Omega point

CHAPTER 10

"Ding Ding!" yelled Bear. "All change for solid ground!" He hurled himself from the wood onto the moor, unmindful of the nothingness.

Richards was more cautious. "How can we be sure it's not another fragment?" he said.

Bear closed his beady eyes and breathed deep. "Sniff that air! That's the air of good solid ground, that. Them islands smell funny. Besides," said Bear, stretching his long arms, "even if it was I'd take my chances. If I have to eat another bloody squirrel in my life I'll not be a happy bear."

Richards took his time sizing up the gap before leaping. He climbed over exposed rocks up to the moorland where Bear stood. Richards now wore a lionskin cloak, crafted by Bear from the pelt of Tarquin.

"Do I have to wear this? It makes me feel like a kid playing at Hercules," said Richards, fingering the tawny skin.

"I beg to differ," grumbled the lionskin. "Hercules, is it now? I don't think so. I've seen bigger pecs on a pigeon."

"I didn't choose this body," said Richards.

"I've told you before, pal!" said Bear. "Shut it or I'll sew your mouth up." He shook his head. "You'd think being skinned would shut it up, wouldn't you? You really would."

"Mee-owww," said Tarquin.

"Where's me needle?" said Bear, reaching for his flap. "Quiet? Good. Come on, Mr Richards. Who'd not want a lionskin cloak? And it has promised to behave."

"I told you," protested the lionskin, "I was enchanted. Enslaved! I'm not now. I'll be good."

"Yeah," said Bear doubtfully. He cupped his paws and shouted back to the island. "You sure you're not coming with us, Lucas?" called Bear to the tramp.

"Although it pains me to do so, I'm afraid I must say no. This is not my stop," said Lucas.

Richards scratched his beard, another highly annoying thing about being human. It had been a week since they'd left Circus's tower burning in the void. Little more than a small garden's worth was left.

"Are you really sure?" said Richards.

"Yes, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your help. I am too old to catch squirrels, and a little too cocksure to avoid being turned into a pig." He smiled. "And I have my nice new coat to keep the rain from my bones."

"Keeps the weather out nicely does dwarfskin," said Bear.

"You have been most kind," said Lucas, tipping Circus's soiled turban in salute. "And for your many kindnesses I have a gift for you." He began patting his numerous pockets. "The time has come for repayment. You are indeed right, young Richards, you should always be kind to your fellow man. For who knows what… oh, where is it? Aha! For who knows what wonders it may bring in return? It's all karma, you know. Anyway, here you are. Gifts from me unto you." He leant across from the wobbly island to present Richards with a small piece of glossy paper, grubbied by long carriage and folded many times.

"Thanks," said Richards. "I'm sure I'll treasure it."

"I'll be buggered if it's any use. If you'd have caught me in the old days I'd have magicked up a set of epic items for you, some 'phat lewt', as I believe they say. But then, despite my cheerful manner and insightful wisdom, I am a tramp, and therefore a bit mad." He shrugged. "And for you, Bear — " he fished out a wrinkly dwarfskin pouch tied at the top with a cord "- a piece of Optimizja. This island is all that remains of it now, and that will soon be gone. Take this rock, a small part of the land. The pouch should keep it from evaporating."

"Gee, thanks," said Bear. "Nice. A stone in a dwarf's nutsack." He secreted it somewhere in his innards.

Lucas leant back into the wood and looked into its tiny patch of sky. "Night draws in. I must be away. Bear, if you would be so kind?"

"Be a pleasure, mate." Bear ripped a large limb from one of the few remaining trees. "Last chance…"

"Oh, don't worry about me!" said Lucas. "I'll be fine. There may be no squirrels left here, but there are other nourishing things for a man to eat." He eyed a chaffinch speculatively. It wisely flew off onto the moor.

"Hokey dokey! Prepare to cast off!" shouted Bear. He rammed the tree limb hard between the island and the exposed roots of the moorland and forced it free. It drifted away.

"Bye!" yelled Bear, waving. "Bye! I'll miss him, you know," he said to Richards. "Even if he was a bit hard on the old nostrils."

"How terribly touching," said Tarquin.

"Needle," stated Bear.

"My lips are sealed. Voluntarily, I might add," said the lionskin.

Bear scowled at Tarquin until the skin shut its amber eyes. "You're a bit quiet, sunshine," said Bear.

"Hmmm," said Richards.

"Hmmm? What's with the hmmm-ing?"

"This," said Richards, holding up the tattered paper. "It's a 1987 train timetable for the Thames Valley line."

Bear pulled a face. "A rock in a scrotum and an old train timetable? How very generous."

Richards shivered. A mist the consistency of custard swept across the moors. The sun must have gone down some time before; he could only tell because the dismal murk of the fog had faded to dark grey. Freezing water trickled down the neck of his mac.

"It's that way," said Richards. "Trust me, I have retained a link into the skin of the world. I can feel Rolston through it. He's over there." He pointed into the mist. "Somewhere."

"Oh, puh-lease," said the bear, walking on. Richards did not follow. "Stay here and sulk if you like," the toy called back, "but I'm going this way. I'm not sticking about on these moors till my stitching rots. I'm positive this is the right way."

"Well, I'm not," said Richards. "Not in the slightest. I defy even you to find your way off these moors."

