Omega point

CHAPTER 6

Though the day promised rain, it held off. Soon Richards' human facsimile was sweating heavily and he was obliged to remove his macintosh. As his soreness receded, he began to take in the sensations his near-human form fed him, so much more entire than those he had experienced before. It was almost pleasant. Almost.

It was slow going with Geoff. "He's just not balanced right for it," said Bear. "Being three-legged is a disadvantage overcome with difficulty by giraffes." He shook his head as another frustrated squeak reached them from the wheat. "I fear he'll never master life as a tripod."

They rested awhile by a stone barn deep in the soughing corn. Bear leant against a huge chestnut tree and Richards sat with his back to a sundial. Geoff lay on the floor; it was easier for him.

They napped in the sun, each lost in his own thoughts. As they readied to leave, Geoff conveyed his wishes that the others go on, via a series of tremulous squeaks.

"We must stick together," said Bear.

Geoff would not be swayed. After a long and urgent conversation between the two animals, Bear came to Richards.

"Giraffes can be stubborn beasts, even those whose heads are full of wool," he said. "He's going to stay." Bear sniffed the air. "I'm sure he'll be fine. All I can smell down here is summer sleep and wheat." He yawned. Bear had a lot of teeth. "And look too," he said, gesturing upwards. "Look at the sky."

"Yes?" said Richards. The sky was blue and pretty.

"The sun!"

Richards shielded his eyes. "It's hardly moved," he said.

"I suspect night does not fall easily on these golden fields," said Bear.

"That's rather poetic," said Richards.

"I'm a poetic kind of bear," said Bear with a shrug.

The day wore on, and the sun did not move from its noon. They stopped for lunch by a rare brook. Richards took the opportunity to wash his stinking clothes as Bear ground some wheat and made flatbread on a rock heated by a fire of straw.

"My favourite," said Bear.

"Really," said Richards, annoyed at his need to eat. It tasted foul, and the grit in it hurt his teeth.

"It's free!" said Bear, grinning, though his smile was brittle.

Without night, time became meaningless. Richards' eyes blurred with endless gold, and he welcomed clouds, however fleeting. What had been a fine feeling turned sour, and his brain throbbed. When they slept, they did so in the shade of trees that broke the expanse of wheat, or underneath tumbledown walls that cut across the land, doggedly running to nowhere. The light shone through Richards' eyelids, turning his dreams pink.

"This is a land better suited to plants than men," said Bear, his voice roughened by thirst. It was all he said for quite some time. Pollen choked them.

After what felt like several days, Bear stopped and pointed. "Look!" he said. "The sun has moved at last."

Richards raised his sunburnt face to the sky. His body itched and his skin was tight. He was tired and hungry and thirsty. Humanity had worn thin.

The sun was several degrees lower than it had been before.

"Hmmm," murmured Bear, "this is most peculiar. The sun is setting, but it does not seem dependent on our passage through time, but more on our traversal of distance."

"Right," said Richards. He badly wanted to lie down. "Well done."

Bear waggled a paw with a rattle of beans. "I'm a curious kind of bear."

They walked through sunset fields where the unripe wheat reached Richards' chest, then came to a place where a sooty twilight reigned, and the wheat stopped altogether.

"I was afraid of this," said Bear. "I've been able to smell it for some time."

Ahead of them lay an area of blackened land. Patches of stubble poked up through fine white ash. The air was acrid. Dust devils whirled, and the ground radiated a dangerous heat. The swollen sun melted away into tears of fire at the ruin of the world.

An eerie howl sounded across the plain.

"Hmm," said Bear. "Let's stop here."

Richards, more tired than he thought possible, sank to his knees and was asleep before he hit the ground.

Day came as day does, the normal order of things holding sway at the edge of the wheat, and they continued onwards.

Soon after, Richards and Bear found a village that had been sacked. A small place of twenty or so cottages whose blackened beams stood exposed to the sky, walls bowed, close to ruin or ruinous already, revealing tangles of bones inside. There was a broke-back church and a mill whose wheel lay smashed in the river. The crackle of dying fires and wisps of smoke still haunted the place.

"I smell trouble," said Bear, "and it is trouble of the worst kind. We best be careful, sunshine." He fell to all fours and slunk across the river, a scowl on his face. Richards followed, the water warm and stinking, his trousers clinging unwelcomely to his legs.

