by Greg Bear
She was the moving city.
Durragon waited and watched expectantly. If the city was crumbling, perhaps the barricade would be breached and his soldiers could pour in. Victory was so close he could smell it. He smiled and patted his mount. “I’ll command your brothers,” he said to it quietly. “They can’t ignore us any longer.”
For the moment, nothing was happening. He examined supply requisitions with the chief of material for a few minutes in the early morning, then looked over fresh maps drawn up by a newly enlisted cartographer. The sharp-faced map-maker stood nervously by as Durragon ran his fingers over the inked lines.
“Sir,” the young man began.
Durragon ignored him. “The maps are excellent,” he said a few seconds later. “My army grows more sophisticated every day.”
“Sir,” the map-maker blurted, “I may speak out of turn, but I fear for your safety.”
Durragon glanced up at him. “How?”
“The Chasers, sir—”
“Still aren’t used to them, eh? I command with a strong hand.”
“I know them well, sir. I lived with a tribe of them just three months ago. Your Chasers are not happy.”
“Oh?” Durragon rolled the map up carefully.
“Your new flank runners talk behind your back.” The map-maker was trembling now. “They’ll kill me if they find out I’ve said anything…”
“We’ll keep our little secrets,” Durragon said nonchalantly. “What do they say?”
“That you refused to enter the city with the first rank because you lost your courage. And you held back the second rank just long enough to keep them from getting in. They say you don’t have enough nerve any more.”
“Grumblings.”
“I think more than that, sir.”
“I’ll take care of it. You attend to your own duties.”
“Yes, sir.” The map-maker took up his charts and left the tent. Durragon frowned at the swinging flap. The Chasers always grumbled, but he disliked dissent among his officers.
The new flank runners, Gericolt and Perja, sat around a fire and brewed olsherb tea in a battered metal pot. They didn’t have as many friends as when they’d been common soldiers, and this irritated them. To assuage their feelings they added a little intoxicating froybom powder to the tea. Soon they were warm and relatively contented. As they lounged, a soldier in a worn cloth jerkin approached them, bowing profusely.
“Cutta,” Gericolt ordered sharply. The Chaser stopped his obeisances.
“Dis em, in tent ob He, appree words ob de scribbler.”
“Eabesdrop, dis you?” Perja asked, raising an eyebrow. The Chaser nodded. Then he explained what he had heard and the effects of the froybom seemed to evaporate in the flank-runners’ blood. “Dis we, kill dat talker,” Perja said. Gericolt narrowed his eyes.
“Worry, ourselbes, por wat de Man’ll do dis we.”
Now they were thoroughly unhappy. Staring into the fire, trying to think how they could avoid punishment, they weren’t the first to notice that the city had resumed dismantling itself. When other runners reported to them, Perja threw his ceramic cup onto the ground and stood, brushing dirt from his clothes.
Still anxious, he went to Durragon’s tent and touched the General on the shoulder. Durragon turned around slowly, but the Chaser had noticed his jerk. Better to make noise when entering the tent from now on … unless…
“What?”
“De polis,” Perja said. “At it all ober.”
“Moob, de polis?” Durragon asked. Perja shook his head.
“Dis we, look close, nort side come doon an’ show de bones ob undisside.”
Durragon dressed quickly and went out to see if the barricade was expanding again. Where were all the city parts being stored? Soon enough the city would have to breach the spines and extend its bulk along the plain. Then, perhaps, their chance would come.
Perja left the tent, breathing heavily, and fingered his hidden pants-knife. Then he went to look for the map-maker.
Even in the jumbled thoughts of the move, the city was agonized. Reah felt the pain and guilt as if they were her own, as if she had been the one to order the exiling of humans a thousand years ago. For a moment she struggled to be free of the hurt, but then she gave in. It was time to learn what her city was like, all the way to its center…
Screaming. For days and nights, all around God-Does-Battle the air had pulsed with the despair of the cities, matching the wailing of the humans outside. Reah’s mind whirled in the storm of ancient memories. Many of the cities had gone insane, shrinking within to dream only of the past, projecting ghosts to walk the halls and fill the rooms. These had died earliest of all. Their parts had either been scattered on the razor-ridge mountains, or left to wander rogue.
