Strength of Stones (21 page)

"I think I can wrench up this end," Jeshua said.

"And after that?"

"We should probably wait for guards," Kahn said. "When they come to get us -- surprise them."

"I'll stand between their guns and you, Builder," Jeshua said. "I'm already injured -- a few more bullets won't hurt."

"You're amazing," Kahn said. "I would never have guessed city parts could take so much abuse."

"That's why the Holy One, blessed be He, put us here -- using your master plan," Jeshua said. "We are to absorb the pain of the messianic age."

"My friend has gone a bit deep into that stuff." Thinner said. "From what I've heard, he has only you to blame."

Kahn grinned at the rebuke. "I don't think my code is wholly responsible. You both seem to be true individuals. If I didn't know, I'd say you were human."

"No," Jeshua said. "We are not that."

"Well, technically speaking, neither am I, and I think I can take a few bullets as well as you." He wasn't positive about that -- especially not where his head was concerned -- but he felt it was time to assert himself, show a little courage. He felt almost ashamed in the face of his latter-day creations.

A guard opened the door at the end of the cell corridor. Kahn held his finger to his lips. Three pairs of boots clacked on the pavement and he looked up to see men leaning over the pit, shadows against the dim blue skylight.

"All city parts?"

"We think so. Haven't cut them open yet -- but one is hurt, and he isn't human. The other's just a head, no body, and one is dressed in clothes like he came out of a polis."

"Open up, then."

The guard bent down and inserted a key into the lock. The hinges slipped in their corroded seats, making the bars fall against the outer frame with a clang. The guard inserted his lever to pry the bars up, but they had jammed.

Jeshua braced his feet on the floor of the pit and reached up with both hands. Heaving suddenly, he pushed the bars away from the frame. The guard was knocked backward and Jeshua stood, using the bars to pin the other two against the corridor wall. Kahn grabbed the head and climbed out of the pit. Jeshua plucked the keys out of the bars and they ran to the opposite end. With the second door open, they found themselves in an exercise yard adjacent to the old Synedrium judgement chambers. Jeshua kicked a flimsy panel door open and they came to a flight of stairs opening onto a street. They were in the delivery alley in back of the jail. The alarm hadn't gone off yet; the Founder police weren't as efficient as Kahn expected.

They were in Canaantown proper, running through the early scooter and foot traffic, when the jail bells rang.

Arthur sat on the front porch of the house waiting for the first cool winds of evening, chin in his hands and knees braced against a broken board. The stars were twinkling furiously as the land gave up its warmth. To the west, heat lightning flashed silently between clouds pushed high during the late afternoon. The tall anvil-head billows looked like faces in the brief purple and green illuminations.

The house was empty. His daughter was in Canaantown, visiting Jorissa. Nan's visits with her mother grew longer each time. This visit, he suspected, would be the longest of all. He doubted she would return.

He didn't want to feel betrayed. There was nothing here for Nan, after all; little enough for himself. The farm was a memory and a deed to a tract of dead land, soon to be appropriated by the Founders. He was an old man withering under the sun, doing nothing, promising nothing. It was best she leave.

But the betrayal was real and it hurt him nonetheless. It was a hard time, pushing people to do hard things. Soon, he suspected, he would either die or he would leave, and at age fifty-five, he doubted it was time for him to die.

For the moment, however, he felt like doing nothing more than sitting on the porch, wondering how long it would take for God-Does-Battle to bake and blow away.

The lightning was coming closer. Some of the flashes were almost directly overhead, still silent, but bright enough to pick out the trees, front fence and road like full double moonlight. In a vivid purple flash that left an image swimming in his eyes, he saw two figures standing by the fence.

They were on the trod, both of them this time. The one who called himself Kahn and the big fellow with the head in his arms. Arthur was too tired to care.

"So come on up," he shouted into the hot dark. "I feel half crazy, half a ghost myself. Come on!" He waved them to approach.

The dim lantern light coming through the front window picked them out about five meters in front of the porch. The big fellow was frightening, sure enough, more like a giant corpse than a man, and carrying a head just like Arthur had seen him before. Except for dirt, Kahn was no different from two days before.

