Ruined Cities Read online

  Barlin shook his head. “Amazing.” They stood in silence a moment, watching the ground crews circle the ship, taking readings. “Well, since you’re not volunteering, I’ll ask: What the hell do you want with me?”

  “We are hoping you’ll join us — the colony will have need of an enforcer, or a ‘policeman’ if you will. Most of us have never known violence, but we are in the end human. Violations will come.”

  Barlin looked at Sanny aghast. “Me, a colonial enforcer? That would be like Fido keeping peace at an astrophysics seminar. How am I supposed to catch criminals who can outthink me while pinching out their morning loaf?”

  “Fredric, you would have to become one of us.”

  Barlin shook his head violently. “That is not going to happen.” He folded his arms. “And if I don’t help you?”

  “Understandable. You’ve assisted us immensely already — without someone to hold back the robot drones, we could not have completed the final stages of this ship.” Sanny’s bulbous eyes searched Barlin’s face. “You know, we examined all twenty-five police personnel in Seattle, but none were decent enough to see the wisdom in ignoring the Corporament’s decrees for the greater good. None except for you… after a bit of training.”

  Barlin squinted suspiciously. “Uh-huh. The trip to the nightclub, the ocean painting, the riot at the doughnut shop. You wanted me to see those, didn’t you?”

  Sanny nodded. “We wanted you to feel in your bones what humanity has become. Only then could you see why all this is necessary.” Sanny blinked, a disturbing movement that reminded Barlin of a string-puppet’s wink. “If you choose to stay, Mr. Barlin, we will provide you with enough money so that you never have to work again. It’s the least we can do, and we certainly don’t need the credits anymore.”

  Barlin looked away, watching freaks in white coats circle the ship. All the money he could want — a chance to thumb his nose at Tando and Carlyle, never step foot in the station again. He could spend full time in sim-land, getting his kicks, doing whatever he wanted. Living any way he chose.

  That, as contrasted with riding a barely proven tin can with Keliel to some barren alien world, hoping like hell an egghead doctor figured out how to swell their brains into steroidal water balloons without killing them.

  When you put it that way, the choice was clear.

  He looked at Sanny. “You know, I never said I loved her. I had my chance before she went under, and I still couldn’t do it.”

  Sanny said nothing, watching him.

  Oh what the hell, Barlin thought, turning toward the starship. If he wound up as a cloud of gas in interstellar space, so be it. If not, he and Keliel would both be eggheads, bumping braincases together at night, or whatever these people did to have sex. They’d be a team again.

  “All right, take me into the ship you bobble-headed goon. But you better put me to sleep right next to Keliel. I have to see the look on her face when she wakes up and sees my basketball dome.”

  For a brief moment, Sanny’s mouth curved upward, the closest thing to a smile his stretched facial muscles would allow. Then he nodded and walked toward the ramp.

  Barlin rubbed his forehead, and followed Sanny into the waiting starship. Here goes nothing.

  THE LAST EMPRESS OF ATLANTIS

  by

  JAY LITWICKI

  It was a world only the dragons could love. Their leathery wings flashed red as they circled the conflagration. The angry mountain burned in the distance and Atlantis, capital of the world, burned near at hand.

  Otheirn turned from the balustrade and crossed to his usual place. He tore the robe from a nearby corpse and used it to wipe away the layer of ash coating the table and chair, set down the flagon of wine and a glass, and took his seat, facing the ravaged city. Filling his glass, he stoppered the flagon against the fall of ash, and savored the rare vintage.

  A pair of drunken rustics armed with lances chased a bloodied unicorn across the plaza. The terrified beast circled the dry fountain, its crazed eyes holding Otheirn’s for a second as it scrabbled on the cobblestones, found purchase and dashed down a corpse-strewn alleyway. Its tormentors whooped wildly and continued their mindless pursuit.

  Otheirn wondered where the girl had gotten to. She kept wandering off, and who could blame her, having spent the better part of her life a prisoner of the Temple; he’d not begrudge her what freedom she had left.

  The ground convulsed. Nearby a woman screamed. Another laughed. Were they companions?

