Feersum Endjinn

TRANSLATION — ONE — 4

Woke up. Got dressed. Had breakfast. Spoke with Ergates the ant who said it's just been work work work for you lately master Bascule, why don't you have a holiday? and I agreed and that was how we decided we ought to go to see Mr Zoliparia in the eyeball of the gargoyle Rosbrith.

I thought I'd better clear it with the relevant authorities first and hence avoid any trouble (like happened the last time) so I went to see mentor Scalopin.

Certainly young Bascule, he says, I do believe this is a day of relatively light duties for you. You may take it off. Have you made your matins calls?

O yes, I said, which wasn't strictly true, in fact which was pretty strictly untrue, truth be told, but I could always do them while we was travelling.

What's in that there box you're holding? he asks.

It's an ant, I say, waving the box at his face.

O this is your little friend, is it? I heard you had a pet. May I see him?

It's not a pet, it's a friend; you was right the first time, and it's not a him it's a she. Look.

O yes very pretty, he says, which is a pretty strange thing to say about an ant if you ask me but there you go.

Does it — does she have a name? he asks.

Yes, I says, she's called Ergates.

Ergates, he says, that's a nice name. What made you call her that?

Nothing, I says; it's her real name.

Ah, I see, he says, and gives me one of those looks.

And she can talk too, I tell him, though I don't expect you'll be able to hear her.

(Shh, Bascule! goes Ergates, and I go a bit red.)

Does she, does she now? mentor Scalopin says with one of them tolerant smiles. Very well then he says, patting me on the head (which I don't much like, frankly, but some times you just have to put up with these things. Anyway where were we? O yes, he was patting me on the head and saying), off you go (he says) but be back by supper.

Righty-ho, I says, all breezy like, never thinking.

Swing down past the kitchens to see mistress Blyke to flash my big soulful eyes and give her the soppy smile all shy and bashful and scrounge some provisions. She pats me on the noddle too — what is it with people?

Leave the monastery about half nine and lift to the top; the sun is shining in through the big windows across the great hall straight into my eyes. Damn sure it doesn't look like it's getting dimmer to me but everybody says it is so I suppose it must be.

Grab a ride on a wagon heading for the south-west hydrovator along the cliff road, hanging onto the back of the truck above the exhaust; bit steamy when the truck stops at junctions, but beats having to ride in the cab and talk to the driver and probably get patted on the bonce again like as not.

I like the cliff road because you can look over the edge and see right down to the floor of the hall and even see the big round bobbly bits what would be the handles of the drawers of the bureau if this was a proper size place instead of being BIG like it is. Mr Zoliparia says of course there weren't never no giants and I believe him but sometimes you can look out over the hall with its mountains like cupboards and mountains like seats and sofas set against the wall and the tables and poufs and so on scattered about the place and you think, When's them big bags coming back then? (Bags is my own coining and I'm quite proud of it — means Boys and GirlS. Ergates says it's called an acronym. Anyway, where was we? O yes, hanging onto the back of the truck rolling along the cliff road.)

Ergates the ant is in her box in the left breast pocket of my jacket-with-lots-of-pockets, all safely buttoned down. You all right, Ergates? I whisper as we bounce along the road.

I'm fine, she tells me. Where are we right now?

Um, we're on a truck, I sort of half-lie.

Are we hanging off the back of a vehicle? she asks.

(Blimey you get nothing past this ant.) What makes you think that, I asks, stalling.

Must you always maximise the danger of any given mode of transport? she asks, ignoring my stalling.

But I'm Bascule the Rascal, that's what they call me! I'm young and I'm only on my first life I tells her, laughing; Bascule the Teller nothing, that's me; no I or II or VII or any of that nonsense for yours truly; am good as immortal for all intents and purposes and if you can't act a bit daft when you never died not even once yet, when can you?

Well, Ergates says (and you can just tell she's trying to be patient), aside from the fact that it is folly to throw away even one life out of eight, and the equally salient point that in the present emergency it might be foolish to rely on the efficient functioning of the reincarnative process, there is my own safety to think about.

I thought you was indestructible to a fall from any height on account of your scale and mass-to-surface area given the relative size of air molecules? I says.

Something like that, she agrees. But if you landed the wrong way it is conceivable I might be crushed.

Ho, I'd like to know what's the right way to land from this high up, I says, leaning out over the drop with the wind in my hair and gazing down the way at the treetops of the forest-floor, what must be a good couple of hundred metres below.

You're missing the point, says Ergates the ant, sounding sniffy.

I thought for a moment. Tell you what, I says.

Yes? she says.

When we take the hydrovator up the cliff, this time we'll go on in the inside; how's that?

Your munificence astonishes me, she says.

(She's being sarcastic, I can tell.)

The hydrovator car is one of the old wooden ones what creaks a lot and it smells of rope-oil and varnish and the empty water tanks underneath the deck make big boomy spooky noises as it climbs up the wall of the hall. The floor of the car is mostly taken up with six big military vehicles which look like airships with wheels. They're guarded by some army lads who're having a game of pinkel-flip and I'm thinking of joining in because I'm a pretty good shot at the old pinkel-flip and I probably could stand to make a deal of gambling tokens on account that I'm so young and innocent looking and yet a bit of a hustler really but then Ergates says, Don't you think you should make those calls like you promised brother Scalopin? and I says, O I suppose so.

I'm a teller, so the calls have to be made, I suppose.

I find a quiet spot near the gates where the wind ruffles in, and I sit down and lean back and let my eyes go mostly closed and I tap into the crypt where the dead people are.

From the top of the hydrovator I cross the marshaling yard on the frieze near the roof of the hall and head into the wall through various passageways and tunnels and take a tube along the inside of the wall to the far end of the great hall. I get off at the corner station and climb up some steps; I come out in a galleria on the outside of the wall what extends out from the greenery and bluery and etcetery of the babil plants. From here I can look down onto the terraces and little villages on the roofs of the parapet merlons with the little fields on the crenels and if I look right down I can see the flat green valley that is the allure but I expect none of this terminology means much if you don't know much about castles.

Anyway, it's a pretty impressive view, and sometimes you'll see eagles and rocs and simurgs and lammergeiers and other big funny-looking birds wheeling about just to add a bit of local colour, and further below there's more walls and towers and allures and steep roofs — some of them terraced too — and below that the forests and hills of the bailey, then the curtain wall in the distance and further away still there's the hazy scenery of the far beyond. (They reckon you can see the sea from the very highest heights of the habitable castle, but though I seen this screened I never seen it with my own eyes.)

A rickety old chair lift takes me up and along, through a sort of tunnel in the hanging babil plants, and before long I arrive at the corner of the great hall and the place under the eaves where the Astrologers/Alchemists hang out, and hang out is exactly what they do, especially Mr Zoliparia, who being an important old gent of some note has got one of the prime positions in all the town for his apartments, viz. the right eyeball of the septentrional gargoyle Rosbrith.

The gargoyle Rosbrith looks out to the north, but because it's on the corner and there's nothing in the way, you can see east too, where the sun is prone to rise of a morning and the nastiness of the approaching Encroachment is popping up saying 'Hi there folks — it's lights out soon by the way!'

I hit a snag; Mr Zoliparia doesn't appear to be in. I'm standing at the top of a rickety ladder inside the body of the gargoyle Rosbrith abanging and abashing on the little circular door of Mr Zoliparia's apartments but for all my hammering there's no answer. There's a wooden landing below me what the ladder's perched on (it's rickety too, by the way. Come to think of it most stuff in the Astrologers/Alchemists town seems to be pretty rickety) but anyway there's an old lady scrubbing the damn landing with some horrible bubbling stuff that's bringing the wood on the landing up a treat even if it is dissolving most of it and making it even more rickety, but the point is this stuff's making fumes go up my nose and causing my eyes to water.

Mr Zoliparia! I shout. It's Bascule here!

Perhaps you should have told him you were coming, Ergates says from her box.

Mr Zoliparia don't hold with modern-like implants and that sort of stuff, I tell her, sneezing. He's a dissident.

You could have left a message with somebody else, Ergates says.

Yes yes yes I says, all annoyed because I know she's right. I suppose now I have to use my own bleeding implants and I've been trying not to apart from contacting the world of the dead because I want to be a dissident like Mr Zoliparia.

Mr Zoliparia! I shouts again. I've got my scarf up round my mouth and nose now because of the fumes coming up from the landing.

O, bugration.

Is somebody using hydrochloric acid? Ergates says. On wood? She sounds mystified.

I don't know about that I says but there's some old girl down there scrubbing away at the landing with something pretty noxious.

Odd, Ergates says. I was sure he'd be in. I think you better get down — but then the door opens and there's Mr Zoliparia in a big towel and what there is of his hair's all wet.

Bascule! he shouts at me, might have known it was you! Then he glares down at the old lady and waves at me to come in and I scramble over the top of the ladder and into the eyeball.

Take your shoes off, boy, he says, if you stepped in that stuff on the landing you'll be rotting my carpets. When you've done that you can make yourself useful and warm me up some wine. Then he pads off, hoisting his towel up around him and leaving a trail of water behind him on the floor.

I start to take my shoes off.

You been having a bath, Mr Zoliparia? I asks him.

He just looks at me.

Mr Zoliparia and me and Ergates the ant are sitting on the iris balcony of the gargoyle Rosbrith's right eyeball having respectively mulled wine, tea, and a microscopic morsel of stale bread. Mr Zoliparia's in a chair what looks a bit like an eyeball itself, suspended from an eyelash above; I'm on a stool sat beside the parapet where Ergates is tucking into the bread Mr Zoliparia gave her (and what I moistened with some spit) — it's a whole huge lump of crust and far too much for her really, but she tears crumbs off and works them with her mouthparts and front feet until she can swallow them. I heard Ergates say Thank you to Mr Zoliparia when he gave her the crust but I haven't told him she can talk yet and he didn't seem to hear her.

I'm watching Ergates carefully because it's a bit windy out here and though there's a sort of net under the balcony and Ergates wouldn't be harmed by a fall, she'd probably go straight through the net and even if she wasn't harmed she'd be lost; blimey, something as light as her could get blown right into the bailey from this high up and how would I ever find her then?

You worry too much, Ergates says. I'm a highly resourceful ant and I would find you.

(I don't say nothing in return because Mr Zoliparia's talking and it would be impolite.) Anyway the point is quite frankly I'd rather Ergates was still in my pocket but she says she wishes to take the air and besides she likes the view.

… Symbol not of potency or invulnerability but of a kind of stultifying impotence and extreme vulnerability, Mr Zoliparia is saying, banging on about the castle again as he is often want to do.

We live in a folly, Bascule, never forget that, he tells me and I nod and sip my tea and watch Ergates eat her bread.

It's no coincidence the ancients used to refer to the quick and the dead, he says, swallowing some more wine and burrowing into his coat (it's a bit cold out here). To live is to move, he says. Mobility is all. Things like this (he waves his hand around) are a kind of admission of defeat; why, the damn thing's little better than a hospice!

What's a hospice? I ask, not recognizing the word and not wanting to use implants (and wanting Mr Zoliparia to know this, it has to be admitted).

Bascule, you might as well use the facilities you've been given, Mr Zoliparia says.

O yes, I says. I forgot. I made a show of closing my eyes. Having done this for a while, I said. Let's see; I yes, hospice — a place where you go to die, basically.

Yes, Mr Zoliparia said, looking annoyed. Now you've made me go and forget; I've lost the flow.

You was saying the castle was like a hospice.

I remember that, he says.

Well I'm very sorry, I says.

No matter. The burden of my argument, Mr Zoliparia says, is that to set itself up like this in such a defeatingly vast and intimidatingly inhuman structure is merely to announce the coming to rest of one's progress, and without that we are lost.

(Mr Zoliparia is big on progress though from what I can gather it's a pretty old fashioned idea these days.)

So there definitely weren't never no giants then? I says.

Bascule, Mr Zoliparia says, sighing, what is this obsession with the idea of giants? He fills his glass with more wine; it steams in the cold air. I watch Ergates for a bit while he does this, zooming in to look at her face; I can see her eyes and feelers and watch her mouth-parts needing and tearing at the gummy-looking bread. Pull back as Mr Zoliparia sets the wine jug back down on the table.

The thing is, he says, and sighs again, there were once giants. Not giants in the sense that they were physically bigger than us, but bigger in their powers and abilities and ambitions; bigger than us in their moral courage. They made this place, they built it from rock and materials we've lost the art of making and working. They built it for a purpose in a sense, but it's ludicrously over-designed for its supposed function. They built it the way they did for fun. Just because it amused them to do so. But they've moved on, and we are all that's left and now the place teems with life but then so does a maggoty corpse; there is much movement but no quickness in us; that's all gone.

What about the fast-tower? I says. That sounds pretty quickish to me.

O Bascule, he says and looks up at the ski. Fast as in hold-fast or stuck-fast. How many more times must I tell you?

O yes, I says. So all these quick types left for the stars did they, Mr Zoliparia?

Yes, they did, he says, and why shouldn't they? But what puzzles me is why they should abandon us so completely, and that why we should have given up the ability even to keep in touch with them.

Isn't that in none of your books and stuff, Mr Zoliparia? I asks him. Isn't that nowhere?

Doesn't seem to be, Bascule, he says; doesn't seem to be. Some of us have been looking for the answers to those questions for longer than we've been able to record, and we seem to be no closer now than when we started. We've looked in books and films and files and fiches and discs and chips and bios and holos and foams and cores and every form of storage known to humanity. He drinks his wine. And it's all from before, Bascule, he says, sounding sad. All from before. There's nothing from the time we want to know about. He shrugs. Nothing.

I don't know what to say when Mr Zoliparia sounds all sad and sorry like this. People like him have been trying to work this sort of thing out for generations, some through the old stuff like books and so on and others by using the crypt, where supposedly everything is but you just can't find it. Or if you find it you can't get back with it.

I once said to Mr Zoliparia it sounded a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack and he said, More like looking for a particular water molecule in an ocean and even that's probably underestimating the task by several orders of magnitude.

I've thought about being the one to dive into the crypt proper — really deeply — and bring back the secrets Mr Zoliparia wants, but apart from the fact that means serious implant work and I want to show Mr Zoliparia I only use my implants for telling and nothing else as a rule, it's also been attempted and proved pointless.

It's chaos in there, you see.

The crypt (or cryptosphere or data corpus — it's all the same thing) is where everything really happens here, and the deeper you go the less likely you are to come out; it's like it's an ocean and consciousness is soluble, like diving into acid, beyond a certain depth. It scars you for life if you go too deep, you come back as something shrivelled and dying if you go deeper still, and you just don't come back at all if you go really really deep; you just disintegrate totally as a distinct personality and that's that.

Of course you personally are still alive and kicking, back in physical reality and none the worse for wear (usually; unless you have a bad trip like they say and get feedbacks and deadbacks and flashbacks and flashforwards and nightmares and daymares and trauma and stuff), but the crypt-copy you sent in there, that's just gone forever you can kiss its ass bye-bye, and that's factual.

Ergates is playing with her food; she's molding the bready-bits into funny shapes with her mouth-parts and front legs and not bothering to eat it at all no more. Right now she's making a tiny bust of Mr Zoliparia and I wonder if he can see her doing that or if he's so dead against implants and improvements in general that he has ordinary old-type eyes and can't zoom in on details like I can.

Do you think it's a good likeness, Bascule? she asks me.

Mr Zoliparia is looking thoughtful and staring into space, or into the atmosphere anyway; bunch of birds circling way in the distance over a bartizan — maybe he's looking at them.

Anyway I decide to risk whispering to Ergates: Very good. Now you want to get back in your box?

What's that Bascule? Mr Zoliparia says.

Nothing, Mr Zoliparia, I says. I was just clearing my throat.

No you weren't; you said something about getting back in your box.

Did I? I says, stalling.

You weren't referring to me I trust, he says, frowning.

O absolutely not Mr Zoliparia, I tell him. I was actually addressing Ergates here, I says, deciding to make a clean breast of it. I look at her sternly and wag my finger at her and say Get back in your box now, you naughty ant. Sorry about this, Mr Zoliparia, I tell him, while Ergates quickly changes the bust she's working on to one of me with an enormous nose.

Does she ever talk back? Mr Zoliparia asks, smiling.

O yes, I says. It's quite a talkative little critter actually and very intelligent.

Does it really talk though, Bascule?

Of course, Mr Zoliparia; it's not a figment of my imagination or an invisible friend type of thing, honest. I had a invisible friend but he left when Ergates came on the scene last week, I tell him, feeling a bit embarrassed now and probably blushing.

Mr Zoliparia laughs. Where did you get your little pal? he asks.

She crawled out the woodwork, I says, and he laughs again and I'm even more embarrassed and getting quite sweaty now. That damn ant! making a fool of me and making my face all big and bloated in that bust she's working on now and still not going back in her box either.

