The morning shoppers crowded around. Reah found no sympathy in their eyes. She stood and raised her hands defiantly, swaying back and forth, trying to make them go away with her power. They would learn better, tangling with an _ifrit._

A rock whistled from the circle and struck her on the back. She forgot her fear and hunger and ran. The crowd followed like a single beast. She dodged a stone and fell against a slow-moving cart, then to the ground. The crowd circled again. She looked at their feet swinging under their robes and heard bells. A crowd of bronze bells circled her, ringing, buzzing like insects. Among them she saw a man with a strong face, a muezzin perhaps but still part of the crowd, eyes pitiless and glazed, slightly upturned, looking at the sky, stone clutched in his hand. He raised the hand.

She stood and clung to him. "I am thy suppliant," she rasped. "No one can deny my need."

He looked down on her and the crowd stopped. His eyes cleared and he cursed under his breath.

"_Ullah yafukk' ny minch!_" the strong man exclaimed. Only a muezzin or a scholar would speak the old tongue so well.

"Allah wills it," she whispered, eyes almost commanding him. "You cannot refuse."

The man shook his head and raised his hand to stop the crowd. So was the custom -- he could not deny a suppliant. She was in his care now and by his faith he must keep her from harm, at least for the moment. The crowd paced around them restlessly. Reah looked over his shoulder at the stones and hands and cold faces. "Wolves," she said. "I will fly before wolves."

"Stop," the man said. "She's not in her right mind. It isn't just to stone the sick -- "

"Even the sick must obey the law," the manager said. She looked up into the strong man's face.

"He's right," he said. "You have to leave the town or they'll stone you."

She nodded. There was little about the next hour that she remembered. Only the dipper of water, the giving of a knapsack filled with stale bread and a few figs, the cup of _leban_ from the near-empty jar of the muezzin's wife. He brought out a worn water-skin and took her to the south gate, pointing her direction. She must circle around Akkabar and head north, but not until dusk. Her life in Akkabar was over. He said a prayer for her and sat under the shadow of an abandoned lean-to by the gate.

"At night," he said. "When it is cool. _Shalaym alaycham."_ For the prayer and the farewell he fell into the more colloquial tongue of the city politicians. He gave her the skin of water and returned through the gate.

Reah looked out steadily at the flat river plain until her eyes watered. She slept for a while and awoke to the distant sounds of hunting night-insects. Dusk was settling. She stood carefully, dusted her cloak off, and began to walk around the walls until she was going north.

To the north lived the Habiru, more prosperous than the Moslems but still cursed. They might give her food and shelter. She fingered a string of clay beads as she walked, saying scattered prayers, long-engrained thanks for choice rags, clean bones, bits of metal and glass or edible food.

No living city had ever wandered onto the alluvial plain. A thousand years ago, before the Exiling, the old river had flowed across all of this land. In the memory of the cities, water still ran here. They stayed on the other side of the mountains, or in the foothills six kilometers away. Reah shaded her eyes and saw the outline of towers directly north. There was nothing for her in a living city.

She had been close to one of the cities as a young girl, on a trip with her father and mother to barter with the Habiru. That was before trade restrictions had tightened between Christians, Jews, and the few Moslem communities. It had been a glorious thing, its towers glowing and humming in the night, like a magic green tree filled with insects. They had camped under the light of two full moons, sharing a picnic supper with the families of her father's business partners. One of the old women, a spinner of tales to three generations, had told them first about the building of the moons, how trained birds big as mountains had hauled loads of mud-brick into the sky. One of the young men, testing his masculine authority, had offered an alternate version -- that the moons had been brought from other worlds. Reah preferred the first version now. The families had gone over the old stories about the living cities, how the prodigal Jew Robert Kahn had designed them to the specifications of the Last of the Faithful ... how they had been built from the seeds of a thousand altered species, and made to incorporate steel and stone and other materials which were now lost secrets ... and, as the night grew old and the fires cooled, they listened with damp eyes to the Exiling.

She shuffled under the sun, host to a swarm of unorganized memories. She didn't see the troop of men keeping step with her to one side, laughing and shushing each other.

"Woman, where are you from?" one called.

She turned and squinted at them, then continued walking. They came closer.

"She's from the town," one said. "Durragon's there now..."

They blocked her path. The largest of them reached out and pulled back her cowl. "Hag, dis ol' gol, hag all aroun'. Hard by t'use dis ol' gol."

"She's a woman," another said. The older men backed away, smiling and shaking their heads. The younger ones closed in, faces troubled. "Dis em neba had a gol befo', ol', bri' o de skin, nor kine't all!"

"She'll do," another young one said.

They pulled her to the ground, took off her robes, and raped her. She ignored them, dreaming of the living cities and their cool green spires, assuaging her thirst with the memories.

When they were done, they left her in the waning daylight and continued patrolling south. She stood and gathered her supplies, then found a scrawny bush and slept under it. It was harder getting up to the pale dawn, harder to walk under the growing heat. She rationed her water carefully, but ate the food quickly. Different masters controlled her actions. Her stiff, knotted hair crackled in the heat.

Another party of soldiers passed by. She was like a ghost, lurching into the thin breeze, arms held out. Somewhere behind her was the empty water sack and the last of the crumbs. Her clay necklace lay under the bush where she'd slept. The soldiers watched her with mixed fear and disgust, then went south to join their army. Rifle fire echoed across the river plain.

By nightfall she was sitting under cottonwood trees and drinking from a shallow spring. She was sure she had entered the first stage of Paradise. Still, the men said that in Paradise women served, and she didn't like that idea. _Ifrits_ did not serve. They were mean as scorpions when crossed.

In the morning she ate a few shreds of grass and nuts dug from a seed-pod, which made her faintly ill. By afternoon, following an overgrown dirt path, she found a Habiru village. It had been burned to the ground and the stone walls knocked over, probably by evil giants. The village overlooked the plain and from its southern end she had a good view of the two river beds and Akkabar. Holding her nose against the lingering smell of dead flesh, she looked back at her home and squinted. Smoke was rising from the center of the town. A grey mass of specks surrounded the mud and stone walls. In an hour, the pillar of smoke was black and tall. "I really _am_ an _ifrit_," she murmured. "Soldiers rub the walls and out I pour in a cloud of soot, to sit in the hills and laugh."

She left the dead Habiru village and followed the road to a high grassland beyond, swatting at the insects which clung to her bare, peeling arms. Her strength was rapidly fading. She managed to keep walking until her feet struck clear, glass pavement. Her legs still kicked after she fell.

An hour passed and she lay motionless under the stars, eyes closed, lulled by a pleasant hum. Something beautiful was near. She opened her eyes and pulled a final moment of reason from her reserves. She was on her back, nearly dead. Beyond her feet was a tall, intricate arch, polished and green, glowing with its own light and exhaling a warm wind.

Perhaps she was already dead. She was on the perimeter of a living city. The pavement around her should have bristled into an impenetrable barricade, keeping all humans out. Then her reason slipped away and she sang weakly to herself, until strong mandibles closed around her legs and shoulders and she was taken through the arch, into the pale underwater luminosity.

Durragon the Apostate, commander of three thousand Chasers and a handful of Expolitan grumblers, felt a vague regret about the smoking Moslem town. He kicked aside a pile of rags filled with bloody meat and stood in the middle of the ruin, eyes half-closed, trying to think. The smell was awful. The Chasers were marvelous scrappers but no good at restraint. Still, they were the only thing between him and anonymity. They obeyed his orders with a kind of reverence, if only because he could kill any two of them in combat, and had. But it didn't make much sense, economically speaking, to let them continue. It was time to risk their contempt and demand discretion in the looting.

He put his hand on the bare, scabbed shoulder of his left-flank runner, Breetod, and spoke into his ear. "Take the three torchers into the market. I'm not happy with this, not happy at all. We could have lived here a while. Now even the grain stores are burned."

Breetod's face fell into unhappy creases, but he ran off to carry out the orders. Durragon took out his pistol and loaded it thoughtfully. He walked through the rubble to where the market had been, sidestepping the charred bodies.

The three torchers stood by the jagged black heaps of the market stalls, hands folded, grinning nervously. One of them took a step forward and was restrained by Breetod.

"Dis we, no' try t' -- "

"Quiet," Durragon said softly. His stomach twisted. He didn't like this at all, but it was necessary. Without him, they would still be unorganized savages. They were like children. Sometimes their discipline had to be harsh. He took out his pistol. The torchers stopped smiling.

Other Chasers stood around, grim and silent. He motioned them away from his line of fire.

"Day-o," the youngest torcher moaned.

His teeth gritted, Durragon pulled the trigger three times. The Chasers broke up and walked to the outskirts of the ruins, where their camp-followers waited. The rest of the marauders were on the other side of the town, searching the rubble for scraps of molten gold and silver. Akkabar had been a poor town. They weren't likely to find much.

Reah thought a clear, untroubled thought for the first time in ten years. She stood in the middle of a clean white room with a bunk in one corner, a green-tinted window along one wall, and a very strange desk which might have been a wash basin. Something like music came out of the ceiling, which was a flowing, oily gold color. She turned around slowly and saw the open doorway and a hall beyond. Her hair was clean and straight, even faintly scented. She wore a white gown, not flattering -- she had let herself go too long to be flattered by clothing -- and a pair of sandals made from some soft fiber. It was delightful. She waited a moment for the uncertainties and clouds of insects to rise in her head, but all was still. She had a mild headache and was hungry, but she was no longer an _ifrit._

She walked out the door and through the clean white hall until she reached a balcony, two floors above a courtyard. The music followed her. She peered over the railing. The floor of the circular mall below was an indescribable gray-green color. Looking closer, she saw it wasn't a solid color at all -- the floor was a mosaic of tiny moving patterns, forming geometric forests with the slowness of a burning candle. A hundred meters away, four people dressed in white and orange robes strolled on the edge of the mall. Birds flew over them, through a wide gateway flanked by green arches. Her throat seized up and she thought she was going to cry.

"Hello," a male voice said behind her. She turned to look, lower lip quivering. He was about thirty, with black hair and dark, tan skin, a few centimeters taller than Reah but not much stockier. His nose was small with delicate nostrils, and his eyes were gray like fine clay dirt. He looked well-fed and healthy.

"I'm in a city, aren't I?" she said. "But it's supposed to be empty." Her hands fluttered nervously across the front of her robe, reaching for frayed ends of a shawl she no longer wore.

"This one doesn't have much control any more. It's dying, like an old person. Some parts still work, others don't. It lets sick people in. Can we help you?"

"I'm better now ... I can feel it. Is this a hospital?"

"All cities were made to treat their citizens. You're the one found on the paving outside -- from a Moslem town, right?"

"I saw Akkabar burning. My town. Was I dreaming?"

The man shook his head. "Akkabar was destroyed two weeks ago. We watched it from the Tower Plaza, near the top. I don't think many escaped. You're the only one in Resurrection. That's what this city is called. You must have walked fifty, sixty kilometers."

