Time's Dark Laughter Part 9

The texture of this dreamscape glittered with bizarre visions and apprehensions: a bearded old man kissed his lips, blew air into his body until he floated above the ground; a woman of gla.s.s caressed his legs, sending electric blue jolts through him, excruciating, sensual; crus.h.i.+ng, suffocating darkness; an army of skeletons and dancing bones surrounded him, chased him, jostled him, buried him; giant insects needled him with poison, sucked his blood; a presence, lonelier than any absence, laid its hollow hand upon his brow; he tried to squirm free, he could not stop squirming, he grew small, there were fires, it was cold, he wept, someone touched him; a great silence.

When he finally awoke, it was upon the softest bed he had ever felt. His eyes came open slowly, and he looked around; a room, like any other room-some simple chairs, a table, artificial lights of a type Josh had never seen before.

He stood up and walked over to the table; his legs felt weak as a kitten's-his legs!

With a shocked excitement he pulled up the robe he found himself wearing and looked at his legs. They were no longer broken. They bore his weight without pain, without buckling. How long could he have been asleep, then? And where was he now?

On the table was a sheet of paper; and on the paper, writing. Josh sat down in the chair and began to read the page before him.

Visitor- I know not who you be, or even if you can read-but this, I vow, be the only communication you will ever get from me.

You have come to the city of Atlantis. We be a city in a bubble of polymer, fas.h.i.+oned by our ancestors and anch.o.r.ed here at five thousand fathoms over two hundred years ago, by the reckoning of the sun we no longer know. Our machines be powered by generators that take then-energy from the ocean currents around us. With these machines we extract oxygen from the sea to breathe, and salt that we may drink the water. And light, and heat, and .

We made this descent to escape the insanities of the upper world. But in this respect there was no escape. For like our namesake island before us, we have died. Only I am left, alone. I am the city.

The specifics matter not. Patterns cannot learn from themselves, and we are naught but whirls in the pattern. Yet even so I try to deny this my deepest belief-for if you come here that I might tell you what befell us, if that is your purpose in the pattern, then I say to you only this: I Will Not Tell! Yet even as I write I know the pattern is not for me to view, and mayhap my fillip is the very thing I thought to confound, and were I to perceive the true pattern, I would see my role is Not To Tell.

But I weary of this commerce.

The vessel you returned in was lost on an expeditionary journey over a century ere. Our sea locks were programmed to admit it back inside, and will ever remain so. I revived you easily, for we were advanced in the medical arts. It took but a few days to heal your fractures elec-tromagnetically.

The city be as much yours as mine now. Yet try not to seek me out, for I will shun you-and will I barm you if you press me in this matter. For I like not the company of men, or talk, or aid.

There be a manual of instruction in the submarine, where it sits in the sea lock. If it be that you can read, so will you learn to operate the craft, and also how to open the sea lock, to sail from the city. If the matter of reading be otherwise with you, then none of this has bearing in any event.

Know also that if you leave and try later to return here with others, I will kill you all in the sea lock with the hammer of the ocean. Nor Will I Tell!

I welcome you without joy or rancor, for we are but lines in the pattern.

My name is nothing extra.

Josh read the extraordinary doc.u.ment over twice. Then he set out to explore the city.

Under a gla.s.slike dome, it was about one mile in diameter. Gla.s.s buildings rose up many stories, sparkling in the light of a thousand incandescent bulbs that cast a hazy glow into the crus.h.i.+ng ocean beyond. A city of palaces, stunning and jeweled. And not a living soul to be seen.

Yet everywhere Josh walked were strewn bones. Skulls, vertebrae, cl.u.s.tered carpales. Sometimes entire disarticulated skeletons-some embracing, in struggle or in ecstasy, it was impossible to discern; some alone.

Josh came across them in the streets, in the houses, in a.s.sembly halls; in the garden. One whole section of the city was a garden-overgrown now, choked with weed and fruit, under the undimming radiance of special violet lights, fed by an ever flowing artificial spring. Josh picked some fruit and ate. It was good. But here, too, bones lay, half-hidden, half-smiling.

He explored for hours, discovering all manner of wonderful things: a fountain of flame that never died; a beacon s.h.i.+ning down into the sea, illuminating the depths with a knife of green light; a machine that made music.

Once, he even thought he saw the shadow of a man hovering in a doorway. But by the time he ran over to it, the shape was gone, and when he called out, no one answered.

He reached the sea locks eventually, and there found the gla.s.s pod Kshro had put him in. He wondered how Kshro was, and her people. He hoped he would see them again some day.

In the s.h.i.+p, just as the message had said, was the instruction manual. But it was so full of propulsion dynamics and pitch and yaw and myriad other baffling words that Josh could make little of it. With a grim and empty tremor, he began to despair of ever again seeing his friends, or seeing the sun. In this dark mood he fell asleep.

