City at the end of time

“That sounds pretty cruel even for Tall Ones,” Khren said.

“I hatebeing ignorant! I want to see things, newthings. I hate being taken care of.”

With this outburst, the air between them settled a little and Khren returned to his accustomed role—of being a sounding board. In truth, Khren found Jebrassy’s plans intriguing—he regarded them with a fascinated mock horror, as if, having played them over in his own mind, he had reached an impasse—a wall beyond which he could not foresee making any personal decisions. Khren at times seemed unwilling to believe that these plans meant any more to Jebrassy than they did to him—intriguing but empty talk.

“What did your visitor leave behind the last time?” Khren asked, savoring a final drib of tork. Jebrassy had kept his friend company in drink through two previous tumblers, but no more—he needed a clear head for tomorrow. For the meeting he knew couldn’t possibly happen.

“He’s a fool,” Jebrassy muttered. “Helpless. He knows nothing. An aaarp.” He belched to emphasize that degraded status. The concept of insanity did not exist among the ancient breed. Eccentricity, whims, and extremes of personality, yes, but insanity was not part of their mix, and therefore no one accused another of having lost touch with reality—except as a vague concept, an uncomfortable joke—suitable for belching.

“Well, did he tell you anything more?”

“I wasn’t there. When he comes, I go. You know that.”

“The drawings on the shake cloth.”

“They never make sense.”

“Maybe your visitor has met hervisitor, and that’s how she knows so much about you.”

“You’ve talked with him. You know him better than I do,” Jebrassy said, slumping deeper into the cushions.

“You—he—could barely talk at all,” Khren said. “He looked in my mirror and made sounds. He said something like, ‘They got it all wrong!’—except slurred. Then he—you, your visitor—just stumbled over and sat right where you are now, and closed his eyes—your eyes—until he went away.”

Khren waggled his finger. “If that’s what straying is all about—better you than me, mate.”

TEN ZEROS

CHAPTER 9

Seattle, South Downtown

To pass the long gray time, as the rain patted and blew against the skylight over the shadowy, high-ceilinged room, Virginia Carol—Gi

The remains of a half-eaten sandwich, still in its waxy wrapper, awaited her attention on the bare brass table beside a high-backed reading chair. She had been hiding in the green warehouse for two weeks, waiting for an explanation that never seemed to come. Her fright had faded, but now she was growing bored—something that two weeks ago she would never have thought possible. The pictures in the gargoyle book were amusing—leering, perverse figures designed, scholars said, to scare off evil spirits—but what caught her eye was a grainy photo embedded in a chapter on the university town’s older buildings. On the inside of a stone parapet high in a clock tower, someone had clearly incised, in proper schoolboy Roman majuscule, cutting through a centuries-old black crust of grime and soot:

DREAMEST THOU OF A CITIE AT THE END OF TYME?

And beneath that, 1685. Another inscription below the date, presumably a name or address, had been vigorously scratched out, leaving a pale brown blotch.

Conan Arthur Bidewell pushed through the door at the far end of the room, carrying more books to be returned to the high wooden shelves. He observed her choice of reading. “That’s a real one—not one of my oddities, Miss Carol,” he said. “But it does reflect unpleasant truths.” His cheeks were sunken and thin wisps of hair covered a leathery, shiny pate. He resembled a well-preserved mummy, or one of those people found in bogs. That’s it, Gi

“So it is,” Bidewell said.

“This has been going on for centuries,” she said.

He peered through his tiny glasses. “Far longer than that.” Under his arm he carried two folded newspapers— The Strangerand The Seattle Weekly. He laid them out on the reading table. One paper was a week old, the other from the day before. Sticky tabs marked ads in the classifieds. The ads were almost identical.

Do you dream of a city at the end of time?

There are answers. Call—

Only the phone numbers were different.

“Same people?” she asked.

“Not to be known. Though in our neighborhood, I believe where once there were two, there is now only one. But soon there will be more.” Bidewell stretched and cracked the knuckles of his free hand, then ascended a tall ladder that rolled along a high, horizontal track fastened to the cases. The track extended over doors and a boarded-up window, all the way around the room. Bidewell replaced the books he had been studying, his thick corduroy pants hissing as he bent and straightened his spindly legs.

“They’ve been looking for people like me, all this time? They would have to be very old,” Gi

“Some still survive and do their work, if we should call it that. There are so many foul currents in these young, deep waters. Were you followed here?”

Perhaps deliberately, he had not asked this question until now. Whatever his peculiarities, Bidewell seemed sensitive to her fears.

Gi

“Mmm.” Bidewell finished fitting the books back into their gaps and descended the ladder, making small chuck-chuck sounds with lips and cheeks. From the last rung, he glanced over his shoulder and squinted at the broad milk-glass globe light hanging from a bronze ceiling fixture. “I should be changing out those bulbs, shouldn’t I?”

“The ones who place the ads, who scratched this…” She tapped the picture from Oxford. “Are they human?”

Bidewell nodded quickly, like a bird. “That particular inscription was carved by a schoolboy, on the dare of another schoolboy…who was paid by an older man. But to answer your question, most are human—yes.”

“Why don’t they die?”

“They have been touched,” he said. “Their lives improbably extended. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be obscure.”

Gi

She had told no one about her ability—until Bidewell took her in. Only last week, listening to her story, for once the old man had opened up enough to render an opinion. “Sounds very like someone lost, enslaved, in the Chaos. Whatever that may be, not to be known, not to be known.”