Bear crossed quickly, leaving Richards to scramble up its far bank alone. At the top, he came across a body, a brightly hued rabbity thing the size of a five-year-old.

It couldn't have been killed more than a day ago, but it looked as if it had been dead for centuries. Its bright skin was a thin, dirt-lined parchment, eyes sunken in cavernous, glitterrimed sockets. Where Richards touched it, its flesh felt hard and brittle.

"YamaYama," said Bear, coming to Richards' side. "Had a quick scout, there's lots of 'em dead, all like that, poor little blighters."

"This is a YamaYama?" said Richards.

"Toy of the year, 2102," said Bear. "Fully interactive, cute little beggars, bit like rabbits, but more soppy."

Richards nodded. "I heard of them, although 2102 was a couple of years before I was born. I've had to interrogate one as a witness. Big learning capabilities, but then what doesn't possess heuristics in this day and age? There was a controversy: too close to true AI. Neukind rights people said they were alive, like me, or you. They were one of the examples the rights movement used."

"Yeah, well, that didn't stop them being trashed in their millions when they went out of fashion," said Bear. "And I complain about my box in the attic."

"Some of their minds got out onto the Grid and ended up here?" said Richards.

"Mm-huh," said Bear. "Their collective was already up and running when I got pulled in. It was all going so well for them, and now look at this." A paw swept round the devastation. "Shocking."

The YamaYama looked like he'd been sucked dry, his face an expression of agony that suggested he had been alive to suffer it.

"What did it?" asked Richards.

"Haemites," said Bear. "One of Penumbra's lot," and he shook his long head until his little helmet rattled.

"Who is this Penumbra?"

"I've said too much. Got to keep you fresh for the debrief. Forget it, if you're not shamming, that is." The bear squinted suspiciously. He wrinkled his nose. "Hey, can you hear that?"

"What?" said Richards.

"That."

There was a ring of metal, then another.

"Is that a swordfight?"

Bear shrugged. "Mebbe. I'm going to check it out. You can stay here if you want."

"Aren't I your prisoner?" said Richards.

Bear grinned a daggered grin. "And where you going to go, sunshine?"

They hurried to the far side of the village, toward the sound of melee.

"Get back! Get back, I say!" Clang! Clang! "Avast! Avaunt! Begone!" Clang, clang, clang-clang.

There was a tumult of steam whistles, a frantic scrabbling, and four figures came haring round the carcass of a smouldering house, stumbling to a stop of blades and curses twenty metres from Richards and Bear.

One of them was a man, his face furrowed with concentration. He wore slashed velvet clothes of eye-watering purple, a goatee on his face. A large hat sat atop his sweat-damp hair, decorated with a long, bedraggled feather.

"A cavalier!" whispered the Bear with some delight. "Or he looks not unlike one. He certainly fights with their panache. Let's watch," he said, and pulled Richards into the shelter of a ruined cottage.

The cavalier handled a silver blade with an ease that belied its unwieldiness, shaped as it was like a huge feather. In and out it went, turning away the weapons of his adversaries. Yet his movements were slowing, flickering a semaphore of desperation.

His opponents were iron homunculi a metre and a half tall. Stooped and misshapen, they moved with an ugly grace.

"Hee hee! Hee hee! Kill him! Kill him! Eat his eyes! Stab his heart!"

"Ha ha! Break his bones! Smash his skull! Strip his meat! Take him apart!"

Each was the colour of ancient rust. Their faces were intricate masks. Clanking mechanical noises issued from them, a ratcheting hum underlying the swordplay.

"Hoo hoo hoo!" chittered a third. "Take his blood! Eat! Eat! Eat!"

"Bloody Hell, clockwork goblins," said Richards. "This place gets weirder by the minute." The bear was watching with an expression approaching enjoyment. Richards elbowed the toy in its gut. "Go on then, help him," he said.

Bear shrugged. "Not my problem."

Richards scowled. "Some soldier you are. Well, I can't just stand here." He stepped out into plain sight. "Oi!" he shouted, his plan running out with that.

One of the haemites turned from the fight. "What's this? What's this? Fresh meat! Fresh meat!" A whistle on its shoulder tooted. It whirred towards Richards.

"Run, you fool! Flee!" shouted the cavalier. "Be away swiftly before they are upon you!" And he redoubled his efforts to drive back the haemites besetting him, but to no avail, and they tooted as they pressed him harder. "For the love of god! Don't let it touch you!"

