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BY GREG BEAR
Darwin’s Radio(Wi
Dead Lines
Vitals
Blood Music
Moving Mars
and many more
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GREGBEARis the author of more than twenty-five books, which have been translated into nineteen languages. His most recent novel is Quantico. He has been awarded two Hugos and five Nebulas for his fiction. He is married to Astrid Anderson Bear, and they are parents of two children, Erik and Alexandra. Visit the author’s website atwww.gregbear.com .
And there’s more atwww.cityattheendoftime.com .
ENTR’ACTE
This is the unexpected moment. Gods will never be predicted or judged, their motivations will never be known. Ishanaxade enjoys a brief respite before her own tasks resume. Sangmer is there. When they part, it will start again—her labor and his solitary quest. The Sleeper will take over soon. Until then the children will play, all of them, and their play is crude and primal and sweet, the stuff of which dreams will always be made.
Out on a formerly gray domain, Gi
Jebrassy and Tiadba find this open land enchanting, with its wide blue sky. They particularly love the lingering times between night and day, dusk and dawn. There are no stars, of course. But the sun is bright and full and warm—when clouds don’t gather and rain isn’t falling. The rain is unexpected and delightful. They have built a small hut in a hidden valley, and have learned how to gather berries and make a fire. Jebrassy, of course, is learning to hunt—after a fashion. There is usually bread on the hearth, should he return empty-handed, which is often, since there are so few animals, and those not very convincing. Tiadba is growing rounder. They wonder: What happens when a child is born between creations?
Throughout Thule the detail grows. There is a town, with its own library—and a bookstore, already filled with books and a few cats, some with burned toes and singed ears. In the bookstore, five green books appear. On the spine of each is the number—or is it a year?—1298.
One day Gi
In the library, on a windowsill, sits a small round piece of wave-tossed beach glass, the color of pale jade, refracting the changing light of each new dawn.
Then it is gone.
Memory is returning.
Some say, even now, Jack travels with Gi
All stories forever, shaping all fates, until the end of time—or is one story, one life filled with love, sufficient to rekindle time and make paradise?
Waiting for the Sleeper to finally awake.
To this very day, Jack juggles. He never drops anything.
Others say—
In the begi
Ly
September 28, 2007
TEN ZEROS
CHAPTER 1
Seattle
The city was young. Unbelievably young.
The moon rose sharp and silver-blue over a deck of soft gray clouds, and if you looked east, above the hills, where the sun would soon rise, you saw a brightness as yellow and real as natural butter. The city faced the coming day with dew cold and wet on new green grass, streaming down windows, beaded on railings, chill against swiping fingers.
Waking up in the city, no one could know how young it was and fresh; all had activities to plan, living worries to blind them, and what would it take to finally smell the blessed, cool newness, but a whiff of something other?
Everyone went about their business.
The day passed into dusk.
Hardly anyone noticed there was a difference.
A hint of loss.
With a shock that nearly made her cry out, Gi
Gi
Gi
The driver sighed and closed the door, and the bus drove on. Gi
The Mercedes dropped back and turned onto a side street.
With her good hand, she felt in the pack’s zippered side pocket for a piece of paper. While unwrapping the filthy bandage from her hand, the doctor at the clinic had spent half an hour gently redressing her burns, injecting a big dose of antibiotics, and asking too many questions. Gi
Because Gi
Before boarding the bus—before seeing or imagining the gray Mercedes—Gi
It was Gi
Neither of the names had ever come with much of an explanation. The stone—a hooked, burned-looking, come-and-go thing in a lead-lined box about two inches on a side—was supposed to be the only valuable possession left to their nomadic family. Her mother and father hadn’t told her where they had taken possession of it, or when. They probably didn’t know or couldn’t remember. The box always seemed to weigh the same, but when they slid open the grooved lid—a lid that only opened if you rotated the box in a certain way, then back again—her mother would usually smile and say, “Ru