Grimus

LIV Fifty-Four

IT WAS DARK inside the small blackwashed house, a dark chill quiet. Shadows stood everywhere, insubstantial guards over the unseen ugliness. Outside, the shrouds of Calf Mountain’s summit hung over the house like a second, thundery ceiling, shielding it from the pale, mist-weak sunlight lying over the plains beneath. Liv’s home, blind and without foundation, stood blankly on the cheerless outcrop, its door firmly shut, the only sign of life a single donkey, tethered to the last tree of the climbing forest, munching at the forest’s long grass. A bird shrieked.

The unseen ugliness. Behind the shuttered windows lay a scene of cosmic chaos, the debris of a life wrestling and vying for floor-space. Dust lay thickly over the scattered books and plates. A piece of bread, invisible behind its crust of mould, lay on a broken hand-mirror and a spider etched its web between the two. Cloth, paper and crumb alike succumbed to the encasing envelope of dirt. And above the strewn floor, the carvings glared. Carvings which made their ancestors at the Rising Son seem, by comparison, effusions of beauty and joy. The vile, twisted shapes, faces, bodies, truncated limbs, nightmare landscapes, spoke of a deepening passion in their maker, a deepening slough of loathing. If the carver merely extracts from his raw materials the shapes that already lie within it, then the wood must have been made by demons, to contain such hideous forms.

The interior of the small black house was a single room. Hens sat miserably in cages on a shelf. There was a chair, and a bed. And here was a surprise: for these two pieces were as perfectly clean as the rest of the house was filthy. They were dusted and cared for and the bedclothes were washed. They were pieces from another world.

A shadow sat unmoving in the chair.

To re-enter the forested slopes was to relinquish all illusions of normality, to shake off the air of the town, insanely mundane, mundanely insane. The green light of the trees was a kind of purifier for them both. Here Flapping Eagle felt once more the tangible mystery of the mountain and was cleansed of the webs of his own self-deceit. The mountain would not be ignored. Virgil, too, was in good heart, dragging corpulence and corns uncomplainingly up the steep incline, grasping hummocks of earth and tufts of grass to ease his ascent. The air was alive with the hum of insects and the esoteric messages of birds in flight.

– Magister pene monstrat, Virgil Jones quoted, out of nowhere.

They were resting for a moment. Flapping Eagle was obliged to ask for clarification.

– At school, said Virgil Jones in half-embarrassed recollection. An irritating young twerp chalked that up on the blackboard before the lesson. As a joke. The magister in question took it very well. Simply asked why the word penis was in the Ablative rather than the Accusative. Whereupon the young twerp, showing a degree of nerve, stood up and said: -Please sir, it’s the Ablative of the End in View.

They resumed their climb. The excitement of the end in view, whatever it might prove to be, had invaded and conquered them both. If the Mountain was to win, Flapping Eagle told himself, at least it would have to fight for its victory. In the excitement of anticipation, he didn’t pause to reflect that he knew few of the rules of the battle or of the purposes of his adversary. He was in it now: that was all that mattered.

The scar on his chest itched.

He noticed that Virgil Jones’ fingers, when they were not holding on to clumps of grass, were tightly crossed.

A little way behind them, the secret figure of Media followed, keeping her distance, keeping in touch. They didn’t hear her, because they didn’t expect to be followed. The mind-whine of the Effect, not so much a sound as a feeling, was stronger now, but in their separate ways they were all defended against it: Media by her new obsession, Virgil by his old paralysis, Flapping Eagle by his recent conquest of the fever.

The shadow sat unmoving in the chair and heard the movements outside. Eventually, it would move. Eventually, it would be time to look at the book under the pillow. Eventually, it would be time to wring a pullet’s neck, and eat. Eventually, the movements would have to be investigated. But not for the moment. For the moment, sitting here in the dark was enough.

Liv sat like this a great deal, still, stone, statue.

It was cold on the outcrop, cold and damp. The day had moved into late afternoon. Flapping Eagle stood by Liv’s donkey, patting it idly, watching Virgil Jones behaving like a schoolboy on a treasure hunt.

(-No, he had said, let’s not bother to see her. Let’s get it done.)

Sixteen paces forward from the edge of the clearing. He turned right. Sixteen paces right. He stopped. The black house was behind him, impassive. -Here, said Virgil Jones. It should be here.

Flapping Eagle closed his eyes and controlled the wild rushing inside him. It was time. He walked across to Virgil, whose tongue flickered in an agony of tension, the blind guide. Being paralysed by the Rose, he could not himself know if it was the right spot. Flapping Eagle had to be the guinea-pig.

– If you stand where I am standing, said Virgil, and concentrate upon the Gate, you should find it. He moved three paces to his left and crossed his fingers anxiously.

Flapping Eagle lunged forwards suddenly and stood upon the spot.

Again, he closed his eyes.

The Gate, he thought fiercely. This is the Gate. I am passing through the Gate. This is the Gate. I am passing through. This is the Gate…

Over and over, building power in himself as Virgil had instructed, waiting for the Outer Dimensions to claim him and carry him to Grimus.

Was that a change in climate? Was there a breeze where there had been none before? Did the ground feel strange beneath his feet? Cast out those thoughts, they are a distraction. Concentrate, concentrate. The Gate and I am passing through.

Nothing happened.

Virgil’s voice, calling: -Think on the Rose. You’re going to the Rose.

A rose made out of stone. It is coming to me, I can hold it in my hand. I am going to hold the rose, hold the rose, hold the rose…

Nothing.

He opened his eyes. Virgil was staring at him in anguish.

– What is it? he cried. Is it Grimus? Is he fighting you? Can’t you get through? Will, will. That’s the thing. Where there’s a will, there’s a Way.

– Virgil, said Flapping Eagle quietly. This isn’t the Gate.

– Of course it is, said Virgil. Of course. It always was. I wouldn’t forget.

– There was nothing here, said Flapping Eagle in an empty voice.

– You didn’t feel the, the power? asked Virgil. Flapping Eagle shook his head. -didn’t you have a sense of being about to be… transported? asked Virgil. Again, Flapping Eagle shook his head. He felt drained, voided by the anticlimax.

Virgil Jones subsided to the hard ground and buried his head in his hands.

– He’s moved it,

The words came from him like an echo from a hollow cave. Flapping Eagle knew it was the end. They had failed before they had even begun. Bitterness flooded over him.

– didn’t you know? he asked. didn’t you know he could move the Gate?

Virgil looked up, hearing the tinge of frustrated scorn.

– In theory, he said. Yes, in theory. But in practice… He must have become infinitely more expert. It took so much hardship to build. So much pain. It isn’t an easy thing, you know. Wasn’t. I didn’t think he would have.

– You didn’t think, said Flapping Eagle, adrenalin forcing the insult to his lips. Virgil looked at him, and his eyes were the eyes of a beaten man.

– We’ll find it, he said blankly. Can’t have gone far. Don’t believe he’s that expert. Just have to nose around a bit. It’s here all right. We’ll find it.

– Yes, said Flapping Eagle, turning away, to face the black house.

A figure stood in the doorway, covered from head to foot in a black veil with a window at eye-level.

– I thought you’d come, said Liv in a flat voice.

Virgil Jones was lurching across the small plateau and muttering to himself. Every so often he would stop, squeeze his eyes shut until moisture ran from the corners and stand in a paralysis of thought. Then he would open his eyes, shake his head, and continue on his lurching way. The Gate continued to elude him.

Liv said:

– Does he imagine I have never searched for the Gate? Does he imagine I have lived here for nothing? I have as much reason to hate Grimus as he has. Does he imagine Grimus to be as great a fool as Virgil Jones?

The flat tones were gone now, replaced by a frightening intensity of passion. The venom in her voice would have alarmed a snake.

– Look, Flapping Eagle, she said. Look at Virgil Jones, your guide and my husband, and equally incompetent at both functions. I look at him and see a man as blindly possessed as any man in K. What do you see? I see a man chasing shadows. What do you see? Come inside, Virgil, she called. Perhaps I’ve hidden your Gate inside. Come and look for it inside.

Virgil Jones continued to squeeze his eyes and lurch from empty ground to empty ground. He might not even have heard her.

– It is time, she said, turning to Flapping Eagle. It is time you knew all about Virgil Jones. High time you knew how great a fool you are to believe in him.

They stood there for a moment, ingrowing, hate-filled Liv and scarred, colourless Eagle, as Virgil muttered and stumbled his shambling way around them, racked by the gulf between attempt and achievement. There were vast spaces between their lives: Flapping Eagle could almost see the holes. And yet, it was those spaces which bound them irrevocably together, weakness, ignorance and hate, united against their will.

Liv wheeled and went indoors. After a moment’s hesitation, Flapping Eagle followed her, leaving the shambling Virgil Jones, vulnerable and wounded, to go his muttering way. It was getting darker.

Media, hiding at the end of the wooded slopes, cried tears of sympathy for their failure.

– Did he tell you about Dimension-fever? said Liv. No. I suspect he wanted you to suffer that, because only by conquering it could you become the man he wanted. Did he tell you the danger you would be in, with your face, in K?

– What about my face? asked Flapping Eagle, perplexed.

– He didn’t even tell you that, said Liv. The hooded head shook; the voice was disgusted. Twice already he has risked your life. He was ready to do so again. And he didn’t even tell you that.

– He saved my life twice, said Flapping Eagle. And he had my agreement for this attempt. But what about my face?

– Poor idiot boy, said Liv, lying back on her bed. Flapping Eagle sat stiffly on the chair amid the accumulated filth.

– Poor idiot boy, she repeated. Your face is as like the face of Grimus as his own reflection. Younger-looking, paler, but so, so similar. Did you not know that was what attracted him to you in the first place? It was not Bird-Dog he was interested in. It was you. Born-From-Dead.

She knew a lot about him…

– Sispy, he said. Sispy and Grimus are one and the same?

The reclining, hidden figure nodded.

– Then if my face is so like his, said Flapping Eagle, why did Bird-Dog not tell me so? She would have mentioned it… we were close then.

– Grimus, said Liv, is a master of disguise. Don’t doubt it, poor stupid double. It was your face that fascinated him. But it was Bird-Dog he got.

A cruel laugh. As his thoughts whirled, Flapping Eagle wished he could see the face behind the hood.

– One other thing, said Liv. Grimus is a very attractive man. Does that perhaps explain some things?

Deggle used to call him pretty-face.

Irina saying: -You are not the man you look…

Gribb at the foot of the bed, muttering: -Remarkable, remarkable.

The looks of recognition he had received in the Elba-room, and Peckenpaw saying: -Jones and a stranger, in that loaded voice.

The Spectre of the Stone Rose.

The Spectre of Grimus…

That was why Irina Cherkassova had been drawn to him so instantly. That was why Elfrida Gribb had been attracted, too. That was why the girl Media had stared at him so compulsively. That was why Jocasta had disliked him instinctively. He was living behind another man’s features, reaping both the rewards and the whirlwind of his personality. That was why.

– I see that it does, said Liv dryly. She stretched lazily on the bed. How fascinating it is to watch the truth at work on people.

– The truth, mumbled Flapping Eagle.

– And now, she said, I shall tell you the truth about me. I shall tell you because you’ve been starved of truth. This is the truth about Liv: she hates Grimus. She hates Virgil. She hates this infernal mountain.

– But she lives, said Flapping Eagle.

– Hate, said Liv, is the nearest thing on earth to power. One does not give up power easily.

Flapping Eagle was about to speak, but she silenced him.

– It’s time to look at the book, she said, and reached under her pillow.

Sitting in this slum of a room, his hopes of redemption shattered by the mumbling failure outside, reduced to the status of a pawn in someone else’s game by the truth from this hooded oracle, Flapping Eagle learnt the story of Calf Mountain; learnt it when he believed there was no longer anything he could do about it. As usual, he was wrong about that.

The carvings stared down from the wall as Liv brought the old, old notebook out from under the pillow, wrapped in rough black cloth.

– In those days, she said, Virgil kept a diary. It makes interesting reading.

A hen squawked irrelevantly from the shelf.

– I shall now read from it, she said, and began to recite. Recite, because the room was dark, and getting darker by the second as evening drew on and even the faintest light withdrew. She knew the book by heart.

Wodensday 19th June.

My diaries have always been my friends. The written word is so much more constant than human beings. Honest, too. Holding up a constant mirror to one’s own inadequacies, but without malice. There’s friendship if you like.

The fact is, my friend, you are going to have to be more understanding today than ever you were. The things I am about to tell you are true, but you could easily be forgiven for disbelieving them. You must not disbelieve.

A tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Dear Brutus. I wonder if he was right. Certainly it is high tide in my affairs. The link between floods and fortune is somewhat tenuous, however. But I am circling round my subject. Perhaps I am reluctant to begin. I shall begin.

My old failures you know: it was sheer laziness, a butterfly quality of the mind, that thwarted my archaeological aspirations. Ironic that idleness should have led so directly to manual labour. But debts must be paid and I do know how to dig. Even if I now inter where once I exhumed. I think of myself as a layer of evidence for future archaeologists. I must; I can see no other dignity in my present labour.

