Greg Bear - Strenght of stones

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Strength of Stones

by Greg Bear

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Science Fiction

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Other works by Greg Bear also available in e-reads editions

EON

SLANT

SONGS OF EARTH AND POWER

MOVING MARS

LEGACY

THE VENGING

--------

For my grandmother, Florence M. Bear,

provider of a home

for wandering adventurers.

--------

>>11 "What is my strength, that I should

wait?

And what is mine end, that I

should be patient?

12 Is my strength the strength of stones?

Or is my flesh of brass?

13 Is it that I have no help in me,

And that sound wisdom is driven

quite from me?"<<

_JOB 6, the Masoretic Text_

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_The final decade of Earth's twentieth century was cataclysmic. Moslem states fought

horrible wars in 1995, 1996, and 1998, devastating much of Africa and the Middle East. In less

than five years, the steady growth of Islam during the latter half of the century became a rout of

terror and apostasy, one of the worst religious convulsions in human history._

_Christian splinter cults around the world engaged in every imaginable form of social

disobedience to hasten the long-overdue Millennium, but there was no Second Coming. Their

indiscretions rubbed off on all Christians._

_As for the Jews -- the world had never needed any reason to hate Jews._

_The far-flung children of Abraham had their decade of unbridled fervor, and they paid for

it. Marginally united by a world turning to other religions and against them, Jews, Christians and

Moslems ratified the Pact of God in 2020. They desperately harked back to ages past to find common

ground. Having spoiled their holy lands, there was no place where they could unite

geographically._

_In the last years of the twenty-first century, they looked outward. The Heaven Migration

began in 2113. After decades more of persecution and ridicule, they pooled their resources to buy

a world of their own. That world was renamed God-Does-Battle, tamed by the wealth of the heirs of

Christ, Rome, Abraham and OPEC._

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_They hired the greatest human architect to build their new cities for them. He tried to

mediate between what they demanded, and what would work best for them._

_He failed._

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*BOOK ONE*

3451 A.D.

_Mandala_

THE city that had occupied Mesa Canaan was now marching across the plain. Jeshua watched

with binoculars from the cover of the jungle. It had disassembled just before dawn, walking on

elephantine legs, tractor treads and wheels, with living bulkheads upright, dismantled buttresses

given new instructions to crawl instead of support; floors and ceilings, transports and smaller

city parts, factories and resource centers, all unrecognizable now, like a slime mold soon to

gather itself in its new country.

The city carried its plan deep within the living plasm of its fragmented body. Every piece

knew its place, and within that scheme there was no room for Jeshua, or for any man.

The living cities had cast them out a thousand years before.

He lay with his back against a tree, binoculars in one hand and an orange in the other,

sucking thoughtfully on a bitter piece of rind. No matter how far back he probed, the first thing

he remembered was watching a city break into a tide of parts, migrating. He had been three years

old, two by the seasons of God-Does-Battle, sitting on his father's shoulders as they came to the

village of Bethel-Japhet to live. Jeshua -- ironically named, for he would always be chaste --

remembered nothing of importance before coming to Bethel-Japhet. Perhaps it had all been erased by

the shock of falling into the campfire a month before reaching the village. His body still carried

the marks: a circle of scars on his chest, black with the tiny remnants of cinders.

Jeshua was huge, seven feet tall flat on his feet. His arms were as thick as an ordinary

man's legs, and when he inhaled, his chest swelled as big as a barrel. He was a smith in the

village, a worker of iron and caster of bronze and silver. But his strong hands had also acquired

delicate skills to craft ritual and family jewelry. For his trade he had been given the surname

Tubal -- Jeshua Tubal Iben Daod, craftsman of all metals.

The city on the plain was marching toward the Arat range. It moved with faultless

deliberation. Cities seldom migrated more than a hundred miles at a time or more than once in a

hundred years, so the legends went; but they seemed more restless now.

He scratched his back against the trunk, then put his binoculars in a pants pocket. His

feet slipped into the sandals he'd dropped on the mossy jungle floor, and he stood, stretching. He

sensed someone behind him but did not turn to look, though his neck muscles knotted tight.

"Jeshua." It was the chief of the guard and the council of laws, Sam Daniel the Catholic.

His father and Sam Daniel had been friends before his father disappeared. "Time for the Synedrium

to convene."

Jeshua tightened the straps on his sandals and followed.

Bethel-Japhet was a village of moderate size, with about two thousand people. Its houses

and buildings laced through the jungle until no distinct borders remained. The stone roadway to

the Synedrium Hall seemed too short to Jershua, and the crowd within the hearing chamber was far

too large. His betrothed, Kisa, daughter of Jake, was not there, but his challenger, Renold Mosha

Iben Yitshok, was.

The representative of the seventy judges, the Septuagint, called the gathering to order and

asked that the details of the case be presented.

