by Clay Gilbert
They’ll have been recording me, just like they recorded that girl’s death. Isaac could talk his way out of that, if he had to. If I were caught, I wouldn’t be so lucky.
He pulled the chip from its slot, slipped it into a pocket on his jacket, then followed the camera’s control wire down to the panel and pulled it free. If anyone noticed the camera had gone dark, they might send someone to investigate. But he’d be gone by then.
He left the building just as he had come, boarded his cycle and sped back to the Forgotten City in silence.
CHAPTER NINE Eternity knew he couldn’t stay in the Underground forever, and with what he learned from Paladin, he didn’t want to. It was a place too filled with secrets, and he wanted to be back in the open air of the Forgotten City again. So he, Brain, and Shadow lit out for the Above. Now Shadow was in the Black City, because times were getting dark again, and there were things they had to know if they were going to keep the freedom they had managed to steal back.
Dark times. Eternitycould feel it, even here in the neon glow of Crown Avenue, where he ordinarily felt worlds away from the Providers and their dome-drones. It felt like things had changed, even in the brief time he had been in the Underground.
“I don’t know what’s up, man,” Eternity told Brain as they cruised the Avenue on their hovercycles. “It doesn’t feel right around here, though.”
“Yeah,” Brain said, “Iknow what you mean. There’s rumors that they’re killing people in the City. It’s getting everybody stirred up. Word is, more people disappear every day.”
It’s because of us, Eternity thought, though he didn’t dare say it. It’s all because of us. If we’d just stop and give in— just be like the others—they’d leave us alone, and no one else would have to disappear. He thought of his parents, and for a childish moment, thought he might cry. We can’t stop, though. It’s what we are. What I am. This way lies pain, that way peace. This way lies danger and death, that way, quiet and safety. But at what price? How much is our freedom worth? How much is it worth to be ourselves? Eternity knew his answer. It was worth everything.
“It’s not right, man,” Eternity said. “They’re getting to us. It can’t go down this way. It can’t.” Eternity’s hazel eyes burned behind his shades, stinging with sudden tears.
“Let’s go see the Prophet,” Brain said, his voice for once devoid of the swagger that usuallysuffused all he said or did. There was no streetrider cool there, merely a genuine concern. “Come on, man,” Brain said softly, and Eternity followed his friend into the blazing, neon night.
The holograph house was a shiningsilver palace, itsmarquee flashing in digital letters the names of two holoflicks Eternitycould not remember having even heard of. The sight of it gave him a feelingof déjà vu—astrangefamiliaritywith this apparition out of a world in which he’d never lived.
“What is this place?” he asked Brain. “What is it now, I mean?” “This is the Prophet’s place,” Brain replied, and the doors slid open to receive them. The lobby of the ancient building was huge: a great hall with marble floors and high arched ceilings. Black pedestals stood in two rows on either side of the room. Above each, miniature holograph images played out coming attractions that had long since concluded their engagements, the figures above the pedestals now irrelevant images trapped in endless repetition. There was a black door beside each pedestal.
“Those are the screening rooms?” Eternity asked. He’d never been in a place like this. All of the holograph houses in the Black City had been closed down, along with all the mindgame arcades like the Forgotten City’s Cortex Vortex.
“The auxiliary ones,” Brain said, pointing to a set of panels at the far end of the room. “The main screening room’s through there. That’s where he’ll be.”
There was no need to ask who Brain meant, and no time to ask before they stepped into the room. A set of red curtains greeted them on the other side of the panels, and pushing their waypast, they found themselves in the building’s huge, main auditorium. Voices filled the room, and lights danced off the walls, reflected from the images generated on a huge stage in the center of the room. Eternity marveled at the realism of the holographic projections. Surrounding the stage in ascendingrows, wereat least ahundred seats. Seated in one of the uppermost rows, his eyes fixed on the images from the stage, sat a man—no, a boy, Eternity realized—a boywho, at second glance, seemed to be his own age and yet looked older even than Sentinel’s many years.