She did! Mr Zoliparia I says. Crawled out of the woodwork in the refectory at supper time last Kingsday. She came here with me the next day to see you, but hid in my jacket that time on account of being shy and a bit awkward with strangers. But she really talks and she hears what I say and she uses words I don't know sometimes, honest.

Mr Zoliparia nods, and looks with new respect upon Ergates the ant. Then she's probably a micro-construct, Bascule, he tells me; they crop up now and again, though they don't usually talk, least not intelligibly. I think the law says you're supposed to take such things to the authorities.

I know that Mr Zoliparia but she's my friend and she don't do no one no harm, I says, getting hotter still because I don't want to lose Ergates and I'm wishing I hadn't said nothing to brother Scalopin now because I didn't think people bothered with such finicky rules but here's Mr Zoliparia saying they do and what am I to do? I look at her but she's still working on that infernal bust and giving me big buck teeth now, ungrateful wretch.

Calm down, calm down, Bascule, Mr Zoliparia says; I'm not saying you ought to turn her in. I'm just saying that's the law and you better not tell people she can talk if you want to keep her. That's all I'm saying. Anyway she's just little and so nice and easy to hide. If you look after her you'll be fine. May I — ? he starts to say, then he stares above me and his eyes go wide and he says, What the fuck? and I'm quite shocked because I've never heard Mr Zoliparia swear like that and then there's a shadow over the balcony and a noise like a snapping sail-wing and a gust of wind, and — before I can do anything except start to turn round — a huge bird, grey and bigger than a man, suddenly clatters down onto the parapet of the balcony, grabs at the box and the bread and flaps its wings down and launches away again screeching, while Ergates goes 'Eek!' and I'm up on my feet and so's Mr Zoliparia and I can see the bird lowering its head as it beats away and pecking at what it's got in its talons and it's eating the bread! and Ergates is stuck in the bird's talons! Caught between a talon and a bit of bread, her little antennae waving and one leg out waving too and that's the last I see of her because the distance gets too great, and I hear Ergates screaming 'Bascuuule!' meanwhile I'm shouting and Mr Zoliparia's shouting too but the big bird lifts away and disappears up over the edge of the roof and Ergates is gone and I'm bereft.

TRANSLATION — TWO — 4

Bascule, I know this is hard for you, but for goodness sakes boy, it was only a damn ant.

It was a most special and unique ant Mr Zoliparia I tell him and I feel responsible for what happened to her.

We're inside the eyeball of the septentrional gargoyle Rosbrith, in Mr Zoliparia's study. Mr Zoliparia has a thing called a telephone in his study you can speak into (didn't even know he had it — think he's a bit embarrassed about it to tell the truth). Anyway, he just got in touch with the guard to report what happened after I'd insisted, though he'd only report that the bird had stolen a valuable antique box, not an ant. (Actually, the box isn't an antique at all but that isn't what matters.) I'd have tried calling the guard myself as soon as it happened but I know from past experience they wouldn't listen to me because I'm young.

We'd been hoping that maybe the bird what had stolen Ergates was one of them ringed eyes with cameras and stuff, or one of them being followed round by little buzzer-bugs for a wildlife screen program or the purposes of scientific research but I guess it was a bit of a long shot and sure enough the answer was no to both. The guard took some details but Mr Zoliparia doesn't hold out much hope of them doing anything.

You mustn't blame yourself, it was an accident, Bascule.

I know that, Mr Zoliparia, but it was an accident I could have prevented if I'd been more observant and watchful and just plain diligent in general. What was I thinking of, letting her eat that bread on the balustrade like that? Especially when I seen them birds in the distance. I mean; bread! Everybody know birds love bread! (I slap my hand off my forehead, thinking what an idiot I've been.)

O Bascule, I'm sorry too on account of me being the host and all; this happening in my home and I should have taken more care too, but what's done is done.

Is it though, Mr Zoliparia? You really think so?

What you mean, young Bascule?

I'm a teller, Mr Zoliparia, you mustn't forget that. (I screws up my eyes at this point, to show him I mean business.) Them birds —

Bascule, no! You can't go doing that sort of thing! You crazy or something child? You'll only go and scramble your brains you try any of that sort of nonsense.

I just smile.

I don't know what you know of what a teller does but now might be as good a time as any to tell you if you don't know (them that does can happily skip the next 5 or 6 paragraphs and get back to the story).

Basically, a teller fishes into the crypt and pulls out some old boy or girl and asks them questions and answers their questions. It's kind of half archaeological research and half social work if you want to look at it coldly and are happy to ignore what people call the spiritual side of it.

'Course it's all a bit murky and weird down there in the crypt and most bags (that's Boys and Girls remember) get a bit spooked even thinking about contacting the dead let alone actually welcoming them into their heads and having a natter with them. To us tellers though it's just something we do as a matter of course and no bother … well, providing you are careful, naturally (admittedly there aren't a lot of old tellers around, though that's mostly because of what they call natural wastage).

Anyway, the point is that tellers use their natural skills to delve into the crypt, partly to find out things from the past and partly to fulfil pledges and bequests what the relevant order has taken on. My order is called the Little Big Brothers of the Rich and we originally just looked after the encrypted souls of people what were very well off indeed thank-you-very-much but our remit has broadened a bit since then and now apparently we'll talk to any old rif raf if they got something interesting to say.

Now, the thing is this; just as the deeper you go into the crypt the hazier and more corrosive down there things get, so the longer it is since you died the more kind of disassociated you get from reality, and, eventually, even if you want to stay in some kind of human form, you just can't support that sort of complexity, and one of the things that might happen after that is that you get shunted into the animal kingdom; your personality, such as it is by then, is transferred into a panther or a roc or cat or a simurg or a shark or eagle or whatever. It's actually considered something of a privilege; loads of bags think there's nothing better than being a bird or something similar.

Of course, these animals is still linked into the crypt by their own implants, and thusly their brains is potentially available to a teller, though this is a pretty irregular — not to say kind of dangerous — occurrence. Irregular because nobody ever does it. Dangerous because what you are basically trying to do as a teller in such a circumstance is to try to fit your human size mind inside a bird size one. Takes some finessing, but I've always had this theory that because my thoughts come out with a spin on them, so to speak, I'm especially good at coping with two different thought modes at once, and so more than capable of taking on the task of becoming a bird and flying into their area of the crypt.

This, you may have gathered, is exactly what I am proposing to do, and Mr Zoliparia is not too enamoured of the idea.

Bascule, please, he says, attempt to retain a sense of proportion. It's only an ant and you are only a junior teller.

For sure, Mr Zoliparia, I says. But I'm a teller what hasn't even begun to be stretched yet. I'm a great teller. I'm a total blinking hot-shot teller and I just know I can find that bird.

And do what? Mr Zoliparia shouts. The damn ant is probably dead! That bird's probably eaten it by now! Why you want to torture yourself by finding that out?

If so, I want to know, but anyway I don't think that's right; I'm banking on her having been dropped by that big bird and I'm hoping it might remember where, or —

Bascule you are upset. Why don't you just go back to the order and try to calm down and think this —

Mr Zoliparia, I says quietly, I thank you for your concern but I intend to do this no matter what you say. Cheers all the same.

Mr Zoliparia looks at me different than he has in the past. I've always liked him and I've always looked up to him ever since he was one of the people they sent me to when they realised I talked fairly normal but I thought a bit funny, and I tend to do what he says — it was him who said, Perhaps you would make a good teller, and him what suggested I keep a journal, which is what you are reading — but this time I don't much care what he thinks, or at least I do but I don't much care how bad it makes me feel going against his advice because I just know I have to do this.

O dear Bascule, he says and shakes his head. I do believe you do intend to do this and is a sorry thing for any person to do for something as insignificant as an ant.

It's not the ant, Mr Zoliparia, I says feeling dead grownup, it's me.

Mr Zoliparia shakes his head. It's you and no goddamn sense of proportion, that's what it is.

All the same, I says. It was my friend; she was relying on me to keep her safe. Just one try, Mr Zoliparia. I feel I owe her that.

Bascule, please, just think —

Mind if I just hunker down here, Mr Zoliparia?

Given you're determined, Bascule, here is probably better than elsewhere but I'm not happy about this.

Don't worry, Mr Zoliparia. Won't take a second, literally.

There anything I can do?

Yep; let me borrow that pen of yours. Ta. Now I'm going to sit up here — I squatted on a chair, my chin on my knees, and put the pen in my mouth.

'en 'i 'en 'all ou' 'a 'ouf, I start to tell him

What you saying, Bascule?

I take the pen out my mouth. I was just saying, when the pen falls out of my mouth, let it hit the carpet then shake me and shout Bascule, fast awake!

Bascule, fast asleep, Mr Zoliparia says.

Awake! I yells. Not wide asleep; fast awake!

Fast awake, Mr Zoliparia repeats. Bascule, fast awake. He shakes his head and he's shaking. O dear Bascule, o dear.

If you're that worried, Mr Zoliparia, catch the pen before it hits and then wake me. Now, just give me a minute here … I settled into place, getting comfortable; this'll only take a second but you have to feel settled and ready and at peace.

Right. I'm prepared.

This'll all happen very quickly, Mr Zoliparia; you ready? I put the pen back in my mouth.

O dear Bascule.

Here we go.

O dear.

And so it's off to the land of the dead for yours truly for the second time today, only this time it's a bit more serious.

It's like sinking into the sky on the other side of the Earth without going through the whole thing first. It's like floating into the earth and the sky at the time, becoming a line not a point, pluming the depths and ascending the heights and then branching out like a tree, like a plain tree, like a huge bush intermingling with every bit of the earth and the sky, and then it's like every one of those bits isn't just a bit of earth or a molecule of air any more, it's like all of them is suddenly a little system of their own; a book, a library, a person; a world… and you're connected with all of it, ignoring barriers, like you are a brain cell deep in the grainy grey mush of the brain all closed in but joined up to loads of other cells, awash in their communication-song and set free by that trapped machine.

Boompf-badoom; slapadowndoodie through the topmost obvious layers what corresponds to the upper levels of the brain — the rational, sensible, easily understood layers — into the first of the deep down floors, the bit under the cerebral, under the crust, under the photosphere, under the obvious.

It's here you have to be a little bit careful; it's like being in a not-so-salubrious neighbourhood of a big dark city at night — only more complicated than that; much more so.

In here, the trick is thinking right. That's all you have to do. You have to think right. You have to be daring and cautious, you have be very sensible and totally mad. Most of all you have to be clever, you have to be ingenious. You have to be able to use whatever is around you, and that's what it really comes down to; the crypt is what they call self-referential, which means that — up to a point — it means what you want it to mean, and displays itself to you as you're best able to understand it, so it's up to you really what use you make of it after that; it's all about ingenuity and that's why it's a young person's medium, frankly.

Anyway, I knew what I wanted so I thought bird.

And suddenly I was up in some dark building above the wee twinkly lights of the city, up there with big metallic sculptures of fearsome looking birds and there was lots of screeches and squawks about the place but you couldn't see no birds just hear the noise they made and it was sort of crusty-soft under foot and smelt acidic (or alkaline; one of the two).

I sniffed about, walking quietly, then hopped up onto one of the big metallic birds and squatted there, wings by my sides, staring out over the light-specked black grid of the city and not blinking, just looking for movement, and lowering my head now and again and poking in under my wings with the twig what I held in my beak, just like I was preening or something.

Noticed my wake-up code in the form of a ring round my left leg. Handy to know it was there, just in case things go wrong and/or Mr Zoliparia fluffs his line.

… Stayed there a while, patient as you like, just watching.

What you want then? said a voice from above and behind.

Nothing much, I said, not looking. I was aware of the twig in my beak but it didn't seem to make speaking any harder.

You must want something, you wouldn't be here otherwise.

You got me there, I said. I'm here looking for somebody.

Oh?

Lost a friend of mine. Roost-mate. Like to trace her.

We all got friends we like to find.

This one very recent; half hour ago. Taken from the septentrional gargoyle Rosbrith.

Sep what?

Means — (this is complicated, referring to the upper data level while I'm down here in the first circle of the basement, but I do it) — means northern, I said (blimey). Rosbrith. North-west on the great hall.

Taken by what?

Lammergeier, I said. (Didn't know that neither til now.)

Really. What you giving in return?

I'm here, aren't I? I'm a teller. You got my ear now. I'll not forget you if you help. Look in me if you want; see what I say is true.

Not blind.

Didn't think you were.

This bird; you catch any distinguishing marks on it?

It was a lammergeier, that's all I know, but there can't be all that many of them around the north-west corner of the great hall half an hour ago.

Lammergeiers are a bit funny these days, but I'll ask around.

Thanks.

(flutter of wings, then:)

Well, you might be in luck —

– then there was a mega-squawk and a scream and I had to turn around and look and there was a huge great bird beating in the air behind and above me, holding another torn bird in one of its talons; the big bird was red-black on black and fierce as death and I could feel the wind of its flapping snapping wings on my face. It hung in the air, wings spread, beating like something fiercely crucified, shaking the dead bird in its talons so that its blood spattered in my eyes.

Why you asking questions, child? it screamed.

Trying to find a friend of mine I said, keeping calm. I clumped around on my perch to face the big red-black bird. Twig still in my beak.

It held up one foot; three talons up, one down. See these three claws? it said.

Yup. (Might as well play along for now, but I'm checking the exits, thinking of my leg-ring with the wake-up code on it.)

You got to the count of three to move your beak back to reality you skin job, the red bird says. You hear me? I'm starting counting now: 3.

I'm just looking for my friend.

2.

It's just an ant. I'm only looking for a little ant who was my friend.

1.

What's the fucking problem here? Don't a creature get no respect for — (and I'm shouting now angrily and I drop the twig from my beak).

Then the big red bird's foot comes out like its bleeding leg is telescopic and zaps itself towards my head and wraps round it and squishes me down before I can do anything and I feel myself trapped and squelched down through the fabric of the metallic bird I'm perched upon and down through the building it's part of and down through the city and down through the grid and down through the earth beneath and down and down and down and what's worse I can feel that the ring round my leg that had my wake-up code on it has gone like that big red bird swiped it when it hit me and sure enough, I can't think what the hell the wake-up code is, meanwhile I'm still going down and down and down and I'm thinkin,

Oh shit…

TRANSLATION — THREE — 4

Once the sky was full of birds; used to go black with birds it did and birds ruled the air (well, apart from the insects) but that's all changed now; humans came along and started shooting and trapping and killing them and even if they've mostly stopped doing that sort of thing now they're still top of the roost partly because they killed off so many species and partly because they make stuff fly, which when you think about it does kind of spoil it for the birds on account they had to spend millions of years jumping off cliffs and out of trees and crashing to the ground and dying and then doing it all over again and one time maybe not crashing quite so hard but gliding a bit and then a bit more and a bit more still and so on and so on etc. and just generally painstakingly evolving in this incredibly complicated way (I mean, lizard-scales into feathers! and hollow bones, for goodness sakes!) and then these bleeding humans, these ridiculous-looking bald monkeys come along what have never showed the slightest interest in flying nor sign of adaptation to the air what-so-bleeding-ever and they start buzzing around in flying machines just for a laugh!

Makes you sick. Didn't even have the decency to do it slow; one minute their flying machines is made from paper and spit, then one evolutionary blink of the eye and the bastards are playing golf on the moon!

Oh, there's still birds around all right but there's a damn sight fewer of them and a lot of what you would think is birds isn't; it's chimerics, or machines, and even if it is the case that what looks like a bird is a bird, if it's a big one it's probably not even got its head to itself but it's been taken over by a dead person. Can't even have peace in your own bonce. Birds have coped with tics and fleas and lice all their evolutionary life but these damn humans are worse and they get everywhere!

I'm flapping and squawking and walking about my perch and wishing Mr Zoliparia the human would hurry up and wake me because the more I think about people the less I like them and the more I like being a bird.

Been almost a week now; what's keeping the man? My own fault for entrusting my safety to an old geezer. That's the trouble with old persons; slow reactions. Probably dropped the pen I asked him to catch and is even now scrabbling about on the floor for it, forgetting the important thing is to wake me, not to get the bleeding pen. But it must have been a minute in real time by now; surely even an old person can't take that long to look for a bleeding pen for goodness sakes.

How am I going to wake up? I'm below the level where you get asked in your sleep automatically and my own wake-up code was taken from me by that big bastard bird what slapped me down here in the first place and even though I've remembered it since it just doesn't seem to be working no more.

My goose, like they say, may well be cooked.

I'm on a perch in a sort of little dark cave.

If you can imagine a giant black brain in an even bigger dark space, and then zoom in on the brain and go down in amongst its corrugations and folds and see that the walls of every fold is made out of zillions of little boxes with a perch in it, well, that's what this bit of bird-space is like, in the crypt.