Other cities had died because of malfunctions in their central generation units, the devices which bred replacements for the parts which had worn out. Many cities had slowly crumbled away. Others, like Resurrection, had lasted longer and in fair health, until confusion and guilt had broken down any will to continue.
“Now there’s a reason to go on,” she thought. She tried to guide her thought from unit to unit, in the ragged remains of the city mind. “Now you’ve purged the programs and know that all humans are weak, that you were made in the image of their dreams, not in some false image of a pure God. You cannot judge them; you are mortal clay, too, and weak.”
The area that had been the religious coordinator was silent, but for a moment she thought she could feel a spark, almost of rage. Frightened, she continued to push her thoughts deeper.
“It is not your duty to judge.”
What is the function? Like the voice of a young girl; startled, she recognized it was her own voice, from thirty years in the past.
“I give you a new reason to live: rescue the children. Bring them here, the sick and the lame, those who will grow strong only with your care and teaching. Teach them as best you can; for the moment those most in need must be treated first.”
The voice of the architect, muffled and distant, answered her: It is a commission, not unlike our original function.
And a strident whisper—But it is not our original commission!
Reah stormed through the sudden strands of dissent as if she carried a sword, her face creasing with rage and disgust. Here was revenge, slashing away the dying, cluttered anti-human notions of the city; here was gratification, paying back the philosophies which had killed her husband and daughter, and kept her in bondage and insanity. “Remove this,” she demanded, “take this away, leave this behind…”
And she came to the center of the city’s being. She seemed to stand in a foggy glade. Golden sunlight poured from above, striking her outstretched hands. More like a plant than an animal, at this center the city accepted the bounty of soil and sun and gloried in the turning of nature. She reached out from the center.
“Like a tree,” she said, “you are free to bear fruit and feed those who live in your shade. I free you from guilt, from the human functions, for those were improperly assigned to you. It is your duty only to revel in the light and the warmth, to work free of compulsion, to be what a more knowing nature would have made you, rather than what humanity made you. I free you all!”
As she pushed and probed, the city streamed from the high plains, leaving a ring of disrupted soil several kilometers wide, scattered with dead and dying parts.
Ezeki and Musa pushed aside their blanket and peered out of the recess in their appropriated transport. They watched the last of the barricades put out legs and join the river at its tail.
“Allah save us from sorcery,” Musa said, robbing his hijab. “I’d swear Shaytan has a grip on my eyes. This is unreal, and I am possessed.”
“None of that,” Ezeki said, smiling as he backed into the recess and let the blanket corner fall. “A thousand years ago, this was science, not magic. And by all my power, I’d have that time come again! By God or Allah, we deserve it, we’ve suff
ered enough!”
Durragon rode his mount to one side of the moving city, his Chasers walking nearby, a second river. The city crossed the plain and crawled through the low hills, then marshalled and passed through a cleft in the mountain, just as Reah had done two months before. Still no weaknesses showed.
Durragon fumed.
Then, while descending the slopes to the old river bed, he saw his chance. He brought the captured parts of Tomoye forward and spoke to the drum.
“Where is the city weakest?” he asked.
The drum hummed and said nothing.
“I think where the biggest structural supports march. They’re slow. We can pass between them. Am I right?”
The drum rested on a cart, pushed along by four Chasers, who sweated in the hot sun. Durragon rode beside it, looking down. “That’s an order, a command request,” he said softly.
“You are correct,” the dram said. Then it began to crack on its flat ends. Durragon watched helplessly as his Chasers brought up dirt and grass to caulk the splitting seams, but the fluid and tiny glittering nodules poured out and the unit died. The Chasers looked at him, faces blank. He shrugged. “It’s told us what we need to know.”
