Hobi edged after him, hugging his arms to his shoulders. He heard loose stones or dirt rattle under his feet and then fall away, the sound abruptly silenced.
“Oh, god,” Hobi muttered; but then Nasrani was gripping his arm and pulling him gently forward, until he felt more solid footing. He fell forward, his hands smacking against a wall as he gasped in relief.
“What does it mean?”
The exile’s voice came very close to Hobi’s face. The boy started, still trying to catch his breath. Something clinked; the lumiere cast its feeble light upon a handful of keys. Nasrani picked out one and held it up to the light. He said, “It means there is a fissure here that was not here yesterday.”
“What?” Hobi shook his head. “A fissure, what do you mean, a fissure?”
“A fissure. A hole, a rift. A break in the earth. Now.”
He raised the lumiere so Hobi could see that they stood in a recessed doorway. The brick walls gleamed damply. Tendrils hung from the corners of the ceiling. When Hobi touched them they felt wet and pulpy, and his fingers smelled of rotting fish.
“I don’t understand,” the boy said uneasily, wiping his hand on his trousers.
“It used to happen Outside.” Nasrani rattled a doorknob. “Earthquakes. The ground would open up. Not here—I mean not in this part of the continent. I don’t understand it, there shouldn’t be any threat of earthquakes here. A gap like that could breach the integrity of the whole foundation….”
Breach. Hobi went cold.
His father. The Architects. A breach in the fundus of Angels.
“…have to ask your father if he knows anything about this. Watch that fungus there.” Hobi jumped as the exile poked him. There was a loud click. “Ah, here we are—”
A gust of musty air rushed out to choke them. “Come now.” Nasrani coughed, pulling at Hobi’s sleeve. Behind them the door slid shut with a sucking noise. They stood in total darkness, except for the lumiere’s tiny glow.
“Wait here,” commanded Nasrani.
“What—” Hobi stammered, but the exile had already crossed the room. From the darkness came a faint ticking, a soft hum as of machinery. Hobi’s heart throbbed painfully. He thought he might faint.
From across the emptiness came a flltt! A candle flared into life, so bright and sudden that he gasped. Then another, and another, until the room was ringed with light. Hobi raised his arm, shielding his eyes. Across the walls Nasrani’s goblin shadow leaped and crouched. Hobi stepped forward, amazed.
“What is this place?” he whispered.
All around the circumference of the room were cabinets. Small ones that barely came to Hobi’s knees. Tall ones that towered above him. Cases that covered an entire wall, and some so small they must have been designed for ornamental value alone. In front of a metal cabinet stood the exile, the split tails of his greatcoat curling behind him like wings. In his hand flickered a candelabrum, so encrusted with yellow wax it resembled some bizarre plant. He raised it, pointing to where a long banner draped the wall.
“Witness the wonders of the ancients,” Nasrani said dryly.
Hobi walked until he stood beneath the banner. Across it spilled crude, luridly painted letters:
DOCTOR MONDO’S AMAZING CYCLORAMA!
Hobi glanced at Nasrani, then at the banner again. Ragged and charred at the edges, its colors had faded—blue to a pale shade that was almost white; red to a bloody smear; green to a pallor that reminded Hobi of the strings of moldy stuff hanging from the door outside. The corners of the banner had frayed and then been painstakingly repaired with heavy black thread that tore through the fragile cloth like a razor. It looked to be several hundred years old.
SEE! THE TITANIUM CHILDREN!
MAXIMILLIAN UR: THE BANE OF SHEIKS!
THE ANODYNE PHYSICIAN: HER SIGHT ALONE WILL HEAL YOU!
MOGHREBI: PRINCESS OF THE SANDS!
WISE APULIEUS: WILL HE MAKE AN ASS OUTOF YOU?
NEFERTITY: THE BEAUTIFUL ONE IS HERE!
Beneath the names was a badly drawn picture of a woman’s head. She stared straight out at Hobi with large tilted eyes, a cool gaze that was all the more unsettling for the crudeness of its execution. Hobi stared back at her, then crossed the room to join Nasrani where he stood in front of a tall steel cabinet.
