Chapter 7: Alone Again
The huge places of learning, libraries, schools and colleges, swallowed the gray car like a fly. Its engine echoed quietly down the side-streets, reverberations soon muffled by marble and brick. There was no way to tell where the car should go next, which buildings to search or what Drifter should be looking for. He needed to find Dick Chelsea. Years ago that man had been living in the Academy sector. There was no guarantee that he still was or that he had even survived the fall of Greenspark fire.
After driving aimlessly for some time Drifter pulled over to the side and stopped. Beyond the sidewalk a patch of open ground spread, black trunks of destroyed conifers jabbing at the sky. The chain-link fence that had once ringed it was fallen to the ground, laying in torn, rusty heaps. In the center of the space a large building rose up, columns and arches of white marble supporting an angled roof of gray tiles. Three of the pillars had fallen, laying broken in the dirt. What looked like a blackened human skeleton was decomposing into the ground, trapped under a fallen pillar.
On the opposite side of the street was a monument of rough gray and tan stone, formed into a huge edifice of learning. Archaic symbols were carved into the stone above a dim opening, a colonnaded entrance like a gaping mouth. Drifter looked from one building to the other, then pocketed his keys and chose the larger building of gray and tan. It had windows, some of them surprisingly intact, which could be used to look out on a large portion of the surrounding city. He might see movement from there, someone he could question or follow secretly.
As he strode towards the building Drifter realized that he was alone again. No one followed in his footsteps, questioned his next move or watched him from coldly calm eyes. It was a feeling of release, a freedom from worry and care. Everything was as it should be. He moved alone, a solitary figure bent on his own projects.
The shade under the portico engulfed him. He walked under it to where the glass doors were still intact, dust filming their smooth surface. Recently, someone had scratched words on the wall beside the doors. Drifter leaned over to look at them, eyes narrowed.
‘step inside and learn your lessons,
life and death together making fun.’
There was nothing else to the poem except for a vague scrawl on the wall which could have been a signature or words that were never written, stopped by some violence. It did not give Drifter a clue as to where Dick might live, though it did confirm that someone was still alive in this sector. If the poem was supposed to be a warning, Drifter did not know what it meant. Life and death walked hand in hand across all of Apex, death as the elder brother.
He pushed carefully on one side of the double-door, swinging it open soundlessly. Inside, a hall carpeted in moth eaten plush led past office and bathroom doors to the main chamber of the academy. A huge, soaring room with a pillar of dark blue material holding up the domed ceiling in the center. All around the upper edges of the chamber ran a wide balcony, bound by twining banisters of steel. Windows looked out upon the city at regular intervals around this balcony, most of them still intact. From them spilled light tinted silver and gold by dust. It pooled over the lip of the walkway and cascaded into the huge chamber, striking blue glints from the central pillar.
All this was quiet and harmonious. It exhaled an air of deep thinking and peace left over from its days as a college. But there was an incongruity in the scene which Drifter eyed warily.
Hanging from the balcony was a number of long ropes, bound to the supports underneath it. Dangling from each rope was a lynched body. Charwings hopped from one corpse to the next, picking and pecking. It did not look like a warning, unlike the pair of bodies outside of the adobe houses. These hanging forms had been executed for some crime or destroyed in a fit of revenge. The birds fluttering between them were horribly alive, the bodies grimly dead.
Drifter now understood the writing by the door. It had been done more recently than he thought, sometime within the last week, by the state the remains were in. But their faces were too destroyed for him to make out if any were the man he was searching for. He did not know if he would even recognize Dick should he meet him alive.
A stench of decay drifted through the large chamber, along with the golden dust motes in the window’s light. Drifter hunched his shoulders against the smell and passed through the room, ascending a wide staircase at the other side. This did not lead to the balcony, but up to another hall with many doors leading off of it. The dormitories and living quarters of the academy.
