The city consisted of three massive structures built on ascending terraces. Each building had a rectangular base, as white as a block of sugar, with thirty-three floors of windows. Golden towers rose from the roof of each base. Some were simple cylindrical shapes, but there were also domes, minarets and an elaborate pagoda. Gabriel wondered if he was looking at a fort or a school or a massive apartment building where each black-framed window had a view of the plateau. From a distance, the white buildings supporting the towers reminded him of three enormous birthday cakes with fanciful decorations on top.
Neither armed guards nor barking dogs gave a warning as he hurried up a short staircase to the first terrace-an open space of packed gravel. Gabriel stopped halfway across the terrace and gazed up, expecting a face to appear in one of the windows. It was almost painfully bright, and all the shadows had sharp edges. There was nothing welcoming about the golden city; it was more of a monument than a residence. At first, he couldn’t find a way in, and then he noticed an entrance at the far right corner of the building. The door was made of a greenish metal that resembled tarnished copper. An elaborate metal lotus was placed at the center. When Gabriel pushed this ornament, the door swung open. He waited a few seconds, then stepped inside, expecting to find something magical-perhaps a serpent twined around an altar or an angel in white robes.
“I’m here,” he said. But no one answered him.
He was standing in an empty room with white walls and bars on the windows. The bars created little boxes of hazy light on the floor. A second door was set in the wall left of the entrance. Gabriel pushed it open and found himself in an identical room.
So where were the gods? As he glanced out the window at the courtyard, he heard the door shut behind him. Moving slowly, he passed through a row of empty rooms until he reached the other side of the building. The silence was starting to bother him. He had never been in a space that felt so empty.
A staircase led him upward into an identical room with another doorway.
“Hello!” he shouted. “Anyone here?” When no one answered, he lost his temper and marched forward, slamming each door behind him. Floor after floor, he climbed upward, but there were no room numbers to announce how far he had gone. At a certain point, he entered a room and found a white cube supporting a model of a palm tree made out of bits of colored metal.
The next few floors displayed more artificial plants. Gabriel found daisies and oak trees and sea kelp, but there were also plants he had never seen before. Had the gods created these objects? Was he supposed to offer prayers, or was this building simply an enormous museum? A few floors higher, the plants vanished and models of animals appeared. Fish. Birds. Lizards. And then the mammals. There was a room devoted to foxes and another filled with cats. Finally, a spiral staircase led him out of the building, and he stood among the gold towers.
Perhaps the gods were watching him, testing him in some way. Gabriel crossed the terrace and entered the second building. The rooms were exactly the same, but there were models of tools and machinery. He inspected one room full of hammers and another that displayed lamps. There was a room dedicated to different kinds of steam engines next to one filled with antique radios. Gabriel was getting tired, but there was no quick way out. He climbed staircase after staircase until he reached the second terrace.
From the outside, the third and final building resembled the previous two structures. But when he pulled open the entrance door, he found five staircases that led off in different directions. Gabriel took the middle staircase and immediately got lost in a succession of intersecting hallways. There were no models of the natural or mechanical world in this structure-only a great many mirrors. He saw his bewildered faced in convex mirrors, pocket-seized mirrors and tarnished mirrors held in antique frames.
The sun was directly above the mountains when he finally emerged from this maze and stepped out onto the third terrace. Wandering through the towers, he found shards of broken mirrors and then a spot between two towers where someone had used mirrors to build something that resembled a solar oven. Would gods make something like this? Gabriel assumed they could just wave their hands and objects would appear.
Cautiously, he passed between the towers to an open section of the terrace. Fifty yards away from him, a man was sitting cross-legged on a bench. Like a stone idol, the figure waited for Gabriel to approach him. He looked smaller than Gabriel had remembered and his hair was much longer-almost touching his shoulders.
“Father?”
Matthew Corrigan stood up and smiled. “Hello, Gabriel. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“That could have been a long wait. I almost died a few hours ago.”
“Hope grows from faith. I always believed that you and Michael would find your way here.”
His father’s certainty, his calmness, was infuriating. “Is that why you disappeared?” Gabriel asked. “So you could live in this empty place?”
“After those men burned down our house, I hid among the trees near the top of the hill. When the three of you came out of the cellar, I made the decision to leave. I knew you would be safer without me around.”
“Mom was never the same after the fire. It destroyed her life.”
“When I married your mother, I didn’t know that I was a Traveler. All that came later. The Tabula found out and put me on their death list.”
“So where did you go after the fire? Were you hiding out in this world while we wandered around like bunch of homeless people?”
“I was teaching others. I tried to show them a different way.”
“Yeah, I know all about that. Remember the New Harmony group in Arizona? The Tabula executed everyone living there. They destroyed the entire community-the men, women and children you ‘inspired’ to change their lives.”
Matthew bent slightly forward as if taking the pain and sadness into his body. “What a terrible crime. I’ll pray for all of them.”
