The City of Mirrors: A Novel (Book Three of The Passage Trilogy)

by Justin Cronin

  She paused before answering. “I don’t know. All I know is that for the first time in my life, I was truly happy.”

  For a while they listened to the quiet creaking of the boat.

  “I love you,” Peter said. “I think I always have.”

  “And I love you.”

  She drew herself closer against him; Peter replied in kind. He took her left hand, slipped her fingers through his, pulled it to his chest, and held it there.

  “Michael’s right,” she said. “We should sleep.”

  “All right.”

  Soon she felt his breathing slow. It eased into a deep, long rhythm, like waves upon the shore. Amy closed her eyes, although she knew it was no use. She would lie awake for hours.

  —

  On the deck of the Nautilus, Michael was watching the stars.

  Because a person could never grow tired of them. All his many nights at sea, the stars had been his most loyal companions. He preferred them to the moon, which seemed to him too frank, always begging to be noticed; the stars maintained a certain cagey distance, permitting the mystery of their hidden selves to breathe. Michael knew what the stars were—exploding balls of hydrogen and helium—as well as many of their names and the arrangements they made in the night sky: useful information for a man alone at sea in a small boat. But he also understood that these things were an imposed ordering that the stars themselves possessed no knowledge of.

  Their vast display should have made him feel tiny and alone, but the effect was exactly the opposite; it was in daylight that he felt his solitude most keenly. There were days when his soul ached with it, the feeling that he had moved so far away from the world of people that he could never go back. But then night would fall, revealing the sky’s hidden treasure—the stars, after all, weren’t gone during the day, merely obscured—and his loneliness would recede, supplanted by the sense that the universe, for all its inscrutable vastness, was not a hard, indifferent place in which some things were alive and others not and all that happened was a kind of accident, governed by the cold hand of physical law, but a web of invisible threads in which everything was connected to everything else, including him. It was along these threads that both the questions and the answers to life pulsed like an alternating current, all the pains and regrets but also happiness and even joy, and though the source of this current was unknown and always would be, a person could feel it if he gave himself a chance; and the time when Michael Fisher—Michael the Circuit, First Engineer of Light and Power, Boss of the Trade and builder of the Bergensfjord—felt it most was when he was looking at the stars.

  He thought of many things. Days in the Sanctuary. Elton’s blind, rigid face and the hot, cramped quarters of the battery hut. The gassy stink of the refinery, where he had left boyhood behind and found his course in life. He thought of Sara, whom he loved, and Lore, whom he also loved, and Kate and the last time he had seen her, her compact youthful energy and easy affection for him on the night when he had told her the story of the whale. All so long ago, the past forever retreating to become the great internal accumulation of days. Probably his time on earth was reaching its end. Maybe something came after, beyond one’s physical existence as a person; on this subject, the heavens were obscure. Greer certainly thought so.

  Michael knew that his friend was dying. Greer had tried to conceal it, and nearly had, but Michael had figured it out. No one thing in particular had told him this; it was simply his sense of the man. Time was outstripping him—as, sooner or later, it did everyone.

  And, of course, he thought about his ship, his Bergensfjord. She would be far away now, somewhere off the coast of Brazil, churning south beneath the selfsame starry sky.

  “It’s beautiful out here,” Alicia said.

  She was sitting across from him, reclining lengthwise on the bench, a blanket covering her legs. Her head, like his, was tipped upward, her eyes glazed by starlight.

  “I remember the first time I saw them,” she continued. “It was the night the Colonel left me outside the Wall. They absolutely terrified me.” She pointed toward the southern horizon. “Why is that one so bright?”

  He followed her finger. “Well, that’s not a star, actually. It’s the planet Mars.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “You’ll see it most of the summer. If you look closely, you can see that it has a slight red tint. It’s basically a big, rusty rock.”

  “And that one?” Directly overhead this time.

  “Arcturus.”

