Feersum Endjinn

1

'In those days the world was not a garden and the people were not idle as they are now. Then on the face of the world there was real wilderness, empty of humanity, and the wilderness that humanity created, the wilderness that it packed with itself and which it called City. People toiled and people idled and the toilers worked for themselves and yet not for themselves and the idle did no work or little work and what they did, did only for themselves; money was all-powerful then and people said they made it work for them but money cannot work, only people and machines can work.'

Asura listened, fascinated but confused. The speaker was a thin middle-aged woman dressed in a plain ivory-coloured smock. Her feet were hobbled with a half-metre-long iron rod attached to wood-lined cuffs whose internal surfaces had been polished smooth and bright by friction with her skin. Her hands were similarly secured. She stood in the centre of the open gondola, chanting more than talking, her gaze raised to the belly-bulging underside of the airship above and her voice raised to cope with the noise of the craft's engines and the slipstream swirling over the gondola's semi-transparent bulwarks. Asura looked around, wondering at the effect this strange, declaiming woman must be having on her fellow travellers. She was surprised to find that she seemed to be the only person paying the woman any attention.

Asura had been standing at the airship's deck rail watching the plain roll past beneath and had seen the first line of blue hills appear through the haze. She had been waiting for her first glimpse of the great castle, but the woman's steady voice and odd words had intrigued her.

She left the rail to find a seat close to the woman. As she moved between the tables and chairs, she looked towards the bow of the gondola, where the upper deck's round transparent nose bulged out, part of a huge sunstruck circle veined with the dark lines of struts, and suddenly she was reminded of something she'd seen in her dreams last night.

She sat down, feeling dizzy.

In a great dark space there was a huge circle, subdivided into smaller circles by thin dark lines like rings of ripples in a disturbed pool, and further subdivided by similarly fine lines radiating from the very centre of the circle. The circle was an enormous window; stars shone beyond it.

She could hear a clock ticking.

Something moved at one edge of the great circle. Looking closely she could see it was a figure; somebody walking along the horizontal ray-line from the edge to the centre of the circular window. She looked more closely still, and saw that the person was herself.

She walked along until she stood in the very centre of the vast aperture, looking out through a central pane of some substance she knew was more hard and clear and strong than glass. Far below, there was a landscape of luminous grey; a circular depression of shallow, undulating hills surrounded by cliffs and mountains, lit from one side and full of deep, black shadows. The clock still ticked. She stood for a while, admiring the stars, and thinking that the circle of the great window mirrored the shape of the circular plain it overlooked.

Then the clock-sound speeded up, ticking faster and faster until it was a ripping, buzzing noise in her ears; the shadows swung across the landscape and the bright orb of the sun tore across the sky, then abruptly the sun vanished and the noise of the clock changed, took on a kind of rhythm until the noise speeded up again and became the buzz it had been before. She could barely see the landscape below. The stars blazed.

Then the stars started to disappear. They went out slowly at first, in a single region of the sky off to her right and near the dark horizon, then more quickly, until the stain of darkness was eating up a quarter of the sky, rising like a vast curtain thrown up from the ghostly grey mountains. Now a third of the sky was utterly dark, the stars going out one by one or in groups; shining, then dimming, then flickering and disappearing altogether as the darkness consumed half the sky, then two thirds.

She stared, open-mouthed, choosing brighter stars in the path of the blackness and watching them as they vanished.

Finally almost the whole sky was black; just a few stars shone steadily above the distant mountains to her right, while to her left the darkness had touched the horizon, where the sun had shone earlier.

Abruptly the clock was back to normal, and the sun blazed again — from a different angle now, but still just within the region of the darkness — sending a cold, steady light across the crater floor to the grey cliffs and crags of the rim-wall.

Earth. Cradle. Very old. There are many ages. Age within age. Age of nothingness comes first, then age/instant of infinitesimal/infinite explosion, then age of shining, then age of heaviness, of different air/fluids, then the tiny but long ages of stone/fluid and fire, then the age of life, smaller still, and living with and in all the other ages, then the age/moment of thought-life: here we are, and all goes very quickly and at the same time all other types/sizes of ages go on but then there is next age/moment of the new life that the old life makes, and that is much faster again, and that is where we are now too. And yet.

The old ape-man looked sad. He had grey hair and grey sagging skin on a skinny frame and he was dressed in a strange costume of yellow and red diamonds topped by a pointed hat with a bell on the end. His soft shoes were pointed too, and also had bells at their tips. The only noise he could produce was a chattering laugh; he was the size of a child but his eyes looked wise and sad. He sat on the steps that led up to a big chair; the large room was empty except for her and the ape-man and one wall of the room was window, double-skinned and curved and ribbed with a fine tracery of dark lines, though much smaller than the circular window she had seen earlier. This window too looked out onto a landscape of shining grey.

The beautiful globe hanging in the black sky above the shining grey hills was Earth, the ape-man had told her. He talked by sign, using his arms and fingers. She found that she could understand him but not reply, though just by nodding, frowning or raising her eyebrows it was possible to express herself well enough, it seemed.

Eyebrows? she signalled.

And yet, the ape-man sighed, expression still downcast. Ages are in conflict, he told her. Each move, own pace, not often come together, fight. But now: happens. Age of air/fluids and age of life fight. Two ages of life, too. For all who feel sadness sometimes, there comes sadness now. For all those who die sometimes, there comes death now, perhaps.

She frowned. She was standing, still dressed in her night-blue gown, in front of the wide window. Every now and again, during pauses in the ape-man's signing, she glanced at the Earth and the steady stars hanging visible beyond its brightness. Her gown was the colour of the barren, ghostly landscape outside.

She shrugged.

People/humans made much; big things on Earth. Biggest thing, smallest thing too. Everywhere. Then inside this thing, fight. Then peace but not peace; peace for a while, short now. Now the age of air/fluids comes, threat to all. All must act. Most danger if biggest/smallest thing not act. Biggest/smallest thing fight with self, cannot talk to all of self; bad. Other ways of talking; good. Most special good if self talk to self.

The ape-man looked almost happy for a moment, and she smiled to show she understood.

You.

She pointed at herself. Me?

You.

She shook her head, then shrugged, spreading her arms.

Yes, you. I tell you now. You forget in future, but you also know still, too. Is good. Perhaps all safe.

