Read Online Magic Time: Ghostlands by Robert Charles Wilson, Marc Scott Zicree - Free Book Online
Authors: Robert Charles Wilson, Marc Scott Zicree
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and wings.
There is no try, there is only do.
Inigo was the messenger.
Christina returned home as the sun was dipping below the spires of the city, the sky streaked and fiery.
Her body ached from the hours of practice at the School of the American Ballet, obeying the commands of the shade that looked and sounded like the essence of the retired prima ballerina she had so idolized and emulated in recent years, years that seemed more a dream than the dream that had awakened her this morning.
Wearily, she climbed the four flights to her flat, her book bag feeling as if weighted with stones. She fished out her key as she drew near the door—then saw that it stood half-open (and she knew she had locked it on leaving that morning).
With a choked cry, she dropped her bag and the key, dashing inside, the hope surging in her like a drowning man swimming for the surface that at last he had found her—the one she could almost, not quite, remember—that he had come as he had promised her, back in the place she could not summon, but that her mind told her was named Boone’s Gap.
But the figure sitting in the one good chair, silhouetted against the dying embers of the day that slanted in through the window, was not the one she waited for.
From the outline of him, she knew he was wearing his manshape again. He drew on his cigarette in the darkness, and the red tip of it was a malevolent eye.
What monstrosities would walk the world were men’s faces as unfinished as their minds….
“What a day I’ve had,” he muttered.
She settled into the rocker that her lost mother had sung lullabies and held her in; that her lost father had torn the runners off in a fit of rage, before she was born.
Soon you’ll be past the pain, her visitor had told her long ago, on a rooftop over a thousand miles away.
She wondered when that would be.
He had never touched her in violence, never physically harmed her in any way. But he had committed horrors, andshe had been the unwilling witness to much of it. Like the inhuman being in the Harrison Ford movie that was older than she was, the one who in the end found a dreadful and curious compassion.
I have done questionable things….
She said nothing as he unburdened himself through the night, opening his dragon heart to her once more.
FOUR
GATEWAY
I t took Cal and his companions nearly two hours to search out a shelter, one big enough to hold thirty road-weary travelers. In a different terrain (one with such novel variations as valleys and mountains and hillsides, not just an endless expanse of grassland), Cal would have been content securing some cave in a cliff face—ideally one with no bears, wolverines or other irritable residents, not to mention tunnels full of grunters or portals that could suddenly open onto different states.
But as Cal had learned in many a quick improvisation on this journey, you worked with what you had.
“I think this’ll do,” Cal said as they drew up rein and surveyed the square structure sitting smack-dab in the middle of all that grass that stretched from the horizon on the left to the horizon on the right (not to mention the horizons ahead and behind).
Goldie dismounted and strolled up to the entrance. The glass door that said IN was shattered and hanging off its hinges, while the door that said OUT was intact, if almost black with grime. Of course, no one paid the least attention to those rules anymore, not that anyone particularly ever had.
Seen from here, the interior appeared utterly dark andquiet. Goldie turned back to the others. “The king seems to be gone from his palace.”
“Palace?” Colleen asked.
“The Palace of Material Goods, the central image and shrine of all we once held dear. Or at least, you guys did—I myself took a path I prefer to think of as more stripped-down and Zen.”
Cal thought of the vast mountain of scavenged goods Goldie had assembled in his underground home in the tunnels beneath New York, the place Goldie
There is no try, there is only do.
Inigo was the messenger.
Christina returned home as the sun was dipping below the spires of the city, the sky streaked and fiery.
Her body ached from the hours of practice at the School of the American Ballet, obeying the commands of the shade that looked and sounded like the essence of the retired prima ballerina she had so idolized and emulated in recent years, years that seemed more a dream than the dream that had awakened her this morning.
Wearily, she climbed the four flights to her flat, her book bag feeling as if weighted with stones. She fished out her key as she drew near the door—then saw that it stood half-open (and she knew she had locked it on leaving that morning).
With a choked cry, she dropped her bag and the key, dashing inside, the hope surging in her like a drowning man swimming for the surface that at last he had found her—the one she could almost, not quite, remember—that he had come as he had promised her, back in the place she could not summon, but that her mind told her was named Boone’s Gap.
But the figure sitting in the one good chair, silhouetted against the dying embers of the day that slanted in through the window, was not the one she waited for.
From the outline of him, she knew he was wearing his manshape again. He drew on his cigarette in the darkness, and the red tip of it was a malevolent eye.
What monstrosities would walk the world were men’s faces as unfinished as their minds….
“What a day I’ve had,” he muttered.
She settled into the rocker that her lost mother had sung lullabies and held her in; that her lost father had torn the runners off in a fit of rage, before she was born.
Soon you’ll be past the pain, her visitor had told her long ago, on a rooftop over a thousand miles away.
She wondered when that would be.
He had never touched her in violence, never physically harmed her in any way. But he had committed horrors, andshe had been the unwilling witness to much of it. Like the inhuman being in the Harrison Ford movie that was older than she was, the one who in the end found a dreadful and curious compassion.
I have done questionable things….
She said nothing as he unburdened himself through the night, opening his dragon heart to her once more.
FOUR
GATEWAY
I t took Cal and his companions nearly two hours to search out a shelter, one big enough to hold thirty road-weary travelers. In a different terrain (one with such novel variations as valleys and mountains and hillsides, not just an endless expanse of grassland), Cal would have been content securing some cave in a cliff face—ideally one with no bears, wolverines or other irritable residents, not to mention tunnels full of grunters or portals that could suddenly open onto different states.
But as Cal had learned in many a quick improvisation on this journey, you worked with what you had.
“I think this’ll do,” Cal said as they drew up rein and surveyed the square structure sitting smack-dab in the middle of all that grass that stretched from the horizon on the left to the horizon on the right (not to mention the horizons ahead and behind).
Goldie dismounted and strolled up to the entrance. The glass door that said IN was shattered and hanging off its hinges, while the door that said OUT was intact, if almost black with grime. Of course, no one paid the least attention to those rules anymore, not that anyone particularly ever had.
Seen from here, the interior appeared utterly dark andquiet. Goldie turned back to the others. “The king seems to be gone from his palace.”
“Palace?” Colleen asked.
“The Palace of Material Goods, the central image and shrine of all we once held dear. Or at least, you guys did—I myself took a path I prefer to think of as more stripped-down and Zen.”
Cal thought of the vast mountain of scavenged goods Goldie had assembled in his underground home in the tunnels beneath New York, the place Goldie
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