City at the End of Time

by Greg Bear

  Jebrassy drew his brows together.

  “You must promise you will never tell another.”

  “And?”

  “You must promise you will use what you learn to guide all our explorations—not just your own. You will not seek glory alone.”

  This smarted. He had hoped to do just that. “And?”

  “You must not go on a march by yourself or with anyone else—not right away. You will consent to be chosen—or you will stay in the Tiers.”

  “Nothing is worth that. I’d…” He shuddered. “I’d go mad if I thought I couldn’t leave.”

  The desperate slant in Tiadba’s eyes told Jebrassy that he had made a serious mistake. “Go on, then,” she told him. “I’ll stay here and follow a little later. We shouldn’t be seen together. When I get back, I’ll alert the wardens about this poor explorer.”

  Jebrassy turned and sat on the edge of the proscenium. What could she possibly offer that would be worth such sacrifice, such slavery?

  “There is going to be a youth march,” Tiadba said to his back, her voice carrying an odd quaver. “It’s being assembled very carefully…not quickly enough. We’re all impatient. A lot of preparations have to be made. But soon, it will happen.”

  Jebrassy had heard rumors of groups handpicked, trained, sent down the flood channels. Rumors were all he had ever heard.

  “There’s a plan, a leader,” Tiadba said. “Someone we trust.”

  This had the ring of truth. He had always wondered how anyone could survive in the unknown outside the Kalpa without training, supplies, or equipment.

  Tiadba sat next to him, startling him again, her movements were so quiet and graceful. She glanced left, eyes half lidded in peaceful drowse. With a little shudder, she moved closer and leaned her head on his shoulder. Her touch was electric. His heart thumped and his hands warmed.

  “You won’t lie,” she said. “And you’ll never let us down.”

  “How can you be so sure about everything?” he asked, trying to be abrupt.

  “Because I know you. We’ve met before,” she said. “Don’t you feel it?”

  He got up, shook out his arms, and started to walk away. “Too many promises, not enough in return.”

  Tiadba ran after him, wide-awake, lifted his hand, then pulled on his fingers—hard. “Promise!” she demanded. “You know you must.”

  “Let go!” He tried to break free, and she grabbed his shoulders with a small shout. They began to roll across the dusty stage. She was stronger—females of the breed could be that way, wiry and sweetly scented. That scent was their greatest weapon. It made him much less willing to fight.

  “Stop it!” he shouted as she held him down on the floor. Her face pressed close, eyes intense. They had covered their clothes with dust.

  She frowned so hard that he wanted to look away in shame. “Don’t be stupid. Promise! You know you will.” Then, in a harsh whisper, lips almost touching his…“Promise!”

  “Give me something, give me hope,” he said, his voice resentful and raw. “Promise me I’ll go on the next march!”

  She rolled off and got to her feet, brushing her clothes. “I’m not the one who chooses.”

  “You say we know each other—but you obviously don’t know me at all.”

  Tiadba placed her hands together and tipped her fingers against her forehead, eyes closed.

  “You’re taking advantage,” he said. “You pick on lonely outcasts…you’re like a pretty bunch of chafe shoots held out for a pede, to lure them into the fields.” He pulled down her hands and stared directly into her eyes. There was a connection—he could not explain it, and that angered him more. He let her go.

  “If you’re so bold, why haven’t you run away on your own?” she asked. “What’s stopping you?”

  He blustered, “Someone has to watch for wardens. I agree with one thing—it takes planning.”

  “What if I tell you about the difficulties, just a little about what’s involved?”

  “You’d betray your people?”

  “I trust you.”

  “You shouldn’t. I’m not responsible.”

  “Is that what your sponsors tell you?”

  “My mer and per are gone,” Jebrassy said.

  She drew up close again. She was nothing if not persistent. “I know,” she said.

  “An intrusion took them.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you spoke with our leader in the market. But before that, I told her about you. She gave me permission to meet you here.”

  This rendered Jebrassy speechless. That a sama—a healer and listener—would betray his confidence as easily as Khren was almost beyond belief.

