"But not without me." DeVore looked up at him, his eyes piercing him through. "Not without me. You understand that?"
"I could have you killed. Right now. And be hailed as a hero."
DeVore nodded. "Of course. I knew what I was doing. But I assumed you knew why you were here. That you knew how much you had to gain."
It was Ebert's turn to laugh. "This is insane."
DeVore was watching him calmly, as if he knew now how things would turn out between them. "Insane? No. It's no more insane than the rule of the Seven. And how long can that last? In ten years, maybe less, the whole pack of cards is going to come tumbling down, whatever happens. The more astute of the Above realize that and want to do something about it. They want to control the process. But they need a figurehead. Someone they admire. Someone from among their number. Someone capable and in a position of power."
"I don't fit your description."
DeVore laughed. "Not now, perhaps. But you will. In a year from now you will."
Ebert looked down. He knew it was a moment for decisiveness, not prevarication. "And when I'm T'ang?"
DeVore smiled and looked down at the board. "Then the stars will be ours. A world for each of us."
A world for each of us. Ebert thought about it a moment. This then was what it was really all about. Expansion. Taking the lid off City Earth and getting away. But what would that leave him?
"However," DeVore went on, "you didn't mean that, did you?" He stood and went across to the drinks cabinet, pouring himself a second glass of brandy. Turning, he looked directly at the younger man. "What you meant was, what's in it for me?"
Ebert met his look unflinchingly. "Of course. What other motive could there be?"
DeVore smiled blandly. Ebert was a shallow, selfish young man, but he was useful. He would never be T'ang, of course—it would be a mistake to give such a man reed power—but it served for now to let him think he would.
"Your brandy is excellent, Hans." DeVore walked to the window and looked out. The mountains looked beautiful. He could see the Matterhorn from where he stood, its peak like a broken blade. Winter was coming.
Ebert was silent, waiting for him.
"What's in it for you, you ask? This world. To do with as you wish. What more could you want?" He turned to face the younger man, noting at once the calculation in his face.
"You failed," Ebert said after a moment. "There were many of you. Now there's just you. Why should you succeed this time?"
DeVore tilted his head, then laughed. "Ah yes. . ."
Ebert frowned and set his glass down. "And they're strong."
DeVore interrupted him. "No. You're wrong, Hans. They're weak. Weaker than they've been since they began. We almost won."
Ebert hesitated, then nodded. It was so. He recognized how thinly the Families were spread now, how much they depended on the good will of those in the Above who had remained faithful. Men like his father.
And when his father was dead?
He looked up sharply, his decision made. , /
"Well?" DeVore prompted. "Will you be T'ang?"
Ebert stood, offering his hand.
DeVore smiled and put his drink down. Then he stepped forward and, ignoring the hand, embraced the young man.
PART 4 | SPRING 2207
Artifice and Innocence
The more abstract the truth you want to teach the more you must seduce the senses to it.
—friedrich nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Reach me a gentian, give me a torch
let me guide myself with the blue, forked touch of this flower
down the dark and darker steps, where blue is darkened on blueness
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
of a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendour of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the lost
bride and her groom.
—D. H. lawrence, Bavarian Gentians
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Feast of the Dead
A BANK OF EIGHT screens, four long, two deep, glowed dimly on the far side of the darkened room. In each lay the outline image of a hollowed skull. There were other shapes in the room, vague forms only partly lit by the glow. A squat and bulky mechanism studded with controls was wedged beneath the screens. Beside it was a metallic frame, like a tiny fourposter stretched with wires. In the left-hand corner rested a narrow trolley containing racks of tapes, their wafer-thin top edges glistening in the half light. Next to that was a vaguely human form slumped against a bed, its facial features missing. Finally, in the very center of the room was a graphics art board, the thin screen blank and dull, the light from the eight monitors focused in its concave surface.
It was late—after three in the morning—and Ben Shepherd was tired, but there was this last thing to be done before he slept. He squatted by the trolley and flicked through the tapes until he found what he wanted, then went to the art board and fed in the tape. The image of a bird formed instantly. He froze it, using the controls to turn it, studying it from every angle as if searching for some flaw in its conception; then, satisfied, he let it run, watching as the bird stretched its wings and launched into the air. Again he froze the image. The bird's wings were stretched back now, thrusting it forward powerfully.
It was a simple image in many ways. An idealized image of a bird, formed in a vacuum.
He sorted through the tapes again and pulled out three, then returned to the art board and rewound the first tape. That done he fed the new tapes into the slot and synchronized all four to a preset signal. Then he pressed PLAY.
This time the bird was resting on a perch inside a pagoda-like cage. As he watched, the cage door sprung open and the bird flew free, launching itself out through the narrow opening.
He froze the image, then rotated it. This time the bird seemed trapped, its beak and part of its sleek, proud head jutting from the cage, the rest contained within the bars. In the background could be seen the familiar environment of the Square. As the complex image turned, the tables of the Cafe Burgundy came into view. He could see himself at one of the nearer tables, the girl beside him. He was facing directly into the shot, his hand raised, pointing, as if to indicate the sudden springing of the bird; but her head was turned, facing him, her flame-red hair a sharp contrast to the rich, overhanging greenery.
He smiled uncertainly and let the tape run on a moment at one-fifth speed, watching her head come slowly round to face the escaping bird. In that moment, as she faced it fully, the bird's wing came up, eclipsing the watchers at the table. There it ended.
It was a brief segment, no more than nine seconds in all, but it had taken him weeks of hard work to get it right. Now, however, he was thinking of abandoning it completely.
This was his favorite piece in the whole composition—the key image with which it had begun—yet as the work had progressed, this tiny fragment had proved ever more problematic.
For the rest of the work the viewpoint was established in the viewer's head, behind the eyes, yet for this brief moment he had broken away entirely. In another art form this would have caused no problems—might, indeed, have been a strength—but here it created all kinds of unwanted difficulties. Experienced from within the Shell, it was as if, for the brief nine seconds that the segment lasted, one went outside one's skull. It was a strange, disorienting experience, and no tampering with the surrounding images could mute that effect or repair the damage it did to the work as a whole.
In all the Shells he had experienced before, such abrupt switches of viewpoint had been made to serve the purpose of the story: were used for their sudden shock value. But then, all forms of the Shell before his own had insisted only upon a cartoon version of the real, whereas what he wanted was reality itself. Or a close approximation. Such abrupt changes destroyed the balance he was seeking, shattered every attempt of his to create that illusion of the really real.