City at the End of Time

by Greg Bear

  Bidewell held his answer until all the women had gathered. Most sat on the old wooden chairs—Agazutta remained standing. Farrah lay back on the overstuffed chair, languid as always, but her eyes flicked at every noise, and her hands clutched the padded chair arms.

  “Not long,” Bidewell said. “I haven’t told the children. From this point, things will decay rapidly. I have deeply valued your company.”

  “But not our judgment,” Farrah said with a sniff. “Letting those bastards in. Why?”

  Bidewell stared up at the high rafters and shook his head. “The stones choose.”

  “How do you know Glaucous?” Agazutta asked.

  Bidewell made a disgusted grimace. “Him I could have predicted.”

  “If he’s a hunter, why let him in?”

  “No answer I give will ever suffice…but the sum-runners pick their companions.”

  “More like create them, right?” Ellen asked, her hands making small lost movements to her cheek, her chin. They all jumped at another sharp crack and grind from outside the walls.

  “Not to be known,” Agazutta said wearily.

  Bidewell looked down and there were tears on his cracked, rugged cheeks, which shocked them all. “I know this much. The shepherds as confirmed by Mnemosyne are by text, out of text—text is central. The sum-runners have mazed their courses throughout all the world-lines, traveling all possible avenues, even the most unlikely, and now they have arrived, summed—come to our attention…and out of themselves, vaster than anything we can imagine, they have made guardians. Even Daniel, though that is not certain.”

  “A false one, perhaps,” Miriam said.

  “We do not know that,” Bidewell said. “Though his proximity to Glaucous—worrying, certainly. For centuries, there have been rumors of a bad shepherd…But I have never met him, or her.”

  “What’s a bad shepherd?” Agazutta asked, combing her fingers through her hair.

  “A traveler working his way forward, through other shepherds. Using them. Bringing more than just a stone—bringing something else, for his own motives.”

  “Sounds charming,” Farrah said.

  Bidewell held his hands over the iron stove, then examined his fingers. “As always, I apologize for my ignorance, ladies,” he murmured. “But as you say, our time is limited. I sense restlessness. I can assure you the opportunities outside are very limited.”

  “They’ve made up their minds,” Ellen said.

  “Who is going?”

  Agazutta raised her hand. “Children, grown and moved out—France, Japan, far away, but maybe they’ve left messages for me at home. Maybe there’s still a way to speak to them. I have to try.”

  Miriam raised hers. “I need to get back to the clinic—if it’s still there. My patients must be scared out of their wits. My staff…They’ve been with me for years.”

  Farrah stood and stretched. “I’m alone,” she said. “But I’ll go with Agazutta and Miriam, just to watch out for them.”

  “I’ll stay,” Ellen said. “Whether I’m needed here or not—no one out there needs me.”

  “Not even us?” Agazutta said. “Is this the end of the Witches of Eastlake?”

  “It’s been good,” Ellen said. “You are all the best friends, the finest adventurers one could hope for.”

  “Well, it ain’t over…”

  “Until I sing,” Farrah said.

  The women exchanged hugs. More tears were shed. Then they took up their bags and purses, and Bidewell escorted them to the northern door.

  “You have your books?” he asked. “Do not lose them. Keep them close at all times.”

  They gave him wry looks. “Slender tomes,” Agazutta said.

  “What does 1298 mean?” Farrah asked.

  “They are your stories, dear ladies,” Bidewell said, “penned long ago in Latin, by your obedient servant, copying from even older texts—scrolls that were burned at Herculaneum. So long as you keep your stories near, you will be afforded some protection. I do not suggest reading ahead or skipping to the end—not yet.”

  “Will we get out of this alive?” Farrah asked.

  Bidewell lightly snorted, but gave no answer.

  Miriam opened the door to the outside. The air over the city had cleared a little. “Oh, look,” she said with a sigh. “It isn’t raining.”

  “What will happen to the rest of you?” Agazutta asked, taking Bidewell by the elbow as they walked down the ramp side by side.

