He colored his cloak infrared, making the nearest pools of air bubble furiously and vanish. This one-a small angelin, female in form-stood barely taller than Ghentun’s knee. The Librarian had such a variety of servants, he did not know what to expect. He felt a presence behind him and turned, bowing his head. A few wakes later he had descended from the Broken Tower-even then called Malregard-and gone forth on his last quest with five brave companions, philosopher-adventurers all.
Sangmer, the first to lead an attempt to cross the Chaos, had once stood on this very spot, mapping the course of his journey. Ghentun averted his eyes just as the beam swept through the chamber. Out of the Chaos, the massive orb of the Witness beamed its gray, knife-edged searchlight over the lost bions and the middle lands, blasting against the foggy Defenders, arcing high as if to grasp the tower- too painful to watch. Outside of their protection, four craters filled with wreckage-the lost bions of the Kalpa-swept away in a wide curve to either side and back again, meeting in darkness hundreds of miles away: the city’s original ring. That ring and all within was protected by an outward-facing phalanx of slowly revolving spires, blurred as if sunk in silt-laden water: the Defenders, outermost of the city’s reality generators. A narrow gray belt surrounded these huge edifices, and beyond that stretched a broad, uneven black ring: the middle lands. Directly below, great curves like the prows of three ships seemed ready to leap into the darkness: the Kalpa’s last bions, containing all that remained of humanity. Ghentun approached the nearest window and braced for a look.
PLANET COASTER THE GAME FREEZE AT THE END OF LOADING WINDOWS
In all the Kalpa, only the tower had windows to the outside the rest of the city had long ago walled itself off from that awesome, awful sight. The high windows gave a panoramic view of what lay outside the city, over the middle lands and beyond the border of the real-the Typhon Chaos. And yet, Ghentun had requested an audience and had been summoned. Appointments were nearly impossible to obtain. Servants of the Librarian came here rarely to meet with suppliants from the lower levels. This part of the city was not used to his kind, his brand of physicality, and did not adjust willingly to his needs. A thin pool of air bubbled at his feet, and a fine icy mist lingered along the path he had taken from the lifts. Alone at the outer edge of an empty room half a mile wide, surrounded by a brutality of high crystal windows, Keeper Ghentun drew in his cloak against the mordant chill. Moore and Henry Kuttner, Earth’s Last Citadel Everything you know is wrong.Ĭoming to the Broken Tower was dangerous. “Time-gone out like a tide and left us stranded.” -C. Should we not call it bottomless? -Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers PROLOG Very deep is the well of the past. This book has been optimized for viewing at a monitor setting of 1024 x 768 pixels.
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Bear, Greg. Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc. Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Copyright © 2008 by Greg Bear Map copyright © 2008 by Casey Hampton Impossible armillary sphere design copyright © 1984 by Greg Bear All rights reserved. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Darwin’s Radio (Winner of the 2001 Nebula Award for Best Novel) Darwin’s Children Dead Lines Vitals Blood Music Moving Mars and many moreĬity at the End of Time is a work of fiction.
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