Strength of Stones

by Greg Bear

  But Matthew couldn’t afford to trust Thule to be as efficient this time. He didn’t like to think of what he would have to do if the simulacrum succeeded—he hadn’t enjoyed destroying Eulalia. There were few enough cities left as it was, and perhaps in time he could think of a use for Thule.

  He walked back to the aircraft and sat on the door ramp. “Come here.” He motioned to the nearest city part. It approached. “Bring down the flier, just in case.”

  Another ramp opened in the side of the craft and a bee-shaped flier floated out. It had been modified slightly; now a black cylinder stood upright in the middle of the passenger section. On top of the cylinder was a silvery cube with three delicate antennae, measuring about ten centimeters on a side. By Kahn’s technological standards, no doubt it was very crude, but Matthew had long since abandoned self-conscious comparisons. He was the son of a peasant; the best he could hope for was that his methods be effective, not elegant.

  Either way, Kahn would not drain his planet of people. There was nothing out there for them to go to, nothing they would understand. God-Does-Battle was their home, for better or worse, so God had decreed ages ago. And Matthew would do anything to carry out God’s will.

  A crystal framework pyramid—the same or different was hard to tell—met them at the bottom of the shaft. “Pontifex, the Bifrost is in an amphitheater on his level. We have also arranged for terminals in an adjacent library to have ComNet access. But we expect you would liked to see the Bifrost first.”

  Kahn agreed, and the pyramid led them into the amphitheater. It had been designed to hold sixty thousand citizens, but the circular stage set up in the middle of the grass-covered field played to empty seats.

  They walked across the well-kept, lustrous green grass. The stage was not made of city parts; for that reason, Kahn suspected it had been constructed later, perhaps nine hundred years ago. Their angle of approach—from the rear—didn’t give them a good view of the Bifrost, if indeed it was located on the stage. Two white, wing-shaped arches stood in their line of sight. He wondered how it was all connected with the spires. Perhaps there were no physical connections—and at any rate, how could he even speculate?

  It seemed that the original Kahn’s planning had included psychology. The stage was very like an evangelist’s proscenium, decorated in rather angelic fashion.

  They rounded the stage.

  Between the arches rose a rectangular space of such intense blackness that it looked like a hole. Around the base of the stage was a half-circle of steps. Everything had been arranged so that hundreds of thousands of people could enter each hour, walk up the steps—and, Kahn presumed, into the blackness.

  From this perspective, it looked very much like an advanced matter transmission system.

  “Is that the Bifrost?” Arthur asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “That is the Bifrost,” the pyramid said warmly.

  “Is it operating?” Kahn asked.

  “This unit does not know. The Bifrost has been in this mode ever since the transformation of the primal Archon.”

  “It’s never been tested?”

  “No.”

  “Where are the terminals?”

  “This way.” The pyramid moved toward an aisle and Kahn followed. Jeshua and Arthur were close behind, but Thinner held back, staring at the black rectangle.

  “Were many records left by… the Archon?” Kahn asked, deciding the simplest expression of a confused situation would have to do.

  “There are records,” the pyramid said.

  “Don’t you know what the Bifrost is? Not even now?” Arthur asked.

  “I’m not the same Kahn who built it. Why should I know? He had four hundred years on me.” At the end of the aisle, they passed through a broad gate. Thinner followed several dozen meters behind, feeling the walls with his hands, stopping occasionally to stroke a pillar or buttress.

  The terminals were in an antechamber. The walls had been festooned with multi-colored crystal flowers, intricate circular designs with mystical symbols etched in glass and city material. The result was eye-spinning and garish, not at all like the original Thule.

  Kahn pulled a chair out from one terminal and sat. “Feel free to use the others,” he said to Arthur and Jeshua. Jeshua followed suit, but Arthur remained standing.

  Kahn spread his hands over the dimples in front of his terminal screen. “Records of Robert Kahn, please.”

