Strength of Stones (20 page)

"No trouble at all. I'm hiking from Ibreem."

"Long hike. Your family and name?"

"Azrael Iben Cohen."

"Lots of Cohens in Ibreem," the leader said. "But you weren't born there. Where were you born?"

Kahn blinked, then said casually, "Here, originally. In New Canaan."

"No, I don't think so," the leader said. "They don't have clothes like that in Ibreem -- or here, for that matter. I think you'd better come with us."

Kahn nodded and followed the leader to his motorbike. Arthur said nothing, but his fists were clenched tightly.

The bike sputtered off. Arthur stayed on the porch for several minutes, watching the trail of dust. Then he walked back into the house and stood in the filthy kitchen, looking around, his lips trembling. "We've been living here like dust in a snail shell. They aren't going to let us stay much longer. They want the land. They want everything we have."

"Now, Father -- "

"They do," he said quietly. "Poor, crazy man."

Jeshua's footsteps echoed in the empty halls. They had spent more than a week in the dead city, exploring, trying to find something useful to them. All they found was decay and defilement.

"They destroyed it," Thinner said as he was lifted around to see the crumbling walls of the third level gardens. "It let its guard down and they destroyed it."

"It was probably dead when they came in," Jeshua said.

"I went through Fraternity once, before I met you. It was a quiet place. They'd built it for seminarians and it was less fancy than some of the polises. It had a huge collection of books -- real books."

"I hope they didn't burn the books, too," Jeshua said.

The silence settled over them. Thinner made a noise like a sigh. "You looked around the upper levels?"

"Yes," Jeshua said, frowning. "I took you with me."

"I'm growing forgetful," Thinner said. "No spare parts?"

"Nothing."

"No, of course not. Then we move on."

As they left Fraternity, an early evening drizzle settled on them. They turned west.

Thinner talked of the days in Mandala before Jeshua's return. Jeshua had heard it many times before, but the sound of the head's voice was soothing, rising above the hiss of rain on the hot, dry dirt and grass. A thin ground-fog crept around his legs and he walked between thin, skeletal trees, tall and shadowed, the head clutched in his arm.

Four men on horseback saw him that way. The horses reared in terror and the men, quite agreeing, gave them their reins, hanging on as they galloped into the foothills.

It was late evening and two moons were up above the mountains behind them when Jeshua stopped. The land was cooling now and a thick, moist breeze was falling out of the hills. The rain had stopped and the ground was dry again.

They spent the night in a copse of withered mulcet trees. Jeshua laid Thinner delicately on a prepared bed of dry grass and leaves, making sure his mouth was pointing up. Then he sat with his back against a trunk, thinking. Thinner was getting more and more forgetful each day. Jeshua wondered if his nutrients weren't enough for the head -- if Thinner needed something only the internal working of a full body could produce. He hoped they would make it to Resurrection before the head gave out completely. Jeshua didn't have much in the world to lose, little more in fact than his existence -- which he wasn't too concerned with -- and his companion.

He wished he could sleep. Thinner lay with his eyes open, in a kind of stupor, but Jeshua had long since abandoned the human habit.

He was quite aware, then, when a crowd of men on horseback surrounded the copse and began to close in.

* * * *

Kahn tried to shout above the noise of the motor tricycles, leaning forward toward the ear of the thin curly-haired man. "I need to talk to people in your city..."

The Founder shook his head.

"It's very important," Kahn said. "I need to talk with meteorologists -- with weather men, with astronomers -- with land managers."

"You're not talking to anybody," the Founder shouted back over his shoulder.

Kahn wriggled his wrists reflexively to loosen the bonds fled to the rear cushion of the trike.

The town of New Canaan was busy, prosperous-looking, and -- to Kahn -- painfully primitive. He was removed to a two-story stone and concrete building, square and ugly, and taken into custody by a burly officer in a loose-fitting black uniform.

"We have reason to believe you're a mimic," the officer said, walking around Kahn and tapping him lightly with a thin wooden dowel. "We've had problems with mimics in the past. We still find them now and then. You know how we tell if you're a mimic?"

Kahn shook his head.

"We cut you open."

