City at the End of Time

by Greg Bear

  The sky—what had once been the sky—seemed to know that it was being watched. It tried to reach into her eyes, plunge through her mind, subvert everything that defined her as a breed—as an observer, a thinker, a separate being.

  It refuses to be understood—it will certainly not be mastered.

  Tiadba slowly lowered her gaze to the uneven, fractured ground, then blinked, of her own will. Somehow she had fought off what lay above the Kalpa, fought it to a standoff.

  Pahtun looked upon this young female breed with new respect. He took some small satisfaction in their distress, and professional interest in their slow recovery.

  “That’s just the beginning,” he said. “No way to prepare you. No way at all.”

  They neared the outer rank of generators—high, narrow monuments sliding back and forth slowly along the perimeter—pale, shining, and indistinct, like towering glass giants surrounded by fog. Shapes buried inside these obelisks moved with slow deliberation, as if tracking outside forces.

  Between the generators lay a misty darkness broken by a maze of low walls, barely knee-high to a breed. Tiadba could not believe those walls would keep out anything that really wanted to get in.

  Pahtun and the escorts accompanied the nine breeds over the last five miles to the inner wall. Distance still meant something here, sixty miles out from the training camp in the flood channel.

  They had learned to level their gaze upon the dark gray horizon and not look up unless they had to.

  “There used to be seven bions to the Kalpa, and twelve cities on the Earth,” Pahtun told them, his voice clear in their helmets. He walked ahead on the hard surface, crazed with cracks and crevices, his boots raising puffs from fine dust that had somehow streamed into tiny dunes. The dust lay over the ancient foundation like fine ash—perhaps it was ash. “The reality generators worked for millions of years to protect all the bions. Then—war. The Chaos took the spoils. Now there are only three bions—and soon, perhaps just two, or one. You might find the rest of that story in your books, young breeds. How the Ashurs and Devas and Eidolons fought among themselves, and the cities were sacrificed to their godlike stupidity.”

  “What’s a ‘god’?” Khren asked. Nico, Shewel, and Denbord walked on Tiadba’s left, Khren and Macht on her right. Perf, as always, straggled behind with Frinna and Herza.

  Nobody answered. “Just thought a Tall One might know,” Khren murmured.

  Tiadba felt no hunger, no pain—hardly felt the exertion of walking for long miles over the ancient, dead surface. She was beginning to feel beyond all real pain or care, all emotions except for curiosity, which never failed her. If Jebrassy were here, she knew he would be as curious as she, and as eager to see what lay beyond the border of the real.

  Their only hope for freedom, they had once believed, lay outside the Kalpa, far from the stifle of history and tradition. The books, their trainer, the sky itself, such as it was—all told a different story. They were once again being used. As they had always suspected, they were just tools, means to an end. Still, Pahtun seemed concerned for their welfare. Now that the training was almost over, his gruffness had tempered to patient instruction about last-minute details. He repeated himself often, and this irritated Tiadba, but when she looked at the other breeds, she understood the necessity. Especially for Herza and Frinna, who never asked questions. They needed the stories told over and over for a reason. How could they possibly survive in the Chaos?

  “The middle lands are most difficult,” Pahtun said for the hundredth time. “The zone of lies is called that for a reason—intrusions can happen at any moment. You must cross quickly. Should the Chaos launch an assault through the sector you are crossing, the battle between the Kalpa’s generators and the intrusion will create intense whirlpools of fractured time and space, almost invisible and deadly. Get caught in one and you will never reach the border of the real. Your suits will not become fully active in this region. Listen to them—they will tell you when an intrusion and its effects are near, and whether your perceptions, or your decisions, are being clouded.”

  Their own spoken words reached each other directly, right in their ears—but the way the armor communicated was difficult to get used to. It only rarely used audible words. Much of the time they simply “knew better.” Tiadba was not sure whether she resented this subtlety. It could certainly prove useful beyond the gates and the border of the real—though Pahtun and the other escorts had warned them that the suits could not know everything.