The creature came closer to Richards. It smelt of furnaces and stale water. "Hee hee, hee hee hee!" it gibbered. "Slow we'll go, slow and nice. Best for me!"

Richards scooped up a house brick and bounced it off the haemite to no effect. "Ah, balls," he said.

"Oh, for the… Ahem!" shouted the bear. "Hands off my prisoner!"

"A bear!" the machine screeched.

"A bear?" queried a second.

"Where?" cried the third.

"There!" hollered the fourth.

"More, more!" cried the creature approaching Richards. "Oh, joy joy! Iron and meat for us to eat! Plenty!" It whistled, jaws clacking together. "You later!" It giggled. "Kill the bear!"

"I wouldn't be so sure about that if I were you, matey," said Bear, flexing his claws.

"Skreeeeeeee!" shrieked Richards' assailant. It charged the toy. Bear batted its first strikes away, sending the goblin-thing staggering with the force of his paws. It recovered with alarming alacrity. Bear snarled and swiped, missing. The creature ducked and lunged. There was a soft rip as sword connected with fabric.

The creature's blade sunk up to the hilt in Bear's belly, and it screamed in triumph. The fight by the barn slowed, the man looking on in horror. The other creatures joined the call, a keening whistle.

Bear looked at the sword, then at the haemite. Bear raised his eyebrows. Bear did not look very happy.

The creature wrenched its sword from Bear's gut and stabbed again. Bear grimaced.

"Ouch," said Bear. "Ooh, ow, oh, really, aiee! Stop it." He scowled, and spoke with leaden menace. "Oh, do stop it. Do."

The creature stopped and drew the sword out. A thin wisp of stuffing snagged on the blade's nicked edge. Bear poked at the hole in his tummy, and fixed the mechanical monster with a doleful glare. "Now you're just annoying me," he said.

There was a noise like a beanbag travelling at mach three hitting a sack of spanners, and the haemite hurtled into a wall. It exploded with a gout of steam and hot coals. Tiny gears rained down over Richards.

"Aha!" yelled the cavalier. He swung his blade, cleaving one of the creatures in two. The remaining pair faltered, the energy gone from their assault. Bear roared and they turned tail and fled.

The cavalier planted his sword in the ground and leaned upon his knees. "A thousand thanks," he panted. His face was florid and running with sweat. "Rarely have I seen such valour in battle. Indeed." He caught his breath, stood straight and smiled. "I had come to a sorry pass with those devils, and feared my days were done. Were it not for your timely intervention I believe done they would have been."

"No problem, bud," said Bear with a shrug, beans rattling. "Just doing the decent thing." He looked at Richards. "How are you, Mr Richards, OK?"

"Just Richards," said Richards.

"You were most fortunate, sir," said the stranger. "The preferred delicacy of the haemite is the iron found within the human organism. Three moments more and you, sir, would currently resemble the poor wretches of this place." He spun on Cuban heels, staring up at Bear. "And how fare you, my mighty friend? What says your steely gut? I have seen such blows disembowel an elephant, yet you stand unscratched."

Bear shrugged and scratched his hole. "I'll stitch."

"Stitch?" said the man. "Aha. Stitch!" he bellowed with pantomime laughter that stopped as abruptly as it had begun. "I am forgetting my manners. I, Percival Del Piccolo, poet swordsman of wit, cavalier, debonair liberator of ladies' virtues, pirate king and all round irritant…"

"Yeah," butted in Bear.

"Ahahaha," said Piccolo, laughing, "all round irritant to tyrants, evil Maharajahs and Grand Viziers with ideas above their station." He held up his sword, which only now Richards realised was shaped like a quill, with a silver nib for a hilt. "I also appear to be overly fond of glib cliche." He let the weapon fall to his side again.

"What are you?" Richards looked him up and down. "You're not a historical, nor educational. An old game character? A composite of old game characters?"

"This place is full of them," said Bear. "Wankers. Always asking you to do pointless shit. Over. And over. Again." He growled.

"I know not," rejoined the cavalier. "I only know that I am, and that I possess only one set of clothes." Piccolo's face turned from frown to grin as he took in the gold trim and lace cuffs. "And that is not a welcome state of affairs."

"Does this chap ever shut up?" said Bear to no one in particular.

"Rarely, I admit," said Piccolo.

"That it? I'm Bear," said Bear.

"He's a toy, even though he looks like a bear," added Richards. "And I'm Richards."