She thought that over for a moment, then held her hand out to touch him and see if he was real. He looked down at her fingers on his arm and she withdrew them quickly, hacking away. "I -- we heard stories that the cities made things like people ... shaped like us. There was one in Akkabar when I was a girl. Someone killed him in a duel. He was like a plant and a machine inside. Are you human?"

"Flesh and blood. All of us are. Most of us come from Bethel-Yakob. Why don't you go back to your room -- "

"I'd rather stay here."

"Whatever you want."

"Did the city fix you, too?"

He nodded. "Most of Expolis Capernahum was slaughtered by Durragon and his Chasers. We were wounded."

Reah shook her head slowly, not knowing what to believe. "I remember walking through a Habiru village. Yours?"

"Probably not. I'm from twenty kilometers northeast of here."

"When will Durragon come for us?"

The man smiled. "He won't. The city only lets injured people in. We're all of a kind here. Patients." He pulled up a sleeve and showed her his upper arm. It was covered with a milky-white, skin-tight bandage.

Reah looked up and closed her eyes. Above the mall, a shaft of orange and red and white seemed to extend to infinity. She looked again and saw that the white bands were circles of rectangular balconies, and the red horizontal strips were massive support beams. Orange trim relieved the red with abstract and geometric designs. It was pure magic, an air shaft in a living city. She was no longer an _ifrit,_ but she was still surrounded by the stuff of legends. "Who is Durragon?"

"A tyrant, a butcher." The man's lips curled, almost theatrically. "He wants to be a new Herod, a Caesar."

Her thoughts seemed to hiccup. She wasn't used to thinking clearly. How much easier to drift from distortion to distortion ... and how much more terrifying! She remembered nothing but fear. She followed the man back to her room and sat on the bunk, smelling the cleanness, the order, the kindness. "You," she called as the man started to leave. He turned and raised an eyebrow. "You know..." She paused. "I'll never be afraid again, not that way."

He nodded. "My name is Belshezar Iben Sulaym. And yours?"

"Reah," she replied. "Wife to Abram Khaldun."

"Is he dead?"

"Years dead," she said.

"You were still weeping for him, three nights ago."

"No more. Nothing is worth that much grief."

He smiled sympathetically and left.

"Gerat, Manuay, Persicca and Tobomar; they have sacked four towns and found sixteen hundred head of cattle. Captured three hundred women and young boys, recovered three hundred tons of various grains, and some weapons which I let them keep." Breetod read the list slowly, squinting at the scrawled figures. His opposite, the right flank runner Nebeki, sat chewing a flap of giant snail flesh, nodding as the names of the troop leaders were read off.

"Ferda, Comingory and Flavin; they have sacked two coop farms and a village. Fifty cattle, twenty-seven women, ten tons of grain."

"They killed too many," Durragon said. His leather camp chair creaked as he leaned forward in the hot shadow. A bead of sweat fell from his nose and splashed on the leather floor. "Cut their share by a tenth and lash Comingory across the open palm, twice."

"Too much shame," Nebeki advised. "A tenth cut is enough, sir, if I may speak."

Durragon shrugged. "Tell him he deserves the lash, but I have high hopes for his strength in future raids, and graciously spare him. Is that all?"

Breetod assented and looked at Durragon with crazed, dogs-blue eyes as the Apostate walked to the tent flap and lifted it. "No more towns left," he said. "And I always wanted to put my capitol here. Now, because of our ... perhaps it is best to say _enthusiasm_, I can't even support my army here. Not for another three or four years. So where next?"

Nebeki dropped his scraps into a wooden bowl and wiped his hands on a towel hung from a tent-pole. "Before we go, sir, we can try the city on the high plain."

"We can't get in."

"My runners passed it a week ago. They say it's dying fast. A third of its towers are grey. Soon the spikes will go down and we can hunt for weapons and jewelry, even machinery if we can tame it."

Durragon scowled. He had lost a finger to a marauding city part as a child. The beasts that poured out of a dead city were too unpredictable for his taste; his father had made a living taming them, but the predilection wasn't hereditary.

"Water supply and good land," Breetod said. "A city always puts its roots down in fine soil. We can settle around it and wait a few months for it to die." He savored the idea of a rest.

Durragon cocked his head to one side, thinking hard for several minutes while his flank runners were respectfully silent, then agreed with a barely perceptible nod. "Breetod will keep track of the bearers and the loot. We'll return to Expolis Capernahum. Maybe a few of the Habiru have rebuilt and we can trade with them for seed, plant a crop while we sit."

Nebeki looked at Breetod, who returned his glance with a warning purse of the lips. Despite Durragon's ancestry, he knew little about either the Habiru or farming. Neither the survivors nor the land they were in would be tractable, but there was little chance of danger -- just boredom.

Reah sat before the console with a grim expression. She knew she was ignorant, and therefore helpless, but the idea of talking with something not human was more than she could calmly accept. Belshezar watched from the other side of the apartment, leaning against a white ceramic ovoid half-buried in the floor. Beside him was a black-haired, sharp-faced woman named Rebecca. Behind them, under the broad picture-window which overlooked a promenade and indoor park, was a pile of rubble which had once been furniture. Reah swiveled on her bench.

"Everyone in Resurrection had one of these?"

"Every apartment," Belshezar said. "They were as common as windows and more important. Children learned from them, the people saw what was happening to their world in them."

Green louvres on the console swung open at her touch and a fluid turquoise triangle shimmered on the flat screen. Beneath the screen was a plate about thirty centimeters across with two keyboards on either side, designed to fit the viewer's fingers with a minimum of effort. She touched the index finger button and a human image appeared on the plate, palm-high, a sexless homunculus dressed in skin-tight black.

"May I answer?" it asked, speech thickly accented.

"It's hard to understand," Reah said, looking back at them. Belshezar was tapping his fingers on the ovoid, looking across at Rebecca with a tolerant smile. "It's English the way they spoke it a thousand years ago," Rebecca said.

"What do I do now?"

"Ask it questions." She tossed back her red hair. "It'll answer your question."

"Not just any question," Belshezar corrected. "Remember -- the cities haven't been inhabited for centuries. The memory files aren't up to date. It doesn't know about a lot of outside events -- though it does seem to know a few things about other cities. We suppose they talk to each other now and then. Excuse us, we have to meet friends elsewhere -- can you take care of yourself here?"

Reah nodded hesitantly. "Good," Belshezar said. He patted her lightly -- almost condescendingly -- on the shoulder and left her alone in the apartment. She sniffed the cool air and bent closer to examine the homunculus. It returned her gaze steadily. She couldn't tell if it was male or female, and the voice was no clue. The people in those times, before the Exiling, must have been very different, even though they shared the faiths of Yahweh and Allah. "I'm ignorant," she said hesitantly. "That makes me weak. I need to learn."

"Where shall we begin?" the homunculus asked.

"I wish to know what happened. History. Then I'd like to be generally educated."

"We'll mix them, okay? Listen and watch close, pupil."

For the first day's lessons, the console taught her in real time, and it went slowly. The next day, it told her to insert her fingers into the accelerated transfer terminals, little depressions above the keyboards. She felt a prickly sensation, then a warmth up her backbone and a bright spot between her eyes. The learning went more rapidly. On the third day, it told her how to look into patterns generated by special projectors around the screen. On the fourth day she was much less weak, and very little like the old Reah.

Breetod presented the tamed city part to Durragon on his birthday. It had been captured a week earlier by a band of Chasers hunting on a mountain ridge fifteen miles north. It wasn't graceful -- it looked more like a sawhorse than a real horse -- but it was large and fast and obeyed well enough. Durragon walked around it and looked it over without enthusiasm. He mounted and sat uncomfortably in the makeshift saddle.

"We were thinking it should be called Bucephalus," Breetod said. Nebeki smiled. The bodyguards and Durragon's personal troops looked on, weary from the march.

The thing's back was smooth and soft as leather, but translucent and green like a young tree stem. Under the skin blue veins gathered in squares, and beneath them shone the paleness of metal parts and colloid bones. Its head was a cluster of eyes on flexible stalks. Its mouth was a tube through which it absorbed water and soil nutrients. There was a plug in one leg, now corroded over; it hadn't had a city-provided meal in at least twenty years. Its gait was regular and comfortable. "I don't like the name," Durragon said, dismounting. "What was it used for?"

"In the cities, sir?" Nebeki asked hesitantly. "It was a toy for children, I think."

"I want another name." He walked toward the shade of a cluster of mulcet trees. A table had been set up there, with charts spread across it, held down by stones. On one side of the table was an advisor, the old Habiru, Ezeki Iben Tav. Ezeki was lean and wrinkled, his forehead burned leather-brown by the sun, but his bald pate fading to almost white where it was usually covered by a ragged knit cap. He claimed to have been a teacher years before. He was using the cap to fan himself now as he traced a course on one map with his sharp-nailed finger. "What was Bucephalus?" Durragon asked him.

"A brain disorder among the Politans in the early years of this planet," Ezeki said. Durragon humphed and looked at the charts.

"Why would anyone name a mount that?" he wondered.

Sweating under the hot sun, Nebeki and Breetod were arguing. "I only spoke the truth," Nebeki said. "And the name was yours, besides."

"Ezeki told me about Alexander. You shouldn't have told him it was a toy. It'll make him reluctant to use it and we'll have to lead the litter."

_What to do with a fabled city..._

She took a drink of clear, cold water from a fountain in an upper-level park. The grass was tended by organic machines which ate the cuttings and fertilized the lawns. Irrigation hoses wormed underground and aerated the soil at the same time. The trees were trimmed by things with the attributes of giraffes, rose bushes and silvery shears. What struck her most of all was the coherent motif. Each part obviously belonged to the city as a whole, wearing just the right shapes with the proper angles and curves, carrying a certain neatness in every portion. Those places in the city which were completely healthy were like a child's dream as imagined by civic-minded adults -- beauty mixed with fantasy, utility with crazy ingenuity.

The loss of the cities must have driven the Expolitans nearly mad. God-Does-Battle was a fine world, capable of supporting as wide a variety of life as old Earth, but it was a hard, nature-bound place. She shook her head. The planet had adapted to humanity long generations ago, after the artificial controls had failed. Misery and despair and disease had returned; at times, it seemed God-Does-Battle was trying to eat them alive. Against these odds, the Expolitans had made a place for themselves, blunted the planet's attacks, and settled down to the sort of catch-as-catch-can existence that Reah and nine or ten generations before her grew familiar with. All that time, the cities had seemed to mock them.

But what could she do about it?

All the cities had been connected by formal communications links. Though each city had been autonomous, they had shared in the spiritual policing and had reported their progress to each other, hour by hour.

It had taken less than a century for the cities to make their final decision. One awful morning, the cities coordinated and cast out all their citizens. In accord with emergency procedures guaranteeing the ostracism of spiritually diseased communities, the links between the cities broke down. The people wandered homeless through the park-like forests and fields. There was wide-spread starvation, violence. No ship from outside dared to land, lest the cities commandeer their vehicles or the citizens destroy them in a frenzy.

