Gate of Faces

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JOHN THINWOLF DROVE HIS boat north, slicing the green seas into rainbowed spray. The sunlight soaked into his back; the pain blockers did their work. The last redskin was as happy as a dying man could be.

At noon the hammer-headed towers of a Forbidden City lifted over the horizon.

Under the ancient walls, he shut off the engine. A current carried him slowly along the scarred alloy flank of the City.

"What were you?" Thinwolf shouted, but the City made no reply. He thought: One of the silent ones.

He drifted. He took a shot of tissue stabilants and a flagon of fruit-flavored syrup, blood-red and thick as honey — his lunch.

He was always thirsty, and the syrup made it worse. The boat's med unit prohibited him from drinking anything else. "Injuns can't drink," he said, looking at the empty flagon. His kidneys had given out a week ago. On his thigh he wore a dialysis coupling, which sucked at him with a thousand tiny mouths, cleansing his blood. "Injuns can't do much at all anymore: can't drink, can't piss, can't sleep. Can't make long-range plans." He threw the flagon; it shattered against the City. The fragments glittered into the blue depths, falling down the black cliff of the City's hull, and Thinwolf watched them disappear with the same solemn concentration that he now gave to every event, no matter how insignificant.

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