Feersum Endjinn

1

When she awoke there was a halo of light all around the circular bed; the light led up forever into and beyond the sky and shrank to a point that was both the source of the light and a calm, dark hole.

She wondered where the ceiling had gone.

The light was like nothing she had ever seen or even had any words for; it was at once absolutely smooth, uniform and pure, and somehow wildly various, composed of every hue there were words to describe and many more besides; it was every shade and intensity of every colour any eye or instrument ever born or made had ever been able to distinguish, and it was the utter un-colour of profound darkness too.

As she sat up, the tunnel of light moved with her so that she was always looking straight into it, until she was gazing down to the end of the bed over the little hills her feet made in the soft coverings. Now the tunnel of light led away across where the floor ought to be and out through the tall windows and over the balcony and the lawns outside. It was as though in that silent gloriousness she could see vague dim outlines of the earlier room around her, but the brilliant shining had made them the unreal world, not the real one.

She could remember waking and her journey through the garden and the hedge-castle and the talking heads and her con­versations with the old man in this house; she could remember the two younger people and the lunch and supper they had taken together, and recall being shown to this room by the old man and the woman, and shown the bathroom by the woman, but all that was made as though into a dream by this utterly quiet cascade of light, so that now she could have believed that all of it had indeed been a fiction.

She crawled to the foot of the bed and slipped out of the covers. They had given her a beautiful nightgown of soft blue and she had worn it first then taken it off because it felt restricting, but now she reached back and slipped it on again.

They had given her slippers too but she stared into the light and could not bear to go back round the side of the bed to look for them, and so she set off into the light, walking gently with a flowing, measured tread, as though frightened her footsteps might bruise the fabric of this beckoning radiance.

The tunnel's floor was neither warm nor cold; it yielded to her soles but it was not soft. The air seemed to drift with her as she walked and she had the impression that with every step she took she moved a great but somehow natural distance, as if one could stand on a desert and look to a far mountain peak and suddenly be there on that summit, in the thin rush of cold air, looking at a line of hills on the horizon, and then be there too, and then turn and see a broad grassy plain in the distance and be there, standing on the warm earth with the tall swaying grass brushing at her legs and buzzing insects sounding lazy in the hot, damp air; she looked from there to a small hill where short grass grew around old, fallen stones and birds trilled overhead and from where she looked into a broad forest and then she was within the forest and surrounded by trees and didn't know where to go; everywhere she looked was the same, and she could no longer tell whether she was actually moving anywhere now or not and after a while realised that she was completely lost and so stood there, her mouth set in a tight line, her fists clenched and her brows furrowed as though trying to contain within herself the fury and perplexity she felt at still being enclosed by the night-dark jungle, until she noticed a cool shaft of soft light glowing through the branches, and was there, bathed in it but still surrounded by the green pouring weight of rustling foliage.

But then she smiled and lifted up her head and there in the sky was a beautiful moon, round and wide and welcoming.

She looked at it.

She went to the moon where a small ape-man tried to explain what was happening, but she didn't completely understand what he was telling her. She knew it was something important, and that she had something important to do, but she could not quite work out what. She set the memory aside. She would think about it later.

The moon disappeared.

In the distance there was a castle. Or, at least, something that looked like a castle. It rose above a blue line of hills in the far distance, castle-shaped but impossibly big; a blue outline painted on the pale air, flat— and even upside-down-looking, not because it was not the correct shape for a castle — it was exactly the right shape — but because the higher up you looked the clearer the castle appeared.

Its horizon-spanning, many-towered outer wall was barely visible through the heat-haze above the hills, while the bulk of its sky-filling middle section was more defined, although obscured by cloud in places; its upper storeys and highest towers shone with a pale whiteness that brightened with alti­tude, and the tallest tower of all, just off-centre, positively glowed towards its summit, its sharpness giving it the per­verse appearance of proximity despite its obvious extreme height.

She sat in an open carriage drawn by eight fabulous black cat-beasts whose silky fur pulsed with muscly movement beneath harnesses of damascened silver. They rippled along a road of dusty red tiles, each one of which bore a different pictogram picked out in yellow, between fields of grasses and shining flowers; the air whistling past was thick, humid and perfumed and full of birdsong and insect buzz.

Her clothes were delicate and fine and coloured lighter than her skin; soft ankle boots, a long flowing skirt, a short gilet over a loose shirt, and a sizable, firm-surfaced but very light hat with green ribbons which flew out in the slipstream.

She looked behind her at the road stretching back into the distance; the dust of their passing hung in the air, slowly drifting. She gazed around and saw far-away towers, spires and windmills scattered across the cultivated plain. The road ahead led straight towards the wooded hills and the vast castle-shape hanging above.

She looked up; directly over the carriage a flock of large, sleek grey birds were flying in an arrow-head formation, keeping station with the carriage with purposeful, coordinated wing beats. She clapped her hands and laughed, then sat back in the soft blue upholstery of the carriage seat.

There was a man sitting in the seat across from her. She stared. He hadn't been there before.

He was pale-skinned and young and dressed in tight black clothes which matched his hair. He didn't look quite right; he and his clothes looked speckled somehow, and she could see through him, as though he was made of smoke.

The man swivelled round and looked behind him, towards the castle. He crackled as he moved. He turned back.

'This won't work, you know,' he said, his voice whining and cracked.

She frowned, staring at him. She tipped her head on one side.

'Oh, you look very cute and innocent, to be sure, but that won't save you, my dear. I know you can't, but just for form's —' The young man broke off as several of the escort birds stooped screaming at him, talons spread. He batted one away with an insubstantial fist and seized another by the neck without taking his eyes off her. He wrung the bird's neck while it struggled, wings beating madly, in his hands. There was a snap. He threw the limp body over the side of the carriage.

She stared at him, appalled. He produced a heavy umbrella of darkest blue and spread it over his head as the keening birds attacked.

'As I was saying, my dear; I know you don't really have any choice in this, but for form's sake — so that when we do have to kill you we feel at least we gave you a chance — hear this; cease and desist, now. Do you understand? Go back to where you came from, or just stay where you are, but don't go any further.'

