City Without End (36 page)

“Was Mom awake?”

“Yes. I told her we were having problems. She figured out it was marital.”

He didn’t elaborate. He’d said Mother
figured it out
because they
were
having problems. Of course they were, even if they’d never discussed it.

Caitlin brushed past that topic, dwarfed as it was by events.

“I have some things to tell you that I’m not proud of. But the worst things aren’t personal. They’re . . .” her voice trembled. “Rob, they’re something so bad.” She couldn’t see him in the absolute dark. Maybe that was best for what was coming. “I’m scared to death.”

He put an arm around her. “I know. Just start talking, hon, let some words out.”

“It’s about Titus. It’s about Lamar. And the kids.”

“Whole family, then,” he said with a smile in his voice, treating her like a panicked child.

She stopped, thinking that this was the last moment of peace Rob would know. She gripped his hand in a wordless apology. Closing her eyes, Caitlin tried to find a thread to pull on, somewhere to begin.

“Lamar changed Mateo’s standard test so that he’s shown as having advanced capabilities. As savvy.”

Rob whistled.

Oh, baby, you think
that’s
bad.

“He also changed mine.”

Their voices took on a chamber resonance in the great space of the converted warehouse. She lowered hers to a whisper, and told him, then, of Lamar’s offer to get them in on something, and that she grew suspicious and drove, not to visit her friend in Goldendale across the river, but all the way to Hanford.

Rob’s arm came off her shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was ashamed of something.” She wasn’t going to soften this. It would be so easy to make this part obscure, and she by God wasn’t going to because Rob deserved the truth. They’d been married a long time, and she’d been treating him like shit for years. No, not like shit, maybe like something worse. Like a clueless, pleasant roommate.

Maybe it didn’t matter any more.

“Lamar didn’t change your scores.”

“I don’t need . . .”

“No, don’t ask questions yet. I need to tell you the whole thing. Lamar is planning a crossover to the place Titus went. For a bunch of savvies. Some of them are his friends. Like me and the kids. But not you.”

A much larger silence hulked.

“Lamar has a staging ground up at the old Hanford nuclear reservation where people are starting to congregate. I saw it. It’s innocuous looking. Just a bunch of modular dwelling units, a makeshift school—surrounded by the decommissioned plants. They’re getting ready for a mass crossing to the place Titus went. Lamar said it’s like a pocket universe, but enough like our own that they can make a human colony. Lamar is trying to say that Titus is ready for an advance team of scientists and their families to join him. And he’s letting me and the kids go out of some kind of pity. He’s excluding you. Because he assumes that I want to be with Titus.” She paused, letting that statement sink in.

“And do you?”

Well, that was a nice, controlled reaction. “No. No, but that doesn’t mean I’m not guilty, Rob. I’m not saying I’ve been . . . a good wife.”

“You’ve been.” But his voice was tentative.

Now was the time for the thing she’d been trying to say since she’d walked into the warehouse. “I’ve been in love with Titus for a long time.”

They sat side by side staring into the darkness, trying to see something, anything that would save them.

“I’ve fought it and reveled in it. I’ve pushed it away and wished to act on it. I would apologize if it wasn’t so pathetic and self-serving. I just fell in love with him. I just, at times . . . it crept up, and I—”

“Don’t, Caitlin. Just stop explaining. I know this.”

“You know?”

A fringe of bitterness attached to his words: “I may not be Titus, but I notice
some
things.”

Jesus. He knew. And all this time he forbore to say anything. It sounded miserable, even to her, but she said, “You didn’t care?”

“I cared. You weren’t sleeping with him?”

“No.”

“He didn’t ask you to?”

“No.”

From the sound of it, she thought he put his head in his hands. Anger flared as she realized that it was more important to him to have his brother’s loyalty than his wife’s. She could have told him, but she didn’t feel like it, that Titus wouldn’t have been with her even if something happened to Rob, because he wouldn’t
be in line
, as he’d said. So not only did she not have Titus, but she could never have had him. The whole thing was so fraught with layers of abstraction and longing that she couldn’t decide, at this moment, how to feel. Goddamn Rob for accepting things, and goddamn Titus, too, for saying no. She was not thinking clearly, but what was new about that, after years of pretending, pretending that her marriage wasn’t cracked down the middle?

“Caitlin,” Rob began.

She turned on him, frazzled and desperate. “Is it just that we didn’t have sex? Is that all that matters? Is it all just a game of who shags whom?”

“That’s a lot of it.” He didn’t back down. “It matters to me.”

How was she planning to make this Rob’s fault? That he didn’t love her enough to care who she loved? She stood up, pacing, bumping into a desk and painfully crunching her shin. “Shit, oh shit.”

Rob found her in the dark. “Look. Caitlin. I don’t blame you, and I’m not looking for an apology. There’s just one thing I want right now, and that’s you.”

He said it so artlessly and without rancor that it caught her breath. She wanted to move toward him, but that was too easy, to receive absolution and then move on to the end of the world. But the thing was, she was relieved by his words. A drift of comfort settled down from above, like a blessing. “Oh Rob, I don’t deserve this.”

