City At The End Of Time (54 page)

“Mnemosyne is special, and always difficult,” Bidewell said. “A certain mental preparation is required before you meet her. I hope you have had time to consider what we’ve discussed.”

“Is she a person, or a thing?” Jack asked.

“Neither. How old is the universe, Jack?”

“Billions of years, I guess. That’s what I’ve been told.”

Agazutta had become subject to fits of shivering and whimpering and now held her hand in front of her mouth. Miriam and Ellen stood on either side, firmly gripping her shoulders.

“And how old do
you
think it is?” Bidewell asked.

“Well, I was born twenty-four years ago,” Jack said with a wry face. “That’s how old it is for me.”

“The beginning of a good answer. But we will not dive into solipsism. I wouldn’t approve—more important, Mnemosyne would not approve. She responds best to a certain level of, how should we say,
skepticism
about the taught order of things. How old do you think these atoms and molecules are that you eat and breathe, that make up your body and propel the currents of your mind, your observing wit?”

“Same as the universe,” Jack said with more certainty.

“A common error. Not all matter came into existence at the beginning. It is still being made, and will continue to be made for a very long time to come—if we did not face Terminus, of course.”

“Of course,” Miriam said.

“But that is beside my point. In certain parts of space and time, it is supposed that entire galaxies have appeared instantaneously, complete with hundreds of billions of stars burning, planets formed, civilizations alive and busy. Yet their histories have not arrived with them. Reconciliation is thus made an epic task.”

Jack looked to see if Bidewell was joking. The highlights on the old man’s lined face flickered in the warm firelight, but he showed no hint of humor. If anything, he seemed drowsy, wearily repeating an obvious and well-known truth.

“Appeared out of nothing?” Jack asked.

Ginny pulled up enough courage to say, “That doesn’t seem possible.”

Bidewell shrugged. “True, spontaneous creation usually delivers smaller units—particles, atoms, molecules in profusion. Virtual galaxies are difficult to conceive, I admit. But no less real. Once a particle or an object is created, it
has always been here.
It makes connections with all the particles with which it has interacted, and those connections—that connectedness—must be established, you might say after the fact. Literally,” Bidewell smiled, “the books must be balanced.”

“What about us?” Ginny asked with unexpected archness. “Human beings. Dogs. Cats. I mean, who keeps track of all the people on the streets?” She looked sharply at Daniel, and then at Glaucous, in the shadows.

Bidewell lifted one shoulder.

“How could anyone tell if I just popped out of nowhere?” Jack asked.

“As a rule, we cannot,” Bidewell said. “Mnemosyne is the force that keeps it all from crashing into ruin and contradiction. She does her job, and she does it well.”

Jack whistled. “Some lady.”

Even this flippancy did not pique the old man. “You’ll like her,” Bidewell said. “But she is no lady.”

“Sounds like a backward way of doing things,” Ginny said.

“Perhaps, but it results in a cosmos of infinite richness and complexity. For this reason, logically speaking, the universe has no true chronological beginning, out of which all things flow. Every moment, until the end of creation, is a sort of beginning, somewhere.”

“What’s this I’ve heard about a Big Bang?” Jack asked.

“I’m not asking for belief. You’ll see the truth soon enough—my words are preparation. Rays of light, you know, must be set in motion, already entangled, to complete the picture every observer sees or will see from that point on—and before. The wave of reconciliation passes back in time, and then forward again; pulse after pulse, until the refinement is complete.”

“Sounds complicated,” Jack said.

Ginny looked at the tall shelves of books, the opened boxes and crates whose contents had been laid out on the big table in the center of the high-ceilinged library. “You said some of the books you were looking for were odd, impossible, because they have no history. That must mean they were never reconciled, even before…what’s happening outside.”

“Good,” Bidewell said.

“And that means Mnemosyne…well, she’s been distracted, or something is increasing her workload. Or—she’s sick. Maybe dying.”

“Better,” Bidewell said.

“Books, galaxies…What else?” Ginny asked.

Jack suddenly remembered the giant earwig he thought he’d seen scuttling between the warehouses.

“Strange animals?”

Daniel looked both sly and sleepy. “What makes you say that?”

“I’ve seen them,” Jack said. “One, anyway.”

“Oh, my,” Bidewell said, folding his hands. “Yes, those are indicators.”

“Dreams sometimes come out of nowhere,” Ginny said. “Are
they
indicators?”

“Mnemosyne can reconcile everything, everywhere, except in the heart and mind of an observer. That territory is forbidden to her. But observers die and their memories die with them—except for the legends, the myths of beginning times, the way things were before creation grew huge and complicated. Those are passed along in speech and dreams, and linger despite Mnemosyne’s hardest labors. For that reason, Mnemosyne rarely concerns herself with dreams.”

“When does she?” Daniel asked.

“When they come true,” Bidewell said.

CHAPTER 70

The Chaos

“What are those?” Denbord asked. He knelt on the crest of a vast ripple in the sea of stone and looked down. The others joined him.

In the trough of the frozen, rocky wave, for as far as they could see into the reddish, murky light, row upon row of cylindrical shapes lay in rough parallel beside their dark cradles, like the broken rungs of a toppled ladder.

“They don’t look that big,” Nico said.

“Big enough,” Shewel said.

Perf assumed a teacher’s tone. “It’s tough to judge size and distance—but if we went down there, I bet we’d be tiny.”

Tiadba tried to remember Sangmer’s description from the stories she had been reading to the breeds, to distract them from the long march, the brief rests, the strain of keeping to the beacon’s line. Whatever these were, they blocked the path the beacon had been drawing for them. “They’re boats,” she concluded. “Like in the nauvarchia.”

“They don’t have sails,” Denbord observed.