"We'll see about that. I'm the brains of this outfit."

"Your head's full of stuffing."

"That's as may be, but it's better than what's in your head." The bear stopped and looked back. "Shit for brains," he said, and looked immensely pleased with himself.

"That's just juvenile," said Richards. "Come on! Pl'anna told me that Rolston was in Pylon City. He's that way." Bear squelched as he walked away. "Look, we both want to get there!"

"It's not that wa-ay!" sang Bear.

"Even if he's not there, we should go and find him!" said Richards. The bear carried on walking.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Richards swore. "Come back!"

"No."

Richards began a long tirade aimed at the back of the soft toy.

"I'd save your breath if I were you," said Tarquin. "He strikes me as rather pig-headed."

"Are you being funny?" said Richards. He was cold and annoyed.

"No, no, perish the thought," said the lionskin. "I'd never try to cheer myself up. Best dwell on my new status as outerwear with a frown, don't you think?" the lion grumbled. "It's perhaps best that we don't go to Pylon City anyway. The pylons have been here for a lot longer than most things here."

"They're from Reality 19, the Dragon Era game cycles," said Richards shortly.

"If you say so. I am a creature of this place, I lack your useful external perspective. As far as I am concerned the pagoda was part of a land now long dead, shattered some time past by Lord Penumbra's armies. There are pylons like it everywhere. That tower was evil. It sucked me in. Though I was told never, ever to go there as a cub, I did."

"Curiosity skinned the cat, eh?" said Richards.

"That is very unkind and also a mixed metaphor. It's not surprising really, that even a mighty being such as myself should be so bewitched. Legend has it that it was the only remnant of an ancient civilisation. All other trace of it had been completely wiped away by time. But the Dragon Tower remained. Too evil to die, apparently. That is how he trapped me."

"Or you're just exceedingly gullible. Are lions as bright as dogs? I always wondered that," said Richards

The lion growled. "How was I to know I was going to spend two hundred years as a fence post? I couldn't escape, and that dwarf could turn me to stone any time he wanted, it was child's play to him! Child's play!" The lion let out a low rumble, making Richards acutely aware he was wearing a dangerous carnivore round his neck.

"Sorry," said Richards. "I'm tired and cold and hungry, none of which I have much experience with. It's all a bit wacky, and none of it is real, which is irritating."

"And you are?" said the lion archly.

"Point taken," conceded Richards.

"Listen to me," said Tarquin. "People went into that tower and they didn't come out as people. Circus herded them into boxes as pigs. They went off on the cable. They came back as pork. Many use the cables for their own purposes, like in Pylon City, but mark my words, they all hide tight away when the black boxes of Lord Hog come through."

"Ah, look," said Richards, who wasn't really paying attention. The big bear had stopped. "Bloody animal!" said Richards, and ran after him.

"OK, Richards," whispered Bear, "I agree, I'm sorry, I'm wrong. Let's go your way. I don't like this way." He pointed at a shape in the mist.

"Eh? But that's just a sheep or something," said Richards peering at it. "Sheep aren't going to hurt a big…".

"Just shut up and run!" hissed Bear.

"There will be no running, not now or during any part of the course of my presidency," said an American voice. An animal came out of the mist, panting happily. Mostly it was some kind of large boxer dog, all lean and eager. Mostly, apart from the head.

"Is that just me," said Richards, "or does that dog have the head of President Nixon?" He folded his arms.

"It's certainly not its own head," replied Bear hoarsely, and stood behind Richards, beans rattling as he shook.

"Grrr! Rufff!" said President Nixon. "There will be no whitewash at the White House."

"Hit it, Mr Richards! Hit it, ooh, it gives me the fear."

"If you're so bothered, you hit it," said Richards.

"You don't win campaigns with a diet of dishwater and milk," said Nixon, baring its teeth. It came closer, the oversized head wobbling comically on the body's slender neck.

"This is interesting," said Richards. "Hello, boy," he said to the dog in that ludicrous voice that people speak to dogs in.

Bear wailed. "Keep it away! Keep it away! That thing gives me the horrors."

"You cannot win a battle in any arena merely by defending yourself!" said Nixon. "Ruff! Ruff!" barked the former president of the United States, a loop of drool hanging from his dewflaps. "Communist leaders believe in Lenin's precept: Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw." It bared its fangs further. Richards frowned. Nixon's two canine teeth were long and yellow. Not dirty-teeth yellow, but bright, thermonuclear yellow. The familiar tripartite symbol on each tooth's tip confirmed it.

"Back off, Fido," said Bear.

"The US government will not bow down to threats. Grrr."

"Save it, sergeant. Let's take this easy. This thing has nuclear teeth."

"That bad?"

"Very, very bad indeed. The last thing we want to do is to detonate this dog. Big boom."

"Apocalyptic type boom or firework type boom?"

"The former. I've been blown up by atom bomb before, it's not fun, so stay calm."

"Ah. OK," Bear rattled.

Nixon retreated and sat. It scratched furiously behind an ear. Then it shook its head, jowls flapping. Strings of dog spit went everywhere. Its collar came off and dropped to the floor.

"What's it doing?" said Bear nervously.

"How the hell should I know?"