She looked over the rear of the carriage at the body of the bird the man had killed, lying crumpled on the roadway, already almost out of sight. The rest of the flock swooped and screamed and battered off the thick fabric of the night-blue umbrella.

Tears came to her eyes.

'Oh, don't cry,' he said tiredly, sighing. 'That was nothing.' He waved one arm through his own body. 'I am nothing. There are things a lot worse than me waiting for you, if you continue.'

She frowned at him. 'I Asura,' she said. 'Who you?'

He gave a high, whinnying laugh. 'Asura; that's rich.'

'Who are you?' she asked.

'KIP, doll. Don't be silly.'

'You are Kayeyepee?'

'Oh for goodness sake,' the man said, with an exaggerated isn't-this-tedious roll of the eyes. 'Are you really this naive? KIP,' he repeated, sneering. 'Cliché number one, you stupid bitch; Knowledge Is Power.' He grinned. 'Asura.'

Then he opened his eyes wide, leant forward at her and made a funny face. He sucked in, his cheeks concaving and his eyes staring while the air went sss through his pursed mouth. He sucked harder and harder and his skin stretched and his lips disappeared and his nose came down to his mouth and she could see the pink skin under his eyes; then his skin ripped somewhere behind and suddenly it was all flowing in through his mouth; nose, skin, ears, hair; everything sucked in through his widening mouth, leaving his face bloody and slimed and his mouth fixed in a great broad lipless grin and his lidless eyes staring while he swallowed noisily and then opened his raw red mouth and between gleaming yellow-white teeth screamed , at her, 'Gibibibibibigididibigigibididigigigibibigibibi!'

She screamed too, and covered her face with her hands, then shrieked as something touched her neck and jerked back.

The birds had clustered round the man's face; four of them had snagged the umbrella in their talons and lifted it away; the rest beat and keened in a storm of wings around the man's face, where something long and red lashed to and fro, beset by pecking, tearing birds.

She sat and watched, horrified, while the birds tore at the man's face and the long lashing thing; an awful bubbling scream forced its way out through the fury of thrashing wings, then suddenly the man was gone, becoming smoke again for an instant before vanishing utterly.

The birds lifted in the same moment and resumed their arrow-head formation above. No trace was left of the fight, not even a fallen feather. The same number of birds beat rhythmically over the carriage. The great black cats pounded on down the road, having taken not the slightest notice of the struggle.

She shivered despite the heat, looked all around, then settled back in her seat, smoothing her clothes.

Then there was a soft pop! and flying next to her face there was a tiny bat with a livid, skinned-red face.

'Still think it's such a good idea, sister?' it squeaked.

She grabbed at the bat but it flicked easily away from her grasp before side-slipping back towards her. 'KIP!' it hooted, giggling. 'KIP!'

She hissed in exasperation. 'Serotine!' she cried — surprising herself — and snatched the bat out of the air.

It had time to look surprised and to go 'Eek!' before she twisted its neck and threw it behind her. It thumped twitching onto the road. The last she saw, one of the escort birds had landed beside the body and started pecking at it.

She dusted her hands and looked through narrowed eyes at the vast, vague, unchanged shape of the castle above the distant hills.

The carriage bowled onwards, the thick warm wind whistled past, the birds stroked the air above and the giant cats swept along the dusty red road like a wave of night engulfing sunset.

She felt sleepy.

In the morning they found her dressed and sitting at the breakfast table.

'Good morning!' she said brightly to them. 'Today I have to leave.'

2

He took the Queen by the shoulders and pushed her back so that she had to sit upon the bed. 'You go not,' he told her, 'till I set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you.'

'What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?' she cried. 'Help, help, ho!'

Then from behind the arras came another voice, that of an old man: 'What, ho! Help, help, help!'

He spun towards the noise, shouting, 'How now! A rat?' He drew his sword, swinging it towards the tapestry. 'Dead, for a ducat —' He swept the arras aside with the tip of the sword, revealing the quivering figure of Polonius. '— Or just trapped, and justly?'

'My lord!' the old man cried, and sank, stiffly, to one knee.

'Why then, not a rat, a mouse! What say you, good mouse, or hast the cat your tongue?'— the King paused there.

It was always a moment to savour, in this branching of the improved story; the point where the Prince began to get his act together and behave neither tactically too rashly nor strategically too hesitantly. From now on you just knew he was going to prevail, avenging his father, marrying Ophelia, ruling wisely in a flourishing Denmark and living happily ever after (well, until he died).

The King liked happy endings. You couldn't blame the ancients for coming up with unhappy conclusions so often — they each spent all their single short life waiting either for oblivion or some absurd after-death torture — but that didn't mean you had to stick faithfully to their paralysed paradigms and ruin a good story with a depressing denouement.

He sighed happily and got up from the bed, exiting via its foot so as not to disturb the voluptuous forms of the sleeping Luge twins, between whom he'd been lying.

Adijine had woken — still sated but desiring some form of diversion — a little earlier, in what might fairly be termed the middle of the night. His pillow contained a transceptor array similar to the device in his crown which let him access the data corpus; it made a pleasant change to dip into the crypt without that thing on his head. The revised interactive Hamlet was one of his favourites, though it could still be a little long, depending on the choices one made.

He left the Luge twins breathing softly beneath their silk sheet and padded across the warm pelt of the bedroom carpet to the windows. He took some satisfaction in pressing the button that opened the curtains, rather than simply thinking them apart.

Moonlight spilled across the mountains that were the roofs of the fastness; the sky above was cloudless. Stars filled half the vault. The darkness of the other half was absolute.

The King stared up into that inkiness for a while. That was all their dooms, he thought, all their rash mistakes and compensating hesitancies, on the far side of the curtain. He let the drapes sweep back and — stretching, scratching the back of his head — returned to the bed.

The sight of the Encroachment had left him restless. He lay between the sleeping girls and pulled a cover over himself, unsure what to do next.

