City at the End of Time

by Greg Bear

  “You keeping talking about the Typhon as if it were alive,” Nico said. “Is it really someone bigger and more powerful than the Eidolons—whatever they are?”

  “I am as ignorant as you,” Pahtun answered after a short pause. “Some humans once regarded the unknown forces of nature as magnificent enemies or implacable gods. To me, the Typhon is not part of our nature—neither magnificent nor an enemy whom one might respect. It is a scourge and a disease. But you’ll soon live it for yourselves, and whatever theory keeps you alive, that’s the one you should hold and cherish.”

  Macht and Khren seemed intrigued, but this didn’t satisfy Nico, the philosopher. Perf, Shewel, and the other females looked lost or bored. Denbord and Tiadba just listened and tried not to voice their opinions.

  Seeming to sense Tiadba’s quiet skepticism, Pahtun knelt beside her on the sandy floor of the channel. His head still rose over her, even as she stood tall in her armor.

  “You have a question,” he said.

  “We’re going where we have to go,” Tiadba said. “But who made us that way?”

  “Shapers, I suppose, following the orders of an Eidolon. I’d like to meet the old twitch someday and give him my opinion.” Pahtun wriggled his fingers and then touched his nose, breed-style. “Ages ago, when I was younger, to salve my own guilt, I snubbed the laws of the City Prince and sent outposters to study the Chaos.” He stopped for a moment, his face crinkling, and Tiadba thought this was the first time she had seen such an expression on a Tall One. She didn’t know what it meant—sadness, wonder, loss? “They will not report back. Whoever leaves the Kalpa must never return, for reasons good enough and simple.”

  “But you keep sending us out there,” Tiadba said.

  “Higher minds than mine made these plans, and I suppose we’re all committed, whatever the consequences. You feel your instincts, I do my duty.” He stood. “If any of my outposters are still out there, and still free, they might help—they might not. You have to exercise the same caution you would with anything else in the Chaos.”

  Perf looked back at the Tiers, lost in mist beyond the edge of the camp. Macht put his hands together, murmuring a song of calming.

  Pahtun’s face smoothed and took on a distant look. “I do believe this, because I must: if any of you succeed, a greatness will be accomplished, something that may make all the long sacrifices of your kind worthwhile.”

  “The old pede-kicker is resting.”

  Khren, stocky and quiet-footed, approached Tiadba. She turned and looked him over critically. She had been feeling miserable again. Not his fault, of course, but Khren and his friends were no substitute for her warrior, foolish as he might have been at times.

  “We have a moment,” he said gently, aware of her mood. Macht and Perf joined him.

  “Please read some more from the books,” Perf said. “Teach us.”

  Grayne’s shake cloth and the old letterbugs could not guide her now. She had to riddle the words on her own, but she had become better at that. What she read, she tried to convey and explain to the others. She was sure this was what Grayne had intended. Strange that she could no longer remember Grayne’s face or the music of her gentle, insistent voice. Jebrassy she remembered clearly.

  Others gathered: Denbord, Nico, and Shewel, carrying their mats. They had come to prefer sleeping in the open, under the dark arches, rather than inside the flimsy tents, which flapped in the tweenlight breezes and worried them.

  Tiadba sat and opened one of the books. The breeds’ favorite passages tended to be about Sangmer the Pilgrim and Ishanaxade, the Librarian’s daughter, but the stories were seldom the same, a peculiarity that didn’t matter much to her audience.

  Of necessity, she skipped or paraphrased parts with which she had difficulty, and many of the words were still obscure, but reading them over and over again was like seeing them with more experienced eyes, and she took away more meaning each time.

  Other passages, spread throughout the text like chafe-seeds in a cake, still stumped them. Some were lists of instructions, go here and do this, then that—word-maps, Tiadba called them—and sometimes she read these for their calming effect just before the Tall Ones extinguished the lamps for sleep.

  This time she chose a more familiar text while the breeds curled at her feet, staring out into the shadows.