During his explorations the next day, though, he made a miraculous discovery: the library. More books here than he ever imagined possible in one place-including the most magical book of all, a dictionary. Incredibly, it was a book of all the known words, their meanings and uses. He cried just to hold it in his hand; his tears tasted the pages of words.

Here, too, was something called an encyclopedia, which told about things; and an index, which told where the things were told about.

And there were other manuals, and textbooks, and essays and novels, and thin yellowing picture-books called monthlies, and . . .

There was great power here.

With trembling resolve he began looking up some of the mysterious instruction-manual words in the dictionary. He found their meaning. Later, he even found whole books about some of the critical words, like guidance systems; but that was later. For now, he was content to learn the simple meanings.

He spent many weeks in Atlantis and learned many things. But he never met the man who would not tell, so he never learned why.

CHAPTER 8: In Which the Trackers Get Very Close.

JASMINE and Ollie left Ma'gas" late in the afternoon, heading south by foot. The Saddlebacks weren't exceptionally high here, but they rose abruptly, making habitation or concealment difficult The land to the west, on the other hand, was studded with small woods, ravines, and marshes: it was there that trouble lay.

Ollie and Jasmine stuck close to the hills. This area formed a fairly clear corridor, which was both good and bad for them. It allowed them to make good time; and it was open enough that they could see in advance if danger was approaching. But it left them exposed; others would know they were here. As the sun ebbed, they set a faster pace.

Once, in the dwindling twilight, a flapping sound accosted their ears from above. They crouched immediately, and looked up, weapons poised, breathing stilled.

They saw two Pegasi, soaring together, nuzzling each other, fluttering around and around in a wind-whipped courting dance high in the air where the light of day still hovered. The Pegasus stallion was a palomino. He whinnied and pawed the air about his roan lover as if he were trying to break through some ethereal barrier to reach her. She pranced before him, wings billowing. Something in his color reminded Jasmine of Beauty.

She had not thought of Beauty, physically, until this moment. Even as she had left the note for him uT Joshua's camp, he had been only an abstraction to her, the abstraction, of a memory. Now, watching the magnificent flying horse rise and dive for bis lady, Jasmine closed her eyes: the memory of Beauty was thick, almost palpable.

His smell, his touch, his voice, his sometimes ridiculous sense of propriety-these things were suddenly real again for Jasmine, as if the Centaur were actually standing before her. Tenderly, she reached out to touch him-but the memory was elusive, and refused to show its face for long.

Jasmine sighed. She had managed to keep Beauty submerged, for the most part. Rarely, events like this would call him to the surface. She knew she must push him back, though: he had chosen another woman, Jasmine had chosen another life. Still, it was nice, sometimes, to bring him out, touch the memory, savor it, then put it back. It made her feel vulnerable, though-an indulgence she could ill afford on this journey. She sighed again, and opened her eyes.

The palomino was just mounting the roan. Behind her, atop her, his forelegs straddling her shoulders, their necks stretching, heads into the wind, wings pounding in unison, they rose and fell, turning great circles through the air, roaring then- pa.s.sion . . . when suddenly another form flew toward them from out of the woods-a smaller creature, with a b.e.s.t.i.a.l body, and talons, and the head of a man.

"Mantich.o.r.e," whispered Ollie, shaking his head hi foreknowledge.

The Mantich.o.r.e tore into the palomino Pegasus, literally ripping him off the back of his lover. They tumbled out of control, as the evil little beast sunk its gnas.h.i.+ng teeth into the Pegasus's face, twisted the palomkuj's arching neck, lashed at his wings with its hind claws. In a few moments they had careened back to Earth, somewhere into the nether woods, and were lost to sight.

The roan Pegasus fluttered around desperately for a minute, trying to see where her beloved had fallen; but the last of the sun was pa.s.sing now, and little could be seen. Her fear and confusion were obvious, her flight erratic. After a minute of this, she swooped low over the trees to the southwest, and disappeared.

Ollie looked at Jasmine questioningly. But there was nothing to say. Or do. Jasmine suppressed the feelings for Beauty it had aroused; furthermore, she was a scientist, and so dismissed any notion that this might be an omen.

Ollie rose slowly, his breathing controlled by tension. To himself he nodded, for this was an old, and endlessly repeated lesson to him: in the moment of deepest love are we most open to attack, and nearest to death; and in that moment the attack inevitably comes, and inevitably we die, alone and in pain. This much seemed empirical to Ollie; these were the facts. The lesson to be learned, of course, was that to survive it was necessary to form a sh.e.l.l against love. Therein was shelter. Otherwise, one might just as well lie belly-up hi a pit full of Accidents; that's what love was like.

