Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick Page A

claims your life, the first thing she has to do is to shatter your old world, in order to force you into the larger universe. The mind is lazy. It’s comfortable where it is, and can only be driven into reality with pain or fear.
    “But this is never done with malice, but with love. At the end of her test, Madame hugged me. I thought she despised me, I believed I was about to die, and then she hugged me. I can’t tell you how good that hug felt. Better than anything we’ve done tonight. Better than anything I’d ever felt before. I cried. I felt wrapped in love, and I knew that I would do anything to be worthy of it. I would have died for that woman in that instant.”
    “But this didn’t happen with Gregorian.”
    “No.” She rocked slightly from side to side, moving him within her. “She never broke Gregorian. She tried many times, and each failed attempt made him stronger and more savage. And that’s why he’s going to kill you.” Abruptly she rolled him atop her. For a second he was afraid he’d hurt her with his weight. “Well, in the meantime,” she said, “I have my own uses for you.”
    He had four more orgasms before he finally came, and that final time was of an order of magnitude more intense than anything he’d ever felt before.
    He did not so much fall asleep as pass out.
    *   *   *
     
    When he awoke, Undine was gone. Groggily he looked about the room: The furniture remained and a few discarded oddments. The fantasia lay on the floor, sad and a little tattered, several of the long rainbird plumes already broken. But there was an emptiness, a sense of abandonment, about the room; all personal touches were gone. He dressed and left.
    It was late in the morning. Prospero was already high in the sky, and the town was empty. Doors hung open. Bedthings lay where they’d been flung in the grass. The husks of last night’s fantasias littered the streets, like abandoned cicada shells. The bureaucrat strolled back to the center of Rose Hall, head clearing slowly, and felt like singing. His body ached, but pleasantly; his cock felt pink and raw. All he needed was a good breakfast to put him right with the world.
    Chu stood by a truck with THE NEW BORN KING painted on the fender, and ARSHAG MINTOUCHIAN ’ S STRING THEATER AND ILLUSARIUM OF HEAVEN AND HELL , THE TEN MILLION CITIES AND THE ELEVEN WORLDS in seven garish colors on the van’s sidewall. The bureaucrat remembered seeing it last night, shutters open and a puppet play in progress. Chu was talking to a fat, sweaty man with a fastidious little mustache. Arshag Mintouchian himself, evidently. “Have a good night?” she asked, and abruptly burst into laughter.
    The bureaucrat stared at her in astonishment. Then Mintouchian too began laughing.
    “What the hell’s so funny?” the bureaucrat demanded, offended.
    “Your hand,” Chu said. “Oh, I see you’ve had a night to remember!” Then they were off again, the two of them, soared aloft on gusts of laughter like kites.
    The bureaucrat looked at his hand. There was a fresh new tattoo there, a serpent that circled the middle finger of his left hand three times and then took its tail in its mouth.

6
    Lost in the Mushroom Rain
    “I’m the biggest thing you’ve ever seen,” Mintouchian’s thumb said. “Hey, I don’t want to brag, babe, but you’re gonna be sore in the morning.” It paraded back and forth, proud as a rooster.
    “Mmmm, I can see that,” said Mintouchian’s other hand, the one held closed with a long vulval slit between thumb and forefingers slightly ajar. “Come here, big boy!” He gaped it suddenly wide.
    Everybody laughed.
    “Modeste!” Le Marie called. “Arsène! Come and look at this.”
    “This isn’t really the sort of thing children should witness,” the bureaucrat demurred softly. Two pig farmers and one of the evac planners looked at him, and he reddened.
    But none of the youngsters came in from the next room. They were watching television,