He glanced into the crypt, first at the paused Hamlet, then at the general security situation, then at the state of the war — still stalemated — and at the progress the bomb-workings were making in the level-five south-western solar — still struggling, still hoping to initiate in a few days, and still tightly controlled by Security — then swung through a few minds, finding various couples coupling and finding his own sexual interest piqued despite his earlier exertions with the almost insatiable Luge twins. He turned away from that for a moment, roaming through the accessible minds still awake in Serehfa, and looked for a moment into that of the Security agent they'd placed with the Chief Scientist Gadfium.

So, they were still up at this hour.

Adijine pondered the significance of the strange and unprec­edented circular pattern the stones had formed, and wondered if Gadfium had come up with any explanations. Were the stones also linked into the crypt somehow? His Cryptographers seemed puzzled by some of the corpus' deeper-level behaviour as well as by some of the upper-level and even physical manifestations of those disturbances. Was the crypt preparing to intervene in the present emergency? If it was, he wanted to know. Gadfium was no more trustworthy than any other Privileged, but she had had a habit of making good guesses in the past, and if anybody was to furnish him with the first warning of the crypt's interference, it might well be her, one way or the other.

Gadfium. It had annoyed the King throughout his this life-time — and Gadfium's last two — that she had stuck with the male version of her name; why hadn't she changed it to Gadfia when he had become a she between incarnations? Wilful type, Gadfium.

He listened in, through the agent.

'I beg your pardon, Chief Scientist?' Rasfline said.

'I said,' Gadfium replied, sighing, 'I'd like the data on brand new births displayed related to each clan's vault, from five years before the new dating system came into use, compensated for clan size.'

'I beg your pardon,' Rasfline said, obviously embarrassed at seemingly being caught either day-dreaming or dozing. 'At once.' The wall screen cleared the previous three-dimensional display and replaced it with the new bar field.

'Hmm,' she said, scrutinising the display and realising she could not recall exactly why she had asked for it.

'I do apologise, ma'am,' Rasfline said, sounding mortified.

'That's quite all right,' Gadfium told him, still staring at the display. 'We're all tired.'

She glanced at Goscil, who was yawning again, though somehow still with a look of concentration on her face as she sat, eyes fixed straight ahead, unseeing, while she reviewed some other aspect of the Sortileger's files.

The same light tragenter that had taken them to the mobile observatory on the Plain of Sliding Stones had returned them to the elevator, which had dropped them through the thickness of the roof itself and the kilometre-deep space of the room below; a cold, gloomy, barren place where flutes of scree and bahada lay slumped against the walls and thin lancet windows cast mean slivers of light across a dark desert of broken stones where even babilia struggled to grow.

An Army scree-car had jolted them to where a hole let into one wall led to a tunnel and a restricted funicular; they exited to the sixth level on a broad shelf where subsistence farms made the most of the cold and still thin atmosphere and the light came from broad, full-length windows looking out onto a sea of air where little puffy clouds sat like white islands.

A hydrovator had lowered them to the floor and a piker swept them between machine-tended fields to the terminus of the clifter they had ascended in. The tethered balloon had vented gas and sunk quickly through the next three levels, their ears popping as they entered a sunny farm room, a shady suburb solar and then an artificially lit industrial chamber two concentrics in from the Great Hall. They had passed through dark, deserted, outlaw chambers beneath Engineer-controlled room-space in a fast armoured monorail and ascended to the Sortileger's office — an old yamen housed within a piscina in the sunlit eastern chapel — by airship.

The Sortileger Xemetrio met them at the dock, alone. 'Madam Chief Scientist,' he said, taking her hands. 'Thank you for coming.'

'My pleasure,' she murmured, smiling at him, then looking down and taking her hands from his. 'I think you know my staff; secretary Rasfline, scientific aide Goscil.'

'A delight, as ever,' the Sortileger said, nodding. He was a tall barrel of a man, and another near-contemporary of the chief scientist. His face was much lined but still firm and his hair was a convincing jet-black.

Rasfline and Goscil returned the nod, Rasfline with a knowing smirk to Goscil which she did not acknowledge.

'You seem to be much in demand, Chief Scientist,' Xemetrio said as he led them to the doors.

'Indeed.'

'Yes, I understand you've been busy elsewhere today.'

'That's right,' Gadfium said, nodding.

'Ah.' The Sortileger looked like he wanted to inquire further, but as they stepped through the doorway Gadfium asked:

'And what may we do here? Have you another of your… glitches, Sortileger?'

Xemetrio nodded. 'It is the same problem, Chief Scientist, and my staff seem unable to divine the source. Security maintain it cannot be deliberate falsification by an operative, Cryptography insist everything is in order at their end, therefore the problem must lie here. Two days ago we predicted a cryptosauric event which did not happen and today we failed to foresee the assassination of a… well, somebody important. If this goes on we'll soon be unable to forecast the weather…'

Goscil stood, her back stiff. She rubbed her eyes and stretched. 'No. If there's anything here, I can't see it.'

Gadfium turned away from the wall display. She watched the other woman make circling motions with her arms. 'Well,' she said. 'I think after this morning's rather pathetic faint­ing fit I've regained a little self-respect, keeping you two youngsters up this late.' She smiled, then she too yawned. 'There,' she laughed. Time for us all to head bedwards.' She looked at Rasfline and nodded at the wall screen, which switched off.

They were in the display room of the Sortileger's office library, surrounded by records and accounts committed to almost every type of storage medium known to history.

'I'm not really tired, ma'am,' Rasfline said, sitting up sharply. 'I could continue to —'

'Well, I'm tired, Rasfline,' she told him. 'I think we'll all benefit from some sleep. It's been a long day. Perhaps in the morning when we're refreshed we might spot something.'

'Perhaps, Chief Scientist,' Rasfline said, reluctantly. He stood up, straightened his uniform and blinked rapidly, as though still trying to wake himself up.

Goscil rubbed absently at a stain on her tunic. 'Do you think the Sortileger is telling us the whole truth?' she asked, yawning. Rasfline shot her a look.

'I think we have to assume that,' Gadfium said reasonably, folding her note-file.

– The Sortileger, thought the King. He should be asleep by now.

