“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.
“Ginny,” he said, and licked his lips to keep them from cracking.
Something touched his ankles—whiskers or feelers. Thinking of giant earwigs, he jerked and looked down, almost dropping the sum-runner.
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-runner, holding it over his head. The cat ran off.
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 funny; an amusement hiding a brief yearning. To men, he must appear ragged and clownish—not a threat despite his youth and good looks. To children, he must be like one of them—if they could only sing and dance and juggle hammers and rats.
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 spinning succession sky and ground and Jack’s hand, but there it was; they were gently caught and gently tossed, and then they were fed, and there was always something interesting to look at through the mesh of the cage as they groomed themselves. Rats had led worse lives.
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 Denny to Capitol Hill.
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.
Jack could be very handsome. He had made himself only slightly handsome around Ellen. Her longing was a puzzle—not motherly, not lustful—not entirely. He liked the attention. It made him feel rooted. She might remember him for weeks at a time—unlike everyone else. Still, he moved some small things around in the living room.
She had recommended the free clinic. “Even buskers need checkups,” she had said. He thought about last week’s dinner. Ellen had set the table with fine silver, crystal, and antique china, and served up salmon in berry glaze with rice and buttered fennel root. She had regarded him with a peculiar mix of longing and caution when she thought he wasn’t looking, and he’d tried to reward her approval—without being too open.
She was not a hunter—not a spy. But vigilance was essential—especially when he felt safe. As she’d asked, he brought in her mail, sorted and dumped the recyclables, then checked the moisture in her aspidistras and an indoor lemon tree by the broad front bay window. Jack lingered for a few minutes, staring through the window across the street, and noted the distance between streetlights; wondered what the view would be like at midnight, in almost complete darkness, or better yet early in the morning, with all the lights off and just a glimmer of dawn. He could almost see it—the picture swam before him, this time overlaid by something else that could not and certainly should not have been there. The houses across the street seemed made of glass, and through them he spied a plain or desert, black as obsidian, studded with huge, indistinct objects—alive in their way, but full of hatred and envy, unforgiving.
With a groan, he closed his eyes, then shook his head until the afternoon light returned—and quickly drew the drapes.