The Golden City Page 5

  “Now what?”

  “Stay close and follow me.”

  A thicket of dead trees and thorn bushes was a one end of the island, but it was dominated by a ruined city. Maya had given names to the different locations: there was the insurance building, the schoolyard and the theatre district. She tried to imagine what the city had looked like before the fighting started. Were there ever leaves on the trees? Did the trolley actually roll down the central boulevard and did a conductor ever ring its little brass bell?

  Pickering had a different vision of Hell. He ignored the few remaining sign posts, but appeared to know the location of every gas flare that roared fire and smoke from a broken pipe. His city was comprised of different intensities of darkness and light. For most of their journey, he remained in a shadow land, avoiding the flares as well as the black tunnels where someone might be hiding. “This way This way ” he hissed, and Maya had to run to keep up with him.

  They entered a looted department store filled with smashed display cases and a pile of dress mannequins. The mannequins were smiling as if pleased by the destruction. When Pickering reached the store entrance, he looked out at the library across the street. The library was designed in the same neo-classical style as the other public buildings in the city. It looked like a Greek temple that had been attacked in a bombing raid. Some of the marble columns had been reduced to rubble while others leaned against each other like dead trees in an overgrown forest. A large statue had once stood guard at the base of the outer staircase, but all that remained were sandaled feet and the hem of a stone toga.

  “We have to cross the street,” Pickering explained. “They may see us.”

  “Keep moving. I’ll handle any problems.”

  Pickering took three quick breaths like a man about to dive underwater, and then dashed across the street. Maya followed him, walking slowly and deliberately to show that she wasn’t afraid.

  She found Pickering hiding behind one of the columns, and they entered the library’s main lobby. Chunks of plaster and concrete were scattered across the floor, and a brass chandelier had been ripped away from the ceiling. Books were everywhere, littering the floor and staircase. Maya picked up one near her foot and searched through the pages; it was written in a language she had never seen before and featured delicate drawings of plants that looked like ferns and palm trees.

  “We’re going to the third floor,” Pickering said. She followed him up the staircase. Maya tried to avoid the torn and stained books, but sometimes she stepped on the loose pages or kicked them away. It was dark on the staircase; the oppressive gloom seemed to add a weight onto her shoulders. By the time they reached the first landing, her entire body felt heavy and slow.

  On the third floor, books had been stacked against the wall as if someone had tried to sort through the collection. Pickering led her down a corridor, made a sudden turn through a doorway and stopped. “Here we are,” he announced. “The reading room ”

  They stood at one end of the large public space that dominated the top floor of the building. The reading room had a forty-foot ceiling and a green and white checkered marble floor. It was filled with long wooden tables and chairs. The room’s bookshelves were on two levels—a floor-level row of shelves and a second tier that began halfway up the wall. Some of the gas pipes in the library hadn’t been destroyed, and a few of the desk lamps were still burning. Their sputtering flames gave off an oily smell.

  Pickering’s shoulders were tense and his lips were pressed tightly together. Maya wondered if her lack of fear made him nervous. She followed her guide between the rows of tables to a point halfway across the room where the floor suddenly disappeared. Apparently there had been an explosion—and then a fire—and a large portion of the library had collapsed.

  What remained was a three-story fragment of the building, a pillar made of brick and stone and concrete, surrounded by twenty feet of empty space. At the top of the pillar was a fragment from the reading room—a single table on a patch of checkered floor and a barred door that looked like the entrance to a prison cell.

  “There. Do you see it?” Pickering pointed at the door. “That’s the entrance to the map room.”

  “So how do we get there? Can we climb up from inside?”

  “No. I tried. I thought you’d know what to do.”

  Maya paced back and forth, trying to figure out a way to get across the fifteen-foot gap between the pillar and the reading room. A rope was useless unless she could climb to the top of the ceiling. They could build a ladder from pieces of wood and old nails, but that would take too much time, and their activity would be noticed by the patrols. Still silent, she turned away from Pickering and climbed up the staircase to the top level of bookshelves. She grabbed the metal railing and began to push it back and forth. Books fell off the walkway with a flutter of white pages and hit the floor below.

  Pickering scurried up the staircase and stood beside her. “What are you doing?”

  “Grab the railing,” she told him. “Let’s see if we can break it off.”

  Together, they pushed and pulled the railing until a section broke free of the walkway. Maya lay the section flat, and then shoved it forward until the one end rested on the spire like a narrow bridge.

  “I knew you’d think of something,” Pickering said.

  Maya adjusted the scabbard strap and stepped onto the improvised bridge. It shifted, but didn’t collapse. She took a first step, then another—trying not to look down. The railing flexed slightly when she reached the center, but she took a few more steps and reached the other side.

  Using her club as a pry bar, she ripped the door from its hinges and entered the map room. It was a windowless storage space about the size of a walk-in closet. The walls were lined with shelves that held black cardboard storage boxes. Each box was tied shut with a silk cord and labeled with faded numbers.

  Maya grabbed a box from the shelf and placed it on a table. At that moment, escape seemed possible, but she tried to control her emotions. Slowly, she untied the cord, opened the box, and found a faded lithograph of a creature in human form with wings and light emerging from its body. An angel. Beneath that lithograph was another angel, wearing different colored robes.