"Son of David," Renold said, "I have come to contest your betrothal to Kisa, daughter of

Jake."

"I hear," Jeshua said, taking his seat in the defendant's docket.

"I have reasons for my challenge. Will you hear them?"

Jeshua didn't answer.

"Pardon my persistence. It is the law. I don't dislike you -- I remember our childhood,

when we played together -- but now we are mature, and the time has come."

"Then speak." Jeshua fingered his thick dark beard. His flushed skin was the color of the

fine sandy dirt on the riverbanks of the Hebron. He towered a good foot above Renold, who was

slight and graceful.

"Jeshua Tubal Iben Daod, you were born like other men but did not grow as we have. You now

look like a man, but the Synedrium has records of your development. You cannot consummate a

marriage. You cannot give a child to Kisa. This annuls your childhood betrothal. By law and by my

wish I am bound to replace you, to fulfil your obligation to her."

Kisa would never know. No one here would tell her. She would come in time to accept and

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love Renold, and to think of Jeshua as only another man in the Expolis Ibreem and its twelve

villages, a man who stayed alone and unmarried. Her slender warm body with skin smooth as the

finest cotton would soon dance beneath the man he saw before him. She would clutch Renold's back

and dream of the time when humans would again be welcomed into the cities, when the skies would

again be filled with ships and God-Does-Battle would be redeemed --

"I cannot answer, Renold Mosha Iben Yitshok."

"Then you will sign this." Renold held out a piece of paper and advanced.

"There was no need for a public witnessing," Jeshua said. "Why did the Synedrium decide my

shame was to be public?" He looked around with tears in his eyes. Never before, even in the

greatest physical pain, had he cried; not even, so his father said, when he had fallen into the

fire.

He moaned. Renold stepped back and looked up in anguish. "I'm sorry, Jeshua. Please sign.

If you love either Kisa or myself, or the expolis, sign."

Jeshua's huge chest forced out a scream. Renold turned and ran. Jeshua slammed his fist

onto the railing, struck himself on the forehead and tore out the seams of his shirt. He had had

too much. For nine years he had known of his inability to be a whole man, but he had hoped that

would change, that his genitals would develop like some tardy flower just beyond normal season,

and they had. But not enough. His testicles were fully developed, enough to give him a hairy body,

broad shoulders, flat stomach, narrow hips, and all the desires of any young man -- but his penis

was the small pink dangle of a child.

Now he exploded. He ran after Renold, out of the hall, bellowing incoherently and swinging

his binoculars at the end of their leather strap. Renold ran into the village square and screeched

a warning. Children and fowl scattered. Women grabbed their skirts and fled for the wood and brick

homes.

Jeshua stopped. He flung his binoculars as high as he could above his head. They cleared

the top of the tallest tree in the area and fell a hundred feet beyond. Still bellowing, he

charged a house and put his hands against the wall. He braced his feet and heaved. He slammed his

shoulder against it. It would not move. More furious still, he turned to a trough of fresh water,

picked it up, and dumped it over his head. The cold did not slow him. He threw the trough against

the wall and splintered it.

"Enough!" cried the chief of the guard. Jeshua stopped and blinked at Sam Daniel the

Catholic. He wobbled, weak with exertion. Something in his stomach hurt.

"Enough, Jeshua," Sam Daniel said softly.

"The law is taking away my birthright. Is that just?"

"Your right as a citizen, perhaps, but not your birthright. You weren't born here, Jeshua.

But it is still no fault of yours. There is no telling why nature makes mistakes."

"No!" He ran around the house and took a side street into the market triangle. The stalls

were busy with customers picking them over and carrying away baskets filled with purchases. He

leaped into the triangle and began to scatter people and shops every which way. Sam Daniel and his

men followed.

"He's gone berserk!" Renold shouted from the rear. "He tried to kill me!"

"I've always said he was too big to be safe," growled one of the guard. "Now look what he's

doing."

"He'll face the council for it," Sam Daniel said.

"Nay, the Septuagint he'll face, as a criminal, if the damage gets any heavier!"

They followed him through the market.

Jeshua stopped at the base of a hill, near an old gate leading from the village proper. He

gasped painfully, and his face was wine-red. Sweat gnarled his hair. In the thicket of his mind he

searched for a way out, the only way out. His father had told him about it when he was thirteen or

fourteen. "The cities were like doctors," his father had said. "They could alter, replace, or

repair anything in the human body. That's what was lost when the cities grew disgusted and cast

the people out."

No city would let any real man or woman enter. But Jeshua was different. Real people could

sin. He could be a sinner not in fact, but only in thought. In his confusion the distinction

seemed important.

Sam Daniel and his men found him at the outskirts of the jungle, walking away from Bethel-

Japhet.

"Stop!" the chief of the guard ordered.

"I'm leaving," Jeshua said without turning.

"You can't go without a ruling!" "I am."