They stood back to back, listening for sounds; but none came. After a few minutes, they set off south again, into the night The storm was violent almost from the outset. The rain crashed down in drenching sheets, the wind approached hurricane velocity.

"With these mountains so close, it's like a wind tunnel along here," Jasmine shouted. "We'll have to move down into the forest!"

Ollie nodded, and they ran west quickly, into the windbreak of bhong trees that skirted this forest. The rain, too, pelted them less.

They headed south once more, though at a decidedly slower pace. Bushes and mudholes slowed them, branches scratched their faces, they stumbled over roots. And the blackness was unpenetrable. Except when the lightning flashed, turning everything blue-white for a few seconds, pounding the Earth with thunder. But the shadows cast by the low-hanging branches were even more ominous than the opaque night; so Jasmine and Ollie unconsciously drew closer together.

"How much farther, do you think?" Ollie asked.

"Halfway, maybe. Want to rest?"

"In this?"

"Just asking. You tired yet?"

"Should I be?" He sounded defensive.

"You know, you're a hard kid to pin down," she smiled.

"Afraid someone might get a handle on one of your few weaknesses?"

"What's a weakness?" He returned her smile.

"See? There is something I can still teach you." She laughed, the rainwater streaming down her face. "Weaknesses are something I can give you a lot of firsthand information about. Now take notes . . ."

He made an elaborate charade of holding a notepad in one hand, moistening a quill point in his mouth, and poising it over the imaginary paper, as they walked. Suddenly he threw down the illusory articles, hit his forehead with the heel of his hand, and said, "I forgot-I do have a weakness 11 know how to read and write!"

The rain continued. In the distance to the west, they could see flas.h.i.+ng yellow lights crackling and jumping beyond a wooded glen.

"What's that?" Ollie whispered.

"Looks like neon." She squinted at the indistinct light show.

"What's neon?" He took a step toward the display.

"Forget it," she held him back. A spear of lightning traced through the sky to the glowing grove, producing a surge of incandescence, followed by a thunderous Crack, followed by a long, animal scream.

They ran the hundred yards to a large clearing. There at its center was a huge jumble of debris-buckled over the ground, sticking up into the air, twisting around in a hopeless tangle of steel rods and rotting wood crossties-with jolts of electricity violently sparking at every crossing, the slithery charges running up and down the lengths of rail.

"Railroad tracks," Jasmine marveled.

Another bolt of lightning crashed into the tallest rod, and the charge raced down the steel and around the clack-ering circuit, accompanied by elemental sound and light. Off to the side, several ancient engines lay half-buried and decomposing hi the mud, a great half-moon of iron plate sunk at an acute angle into the earth beside them.

"It must have been a terminal or roundhouse once," she went on.

"What's that?" asked Ollie. Another of Jasmine's wisdoms, out of another age.

"A railroad; it was a railroad," she said absently. Sparks flew all about.

There was another scream, behind a ma.s.sive upturned engine. They ran around to look, daggers drawn; and momentarily stopped. The roan female Pegasus stood there, uselessly flapping her mud-sodden wings. Straddling her from behind was a Night-Mare.

It was a giant Horse-easily twice as big as the Pegasus-black as death, with reflective red eyes and rows of dripping, jagged, carnivorous teeth. Its hooves were spiked, its tail barbed. Its breath, like a Dragon's, was bacterial methane, which ignited into blue flame whenever it gnashed its flinty incisors. It was a terrifying beast. It was raping the roan.

Its colossal size drove her to her fore knees as it mounted her from behind, pressing its tuburous redness between her hind legs, beneath her tail. Lightning splashed and danced; the Night-Mare's demented eyes flashed with carmine fire.

The roan's nostrils flared, her mouth foamed, her eyes stared wildly in all directions. "Nay!" she screamed. "Naaay!" And the wind shrieked with her.

Chest heaving in exhaustion and terror, she beat her wings again, but to no avail; they were soaked. She wailed once more, as another bolt of lightning coursed through the steel rails that twisted into the air around them. "Naaaay!"

The Night-Mare forced itself grossly in her, roared its l.u.s.t, ground its teeth, and blew gaseous fire from its throat, singeing the Pegasus's mane. Her tongue flopped from the corner of her mouth, her beautiful bead lolled to the side. The Night-Mare clamped its sharp drooling teeth into the base of her neck, at the shoulder blade. The rain poured down.

This was all a long moment. In the next moment, Ollie was flying through the air; and the moment after that he was on the giant's back, his left hand clutching the raging mane, his right hand on his dagger, which he plunged to the hilt into the creature's right eye.

