waving to their left, rooted in soil suspended over water (there’s alchemy in those trees, in earth over water, surrounded by air and the hot steel combustion engines of the cars; now that he knows this force exists, is not just a children’s story, he’s beginning to see it everywhere). Then the fog breaks, and there is San Francisco, glorious in the darkness, lit up like a beacon to the weary and the lost. Dodger’s hand tightens over his. Roger goes still.
Every city is the Impossible City, when a savior is needed badly enough. When that’s where the road of alchemical enlightenment leads.
“Can we survive this?” asks Dodger, eyes still on the window, and Roger doesn’t answer her, and maybe that’s for the best. Maybe some questions don’t need to be answered.
The bus stop is cold and industrial, surrounded by the sleeping giants of the Financial District. The Greyhound depot isn’t far away. Dodger vanishes inside, returns with three tickets to three different destinations, repeats the trick with saliva and strangers. When Leigh goes looking, she’ll find that not only are they on the BART, they’re also heading for Reno, Nevada, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, all places where the lakes are liquid and water’s claim might be seen as stronger. There’s a chance she’ll see all four options and deduce that none of them is true, but she’s smart enough to know that they’ll have considered that possibility, and might be banking on it. She has to check at least one of their false leads. Dodger has done what she promised. She’s bought them time.
They move across the parking lot and down the street, a silent trio of refugees running from a war that can’t be real. The bicycle rental rack is bolted to the street in front of a deli, automated, no humans involved. Dodger feeds it golden dollar coins until it surrenders three bikes, all new and white and glossy. Even the tires have been scrubbed clean.
They take their bikes and stand there, unmoving, all three of them clutching their handlebars hard. Erin speaks first.
“Now where?” she asks.
“Don’t you know?” asks Dodger.
Erin looks at her and shakes her head. “I’m the living incarnation of the force of Order,” she says. “I didn’t get cosmic knowledge or the ability to change the universe. I got the urge to organize your CDs. It’s on the two of you. Where are we going?”
Roger and Dodger exchange a look.
“Mathematically, this place is water,” she says.
“We need something on or near water, that was standing when Baker was alive, or she wouldn’t have used it as an anchor point,” says Roger. “Leave out natural landmarks—she was hung up on the idea of the Impossible City and finding a way for man to coexist with nature, so she won’t have used something no one built.”
“Which is good, because if she’d gone for natural beauty, we’d need to get ourselves to Santa Cruz,” says Dodger. “Natural Bridges is Baker’s sort of place.”
“The monarch migration alone would have sealed the deal,” agrees Roger. “It would have been something manmade, something she thought would endure—”
“—so nothing that looked temporary or like a passing thing,” says Dodger. “Golden Gate Bridge is tempting, but I think that’s why it doesn’t add up. It’s a false flag—”
“—too much of a tourist attraction to risk using, and not about water. It’s about being above water. I’d almost buy it for fire, if you told me it had to be a landmark, but it feels less like our destination and more like one of—”
“—the ways to get there. Add the sum of the bridges, subtract the average distance traveled, and the date . . .” Dodger stops slowly this time, breaking the rhythm of the theory they’ve been tossing between them. Her eyes widen. “It’s gone. Whatever it is, it’s gone.”
Roger blinks. “Show your math,” he says, because that’s always been the one thing she’s happy to do, no matter what else is going on: she’ll always, always stop to show her math.
“Reed’s been trying to undo everything Baker did. He has to have known where the anchors were, because he probably helped Baker create them. So we need something that fits the parameters, matches the math, and isn’t there anymore.”
“Ah,” says Roger, understanding. He pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to concentrate.
History is a form of language. It tells the story of an area, of a city, of an idea (because all any civilization is, really, is a string