“That’s him,” Brain whispered. “That’s the Prophet.” Almost as soon as Brain began to speak the words, the Prophet rose from his seat and started down toward them. To Eternity, the most striking of the Prophet’s features was the long shock of snow-white hair, framing his youthful face in frosty paradox. There was very little about the Prophet that didn’t seem unusual to Eternity. His eyes were so pink that they were nearly crimson, so much so that he seemed almost to have no pupils, as if his eyes were two red-dwarf stars set into a countenance made unfathomably strange by a combination of age and innocence. His skin was pale, as if the dark chamber he sat in had sucked from his skin every ray of sunlight that had ever touched it. His thin frame was draped in robes of dark green that so enveloped him that any other detail beneath them was undetectable.
“These are strange days,” said the Prophet, in a voice with the softness of a whisper and the strength of a slamming door. The burning eyes found Brain first, and the Prophet gripped the dark-skinned youth’s hand tightly. “It’s been a long time, man,” he said to Brain. “Makes sense for you to come back now, though.”
Brain’s expression was blank. “What’s wrong?” asked the Prophet. “You think I don’t know what’s been going on? You think I’m just sitting in herewatchingpicture-shows? Thisplace hasn’t been forvidviewing since the black Towers were built—even if I do screen the odd holoflick sometimes.” He chuckled. “But I haven’t lost the Sight, and it hasn’t lost me.” As if to punctuate his sentence, he tapped a silver syringe that rested in a leather pouch he wore suspended around his waist on a braided belt.
Eternity remembered his parents’ warnings about the drugs he’d heard called dream-finders: hallucinogens, like those that had existed as long as history remembered, but now, in the wake of the great Wasting before the Black City rose, there were mutogens as well. They changed you, and the changes were different in every user.
“No one’s ever heard of the dream-drugs causing anything like the Sight before,” Shadow whispered to Eternity. “Sure, they make lots of people see things, but not things that happen. He’s special.”
The Prophet’s twin-star eyes locked on Eternity. “So what’s your trip, man? What’re you after?”
“The future,” Eternity answered. “Will the Providers always rule? Will anyone stop them? Can they even be stopped?” “Sit down,” the Prophet told the two youths, staring past them down to the stage, and it seemed to Eternity that he peered right through the images still engaged in their threedimensional pantomime on the stage below. “Fire,” the Prophet intoned. “Always starts this way, with elemental fire and white fog—the Big Is, the Dream Door Icall it. And yes, now, there it is—the Black City—the Forgotten City, too— the Two-in-One—and now, the Towers burning—people on fire in the streets—living flames—and war. War between the Two-In-One!”
But how can that be? Eternitythought. They don’t even know we’re here. Or do they? “What else do you see?” he asked the Prophet.
“Peace, in the end,” the Prophet said, the manic moment of his earlier vision passed, “but at a great cost.” “But who are They? And how are they stopped?” The Prophet shook his head. “Only kind of unlimited vision, man, is hindsight. I can only see as much as the Sight shows me, and that’s all there is for now.” His eyes were no longer vacant as they had been a moment before.
“But is war the only way?” “Hard to tell,” the Prophet said. “Still a long way off. Sometimes you can only gain by losing.” He seemed far away again, his ey
es staring back toward the stage, as if to call back a part of the vision that still remained unsaid. “Just let it be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eternity asked. “Don’t really know, man. I heard it in a song somewhere, once. Seemed true to me,” he added, with a smile. Eternity could not help smiling back. “Thanks, man.” In that instant, the Prophet seemed to him a figure strangely out of step with time—a youth gifted with magic in an age when such things seemed all but lost. No drug lay at the heart of the visions, Eternity realized. The Prophet’s gift was his own. What the Sight had shown was true: the Black City would be tried by fire from within its own heart, and the Towers would fall.
