

ARMWRESTLING THE DEAD

by Andrew McEwan

*

Copyright 2011 Andrew McEwan

Smashwords Edition

*

Cover design by Jane Parker - http://www.janedesignedthis.com/

*

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

* * *

first: protean world

Golden bars of sun slipped between rocks on the far horizon like torchlight through fingers. He sensed their warmth before he felt it, a primitive awareness of fresh hope, renewed life and worldly splendour that inevitably made him think of breakfast. Below him on the sandy plain, its yellow dust concealing a million shadows, the crashed flyer hunched over its spilt guts like the petrified victim of an as yet unsated predator.

There was nothing to do but sit; sit and breathe, talk with the wind, mouth open, eyes narrowed in Oriel's weighty medium of survival. The atmosphere hung heavy with snow. It formed a blue-white lattice round the planet, one that cracked as the seasons roused, flexing muscles of capricious weather that ultimately fractured this icy grille, dumping tonnes of frozen material onto the world beneath its continually forming roof.

Three metre flakes rose about the flyer like slowly melting bergs.

The snow was alive, the Ologists said. Below ten thousand metres it blossomed, a pseudo-bacterial mash the metamorphic properties of which were not lost on the original survey team that had penetrated Oriel's natural defences a decade past, losing a fifth of their number to the vagaries of the planet before mastering the encoded patterns of her boisterous climate. But still there were casualties. The flyer, on a routine transit from Base 1 in the north to Base Central at the foot of Candy Mountain (christened such by Ologists, whose private games and corporate dialogues baffled the majority Runners and Weekenders) had strayed into an area of flux, the storm-carried debris indenting the fragile craft like oversized hailstones the canvas wings and fuselage of a child's toy glider...

He'd sat on this moulded spur of rock the entire night, peering up at the few visible stars, mind cosseted in a balmy cloak of repair; while on the lightening plain shapes true and imagined climbed unsteadily, staggered and fell as injuries told.

And now it was morning.

one - snowmen

Stepping carefully through the wreck, an itch at the base of his spine, Harry outlined the figure they'd located earlier. One of his legs had been splinted, yet it appeared he was the sole survivor.

'How's it feel?'

The figure, whose name was Yan, tipped his eyes from the intruder's glare.

'Issac?'

Harry, leaning over him, drew away. 'Isn't that stretcher here yet?' he called back, dipping his shoulder, voice resonating inside the trashed cabin.

Yan stared past him at the amorphous shapes moving beyond the flyer's serrated edges, ragged gums hanging in the breeze like streamers.

'It's okay,' Harry told him. 'Everything's fine. Don't try to move.'

'Issac?' repeated Yan. 'I can't see your face.' His head shook, eyes dancing as they slipped in and out of focus.

'The name's Schroeder. Harry Schroeder.'

'Where's Issac? Still up on the ridge?'

'There's no-one on the ridge,' Schroeder told him, hunting for cigarettes, a reflex he recognized as nervousness.

Yan refused the offered smoke.

'Is that who fixed your leg?' he asked, lighting up, trailing bluish clouds. 'Was he on the flight?'

'My leg,' said Yan, as if clawing the memory back. 'Issac fixed my leg, you say?' His grin made an appearance, like he wasn't convinced. 'Well, that's something.'

Harry didn't get the joke. He presumed there was one, pulling meditatively on his cigarette while he attempted to unravel the meaning behind the survivor's waxy stare. 'Tell me about this Issac,' he prompted when sure of Yan's attention. 'In fact, tell me everything you remember of the last twelve hours, from before the crash.'

'Before?'

'Right,' said Harry, unfolding his notebook. 'Start when you boarded the flyer.'

i

'Trauma,' opined Ivan. 'He's crazy.'

'I don't think so. A lot of what he told me makes sense.'

Ivan scratched his head. 'The Ologists are going to have a ball with this one.'

'Let them.' Harry looked around at the vague stubs of bergs, then up to the sun-pierced vault with its waiting cargo, and shivered.

'Cold?'

'Uneasy. This planet gives me the creeps.'

'So you've said.' Ivan dragged the toe of one boot round in a circle. 'I don't know, I kind of like it,' he added, dividing the circle into slices like a cake.

'Did you get a call through to Central yet?' questioned Harry, ignoring the discomfort of his bones. 'The passenger list?'

'On its way. He really has no idea what happened to them, or the crew?'

'Yan? No. This Issac Waters, he was the only one he saw after the crash.'

'Apart from snowmen...' Ivan commented, admiring his artwork while pulling at an ear.

Harry wandered toward the ridge, its brownish hue like worn leather, its convolute form that of an elongated saddle. He climbed slowly, pacing himself, the day's warmth climbing alongside, swelling with the rock as the turgid air inflated the oddly quiescent sacks of his lungs. Turning once, he watched flickering shades gambol about the stricken flyer, spectral animals harvesting a corpse. Ivan stood by the truck, one cab door open. Talking over the radio, Harry presumed. The rescue party, diverted to the crash site from a routine pick-up two hundred kilometres west following a command from Central, milled like confused bees, unexpectedly redundant.

He badly wanted to question the missing Weekender. The present scenario was difficult to interpret.

The pick-up had involved Ivan and himself, airlifted to a survey station two days previous, charged with investigating the theft of personal belongings and scientific instruments, the latter a puzzle as the station's sixteen personnel were all members of the survey and as such had a vested interest in its success. At first everything appeared normal; there was the usual non-co-operation, resentment and closing of ranks. Then, late yesterday evening, the project leader was discovered hanged from a stanchion. Harry had immediately requested the station's closure, only to receive news of the crash to the east along with instructions to accompany the rescue party, whose truck cut a hastily arranged trail, slowing amid a plume of sparkling mica just long enough to haul the two detectives on board and drop two heavily-armed security operatives in their place. Routine was their driver's description of the operation. It made Harry cringe to think about it, her quixotic smile.

He reached the ridge and sat overlooking the plain, its yellow sands and clustered humanity. Unrolling his hat and pulling it down over his ears, he squinted at the hills on the far horizon, dozing like them beneath the struggling roof of the world. Puzzles formed an orderly queue in his skull.

He wrestled one.

Why had Yan been left behind? That presupposed the other passengers, dead and living, had, for whatever reason, decided to walk to safety rather than wait for safety to arrive. Harry didn't like the walking theory; it was improbable. Only, the alternatives were outrageous.

That there had been passengers was fact. There was blood. He'd taken particular note of that. And Yan hadn't fixed his own leg, so his talk of Waters would appear genuine. Which brought Harry to the snowmen and Yan's eerily convincing account of their nocturnal manoeuvres.

two - yawbus

'Hookler!' Brouchard, leaning with the flats of his hands on the table. 'A word...if you will.'

He frowned, toying with a plastic counter, its white ridges forming concentric circles, matching reliefs. 'What is it, doc?'

'I think you'd better see for yourself,' Brouchard told him, adding, 'It's important.'

'It's always important,' Hookler replied, rising from his game of draughts, his opponent a green-eyed woman possessed of a whimsical smile. 'Okay...'

The doctor walked nervously, fidgeting with the belt of his lab coat, while the pilot (second-class) loped behind, a head shorter, silently amused, if somewhat perplexed by Brouchard's agitation. They climbed a stair. Its well ran with coloured lights denoting deck and area. Stepping off, Hookler folded his heavy arms while Brouchard exchanged worried glances with a junior medic.

'In here...'

Hookler pushed open the storeroom door - inside a table, a toppled foam cup, a pool of brown liquid on the dull veneer surrounding a crumpled cigarette pack.

'Doc?'

Brouchard shoved his hands in his pockets. 'He was sedated! Fifty milligrams. I can't explain it.'

'Where is he now?'

'Duct sixteen. At least that's where we pulled him out.'

'Right.' The pilot shook his head to clear it. 'I'll go in after him. You stay here.'

Brouchard was uneasy. 'I don't know,' he quibbled. 'I think maybe it's time we reported the incident.'

'Incident, George? Be realistic. It's gone too far for that. You want to be jailed on Oriel? Besides, Gruman knows his stuff. He can cut it; in or out of his skull. Think of your percentage.'

'But if something were to go wrong? He could do permanent damage to the ship. It's not worth the risk, Hookler. You didn't see him!'

'No - you let him get away,' the pilot said calmly, shaking in his boots.

The doctor shut his eyes tightly, nodding.

'Well, now we have to get him back again.'

i

In the artificial darkness, rubber suit tight round his throat, goggles misted, Gunther Gruman fumbled with Vector Dud's Magic Spanner. The negative light displayed the duct's parameters as a set of interconnecting, varicoloured grids given visual solidity via the medium of the clouded lenses strapped firmly to his head. He took them off, eyes squeezed shut against the otherwise invisible radiation, and wiped them as best he could on a cloth looped through his tool belt. If he were to open his eyes he might never leave this adapted region, but become adapted himself, its spurious imagery etched into his floating mind.

Switching rails, the goggles reseated, he brought the spanner round till it connected with the blue key, which flashed dimly, echoing its weakened state. Then, as a scale slowly counted down, Gruman turned the key anticlockwise. The blue died completely, one coded dimension from four. Keys red, green and yellow began a compensatory motion.

The spanner withdrawn he glided toward a junction of red and yellow, their flowering responsible for ship's speed and orientation.

Vector Dud tagged along. The storekeep, he'd brought his Amazing Acrobatic Wrench with him, too.

Gruman liked that. The wrench had definite possibilities.

ii

Geena scowled; her screen had died. She crunched a ball of paper and flung it at young Mason, who woke up. 'Hey, Mason, my screen died - what do you think?'

'Leave him alone,' said Thompson, stretching. 'Mason?'

'What?'

'Geena's screen died - what do you think?'

They fell about laughing. Mason stood, walked across to the coffee machine and filled a cup.

'Hey, Mason,' Geena said, 'you can't do that. Who said you could do that?'

'I told him,' Thompson answered. 'Isn't that right, Mason? I said you could do it.'

'Nobody told me anything,' said Mason.

More laughter.

Then, 'Hey!' from Thompson. 'My screen died!'

Young Mason smirked behind his cup. His screen worked fine. It was home to his project right now and drew its power from a battery-pack.

This was his freetime. Usually in his freetime young Mason played ice hockey.

'Thompson?'

'Yeah, Geena...'

'The lights are flickering.'

He looked around, swivelling in his seat. 'So they are.'

'Hey, Mason,' Geena called, 'the lights are flickering.'

'He can't hear you,' Thompson said. 'His screen's okay. He's involved.'

'Really? What's he involved in?'

Thompson shrugged. 'He won't say.'

'Hey, Mason,' asked Geena; 'what's that you're involved in?'

'It's a mystical exercise,' Thompson expounded. 'I sneaked a look earlier, when he was out. Mason's studying to be an Ologist. Isn't that right, boy?'

'Shush,' Geena replied. 'You'll wake him.' She stood, tossed her head and walked over to the lit screen and the young man behind it, the deck swaying a little so that she imagined she'd got up too fast. 'Parts and reorder not good enough for you anymore? Want to be an Ologist, eh?'

Mason pulled his plug, exhausted.

'Now see what you've done,' admonished Thompson. Adding, 'Hey, Mason, your screen died - what do you think?'

iii

The towers grow from the cool lake as if pulled erect, bright shards lifted, tapers hooked into the flurried sky like eager shoots, their living flesh radiating a gelid, textured light. They meander, climbing, veins whose bones are their close neighbours. They narrow, stretching ever higher until their weight drags them back toward the lake, entangling the myriad tendrils like wind-swept grass, folding and snapping the soft bodies like brittle candles. Dew buds, the residents of these transient dwellings slip and slide along the angled walks and bridges, conversing with one another as the orange sun floats beyond the horizon and arises anew.

They are timeless, the Orieleans.

Threatened. Invaded. From outside their quiet realm, where the wind speaks with a different voice and the worlds turn at a different speed, a malignant force has arrived.

And they are dying...

Mason opened his eyes. His co-workers, frustrated by the power loss and tired of their games, had long since abandoned him to dreams. Dead faces surrounded. Inset, his own reflection sat hunched in the plastic window before his eyes, disconnected from its battery existence. He decided to leave that world caged a while, give himself time to digest this newest angle. Something had penetrated his mind, he felt sure, and that something was receptive, vulnerable even, to his thoughts.

What of the planet? What was the effect of human influx?

He stretched, rose, gauging the tension in his muscles as a chorus of otherworldly voices writhed and slithered through his quiet-steeped consciousness.

iv

Hookler tied a knot in his belt. It was there to help him remember.

There is no incident, he kept telling himself. Eh, Gruman? The blue flickered. The yellow surged. The red was stable and the green, now he'd reconnected it, was up to normal working capacity, off the emergency tether as the blue was off the emergency tether. But not himself. Jonas Hookler was buoyed in duct sixteen, enshrouded by a pulsating host of fantastic structures, pinned like a stunned fly in a jar of panchromatic honey. It was sweet; he liked it. You could drown though, submerged in false colours, weighted by the honey's Siren call, locked within the grids like a fossil in sediment, a footprint on some plaster moon.

Gruman? Can you hear me? His soundless voice travelled the rail with Hookler close behind, hand over hand.

There was no reply.

v

Vector Dud waved a strobing hand in his face. The mechanic blinked rapidly, momentarily dazed. Drifting free of the rail had been the storekeep's idea. 'The perspective is really something, Gunther,' it had said. 'Come on, don't be afraid. It's easy. I won't let you fall. Just follow me. Do what I do, okay?'

Gruman wondered what time it was. Round him, suspended in the warm air, the grids took on the aspects of fabulous creatures, heraldic animals built of millions of illusory bricks. Distant from the rail's control, estranged from its inhibitive leash, he floated beyond the level of simple matrices deep into an unexplored region of increasingly compound structures...

'Over there,' his system-generated companion pointed out, a voice resonant with imagery. 'Where the goat meets the peacock. Use the wrench to splice them.'

And create what? Gruman wondered, orienting feet. The goat was blue and the peacock yellow; both computing channels. He manoeuvred the Amazing Acrobatic Wrench, then keyed to access the radiant tool, thus subverting the existing grid-features. Next, as the animals lost definition, collapsing outward, dissolving inward, he casually redefined their twin parameters, combining them, melding the various cubic pieces into a new whole.

A fresh identity, Gruman thought, how very picturesque.

vi

What he had to remember, thought Hookler, was to calibrate the tension-seekers. The tension-seekers switched him between rails automatically, taking their cue from any frequency disturbances in the antiwaves of negative light as rationalized by his goggles. The equipment was sound; the operator susceptible. He shook his head. It was too late.

Zeroing in on a disturbance was the easy part. Diagnosis came next. Hardest was knowing which key to adjust, as a wrong turn could screw the entire system. The duct would require voiding then, all past configurations erasing.

The scam had been Gunther's idea, creaming off fuel and selling it back to the company via an intermediary. There weren't even any storage costs; the fuel never left the ship. Only Gunther had gone native, and Jonas was no mechanic. Theory wasn't much use in a environment where ideas, functions, concepts had actual physical presence. He was beginning to be scared. Where was Gruman? What had happened to complicate the once absolute simplicity of the plan? His mind fogged. His lenses had misted. The false colours weaved crazy angles and more and more complicated grids, skeletons, frames onto which layered sediments of dazzling aggregate, motes of luminous dust, a coating flesh of intangible substance...

And he was frozen, compressed, out of his depth.

Hookler clamped one arm round the gently throbbing rail.

Gruman cruised past at the van of a string of gaudy leopards.

vii

Issac knew there was something amiss the second his alarm detonated, rattling his brain. The bunk above his failed to sag. There was no dangling, soporific hand. No talking. Gunther always talked in his sleep. He chatted neverendingly to a variety of characters with names like Soapy Farfriender and Knox Hog, their inaudible - to Issac - replies often provoking bouts of intoxicated laughter.

So where was Gruman?

Issac got up, glanced sidelong at the clock. Thirty minutes till his shift began, which meant Gunther's ought to have finished six hours past. He pressed the talkswitch and waited.

viii

The trees are real; they possess a dual reality. They sway with rhythmic precision, sweeping fey wisps of glittering fog, spores frosting their limbs and beading their roots. Between limb and root there is no difference. Clouds drift through this forest, a sojourning of happy souls upon the breeze. The spores attach themselves like pollen grains to the legs and wings of gaseous insects. Branches fan the cyclic procession, casting eddies, trawling for the shapeless forms, the living nebulae that dance in passing, headed nowhere, like deaf, blind, aerial worms. They fish out revellers whose costumes shimmer and toss them back. And dance themselves in turn. Until newer currents scythe the wispy trunks, seeding the quiet milieu with a loud disorder, crushing the patterns and impressing the forest with exterior meanings, crude predatorial devices that bring a rapid, ugly decay.

They are slaughtered, the Orieleans...

The yawbus Vulcana 6. Locked inside his head, young Mason sketched its passage, troubled by waves of consciousness that swept over him like a salt-laden wind, nibbling at his flesh. Sweat glued the sleeves and leggings of his hockey gear to his limbs. The compartment into which he'd sneaked rang with the echo of distant battery-fed motors. Like a cramped berth on some ancient steamboat, the engine's note rattling china in the adjoining galley while exhaust fumes pumped from the twin stacks above.

'What the fuck! Mason?'

'Did I wake you, Franky? Sorry.'

'What time is it?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know? Mason, what are you doing here? I just got to sleep.'

'I needed to talk. I couldn't think of anyone else. I was going to wait; just sit here, you know...'

She rubbed her eyes, bewildered. 'No, I don't know.' The boy sat with his arms round his knees on the chair he'd dragged clear of her desk. He looked pathetic. 'Okay, talk.'

'You won't laugh?' He sounded strange, desperate. 'Promise.'

'Mason, say what you came to say. I won't laugh.' And leave, Franky added. Her head throbbed. She avoided the clock's luminous gaze, afraid of what it might read. After a double stint in the Weekender canteen rest was all she cared to think about.

Mason shuffled, silhouetted against the blank cabin wall, dark and edgy in the wan light off the console, its numerals yellow and turquoise.

He was wearing his hockey suit, she realized.

'Mason?'

'It's me, Franky. Listen, we can't land on Oriel. There are living things there and we're killing them. We have to turn the ship around before it's too late. The planet has to be evacuated.'

'Mason, I'm tired. What are you talking about?'

'Alien life,' he said.

Franky giggled. 'Aliens? Come on, where've you been? You spend too much time wired into that screen for your own good.' She sat up, hugging the cover. 'Have you been drinking? No, no - you don't, I forgot. Been talking to some drunken Ologist then? And what's with the hockey...shit!' Her head struck the pillow and her lungs emptied, a stream of warm air from her nostrils as his left hand clamped tightly over her mouth, his right balled in a shaky fist above, hovering menacingly between Mason's shadowed expression and the mellow blue ceiling.

'You have to listen,' he said. 'There isn't time. You have to listen. You're the only one, Franky, the only one I can trust.'

He took his hand from her mouth.

A heavy tear, oddly dense, as if muddled, splashed on her reddened chin and slid languidly round her throat to the mattress beneath.

She steadied her breathing. 'Hey, Mason, don't cry. I'm listening, okay? Whatever you want to tell me.'

'I've seen them,' he confided, hands finding the thick gloves joined by a string about his neck. 'I've seen their many faces, Franky, and they're beautiful.'

She waited for him to continue, her heart slowing in her chest, but he was silent, straddling her, a big silver 59, padded and immovable, his hair lank and greasy, glued to his skull as if by oil, or sweat. She glanced toward the door's lit outline. His stick leant against it, his helmet on the floor, stuffed with rolls of printout.

'You're hurting me,' she said.

The grip of his knees loosened. He relaxed. Avoiding her eyes he moved away, slid off the cot and retreated to his previous position on the chair.

'I'm sorry,' he said, mumbling. 'I didn't mean...I'm sorry...' He seemed embarrassed. 'I've been busy, Franky. All the screens in my section died, you know? Some fluctuation thing...more...'

'Strange shit happening?'

'Yeah. And my project...' He was smiling now. 'It's here, the bones of it at least. I thought you might read it and tell me what you think.'

Franky was speechless. The project, as he called it, was Mason's big thing. She didn't even know what it was about. Probably no-one other than Mason did. And he wanted her, Franky Heidelberg, Runner, canteen assistant, sometime croupier and dance instructor, to read it, offer an actual opinion?

'Eh, Mason, I'm honoured.'

His smile vanished. He got to his feet, crossed to the door. Using his hockey stick young Mason then carefully guided the paper-stuffed helmet over toward Franky, a look of pure concentration warping his dim, hardened features.

'That's it?' she asked. 'Are you sure you know what you're doing?'

It wasn't intended as criticism, and she couldn't be sure he took it as such, but Mason, eyes part closed, crouching, slipped from the room without another word.

Franky stared disbelievingly at the helmet, frightened to move, scared not to. The way he'd treated it, the latex and plastic. The way he'd pushed it over, she thought, as if it was something precious, or terrible. She started to shake, a meek trembling that annoyed her. She stared at the helmet, which stared back, challenging her to examine its contents, those masses of curious folds...

ix

'They had no choice,' Issac said, 'is that what you're telling me?'

'There was nothing else for it,' she said. 'You know how it is; the duct had become unstable.'

The air moved delicately, stroking his chin as somewhere a door opened or closed. Like a pubic beard, he couldn't help thinking.

'Hey, Issac, it's not like you were friends...'

He shook his head. 'Friends?'

The shift supervisor refilled their cups. They sat in the Weekender canteen drinking rich dark coffee.

'I'll miss old Gunther.'

'Old? He was twenty years your junior.'

Issac cracked his knuckles.

'What are you worried about? I thought he drove you crazy. Hadn't you requested another billet or something?'

He had to laugh at that. 'I needed some sleep. They used to keep me awake, uncle Gunther's bedtime stories.'

'Well, you got your wish...'

Yes. The decision had been taken to void the duct. Like the super said, there was nothing else for it. It was strange though, this feeling he had.

The storekeep, Vector Dud, stirred at the fringe of his introspection, beckoning with the promise of overtime.

A joke, he thought, surely.

'Looks like there's work to do.'

'They have to be kidding.'

'Come on, Issac, you can mope later. Didn't you catch the signal?'

Yes, his wrist was tickling.

three - bow wave

Schilling was in trouble. Ruby was after him. Ruby was the Weekender he'd bought his promotion off \- illegally.

Franky didn't know that.

She sat next to him on a hard bench overlooking the mess in section nine, watching the soldiers below, commenting on their movements between the tables, shrouded in conversation and casting reflexive glances at the large mechanical clock suspended over the entrance. Like a station, she mused, everybody milling around, checking tickets and luggage and platforms.

'Shouldn't you be down there, eating?' she asked.

'I'm not hungry,' he replied. 'Besides, I'm still officially quarantined.'

'The bow wave?'

'Exactly. How many deaths now, seven?'

'Nine. Two more yesterday.'

'What about this morning?'

'I haven't been to the infirmary,' she admitted.

Schilling's eyes widened. 'I thought you went every day, to see your friend Mason...'

'Yeah; I did.'

'And?'

'He's okay,' Franky said dismissively. 'What about you?'

Her face was blank, strangely vacant. 'I need a friend, is all,' he said, wondering if he could trust that expression. Was she listening? Would she be interested? This was hard enough already...but this was Franky, if he couldn't talk to her who could he talk to?

'Jesus.'

'What about him?'

'Nothing, I...'

'Go on, Hubert. What's on your mind?'

He told her.

She blanched further.

'Well?'

He looked hopeful. She hated to spoil it. 'Hubert,' she began, 'you have to turn him in.'

'He'd kill me.'

'They wouldn't let him near you.'

'Right - I'd be locked up.' He stood, leaned on the rail. Below, the mess had emptied. The giant clock could be heard, a stoic witness.

'Well you can't go on letting him bleed you dry.'

'You think it's just me? Franky, half the Weekender posts are filled illegitimately!'

'Okay. Calm down.' She shuffled on the bench, not knowing what to say, having enough problems of her own: a sense of guilt, of failing Mason, of denying him the assurance of her understanding, her appreciation of the existence of life on this bleakest of worlds. 'You should have seen it coming.'

He frowned. Self-mocking? 'Sure, it's easy to say that now. But it changes nothing. This goes higher than Ruby - you realize that?'

Franky nodded.

'The fact remains,' Schilling continued. 'He's got me over a barrel. What would you do?'

'Expose him.'

'How?'

'I don't know, Hubert. Set him up somehow. We can think of something.'

That pleased him, that we. That was uplifting. 'Thanks,' he said. 'How about tonight?'

Franky shrugged. 'Maybe.'

He waved his hands resignedly. 'No moves; business. I'll meet you in the caverns. You know Zinger?'

'I know Zinger.'

'Good. Twenty-hundred. I'll be cleared by then. It's all routine, low risk stuff.' And he was off, a bounce in his stride as he headed back to his unit.

i

Franky Heidelberg, thought young Mason, standing over my bed like an angel, in khaki.

'Hi,' she said.

'What day is it?' There were no days where he was, but he remained curious.

'Thursday local.'

'Oriel...'

She glanced aside momentarily. 'How are you feeling? I see you got your stick back.'

'It was in my locker,' he explained. 'I'd only misplaced it. It wasn't stolen.'

'You look better.'

He yawned.

'Sleepy? I can come another time.'

Itching to get away? 'The stuff they feed me,' Mason told her, craning his neck. 'Sedatives. Blinders. The whole trolley.'

'I'm sorry,' Franky said. There were tears in her eyes, tiny glistening baubles. 'I've wanted to tell you, Mason; you have to believe that. It's just hard keeping it in some sort of perspective. What you sprang on me; your project. That was pretty heavy material, eh?' A form of resigned laughter leaked from her mouth in the wake of the words, as if held at back by the combined weights of doubt and uncertainty, now lifted.

'You read it.'

'Yes. I couldn't tell you earlier...'

Young Mason closed his eyes and saw her through the lenses of countless nebulous bodies, jumbled shapes crowding the space between them, turning in the sterile light. Faces juxtaposed with his own and Franky's. And hers was talking, sighing. She'd come to comfort him. But he was already dead.

ii

She didn't turn the light on. Her visitor shifted nervously in the dark.

She folded her arms and tapped her foot.

His voice was soft, out of breath. 'You knew I was here,' he stated. 'Can you see in the dark?'

She wondered about that, too.

'Do you know who I am?'

'No.'

'Or why I'm here?'

'I can guess...'

There was a smile, an audible breath, air squeezed from nostrils as facial muscles clenched. 'I'm no criminal, Runner Heidelberg. However this might appear, I'm here for no violent purpose.'

She didn't care for his slowness. There was unnatural effort to his speech, like he were unused to it, out of practice. He'd been waiting, a fact which should have frightened her, as only herself and her roomy Zonda had keys. But it didn't.

She was curious.

iii

If ever a Weekender had influence it was Ruby Joplinski. Schilling had no idea who his backers were, but they countenanced his petty tyrannies so their ends must have been served. Schilling's impotence in the face of what was happening was obvious. Franky not keeping their date hadn't improved his mood; yet publicly insulting Ruby had been a mistake of his own design. Somehow irresistible. Guard duty at the mine was about as low as he could go and still retain his much coveted Weekender tag. And the Runners, he knew, the Runners would give him shit.

Packing was easy as most of his personal belongings were still on the bus. He had a few clothes, a toothbrush, a flatpack with the label missing (maybe liquorice, maybe shoelaces), his backgammon set and the usual papers in a string-pull bag. That was it: his three kilos. Once more he deliberated over contacting Franky. All his previous attempts had failed, her room-mate Zonda repeating some half-baked excuse regarding Mason.

'Ah, come on, Zonda, don't give me that. Put her on if she's there. I need to talk to her.' He couldn't understand why she was upset with him. He was the one having problems, and those problems had worsened dramatically. Zonda's reticence wasn't helping.

'Hubert, she's out, she's busy - I don't know. I'm sorry you're leaving Central, but I can't help the way she is right now...'

He pressed his forehead against the booth wall. He didn't have all day.

'Tell her thanks, Zon. I appreciate it. I'll send her a postcard.'

'Hubert!'

Schilling felt bitter. He'd get a haircut, he decided. He had a few minutes. Leaving the Weekender district he walked directly topside, the open air busy with mountain games and side-shows. There was a barber's pitch at the summit, he recalled, from there a short glide down to the field and its wing to wing transports. He'd noted the barber's pole on the overflight four days ago. Oriel days, they slotted together too closely. The red and white striped pole was a fitting symbol, rising five metres from the northern continent's highest point, the mountain some Ologist had dubbed Candy, its mass gutted and reinforced, the base at its foot manufactured largely from its harvested core, blocks hardened to a dusty cement finish by the liberal application of offworld bacteria. Paint cans still littered the greensward. Schilling laughed to himself. We bring everything, he thought, ourselves and our lawns and our garbage and our false colours. The base didn't need to be that rusty orange to stand out, it only needed its clumsy angles. And the grass? Its green was turquoise from a height, unlike the true green of the stiff ocean beyond the creams and yellows in the sky-grey louring distance. Only shadows were immune to human interference, it seemed; the roof grille dictated those.

The leather of the barber's chair creaked under him. The barber, a Weekender with a moustache and bars on his shoulder, turned his face into the wan sun.

'Looks like snow.'

Schilling folded his arms impatiently. 'Short,' he said.

It never rained on Oriel. Gases leaked into the atmosphere and came down as chunks.

'You're the third cue-ball this morning,' the barber remarked.

Schilling was quiet. The razor hummed. He arched out of the chair and paid.

'Hey, no tip?'

Their eyes locked.

'Okay, muscles, have it your own way.'

It wasn't all gases, he knew, heavier particles rose in magnetic vortices from the poles. 'Does the name Joplinski mean anything to you?'

'Ruby Joplinski? Sure, everybody knows Ruby...'

'Could you get a message to him?'

The barber scraped a nail between his front teeth. 'Excuse me, sir, but I've another customer.'

Schilling though, wouldn't be dissuaded. 'I want him to know he hasn't seen the last of me,' he shouted, drawing glances. 'That I don't give a fuck and I'll be back.'

Many eyes turned away. He might as well have been alone on the mountain. He was, after a fashion; alone with his foolish bravado. His threats blew on the wind, unanswered. It was downhill. Steeper by the second. He might as well have taken on the company, as this was a company world, Ruby a company flunky. Weekenders in the glider queue stepped aside, suddenly remembering other duties, leaving his way free. He didn't flatter himself by imagining they were scared of him. No, when you invoke the devil people naturally give you a wide berth. Still, he felt invincible the thirty seconds it took to reach the field and its rusty concrete.

Racking the glider he glanced across the fissured wall that was Candy, the barber's pole pin-high at its summit. There were multihued awnings, pitched tents, gaudy umbrellas like cake decorations. It needed only someone to light the candle.

Head shaking Schilling turned his back on the vision. He checked his flight with the field controller, located the plane and sat watching as it was loaded.

He'd been stupid, he realized. Again, belatedly.

He came from a long line of seafarers. His ancestors had navigated oceans. But Schilling was no sailor. Schilling was a company trooper, schooled in attack and defence, attuned to superiors, a follower of orders and a non-complainer. Yet, for as long as he could remember there had been a nascent ambition, its seed frozen in his heart, nagging him through dreams, straining against the inertia of his twenty-five years, a quarter century of discipline he hated but could not escape, which provided his sole frame of reference. His mother had sold him to the company as a baby. Of his father he knew only that there had been salt in his bones. And he yearned for that freedom. As a Runner he'd lacked true stature; was no-one, a boot-wipe. As a Weekender there was the reality of promotion, a future. Ruby provided. Schilling paid, and sweated to pay, gritting his teeth at each fresh assignment, each naked planet. The atmosphere and gravity on company worlds were always much the same. It was the weather that altered. But it was the only way. He'd sewed his stripe on in the naive belief the bad times were over.

'Schilling?'

'Right.' He stood, stretching.

The pilot grinned. 'I wasn't expecting any live cargo. You'd better sit up front with me. This is the economy flyer: no insulation.'

The pilot's name was Johnson and he'd volunteered.

'People think I'm crazy,' he revealed at two thousand metres. 'I mean, I've done my six years, earned my colony slot, right? That's what most volunteers volunteer for in the first place. But not me. I'd get bored after a week. And the idea of settling permanently on some backworld - well, you get the picture.'

Schilling liked him. Johnson was committed.

'They give me all the worst jobs,' he went on. 'That way they hope to kill me off.' He laughed as the flyer shook. 'It's a company joke. They hate anyone behaving differently. You keep on volunteering for new worlds and your name starts to crop up in some peculiar places. Those high up the ladder, they worry, and when they worry profits slump, and when profits slump they look for someone to blame, and when they look for someone to blame whose name do you suppose is on their surgically narrowed lips?'

Schilling liked him. Johnson was a nut.

'I lost both engines once,' Johnson said. 'They just fell off.' He shook his head. 'Got a cigarette?'

'I don't smoke,' replied Schilling, adding, 'What's it like at the mine?'

The pilot offered a meaningful profile. 'Like you make bad friends,' he suggested. 'Am I right?'

He answered yes. He couldn't help admiring Johnson. He'd substituted the company's reality for his own. Johnson's was an island universe. A solipsistic one; at any rate, a universe wherein Johnston came first and last.

The sky changed colour as they overflew the verdant ocean. Shades of avocado and olive tinged the atmosphere, the sky's upper reaches falsely blue, deceptively purple, subtly orange, perpetually fickle.

'Want to go lower?' Johnson offered.

'Isn't that dangerous?' inquired Schilling. He understood something of the sea's eruptions...

'Yes,' the pilot said.

They dived.

'You ever fly one of these, Schilling? No? You ought to learn. The fundamentals are pretty basic. Here,' he said, 'I'll teach you.'

They clipped a hundred metre wave as Johnson pushed out of his chair.

'That's okay, it was liquid.'

'Doesn't it choke the engines?' Schilling hadn't budged from his seat. If anything, he gripped it tighter, with his buttocks. 'I think maybe you'd better stay where you are,' he enjoined, peering out the murky window at a vibrating wing tip. 'Just in case.'