  Otheirn refilled his glass.

  Around a corner steel clashed, mixed with oaths. There was a flash of light, the smell of ozone; a petty magic. A harbor breeze skimmed the city and reeked of the abattoir. A child called for its mother. Across the plaza a weeping castrato sang an aria for a klatch of crippled men who threatened him with blades and pelted him with garbage. Those lucky enough to be alive yet unfortunate enough to be abandoned had dropped the pretense of civilization. It was the end of the world and the damned were living like kings and dying like dogs. Perhaps the world, in its shame, had ceased turning and the gods averted their eyes. Plague and cataclysm. It was a tragedy of epic proportions. Otheirn suddenly wished that he’d written it, but who would have believed? It would never fit the stage, and besides, the crowd always preferred a comedy.

  He finished his wine. The girl came back. She still hadn’t spoken. If asked, the old playwright could not have said why he entered the smoldering temple where he found her, chained to an altar, prepared for a sacrifice that never befell. Perhaps it was the lack of her blood that sealed the island’s doom. He now felt responsible for her, an unfamiliar paternal instinct he’d never had for his own children, gone now with their mother to her brother’s colonial estate. None of them had bothered trying to talk him out of staying behind.

  “Come on,” he said to the girl as he rose from the table. “It’s time we found Yelty.”

  She followed without comment.

  Their journey traversed the ravaged city down the hill from the Estates District to LowTown. A dragon laid dead in a square, diamond faceted eyes open and reflecting the flickering destruction. Urchins sat astride its neck shouting the clichés of their war games. All about them fires regaled the slums with wagging tongues whose reflections danced on the basalt walls of the prison so that it looked built of live coals. The girl slipped away again when they entered the derelict garrison that surrounded the gaol, but rejoined Otheirn as he mounted the steps that climbed to the open iron doors.

  “What’s that you’ve got?” he asked, pausing at the topmost stair. She ducked her clenched fist behind her back and hunched her slender shoulders.

  “I’ll not take it,” he said. “I just want to see it.”

  Grudgingly, the girl held out her hand. A gaudy signet ring of red gold lay in her palm.

  Otheirn laughed. “I’m afraid such riches will do you little good anymore,” he said.

  The girl pursed her lips petulantly, thrust her head towards his own and give him a derisive “Ha!”

  She casually parted her robe and displayed a silver chain bearing near a dozen similar rings that hugged the outer curves of her nascent breasts. Otheirn managed a wry smile. The girl unclasped the chain, slipped her newest prize onto it, and cinched the robe shut.

  Otheirn’s smile melted when he turned to face the prison and entered its dark mouth. Within, the air was oppressive and moist, redolent with the oily taint of sweat and blood, vomit and excrement. Lamps stood on intermittent sconces, their lambent flames animating the shadows. The girl made a face and hooked one hand around his belt, following closely as they crossed the entryway. The only sound was dripping water and the echo of their footsteps.

  The great hall and receiving room was mostly free of corpses, though rich in stout rats that eyed the interlopers curiously, no doubt wondering when they would fall dead and add a fresh course to their gruesome banquet. Otheirn, having visited the prison on occasion, though never, he was quick to remind himself, as a
guest, strode rapidly to the warder’s quarters hoping to find the keys.

  He entered without knocking, expecting the warder to be either dead or fled, and indeed, the amorphous lump of flesh and sores that lay on the sleeping shelf appeared lifeless. When it sat up with a sonorous bellow, snatched a short sword and held it leveled at Otheirn’s chest, the old playwright jumped back with a string of curses and knocked over the girl, who fell to the flagstones with a squeal. She then started to laugh, whether out of fear or because the sight of the grotesque walking dead man had finally pushed her past the limit of dread and into the realm of absurdity, Otheirn was uncertain. Her laughter proved infectious and he was hard pressed not to fall under its spell. The warder sweated blood, swayed on his scabrous legs and struggled to keep the sword point from dropping to the floor. Otheirn struggled to keep a straight face, swallowing snorts that crept up his nose and made his eyes water, like a comedic actor fighting to maintain his composure when playing opposite a master.

