City Without End (50 page)
Authors: Kay Kenyon
“It all vanishes. It’s why life is so sweet, Chiron. Sustain the Entire as long as you can, and then let it go. At the end, go back to the Heart.”
“And you will come?”
He considered this only for a heartbeat. “No. But you’ll tire of me by then.”
“Perhaps we have tired of you already.” Dropping her hand from his face she backed away. The bars flashed into place.
She left him alone. He tried not to think about what he had just set in motion. But the vision came, of a life with Chiron/Demat. From what he knew of the Tarig now, how could he even treat them as real beings? The definition of life was malleable, he had learned in the Entire. But when he thought how they sometimes went blank and insensible, he thought they were only semi-alive. They turned off in some way when they were bored. To stay involved with the world they needed the stimulation of other sentients.
For that task, other Tarig would not do. Other sentients were their favorite sparring partners. Quinn wished that, in his past life with Chiron, he had not been quite so interesting.
Pranam the Ysli steward performed his circumambulation of the bier every day. It was considered odd, but Pranam took great comfort from the ritual and cared little for others’ opinions. He walked up from the sunken garden of the Magisterium, as he had so many ebbs before, pausing at the pool of the carp, then made his way to the great hall of the Sleeping Lord.
Pranam had been in service to the Magisterium for seven thousand days. He found happiness in small accomplishments and in devotion to the lords. His piety waxed all the stronger these last few days as he’d watched with dismay the lords’ very home suffering indignities. No doubt it was all due to the traitor Titus Quinn. Pranam remembered the darkling when he had lived among them. He had been seen everywhere on the plaza, sometimes feeding carp, or staring at the bright, and other times in the company of the great lady, Chiron, or some other high figure. Now the miscreant was back again, said to have defaced the tower, among many previous crimes. Pranam and many of his friends expected a public execution. Though the Ysli had never witnessed a garroting, and did not look forward to it, he would be there when justice was finally done.
Entering the hall of the Sleeping Lord, Pranam climbed the back stairs to the gallery surrounding the hall on the second floor. In the center of the spacious room below was the bier itself, the only furnishing of the great mausoleum. Properly speaking, it was not a bier. It was the very bed of Lord Ghinamid, the lord who missed his home in the Heart so dearly, but stayed in the Entire for love of the land over which he reigned with such graciousness. Even if he was asleep. It was a fabulous mystery, and a comfort to those who toiled in the Magisterium and seldom left the Great Within even to visit loved ones.
Lord Ghinamid had lain there for two million days. The mystery and miracle was that the lord still breathed.
Pranam walked beside the railing, the only sentient in the hall that ebb.
It was often thus, and his excursion was more peaceful for the solitude.
Continuing his circumambulation, Pranam glanced down on the hall below. And stopped. Moving closer to the rail, he peered down.
Pranam’s peace vanished. How could this be?
He heard a cry issue from his lips. Then he rushed back to the stairs, pounding down them and hurrying to the center of the galleried hall.
His heart kicked heavily in his chest as he looked at the bier. The stony coverlet that had draped over the lord’s lower body lay crumpled on the end of the bier. The lord’s pillow lay askew.
Lord Ghinamid was, unthinkably, gone.
C
AITLIN SPED TOWARD HER MEETING WITH STEFAN POLICH
, passing the meshed cars in the other lanes. The list of two thousand in her hand, she finally had evidence, weak as it might be, to show him. He’d agreed to meet her. It was only two o’clock, and he couldn’t meet her until five, the bastard, but better to wait for him downtown than risk being late, especially in this rain.
The list was no proof, but in Caitlin’s mind, it was the last, damning clue. The evidence that had begun with Jess’s words:
It’s our chance to get it
right this time. Without the dreds pulling us down, diluting the good stock. I hate
what’s coming. We all hate it. It’s our home. Gone, just like that.
