Again the city all around them, quakes and fires and broken stone, death and fear. This time Tietjen saw Jit sleeping, curled up in a tunnel, light filtered through a grating, patterning his face and the pile of grimy blankets draped over him. He turned in his sleep, rolled from one side to the next as if he were dreaming. Then, he sat up, head back and eyes closed, hands at his side … and after a moment sank back again. In that moment Tietjen saw something flow from the boy, a flash of darkness, something indefinable. And he understood at last what the boy had done, and felt sick with horror.
The kid was trembling in his arms. Mindlessly, Tietjen began to stroke his shoulder, murmuring, “It wasn’t your fault, it was an accident.” All the time he was thinking, I can’t forgive this. No one
could forgive this
. The boy’s trembling turned to struggling again. Tietjen held on to him.
Tell me what it is and we can fix it
, he had said. And he had tried to fix it, and the boy had tried to hurt him. What wasn’t he understanding?
“Jit, why are you so angry with me? Did you”—he thought of how to say it—“did you have that terrible dream that hurt the city because you were angry with me?”
The boy stilled in his arms, looked at Tietjen with tearless venom. One more memory played: himself, sitting in one of the windows at the Store on a dark night, looking out over the city. It was—it felt familiar, but it took Tietjen a few moments to remember. It was the night of the day they had won their fight with Gable’s people. It was the night he had believed that all their battles were over. He felt the breeze again, saw the velvety blackness of the city, clusters of shadow hinting at size and mass; glitter of distant windows in the moonlight; a festive awning of stars, their light uncontested by the city. Remembered his own memories that night. Then remembered Jit’s:
Gable had been wrong: Tietjen was the father
.
Tietjen saw it all: Jit had helped to win the battle with Gable, had given them gifts. Jit had loved
him. Now it begins
, he had thought. And he had filled himself with anger, with rage as fiery and feral as anything that Jit had ever felt—at the thing that had hurt the city. At Jit.
Tietjen wanted to laugh, it was so horrible. So much death and pain and fear—because he had cared so much for the city, and the boy had cared so much for him. What a sick, sad joke.
Jit broke away from Tietjen’s grasp. “Tee-jin lied,” he said again. “Tee-jin lying right now.”
He was right, Tietjen thought hopelessly. He had lied, without knowing it. How could he forgive the boy for laying waste to New York? For killing Ketch? For creating the monsters who had killed Maia. For making Barbara his tool, stripping her of herself and using her to speak his outrage. You don’t forgive things like that.
But Barbara had forgiven
him.
Or at least loved him enough to see past her hurt. And this kid, who was almost man-sized but thought and felt like a kid Davy’s age—he was all hurts, all loneliness. I can’t forgive him, Tietjen thought. Maybe that’s not what he needs.
Quietly he spoke. “It’s all right. You didn’t know, and I understand that now. I’m sorry I hurt you; I hope you can forgive me. But it’s over now, Jit. It’s okay.” He took the boy in his arms again and rocked slightly, feeling the motion comfort himself as much as the boy. Tietjen breathed deeply. “It’s okay. Nothing you could do would keep me from loving you—not now that I know you. It’s okay.” He said the words over and over until they were nonsense on his tongue, and kept saying them still. The boy stopped moving, stopped trembling, seemed at last to have fallen deeply asleep, and still Tietjen repeated the words, listening to the truth of them that became clearer with each repetition.
The streetscape, the images of the blasted city, everything faded until there was only Tietjen and Jit, rocking together, silent and unseeing.
It was hot. Tietjen moved and felt his muscles work, not the gliding, frictionless motion of nowhere but the movement of reality. Something hot trickled down the back of his neck. He could smell his own sweat, and see the redness of sunlight through his eyelids. He opened his eyes.
He was standing among the stone animals. He could not tell how long he had been there—the sun was still high in the sky. A few feet away the boy lay on his side, curled up as if against the cold. Tietjen reached a hand out to feel the pale skin which was sweaty and cool. Shock, he thought distantly. Shock.
He turned and looked north. Barbara was standing there, watching. He waved at her. Waved again, when she was slow to move toward him.
“Are you okay?” she called when she got a little closer.
“Okay,” he called. “You?”
She made a face at him; he wanted to laugh. “I’m peachy. Fine as frog hair. Wasn’t he there?”
“What do you mean?”
“Wasn’t the boy there?” she asked again. She was almost abreast of him, and followed his glance. Then she started, as if she’d suddenly seen a snake. “Jesus. What happened to him?”
Tietjen ignored the question for a moment. “How long have I been here?”
She blinked. “You’ve been standing there for about twenty minutes. I was afraid he’d—I don’t know. Frozen you in place, or sucked your brains out or something. I couldn’t walk away, but I was getting-nervous.”
Tietjen put an arm out and around her shoulders. “I’m sorry.” He knelt at Jit’s side and felt the boy’s skin. Still sweaty and cool. Pensively, Tietjen took off his shirt and draped it around the boy.
Barbara frowned. “That’s sweet. What the hell happened? What’s going on?”
“He tried to hurt me, but I was a little tough to swallow, I guess.” Tietjen smiled. “I want to go home. Are you hungry? I’m hungry.” From Central Park he thought he heard birdsong, and there was something else, a faint ringing he knew he should recognize.
Barbara looked at him, her mouth gaping theatrically. “You’re a little tough to swallow? I guess so. You want to go home?”
Tietjen nodded. “I do. Don’t you?”
“Ye-e-es. And what about him?”
Tietjen pulled the boy into his arms, awkwardly, and tried to stand. It had been easier in his head, but then, things usually are. “We bring him.” The ringing came from the west, faintly. From over the Hudson, he realized. There are boats on the Hudson, going downriver. He’s let us loose again; we’re free.
“We bring this boy back to the Store?”
“To the Store.”
“After what he’s done?” Barbara asked.
Tietjen shook his head and shifted the kid’s weight in his arms. “You don’t know the half of it,” he said. “Come on, let’s go home.”
It was time for the World to come back. Time to go home. They started back across the Park, empty of shadows.
This book was a very long time in coming together, and many people helped it on its way: the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop; the Clarion Writers Workshop, 1981; Elaine Rado, Steve Popkes, Melissa Ann Singer, M. Lucie Chin, Connor Cochran, Duncan Eagleson, Laura J. Mixon, Claire Eddy, Kij Johnson, Donald Keller, Shira Daemon, Patty Fuller, Stephanie Smith, Margaret Bishop, Barbara Krasner, Jane Brown, and Danny Caccavo, all of whom have read, suggested, raged, soothed, and otherwise been friends and critics when either or both were needed. Gratitude also to my online correspondents and my coworkers at Acclaim Comics, who encouraged me through the last stages of Terminal Book.
I got much needed assistance from the Maps Office of the New York City Parks Department, including (slightly bemused) help with Central Park tunnel maps; from the Library of the American Museum of Natural History with data on Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and his stone dinosaurs; from Sage Walker, who told me cool stuff about dead bodies and amputations; and from the staff of the Bookstore Cafe at Barnes and Noble’s branch at 82nd and Broadway, who let me sit and finish the book when home and children became too distracting. Enormous gratitude goes also to my excellent—and very patient—editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and his equally excellent wife, Teresa, without whom, etc., and to my friends and former coworkers at Tor, a place where people truly love puttin’ out books.