  “That is well known,” Bidewell said. “I am marked. I have been in the fray too long to go unnoticed, and so…I fear all our fates hinge on the outcome, and before that arrives, we must enter a kind of storage, along with this city—all cities, all histories, all times. The world out here is not the only record, and not the final version in the edit.”

  Agazutta shook her head in wistful irritation. “I’ve never understood you, or why we did all this.”

  “I’m a seductive fellow,” Bidewell said.

  “That you are,” Miriam said, and kissed his cheek.

  The gate was opened, and three of the Witches of Eastlake departed into the grayness, holding bags or purses, and their books, before them. They left their youngest, Ellen, standing beside the ancient man with wet cheeks, who looked even older now.

  “We should go back in,” Ellen said, peering after the figures. They were limned by barely visible halos, and the flickering of the sky—the leaning and grinding of the walls—slowed as they departed.

  “It will not long matter where any of us stands,” Bidewell said.

  Ellen grasped his face and looked straight into his eyes. “You didn’t tell them. You think things have gone wrong.”

  “In the short run, now equal to any long run, we are all together. There are only two fates, two paths remaining. We shall all be moved along one path or the other—to be reconciled and ordered in our conclusions by Mnemosyne, or played with by the Chalk Princess as she sees fit. And it is our visiting children who will steer us, ultimately.”

  He pulled himself straight and waved his hands at the curtain of gloom where the women had passed. “I wish them well,” he said. “It is cold out here.” He closed the door but did not shoot the bolt home. “We have been dealt all our cards.”

  CHAPTER 76

  * * *

  The Chaos

  The branches swung aside as this Pahtun—he had no other name—led them deeper into the trees. Tiadba knew they would never be able to find their way out. The branches had parted reluctantly, and then tried to enclose them, perhaps as defense. And the armor no longer responded to her commands to close up and form a seal. Obviously, the Tall One was in charge, and seemed to know what he was doing.

  Macht wore a steady scowl, and Denbord had frozen his face in a look of insolence, though he said nothing. They had already been through too much.

  “Did you try out your claves?” Pahtun asked. “How effective were they?” The Tall One spun about, arms extended, and the tips of the branches overhead brightened almost into wakelight.

  “We tried them,” Denbord said. “They were hard to manage. But some of the old marchers fell back—the dead ones, I mean, whatever they were. They fell apart.”

  “Echoes, no doubt. They’re thick around here.”

  “Were they dead?” Tiadba asked.

  “Perhaps not dead, but most unfortunate. They might have been versions of you who made wrong choices and got trapped, their fates snared and looped by the Typhon. The Typhon uses whatever it captures or finds. Not a pleasant end. No end at all, from what I’ve seen over the past few tens of thousands of wakes. I work out here, save what I learn, and pass it along to such as get this far.”

  “How many breeds have survived?” Denbord asked.

  Nico lifted his hands in a counting prayer.

  “I’m not sure. A hundred…fewer.” Pahtun touched the ground and a box rose up, about the size of a clothes box. Walking around it, he scratched his palms, spoke a few soft words, jerked his hea
d. The box responded and its sides fell open. Within, thin branches spun and grew with dizzying speed, throwing sharp little sparks. They were miniature versions of the trees that surrounded and covered them.

  “Take off your suits. Lay them out on the ground. Once they air out, we’ll throw them in here.” He pointed at the spinning mass in the box. “Your armor will be remade and improved—new knowledge, better guidance. And then you’ll go. I’ll be breaking this camp and fleeing myself. The trod is close, and I don’t want to be caught by a Silent One. Besides, we’re all much too near the Witness.”

  “How is that possible?” Tiadba asked. “We were let out into the Chaos far from there.”

  “Distance, angle, the metric—all changing, I’m afraid. And it isn’t getting any easier to plan and prepare for.”

