City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright Read Free Book Online Page B

tomorrow brings. We can't change the past, but we sure as hell can try to change the future.
    I ran toward the door, calling out to her.
    Maybe I could catch up with her before she reached the elevators.

30.
     
    In the other ending, the one I'd rather not dwell on, I had no breath to scream when I saw the world dissolve into mist, the golden towers falling. For I had stooped, not towards the single black card, but toward the many shining ones. They seemed so bright, and I thought I'd always have time to change my mind later.
    I hope this warning reaches you in time.

An End
     

Choosers of the Slain
     
    The time was Autumn, and what few beech trees had been spared released gold leaves into the chilly air, to swirl and dance and fall. Defoliants, and poisons, had reduced the greater number of the trees to leafless, sickly hulks, unwholesome to behold, and where the weapons of the enemy had fallen, running walls of fire had consumed them, leaving stands of wood and smoking ash. But here and there within the ruin, defying destruction, a kingly tree raised up a bounty of leaves, shining green-gold in the setting sun. Through the ruins of the forest came a man. He was past his youth, and past the middle of his age, but he was not yet old. His posture was erect, untiring, unbowed, and strong. His hair was iron-grey, his face was lined and careworn. The sternness of his glance showed he had been a leader of men, accustomed to command. The sorrow and cold rage kindled in his eye showed he was a leader no more. The furtive silence of his footstep, the quick grace of his flight, showed that he was hunted.
    He wore the uniform of a warrior of his day and age. The fabric was soft and camoflaged, broken into unpatterned lines and shadows. The fabric faded to dull green when he stood near a flowering bush, or darkened to grey-black when he ran across an open space thick with piles of ash.
    Across his back he bore a weapon which could fire a dozen missiles no larger than his littlest finger. The missiles could be programmed to seek and dive, to circle and evade, or to search out specific individuals, whose signatures of heat, or aurenetic patterns, matched those locked within the little bullets. The little bullets could fly for hundreds of yards, hunting, or, if fired with a booster, reach enemies miles away. On his shoulder he wore his medical appliance, with needles stabbed into the great veins of his arm, and colored tabs to show what plagues and viruses of the enemy had been found and contradicted in his blood.
    Hanging open at his throat, there hung a mask to filter out poisoned air. He left it dangling loose now as he walked, for the wind was fresh, and smelled of the salt sea as it blew into the east, toward the patrols he fled. When he came clear of the trees, he saw a rushing mountain stream, but it was poisoned now and clogged with stinking fish and blood. He had climbed higher than he knew. Not a dozen paces to his left, the stream fell out into the air, and let a bloody waterfall tumbled down high cliffs once green with trees.
    He knew these cliffs; he had climbed and played upon them as a boy. Once he had climbed their craggy sides to a high place not far from here, and felt such crowning triumph and such joy as he had never felt again, not even when the many fighting factions of his land united all beneath his hand to join in common bond to repel the invaders from over the sea.
    For many years he had ruled a turbulent people, combined them in one cause, and laid down strict laws to govern them, laws he prayed were fair and just. Now, remembering the way, he climbed the rocks again to find, unchanged, that wide and grassy ledge from whose vantage long ago he once had viewed in triumph far below the wide green field of his youth.
    When he turned and looked out upon the world, he saw the hills and deep-delved valleys fall away into the roads and fields and cottages, now blackened and deserted. By the river in the distance, he