City at the End of Time

by Greg Bear

  The Librarian spoke, using the same voice as before, but rooted—somehow more real and immediate. “You’ve been patient, a quality I admire.”

  “Easy enough. I sleep most of the time.”

  “You have recovered admirably,” the Librarian said. “So much to heal. I once did myself an enormous injury, then slept, just to give myself the time to work out a problem never before solved.”

  “What problem was that?” Jebrassy asked, sure the answer would make no sense.

  “How the universe will die, and what opportunities that death will present. I did not live in the Kalpa at the time, but far across the universe, where I was learning from other masters, not human but natural enough, though doomed…They refused transport back to the Earth. The Chaos ate them. And that’s why we’re here, young breed. Come closer and take a look at what lies outside our poor city.”

  Jebrassy drew himself up. All he had seen of the Chaos so far was the strange gray beam that flashed through the high windows.

  She might be out there already…

  They stood beside each other, much of a height, just able to peer over the lower frame of the window.

  “It’s frightening, but it won’t harm you—not here,” the Librarian said. “It’s changed over the last few wakes—more fundamental change than any of us have witnessed since it surrounded the Kalpa.”

  There was a horizon of sorts—like the far line of the channel beyond the Tiers. But where the ceil would have faded off into shadow, something else rose up—a sky. The sky made no sense—a tight-scrunched bundle of fabric, its wrinkles burning with a dim, purple fire, dwindling here and there but starting up elsewhere like dying embers.

  “It doesn’t like being looked at,” Jebrassy said.

  “A fundamental truth. The Chaos is not fond of observers.”

  Below the horizon and the wrinkled, burning sky, if he focused hard enough, Jebrassy could make out jumbles of shapes, what might have been faraway, broken buildings, old cities, or perhaps just piles of stone and rubble. He had no scale for comparison—how big, how high, how many were these things, spread out so strangely? How far to the line between “sky” and “ground”? His eyes couldn’t seem to focus—details presented themselves then flashed away, elusive as motes of dust.

  The Librarian held his shoulder. “This is what your female will soon be seeing.”

  “Then she hasn’t left yet?”

  “And you will join her. But first we must learn whether we have solved a great problem. Against this problem, I am, and always have been, as humble and troubled as one of your beasts of burden down in the basement Tiers.”

  Jebrassy said, “You don’t know how stupid pedes can be.”

  The Librarian touched his finger to his nose. “In my world, I can be just that stupid. Look. Ask. I will try to describe and explain.”

  “How big is it, out there?”

  “In the Chaos, distance is difficult to measure or judge. That has been the chief obstacle to your pilgrims—how to get from where they think they are to where they think they want to be.”

  “It looks confused,” Jebrassy said. “It isn’t finished—feels incomplete. Doesn’t want to be seen undressed.”

  “A fair assessment. Though we should not ascribe our own motives to the Typhon. They are not the same—if the Typhon can even be said to have motive. In the simplest terms—applicable to our experience within the Kalpa—we are looking out over a thousand miles, horizon to horizon. Down there—look toward the closer regions just below—you can see a narrow gray circle, stretching out to a broader black border. You might be able to make out a kind of maze, and a low wall.”

  Jebrassy followed the Librarian’s pointing finger and saw a gray curve surrounded by what might have been a black smudge of wall, two hand-spans out from the great rounded, shiny shapes immediately below—the word came to him, bions.

  The tower rose from the middle bion, which looked damaged. The other two bions appeared to be in even worse condition.

  “I’ve seen this before,” he murmured. “My visitor told me.” His face wrinkled in frustration, but the Librarian seemed to understand.

  “Go on.”

  Jebrassy tried to finish his thought. “There’s a shifting place…I think it’s called the zone of lies.”

  “Very dangerous,” the Librarian said. “Many breeds have had their journeys ended there before fairly begun. I believe the Menders have improved your education and training since those times.”

  “You’re talking about our lives,” Jebrassy said.