Adijine left the chief scientist and her aides and shifted to Xemetrio's bed chamber. The old fellow was indeed asleep, and his head lay on a pillow which contained a receptor net.

… flying above a blue sea, blue wings beating on a warm wind; a green isle beneath, naked women languorous on the black sand, standing and pointing and shading their eyes at him as he wheeled and turned back towards them–

– Lucid dreaming again. Adijine had been in the Sortileger's sleeping mind before and always found the same thing: some erotic adventure, shallow, and ultimately more concealing than revealing.

He switched back to the others, and into Rasfline's mind, in time to hear him saying, 'Goodnight, ma'am,' and catch a fleeting, caricatured image of two old bodies coupling against a wall. Rasfline smirked at Goscil as they went to their separate rooms and Gadfium walked to hers. This time, Goscil returned the glance.

The King, intrigued by those looks, followed Gadfium by using some of the static cameras located throughout the yamen.

The chief scientist went to her own room, disrobed, washed quickly, perfumed her stocky, grey-haired old body (good if obviously artificially maintained skin tone, the King noted, and breasts of such undeniable if assisted presence they were almost intimidating), slipped on a generously proportioned negligee, then checked the door monitor and slipped out of the room and along the darkened corridor.

Ah-ha, thought the King, following her to the Sortileger's own chambers.

Gadfium sat on the bed of the Sortileger Xemetrio, who had woken at her gentle knock on his door. A soft light shone from above the bed. The Sortileger sat up, took the chief scientist tenderly in his arms and kissed her. He reached behind her and undid her hair. Then he pressed her back so that her head lay near the foot of the bed, her long grey hair like veins of silver on the sheets under the footboard and her feet resting on a pillow.

– Damn! thought Adijine, who'd had to shift to a ceiling camera the instant Xemetrio had sat up and his head had left the pillow with the receptor net.

The Sortileger smiled down at Gadfium, then pulled the sheet up and over, covering both of them. The light went out.

The King cut away again, disappointed. He could have watched in IR from a concealed chamber camera but all he'd have seen was lumps moving under a sheet. It was a lot less fun than being in somebody's head.

Back in his own bed, Adijine looked down at his own hesitant tumescence, wondering if the Sortileger was simply making up the glitches in his forecasting department just to conduct these trysts with the chief scientist. Cause for concern. Perhaps dereliction of duty, especially in these straitened times. He'd let it pass this time but have Security keep an eye on the man. As for Gadfium, if anything she worked too hard and the King reckoned a little recreational fornication would do her no harm whatsoever.

He stroked his erection. He looked at the curvaceous shapes lying to either side of him.

Hmm; he was still a little tired.

Perhaps if he woke just one of the Luge twins…

The pen left lines of coolly luminous ink on the tiny pad Xemetrio had hidden under the sheets.

Good to see you again. Sometime we must do this for real!

You always say that.

Always mean it. What IS that perfume?

Enough. To business.

Funny name for a… No tickling!

There's been a signal from the tower.

I guessed: why I called.

She pulled the tiny tube that was the copied message from the hem of her nightdress. She handed it to him; he unrolled the flimsy and stared at the glowing letters.

3

Sessine walked through the darkened town, uphill and away from the direction of the ocean tunnel. A few people passed him in the quiet streets, but all avoided his eye. He reached the walls of the cavern — not rock but small glazed white tiles with networks of crazed cracks in them like little burst blood-vessels of black — where he turned left and walked until he reached the spill-sluice. It was a huge tunnel sloped at forty-five degrees or so, and from it, cascading down a series of steeply banked terraces, tipped a dirty froth of water which disappeared under a bridge and then wound away in a culvert towards the centre of the town and the docks beyond.

The tunnel was shaped like an inverted U and was perhaps ten metres across; steps led up the near side, separated from the rushing water only by a thin iron rail supported by spindly, rusting rods. Weak yellow lamps lit the tunnel roof sporadically, disappearing into the distance with no hint of any further light.

He started up the slope, and soon lost count of the steps and the time. He passed one man coming down, crying, and another lying snoring on the steps.

He came to the smoking-tavern called the Half-way House. It was just a door in the wall of the tunnel and a sign. He opened the door and found a quiet place scarcely lighter than the tunnel outside. A few people sat in booths and at tables; some looked up at him as he came in, then looked away again. A steady murmuring filled the air.

The circular bar held open shelves stacked with miniature braziers, smoking funnels and ornamental narghiles. It was tended by a hopfgeist in the shape of a tall, thin woman dressed all in black, with black, tied-back hair and dark, hooded eyes.

He walked towards the woman. She watched him, then beckoned him round to the rear of the bar, where there was a hatch cut out of the circle.

'Sir, I was told long ago you might stop by,' she said quietly. Her voice was flat and weary. 'Have you anything to say to me?'

'Yes, I have,' he said. 'Nosce teipsum.'

It was his most-secret code, the one he had thought of once, a long time ago, in his first ever life, in case he ever needed some already-remembered code quickly one day. It was one he had never committed to any other form of storage other than his own memory and never told to anybody else, except this woman, assuming his previous self had been telling the truth in the note he'd found in the hotel room in Oubliette.

The tall woman nodded. 'That's as it should be,' she said, and sounded almost disappointed. She took a key from a chain round her neck and opened a small drawer set into the thickness of the bar counter. 'Here.' She handed him a small clay pipe, already charged. 'I think this is what you desire.' She put her hands on the counter, looking downwards.

'Thank you,' he told her. She nodded, not looking up.

He retreated to a dark, secluded booth lit by a small oil lamp set into the rock wall. He took a twisted paper spill from a nook to the side of the lamp and lit the pipe, drawing deeply on the thick, pungent smoke.

The bar faded slowly as though filling with smoke from the pipe. The murmuring rose to an ignorable roar; his head felt like a revolving planet, speeding up and shaking off its wrapping of atmosphere as if it was some excess piece of clothing, before disintegrating entirely and throwing him into space.