Still, it was not the highest vantage point of the building. Drifter found another set of steps, narrower this time, leading him up to a series of school rooms, libraries and dining chambers. Eventually, he found the last set of steps leading upwards, even narrower than before. These took him to a tall pinnacle above the domed roof, set on its peak. In it was a sort of observatory, a circular room with windows all around its walls and a dome of shattered glass on top. Bits littered the floor like stars, reflecting the sunlight above. The floor was scorched but, being thick stone, still stable enough to walk on.
Moving over to a window, Drifter leaned on the thick stone lintel to look out. Directly below him was the dome of the lower chamber. Beneath it, the scene dropped away suddenly, plunging down a few jagged towers and subsidiary roofs to the herringbone pavement of the street. The white palace across the way could be seen clearly, tiled roof glinting with a dull light. Beyond it, and all around him, the structures of the Academy sector reached out. Massive, hulking buildings with domes and gables, towers of a brownish-gold stone with tops wider than their trunks, bubbled of shattered and sparkling glass. It spread all around him, with shadowy, bricked avenues in between. And, here and there, the burnt hulks of conifer trees with tops singed to a single spire.
He saw nothing moving, but Drifter was patient. Hoisting himself onto the wide edge of the window, he sat with his back against the inner wall and legs resting along the sill. With a turn of his head he could keep watch on his car below and everything that stirred in this part of the city.
Charwings hopped in and out of the lower story of the building. A few other birds, pigeons perhaps, winged their way between structures. Other than that, everything appeared to be silent. Drifter became as still as the scene, as motionless as the stone. Sitting in the window, he would have looked like a mere dark smudge from below. No one would have thought the shape alive, as it did not even twitch as the sun moved across the sky and began its descent into the gray mists of the far west behind him. For a few minutes the sun outlined the man in fiery red like a halo. Then it sunk beyond the edge of the opposite window and he became an even darker outline as the sky faded to blue. Gray tones gradually ate into the sky, bleaching color from the air until all was darkness, with a sprinkling of blurred stars above.
Finally Drifter shifted, legs swinging down to meet the floor. He had seen nothing to indicate human life as he watched, no movements, lights or smoke from cooking fires. But he knew people must be out there, as the lynching below proved it.
Retracing his steps down the stairs and through the halls in the dark, Drifter found his way to the main hall. The stench of decay still hung in the room, frosted by the cold air. No light came in through the windows except for the faintest starlight. The bodies were looming shapes of black in the gray darkness. Drifter moved through the hall quickly, coming out between the pillars of the academy’s entrance and onto the sidewalk. Above him, the sky was clear and cold, stars burning silver in the deepest blue. His car was a faint gray sheen across the road, outlined against the ghostly white of the opposite building.
From the shadows by the pillar, he surveyed the road up and down to make sure that nothing was stirring. It was on the second sweep of his head that he saw something detach itself from the whiteness of the opposite structure. A shape just as pale as the stone it came from. Mist seemed to swirl around it, long strips of gauze floating on the chill air.
The wraith moved across the open space at a tangent to Drifter, heading towards a group of buildings on the far right. He could see no clear legs on the thing, but it glided in long strides over the desolate ground. As it came nearer, he heard an eerie, bell-like noise proceeding from it at intervals. A mellow, deep gonging would sound, before fading away into the still night air. Once each note had evaporated it would be followed by a second exactly like the first. Drifter crouched back against the pillar behind him at the sound. It was so inhuman, precisely placed, yet softly reverberating, that he felt a fearful chill as it repeated itself.
The phantom wafted by, gradually disappearing into a cluster of buildings which looked like storage sheds or outbuildings of some sort. It did not re-emerge. After waiting for some time Drifter went cautiously across the street to his car. He felt oddly shaken at the sight of the wraith. It brushed uncomfortably close to his memories of the last time he had met one, which in turn evoked remembrances further back...