  Furious, Maya ripped open two more storage boxes, stacking them on top of each other. She found full-color prints of angels carrying swords or gold caskets. Illustrations ripped from books. Water-colors and wood-block prints. But the subject was always the same: Angels on earth and in heaven. Angels floating and flying and sitting on golden thrones. Black angels, white angels and even one with six arms and green skin. But no trace of a map anywhere.

  She heard a banging from outside the room. Holding one of the cardboard boxes, Maya stepped out of the doorway. Her improvised bridge had been kicked away and was lying on the rubble three stories below.

  Pickering stood on the edge of the walkway, smiling triumphantly. “Don’t go anywhere,” he giggled. “I need to find one of the patrols.”

  “They’ll kill you.”

  “No they won’t. They know me. I can find anyone who’s lost or missing—even a demon like you.”

  “What about the maps, Pickering? I just found a map that shows a passageway under the river.”

  “Show it to me. Let me see it.”

  “Sure. No problem.” Maya waved the box. “Just help me get off this platform.”

  Pickering considered the idea and then shook his head. “There can’t be a map because there’s no way off the island.”

  “Help me and I’ll defend you from the wolves.”

  “If I stayed with you, we’d both be killed. You still have hope, Maya. That’s your weakness. That’s why I could lead you to this place.”

  As he turned and hurried away, Maya reached into the box and tossed a handful of brightly colored angels into the air. The prints and illustrations fluttered downward into the gloom. Hope. That’s your weakness.

  Now, it was gone.

  6

  M ichael woke up and took a shower in a suite decorated with flowers. Two dozen red
roses drew his eyes to the bedroom dresser. A spray of white hawthorn blossomed from a crystal vase near the bathroom sink. Little cards had been attached to these offerings—personal messages from Mrs. Brewster and other members of the Brethren. Good luck, announced one. You carry our hopes with you on your journey.

  Michael had no illusions about the sincerity of these statements. He was still alive because the Brethren believed that he could help them increase their power. When the monitor screen attached to the quantum computer flashed the words come to us, he knew that the executive board would demand that he cross over. That was his role—to go off into the darkness and come back with technological miracles.

  He pulled on a T-shirt and sweatpants and walked into the living room. An hour ago, the security staff at the research center had placed yet another elaborate flower arrangement on the coffee table, a Japanese village with straw-yellow orchids twined around a ceramic pagoda.

  Standing at the window, Michael gazed at the Neurological Cybernetics Research Facility, a windowless, white box of a building that looked like a sugar cube dropped from the sky. Now that he was a Traveler, he didn’t need special drugs or wires inserted in his brain to cross over. But going back into the building was a public act, a demonstration of his unique power. It was clear that he was no longer a prisoner, but becoming a member of the Brethren had only increased his enemies. If he returned with some new form of technology, then his position would be much stronger.

  The six realms were parallel worlds, alternative realities. He had already crossed over to the Second Realm of the hungry ghosts. The First Realm was a version of Hell and Michael had no intention of visiting that dangerous place. There was a Third Realm that was filled with animals, but that wasn’t the place to find an advanced civilization using a quantum computer. Michael had decided that the beings who sent the message were either in the Sixth Realm of the gods or the Fifth Realm of the half gods. He had read the diaries of past Travelers, but none of them could describe these worlds in great detail. The half gods were supposed to be clever, but jealous of everyone else. The gods lived in a place that was difficult to find—a golden city.

  Although the Brethren assumed they controlled him, Michael had his own agenda. Yes, he needed to gain access to advanced technology, but he was also looking for an explanation for his own actions. It was a waste of time to study philosophy or pray in churches if a superior being could give him a direct answer.

  Did the gods possess magical powers? Could they fly through clouds and toss thunderbolts with their hands? Perhaps the human world was simply an enormous anthill, and the gods stopped by to blow up the mounds with firecrackers or flood the passage-ways with water. And then, every few hundreds of years or so, they would drop morsels of knowledge in the dirt so that humanity would be inspired to keep working.

  Someone knocked softly. When he opened the door, he found Nathan Boone and Dr. Dressler waiting for him in the hallway. Boone was as stolid as ever, but the scientist looked nervous.

  “How you are feeling, Mr. Corrigan? Did you have a good night’s sleep?”

  “I guess so.”

  “The staff is ready,” Boone said. “Let’s go.”

  They took the elevator to the lobby and walked outside. The wind was coming from the northeast and the tops of the pine trees beyond the wall swayed as if an army of woodcutters were attacking them with chain saws. When they reached the white building, Boone waved his hand. A steel door slid open and they entered a large room with a glass-enclosed gallery twenty feet above the concrete floor.

  As Dressler and Boone climbed the stairs to the gallery, Michael pulled off his shoes and lay down on the examination table in the center of the room. A Taiwanese physician named Lau came over and began to attach sensors to Michael’s arms and skull. Michael smelled Lau’s twist-of-lemon cologne and heard the sound of an air-conditioning fan. The shadows on the wall changed when the doctor moved to the other side of the table.