"And he's an idiot, even though he looks like a fool," added Bear drily.

"A toy like a bear and an idiot fool, eh? Ohohoho. What a gay pass."

"Ra-ight," said Bear. "Well, I think we'll be on our way now, if you don't mind. No need to worry about the rescue and all."

"In that case, strangers, I assume you do not wish to be made aware of what occurred in this place?" inquired Piccolo.

Bear huffed. "No."

"Yes," said Richards.

"I shall perforce forgive your hirsute companion, sir, for he is but a rude beast, with manners to match. Indeed who would expect more — " he laughed "- from a bear? 'Tis fortune indeed for him for that he is naught more. Mayhap, were he a man, honour would compel me to slice the blaggard from gizzard to crotch."

"Just you try it," muttered Bear.

"This land you presently stand in," began Piccolo, "was once the happy YamaYama nation of Optimizja. Ah!" he projected, bouncing his voice off the surrounding buildings. "Ah! Optimizja! The very name is sweet mead on the tongue! A veritable salve to any misery was a week in Optimizja! A panacea to the ills of the soul! A joyous place, where the YamaYama folk were happy with never a care, all times willing to see the best in things, always hopeful for tomorrow, forever…"

"They'd be optimistic, then?" said Bear. "Hurry it on."

"I suppose one could ineloquently put it like that, if one had to, or were one rushed for time," said the cavalier. "May I, with your leave, Sir Bear, continue?"

"Be my guest," said Bear, settling down on the floor. "Sit down, sunshine," he said to Richards. "This may take a while."

"They were always well fed and industrious, the people of Optimizja. The eternal light that would never dim providing them both with vittles and joy, fuelling their sunny dispositions. They worked hard and laughed long, the people of Optimizja, always illumined by glorious gold until…"

"Let me guess," said Bear. "The sun set one day."

"Will you be silent, please? I am mid-narrative," snapped Piccolo.

Richards dug Bear in the ribs. "Sorr-ee," said Bear.

"Then, one awful eve, the unconscionable occurred. The folk of this joyous place were overcome with horror when the sun unexpectedly set," said Piccolo.

"See?" whispered Bear to Richards.

"After marvelling at such a thing, for many of them had never travelled to the lands where the lamp of Sol is extinguished, borne through Hades by the chariot of glorious Apollo ere close of every day, only to be hauled forth again the next — " he paused to draw breath "- the people were terrified, yet, in their terror, they were hopeful that the sun would return, the elders reassuring the youngsters that this was what passed ordinarily in foreign parts, and that even here the sun required to rest from one age to the next. Thus they went about their business in the unfamiliar night with smiles upon their faces."

Bear put a paw up.

"Yes?"

"Was that because they were optimistic?"

"But little did they know!" shouted Piccolo. "Little did they know that this was merely the precursor to the Great Terror about to engulf their land in perpetual gloom! They kenned nought of it, the dark that sweeps the land, consuming all in its path, the armies of vile creatures that are its van, and Lord Penumbra! The evil beast who is its master, the shadow who controls it all! For why should they? The people of Optimizja never ventured forth from their happy land, for they had no need. Everything required was here for them. An enchanted, blessed place was this."

"Hmph. Sounds like they needed a reality check to me," said Bear. "Ooh, look! A ladybird."

"But woe unto them!" bellowed Piccolo, making Richards jump. "For when the armies of darkness descended upon Optimizja its folk were caught unawares, rousted from their beds by horrors far beyond their cheerful imaginings. Scattered and slaughtered were they, reaped as easily as the wheat they harvested. Bucks, does and kittens, their essences drained by haemites. Their crops and homes burnt.

"But that, that, dear gentlefolk, is not the end of it. Oh, precious life of ours, no. Soon the very land upon which this village stands will be consumed by the Great Terror, the terrible vortex that follows in the wake of Penumbra's depravities, leaving nothing, not one grain of sand but, in the stead of life, a terrible void. As it is now for thousands of leagues to the east, and as all will be when the dark finally reaches the sea to the west." Piccolo bowed his head.

"So," said Richards, "you're telling me there is a, for want of a better word, 'shadow lord', and the entire world is being eaten alive by some terrible darkness?"

"A little imprecise, but yes. Some fragments persist, here and there in the dark — those places which hold the soul of a land remain for a while dotted in the starless night, until they, too, fade."