  Almost. Time itself was changing, there were so many intrusions—and the wardens weren’t acting the way they used to. He could almost see the Tall Ones walking among them. Why should he trust anyone or anything?

  Tiadba felt his distress and again lightly gripped his shoulders. “I’ll tell you as much as I know. You don’t even have to promise. It’s that important.”

  “Did she tell you to say that?”

  “No,” Tiadba said. “My risk.”

  Jebrassy rolled his head in misery. “I don’t know who I am or where I’ll end up. That’s why I went to a sama in the first place.” He shuddered.

  Tiadba struggled to find her next words. “Two names. Tell me what they mean. I’ll tell you one name, and you tell me the other.”

  “Names?”

  “Ginny,” she said.

  Jebrassy backed off. Before he could stop himself, he said, “Jack.”

  She looked at him, triumphant—and scared. “Two funny, ugly names,” she said. “Not from the Tiers. We know each other, Jebrassy. We know each other from somewhere else. It’s as if we’ve known each other forever. I’ve never felt that with anyone else.” Her eyes crossed with the intensity of her emotion. “Some wake or another, one of us will be in very bad trouble. I think I will be the one who needs you. And you will come for me.”

  Jebrassy groaned and got down on his knees, suddenly weak. It was true. He could feel the intensity of grief already—the knowledge that he would have her, that he would be faithful and bond to this female, and that he would lose her far too quickly.

  Out of sequence.

  Out of control.

  Our lives are not our own.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” he whispered.

  She knelt in front of him and they placed their foreheads together, hands on each other’s temples. “Promise me the three promises, and I’ll share—I’ll show you.”

  The visitor—a useless residue inside of him—seemed to kick up in his head, trying to force him to make a decision.

  Jebrassy stroked her cheek.

  They swore in the way they had learned as children, repeating the words to each other over and over, until both had them precisely memorized.

  Tiadba then whistled a short tune of sealing.

  It was done. Jebrassy had no idea what had just happened. His eyes slowly focused. Tiadba had moved off and stood nearby, staring up. She pointed to an open half cup pushed out from the far right-hand edge of the screen, tiny in comparison to the total span, like a private box seat, but with the worst view of all. “See that?”

  “A bump. It’s always been there. What about it?”

  “They used to call it the Valeria,” Tiadba said. “It’s where they organized and controlled the shows. I found a way to get up there, from behind the Wall of Light. Would you like to see?”

  “It’s full of dirt, right?”

  “I cleaned it.”

  He struggled to steady his voice and recover his attitude. “Might be interesting…but why so important?”

  “The big screen is broken,” Tiadba said. “But up there is a little screen. Up there we can connect to a catalog of the shows they used to put on in the Diurns. I’ve watched a few. I think they tell a history. Not ours, exactly. The histo
ry of those who were here before us.”

  “I still don’t know how that can help the marchers.”

  “Aren’t you curious, just a little bit? To see things no other breed has seen, nor anyone else, for millions of wakes? To learn how we came to be here, and…maybe…why? We’re so ignorant,” she sighed. “And that…”

  “That’s the third thing we have in common,” Jebrassy said. “You should also know I’m impulsive. Some say I’m stupid, but I’m really just stubborn. And I care too much.”

  “Four, five, and…”

  “Six things we have in common?” he finished.

  She drew herself up, standing just a little taller than Jebrassy, not uncommon among the ancient breed. “If the wardens find us, or learn that we know…I think they would stop us. They would give us up to the Tall Ones. Understand?”

  He nodded.

  “Come with me, then. Part of the old gallery fell down a while back, right next to the proscenium.”

  Jebrassy followed for about fifty yards, and then clambered after her into a darkened pit formed by the walls of a masonry chamber whose roof had collapsed. A small hatch hung open in the base of the proscenium, still partially blocked.

  “Are you afraid of tight places?” Tiadba asked as she removed a few stones and bricks.

  “I don’t think so,” Jebrassy said. “As long as there’s a way out.”

  “Well, here’s a tunnel. It stretches behind the screen for quite a ways, and then there’s a narrow shaft going up. I think there was a lift nearby—but it’s not working. To go up there, we have to climb a tiny spiral with lots of tiny steps.”

