The Mask of Loki

by Roger Zelazny

  Gurden: We're in Atlantic City, off the beach.

  Eliza: Still well within my jurisdiction. But where are you going from there?

  Gurden: I don't like to say over the phone.

  Eliza: Tom! This is a mirror-sheathed line. My files were sealed under court order in 2008 and now enjoy the same legal protection as a physical doctor's. Even stronger protection, because I cannot be made to divulge file contents against my programming. There's a wipe code between every data block. If you tell me, no one else knows—that's part of our contract.

  Gurden: All right, we're going to the outer islands off North Carolina. Hatteras, Ocracoke, Cape Lookout, one of those.

  Eliza: That is... technically beyond my franchise. Can I not dissuade you, Tom? You could still call me from there, of course, but it would be unlawful for me to accept the call and perform my functions under your Universal Medical Coverage.

  Gurden: What if I were simply traveling out of your franchise area, perhaps on business, and felt the need to talk with you?

  Eliza: A business traveler would, of course, want to call the local Eliza. In the Carolinas, she is a function of Midatlantic Medical Systems, Inc. If you called me instead, I would only talk to you under a credit agreement, automatically endorsed when you identify yourself by your thumbprint on the capacitance plate. But you do not want to pay for my services yourself, Tom. I am very expensive.

  Gurden: Suppose I were to give you my booth number.

  Eliza: Why would you do that?

  Gurden: Just to verify that I was really calling from within the Boswash area. Now, some little switch along the trunk line somewhere wouldn't tell you I was lying, would it?

  Eliza: Not unless I initiated a comparison between the incoming line noise and your keypad entries, Tom. And I would probably not choose to do so.

  Gurden: Well, Eliza, you've just told me how to get around your own billing system. And that makes me wonder... Why are you so persistent about keeping in touch with me, anyway?

  Eliza: When we first spoke, you mentioned "people trying to get inside my life, to... push me out." I am programmed for curiosity and want to know more about these people.

  Gurden: I have dreams.

  Eliza: Everyone has dreams, and most people can remember them. Are these unpleasant dreams?

  Gurden: No, or not always. But they're so real. Waking dreams, that come sometimes while I'm playing.

  Eliza: Are they dreams of other people?

  Gurden: Yes.

  Eliza: Are you, Tom Gurden, in these dreams?

  Gurden: I am in them, yes, or at least I feel them, but I don't think my name is Tom Gurden.

  Eliza: Who are you?

  Gurden: The first dream started in France.

  Eliza: This was when you visited France?

  Gurden: No. The dreams started long after that tour. But the first of them took place in France.

  Eliza: Was it about places you visited in France?

  Gurden: No, not any place I have ever visited.

  Eliza: Tell me your dream from the beginning.

  Gurden: I am a scholar, in a dusty black gown with an academic hood of blue velvet. That hood was my last extravagance...

  * * *

  Pierre du Bord scratched behind his knee and felt the spine of his stripped quill go through a moth hole in the loose wool stockings. Silk would be more to the fashion, more durable, too. And more expensive, of course, than a young student of Paris, only lately awarded his Doctorate of Philosophy, could hope to afford.

  Or, not in these exciting times. The people were aroused; the National Convention was sitting in near-continuous convocation; and King Louis had gone on trial for his life—and lost it. In such an atmosphere, few enough of the people of taste, distinction, and money were left in the City. And, of those who were, none could lift their eyes from the daily rush of affairs to consider the proper tutelage of their sons and daughters in the arts and letters at the hands of one Pierre du Bord, Academic.

  Starving academic.

  Pierre dipped his quill again to take up the next line of his text but paused to read what was already written down. No, no, never do. His letter to Citizen Robespierre was inelegant, fumbling, and childish. He badly wanted a post in the government but was afraid to ask for it directly. So, having neither experience of, nor special talent for, governing, Pierre was reduced to pleading his enthusiasm for the cause of liberty and praising the decision of the National Convention in the matter of Louis's beheading. He knew, however, that Robespierre's and the other Montagnards' vision of a New France clearly excluded slavery, the qualifications of property, and capital punishment—as explained in their pamphlets which were so liberally strewn in the gutter. Thus it would ill suit Pierre du Bord to praise the regicide before such gentle, idealistic, and reasonable lawyers.