With an effort he shook the spooked feeling off and turned the key to start his car. Almost without meaning to, he checked the passenger seat, before realizing that there was no reason for him to look towards it. No one would be there, whether he looked or not. He did not have to wait for Loran to get in, or argue the meaning of the apparition with her. A momentary twinge of disappointment traveled through him.
“Fool,” he muttered to himself, wrenching the car around onto the road. “Forget it. Forget her and everything else. They won’t matter once your mission is done.”
Driving into the darkness, he ran without his headlights on so as to attract less attention. His eyes searched for any light that another person might have lit, any smudge of smoke against the sky. Seeing only stars and shadows, he drove through the whole sector from one end to the other. Late at night, past the deep-blue middle, he came out on the wharf of the seaboard. At the very tip of Terminal point, a long beak reaching into the sea.
The cement of the wharf was cracked and mildewed, the fence around it broken and dragged aside. Drifter drove out onto the edge of the docks and stopped, staring out over the deep sea.
The water was a black so alive it was like the hide of a sleeping beast, undulating at every breath. Tints of blue and gray ran through it, streamers of phosphorescent green glinting on the horizon. The swells were oily and shifting, so that not a star was reflected in it. The sky might as well have been covered in the thickest clouds. The noise of the breakers slamming against the pier filled the night with a melancholy solemness, healing and bitter as a tall glass of wine.
Drifter stood out of his car and moved to a stop beside the hood, leaning on it slightly. The cold sea air misted against his face, bringing the sharp scent of brine. Far to his right, along the wharf a huge ship lay crumpled against the cement, sides peeling and rusting as the bow was gradually jammed into the hard land. The name on its side was almost gone, the company logo worn away. It was no longer a machine, one of the tools of men to move and accumulate wealth. What had once been a ship was a ghost, the bones of a memory.
Turning about, Drifter looked back at the silhouette of the Academy sector. It stretched all along the landwards horizon, clasped by thin arms of sea on either side. Dead structures raised their heads to the sky, blotting out stars with their immensity. Gray tiles gleamed, walls blackened by the absence of light stood solidly. The jagged ends of broken rafters bristled out of one nearby warehouse, making inky lines straight as a ruler. Far away, a tall tower rose above the rest, head a bubble in the sky.
At first there was no sign of inhabitants, no light or movement in the city. But as Drifter watched, something happened which made his gaze sharpen with excitement. A tiny yellow light, a golden glow blunted by distance, appeared in one window of the tall tower. It was small and far away, a fairy drifting in the night air, but it meant life.
The tower was somewhere near the center of the sector. Drifter tried to fix its location in his mind, using the roofs of other buildings and towers near it to create landmarks. Once the outline of the city, with its one glowing spark, was imprinted on his mind he got back in his car and turned it towards the nearest street. The Academy sector was not wholly dead.
---
Tangled in the many avenues between looming buildings, Drifter eventually lost his course. Whether the light had gone out, or was impossible to view from a closer perspective below the tower, he could not tell. Usually, he was adept at making his way through Apex with perfect precision. But the Academy sector was built on different plans, and once you came near their base all of the towers looked the same in the dark.
Frustrated, Drifter slapped a hand on the seat next to him and gazed all about in the shadowy alleys. The tower above him could be the one he had spotted from the pier, but it did not appear to be the tallest in the sector, from his perspective at its base. He had already tried two towers, both of which had appeared to be in the right place. But each had been empty, one even half-destroyed by the disaster. More than that, neither looked like they had been entered or disturbed in many days. Cobwebs hung over their steps inside, the dust was unmarked before Drifter stepped there, and sections of staircase were missing in the broken one. Sections too large to be bypassed, even by a great effort.
It felt as if the right tower were eluding him on purpose, a ghost losing itself in the mass of ghostly buildings to avoid his contact. Closing his eyes, Drifter recalled the scene on the pier and tried to bring up an image of the roof shapes around the lit tower. But all of the shapes in the sector started to blend together, slanted roofs, domed roofs and peaks all repeated in hundreds of buildings.
