Gate of Faces
By Ray Aldridge
/The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1991/
JOHN THINWOLF DROVE HIS boat north, slicing the green seas into rainbowed spray. The sunlight soaked into his back; the pain blockers did their work. The last redskin was as happy as a dying man could be.
At noon the hammer-headed towers of a Forbidden City lifted over the horizon.
Under the ancient walls, he shut off the engine. A current carried him slowly along the scarred alloy flank of the City.
"What were you?" Thinwolf shouted, but the City made no reply. He thought: One of the silent ones.
He drifted. He took a shot of tissue stabilants and a flagon of fruit-flavored syrup, blood-red and thick as honey — his lunch.
He was always thirsty, and the syrup made it worse. The boat's med unit prohibited him from drinking anything else. "Injuns can't drink," he said, looking at the empty flagon. His kidneys had given out a week ago. On his thigh he wore a dialysis coupling, which sucked at him with a thousand tiny mouths, cleansing his blood. "Injuns can't do much at all anymore: can't drink, can't piss, can't sleep. Can't make long-range plans." He threw the flagon; it shattered against the City. The fragments glittered into the blue depths, falling down the black cliff of the City's hull, and Thinwolf watched them disappear with the same solemn concentration that he now gave to every event, no matter how insignificant.
After a while the current carried him around the curve of the City into the shade. He shivered and went below for a jacket.
When he came back on deck, the current was sweeping his vessel toward the City's Seagate, which was flanked by a pair of deities carved in low relief. They spread high-arched, batlike wings, and their faces seemed vaguely reptilian. Did they resemble the vanished inhabitants of the City, or were they as alien to that race as so many human gods had been to humanity?
Inside, he could see towers studded with slender projecting balconies. Landing ramps? From the lower levels, steep slides fell into the dark water. Thinwolf scratched his head. Flying amphibians? Arboreal frogs? He laughed; the day had given him something strange and wonderful. Not a waste, then....
He let the current carry him almost to the gate before he switched on the engine and backed away. Some of the empty Cities were dead, and thus safe to enter, but the bit of life remaining to Thinwolf was precious to him.
"On to the next," he said, and opened the throttle. The boat leaped away, back into the sunlight.
At twilight, Thinwolf cut the engines. Sometimes he would press on through the night, but just now he was too tired. An unpleasant thought came to him: Would he ever be less tired than he was now? Would he ever spend the night driving the boat hard through the darkness? So many endings had come; so many pleasures had slipped suddenly from him, unnoticed at first.
"No," he muttered. "I won't think that. Not before I have to. Hah!"
He took his evening injections, and another flagon of the syrup. For a while he lay on the settee in the boat's small, comfortable salon, willing himself to sleep. The effort fatigued him even more, and after an hour he gave it up and went out to the foredeck, where the canvas-shrouded figure of the hulk lay. He cast off the covering, looked down on the metal body he would soon wear.
"You're a passable redskin," he said. The face resembled Thinwolf's a little. Its cheekbones were sharper, its eyes black instead of brown. Countless tiny articulated scales formed the skin, like dark bronze dusted with glittering motes. Though frozen now, it was capable of a fleshlike suppleness. The hulk's chest was broad and deep, its hands powerful, its thick neck set into massive shoulders. Heavy tie-down straps secured it to the deck.
Thinwolf rapped his knuckles on the hulk's chest, which gave back a dense thunk. "You and me, we're going to cut a swath one day. Hah?"
He was, quite abruptly, lonely. He fumbled open the access plate in the hulk's side. He caressed the wired-down ACTIVATE switch, then pressed the TEST MODE rocker. Light came into the hulk's black eyes, and it blinked. "Good evening, John," it said. "Do you wish to tell me another story?"
"Yes, another story, if you like. Let's see. Have I told you about how Coyote left the World of Roads?"
"No. That sounds interesting, John." The hulk's voice, though deep and resonant, had a childlike diction.
But it was not a child, Thinwolf reminded himself; it was a superficial machine personality, installed to facilitate testing. Though sometimes he worried that his occasional activation of the hulk was causing an evolution in the machine's capabilities — there was no technical reason why the hulk could not develop a mature personality, given sufficient input.
He shrugged off the thought, and began....
A long time ago, in the Time before Time, Coyote was cruising the World of Roads in his fine new car. On the World of Roads, there's no place you can't get to in your car, and a lot of scenery — but no good place to stop. As fine a place as it was, a day came when Coyote became restless. His hands were tired of the steering wheel, and since he had been driving with the top down, that beautiful new-car smell had all blown away.
The Trickster was always the most easily bored of the First Folk.
By and by, Coyote turned onto a road that ran straight as a bowstring between two mighty basalt cliffs. The canyon was so deep that he could see only a thin crack at the top, through which the red sky glowed. "It’s like the line of true blood that carries my wisdom forward to those who come after," Coyote said, for he loved to talk like that. Coyote thought he was wise, but in fact, he was only clever, which is very different.
Coyote put his foot down hard. His new car leaped away down the road, which was smooth and empty. Coyote went faster and faster, until the black rock on either side blurred and grew darker yet, so that Coyote seemed to be flying through starless space. "This is like the end of time," he said," when nothing will be left in the universe but my wisdom."
Pretty soon Coyote began to think that the road was growing narrower, and in fact, it was. He looked up and saw that the cliffs were closing together, so that only an occasional red sky-gleam flickered. "That is like the last bead of blood drained from my last descendant," Coyote said. Coyote was easily frightened, like any being with too much imagination, and he saw that he was going much faster than he had intended to go. He tried to slow down, but the pedal was frozen, and the brakes were gone. If anything, the car ran faster still, and the canyon had become a tunnel.
At first, Coyote was angry — at the car, at the road, at the canyon — and he shouted and cursed and beat on the steering wheel. After a long time, he grew tired, and finally he sat silent and still, and his hands slipped from the wheel. "So I must die," he said to himself." I had not planned on this so soon. I am not wearing my best moccasins; I had barely begun to compose my death chant." And these things were true, because Coyote had expected to live forever, as does everyone.
Thinwolf paused to get his breath, which seemed to hide from him for a moment. The hulk watched him, eyes empty and waiting. Thinwolf sucked in the cool night air, composed himself, and went on....
The canyon tightened even more, so that the sides of Coyote's new car began to strike sparks from the stone. Still the car did not slow, and soon Coyote was surrounded by heat and fiery light. "This is like riding a shooting star down from the heavens; at least I will not die in darkness," he said. Coyote was not wise enough to know that all must die in darkness, that there are no glorious deaths.
But Coyote did not die. After a while the rocks took such a grip on Coyote's car that it had to stop, and so it did, grinding and screaming. At this, Coyote was encouraged. "Perhaps today is not my day to die, after all. I will just get out and walk back out the way I came," he said.