  A homunculus formed on the plate. It was a black and yellow locust standing on its hind legs, wearing a formal black suit and round black cap. “Those records are separate from the city ComNet,” it said. It cocked its head at him inquiringly. “Any questions I may answer?”

  He wanted to ask if the original Kahn was still alive, but the words stuck in his throat. “Where are those records kept?”

  “In the Archon’s chambers.”

  “Where are the chambers?”

  “I will find out. Do you have any other questions?” The homunculus should have known immediately. Either Thule was not completely integrated or it was hiding things. And he was worried by other aspects of the homunculus—its use of a personal pronoun, its peculiar form and animation, quite unlike the service figures in other cities. What it represented in Thule’s scheme of things, he couldn’t tell.

  “I need a record of solar flux in the last five, six hundred years.”

  “I believe the Pontifex has notes on that subject, but there are no records in the ComNet.” The homunculus’ tone of voice was faintly taunting now.

  “Are there any city records?”

  “No.”

  “What does the ComNet…” Kahn took a deep breath and bent closer to the little figure. “Then I’d like city history, starting with the return of the original Kahn.”

  “Coming up.”

  Kahn and Jeshua fit their fingers into the cups and stared into the projectors. Arthur leaned against a pillar, tapping one foot nervously. He looked around for Thinner. The mimic hadn’t followed them into the antechamber.

  Arthur walked to the door, then down a short corridor. Thinner wasn’t in the amphitheater, and he wasn’t in the corridor. Arthur returned to the antechamber, saw that Jeshua and Kahn were absorbed in whatever the terminals were showing them, then went in search of Thinner.

  He was tired and not a little afraid, but the rebodied mimic had puzzled him since they’d left Resurrection. Weren’t the city parts supposed to follow Kahn’s orders? Thinner obviously wasn’t doing that.

  Trying to memorize his path, Arthur made his way to the main promenade, then walked in the pale light to a spiral ramp leading to higher levels. He spotted the mimic on the ramp.

  Arthur followed him. The mimic didn’t seem much more familiar with Thule than Arthur was. It was easy enough to tail him; Thinner stopped every few meters to feel the walls, stroking them or just touching with his fingers.

  Up elevators, moving stairways and more spiral ramps around a ventilator shaft, Thinner stopped five floors above the amphitheater level, his face expressionless. The way he touched the city’s surfaces, he seemed to be reading, following some hidden pattern.

  Then, inadvertently, Arthur lagged behind too much and the mimic spotted him across the ramp. He froze. Thinner stared at him for a few seconds, then turned away and kept walking. Arthur waited a discreet interval, unsure how the mimic felt about being followed, then hurried to catch up.

  “Do you know what I’m looking for?” Thinner called back.

  “No,” Arthur answered.

  “The terminals won’t tell Kahn anything he really needs to know. They’re stalling. So I’m looking for ComNet entry terminals—not just terminals with read-only capability.”

  “Why?”

  “A safeguard. What do you remember about Thule?” That was a strange question, but he answered without thinking. “A Gnostic city now, but before the Exiling Gnosticism was only part of its…” He stopped, startled by the flow of words—and not just words, but images
, understanding. “Part of its heretical programs. George Pearson apostasized ten years before the Exiling became the mayor of Thule.” His thoughts raced ahead. “The city didn’t accept the judgement of all other cities during the Exiling. But two months later, for reasons of its own, first it kicked out all Jews. Gnosticism is antagonistic toward Jews and their God. Then everybody else. They all died in the cold.”

  “Where did you learn all that?”

  “In Resurrection, I think.”

  “Given history lessons, just like a child. How does it make you feel?”

  “Confused,” Arthur said, walking in step with Thinner. And stronger… and deeply afraid. There was a part of himself he hadn’t earned, somehow, not truly himself, but the memory of cities. He felt violated, but not just violated… pleased, shamefully proud of the knowledge he hadn’t earned.

  The sensation of understanding his own words, of being somehow a larger person—as if he had been given an atlas to his past, a magic mirror—was incredible, inexpressible.