With a snort, he turned off the car and got out. He would try this third tower and if that failed, keep lookout in it for the light to reappear or, that failing as well, wait for morning in an attempt to spot the tallest tower in the area.
The area the third tower stood in was nondescript. More ancient buildings and the burnt twigs of scorched hedges stood around it. The road ran by on its right side. In front of Drifter, on the far side of the tower, lay a tall dividing wall of gray stone. There was nothing to show that a human dwelt in the tower. Even as he walked up to the tower’s melted aluminum door, Drifter could not make out footprints in the loose dirt in front of the it. His hope was low as he walked through the arched doorway, metallic nuggets crunching under his feet. Inside was a large, circular room that had once been carpeted and set with comfortable couches like a waiting room. Now ash lay thick on the floor and small wooden beams stood like skeletons with the fabric burnt off.
Drifter was not sure what the towers had been used for before the disaster. They almost appeared to be wizard’s retreats or the homes of sorceresses. But, as magic was not one of the studies in the Academy sector, he theorized they must have belonged to high-ranking professors who lived in them as status symbols.
A staircase of polished stone led up in a spiral towards the upper stories. Along its edge was a previously gilded banister, gold peeling off like flaking skin. The steps were more solid underfoot than the last tower stairs Drifter had tried. Walking up them, his senses were stretched on the alert for any sound from above. Nothing stirred, no light glimmered down the steps or feet echoed on upper floors. Drifter ran a hand along the banister as he ascended, gold flakes crackling off under his finger tips. He passed doors leading into other rooms and open landings strewn with dusty furniture. Finally, he reached the top, where an open square of paleness indicated the entrance to the upper chamber. Drifter came up through it like a man emerging from deep water, head and shoulders breaking above the darkness below.
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A gray predawn light was just starting to cut the horizon, pooling in through the windows set all around the chamber. Some of the glass was cracked, one or two pieces missing from their corners. The earthquakes had not taken as great a toll on this part of the city, leaving many of the towers and buildings upright. Perhaps it was their older form of construction which gave them unexpected stability. Or maybe it was just one of the peculiarities of the Greenspark fall.
The room had a swaybacked bedstead, a few dusty chairs and what looked like a child’s play pool set on the floor. Other than that the room was oddly bare, as if someone had stolen the very carpet and knickknacks. Drifter moved across the empty floorboards to stand by one of the cracked windows, peering out at the night. This tower was unoccupied, as he had expected. Even the dust of the floor was undisturbed. But somewhere out there was a lantern, flashlight or hearth that had been lit for a brief space of time. Enough for him to see it and fix it in his mind.
Going from one window to the next Drifter looked over the city. There were two or three towers in the vicinity, each appearing taller than the one he stood in. A huge, ancient library blocked his view in one direction, peaked eaves looming towards him. Drifter skipped those windows and came around to the ones facing east, in front of the tower, towards the divider wall. From this vantage he could see over the wall, into a open space on the other side. It was paved smoothly in dark gray cement, ringed with the wall on three sides. Standing on the cement in the center was a large, domed shape which glimmered in the early morning light. It was a dome, a huge bubble resting directly on the ground. Drifter’s eyes focused on it with surprised intensity.
The dome was glimmering with the shades of unbroken glass. Not only that, it sparkled with a blue sheen, as if a net of silken cobweb lay across the whole thing, tinted a brilliant azure. Underneath the dome, hues of vivid green flickered and shifted. A shade of green Drifter had not seen in many days. But it was the blue which most held his attention. There was only one thing he knew of which had that color. One thing which could keep a huge dome of glass from being shattered or melted by the Greenspark fire. A force shield.
Force shields were not a widely known or used technology in the days before the disaster. If they had been, more of the world could have been saved. As it was the technology was mostly in development, an experimental idea being put to the test. Drifter had known a man, been close friends with a fellow, who worked in the development of force shields. This was why he had been able to put one in his car in the first place. It had been a sort of joke between them, a laughing gift his friend had helped him install.