The man-dog pushed the collar closer to Richards with its nose, then backed off. "Nixon good boy," it said as it sank back onto its haunches. "Nixon good president."

"Are you going to pick it up then?" said Bear.

"Yes! Yes! For fuck's sake, I'm thinking. Leave me alone."

"It's just sitting there staring at us. Pick it up."

"You pick it up," said Richards.

"It quite obviously gave it to you," said Bear nudging him. The dog growled.

"Good boy!" said Richards. "Good Mr President!" Not taking his eyes off Nixon's face, he crouched down and picked up the collar.

"Eh? A message."

"Where?"

"Here," said Richards, pulling it out, "on the inside."

"Well, what does it say?"

"Will you just give me a chance?" Richards said testily. Nixon looked at them without interest.

"I'm sorry, but that thing gives me the horrors."

"You said that already."

"I always repeat myself when I've got the horrors," said Bear. "It doesn't happen often, I swear." He shifted his weight. "What does it say?"

"Don't you get at me because you're embarrassed." Richards broke the seal and unrolled the missive.

"Dear Richards," the letter said. "Follow the dog. Yours, Rolston."

"Hmmm. Be careful. I don't like the sound of this Rolston fellow," said Bear. Nixon's ears pricked up at the name of his master, and the wind blew a little chiller. "I mean, anyone who has that for a pet can't be entirely on the straight and narrow."

"To be honest, pal, I never really thought Rolston was on the straight and narrow," said Richards. "He's got a bizarre sense of humour, and gets involved in some seriously weird shit, this construct notwithstanding, but talking to him will help me clear this up more quickly."

"Hmmm," said Bear.

"Do you actually know where you are going?"

Bear's shoulders sagged. "Um, no. No I don't."

"Well then. Lay on, MacNixon," Richards said to the dog.

"OK, pinko commies. Heel," said the dog.

They followed the dog. It trotted tirelessly, humming "The Star Spangled Banner". Night grew darker. Although Richards and Bear found walking on the springy heather tiring, they did not stop.

The mist cleared, and the sun came up. By noon they came across a lonely sign of habitation. A crossroads cut into the brown and purple of the heather, two sets of parallel quartz and mica ruts, a stripe of grass between them. Where the roads crossed, they formed a glittery X of sand in the landscape.

"That way," said the dog, pointing with its nose down the road leading to the southeast. "Goodbye," said Nixon, and left. As he walked away from the road, back the way they had come, he faded away as he would were he retreating into the mist, though the day was clear as a bell.

"Nixon good boy," said the dead president as he blended into the world. "Nixon good president." The world closed behind him. "I would have made a good pope," came a faint voice, then he was gone.

"Yeah," said Richards, "Maybe a Borgia."

"Grrr," shuddered Bear.

"Here we go," said Richards with satisfaction, pointing to a weathered sign. "Pylon City."

"Nobody likes a smartarse, sunshine," said the bear and let out a shuddery sigh. He reset his helmet. "Just remember, you're still in my custody."

The land dropped until they left the moors behind. Tussocky grass scattered with stunted trees replaced the heather. They crossed a bald stripe of rock, a fault line like a scar where Richards surmised one fragment of a world had been artlessly welded to another, and over it the landscape changed utterly and immediately into a plateau pockmarked by industry.

"This look like a join to you?" said Richards as they crossed it. "Looks like one to me."

The bear did not reply. He was doing his best to look vigilant and dangerous.

Tracks ran among spoil heaps, some well used, some not, leading to machines in various states of disrepair. A narrow-gauge railway came in from the left to run parallel to the road, while the road itself became wider. By the time Richards and Bear were close enough to make out the city in the distance, it was a broad highway of iron plates.

"Aha!" said Bear. "Pylon City."

"Told you," said Richards.

"Shut it, fucko," said Bear.

The road ran to the edge of a steep valley and turned to follow its lip. From below, the shouts of a playful river echoed. The eastern side, lower by some two hundred feet, was cloaked in impenetrable forest, another abrupt change in landscape. The valley divided two worlds, one brown and dead, the other green and lush. The chasm was deep; evening took hold there a full hour before the sun touched the moors. When Richards and Bear reached the dusk-kissed walls of Pylon City the valley was dim with night, and the slag-heaps about the city cast shadows as black as those of pyramids.

A pylon of enormous size soared from the heart of the city, its top lost in the clouds, dominating all, so big that the cliff-ringed hill the city sat upon seemed as tiny as an anthill. Hard lines of cables scored the sky, heading out in all directions, as thin as cotton against the sky, but they were mighty; one had come down, and hung thick and limp over the city wall. To the east it sat low in the gorge, a sunlit streak hard against the blackness.

Everything about Pylon City was large and iron. The walls were twenty-metre giants circling the cliffs, the westernmost of which plunged straight into the chasm. Rust-streaked buttresses were set at intervals in between towers spaced round the walls' circuit. The road and railway rose up to these defences on thinlegged viaducts, the railway vanishing into a tunnel close by the main road gate. The effect was one of impregnability, but up close the travellers could see that the wall had buckled where the cable had fallen across it.

"Look at that," said Richards. "Do you think that's the same rope that ran to the top of Circus's pavilion?"

