City at the End of Time

  And how long until they were all down on their luck? Fortunes run out, world-strands gummed together and gathered like dried tendons from a corpse, waiting to be trimmed…short stalks in a dead bouquet.

  For a moment the road was empty, the corners quiet—he could hear the wind blowing through the thin brush and young alders crouched back from the side of the road. Rain had fallen fitfully all day. It soaked through his coat—soaked his moth-eaten thrift-store Pendleton and woolen long johns, his socks squished in his shoes—never wear costly shoes, make sure you smirch your coat and outer garments with dirt after you clean them, rub the dirt into your hands and your fingers—a little diluted mud dripping as you take their few coins and fewer bills…

  To keep eating, Daniel Patrick Iremonk played along, for now.

  A small Volkswagen drove up—yellow, familiar, they had had Volkswagens like this in his world, before the darkening and the cinder-grit dusting, before his precipitate flight. Behind the wheel hunched a plump young man with cherry cheeks, pushed-up nose, and short, thick black hair. The young man wore a gray suit coat, sleeves too short, over a pink striped shirt—a salesman, Daniel guessed. Not much money in the bank, lots of debt, but he kept his car clean and his clothes pressed.

  Daniel held up his sign.

  Bad Times Got ME

  A little Cash for food?

  God Bless You!!!

  Daniel could freeze the light on red for five or six minutes at a time—drawing out the stop until the drivers got nervous, until they rolled down their windows and offered a payment of cash to get moving, get this show back on the road, my God that’s a long light!

  Cars were backed up all the way to the freeway.

  On the opposite corner, Florinda—the lean brown woman—stood like a bundle of twigs, holding her own misspelled message on its dog-eared square of brown cardboard. She rarely looked at the drivers—a bad corner, traffic always moving.

  Florinda was in her late forties, face draped by long strands of felted hair, a chain smoker whose habit got her stuck in less desirable locations—she just had to pause every fifteen minutes for a puff, and inevitably she lost her best spots to more aggressive panhandlers.

  The light hung on endless red. Frustrating, time-eating, finger-drumming crimson.

  The salesman glanced resentfully at Daniel. He was a mouth-breather, Daniel observed—jaw slightly agape, lower lip flaccid. Daniel could not see his eyes—they were shaded from the slanting light breaking over Wallingford.

  The salesman finally leaned forward and scowled, then rolled down the window, shoulder jerking with the effort. “If I give you money, will you let me through?” he called.

  “Sure,” Daniel said, stooping. He needed to see the man’s eyes.

  The head dropped lower as the man reached into his pocket, plump fingers pushing under the seat belt’s hard, square buckle.

  Daniel could only hold the light a few more seconds. Too long and the traffic engineers in the city figured something was wrong—sent repairmen and sometimes cops. He’d had to abandon this corner twice because he held a red too long—messing too obviously with all these small fortunes, tiny fates.

  “Here,” the driver said, holding out four crumpled dollar bills. “Billy Goat Gruff. Just don’t ask any questions, and don’t eat me.”

  Daniel stuffed the bills in his deepest coat pocket. Their eyes met, the driver’s underslung, blue, direct—Daniel’s steady, wide, washed-out.

  A little spark hit him in the base of the spine.

  “Bad dreams,” the driver confessed. “You?”

  Daniel nodded, then swung out his arm, and the light changed.

  The prelude before the flood.

  He could feel that hideous tide already lapping up on the fresh beaches of this world. The first sign—refugees like himself, crippled storm petrels, crawling onto the shore, gasping, wings broken, desperate.

  And then—

  Bad dreams.

  There were ways of gauging how long he had—of measuring the remaining days, weeks, months. He had become an expert at predicting the storm surge.

  Daniel folded up his cardboard sign and waved across the intersection at Florinda. “I’m done for the day,” he called.

  “Why quit now?” Florinda asked. “Lunch crowd from the U.”