My little box looks out onto a huge hanging dark space all filled with shadows and the occasionally passing bird flapping slowly past (we all flap slow — the pretend gravity is less here). Well, I'm saying it's all dark but maybe it isn't really, maybe that's just me because truth to tell I've not been very well; in fact I'm half blind, but that's better than what I was a couple of days ago, which was half dead.

There's a dainty flutter of wings at the entrance to my box, and in comes little Dartlin, who's the friend I've made here.

Hello, Dartlin, how's it going?

Fine, Mr Bathcule. I been terribly busy, you know; terribly busy bird I been. I flew through to the parliament of the crows and picked up some gossip, would you like to hear it?

Dartlin is my spy, sort of. When I imagined myself in here in the first place, back in Mr Zoliparia's pad, I just naturally somehow took on the appearance of a hawk, which is what I still am now. Dartlin's a sparrow, so in theory we should be raptor and prey respectively, but it doesn't actually work that way here, not in this bit anyway.

Dartlin found me on the floor here. I'd just got back from the level beneath where the real fun in the crypt starts and I was in a sorry state, let me tell you.

The first couple of days were the worst. When the big bird slapped me down through all them levels I thought my time was up; I mean, I knew I'd wake up in the eyeball of the septentrional gargoyle Rosbrith sooner or later, but I thought I was going to die in here, and that's a hell of a thing to take back to your waiting mind; scar you for life, that can.

It's very difficult to explain what it's like when you go that deep in the crypt, but if you can imagine being in a snow storm, flying in a thick snowstorm only the snow is multi-coloured and some of it seems to be coming at you from every angle (and each snow-flake seems to sing and hum and sizzle and hold little flashing images and hints of faces in it and as they go past you here snatches of speech or music or you feel a emotion or think of a idea or concept or seem to remember something) and if one of the snow-flakes hits you in the eye you are suddenly in somebody else's dream and it's an effort to remember who the hell you are, well if you can imagine experiencing all that when you are feeling a bit drunk and disoriented then that's a bit like what it's like, except worse of course. And weirder.

I don't actually remember much about that bit and I don't think I want too, either. I learnt to navigate by the flavour of the surrounding dreams and gradually sorted some sense out of the gibberish and though I got blinded by the abrading impact of all those snow-flakes and lost the wording of my wake-up code, I finally broke back through to the darkness and peace and quiet here, and lay exhausted on the floor amongst lots of scraggly dead feathers and solidified droppings and that's where Dartlin found me.

He'd been terrified by something and lost the memory of how to fly and so ended down on the floor too, but he could see and so once I'd got my strength back he got onto my back between my wings and guided me to where the sparrows gather. They told him how to fly again but they didn't feel comfortable having a hawk around so they found me this place down here and that's where I've been the last four days, getting my sight back while Dartlin flits about making inquiries and being busy and nosy and gossiping, which is what sparrows like doing anyway.

Why I certainly would like to here what you heard, little friend, I tell Dartlin.

Well, it's terribly interesting and I hope you don't get frightened but, though you are a fierce hawk after all and probably don't get frightened … Oh, isn't this a dark old place? I don't like perching here on the edge. May I hop up beside you?

By all means, Dartlin, I says, shuffling along a bit on my perch.

Thank you. Now; I says, now I don't want to make you nervous anything — like I say, with you being fierce I can't imagine you know the meaning of the word — but it would appear that there's a bit of a disturbance in the air — oh, it gives me a shiver just looking at those big fierce talons of yours — what was I saying? — oh yes, a disturbance in the air, affecting everybody, near enough — you know I think I felt it begin myself even though I was down on that horrible floor at the time with other things on my mind — wasn't it horrible down there? I hated it. Anyway, it seems the raptors and carrion-feeders and most especially the lammergeiers have been behaving strangely — oh! was that a seagull just there? I knew a seagull once, his name was…

That's the trouble with sparrows; they got a very limited attention span and are inclined to go wittering on for ages before they get to the point, always fluttering off at tangents and keeping you guessing what it is they're actually talking about. It's very frustrating but you just have to be patient.

Anyway, I better paraphrase or we'll be here all bleeding day listening to this sparrow-crap.

First, some of the birds is looking for somebody and I get a funny feeling it might be yours truly. The song goes that there's a hunt on for somebody who's loose in the system, existing in the crypt and/or the base-world and there's a price on their head. Apparently this person's a first-born, which fits me. Fits lots of people, you might say, but apparently this person's got something a bit different about them; they have some peculiarity, some strangeness, and they're a signal carrier, carrying a message they might not even know they have.

Oh I know it's probably not me, but you know how it is; I always felt I was special — just like everybody else — but unlike everybody else I got this weird wiring in my brain so I can't spell right, just have to do everything phonetically. It's not a problem because you can put any old rubbish through practically anything, even a child's toy computer and get it to come out spelled perfectly and grammatisized too and even improved to the point where you'd think you was Bill bleeding Shakespeare by the language. Anyway, you can probably see why I got a bit paranoid when I first heard all this, and it gets worse.

The story goes that this person — maybe a bird, maybe not — is a contaminant from the crypt's nasty old nether regions, a virus come to corrupt even more levels, which is quite a thought and might even be a bit worrying just in case it was me, only not everybody seems to believe this bit of the rumour because it's reckoned that the story comes from the palace and the King and the Consistorians are behind it and they can almost be guaranteed not to tell the truth.

Some folk reckon it's all to do with the approaching Encroachment; they think the chaotic levels of the crypt have somehow woken up to the fact that things could eventually get a bit hazardous even for them.

You see, everybody's assumed that the crypt's chaotic levels quite liked the idea of the Encroachment; something that ushered in a new ice age (at the very least) and cut off the sunlight and killed off practically the whole planetary ecosphere and just generally gave humans and biological stuff a hard time sounded right up the crypt's tree thank-you-very-much, but now that it looks like the Encroachment might be even more serious than that and possibly threatening the existence of the sun, the planet, the castle and the crypt, well the beasts of the chaotic zones have finally sat up and took notice and things have been stirring ever since.

Why it should be happening in the realm of the birds specifically is a good question but there you are; not much point trying to figure out the crypt.

Exactly what is going on apart from the fact that they're looking for somebody isn't too clear either, there's too many conflicting rumours (and anyway this is all being transmitted by Dartlin, who is a dear little bird but would not even get an honourable mention if they was giving out prizes for conversational coherence) but the point of it all is that basically there's big doo-doo flying around and all the flocks is nervous and a bit hysterical and anybody who's a bit different is being sought out, rounded up, interrogated and taken away. All of which might sound familiar to any students of history and just goes to show that some things never change, least not when these plucking humans designed the original system.

So there you are Mr Bascule, isn't it all terribly, terribly interesting?

Oh it's interesting all right, Dartlin, old chum.

I think though to — oh look, I think I just saw a flea on your leg there; may I preen you?

I feel like saying, You sure it's a flea not an ant? because I still think tenderly of poor little lost Ergates now and again, but I just says, Preen away, young Dartlin.

Dartlin pecks round the feathery top of my left leg and eventually crunches on a flea.

Yum. Thank you. Well anyway, I wonder what on earth can be going on? Who do you think they are looking for? Do you think it could actually be one of us birds? I don't think so, do you?

Probably not.

Oh, it's not you, is it? Tee-hee. Tee-hee-hee-hee.

I don't think so. I just a poor blinded old hawk.

Well I know that, silly, though you are a very fierce old hawk, and getting less blind all the time. I was just kidding. Oh look another sea-gull. Or is it? Looks more like an albino crow, actually. Well, I can't stand around here all day chatting with you; I have to fly, Dartlin says, and hops down off the perch. Is there anything I can get you, Mr Bathcule?

No, Dartlin, I'm getting better all the time, thanks. Just you keep your ears open though; I like hearing about all this stuff.

My pleasure. Sure I can't get you something to eat, perhaps?

No, I'm fine.

Very well.

Dartlin hops towards the edge of the box looking out over the dark canyon. It preens itself a bit, then balances on the edge, looks round to say, Well, bye then… but its little voice sort of trails off, and it looks back round to the outside and then it starts shivering and it jumps back and almost falls over and keeps jumping back until it's underneath my perch.

Dartlin! I shout. What's the matter? What is it? and I look down at the little fella and he's just pressed back against the rear of the box and quivering with fright, his tiny eyes bulging and staring and not seeing me, and meanwhile there's movement and the sound of fluttering wings outside the box and some whispered squawks. A couple of large dark shapes flit past the entrance to the box.

Dartlin shakes like the poor little bugger's having his own private earthquake.

He looks at me and wails, Fierce, Mr Bathcule! Fierce! and then just keels over onto the floor of the box, his eyes still open.

Dartlin! I says, not shouting, but I don't think this sparrow's going to be doing no more spying nor flying. I can see his fleas getting ready to move out of his scrawny little body, and that's always the worst of signs.

I look up again and there's more movement and a rustling sound from outside and then suddenly the noise of huge great wings flapping.

A crow pops its head round the side of the box.

It looks at me with one beady black glinting eye and croaks,

Yeah that's him, must be him.

It disappears before I can say anything.

Then there's a face at the entrance to the box, and I can't believe it; it's a human face, a human head but it's been flayed, it's got no skin on it at all and it's all red with blood and you can see tendons and muscles and its eyes are staring out with no lids neither but it's also got the biggest smile you ever seen and it's held in the claws of some huge bird I can't see apart from its talons and lower legs; the talons are holding the head by the ears and the head opens its mouth and starts making this weird noise, incredibly loud and guttural and its tongue comes out, but it's not an ordinary tongue, it's far too long for a start and it's flapping and lashing and the head's making this screaming noise and the tongue is snaking right at me and it's got hooks and claws at the end of it and the tongue flicks towards me and I jump backwards off the perch and land almost on top of Dartlin's body and the tongue is snapping back and forth over the top of the perch trying to get me and I'm pecking and screeching and trying to get at it with my talons but it's too high up and all the while this hoarse cacophony of noise is ringing in my ears and at first I think it's screaming Gimme gimme gimme but it isn't, it's more like Gididibididibididigididigigigibididigibibibi all run together like that, like it's a machinegun or something and the tongue lashes back round the top of the perch and down and now is coming straight for me and I slash at it with my talons but it twists and grabs my right wing and starts to pull and I'm screeching and it's going gididibibibigigigibigigigibibigigi and I'm trying to hold onto the perch with one talon and scratch the tongue with the other and peck at it too and it's tearing my wing off, breaking it and it snaps and it pulls off a whole bunch of feathers and the horrible face gets a mouthful of those and I hop back again to the rear of the box, flapping and screeching and trailing my broken wing; the tongue flicks back in and I kick little Dartlin's body at it and the tongue wraps tight round it and pulls it back but throws it away when it gets it outside and it's still hammering away with this gigigibididibibibigigigi stuff filling my ears and I'm just about to die of fright as the tongue comes snapping towards my face when it goes gididibibibibibibigididibigiBasculefastawake!

– and I'm back in the study of the gargoyle Rosbrith squatting on the chair and staring at this huge human Mr Zoliparia holding a pen and shaking my shoulder and going, Bascule? You all right?

It can be a bit of a shock watching somebody come out of a crypt trip; if it's only a minute in your time, it's a week in theirs and a lot of things can happen in a week and if it's been a bad one it tends to show in your face, so for the person waking you up it's like they tell you to wake up and instantly your face goes old and pained and worn-looking and the person thinks, Oh no, what have I done?

I'm squatting on the balustrade where Ergates was lifted from, hunkered down taking more tea and biscuits with Mr Zoliparia. He's looking a bit worried because I'm squatting here facing the drop like I'm about to launch myself into the air, but there is the safety net after all and anyway I just feel comfortable perched here and I like the view and the feel of the wind on my face.

My left arm has that sort of echo-pain you get from a bad crypt trip injury and I keep wanting to lift the biscuits with my foot and eat them that way but I think I'm gradually losing my birdishness. I can tell Mr Zoliparia wants to ask me lots of questions but I'm still finding it a bit hard to talk.

Phew, that was a hard old crypt trip that one. I suppose you could argue I should have taken a bit more time and just sent a send of myself in; a image or construct who'd have done everything I did and felt everything I felt and in fact would have been a duplicate me, except meanwhile I'd still have been fully conscious here with Mr Zoliparia, but it takes much longer doing it that way; you have to prepare thoroughly before you go and you have to spend ages reintegrating your two selves when the send comes back, sorting memories and feelings and character changes and so on; just jumping in and out with the one personality is a lot quicker; less than a second rather than up to half a day… but of course that supposed second doesn't allow for the person who's supposed to wake you up getting confused because almost the last thing you said to him was, 'Just give me a minute here,' and them totally misunderstanding what you meant on account of them being old and confused, and so you spend a week in the crypt instead of a few hours, and thusly getting so altered by your crypt-self that you think you're a blinking hawk for the next couple of hours.

I see a flock of small birds in the distance and while one half of me's thinking, this is how this all started, and remembering that poor dear little ant, the other half is going, Ha! Prey!

No I don't think it is all an hallucination, Mr Zoliparia, I says (I'm missing out the bits where he keeps apologising for what happened). I think it's all as true as you and me sitting here. There's something happening in the crypt; I couldn't work out what part of it's to do with the palace and what part is to do with the chaotic regions, but there's something going on, and there's a watch being kept for somebody or something unusual in there and out here too, and something really disgusting from the human realm has access to the bird part of the crypt and has secured the cooperation of at least some of the birds.

It all sounds more like a nightmare, especially the last part, Mr Zoliparia says.

We're both sitting now; I feel less like a hawk all the time. Mind you, I still need to be out here on the balcony; don't like the thought of going inside and being trapped.

I saw it with my own eyes, Mr Zoliparia. I know you don't hold with the crypt and all and think it's all a dream anyway, but it's not that simple, and what I saw I saw, and I never seen nor heard of nothing like that thing like a flayed head and making that horrible noise; I mean, you hear stories of ghosts and beasties and stuff like that from the chaotic realms coming up and snatching people and gobbling them up, but you never see it happen; that stuff's just myth; this was real.

You are sure that because it had a human head it was something from the human part of the crypt?

That's the way it works, Mr Zoliparia. It was something that had to preserve human form even in its monstrousness or it couldn't function, or maybe because it might have let the birds see what it was really like, which given that birds don't much like humans in the first place, is saying something.

And it was after you.

It sure was. I'm not saying I am what they're actually looking for — don't expect I am — but they're catching and caging everybody a bit different or suspicious and that head thing seems to be involved in the round-up.

Mr Zoliparia shakes his head. O dear Bascule, o dear.

Never mind, Mr Zoliparia. No harm done.

That's true, Bascule; least you back here safe and sound, no thanks to me. Anyway, I think you should keep away from the crypt for a bit, don't you?

Well that might be an idea, Mr Zoliparia, I says. You certainly got a point there…

Good boy, he says. I know; why don't we play a game? Or maybe you would like to go for a walk; take a constitutional round some of the terraces on the roof, maybe stop off somewhere for lunch — what you say, Bascule?

All sounds good to me, Mr Zoliparia.

Let's do both things, he laughs. We'll go for a walk but we'll take the portable Go board with us and have a game over a nice long lunch at a rather nice restaurant I know.

Good idea, Mr Zoliparia. That's a fine old complicated game, that Go.

Right! I'll get the Go, then we'll go! he laughs, and he jumps up and heads indoors. Drink up your tea! he shouts.

I look out at them birds again, circling above a far tower. I don't want to tell Mr Zoliparia but I'm going straight back in there to that crypt just as soon as I feel able. I still want to find out what happened to poor Ergates, but I want to know what's going on, too.

Truth be told, it terrifies me half to death just thinking about it, but I got this feeling I learnt a lot while I was in the crypt today and it's true what they say; it's like a addictive game, and once you come out of it a bit bruised and wounded, the first thing you want to do is get straight back in there and get it right next time. I just won't think about that horrible head thing.

I finish my tea and tidy up the cups and stuff (you have to do this at Mr Zoliparia's because he hasn't any servitors) and take the tray inside just as he's putting on his coat and stuffing the portable Go board in his pocket.

Ready, Bascule? he asks.

I'm ready, Mr Zoliparia.

Ready all right. Big stuff happening in the crypt and some poor bugger being hunted and me with a headstart on the people doing the hunting.

Bascule the Rascal, that's me and I'm more than ready; I'm fierce.

A little bird told me.

TRANSLATION — FOUR — 4

I've got a very good view of the fast-tower from here. I'm half-lying and half-sitting cradled by the babil branches and am looking up through a gap in the foliage at the dirty great hugeness of the castle's central tower.

You forget the tower's there a lot of the time because (a) it's usually behind you if you're looking out the way from the castle and (b) it's obscured by cloud more than half the time anyway.

According to Mr Zoliparia the fast-tower is where the space elevator was anchored to Earth.

