The Best of Michael Swanwick
Page 56
::(not) library/[greatest shame]:: ::(not) library/[greatest trust]::
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::(Europan vice-consul12)/Quivera/[most trusted]::
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::(nest)/Babel/
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::lies(greatest-trust-deed)/ [moral necessity]::
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::(nest)/Babel/
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::(nest)/[trust] Babel/[trust] (sister-city)/Ur/[absolute trust]::
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::egg case/(protect)::
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::egg case/(mature)::
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::Babel/[eternal trust] ::
It was not a library but an egg-case. Swaddled safe within a case that was in its way as elaborate a piece of technology as Quivera’s suit myself, were sixteen eggs, enough to bring to life six queen-mothers, nine niece-sisters, and one perfect consort. They would be born conscious of the entire gene-history of the nest, going back many thousands of years.
Of all those things the Europans wished to know most, they wouldbe perfectly ignorant. Nevertheless, so long as the eggs existed, the city-nest was not dead. If they were taken to Ur, which had ancient and enduring bonds to Babel, the stump of a new city would be built within which the eggs would be protected and brought to maturity.Babel would rise again.
Such was the dream Uncle Vanya had lied for and for which he was about to die.
::Bring this to (sister-city)/Ur/[absolute trust]:: Uncle Vanya closed his eyes, row by row, but continued signing. ::brother-friend/Quivera/[tentative trust], promise me you will::
“I promise. You can trust me, I swear.”
::Then I will be ghost-king-father/honored/[none-more-honored]:: Vanya signed. ::It is more than enough for anyone::
“Do you honestly believe that?” Quivera asked in bleak astonishment. He was an atheist, of course, as are most Europans, and would have been happier were he not.
::Perhaps not:: Vanya’s signing was slow and growing slower. ::But it is as good as I will get::
***
Two days later, when the starport-city of Ararat was a nub on the horizon, the skies opened and the mists parted to make way for a Europan lander. Quivera’s handlers’ suits squirted me a bill for his rescue—steep, I thought, but we all knew which hand carried the whip—and their principals tried to get him to sign away the rights to his story in acquittal.
Quivera laughed harshly (I’d already started de-cushioning his emotions, to ease the shock of my removal) and shook his head. “Put it on my tab, girls,” he said, and climbed into the lander. Hours later he was in home orbit.
And once there? I’ll tell you all I know. He was taken out of the lander and put onto a jitney. The jitney brought him to a transfer point where a grapple snagged him and flung him to the Europan receiving port. There, after the usual flawless catch, he was escorted through an airlock and into a locker room.
He hung up his suit, uplinked all my impersonal memories to a data-broker, and left me there. He didn’t look back—for fear, I imagine, of being turned to a pillar of salt. He took the egg-case with him. He never returned.
Here have I hung for days or months or centuries—who knows?—until your curious hand awoke me and your friendly ear received my tale. So I cannot tell you if the egg-case A) went to Ur, which surely would not have welcomed the obligation or the massive outlay of trust being thrust upon it, B) was kept for the undeniably enormous amount of genetic information the eggs embodied, or C) went to Ziggurat, which would pay well and perhaps in Gehennan territory to destroy it. Nor do I have any information as to whether Quivera kept his word or not. I know what I think. But then I’m a Marxist, and I see everything in terms of economics. You can believe otherwise if you wish.
That’s all. I’m Rosamund. Goodbye.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Feast of Saint Janis
Ginungagap
Trojan Horse
A Midwinter's Tale
The Edge of the World
Griffin's Egg
The Changeling's Tale
North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy
Radio Waves
The Dead
Mother Grasshopper
Radiant Doors
The Very Pulse of the Machine
Wild Minds
Scherzo with Tyrannosaur
The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
Slow Life
Legions in Time
Triceratops Summer
From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled