The Sea Peoples(31)
“The High King, High King Artos, once told me that he’d been told by those who knew that time isn’t an arrow. Time is a serpent. Our world is one of many through the cycles of the universe. Many . . . many iterations. Some very different, some much the same, some just different enough to be like an image seen in a distorted mirror. Deeds and persons and places echo from one to the other; sometimes what is dreams or tales in one is sober truth in the next. And within each . . . iteration . . . more Powers than one, or more powers than two, many more, push to bring the cycle of things more to their liking.”
“That’s bloody indefinite!”
“That’s as definite as I can be; he said that the Ones he spoke with more or less told him that was all he could understand, and Artos thought it was for the same reason you can’t explain arithmetic to a dog, that the reality is simply beyond what we can grasp. But we’re not alone here, let’s say, and we’re not entirely alone with the One whose place this is.”
Thora stepped forward and ducked her head outside the entrance to the alleyway for a quick glimpse either way.
“Those are streetlights,” she said, her voice soft with wonder for a moment. “Electric streetlights.”
They all stared at that light, so unlike the flicker of flame or even the glow of gas mantles. It was like stepping through into an ancient tale of wonders.
Deor closed his eyes and felt for the thread of connection that had tugged at him from the Prince’s side.
“I think we should keep moving,” he said.
Pip nodded and took a deep breath. “Look as if you own the place,” she said crisply, in that drawling accent. “Best rule in a strange town.”
“Yes, it is,” Thora replied dryly.
She’d seen full many of them, as she voyaged the world around in Deor’s company, and had fifteen years on the tawny-haired youngster.
Was I ever that heedlessly arrogant? he thought. I hope not . . . but then, after I left Mist Hills for the broader world, I wasn’t the Baron’s son anymore—not even his odd younger son who liked boys. I was the bumpkin, the yokel, the hayseed from the place in the wilderness nobody had ever heard of; I had to earn every grain of respect I ever tasted.
The street outside was fairly broad, running between brick-faced buildings four or five stories high, floridly decorated in terra-cotta moldings, many with wrought-iron balconies. Cars—moving autos—dashed by, and crowds dressed much as they were moved thick on the pavements beneath light-stands shaped like vultures holding globes of light in their beaks. The folk moved quickly, faces down and closed, avoiding one another’s eyes, and if you looked closely most of the autos, heavily laden, were heading in one direction.
The air had an odd chemical smell, like some laboratories he’d been in here and there, and an acrid burnt tint a little like forges or smelters. There was none of the usual urban scent of horse manure and stale horse-piss.
And fear, I know that smell. It smells of fear.
A man in a brass-buttoned blue uniform stood on the corner, with a pistol at his side and a yard of truncheon in his hand, a curious helmet like a cloth-covered fireplug on his head. Occasionally he would trot over when the autos got themselves into a snarl blowing a whistle and waving; once hauling a man out from behind the wheel and beating him bloody before throwing him back in. The passengers pulled the unfortunate man into the backseat, and one of them moved up to take control.
There was a stand nearby, much like those used in some cities he’d seen to sell newspapers. Posters plastered the sides of it. One bore large letters:
NEW YORK HERALD
“New York!” Pip murmured.
They all glanced at one another; that fallen city was a name of terror, at the heart of one of the greatest and worst of the Death Zones created when the world-machine stopped.
“Is this New York before the Change?” she said. “It’s not much like anything I’ve seen or read about it. Not in the details, at least—no hundreds of giant glass-walled buildings for starters.”
Toa was looking upward. “Take a dekko,” he said, his bass voice rumbling softly.
Not far from them—though perhaps farther than it appeared—was a towering structure like an elongated pyramid, stepped in at intervals and glowing with innumerable windows, and topped with a yellow-lit spiky three-armed sigil. Beams of light like gigantic spears picked out something at its peak just below the Yellow Sign, like a huge finned whale-shape floating in the air. As they watched, it cast off and turned away with a purposeful motion unlike any balloon, a buzzing coming from it that still cut through the throb of street-noise.
“Anything about those in that fancy school, Cap’n?” he asked.
“That they weren’t around in 1998,” Pip said, but gave it only a glance.
She fished in the bag at her side and tossed a coin to the attendant in the booth, who sat in a wheeled chair behind the counter. He grabbed it and yammered; Deor saw the stub of a tongue in his mouth, and a line ran from a collar at his neck to a staple in an iron post at the back.
The captain of the Silver Surfer scanned the paper in her hands; it had more pages than any Deor was familiar with, even in Portland or Winchester or Sambalpur, a fantastic extravagance given what paper cost in most places.
“March 17th, 1998,” she said.
“The day of the Change!” Deor exclaimed.