City at the End of Time

  “I remember,” Jack said. He turned to say good-bye to Joe-Jim, but Sepulcher grabbed his shoulder in a vise of sharp, bony fingers.

  “I didn’t want to come here,” Sepulcher growled. He sucked in his cheeks and dropped his thin white-lined brows. “These people hate me.”

  “I wonder why,” Jack said.

  “But you, young son of an old friend, you have something I need.”

  Jack looked down. “Let me go, or I’ll break your arm.”

  Sepulcher let go, but his white-daubed digits flexed. The index and thumb made a space, three inches. “This big. Dark, pitted, shiny. Burned by time. A crooked black rock with a red eye. They want me to find it.”

  Jack stared the man down, his teeth grinding.

  “To pay a debt,” Sepulcher added. “You have it, I know you do.”

  Jack shook his head. “Haven’t seen it, Nathan,” he said. And that was true, in a way.

  His father and Silverstein had split up after a few months, despite drawing decent crowds in small comedy theaters across the Midwest. Sepulcher had been different back then, but Jack never liked him.

  “That rock…” Sepulcher seemed unable to finish his thought. Jack knew he needed to leave, or there might be a ruckus—so he said goodbye to Joe-Jim, then, giving Sepulcher a wide berth, walked quickly to his bike.

  Sepulcher stared after him with forlorn conviction—Jack could actually feel the man’s eyes like little needles in his neck. “That was my rock, Jack! Your father stole it from me! My life has been a misery ever since!”

  Other buskers had gathered. Slowly, deliberately, they encircled Sepulcher, whispering, prodding, quietly urging him to move on.

  Jack pedaled south.

  The whole night was going sour.

  Ginny walked in a happy daze. She had always loved circuses, street acts, magicians—had always wanted to have a birthday party on a great, sprawling lawn, with minstrels and dancing dogs and jugglers—and she could almost pretend, here it is, here I am, under the stars—my magic moment.

  Here I am, finally happy and whole.

  And then she noticed the compact young man on the bicycle, riding south along the asphalt path, glancing back over his shoulder. Skinny but well-toned, muscular forearms prominent beneath a striped short-sleeve shirt, swirling black hair, dark eyes intent, not scared but wary.

  She stood transfixed. Her arms started to shiver. She wanted to run after him, ask who he was—but he stood on his pedals and sped up, leaving behind the long stretch of tents and rings and the banner that announced LE BOULEVARD DU CRIME.

  She knew him.

  They had never met.

  She ran after, crying, “Wait!”

  The bicyclist didn’t stop. He vanished in the lights and shadows along the waterfront, under the star-pricked southern sky.

  CHAPTER 20

  * * *

  Queen Anne

  Jack’s roommate, Burke, had not returned. After the run-in with Sepulcher, he needed company—someone other than his rats. Outside, seagull cries blew through the open window, discussing an offshore storm.

  The weather would soon turn miserable.

  Hastily consumed game hen and the glass of red wine rolled like lead in his stomach. He held his hand to his lips for a belch that refused to come, then reached into his pocket for the classified ad. Unfolding and smoothing it, reading the simple question over and over, he wondered what to do. Whom to trust.

  Everywhere he went, he had the weird feeling he was being followed. Somebody—everybody—thought he was special. Jack did not want to be special. He wanted to continue with the life he had led for years now, since his father’s death.

  Since the funeral. Since finding among his father’s few effects the box that sometimes contained the melted, curiously shaped stone with the red eye—and sometimes did not.

  Harborview. Doctors. Needles. Putting my life in other hands.

  In his bedroom, a futon lay bunched up against the wall. A restless night. Most of his nights had been restless lately. He flopped down.

  “Not a city, exactly,” Jack muttered in the darkness. “A refuge. A fortress. The last, greatest place on Earth.”

  A rat rolled and squeaked, eyes closed, raised front leg twitching.

  “And I wouldn’t call it dreaming.”