"We'll hunt you!"

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"Then I'll hide, damn you!"

There was only one place to hide on the plain, and that was underground, in the places

older than the living cities and known collectively as Sheol. Jeshua ran. He soon outdistanced

them all.

Five miles ahead he saw the city that had left Mesa Canaan. It had reassembled itself below

the mountains of Arat. It gleamed in the sun, as beautiful as anything ever denied mankind. The

walls began to glow as the sky darkened, and in the evening silence the air hummed with the

internal noises of the city's life. Jeshua slept in a gully, hidden by a lean-to woven out of

reeds.

In the soft yellow light of dawn, he looked at the city more closely, lifting his head

above the gully's muddy rim. The city began with a ring of rounded outward-leaning towers, like

the petals of a monumental lotus. Inward was another ring, slightly taller, and another, rising to

support a radiance of buttresses. The buttresses carried a platform with columns atop it,

segmented and studded like the branches of a diatom. At the city's summit, a dome like the

magnified eye of a fly gave off a corona of diffracted colors. Opal glints of blue and green

sparkled in the outside walls.

With the help of the finest architect humanity had ever produced, Robert Kahn, Jeshua's

ancestors had built the cities and made them as comfortable as possible. Huge laboratories had

labored for decades to produce the right combination of animal, plant, and machine, and to fit

them within the proper designs. It had been a proud day when the first cities were opened. The

Christians, Jews, and Moslems of God-Does-Battle could boast of cities more spectacular than any

that Kahn had built elsewhere, and the builder's works could be found on a hundred worlds.

Jeshua stopped a hundred yards from the glassy steps beneath the outer petals of the city.

Broad, sharp spikes rose from the pavement and smooth garden walls. The plants within the garden

shrank away at his approach. The entire circuit of paving around the city shattered into silicate

thorns and bristled. There was no way to enter. Still, he walked closer.

He faced the tangle of sharp spines and reached to stroke one with a hand. It shuddered at

his touch.

"I haven't sinned," he told it. "I've hurt no one, coveted only that which was mine by

law." The nested spikes said nothing but grew taller as he watched, until they extended a hundred

yards above his head.

He sat on a hummock of grass outside the perimeter and clasped his stomach with his hands

to ease the hunger and pressure of his sadness. He looked up at the city's peak. A thin silvery

tower rose from the midst of the columns and culminated in a multifaceted sphere. The sunlit side

of the sphere formed a crescent of yellow brilliance. A cold wind rushed through his clothes and

made him shiver. He stood and began to walk around the city, picking up speed when the wind

carried sounds of people from the expolis.

Jeshua knew from long hikes in his adolescence that a large entrance to Sheol yawned two

miles farther west. By noon he stood in the cavernous entrance.

The underground passages that made up Sheol had once been service ways for the inorganic

cities of twelve centuries ago. All of those had been leveled and their raw material recycled with

the completion of the living cities. But the underground causeways would have been almost

impossible to destroy, so they had been blocked off and abandoned. Some had filled with

groundwater, and some had collapsed. Still others, drawing power from geothermal sources,

maintained themselves and acted as if they yet had a purpose. A few became the homes of

disgruntled expolitans, not unlike Jeshua.

Many had become dangerous. Some of the living cities, just finished and not completely

inspected, had thrown out their human builders during the Exiling, then broken down. Various

disembodied parts -- servant vehicles, maintenance robots, transports -- had left the shambles and

crept into the passages of Sheol, ill and incomplete, to avoid the natural cycle of God-Does-

Battle's wilderness and the wrath of the exiles. Most had died and disintegrated, but a few had

found ways to survive, and rumors about those made Jeshua nervous.

He looked around and found a gnarled sun-blackened vine hard as wood, with a heavy bole. He

hefted it, broke off its weak tapering end, and stuck it into his belt where it wouldn't tangle

his legs.

Before he scrambled down the debris-covered slope, he looked back. The expolitans from

Ibreem were only a few hundred yards away.

He lurched and ran. Sand, rocks, and bits of dead plants had spilled into the wide tunnel.

Water dripped off chipped white ceramic walls, plinking into small ponds. Moss and tiered fungus

imparted a shaggy veneer to the walls and supports.

The villagers appeared at the lip of the depression and shouted his name. He hid in the

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shadows for a while until he saw that they weren't following.

A mile into the tunnel, he saw lights. The floor was ankle-deep with muddy water. He had

already seen several of God-Does-Battle's native arthropods and contemplated catching one for

food, but he had no way to light a fire. He'd left all his matches in Bethel-Japhet, since it was

against the law to go into the jungles carrying them unless on an authorized hunt or expedition.

He couldn't stand the thought of raw creeper flesh, no matter how hungry he was.

