The White City (37 page)

Ray watched as the town rapidly expanded, wooden houses being replaced by brick and stone. Dirt streets being paved with cobblestones. Stores and churches and warehouses and factories being built as a city rose up where only prairie existed before. Finally Ray saw the Midway filled with the exotic buildings and mobs of smiling fairgoers. Overhead towered Mister Ferris’s marvelous wheel and, beyond, the domes and spires of the White City.

“This Expo is a turning point,” the voice said. “The world will never be the same. Electricity. Engines. Machinery big and small. If this much has changed in so quick a period, can you imagine, young Ray, what lies ahead?”

As Ray stared breathlessly through the lens, he watched as the buildings grew taller and taller, towers of lights and steel and glass that seemed to rise beyond the clouds. The scant trees and patches of earth that remained soon disappeared under cement. The streets were flooded with such a mob of people that none seemed to be able to even move. These were not the smiling faces of the fairgoers. These were lifeless, ashen-faced people. The lake was clogged with monstrous barges and the sky filled with winged airships. Stretching out to the horizon were
endless crowded streets and colossal buildings. What had been earth and air and water was now blotted out like a gray mold covering a piece of fruit as the city of smoke and steel and darkness expanded.

Ray staggered back from the lens and saw that twilight had fallen over the prairie as he’d been watching the Magog’s vision of the future.

A thin laugh came from the cone. “Impressive, isn’t it? And shocking. What man is capable of. Consider this, Ray. My servant Mister Grevol, he did not make Chicago what it is today. He did not conceive of this Expo or its wonders. And neither did I. The Chicago that you just saw, the Chicago that is to come—that is to say, the very world that is to come—will arrive whether or not Mister Grevol or I are here to play our small part in it. What you saw is progress. What you have witnessed, Ray, is the inevitable.”

Ray felt terror and anger welling up in him so fast that he grew dizzy. “No!” he said. “That’s not true.”

The grass around him was shriveling and dying, the waters of the lake receding into mudflats. The sky grew darker with no stars or specks of light overhead.

The gears continued to tick as they swirled around in the box. “You cannot stop it by stopping us,” the voice from the cone said.

Ray stumbled, feeling as if the entire world was toppling around him. He shouted and reached for the box to slam the lid, to stop the Magog from saying any more, but he could not find it in the dark, and he fell.

The tinny voice said, “What place will there be for a Rambler in the world that is to come?”

Ray tried to sit up but the ground beneath him was no longer there. He seemed to be suspended in a black void.

The voice spoke one last time, but now it was not the thin, tinny voice from the cone but a low whisper that seemed to come from lips pressed to his ear. “So I have a question for you, Ray Cobb. What are you still fighting for?”

He couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel or hear anything. He saw only Darkness surrounding him. The Magog’s words swirled in his head.

What was he fighting for? What hope was there in stopping what could not be stopped?

Something crept through the black of his mind. Sounds slowly emerged again. At first they were indistinct: A thud. Shuffling. Scraping. Then a sharp twang and another twang, like arrows being fired.

Ray recognized a voice, but it was barely audible through the Darkness filling his thoughts. “What’s … happened …?”

Ray couldn’t tell who was speaking. He no longer cared. The world would embrace Grevol’s aims no matter how this battle turned out. And even if Conker and Jolie and Nel succeeded and Grevol and his Machine were destroyed, the world would become a twisted, dark place that he could no longer live in.

Whirling muffled noises surrounded him. Through them, words emerged: “is … hurt … no … what’s wrong …”

Ray felt a hand touching him, but it was as if it were through thick blankets. He tried to drive his concentration from whoever it was. He wanted nothing more than to slip back into the Darkness and disappear.

“Toby’s gone … doesn’t have … charms … protect … Dark.” The voices came through clearer, closer. Despite his efforts, Ray cracked open his eyelids.

Marisol was kneeling over him. She was sliding her pouch from over her head.

Redfeather grabbed her hand. “No! You mustn’t,” he said. “It will take you too.”

She hesitated but finally let go of the pouch. Ray’s vision grew blurry and dim.

“Did you do it?” Redfeather asked, kneeling closer to Ray. Fire glowed from the cupped palm of Redfeather’s right hand, casting an orange light into Ray’s eyes. “Is it destroyed?”