  Thinner stopped abruptly, then turned. “There are entry terminals in a room at the end of this corridor.”

  “You know that just by touching the walls?”

  “All cities have a nerve system. I can read the impulses. They tell me things not even Kahn knows. Thule is very unhealthy now. Even a heretic city would be warped by what it did. It watched its citizens freeze to death in the snow. And it exiled them not under compulsion, but because it chose to. It’s dangerous here.”

  “Does it know you’re listening?”

  “Its ComNet isn’t aware throughout the entire city. It’s contracted, withdrawn. But it might know.”

  At the end of the corridor was a broad, high-domed room, lit as if by skylights, though they were deep within Thule. Arranged around the room were larger versions of the terminals in the antechamber. Some had been broken and scattered, others tossed haphazardly. Thinner righted one and tested it by pushing several buttons.

  The screen’s louvres opened. Thinner bent over the terminal, bringing his face close to the dimples. The mimic’s forehead glowed.

  “Thinner died before you came to Resurrection,” the mimic said, its voice faint. “Kahn’s chambers are on this floor. Take the corridor in the opposite direction, to the end. I will prevent the city from harming you, if I can.” The mimic pressed its hand into the dimples on the console.

  Arthur stepped back, then slapped his hands to his ears. There was a high-pitched noise, almost beyond the range of his hearing. Then all was silent. Arthur lay on his back beside the terminal. The mimic’s body had fallen forward, bending its head so that it seemed to rest on the console, disconnected. The eyes were open, blank. At last he understood. Thinner had never made the journey with them. The head had been used.

  Arthur got to his feet, turned slowly, and ran.

  There was a commotion among the pipe-joint city parts Matthew had brought with him. He looked up from the patterns he had been scrawling in the snow.

  Thule’s silicate spines were lowering. He stood and gestured at the flier with one hand. “Go.” It would hover above the city until it was needed. If it was needed. He still had hope, but it was fading rapidly.

  He walked across the field of snow until he came to the edge of the spines. Then he entered Thule’s boundaries, with nothing to stop him. Reah had entered the city mind using a mimic’s body, her personality confined in the blank mind of the damaged city-part. Matthew marveled at his mother’s inventiveness. She had relaxed Thule’s defenses, hoping to clear the way for Kahn.

  At the same time, she had cleared the way for her son.

  “Reah’s in the city,” Arthur said, his breath coming hard. After the sounds of a few minutes before, the antechamber seemed abnormally quiet. “She was in Thinner. Thinner was already dead…”

  Kahn looked at Jeshua. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “She is the Shekhinah,” Jeshua said. “There is no deeper sin and error than in this city. She had to come here.”

  “God damn this mystic nonsense!” Kahn shook his hands in the air. “I need to know what lies on the other side of that!” He pointed in the direction of the amphitheater. “The ComNet doesn’t tell us a damned thing.”

  “And I’ve located your chambers,” Arthur said. “That is, the…”

  “Where?”

  “Archon,” the homunculus on the terminal interrupted. It was cleaning its legs. “It is not recommended that you…”

  The voice blurred, then became audible again, “… tour the city. I recommend you stay here. The primal Pontifex’s chambers are not in order.”

  The image wavered. Kahn stepped closer. Another image replaced it for just a moment, a woman in long, flowing robes. Then the locust returned.

  “What danger is there?” Kahn asked.

  The locust’s human-like face smiled at him, and the image vanished completely.

  “Take me to the chambers,” Kahn told Arthur. He led them back, retracing his steps. He didn’t want to—what he had seen in the past few minutes was enough to derange him without repeats—but he knew he was marching down the trod, past all will, all hope. He had eaten the fruit, been given forbidden knowledge, and now he was part of the spirit game. Down the corridor, turning left instead of right, to the half-opened door.

  “Here,” he said.