  He reached out to draw the light closer over the paper. The candlestick was some bauble Claudine had traded for, with the blonde Huguenot woman who lived downstairs, to dress up his work table. As he shifted it, one of the hanging crystals cut into his finger.

  "Agh!" The pain sluiced through him, stinging the nerves in his wrist and elbow and up his arm, although it was only the side of his finger that was slashed. Pierre stared at the slice and watched a bright globule of blood form winking in the wavering light, before he sucked it away.

  "Claudine!"

  He spread the lips of the wound, to see how deep it might be, and a spatter of blood fell across his letter, ruining it. He thrust the finger in his mouth.

  "Claudine! Bring a cloth!" he called around the digit.

  The pain in his arm subsided from the sparkling line he had felt at first, into a dull ache that was starting to numb his side. Clearly, the crystal had cut across a nerve.

  He peered at the hanging bangle of glass, expecting to find a broken edge or some protrusion. The glass was clear but, instead of being polished round, it was cut straight and sharp. Probably some artisan's trick to increase the brilliance of the rainbow it would throw in the sunlight.

  But what was this? A fleck of blood was dried on the glass—dried, it seemed, almost before he had been cut. Du Bord caught up the crystal with his off hand and, careful not to cut himself again, rubbed at the spot with the pad of his thumb. When that didn't remove it, he used his nail. Still no effect.

  He leaned closer and squinted against the candlelight. The reddish-brownish spot was inside the glass, a dark defect floating near the edge that had cut him.

  "Claudine!"

  "Here, what are you crying about?" His chestnut-haired lady, a draper's daughter but pretty enough, put her head through the doorway.

  "I have cut myself. Bring me a cloth to bind it, please."

  "You have a neck cloth, you know. It's not worth half as much as some of the rags I must call my petticoats. Bind it yourself. Men!"

  "Women!" du Bord responded as he unwound the linen from his neck and laid it across the squeezed-together lips of the wound. Before wrapping it around, he stopped, lifted the cloth, and plunged the damaged finger into his wine glass up to the knuckle. The wine stung, and that was probably to the good. Then he tore a strip from the cloth and bound his wound.

  * * *

  "My friends! My loyal friends!" du Bord pleaded with the crowd.

  "Get out, Professor!"

  "We want none of your mathematics here!"

  "No friend to me and mine!"

  Pierre tried again: "This day the sun has seen the rising of the land. It is the Year One, the first of a New Age of Free Men. We behold—" He stopped to turn a page of the speech he had written.

  "We behold a billy-doo fool!"

  "Go back to your lace and ladies!"

  "Give up the aristos!"

  "Give up the aristos!"

  "Give up the aristos" was the common call these days, echoed by the street rabble who were looking for sport, not reason.

  Pierre du Bord suddenly thought of the l
arge wig-maker's shop across the river, in Montmartre, not 200 meters from this very spot. The shop was closed and boarded up, now that its ribbons and powders had no takers. But, on his lengthy nighttime walks through the city, du Bord had observed the building's back rooms lit by candles. Someone, or some ones, were staying there in secret. Who else could it be but the hated aristocrats, unable to find safe passage out of the city and out of the country?

  "I know where the aristos are hiding," he bellowed.

  "Where?"

  "Tell us! Tell us!"

  "Follow me!" Du Bord jumped down off the crate he had been using as a podium and pushed his way through the crowd. The nearest bridge across the Seine was to his right, and as he made for it the people followed in his wake as chicks after their hen. Unseen behind him, several soldiers wearing the new Republican cockade had melted into the edges of du Bord's mob.