She smiled uncertainly.

'Ah, there you are,' Pieter Velteseri said, appearing from the steps leading to the gondola's lower decks. He parted the tails of his coat and sat beside Asura, planting his silver-topped cane between his feet. He looked at her.

She blinked rapidly for a few seconds and then shook her head, as though just waking up.

Pieter glanced at the woman standing speaking in the middle of the gondola's floor. He smiled. 'Ah; our Resiler has found her voice, has she? I didn't think she would stay silent for long.' He placed his hands on top of the cane and rested his chin on top of his hands…

'She is… Resisla?' Asura said, glancing at Pieter and frowning as she tried to pick up the thread of the woman's speech again.

'She is a Resiler; one who resiles, or recoils,' he said in a low voice. 'In a sense we all are, or our ancestors were, I suppose, but she is of a sect who believes we need to resile further.'

'No one else listens,' Asura whispered. She looked around the others on the gondola's open deck. They were all talking among themselves, or watching the view, or sitting or lying with their eyes closed, either snoozing or experientially elsewhere.

'They will have heard all this before,' Pieter said quietly. 'Not word for word, but…'

'We are guilty,' said the Resiler. 'We have treasured our comfort and our vanity by giving shelter to the beasts of chaos which infest the crypt so that humanity's part of it now is barely one part in a hundredth, and that wasted, that turned over to the worship of self and vanity and dreams of sovereignty over what we claim to have renounced…'

'Is all she says true?' Asura whispered.

'Ah,' Pieter said, smiling. 'Now, that is a question. Let's say it is all based on truth, but the facts are open to different interpretations from the one she supplies.'

'… The King is no King and all know this; well and good, but neither is what appears to be our good work good, but only a disguise for the face of our foolish ignorance and ill-fitness.'

'The King?' Asura said, looking puzzled.

'Our ruler,' Pieter supplied. 'I've always thought Dalai Llama would have been a better description, though the King has more power and less… holiness. In any event, the royal term is preferred. It's complicated.'

'Why is she in irons?' Asura asked.

'It's a symbol,' Pieter said, a teasing, mischievous look on his face. Asura nodded, her expression serious, and Pieter smiled again.

'She seems very sincere,' Asura told Pieter.

'A word with oddly positive connotations,' Pieter said, nod­ding. 'In my experience those who are most sincere are also the most morally suspect, as well as being incapable of producing or appreciating wit.'

'What happens happens,' continued the Resiler, 'and cannot be made to unhappen. We are the equation; we cannot deny the algebra of the universe or the result it brings us. Die peacefully or in hysterics, with grace or with despair; it matters not. Prepare or ignore; it matters not. Very little matters very much and almost nothing matters greatly. Shanti.'

'I find myself half drawn to that last statement,' Pieter told Asura as the Resiler sat down. Nearby there was a group of people who had been laughing and joking among themselves during the course of her speech; a highly dressed woman rose from among them and went over and placed some sweetmeats in the plain wooden bowl at the Resiler's side. The Resiler thanked her and ate with awkward grace. She smiled thinly at Asura as the other woman sashayed back to her friends, laughing.

'Come, my dear,' Pieter said pleasantly, rising and taking the girl's elbow. 'We'll take the air on the lower viewing deck, shall we?' They rose. 'Ma'am,' he said, nodding to the Resiler as they passed.

'Don't worry,' Asura said to the Resiler as Pieter led her to the stairs. 'It's going to be all right.' She winked at her.

The woman looked briefly baffled, then shook her head and continued to eat, her movements made strange by the iron rod linking her wrists.

Asura's smooth brow furrowed into a frown as she and Pieter descended to the main lounge. 'She eats,' she said, glancing back up. 'How does she clean herself after toilet?'

Pieter laughed lightly. 'You know, I never thought of that. The alternatives are all unpleasant, aren't they?'

Below, from the promenade deck, they saw the forested hills stretching out around them and, from the tiers of seats facing the lower section of the round transparent nose, the first hazy hints of the towers and battlements of Serehfa.

Asura clapped her hands.

That morning, over breakfast, she had told them something of her dreams and Pieter had looked at first alarmed and then resigned. She had not told them all the details; just that she had seen the tunnel of light and been in an enchanted carriage journeying across the dusty plain towards the great castle beyond the hills.

'Lucky you,' Lucia Chimbers had told her. 'Most of us have to concentrate quite hard to have dreams that inter­esting.'

'Sounds like she might have implants after all,' Gil said, helping himself to more ortanique juice.

Pieter shook his head. 'I think not.' He frowned. 'And I do wish people would stop calling them implants; they're not, if you're born with them and they're part of your genetic inheritance, reversible or not.'

Gil and Lucia smiled at him with practised indulgence.

Pieter dabbed a napkin at his lips and sat back, surveying their young guest, who sat very upright with her hands in her lap and her eyes sparkling.

'Do I take it then that you wish to leave, young lady?'

'Please call me Asura,' she said. She nodded vigorously. 'I think I go to castle.'

'Bit touristy, going so soon,' Lucia said. Pieter glanced wearily at her.

'Everyone should see Serehfa,' Gil said, drinking noisily.

'Do you wish to go today?' Pieter asked.

'As soon as possible, please,' the girl said.

'Well,' Pieter said, 'I suppose one of us ought to go with you, really.'

'Don't look at me —' Lucia began.

'I merely wondered if we might prevail upon you to lend the young lady —'

'Asura!' she said, happily.

'— to lend Asura,' Pieter said with a sigh, 'your clothes on a rather longer term —'

'Take them.' Lucia waved one hand, then took Gil's in hers.

'I shall want to be back in time for the others returning,' Pieter told Asura. 'I may have to dump you at the gates, even assuming we can find a flight in time.'

'As soon as possible, please,' Asura repeated.

'Book her into a sisters' hostel in the place or something,' Gil said. 'Or get a clan member to look after her.'

'I may do both,' Pieter said, then sat back and closed his eyes. 'Excuse me,' he murmured.

Lucia Chimbers and Gil poured each other coffee. Asura looked intently at the older man, who presently opened his eyes again and said, 'Yes, we're booked on a flight from SF del Apure, leaving at noon. I can be back on the return service a little after midnight. The jalop claims to be charged up, so I'll drive us to the rail station. I've left a message for Cousin Ucubulaire in Serehfa. I dare say you two will manage to keep yourselves occupied without me?' he said to Gil and Lucia, who both smiled.