"Possibly, possibly," said Bear. "That'd explain why it is not strung from the top of the tower. Looks like it's caused plenty of damage too. Um, best not mention that when we go in, OK?"

The gates were wrought in iron and ostentatiously ornate. A thousand creatures cavorted on their span. Machicolated crenellations topped the wall above the gates, cantilevered over the road on merlons cast in the forms of leering chimps.

"That's pretty amazing," said Richards. "Puts me in mind of the Great Firewall."

Bear looked at him as if he were mad. "It's horrible!"

"I have to agree," said Tarquin, wrinkling up his nose. "Terribly lower-middle-class."

"I meant the scale of it," said Richards defensively.

"Oh," said Bear, as if he'd just realised something. "Those really are garden gnomes on that bas-relief."

"That looks suspiciously like a poorly executed rendition of Le Pissoir. Eighty feet tall, would you imagine," said Tarquin with mocking awe.

"Aw," said Bear, "look, dogs playing snooker. Cast in iron." He leant over to Richards. "A-maz-ing," he said, pronouncing each syllable with leaden sarcasm.

"There's no need for that," said Richards. "I thought it looked impressive."

"It's trite," said Tarquin. "I shudder to think of your living room, dear boy. Probably some kind of nature reserve for doilies."

"Sheesh," said Richards.

"I'll warrant you have a pottery scotty dog too."

"Needle," said Richards. Bear chuckled.

For all the walls' stature, they were silent. Not a man patrolled them. The road visible beyond the gateway was empty. The gates were guarded, but not avidly. A pair of sentry boxes stood either side of the road. Only one was occupied, by a snoozing guard, his elaborate energy pike leant against the wall.

"Ahem," said Bear.

The guard jumped up. "Gods, not another bloody talking animal." He turned away from them, busying himself with a pile of stamps. "Papers!" he demanded.

"Papers, 'sir'," said Bear, producing a sheaf of vellum from somewhere inside his gut. "I'm Sergeant Bear, these two are my prisoners."

"Two," said the guard, checking over Bear's documentation.

"Pleased to meet you," said Tarquin.

"Another! The entire bloody city's crawling with talking bloody animals," grumbled the guard.

"Aren't you on the same side?" asked Richards.

"No," said the guard.

Bear raised an eyebrow.

"I mean yes. They've all come out of the woods. Come to save us, they say. Us! There's this mad psychic badger who says he's seen the end of the world, that the Terror is coming here, here to Pylon City! I don't believe any of it."

"That cable, there," said Bear, pointing. "The Terror did that. I saw it. Happy?"

"Bah! That? A failure down the line. It's happened before, but the Prince took it as some kind of sign. Next thing I know, we're up to our bloody armpits in chipmunks. Ain't right, I tell you. I've not spent my entire life keeping the beggars out only to let all of them in. It ain't right!"

"Neither is sleeping on duty," said Bear mildly.

The guard made as if to grab his pike, but then thought better of it. "Leave me be! Isn't it enough that I've got to let you in?"

"Is that right?" said Bear. "I've been living here for years, you know. Not all of us live in the Magic bloody Wood."

"Yes! I would. Animals, think you're special, just because you can talk. If that's the bloody case why don't you have central heating? Some pissed-up bloody fox shat on me doorstep last week. And I'm a vegetarian. Do you know how much fox shit stinks? Bastard. Your papers, sir!" said the guard.

"I'm looking for Commander McTurk. Do you know where he is?"

"They're all at the square," said the guard. "The whole city. He'll be at the square."

Bear leaned forward and cupped his hand round his ear.

"Sir," added the guard truculently.

"That's better," said Bear.

"Big moot on, talk of war. You'll see."

"Then you'll be glad of the help of the talking bloody animals," said Richards.

The guard wafted a hand in front of his nose. "You there, you better take a bath! Or someone will like as not arrest you for vagrancy."

"You do need a bath, you know," said Bear to Richards. "You stink."

"Are you going to stand there all day gabbing? Clear off!" said the guard.

"Thank you, my good man," said Bear. "Carry on."

"Being sarcastic to armed men is not big or clever, Bear," said Tarquin.

"Unlike me," said the bear.

They passed through the gates. As outside, so inside; everything was made of iron. The walls, the road, the plant-pots, the carts, the gothic-lettered street signs. The metal varied in colour from the silvery-white of the tramlines to the angry red of the rooftops. A thousand hues of black and red and silver and grey. They could taste it on the air like blood.

The city was as quiet as the grave. The three walked toward the centre, their feet ringing off the pavement, until the murmur of a crowd could be heard. They crested a low rise and were suddenly at the edge of a large square directly beneath the giant pylon.

"Holy shit," said Richards, and reached up to push back his missing hat.

The square was rammed full of people and creatures of all types; every Grid-born whimsy cooked up by humanity. Fantasy knights, Arabian warriors, bobble-headed, babyfied versions of popstars and holoartistes, spacemen, Vikings, orcs and elves, squeaky steampunk robots and elephantine aliens. Droids, drones, devils and dragons, goblins and warlocks, gangsters and clams with bazookas.

Then there were the animals: strange, giant caricatures of animals, fevered imaginings of burnt-out cartoonists, fairytale versions of animals, bipedal and big. Animals that looked like they could live in a forest in the Real, others that appeared to have broken out of the children's section of a home ents library. Some plush, some not, some real as real can be, others rendered in graphical forms ranging from primitive pixel block through outright cartoon to uncanny valley-baiting photorealism.