  “‘The story I tell is simple,’” Tiadba began, and her eyes filled, remembering the times with Jebrassy, just a few wakes past.

  Once, half an eternity ago, the glorious new sun—so-named, despite its having burned for ten trillion years—was almost surrounded by the Typhon Chaos. Five worlds remained, and on Earth, twelve cities, homes to those gathered from around the cosmos after a long and wretched decline.

  Greatest and most ancient of these cities was the Kalpa, and wisest, for this city constantly made preparations against the time when the Chaos would swallow even the new sun.

  Defeat was imminent, many thought.

  The greatest human of the age was a Deva called Polybiblios. He had traveled to the final far end of the aging cosmos, to live and study in the glow of the sixty suns of the Shen, a great civilization about to be absorbed by the Chaos.

  The City Princes of Earth promised a rich prize if someone would go to those last far places and persuade Polybiblios to return. For as absorbed as he was in his learning, and almost walled in by regions filled with traps and snares, he could not by himself make the journey back to Earth.

  The first to volunteer was the young Mender called Sangmer, already renowned and beloved for his many exploits and rare courage.

  Sangmer gathered a crew and revived the Earth’s last great galaxy ship. With his crew—selected for strength, courage, and wit—he journeyed along the single open course to that final far corner of the universe.

  In all their adventures—and many they were, strange and difficult—only ten survived, including Sangmer, to return with Polybiblios. The Chaos raged and consumed and did its deadly dazzle, and many times nearly took their vessel—for none is so persistent and perverse as the Typhon, some say, and others, none so unlikely and difficult to plan against.

  Sangmer also brought to Earth Polybiblios’s mysterious adopted daughter, who most agree was less human than the Shen—though her form was very pleasing.

  She had taken the name Ishanaxade—born of all stories—and espoused the Deva gens of her father.

  Back on Earth, they were welcomed by the City Princes and there was great rejoicing, yet funeral rites occupied many families, who mourned their lost youths.

  Polybiblios began his work in the high tower over the First Bion of the Kalpa, and using his Shen knowledge, soon helped design and forge the Suspension that protected the new sun, and kept the Chaos at bay for a time.

  Sangmer did not sit idly, but continued with his restless ways, making other voyages and studying, measuring, and defying the Chaos, all of which heightened his fame—though these journeys consumed many more sons and daughters of fine families.

  So many youths perished that Sangmer the Pilgrim also became known as Killer of Dreams, a title he did not bear proudly, and so, he promised to go into deep exile within the Sessiles, and not to return until he had studied Silence for an age.

  Ishanaxade emerged from among the curious that lined the ribbon road to witness his penitent journey, and stood before him where he bore up under the discs of memory of his thousand lost comrades, which nearly bent him double.

  None was so wonderfully fashioned as Ishanaxade, but that is not why to this day her images are forbidden or erased; none so beautiful in her father’s eyes, nor in the eyes of the curious who watched her partake of Sangmer’s burden, and help carry the discs to the door of the Sessiles, where Silence is peace.

  Some say that it was in the Sessiles that their lines first twined and grew together. Others say their love began on the journey back from the realm of the Shen. No one objected that a Mender should take to wife Ishanaxade, for few dared displease Pol
ybiblios, who had saved the last of humanity, and who sanctioned this union.

  Upon their emerging from Silence, Polybiblios assigned them many great works to do, together and apart.

  So it was, so it will be.

  Tiadba closed the book and the young breeds curled up tighter. Somehow, the story had changed since the last time she read it—details were different, or their ears had become more sophisticated.

  “It’s not a happy story, is it?” Khren said.

  “We’re all going to die out there,” Nico asserted gloomily. “I don’t understand, but I still want to go. That’s total frass.”

  Suddenly, through her exhaustion, Tiadba felt a sudden urge to speak of Jebrassy, to shout at them—that he was not dead, and would somehow be joining them, and that his presence would make this march different from all the others…But she turned her eyes to one side and fell back a little, doubting her companions would believe or take comfort.