  In the dark, her expression was hidden from his view, though he imagined her frowning with interest. “How far away is it?”

  “Not very, as these things go. About thirty-seven light-years. That’s how long it takes the light to get here. When the light you’re seeing left Arcturus, we were both a couple of kids. So when you look at the sky, what you’re actually seeing is the past. But not just one past. Every star is different.”

  She laughed lightly. “That kind of messes with my head when you put it that way. I remember you telling me about this stuff when we were kids. Or trying to.”

  “I was pretty obnoxious. Probably I was just trying to impress you.”

  “Show me more,” she said.

  He did just that; Michael traced the sky. Polaris and the Big Dipper. Bright Antares and blue-tinted Vega and her neighbors, the small cluster known as Delphinius the Dolphin. The broad galactic band of the Milky Way, running horizon to horizon, north to south, bisecting the eastern sky like a cloud of light. He told her all he could think of, her interest never wavering, and when he was done, she said, “I’m cold.”

  Alicia scooted forward from the transom; Michael crossed over and wedged himself behind her, his legs positioned on either side of her waist. He pulled the blanket up, wrapping the two of them, drawing her in for warmth.

  “We haven’t talked about what happened on the ship,” Alicia said.

  “We don’t have to if you don’t want.”

  “I feel like I owe you an explanation.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Why did you come in after me, Michael?”

  “I didn’t really give it a lot of thought. It was a heat-of-the-moment thing.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  He shrugged, then said, “I guess you could say I don’t much like it when people I care about try to kill themselves. I’ve been down that road before. I take it kind of personally.”

  His words stopped her flat. “I’m sorry. I should have thought—”

  “And there’s absolutely no reason you would have. Just don’t do it again, okay? I’m not such a great swimmer.”

  A silence fell. It was not uncomfortable but the opposite: the silence of shared history, of those who can speak without talking. The night was full of small sounds that, paradoxically, seemed to magnify the quiet: each shifting touch of water against the hull; the pinging of the lines against the spars; the creak of the anchor line in its cleat.

  “Why did you name her Nautilus?” Alicia asked. The back of her head was resting against his chest.

  “It was something from a book I read when I was a kid. It just seemed to fit.”

  “Well, it does. I think it’s nice.” Then, quietly: “What you said, in the cell.”

  “That I loved you.” He felt no embarrassment, only the calm of truth. “I just thought you should know. It seemed like a big waste otherwise. I’ve kind of had it with secrets. It’s okay—you don’t have to say anything about it.”

  “But I want to.”

  “Well, a thank-you would be nice.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Actually, it’s exactly that simple.”

  She fit the fingers of one hand into his, pressing their palms together. “Thank you, Michael.”

  “And you are most welcome.”

  The air was damp, mist falling, beads clinging to every surface. At an indeterminate distance, waves were hissing on the sand.

  “God, the two of u
s,” she said. “We’ve been fighting our whole lives.”

  “That we have.”

  “I’m so…tired of it.” She drew his arm tighter around her waist. “I thought about you, you know. When I was in New York.”

  “Did you now?”

  “I thought: What is Michael doing today? What is he doing to save the world?”

  He laughed lightly. “I’m honored.”

  “As you should be.” A pause; then she spoke again. “Do you ever think about them? Your parents.”

  The question, though unexpected, did not seem strange. “Once in a while. It was a long time ago, though.”

  “I don’t really remember mine. They died when I was so young. Just little things, I guess. My mother had a silver hairbrush she liked. It was very old; I think it belonged to my grandmother. She used to visit me in the Sanctuary and brush my hair with it.”

  Michael considered this. “Now, that sounds right to me. I think I recall something like that happening.”

  “You do?”

  “She’d put you on a stool in the dormitory, by the big window. I remember her humming—not a song exactly, more like just notes.”

  “Huh,” Alicia said after a moment. “I didn’t know anyone was paying attention.”

  They were quiet for a time. Even before she said the words, Michael sensed their approach. He did not know what she was about to tell him, only that she was.

