Nate dived for the control pad, banged on it. The elevator began to rise.
“Jill,” Nate hissed, “did you see that? I told you, they can’t see us!”
His eyes were large and dark—freaked-out eyes. She knew what he was thinking—some weird, supernatural thing, like maybe that they were ghosts after all. She felt a flash of irritation.
“Maybe this species is blind. How would we know?”
“With those eyes? That’d be a sorry waste of real estate.”
“Anyway, they can hear us, at least. Why didn’t you want me to speak? We’re going to have to make contact sooner or later.”
“What if they’re dangerous!”
“Why assume they’re dangerous?”
He gave her a look like she was being incredibly stupid. “Um… because it’s a hell of a lot safer than assuming they’re not?”
She rolled her eyes, but she had to admit… She was just as glad herself that the alien in the elevator hadn’t seen them. There was something about those huge eyes and husklike bodies that was not very pleasant at all.
The roof was a flat, dusty surface made of the same stuff as the rest of the City—a dense white material that was difficult to distinguish as either synthetic or stone. Nate looked around the rooftop for more aliens before deigning to get out of the elevator. He walked to the edge.
“So… what are we looking for?”
“I don’t know yet.” Jill studied the street grid. There were no plazas, no circular turnabouts, no variation in the street widths—just endless rows and columns. The air was very clean, startlingly so for a cityscape, which meant they didn’t burn fossil fuels. And the planet seemed to have little precipitation. The sky was cloudless.
“Do you think those are power indicators?” Jill asked, pointing to a light on a roof down below.
Nate perked up. “Cool! I don’t think that’s what they’re for, but they sure work that way, don’t they?”
Every building had a large light at the center of the roof—including their own. The original purpose of the light was probably for communications or rooftop landings. But looking out over the cityscape now, these roof lights were an ideal indication of which buildings had power. They’d been designed to be visible even in this perpetually bright world—shining a determined red. Jill sucked in a breath as the full implications hit her.
They were looking over a city so vast they could not see the far edges of it. And all that they could see—all of the buildings surrounding them for blocks and blocks and blocks—was 90 percent dead, turned off, deserted.
“Oh my god. Look at that,” Nate muttered.
They were standing in a pocket of red, maybe twenty buildings in all. A few blocks away was a street running north–south that had to be a major artery. The lights on that street were red all the way into the horizon. There was another artery, perpendicular to the first, that was also red down its entire length. Other than this red cross, there were only rare splashes of red dotting the landscape. The rest of the city was dark.
“What happened to them?” Nate asked, his voice faint.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think it might have been a disease? It couldn’t have been an atomic weapon or a meteor—there’s no damage.”
“No.”
“You’d think war would have left some damage, too, unless they have some pretty funky weapons.”
Jill’s hands floated to her collarbone and tapped thoughtfully. She didn’t reply.
“So what do you think? This place must have had millions of inhabitants—where’d they all go?” Nate insisted. She knew he wasn’t really asking her; he was just asking.
“I think we’ll find more clues, if we’re patient.” Jill sighed. “This could take a while.”
The thought was somehow satisfying. Nate shot her a look that she ignored. She was focused on those red patches. “There!” She pointed.
To the east, about a mile away, was a round building in a patch of red. It had a dome shape, incongruous in this square-filled field. Even more interesting was what was next to the dome—an enormous field of antennae.
“Communications,” Nate guessed.
“Maybe.” Jill squinted to see the antennae better. Something had just crossed her mind, a possibility that, in all the hours they had spent in this place, had so far eluded her. As the idea fully revealed itself in her brain, almost bashfully due to its enormity, she found her mouth dry once more. She understood now her initial feeling of excitement at the wall. There was a moment, standing at the edge of that rooftop, when she completely accepted the City. Not just accepted it but embraced it as her right, as part of her purpose, her destiny.
“Jill!” Nate’s voice, eager, broke the moment. He had moved to the other side of the roof and was pointing as excitedly as a kid at a toy shop window.
There, on the southern edge of the city, miles away, was another domed structure. This one looked even larger than the first. Around it was a smooth sea of tarmac. And parked at one end of the tarmac was a planelike craft that, despite its small size from here, had to be enormous close-up.
“It’s a spaceship!” Nate crowed. “They have interplanetary travel! Whoo-hoo!”
Jill smiled tentatively.
“Good ol’ Earth! Christ, what are we waiting for?” Nate walked toward the elevator.
“Just a second. What about the antennae?” Jill’s eyes drifted magnetically back to that other dome.
“What about the antennae? What about the antennae?”
His voice got her attention. That boyish face of his, so ingeniously expressive, was disbelieving and hopelessly young. “Jill, hello? I don’t know about you, but I want to go home.”
She was used to diagnosing Nate’s moods in a rational framework for her experiments. One look told her that arguing with him would take more energy and tact than she could muster. She tried anyway. “But, Nate,” she said gently, “we have an entire city to explore.”
He folded his arms over his chest. His dark eyes stared at her, daring her to say anything more.
“Okay,” she sighed. “All right. We’ll check out the airport first.”
He grinned. “It’s a spaceport.”
“Fine. Whatever. I guess it won’t hurt.” She looked out over the cityscape. “How ‘bout we go down that main artery? That’ll give us food and water most of the way. It might take us a while. I have a feeling it’s even further than it looks.”
“Why don’t we nab one of those air cars? We can be there in an hour.”
“We will not. I’m not crazy about flying when the pilot knows what he’s doing.”
“They’re probably user-friendly! They probably drive themselves!”
Jill gave him her best freezing look. “And how would you know until you were up in the air and couldn’t get down? We’ll walk.”
“Fine! Have it your way.” Nate looked at the distance between them and the spaceport and got into the elevator, a very determined look on his face.
15.4. Thirty-Seventy Aharon Handalman
At what point do we lose our conscience? Our call to the divine? There are things, maybe they’re different for everyone, but there are things… and from these experiences no man can return.
Everything he had ever held back or held in, everything he had pushed aside, refuted, argued against with Talmudic vigor, these doubts, fears, and shadows, now crowded Aharon’s mind. He had been proud and strong in the wind; he had been a mighty oak, a wall, unbreachable, like the walls of Zion. But Kobinski had blown his trumpet and the wall that was Aharon Handalman had come tumbling down.