The City of Mirrors

by Justin Cronin

  Everyone gathered at the Nautilus. Lore and Rand operated the winch that hoisted Alicia, still strapped to her stretcher, to the cockpit. Michael and Peter carried her down to the boat’s small cabin, then descended the ladder to join the others: Caleb and his family; Sara and Hollis; Greer, who had rebounded well enough from the crash to join them on deck, though his head was bandaged and he stood unsteadily, one hand braced against the hull of the Nautilus. Everywhere on the ship, people were watching; the story had spread. It was 0830 hours.

  The final goodbyes: no one knew where to start. It was Amy who broke the stalemate. She embraced Lucius, the two of them exchanging quiet words that no one else could hear, then Sara and then Hollis, who, of everyone, more so even than Sara, seemed undone by the weight of it all, hugging Amy tightly against his chest.

  But, of course, Sara was steeling herself. Her composure was a ruse. She would not go to Michael; she simply could not bear to. Finally, as the various farewells proceeded around them, it was he who went to her.

  “Oh, damn you, Michael,” she said miserably. “Why are you always doing this to me?”

  “I guess it’s my talent.”

  She wrapped her arms around him. Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes. “I lied to you, Michael. I never gave you up. Not for a day.”

  They parted; Michael turned to Lore. “I guess this is it.”

  “You always knew that you wouldn’t be going, didn’t you.”

  Michael didn’t answer.

  “Oh, hell,” Lore said. “I guess I kind of knew it, too.”

  “Take care of my ship,” Michael said. “I’m counting on you.”

  Lore took his cheeks in her hands and kissed him, long and tenderly. “Stay safe, Michael.”

  He climbed aboard the Nautilus. At the base of the ladder, Peter shook Greer’s hand, then Hollis’s; he hugged Sara long and hard. He had already said goodbye to Pim and the children. His son would be the last. Caleb was standing to the side. His eyes were tight, withholding tears; he would not cry. Peter felt, suddenly, as if he were marching to his death. Likewise was he struck, as never before, by a sense of pride. This strong man before him. Caleb. His son, his boy. Peter pulled him into a firm embrace. He would not hold on long; if he did, he might not let go. It’s children, he thought, that give us our lives; without them we are nothing, we are here and then gone, like the dust. A few seconds, recording all he could, and he stepped back.

  “I love you, son. You make me very proud.”

  He climbed the ladder to join the others on the deck. Rand and Lore began to crank the winch. The Nautilus rose from her cradle and swung over the side. With a soft splash, the boat settled into the water.

  “Okay, hold us there!” Michael called up.

  They used their knives to cut the net. It passed beneath their stern, half-floating, then was dragged under the surface by its weight. Peter and Amy attached the guy wires while Michael set the lines that would pull the mast erect. They had begun to drift away from the Bergensfjord. When everything was ready, Michael commenced turning the winch. The mast rose into position; he locked it in place and unstrapped the sail from the boom. The distance to the Bergensfjord had increased to fifty yards. The air was warming, with a gentle breeze. The great ship’s engines had come on. A new sound emerged, one of chains. Beneath the Bergensfjord’s bow, the anchor appeared, water streaming as it ascended. The ship’s rail was lined with faces; people were watching them. Some began to wave.

  “Okay, we’re ready,” Michael said.

  They raised the mainsail. It flapped emptily, but then Michael pulled the tiller to one side and the bow veered slowly off the wind. With a pop, the canvas filled.

  “We’ll raise the jib once we’re clear,” said Michael.

  Their velocity was, to Peter, quite startling. The boat, heeling slightly, possessed a stable feel, the point of its bow slicing cleanly through the water. The Bergensfjord receded behind them. The sky seemed infinitely deep.

  It happened gradually, then all at once: they were alone.

  79

  Log of the Nautilus

  Day 4. 27.95N, 83.99W. Wind SSE 10–15, gusts to 20. Skies clear, seas running 3–4 feet.