“They wouldn’t need them. They’re spaceboats. They travel across space—or they did, back when there was space to cross.”

The others slowly understood her point. “Starboats,” Perf said. “Back when there were stars.”

Until now, the going had been steady though strange—over a monotonous gray landscape, dotted with tiny pores that pinched out pulsing green globules as the breeds approached, then shrank back into the rock.

All around, the rock sweated—the rock oozed light.

Tiadba looked both ways along the crest, then into the trough. “No way to avoid crossing,” she said.

“What if those things roll over on us?” Shewel asked.

Denbord touched his finger to his faceplate. “Quick and easy,” he said.

“What if the Silent Ones are down there?”

“Nobody’s seen them,” Nico said. “Nobody knows where they are or what they look like. Maybe they’re gone. And the armor hasn’t said a peep. We must be doing something right.”

“At least we haven’t stumbled over a trod,” Perf said.

“I’d almost like to see that—or a Silent One,” Denbord said. “Just to know what they are—what to expect, or avoid.”

As Nico had pointed out, their suits had mostly kept quiet. On just one occasion, Perf was warned not to kick at the glowing balls.

Tiadba looked to the other side of the trough, the opposite crest, apparently two or three miles off. The clarity in the distance between the crests was increasing—something she’d noticed earlier, that the light could at times, unpredictably, grow stronger and more coherent, letting them see over a greater distance. Perversely, the lower they were, the farther they could see. Light in this part of the Chaos apparently climbed around and over obstructions, then curved down to meet them—an effect among the most disturbing they had encountered since crossing the zone of lies. From the bottom of this valley, they might be able to see across the Chaos for many hundreds or thousands of miles. If distance still held, still mattered out here.

Nico moved up beside Tiadba, though they did not need to be close to hear each other. “What’ll we do?”

“Climb down and cross over,” she said.

“Can’t we explore?” Perf asked. “I’d like to see inside a spaceboat.”

Macht had walked off to their left. Now he rejoined the group. “They must be old,” he said. “There are thousands of them.”

“If the armor doesn’t stop us, we’ll look around,” Tiadba said.

They spread into an optimized arc, to let their helmets see and process from a wider angle. Their view was now almost too crystalline. Beyond the trough, above the fallen ladder-rungs of the spaceboats, Tiadba saw the outline of edifices at least as large as the bions they had left behind—stark and caved, edged with a greenish fire that flickered as if still burning.

The others sucked in their breaths.

“What are those?” Khren asked.

“That’s the Necropolis—isn’t it?” Denbord asked, ever the studious one. “But I don’t see any dead walking.”

“We’re too far away,” Khren said.

Their armor responded, “There are many ancient cities, collected from many regions and histories. They should not be entered.”

Denbord and Macht looked at each other, then at Tiadba. The others simply stared across the valley at the jumbled ruins, lying out there for no one knew how long.

How far humanity had been pushed back, how much had been destroyed…How little remained, compared to the vastness of the past—how little there was left to lose.
Just us.

“Is it dangerous to cross?” Tiadba asked. This time the armor did not answer. “I guess not,” she said. Denbord added, echoing her own irritation, “Kind of rude, isn’t it?”

They began their descent.

The closer they got to the bottom, the hazier became the outlines of the spaceboats and their infrastructure, until they saw only a dancing puzzle of grays and browns cut through by dim arcs of green. However, the ruins of the cities beyond the next rise seemed to loom, and it was tempting to just stop—to halt their steady progress across the valley and contemplate dazzling visions of towers, domes, great rounded shells tens of miles wide, carved open to reveal uncounted interior levels, concavities filled with what must have once been urbs and neighborhoods, most collapsed and covered with irregular encrustations.

“Not tidy,” Denbord said.

“Do not stop here,” their armor told them. “Move on.”

“What’s wrong?” Tiadba asked.

“Unknown disturbances. We are being followed.”

“By what?” she asked.

“Echoes are possible.”

Tiadba tried to reason through to what that could mean, based on what Pahtun had told them in training.

“We’re following ourselves?”

“Unknown.”

CHAPTER 71

The Broken Tower

Jebrassy looked up from the book he had been reading, stood away from his pretty golden desk, and saw the Great Door open.

Here, he could never tell what was an instructive illusion and what might be solid and real. Fear could not grip him, nor hunger, grief, or anticipation. He was comfortable in both mind and body. All was smoothed and welcome, small challenges and large explorations equally and curiously invigorating. He was happy.

Sometimes the epitome of the Librarian walked with him, sometimes he explored alone, though he did not feel lonely. It was a new childhood, and it seemed to last a long, long time. He was learning much about the Kalpa, and some of the simpler secrets of those who lived within the upper levels of the city. Mathematics, for example—never his strong suit, beyond the shopkeeper’s necessities trained into all breeds.

But always
this
door had been shut: the Great Door, more like a wall, easily as tall as a bloc of Tiers; curved like a crest or shield and covered with deeply engraved words, some of which he could read. He seemed to understand many more languages and signs now.

Jebrassy stepped through the breed-sized gap in the door, expecting something marvelous. He was not disappointed. He looked up and up at walls of shelves rising overhead and—he leaned over the parapet on which he stood—dropping down for as far as he could see. All the shelves were packed tight with books, too many to count, not uniformly bound, but a crescendo of colors leaping from the shelves, as if demanding to be inspected. Dark bindings neutral, untouched and unread; pale bindings touched once or twice; colored bindings, particularly blue and red, announcing greater degrees of interest. These colors attracted the attention of many figures, small and slender, but not breeds. More like the angelins he had already met, but solid and dedicated. They flocked joyously up and down the spiral stairs, searching the shelves along all the levels.