Fiendish Schemes by K. W. Jeter Page A

toward me.”
    “All that will change,” insisted Stonebrake, “when you have the ready jingling in your pocket. That’s the music to which people listen—and applaud. But let me proceed. I take it that you are also familiar with the complications, in regard to navigation, that have arisen from the oceans being living creatures?”
    “Who is not?” I shrugged. “As you say, these living seas have been observed to act on their own initiative and agenda, in ways that might not be convenient for Mankind. An ocean strait that might have been deep enough for ships to sail through before, now might suddenly become shallow enough to rip a ship’s hull open with the exposed rocks below.” In relating that which the entire civilized world knew already, I could be as pedantic as him. “Or similarly, a passage that was previously too dangerous for ships because of its strong currents might now be safely calm and navigable—the task for sailors being to find those new, safe routes, without losing one’s ship and crew in the process.”
    “Well said.” Stonebrake’s smile was as irritatingly patronizing as before. “And what assists them in so doing?”
    Nothing would do for the man, apparently, except a complete recitation of the information with which we were both familiar. “The lighthouses, of course.”
    “Ah, but we had light houses before we had to deal with animate oceans. And it took a good deal of effort and entrepreneurial capital to construct them. To what avail? A lighthouse that was previously a valuable navigational aid, might find itself miles from the rocky shoreline that it had helped ships sail past, or be completely submerged and its light extinguished by an ocean that had decided on its own to shift its position but a couple of miles east or west. What would be the point of even constructing a lighthouse if its usefulness could be unpredictably ended the day after it goes into operation?”
    “Now I am perplexed.” I regarded the other man with a more incisive appraisal, as though in the darkness more had been revealed than by the room’s lantern. “You make claim to know my affairs— and so you initially seemed to—but these tiny lacunae crop up. Are you aware that just this day I attended a launch party for Phototrope Limited’s most recent venture?”
    “Of course I know. I observed you there.”
    “How odd. I don’t recall seeing you amongst the guests.”
    “The festivities up in the lighthouse’s bridge chamber?” Stonebrake shook his head. “No, not there. I observed you later, after the lighthouse had grappled its perch upon the rocks, and after Lord Fusible’s other guests had departed. Outside—that is where.” With one hand, he indicated his diving garment. “You were so intent upon your conversation with Lord Fusible—though I could have told you beforehand that importuning him for some type of commission would be pointless—that you didn’t see anything out amongst the waves. You didn’t see me, to be precise.”
    His words nettled me. However little I cared for being spied upon, I took even less comfort in knowing which ungracious moments had come under his scrutiny.
    “Very well.” I straightened, as though to gather the tattered rags of my dignity about me. “Then you must be fully versed as well in the nature of an enterprise such as Phototrope Limited. Being as it is, of course, one of several such limited corporations that have sprung up since the advent of the living oceans has come upon us. Faced with a dilemma that might well have put the builders of the original, stationary lighthouses out of business, these new corporations’ engineers have developed the solution.”
    “Yes,” said Stonebrake. “The walking lights .”
    “Exactly. Lighthouses that are capable of auto-locomotion; that is, lighthouses that can move under their own power from place to place. The same massive mechanized legs at the base of such lighthouses, that enable them to crawl