That's why it's called a fastness, Mr Zoliparia says; in English fastness means a stronghold, and also because when things are tied hard against each other they are said to be tied fast to each other like the space elevator was tied fast to Earth, and in a sense tied to the Earth's surface and space together, too (I said; and the space elevator was a way of getting into space fast; but Mr Z said no actually it was slower than a rocket or whatever but much more efficient). Mr Zoliparia thought the space elevator was a great idea and it was a shame we'd got rid of it and if we hadn't then we wouldn't be in the pickle we are, i.e. about to get clobbered by the Encroachment.

But I thought space was just full of nothing I said to Mr Zoliparia. What's the point of going there?

Bascule, he said, you are so thick sometimes.

He told me the fast-tower led to the planets and the stars; once you were in space you had limitless energy and raw materials and after that brainpower took you wherever you wanted but we'd thrown all that away.

Mr Zoliparia says the fast-tower represents something of an enigma, on account that we don't strictly speaking know what's actually in the top of it; it's been explored up to about the 10th or 11th levels but after that you can't get no higher, so they say. Blocked on the inside and nothing to hold onto on the outside and too high up for a balloon or an aircraft to go. The knowledge of what's up there's been lost long ago in the chaos of the crypt, says Mr Z.

You hear rumours that there are people up there in the top of the tower but that's got to be nonsense; how'd they breathe?

Mr Zoliparia isn't the only person to have theories concerning the big tower; Ergates the ant told me there used to be three space elevators; one here, one in Africa near a place called Kilimanjaro and one in Kalimantan. According to her, they've all been dismantled long since of course but we've got the biggest stump on account of whoever designed the American continent space elevator had the wizard idea of making the terminus particularly spectacular and so designed it to look like a huge castle, viz. the vastness of the fastness (which she claimed used to be called Acsets, which was another of them acronyms, apparently).

I thought this all sounded a bit iffy and asked Mr Z if he'd ever heard of there being other fast-towers and he said nope, not as far as he knew, and sure enough when I searched the crypt for info there wasn't any on no other elevators and when you actually look into it there doesn't seem to be anywhere where it says straight out the fast-tower used to be one end of a space elevator, though it's not a secret. Anyway, Kilimanjaro is a lake and Kalimantan is a big island (it's got a Crater Lake too) and I think Ergates' imagination was running away with her a bit there and besides if her theory was right the name of this place would begin with a K not a S or a A, stands to reason.

Poor Ergates. I still wonder what happened to that dear little ant, even though I've got plenty of other things to worry about now.

I turn over in the little nest I've made for myself in the babil branches and look down the curved trunk to the wall. Nobody else around. Looks like I gave the bastards the slip.

My shoulder still hurts. So do my wrists and my knees.

Oh what a sorry state we're in, young Bascule, I says to myself.

I just know that sooner or later I'm going to have to go back into the crypt to find out what on earth's going on, even though the last thing the big bat said was not to. Don't think it's going to be much fun.

I'm frightened.

You see, I've become an outcast.

I have to say I had a very pleasant lunch with Mr Zoliparia and a good game of Go which he won of course (like he always does) in this travelling restaurant. The restaurant starts in a vertical village in the babil near the top of the great hall gable and slowly descends to floor level over the next couple of hours. Good food and views. Anyway, I had a very nice time and almost totally forgot about Dartlin and the giant brain in bird space and horrible skinned heads and things what go gididibibibigididibigigi and so on.

Me and Mr Zoliparia talked about loads of stuff.

Eventually though it was time for me to go because I still had evening calls to do for the Little Big Brothers and they like you to be there in the monastery to do them and I'd already done one lot on the hoof as it were that morning in the hydrovator so I thought for the evening I ought to actually be there within the precinct.

Mr Z saw me to the west wall tube train.

You promise you won't go back into that crypt until you have to? Until you're back with the brothers? Mr Z said to me, and I said, Oh all right then Mr Zoliparia.

Good boy, he said.

Everything went as per normal till I got to the other end where there was a long wait at the hydrovator. I thought of a better idea and took a travelator across the allure to a funicular line up a flying buttress; I'd get to the monastery by dropping from above.

There were a couple of novice brothers in the funicular car with me; they were a bit drunk, and singing loudly. I thought one of them seemed to recognise me but I just looked away and he ignored me too.

They kept singing as the car when slowly up the curve of the buttress. I wouldn't have minded, but they were out of tune.

Little-Big, Little-Big, Little-Big!

We're the Mediums who don't give a fig!

Well, here's a fine to-do, I said to myself, sighing and staring out the window and trying to ignore the noise and their beery breaths. I looked out the window; it was dusk by this time and the lights were on in the funicular car's cabin and the sky outside looked pretty and very colourful.

When you're dead, when you're dead, when you're dead,

We'll happily live inside your he — ad!

O, what the heck, I thought.

In a way what I was going to do would make the trip longer not shorter but at least I'd have some respite from all this cheery-drunken shit, and even if I forgot my return code again these noisy prats would wake me up soon enough. I dipped into the crypt, intending to spend maybe half a second in there.

Less than that was quite enough.

There was something going on.

The first place you go from transport is into a representation of the castle's transport system, a transparent holo of the fastness with the tube, train and funicular lines, lift shafts, roads, hydrovator lines and clifter slots all highlighted. Then you move onto where you want to go elsewhere in the crypt. Most bags don't even spare this setup a passing glance, but if you're something of a connoisseur of the crypt's states, like I am, then you just always swing past this sort of thing and click it out and do a quick comparison with actual movements to see if Transport's on its bols or not. Upshot is, if there's anything amiss you spot it, like I spotted the transport setup wasn't quite right.

It looked like there was an odd kind of hole around the monastery; nothing moving out, just stuff in-going. Very strange, I thought. I didn't go no further into the crypt. I checked the monastery's crypt business during the afternoon. Definitely phase-change in the traffic around an hour ago. Somebody trying to make things look normal when they weren't.

Where was brother Scalopin's usual call to the Martian Days storyline, for example? Or sister Ecrope's tea-time interlope with her lover in the Uitlander embassy? All replaced by making-up-numbers traffic, that's where.

I knew I was probably being paranoid, but I worried all the same.

The funicular was due to make one more stop before the station I'd normally get off at. I told it to stop ASAP.

A minute later it did, and I got off at this little silly halt three quarters of the way up the buttress which served a couple of clan-execs' love nests, a old babil farm and a glider club, all of them deserted. The two brothers I left on the funicular looked puzzled but waved bye-bye and kept singing as the car trundled away again.

Then there was a thump in my head. The funicular car stopped, then reversed and clunked and whirred back down towards me.

The thump in my head was some bastard trying to knock me out with a bit of feedback from the crypt; theoretically impossible and technically difficult but it can be done and the jolt I'd just got would have knocked out most people, only I've got the equivalent of shock absorbers because I'm a teller and therefore used to getting a rough ride from the crypt.

The funicular car was coming glowing back down the curved track, its cabin lights reflecting off the babil plants festooning the broad arched back of the buttress. The two brothers inside were at the back window, staring at me. They didn't look so drunk now, and they were each holding things in their hands that could have been guns.

Oh shit, I thought.

I ran down a spiral stairway at the side of the buttress. I heard the car stop above me. The stairway went on and on and on and on spiralling all the time and I thought when it levels out I'm not going be able to stop going round; they'll find me whirling round in a tight little circle unable to go straight. I hit the bottom and sheer terror proved a very efficient course-straightener. I raced across a gantry slung underneath the stonework and went down another stairway set against a metal-frame building on the far side of the buttress. Footsteps clanged behind me.

I came out on a broad balcony and dodged through a doorway and down some more steps into a sort of hanger where old gliders sat tilted like great ghostly stiff-winged birds and a bunch of little bats started chattering and flying round my head. Footsteps above, then behind. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. The bats were kicking up a hell of a racket.

I spotted a ladder against one wall leading down through the floor and I ran for it. Somebody shouted behind me; the footsteps slapped loud. Something went, Bang! and a glider next to me exploded with flame and lost a wing; the blast of air was warm and almost knocked me off my feet.

I threw myself at the ladder, held the sides and dropped, sliding down without using my feet at all, hitting the floor and twisting my ankle.

I was in some kind of circular platform slung under the glider building. Nothing but air underneath and nowhere to go. I looked back at the ladder. The footsteps were right above me.

I heard a noise like quick, distant surf, and a huge black shape lifted from under the platform on wings longer than I'm tall. It wavered in the air alongside then grasped at the thin metal rail round the platform on the far side from the ladder, its talons gripping the rail while its wings beat quickly and almost silently back and forward.

I could hear somebody coming down the ladder, breathing hard.

Here! shouted the black shape at the other side of the platform. I'd thought it was a bird but it was more like a giant bat. Its wings clapped in and out in and out.

Quickly! it said.

I think if the brothers coming down the ladder hadn't shot at me in the hanger I wouldn't have gone, but they had so I did.

I ran for the big bat. It held its feet out. I grabbed its ankles and it wrapped its talons round my wrists making me shout with the bone-crunching pain while it pulled me off the platform, cracking my knees off the rail.

We twisted and dropped like the thing couldn't carry me and I screamed, then it spread its wings with a snap and I nearly lost my grip as we curved out and away. Light sparkled above me and I heard the bat cry out but I was too busy looking down at the dark fields in the allure, 5 or 600 metres below and thinking well, if I die, there's still another seven lives to go. Except I didn't think that was right somehow, I reckoned whatever trouble I was in went beyond this life and I wasn't guaranteed another seven lives or even one.

I held on tight, but the light crackled again and the bat thing juddered in the air and cried out again and I smelled smoke. We lurched and side-slipped towards the wall of the great hall, then fell like the proverbial, and in a scream of air and a scream from me dipped below the allure and the parapet and went on down till we were level with the lower bretasche, where the bat wheeled round so hard I lost my grip on its scaly legs and only its steel-like clasp on my wrists stopped me from falling to the roof of the second level tower underneath.

Felt like my arms were about to pop out of my sockets. I'd have screamed but the breath was gone from me.

The air shrieked round my ears as we plummeted between the great tower and the second level wall, down into a layer of cloud where I couldn't see a damn thing and it was freezing cold, then we turned in what I thought was the direction of the tower and out of the mist loomed this bleeding great rock wall. I closed my eyes.

We twisted once, twice and I went — phew — to myself but when I opened my eyes we was still heading straight for naked stonework. O fuck, I thought, but by then I'd decided I'd rather die with my eyes open. At the last moment we lifted, I saw hanging bunches of foliage strung from the machicolation above and a instant later we crashed into the babil; my shoulder was wrenched and I was thrown off the bat and into the babil, grabbing at leaves and twigs and branches and slipping and falling down through it.

The bat beat furiously, shouting, Hold on! Hold on! while I tried to get a hold on the damn stuff.

Hold on! it shouted again.

I'm bloody trying too! I yelled.

You safe?

Just about, I said, hugging a big strand of babil like it was a long-lost mum or something, not able to look behind but still hearing the big bat flap and beat at my back.

I'm sorry I couldn't help you more, the bat says. You must save yourself now. They're looking for you. Beware the crypt. Keep out of things! Erch! Erch! I must go. Farewell, human.

Yeah, and to you, I shouted, turning round to look at it. And thanks!

Then the big bat dropped, and I saw it disappear in the mist, falling away straight down, trailing smoke and then just before I lost sight of it curving away following the circumference of the tower, beating hard but looking weak and still falling.

Disappeared.

I crawled into the darkness of the babil, nursing my aches.

Oh dear Bascule, I said to myself. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

I spent the night in the foliage, constantly dreaming of flying through the air with Ergates in my hand but then dropping her and her tumbling away and me not being able to catch her and my wings coming off and me falling too and screaming through the air, then waking clutching the branches, shivering and covered in sweat.

So here I am, looking up at the fast-tower and I've spent some time so far this morning trying to pluck up the courage to go straight back into the crypt to find out what's going on and look for poor little Ergates and this time take no nonsense… and I've also spent some time vowing never to even think of the bleeding crypt again and deciding not to decide about it for now and so instead I'm just sitting here wondering what I'm to do in general and not able to come to a decision on that score neither.

I turn over in my little nest again and look down through the branches and this time I freeze and stare, because I can see this big animal coming climbing up through the babil; it's bleeding huge, the size of a bear and it's got thick black fur with streaks of green on it and it's got big shiny black claws and it's looking at me with two little beady eyes and a funny pointed head and it's coming up the branch I'm on, straight towards me.

Oh shit, I hear myself say, looking round to see if there's a way to escape.

There isn't. Oh shit.

The animal opens its mouth. Its teeth are the size of my fingers.

… Stay where you are! it hisses.

TRANSLATION — FIVE — 4

I stare at the big black beast coming up the branch toward me.

I've got a gun! I shout (this is a lie).

… I very much doubt that, the thing says. It stops all the same smiling and showing its teeth again. But anyway, it says, stop being silly. I'm here to help you.

I'll bet, I says, glancing round and still trying to figure out a way of escape.

Yes. If I'd wanted to harm you I could have shaken you out of there five minutes ago.

Oh yeah? I says, hanging on tighter. Well maybe you don't want to kill me, maybe you just want to capture me.

… In which case I'd have dropped on you from above, you silly boy.

Oh you would, would you?

…Yes. You're Bascule, aren't you?

Perhaps, I says. And who or what are you when you're at home then?

… I'm a sloth, it says proudly. You can call me Gaston.

So I'm being led through the babil plants by a sloth called Gaston who has a kind of mutant lisp and takes such pride in his appearance he's got fungus growing on his back; that's what the green streaks are. He offered to let me ride on his back hanging onto his fur but I declined.

We climb through the babil, going down and round the tower.

Who sent you then? I ask.

…Same people sent the jericule last night, Gaston says, talking over his shoulder.

What, that big bat?

…That's right.

What happened to him anyway, do you know?

…Her, Gaston says. No.

Oh.

I follow Gaston down through the babil branches. Following Gaston isn't difficult on account of him being a quite remarkably slow mover. If he had been coming to attack me I could probably have just gone down the branch he was on and climbed right over him before he could have started to react.

Anyway. Who was it sent you here then?

…Friends.

You don't say.

…No, I do say; friends.

Well thanks, that's pretty enlightening.

…Patience, young man.

We negotiate a few more branches.

Where you taking me anyway?

… to a place of safety.

Yeah, but where?

… Patience, young man, patience.

I can see I'm not going to get nothing out of this sloth so I just shut up and content myself with making silly faces at its big black green-streaked back.

It's a long slow journey.

… There's things going on, Mr Bascule, that's all I can say; there's things going on. Frankly I don't know exactly what they are myself, or whether I'd be able to tell you about them if I did, but as I don't I can't anyway, you see?

Not really, I says, which is the truth.

The sloth-geezer what can only say, There's things going on, is called Hombetante and he's the chief sloth; he's got implants and is actually considered a bit of a live wire by sloth standards though you could still go off and have a pee, wash your hands and brush your teeth in the time it takes him to blink. He's fat and old and gray and his fungus looks more lively than he does.

I'm in a half-ruined bit of the same tower where the big bat called a jericule dropped me last night. Me and Gaston the sloth got here after about an hour in the babil, coming in through a tall window half overgrown with babil branches.

This seems to be Sloth Central; it's like a whole room full of scaffolding and hanging tents and hammocks and stuff. There's rubble on the floor and no glass or anything in the windows and the wind blows in through a window on the other side of the huge circular room and through the scaffolding and makes everything sway in the breeze and the sloths don't seem to take very good care of the place no more than they do themselves, but at least they gave me some water to drink and have a quick wash in and then gave me some fruit and nuts to eat. I'd have preferred something hot but I don't think the sloths are great fans of fire so heating stuff up might be a problem.

We're in a big space in the centre of the scaffolding where the sloths apparently hold their meetings. Bet those are a bundle of laughs.

Hombetante is hanging upside down from a bit of scaffolding on a low stage at one end of the meeting space, the floor of which is covered with similar curved lengths of scaffolding like very tall railings. They've given me a sort of sling thing to sit in suspended from Hombetante's scaffold pole. The only other sloth present is Gaston, who's hanging from another bit of scaffolding alongside, munching slowly on some particularly un-yummy looking leafs.

… You are welcome to stay here, Hombetante says, until things settle down.

What you mean, settle down? I ask. How are they settled up at the moment? What exactly is supposed to be going on?

… Just things, Mr Bascule. Things which need not concern you at the moment.

What about a certain ant who goes by the name of Ergates? You know anything about her fate?

… You are just young and doubtless headstrong, Hombetante says, very much like he hasn't heard what I just said… I was young once myself you know. Yes I know you might find that hard to believe but it is true; I well remember…

I won't bore you with the rest. What it boils down to is there's trouble at the crypt and somehow I've got mixed up in it. Might all be cleared up soon, might not. Whoever is supposed to be the good guys in all this are behind the jericule picking me up yesterday and Gaston coming to find me today. Now I'm here with the sloths I've been told to lie low, and not to go near the crypt.

