City at the End of Time

by Greg Bear

  An impersonal offering of grace—a remote and pure shriving.

  The pricking passed. Now he was his own powdery thing, still standing, but falling apart and being put back together each split second.

  The Moth protected them as best as he could.

  “Welcome to the center of the universe,” he heard Whitlow say or think.

  Their eyes—they no longer seemed to have bodies—saw in some manner a deep black pool in which two large needles churned a thick liquid. The needles met beneath the surface of the pool and spun like the shaft of a gear in a jeweled movement.

  “The Crux has no center and no radius,” Whitlow said. “Brace for a nasty residue—a powerful thing once focused its heart of frustration and misery here. It ate our world and spat it out in nasty chunks. You’ll feel it.”

  “The Typhon?” Glaucous asked.

  Whitlow shrugged. “These steel threads are the last two fates. In one, the Typhon fails and we all pass into nothingness. In the other…there is a kind of success. Who can say which would be better? Now—

  “Tell us where we are—draw up the proper thread, and tell us what remains for us to do. That is your talent, is it not?”

  Glaucous could not shut his eyes, could not find any private place in which to make his decision—but that did not matter. He had decided long ago.

  Fifty years and more had passed since he had decided.

  Somehow, in this abstract heart with no center, and without the Moth’s help, he chose the best fate—the last remaining good fate—and drew it down like a fortunate hand of cards, the one lucky flip of a coin.

  And—always deferent to his employers—he made sure both the Moth and Whitlow approved.

  Far away, an awful sound echoes again throughout the False City.

  And the Dead Gods begin to move.

  CHAPTER 112

  * * *

  The False City is quivering, snapping, shrinking. Jebrassy does not know why he is still walking, still seeing.

  He looks down on Polybiblios, who has inexplicably collapsed, and then kneels beside him. Some steps away, Ghentun has also fallen. Both are wavering in substance and outline.

  “The Kalpa is reaching its end,” Polybiblios says. “The City Prince’s bargain means nothing. I cannot last much longer than my stored fates within the city. All my fate-lines will die with the Kalpa. Finish it well, young breed. You have all you need—but for this.”

  The epitome reaches out to give him the thing he has carried since their journey began. Jebrassy holds the small gray box. The epitome of the Librarian winks at him through the armor’s faceplate, then lies back on the black surface.

  Jebrassy then moves to Ghentun and lies down beside the Keeper, to hold him as best he can while the Tall One—the former taskmaster and protector—stares up into the ice-crusted darkness.

  His eyes sink.

  “I chose to become noötic,” the Keeper confesses. “When I was young. My only betrayal. I reconverted when I became Keeper. But my fate-lines were cut and remade, and tied up with the Kalpa. I won’t be going any farther.”

  Ghentun touches the breed’s hand, feeling Jebrassy’s solidity, then moves his fingers to his own nose and makes that strange, explosive sound that signifies humor. “Let me see what he gave you.”

  Jebrassy holds out the box.

  “Open it for me. Show me.”

  Jebrassy touches the top and turns it one way, then another, shaking it. He knows instinctively how to open it. The lid pulls away, and within there is a new, bright twist of gray metal, cradling a small reddish stone. The stone gleams within, like a star growing on the tweenlight ceil.

  “Four is the minimum,” Ghentun says, and his sunken eyes turn away. “Some say three. But it is four. Enough. They have had enough time and power. At the very end, the City Prince wins all.”

  Dying eyes now focused on the young breed, with his last strength the Keeper pulls the stone up and away from Jebrassy’s suddenly frantic, grabbing hands, and smashes it against the littered floor. It does not break but makes a strange squeal and tries to pull away from the Mender’s armor. As if remembering something obscure, a last bit of instruction, Ghentun nods, then with his other hand reaches for the lid of the box—and examines the design engraved there. “Why play Eidolon games, young breed?”

  Holding both away from Jebrassy, he lurches to his feet and clasps them to his breast, then closes his eyes.

  There is nothing Jebrassy can do. He turns between the Keeper and Polybiblios, like a child caught in a tormenting game played by cruel adults.

  The incarnate fragment of the Librarian seems at first to share Jebrassy’s horror, then holds up one hand, as if waving good-bye, or dismissing all further effort. Polybiblios crumbles to gray dust within the armor. The armor falls inward, shrinks to a wrinkled pebble.

  No more words, no more information.

  Trillions of years of memories—gone.

  The Keeper turns white eyes upward, and then passes—becomes dust. His armor likewise shrinks, and pieces roll on the ground, sparking, sizzling around the box and the stone.

  All crumble.

  Jebrassy tries to gather the remains in his gloved hands, but at this touch, the destruction begun by Ghentun’s passing is complete. Nothing but fine sand sifts through his fingers.

  All pointless.

  Jebrassy gets to his feet. He is learning for the first time what it means to be utterly and completely alone. The False City, like his heart, is filled with a terrible screaming. He knows that voice, recognizes it from his dreams—from his origins.

  Someone throws a rock. The rock continues on its arc to a destination. So long as it flies, a life goes on—a fate remains in play.