  Pahtun said, “Don’t underestimate your instincts—you are observers, made of ancient matter, and observers are primary even out in the Chaos. The Typhon is envious of your senses. This is the first principle—out there, to look, to perceive, is to be hated. Later, when you’ve acquired direct experience of the Chaos, you will learn to rely more and more on your own judgment, above all things. But at first, and certainly in the zone of lies, rely upon your suits.”

  “How can something inside the borders be worse than what’s outside?” Nico asked.

  “Not worse—just treacherous,” Khren said. “Like being bitten by a tame pede. You don’t expect it.”

  “Oh,” Nico said.

  “A meadow pede bit me once, when I stepped on its tail,” Shewel said.

  “Pedes are all tail,” Perf said.

  “This one was all bite. Nearly lost a toe. Still hurts when I walk a long ways.” Shewel’s skin shone pale behind his golden faceplate.

  Pahtun slowed enough that Tiadba could catch up with him, then tuned his voice to her helmet alone. “Some marchers think they’ve been betrayed,” he said. “They think the Kalpa sends them out into the Chaos to die, or worse—for no reason. Doesn’t matter what trainers tell them. Maybe it’s the books they find back in the Tiers. Bad start, that sort of thinking.”

  She didn’t know how to respond, so she stared straight ahead.

  “What’s most startling to the trainers is that even when the marchers start off badly, if they make it across the zone of lies, they seem to do well—as far as they can be tracked from the Broken Tower. It’s true, young breed—you were made for the Chaos.”

  “But none come back,” she said.

  “Maybe they get where they’re going and it’s better there—for breeds. If I could, I would join your march and go see. Do you believe me when I say that?”

  He seemed to care about her answer. She did believe him, but did not want to give him the satisfaction of saying so. After all, his kind had let the cities die, let the Chaos advance, let the intrusions in—and had taken Jebrassy from her, and she could not guess why.

  More miles passed, and they came to a row of square gray pillars, each about a hundred feet tall and ten feet thick. They stretched off in both directions for as far as she could see—tens of miles.

  The marchers gathered around one pillar.

  Pahtun patted it. “These mark the outer boundary of the old city, before the Mass Wars and the Chaos. Back then the Kalpa was huge—bigger than I can imagine. The middle lands lie two miles beyond these markers. I’ll take you a few hundred yards into the zone, and then we must part company.”

  Pahtun stood for a moment, hand against a pillar. Then he straightened and walked on.

  “He’s afraid,” Khren said as he drew near Tiadba.

  “He can hear you,” she reminded him.

  “I’m afraid,” Khren said, and tipped his finger against his helmet, as if to touch his nose. “But I’m excited, too. What does that mean?”

  The others tipped their fingers to their faceplates, and Nico stretched out his arms, folding them like a warden’s wings, and danced over the cracked, dusty plain. His boots—all their boots—were gray with the ashen dust.

  “Maybe we’re going aaarp,” Perf said. “That would explain a lot. We’re not even there and already we’re broken.”

  Pahtun and the escorts may have been listening, but just kept walking until the low black line they had seen for some while now grew into a glossy
black wall, with a narrow gap cut through, barely wide enough for one breed.

  “Do all marchers pass through there?” Khren asked.

  “No,” Pahtun said. “This gate opened a few minutes ago. The Kalpa has chosen the safest path—for now.”

  “Somebody up in the tower is keeping track?” Perf asked.

  Tiadba felt the sudden urge to look over her shoulder. She knew—suddenly and completely—where Jebrassy was. He was in the tower—but he wasn’t watching.

  No need to turn around. No need to look back at all. She was done with the city. She would never return.

  But she was not done with Jebrassy, nor he with her.

  He’s coming. But by the time he arrives, you might not care.

  “Oh, shut up,” she said under her breath.

  “Sorry,” Perf said.

  “Not talking to you.”