On her way to meeting Stefan, she ran over in her mind the way she’d approach the bizarre topic of what Lamar was up to at Hanford. For starters, she’d show him the list. Maybe he wouldn’t believe her. That’s why Rob would take a copy to Minerva’s competitors: EoSap and TidalSphere. But it was Stefan Polich on whom her hopes rested. There were Minerva names on that list. Plus, he and Caitlin knew each other. She was the sister of the man he depended upon for benefits from the Entire. Stefan would have to listen to her.
Oh Titus, she thought. Come home, my dear. Now, more than ever, you must come home.
As she drove, her thoughts for some reason went to Johanna. The woman’s ghost seemed to touch her for a moment. Oh, Johanna, to have died so young. And Titus loved you so. What was that like, to have had such a man? In the end, was the marriage like most—comfortable and plain?
No, Caitlin decided. It was good, it was very good.
She thought that Johanna was very near to her, and why that should be, was both strange and comforting.
I envied you, Johanna, but it didn’t stop me from liking you. I hoped you were
alive, but I feared it wasn’t so. You know that, don’t you?
Yes.
I can’t help but love him.
Yes. It’s what we can’t have that we always want.
Lamar drove through the light rain, feeling half dead, unsure that after today, he could stand himself. It didn’t help to think that she was going to die anyway. He wouldn’t think about it. It had to be done; if he didn’t do it, Alex Nourse would step in.
Coming up the on-ramp, he put his hand on the small box next to him on the seat. Don’t think about it. Oh, Caitlin.
At least they hadn’t asked him to kill the children. They were sequestered somewhere. Until the end came. Oh, Caitlin, like a daughter to me.
He found the blip on I-5. To his dismay, he found that by kicking up his speed to 75, he was gaining on her. What was he doing? Lamar, you evil son-of-a-bitch. What was he involved with, anyway, that he should be sent onto this freeway to . . .
Don’t think about it. It’s all dying, it’ll make no difference. But somehow, it did matter, and it was breaking his heart. He urged her to pull off, abandon the car, take a cab. Run, Caitlin.
The mapping on his dashCom showed the blip, the target, practically next to him. She must be close enough to see. He felt relief that he didn’t.
But then, in the next lane, he did see the blue Mercedes.
God in heaven. He slacked off, letting some distance come between them, so that when the explosion happened, he would be well clear. No, that didn’t make sense. He’d be driving into mayhem. He needed to pass her.
Speeding up, he sped past her car, gripping the wheel like death, driving with one hand, putting his free hand on the box, looking in the rearview mirror. Just enough room.
He pushed the button. And sped away, hearing the explosion like a brief, ugly cough, like the preview of the detonation to come. Smoke billowed behind; cars skidded, rammed into each other.
Pieces of her car floated on fire and smoke, spiraling away, adding brilliance to the rain-soaked day.
N
ED ISLINGTON WAS USED TO BIG NUMBERS
. As an astronomer, he dealt with them all the time, thinking nothing of distances measured in the megaparsecs, for example. Conversely, specializing in black holes, he dealt with very small numbers, such as those needed to describe the amplitude of black hole–generated gravitational waves originating far away. Such detections were the specialty of the Super Massive Gravitational Telescope, the SMGT, near Sudbury, Canada.
Therefore, on this Saturday morning at the beginning of his shift at SMGT, he was staggered by the size and frequency of the incoming wave. The amplitude was too big, the frequency too high, to be ascribed to any astrophysical phenomenon. The detectors were designed to pick up extraordinarily small effects, since the amplitude of a wave fell off as the inverse of the distance from the source. This reading almost kicked the detectors off their hinges.
Add to that, the source of the wave was no longer producing it. The wave was gone. Preserved in the passing, but whatever was out there had ceased to radiate. Even while it was coming in, it registered no sidereal motion whatsoever, suggesting that whatever its source, it was fixed in relation to the motion of the stars.
They’d never seen an anomaly like this one before at SMGT, ensconced as it was in the midst of the Canadian Shield, one of the least geologically active landforms on Earth, one of the least likely places to perturb the quantum interference devices.