Strength of Stones (25 page)

But all that was long past. He could not avoid the fact that he was responsible, in part, for the biggest disaster in the history of organized religion. There was no one left to share the blame; generations by the score had come and gone.

He put the packet into his coat lining and took two steps away from the chair.

"Is it enough?"

He looked back over his shoulder. Matthew was watching from the other side of the chamber, sitting on a raised portion of the floor. "Not nearly enough," Kahn said.

"But it's all there. I've read your packets ... two of them, anyway."

"You found the recorder in Resurrection."

Matthew nodded. "And in Throne. They even touch on what I've done, briefly. And on what you did."

"What happened to Throne?"

"I guided it to the river plain, then dismantled it. I put it to good use."

"What sort of use?"

Matthew's face hardened and his lines seemed to deepen.

"You might as well be a ghost. I've been fighting you and what you did. You resisted every time through your city programming, your Bifrosts -- "

"What are the Bifrosts?"

"You can't guess? That's just as well. The best thing is for you to leave. I'm the one to fix what you've torn apart." He held out thin, trembling hands.

"You don't know how," Kahn said. "Have you communicated with the -- with other worlds, our people out there?" Kahn pointed up, uncertain how sophisticated Matthew really was.

"I tried once. The city fought me for months, but I finally convinced it to make a transceiver. It wasted its energy on a huge system, and I sent a signal out to the stars. Nothing came back. Nothing. We have been wrapped in our own box of dark, velvet sin. They have isolated us, and that is as it should be. Now we have the freedom to choose where we will go."

"Who's this 'we'?" Kahn asked. "You and who else?"

"I am alone now."

"Then who are you, to think you can save God-Does-Battle without help -- "

"I am Matthew, son of Reah! My mother was Moslem, raped by pagans, killed by an apostate Jew-Christian! I am more qualified than anyone to save these people, for I am all of them, born of hate and conflict and despair!" He lowered his voice. "My own mother chose to abort me rather than bring me into the world she knew. This city saved me, raised me as the new Christ." He smiled. "Which I most emphatically am not. So I've taken up where my mother left off, guided Resurrection, helped it reorder itself. And I've destroyed what you started nine centuries ago."

"The Bifrosts?"

"Yes. In Throne, in Eulalia."

"And in Thule?"

"Thule is safe enough, left alone."

Kahn held out his hands. "Listen, I'm not your enemy, and I'm no more Satan than you are Christ. If you help, we can solve our problems together."

"In the final analysis, you probably have more power than I do," Matthew said. "You can go places I can't. You don't need my help. I wouldn't give it to you if you did."

"At the very least, let me look over your transceiver. Help from outside -- "

"There is nobody out there. I destroyed the transceiver when I saw it was useless."

"Damn you, Matthew, your people may die if we don't do something!"

"Perhaps that's only fitting. Let God's will be done. Go away, ghost. Vanish. Your companion is safe in a very comfortable room. Take him with you. Leave the mimics if you wish; I may be able to use them."

Matthew stood and walked slowly toward the door, leaning on his stick. "I'm old," he said, as if answering an unasked question, "because I chose to grow old. You have no such grace in you."

When Kahn reached the door, the old man had disappeared again. "Ghost, ghost, I'm not the only ghost on this planet," he muttered.

Arthur was flying above the river plain. He saw Resurrection, and he saw beneath the ground, into tunnels radiating out from the city, going for hundreds of kilometers. The tunnels were filled...

But not with people. Not this time.

They were mimics. Thousands of them emerged from Resurrection, going out into the countryside, coming out of the ground, raising their arms to the hot, bright sun. They fanned out across New Canaan, were caught by Founders and tortured, dismantled.

Behind him he could feel the woman, the warmth from the star in her forehead. She was guiding him in his flight, guiding his dream --

He started awake at the sound of the apartment door sliding open.

"Arthur?"

"Yes, I'm here."

Kahn entered, followed by Jeshua and somebody familiar -- the red-headed figure from the dream.

"We're leaving now," Kahn said.

"Oh." Arthur struggled up from the couch and stood on wobbly legs. "Where?"

"Matthew doesn't want us here, isn't going to cooperate. But I know where the Bifrosts are."