'Between you and me, my dear,' Pieter shouted an hour later as he drove the whirring battery car along the dusty road from the house to Cazoria, the nearest town, 'I put you in the blue room on purpose last night; the bed's headboard is fitted with a receptor system.' He smiled over at her.

They had the sunlight-powered car's top off; the wind whis­tled round their ears. ('Ruins the efficiency,' Pieter had told her, 'but it's much more fun.' He wore goggles and a tie-down hat, and had given her similar equipment. She wore loose trousers, a blouse and a light jacket.) 'I thought you might be able to avail yourself of the facilities. If you hadn't, well then, no harm done.'

Asura held onto her hat and smiled broadly at him. Then she frowned, and said, 'The bed made me dream?'

'Not exactly, but it let you dream… in concert, shall we say? Though you must have a remarkable gift to adapt so quickly and so easily.'

They drove on through the morning, between wild fruit-forests of banana and orange. Asura was enjoying the drive.

'Ah, Asura?' Pieter said.

'Yes?'

'That is not regarded as acceptable in polite society. Or, come to think of it, in almost any society, normally.'

'What? This?'

'Yes. That.'

'No? But it feels good. It is beginning with car shaking.'

'I don't doubt. Nevertheless. One does that sort of thing in private, I think you'll find.'

'Oh, all right.' Asura looked mildly puzzled, then adjusted her hands and sat with them clasped demurely in her lap.

'There's the town,' Pieter said, nodding ahead to where a collection of white spires and towers were rising above the greenery. He glanced at his young passenger and shook his head. 'Serehfa. Good grief. I hope I'm doing the right thing…'

2

Chief Scientist Gadfium sat in the whirlbath with the High Sortileger Xemetrio; the pumps hummed, water frothed and bubbled, steam hissed from wall pipes and wrapped them in its hot, dense fog, and music played loudly.

They sat side by side facing each other, each whispering into the other's ear.

'They sound half mad, or it sounds half mad,' Xemetrio said, snorting. 'What is all this nonsense about "Love is god" and the "Hallowed centre"?'

'It sounds formalised,' Gadfium whispered. 'I don't think it really means anything.'

Xemetrio drew back a little in the swirling steam; it was so thick Gadfium could not see the walls of the bathroom. 'My dear,' Xemetrio whispered urbanely once his mouth was alongside her ear again. 'I am the High Sortileger; everything means something.'

'You see; that is your faith, even though you wouldn't call it such; theirs is expressed in this quasi-religious —'

'It isn't quasi-religious, it's completely religious.'

'Even so.'

'And Sortilegy boils down to a matter of statistics,' Xemetrio said, sounding genuinely offended. 'Anything less spiritual is difficult to —'

'We're moving off the point. If we ignore the religious trappings and concentrate on the information itself —'

'Context matters,' the Sortileger insisted.

'Let us assume the rest of the signal is true.'

'If you insist.'

'Abstract: they confirm our fears concerning the cloud and the lack of any communication from the Diaspora, and they know of our attempt to construct rockets. They know about this idiotic war between Adijine and the Engineers and that it isn't going to lead anywhere, and they seem concerned about some "workings" going on in the level-five south-western solar affecting the fabric — we assume they mean the fabric of the castle mega-structure itself.' Gadfium wiped beads of moisture from her brow. 'Do we know any more about what's going on there?'

'There's a full Army unit there and they have a lot of heavy equipment, including something they dug out of the southern revetment last year,' Xemetrio told her. 'It's all being kept very quiet.' He leant back and adjusted a control by the side of the tub. 'They built a new hydrovator into the Southern Volcano Room just to supply the garrison. That was where Sessine was heading when he was killed.'

'Sessine was always reckoned one of those who might have been sympathetic to us; do you think — ?'

'Impossible to say. There was nothing to link us and him, though it is feasible he was assassinated for political reasons.' Xemetrio shrugged. 'Or personal ones.'

'The signal spoke of "workings",' Gadfium said. 'Mine work­ings, perhaps? What is beneath that room?'

'The floor is unpierced; it cannot signify.'

'But if the device found in the southern revetment…'

'If somebody had finally found a machine able to create new holes in the mega-structure and made it work and dragged it all the way up here, they'd be burrowing into the ceiling of the sacristy, in no-man's land between the King's forces and the Engineers of the Chapel.'

'But the signal spoke of their concern over the fabric. If that is what they meant —'

'Then,' the Sortileger said, sounding exasperated, 'there's nothing we can do for now, unless we are to confess all to the King and his Security people. What else have you decided we can tell from your mysterious signal, assuming it's not all some bizarre self-delusion on the part of the mad people who watch stones slide and call it science?'

'I trust them.'

'Like you trust the signal itself,' Xemetrio said sourly. 'We are conspirators, Gadfium; we cannot afford so much trust.'

'We are not yet acting upon such trust and so risk nothing.'

'Yet,' scoffed the Sortileger, cupping water over his shoulders.

'Whoever sent the signal,' Gadfium went on, 'believes the answer lies in the Cryptosphere.'

'I'm sure the true answer does, along with every possible false answer and no way to distinguish between them.'

'They appear to believe that, as we have always suspected, there is a conspiracy to thwart all efforts to avoid the catastrophe.'

'Though why the King and his cronies should particularly want to die when the sun blows up is of course a trifle difficult to fathom. We're back to speculating about ultra-secret survival projects or some bizarre fatalism.'

'Neither of which is utterly unfeasible, but the act of the conspiracy is all that matters for now, not its origin. Lastly, the signal-senders confirm both that there is, or may be, an already designed-in method of escape —'

'What, though? Switch on some galactic vacuum-cleaner? Move the planet?'

'You're the Sortileger, Xemetrio…'

'Huh. We daren't run that question through the system, but if I had to guess, I'd stick with the obvious answer; there's some part of Serehfa which conceals an escape device. That may be what the war with the Chapel is really about. Maybe the Engineers have access to it and Adijine doesn't.'

'Whatever. The signal also suggests that the data corpus itself may hold the solution and be attempting to access it.'

'The mythical asura,' the Sortileger said, shaking his head.

