Michael Swanwick - The Dragons of Babel

"Good, good, I'm glad. Now set me free!" "Oh, dear. I wish you hadn't said that." "What?"

"Years ago and for reasons that are none of your business I swore a mighty oath never again to obey the orders of a man. That's why I've been ragging along after you — because you ordered me not to be concerned with your welfare. So of course I am. But now you've ordered me to free you, and thus I can't."

"Listen to me carefully," I said. "If you disobey an order from me, then you've obeyed my previous order not to obey me. So your oath is meaningless."

"I know. It's quite dizzying." The fox lay down, tucking her paws beneath her chest. "Here's another one: There's a barber in Seville who shaves everyone who doesn't shave himself, but nobody else. Now—"

"Please," I said." I beg you. Sweet fox, dear creature, most adorable of animals... If you would be so kind as to untie me out of the goodness of your heart and of your own free will, I'd be forever grateful to you."

"That's better. I was beginning to think you had no manners at all."

The vixen tugged and bit at the duct tape on my wrists until it came undone. Then I was able to free my ankles We both got into the truck. Neither of us suggested we try digging for my bag. As far as I was concerned, it was lost forever.

But driving down out of the landfill, I turned and where the vixen had been, a woman sat with her feet neatly tucked beneath her. Her eyes were green and her hair was short and red. I had the distinct impression that she was laughing at me. "Your money's in a cardboard box under the seat." she said, "along with a fresh change of clothing — which, confidentially, you badly need — and the family signet ring. What's buried out there is only the bag, stuffed full of newspapers and rocks."

"My head aches," I said. "If you had my money all along, what was the point of this charade?"

"There's an old saying: Teach a man to fish, and he'll only eat when the fish are biting. Teach him a good scam, and the suckers will always bite." The lady grinned. "A confidence trickster can always use a partner. We're partners now, ain't we?"

So ended Nat's story. Esme had stopped listening long ago. She was at the window again, staring out at tank farms and pyramids of containerized cargo sliding backward into the past. A line of high-tension towers leapt out of nowhere, matched speeds with the train, and paced it down the tracks. A second set of rails joined them, and then a third, and then a canal. All the world, it seemed, was converging upon Babel. "What became of the vixen?" Will asked.

Nat tapped his heart whimsically. "She's right here. Laughing at me." Then, serious again. "I can't say why I should like you, lad. but I do. So let me ask you again. Will you join forces with me? I'll teach you all the lore the short and clever ways of dealing with the world, and give you a full third share of the swag to boot. What do you say? Are we partners?"

Will felt a tickle on his knee. Looking down, he saw that his forefinger was tracing invisible letters, over and over, on the cloth of his trousers:

At which very instant the tracks curved and a mushroom ring of natural gas tanks swung away to reveal a wall that rose up to fill the sky To either side it stretched as far as the eye could see Will's heart quailed at the sheer size of it larger, it seemed, than all the rest of the world put together Abruptly the sheer magnitude of his ambition seemed folly That fell Tower was bigger and meaner and more ruthless than he could ever hope to be There was no way he could get revenge upon it

Not as he was now.

And yet. simultaneously, a pervasive sense of destiny filled him If I am to have my vengeance, he thought, I need to learn deceit and much else besides Very well, let this fool be my first teacher.

"Yes," he lied. "Partners."

Esme had grown bored with the passing landscape and was rummaging through Nat's luggage. She hauled out a transistor radio and snapped it on. Music more beautiful than anything Will had ever heard Hooded the car. It sounded like something that might have been sung by the stars just before dawn on the very first morning of the world. "What is that?" he asked wonderingly.

Nat Whilk smiled. "It's called 'Take the A Train.' By Duke Ellington."

Faster and faster the train sped toward the featureless stone walls until it seemed inevitable they should crash. Then, at the last possible moment, a tunnel opened in the wall, black as a mouth. The train plunged into it, and Babel swallowed it whole.

The walls and pillars of the great hall at Nineveh Station were of snow-white marble, according to a tourist brochure that had passed through so many hands on the train that it was falling apart by the time Will saw it. "Seven pillars on either side bear up the shadowy vault of the root: the roof tree and the beams are of gold, curiously carved, the roof itself of mother-of-pearl," it said, and also. "The benches that run from end to end of the lofty chamber are of cedar, inlaid with coral and ivory... The floor of the chamber is tessellated, of marble and green tourmaline, and on every square of tourmaline is carven the image of a fish: as the dolphin, the conger, the oroborus, the salmon, the ichthyocentaur, the kraken, and other wonders of the deep. Hangings of tapestry are... worked with flowers, snake's-head, snapdragon, dragon-mouth, and their kind; and on the dado below the windows are sculptures of birds and beasts and creeping things."

Perhaps so. But long years before Will alit from the train, the tapestries and benches had been taken down and dismantled, the floor mosaic replaced with linoleum, and the marble pillars and walls stained a bluish gray by engine exhaust and cigarette smoke.

Nevertheless, the great hall overwhelmed him. Its grandeur came not from the opulence of its materials, however, but from the fact that trains were continually arriving, disgorging passengers, and then proceeding to a further platform to take on more. Such were the numbers of travelers and immigrants that, though individually they jostled and bumped against one another like so many swarming insects, collectively they took on the properties of a liquid, flowing like water in streams and rivers, eddying into quiet backwaters, then surging forward again until finally they formed an uneasy lake behind the long dam of customs desks at the far end of the hall.

"You're my family," Nat said. "Remember that."

"Yes, Pop-Pop."

"Why?" Will asked.

"Because I'm going to have to bluff my way in. The passport I'm carrying wouldn't fool a cow."

"Wait. If you're in such a bad position, then why are you involving us in your problems?"

"Pfft. I can talk my way out of anything.''

Hoisting Esme in one arm and Will's suitcase in the other, the lanky fey pushed through the crowd. Will hurried after, awkwardly toting two of Nat's bags and dragging a third behind him. He struggled to keep sight of Nat and Esme, fearful that if he looked away for even an instant he would lose them forever in the scurrying throngs.

In less time than he would have thought, a customs agent frowned down at Nat's papers, spoke briefly into a telephone, and shunted all three of them through a side doorway. "You want Immigration Control, room 102, down to the end of the hall. You can't miss it. It's the only entranceway that isn't ensorceled to kill unidentified personnel," he said, and closed the door alter them.

Room 102 felt preternaturally still after the hubbub of the train hall. Two Formica-topped tables, overflowing with papers, divided the room, with only a narrow passage between them. Under the tables were cardboard boxes crammed with documents. On the far wall, past overflowing filing cabinets, hung two government-issue prints, one to either side of a closed door. They were, predictably enough, Bruegel's Tower of Babel and his "Little" Tower of Babel, each showing the city as it must have looked in its early stages of construction. In the foreground of the first, King Nimrod loomed over worshipful stonemasons like the giant that he was, sternly admonishing them to ever more heroic feats of construction. But in the other there were no figures at all, and the Tower was ruddy, dark, and ominous, the conflicted hero of its own complex psychodrama.