  “You want it?” Daniel’s spot was prime—left side of the off-ramp, driver’s-side windows.

  “Not if you’re just going to bust my chops when you get back.”

  “I’ll be gone the rest of the day. Back tomorrow morning. Don’t give it up to some other bastard for a smoke.”

  “I’ll hold it,” Florinda said, with a surprisingly sound grin. She still had all her teeth.

  Daniel missed having good teeth.

  He wrapped his sign in a plastic garbage bag and hid it in the bushes, then walked up Forty-fifth, passing Asian restaurants, video stores, gaming parlors—he paused before a used bookstore, but it sold only best-selling paperbacks—hung a left on Stone Way, passing apartments, a fancy grocery store…more apartments, condos, plumbing fixtures, hardware.

  He descended the long, gentle slope to Lake Union.

  Daniel had begun his search three days ago by taking a bus to the downtown library—not the old library he was familiar with but a huge, shiny metal rhomboid—scary. Differences were at once frightening and reassuring. He had come such a long way—that was a good thing. It was also a sad thing. He had left so much behind.

  The downtown library did not carry the book he was looking for, and none were available through interlibrary loan.

  Despite an excessive amount of wear and tear, with less liquor and better food Charles Granger’s body had regained some strength. It took Daniel less than thirty-five minutes—joints aching, heart pounding, hands trembling—to reach Seattle Book Center.

  A block and a half from the Ship Canal, on the east side of the broad street, three bookstores shared a single-story brown and gray building. In Daniel’s previous world, there had also been bookstores here—a confluence he didn’t give much thought to, considering the greater changes he had witnessed.

  He paced beside the storefront, darting glances through the half-silvered windows. Art books stood in uneven ranks, spines facing inward, anonymous when viewed from the street.

  He set the glass door’s bell a-jingle. The owner was instantly on alert—street person walking—but not alarmed. Seeing someone like Daniel—as he now appeared—had to be a common occurrence across the freeway from the university, where so many homeless youngsters and street people hung out…Down and out.

  Common folk.

  Daniel swallowed, sized up the owner: a stocky man in his late fifties, of medium height, with a slight stoop, long hair, and experienced, quiet eyes—calm, slightly bored, self-assured. “Can I help you?”

  Daniel worked to keep his voice from shaking. Like everything else subject to corruption, libraries and bookstores scared him—but that wasn’t what gave him the shakes. He had only recently weaned this body off its daily medicine, a liter of Night Train and sixty-four fluid ounces of Colt 45.

  “I’m looking for a book on cryptids,” he said. “Unusual animals, long thought extinct, or never known to exist. New species. Monsters. I have a title in mind…”

  “Shoot,” the owner said with a wary smile.

  Daniel blinked. He wasn’t used to being received with familiarity, on such short notice. He studied the owner—too perceptive. Scouts, collectors, could be anywhere.

  Or, the owner was simply responding to a customer who knew about books. The community of book people was used to eccentrics.

  “Signs,” Daniel continued, trying to subdue a twitch in his left eye. “Portentous signs hidden in strange animals. Lost in time or place.”

  “A title would help—that’s not a title, I take it?”

  “I don’t know what the title will be…here. The author is always Bandle, David Bandle.”

  “B-A-N-D-L-E?”

  ?
??Correct.” Daniel’s throat bobbed. His forehead was damp from the strain of this extended interaction.

  The owner did not seem fazed. “I remember a book on cryptozoology by someone with a name like that…Travels in Search of Hidden Beasts, I think,” the owner said.

  “Could be,” Daniel said.

  “Don’t have it. I can do a search online.”

  “That would be kind. Most recent edition. How much…would it cost? I’m not wealthy.” This body was not used to smiling—bad teeth, worse breath. He succeeded in drawing parenthetical creases around his lips.

  “Oh, thirty bucks. Good reading copy. It’s not very old, is it?”

  “Perhaps not. I wouldn’t know,” Daniel said.