  “Show me,” Jebrassy said.

  Gleeful, Tiadba took his hand and tugged him forward.

  TEN ZEROS

  CHAPTER 19

  * * *

  Seattle

  Ginny had followed the music for miles and now, her long hike finished, she stared up in awe at what she had found: a wide banner painted in red and black circus letters, announcing LE BOULEVARD DU CRIME.

  A collision of sounds filled the air—hurdy-gurdies, calliopes, electric guitars, flutes and trombones and trumpets—a screeching but melodious wreck of noise that ascended in triumph to shimmer the clouds in the starlit sky.

  A wide smile crossed her flushed face.

  “Hey, pretty lady!” shouted a crimson and blue clown balancing a huge nimbus of white hair. “Join the Busker Jam! Certified insane, we am! We’re better than Fair, we’re not even there!”

  The clown led a toothy, grinning monkey that stalked with anxious delicacy on yard-long stilts.

  Busker Jam filled several long acres of grass and gravel overlooking the glinting obsidian waters of Elliot Bay, marked at the northern end by a big grain elevator, flanked on the land side by gray and brown apartment buildings and condos, and tapering at the southern end into a sculpture garden—now closed—and a lot filled with a churning puzzle of parking cars. Red and yellow tents flapped and snapped in a light breeze. Food trucks and trailers clustered near the parking lot.

  A veering, snaking line of performance rings of all sizes poked up between the food trailers and the grain elevator, each distinctively labeled: THÉTRE-LYRIQUE, CIRQUE OLYMPIQUE, FOLIES DRAMATIQUE, FUNAMBULES, THÉTRE DES PYGMÉS, THÉTRE PATRIOTIQUE, DÉLASSEMENTSCOMIQUES, and so on, stretching out of sight.

  Ginny had never seen so many artistes—clowns, musicians, acrobats, magicians, and of course mimes—and she wanted to laugh and cry at once. It was so much like the girlhood she could not remember, but wanted with a desperate ache to return to.

  As Jack rode along the bike path, searching for familiar faces, jauntily swinging his front tire to keep a slow balance, he spotted a practice circle, and within the circle: Flashgirl, the Blue Lizard, Joe-Jim, and other old friends warming up for a turn in the rings.

  Hundreds of patrons milled about in clumps, laughing, applauding, oohing and aahing, dropping bills and change into boxes and hats. It looked like a clink-paff night for his friends and colleagues. Buskers called a good show clink-paff—the sound of coins falling into thick piles of bills.

  In the first ring, T-square—dressed in a flame-red leotard—arranged three firepots and a circular roller-coaster-style ramp for his unicycle. On his head he wore a bright blue T-square jutting above a huge pair of wing-tip glasses studded with rhinestones. During his act, he said not a word, simply doing acrobatics on the unicycle and riding through brilliant and startling flashes of fire from his pots. Jack knew what the marks did not: that T-square would soon set his hat on fire and require the assistance of a prestationed shill—his daughter, a savvy and quick nine-year-old who would extinguish him with a spray of foam from a chrome-plated canister.

  Needing no ring, Somnambule the Sleepified worked a series of startling card tricks, then struck a frozen pose, leaning into an imaginary wind with kerchief flying and hat about to blow off his head—cradling his cheek against nested hands and snoring until the next act began.

  He winked as Jack cycled past. Jack tipped a salute.

  Flashgirl did not use fire, but in her yellow and orange jumpsuit, with sultry countenance and angry, superfeminist patter, everything else about her was inflammatory. Her routine consisted of juggled illusions with knives and wands, frenetic dance, and jabbing verbal assaults on male members of the audience—whose sexist attitudes she blamed for the failure of her magic. Nearly everyone laughed; she was good. Not once had Jack seen Flashgirl actually anger an audience member. Still, at forty-five, she was slowing down. He thought from the sag of her shoulders and subtle gasping as she danced that her lifelong habit of smoking might be taking a toll.

  Still, buskers worked sick or well—he hoped she was just fighting a cold.

