Strength of Stones (19 page)

"Fine, but do we know where Throne has moved? No. In Resurrection, there could be information -- a library. You could study in the library, pin down your prophesies more precisely."

"And you could find spare parts -- perhaps another body," Jeshua said.

"That has occurred to me once or twice, I'm not sure I can last long enough to get to the Bifrost. Or you. Look at your skin."

Jeshua pulled a flap of skin together on his arm and fastened it. It was getting worse now, opening and showing the green capillaries and silver-white bones whenever he wasn't vigilant.

"I admit I'd like to have some means of walking around without being carried. I wouldn't even mind being a remote again. I'm tired of being a cripple."

Jeshua held his fingers in an inverted pyramid, elbows on his knees. "It is the suffering of the -- "

"Birth pangs of the age of the messiah," Thinner said. Jeshua looked at him mournfully.

"The texts are very clear."

"I've never found them so. You've been at them for fifty years -- Rab City Part Jeshua, combing out hidden secrets from the books like fleas from a beggar!"

"We're machines," Jeshua said, his expression showing he was about to return bait for bait. "Machines don't suffer."

"Tube waste," Thinner said. "We mimic. We were made to play the roles. Let _them_ decide if we're faking it." By _them_ he meant humans. "We're as real as they are." The pair had been avoiding humans since leaving Mandala. In Mandala, of course, there had been no humans at all. They had grown used to living alone, and life in the city had inevitably rubbed in an aversion to humans. Even Jeshua, who had grown from a small child believing he was human and living with them, felt vaguely misanthropic.

He had been alive for more years than he cared to remember now, never aging, learning how to use his body all over again. He could still eat human food if he wished, and be sustained that way. Thinner could not. Jeshua had to periodically peel off the tip of a finger (which was getting worn, too, and dropping away at awkward moments) to give Thinner some of the nourishment his body had processed. Above the metal and colloid, blue and green chemicals, cables and valves and sensors, was the sandy flush of skin and the dark, thick hair. Despite the years, the image of Jeshua's exterior still haunted him with humanity, and in that way he would always be human, not a city part.

Thinner's body surrogates had never quite taken. With the breakdown of the last -- a wheeled water-sprinkler which had tended the city's gardens -- Thinner had resigned himself to being bodiless. Jeshua didn't mind carrying the head around. He had long since come to regard Thinner as his only friend, and, like him, one of the last living parts of Mandala.

He stood up and brushed off his clothes. Thinking of Mandala was depressing. He reached down with his broad, rugged hands, but Thinner objected.

"Just a moment. We don't talk as much when we walk, and I'd like to get this settled now."

Jeshua shrugged. "All right. But we're just bickering to give us an excuse to keep moving. I don't think either of us wants to decide. We don't know where Resurrection is now, and what if one is gone, or the other, and we make the wrong _choice?_ We might find out how things really are."

Thinner's jaw moved as if he were swallowing. "We're very naive out here. Sooner or later, if we keep moving, as ignorant as we are, we're going to be caught, killed, put on display -- whatever. We're freaks. I am an obvious freak, but you're no less one. If we got to Resurrection, not only might we get the information we need, but we might be able to ride a transport part to the Bifrost."

Jeshua considered. There was nothing in the texts forbidding such a sidetrip -- just the risk of encountering humans. If they find out what we are -- "

"Don't," Thinner said. Wherever they had been, even the dead cities had been scourged -- burned, used for the dumping of trash, destroyed when possible. With the death of Mandala through its own madness and decay, they had had to face a sobering fact.

Most of the cities -- dying for lack of the citizens they had once exiled -- were no longer able to defend themselves.

The time for humanity's vindication was at hand.

Kahn finished his explanation. Arthur stared at the opposite wall, the cords in his throat working.

"If you really are from a polis -- "

"From Fraternity," Kahn repeated.

" -- Then I'm not sure you should stay in this house."

Arthur got up from his chair and stood by the table. "We're supposed to report rogue parts."

"I'm not a part."

"You're a ghost," Nan said. "Someone who should be dead by now."