It held a woman; at least he thought it was a woman. She stood behind the glass, regally tall, skin black as oil, eyes closed and mouth in a tight grimacing smile. Looking at her Hobi felt distinctly queasy. He was certain she was dead.
“She is only sleeping,” whispered Nasrani, as though he read his thoughts. The boy jumped. Nasrani held up his candelabrum so that its wavering light cascaded across the glass in ripples of black and yellow. “Second Ascension. Very rare.” He scraped a bit of wax from the case, shaking his head. “Be careful around her. She is very sensitive to noise and light.”
Hobi gaped. “She’s alive? Who is she?”
Nasrani made a small pfff of disdain. “Alive? Of course she’s alive. I told you, she is sleeping. They are all sleeping.”
He swept his arm in an arc, waves of light trailing the candelabrum and bouncing from the other cases. He gestured at each one as he intoned their names.
“Moghrebi, the Blackamoor Princess. The Skeptic Apulieus. Maximillian Ur, the Bladed Nemesis. The Titanium Children, Jackie and Jane. And Nefertity: The Beautiful One Is Here.”
Hobi looked around the room nervously. “She is?”
Nasrani tilted his head, annoyed. “Her name. That’s her name. Nefertity: The Beautiful One Is Here.” He gestured impatiently toward a case at the far end of the room, then said, “I found them when I was—exploring—down here, many years ago. There was a tunnel, the remains of a sewage system.
“It led—well, never mind where it led. I followed it, and eventually I found them, just sprawled everywhere, totally neglected. No sign that humans or Architects had been there in ages. Nothing but abandoned buildings, rusting machinery— such machines, Hobi! Giant wheels, immersible booths, elevated transways—they were rotting amid the ruins of a funfair ! Obviously the idiots who had found them had no idea what they were—they must have discovered some forgotten cache of an earlier Ascension and thought they had god’s own amusement arcade.” Patting the outside of the metal cabinet he added, “Moghrebi here was designed as an intelligence unit for the Thirty Wars in the East. But they were using her for”—he spat the words—“fortune-telling!”
Within her glass case Moghrebi remained motionless. Hobi stared at her, trying to focus despite the flickering light and shadows, trying to see if she was breathing. After a full minute he was certain she was not.
“She’s a replicant,” he said at last.
Nasrani looked at him as though he were mad. “Android,” he snapped. He turned and stalked across the room. Hobi trailed after him, chagrined.
When he reached the far wall, Nasrani put down his candelabrum and crouched to inspect a tiny cabinet. Hobi heard a soft click; then a figure no bigger than his hand somersaulted out, to straighten and stand at Nasrani’s feet.
“Toys,” said the exile. He extended a finger to touch the tiny figure’s head. It was a woman, a green woman. Antennae like filaments of glass sprouted from above her eyes, quivering. “That fraud Planck should see these. He’d be ashamed to peddle those pathetic cretins of his—” He snapped his fingers and the tiny woman vaulted back into her case.
There were others, many others. Hobi lost count after Maximillian Ur with his clashing knives and the Anodyne Physician, the Mechanical Baboon and her dog-faced brood who danced when Nasrani raised his arm and commanded them. A retrofitted scholiast with an eyeless face and hands like a young boy’s, groping and eager as they reached to stroke Hobi’s cheek. Wise Apulieus, looking surprisingly modern in his white jacket and simple gold jewelry. The Titanium Children, Jackie and Jane, their azurine eyes regarding him with detachment as they danced a silent tango across the darkened room. Moghrebi, intoning dire prophecies as she went through the motions of reading a small paper volume. Nasrani woke them all, going from case to case and opening the glass doors to release them into the flickering shadows of the great chamber, until the place was full of them: laughing, chattering, dancing, singing, silent androids and robots, tiny monads and automatons and replicants. Humanoid and animal, children of metal and monkeys spun of glass, they bowed to Nasrani and greeted him by name, then turned gracefully to his guest.