“Perhaps,” Bidewell said. “How much longer we can extend hospitality…not to be known.”
“Same old Bidewell!” Glaucous enthused, and clapped his hands. “We are grateful, sir. Many tales, a sharing of jinks and capers over all the sad, lost centuries! Jolly times, such as they must be.”
“You know him?” Jack asked Bidewell, angry and suspicious.
“I do,” Bidewell said. He gathered up what spit he could and expelled it in a thin stream. Glaucous’s eyes sunk inward like a shark’s. His lips pressed together and his cheeks grew red beneath the grit. “Sir,” he murmured.
“Open the gate,” Bidewell ordered. “We have no choice. The stones have gathered, bringing whom they will.”
FOURTEEN ZEROS
CHAPTER 65
The Broken Tower
The warm darkness around Jebrassy cleared in one direction, revealing a bright pathway edged in green. Down this walked a white figure—one of the Librarian’s many epitomes, faceless but no longer frightening. The epitome waited patiently as Jebrassy dressed, then spoke in that familiar, elusive voice—the voice you’ve known forever yet can’t quite remember.
“We are going to the top,” the epitome said. “You are recovered and almost ready.”
“Has she left?” Jebrassy asked, dressing more quickly. “Has the march begun?”
The epitome gestured for Jebrassy to follow, and guided him back through places both dark and empty, bright and filled—all attended by many more white figures.
Jebrassy had difficulty comprehending the architecture of the tower. When he looked up, he saw a roof of sorts, but he could make the roof seem to rise higher, or lower, depending on how closely he walked the edge of the path and how he moved his eyes. Were those supporting arches high above, or free-floating shapes of no apparent use—perhaps decorations?
Or was he experiencing a different kind of dream?
The epitome preceded him for what felt like several thousand yards—a welcome hike after his fitful, fact-filled slumber.
They approached a curved wall, high and lined with tall windows—much like the wall near which he had first met the angelin. Now the epitome assumed a face—the face Jebrassy from now on would identify as the Librarian, however incomplete that equation might be. The Librarian seemed to exist all around—spread everywhere throughout the tower, distributed among all the white figures, directing the angelins and probably others he had yet to meet. Were the white figures like remote arms and legs—and the angelins more like servants? So much yet to learn, and frustration that he was stillincapable of even asking the right questions.
The Librarian spoke, using the same voice as before, but rooted—somehow more real and immediate.
“You’ve been patient, a quality I admire.”
“Easy enough. I sleep most of the time.”
“You have recovered admirably,” the Librarian said. “So much to heal. I once did myself an enormous injury, then slept, just to give myself the time to work out a problem never before solved.”
“What problem was that?” Jebrassy asked, sure the answer would make no sense.
“How the universe will die, and what opportunities that death will present. I did not live in the Kalpa at the time, but far across the universe, where I was learning from other masters, not human but natural enough, though doomed…They refused transport back to the Earth. The Chaos ate them. And that’s why we’re here, young breed. Come closer and take a look at what lies outside our poor city.”
Jebrassy drew himself up. All he had seen of the Chaos so far was the strange gray beam that flashed through the high windows.
She might be out there already…
They stood beside each other, much of a height, just able to peer over the lower frame of the window.
“It’s frightening, but it won’t harm you—not here,” the Librarian said. “It’s changed over the last few wakes—more fundamental change than any of us have witnessed since it surrounded the Kalpa.”
There was a horizon of sorts—like the far line of the channel beyond the Tiers. But where the ceil would have faded off into shadow, something else rose up—a sky.The sky made no sense—a tight-scrunched bundle of fabric, its wrinkles burning with a dim, purple fire, dwindling here and there but starting up elsewhere like dying embers.
“It doesn’t like being looked at,” Jebrassy said.
“A fundamental truth. The Chaos is not fond of observers.”
Below the horizon and the wrinkled, burning sky, if he focused hard enough, Jebrassy could make out jumbles of shapes, what might have been faraway, broken buildings, old cities, or perhaps just piles of stone and rubble. He had no scale for comparison—how big, how high, how many were these things, spread out so strangely? How far to the line between “sky” and “ground”? His eyes couldn’t seem to focus—details presented themselves then flashed away, elusive as motes of dust. The Librarian held his shoulder. “This is what your female will soon be seeing.”
“Then she hasn’t left yet?”
“And you will join her. But first we must learn whether we have solved a great problem. Against this problem, I am, and always have been, as humble and troubled as one of your beasts of burden down in the basement Tiers.”
Jebrassy said, “You don’t know how stupid pedes can be.”
The Librarian touched his finger to his nose. “In my world, I can be justthat stupid. Look. Ask. I will try to describe and explain.”
“How big is it, out there?”
“In the Chaos, distance is difficult to measure or judge. That has been the chief obstacle to your pilgrims—how to get from where they think they are to where they think they want to be.”
“It looks confused,” Jebrassy said. “It isn’t finished—feels incomplete. Doesn’t want to be seen undressed.”
“A fair assessment. Though we should not ascribe our own motives to the Typhon. They are not the same—if the Typhon can even be said to have motive. In the simplest terms—applicable to our experience within the Kalpa—we are looking out over a thousand miles, horizon to horizon. Down there—look toward the closer regions just below—you can see a narrow gray circle, stretching out to a broader black border. You might be able to make out a kind of maze, and a low wall.”
Jebrassy followed the Librarian’s pointing finger and saw a gray curve surrounded by what might have been a black smudge of wall, two hand-spans out from the great rounded, shiny shapes immediately below—the word came to him, bions.
The tower rose from the middle bion, which looked damaged. The other two bions appeared to be in even worse condition.
“I’ve seen this before,” he murmured. “My visitor told me.” His face wrinkled in frustration, but the Librarian seemed to understand.
“Go on.”
Jebrassy tried to finish his thought. “There’s a shifting place…I think it’s called the zone of lies.”
“Very dangerous,” the Librarian said. “Many breeds have had their journeys ended there before fairly begun. I believe the Menders have improved your education and training since those times.”
“You’re talking about our lives,” Jebrassy said.
“No need to get testy. Tell me you aren’t already attracted to what you see.”
“I am!”Jebrassy shouted, and tried to turn away, but couldn’t. He was fascinated. He yearned, said almost in a whimper, “I always have been.”
“I have my inclinations, and you have yours. Right now we’re working together—but when you go out there, to join your mate, as you have dreamed, you will carry to her information no one else possesses. Information that might help you both survive, and succeed. And if you do not succeed, then my half an eternity of labor will pass away, without conclusion—without product—a failure.