'Such a method would make sense, given the chaotic nature of the crypt,' Gadfium whispered. 'The possibility of the data corpus' corruption may have been foreseen —'

'Amazing Sortilegy,' Xemetrio muttered.

'— just as was the possibility of a threat to the Earth that could not be dealt with by automatic space defence mechanisms. Physical separation of the information required to activate the escape device would ensure that no matter the delay it could never be corrupted by the crypt.'

'Though it still has to be initiated,' Xemetrio said. 'But let's not lose sight of the fact that all this supposition is built on the word of some historically, how shall I put it?… eccentric observers of sliding stones, and that even if they are to be trusted, what we've actually got is an intellectually suspect, semi-garbled message originating from somewhere within the top ten kilometres of the fast-tower; we still have no idea who or what is up there and what their motives are.'

'We also have little time to squander, Xemetrio. We have to decide what to do and how to reply. You're sure you can get this signal and our appraisal to the others safely?'

'Yes, yes,' the High Sortileger snapped; Gadfium asked this question virtually every time they had information they had to spread around their network, and each time Xemetrio had to reassure that as High Sortileger he could move data within the data corpus without Security knowing all about it.

'Good,' Gadfium said, apparently relieved afresh. 'Clispeir is going to heliograph an acknowledgment to the fast-tower's signal and a request for more information, but we must make up our minds; do we act now, merely get ready to act, or go on as before, waiting?'

The High Sortileger looked sadly at the glistening mountains of foam bobbing around him. 'I vote we wait for more information. Meantime, I'll start a quiet search for your asura.' He shook his head. 'Besides, what could we do?'

'We could find out what's going on in the fifth-level south­western solar; that would be a start.'

'I've tried that; most of the military don't know.'

'Perhaps the shade of Count Sessine could answer the ques­tion,' Gadfium suggested.

Xemetrio looked sceptical. 'I doubt it. And what if he remains loyal to the King? Quite possibly he is part of their big bad conspiracy and would report our little one to Security.'

'A way might be found to talk to him without giving too much away.'

'I suppose so,' Xemetrio said, looking uncomfortable, 'but I'm not doing it.'

'I'll do it,' Gadfium told him.

Uris Tenblen raised his face to the cold, thin wind cutting across the frozen plain, blinked red-rimmed eyes, cocked his grey-skinned shaven head to one side and listened to the song in his skull.

It was different again today. It was different every day, if he remembered correctly. He wasn't at all sure that he did remember everything correctly. He wasn't sure he remembered anything correctly. But the song in his heart said that it didn't matter.

The wind blew in through the vast windows two kilometres away across the plain. The windows were floor-to-ceiling, and broad; sometimes it seemed to Tenblen that it was better to think of three skinny pillars holding up that side of the next storey, not four broad windows in a wall. Above here there was only a broad piazza, open to the skies. Tenblen turned round and looked towards the other wall, where four similar apertures, also two kilometres away, let the wind straight back out again. Both sets of windows looked out onto a sea of white cloud.

He turned back; the wind brought hard powdery snow with it, probably not fresh but dislodged from part of the castle above here. The wind-blown granules stung the exposed skin of his face, neck, wrists and hands. He forced the visor and helmet over his head, fumbling raw-fingered with the straps. Chill weather, he told himself, but the song in his head kept him warm, or told him it did, which was just as good.

His dorm was at the edge of the camp; it was a shining aluminium box almost identical to the forty or so others which ringed the workings. This close, the workings themselves were just a huge sloped wall of rubble; from further away across the frozen marshes and low hills of the plain they appeared as a small, steep-sided crater.

From above they would just look like a hole; a dark pit, usually filled with yellow-grey mists, like a giant weeping wound.

Tenblen trudged through the rimed puddles on the rutted path leading towards the workings, fastening his tunic. His boots crunched through brittle white surfaces of ice into the hard brown hollows of the puddles.

The song in his head rose to a sweet crescendo just then and he gave a thin, grim smile, then made a small, involuntary ducking motion and looked nervously up at the ceiling a thousand metres above him.

He passed the bomb caissons, great closed iron cylinders coated with snow, their wheels sunk a little way into the cracked surface of frozen mud. Thus far, they had only two caissons, six small bombs and one large one. A new convoy was on its way, bringing fresh materiel. He saluted an officer who passed him on the path. He knew he ought to know the officer's name, but he could not remember it. That didn't matter; if he needed to talk to the officer or take him some message or order, the song in his head would remind him of his name. The officer nodded as he walked past, his gaze fastened straight ahead and his expression fixed in a broad and somehow desperate grin.

Tenblen climbed the steps by the side of the inclined plain. He ascended them in time to the song, and as he climbed he imagined that the King was looking through his eyes.

(Adijine, who was doing exactly that, experienced only very mild surprise at this point, and almost immediately felt oddly cheated that he hadn't sustained some profound sense of aliena­tion or momentary loss-of-identity.)

The King would look through his eyes and hear the song in his head; the song of loyalty, of obedience, of joy to have this part to play, and know that he was glad to be loyal, glad to be obedient and glad to be joyful. He could think of nothing more pleasant than to be transparent in exactly that manner, and to be seen to be the King's loyal soldier. He got to the top of the crater-wall of rubble and started down the other side, towards the pit.

The fumes were already quite bad. The steam came drifting up the brecciated slope from the hole, wrapping itself around the scattered cisterns, pipes, valveheads, winches and gantries littering the incline. Sometimes the smell of the gases came with the steam, and you thought the cloud enveloping you would be pure fume and you almost panicked with only the song in your head telling you it was all right; other times the steam was far away when you picked up the stink and your eyes watered and your nose and the back of your throat felt rasped and burned.

He stopped at the quartermaster's office. There was a ghost outside.

The ghost was dressed as some ancient judge or holy man. He tried to get in Tenblen's way and shout something at him, but Uris just put his hand through the ghost and made as though to wave it out of the way as he stepped through it. The song in his head drowned out the ghost's voice.

'Bit nippy today,' he shouted to the quartermaster. It helped to shout, over the noise of the song. The quartermaster was a large, red-faced man. He nodded as he issued Tenblen with his gloves, mask and respirator.

'Wind's shifted,' he said loudly, coughing. 'I've asked them to move me further up the slope but of course they haven't done anything yet.'

