City at the End of Time

  That motivated them up to a point, and they fell in line behind Khren and Jebrassy as they crossed the mid-line bridge to the first isle.

  The lower tier levels were still populated, so they entered off the inward esplanade, keeping clear of the small groups of occupants around the lifts, and ascended the winding stairs through one of many ventilation cores—the steps gritty with disuse.

  The group waited at the tenth level, where Tiadba had instructed them to gather. All the levels above the tenth on this end of the bloc had been abandoned in living memory, after three intrusions in a single wake—a fluke, perhaps, but enough to scare off all families and even young singles. None of the niches showed signs of having been lived in recently—all were filled with broken furniture, debris, and frass deposited by rogue letterbugs and pedes.

  As Jebrassy paced, he glanced down the halls radiating off the stair core. Two lost letterbugs flitted about in the draft that rose here—too few, too widely scattered and disorganized to form interesting words, forlorn remnants of more cheerful wakes, when umber-borns had laid them out on shake cloths and played their learning games.

  The young breeds, bored, played a few rounds of arm-off, then shook out their wrists and ran down a hall to practice tugging, so they said, though none of the halls on this level had shelves, much less spinebacks. “Don’t go far,” Khren called out, well aware how short the attention span of a young breed could be. “She’s late,” he observed to Jebrassy, his voice low and nervous. “They say intrusions never strike twice in the same place…but I’m not so sure.”

  The two friends split a wad of bitter chafe and thoughtfully chewed the fibers, until the silence seemed to overwhelm them. They could no longer hear even the scrabbling and whickering of the three youngsters. The letterbugs had vanished as well.

  “They’re wandering too far,” Khren said. He squatted, refusing to accompany Jebrassy in his back-and-forth around the stair core. “I should go find them.” But he did not get up. Khren much preferred contemplation to actual movement, even when he was anxious.

  “They’re fine,” Jebrassy said. “A shout will fetch them. Patience.”

  “How reliable is your glow?” Khren asked.

  Jebrassy was about to answer, but they heard soft steps echo and Tiadba appeared, stepping quickly through the balustrade. She wore the same pants and shift tied at the waist that she had worn at the Diurns, and she looked tired. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Gray wardens. I had to go out and around on the first level so they wouldn’t follow. Why would anyone come here, after all?” She peered accusingly at Khren.

  “I didn’t say anything,” he responded, spinning two fingers resentfully.

  “Of course not,” Tiadba said. “Did you find helpers?”

  “Khren recruited three,” Jebrassy said. “They’re green sticks but lively. They’re already out hunting.”

  Khren glanced at Jebrassy, still stung, and excused himself to go join them.

  “He’s an honest breed,” Jebrassy said when he was out of hearing. “Leaders have to take care with their words.”

  Tiadba sniffed. “Grayne tells me the best hunting is above the fiftieth. Those levels have been abandoned for hundreds of generations. For some reason, that loosens the spinebacks even more—so she says. She says—”

  “How does she know so much?” Jebrassy asked. “Who talks to her? Tall Ones?”

  “Breeds talk to her,” Tiadba said. “She’s been a sama for a long time. Breeds come to the market from all the Tiers to consult with her. She’s as close to a real teacher as we have. But I was going to tell you—”

  A racketing echoed down a long hall, preceding the return of Khren and the three youngsters. More introductions went around, and Tiadba softened the critical tone she had used earlier. The young breeds weren’t shy around a female; if anything, they ramped up their raucous sporting, and it seemed they might explode any moment. Only Nico appeared willing to maintain a kind of philosophic dignity.

  “We’ll race! Fifty—that’s near the top,” Shewel called out as he started up the spiral stairs. His voice echoed back. “We could climb out on the roof!” The others followed close behind, but Mash trailed—slower and a little abashed.

  “What do we need books for?” he asked. “Even if they’re real, they’d only tell us about the times before there were breeds. Who cares?”

  “It’s a game,” Tiadba said. “That’s all. You can read, can’t you?”

