The Secret City

by Brian K. Lowe

  But then, if I had not stumbled upon that time machine, I would not now be greeting my best friend. The fact that he was a talking gorilla was of no consequence.

  We fairly pummeled each other in our joy. Over the millennia, although the species survived, the legendary strength of the mountain gorilla had lessened, so that although Timash was a fearsome opponent to any man born in this day and age, to me, with my “prehistoric” physique, he was but a large man. A very strong large man, to be sure, but I believe he gave me no more bruises than I inflicted upon him.

  At last we broke off, laughing. Timash caught his breath first.

  “I’d ask what the hell you were doing here, but—what the hell are you doing here? Where have you been? It’s been twenty years!”

  “And it has seemed like a hundred,” I replied wearily. “Believe me, it was not my choice. I can tell you all about it later.” I shook my head, trying to get my thoughts back on track. This was no place for a prolonged conversation. “There is someone you should meet. In the skycar. Her name is Sanja Drusine, and—” I turned to see that Sanja had emerged from the car, followed by the Librarian. While he shimmered diffidently, she was already perspiring heavily. “And she has never been in the jungle before. We should get inside.”

  Timash cast a glance at the sky, and nodded. We all got back into the car, and he directed it into a rock cleft so cleverly fashioned that I almost doubted his ability and pulled him from the controls. All at once we were in Tehana City, his home, the City of the Apes.

  Of my return to the home of Timash and his mother, Doctor Chala, little need be said. Tehana City was built under a hollowed-out mountain, a refuge from the Nuum and their ban on technology, which the apes used freely. In return for security, they traded elbow room; families such as Timash’s generally shared quarters even after the children were grown and took mates, although Timash had yet to do so. Knowing his adventurous nature, I doubted many women could tame him, and apparently none had yet.

  Chala was as pleased to see me as her son, and when Timash’s Uncle Balu, whose stories of his own far-ranging exploits had so entertained me on my last visit, came running, the family reunion was complete—for no one had ever treated so much as their own flesh and blood, perhaps including even my own parents. The Librarian was also an old friend, and Sanja quickly discovered that she was in no way considered a stranger so long as she was with me. Given my unexpected imposition upon them, I could not but hold my impatience in check while they satisfied my curiosity concerning my absence, but for all that I loved these people and it did my heart great good to see them again, the process that felt interminable.

  At long last, Balu, whose wisdom had only grown while his fur began to silver, sat back and eyed me speculatively.

  “So, Keryl, what do you want to know?”

  Timash looked from his uncle to me, frowning. I acknowledged Balu’s point with a nod.

  “As I said, I have no idea why I have been brought back, or why I ended up in the desert, where I would have died in short order if not for Sanja. Although in all honesty, I would have died in short order if I landed anywhere the Nuum could find me, so perhaps it was all for the best.” All for the best, yes, but was it a coincidence? I filed that query away for later. “Nevertheless, I need to find Maire. And if I just walk up to her in the middle of Dure, Farren will have me arrested on the spot.”

  Timash sucked in his breath. “You heard about that, did you?”

  “We were able to get some current information through Thoran news sources, but that was all.”

  Timash sighed heavily. “All right, I guess I’ll start at the beginning. After you disappeared and they found Maire lying on the floor, everything went to hell. Farren had run away, the Council thought we were going to shoot them on the spot, and the Duke was almost dead. There were breen in the Council Hall, and poor Lottric, Maire’s cousin, didn’t know if maybe you were some kind of assassin after all. If Farren hadn’t run off, he could’ve walked back into the council chambers and probably taken over.”

  “But wait,” I said. “Did Maire not explain everything when she woke up?”

  “Well—yes and no. First, nobody knew what had happened to her, of course, and then they couldn’t wake her up. Whatever your Time Policeman used on her, it hit her hard. She was unconscious for hours. Then when she did wake up, she wasn’t much help. She’d been hit from behind, and she wasn’t terribly clear on your part of things, either. Later they figured out that there was an amnesiac effect from the weapon that was used, but right then she could barely remember who you were, let alone what you’d done right before she was shot.”

  The horror I took from his words threatened to make me physically ill. I had never forgotten for a moment Maire’s falling limp in my arms and the Time Policeman’s sincere, “I’m sorry,” before I, too, was struck down—but I had never suffered the memory lapse that she had. How long had it lasted—and how much had she forgotten? Even were I to find a way to reach her, would she remember me at all?

  Timash must have seen the anguish in my face, for he hurried to reassure me. “Eventually she remembered everything, or said she did. But it took days, and between that and the search for you—and believe me, she searched everywhere—the situation in the capitol was fluid, to put it mildly. Turns out Farren was hardly gone before the Council brought him back. Maire and her father fought that tooth and nail; they wanted him arrested for kidnapping the Duke and trying to murder Maire right there on the council chamber floor.

  “But the Council put politics over everything. And there was no evidence Farren had anything to do with the Duke’s kidnapping, so that was easy to overlook.”

  “But what about shooting Maire?” I asked. “I mean, yes, it was just a hologram, but he thought it was her.”

