City At The End Of Time (26 page)

She was away again…

They had crossed the plain of sparkling dust. Ahead, a silvery cluster of rounded buildings, like soap bubbles made of moonlight, rose from a pedestal surrounded by rivulets of that same dust, blown into low dunes and meanders across a depthless black floor.

“Nothing here is real,” said a young male trudging close to Tiadba. His name was Nico. They were all more than weary; they no longer had the full brightness of the ceil over the Tiers to guide them. Their world had expanded immensely—and most of it was ugly, barren, strange. Tiadba looked around at the nine, her nine.

You—inside me. This could be a dangerous time. We’re a broken team. I don’t know what we’re
going to do.

Ginny still did not have the wherewithal to respond. She felt loosely attached; what Tiadba saw seemed to wobble and tunnel away, like an image at the end of a long pipe. Ginny was little more than a poorly connected rider, jostled by her host’s thoughts, even by the pounding of her heart. She could not speak, could barely even watch.

The sheets grew tighter, she was falling off something somewhere…

The group climbed a ramp to the pedestal and kicked off what they could of the dust on their feet and calves. Tiadba knew their names, tried to repeat them under her breath, as if introducing them to her guest.

She was thankful she was not the one doing the straying now; like Ginny—whose name she could not speak or make sense of—her memory of the lapses was minimal.
You’re not going to push me aside,
are you? That would be awkward for both of us. We could die.

The group entered the closest of the silvery bubbles. Inside, arranged on transparent racks, suits of armor twinkled and flashed at their joints with false fire. Split helmets draped the shoulders. They were like wet suits but segmented, thick and tightly ribbed—

You dive, in water? Don’t distract me now! Please—

Ginny, embarrassed, wanted to withdraw, but could not—like a loose tooth hanging by a painful nerve, neither in the jaw nor out, she was buffeted by Tiadba’s emotions—yet knew that Tiadba’s upper mind was still only vaguely aware that something was different. In essence, Ginny was being counseled—rebuffed—by her host’s housekeepers, the organizers and tenders of a body’s everyday needs.

And when she was gone, Ginny knew that these same tenders would sweep away the short shallow irritation of her presence…As her own tenders and housekeepers did when their roles were reversed and

she played host. So strange! Such a thing to know!

If only she could keep from forgetting, she could bring back these experiences, think them over while she was awake, fit them into all the other puzzle pieces—and perhaps complete a picture. So little of it made sense.

The bright suits—dull red, pastel yellow, ethereal green, nine different hues—fully occupied Tiadba’s awareness, as if she could see nothing else. She had been told of these marvels at the base camp, but only recently—only just before the march across the dust plain in the gray cavern. These were the devices that would help keep them alive in the Chaos, beyond the border of the real…and as such, they were outside the experience of any of the ancient breeds in the Tiers. How wonderful, to learn of them; and how disturbing to be told why they were necessary!

Tiadba had long since realized that their plans and hopes for adventure had been more than naive. The Chaos was not sanctuary, not freedom—it was endless peril. Even the Tall Ones seemed to forgo speaking of it unless it was strictly necessary.

What they had experienced before arriving in the flood channel—the sorrow, compounded by the shock of displacement and the grief—was only a hint of what lay outside the Kalpa. Yes, they were going—finally they were going on a march—but at what risk, at what cost? And who could be trusted, after all these things not told of, never explained?

Go away now! I have to focus…

The last thing Ginny could hold onto, like a slippery rope, before the housekeepers swept her up and broke her loose—

Tiadba’s hope:
We
will
meet again. You know that, don’t you?

Out of sequence. Everything jumbling, dreams and life contorted.

Where is he? Is he still alive? You know! Tell me!

But Ginny did not know.

Why haven’t we heard from him?

Ginny fell off the cot and hit the floor in a tangle of blanket and sheets. Sweat soaked her nightgown. Desperately she tried to hold onto what she had seen and heard, but the vision melted like a sliver of ice under the intense heat of waking.

She let out a tight shriek of frustration.

Minimus leaped up from the floor and rubbed against her feet, then sat and watched her untangle and rearrange the bedclothes.

Whatever she had seen, wherever she had been, in any rational sequence, might have come before the…the
what
? The lapses that left her with such an awful sense of terror and oppression. The bad, endless times to come.

CHAPTER 22

University District, Seattle

What are they dreaming? How long until they can’t sleep at all?

Daniel closely watched the morning commuters in their cars—when he could see them. In this world, so many hid behind tinted windows, as if shy or afraid. Faces fixed straight ahead, eyes flicking, avoiding his gaze, some reading his sign and smiling—waving—others shouting words of abuse—good people, smart, but they didn’t stop and give him money; a very few, and these he felt the most sorry for, rolling down their windows and offering spare change or a few dollars—and the rest don’t see him, will not see him, oops, now the traffic is moving, it’s too late—would’ve offered something, sure do feel sorry for you poor folks down on your luck…

And how long until they were
all
down on their luck? Fortunes run out, world-strands gummed together and gathered like dried tendons from a corpse, waiting to be trimmed…short stalks in a dead bouquet. For a moment the road was empty, the corners quiet—he could hear the wind blowing through the thin brush and young alders crouched back from the side of the road. Rain had fallen fitfully all day. It soaked through his coat—soaked his moth-eaten thrift-store Pendleton and woolen long johns, his socks squished in his shoes—never wear costly shoes, make sure you smirch your coat and outer garments with dirt after you clean them, rub the dirt into your hands and your fingers—a little diluted mud dripping as you take their few coins and fewer bills…

To keep eating, Daniel Patrick Iremonk played along, for now.