“Prayers can’t change what happened. Those people are dead because of your ideas. And you want to know something else? Michael became a Traveler, but he went over to the other side. Now he’s running the Evergreen Foundation.”
Matthew stood up, walked to the edge of terrace and gazed out at the mountains. “Your brother was always angry. He wanted to be just like everyone else, but that wasn’t possible.”
“Michael is going to turn the world into an enormous prison. And I’m the only one who can stop him. Was that part of your plan? Did you know we’d be on opposite sides?”
“I can’t predict the future, Gabriel.”
“People are risking their lives because I’m a Traveler and they think I have an answer. Well, I don’t have an answer. I wake up at night and wonder if I’m just going to create another New Harmony for the Tabula to destroy.”
“Hatred and anger are like two men standing in the street and shouting for revenge. Sometimes, it’s difficult to hear the softer voices.”
“I know all about hatred and anger. I’ve been to the dark city. In fact, I’ve met the crazy museum director who is still waiting for your return. But that’s your style, isn’t it? You never stay long, not even for your own family. Just one short visit and then you’re hiding in some distant world.”
“The realms aren’t distant, Gabriel. They’re parallel to our lives. A student sits in a classroom. An old woman cuts a slice of bread. They think they’re light years from a different reality, but those new worlds are right there if they could only reach through the barriers.”
“Most people don’t want to cross over. They’re more concerned with the problems they’re facing right now. The Vast Machine is becoming more powerful, more pervasive. A few individuals realize they’re about to lose their freedom, and they’re joining the Resistance. If I make a mistake or say the wrong thing, they’re going to get hurt.”
“That’s possible. We can’t control the future.”
“What about the gods? This is the golden city. Aren’t they supposed to appear and tell
us what to do?”
“When I first came here, I searched for them. I explored the mountains and the canyons. I tapped my knuckles on these towers, searching for passageways and secret rooms. There’s nothing hidden here, Gabriel. The Light that created the universe endures forever, but the gods have vanished.”
“What happened?”
“They left no message, no explanation. I’ve come up with my own theory. Their disappearance is an opportunity.”
“So no one’s here?”
“If the gods have left the stage, then it’s just the two of us.” Matthew stepped toward his son. “So who are you, Gabriel? And what kind of world do you want to live in? I’m not going to tell you what to believe. All I can do is guide you forward, and make sure you don’t turn away from your own vision.”
29
Lying on the bed in Hollis Wilson’s rented room in Camden Town, Maya nibbled on tea biscuits and stared up at the crack in the ceiling. Like a mechanic checking a race car, she stretched her body and evaluated its current strengths and weaknesses.
She had grown up seeing ads of pregnant women advertising everything from vitamins to bank loans. Once she had spent a rainy afternoon at the National Gallery contemplating Renaissance paintings of the pregnant Virgin Mary. Now she realized that both the painters and the magazine photographers had it all wrong; she certainly didn’t feel like standing around with her hands on her belly and a mysterious smile on her face. Her fatigue had disappeared and her leg wound had finally started to heal. She felt strong, aggressive, ready for battle.
Her mobile rang and she picked it up off the floor. “Good morning,” Simon Lumbroso said. “Remember the package we lost at Euston Station?”
“Is there any new information?”
“Apparently our young friends have tracked it down. They want to hold a sales conference at their business office. Is twelve noon a good time for you?”
“I’ll be there,” Maya said, and switched off the phone.
The “young friends” Simon had mentioned were Jugger and the other Free Runners. The “business office” was their apartment in Cheswick and Alice Chen was the “lost package.” Maya wondered if Alice was still alive. Killing a child in a public place would have drawn attention from both the London police and the media; it was a better idea to take Alice off the train. The Tabula could question her-and execute her-in a secret location.
As Maya got dressed and ate a bowl of cold cereal, she wondered how to present the problem to Linden. Her thoughts weren’t focused that morning, and her mind wandered in painful directions. The fact that the Tabula had captured the little girl reminded Maya of her own captivity in the First Realm. She could see the gas flares wavering back and forth, the wolves with their clubs and spears, and Pickering ’s body swinging from a rope. Can the baby feel that? she wondered. Are all these memories trapped within my body?
Linden didn’t care about anything unless it directly involved the Traveler. She knew what the Harlequin would say when she mentioned Alice Chen: the child was dead-or not important. It was logical to forget about this person and move on.
But Gabriel had shown her a different way to look at reality. What was supposed to be logical was not always what was fair, right or inevitable. Fighting the Tabula was not particularly logical, and yet people all over the world were joining the Resistance. And what about this child growing within her? Was there anything logical about bringing a new life into this chaotic world? She shouldn’t keep it, wouldn’t keep it, absolutely can’t keep it. But yes, she thought. Yes. I’m going to do it anyway.
With the sword case hanging from her shoulder, she strolled over to the drum shop in Camden Market. Her first objective was to get Linden ’s permission. That wasn’t going to be easy.