  He gestured with his hands, flower finger prominent, and one by one, reluctantly, they peeled off their suits—all but Macht—and laid them on the ground. Herza and Frinna stayed close to the box, as if comforted by its apparently benign mystery. Shewel joined them.

  Pahtun gathered the suits and flung them into the spinning branches, where they sizzled and vanished. He waited for Macht to make up his mind.

  “Tall magic,” Denbord said, with a wink and a nod, and then touched his nose. He still did not believe, but what else could they do? The protection was obvious—if temporary.

  “Just do it,” Tiadba instructed Macht. He glared at her but finally handed his suit to this Pahtun, who dropped it into the silvery tangle.

  The breeds lay mostly naked around the box and took turns telling of the last large intrusion, the damage to the Kalpa, their training, the end of the first Pahtun, the starboats in the valley that went away, the shattered ghosts of cities, the strange way light moved out here.

  And the echoes.

  “No doubt Perf is with them now,” Macht said, and Nico knelt and tented his hands, a prayer of supplication—though to what, out here, no one could say.

  Pahtun listened intently, though Tiadba suspected he had heard such tales before. “You’ve done well against all odds, young breeds,” he said. “Good to know we can still shape such as you. But the city is ignorant about much of the Chaos—always has been. I can’t go back, nor can I communicate what I know, because the city must not take such a chance. We might be products of the Typhon, after all, made to misinform.”

  “That’s what the trainer told us,” Macht said, and looked miserable.

  “Might be,” Pahtun emphasized. “Use your instincts—they are so much better tuned than those of any Mender or Eidolon. Closer to the primordial Earth, closer to the truth. Am I of the Chaos?”

  “No,” Denbord finally said, and Tiadba agreed. The others kept silent.

  “Well, some believe, some are suspicious; all good. None of you can be right all the time. Here is what I can tell you. The trods shift and grow. There are any number of them out there, pulling in tighter—most of them pointing to a great crater, cut through by a vale that extends almost halfway around what remains of the Earth. I’ve seen a few strange things gather and grow out there—I don’t know what they are, or what they might do. The Chaos lets them accumulate, for now. I’ve heard Eidolons call them ‘Turvies’—singular, ‘Turvy.’ The angelins in the Broken Tower can sometimes see that far, tricks of Chaos light being in their favor. They surround your goal, Nataraja.”

  “Does it still exist?” Nico asked.

  “Let’s hope,” Pahtun said. “If it doesn’t, then all our efforts have been wasted. The Great Eidolons, in their wisdom, exiled important persons to that rebel city—and with them, I hear, they carried important tools.”

  “What?” Nico asked, eyes bright.

  “Only they would know. The Librarian’s tale—have you been told that one, young breeds?”

  “No,” they said.

  “Not all of it,” Nico added.

  Tiadba lifted the books, which she had kept strapped within the leg pouch of her armor. “Maybe we don’t need to know,” she said.

  Several times, Pahtun had glanced at the books with something like hunger. “I doubt that your ignorance would help anyone,” he said. “It’s part of the great story, the greatest story of all. But you, young breed—your name is Tiadba, is it not?”

  She had not told him. Perhaps he’d learned it from her armor. “Yes,” she said.

  “Read for us, why don’t you? We have time, and I haven’t heard a marcher’s story in ever so long.”

  She opened her book and found a passage by Sangmer that described his crew, and their journey in the starboat across the last winding reaches of space and time.

  THE FIRST OF ISHANAXADE

  Even surrounded by the beauty of the Shen necklace-worlds and the clever arts gathered in past times from all the living galaxies, my crew could only feel pity at what we had seen—and dread at the thought of traveling back through those ruined spaces. Whatever we brought back with us—whomever we transported—the return journey would be even more difficult.

  While Polybiblios made his preparations—shedding his Shen selves and returning to Deva unity—I walked along the grainy margins of the basin wherein the Shen had stored their discoveries. Here, glistening like a soft jade ocean beneath the banded glow of the greatest ringstar, lay the pooled fate-logs of Shen travels during the Brightness, before the end of creation, their information long since scrambled and irretrievable—but still beautiful.