Johnson laughed. 'Anything you say.'

The coast became visible between crests fractured and tumbling. The land was browner, the southern continent richer in minerals, older and more stable than the northern, larger and flatter. Here the company mined lanthanum, promethium and other rare lanthanide's found in small quantities of the surface. Such enabled lights to shine, planes to fly, and put the electric hum into trucks.

Schilling relaxed. The ocean had an unsettling feel. The land, although just as ugly, at least remained where it was. Its movements were gradual, like those of the dead in their graves, the decaying echoes of worms burrowing deep below superficies flaked and leached of colour, collapsed in places, inflated in others, mutely giving up their treasure to machines segmented and blind.

'There she is.' Johnson pointed out the mine, a line of reddish chimneys on the horizon.

As they flew closer Schilling could see they were steel, expensively fabricated, now scarred and dented. The mine resembled a scrap heap, the rusted carcasses of steam locomotives and automobiles grown with colour splashes, mottled and threaded with cobwebs that changed in design and number as the egg-yolk sun poked through the erratic firmament. It was difficult to believe the mine hadn't existed a year ago. Like all man's intrusions, it dominated the landscape, embodying hidden change.

The pilot circled. 'Rough house,' he commented. 'They're fond of armwrestling and vegetation.'

'How's that?'

'They had this idea,' explained Johnson, meaning the company, 'of cramming the installation full of trees and such in the hope of creating a better working environment.'

'And did it?' Schilling could guess the answer; the company was often perversely empirical.

Johnson shook his head. The ground smoothed and they landed.

He stepped off the flyer. The field crunched under his boots. The mine itself was eerily quiet, vapours distorting its pipe-organ chimneys from which rose barely visible smoke. Schilling approached the controller's hut. Johnson waved unseen, this his first stop on a three day trip. Next came Base 2, then back to the mine via Courtney Island (named after its ghost, the Ologist who'd first-footed this globe) to onload a consignment of corpses, bodies the flyer's chill hold would accommodate neatly.

Johnson's was a routine visit. The field controller pawed over Schilling's papers. 'You're not due till Monday,' he objected.

'Monday?' Ruby was fucking with him already.

'Today's Friday,' grunted the fat controller, flicking ash from his cigar. The hut's interior was a mess of boxes and fronds, the latter blue, green and yellow, some decked with blossoms like cheap ball-gowns. 'You're early. A weekend early!' He grinned at the pun and slapped his enormous belly.

The fun and games had started. Johnson's flyer taxied. Schilling gritted his teeth. 'Okay,' he said evenly. 'There's been a mistake. But it's okay. Just give me directions. Where do I sleep?'

'That's up to you. Security won't let you in the mine; no clearance.'

'But I am security,' argued Schilling. He dropped his bag and wiped his brow.

The controller shook his head. 'Not till Monday you're not.' He wagged a finger. The crop of plants to his rear rustled as if with laughter.

Schilling turned his back on them. He could feel the knives going in, sense their keenness. But this wasn't his moment. He'd stick his chin out and take it.

'And no loitering,' the obese man added jeeringly, 'or else I'll have Miller arrest you.'

The Weekender inhaled deeply but said nothing, eyes fixed on the farthest horizon. The mine intruded to his right. Left, eighteen kilometres across sand, gravel, boulders, some fallen from the sky, was the ocean. He hooked two fingers through the string-pull carrier, its bottom scuffed, and hoisted it, avoiding the question the controller answered anyway.

'Miller's the turd you're replacing.'

He caught Johnson's lurid smile as the flyer climbed.

He was stranded.

He walked.

'There's nothing that way,' fat man called after. 'Hey!'

But he wasn't listening. Walking toward the mine's eastern perimeter, the smell of it arriving as he left the field, Schilling neared a series of low orange buildings. Through open doors he saw machinery silently living and through closed doors men making hand signals, passing instructions from raised walkways to sunken floors, sitting on peeling generator housings eating limp sandwiches and tossing jacks, scowling at one another, unsure who was cheating, wiping poisoned noses on poisoned sleeves. It was only a game. Schilling, this side of the wall, imagined the Runners' tongues as they swept over lips and inside mouths cracked and glistening, the canines and molars they'd purchased a month earlier already turning silver, indelibly blemished. No happy futures in their smiles. Ologists' teeth, by contrast, were always ivory, buffed and pristine.

The ground rose at the mine's edge, piled there by diggers and sprouting human litter. Loose grit and heat-shrunk plastic rolled over his boots as he climbed, the lazy sun dragging itself through noon, falling past midday, smudged like his shadow. He'd be hard pressed to improve his situation by evening, but he could at least make the best of it. There was bound to be some way into the complex, above or below surface. Oriel nights were shallow and cold, the roof offering little insulation, and it seemed likely he'd encounter trouble after dark unless he found a hole to crawl in, blessed shelter from Ruby and the weather, one as impossible to predict as the other. There were hints overhead and underfoot, clues to the coming storm in the quality of the light, the peculiar shellac of the sky, its brittle veneer an almost uniform grey, steely blue in places, delicately hatched in violet, what passed for clouds on Oriel a network of wispy bruises. Perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow; Schilling couldn't say. If the sky cracked directly above the mine the debris might land five hundred kilometres distant. Aeronautics, meteorology, these were dangerous professions to be in.

Schilling had fetched fifty ounces of gold as a baby. He wondered what he was worth now.

His home planet was Suma. He'd seen pictures of his father on his grandfather's boat. But the pictures had been fleeting electronic images, presents from a guilty mother the company had wiped. Sometimes he lay awake trying to guess the colour of her eyes, yet never dreamed of her in his sleep. The boat had had sails and its keel had sliced water blue and crisp, the men on board dressed in storm-coats.

It was a storm-coat Schilling could use now as he manoeuvred between empty drums and streaked containers. Vents extruded from the mine's naked flank, flaps squeaking like old hinges as the monstrosity sucked and issued gases. The walls leaned at sixty degrees.

And inside they practised grip and hydroponics.

iv

Suma was in another part of the galaxy. As the afternoon waned toward evening Schilling could see no stars. The mine lip up like a circus, yellow illuminations playing tricks of shade across its manifold surfaces, clowns and performing seals at the base of its chimneys. He lay between two sheets of discarded insulation, his head resting on the carrier, staring at the gridwork of ladder-guards and platforms, the likelihood of ingress uppermost on his mind as he studied the use and position of variously shaped doors. You could tell a lot about what lay behind, he figured, by their weight and outline, whether or not they were pressure-locked or opened vertically with the input of lettered keys. The number of bolt heads in their construction and the flatness or otherwise of their improper coloration offered a variety of clues. He had merely to decipher them.

He chose his door with care. Its plates were riveted. A man exited every forty minutes or so, suggesting rote, beyond a companionway; perhaps a refreshment area or shower facility, as the men came out lightly dressed, unburdened by hoses and crude breathing apparatus. This section of the mine dealt mainly with refinement and storage, he intuited, arguably more hazardous than extraction, but not so reliant on muscle, which meant less of a physical presence. Most of the real work went on underground.

Schilling was at a loss to pinpoint a residential area, but probably it was to the back of the mine, well away from the loading terminals he'd passed earlier. A man had come from that direction riding a whispering motorcycle, helmeted and with a heavy pump-gun across his shoulders. Most likely Miller, he'd stopped at the rubble and raised his visor, stood on the saddle, but failed to spot the reclined trooper, who wondered briefly just how deep the hole he had dug for himself was and if he alone would fill it. That was hours ago. Now, the sky darkened, purple to black, that same trooper rose, dusted himself off, jogged for a ladder and clambered swiftly up its hardened rungs. Ruby had dumped on him once too often. He felt he had nothing to lose. His life belonged to the company; they'd paid for it. Franky was nowhere. There was no blue ocean, only a slick green one...

The door with the rivets was open.

A rumbling began at the foot of a gantry supporting an inoperative machine. Schilling was twenty metres in. There had been a companionway, but he'd left this as it veered into an area of voices and flowing water, continuing instead via a series of zig-zagging stairs, each of ten steps taking him inexorably upward. His way forward was blocked by the machine, whose purpose was masked by its silence. He skirted round, outside the gantry rail, and reached a second, higher level, the catwalk oily in the dim light. Another twenty metres of sagging mesh ended at a hatch with blazoned numerals and spin-lock bolts, this side and free. He stepped through, the rumbling louder, a shapeless noise without direction. If anything the light was weaker here. There was no extraneous movement. Only the air stirred at his passing.

The mine's eastern extreme didn't appear to be a secure zone; no cameras or obvious detection equipment. A few glinting eyes observed him indifferently, but Schilling fell outside their threat parameters, enabling him to proceed unmolested. Fifty metres found him at another door, the mesh before it wet, acrid liquid dripping from one of several looped pipes where the ceiling had dramatically lowered. The door was dragged open from the other side by a squat Runner with a toolkit and Schilling jumped quickly through, cheeks inflated as if in consternation, boots hurrying past the man whose vacant features turned to mark his rear as he disappeared behind a fire-gutted electrics' conduit, its blackened fibres the first hint of internal foliage, their melting a probable cause of machine hiatus. Schilling didn't gaze over his shoulder. The conduit rose through the slatted floor and punched a hole in the false ceiling, a half metre tube of cables and fluid.

Doors grew more frequent, crowded in passageways. Catwalks extended like rope bridges over a huge square-sided shaft, stinking air rising from its stygian depths. But he wasn't exploring; that would have been pointless. Neither was he searching for any one place. In general he sought the residential area; but mostly, he realized, he was just headed south. South lay the more violent climes, the permanent ice. The snow roof was thickest close to the poles. It cracked less often. He shrugged. No wonder the planet wobbled. There was a cooking smell ahead. Laughter and ferns appeared round a bend and the walls shifted hue. He followed his nose.

'Hey...'

He stopped to look. A woman smiled at a man whose shirt was torn at the elbows. They turned down a passage crossing this one.

Moistening his lips, he followed, the string-pull bag dangling from his shoulder. Schilling no longer needed his nose, but held it out in front to make doubly sure. The passage widened as others joined it, the whole gently sloping, gauzy in shades of watercolour light. The rumbling transformed into individual sounds.

Human voices climbed out of the babble, shaping words that filtered through the tavern's ribboned entrance. This was the last place he wanted to be, especially if a shift had just ended, but he edged his way in, stole a drink and sat in a chair by the only window. The table was free while the tavern was crowded. Schilling drank meditatively and gazed at the darkened view.

No-one approached the table or otherwise tried to speak with him. They bustled and shoved among themselves, straining the volume, eating, casting furtive glances from behind opal fronds and breathing one another's foam. Their glasses were full of it, their plates stacked, white bubbles on their lips and in their lungs. Schilling examined faces, taking them ten and fifteen at a time with sweeps of his head. All were Runners. He was intruding. They didn't know what to make of him. They were a suspicious bunch, yet lacked motivation. None thought to ask. They'd get drunk and pick a fight maybe, but they wouldn't question. As Runners went they were the worst, the dregs, the least mentally agile, their minds further addled by drugs. They lived a white foam existence. The plants about them possessed more imagination. The plants about them were not part dead.

But the plants wouldn't kill him.

Schilling drained his glass and in doing so complied with an unknown etiquette.

A man immediately occupied the chair opposite and the tavern was hushed.

Know thine enemy, the manuals read.

And Schilling was very much mistaken.

v

The veins in his neck formed ridges, short sections of a larger, mostly hidden network. The reason they stood out was to be found in Schilling's right hand and left cerebral hemisphere, each of which played a major role, joined via flesh and nerve and sinew. Information flashed back and forth as his fingers heated, skull shrinking, wrist and elbow distorted, skin and thought redly taut. Lights reflected in the window glass. Beyond, suspended in the dark, some kilometres yet from the complex, other lights went unnoticed.

The bout had started several minutes past.

Sweat trickled in to his eyes. His opponent's were aqueous pools of effort. the trooper proved extravagant with his energy, using it to lick his lips. Behind him plants green, blue, yellow and pink stretched variegated heads, those with teeth and nostrils pressing tongues and flaring apertures, not missing a scent. No-one moved below the shoulder, their bodies having locked in position at the off, stiff and cramped as the seconds mounted and the breaths quickened and the hearts twisted beneath ribs of steel and match-wood.

On the fringes of consciousness, where the crowd had gathered like penguins on an ice floe, a newer rumbling, softer than that which had transmuted into jumbled conversation as Schilling entered the tavern, intruded now disguised as lung rasps and stomach turns, shaking ash from neglected cigarettes, jingling bottles on the bar, creeping into gums and feet. Inside, the lights dimmed, as those outside swelled. The rumbling increased and the window cast a harsh monochrome through features contracted with effort. His opponent grunted. Schilling gained a few centimetres, measuring them in degrees as his palm was sucked to the table.

People began to stir, alarm registering. Such was his infatuation he imagined their concern to be centred on himself, for as their champion succumbed his victory seemed increasingly laden with guarantees. After this he was ready for anything. Ruby most of all.

Too often did Schilling rely on first impressions.

A scream sliced through the tavern, spreading panic, those plants that were able running for the exits as the window exploded and the scream ascended in pitch, bursting the veins of the man opposite, his hand abruptly flaccid, crushed by the trooper's into the glass-strewn table.

Schilling was deafened. His face bled copiously. Blood ran from his ears and nose. Releasing his grip on the dead man he slid to his knees amid the carnage of leaves and flowers, mock colours mirrored in the wires drooping from the buckled ceiling. The roof of the tavern had broken open. Internally, the light was erratic, pulsing, the strobed passage of blood down his arm blue and brown. He stepped over twitching limbs, mind numb, balance off-centre, staggered from the wrecked tavern with his fingers creasing the back of his neck. His toes felt inflamed in his boots. The corridor sloped, a new gradient. He retraced his steps as far as the crossroads, ghost lights shining from his orbits. The passages looked the same in every direction. Stumbling forward he brushed dwarf trees fallen into arches, resting precariously on one another's shoulders, so as he had to duck under their featherlike keystones.

Lost. The mine shook, toppling him. He could hear nothing save a toneless ringing in his ears. The walls carried messages he translated as explosions, shells of air and noise buffeting the mine's elastic structure with the design of incapacitating its occupants while causing minimal structural damage. But as with insects shaken in a can, a number of fatalities were inevitable.

On his belly, Schilling knew this wasn't snow; the buffeting of snow wasn't rhythmic.

He crawled an impossible distance.

On hands and knees a member of the original survey had searched the coarse ground hereabouts for souvenirs, picking blue and green veined stones from the powdery surface where the mine now stood, his purpose the manufacture of jewellery for daughters eleven and six back home, gaudy beads strung on rubber bands. That surface had been scraped away. Engineers had sunk a pilot shaft, Weekenders following the pencil lines of Ologists' down through vague strata, forcing the soft layers apart rather than excavating. Like a fist through dough, the landscape altered for as much as thirty kilometres in radius. The mine was flown in. Runners set to work, gouging tunnels and displacing mass.

When the flora arrived they knew the project to be long-term. Many died. Many disappeared. Ologists shrugged and reached for their terminals, spinning yarns to the workforce and reassuring their superiors, mining fictions as well as lanthanide's.

Schilling crawled in darkness, unseen by running feet. The snub barrels of hand-held cannon passed him by. In his mind he still wrestled the dead man, the stocky Runner whose name he did not know. He could feel the print of his palm, hard and sweaty. The trooper's right arm from the shoulder down ached with effort...

That the mine had been attacked by company soldiers was evident, but whereas the objective was clear - the facility's seizure - the motive remained obscure. Was there dissent among the captains? The company body was possessed of many heads, and while news of conflict was discouraged it was probable the higher echelons were engaged in a near constant struggle. Power was no great unifier, its sources manifold and uses various. An installation like the mine might offer a point of leverage for one party against another.

Yet, thought Schilling, oddly rational, an attack this blatant had either to be doomed to failure, the product of desperation, or else signify a deeper division, a grander scale of aggression; a massive upheaval, for despite Oriel's remoteness, this was no covert operation.

Exhausted, bleeding, it was Saturday morning, the sun honey in porridge when he emerged.

Schilling...

The sky deceived him, however; it was evening, the ruddy sun dripping beyond the silent landscape. The chimneys were buckled, facets multiplied like a dented shield wall. Lances and helmets sprouted, points rusted and plumes flattened. Doors had blown, draped on hinges, the safety valves in this pressure system, what Schilling had need of in his ears. A fallen cavalryman, he lay on his back in the rubble, victim to politics and broken stirrups.

He still had his carrier, his few belongings. The fat controller had kept his papers, the pull-string bag minus those grams of identity, detail, orders. The wind rustled, its sound imagined, smelling of mustard. Apples grew in the mine. Maybe pineapples. Whether or not he slept, the night passed without further pummelling detonations. Flashing lights sucked life white and yellow from generators untended, sporadic, the circus closed as life pink and brown and bipedal had been herded, silver-toothed and compliant, below-ground. Noiseless, the Weekender was left for dead on a west facing hillside composed of pretty rocks and compacted mica. Driven, the Runners had felt obliged to vanish, leaving the complex empty save for a dusting of corpses.

Blood tears dried and cracked round his eyes. The world lightened. He shivered despite the growing warmth. Sitting up, he peered at the landing field and the swarm of flyers there, sensing their abandonment, piecing together a sequence of events whose conclusion was not only unfathomable but ludicrous.

Truth crashed into his brain, albeit encoded.

Schilling hurt.

He hurt all over. His head cleared slowly as the sun rose, but that only made the pain worse.

Standing, he fully appreciated his deafness; he might scream and not hear. He recalled the men and women of the tavern, their white foam and dead features. He'd judged them harshly, he realized. They'd been easy targets. It was the captains Schilling despised, their dumb manoeuvring that had led to carnage. Even Ruby Joplinski was furnished with greater understanding. His motives were purer, cognizant, deliberate, whereas the captains trampled blindly across every landscape, oblivious of individual streams and rivers, intent on harnessing the lakes and reservoirs, thwarting each other with the building and blowing of dams. Their actions were senseless. Approaching the field, he thought they must know something didn't.

The controller's hut was empty. Plants drooped and boxes had imploded. There were crude bullet holes in the structure. He rummaged inside for a medikit and comestibles. There was the quiet droning of a plane circling, unrecognized by Schilling as he pressed cream to skin and plucked shards from flesh, improvised bandages.

So it was bug-eyed Johnson found him, sat naked on a green container, mouth stuffed and body patiently repairing.

'You make bad friends,' said the pilot, grinning. 'Didn't I say?'

But Schilling couldn't hear.

'What the fuck happened?'

Then, recognizing his former passenger's blank gaze, he switched his attention to the crowded field, his own vehicle anonymous, one among many. Whistling, scratching his head, he went to look around.

vi

Franky Heidelberg wasn't suffering. Attuned to the world of transparent faces, she let it wash over her, the bow wave, the fallout from this human invasion, what it meant in terms of people, what it represented in regard to Oriel. She would never have a better opportunity. Cut off from the rest of mankind she floated impassively, watching, reading, Mason's hockey game extant in her skull. Her mind separate from her body, she tried to picture what she looked like, the ones about her probing, testing, keeping that body alive while she sojourned in the realms of fancy.

Who controlled them?

Her visitor, the stranger? He was right, she could see in the dark. It was quiet, a little frightening. Her own self looked fragile.

four - stampede

Ruby pounced. He took his orders from Mother and Mother had disappeared. Under such circumstances, he believed, were captains made, constellations favouring the brave.

Ekland opened the door, shoulders brushing the frame as he entered.

'How many?' Ruby asked.

'Thirty,' said Ekland, 'with another two accounted for.'

'Good - any trouble?'

'A little.'

Ruby smiled. 'Who's missing?'

Ekland unfolded a piece of paper. 'Ologists Christian and Irdad.'

'Which leaves?' He swung his feet up on the table.

'Peterson,' Ekland said; 'but we had to kill him.'

i

Zonda MacIntyre wasn't happy. Her head throbbed. Her tongue was swollen and dry. She had a hangover. It wasn't her first, but she'd not experienced one like it for a while. And who could blame her?

That's right, Zon, make excuses for yourself; nobody else to.

BOOM! KRANG! ZAPPOW!

'Oh...shit.'

'Will you get off my leg,' said Pete Trebinek. 'Move! Zonda, shift, I need to get up.'

She rolled over. 'What's your rush?'

'I'm late.'

'Late for what? You're always boasting you set your own timetable.'

He dressed hurriedly. 'You look a mess.'

If only she'd had somewhere of her own, Zonda thought, and not been kicked out. They wouldn't let her in to see Franky. Told her to get lost.

Dutifully, she had.

'Where are you going so early?'

'None of your business.' He was churlish. 'Just don't be here when I get back.'

That's right, Zon, not another drop.

Slipping from his narrow bed, a bit wobbly, hand to temple, she stepped into the bathroom and locked herself inside. She'd left her clothes on the floor. 'Forward planning,' she said.

Pete hammered on the door. 'Hey!'

Zonda ignored his protests. Searching among his belongings she found a stalk of asphodel and chewed it, grateful to the immortal flower as it blossomed in her skull. Now she had only to water her brain and her breath would smell of lilies.

'Zonda!'

Pete was angry. She could tell. She flushed what remained of his toilet-paper and made him wait.

Later, shuffling breakfasts on plates, neglecting the coffee, cigarette smoke in her eyes and a pain in her side, Zonda came to a decision. It had only taken a few minutes, the time it took ersatz bacon to fry. There were no broadcasts, but recruitment posters everywhere, one clinging wetly to Pete's grey-blue door. She'd been with the company three years; she owed it nothing, least of all loyalty. Technically, she had another three years before her contract expired, then a one-way ticket to the world of her choice. But Zonda had kidded herself with the brochures. One or two worlds looked okay. Realistically, her chances of securing any kind of future on an upmarket globe were limited. As a Runner she had the options of a whore. Zonda was nineteen, the same age as Franky whom she'd met en route, both women juggling waffles, teaching dance and playing soldier, spreading their legs for no man, a pact Zonda had broken three times to Franky's once - that she knew of. She had her suspicions. Schilling was a fourth she'd get around to, if Franky hadn't already. No use spoiling him, she reckoned.

Day-dreaming. They'd taken Franky away.

She flipped eggs. The percolator groaned. Spaghetti clung to the ceiling.

This was Candy Mountain. The old order had fallen. There was a rumour the orbital was down. It that were true, and the recruitment posters genuine, there'd be no ships parked over Oriel for some time.

ii

Perched on a rise two kilometres from Central, the Ologists Christian and Irdad exchanged worried glances. Their truck was stalled and their lives in danger. Both were aware of the coup. In the back of the truck was their equipment.

Christian folded his arms, one foot on a boulder. Irdad stood with his hands in his pockets, a blue cap on his head.

'Joplinski.'

'Who else? Mother gave him too much rope; so much he slipped the noose.'

'I think we need to save our skins,' said Irdad. 'Any suggestions?'

Christian spat. 'I'd like to know what started the panic,' he commented bitterly.

'Mother,' whispered his counterpart. 'Strange, we measure a planet's every twitch yet the really big upheavals escape us.'

It was a joke Christian didn't appreciate. They were seismologists, woken in the dead of night by crazy numbers, instruments squawking, engine gunned, half the four hundred kilometres to Central covered before they realized this was no quake. The perturbations were neutral, inexplicable, and not centred in any one place. As if, hypothesized Irdad, a sizeable mass had passed close to the surface. Over not under.

Christian refused to believe that. He knew what Irdad was suggesting, but no way could he accept it.

The radio was dead. White noise. The atmosphere had carried tales of arrival and departure, change at the top, before the signal tied itself in knots.

The air smelled burnt. As if, implied notional bluecap, it had been squeezed through a ship's drive.

But that was madness, contended his fellow. It would be impossible to land a yawbus planetside.

Rubbing his brow Christian turned his back on the mountain and went to sit in the cab. Irdad joined him a few minutes later. 'There must be one hell of a whole somewhere.' His partner's hands gripped the wheel. 'Feel that wind? The weather's really going to hit us out here. My guess is they punched through on the blind side and braked southward; that would explain the ozone. The storm when it comes will arrive from the northwest and ought to be spectacular.'

'All right,' said Christian, leaning against the door as if to put distance between them. 'Spare me the apocalyptic details. I know what's over the horizon, and I know we're in deep shit if we don't find some cover. But what if Joplinski stands us against a wall? It might be in his best interests. No Weekender is going to topple him.'

Irdad shook his head. 'Forget the politics. Joplinski's no fool. He can use a specialist's knowledge. He wouldn't throw that away. Give the man some credit. Besides, he'll welcome us with open arms if we offer our unconditional support.' Christian scowled disgustedly. 'I know, I know - but what choice do we have? Right now we can bargain, and survive. Leave the heroics to someone better suited. Let's just get inside. We can always turn coats again later.'

Christian slapped the dash with the heel of his hand. As if squashing a fly, thought Irdad, wondering at the buzzing in his ears.

'Aren't you forgetting something?'

'What?' Bluecap unconsciously scratched his nose.

'The truck's going nowhere.'

'So we'll walk. It's not far.'

'And the equipment?' He stared at Irdad contemptuously, blaming him for their troubles. 'Do we carry it?'

A squall shook the vehicle.

'Forget the equipment; I'm out of here.'

Christian remained seated.

Irdad cursed the man's pride, his stubbornness, his refusal to accept the situation. Christian's was an old family, once powerful, reduced to merely privileged daughters and sons. Climbing into the back of the truck he decided there and then to go on alone. Most of the sensitive measuring equipment was junk now anyway. He filled his pockets with infomats and stuffed a roll of printout under one arm. Well, you didn't get the chance to make such a radical career decision every day, he contemplated, jumping down. Something stung his cheek. A rubbery hailstone struck his boot. Others lodged in the folds of his clothing. He walked to the front of the truck and banged on the driver's door.

Christian stuck his head out the window.

'I'm sorry you feel that way,' said Irdad.

The other man shrugged. His face was composed, set in its fate. 'Me too.'

'I hope it's quick.'

'Right, no pain.'

Cracks appeared in the sky.

'You'd better get going,' Christian advised. 'The base is farther than you imagine, despite what the meter says.'

'Right...'

'Good luck.'

Irdad set off briskly southeast, the storm building behind, crossing distant seas, rolling that greenness between forefinger and thumb and filling the air with marbles. It must have reached Base 1 already, a hideous broad cape of elements thrown over everything.

There was movement to his right. 'Oliver?' But no, his partner remained true to his ideals, his past, awaiting death in the manner dictated by his forefathers, a proud martyrdom no-one would remember.

iii

The rationalization of so many convergent events came easy to Ruby Joplinski. He lit a cigarette.

Sitting in one of eight chairs about an oval table, head tilted back, storm booming, felt through the chairs legs, he breathed smoke the hue of city pavements, shaped rings with tongue and lips while the world called Oriel exhausted its temper on the mountain above. Deep in his bunker, collecting his thoughts, he waited.

The cigarette was from a fresh pack of fifty. He planned to smoke one an hour. That ought to be long enough. He was alone in this, Mother's room, its walls bare of ornament. One thought concerned Hubert Schilling. Ruby was sorry to lose him, as Schilling had had the kind of guts he personally found laudable. With a bit more direction, a degree more application and a little less trust, Schilling might have proved a credible threat. As it was he'd disappeared with the rest of them, dropped from sight down a deep dark hole. Whatever had transpired at the mine, he hadn't known of it in advance. He would have kept the trooper closer to hand otherwise. But Ruby wasn't the sort of man to let timing interfere with ambition. He was always prepared. Presumably those captains who had launched this episode, throwing the company's operations on the planet, and Oriel itself, into confusion, had their reasons. He couldn't be sure and thought it unwise to speculate as to what those reasons were, content for the moment to leave that mystery unsolved. There were more tangible puzzles to work on. The captains' departure he viewed with approval. Ruby even saw the storm as a boon. It served to disorganize and isolate any opposition. It would pass, breaking bones, disrupting routines, allowing him free roam among the many pieces.

He stubbed his first cigarette out on the chair next to him, watching as the ash danced. Calm in his assessment, he listened attentively, ears wired direct through levels A to G, constantly reappraising his own elevated persona in respect to the new deal. His takeover, in effect.

No, he didn't mind the chaos.

One thing worried him, however. Was this what Mother had planned from the beginning? And if so, what did that make him? A user, or just one of the used?

iv

Eyes strained through the murky windscreen, chin resting on the black plastic wheel, Christian studied Irdad's dwindling silhouette. His contempt for his associate had lessened considerably since the world had darkened, growing colder as the first sizeable chunks deposited themselves on the changing landscape. Fantastic structures were erected. Alien habitats. He fingered the starter button, playing with the idea that if he pressed it and the engine were to start, he could yet make it in time, even give Irdad a ride. He'd continue his life on a different track, but he'd be alive. The truck had stalled unexpectantly. The problem could be minor. A mechanic would no doubt be able to fix it in minutes. But there was no mechanic. There was the possibility the fault was only temporary, long since rectified. Although the odds were against it, Christian had one sure way of finding out.

He could press the button or not press the button, which he was doing now. He could gamble. It was his last chance. Recognizing it as such he had also to recognize how a future thus secured might unfold. He could not gamble, not risk the ultimate humiliation of reaching for that slimmest of hopes only to have it dashed. And die where he was, in the cab.

Irdad experienced no such qualms of conscience. Seeing the exit clearly marked he'd taken it. The wind pushed him along, accelerating his pace while simultaneously overtaking the gasping man whose streaming vision was fixed, negotiating abstract pillars of debris, semi-translucent edifices of a scintillating blue-white impermanence, shapes redefining the local topography.

The people upstairs were having a party.

Irdad cursed his luck. He wished he was in orbit, the music loud and the hors d'oeuvres piled high on trays. His arm round a girl he'd taste salmon and smiles, drop inferences and pick up loose company change.

But it was not to be. Bluecap was forced instead to contend with the abutment of death, its cathedral supports surrounding, falling across his shoulders like felled telegraph poles, the road to Candy strewn with automobile wrecks, screaming mothers and children, fathers splashed over the foreshortened bonnets of cars, puking glass. He was struck repeatedly, blows that deadened his arms, causing him to drop the printout, drawing a curtain of black plain through his skull and disrupting his breathing. And each time the curtain lifted the sky was darker, the road increasingly cluttered, wild dogs at his heels and shrieking birds at his fingers. He had to keep going, was terrified of falling, knowing he'd be trampled by those behind...

The wind screamed in his ears and strangled his eyes, the blue whirling speck before him his cap, that which tugged him after, a kite and its string, the filling stations and fast-food outlets on either side busy with ketchup-stained casualties.

He thought he saw the truck swing past and ducked instinctively, imagining Christian with his nose pressed to the window and his thumbs in his ears, listening to the static on the radio.

His feet were sinking. Base Central squatted like a mushroom, green mould on its chin, the landing field stretching to Irdad's right naked of planes and cover, a shimmering patch between mountain and sea. Wisps of smoke appeared to rise from the mushroom's crown, like feathers.

Everything turned upside-down and purple.

The bergs began to roll...

Faintly luminescent, a wheel of ice cut through the dark, yellow and red demons cavorting on its diaphanous flank, dragging its broken axle stalk like a snatched umbrella or hexagonal die spun on a cocktail stick.

Cut flowers to every side.

On the mountain's eastern slope was a stepped building of nine levels decreasing in area like the tiers of a ziggurat. It housed maintenance crews, the bottom two levels given over to hangar space and workshops, modules implanted whole into the gradient. Irdad viewed its shutters with a single-mindedness uncommon among Ologists, their privileged stratum practically inaccessible from beneath and therefore immune from ladder-climbers. It was not essential to be so focused when your super-ego was compounded of presumption and wealth. A single-mindedness latent in his genes, then, as in matters of survival no hierarchy remained intact for long.

Irdad was willing to forgo it all. His power base was a family rich in duplicity and fraud, his blue cap a uniform that scampered now between sugarcubes and suburban porches. Yet he felt compelled to chase it. It was headed in the right direction. The base was obscured, the mountain barely visible over jagged rooftops, demolition and construction in equal measure ensuring the cityscape was in constant motion. A window illuminated the sky. The temperature had dropped sufficiently for his breath to gauze. Irdad hailed a taxi, but none of the circling snowmobiles chanced his kerb.

Flattened by an invisible hand he lay bleeding, sliding, scared for the first time, the jokes he'd used to sustain himself squeezed from his mind, burs like bubble-wrap. A giant berg keeled over in front of him, exposing his torment and goal. Irdad peered at the base, tears distorting perspective. Wind-jostled snowmen chased around like opposing football teams, his blue cap the ball, signed by each player prior to a post match charity auction. His vision halved; his right eye brutally closed. The left tried to compensate, straining to focus as movement below his waist brought his legs back under him and, hooked on a gale, he made it to safety largely intact.

Surfacing behind a truck, half expecting to meet Christian there, Irdad stood panting. Able to feel his exhaustion, he vowed to smoke no more cigarettes. He slipped to the concrete, tugged at his collar, his throat having swelled since entering the flapping door with its warning sign swinging.

Somebody laughed.

Irdad gazed up at a round face and a gun barrel, his good eye squirming.

'I honestly didn't think you'd make it,' the man shouted over the storm-induced racket. 'Lousy weather, eh?' He laughed again.

Irdad was suddenly very conscious of the tattoo centring his bald head. He couldn't move. A berg the size of two Reachin ogres burst through a set of timpani shutters, crushing a trailer and fusing the lights in the workshop.

Reachin was Irdad's homeworld. Circumstances alone caused him to miss it.

The volume increased. The man bellowed, enjoying his words, a lackey of Joplinski's who raised him without effort. 'I was watching you out there,' he said, voice defying the elements. 'First time an Ologist's impressed me! You should be flattered. I had my rifle trained on you; killed your partner second shot.'

Ogres hunted land-whales. This giant leading him by one dead arm could have been among their offspring.

He let his feet drag. The man guided him up a short flight of steps onto a concrete platform, through a buckled exit into an unlit corridor smelling of ammonia. A torch-beam danced ahead.

'Why did he come alone?' Ekland inquired of himself, the Ologist limp at his side. 'Engine trouble, I suppose. Too lazy to walk.'