And — of course — to have patience.

After my audience with Hombetante during which he tells me have his life story and I nearly fall asleep twice Gaston takes me to a place near the outside of the scaffolding where there's a room with a hammock and a sling chair and an old fashioned screen working off broadcasts. There's a sort of cubby-hole in one corner with a pipe sticking up which is supposed to be a toilet. Two floors above there's a place where the sloths gather for food every evening. Also in the room is a bowl of fruit and a jug of water. There's a window in one wall what looks out to the big vertical tower window we came through. Gaston shows me how the screen works and says if I get bored I can always go fruit and nut gathering with him.

I say thanks, maybe tomorrow, and he goes and I get into the hammock and pull the covers over and go straight to sleep.

I just know I'm going to go crazy here, and I know that I'm going to have to visit the crypt sooner or later, to look for Ergates and find out what's going on, so when I wake up in the late afternoon I splash some water on my face, have a pee and once I've decided I generally feel awake and refreshed, I get right down to it, on the principal that there's no time like the present.

I try to clear my mind of all things sloth-like (can't think of anything less useful to take into the crypt than any semblance of slothfulness) and plunge right in.

I think I learnt a thing or two during all that time I spent in the crypt as a bird so I head back in that direction only this time I'm not fucking about with wee dainty sparrows or hawks or nothing; I'm going as a big bastarding bird; a simurg. They're so big their brains can cope with a human mind without much finessing, which means I don't have to spend most of my time remembering what I am or disguising my wake-up code as a ring. It's a bit ambitious but sometimes that's the only way to get anywhere.

I close my eyes.

/Check out the immediate locality first; nothing out of the ordinary in the nearby crypt-space. Have a shufty at the architecture of the tower just on general principals — this old tower is a interesting place right enough — then look a bit further out. The traffic around the Little Big Brothers' monastery is just about back to normal but I don't go any nearer to find out more.

Zoom into birdspace.

/And I'm a huge wild bird floating on the currents sliding within the drifting wind, hanging lazily loosed on my outstretched wings cantilevered across the singing air. My wingtip feathers are each the size of hands; they flutter like a lamb's heart flutters when my shadow falls over it. My feet are steel-tipped grapples hung on the end of my hawser legs. My talons are unsheathed razors; only my eyes are sharper. My beak is harder than bone, keener than just-broke glass. My keel bone is a great knife cozened in my flesh and cleaving the soft air; my ribs are glistening springs, my muscles sleek bunched fists of oily power, my heart a chamber filled with slow thunder, quiet and unstressed; a towering damn trickling power, ticking over, headwaters of charged blood pent and latent.

Well, YES! This is more like it! Why did I ever bother being a hawk? Why was I so bleeding unambitious? I feel fierce, I feel powerful.

I look about, surveying. Air everywhere. Clouds. No ground.

Other birds flying in vast Vs, climbing in huge columns in the air, gathered in their own dark clouds, wheeling and calling. I think towards roosts.

/And I'm in the midst of them; spherical trees floating in the groundless blueness like brown planets of twigs in a universe of air, surrounded by a squawking atmosphere of birds to-ing and fro-ing.

The parliament of crows, I think.

/And I'm there, in bitter air between layers of white cloud like mirrored landscapes of snow; the great dark winter-trees are massed to the density of black cliffs against the icy billows of freezing cloud. The crows' parliament is in the tallest, greatest biggest tree of all, its brown-black twigs like the sooty bones of a million hands clutching at the chill blank face of heaven. The meeting breaks up when they see me and they come squawking and screeching out to mob me.

I beat, pushing down the air, rising over the pestering birds, seeking one who stays back, directing.

The crows swarm up around me. A few land blows on my head but it doesn't hurt. I laugh and stretch my neck, swivelling my head and ripping a few of their little toyish bodies from the air. I toss them aside; red blood beads, pulverized white bone pushes through their coal black feathers and they tumble torn to the snow-cloud billows. The rest scream, pull fluttering back a moment then mob in again. I stroke forwards. Air snaps swirling under my wings, rolling the pursuing birds round like bubbles under a waterfall.

I see my prey. He's a big grey-black fella perched on the topmost twig of the topmost branch of the parliament-tree and he's just realised what's going on.

He rises, cawing and shrieking into the air. Foolish; if he'd dived into the branches he might have had a chance.

He tries some acrobatic stuff but he's old and stiff and I snatch him so easily it's almost disappointing. Snap! and he's neatly encased in one cage of foot, flapping and screaming and losing feathers and pecking at my toes with his little black beak and tickling me. I slice another couple of his fellows out of the air, spreading their blood like a artist would, paint on a white canvas, then I think eyrie.

/And am alone with my little crowy friend above a tawny plane of sand and rock, beating towards a fractured cliff where a gnarled finger of rock juts out, its summit topped with a giant nest of sunbleached timbers and splintered white animal and bird bones.

I land and fold the soft cloaks of my wings and stand upon the brittle nest — timbers creak, branches burst, picked-clean bones snap — looking down at my balled foot with the old gray-black crow imprisoned in it, flapping and beating and hollering.

Skreak! Skrawk! Awrk! Gerout!

Oh shut up, I tell it, and the rock-crushing weight of my voice stuns it to quiet stillness. I balance on that leg, compressing the trapped crow and reaching through the bars of my talons with a talon from the other foot, tickling the bird's grey-black throat while the breath wheezes out of it.

Now then my little chum, I say — and my voice is acid on a slicing blade, boiling lead down a open throat — I've a few questions I'd like to ask you.

TRANSLATION — SIX — 4

You know what I'm going to do if you don't tell me what I want to know, don't you? I says to the old crow caged in my talons.

I'm resting in my big nest on the finger of stone looking out over the desert, sitting here quite happily pulling out the old grey-black crow's feathers one by one with my free foot, humming to myself and trying to get some sense out of the old bird.

I don't know nothing! the grey-black crow shouts. You'll pay for this, you piece of filth! Set me back where you found me immediately and maybe we say no more about this — eark!

(I scrunch his beak a bit with two of my talons.)

You swine! he blubbers.

I decided it's time to fix the old fella with a serious stare, so I lower my great-beaked head down to his level and look in through the talon-bars at his little black beady eyes. He tries to look away but I hold his head round looking towards me with a talon and put my head closer to him (though not too close — I'm not stupid). Crows can't actually move their eyes very much and now he couldn't move his head neither. They've got a thing called a nictitating membrane what they can flick over their eye and this old chap's nictitating like mad trying to block me out and if I wasn't such a fine firm fleshed-out example of a simurg he might block me out (or even taking me over if he was trying), but I am, so he couldn't and I was in there.

I had decided in my own mind by this time that simurgs were related to lammergeiers and as any fool will tell you lammergeiers are also known as bone crushers. So the old crow looks into my mind and sees what I intend to do and promptly shits himself.

I look at the mess on my fine razor-sharp talons and my nicely decorated nest and then look at him again.

Oh f-f-fuck, he whimpers. Sorry about that. His voice is quivering. I will tell you anything you want to know; just don't do those things to me.

Hmm, I says, lifting him up a bit to look pointedly at the shit on my nest. We'll see.

What you want to know? he shrieks. Just tell me! What you looking for?

I jab my head towards him. An ant, I tell him.

A what?

You heard. But let's start with the lammergeiers.

The lammergeiers? They're gone.

Gone?

From the crypt. Gone.

Gone where?

Nobody knows! They been weird and distant for a while and now they just ain't around no more. It's the truth; check it out for yourself.

I will, and before I let you go, so you better be telling the truth. Now what about this bleeding red-face thing goes gidibibidibigibi etc. etc. you get the idea, eh? What's it when it's at home then?

The old crow freezes for a second, then he starts to shake and then he — I can hardly believe it — he laughs!

What? he shrieks, all hysterical. You mean that thing behind you, is that what you mean?

I shake my head. What sort of bird you take me before? I ask it, shaking it up and down so it rattles like a dice in a cup. Eh? Eh? Just how stupid you think I am? Do I look like a bleeding pigeon?

Gidibidibigidigibigi! screams a voice behind me.

(I feel my eyes go very wide.)

I stare at the bedraggled black crow trapped in the talons of my right foot.

Another time, I says, and crush the crow to the size of a thrush.

I whirl round and throw the dead crow at where I hope the horrible red head thing is, pushing myself off the nest at the same time.

Gidibidibigidigibigi! the skinned head shrieks, and the old dead crow explodes into flame and disappears as it hits the jagged red hole of the thing's flayed nose. The head's bigger than it was before and it's got wings of its own now; wings like the wings of a skinned bat, all wet and bloody and glistening. Fucker's bigger than I am and its teeth look sharp as hell. I beat my wings, not turning and flying away but hovering there, staring at it like it's staring at me.

Gidibidibigidigibigi! it screams again and then it's expanding, rushing towards me like it's a planet bloating, a sun exploding. I'm not fooled; I know it's still the size it was really and this is just a feint. I glimpse the real thing coming straight at me like a punch thrown through the exploding image.

This is my nest. The head's over the edge of it right now.

I take one quick flap closer and reach out with a foot and slap down on a huge white-bleached hunk of timber; the timber is most of a tree-trunk and it levers up in a explosion of smaller branches and smacks straight into the face of the thing going Gidibidi-urp!

Its wings close involuntarily around the tent of branches sticking up in front of it and it falls flapping to the nest, all tangled and shrieking and bouncing and flapping and tearing its wings and I just know I should get the hell out while the going's good but call it instinct, call it madness, I just have to attack.

I give one more flap to get a bit of height — noticing that the sky seems to be getting brighter — then spread my talons and start to drop towards the horrible head thing.

The sky's gone very white and bright.

I cancel the stoop and flap once more, hovering over the flapping screaming entangled head and looking up at the sky; it's gone dark again, but it's starting to bulge somewhat.

Oh-oh, I think, and say my wake-up word to myself.

There are certain things which will impose themselves on you even when you are in the depths of the crypt, and an explosion is one of them; either a very bright flash of light or a shock wave and certainly both, which is what I was getting here. You don't have to wake up and if you're in deep enough you won't, you'll just explain it away to yourself even if it's blowing you apart as you think, but I'm not so daft.

The blast rolls me over in my room, bouncing me off a taut-strung wall and flinging me back into the centre of the room again.

I look out the door through smoke and flames and see men coming down ropes from above the big window in the tower; a handful of guys in wing-chutes are flying in through the window, heading for the scaffolding, shooting with guns that send bolts of light through the smoke. A sloth falls flaming past the doorway of my room, making a tearing, roaring noise as it falls and leaving a trail of thick black smoke. Another explosion rocks the scaffolding around me and the walls bulge. I see the light of big flames shining through the fabric wall to my right. Outside, the guys in the wing-chutes swing their guns to one side and reach out to grab the scaffolding as they thump into it; their chutes fall away as soon as they touch.

I roll away to the back of my room and bite at the fabric just above the floor; it holes and I haul and pull at it till it tears some more then squirm out through and into relative darkness.

I'm behind the walls of the sloths' scaffold structure, swinging from pole to pole like a monkey, heading downwards. A huge explosion of flame bursts out overhead, showering me with flaming debris; I have to hang by one hand from a pole and pat out flames on my shirt. The debris falls on down, lighting the way. There are quite a lot of flames now, and gunfire.

Part of my mind is thinking, Blimey, can all this really be for me? and another part is thinking, No, Bascule, don't be silly! But the first bit is going, Then how come there's all this violence and stuff happening around yours truly? This ain't a violent society; bags is pretty peaceful as a rule. How come all this is happening all of a sudden? Oh fuck; those poor sloths was just trying to be friendly and how do I repay them? I wonder how things have shaken out for Gaston and old Hombetante. Then I figure maybe it's best if I try not to think about that sort of thing; it's done now.

Amazing the survival mechanisms you build up in times like this.

Ahead of me I can see the curved inner surface of the wall of the tower, it's undressed stone and all black and glistening with moisture in the light of flames. A few last poles to go, regularly spaced.

Right hand left hand right hand left hand; I'm in a fever or something because I think; just the time to crypt for a second, and as I reach for the next pole I think, right, crypt until you touch this pole, and I'm there, deliberately not thinking about where I am at the moment but swinging out into the immediate locality

/only to find it isn't there any more.

It's like there's just a grey fog all around me; a metallic, growling, hissing, static-ish sort of fog. I can roughly remember where things were from earlier but I don't want to have to trust to memory that much. Then the fog seems to collect around me and it's like it's not fog at all it's made up not of water but of metal filings, metal dust, sleeting into my skin like acid, burrowing into my pores and it hurts and my eyes go wide and the metal dust is sandpapering my eyes and making me scream and as I open my mouth it's filling it and nose with metal grit and I'm breathing it in and it's fire, like breathing flame, filling me, roasting me from inside.

I flail out at it, trying to push it away and my hand touches something solid and I remember that means something and with a struggle I wake up.

My hand clutches the cold bar of the scaffold pole and I feel the breath whistle out of me and I sneeze and my eyes water and my skin itches everywhere and I just manage to grab the last pole and then thump into the black stone wall and stop there, still shaking and not feeling too good.

The floor is a couple of metres lower down, covered in rubbish. Looking up, the wall disappears into darkness. On either side, it curves away, black and barely visible. The sloths' scaffolding structure fits raggedly against the wall, poles stuck resting on bits where the rough stone juts out and the grey sackcloth stuff flapping in the breeze. The channel I escaped down rises like a narrow black canyon above me. Flames burn in the distance.

I try to remember the layout of the place from the start of my crypting earlier. Bleeding hell.

I shake my hed, then start leaping across from pole to pole along the side of the rough stone wall. Should be this way…

And so I go swinging off through the dark space behind the walls of the place where the sloths hang out, or at least did until these guys — with the guns and parachutes and stuff — came calling.

I'm a rat behind the bleeding walls, I think, scurrying above the rubbish looking for a hole to disappear down.

Oh dear Bascule I think to myself, not for the first time and I've a horrible feeling not for the last time neither. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

TRANSLATION — SEVEN — 4

I'm in the lammergeiers' roost, my breath sounding loud in my ears and mixed in with these hissy clicky noises because I'm wearing this mask on my face and a breathing bottle on me back both of which I got off the dead spyer.

This is a spooky old place and no mistake. There's nobody around and it's very cold indeed and the light is very white and intense and washed out looking. Being in the lammergeiers' roost is like being inside a giant holey cheese; sort of interconnected bubbles and stretched, punctured membranes of stone and metal everywhere and high up on the walls in places where the bubbles make cup and bowls jutting out there's these nests lined with babil plant and feathers only there's no birds in them nor eggs nor nothing. The floor of the roost is like a whole lot of little craters each of them holding loads of broken, splintered bones. My feet go crunch crunch as I walk, looking up and around and trying to see if there's anybody else here either human or creature but the place seems to be deserted.

There are huge circles in the outer walls like portholes where the winds come in whistling through and sounding high and ready and weird; I climb up to one of the bigger holes and look out. It's hazy white cloud out there like a layer of fog what extends to the horizon; you can just about see the lower levels of the castle showing underneath, like something trapped inside a transparent glacier. There's a couple of towers sticking up from the cloud but they look very small and far away. No sign of no birds out there neither, but then that's the thing; this is too far up for birds to fly, so how come the lammergeiers were ever here?

I slide down a curve of bubble and crunch into some bones, then head towards the centre of the tower, into the shades where there's a faint breeze coming from.

The nests thin out and disappear as I go deeper, still crunching over the occasional bone while it gets darker and darker and I can hardly see where I'm putting my feet. I've got this torch what the dead spyer had on him so I turn it on and just as well; there's a dirty great hole right in front of me. I edge closer and hold onto the wall and stick my head out over the huge circular hole. Must be 50 metres or more across. Black deep. Goes straight up into the darkness, too. There's a gentle draft of air coming up the shaft. It's warm, at least in comparison with the freezing air up here. No sign of any other entrances around the shaft, just this one.

I'm still not anywhere near the centre of the tower; that's way, way further deep, probably a couple of kilometres away. I'm in the fast-tower, still on the lam and searching for little Ergates.

I lean back from the hole.

Then there's a crunching noise somewhere in the darkness behind me. I whirl round.

I found Gaston the sloth peeking out over a stone ledge on the inside wall of the sloths' tower, near the sloped tunnel what led to the old lift shafts. According to the glimpse I'd had of the locality when I'd crypted earlier these shafts were abandoned and unused but I'd thought with any luck they'd be the type of shaft what has stairs going round the inside of the shaft for emergencies, and maybe they wouldn't be guarded by the bods what were attacking the sloths.

Well, that was the theory. In fact the scoop of the tunnel on the level below where Gaston was hiding was full of Security geezers with guns. Oh great, I thought.