“Because, who knows?” The words of his friend suddenly came down to him through the years, forcing their way out of the box of his memories.“Maybe one day you’ll be chased by mobsters or in the middle of a wild fire and need a force shield.”
Before the disaster he had only used it once, when out driving with his wife. They had been driving through a nature reserve of some sort, a national park. He had taken a rough back road through the trees and come upon a waterfall at the base of a rocky cliff. With a silly desire to scare her and have some fun, he had driven through the waterfall, putting up the force shield so that the water cascaded around the car without touching it, falling in beautiful, sun-lit streamers...
Drifter broke away from the memory with a gasp to find himself still standing in the abandoned tower, looking out across the cold, ruined city at the force-shielded dome. He was shaking and had to grip the window ledge to stop himself. The cold air seemed to cut through his cloak with unusual intensity. Staring at the glimmering circle of color, he forced the last vestiges of memory away, tamping it down beyond the dark scars of his mind.
He was in the ruined remains of Civitas Apex. In the Academy sector, to be precise. He had to find Dick Chelsea. Whoever had turned on the shield around the dome might still be living there. If so, they might have a clue as to where Dick could be found. Or if he had perished in the fall of Greenspark.
For a moment, Drifter turned this idea over in his mind. If Dick had died, what then? Where else could he go to discover more about the key in his belt, find out if his theories about it were correct?
The libraries, perhaps. Loran was still out there, searching the great libraries for knowledge. She might have found something by now that would help him. Or he could look through the books alone, hunting for any mention of a relic key and the gate it went to...
But for now the sun was starting to tint the sky lemon-lime and he wanted to find out more about the dome below.
---
There was a low, rumbling sound like an engine running coming up from below the cement pad. Drifter walked out onto it in the first streaks of dawn, having passed around the end of the division wall. Below him, the noise rumbled, far away. In front of him the force shield glimmered with silent blue flame. The glass dome underneath of it came down to an entrance on his side, a door set into a frame in the glass. Beyond it, vague green shapes stood reflecting the morning light in a million shades.
Attracted by the burst of color in the gray landscape, Drifter moved quietly up to the edge of the shield. His shoulders felt tight with inward tension as he turned to view the whole courtyard suspiciously. A moment later he pivoted back to peer at the glass in an attempt to see inside. But between its thickness and the sparkle of the force shield he could make out nothing except flighty colors and insubstantial forms inside. If anyone was watching his movements, they blended into the scenery too much to be made out.
Reaching out a hand, he ran it gently down the smooth surface of the force shield. There were no markings on the ground or handles outside to indicate a way through. It might have been remotely activated or enabled from inside.
As he touched it there was a faint flicker through the whole thing, a shift of color from blue to yellow around his fingers. The shield shifted in a way he had not expected a shield could, forming itself around the door, opening up in a rectangle just as big as the entrance. In front of him the force shield was cleared to the glass door. Everywhere else on the dome it still flickered sky blue.
Drifter blinked his eyes slowly, like a lizard, before stepping forward and trying the handle of the door. It turned easily, the door swinging open on smooth hinges to let him inside.
The first breath of air that touched him made him realize how stale the outside world was. Inside, it was not just breathable, not simply a gas to take in and exhale. It was alive, moist, warm and full of delicate scents. Breathing it in was like drinking a refreshing draft of water.
Once he had stepped inside and shut the door he stood taking in the sights, dazzled by color and living form.
A large deciduous tree grew in the center of the space, gnarled roots digging into a huge pit of rich, dark loam. Its branches reached for the sky beyond the dome, spreading forth leaves as big as a hand and greener than anything Drifter had seen in years. Like the air, it was not a stale, dead green. It was the verdant color of something that was alive.
All around the tree and in every available space between paths stood buckets, tubs and raised beds of growing things. Bushes, grass tufts, delicate annuals and flowers in every shade of red, orange and yellow. Their foliage varied as much as their forms, leaves of dark green, lighter shades or veined in red. Leaves the shape of spears, hearts, spiders and tongues. Some grew in thick profusion, making it difficult to see through them. Others sprouted in traceries so fine they were like vivid lace.