  “I can riddle any letterbug challenge, as long as it’s fair,” Mash said. “And I can read anything a teacher puts in front of me. I’m big, but I’m not dim.”

  The fiftieth level had a desolate, muggy smell that sent shivers down to Jebrassy’s fingers. Just a few levels below the roof of this bloc, the stair core had expanded to almost three times its diameter at the ground floor, making the risers shorter, the steps wider, and perversely increasing the distance they had to climb. He stumbled several times. None of the other stair cores were like this, which increased the feeling of strangeness—an inappropriate place for breeds.

  The youngsters did not seem to notice. They had already radiated off, drawing marks in the grit before each hallway they investigated. There were over twelve halls stretching away from the core at this level, and hundreds of niches—all empty. Not even the rustle and flap of lost letterbugs broke the ancient hush.

  Nothing alive seemed to want to be here.

  The three youngsters quickly filled that silence, counting out how many spinebacks they had fruitlessly tugged. Their voices echoed and grew faint the farther they ran, until they could barely be heard at all.

  “I’ll leave you two and join them,” Khren said. “Three’s an awkward number, don’t you think?”

  Jebrassy was about to protest, but Tiadba thanked Khren and off he went, with some haste. He did not like being around Tiadba, obviously, which did not puzzle Jebrassy—she had not gone out of her way to make friends.

  Tiadba took this opportunity to brush his shoulders with her hands. “Did you see?”

  “See what?”

  “I saw it just before Khren spoke. I wonder if they’ll even notice.”

  “Notice what?”

  Tiadba pushed him to the angle of an unexplored hall, one the youngsters had not marked. Here, six shelves rose on each side, each stretching ten arm lengths, filling the spaces between niche doorways, outward into the gloom—to the very end of the hall. False spinebacks marched off in solemn relief as far as they could see. “Wait. Look.”

  He wasn’t paying attention. Guilty, he leaned forward and forced himself to concentrate on the titles, frowning as he walked along the middle row of spinebacks. “What am I looking for?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level, his tone humble.

  And then he saw it. The titles changed—the odd letters seemed to crawl, rearrange, and fix themselves again, as innocent and permanent as he had always assumed they were. The sight did more than startle him. He couldn’t stop himself—he stumbled back and bumped against the shelves on the opposite wall. Then he looked toward Tiadba, ears hot with surprise. Such impermanence in a timeless feature like the false shelves was almost as frightening as an intrusion.

  Tiadba did not laugh at him. “Is that what Grayne was talking about?” she asked, awestruck. “Here, everything changes, I mean—because nobody’s watching?”

  “We’re watching. Why change it in front of us?”

  “I…do…not…know,” Tiadba said, but she reached out and tugged at a false book. Of course, it refused to budge. “Grayne was being too sly. This is a puzzle. We have to riddle it to be worthy.”

  “I’m clueless, but that’s always been obvious,” Jebrassy said, ears still warm. “I don’t like it here.”

  “Maybe these shelves are showing us what happens everywhere, when the breeds sleep, and we’re too ignorant, too unobservant—or we sleep too soundly—to notice or even care. We could learn these old symbols. We could write them down on shake cloths and then co
mpare them after a few sleeps—”

  Jebrassy suddenly caught on. Momentarily forgetting his fear, he returned to the shelf and fingered the spines, but did not tug—presuming he had not earned that privilege, not yet. “The books that could come loose, that can be pulled out, are always the same,” he said. “But they move around. The titles move. Is that the secret?”

  Tiadba smiled and reached out to pull on a few more spines. No luck. Then she whistled with excitement and raced down the hall.

  “Maybe they’re like letterbugs,” Jebrassy said, moving toward her. “Maybe the books on the shelves actually breed. Maybe the titles make new titles—maybe they make new books.”

  “I don’t see how it helps to know that,” she called back.