  “Let’s sleep,” she suggested.

  The young breeds blew out their cheeks and pulled up their sleep mats under the high dark arches.

  PART THREE

  TERMINUS AND TYPHON

  CHAPTER 60

  * * *

  Wallingford

  At first the squat, hard-packed old man in the tweed suit refused to tell Daniel his name. He could act aloof, then turn gruffly assertive, as if he had always lived alone but was used to being in charge. His accent was difficult to place: English, like cockney, but Daniel was no expert.

  Together, they had built up their courage and abandoned the house, leaving Whitlow on his chair, locked in jerky rigor—and now something like sunrise was spreading all around, a burning pewter light painted over the streets. The neighborhood to the north resembled a pasted-up collage, bands of light and shadow lying over dark, forbidding houses. The people left on the streets seemed intent on getting somewhere but were being given a very brief time to do it—and worse, they were doing it over and over. A few seemed to vaguely recognize their plight—like insects caught in congealing resin, all except Daniel and the squat brute, and how long could their freedom last?

  “A Shifter who doesn’t dream,” the brute mused between rasping huffs. He struggled to keep up as they turned east on what had once been Forty-fifth Street, toward the freeway. The air was gritty. “I’d never have found you. Mr. Whitlow was primed, however. Even without the dreams, he could sense your stone. That was his specialty. Ironic he couldn’t find shelter—when she abandoned us.” The brute seemed pleased with himself. “Me, alone,” he wheezed. “Riding the last threads. Pulling them down and sweeping along. And you, of course.”

  “Terminus,” Daniel said.

  The brute nodded—understood this word well enough. “Mr. Whitlow called it that,” he said. “Never knew what it meant. Where the railway stops? End of the line? Don’t know now. But whatever, I don’t like it. It’s sticky. It catches.”

  Daniel wrapped his fingers around the two boxes in his pocket and blessed the little freedom the stones gave him—them. The brute was also contributing, Daniel could not say how. Both seemed aware that without the benefit of the other’s presence, they would be as frustrated—as obviously doomed as the mired, wild-eyed figures they passed on the sidewalks and in the streets.

  “Who’s the Chalk Princess?”

  “The highest of high, in my line of work. But truthfully—don’t know. Never met her. Dangerous, you know.”

  “The Moth?”

  “Ah, the Moth—so he was here. So many tiny thrones for the Queen’s servants. Nunc dimittis, I say. I doubt he would have killed you, such a curiosity. He probably wanted to rip you about, like a sheepdog.”

  Daniel grunted and turned his head forward. He didn’t like looking back—the street behind was not the street they had just traveled. Time, he supposed, was bunching up like an accordion smashed into a wall.

  They came upon a rise overlooking where the freeway had once been. Now there was just a long muddy ditch flanked on both sides by empty houses. In this part of the neighborhood, the bunched accordion had brought along material things—houses and funny old cars. But nothing living.

  “No more people,” the brute observed.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You tell me, young master.”

  The freeway was obviously not available—and that meant they would have to take surface streets, such as they were. It would be a long, difficult walk. They looked into a car but machinery was hopeless. It all seemed made of fused cinders.

  “What are you, my sidekick?” Daniel shot over his shoulder, flippancy hiding real fear. “My butler?”

  “Your guide, young master—taking you back to where I’ve been already. It’s south of here—a green warehouse. I walked around the building, knew they were inside, yet had nothing to offer and could not hope to enter. After the storm, after the wreck—after the Queen fumbled like a frightened lover and dropped our prey, I knew I wouldn’t be allowed inside, however desperate my situation. They’ll welcome you, however. It’s where you belong—not that you’re grateful.” The brute’s thick fingers clenched. “It’s getting worse. I don’t mind saying—”

  Daniel held up his hand and looked out across a long dark ditch at where the University of Washington had once been; and still was, after a fashion, its shrunken structures black and shiny, like anthracite. Only a few buildings seemed relatively unaffected.

