Strength of Stones (29 page)

"I'll help, sir."

And he made the journey again, by car and truck and then by boat, across the flooded delta.

Resurrection rose from the waters like a drowned cathedral. The enclave had been evacuated a year before, when the ocean reclaimed the dry flats. He was taken from the boat to the top of the city wall in a metal basket. All the silicate spines had withdrawn.

Resurrection was dead.

"Why do you believe me now?" he asked as they led him through the corridors to the heat shaft.

"It's just as you described it," said a young woman carrying a black notebook. "It took us months to find the report, but the Founders keep everything on file."

"I know," he said ruefully. "I didn't see all that much here. What can I tell you?"

They took a makeshift elevator up the heat shaft, up the tallest tower, until they stood in a dead, brown forest. "We need an identification," the woman said.

His arms and legs ached with tension. He didn't want to show his fear, however, so he just stared at the unlit, scuffed path, his eyes wide. They took him to the cylindrical building with the 2 and the Omega on its side.

A half-circle door was open. Two older men carrying black cases came up behind them, one carrying a crude tape recorder. "Mr. Daniel, we'd like to make your statements permanent. If you'd just speak close to this..."

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.

THE END

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