Tim Lebbon: Echo city

"Fuck the Marcellans," she said, "and get that bread out."

They ate in silence for a while, comfortable in each other's company without feeling the need to fill it with noise. Peer looked out over the flat, featureless desert, watching the line of rain progressing outward as the clouds drifted overhead. Sands darkened, and before long the rain front had moved too far for her to see.

"The weather knows no boundaries," she said, but Penler only laughed. "What?"

"You," he said. "Still watching."

"I was born a Watcher," she said. "It was in my heart, such belief. I can't bear ignorance. I can't understand people who don't think such a thing."

"You don't understand me?" he asked, a tricksy question. She glanced sidelong at him, and he was staring at her with raised eyebrows and a curious smile on his lips. For an old man, his mind was agile. That's why she liked his company so much.

"You're an explorer," she said. She'd told him that before, and it seemed to please him immensely. In Echo City-a place mostly known-true explorers had only their minds in which to travel. That, or down into the Echoes.

Penler smiled, but it did not quite touch his startling blue eyes.

"Penler?"

"My exploring days are long behind me," he said. "I'm getting old, and sometimes I wish I could…" He trailed off and looked at the stoneshroom in the palm of his hand.

"Wish you could what?"

But he shrugged and stared back out at the desert.

The rain fell around them, light but drenching, and soon they were huddled together, sharing warmth and closing in so they could hear each other speak. It was strange, sitting side by side talking, because their raised hoods meant that they could not see each other unless they turned. Peer spoke and, when Penler responded, it sounded like a disembodied voice. The Marcellans claimed that Hanharan spoke to them in their sleep. We're ruled by ghosts, Peer thought, but that could not make her angry. She believed in a larger world beyond the deadly desert-never seen, never known-and what was that if not a ghost of possibility?

"You said you have something to tell me," she said at last. She heard Penler sigh and take another drink of wine. The rain fell. The desert sands were dark and wet. She loved sitting here at the southern tip of Echo City with the whole world behind her.

"Whispers," he said at last. "Peer, you know I have… ways and means."

She turned to him, took the wine bottle, and lifted it in a casual salute. "Something about you, is how they say it. Dark arts. Bollocks, I say."

"Getting things is easy," he continued, "and the border is not solid. There's money, and people will do a lot for that, whatever their declared allegiances. But I've never dealt in money."

"No. You deal in information." Peer sipped at the wine. It was almost gone, and she wanted them to relish the final drop.

"Yes. Information. It comes, and it goes. Much of what comes is of no consequence or is likely false. Some of what I hear, I store." He tapped his head, gave her that lopsided grin once again. "And some of what I hear, on occasion… sometimes I try to forget."

"Now you're worrying me."

Penler pressed his lips together and turned away, and as he did so the rain caught his face and spilled like tears.

"What is it?" Peer asked, suddenly afraid.

"Murmurs from the Garthans," he said.

"The Garthans?" Peer had never even seen one. They lived way down below the city, in some of the earliest Echoes that were supposedly tens of thousands of years old. Some said they were pale and blind and so far removed from surface dwellers that they were another species. Others claimed that they were cannibals, fondly feasting on offerings of human meat presented by those eager for their strange subterranean drugs. The only certainty was that they were no friends of top dwellers.

"Rumors of something wrong," Penler said.

"You've heard such things before. You've told me, there are always stories from the Garthans."

"Yes, that's true. But this time they're afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"I don't know. But the Garthans are never afraid of anything."

Peer waited. Penler felt the pressure of her stare and turned so that she could see his face, hidden within his coat's wide hood. She was concerned for him, because his voice had sounded… different.

"Why tell me?" she asked.

"Because you're a Watcher."

"And what does that make you?"

Penler smiled then, but once again it did not touch his eyes. Raindrops struck his face again as he tilted his head back to laugh, but his effort to lighten the heavy mood felt strangely false.

"I think that sometimes people need to build falsehoods for their own ends."

Peer bristled. For such an intelligent man, Penler often displayed an ignorance that she found shocking. She'd tried to see through it many times, but his opinion was a solid front, and whatever lay behind wallowed in shadows that perhaps even he could not breach. Once, perhaps… years ago. But now he was growing old. Maybe the fire had gone from him.

"That's what the Marcellans call any beliefs they don't agree with," she said coldly. "Falsehoods. They told me to deny my own false beliefs as they slid the air shards into my arm." She held her right biceps with her left hand, squeezing to feel a rush of warm pain. It always fueled her anger.

"Peer," Penler said, and his voice carried such wisdom and age. "I know very well what they did to you. And you know me better than that."

Do I? she thought. It had been only three years, though in truth it felt like more. In all that time, Penler had yet to betray his true beliefs, even to her. Sometimes she thought he was a secularist, sitting apart and observing while his friends expended time and effort on their own diverse philosophies. And other times, like now, she suspected that he might be a devout believer in something he craved to disbelieve. There were contradictions in Penler that scared her and an intelligence that she sometimes suspected would be the death of him. Even while he told her to be calm and accepting, he fought.

"So the Garthans are afraid," she said, "and the rain still falls where no one can walk." She stared out across the desert from atop the city wall. A hundred years ago this would have been a place for market stalls and street entertainers, but now the wall's wide top was simply another place to sit and wonder.

"I have to go," Penler said. "Will you eat with me this evening?"

"Are you cooking?" Peer asked.

"Of course."

"Hmm." She did not turn, even when she sensed him standing beside her. And she could not contain her smile. "Last time, you cooked that pie and I had the shits for a week."

"Bad pigeon," Penler said. He was already walking away. "I'll see you before dusk. You can stay, if you like."

"I will," Peer said. It was not wise to walk Skulk's streets after dark. She watched Penler leave, and as he reached the head of the stone staircase, he waved. She waved back. Through the heavy rain, she could not see his expression.

Chilled, she stood and walked to the parapet, chewing on the last of the stoneshroom as she went. She liked looking over the edge and down at the desert. Where she stood was civilization, order, comparative safety, and the whole world and history of Echo City. Down there, where the desert began, was the symbolic boundary of their world. People often walked the sands close to the city wall, of course. In places the wall had degraded and crumbled, and it was easy enough to work your way down to the desert, because where the wall was solid there were no doors or gates. There was no need. But those brave explorers never remained there for long; soon they were scampering back up the stone pile again, waving away the respectful cheers of their peers or the admiring glances of those they had set out to impress. The city drew them back.