, I’d be down there myself.”
“Sure you would.”
A glint of light caught the bureaucrat’s eye. A door opening in the storeroom at the center of the bar. There was a flashing, near-subliminal glimpse of a narrow white face before the door closed again. It was more an impression than anything else, but enough that he decided to wait and watch to see if it would happen again.
He stood very still for a long time. Again the door opened, and a furtive face peeked out. Yes! It was a woman. Someone small, slender, mouselike.
Someone he knew.
Interesting. The bureaucrat made a long, careful circuit of the floor. There were two doors to the storeroom, situated opposite each other. It would take only an instant to slip under the bar and within. He returned to his starting place and found a chair sheltered by a cascade of tentacle vines.
Hours passed. The televisions were an impressionistic wheel of icebergs calfing, canvas cities for the cattleboat people, lingering shots of precataclysmic icecaps. He did not mind the wait. At long intervals, yet regular as clockwork, the door would open and that pinched white face peer out to scan the crowd before it closed again. She was definitely waiting for someone.
Finally a newcomer sat down at the bar, laying down a handful of flowers on the countertop before him. Crushed kelpies and polychromes, plucked from the weeds outside. He picked up an invisible napkin and turned it over. Then he ran his hands under the edge of the bar, as if searching for something hidden. When the bartender gave him a drink, he held the nonexistent glass high so he could examine its underside.
The bureaucrat knew those gestures.
Soon the storeroom door opened again. The woman’s face appeared, pale in the gloom. She saw the newcomer, nodded, and raised a finger: just a minute. The door closed.
Smoothly the bureaucrat strolled to the far side of the bar, and ducked under. A bartender device moved toward him and he held up his census bracelet. Green, exempt. It turned away, and he stepped into the storeroom.
The single bare light hurt his eyes after the dim bar. Tier upon tier of empty shelves covered the walls. The woman was up on tiptoes lowering a box. He took her arm.
“Hello, Esme.”
With a squeak of indrawn breath she whirled. The box banged against a shelf. She pulled away from him, at the same time awkwardly trying to keep from dropping the package. He did not let go. “How’s your mother?”
“You mustn’t—”
“Still alive, eh?” There was panic in those tiny, dark eyes. The bureaucrat felt that if he tightened his grip ever so slightly, bones would splinter. “That’s how Gregorian got you running errands for him, isn’t it? He promised to resolve matters for you. Say yes.” He shook her, and she nodded. “Speak up! I can have you arrested if I want. Gregorian is using you as a courier, right?”
He pushed forward, trapping her between his bulk and the shelves. He could feel her heart beating. “Yes.”
“He gave you this box?”
“Yes.”
“Who are you supposed to give it to?”
“The man — the man at the bar. Gregorian said he’d bring flowers.”
“What else?”
“Nothing. He said that if the man had any questions, I should tell him that the answers were all in the box.” Esme was very still now. The bureaucrat stepped back, freeing her. He took the box. She stared at it as avidly as if it held her heart.
The bureaucrat felt old and cynical. “Tell me, Esme,” he said, and though he meant it gently, it did not come out that way. “Which do you think would be the easier thing for Gregorian to do — kill his mother? Or simply lie to you?” Her face was a flame. He could no longer read it. He was no longer certain she was motivated by anything so simple and clean as a desire for revenge. But the time was past when he might influence her actions. He pointed to the far door. “You can leave now.”
As soon as she was gone, the bureaucrat opened the box. He sucked some air through his teeth when he saw what it contained, but he felt no surprise, only a pervasive sense of melancholy. Then he went out to the bar and to the surrogate waiting there. “This is for you,” he said. “From your son.”
Korda stared blankly up at him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Spare me. You’ve been caught consorting with the enemy, using proscribed technology, violating the embargo, abuse of public trust — it goes on and on. Don’t think I can’t prove it. A word from me, and Philippe will be all over you. There won’t be anything left but the tooth marks on your bones.”
Korda placed his hands facedown on the bar, ducked his head. Trying to regain his control. “What do you want to know?” he asked at last.
“Tell me everything,” the bureaucrat said. “From the beginning. ”
Failure brought the young Korda to the hunting lodge in Shanghai. He had entered public service in an age when the Puzzle Palace was new, and the culture filled with tales of dangerous technologies controlled, and societies rebuilt. He intended to outdo them all. But the wild horse of technology had already been broken to harness and reined in. The walls had been built, the universe contained. There were no new worlds to conquer, and the old ones had been safely bricked away. Like many another of his generation, the revelation left him lost and embittered.
Every day Korda skiffed into the marshes, or shambled into the low coral hills, and with intense self-loathing killed as many creatures as he could. Some days the marsh waters would be carpeted with feathers, and still he found no peace. He killed several behemoths, but he took no trophies, and of course they were not good to eat.