  “How could we know?” Jebrassy murmured, his shock of discovery dissipating as quickly as it arrived. “We can’t read them…we don’t know which ones to pull…they shift around or multiply each sleep when nobody’s looking…and that means, since the shelves never grow, some titles vanish…Frass,” he swore. “It’s a dice game.”

  “And the dice are loaded!” Tiadba said. “We can’t win. We’ll never find a book. But Grayne’s sisterhood found a few anyway.” Her face lit up. “Isn’t that the challenge? Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Jebrassy peered after her. “Well, that can’t be all there is to it,” he said. “We’re missing something important.”

  “Call your friend and the young breeds,” Tiadba said. “Maybe they’ll help us—maybe they’ll find their own books.”

  Jebrassy looked across the core at the other hallways, radiating to the outer Tiers, thousands of shelves…he couldn’t begin to think how many titles. “This is going to take forever.”

  “What’s that mean?” Tiadba asked.

  Neither of them had ever heard that word before—it was not part of the breed tongue.

  TEN ZEROS

  CHAPTER 31

  * * *

  Before crossing Forty-fifth Street, in front of a motion picture theater, Whitlow looked both left and right—after so many years in London and Paris, he still could not decide which direction horse-drawn or gasoline-powered vehicles might descend upon him.

  Whitlow lacked any sense of general danger, actually had less sense than the people he hunted. Minus the charm of the Chalk Princess, he would likely have died a thousand years ago, in the last Gape of burning Cordoba.

  There were no items of interest to be found in any of the area hockshops. He hadn’t expected any—forces were obviously working in opposition, building toward a confrontation.

  The theater marquee indicated that a film called The Book of Dreams was being screened. That brought out a broad smile, unveiling strong thick teeth, all alike and the color of old ivory.

  He wore his best suit, a little tatty after fifty years but well-mended. Invisible reweaving, indeed. He had administered a biweekly sponge-scrub in his studio flat in Belltown, greased his thinning black hair, trimmed and waxed his narrow mustache, and slipped on wool socks and high-laced black boots he’d had made in Italy to fit his deformed toes.

  He then donned a new fedora.

  It had been good to see Max Glaucous again, his young protégé, after so many decades—more than a century, really. As time wound down, the past seemed to bunch up, forming humps and valleys, difficult to judge distance or terrain…but no matter. Glaucous had always been a productive hunter, though by Whitlow’s standards a little brusque and obvious.

  Whitlow himself had been in Seattle for over a month, having sensed a confluence, a drawing together of significant world-lines—well, of course, having been accorded the grace of some of the Moth’s vast well of knowledge. For one of the Moth’s talents lay in knowing when others were approaching points of desperate choice; and in particular, points of collision with the Chalk Princess or her employees: a specialty whose importance was not to be casually dismissed, nor discussed with the likes of Glaucous.

  Whitlow knew better than to come anywhere near Glaucous while he was collecting—knew even the danger of announcing his presence in Glaucous’s city. But their Livid Mistress expected her due, and Seattle was now home to at least two and possibly three targets.

  The third target not only elusive, but problematic. Some in the profession doubted that one of this type would respond to any inducements, and yet might be more powerful than either of the others, or all of them combined.

  The bad shepherd.

  For decades, Whitlow had maintained a remote and watchful presence in cities around the world, without drawing attention from other hunters, and often enough without poaching their prey. For the Chalk Princess had, months after the Great War, set him a particular task: to find the one shifter who did not dream of that Citie over which she maintained, some said, eternal watch—in another existence. It was his custom to keep a cadre of irregulars on a payroll of money or drugs or both; a select few who lived their lives like insects under rocks, shy, watchful creatures with nothing to lose but their own brief, painful stretches of time. Fifty or so in most cities sufficed, randomly positioned. Shifters seemed to always come into loose contact with such unrooted beings, as if their own world-lines—so tightly controlled—were attracted to briefer and more ragged threads.

  Might even merge with them—under some circumstances.

  Whitlow had seen that happen 634 years ago, in Grenada. Had conditions worked out, had he—masquerading as a Jewish dealer in antiquities—managed then to capture his chosen prey, there would have been no need for all these subsequent centuries.