  Kahn stepped inside. The first room was small and dusty-smelling. The floor seemed to be covered with broken glass. The room beyond was larger, with broad tables covered with rolls of paper and notebooks. Here, too, the floor was littered with shards of crystal. Scattered amid the shards were bones and scraps of cloth. The furniture was pierced with needles of glass.

  The only intact body was pinned to the opposite wall. Dark blood streamed down the wall, flaking with age. How long ago—nine centuries? Only bones were left, hanging in a white suit not very different from the one Kahn had unpacked and put on in Fraternity.

  He stepped up to the pinned figure and examined it closely, clenching and unclenching his hands.

  “There are four skulls on the floor, builder,” Jeshua said.

  Kahn reached carefully into the white suit’s pocket and pulled out a jeweled personal computer. On the back he read an inscription: “Love in our third century”. Next to the words was Danice’s personal design, a rose with a star nestled in its petals.

  It was just the sort of precious, tasteless thing Danice would have found for him—a jeweled tapas pad.

  Kahn opened and closed his mouth, then looked up at the fleshless skull. The tapas beeped in his hands and he glanced down again. He had accidentally activated the small screen. A triangle appeared, its three corners marked with the symbol for Earth, “G.D.B.”, and a lopsided figure eight—infinity.

  He walked over the shards to the table and began to flip through the notebooks, pushing aside the rolls of city plans and bits of broken crystal. It took him several minutes to find the section he had hoped was there, in a notebook dated 2666/ 9/9. It seemed an afterthought: a scrawled chart showing solar maximums and minimums. The star was a Bollingen variable, something he had never heard of before. It had a period of six hundred years. “Now at minimum,” the note said casually. “Climatic effects were severe at max., but not permanent. Coastlines altered with sea level rise, weather erratic.”

  Kahn figured in his head. If it had been at minimum nine hundred years ago, it was at maximum now. In a few years—or decades—it would decline. God-Does-Battle’s residents had already suffered through a maximum and survived. They would very probably survive again.

  They didn’t need him. In a way, Matthew was right. His return, all things considered, was not crucial. But he could activate the Bifrost, complete what the original Kahn had tried to do… which was, as near as he could tell, to get everybody away from this foresaken teeter-totter world by walking them through the Bifrost.

  One notebook was bound in a dull, frosty gold cover. He pulled it out of the debris and opened to the first page. There
was an intricate diagram of a spherical object, surrounded by mathematics of a sort he wasn’t familiar with, even though the writing was recognizably his own. Keeping hand-written notebooks was an affectation he had retained from his younger years, when he had imagined himself an equal to Leonardo.

  Some of the numbers he could fiddle: dimensions—the sphere was ten kilometers wide—and strength-of-materials analyses in one corner. Judging from the figures, the sphere obviously wasn’t made of matter—it was practically indestructible—and its internal structure seemed amorphous, more like a gigantic circuit than a building, or even a vessel.

  He turned the pages. The sphere’s capacity was enormous, allegedly a trillion occupants. But in what form? Not in their bodies, that was certain. Other pages contained diagrams of different structures, one a much larger framework sphere within which the ten kilometer ball would nest. But only temporarily. There were facilities for the reception of travelers—or guests—or whatever they would be, but no docking terminals. Entrance was apparently gained through matter transmission systems.

  Wonderful, he thought, the changes that could occur in four hundred years. What purpose did it all serve? Where would the ten-kilometer ball go when it exited the framework sphere? And how would it exit in the first place—no openings were provided, though it was shown pursuing some sort of complex path in higher geometries.

  He looked back at the body on the wall, his vision blurring. “She is here, Builder,” Jeshua said. He turned.

  Reah’s image wavered in the middle of the room. Her voice was distorted, and things seemed to be flying around her, pushing her this way and that, but they could understand her words.

  “Builder! You must hurry. The way is open. I have fought all my life, fought my own son when he stopped the children from coming to Resurrection. Now he is here, and you must hurry. You finished the bridge. Take my children across the bridge! Take them away from this place!” The image wavered violently and vanished.