It took some persuading to get him to enter the chamber. “You seem to know so much about the old cities,” the woman said. “We’d like to get it all down.”
“I told you what was up here,” Arthur said. “About the mimics—”
“In school, we were told they came from Fraternity,” the woman said.
“Yes, well I imagine that’s what he wanted you to think.” She flicked a switch on a portable floodlight and the dark chamber was almost bright as day. “We need to know who he is.” She pointed at the chair in the middle of the chamber.
“Him,” Arthur said after a moment. “That’s what he wanted you to think, about Fraternity.”
A skeleton was slumped in the chair. It wore white shorts and nothing else. A green cane lay nearby. “He was nothing without Reah, not really.”
The woman looked at him quizzically.
“His name was Matthew,” Arthur said. “He brought me back to New Canaan. After that, I don’t know what happened.” He made a shuddering sigh. “Now I have to get out of here.”
“Yes, of course.” They led him out and fed him lunch under a broad tent set up where grass had once grown. After lunch, he told them again what had happened, as much as he remembered, and they listened very closely. Then he slept.
When he awoke, night was upon them. They sat around a portable charcoal brazier, talking. He came out of the tent and looked up at the sky.
He pointed with a gnarled finger. “That’s where it is, you know.”
“What?”
“Earth. It goes around the pole star. So now all the Moslems know where Mecca is, and all the Christians and Jews know where Jerusalem is, and they can all point up there.”
The people nodded and made their notes.
“Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to go home,” Arthur said. “I’m all done with this. Was all done a long time ago.”
“Certainly.”
And they took him home again.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1981 by Greg Bear
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-0892-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Greg Bear, Strength of Stones
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