echoed with his braying cry.
The cyborg appeared at the bottom of the staircase and knelt down to examine the girl.
"Both of us," Jeshua said. "Both lies."
"We don't have the parts to fix her," Thinner said.
"Why did you bring us back? Why not let us stay? And why not just tell us what we are?"
"Until a few years ago there was still hope," Thinner said. "The city was still trying to correct the programs, still trying to get back its citizens. Sixty years ago it gave the architect more freedom to try to find out what went wrong. We built ourselves -- you, her, the others -- to go among the humans and see what they were like now, how the cities could accommodate. And if we had told you this, would you have believed? As humans, you were so convincing you couldn't even go into cities except your own. Then the aging began, and the sickness. The attempt finally died."
Jeshua felt the scars on his chest and shut his eyes, wishing, hoping it was all a nightmare.
"David the smith purged the mark from you when you were a young cyborg, that you might pass for human. Then he stunted your development that you might someday be forced to come back."
"My father was like me."
"Yes. He carried the scar, too."
Jeshua nodded. "How long do we have?"
"I don't know. The city is running out of memories to repeat. Soon it will have to give up ... less than a century. It will move like the others and strand itself someplace."
Jeshua walked away from Thinner and the girl's body and wandered down an access hall to the terraces on the outer wall of the city. He shaded his eyes against the rising sun in the east and looked toward Arat. There, he saw the city that had once occupied Mesa Canaan. It had disassembled and was trying to cross the mountains.
"Kisa," he said.
_Many of the cities did not die quickly. They lingered on for more years, some as if by force of will, others by the fortune of their kind environments. Wherever they stood, the humans in their shadows lived with their minds fixed on a past splendor they could never have again ... so they believed, for the universe was a hard place, and God's judgement harsh._
_But not all exiles accepted that judgement._
_And not all the cities, either, for a few were decaying in quite unexpected ways..._
--------
*BOOK TWO*
3460 A.D.
_Resurrection_
IT was the middle of the month Tammuz, and drought was on the land. The village of Akkabar squatted near the confluence of two streams normally deep enough for commerce, in an otherwise barren and featureless expanse where a single broad river had once flowed into the sea. The streams were now cracked mud. Some villagers thought the water table had dropped below most of the town's wells; others thought it was punishment from Allah for a multitude of sins. Yet where could one direct his prayers for forgiveness? They had all foresaken the Earth over a thousand years ago. Under the hot blue skies of God-Does-Battle, none could remember which direction Mecca was.
At forty, Reah was an ill-favored picker of rags and bagger of bones. She had decided, quite rationally, to take the way of the ghouls, trod only by nightmares and _ifrits,_ of whom she might be one: a singularly well-disguised _ifrit._ Gradually her mind clouded in earnest and she went about scavenging trash. All this had come to pass in the ten years since the death of her husband and daughter in a fire.
Leavings in the town dump were sparse. She stood in her black cloak, face veiled against the dust and sun, dark eyes looking over the piles of broken rock, dry-dead livestock, broken pottery, old splintered boxes and a digging cat. Her worn sandals scuffed the baked dirt uncertainly. She turned and looked back at the northern gate of Akkabar. There was no longer enough here to keep her alive. People weren't throwing enough away.
She shuffled through the town gates, passing between sleepy guards too tired to kick her. She could satisfy her thirst at one of the few public wells still
The cyborg appeared at the bottom of the staircase and knelt down to examine the girl.
"Both of us," Jeshua said. "Both lies."
"We don't have the parts to fix her," Thinner said.
"Why did you bring us back? Why not let us stay? And why not just tell us what we are?"
"Until a few years ago there was still hope," Thinner said. "The city was still trying to correct the programs, still trying to get back its citizens. Sixty years ago it gave the architect more freedom to try to find out what went wrong. We built ourselves -- you, her, the others -- to go among the humans and see what they were like now, how the cities could accommodate. And if we had told you this, would you have believed? As humans, you were so convincing you couldn't even go into cities except your own. Then the aging began, and the sickness. The attempt finally died."
Jeshua felt the scars on his chest and shut his eyes, wishing, hoping it was all a nightmare.
"David the smith purged the mark from you when you were a young cyborg, that you might pass for human. Then he stunted your development that you might someday be forced to come back."
"My father was like me."
"Yes. He carried the scar, too."
Jeshua nodded. "How long do we have?"
"I don't know. The city is running out of memories to repeat. Soon it will have to give up ... less than a century. It will move like the others and strand itself someplace."
Jeshua walked away from Thinner and the girl's body and wandered down an access hall to the terraces on the outer wall of the city. He shaded his eyes against the rising sun in the east and looked toward Arat. There, he saw the city that had once occupied Mesa Canaan. It had disassembled and was trying to cross the mountains.
"Kisa," he said.
_Many of the cities did not die quickly. They lingered on for more years, some as if by force of will, others by the fortune of their kind environments. Wherever they stood, the humans in their shadows lived with their minds fixed on a past splendor they could never have again ... so they believed, for the universe was a hard place, and God's judgement harsh._
_But not all exiles accepted that judgement._
_And not all the cities, either, for a few were decaying in quite unexpected ways..._
--------
*BOOK TWO*
3460 A.D.
_Resurrection_
IT was the middle of the month Tammuz, and drought was on the land. The village of Akkabar squatted near the confluence of two streams normally deep enough for commerce, in an otherwise barren and featureless expanse where a single broad river had once flowed into the sea. The streams were now cracked mud. Some villagers thought the water table had dropped below most of the town's wells; others thought it was punishment from Allah for a multitude of sins. Yet where could one direct his prayers for forgiveness? They had all foresaken the Earth over a thousand years ago. Under the hot blue skies of God-Does-Battle, none could remember which direction Mecca was.
At forty, Reah was an ill-favored picker of rags and bagger of bones. She had decided, quite rationally, to take the way of the ghouls, trod only by nightmares and _ifrits,_ of whom she might be one: a singularly well-disguised _ifrit._ Gradually her mind clouded in earnest and she went about scavenging trash. All this had come to pass in the ten years since the death of her husband and daughter in a fire.
Leavings in the town dump were sparse. She stood in her black cloak, face veiled against the dust and sun, dark eyes looking over the piles of broken rock, dry-dead livestock, broken pottery, old splintered boxes and a digging cat. Her worn sandals scuffed the baked dirt uncertainly. She turned and looked back at the northern gate of Akkabar. There was no longer enough here to keep her alive. People weren't throwing enough away.
She shuffled through the town gates, passing between sleepy guards too tired to kick her. She could satisfy her thirst at one of the few public wells still
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