The floor ahead had been lifted up and dropped. A lake had formed within the rimmed

depression. Ripples shivered with oily slowness from side to side. Jeshua skirted the water on

jagged slabs of concrete. He saw something long and white in the lake, waiting in the shallows,

with feelers like the soft feathers of a mulcet branch. It had large grey eyes and a blunt rounded

head, with a pocketknife assortment of clippers, grabbers, and cutters branching from arms on each

side. Jeshua had never seen anything like it.

God-Does-Battle was seldom so bizarre. It had been a straightforward, slightly dry Earth-

like world, which was why humans had colonized in such large numbers thirteen centuries ago,

turning the sluggish planet into a grand imitation of the best parts of ten planets. Some of the

terraforming had slipped since then, but not drastically.

Water splashed as he stepped on the solid floor of the opposite shore. The undulating

feathery nightmare glided swiftly into the depths.

The lights ahead blazed in discrete globes, not the gentle glows of the walls of the living

cities. Wiring hissed and crackled around a black metal box. Tracks began at a buffer and ran off

around the distant curve. Black strips, faded and scuffed, marked a walkway. Signs in Old English

and something akin to the Hebraic hodgepodge spoken in Ibreem warned against deviating from the

outlined path. He could read the English more easily than the Hebrew, for Hebraic script had been

used. In Ibreem, all writing was in Roman script.

Jeshua stayed within the lines and walked around the curve. Half of the tunnel ahead was

blocked by a hulk. It was thirty feet wide and some fifty long, rusting and frozen in its decay.

It had been man-operated, not automatic -- a seat bucket still rose above a nest of levers,

pedals, and a small arched instrument panel. As a smith and designer of tools and motor-driven

vehicles, Jeshua thought there were parts of the rail-rider that didn't seem integral. He examined

them more closely and saw they hadn't come with the original machine. They were odds and ends of

mobile machinery from one of the cities. Part machine, part organism, built with treads and grips,

they had joined with the tar-baby rail-rider, trying to find a place on the bigger, more powerful

machine. They had found only silence. They were dead now, and what could not rot had long since

dusted away. The rest was glazed with rust and decay.

In the tunnel beyond, stalactites of concrete and rusted steel bristled from the ceiling.

Fragments of pipes and wiring hung from them on brackets. At one time the entire tunnel must have

been filled with them, with room only for rail-riders and maintenance crews walking the same path

he was taking. Most of the metal and plastic had been stripped away by scavengers.

Jeshua walked beneath the jagged end of an air duct and heard a susurrus. He cocked his

head and listened more closely. Nothing. Then again, almost too faint to make out. The plastic of

the air duct was brittle and added a timbre of falling dust to the voices. He found a metal can

and stood on it, bringing his ear closer.

"Moobed..." the duct echoed.

"... not 'ere dis me was..."

"Bloody poppy-breast!"

"Not'ing ... do..."

The voices stopped. The can crumpled and dropped him to the hard floor, making him yelp

like a boy. He stood on wobbly legs and walked farther into the tunnel.

The lighting was dimmer. He walked carefully over the shadow-pocked floor, avoiding bits of

tile and concrete, fallen piping, snake wires and loose strapping bands. Fewer people had been

this way. Vaguely seen things moved off at his approach: insects, creepers, rodents, some native,

some feral. What looked like an overturned drum became, as he bent closer, a snail wide as two

handspans, coursing on a shiny foot as long as his calf. The white-tipped eyes glanced up, cat-

slits dark with hidden fluids and secret thoughts, and a warm, sickening odor wafted from it.

Stuck fast to one side was the rotting body of a large beetle.

A hundred yards on, the floor buckled again. The rutted underground landscape of pools,

concrete, and mud smelled foul and felt more foul to his sandaled feet. He stayed away from the

bigger pools, which were surrounded by empty larvae casings and filled with snorkeling insect

young.

He regretted his decision. He wondered how he could return to the village and face his

punishment. To live within sight of Kisa and Renold. To repair the water trough and do labor

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penance for the stall owners.

He stopped to listen. Water fell in a cascade ahead. The sound drowned out anything more

subtle, but sounds of a squabble rose above. Men were arguing and coming closer.

Jeshua moved back from the middle of the tunnel and hid behind a fallen pipe.

Someone ran from block to block, dancing agilely in the tunnel, arms held out in balance

and hands gesturing like wing tips. Four others followed, knife blades gleaming in the half-light.

The fleeing man ran past, saw Jeshua in the shadows, and stumbled off into black mud. Jeshua

pushed against the pipe as he stood and turned to run. He felt a tremor through his hand on the

wall. A massive presence of falling rock and dirt knocked him over and tossed debris around him.

Four shouts were severed. He choked on the dust, waving his arms and crawling.

The lights were out. Only a putrid blue-green swamp glow remained. A shadow crossed the

ghost of a pond. Jeshua stiffened and waited for the attacking blow.

"Who?" the shadow said. "Go, spek. Shan hurt."