'Perhaps you should be right at the top.'

'Perhaps I should. Or even on the far slope.'

'You might be better off at the bottom of the slope on the other side.'

'Yes, I might.'

'Well, see you later.'

'Goodbye.'

Tenblen put his mask and respirator on before he left the quartermaster's office. He felt hoarse and his throat was sore already. He could remember being able to talk without talking; being able to think something and somebody else understanding what it was you had thought; he could remember a long time ago when the song had started, thinking how odd it felt having to physically talk any time you wanted to tell somebody something. Promotion, people had joked at the time, at first.

The song had been young then and they had all been charmed by it. He could remember even longer ago when he'd not been a soldier and had been able to talk to anybody. He felt sad about that, sometimes. The song lifted his spirits, though. It could turn the sadness to joy. After all, you cried when you were happy sometimes, too.

He stepped outside into the slow whorls of drifting, rising steam, and continued down into the workings. His own breath sounded loud within the mask and he could hear valves clicking and hissing. He could feel the fumes on his neck, already chafing against his collar. A little of the fume-smell leaked in round the edges of the mask, and he tried to clamp the mask down harder. He tramped deeper into the steam, down a concrete path lit by tall poles tipped with small lamps and strung with a hand-rope at hip level.

The song sang majestically as he descended into the darkness…

(The song the song the song while he seemed to pass venting pipes and arrive at a platform in a broad tunnel where a small train waited full of coughing men but the song said no no no stuck in a breath-holding loop that said time is not passing this is not happening and sang higher sweeter fuller as the train ground and screeched its way over points and into a narrow tunnel and accelerated in utter darkness the wind in his face journeying for a time then passing through a dimly lit hole where guards with fixed stares stood then another tunnel and then the fume smell again and the steam and he started to relax as though he'd been holding his breath all that time and then out of the train with the others and down the steps relieved and even glad to be here while the song sang resuming.)

… The workings surface was a chaotic ballet from some primitive's hell; it was filled with a loud, fume-laden darkness pierced sporadically by flashes of intense, scarifying light, and permeated with a furious hissing sound punctuated by sudden screams and explosions. Through this havoc drifted a population of terrifying beasts, monstrously deformed human shapes wielding strange instruments designed to puncture, flay and burn, and the wailing, beseeching figures of ghosts.

Tenblen pulled on a harness and hitched himself to the roof struts. An officer came up to him and told him to return to his quarters, but the song in his head told him this wasn't a real officer; it was a ghost and to be ignored.

Tenblen found a pair of boots that didn't look too badly scarred and started down the steps to the mine surface. A chimeric oxephant hauling a vat of acid loomed out of the mist, making him pause. He found himself automatically checking its harness and restrainer straps; they all seemed to be in place, the harness tight and the straps disappearing up into the steam clouds towards the grid of struts barely visible against the dark roof above (and some part of him looked at that darkness above thinking, But — … but then the song swelled, drowning out the sound of his recalcitrant thoughts).

He walked towards the eastern part of the floor. He glanced down as he walked. The surface. The song in his head welled up again, telling him to rejoice at the task they had undertaken, at its daring, its technological sophistication, at its audacity and its uniqueness. It was a wonderful and beautiful thing they were doing; they were reclaiming the structure, the whole castle, not just for their cause and the King but for all people. They were no longer at its mercy, it was at theirs.

A beautiful woman appeared out of the mists, her skin black, her clothes whiter and wispier than the mists, her body full and firm and voluptuous. Tenblen knew she was a ghost but he stood and stared for a while as she walked round him with a half-coy, half-welcoming smile. Then the song rose again, racketing in his head and setting his teeth on edge. It was still pleasant, like being tickled, but he could not take it for very long. He hurried on, away from the woman.

He came to the latest workings. Acid fumed, arc-light spar­kled, power tools hammered. Men dressed in full protective suits stumbled round. Chimerics pawed the ground, pulled with harness hooks and bellowed.

Tenblen tried to breathe easily and shallowly through his mouth, ignoring the rasp of fumes in his throat as he walked amongst the men and beasts, checking their harness connections and restraining straps. Under his feet, the surface of the workings was smoking and peeling and blistering, constantly sprayed by the rusting agent and then further attacked with scab-hooks, welding arcs, lasers and a selection of acids, mostly sulphuric and hydrochloric. The surface was constantly attempting to repair itself, flowing back to fill holes and rearranging the large-scale fibres and scales which it was composed of. You could never be certain which sections would be susceptible to which removing agent; there was no alternative but to try everything and see what worked at that point at that time.

He stood for a moment, ignoring the ghost of a small baby at his feet, writhing and screaming on the ground amongst the acid pools. The surface here looked thin somehow. Perhaps they'd do it here (the baby looked up at him, eyes huge, while smoke curled up around its blistering skin. The song sang high and sweet while Tenblen's eyes filled with tears. He gently put his boot out, through the apparition of the baby, then when it moved out of his way, suddenly screamed in frustration and brought his boot down on it as though trying to crush the infant. It disappeared. His boot heel met the surface and the shock resounded through him, then the ground too seemed to disappear and he was looking —

– down. The circular hole started at his feet and was almost instantly ten metres wide around him.

He dropped through, screaming, in a haze of acid spray. The city was a sparkling jewel two kilometres below him. His harness tightened around him like a bony fist and the restraining straps bounced him up and down like some child in a walking yoke. The song burned in his head, exultant. He kept on screaming despite the song, and soiled himself.

On a warm marble table in the Palace baths, the King opened his eyes and looked up as the masseuse kneaded his back. He smiled broadly and said, 'Yes!'

He winked at the masseuse and lowered his head again, within range of the receptor devices buried in the marble table.

He skipped back into Uris Tenblen's head just in time to watch with him as the edges of the hole above him wobbled liquidly like grey-black circular lips, then snapped back closed with a whiplash crack, rebounding a little so that a metre-diameter hole existed for a moment before that too irised shut like an eye blinking.

The first closure had instantly severed the straps on Tenblen's harness.

He plummeted — gesticulating frantically, screaming hoarsely — towards the glittering spires of the city two thousand metres below.

The link sizzled and cut out.

Adijine raised his head. 'Shhhit,' he said softly.

