Far Thoughts and Pale Gods

by Greg Bear

  “Please,” he begged. “Let me out, let me out!” Jeshua lifted his slumped shoulders and expanded his chest. “I’m afraid!” he shouted at the city. “I’m a sinner! You don’t want me, so let me go!”

  He squatted on the pavement with club in hand, trembling. The hatred of the cities for man had been deeply impressed upon him. His breathing slowed until he could think again, and the fear subsided. Why had the city let him in, even with Thinner? He stood and slung the club in his belt. There was an answer someplace. He had little to lose—at most, a life he wasn’t particularly enjoying.

  And in a city there was the possibility of healing arts now lost to the expolitans.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m staying. Do anything you want to me. I’m here, and I’m ready for the worst.”

  He walked across the mall and followed another corridor beyond. Empty rooms with hexagonal doors waited empty and silent on either side. In a broad nave he found a fountain of clear, cool water and drank his fill. Then he spent some time studying the jointing of the lower reaches of arches that supported the vault, running his fingers along the fine grooves. A small anteroom had a soft couch-like protrusion, and he rested there, staring blankly at the ceiling. For a short while he slept. When he awoke, both he and his clothes were clean. As well, a new outfit had been laid out for him—standard Ibreem khaki shirt and short pants with twine belt, more delicately woven than the one he was wearing. His club remained as well. He lifted it. It had been tampered with—and improved. It fitted his grip better now and was weighted to balance well.

  A table was set with dishes of fruit and what looked like milk and bread pudding. He had been accommodated in all ways, more than he deserved from any city. This almost gave him the courage to be bold. He took off his ragged clothes and tried on the new set. They fit admirably, and he felt less disreputable. His sandals had been stitched up but not replaced. They were comfortable, as always, but sturdier.

  “You’ve fixed my clothes. How can I fix myself here?” he asked the walls. No answer.

  Again, he drank from the fountain and moved on to explore further. The ground plan of Mandala’s lowest level was relatively simple. It consisted mostly of trade and commerce facilities, with spacious corridors for vehicle traffic, large warehouse areas, and dozens of conference rooms. Computing facilities were also provided. He knew a little about computers—the trade office in Bethel-Japhet still had an ancient pocket model taken from a city during the Exiling. Of course, it didn’t work. The access terminals in Mandala were larger and clumsier, but recognizable. He came across a room filled with them. Centuries of neglect had warped them into irregular shapes. He wondered what portions of them, if any, were alive or might still function.

  Most of the rooms on the lowest level maintained the sea-floor green motif. The uniformity added to Jeshua’s confusion, but after several hours of wandering, he found the clue that provided guidance. Though nothing existed in the way of written directions or graphic signs or maps, by keeping to the left he found he tended to the center; and to the right, the exterior. A Mandalan of ten centuries ago would have known the organization of each floor by education, and perhaps by portable guidebooks or signalers.

  Somewhere, he knew, there had to be a central elevator to the upper levels. He followed all left-turning hallways, avoiding obvious dead ends, and soon reached the base of a hollow shaft. The floor of the shaft was tiled with a circular pattern of greens and reds and blues, advancing and flowing beneath his feet like a cryptic chronometer. From the bottom, he craned his neck and looked up through the center of Mandala. High above he saw a bluish circle—the darkling daytime sky, showcasing a single star. Wind whistled down the shaft. No elevator. How would people reach the upper floors?

  Maybe the city didn’t care any more. It had rebuilt itself so many times its original design might have—

  Jeshua heard a faint hum. A speck blocked out part of the skylight and grew as it fell, spiraling like a dropped leaf. It had wings, a wide body for passengers, and an insect head, like the dragonfly buttresses that provided ventilation on Mandala’s exterior. Slowing its descent, it lifted its nose and came to a stop in front of him, still several feet above the floor. The transparent wings refracted the floor’s changing design. Then he saw that the design was coming to a conclusion, like an assembled puzzle. It formed a mosaic triskelion—a three-winged symbol outlined in red.