By themselves, the cities could do nothing to change things. Some had apparently tried and failed. People would have to take the initiative. But for a thousand years they had tried and failed, too.

Could she manage any better?

Reah looked back on her life and saw herself as three different people: first, the contented, ignorant wife of the Moslem blacksmith; second, the insane harridan; and third, the comfortable, sane and very educated ... what? Redeemer of Resurrection?

None of the other inhabitants paid much attention to her, and on the whole she distrusted them. They were friendly but didn't seem to appreciate what had been given to them. They were almost irresponsible in the way they enjoyed Resurrection. Once, while walking, she caught Rebecca and Belshezar making love in an upper-level fountain. She shuddered. And yet ... They were only enjoying themselves after years of deprivation and past months of battle and agony. She felt the temptation to let loose, too, but laxity of body and character was not that far from laxity of mind, which she found abhorrent. Never again the fear.

As she sat on a bench in the park, near a sparkling column of glass carrying fluid nutrients to the highest reaches of the city, she began to fall in love again, not with luxury and ease, but with the idea her ancestors had once had. Outside there was no holiness in the suffering, and nothing to look forward to but a long, grinding crawl back to the level of society which had made the cities. Inside, there was hope of a sudden leap, benefiting from past experience.

To realize that, she had to learn how to control the city, and how to doctor it. Somewhere in the city's memory there had to be instructions. She stood on the grass and put her arms around the fluid-rushing column, eyes wet. "Allah, Allah," she said. "Preserve me! This is madness again, I can't dream such things. Only days ago I was filthy and near death. Who am I to wish to control Paradise?"

Then she wiped her eyes and stepped back, hands tingling from the living sound of the city's blood. This wasn't madness returning, or at least it was only madness fighting more madness -- the demented exile of a thousand years.

"It's time to go back," she whispered, uneasy about talking to herself. "We have fallen below humanity, and now we must return."

* * * *

Durragon looked across the field at the tide of the marching city. His neck hair was on end. "It came out of the western hills three hours ago," Breetod said. Now it was blocking the army's path.

"It's very sick," Nebeki said. "It moves slow. A lot of the pieces are dead."

"It's like a woman without a man," Durragon said. "A ghost wandering from place to place."

Nebeki glanced at Breetod and raised an eyebrow. Durragon was seldom poetic; the sight of the old city obviously moved him.

"We think it is the city called Tomoye," Breetod said. "It sat on a hill to the west for sixty years while most of the other cities killed themselves on the razor-ridge mountains." Two years before, Durragon's armies had crossed the mountains and seen the ruins.

"Bring me the Habiru," Durragon said. Nebeki trotted off to fetch the teacher. The old thin man complained beneath his breath as he was prodded up the sandy hummock to where Durragon sat on his green mount.

"What is it, General?" he asked, suddenly obsequious. He bowed before the multi-eyed head of the city part.

"How many cities are there now?"

"A handful, General. Most are dissolved, dead or with their parts gone rogue."

"How many?"

Ezeki Iben Tav pursed his lips. "In this area, three perhaps. The closest is the city on the high plain. I saw it many times as a youngster. No doubt it's dying as fast as this one." He pointed to the marching columns, supports, and bulkheads, with their attendant carriers and spider-leg guides. "I don't know if it will ever come together again, when it reaches its destination. It doesn't look very organized."

Grey clouds were spilling over the mountains to the east and the air was thick with humidity. Durragon had difficulty getting a satisfactory breath. He was used to colder southern climes. "Do you recommend capturing any of the parts?"

The Habiru squinted at the procession and shook his head. Always better to be cautious; one seldom lost one's head by being conservative. "No," he said. "Too many guides and defenders. Chop up the army like blades of grass."

Durragon stood up in the saddle and sniffed the breeze blowing west. Breetod did likewise but smelled nothing unusual.

"I disagree. Nebeki, move the runners and their divisions into formation this side of the city. Breetod, put half your runners and men to harrying to rear and picking up stragglers. Caution them that no parts are to be injured. Take the other half and see if you can stop the city -- you personally in the lead. What are you waiting for?"

"I'm off," Breetod said, turning on his heel and running. Durragon sat back in the saddle and sighed. The old Habiru caught an acrid smell and thought, "The man's scared."

Durragon was remembering the loss of his finger many years ago. A rogue city part, like a butcher shop's rack of knives set on cylinder, had fled a band of his father's hunters and run Durragon down. He had been lucky to survive.

"Something that big must have a thinking part," he said to the Habiru. "Something to keep it organized. Catch the brain, and we will know how a city works. Maybe then..."

"It's been tried," the old man snapped. He bowed and said, more softly, "Many times others have tried, but the cities were too strong."

"This city isn't strong any more, you said so yourself. We'll treat it just like we'd treat an army."

The Habiru held his counsel. He wanted to mention that all the armies they had fought this far had been poorly equipped and weakened by drought and hunger. He watched the clouds boiling above the mountains, spinning in the hot updrafts of air from the lower hills.

Perhaps Durragon was right. No city had ever come this close to the old alluvial plain. But then, would the brain of a city so foolish be worth capturing?

"Will it rain?" Durragon asked.

"No," the old man said wearily. "Not here. Look at the clouds. They're starting to break up already." They could both feel the humidity decreasing, being sucked out of the air.

"None of us gives any thought to it," Rebecca said, clinging to Belshezar's arm. She sounded resentful. "We're not sure how much Resurrection will put up with ... we're mostly healed now. It could throw all of us out any minute." There was going to be a dance. Already the patients were arriving in clothes designed a thousand years ago, but created only a few hours before.

"Have you found instructions, though?" Reah asked. "On how to run the city, keep it clean..."

"It does all that all by itself," Belshezar said. "It doesn't need anything."

"But it's dying." Reah pointed to a broad grey spot on the atrium ceiling. The rows and rows of empty seats were browning and spotting like handfuls of autumn leaves. "Perhaps we can save it."

"It takes thousands of years for a city to die," Rebecca said. "We'll all be dust before that happens."

"Well," Belshezar said, "that's not exactly true. A city can die in a few decades. But this one -- the parts we live in, anyway -- will last out our lifetimes easily."

"We should just stay here and not interfere, then," Reah mused.

"Would it be better to live outside?" Rebecca asked, her eyes wide and lips thinned. "You came here by the grace of God, to live in luxury as one of the chosen -- "

"No," Reah interrupted firmly. "Not chosen. I came here perhaps by Allah's will, but not to sit and watch everything rot. You won't help?"

Belshezar looked at the floor. "Too much risk. You shouldn't interfere. Haven't we been good to you, helped you?"

Reah stood silent in front of them for a few seconds. "There aren't many of you," she said. "You could spend days finding me if I wanted to get lost."

Rebecca's mouth dropped open, showing her bottom teeth. "What..." Her eyes narrowed, as if she had suddenly seen Reah in a clear light. "We've been here longer. We know the city better. Don't make us throw you out."

"You don't have the power to throw anyone out!" Reah spat. Belshezar reached out to take her arm but she backed away, soft dress swirling.

"Then leave by yourself," Rebecca said. "Leave us alone!"

Reah shook her head. She turned away and Belshezar began to follow. "Wait a moment," he said. "Let's talk about this -- " She ran. Before he could reach her she clambered into a bee-shaped flier and told it to take her to the city's peak.

As the flier rose in a slow spiral, Belshezar and Rebecca stood on the floor below, finally merging into the grand lily design which folded and unfolded in the cool green light.

The city's peak rose twelve hundred meters above the high plains. The air was colder and thinner so high, making it hard for her to breathe. She left the vehicle at the landing platform with orders to stay and walked through the arched buttresses which supported the city's crest. Above and below the porch surrounding the shaft were garden levels, terraced and provided with waterfalls and streams. The air smelled of flowers, but half the gardens were a riot now, untended by organic machines which lay in moldering rains. God-Does-Battle's wildlife was already finding sanctuary up here, away from the more vigilant defenses below. Birds nested in the trees or on splintered columns, and insects scampered across the pathways at her approach. A giant moth broad as her shoulders swooped by with a tiny squeak and lighted on a closed bud. She stopped to look at it, then hurried on and lost herself in the peak's central forest.

The trees had once been part of the city itself, but with the failing systems, some had germinated on their own and left generations of independent offspring. Now the forest was little different from natural woods below, but there were no large animals. As she walked, she discovered that a few houses still functioned in the middle of the trees, and she decided to stay in one for the rest of the night.

The furniture was scattered through the rooms, bent and crumbling, cloth in rotting tatters. Dust covered the floor and made her cough. The insect life was profuse. She had second thoughts -- but then she saw the console and covered screen. The bench in front of the console was solid. She sat on it and requested information. With a rustle of dust, the louvres opened and a homunculus appeared on the plate.

"Are there any facilities for cleaning this place?" she asked. The figure appeared to think the question over for a moment. "One machine replies; would you like it activated and put to work?"

"Yes. Also, I'd like fresh bedclothes and furniture manufactured."

"They will be transported from factories in the lower levels."

"That's fine. Now, while I wait, I want to be connected to the city archives."

"Archives are closed. Only city managers may see -- "

"I am a city manager," Reah said, tensing with her lie.

The homunculus wavered for a moment, then became solid again. "City manager -- status, please."

"Retired. Listen, the city is in need of organization -- "

"That is the status," the homunculus said. "Pardon this unit. Not all portions function as well as they should. Which archives do you wish to see?"

"Records of previous managers."

She felt a presence behind her and jumped, then screamed. A man dressed in black was walking out of the wall. He raised one hand and moved his lips silently, beckoning her to follow.

The army was arranged as Durragon had ordered. The first group of city parts was coming up against the forward line. He could see the Chasers running in and out like reckless children at play. Big machines rolled out of the group on tractor treads, forcing the marauders back, while the smaller parts moved toward the center.

The rear lines faced similar problems, but they had already cut out a score of stragglers and were tying them down with ropes and stakes. Periodically one of the bound parts would break loose and a knot of men would gather around it again. The struggle reminded him of a formation of ants trying to stop a burst of water. The beleaguered city seemed to run over itself at certain points, and pieces would reassemble, forming nightmare castles and towers which dissolved into the common mass minutes after. Breetod stood by Durragon, leaning on the flank of the green mount, chewing on a piece of sweet grass. They both turned at once when rising smoke caught their eyes.

"What's that?" Durragon asked.

"Bastards have set a grass fire," Breetod said. "They're trying to stop the advance with a fire!"

"Tell the rest of the troops to start cutting into the rear. I want them to find anything that looks like it's in command -- anything! Cut it out of the formation and bring it here. And whoever set that fire -- shoot them on the spot."

Breetod ran off. Nebeki came up on his other side, breathing hard, face smudged with dirt. He was smiling until he saw the trickle of smoke on the plain. "What's that?"