  The mummer called Sepulcher was one of his, and had alerted him to the existence of a Shifter named Jack, whereabouts otherwise uncertain. That was Glaucous’s prey.

  And now, another scout was telling tales. Six blocks east, the thin, angular woman named Florinda stood in the shadow of an awning over the entrance to a small bookstore. She was speaking with a plump older woman with white hair and a round, finely wrinkled smoker’s face. Florinda sensed Whitlow’s approach and craned her head until her neck corded like rope. Her eyes opened wide, startled, expectant.

  As Whitlow and Florinda spoke, the white-haired old woman mumbled and stared blankly at the street.

  Afterward, Whitlow paid Florinda in her most desired coin.

  And that night, as she lay beneath a freeway overpass, drifting in and out of drugged sleep—rain pattering on her blue tarp, and the first few, distant flashes of lightning picking out her sweet, cooling, smoothing face—she slipped free of all this world’s lines and binding threads.

  In his tiny studio apartment, Whitlow pushed back his head, closed his eyes, and smiled as if at a beautiful passage of music, waiting for the storm to gather strength and take a shape—a familiar, feminine shape.

  Only days until the end.

  And always the unanswered question: Why do our giants bother with such tiny grains? We swirl all pointless and ignorant in the great wet surge of worlds.

  Why care at all?

  CHAPTER 32

  * * *

  Queen Anne

  Jack sat in the dark at the small kitchen table, warm cup of tea in hand, but tea this early morning provided no comfort. Burke was late; maybe he had hooked up with his waitstaff friends and gone clubbing.

  Except for a heavy rain and flashes of lightning to the south, quiet.

  He looked at the clock on the stove. Two A.M.

  Burke kept a phone under a pillow behind the couch. He often slept through the day but was superstitious about turning off the ringer; hence, the pillow.

  Jack fingered the piece of newsprint. The 206 prefix would be a local call. No additional charges on Burke’s precious phone. The worst that could happen, he might connect with a lonely crank and they would compare the dismal weather and their boring nightmares. That in itself might not be a bad thing—a sympathetic ear.

  He reached under the couch to remove the pillow and retrieve the phone. The answering machine mounted beside the cradle blinked red: forty old messages
and two new ones. Burke was superstitious about erasing old messages. The first new message was from someone named Kylie at the Herb Farm.

  The second was from Ellen.

  “This is for Jack. My apologies. That was a bad start. I thought it would be fun to talk things over with the girls. Your exit was impressive. Could you do it again—on cue?” She sighed. “I found the newspaper, Jack. This must be a difficult time for you. Don’t be rash. Please. Call me immediately. Whatever you do, do not—”

  The machine beeped, its memory full. He touched the box in his pocket. Three numbers to choose from. Harborview, the classified ad—or Ellen. More out of embarrassment than anger, he did not want to speak to Ellen now. He stared at the western corner of the living room. Two walls meet the ceiling. Three lines make a corner. Push the corner out like a rope, to infinity…twist all the lines together…much stronger.

  Which path, which consequence?

  Now you’re just being irrational. Make up your mind.

  He jerked as if someone had puffed into his ear.

  Get it over with. There’s work to do, and either you’re going to help or you’re not. Just do something.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the first number that came to his fingers.

  Naturally enough, it was the number in the ad—and he was calling a complete stranger at two in the morning. Somehow it felt right—a sweet pathway. All would be well.

  It was picked up at the other end before the first ring had finished. “City desk,” a husky voice said. “Journal of Oneiric Fancies.”

  “Is this the number to call…about dreams?”

  “Does it sound like it is?”

  “I have the wrong number—I’m sorry.”

  “Explain yourself. It’s still early.”

  “I need to know about the Kalpa,” he said. He sucked in his breath and masked the mouthpiece with his hand, startled by that word—that place.

  “Name and address, please.” The voice was raspy, confident—not a bit sleepy.