Irdad gasped at a pain in his chest.

'Christian, right?' Ekland pointed the torch at Irdad's bloody nose. 'So you must be...'

'You killed him from here?'

'Second shot.'

He smiled, missing his headgear less, swivelling his good eye round in the yellowness. 'Thanks.'

'Don't mention it,' said Ekland. 'Not often I get the chance. A seagull deflected the first round, but I was more patient with the next. Saw the windscreen haze and that was that. The truck vanished soon after.'

Irdad nodded appreciatively, saliva dripping from his mouth.

Clouds sailed like buffalo across the sky, hooves indenting, steam from nostrils like jets.

v

Johnson discovered his passenger sitting atop a stack of red and green crates in a fenced yard behind the mine.

'I hope there's something worth looking at,' commented the pilot. 'I'd hate to have climbed up here for nothing.'

Schilling acknowledged him but did not reply. Words to him were a blur.

'Well.' Johnson folded his arms. 'There's mist. More to see in the other direction.' He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. 'Some impressive thermals massing. No way we can fly.'

'Courtney,' mumbled Schilling. 'You have to get me there.'

'The island? Not today, my friend. Not in this weather. Smells like a rough one.' He clicked his fingers behind the Weekender's head. No response.

'There's someone I have to see.'

'Sure...'

Schilling turned slowly, fixing the pilot's crazy eyes.

'Tomorrow, if we're lucky,' said Johnson. There was a hollowness to the trooper's stare that both excited and terrified him.

Schilling turned away, apparently satisfied.

'I took a look inside the mine but found only a few fires; not even any bodies. Doesn't make any sense at all. A company party? A private war? Your arrival certainly seems to have sparked some shit. What are you, some kind of bad omen? Not that it worries me, you know.' Johnson rambled, his brain unhinged. 'But I like to keep score: them and me. A personal thing.'

The sun brightened deceptively, hinting at shadows. The breeze sifted through the lifeless facility and emerged glutted with souls, odours taint and sharp.

'Come on.' Johnson pulled on Schilling's arm. 'Give me a hand to get the flyer under cover before this storm hits. I looted whiskey, so we can get smashed afterward.' He grinned stupidly, jumping down. A stone in his boot proved to be a tiger's eye, its brilliant lustre buffed by his foot. He tossed it at Schilling, who caught it easily. 'For luck.'

There was limited hangar space at the mine, room for only three small wings the two men had to move outside before they could manoeuvre the plane in.

Johnson had gone through the flyers abandoned on the field, spinning their radios for clues. The atmosphere was clogged with random waves and there was no fix-signal from the orbiting station, so he'd given up, the mystery amplified. A corporate game, had to be. The flyers carried no supplies, the clips of their weapons' racks dangling.

He'd salvaged anything he thought might prove useful from the mine while searching for survivors; anybody; but as it turned out, only the big man.

'Try a kumquat,' he offered. 'Delicious.'

Schilling though, was armwrestling a dead Runner in his sleep, face twitching, mouth contorted, his whole right side knotted under the fat controller's scruffy umber jacket, padded at elbow and shoulder, sleeves too short and pockets dusted in rich tobacco.

Johnson watched him with his feet up, the hangar doors bolted, wondering what he'd witnessed. And his fixation on Courtney? Did he intend a rendezvous? With whom? There was more to the trooper than met the eye. He had that quiet, deranged set to his features, a look Johnson had to practice in the mirror. His own madness was an act. Or so he liked to think. An Ologist had given him the idea - and who knew better than an Ologist what was sham and what merely fake? He opened the green whiskey bottle as the metals doors sang like dropped baking trays and toasted the demented firmament.

vi

She stumbled against a wall, heard a light fitting slide to the floor, kicked her bag in front and made it under a lintel. You got used to the shaking after a while, but when the walls narrowed and the floor dipped and the ceiling meandered down a once straight corridor it made your stomach want to escape via your rectum, or vice versa. Zonda had thus far resisted the urge to puke. The barostats worked overtime, but when the pressure shifted your ears popped and your nose bled and anyone fool enough to be on their feet saw the end of the line, a distant black doorway growing steadily larger like the mouth of a tunnel and you the locomotive off the rails and no brakes and WHACK! your head, Zon, just kissed the tiles.

vii

Irdad snapped awake in a chair.

'How's your eye?'

He stared out of it. 'Fine.'

Ruby's twelfth cigarette smouldered on the table, scarring that wood from Earth.

'Ekland told me about your journey in. He was generous in his assessment.'

The stiff Ologist shrugged. Bones flexed like rubber, muscles like bricks.

'Now I'd like your account - the truth.'

'You didn't believe his version?' Straightening in the chair, Irdad grimaced. There was no blood in his mouth and someone had changed his shirt.

'That's not the issue. Ekland only reported what he saw through his scope. The sight, not the fact.'

Irdad feigned distress, fingers creasing his brow. The storm had proved a surmountable obstacle. The Weekender Joplinski and his occupancy of this, Mother's room, represented a greater threat. It could go either way, he understood, palms now misting the table, never having guessed he would find himself in a captain's seat.

'Comfortable?' queried Ruby, his tone sarcastic.

'I doubt it's all it's cracked up to be,' the seismologist came back.

Ruby inhaled noisily.

Too late to bite his tongue.

'You're a pragmatist, Robert. I like that.'

He squirmed inwardly at the use of his proper name. But what was another pill to swallow?

'I'm whatever life makes me,' Irdad stated, the pain in his head real, the man opposite calculating, drawing a blunt nail across his chin. 'There's no helping that.'

'You think so? That what you are born you stay?' challenged Ruby. 'That others higher than yourself make all the important decisions concerning your fate? That each of us has his place?'

'No.' He breathed deeply. 'That's not what I said.' Peering over the edge, annoyed Joplinski had deliberately misconstrued his somewhat clumsy explanation. 'No,' he repeated, thinking the words; 'I believe we shuffle our own decks.'

Ruby smiled. 'Profound,' he said. 'Very good. Although for some of us it's necessary to cheat, eh? To deal off the bottom, so to speak.'

'Whatever it takes.'

'That's your philosophy? Not one I'd expect from a man born holding the aces.'

Irdad slumped. 'Look, we both know the situation - you better than me - so can we drop the pretence? This talking in riddles is childish sophistry.'

The Weekender stood. 'You're the last, the last I've interviewed. You'd be surprised by the reactions your contemporaries have given.'

'Wide ranging? Nothing like that surprises me.'

'No? Well, it's not important. You can forget them.'

Irdad wet his lips. Dead? He wasn't unduly affected. It was his own skin he was interested in saving.

Ruby studied him minutely for several seconds.

'Why didn't you stay with Christian in the truck?'

'I didn't like the odds. Your man proved that.'

'Wasn't it the noble thing to do?'

Irdad could afford a grin. 'You must know Ologists are full of shit,' he said. 'It's kind of an inverted paranoia. We don't all take our roles as seriously. Look at Mother. Look at the captains who not so long ago sat round this table. Do you suppose either me or Christian were part of their machinations? We fell outside the corporate umbrella, just like the rest of you. We're no different, and I've no grand illusions, no company crutches. I can stand on my own two feet.'

'Whatever it takes?'

'Sure.'

'Even if that means siding with a Weekender, Robert? Your conscience isn't pricked?'

'I left my partner for dead, didn't I?'

The room shook, the noise of the storm leaking downward, brash and intrusive.

Irdad thought over the words he had delivered with such conviction, their effect of Joplinski.

'Yes,' Ruby conceded, seating himself. 'But your running might be seen as cowardice.'

'There are no cowards on Oriel,' pronounced Irdad. 'Only rational funks.'

Ruby looked surprised. 'Among your peers?' he jibed. 'You don't mix socially, Robert? I'm disillusioned. I'd confused respect for authority with respect for those possessed of it. I was mistaken, it seems. But if my tenure is to be lasting I must command that respect for myself; and loyalty is a rare thing, like friendship. What I propose is a compromise. Payment in kind. You follow? Mutual trust. Or, if you prefer, mutual distrust. But a balance; of fear, of greed; of whatever you like.'

'And every man gets his cut?'

'Exactly. Like a pirate ship. Only some cuts are bigger than others.'

Irdad nodded. 'Of course.' He had thrown in his lot with the devil.

Might there be other devils abroad?

Ruby leaned across the table. 'Smoke?'

He was cheaply bought.

No use wriggling, that would only tighten the grip. Best to play dead and let Ruby knock him around with his paws. Like he'd told Christian: we can always turn coats again later. First, let's see what's in this pirate's chest.

viii

The image converter was Joplinski's idea, but Ekland had the job of monitoring the flow of information. The screen he carried could be tuned across the spectrum, receptive to X-rays and visible radiation, its definitive range two hundred metres, contextual field from zero to 180 degrees. Irdad's damaged right eye had been scooped out and a scope similar to that gracing Ekland's rifle installed in its place, utilizing the original nerve endings and surrounding tissue. The unit was battery powered and serviceable for more years than the Ologist, whose lifespan (usefulness) Ekland judged to be weeks. Long enough for whatever purpose the new boss put him to.

ix

The barber's pole no longer topped the mountain. The mountain itself had shifted. Zonda had a lump on her forehead the size of an egg. Pete was dead. She'd come across his body by chance, forcing open the mess-hall doors to find the clock's minute hand transfixing a table and Pete impaled on the hour. She had the guilty feeling he'd come looking for her. Not convinced of his motives, however, she believed something worse.

'Sorry, Pete, but the world's freshly laid and hasn't much room for sympathy.'

And are those my tops?

Spilt from his hand were a dozen or so translucent capsules, what she and Franky had conned out of a nervous doctor. They'd been stashed behind a kitchen locker. Zonda did not recall speaking of them. The nervous doctor had made them promise.

The mess quivered like an electric accordion, notes from cupboards and shelves and seating, ovens and saucepans and cutlery. Gathering up the capsules, ascending the spiral stair to the mezzanine, Zonda sprawled on a hard bench and tripped on buttons.

five - islands

Schilling could see his breath. The sun rose blue, violet, orange and yellow. His hands were cold.

Johnson said, 'Weird.' The mine was part flattened under huge chunks of the sky, its chimneys like trampled flower stalks, bent and ruptured, spewing fluid. 'Anyway,' the pilot added, 'isn't it about time we...' Cut short by the sight of the economy flyer, one wing visible like the pinion of a trapped bird, fuselage buried. The hanger had collapsed.

As the storm's unprecedented ferocity dawned on them the two men had sought refuge in the mine itself, sanctuary beneath the surface, the ultimate safety helmet elastic layers of polymorphic rock.

The pilot began tearing into the wreckage, heaving aside pieces of airborne material, moving clumsily round the dented flyer while Schilling absorbed the light. Its quality was fascinating. Pure, it slid thickly, cloy and restless, flowing like translucent blood. It tinged the bergs green and blue, softening their fantastic edges until they resembled a single multifaceted form. He walked over to where Johnson busied himself and stood hands on hips.

Moments later he stepped forward, and having lifted the other man clear, supposing him to be doing more harm than good, raised a large box-section lintel and used it to brace the roof. He worked methodically then, uncovering the craft as Johnson looked on with a mixture of anxiety and excitement twisting his face. The flyer was less critically damaged than either could have hoped. It should hold together at low altitude. Soon the pilot was able to clamber into the cockpit, where he nervously coaxed dials, frightened as yet to start the engines. Meanwhile, the trooper was eagerly swinging an axe, smashing coloured obstructions, limbs disintegrating, heads exploding, doggedly creating a runway. Johnson munched a lit cigar and fidgeted. If the plane couldn't take off, he reckoned Schilling would hack his way to the coast and swim to Courtney. Watching the blade at work, he gazed out the misshapen window. There was a discernible upward curve to the starboard wing, but he didn't see that as a problem. In the big man's company anything seemed possible. He wondered if he ought to help. And get in the way of that axe?

There was a loud stomach rumble. The sea appeared round Schilling's ankles, kilometres from where it should have been.

Johnson flicked the cigar away, his optimism with it. The flyer had skids for emergencies. The problem lay in gaining sufficient forward momentum for them not to be dragged under by that clinging ooze.

They'd have one chance. There would be no turning back; not with the limited rudder control Johnson had. The trooper shouldered his axe and approached, sweat coating his features like pearls. He looked pleased with himself.

'I don't know what you're grinning at, you're going to have to lose a few more kilos before this bird gets off the ground.'

Schilling wiped his nose. 'Is it wide enough?' he asked through the window, voice slurred.

'Huh? Oh, yeah...plenty of room. It's perfect.'

The grin vanished. He carried the axe on board, depositing it aft and himself next to the pilot, who nodded repeatedly, only stopping when he caught sight of his reflection in an instrument panel.

The engines squealed like strangled kittens and the aerial frame shuddered as Weekender Johnson, volunteer, wound them all the way up, cringing less with each revolution. He even began to enjoy his morning. The compass needle was broken, he noticed. So what? This was one of those moments requiring a jaunty laugh.

Maximum thrust. It couldn't be sustained. He fished a fresh cigar from a niche in the battered console. Aloft, the ocean was ubiquitous, having swallowed the sky and slipped into the lap of the continent. Holding course with his knees he reached under his seat for a map, knowing it was probably useless.

i

They circled.

Even without the compass Johnson was sure this was where Courtney had been. He'd made the trip thirty or more times, and while the island drifted painstakingly north and west it was too big to simply disappear over the horizon. Taking the plane lower, he skimmed slow waves, the trooper leaning out the poetised door. The pilot thought he intended to jump, but Schilling only glared at the ocean, whorled like stiff green yoghurt. To the south was a plume he used as a marker, afraid of losing his bearings - if not his marbles - over the deceptive seascape.

Courtney was submerged. Schilling must realize that. Any survivors were adrift among three-dimensional, lichens marmalade. Laughing to himself he jammed the controls and joined his passenger. The cargo hold was greasy, the flyer banked, the trooper braced across the wind-rushed hatch.

Johnson tapped him on the shoulder. 'It's no good,' he shouted, 'there's nothing here.' He wasn't able to tell if Schilling understood. All he got in response was a flat stare, unfocused and expressionless, the sole indicator of life a pulsing artery visible over the collar of his jacket, short-sleeved and stained. 'We're running low on fuel,' he added. 'It's Base 2 or nothing, okay? Maybe we can get some wheels there, or a hover.'

Schilling dragged shut the door. The volume lessened.

The pilot flattened his wild hair. 'Whatever transport we can find we'll have to steal,' he commented. 'But that shouldn't be too difficult given the current climate.' And later, 'Ever experience a crash landing?'

ii

He sat with his left hand clamped tight round his right wrist, peering at his whitened knuckles like a shaman at chicken bones...

Just then the bergs had shifted, the evening sun playing off a whole new set of profiles.

He had his axe, pulled like a splinter from the wreck, the flyer wedged between towers of alien snow, semblances of palm trees and whole city blocks.

'You're shuddering,' Johnson said, talking to reassure himself. 'Should have considered landing before we took off.'

Base 2 was an island. It had been constructed on a promontory, steep cliffs of porous rock on the seaward side, land sloping to the rear where now a strait cut it off from the southern continent. Caves, stilt-walled like old ladies hitching up their skirts, gave access to the saltless depths. There should be wheels or hovers parked therein, either drowned like wasps in cold sweat tea or afloat at the old ladies' knees, the stone skirt roof with sufficient clearance to accommodate an ocean upwardly displaced. Their problem lay in crossing the strait.

Aircraft had passed low overhead, circling the base, planes like garish lizards, bristling with armour; but the crash, if observed, went uninvestigated.

He wished he knew more about what was happening on a planetary scale. Life had been less complicated in the past. Then the company and the pilot had sparred for fun, death looming no larger than accident, one a chance result of the other. Now it seemed the killing was deliberate, the line taking a step back in order to volunteer the individual, a man on whose behalf they were willing to forgo the privilege.

Roman Johnson wondered how deep it was and if they should even consider wading.

Hubert Schilling raised his axe and began hollowing out a boat.

Not a boat in the conventional sense, that would have proved impossible to paddle. What Schilling hewed from a three metre berg was a tube, a pipe section, an elongated doughnut. It was surprisingly round, the brawny trooper obviously pleased once more with his handiwork, smiling maniacally as he rolled the fragile mass to the shore.

'You honestly think this will work?' quizzed the pilot, stepping inside, fingers testing the curved wall.

Schilling pushed the axe through a belt loop and stared at Johnson as if to say: ready?

After three...

At first he was convinced they were sinking, but the cylinder was two metres in diameter, the ocean sufficiently condensed to support their weight provided them retain forward momentum. And fear accounted for that. Cracks appeared, but they made it across, crashing into a shelf of rock on the new-made island, the base on it crumpled and listing.

Clouds massed, twilight premature. They picked their way carefully over what was once the landing field, the remains of flyers scattered like crushed insects. Everything was quiet. Nothing moved besides themselves. Schilling crouched low and pointed. A door hung lazily on one hinge. It looked to have been kicked open, a dent forced outward. The flesh of Johnson's neck tingled. He'd salvaged a torch from the plane but the wan yellow light did little to relieve the inner darkness. He couldn't shake the impression that whoever had used that door last had been afraid, in too much of a hurry. Schilling entered first, the head of his axe gleaming.

The roof sagged and the floor was wet. Liquid dripped as they ducked, Johnson playing the light upward where it revealed fractured reinforcement, grids impacted from above. There were toppled shelves, footprints smeared in noxious pools, a jelly of dust and grease. The place was stale, as if deserted long before the storm, abandoned to tamer elements, something the pilot new to be false. Base 2 had been alive and kicking only a four, five days earlier? The dislocation made him more uncomfortable. He felt like reality creeping in. Schilling led the way, cutting through the beam, hunting for a downward path. Dust whorled, suspended on damp air. The next door was missing entirely, the corridor beyond scratched and indented. Belongings lay scattered, further evidence of a struggle. A glove, pencils, a pack of cigarettes the trooper stood on before the pilot could rescue. He shook his head, resisting the urge to check the pack to see if it were full or empty. There was the faint gurgle of water pipes and air vents screened behind the false ceiling, a cistern maintaining itself without human scrutiny. Schilling walked briskly and with some notion of direction, although Johnson was sure the base was new to him. Bare patches on the walls showed where noticeboards or warning signs had hung, their removal a puzzle, one neither man cared to fathom as they came to a stairwell and descended rapidly through successive levels. Johnson imagined a figure lurking in the shadows by a machine shop, but they passed unchallenged, any eyes displaced by camera lenses, shock or apathy. The clues to violence diminished the deeper they ventured, the man ahead not once looking back. He strode confidently, emerging from a passage narrowed by compression onto a gantry in a flooded cavern, a blackness therein the yellow torchlight failed to penetrate. It shone off tide-raised fins, however, capturing the abstract hulk of a vessel.

Schilling turned at last, happy. It was impossible to judge from the irregular cavern roof if the sea would permit an exit. Not that it worried the axeman, who'd doubtless fashion an opening were one not available. The vessel, a hover was his prize, his means of reaching Courtney Island, sunk like fabled Atlantis, and it would take more than a few tonnes of stone and sludge to forestall him.

Johnson leapt aboard while he severed the moorings. Raising the hatch he dropped inside, suddenly awash in stark illumination. He pocketed the torch and rubbed his chin, long hours unshaven. The trooper appeared, fixing himself in a chair by a flashing console, arms folded. Seemingly convinced of Johnson's ability to operate the hover he offered to take no part in the manoeuvring. The engines whined, more by luck than design, the steeply angled horseshoe window deblanking as externally mounted lamps blossomed to uncover the natural cave, its rugged mouth framing perhaps three metres of clearance. Edging the throttle forward, he felt the skirt inflate, and they slipped from the stiffly bobbing wharf, advancing like a turtle.

Ten metres long and five wide, the hover fitted the gap neatly to enter the blue-grey gloaming. Some Ologist's toy, presumed Johnson, its controls simple once you separated them from the peripheral buttons and metres. A study vehicle, one that had sampled the ocean and catalogued its idiosyncrasies in a dozen computer languages, cross-referenced and hard-copied to Mother. The tiller was the throttle. There were no foot pedals. Schilling unfolded his arms to a satisfied humming.

The pilot watched the compass and noted the kilometres, 270 north by northwest to where Courtney had vanished. Bumping over the surface he engaged auto, wondering briefly whether it were capable of steering the hover round obstructions. But the green sea had recently been violently mobile, making the likelihood of a collision small. The heaviest crusting would be broken and they could probably plough through any verticals. He sat back and took things easy.

iii

Night enveloped, the stars hidden behind dense clouds and the air charged, the pilot staring in disbelief as Schilling undressed, his skin taut and his feet arched as he prepared to go over the side.

He had no choice. Franky was down there.

Refusing the line Johnson wanted to tie round him, in defiance of sea and sky, he secured a flat-tank to his back and sealed his gonads between his legs with reels of red elastic tape. Goggles in place, Schilling considered the axe. Reluctantly, he left it.

He nodded at Johnson, who raised the hatch. The atmosphere was close and primed on deck, the ocean invisible. Blackness lay everywhere. It served to emphasize the luminous tape, the goggle's prismatic lenses, the tank. Schilling twinkled like a firefly as he went over the side, signals diminishing as he disappeared below Oriel's native variety, its proximate life. Senses inhibited, he forced himself to sink, the ocean's natural suction aiding him on this leg of his journey. A safety line would have been of similar use on returning, especially with someone pulling, but there was too great a chance of it becoming snagged. What had made the island special were its conglomerates of trees. From what the trooper understood they existed nowhere else on the planetary surface, being composites, rubberlike strands pressed upward by the grating action of Courtney as it shuffled west and north across the seabed. With luck he would fall among their branches. He tried to form a picture in his mind, piecing together details he had never seen firsthand, the orientation of trees and buildings. Johnson had managed to glean some information from the onboard computer in regard to their position over the structures set unknowably deep. Had they more expertise they might have pinpointed each individual conglomerate and prefab. As it was he had to make do with the barely tangible caress of the upper canopy and the infrequent, undirected messages from the woman he loved.

six - undercurrents

Light swelled to brightness, but what it illuminated had changed, not least the mechanic who'd spent the intervening hours locked underground in a cell two metres by six. A hastily converted storage room, they'd put him in here barely an hour after he'd reached Base 1. Then the walls had shaken. Issac was bruised and hungry. The fluorescence hurt his eyes, its watery yellow fastened to a sagging roof. Dust covered everything. They'd taken his shoes. He knew nothing of conditions on the surface, had only his imagination and the violence of shockwaves to go on. In a sense he was lucky to be where he was. Why he was there remained a mystery. But it was the silence worrying him now.

He scratched his name on the warped stone floor with a piece of forced concrete from the ruptured ceiling.

The door creaked several times before bursting open.

'What took you?'

The man chose a wry smile. The alternative, briefly glimpsed, a threatening sneer. 'On your feet,' he instructed.

'Help me up...'

He stepped back. Wary? 'You can manage. Come on; no time.'

Issac raised an arm, wrist lazy, the hours of wasted air having left him weak. Dizzy, he pulled on the door jamb and staggered upright into the passage where a second man, armed with a pump-gun, waited.

'Jesus, he stinks!'

The first man pushed him forward. 'Any chance of a bath?' he joked, straightening with some effort. His skin itched unbearably.

'Just keep moving.'

He walked between the two men the twenty metre length of the passage. Debris littered its floor. There was an open hatch to duck through, then the lead man turned, gesturing with gun and head for him to enter a room much like the one he'd vacated. Only clean, he thought, feeling dirtier, its freshness clinical, as if disinfected, not stinking of faeces. There was a single chair and no further ornament. The door closed behind him.

Issac sat with his arms folded, dozing until another man arrived, and a woman.

Asked his name he replied, 'Issac Waters.'

The newcomers exchanged glances. The woman had the look of a medic. Senior, perhaps a surgeon; a specialist, she drew circles on her palm with a finger.

'According to your papers, Issac, you arrived on Oriel thirteen days ago,' stated the man. 'You requested a transfer...'

'De-requested.' he corrected.

'I beg your pardon?'

He squinted, struggling to concentrate. Ologists? Had to be. 'I made the transfer request aboard ship,' he explained, wearily patient. 'But I cancelled it.'

Was that what this was all about?

'What was your ship?' questioned the woman. She leant against the wall opposite.

Issac hesitated. Smoothing his brow he asked for a drink of water.

'What was your ship?' the woman repeated, fingers dancing, head to one side.

'I don't recall,' he admitted, surprised by the apparent gap in his memory. It had all been there, hadn't it?

'How does that strike you?' she continued, the sole of one foot pressing her shoulders from the wall. 'Don't you find it strange, even disconcerting?'

'Peculiar,' Issac said. 'That must have been quite a snowstorm, eh?'

He felt complicated.

She had a syringe.

'You've run the tests?'

'If you're asking "is he human?", the answer is a definite yes.'

Who was she?

Issac sat up in bed. The walls had changed colour and the sheets smelled of antiseptic chewing-gum.

'A short time ago a man with your prints boarded a flyer here headed for Central. It crashed. There was only one survivor.' He paused to light a cigarette. Issac scratched his chest. 'Are you listening? Do I have your attention?'

He looked the man over. Short. Nothing else registered.

'What's your name?'

'I just told you.'

The short man gazed at the tall woman with her right foot against the green wall.

She'd moved, he thought. She levered gently back and forth, rocking.

Who was the man?

'Give it another hour,' the woman said.

Issac dribbled.

'And you, Waters, go to sleep.'

The pillow hit his head.

'What next?'

'Write it down.'

Fumbling with a pencil he licked his lips. They'd given him a notebook. The short man wanted him to record his memories of the outward voyage, his time on Oriel until his arrest. What he wrote now was a poem about ice.

They couldn't read it.

'What language is this, Issac?'

'One Gunther taught me,' he answered.

'Gunther?'

'Gunther Gruman, lost in the ducts. He had the bunk above mine and talked in his sleep.'

His visitors frowned in near unison.

'Go on,' encouraged the man.

'That's it.'

The woman covered a smile behind her confederate's back.

He inhaled slowly, obviously irritated. 'And the poem? Read it for us.'

Issac stared at the offered page. 'It's melted,' he said.

i

'Stewart, will you calm down.'

'He's making fools of us! Can't you see that?' Ash floated to the scuffedtiles, their edges raised, exposing the pressed earth beneath.

'That may be,' Ula conceded. 'But he's not doing it on purpose. Listen, you know the situation as well as I do. We need to keep some kind of perspective.'

He nodded angrily. The captains' interest and subsequent exploitation of their studies had turned the world inside out.

She waited for his breathing to settle. 'Okay, everything's a mess - the storm's made sure of that. But it's not over yet, not by a long way.'

Stewart relaxed. 'We can't afford to start over,' he said grimly. 'You know Smith wants us to carve him up? The direct approach, he calls it. Right now I think Waters deserves it.'

Ula let her hands fall to her sides, composing herself. 'What if we were to let him go?'

He folded a lip. 'And?'

'Think of it as field research. Are we dealing with a wholly sympathetic psychosis or not? How close are they mentally? Have they actually met? This is one way to find out. Let this one loose and maybe he'll lead us to his doppleganger, human or not.'

Smith wouldn't like the idea. He mentioned that.

'Smith! Are you scared of him, Stewart? Is that it? Well, I'm not. He pulls no rank.'

'It's not a question of rank. Be realistic for once, ay?'

She laced her fingers, smeared her palms. 'Yes?'

'If we can convince him. Convince them both.'

ii

The fact people kept talking in terms of damage suggested to Issac that war had encapsulated the planet, where in reality the snowmen were responsible for everything. His mechanical fingers itched to be at engines. His grizzled expression silently addressed those around him strapping auxiliary fueltanks to the wing he had flown for hours that morning, familiarizing himself with its controls. Presently he sat in Ula's truck, Ula scribbling notes, board resting against the wheel, pencil attached by a length of frayed string so thin in places it must shortly snap. He looked down at her ankles. Somebody shouted outside and Ula complained at the disturbance.

They were sending him on a quest. He liked to think of it as that. The sun hurt his eyes, but they'd provided goggles strung on elastic round his neck. He wore thick tan trousers and shirt, had a coat which reached to his knees and boots whose tops met its hem.

A man approached his door, limping, head tilted back to peer in the window Issac next lowered. They stared at each other but exchanged no words. Issac was tired of words. The man was known to him, he felt sure.

Ula said something he missed. The man smiled and limped away.

'Issac.' Tapping his wrist.

He turned from the window.

'Issac, is there anything you want to ask? Anything you're not clear about?'

His mind went momentarily blank. Illusory animals flashed before his eyes. These fantastic creatures of colour and light were known to him also.

'You want me to find the man with my name,' he said eventually.

She gazed at him sadly.

'And bring him to you,' Issac went on; 'in a box if necessary.'

'What? Who told you that?' She was angry, breaking the string without noticing. The board slapped the wheel.

'You did,' he said.

'No!' Ula shook herself. 'I mean...the part about the box. Who said that?'

He had to think where he'd heard it. 'Smith.'

She got out of the truck, rattling its door and sending shockwaves through the cab.

Issac didn't know what to do, so he sat reading her notes, the board having slipped to the seat.

iii

'Retardation! Stewart, how do you expect him to function after Smith's fucked with his brain?'

'Come on. He's fine. Plenty of spare capacity.'

Ula took deep breaths. 'Why didn't you tell me? Or was that part of the deal?'

He fumbled for cigarettes. 'It was that or terminate him as a security risk. You know how paranoid Smith is. He's never accepted our work as being possessed of anything but novelty value. And now Mother's gone, cutting the ground from under him, maybe even exposing the reason he failed to secure a captaincy - well, he's had his nose rubbed in it, that's all. He's not alone in looking for someone to blame.'

'Smith was up for captaincy?' It pained her to say the words.

Stewart nodded.

'Christ.'

'Yeah. But that's history. I'd watch your step around him, Ula, okay?'

She hated this world. She scraped her feet across its unnerving superficies.

Later, Waters dispatched to an unknown end, she sat down with Monk, who said, 'I know, I know; you're in the wrong place; want to be somewhere else.'

'I can't help myself.'

'But I might be able to.' His head bobbed rhythmically as he shuffled.

She folded her arms on the table and crossed her legs under the chair.

'Don't you like me?'

He dropped the three of spades. Staring at her, he replaced the card in the deck.

'Heard from your brother lately?' she asked.

Monk put the cards down.

'You can't figure it out, can you? You just don't see what I'm getting at.'

'I plant trees,' he said. 'Your hands stay clean in the lab. We both make things grow, and yet mine is a lowly task and yours the work of gods.'

She laughed. He made her do that. 'I like you, Monk. I do. You're uncomplicated. I think we're made for each other.'

The worried look was exactly what she'd anticipated.

'Are you with me now?'

He picked up the deck and dealt five cards. 'My father planted trees on Eriksworld and Hadada,' he said, studying the hand. 'Dealer takes three.' She grabbed the pack and counted three off. 'He met my mother on a bus. She was a specialist in fungi.'

'A parasite?'

Monk fanned out his cards, face down. 'I think you're bluffing,' he told her.

'So call me.'

iv

The work detail Zonda had been assigned to was responsible for exits. She had a handgun strapped to her hip and liked the feel of it, the snug plastic of the holster, the ceramic of the weapon balancing her mescaline appetite. She was on a permanent high. Gazing around at the weather the former Runner nipped her tongue between her teeth and tasted power. Ekland had pointed at her from across a blank space, a floor naked of furniture, hers two feet among hundreds, his callused digit finding the narrow bridge separating her eyes. Later she learned that was his trigger finger, steady as it marked an X on her brow. The sun bathed her and the crew manhandling a heavy support, part of its honeycombed structure twisted, made to fit anew. Already the landing field was back in use, bulldozed of eerie phantoms. Planes were constantly landing and taking off. Flying north and south, she guessed, photographing the outlying bases and survey stations, assessing damage and displaying light cannon, transmissions scrambled, wings and bodies daubed in clashing hues, panchromatic dragons not all of which returned to their mountain nest. The losses were predictable, not through combat but defection, pilots either flying direct or being ditched by crews over land and sea. Ruby was doubtless happy to let them go. They were less of a threat that way. The majority, Runner and Weekender alike, had simply recognized the new order and got on with the business of recovery. Zonda's sidearm was likely to remain where it was. A yellow neckerchief more effectively denoted her independent status.

There were a number of dead, buried without ceremony on the mountain's northern slope, its gradient lessened, eroded by the storm. Southward the ocean appeared at once closer and farther away. On every side the weight of bergs was numbing. They lay scattered like enormous potsherds, the wreckage of Oriel's opaque ceiling. Designs, fractured reliefs, patterns from myriad ages littered the surface, colouring as they absorbed heat and light, changing shape and exuding gases. Zonda viewed the many forms and compared them to previous hallucinations: grazing sheep and cattle, ruined temples, ancient forts and dwellings, the decayed remains of forgotten cultures piled one atop another. Fragments alien and enchanting, they worked their latent magic on the eye, liquid-state dream-engines whose lazy melting produced a rich panorama of imagery, the shadows they clung to deceptive, cunning, adding depth and tone to the picture, smoothing and etching still deeper the wonderful array of conjured artefacts her unblinking vision inverted on her brain.

v

The orange square tied like a bandanna round his head, Irdad ventured above ground. Candy was alive with teeming insects, human imagines performing as their queen instructed. The analogy brought a smile; one Joplinski wouldn't approve of, but a smile none the less. The orange marked him out as a lieutenant of this feudal lord, the usurper having acted quickly to consolidate his victory. No great feat, Irdad thought. The company's tiered solidity aided Ruby, but his removal of its higher echelons was a shrewd manoeuvre. Obvious by definition, the scenario was one played out many times before. Not that the Weekender would necessarily know of the precedents, historical and corporative, or even of the narrow course of events to inevitably follow, a field from which fate would pick a winner.