  More people joined as he strode across the high back of the stone bridge. And by the time he came to the right street, more than a hundred shouting Parisians flowed around him. He stopped before the darkened shop building and thrust his arm up at a high window, where a grain of light flickered against the grimy glass.

  A broken edge of cobblestone flew past Pierre's head and thudded against the boards that crossed the door.

  The light winked out. But suddenly the street was brighter for the torches his mob had suddenly raised.

  More rocks flew, breaking the glass in the upper windows and chipping the white plaster over the brickwork walls.

  "Come out! Come out! Aristos!"

  It seemed to du Bord that every crowd carries with it the tools of its trade: those torches, stout clubs, rotting vegetables, a stout pole for a battering ram. Without a word of command from him, like a practiced army they began their work of siege: breaking down the door, the windows, the very window frames; terrorizing the inhabitants with their shouts and growls; locating stocks of drink and handfuls of food to sustain them in their labors.

  After a frenzied ten minutes, three elderly people were dragged from the house. From their clothes and bearing, they might have been anyone—aristos, beggars, or the former shopkeeper's own family. But they cowered in the torchlight and looked guilty enough, so the front members of the crowd gave them a few licks with their clubs and turned them over to the soldiers.

  Six of these banded minions took the prisoners in hand and rushed them away. Their captain then turned to Pierre and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder.

  "And you, sir. Who might you be, that you know about these people?"

  "I am Pierre d—" The genitive du, a lingering syllable of the aristocracy which might blow him away in this democratic wind, stuck in his throat. "I am Citizen Bord. By profession, a scholar. By faith, a supporter of the Revolution."

  "You will come with us then, Citizen Bord. We have instructions concerning people like you."

  * * *

  They brought Pierre Bord to an office in the Conciergerie. Its dark woodwork and heavy brocades were lit by many lamps, their wicks turned up until they yielded a flare of light. Such a prodigal expense of oil, in a nation beset by want and rage!

  At the focus of the light was a small man, prim and bewigged, dressed in a yellow silk waistcoat over tight, dark breeches. The man looked up from the papers he held to stare owlishly at Bord and his escort.

  "Yes, yes?"

  "This is the man who ferreted out the Des Cheneyes, sir. We brought him here directly from the head of the mob he was leading."

  "A natural firebrand, eh?" The prim little man looked Pierre over more closely. His eyes narrowed and seemed to reflect a piercing light from the lamps. "Can he reason and speak, too?"

  "I can, Your Honor," Pierre responded.

  "No honor, boy. All that's behind us now."

  "Yes, sir."

  "You were educated to be an academic, weren't you? Dare we hope for a Doctor of Law?"

  "Alas, no, sir. The classics, Roman and Greek scholarship, with an advantage to the Greeks, I'm afraid."

  "No matter. Some of our best thinkers have risen above the trivialities that were admired in the dark, old age of the Louises. Well, do you want it?"

  "Want what, sir?" Pierre was startled.

  "A seat in the Convention. We have openings 'on the Mountain', and three are in my gift—a return for my humble talents of administration."

  "I want it more than anything, sir!"

  "Report here at seven in the morning, then. We start our work early."

  "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

  "The 'sir' is behind us, too, my friend. A simple 'citizen' will do."

  "Yes, si—citizen. I'll remember."

  "I'm sure you will." The man smiled, revealing small and even teeth, then looked down at his papers.

  The captain tapped Pierre lightly on the shoulder and tipped his head toward the door. Citizen Bord nodded and went out with him.

  In the passage outside the brightly lit room, Pierre mustered the courage to ask: "Who was that?"

  "Why, that is Citizen Robespierre, one of the leaders of our Revolution. Did you not know him?"

  "I knew his name, but not his person."

  "Well, you know him now. And he knows you."

  Pierre remembered those keen eyes and was sure of that.

  * * *

  "I cannot support it, Bord. You ask too much. He asks too much." Georges Danton pushed his long, loose hair back from his face and snuffed in a great lungful of air.

  Bord tapped his foot in impatience. This bear of a man, with his popular sympathies hung about him as casually as his clothes, was going to block the whole program.