  “Down payment of ten dollars. The rest when I get the book in. Probably take a week or two. Address?”

  Daniel shook his head. “I’ll come back.” He removed two smudged fives from his pocket and placed them in neat parallel on the counter. There goes dinner.

  The owner smoothed out the money and wrote up a receipt. “I always liked those sorts of books,” he said. “Adventure in faraway places, hunting down creatures that time forgot. Wonderful stories.”

  “Wonderful,” Daniel agreed, and pocketed the receipt.

  “We have a good collection of deep-sea books, just in. Beebe, Piccard, that sort of thing.”

  “No, thank you.” Daniel backed out of the store with a half bow and a short wave of his right hand. Very good, he assured his new body. A good beginning.

  He had come to trust Bandle. Bandle’s report on cryptids had given him essential clues years ago, in another strand, another lifetime. Bandle cataloged sightings of animals that could not exist—sea serpents, half-human beasts, earwigs bigger than rats. Any of those could be indicators. Variations, permutations—warnings—all collected into one authoritative text.

  But as he walked along, Daniel suspected he would not be coming back. Something about the way the owner had examined him. It was probably dangerous at this late date to even inquire after Bandle.

  Ten bucks—wasted.

  Daniel stood on a steel-edged curb, blinking at the bright clouds and the low autumn sun. Such a lovely world.

  You are what you leave behind.

  His grandfather had once said, visiting him in prison, Where are you going, young man? Is there anything you will not do to get there? Eventually, you leave so much behind, you show up before God and you’re as empty as your damned puzzle box—you’re so empty it’s not even you anymore, and heaven doesn’t matter.

  Daniel began to cry.

  FOURTEEN ZEROS

  CHAPTER 23

  * * *

  The Tiers

  The passage had been made for someone smaller than either Jebrassy or Tiadba. Once, green circles spaced every few yards must have provided illumination, but they no longer gave even the feeblest light.

  Crouched over, then down on hands and knees, they crawled in darkness through the dank tunnel, nothing visible ahead and only a shrinking spot of dimness behind. After a longer time than Jebrassy cared to think about, they still had not reached the vertical shaft.

  Tiadba said, “Don’t you hate the way time changes? One day, it’s short—the next day, it’s long. Makes me feel like we’ve been crawling since we were born. Even here. You’d think at the Diurns—”

  “How long was it for you, the last time?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a small chuff. “Wait. I think it’s just ahead.” She shuffled forward quickly, and then he could see an outline of her legs and feet as she stood. “Come on. The steps begin here.”

  The light was weak—dropping from far above, he guessed. “This takes us up to the—what did you call it?”

  “The Valeria,” she said. “I don’t know where any of the names come from. They don’t sound like breed speech, do they? The steps are tiny. It’s best to curl up and crawl around—wrap your arms and legs around the center of the spiral. Then…just hump and slither.”

  That was easier for her than for him. Another endless time drew them along, slithering and on occasion trying other forms of ascent, crouching and taking mincing steps—bumping his head. Tiadba seemed in good humor. His admiration grew, especially as her scent filled the enclosed space.

  “Look,” she said. Her hand, a barely visible paleness, brushed over a long chink in the smoothness surrounding the stairs. “Look through this gap and tell me if that isn’t a lift shaft.”

  He saw a kind of railing running vertically up a parallel shaft, brighter and wider than the one they were climbing; but no sign of a lift car.

  “There’s so much we should be curious about, but aren’t,” Tiadba said from above. Her voice diminished. She had increased their distance; she was thinner, taller, a little stronger…

  “Don’t leave me behind,” he called out, only half joking.

  Time stretched. His head hurt trying to understand how long it had been. Then a kind of panic set in, and he squeezed against the steps—the surrounding cylinder of wall—with all his strength, until his joints popped and he could feel his flesh bruise. His breath came in husky drags and he felt as if he were dead but still seeing, still hearing…feeling his own flesh rot away.