  Brows furrowed, he studied the phone number. Better than a visit to the doctor—if the ad meant anything, but of course it didn’t. It was wrong on all counts. Not a dream, not a city—and what about at the end of time?

  Even thinking about calling the number made his head hurt.

  One thing was clear. His time of freedom, of avoiding major decisions, was over. As an aid to finding a better fate, he could focus on the western corner where the ceiling met the walls, all those angled lines suddenly bending and coming taut—he could visualize a stranded cord stretching to infinity, or at least a vast distance, vibrating as if alive, singing to him—he could spend days, weeks, trying to unkink the knots formed while he was caught up in a wind of misfortune—

  Or he could trump it all and make his decision right now.

  He covered his eyes with his hands, miserable. Definitely losing the last of his marbles. Dropping them one by one, watching them roll down the sewer grate—out of control.

  His foot kicked out and hit the old steamer trunk where he stored the fragments of past acts, history—his mother’s and father’s worldly goods.

  The stone.

  He kicked the trunk again, to offload bad energy.

  All the rats watched, awake now, still but for their whiskers. “I know, I kno-o-ow,” he soothed.

  Time to connect past moments—to see if the rock was in its box. Magic box, magic rock—except that Jack knew magic had nothing to do with it.

  Memory is the secret. But I don’t always remember—

  He stood and reached for the latch on the trunk lid. To open the trunk all the way, he had to lug it out from the wall. He braced to do so. Something behind the trunk caught his fingers. Distracted, he reached back, trying to remember what he had put there—and pinched out a thin black portfolio. The portfolio measured thirty inches wide and eighteen inches high, and had been secured with a twist of dirty linen.

  He untied the knot—he was very good with knots.

  The portfolio contained nine or ten drawings on thick sketch paper. They somehow looked familiar. At first glance the topmost sketch might have depicted the elongated bows of three ships crossing a wavy black sea, like ocean liners in old posters. But the jutting bows were curvaceous and massive and the sea was really mountains, he decided, so the three objects weren’t ships at all. They had to be huge—dozens, maybe hundreds of miles high.

  Someone—not him—had sketched suggestions of detail inside the curves, thin lines and blocks of shadow. A narrow tower or mast rose from the central and most prominent of the three shapes. Definitely architecture, not ships.

  He pushed aside the first sheet—it made a rippling hiss—and examined the second with pursed lips. This one he did not like at all. Rising behind a smaller scale rendering of the three objects, touched with crayon, pastel, pencil, and watercolor, an oblate orb stretched across almost the entire page. The orb was rimmed with deep red fire but its center was a waxy crayon black, heavily layered. When he held the drawing at the right inclination, such that it reflected no light, the center of the orb became an eclipsed eye with tiny darting flames instead of lids and lashes. And all around the orb, what could be seen of a sky gave the startling impression of rotten, ripped fabric—a fantasia of dark colors and textures highlighted with multicolored squiggles.

  He could easily imagine the squiggles glowing like neon signs.

  No way his roommate had done these. Burke had absolutely no talent in that department—or any other, except being a sous chef, which was talent enough to earn a real living, unlike busking.

  Jack tried to look away from the pages, but they held him with a stomach-churning fascination. He had see
n these things before; he knew what they were. So…

  What were they?

  He closed the folio with a broken laugh, tied it, and restored it to its place behind the trunk. Then he shoved the trunk against the wall, hard.

  “Who else lives in this room, besides me?” he asked.

  CHAPTER 21

  * * *

  The Green Warehouse

  Ginny tossed on the cot, winding the blankets and sheets. Like a coward, with nowhere else to go, she had returned to the warehouse. She doubted anyone other than Minimus had even noticed she was gone.

  “I almost know his name,” she whispered, then took a deep breath, let it out slowly, puffed her worries in a cloud that rose to the roof and wisped through the cracks to spread in the high night air.

  Her eyes stared up at the old skylight, not seeing the pale moon through the clouds. As she twisted, making small, tight whimpers, the moon cast her face in a ghostly glow; she was far away, pupils dilated, pulse rapid; far away and frightened.

  She was not asleep. She was not awake.