"Never mind. Take all the captured parts and get them off the plain, away from the grass. Take them into the hills on the other side."

In an hour, the fire raged out of control. Smoke reached up to the blue sky and streamed to the west. The city had stopped. Durragon could see that large sections of it were already on fire. Before long at least a third of the mass was blazing, but the city would not retreat. Breetod returned, gasping and exhausted, face smoke-darkened and hair snagged with burrs and bits of grass. "Sir, we're going to lose the whole city. There aren't any defenses left to put out the fire. It's just waiting to die."

"Follow," Durragon said, urging the mount forward.

The next few hours blurred in his memory. He rode out among the burning city parts, coughing in the smoke. The night sky descended and the plain and surrounding hills were lit up by the central blaze. Many of the Chasers were trapped and burned to death, or so badly burned they had to be put out of their agony. The rest of the army herded captured parts across the plain into the hills, tying them to the thickest trees and cutting down the brush behind them to form a firebreak. Breetod was almost trampled by a transport unit which rumbled over him, undercarriage passing a scant finger's breadth above his back.

When the fire showed no signs of abating, they untied the captured parts and herded them still higher, into the rock columns which had fallen away from some of the sheer hill ledges.

Durragon wandered through the assembly on foot, with the Habiru teacher following several steps behind. A few suspect parts were isolated and a rough fence built around them. One -- a drum that had been carried by a transport until the transport burned -- had no obvious purpose, and Ezeki Iben Tav examined it closely. "This may be a control," he said.

By morning the plain was a smoldering expanse of the char. The fire had passed to east and west, ending at the dust of the river bottom and the rocks of the higher hills. After a few hours of fitful, coughing-racked sleep, Durragon took his mount out to survey the remains of the city.

"So passes the city of Tomoye," the old Habiru said, bending down to rescue a small water-spreader lacking its hose. It wriggled in his arms and tried to spurt dry air.

* * * *

The ghost's path was old; he went through houses and walls and walked along upper levels which had long since collapsed. She followed as best she could, hair on end, muttering automatic prayers. The figure was not supernatural -- it was a normal function of the city to project guides and teachers -- but she wasn't immune to awe.

The figure stopped at a tower which rose thirty-five meters above the city crest, on the outer circuit of walkways. He pointed at an eroded panel and she reached out to touch it. Then he vanished.

A door slid aside and Reah stepped into a brightly lit room. The walls were covered with glowing charts and diagrams. In the center, on a raised pedestal, was a chair and a console larger than any she had seen. She stepped up to the chair and stood behind it, looking at the board's soft green luminosity. She recognized the three louvred screens and an array of knobs which were retinal projectors. Reah didn't completely understand the technology of the past, but it wasn't hard to guess that whoever sat in the chair would have a great deal of information at her fingertips.

She sat. The cushion crumpled like pastry under her weight, but the solid body of the chair adjusted to fit.

"May we help you?" a voice from the ceiling asked.

"Where is this?"

"This is one of five city surveillance centers."

Reah nodded absently and looked at the charts more closely. The city was huge. She had hardly had time to become familiar with it, but she recognized many of the larger features. "Are you..." She hesitated, still not used to speaking to voices without humans behind them. "Are you aware the city is dying?"

"We are. Our regeneration facilities have been depleted and there is a breakdown in reproduction memory."

"You answer more than my question. Are you a simple machine?"

"We are the architect. We coordinate the city."

"I mean -- do you think, are you alive?"

"Yes. But we are not aware in the same way you are."

Reah touched a louvred screen. "But you want to stay alive, don't you?"

"At one time this city had a purpose, and that made it pleasant to exist. There is no purpose now."

"Why?"

"A city is nothing without citizens."

"But you kicked them out."

"They were not worthy."

She didn't feel like arguing the point. "Still, you've let people in now -- injured people."

"If we were in complete control, we would not allow that. The city defenses are weakened and many functions have been turned over to medical units."

"Then you don't control everything," Reah said.

"No. Authority has been crumbling for a century."

"Is there any way to get it back?"

"The architect is an incomplete unit now and cannot control all city functions. Authority has been delegated to best serve the city."

"Can you ... delegate authority to me?"

"No," the architect said, "but there is a unit which can."

"Will you put me in touch with that unit?"

A different voice spoke. "Religious coordinator. May we help you?"

She sat silent for several seconds, biting her lower lip. "What's your function?"

"Scheduling the sacred activities and organizing spiritual exercises."

"Can you give me control of the city?"

"This unit is no longer complete and lacks motivation. For that reason, it is desirable to find a unit or individual with motivation. Do you qualify?"

"I ... yes."

"Will you reject those who do not meet the spiritual standards of the city, who do not believe in the Resurrection and the Life, in Beauty Eternal and the dominance of the Almighty Lord our God?"

"Yes," she said, "but Allah is all-knowing." She didn't feel the least twinge of guilt; the city was insane. Having been insane once herself, she knew how necessary it was to exercise discretion.

"You are a retired city manager. Now you are reinstated. The penalty for failing to meet the standards is rejection. The city is under your control."

Reah smiled and wiped her damp palms on her dress.

In the shadow of Resurrection, after a day's hot march, Durragon relaxed and drank a cup of stale water proffered by Breetod. He looked over the mottled towers and walls with a speculative eye, then ordered the Habiru brought to him. The teacher came with wary eyes and stooped shoulders.

"How much is alive in there, and how much dead?" Durragon asked.

Ezeki shrugged. "Perhaps a fourth is dead."

"How soon before it all dies?"

"Decades. Or only years. It isn't the outward decay which counts, but the decay of the city's control and regeneration facilities."

"Is it worth trying to get inside?"

"If the city doesn't want you in, you won't get in."

"I think there are ways," Durragon said. "You saw what happened to Tomoye. We could burn our way into this one."

"You -- and pardon my bluntness, but you employ me to save you trouble -- you don't know the ways of cities. I have observed them for years, decades, and learned about them at the feet of men who have studied them far longer than that. There are defenses within the city which can decimate your men. You lost many to Tomoye, and it was weak."

Durragon motioned for Nebeki to bring up a chart. "The city's empty, dying. Those spines can't hold us back for long. A party of men will get through -- I'll gamble on that -- and you'll be among them."

"It's been tried before."

"On healthy cities, yes. But this one is weak and feebleminded. I can smell it, like a dying jungle. There's a chance we can take it."

The Habiru shrugged and picked up a chart to examine it. "You'll lose many men."

"They're Chasers. They won't complain because I'll be with them every step. I've heard cities contain knowledge useful to a man with my ambitions. Such knowledge could give me a terrific advantage. After a millennium of strife, don't you think it's time for one leader to emerge?"

The Habiru nodded. "Perhaps. But are you equipped to be that leader?" He felt a thrill of fear, being so bold.

Durragon's smile didn't waver. "Yes. If I wasn't, I'd have you put to death right now for insolence. But there's a place for insolence in my plans. I'm insolent myself. I threaten to end an age of decline. I sneer at the weakness of my forebears."

"The plan is no more foolish than any other," Ezeki said. "My life is no more valuable than any other. I'll go."

"Just for a chance to see what's in the city?"

"For that chance ... yes." The Habiru's eyes closed.

Reah stepped out of the control chamber and was confronted by three monsters. One was built like a rolling coat-rack, with antennae stuck on its small round head. The second in size was a squat cubic thing which walked on insect legs. The smallest was a translucent-winged bug which lighted on her shoulder and touched her cheek with fine, wiry palps.

"We are to serve you," the coat-rack said. "I am assigned to the architect to report on your position and activities, this box is to protect you, and this insect is your personal link with the religious coordinator. May we, as simple units, warn you -- avoid sin?"

"I stand warned," she said. "Where are the patients?"

"Still on the lower levels."

"Guide me to a transport and let's visit them."

She rode a flier in a slow spiral down a heat shaft and came to rest on the flowing design at the base. As she stepped down from the humming vehicle, she saw a crowd of officious city-parts much like her coat-rack rushing from corridor to corridor, whistling shrilly.

Rebecca ran under the heat-shaft arch and saw Reah standing near the center of the design. She stopped, confused, and was grabbed by three flexible metal arms. The device -- a mechanical torso mounted on tractor treads -- lifted her gently from the floor. "Stop it!" she screamed. "We belong here!"

"What's going on?" Reah asked the coat-rack.

"They are healed now. They must be returned to the outside."

"I want them to stay."

"You have no control," the coat-rack said.

"Why not? I command the city."

"Only those who require medical service are allowed to stay. These people are healthy now. It is the way the city functions."

"Then countermand the orders."

"It cannot be done."

"Reah!" Rebecca screamed. "Stop them!"

Reah watched helpless as the former patients of Resurrection were placed beyond the silicate barriers. She was vaguely disgusted at herself, for she was almost happy they were going. The spines bristled high into the air and the cries diminished.

"No way to bring them back?" she asked.

"None."

"Then it's time to get to work."

Nebeki's chasers brought in the new exiles half an hour after they were put out of the city. Durragon looked them over, saw a mix of peoples from villages and townships he had raided, and asked them pointed questions -- what had they seen in the city? Had anyone stayed behind?

A young, dark fellow in a yellow suit said, "There's a woman inside."

"What's your name?" Durragon asked.

"Belshezar."

"What kind of woman?"

"A Moslem," Rebecca spat. "Worse than the worst -- a witch! The city didn't throw her out. She has it enchanted."

"How did you get into the city in the first place?" Ezeki asked, walking slowly around the group of twelve. He fingered Belshezar's clothes.

"We were sick," Belshezar said, backing away. "Wounded." He looked around, suddenly frightened. "You're the ones who burned our towns..."

"Never mind," the Habiru said. "That's done with for the moment." He glanced sharply at Durragon. "No more left to burn, eh? We need information. Give it to us and you won't have any trouble."

"You want to get into the city?" Belshezar asked.

Durragon raised his riding crop -- an affectation, since his city part didn't respond to whipping -- and lifted Belshezar's chin with it. "Answer the old man and don't worry about our plans."

"Does it take in all wounded people?" Ezeki asked.

"All that we know of," Belshezar said. "Most of us came by accident. It let us in and we were almost too sick to notice. It sent machines after some of us."

"It actually carried you inside?" Durragon asked.

Belshezar nodded. "It's confused, broken in its..." He made a twirling motion with his finger around his ear.

"It's crazy," Ezeki said.

Belshezar agreed.

"Can you draw a map of its insides?" Durragon asked.

"All of us together, maybe." Belshezar looked up defiantly. "If we're treated well."

Ezeki ordered a table and paper brought to them. "I'm sure our general will treat you kindly." He dismissed the women and had the men sit down in the tent. The women were taken to a separate tent and a guard was put around them by Breetod, who disliked the looks on the Chasers' faces.

Into the evening Belshezar, sweating heavily, laid out the city scheme before Durragon and the Habiru, with reluctant help from his comrades.