What must be must be, Eternity thought, remembering the choices of his past and resigning himself to his part in the City’s destiny. “Let’s go,” he said softly to Brain, and the two of them departed the theater, leaving the Prophet behind to his gift and his illusions.
* * * *
Eternity rode alone.
Brain had gone back to the Underground, to live his own life and confront his doubts about what his father had done. Eternityknew Brain himself could be trusted, though, and he hoped he’d not seen the last of him.
He was alone. For the first time since leaving the Hotel Paradise, where he had first been set on the path he was walking now.
No. That’s not true. He’d been set on this path since the day he’d first heard the voiceof dissent within himself. He’dbroken away,no longer forced to wear a Citizen’s robes or shave his head, no longer madeto hear Their voices fed into his mind, tellinghim what to believe. And yet there was still an uncertainty he couldn’t blame on the Providers or the unrest in the City, as much as he might like to.
How can war help us? And should it? Perhaps, he thought, the Forgotten City’s people should merely be, just exist, a body separate from the Black City. Two opposites, irreconcilable, trapped together, yet separated by a way of life and a single wall. That was the way it had apparently been for centuries, perhaps for as long as there had been those willing to defy the Providers. Why shouldn’t things just go on that way? What would any of them gain if the thingstheProphet saw became reality? What was there to gain by blood and fire?
Would we become the new Providers then? He wondered. And would we be any different? For the first time, he was alone, and he found he doubted everything. What do I have to rebel against? He looked down at his clothes and at his cycle shining faintly in the neon radiance that was nighttime in the Forgotten City. What do I have to fight anymore? We’re safe here, free from surveillance and censorship. Many of us have good reason, and the time, to forget what slavery is. How many lives might be saved if we could just forget?
Hethought of his parents. They might be dead already. Tears filmed his eyes, but he blinked them back hard, windows slammed shut against a storm. It’s because of them that we can’t forget, though—because of all the ones who aren’t free, all the ones who still don’t even know they’re in a cage. That’s why Ace kept fighting, and why I have to, too.
But his doubts remained. What right did he have—did any of them have—to decide what freedom meant for someone else? Only hours ago he’d pledged to himself that he would fight Them at any cost, and now the possibility of that debt coming due seemed nearer than ever, and he wondered if he really had the strength to follow through. In his mind, he imagined the future the Prophet had foreseen: the Black City divided bywar from within. He could hear the screams in his head, could almost smell the smoke and the scent of flames and flesh.
Is this the price we’ll have to pay for our freedom? And how many people will pay with us? He wondered if Ace had ever doubted, and where he himself would have ended up if Ace had decided it wasn’t worth the effort to resist.
“Eternity.” His name, spoken by a voice behind him, spun him round to face its source. It was Shadow. Eternity saw his friend standing beneath the pale, white glow of a Crown Avenue streetlamp. The light seemed to dance offthe tears that shone in Shadow’s eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Eternity asked. “There’s been a death—a murder—in the Busisec. One of the newspeople. Domes killed her. Her own people, man, and behind her—lasgun burns—two words: ‘Rebels die.’”
Eternity was silent, nearly unable to think over the sound inside his head that reminded him of the white noise over the glass wall in his parents’ house before a screencast late at night.
“Did they have any proof?” he asked, looking up at Shadow again. “That she was against them, I mean.” “I heard part of a screencast in the City, and that’s how they’re spinningit. They’recallingherkiller a hero, and they don’t even know who it was. The report was all just words, and a black wall behind the newsperson. For effect, I guess. It’s sure having one. They didn’t show any footage.” He paused for a moment, then took the micro-drive out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Eternity. “They didn’t, because they didn’t have any. Here’s the proof, man. The proof of what they did to her. You’ll never see that on a screencast.”
“This could really be bad for us,” Eternity said. “This is a bad time for the Forgotten City not to have a leader. I wish Ace was here.”