The room was small. Through a tiny barred window, Kahn could hear the grind of internal combustion engines and the hiss of steam vehicles.

"I'm not a city part," Kahn said. "I have to speak to -- "

"You don't know anything about us, do you? Like most mimics. Ignorant. Locked up in cities, never bothering about us, here in the dirt and flies."

"I come from Fraternity, but I'm not a city part."

The officer pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. "You came from a city. That's good enough for us." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Whatever you are, we don't need you. We have laws here, and I think you should be glad. If I had my way, we'd dismantle you right now. Find out what you work. Not that you'd care, I suppose. Mimics don't feel pain, don't eat, don't sleep." The constable shook his head. "But then, you're probably lying. You probably came from Ibreem, crept out of the city there. Hide your tracks. Well, we're a democracy. We have treaties with Ibreem, we can't just go in and clean them out. The borders aren't nearly as tight as they should be." He motioned with his hand.

Kahn was taken by two guards to a concrete pit. He walked down a flight of wooden steps into the cell and iron bars were lowered over. He barely had room to squat. "If you shit, maybe we let you loose," one guard said. "Maybe not. Mimics can shit, too, they say."

He settled in to make himself as comfortable as possible. After a few minutes, he pinched himself on the inside of his left arm, then tried to indent the skin with his fingernail. What would they find if they cut him? His knowledge of simulacra was slight, ironically. Except for the brain, he had heard, the interior structure was pretty amorphous. Not at all like a city-part.

Could they disable him? He wasn't sure.

No one had considered the possibility a simulacrum would have to face such circumstances.

He didn't think he could sleep, though he could close his eyes. He certainly couldn't shit. There was no way he could convince his captors he was human.

After an hour, he shut his eyes and began running numbers and architectural images across the darkness. Soon he had a Romanesque cathedral mapped out. Then he began to change the types of stone, working out strength of materials problems and redesigning accordingly.

To his surprise, something like sleep came along shortly after -- dreamless, dark, not very comfortable, but much better than useless thought.

He was stirred out of the darkness by the squeal of the bars being raised. "Inside, hunker down," said a guard. It was dark and the guard carried a dim electric lantern. A large shadow descended into the pit with him, brushed up against his legs -- he curled them tighter -- and settled into silence.

The guard's light pointed down into the pit and Kahn saw it briefly touch on his companion's chest. The light moved a few centimeters, then stopped. The guard took a deep breath, flicked the light off and locked the bars.

Whoever his companion was, it carried a head under its arm, and the head had blinked at him.

Kahn didn't sleep or meditate for the rest of the night. Dawn threw a vague orange glow into the cell, outlining the figure.

It was human-like, and it did indeed carry a head, but the head's eyes were closed. As the glow brightened, coming through a skylight above the cell, Kahn saw that the large figure was a man, terribly wounded. Shafts of arrows stuck out all over him, most broken off. There were bullet holes in his ragged shirt, and brown and green stains around the holes. His free arm appeared to have been sliced open.

Beneath the flap of skin was not muscle, but glassy green tubes and a purple, foam-like filler. Beneath the filler was metallic bone. The figure was not human -- he was a city part, a mimic.

No wonder he had been suspected, Kahn thought. The mimics must be everywhere.

"Hello," Kahn said. The mimic opened his eyes. "Hello."

"From which city?"

The mimic didn't answer for a long moment. "Mandala," he said finally. The voice was deep, quite convincingly human.

"I come from Fraternity," Kahn said. The mimic nodded and looked at Kahn's clothes, and finally at the shoes. The shoes had been undone in a search for weapons and no longer sealed against the pant legs.

"Fraternity made you?"

"No," Kahn said. "I'm not a city part."

"Then you're human."

"Not exactly." It was difficult treating the mimic as something other than a human; the cities had never specifically been instructed to make humans. For some of Kahn's clients, that ability would have been blasphemous. But Kahn suspected that city programming still operated in the mimic. "I am the builder," he said. "My word is _qellipoth._ It is a practical word, not a theoretical word."

The mimic jerked as if kicked. "I am Jeshua. This is Thinner." He held up the head. "Builder ... I am..."

"Be quiet," Kahn said softly. "I have questions."