  The glider waited for him. In its open body there was room for at least five people. He chose the front seat. The glider trembled and moved forward. The insect-head tilted back, cocked sideways, and inspected its ascent. Metallic antennae emerged from the front of the body. A tingling filled the air.

  And he began to fly.

  The glider slowed at a considerable distance above the floor and came to a smooth stop at a gallery landing. Jeshua felt his heartbeat race as he looked over the black railing, down the thousand feet or so to the bottom of the shaft.

  “This way, please.”

  He turned, expecting to see Thinner again. Instead there waited a device like a walking coat-tree, with a simple vibration speaker mounted on its thin neck, a rod for a body, and three appendages jointed like a mantis’s front legs. He followed it.

  Transparent pipes overhead pumped bubbling fluids like exposed arteries. He wondered whether dissenting citizens in the past could have severed a city’s lifelines by cutting such pipes—or were these mere ornaments, symbolic of deeper activities? The coat-tree clicked along in front of him, then stopped at a closed hexagonal door and tapped its round head on a metal plate. The door opened.

  “In here.”

  Jeshua entered. Arranged in racks and rows in endless aisles throughout the huge room were thousands of constructions like Thinner. Some were incomplete, with their machinery and sealed-off organic connections hanging loose from trunks, handless arms, headless necks. Some had gaping slashes, broken limbs, squashed torsos. The coat-tree hurried off before he could speak, and the door closed behind.

  He was beyond anything but the most rudimentary anxiety now. He walked down the central aisle, unable to decide whether this was a workshop or a charnel house. If Thinner was here, it might take hours to find him.

  He stared straight ahead and stopped, seeing someone not on the racks. At the far end of the room, a figure stood alone, too distant to be made out in detail. Jeshua waited, but the figure did not move. Stalemate.

  So he decided to take the first step. The figure darted to one side like a deer. He automatically ran after it, but by the time he’d reached the end of the aisle, it was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hide and seek,” he murmured. “For God’s sake, hide and seek.”

  He rubbed his groin abstractedly, trying to still the flood of excitement rushing into his stomach and chest. His fantasies multiplied, and he bent over double, grunting. He forced himself to straighten, held out his arms, and concentrated on something distracting.

  Then he found a head that looked very much like Thinner’s, wired to a board behind the rack. Fluids pulsed up tubes into its neck. The eyes were open but glazed, and the flesh was ghostly. Jeshua reached out to touch it. It was cold, lifeless. He examined other bodies more closely. Most were naked, complete in every detail. He hesitated, then reached down to touch the genitals of a male. The flesh was soft and flaccid. He shuddered. His fingers, as if working on their own, went to the pubic mound of a female figure. He grimaced and straightened, rubbing his hand on his pants with automatic distaste. A tremor jerked up his back.

  He was spooked now, having touched the lifeless forms, feeling what seemed dead flesh. What were they doing here? Why was Mandala manufacturing thousands of surrogates? He peered around the racks of bodies, this way and behind, and saw open doors far beyond. Perhaps the girl—it must have been the girl—had gone into one of those.

  He walked past the rows. The air smelled like cut grass and broken reed stems, with sap leaking. Now and then it smelled like freshly slaughtered meat, or like oil and
metal.

  Something made a noise. He stopped. One of the racks. He walked slowly down one aisle, seeing nothing but stillness, hearing only the pumping of fluids in thin pipes and the clicks of small valves. Perhaps the girl was pretending to be a cyborg. He mouthed the word over again. Cyborg. He knew it from his schooling. The cities themselves were cybernetic organisms.

  Then he heard rapid footsteps, the staccato slap of bare feet on the floor—someone running away from him. He paced evenly past the rows, looking down each aisle, nothing, nothing, stillness, there!

  The girl was at the opposite end, laughing at him. An arm waved. Then she vanished.

  He decided it was wise not to chase anyone who knew the city better than he did. Best to let her come to him. He left the room through an open door.