  The warder summoned the remnants of his life force, contorted his wasted, pocked and oozing face in a rage, and lifted the sword high. Otheirn could restrain himself no longer, and though he fully expected the death stroke, he burst out in riotous laughter. The warder hesitated, his eyes drew wide and he simultaneously vomited a prodigious quantity of blood and bile while he soiled himself front and back. Otheirn barely managed to avoid the fluids. The warder swayed, dropped his sword, fell to his knees and pitched forward, his face striking the floor with a wet thud.

  The rats were on him instantly.

  Otheirn’s laughter died as quickly as it was born. He breathed deeply, wiped his eyes, and carefully removed the comically large ring of keys from the dead man’s belt.

  “We leave the main floor now,” he told the girl as he helped her to her feet. They exited the warder’s quarters and headed down the central corridor. Otheirn plucked a lantern from one of the sconces.

  “The good news is that Yelty’s cell is upstairs, top floor,” he continued, “not the cellar.”

  As he spoke they came to a shadow soaked stair leading down. A rhythmic mumbling of many voices filtered up the stairwell, underscored by a faint, phlegmatic laughter.

  They hurried past.

  The stairs up lay at the end of the corridor. Otheirn’s lantern was the sole island of light when they reached the upper story. Rows of cells lined the corridor, most with open doors, others occupied by plague-stricken corpses; one held an inmate who’d hung himself rather than wait on the disease.

  Otheirn stopped before a locked cell and held the lantern aloft, steeling himself against what it might reveal. In the far corner a massive hulk of a man sat propped against the wall, his chin on his chest.

  “Yelty,” Otheirn whispered. “By the gods, I’m too late.”

  The head stirred and lifted. Red-rimmed eyes stared out from behind a mop of sweat-matted curls. “So you’ve decided to come after all,” the inmate rasped.

  “Yelty!” The playwright cried. He fumbled among the keys, trying them randomly in the lock. “You had me worried, you old satyr. I’ll have you out in no time. Damn these keys, why on earth wouldn’t they number them? Ah, here we go.” The cell door screeched open.

  “I’m parched,” the prisoner said, rising with difficulty. Yelty seemed a mythic behemoth in the wavering lantern light, a head taller than the playwright and of colossal girth. He braced himself against the prison wall.

  Otheirn produced a wine skin from within the folds of his robe and held it out to his friend.

  “Bless you,” the other said. He pulled the stopper with his teeth and shot a red stream passed his thick lips. Wine splattered on his jowls and down his collection of chins. He sighed. “Otheirn, it really is good of you to come,” he said. “I’d almost given up hope.”

  Yelty noticed the girl at his friend’s side.

  “What’s this?” he said roguishly. “I’ve been locked in here over a month, and you bring me a girl? And I thought you were my friend.”

  “Good old Yelty,” Otheirn said. “I see prison has not reformed you.”

  “Do you know,” Yelty said, “that they freed the entire floor but me, those who weren’t plague-stricken, that is. Murders, cutpurses and debtors were given their chance against the apocalypse, but not the dangerous poet.”

  “As I recall, poetry was not the charge brought against you.”

  “I was incarcerated for writing a book of poems!”

  “Love poems to a Senator’s son,” Otheirn reminded him.

  Yelty smiled. “And he was almost worth it. Is he?”

  “Not dead, no, but escaped to his father’s Colchis estate.”

  The girl tugged at Otheirn’s robes, eager to quit the dark prison.

  “Come,” the playwright said, “we’ll talk later, over a flagon or two.”

  Yelty nodded.

  They hurried down to the main floor, the echo of their footfalls joined by Yelty’s wheezing. When they exited the building the stout poet staggered as if struck a blow to the chest.

  “By the gods,” he said, looking at the nightmare vista laid out before him. “It’s like the dream of a mad prophet.”

  Otheirn, who had watched Atlantis spiral into chaos over the course of a fortnight, tried to imagine what it must be like for Yelty, whose last image of the Imperial City was of its pristine glory, bustling with healthy people beneath blue skies.