Irdad, safe for now in the saddle, riding in the new boss's colours, wound his way to the summit. The view was equally breathtaking and repugnant. He slotted hands in armpits and gazed upon the snow, ideas as to the storm's beginning orbiting like the space-dock overhead. He was relieved not to have been quizzed in any great detail about the disappearance of the captains. In truth he knew little, cognizant only that some major thinkers had been shifting nervously, political intrigue more Christian's line than his. Irdad was curious though, recalling the manner in which the screeching instruments had woken him, the chaos and resulting atmospherics, his partner's illogic and his own determined flight before the storm. He remained convinced the intrusive mass of a ship had penetrated, nothing short of that appealing lunacy being anything like sufficient to satisfy the exacting standards of the climatic disruption to follow. The storm was manmade by consequence. Maybe there was a purpose. The ship's current whereabouts was a mystery he was keen to solve.

He was being sent north by Joplinski.

'What makes you think they'll parley?' he'd asked, uncomfortable with the use Joplinski wished him put to. 'After all, if the wagon's there - and it's a big if - they'd be foolish to part with it.'

'Oh, they'll part with it. Not in exchange for hostages, perhaps, but part with the wagon they will.'

'If you're planning a raid why not go ahead? Forget the preamble; hit them fast and hard.'

The answer was clear, as Ruby knew. He had yet to fully marshall his forces.

There were question marks regarding loyalty.

'You can make your own arrangements for transport. Overland, by truck, as I need every flyer I've got.'

A lie, as present wastage showed.

I'll need a driver, Irdad reckoned, someone to talk to on the long haul.

And what equipment I can hustle, he added, the orange kerchief a blank cheque from Joplinski.

And look at me, on a fool's errand.

And is that my cap she's wearing?

'Zonda MacIntyre.'

'Pleased to meet you, Zonda,' he said, rubbing the strangely dry orb of his right eye.

'I can use this gun,' she told him.

'I don't doubt it. But can you change a flat, fight off Indians, eat a sandwich with your head stuck out the window over rough ground and piss in a broken bottle?'

'Sure,' she replied, 'all of those things.'

'Your mother teach you?'

Zonda frowned.

'Never mind,' said Irdad. 'You're with me. Let's see what they have under cover.'

The truck was a conversion, a hybrid wheels more suited to the altered terrain. The winch and cannon were extras, the latter mounted centrally on the truncated chassis, reducing yet further the space available for storage. Irdad had merely to commandeer it. He still carried the infomats he and Christian had compiled in an earlier incarnation and hoped to get the opportunity to play them back, maybe add a few new ideas of his own without the weight of his erstwhile partner reining him in. He wondered briefly why Ruby had let him keep them, putting that suspicion aside as he schemed how best to regain possession of his blue cap, the headgear Zonda had claimed in his absence.

It meant a lot to him, that hat.

Zonda drove at Irdad's request.

Under normal circumstances the journey to Base 1 might have taken three days. With the snow he figured eight, although they were pushing for half that by driving non-stop. The truck was easily capable, its fuel cells good for two hundred hours. But they had yet to drive at night.

As the sun went down, muted behind exceptional clouds, and the ground became more rugged by design, snow or no snow, Zonda held the wheel more loosely than she had previously, enjoying the bumpy feel. She liked the way Irdad kept reaching for his orange headscarf as if frightened it would slip off, unravelling like a trick knot. A reflex he was oblivious to, she decided, deliberately slewing on the oversized tyres. When finally he removed it completely, dropping the gaudy square to the floor, Zonda noticed the tattoo, his family crest emblazoned on a scalp genetically purged of hair save for a few vagrant wisps above his ears and under his chin.

Irdad told her to slow down, then changed is mind and apologized.

'Do I make you uncomfortable?' she inquired, vision darting sidelong, a brief exchange.

He was silent a while, before, 'No.'

Zonda stuck her tongue out and hit the brakes. 'Here, take the wheel.'

She liked ordering him around; surprised she was able.

Irdad shuffled over as Zonda got out and scrambled onto the truck-bed with its flimsy tarpaulin tied back, the snub cannon like a fire hose. Pressing the red button and hearing a shell click into position she aimed at the berg directly in front and put her fingers in her ears. The cannon itself wasn't loud. The berg evaporated with a slap, a vacuum's short visit causing the entire vehicle to lurch forward several centimetres. She pressed the green button, locking the barrel, and returned via the passenger window. It turned her on, the cannon, but she'd never admit as much.

Irdad pressed the accelerator gently. He got the distinct impression the girl didn't care about tomorrow. Her personality was all too simple. Maybe the real Zonda MacIntyre was hiding; shocked and fragile, a different person. He smiled at her, feeling a weight slide from his shoulders. Suddenly ebullient he charged over the smaller chunks and brushed past the larger, a rare moment when all four wheels were on the ground. The girl held the window stirrup, one foot braced against the dash as the truck elbowed shop windows and theatre awnings, crowds of citizens parting like biblical waters. If you stared dead ahead the bergs appeared to flash by at impossible speed, blurred roadside trees whose colours leaked to form a tunnel. The effect was dizzying. Irdad slammed the contours recklessly. It grew difficult to tell the rocks from the snow and the snow from pedestrians wielding shopping and umbrellas.

Their rough course took them north, following a broad rift valley, the occasional blunt peak visible in the distance beyond the transient horizon, its whites and yellows contrasting with permanent browns and ochres, a set of narrow distinctions that grew less evident the longer he drove and the lower the sun dipped.

In the sky assembled gaseous, swollen carrion, fat and dark. The elements, ever fickle, jostled one another, wrenching the guts from thermals gravid with electricity, points of acute focus that, dampened through the glass, registered on his eyes as pins of red, blue, green. An accompanying hum Irdad found relaxing.

Zonda said, 'Watch out for the gully.' But by then they were stuck in it.

A berg slipped, denting the roof and cracking the screen, and the girl added something about Ologists being crazy and not listening to a word anyone said.

The impact had deformed the cab and both doors were jammed.

Irdad followed Zonda's example and clambered out the window. The winch was mounted at the front of the vehicle, giving him no choice but to attack the fractured berg with his bare hands. It was soon dislodged, knocking the cap from Zonda's head, who told him to be careful.

Out in the open it was appreciably colder. The atmosphere tightened menacingly.

'I'll try and reverse out,' said Irdad, hooking a leg round the door post.

Zonda nodded. She crabbed onto flatter ground, searching for a solid outcrop among the congregation she might fasten a cable to once the winch was fully uncovered.

Behind her she could hear wheels spinning.

To her left the assembled bergs posed like camera-toting newsmen, herself the attraction, her story they wished to cover. Zonda looked away, dazzled by flashes.

Rightward, she was able to thread her gaze some distance through the gloaming, the prevailing roof shapes disguised as parked cars, discarded shoes, multihued ovens and refrigerators. She felt like a bug crawling about on the carapace of a bigger bug. Irdad and the truck were bugs also, the latter dead and hollow.

In front of her, where he hadn't been moments ago, stood a man wearing shades and an enviably large overcoat, his hands thrust deep into generous pockets.

Irdad decided it was no good. He'd managed to turn the vehicle slightly, enabling them to get at the winch, but it was impossible to do more without the tyres sinking deeper. The gully was a recent feature, the ground undermined by run-off from the bergs and perilously soft beneath. Killing the engine he sat back and yawned. The cab light flickered out, leaving the stored luminescence of his surroundings to tint his flesh a waxy purple. Irdad examined the backs of his hands. The skin pressed to a bloody maroon. He reached for a cigarette, remembering his earlier vow to quit and dismissing it, comforted as much by the fiery orange glow as the subtle action of the narcotic. Zonda appeared as a darker silhouette. She climbed over the cab to get at the cannon, no doubt to blast an anchor peg into the ground, a point from which the truck could pull from. But when there was no further sound he went to look for her. It was near total dark now and his torch strobed from one statue to the next. It he was quick, he thought, he might catch them moving.

There was no Zonda. He found his cap hanging on a vitreous ear of a figure whose listening apparatus was manifold. It was warm. Her smell lingered.

Puzzled by her disappearance, Irdad returned to the truck.

He'd give her till morning, then radio.

vi

Rising from Ula's bed, dreaming of rain while awake, upright and walking, Lloyd Monk, brother of Street Monk, ducked under the lintel without realizing the act, the lintel like all lintels a company specified 210 centimetres from the floor, Lloyd himself last measured at 195. Naked, he padded outside having travelled down an empty passage under a second frame as tall as the first, ducking a reflex he had apparently learned.

He planted trees. Street planted trees. He'd been posted to Base 1 and his brother, his twin, to Base 2. They'd last communicated a week ago, prior to the Great Storm (as already it was remembered), exchanging friendly banter as always, yet tinged with a rivalry neither had felt so deeply since kindergarten when the brothers had competed at everything from building blocks to sports. Their parents were an image reality lightyears removed, the boys' futures paying for that trip of a lifetime round the galactic spiral to where else but Finnegan's World.

To begin again, as the brochures had it.

The rain was real...

Monk stuck his tongue out and turned his palms upward, felt the hairs on his legs and chest stiffen as he picked his way in the direction of the orchard. He was soaked within metres. The night was absolute, the rain torrential, abnormal, streaking his flesh and chilling him to the bone. He'd cleared most of the debris the previous day, leaving shards embedded in the cultured soil like milky diamonds, gems which altered colour as the hours passed and the sun carouselled, the dendrologist mourning his nascent jungle, each hour shifting albedos and projecting half-seen forms. These woody plants represented a labour of love, bark stripped and trunks smashed, limbs shattered and foliage torn, carefully tailored from his hipbank of genes.

Approaching, the air smelled alive.

second: other worlds (then and now)

six - real window

Through the real window the grey-white planet resembled a frosted pearl set on a background of crumpled velvet. He positioned the space wagon so as to look down on its shady curve, the closest any man had come to this world. The ship was trim and silent, reading what Courtney read from a ladder of coloured screens.

The screens detailed his entry.

The orbital on the planet's dark side was the converted hulk of the yawbus Kama 5, stationed, equipped to conduct a normal ten month assessment of the planet's exploitable potential.

Courtney stood alone, the cabin darkened, the sugar-icing fractured before him in accordance with the computer projection, his own part in the model next to be realized as he steered the wagon toward a polygonal opening whose ragged edges dripped blue-winged forms into the atmosphere. Like diving seagulls, he thought, birds intent on fish, spearing the unwalked surface of the world a ballot of captains had named Oriel. The opening was two kilometres wide, a break in the grille that was like some crystal mesh, a bizarre cathedral architecture whose grand purpose was to hold itself up. Here the probability of clearance was high, a fissure through which man and machine might readily travel. The difficulty lay in what conditions prevailed the far side of this broken window, in the dynamics of wind and heat. The computer model branched uselessly. It was wait and see, the space wagon's modus operandi taking over responsibility for flight maintenance, all spare capacity thereafter given to ontological matters; not Courtney's area of expertise.

It was a gamble putting the wagon to such an enterprise, and the captains knew it, but the larger craft would be better able to cope with whatever inner Oriel had to offer in extremes of climate, an issue the unmanned Kama 5 had failed to settle, its probes inhibited by the planet's very nature. As far as Courtney was aware this was a first for both Mother and the company. They'd never previously encountered a world barricaded by its own emissions. The predicted gaps in the facade, most common about the equator where the crust was thinnest and caused primarily by contraction, fitted a cyclic theory of time and motion, a slow, alien course of seepage and precipitation.

The initial survey results were encouraging. He'd drawn the short straw. But for the group pathologist, newly qualified, it was an honour.

The trip was largely automated, Courtney along to offer manual assistance, necessary where the model fell short and the accident ratio soared to dangerous levels. Mostly he had only to watch the screens, adjust the dials, monitor his own pulse and brainwave patterns, a routine precaution when entering any new environment. If the wagon failed to register a threat, either viral or intrinsic, such as walking life, then his exposure in the limited event of that threat going unnoticed by himself as well as the computer, would prove a last line of defence. The ultimate filter, his possible sacrifice saving the company billions in cell-time and discussion. His status wouldn't save him, not down there. Mother would be loath to waste him; but Irving Courtney was intelligent enough to appreciate the political standings. He was a from a retrogressive family. Irving senior had done no favours. Perhaps the death of him. Neither would Irving junior, who understood the many paths of killing. And no Weekender could be offered the kudos of first-footing, whereas Courtney had simply been unlucky. Or had he? He was sure of one thing: if the crimes of the father were to be visited on the son, Oriel provided the perfect opportunity.

i

The weather was kind, almost gentle.

The livid green ocean struck him as freakish. Overflying its soft mantle, instruments swinging wildly, the Ologist shook his head, his conception of its nature prior to the actualization far removed from the sculpted reality of its majestic peaks. He broadened the real window to 360 degrees by raising the cabin floor and fixed the wagon in sightseeing mode, the craft's dome a dewdrop in which he was trapped like some larval mite. The wagon skimmed the undulating surface, rising and falling to maintain a safe distance between itself and the sea whose perplexing waves were altogether more interesting than the uniform continents. Numbering two, these tracts of land appeared staid in contrast, with just a single noteworthy mountain between them, dominating the northern coast while the southern mass was largely featureless. The wagon though was restricted to a three thousand kilometre band either side of the equator, a line shifting as the planet wobbled. Free from any lunar influence, its axis tilted only marginally, Oriel was disturbed by the jet actions of her geyserlike poles, their combined excretions encapsulating the world and prohibiting the safe exploration of regions farther south and north. Mapping the planet would be a problem. Pinpointing its resources less so.

As a means of drawing attention the island's proto-trees worked beautifully. What they lacked in hue they made up for in texture, their place in the computer minds aboard the orbital given special consideration as the stony trunks were thought a likely indicator of planetary history. The island was known to move, its trees a consequence of that slow journey across the ocean floor, squeezed upward like paste through the porous rock and twisting to present heights as the combination accreted. If the space wagon had not been directed there, Courtney may have overridden the controls. It was a forest of standing worms, polyps, their upmost bodies coiled, some broken, others split like damaged hairs. The thin sunlight weaving among them hinted at rich colours under shiny, translucent bark.

The wagon circled, losing height until finally it hitched up its skirts and settled languidly, a plump ballerina. The earth was powdery yet firm. Springy, he discovered, bounding toward a slope over whose uneven rim the trees were visible. Close to they resembled stalagmites, inverted icicle spines rising thirty metres and more, bunched fingers compacted of sediment in differing shades and bands. Many had fallen, trunks shattered like Greek temple pillars, the competition for space hinting at a strict geological boundary. Courtney jogged to the jumbled perimeter. Looking back he could see nothing of the wagon. His heart beat loudly in his ears. He clambered onto a fractured, horizontal bole, sensing its plasticity through the soles of his boots. Touching it, he thought of stretched rubber, a tensile surface, tapering and finely ridged. Rats' tails, the rats themselves buried, their bodies stuffing the island. In his shirt pocket was a scalpel, part of the small investigative kit he always carried. Extending the blade, he first traced its intended path with a finger, stroking the surface, bloodless and pale, on which he sat astraddle. A wasted limb. Tense dead flesh, the muscle yet to relax. He hesitated, the scalpel a centimetre from that glossy film.

He let out a sigh and slid the blade in, opening a half metre wound. It bulged surprisingly, widening like the split belly of a whale, guts outpouring. A yellow liquid ran, stinking of decay, and Courtney had to move quickly to avoid contact. Watching from a safe distance, he saw the tree's knotted innards uncoil, the wrinkled bark darken, thick loops of tissue spooling like twinned snakes from a basket. The trunk as a whole pulsed, then was still, its past torpidity reinstated. Only the smell remained.

Shivering, he dropped the scalpel; retrieved it and carefully sealed the blade for analysis. He hadn't expected anything like what had happened. Moreover, he had never experienced such abject revulsion. Or was it another thing he was feeling? He couldn't take his eyes of the mutilated tree, the wound he'd inflicted a hideous tumour.

He wiped his nose and turned left, walking, stepping over other toppled limbs varying in thickness, the greatest two metres in diameter. No doubt larger boles existed, perhaps many times as big, ancient trunks whose girths justified their height. And the tallest trees were located toward the centre.

Did he have time to find them? The space wagon had a fixed schedule and would abide by it regardless of his presence. He could go back and change it. But why worry? He proceeded inward.

Anyway, he wore a reminder.

It grew tangibly darker, dust motes suspended like flies in the irregular bars of light. The scene was reminiscent of his childhood haunt, the substructure of floorspace insulating the governor's palace over Saturn. All it lacked was a roof. If he were to linger till nightfall the effect would be complete - cables arranged at random like the overlapping filaments of collagen in bone, air-pockets in place of marrow, a shield against the broiling, hydrogen rich atmosphere on which the edifice floated. Then he had played hide-and-seek with his shadow, a playmate cast by roving fluorescent mailboxes, weaving documents and memoranda that sped like tiny comets round his head. Now he felt like some parasite crawling amid the quills of a hedgehog. Yet something of Saturn clung. His father's voice boomed like a god's, giving life to the darting messages, animating the strobed sandwich columns across whose outstretched toes the boy Courtney scampered, tongue flashing, a lizard as he wound through arches and between stalks too narrow for a grown man, pockets of heat and blackness immersing him in sweat and near vertiginous panic.

But there was no fall at the end of it. Courtney braced his shoulders and filled his lungs. Eyes adjusting to the gloom, feet and hands levering him on, the pathologist advanced farther into the vermiform jungle. At times the surrounding trees sparkled as if impregnated with jewels, bright flowers whose lifespan was moments, their souls drowned in shades, snuffed like candles...

'Careful, child, the ground is slippery; don't want you breaking an arm.'

He glanced toward the door.

'Hurry now, it's time for your lesson.'

The bole was layered.

'Irving.'

'Yes, father.'

In his mind's eye the door was held ajar. He moved sideways through it, squinting, one hand covering his face. A flight of stairs led into a domed vestibule whose real windows were set high, blurred yellow.

'One day I'll lose you down there,' his father joked.

But he wore his reminder.

Courtney leant with his back to a trunk. Breathing heavily, wiping the long smears from his vision, he craned his neck and peered straight up into the elevated canopy. The sky was the colour of fish scales. Nothing moved for hours. He blinked and it was dark. Suddenly worried, the Ologist groped about, slapping the insubstantial gauze from his mind. He was lost among the trees, conscious of something behind him, always behind him, no matter which way he turned. He began to climb, flesh clammy, fingers numb, hugging the nearest tree while pushing with heels and toes, braced between this bole and its neighbour. The two grew wider apart. The slick bark secreted the same pungent liquid he had escaped contact with earlier. It soaked him, ran down his chest and over his aching thighs. Struggling higher, embracing the tapered limb, he was kept from slipping by the tenacity of his grip; ever tightening, lubricated, a corpulent machine part as he ascended, made increasingly heavy. The tree's stinking juices saturated his clothes, seeped into his muscles, infused his blood and organs, until he climbed not with hands and feet but with his entire body, like a slug. Reaching the crown he rolled into the upturned palm of its branching. The night was close above, the planet's disquieting shell faintly luminous. The stench no longer bothered Courtney. Distracted by a nub of pain, like knuckles twisted against his spine, the odour's acrid strength went unnoticed.

'Are you going to stay in bed all day, Irving?' his father said. 'Some dreams are better left.'

The pain travelled, shunted along his nervous system until it reached his brain.

'Irving! How are you, boy? How long has it been since I last held you? Oh, what a fuss I'll make over everything. You have no idea. Decorations. Musicians. And a cake; must have a cake.'

He freed himself from her grasp with difficulty. She held him at arm's length and stared at him intently.

'Are you better? Have they made you well?'

'He's not a baby, Cleo. Don't coddle him.'

She scoffed at her husband. 'He's jealous,' she whispered. 'Wants all the attention.'

Courtney senior sat at a broad, shining table. His wife ignored his expression. Brushing the hair from junior's eyes, she asked, 'Have you missed me?'

'Yes, mother.'

'And you're pleased to be home?'

'Of course.'

She kissed him. And the pain was no more. A new sensation, one of comfort, supplanted the distant agony of his bones.

ii

There had been that time on Sourpuss, thought Rocard, when a group of mutineers had attacked his vessel, their hearts pumping wildly, poisoned, Mother having sent him in to discover the reason an outpost had fallen silent. The captains relied on his methods as opposed to his discretion. He got things done. Rocard's was an enviable position. Or so he imagined, lacing his boots in the dirt.

Standing, gazing around, he noted with satisfaction the way the survey team pretended he wasn't there, going about their business like a herd of masticating wildebeest, gnus oblivious to the presence of Rocard the lion.

Jenny stepped off the flyer and shielded her eyes. 'Busy, aren't they? Also pretending there's something important.'

He shrugged. Jenny took his arm.

'Let's walk, Darcy.'

Rocard didn't move and she frowned.

'Also?' he questioned, alarmed that she was making fun of him again.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

Jenny grinned. 'Really, Darcy, you have such a way with words.' She pulled him and he moved. 'That serious expression,' the mould-woman continued; 'those hardened eyes. Like a stiff in a gangster movie: no style.'

She had been a present, appeared no more than eighteen, brash and energetic, a company toy. They were cultured on Lobo, popular myth giving the address as 'lobotomized'. Rocard hadn't cared for her at first. With or without wires, she'd made him uneasy. But Jenny was all his now, and she didn't bruise.

Walking, he listened to her talk, relating details of their journey, the express route from Earth via Grandee via Badmove via the massing-station at Harbour 14. To him it was a blur, a series of interchangeable walls. Jenny though, absorbed every lampshade and duvet, each hour and minute spent in this hotel or that compartment, what they ate and how much it cost, her capacity for observation a tool he recognized like any other. The mould-woman digested everything. She talked to Rocard, falling silent whenever a third party became involved. The world of Jenny, the strictly bordered world of her thoughts and needs, revolved round his own. Her chatter was for two ears, Darcy's, his to interpret and understand.

The reason they were on Oriel was simple. On this strange island lived an Ologist.

The forest covered four-fifths of the land mass. Courtney had vanished in it and Mother wanted him found, convinced he was alive as the space wagon still registered his presence. Standing before the trees, glancing up, Rocard had his doubts. True, the signal was there, he had seen that for himself. But how did it move so fast? No man on foot could cover so much ground, even across terrain hard and flat; that Courtney achieved it through dense, alien growths, was beyond comprehension. Something wasn't right. It irked him how little information the captains had. The Ologist had been first-foot. Alone.

'Christ.'

'You invoke the saviour, Darcy?'

'I do.'

'You've been doing that a lot lately.'

'I have?'

'Yes...'

She tapped her foot. Rocard kicked a fallen trunk. The sound it made disturbed him. Like a ship's hull, he thought, absurdly thin, the space beyond vast and empty, without echo.

'Tell me what you see, Jenny.'

But she appeared hesitant.

He waited, intrigued.

'I see...a garden.'

'A garden?'

She nodded, almost embarrassed, biting her lip.

iii

The survey, headed by a petrologist named Johanna, took numerous core samples.

Bored, special investigator Rocard folded his arms, put his feet on the table that had been raised in the open and rocked back in his chair.

'Sedimentary?' he interrupted.

'Yes,' the Ologist replied. 'From the ocean floor.'

'I would have thought that much obvious.'

She reddened, disliking his attitude. Her patience thin. 'Do you wish me to continue?' she asked brusquely.

Rocard swayed through several degrees on the chair. 'No, not unless you can help me locate your colleague.'

Johanna sat up straight. Her contempt for him was patent, dominating her face like a wound.

'Don't you want him found?'

That caught her off-balance. She reeled, had been watching Jenny turning circles. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'You Ologists,' he said, enjoying himself now. 'Your superior ways. I can't but think you all have it in for each other.'

'If you're trying to bait me, Rocard...'

'Why?' He stood, fists on table.

'Excuse me?'

Better composure, he observed; the barriers raised.

'Why should I bait you? Got something to hide?'

The woman smiled, not about to lose her manners. 'A game.'

'A game?'

'A power game,' she elaborated. 'You like to play. You like fucking with lives. You have jurisdiction. Authority.'

She fiddled with her necklace.

'I can get away with it,' Rocard said. 'Is that what you mean?'

She didn't answer.

Jenny danced closer.

'This is a peculiar world,' the special investigator commented.

'They all are,' replied Johanna, 'to begin with. After a while those peculiarities are ironed out by the company. There comes a sameness to every stage. Conformity is a given.'

Who was baiting who? he wondered. 'Those are not loyal words.'

'So arrest me.'

Rocard shook his head. 'Not my job, arresting.'

The petrologist smirked, left her chair and walked away, leaving him with his fists still indenting the table.

A movie stiff, he recalled.

The means justified the ends, Mother had taught him. The ends he failed to question. If Rocard was honest he would have to say he enjoyed the fear he brought, the pain he metered out, the killing. It was part of him. He was too old to change. He did what he did and that was all. He prided himself on a job well executed. Or had done.

Too old?

'Christ.'

'There you go again.'

He hadn't been aware. Jenny had crept up on him. Rocard's heart pounded. She'd scared him.

The day was short on Oriel. Already the planet was getting his goat. He hadn't felt this agitated in years.

'She was wearing perfume,' said Jenny.

Rocard scuffed his feet and straightened. 'She was wearing nothing of the kind!'

'Are you angry, Darcy? Will you beat me?'

'Leave me be a while,' he ordered.

But the mould-woman lingered.

Defiance?

'She was wearing perfume,' affirmed the company toy. 'I recognized the brand.'

iv

Harry the dredger.

A normally inquisitive man, he remained in his seat until they told him it was safe to leave.

'Down the aisle on the left.'

'Thank-you.'

The first thing he saw, sailing along the exit ramp toward a rendezvous with his luggage, the old town much as it had been for centuries, was the cathedral, Norman and under glass. They'd extended the dome, he noticed, to cover the railway viaduct. The castle's replica was less than satisfying, the original dismantled and put to alternative use, afloat on Saturn's boisterous gas. He wondered grimly what the Prince Bishops would make of that. Walking through the arrivals hall below a ceiling of green lights, he reckoned it was a miracle the city managed to hold on to its university. Owned and run by the company, there was no absolute reason for it to remain. Earth based students were vulnerable to attack from any of a growing number of terrorist and neo-revolutionary groups, and the campus offered an easy target. Luggage to heel, he hailed a taxi, an upright as the city was overcrowded. He hoped the trip was worth it; journeys depressed him. But this was Angelo, he reminded himself. Durham, too. If the former disappointed then the latter, its satellites and surrounding landscapes would adequately compensate - until the return leg, his office in Lima with the central-heating on. Maybe he'd stay here for good. Harry didn't care what anyone said, the world was too big.

Grounding at the correct address he straightened his tie and pressed the button. A face appeared, smiled, and the door opened. He walked up the stairs to the first floor flat, luggage left at the foot.

Angelo stood waiting. 'Thanks for coming,' he said.

Harry slumped in the offered char and relaxed.

'Drink?'

'Coffee for now.' His stomach still a little upset. 'How's Martha?'

Angelo made noises in the kitchenette.

How long had it been? Four years? Six? Then a call. Important I see you right away. Something amiss?

'Sugar, Harry?'

'No - I had a card from you.' He clicked his fingers, summoning the name.

'Mauritius.'

'Martinique.'

Harry accepted the mug and sipped.

'She left,' Angelo said. 'Took the kid.'

He peered through steam, his old friend occupying one half of a two seat sofa. 'When?' Was this it? All the way from Lima for this?

'It's not important,' replied the taller man, his face measuring, judging, his lips licked. 'I have a proposition for you. Or rather, I have a case to put.'

Harry sat upright. There was an uneasy sensation working its way up from his shoes, tying the hairs on his legs in knots.

Angelo reached under the sofa and pulled out a brown paper envelope. Leaning forward, he offered the limp package to Harry. 'Here, take a look.'

'What is it?'

'A company internal report.'

'Released?'

'What do you think? Take it.'

He kept tight hold of his mug. Scanning the room for cameras, needing to piss, he wondered what he had walked into, what options, if any, he had left.

'Harry?'

'Just drop it on the floor,' he said.

Angelo complied. 'I'm sorry. I'm pressuring you. You need more time.'

Time? thought Harry, reaching in his jacket pocket for cigarettes. Time for what?

Agitated, he grabbed the pack Angelo wafted.

Safer than the envelope.

Lighting up he queried, 'What are you involved in?' And do I want any part of it? he added to himself.

The tall friend laced his fingers, waited.

'What's in the report?'

'A synopsis. Incomplete.'

'Concerning?'

'Oriel.'

'Never heard of it.'

'This is why.'

He considered his position, the drab walls of the flat, the cigarette smoke, the coffee, the ash.

'You used to talk about the big one, Harry.'

'Yes; but that was a long time ago. I was idealistic.'

Angelo shook his head. 'No, no - romantic, Harry, remember? You and me, those front page scholarships; we didn't possess an ideal between us. Ideals were for lifers, company thralls. We shared a different map.'

Harry adjusted his sitting position, mumbled, 'Maybe so.' Then louder,

'That doesn't give you the right to manipulate our friendship, to manipulate me.' He said it with conviction, although he was no longer sure how much conviction he felt.

Again, Angelo was silent.

His fear was of fear, Harry realized, a deep disappointment within himself.

'I'll look it over later,' he said.

v

'I don't get it,' Harry repeated, peeling the back off a beer mat. 'And frankly, I don't care. Nine tenths of what you've told me is supposition, the one tenth second-hand.'

'From the company direct,' qualified Angelo. 'You agree the report is genuine?'

'Yes.' He frowned. 'It's too elaborate a hoax.' Directed at whom? The frown deepened.

'Then one chance in ten ought to suffice.'

They occupied a central table in the pub. Business slow this summer, the few customers grouped round a bar aglow with fittings. Harry had filled the jukebox. They were contained by sound and windows.

Angelo turned his glass between his palms, light tumbling from it like a chandelier. 'What are you thinking?'

'That I'm a dead man one way or the other,' Harry answered bluntly.

'I'm sorry, Harry. I didn't...'

'Facts!'

'What?'

'Give me facts, something I can get a handle on. No more lying, understand? Fuck your motives. What's your organisation? Cellular? Anarchic? This is no news story. Even if it was the networks would never carry it. Angelo, we both know that. No unsanctioned story is in the company's interests, and it practically runs the globals. So what's really behind Oriel? What makes this planet special? Why do you need me to go there? Me, Angelo, your old friend. Is that it? You trust me? God in Heaven...'

Each man gazed over the other's shoulder, neither speaking, the people moving about the bar and the people outside in the street as conscious then of the moon as Harry and Angelo were of yesterday and tomorrow. The lecturer's thoughts were with his students, his betrayal and their miseducation. He had yet to be called upon to plant a bomb in a dorm, but that day might not be far off. As measures grew desperate his position was made vulnerable. To date his role in the university had proved valuable, not to be risked on so blatant a gesture. But it couldn't last. The company's grip on the establishment was total. There were no legitimate means of loosening it. He was expendable, or soon would be. Idealistic? Angelo smiled wanly. Maybe.

The journalist, his cynical nature undermined by some primal shout, finally had to admit he'd lost control over his destiny. The future, his future, a Peruvian river valley stuffed with comforts, had been snatched from him, the dream of it insubstantial, broken, dispersed as easily as smoke. Freshly peeled, shiveringly naked, he gazed out the window at the bobbing heads, the multihued taxis jostling like stars, tastes and smells hovering round them like planets, worlds he had cared nothing for that morning, held in a different light now, the window as if cleaned, made emphatically real, his vision attaining real depth through its interaction, a reality of metal, flesh and glass he discovered to be at once wondrous and appalling. Either that or he was drunk. The contents of the envelope had shaken him. Enticed him. Made him think.

Woken him? When had the excitement turned to fear?

Angelo broke the reverie. 'The company is overextended,' he said. 'One man in the right place...'

'A decapitating stroke.'

The tall friend regarded him strangely, as if he'd attempted some witticism.

'Corny,' said Harry, clinking glasses; 'but I'll go.'

seven - wire walking

The company managed 349 worlds of which 216 were category A, meaning they held a more or less fixed orbit about a given star. Moons were excluded for practical purposes. Counted separately. Likewise, asteroids and other bodies whose mass fell below half that of Earth.

Mother's target for worlds was 365, one for each day of the year. A leapyear was equivalent to 364 lightyears, the standard for measuring subspace excursions.

i

Harry woke with tears in the bowls of his eyes. He'd dreamed of endless corridors, countless rooms whose doors had been broken off their hinges, dusty spaces crammed with worm-eaten furniture. In one room he'd clambered laboriously up a stack of tables and sideboards to sit in a creaking armchair at the summit, fighting back a sneeze as he tottered amid cobwebs and paint flakes. He could see the whole room from here, the walls at crazy angles to the ceiling, the floor hidden under layers of mouldy carpet.

It was hopeless. Harry couldn't hold it any longer. He sneezed and the furniture mountain shook, the sideboards parting with the tables to leave the armchair suspended, uplifted by nothing more than swirling, glittering dust.

And then he fell. He fell down an endless corridor into a room whose elongated windows were thrown open to admit the breeze, curtains dancing like summer frocks, beyond the warm womb of space, stars bright jet-plane zippers criss-crossing the pools of his irises. Blue planets, hollow worlds...

Awash in tears, he sniffled.

His skull felt swollen, subtly different. His feet were propped on one arm of the two seat sofa, his shoulders wedged into the other.

Angelo brought him coffee. 'Got any money?'

'Money?'

'Travelling expenses.'

'I thought this was all worked out?'

'It is - but we need to borrow.'

'We?'

Angelo shrugged. 'Us. The agency. Harry, you go where you go uninvited, with no guarantee of success. You've adequate funds to cover the outward journey, from your own pocket? Remember, you're looking to emigrate but you don't trust the brochures. You're a journalist, you want to see things for yourself before deciding where to settle. This is your last big adventure.'

ii

World 162 was Hecuba. Hucuba had nineteen moons.

Uri Evangela staked out his farm using five thousand posts and a tape measure. There was plenty of room. The sheep left tufts of wool on the wire. Uri had a wife named Belinda. Together they sheared and made a child. They called him Ivan after Uri's father. Belinda's father had been called Peter; but the milk turned sour the night of the birth, proving Uri's ghost the stronger.

Peter had been an electrician.