He climbed up a ridge overlooking the pass and sat on a rock, chin in hand. How much of the city was he willing to sacrifice? He had to stop it someway…
“Start a fire on the opposite side of the valley and deflect the city into the rock pile south of here. That’ll break up the organization and let us move in faster.”
The runners spread out and his army began to move. As he resumed his mount, he saw a body lying in the tufted grass. He pointed and asked, “Who’s that?”
The flank runners shrugged. He rode by the body. It was the map-maker. Suddenly apprehensive, he took the lead of the torchers and stayed well away from the mass of troops.
He wasn’t afraid. There was too much to do. But he could feel a force rising against him, shifting his course of action just as he was going to shift the city. It was only natural, he told himself; now he was going to be tested.
Chasers rode the more limber city-parts to the mouth of the pass and waited. The torchers crossed to the opposite side and set the necessary fires.
“Stop, dig wells, feed the pumping systems!” Reah demanded. The city obeyed but they were still too high; the wells didn’t bring up enough water. The fire caught the side ranks and destroyed them. Reah felt their end as a shrivelling in her extended awareness.
The city moved around the fire and flowed toward the rock piles. Reah saw Durragon’s scheme and brought the city to a halt again.
“I release you from another obligation,” she said. “It’s necessary to kill human beings now—not as one steps on ants, but deliberately.”
She felt the spark of rage glowing beneath her. At once she was aware of a new city mental space—a vast, dark realm, crossed by ordered textures of tradition. For a moment she sensed rebellion, but that subsided, and the spark vanished.
Still, it was best to try an alternative first. The city sent part of its mass into the rock-piles to engage the men waiting there. The Chasers attacked and the rest of the city withdrew, leaving expendable parts behind as bait. The Chaser army was divided.
She pushed Resurrection on to the old river bed. The smell of the sea, a dozen miles away, came to her through a thousand sensors. Much fainter, but sharply amplified, was the smell of fresh water. It was deep, and they’d have to dig near Akkabar.
She looked for the village and saw it. A few huts had risen among the ashes, and now she was dragging the invaders back. She would try to circle the town, protect it. She spread the city farther apart, knowing what she was risking. She was tiring, though. Chasers riding rogue parts were capturing and destroying structural members on both sides. Events seemed to swim in her memory. She struggled in the chair. Weakness used her veins as step-ladders to her mind. Then she felt her stomach heave and she lost contact with the city. Far beneath her, the spark grew.
Durragon rode away from the arsonists after ordering them to extinguish their torches. The grass fires burned away from them, carried by winds going north through the pass. That was good; the fires had served their purpose, and already too much of the city had been destroyed.
He told his runners to re-group the army and follow him in a charge on the city. His flank-runners shook their heads.
“Dis we, brayba do we be, do no’ t’ink wisdom to dribe away de—”
“Those are my orders!” Durragon said. The runners continued to look at him darkly, almost insolently. He stared them down. Perja shrugged. “Ob de way, Man,” the Chaser said. They jogged off.
Still no fear, but Durragon could feel sweat gathering on his forehead, not born of exertion.
The sky across the river bed was gold, and high above, an insect-wing blue of enchanting depth. In another hour night would be upon them. The city could entrench and they’d never get into it. He had to act now.
He rode toward the front of the flow as fast as the mount could carry him, passing Chasers. Some cheered, others watched silent. There were only a few bands at the very front of the city, and they were tired, smoke-smudged and disgusted. They shouted questions as he passed them.
There was no time for orders or explanations. He had to get to the front, to lead his troop in for the kill. He could feel the blood pumping in his neck and head. Best to lead, to fly into the face of danger even before his men… that was how he would stop the uprising. It wasn’t overt, but he could feel it nonetheless: the lack of respect, the growing confusion in his men. He found an assistant runner trudging through the grass and almost rode his city part over the man, stopping short and kicking up clots of dirt. “Get all the guards down to the front,” he ordered. “All the veterans, the advance guides… I want them all up here with me.” Around me, he thought. “I’ll wait for them before we move in.” He felt for the secure hardness of his pistol.
