“Can you land us in the city?” the bureaucrat asked.
“What city?”
“That big mound of stone dead ahead of us is what city,” the bureaucrat said, exasperated.
“Boss, the land in front of us is flat. There’s nothing but marshes for thirty miles.”
“That’s prepos — Why are we banking?”
“We’re not banking. The flier is level, and we’re headed dead south by the compass.”
“You’re bypassing Ararat.”
“There is nothing there.”
“We’re veering west.”
“No, we’re not.”
The city was shifting steadily to the side. “Accept my word for it. What explanation can you give me for the discrepancy between what you and I can see?”
The briefcase hesitated, then said, “It must be a hardened installation. There are such things, I know, places that have been classified secret and rendered invisible to machine perceptions. I’m ordered not to see anything, so to me it doesn’t exist.”
“Can you put us down by my directions?”
“Boss, you don’t want me to fly this thing blind into a hardened installation. The defenses would order me to flip it over, and I’d fly us right into the ground.”
“Hah.” The bureaucrat studied the land. Against the horizon, Ocean was a slug-gray smear squeezed beneath the clouds. Ararat was unapproachable from three sides, surrounded by dull, silvery stretches of water and mud. To the west, though, a broad causeway led straight from the city to a grassy opening in the trees. It was clearly a fragment of what had once been a major route into the city. A flier and as many as a dozen land vehicles sat abandoned in the meadow at its terminus. The bureaucrat pointed them out. “Can you see them?”
“Yes.”
“Then set us down there.”
The canopy sighed open.
“I can’t come with you,” the briefcase said. “As long as I’m patched in, I can suppress Gregorian’s incursions. But the machinery is rotten with unfriendly programming. Once I’m taken off, we run a good chance the flier will turn on us. At the very least it’s likely to fly off and leave us stranded here.”
“So? I don’t need you to do my work.” The bureaucrat climbed out. “If I’m not back in a few hours, come after me.”
“Got you.”
He faced the causeway. What had been obvious from the air was invisible from the ground. The roadbed was buried under sand and overgrown with scrub. A crude road, however, had been bulldozed down its center, the machine itself abandoned by the mouth like a rusting watchdog. He went from truck to landwalker to truck, hoping to find one he could ride into Ararat. But the batteries had been yanked from them all. He picked up a television set left on the front seat of a mud-jitney, thinking it might be useful to keep an eye on the weather. The city loomed enormous over him. It could not be far.
The bureaucrat walked in among the trees. The woods were silent and deep. He hoped he would not meet a behemoth.
Where the ground was soft, footprints scurried ahead of him. Other than the bulldozer treads, there was no evidence of motor traffic.
Briefly he wondered why the vehicles had all been left behind in the meadow. In his mind’s eye he saw the rich, foolish old beggars stumbling toward Ararat to be reborn, pilgrims compelled to approach the holy mountain on foot. They would have come with arrogance and hope, blind with anxiety and loaded down with wealth to barter immortality from the wizard. He could not entirely despise them. It would take a grotesque kind of courage to get this far.
The air was chill. The bureaucrat shivered, glad he was wearing a jacket. It was quiet, too, oppressively so. The bureaucrat was just reflecting on this when something screamed from the heart of the marshes. He concentrated on walking, putting one foot before the other and staring straight ahead. Out of nowhere a sudden wave of loneliness washed over him.
Well, after all, he was fearfully isolated. One by one he had left all friends, allies, and advisers behind. By now there was not a human being he had ever met closer than the Piedmont. He felt emptied and alone, and the city dominated the sky but drew no closer.
Experience had misled him. Used to the friendly distances within the floating worlds and orbital cities of deep space, he had not realized how far away an object could be and still dominate the sky. The peak of Ararat floated above him, black and lifeless.
The air darkened, leaching yet more warmth from the day. What, he wondered, would he find when he finally got to Ararat? Somehow he no longer believed that Gregorian would be there waiting for him. He simply could not picture it. More likely he would find the city empty, all echoing streets and staring windows. The end of his long search would be to arrive at Nowhere. The more he thought of it, the more probable he found this vision. It was exactly the sort of joke that Gregorian would make.
He kept walking.
In a strange way, he felt content. Ultimately it did not matter whether he found Gregorian or not. He had stayed with his task, and for all Gregorian’s efforts the wizard had not been able to turn him aside. It might be true that the masters he served were venal, and the System itself corrupt and even doomed. Still, he had not betrayed himself. And there was time enough for him to reach the city and return well before the jubilee tides. His job would be done then. He could return home.
A speck of white floated in the air before him. A second appeared and then a third, too small to be flowers, too large for pollen. It was bitterly cold. He looked up. When had the leaves fallen? The bare-limbed trees were black skeletons against the gray sky. More white specks darted by.
Then they were everywhere, filling all the empty space between him and the city with their millions, and in so doing, defining that space, lending it dimension and making explicit the distance he had yet to go.
“Snow,” he said wonderingly.
It was unpleasant, the cold, but the bureaucrat saw no reason to turn back. He could put up with a bit of discomfort. He forced his pace, hoping the exertion would generate a little heat. The television banged against his thigh as he trotted ahead. His breath puffed out in little gusts of steam. Soft, feathery flakes piled up, coating the trees, the land, the trail. Behind, fleeing footprints softened, grew indistinct, disappeared.
He flicked on the television. A gray dragon of stormclouds doubled and redoubled upon itself, creeping down the screen upon Continent. They’re melting! an excited voice cried. We have some magnificent views of the icecaps from orbit—
He thumbed over to the next channel — find shelter immediately. The trail wound through the trees, flat and level and monotonous. Out of breath, the bureaucrat lapsed back into a trudging gait. The television chattered on in the happy drone of people caught on the fringes of disaster. It spoke of near-miraculous rescues in Sand Province and perilous airlifts along the Shore. He was told that the militia were on alert, with flying squads in six-hour rotations. Reminded that he must be out of the Tidewater before the first wave of jubilee tides hit. That might be in as little as twelve hours or as much as eighteen. He was not to stop for sleep. He was not to stop for food. He must leave at once.
The snow was falling so thickly now he could barely see the trees to either side of him. His toes and the soles of his feet ached with the cold. Hypothermia tips! the television cried. Do not rub frostbitten skin. Thaw it gently with warm water. He could not really follow the gist of the advice; there were too many unfamiliar words.
The announcers sounded giddily excited. Their faces were flushed, their eyes bright. Natural disasters did that to people, made them feel significant, reassured them that their actions mattered. He switched channels again, and found a woman explaining the precession of the poles. Charts and globes helped demonstrate that Miranda was now entering great winter and receiving less insolation than ever. However, the warming effects were inevitable well over a decade ago. Delicate natural feedback mechanisms assure—