On his way to school one day Ivan got into a fight with a boy twice his size and three years older. He took a beating. But when the victor turned his back young Ivan stabbed him with a screwdriver.

'Hey, Evangela.'

It was Stormy with a plastic sheet.

Ivan leaned on his mop and frowned indulgently. The sheet bore the likeness of a naked woman with spread legs.

'I found it behind a stall,' Stormy told him, excited.

'I've four more passageways,' Ivan grumbled.

'You haven't seen one before?' He held the sheet taut beneath his chin.

'You really are from the backwards, eh? Well, learn something, Evangela. This is all the breakfast you can eat. A wrapper. You fuck it.'

Ivan saw. He pushed his mop.

'I wonder who it belongs to,' mused Stormy, sticking his chest out. 'Got to be worth a few cigarettes.'

'I don't care. Put it back.'

He rounded a corner. Stormy though, ignored his advice.

The deckmaster, Pointsman, let it be known than an unnamed transportee had been found drowned in a toilet. There were, he added, no suspicious circumstances.

That same work period Ivan received a message, a reminder of home. Curious, he made the rendezvous. The boy was a man now and he remembered the little shepherd. A frost grew on his torso, was shaved from his head, which was heavily pitted. Of the two men with him, honed and edged like ploughshares, one twisted a length of string round his whitened fingers while the other stood with his mouth open.

'Good to see you again, Ivan,' said David. 'Small galaxy.'

The string-twister laughed emptily, was silenced. David wished to broaden a conspiracy.

Ivan smiled, having listened. 'You're crazy.'

'Now let's not argue,' the man pleaded. 'I had no idea you were aboard or I would have contacted you sooner. It's not every day you get to link up with a face from the past.

Ivan wanted nothing to do with him. 'You know what will happen? They'll vent the ship, killing everyone. This is a company vessel; we're company fodder.'

The three shook heads. 'So where's the problem? We're dead anyway, or as good as. What do you care about these others? Once we ground, that's it; no second chance, nothing. You want that? You still think my idea's stupid?'

'Yes.'

David blanched. 'I've this scar,' he said. 'It itches. It makes me nervous when it does that. And you know what? It's right. When it itches I know something's up; so I keep my eyes peeled and I'm ready to act.' He gazed around theatrically. 'It's itching now. It hasn't stopped; been gnawing me like a rat since we hauled.'

They walked a short distance, one group among many in the freezone.

'It shouldn't be too hard to start the fire,' David argued, shoulder to shoulder with the shepherd he had once accused of poisoning a horse of his father's. 'It doesn't even have to be big, just smoky enough to create a diversion. Marvin here reckons once the sprinklers are going that will cause sufficient turbulence in the main water system for air to be dragged back through the pipes into the storage tanks. All we have to do is find a way of accessing one or more; preferably one each. That would stretch our chances. The tanks are drained routinely before and after a trip, and that's when we make our move.'

Ivan rubbed his jaw. 'So we hijack the ship,' he said. 'What about fuel? Supposing we live that long, supposing we overcome what remains of the crew - and there might not be any, which means zero life-support - what then?'

David Zeb, whose mother had broken both her legs in a fall shortly before his birth, whose father disliked sheep and fences, who'd cut Uri's wire, rocked his smooth head from side to side.

'We die,' replied Marvin, 'or we live,' mouth closing and opening to accommodate the words.

Ivan thought of Stormy, drowned in a toilet.

He'd stopped for a charge on the road halfway between Flagstaff and Winslow, the garage with a cafeteria, shade and only two other customers. Having ordered coffee, he picked a table and flipped open his map. The window framed a view of the mesa. The cafe doors breezed open a few minutes later and a girl wearing shorts entered. Removing heavy sunglasses she requested a beaker of milk from the counter, surveyed the empty chairs, and sat opposite Ivan.

'Hi.'

'Hello.' The response was automatic. She was attractive, about his age, chewing on the glasses' stems.

Swapping them for a red and blue striped straw, her foot brushed his knee as she crossed her legs.

'Where are you from?' the girl inquired, elbows on the table, her teeth small and even.

Ivan felt himself blush.

'Which planet,' she quizzed, 'did you bring?'

'Bring?' he echoed, closing the map.

She took another drink, the beaker running from white to opaque to clear.

'You must come from somewhere,' she stated, 'and that somewhere is in your head; you brought it with you.'

He glanced at the exit, feeling Arizona, Earth, was an uncomfortable place to visit.

'Okay, you don't have to tell me.' She slotted the chewed stems behind her ears.

Standing, Ivan made to leave.

'Where are you headed?'

He paused. 'Albuquerque.'

'That's a long drive. You going to enlist?'

'Yes. I mean, I already did.'

'I'm going to Albuquerque, too. You can give me a lift.'

'Don't you have a car?'

'No.'

'Well how did you get here?'

'I hitched.'

'Isn't that dangerous?'

She finished her milk. 'Only if you ride with the wrong people. But you seem okay.'

Ivan turned and walked between the tables to the doors, expecting her to follow. She obviously knew what she was doing. He looked like a safe bet.

But she didn't move from her seat.

'Is it okay?' she asked, suddenly less intimidating, her voice higher.

The two other customers, a man and a woman, cast hollow glances in her direction.

He nodded and held the door open.

She said her name was Beth. 'I had a floor job in Vegas, but I quit when my mother got sick.'

'And she lives in Albuquerque?' Ivan's confidence was growing; he was getting the hang of this. He hadn't realized it was such a long journey inland, had wanted to escape the crush of the coast. But he'd time and money to travel and the desert air felt good.

'Right,' said Beth. Then, 'Why'd you do it?'

'Enlist?'

She nodded yes, the wind taking her hair as the car glided over asphalt.

'There was a census, a company ship.'

'And they were recruiting? Where? You didn't tell me.'

'Hecuba.'

'Never heard of it.'

Ivan gritted his teeth. Beth's was the expected response, four words that somehow undermined his past. He swallowed. 'It was either that or sheep,' he told her, hoping not to sound bitter. In fact Uri's farm had never been a success, the wool proving about as durable as the grass. It had killed his father, driving in all those posts.

Evening loomed, so too the New Mexico border. Ivan was tired. Beth offered to take over and let him rest. Dozing in the passenger seat, the wind cooling, he dreamed of a plateau on which stood a tall building entirely faced in glass. Its sides were square and vertical. There were no visible doors or discernible windows. It dominated the tableland. In the glass was reflected the world to the horizon, red-orange and breakfast yellow, distorted peaks and troughs, blades of shadow, the clouds and their images indistinguishable as the building appeared to meld with the silver-blue sky, like a sword penetrating armour of equal brilliance. The dream Ivan walked its perimeter. On the building's far side, which was as equally lit, the edifice casting no shadow, dangling from the glazed heights on ropes that faded to nothing, was a platform, and on the platform stood a tall building entirely faced in glass.

The windscreen caught him, wrapped him in a pneumatic ball as he was flung from his seat. The ball rolled a safe distance with Ivan its suspended foetus, any injuries he may have sustained as a result of the accident given immediate attention. The windscreen's safety sticker displayed his vital signs and medical status, along with insurance endorsements, date, time, speed and legal number of persons in the vehicle. A police flyer arrived within minutes. The police officer took one look at the mess that was the girl and arrested Ivan. Hitch-hiking was illegal in New Mexico. He was charged with manslaughter. Runner Evangela, nineteen years of age.

'That's your name?' The man held a card up before his face, his particulars on it.

'Yes,' confirmed Ivan.

The man's arm retracted. 'What made you drive from LA?'

'I don't know.'

Beth was dead. He knew that. She had been driving. She had hit...what? No-one would fill in the blanks.

'You don't know?' scoffed the man. 'That just about sums it up.'

Ivan tried to sit straight, but it wasn't easy; the chair wasn't designed for successful candidates.

The man breathed deeply. The court had wished to be lenient, but ultimately he was responsible for her death. The fact Ivan had allowed Beth behind the wheel in contradiction of the hire agreement reinforced his guilt. She shouldn't have been in the car in the first place. They cancelled his original contract. He was to have trained in communications, made the grade in three, gained Weekender privileges, a colony slot, his freedom after six. The price of freedom had quadrupled now, however, and Ivan couldn't wait. He'd take his chances with the company's extra-orbital penal system rather than an Earth jail. There was more room in space. He'd walk a different wire, albeit a sharp one.

eight - deathspoint

Pointsman had all the answers. Ivan lounged in a comfortable chair and listened.

'They were desperate men with nothing to lose. You, on the other hand, can work your way out of here.'

Ivan was suspicious. He'd managed to start a fire between two alcohol soaked wads of cloth and the bent open lid of an impacted radiator, but this had produced only thin blue flames and a red light on some operator's console. Cameras tracked him to the rendezvous. By then Ivan had given up any vague belief he had in David's plan. But Zeb was more resourceful than he'd imagined, having employed him as a decoy.

'You're valuable. I'm to look after you.' Pointsman was enjoying these revelations, stalking about the far side of his desk like a Victorian landowner preparing to enter the confidence of a plucky underling.

Ivan felt negative. Total apathy.

But David was betrayed also. Marvin's ideas were the company's.

Marvin was patented.

The air in the wooden shack tasted sweet, a minty tang that rose from the crushed foliage hereabouts. The prisoners, those who were too old or sick to dig, sat in the open air, leaf hats wide and high, composing potpourri. There were a number of stations on this hospitable island, six continents home to proving grounds designed within the closed system of the world to test both men and machinery. Troopers occasionally outnumbered convicts.

'You're smiling, Evangela,' said Pointsman. 'Good. There are questions to answer.'

An interior door opened, hinges squealing, and a muscled individual entered. He stood with one hip pressed against the desk and his arms folded. The face last seen by lucky-scar and white-finger. Slack-mouthed, the automaton.

i

A low technology threshold, a shallow wastage curve, the weaning of subject peoples and the extraction of young lives as tribute.

Company policy.

The penal colony, like countless others, was forced to pay its way. The planet represented an investment of skills forgotten in all but academic circles on Earth. On rainy days hand-stitched umbrellas blossomed, spokes engraved and handles turned. A thousand chess pieces stood ranked with military precision on hardwood shelves, rooks and bishops, kings and porns ready to move through manicured fingers across inlaid boards. Death was a museum, but it worked. Ivan soldered necklaces of fine drawn wire. The prison compound was without any fences save those of forest and the ocean. Neural implants kept the peace, yet even here tolerances were high. Violence was mostly between disciplines and burials did occur. However, induced cretinism was a limiting factor in art.

Ivan read the situation as bizarre. The picture he'd been given, of an open door, hung over his bunk, forcing a measure of his time. The questions Marvin and the deckmaster seemed intent on asking only confused him further. He began to retreat mentally from any scale of hope, wishing no favours of his captors, desiring only to be left alone.

From what he understood of solid-state electronics Ivan had constructed a metal-detector, an automatic pencil-sharpener, a radio and a telephone. The radio was able to pick up broadcasts from the landing station 600 kilometres north, courtesy of a longwave antenna reaching nine metres into the pristine air above his barracks. The music attracted large audiences come evening, when reception was best. His planned use for the telephone, a request line to the station, never got off the ground.

ii

His spade cut satisfactorily, neat incisions through the fibrous loam. The sun was hot, the river water beautifully clear. Ivan smiled and filled his hopper. Nearby a whistler sustained a tune. Shadows wrapped a score of ankles, washed them of sweat and displaced them from calves below the waterline. Men bunched shoulders, gripped shafts, leant weight and sliced. Yes, satisfactorily. An explosion shook the trees and spun branches through the disturbed air. The sound was deafening. He felt his implant quell the panic, but his legs still wanted to run, in a straight line, out of there, quickly. A trustee with a bleached expression tumbled from sky to water, his bloody splash liberating minds to fear. The second explosion was closer, downstream, the loam it cut ragged like destroyed corpses. Ten broke in different directions, men preoccupied with imminence. Ivan hugged the bank a short way then turned into the dense shade of odiferous blue leaves. Behind him, at the water's edge, a third explosion lifted his shattered hopper as far as a clearing fifty metres away. Screams registered for the first time, death noises carried on the backs of stark, crunching echoes...four, five, aimed at the prison station now, tossing barracks, smashing his antenna. He ran faster, the trees thinning, heat-soaked, his feet bare and springy, hardly touching the ground.

Something passed low overhead and he dived for cover. Pressed flat by shockwaves, spine buffeted, he felt the explosions erratically, as if they were detonated at random, to no prescribed attack pattern, to frighten rather than obliterate. In strict military terms, an understated barrage. A similar randomness occupied him, a medley of images, of past explosions, collisions, raw bursts of light. His eyes were leaking when he got to his feet. Wiping his vision he continued, seeing the wreck of buildings ahead, the loss of order, peace, life. Pain slowed him. A thousand men had lived here. A thousand pacified craftsmen, effecting their time and giving attention to objects easily broken. Racks of pots had fallen; copper urns and kettles were holed by bone shrapnel. And he stood in the middle of this, a dumb witness to destruction, as the sounds reverberated and diminished.

Pointsman wandered over, hands in pockets. 'Looks like somebody flipped, eh? Mistook us for a big painted X.'

Ivan said nothing.

'Come on, Marvin's waiting. We've transport; a safe haven eastward.'

He followed. Pointsman heaved open the tail door and ushered him inside a small reconnaissance vehicle. Marvin patted the seat next to him. Did either man or automaton know what was happening? Ivan was undecided. He let the deckmaster strap him in. They drove to the shore and a waiting boat carried them across the sea.

A woman pressed behind his ear and he slept. Blue and white ceilings interchanged. Ivan was on wheels.

He could still hear the explosions. Remembrance of them brought on the pain and the woman frowned, appearing from nowhere to press behind his ear again.

Breakfast floated in milk. Ivan recalled pungent leaves on crystal water. His face dropped into the bowl.

Would they permit him to die? he wondered. Pointsman, he reminded himself, had confessed Ivan's value; hadn't elaborated. Marvin was with him now.

'Welcome,' said the mouth in motion. 'I hope you're comfortable.'

'Me too,' said Runner Evangela. 'What did I do to deserve this?'

'You assassinated a governor,' Marvin told him flatly. 'We're proud of you.'

Ivan pushed himself up on sore elbows. 'You're kidding.'

'You won't remember. Later maybe. But that's one adventure you won't overcome reflexively. Give it time.' The construct paused. 'Sorry,' it added, 'you don't have any. Me neither. Same goes for the entire organisation.'

The explosions softened. He got out of bed, pressed his feet to the floor and rocked on his toes. He was thinking. Out loud he asked, 'What organisation? Is this more company politicking? I've had my share of that already. They set me up...'

'To kill a governor,' finished Marvin. 'It was easy. We're your rescuers. Unfortunately...'

'Unfortunately?' There was a window. He walked over to it and gazed out.

'I can only guess,' the automaton replied. 'It appears likely, however, that a number of disaffected troopers got hold of the local variety.'

Beyond the window was ocean. Fish swam in it. Ivan probed further, restoring momentum. 'Why was I rescued?'

'Revenge.'

'On the company?'

'Yes. They hurt you. They've hurt many of us.'

One fish ate another. Whole. Swallowed it. 'How? I can't feel avenged if I can't remember. You could be lying, simply misleading me.'

Was it such a personal thing?

'But why should we?' answered Marvin. 'You've caused us a lot of trouble.' He shrugged. 'Why should we lie to you?'

Ivan rested his head against the pane and felt it bulge outward. They weren't deep, he figured. He might have been floating face down in a swimming pool, or a toilet. He exchanged that image for one of a tin bath and a kitchen fire.

'I want to go home.'

Marvin shuffled behind him. 'Not possible.'

'And the alternative?'

'There is no alternative, as you must know.'

'There's death,' said Ivan. 'There's a violent end on this planet's surface.'

'There's always that,' Marvin conceded.

'What did they do to my head, the company?'

'They remapped your brain; if I interpret you correctly.'

'They did?'

'Yes. Crudely put.'

'What can I do to them, Marvin?'

The construct was silent.

'Marvin?' He couldn't take his eyes off the fish.

iii

Pointsman had all the answers. Ivan lounged in a comfortable chair and listened.

'You can relax. Nobody knows we're here.'

He didn't believe that and thought it likely Pointsman didn't either.

'The mutiny - if we can call it that - was unforeseen.'

He liked the sound of Oriel; was enjoying this question and answer session. He was eager. Stormy's fate clouded his mind. Ivan tried and failed to dissociate the deckmaster from the crime. But a detail. Lives were details, easily overlooked, or erased. The agency, he knew, was no different from the company in everything but details.

Personnel...

'We plan to turn the situation to our advantage,' he was being told.

'Marvin has volunteered for the assignment.'

Volunteered? A construct?

'He'll accompany you as far as the landing station. The rest, Ivan, is up to you.'

Win or lose, there'll be others. Broken cups and vases. And the map of his brain?

Fishes...swallowed whole...Deathspoint, Deathspoint, the eye of your needle.

iv

'Desperate, Marvin, aren't they?'

Ivan plucked a blue leaf and chewed it.

'Those things will rot your teeth,' the automaton said, moving the heavy gun on his back.

He dragged the long stem between his lips and made sucking noises.

The landing station was to the northwest. After three days the trees, squat and widely spaced, were slowly giving way to taller and taller grasses, orange and red plants like giant, elongated fingers wrapped in the dawn mist. The world was quiet. Marvin snapped a grass stalk and poured its dusty innards onto the back of his hand. He stuck his tongue in the pile, closing his eyes. Grimacing comically, he spat. 'Don't you dare,' he warned Ivan, about to copy, a mound of spores in his upturned palm.

'The local variety?'

'Yes.'

He dumped the mass and slapped his hands together while holding his breath.

By mid-morning, however, the fingers were slowly bending, coaxing, making come-hither gestures that grew increasingly difficult to ignore. They pulled at his clothing, dusted his hair, stuck like fresh marshmallow to his boots and jammed his nostrils. If Marvin was aware of his burgeoning intoxication he didn't show it, shoulders square as he marched. His durability, the construct's built-in immunity to such blended retinal fallacies, aroused the anger until recently stashed at the very bottom of Ivan's emotional pile. He couldn't keep the blunt nose of his machine-pistol from aligning with a spot at the base of Marvin's spine. Ahead, the ground climbed steeply, the horizon a distant straight line. The sun was high, the air cool, humming monotonously as Ivan placed one foot in front of the other. None of the expended energy seemed worth it. He allowed his legs to carry him, that was all. At the incline Marvin halted. Turning to face the shorter man he tugged on a flask, capped it and threw it to Ivan, who let it bounce off his chest.

'Not thirsty?'

His mouth was raw and his stomach contracted.

The automaton grinned sarcastically. 'It's a crazy world, Ivan, a crazy universe. I'll tell you something before you decompose. There are loyalties, and there are priorities. There are humans and non-humans. And people, unlike machines, can't always tell the difference.'

Details, thought Ivan: the company, the agency, equal and opposite forces, symbolic, chaotic divisions. Had Marvin switched sides again? He wanted to shoot him but couldn't. The machine-pistol bobbed, its trigger solid, the open mouth inviting a stream of bullets. He sensed the drug pushing against the elastic window of his consciousness; but the dose was too small, the effects too weak to snap the yielding pane and usher the white-foam ocean upon him. There were bound to be sharks in such warm waters, ferocious creatures with large appetites for destruction. He had experienced their random kills, run from their deathly voices. And no, he couldn't tell the difference. Simplistically, his ignorance told him which side he was on. He swallowed hard and fired.

Marvin staggered back, full of obvious holes, leaking dark blood. The construct's tongue darted uselessly from his astonished mouth. The big gun was levered forward, aimed, and a further chemical process set in motion. But Ivan was lucky, he'd fallen over, paralytic rather than dead, vision tuned to the sky, telephoning a request to God.

He was dirty and tired, Ivan realized. The buzzing had found its way out of his skull and floated off like a moth from a false image of the moon. Stars poked through dense steel clouds. He ached all over, squinting despite the dark as he got his two feet under him and walked. Marvin's holes were barely visible now. The horizon still cut a straight line. Ivan clambered toward it, the slope a lumpy forty degrees, the grasses shorter, benign, passive, as he had been days earlier. Their longer cousins had changed the climber, hardened his wandering soul. Oriel, the dream of it, the reality he strived for, was on his mind like a thumbprint ink-stained on a page. Forget Pointsman. Forget the automaton, the company and the agency, anything he did now was for Evangela, Runner, ex-Runner, sheep farmer and fence erector. The only loyalty he owed was to his father, his mother, and a girl from Albuquerque with the desert wind in her hair. Priorities would come later, topmost the necessity of planet-hopping, world to world, an endless spotlit plain of rolled concrete his immediate stage. It went on forever, the proving ground, reminding him of the mesa, a smoothed tableland then above, now below. Sound moved across it, but not security. Defences were orbital, as there was no perceived threat from the surface. Ivan trudged for about an hour before stopping. Figures, a parked vehicle, a second swinging, driving away. From where he stood he could hear the parked vehicle's radio. The atmosphere was relaxed, the music distant yet loud. Three men sat on the concrete, laughing. A fourth paced round the jeep. Ivan proceeded, the machine-pistol dangling behind, out of sight, his fingers itching for the moment they spotted his advance. He slowed his step the last twenty metres, anxious not to provoke a violent response, calm as he approached, betting on his own reactions to any given situation. And luck.

The men played dice. They were drunk. The man walking in circles waved indifferently, counting each lap, concentrating on his feet. One of the other three tipped his head back. Ivan smiled, got in the jeep and started it. The layout was unfamiliar. He released the handbrake, put the vehicle in gear, stalled, restarted and finally got moving. They shouted then. He nudged aside the circuit man. Gunfire slapped, but they couldn't catch him. The radio blared uninterrupted. Perhaps it was that they were missing, he thought. He drove toward a low building, swerving round a number of metal containers as he neared, the jeep's headlights reflecting only dimly off the obstacles. Skidding to a stop, the engine stalled once more. He jumped out. There was a string of red lights and a circle of green. Someone asked him for a cigarette. A young woman with shining eyes. 'They're inside,' she added.

'Who's inside?'

'The pigs...' She leaned into the jeep and began emptying a host of plastic bottles she found behind the passenger seat.

Harsher light cut round the angles of the door. Ivan slipped his weapon into the crook of his arm and gently pushed it open. Feet dragging, suspended from wooden benches supported either end on metal lockers, were eleven corpses, naked and hanged, some with patched wounds, all painted a garish yellow, the semblance of uniforms, fake medals pinned and cuffs linked with brushstrokes and bruises. Meathooks filled their mouths, exiting facially. As Ivan looked a tongue was uprooted, that corpse dancing, its neck at a weird angle.

Heat drained from his body. The music stopped. He turned to see the woman trip and fall, cracking her head on the hard surface. She'd found a cigarette and broken it, bleeding thinly as she tried to reunite the two ends. One of her shining eyes was extinguished. Ivan shot her. A series of explosions echoed the machine-pistol's brief clatter. The sky lit up, shaking his teeth. Shapes became visible, military flyers and scorched debris, a battle approaching the red and green landing indicators. He ran round the front of the building and on to the next. People milled here, dazed and nervy, a growing panic among them as the noise and light melded above.

Perfect timing, some rational aspect of Ivan stated. The orbital cavalry, perhaps alerted by Marvin to a different task, descended at that moment upon the near deserted station, its former compliment having succumbed and murdered.

It was a limited conflict. They all were.

Pointsman had all the answers save one, Ivan thought, someone else now, feeling the change without necessarily understanding it, filling the space of a previous individual - a passenger in transit, helmet secured, company ID external and verified. He'd have to shake the facade before long. Wouldn't he? Or had something extraordinary manifested? Static in his ears, Ivan wondered at his casual acceptance of other people's escape plans, his nominal objections, of how those schemes were shams that went predictably wrong. It was fate, he decided, taking the easy way out as usual. But fate, like David, like Marvin, had an ulterior motive. Evangela never planned that far ahead. He merely coped, acted, and took the path of least resistance, a survival trait that didn't hold up well to close inspection. One, none the less, which had saved his skin on this occasion.

Luck, chance, call it what you will; it got the ball through the hoop from the craziest of angles.

nine - grandee and rumpelstiltskin

Harry Schroeder reported the theft of his luggage. Strangely, he didn't miss it, like the suitcases no longer belonged to him.

Gravity was high for a company world, a resort stop-over for close to a million tourists. Disclaimers were issued at the port along with pills and sunglasses. The planet boasted previous occupants, an alien civilization whose sandy byways were compacted of desert into regular angles and featureless walls; a city long abandoned, void of clues other than square buildings and oblong terraces. There was an artificial flavour. No sculpture, no images of gods or leaders. Just predictable geometry, blocked streets and regular pavements a snaking six thousand kilometres in length.

The authorities offered sympathy: discount at the Wisconsin Hotel.

The city was too hot to explore other than at night, when its bland arches and flat roofs eerily glowed. From space it resembled a neon sign; irresistible fare, despite the squashing gravity, to the vacationing hordes, and those emigrants whose shipboard routine had left Harry feeling condemned. Hugging a cheap cigar, he dreamed of the cold, the mountains of Peru, of impossible snow and a head on his beer.

The hotel was underground, the room basic, a single inflatable that went some way to cushioning the extra load (artificial gravity being expensive in reverse) and a device for wastes which, thought Harry, required no explanation. He pushed the button and it talked. A single bulb supplied a range of illusions.

Only the beach scene worked.

Lounging, the dredger, the reader of leaked reports, two weeks out from Earth, two weeks in which he'd done a lot of useless thinking, did some more.

Years ago Harry had supposed, naively, that to everyone there manifested an opportunity of strictly take it or leave it proportions, that come his turn he would know intuitively the direction right for him. Sat in his office in Lima, such a day proved illusive. Had he missed out somehow? Was there no warning, no sixth-sense immediacy? He grew wide in a chair dating from the 18th Century, directing news items like traffic, doing a little writing, composing waste-paper balls and tossing them with increasing accuracy into one of several strategically positioned dented steel receptacles, more ready than he knew to succumb to desperation. Then Angelo called. Grumbling, Harry found his way across the Atlantic and into this straight-line expedition...

Speed frightened him. He'd gone from zero to Grandee in fourteen squished days and was practically incontinent. Smoking relived the tension. The air-conditioning rumbled mysteriously. The report had hinted at absolution, as if everything was redeemable. What had transpired on Oriel, what was possible, shifted his bowels in contrary directions. Maturity howled in his ears, had done since Angelo's sofa and the extraction of the envelope, and what maturity said forced Harry to accept this mission. The politics didn't interest him as they might once have done. Even the danger was rationalized. Mother was incidental. None of which he found convincing. Sanity, his body told him, had slipped like space food from his anus.

Schroeder laughed.

The city was a vivid orange, the colour of bad dreams and cheap hotel soap. Harry wandered its streets, buoyed by decisions outmanoeuvred, smoking Wisconsin cigarettes. Gravity was busy sapping the enthusiasm of the majority of tourists. Those that slouched along the flat stone walks and dead straight avenues wore company helium vests, luminous greens and blues and yellows that clashed. There was a concession stand in the hotel where you could hire them, the girl behind it dressed in a comical panoply of false limbs and elastic antennae. People were always on the lookout for aliens, real or imagined. The desert stretched, windless and dry, in every direction with equal monotony, punctuated by the human shapes of the port with its squatting craft, terminal buildings and maintenance sheds. All seemed quiet. The city gave off no residual light, appeared like a flat colour against the black, the boundary distinct, as if hung in space. Light from the port was minimal, deliberately so, which left only the stars. He struck a knuckle off a wall and marvelled at the purple mark it left, quick to fade. Five kilometres at its widest, this peculiar conurbation, reinforcing the analogy of the neon sign. Harry stood at its edge studying a set of glowing footprints impressed in the sand, a stored luminescence made visible through compression. Like the mazing walls, the prints somehow expressed shape while shining inward. He followed the trail, leaving one of his own, his cigarette end a lone spark, a wandering imitator of the alien works. With spit and sand, he discovered, it was possible to manufacture lurid orange snowballs.

He had walked for perhaps ten minutes when the footprints ran out, scuff marks where they ended. It was impossible to see if a person waited, cloaked by night. He sole clue remained the trail.

'Do you think anybody ever lived here?' a woman asked.

Harry glanced back over his shoulder, dropping the hot butt as he did so.

'Anybody?'

'Yes,' she said. 'It's so basic, as if built for ghosts.'

'Maybe they were aesthetically pure,' he suggested, 'and had few if any bodily functions. What are you doing so far from the walls?'

'Watching.'

'Not much to see.'

'No - and you?'

He fumbled in his pocket for cigarettes, needing that reassurance, hoping to get a look at her face. 'I saw your trail. I was curious. Smoke?'

'What do you do?' she quizzed, invisible fingers waving till they touched and slid to the pack.

Harry was uncertain how to answer. Satisfied the woman had taken the offered cigarette he raised the pack to his mouth while his free hand located his lighter.

'Nothing,' he eventually said, speaking round the tube.

His prized Zippo with the naked lady failed to ignite.

'Here,' she said. 'Allow me.'

He squinted, eyes liquid. Sucked. 'Thanks. What's your name, if I may ask?'

No reply. The cool desert was breathless. Grandee was huge and empty, once though noble.

And Harry was alone. He shrugged, pretending equanimity, where in fact he was angry at being deceived. Had the woman multiple limbs and gangling antenna? That was easier to believe. He hadn't imagined her, he was sure. The cigarette burned. He held onto it, puffing wildly, making a conscious effort not to look down, afraid of how many sets of prints he might see. Cursing, he returned to the hotel. Crushed in the inflatable midst the beach scene flicker of an enfeebled bulb, wastes disposed and stomach tight, he tried unsuccessfully to sleep. Tomorrow would bring long queues and short patience, a robot ship, this plague of complaining, passive emigrants making way for another, one as dumb and fascinated, crowding the concession stand and dragging gas-filled Mae Wests over heads not dissimilar in content, a noisy herd of would-be sightseers only a handful of whom would have the energy to promenade.

Tomorrow that ship would take him to Harbour 17.

The door resounded.

'Who's there?' Harry bellowed.

No reply. The bulb swelled and the beach whitened. Groaning, he rose to answer.

Two suitcases in the spartan corridor.

He got behind and pushed.

i

The report talked of albumen and tumours. There were several case studies, all inconclusive if not incomplete. It was a game the company played, he remembered thinking, the picking of teams from among itself: goals might be scored either end without affecting the result.

Drunk on a yawbus, Harry pictured Angelo, nervous with matches, keen to set fire to the report the moment he'd digested it. There were reasons to question its authenticity. He hadn't brought them up. Angelo appeared reluctant to discuss the prospect of a red herring. Too much had been risked. The agency, as he termed it, had called the company's bluff.

None of which mattered to Harry. There was a detour, an additional port of call between Grandee and the harbour crossing-point. Rumpelstiltskin had entered the lists, muscling astride its orbit, its star a white blip.

ii

He was no longer sure of his identity. A momentary panic surged; the name repeated. 'Matheson!'

'Coming...' He dropped to the deck, loped to the office with his hands in his pockets, convinced they glowed red.

'Matheson!' the voice raged from his collar.

The stockyard was deserted. Even the strutting rooster was missing. That meant one thing, the imminent sterilization of pens and loading equipment. Ivan glanced up at the dome part shuttered, the intense white light soon to go unfiltered.

'Matheson!'

He shoved the door open. 'Yeah?'

Corning feigned absentmindedness.

'You wanted to see me, sir?'

The old man nodded and tipped from his chair. 'There's a company vessel headed here. I need you to slaughter some cattle. A hundred ought to do it.'

Ivan was bewildered. Corning had recently supervised the transportation of his entire mature stock. The only beef left was either gluey-eyed or pregnant.

'Matheson.'

'Mr Corning?'

'You're still here.'

'That's right, sir; you...'

'Don't lie to me, son. I've checked on you. You have no background. You're a fugitive out of some company resort that went blind - and I'd like you out of the way. See?'

He didn't. Advice or a warning?

'Did you ever shear a sheep, Matheson?'

Ivan smiled. 'Yes, sir.'

'Then you'll know they can bite.'

He got the message. Corning was a rare individual, a dogged entrepreneur with connections higher up the pile. He had money and a sound disrespect for company plutocrats. He had enemies; was tired and ancient, the sole owner of a planetoid whose business was the raising on the hoof of genuine longhorn meat. The steel fabricated stockyard could hold five hundred of the giants at a time. Right now he was wafting Ivan away with the back of his hand.

'Go hide, cowboy, go hide.'

Ivan did just that.

Coasting, he allowed the grass to unroll, the glider to nudge the scenery. Since escaping Deathspoint he had changed his identity more than once, moulding his body and features to another's, that other subsumed, their identity captive. He'd a talent for it. He usurped. He occupied, accepting it without question, this disturbing ability to physically flow. In orbit a commander had shaken his hand, slapped him on the back. Removing his helmet he found others recognized his face, that of a stranger to Ivan, reflected in his visor an unknown. And now he was Matheson, a cowboy he'd murdered in transit, seagulls on his shirt and blues in his ears on a hospitality barge circling Arcturus. Matheson was a drifter, a backworlds skinflake. Unlike Ivan he had never been to Earth. Killing him was easy; the easy part of it. His existence, the blood on his hands though, was indelible. Guilt? Survival. Yet he was restless, haunted. Oriel poisoned his mind. The planet had become like a person, his tormentor. More than a destination, he wanted to go there and possess its soul...

Rust-cows dotted the landscape, machines that marshalled and doctored the livestock. Ivan's job was to oversee their maintenance, a task Corning had previously carried out, running the ranch, as he termed it, singlehandedly. But those days were over. The old man was no longer physically able to operate the planetoid on his own. He had enjoyed the temporal isolation of these cavernous halls for decades, building a breeding programme that was capable of showing a profit. It would be simple for Ivan to take control. He liked Corning, however. He was reminded of his father, his stubbornness in the face of adversity, his absolute commitment to property. Such qualities were not Ivan's. For him there were too many possibilities. With Corning's powers waning, the company wolves were already marking up the carcass for butchering.

A ship was due here. For that purpose?

