by Greg Bear
“Worse than Satan, is my guess. Worse than anything we’ve ever imagined. A malign embryo that will never be born, much less achieve any sort of maturity. A failed god.”
“And this female…is she that failed god?”
“No. She serves, but I believe her servitude is forced. Sometimes I almost recognize her…I’ve dreamed and guessed and thought about it for long centuries now. Perhaps when she arrives, I’ll know what questions to ask.”
“Something’s coming,” Ellen said. A new intensity of darkness and cold was closing in, and something else was in the air—something that made her want to weep. A loss far beyond the loss of a world—the loss of all history.
“Do you have your book?” Bidewell asked, getting to his feet.
“I thought the books were spent.”
“Not these. They still tell our stories.”
“What do we do—read them aloud?” Ellen removed her book from the bag.
Something moved through the fallen, frozen crates and boxes—not a cloud, not a figure—swirling around corners that did not exist, turning in directions no eye could follow, radiating a dark spectrum of emotions.
Bidewell gestured—a quick jerk of his fingers—and they opened the books, pushed them to their breasts, leaning toward each other, heads and hands touching.
A sound came in soft gusts, like a cry out of deep caverns—Rachel, weeping throughout eternity for her lost children.
“She’s blind,” Ellen said. “She’s blinded by grief.”
“Do not feel sorrow for her, not yet,” Bidewell said. “Everything about her is obverse. Grief is joy, and even her blindness is a kind of seeing.”
“Is that her?” Ellen asked as the shadows fell and the room seemed suspended over an abyss.
Bidewell opened his mouth but could not take a breath. There was no need for an answer. The Queen in White was upon them, and in her way, tried to love them as they deserved.
CHAPTER 85
* * *
Ginny
Ginny settled into a hollow in the crusted ground and pulled up the hood of her parka, then drew the strings tight, hiding most of her face. That weird sun was in the sky again. When it burned overhead, she could feel her small bubble of protection shrink, could almost feel it wither—just as when the deathly gray beam passed over. No doubt about it—this sky and what lay beneath did not like her.
The stone in her pocket had turned cold, but she didn’t dare let go. It protected her, of that she was certain, and it didn’t matter how it did so—not yet.
Then she had a thought: What if leaving the warehouse had put Bidewell and the others in deeper danger? There wasn’t anything she could do about that now. She had made her choice, half hoping someone would follow her, argue with her; and then, reasoning it through, she understood that it would have to be someone carrying his own stone, Jack or Daniel, perhaps both—but would they bring Glaucous, too? That seemed bitterly incongruous—a strange team indeed.
After a few minutes of rest—at least, it felt like a few minutes—she peered over the edge of the hollow and experienced another connection to Tiadba, this time while awake. They were closer. She had known that for some time now but could not understand what it meant; closer in what way? Their worlds had merged. She had guessed that much—doubted it, but could find no other explanation. Not that it was any sort of explanation.
Despite all her foolishness and “bad” decisions, she had always primly asserted her rationality—and now pondered for the ten thousandth time the reasons none of this could possibly happen. Her doubt was like tonguing a jagged, painful tooth. All the rules had been broken. What remained? Magic? Strength of will? Some effect of whatever science or knowledge had created the sum-runners?
Ultimately, she knew there could be no explanation, only survival and completion. Results. In most ways, she had lived her short life—perhaps shorter than she was happy to consider—in clueless ignorance, wrapped in the baby blankets of culture and surrounded by the poor theories of fellow travelers—all of that amounting to another kind of protective atmosphere, off which the smaller, plunging impossibilities bounced or burned away before reaching her. Consensus reality.
Another kind of bubble, equally inexplicable.
Well, out here that was gone, too. She was alone.
She ducked back into the hole. Something huge swung past nearby—a glimpse of sparking shadow accompanied by a thin, strident howling or weeping, penetrating the bubble and hurting her ears.
Ginny slowly gathered enough courage to look out again and saw that the shallow dip in the land lay beside a kind of road, colorless, neither bright nor dark—like something half seen by moonlight.
The road stretched to a sawtooth horizon.
“Stay away from the trods,” she murmured. “Whatever rides them might be strong enough to break your little bubble. Or see you—and collect you.”
She understood that inner voice. Tiadba again. So close!
Despite this warning, Ginny walked alongside the trod, a dozen paces away—such as her paces were, difficult to judge—and descended a grade onto a broad, grayish-tan plain. The mountainous walls to either side were lined with a dim audience of monuments, strange, seemingly dead and still. Twice she had to hide behind rocks or in dips as huge, flat, elevated shapes glided past on the trod. These made no sound and gave no warning. She did not want to know what they were—her glimpses, from a distance, might have shown heads big as buses, twitching, sweeping eyes pointed down, searching.
But they did not see her.
Ginny realized that she needed to think less and act more. Going mad out here would be less than pointless—like lighting a match inside a supernova.
She kept walking. The wrinkled, purple-black sky, devoid of stars, did not bother her so long as she did not look up. Strange, that feeling of silent resentment, like a fly flicked from the hindquarters of a sleeping horse. Whether or not she made any real impression, this place tried to repel her and negate every assumption she brought with her.