As you further know, Nicholas Deggle arranged for my present employment. He came to see me yesterday. (My apologies for not writing then. Events had me by the scruff of the neck.) I think he came to ridicule. It is his most unfortunate trait. Forgivable perhaps from a creditor. Understandable perhaps when considering my employment.

Not only am I a gravedigger, my friend, but a digger of pets’ graves! I have been burying beloved spaniels and lamented moggies by the score. Everyone has to start somewhere, they say. There could scarcely be a more humble beginning.

The pets’ section of the cemetery is at its very edge, next to a piece of overgrown woodland. Having consigned my third lap-dog to the soil, I went here to eat my small lunch: two biscuits and a piece of cheese. It was here that I found the Thing.

At first I thought it was a mislaid tombstone. On closer inspection I realized it was not so easily explicable. It is about the height of a man and perfectly carved in stone. It looks like a highly geometric rose, and that is what we now call it: the Stone Rose.

It stood in the middle of a bush. I don’t think it was deliberately concealed there. It just was there. I cleared a way to it, scratching my hands and tearing my coat-sleeve a fraction.

This is where you must begin to suspend your disbelief, my friend. I touched it and an entirely terrifying thing happened. My head swirled, strange pictures formed before my eyes. I must have fainted. I awoke on the ground by the Rose, dusty and with a couple more scratches. I’m ashamed to say my first instinct was flight. I returned to my duties and buried a few more animals. Then Deggle arrived. It was his condescension that led me back to the Rose. I wanted to see if it had the same effect on him. If it did, he would soon stop sneering.

It did. I was forced to resuscitate him by splashing water over him. I say forced: I must confess I used more than was necessary.

We emerged from the wood, shaken and greatly frightened, to find ourselves being scrutinized by a tallish, fairish man, who somehow gave the appearance of being a good deal older than he was. I suppose he is in his middle fifties and is actually very well-preserved, but he seems older. If that is not too oxymoronic a statement. He had brought us a bird to bury, a highly coloured bird of paradise. He said his name was Grimus; by his accents he is evidently Middle-European, a refugee no doubt.

We must have looked a fright, for he asked us instantly what the matter was. After a brief discussion, during which he looked increasingly interested, we led him into the wood and he tried his hand at the Rose. He staggered away from it, clasping his head; but he did not faint. Which instantly gave him a kind of seniority over us. Perhaps that is why we agreed to keep the Rose a secret for a while, until we understood it better.

He invited us to his home that evening to talk further. Already we seemed to have entered a conspiracy with this man. He returned to the cemetery as I was completing my duties with an empty coffin. Using ropes and sticks, we unearthed the rose and placed it in the coffin without touching it. He had brought his large estate car to the wood and we smuggled our treasure out like three grave-robbers, feeling criminal though we had committed no crime.

Grimus’ house is in a dingy suburban terrace in the south-west extreme of the city. It is as dingy inside as out, and cluttered with a quite amazing variegation of objects and books. There are a number of stuffed birds and evidence of wide travel. There are pictures, Oriental I think, everywhere, and again the theme is preponderantly ornithological. Grimus is interested in mythical birds and as he talked he seemed curiously bird-like himself, his hands fluttering and his voice a rushing twitter. In my amateur way, I share his interests; moreover he has the quality of interesting others in his own preoccupations, so we were not bored.

It is not his real name, Grimus. He told us so freely. He changed it from something unpronounceable when he arrived in this country some thirty years ago. True to himself, his adopted name is derived anagrammatically from a mythical bird: the Simurg.

– The Simurg, he told us eagerly, is the Great Bird. It is vast, all-powerful and singular. It is the sum of all other birds. There is a Sufi poem in which thirty birds set out to find the Simurg on the mountain where he lives. When they reach the peak, they find that they themselves are, or rather have become, the Simurg. The name, you see, means Thirty Birds. Si, thirty. Murg, birds. Fascinating. Fascinating. The myth of the Mountain of Kâf.

– Calf? asked Nicholas Deggle.

– Kâf, Grimus enunciated. The Arabic letter K.^*

He would have rambled on thus for ages, but Deggle cut him short, reminding him about the Rose.

– Ah yes, he said. The rose. The rose has Power.

– You are an occultist? I asked, depressed. I am always depressed by the occult. It is so cheerless.

– Not exactly, he twittered. Broad-minded. That is what. If the rose has Power, we must learn of what kind.

– Open the coffin, he said to me. I resented the order, but found myself obeying. Grimus moved swiftly to the rose and before we knew what he was doing, grasped it. He cried aloud in pain, but did not release his hold. I saw his eyes dilate and widen.

Then he disappeared. The Rose stayed where it was, but I swear he did not. He softly and silently vanished away.

A few minutes later, he reappeared, beaming and shaking his head.

– Wonderful, he said. Truly wonderful.

I looked at Nicholas Deggle and he at me. -You must both try it, said Grimus. You must.

We both did in the end, after a large measure of Grimus’ excellent brandy. We were both scared but I am sure Deggle was the more so. He had an entire posture of superiority to lose, after all. Deggle is not an humble man.

I cannot describe the planet Thera to you as yet. I must form my opinions of it more completely first. Suffice to say that we have travelled through… what? I do not know, and met a life-form vastly superior to our own. The world is suddenly filled with marvellous possibilities.

And it was I who found it!

– I will leave out the next part, said Liv formally. It is an account of other journeys they made.

The room was black now. Eagle listened riveted to the flat recitative.

Moonday 1st July.

Today Grimus made his greatest discovery and propounded his grand design. I must say it enthralls me. Deggle is surly and withdrawn and, I think, disapproves; but the Rose has him gripped as tightly as any of us. Even though he has continued to refuse to use it after that first visit to Thera.

– One has enough problems, he said today, without any of this trickery. He still comes though: comes every evening when we gather around the coffin in Grimus’ living-room to go on the Conceptual Travels which Dota explained to us. He comes to sit and glower as Grimus and I take turns to visit our worlds.

How rapidly I have come to accept a new universe, to sit in an exotic suburban living-room watching a man disappear and reappear and doing so myself! Evidently, like Grimus, I too am (his word) broad-minded. Fortunate. But today the broadmindedness received a nasty test. Grimus brought something back from his Travel. It is the first time those other universes have entered ours. He brought back two bottles. One filled with yellow liquid. One filled with blue.

– Yellow for eternal life. Blue for eternal death, he says.

This is his grand design. In his own words. Or as nearly as I can remember.

– We have now the situation of being able to dispense the gift of life, he said in his feathery Slavonic voice. I propose we accept the responsibility. The necessary first step is that we grant it to ourselves. The necessary second step is the choosing of recipients. I offer some criteria for the choice: those with a pleasure in life. Those with a work to do which eternity would benefit. Those in short who would both benefit from, and seek, a longer span of life. The necessary third step is to provide a place of refuge. A place where those who tire of the world but not of life may come.

– Just a moment, said Nicholas Deggle. How on earth are we to choose these people?

It was at this point that Grimus reached into a pocket of the greatcoat he always wore on his Travels and produced the Watercrystal.

– With this, he said, and with the Rose correctly adjusted, we can see the lives of those we Conceptualize, according to the techniques of Dota. Simply we fix our thoughts upon the selected type of recipient and they appear here like a TV picture. Then with a further adjustment of the Rose we go to them.

– Playing God, said Deggle. Dangerous, don’t you think?

– Would you rather we handed our knowledge to the authorities? snapped Grimus. His voice was filled with a bitterness and hatred for authority that must spring from some awful experience in his past, before he became Grimus the birdman. (We never knew his true name.) -Would you rather be locked up in an insane asylum? Or watch as Governments used our gift to make weapons and war? We do it ourselves or not at all. I say only this: to allow knowledge of this magnitude to go unused is more than a crime. It is a sin.

Liv skipped several pages. She made great show of turning to the correct place, though she never glanced at the book in her hand as she spoke.

We have been building a world. Impossible to say whether we found the island or made it. I incline to the latter, Grimus to the former. He holds that Conceptual Technology merely reveals existences which mirror your concepts. I am not so sure. However, we have made the island and it is a paradise, fertile, lush and green. Grimus has named it. Kâf Island. The mountain is Kâf Mountain. But since neither Deggle nor I are masters either of the glottal-stop or of the flat Arabic vowel, I’m afraid we bastardize the name to Calf. Fatted? Golden? Time will tell.

As for its population: Grimus now spends his entire time at the Watercrystal. He has made a discovery: each life he sees there comes from a fractionally different dimension, exists in a slightly different potential present… his phrase. Will there be a problem in assimilating immigrants from these different planets in the one society? Grimus is cheerfully optimistic. The differences are too minute to matter, he says. I trust he is right.

Liv moved on once more.

Calf Island, Day One.

Moonday January 1.

The date is arbitrary. One may as well begin at a beginning. We are all on Calf Island now, at the town called simply K. Grimus has been clever in arranging this beginning: by astute use of the Rose he has engineered that whoever wishes to come to Calf Island, (he has kept a careful check on all the Recipients) whenever they do so in their own lives and dimensions, they are brought to K on the same day. -It is a time-equation process, says Grimus, and I believe him. He says there has been only one misjudgement.

The philosopher Ignatius Gribb and his wife Elfrida’s journey has been mistimed; they will not be here for some time yet.

There is an air of joy in K today, as the community meets itself, a sense of paradise. We are the immortals and this is our Olympus. It was a lucky day when I took the job in the pets’ graveyard.

Another jump. This time there was a tension in Liv’s voice that had not been there before.

Freyday January 26th.

Today’s is a tale of two women. For my part, it is a happy tale.

Liv Sylwan is a whore. A very exceptional whore. (Curious, by the way, how many whores chose Calf Island. It must be a very fulfilling job.) Liv rejoices in being beautiful and enjoys working with her body. She is without shame. She is also gifted with command. The brothel became hers instantly. Jocasta, who lies second to her, so to speak, was the only real opposition. I like Jocasta. But Liv is… well, Liv is.

I must confess that until the Rose I had never been what you might term a sexual giant. A pigmy would be more accurate for all my bulk. I didn’t blame the ladies, dear sweet bebummed betitted things. Who would want to be squashed under me? The Rose gave me confidence. I journeyed to new worlds where fat men were as much in demand as Rubens ladies. The terror of the titties, I. Virgil Jones, a sex-symbol! Remarkable.

I cannot quite believe that Liv Sylwan wants me. She said she did, though, and I must not call her a liar. So she does. But why? In heaven’s name, why? She says she will give up her work to keep house for Deggle and Grimus and myself-I cannot understand it. But I will not look the gift horse in the mouth. It is a happy day, when beautiful women want ugly men simply because they like them.

We are going to be married. Grimus was apparently a monk once, in his old days, and he will marry us according to the rites of our church, though I am not terribly godly. Ceremonies are fun.

As for Grimus… he’s an odd bird, to coin a phrase. I’ve never been one for judging the attractiveness of men, so I’d have said Nicholas Deggle was the best-looking of the three of us. Apparently not. Grimus is the one they all covet, the favourite of the whores (except, of course, my own Liv), the darling of farmer’s wife and Russian countess alike. The trouble is he shows no interest in them. It’s that monkish background. Trained to celibacy. Perhaps that’s the attraction. He’s hard to get.

The Axona Indian woman called Bird-Dog is the most persistent. As plain a girl as You’ll see, she dogs his footsteps as her name suggests she would. He has no time for her, though she fawns on him. She probably sees him as some kind of shaman, and worships him, poor simple child. She’ll tire of it.

Interesting fact arising from Bird-Dog’s presence here. Grimus became much taken once with the notion of finding his own double. -Logically, he said, in an infinite universe, there must be a precise duplicate of myself. That doesn’t interest me. What I’m after is a certain similarity. A likeness to me which is also entirely alien.

He was very pleased when the Axona Plateau loomed up in the Watercrystal. It hasn’t worked out as he hoped, though. Bird-Dog’s brother hasn’t chosen Calf Island yet. Perhaps he will, perhaps he won’t.

Perhaps it wasn’t really Grimus’ hope that he would. One can never be entirely sure with him.

Liv turned several pages, jerkily.

Thorsday April 5th

It’s all going wrong. I can feel it. The atmosphere of joy has gone. If that goes then it is no longer worth while. Though Grimus disagrees. -It is a Great Experiment, he says. It cannot fail. I am not sure that the force of his will can hold us together. Forever is such a long time.

Besides: the three of us never ran any suitability tests on ourselves. We took it for granted we deserved immortality, and then took it for granted that Calf Island was the place for us. We may have been entirely wrong.

The suicides are doing it. That’s what it is. Grimus is furious about them. They should never have come, he says. They should have drunk their blue bottles in peace, somewhere else. Not killed themselves here. Deggle says it’s like marriage, agreeing to come to Calf Island. A lot of people will inevitably want a divorce no matter how much in love they were at the time.

The suicides are turning people against us and Deggle is on their side. Is he right? No, he must be wrong. Everyone made a free choice. It’s not our fault.

Like a marriage… I was blind, of course. Liv doesn’t love me. I know that. I knew it then. I thought she liked me, though.

