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The City on the Sand

By George Alec Effinger

Fictionwise
Copyright ©1973 by George Alec Effinger


In Europe, there were only memories of great cultures. Spain, Portugal,
Italy, France, England, Carbba, and Germany had all seized control of the
world's course and the imagination of the human race at one time or
another. But now these great powers of the past were drifting into a
cynical old age, where decadence and momentary pleasures replaced the
drive for dominance and national superiority. In Asia, the situation was
even worse. The Russias struggled pettily among themselves, expending
the last energies of a once-proud nation in puerile bickerings. China
showed signs of total degeneration, having lost its immensely rich heritage
of art and philosophy while clinging to a ruthless creed that crushed its
hopeless people beneath a burden of mock-patriotism. Breulandy was the
only vibrant force east of the Caucasus Mountains; still, no observer could
tell what that guarded land might do. Perhaps a Breulen storm would spill
out across the continent, at least instilling a new life force in the decaying
states. But from Breulandy itself came no word, no hint, as though the
country had bypassed its time of ascendancy to settle for a weary and
bitter mediocrity.
Of the rest of the world there was nothing to be said. The Americas still
rested as they had in the few centuries since their discovery: huge parklike
land masses, populated by savages, too distant, too worthless, too
impractical to bother about. None of the crumbling European
governments could summon either the leadership or the financial support
to exploit the New World. The Scandinavian lands were inhabited by
skin-clad brutes scarcely more civilized than the American cannibals.
Farther east, beyond the teeming Chinese shores, between Asia and the
unexplored western reaches of the Americas, no one was quite certain just
what existed and what was only myth. Perhaps the island continent of
Lemarry waited with its untold riches and beautiful copper spires.
And then, lastly, there was Africa. One city sat alone on its fiery sands.
One city, filled with refugees and a strange mongrel population, guarded
that massive continent. Beyond that single city, built in some forgotten
age by an unknown people for unimaginable purposes, beyond the high
wooden gates that shut in the crazy heat and locked in the citizens, there
was only death. Without water, the continent was death. Without shade,
the parching sharaq winds were death. Without human habitation, the
vast three thousand miles of whispering sands were death for anyone mad
enough to venture across them. Only in the city was there a hollow
travesty of life.
****
Ernst Weinraub sat at a table on the patio of the Café de la Fée Blanche.
A light rain fell on him, but he did not seem to notice. He sipped his
anisette, regretting that the proprietor had served it to him in such an