  The brute went on. “Libraries,” he muttered. “Queen can’t touch them—not yet. But the books are scrambling. Soon they’ll be wiped clean. No protection after that.”

  The nearest houses were taking on a dull glimmer of translucence, as if carved from sand-blasted crystal. Others had been cut in half, showing jumbled interiors—but no occupants.

  Daniel said, “I think we’re passing out of the zone where people can even exist.”

  “I doubt I understand any of that, Professor.”

  Just hearing each other’s voices had suddenly become an odd comfort.

  “What can I offer, what do I do for us, you ask?” the brute said. “I’m a Chancer. There are Shifters such as yourself, with their stones and all, and Chancers. Chancers have a muse—Tyche. A modest sort of muse, but she’s ours. Right now I’m dragging every bit of good fortune I can into our immediate vicinity. Bit of a knee-wobbler, actually.” He grinned like a hoary old chimp. “Even with your stone, if you get too far ahead of me, I guarantee nothing. We need each other, Professor.”

  Daniel started moving south—if there were any points left on a compass now. “I’m not a professor,” he said.

  “You were—once,” the squat man said. “Part of my work was being a detective.”

  “What’ll I call you, then—Pinkerton?”

  The brute chuckled. “Max will do, while we work out whether I want to stick here with you or just chuck it.” He laughed at this unaccustomed freedom.

  Daniel pointed southwest, into the muddle where the black sky lay heavy over land and city. “Do you see what I see, over there?” The greasy darkness was less intense, and if he focused, he could make out an actinic paleness, less than half the width of his thumb.

  “I was there earlier,” the brute said. “That same blue glamour is how I found you.”

  “What causes it?”

  “The stones, I’d say. The warehouse has two of them, inside.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Some women. Two Shifters. And a collector of sorts, though no longer a servant of our Livid Mistress. They are getting along better than us, certainly better than the other poor souls out here. Still…I wouldn’t dare approach them—not without you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I collected one of them—reeled him in like a trout, fair sport and square. Not welcome. Oh, Mr. Whitlow was your man—I feel no guilt about you,” Max said. “But the game doesn’t matter. We’re abandoned.” He puffed his cheeks in amazement. “Didn’t think I’d ever escape. Thought that at the end of my service, the Qu
een’d just flick me off like cigar ash, right into the gutter.” He drew his face into a bereaved scowl. “More lives in my bindle than I imagined. Still…Over there—the warehouse—last chance. They could be your friends, if you introduce yourself proper. They might even accept me in the bargain.”

  “What’ll you do if we get there?”

  “Make myself useful. As always.”

  “You’ll tell them about me?”

  “Oh, they need you, Professor. Sum-runners attract. Tough to keep them apart when their time is come—that’s what Mr. Whitlow used to say. Don’t walk so! Have pity on an old man.”

  Daniel slowed. The pace was more than exhausting. He could feel something leak away when he pushed too hard—opportunity, fate, perhaps his proximity to Max’s hard-gathered luck. It seemed possible they did need each other. Of course, it was also possible that Max was making him think that.

  “Such a sad town,” Max observed. “Never thought I’d see such a thing. All trapped, doomed, ropes growing shorter!” He clucked his tongue, face flushed, short scraggly hair on end in the dryness, like an ugly Christmas gnome jolly with cold-blooded humor. Then, “Can we get there from here? Such a distance, bad air, hard to—” He fell back in a fit of coughing.

  Cold sweat on his brow, Daniel looked along the direction where the freeway had once been. They could not just walk south—things were even more jumbled that way, like blocks of ice backed up in a freezing river. “This way,” he said.

  They headed west, retracing their steps.

  The pewter glow came and disappeared again.

  What was left of their part of the big world—their small portion of space and time—was rapidly shaking itself to pieces.

  They came to a large, long bridge, still intact but wavering and ghostly in the gloom. They started to cross. Daniel looked over the side. Below, water had turned to rippling mist, gray-green and ominous.

  “This isn’t the one with the troll underneath, is it?” Max asked.