"Hmmm," said Richards. "Tell me, do you know of an entity such as myself, one called k52?"

"That I know not, good Richards," said Piccolo regretfully. "I am a fragment of a world gone, a world where I had no more will than a blade of grass. Only the Flower King gave me form, and in truth this life is no more real. We will all die eventually from this war. Best to flee to the west, as I was attempting to do before my ship threw a wheel, costing me my crew, lost to those iron devils. Oh! They were a bitter tax levied that I may live the longer! Woe is Piccolo! Woe! It makes me wish to weep when I think of the fine day we set out across land. It was seven weeks past, I remember it well, a glorious morning full of promise…"

"Thanks," said Bear, hauling Richards upright. "I think that'll do."

"It may seem trite to you, my friend," said Piccolo, fixing Bear with a sorry eye. "But our world is dying." He seemed diminished, crumpled.

"Yeah. I know," said Bear, tapping his helm with a claw. "Helmet see? Me brave soldier, fighting armies of darkness? I understand entirely. That's why we're sooooooo out of here." He began to walk away. "If the Terror has come this far in," he confided to Richards, "we'll need to get Geoff. This place won't be here for much longer." He thought for a second, then added halfheartedly, "You should come with us, Piccolo."

"Aha!" cried Piccolo, once more a dashing figure. "I cannot, for, before the end of it all, I must chase down my arch-adversary, the Punning Pastry Chef!"

"Puh-lease," said the bear, and grabbed Richards by the shoulder.

"Who?" called Richards, as Bear dragged him away.

"He bakes pies and tells lies, with not a good rhyme between them. He will taste my steel before the world is done! I will slice his final cake with glee! Farewell, my friends!" called Piccolo through cupped hands. "Keep well, and remember, head west. Always to the west!"

And with that they turned a corner and the cavalier was lost to sight.

"Good riddance," said Bear.

Richards stopped. Bear tried to pull him on, but he resisted.

"What's he doing here?" said Richards. "Very interesting."

"What?"

"Him, there," Richards pointed to a corpse. From a distance it looked like a YamaYama, shrivelled by haemite touch, but closer they could see it had once been a man. "East Asian?" said Richards as he approached. He squatted down and poked at the woody corpse with a piece of charred lath. "Chinese. Could be, but hard to tell in here, could be anything." And then, something, something he'd not felt since he'd arrived. His head snapped round, and he practically jumped up. A stream of information, a tug of numbers, the weft of the place he was in, snagged at his mind. "Hang on a minute," he said eagerly. He scanned the village, turning his head slowly left to right: that way the flow diminished, fading back into a world of broken homes and dead toys, but this way he sensed it again, a flicker in the world, a crackle in his head. "Bingo!" said Richards. "I knew he wasn't from in here!" He set off toward the church.

"Oi! Stop!" shouted the bear. He grabbed Richards' shoulder again.

"Stop pawing at me, will you?" Richards shrugged the paw off, so Bear knocked him to the floor.

"We cannot leave the giraffe behind!" growled Bear. "He is my friend, and I won't abandon him to die. No tarrying!"

"Do you want to save this place or what?" said Richards.

The bear shuffled from foot to foot. "I suppose," he said eventually, with a sniff.

"Then let me do my job. In there — " Richards pointed a finger at the village church "- there's a way to the outside."

"But you're my prisoner," wheedled Bear. It came with no force, and Richards went on. Clasping his helmet to his head, Bear hurried to catch up.

They went into the church, stepping over a spill of shrivelled YamaYama fanned around the door. The roof ridge was broken, and there were large holes punched through the tiles. The floor was cratered and covered with shrapnel, rubble and splintered wood. YamaYama bodies were crushed and dismembered everywhere. In a pulpit at the front a YamaYama in an ecclesiastical surplice stood, pinned by a spear to the wall. A spread of ornate breads, fruit and vegetables lay on an altar before a cross, untouched but for a layer of fine debris.

Richards stopped and pointed at something on the far side of the church. "See?"

"What?"

"I'm not people, but they were." Five more corpses lay in a grotesque pile, half phased into each other and the stone wall. Richards peered closer. One of the blocks flickered. "Someone's been trying to break in. Looks like it was shut off pretty quickly, too quick for these poor idiots, but there's something still there." Richards closed his eyes. "It's slippery, but I can feel…"

"Yeah, whatever, Mr La-di-da Richards AI Level Five man," said Bear. He flapped a paw and crunched over the rubble to the food. He dusted a loaf off and sniffed it. He hit it against the altar. It made a thud; hard and stale. He put it back. "I'm going to keep watch," he said, and went to stand by the church's shattered nave windows.

