The Holy Machine

48

+000000113-000000254, read the notice over the gate of Park.

These were its coordinates. Five kilometres east, Park would be called +000000113-000000255, fifty kilometres south, Park would be called +000000103-000000254. They used to have names over the gates chosen by local residents, and little details of design that marked out one from another. Now only the numbers distinguished them.

On their green hillock, the circle of children were dancing ring-a-roses.

Atishoo-atishoo…

Five kilometres to the north in Park +000000114-000000254, an identical circle of children were dancing. So they were five kilometres eastward in +000000113-000000255, and every five kilometres, north, south, east and west for ever and ever and ever. Every five billion kilometres, the numbers themselves began to repeat.

Little Rose ran to the top of the highest hill in the Park and stopped to look around. Houses, towers, hills stretched away into the distance. But, many repetitions away, a whole section of the City disappeared as she looked, as if a great mouth had bitten it off and swallowed it. After which there was a flurry of ghostly traffic all around her, a muttering and murmuring, like a wind of soul-fragments, hurrying towards the gigantic hole where that section of city had been.

yibbly dibbly deeble dargle, yibbly dibbly deeble dargle… went the whispering traffic of ghosts.

Then, for the first time since Mr Gladheim was struck dumb, she heard a voice speaking real words.

‘Don’t just stand and look at it! Can’t you see the danger?’

It was a thin man, as thin as a stick, sketched out in black and white, his face a diagram of fear.

But under his arm he carried a second head, a second diagrammatic head, which looked at Little Rose and smiled reassuringly.

‘What larks eh?’ said the disembodied Head.

But the thin man clucked his tongue.

‘You’d better come with us!’ he said, ‘We have to get away from that thing over there or it will eat us too.’

To her own surprise, Little Rose just smiled.

The Head chuckled.

‘How can you laugh?’ exclaimed the Thin Man urgently. ‘It’s coming! Look! Run!’

Across the City, Park +000000113-000000249 disappeared into an invisible maw.

yibbly dibbly deeble dargel… went the ghosts as they hurried towards oblivion.

Even the letters in the sky were flowing towards the gap.

Poor Little Rose. Her whole life had consisted of running to new safe places as old ones were violated. But if monsters invaded SenSpace when she no longer had arms or legs or eyes, then where else was there left to run?

She felt terror, and rage… but oddly too, she also felt relief.

‘Come on!’ called the Thin Man.

‘No,’ said Little Rose, ‘No. I think I’ll just stay here.’

‘Bravo,’ said the Head, ‘Me too! I’ll stay as well!’

‘You certainly won’t,’ said the Thin Man, grasping his bodiless companion firmly and taking to his heels.

‘Follow us!’ he shouted back. ‘Do you want to be devoured?’

The Head gave a kind of bodiless shrug as it was whisked away.

‘Good luck!’ it called out to Little Rose as it disappeared from her view.

Little Rose waited, watching the nothingness draw closer like a tide. Another Park, another Downtown, another Residential Area. The ghosts yammered more and more loudly with each new and nearer bite.

Soon the thing was eating through the nearest Downtown, the nearest Artists’ Quarter.

Then it went gulp and there was nothing beyond the lake.

yimmer yammer… went the ghosts voices.

Gulp went the mouth again, and the lake was gone.

Gulp.

Gulp.

Gulp.