The voice sounded like it might come from an older boy, perhaps eighteen or nineteen. He

spoke a sort of English. It wasn't the tongue Jeshua had learned while visiting Expolis Winston,

but he could understand some of it. He thought it might be Chaser English, but there weren't

supposed to be chasers in Expolis Ibreem. They must have followed the city ...

"I'm running, like you," Jeshua said in Winston dialect.

"Dis me," said the shadow. "Sabed my ass, you did. Quartie ob toms, lie dey t'ought I spek.

Who appel?"

"What?"

"Who name? You."

"Jeshua," he said.

"Jeshoo-a Iberhim."

"Yes, Expolis Ibreem."

"No' far dis em. Stan' an' clean. Takee back."

"No, I'm not lost. I'm running."

"No' good t'stay. Bugga bites mucky, bugga bites you more dan dey bites dis me."

Jeshua slowly wiped mud from his pants with broad hands. Dirt and pebbles scuttled down the

hill where the four lay tombed.

"Slow," the boy said. "Slow, no? Brainsick?" The boy advanced. "Dat's it. Slow you."

"No, tired," Jeshua said. "How do we get out of here?"

"Dat, dere an' dere. See?"

"Can't see," Jeshua said. "Not very well."

The boy advanced again and laid a cool, damp hand on his forearm. "Big, you. Skeez, maybe

tight." The hand gripped and tested. Then the shadow backed off. Jeshua's eyes were adjusting, and

he could see the boy's thinness.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"No' matta. Go 'long wi' dis me now."

The boy led him to the hill of debris and poked around in the pitchy black to see if they

could pass. "Allry. Dis way." Jeshua climbed up the rubble and pushed through the hole at the top

with his back scraping the ceramic roof. The other side of the tunnel was dark. The boy cursed

under his breath. "Whole tube," he said. "Ginger walk, now."

The pools beyond were luminous with the upright glows of insect larvae. Some were a foot

long and solitary; others were smaller and grouped in hazes in meager light. Always there was a

soft sucking sound and thrash of feelers, claws, legs. Jeshua's skin crawled, and he shivered in

disgust.

"Sh," the boy warned. "Skyling here, sout' go, tro sound."

Jeshua caught none of the explanation but stepped more lightly. Dirt and files dropped in

the water, and a chitinous chorus complained.

"Got dur here," the boy said, taking Jeshua's hand and putting it against a metal hatch.

"Ope', den go. Compree?"

The hatch slid open with a drawn-out squeal, and blinding glare filled the tunnel. Things

behind hurried for shadows. Jeshua and the boy stepped from the tunnel into a collapsed anteroom

open to the last light of day. Vegetation had swarmed into the wet depression, decorating hulks of

pipe valves and electric boxes. As the boy closed the hatch, Jeshua scraped at a metal cube with

one hand and drew off a layered clump of moss. Four numbers were engraved beneath: "2278".

"Don' finga," the boy warned. He had wide grey eyes and a pinched, pale face. A grin spread

between narcissus-white cheeks. He was tight-sewn, tense, with wide knees and elbows and little

flesh to cover his long limbs. His hair was rusty orange and hung in strips across his forehead

and ears. Beneath a ragged vest, his chest bore a tattoo. The boy rubbed his hand across it,

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seeing Jeshua's interest, and left a smear of mud behind.

"My bran'," the boy said. The 'brand' was a radiant circle in orange and black, with a

central square divided by diagonals. Triangles diminished to points in each division, creating a

vibrant skewedness. "Dat put dere, long 'go, by Mandala."

"What's that?"

"De gees run me, you drop skyling on, woodna dey lissen wen I say, say dis me, dat de

polis, a dur go up inna." He laughed. "Dey say, 'Nobod eba go in polis, no mo' eba.'"

"Mandala's a city, a polis?"

"Ten, fi'teen lees fr' 'ere."

"Lees?"

"Kileemet'. Lee."

"You speak anything else?" Jeshua asked, his face screwed up with the strain of turning

instant linguist.

"You, 'Ebra spek, bet. But no good dere. I got better Englise, tone up a bit?"

"Hm?"

"I can ... try ... this, if it betta." He shook his head. "Blow me ou' to keep up long,

do."

"Maybe silence is best," Jeshua said. "Or you just nod yes or no if you understand. You've

found a way to get into a polis?"

Nod.

"Named Mandala. Can you get back there, take me with you?"

Shake, no. Smile.

"Secret?"

"No secret. Dey big machee ... machine dat tell dis me neba retourn. Put dis on my bod." He

touched his chest. "Tro me out."

"How did you find your way in?"

"Dur? Dis big polis, it creep afta exhaus' -- sorry, moob afta run outta soil das good to

lib on, many lee fro' 'ere, an' squat on top ob place where tube ope' ri' middle ob undaside. I

know dar way, so dis me go in, an' out soon afta ... after. On my -- " He slapped his butt.