Liv loves power. She loves to be near the centre of power. She loves to be near Grimus. Through me, she is. There’s an end to it. An end to paradise. We do not make love. She talks to Grimus incessantly.

I overheard this:

– Your name, said Grimus. LIV. In the Roman numerology that is fifty-four. I was fifty-four when I drank the elixir. The numbers bind us.

I knew Grimus was interested in numerology. But is this simply a monkish, mystic bond? I am becoming a jealous man. Liv says I have nothing to be jealous of. She is right. There is nothing between us.

It’s all going wrong.

Tiusday May 1st.

Mayday, m’aidez. The grand design is broken and so are we. I will try, my friend, to recount events dispassionately, but I may not succeed.

Deggle started it. The violence.

Liv finished it.

But the beginning. Begin at the beginning, go on until you reach the end, then stop. Sound instructions. The beginning, then. Two nights ago. I was awakened by a terrible crash in the Rose Room. I rushed, as rapidly as my bulk permits, to the scene. Grimus was already there, in his ridiculous nightshirt and noddycap, a large, enraged goblin, staring at the disaster.

The Rose lay on the floor, its stem protruding from the coffin, which was overturned on top of the precious thing! And stooping over it, scowling, was Deggle.

I have felt for some time now that all was not well with Deggle, and wondered how much the growing dislike of Grimus and myself in the town was a result of his machinations. We have been passing through disenchanted times in K. Suicides apart (and thank the lord, that phase seems to be over) there have been a number of defections from K. People who have chosen to live elsewhere, in the wooded lower slopes, away from the town. K itself, stultified, discontented. Natural, I suppose, god help us, that they should vent their spleen upon the people responsible for Calf Island. But the violence… the whispers about destroying Grimus’ infernal machine… I had thought we had left violence behind. And the Rose itself… I do not even know about that anymore.

Control. Control.

Deggle has been spending much of his time in the Elba-room. Perhaps he saw himself as a kind of saviour. A popular messiah. A liberator. There has never been much love lost between us. Perhaps the enmity ran deeper than we believed.

At any rate. We found him trying to shatter the Rose! Grimus recovered quickly from the shock and, displaying astonishing strength, hurled him from the room. -It must be tested, he said, and for the rest of the night he was closeted with the Rose, adjusting, permuting, testing. It was dawn before he declared himself satisfied that no damage had been done.

No damage!

– We must not allow this to happen again, he said, with a fierceness in his voice I had heard only once before, in his short diatribe against authority. -The Rose is the most valuable thing on the island, he said. I cannot permit it to be jeopardized. Will you help me?

I was caught up in the fervour of those bright, hooded eyes. -How? I asked.

– By myself I am not sure I can do it, he said. It will take our combined wills. We must expel the vandal from the island. I visited Dota in the night: he has taught me a method. But it is difficult.

I won’t bother with the ensuing argument. Suffice to say that we went into the Rose Room, agreed. At once I felt uneasy.

How can I explain it? There was a sensation in the room, like a soft inaudible whine. No, not in the room. Inside my head. And it was strongest near the Rose. I asked Grimus what it was, in some anxiety. He dismissed it: it had not affected the Rose’s functions in any way. -It was only a whine, he said. Dota the Gorf had not been worried about it.

He set the Rose and we fixed our thoughts upon our intentions, repeating this form of words: IXSE SIXTTES SIXE IXSETES EXIS EXISTIS. A variant, I supposed, to the SISPI formula for Travel between potential presents.

Deggle has not been seen on Calf Island since. I must presume the expulsion worked. I do not know where we have sent him, but he has gone. No doubt the Water-crystal will spot him should we desire it. I do not desire it. Not now.

I have always thought of uses of the Rose as rites. They are so very unmechanical. So. When the rite was over, it happened. I felt dizzy. I was unwell, I was sure. Grimus was saying: -It is not enough to expel Deggle. We must remove the Rose to a safer place. I have a plan.

I could hardly hear his voice… it came and went, and went.

(Now, Virgil, dispassion, tell it calmly.)

The whine. It was the whine, somehow, it must have been. Holding the Rose all that time, so close. I wonder why Grimus was not affected…

The whine filled my head with shapes and pictures and beasts and terrors. Horrors. Horrors. I tried to escape and there was no escape. They were inside.

Hallucinations? No, they were too real, they could cause pain. No, I will not describe them, the infernal scenes I saw and felt, the depths I plumbed. It was as though an army of terrors from the recesses of my own imagination had been released, my inmost fears made flesh. Horrible, most horrible. No, I will say no more about it… the Dimension-fever. So Grimus called it.

When I came to my senses, Grimus sat by me solicitously, on the Rose Room floor. He had rescued me, tuning the Rose to my co-ordinates and willing me back from my inner depths. So the Rose can heal as well as hurt. I am more scared of it than I ever was.

Most of all I am scared because I can no longer use it.

Grimus wanted me to master it again, like a fallen mountaineer. He set the Rose for Thera and we grasped it.

I did not Travel I Try as I might, I could not use the Rose.

It is like a paralysis of the mind. It shuts me out from that insidious whine-but it shuts me out, too, from all the countless universes I have not yet seen. Calf Island is all I have now. And a bleak inheritance it is.

I shall be brief now, or else I shall become maudlin.

Grimus, using the Rose for intradimensional Travel for the first time, has removed himself-and it-to the mountain peak. With a great deal of effort, he has succeeded in building a double barrier against the island: a visual barrier of clouds which obscures him perennially from our sight, and a kind of forcefield which we cannot pass. There is one Gate. He showed it me in case things improved. They will not improve.

His departure has brought about the end of my-not marriage-cohabitation with Liv. I was obliged to watch the degrading spectacle of my wife pleading, begging Grimus to take her with him. Misogynist that he is, he refused. I found myself feeling angry with him for this, this, insult to my wife! Imagine that, my friend. So greatly am I reduced.

Picture Liv’s fury, then, when he took the woman Bird-Dog instead of her. An explicable choice. He wants a servant, not a mistress. The doting Axona will be a good servant, I expect. She thinks of him as a demi-god.

Liv’s fury, in the absence of Grimus, vented itself on me. She has said a number of cruel things I will not commit to this page. She despises me for not being his equal, though I never claimed I was. And for my paralysis, thanks to which she is barred from his company. She wants nothing to do with me. In her eyes, I am just a fat, weak man. Probably she is right. Yes. Probably she is.

The house where we lived is empty now. Liv has gone up the mountain, to be as near Grimus as possible, no doubt. She does not know the location of the Gate, nor how close she is. And even if she knew, Grimus would not let her pass. He will watch the island with his Watercrystal and defend the Rose, and his privacy. The Rose is all he cares for now.

I am being looked after by Jocasta. She has always been a friend to me. I suspect a rift between her and Liv. Because Liv scorns me, Jocasta adopts me. But I am past questioning motives; I accept companionship where it is offered.

Mayday, indeed.

Saturnday September 29th.

I am leaving K. It is a town made mad by a machine. Soldiers, policemen, actors, hunters, whores, drunks, wasters, philosophers, menials, morons, artisans, farmers, shoe-salesmen, artists, united by their common inability to cope with the world they have had imposed upon them, Especially as the whine grows worse, they say. I cannot hear it. It has driven some to distraction. It has led to what they now call the Way of K. Gribb’s way. Gribb and Mrs Gribb, who arrived recently. No doubt Grimus had a hand in their arrival, but now they deny him and his Effect. Obsessionalism is their defence. I cannot bear what is happening to K, place of erstwhile joy. If my mind is paralysed, at least my life is not.

Guilt. It must be someone’s fault. It is ours. It was our experiment. But the Rose… the Rose is a wonderful thing. How has it brought so much grief? It is a terrible thing, so much distortion caused by such a wonder. I must leave. I do not want to watch. The woman Dolores O’Toole is going down the mountain. I shall go with her.

As for you, my friend, I shall take my leave of you as well. I want no friends now. I shall sacrifice you to Liv in propitiation of the gods. I shall take you to her. She will probably rend you limb from limb or toss you casually aside, as she did me. That is your future. It may help me forget my past. It may help me forget K and the horrors that burnt my mind. You will be my means of self-immolation. Greater love hath no friend.

To your destroyer, I will say one last word. There was a moment, back in that fit-to-be-expunged past, when I thought she wanted me. The excellence of that moment is not dimmed by the discovery of my mistake. I thank her for it. Beginnings are always better than endings. Then, everything was possible. Now, nothing is.

Dark. The book shut, wrapped, replaced. The silent blackveiled woman rising to her feet, standing stiffly before him. A hen clucking, once. Outside, the frenzied padding of the diary’s author, searching for a door he knew he could not find or pass. And the hiding whore, crouching by the donkey, behind a tree, watching.

But she did not rend it limb from limb, thought Flapping Eagle.

– Fifty-four, said Liv in a flat, regular voice. He said it was a bond between us. His always-age, my name. He is a man who breaks his bond. I knew how he thought, knew how he felt, knew him. It was a bond beyond breaking and it was broken.

As she spoke she stooped over a group of candles on the floor and lit them with flints. Then she stood erect once more, the light yellowing upwards at her from the floor, casting great shadows on the wall. Flapping Eagle remembered: the goddess Axona had looked like this. Then. Ago. Before. And the recollection mingled with the revealed history of the island, losing itself in that gloom.

She had not been speaking to him. Again, the sense of ritual: the book recited, the candles lit, the litany spoken. This was how she lived her life, embalmed in the bitter formaldehyde of old hatreds and betrayals. Flapping Eagle felt sorry for her for an instant; then her eyes focused on him through the grill of her hood.

– Aaaaaah. It was a huge exhalation of air, sobbing out from her lungs.

– Of course, she said. Of course. You have returned. The Spectre of Grimus is here to make good the bond of Grimus. Of course. So it is.

She was different, Flapping Eagle realized. The recitation, the entire rite, had altered her. She spoke slowly now, distantly, as though in some kind of trance. The past had possessed her. And he, Flapping Eagle, had become a part of that past.

– Come, she said, backing towards the bed, beckoning. Come and consecrate your bond.

Flapping Eagle sat immobile in the chair, not knowing how to react.

– Look at my body, Spectre, said Liv. Is it not a suitable altar?

Her hands moved suddenly to the back of her neck, where they undid a fastening. The black robe fell to the floor. She stood unclothed before him, her face still hidden by the black veil, the eyes looking out at him, piercing, perhaps even mocking, the candles casting their upwards yellow glow.

– Look at my body, Spectre, repeated Liv. Flapping Eagle looked.

Liv, ice-peak of perfection. Virgil had overstated nothing.

His eyes described her to his unbelieving mind. The feet, a little too large, stained with intricate henna tracery like an Indian bride; the long, tapered legs, the right bearing her weight and the left relaxed, so that the swayed curve of her hips was accented, sinuously, consciously; the tight curls of hair beneath her navel, unshaven, untrained, pale, nestling curls; the deep, deep navel, a dark pool in the whiteness of her skin; the breasts, small, the right slightly larger than the left, the left nipple tilted a fraction higher than its partner, but both still child-rosy, soft; the narrow, straight shoulders pushed back a fraction to an almost military angle, challenging, confident; the arms hanging straight and loose, palms of the hands facing forwards, third fingers curled beneath the thumbs, a generous hint of hair shadowing the pits of the arms. The rest, the neck and face and head, unseen beneath their hood, only hinted at by those sharply quizzical eyes. He looked at her now in the whole, the black garment lying at her feet, a forgotten shroud, the dancing candles on the floor sending rich shadows to flirt with the naked body, the chaos and filth of the room forgotten in the perfection of this vision. She knew how to display her body, just enough emphasis to heighten its beauty without obtrusion. A headless venus in a slum museum.

– Is it not a suitable altar? she said.

He nodded, wordlessly, and with a sudden movement of the right arm she removed the windowed hood. It fluttered to the floor to join its companion-robe.

He had known she would be beautiful; but he had failed to anticipate how subjugating that beauty would be. Flapping Eagle had to wrestle with himself to look into that face without instantly lowering his eyes. It was the loveliness of sun on ice, too brilliant to watch. Blinding, imperious perfection. The firm, long, narrow jaw, set and tilted upwards, and the wide, wide mouth without the vestige of a smile; the nose, short and straight, flanked by cheekbones like blades or sharp white cliffs. A long face, the bones perfectly balanced by those vast lucent pools of eyes, deepest aquamarine, eyes you could almost see through, eyes that saw, effortlessly, through you. And framing the head of the ice-queen, an abundance of waving gold, rising a few inches from a central division and crashing effusively around the glitter-hard face with the sea-soft eyes, a niagara of falling hair. It was the face that did it.

Liv lying down on the bed.

– Come, she said. Come and consecrate your bond.

As Virgil Jones stumbled around in the night, Flapping Eagle moved towards the body of his wife, towards the clean bed, past the glowing candles and the spiders and the mould.