I'd climbed along between the dank black wall of the tower and the framework of scaffolding what was the sloths' home neighbourhood, heading for here, where the floor dropped away in steps and the access tunnel was. Looked like old Gaston had had the same idea.

I didn't think I'd made a noise but he turned round slowly and saw me and pushed himself back from the edge of the ledge and climbed up the scaffolding towards me, pointing behind me.

We retreated a bit, behind some of the canvas-hung scaffolding.

… young Bascule, he said, you are safe; good.

Yeah and you, I said. But it looks like the Security boys have this place strung up good and tight. You know any other ways out of here?

…As it happens, Gaston says, I do actually. If you'll just follow me…

Gaston set off back from the scaffolding heading upwards at what was probably an extreme sprint for a sloth. I ambled after him.

We climbed up about seven floors of the sloth scaffolding; there was quite a lot of smoke up here and I could see flames in the distance, deeper inside the structure.

… Here, Gaston said, stopping at a pretty ordinary looking bit of wall. He gripped the top of a dripping black stone; it hinged down to reveal a round black hole. He motioned me in.

I must have looked dubious.

… I'll go first, then, he said, and clambered into the hole.

I shouldn't have looked dubious because I couldn't lift the stone back up after us and so Gaston had to squeeze past me to do it. I don't know if you have ever had a large sweaty sloth with copious quantities of fungus on its pelt squeeze past you in a confined space… Come to think of it probably you won't, but assuming that's the case think yourself lucky that's all I can say.

Having Gaston squeeze past me again didn't seem like such a good idea.

I'll just lead off then if it's all the same to you Gaston old son, I said.

… By all means, young Bascule.

The tunnel was cramped and only fit for crawling in. The damn thing went up, down and round this way and that way; it was like climbing around in the intestines of some huge stone giant. With Gaston's pelt-fungus still smeared all over me, it didn't smell dissimilar neither.

Listen Gaston, I said at one point while he was giving me a punt up a particularly steep bit of the giant intestine, I'm really sorry if that was me what brought all that there shit down on you guys. I really appreciate what you did, rescuing me and taking me in etc. and I'd hate to think I was responsible for all this.

…I quite understand your anguish, young Bascule, Gaston said. But it's not your fault certain persons are trying to persecute you.

You really think they was after me? I asked.

… That was the impression I formed from what I overheard, Gaston said. They did not seem to be interested in any of us. They were looking for somebody else they suspected us of harbouring.

Blimey.

… In any event, Gaston said, The responsibility is theirs, not yours. What happened is just one of those things I suppose.

Well, thanks, Gaston, I said.

…You didn't crypt, did you? Gaston said. It's just that might have led them to us. But you didn't, did you?

Oh no, I said. No, not me; I didn't. Nope. Not guilty. No sir-ee. Uh-uh. Wouldn't catch me doing a thing like that. Oh no.

…There you are then, Gaston said.

And so we wound on through the guts of the tower, me feeling lower than a tapeworm.

Eventually we came to a bit where the tunnel widened out and the floor turned from stone to wood; I more or less fell into this wooden bowl where a faint light shone. I didn't quite get out of the way in time so Gaston slid down on top of me.

More pelt fungus.

… there should be a trap here somewhere, Gaston said, feeling around on the floor… Ah, here it is. There was a sort of hollow clunking noise and in the half-light I could see Gaston pulling what looked like a huge plug up out of the floor.

… It's a hollowed out babil stem, Gaston explained, setting the plug to one side. I'll go first, I think.

The hollow babil trunk headed down in a series of long, stretched Ss. There were rungs on the walls; Gaston went down them pretty quickly for a sloth. Now and again we passed what might have been doors in the trunk where the occasional crack of light showed, but mostly it was totally dark. We seemed to go on down forever and I nearly fell off a couple of times. Just as well Gaston was beneath me; the thought of another close encounter with his pelt fungus quickly concentrated my mind, I can tell you.

At last Gaston said, … here we are, and we stepped on to a platform of stone and when through a door into a cramped space where Gaston wriggled and I crawled between a stone floor and this metal sealing which made a sort of blurbilurbilurbil sound. We came out in what looked like a big long curving service duct whose walls were lined with pipes; we'd just crawled under a big gurgling tank of some sort. I could here what sounded like a train rumbling somewhere nearby.

… There is a freight tube line junction through there, Gaston said, pointing at a hatch in the floor. The trains have to slow down to negotiate the points and it is possible for a human to jump on board a wagon and so secure a ride. I think I have to return to see what has befallen my friends, but if you can make your way to the second level south-west buttress you will find a town there. Go to the central square; someone will be looking for you and will look after you. I'm sorry to have to abandon you in this way, but it is all I can do.

That's all right, Gaston, I said. You done all you can and I don't deserve all the kindness you've shown me. I was so choked I could have hugged him, but I didn't. He just nodded his big funny pointed head and said,… Well, good luck young Bascule, you take care now… and you promise you will go to the south-west buttress at the town there?

Oh yes, I says, lying through my teeth.

Good. Fare well.

Then he was away, crawling back under the big gurgly tank.

I went down through the hatch in the floor into a broad dark cavern where lots of tube lines converged from single tunnels. There was nobody about but I hid behind some humming sort of cabinet things between two of the tracks and waited; a while later a train of open wagons came rattling through, clattering across the points; I let the unmanned engine and most of the wagons go past and then jumped on one near the end, hauling myself up the side and over into its empty interior.

After a few minutes during which the train entered a black-dark tunnel and picked up speed again, I reckoned it was safe to crypt.

There was no horrible corrosive fog/sleet here. Everything luckily seemed normal. The train was heading for the far end of the second level, near to the Southern Volcano Room. It would slow down at a few more places yet where I could get off. I crypted further afield.

/The lammergeiers roost was frozen. Its crypt-space repre­sentation was there but it was like a still picture instead of a movie; there were no birds nor anybody or anything there and you couldn't interact with nothing there. I sensed something nearby in the crypted space and suspected there was some kind of guard on the place, waiting to see who turned up interested in the lammergeiers. I disconnected quick.

The train rolled on. The lammergeiers lived — or used to live — in the fast-tower, on the 9th level. I reckoned there was something going on up there. The freight train would pass almost underneath the fast-tower. Good enough for me. The 9th level sounded a bit high and cold and inaccessible but I'd burn that bridge when I came to it.

I almost decapitated myself jumping off the train when it went through another set of points in a wide bit of tunnel the length of which I slightly overestimated, but apart from banging a shoulder on a wall and skinning one knee I escaped unscathed. I climbed a ladder, walked a bit of service tunnel and took a service elevator up to the main floor level. I found myself in what looked like a giant chemical works, all pipes and big pressure vessels and leaking steam and funny smells. Sure enough, a quick check on the crypt and I confirmed it was a plastics refinery.

After a lot of fancy and highly technical crypting, some walking and climbing over pipes and ducts and avoiding the dodgier-looking shadows I found an automatic freight elevator taking vats of some sort of fertilizer up the tower and hitched a ride up in that.

My ears popped after two minutes, and after about five, and ten.

Some more fancy crypting got the elevator to go a floor above where it was expected; this was as high as it could go. I got out in a sort of tall open gallery where a fierce cold wind blew and the view was of babil plants forming a fretwork of gnarled branches letting in a spare icy light.

I let the elevator take itself back down a floor.

There was a pillar about 100 metres away which supported the roof of the tall gallery. The one in the other direction was twice as far away. I set off towards the nearer one.

I was still only dressed in my usual clothes and this wind was making me shiver already, but then it had been fairly warm further down so maybe it was just the suddenness of the change. I walked along the gallery, between the silhouetted babil and the smooth ashlar of the tower's barely curved wall. The floor felt cold through my shoes and I wished I had a hat.

The crypt started to get a bit vague and unhelpful about the layout of the fast-tower at around this level. I just had to hope the pillar might have a set of stairs in it.

It didn't. It had two sets of stairs in it, intertwined in a double helix like DNA.

Didn't seem to matter which one I took. I started climbing.

I went fast at first to try and warm up but the breath just whistled out of me and my legs turned to jelly; I had to sit down and put my pounding head between my knees before I could continue, more slowly.

The steps went round and round and round; pretty steep.

I plodded on and up, trying to settle into a rhythm. This seemed to work but I was getting a hell of a headache. Lucky I was fit, not to mention determined. (Not to mention bloody stupid, it was starting to occur to me.)

The pillar got to the next storey — another open gallery — and didn't stop; it went on up. Seemed to go on for a good ways yet so I stuck with it. The stair case had no handrails and though it was a good couple of metres wide it would have been frighteningly open and exposed on the outer side if the babil plants hadn't been hanging growing all over the outside of the tower. As it was it was still pretty frighteningly exposed on the other side, but the best thing to do was not to think about it and certainly not to look.

I kept climbing.

Another level. My head was hurting like mad. I looked for the pillar but it wasn't there any more. Instead there was a whole network of twisted pillars, weaving this way and that with high altitude babil — thin weedy stuff — all over it, coating the floor of the gallery, netting the weave of the fretted stone wall.

I wandered, my feet tripping over the babil, looking for a strand of stonework with steps in it or on it so that I could go higher, my vision getting dark at the edges, my legs feeling bouncy and strange and something howling in my ears that might have been the wind and might not.

I don't know how long it was before I found the spyer, fallen amongst the babil, dead, crumpled, head shattered, skin dried, white bones poking through his kneepads. I remember looking up and thinking he must have falling from the open-work ceiling, and I saw his mask and the cylinder on his back but I just wandered off again, feeling like I was walking along this tunnel because that was all I could see and it seemed like hours later while I was still searching for another stairway or at least a door or something that I thought, Hey, maybe I could use the spyer's gear! and I started to turn round and almost tripped over him because I'd wandered in a circle.

There was old brown blood dried on the face mask but it fell away like dark dandruff when I knocked it. The oxygen in the tank was cold and it felt like it was freezing my lungs but my headache started to go and I wasn't looking down a tunnel all the time no more.

I finished the water in his canteen, took his jacket, hat and torch and left the poor bugger lying there.

The stairs were in a really obvious place, just along from the top of the pillar I'd climbed.

The lammergeiers' roost was on the next level. I got there at dusk and collapsed in a nest of dry babil and huge scratchy feathers. The din waked me and I started investigating, ending up looking down the big shaft.

I hear the crunching noise.

I swing the torch round aiming the beam down the tunnel; the warm breeze coming up the deep black shaft tugs at my jacket. The torch beam just disappears into the dark, swallowed up.

Something crunches again, then there's a noise of something coming whistling towards me.

I don't have time to duck and I don't see what hits me, but it bashes into my chest and knocks me backwards, the breath going Hoof!, out of my lungs. I feel myself start to go over the edge of the shaft and grab with one hand as the lip of stone skates under my bum. My hand misses.

I fall into the black throat of the shaft.

The roar of air builds up around me, tearing the mask off my face.

After a few seconds I get my breath back and I start screaming.

TRANSLATION — EIGHT — 4

I get tired of screaming. Even more I get tired of getting bashed on the head with the mask what has come off my face; it's still attached to the air tank on my back and it's slipped round behind my neck and is going thump thump thump on the back of my bonce.

I feel behind me and tear it away.

My ears are going pop pop pop. The air is blasting round me so hard there's hardly any point in me screaming anyway. It's almost totally dark; I've got a sort of gray sensation of the walls rushing past around me, and if I twist round I can look up and see a vague impression of a tiny patch of dark gray on the blackness.

Downwards, there's just blackness.

I try to crypt but I can't; don't know if it's because I'm moving too fast or because the shaft is shielded or because I'm too terrified to concentrate properly. I start screaming again, then stop, gulping for breath.

I'd have shat my pants by now but it's been so long since I ate that I can't.

The air is cold and I'm shivering but it's not freezing. I settle into a sort of floppy X-shape after a while, like I've seen skydivers do; I drift towards one wall, then manoeuvre myself away again. I have to keep swallowing to keep my ears from bursting. I try to think how far up I was and how long it's going to take me to fall to the bottom, if it's the bottom that's going to break my fall. I realise that there might be something between me and the bottom and I could hit at any moment and I start screaming again.

I stop after a while. Tears get whipped off my face but it's not me crying it's just the fierceness of the wind tearing at my eyes.

I've never died before. I don't know what it's like. I've heard from other people and I've been in the minds of bags what have died and got their impressions but they say it's different for everybody and I don't know what it'll be like for me and I was hoping not to find out for a while yet thanks very much but there we go.

I start wondering if they'll resuscitate me at all. Oh fuck; what if I'm in such big trouble they'll just lose my identity from the crypt? What if they catch my dying thoughts and then just interrogate me, or don't bother saving me at all?

I feel like I'm going to be sick.

The roaring around me goes on forever. My eyes are dry and sore. My ears hurt too.

Oh fuck I don't want to die.

I can't believe how long this is taking. I feel like I'm in crypt-time. It occurs to me maybe I am, maybe I crypted without knowing about it. But I can't be. I'm obviously not. I'm here, falling down this shaft, dammit. I try crypting again.

It works. I'm on the second basement level, practically at sea level.

How much further down can this bleeding shaft go?

/I port across into the crypt; at least I can avoid the moment of impact. My implants will pull me back when I die, so there won't be two of me, but at least… wait a bleeding minute.

According to the local hardware I'm still on the same level. The crypt thinks I'm stationary. What's going on here?

I double check, treble check, quadruple check. Yep; the cryptosphere thinks I've stopped.

I give a sort of mental gulp, then port back across to my body.

/The air is still screaming up round me. It's still totally black but with the thermal bit of my vision I can still make out the walls to either side. Sure enough, they do look a bit different; no impression of them hurtling past no more. I stare down.

I don't see nothing but blackness but now I think about it the sound is different somehow; even more of a roar.

Then suddenly there's lights everywhere, blinding me.

I close my eyes. I think; blimey, I never felt a thing. That's me dead and this is the long tunnel with the light at the end what everybody gets to see and I must have hit the bottom and not even felt it.

Except the roaring's still there and the wind is still pushing into my face. I open my eyes again.

I'm staring straight down at a sort of a hexagonal grid of wires or metal or something, and beyond the grid, a few metres further down, there's all these big propeller things, 7 of them, all whirling away and roaring and sending the air screaming up past me.

I look to the side.

There's a door in the wall level with me and a couple of big black mean looking birds with scaly necks perched there, looking at me, beady-eyed, their feathers ruffling in the draft.

I can't think what else to do. So I wave to them.

That was how we used to reach our home, one of the birds tells me.

I'm walking along a broad brightly lit tunnel. The two lammergeiers are keeping pace with me by sort of half-hovering in the air one on either side of me, their wings going whuf whuf, whuf whuf. I didn't even know they could do this.

I'm walking kind of funny because I think I did crap my pants just a little, but they don't seem to notice, or they're too pol­ite.

You mean you got blasted up there by those fans? I say, surreptitiously pulling at the seat of my pants.

Correct, says the bird (having to shout above the noise of its wings going whuf whuf).

So why'd you leave? I shout. And who was that up there who pushed me down?

We left because it was no longer safe, and we were needed down here, yells the bird. As to who pushed you into the shaft, I imagine it was probably a state employee.

What, a Security geezer or something? But-?

Please; I can't tell you any more. Our commander may be able to answer any other questions you have. Look; would you mind running?

Running? I says, Why, is there somebody after us? I glance behind expecting to see Security people pursuing us but there's just the long bright tunnel stretching way into the distance.

No, shouts the bird, it's just this pace is very tiring for us.

Sorry, I says, and break into a run. Doesn't do my chafed bum no good but it keeps the two lammergeiers happy, beating alongside.

And so that was how I arrived at the lammergeiers' HQ; breathless, on the double and with my pants spotted with cack.

The head lammergeier is a fierce big bugger of a bird; taller than me when he's perched and wings longer than I'm tall. He isn't no old guy neither, he's in his prime with sleek black and white feathers, steely looking talons, a naked neck that looks old and bright, and jet-black eyes. I don't know if he's got a name; we haven't been properly introduced.

He's sitting on a perch, I'm sat on the floor. The room is funnel shaped and the broad circular roof has an image of a blue sky with little fluffy clouds in it. There's another half dozen or so other lammergeiers perched around the room too.

You have been a proper pest to certain people, master Bascule, the big bird says, staring at me and rocking from side to side and sort of stamping its feet on the perch. A most persistent pest.

Thank you very much, I says.

That was not a compliment! the bird screeches, flapping.

I sit back, blinking (my eyes are still a bit sore after all that wind roaring past me when I fell). What do you mean? I ask.

It's quite possible that we have given away our new position here by turning on the lift fans so we could save your miserable hide! the bird shouts.

Well, sorry I'm sure, but I was told you might have some information about the whereabouts of a friend of mine.

What? the head bird says, sounding puzzled. Who?

It's an ant. Her name is Ergates.