"Coupla bounce, too."

The collapsed ceiling -- or styling, as the boy called it -- of the anteroom formed a

convenient staircase from the far wall to the surface. They climbed and stood on the edge, looking

each other over uncertainly. Jeshua was covered with dark green mud. He picked at the caked rings

with his hands, but the mud clung to his skin fiercely.

"Maybe, come fine a bod ob wet to slosh in."

A branch of the Hebron River, flowing out of the Arat range, showed itself by a clump of

green reeds a half mile from the tunnel exit. Jeshua drew its muddy water up in handfuls and

poured it over his head. The boy dipped and wallowed and spumed it from puffed cheeks, then

grinned like a terrier at the Ibreemite, mud streaming down his face.

"Comes off slow," Jeshua said, scraping at his skin with clumped silkreeds.

"Why you interest' in place no man come?"

Jeshua shook his head and didn't answer. He finished with his torso and kneeled to let his

legs soak. The bottom of the stream was rocky and sandy and cool. He looked up and let his eyes

follow the spine of a peak in Arat, outlined in sunset glow. "Where is Mandala?"

"No," the boy said. "My polis."

"It kicked you out," Jeshua said. "Why not let somebody else try?"

"Somebod alread' tried," the boy informed him with a narrowed glance. "Dat dey tried, and

got in, but dey didna t'rough my dur go. Dey -- shee -- one gol, dat's all -- got in widout de

troub' we aw ekspek. Mandala didna sto' 'er."

"I'd like to try that."

"Dat gol, she special, she up an' down legen' now. Was a year ago she went and permissed to

pass was. You t'ink special you might be?"

"No," Jeshua admitted. "Mesa Canaan's city wouldn't let me in."

"One it wander has, just early yes'day?"

"Hm?"

"Wander, moob. Dis Mase Cain' you mumbur 'bout."

"I know."

"So't don' let dis you in, why Mandala an' differs?"

Jeshua climbed from the river, frowning. "Appel?" he asked.

"Me, m'appel, not true appel or you got like hair by demon grab, m'appel for you is

Thinner."

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"Thinner, where do you come from?"

_"_Same as de gol, we follow de polis."

"City chasers?" By Ibreem's estimation, that made Thinner a ruthless savage. "Thinner, you

don't want to go back to Mandala, do you? You're afraid."

"Cumsay, afraid? Like terrafy?"

"Like tremble in your bare feet in the dirtafy."

"No' possible for Thinner. Lead'er like, snake-skin, poke an' I bounce, no' go t'rough."

"Thinner, you're a faker." Jeshua reached out and lifted him from the water. "Now stop with

the nonsense and give me straight English. You speak it -- out!"

"No!" the boy protested.

"Then why do you drop all 'thu's' but in your name and change the word order every other

sentence? I'm no fool. You're a fake."

"If Thinner lie, feet may curl up an' blow! Born to spek dis odd inflek, an' I spek differs

by your ask! Dis me, no fake! Drop!" Thinner kicked Jeshua on the shin but only bent his toe. He

squalled, and Jeshua threw him back like a fingerling. Then he mined to pick up his clothes and

lumbered up the bank to leave.

"Nobod dey neba treat Thinner dis way!" the boy howled.

"You're lying to me," Jeshua said.

"No! Stop." Thinner stood in the river and held up his hands. "You're right."

"I know I am."

"But not completely. I'm from Winston, and I'm speaking like a city chaser for a reason.

And speaking accurately, mind you."

Jeshua frowned. The boy no longer seemed a boy. "Why fool me, or try to?" he asked.

"I'm a free-lance tracker. I'm trying to keep tabs on the chasers. They've been making

raids on the farmlands outside of Winston. I was almost caught by a few of them, and I was trying

to convince them I was part of a clan. When they were buried, I thought you might have been

another, and after speaking to you like that -- well, I have an instinct to keep a cover in a

tight spot."

"No Winstoner has a tattoo like yours."

"That part's the truth, too. I did find a way into the city, and it did kick me out."

"Do you still object to taking me there?"

Thinner sighed and crawled out of the stream. "It's not part of my trip. I'm heading back

for Winston."

Jeshua watched him cautiously as he dried himself. "You don't think it's odd that you even

got into a city at all?"

"No. I did it by trick."

"Men smarter than you or I tried for centuries before they all gave up. Now you've

succeeded, and you don't even feel special?"

Thinner put on his scrappy clothes. "Why do you want to go?"

"I've got reasons."

"Are you a criminal in Ibreem?"

Jeshua shook his head. "I'm sick," he said. "Nothing contagious. But I was told a city

might cure me, if I could find a way in."

"I've met your kind before," Thinner said. "But they've never made it. A few years ago

Winston sent a whole pilgrimage of sick and wounded to a city. Bristled its barbs like a fighting

cat. No mercy there, you can believe."