She could arouse him as Irina never had. Then, he had been in control, a part of him always detached, choosing his next course of action, watching her come to her peak, deriving most of his satisfaction from the giving of pleasure; now it was he who was driven, uncontrollably, by the touches and movements of her body. She spent a long, slow while discovering his preferences and taboos, whispering all the time: -Do you like that? Is that nice? Shall I do that harder or softer? Shall I lick or nibble or tickle or scratch? Is my hand good there? Shall I be like this, or this, or this? The new, quiet gentleness in her voice softened interrogation into intimacy, and it was only later that he realized he had never asked if she, too, liked what he chose.

So that, when she did what she had always intended, it caught him with every defence down, open, helpless.

He lay on his back on the bed. The candles flickered closer to guttering out. The time of exploration was over, and the kissing and stroking and squeezing and she knelt over him, the golden cornucopia covering her face like a lavish thatch, the aquamarine eyes hidden, the long hands kneading and working at the small tilted breasts, the thighs quivering gently as she descended, and then he was in her. Slowly still, making it last, the living strike of flesh in flesh, slowly, slowly gathering force, building, slowly gathering.

She was groaning now (- groan, she had said) and they were striking hard at each other, near, so near, the shudder growing within him, and the moment had…

She wrenched herself off him then, hard and without warning, and stood on the bed looking down at him, composed, unruffled, and the aquamarines were filled with triumph.

– It is Liv who breaks the bond, she said.

Liv’s revenge on Grimus, plotted in centuries of darkened, still-seated brooding. Now, possessed, entranced, she had wrought it on his Spectre. It was a very final humiliation, hitting him in the core of his carnal pride, the only pride he had left. He looked up at the towering Valkyrie, staring at him with the full force of her century-festered hate, and helplessly, miserably, his body roused beyond his control, spilt his sterile seed upon the sheets.

Virgil Jones had slept squatting on the outcrop. Flapping Eagle was curled into a foetal ball against the wall of the black house. When they awoke, the damp had seeped into their bones. They shivered.

It was the cry that woke them, a half-frightened, half-elated yell from the wood. Flapping Eagle was awake at once and running in the direction of the voice. Virgil, slower, bulkier, followed him, blinking rapidly.

Media stood at the edge of the wood, her arms trembling but her hands clasped rigidly together.

Trapped between her arms was the surly, draggled figure of Bird-Dog.

Brother and sister stood still a moment, taking stock.

– Tell this stupid woman to let me go, little brother.

Her voice was unfriendly.

– I saw her appear, Flapping Eagle, said Media tremulously. Like a spectre. I saw her appear so I caught her. I thought you’d, you’d want to see her.

It had been a brave thing to do.

Bird-Dog said: -If you saw me appear, don’t you think I could just as easily disappear? You’d be left clutching thin air.

Media looked doubtful, but didn’t release her hold.

– She’s right, Media, said Flapping Eagle. If she’s here, it’s because she wants to be. Let her go and perhaps we’ll find out why.

– I don’t want to be here, said Bird-Dog roughly. If he hadn’t sent me I would never have come.

– Grimus sent you? It was Virgil’s voice, blank, disbelieving.

– Not for you, she said. For him. Little Joe-Sue. It’s none of my doing, little brother. Remember that.

Grimus actually wants to see me, thought Flapping Eagle. There will be no battle of wills.

– Why? Again, it was Virgil Jones who spoke Flapping Eagle’s thoughts.

– Don’t ask me why, said Bird-Dog, shaking herself free of Media’s constricting embrace. I have a message to deliver, and then I am to take him back with me.

Media was about to speak, but remained silent, She looked worried.

– Well, then, said Flapping Eagle. Deliver your message.

As Bird-Dog began to speak in a memorized, sing-song voice, a figure in a black robe and hood came out of the black house to listen.

Grimus says: -Thank you all for your efforts. I have derived a great deal of pleasure from watching you. To Virgil, I owe my apologies. I have been playing a game of hide and seek with him. Slightly cruel, possibly, but necessary.

It is to Liv Sylwan Jones that I owe my greatest thanks. She has set the seal on Mr Eagle, who is therefore prepared at last to meet me. He knows about me now, intimately, I think. And more important, he has moved from a state of what I should call self-consciousness to a state of what I would humbly term Grimus-consciousness. That is a good state in which to meet me, and I must once again thank you all: the absent Nicholas Deggle for making the meeting possible, you, Virgil, for leading him so astutely towards a confrontation with me, and you, Liv, for breaking down the last barrier to that meeting: his masculinity. In a sense, Liv, you were the Gate, as far as he is concerned. Now that he has passed you, he may come to me. I am very thrilled: perhaps this is my Perfect Dimension, after all.

Bird-Dog stopped and lowered her head. -Shall we go now? she said. To Flapping Eagle, the sight of this servile Bird-Dog, a grumbling, malcontented but totally subservient menial, was a shock and an upset. This was not the sister who had foraged for his food, who had raised and protected him. This was a shadow of the Bird-Dog he had known. What had Grimus done to her?

Liv raised her hood a small way and spat viciously on the ground before her.

Virgil Jones fussed at Flapping Eagle: -Don’t forget. Wait your moment.

But life no longer seemed entirely clear-cut to Flapping Eagle. Curiosity and last night’s humiliation were creeping over his resolve.

Media came up to Flapping Eagle and said quietly: -Take me, too.

Flapping Eagle was no longer surprised by anything. -Why, Media? he asked.

She shrugged.

Flapping Eagle found himself saying: -Yes. All right. Come with me. Perhaps it was because he felt the need of a friendly face on the journey into the unknown. Perhaps it was a reaction to the night with Liv, a need to reassure himself. He didn’t bother to examine his motives, but he realized he was glad she was coming. As for Media, her face had suddenly broken into sunlight.

Bird-Dog said: -Not her. Just you.

Flapping Eagle found a drop of strength.

– Big sister, he said. You’re supposed to lead me to Grimus. Now I’m not coming unless she does. So You’ll just have to take us both.

With bad grace, Bird-Dog gave in.

– Follow me, she said.

Flapping Eagle clasped Media’s hand, tightly. The returned pressure was even more fierce. -I will think about you, she said, and only you. While I do that, nothing can harm me.

He realized that she was exactly, precisely right.

Bird-Dog walked ahead of them to a spot just behind the first trees. She closed her eyes and muttered: -Sispi, Sispi. She became transparent. She nearly disappeared, but the faintest outline of her moved a step to the right and waited. Media’s eyes widened; then she closed them and tightened her lips.

Flapping Eagle led her to the Gate.

Virgil Jones and Liv watched the three faint outlines walk away up the rising slope of the mountain, walking miraculously where there was no path to walk on, until they were lost to sight. They were so slight that it did not take long for this to happen.

Liv turned and went back into the black house, slamming the door.

And Virgil? Virgil knew that there was no longer anything he could do, that after all the Gorfs prophecy had come true. Flapping Eagle had reached Grimus without his help, and who knew what the result would be? There was nothing to be done now.

He started down the mountain, back to the beach, back to Dolores O’Toole and the jigsaws, the rocking-chair and the shreds of his helpless dignity.

*Ishould note that the Arabic letter in question has no exact parallel in the Roman alphabet. It is more usually rendered as Q (Qâf)-but it is, in fact, a glottal-stop for which there is no accurate rendering. I have chosen to refer to it as K (Kâf) and risk confusion with the quite distinct letter Kaf, for the simple reason that it is the only way I can pronounce it. A purist would not forgive me, but there it is.

LV The Stone Rose

FLAPPING EAGLE AND Media (when she opened her eyes) found themselves on a strangely transmuted Calf Mountain, a Calf Mountain in which Virgil, Liv, Liv’s house, even Liv’s donkey were reduced to wraith-like wisps, in which the outcrop remained, and the forest, both feeling different though they looked the same. Perhaps the most shocking change, harder to accept even than the ghosts of Virgil and Liv, lay above them. The clouds had vanished from the mountain’s summit. Flapping Eagle was surprised to find that the mountain was lower than he had imagined; the cumulus cocoon had made it seem much higher than it was. The summit lay only a few hundred feet above them.

– Grimushome, said Bird-Dog, pointing without turning to face them.

A sprawling house, long and low and castellated, looked down at them. It was a stone house, a miniature fortress. Somewhere in that stone home, thought Flapping Eagle, lies the Stone Rose.

The house was wildly irregular, its walls anything but straight, no corner a right angle, but it was a designed eccentricity, a deliberate folly. The zigzag patterns it wove on the mountaintop were purposeful, reflections of their creator.

Reflections: the house gave them off in all directions! for every window in its wandering walls was also a mirror. This combination of undulating stone and blind, gleaming windows made the house curiously difficult to focus upon, as if his eyes refused to accept it, as if it was an illusion that would not harden into fact.

Possibly it was a question of size. The house was large, but, in an impossible distortion of scale, it lay in the spreading shade of an inconceivably huge tree, an ash which dwarfed its venerable sibling in the Gribb garden by comparison, as if the swing-bearing tree had been a mere sapling. It was more than gigantic; it inspired awe. Flapping Eagle remembered Virgil Jones’ description of the Ash Yggdrasil, the mother-tree which holds the skies in place. And wondered what monsters were gnawing at its roots.

Another shock. Flapping Eagle had a clear memory of the upper slopes of Calf Mountain. They had been steep, more arduous even than the ascent from K to the outcrop, and densely forested. He had had severe doubts about the possibility of scaling these heights without proper equipment. It was stunning, then, to see before him a neatly-cleared passage up the mountain, a whole flight of narrow stone steps sweeping effortlessly to the very door of Grimus-home. And yet they were there. They were real. Flapping Eagle shook his head, forced into admiration.

They were climbing the stairs now, Bird-Dog leading, Media bringing up the rear, and the birds swooping and swarming all around them. More birds than Flapping Eagle had seen in his life, birds from every climate and of every imaginable feather, birds as common as crows and birds he had never seen before, with uselessly twisted beaks and strangely contorted shapes, flocking and squawling up the mountain to the peak. Often he had to shield his face against a spread of beating wings. He glanced back at Media; there was fear in her eyes, but she forced a smile.

And the whine was still all around him, loud now and pervasive, but the marvels surrounding them took far more of their attention. Eventually they were near the peak. Bird-Dog had maintained a hostile silence throughout the climb, but now she broke it, whirling to face her brother from her higher position.

– Leave us alone, she cried. Why did you have to come here?

Then, equally suddenly, she turned around once more, and there was resignation in her steps as she resumed her climb.

For a man at the end of a quest, Flapping Eagle felt extremely unheroic.

Engraved in the stone over the door of Grimushome:

THAT WHICH IS COMPLETE IS ALSO DEAD.

Birds crowded the branches of the giant ash as Flapping Eagle and Media followed the surly Bird-Dog in.

The house was a kind of rough triangular labyrinth, the face which it presented to the ascending steps being the jagged base of the triangle. The main door stood towards the left-hand corner of this base. The two other faces were even more jagged than the front; a sharp protruding sub-triangle stuck out on the left and a blunter but larger sub-triangle distorted the right side.

Inside, Flapping Eagle and Media found a bewildering series of interlocking rooms. First of these was the stone hall in which they found themselves upon entering, a bleak spartan room, lit only by oil-lamps until Bird-Dog flung open a mirrored window. It contained no furniture, but variegated pieces of rock, boulders and two beautifully-detailed erotic sculptures in stone stood lining its walls. Flapping Eagle found it an unfriendly room.

It was roughly square, though it grew narrower at the far end, where a door stood closed against them. Bird-Dog moved towards this door and flung it open. As they followed her, Flapping Eagle heard the creaking for the first time.

A regular, rhythmic creaking. The walls were full of it, but they were stone walls and there was no obvious source for the sound. It seemed to grow louder as he listened; he turned to Media. She, too, was listening. Creak… creak… creak… creak. They hurried into the next room.

And momentarily forgot the creaking at the sight of an army of birds.

– Birdroom, said Bird-Dog curtly and unnecessarily.

This was the room which stuck sharply out from the left side of the building. Through an open window poured the birds, a steady stream of comings and goings. Various feeds stood on small pedestals around the room and a large birdbath was the room’s central feature. Peacocks strutted on the floor.

But not all the birds were alive. Stuffed creatures stood in glass-fronted cases all around them, immobilized for ever in typical scenes from their lives: birds eating, birds courting, birds breeding and hatching, birds in flight, birds dying, birds swooping on other birds, in a dazzling series of eternal tableaux.

And on the walls, the portraits of birds, an audubon profusion of feathered heads, some real, some imaginary, serried in ranks around the central picture which took up almost all the wall to Flapping Eagle’s right. One look at the glorious particoloured creature depicted there was enough. This was the Roc of Sinbad, the Phoenix of myth: Simurg himself.

The creaking broke through Flapping Eagle’s fascination. Bird-Dog was hurrying on through yet another door at the far end of the room. They followed her rapidly through an electrifyingly beautiful dining-room, on whose walls hung ancient tapestries and on whose floor lay ancient carpets. Silver plates and candelabra glinted everywhere. This was the room which stood at the apex of the triangle. Bird-Dog did not pause.

