As he watched it proceed he saw through his binoculars for the first time the spires of the city, and saw one tumble in a glimmering instant as the great wave passed. Somehow he had thought of cities—or towns, as the man had said, a word strange to Toby—as grand places free of the rub of raw nature, invulnerable.
He moved on quickly. A purple radiance played amidst the ripe forest, shed by a big patch of raw fresh timestone beside a shiny lake, far away. Thoughts of the city possessed him, ideas of how to track his father, so he forgot the time-storm.
At first he felt a wrenching in the pit of his stomach. Then the humid air warped, perverting perspectives, and confusion rode the winds.
His feet refused to land where he directed them unless he kept constant attention, his narrowed eyes holding the errant limbs continually in view. Cordwood-heavy, his arms gained and lost weight as they swung. To turn his head without planning first was to risk a fall. He labored on, panting. Hours oozed past. He ate, napped, kept on. The air sucked strength from muscles and sent itchy traceries playing on his skin.
The whispering tendrils of stupefaction left him as he angled toward the city. He sagged with fatigue. Three spires remained ahead, whitewash-bright, the most palatial place he had ever seen. Houses of pale polished wood were lined up neat and sure beside rock-roads laid arrow-straight with even the slate slabs cut square and true.
These streets thronged with more people than Toby could count. Ladies in finery stepping gingerly over horse dung, coarse frolickers lurching against walls, tradesmen elephantine and jolly, foul-witted quarrelers, prodigious braggarts, red-faced hawkers of everything from sweets to saws. All swarming like busybody insects and abuzz with talk.
To Toby it was like trying to take a drink from a waterfall. He wandered the gridded streets, acutely conscious of his ragged clothes and slouch hat. Baggy trousers covered his field gear. He drew some odd looks.
This whole Lane seemed devoted to the comforts of some human past he could not quite fathom. His Isaac Aspect broke in,
This is a deliberate echo of an ancient human culture. I cannot place it, but obviously it is pre-Chandelier. Their technology is mannered and cherished for that fact. Together with the river, it seems a sort of refuge for some. I hypothesize—
“I’d appreciate advice on how to get out of this Lane plenty more than your theorizing.” Toby had assigned Isaac the task of searching all files in his Aspect-space, and he had hoped for more than this.
It lies quite within the realm of human sociology to manifest nostalgia on such a scale. This Lane seems to run on varying time senses because of extreme esty gradients, and the human reaction has been to cling to constancy. Understandable and—
“Quiet.” He stuffed the Aspect back in its hole and sought the one thing he knew, the river.
Along the big stone quay men loafed in the rising, insect-thronged heat. They slouched in split-bottomed chairs tilted back to the point of seeming dynamical impossibility, chins on chests, hats tipped down over drowsy eyes. A six-legged sow and her brood grunted by, doing a good business in droppings from split crates.
Beyond this slow scene lay the river, lit by the fitful radiance of three overhead timestone patches. Toby took off his pack and sat on a wharf railing and looked at the river’s ceaseless undulation, broken by shards of raw silver that broke the surface, fumed, and were gone.
“Lookin’ for work?”
The voice was rough. It belonged to a young man somewhat older than Toby and short, like everyone here. Broad shoulders burst his crosshatched shirt. But the eyes were dreamy, warm.
“Might be.” He would need money here.
“Got some unloadin’ to do. Never ’nuff hands.” The young man held out a broad palm. They shook. “Name’s Stan.”
“Mine’s Toby. Heavy stuff?”
“Moderate. We got droners to help.”
Stan jabbed a thumb at a line of five slumped figures seated along the jetty. Toby had seen these before, only upriver they were called Zoms. They all sat the same way, legs sprawled out in front, arms slack, weight on the lower spine at a steep angle. No man could sit in that manner for long. Zoms didn’t seem to mind. Just about anything seemed better than being dead.
“You new?” Stan asked, squatting down beside Toby and scribbling something on a clipboard with a pencil stub.
“Just came in.”
“Raft?”
“Skiff. Landed up above that storm.”
Stan whistled. “And walked around? Long way. That ripple knock you flat?”
“Tried to.”
“Be a lotta trouble to get back to your skiff.”
“I might just push on down.”
“Really?” Stan brightened. “How far you come?”
“I don’t know.”
“Angel’s Point? Rockport?”
“I heard of them. Saw Alberts but it was foggy.”
“You’re from above Rockport? And just a kid?”
“I’m older than I look,” Toby said stiffly.
“You do have a funny accent.”
Toby gritted his teeth. “So do you, to my ear.”
“I thought, comin’ this far downtime, you’d get sick, go crazy, or something.” Stan seemed truly impressed, his eyes wide.