"But you have a way, now."

"Okay," Thinner said. "We can go back. It's on the other side of Arat. You've got me a

little curious now. And besides, I think I might like you. You look like you should be dumb as a

creeper, but you're smart. Sharp. And besides, you've still got that club. Are you desperate

enough to kill?"

Jeshua thought about that for a moment, then shook his head.

"It's almost dark," Thinner said. "Let's camp and start in the morning."

In the far valley at the middle of Arat, the Mesa Canaan city -- now probably to be called

the Arat city -- was warm and sunset-pretty, like a diadem. Jeshua made a bed from the reeds and

watched Thinner as he hollowed out the ground and made his own nest. Jeshua slept lightly that

evening and came awake with dawn. He opened his eyes to a small insect on his chest, inquiring its

way with finger-long antennae. He flicked it off and cleared his throat.

Thinner jack-in-the-boxed from his nest, rubbed his eyes and stood.

"I'm amazed," he said. "You didn't cut my throat."

"Wouldn't do me any good."

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"Work like this rubs down a man's trust."

Jeshua returned to the river and soaked himself again, pouring the chill water on his face

and back in double hand-loads. The pressure in his groin was lighter this morning than most, but

it still made him grit his teeth. He wanted to roll in the reeds and groan, rut the earth, but it

would do him no good. Only the impulse existed.

They agreed on which pass to take through the Arat peaks and set out.

Jeshua had spent most of his life within sight of the villages of the Expolis Ibreem and

found himself increasingly nervous the farther he hiked. They crawled up the slope, and Thinner's

statement about having tough soles proved itself. He walked barefoot over all manner of jagged

rocks without complaining.

At the crest of a ridge, Jeshua looked back and saw the plain of reeds and the jungle

beyond. With some squinting and hand-shading, he could make out the major clusters of huts in two

villages and the Temple Josiah on Mount Miriam. All else was hidden.

In two days they crossed Arat and a tilled terrain of foothills beyond. They walked through

fields of wild oats. "This used to be called Agripolis," Thinner said. "If you dig deep enough

here, you'll come across irrigation systems, automatic fertilizing machines, harvesters, storage

bins -- the whole works. It's all useless now. For nine hundred years it wouldn't let any human

cross these fields. It finally broke down, and those parts that could move, did. Most died."

Jeshua knew a little concerning the history of the cities around Arat and told Thinner

about the complex known as Tripolis. Three cities had been grouped on one side of Arat, about

twenty miles north of where they were standing. After the Exiling, one had fragmented and died.

Another had moved successfully and had left the area. The third had tried to cross the Arat range

and failed. The major bulk of its wreckage lay in a disorganized mute clump not far from them.

They found scattered pieces of it on the plain of Agripolis. As they walked, they saw

bulkheads and buttresses, most hardy of a city's large members, still supported by desiccated

legs. Some were fifty to sixty yards long and twenty feet across, mounted on organic wheel

movements. Their metal parts had corroded badly. The organic parts had disappeared, except for an

occasional span of silicate wall or internal skeleton of colloid.

"They're not all dead, though," Thinner said. "I've been across here before. Some made the

walk a little difficult."

In the glare of afternoon they hid from a wheeled beast armored like a great translucent

tank. "That's something from deep inside a city -- a mover or loader," Thinner said. "I don't know

anything about the temper of a feral city part, but I'm not going to aggravate it."

When the tank thing passed, they continued. There were creatures less threatening, more

shy, which they ignored. Most of them Jeshua couldn't fit into a picture of ancient city

functions. They were queer, dreamy creatures: spinning tops, many-legged browsers, things with

bushes on their backs, bowls built like dogs but carrying water -- insane, confusing fragments.

By day's end they stood on the outskirts of Mandala. Jeshua sat on a stone to look at the

city. "It's different," he said. "It isn't as pretty." Mandala was more square, less free and

fluid. It had an ungainly ziggurat-like pear shape. The colors that were scattered along its walls

and light-banners -- black and orange -- didn't match well with the delicate blues and greens of

the city substance.

"It's older," Thinner said. "One of the first, I think. It's an old tree, a bit scabrous,

not like a young sprout."

Jeshua looped his belt more tightly about his club and shaded his eyes against the sun. The

young of Ibreem had been taught enough about cities to identify their parts and functions. The

sunlight-absorbing banners that rippled near Mandala's peak were like the leaves of a tree and

also like flags. Designs on their surfaces formed a language conveying the city's purpose and

attitude. Silvery reflectors cast shadows below the banners. By squinting, he could see the

gardens and fountains and crystalline recreation buildings of the uppermost promenade, a mile

above them. Sunlight illuminated the green walls and showed their mottled innards, pierced the

dragonfly buttresses whose wings with slow in-out beats kept air moving, and crept back and forth

through the halls, light wells, and living quarters, giving all of Mandala an interior luminosity.