  “Is it day or night?” Yelty asked.

  “Night,” Otheirn said. “Coming on morning.”

  Yelty turned his gaze on the harbor, visible over the rows of burning warehouses, the choppy waves reflected red and yellow so that even the sea seemed ablaze. The harbor was crowded with ships, military and private, all of them leaving.

  “Yelty,” said Otheirn, “let’s get that drink.”

  They journeyed unmolested through the apocalypse, and finally arrived at the concourse before the Pyramid of Eternity. There they were pleased to discover that The High Road, a favorite tavern, was seemingly untouched by the world’s end and open for robust business. The owner, an ex-cavalryman who still wore his scarf of commendation, was drunk to the point of incoherence, as were those of his patrons still conscious.

  “The men of letters,” he bellowed as Otheirn and Yelty entered. “Mister boat?”

  Yelty steadied the man with one arm. “We could hardly leave without at least one flagon of your finest.”

  “Sright,” said the barkeep. He spun and staggered against the bar. “Watch er backsides, boys,” he said to the slumped and sprawled guests. “The poet’s drinking.”

  He drew two flagons with difficulty. Yelty ducked through the door to the side of the bar and emerged seconds later with a cold haunch of meat and aspic on a platter. Otheirn produced a handful of half crosses but the barman waved them away. “Money’s no good here. No good anywhere. No good. Drink up. Drink ‘til she sinks.” He sat down heavily on a cask and laid his head on the bar.

  A man in priestly robes stretched out in the corner raised a glass and repeated: “Drink ‘til she sinks.”

  “It won’t come to that, will it?” Yelty asked as they sat at a table near the door.

  “The oracles predict it.”

  “Good,” Yelty said. He drank from the flagon neck and then attacked the meat ravenously.

  The girl began picking among the insensible bodies that littered the tavern floor.

  “I have passage for two reserved on Vallyon’s trireme,” Otheirn said. “If you are so inclined.”

  “What, and leave the capital of the world? You go ahead, I’ll await the end here.”

  “I couldn’t leave this,” Otheirn said. “Where would I go?”

  “Your brother-in-law’s?”

  “That popinjay? I think not. The truth is, Yelty, that I cannot imagine life anywhere else. Atlantis created me, and I’m afraid I’ll die with her, for I can’t live without her.”

  Yelty wiped his mouth with his sleeve, drank deeply and belched. “
Gods, I needed that. I feel almost human again.”

  The poet rose, took their empty flagons to the bar, ignored the senseless barkeep and drew fresh wine.

  “What happened?” he asked the playwright, slamming down the flagons.

  Otheirn scanned the room, looked finally at the hint of Armageddon visible through the front door. “This,” he said.

  “Wha… ?” a head rose from the table beside theirs; the man attached to it clutched at his finger. “My ring. Stop, thief!” The drunk arose, pinwheeling, steadied himself and made a grab for the girl, who easy sidestepped the attempt. Yelty rose, cocked his arm and drove a meaty fist into the attacker’s jaw. The unfortunate victim of theft, violence and Armageddon fell back and laid still.

  The girl considered Yelty as he flexed his hand and whistled. She shrugged, opened her robe and unclasped the chain around her neck from which her collected rings depended. She added her newest acquisition.

  Yelty leaned forward.

  The girl squared her shoulders to afford him a better look at her treasures.

  “Don’t mind that,” said Otheirn. “She’s been collecting them all night. I’ve told her not to bother, but she keeps her own counsel.”

  “By the First,” whispered Yelty. “Those are…”

  “The houses,” said the girl, stretching the necklace closer to the poet’s wide eyes.

  “The what?” asked Otheirn.

  “They are signet rings,” whispered Yelty, “of the Houses of the First Families.”

  “What?” stammered Otheirn, leaning closer himself. “How many has she?”

  “Thirteen,” the girl said.

  “So you are only missing one,” said Yelty, turning the ring on his own finger.

  The girl smiled.

  Yelty slid the ring off his finger and held it in the palm of his hand, an offering.

  “Who are you?” he asked.