  I sought quiet, a lonely kind of peace, but better than contemplating our almost certain oblivion in the Chaos.

  My crew was amusing itself by visiting the shrines of Shen accomplishment—erected by human students from worlds long since eaten by the Chaos. The Shen acknowledged no gifts, accepted no reverence; not even to the extent of refusing or demolishing these tributes. Abandoned in scenic disrepair, the monuments rose or fell at the shivery whim of this huge pseudo-planet.

  The Shen had been the first to map the five hundred living galaxies, the first to link the ancient barren whorls of dying suns into ringstars, the first to do so many things. And here was that dead, glistening sea of exploration and knowledge, lapping on a beach of whispering grains, a mockery of all who have ever sought glory.

  With only my dark thoughts as company, I stripped my garments and walked out onto the vectors, feeling them coil like jelly-crystal, cool and silver around my ankles, seeking the glow of my order—but unable to share or partake. They fell back with lost whispers, a muddle just on the edge of sense, as if they might still be capable of retelling lost tales. Melancholy to match my own—and no one else’s, I thought, until I saw what at first I took to be a small young female, walking toward me from a mile or so farther along the strand.

  This was an impossibility: a human-seeming figure on a world where only my crew claimed humanity; my crew, humble Menders all, and of course the Deva Polybiblios.

  The girl could have been a young Mender, but none of my kind had been born and raised in such a way, through incarnate infancy and youth, for tens of trillions of years.

  As she grew close, I waded to the shore, then knelt on the margin to caress the tiny, rounded bits washed up there, glowing with a soft green radiance. I watched this girl-child from the corner of my eye, helpless—feeling that a truly irreversible moment approached.

  But there could be no retreat.

  “Are you the Pilgrim?” the child asked when her voice could be heard above the whispers.

  “Some call me that. Who were you?” I thought she might be a ghost of vector history, brought back by some contribution I had made to the bright-roiled sea—a bit of shed skin, tricked up by forces far beyond Mender understanding.

  “I am, not were. I have no finished name. The Shen have bequeathed me to a human I will call Father. He has gathered my parts in this sea, like these pieces on the shore, and helped shape them into what you see now.”

  “Are you human?” I asked.

  “Mostly,” she said. “My father pledges me to Gens Simia through De
va lineage.”

  Close as she was, her features had not yet settled. She showed many graceful possibilities, yet seemed neither hurried nor embarrassed by this multiplicity.

  “How are we to be introduced?”

  “I have a Shen name, but that is little better than none.”

  “What else are you, besides human?” I asked, trying not to sound rude.

  “I’m not sure. Polybiblios assures me I contain elements of the forces that once helped shape and resolve creation. The Shen found them, collected them, and deposited them in this sea, for Father to rediscover and shape. How he could fit such large ideas into this small form, I don’t know. Can you see them?”

  “I don’t see anyone or anything clearly.”

  She assumed a determined face, and her outline sharpened, but then she grew larger, too large, rising above the vector sea many times my height.

  I looked up, charmed by this metric naiveté.

  “It must feel important to be a vessel of creation’s glory,” I said, shading my eyes against the brilliant light of the ringstar.

  “Most of the time, I can’t feel it,” she admitted. “But sometimes I lose control and try to fix things, or bring logic—to correct. As I mature, I’ll control myself and take reliably solid form, like you, I think. Your form is pleasing. That’s what Polybiblios tells me.”

  “Are you a reward, then? A gift from Shen masters to Deva student?”

  “My father does seem to bear me great affection.” She had fallen in altitude and was now just a little taller than me, and already appeared more mature. “I think he wants to study what I will become.”

  She dipped her toe into the vector sea and rose-red waves spread outward, as if by herself she could revive all that had ever been lost.

  “If I stay here, the Shen can’t or won’t give me what I need. I will become another abandoned memory, like this sea. And then—what’s left will perish when the Shen succumb to the Chaos.”