  “I’m there!” Tiadba called. “Hurry up. It’s small, but there’s room for two, if we squeeze.”

  Eyes searching for light, Jebrassy clamped his jaw and quickened his crawl. Soon he wriggled into a short horizontal corridor, then pushed forward and through another hatch, into an open booth—the rounded half cup of the Valeria.

  “Careful—not much room,” Tiadba told him.

  He stood, brushing against her, then slowly peered over the lip of the cup, down hundreds of feet to the littered and dusty stage below. He could make out the curled-up corpse in the rubble. Looking up with equal caution, not to get dizzy and fall out backward, he saw the last of the wakelight from the ceil, even less convincing at this altitude.

  They had spent their whole life within a stage set, he thought…for the entertainment of a cruel and uncaring audience.

  With a deep breath, he squeezed around beside her and looked down at the control seat and console. Above the console, a screen barely two hands wide had been set flush against the wall, and below that, a surface with dozens of bumps of various colors.

  Above the screen, six glassy lenses glittered like insect eyes.

  The single seat before the console would have fit a man half his size. Tiadba risked toppling as she squatted and set her butt on the rim of the cup. Both stared earnestly at the gray blankness on the small display.

  “This one doesn’t work, either,” she said. “It took me a couple of trips to learn how to look into the black things. Sit close, and I’ll finger up a catalog. I’ve only seen one or two entries. I didn’t want to watch any more, alone, because I’m not sure these old memories, the records, are going to last. Two observers, two memories…much better.”

  Jebrassy stared earnestly at the shining black beads. “I’m looking,” he said, perching in a half squat beside her. “I don’t—”

  She raised her hand and bent his head to the proper angle, and he jerked as bright images flooded his eyes. He could see nothing else. The effect was immediate and startling—scenes flew past so quickly he couldn’t make sense of them; intense, sick-making. “I’m going to throw up,” he warned.

  “You’ll get used to it, and it’s worth the headache, too. I’m still learning how to look properly. If you want to hazard a guess about all the knobs and bumps, go right ahead.”

  “What if we accidentally erase the records?”

  Tiadba shrugged. “I doubt they’d let anyone here have that sort of power.”

  Jebrassy felt a surge of interest. Ever above the thought of leaving the Kalpa soared the need to know what he was, and what his place might be. No one had yet been able to tell him that, though since childhood he’d been convinced that in the ancient places, in the depths of the walls—even in such illusions a
s the ceil, and the false bookshelves high in the blocs—there were clues.

  More than clues…

  The story, complete and convincing.

  Justification for all he was doing.

  “This seems to slow the parade,” he murmured, fingers prodding a dimple. He found that with some practice he could push the dimple to the right or the left. And then he realized that it was not his finger changing the speed, but the way in which he looked at the racing images—the way he darted his attention one way, then the next. Concentration, focus, the flick of an eyelid or facial muscle. The display was controlled by expression more than fingers.

  The quickstep parade of scenes slowed to a crawl. Each part of the parade was itself another parade, but moving at relatively normal speed—three-dimensional representations somehow all visible, one through another: visible, dense, and real.

  “Getting used to it?” Tiadba asked, pressing her shoulder against his.

  “No,” he said, but he was—sort of. “How do you choose?”

  She patiently explained what she knew. The combination of the floating sense of other-reality and Tiadba’s voice was hypnotic. After a while Jebrassy realized he was as fascinated by the sounds she made as by the panoramas they were accessing—which, after all, seemed nothing more than surveys of places within the Tiers, many of them already familiar.

  All of the programs were devoid of citizens. They revealed only empty places, deserted spaces. The effect was spooky, like peering into a dead city—or visiting the Diurns themselves.

  “The person who operated this was smaller,” Tiadba said, and then added in a bare whisper, “But the operator wasn’t expected to be any brighter than you or me…or very different in shape. They must have been people like us, but they were allowed to see these things, and to know some of what was happening to them. We aren’t—not anymore. I wonder why?”