The Demon and the City

unmethodical, subjective, running on half-expressed intuitions, heretical and unrepentant. But because she was running the show she could work any way she pleased, and in the past the results had been impressive. Her disciple technicians trusted her, even when she outraged them. She rode the dragon and they ran along behind, imploring hands outstretched, pleading for her to slow down. She rewarded people who enjoyed being outraged: Robin was not one of them. Jhai, so forceful and vivid a presence in the dingy little lab, made her uneasy.
    The experiment stirred and whimpered. Robin started fiddling with the hookups on the monitor. Another few minutes and then she would go home, and maybe Deveth would have rung. Better yet, perhaps she would find Deveth waiting on the step, her arms full of groceries, smiling up at Robin. Dream on, Robin thought. She glanced up to find that Jhai was staring at her, the gaze full of that assumed concern.
    "Are you okay, Robin? You look a little tired."
    "I'm fine," Robin lied.
    "Good. Well, let me know if anything happens."
    Robin nodded, willing Jhai to leave, and at last, after a final data inspection, Jhai did so. Robin turned back to the bed. The experiment was awake. The blue eyes burned into her own.
    "Mhara? What's wrong?"
    "The world," the experiment said, almost conversationally, "is going to end. Very soon."
    "What?" Robin faltered. The experiment's gaze blurred; his voice murmured in the vaults of her skull.
    "I can see everything," the experiment whispered. "Everything that will happen: blood and darkness and fire, demons devouring the city, ghosts running hungry through the streets. The end of everything." —and suddenly Robin could see it too, a vision of apocalypse conferred without grace. A tower crumbled and fell, crashing down into the street. The ground split and splintered under her feet and above her, the sky, too, cracked like a fractured eggshell. Robin's vision receded into a tunnel of night. She reeled back, her hand painfully striking the metal edge of the couch, and the lab was as before.
    "What's going to cause the end of the world?" The question was no more than a thought, but the answer hissed in her head.
    Jhai Tserai . . .
    Robin blinked, and the vision was suddenly gone. The experiment sank back against the pillows.
    "Mhara?" Robin whispered. She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and gripped his shoulders. "Mhara? What was that? What did we see?" but he was already back in the tranquilized trance that passed for sleep.
    Her mind racing, Robin tidied up the desk in the lab, made a final check of the monitor and settled the experiment down for the night, attaching the linkmote that would alert her if anything went wrong. She smoothed the dark hair over the experiment's brow. He smiled vaguely in his sleep. He looked so innocent, but the memories of what she had glimpsed were still vivid as nightmare.
    "Goodnight," Robin whispered. She locked the door and took the lift up to the atrium. She walked through it in a daze, automatically checking her employee card at the door, barely hearing the doorman's farewell. Above her, the tower hummed with life; Paugeng worked round the clock. Robin stared numbly up at it as though she had never seen it before, and finally got herself sufficiently together to head for the tram. There was some hitch in the Shaopeng service, announced on the departure board, and the downtown was late, eventually arriving after seven. Robin's journey passed swiftly, lost in a haze of speculation.
    She had been instructed to report anything Mhara said, directly to Jhai, but she did not want to anger her employer, and informing Jhai that she was apparently the cause of wholesale destruction seemed a good way to go about this. Robin herself was not even sure that she believed in Mhara's predictive abilities, but Jhai believed, and that was the important thing. Robin tossed questions to and fro in her head until she was too tired to think.
    By the time she got home, the sky had darkened to rose. Deveth was not waiting on the doorstep. Robin tried to stifle the hope as she stepped into the hallway, but found to her own disgust that she was holding her breath. No one was waiting for her. I told you so, Robin said to herself. She climbed the interminable flight of stairs and opened the front door.
    The apartment was minute: a box, a coffin. Inside the box, the heat was unbearable. Robin threw open the windows and a suffocating smell of