He landed. Climbing out he listened for static. Nothing, the channel closed. It puzzled him why Corning had sent him away. No problems down here. Was he plotting something? Ivan got back in the glider. What his boss had said, about him being a fugitive - guesswork? Manoeuvres in yet another escape plan? The glider turned complainingly, stalled, hit the ground and rattled its pilot, who vaulted clear and started walking, sure in the knowledge of the craft's disobedience. What he had become involved in threw cold water over rational thought. He shivered. It was six kilometres to the wall and he supposed he was lucky as any serious cowpokery might have exaggerated the distance, allowing the old man every opportunity to implement a spectacular exit. He couldn't say how he knew. It was intuitive. The facts pointed that way. Corning was psychotic. Ivan also.

Kicking through the rough grass he approached a rust-cow motionless on a rise, flesh and blood cattle munching below. The Angus were square and bald, their horns arrayed like cacti, retained to scratch and pacify. The rust-cow was suspended on a magnetic thread from the cloud-obscured cavern ceiling, spinning slowly to face him as he trudged toward it, needing transport. He prised open a panel and stood back. The machine would not leave its charges without some short-circuiting and inside glittered the engine, a hub surrounded by wires and light, the cow's electric heart and functional satellites, crudely bundled and taped. Corning had adapted the machines from bumper cars and still referred to them by their original numbers, fading numerals on battered casings. This was 28. Ivan had no tools with him. All the cows watched. But they always did. It took some getting used to, that and the network of veins in their stout necks, a map showing where to cut. He ignored the bovine stares and fumbled, shocking himself, causing a smoky outburst and a cough. The rust-cow dropped several centimetres then righted itself. He clambered on, sliced his hand through the invisible cord holding the machine up and it shot forward ten metres, nearly throwing him off. The cattle shook their heads and started to follow. Ivan gripped with his knees, whitened four fingers on the casing and whipped his free hand through the cord again, back and forth as the quiet air streamed over his gaunt features. Shortly after, with the grey wall in sight he ceased the motion and prepared to jump. The rust-cow decelerated slowly, bringing him closer as the grass blurred and hissed. Ivan scanned the rough vertical horizon for a door. Spotting one to his left he gritted his teeth and began to slide off the machine's rear, feet incising tramlines in the virgin pasture, ankles raw and hot. The distance was difficult to judge with any accuracy. He let go, hit and rolled, right leg jammed under his body. The clouds spun in a louring blue vortex. The ground was suddenly full of rocks. He sat, blood dribbling on his shirt, but otherwise he was okay. A low thumping explosion jolted him and he turned to see a black scorch mark on the wall a hundred metres away. The door had disappeared completely. He stood. Wiping his nose on his shoulder he walked leftward until the door showed itself again, the lights of the stairs beyond cool and yellow.

It was a long climb. The lights dimmed as he ascended. Power drained for priority use. The company ship was nearing, he surmised, edging into realspace along the star's appointed curve and looping in toward the ranch.

And Corning? He began to run, ribs soon biting guts. The lights dimmed further to red.

The doors were locked. What was the old man playing at?

Ivan slumped, his back to a hermetic seal. He'd wait and find out.

iii

This haze was mystifying. Harry fumbled uselessly at the heavy lenses someone had strapped round his head. Finding nothing, his environment actual, he lurched erect and was grabbed by one wrist, a steadying motion that snapped his eyes into sharp focus.

The old man had a white beard and a cane. Harry ordered a drink.

'No booze,' whitebeard said. Then, 'What's your name, son?'

He unfocussed again. 'Harry...'

His hand was shook. 'Thank her for me, will you, Harry?'

'Who?'

Laughter. His back was slapped. 'The lady!'

'Oh, right.'

Furniture manifested, solids and colours swinging in his skull like crane jibs.

An idea happened. 'How'd I get here?'

The old man looked like God.

Harry remembered something from childhood. In six days God had created the Earth, and on the seventh dropped it.

'See the bird, Harry?'

Harry did. A lake of steel separated.

The old man said, 'Fine.' He winked jovially.

The cockerel led him across the glare, a pounding brilliance against which the bird trotted confidently, feathered brown and gold, silver flecks in its folded wings. For a moment he was in a dusty farmyard in Peru, the guest of honour chasing a plump fowl for the pot. The bird clucked, flapping as he lunged. Landing atop a raised section, a metre wide dais, it stared at Harry, menacing him with its beak. He let his tongue loll and sidled closer, bent at the waist like a man about to tickle a fish. The rooster spread its wings and the dais rose to reveal an entrance cut from the tubular block.

God was at his shoulder, creasing his moustache.

'Down you go,' he said.

iv

From the gallery it was possible to view a sizeable chunk of Corning's ranch. Grassland mellowed into a pastel distance, highlighted by waters, spidery threads. Cattle were pale dots, indistinguishable in the singular, arranged in groups of between five and fifty, a rust-cow attending, wet-nursing and electro-gunning tailored hormone shots. The interior of the planetoid was beautiful; more so than his memory of Hucuba. Here the only sheep were in Corning's imagination.

Of the three adjoining galleries one housed a glider and another a workshop stacked with parts. The glider was ancient and missing its engine, perhaps used in an earlier repair to the craft Ivan had been forced to abandon. He was thinking of an exit across the green space, an alternative route to the radiation blasted surface. Not having taken it into his head to more thoroughly explore the cavern's nether reaches galled him now such knowledge was of possible value. His options were limited, and he had no way of knowing how the company might react to any tricks the old man had up his sleeve. The future, as Ivan read it, had always been unpredictable. That was okay. What angered him was a lack of means to combat it.

Some activity stirred the omnipresent clouds.

Rain leaked to the meadow. And a grey capsule.

Ivan watched with interest, not having seen such a thing before. The ranch held many surprises, most with ready explanations. The steel pens in the stockyard, for instance; weighty, expensive constructions necessary to survive the stellar radiation the area was routinely subject to.

The capsule drifted groundward fifty metres from the wall. Cushioned by magnetism it bumped and rolled gently in the wet grass.

Ivan, still aching from his fall, took off for the stair and the cavern. He ran through the rain, soaked and gasping, nearly tripping over the man newly descended from the heavens like an angel.

Harry, hearing someone approach, tensed involuntarily, suddenly desperate to empty his bladder. The rain struck him with a benign ferocity, a break in it as a man leaned across, hands on knees. Neither spoke for several seconds, out of breath for different reasons.

'You came from above,' Ivan stated eventually.

'I did?' Harry replied. 'Yes. I did.'

'What's happening up there? Are you from the ship?'

Harry nipped his eyes. The haze washed from his features onto his surroundings. 'Gorgo 9, en route to Blister City...'

Ivan straightened, dripping.

'Who was the man with the beard?'

'Corning. This is his.' He spread his hands.

Harry shrugged, supine.

'What's happening up there?' Ivan repeated.

'I have no idea. A steward came for me; took my luggage. I was dead drunk.'

The rain slackened.

'Were you meant to disembark here?'

'No. Harbour 17. I thought this was it.'

Ivan's head was shaking. 'The old man, Corning, there's something between him and the company. Did you bring your luggage with you? Ground it?'

Harry squeezed his eyes shut once more. 'Yes.'

'Are you sure?'

'As near as certain. The steward loaded it onto the wagon. After that...'

'Bingo.'

'A conspiracy?'

'They're everywhere.'

'I'd noticed. Who are you?'

'Ivan.'

'Harry. Is there a toilet round here?'

'You're on it.'

Ivan wandered. He rolled the capsule with his foot while Harry divided the grass at his newly planted feet. The dredger zipped his fly and pawed for cigarettes. Ivan dug a nail in his chin.

'Is there some way out of here?'

'I'm working on it.'

'You know, you seem familiar.'

That caused his brow to crease. Was Matheson known after all? Would he have to kill this person?

'I doubt we've met.'

'Me too. But the universe has been surprising me lately. Your Mr Corning, for example.'

'Corning?'

'Yeah - I thought he was God.'

'Raising cattle?' answered Ivan without blinking. The fat man was delirious.

'Is that what this place is?'

Ivan nodded.

'That settles it,' said Harry, lighting tobacco. The smoke coiled weirdly, barely rising.

'The gravity,' Ivan told him. 'Like the weather: fickle.'

Harry sucked on his cigarette, understanding little.

'Have you any idea what might have been in your luggage? An inducer of some kind?'

'You know about these things?' Belatedly, his mind had begun ticking.

'Some. Corning's dying. It wouldn't take much to drop this rock into the sun. Anything to keep it from the company.'

'God's a paranoid?'

'Certainly.' Ivan folded his arms, unsure of the man, how to handle him.

'The worst kind, a rationalist. But I don't think he could destroy his life's work. Or hand it over.'

'That narrows his options,' Harry said. 'He might take out the ship. But there'd be others.'

'Would there?'

It was Harry's turn to muse uncomfortably. He decided not to tell Ivan about his suitcases going missing on Grandee. That would make him look foolish. And Ivan frightened him. Whatever Corning's intentions, or for that matter the company's, Harry was no nearer Oriel.

The cowboy slicked back his hair, shook the water from his hands as a rumble passed through the clouds.

'I've run out of questions I need answers for,' Harry stated, fingering the Zippo in his pocket. 'I have to get back to the ship, regardless.'

'Sure,' the man responded. 'Go ahead.'

Harry inflated his cheeks and began walking briskly toward the wall and the exit he'd spotted there. Dizziness echoed in his brain and his eyes stung. He pressed on, hit the stairs and spiralled into red lights that turned yellow. At the top were corridors, ingresses rimmed, sealed, colours fading as he approached. A shrill alarm permeated the steel and the lights dazzled momentarily, as if at a power surge, then as quickly softened. He let out his breath, crushed his cigarette end against the smooth outline of a door, which opened automatically. A tunnel widened, the metal beyond lifting steam, partly shaded. Harry passed along the tunnel feeling the raw heat on his face. The soles of his shoes made sucking noises on the cooling surface. He looked around for Corning.

Everything was folded away. Afraid to stand in one place too long in case his shoes melted, he wandered in circles, staring up through the dome in the hope of catching sight of the Gorgo 9. Its silhouette was absent, but the yawbus might easily be obscured as his vision was limited to thirty or forty degrees by the shutters. A noise distracted him. Pushing from the still hot floor was a clear-walled structure, furniture inside, a hat-stand toppled, papers strewn as if by a gust of wind. Slumped in a sprung chair behind a desk was the old man with the white beard.

Harry crossed over. Corning was smiling resplendently, silver stars in his eyes, toying with a pile of coins, burnished gold and copper hues between his dextrous fingers. He looked fifty years younger than Harry's blurred memory of him. The divinity had undergone metamorphosis.

'Radiation' said God, his chair squeaking as Harry entered the office. 'Wonderful stuff.'

'Is it safe?'

'Of course. The rock soaks it up. Little residue.'

Harry frowned. 'Ivan seemed convinced you were about to attempt something drastic.'

'Ivan?'

Harry was baffled. He'd tread carefully. His head pounded. 'Your ranch hand. I met him below.'

'So that's his name. I'd wondered. Don't turn your back on him. Remember that, okay?'

'Okay...'

Silence lingered. Harry tried to spot his luggage. Ivan emerged from the tunnel two hundred metres away across a lake of shimmering steel. He strode purposefully, a man with a mission; his mind made up, now prepared to act.

Corning glanced over. 'He's learning,' the rejuvenated meat baron whispered, coins clicking.

Harry couldn't stand it. He was trembling by the time the cowboy made it to the door, steam rising from his shirt and idling flatly, the planetoid's gravity augmented magnetically, the air thickest two metres above the ground.

'Matheson.'

'Sir.'

'I hope your trip wasn't too great an inconvenience.'

They stared at each other with physical force. Harry felt sandwiched, crushed to insignificance.

'If you'd like to settle with me, sir, I'll be on my way.'

'Oriel?'

Harry's heart stumbled. His mouth fell open.

Ivan swung his stare aside briefly before fixing once more on Corning.

'Yes,' he answered.

'I wish I could go with you. I've unfinished business, alas, which precludes that design. Another time, perhaps. The wagon's due any minute.'

'From the ship?' Harry blurted.

'Where else?' said Corning. 'You didn't think I'd leave you stranded. On the contrary, as a gentleman I pride myself on my hospitality.'

The atmosphere became more uncomfortable. Harry, drying out, sweated buckets. He failed to apprehend the situation. Ivan or Matheson or whoever he was stood with his hands meshed, a grave realization in his sullen expression, while Corning amused himself turning coins through his fingers, the knuckles of which might have been deliberately shaped for such an idle purpose.

'And my suitcases?'

v

Blister City.

The galactic hub. Harbour 17. All change.

Rumpelstiltskin left a stain, a tide-mark on his consciousness. It was no good trying to wash if off. What had transpired amounted to a lot of fishy clues wrapped in old newspaper, a package his heart was willing to unravel, if only his stomach would stop gagging. The fact God and the cowboy knew of Oriel disturbed Harry greatly, more than what had passed between them in Corning's office, Ivan leaning on the door jamb, the rancher slumped in his sprung chair like a patient who had knocked his doctor on the head and stolen his clothing.

And Ivan was travelling to Oriel.

Why? Of all the questions Harry wasn't asking that proved the most stubborn. Any answer he conjured from the vortex of his ratiocination only added to the problem. To deduce C from A and B required an act of faith suspect in the extreme, like believing Corning really was God and not some company draftee scripted for the occasion. In a universe where it was vital not to trust anyone, Corning was a prime candidate for neat disposal. On returning to the ship the same steward who had loaded his suitcases unloaded them (it) again, explaining the mistake and that they (it) had remained aboard the wagon the whole time. Harry didn't argue. He searched through his belongings in the remaining case, tempted to dump everything down a waste chute, keeping only the clothes he stood in. But relented. Like in his dream, he had journeyed beyond the window.

Ivan had boarded the wagon and vanished. He put him out of his mind as Harbour 17 loomed impressively, a fiesta of lights that multiplied exponentially. Glad to be leaving the yawbus he first checked with the bank handling his finances. The amount of transferable company stock he'd started with had been reduced by over two thirds, mostly in barrier taxes, the company fixing the price of essentials at near zero and then taxing their use on a rising scale that varied according to which zone you wished passage. The farther you travelled, the cheaper it was for the company. Thus did expansionism, ever centralized, routinely neglect a large number of planets, even rediscovering a few by accident. Outside of direct company utilization, busses like worlds, simply continued in the direction they were headed. More were constructed, orbiting Neptune like gimbals, while their robot predecessors voyaged on into deepest nothing.

It was certain no company vessel would take him to Oriel. The planet was restricted. He would have to barter a crossing, hire some junket. Here, at the hub, that ought not to prove difficult. But could he afford the fare? Angelo, together with his organisation, had from the outset deprived him of useful contacts. The agency had, quite intentionally, left him out on a limb. How many others, he wondered, found themselves in similar predicaments?

The face of Ivan floated menacingly...

The air was loaded with bromides, sweetened artificially. Violence, he guessed, was sporadic. Explosive, too. Bottled air, though free to residents, was available to transients at a premium, and for such a high a majority of emigrants would queue.

Not Harry. He signed a tenancy, a cheap bulb with a black view, where the gravity was metered and the power alternate hours. He ate from squashpacks, wandered the smaller quays, observing the to and fro of rushbaskets, patched and blown and salvaged, painted blue over green, yellow over blue, red over yellow like exotic bees. Only a junkie would take him to Oriel. A person whose name he didn't yet know.

Harry trudged, eyeing hatches. He wasn't permitted to smoke in his room. Hub tobacco was artful, creeping up on you like a monkey in a zoo. Someone offered to buy his Zippo with the naked lady. The price was incredible, but he wasn't selling. Rumour tracked the flame-marked wharves and the dredger employed skills he'd thought lost to his office in Lima.

A tall man waved him over and they struck a deal

third: emergent world

ten - passengers

The sea was blue and deep. He fished these waters, casting nets woven of chewed bark and sewn using wooden needles. The fish that were his labour, silver and winged, darted like shooting-stars, swift and evasive as they matched their skill with his.

Noon. The sun rode high, its light dancing off ring fragments in the upper atmosphere, streaking rainbow hues. The ring itself was barely visible, thin and opaque, a pale ribbon among clouds like spring blossom, gravid with the promise of fruit.

He'd been out since dawn and caught nothing.

The fish swam deep, following the current. The surface was placid and his nets empty. The tree lay beyond the eastern horizon, the axle of its trunk out of sight. Never had he sailed so far. Concern grew inside him, the proximity of his green home affirmation of a life until recently blessed, a time spent in the company of his family, now dead. A past time, as older memories tainted his breath: a woman's face that was not his wife's. A woman's cries echoing in his heart since the day he'd speared a golden fish. A messenger from the dead.

His people of the tree said he brought disease among them and called for his banishment. They chased him to the lowest branches. Only his father defended him, arguing his son's ignorance, his innocence in landing such a catch. But the sea punished them, they said. Why had he not thrown it back?

And the message? He'd eaten the fish to find out. It stirred in his belly yet, the words slowly loosening, ascending like bubbles to fill his mouth, flood his mind, confuse his thoughts and swell his tongue. There was that woman's image, pale and beautiful, and the knowledge of land, a place he had been and a place he had to go.

He turned the boat now, an urgency in his fingers as they tied and untied. Sweat ran from his brow. Salt flavoured his lips. The sail flapped uselessly a moment before humming tautly, contentedly on the breeze. The sea rolled under the keel under his feet. The wood of mast and deck sighed longingly, glad to be headed home, the thick mantle of the tree soon visible on the horizon. A lush crown of bark and leaves it rose like a green moon, his island world, a provider of life and shelter from which he was becoming estranged.

He remembered swimming through its branches, his entanglement in its many limbs and his discovery of pockets of air and light. He remembered flying. Another boat...

The silence of depth and the hue of luminous tape.

Franky Heidelberg. It was her voice in his head, distant and lulling, steering him...where? South?

The wind strengthened, hastening his return, and yet it was toward evening when he cast his rope to the waiting sail-maker, his smile grotesque on a quay broad and uneven. Stumps rose vertically, the oldest cut for masts, the youngest for oars. The sea frothed with human litter. He jumped ashore, caught the sail-maker's hand, found it clammy. To his left the tree filled the sky. Lanterns were hung, burning sap. It was magnificent, he thought, glorious and dying. The quay was a massive horizontal limb, part submerged, one of hundreds radiating out from a trunk many thousands of armlengths in circumference, rooted deep below.

Schilling wiped his palm on the hammered bark leg of his trousers.

i

Hey, Zon, look in the mirror.

Recognize anybody?

'We were like this,' she said, crossing two fingers. 'We were so different we had no trouble understanding each other. She was strong and quiet; I was in need of constant reassurance. She cut tomatoes laterally and I cut them through the stalk. But we always met in the middle.'

'So what happened?' asked her reflection, head to one side, lip folded.

Zonda closed her eyes, frightened of the answer, the truth she'd arrived at after weeks - months? - of nail-bitten deliberation.

'Oh, she was stolen.'

'Who took her?'

She opened her eyes, saw them sparkle, wet with tears. 'The god of the underworld,' she replied.

'Where is she now?'

'I'm not sure. I mean, sometimes she's near, like next to me, and sometimes she's far away. So far away I forget her.'

'But you want to remember, right?'

Zonda wasn't sure. 'Maybe.'

'But you want to remember, right?'

'I don't know! She left me. We were friends and she left me. I thought she was dead. They wouldn't let me in to see her. But she wasn't there, where I thought she was. He'd taken her, whisked her off like some fairytale princess.'

'And you're bitter.'

'Yes! Yes - guilty, ashamed, jealous. I don't know. We were like this,' she said, crossing two fingers. 'I loved her.'

'How much?'

'Enough to want to forget. And quickly.'

'So, what did you do?'

Zonda paused.

'Zonda?'

Would the mirror crack if she lied? She dared not risk it.

'Nothing.'

'You were confused.'

'I was scared.'

'You had no option. Your hands were tied. They wouldn't let you in to see her.'

'I knew in my heart she was gone. Not dead; just gone.'

'Still, you buried her...'

'Yes.'

'And now you want to dig her up again. That might not be such a good idea.'

She turned her back on the mirror. 'If I want your advice I'll ask for it, thank-you.'

There had to be ways, more ways than she could imagine.

A note from Issac lay on the breakfast table. The ink had faded.

And now the house they shared was dissolving.

Out of mind, out of range, the house Waters built had begun to crumble. She might try and restore it, shore it up temporarily, but she lacked his talent.

Windows evaporated. The ceiling drooped. Tiles lifted and curled like wakened moths on the roof.

She'd fixed a leaky tap but failed to redecorate the kitchen. Zonda was clumsy, too direct, whereas Issac, beard trimmed and goggles seated, was adroit, a natural.

Returning to the mirror, its outline softened, she unhooked the frame, smiled at the glass smiling at her, and before it could melt, smashed it.

ii

Dead. It was inevitable. The tree would reclaim them, salvage their materials. Only he and the aged sail-maker remained, the latter sick, here to blame, like a kicked dog at his heels, coughing and spitting phlegm that hung on leaves, reminding him of chrysalides, the eggs and pupa of insects. Only the tree was unaffected. Its permanence dominated. Both himself and the corpses were transient, migrating birds nesting in its luxurious mantle, what damage they caused easily rectified.

Schilling imagined the dead bodies becoming hollow, their juices recycled, husks raised on the wind and scattered like seed pods across the ocean. To float or sink, and perhaps found new colonies. Was that how it worked? He scratched his head in disbelief.

Night fell. He wondered how Johnson was faring, the pilot he'd last seen aboard the Base 2 hover. Inevitably, Ruby Joplinski stirred his mental ether. The manipulative Weekender. Did such titles exist anymore? Did they matter? It amused Schilling to toy with thoughts, emotions, memories, all with one thing in common, in that they were trapped, part of an earlier stratum, belonging to an archaeology discredited and bizarre, a past time whose earth mounds he might chip at without fear of lost privileges, undesirable postings or vanished friends. Still, deep in his psychic library was a weighty tome, his Book Of Revenge.

He yanked loose the rope from its mooring, the boat where he had left it at the quay. The sail-maker crawled behind him. Schilling felt pity, disgust, a mixture of love and hate that cancelled out, leaving only a thin residue of surety.

They were dead. He was living.

It was cool and dark, summer, the ocean calm, the sail pulling, the ring a silver arch, the last great spar of a once magnificent ceiling. He steered as if to pass under it, this gateway to another world, toward a southern continent remodelled by snow and tide. He wondered what he might find on that shore.

Schilling patted his stomach, feeling the fish turn inside. He bound the rudder and lay hands behind head. The land was a dream, a place of ghosts and abandoned company furniture. Exotic funfair rides.

iii

Ekland hunted a land-whale minus a trigger. He rode as a passenger in an Ologist's head.

Bluecap, thinking himself an ogre, stalked the huge dumb creature with a keen eye and a sharp appetite.

The forest was dull. Motes of dust, sundry insects turned languid circles, racing to see who was slowest, floating in bars of yellow illumination.

Disturbed by the passage of hands and feet, they were drawn into patient lungs, spun dizzily and ejected.

Irdad struggled to light a cigarette. His matches were damp.

Ekland, in his chair, flung his arms out, arched his chest with a loud crack, dragged his heels off the table and stretched. Reluctantly, he left the image-converter and its panchromatic scenery, a real-life drama of alien backdrops. He strode into a corridor beneath a crumpled ceiling of roots. Irdad had never reached Base 1, his role as fly-on-the-wall overtaken by events. Joplinski had raged, calmed, then dismissed the Ologist as incidental, a dead end, of no further consequence. But his secret eye remained. And Ekland got a kick out of it, the fantasy crazed bluecap had invented for himself.

Ruby still intended to go ahead with the raid. Disorganization among the former company employees held him up. There was a rush of defections, Runners and Weekenders alike. Of those occupying the mountain about 400 might be described as loyalists, men and women whose allegiance was like that of salamanders to a mandrake. They wanted heat to bask in and Ruby could oblige. Ruby was a volcano, the soul of this mountain, and a month after the storm he was ready to strike. Ekland, in his position as first lieutenant, felt strangely left out. He'd disposed of his flame-coloured scarf. Increasingly, he viewed the planned attack on Base 1 as ludicrous, less a military operation than a tantrum, with hundreds of fanatical commandos squeezed like canned fruit into a handful of shaky flyers, planes now in worse repair than their pilots, as the ground-crews had become indifferent, dangerous even, the coming attraction loaded with gunware and seething frost-lipped individuals whose rationales were strictly biological.

They had a lust for destruction, for violent assault and premeditated action, a trait they shared with Joplinski. It remained to be seen what awaited their arrival, whether this war would be fought by more than one side. Ekland reached and knocked on the iron door of Ruby's office, noticing the fast accumulation of rust on hinges. A voice boomed from within, a bolt slid back and the door opened.

'Ah,' said Joplinski, standing, nodding to the others in the candlelit space. 'Now we can begin.' He smiled, indicated the vacant chair.

Ekland sat, shuffling uncomfortably. They all had that far away expression, he thought. And Ruby, his lips were fat and swollen, his features heightened, hands arrayed, fingers tines, the cutlery of delusion.

Breaths were being held. Ekland let his out through his nose.

'There is a traitor among us,' said the firelord.

Silence filled the room. Then dark.

The iron door groaned, admitting...

He'd begun to tremble, Ruby's bloated eyes swinging toward him in the new light.

The cracking of knuckles. An explosion.

iv

Sunrise touched the land, picking out rugged features, cliffs steep and fractured, no obvious beach. Schilling lowered the sail, heaved the long oars over the sides and rowed. The promontory climbed forty metres straight from the water, a sheer wall of igneous rock that belied its age, thousands of years of weathering, attrition, discolouration mimicked in just a few weeks. He rowed steadily eastward, casting glances over his shoulder as the sun warmed his back. Gulls regaled him from ledges, their chatter seemingly for his benefit, the continent whose precipitous edge they guarded much changed from the bare dusty terrain he had fleetingly known. The promontory itself was larger, an island separated from by a tongue of sea Schilling glimpsed now two or three kilometres south. It was unlikely anything of the base remained; or if so, the evidence was locked underground. The sun lent greater definition to the island's eastern shore, highlighting a number of possible harbours, the first a shallow bay where he was able to ship oars, and sliding over the side, physically steer the boat in toward a defensive clutter of boulders. Beyond these a pebbled strand inclined sharply, abutting the cliff wall, dark and shiny with salt water, tufted by moss and a nameless selection of wildflowers.

Schilling walked barefoot on the strand and dragged the boat from the shallows, crunching its keel. He took the rope from the prow and made it fast, next clambering on board to detach and fold the sail, which he slung across his back before finally scrabbling ashore. His feet were careful on the unfamiliar surface, as yet attuned to bark, his memories of an earlier life slow to filter through. He glanced at the boat once, smiled, then set his mind to the task of ascending this nascent escarpment.

A light drizzle began to fall and the temperature dropped noticeably, gauzing his breath against the stone as he eased himself higher, searching out footholds. Soil, windblown over days rather than decades, packing crevices prised open by the action of hypothetical freeze-thaw, trickled down the rockface, unseating the dried husks of insects. The detail was impressive, he thought. It would not have surprised him to find rusted drinks cans on the shore, condoms and other debris flushed from passing liners; perhaps a picnic site above, seats and trestles and huge plastic umbrellas. He laughed inwardly, concentrating, securing passage with his hands. Half way up the cliff the wind suddenly grabbed at him, the air boasting talons. His heart skipped. He clung steadfastly and waited for the squall to pass. Something buzzed close to his right ear. There was a cooking smell. Once more composed, he unstuck himself, tipped his head back and continued. The cracks grew wider, the climb easier, Schilling grateful for the respite, soon hooking an elbow and raising his chin above the first step of a complex ledge of brittle angles. Knees followed. He stood, emptied his lungs dramatically, surveyed the land before him, thick with gorse, undulating, the ruin of a castle jutting like the crashed tail section of a solid-fuel rocket.

Smoke hung over the crumbling wall, betraying the fire beyond. He was apprehensive. The cooking smell failed to reassure. His mouth was dry as he neared, treading stealthily through the stiff grass and stunted bracken. In the distance was a line of crooked trees. The castle looked centuries old, perhaps once a simple tower, a frontier post of the imagination. The mechanics of the planet's renewal, its chemistry and brief timescale, was bewildering. Proof of it abounded, what he was seeing able to be traced to Oriel's unsteady roof, that icy grille many an Ologist had claimed to be artificial, not a natural phenomenon, but the work of an absent landlord. A deliberate barrier, like an ingress boarded against squatters. Whatever the facts, he was on the inside. The company had claimed the property - leased it, maybe. And then disaster had struck, exposing the surface to the full throes of a sun not orange but yellow, baking, distilling, sculpting land and sea, fashioning a substitute world in the guise of water-colour memories and potsherd images leeched from unsuspecting, varied minds. Truly, earthenware, a coarse clay mandala formed by a host of interlocking shapes, juxtaposed and randomly decorated, a celestial vase whose reliefs were continents.

Schilling paused to shake his head. He wondered what there was to discover. But the wall provided his initial obstacle. Approaching, he listened, hearing the crackle of gases escaping wood. The idea of human company filled him with trepidation, only it was not a scenario he could run from. Carefully he followed the ancient wall to a point where it was low enough to clamber over, from where, cloaked in shade, he saw two figures, children huddled together next to a spluttering fire. They sat toasting lumps of torn bread, Y-shaped sticks in their hands, small faces glowing in the flames.

He peered intently, not knowing what to do. At last one of the children looked up, his features mischievous, old, his blond hair brushed into a quiff. This character nudged his companion, whose potato nose levered in Schilling's direction, the skull supporting it oddly narrow.

The pair exchanged glances, a silent conversation between themselves. They shrugged in unison and returned their attention to the fire.

Schilling, uncertain, moved closer. These weren't children after all, he realized.

v

The booming was like the storm revisited. Zonda watched from across the valley. The space wagon hovered close by, had the mountain under attack. Wings looped overhead like feasting crows. She sat with her back to a fir, unable to believe her eyes. Most of the fighting was inside Central, hand to hand, the defenders obviously surprised. It confused her that she felt no sympathy, no loyalty. She was unwilling to cheer either side.

Small-arms fire echoed, rocks battered together, shedding dust and sparks. A handful of troopers emerged from an opening near the summit, hatched now with green and purple heather, the sky above holed by the black silhouette of the wagon. It had to have come from the north, the base there, she conjectured. Zonda's and Irdad's onetime destination.

What did that make the Ologist? An emissary? Had they succeeded might this assault have been avoided?

Succeeded in what? she pondered.

Anyway, she'd met Issac Waters and received a better offer, abandoning her high-born comrade and dooming him to failure.

She paused, halted thinking and breath, but could find no guilt in her consciousness. It was of no importance, Zonda decided.

vi

Ula had no interest in the statistics of killing. That was Smith biting, he said, before he was bitten.

And Issac?

'You were right,' Stewart told her. 'He was wired as an assassin. Took out most of the ruling council.'

'Most?' She cleaned her nails, felt her skin contaminated, the air in her lungs stale. The excrescence of zombies. A morbid presence.

'They say two got out; although I don't see how that's possible.'

'You suppose they miscounted?'

'Not exactly.' Removing his hands from his pockets he sat down. 'There were body parts for six, but eight chairs, two moved just prior to the explosion.'

'They can be that sure?' Ula frowned, looking over her knees at Stewart.

'I know,' he said. 'It's disturbing.'

'And we didn't learn anything.'

He was caught off guard. 'Do you still view this as an experiment? Shit, Ula, this is survival. Who knows when the company might investigate. We're stranded.'

She closed her eyes. Opened them again. 'I can view it no other way.'

He stood, hands returned to pockets. 'You've changed.'

'Hasn't everyone?'

'You know what I mean.'

'So why not talk about it? Stewart, the whole fucking planet's running scared. We're out of our depth here. This is entirely unprecedented. And you know what? I don't think the company will investigate; because the company's already here. This is Mother's doing. We're expendable.'

'Like I said: survival.'

'Balls,' said Ula. 'Understanding. It isn't necessary to annihilate each other. That's irrational.'

He dragged his tongue over his lips. 'Okay. Okay. But it happens that Joplinski is one of those unaccounted for. There'll be more corpses, not fewer.'

'And the city?'

'What city?'

'Come on, you know. The city to the east, the one blurring the screens up on the wagon.'

Stewart grinned. 'An aberration. A spectre. You took that seriously? I'm ninety-nine percent sure it's chromatic. Ring fragments. The sky is full of ghosts, Ula.'

'Is that what Smith told you?'

His grin vanished.

'Well?'

'Smith hasn't seen it,' he murmured.

Ula felt a new respect for her colleague. 'I thought...'

'You thought wrong. I threw up a blanket. This is between you and me, understand? Our secret. Nobody else knows; just us. Our secret city.'

'Thank-you.'

He sat once more, creasing his brow. 'About time.' The grin reappeared, a self-mocking expression. 'Frightening, isn't it?'

Ula ceased paying attention to her nails. She straightened in her chair, lifting the portable screen from her lap. 'One secret for another,' she said. 'Take a look.'

Stewart accepted the foldaway and scanned the image. 'Realtime?'

'Yes. What do you make of it?'

He scrutinized the picture a while before answering. 'Difficult to say. The carrier appears to be reacting to an environment other than that viewed.' He glanced at her briefly. 'You never give up, do you?'

'How do you mean?'

'Already you have a fresh subject, a new mind to rake.'

'Not me.'

'No?'

'No. He's a present. For you. I'm headed south with Lloyd. Engagement party.'

'Congratulations. Does Smith know?'

Ula shook her head.

Stewart peered at her again, with a hint of sadness, then back at the screen. 'Wonderful. At this rate we'll all be executed. Smith can smell a conspiracy.'

'Yes,' she conceded. 'But Smith's part of the experiment, too.'

vii

'Soapy Farfriender.'

'Knox Hog.'

'Hubert Schilling. Pleased to meet you.'

Soapy rolled the tiger's eye in his palm, buffed it on his sleeve and handed it to Schilling along with his string-pull bag.