3

'Very well, Alan, who is trying to kill me?' Sessine asked, smiling a little at the image of his earlier self.

The younger Sessine looked around. The engine's thrashing heart was all fury and noise; pipes roaring, connecting rods flashing to and fro. He took up the portable chess board and put it down the bib front of his engineer's overalls, then stood.

Sessine did not get up, but sat on the little stool, still smiling up at the construct of his younger self, who laughed.

'Please, Count; come with me.'

Sessine stood slowly, and nodded.

They were standing in a clearing within the high forest at the foot of the fastness walls. Sessine looked up through the sighing tops of the trees to the curtain-wall towering above. A tower a few kilometres away rose still higher, but the rest of the structure was hidden by the walls, a rosy cliff fifteen hundred metres high and festooned with variegated babilia. The wind soughed briefly in the trees, then died away.

'Here,' Alan said. Sessine turned, and the younger man took his hand.

/They stood in a vast circular space with a floor of gleaming gold, a velvet-black ceiling and what appeared to be a single all-round window looking out onto a whitely shining surface and a purple-black sky where stars shone steadily. Above them, suspended as though on nothing, hung a massive orrery; a model of the solar system with a brilliant yellow-white ball of light in the middle and the various planets shown as glassy globes of the appropriate appearance all fixed by slender poles and shafts to thin hoops of blackly shining metal like wet jet.

Under the representation of the sun, there was a brightly lit circular construction like a half-built room. They walked there across the glistening floor.

'This is a memory, of course,' his younger self said, waving one hand. 'We don't know what the upper sections of the fast-tower look like now. When Serehfa was still called Acsets, this was part of the control apparatus.'

They entered the circular area in the centre of the room; a collection of couches, seats, desks and ornately decorated wood and precious-metal consoles and dark screens of crystal.

They sat on facing seats. Alan looked up at the glaring image of the sun, his face shining. 'We're safe here,' he told Sessine. 'I've spent subjective millennia exploring, mapping and studying the structure of the Cryptosphere and this is as secure as it gets.'

Sessine glanced around. 'Very impressive. Now.' He sat forward. 'Answer my question.'

'The King. He ordered your death.'

Sessine sat very still for a moment. Then I am lost, he thought. He said, 'Are you sure?'

'Entirely.'

'And the Consistory?'

'They approved it.'

'Well,' Sessine said, running a hand round the back of his neck, 'that would appear to be that.'

'That depends on what you want to do,' the construct said.

'All I wanted was to find out why I was killed.'

'Because you have doubts about the conduct of the war, but most especially because you were starting to doubt the motives of the King and the Consistory and their dedication to the cause of saving people from the Encroachment.'

'I think others feel that way.'

Alan smiled. 'Most of the Consistory doubt the wisdom of the war, and many people think the King and his pals seem less concerned than they ought to be about the Encroachment — a lot of people suspect they have their own space-ship, though they don't. Most people can't do anything about their suspicions; you can — or could have. You have the honour of being the most highly placed and popular potential dissident, the one they felt they might benefit most from making an example of. They were still uncertain whether actually to do it — Adijine himself spoke for letting you live — but you made their minds up for them; you pulled strings to go on that supply convoy to the bomb-workings. Adijine had left strict instructions only somebody with implants could command it.'

'I know. It seemed… wrong.'

'You used your influence, somebody high up enough to know of the King's decree but with a grudge against you let you swing the commission, and when the King and the Consistory found out they didn't even consider trying to order you back; they just had you killed by activating a Chapel spy whose code they had already intercepted.'

Sessine considered this. 'That seems a little desperate.'

The construct shrugged. 'These are desperate times.'

'And who do I have to thank for the decision to let me go in the first place?'

'Flische. Colonel-to-the-court. He's fucking your wife.'

Sessine thought for a moment, staring at his vague reflection in the matt blackness of screen on a console opposite. After some time he sighed.

'What is happening at the workings?' he asked.

'Last year they found a mesturedo, a substance which can attack the fabric of the mega-structure. They've used it to eat through the floor of the solar. From there they built a tube track between the floor and the ceiling along to the wall between the solar and the room above the Chapel; they're currently on the last lap, burrowing through the fabric of the false ceiling directly above Chapel City. When they succeed in opening it they'll drop bombs through.

'The mega-structure fabric tries to defend itself through the crypt. It sends visions; ghosts and demons which attempt to prevent the soldiers and engineers doing the digging. The only way the Army's found to keep their personnel functional — if not sane — is to flood their minds with a loyalty signal; a song of captivity that blanks out everything else and turns the men into automatons.'

'So I would not have been susceptible to this song; so what?'

'So what they are doing there is not only destroying Army personnel, it's destroying parts of the crypt itself.'

'How so?'

'The mega-structure houses filaments of the crypt's hardware. Contrary to popular belief, the Cryptosphere is not a function of some buried horde of super-machines; the whole fastness is permeated with it. There are elements deep inside the structure, but the primary structure itself houses most of what we know as the crypt.

'What the bomb-workings are doing now is destroying an important nexus of that Cryptospheric structure; it's madness, and it encourages chaos. The crypt-time has slowed down locally by an appreciable additional degree. What is left of humanity is caught between the threat of the Encroachment above and the chaos within the crypt below. The course Adijine and his Consistory are following would seem to ignore one and aggravate the other. At the very least you would have been concerned, sceptical and questioning on discovering all this. They could scarcely risk that, let alone what might have been your most extreme reaction.'

Sessine gave a small, humourless laugh, and shook his head. 'And the war with the Chapel?' he asked matter-of-factly.

'Genuine enough. The Engineers do have something we need, though it's not the information on how to make spacecraft.'

'What is it?'

The construct raised his eyebrows. 'Here we reach the limits of my research. I am not certain.' He shrugged. 'But it is something Adijine and the Consistory consider to be of the utmost importance.'

Sessine shook his head and looked up at the vast orrery hanging silently overhead. It had moved, while he had been listening to the construct. Saturn hung overhead now, immense and gassy, attended by its moons.

'Madness, chaos, crypt-time slowing,' Sessine said, sighing. He stood up and walked round some of the ancient equipment, drawing a hand over the surfaces of the desks and consoles, wondering if this virtual environment included dust. He inspected the tip of his finger. It appeared it did, though only just. He rubbed his fingers together and looked back at his younger self. 'Anything else you want me to assimilate this afternoon?'