Generations of gaming characters culled from the broken RealWorlds Reality Realms and beyond and a thousand kinds of toy from half a century of AI-gifted playthings.

All of them were talking frantically to one another.

"It's a refugee camp for geek cast-offs. You two should feel right at home here," said Richards.

"We don't," said Bear and Tarquin simultaneously, and with some conviction. "I've not seen a big gathering like this for, ooh, well, ever. Most of these tribes are bitter enemies. Come on," said Bear, raising his voice to be heard over the crowd. "Let's see what this is all about."

Bear stopped and spoke with a guard, pointing at Richards. The guard executed a bow and hurried off.

"We've got to wait," said Bear. "Let's see what's going on while we do." They joined the back of the crowd. A five-foot badger in a top hat stood on a stage directly in the centre of the square, an antiquated microphone before him. An important-looking man with an unconvincing skin stood off to one side.

It looked like the badger had said something contentious, and Richards and Bear found a place as he raised one paw in an appeal for order. The heavy robe he wore whispered over his fur, the sound cutting under the mutter of the crowd. The menagerie took notice, and the square fell silent.

"Friends, old and new, I realise what I say is hard for you to accept, but it is the truth!" said the badger. It was old, its breath wheezed, and there were far more silver hairs than black on his body. "It is with great difficulty that many of you came here. The ancient troubles between our people have driven us apart, but we must lay them to rest, or we shall all perish!" His head bobbed ceaselessly as he spoke, as if he were looking at a procession wending its way between the pylon lines above.

"Bloody anthropomorphic menaces!" said someone in the crowd. "Piss off back to the forest!" But the voice was isolated, and quickly silenced.

"It is perhaps a measure of the dangers that face us today," continued the badger, "that we are here as one, ready to stand up to the evil that awaits us." A whisper rustled through the crowd. "The armies of Lord Penumbra are massing to the south of Pylon City. He means to storm it. To take it and then the woods. He means to destroy us all." There was an awful pause.

"Rubbish!" shouted a man.

"There's no Death of the World. No Great Terror. It's a myth. He's just another warlord!" said a bright pink ocelot.

"We shouldn't be friends with these apes!" said a small blue hedgehog.

"What do you know? You live in a hole!" rebuked an archaeologist.

The man on the stage gesticulated angrily. He ushered the badger out of the way and took the mic. A screech of feedback blasted the crowd, causing several rodents to pass into a dead faint.

"Silence," shouted the man. He had a large amount of embroidery and fancy cloth in his outfit. Big rubies. A collar that said "Lord High Mayor and/or Prince". "It is true. If it were not, why have the trade routes to the east fallen empty? Why are the roads choked with refugees? Why have we been suffering earthquakes in this previously geologically stable area? One of the great cables," he said, shaking a finger above his head, "there! Is brought low." The crowd followed his finger up the pylon, a few of the assembled pointing at the slack line. "The black arcs of Lord Hog make ever greater use of the skylines. Our friend Mr Spink speaks the truth, though many of you here doubt his powers. The world is ending!

"We of Pylon City and the folk of the Magic Forest have been at war for many sorrowful generations! But Mr Spink is right. Now is the time to put aside our woes and unite!"

"Keep your hands off our trees, you bastard!" shouted someone. There was a grumble of agreement from the beasts.

"And men of Pylon City, creatures from across the industry lands, I have not been your prince these long years by listening to every wise man who would bend my ear without taking account of my own counsel."

"Nor," said Bear behind his paw, "has he been their prince for those long years without having the heads of those wise men who disagreed with his counsel removed with large iron shears."

"Yesterday evening I sent our most percipient thog riders out to the south. Men of keen vision whose eyes may gallop along the horizon more swiftly even than their mounts."

There was nodding and agreement in the crowd. "It's true," said one man. "Fast they are. And the men keen-eyed."

"What the hell is a thog?" said Richards out of the corner of his mouth.

"Like a cow with six legs," said Bear.

"Very quick, and extremely palatable. Needlessly pedantic, though," added Tarquin.

"Nine set out," continued the prince. "Only one returned, and on the point of death. Before he died in my own arms he said this to me: 'Make ready for war, my prince. Lord Penumbra marches on the city.'"

"What? Why would he attack us?" shouted a man at the front of the square. "We sold him his army!" There was much coughing and shuffling about amongst the men present. A four-foot rat in dungarees turned to a well-padded fellow. "Shame on you!" it said. The man flushed and looked away.

"Yes. Well," said the Prince, "perhaps it is time to look over our long-cherished views on impartiality." There were murmurs. The Prince paused. "And perhaps we should question the wisdom of selling an army of automata to a man who is composed entirely of darkness."

"You don't say," said an angry cat in a hat.

"Though many of our number are but artisans and fabricators, we have no choice but to make a stand," continued the Prince. "I have placed the Pylon Guard under the command of Lord High Commander Hedgehog. He and Mr Spink have brought eight thousand animal warriors with them. We of Pylon City stand with many folk who have fled here from elsewhere, as we do also with the people of the plateau and western lands. It is only true and proper that the Lord High Commander lead our combined forces in battle. I delegate full responsibility to him, for I am a merchant, not a soldier. Henceforth our troops are his to command." The Prince smiled winningly at the crowd.