  Timash shrugged. “He said he knew it wasn’t her. He was aiming at you, and you were the one trying to overthrow the council. They bought his entire story, no surprise there. By the time he was done, they thought he hadn’t been running away, he’d been chasing you. And he got you, for all they knew. The datasphere reports said he was a hero.”

  “The victors write the history.” I sat back in my seat, deflated. “Then what happened?”

  “Unfortunately, the Duke had been badly treated while he was missing, and he wasn’t up to continuing. He tried to abdicate in Maire’s favor, but the Council overrode his choice. They said that after what Maire had done, they couldn’t trust her on her own any more.”

  I lurched forward again. “After what she had done? She was trying to save her father and keep Farren off the throne!”

  “Yes, but she’d gone about it the wrong way. If she’d gathered up her cousin and a few other Nuum, she could have challenged Farren’s claim and they would have had a hearing or something. But instead she stormed the Council Hall with an army that was half-Thoran. She gave Thorans weapons and set them loose on the Council. And that’s not even counting the breen. God’s sake, Keryl, I know it had to be done, but you have no idea what it meant to have a horde of those monsters in the middle of Dure. Half the city still has nightmares. I don’t think they trusted Farren, but they couldn’t trust Maire; the things she did—the things we did—were absolutely unthinkable. So they came up with this compromise of co-governors, which is a terrible system when the two people in charge don’t hate each other to death. As it is, the city barely functions since they can hardly agree to keep the power turned on. How they’ve both survived this long is beyond me.”

  “It’s probably because they hate each other so much,” Balu offered. “If either of them were to die, the Council would never leave the other there by himself.”

  I lowered my face into my hands. In all the years I had ached to be reunited with Maire, and in all the thousands of times I had tried to imagine what might have happened to her after I was taken back, I had never envisioned anything such as Timash described. Were I to change my name to Dante, I could write a new level of Hell.

 
“I have to see her.” I raised my head. “I have to see her, but not let Farren know.”

  All my friends could offer were sympathetic expressions.

  “You can’t contact her through the datasphere,” Balu said at last. “Even if you could use it, you couldn’t be sure your message wouldn’t be intercepted. I’m sure Farren monitors all of her communications.”

  “And I’m sure she does the same for him,” Chala said. She turned to her son. “How long has it been since you’ve seen her?”

  Timash calculated for a moment. “I talked to her a lot while we were all looking for Keryl, but that was years ago. I haven’t actually seen her in…ten years?”

  “Well then,” his mother said with finality. “It’s time you visited. You’re getting lazy sitting around here. It’ll do you good to get back into the world.”

  Timash and I both stared at her. Sanja’s gaze bordered on worshipful, and Balu simply looked amused. The Librarian’s expression did not change, but then, it hardly ever did.

  “I—I—I—” Timash stammered.

  “Yes, you, you, you,” Chala tutted. “Who else but you? Maire doesn’t know any of the rest of us, and Keryl can’t exactly walk up to her front door. You have to go to Dure and tell her what’s happened. Then you can arrange a place where she and Keryl can meet.”

  “Someplace well away from Dure,” Balu suggested. “If Farren does get wind of this, you don’t want to be too close to his base of operations.”

  My heart swelled with gratitude and hope. If Timash could bring Maire away on some pretext, we could be together again! Whatever her relationship with Farren, I would still march straight to the Council Hall and declare myself for Maire right there in front of all of them, but discretion was the better part of valor.

  Timash sighed and looked at his uncle. “You realize this is all your fault.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “You’re the one who used to tell me all those stories that made me want to go out and have these crazy adventures!”

  Chapter 10

  I Study Human Nature

  It was said that standing to the west of Crystalle and watching the sun rise could make a man weep. I called it Crystalle, although its inhabitants would have had different names, each corresponding to their own experience, but each equally valid when most communication was telepathic and the concept counted for more than the word. To every eye, however, it was the City of Crystal.

  And it was exceedingly beautiful.

  Poor Sanja was suffering shellshock from the unimagined sights she had witnessed since leaving her Zilbiri. While we were preparing for this voyage, she had spent hours monitoring the jungle, and more hours wandering outside of Tehana City when someone could spare the time to babysit her. The ocean had been a disappointing mystery, since we were passing far too high above it for her to make out much. And now, Crystalle, with its mile-high towers and undulating skyways of multi-faceted artificial crystals. It would have been as fitting, if less poetic, simply to call the city Rainbow.

  I had been staying in Crystalle, in a high-rise hotel suite suitable for a Nuum, for three days, waiting for Timash to return from Dure, hoping that Maire would be with him. I had intended to bide my time somewhere less public, a smaller town where I could more easily escape notice, but both Chala and Balu had pointed out that, travelling as a Nuum, I would draw more attention, not less, were I to act in a manner unbecoming to my station. A Nuum trying to hide himself was an object of curiosity; a Nuum spending his days in high luxury lived beyond the attentions of lowly Thorans, and would not occupy the interest of his self-centered fellows. On the other hand, Sanja, universally assumed to be a lordling’s plaything, was dismissed by the latter and mistrusted by the former.