  After three days of light air, we are finally making decent headway, running at 6–8 knots. I expect we will reach Florida’s west coast by nightfall, just north of Tampa. Peter seems to be finally getting his sea legs. After three days vomiting over the side, he announced today that he was hungry. From Lish, not very much; she sleeps most of the time and has said virtually nothing. Everyone is worried about her.

  Day 6: 26.15N, 79.43W. Wind SSE 5–10, shifting. Partly cloudy. Seas running 1–2 feet.

  We have rounded the Florida peninsula and turned north. From here we will leave the coast behind and make a straight shot for the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Heavy clouds all night but no rain. Lish is still very weak. Amy finally talked her into eating, and Peter and I drew straws. He was the winner, though I guess it depends on how you look at it. I was a little nervous about Sara’s instructions and I’m no good with needles, so Amy took over. One pint. We’ll see if it helps.

  Day 9: 31.87N, 75.25W. Winds SSE 15–20, gusts to 30. Skies clear. Seas running 5–7 feet.

  A horrible night. The storm hit just before sunset—huge seas, high winds, driving rain. Everyone was up all night working the bailers. Blown way off course, and the self-steerer is shot. We’ve taken on water, but the hull seems tight. Running reefed in heavy air, no jib.

  Day 12: 36.75N, 74.33W. Winds NNE 5–10. Patchy clouds. Seas running 2–3 feet.

  We have decided to head west for the coast. Everyone is exhausted and needs to rest. On the bright side, Lish seems to have turned a corner. Her back is the issue; she’s still in a lot of pain and can barely bend at all. My turn with the needle. Lish seemed to have a little fun with that. “Oh, buck up, Circuit,” she said. “A girl’s got to eat. Maybe your blood will make me smarter.”

  Day 13: 36.97N, 76.27W. Winds NNE 3–5. Seas running 1–2 feet.

  Lying at anchor at the mouth of the James River. Fantastic wreckage everywhere—huge naval vessels, tankers, even a submarine. Lish’s mood has improved. At sunset she asked us to bring her up on deck.

  A beautiful starlit night.

  Day 15: 38.03N, 74.50W. Winds light and variable. Seas 2–3 feet.

  Under way again with fair winds. Running at 6 knots. Everyone feels it—we are getting closer.

  Day 17: 39.63N, 75.52W. Winds SSE 5–10. Seas 3–5 feet.

  Tomorrow we reach New York.

  80

  The four of them sat in the cockpit in the gathering dusk. They were lying at anchor; off the port bow, a long sandy line. The southern edge of Staten Island, once populated by a dense humanity, now exposed, swept clean, a wilderness.

  “So, we’re all in agreement?” Peter said, scanning the group. “Michael?”

  Seated by the tiller, he was fingering a pocketknife, opening and closing the blade. His face had been crisped by salt and wind; through his beard, the color of sand, his teeth shone white. “I told you before. If you say that’s the plan, then that’s the plan.”

  Peter turned to Alicia. “Last chance to weigh in here.”

  “Even if I said no, you wouldn’t listen.”

  “I’m sorry, that’s not good enough.”

  She looked at him guardedly. “He’s not going to just surrender, you know. ‘I’m sorry, I guess I was wrong after all.’ Not really the man’s style.”

  “That’s why I need you in the tunnel with Michael.”

  “I belong in the station with you.”

  Peter looked at her pointedly. “You can’t kill him—you said so yourself. You can barely walk. I know you’re angry and you don’t want to hear this. But you need to put your feelings aside and leave that part to me and Amy. You’d only slow us down, and I need you to protect Michael. Fanning’s virals won’t attack you. You can give him cover.”

  Peter could see t
hat his words had stung. Alicia glanced away, then back, her eyes narrowed with warning. “You realize that he knows we’re coming. I seriously doubt any of this has escaped his attention. Waltzing into the station plays straight into his hands.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “And if this doesn’t work?”

  “Then we all die and Fanning wins. I’m willing to hear a better idea. You’re the expert on the man. Tell me I’m wrong and I’ll listen.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I know it’s not.”