  “No need to get testy. Tell me you aren’t already attracted to what you see.”

  “I am!” Jebrassy shouted, and tried to turn away, but couldn’t. He was fascinated. He yearned, said almost in a whimper, “I always have been.”

  “I have my inclinations, and you have yours. Right now we’re working together—but when you go out there, to join your mate, as you have dreamed, you will carry to her information no one else possesses. Information that might help you both survive, and succeed. And if you do not succeed, then my half an eternity of labor will pass away, without conclusion—without product—a failure.

  “All that I am, then, rests on your small shoulders, young breed. The Typhon is absorbing the old universe, from beginning to end. Our time and history are being broken up, dissolved—look out the window. The Chaos is just beyond the border of the real, waiting.”

  Jebrassy forced himself to look over the curved, darkened, jumbled landscape. Outside the zone of lies, great high shapes stood up against the Chaos, difficult to make out, as if surrounded by fog. Defenders.

  “Only three threads connect us to the broken past that will soon be upon us—your female, who will soon travel into the Chaos; you, and one other, a driven being, forced to abandon all principle, who cares little for any sort of existence—but who must return.”

  Jebrassy frowned, trying to retrieve an elusive memory of hatred and pity.

  The epitome tapped the crystal window with a white finger. “The lives of you and your dream-partners are strung like beads on the cosmos’s remaining threads—heading for a collision. If all goes well, that collision will happen in Nataraja. That is where you will go—where all marchers have tried to go. There is no other destination.

  “You must succeed where Sangmer failed.”

  Jebrassy thought of the books and stories that Grayne had guided them to. “You’re the one who put the shelves in the Tiers—aren’t you?” he asked.

  “One of me,” the epitome said. “Not very long ago.”

  “How long?” Jebrassy asked, defiant.

  “What if I said a hundred million wakes—could you count them, remember them all, even begin to understand how long that is?”

  Jebrassy tried to stare a challenge. Finally, he glanced aside. “No,” he said.

  “We are adapted to our time as well as our space. Even this epitome can hardly conceive of a hundred million wakes without external assistance, so don’t be embarrassed. And it was longer ago than that.”

  CHAPTER 66

  * * *

  The Border of the Real

  She was always going to do this.

  She would always be doing this.

  Tiadba had wanted to join a march long before she met Jebrassy; long before Grayne had instructed her to recruit the young breed warrior, long before she fell in love. And long before she lost her warrior.

  And here she was, wearing a suit of supple orange armor, feeling no fear, only that ache of grief and loneliness that would never go away—and the realization that this was what she had been made to do.

  To leave the Tiers, the city itself, and cross over the border of the real, beyond the reach of the Kalpa’s great generators…

  To cross the Chaos and see what lay on the other side.

  Pahtun took Tiadba and Khren aside and told them they were group leaders. “I’ll go as far as I can with you. But I will not go beyond the zone of lies. I must return. Our f
inal battle is upon us.”

  Tiadba looked to Khren and saw that he was intent on the trainer’s words. No sign remained of Jebrassy’s buffoonish young friend. He, too, was always going to do this. She wondered: Had all breeds been made this way?

  Assisted by the four escorts, the marchers prepared to roll out the small wheeled cart that carried their claves and two portable generators.

  Pahtun got to his feet and repeated what he had said earlier, so often it was almost soothing in its familiarity. “The beacon from the Kalpa is perpetual. From its pulse you will always know where lies the city. There are moments when the Witness seems to interfere with the beacon—perhaps deliberately—but you will regain the signal if you persist. All your suits possess the means. There can be no communication sent to the city, ever—you must not alert the Chaos to your presence. There are vigilants, of all sizes and strengths, always changing but constant in their watchfulness. The Chaos is hungry.”

  Khren stood beside Tiadba and glanced at her through his golden-colored face pane.