Despite the orange and black of the colored surfaces, the city had an innate glory that made

Jeshua's chest ache with desire.

"How do we get in?" he asked.

"Through a tunnel, about a mile from here."

"You mentioned a girl. Was that part of the cover?"

"No. She's here. I met her. She has the liberty of the city. I don't think she has to worry

about anything, except loneliness." He looked at Jeshua with an uncharacteristic wry grin. "At

least she doesn't have to worry about where the next meal comes from."

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"How did she get in? Why does the city let her stay?"

"Who can judge the ways of a city?" Jeshua nodded thoughtfully. "Let's go."

Thinner's grin froze and he stiffened, staring over Jeshua's shoulder. Jeshua looked around

and surreptitiously loosened his club in his belt. "Who are they?" he asked.

"The city chasers. They usually stay in the shadow. Something must be upsetting them

today."

At a run through the grass, twenty men dressed in rough orange-and-black rags advanced on

them. Jeshua saw another group coming from the other side of the city perimeter. "We'll have to

take a stand," he said. "We can't outrun them."

Thinner looked distressed. "Friend," he said. "It's time I dropped another ruse. We can get

into the city here, but they can't."

Jeshua ignored the non sequitur. "Stand to my rear," he said. Jeshua swung his club up and

took a stance, baring his teeth and hunkering low as his father had taught him to do when facing

wild beasts. The bluff was the thing, especially when backed by his bulk. Thinner pranced on his

bandy legs, panic tightening his face. "Follow me, or they'll kill us," he said.

He broke for the glassy gardens within the perimeter. Jeshua turned and saw the polis

chasers were forming a circle, concentrating on him, aiming spears for a throw. He ducked and lay

flat as the metal-tipped shafts flew over into the grass. He rose, and a second flight shot by,

one grazing him painfully on the shoulder. He heard Thinner rasp and curse. A chaser held him at

arm's length, repeatedly slashing his chest with a knife. Jeshua stood tall and ran for the

circle, club held out before him. Swords came up, dull grey steel spotted with blood-rust. He

blocked a thrust and cut it aside with the club, then killed the man with a downward swing.

"Stop it, you goddamn idiots!" someone shouted. One of the chasers shrieked, and the others

backed away from Jeshua. Thinner's attacker held a head, severed from the boy's body. It trailed

green. Though decapitated, Thinner shouted invective in several languages, including Hebrew and

Chaser English. The attackers abandoned their weapons before the oracular monster and ran pale and

stumbling. The petrified man who held the head dropped it and fell over.

Jeshua stood his ground, bloody club trembling in his loosening hand.

"Hey," said the muffled voice in the grass. "Come here and help!"

Jeshua spotted six points on his forehead and drew two meshed triangles between. He walked

slowly through the grass.

"El and hell," Thinner's head cried out. "I'm chewing grass. Pick me up."

He found the boy's body first. He bent over and saw the red, bleeding skin on the chest,

pulpy green below that, and the pale colloid ribs that supported. Deeper still, glassy machinery

and pale blue fluids in filigree tubes surrounded glints of organic circuit and metal. The chaser

nearby had fainted from shock.

He found Thinner's head facedown, jaw working and hair standing on end. "Lift me out," the

head said. "By the hair, if you're squeamish, but lift me out."

Jeshua reached down and picked the head up by the hair. Thinner stared at him above green-

leaking nose and frothing mouth. The eyes blinked. "Wipe my mouth with something." Jeshua picked

up a clump of grass and did so, leaving bits of dirt behind, but getting most of the face clean.

His stomach squirmed, but Thinner was obviously no mammal, nor a natural beast of any form, so he

kept his reactions in check.

"I wish you'd listen to me," the head said.

"You're from the city," Jeshua said, twisting it this way and that.

"Stop that -- I'm getting dizzy. Take me inside Mandala."

"Will it let me in?"

"Yes, dammit, I'll be your passkey."

"If you're from the city, why would you want me or anyone else to go inside?"

"Take me in, and you'll discover."

Jeshua held the head at arm's length and inspected it with half-closed eyes. Then, slowly,

he lowered it, looked at the tiled gardens within the perimeter, and took his first step. He

stopped, shaking.

"Hurry," the head said. "I'm dripping."

At any moment Jeshua expected the outskirts to splinter and bristle, but no such thing

happened. "Will I meet the girl?" he asked.

"Walk, no questions."

Eyes wide and stomach tense as rock, Jeshua entered the city of Mandala.

"There, that was easier than you expected, wasn't it?" the head asked.

Jeshua stood in a cyclopean green mall, light bright but filtered, like the bottom of a

shallow sea, surrounded by the green of thick glass and botanic fluids. Tetrahedral pylons and

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