Down the right side now, Flapping Eagle told himself, concentrating on orientation. The fourth room stood in darkness, a number of white shapes looming through the shades. As his eyes accustomed himself to the poor light, he saw that a number of podia were scattered about the room, bearing-what?-things, hidden by white, shrouding sheets. These silent ghosts-none large enough to be the Rose-were in some way worrying. And the creaking continued here as in all the previous rooms…

This time the door was not in the far wall, but in the wall on their right. Following Bird-Dog, they came into a small room, entirely empty, oil-lamps flickering on the walls, the first room they had been in without an outside wall. On the wall facing them, red against the grey stone, was this shape:

– The letter Kâf, said Bird-Dog brusquely.

Flapping Eagle did not understand the purpose of this room, unless it was an anteroom, for their journey was near an end. Bird-Dog went through a door in the wall to their left and they found themselves in a bright, airy, well-furnished room: their room. The large bed wore fresh sheets and had obviously been expecting them. There was a deep, soft divan and an ornate low table inset with ivory squares.

His sense of direction told him there was still an unexplained area on each side of this room. One was rapidly clarified-a door on his left as he stood just inside the entrance from the Kâf-room led to a bathroom and lavatory; and on the far side of this were Bird-Dog’s small, dingy quarters. She had her own door to the outside world, as befits a servant. She was retreating now, into this small shell.

Flapping Eagle called after her: -Where is Grimus?

– Wait, she said, and shut her door. He heard a bolt being shot.

Sounds: a range of unfamiliar, disturbing sounds. The whine, the loud combined conversation of birds, and the creaking.

– Are you all right? he said.

Media lay on the bed, her hands over her ears, trying to shut out this new, frightening world.

She is a resilient woman, thought Flapping Eagle, but very near breaking point.

He was retracing his steps to the main entrance. The unexplained area towards the front face of the house, south of their room, must be Grimus’ own quarters, he had decided; but he had seen no doors leading into that area. He went outside and circled the house; but other than the front door and Bird-Dog’s back door, there were no entrances; and the windows of Grimus’ room were closed and reflecting. Puzzled, he returned to the stone hall.

To find a door where none had been, a swinging slab of stone that now stood open. From the room within came the creaking, the all-pervasive creaking. Flapping Eagle walked slowly towards the sound. The dirty yellow light of oil-lamps glowed through the secret door.

– The acoustics here are somewhat haunting, yes?

Quick, clipped consonants and short, flat vowels. The voice of Grimus.

– I trust you are both comfortable?

The rocking-chair stood with its face to the closed window and its back to Flapping Eagle. He could see the head: a shock of white hair, some of it flowing over the back of the chair.

Creak… creak… creak as the rocking-chair swayed back and forth; and another, slighter sound, a soft clicking which Flapping Eagle could not understand. He reached the rocking-chair and stood beside the man he had come so far to see.

Grimus was knitting.

Like, and yet unlike. Yes, their faces were alike, the aquiline nose, the deepset eyes, the firm square jaw; but Grimus was nearer Bird-Dog’s olive colouring than the white of Flapping Eagle’s sepulchritude. And their eyes spoke differently, Grimus’ distant, cool, twinkling while Flapping Eagle’s were glaring and hot. Like, and yet unlike.

As though reading his thoughts, Grimus said:

– My pale young shadow. That is you.

Flapping Eagle forced the necessary words past his lips; he was finding it difficult to take up an antagonistic stance in this relaxed, amused presence.

– You know why I am here, he said. Where is the Stone Rose?

– I know why Virgil wanted you to come, said Grimus. That is sad, you know. For Virgil to side with the Nicholas Deggles of this world. But no matter, no matter. I hope you will make up your own mind, Flapping Eagle. You are nobody’s tool. The eyes smiled.

– Well, then, said Flapping Eagle. Tell me why you sent Bird-Dog for me. And tell me what you have done to make her… what she has become.

The white eyebrows rose a fraction.

– So fast, said Grimus. Such haste. No, my friend, I will not tell you. Not, at any price, before dinner.

Dinner was vegetarian, like Grimus; but so expertly had Bird-Dog prepared it that Flapping Eagle, a great carnivore, scarcely noticed the absence of meat.

– Man’s origins, Grimus was saying, are those of the hunter. Thus the hunt, search or quest is man’s oldest, most time-honoured pursuit. You must feel a great sense of accomplishment to have arrived.

Flapping Eagle looked at his sister: crushed, servile, cowering menially in a corner, ignored by her master.

– Perhaps it’s better to travel hopefully, he said.

Bird-Dog, who had been waiting on Grimus for an eternity now, an eternity of being ignored. She had stood it, Flapping Eagle surmised, because at least she could feel unique, the sole acolyte of the man she worshipped. At least she was significant. No wonder, then, that she grudged his arrival; she would not want to share Grimus with anyone.

Grimus, for his part, treated her throughout the meal as subhuman, a being beneath contempt; and Flapping Eagle found himself shaping a dislike of the strange secret man.

He was talking to Media. -I must compliment you on your strength, he said. But I fear for you. Flapping Eagle, do you not fear for her? This is not an entirely safe place. The side-effect, I mean.

– She’s resisted it perfectly well so far, said Flapping Eagle.

– But one can weaken, said Grimus. My dear, would you be prepared to undergo a little hypnosis? It would make you safe.

Media looked at Flapping Eagle through ill, panicky eyes. He was thinking: Grimus is right: the Effect is strongest here. She could succumb at any moment. So, despite his reluctance to allow Grimus near her, he said: -Perhaps you’re right.

– After dinner, then, said Grimus. You will of course be present yourself.

– You like my home? asked Grimus, eagerly.

– Very nice, said Media.

– I have built it to enshrine my favourite things, said Grimus. My favourite ideas. The ash outside. The portraits of birds. It is a great pleasure to a lonely man.

– It’s very large, said Media.

– When I lived in K, said Grimus, I was prepared to live as modestly as the rest. But since they have forced me to withdraw, I indulge myself shamelessly.

– Acute of you to recall the Ash Yggdrasil, said Grimus over coffee. Let me tell you of a related matter. The Twilight of the Gods, as it is known. This is an entirely erroneous term, you know. The word ragnarok, twilight, only occurs once in the entire Poetic Edda, and is almost certainly a misprint for the word ragnarak, which is the one used throughout the songs. The difference is crucial. Ragnarak, you see, means fall. Total destruction. A much more final thing than twilight. You see how one letter can warp a mythology?

– How do you get coffee here? asked Media.

Grimus frowned at the irrelevance. -I think, therefore it is, he said.

Flapping Eagle imagined he looked pleased at her confusion.

On their way out of the dining-room, Grimus bumped into Bird-Dog. She dropped the dish she was carrying. He dusted himself down at the place where their bodies had touched, looking disgusted; and said: -Bird-Dog, you are a clumsy fool.

– Yes, Grimus, she said.

Flapping Eagle stifled a surge of anger, remembering Virgil’s advice: Bide your time.

The hypnosis of Media was completely successful; the post-hypnotic suggestion completely shut out the whine from her head. Flapping Eagle cheered up slightly, then thought: I wonder how much hypnosis he’s used on Bird-Dog?

Media was asleep. Bird-Dog was concealed in her quarters. Grimus and Flapping Eagle sat in the Bird Room, amid the paintings and the stuffed and sleeping creatures.

– Peaceful beings, said Grimus. Yet they can be trained to fight, like cocks. Simple beings, yet they say the mynah bird can tell fortunes. Amoral beings, yet some are highly moral. The albatross, for instance, is monogamous after performing its mating dance. For the rest of its natural life. Few of us could claim as much.

– Grimus… began Flapping Eagle.

– They feed, they breed and they die, said Grimus. All we can do is feed. Which of us do you find the superior?

– I think it’s time, said Flapping Eagle.

– Now you yourself, Flapping Eagle, are a strange creature. Once you were nidifugous, fleeing the nest which bore you. But not by choice, so you have once more become nidipetal. Seeking a new nest, eh? Admirable. Most admirable.

Flapping Eagle burst out:

– Grimus, what is this all about?

Grimus looked mildly astonished.

– All about, Mr Eagle? But of course it is all about death. Death, Mr Eagle-that is what life is about.

Flapping Eagle felt suddenly very cold.

– Whose death? he asked, fearfully.

– My dear Flapping Eagle, smiled Grimus. Mine, naturally. Whose did you think? That is who you are: the angel of my death.

– Put these on, said Grimus.

– Why?

– Because it must all be properly done, said Grimus, his hands fluttering in bird-like movements.

So, in the Bird-Room, Flapping Eagle assumed the full ceremonial feathered head-dress and face-paint of an Axona Sham-Man, slung a bow across a shoulder and a quiver of arrows at his back, and held a ju-ju stick in his right hand. Grimus, in the meanwhile, put on a different head-dress, whose colouring exactly matched the plumage of the great bird in the largest portrait in the room.

– And now, said Grimus. Shall we dance?

Flapping Eagle sat in Grimus’ rocking-chair, listening, There was not much else he could do; he had seen no sign of the Stone Rose. And besides, he was curious. His head-dress hung proudly over the back of the swaying-chair and the ju-ju stick lay in his lap. Grimus circled him, walking in an odd, stilted manner, bending forward from the waist and sticking out his neck at every step, his hands at shoulder-height, his fingers moving, moving ceaselessly. There was an angular rhythm about his movements that dizzied the eye.

– This is the Dance of Wisdom and Death, said Grimus. Death, still, watching and listening, biding its time, good. Wisdom, circling, gesturing, revealing itself to its Doom. Good. This is how I chose to be; it is a man’s freedom to choose the manner of his going. I have chosen a beautiful Death and made it in my own image.

His voice descended from its high pitch and his manner became conversational.

– Ordinary men, he said, by which I mean mortal men, are made incomplete by ageing and death. As the years give them wisdom, their failing faculties make a nonsense of it, so that when Death claims them they have little to say to it. I chose to be different. Through longevity I have been able both to grow wise and to retain the faculties which add potency to wisdom. To be wise and powerful is to be complete. That which is complete is also dead. And so I wish to die. Not the paltry fizzling of mortal life, but a minutely-planned and satisfying death. An aesthetic passing on.

The Elixir of Death, the blue release, has no power on Kâf Mountain. It was thus I conceptualized the island, for in building a life one must be conscious of its end. Who would write a story without knowing how it finished? All beginnings contain an end. Unknown to Virgil Jones, unknown to Nicholas Deggle, I planned Kâf Mountain around my death. Around you. The Elixir of Death would have been too easy, too incomplete. One cannot reveal one’s secrets to a drink. And then there is the question of the Phoenician impulse, but more of that later.

The Mountain of Kâf, in short, is a place where death is neither natural nor easy. It must be chosen, and it must be an act of violence against the body. That, after all, is what it always is in truth.

But the Mountain is more than this. It is the Great Experiment. Not in the sense that Virgil Jones understood it; I saw no reason to tell him my true intentions. There is every reason to tell you. You are the Phoenician Death. This is the nature of Kâf: it is an attempt to understand human nature by freeing it from its greatest instinctual drive, the need to preserve the species through reproduction. The Elixir of Life is a beautifully two-edged weapon, removing at a stroke the possibility of reproduction by sterilizing Recipients, and also nullifying the need to reproduce by conferring immortality. The island, furthermore, is plentiful and fertile. Scarcity, too, has been removed. All of which necessitates a profound change in human behaviour, a change which I believed would reveal our true natures far more exactly. It is a fine combination, sterile immortals and fertile land. A most rewarding study.

Analysts of the mythical mountain of Kâf have called it a model for the structure and workings of the human mind. Fitting, then, that the actual Mountain should be a structure created to examine the interests (and enable the death) of one human mind.

Though, in a sense, it is not my intention that my mind should die. This is the purpose of revealing my secrets to the chosen instrument of my death. This is the Phoenician impulse.

When I became Grimus, I took the name from a respect for the philosophy contained in the myth of the Simurg, the myth of the Great Bird which contains all other birds and in turn is contained by them. The similarity with the Phoenix myth is self-apparent. Through death, the annihilation of self, the Phoenix passes its selfhood on to its successor. That is what I hope to do with you. Flapping Eagle. Named for the king of earthly birds. You are to be the next stage of the cycle, the next bearer of the flag, Hercules succeeding Atlas. In the midst of death we are in life.

– What if I refuse?

The question came unprompted from Flapping Eagle’s scared lips. Megalomania is a frightening thing to be circled by.

– You are the next life of the Phoenix, repeated Grimus. The Phoenician Death.

– How can you refuse? said Grimus after a pause. Consider your life: you will see that I have shaped it to this express purpose. In a sense, Flapping Eagle, I created you, conceptualizing you as you are. Just as I created the island and its dwellers with all the selectivity of any artist.

– We existed before you found us, said Flapping Eagle.

– Surely, said Grimus tolerantly. But by shaping you to my grand design I remade you as completely as if you had been unmade clay.

– I don’t believe you, said Flapping Eagle, and Grimus laughed.

– A sceptical Death, he said. Good, good. His voice rose again to its formal high pitch and his fingers fluttered more than ever.

