A Dirge for the Temporal by Darren Speegle Read Free Book Online

that voice.”
      Lane looked at her narrowly. “Don’t say it’s Joy’s voice. Don’t you say it’s Joy’s voice appearing with your scarf. There are a million people in this city.”
      “Yes, but Joy’s voice is in that voice. Maybe this Citygirl is a product of all the most unique voices, a thousand of them, combined.”
      He looked from her face to that of the pop star. Muttered, “…in diversity.”
      The caravan bore them to the very rim of the basket, the transparent arms of the âme reaching out to caress Citygirl lovingly. As Citygirl’s eyes turned on Leah, Lane saw the bands of the spectrum exhibited there, mimicking the panels of the parachute above her. And he understood that the creature he looked upon was the city of New Geneva personified.

    ~

      In her poised, tense, fragile silence, so did Leah. She raised her open hand to the girl whose eyes were ribbons of color, and the girl accepted the invitation, bringing the boa with her as her hand landed in Leah’s grasp. At that instant, as if in obedience to a separate instinct, burners exploded with air-heating flames, and the balloon began to lift. Leah would not let the boa go and felt her body rise on its toes, then off the ground, then suddenly lurching upward, arm nearly dislocating from the socket. Her lungs took in the air of the event as she turned to look down at Lane. His arm, its hand extended futilely, grew smaller, more desperate with every clenching of the fist.
  The people and their own empty hands and their recorded music diminished. The miasma embraced. The glass monolith that was the Prism appeared, rising through color-wrenched strata, and Citygirl, in a swirl of purple feathers, entered Leah’s sphere. Hostess breathed of her guest and when her guest didn’t object, tossed the scarf around Leah’s neck and put her mouth over hers, pulling at the silence within her. Losing all sense of who and what and where she was, Leah broke the contact, and in the interim the bands of the spectrum warped and spiraled . She felt herself falling.
      The rush of air was noise again, great mysterious noise again. A hand reached down towards her, but it had no rope to reach so far, no feathers on which to hitch a ride.

    ~

      The city did not have a name now. Leah had been a name and more to Lane. Gena had been a name. Even Joy, whom he did not know, was a name. But now…
      He moved through the center on feet of lead. Although their numbers only increased as he went, the âme relinquished him gladly, for he was a bruise to them. The inner city burned like a beacon, hot across window sills and stoops, singeing the hair of rats, searing the tongues of the prophets. When he entered the park and the walls of the Prism became visible, Lane wished only to take shelter there, like some lighthouse keeper, out of the storm of nothingness.
      There was such an individual, though he’d no optic with which to work, nor ships to guide. A look at his aging face as he rose from the base of the Prism, where he’d been immersed in a sandwich, revealed as much. Lane told him he was looking for a girl. She’d last been seen in a balloon over Germantown. Without realizing he was doing so, his hands pirouetted before his face, describing Leah’s eyes. The man’s amusement drew attention to the fact that the man himself bore no signs, not in his vessels of sight nor anywhere else.
  “But how?” Lane said.
      “I do my duty,” said the man. “I see that the Prism remains functional and unmolested. The city needs me for no other purpose.”
      “Have you seen or heard anything of her?” Lane said.
      The man shook his head.
      “If you were to take me up into the Prism…”
      “That would not be neutral,” said the man.
      “Can you be neutral? Knowing what New Geneva has become?”
      The man took a bite of his sandwich, chewed with an enunciative care and deliberateness. When he swallowed finally, he opened his eyes wide,