"More than one?" Jeshua asked. Kahn nodded. "How do we get there? More walking?"

"No," Kahn said. "We have transportation."

"Oh." Arthur rubbed his eyes. "Is that the head?" he asked, looking at Thinner.

"That I was," Thinner said.

"Oh."

They stood silent for a few awkward seconds.

"I've been dreaming -- " Arthur started, but Kahn interrupted.

"We'll go to the heat shaft. There's a city transport waiting there, unless Matthew has interfered again."

Thinner was regarding Arthur fixedly, which made him uncomfortable. There was something familiar in the stare. "I'm ready," Arthur said quickly. "I'd never get used to all this." He motioned at the apartment.

In the heat shaft, a large white object like a smooth clay dove hovered, hatch open for them to enter. In basic form it resembled an airplane Arthur had seen the Founders flying, but much sleeker.

As they boarded the craft, Jeshua looked down on Kahn with an unfamiliar, almost queasy reverence. It was built in to him that he should obey the builder, even at the widest limit of his freedom; yet if it had been different, he would have obeyed anyway. He could feel the forces of regathering and redemption working within Kahn, within the _Shekhinah_ which surrounded them. He sat awkwardly in a seat barely large enough to hold him, felt supple restraint close around his chest and legs, watched the others being gently wrapped in white bands. They sat in a circle near the center of the craft, beneath a transparent portal as wide as the cabin.

Thinner closed his eyes and laid his hand on Jeshua's. Kahn took his seat at a console beneath a forward-facing blister.

The craft rose slowly, and sections of the walls around them became transparent. Their seats seemed suspended in a cage of wide, flat white bars.

Above the city, looking out across the enclave and the smaller towers, Kahn told the craft, "We are going to Eulalia."

"Where's that?" Arthur asked quietly.

"It's a city south of us," Thinner said. "Used to be inhabited by Pentecostals."

"Ever been there?" Arthur felt awkward sitting next to the mimics, without Kahn mediating.

"No," Jeshua said, smiling as if at some secret joke. "It's across the sea. Last we heard, it was surrounded by Pentecostal expolises. They were being very zealous, wouldn't allow the city to move. They built concrete barricades all around, higher than the city parts could climb."

"How long ago was that?"

"Fifty years."

"Oh." He leaned his head back and looked up at the blue sky. A cloud was floating past in the morning light. Suddenly, the cloud shifted and disappeared.

The craft accelerated above the river plain, banked, and headed south.

Kahn felt like his entire thorax was filled with expanding lead. He couldn't call the sensation dread, or fear -- it had too much of something else, directed toward Arthur and the city parts. They were such pure symbols of his failure.

Matthew watched Kahn's commandeered aircraft vanish to a pale point in the brightening sky. He sat beneath a tent looking south from a broad portico. Another aircraft waited just beyond the edge of the portico, but Matthew was in no hurry. He knew where Kahn's final destination lay. And he knew about Reah's capabilities; he had opposed her long enough, in silent warfare, not to be surprised by anything she did.

She had controlled city part repairs. At one time, she had overseen the education net for the children brought in from outside. And she had controlled the medical facilities.

He was reminded of her control with every creak and twinge of his aging body, with every failure of memory and intellect. She was dead; she was immortal, not human. And she had allowed her son to grow old. It was the only way she could guarantee eventually wresting his part of the city away from him. When he died, he would have been on her home territory ...

But now, Reah was no longer in the city mind.

She had joined the false Kahn on his journey.

He let the hot morning wind blow across his skin and shaded his eyes against the blowtorch glare of the sun, bright even through the tent fabrics.

Arthur looked down on the flat expanse of water. They had crossed over into night again, and two moons cast twin arcs of wave-textured light across the sea.

He had given up worrying. The marvels were coming so thick and fast that he simply planted an almost animal trust in Kahn.

Kahn remained in the blister beside the emergency operations console. Charts were projected into his eyes and he checked their course every few minutes, a gesture of nerves. At least he didn't grow tired. While Arthur slept and the mimics talked softly, he ordered the craft higher, until the atmosphere was as black as space and the horizon was a purple line of sunrise. When the sun appeared, he darkened the windows.