  A gallery outside adjoined a smaller shaft. This one was red and only fifty or sixty feet in diameter. Rectangular doors opened off the galleries, closed but unlocked. He tested the three doors on his level, opening them one at a time with a push. Each room held much the same thing—a closet filled with dust, rotting and collapsed furniture, emptiness and the smell of old tombs. Dust drifted into his nostrils and he sneezed. Rubbing his nose, he walked slowly back to the gallery and the hexagonal door.

  Looking down, he swayed and felt sweat start. The view was dizzying and claustrophobic.

  A voice echoed down from above. It was feminine, sweet, and young, singing a song in words he did not completely catch. They resembled Thinner’s chaser dialect, but echoes broke the meaning. He leaned out over the railing as far as he dared and looked up. Definitely the girl—five, six, seven levels up. The voice sounded almost childish.

  Some of the words reached him clearly with a puff of direct breeze: “Dis em, in solit lib, dis em … Clo’ed in clo’es ob dead …”

  The red shaft vanished to a point without skylight. He shaded his eyes against the city’s internal brightness o see more clearly.

  The girl backed away from the railing and stopped singing.

  He knew he was being teased and that by rights he should be angry. But he wasn’t. Instead he felt a loneliness too sharp to sustain. He turned from the shaft and looked back at the door to the room of cyborgs.

  Thinner stared back at him, grinning crookedly. “Didn’t have chance to welcome,” he said in Hebrew. His head was mounted on a metal snake two feet long. His body was a green car with three wheels, a yard long and half a yard wide. The whole arrangement rolled silently on soft tires. “Have any difficulty?”

  Jeshua looked him over slowly, then grinned. “It doesn’t suit you,” he said. “Are you the same Thinner?”

  “Doesn’t matter, but yes, to make you comfortable.”

  “If it doesn’t matter, then who am I talking to? The city computers?”

  “No, no. They can’t talk. Too concerned with maintaining. You’re talking with what’s left of the architect.”

  Jeshua nodded slowly, though he didn’t understand.

  “It’s a bit complicated,” Thinner said. “Go into it with you later. You saw the girl, and she ran away from you.”

  “I must be pretty frightening. How long has she been here?”

  “A year.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Don’t know for sure. Have you eaten dinner?”

  “No. How did she get in?”

  “Not out of innocence, if that’s what you’re thinking. She was al­ready married before she came here. The chasers encourage marriage early.”

  “Then I’m not here out of innocence, either.”

  “No.”

  “You never saw me naked,” Jeshua said. “How did you know what was wrong with me?”

  “I’m not limited to human senses, though El knows what I do have are bad enough. Follow me, and I’ll find suitable quarters for you.”

  “I may not want to stay.”

  “As I understand it, you’ve come here to be made whole. That can be done, and I can arrange it. But patience is always a virtue.”

  Jeshua nodded at the familiar homily. “She speaks chaser English. Is that why you were with the chasers, to find a companion for her?”

  The Thinner-vehicle turned away from Jeshua. It rolled through the cyborg chamber, and Jeshua followed. “It would be best if someone she was familiar with would come to join her, but none could be persuaded.”

  “Why did she come?”

  Thinner was silent again. They took a spiral moving walkway around the central shaft, going higher. “This is the slow, scenic route,” Thinner said, “but you’ll have to get used to the city and its scale.”

  “How long am I going to stay?”

  “As long as you want.”

  They disembarked from the walkway and took one of the access halls to an apartment block on the outer wall of the city. The construction here seemed more recent and the colors more coordinated. The bulkheads and doors were opaque and brightly colored in blue, burnt orange, and purple. The total effect reminded Jeshua of a dreamy sunset. A long balcony in the outer wall gave a spectacular view of Arat and the plains, but Thinner allowed him no time to sightsee. He escorted Jeshua into a large apartment and made him familiar with the layout.

  “It’s been cleaned up and provided with furniture you should be used to. You can trade it in for somewhere else whenever you want, but you’ll have to wait until you’ve been seen to by the medical units. You’ve been scheduled for work in this apartment.” Thinner showed him a white-tile and stainless-steel kitchen, with food dispensers and basic utensils. “Food can be made or ordered here. There’s enough in the cabinets and freezer to customize whatever comes out of the dispensers. Sanitary units are in here and should explain themselves—”

  “They talk?”