  Jack knew where to find the performers’ zone, at the end of a short path winding up to the small changing trailer, marked off by stakes and ribbon. The moon-shadow of the huge grain elevator dominated this end of the park, and here, half in lunar shade, Joe-Jim squatted on a big white bucket, eating fruit salad from a plastic tray. He spotted Jack, and for a moment gave him a blank look.

  He doesn’t remember.

  Then something seemed to connect—to click in his head—and Joe-Jim waved his fork. “Brother Jack, back on track!” he called, spraying bits of orange.

  “Whom do I address tonight?” Jack asked, shaking hands busker-style, with a sharp clap of palms and a hook-and-wriggle of three fingers.

  “Tonight we are Jim. Joe’s on vacation in Chicago. Be back in a week. Calls me every day to check in.”

  Joe-Jim’s routine was to perform acrobatics with an invisible partner—mime in the middle of the air, to all purposes, and at his best, he astonished. He was only a few years older than Jack but looked older, and also looked as if he had not been eating well. His eyes were haunted, his high cheeks were dark yellow, and both cheeks and chin bristled with two days’ growth of beard.

  One of his wrists had been tightly secured with a dirty Ace bandage. A lateral cut, Jack guessed—not a serious attempt.

  “Why aren’t you jamming?” Joe-Jim asked. He insisted on being called by both names, whoever was actually present. Few in any audience could know that whichever character, Joe or Jim, performed on any given day, was half of a genuine split personality.

  “Rats went on strike,” Jack said.

  “Feeling our age, the rats and I,” Joe-Jim said. “Not good times, Jack.” The perennial pessimist, Joe-Jim pulled out a pack of cigarettes and tapped one into his palm. “Keeps the demons at bay,” he said, and lit up with a squint.

  “About those demons,” Jack said. “Seen any lately?”

  “No more than usual.” Joe-Jim pulled up another bucket, inviting Jack to sit. The acrobat-mime had suffered through a lot—muggings, broken love, weeks and months in and out of institutions. Jack suspected he had at most a year or two before the streets and poverty—and the demons—snatched what was left of his health. Busking was a hard life.

  “Do you ever r
un around empty?” Jack asked. “Moments when both Joe and Jim have left the building?”

  Joe-Jim blew out a coil of smoke. “I couldn’t do my act with two invisible guys. Why?”

  “Just asking,” Jack said.

  “No, but it bugs me when we fight. I can’t get the invisible guy to do his part.” He smiled slyly. “You’re about to say, I’ve adapted rather well.”

  “You’ve adapted rather well.”

  “I certainly think so. I could never work in a cubicle, with my mates wondering who would show up day to day.” He dropped his cigarette half smoked on the grass and ground it down with his slipper heel. His features grew stiff. “Heads up. Here comes the shadow that walks like a man.”

  A tall, emaciated anatomy wearing a top hat and formal attire—the suit split equally black and white top to bottom, the back adorned with a metallic blue skeleton—sauntered toward them, his gait that of a zombie Fred Astaire. His face was white and his eyes were ringed with black, and he radiated a deadly gloom.

  He ignored Joe-Jim but homed in on Jack with hungry precision.

  “Back off, Sepulcher,” Jack said, rising with fists clenched.

  Joe-Jim looked away and inward.

  Sepulcher pinned Jack with his sharp, deep eyes—famished, but not for food. “How’s your father, Jeremy?” he asked, his voice as resonant and lost as a bull in a cave.

  “Still dead,” Jack said. He had changed his name years ago—everyone knew that.

  “I’d forgotten,” Sepulcher said. “Always good to forget unpleasantness. Then—I saw you, and it all came back.”

  Sepulcher never seemed to attract much of an audience or make much money. Some on the circuit had speculated he was a rich eccentric with a really bad act, which consisted of standing still for hours on a street corner, his eyes following people as they walked past—and occasionally letting loose with a whistled dirge.

  Some buskers—the worst of a generally good lot—were actively creepy.

  Sepulcher’s real name was Nathan Silverstein.

  “I worked with your father, Jack,” he said. That was a fact. Silverstein and Jack’s father had worked as a comedy team fifteen years ago.