  Pahtun turned sideways and squeezed through the gap. Tiadba went after him. All of the others followed, their armor brushing the exposed inner surface with an eerie, slick hum. When all were through, Pahtun gathered them once again into a tight group, and they stared out at the zone of lies—gray, jagged, broken; indistinct shapes mounded low along the horizon. “You’ll cross quickly. I’ll go as far as I can, but then you’re on your own. The next barrier is another low wall, about as high as your knee—marking the farthest reach of the Kalpa’s generators. These are the border of the real. And just beyond, you’ll see what looks like a great gate welcoming you, but don’t go there. It’s a trap—it rises wherever observers try to cross. A Typhonian welcome—if you pass through it, you’re lost. It takes you straight to the Silent Ones.”

  Tiadba saw Khren mouth Silent Ones, his eyes wide.

  Tiadba looked up just long enough to see a sharp gray ribbon arc overhead, and realized the Witness was still rotating its searchlight beam across the Kalpa and around the Chaos. With every sweep, the beam intersected the Broken Tower. The Witness was looking for someone—for Jebrassy—had always been searching for him. But why the Witness would care, could care, and why Jebrassy might be there, rather than here, her unreliable inner voice could not inform her, and so she did not know, and refused to think about it anymore.

  “Now, follow! Run!” Pahtun said, and he loped off to provide an example. The four escorts stayed behind, kneeling with staffs held out in salute.

  The breeds did their best to keep up, but soon the trainer was far ahead. Tiadba could barely see him, clambering over broken rubble, then standing and looking back over their heads—raising his arms. He saw something—but Tiadba knew he shouldn’t just stand there.

  A warning—

  Something dark covered the sky, and a sound like a hideous siren issued from the bions far behind them, pitched high and then low like mournful keening and growling—a noise that raised the fur under her armor and set her teeth on edge. She ran faster and pushed up against Khren and Nico, both dashing for their lives, but not as fast as Herza and Frinna, stumbling up and over blocks of heaved stone and mounds of heaped black foundation and thick drifts of slow, sucking ash.

  The darkness dropped. For an instant Tiadba wondered if the Kalpa wasn’t giving them cover—blanking the awful sky, distracting whatever might want to find them and tempt them. But then she realized the darkness came from outside, not from within—rolling back toward the bions in slow, oily waves.

  An intrusion. Like the one that separated us and scarred the Tiers—like the one that took Jebrassy’s sponsors. We were warned!

  They were within a few dozen yards of Pahtun, still standing on a high block of gray stone with his arm outstretched, frantically waving them on.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Khren shouted.

  “Don’t stop!” Tiadba yelled. “Keep running! Cross the zone!”

  The city fought back. A luminosity carved the landscape in simple, ragged patterns of black and white—no grays. The darkness spasmed. They dared not look up, but Tiadba glanced sideways at the block of stone, at Pahtun—and saw him caught in a burning coil of orange and empty black. She saw his armor break apart and blow away in rippling fragments. He shook free of the last scraps, then stood naked on the rock, and she saw—for an instant, but she would never forget—the bare truth of a Tall One, too smooth, too naked, and much too vulnerable.

  And then he was gone. A cloud of sparkles rose from the block and flew off.

  She swallowed a moan and kept running, head down, eyes burning with shame and fear.

  It seemed just a few hard, thumping steps later they came to the low wall that Pahtun had described—the outer perimeter. The border of the real. They leaped over it with hardly a thought.

  Looming before them, where nothing had been before, they saw a magnificent, arching gate, covered with monumental figures, all breeds, caught up in some beautiful golden substance, smiling and waving a frozen welcome—the gate stretching up and breaking through the flow of the warring darkness and the defending waves of luminosity from the Kalpa.

  All nine marchers slunk around the foot of the arch, squeezing between broken, jagged rocks—rocks everywhere, big and small—and then, exhausted, they slid into a hollow and shoved up against one another, hugging and shivering.

  The siren’s keen fell to a grumble, then stopped.

  Silence.