The bird stares at me. You're looking for an ant? he squawks, and sounds incredulous.

A very special ant. (I narrow my eyes.) What was taken by a lammergeier.

The bird shakes its head. Well, it wasn't done by one of us, it says, shaking its feathers.

Oh yeah? I says.

We are chimerics, master Bascule. This… ant must have been taken by a wild lammergeier.

And where are they then? I ask. (Damn, thought I was on the right track at last!)

Dead, the head bird says.

I blink my eyes. Dead?

The state had them killed during yesterday evening when it realized we opposed it; most of them were mobbed by chimeric crows and brought down. We believe we were the real targets. Two of us were caught and destructed. All the wild lammergeiers are dead.

Oh, I said. Oh dear, I thought.

Hmm, I said, I don't suppose you know if any of them said anything about-?

Wait a minute, the bird says, waving one wing at me. It closes its eyes for a moment. It opens them again.

It looks steadily at me for a moment, then sort of half shakes its head. Well, master Bascule, it says. As I said, you have been nothing if not persistent. And you have not been frightened to risk your life. It stamps its feet again. There is something you might do.

Do for what, for who?

I can't tell you too much, young sir; it's best for you if you don't know too much, believe me; but there are some very important things happening right now, things which affect — and which will affect — all of us. The state — the people who have attacked our friends the sloths and have tried to kill you — are trying to prevent something happening. Will you give us your help in making it happen?

What happen? I ask, suspicious. They say there's an emissary from the chaotic bits of the crypt around, wanting to infect the upper layers.

The big bird shakes its wings impatiently. The emissary, it says, is called an asura and it is from one of the few parts of the crypt which has not been touched by the chaos. It carries within it the means of our salvation, but its mission is in jeopardy; the state opposes it to because the fulfilment of its mission would — conceivably — mean the end of the present power structure. Of course the state has used the bogey of the chaos to attempt to turn others against the asura and those who would aid it. The fact remains it is our only hope. If it does not succeed we are all lost.

I shift my bum a bit. I really should have asked to clean up a bit before all this. Not that a place where lammergeiers are is likely to be big on washrooms, judging from the state of some of the floors I've seen around here. I'm thinking through what the head geezer's just told me. It might be true, but I very much doubt I'm being told the whole truth here.

And what am I supposed to do? I ask.

The head bird looks distinctly uncomfortable, and flaps its wings a bit. It's dangerous, it says.

I'd kind of guessed that, I says urbanely, feeling pretty grown-up, thank you very much. What did you have in mind? I ask.

The lammergeier fixes me with its ice-black eyes. Going back up the fast-tower, it says. Only higher this time. (It stamps its feet, one after another, and the other birds do the same thing.) Much higher.

I sit back. Throats gone a bit dry.

You got a toilet I could use? I ask.

Looks like the whole bleeding fast-tower's just packed with shafts. We're here at the foot of another one. It's bigger than the one I fell down; a lot bigger. This is the one in the centre of the tower and it must be easily half a kilometre across. Very faint light filters down from… blimey, I don't know; hell of a far up, that's for sure.

We are here courtesy of the war, the head bird tells me. Both sides think the other controls this space.

Oh really.

Yes; the fact they may be about to reach an accommodation shortly is another reason for there being a degree of urgency about the present situation.

The head bird is perched with his half-dozen pals on what looks like a peace of crumpled, soot-blackened missile wreckage near the centre of the shaft base. Other lammergeiers are flitting about the place through the shadows. The rock floor of the shaft looks like it used to be smooth but it's all chipped and scarred now and littered with bits of broken machines. There's a double set of rails leading in from the side of the shaft which is where we came from; there's a big cavern there what looks like a museum of rocket flight or something; full of big sheds and mysterious bits of equipment and rusting missiles and big spherical tanks and telescopes and radar dishes and deflated silver balloons like discarded bolgounz.

I look straight up. Didn't know you could get vertigo looking up.

This is the main shaft, the head bird says, and poses. Once it led to the stars.

I look up again and I can believe it. My head spins at the thought & I almost fall over.

The top of the fast-tower has been inaccessible for as long as anybody or anything can remember, the lammergeier tells me. Many attempts have been made, mostly in secret, to reach its heights. All have failed, as far as we know. It lifts up one foot and looks down at the bit of missile it's perched on. You see some of the wreckage around you.

Uh-huh, I says. Something up there keeps shooting them down, yeah?

No; but there appears to be an armoured conical base to the tower's upper reaches at about 20 kilometres which nobody has been able to penetrate.

I look round at all the missile wreckage. The authorities don't usually let airplanes operate within the castle for fear of a crash weakening the structure, let alone missiles. You can't help wondering what sort of damage has been done up there by all this wrecked hardware.

So? I says.

We have a final vacuum balloon, the lammergeier says.

A what?

A vacuum balloon, it repeats. Technically, a very strong impermeable membrane enclosing a high vacuum and fitted with a harness.

A harness, I said.

And we have some high-altitude breathing equipment.

You have, have you? I says. (and am thinkin, oh-oh…)

Yes, master Bascule. We are asking you to take the balloon up as far as you can and then climb some way beyond the level the balloon attains.

Is that possible? How far up we talking?

It is certainly possible, though not without risk. The altitude is approximately 20 kilometres.

Has anybody else been up that high?

They have.

They get back down again?

Yes, the lammergeier says, stamping from side to side again and flapping its wings out a bit. Several missions have attained such heights in the past.

What am I supposed to do up there?

You will be given a package to take with you. All you have to do is deliver it.

Where? Who to?

You will see when you get there. I can't tell you any more.

If this is so urgent, how come you guys can't do it? I ask, looking round at the other birds.

One of our number tried, the head bird says. We believe he is dead. Another was about to mount a second attempt just before you appeared but we were not very hopeful of success. The problem is that we cannot fly to a half of the altitude required, and once the balloon will rise no more simply walking up steps appears to be the best means of gaining height. We are not built for walking. You are.

I think about all this.

It is a simple task in a sense, the head lammergeier says, but without it the asura's mission will surely fail. However, this is a dangerous undertaking. If you lack the courage to take it on then be sure that most humans would feel the same way. Probably the sensible thing to do is to turn it down. You are barely an adolescent, after all.

The head bird lowers his neck a little and looks round at his to nearest pals.

We ask too much, he says, sounding sorrowful. Come — and he starts to open his wings as if to fly away.

I swallow hard.

I'll do it, I says.

TRANSLATION — NINE — 4

Hoo-wee! I'm probably higher than anybody else in the whole wide world right now, excepting only the people in the fast-tower assuming there's anybody up there of course.

The balloon is a great enormous shadow above me. I'm hanging under it by what looks like a pair of threads from a wispy net of more threads what loop over the big sphere. The lammergeiers strapped these three oxygen tanks to my chest and gave me this light little package to put on my back. I've got another mask on now, too.

& a bottle of water.

& warmer clothes.

& a torch,

& a knife.

& a headache, though that's probably the least of my problems, but nevermind.

& I've got a parachute too, though that might have to go when I get a bit higher up.

The birds at the bottom of the shaft seemed to be in a bit of a hurry and I only got about 10 minutes of instruction on how to control the balloon while I was getting kitted out with the high-altitude clothing and stuff, but it boils down to using a couple of pairs of lines to pull hinged flaps like airbrakes which should steer me a bit, and (to control my speed of ascent) waiting for the balloon to slow down and then cutting off lengths of plastic tubing secured to the same threads holding me.

The lammergeiers brought the balloon out of a big shed in the cavern at the foot of the shaft; it ran on rails attached to the ceiling. The balloon is just a big sphere full of vacuum; it's as simple as that. It looks greyish and according to the birds is made of some sort of stuff similar to the fabric of the castle, so it must be pretty strong. The threads were already draped over the balloon.

What if it busts? I asked, joking really, but the head bird looked kind of awkward and said something about other models with lighter balloons inside them not being up to the job and if it was going to burst it would be low down probably and they would give me a parachute for lower altitudes.

Anyway, not to worry I said, kind of wishing I hadn't asked in the first place.

I got my flying lesson, they weighed me, then they gave me the various bits of stuff, strapped me in, pushed the balloon — with me hanging under it — along the rails out into the bottom of the shaft and along to just before where the rails ended. They attached the lengths of plastic tubing to the harness in front of me and that was us ready.

Good look, master Bascule, the head bird said. We wish you all the best.

Me too, I said, which might not have been very gracious, but at least it was true. Oh, and thanks for all your help, I said.

You are welcome, the head lammergeier said. It seemed to stiffen, then said, We'd better get on with it; things appear to be coming to a head. It went quiet for a moment, then seemed to nod to itself. I would advise you not to use the crypt for the moment, it told me.

Righty-ho, I said, and gave the thumbs up sign.

They pulled some levers and the rails above me swung up and open; the balloon took off with a whoosh of air, dragging me and the lengths of plastic tubing up with it. It was like falling upwards. Felt like my stomach was pulled down to my boots.

They either closed the doors to the covering alongside the bottom of the shaft or put the lights out, because it all went dark down there and I was left with just the dark greyness of the shaft walls. The slipstream wind tugged at my clothes.

The balloon seemed to go up pretty straight, though I pulled on the control lines connected to the hinged flaps just to make sure they worked.

Even with all that tubing and stuff we fairly shot up and I had to keep yawning to clear my ears. Some of the lammergeiers had flown up inside the shaft, and I waved to their shadowy shapes as I went past. The whole huge circle of the shaft bottom seemed to shrink like some closing shutter as me and the balloon whistled upwards; pretty soon the birds wheeling round inside the shaft had grown too small to see, and the bottom of the shaft was just a black circle getting slowly smaller.

I don't know how many minutes it took to get to where I needed oxygen, but it had got pretty bleeding cold by then, I can tell you. I was glad of the thermals and stuff they'd given me. My head was a bit sore by this time.

I turned on the first oxygen tank and took a breath. The balloon had slowed down a lot and I didn't want to use any more oxygen than I had too, so I cut a length of the tubing off; it was thick stuff like you'd make a drain or something out of and it fell away like a big stiff worm; the balloon picked up speed again and the thin air hissed past me.

The walls of the dark shaft were plain and boring, just lines and rails and occasional circular outlines that might have been doors but which were never open.

I'd let 5 of the 8 bits of plastic tubing go when I saw flashes down below, in the depths of the shaft. A bit later I heard some muffled bangs.

There were more brief flashes, and then I saw a little wavering spark of light what didn't fade; in fact the bugger seemed to be getting brighter and closer.

Oh fuck, I thought, and cut the strings holding the other three lengths of plastic tubing. The balloon whooshed up the shaft; the harness bit into my thighs and my arms were dragged down to my sides. The air roared distinctly around me and my headache got worse.

I watched the three bits of tubing falling away, hoping they'd hit whatever it was coming up after me, but they didn't. The rocket — which is what I was assuming it was — climbed on after me. I didn't want to cut my parachute free and I didn't think that would make much difference anyway and there was just a chance if the rocket destroyed the balloon I'd survive and be able to use the parachute (Ha! Who was I kidding?). I felt my bladder getting ready to lighten me a bit.

Water, I thought. I got my water bottle out and was about to chuck it away when the fire around the tail of the rocket went out. It still kept coming for bleeding ages mind you, and I was half waiting for some second stage or something to ignite, and still hesitating about chucking away the water bottle.

Never happened; the rocket got to within about half a kilometre or so and then just sort of toppled over and slowly started to fall away, tumbling end over end back into the darkness and eventually disappearing.

I breathed a sigh of relief that misted up my face plate. The balloon almost scraped the side of the shaft but with a bit of dextrous pulling and a modicum of swearing and panicking I got the damn thing back on the correct course.

There was a explosion at the bottom of the shaft.

No more rockets.

I couldn't see upwards naturally, but the base of the shaft was an awful long way away and I thought I had to be near the top of the thing by now. On the other hand, the balloon was still fairly racing upwards, so I guessed I was wrong. Sure enough, the climb went on for some time after that. My feet and fingers was starting to get really cold. My head was aching fit to burst.

I didn't feel I was breathing right, but couldn't remember what you were supposed to do to breathe right. I started to worry about what would happen if they'd taken the top off the tower or I drifted out the side through a hole and went on up into space. What'd I do then? I wondered. I looked down; my gloved fingers were fiddling about with the valves on top of the little bottles strapped to my chest. I shook my head. Doing this hurt a lot.

I think I must have blacked out for a bit because when I awake I was stationary.

My head still hurts like hell but at least I'm alive. The balloon is floating against one wall of the shaft and sort of bobbing me up and down very gently. It's a bit lighter at last. I can see the tracks going up the side of the shaft in great detail, but no doors. I try to think what I can throw away. An oxygen tank; there's one empty. I must have changed over to the second one after all.

I unscrew the tank with very cold gloved fingers and let it drop.

The balloon floats up very slowly.

My head feels tight and buzzy like it's going to burst and my whole body feels bloated like I'm a balloon myself. Lights sparking in front of my eyes and roaring in my head.

The balloon stops, bobbing again.

Still no sign of a door.

I rock back and forward as if I'm on a swing; this scrapes the balloon against the side of the shaft, but it can't be helped. Swinging quite hard, I can see a door — an open door! — a bit further up the shaft.

I take a drink from the water bottle, then let it drop into the darkness. The balloon bobs a bit higher over the next few minutes. Nearly there but not quite.

I might need the knife; can't throw that away. I look at my boots and my gloves, but I suspect it would be crazy to throw them away. I could throw away the parachute but then I'd have no chance at all of getting back down.

It looks pretty light up here; I take the torch out and throw it downwards as hard as I can.

I keep the balloon going from side to side as it floats up a bit higher. I'm level with the door; it's human sized and like a sort of square O shape. Looks dark inside there. I can almost reach the door but I need to make the balloon rock some more. The balloon floats down a bit and I shout and curse but I keep swinging and swinging and eventually I'm whipping back and forward in a almost complete half-circle and the door's just about in range; I fling out one leg and hook onto the sill of the doorway, then pull myself in with my legs.

I dunno; I must be dopey with the altitude or something because I just undo the harness and of course the balloon races off up the shaft, nearly dragging me out of the doorway at the same time; I stagger with one hand flailing out of the door while the other glove slides along the flange inside the doorway.

I pull myself back in, gasping for breath. I look up the shaft. There's a big black cone hanging down feeling the top of the shaft, and there's big long holes like sort of upwardly-sloped gill slits letting in some light around the walls of the shaft opposite the cone. The light looks like daylight, though it must be coming from a fair distance as this is the centre of the tower and everybody knows it don't taper much.

There's another couple of balloons up there where the one that brought me up is heading. I watch mine thump against the side of the black cone. It goes on up, nearly disappears out of one of the big long slits, then comes to a stop at the top of the shaft, between the cone and the shaft side, bobbing like a balloon lost to the ceiling at a kids' party.

Oh you silly fool Bascule, I think to myself. I look down the shaft. How am I going to get back down now? Still got the parachute but without the balloon to slow me down initially the lammergeiers reckon the parachute's nearly useless. Oh well, might as well leave the damn thing here. I take it off and dump it by the doorway.

Blimey it's cold. I peer into the darkness beyond the door.

There's another door and a sort of control-panel looking thing. Could be a lift I suppose but I should be so lucky. Sure enough, nothing happens when I press the symbols. I try crypting, very carefully and short-range, so it's really not like crypting at all. Blimey; there's nothing here! Not even any electrics nearby! I never been so far away from the crypt, from civilisation.

Anyway, the point is, this elevator's dead.

There's another door to one side. It isn't quite closed. I push it open. Very dark, but there's steps there all right. Very dark indeed. Wish I still had that torch. Spiral steps. Bloody big deep steps, too; must be only three to a metre. Oh well, I think, trying to encourage myself; I didn't have any other plans for today.

I start climbing.

I count the steps in hundreds, trying to keep to a steady rhythm. It doesn't get any darker or any brighter.

I try not to think about how high I am, even though there's a kind of pride in me that I've got this far. I also try not to think about how I'm going to get down, or about the people who shot the rocket at me and whether they will still be there if I am able to find a way back down. I pass another side door; it's locked. 500 steps and another door. It's locked too. I also try not to think of the things you hear about the fast-tower; about real ghosts or monsters from before the Diaspora or from the depths of space or just put here to guard it and stop silly bags from attempting to explore it. I spend quite a lot of my time trying not to think about all these things.

Another doorway. The doors are spaced every 256 steps. All locked so far.

1000 steps.

Suddenly there's something ahead of me, round the turn of the stair; something that looks like it's alive and waiting and crouched looking at me.

It's still almost pitch black but this thing's blacker, and it's huge and it's poised over me like some avenging angel of darkness. I feel for my knife. The thing above me on the steps doesn't move. I'd like to kid myself it isn't really there but it is. Can't find my knife. It's hanging on a bit of string somewhere here but I can't find it; oh blimey, oh fuck.

