Breckenridge and the Continuum

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Then Breckenridge said, “I suppose I could tell you the story of Oedipus King of Thieves tonight.”

The late afternoon sky was awful: gray, mottled, fierce. It resonated with a strange electricity. Breckenridge had never grown used to that sky. Day after day, as they crossed the desert, it transfixed him with the pain of incomprehensible loss.

“Oedipus King of Thieves,” Scarp murmured. Arios nodded. Horn looked toward the sky. Militor frowned. “Oedipus,” said Horn. “King of Thieves,” Arios said.

Breckenridge and his four companions were camped in a ruined pavilion in the desert—a handsome place of granite pillars and black marble floors, constructed perhaps for some delicious paramour of some forgotten prince of the city-building folk. The pavilion lay only a short distance outside the walls of the great dead city that they would enter, at last, in the morning. Once, maybe, this place had been a summer resort, a place for sherbet and swimming, in that vanished time when this desert had bloomed and peacocks had strolled through fragrant gardens. A fantasy out of the Thousand and One Nights: long ago, long ago, thousands of years ago. How confusing it was for Breckenridge to remember that that mighty city, now withered by time, had been founded and had thrived and had perished all in an era far less ancient than his own. The bonds that bound the continuum had loosened. He flapped in the time-gales.

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