Four hours from Resurrection, they flew over land again. Up from dazzling yellow sand beaches rose sharp-spined mountains covered with thick foliage. Inland, the mountains merged into tablelands and valleys. A wide fjord cut from the sea into the tablelands, and in a natural bowl-shaped Valley adjacent to the fjord was Eulalia. Three needle-thin spires rose from the Pentecostal city, just as Kahn had seen in the record. The craft dropped steadily, improving his view.

Within its concrete barrier, Eulalia was dead. Close-up, the spires were pitted, rusted, ready to collapse. The city itself was little more than a shell. Still, he had to look to be sure. The craft descended a dilapidated heat shaft.

Many structural parts and virtually all detail parts -- walls, floors -- lay in ruins, the decay far more advanced than in Fraternity. The heat shaft broadened and they saw collapsed promenades leaning outward at crazy angles, buttresses fallen in rows like soldiers fainted in parade-ground heat. And at the very center, the city had been hollowed, burned out, by some kind of explosion.

He was satisfied that the Bifrost no longer existed in Eulalia. The destruction was so complete that he decided not to investigate any further.

He carefully maneuvered the craft back up the shaft, then slowed as something caught his eye. There were bodies scattered across a tilted and cracked promenade. He brought the craft as close to the leaning surface as he dared. "Jeshua," he said. "What are those?"

Jeshua looked out his window, which gave a better view. "Dead city parts," he said. "Mimics and others ... servants, all kinds."

"What are mimics doing in Eulalia?"

Arthur frowned. "Matthew sent them," he said finally.

"How do you know?" Kahn asked.

"I can see them leaving Resurrection, in my memory. I don't know how ... I was having dreams in the city..."

"Why would he send them?" Kahn asked, but he could guess. To destroy the Bifrost. No more than twenty-five years ago, Eulalia had been alive and whole, or so the record showed.

He flew out of the city and did a quick tour of the surrounding valley floor. The Pentecostal villages had moved or been forced to move. Their vigil over Eulalia had ended.

"We're going south," he said. Matthew had indicated Thule was still intact. Now he was curious as to why Thule had survived Matthew's crusade.

As the craft gained altitude, Kahn lapsed into that speculative frame which was the closest thing to sleep. He lost track of the hours.

Arthur became hungry and the craft fed him. The craft also took care of Jeshua's and Thinner's needs.

They flew low over desert, sometimes passing villages and clusters of nomads. Here, the season was cooler, closer to whatever winter the bright sun allowed, and the desert was at least tolerable. In the summer, it would not be. Arthur wondered where the people would go then, whether they would leave at all or just die, clinging to tradition and hope.

He looked across the cabin at the mimics. He couldn't shake the notion that there was something familiar about Thinner -- something he had seen in his dreams. Gestures, eyes. Arthur shrank back into his seat. His fear was returning. He felt his humanity acutely, going to the restroom every hour or so, while the others needed no such facilities. He felt like curling up into a ball, sleeping. In time, he did sleep again, but fitfully.

When he awoke, Kahn said they were still flying south, over the Sea of Galilee. Before God-Does-Battle had been purchased, the Sea of Galilee had been called Cold's Sea, after a geographer aboard the first colony ship. When the new owners had moved in, they had stretched Earth's Middle East and Bible lands around the planet like a sheet of rubber.

Kahn spotted icebergs floating like overlarge whitecaps far below, then stretches of pack ice beneath the clouds. God-Does-Battle's south polar region was extensively frozen over, with deep fingers of white reaching across the four continents of the southern hemisphere; but the ice was less dominant than it had been thirteen hundred years ago. The oceans were expanding. Soon -- perhaps in months -- the alluvial plain around Resurrection would be flooded.

The displays showed hundreds of kilometers of pack ice, then an edge of solid white which denoted the continent of Brisbane. Pearson's colonizers had left these names alone -- Brisbane, Asgard, Scott and Amundsen. By rights, Kahn thought, the Bifrost -- whatever it was -- should have been built on Asgard, but that continent was much farther south, buried deep under two kilometers of ice, still scarcely touched by the sun. Thule, the only arctic city, had been built on Brisbane. It must have been difficult for the original Kahn to settle on Thule, isolated as it was; obviously, he had had little choice.