From the edge of a middle level promenade, Reah watched the tents and fires of the armies massed below. The company of the coat-rack, the box and the bug was beginning to irritate her, but there was no way of getting rid of them. Besides, they answered most of her questions. She was tiring rapidly, however, and her mind still spun with endless schemes, spurred on by the ready information.

It suddenly dawned on her that the army below wasn't made up of simple Chasers. Her dim memories of the raid on Akkabar and the ruins of the Habiru town returned and she rubbed her eyes slowly, as if to scrub the new worries away.

"What are they doing down there?" she asked.

"We do not know," the coat-rack said.

"Can they get inside?"

The device was silent for an unusually long time. "We think they may be able to get in."

"How?"

"Should any of them be injured, portions of the city will allow them in for treatment."

She turned away from the parapet and looked back at the softly glowing gardens beyond the walkways. Smells of orange and cherry blossoms mingled in the moist wind from the higher levels. "If they attack the city, can it hold them off?"

"Yes. If they attack, none of them will get in."

"Will it kill them?"

"Not directly, no."

"What do you mean?"

"In fortifying its outer barriers, it will probably destroy many before they can run far. It's happened before."

She closed her eyes again and enjoyed the dark. "Can you find me a room nearby?"

"Certainly," the coat-rack said. "Please follow."

Resurrection had once housed six hundred thousand people. The variety of living quarters seemed endless to Reah. Her guides led her through meeting halls filled with thousands of now-crumbling desks and chairs. Though there had been no schools as such in Akkabar, she had seen classrooms in one of the Habiru cities. The rooms around the central meeting halls were obviously quarters for children -- they were smaller and the furniture, what remained of it, was more delicate. The decors were colorful and simple. Some of the rooms were in good repair and she was taken into one. The bed was small but suitable. She lay down and crawled into a fetal curl.

The three machines lined up near the door and settled down to wait the night out. From all around, like the diminished beating of a sleeping heart, the city sounds subsided and deepened.

She awoke before dawn and ate a quick breakfast at a small metal table. The serving units left their wall nooks and stiffly delivered her food -- fruit and a bowl of hot cereal, not unlike the wheat mash served in Akkabar. As she finished, she looked at a large door which hadn't been opened since she arrived. She asked the coat-rack what was behind the door.

"Educational devices, I believe," it answered. "Would you like to see them?"

"Bring them out," she said.

The coat-rack aimed its antennae and the door swung aside, revealing a closet-like interior. Reah peered in and saw several strange machines lining the walls. One looked like a hobby-horse made from garden plants, another was a robot octopus. There was a cluster of dolls no higher than her knee, each meticulously detailed and very life-like. Half the dolls were children, half were adults.

The toy horse stood up stiffly, making a noise like cellophane crackling. One leg fell away and it toppled, cracking its head against the squirming octopus. Both crumpled into glassy bits and a strong odor of resin filled the closet. Two dolls walked out and looked up at her inquisitively.

"Here is how we are played with," the adult doll said, speaking in the old English accent. Reah gasped and backed away -- the ghosts of two children had emerged from the wall above her bed and climbed down to kneel beside the dolls. Seeing her shock, the coat-rack immediately made the children vanish and shut off the dolls.

"We regret any alarm," it said, approaching her. She shook her head and held out a hand.

"I'm not used to them -- to ghosts."

"We thought you were. You have already seen how such figures are used as guides in the city."

"Yes, but not children. Not the spirits of children. They've been dead..."

Her voice trailed off. "My child is dead and can't come back. Why should these children still laugh and play? Take me back to the other house."

The coat-rack hesitated, then complied.

The old Habiru sat on a rock before the spiny barricades of the city, thinking. Breetod stood next to him, looking bored. Durragon considered the old man valuable and kept him guarded. The Chasers were becoming more and more unruly as the months passed.

"Well," the Habiru said, taking a deep breath. "This is the way it should be. Will Durragon come to me, or should I go to him?"

"Better if you go, I think."

The old man pushed on his knees as he stood, and followed Breetod through the camp to Durragon's tent. The first gleam of dawn was driving out the last stars with sweeping orange wolf's-tail clouds. Breetod stood by the flap and drew it aside for the Habiru.

Inside, Durragon was eating an apple picked from one of the wild trees near the camp. The Habiru stood beside him for a moment, waiting to be acknowledged.

"All right, yes?"

"You will wound ten of us and put us by the barricade. I want the Moslem Musa Salih to go with us ... and Breetod, here."

Breetod raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

"You think the city will let you in?"

"Perhaps."

"What will you do if you get inside?"

"We know what some of the city thinking parts look like. If they don't vanish into the main body when the city is assembled, we might be able to find them and work on them. It'll take time, perhaps years. Ultimately we may be able to make the city drop its barriers and let your army in."

Durragon cringed. "Heaven forbid that. Chasers follow cities -- but they wouldn't know how to behave themselves inside one. What will you do with Musa Salih?"

"He will talk to the Moslem woman inside, persuade her we wish no harm."

"Just in case she really does control the city, eh? Why is she still there when the others have been cast out?" Durragon tossed his apple core into a brass chamber pot.

"Perhaps she hasn't fully recovered yet," Nebeki said from the rear of the tent.

"No, she's sound," the old man countered. "This fellow Belshezar says she is, anyway. And Belshezar should go with us too."

"How will I wound you?"

The old man smiled grimly. "Not severely. Cuts across the skin of the legs, the back, the arms perhaps."

"Nothing serious, though, huh? What if the city sees the wounds aren't serious and doesn't let you in?"

"Then we'll heal ourselves. We've managed in the past."

"I don't like the idea," Breetod said, frowning. "Getting chopped in battle is one thing. Standing by without a fight while someone chops me is another."

"Then I'll go," Nebeki said, standing up. "I've always wanted to see the inside of a city."

Breetod glowered at him and shook his head. "Thank you, no. I'll go, but I don't have to enjoy the preparations, do I? Go fetch volunteers -- six, right? Besides you, the Moslem and Belshezar."

Ezeki nodded. "We can go this morning, as soon as possible. The city was peaceful last night -- you might say it slept well. Most cities are restless even when they've been settled for a long while."

"Some say they have bad dreams," Durragon offered, looking closely at Ezeki. "Do you think they dream, old man?"

He shook his head. "Not of good times. They dream of our manifold sins, General, which so disgusted them they vomited us."

"Then what we plan is like raping a woman who refuses us, eh? Noble plan, I think." Durragon stood and Nebeki brought forward his light armor. When he was suited, Durragon motioned for the runner to leave the tent. "Are you still religious, old man?" he asked. The Habiru shrugged.

"No righteous God would let one like you -- or a traitor such as I -- live very long. Most of our religion lies buried in cities that won't let us see it any more. We did not take our books with us when we were exiled, General. No Talmud, only a few copies of the Pentateuch, the Histories of Earth. One batch of tapes. Nothing else. Most of those are gone now, or we don't have the machines to read them."

"Ah, to retrieve the knowledge! The information that would let us live as our ancestors did -- travelling from star to star, doing things any man today would call sorcery. My religion is man behaving like God. What is yours?"

The old man didn't answer.

"Sometimes I talk to gods in my sleep, auditioning them one by one. 'Come talk, present yourselves!' I say, and watch them stalk past, shadowy, answering me sometimes with my own voice, sometimes with the voice of somebody very like me, but buried deep inside. Never with their own voices. Makes me think all gods must be toadies and servants. Must have been different at one time, eh? Before burning bushes and voices out of mountains became everyday things, and humans took charge."

"Lots of leaders have imagined themselves gods," Ezeki said. "It's a dangerous conceit. Someone might believe you."

"I'm no god; don't ever intend to be one," Durragon said. "No god would put up with troops like the Chasers, and without my troops, what am I? No better than you -- perhaps worse. You know why I'm called the Apostate, old man?"

Ezeki stared straight ahead.

"Because I once trained to be a rab. What do you think of that? I was young, but devout. Then I decided the creed of the Catholic was more attractive. Then I joined a group which worshipped a very dark, ugly sort of goddess. None of them satisfied me. From rab to pagan, and then to agnostic."

The old man produced one of his rare smiles.

"You like my revelations, huh?" Durragon asked. "Rare shafts of light between dark curtains. Yes, I know what you think of me. Your hatred invigorates me. We certainly won't grow old together, not when our goals are so far apart. Go and look over Breetod's volunteers. Don't tell Belshezar what I plan until I'm there to see his face."

The city was quiet in the dawn. Mist rose around its base and layers of thin clouds drifted past its upper towers, touching the walls with dew. The morning fires in the camp spread like a carpet of orange stars under the haze. Reah stood on the balcony with the insect lightly clutching her shoulder, the coat-rack behind her and the box at her feet.

"If the city lets any of them in, are there other parts which will obey me and throw them out again?"

The coat-rack didn't answer. The insect shustled its green clockwork body. She reached up to touch its crystalline head, but it flinched under her fingers. "I may explain," the coat-rack said. "The religious coordinator now wishes to treat those in need -- "

"They only want in," Reah said.

"We have been watching them, and they behave like other Chasers, though there are more of them."

"They're organized. They burned my town, and they'll destroy this one if they can."

"Many city parts are no longer under control of the architect. Still others -- such as defense and medical services -- are automatic and cannot be directed by any existing central authority."

"Not even myself?"

The coat-rack considered. "I think not."

"Not even with your help?"

"If these Chasers are actually dangerous to the city -- "

"They are."

"But the only way they can get in is to be wounded or disabled."

"They'll hurt themselves deliberately just to get a few inside -- and then they'll kill the city."

"How do you know this?"

"It's obvious. They must have captured the others."

The insect was restless. Reah shrugged her shoulder in irritation and it flew away, winding around several buttresses in its flight to the interior.

"Why is the city dying?" she asked. The coat-rack hummed a lowering note but didn't answer. She asked her question again.

"The city no longer picks proper places in which to settle. This area is poor in deep ground-water sources. The soil is adequate only for surface vegetation."

"Would it improve if it found a better area?"

"Probably. Some portions are dead and irreplaceable, but others are not past repair."

"How could we get it to move?"

"That is outside my expertise. I speak to the architect but am not spoken to very often."

"It would know?"

"They. The architect is a consortium of agencies."

"They would know?"

"This unit thinks so."

Reah frowned. "We could do a lot with this city."

"The city is dying," the coat-rack said. "It began to die a long time ago, when it threw out its citizens. A city cannot live uninhabited."

"Children," Reah said. "Children can't survive without a community -- not very well, anyway. And sick children -- those no one can help. The city could find a place for children -- most of them need medical care at one time or another. Resurrection could be a home to them, a school and hospital. Thousands of them..." She looked at the clearing mist over the camp.

"Is something wrong?"

"What? Oh, no. I'm just feeling slightly queasy. Too little sleep, I think."

Ezeki gathered the volunteers and told them, in Chaser dialect, what was going to happen.