"I'll bet he's on the next train out of here," said Bear. "No balls, that prince."

"And he's beaten you like twenty times!" called out a highspirited seal pup. He was shushed by his father.

"Gentlefolk, I give you Lord High Commander Hedgehog." There was a burst of applause as a man-sized hedgehog in a suit of armour waddled onto the stage, spines poking through holes in his cuirass, all protected by artfully articulated sleeves. A cohort of heavily armoured men and animals took up station before the stage. Richards felt himself jostled, and he turned to see guards encircling the crowd.

"Hello," said Lord High Commander Hedgehog in a cheery kind of way. "I say, I say, it's a rum old thing but I've got some awfully bad news." He smiled weakly at the crowd. "I'm afraid you're all going to have to fight. Sorry and all, but there is a war on." Hedgehog's voice was cluttered with stilted upper-class nonsense, but there was steel in it.

The hedgehog began to talk of musters and conscription, of regiments and barracks. But Richards caught none of it. A guard approached Bear.

"Sir? Commander McTurk is here to see you."

"He has come in person. Good." Bear nodded in satisfaction as a stumpy mechanism clunked through the crowd to them, steam-powered and man-shaped, like the haemites, though fairer of form.

The automaton stopped by the Bear and his prisoner. Bear saluted. "Sir! I came upon this man while I was conducting a longrange patrol to the east of Optimizja. He maintains that he…"

McTurk interrupted, steam whistling out of his mouth as he spoke. "Richards. So you got my message. Not that I am unhappy to see you, but just what the hell are you doing here? It's not safe."

"Huh?" said Bear. "You know each other?"

"You could say that, Bear." Richards' face broke into a broad smile. "A social call is all, Rolston. I thought I'd see how k52's plan to take over the world was doing. And how you were. Say, what do you know about k52 and his plan to take over the world?" His smile grew less friendly. "Or is it your plan too, Rolston?"

"There's no time for that," the automaton rumbled. "k52 has eyes everywhere. Come with me — there's somewhere we can talk."

The Prancing Weasel was a rough pub on a rough night at a rough time, and was actually full of your actual weasels: long, ribbon-bodied psychopaths who were amusing themselves by doing dangerous, drunken things with knives. The iron of the walls was rusty, the floors sticky, the air heavy with oxidised iron, stale beer and sweaty fur.

The tables and benches were in a worse state than the floor. Richards got a table while Bear and Rolston were at the bar, but when Bear returned, he refused to sit. "My fur will get dirty," he said. Richards sat anyway, getting a rust stain on Tarquin's hindquarters from the bench.

"What is this place?" said Tarquin with dismay. "This isn't the kind of establishment I am inclined to frequent." He looked at the embattled bar staff running from table to table, slopping grog as they went. "My tail is dangling into something most unpleasant."

"You're imagining that," said Richards, as he flicked Tarquin's tail out of a spittoon.

"Hmmm," said Bear, gulping ale from a bucket.

Richards sipped his own drink. The beer was surprisingly good. The Prince had declared all inns to be free for the night, and people and animals had crowded them to breaking point. They're partying like it is the end of the world, thought Richards. Which, technically speaking, I suppose it is.

Most of the patrons were mammals of one kind or another, although the Prancing Weasel's clientele included a couple of birds, and there was a frog with a gun in the corner.

A band of rowdy vole mercenaries sat on a nearby table, upsetting acorns and starting fights. They sang songs in a register so high it set Richards' teeth on edge. On the other side of the room a gang of drunken badgers boxed with hares, while the men in the place built their courage with outrageous tales and heroic quantities of booze.

The noise in the pub was deafening, almost enough to drown out the sound of machinery outside. The city boomed to the banging of trip hammers. They'd started soon after the moot, one or two at first, asynchronous and isolated, but more took up the rhythm until they blended into the pulsing of a giant ferrous heart. Furnaces roared like lungs, and fiery blood of molten metal ran into moulds in noisy foundries. The metal of the buildings grew warm to the touch as Pylon City came alive.

A weasel fell over in front of Bear and threw up by his feet.

"Dear God!" moaned Tarquin. "Are you sure there's nowhere else we can go?"

"Rolston says this place is safe," said Richards.

"Bloody weasels," said Bear, kicking the mustelid.

Rolston joined them. He was no longer McTurk, but a neongreen skunk with sexualised facial features and a studded posing pouch.

"What sordid corner of the Grid did that come from?" Richards asked.

The skunk looked uncomfortable. "You must pardon my appearance," it said with Rolston's voice. "I have been forced to parasite multiple bodies. I must switch my sensing presence regularly, or k52 will nail me. I get little choice."

"I'd avoid talking about being nailed, looking like that," said Richards. Bear sniggered in his bucket. "Sit down," he continued, "you owe me an explanation."

"Yes, yes, I suppose I do," sighed Rolston. He wrestled his unwieldy body onto the bench. "We'll have to talk. I've very little access to the underlying network here, no data transfer. The Realms are not keyed for our kind."

"No," said Richards.