  This time Ginny had not pushed her host from the body’s perch, but shared it. Tiadba had only the vaguest notion that somebody watched through the same eyes and listened through the same ears.

  There was too much else happening for this to be important.

  Gradually, Ginny—not in control, unable to direct the shared eyes—pieced together that Tiadba was in a broad gray place, walls, if any, far away or behind, and at her feet, a shallow sea of dust sparkled and groaned beneath her bare feet as she walked.

  Tiadba was lost in gloom. The adventure meant nothing—all their training, their plans, nothing now.

  The group had joined several Tall Ones. A deep, musical voice spoke on Tiadba’s right.

  “There’s little time. You’ll pass through the gate when you’re fully prepared. Nobody leaves without proper training and tools.”

  Tiadba looked up at the speaker, wrapping his long, strange face in her own fear and frustration. She wore a silvery mask to protect against the dust that rose in low puffs from their feet. She was part of a group of thirteen, nine of them ancient breeds. Their escorts or guards: four Tall Ones who would accompany them as far as the border of the real, and then deliver them to the Chaos.

  The nine and their escorts hiked beneath a high, dark gray roof—while the walls behind receded to a thin line. The effect was disconcerting—a huge flat space, dimness above, and nothing all around but the boundless, dusty plain.

  How long would it take to get to where they were going? And where was that?

  The oldest Tall One produced a trill that Tiadba interpreted as humor. “Breathe through the masks,” he advised. “There’s nothing poisonous, it’s just old, precious dust—older than you, older than any of us!” He was at least twice as tall as Tiadba, with long, graceful arms and legs, a short, broad, pearl-colored face finely lined, and large brown eyes, spaced on each side of a broad, flat nose without apparent nostrils. (Ginny tried to remember if the Tall Ones were human—Tiadba seemed to think they were, though distantly and nonspecifically related.) He wore a tight black suit covered with close-spaced reddish piping that seemed to rearrange itself every few seconds—disconcerting.

  Their own clothes—except for the masks—were what they had arrived in: dun-colored pajamas.

  Tiadba (and Ginny, in turn) was beginning to realize just how naive they all had been. Who’s deceiving whom here? Did Grayne know, before she handed us over—before she died?

  And Ginny could sense that Tiadba was still recovering from a nasty scare, accompanied by sorrow—the grief still burned. Something had happened back in the Tiers, something outside of Tiadba’s experience.

  A bit of Tiadba’s backmind became acutely aware of Ginny’s presence. You! Go away. Or keep still and be quiet!

  Ginny’s eyes fluttered, and for a few instants she again saw the warehouse, the skylight—again felt the presence of boxes and crates stacked out to the walls. The cot’s brown blankets bound her like a shroud; she stared up like a wild thing, neck corded.

  Elsewhere, time was flowing—she was neither here nor there. She could only vaguely remember where she had been, and who—a lost name, three notes of a much longer tune she could not recall.

  Then, her eyelids fluttered and drooped. Her breath became shallow and quick.

  Her body settled.

  She was away again…

  They had crossed the plain of sparkling dust. Ahead, a silvery cluster of rounded buildings, like soap bubbles made of moonlight, rose from a pedestal surrounded by rivulets of that same dust, blown into low dunes and meanders across a depthless black floor.

  “Nothing here is real,” said a young male trudging close to Tiadba. His name was Nico. They were all more than weary; they no longer had the full brightness of the ceil over the Tiers to guide them. Their world had expanded immensely—and most of it was ugly, barren, strange. Tiadba looked around at the nine, her nine.

  You—inside me. This could be a dangerous time. We’re a broken team. I don’t know what we’re going to do.

  Ginny still did not have the wherewithal to respond. She felt loosely attached; what Tiadba saw seemed to wobble and tunnel away, like an image at the end of a long pipe.

  Ginny was little more than a poorly connected rider, jostled by her host’s thoughts, even by the pounding of her heart. She could not speak, could barely even watch.