  But now the purpose is gone, and there is only the fate.

  Why play Eidolon games, young breed?

  One last glance at the piles of sand.

  Something new has formed there—a larger, polyhedral shape with seven sides and four holes, made of the same substance as the gray box.

  His fingers twitch. He touches it—the armor does not interact. It is inert.

  Jebrassy picks it up and carries it with him, as a pede carries nesting material even after its clutch of eggs has been stolen and eaten.

  He walks the last remaining distance under the deadfall, through a storm of whispering shadows—

  The central shape of his most hidden dreams is gathering, he can feel its motion—a great revolving, spinning thing, like the design on the lid of the box: the symbol of the Sleeper. This geometric fortress will hold back the end for one last moment, until Brahma decides whether or not to awaken.

  Jebrassy passes through just as a great rotating band swooshes behind him. There is no going back, of course.

  He has stepped onto a lake of translucent blue-green, the same color as the pieces of the muse collected by the Shen and gathered into humanlike form by Polybiblios.

  The final part of his journey begins.

  Toward the screaming.

  CHAPTER 113

  * * *

  Jack has reached the center of the city. It looks like a center—everything spins out around it—though the scene is cockeyed and difficult to define, and so he turns, looks back over his shoulder, then bends over and stares between his legs—through the last iridescent film of bubble. The stone is hot in his hands, quivering with its own excitement. But everything else…very cold.

  The center is a circular, emerald-green lake surrounded by revolving and whirling circular bands: the ever-moving, ever-slicing and parsing bars of a special prison. He is inside them. Somehow he has passed through the cut and slice. The bands are flat, of no thickness, and smooth, reflecting light with a brazen, defiant sheen.

  A cross formed of two straight ribbons meets above the lake. From one angle the revolving bands move behind the cross—from another angle they surround it—and from a third angle they whirl in front.

  This is very like the symbol carved into the puzzle box. So
he is where he should be, finally.

  And the others?

  All he really wants now is to find Ginny. If she’s here, he’s certain she’s very afraid—that seems to define Ginny. Courage through fear. Jack—just a little afraid, but not like Ginny. Even this little fear comes close to paralyzing him.

  Time to see things better. He turns around again, refreshing the polarity of his perception, and this creates a kind of clarity.

  Curls of pale gray dart down and around, forming particle-chamber tracks through the distance above the frozen green lake, like greenish snow—all the snow in the world, summing to a peculiar blizzard here at the end of time.

  The lake might be made of ice—greenish, glassy ice.

  And at the center of the lake—

  The Crux or heart…

  A blurry black point. Too far off, too small to see any details from where he stands—just a foggy, dimensionless darkness. Nearby, another hollow opens up, carved out of the ice. Within the hollow he sees a lovely actinic glow—a billion arcs of brilliant blue. Vague shapes move there, small enough to be human—all but one, a nacreous cone with a brilliant luminosity at its apex—a face. Even from here he sees it is the face of a woman—or at least some sort of magnificent female.

  Looking through the blue light at that shape, Jack shivers. He knows where this is—and what that is, or was. The icy surface of the lake is scored all around, as if giant skaters have carved deep pathways, gouges that would rise over his head if he went down there and fell into one.

  The tortured tracks of the Queen in White.

  And so he is going. The sum-runner is hot and pulls him along. If he doesn’t hold on tight and go with it, it seems likely to just skitter down by itself, leaving him behind, and he will freeze, like all those giants he now sees gathered just outside the whirl of the bands—the ribbon sections of so many spheres—an armillary. That’s what they’re called. He saw something like it in a museum once.

  The armillary paradox is the symbol of the sum-runners—broad, interlaced fates rising forward and slipping back.

  Now about those giants. Were they there before? He sees them on the opposite side of the whirling bands, gathered like extraordinary chess pieces, waiting in timeless judgment. They are horrifyingly beautiful—he is inadequate to the task of assessing their grandeur, their former power. Seeing them carries by itself a kind of knowledge, access to what had once been a tremendous future history. Once, they were judges, he guesses, builders and movers of galaxies—and then they became prisoners, held in thrall to witness the fumbling, inane destruction of everything they had ever lived and loved.

  Now they are gathered to await another judgment, another conclusion. The mighty and glorious await the arrival of the tiny and insignificant.

  He has an audience.

  He holds onto the sum-runner despite all of its enthusiasm. Jack never drops anything.

  As he steps onto the slippery surface, white and black shapes move around his feet, precede him onto the green ice—a river of silent, vengeful fur.

  CHAPTER 114

  * * *

  Whitlow is triumphant as they approach the Queen in White in her abode. Above, the magnificent confusion of the armillary makes a humming backdrop.

  The Crux lies within the black point around which pivots this stately gyre. Whitlow exults. They were just there—at the center. They are powerful and privileged. They will be rewarded magnificently for their success. All that was promised will finally be attained.

  The Moth is above, around, everywhere—guiding them with a silken, dusty enthusiasm.