'My speculation as to the nature of the prize the Chapel and the King compete for.'

'And what would that be?'

'Can you keep a secret?' His younger self smirked.

Sessine shook his head again. 'Was I really this tiresome?'

The construct laughed. 'This is a secret you must keep even from yourself, for a time at least.'

'Go on,' Sessine said tiredly. 'What is the glittering prize we all pursue?'

The construct grinned broadly. 'A secret passage.'

Sessine looked levelly at him.

4

I stair @ thi big blak beest cumin up thi branch 2wards me.

Av got a gun! I shout (this iz a ly)

… Ah veri mush dout that, thi thing sez. It stops ol thi saim smilin & showin its teef agen. But nway, it sez, shtop being shilly Am heer 2 help u.

I'l bet, I sez, glancin roun & stil tryin 2 figir out a way 2 escape.

… Yesh. If ahd wantid 2 harm u ah cude ½ shaken u out ov thare 5 minitsh ago.

O yeh? I sez, hangin on titer. Wel mayb u doan wan 2 kil me mayb u juss wan 2 capture me.

… In whish caysh ahd ½ dropt on u from abuv, u shilly boy.

O u wood, wood u?

… Yesh. Yoor Bashcule, arnt u?

Praps, I sez. & who or whot r u when yoor @ home then?

… Am a shlof, it sez proudly. U can col me Gashton.

So am bein led thru thi babil plants by a slof calld Gaston whot has a kinda mutant lisp & takes such pride in his appeerinse heez got fungus growin on his bak; thats whot thi green streeks r. He ofird 2 let me ride on his bak hangin on2 his fur but I declynde.

We clime thru thi babil, goan doun & roun thi towr.

Hoo sent u then? I ask.

… Shame peepil shent thi jericule lasht nite, Gaston sez, tokin ovir hiz sholder.

Whot, that big bat?

… Thatsh rite.

Whot happind 2 him nway, do u no?

… Hir, Gaston sez. No.

O.

I follow Gaston doun thru thi babil branchiz. Followin Gaston iznt difficult on account ov him bein a qwite remarkibly slo moovir. If he had bin cumin 2 atak me I cude probly ½ juss gon doun thi branch he woz on & climed rite ovir him b4 he cude ½ startid 2 react.

Nway. Hoo woz it sent u heer then?

… Frenz.

U doan say.

… No, I do shay; frenz.

Wel fanks, thats prity enlitenin.

… Payshinsh, yung man.

We negoshayate a few more branchiz.

Whare u takin me nway?

… 2 a plaish ov shafety.

Yeh, but whare?

… Payshinsh, yung man, payshinsh.

I can c am not goan 2 get nuffink out ov this slof so I juss shut up & content myself wif makin sily faces @ its big blak green-streekd bak.

Iss a long slow jurny.

… Thers fings goan on, Mr Bascule, thass ol I can sai; thers fings goan on. Frankly I dont no xactly whot they r myself, or whethir Id b abl 2 tel u about them if I did, but as I dont I cant nway, u c?

Not reely, I sez, witch is thi troof.

Thi slof-geezir whot can onli sai, Ther's fings goan on, is calld Hombetante & heez thi cheef slof; heez got implantz & is actule considerd a bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds tho u cude stil go off & ½ a p, wosh yoor hans & brush yoor teef in thi time it taks him to blink. Heez fat & old & gray & his fungus lukes moar lyvli than he duz.

Am in a ½ runed bit ov thi saim towr whare thi big bat cald a jericule dropt me last nite. Me & Gaston thi slof got heer aftir about a our in thi babil, comin in thru a tol windo ½ ovirgroan wif babil branchiz.

This seemz 2 b Slof Sentril; iss lyk a hole room fool ov scafoldin & hangin 10ts & hamox & stuf. Thers rubbil on thi floar & no glas or anyfin in thi windos & thi wind blos in thru a windo on thi otheir syd ov thi hooj circulir room & thru thi scafoldin & makes everfin sway in thi breez & thi slofs doan seem 2 tak ver gude care ov thi plais no moar than thay do ther can selfs, but @ leest thai gaiv me sum woter 2 drink & ½ a qwik wosh in & then gaiv me sum frute & nuts to eet. Id ½ preferd sumfing hot but I doan fink thi slofs r grate fans ov fyr so heetin stuf up mite b a problim.

Weer in a big spais in thi sentir ov thi scafoldin whare thi slofs aparently hold ther meetins. Bet thos r a bundil ov lafs.

Hombetante is hangin upside down from a bit ov scafoldin on a low staje @ 1 end ov thi meetin spais, thi floar ov which is coverd wif simla curvd lenths ov scafoldin like ver tol railins. Theyve given me a sorta sling thing 2 sit in suspendid from Hombetante's scafold pole. Thi only othir slof presint is Gaston, whose hangin from anuthir bit ov scafoldin alongside, munchin sloaly on sum particulerly un-yummy lookin leefs.

… U r welcom 2 stay heer, Hombetante sez, until thingz settil down.

Whot u meen, settil down? I ask. How r they settled up @ thi momint? Whot xactly is supposed 2 b goan on?

… Juss things, Mr Bascule. Things witch need not consern u @ thi momint.

Whot about a certin ant who goes by thi name ov Ergates? U no anyfin about hir fate?

… U r juss yung & doutlis hedstrong, Hombetante sez, very much like he hasnt herd whot I juss sed … I woz yung 1nce myself u no. Yes I no u mite find that hard 2 beleev but it is tru; I wel remember…

I woan bore u wif thi rest. Whot it boils doun 2 is thers trubil @ kript & sumhow Ive got mixd up in it. Mite ol b cleerd up soon, mite not. Hooevir is supposed 2 b thi good gies in ol this r bhind thi jericule pikin me up yesterday & Gaston cumin 2 find me 2day. Now am heer wif thi slofs am been told 2 lie lo, & not go neer thi kript.

& — ov coarse — 2 ½ payshins.