There was a fountain of data rippling intermittently from the outside, a gash in the world through which Richards could taste the wider Grid. Richards positioned himself in its path, and tentatively extended part of his mind into the flow.

He hooked in.

"Got it!" His mind burrowed into the fabric of the world. He poked a sensing presence out of the shell of the construct and found himself looking at the firewall that surrounded all of the Reality Realms, living and dead. A tiny rip blinked in it, already closing. No way out there. He turned his mind back in and ran his thoughts into the reality he stood within. Creative coding wasn't his strong point, and the mass of numbers he was confronted by was nearly beyond him, but the stream of equations rushing through him were of indescribable complexity, way beyond most everything else out in the world. "This stinks of k52," he muttered. He pushed harder, trying to snag himself onto the world, to give it a tweak, make a hole from the inside out he could use to escape, send a message, anything. He pulled back frustrated. He could just about hear and feel his own Gridpipe, but the way back into the Grid remained elusive.

He pushed harder. There, another stream of data, a second layer under the first, simpler, old-fashioned, mismatched. He scanned through it quickly, and his eyebrows raised. This was the core script for the world that he was in, not the complex stuff. Still, it was not like anything he'd seen before either. It was a patchwork, what looked like scavenged bits of the four RealWorld Reality Realms broken before k52's takeover of the Realm House, stitched together with additional elements copied or stolen from all over the Grid — virtspace recreations of locations in the Real, on-Grid shopping arcades, truly ancient games, conference rooms, sense-furnished chatrooms — enough to make a world.

This lay beneath the smothering layer of the complex code Richards tentatively identified as created by k52. He took another look. k52's contained information, but it was unable to express itself. The codes were fighting one another, both attempting to occupy the same space. It was an eerie feeling. Information in the Grid came like currents in a sea, and these were two streams, isolated and competing for resources, fighting like snakes. Behind them, on the edge of his awareness, was the hum of the remaining thirty-one Realms, beyond that faint hints of the Grid, maddeningly unattainable.

The patchwork world seethed with simple near-Is, all modded, some corrupt, bound to the world they inhabited. As he watched, k52's programmes probed and bit. The older code reacted, in some places holding out, while in others chunks of the world frittered to nothing, scores of lesser digital minds going with it. The complex code was winning, but not in the usual way. Richards could sense no hunter-killers, no phages, nothing used for normal datawipe, but somehow k52's stream was besting the other, even as the other infected it and subverted parts of it.

Something else caught his attention. Within the modded near-I populations, several true AIs' Gridsigs rang out, obvious as elephants in a field of rabbits. There were many Twos and Ones, a few Fours and a Six, some bound into the fabric of the world, others on top, idents masked and unreadable.

Three of the sigs he recognised in spite of their camouflage. There was nothing quite like the digital song of a living Class Five, and he knew these well.

Rolston, Pl'anna and k52. Pl'anna's was fragile and changed, yet true at its heart, Rolston's irregular and inconstant, echoes doubling it up. Both were faint and distorted, similarly modded to the lesser near-Is infesting the fabric of the makeshift Realm, flashing with parts of the world code. k52's had grown black and monstrous, boiling with power.

As soon as his awareness brushed k52's Gridsig, something pressed hard back, breaking his concentration.

"Ah, bollocks," said Richards, and tried to snatch himself back.

"Richards," said a voice in his mind, the pressure of a giant intellect coming with it, and something else — unbounded irritation. "There you are. Goodbye, Richards," said k52.

Somewhere in the conflicted world codes opened. Richards caught the sense of another presence, angry, looking right at him. Then the connection snapped shut with physical force. Irreality rippled, and Richards was cast across the room, landing in a tangle of limbs and loaves in the middle of the YamaYama harvest festival display.

"Oh-oh," said Bear.

The air changed, becoming sharp and electric. Richards pulled himself free from squashed bread and fruit and hurried to where Bear stood. To the east of them, in the darkening sky, a thunderhead was building itself up into an angry mountain.

The sky rumbled. A gust of wind hurled debris into their faces. The clouds turned black, rushing in like oil on water, casting the distant golden fields into unnerving contrast.