  Tiadba wept. Herza and Frinna muttered prayers. Shewel and the other males lay still, but their eyes shifted to the broken shadows. The hollow was cramped but seemed a fair refuge—at least, it did not open like a mouth and eat them, which she could easily imagine, given all they had been taught.

  They had survived the zone of lies. Their armor was hiding them effectively enough, something that Pahtun’s had failed to do. He’d been caught up in the city’s defense against the intrusion, just as he warned them—or so she surmised.

  He sacrificed himself. For us.

  This suddenly affected her deeply. Now, if they could believe their training—she could almost hear Pahtun’s sonorous voice—they must not stay where they were. Yet they could not move; paralysis gripped them as each tried to sort through what they had been taught, what their armor was saying to their bodies, conveying the depth of their peril. They couldn’t hear a thing except their own breathing and then Tiadba’s soft, trembling words as she encouraged them to get up, to move.

  “The Tall One told us to stay low,” Khren said. “Did he go back?”

  “He’s gone,” Tiadba said. Now wasn’t the time to tell them what she had seen.

  “We should stay here until he comes to get us,” Perf said.

  “He won’t come for us anymore. We’re on our own.”

  “Where exactly are we?” Nico asked, trying to overcome sudden hiccups. He tugged against his friends’ gripping hands and pushed up, trying to see out of the hollow.

  “We made it,” Perf said, astonished. “We’re still alive.”

  “We can’t stop,” Tiadba said. “We should travel as far as we can before we rest.”

  A pleasant low tone, languid and musical, sounded in their ears.

  Herza and Frinna touched their helmets. “The beacon,” Herza said. “We’re on course.”

  “Time to go,” Frinna said, transformed, and Macht echoed her, their enthusiasm surging, paralysis broken—too quickly.

  “What if something’s looking for us?” Perf asked.

  “Something will always be ‘looking for us,’” Khren said, with a buzz of sarcasm. “Let’s move, like she says. We should take a peek first, of course.”

  “That’s what I was trying to do,” Nico said.

  They could all feel it. They were in the Chaos, in the wild at last, and to Tiadba, the sudden excitement and anticipation were almost as frightening as Pahtun’s destruction. They were much too eager.

  But they knew that whatever came next, they were where they belonged.

  TEN ZEROS

  CHAPTER 67

  * * *

  The Green Warehouse

  Daniel and Glaucous stood silent
and watchful by the warehouse door, too tired to speak. Bidewell had brought the new visitors inside, then left them with Jack and went off, he said, to make preparations. “Things will be getting worse sooner rather than later.”

  Glaucous dropped to the wooden bench beside the door, face swollen with fatigue, piggish eyes bleary, paying neither of the younger men a whit of attention, as if for now they were beneath notice. Daniel lowered his head and bent over, fighting nausea.

  “I don’t know you,” Jack said to Daniel. “I do know you,” he blurted at the squat, gnomish man. “If you try anything, I swear…I’ll kill you.”

  Glaucous stared up at Jack. “Well spoken, young master,” he said. “You should know that I killed the pair that hunted the young lady. We all have our mixes of good and bad.”

  “How did you get out of the van?” Jack asked. “Where’s the fat woman?”

  Glaucous waggled his hand, demonstrating something flying off into the air.

  “I wouldn’t worry about him,” Daniel said, pushing up again.

  “What about you?” Jack asked.

  Glaucous smiled. “So very tuned, so very sharp.”

  Jack worked to keep his temper. “I don’t know why the old man let either of you in.”

  “You assume Bidewell’s brought you here to protect you—to keep you safe from such as me. He hasn’t told you his story, I take it?” Glaucous asked.

  “You shouldn’t talk when he’s not here.”

  “Ah, we are in your charge,” Glaucous mused, then dropped his gaze to the floor.

  “How many of us are here?” Daniel asked. “Shifters, I mean. I’m thinking three, me included.”

  Jack shook his head, unwilling to give up information. “Where did you get that stone?”