The French Harlequin was sitting in the kitchen of the secret apartment when she came through the door. The room smelled of spilled wine and the sugary odor of the French Harlequin’s handmade cigarettes.
“How is the Traveler?”
“No change.”
“I’ll check on the body.”
Maya walked to the room where Gabriel’s body lay on a narrow bed. She closed the door so that Linden wouldn’t surprise her and then touched Gabriel’s face with the palm of her hand. “I’m pregnant,” she whispered. “What do you think of that?”
The Light had left his body, and Maya knew Gabriel couldn’t hear her. She leaned forward, kissed his forehead, and then returned to the kitchen. “Still alive,” she told Linden. Her voice was calm and matter-of-fact, as if they were talking about an article in the newspaper.
Linden got up from the table and turned on the gas burner. “Coffee?”
“Yes.” Maya took the sword carrier off her shoulder and hung it on the back of her chair. “I got a call from Simon this morning. The Free Runners know where the Tabula took Alice Chen.”
“I’m sure that she’s already dead.”
“We don’t know that.”
“It’s the logical conclusion.”
“I think we need to consider every possibility.”
Linden opened up a tin and began scooping out teaspoons of ground coffee. “If she’s dead, there’s nothing to be done. If she’s alive, we’re not going to waste our resources finding her.”
“When I was growing up, my father lectured me about the tensions between Travelers and Harlequins. They don’t like us. Not really.”
“I do not give a damn what they think,” Linden said. “Soldiers go to war even though they may disagree with certain political parties within their country. We Harlequins defend a difficult group of people. But we have accepted that obligation.”
“If we do nothing to help Alice and she dies, Gabriel will walk away from our protection. You know him, Linden. You know that’s true. If we don’t save the child, we lose the Traveler.”
The kettle started whistling and Linden poured boiling water into a French press. He waited a minute, then pushed the plunger down. “You might be right.”
“I’ll handle the problem,” Maya said, and tried not to smile.
Linden gave her a cup filled with a coffee so thick that it reminded her of chocolate cake frosting. Maya resisted the temptation to add sugar and took a sip of the black sludge.
“Too strong?” Linden asked.
“Just right.”
***
She left Camden Market, waved down a taxi, and told the driver to take her to suburban Chiswick. During the journey, she counted every surveillance camera the taxi passed on the street. Some of them simply recorded images, but others used sophisticated face-scanning programs. A few of the citizens noticed there were more cameras-yes, they just put up that new one in the square-but the walls of the new prison were invisible. In Britain, the plan to centralize all databases was called Transformational Government, an innocuous phrase that implied that this sort of change was both positive and necessary. These changes were being made For Your Protection, For Efficiency and Modernization. They were Styrofoam words-light and unsubstantial, packing materials to blunt the sharp edges.
When the taxi reached Chiswick, she got out near a school, and then walked three blocks to a street lined with tidy row houses. There was a faded Harlequin lute chalked on the pavement in front of the second house from the corner. The Free Runners had been living in the ground floor flat for the last few months.
Simon Lumbroso had already arrived and was sitting gingerly on a saggy couch in the living room. He seemed out-of-place amidst the cast-off furniture and the rubbish bins overflowing with crushed beer cans and fast-food cartons.
The only neat and organized area was a long work table with three monitors attached to a homemade computer. One monitor showed cars driving past the entrance to Wellspring Manor-the country estate owned by the Brethren. Another showed the entrance to the Evergreen Foundation office building near Ludgate Circus. The third was the main page of a secret website set up by the Polish Free Runners; their Internet team had accessed the security cameras
near other properties owned by the Foundation. Six small boxes on the monitor displayed street scenes in four different countries.
Roland, the quiet young man from Yorkshire, sat at the table answering email while Jugger bustled about the room. His appearance hadn’t changed since joining the Resistance; his T-shirt was too small and revealed a patch of his flabby stomach.
“Tea?” he asked everyone. “How about a nice cup of tea?”
“Not right now.” Maya sat down on the couch. “Tell me what you’ve learned about Alice Chen.”
“Yesterday afternoon, I talked to the nun who was traveling with Alice,” Simon said. “Apparently, a man and a woman got on the train at Crewe and entered the compartment. They injected the nun with a powerful sedative right before they arrived in London The man wore a tweed suit and had a Welsh accent. They were carrying a large rolling suitcase.”
Jugger scratched his stomach. “After Simon gave us that description, we searched through the images taken by one of the City of London traffic cameras near the Evergreen Foundation office. Go ahead, Roland. Show Maya what we found.”
Black and white images appeared on the screen along with a time stamp at the bottom right hand corner. The city-owned camera took a photograph every five seconds, but most the images only showed the street and the entrance to the Foundation building. As Roland searched through the images, Maya noticed that several of the foundation employees had been tagged with nicknames and other information. “Susie Secretary arrives at 8:20hrs. Friends with Mr. Bald Head.”
“This is the feed two days ago when the little girl was kidnapped,” Roland said. “I remember these people because of their suitcase.”
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