Still, she could not ignore a deep curiosity about the nature of the valley. Wherever she looked, the horizon was always curved. Perhaps light behaved differently here.
“I don’t know what that means. Stop thinking.”
The plain between the mountains…the monuments or statues—part of her had seen it all before. Tiadba had been here, was here now.
Or would be here.
Maybe they would meet.
“I’m not sure I’d like that,” she whispered, still walking. “I’m already stretched thin.” She dropped again as something on the trod skimmed by, like a huge dinner plate or a squashed crab with a human face. After it passed, when she got to her feet, she noticed a curved, shining green blade stuck in the black ground directly in front of her. A small handle on one side made it look like a baker’s dough-cutter. A weapon, I think. Why was it left here? Who dropped it?
She decided against touching the blade, much less picking it up. Could be a trap. Then the hair on her arms pricked—something was watching her—and she swung around, dizzied as the entire horizon seemed to careen this way and that—
And faced her first ancient breed. There wasn’t time to look away. A male, she guessed.
Not alive. Not dead.
And not alone. There were hundreds just like him, crawling or walking over the ridge into the valley, a river of figures, each smaller than her—this one barely up to her shoulder—and festooned with scraps of what might have once been thick clothing—armor? Red, orange, green, and blue, now faded, ripped and hanging like tissue.
They were marchers. She was sure of it. Their faces drooped like soft wax, their eyes—
She could not look into their eyes. Failed, lost, changed. Like ants they flowed into the valley, trying to reach something in the center, a structure hidden by a trick of the light, unless—as she did, frightened—you spun around twice, flinching and leaping between each spin to evade those who trudged past.
And after the seco
nd rotation—she saw.
Like a huge house or castle, it rose from a shallow crater in the center of the valley—could it actually be that many miles wide, that many miles high?—shining and cold, like hoar-frosted green glass. Every bend of her head or twist of her gaze made it almost impossible to simply see the structure again. Still, with effort and focus, its detail grew—and its true immensity became more apparent.
It had to be a city.
The line of failed marchers were indeed like ants, flowing toward the bowl and the city at the center—where they would slide in and be pinched up by a predator, like an ant lion, while all around the arena the silent sculptures formed a nightmare audience, caught in mid-hope, mid-stride, frozen into something like stone.
A history lesson, she thought.
She moved along with the marchers. It was time.
Time to go down there.
Into the False City.
CHAPTER 86
* * *
The Kalpa
Ghentun’s relief at leaving the Broken Tower was clear even to his young companion. They said very little on their descent to the upper urbs, and Ghentun made no attempt to hide the city’s dismal realities—such as they were—from Jebrassy’s bright, curious eyes. If the Librarian could educate them in his selective way, then the Keeper could supplement that education from a more grounded perspective—by taking the long way down, and showing how dire the city’s situation had become.
Jebrassy said little as they moved through the highest urbs and levels of the first bion, carried along and between and around the sinuous tracks and channels that formed a silvery three-dimensional web. The web was cut through with complicated surfaces studded with spheres and extrusions that moved slowly like great boats on a fluid sea, though many stuck out sideways or hung upside down from the curves. He cringed at what must have once seemed supernatural power and arrogance—now fallen victim to extraordinary failure and disaster.
The intrusions had broken through to all levels of the Kalpa. Many of the tracks and channels had been sliced away, whipping around to snap and cut across other tracks, shedding their miles-wide neighborhoods—now tangled, blocked, and studded with embedded, flickering debris.
“I don’t understand” was all Jebrassy managed as they descended below the Eidolon urbs and approached the ruins of the crèche.
“Welcome to all our lost worlds, high and low, young breed,” Ghentun murmured. “I’m more at home down here.”
They walked through the Shaper’s domain, now a shambles—barriers broken, machines collapsed in blackened piles of molten slag, but fortunately, no evidence remained of the lost young themselves. The many-armed Shaper had made an attempt at cleaning up after the most devastating intrusions. Clearly, however, there was no longer a crèche, and the umbers would never again deliver young breeds to the Tiers to be raised in the old way.
They stood silent before the Shaper, who gave Jebrassy a brief caress with one long, warm finger. The breed drew back in shock and embarrassment. But he could feel new knowledge filling his insides like a rich and energizing meal. It spread a cool, speedy lubrication throughout his being. He liked that sensation—but he did not enjoy the following awareness of how badly wrong things had gone, nor how ignorant he had been of the foundations of his existence.
He felt small, but not diminished. So much to tell Tiadba when they finally met again. Of that eventuality he was absolutely convinced, despite the gloomy presence of the Tall One—which puzzled him. He would almost have rather made the attempt alone.
Could a breed and a Tall One—a Mender—ever act like equals? Jebrassy felt up to the task. But he wasn’t so sure the Keeper could actually keep up once they were in the Chaos.
Ghentun issued his final instructions to the Shaper—using words Jebrassy could not understand, though he suspected they were not so much elevated or inaccessible as simply specialized.
“The last generation,” Ghentun said as they departed the crèche. “It saddens. But it’s long since time this was done with.”