'Pilot Johnson asked us to keep a lookout for you. He was convinced you'd show up.'

'He found us under a rock,' said Knox, as if this was sufficient explanation.

Soapy grimaced and patted his companion on the shoulder.

A little heavily, Schilling thought.

'Now, we don't want to confuse the gentleman.'

Knox shook his hand off. 'We were dreams,' he persisted, 'born of the human mind.'

'He's quoting Pilot Johnson,' Soapy clarified. 'He has deficient genes.'

'Who? Johnson?' Schilling dropped the tiger's eye in the bag where it nestled alongside his backgammon set. There was a pair of boots in there, also.

'Knox Hog,' corrected Soapy, blowing aside his quiff.

'Oh.'

'Pilot Johnson calls us his issue. He tells us to listen and grow.'

Schilling squatted by the fire, toast swallowed and beard dusted with crumbs. Who was he talking to?

Knox said, 'Well, we're listening.'

viii

The world carried her along, thought Zonda, advanced her like an idea. She rode the world and the world rode beneath her, each footfall a concept, each plant she trampled or stepped over the consequence of gravity and imagination, a struggle between the two.

People, nervous and unfamiliar, ignored her.

Thinking made Zonda invisible.

She meandered along scorched corridors, down passageways hung with roots and smelling of humus, a dimly lit warren in which many had died.

She didn't know where to look. Everything was so different. She opened doors, eavesdropped on conversations, paused to drink coffee from a machine. She breezed a makeshift mortuary, disturbing sheets of green plastic, reading the names of toes. Some of them she recognized, overheard once, forgotten or stored away. A stairwell invited her to visit another level. Zonda accepted, spiralled down, happened upon the Weekender canteen. The large mechanical clock had not been repaired, its missing arms still missing, its face mottled, a china plate bordered in arcane numerals. She wandered through the kitchen, wrote Franky's name in the dust on a stove; as if she had been there, the mazy signature at the bottom of a message since obscured. It was one of myriad fantasies, a harmless illusion she indulged.

The world carried her along, its passenger. It informed her of impossible things.

ix

Irdad shivered.

He'd been patient, crouched for hours, his prize floating toward sleep, the moment near...when he was stricken, laid flat by an electric pain in his skull.

The land-whale was his adult state, his imago. He had to kill it and burrow inside, reanimating its shell while his own dissolved, the raw material from which would develop an egg.

But he'd failed.

And now? A man appeared. Moving with a lazy silkiness, he waved a greeting, framed in bluecap's one sound eye while the other leaked vision...

Irdad managed a smile as the man knelt before him. Clean hands brushed his face and a gentle finger hooked out the dead orb, holding it up to the light.

'Christian?'

'Shush,' the man instructed. 'It's finished.'

'Christian, I'm...' His mouth was covered.

An animal accompanied his friend. Set in its forehead was an empty socket.

eleven - heidelberg woman

Jakob opened the morning paper, searched for his horoscope, couldn't find it, turned to the front page instead.

UFO latest, it read.

The family business occupied three floors, two warehouses and one depot.

Solomon Candy owned the works. His whole life had gone into building an empire of soft drinks and confectionery. And life had been kind, providing him with an heir. But his son was a disappointment. Solomon had spared no expense on the boy's education, sending him to the finest schools, equipping him with books and pencils; only the books went unread and the pencils he used for cleaning his ears. The boy was a dreamer, he realized.

The telephone rang. Startled, he answered. An accident in production? A threatened strike? Solomon, Solomon, it is only your wife...

'He what?'

'Took the car.'

'Where? Did you let him have the keys? Give him money?'

She slammed the phone down. He buzzed his secretary.

'Sir?'

'Never mind - I mean. Never mind. I'll take care of it myself.'

There, that hadn't been too difficult. He'd volunteer his son for analysis.

The decision made, Solomon rose from behind his desk, tugged flat his waistcoat and headed out the door. It was for the best, he reassured himself.

Walking between humming vats, each stainless steel occupant of the basement, he whistled a tune the accompanying words of which he had sung to Claudia on their wedding night. Everything had seemed fine then, the future gloriously bright. Her cheeks were rosy, their embrace a confirmation of all he believed in; this city, this woman, this business started on a homemade barrow outside the Globe picture house. He couldn't allow Jakob to ruin that. The boy had to change, see the way forward, heal the rift he had opened, like a sinking valley floor, twixt Solomon and his wife.

'The future is vital,' he told a congregation of pipes. 'He must be made to see the way clearly and not be distracted by every passing fancy. He must realize his position, honour the past, revere the present, and not fall prey to outrageous whims.'

The pipes gurgled their sugar mixture.

Solomon swung his arms behind his back, grabbed the little finger of his left hand with the thumb and index finger of his right, and continued his tour of the premises.

The building was old and crumbling, its basement dank. A man was employed to keep the vats clean, his footprints joining puddles lit by fitful bulbs. Solomon overlaid the flat negatives of his own shoes. He bounded up a stair part submerged in packing cases, the iron railing peeling. Staff and machines chattered on the factory floor, a sublime air of chaos suffused with - and by - strawberry, lemon, pineapple, vanilla and lime. Citrus fumes gauzed lineaments made sticky via the intimacy of flesh and metal, digits and mixers, swivelling elbows and jointed pistons, bunched shoulders, fixed bellows, the cutting of liquorice and the sorting of flavours, from steaming liquids to glutinous strands.

He loved it. He eavesdropped on the conversation between a press and its operator, shimmied through sugar clouds. In pursuit of a conveyor, soles tacky, he juggled bright constellations, stuffed his jacket pockets while fizzing orally, gums red and teeth purple, bow-tie dusted with sherbet as he chased a special edition tube of Leapers. Opening, finding the newly created cherry, he danced out the loose-hanging rubber strip doors.

The afternoon was warm, the yard quiet. Noise reverberated only dimly from the warehouses, crawling lazily over cement and tarmac. He rubbed at a mark on his trouser leg and smelled his fingers. Orange. He heard distant tyres slide and thought of Jakob. The surrounding buildings were faced with steely octagonal mirrors. Reluctantly, he went back inside. The city was unrecognizable from his youth, a fact which saddened him. His island enclave was one of only a few red-bricked oases left.

He traipsed to his office.

He buzzed his secretary.

'Sir?'

'Find me the name of a good psychiatrist,' he asked.

i

The wrought-iron gates creaked open to admit a long black limousine. It rumbled across the yard and came to a halt by a bucket-wedged fire exit. A rear door popped and out stepped Darcy Rocard, smoothing his moustache, creases falling from his greatcoat. Rocard took in the scene, smiled and entered. He reached the top floor by way of the stairs, waved aside questions and without knocking turned the polished brass handle.

Candy was a bony, surprised individual.

ii

Jakob, bored and restless, tooled in his mother's jalopy, venting his frustration on other drivers as he coursed the city highways, exploring, lost, puzzled by his environment. He parked on Crimson Boulevard, peculiarly unnerved, the rapid-fire development of sparkling tenements overwhelming, the original facades vanished beneath newer ages, crazy angles and aquiline curves the present mode. The exception was a prefabricated wood and plasterboard second-hand bookshop cum cafe, the name Atlantic Tearooms in weathered veneers above the blinded, murky door.

Curious, Jakob entered. Four men round a collapsible table paused in mid-conversation, their arms folded on a red and white check cloth upon which rested cups and plates of blue china. The plates were empty and the cups steaming. Jakob closed the door, bell chiming, and wandered deep into this rare establishment. Books, old and faded paperbacks and tatty hardcovers, lined every wall, stood in ranks on shelves and piled like sediments in niches. Browsing, he sensed the eyes unhook from his clothing, heard the talk resume, although perhaps quieter. The atmosphere was one of collusion, the gathering (men and books) illicit. He didn't belong, they told him, first by sight, second by posture. The backs of skulls ranged against him. But he ignored them. He was captivated, immersed in fusty smells, squinting to read gilded titles and the names of unknown authors. The library he usually visited was brash and modern, its books solid and two dimensional, sharp words on dazzling paper. Here was time to a depth unimagined. He was almost scared to touch, the sweat of his palms betraying. Flushed, he eased one volume clear of its neighbours and turned the antecedent pages. There was a signature, unreadable, Alice something; an address, 20 Peach Tree Gardens, Outer Space. A drawing, part erased. The leaves were brown with age.

'Try another,' said a man, close and erudite, the youth's left ear burning. 'Plenty to choose from - though they might all be the same.'

He swallowed, replaced the book and turned.

The man wore dark glasses. 'You're Candy's son, aren't you?'

'Yes,' Jakob said, pinned against a shelf. 'How did you know?'

The man stepped back from him. 'You reek of cocoa solids and glucose,' he answered, breathless.

One of the seated men chuckled, a sound Jakob recognized without having heard it before. The bookshop appeared suddenly larger, its echoes friendly yet intimidating.

'Are you a fellow collector?'

Jakob was unsure.

'Perhaps you seek information,' the man suggested. 'A context? A situation?'

'I don't understand.'

'Of course not, you're indigenous; it would be unfair to expect you to comprehend such a broad band of allusions.'

Chuckling again, all four men joining the chorus, banging their spoons and slapping the table.

Jakob's mouth worked but he said nothing.

'What was the first thought you had this morning?' the man asked. 'What time did it rain...last Tuesday? You don't have to tell me the precise minute, morning or afternoon will do.' His glasses reflective, the youth smeared across lenses. 'How many pickles does it take to fill a pickle jar, master Jakob?'

'How many seeds does a poppy have?' another demanded.

'What is the sum of zero plus minus zero plus minus zero plus minus one?'

'What colour is an egg yolk before the egg is broken?'

'How much is loose change?'

He slid down the shelving, spine abutting spines.

'Ah,' said the man. 'He's fainted.'

'Swooned like a debutante.'

'Passed out.'

'Overloaded.'

A portrait. He saw it now, a girl's sketched visage. Francesca, daughter of Alice Heidelberg.

Someone was trying to reach him.

A man? Yes, the oldest man Jakob had ever seen, leaning over him, on a couch in a small, cluttered room.

'Awake?'

He nodded.

'Good.'

Smelling tea, Jakob pushed himself up on his elbows.

'Did you dream?'

'I don't know,' he replied. 'I think so.'

The ancient, wrinkled man shrugged. 'It's not important.' A cup shook, rattling on its saucer as it was passed. 'You must forgive my colleagues, they can be impatient at times. Times like these.'

'They asked me all kinds of questions,' recounted Jakob, accepting the beverage. He sipped; no sugar, they way he liked it. 'Thank-you.'

'You're welcome.' Then, 'This city is, as of today, thirty-two days old,' his host continued, relaxed in an elegantly upholstered chair. 'Thirty-one days ago the first inhabitants cut down a few trees and extended their shack, the following morning adding a second floor and a barn, a stable, a garage by mid afternoon, driving to work thereafter, no more content with their lot than your average second millennium family, complaining bitterly about taxes and visiting the ever farther removed countryside on alternate weekends...'

The young man listened earnestly. Warmed by the herbal infusion, he supposed the old man crazy.

'Sound familiar?'

'My father wants me to follow in his footsteps,' Jakob confided.

'Yes,' said his host; 'mine did too.' He leaned on one cushioned arm and retched noisily. 'But that was a long time ago. The events of today are more immediate.' Spitting into a tarnished brass planter. 'There are people looking for me, Jake. People I brought here, to this world. Your world.' He coughed, hunching like a rolled up carpet stood on its end. His face was barely visible in the dim room.

'Are you okay? Can I get you anything?' Jakob was on his feet, wondering at his motives, fascinated by the man and the books whose presence hung beyond the door. Yet he wanted to escape, to flee as if from an uncomfortable truth.

'No, no,' the old gentleman was saying, apparently recovered. 'It's an effort to talk, is all...'

Jakob eyed the exit. He sat again on the couch, cup still in hand.

'Not to worry, lad, we've managed to slow things down. Arranged for difficulties to arise. Placed obstacles. Your father, for example.'

'My...'

'I created him, in a manner of speaking. He was one of the first. A representative strand of my subconscious, as I have rather a sweet tooth.'

'You created my father?' Jakob was less incredulous than amused. He tucked his feet under him and leaned forward, enjoying this story. 'What for?'

'I just told you: too slow things down.'

Jakob finished his tea. He glimpsed the girl's features in the leaves at the bottom of the cup. 'Did you create Outer Space?' he asked.

'No,' said the man. 'Somebody else did that.'

'Thought so.' He put the cup down on a low table. 'I have to be leaving now. I'm expected somewhere.'

His nameless host creaked erect, his robe loose about him as if draped over bones. Only the skull was given flesh. Skeletal hands flicked to a brass-inlaid cabinet, opened a drawer and removed a book. He held it flat against his chest a moment, a much coveted object, then, with no more ado, passed it Jakob, who accepted in silence, unable to think of anything to say.

'Read it when you feel ready,' he was instructed. 'Think of it as a work of fiction, only true.'

The door swung open. The shop beyond was empty of people yet thick with anticipation. He gazed upon the book, turning to the sketch and the name. It was a gift. He ran his fingers over the lettering, smelled them, a perfumed Braille.

A Short History Of The World, by H.G. Wells.

iii

Rocard hadn't believed in resurrection and was in some doubt as to the facts concerning his fatal meeting with Courtney. His eyes had been peeled open by a woman, a captain. Of Jenny there was no trace. Her young flesh was lost to him.

The special investigator wasn't perturbed. He served the same master. Mother was here on Oriel. This was Mother's world and surrogate home. The company, threatened, had taken leave of old Earth, instigating, directing the rapid transmutation of an entire planet, a new Earth whose growing pains, while expected, were proving as difficult to predict as the random break up of Oriel's quondam ceiling, the crusting and deliquescing of her former oceans. And while Rocard failed to comprehend the process responsible, the reality manifested was beyond question. The company symbolized power. That power, godlike, had transcended. The company had achieved the impossible, advanced not only the bounds of science but the definition, reinterpreting the fundamentals of nature. But there were problems. Candy was just one of many first-tier individuals into whose nascent minds had been introduced themes of self and constancy. They'd become sapient in a way that surprised Mother, fomenting an array of cause and effect perturbations; hopes, desires, ambitions out of kilter with their superficial environment. Secretly, Rocard wondered if there was not a worm in the apple. Mindful of the dangers of his position, however, he dismissed the idea, placing his trust, as always, in the greater intellect of his moral and blood superiors. Let them dance with stars, he thought. It was their vision of ascendancy. Rocard's was a beer and a girl.

Having forgone the comfort of his sleek limousine and walked through swelling masses to a bar, he sat with suited elbows on the mahogany counter and appraised the patrons with the aid of a long, decorative mirror. Bottles fronted it; a host of familiar labels. Overall, the detail was impressive. There were no cocktail-sticks in evidence and the gherkins were a sickly yellow, but you might pick faults with anything. It was early afternoon and the lunch crowd was thinning, leaving a skinny waitress to clear and buff tables. From her age - late teens - he guessed she was second-tier, the quickened progeny of those initial dwellers magicked from loam and sand. He toyed with the image of her accelerated growth, her fleeting childhood and pubescence. If events hadn't slowed dramatically in the past few days she may have been dead by tomorrow afternoon, her own children fast-forwarding to middle age. The city had existed as a blur, a conglomerate of buildings without precise form, streets widening as if at an intake of breath, transport systems vague, residents, workers lacking pasts and names. With the brakes applied though, structures, lives, businesses demanded singularity in order to glue together their previously scattered parts, a degree of consistency, purpose, design, else they waver and fall. Rocard felt certain that if he sat here another hour the gherkins would darken to a ripe green and the cocktail-sticks arrive.

Prematurely. He reckoned the captains were aiming for nothing less than 23rd Century technology, goods and services, a threshold of military aptitude necessary if they were to realize their goal of revisiting older celestial haunts, Earth included. That was the reach of Mother's ambition. The company had yearned for a distinctly alien opponent. Ironically, they had opted to fashion one, become it themselves, crawling from one shell to another, determined next to purge and reclaim the three hundred plus worlds abandoned to whatever government rushed to fill the void.

Did they fight among themselves? Was their function, their premise, essentially internecine? He drained his glass and banged it down. The waitress slid behind the bar, wiped her hands on her apron and quickly poured him another. He hadn't said anything. Had he need to? Maybe Rocard had more in common with the girl than he appreciated...

He gulped the frothy beer. He grabbed the twig-thin wrist. The waitress wasn't Jenny, wasn't his mould-woman, and probably lacked that girl's resistance. But he was driven, pulling her violently over the counter, tearing at her white blouse, a wild hunger in him as he snatched at her puny breasts and throat. The bar had emptied, he knew. Unconsciously, he'd watched the last customer leave. Her cries would go unheard. Her warmth suffused him as he wrestled her narrow frame to the tiles. He yanked up her skirt, unbelted his trousers. A bag of sticks, not a person, mud and wattle, a dressed dummy, a product, a pitiful mannequin whose fear was token, the plaything beneath him shedding mock tears, choking under the weight of his braced elbow, a pretend victim he could use and toss away...

The bullet in his brain confusing.

iv

They ate in silence, each cosseted with their thoughts. The meal was lamb chops and mint sauce. Overly sweet, yet Jakob made no mention. His mother and father sat either side of him at the table ends, his baby sister opposite, smeared and dribbling, a more appropriate heir to Solomon's confectionery empire.

Jakob's mind was full of Greeks and Romans, his introduction to history a revelation, the previous gap in his knowledge one of many disturbing holes he dared himself peer in. Worst was thinking he might only be a few weeks old when upcoming was his 18th birthday.

Who could he talk to? What could he say? He felt at once farther removed and closer to his parents. Their unspoken resentment of his failures was suddenly of little or no importance.

Did he love them? Did they care?

He dropped his fork, went unchastised, which led him to believe he was not alone in experiencing disturbances; his mother and father and baby sister were quietly involved in their own manufactured worlds.

So much of life went on in the background. He left the table and raced upstairs, opening the book to the page he had marked earlier.

Minutes later, he slammed the door behind him.

v

Jenny erased the hurt. By morning, she knew, it would no longer be possible to so easily effect change in the Orielean mind. But that was good; as it should be. They'd stand alone, stable in time. Courtney and the others would be forced permanently underground.

That suited Courtney. He knew the inside better than any. The captains, however, weren't far behind.

The pathologist's illness was morbid, wasting. She worried that at times he lost sight of his principles and flirted with the other side.

Luther had been charged with disposing of Rocard's corpse.

Eagerly, Jenny awaited her new love's return.

vi

Life on Oriel was threefold. There were the offworlders, the company émigrés; there were the onworlders, the wakened indigenia; and there were the second-generation ghosts and dopplegangers whose paths and number she had most difficulty tracing, wraiths who crossed between.

Franky Heidelberg was undecided where to place herself, whether she was living at all. Her thoughts travelled while her body remained. Inward her flesh roamed, perhaps seeking a new form. She was buried, dispersed, riding currents of wind and water, slipping through her own fingers.

Schilling, she dreamed, rescue me.

twelve - oracle

He woke with a stiff shoulder, a soreness bridging the gap between index finger and thumb, the muscles of his right arm tired. The fire was out, the drizzle persistent, the bark sail sagging overhead. Listening for Johnson's so-called issue, Schilling massaged his aching pinion.

According to Soapy and Knox the pilot had gone to further investigate a settlement around the coast to the west. He was expected back this morning. Of the stunted progeny there was no sound. He crawled out into the open and stretched, feet cool in the rough grass. The sky was a deep blue. The planet's ring arched, the orbiting detritus of the fallen grille, outsized particles that had somehow escaped the tyrannies of weather and gravity. It occurred to him they might be shepherded, the circling hulk of a former yawbus a leash to their roaming.

Vacated? Observing? He did not know, his own patchy affairs but a drop in the vast company ocean.

Neck complaining, he grunted and lowered his eyes to the horizon. He pictured the tree, its verdant foliage, the dead hanging like diseased fruit from its branches. It had grown from the sunken island, his private Atlantis, with Schilling its sole function; the others, his extended family, unreal yet sophisticated reproductions whose purpose was to illustrate one possibility, to boast of such potential, a micro-society the physical presence of which was more than illusory.

He still felt the pain of that separation. But a greater pain subsumed it.

A shout rang out, spinning off toppled walls. He turned to see the clumsy figure of Knox Hog running toward him, waving his arms as if to fly, the quicker to reach the camp.

Schilling kicked himself mentally, in despair at his empty brooding. A moment later Knox crashed into him, knocking him flat as he blathered news of Johnson's return. The big man laughed, raised them both, and together they walked in the direction the pilot would be coming.

Soapy waited in a sprawling bush just over the rise, ensconced like a nestling, a brass telescope pressed to one eye.

'Who knows?' Johnson said later when Schilling asked about the pair. 'They're good at finding things,' he explained, dismissive, wishing to talk of telephone boxes, old ladies knitting and the drawings he's made. 'I'm no artist,' he said, 'but I know how to make a pencil behave. I did a stint flying map-makers on Harold The Boar. Shy creatures; always drinking beer. They showed me how to do reliefs, contours...' He trailed off. 'Anyway, the last time I saw you you were going over the side in search of Courtney Island. Would it be remiss to ask if you found what you were looking for? You were acting pretty weird at the time.'

Schilling digested that, along with the kippers the pilot had brought. 'The mine,' he said, nodding. 'I was shaken up. I don't know. I was looking for anything \- she means a lot to me, I suppose.'

The nod infected Johnson, who copied, saying, 'Easier to think than talk.'

'Right. I'm still some way behind.'

'It's a different world.'

'Always is.'

'Don't I know. You'll find her some day.'

'Right...'

'Cigarette? No, I forgot, you don't. I stole these from a post office. Can you believe it? Whoever's orchestrating this pageant really knows their stuff.'

The burly ex-trooper scratched his head. 'I used to dream of a life free of worry, a kind of perfect existence where my actions weren't directed by the company. Now it seems my existence is the company. It's as if I've become part of something I only used to belong to.'

Johnson punched him theatrically, comradely. 'We're all in this together, eh?'

'Something like that.'

He ate some more, in silence.

Johnson smoked. Then, 'You know, you look different.'

Schilling thought a moment. 'You too,' he answered.

'Maybe it's the thinning beard.'

'Nah.'

'The breasts? They're real. You can touch them if you like.'

'No. Thanks. I mean, yes, the breasts; they've changed you. Am I blushing?'

'A little,' replied Johnson. 'Hard to tell.' He snapped his fingers, grinning broadly.

'What?' queried Schilling. 'What is it?'

'Your colour!'

'What about my colour?' He was agitated, uncertain.

'You were white, blue-eyed, yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'Well, you're still blue-eyed, but the rest of you has turned the shade of cheap stationery. You look a hundred years old!'

Schilling touched his face and shrugged. He waited for the pilot to stop beating his thighs and settle down.

'Interesting.' Worrying the loose skin round his neck and feeling its stiffness.

Johnson had the giggles. 'I think maybe I was always a woman; you know, deep down inside...'

'Sure. And I was always a manila envelope.'

i

It was out of character, this watching the sunrise. Shades of purple, crimson and blood. Maybe he had unzipped himself from one body and zipped himself into another. A darker hue. It struck him that if the planet's metamorphosis had been subtle he never would have believed the evidence of his eyes, ears, nose and tongue. Far from being a spectacle, the intrinsically thaumaturgical devices here employed presented an often bland, holistic front; yet they were an undeniable presence in Schilling's wayward head. Changes were obvious if universal.

It was real. Had to be.

There was no other choice.

Johnson yawned behind him, muttered and stood. The worldly issue were off scavenging. Schilling wondered if they ever slept.

The pilot avoided his gaze. An unsettling experience.

He busied himself untying and rolling up the sail in preparation for the agreed trip south. There was a continent to explore, a wilderness of unknown rocks and ridges, people and insects. Already they were south of the equator. But had the equator, previously vacillating, permanently shifted? Did this new world tilt? Another question. Another missing link. The temperature on the promontory hung between ten and twenty degrees, even at night. If anything it was too comfortable, as if each individual, himself included, supported their own environment.

The quiet after the storm? He coughed, a compromise, unsure whether to groan or laugh. Shouldering the string-pull bag he asked Johnson if he could play backgammon.

The pilot considered, scratching his face, the action more a consequence than a cause of the depilation he was undergoing. 'Sure,' he said, finally relaxed, beard wispy and face less angled. 'Smoked or unsmoked?'

Schilling farted. Too early in the morning for bacon jokes.

They walked across the promontory to where an ancient stairway regulated the granite descent, worn steps bringing them to a crude wharf set on the strait dividing the mainland from what had been Base 2, the same breadth of ocean Schilling and Johnson had crossed in the opposite direction, utilizing a berg after crashing the economy flyer. The distance was greater now, close to a kilometre, the hover berthed with Knox and Soapy stretched out on its hull. The issue saluted grimly, lips parallel, their innate double-act a throwback to some early Earth monochrome two-reeler. Schilling made the appropriate rejoinder and they piled below deck, where Johnson handed him the axe.

There was a reverential silence, a spectrum of fractured light.

Soon broken.

'I can't say for sure how far inland we'll get,' Johnson said. 'Depends on the country.'

The hover rumbled to life.

'Fuel?' queried Schilling.

'Eight, nine hundred kilometres. If we follow the coast hopefully it won't be too long before we find an estuary. Perhaps we'll get lucky. Perhaps not. A solid line of trees and we continue on foot.'

The axeman registered assent.

'Okay,' said Johnson. He sent Knox Hog topside to release the mooring. Water cut under the filling skirt, droplets spattering the windscreen just one of many changes from the sea of old.

Schilling sat in his remnants of chewed and hammered bark. On a whim he raided a host of storage cabinets, coming up with a reinforced jumpsuit. Faded black, some Ologist's frontier fetish. He emptied his boots and secured his feet inside, paced a while, squatted, bending his salt-stiffened toes and abrading his heels before dispensing with the tan containers once and for all, preferring the touch of air and floor. Johnson was nonchalant at the controls, feigning absorption. The issue lay on the deck, watching. Schilling pulled a face, high on pretended weightlessness, sure of the hydrogen in his bones. They hugged the coastline, the admixture of scenery at the continent's lip. There was no sign of human settlement. Rocks dominated, toothing shadows and sitting motionless and round at the water's edge, smoothed over fake centuries. The pilot outlined their course, roughly matching the ebb and flow of the land, then overlaid the topography of pre-storm Oriel. He guessed the sea's nadir to be around 150 kilometres southward, a point they reached by midday.

Eyes peeled, Schilling moved up front. The land was flatter here, the bay curving much deeper than the charts indicated. The pilot shrugged at the possibility of a river they might navigate. Nearby a small boat drifted, upturned, marked by some impact. It was the first sign of violence they'd encountered. The second was a razed village, a charred ruin they waded ashore to investigate. Schilling kicked through the wreckage, exposing a sad collection of pots and pans among the still smouldering timbers, but little to intimate the nature of either the attack or the community eradicated.

Johnson stood hands in pockets. Strangely, the protomen had refused to leave the hover, unnerved by this evidence of aggression. Between their cousins? Possibly. Schilling put forth no contrary explanation and the pilot was happy to go along, the burnt remains of torches and blade marks sunk into broken doorways making a powerful argument for tribal conflict. Indigenously human...

And there was a river, the village built alongside, Johnson contemplative when next he guided the hover between scorched and blackened ruins, the residues of dwellings and storehouses. Furred animals, large rats swam upstream under their bow. Mainly deciduous, the trees threatened to close, an increasing obstacle as the banks steepened, tipping branches toward the water. Squirrels flitted from limb to limb, gathering summer fruits. Johnson experimented with the fascia and eventually flooded the cabin with sound from external sensors, birdsong swelling as the forest lungs heaved.

Other noises rose, shouts and cries filtering through the steady drone of the craft's propeller fans, made vividly real by the crack of stones or arrowheads striking the deck. The pilot upped their speed to a shaky thirty kilometres an hour in an effort to out distance the projectiles.

The windscreen flowered, a spiderweb of crystal as it absorbed the impact of a missile Schilling deemed to have been delivered chemically, a small rocket that fortunately skidded off the rigid plastic. Fired from the bank, or, more likely, discharged from a pump-gun by someone in the branches above. Whatever the source, he knew the hover couldn't take too many shots like that. It wasn't a military vehicle.

Soapy and Knox lay huddled, frozen in an attitude of terror.

'Can you see?' bellowed Schilling.

'Enough. If the screen holds.'

'Looks almost as if they were expecting us.'

The pilot refused to speculate. 'Grab me a helmet from the locker,' he said with a grimace. 'Anything. Then knock the screen out.'

Schilling recalled seeing goggles. He made a quick search, found them, hooked a pair over his brow, doing the same for Johnson.

'Ready?'

'Do it!'

Using the axe he punctured the screen, crystal motes flying as he next tore it aside like the cracked lid of a sterilized container. One of the issue screamed. Knox Hog, Soapy dragging him to the relative safety of the tiny galley.

The hover bounced, slammed, lashing them with water. A rap of small arms fire caused them to duck. The river narrowed, foliage shrouding. Johnson advanced the throttle once more, ripping through a wood and rock tunnel. A blade sheared, jammed and shattered the prop. The remaining fan choked briefly on a duct full of twigs, spluttered, died, then spun back to life, its temperature soaring before they again hit open water.

Wind tumbled into the cabin, a pummelling rush of cold vapours beyond whose pressured rattle was a welcome quiet. The hover slowed under the pilot's direction and both Johnson and Schilling exhaled deliverance, lifting their goggles to peer at each other.

'Well, what do you make of it so far?'

Schilling wiped his nose in reply.

Johnson pushed from the command chair and scuttled aft. 'Hey; you guys okay? Talk to me...'

He left her to it, mentally underlining the necessary pronoun, staring out the window at the placid surface of a lake ringed by trees. The hover made steady progress across a body of water seemingly anomalous, more a reservoir than a natural feature. He tried to gauge its extent from the instruments, but failed to apprehend the relevant data. Maybe Johnson could do it. For now it was better to relax. Let the pilot calm the professed dreamsporn couched in the galley. A peculiar excitement swamped him, an eagerness to come ashore and face whatever was out there. He felt a lurid expectation, an extreme desire, was a young boy on the eve of a big occasion, a birthday perhaps, and over the horizon lay the otherworldly site of his party. Clambering out to better survey the lake and its arboreal perimeter, he saw the moulded hull to be scarred and pocked with bullet holes, some the size of his fist. The surviving fan burbled along merrily, even if its bearings were noisy, a flicker in its cycle suggesting one of more blades were missing. The green blood of pithy limbs scrawled bizarre graffiti.
In the distance, sparkling as it foamed, a waterfall slipped gracefully over a rounded stone tongue. The end of the road for the hover, unless they could somehow bypass the fall to the river's upper level. But that meant going through the forest and more than a few days felling trees. They would be forced to abandon the riddle craft, its skirt torn and shell battered, continuing south on foot at Schilling's manic leisure.

First they ate, Johnson dangling off the port side, pale and womanly as she bathed, one hand clinging to a rope so as not to sink with a belly full of rehydrated vegetable matter. He couldn't watch, choosing the sunnier starboard panel for his ingestions and excretions, both performed above water, a bottle filled and capped earlier. There'd be ample opportunity to wash, he reckoned, taking a perverse delight in launching turds into a lake uncontaminated as yet by human endeavour. Hosts of tiny silver fish nosed his offerings and he thought of a line, but if they were to be well inland before nightfall there was no time to waste angling.

Smoke drifted across from Johnson's cigarette.

'How many packs have you?' he inquired jokingly.

'Three more of twenty,' answered the pilot, dressing. 'Although I'm ignorant of their origin, they're the brand I used to smoke back home.'

'Home?'

'Amy's Cupboard. My father was a priest.'

'But you'll smoke them anyway,' Schilling chided.

Johnson scowled. 'Of course. No way round it; like the waterfall.'

He turned to regard the spuming liquid, its drum-roll rising as they drifted closer. The fall was only six or eight metres high. Might as well have been sixty or eighty for all the chance they had of getting the hover over it.

'What do you suppose is on the other side?'

'The other side of where?' questioned Johnson, flicking ash, hair dripping, beard almost gone. 'The planet?'

Soapy Farfriender stuck his head out the hatch, appeared ready to say something, then retreated.

'How about those two. Are they fit to travel?'

'They'll make it. They're main concern is you.'

'Me?' Schilling was rattled.

'You're unpredictable. They think you enjoyed what went on back there.'

The darkening man grinned, his anger quickly dissipating.

'Well, you did, didn't you?' said Johnson, cigarette butt looping into the quenching water.

He turned his palms upward.

On dry land his toes quivered, receptive to the forest loam. He carried the axe in his string-pull bag, the blade covered. Johnson marched behind, swathed in waterproofs, the issue with her one moment, gone the next, chattering quietly to themselves, a conspiratorial whisper that made Schilling suspicious. He blocked them out of his mind, pushing on, following the southward course of the river. The current ran in the opposite direction, a bubbling succession of arrows. Trees flanked them, oak and alder, broadleafs whose abutment cast the flow into shimmering blackness. The pilot fiddled with a handset, static whistling, coded bursts of information briefly extant as Johnson kept her thumb on the scan button. Schilling was ignorant of the set's range, or how it was affected by the close proximity of the trees, but the strength of the transmissions suggested an enemy nearby, perhaps dead ahead, the group's bearing gleaned from those bandit's on the north shore.

'Can't you find a music station?' he complained.

She pressed her thumb twice, killing the noise. 'I was hunting for clues.'

'Die in ignorance,' he told her. 'It's all the rage.'

Johnson swatted a fly, dropped the radio into a holdall. 'I'm sorry you feel that way.'

He pulled his bare feet from the gathering mud with an undignified suction.

Evening descended prematurely, the waning light swallowed by the forest. The sun set over distant hills, their flanks sombre, crests purple. More hills floundered in shadow to the south, a higher range against which the trees scrabbled, lost for purchase on exposed brown rocks. Neither Schilling or Johnson spoke for hours, the night tar-thick before weary limbs demanded rest. The pilot had a flashlight among her effects, but judged it unwise to splash their whereabouts across potentially hostile retinae, a beacon for incoming fire. It grew colder. The axeman laid his hand on her shoulder and whispered he'd take first watch.

