The City of Mirrors

by Justin Cronin

  “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 us,” 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 of 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 emerged 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.

  “Sixty minutes,” Peter said. “Good luck.”

  They parted cleanly, no goodbyes.

  Peter and Amy walked north along Fifth Avenue. Block by block, the vertical core of the city rose, fashioning narrow fjords between the buildings. In places the pavement was buckled with the roots of trees, in others collapsed into craters that varied in size from a few yards to the width of the street, forcing them to creep along the edge. As they moved up the island, Peter took note of the landmarks: the Empire State, dizzyingly tall, like a single imperious finger pointing to the sky; the Chrysler Building, with its curved crown of burnished metal; the library, sheathed in a feathery cloak of vines, its broad front steps guarded by a pair of pedestaled lions. At the corner of Forty-second and Fifth, the half-constructed tower Alicia had described came into view. The exposed girders of its upper floors possessed a reddish appearance—the product of decades of slow oxidation. An exterior elevator ascended to the top of the structure; from there, the crane rose another ten or fifteen stories, its horizontal boom parallel to the building’s west flank, high above Fifth Avenue.

  So far, they had seen no trace of Fanning’s virals—no scat or animal carcasses, no sounds of movement from the buildings. Except for pigeons, the city seemed dead. Each of them had a semiautomatic rifle and a pistol; Amy also carried the sword. She had offered it to Alicia, but the woman had refused. “Peter’s right,” Alicia said. “I’ve got no use for it. Just do me a favor and cut the bastard’s head off.”

  They approached from the west, via Forty-third to Vanderbilt; between the buildings, a view of Grand Central emerged. Compared to what was around it, the structure seemed modest in its dimensions, nestled like a heart in the bosom of the city. The streets around it were open to the sun, though an elevated roadway encircled the perimeter at balcony level, creating a zone of darkness beneath.

  Amy checked her watch: twenty minutes to go. “We need to scout that door,” she said.

  A risk, but Peter agreed.
If they moved cautiously and kept low, maintaining an upward line of sight, they would be able to detect any virals beneath the overpass before they got too close.

  Which was, Peter later realized, precisely what Fanning had intended them to do: to look up. Never mind Alicia’s warnings not to underestimate their adversary. Never mind that the street was suspiciously carpeted in vines, or that with each step forward the air thickened with the damp, septic odor of an open sewer. Never mind the faint sound of rustling, which might have been caused by rats but wasn’t. One careless moment was all it took. They crept beneath the overpass, every ounce of their attention focused on the empty ceiling.

  Peter and Amy never even saw them coming.

  Michael watched the numbers of the streets decline. A few were impassable, choked with vegetation or debris, others empty, as if forgotten by time. In some of the buildings, trees were growing; flocks of startled pigeons burst forth in their path, wheeling upward in huge, flapping clouds.

  At the corner of Eighteenth and Broadway, they paused to rest. Alicia was breathing hard, her face glazed with sweat. “How much farther?” Michael asked.

  She coughed and cleared her throat. “Eleven blocks.”

  “I can do this on my own, you know.”

  “Not a chance.”

  The crutch was too unstable; they left it behind and went on, Michael supporting Alicia from one side. A rifle dangled over her shoulder. Her steps were labored, more hobble than walk. From time to time, she issued a tiny gasp he knew she was trying to hide. The minutes dripped away. They came to a small shelter of elaborate iron scrollwork, painted white with pigeon guano. The smell of the sea had grown strong.

  “This is it,” she said.

  From his pack, Michael removed a lantern and lit the wick. As they descended the stairs, he detected small movements along the floor. He paused and raised the lantern. Rats were scurrying everywhere, long brown ropes of them hugging the edges of the walls.

  “Yuck,” he said.

  They reached the bottom. Arched brick columns supported the roof above the tracks. On the tiled wall, a sign in gold lettering read ASTOR PLACE.