  “No. I mean their use should be self-evident. Very few things talk in the city.”

  “We were told the cities were commanded by voice.”

  “Not by most of the citizens. The city itself doesn’t talk back. Only certain units, none like myself—there were no cyborgs when humans lived here. That’s a later development. I’ll explain in time. I’m sure you’re more used to books and scrolls than tapes or tridvee experiences, so I’ve left some offprints for you on these shelves. Over here—”

  “Seems I’m going to be here for a long time.”

  “Don’t be worried by the accommodations. This may be fancy by your standards, but it certainly isn’t by Mandala’s. These units were designed for citizens with an ascetic temper. If there’s anything you want to know when I’m not here, ask the information desk. It’s hooked to the same source I am.”

  “I’ve heard of the city libraries. Are you part of them?”

  “No. I’ve told you, I’m part of the architect. Avoid library outlets for the moment. In fact, for the next few days, don’t wander too far. Too much too soon, and all that. Ask the desk, and it will give you safe limits. Remember, you’re more helpless than a child here. Mandala is not out-and-out dangerous, but it can be disturbing.”

  “What do I do if the girl visits me?”

  “You anticipate that?”

  “She was singing to me, I think. But she didn’t want to show herself directly. She must be lonely.”

  “She is.” Thinner’s voice carried more than a tone of crisp efficiency. “She’s been asking a lot of questions about you, and she’s been told the truth. But she’s lived without company for a long time, so don’t expect anything soon.”

  “I’m confused,” Jeshua said.

  “In your case, that’s a healthy state of mind. Relax for a while; don’t let unknowns bother you.”

  Thinner finished explaining the apartment and left. Jeshua went through the outer door to stand on the terrace beyond the walkway. Light from God-Does-Battle’s synchronous artificial moons made the snows of Arat gleam like dull steel in the distance. Jeshua regarded the moons with an understanding he’d never had before. Humans had brought them from the orbit of another world, to grace God-Does-Battle’s nights.
The thought was staggering. A thousand years ago, people used to live on the moons. What happened to them when the cities exiled their citizens?

  Had the lunar cities done the same thing as the cities of God-Does-Battle?

  He went to his knees for a moment, feeling ashamed and primitive, and prayed to El for guidance. He was not convinced his confusion was so healthy.

  He ate a meal that came as close as amateur instructions could make it to the simple fare of Bethel-Japhet. He then examined his bed, stripped away the covers—the room was warm enough—and slept.

  Once, long ago, if his earliest childhood memories were accurate, he had been taken from Bethel-Japhet to a communion in the hills of Kebal. That had been years before the Synedrium had stiffened the separation laws between Catholic and Habiru rituals. Jeshua’s father and most of his acquaintances had been Habiru and spoke Hebrew. But prominent members of the community, such as Sam Daniel, had by long family tradition worshipped Jesus as more than a prophet, according to established creeds grouped under the title of Catholicism. His father had never resented the Catholics for their ideas.

  At that communion, not only had Habiru and Catholic worshipped, but also the now-separate Muslims and a few diverse creeds best left forgotten. Those had been difficult times, perhaps as hard as the times just after the Exiling. Jeshua remembered listening to the talk between his father and a group of Catholics—relaxed, informal talk, without the stiffness of ceremony that had grown up since. His father had mentioned that his young son’s name was Jeshua, which was a form of Jesus, and the Catholics had clustered around him like fathers all, commenting on his fine form as a six-year-old and his size and evident strength.

  “Will you make him a carpenter?” they asked jokingly.

  “He will be a cain,” his father answered.

  They frowned, puzzled.

  “A maker of tools.”

  “It was the making of tools that brought us to the Exiling,” Sam Daniel said.

  “Aye, and raised us from beasts,” his father countered.

  Jeshua remembered the talk that followed in some detail. It had stuck with him and determined much of his outlook as an adult, after the death of his father in a mining accident.