"We need your help," Kahn said, coming closer. "Where's your daughter?"

"In town."

"We need to know the way to Resurrection. This is Jeshua." He pointed and the giant nodded at Arthur.

"Aren't you going to introduce me to the head?"

"My name is Thinner," the head said. Arthur tensed and moved up one step.

"If I can get to Resurrection, I can at least begin to put things right," Kahn said. "With the problems you've faced, you must understand how urgent this is."

"My problems are my problems. They've been with me for a long time, and I don't think you can do anything about them. Did they take you to jail?"

Kahn nodded. "I met Jeshua and Thinner there."

"City parts, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"And you aren't."

"He is the builder," Jeshua said.

"So I've heard. You have to go to Ibreem to find the polis. That's across the border west of here, maybe fifty, sixty kilometers. Just go west."

"I think we need more specific directions. Which roads -- landmarks -- "

"I've never been there," Arthur said. "I've just heard stories. Oh, I've been to the border. Take any road west. How did you get away from them?"

"With Jeshua's help," Kahn said. "Just west, then?" He pointed.

"No, more that way," Arthur said, correcting him. "The wind blows from there mostly, nowadays. Used to blow from the east."

"Thank you for your hospitality, and for trying to help me," Kahn said. "I won't forget your decency."

Arthur looked away. "Great deal of good it's done me. But I appreciate your saying so."

The giant city part had been looking at him steadily, brow knit as if in thought. As Kahn turned to leave, Jeshua said, "Is your name Daniel?"

"It is. Arthur Sam Daniel."

Jeshua smiled. "I knew your -- great grandfather, great -- great grandfather? A man named Sam Daniel the Catholic."

"I've heard of him," Arthur said. "He was supposed to be the great man in our family. But that was maybe a hundred years ago."

"The age of wonders is at hand," Jeshua said. "Your ancestor was an honorable man, and someday I would like to know what happened to him."

They walked off into the dark, until only the vague starlight outlined them. Arthur was shaking on the porch as if he were cold, but the air was still tepid.

He stood, brushed off his pants, and cupped his hands over his mouth. "Wait a moment!" Under his breath, he muttered "Crazy bastards, crazy stupid asses," and he ran into the house. "Just a moment!"

He came out with a canvas bag filled with all the canned food and clothes he thought worth taking. If Nan returned, he had scratched a note on the kitchen table top. There was enough left to make it worthwhile for her to come back, but if she didn't ... then she would never know.

He felt like a child running away from home, but the feeling exhilarated him. He had never done anything this crazy before.

"I'd like to come with you," he said as he met them next to the road.

They traveled by night -- not as safe as it might seem, since most travelers moved by night and spent at least the heat of day under shelter if possible. Still, they were careful, and they did not encounter more Canaan Founders.

Neither Kahn nor Jeshua tired as they walked, but for Arthur's sake they paused every few hours. Their first stop was within sight of Fraternity, and they sat on a fallen log while the heat mist washed around their legs.

"If there's anything you people or parts or whatever you are can do that I don't know about -- fly, disappear, fight like demons, anything like that -- don't wait to tell me," Arthur said. "Let me know so I can figure a way to take advantage of it."

Kahn smiled. "Nothing magical. The food is for you alone, since I don't need to eat and Jeshua can't just now. The water we can share, but you'll need much more than we do. When you get tired, tell us."

"I'll have to slow down now and then," Jeshua said. "I'm a little worried about Thinner." The head was silent most of the time, eyes closed as if asleep. "I can't feed him much now."

"My grandfather used to tell me about capturing city parts and using them like horses or cars. But they're mostly gone now. I was just wondering how much like a city part you are." Arthur looked at Kahn.

"Not very much, actually. The technology of the block was more advanced than the technology I had to use in the cities. I didn't really have much to do with the block, so I can't say I know how I work ... not clearly, anyway."

Arthur's eyes narrowed. "Makes sense, I suppose. I don't know much about how I run, either. Be a bit perverse if we did, like looking in a mirror too hard."