– Do you deny that by selecting you as a Recipient I shaped your life thenceforth? Do you deny that by taking your sister from the Axona I forced your expulsion? Do you deny that by expelling Nicholas Deggle into your continuum I guided you towards Calf Island? Do you deny that by allowing you to wander the world for centuries instead of bringing you here I made you the man you are, chameleon, adaptable, confused? Do you deny that by choosing a man similar in appearance to myself I estimated exactly the effect of such a man on Virgil and on the town of K? Do you deny that I lured you here with the Spectre of Bird-Dog? Do you deny that I have steered a course between the infinite potential presents and futures in order to make this meeting possible? (And then, dropping his voice:) Which of your Lord’s blessings would you deny?

Flapping Eagle was shaken but not wholly convinced. He shook his head.

– Since you do not know how to conceptualize the coordinates of your Dimension, you cannot leave the island, said Grimus. You cannot stay among Kâf’s inhabitants, bearing my face. Your only alternative is suicide, and once I have shown you my marvels you will not wish to do so.

– Show me, said Flapping Eagle.

Flapping Eagle stood in the room he had passed through earlier, the room with veiled objects on podia, wondering what he found most alarming about Grimus. He decided it was the childishness underlying his whole so-called Grand Design, the fulfilment of every half-formed whim, and the strangely infantile rituals he devised to amuse him, like this so-called Dance. Grimus: a baby with a bomb. Or a whole veiled arsenal of bombs. On pedestals.

– The second part of the Dance, Grimus twittered, is a Dance of Veils. In Which Much That Is Wonderful Is Revealed.

He stood by the first podium, a didactic, particoloured owl.

– Beneath personality, he said, is concealed an essence. The Meta-Physicists of Oxyput VII have perfected a tool for the detection of this essence. I acquired one on my travels. It is based upon a simple concept: that Essences are of two kinds: atomic, complete, static on the one hand, or on the other, ionic, incomplete, dynamic. What might be termed Ions in the Soul. (A short laugh.) The device I am about to show you is called an Ion Eye. It can examine and record the particular Ionic structure of any Dynamic Essence. Through centuries of experimentation, the Oxyputians have analysed the meanings of these Ionic patterns. This knowledge is also at my disposal. I used it to aid me in the conceptualization of none other than a certain Flapping Eagle.

He unveiled the Ion Eye. It was a simple black box. On its front face were rows and rows of tiny glass windows.

– Stand in front of it, please.

Flapping Eagle complied and at once lights appeared in the tiny windows, a complex pattern of lights.

– Your Ionic Pattern, said Grimus, is the strongest destructive pattern I have ever seen. If one were superstitious, one could argue that it is this essence that Mrs Cramm spotted in your palm, this essence which caused your people to mistrust you, this essence which lies at the root of your misfortunes on Kâf Island. For my purposes, it made you an eminently suitable angel of death. You and your sister. Though her pattern is rather less well-defined than yours.

Grimus moved to a pair of pedestals, which stood close together at one end of the room. He unveiled one.

Flapping Eagle found himself looking at the Water-crystal.

– I see you recognize this, said Grimus. Virgil’s diary. Good, good. It was through this that I found you and then tested you with the Ion Eye, through this that I followed you all the way here. But its companion is almost more interesting. It does not occur in Virgil’s diary, because I concealed it from him. It is the Crystal of Potentialities. In it I can examine many potential presents and futures and discover the key moments, the crossroads in time, which guide us down one or the other line of flux. If you understand what I mean by that.

Flapping Eagle shook his head-no-as he stared at the second, unveiled crystal globe. This was filled, not with water, but with a kind of smoke.

– I’m afraid you always see through a bit of a haze, said Grimus. Ah, but you do not understand. Let me refer to incidents you yourself remember. Twice in the very recent past, you have experienced crossroad-points. For instance. Had I not conceptualized a protective barrier around you, you would no doubt have drowned as you floated in to the island. Obviously I allowed some water to enter your system. Verisimilitude is important. And a second moment: when you unconsciously spoke the name Elfrina to La Cherkassova. I’m sure you perceived how that one small moment changed the course of your life. Though it is fair to say that if you hadn’t made it so easy for me I’d have had to find another way of detaching you… Anyhow. You see what I mean. Crossroad points. I have been husbanding you-and others-along the right road for a very long time now. That is what I mean when I say I have made you. I have been constructing the Perfect Dimension, in which everything goes according to plan.

You will say: it didn’t. I didn’t anticipate the treachery of Nicholas Deggle. To which I reply: one of the greatest qualities of a well-formed Concept is flexibility. One can turn disadvantages into advantages. Thus Deggle’s expulsion became a simple way of drawing you into the net. Thus the K-people’s dislike of me helped them to react correctly towards you. (Though by denying them access to the Rose I would have fostered that dislike anyway.)

– You denied them the Rose, said Flapping Eagle.

– Naturally, said Grimus. For one thing, it had nothing to do with their reasons for being here. Immortality was their choice, not exploration. The Rose was mine.

– And Virgil’s, said Flapping Eagle. Grimus ignored him.

– This is the Perfect Dimension, he said. In another potential Dimension, you never came to Calf Island. In another, I never found the Stone Rose. In yet another, I continue to live, for ever, prisoner to my own ideas. But here, it must all be as I intended it.

His hands were working feverishly now, his voice was piercingly shrill.

– Supposing I had succumbed to Dimension-fever? asked Flapping Eagle.

– You couldn’t possibly, said Grimus. Your Ions were too strong. Notice the means you used to vanquish your monster: Chaos. The true weapon of the destroyer. Your unconscious mind knew exactly what it was doing.

– There was a risk, said Flapping Eagle.

– Nonsense, said Grimus. With Virgil Jones, the Gorf Koax as well as myself looking over your shoulder? Nonsense. You played your hand well, though, I don’t deny you that.

Something snapped inside Flapping Eagle at the sight of that face, so much his own and yet so little his own, smiling at him benignly. Or perhaps it would be more exact to say that a number of things fell into place. An old, old memory stirred: the memory of a man searching for a voice in which to speak. Flapping Eagle, in the company of the orchestrator of his life, had finally found such a voice for himself.

– Played my hand well, he repeated with quiet fury. A revealing metaphor, don’t you think? The Stone Rose has warped you, Grimus; its knowledge has made you as twisted, as eaten away by power-lust, as its effect has stunted and deformed the lives of the people you brought here. This is a game, isn’t it, a game you’re enjoying? An infinity of continua, of possibilities both present and future, the free-play of time itself, bent and shaped into a zoo for your personal enjoyment. Yes, you have made me, I grant it. Yes, you have brought me here in the condition you wanted for the lunatic purpose you envisaged. You are so far removed from the pains and tormented of the world you left and the world you made that you can even see death as an academic exercise. You can plan your own death as a kind of perfect game of chess. But in the end it all depends on me, Grimus, in some way which you haven’t yet explained. It all hangs on my choice and I tell you now I am not going to play. Virgil asked me to destroy the Stone Rose. I am now convinced he was right. It has already shattered too many lives. Too many possibilities of happiness. I said it to the goddess Axona in my fever and I say it to you: Grimus, I shall destroy you if I can.

Grimus applauded gravely.

– Ah, a spirited death, he said. Good. Good.

Flapping Eagle gathered his strength to do-what?- he could not form any plan. He stood helplessly, clutching his ju-ju stick, as Grimus laughed.

– I shall destroy you, repeated Flapping Eagle, but not in the way you want. I will not assume your mantle.

Grimus said: -I think it’s almost time to tell you my plan for my death, which is, of course, my plan for you. But before I do, I should like to set at rest certain misapprehensions you appear to be fostering. Please follow me.

He went through the door into the Kâf-room, the empty area with the letter Kâf on a wall. Flapping Eagle followed, seeing no reason not to. He still needed Grimus, needed him to find the Stone Rose.

– You say I am detached from my creation, said Grimus. This room will bear witness I am not. And who do you think it is that watches over K? Do you not think those aged houses would have fallen down by now? Do you not think that much-tilled soil would be exhausted by now? Did you ever wonder why Mr Gribb never ran out of paper or where the metal hinges which held the doors on were made? The truth is, Flapping Eagle, a Conceptual Dimension like Calf Island needs constant fostering and Re-Conceptualizing at regular intervals, in order to preserve its existence. If I am to die without a successor the island will crumble. You have to take my place.

– You said this room was to bear witness, said Flapping Eagle.

– Yes, yes, said Grimus, showing a trace of irritation. Very well. Think of anywhere on the island. Anywhere at all.

– Just think about it? asked Flapping Eagle, wondering what was coming.

– Yes. Think hard.

Flapping Eagle found the picture of Dolores’ house forming in his mind. It would be interesting to see what had become of her…

And suddenly they were there. In the cottage. The cottage was here, in the room, in Grimushome. The jigsaw, there. The pot of root-tea, there. The rocking-chair, there…

In the rocking-chair, Nicholas Deggle.

– He can’t see us, said Grimus.

– How are you doing this? Flapping Eagle’s voice was unsteady again.

– An adjustment of the Rose. I use it to keep watch on the island when I’m tired of using the Watercrystal. So much more detail here. By the way, Dolores O’Toole is dead.

The scene faded. Once more, an empty room.

– You see, said Grimus. I’m not really out of touch.

No, thought Flapping Eagle. You have reduced all other lives to the same level of unreality as your own. They are fictions now, illusions called up by Conceptualizing and the Rose… they cannot move you in this form. They don’t affect you. Aloud he said: -I disagree.

Grimus turned and walked from the room in that stylized bird-gait of his.

– The third part of the Dance will now begin, he said. I shall explain the manner of my death.

Flapping Eagle, seated once more in the rocking-chair. Grimus, circling around him once more.

– Grimus, said Flapping Eagle. Some questions.

– Questions? Good. Good.

– Why does the Effect leave you unscathed?

– Good question, said Grimus, and fell silent. It was as though he was thinking of the answer.

Eventually he said: -I was once a prisoner of war. Every day I feared I would be killed. It was that kind of war. I sat in trucks with dozens of others and they drove us to the execution-ground and blindfolded us. We heard soldiers coming, orders to aim… the bullets did not come. It was an expert torture. And sometimes, just to keep us believing, they really did shoot people. But it was the torture they liked. Some people died of heart attacks. Not me. I learnt two things about myself: first, that it was a matter of the utmost aportance to me whether my body lived or died. Second, that at some future time, I wanted to be the one to organize my life. Exactly as I wished it.

And so you built your own prison, thought Flapping Eagle.

– Aportance? he said.

– When a thing is neither important nor unimportant, said Grimus, when, in fact the concept of importance ceases to have meaning, you have understood aportance. This is why the Inner Dimensions could not hurt me: I am pliable, willing to believe anything, willing to accept any new horror, any vile truth about myself. I have no secrets from myself. So I can live with the Inner Dimensions. They coexist with my conscious self, continually. Do you see?

– Yes, said Flapping Eagle. I see.

– Another question, said Grimus. One tells one’s Death everything.

– Yes. Just one more. (I’ll reserve the blinks for a better moment. There will be a better moment, he told himself.)

– All the people on the island, he said, seem to come from a time roughly contemporaneous with the time I took the Elixir. So do you, in fact.

– Observant of you, said Grimus. Several reasons, really. One, I didn’t want to cause vast social problems by combining cavemen and astronauts. Two, I find my own time a great deal more interesting than either the past or the future. And three, it proved easiest to transport people from parallel dimensions if one fixed upon a constant time. Made the settings easier and so forth. No more questions?

– Yes, said Flapping Eagle, remembering.

Grimus clucked his tongue in admonition. -Such mental imprecision, he said.

– Don’t you consider your Experiment to have been a failure since the Effect has changed its course so completely?

He kept his voice deliberately level, abstract.

– Not at all, said Grimus. Good question. Not at all. My, you ask good questions. (Again, a slight feeling that something had got under his skin.) It merely changed the nature of the experiment. And helped with the necessary alienation. It is important that K should dislike me. For my Death, you know. For my Death.

– All right, said Flapping Eagle, seeing no alternative.

Tell me about it.

– Simple, said Grimus. I have put Bird-Dog through a course of deep hypnosis. At a given command she will Travel to Liv’s house. I shall of course open the Gate. She is instructed to tell Liv she hates me-and for the sake of verisimilitude I have abused her for centuries, so she shouldn’t find it too difficult to obey the post-hypnotic suggestion. She hates me and wants me killed. Liv, of course, has had her hate of me (carefully-nurtured by me, might I add) revived recently by her adventure with you. Obviously she knows, now that she is no longer in her trance, that her plan misfired somewhat, her sexual revenge I mean. So she will be very bitter, and will agree. The flux-lines say she will. I have examined them. Free will really is an illusion, you know. People behave according to the flux-lines of their potential futures.

Anyhow. They will attempt to drum up support, being sufficiently in awe of me not to attempt my murder on their own. Here again your mishaps in K were exactly correct. K is now more antagonistic to me than ever. And so we come to my murderers. A fascinating trio. Flann O’Toole is one. The thought of playing Napoleon, of leading an invading army, will be irresistible to him. The second is Peckenpaw. For him it will be a revenge for the death of his friend and a chance to return to the chase, the thrill of the chase. The third is more unlikely, perhaps. Mr Moonshy will join the merry band. He will tell himself it is to free the island from tyranny. Perhaps it will be. Perhaps he is really more interested in Trina Cherkassova than he allows. Those are the three who will come through the Gate, which I shall leave open. Flann O’Toole, as no doubt you noticed, has very powerful hands.

