John Hawks - The Golden City

“No.” Maya checked the time on her mobile phone. “Right now, I’m late for an appointment.” She slid off the examination table, brushed past Dr. Kamani and hurried out of the clinic.

Alice Chen and one of the nuns from the island were arriving in London, and Linden had told Maya to meet them. She found an unregistered taxi parked across the street and climbed into the back..

“Euston Station,” she told the driver. “I’ve got to be there in ten minutes.”

As the car jerked forward and headed down Brick Lane, the moment in the examination room returned to her with all its power. She was pregnant with a Traveler’s child. At that moment, it felt like being in a plane crash-an instant of comprehension followed by confusion and pain. What should she do? Could she tell anyone? She was angry and sad, happy and defiant before the car reached Whitechapel Road.

If this had happened to Mother Blessing, the Irish Harlequin would have demanded an abortion that afternoon. She would have removed this accident growing inside her-destroyed it like a tumor. The Harlequins’ power came from the simplicity of their lives, the single-minded ferocity of their obligation. The body was a weapon that had to be maintained.

By now, Maya was late for the train, but she followed the rules she had learned from her father. For Thorn, a place like Euston Station was an “Argus trap”-a high-intensity surveillance area named after the guardian character in Greek myth that had a hundred eyes. Euston was a particularly dangerous location because it was on the northern boundary of the congestion tax zone, so cameras took continual images of car license plates. University College London and the bones of Jeremy Bentham were only a few hundred yards away from this central point. If the dead philosopher stepped out of his glass case and sauntered down the street, he would have been a prisoner of the electronic Panopticon.

Maya got out of the taxi, walked down Euston Road and entered Friends House, the Quaker religious center. Standing in the ground floor reading room, she could make an initial evaluation of the station. The front entrance had over a dozen cameras pointed at the bus area and the war memorial to the “The Glorious Dead.” In an emergency, she would have simply run the gauntlet and hoped that the Tabula mercenaries would be delayed in traffic. But there was usually a safe way in-even Argus had been defeated.

She went back outside and hurried up Barnaby Street on the east side of the station. The trash-covered sidewalk led her past King Arthur’s Pub, a betting parlor and a shop called Transformation that sold clothes to cross dressers. Two identical male mannequins were in the window, one with a suit and bowler hat and the other with a blond wig and a red silk cocktail dress. THIS COULD BE YOU, proclaimed a sign. Not bloody likely , Maya thought. An image flashed through her mind of different display: A pregnant young woman standing next to fierce looking twin with a flat belly.

Barnaby Street merged into a traffic ramp, and she followed it up to an enclosed delivery area on the top of the station building. There were only a few cameras in this area-all of them searching for car license plates-and she followed the concrete ramp that led down to the central concourse. The concourse was lined with shops, including two Burger Kings, two W.H. Smith bookstores, and two Marks and Spenser’s. Perhaps that was a clue to the future-hundreds of stores that were basically the same.

An announcement board told her that the train from the ferry port at Holyhead had just arrived on track six. Maya passed between two shops to tracks seven and eight, and then peered down through a thick glass window that overlooked track six. Passengers from the Holyhead train were hurrying toward the main concourse: an East Asian family with strollers, three teenage girls with braided hair and backpacks, and a middle-aged couple maneuvering a large wheeled suitcase.

It didn’t look like Alice Chen was on the train. When Maya changed her position, she saw a police officer entering the station, followed by two paramedics pushing a stretcher on a gurney. This way , the officer gestured. Track six. Follow me .

She checked her knives and shifted the sword carrier so that she could draw the weapon easily. Pretending to search for a passenger, she strolled down the platform for track six. The police officer was there, standing on the steps of the fourth train car. As she passed by the windows of the car, she saw that the paramedics and two train conductors were crowded into the third compartment.

Maya reached the end of the platform as the paramedics reappeared with one of the Poor Claires strapped to a stretcher. The nun was unconscious, but alive. So where was Alice Chen? She waited for someone to escort the little girl off the train, but the two conductors and the police officer followed the gurney out to the concourse. It was clear that that no one was searching for a lost child.

Maya took out a mobile phone registered to a homeless man in Brixton and called Linden. “I’m at the station,” she said. “I was supposed to collect the package, but the situation is not as expected.”

“Is there a problem?”

“The person in charge of delivery was unconscious and taken away by paramedics.”

“And the package?”

“Not on the train.”

“What is your current situation?”

“Our business competitors are not in the area.”

“Don’t put yourself at risk. This is not our obligation.”

“I realize that, but-”

“Leave the area immediately and return to the office.”

The called ended, but she didn’t leave the platform. This is not our obligation . Yes, her father would have said the same thing-and a year ago she would have followed his example. But Gabriel had made her aware of another level of responsibility. It felt like Linden was imitating the Brethren at that moment. He wanted her to be part of the cause and ignore the individual, follow the rules and betray the deeper knowledge within her own heart.

Her mobile phone rang again, but she didn’t answer it. A stiletto appeared in her left hand as she boarded the train and hurried down the corridor to the fourth car. The third compartment was empty-no sign of a struggle-but she noticed something on the scuffed floor.

Kneeling down, she picked up two fragments of a sea-smooth piece of driftwood. A policeman would have never understood what the fragments meant, but Maya knew instantly. She had made pretend weapons like this when she was a growing up-measuring sticks that were supposed to be swords and pencils held beneath her sleeves with rubber bands. When she fitted the pieces together, the driftwood looked like a dagger.

Gabriel had always returned to the familiar reality of the Fourth Realm before he gathered the courage to cross over again. But this time he continued his journey. After the confrontation with Michael, he returned to the beach, and then followed the passageway through darkness to light.

The Traveler sat on a flat rock and studied this new world. He had crossed over to an arid highlands dotted with low-lying bushes that had black roots growing out of them like spider legs. Immense mountain ranges topped with snow rose up in each direction. It felt as if they contained the universe within their boundaries.

But the most striking aspect of this realm was the sky; it was a turquoise-blue that reminded him of old jewelry. The distinctive color could be caused by the high altitude. Gabriel was breathing quickly and felt a burning sensation in his lungs. There was a harshness here-an austere purity that did not permit compromise.

Gabriel decided that he had reached the Sixth Realm of the gods. The few Travelers from antiquity that had visited this place had left vague accounts of tall mountains and a magical city. Perhaps the city no longer existed; nothing was permanent in the universe. According to his Pathfinder, Sophia Brigs, the different realms were much like the human world; they evolved in new directions and changed over time.