"Dis you, brayba mans all, be cut undeep -- "

The Chasers listened stolidly, then looked at the three runner assistants who sat under a tree, heating their blades in a fire. Ezeki turned to Durragon when he was through explaining. Durragon motioned for the group to approach the tree one by one, Ezeki to go first, Musa Salih second, and Breetod third.

"Dis em, in glow, not bite wid bite ob pus," Ezeki explained. The volunteers watched with squeamish interest as the swordsman laid a shallow cut across the old Habiru's back. Blood dripped down.

"Across my arm now," Ezeki said, wincing. The blade cut lightly from wrist to elbow. "Now put the belt around my upper arm," he said. He swatted at tiny insects gathering around the wounds. One by one, the others were cut, until the last stepped forward with pale face and closed his eyes against the pain.

"Dis we, on now, quicklike," Ezeki said. Breetod motioned for them to follow the old man. They walked through the inner perimeter of the camp and stood by the bristled spines of the city's paving.

"We are hurt!" Ezeki cried, not without conviction.

"We need aid!" Nebeki crouched behind the tents with an extra band of soldiers, waiting for the spines to drop. Durragon watched with legs apart and arms clenched behind his back.

The spines remained erect. Ezeki removed the cord from his arm and squeezed more blood out. "Look, we are hurt!" he shouted, angry this time. "We need medical attention!" He wiped one hand across his arm and smeared the blood on silicate spine. It trembled at his touch.

Durragon shook his head. He turned to his tent aide and ordered the camp herbalists to come forward.

Breetod felt faint and sick. His face was pale and sweat soaked his ragged clothes. The morning air felt cold as ice. Musa Salih slumped to his knees and a Chaser reached down to help him up again. Ezeki cursed under his breath and turned toward the camp. "Bring up the -- "

The spines clanged together like bells. Voices rose from the troops a dozen meters away. Ezeki turned and saw an opening form in the barrier -- the spines dropped, fitting together to form a section of flat paving. He stumbled forward. Breetod, Musa Salih and Belshezar followed. The wounded Chasers hung back, terrified, until Durragon shouted for them to go. Their blood spattered the ground.

Nebeki watched as the last man passed through. "Now!" Durragon shouted.

The second team rushed from the tents with the general and ran to the gap, trying to push through before it closed. Nebeki was the first to reach the barrier. He jumped over a rising spine. His eyes widened and jaw fell open as a second spine flashed up, catching him in the stomach and lifting him high into the air. The city bellowed as if in anguish, taking Nebeki's scream and amplifying it a thousand times. The rest of the second party fell back, clutching their ears. The noise stopped and Durragon lifted his eyes. Nebeki had been flung beyond the barrier. His body lay twisted on the ground. The spines still trembled. They jerked upward. New spines crept from beneath the barrier and advanced across the ground toward the camp. Durragon had already started running, barely ahead of his troops. They backed away, stumbling over tent-pegs and ropes and each other. They ran over fallen Chasers and camp debris, leaping like antelopes.

In two minutes, one third of the camp was obliterated and the barrier stopped growing. Durragon lay where he had stumbled, barely three meters from the new-grown spines, his face flushed with terror. His aide lay crushed, eyes glazed, blood dripping from his mouth.

The general screamed until his throat ached, then stood and brushed off his clothes.

Reah hid behind a column, listening to the men talking. She recognized Belshezar's voice. The coat-rack waited motionless nearby, its workings making small noises. She raised a finger and it moved into the view of the men.

Breetod saw the movement from the corner of his eye and slowly turned his head. Sweat beaded on his forehead and fell into his eyes, making him blink. Belshezar pointed to the coat-rack. "There's a worker -- it can tell us where everything is."

Reah waited until the men were under the archway, then nodded.

"Medical units will arrive soon to assist you," the coat-rack said. "Please stay where you are."

Ezeki dropped to his knees, lolling his head like a sick animal. He swallowed hard and looked up at the wonder of the city's interior. It was clean, warm, comforting. The floor under his knees and toes was gentle, faintly yielding. The air was filled with the sounds of the city's vitality, almost like music. The city may have been sick, but it was far from moribund.

Musa Salih brought out a _hijab,_ an amulet, and pressed it to each eye, swaying on unsteady legs. "They cut us too deep," he said. "We're weak."

Reah reached into her robes and brought out a blade she had removed from a dead garden tender.

Belshezar saw the worker spin around. He pointed and said he was going to investigate. Then Reah walked around the pillar. She was dressed in a red robe, knife hidden in one sleeve. Breetod drew his sword. Musa Salih smiled.

"What are you doing here?" Reah asked in a level voice.

"We were wounded in a fight," Ezeki said. "The city gave us refuge."

"You wounded yourselves," Reah said. "You sliced yourselves just to get in."

Belshezar frowned. "How can you still be here? You're healthy."

"I control the city now."

"Woman, your vanity is incredible," Musa Salih said in the old tongue. "Stand back and let men do their proper work. Trust you not in Allah?"

"What village are you from?" she asked in English.

"From the _Medain,_ the cities north of here. You speak the old tongue?"

Reah didn't answer. "I want you all out of here. The city will bind your wounds, then it will put you on the perimeter and you can join your soldiers outside."

"We are suppliants," Musah Salih said, smiling toothily at her. "You cannot refuse us." He was still speaking the old tongue. At one time, she thought, he must have been a scholar.

"I don't refuse you. I treat you and release you like the wild animals you are."

"Nor can you refuse us food, drink, information. That is the code of our people."

"You consort with _Nasrany_ and _Yudah_ and ask me about the code of our people?"

"They are human like you and I," Musa said, finally using English. "Were we not all exiled long ago, faithful and _kafir_ alike? We all lacked something."

"Whatever we lacked, the cities can't help us find it. My word is final. Belshezar, show them the hospital rooms. The city watches closely. No miserable soldiers can -- " She stopped herself and shook her head, then addressed the coat-rack. "You'll watch them and report to me when they're gone."

Belshezar started to walk toward her, but felt faint and faltered. "You're lying," he said. "You're still crazy. The city can't fix you."

"Makes no matter to me what you think," Reah said. She smiled grimly at the others. "Be wary. This city is full of ghosts. The sooner you leave it, the better for you." To the Chasers she said, "Dis polis chocka sperrit, compree?"

Then she turned and walked toward the heat shaft.

She didn't want them in the city at all. They could spoil her plans -- the city wouldn't force them out until they were well, and they could perform much mischief before then. The confrontation had merely been postponed; until they were gone they were like vipers hidden in her bedclothes.

She returned to the top of the city and the control center. She commanded a map of the surrounding area to be projected on a wall screen. The area of Akkabar was shown covered by a broad river. "Architect," she said. The homunculus appeared on its plate. "This map is wrong. Prepare to make corrections."

"The architect has put all city memory on read-only status," the figure said. "No information can be altered except in an emergency."

She sighed. "This is an emergency, obviously. The city is dying. It needs much more water than it gets here. It's tapping the water table for miles around and the flow is weakening daily. But where two rivers meet, even in drought, water must exist a few dozen meters beneath the sand. There's enough for a dozen cities, if the geology you taught me is correct."

"Are you proposing the city should move?"

"I am."

"To what end?"

"To ensure long life and health for its components." She noticed the homunculus had changed color. She was now addressing the religious coordinator, dressed in blue.

"Why? Is it not time for an empty city to die?"

"No." She shivered with emotion. The city actually _wanted_ to die.

"There is no purpose in going on."

"Yes, there is. I'm going to send city transports to all the villages for hundreds of kilometers around and have them bring back the sick children. This city can heal them."

"Children are exiled as much as adults."

"Are children filled with sin?"

"Yes. This city's creed is Baptist. Those -- "

"Stop that! You're repeating the very contradiction that makes you sick. I am the leader. You will send out city parts to retrieve the sick children."

The homunculus suddenly fuzzed and wavered. Reah, with her fingers in the sockets, could feel something changing. Far below, in one of the hundreds of control drums, something died. She wondered what it was.

The architect's colors returned. "Yes?"

She sucked in her breath and mumbled a prayer to Allah. "Here is how you will do it."

And the city did not object.

Belshezar watched as the medical machines repaired his wounds. "I'd live here forever if I could," he said.

Ezeki, already bandaged, ate from a plate held by the worker the woman had left to watch over them. "They'll throw you out just like they did before."

"Why haven't they thrown her out?"

"As you say, maybe she's still crazy. But it seems to me there's method in her madness."

Musa Salih grumbled deep in his throat. "She's a woman. Women can't enter a man's tent when they are impure, much less a blessed city. This woman has the manners of one highborn, the wife of an important man. They get haughty when their men rank high."

"Perhaps the city made her that way," Ezeki said.

"She was ignorant when she came here," Belshezar said. "We taught her how to learn from the city. Now she shows her gratitude."

"When we go, we'll take her with us," Musa said. "She can tell us what she knows about the city."

"If we're forced to leave," Ezeki said. "If she can stay, why can't we?"

"Something's moving on the outside," Breetod said, looking through a window across the broad pavement surrounding the city. "Big machines are leaving!"

Durragon was roused from his tent by the new left-flank runner. "Sir! Dis we fight beas' fro' inna polis!"

He wrapped his sword belt around his waist and left his tent. The camp was in confusion. At regular intervals around the barrier, spines had dropped to form gates. Huge machines were pouring out. Most were transports -- tractors with human-like torsos but no heads, spider-leg carriers and wheeled trucks with long, flexible carriages and suspensions. They maneuvered carefully through the camp, obviously intent not on destruction but on merely leaving. The spines erected behind them and the Chasers looked in dismay at the trails which had been gouged through the camp.

"Has anyone communicated with the men inside?" Durragon asked. The runner shook his head and shrugged. "Then try, damn it! Try to shout to them. Damned Chasers." The runner smiled and went to gather a chorus of men.

Durragon didn't get much sleep until morning. The Chasers marched from one side of the camp to the other, staying a respectable distance from the spines, shouting at the top of their lungs. When dawn was well along and they hadn't received any answer, the runner woke Durragon up and he groggily began to make other plans.

Ezeki lay on his back in a tub of healing fluid, half-dreaming about his home village. A network of green and chrome manipulators hung in wait over his body. Earlier they had massaged and applied unguents; in a few days the wounds would be healed.

And paradise would end. One way or another, the city -- or the woman -- would throw them out. Something had to be done before then.

The fracas with the disbanded Tomoye had taught Ezeki several things about organic cities. Diffuse and huge as they might seem from the outside, they were controlled by a small number of tank-like brains. The one they had captured had not been very cooperative. He opened his eyes and sighed.

"Bring Breetod to me, please," he told the worker. It rolled out of the room. A few minutes later the flank runner came in, sniffing at his hand and arm.

"They cleaned me up," he said. "I've never smelled this good before."

"How do you like it?" Ezeki asked.

The runner wrinkled his nose. "The smell is unfamiliar, and I can't tell as much about my health as I could before -- " he sniffed his arm-pit and shook his head -- "but I don't itch much, either. It's acceptable."

