Paul Di Filippo - WikiWorld

Silence reigned for a brief moment before Margali Gueths spoke again. “Surface. It’s still all only surface observations. I am not just the sum of my recorded actions, Mr. Yphantidies. No one is. There are infinite depths to every living person, depths which the Great Continuity can never reckon nor fathom.”

“This is metaphysics, Mrs. Gueths. And a sane polity cannot be built on metaphysics.”

She did not choose to refute this obvious statement, but instead again demanded, “How dare you, in any case?”

I began to frame an answer, but then stopped. Surprising myself, I said, “Mrs. Gueths, would you allow me to attempt to justify the Great Continuity’s existence under more relaxed circumstances? Perhaps we might share dinner together this evening?”

Taken aback, she hesitated, then said, “Very well. You know my address. Be there promptly at eight.”

She spun about and strode off then with utmost certainty. Plainly, she had memorized our path, or the Vault’s whole coordinate system.

Watching her go, I was impressed, despite myself, and despite my reverence for the Great Continuity she despised.

The Gueths residence occupied an entire block of Eldorada Street in the Minvielle District, sharing the neighbourhood with the manses of such famous families as the Pybuses, Streutts, and Cavenders. A district of wealth and attainment, won from capricious fate by adherence to individual, familial and societal Templates. A dignified hush broken only by the insect whine of klickits swaddled the street.

The night had brought some surcease from the heat, although the humidity remained. My civilian clothes, while not as comfortable or as familiar-feeling as my official robes, proved quite adequate to the weather.

My landau discharged me at the front entrance to the Gueths residence. The driver descended and prepared to feed his theropods while he waited. I could smell the bloody meat that was their customary fare. Lamps to either side of the Gueths’ double doors shed their radiance against the night. I climbed the steps and rang the bell.

To my surprise, Margali Gueths herself opened the door. She was dressed demurely, in browns and greys. Her handsome face remained composed in a neutral expression.

“Come in, please, Mr. Yphantidies.”

I entered.

“I have dismissed all my servants for the evening. Our meeting did not strike me as a formal affair. Before leaving, Cook laid on a cold buffet that should be refreshing while we continue our discussion.”

She conducted me through several well-appointed chambers to a dining room. I noticed several paintings by Glassco on the walls, but not my favourite. I took a seat indicated to me, while Margali Gueths stopped by a sideboard bearing an assortment of decanters.

“Will you have a drink?”

“Can you make a Cubeb Slosh? That would be most refreshing.”

“Of course.”

With chilled drink in hand, I contemplated my hostess, now seated. Despite her initial formality and reticence, I could tell that she was eager to resume our former dispute.

After sipping my drink, I said, “You asked me how the Great Continuity could sanction its intrusions into the lives of the ekumenical citizenry. The answer is simple. Our organization is following its own Template. It is not only individuals who must obey their predestination and innate disposition, but also institutions, and society as a whole. Having come into being, the Great Continuity simply follows the dictates of its nature. We do as we do because we can—and must. To ensure our own survival, just as would any person.”

Margali Gueths looked at me incredulously. “Your arguments are entirely circular! You are using the unproven notion of Templates to justify enforcing Templates! Hasn’t this paradox ever occurred to you before?”

I waved away her juvenile objection. “This is all discussed and dealt with in Beginner’s Heuristics. If you had academic training—”

Margali Gueths surged impulsively to her feet. “This whole evening is a waste! I was foolish enough to imagine that if I got you out of your fortress—out of your formal shell—then you might be able to see the injustice being done me, how your Great Continuity wants to strip me of all that is my due. But instead I find that I have invited a hollow man into my house. Or rather, a ragbag man stuffed with the mouldy hay of preconceived ideas!”

Margali Gueths’s passionate tirade in her own defence, even though I was its butt, rendered her more alluring in my eyes than any other woman I had ever known. Betrayed by this unwonted feeling, and perhaps a little intoxicated from the Slosh, I chose to speak freely.

“Mrs. Gueths, I am not insensible to your character, and your righteous appeals. If matters were different, so forceful is your nature, I might— Well, I might even now be contemplating the establishment of a certain level of intimacy between us.”

This statement stopped Margali Gueths in her tracks as she paced the chamber. “So. Having seen those shameful images from my file, you take me for a loose woman? Well, what if I am? What if I chose to palliate my loveless marriage with certain wild assignations? Am I not just following my Template, according to you?”

“Indeed. And I don’t pass judgement on your actions. One of our prime tenets in the Great Continuity is that there is really no good or evil, moral or immoral—at least not as conventionally defined—but only adherence to or violation of one’s Template. No, my attraction to you stems solely from what you have shown me of your nature in person.”

She was silent for a time. “Assuming I would even begin to imagine consenting to such a relationship between us, what prevents it on your part?”

I sighed. “My own Template. When I was five years old, I received my first results on the Amatory Scale, and was deemed incapable of forming mature bonds with the opposite sex. Subsequent readings only confirmed this. Thus I have been precluded from any intimate relations. It is a regrettable defect, I suppose, but one that I have learned not to be troubled by.”

Margali Gueths collapsed on a chaise. Her expression mingled horror, bemusement and—most injurious—pity.

Suddenly she began to cry and laugh by turns, tears and guffaws blending into an unholy symphony that pierced me like a hot wire.

“I— I can’t believe— All your life— Never to have— Just because— Madness, madness!”

A frosted dignity suffused my brain. I attained a standing posture.

“Madame, I am leaving now. Our discussion is at an end.”

Margali Gueths wiped snot from her nose. How had I ever imagined her attractive?

“Of course. Or course it is. I will never allow my life to be blighted as you have allowed yours to be. The Great Continuity has hold over me no longer.”

Somehow with no passage of time that I could recall I found myself standing outside. The stars overhead appeared to me like gaping moth-holes in the shoddy fabric of the universe.

I climbed back into my landau. But I did not return to Vestry Street.

Rather, I went once more to my office, there to initiate the reformation of Margali Gueths.

The brazen woman had confiscated and destroyed a single daguerreotype from the Vaults.

But there were many more.

It was not necessary to disseminate certain information and imagery from her file to any actual scandal sheets. Those tabloids were a blunt instrument useful only for amusing the proletariat. Anonymously circulating the material among her peers was a more subtle and sufficient means of ruining her standing, and thus frustrating any attempt on her part to circumvent the Great Continuity’s disposition of Juvian Gueths’ estate.

In only a month, Margali Gueths’ ambitions to take her husband’s place had been rendered impotent.