"Whether or not I'm dead, somewhere else, has no bearing on my existence here," Kahn said. "I'm not a ghost." He reached out and gripped Nan's arm, making her jump in her seat. "Feel. I'm as solid as you are."

"You claim you're like a picture, then," Nan said, slowly pulling her arm from his fingers. "Except ... round."

"More than that, even. I think and act and feel just like the original. To myself, I am Kahn. But my time here is short. I only have about thirty days." He looked between Arthur and Nan. "Certainly not enough time to try to convince everyone."

Arthur stacked the cups and carded them into the kitchen, dropping them into a dry washtub. "Crazy people say they're Robert Kahn."

Kahn looked up.

"They say it all the time. Especially if they are crazy for being beat up. That sort of thing." He refused to face Kahn. "You don't sweat in the heat -- maybe you're sick. Where you get clothes like that, I don't know, but I don't travel much, either. Maybe you're crazy and from a place I've never been."

"I don't do magic tricks," Kahn said. "I'm not claiming to be a god, or a ghost."

"I'd believe a ghost," Nan said.

"When I was stored in the block's memory, there was a universal program in the cities. They have to let me inside. Take me to a city that's still alive -- "

"There aren't any here," Arthur said. "They're dead and the Chasers and Founders tried to burn them. We fought city parts." He pointed to a heavy-bore rifle sitting alone in a gun-rack next to the fireplace. "I was conscripted. Twenty-four years ago, they gave me that, and took six years out of my life because they were afraid of polises taking all of us over. Then I came home to my family, got back to farming -- that's been eighteen years." He paced across the creaking floor. "Back then, the Founders were just soldiers and hotheads. Now they're bankers, merchants, farmers, engineers."

"You mentioned Chasers. What are they?"

"Hunh!" Nan said, incredulous.

"They used to worship polises, chase after them. Didn't respect them -- peculiar type of worship. They'd just as soon burn a polis down if they could, and when the polises got weak, they burned them, sure enough. Now the Founders hire Chasers as soldiers, police."

Kahn shook his head. "It'll take years just to catch up on the history."

"History! History is dead people and crooked Founders and no laws any more -- "

"Founders have laws, Father," Nan said patiently. "They're a government like any other."

"A touch more harsh," Arthur said sharply. "They're expolitans like all the rest of us, but they don't like that word now. No more talk of exiling, of polises. The old government just accepted the fact we weren't worthy, lived with it, made good laws. Then the Synedrium converted itself into the Syndine to handle bigger problems, more land and people, and the Syndine couldn't keep people from getting angry. You can't sit around thinking you're weak and sinful all the time. A thousand years is enough. So the Founders said we weren't weak, we're better than the polises! Tear them down, wipe out their memory, start over?"

Kahn nodded. "Why did the cities kick everybody out?"

"Because we're sinners," Arthur said. "Some of us still believe that. Founders can't kick it out of us. So now they make their own guilt. I fought side by side with them, watched them die, and I still don't like them. Arrogance. Mine, theirs." Arthur was growing more and more agitated. "They take whatever they want, now. No guilt. That's where my wife and daughter are -- other daughter. I told you about them." Arthur's face was dark and deeply lined with sun, hard work, worry.

"Why aren't you one of them, if you fought for them?" Kahn asked.

"I'm an independent sort. They want complete cooperation. Bunch of young, skinny men and women run things now, chase the old out -- more guilt in the old." He made a wry face. "Not my sort at all. If you join and don't cooperate, you're in even worse trouble than if you just mind your own business."

"Why do they leave you alone?"

"They don't, not entirely. I don't have much they want, though, now they have two of my family. Nan is the only one who stayed with me. The land here isn't worth much, but they'll come and take that when they please."

"When did the farm start to go bad?"

"Four years ago. Weather heated up, not as bad as now, but enough to wither the corn. Founders offered seed for other crops, tents to cover them during the heat, if you became a Founder and handed over your land, tenant farmer sort of thing. I didn't go along. Jorissa -- that's my wife -- she said I was a fool. I suppose I was. Everything burned off. Couldn't get the seed or tents yourself unless you joined."

"Is that when the sun started getting brighter?"

"That's when it started getting noticeable. But this is all talk about us, and we haven't settled anything about you, yet."