“I don’t care about who’s right, Caitlin. Can’t you just listen to me? I want us to be good with each other again. I want you back.” He put a tentative hand on her arm, or tried to, but touched her breast instead. He moved to her shoulder. “I’m not Titus, but can you love me?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m so fucked up. Please let me try. Can you do that, can you let me try?”

They managed to touch hands.

“And Caitlin?” He gripped her hand. “Why are we discussing all this in the dark?”

“Because Lamar is trying to kill me.”

“I thought you said he was trying to help you.”

“He was. But I went to Hanford. He’ll find out. He or one of those people is going to start worrying about me, especially after we hack his computer.”

“Hack his computer?”

“We have to get some evidence for what they’re doing. No one is going to believe me, and we might not have any time to wait for people to investigate.

They’re hiding everything inside an old reactor. That’s where the transition platform is. If we can prove there’s something strange in there, it would blow their cover story of a nuclear cleanup. So we need to raid Lamar’s files.”

She was tired, and rambling, and she hadn’t yet told Rob about the hurricane of fire, and how the dreds weren’t going to dilute the good stock anymore.

“I think we need to sit down for this,” she began.

Just before dawn, they left the warehouse. It was still dark, so she still hadn’t seen Rob’s face, not clearly. It was surprising how much you could tell just by voice. He was sober, focused, and a little stunned. Still, he was working the problem. He was probably dealing with all this so well because he hoped she was wrong. And when he found out the opposite, he would feel exactly what she did: Quiet, sick panic.

They said their goodbyes and went to their separate cars: Rob to get the kids and Mother, finding a hiding place for them, and Caitlin to ferret out someone who was good enough to get past Lamar’s computer security.

She settled into the driver’s seat. If she couldn’t find someone for the job, she’d return to the office and put her mSap on it. It would mean losing eleven million dollars’ worth of quantum programming. She wasn’t a sapient engineer, but she could handle savant programming, and she could jury-rig an mSap. It might leave a quantum mess behind, but it could be done.

Rob started the car, then shut it off again and got out, coming over to her. She rolled down her window.

“I love you,” he said. By the streetlight, she caught him putting a finger to his lips.

She wasn’t to answer, and she didn’t.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

All alone, he hides in sleep,
Missing home, he cannot keep.
Watching o’er his eyes so blind
He flees to dreams his Heart to find.

—
Lord Ghinamid Watching O’er
, a child’s verse

D
ESPITE HIS RESOLVE NOT TO BE IMPRESSED BY THE ASCENDANCY
, Tai stared at the great plaza before him, with its canals, artful bridges, and occasional towers of mysterious purpose. A Jout passed him, walking briskly on her business, smirking at the expression that must have marked Tai as a newcomer.

The Ascendancy was not so grand. It was a circular city resting upon the under-warrens of the Magisterium. Its grand plazas bore a few immense and narrow towers rising to nearly the bright itself. But there were not many of these. In the near distance, a hill upon which the lords’ habitations clustered, those of the Five dwarfing the manses of the lesser lords. Behind Tai, the cutaway sector where the levels of the Magisterium were exposed to the sky.

So. Now he had taken in everything in one round glance. For all his adult years he had dismissed the lords and their works; he had lived by the Sea, he had gazed up at the Ascendancy. It was not so very grand, or if it was, one should not revere such hollow things.

But who was he trying to fool? The Bright City staggered him. The plaza before him could have contained the whole of the Rim undercity. The looming towers, topped with curved roofs, were the more wonderful in that they were said to have no purpose. Crisscrossing the plaza were the twisting canals of the city, crossed by graceful arching bridges. Petitioners of the many sways conversed in knots along the canals and pursued their mysterious errands. Above him the sky buckled in deep folds of lavender-gray in this, the second hour of Early Day. So close to the bright’s essence, one felt oneself in the very doorway of heaven. Add to all this, the city floated high above the land, providing views out to the nearest storm walls, looking from edge-on like the dark legs of the Miserable God.

A shadow passed over him; it was a small flying creature. He had never seen birds fly, though he’d seen them run in the veldt. Momentarily he was disappointed. He thought the shadow might have come from a brightship.

Not that he would gape at such a machine. But he would not pass up the chance to see one at close range.

He still had not moved more than a few steps from the receiving docket of the pillar. It had been staggering enough to ride up and see the Arm of Heaven laid before him, in its vast length, but somehow the city gripped him more fiercely.

However, Tai would not begin his mission here by cowering before towers and bridges. He reminded himself that this city was the home of those who were afraid to live, who walked into their bodies and left them as easily.

This city was created by those who refused converse with the Rose. Who, if rumors were true, had just destroyed the ancient minorals of the Arm of Heaven. The lords were both ruthless and petty, destroying while at the same time promising life of one hundred thousand days, and in so doing, draining value from hours grown too long and too numerous.

As terrible a loss as the minorals were, Tai felt a personal grievance as well. If the to-and-from-veils were gone, Tai could not go to the Rose. Hel Ese, too, was worried about the fate of the veils. Although she had not yet confided in him, he believed she was hewing the pathway for her Rose compatriots to come here. With all her powers, perhaps she would find a way.

Blinking at the glare from the canals, he took several calming breaths.

He’d come to place a weapon here, and, though he hoped it would never be used, he was determined to do it.