"Builder, I am shocked ... doubly shocked. I feel the power of your words ... but I have been studying _kaballah,_ too. For a long time, a century, Builder." Jeshua's eyes filled with tears. He reached out to touch Kahn's foot. "Are you here to rescue the sparks?" he asked. "Is it time for the regathering?"

The mimic's humanity ran deep. His independence was surprising. A normal city part would have come completely under his control upon hearing that sequence of words. And it knew _kaballah_! Kahn had only briefly studied the mystical teachings under the spotty tutelage of George Pearson, God-Does-Battle's financial minister. Kahn had considered it his duty to know more about his heritage, for in past centuries his family had been Jewish.

"I don't know about the regathering," he said. "I'm not a messiah, I'm not a kabbalist. I'm the builder."

Jeshua sagged and his eyelids lowered as if in fatigue. "I feel the compulsion," he said again. "Only the builder would know those words. But I don't know how I know ... I am very confused."

"I programmed a code and command into all city parts long before you were made," Kahn said.

"You were human. How could you live so long?"

"I have questions, too," Kahn said. "I hope you can answer my questions, and I'll try to answer yours. But first, we have to get out of here. I don't think I'm going to see any higher authority."

"Why are you in jail?"

"They think I'm a city part."

Jeshua moved the head into his lap. "They destroy cities, city parts," he said. "They're human."

"There's a place where humans are more tolerant, Expolis Ibreem. If we can find our way there..."

Jeshua reached up with a hand at least half again as wide as Kahn's and tested the bars overhead. "They're too strong for me to bend them. Besides, I'm damaged." He looked down at Thinner, who still had his eyes closed.

"Is the head alive?" Kahn asked. He felt like an artist who had once painted a simple picture, and come back years later to find it growing more and more bizarre.

"I think so," Jeshua said. "Thinner. Wake up. Open your eyes." The head opened his eyes. "We're with the Builder."

"I heard," the head said hoarsely. "Now I know why you study _kaballah._ He planted the seed. Let me see him." Jeshua turned the head and lifted it. "Welcome, Builder. Your coming is a mystery to us."

"Then we're even. You're a mystery to me."

"Jeshua, the walls are concrete and the bolts holding the bars are set maybe only a few centimeters deep. You can't break out in your condition, but maybe you can spread a little pouch fluid on the concrete."

Jeshua considered that for a moment, then set the head down gently on the dirty floor. "_Peah,_" Thinner said. "Smells like a sewer in here."

Kahn's eyes widened as Jeshua pulled up his dirty white tunic. The mimic was fully equipped with genitals, body hair, anal opening. Jeshua touched several spots on his belly and pulled aside a flap of skin.

"Think you're hungry," Thinner said.

Jeshua pulled out a milky pouch from his abdomen. "I'll have to cut it, there's no opening here."

"Let me bite it," Thinner offered. Jeshua held the head to the pouch. Despite his own lack of viscera, Kahn felt strange and looked away.

"Now I won't be able to eat," Jeshua said. "We'll have to reach Resurrection soon, get a city-fed meal, get fixed." Almost sorrowfully, he said, "I'm a real wreck now, aren't I?"

"You're still better off than I am," Thinner said, his task finished. "Wipe my mouth. I don't want to blister."

"You can eat human food and city fluids, too?" Kahn asked.

"The builder didn't provide for our construction?" Thinner asked. Jeshua cupped his hands and clear, steaming fluid poured into them. He dabbed the fluid on the concrete around the bolts, then dipped his hands in the water bucket in one corner. The concrete sizzled and became a greyish mud. The bars groaned and settled a centimeter or so.

"I didn't know cities could make parts like you," Kahn admitted. "My creations exceed my expectations."

"Builder is a proud father," Thinner said, his voice muffled. He had fallen over again. Jeshua was re-sealing his belly skin. Kahn reached over and righted the head.

"Not so proud," Kahn said. "What will that acid do to your insides?"

Jeshua smiled. "Not much leaks. I just have to remember not to get hungry. Shouldn't be too hard -- I've only started eating human-type food again in the last few weeks."

"Can we get out now?" Thinner asked.