"Mr Richards…" said Bear slowly. The wind grew, the stalks of wheat tossed and strained, hissing frantically, a trillion serpents trapped in earth by their tails, desperate to flee.

"Just Richards," breathed Richards.

The clouds ate the sun. A shroud of darkness was thrown across the land.

A crack of thunder, and another. The ground trembled. The church swayed. The toy bear and the facsimiled man stumbled out into the street.

"Uh, Mr Richards!" shouted Bear over the gathering wind, "I think it's high time we got out of here." He pointed. Heading toward the village, a towering vortex of sinister energies, a hurricane of smoke and mercury. Tendrils probed down from the underside of the cloud, malevolent whirlwinds questing for nourishment. The storm moved with unnatural swiftness toward the YamaYama village. Trees, crumbling houses and the mill wheel whipped skyward. When they touched the vortex they shattered, consumed in a shower of cold silver sparks.

Richards ran for all he was worth. The air rasped in his lungs, burning them. He was choked by dust, and he cursed whoever had given him this body for not making it a fitter one. A storm tendril made landfall behind him and the church exploded, fizzing bits of wood raining down and turning to sparkling nothing as they hit the ground. He stumbled, sharp claws scraped his back, and he was lifted high. He was on Bear's back.

"Hang on, sunshine!" roared Bear. "I'm going to have to put some effort into this!" And they were away, Bear snorting as he galloped.

Bear made for a copse illuminated by one last sunbeam. "Let's hope that lasts!" he yelled.

They were within a paw's swipe as the wind came upon them. It was full of… things. Some of these were of the prosaic kind, grit and twigs and bits of house, but many of them were not. Intangible efreets and harpies rolled in the air, riding the energy of the storm. The wind was braided with cruel laughter, and claws teased Bear's fur as he burst into trees and sunshine and safety. Richards did not follow.

"Wuh?" said Bear. He turned to see Richards being carried backward by some half-visible devil. Behind them the land was crumbling to nothing.

"Help!" shouted Richards.

"Mr Richards!" shouted Bear.

The toy dug his claws deep into an oak overhanging the nothingness and reached out for Richards. Richards gave up punching the thing carrying him and reached back for Bear, managing to grasp one smooth claw.

"Hold… on… harder!" yelled Bear above the tornado. "Don't… let… go!"

"I'm fucking trying!" shouted Richards.

The pair of them were pulled away from refuge into space. Chunks of clay and soil crumbled from the edge of the island, frittering to bits as they hurtled upwards.

"I'm slipping!" shouted Richards.

"Hold on, Mr Richards, hold on!" But it was no use. Bear was slipping. The oak shifted. The ground disappeared beneath his feet. The tree leaned out into the uncanny storm, Bear holding the tree, Richards grasping the bear and the thing in the dark hauling hard at the AI.

The storm diminished, the vortex and its cargo of nightmare whirling around into ever tighter spirals, until it reached a point of black light and vanished with a shriek. Richards came free. Bear struggled to keep hold of him as he swung toward and under the fragment of earth that remained.

They hung over the void.

"Frigging pandas on a bike," gasped Bear. "That was horrible. I've never seen The Terror up close like that, Mr Richards."

"Just Richards," panted Richards.

Bear told Richards to climb up onto his belly, then hauled them both onto the island, where they lay on the grass. The tree creaked woefully and fell down into the nothing, disintegrating in a shower of multicoloured subatomic bits.

"k52, you bastard. Total dissolution," said Richards. "He tried to wipe me. Now I'm mad."

"Nice friend," said Bear. "Oooh. I think I've pulled the stitches in my arm."

"Still," said Richards. "He didn't kick me out entirely. I've got a fix on the other Fives, more or less; that's something. If I can find them, things might be a little bit easier for us." He looked at them in his mind. He had a dim awareness of the war taking place in the rush of numbers that made up this construct. He tried to force his way back into the code level, looking out for k52 as he did so, but could not make further progress. Rolston and Pl'anna's signatures remained faint, but offered answers, if he could find them.

Bear sat and looked out into the infinity of blackness.

"Geoff…" He hung his head. "It's gone. All of it's gone. Geoff… Geoff's gone." The great animal began to weep, a mournful sound born of damp earth and the regrets of forests. Richards was battered by the misery they contained. Unsure of what to do, he reached his arms around the mighty toy. Bear leaned into him and howled.

"There, there," Richards said. "There, there."

Otto was never going to believe this.