Nan nodded her agreement.

"I can't convince you," Kahn said. "My clothes are some evidence. Feel the fabric." He removed his coat and offered it to the woman. She looked it over carefully, then passed it to Arthur. "Father does as much knitting here as I do," she said dourly. "Some things the Founders did weren't too bad. Women are better off in some places."

"Syndine did that during the Reform," Arthur said. He turned a sleeve inside out. "No seams. Fabric stretches two ways. Doesn't feel like fabric. So you could be from someplace far away -- or from a polis. They had clothes like this in the polises."

"Yes, but I'm not a city part."

"We're no judges," Nan said. "We're not that educated, we don't know what to make of you. You have to go to the Founders."

"I wouldn't recommend that, daughter," Arthur said. "They'll think he's a city part for sure."

"If the Founders know more, I'll have to go to them. Have you heard any people talking about the star being a variable?"

"Star?" Arthur asked.

"The sun, he means, Father," Nan said.

"Not that I know."

"Do you know what a variable is?"

Arthur hesitated, then shook his head, looking levelly at Kahn.

"A variable is a star that gets brighter or dimmer periodically. If it's a long-term variable, it's hard to determine the period, or even to tell if the star is stable over millennia. If it truly is hotter now than it was just four years ago -- or in my time -- " He stopped, If the star was a long-term variable, his problem was far worse -- and it was already monumental. "Are there any cities still alive?"

"Yes," Arthur said slowly. "Resurrection, it's called."

"Can I get there?"

"It isn't too far, maybe a hundred kilometers. Across the border. The Founders don't touch Expolis Ibreem proper, it has its own government -- last of the Syndine states. Too powerful. So the polis stands."

"If I could go there -- "

Arthur struck an attitude of listening, then shook his head firmly. "No, dammit!"

Nan went to the window and peered out.

"I hear them goddamn scooters again," Arthur said. He stood behind her and pulled aside a ragged blind. Kahn could hear voices and a weak putt-putting.

"Who is it?"

"Founders, six of them, a tail, curly-haired spindly fellow in the lead. I know his type. I know his goddamn type. You stay in here; whether you're crazy or what you say you are, you shouldn't mess with them. And if they get in, say you're visiting from Ibreem, hiking on a sabbat march. And your name isn't Kahn -- it's Cohen, Azrael Iben Cohen, something like that. They have treaties with Ibreem, can't mess with religious people."

"Be quiet!" Nan warned, opening the door for her father and shutting it behind him.

Arthur stood on the porch, hands buried in his torn pockets, expression grim.

The tall leader dismounted his gas engine tricycle and strolled up to the steps, looking down at a pad of paper. "Arthur Sam Daniel, son of Julius Sam Daniel, son of Giorgio Sam Daniel?"

"You know all that," Arthur said. "Wife tells you all that, all you want to know."

"We're here to account for your crops, take census, that's all. No trouble, now friend."

"No crops, just me and my daughter. Easy enough." Three of the six were women, wearing the grey and black that Founders wore almost without exception, smiling and talking with each other as the leader looked mildly at Arthur. "The Canaan Founders just have your best interests in mind. You living alone now?"

"I told you, just my daughter and I. You don't need more facts than that."

"We've been told a stranger came to your house earlier today. I thought he'd like to meet us and be welcomed to New Canaan West."

"He'd rather not," Arthur said, throat bobbing.

"Now," the leader began, his voice rising faintly, "don't you think it's more polite to let your guest answer for himself?"

Kahn stood, but Nan vigorously gestured for him to stay put and resumed peering through the curtains.

"We like to keep track of visitors, give them information that will help them get around New Canaan West. Mind telling us where your friend is from?"

"I don't see any need -- "

The tall man walked up the steps and put his hand firmly on Arthur's shoulder. "You're making me very suspicious, neighbor." He smiled, showing snaggled teeth and a gold crown. "We need to see your visitor."

Kahn stood again and ignored Nan's gestures. He opened the front door. "Can I ease your day?" he asked, hoping his language was up to the confrontation.

"Perhaps," the leader said. "I'm Frederik Bani Hassan. We need to know your origin, destination and intentions."