Drifter had never seen the hidden fields of Apex Haven. If he had, the greenery of this sheltered spot might not have come as such a shock. As it was, he felt like he had stepped into a different world, one he could remember imperfectly but had never understood so well as he did at the moment. For a few minutes he stood gazing all around, then up at the oak leaves, in a state of awe. Gradually, he awoke again and walked over to the edge of the path by the tree, laying a hand on the rough trunk.
“If the world could be like this again,” he muttered huskily, “there would be no need for it to end.”
With an effort, he shook free of his absorbed state of mind. The soil around the plants was moist, their stems carefully trimmed of any dying leaves. Someone had taken the time to build this place and was still maintaining it. They could not be far off, either in the dome itself or living somewhere in the city...
At that moment Drifter heard a noise in the dome. A clink or clunk like thin metal struck against something solid. He tensed, hand straying towards the knife at the back of his belt. Whoever owned this place might not be happy that he was trespassing. In fact, they would have every right to want him gone and seek to kill him if he resisted. Drifter would have understood it perfectly. This place was too precious to share with anyone who wandered in.
At the same time, he had entered looking for a person to question about Dick’s whereabouts. He eased his hand away from the blade and began creeping stealthily towards the location of the noise, trying to see around the shrubs and flowers in his way. He was part of the way across the dome when he heard another noise, this time the shuffle of footsteps followed by a soft sound of running water. The owner must be watering their garden at the very moment.
Perceiving that the noise was just around a thick shrub, Drifter steeled himself and held out his hands in a gesture of peace before stepping around the bush. He found himself in an open space boxed in by flowering bushes, with a slight figure in front of him holding a watering can tipped towards one shrub. It was a boy, thin and pale, with hair the color of oat sheaths and round glasses perched on his nose. He looked somewhat less than sixteen, though his skinny frame and fine face would have been deceiving if he were older. He was watering the plants with an absorbed expression and did not appear to notice Drifter at all. The lone man stood for a moment with his hands out uselessly, then crossed his arms on his chest with a curious expression. His light eyes showed some impatience. How long would it take for the oblivious youth to notice him?
The drifter stood in his dark blue cape and hood, arms crossed over his tan uniform, while the boy watered and hummed lightly to himself. Finally, the boy’s can ran out of water and he began to turn, presumably back towards the faucet set on a post nearby. But he had only came around a little when his gaze fell on the figure watching him and the eyes behind his glasses widened hugely.
“I mean no harm,” Drifter assured him hastily, holding out one hand again to show that it was empty. The watering can slipped from the boy’s fingers to the ground and for a moment Drifter thought that he might fall onto his knees or even collapse in a faint.
But the youth seemed to rally himself and picked the can back up, ducking his head awkwardly.
“Hello sir,” he said, in a voice surprisingly young for one who lived in the later days of Apex, “I don’t mean any harm either. You’re...you’re welcome to enjoy the garden.”
“Thank you.” Drifter nodded towards the bushes. “It is a sight for tired eyes. I haven’t seen greenery like this since...well, for many days. Did you make all this yourself?”
“Oh no.” The boy colored like a maiden. “I just help take care of it. The Shielded Garden was planted before the disaster, by some of the academy students. It was an experiment to see if plants could grow under the distortions of a force shield. As you can see, it worked.”
There was a touch of pride in his voice as he waved a hand around at the growing things under the dome.
“And you helped plant them?”
“No, I wasn’t even in the Academy sector then. Not long after they planted it, I came to attend upper grade school. A few years after that...well, you know what happened.” The boy shrugged, smiling shyly. “I just help take care of it. Water the plants in the morning, make sure the water turbine underneath is still running on the underwater stream, trim leaves--”
Drifter interrupted him with a small gesture. “You said 'help take care’. Does someone else keep this place?”
