The Holy Machine

49

Little Rose found herself back on that high platform under the stars. She was looking out over the patchwork of the SenSpace worlds. There was the seaside, there was the forest, there were the mountains, there was a little part of the City without End^TM, all laid out for her to choose from, just as if nothing amiss had ever happened.

‘I’m very, very sorry, my dear,’ said a familiar voice. ‘You must have had a dreadful time of it. There was a technical problem with the interface, I’m afraid.’

Little Rose turned smiling to Mr Gladheim. He put a protective arm across her shoulder. ‘You know I’ll never feel quite the same about you again,’ she said, ‘now that I’ve seen you vanish in slices.’

Mr Gladheim didn’t know what to say.

‘Are you under the control of a human operator at the moment?’ asked Little Rose.

After a moment’s hesitation, Mr Gladheim nodded.

Little Rose nodded.

‘What’s your name, operator?’

Again Mr Gladheim hesitated.

‘I don’t know if I’m…’

‘Go on,’ said Little Rose.

‘Er… Janet,’ he said, ‘Janet Müller.’

Little Rose smiled at the notion of a woman speaking with Mr Gladheim’s manly baritone.

‘Ruth Simling,’ she said, ‘That’s who my operator is. Not that there’s much left of Ruth Simling.’

Mr Gladheim nodded, sagely, Janet Müller not knowing what else to say.

‘Everything’s back to normal down there in the City,’ she made Mr Gladheim say after a pause. ‘Your House is back how you made it. I expect you want to go back there don’t you? Maybe we could sort out that orchard you wanted?’

Little Rose turned away from him and looked out over the many worlds below them.

‘Be honest Janet, how would you like it if this was the only place you could be?’

Janet did not know what to say to this either, so she let Sol Gladheim look shrewd and sympathetic and not say anything at all.

Little Rose, however, was looking out over the worlds.

She noticed some bare mountains in the distance she hadn’t seen before. She thought perhaps she’d go there.