Michael Swanwick by Stations Of The Tide

Author:Stations Of The Tide [Tide, Stations Of The]
Format: epub
Tags: sf
Published: 2010-10-16T22:00:00+00:00

"Please."

He absorbed:

The map room was copied from a fifteenth-century Venetian palazzo, star charts with the Seven Sisters prominent replacing Mediterranean coasts on the walls. Globes of the planets revolved overhead, half-shrouded in clouds. Hands behind back, the bureaucrat examined a model of the system: Prospero at the center, hot Mercutio, and then the circle of sungrazing asteroids known as the Thrinacians, the median planets, the gas giants Gargantua, Pantagruel, and Falstaff, and finally the Thulean stargrazers, those distant, cold, and sparsely peopled rocks where dangerous things were kept.

The room expanded to make space for several researchers entering at the same time. "Can I help you sir?" the curator asked him.

Ignoring it, he went to the reference desk and rattled a small leather drum.

The human overseer came out of the back office, a short, stocky woman with goggles a thumb's-length thick. She pushed them back on her forehead, where they looked like a snail's eyestalks. "Hello, Simone," the bureaucrat said.

"My God, it's you! How long has it been?"

"Too long." The bureaucrat moved to give her a hug, and Simone flinched away slightly. He extended a hand.

They shook (the cartographer was unique), and Simone said, "What can I do for you?"

"Have you ever heard of a place called Ararat? On Miranda, somewhere near the Tidewater coast. Supposedly a lost city."

Simone grinned a cynical grin from so deep in the past the bureaucrat's heart ached. "Have I ever heard of Ararat? The single greatest mystery of Mirandan topography? I should guess."

"Tell me about it."

"First human city on Miranda, planetside capital during the first great year, population several hundred thousand by the time the climatologists determined it would be inundated in their lifetimes."

"Must've been pretty rough on the inhabitants."

Simone shrugged. "History's not my forte. All I know is they built the place up—stone buildings with carbon-whisker anchors sunk an eighth of a mile into the bedrock. The idea was that Ararat would survive the great winter intact and come great spring their grandchildren could scrape off the kelp and coral and move back in."

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