Page 230 (1/1)

Not an hour would have gone by, her body grown cold in my embrace, before I would have followed her fron I would take the last pills, the ones I’d saved for ether ould be bound eternally to each other and to an invincible universe My resolve was ihts lucid as ice I possessed not an iota of doubt Thus at the anointed hour of our rendezvous I took el to appear In my suitcase, the instruments of our mortal deliverance slept like stones Little did I know that this was but a foretaste of the wider ruin--that the hurrying travelers flowing aroundthem

Thrice have I been fathered; thrice betrayed I will have satisfaction

You, Amy, have dared to love, as once I did You are hope’s deluded champion, as I am sworn to be its eneent of truth, which is the truth of nothing We were, each of us, n we forked like roads in a dark wood It has ever been thus, since the materials of life assembled and crawled froroeeter by the hour I know that he is with you, Amy How could he fail to stand at your side, the man who made you human?

Come to me, Amy Come to me, Peter

Coed like a vision, the great city, soaring from the sea like a castle or soled the senses, its scope too , blazed off the faces of the towers, ricocheting frolass like bullets

Peter joined Amy at the bow She seemed almost preternaturally calm; a profound intensity radiated off her like heat froher

"Good God, it’s enorh this was only half the truth Fanning’s presence saturated the city It was as if a background hu all her life, so o in volume She felt a heaviness That was the only word A terrible exhausted heaviness with everything

They had decided to come in fro for a place to dock Daylight was everything; they needed to ainst the the lines and tiller, seeking to harness any breath of wind "I know"

The river was dark as ink; its force was immense The day turned toward afternoon At times they seemed stopped cold

"This is impossible," said Michael

By the time they found a place to tie off, it was four o’clock Clouds hadof decay Four, perhaps five hours of daylight remained From the cabin, Michael retrieved the backpack of explosives, as well as a long spool of cable and the detonator, a wooden box with a plunger It seemed pris were always the et this right In the cockpit, they armed themselves and reviewed the plan a final time

"Make no ets dark, we’re done"

They disembarked They were in the West Twenties The roadas choked with the skeletons of cars; glassless s stared at thee, Michael and Lish south to Astor Place, Peter and Amy across midtown to Grand Central Michael had fashioned a crude crutch for Alicia from a boat oar

"Sixty oodbyes

--

Peter and A Fifth Avenue Block by block, the vertical core of the city rose, fashioning narrow fjords between the buildings In places the pavement was buckled with the roots of trees, in others collapsed into craters that varied in size fro thee As they moved up the island, Peter took note of the landle i, with its curved crown of burnished metal; the library, sheathed in a feathery cloak of vines, its broad front steps guarded by a pair of pedestaled lions At the corner of Forty-second and Fifth, the half-constructed tower Alicia had described cairders of its upper floors possessed a reddish appearance--the product of decades of slow oxidation An exterior elevator ascended to the top of the structure; from there, the crane rose another ten or fifteen stories, its horizontal booh above Fifth Avenue