  A brief silence passed. Alicia sighed in surrender. “Fine, I can’t. You win.”

  Peter looked toward Amy. After two weeks at sea, her hair had grown out somewhat, softening her features while also making them seem clearer somehow, sturdier and more defined. “I think it all depends on what Fanning wants,” she said.

  “From you, you mean.”

  “Maybe he just intends to kill me, and if so, there’s not a lot to stop him. But he’s gone to a lot of trouble to get me here if that’s all he has in mind.”

  “What do you think he wants?”

  The light was nearly gone; from the shore, the long shushing of waves.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I agree with Lish, though. The man has something to prove. Beyond that …” She trailed off, then continued: “The important thing is to make sure he’s in that station. Get him there and keep him there. We shouldn’t wait for Michael. We need to be there when the water hits. That’s our moment.”

  “So you agree to with the plan.”

  She nodded. “Yes. I think it’s our best chance.”

  “Let’s look at that drawing.”

  Alicia had sketched a simple map: streets and buildings, but also what lay beneath them and points of access. To this she added verbal descriptions: how things looked and felt, certain landmarks, places where their passage would be obstructed by forest growth or collapsed structures, the sea’s margins where it lapped over the southern tier of the island.

  “Tell me about the streets around the station,” Peter said. “How much shade is there for the virals to move in?”

  Alicia thought for a moment. “Well, a lot. Midday you’d get more sun, but the buildings are all very tall. I’m talking sixty, seventy stories. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen in your life, and it can get pretty dark at street level any time of day.” She drew their attention to the drawing again. “I’d say your best bet would be here, at the station’s west exit.”

  “Why there?”

  “Two blocks west, there’s a construction site. The building’s fifty-two stories tall, not huge by the standards of what’s around it, but the top thirty stories are only framed in. There’s good sun around the base, even late in the day. You can see it from the station—there’s an external elevator and a crane up the side of the building. I used to spend a lot of time up there.”

  “On the crane, you mean?”

  Alicia shrugged. “Yeah, well. It was kind of a thing with me.”

  She offered no more explanation; Peter decided not to press. He pointed to another spot on the map, a block east of the station. “What’s this?”

  “The Chrysler Building. It’s the tallest thing around there, almost eighty stories. The top is made of this kind of shiny metal, like a crown. It’s highly reflective. Depending on where the sun is, it can throw a lot of light.”

  The day was over; the temperature had dropped, drawing dew from the air. As a silence settled, Peter realized they had come to the end of the conversation. In a little under eight hours they would raise the sails, the Nautilus would make the final leg to Manhattan, and whatever was bound to happen there would happen. It was unlikely that all of them would survive, or even that any of them would.

  “I’ll take the watch,” said Michael.

  Peter looked at him. “We seem well protected here. Is that necessary?”

  “The bottom’s pretty sandy. The last thing we need is a dragging anchor right now.”

  “I’ll stay, too,” Lish said.

  Michael smiled. “Can’t say I’d mind the company.” Then, to Peter: “It’s fine, I’ve done it a million times. Go sleep. You two are going to need it.”

  Night spread her hands over the sea.

  All was still: only the sounds of the ocean, deep and calm, and the lap of waves against the hull. Peter and Amy lay curled together on the cabin’s only bunk, her head resting on his chest. The night was warm, but below decks the air felt cool, almost cold, chilled by the water encircling the bulkhead.

  “Tell me about the farmstead,” Amy said.

  Peter needed a moment to gather his answer; lulled by the boat’s motion and the feeling of closeness, he had, in fact, been skating on the edge of sleep.

  “I’m not sure how to describe it. They weren’t like ordinary dreams—they were far more real than that. Like every night I went someplace else, another life.”

  “Like … a different world. Real, but not the same.”