Ray opened his mouth to answer, but couldn’t muster the effort. His mind swirled with blackness, emptiness, despair.

“Ray.” Redfeather spoke firmly and slowly, making sure Ray could understand him. “Nel is fighting the Gog. He needs you. He cannot defeat him.”

Ray managed to murmur, “Doesn’t … matter … anymore.”

“Yes, it does!” Redfeather snapped, shaking Ray by the shoulder.

“Redfeather, don’t …,” Marisol began.

Ray felt he couldn’t hold his eyes open any longer. Redfeather wrapped his arm around Ray’s shoulders, helping him sit upright. Ray’s head slumped, his body as limp as a doll’s.

“Listen, Ray!” Redfeather said. “Listen. You will not fall to the Dark. Don’t you remember what Water Spider told us? You’re a Rambler. Like your father. Greater even than your father! Don’t you remember? Water Spider said you could resist the Darkness if you mastered the Darkness within you.”

Ray struggled to think against the black gears growing in his mind. Hadn’t his father told him this also, in the Gloaming? What were his words?

The only one who can stop the Gog and the Magog is the one who has mastery over his own Darkness. The one who can stand against his own black clockworks.

What was his Darkness? Ray thought it had been having to watch Jolie leave to sacrifice herself to heal the Wolf Tree and free her captive sisters. Or giving Si the spike so that she and Conker could destroy the Machine, even though it meant marching to their deaths.

But he had been willing to go with Conker. He too had been ready to die to stop the Gog. That had not been his Darkness. That had not been what had driven him to despair. Ray knew their sacrifices had purpose.

But then he’d seen the Magog’s terrible visions of what was to come—of all that the Ramblers had fought for adding up to nothing in the dark world of machines and soulless cities that lay ahead. But hadn’t the Magog also shown him his friends falling before they had done their parts in stopping the Gog? He’d seen Marisol and Redfeather dead. But here they were, Marisol leaning over him with tears on her cheeks and Redfeather with his arm around him. His dear friends. They had not fallen. They were alive.

The Magog … the vision it had shown him, it had not been true, or at least it had only been a possible fate, the darkest possible one. Nel was alive and still trying to stop Grevol. And Jolie might still make the siren spring that could save the Wolf Tree. Conker, he, and Si might still be able to reach the heart of the Machine.

And the world ahead, it would change. That was inevitable, just as the Magog had said. But it wasn’t inevitable that it would be a world that would turn people into the ashen-faced slaves that Grevol desired. Mankind might still hold on to its humanity. There might still be a place for a Rambler.

It was as if an ember formed. A small and singular spark taking flight from a bed of dead coals. The flame grew and grew, becoming a blaze.

Ray reached out to grasp Redfeather’s left hand.

Redfeather looked up sharply. Marisol leaned back in surprise. “Ray?” Redfeather said, pulling him to his feet. “What’s happened?”

Ray staggered a step, but then felt strength flood into his body. A tingling feeling moved from his chest to his arms. “Where is Nel?” he asked.

Redfeather held up his hand as it burst with flames. “Let’s find him.”

Marisol said, “This way,” notching an arrow before pushing back the bushes.

They ran around the back of the building. Buckshot-hard pellets of hail roared down from the storm. But Ray felt no cold, no weakness. He ran, with Redfeather and Marisol at his sides.

A terrified group of Javanese tribesmen stared out at them from their grass hut displays as the three passed. Continuing to circle the building, Ray came up behind the Pirate Queen taking cover from gunfire roaring across the Midway’s boulevards. Marisol and Redfeather took positions against the wall, their weapons ready.

“Ray!” Mister Lamprey barked. Piglet was there, along
with Hobnob. They held guns, but the small yellow-haired thief kept switching the Colt from hand to hand, scratching at his palms.

“This is it,” Hobnob simpered. “I’m quits after this. Never felt myself cut out for this sort of work—”

“Shut up and be ready with that peashooter!” the Pirate Queen shouted, loading the massive cartridges in her guns. “And, Ray, what are you doing here?”

“Have you seen Nel?” he asked, knowing there was no time to explain it all.

“The wheel,” she said. “Last I saw, he and Grevol were at the base of that wheel.”

Mister Ferris’s wheel. The symbol of the Expo. The towering monument to the progress of the age. Ray would need no help finding it.

“Can you cover us?” Ray asked.

