PROBABLY, he added, and retreated into the darkness.
Miss Flitworth sat down on the steps of the clock, cradling the body of the girl across her knees.
“Bill?” she ventured.
A mounted figure rode into the square.
It was, indeed, on a skeletal horse. Blue flame crackled over the creature’s bones as it trotted forward; Miss Flitworth found herself wondering whether it was a real skeleton, animated in some way, something that had once been the inside of a horse, or a skeletal creature in its own right. It was a ridiculous chain of thought to follow, but it was better than dwelling on the ghastly reality that was approaching.
Did it get rubbed down, or just given a good polish?
Its rider dismounted. It was much taller than Bill Door had been, but the darkness of its robe hid any details. It held something that wasn’t exactly a scythe but which might have had a scythe in its ancestry, in the same way that even the most cunningly-fashioned surgical implement has a stick somewhere in its past. It was a long way from any implement that ever touched a straw.
The figure stalked toward Miss Flitworth, scythe over its shoulder, and stopped.
Where is He?
“Don’t know who you’re talking about,” said Miss Flitworth. “And if I was you, young man, I’d feed my horse.”
The figure appeared to have trouble digesting this information, but finally it seemed to reach a conclusion. It unshipped the scythe and looked down at the child.
I will find Him, it said. But first—
It stiffened.
A voice behind it said:
DROP THE SCYTHE, AND TURN AROUND SLOWLY.
Something within the city, Windle thought. Cities grow up full of people, but they’re also full of commerce and shops and religions and…
This is stupid, he told himself. They’re just things. They’re not alive.
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Maybe life is something you acquire.
Parasites and predators, but not like the sort affecting animals and vegetables. They were some kind of big, slower, metaphorical lifeform, living off cities. But they incubate in the cities, like those, what are they? those icky newman wasp things. He could remember now, just as he could remember everything, reading as a student about creatures that laid their eggs inside other creatures. For months after he’d refused omelettes and caviar, just in case.
And the eggs would…look like the city, in a way, so that citizens would carry them home. Like cuckoo eggs.
I wonder how many cities died in the past? Ringed by parasites, like a coral reef surrounded by starfish. They’d just become empty, they’d lose whatever spirit they had.
He stood up.
“Where’s everyone gone, Librarian?”
“Oook oook.”
“Just like them. I’d have done that. Rush off without thinking. May the gods bless them and help them, if they can find the time from their eternal family squabbles.”
And then he thought: well, what now? I’ve thought, and what am I going to do?
Rush off, of course. But slowly.
The center of the heap of trolleys was no longer visible. Something was going on. A pale blue glow hung over the huge pyramid of twisted metal, and there were occasional flashes of lightning deep within the pile. Trolleys slammed into it like asteroids accreting around the core of a new planet, but a few arrivals did something else. They headed for tunnels that had opened within the structure, and disappeared into the glittering core.
Then there was a movement at the tip of the mountain and something thrust its way up through the broken metal. It was a glistening spike, supporting a globe about two meters across. It did nothing very much for a minute or two and then, as the breeze dried it out, it split and crumbled.