Strangled’s hands, remembered Flapping Eagle.

– The key figure in all this, said Grimus equably, is Liv. It is her passion which will drive them. Not Bird-Dog’s: she is a Spectre of Grimus. Not their own, for it is tempered with fear. It is Liv who will push them. Thanks to you. Angel of Death. You have prepared the Mountain of Kâf to turn upon the Simurg. And you will be the new master, because I shall have taught you how.

– You really wish to die like that, at the hands of a mob? asked Flapping Eagle.

– Of course, said Grimus with simple insanity. I have planned it for years. It is both psychologically and symbolically satisfying. The period of stability containing the seeds of its own downfall. The cataclysm being followed by a new and very similar order. It is aesthetic. It is right,

Grimus hopped across the room and pulled on a bell-cord. Though it was late at night, Bird-Dog was with them within a minute, panting and out of breath. Again Flapping Eagle felt a helpless rage at seeing his flesh and blood so humbled. Perhaps he, too, was as trapped as Bird-Dog, he thought, and then attempted without success to expunge the thought from his mind.

– Bird-Dog, said Grimus.

– Yes.

– This is my final order to you, said Grimus.

– Yes, said Bird-Dog, starting.

– The Order is Final, said Grimus.

Bird-Dog turned and walked towards the door. Flapping Eagle rushed to her and grasped her by the shoulders. -Don’t go, he said. Fight your conditioning. Say no.

– I want to go, said Bird-Dog quietly. I want him killed.

Grimus laughed happily in the background as Flapping Eagle released his sister. Who walked out of the room and shut the concealed door behind her.

Violence was all Flapping Eagle had left.

– Grimus, he said. If you don’t show me the Stone Rose now I shall happily strangle you myself for what you have done to my sister. Now, before your well-planned death can occur, as you say it will. It will be a miserable, meaningless death, Grimus.

– My, said Grimus. How cross you do get. I was just going to the Rose anyway. I have to set it in order to open the Gate.

He moved to the corner of the room nearest the centre of the house.

And pushed open a second secret door. Inside, at the heart of the house, was the Rose Room.

So that was why the house was such a crazy shape. Its labyrinthine excesses fogged the brain to such an extent that the presence of this small room went completely unnoticed. Flapping Eagle, who had been concentrating on the shape of the house when he arrived, had not even begun to guess at the room’s existence.

– Come, said Grimus. This is the last part of the Dance of Wisdom and Death.

The Stone Rose was actually not a rose at all. Flapping Eagle watched as Grimus set it, as it lay in its coffin in the small secret room, and began to understand.

Around the top of a central shaft, or stem, were a series of thin, star-shaped slabs of stone. Flapping Eagle counted seven such slabs. The top two had four points each, the next eight, the next sixteen, and so forth. Each slab rotated independently around the central stem. Setting the Rose appeared to consist of aligning the slabs in different relationships to each other. This is what Grimus was doing now. About halfway down the Stem, at convenient holding-height, was a sort of bulge.

– In some Dimensions, said Grimus, the Object is different. It varies according to the capabilities of the ruling species, you see. There are settings for space-warp, Travel to parallel dimensions, and so forth.

Flapping Eagle spoke.

– I haven’t changed my mind, Grimus, he said. I am going to break that thing. You can’t control it. It controls you. And then there are the blinks. The Rose is damaged, Grimus. It is dangerous. It has made you dangerous.

Grimus’ eyes gleamed for a moment, then went dull.

– Please, he said, and there was a new pleading tone in his voice. I would like to show you just one more discovery of mine. If it does not persuade you of the enormous value of the Rose, of the importance of preserving it and maintaining it when I am dead, then I will allow you to do whatever you wish. Just one discovery.

Flapping Eagle could not deny him. It was a small thing to concede. Now that he had the Rose in his reach, Grimus could not hold him back. After all, Flapping Eagle told himself, he was armed. Not just with bow and arrow, but with a powerful obligation. To Virgil. To his own, destructive past. This time his Ions could be put to good use: if he was a destroyer, let him at least destroy dangerous things.

Grimus had moved to a darkened corner of the small room. He took a cloth off a small object lying there. It was a transparent, spherical shape with a hançlle on each side. As Grimus picked it up by one of its handles, it began to glow.

– I foresaw I would have great difficulty in getting you to see my point of view, he said. It was for this reason that I conceptualized the Subsumer. If you take the other handle, we can communicate telepathically. Through the medium of this sphere. Are you willing?

Flapping Eagle hesitated for a moment.

– Are you afraid? asked Grimus in a child’s sing-song voice.

Flapping Eagle said: -No. He could take anything which Grimus, the ancient infant, could take. He had already proved the strength of his will, after all.

He put down his ju-ju stick on the edge of the Rose’s coffin and came up to Grimus. Then, taking a deep breath, he grasped the proferred handle of the-what was it?- the Subsumer.

The last thing he remembered as Flapping Eagle was Grimus’ high, shrill voice saying delightedly: -My old mother always told me, you’ve got to trick people into accepting new ideas.

(I was Flapping Eagle.)

(I was Grimus.)

Self. My self. Myself and he alone. Myself and his self in the glowing bowl. Yes, it was like that. Myself and himself pouring out of ourselves into the glowing bowl.

Easy does it. You swallow me, I swallow you. Mingle, commingle. Come mingle. Grow together, come. You into me into you. His thoughts.

Yes, it was like that, Printing. Like printing. Press, his thoughts pressed over mine, under mine, through and into mine, his thoughts mine. Mine his. The swallow is a graceful bird. Two swallows, and then one half-eagle-half-him and the other half-him-half-eagle. Yes, it was like that. We were one there in the glowing bowl, two here in the flesh. Yes.

My son. The mind of Grimus rushing to me. You are my son, I give you my life. I have become you, I have become you are me. The mind of Grimus, rushing through. The mandarin monk released into me in an orgasm of thinking. The halfbreed, semisemitic prisoner of war and his contradictions, the aportance of self coexisting with the utter necessity of imparting that self, cruel necessity, ineluctable, the mind of Grimus rushing through. Like a beating of wings his self flying in. My son, my son, what father fathered a son like this, as I do in my sterility.

The light faded in the glowing sphere; the transfer was complete. I let go of my handle-my body was mine to command once more. He released his grip as well. The sphere fell.

And shattered on the stone floor.

– Now, he said. Now we are the same. Now you understand.

Mad? What is mad? It would be easy to call him mad, but he is in my head now and I can see his whys. They are not whys which go well into words. The undermining horror of prison camp, the destruction of his human dignity, of his belief in the whole human race; the subsequent burrowing away, away from the world, into books and philosophies and mythologies, until these became his realities, these his friends and companions, and the world was just an awful nightmare; the monkish man finding beauty in birds and stories. And then the Rose and a chance to shape a world and a life and a death exactly as he wanted, and naturally since he had no regard for his species he did not care what he did to them. They had done enough to him. To his birds, he was kind. He gathered them around him and lived out his favourite story, his ornithological myth. Mad? What is mad? To him, ideas were the sole justification for existence; and when he found the knowledge and power to play with his ideas, he could not be stopped. Knowledge corrupts; absolute knowledge corrupts absolutely. Yes, he was mad. But he is in me, and I know him.

There is still an I. An I within me that is not him.

We are at war about the Rose.

– Look, said Grimus. (I was in him as he is in me. The Subsumer works both ways.)

He held up a small mirror, held it against his chest, angled up towards my face.

My hair had become white. It was his face now, his face entirely, his head on my shoulders.

I was Flapping Eagle.

A second secret door, leading into the room where Media slept. This small room, at the very centre of the house, adjoining most of its rooms. Grimus (who was partly Flapping Eagle) led Media by the hand to where I stood, by the coffin which held the Rose.

– Stay here, he said. Look after each other. They will come soon. But even Bird-Dog does not know about this room.

There was fear in his face. I recognized it; it was my fear. It was the me which he had imbibed that was scared of dying.

– You will not harm the Rose now, he said. We are the same.

And he left.

– He’s changed you, she whispered.

Media was looking at me, wide-eyed.

I held her hand. At least she was the same. One constant thing in a transfigured universe.

The Rose. The him in me had a will of its own, and it was forcing me to bow to its wishes. The I in me was weakened, enfeebled by the shock of subsumation. I stood looking at the Rose for a long, long time. The bump on its stem seemed to acquire a great fascination for me, a magnetic attraction. Perhaps it was the him in me which did that.

Suddenly, I grasped the Rose. By the bump. It fitted well into my hand. Then I screamed, and Media screamed. I screamed in pain. She screamed because I disappeared from the room altogether.

I had Travelled.

The pain is caused by one’s first experience of the Outer Dimensions. Suddenly the universe dissolves, and for a fraction of time you are simply a small bundle of energy adrift in a sea of unimaginably vast forces. It is a devastating, agonizing piece of knowledge. Then it-the universe- assembled once again.

When the Gorfs created the Objects which linked the infinity of Conceived and Inconceivable Dimensions, they always included one element which beamed directly to the planet Thera. The bump served that function on the Stone Rose.

I was there, on Thera, beneath the star Nus, at the edge of the Yawy Klim galaxy in the Gorf Nirveesu. In a small airbubble, sitting on a wide flat rock. Being observed.

Outside, yellow sun against black sky, and a number of stone monoliths surrounding me.

– They look like frogs, I thought. Huge stone frogs. (I-me thought it, not I-Grimus. I-Grimus was reserving its powers to fight me over the Rose.)

– Is it Grimus? The thought, unspoken, unformed into words, came into my mind. It was followed by a second, a deeper, wiser thought-form.

– Yes… no… ah, I see. I had the sense of being stripped naked. My mind had been scanned.

– Where are you? I shouted, and the I-Grimus within me told me that these monoliths, lumpy, huge and surrounded in a slight haze, were the most intelligent life-form in any Galaxy, and that the second thought-form had been that of the great thinker Dota himself.

– The non-Grimus element appears to be marginally in command, came a third thought-form.

– Good. Dota again. Listen, he thought at me, slightly too loud, like a man dealing with a stupid foreigner. We are the Gorfs. There then followed a very rapid series of thought-forms which told me the history of tibe race and the Objects.

– We have two great concerns, thought Dota. The first is for the Gorf Koax, who has settled irrelevantly in your Endimions. Should you meet him, kindly let him know that his gross Bad Order has led to his being banned from Thera. He is not welcome here. He stands or falls with your Endimions.

– Ah, I thought.

– Which leads us to our second concern, thought Dota. We are extremely perturbed about Grimus’ misuse of the Rose. It was never intended to be a tool for intra-endimions travel. Nor a magic box for the production of food. It is a flagrant distortion of Conceptual Technology to use the Rose to Conceptualize a packet of (he searched for the right form) coffee.

Most particularly we are worried about the sub-endimions he has set up on the mountain-top. Sub-endimions are Conceptually unsound. A place is either part of an Endimions or it is not. To Conceptualize a place which is both a part of an Endimions and yet secret from it could stretch the Object to disintegration-point. We would like this ridiculous Concept to be dissolved forthwith. That is all. You may return.

I could feel the I-Grimus part of me throbbing angrily at Dota’s reproof. Then I realized there were some questions that could be answered here better than anywhere else.

– Dota, I thought.

– Yes? The thought was curt, the form of a great mind disturbed.

– Are the blinks in our Dimension a result of the mutilation of the Rose?

– We don’t know, came the reply. Yours is the only Object to have been defaced, and the only Endimions which blinks. There may be a cause and effect relationship. There may not. It may be something which should concern you. It may not. We don’t know everything, you understand.

– One more question, I asked. The air in my bubble felt stale. I would have to go soon.

– Well?

– Is it possible to Conceptualize a Dimension… Endimions… which does not contain any Object?

A long pause, in which I felt complex arguments flashing between the assembled Gorfs.

– We cannot be sure, said Dota. For us, the answer would be No, since the very existence of the Endimions relative to us is a function of the Object. But for a dweller in the Endimions… a mental shrug-form followed.

– Goodbye, said Dota’s lieutenant.

I searched in the I-Grimus and found the technique for returning to the Rose. A moment later I stood in the secret room again.

Media looked very relieved!

Flann O’Toole, wearing his Napoleon hat, right hand concealed in his buttoned greatcoat, face whisky-red, climbing the steps. At his side, One-Track Peckenpaw, raccoon hat jammed on, bearskin coat enveloping his bulk, coiled rope hanging over one shoulder, rifle in hand. And behind them, P. S. Moonshy, a glaring-eyed, unshaven clerk. An unlikely trinity of nemesis nearing its goal.

Grimus stood in the shade of the great ash, beside his home, the particoloured head-dress fluttering in the slight breeze, his birds lining his shoulders, clustered around him on the ground, watching over him from the vast spreading branches. His hands twitched; otherwise he was completely still.