  “Something…happened to me in Iowa. A man raped me there, one of the guards. He got me pregnant.”

  Michael waited.

  “She was a girl. I don’t know if it was what I am or something else, but she didn’t survive.”

  When Alicia fell silent, Michael said, “Tell me about her.”

  “She was Rose. That’s what I named her. She had such beautiful red hair. After I buried her, I stayed with her awhile. Two years. I thought it would help, make things easier somehow. But it never did.”

  He felt, suddenly, closer to Alicia than he had to anyone in his life. Painful as this story was, telling him was a gift she had given him, the heart of who she was, the stone she carried and how love had happened in her life.

  “I hope it’s okay I told you.”

  “I’m very glad you did.”

  Another silence, then: “You’re not really worried about the anchor, are you?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “That was nice, what you did for them.” Alicia tipped her head upward. “It’s such a beautiful night.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, more than beautiful,” she said and squeezed his hand, nestling against him. “It’s perfect.”

  * * *

  81

  So, at the last, a story.

  A child is born into this world. She is lost, alone, in due course both befriended and betrayed. She is the carrier of a special burden, a singular vocation that is only hers to bear. She wanders in a wasteland, a ruin of grief and tormented dreams. She has no past, only a long, blank future; she is like a convict with an unknown sentence, never visited in the cell of her interminable imprisonment. Any other soul would be broken by this fate, and yet the child abides; she dares to hope that she is not alone. That is her mission, the role for which she has been cast at heaven’s cruel audition. She is hope’s last vessel on the earth.

  Then, a miracle: a city appears to her, a bright walled city on a hill. Her prayers have been answered! Shining like a beacon, it has the aspect of a prophecy fulfilled. The key turns in the lock; the door swings open. Ensconced within its walls she discovers a wondrous race of men and women who have, like her, endured. They become hers, after a fashion. In the eyes of this wordless child, the most prescient among them perceive an answer to their most persistent questions; as they have relieved her loneliness, so has she relieved theirs.

  A journey commences. The world’s dark arrangement is revealed. The child grows; she leads her companion to a glorious victory. By her hand, seeds of hope are scattered over the land, promise bubbles forth from every spring and stream. And yet she knows this flowering is an illusion, the merest respite. There can be no safety; her triumphs have but scratched the crust. Below lies the dark core, that great iron ball beneath all things. Its compressed weight is fantastic; it is older than time itself. It is a vestige of the blackness that predates all existence, when a formless universe existed in a state of chaotic un-creation, lacking awareness even of itself.

  She falters. She has doubts. She becomes indecisive, even fearful. Hers is the greatest of all errors; she has grown attached to life. She has dared, unwisely, to love. In her mind a contest rages, that of one who questions fate. Is she merely a lunatic’s puppet? Is she destiny’s slave or its author? Must she turn away from all the things and people she has grown to love? And is this love a reflection of some grand design, a taste of an ordered and divine creation? Is it truth or a departure from the truth? Romantic love, fraternal love, the love of a parent for a child and the love returned in kind—are they a mirror to God’s face or the bitterest gall in a cosmos of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

  As for me: there was a time in my life when I put aside all doubt and supped at the flower of heaven. What sweet juice was there! What balm to all suffering, the soul’s holy ache! That my Liz was dying did not countermand my joy; she had come to me like a messenger, in the hours when all is laid bare, to reveal my purpose on the earth. All my days, I had scrutinized the tiniest workings of life. I had gone about this task blandly, never fathoming my true motive. I gazed upon the smallest shapes and processes of nature, seeking divinity’s fingerprints. Now the evidence had come to me not at the end of a microscope but in the face of this slender, dying woman and the touch of her hand across a café table. My long, lonely hours—like yours, Amy—seemed not an exile or imprisonment but a test that I had passed. I was loved! Me, Timothy Fanning of Mercy, Ohio! Loved by a woman, loved by a god—a great, fatherly god, who, measuring my trials, had found me worthy. I had not been made for nothing! And not just loved; I had been charged as heaven’s escort. The blue Aegean, where ancient gods and heroes were said to dwell; the whitewashed house one climbed a flight of stairs to reach; the humble bed and homespun furnishings; the workaday sounds of village life, and a terrace with a view of olive groves and the wild sea beyond; the soft white light of eternal mornings, growing brighter and brighter and brighter still. In my mind’s eye I saw it, saw it all. In my arms she would pass from this life to the next, which surely existed after all, love having come to me—to both of us—at last.

