Страница 20 из 124
“Old is not an adequate word. I don’t know whether I served and failed, or was rejected as no longer essential—but I seem to remember scattering everywhere people still lived. After that—until I was brought here—I remember nothing.”
“And now, you’re almost human.”
“Why do you stay and speak with me? Am I attractive? None of the Shen seems to find me attractive.”
When she spoke, her breath was like a refreshing wind, cool and moist, yet when her eyes fell upon him, he was warmed, kept dry and secure. Sangmer studied her some more and considered for a while, on the shore of the great silvery vector sea. “You seem to like helping, taking care of people,” he said. “That is admirable.”
“You enjoy being nurtured?”
“Well, that isn’t all you promise. When you touch me, I feel a fire at my center. You want me to grow and find my true story, my purpose. You seem to want to be there when I see new things. You want to
share and enjoy my discoveries.”
“I discover what anyone discovers,” Ishanaxade said. “That’s a truth. But if I become human—what you see now is not all that is left of me. I am two.”
“What other is there?”
“She is always with me—not separate. Polybiblios might have warned you.”
“He did not.”
“The Shen did not mention this?”
“They mentioned nothing about you. My crew has had a difficult journey—perhaps they did not want to alarm us.”
“Well, some of the Shen find me most alarming. They would be happy to see my puzzle resolved—or to send me away. I not only inspire, I correct.”
“What’s so wrong with that?”
“Some things ca
Sangmer watched her closely—what he could see of her—and thought he spied a shadowy other-self within the beautiful and changing margins. “Then you should make the Chaos disappear!”
“Oh, my destructive side is no more effective than my inspirational side, so long as Brahma sleeps. So I have been told, and so I believe.”
Sangmer frowned. “Well, whatever you are, you’re the most extraordinary, almost-human female I’ve ever encountered. And I’ve known some wonderfully different females—and many that were not female at all, like the Ashurs—”
Ishanaxade seemed to condense more as he spoke. “Tell me about them,” she said. “You thought they were beautiful. I’d like to learn how they pleased you.”
This hurt. A shriek of eternal despair filled the vast dark hall, and was lost without echo in the smother of wreckage.
Where is he? Why does he not come?
CHAPTER 109
Jack looked over his shoulder. For some time now he had been trying to stay ahead of Glaucous and Daniel, and simply follow the tug of his stone. Whether he trusted them or not—he did not, of course—simply didn’t matter. He wanted to test himself and see what he could accomplish on his own. The endless miles of wreckage had its own silence, a quality deeper than simple lack of sound. Here, for a moment alone, he tried to think and remember where he’d been, what he’d seen and heard—and fit it all together without distraction or interruption.
Somehow, that made seeing and thinking easier as well.
A low tuneless whistle found its way between his lips. He held the stone out before him, trying to interpret its subtle tugging. And gradually, over a time of no time, he was guided beneath a huge, vertical sheet that stretched up into high shadow—a warped, bumpy sheet that might have been the size of Manhattan, turned on its nose and hung from a hook, covered with huge, broken ornaments, each with its own distinct cast, a grayish-silver sheen.
What would it mean if he believed that he was actually walking through—or beneath—the suspended ruins of a future city? That people had once lived here, and that what had invaded and sucked the life out of Seattle had also sucked away their lives, squeezing it all together, making them equal…?
Jack had never been much for philosophy, but this was a poser. He could walk, whistle, see—wonder—but there wasn’t really anything, including time, that made sense in the old way. There was hispersonal time—he was still making memories—
And wasn’t that how one defined time anyway?
He kept walking, kept whistling, but decided that thinking was almost useless. Humility was easy when mystery threatened to crush you at every turn.
“I am that I am,” he muttered. “I think, therefore I am. I remember, therefore I am. I’ve chosen my own name, therefore I am. I’m hungry, therefore I am. I worry about my friends, therefore I am. I’d like to see what’s about to happen, therefore I am. I want to go on and finish my story—make more memories—never enough memories—therefore I am.”
I am alone, and things haven’t just winked out.
Therefore I am.
I want to set it all right again, therefore…
Far away, he heard a terrible sound—not exactly human. A banshee wail of despair and pain that seemed to drizzle down from above.
“Gi
Something touched his ankles—whiskers or feelers. Thinking of giant earwigs, he jerked and looked down, almost dropping the sum-ru
A cat rubbed his leg, arched its back, looked up—and opened its mouth as if to make a sound. But the cat, too, was silent. He thought he recognized it—him—one of the cats in Bidewell’s warehouse, and for once did not wonder for an instant what he was doing here. There could be nothing more improbable than Jack’s own presence. He knelt and stroked the soft head, palmed the closed eyes and pushed back the velvety ears, and immediately felt a surge of comfort, normality, self-assurance. Cats could do that. Despite their apparent aloofness, or because of it, simply by their acceptance one acquired solid value.
“Well, maybe I don’t hold everything together all by my lonesome,” Jack said. “Maybe you have something to contribute, too.” The cat purred agreement, then lightly nipped his finger and ran off a few yards, stopped, sat on its haunches; waited. Jack consulted the sum-ru
Cat and stone agreed. Both were leading him in the same direction.
CHAPTER 10
Seattle
A busker must satisfy all of his customers. To women, he must be young, charming, and fu
Jack was making decent money, about twenty-eight dollars in three hours, deposited by members of his occasional audience into a floppy canvas hat planted on the sidewalk outside the downtown Tiffany’s. Today, as he had for two years, Jack was working with live rats. They were used to his tricks and he never dropped them—never. The rats may not have relished flying through the air, twisting their tails and heads, beady black or pink eyes flashing, seeing in spi
By four o’clock the crowds fled the concrete canyons, on their way home, so Jack packed up the cage and impedimenta, hung them on the front and back fenders of his bike, and began the long haul out of downtown, up De
He was reluctantly on his way to the Broadway Free Clinic. First, he made a stop at Ellen’s house. Her small gray bungalow was perched behind a slender garden topping a three-foot-high retaining wall, up two flights of concrete steps. She was still on a day trip out of town, so he found the key she had left hidden for him and stashed his rats high in the rafters of the old single-car garage, away from prowling cats.