“With pleasure,” the Pirate Queen said, chomping on her cigar.

Piglet peeked around the corner, and immediately a bullet resounded off the stone inches from her face. She looked back and smirked. “They’re waiting for us.”

“Wouldn’t want to disappoint them,” the Pirate Queen said before stepping out into the boulevard and roaring, “Looking for me, you dandies?” From under her coat, she brought out the pair of fat-barreled guns that were too big to be pistols and too small to be cannons. Each weapon boomed with great clouds of smoke.

The agents ducked behind a cart as it splintered with gunfire. Piglet and Mister Lamprey ran past her, firing their rifles and screaming as they charged and drove the agents from their
hiding places. Hobnob followed, but as soon as a bullet rang off the cobblestones by his feet, he dropped his gun and smashed the dandelion hat to his head, dissolving in a cloud of seedpods.

Redfeather said, “Follow me.” As he disappeared around the corner, Marisol and Ray sprinted after him. Marisol paused halfway across the thoroughfare to send a volley of arrows at the agents. The three kept running, keeping low until they reached a stack of beer kegs.

“There are more Bowlers ahead,” Marisol said.

Ray peered around the leaking barrels to see the black-suited agents battling against the pirates and Buffalo Bill’s men.

“We’ve got to find better cover,” Redfeather said. Ray looked hastily around and then pointed. “That booth!”

“Good enough,” Redfeather said.

They ran as gun battles raged around them. Ray jumped across the counter of a tin-sided ticket booth, landing on the dusty wood floor. He fell against someone hiding. The person gasped and cocked a pistol, but Ray quickly pushed the barrel down.

“Gilley, it’s me,” Ray said.

“You scared the blazes out of me,” the young cowboy said, his freckled face pale and his eyes wide.

“Glad you’re okay,” Ray said.

“Me too,” Gilley said. “It’s a miracle I’m in one piece.”

Redfeather and Marisol burst through the door and crouched beside Ray and Gilley. Redfeather said, “What now?”

Ray peered over the counter. Staying low, Redfeather and Marisol came up beside him to survey the scene.

The towering wheel rose hundreds of feet above the Midway. Dozens of locomotive-sized cars were mounted to it, for visitors to ride and view the Expo. Although they were empty, the cars rose up and around and back down, following the huge circular path. Just beside the base of the wheel in an opening in the ground, the engine driving Mister Ferris’s ride rumbled. Its pistons and gears clattered as they turned the great pulleys attached to the wheel’s axle.

A line of agents encircled the base of the wheel. Ray saw bodies lying on the ground around them—some were Buffalo Bill’s men, some were agents of the Gog. The shell of a Hoarhound smoldered to one side. From the black scorch marks radiating from it, Ray guessed the monster had been struck down by a bolt of lightning.

By the bottom of the wheel, the Gog stood with his back to Ray. He swung his walking stick like a conductor of some mechanical orchestration. Nel was pinned between the pit with the churning engine and the cars coming by every few moments. As each of the huge cars swung down, he had to duck to keep from being crushed.

As the next car rose over him, Nel held out a vial of glass that glowed suddenly. Lightning flashed down on the Gog. Ray’s vision turned white. He pulled back from the counter, to squeeze his eyes shut as the light lingered in his sockets.

“He needs our help,” Marisol said.

“You’ll never get past those agents,” Gilley said. “Iron Tail tried to attack them, but I think he was shot.”

A whirlwind of seedpods filled the booth. As it began to coalesce into a form, Gilley backed nervously against the wall.

“It’s okay,” Ray said. “It’s just Hobnob.”

A moment later, the little thief pulled the dandelion hat from his head and fell back against the wall, panting.

“You okay?” Redfeather said.

“Do I look okay!” he squeaked.

“Is the Pirate Queen coming?” Ray asked.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Hobnob said piteously. “None’s the difference.”

Marisol stole a glance over the counter. “I see her. She’s coming this way with Lamprey and Piglet.”

Redfeather said, “There’s still too many agents between us and Nel. Even that one-woman army can’t get us through all of them.”

Ray looked over the counter with Redfeather to see how Nel was doing.

The old Rambler held up his hands and pushed his palms toward Grevol. A gale-force wind battered down, ripping at the Gog’s coat. The Gog turned to one side to brace against the force, then flung out his walking stick.