Free City At The End Of Time by Greg Bear Page A

vigilant.) The moods of his books had darkened and clouded over. This is the way the world ends—not with a bang, but a misprint.
    He had noted other changes in the neighborhood—a decrease in mice and an increase in cats. The warehouse contained two more cats than it had before the girl’s arrival. They seemed to get along well with Minimus, his favorite. No doubt they all belonged to Mnemosyne—in their independent way. And now Bidewell and the cats had a girl to keep them company, an unremarkable girl mostly, moody, guarding her emotions, as well she should. She was in a precarious situation. She believed she was eighteen years old. Bidewell knew better, but did not have the heart to tell her. Let them all discover the truth when they came together, for inevitably—despite the predators that searched them out and suppressed them, much as the cats reduced the warehouse’s population of mice—there would be others. Their time had come.
    A time of conclusions.
    Ginny had survived a downward spiral and a terrible shock. He saw that she needed to recuperate and so did not load her overmuch with chores. The girl performed her jobs well enough. She opened boxes and weeded through the least promising collections, and was becoming a discerning reader, no surprise, considering her origins. She might eventually be of real help, but Bidewell wondered whether they would have the time for her skills to develop to where she could make a real difference. The work in the warehouse proceeded, though he already knew what he needed to know: that the past was responding like a barometer to a tremendous decrease in pressure. So little past remained, and hardly any future.
    What one thought one remembered was not a reliable guide to what had actually occurred—not anymore.
    History truly was bunk.

    CHAPTER 100
    The False City
    Tiadba had been wrapped in a cocoon of dust and fiber, like sweepings neglected in a corner. Her eyes stung and pricked but she did not dare lift her fingers to wipe them—hands and skin were both crusted with sharp grit.
    Often enough, over hours like beads strung on endless necklaces, she had felt the grit crawl on her skin as if alive…Could not imagine what it might be.
    Living, consuming decay.
    Did not much care.
    Here, beyond exhaustion, trapped—one bead of the necklace cold, the next neither cold nor warm—drained and burned to a crisp yet still capable of pain, not caring whether there was pain, only now and then could she rouse memory of her companions—her fellow marchers—and when she did, the grit jabbed all the more sharply. Memories and regrets had become tiny shards, sharp and glassy, caked on her skin and jabbing into her eyes.
    Tiadba had seen her marchers carried along the glowing, fluid trod through a hole like spreading lips rimmed with sores, into a great dingy hollowness…had seen bloated, slavering things, long and malevolent, hurry from far walls to dangle from squirming legs and stab with scimitar jaws. Jaws that smoked and sparked.
    Grabbing, piercing, and burning, then scurrying back into the hollowness. Tiadba curled. If she curled tight enough, perhaps she would simply fold into herself and vanish. Anything could happen here.
    She opened her eyes long enough to lift her hand, crusted over by dried blood. Bits of glove—shreds of dead armor that no longer protected or spoke—tried to glimmer on her fingers. But memory and betrayal pushed the shreds apart, finished the task of peeling them away, leaving her totally naked. All were naked.
    She could not tell how long it had been before she was lifted and her eyes were brushed clear. She blinked at the immensity of gloom and shadow and dust.
    She stood or had been propped stiffly on what might have been the side of a hill under a great canopy. The limits of the canopy seemed to waver, to rise and fall, uncertain not just in color or brightness, but also in distance and dimension. Still, something was arriving, something coming