It screeched and reared. Ollie stabbed it twice more- through the eye, into the brain. The beast bellowed, louder than thunder, and fell backward, almost crus.h.i.+ng Ollie. He jumped clear, though-only to be attacked by the Manti-ch.o.r.e they had seen earlier.

He grappled with the creature, rolling in the mud, getting clawed and kicked-until Jasmine jumped in to the fray and neatly cut the Mantich.o.r.e's throat.

It rolled off Ollie, and stared at Jasmine for a second. Its head was Human, with several rows of Shark-like teeth; its eyes were crossed. It tried to speak. Only a gurgle came.

Weakly, it pulled itself over to the huge body of the dead Night-Mare, dragging its hind legs through the mud. When it got to the Horse's head, it licked and kissed the animal's b.l.o.o.d.y face a few times, whimpered, and died. Apparently they had been friends.

Jasmine and Ollie walked over to the roan Pegasus, who lay s.h.i.+vering in the mud. She shrank from them and whinnied abjectly when they tried to examine her for wounds; but they soothed her, put her to rest, and tended her through the night. Jasmine, hi particular, set her at ease; for she had a way with Horses.

Ollie, too, rested in the old trainyard as the storm gradually pa.s.sed through the night. He was cut and bruised, but had no serious injuries.

In the morning, the sky was clear. The Pegasus seemed much improved-in fact, she quickly flew off, then quickly returned. She spoke no language that Jasmine knew, but somehow they made themselves understood. Jasmine and Ollie climbed up on her back, and she flew them the rest of the way south, letting them down on the mountain ridge overlooking the jungle caves Jasmine was seeking-the hiding-caves.

They bared necks and waved good-bye, and the Pegasus flew west into the nebulous grief and freedom of her own future. Jasmine and Ollie turned east and began the cloudy descent into Dundee's Terrarium-toward the dark cavernous channels of their past.

Jasmine sat on her haunches, staring into the ashes of the long-dead fire. Five years dead. The pitted walls of the cave had absorbed the intervening time like a vacuum, leaving the artifacts strewn about virtually untouched and imaged.

Empty tins of food, still-good Gila jerky, candles, flints, three cobweb-covered bottles of wine, some faded blankets, a few tools. Maps-the sanitation maps. The torn, yellowed maps outlining the sewage disposal system that tunneled like a maze beneath The City With No Name. The maps Jasmine and Josh had used to effect their escape from the City. The maps Jasmine had hidden in this cave.

This was the cave upriver where they had all rendezvoused then-Jasmine, Josh, Beauty, Rose, Ollie, the orphans from Bal's harem, the Flutterby-hid out here for days into weeks, until they had recovered enough to disperse to the rest of their own lives, their separate and varied paths.

Ollie sat by the spring that cut across one corner of the cave, watching Jasmine stare into the ashes of her memory. He had his own dark feelings tied up here. The last tune he had sat beside this stream, he had been ten years old, and catatonic. He had seen his parents murdered by mutants, his cousin raped by Vampires. He had been kidnapped and put hi the harem of a Vampire named Bal, who had jewels sewn into Ollie's frail young skin. His skin was scarred and tough now. He fingered the ruby in his chest: memento mori, Jasmine opened the brittle maps one by one in the light of the candles. So familiar. Each shaft labeled according to the surface room to which it connected. Laboratories, offices, suites. The Final Decontamination Room. The Communion Room. Nirvana. The Queen's Chambers. Her mind trembled with the same excited fear she had felt five years before, going over the maps to plan the attack route, and the escape route. Jasmine was a Neuroman who savored her pa.s.sions-they were all creative tensions to her, and she relished experiencing them, regardless of whether the core of the experience was pleasure, fear, rage, or tenderness. They were all, for her, colors in the sensorium of life. She went over every inch of the maps again, now, stretching her mind over the geography of the past.

No sign of Tunnel Twenty-two.

"Don't move. You're covered!" The strange voice leapt out of the shadows like a vicious Cat. Jasmine and Ollie both froze, eyes dilating with intention.

A small flat object skimmed through the dark, heading straight for Jasmine's neck. She flattened to the ground, and the thing hit the stones just beyond her with a Smack. She lifted her head high enough to see it, to decide whether to grab it or run. It was a book.

"Read it!" shouted the voice in the shadow. Jasmine almost laughed with relief, but the voice still had the edge of death.

Slowly she picked it up, opened it, and read out loud, her eyes straining in the candlelight: "It was the best of tunes, it was the worst of times-"

"That's enough," snapped the invisible voice, relenting a little. "Toss it to your pal crouchin* by the water there."

She threw the book to Ollie, who caught it one-handed, his other hand still on the stiletto hi his belt.

"The last page," intoned another voice, from another shadow.