“Why?” Jebrassy asked. “Weren’t the breeds worthy of being made?”
Ghentun looked down with puzzled respect. Perhaps the Librarian had been liberal with his information, or at least his allowance of sophistication. Either that or they had all underestimated the facility of their smaller charges—in much the same way Eidolons dismissed the abilities of Menders.
The worst part of this start to their journey came when they passed through the Tiers. The Keeper had given Jebrassy his gift of invisibility.
A few breeds had survived. They wandered among the smoky ruins, dismayed at the destruction of their blocs and their meadows, yet still trying to put their lives back in order—but clearly that would no longer be possible.
While Jebrassy could hardly have understood the destruction wrought upon the upper levels, this hit him hard. This threw a dark pall over his sense of challenge and adventure.
There would be no coming home—that had been clear to him from the beginning. But now, very likely, there would be no home to come back to.
“I feel sad,” he told Ghentun as they descended to the flood channels by way of a hidden lift. “How can sadness make you free?”
The hike along the black-streaked channels past the outer ends of the three isles—in the final, flickering glow of the partially collapsed ceil—seemed to take no time at all. But the long walk to the camp where the marchers had once been trained and equipped gave Jebrassy too much time to think, and his confidence plunged, until they came upon the huts, the tents, the scattered footsteps in the sand and dust.
He crouched. Someone had knelt and then sat in the fine sand. He bent to sniff. “She was here,” he said.
“No doubt,” Ghentun said.
“How far?”
“We’ve come thirty miles. We have forty more to go before we pass between the inner generators, then exit the Kalpa into the middle lands. This is the last time we’ll actually know how far we are from anything. The last time distance makes any sense.”
Jebrassy understood. “What will happen if the Kalpa falls—will travel be meaningless everywhere? What will happen if we can’t measure—”
“Best not to worry about those problems yet,” Ghentun said. “Just grieve for your dead and enjoy their memories.” He knelt beside the young breed, sad and proud at once. Like a father, he told himself.
After a while he escorted Jebrassy to the silver dome and introduced him to the last three suits of armor. There was no longer a Pahtun to train them, but they managed.
Jebrassy chose a blue suit and put it on with only a little assistance. He seemed to be a natural. When Ghentun commented on this, the breed shrugged. “I don’t remember it until it happens…don’t really remember it at all. But maybe my body does. Or…maybe the Librarian is still reading me my story, but skipping ahead.”
That comment unsettled Ghentun. Who would be the leader, and who the led? Distances had changed in more ways than one.
Ghentun tried on one of the trainer’s outfits. It seemed to adapt well enough to his bulkier frame. He left the gloves unsealed for the time being.
“Someone’s coming,” Jebrassy said, and pointed across the channel.
Ghentun saw a small, pale figure glowing against the black smear that had cut through the sands and marred the channel floor. The figure moved with an awkward, erratic lope.
“It’s not a breed,” Jebrassy said, beginning to feel alarm. “And it’s not big enough to be a Tall One.”
Ghentun extended his vision as far as a Mender’s ability allowed. The figure was an epitome, part of a Great Eidolon.
They stood their ground and waited.
“I know that one,” Jebrassy said as it drew near. “I recognize the face.”
“It showed a face?” Ghentun asked, astonished.
The figure moved swiftly enough, despite its odd gait.
“I’ve gone through a dreadful ordeal,” the epitome called, and joined th
em on the sandy floor of the channel. “Made myself primordial. Still not entirely knitted, I think.” It held up a small, pale hand and turned it this way and that, inspecting its fingers as if for the first time. “Limitations have their limitations, that’s becoming more obvious,” it said, then glanced with envy at Ghentun’s flower finger. “Is that actually useful? It looks useful.”
Ghentun grimaced at the memory of his own return to primordial mass—then clenched his hand in embarrassment. Flower fingers were seldom referred to openly in polite company.
“I’ll be annealed in a few hours,” the epitome said. “Out there…I’ll be able to survive for a time. But I’ll need some sort of protection, just like you. How marvelous.”
“How should we address you, Eidolon?” Ghentun asked, confusion bringing out a perverse courtesy. The old forms were definitely being shattered. No Great Eidolon had ever gone primordial, to his knowledge. It seemed an affront—both a sacrilege and an imposition on the privileges of the low.
“Please call me Polybiblios,” the epitome said. “I shall be a male—by tradition—and so I shall be known as ‘him’ and not the more appropriate ‘it.’ Though real sexuality seems lost to us all—with the possible exception of our young breed, here.”
Now it was Jebrassy’s turn to be embarrassed.
“In a way, I am probably the best part of the Librarian—or at least I will suffer that delusion until I am proved wrong. May I join you, young marchers? I promise to be humble, in my way. And possibly even useful—like that wonderful finger.”
Ghentun sealed his gloves and put his hands behind his back.
The epitome sat in the sand and with an expression of delight, lifted a handful of the gray grit, then let it fall through soft fingers to the channel floor.
Jebrassy had grown strangely fond of the fragment of the Librarian that had offered companionship and teaching in the tower. But seeing him solidly incarnate, similar in size, and out here…very confusing.