The Last Hour of Gann (67 page)

The overhead lights in the office were dead, but she could still
see Crandall over by the window and he could see her. He waved a little. “Come and see this.”

“I can see it from here,” Amber told him queasily, and she could. The sky was alive; lightning rolled through behind the clouds so often, it actually seemed to be breathing. Now and then, white lines popped in and out of sight, hot enough to leave colorful burns hanging in the sky wherever she looked, but the worst things, the horrible things, were the smudgy greenish blobs that hovered around the high towers of the city, sometimes arcing one to another, flaring bright
or winking out and occasionally splitting the difference in an explosion of showy sparks.

Meoraq was out
walking around in that.

“Pretty cool, huh?”

“Yeah,” breathed Amber, but she barely heard herself. Meoraq was outside in that, and maybe it was because he really believed God was looking out for him or maybe it was just preferable to babysitting a bunch of humans one more night, but he was outside in that. And he had been gone a long time.

“Come here. You can see the bridges.
It’s wild.”

Did she want to see the bridges? Did she want to see the bridges
Scott was going to make them cross over all lit up with green fire and throbbing? No, she didn’t, but she moved to the window and looked out anyway.

A constant thread of lightning danced and spun at the highest arch of the nearest bridge, making it seem as though it alone were holding it up. More lightning spat and crawled along the sides, spilling down almost in slow motion to drip from the bottom into the water just like a fountain.
It was wild, all right. She supposed it was even beautiful. Mostly, though, it was terrifying.

Just then, s
omething huge hit the roof with a bang and bounced off, sending Amber leaping into Crandall’s side with a hoarse, unflattering caw of terror. He laughed and put his arm around her, saying, “Relax, Bierce,” in his aw-shucks way.

“I’m fine,” she mumbled,
backing up. “Cool bridge, but I’m going back now. I’ve got to get some sleep.”

“What’s your hurry? Come on, Bierce, what do you want from me? Roses and violins? Why do you have to be such a bitch every time I try to get friendly?” he asked, still smiling, but sounding a little irritated with her, just as if he had every right to be.
“I ain’t asking for your damn hand in marriage. Nothing else you’ve got going on has to change. I don’t kiss and tell.”

“
Of course not,” said Amber, still trying to get out from under his persistent arm. “Then everyone would know you were a chubby-chaser.”

Crandall ran an appraising eye down her body. “No one can accuse me of that anymore. Naw, I’m just not a bragger, that’s all. I may not be a class act, but I’m not a total dick either. Come on.”

“And I’m not interested! How the hell more obvious do I have to be?”

He put the other arm around her. “
Yeah, yeah. Big, tough Bierce don’t need a man. I get it. That’s fine. Look, no one has to know. The lizard’ll probably be gone all night, so why don’t you take the chip off your shoulder and just relax? I promise I won’t tell anyone that you’re really a girl.”

“Fuck you,” she snapped, pushing harder.

“Aw, come on. Don’t be mad. I’m just playing.” He bent down to kiss her.

“I’m not!”
She gave him a real shove now, jerking her head away. “Get the fuck off me!”

He stopped chasing her mouth and looked at her without smiling and without letting go. Lightning strobed across his face, making it a stranger’s, an alien’s.

“I’m getting real sick of this, Crandall,” she said, just like her heart wasn’t pounding and her guts weren’t in knots.

The stranger in the stormlight lo
oked thoughtful. “You know what? So am I.”

Without warning, he seized her by the collar of her shirt and shoved her hard against the wall. Before she could make a sound, he had a hand over her mouth and his thigh between her legs, wedging them apart and making that Hollywood staple of a man-dropping kick to the jewels impossible. She heard the purring sound of fabric tearing as he forced his other hand under her shirt, and although she str
uggled, he grabbed onto her naked boob and squeezed until she whinnied in pain and panic.

But that was all he did. His body crushed up hard against her, but his expressi
on remained fixed in that annoyed/impatient way. He waited for her to stop struggling and when she did, he gave her boob another crude honk and said, “Anytime I wanted, Bierce. Any fucking time. But I didn’t. I ain’t that kind of guy. But the lizard isn’t going to be around forever and when he leaves, you might want to wise up to the fact that not everyone here is going to want to get with his sloppy seconds. So maybe you ought to stop acting like a fucking priss when a guy wants to be friendly, because this is going to be one lonely fucking world when you’re in it by yourself.”

One more twisting squeeze and he shoved himself off her, turning his back and walking away without another word. Amber stayed up against the wall, breathing hard and hugging her breast until the hurt was gone and only the shock remained, but the shock was plenty. She wanted to throw up, but she didn’t want to make a mess now that the cleanerbot wasn’t there to clean it up, so she waited it out and took deep breaths. She was fine, after all. He hadn’t really done anything.

“He’s not that kind of guy,” Amber whispered and laughed, a little hysterically.

But no, she was fine. A little roughed up, maybe. Her shirt was torn at the neck, deep
enough to expose her left breast all the way to the nipple, but she could…she could tie it closed for now and…and she still had one more shirt and her sweaters and…and the bridge was still standing, right? Lightning struck…and struck and struck…but the bridge was still standing and Amber Bierce was fine.

* * *

Meoraq did make a patrol that night, all the way around the edge of the building to the front door, where he ducked beneath a sort of awning that had formed when whatever decorative steeple had once crowned this atrium had caved in. Here, mostly out of the weather and entirely alone, he knelt, slapped his hand to the ground with force enough to sting, and shut his eyes. “I am the clay upon Your wheel, my Father,” he said. Hissed, really. He hoped God could forgive that, because after the day he’d had, he didn’t think he could help it. A Sheulek was supposed to be the master of his emotions at all times, but it was all Meoraq could manage just to be master enough of his clay that he didn’t kill anyone.

