Daniel held up his hand and looked out across a long dark ditch at where the University of Washington had once been; and still was, after a fashion, its shrunken structures black and shiny, like anthracite. Only a few buildings seemed relatively unaffected.

The brute went on. “Libraries,” he muttered. “Queen can’t touch them—not yet. But the books are scrambling. Soon they’ll be wiped clean. No protection after that.”

The nearest houses were taking on a dull glimmer of translucence, as if carved from sand-blasted crystal. Others had been cut in half, showing jumbled interiors—but no occupants. Daniel said, “I think we’re passing out of the zone where people can even exist.”

“I doubt I understand any of that, Professor.”

Just hearing each other’s voices had suddenly become an odd comfort.

“What can I offer, what do I dofor us, you ask?” the brute said. “I’m a Chancer. There are Shifters such as yourself, with their stones and all, and Chancers. Chancers have a muse—Tyche. A modest sort of muse, but she’s ours. Right now I’m dragging every bit of good fortune I can into our immediate vicinity. Bit of a knee-wobbler, actually.” He grinned like a hoary old chimp. “Even with your stone, if you get too far ahead of me, I guarantee nothing. We need each other, Professor.”

Daniel started moving south—if there were any points left on a compass now. “I’m not a professor,” he said.

“You were—once,” the squat man said. “Part of my work was being a detective.”

“What’ll I call you, then—Pinkerton?”

The brute chuckled. “Max will do, while we work out whether I want to stick here with you or just chuck it.” He laughed at this unaccustomed freedom.

Daniel pointed southwest, into the muddle where the black sky lay heavy over land and city. “Do you see what I see, over there?” The greasy darkness was less intense, and if he focused, he could make out an actinic paleness, less than half the width of his thumb.

“I was there earlier,” the brute said. “That same blue glamour is how I found you.”

“What causes it?”

“The stones, I’d say. The warehouse has two of them, inside.”

“Who’s there?”

“Some women. Two Shifters. And a collector of sorts, though no longer a servant of our Livid Mistress. They are getting along better than us, certainly better than the other poor souls out here. Still…I wouldn’t dare approach them—not without you.”

“Why not?”

“I collected one of them—reeled him in like a trout, fair sport and square. Not welcome. Oh, Mr. Whitlow was yourman—I feel no guilt about you,” Max said. “But the game doesn’t matter. We’re abandoned.” He puffed his cheeks in amazement. “Didn’t think I’d ever escape. Thought that at the end of my service, the Queen’d just flick me off like cigar ash, right into the gutter.” He drew his face into a bereaved scowl. “More lives in my bindle than I imagined. Still…Over there—the warehouse—last chance. They couldbe yourfriends, if you introduce yourself proper. They might even accept me in the

bargain.”

“What’ll you do if we get there?”

“Make myself useful. As always.”

“You’ll tell them about me?”

“Oh, they needyou, Professor. Sum-runners attract. Tough to keep them apart when their time is come—that’s what Mr. Whitlow used to say. Don’t walk so! Have pity on an old man.”

Daniel slowed. The pace was more than exhausting. He could feel something leak away when he pushed too hard—opportunity, fate, perhaps his proximity to Max’s hard-gathered luck. It seemed possible they didneed each other. Of course, it was also possible that Max was making him think that.

“Such a sad town,” Max observed. “Never thought I’d see such a thing. All trapped, doomed, ropes growing shorter!” He clucked his tongue, face flushed, short scraggly hair on end in the dryness, like an ugly Christmas gnome jolly with cold-blooded humor. Then, “Can we get there from here? Such a distance, bad air, hard to—” He fell back in a fit of coughing.

Cold sweat on his brow, Daniel looked along the direction where the freeway had once been. They could not just walk south—things were even more jumbled that way, like blocks of ice backed up in a freezing river. “This way,” he said.

They headed west, retracing their steps.

The pewter glow came and disappeared again.

What was left of their part of the big world—their small portion of space and time—was rapidly shaking itself to pieces.

They came to a large, long bridge, still intact but wavering and ghostly in the gloom. They started to cross. Daniel looked over the side. Below, water had turned to rippling mist, gray-green and ominous.

“This isn’t the one with the troll underneath, is it?” Max asked.

“It is,” Daniel said. “The Fremont Troll. Made of concrete.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Max warned. “I hate trolls. Always have.”

CHAPTER 61

I am informed, our two rivals have lately made an offer to enter into the lists with united forces, and challenge us to a comparison of books, both as to weight and number…Where can they find scales of capacity enough for the first; or an arithmetician of capacity enough for the second?

—Jonathan Swift, Tale of a Tub

“What are these things, really?” Miriam asked. Her hand hovered over the two gray boxes on the table.

“Everything seems to point to them, everyone seems to want them, but I have no idea what they are or what they do.”

“It is not so much what they do as what they willdo, given the opportunity,” Bidewell said. “Possibly the best story is how they come down to us, yet even with that, there is no simple explanation.”

“Of course not,” Agazutta said.

Bidewell uncorked the second bottle of wine from Miriam’s handbag. He did seem to enjoy wine. He poured the ladies glasses, but Jack and Ginny demurred. Jack had never liked alcohol. Bidewell lifted a toast and the ladies did the same. “To survival, against all odds.”

“To survival,” Jack murmured, and raised his empty hand.

“We’d appreciate some certainty, Conan,” Miriam said.

Bidewell spun his glass, eyes on the swirling red liquid. For a moment Ginny’s vision seemed to blur—she saw the glass and the red wine as a swoosh.

“Every little thing makes its trace,” Bidewell said. “That much is intuitive. We can visualize everything leaving a trail. Sometimes we call them world-lines. But world-lines flow into other world-lines, and some join to create an observer line, or fate. The fate of an observer spins together many lines that might otherwise never touch, and that creates difficulties—entanglements.

“More perplexing, not all world-lines or even fates link back to the beginning. For creation does not always begin at the beginning. Creation is—or was—ongoing, and new things appear all the time, some of them implying long, ornate histories. These new creations and their histories need to be reconciled with what has come before. And so it is that Mnemosyne becomes necessary. As soon as she came to be—a most remarkable event, but perhaps only an afterthought, who can say?—she began her work. She found lost lines, entangled contradictions, and began reweaving them—reconciling them back to the beginning. She swept up and cataloged and put things back on the shelf, so to speak, a monumental task which she no doubt has yet to finish, poor thing.

“The creation of new things always implies the destruction of the old. Not all things that are created remain in creation. Some are erased. And so, I believe that Mnemosyne must be supplemented by another, sister force, let us call her Kali, though I’ve never met her, thank goodness. Kali disposes of things that have been left loose or cut away, and which Mnemosyne cannot reconcile—objects, people, fates.”