Trapped

Another five minutes closer to downtown, and the true gaudy-show began. There were bulbs in every streetlamp now… and ahead of us, giant hotel towers with artificial light shining from every aperture. A dazzling electrical showcase.

Newlyweds would surely talk about the spectacle for months when they returned to whatever village they called home. Flashing marquees. Bulbs in yellow and crimson. Casinos always bright as the sun, even at midnight. And when a bulb burned out, it was sent to the nearest souvenir shop and sold to some goober who'd take it home to tell his friends, "You should have seen this when it was alive."

At every hotel, music played from electric speakers mounted over the sidewalk-sometimes amplifications of live performances, sometimes recordings from OldTech times. The OldTech music was always unpleasant, discordant noise… not because the OldTechs had wretched musical taste, but because the truly good selections had disintegrated long ago: tapes and disks and platters got played so often they literally fell apart. The only usable records left were the ones so bad nobody had played them while palatable music still worked-tuneless, rhythmless crap with self-important lyrics, just plain embarrassing four centuries after the fact.

It didn't matter. Hotels had to play the ugly noise to prove they had electricity. And they'd play it long and loud, till the tapes tore, the disks cracked, and the ridges on the platters wore down flat as glass. People congregating on the sidewalks would listen to this garbage as attentively as they once listened to much better-marveling at these sounds from the past, and believing they were hearing the heartbeat of OldTech spirit-when in fact, they were wasting their time with drab dingy ditties that had survived only because they were unlikable.

The horses snorted and shuddered as they clopped past. Animals are always good critics.

The ruckus didn't fade-the clamor of bad music, plus people walking and talking, carriages rattling, the evening more busy than daylight-but all lesser noises gradually submerged beneath a greater thunder: hundreds of tons of water plunging every second into a deep echoing gorge. A roaring rumble that put the pathetic music to shame.

The Falls.

There were two separate cataracts, but the largest by far was the one coming into sight outside the coach's windows: Horseshoe Falls, a great pouring arc whose sheets of water were illuminated by searchlights mounted along the walls of the gorge. The lights were tinted (green, gold, blue), projecting through the perpetual mist to shine on the Falls themselves. Despite the chill of the evening, dozens of couples lined the rail along the gorge, gaping at the display as their clothes grew wet from spray.

I glanced at my companions and was glad to see them staring in wonder too-even Impervia, who tried to remain unmoved by anything others found impressive. The water, the light, the roar: it's easy to be cynical from a distance, but not when you're right there, peering through darkness at one of the marvels of our planet. There are taller falls in the world and wider ones, cascades that pour more water per second or glisten more brightly in the sunlight… but there's no other place where natural grandeur presents such a perfect view.

We passed in silence, craning our necks to keep the panorama in sight as long as possible-all along the road that rimmed the gorge, until we finally came level with the edge of the Falls and lost sight of the cataract at the point of maximum thunder and spray.

When we turned our heads back to the road, the generating station lay in front of us.

The station was old: covered with so many snarls of vines the concrete beneath was barely visible, even in leafless winter. Perhaps the vines held the building together; four hundred years of wind and snow had been shut out by tendrils that bulged like varicose veins. The Keepers of Holy Lightning made no effort to cut back the growth-crisscrossing strands of vegetation even covered the stone steps leading up to the front entrance. The only break was a bare patch down the middle. During my last visit to the Falls, I'd been told that the path was worn clear by the feet of the single acolyte who went out daily to deliver lightbulbs and other electrical goods to the citizens of Niagara.

I could see no other entrance… which was strange, given that OldTech safety regulations had demanded multiple exits in case of fire. Somewhere under all those vines, there'd be enough emergency doors to evacuate an immense building like this-three stories tall, a hundred meters long-but everything was roped shut by the wiry green strands woven tight through the centuries.

One way in, one way out: like a fortress. Which it was.