It was the day of the great curtain-wall road-race, held every year at the summer solstice. The race started from the western barbican, where the pits were housed and the majority of the great cars were garaged between race days. Banners and pennants flew from tents and caravans, temporary garage structures and anchored airships. A great crowd of people filled the network of scaffolded stands, bridges, stalls and viewing towers; cheers rang out across the marshalling areas and the smells of food drifted on the hot wind.

Sessine donned a light leather helmet and a pair of goggles and rolled down the sleeves of his shirt, fastening the cuffs to his sandskin gloves.

'Best of luck, sir!' the chief mechanic shouted, grinning. Sessine slapped her on the shoulder, then grasped the ladder and climbed, up through the damp smell of steam hissing from some venting valve, past the linking rods and the man-tall wheels, past the web of hydrogen pipes and hydraulic conduits webbing the main tank and on up to the curved top of the car. He waved down and the foot of the ladder was clipped up and secured.

He looked around, surveying the fifty or so cars and the barely controlled pandemonium of both the pits area and the stands beyond. Each of the mighty cars was fashioned after a particular model of steam railway engine from the Middle Ages; his was one of the first-marque machines, the largest and most powerful class in the race, created in the image of a 4-8-8-4 Mallet type used by the Union Pacific Railroad of North America, back in the twentieth century.

Sessine dropped into the Mallet's cramped cockpit, offset to the left at the rear of the huge locomotive, above where the engineer's cab would have been on the real thing. He strapped himself in, then ran through the instrument check. That done, he sat back for a while, breathing deeply and gazing round the stands and viewing towers, looking for where his wife would be sitting in the clan's own tower and wondering if his latest lover was watching from one of the old airships. The voice pipe whistled; he uncorked it. 'Ready, sir?' said the muffled voice of the chief engineer.

'Ready,' he said.

'All yours, sir. You have control.'

'I have control,' he confirmed, and recorked the voice pipe. His heart beat faster and he wiped sweat from his top lip with his shirt sleeve. He undid one glove and fished in a breast pocket for his ear plugs.

His hands were shaking, just a little.

The marshals' airship hovered pregnantly over the tall, flag-bedecked archway leading to the starting grid. After what seemed like an eternity the flags hanging under the dirigible changed from red to yellow and the crowd cheered wildly.

Sessine slipped the brake, eased the regulator on and fed power to the Mallet's wheels. The hydrogen engine shot a great detonating pulse of steam from its stack — easily twenty metres forward of where Sessine sat — hissed yet more clouds from the pistons below, and, with a great metallic groan and a crumping series of explosive steam-bursts within a cacophonous range of oiled clanking noises, the huge vehicle crept slowly forward, keeping station with the rest of the cars, all jetting steam and blasting whistles, spasmodically interspersing this symphonic din with the sudden racing solo of an engine briefly losing traction, sets of rubber-rimmed wheels slipping together on patches of oil, hydraulic fluid or water.

The race began half an hour later after various delays — every one of which seemed interminable — and much sweating and steaming and sweltering on the starting grid.

The huge cars started their charge round the wall-top roadway of Serehfa's curtain-wall, a half-kilometre wide surface of smooth roadway behind the semi-cylindrical towers. Each lap was a hundred and eighty kilometres in length, a distance the leading vehicles would complete in an hour; each race was three laps. The cars were accompanied by the marshals' airship and by a small cloud of camera platforms like swarming insects, feeding the spectacle to the implant and screen networks and the crowds watching from the viewing stands and towers.

Sessine took the lead when the clan Genetics' Beyer-Garratt burst a series of tyres and skidded off into the outer parapet in a great long articulated explosion of steam, metal and stone (and Sessine thought coldly, Well, that's old Werrieth out of the party tonight, and him onto his last life); debris spattered across the roadway in front of the Mallet but Sessine took the three hundred tonnes of car within metres of the flimsy inside wall, and missed the wreckage entirely.

He was in front! He screamed with delight, and was grateful that the noise was inaudible within the staggering racket of the racing car; the wide roadway spread out in a gentle curve before him, empty and welcoming and sublime. The marshals' airship would be well behind the Mallet and the cloud of camera platforms just level with him. There were cameras and spectators on each of the towers, too, and more people — castlians and Xtremadurians — gathered in clumps on the outer walls, but they were blurs, irrelevant. He was alone; exulting and alone and free!

…He recognised the point, and was able to leave then, and so left his old self to drive, and slipped out of the seat, like a ghost, down through the hatch into the bellowing heart of the quivering machine where valves chattered and gases hissed and water gurgled and sweat popped from the skin in the oven-heat of the shrieking, vibrating engine.

And as he walked through the hammering din of the motor, he started to remember a little of what he had left here.

In a cramped corridor, on an open-work metal floor between great rods and levers darting back and forward like vast metallic tendons, he found his old first self, dressed in engineer's overalls and squatting hunched over a small table on which sat a chess board set in mid-game.

He squatted down too. His younger self did not look up. He was staring at the white pieces, the tip of one thumb in his mouth.

'Silician defence,' the young man said after a while, nodding at the board.

Sessine nodded, outwardly calm but thinking furiously. He knew he was faced with some sort of test but he had no predetermined code to cover this meeting, only the fact that, once, he and this young man had been the same person.

Silician? Not Sicilian?

Silician; Silicia; Cilicia. It meant something. Somebody he'd heard of had been Silician. An ancient.

He searched his memories, willing some connection. Tarzan? Tarsus? Then he remembered some lines from an ancient poem:

Me Tarsan, you Jesus.

And the Silician never really changed.

Ah, yes.

'Professor Sauli played it often,' he said. 'While working on the exclusion principle.'

The young man looked up and smiled briefly. He rose and put out his hand. Sessine shook it.

'Good to meet you, Alandre,' the young man said.

'And you,' Sessine said, hesitating. '… Alandre?'

'Oh, call me Alan,' his younger self said. 'I'm only an abbreviated version of who you are now, though I've developed on my own in here.'

'Having recently been abbreviated myself, I sympathise, Alan.'

'Hmm,' the other man said. 'Well, the first thing to do is to get you out of where you are now. Let's see…' He looked down at the chess board and turned both the white castles upside down.