A small Volkswagen drove up—yellow, familiar, they had had Volkswagens like this in his world, before the darkening and the cinder-grit dusting, before his precipitate flight. Behind the wheel hunched a plump young man with cherry cheeks, pushed-up nose, and short, thick black hair. The young man wore a gray suit coat, sleeves too short, over a pink striped shirt—a salesman, Daniel guessed. Not much money in the bank, lots of debt, but he kept his car clean and his clothes pressed. Daniel held up his sign.

Bad Times Got ME

A little Cash for food?

God Bless You!!!

Daniel could freeze the light on red for five or six minutes at a time—drawing out the stop until the drivers got nervous, until they rolled down their windows and offered a payment of cash to
get moving
,
get this show back on the road, my God that’s a long light!

Cars were backed up all the way to the freeway.

On the opposite corner, Florinda—the lean brown woman—stood like a bundle of twigs, holding her own misspelled message on its dog-eared square of brown cardboard. She rarely looked at the drivers—a bad corner, traffic always moving.

Florinda was in her late forties, face draped by long strands of felted hair, a chain smoker whose habit got her stuck in less desirable locations—she just had to pause every fifteen minutes for a puff, and inevitably she lost her best spots to more aggressive panhandlers.

The light hung on endless red. Frustrating, time-eating, finger-drumming crimson. The salesman glanced resentfully at Daniel. He was a mouth-breather, Daniel observed—jaw slightly agape, lower lip flaccid. Daniel could not see his eyes—they were shaded from the slanting light breaking over Wallingford.

The salesman finally leaned forward and scowled, then rolled down the window, shoulder jerking with the effort. “If I give you money, will you let me through?” he called.

“Sure,” Daniel said, stooping. He needed to see the man’s eyes.

The head dropped lower as the man reached into his pocket, plump fingers pushing under the seat belt’s hard, square buckle.

Daniel could only hold the light a few more seconds. Too long and the traffic engineers in the city figured something was wrong—sent repairmen and sometimes cops. He’d had to abandon this corner twice because he held a red too long—messing too obviously with all these small fortunes, tiny fates.

“Here,” the driver said, holding out four crumpled dollar bills. “Billy Goat Gruff. Just don’t ask any questions, and don’t eat me.”

Daniel stuffed the bills in his deepest coat pocket. Their eyes met, the driver’s underslung, blue, direct—Daniel’s steady, wide, washed-out.

A little spark hit him in the base of the spine.

“Bad dreams,” the driver confessed. “You?”

Daniel nodded, then swung out his arm, and the light changed.

The prelude before the flood.

He could feel that hideous tide already lapping up on the fresh beaches of this world. The first sign—refugees like himself, crippled storm petrels, crawling onto the shore, gasping, wings broken, desperate.

And then—

Bad dreams.

There were ways of gauging how long he had—of measuring the remaining days, weeks, months. He had become an expert at predicting the storm surge.

Daniel folded up his cardboard sign and waved across the intersection at Florinda. “I’m done for the day,” he called.

“Why quit now?” Florinda asked. “Lunch crowd from the U.”

“You want it?” Daniel’s spot was prime—left side of the off-ramp, driver’s-side windows.

“Not if you’re just going to bust my chops when you get back.”

“I’ll be gone the rest of the day. Back tomorrow morning. Don’t give it up to some other bastard for a smoke.”

“I’ll hold it,” Florinda said, with a surprisingly sound grin. She still had all her teeth. Daniel missed having good teeth.

He wrapped his sign in a plastic garbage bag and hid it in the bushes, then walked up Forty-fifth, passing Asian restaurants, video stores, gaming parlors—he paused before a used bookstore, but it sold only best-selling paperbacks—hung a left on Stone Way, passing apartments, a fancy grocery store…more apartments, condos, plumbing fixtures, hardware.

He descended the long, gentle slope to Lake Union.

Daniel had begun his search three days ago by taking a bus to the downtown library—not the old library he was familiar with but a huge, shiny metal rhomboid—scary. Differences were at once frightening and reassuring. He had come such a long way—that was a good thing. It was also a sad thing. He had left so much behind.

The downtown library did not carry the book he was looking for, and none were available through interlibrary loan.

Despite an excessive amount of wear and tear, with less liquor and better food Charles Granger’s body had regained some strength. It took Daniel less than thirty-five minutes—joints aching, heart pounding, hands trembling—to reach Seattle Book Center.

A block and a half from the Ship Canal, on the east side of the broad street, three bookstores shared a single-story brown and gray building. In Daniel’s previous world, there had also been bookstores here—a confluence he didn’t give much thought to, considering the greater changes he had witnessed. He paced beside the storefront, darting glances through the half-silvered windows. Art books stood in uneven ranks, spines facing inward, anonymous when viewed from the street. He set the glass door’s bell a-jingle. The owner was instantly on alert—street person walking—but not alarmed. Seeing someone like Daniel—as he now appeared—had to be a common occurrence across the freeway from the university, where so many homeless youngsters and street people hung out…Down and out.

Common folk.

Daniel swallowed, sized up the owner: a stocky man in his late fifties, of medium height, with a slight stoop, long hair, and experienced, quiet eyes—calm, slightly bored, self-assured. “Can I help you?”

Daniel worked to keep his voice from shaking. Like everything else subject to corruption, libraries and bookstores scared him—but that wasn’t what gave him the shakes. He had only recently weaned this body off its daily medicine, a liter of Night Train and sixty-four fluid ounces of Colt 45.

“I’m looking for a book on cryptids,” he said. “Unusual animals, long thought extinct, or never known to exist. New species. Monsters. I have a title in mind…”

“Shoot,” the owner said with a wary smile.

Daniel blinked. He wasn’t used to being received with familiarity, on such short notice. He studied the owner—too perceptive. Scouts, collectors, could be anywhere.