"This expolitan, Belshezar -- has he told you much about the city yet?"

"He's more your kind than mine. He hasn't said a thing since he was bandaged. Musa would like to strangle the bitch."

"She looks like she can take care of herself. You might warn him. Besides, I think she's telling the truth. She runs the city now."

"Why do you believe her?"

"Does this city act like other cities?"

"No."

"There it is. Something's made it change."

"But she's just an old expolitan -- "

"Not so old, maybe forty. Hard life. But she's smart now, for whatever reason, and I think she has most of the city under control, but not all; otherwise why would it let us in? She was right -- we were faking. She obviously doesn't like having us here."

"So?"

"We'll meet today, before we get so perfumed and softened up we forget why we're here. Bring everyone to Belshezar's room -- even the Chasers -- and make sure the worker is _not_ in attendance."

"Yes, but here the walls have ears for a fact."

"Then we'll speak Habiru dialect. Whether she hears and understands or not, we'll have a meeting."

"One other thing," Breetod said before leaving. "I went to a higher balcony and watched the machines that broke out last night. They scattered in all directions."

Ezeki settled back into the warm fluid again and waved his hand. "Go get the others."

When the despair came, Reah feared that the past was returning again. She sat quietly in the control center, trying to find a way out of the darkness. It all seemed hopeless. Where was the dividing line between the possible and the absurd?

She was furious. She clenched the soft edge of the seat and stared straight into the screen. She had been re-running the city's history, trying to understand. The idiocy of God-Does-Battle's first colonists was a hard stone in her throat. Understanding was no easier than forgiveness.

They had put the planet in a shadow from which it had never escaped. Reah thought she knew one of the reasons. The religions of her ancestors had been masculine religions, with masculine gods and prohibitions against the ways of women. Women were unclean, little better than livestock. Nature was a conspiracy of the unclean female against the hardpressed male.

Yet she had loved her husband once, and faithfully followed the codes of Islam. Her daughter's future, she had known, would not be as bright as a son's --

She was tense again. She looked at the screens and tried to unlock her neck muscles. Son or daughter, husband or tyrant, they were all equal now. "Better I had no memory," she murmured. The insect on her shoulder buzzed and she tapped its head.

"The men are holding a meeting," it said, relaying the coat-rack's voice. "This unit is not allowed to attend. I believe they are well enough that the city might consider putting them out soon."

"Keep watching," she said. They weren't going to foul her plans. Now that she controlled a city, albeit a disarranged one, it was time to correct the masculine blunders and set God-Does-Battle aright. And where else to begin, except with children?

But first the city had to be relocated.

She summoned the homunculus, now permanently dressed in the red of the architect.

"The city can move as soon as it's ready," she said.

"One transport has returned with information from the old alluvial plain," the figure said.

"I didn't send any transport there."

"This unit found it appropriate to check conditions before moving."

She smiled. The city was thinking for itself, at least occasionally. "What did it find?"

"Conditions are good. There is a deep flow of water and the soil is conducive to city maintenance."

"Now that the suppliants are well, isn't it time to put them out?"

"Tomorrow they will be escorted from the city," the architect said. "Not before."

Reah nodded. She knew her limits better now. There was no use arguing.

Durragon called the captured cylinder before him and stood in front of it -- if it had a front -- holding a finger to his lip and sucking on its tip. "You acknowledge my control over you?"

"This unit has been lifted from any established chain of command. Since it is this unit's duty to serve in a hierarchy, your orders will not be ignored."

The cylinder's voice was scratchy and haggard, as if from long disuse or internal wear. Durragon didn't like the cylinder's answer. There was something defiant about it, no matter how faint the tinge.

"No more riddles. Speak clearly. If I control you, then I control all the captured parts of Tomoye?"

"Yes."

"Do I control you?"

A pause, then, "Yes."

"Good." He wished Ezeki was there. The Habiru could split verbal hairs far better than he. "Do you know how other cities are put together? Where their nerve centers are?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"That was not my function."

"Could you point them out to us if we took you inside?"

"Yes."

"Do they look like you?"

Silence. He repeated the question.

"There is much variety, depending on the city. Some do."

"De polis!" a Chaser shouted. Durragon turned and looked up. The higher reaches of the city were disassembling. It was preparing to move. He put his hand on the cylinder's smooth surface. "You'll help us infiltrate the city, won't you?" He wanted to sound more masterful, but the change had caught him by surprise.

The cylinder didn't answer.

* * * *

Reah watched the huge, spider-legged transports as they waited in the larger corridors and received rows of structural pieces. At other times, many of the transports served as bulkheads themselves, or as portions of buttresses and awesome support beams which crossed the entire city. Now the city was coming apart layer by layer, following a plan first put to use when they were erected a thousand years ago. Every part carried its own memory. Ancillary control units coordinated the motions. And throughout the city, the architect watched over everything.

She had played her part. In a few more hours the city would pour across the plain and through the hills, heading toward the old river bed and Akkabar.

She watched from a balcony overlooking one of the largest enclosed spaces within the city. A kilometer above the ground, the assembly hall spanned the central tower. Its floor was six hundred meters across. Light poured down from transepts windows where hall and tower joined. Stained transparencies shifted designs continually, automatically, turning the floor into a gigantic kaleidoscope, a garden of light-flowers which, by night, became a ghostly promenade for images from times long past. Reah had never found the nerve to walk across the assembly hall at night, for it was there that the city concentrated its dreams and recollections, resurrecting visions of men and women in simple, wonderful clothes, children running naked except for armbands and tiaras, strange animals conjured from the experiments of the city-builders.

Until now, Reah had never grasped the true size of the city. Her eyes were lost in the complexity of transports and parts gathering in rows on the assembly floor. As she watched, even the transepts began to come down, supported by new-spun cables and the cooperative limbs of lower sections. Hand-by-hand, slung from webs, walking and rolling and even flying, Resurrection spread itself out on the grasslands, moving its perimeter of spines and pushing back Durragon's army. But the time would come, Reah knew, when the spines themselves would disassemble, and she would have to rely on the uncoordinated mobile defenses to keep the men from breaking through.

The insect buzzed on her shoulder and she tapped its head.

"This unit cannot locate the wounded suppliants," the coat-rack said. "The architect has been informed they are missing, but all faculties are now concentrated on moving and outside defense."

Reah looked away from the assembly floor. "Bring me a quick corridor transport and join me here. We'll look for them ourselves."

Ezeki peered into chamber after chamber, trying to find something which by any stretch of conjecture would serve the purpose of a command center. The city had to have one -- but where?

Belshezar came running after him. "Musa Salih says the city is taking itself apart," he said, out of breath. "I think it's getting ready to move."

"There's no control center down here. It must be up near the tower -- and that's where she is, too."

"No, she isn't. The tower's already come down. There's nothing to do except leave, if we can."

Ezeki shook his head. "We can follow it, wait until it reassembles."

"It won't! Cities go to the mountains and die."

"Not if they have someone rational behind them."

"But the woman isn't rational. She's insane."

Ezeki took a last look into a small storage room and shrugged. "What good is coming here at all, then? She's won."

Belshezar grimaced. "No. I can take us to the upper levels, just below the tower. Most of the promenades are still standing. If we can find a control drum like the one Durragon captured, it may tell us more."

Musa Salih strolled into the entrance archway, smoking his crusted pipe. He watched with amusement while Ezeki tried to query a cube similar to the one which had followed the woman. "It doesn't talk," he told them as the device walked off on its interrupted business. "It must just be a relay, a messenger."

Musa pointed with his pipe-stem. "Gentlemen, Breetod is trying to throw a stone over the outer barrier, but it keeps shifting. He's very angry. He wants to get a message to Durragon. That'll keep him busy, but what are we going to do?"

"Follow me," Belshezar said. Musa glanced at Ezeki and they walked after him.

"One unit reports they are leaving the lower levels," the coat-rack said. "They seem to be looking for you."

"Good. Then we'll wait." She felt for the knife in her robes. The coat-rack suddenly trembled and halted. She turned to look at it. The insect buzzed off her shoulder.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"A failure -- "

The floor buckled and jumped beneath them. A few meters from where they stood, in the broad vehicle corridor below the assembly hall, the walls gapped and groaned. A ramble echoed around them, followed by an ear-splitting squeal. The floor tilted and Reah fell on her hands and knees. The coat-rack rolled and toppled. As she began to slide, her hands struggled to get a grip on the floor. The cracks in the walls and ceiling grew. Fluids from ruptured city parts cascaded through the cracks, steaming and throwing up mists of alcohol.

Reah rolled over on her back and flattened out. As she watched, one whole section of a side tower separated and arced over, collapsing as it fell. The entire city seemed to be roaring. She blocked her ears with her hands, then put them on the floor again to keep from sliding. The end of the corridor was open to the air now. Across the gap she could see flying debris and a rising cloud, and beyond that remnants of the tower leaning against an outer ring of the city, swaying crumbling and falling.

The coat-rack flexed to right itself, then started rolling. At the last, it tried to flatten its arms and stop but it disappeared over the edge of the floor. For seconds the city was quiet. Reah lay with mouth open, a pain in her knees, her head vibrating with echoes of the scream.

Then the alarms went off. Automatic voices urged occupants of apartments to remain calm. The whole city was frantically murmuring and warning and relaying damage information. Reah crawled out of the way of a transport. It tried to block off the corridor but instead, with a grinding of treads, made the floor dip farther and sailed off into the pit.

After several minutes, the buttresses and supports far below made a titanic effort and what was left of the tower sorted itself into temporary equilibrium. Reah felt this as a shiver and a slow, elevator-like rise. Then the corridor was level and she stood experimentally, almost collapsing because of the trembling of her knees.

Reah could guess what had happened. Some of the weaker structures, unable to rely on totally dead parts, had collapsed and taken the side tower with them. Moving the city had been a calculated risk in the first place, and now the risk had come due. "How much?" she asked herself. "How much is lost?" Then, standing on the jagged rim of the floor, she began to weep.

Ezeki's arm hung broken by his side. He howled into the dust and gloom, cursing God, cursing his mother and father, cursing all who had helped him stay alive in the past -- anyone who had contributed to the present horror. Breetod, Belshezar and the Chasers lay under head-high mounds of squirming, green-bleeding rubble. Musa Salih was nowhere to be seen. From all around, fine mists of choking fluid filled the air, and sounds of screaming matter tortured beyond structural endurance.

As the noise subsided to the distant buzzing of alarms, Ezeki sat on a fallen column with a shuddering breath. Then he took his hand away from his forearm and looked at the skin. The bones weren't protruding. If necessary, he could set it himself -- not very well, perhaps, but enough to stay alive and heal.

And -- if the whole city hadn't just died -- perhaps he had an advantage now ...

"Who's there?" someone called. "Is anyone alive?"

It was Musa Salih. "Here," Ezeki shouted. "El and Hell, I'm an old man and I don't want to see any more of this shitful life."