  “And now—the time has come to tell you your destination,” Pahtun said. “It is the destination of all pilgrims since the time of Sangmer—the only other point on Earth where sense may still rule and where there may be help for the Kalpa. It is the rebel city called Nataraja. There, if all goes well, you will connect with whomever remains free of Typhonian rule. You will work with them and tell what you know, and follow their instructions. Believe me, young breeds, if I could go with you, I would.”

  Tiadba brushed the leg pouch that contained her bag of books.

  Pahtun seemed nervous, even guilty. He was repeating his instructions. “No one knows what awaits you. Your armor has reactive protection—it can learn faster than you, and will do all in its power to adapt and to protect you against the Typhon’s perversions. Your face panes will convert whatever passes for radiation into photons you can see, and that will do you no harm. Sometimes they may fail to find anything they know how to convert—and so you will see darkness or approximations based on recent events. The closer you are as a team, the more your suits can communicate and coordinate. It is unwise to straggle or scatter too far—but distance out there is difficult to judge, even with the best equipment.

  “Temptations may exist. The vigilants will try to get you to switch off your generators and strip away your armor. Should you find their temptation irresistible, you will no longer be a breed, but become part of the Typhon’s misrule—an atrocity like those exhibited across so much of the Chaos. And some who have failed—even the greatest, the bravest—are used by the Typhon against the Kalpa.”

  Pahtun struggled for words. “It is possible that the Defenders will fail, and you will lose the beacon’s guidance. The last option then is destruction. The armor will bestow this mercy.”

  Tiadba’s suit no longer itched or chafed. She could not feel her skin—the furry bits that had bunched here and there and itched seemed to have been soothed. No doubt the armor was taking charge of all her sensations—perhaps she would soon become just a suit and not a living creature.

  What would Grayne think, seeing them now? How could they have been better prepared, better educated?

  “We need to get moving,” Pahtun said, one hand touching his shoulder. The four escorts straightened and held out their staffs. “We have a brief opening, and we must pass through the gate before it closes.”

  They began.

  The halves of the marchers’ helmets swung from their neck-pieces with the rhythm of their steps. Their boots made soft, flat clicks. Together, they sounded like farm pedes crawling over dry, hard dirt.

  They walked for long miles beneath the huge central arch, one side illuminated by the wakelight of the far ceil, the other…not. The quality of sound changed in a way difficult to describe. Tiadba had spent her entire life in the Tiers listening to the hive-hum of voice and echo, all her fellow breeds speaking, moving, thinking. That now fell off into stony quiet and a new quality replaced it: destitute hollowness, bereft, lonely yet somehow proud—and more ancient than any of them could conceive.

  The Tiers had always stood apart within the Kalpa, lower than any other level, yet special, different. How many marchers had performed this journey already, as scared as they were, as lonely and far from all they had ever known?

  “It’s quiet,” Khren said.

  Miles to go—hundreds, thousands. Who could know?

  We’re leaving the Tiers behind forever.

  We’re crossing into the Chaos.

  Whether their eyes adjusted to the gloom or the air here was clearer, Tiadba could not say—but suddenly she could make out square, regular shapes lined up on each side of the arch—taller than the tallest of the blocs of Tiers.

  “What are those?” she asked, keeping her voice soft. Out here she felt it might be even more important to show respect.

  “The inner rank of reality generators,” Pahtun said. “They become active if the outer ranks fail.”

  The floor was uneven, broken by periodic ripples as if it had buckled under awesome pressure. Here and there, scars and parallel scuffs marred the otherwise smooth surface. Perhaps intrusions had slipped through this way, touched down…and burned.

  Ahead, Tiadba could just make out the far edge of the vault and something else—a slowly shimmering barrier.

  As minutes of walking passed into hours, the shimmer did not seem to get any closer. Still, her energy did not flag. The suit’s effect was energizing, electric. Grayne’s words from the early meetings returned to her.

  You could walk for thousands of miles across the roughest, most forbidding terrain, yet you’ll remain fit and strong. It will be the fulfillment of all you are, the adventure of a lifetime. I envy you.