But no…no. Feel the anger, Uyane. Acknowledge it. Own it. And set it aside. Even here, in the city of the
Fallen Ancients, he was in his Father’s House.

“I am the new-p
oured sword beneath Your hammer,” Meoraq said, calmly this time. The calm was not honest yet, but it was closer than it had been. “I am the lamp You raise in the darkness. Shape me. Forge me. Illuminate me.”

He prayed for hours, unmoving, reciting
the Word in the silence of his mind, beginning with the Book of Wrath, which seemed appropriate, and taking great comfort from the Prophet’s tales of his own wanderings in that first age after the Fall, and from the proof that he had found of Sheul’s dominion even over that shattered land. He meditated. He breathed. He was Uyane Meoraq in the House of his soul’s Father, and at last, his Father let him in.

By that hour, the storm had moved on. The lights still sparked in the distance and the grumble of thunder still sounded, but dully now and not often. “God’s wrath fell over every city,” Meoraq murmured. “And lo, towers did fall and walls did crumble, and the crying of all men
in terror and despair did rise as flames to heaven, but even His wrath is not everlasting. Nothing there shall be in all His House that is everlasting save His judgment and His love. There is no night, however dark and filled with woe, that is not followed by dawn.”

Truth. And he would get through this,
even this, somehow.

With regret, Meoraq rose off his aching knees and moved back around the side of the building to the hole that had been cut in its side. He entered past the killed machine and started down
the long maze of halls that led to the foreroom, where he would make a count and where he fully expected to find that several had wandered off in direct defiance of him. He wasn’t going to lose his temper when he saw it, either. They wouldn’t have left the building, not in this weather. They had only wandered as far as necessary to annoy him because that was the ordeal which he had accepted in taking this pilgrimage. He would be calm. A Sheulek is the master of his clay and his emotions.

And no sooner had this resolution hammered itself into form in his mind than he heard the
unmistakable sound of a muffled human moan behind a sealed door.

Meoraq stopped where he stood. His hands closed into fists. His head tipped back. He studied the ceiling and listened to the
noises and thought a few black words to himself until he had more or less convinced himself not to be an insensitive brunt. They were probably mating and since they were people, their men had every right to use their wives when the urge took them. He had often wished they would be more careful in concealing themselves when they did so (it was a rare night that Meoraq did not have to suddenly alter the path of his patrol to avoid walking right out on top of a pair of mating humans), but tonight, keeping them under his eye was more important than their privacy.

Whoever was inside moaned again, more breathily than before. The tone was not urgent and he could hear no other sounds, no grunting, no chatter. Good. Either he had stumbled on them before they’d truly gotten started or they were right at the end.

Meoraq struck his fist on the door.

The sounds
ceased at once.

“Get back to your bed,” he said bluntly.

There was no argument, no apology, no reply of any kind.

“Show me your obedience at once and I will forgive you this defiance,” he announced.
“It is late. I am tired. I am in no mood for foolishness.”

The human
s ignored him.

Meoraq hissed at the door, then slapped at the sealing pad and opened it.

The function of the room within was a mystery he did not care to explore at the moment, but he took idle note of its design anyway, since the humans were in no hurry to reveal themselves. It was a small chamber, not wide but rather long, separated into many walled spaces rather like stalls in a stable. Opposite them, before many mirrored panels, grew a pillar of sorts, with several fluted openings arranged over several cupped basins. The pipework and drains set in this structure made it obvious it was some kind of fountain, and it had been non-functional a very long time; one of the Ancients’ machines had died nearby, its metal face aimed at the pipework and its many arms extended in a final death-pose of silent frustration.

And of course, the humans were
here. They weren’t sprawling out in the open for a change, but the lamps made by the Ancients would betray any living body no matter how well it hid from him. The humans breathed in soft, shallow breaths, believing themselves undetectable, yet their grubby little handprints were on the mirrors, on the fountain, even on the dead machine. The smell of smoke and an unwashed body was strong, very strong, but there was no sex-smell yet.

“I know you are here,” he said.
“Put yourselves in order and get out.”

No response.

His patience slipped. He made no effort to regrip it.

“
It would seem the room is empty,” he hissed. “I think I’ll just lock the door so that no other human wanders in.”

“Leave me alone.”

That was Amber’s voice. Meoraq took a step back, inexplicably embarrassed, and then lunged forward in an equally inexplicable fury. “Who the hell is with you?” he demanded, managing not to shout only by the aid of Sheul and half a night’s meditation.

“Nobody. Go away.”

Nobody? Meoraq took another look at the handprints marking up the mirrored walls and saw they were all the same size. But the moaning, the ragged breaths…?

“I told you to stay together,” he said
at last, because he had to say something.

“You said to stay away from the windows. See any windows in here, lizardman? Go away!”

He did not see windows, only the smudgy image of himself in the ancient mirrors. His reflection—distorted by time in spite of, or because of, the ages of meticulous cleaning it had received—glowered back at him. It rendered his face unrecognizable as his own; the body, hulking and malformed.

Without warning, it occurred to him to wonder if the humans thought him ugly.
If his face seemed lumpish and horrible compared to their smooth, flat ones. If he was, in fact, monstrous.

He looked at the closed doors of the many stalls. Behind one of them, Amber hid from him.

‘I hung her up like a cut of meat in a butcher’s window,’ he thought suddenly. And he’d done it in front of all her people. He’d done it with a smile. Meoraq scratched at the side of his snout, which did not itch. “What are you doing in there?”