  Regardless, Sanja had the run of the city, of which she availed herself from dawn until dusk, and, as she discovered the lures and thrills of city life, returning long after dark. I, on the other hand, perhaps operating out of an abundance of caution, kept to our rooms. I had once been the object of a worldwide search. Granted, it had been twenty years ago, but in this age, with information available to virtually anyone at the touch of a button and to Nuum at a thought, my face might trigger some alarm that I could not even envision. Safer, I believed, to stay out of sight.

  Or so I told myself. Any fear that Maire might appear while I was out, and finding me missing again simply abandon me, was irrational. Heavily weighing on my mind every waking moment, but irrational.

  I had the Librarian to talk to, but over the course of two decades, we had exhausted every conceivable topic of conversation—and when speaking of a branch library, that covers many topics. (I had once been the 20th century’s greatest living expert on a range of subjects that no one on Earth had ever heard of.) The Librarian was constantly monitoring available sources for valuable information, but he was limited by the same concerns as before. A Nuum might seek what information he liked on virtually any subject, but if he wished to scan current events, he would do so himself, via the datasphere, and not depend on mechanical intermediaries. And too many pointed inquiries might invite unwanted attention.

  And most importantly, a conversation on current events with the Librarian typically meant he was talking and I was listening. For that I could have used the radio.

  There was no radio, of course, but then I found that the in-room concierge computer was happy to activate and operate the suite’s entertainment system, and in a short time I found myself surprisingly engrossed in the mass media of the 997th century, where I made an astounding discovery.

  It was the same as I had left back home.

  Naturally, the technology was different: An entire half of the suite shimmered into being as a stage whereon phantoms paraded through an array of conversations, arguments, misunderstandings, and assorted histrionics, depending on the exact genre. As I watched, several themes made themselves apparent. First, all of the actors were Thoran; even the occasional Nuum character was a Thoran in elaborate dress, reminding me of Shakespearean times when female roles were played by men. Second, the shows were overwhelmingly what we would have called “soap operas.” Lovers and friends and enemies interacted in a dizzying ballet, but their cares and worries were always personal, and more often than not seemed overtly petty. Even when subjects of greater import surfaced, such as a crime, they were still familiar. Nearly one million years had passed and men still fought with their brothers, cheated on their wives, stole from their businesses.

  True, there were differences. Whenever an actor portraying a Nuum appeared, it invariably heralded an event of great import, usually the resolution of an intractable problem—intractable to mere Thorans, at any rate. Often the Nuum descended as a deus ex machina, dispensing small but vital pieces of advice and vanishing, leaving the Thorans in awe and ready to make amends.

  I had discussed the chasm that existed between the Nuum and their vassals late into many nights with the Librarian. After three centuries, most conquering cultures would have been absorbed into the governed society, resulting in a new and stronger people, but not in this instance. The Nuum had managed to keep themselves largely aloof from their Thoran subjects—although intermixing did occur; Maire herself was an example. Even the Librarian was at a loss to explain it, although in his defense, he had not been programmed with a deep understanding of sociology.

  This puzzle was rolling around in my head as I half-listened to yet another “Nuum” extol his own wisdom, proving it with simple advice that nonetheless laid his listeners prostrate with admiration—and then, instead of leaving, he went on speaking. Suddenly, my thoughts were derailed and my attention completely refocused.

  “Wait!” I looked at the Librarian. Apparently, my outburst had been construed as a command by the entertainment program, for it froze the soap opera in mid-sentence. “Did he just say something about the Nuum ‘returning’? Returning from where?”

  The Librarian turned a fraction of his awareness on me. “The Nuum believe that th
ey were accidentally abandoned on Thora and that someday their fellows will return to take them home.” There was a microscopic pause that I only noticed because of all the years we had spent in each other’s company. “I believe that it is as close as the Nuum come to having a state religion.”

  Religion was another of those topics that had occupied our long nights when I was at home in the 20th century; according to the Librarian’s descriptions, it had metamorphosed radically between my time and the earliest of his records, and he absorbed contemporary accounts avidly (as he did everything else he could ascertain about that dim, almost prehistoric era). But religion had especially fascinated him. I would have gladly taken up a discussion virtually guaranteed to refocus my mind from my constant anxiety of anticipation, had the door not chosen that moment to open and admit Timash, followed by a hooded figure who froze at the sight of me.

  I could hardly restrain myself from charging forward and tearing off the stranger’s hood when she pulled it back with one hand and I saw at last the sweet face that had never been out of my mind for the last two decades.

  Chapter 11

  United

  In my time it was considered unmanly to cry, but the tears sprang unbidden from my eyes and I made no effort to wipe them from my cheeks. For an eternal heartbeat we stood taking in each the other, wondering if what we had known so briefly and so long ago still flickered in our hearts, and then it roared back to blazing life and we were in each other’s arms and I silently vowed to my God in His Heaven that I would never again let anyone keep us apart.