“So do I, man. Maybe we should go see Sentinel. He’s been around a long time. Maybe he’s got some ideas about what we should do.”
“Let’s do it,” Eternity said. Their arrival at Sentinel’s shop at nearly midnight stirred the elderly man from his sleep, but when he met them at the door, it was with a smile, and when they had told him what theyknew ofthe events inthe City,it was clear their decision had been the right one.
“I’m glad you came straight away instead of waiting until morning,” Sentinel said when they were all seated in the back room of his shop. He’d made a pot of tea, and they sipped at their cups as they talked. “This is a most urgent matter. The Forgotten City has always had formal leadership of one kind or another, until recently. Ace’s death caught us all off-guard, even Elders like myself. Before Ace, we were the ones who more or less made the decisions. A group of us, that is—ten council-members and a council chair, who was the eldest member of the Council. That’s what we were—the Council of Elders. Some of the young ones like yourselves called us the Oldtimers Committee.” He smiled, remembering. “The Council hasn’t met for several years now. We got out of the habit while Ace was leader. He seemed to have things well enough in hand. It was easier, too, to delegate responsibility to a single voice rather than hash things out in a debate, as always seemed to happen with the Council. But perhaps now, with things as they are, the old ways are best. At least for the purpose of deciding who should take Ace’s place.”
Eternity considered what Sentinel said, and then he nodded. “Makes sense to me. Where should the Council be held?” “No one’s used the Leader’s Hall since Ace’s been gone,” Shadow volunteered. “Seems fitting to me to meet there.” “An excellent suggestion, Shadow,” Sentinel agreed. “Send out the word then, Sentinel,” Eternity said. “Call the Council.”
* * * * Emilystood before the glass wall at Northern Station, hoping no one could see her shaking. It could have been me. So easily, it could have been me.
The images in her mind played like a vidscreen on fastframe, spinning through as if a tornado was tearing through her thoughts, breakingapart the framework of beliefs and the foundation of memories until she would be left with nothing to cling to, not even the anger that had driven her since her parents died.
Rebels die, Emily thought, remembering the newsperson’s words on the screencast—as if she could ever forget them. They called it justice. They said the girl must have been a terrorist sympathizer. It could have happened anytime, to anyone. She took my place. It could have been me.
* * * * It was early morning by the time the Council of Elders was assembled, its members ten of the most trusted of the Oldtimers, with Sentinel as their leader, being the eldest among them. Paladin was there too, Eternity noticed. Makes sense, he thought. He didn’t recognize any of the ot
hers. The Council convened in a large conference room on the top floor of the Leaders’ Hall, aroom whose balconyoverlooked Crown Avenue. From its window, Eternity, Brain, and the members of the Council could see a large crowd of the Forgotten City’s people, Oldtimers and streetriders alike, gathered outside. Looking out on the assemblage, Eternity was reminded of the diversityof those who madeup the rebel community.
Out there is the reason we have to keep going. Shouts and cheers rose from the crowd, and some jostling and mockfighting broke out now and again among the streetriders, but all were still and silent when Sentinel steeped out onto the balcony and began to speak.
“It’s been many months since the death of Ace, who was our leader.”
“Yeah,Ace!”an anonymous streetrider cried from the crowd below. Sentinel ignored the outburst.
“Ace was our leader for six years, and now, for almost as many months, he has been dead. In those six months, we Elders have tried to fill the gap left by his passing. But last night, an innocent girl died in the City—another victim of the Providers’ tyranny.”
The sound of whispers spread like a great wind through the crowd.
“No more deaths!” a woman’s voice cried from below. “Kill ‘em!” an angry young streetrider shouted, pumping his fist in the air.
Sentinel held up his hand for silence. “This morning, it is time to choose a new leader, but who will it be?” Eternity could feel the tension from his seat inside the council room. He looked at Shadow, seated to his right, and then to Brain, on his left.