The city was a mile away, bearing down inexorably. There were no more obvious weaknesses in its lines than there had been at the beginning of the day.
This was the confrontation, the last stand. If he failed at this, the Chasers would lose their near-mystical reverence for him (were losing it already) and they would suspect he didn’t really care for them, not even as a God cares for his peon creations. They would suspect he only cared for the opportunities they gave him. He had wondered how long it would take them to realize. No leader ever cares for the masses, he thought. It’s a relationship of opportunity, not love. His father had once worked him the same way, looking at him after the harvest with dark, suspecting eyes, in the candlelight after the meager dinner, unsure what this child was, but knowing there was work in it, help for his falling strength. And Durragon had felt a similar suspicion for the tired, seamy-faced patriarch, had dreamed at night of killing him, taking the family savings and going far away.
Now he was the father, and the children were restless. He had to get his most trusted men around him, or he could be killed in the charge, just as the map-maker had been killed.
Durragon had been born a Habiru. No Habiru, he thought, could ever really trust or respect a Chaser. They wasted their lives running in the wake of migrating cities, hoping to scavenge and caring for little else, praying to intractable monoliths that hardly knew they existed.
Now he was their leading edge, to split the monoliths and bring back rightful Paradise. But they were too stupid to even know knives must have a cutting edge.
The advance guides, guards and honored veterans were gathering around him in clumps of five or six or ten, and he rode among them, barking orders and arranging their ranks as buffers. He spotted Perja riding a mount like his own, no doubt captured in the raids of the past few hours. Ambition. The man was dangerous. Durragon didn’t stop to let him have his opportunity.
The city was almost upon them. Some small bit of tactical judgement told him it was foolish, suicidal, but he shouted the command anyway. “Move in! Wedge your way through
!” A hundred yards. His mount carried him smoothly and the wind between his teeth felt exhilarating. Then a giant structural column seemed to materialize, pushing through the smaller city parts, dividing his men. Perja rode beside him.
“Get back to the rear ranks!” Durragon shouted. Perja shook his head. Durragon turned away to see where his mount was running. In the corner of his eye, he saw something fly in, a kicked-up stone, a tuft of dirt and grass. He pulled out his pistol.
He slid off the mount, hitting the ground and knocking all his breath out. He felt a pain, like a pulled muscle in his chest. He rolled over.
Perja stood above him, blocking out the sky. The Chaser put a foot on each of his arms. He couldn’t find the gun or organize his thoughts. The Chaser brought out a thin woven wire. Durragon closed his eyes. A shadow passed over. Angel of Death.
He coughed and his eyes flew open. Perja was still there, but something black was above him. The Chaser was cringing, trying to hunker lower, but his head was snagged by an obstruction and he flew away, leaving Durragon on his back. The shadow passed. The wire fell into Durragon’s hands.
The city had saved him. The Chaser must have thrown a knife and knocked him down, and now the city, like a jealous lover, wanting his command, had saved him. His chest ached. Where was the knife? The stars were visible. The self-defeating stars…
Things moved around him, silent as ghosts. Huge things. He could feel their feet tromping the ground. Legs rose into the air like pistons, giant insects, walking… what? Someone was shouting.
There was wet on his hand, wet dark against the starlit grey… what?
“I’m hurt!” He felt his lips with his fingers. They opened and closed in rhythm with the noises. They were his own. He got to his feet and reached out for a dark hulk moving swiftly by. His hand caught an edge and held, yanking him up, and something large and gentle gripped him to keep him from falling under the treads.
In the starlight, Resurrection circled Akkabar and began to rebuild.
By night, the city was dark and lifeless. Its pieces groaned as they settled, a mournful sound that raised the hair on Ezeki’s neck. Musa cried aloud to Allah like a child.