  Ahead Glaucous can make out, through a lattice of ever-changing shadows, one of the shepherds—the girl Virginia, walking carefully across the ice. She is attended by a few cats. He and Whitlow will soon be upon her.

  Glaucous steels himself.

  “A brilliant conclusion,” Whitlow tells him. “We need to present just one shepherd, one sum-runner to the Typhon itself, the master of the Chalk Princess, to gain our passage. Oh, such a prize, at such a time!”

  Glaucous moves cautiously. All around, the grooves and cuts yawn in expectation of the clumsy. He is wondering how they can remove the girl and deliver her—before the cats do what the cats must do.

  The Moth brushes past, alerts them. Other visitors are crossing the circular green lake. Even at this distance Glaucous recognizes his own prey—Jack. The boy is following a much larger contingent of felines, like a fuzzy gray blanket.

  Cats, ever the friends of books and stories—ever ready to attend to the reading of stories by sitting in a lap and purring. The death of all stories would not make them happy.

  The Moth touches his shoulder again. A third is now on the lake. It is Daniel, the bad shepherd. There are no cats with Daniel. He moves alone.

  “Consider the depths of time,” Whitlow natters on reverently. “Beyond our understanding. And yet here we are—among the few, the last. It makes me proud. All of our pains, justified. All of our poor deeds.”

  Glaucous nods absently, focused on the Crux, the center—still working to draw down the last, best strand of fate.

  Beyond the spinning cage, hauntingly familiar from all the puzzle boxes they have captured and tossed with their shepherds into the Gape: an awful audience, giants out of his worst nightmares. That a nightmare like himself should experience nightmares seems only just.

  The worst nightmare of all, being thrown off the back of the bird-catcher’s cart, rolling across the cobbles in a tangle of feathers…and then hearing the scrabble of rat claws out of the mud-and-sewage-caked gutters.

  CHAPTER 115

  * * *

  Across the lake of green ice, from three directions the travelers move toward the center of the armillary fortress.

  Jebrassy in his armor steps out carefully on the slick surface. The Kalpa has two final voices—the voice of his armor, and his own. “There are watchers,” the armor tells him, something he already knows—the giants from the vale of Dead Gods. They remind him of point-minders in the little wars, presiding over the endgames but forbidden by certain rules to intervene, possibly because they actually are dead.

  That doesn’t seem to stop anything else in the Chaos. But he is just as glad they come no closer.

  “There are Silent Ones closing in,” the armor warns him. “They may be held back by the armillary. Sum-runners have gathered—the spinning fortress is their birthing shell.”

  Jebrassy is not at all sure what he can do about any of that. He is intent on the shimmering dome sketched by the arcs of blue light. That is where Tiadba must be; he is sure of it.

  “There are no intact suits of armor in this vicinity. But there are breeds. And others.”

  Jebrassy is aware of those others, moving in, like him, on the center. “Who are they?” he asks.

  “Pilgrims.”

  “Like me?”

  “Very like you.”

  “My visitor?”

  “Unknown.”

  He nods and pauses to think that over. He would have said, in any other place, at any other point in his young life, that there were ghosts out there—but now reality travels along a sliding scale. These pilgrims may be less real than himself, but more real than the Silent Ones or the Dead Gods.

  One came to him in dreams. And is this any more real than a dream? Yet he suspects there are still rules of a sort. Not just anything will happen. Fewer things might be possible here than out in the Chaos.

  Teamwork. Do your part.

  The voice of his other brings him some relief. They are near.

  “Where’s Tiadba?” he asks.

  “Unknown,” the armor says.

  “Is she alive?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Everything’s closing in.”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I doing the right thing?”

  “There is no going back.”

  “Will I just crumble away like the Keeper?”

  “Unknown.”

 
; Jebrassy shakes his head. They’ve all come so very far—he can’t begin to understand how far. Yet he does not feel small. For once he feels quite large. Bigger even than the Dead Gods, and certainly more powerful. More powerful than any Eidolon. He tries to imagine the Kalpa—but all that is gone. He tries to imagine what Nataraja was once like—now reduced to the deadfall and, at the last, crushed against the spinning and whirling that wraps and protects a hard, slippery, very cold lake.

  Not for the first time he tries to imagine what the entire cosmos was once like. “It’s going to end in a few moments, isn’t it?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Anything else you care to tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  The armor’s voice becomes a gentle rush in his ears, like sifting sand. He does not want to be completely alone out here. The lake and the whirl change perspective whichever way he turns. So he looks straight ahead at the blue light. He still clutches the small piece of sculpture given to him by Polybiblios.

  Barely audible, the armor’s voice says, “You have arrived. Finish the journey naked.”

  “Won’t I die?”

  No response.

  The sandy rush fades to silence.

  He squats on the ice, takes a deep breath behind the faceplate, and begins to remove his armor, first the helmet, then the torso, and finally the sleeves and leggings. It comes off easily, like peeling an overripe tork.

  As he strips down, a creature unlike anything in the Kalpa walks up to him. It is barely as long as his arm and has four legs and is covered with black and white stuff that looks as soft as the fur on Tiadba’s nose.