The boy nodded, moving over to place the watering pot on the cement drain under the faucet. “My guardian. He saved me when the Greenspark fell, by having us hide in here. No one else...no one else made it into the shield. Some died right outside.”
His face became long and solemn for a moment, memories of the horrible deaths playing behind his eyes. “Afterwards, most everybody ran away from the sector, afraid. There are a lot of phantoms here. Other people died of sickness...so there aren’t much here except for me and my guardian. You must come from a different sector?”
With a nod, Drifter explained, “far to the west. They call me Drifter.”
“I’m Bard. Bard Wently.” The boy stuck out a thin hand, expecting it to be shaken. Drifter just touched his finger tips briefly and nodded once. “Not many people kept their last names after the disaster. It didn’t seem worthwhile when there were so few people to become confused and so few families to keep it with. I came here looking for a man...his last name used to be Chelsea.”
“Dick?” Bard gave another of his shy, eager smiles. “Dick Chelsea?”
Suddenly Drifter was gripping his hand tight, though he had only brushed it a moment before. “Do you know him? Where he lives?”
Bard extracted his hand with a wince. “Of course. He’s my guardian. We live together in a tower near here. The tallest one.”
Seeing the intense expression on Drifter’s face, he added quickly, “I’ll take you to him. He would like some company. I’m afraid he’s...he’s been ill lately.”
Recalling the boy’s previous words about sickness, Drifter took a step back. “Plague?”
Many people in Apex had succumbed to various plagues and diseases after the fall of Greenspark, with the lowered conditions of living and water quality.
But the boy was shaking his head in reassurance. “Oh no, it’s not catching. Dick’s had illnesses like this before. It’s something...I think he has a weak heart. Or something else wrong, inside, that it would take a doctor to fix.”
Looking away, he hid the tears in his eyes. His hands stripped the green leaves violently from a bush without noticing it.
“Well.” Drifter took refuge in brusque manners. “We’d better get a move on before he goes. I have something important to talk to him about.”
Bard nodded silently and led the way out of the shielded dome. When the door opened, the shield moved aside, slipping back into place once they had gone through. Drifter looked back once to see the shimmering bubble behind them, catching a glimpse of the wondrous world it hid inside. Outside, the sun was striking off the cold cement, glowing on the sides of cracked and abandoned buildings.
The boy led him around the far side of the division wall and through a sunken, damp street between high buildings. After just a few turnings they came out in a barren stretch of open earth, with a tower sprouting from its center. Drifter looked at the tower, then around at the buildings. Their roofs matched the image in his mind of the lit tower he had seen in the night.
There was no easy way to approach the tower by road. The sunken street they had traversed was narrow and dark, while walls and buildings cut off most direct access from any other direction. It was not surprising he had missed it in his car.
Taking him up to the door, Bard looked back over his shoulder cautiously. “You’ll be gentle with him, won’t you? You won’t hurt Dick? He’s awful weak.”
Though it would have been easy for anyone to lie to the sensitive boy, Drifter nodded gravely. “We used to be friends, long ago. I don’t know if he’d remember me, or recognize me now. All I want is a piece of knowledge he might have.”
The door at the base of the tower opened with a creaking noise and Bard took him into the first room. It had been converted into a sort of processing room for produce from the garden, junk from the city and the water that was stored in barrels nearby. Benches, cutting boards and bins stood all around it, only leaving space for the stairs.
It was immediately obvious that someone lived in this tower. Going up the steps, the floors all had signs of recent activity in them. Odd inventions being built, food being stored or just muddy footprints on the floor.
When they reached the opening onto the final level Bard paused, whispering over his shoulder, “I like to let him know I’m coming.”
Then he called up the steps, “Dick? I’m coming up now, with a friend to visit!” “Come up, young Bard.” The voice which replied was cracked and weak, but Drifter still recognized some of the scholarly tones of his friend from so many years ago.