Clarkesworld Magazine - Issue 41 by www.clarkesworldmagazine.com & Jay Lake & Lavie Tidhar & Russ Colson

Author:www.clarkesworldmagazine.com & Jay Lake & Lavie Tidhar & Russ Colson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction magazine
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2010-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

He used to like Louis Armstrong music, pizza with olives, fresh cold water from the fridge, cartoons on Saturday morning TV. Now his thoughts were fire and his nights were waiting, always waiting for a sign from above, a sign that never seemed to come. Why has it happened? he thought. The storm had come and lashed the city of Tel Aviv into oblivion, but why? It occurred to him frequently that he might as well be asking — Why life? Why Death? The universe held no answers, and humanity went through cycles of life and death, birth and life and death, endlessly, no more comprehending than ants or dogs or rats. Did rats have a religion? Did rats pray to a rat-god? If so, what did they pray for?

Salvation, he thought. I pray for salvation.

Yet what sort of salvation could a Fireman bring?

The streets back were dark and cold and quiet. Too quiet. The silence was pierced only by the boy’s incessant whistling — and suddenly the priest was very afraid.

Shadows moved ahead… they skulked in the darkness of ruined hallways. He turned, began to walk back. Don’t run, he thought. When he came to the boy he said, “Come with me — ” wondering if the boy understood.

“Come with me — ” but even as he spoke he saw the shadows congeal ahead, and knew they were coming.

Stupid, stupid. He had not been paying attention. “There is nothing to take from me,” he said loudly, speaking to the approaching shadows. “Nothing that hasn’t already been taken.”

He did not even have the jewellery any more. All he carried was the book, and a wrapped package of three plump, salted skinned rats. And the Book, too, of course. The Holy Book of Fire. But they would not want that.

“I have nothing,” he said again, feeling the weight of the words tightening around his neck, pulling him down. “Nothing…”

“You have your life,” the shadows said. They came closer and closer, and one of them held a torch now, and in its light he could see them, young faces, hungry, without mercy — faces from which laughter and light had been bleached clean. “We shall take that, and the child.”

“Pretty boy!’ crowed another of the shadows. “We’ll put you to work in the mines, old man. There is much to be mined for, in this God-forsaken city.”

He knew about the mines. Deep they dug, into the cellars and the hidden warehouses, and as they dug they built, caves for the cave-dwellers, a hidden dark city under the city… some said the miners, too, had their own religion, and were seeking escape down there, in the darkness below the sands — seeking a way out of the city, tunnelling their way towards —

But there was nothing. He knew that. They all knew that. The city was no longer a part of the world, the other world. It had been annexed, and now belonged only to the mountain, and to what lay beyond.

“Take me,” he said.

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