The intrusions had broken through to all levels of the Kalpa. Many of the tracks and channels had been sliced away, whipping around to snap and cut across other tracks, shedding their miles-wide neighborhoods—now tangled, blocked, and studded with embedded, flickering debris.
“I don’t understand” was all Jebrassy managed as they descended below the Eidolon urbs and approached the ruins of the crèche.
“Welcome to all our lost worlds, high and low, young breed,” Ghentun murmured. “I’m more at home down here.”
They walked through the Shaper’s domain, now a shambles—barriers broken, machines collapsed in blackened piles of molten slag, but fortunately, no evidence remained of the lost young themselves. The many-armed Shaper had made an attempt at cleaning up after the most devastating intrusions. Clearly, however, there was no longer a crèche, and the umbers would never again deliver young breeds to the Tiers to be raised in the old way.
They stood silent before the Shaper, who gave Jebrassy a brief caress with one long, warm finger. The breed drew back in shock and embarrassment. But he could feel new knowledge filling his insides like a rich and energizing meal. It spread a cool, speedy lubrication throughout his being. He liked that sensation—but he did not enjoy the following awareness of how badly wrong things had gone, nor how ignorant he had been of the foundations of his existence.
He felt small, but not diminished. So much to tell Tiadba when they finally met again. Of that eventuality he was absolutely convinced, despite the gloomy presence of the Tall One—which puzzled him. He
would almost have rather made the attempt alone.
Could a breed and a Tall One—a Mender—ever act like equals? Jebrassy felt up to the task. But he wasn’t so sure the Keeper could actually keep up once they were in the Chaos. Ghentun issued his final instructions to the Shaper—using words Jebrassy could not understand, though he suspected they were not so much elevated or inaccessible as simply specialized.
“The last generation,” Ghentun said as they departed the crèche. “It saddens. But it’s long since time this was done with.”
“Why?” Jebrassy asked. “Weren’t the breeds worthy of being made?”
Ghentun looked down with puzzled respect. Perhaps the Librarian had been liberal with his information, or at least his allowance of sophistication. Either that or they had all underestimated the facility of their smaller charges—in much the same way Eidolons dismissed the abilities of Menders. The worst part of this start to their journey came when they passed through the Tiers. The Keeper had given Jebrassy his gift of invisibility.
A few breeds had survived. They wandered among the smoky ruins, dismayed at the destruction of their blocs and their meadows, yet still trying to put their lives back in order—but clearly that would no longer be possible.
While Jebrassy could hardly have understood the destruction wrought upon the upper levels, this hit him hard. This threw a dark pall over his sense of challenge and adventure. There would be no coming home—that had been clear to him from the beginning. But now, very likely, there would be no home to come back to.
“I feel sad,” he told Ghentun as they descended to the flood channels by way of a hidden lift. “How can sadness make you free?”
The hike along the black-streaked channels past the outer ends of the three isles—in the final, flickering glow of the partially collapsed ceil—seemed to take no time at all. But the long walk to the camp where the marchers had once been trained and equipped gave Jebrassy too much time to think, and his confidence plunged, until they came upon the huts, the tents, the scattered footsteps in the sand and dust. He crouched. Someone had knelt and then sat in the fine sand. He bent to sniff. “She was here,” he said.
“No doubt,” Ghentun said.
“How far?”
“We’ve come thirty miles. We have forty more to go before we pass between the inner generators, then exit the Kalpa into the middle lands. This is the last time we’ll actually know how far we are from anything. The last time distance makes any sense.”
Jebrassy understood. “What will happen if the Kalpa falls—will travel be meaningless everywhere?
What will happen if we can’t measure—”
“Best not to worry about those problems yet,” Ghentun said. “Just grieve for your dead and enjoy their memories.” He knelt beside the young breed, sad and proud at once. Like a father,he told himself. After a while he escorted Jebrassy to the silver dome and introduced him to the last three suits of armor. There was no longer a Pahtun to train them, but they managed.
Jebrassy chose a blue suit and put it on with only a little assistance. He seemed to be a natural. When Ghentun commented on this, the breed shrugged. “I don’t remember it until it happens…don’t really remember it at all. But maybe my body does. Or…maybe the Librarian is still reading me my story, but skipping ahead.”
That comment unsettled Ghentun. Who would be the leader, and who the led? Distances had changed in more ways than one.
Ghentun tried on one of the trainer’s outfits. It seemed to adapt well enough to his bulkier frame. He left the gloves unsealed for the time being.
“Someone’s coming,” Jebrassy said, and pointed across the channel. Ghentun saw a small, pale figure glowing against the black smear that had cut through the sands and marred the channel floor. The figure moved with an awkward, erratic lope.
“It’s not a breed,” Jebrassy said, beginning to feel alarm. “And it’s not big enough to be a Tall One.”
Ghentun extended his vision as far as a Mender’s ability allowed. The figure was an epitome, part of a Great Eidolon.
They stood their ground and waited.
“I know that one,” Jebrassy said as it drew near. “I recognize the face.”
“It showed a face?” Ghentun asked, astonished.
The figure moved swiftly enough, despite its odd gait.
“I’ve gone through a dreadful ordeal,” the epitome called, and joined them on the sandy floor of the channel. “Made myself primordial. Still not entirely knitted, I think.” It held up a small, pale hand and turned it this way and that, inspecting its fingers as if for the first time. “Limitations have their limitations, that’s becoming more obvious,” it said, then glanced with envy at Ghentun’s flower finger. “Is that actually useful? It looks useful.”
Ghentun grimaced at the memory of his own return to primordial mass—then clenched his hand in embarrassment. Flower fingers were seldom referred to openly in polite company.
“I’ll be annealed in a few hours,” the epitome said. “Out there…I’ll be able to survive for a time. But I’ll need some sort of protection, just like you. How marvelous.”
“How should we address you, Eidolon?” Ghentun asked, confusion bringing out a perverse courtesy. The old forms were definitely being shattered. No Great Eidolon had ever gone primordial, to his knowledge. It seemed an affront—both a sacrilege and an imposition on the privileges of the low.
“Please call me Polybiblios,” the epitome said. “I shall be a male—by tradition—and so I shall be known as ‘him’ and not the more appropriate ‘it.’ Though real sexuality seems lost to us all—with the possible exception of our young breed, here.”
Now it was Jebrassy’s turn to be embarrassed.
“In a way, I am probably the best part of the Librarian—or at least I will suffer that delusion until I am proved wrong. May I join you, young marchers? I promise to be humble, in my way. And possibly even useful—like that wonderful finger.”
Ghentun sealed his gloves and put his hands behind his back.
The epitome sat in the sand and with an expression of delight, lifted a handful of the gray grit, then let it fall through soft fingers to the channel floor.
Jebrassy had grown strangely fond of the fragment of the Librarian that had offered companionship and teaching in the tower. But seeing him solidly incarnate, similar in size, and out here…very confusing.