“This is where the Chalk Princess rules.”
City at the End of Timeis a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Greg Bear
Map copyright © 2008 by Casey Hampton
Impossible armillary sphere design copyright © 1984 by Greg Bear
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DELREYis a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Bear, Greg.
City at the end of time / Greg Bear.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-50713-6
1. Young adults—Fiction. 2. Time travel—Fiction. 3. Seattle (Wash.)—Fiction. I. Title. PS3552.E157C58 2008
813'.54—dc22 2008006643
www.delreybooks.com
v1.0
For Richard Curtis:
celebrating thirty years
A.
FOURTEEN ZEROS
PROLOG
Very deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?
—Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers
“It’s Time,” Alan heard himself whisper. “Time—gone out like a tide and left us stranded.”
—C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, Earth’s Last Citadel
Everything you know is wrong.
— Firesign Theater
The Kalpa
Coming to the Broken Tower was dangerous.
Alone at the outer edge of an empty room half a mile wide, surrounded by a brutality of high crystal windows, Keeper Ghentun drew in his cloak against the mordant chill. A thin pool of air bubbled at his feet, and a fine icy mist lingered along the path he had taken from the lifts. This part of the city was not used to his kind, his brand of physicality, and did not adjust willingly to his needs. Servants of the Librarian came here rarely to meet with suppliants from the lower levels. Appointments were nearly impossible to obtain. And yet, Ghentun had requested an audience and had been summoned. The high windows gave a panoramic view of what lay outside the city, over the middle lands and beyond the border of the real—the Typhon Chaos. In all the Kalpa, only the tower had windows to the outside; the rest of the city had long ago walled itself off from that awesome, awful sight. Ghentun approached the nearest window and braced for a look. Directly below, great curves like the prows of three ships seemed ready to leap into the darkness: the Kalpa’s last bions, containing all that remained of humanity. A narrow gray belt surrounded these huge edifices, and beyond that stretched a broad, uneven black ring: the middle lands. That ring and all within was protected by an outward-facing phalanx of slowly revolving spires, blurred as if sunk in silt-laden water: the Defenders, outermost of the city’s reality generators.
Outside of their protection, four craters filled with wreckage—the lost bions of the Kalpa—swept away in a wide curve to either side and back again, meeting in darkness hundreds of miles away: the city’s original ring.
Out of the Chaos, the massive orb of the Witness beamed its gray, knife-edged searchlight over the lost bions and the middle lands, blasting against the foggy Defenders, arcing high as if to grasp the tower—too painful to watch.
Ghentun averted his eyes just as the beam swept through the chamber. Sangmer, the first to lead an attempt to cross the Chaos, had once stood on this very spot, mapping the course of his journey. A few wakes later he had descended from the Broken Tower—even then called Malregard—and gone forth on his last quest with five brave companions, philosopher-adventurers all. None ever heard from again.
Malregard, indeed. Evil view.
He felt a presence behind him and turned, bowing his head. The Librarian had such a variety of servants, he did not know what to expect. This one—a small angelin, female in form—stood barely taller than Ghentun’s knee. He colored his cloak infrared, making the nearest pools of air bubble furiously and vanish. The servant also shifted spectrum, then brought up the temperature in the chamber until finally there was some pressure.
Ghentun bent to give the angelin a primordial speck of dirt, a crumbled bit of Earth’s basalt—the traditional payment for an audience. These were the old rules, never to be forgotten. The Librarian and all his servants were liable to withdraw at a whisper of rudeness into ten thousand years of silence—something the Kalpa could no longer afford.
“Why are you here, Keeper?” the angelin asked. “Has there been progress this side of the real?”
“That is for the Librarian to judge. All honor to its servants.”
The angelin silvered and froze—simply stopped, for no reason Ghentun could fathom. All the forms had been observed. Ghentun switched his cloak and plasma to slow mode so he might maintain some disciplined comfort. Clearly, this was going to take a while.
Two wakes passed.
Nothing around them changed except that out of the Chaos the Witness’s gray knife-edge beam swept three times through the chamber.
The angelin finally cleared its silvery shell and spoke. “The Librarian will receive you. An appointment will be made available in fewer than a thousand years. Pass this information to such successors as there may be.”
“I will have no successor,” Ghentun said.
The angelin’s reaction came with surprising swiftness. “The experiment is concluded?”
“No. The city.”
“We have been out of touch. Explain.”
Ghentun observed sharply, “We do not have the luxury of time. Decisions must be made soon.”
The angelin expanded and became translucent. “Soon” could be interpreted as an affront to any Eidolon, but particularly a servant of the Librarian. It was difficult to believe that such beings still lay claim to the honor of humanity—but it was so.
“Explain to me what you can,” it said, “without denying the privilege of the Librarian.”
“There are troubling results. They may be harbingers. The Kalpa is the last refuge of old reality, but our influence is too small. As the Librarian anticipated, history may be corroding.”
“The Librarian does not anticipate. All is permutation.”
“No doubt,” Ghentun said. “Nevertheless, world-lines are being severed and unnaturally rejoined. Others may have been dissolved. Whole segments of history may already be lost.”
“The Chaos has crept backward—in time?”
“Something like that is being felt by a few of the ancient breed. They are our indicators, as they were designed to be.”
Intrigued, the angelin reduced and solidified. “Canaries in a coal mine,” it said. Ghentun did not know what canaries were, and only vaguely understood the implications of a coal mine.
“Do any of the ancient breed experience unusual dreams?” the angelin asked. Ghentun drew his cloak tight. “I’ve revealed what I can, all honor to the Librarian. I need to make the rest of my report in person—directly. As instructed.”
“From Malregard, we watch your breeds crossing the border of the real—violating city law. They seem determined to lose themselves in the Chaos. None have been observed to return. Is your report an admission of failure?”
Ghentun carefully considered his position. “By nature, they are a sensitive and determined folk. I am humble before the Eidolons—I leave those observations to your kind, and seek criticism from the Librarian, if it is due—directly.”