And eventually, the four of them stood facing each other, knowing what had to be done.

Grimus said:

– I have learnt all I wish to learn.

I have been all I wish to be.

I am complete.

I have planned this. It is time.

But in his high, shrill voice was the uncertainty of the subsumed Eagle within him, the second self protesting. It had not chosen this death.

Flann O’Toole said: -Where is your machine, Mr Grimus? You kept it a secret from your servant woman, we know that, surely. You’ll not keep it from us.

Grimus said nothing.

– One-Track, said O’Toole, try and persuade the gentleman to converse with us.

A few moments later, when Grimus’ nose was broken, his eyes closing, his skin bruised, and his lips still sealed, O’Toole said: -Don’t kill him, man. Not yet. Peckenpaw released Grimus. Who swayed on his feet as the blood streamed from him, but remained erect. Birds screamed in the tree.

– Search the house, said Flann O’Toole.

One-Track Peckenpaw and P. S. Moonshy went into Grimushome then, but found nothing. They did, however, wreck whatever they could; and when they came out, Grimus’ shrouded collection lay around its pedestals in fragments, the shards of a lifetime’s Travel. The Crystals, broken. The Ion Eye, trodden on and crushed.

Suddenly, as they emerged into the misty dawn light, the whine stopped. Abruptly, without any warning. It was simply no longer there.

Flann O’Toole was watching Grimus; so he saw the face sag, saw the look of horror in the blackened eyes, saw the exhaustion seep through the pain. He saw it, and smiled.

– You found it, then, he said to Peckenpaw.

– We found a whole lot of things, said Peckenpaw. So we broke them all. I dunno what they were.

– O, you found it, said O’Toole. Mr Grimus here has just this minute told me.

Grimus remained silent.

– One more thing, said Peckenpaw. I want Flapping Eagle. Where is he?

Grimus said nothing.

Flann O’Toole put his hands around the battered man’s neck and pressed with his thumbs. -Come now, Mr Grimus, he said. You’ll tell us that, now?

Grimus said: -I expelled him from the island. He is no longer here.

– That is the truth, isn’t it, now? asked O’Toole.

– Reckon so, said Peckenpaw. Nobody in the house. Nobody out here. Flapping Eagle’s a lucky man.

P. S. Moonshy spoke for the first time. -What are we waiting for? he said.

O’Toole favoured him with an amused smile.

– Mr Moonshy is in a hurry, he explained apologetically to Grimus. And now that we have completed our task, there is little point in delaying matters, Mr Grimus. I’d be grateful if you’d stand just here.

He moved Grimus to a position directly under the thickest branch of the tree.

Grimus said: -I have no reason to live. It is planned.

O’Toole smiled. -O, good, he said. Most co-operative of you, Mr Grimus.

Beads of cold sweat mingled with the congealing blood on Grimus’ face.

– Why, Mr Grimus, said Flann O’Toole. I do believe you’re frightened.

– Not I, said Grimus. Him.

– Is there a fire lit anywhere in the house? asked Flann O’Toole.

– I saw one, said Peckenpaw. In the entrance hall.

– Good, said Flann O’Toole.

As the three assassins moved away, down the stone steps, the great ash blazed behind them, and the body of a man, ridiculously small against the trunk to which it had been tied, grew charred and blackened in the flames. Suddenly it fell, as the fire licked through the rope which held it, and lay on the ground as the blaze grew stronger. Branches crashed in showers of sparks and smoke around and over him, forming an incandescent tomb. And around the column of smoke, a great dark cloud of circling, shrieking birds, swooping and shrieking, pronounced his epitaph.

There was no Gate now. Calf Island was one place again. The steps led down to Liv’s house, which was solid, visible. With the end of the whine had come the end of the Sub-dimension. There were no ghosts now.

Bird-Dog sat slumped against the foot of the steps, and stiffened as the three men reached her. They passed her without speaking.

The blackveiled woman came out of her small black house. Bird-Dog watched her speak to the trio, followed O’Toole’s pointing arm to the rising pillar of smoke. Liv nodded, quickly, and went indoors. The assassins continued down the Mountain to K.

A moment later, Liv Sylwan Jones emerged once more. She held a knife in her right hand, a knife which had carved innumerable ugly things from the wood of the encroaching trees. She sat down on the ground.

With the knife in her right hand, and with intense concentration, she slit the vein in her left wrist. Then she transferred the knife to that hand and set about slashing the right wrist, equally methodically.

Bird-Dog came over to her and stood in front of her, saying nothing, silently looking on. Liv Sylwan Jones returned her gaze.

– It’s done now, she said, jerking her head at the column of smoke.

Like Grimus, Liv had chosen her moment of death. Death on the Mountain of Kâf must be chosen. A selected violence against the body.

With exaggerated care, she drew a red line with the knife, a thin, leaking red mouth, grinning bloodily from ear to ear, beneath her chin.

Bird-Dog watched it drip.

A small mound of disturbed earth, freshly-turned, stood in the forest behind the blackwashed house. A wooden carving lay upon it, a distorted, open-mouthed death’s head.

A woman in a black robe, her face hidden behind a black veil, walked away from it, away into the black house, averting her eyes from the rising smoke and sat, perfectly still, upon the one chair, amid the filth and mould, and began to chant an old, half-forgotten, half-remembered Axona hymn to death.

– My God, said Nicholas Deggle.

Virgil Jones turned towards him, slowly.

– The Stem, said Deggle. It’s gone. Quite gone.

He began to search desperately around the small, rickety shack. Virgil hauled himself out of his rocking-chair and went outside.

– Well done, he said, looking up the Mountain. Well done.

Deggle came out to join him. -It’s nowhere to be found, he said.

– The Rose has been broken, said Virgil Jones.

– What do you mean?

– I mean that Flapping Eagle has succeeded. Brilliantly.

Nicholas Deggle charged into the forest.

A while later, he returned, full of bewildered surprise.

– There’s no whine, he said. Nothing. We can go up to K.

– I’m going to the beach, said Virgil Jones.

Mr Virgil Jones, a man devoid of friends and with a tongue rather too large for his mouth, was fond of descending this cliff-path on Tiusday mornings, to indulge his liking for Calf Island’s one small beach. Below him, under the shifting greysilver sands, lay the body of Mrs Dolores O’Toole.

Mr Jones stood, facing away from the sea, looking towards the massive forested rock of Calf Mountain, which occupied most of the island except for the small clearing, directly above the beach, where Mr Jones and Dolores had lived. The body of Mrs O’Toole lay between him and the forested slopes.

– Crestfallen, murmured Mr Jones to himself, with his back to the sea. Crestfallen, the sea today.

Well, well, thought the Gorf Koax. A fascinating new status quo. Flapping Eagle and the girl Media replacing Grimus and Bird-Dog. Bird-Dog replacing Liv. Elfrida Gribb replacing Media. Virgil Jones returned to the foot of the island. And the other, earlier re-orderings: Alexei Cherkassov replacing his father. Mr Moonshy replacing Mr Page.

But most interesting of all is the fate of the Rose. Without it, Flapping Eagle is powerless. He is an exile at the top of the mountain. The peak implies no kind of superiority now.

– What are you going to do? Media had said.

Outside, the assassins faced the feathered Grimus.

Inside, in the secret room, I (I-Eagle) was engaged in a furious battle with the I-Grimus within.

– You must preserve the Rose, said I-Grimus. You need it for the constant re-conceptualization of the island. As I explained. You must preserve the Rose. Relativity holds good even between dimensions. They exist only in conjunction with one another, as functions of one another. Destroy the Rose, and you destroy our link with the Dimensión-continua. We cannot survive that.

– Grimus misused the Rose, remembered I-Eagle. The blinks are proof that it is both damaged and being stretched to breaking-point. We cannot continue to use it as Grimus did.

– The Gorfs made the Rose to link the Dimensions, cried I-Grimus inside me. Break it and you break us. Dota could not conceive of a Dimension without an Object.

– But he said that he could conceive of a Dimension-dweller devising such a Concept, said I-Eagle.

Then the I-Grimus ceased to reason with I-Eagle and flooded me with thought-forms. The Rose enables you to travel, said the forms, and showed I-Eagle a thousand beautiful worlds, a thousand universes to explore. The Rose enables you to learn, said the thought-forms, and revealed a hundred new sciences and a hundred new art-forms, the cream of the infinite galaxies. You have one life, Said the thought-forms. With the Rose you can enter into, and become, a thousand thousand other people, live an infinity of lives, and acquire the wisdom and power to shape your own. And they showed I-Eagle some of the people Grimus had watched and understood, showed the vicarious joys and agonies of countless lives. And one day, said the thought-forms, when you have done all you wished to do, been all you wished to be, you can pass this supreme gift on to another, choose the moment and manner of your going and give the Phoenix a new life, a new beginning.

But I-Eagle had seen too much on Calf Island and outside it, seen too much of the way I-Grimus had ruined lives for the sake of an idea. To I-Grimus ideas, discoveries, learning; these were all-important. I-Eagle saw the centuries of wretched wandering that preceded my arrival, saw the people of K reduced to a blind philosophy of pure survival, clutching obsessively at the shreds of their individuality, knowing within themselves that they were powerless to alter the circumstances in which they lived. The combined force of unlimited power, unlimited learning, and a rarefied, abstract attitude to life which exalted these two into the greatest goals of humanity, was a force I-Eagle could not bring himself to like. I-Eagle saw its effect on Virgil Jones, on Dolores O’Toole, on Liv Jones, on Bird-Dog, his sister even though they had long been estranged. No, I-Eagle thought, the Rose is not the supreme gift.

Then all discussion, whether rational or thought-formal, ceased, and the I-Grimus within released upon I-Eagle the full force of his formidable will. Media saw me (us) stagger and lurch as the war raged within, and she grasped my hand.

Perhaps that was what turned the tide towards I-Eagle. I was not alone. Media was there. Media, one of the many whose lives he had distorted. Media, one of the many to whom I-Eagle felt responsible. The guilt of recent events was still there. I was fighting for the island. He was fighting for himself. And he lost.

Outside, Peckenpaw and Moonshy ransacked the house.

I, I-Eagle, spoke to Media. The I-Grimus had receded within me, a throbbing pain in the back of my head.

– I intend to destroy the Rose, I-Eagle said. I won’t pretend there is no risk. It could unmake us all.

– Grimus’ machine is not worth saving, she said. Do it now. Perhaps it is better to be dead than to live in fear of… this.

I-Eagle nodded and receded once more into my mind, finding the I-Grimus, forcing him to reveal the secrets of the Rose. He was unwilling, knowing why I wanted them, but he was beaten. I found the knowledge within him, and made a setting. Then it was a question of Conceptualization.

First, I-Eagle dismantled the Sub-dimension; that was the easy part. I made a picture grow in my head, a picture of Calf Island as one thing, Grimushome on the peak, the steps leading down to Liv’s outcrop. No Gates, no barriers. I knew when it had worked. It was, in a way, like setting an Inner Dimension. After a while one knew it was there, fixed, as one had thought it. For a moment I was lost in admiration of this Object, so incredibly complex, so incredibly simple. Then I collected myself and set about the harder task.

I began to re-create Calf Island, exactly as it was, with one difference: it was to contain no Rose. I had decided that this was a better alternative than physically breaking the Rose. Less risky, in view of what had happened after Deggle’s attempt.

It was now that the I-Grimus made its last attempt. It showed me something I had forgotten it knew: the coordinates of my Dimension, to which he had expelled Nicholas Deggle so long ago. The meaning was simple: if I chose not to destroy the Rose, I could go back to my own world. I-Grimus preferred to go, with I-Eagle, far away from the Rose, perhaps never to find its counterpart in my Dimension, rather than see it destroyed.

I-Eagle cannot say I was not tempted; but then there was Media again, Media and the rest of them, depending on me.

– O, hell, I said aloud. What would I do there anyway?

And the I-Grimus had no tricks left.

I used him. He had shaped the island in the first place, so he knew it best. I drew his knowledge out of him and used it. It seemed like an eternity, but thought-forms move quicker than anything ever known, so it was actually over very soon.

I stood in the secret room with an awe-struck Media, looking down at the coffin of the Stone Rose.

It was empty.

The Rose had gone, and we had not.

The man who had been Flapping Eagle and was now part-Eagle, part-Grimus, was making love to Media, who had been a whore and was now his mainstay, when the Gorf Koax, who had transported himself to the peak of Calf Mountain, sensed something wrong.

The mists around the island.

The mists which circled and shrouded.

The eternal, unlifting veils.

The mists were growing thicker. Slowly, slowly, they were descending, closing in upon the island on all sides, closer, closer, a dense grey fog now, closing, closing.

And they were not mists.

Deprived of its connection with all relative Dimensions, the world of Calf Mountain was slowly unmaking itself, its molecules and atoms breaking, dissolving, quietly vanishing into primal, unmade energy. The raw material of being was claiming its own.

So that, as Flapping Eagle and Media writhed upon their bed, the Mountain of Grimus danced the Weakdance to the end.