  “All done,” Dr. Lau said quietly. “The microphone is on. They can hear us up in the gallery.”

  “Okay. I’m ready.”

  Several minutes passed and nothing happened. Michael’s eyes were shut, but he knew everyone was watching him. Maybe something was wrong. If he failed, Nathan Boone would tell Mrs. Brewster, and she would start a whisper campaign against him. Michael remembered what had happened to Dr. Richardson several months ago: the neurologist fled from the research center, but Boone’s men found him on a night ferry heading to Newfoundland and tossed him into the ocean.

  He opened his eyes and saw Dr. Lau standing beside the table. “Are you comfortable, Mr. Corrigan?”

  “You’ve done your job. Now go away.”

  A shadow hand emerged from his skin and then was reabsorbed. Michael forgot about the watchers in the gallery and concentrated on his own body. He was aware of this energy inside him—the Light contained within every living thing. Slowly, the energy gained intensity, and it felt as if he were glowing.

  He moved his right arm and something forced its way out of his skin. And there it was, an arm composed of little points of light, like a tiny constellation of stars. Within seconds, the rest of the Light followed, and he broke free of the cage that held him, the awkward heaviness of flesh and bone. He drifted upward and then was gone as the Light was pulled into the dark curve of the infinite.

  * * *

  The four barriers of air, earth, water and fire stood between him and the other realms. He passed through them quickly, moving toward each black space that allowed him to continue on. The fire barrier was last, and he paused there for a second, staring at the burning altar before he entered the passageway in the stained glass window. Something powerful was guiding his light in a particular direction; he felt as if all the atoms in his brain had been split apart and squeezed back together again.

  When the moment passed, he was awake and floating in water. Michael panicked,

  reaching out with his arms and kicking his legs. His feet touched ground and he stood up, blinking and shivering like a shipwreck victim just rescued from the sea.

  There was no immediate threat to his life—no sign of any other person or animal. His arms and legs could move. He could think, hear and see. The air was warm and the clouds above him were billowy and gray. He was standing in the middle of what looked like a massive rice paddy, divided by a grid of narrow levees. Every few yards, a thin stick emerged from the surface.

  He examined the area around him and realized that whatever was growing here had nothing to do with rice. Broad leaves with thick stems lay on the surface of the water, and floating among the leaves were flowers that looked like cups molded from orange candle wax. Each flower gave off the wet odor of decay.

  Before he could explore the area, he needed to mark the passageway back to his own world. Keeping his eyes on the spot, he gathered three sticks and jammed them into the mud, forming a crude tripod. As he sloshed through the water to get one more stick, his leg brushed against a round submerged object about the size of a pumpkin.

  Michael reached into the water to investigate and something touched his hand. It was an animal—moving quickly and aware of the intruder in its world. The creature slithered through his legs, and then teeth as sharp and pointed as rows of needles pierced his skin. As he jerked up his leg, he saw a glistening black creature near the surface of the water. It had the body of a snake and the head of an eel.

  Shouting and chopping at the water with his hands, Michael ran through the paddy. His wounded leg burned and he wondered if he had just been poisoned. A few yards from the levee, he stepped into deep mud and he had to force his way forward to the strip of dry land.

  Pulling up his pants leg, he examined the wound, a jagged V made of little points of blood. Once the burning sensation faded, he stood up and surveyed this new world. The tripod of sticks that marked the passageway was about two hundred yards in front of him and the dark green water of the paddies extended to the horizon. Directly above him were three suns grouped in a triangle and
half-obscured by the gray clouds. When crossing over, he moved towards light—the so-called “higher” realms. But there was no golden city in the middle of the dirt levees.

  “Hello!” he shouted. “Hello!” His voice sounded weak and plaintive.

  Michael pivoted on his heel and saw something he hadn’t noticed before—a bonfire burning in a distant thicket of brush and trees. Staying on dry land, he followed the levee bordering a watery rectangle. A light wind made waves that splashed against the reddish-brown dirt. The only other sounds he could hear were his own breathing and a squishy noise from his wet socks. After awhile, he made a left turn onto a new levee and passed scraggly bushes that reminded him of wild sage and dwarf trees with twisted branches jabbing at the sky.

  He heard voices and began crawling through the tangled vegetation. When he reached a thicket of plants with leaves that looked like strips of old leather, he moved cautiously.

  Eleven men and women sat around a fire. It was a woeful, ragged-looking group—like the survivors of a flood or a tornado. Both sexes wore wide-brimmed hats woven from dry grass and long boots with the top part folded down at the knees. The women were dressed in black skirts and blouses with red or green trousers underneath while the men’s clothing displayed bright geometric designs—mostly squares and triangles. Each person also wore something around their neck: a red collar about three inches wide with a silver clasp. Their only other possessions were long curved knives that hung from their belts.

  The group was arguing about something. When the voices became louder, an old man struggled to his feet. He had bandy legs, stringy hair, and a paunch that sagged over his belt buckle. “He’s a thief!” the old man announced. “He’s a squat-house thief who cared nothing for the boots working beside him. But the trouble is—he’s the thief and we’re the ones that pay.”