  He nodded, then said, “I didn’t always remember them, not in detail. It was mostly the feeling that lasted. But some things. The house, the river. Ordinary days. The music you played. Such beautiful songs. I could have listened to them forever. They seemed so full of life.” He stopped, then said, “Was it the same for you?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  She hesitated. “It only happened the one time, when I was in the water. I was playing for you. The music came so easily. As if the songs had been inside me and I was finally letting them out.”

  “What happened then?” Peter asked.

  “I don’t remember. The next thing I knew I woke up on the deck, and there you were.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  She paused before answering. “I don’t know. All I know is that for the first time in my life, I was truly happy.”

  For a while they listened to the quiet creaking of the boat.

  “I love you,” Peter said. “I think I always have”

  “And I love you.”

  She drew herself closer against him; Peter replied in kind. He took her left hand, slipped her fingers through his, pulled it to his chest, and held it there.

  “Michael’s right,” she said. “We should sleep.”

  “All right.”

  Soon she felt his breathing slow. It eased into a deep, long rhythm, like waves upon the shore. Amy closed her eyes, although she knew it was no use. She would lie awake for hours.

  On the deck of the Nautilus, Michael was watching the stars.

  Because a person could never grow tired of them. All his many nights at sea, the stars had been his most loyal companions. He preferred them to the moon, which seemed to him too frank, always begging to be noticed; the stars maintained a certain cagey distance, permitting the mystery of their hidden selves to breathe. Michael knew what the stars were—exploding balls of hydrogen and helium—as well as many of their names and the arrangements they made in the night sky: useful information for a man alone at sea in a small boat. But he also understood that these things were an imposed ordering that the stars themselves possessed no knowledge of.

  Their vast display should have made him feel tiny and alone, but the effect was exactly the opposite; it was in daylight that he felt his solitude most keenly. There were days when his soul ached with it, the feeling that he had moved so far away from the world of people that he could never go back. But then night would fall, revealing the sky’s hidden treasure—the stars, after all, weren’t gone during the day, merely obscured—and his loneliness would recede, supplanted by the sense that the universe, for all its inscrutable vastness, was not a hard, indifferent place in which some things were alive and others not and all that happened was a kind of accident, governed by the cold hand of physical law, but a web of invisible threads in which everything was connected to everything else, including him. It was along these threads that both the questions and the answers to life puls
ed like an alternating current, all the pains and regrets but also happiness and even joy, and though the source of this current was unknown and always would be, a person could feel it if he gave himself a chance; and the time when Michael Fisher—Michael the Circuit, First Engineer of Light and Power, Boss of the Trade and builder of the Bergensfjord—felt it most was when he was looking at the stars.

  He thought of many things. Days in the Sanctuary. Elton’s blind, rigid face and the hot, cramped quarters of the battery hut. The gassy stink of the refinery, where he had left boyhood behind and found his course in life. He thought of Sara, whom he loved, and Lore, whom he also loved, and Kate and the last time he had seen her, her compact youthful energy and easy affection for him on the night when he had told her the story of the whale. All so long ago, the past forever retreating to become the great internal accumulation of days. Probably his time on earth was reaching its end. Maybe something came after, beyond one’s physical existence as a person; on this subject, the heavens were obscure. Greer certainly thought so.

  Michael knew that his friend was dying. Greer had tried to conceal it, and nearly had, but Michael had figured it out. No one thing in particular had told him this; it was simply his sense of the man. Time was outstripping him—as, sooner or later, it did everyone.

  And, of course, he thought about his ship, his Bergensfjord. She would be far away now, somewhere off the coast of Brazil, churning south beneath the selfsame starry sky.

  “It’s beautiful out here,” Alicia said.

  She was sitting across from him, reclining lengthwise on the bench, a blanket covering her legs. Her head, like his, was tipped upward, her eyes glazed by starlight.

  “I remember the first time I saw them,” she continued. “It was the night the Colonel left me outside the Wall. They absolutely terrified me.” She pointed toward the southern horizon. “Why is that one so bright?”

  He followed her finger. “Well, that’s not a star, actually. It’s the planet Mars.”