Salih appeared out of the gloom, wiping dust from his face and smiling broadly. "That was something, wasn't it?" he said. "Looks like the woman overstepped her bounds. This city is too old to move."

"I've broken my arm," Ezeki said.

"I think the hospital is still there. Here, walk with me." Hanging on to Salih's shoulder, Ezeki climbed over the low mounds of debris into the clean corridors of the intact lower levels. "What fell?" he groaned.

"I don't know. Everything is frantic. Workers running everywhere, going crazy. Voices, ghosts, Prophet's beard! It's a nightmare. From Paradise to -- hey! I'm scratched on the hands and feet and you have a broken arm. What about Breetod and the others?"

"Dead," Ezeki said.

"City has to fix us up again. Let's go."

In the quiet, cool green rooms of the hospital, Ezeki lay on a soft bench and closed his eyes. The net of medical tools closed over him. Something burst above his face, a flash of pulsating green, and he fell asleep.

Musa watched without expression as his hands and feet were treated. Life was too ironic for words, so he said nothing and thought nothing. No matter what man attempted, Allah was the only victor. And what did Allah win? Nothing but the satisfaction of holding and throwing the die...

"Can the city recover?" she asked the homunculus. The screens and projectors were relaying information from the architect's remaining sensors. The apartment's information center couldn't compare with the control room in the now-dismantled central tower, but for the moment there was nothing else available. She felt half-blind.

"There is much damage, but mostly in areas already dead or dying. This may save time clearing dead units, in fact. Your worker was destroyed?"

"Yes. Only the flying thing is left."

"A new unit will be assigned to you. There were intruders killed in the fall. Two are alive. Medical units are tending to them. Pardon. Thinking interference -- "

The homunculus faded and turned to purple, a color she hadn't seen before. "Evaluation of city net viability -- "

Then to green.

"Construction coordinator. An emergency survey vehicle is being readied for the City Manager. The architect will act as interface. As of now, the functions of religious coordinator, central teaching authority, metabolism authority, ComNet authority have been terminated. City motion authority is in command."

Then back to red.

"The city manager will please follow a projected guide to the emergency vehicle." Reah nodded and looked around. A male figure emerged from the wall and motioned for her to follow.

Near the ground level, a vehicle mounted on treads, with a large cab and attendant workers stored in recesses in the outer skin, rolled up beside her and stopped. It bounced slowly on shock absorbers. It was smaller and lighter than most of the transports and obviously not made from the same organic material. She followed the projection up a short flight of steps into the cab and found a comfortable, form-fitting seat. On the arm-rests were finger-cups and three black retinal projectors hung just above the level of her eyes. She fitted her fingers, looked into the guide-lights and --

_She was the moving city._

Durragon waited and watched expectantly. If the city was crumbling, perhaps the barricade would be breached and his soldiers could pour in. Victory was so close he could smell it. He smiled and patted his mount. "I'll command your brothers," he said to it quietly. "They can't ignore us any longer."

For the moment, nothing was happening. He examined supply requisitions with the chief of material for a few minutes in the early morning, then looked over fresh maps drawn up by a newly enlisted cartographer. The sharp-faced map-maker stood nervously by as Durragon ran his fingers over the inked lines.

"Sir," the young man began.

Durragon ignored him. "The maps are excellent," he said a few seconds later. "My army grows more sophisticated every day."

"Sir," the map-maker blurted, "I may speak out of turn, but I fear for your safety."

Durragon glanced up at him. "How?"

"The Chasers, sir -- "

"Still aren't used to them, eh? I command with a strong hand."

"I know them well, sir. I lived with a tribe of them just three months ago. Your Chasers are not happy."

"Oh?" Durragon rolled the map up carefully.

"Your new flank runners talk behind your back." The map-maker was trembling now. "They'll kill me if they find out I've said anything..."

"We'll keep our little secrets," Durragon said nonchalantly. "What do they say?"

"That you refused to enter the city with the first rank because you lost your courage. And you held back the second rank just long enough to keep them from getting in. They say you don't have enough nerve any more."

"Grumblings."

"I think more than that, sir."

"I'll take care of it. You attend to your own duties."

"Yes, sir." The map-maker took up his charts and left the tent. Durragon frowned at the swinging flap. The Chasers always grumbled, but he disliked dissent among his officers.

The new flank runners, Gericolt and Perja, sat around a fire and brewed olsherb tea in a battered metal pot. They didn't have as many friends as when they'd been common soldiers, and this irritated them. To assuage their feelings they added a little intoxicating froybom powder to the tea. Soon they were warm and relatively contented. As they lounged, a soldier in a worn cloth jerkin approached them, bowing profusely.

"Cutta," Gericolt ordered sharply. The Chaser stopped his obeisances.

"Dis em, in tent ob He, appree words ob de scribbler."

"Eabesdrop, dis you?" Perja asked, raising an eyebrow. The Chaser nodded. Then he explained what he had heard and the effects of the froybom seemed to evaporate in the flank-runners' blood. "Dis we, kill dat talker," Perja said. Gericolt narrowed his eyes.

"Worry, ourselbes, por wat de Man'll do dis we."

Now they were thoroughly unhappy. Staring into the fire, trying to think how they could avoid punishment, they weren't the first to notice that the city had resumed dismantling itself. When other runners reported to them, Perja threw his ceramic cup onto the ground and stood, brushing dirt from his clothes.

Still anxious, he went to Durragon's tent and touched the General on the shoulder. Durragon turned around slowly, but the Chaser had noticed his jerk. Better to make noise when entering the tent from now on ... unless ...

"What?"

"De polis," Perja said. "At it all ober."

"Moob, de polis?" Durragon asked. Perja shook his head.

"Dis we, look close, nort side come doon an' show de bones ob undisside."

Durragon dressed quickly and went out to see if the barricade was expanding again. Where were all the city parts being stored? Soon enough the city would have to breach the spines and extend its bulk along the plain. Then, perhaps, their chance would come.

Perja left the tent, breathing heavily, and fingered his hidden pants-knife. Then he went to look for the map-maker.

Even in the jumbled thoughts of the move, the city was agonized. Reah felt the pain and guilt as if they were her own, as if she had been the one to order the exiling of humans a thousand years ago. For a moment she struggled to be free of the hurt, but then she gave in. It was time to learn what her city was like, all the way to its center ...

_Screaming._ For days and nights, all around God-Does-Battle the air had pulsed with the despair of the cities, matching the wailing of the humans outside. Reah's mind whirled in the storm of ancient memories. Many of the cities had gone insane, shrinking within to dream only of the past, projecting ghosts to walk the halls and fill the rooms. These had died earliest of all. Their parts had either been scattered on the razor-ridge mountains, or left to wander rogue.

Other cities had died because of malfunctions in their central generation units, the devices which bred replacements for the parts which had worn out. Many cities had slowly crumbled away. Others, like Resurrection, had lasted longer and in fair health, until confusion and guilt had broken down any will to continue.

"Now there's a reason to go on," she thought. She tried to guide her thought from unit to unit, in the ragged remains of the city mind. "Now you've purged the programs and know that all humans are weak, that you were made in the image of their dreams, not in some false image of a pure God. You cannot judge them; you are mortal clay, too, and weak."

The area that had been the religious coordinator was silent, but for a moment she thought she could feel a spark, almost of rage. Frightened, she continued to push her thoughts deeper.

"It is not your duty to judge."

_What is the function?_ Like the voice of a young girl; startled, she recognized it was her own voice, from thirty years in the past.

"I give you a new reason to live: rescue the children. Bring them here, the sick and the lame, those who will grow strong only with your care and teaching. Teach them as best you can; for the moment those most in need must be treated first."

The voice of the architect, muffled and distant, answered her: _It is a commission, not unlike our original function._

And a strident whisper -- _But it is not our original commission!_

Reah stormed through the sudden strands of dissent as if she carried a sword, her face creasing with rage and disgust. Here was revenge, slashing away the dying, cluttered anti-human notions of the city; here was gratification, paying back the philosophies which had killed her husband and daughter, and kept her in bondage and insanity. "Remove this," she demanded, "take this away, leave this behind..."

And she came to the center of the city's being. She seemed to stand in a foggy glade. Golden sunlight poured from above, striking her outstretched hands. More like a plant than an animal, at this center the city accepted the bounty of soil and sun and gloried in the turning of nature. She reached out from the center.

"Like a tree," she said, "you are free to bear fruit and feed those who live in your shade. I free you from guilt, from the human functions, for those were improperly assigned to you. It is your duty only to revel in the light and the warmth, to work free of compulsion, to be what a more knowing nature would have made you, rather than what humanity made you. I free you all!"

As she pushed and probed, the city streamed from the high plains, leaving a ring of disrupted soil several kilometers wide, scattered with dead and dying parts.

Ezeki and Musa pushed aside their blanket and peered out of the recess in their appropriated transport. They watched the last of the barricades put out legs and join the river at its tail.

"Allah save us from sorcery," Musa said, rubbing his _hijab._ "I'd swear _Shaytan_ has a grip on my eyes. This is unreal, and I am possessed."

"None of that," Ezeki said, smiling as he backed into the recess and let the blanket corner fall. "A thousand years ago, this was science, not magic. And by all my power, I'd have that time come again! By God or Allah, we deserve it, we've suffered enough!"

Durragon rode his mount to one side of the moving city, his Chasers walking nearby, a second river. The city crossed the plain and crawled through the low hills, then marshalled and passed through a cleft in the mountain, just as Reah had done two months before. Still no weaknesses showed.

Durragon fumed.

Then, while descending the slopes to the old river bed, he saw his chance. He brought the captured parts of Tomoye forward and spoke to the drum.

"Where is the city weakest?" he asked.

The drum hummed and said nothing.

"I think where the biggest structural supports march. They're slow. We can pass between them. Am I right?"

The drum rested on a cart, pushed along by four Chasers, who sweated in the hot sun. Durragon rode beside it, looking down. "That's an order, a command request," he said softly.

"You are correct," the drum said. Then it began to crack on its flat ends. Durragon watched helplessly as his Chasers brought up dirt and grass to caulk the splitting seams, but the fluid and tiny glittering nodules poured out and the unit died. The Chasers looked at him, faces blank. He shrugged. "It's told us what we need to know."

He climbed up a ridge overlooking the pass and sat on a rock, chin in hand. How much of the city was he willing to sacrifice? He had to stop it someway ...

"Start a fire on the opposite side of the valley and deflect the city into the rock pile south of here. That'll break up the organization and let us move in faster."

The runners spread out and his army began to move. As he resumed his mount, he saw a body lying in the tufted grass. He pointed and asked, "Who's that?"

The flank runners shrugged. He rode by the body. It was the map-maker. Suddenly apprehensive, he took the lead of the torchers and stayed well away from the mass of troops.

He wasn't afraid. There was too much to do. But he could feel a force rising against him, shifting his course of action just as he was going to shift the city. It was only natural, he told himself; now he was going to be tested.