The board blossomed with a semi-transparent holo of Serehfa. Alan studied it for a moment, then reached into and beneath it — and Sessine saw the projection of the castle's fabric bulge and swell around the young man's hand as with an infinitesimal articulation of his fingers he plucked something out of the bowels of the model fastness — Sessine experienced a fleeting sense of vertigo — and deposited it at the side of the chequered surface. Then Alan folded up the chess board and the castle projection vanished.

'Was that me?' Sessine asked casually, leaning to glance at the board.

'It was.'

'So where am I now?'

'Your construct now inhabits hardware situated within the curtain-walls.'

'Is that good?'

Alan shrugged. 'It's safer.'

'Well, thank you.'

'You're welcome,' his younger self said. 'So.' He clapped his hands on his knees. 'You're my last incarnation.'

Sessine looked into his eyes. It was true; as the self aged, and grew to awareness, filtered and downloaded into a new version of the old body, a meta-aging took place over the lives: a serial, cumulative maturing that was visible in the face unless you strove by further tampering to eradicate it. How fresh and innocent this earlier face of his appeared, and yet this seeming youth had been forty years old when he'd recorded this construct and left it free — almost forgotten and just-short-of-unreachable — to flit between the interstices of his personal lives and his clan's concerns: monitoring, collating, reviewing and evaluating.

'Yes, I'm the very last,' Sessine agreed. 'And you are the ghost in the machine.'

He smiled, and wondered as he did so what possible point there was in the gesture. 'So. What do you have to tell me?'

'Well, for one thing, Count,' Alan said, 'I know who is trying to kill you.'

4

Av got a very good view ov thi fass-towr from heer. Am ½ lying & ½ sittin craidled by thi babil branchis & am lookin up fru a gap in thi foleyidje @ thi dirti grate hoojness ov thi cassils centril towr.

U forget thi towrs thare a lot ov thi time coz (a) itz usyuly bhind u if yoor lookin out thi way from thi cassil & (b) iss obskyurd by cloud moar than ½ thi time nway.

According 2 Mr Zoliparia thi fass-towr is whare thi spays elivaitr woz ankird 2 Erf.

Thass y iss cald a fassness, Mr Zoliparia sez; in Inglish fassness means a stronghold, & also bcoz when rings r tied hard agenst eech othir they r sed 2 b tyed fast 2 eech othir like thi spays elivaitr woz tyed fast 2 Erf, & in a sens tyed 2 thi Erfs surfis & spays togethir, 2 (I sed; + thi spays elivaitr woz a way ov gettin in2 spaice fast; but Mr Z sed no actuly it woz slower than a rokit or whotevir but mutch moar efishint). Mr Zoliparia thot thi spayce elivaitr woz a grate idear & it woz a shame weed got rid ov it & if we hadnt then we wooden b in thi pickl we r, i e about 2 get clobberd by thi enkroachment.

But I thot spaice woz juss ful ov nufink I sed 2 Mr Zoliparia. Whats thi point ov goan thare?

Bascule, he sed, u r so fik sumtimes.

He tole me thi fass towr led 2 thi planetz & thi starz; 1nce u were in spaice u had limitles enirgy & raw mateeryls & after that branepowir took u wharevir u wantid but weed throne ol that away.

Mr Zoliparia sez thi fass towr reprisentz sumfin ov a nigma, on account that we doan striktly speekin no whot's actuly in thi top ov it; iss bin xploard up 2 about thi 10th or 11th levils but aftir that u cant get no hyer, so they say. Blokd on thi inside & nuthin 2 hold on2 on thi outside & 2 hi up 4 a balune or a aircraft 2 go. Thi nolidje ov whot's up thare's bin loss long ago in thi kaos ov thi kript, sez Mr Z.

U heer roomers that ther r peeple up thare in thi top ov thi towr but thas got 2 b nonsins; howd they breev?

Mr Zoliparia iznt thi onli persin 2 ½ feeries concernin thi big towr; Ergates thi ant told me ther used 2 b 3 spaice elevaitrs; 1 heer, 1 in Afrika neer a place calld Kilomenjaro & 1 in Kalimantan. According 2 hir, thayve ol been dismantled long sinse ov coarse but weev got thi biggist stump on acount ov hooever disined thi American Kontinent spays elivaitr had thi wizird idear ov makin thi terminus particularly spektaklier & so desined it 2 luke like a hooj cassil, viz thi vastniss ov thi fastniss (which she claymd used 2 b calld Acsets, which wos anuthir ov them nacronyms, aparrintly).

I thot this ol soundid a bit iffy & askd Mr Z if heed evir herd ov ther bin uthir fass towrs & he sed nope, not as far as he new, & shurenuf when I serchd thi kript 4 info ther woznt eny on no othir elevaters & when u actuly luke in2 it ther dozen seem 2 b enywhare whare it sez strate out 'Thi fass-towr usd 2 b 1 end ov a spaice elivaitor,' tho iss not a secret. Nway, Kilomenjaro is a lake & Kalimantan is a big island (itz got a Crater Lake 2) & I think Ergates imajinayshin wos runnin away wif hir a bit thare & bsides if her feery wos rite thi name ov this plaice wood bgin wif a K not a S or a A, stands 2 reesin.

Poor Ergates. I stil wundir whot happind 2 that deer litl ant, evin tho Ive got plenty ov othir things 2 wury about now.

I turn ovir in thi litl nest Ive made 4 myself in thi babil branchis & luke down thi curvd trunk 2 thi wall. Nobodi els aroun. Lukes like I gaiv thi bastirds thi slip.

My sholdir stil hurts. So do my rists & my nees.

O whot a sorry state weer in, yung Bascule, I sez 2 myself.

I juss no that soonir or later am goan 2 ½ 2 go bak in2 thi kript 2 find out what on erfs goan on, evin tho thi last fing thi big bat sed woz not 2. Doan think iss goan b much fun.

Am fritend.

U c, Ive bcome a outcast.