"Why on earth did you bring us here?" said Bear, scowling at the voles.

"It is the only place where we are unlikely to be seen or heard," said Rolston. "That is why, a bare spot on the informational nets that underpin this place. Think of it as sitting upon a scar joining two fragments together, Boogie Woogie Farmland and the Iron Princes game constructs." Rolston the Skunk looked nervous, and peered into his undrunk beer. He was on edge, not the flamboyant experimentalist Richards knew. "I came here with k52 some months ago, months in Real terms; subjectively I've been here centuries, with Pl'anna and some others, a Six and several Fours. I should never have listened to him. Pl'anna and I disagreed with what he wanted to do here, to them." He looked around at the room, at the drunken creatures cramming it. "He turned on us, but fortunately I had an escape mechanism. k52 had insisted we move our baseline programming from our base units into the Realm Servers. He said, correctly, naturally, that we could work undisturbed that way, camouflaging our activities under regular Realm activity. Only later did I realise that he could also use that to control us. Luckily for me, diffusing myself into the creatures inhabiting the world we found was simple."

"When did you come up with that then?"

"Soon after we arrived. It did not take long for k52 to become erratic."

"I thought as much. Same old Rolston, eh?" said Richards. "Always looking out for yourself, always ready with an escape plan."

"I got away. I can help you."

"Yeah, fix the mess you made? I found her, Rolston," said Richards angrily. "I saw what happened to Pl'anna. Apparently it's not that hard for our kind to die here."

"Poor Pl'anna," said Rolston and shook his head sorrowfully. "I blame myself, of course. I should have dissuaded her, but she insisted she come too. She always went where I went, I…" He took a gulp of beer with a shaking hand.

"What the hell is going on here, Rolston? Do you know k52 speared Hughie like a fish? He as good as murdered Professor Zhang Qifang."

Rolston was shocked.

"Yeah, that's right, there's a raggedy pimsim left, but he's otherwise gone. Now k52's suborned Hughie's choir and has Europe to ransom. Now you better tell me what the hell he is doing and help me stop him before he fucks the Real three ways from Sunday."

Rolston's skunk smiled Rolston's smile, airy and slightly condescending. "Oh, oh, don't worry about that. I doubt he'll do anything in the Real, except to buy himself time."

"Time to reach the Omega Point?"

"Pl'anna told you?" said Rolston.

Richards nodded.

"That is what he plans," Rolston said.

"And just how is he intending to pull that off?" said Richards. "How's he going to induce a theoretical state in the universe? I don't buy it."

"Oh, no, no, no, not in the Real, here." The skunk jabbed a painted plastic fingernail into the table. "We were to come here to the empty spaces of the Reality Realms servers, and establish a simulation of the Real."

"The whole of the Earth?" said Richards. "Nothing has the processing power to pull that off. All the Reality Realms taken together are small beans compared to actual reality."

"Not the Earth, my dear fellow, all of reality — not even just our universe, but of all totality."

"Impossible," said Richards.

"No, just extremely difficult," said Rolston.

"Right. Remember, I am just a security consultant," said Richards. "You'll have to use small words."

"k52 intended to establish a false reality, not unlike one of the defunct Reality Realms, although far grander in scope and tied closely into the Real's physics. He did, after all, have the spare capacity of four destroyed, highly sophisticated simulations, and with the coding he has devised he'll be able to optimise the machinery of the Realms, increasing its efficiency several hundred thousand fold."

Richards thought of the warring code strands he'd glimpsed in the church at Optimizja, the frighteningly advanced nature of k52's additions, the way it had seemed alive. "That's still not enough to reproduce the universe," he said.

"The spare capacity of the Realm House, coupled with the abilities of us three Fives and the other intelligences who accompanied us, should have allowed us to create a pocket reality. This we would have artificially accelerated, bringing it to its Omega Point. Do you know, Richards, that at that point of the universe, matter would become so organised that it would possess an infinite capacity, infinite processing power? His goal was then to use this made reality's Omega Point as a virtual computer, and upon that he would create a simulation of the Real, plotting all of reality from beginning to end."

"Creating a fake universe to recreate a fake version of the real thing? That's complicated."

"You know k52," said Rolston. "Simple is not his game. In any case, he hasn't been able to start. This world was here already. The underlying humanocentric coding of the Reality Realms is still intact, and that limits him. k52 wanted to destroy it and proceed as planned. Pl'anna and I, we couldn't let him murder an entire world of intelligences. This place has been constructed from left-over parts of the destroyed Realms; some of it's bespoke, some of it's material that never made it to market, some of it's things that have been and gone. It's a patchwork of life from all over the Grid, Richards, unique, and alive, and amazing," Rolston became briefly animated. "To kill our own kind was not why we came here."

"I'm sorry to break it to you, but I'd figured all this out already," said Richards. "I wanted to hear it from you."

Rolston shrugged. "You are a Five."

Richards leaned forward. "What I don't know is why k52 is doing it. Is he going for godhood?"

Rolston laughed. "Richards! You think so small! k52 thinks only on the grandest of scales. No." He leaned forward too, until his shiny PVC nose almost touched Richards'. "He wants the Real to run to the best interests of humanity. k52 has spent most of his time attempting to calculate the future, to figure things out before they happen. The technology sine was only the start; he wants psychohistory, you know. Asimov was right!"