  After dozens of miles and hours of marching, the dark vault overhead still seemed endless. Then—a change. The shimmer appeared distinctly closer. Despite her doubts, she could not help getting excited. The sky. Pahtun said to be ready for the sky.

  “Helmets up. Seal them tight,” the second escort ordered.

  Tiadba looked around, took a deep breath. The air—the last privileged air of the Tiers—was already bitterly cold. Frost formed on her lower lip and around her nose. Then, as one, the halves of their helmets—which until now had lain on their shoulders like empty fruit skins—rose up and sealed with a hiss that made her ears pop. Her head grew warm and her vision sharpened. The shimmer ahead acquired a life and sparkle she had not noticed before.

  “Wonderful,” Perf said. “My ears aren’t cold.”

  Pahtun brought them to a halt. The escorts lined up behind them, as if to block escape.

  They don’t get it. Pahtun understands—these others don’t, not at all!

  The marchers milled restlessly. They stood on the crest of a particularly high ripple in the Kalpa’s outer foundations.

  Suddenly, the shimmer fell directly in front of them, then bulged inward as if to push them back. The escorts raised their staffs. Pahtun leaned forward. “Wait for it,” the trainer said. “Don’t walk into it. Let it find you.”

  Khren glanced at Tiadba through his faceplate. What she could see of his face looked calm, resigned.

  “Wait for it,” Pahtun cautioned again. The breeds cringed inside their armor, as if they might be snatched up and eaten.

  The shimmer did not move, but suddenly it was behind them. They had passed through without taking a step, and now saw more miles of uneven ground ahead, and beyond, a wall studded with huge shapes: the Defenders.

  The final, outer rank of reality generators.

  Beyond those tall, blurred shapes lay the middle lands, the zone of lies. Tiadba looked straight up. They were out from under the vault. The sky loomed.

  Open sky.

  She captured an impression of endlessly falling curtains, restless color she could not process or accept—no color at all, actually, and probably no motion. Her eyes suddenly lost focus. The sky worked them in ways they had never had to work before.


  “You don’t want to see everything at once,” Pahtun said, “even through the faceplates. Look down, shut your eyes if they hurt.”

  Her eyes did hurt—they wanted to tumble in their sockets and face the back of her skull—but Tiadba did not look down, did not shut them. She had waited too long for this. She rotated on the pads of her boots and looked up along the great curved exterior bulk of the first bion, then left and right, trying to take in the other two huge, dark shapes, both split and cracked—in partial ruins.

  The Kalpa—what was left of it.

  Something above slowly came into view, pushing up and away from behind the first bion: a curving ribbon of painful fire, red and purple at once, fencing in a black, consuming nothingness, empty of thought and life. Tiadba’s mouth hung open and her breath became ragged. It was instantly and obviously wrong—so strange as to push her beyond fright.

  “Is that the sun?” she asked.

  “Depends on what you mean by sun,” Pahtun said. He had fixed his gaze on the ground. “It’s certainly no longer the sun we made.”

  Tiadba asked her second question—on behalf of her visitor. “Where are the stars?”

  “Long gone,” Pahtun answered.

  All their lives they had been protected by the warm, limiting light of the ceil, hardly varying through its pleasant, soothing cycles of wake and sleep—but no more. What lay beyond the walls and above the city was majestic but cruel, self-involved, producing not light but something that the transparent faces of their helmets had to translate for any sense to come of it.

  The Chaos.

  “Wait for it,” Pahtun warned again, studying the ground. Tiadba had no idea what they were waiting for now. How could it get any stranger, any more challenging?

  Something reached down, even though they were still within the border of the real—reached down and tried to casually flick them away, like brushing letterbugs off a table. Four of the marchers screamed at once, then fell and rolled into a shallow valley between the foundation’s ripples, trying to hide. Khren and Nico crumpled to their knees and clung, leaving Tiadba alone beside the trainer, the only one still looking up.