The door opened on a hectic crowd of men and women in white gowns, uniformed security men, distressed civilians. Jesse stepped out of the elevator and tried to orient himself. The Tower One medical clinic had originally been a small part of this arcade floor, but the broad central corridor was lined with cots and gurney beds now; shop stalls had been curtained off to create makeshift surgical rooms where physicians patched up security men who had been injured in skirmishes and civilians who had been hurt by stray artillery rounds. No sooner had Jesse stumbled out of the elevator than a medic pushed a loaded gurney past him: It looked as if casualties were being hurried to the Mirror as soon as they were stabilized.
He caught the attention of a woman in a green surgical gown. “I need to find Dr. Talbot.”
“Are you in from the wall?” She looked him over, and her eyes widened. “You need to be triaged.”
“Talbot,” Jesse insisted.
“I’m sorry, but you need attention right now.”
“Not as much as I need to find Talbot.”
“I don’t have time to argue. Triage is by the fountain. I think Dr. Talbot is working over there,”—she waved vaguely—“in what used to be the spa. Take your pick.”
It was only a scant few yards to the sign that said MASSAGE/HYDROTHERAPY/FACIAL AND BODY SCRUBS, but the journey seemed immensely long. Jesse kept his eye out for Talbot, but in the end it was Elizabeth he found. She came barreling out of the crowd so eagerly that he had to turn away to protect his damaged arm. “Jesse!”
He hugged her, or leaned on her, a little of both.
“I wanted to kick Kemp’s ass when I realized he shut you out, but by then we were deep into Tower One and I figured I ought to stick with Phoebe. They handcuffed Theo and Mercy and took them to the Mirror, but—are you all right?”
Not entirely. He ignored the question and asked where Phoebe was.
“Talbot’s with her” was all Elizabeth would say.
His thoughts had grown unreliable, but he remembered the iPhone. He took it from his pocket and presented it to her. “It’s the one Kemp’s people confiscated,” he said. “I took some extra pictures with it. The kind August Kemp doesn’t want anyone to see.”
Phoebe lay on a table in a back room of the former spa with bags of fluid attached to her body. Her face was alabaster-white, her eyes were closed. Dr. Talbot took Jesse by his good arm and steered him to a chair. “You need attention,” he said.
I need to stay awake a little longer, Jesse thought. That’s what I need. “How is she?”
Talbot took a vial of liquid from the heap of medical supplies on an adjacent table and drew some of the fluid into a syringe. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I can’t help her.”
Jesse focused on the words until they made sense. Even then, he refused to believe it. He had come too far to be dismissed so cavalierly. “With all your futuristic medicine—”
“Jesse, listen to me. I can’t help her here. We X-rayed her, and the internal damage is too extensive for a quick repair. There’s a good chance she’ll survive, but only if she gets careful surgery and post-surgical support. And I can’t give her that—here.”
Five years, Jesse thought. For five years all he had done, from working at the City to killing Roscoe Candy, had been for Phoebe’s sake. To protect her and to redeem her from the ugliness of the world she had been born into. And he had failed. He closed his eyes.
Elizabeth came close to him. “Jesse,” she said. “There are dozens of injured people being taken back through the Mirror. No one’s checking their ID. Do you understand? Jesse? If Talbot puts a tag on Phoebe’s gurney, he can take her through the Mirror. No questions asked. Hell to pay when they find out, but by the time that happens she’ll be getting real treatment. It’ll save her life. But she can’t come back. Once the Mirror’s closed, there’s no opening it again. Do you understand? Jesse?”
He struggled to find the meaning of her words in the increasingly cavernous space his thoughts now occupied. If he understood correctly, she was offering him a ghost of hope. It meant he would never see Phoebe again. But Phoebe might live.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. All right. Take her.”
“And you?”
“What about me?”
Talbot hovered into view, still holding a syringe. “She means you’re a plausible invalid. If I hook you up to a saline drip and give you something to make you sleep, odds are I can get you to the other side along with your sister. If that’s what you want.”
The medication to make him sleep might not be needed. His vision narrowed until all it contained was Elizabeth. Her face, her eyes.
The floor shuddered under him. The lights flickered, there were shouts of alarm. At least one of the federal artillery emplacements must have survived the helicopter assault, Jesse thought. Tower One was being shelled.
A Klaxon sounded, everything was in motion now, an oceanic roar of voices, the smell of blood … “It’s up to you.” Elizabeth’s voice, taut as a piano wire. “It won’t be easy either way, but you have to choose.”
He understood that he was being offered an invitation, but to what? To Futurity, he thought; to the diorama world, spaceships and luminous cities; but no, Futurity was a myth. That was a fact the City had taught him. Futurity was nothing but a place. A faraway place. Another country.
Her voice again: “Help me get him on a gurney.”
Hands lifting him.
“Jesse, can you hear me? We don’t have much time. Last call. Where do you want to go?”
The question required an answer. He summoned what remained of his strength. “With you,” he said, or meant to say, but darkness took him before he could be sure.
EPILOGUE
Magnificent Ruins
—1889—
Long ago, in his first letter from Illinois, Jesse had described the towers of the City as “an architecture fit for angels.” And in his last letter he had written, “They will make magnificent ruins.”
And he was right, Abbie Hauser thought. The prophecy had been fulfilled with remarkable speed.
Ten years and more had passed since Jesse’s final communication. During that time she had often resolved to make this visit, and for years she had put it off, distracted by her situation and the daily business of coping with it. And while she dithered, both she and the City had grown old. Her bones ached on winter mornings, her digestion was irregular, intimations of mortality intruded on her thoughts. And the City of Futurity had been given up to wind and rust and nesting birds.
“Is that it?” Soo Yee asked. “There on the horizon?”
Their carriage crested one of the rolling mounds that passed for hills in this part of Illinois, on a road that had once been smoothly paved but had been crazed and broken by seasons of sun and ice. There it was on the horizon, the City of Futurity, dark against the pale opacity of an October morning. Two man-made buttes, as if the Illinois bedrock had lifted its arms to the heavens. Abbie tugged her shawl and sighed. “Yes.”
“Like gravestones,” Soo Yee said.
“Memorials, perhaps. Not gravestones. Phoebe and Jesse aren’t dead, Soo Yee. At least, I don’t believe so. They’re just—not here.”