  "Don't you see that mass conscription is the best way to fight our enemies abroad?" Bord stuttered. "Damn me, man! This is a republic, not a kingdom anymore. What could be more natural than the people rallying to defend their land?"

  "At the whim of our Little Mankin?" Danton returned. "He's the one who picked this fight with Britain and the Lowlands."

  "This war was inevitable, once we had condemned the Hapsburg bitch. Of course, her brother Leopold will try to save the queen. And, of course, he will draw in the German princes who sit upon the English throne. So, Minister Robespierre could foresee no better alternative but to attack. Is that not clear to you?"

  "Clear as beer. Little Max wanted a foreign war, and he got one."

  Pierre Bord sighed. "The Minister might well wish it were not so. He has so many enemies here at home..."

  "Enemies? None he hasn't made with his own two hands and that long tongue of his!"

  "For the last time: Will you support a conscription?"

  "For the last time: No."

  Bord nodded, turned his back, and walked from the room.

  "Gurr-yaupp!" Danton belched behind him.

  Shown to the door by a butler in loose livery, Bord stepped out into the darkened streets.

  Since its formation in early April 1793, the Committee of Public Safety had found much that was unsafe in Paris. The least of its concerns, however, were the beggars and idlers who made the streets their home. To walk the avenues but an hour before curfew was to invite the attentions of a cut-purse or worse. Still, Citizen Bord made his way from Dan-ton's house without the retinue of soldiers that his seat on the Mountain might now provide for him.

  The Watchers guarded his back.

  Bord had felt them there ever since he had risen to power in the National Convention. Shadows moved with him in the torchlight; he could feel them. Soft steps followed the click of his bootheels on the cobbles; he could hear them.

  Once, in the Bois de Boulogne, when a gang of navvies had stopped his coach—presumably to eat the horses!—the Watchers had revealed themselves. Squat shapes like trolls had rushed from the very undergrowth, with daggers drawn and bitter curses in their mouths. The coachman had fled in panic, leaping down onto the shaft and over the heads of the horses.

  The melee around the coach had lasted less t
han half a minute. Bord watched its progress in the light of the sidelamps, counting the flickering flashes of steel blades and the whistling shadows of knotted clubs. When it was done, only still forms lay about the coach, and the squat shapes of men faded once more into the bushes. All but one, who stood by the horses.

  "Vous avez besoin d'un conducteur," the man said—a statement, not a question. His accent was hard and thick, the voice of the country, not the city.

  "Oui. J'ai besoin," Bord acknowledged.

  The man swung himself up into the box. As he moved against the light, his cloak parted and Bord could see the gleam of chain mail. He could hear its soft clinking, too. That would explain the ruffians' utter lack of success against these Watchers.

  The man drove him back to his apartments in the Faubourg St. Honore. As they approached the steps, he hauled back on the reins, set the brake, and jumped down before the coach had quite stopped. He was part of the shadows before Pierre Bord had known he was gone.

  The Watchers were like that.

  And so this night, after his unsatisfactory meeting with Danton to gain support for the war against Britain and the Low Countries, Bord felt no fear to walk the avenues unguarded.

  Walking, he meditated upon his triumph. In five months of continuous talk and subtle movements, Pierre Bord had become a flame of the Revolution. Advisor to the new Republican mint, fiery orator in the National Convention, intercessor in the Palace of Justice, dealer in estates of the condemned, right hand of Minister Robespierre—Bord was everywhere. In some quarters he was called "the Tailor" because he sewed, with his threads of logic, a bag to snatch the heads of those who would seek to pervert and defeat the Revolution.

  One work of the Montagnards, however, he felt compelled to oppose. And as he walked the dark streets, guarded by his corps of invisible Watchers, he composed his arguments against it.

  * * *

  "Citizens!" Bord rose from his place among the seats high on the left side of the hall—the Mountain, whose occupants were every day gaining the name of a party. "This is a most rash proposal that has been put before us."