"I'm quite aware of how I work," Jeshua said. "But then, I've had many years to learn such things, and excellent libraries."

Arthur nodded as if he were engaging in a perfectly normal conversation. "I still don't believe all this, you know," he said matter-of-factly.

"About the only way you'll be convinced is to see us in action," Kahn said. He stood.

"That could do it," Arthur said.

A single moon illuminated the misty path as they walked around one quarter of Fraternity. On the outskirts of the city. Kahn bent down to pick up a shard of silicate. "I've been wondering what these were for. I remember installing a minor city defense like this, but not so extensive."

"Used to be cities would bristle all around to keep people out," Arthur said.

"I put in the defense by request," Kahn said, dropping the fragment. "They asked for it. Wanted it in case the world was invaded by pagans."

They crossed part of the perimeter on solid paving. The city walls were dry and grey-white where the moonlight hit them, like translucent bones.

"I designed Fraternity for contemplation," Kahn said. "A cross of two intersecting cylinders, topped by a Hofstadter figure -- the central tower, there." He pointed. The moon was just passing behind the tower. The upper promenades and portions of the crossed cylinders had collapsed, leaving the tower in prominent relief. "Did all the cities die like this, in one piece?"

"Not that I heard about," Kahn said.

"Most broke apart and moved," Jeshua said. "They died that way, scattered. Only a few cities die in one piece. Mandala did. The city just quit functioning, sections at a time, and finally all of it ... except for Thinner and I."

"They were only supposed to move parts around when the cities were being remodeled. That was a novelty -- walls that could walk by themselves. We could do it, so we did." He laughed sharply.

"You said something about a Hof -- Hofshtad figure?" Arthur frowned. "I know what a cylinder is, that's like a well is a cylinder's hole, but -- "

"The tower was designed to represent three portraits when viewed from three different angles. Fraternity's tower carried portraits of Christ, Aquinas and George Pearson."

"Who was Pearson ... and Aquinas?" Arthur asked. "Aquinas was a philosopher on old Earth. Pearson was the man who negotiated for the purchase of God-Does-Battle." Kahn remembered the monumental arguments they had had. Pearson had appointed himself shepherd to all the Jews, Christians and Moslems on God-Does-Battle; at the time of Kahn's memorization in the block, Pearson had become a recluse living in the Asian Jewish city of Thule.

"Who can we see from this angle?" Arthur asked. Kahn turned and followed his gaze.

"That's Pearson," he said. "He's as responsible for this as I am, in his way."

Arthur felt briefly dizzy. It was more than just walking while craning his neck -- it was as if, for a second, he had indeed looked into a mirror too closely -- the mirror of God-Does-Battle's history, with a crumbled, monumental face staring back, eyes filled with moonlight, smiling benevolently.

They were less than a kilometer from the border, staying close to the road but not traveling on it, when they stumbled onto a camp. A man in brown canvas shorts and sleeveless shirt, wearing a broad-brimmed round hat, was giving instructions in a melodic tenor voice. Four others -- a woman about the same age, two adolescent boys -- and a young girl -- were loading the truck and taking down a large tent.

Arthur, Jeshua and Kahn watched from the cover of some brittle bushes.

"They're from Ibreem," Arthur whispered. "Sounds like their visitor's pass is running out, so they're going to cross the border tonight."

The man was talking about Resurrection.

"They act as if they live there," Arthur said. "I've heard about an enclave surrounded by the city. Maybe that's what he means."

"He sounds like he's a teacher," Jeshua said. "I recognize that tone."

"Wife and students?" Kahn asked.

"One's his son, I think," Arthur said. "Ibreemites have different ideas about polises than Founders. They try to live with them -- not interfere. They're a Syndine state."

"So?" Kahn asked.

"Maybe we can get a ride with them. Jeshua should hide the head -- we don't want to be too shocking. We could certainly fit on the back of the truck."

Kahn agreed. They stepped forward into the lantern light. The girl was startled and dropped her burden of metal tent poles with a clatter.

"Don't tell them everything all at once," Arthur said. "I still have my doubts about you -- so give it slowly, or not at all. We're just travelers, pilgrims."