  Not an hour would have gone by, her body grown cold in my embrace, before I would have followed her from this world. That, too, was part of my design. I would take the last pills, the ones I’d saved for myself, and slip away in silence, so that together we would be bound eternally to each other and to an invincible universe. My resolve was implacable, my thoughts lucid as ice. I possessed not an iota of doubt. Thus at the anointed hour of our rendezvous I took my position at the kiosk, waiting for my angel to appear. In my suitcase, the instruments of our mortal deliverance slept like stones. Little did I know that this was but a foretaste of the wider ruin—that the hurrying travelers flowing around me possessed no inkling that death’s prince stood among them.

  Thrice have I been fathered; thrice betrayed. I will have satisfaction.

  You, Amy, have dared to love, as once I did. You are hope’s deluded champion, as I am sworn to be its enemy. I am the voice, the hand, the pitiless agent of truth, which is the truth of nothing. We were, each of us, made by a madman; from his design we forked like roads in a dark wood. It has ever been thus, since the materials of life assembled and crawled from nature’s muck.

  Your band approaches; the time grows sweeter by the hour. I know that he is with you, Amy. How could he fail to stand at your side, the man who made you human?

  Come to me, Amy. Come to me, Peter.

  Come to me, come to me, come to me.

  * * *

  82

  It e
merged like a vision, the great city, soaring from the sea like a castle or some vast holy relic. A ruin of staggering dimensions: it boggled the senses, its scope too massive to hold in the mind. The morning sun, low, slanting, blazed off the faces of the towers, ricocheting from the glass like bullets.

  Peter joined Amy at the bow. She seemed almost preternaturally calm; a profound intensity radiated off her like heat from a stove. Minute by minute the metropolis loomed higher.

  “Good God, it’s enormous,” Peter said.

  She nodded, though this was only half the truth. Fanning’s presence saturated the city. It was as if a background hum she’d been hearing all her life, so omnipresent as to be barely noticeable, were increasing in volume. She felt a heaviness. That was the only word. A terrible exhausted heaviness with everything.

  They had decided to come in from the west. On tepid air they sailed up the Hudson, searching for a place to dock. Daylight was everything; they needed to move quickly. The tide was strong, pushing against them like an invisible hand.

  “Michael…”

  He was working the lines and tiller, seeking to harness any breath of wind. “I know.”

  The river was dark as ink; its force was immense. The day turned toward afternoon. At times they seemed stopped cold.

  “This is impossible,” said Michael.

  By the time they found a place to tie off, it was four o’clock. Clouds had moved in from the south; the air was sultry, smelling of decay. Four, perhaps five hours of daylight remained. From the cabin, Michael retrieved the backpack of explosives, as well as a long spool of cable and the detonator, a wooden box with a plunger. It seemed primitive, but that was the point, he explained. The simple things were always the most reliable, and there would be no second chances to get this right. In the cockpit, they armed themselves and reviewed the plan a final time.

  “Make no mistake,” Alicia said, “this island is a deathtrap. It gets dark, we’re done.”

  They disembarked. They were in the West Twenties. The roadway was choked with the skeletons of cars; glassless windows stared at them like the mouths of caves. Here they would diverge, Michael and Lish south to Astor Place, Peter and Amy across midtown to Grand Central. Michael had fashioned a crude crutch for Alicia from a boat oar.