Aftir my odyince wif Hombetante during which he tels me ½ his life story & I neerly fol asleep twice Gaston takes me 2 a playce neer thi outside ov thi scaffoldin whare thers a room wif a hamok & a sling chare & a ole fashind screen workin off brodcasts. Thers a sorta cubby-hole in 1 corner with a pipe stikin up which is suposed 2 b a toylit. 2 floars abuv thers a place whare thi slofs gathir 4 food evry evenin. Also in thi room is a boal ov frute & a jug ov water. Thers a windo in 1 wol whot lukes out 2 thi big vertikil towr windo we came thru. Gaston shows me how thi screen wurx & sez if I get board I can always go frute & nut gatherin with him.

I say thangs, maybe 2morrow, & he goes & I get in2 thi hamok & pool thi cuvirs ovir & go strate 2 sleep.

I juss no am goan 2 go crazy heer, + I no that am goan 2 ½ 2 visit thi kript sooner or later, 2 luke 4 Ergates & fynd out whots goan on, so when I wake up in thi late afternoon I splash sum water on my face, ½ a p & 1nce Ive decided I jenerili feel awake & refreshd, I get rite down 2 it, on thi principil that thers no time like thi presint.

I try 2 cleer my mind ov ol things slof-like (cant fink ov anyfing less usefil 2 take in2 thi kript than eny semblence ov sloffoolniss) & plunje rite in.

I think I lernd a thing or 2 during ol that time I spent in thi kript as a bird so I hed bak in that direcshin onli this time am not fukin about wif wee dainty sparos or hoks or nuffin; am goan as a big bastardin burd; a simurg. Thare so big ther branes can cope wif a hoomin mind without much finessin, which meens I doan ½ 2 spend moast ov my time rememberin what I am or disgysin ma wake-up code as a ring. Iss a bit ambishis but sumtimes thass thi only way 2 get nywhare.

I close ma Is.

/Check out thi immediet locality furst; nuthin out ov thi ordinary in thi neerby kript-space. ½ a shufty @ thi arcitecture ov thi towr juss on jeneril principils — this ole towr iz a interestin place rite enuf — then look a bit furvir out. Thi trafic aroun thi Littl Big Bros' monastry is juss about bak 2 normil but I doan go eny neerer 2 find out moar.

Zoom in2 birdspace.

/& am a hooj wild bird floatin on thi currents slidin wifin thi driftin wind, hangin lazily loosed on ma outstretchd wings cantileverd acros thi singin air. Ma wingtip fevirs r eech thi size ov hands; they flutir like a lam's hart flutirs when ma shado folz ovir it. Ma feet r steel-tipt grapples hung on thi end ov ma hawser legs. Ma talins r unsheethd razers; onli ma Is r sharper. Ma beek is harder than bone, keener than juss-broke glass. Ma keel bone is a grate nife cozend in ma flesh & cleevin thi soft air; ma ribs r glistnin springs, ma mussils sleek bunchd fists ov oily powr, ma hart a chambir fild wif slo thunder, qwiet & unstressd; a towrin dam triklin powr, tikin ovir, hedwaters ov charjed blud pent & latent.

Wel, YES! This is moar like it! Why did I evir bothir been a hok? Why woz I so bleedin unamhishis? I feel feers, I feel powerfil.

I look about, surveying. Air evrywhare. Clouds. No groun.

Othir birds flyin in vast Vs, climin in hooj colums in thi air, gatherid in ther own dark clouds, wheelin & collin. I think 2wards roosts.

/& am in thi midst ov them; spherikil trees floatin in thi grounles blueniss like brown planets ov twigs in a universe ov air, surrounded by a sqwakin atmosphere ov birds toin & froin.

Thi parlyment ov crows, I think.

/& am thare, in bitter air between layers ov white cloud like mirr'rd landscapes ov snow; thi grate dark winter-trees r massd 2 thi density ov blak clifs agenst thi icy billos ov frozin cloud. Thi crows' parlyment is in thi tollest, gratest biggist tree ov ol, its brown-blak twigs like thi sooty bones ov a millyin hands clutchin @ thi chil blank fayce ov hevin. Thi meetin brakes up when they c me & they cum skrawkin & screetchin out 2 mob me.

I beat, pushin down thi air, risin ovir the pesterin burds, seekin 1 who stays bak, directin.

Thi crows swarm up aroun me. A few land blows on ma hed but it dozen hurt. I laf & stretch ma nek, swivelin ma hed an rippin a few ov ther litl toyish bodies from thi air. I toss them aside; red blud beeds, pulverized white bone pushes thru ther coal blak fevirs & they tumbil torn 2 thi snow-cloud billows. Thi rest screem, pull flutrin bak a momint then mob in agen. I stroke 4wards. Air snaps swirlin undir ma wings, rollin thi pursuin birds roun like bubbles under a waterfol.

I c my prey. Heez a big grey-black fellir perchd on thi topmost twig ov thi topmost branch ov thi parlyment-tree & heez juss reelised whots goan on.

He rises, cawin & shreekin in2 thi air. Foolish; if he'd dived in2 thi branchiz he mite ½ had a chance.

He tries sum acrobatic stuf but heez old & stiff & I snatch him so eesily iss almost disapointin. Snap! & he's neetly encased in one cage ov foot, flappin & screemin & loosin fevvirs & pekin @ ma toes wif his litl blak beek & tiklin me. I slice anuthir cupil ov his fellos out ov thi air, spredin ther blood like a artist wude, paint on a white canvas, then I think eyrie

/& am alone wif ma litl crowy frend abuv a tawny plane ov sand & rok, beatin 2wards a fractchird clif whare a narled fingir ov rok juts out, its summit topt wiv a jiant nest ov sunbleechd timbirs & splintered white animal & burd bones.

I land & fold thi soft clokes ov ma wings & stand upon thi brittle nest — timbers creek, branchiz burst, pikd-cleen bones snap — lookin doun @ ma bolld foot wif thi old gray-blak crow imprisind in it, flappin an beetin an hollerin.

Skreek! Skrawk! Awrk! Gerout!

O shut up, I tel it, an thi rok-crushin weight ov ma voyce stuns it 2 qwiet stilniss. I balince on that leg, compressin thi trapt crow & reechin thru thi bars ov ma talins wif a talin from thi other foot, tiklin thi bird's grey-blak frote while thi breth wheeziz out ov it.

Now then my litl chum, I say — & ma voyce iz acid on a slicin blaid, boilin led doun a opin frote — Ive a few qwestchins Id like 2 ask u.