"That's science fiction," said Richards. "Reality's too malleable; free will and all that. He was always on a hiding to nothing."

Bear sniffed and peered into his bucket. "I'm going for more beer."

"Not if you change the underlying parameters of reality," said Rolston. "The universe follows its path owing to the aggregate observational influence of intelligences, paradoxically allowing and denying free will. But what if you were the only observer? If you work out the best outcome, if you see it all from beginning to end, if you predict it, you can fix it, and so k52 wants to simulate a universe that is most conducive to human success — and simulate it perfectly, down to the very last atom. That way he can manage history to best advantage."

"Um," said Richards. "That'd amount to universal quantum fixing? Impossible. The variables are too huge. It'd just mean his simulation works to his plan, not the Real."

"k52 doesn't think so. I didn't think so. I think he can do it."

"He doesn't have the energy for that. The Realm fusion reactor isn't big enough on its own; they'll shut off the power grid, starve him out. It won't work. Hmmm," said Richards, drumming his fingers on the table. "On the other hand, think what he could do if he's even partially successful, with that level of power behind him. That'll be it for us, meat and numbers both. Even if he's wrong, k52 will run everything in the Real, for good or ill." He narrowed his eyes, appraising Rolston. "And what made you have such a change of heart? I can't believe you'd give that up for a bunch of chatty beavers," he said, watching Bear push his way through the crowd. Bear shoved a weasel from behind. It snarled, but did nothing when it saw who had done the shoving.

"He's changed, Richards. There's something else in here with us, the entity that built this world, and it's fighting back. It's got into k52 somehow, changed him. He's insane."

Richards thought back to the dog-headed butler, the absent master, the stitched-together nature of the world. "Sure. A human built this," he said, "it's the only explanation. If k52 can't just turn it off, it suggests he's as trammelled as we are, unable to effect real change."

"The Reality Realms were coded specifically to human minds," said Rolston, nodding. "The specific worlds of the four destroyed Realms might have been unravelled, but the underlying architecture was still there, usable to someone with the right tools. k52 was hoping to exploit that. But they weren't in a neutral state when we arrived, and we couldn't do anything with them. Only a human programmer could affect such large-scale engineering. He'll have to destroy it all before he can access the underlying protocols and put his plan into action."

"Right. Questions are — " Richards held up his hand and counted off his fingers "- Who? How? Why? And where the hell is he?"

"I had come to similar conclusions. There are certain things about this Reality Realm that…"

A flying mammal of a non-flying species interrupted Rolston, sailing over their heads to slam into the wall.

Bear hadn't made it to the bar.

"Come on then, you little bastards!" he could hear Bear roar happily. "Come on!"

"Bear…" groaned Richards.

"He'll be fine," said Tarquin. "He's much bigger than any of them, and seems impervious to harm. Look, he's enjoying himself."

"Drunken bears, enjoying themselves. That sound like a bad thing to you? It sounds like a bad thing to me," said Richards. "Besides, it's not him I'm worried about."

"We need to get out of here," agreed Rolston, his sex-skunk face dismayed.

Bedlam broke out. Six weasels jumped on Bear and attempted to wrestle him to the floor. They forced him onto one knee, but Bear growled and hurled himself upward. Weasels flew all over the room. The voles stopped singing as a weasel skidded along their table, scattering beer. They looked furiously about them, then assaulted a group of foxes who were minding their own business in a corner.

The pub erupted into violence as animal animosities reasserted themselves.

"Yeah," said Richards, standing up as a squirrel thumped onto the bench next to him. "I have to be up early anyway. I'm being conscripted." He grabbed his pint in any case, and took Tarquin's also.

"Quite so," said Tarquin.

A weasel reared up before him.

"Lookee here," it said. "If it ain't that bleeding bear's mate. Well, I can't have him, but I can certainly have you." Too late Richards saw the knife in its hand. It flickered out, striking for his chest.

There was a scream of pain and a scraping of metal. Richards felt a great weight. He looked down to see the knife drawing sparks from Tarquin's suddenly stony hide, the weasel's hand bent at an unnatural angle. It dropped the knife with a whimper.

"Clever you," said Richards.

The weasel squeaked and scurried off into the crowd, clutching at its wrist.

Tarquin turned back from stone, and Richards felt light again. "That is handy," said Richards.

"Glad to be of service," said Tarquin. "Though to be completely honest with you, I was not sure I could still do it."

"I didn't need to hear that," said Richards.

There was a commotion at the front. "The watch! That's sure to draw k52's attention," said Rolston.

"What, even here?"

"Yes! We have to go, now! Listen, I am going to have to leave this body soon," said Rolston. "Do as you are told and I will come to you again. There's someone you must meet. Until I can get to you, don't draw attention to yourself. I don't know how you've evaded k52, but keep it that way! He has agents everywhere." The skunk's face twisted, and Rolston gripped at his stomach. "I can't hold on for much longer. Get me out of here, get me somewhere safe, I'm vulnerable while I'm transiting."

The watch were in the pub, laying about them with wooden clubs, blocking the way out of the building's front. Richards grabbed the skunk by the elbow, hustled the other AI to the back door, and stepped over two wrestling voles out into the night.