I find the knife and hold it out in front of me with one shaking hand. The black thing still doesn't move. I glance behind me. I can't go back. I stare at the motionless thing blocking my way.

It takes a few more moments for me to realise.

It's the frozen dead body of the lammergeier they sent up before. I breathe a bit easier (if you can be said to be breathing easier when your lungs feel like they're about to come out down your nose and your skin feels tight and about to split like a ripe fruit), but when I go up past the bird I try not to touch it.

I keep going.

There's a door at 1024 steps, blocking the way up. I try crypting but the doors electrically dead. There's a big sort of wheel thing on the front so I spin it and after sticking at first, it turns. After a awful lot of wheel whirling there's a click. The door sticks too but it opens eventually, hissing and scraping.

On and up.

1500 steps.

I have to switch to the third and last oxygen bottle at 1540 steps.

Keep going, keep going, keep going. Round and round and round and round forever and ever and ever…

2000. Keep climbing. Roaring ears, flashing eyes, sickness in my stomach, coppery taste of blood in my mouth.

I'm expecting something at 2048 steps but I can't remember what it is. I get there and it's a closed door. I remember the last one. Same performance here except this one sticks worse and I can hardly move the bugger.

2200. 2202. 2222. I want to stop here, I keep bashing into the walls and I'm frightened of falling all the way back down to wherever it was I started from. It's so cold. I can't feel my feet or my hands. Just my nose with my glove and can't feel that neither. Hack and spit. Spit goes crick in mid-air. That means something but I can't remember what. Something bad, I think. 2300. 2303. 2333. Not such a good place to stop. Think I'll keep going.

2444. 2555. 2666.

I don't know where I'm going nor barely where I am any more. I'm in a huge screw thing what is winding down into the earth as I climb up inside it.

2777. 2888. 2999, 3000.

Then there's an emptiness in my lungs. I try hard to think.

I'm in the fast-tower, in a stairway. 3000 steps. I can see some lights, but they're just in my eyes. Nothing in the tank, nothing in my lungs, nothing in my head.

256, something keeps telling me. 256. 256. 256. I don't know what it is but it keeps bleeding banging on about 256 256 256 all the damn time. 2560; there wasn't anything there was there? I stand there, swaying, suddenly thinking, Oh no! What if I missed a open door? What if I've gone past wherever it was I was supposed to be going?

256 256 256.

Oh shut up.

256 256 256.

Oh hell, all right; 256; what's 12 times 256?

Buggered if I know. Too difficult to work out.

256 256 256.

Fucking hell I'm going to keep going just to get away from this damn noise in my head.

256 256 256.

3050. Tunnel vision. No noise but roar. 3055. Sparks gone. Not sure if I'm still climbing or not. 3060. Highest corpse in the castle maybe. Shit, I'm going to die and I'm out of reach of the bleeding crypt; I'm going to really really die, forever.

Try crypting but it's hard, just like keeping my eyes open is hard. Get a hint of a reply though. A wee tiny small voice going:

Bascule! Keep going! Keep going! We're almost there!

Oh, it's Ergates. Ergates the little ant. Come back to me now.

That's nice. But I have to break the connection, it's too hard to maintain.

3065. Taking off the harness now; it's useless, like the crypt. I can see to do it though. Very cold now. Very very cold.

3070. More light.

3071. Light; doorway. Doorway to the side. Don't believe it. Just another hallucination.

3072. Open doorway, bright and warm. Lungs on fire. Going to keep going.

Fall.

Fall into the doorway. Hit the floor.

It's good to lie down.

Lights light up, sounds sound.

Flash!-flash!-flash! Hiss. Vhoot!-vhoot!-vhoot! Clunk. Flash!-flash!-flash! Hiss. Vhoot!-vhoot!-vhoot!

Blimey, I think, closing my eyes, I didn't know dying involved such a bleeding commotion…

TRANSLATION — TEN — 5

It's a very strange feeling waking up alive when you were fully expecting to be dead. Especially when you thought you were really really dead, like completely utterly and finally. You sort of come round slowly thinking; I must be dead, but I'm thinking, so I can't be, so what's going on here then? You are even a bit frightened about waking up any more in case there's some sort of unpleasant surprise in store, but then you think, well, I'm never going know what's going on unless I do wake up, and so you do.

I open my eyes.

Glory bleeding be, it's bright and warm. I'm lying on my back looking up at some sort of sculpture or mobile or something; a bloody huge one, too. There's this great big planet thing suspended right above me and all these others suspended from the ceiling and connected with hoops and stuff. I sit up. I'm in some kind of big circular room with dark windows; stars out of one side, the Encroachment on the other. The thing above me seems to be a model of the solar system and it takes up most of the space in the room. In the middle of the room, under the big globe of the sun, there's a bunch of couches, seats and desks and stuff. There's a guy there, standing on a desk, holding his hand up to the model sun. He says something, nods, then gets down and comes over to me. He's got blond hair and golden eyes and skin like dark polished wood. He's wearing a pair of shorts and a little waistcoat. He waves to me.

O hello, he says, are you all right?

Not too bad, I say, which is true. My sore head's a lot better and the rest of me isn't aching too much either but if I had to pick one improvement above all the others it would have to be the fact I don't feel like I'm just about to die anymore.

Welcome to the High Great Tower, the hollow blossom of the fastness, he says. This is the Orrery Room. May I help you up?

Thanks, I says, accepting his hand and getting to my feet.

The lights in the room flicker. The man looks up and smiles.

Ah, he says. He looks back at the centre of the room, goes still for a second, then looks at me and with a great big smile on his face says, Faith moves mountains. From our hollowness is discharged our central purpose; it is sent that we may be delivered.

Pardon? I said.

Come; let me find you something to eat and drink.

Well, I went with the guy, but I don't mind saying I was giving him a funny look behind his back. He got me to sit in a chair in the centre of the room and started fiddling with some sort of control thing on one of the desks.

It's been so long, he says, scratching his head. What would you like? he asks.

Frankly chum, I said, I'm parched. I fancy a cup of tea but anything wet would do.

Tea, he says, scratching at his noddle again. Tea; let me see. He punches some more controls.

I look up at the model of the sun hanging over my head. I still don't feel too brilliant but I'm a lot better than I was. I have a stretch and look around. Lying on a nearby desk there's the package I was supposed to deliver here.

Oh I says. Excuse me, is that package for you then? and point at it.

What? he says, turning and looking at it. Oh, I suppose so, if you like, he says, and turns back to the controls.

Ahem, I says. I don't want to appear ungrateful or nothing but I did nearly die getting that package up here; would you mind telling me what was in it?

In it? the guy says, frowning at me. Oh, there wasn't actually anything in it. He goes back to the screen. Tea, he says, tea tea tea. Hmm.

I stare at him.

Well then, hullo? I'm saying excuse me, but well then; what the bleeding hell was the point of me coming up here then?

The guy turns and smiles at me, then turns away again.

I just sit there shaking my head and feeling like a prize idiot.

The chap with the golden locks mutters to himself and eventually gets a sort of cylinder to appear up out of the desk. He reaches inside and brings out of a cup of stuff which he shows me.

Tea? he says.

I sniff the cup and shake my head. Cola, I says. But it'll do. Cheers.

Frankly it's crap cola but beggars can't be choosers.

Something to eat? the guy says, looking hopeful.

I think about this. What would you recommend? I ask.

I drink another few cups of soda — it's getting better with each cup — while the guy tries to get some cakes together but without much success. He's staring at a pile of steaming pink goo the desk's just produced when he straightens and looks at me, smiling and looking dead happy.

Then something drops onto my shoulder from above.

It's time to stare again. So I stare.

Bascule; hello again. Well done. Mission accomplished. You know, I lost count of the times I cursed you for your damned persistence over the past couple of days, when far too much of my time seemed to be spent making arrangements for your safety which you seemed to devote all your efforts to frustrating, but in the end I needed help and you were there to provide it. I thank you. Well, something to tell your grandchildren, I suppose. Don't you think?… Bascule? Bascule, can you hear me?

I stare at the tiny little thing sitting on my shoulder.

Ergates? I says hoarsely.

Who else?

Is it really you?

You know any other talking ants?

What the bleeding hell you doing up here?

Delivering a message.

That's what they told me, I says, glancing at the blond guy, who's still muttering and punching buttons.

A necessary fabrication. What you were really delivering was me.

You?

Me. After I abandoned my balloon I had got so far up the steps from the central shaft, but then it became obvious I could go no further because of the door — doors in the plural as it turned out — blocking my way. Very frustrating. I was able to contact the lammergeiers but the bird they sent to help me could not even reach me before the poor creature died. You were like the answer to our prayers. I just hopped on you as you passed and hitched a lift.

So I did hear you when I tried to crypt! I thought I was dying!

Actually I think you were, Bascule, but you also did hear me.

Anyway, I says, pointing at the blond punter struggling with the food-desk thing, why couldn't this guy have come and helped you?

He did not know I was on my way. The fast-tower is not the easiest of places to communicate with even if we had wanted to announce I was on my way. He only knew we were here when I was able to activate the door to the bottom-most live floor.

I just look at that damn ant for a while.

So are you this asura everybody's been talking about?

No, Ergates says, laughing. Though I was created in a similar manner. My task was to act as a key for the tower access systems; they were kept separate from the rest of the tower's functions so that if the tower AIs were ever infected with the chaos they could not facilitate a physical invasion of the tower's upper reaches. I suppose I'm a sort of micro-asura if you like, though all I've really done is press a lift button.

But what about that bleeding lammergeier what snatched you from Mr Zoliparia's; that was all a set-up, was it?

Of course.

But you shouted my name and went Eek!

Had to make it look convincing.

You might have said goodbye.

I waved my antennae; what more you want?

Bloody hell. I stare into the distance, then look up at the mobile.

So what's going to happen now? I ask. What were you doing up there?

I was delivering a message to a receptor chip buried in the model earth. The code itself is meaningless but it's supposed to activate the relevant systems. Everything seems to be working, though there are reports we may not have time to test the elevators. I have to say I didn't expect my arrival and that of the asura to occur in quite such close proximity.

Cake! the guy says, and brings over a plate covered with small steaming brown lumps. I sniff them.

Maybe something in the savoury line might be more appropriate, I suggest. The guy looks like his crest just fell.

Oh! Hash browns; my favourite! Ergates says. Let me at them.

The guy looks happier and offers the plate to Ergates, who climbs onto it and lifts a crumb bigger than she is and then returns to my shoulder.

Your eyes are bigger than your stomach, I tell her.

I'm an ant; my eyes are bigger than my stomach.

Smart ass.

Then the golden-eyed geezer straightens, looks unfocused for a bit and says, Ah, we have somebody requesting to join us. Elevator West North West.

I'm about to say, So? What you telling me for? when Ergates speaks;

Is it her? she says.

Yes, the guy replies. (I give him a funny look; I thought only I could hear Ergates speak.) and one of the winged emissaries, the guy continues, and another she will vouch for.

I would suggest we allow them to ascend, says Ergates.

Very well, the guy says.

We're going to have company, Ergates tells me.

There were three sets of doors; they hissed open in sequence, revealing a small cylindrical elevator with couches similar to those in the waiting room. A wave of cold air spilled from the lift's opened doors. Gadfium and Asura walked into the chilly interior. The lammergeier hopped in after them, cackling excitedly.

The doors closed, one after another.

The elevator lifted quickly; Gadfium sat down along with Asura, who wore an expression that seemed both relaxed and concentrated at the same time. She glanced once at her ring.

The lammergeier looked uncomfortable under the vertical acceleration.

It went on for some time.

TRANSLATION — TEN — 6

Well here we are, us exiles trapped in the tower. It's been a whole month so far since we took refuge up here. Everybody seems happy enough so far.

There's me, Asura, Madam Gadfium and lots of lammergeiers. We've got a whole bloody flock of them birds up here; a load of them managed to get to the lift what brought up Asura and Madam Gadfium, before the Security geezers found it. Now they can't get up and we can't get down but I know where I'd rather be. Asura says it don't matter anyway as there's other lifts they haven't found, though we shouldn't be in any hurry to use those just yet.

… What happened when Asura and Madam Gadfium got here was dead simple; Asura went straight up to the big globe of the sun and put her hand up and touched it and stayed that way for a minute or so while the rest of us looked on, then she sat down and closed her eyes.

What happens now? I asked the golden-eyed guy.

We'll know if it's worked in 16 minutes, he said.

16 minutes, I thought.

Rang a bell, somehow, but I couldn't think quite which one.

Let me make some introductions, I heard Ergates say…

The fast-towers brains got the chaos but it didn't seem to be bothered. The golden hair-and-eyes bloke doesn't seem to have changed since the chaos got into the tower's computers but then frankly he was a few feathers short of a full wing to start with so no change there.

Asura says the whole nature of the chaos may be about to change soon anyway, or at least the way we look at it may be about to change, which would amount to the same thing. First we got to stop fighting it though.

I'll believe it when I see it.

The old fast-tower's a fascinating place; there's a lot more to it than just the big room with the orrery; that's like just one little room out of hundreds. Bits are a bit dilapidated and one or two bits are off limits because they were punctured by meteorites and beyond repair and so couldn't be re-pressurised and heated when the tower woke up, but most of it's up and running again and it's just a total hoot. Amazing views, for a start.

There's loads of fascinating machines up here; great big huge ones like space guns and stuff but also lots of little robots. The robots were trying to fix some of the big machinery they've got up here. They mostly broke down when the tower got the chaos and a lot of the ones that didn't had to be deactivated, but some of them still run on their own on-board computers, which aren't very clever but let them move and do stuff.

It's a bleeding education living up here, I tell you; there's telescopes and a museum of space flight with working simulators and hundreds of hotel rooms and swimming baths and flumes and ice rinks and a huge and totally brilliant spiral ski slope and a whole bloody squadron of space planes though they're far too old to be used and would certainly blow you to smithereens if you tried to fly them, which is a pity. There's also rockets and satellites and all sorts of stuff and as Asura pointed out when she was negotiating with this guy Oncaterius and the other bags downstairs, some of the stuff we got up here could make a really nasty mess of the castle if we was to start dropping it or launching it on them. She said they became greatly less aggressive when she sent them pictures.

Anyway, the rulers have got enough on their plates at the moment as it is without worrying about us; all sorts of shake ups happening down there. The Cryptographers and Engineers have got together and are trying to get the wormhole operational, even though it looks like we won't need it for escaping. Old Adijine is still King but he's having to fight increasing calls for his abdication and all the clans have demanded and got representation on the Consistory but even so bags still aren't happy and feel they've been misled and want more info and say. Apparently the fastest growing political movement at the moment is one calling for Asura to be made Queen or President or something. Watch that space, like they say.

We've got access to the crypt now too, and I've been in touch with Mr Zoliparia, who was most relieved I was all right and is currently in a tricky position in our Go game. I also contacted the Little Big Brothers. Don't think I'll be doing any Telling for a while; we didn't lose much to the chaos but in the current State Of Emergency I'm not the sort of person the Little Bigs want to associate with, which is fair enough; plenty to do up here and I could always go freelance if I missed it, which I don't.

Asura must have mistakenly thought I was upset at getting knocked back by the Brothers because just afterwards she made me a present of her ring. I was really pleased anyway but even more so when I realised what it actually is. It's got a little red stone in it and if you look really closely you can see something moving about in there sometimes and if you try to crypt into it you can hear something way way in the distance going gidibibibigidie (etc), very tiny and small and far away and plaintive.

Ha ha ha, I says.

Nope, I'm pretty happy here and so are the others I think. Asura and Madam Gadfium talk a lot and do lots of studying and there's another Madam Gadfium what lives in the fast-tower's brains and is helping Asura talk with the chaos. Ergates makes me learn lots of stuff too, claiming my education isn't over yet and she's probably right I suppose I've still got things to learn.

As for the whole reason Asura was sent here in the first place, to deliver the message which was supposed to put everything in motion in general and Do Something about the Encroachment, well that appears to have gone smoothly, after an iffy start.

The first sign of what was going on was a bad one; the amount of light from the sun dropped by an eighth, overnight. Everybody, even the scientists, got in a bit of a blue funk about this. There were riots in the castle and elsewhere and I myself remember thinking, Oh fuck, and What have we done? and What is to become of us? That sort of thing. But then from that day on the light started to increase again, very slowly but continually.

The sun shone down, the moon did likewise, the planets continued on their allotted paths, but it was like the big old nasty Encroachment had gone into reverse, however unlikely that might sound.

It was some time before the astronomers spotted what was really happening and it was an even longer time before they convinced themselves it was true, but it was and it is and now we know exactly what the bags of the Diaspora left us with to get us out of trouble, and it's a fearsome engine indeed.

The sun shines a tiny bit stronger every day, and though it'll be a long time before anybody can see it with the naked eye, the stars have moved.

The End.