  The sheets grew tighter, she was falling off something somewhere…

  The group climbed a ramp to the pedestal and kicked off what they could of the dust on their feet and calves. Tiadba knew their names, tried to repeat them under her breath, as if introducing them to her guest.

  She was thankful she was not the one doing the straying now; like Ginny—whose name she could not speak or make sense of—her memory of the lapses was minimal. You’re not going to push me aside, are you? That would be awkward for both of us. We could die.

  The group entered the closest of the silvery bubbles. Inside, arranged on transparent racks, suits of armor twinkled and flashed at their joints with false fire. Split helmets draped the shoulders. They were like wet suits but segmented, thick and tightly ribbed—

  You dive, in water? Don’t distract me now! Please—

  Ginny, embarrassed, wanted to withdraw, but could not—like a loose tooth hanging by a painful nerve, neither in the jaw nor out, she was buffeted by Tiadba’s emotions—yet knew that Tiadba’s upper mind was still only vaguely aware that something was different. In essence, Ginny was being counseled—rebuffed—by her host’s housekeepers, the organizers and tenders of a body’s everyday needs.

  And when she was gone, Ginny knew that these same tenders would sweep away the short shallow irritation of her presence…As her own tenders and housekeepers did when their roles were reversed and she played host. So strange! Such a thing to know!

  If only she could keep from forgetting, she could bring back these experiences, think them over while she was awake, fit them into all the other puzzle pieces—and perhaps complete a picture.

  So little of it made sense.

  The bright suits—dull red, pastel yellow, ethereal green, nine different hues—fully occupied Tiadba’s awareness, as if she could see nothing else. She had been told of these marvels at the base camp, but only recently—only just before the march across the dust plain in the gray cavern. These were the devices that would help keep them alive in the Chaos, beyond the border of the real…and as such, they were outside the experience of any of the ancient breeds in the Tiers. How wonderful, to learn of them; and how disturbing to be told why they were necessary!

  Tiadba had long since realized that their plans and hopes for adventure had been more than naive. The Chaos was not sanctuary, not freedom—it was endless peril. Even the Tall Ones seemed to forgo speaking of it unless it was strictly necessary.

  What they had experienced before arriving in the flood channel—the sorrow, compounded by the shock of displacemen
t and the grief—was only a hint of what lay outside the Kalpa.

  Yes, they were going—finally they were going on a march—but at what risk, at what cost? And who could be trusted, after all these things not told of, never explained?

  Go away now! I have to focus…

  The last thing Ginny could hold onto, like a slippery rope, before the housekeepers swept her up and broke her loose—

  Tiadba’s hope: We will meet again. You know that, don’t you?

  Out of sequence. Everything jumbling, dreams and life contorted.

  Where is he? Is he still alive? You know! Tell me!

  But Ginny did not know.

  Why haven’t we heard from him?

  Ginny fell off the cot and hit the floor in a tangle of blanket and sheets. Sweat soaked her nightgown. Desperately she tried to hold onto what she had seen and heard, but the vision melted like a sliver of ice under the intense heat of waking.

  She let out a tight shriek of frustration.

  Minimus leaped up from the floor and rubbed against her feet, then sat and watched her untangle and rearrange the bedclothes.

  Whatever she had seen, wherever she had been, in any rational sequence, might have come before the…the what? The lapses that left her with such an awful sense of terror and oppression.

  The bad, endless times to come.

  CHAPTER 22

  * * *

  University District, Seattle

  What are they dreaming? How long until they can’t sleep at all?

  Daniel closely watched the morning commuters in their cars—when he could see them. In this world, so many hid behind tinted windows, as if shy or afraid. Faces fixed straight ahead, eyes flicking, avoiding his gaze, some reading his sign and smiling—waving—others shouting words of abuse—good people, smart, but they didn’t stop and give him money; a very few, and these he felt the most sorry for, rolling down their windows and offering spare change or a few dollars—and the rest don’t see him, will not see him, oops, now the traffic is moving, it’s too late—would’ve offered something, sure do feel sorry for you poor folks down on your luck…