I ½ 2 say I had a very plesint lunch wif Mr Zoliparia & a good game ov Go which he 1 ov coarse (like he alwiz duz) in this travelin restront. Thi restront starts in a verticil vilij in thi babil neer thi top ov thi grate hol gaybil & sloely dessends 2 flore levil ovir thi next cupl ov ours. Good food & vews. Nway, I had a ver nice time & almost toatly 4got abowt Dartlin & thi jiant brane in bird space & orribl skind heds & fings whot go gididibibibigididibigigi & so on.

Me & Mr Zoliparia tokd about loads ov stuf.

Eventuly tho it woz time 4 me 2 go bcoz I stil had evenin callz 2 do 4 thi Little Big Bruthirs & they like u 2 b thare in thi monastry 2 do them & Id alredy dun 1 lot on thi hoof as it wer that mornin in thi hydrovater so I thot 4 thi evenin 1s I ot 2 actuly b thare wifin thi preesinkts.

Mr Z saw me 2 thi west wol toob trane.

U promis u woan go bak in2 that kript until u ½ 2? Until yor bak wit de bruders? Mr Z sed 2 me, & I sed, O ol rite then Mr Zoliparia.

Good boy, he sed.

Evrifin went as per normil til I got 2 thi othir end whare ther woz a long wait @ thi hydrovater. I thot ov a betir idear & took a travelater acros thi alure 2 a fewnikuler line up a flyin buttriss; Id get 2 thi monastry by dropin from abuv.

Ther wer a cupl ov noviss bruthirs in thi fewnikuler car wif me; they wer a bit drunk, & singin loudly. I thot 1 ov them seemd 2 rekognise me but I juss lookt away & he ignoard me 2.

They kept singin as thi car wen slowly up thi curve ov thi buttris. I wooden ½ minded, but they woz out ov tune.

Little-Big, Little-Big, Little-Big!

We're thi Mediums who don't give a fig!

Wel, heerza fine 2-do, I sed 2 myself, cyan & starin out thi window & tryin 2 ignore thi noyse & ther beery brefs. I lookt out thi windo; it woz dusk by this time & thi lites wer on in thi fewnikular car's cabin & thi sky outside lookt pretti & ver culirfil.

When you're dead, when you're dead, when you're dead,

We'll happily live inside your heh-ehd!

O, whot thi hek, I thot.

In a way whot I woz goan 2 do wude make thi trip longer not shorter but @ least Id ½ sum respite from ol this cheeri-drunkin shit, & evin if I forgot my return code agen theez noizi prats wude wake me up soon enuf. I dipt in2 thi kript, intendin 2 spend mayb ½ a sekind in thare.

Les than that woz qwite enuf.

Ther wos sumthin goin on.

Thi furst place u go from transport is in2 a representayshin ov thi cassils transport sistim, a transparint holo ov thi fastniss with thi toob, train & fewnikuler lines, lift shafts, roads, hydrovater lines & clifter slots ol highlited. Then u moov on2 whare u want 2 go elsewhare in thi kript. Moast bags doan evin spare this setup a passin glanse, but if yoor sumthin ov a conasewer ov thi kript's states, like I am, then u juss alwiz swing pass this sort ov fing & click it out & do a qwik comparisun wif actule movemints 2 c if Transports on its bols or not. Upshot is, if thers anythin amiss u spot it, like I spottd thi transport setup woznt qwite rite.

It lookd like ther woz a odd kinda hole aroun thi monastry; nuthin movin out, juss stuff in-goin. Ver strain, I thot. I didn go no furthir in2 thi kript. I chekd thi monastrys kript-biz durin thi afternoon. Definit faze-chainj in thi trafic aroun a our ago. Sumbodi tryin 2 make thing luke normil when they wernt.

Whare woz bro Scalopins usual col 2 thi Marshin Daze storyline, 4 exampil? Or sis Ecrope's t-time interlope wif hir luvir in thi Uitlandir embasy? Ol replaicd by makin-up-numbers trafic, thats whare.

I new I woz probly bin paranoid, but I woried ol thi saim.

Thi fewnikuler woz dew 2 make 1 more stop b4 thi stayshin Id normaly get off @. I told it 2 stop asap.

A minit later it did, & I got off @ this litl sily halt 3/4 ov thi way up thi butris which served a cupl ov clan-execs luv nests, a old babil farm & a glider club, all ov them desertid. Thi 2 bros I left on thi fewnikuler lookd puzzld but waivd by-by & kept singin as thi car trundld away agen.

Then ther woz a thump in mi hed. Thi fewnikular car stopt, then reversd & clunked & whird bak down 2wards me.

Thi thump in mi hed woz sum bastird tryin 2 nok me out wif a bit ov feedbak from thi kript; fearetikly imposibl & teknikly diffcult but it can b dun & thi jolt Id juss got wude ½ nokd out moast peepil, only Ive got thi eqwivalent ov shok absorbers coz Im a tellir & ther4 used 2 gettin a ruf ride from thi kript.

Thi fewnikewlar car woz comin glowing bak down thi curvd track, its cabin lites reflectin off thi babil plants festoonin thi broad archd bak ov thi butris. Thi 2 bros inside wer @ thi bak windo, starin @ me. They din luke so drunk now, & they wos each holdin rings in ther hands that could ½ bin guns.

O shit, I fot.

I ran down a spiral stareway @ thi side ov thi butriss. I herd thi car stop abuv me. Thi stairway went on & on & on & on spiralin all thi time & I thot when it levils out am not goan b able 2 stop goan roun; theyl find me whirlin roun in a tite litl circl unabil 2 go strate. I hit thi botom & sheer terrir proovd a ver iffishint coarse-stratener. I raced across a gantry slung underneaf thi stonewurk & went down anothir stairway set agenst a metil-frame bildin on thi far side ov thi butress. Footsteps clanged behind me.

I caim out on a brod balcony & dodjed thru a doarway & down sum moar steps in2 a sort ov hanger whare old gliders sat tilted like grate goastly stif-wingd burdz & a bunch ov litl bats startid chatterin & flying roun my hed. Footsteps abuv, then behind. O shit o shit o shit. Thi bats wer kikin up a heluva rakit.

I spottid a ladir agenst 1 wol leedin down thru thi floor & I ran 4 it. Sumbody shouted bhind me; thi footsteps slappd loud. Sumthin went, Bang! & a glider next 2 me explodid wif flame & loss a wing; thi blast ov air woz warm & almost nokd me off ma feet.

I thru myself @ thi ladir, held thi sides & dropt, sliding down without usin ma feet @ ol, hitin thi floor & twistin ma ankil.

I wos in sum kinda circular platform slung undir thi glider bildin. Nufin but air underneaf & nowhare 2 go. I lookd bak @ thi ladir. Thi footsteps were rite abuv me.

I herd a noise like qwuik, distant surf, & a huge blak shape lifted from under thi platform on wings longir than Im tol. It waverd in thi air alongside then graspd @ thi thin metil rale roun thi platform on thi far side from thi ladir, its talins gripin thi rale while its wings beat qwickly & almost silent bak & ford.

I cude heer sumbody cumin down thi ladir, breevin hard.

Here! shoutid thi blak shape @ thi othir side ov thi platform. Id fot it woz a bird but it woz more like a giant bat. Its wings clapped in & out in & out.

Qwickly! it sed.

I fink if thi bros cumin down thi ladir hadnt shot @ me in thi hanger I wooden ½ gon, but they had so I did.

I ran 4 thi big bat. It held its feet out. I grabd its ankils & it wrapt its talins roun ma rists makin me shout with thi bone-crunchin pane while it poold me off thi platform, crakin my nees off thi rale.

We twisted & dropt like thi thing cuden cary me & I screemd, then it spred its wings wif a snap & I neerly loss my grip as we curvd out & away. Light sparkld abuv me & I herd thi bat cry out but I woz 2 bizy lookin down @ thi dark fields in thi alure, 5 or 600 metres blow & thinking wel, if I die, thers still anuthir 7 lives 2 go. Xcept I didn fink that woz rite sumhow, I rekind whotevir trubil I woz in went beyond this life & I woznt garanteed anuthir 7 lives or evin 1.

I held on tite, but thi light crackled agen & thi bat thing judderd in thi air & cried out agen & I smeld smoke. We lurched & side-slipped 2wards thi wol ov thi grate hol, then fel like thi proverbyal, & in a screem ov air & a screem from me dippd blow thi alure & thi parapet & went on down til we wer levil wif thi lowir bretasche, whare thi bat wheeld roun so hard I lost my grip on its scaly legs & only its steel-like clasp on my rists stopt me from falin 2 thi roof ov thi 2nd level towr underneef.

Felt like my arms were about 2 pop out ma sokets. Id ½ screemed but thi bref woz gon from me.

Thi air shreiked roun ma ears as we plumitid btween thi grate towr & thi 2nd level wall, down in2 a layer ov cloud whare I cooden c a dam fing & it woz freezin cold, then we turnd in what I thot woz thi direcshin ov thi towr & outa thi mist loomd this bleedin grate rock wall. I closd mi Is.

We twisted 1ce, twice & I went — few — 2 myself but when I opend mi Is we woz stil hedin strate 4 nakid stonewurk. O fuk, I fot, but by then Id decidid Id rathir die wif ma Is opin. @ thi last momim we liftid, I saw hangin bunchis ov foleyidje strung from thi machicolation abuv & a instant later we crashd in2 thi babil; my sholder woz renched & I woz thrown off thi bat & in2 thi babil, grabbin @ leevs & twigs & branchis & slippin & fallin down thru it.

Thi bat beat fewriously, shoutin, Hold on! Hold on! while I tryd 2 get a hold on thi dam stuf.

Hold on! it shouted agen.

Am bludy tryin 2! I yelld.

U safe?

Juss about, I sed, huggin a big strand ov babil like it wos a long-loss mum or sumthin, not abil 2 look behind but stil heerin thi big bat flap & beet @ my bak.

Am sorri I cuden help u moar, thi bat sez. U mus saiv uself now. Thare lookin 4 u. Bware thi kript. Keep outa things! Erch! Erch! I mus go. Farewell, hoomin.

Yeh, & 2 u, I shoutid, turnin roun 2 luke @ it. & fanks!

Then thi big bat dropt, & I saw it disapeer in thi mist, fallin away strate down, traylin smoak & then juss b4 I loss site ov it curvin away followin thi circumferince ov thi towr, beetin hard but lookin week & still follin.

Disappeered.

I crolld in2 thi darkniss ov thi babil, nursin ma aiks.

O deer Bascule, I sed 2 myself. O deer o deer o deer.

I spent thi nite in thi foleyidje, constintly dreemin ov flyin thru thi air wif Ergates in ma hand but then droppin hir & hir tumblin away & me not bein abil 2 catch hir & mi wings cumin off & me follin 2 & screemin thru thi air, then wakin clutchin thi branchiz, shiverin & cuverd in swet.

So heer I am, lookin up @ thi fass-tower & Ive spent sum time so far this mornin tryin 2 pluk up thi curidje 2 go strate bak in2 thi kript 2 find out whots goan on & look 4 poor litil Ergates & this time tak no nonsins… & Ive also spent sum time vowin nevir 2 evin fink ov thi bleedin kript agen & desidin not 2 deside about it 4 now & so insted am juss sitin heer wonderin whot am 2 do in jeneril & not abil 2 cum 2 a disishin on that scoar nevir.

I turn ovir in ma litl nest agen & luke down thru thi branchis & this time I freez & stair, coz I can c this big animil cumin climin up thru thi babil; iss bleedin hooj, thi size ov a bare & iss got thik blak fur with streeks ov green on it & iss got big shiny blak claws & iss lukin @ me wif 2 litl beedy Is & a funy pointid hed & iss cumin up thi branch am on, strate 2words me.

O shit, I heer myself say, lukin roun 2 c if thers a way 2 escape.

Ther isnt. O shit.

Thi animil opins its mouf. Its teef r thi size ov ma fingirs

… Shtay whare u r! it hissis.