Johnson was relying on the issue for that. But let him wander if he had to, she reasoned. With luck he might not wake her till dawn. She poured a cup of water and waggled in it dry hunks of bread.

Schilling clambered up a huddle of boulders. The river spilled narrowly between them and a huge fallen trunk, crisp and noisome as it foamed. He needed such a marker. The stones displayed silvery ridges under the stars. The planet's ring was seemingly twisted, warped like a Mobius strip above. A trick, he thought, an illusion of perspective. Near the twist was one brilliant star, sharp and breathing as its luminosity spread through the atmosphere. It appeared close, a frozen comet. Looking away the image followed, a blur melting to blue and green over the rich landscape. He rubbed his eyes, the skin round them loose and sagging. Tiny woodland sounds blanketed him, adding to the surreal texture of his situation.

He wasn't alone. Out there, among the boles, others roamed.

And the progeny. Soapy and Knox.

The axe in both hands Schilling jumped from his vantage, jogged into the trees, away from the tumbling river, weaving easily through junctured groves of beech and ash. It was as if he could see; not the surface world of bark and leaves, but the sub-surface, a world of traded nutrients, bartered water, sustenance and information bought and sold in a variety of guises, using an array of currencies. He was convinced the issue were even now engaged in such a transaction, his freedom up for sale, their co-ordinates in exchange for novelties and trinkets.

Faces surrounded him. A few he recognized. No names adhered to them, however. They were floating human faces, some decayed, faces from the mess hall and the balcony rail, the hospital ward and the landing field. Runners, the essence of plants, crowded faces in a tavern, an elbow V on a table. Curtains on the breeze, his mind engendered them from the un-dark. Spectres. They didn't frighten him. They hung in that space beyond the painted window of reality, the stained glass of present day in the planet's cathedral walls.

Knox Hog stepped out from behind a tree, potato nose shining dimly.

Hubert Schilling raised the axe high and swung the killing blade.

A scream.

Soapy Farfriender dropped from the branches clutching a pair of shoes. He peered at the corpse, seemingly baffled, the night no obstacle to his vision.

The shoes, Schilling noted, were red with gold buckles.

A second scream rang. Neither had come from the issue, both dead now by his hand.

Johnson?

Shoes a leprechaun might wear.

Why should Johnson scream?

Dancing shoes...

The shame he felt was terrible. The cuts were incomplete, neither head truly separated, but dangling, surprised.

Shoes that walked. A child's shoes. Running, skipping shoes. Blood red shoes making a dash for whatever burrow or nest they had been stolen from, as these corpses were thieves.

Red shoes with gold buckles.

Blond quiff and narrow skull. Deficient genes.

Screaming...

Soapy forced an apple between his jaws, saying, 'What's the matter, don't you like us?'

'Yeah,' added Knox. 'You certainly don't act like you do.'

Schilling could feel his skin tearing, his cheekbones pushing through. The zipper that was his spine had turned cold.

The issue sat on his broad chest, whole and living.

Soapy yanked the apple, which Schilling bit, talking and chewing at the same time. He lay on his back in the woods, a single brilliant star illuminating the scene, effulgent and pulsing.

He swallowed. 'God, I thought...'

'Forget it,' Soapy advised. 'We've heard all the excuses.'

His throat ached. They stood and helped him to his feet.

Knox toted the axe, its blade honed and clean. Like the river water, thought Schilling, it rippled.

He didn't know what to believe. Walking back to the camp he was silent, the shame lingering. But he was purged of another thing, a quite separate emotion.

Johnson slept like a baby. Her hair glistened in an entirely new way, her body soft and contoured under the rough sail. Schilling knelt at her side.

The issue crouched in the boulders' shadow, suddenly invisible.

He touched her and she came awake.

'What is it?' she asked quietly, fumbling automatically for the pack of cigarettes in her shirt pocket.

'I'm scared,' he said. 'I'm crazy.'

'You're scared you're crazy or you're scared and crazy?' Johnson returned, lighting up. Her eyelids crimped in the sudden glow. 'You're most definitely ugly.' She smoked as if there was no danger.

'Scared, crazy, and ugly,' he replied, mood lifting. 'I think this wood is haunted,' he continued, shaking his head.

She blew smoke at him. 'I could have told you that.'

'What? That I'm scared? Crazy? Or that the wood is haunted?'

'Get some sleep, Hubert; this profound shit is getting to me.'

He stroked her chin. It was hairless. 'You've never called me that before.'

'It's your name, isn't it?' She batted his hand away.

Schilling lay down, convinced he was sane. 'I'm in love with another woman,' he stated.

Johnson punched him on the shoulder, wincing at the jumpsuit's stiff reinforcement.

He laughed, spluttered, heaved lungfuls of air.

She tamped her cigarette out on the ground. 'Sweet dreams.'

In the morning it rained. Schilling envied Johnson her weatherproofs. He walked uncomplainingly at the head of their troop, the issue ranging to either side, his trust in them restored. He carried the axe again, nervous of its weight and still embarrassed by the amicable way Knox and Soapy had greeted him as he sat eating a breakfast of crumbs. They asked no questions and Schilling did the same. A satisfactory arrangement. He wondered what knowledge the pilot had of their true identity. Were they twins? He thought so. By whom, or what, were they made?

The trees gradually thinned. Cleared at some time, the ground in past years cultivated. Crudely outlined fields lay fallow, speckled with wildflowers under a fleecy sky. The rain ended abruptly. The sun sheared, burning holes and raising staircases of insects from the spangled meadow. Schilling held up one hand. The issue ambled closer, heads bobbing among tall grasses and flower stalks.

'An engine,' he said. 'Hear it?'

'Let's ambush them.' Johnson at his shoulder. 'Turn the tables. We could use the transport.'

'Maybe they're friendly.'

'Maybe they're not.'

The issue vanished once more, shy of violence, reminding Schilling of his own.

'They'll be armed,' he cautioned.

Johnson nodded. Producing an automatic pistol she checked the clip and palmed it home. 'So?'

'There,' Schilling pointed; 'the bushes.'

They watched as a roofless jeep appeared, scything through the dappled fields, whining and slow. Johnson handed Schilling the gun, signing she didn't know how to use it. The ex-trooper scowled, took the weapon and planted his axe. A pulse of anger straightened him. He switched his gaze. The jeep slid up a rise, wheels spinning on the moist grass, three black-clad company soldiers arguing who should get out and push. A routine patrol? It made no difference; they'd be missed. But if the four of them had already been sighted there was nothing to lose.

The jeep came to a stop. Knox stood in its path. Behind the vehicle was Soapy, quiff stuffed under a peaked cap.

'Oh, shit.'

That was Johnson.

'Hey!' Schilling. 'Okay, okay - climb down. Do it!'

It was perhaps inevitable they'd shoot.

He dived into the long grass and returned fire, taking one man in the chest as he rolled, bullets slicing the tall stems.

Then silence.

Johnson called to him. He stood shakily, disturbed. The two remaining soldiers had had their throats cut, the issue dragging their bodies from the vehicle as he looked on, numbed by the fact, the guilt of educating these innocents in the ways of killing. It was his example they followed. His dream execution. Johnson had told them to listen and grow.

She took the pistol from him. 'Sorry.'

He unfroze. 'We all get corrupted sometime.' He walked off, not wishing her to see the tears zig-zagging down his heavily wrinkled cheeks.

She started after, changed her mind, approached the jeep. 'Liquid petroleum. Good for a couple hundred kilometres,' she called, voice drowned as the engine note soared.

Schilling wiped his eyes and retrieved his axe. The twins, as he'd come to think of them, moved excitedly in the back of the vehicle, rifling compartments that were mostly empty. He swung in beside Johnson, cigarette smoke curling from her nose.

'Okay,' he said. 'Drive.'

The pilot reversed and steered the jeep across the incline. She'd cleaned blood off the seats. Schilling grabbed the rollcage, bag and axe between his knees while the issue tumbled in the rear. They drove over hummocks, through a rocky stream, up the side of a hill covered with gorse, scattered trees bent double, moss greening boughs.

It had happened too quickly, he thought. The pistol had discharged. The knives had sliced. Death rode a pale rocket on Oriel.

Johnson's fell on the inspired side of reckless driving. He made no complaint, gazing south, expecting an incoming barrage. Oriel might have changed beyond recognition, but the company's militaristic presence had yet to be erased. He vowed to give it priority. At five o'clock relative they ran out of fuel. Johnson arched her spine, breasts tight against her shirt. She shook her head in mock pleasure, squashing them flat as Schilling stared.

'Were you always a tease?'

She took a drink of water and licked her lips. 'Of course. You just failed to notice before.'

The twins had succumbed to Morpheus in back.

'It's strange, they get more human by the hour.'

'While we become monsters,' finished the pilot. 'Is that how you see it?'

'Perhaps,' he replied. 'Too early to say.'

Birds squawked. Johnson sucked her teeth.

ii

A plume of smoke caught the last rays of an omelette sun, a thin grey line like a tall metal pin in a map of the world, marking, Schilling believed, the site of the abandoned hover. He handed the binoculars to the pilot, who adjusted the intensifier, frowning below plastic.

The house was built in a niche, sloped against the steeply terraced mountainside. There was no furniture. Schilling hoped it would rain, just so they might be dry on the bare boards of a lacquered floor. Johnson lowered the binoculars and shrugged. A waste, her expression read.

A quick exploration of this lonely domicile uncovered a serviceable kettle, and they gambled on a fire, the fireplace cut from the grainy stone of the rear wall. The house couldn't have attracted much light during the day. Facing northwest, it was shrouded on both sides, although the windows were large. There was no electricity, no cables or wires, no evidence of a generator. The kettle was primitive, thick blackened steel ready to the flame. Schilling was allowed to pick from among a dusty handful of anonymous pellets which to drop in the boiling water, afraid of what he might subsequently taste. Soapy and Knox ranged in the closing night in search of food, while the big man's guts rumbled at the odour of, thankfully, coffee.

Johnson breathed a sigh of relief.

She sipped the brew, savouring its bitterness.

They waited quietly in the coming dark.

As the fire died, a sonic grenade knocked them unconscious.

Thinking back, it had been foolish to take refuge in such an obvious place. The house was a trap sprung with only modest bait. Schilling and Johnson found themselves in a whitewashed cell, a thin mattress and a stinking chemical toilet between them. Meals were shoved at irregular intervals through a slot at the base of the door. He paced and she complained of wasted muscles. There were no bars, no windows, their concrete abode, ten steps by six, illuminated by a recessed bulb.

Schilling imagined he could see bloodstains under the fresh paint.

Johnson implored him to sit down.

They talked little, sure of ears pressed to the walls and a camera's secreted eye.

Time was disorientating, the bulb on or off according to the whim of their jailers or the availability of power. If the latter, then any light was a kindness.

After sleeping twice, fitful periods of dreamless torpor, the heavy iron door opened and in stepped a gaunt young man. His chin was elongated, his brow deformed. He wore a white lab coat, ink stains blue and green about a frayed breast pocket.

'If you would follow me,' he said to Schilling, nodding apologetically, two or three larger men behind.

The pilot stirred.

'This won't take long,' the man added, as if to appease her stare.

Schilling pushed from his crouch and walked to the door. 'Couldn't we just fill in a questionnaire?'

The man blanched. 'Oh, we don't mean to interrogate you. This is purely routine. A check-up.' The last in response to the wrinkled man's obvious bafflement.

He gazed over his shoulder at Johnson, who while listening, remained quiet.

He shrugged. 'Whatever.'

The men escorted him down a narrow corridor, the smell of paint disguising that of dank air. There was mould under the wash, a welcome alternative...

'What is this place?'

'I'm not sure. Popular conception has it as a nuclear fallout shelter.'

'On Oriel?'

'Just one of many anomalies. But I'm sure you've knowledge of those.'

'Yes. We're in the mountain then?'

'Correct. Approximately two hundred metres below ground.'

'Wow.'

'Your surprise is noted.'

'Eh?' Schilling was groggy, still hung over from the cell and the preceding grenade.

'You've been under observation,' confirmed the technician. 'It was feared you were enemy agents.'

'Ah...'

The corridor widened, the evidence of activity amplified.

'Nearly there.'

They ran tests on him, mixed his blood with a series of reagents, peeled strips of dark skin from his lips and palms.

Nothing was discussed.

Schilling remained patient through it all, merely inquiring after Johnson.

'Receiving similar treatment.'

He made no mention of the twins.

He wondered whose side he was on.

How many factions disputed the globe?

His physical presence no longer required, they marched Schilling to another room. There was a bed and blankets, a salad sandwich and a magazine. He buzzed the intercom, enjoying its archaic crackle, and requested a glass of milk. It was delivered by an Ologist, this information gleaned from the artificial gloss of her eyes.

Expensive baby eyes.

Rich family.

She was perfect.

The milk was like none he had ever tasted.

She noted his expression. 'It's real - or as near as.'

Yes, better a questionnaire.

'My name's Ula,' said the Ologist. 'What's yours?'

'You know already.' They would have bounced that off a retina.

'True, but I'd like you to tell me.'

'Hubert Schilling.'

'Thank-you, Hubert. Now...'

'I'm in love with another woman,' he stated, the rock of his sanity.

Ula smiled.

He lay back on the bed and peered at the white ceiling. 'She used to be a man once, Johnson.'

'So I hear.'

'It shows? In the tests?'

'A lot of things show. A colleague of mine is with her.'

Schilling closed his eyes. Drowsy. A narcotic? He sensed Ula's fine-boned fingers seek his pulse.

Lloyd Monk entered the room. Tall and angular, he came and stood over the bed. 'You might have let him shower or something.'

'I didn't want to risk losing any surface nutrients. I thought you'd prefer to see him this way, in his natural state.'

'Okay. Help me get him undressed.'

They carefully stripped the man of his jumpsuit, revealing the full extent of his barklike folds, brown and corrugated waves of loosely draped skin.

The lanky dendrologist ploughed digits through his hair, pulling it back from his forehead.

'What are you waiting for?' queried Ula, spurring her husband on. 'Take your sample.'

Monk produced a burnished hunting knife.

'Are you serious?'

'Sure; it won't hurt him. I'll wager his sensitivity is near zero over eighty percent of his limbs and ninety percent of his torso.'

'All the same,' remarked Ula.

'Queasy?' he teased, pinching the flesh of Schilling's right ankle. 'Not like you.' Crusty, dusting the sheets like over-baked bread, the skin stood proud when released. Monk tugged the arch, testing its elasticity. He turned the knife on its side and gently sawed through the raised section to leave an oval opening. A sweet perfume rose from the wound, which quickly filled with a glutinous fluid. There was little actual blood. 'If I was in a facetious mood, I'd swear that was xylem.'

'Very droll,' she commented. 'Is that it?'

'Almost.' He took a syringe and drew back the plunger, extracting some of the fluid. 'That ought to do it.'

'Finished?' Ula hadn't enjoyed the procedure, surprised at her depth of compassion for the big man, an individual she barely knew.

'Finished,' he echoed, the syringe drained into a test-tube and corked with a bung, the knife wiped clean and returned to its leather sheath.

Ula passed a template over Schilling's ankle, peeled the mould from the canister and lay it on the wound, where it set in its final configuration, a neat plug.

When she looked up Monk had already left the room, off to rendezvous with his microscope. She wondered what he might find. Hubert's baggy tissue was the stuff of Hallowe'en masks.

The patient's eyelids fluttered like the spotted carapaces of winged beetles, then retracted.

Maybe she jumped. It was unprofessional, whatever her response.

Dancing in his irises, black like the wicks of candles, were two small yellow flames.

Wax tears pooled in his crumpled orbits.

The flames swelled as the pupils dilated.

And soon he was enveloped, blue and green fire pouring from him into the room, a blaze that drove her beyond the door. It was a full three minutes before the sprinklers managed to dampen the inferno, such was the heat at its source. Of Hubert Schilling only ash remained, a charred husk. Ula ran the hundred metres to Monk's laboratory and found him standing with his fingers under a cold stream of water.

'Spontaneous combustion,' he announced, jovial. 'Can you believe it? Fucking test-tube blossomed in my hand like a match.'

iii

She lay awake through the night. In her lying awake she saw herself and the big man, not in the room where they had talked, where her husband had operated with his knife, but in the open air. It was midday and they walked along a path worn by countless feet, the mountains either side cool and high, coarse with greenery; two kilometres from the nearest bunker exit, winding a slow passage up the gradient of an extinct volcano. Ula had travelled this way before. Indeed, it was a favourite place of hers. Lloyd and she had attempted to cross the mountains here, flying between greater peaks, yet failing to gain sufficient altitude. Fortuitously, as it turned out, being met on landing by a contingent from the shelter beneath. Their adapted wing was similar to that Issac Waters had left Base 1 aboard, his quest for self twisted by Smith into a task of murder. And it had worked. Base Central had fallen, Joplinski either dead or vanished - to return, as all sooner or later returned, in one form or another.

She paused in the climb.

Schilling touched her shoulder. Ula covered his hand with her own and turned to face him. Although she could feel him, sense him, his presence was marked only by a ripple of light and distorted air. He shimmered, as if sporned by a desert. His breath was real, yet no lungs or nostrils could be seen to work.

'Is it much farther?' he asked.

'We're about halfway,' she told him.

'Would you like me to carry the basket?'

She felt him tug at the straps. 'No. I'm fine. You save your strength, Hubert.'

The presence fell away.

The path grew steeper and it was another hour before the volcano's lip was evident, a smooth line against the blue sky. Ula reached it, set the basket down, and began arranging the picnic she'd brought on the edge of a kilometre wide caldera. Schilling stood beside her, taking in the view, outlined by a fine gauze of steam from below.

He was staring. The vapour coiled round his transparent limbs, giving the illusion of substance. It worried Ula, this display of subterranean activity. The volcano was dead these past centuries. It did not sleep, so it could not wake. She followed his gaze out to a body of water. It was from this flat pool the steam rose, heated by rocks deep below, rocks that ought to be cool.

She asked what he saw there that interested him.

He saw a face on the water, he said.

She was about to ask whose face, when he pressed two insubstantial fingers over her lips.

A breath of wind blew the steam away, and Ula saw a young woman's shy and amused expression.

fourth: world in flux

thirteen – arrival

Time is relative, but so is space. Harry Schroeder, reflecting on a journey undertaken for no good reason, felt better than he had in ages. A new lease of life, he told himself, filled with unruly optimism. But wait a minute. Was this the right world? The newly introduced Ivan Evangela seemed to think so. They'd had a long talk, more a discussion, relativity a factor here too, for the gulf separating Harry and Ivan embroiled both space and time, was a third unknown quantity: Z.

Harry was dry and out of cigarettes. His Zippo forlorn, made redundant, had become more a lucky charm than a lighter, the naked lady on its casing smooth and hard under his squat pink thumb.

Ship's time logged five weeks, five days, four hours and nine minutes.

'This doesn't fit my description,' he said, still unconvinced, moody despite his well-being. 'I hadn't expected blue-green and white tufts. And cities! On a backworld trodden by only a few thousand company degenerates, doesn't that strike you as odd?'

'The universe is an odd place,' said Ivan, infuriating the fat journalist.

'Look, it's Oriel. I know it's Oriel. You know it's Oriel...'

'Yes,' Harry interjected. 'But does it?'

i

Moss City, population 240,000.

Christmas cards poked from the waste-basket, tossed there by Jakob; this the office of Solomon Candy, the chair his son now occupied. Solomon had vanished on a fishing trip in early autumn, the bay filled with craft and hooks. Jakob sat with his feet on the desk. The last six months had proved extraordinary. He mused, as often he did, about the bookshop on what had been Crimson Boulevard, now Targum Avenue, a 24-hour supermarket on the former Atlantic Tearooms site, foil-packed comestibles replacing aged hardbacks.

This morning's Bugle lay open before him.

The sky was a fresh shade of blue.

The newness was Jakob's to accommodate. He achieved this via alcohol consumption and a girl named Ellen, dark-haired and met in the freezer section. A girl from out of town, she listened. Jakob griped, the loss of innocence a terrible weight. He had stepped into his father's shoes, unearthing a fascination for the arcane workings of factory and sugar content. News of Solomon's death came a week after Jakob's eighteenth birthday, Ellen a future thing, like the business he now ran, from which he, like his father, resisted all efforts to pry him loose. It was suddenly his life, his history.

The streets were jammed, the pavements crowded as hundreds of previously sceptical citizens made their way north to the airfield. Radio and television reports kept the mass informed of the spaceship's progress, and now it was as if some huge party was to be thrown. Part of it at least, was landing. The images were hazy, the technology retrograde, slipping backward, this century not in keeping with its design. Jakob set out on foot, jogging with the first wave of excited sightseers, among the visionaries eager to witness the moment the aliens presented themselves. The airfield was fenced and closed. He found a concession stand and purchased a slab of Granny's Handrolled Chocolate, the nostalgia angle a last marketing idea of Solomon's, a gimmick harking back to his imagined (implanted?) beginnings outside the Globe picture-house. It was painful for Jakob to think of such temporal omissions. But today the pain was quenched by events in the heavens. Military personnel lined the perimeter on the far side of the wire, beyond them armoured vehicles, trucks, grounded helicopter gunships. Jeeps criss-crossed the tarmac. All the paraphernalia of war, he realized, a welcome party geared for aggression.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder.

'Ellen!'

'Hi.'

'How did you find me in all this?' He gestured at the babbling throng.

'Easy,' she said, hugging her coat tight about her, breath streaking the winter air, 'you stand out a mile. It was obvious you'd be near the front. I just pushed my way through, and here you are.'

'Yes, here I am.' Pushed her way through? Ellen was small and dark. She stole through shadows, Jakob often thought.

'Did you bring your camera?' she asked.

He frowned, dying inwardly.

'No? You forgot?'

He nodded.

Ellen wagged her finger and raised an eyebrow. 'You can borrow mine if you like.'

He loved her. She took and finished his chocolate.

Half and hour passed - half an hour in which they were jostled and little happened above.

His frown reappeared.

'Now what? Didn't I load film?'

'No, that's okay...'

'What then?' She turned to glare at a man who'd rudely shoved her. He cut short an apology and disappeared into the crush, abandoning two canvas chairs.

ii

There were no windows in the cramped pod, only universal eyes, external sensors, atmospheric probes and ground temperature indicators, bands of hypersensitive information gatherers imbued with the task of landing the escape vehicle in one piece, on firm terrain, in an environment hospitable to its contents.

It wouldn't have got the joke.

The release mechanism shunted them clear of the porcupine junk and they were falling, sweating in each other's teeth, two men with no way of returning to their ship.

An impossible time later they hit, the hatch sprung, and Harry slumped backward through it, shoulders meeting grass.

His breath misted. Ivan jabbed him in the ribs. He shuffled on his elbows till he was free of the pod, glimpsing an empty sky moments before a chute smothered him in lazy fabric. Rolling onto all fours he shovelled the material over his head and made his way clear. The view astounded. Rumpled hills, parkland dotted with trees, a chill wind gusting through naked boughs. In the distance was an ocean roar, but the only wavecaps were of steel and glass. The noise was assembled from voices, thousands of voices surging beyond the verdant, manicured horizon.

Ivan appeared beside him, tall and agile, the body he wore made vacant, its owner plucked loose, or perhaps squashed down somewhere. No murder, Ivan contended; a simple usurpation. Harry didn't argue, the equivocation for his own benefit. He had no wish to experience firsthand that visceral rape, but then he doubted the usefulness or aesthetic appeal of his own frumpy carcass.

What happened next was like a scene from a movie.

A musical...

Dust clouds glittered with static. Skulls rumbled like buffalo, the herd leaping and gesticulating. Countless shod feet advanced at a charge over lawns and dormant flowerbeds, churning the cold earth as they spilled like marbles across undulating sweeps of evergreenery, trouncing bulbs and uprooting rosebushes, disembowelling litter bins and carrying away saplings in a flood engendered of flesh and momentum. Harry realized this crowd would stop at nothing, himself and Ivan their target, the focus of their excitement. Ludicrous as it seemed he was off and running, matching the long limbs of Ivan as the manic swell buckled and erupted, falling over itself as those at the front decelerated, the pod in evidence, the press of super-curious city dwellers rippling in a sudden awful crush of bones. Screams resounded as throats burst, drowning the aerial thump of helicopters, their mad gyrations buffeting the already panicked mass as it enveloped the artefact of a spacefaring civilization.

Disappointment followed, and not a few fights broke out as people squabbled over scraps of parachute, pieces of heatshield and cubic centimetres of impact lining.

Breathing heavily, the travellers watched from afar, perched on a wooden bench under a sad-looking mulberry. It was fascinating, yet eerie, the sight of all those people tearing apart an emergency escape vehicle.

They'd overshot, a white and silver ovoid suspended beneath five candy-striped umbrellas, the military as the onlookers, mesmerized in those seconds, eyes raised to the sky and the visiting extraterrestrials. Straining Jakob, like many others, had taken for granted the media's apparent foreknowledge, its government sources reliably informed as to the time and place of the landing. The sight of the lamely drifting pod, however, fitted no news-hyped scenario he was aware of. The whole episode teetered dangerous on the brink of anticlimax. But then, as if sensing the mood, a wind strengthened from the east, catching the alien vessel and dragging it wide of the spacious concrete. Several seconds elapsed, the pod drifted lower, and suddenly pandemonium gripped the crowd, who, robbed of any spectacle, turned as one and ran in the direction of Thistle Park.

Ellen was laughing, uproarious as she sprinted, holding Jakob's hand, holding her hat, the two immersed in a speeding conglomerate, pushed and pushing as the ground disappeared on every side, wrapped in fierce layers of commotion. The crowd's mood turned euphoric, frantically bubbling, men and women, children the first to cry out, their wonder swamped by fear, the less fit slipping on the damp turf as the mass reached the outskirts of the park, dropped possessions and fallen citizenry disturbing the previously even flow of bodies. Shouts went unheard and injuries were garnered while the press mounted the hillside and washed like a storm-fattened river into the gentle valley beyond. Here the pod had descended, and here were no guns or soldiers to countermand. Here the madness climaxed, trampling dirty faces and snarling like dogs, an intoxicated whirlpool of people shrieking and biting as each sought a token, a crumb from the feast of broken, superior technology.

Not Ellen. She dragged him wide, riding the sucking gravity of the throng and continuing up the valley's far side. Jakob's head turned over his shoulder, but his legs carried him along with the girl, obedient to that smile she wore, a smile which admitted no equal, her goal a bench and two dishevelled men sitting on it.

'Hello!' she shouted, beaming widely, Jakob exhausted beside her, the pair's otherworldly pallor yet to impinge. 'Courtney sent me to meet you. Welcome to Oriel!'

iii

Jakob sat numb and helpless in the front of the car, the two men in the rear, one either side of diminutive Ellen. Newly introduced and bearing more than a familial likeness, her sister Jenny was driving, wearing sunglasses and a smile. The aliens were distant and quiet, the larger fidgeting with a lighter, his companion sucking a boiled sweet Jakob had offered having discovered a paper bag of them glued in his pocket.

They stopped at a signal. The traffic arranged itself in lanes between pavements and buildings, the latter crusted and awned, the former choked with pedestrians, caged trees, dachshunds and meters. Ivan rubbed his knuckles against the dark glass. Harry peered over Jakob's shoulder.

Jenny said, 'Pleased you could make it, fellas.'

Both remained silent. In the park, on the bench, they had evinced surprise at the mention of Courtney.

Did they know him? Did he? Jakob imagined so, the name bringing to mind the old man in the bookshop...which made him feel differently about Ellen. Sure she listened, he told himself, sulking. She was sent to listen. Sent by Courtney.

He felt an empathy with the two men. They were hiding their confusion, hoping to learn, awaiting elucidation.

The signal changed and they turned left onto Freedman Avenue.

At least he'd been able to empty his bladder.

Winter sun blinked on and off as they drove, winding slowly through Moss City, one avenue after another: Kaleyard, East, Longevity. Shop fronts and arcadia writhed, stores illuminated and shady. Somewhere a bus honked. They appeared to circle, as if negotiating a maze, gradually making their way toward the centre. Jakob caught Jenny's concerned expression, her eyelash flutter as she glanced in the rearview. He quashed the urge to turn around, guessing they were followed. A pity, as he wanted to meet the old man again. Maybe it was still possible. maybe he ought to be back at work, doing his rounds at the factory, chatting, tasting and inquiring after families he knew to be healthy. Was there any illness in Moss? Had to be. There were clinics, two hospitals; too much cover for accidents. Strange how things only became real when you thought of them.

Jenny accelerated and manoeuvred down a side street. The car behind skidded, wagged its tail in open pursuit. She shook her head. 'I hadn't expected this. Ellen, I'm letting you and your boyfriend out, okay?'

'Okay,' replied her sibling. 'Jakob, get ready.'

'What?' He was scared, the vehicle weaving through alleys, bouncing uncomfortably before emerging onto a main thoroughfare. 'What is this? I'm not sure I want to go anywhere with you.'

One of the men laughed. Ivan?

Yes, Ivan. The other sweated, Ellen climbing over him to reach the door.

'Make a left,' she instructed. More alleyways. 'Jake?' She shoved him. He opened his door as the car swept to a halt. Alighting, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him into a dim hotel lobby. 'Fuck, Jake, this is serious. Don't you realize what's at stake?'

'You,' he said bitterly, 'have lied to me all along.'

Silence engulfed them.

She took his hands in her own.

'Yes. I'm sorry.'

The deserted hotel's musty decor was spotted with fuzzy lights, spots of incandescence that appeared without source. Luminous moths...

Elsewhere, 'Don't shoot,' Harry mumbled.

'Get out of the car,' ordered a masked individual, its sexless body wrapped, faceless, meaning what it said.

Ivan lay bloodied, Jenny gaping.

'Get out of the car.'

Harry shuffled from the back seat, splinters of glass in his clothing.

'This way,' the voice told him, indicating a second vehicle.

He paused to gaze at the woman with her innards punctured, her sunglasses broken. Ivan had not remained passive, cringing like Harry, but taken on one of their aggressors, wrestling him to the ground before being shot. Despite himself, Harry experienced the loss. Ivan had fast become part of his tableau. Now he was alone, a prisoner, Courtney and the truth behind Oriel farther removed, complicated in a fashion he would not have believed.

A gun nosed his ribs once in the other car. He tried his best to remain calm. The gun shunted him again, hard and deliberate, as if trying to get his attention. Its snout twisted as they pulled away. Harry's mouth fell open. He turned to stare but the barrel was jammed with force. He got the message: Ivan. Ivan! Harry wanted to be sick. He covered his face, terrified of giving anything away, the man beside him the same he had first encountered on Rumpelstiltskin, then at the hub, his features those of a distended junkie. And here he was transmogrified once more, in a city of countless avenues, a city of mirrors and living flesh.

Harry closed his eyes and only opened them again when they stopped.

Dark, dank, subterranean, sound dampened, footfalls weak as he was led toward an elevator. No, they steered him in the direction of the stairs instead. A precaution? This place less than secure? Risks a wise person might take, to be under someone's unsuspecting nose rather than ensconced in a hideaway the enemy might happen upon by mistake.

But what did he know of espionage?

Enough. It fascinated the dredger inasmuch as it stirred his journalistic credence, provoking a thirst.

He walked. No blindfold.

The rendezvous was a sparsely furnished apartment. Sat in a folding chair was a woman who appeared switched off, housed elsewhere, this a medium, a flesh-set he was seated facing, awaiting some prompt.

Two of the four masks left the room. Harry failed to distinguish Ivan.

The woman flinched.

He trembled, injected with a sudden craving for nicotine or a passable substitute.

'Orlando,' said the woman; 'a cigarette.'

Grateful, Harry sucked.

'The suitcase,' she inquired. 'Where is it?'

Harry nearly laughed. The suitcase? Shit, he'd completely forgotten about the surviving half of his luggage. It remained in orbit on the junk.

They were interested in that?

Why not? One suitcase had been left in a lost property office overseen by God.

He did laugh; was struck in the back of the neck, a blow that sent him reeling. Blackness, then the stench of burnt carpet, his cigarette extinguished in it and buckled Harry on his knees trying to raise his head.

'Orlando.'

Kicked in the gut. At least the other mask twitched. Ivan, surely. But there was something to learn here first. Harry realized that.

He breathed the best he could. 'I don't have it,' he said, eyes watering, her hard face unsympathetic. 'I don't have it with me,' he expounded, stating the obvious, buying moments.

She leaned forward. 'I think you think you can make a deal. Correct?'

The fucking suitcase. He wished he had trashed everything, himself included.

'Orlando.'

He gritted his teeth, but what arrived was a fresh smoke. A small difference in inflexion. His lip bled.

'The suitcase,' he said, going for broke. 'What's in it?'

Her eyes were dry and lustreless, her teeth imperfect. An overbite. Her skull when it exploded splashed the room with an assortment of colours.

The mask called Orlando collapsed to the floor.

There was a cruel pause. Two masks, undecided, were wedged in the jamb, the destruction's source unclear.

Ivan shrugged and blew them away with the wall.

'Perhaps I should have waited,' he said later, apologetic in the absurd.

'No,' replied Harry. 'I don't think she knew.'

'What about Courtney?'

He sipped his drink. 'Oh, he knows. Whatever it is, he knows. He was expecting us.'

'Correction: he was expecting somebody. But it doesn't take much to deduce that. For all we know the suitcase might be a red herring.'

Harry didn't agree. He said as much.

Ivan waved at the waitress. 'Same again?'

'Sure...' He was getting somewhere with the alcohol.

'Two beers, two rums, and a cigar for my friend here.'

'I don't trust you,' confessed Harry. 'I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is - you're creepy.'

'Thanks.'

'That's okay. Where did you get the money?'

Ivan smiled out of his new face. 'Found it in my pocket.' He wafted a note. Ten bells, one hundred chimes to the bell.

'Blood money,' said Harry, woozy.

'Right. Who cares? It's necessary.'

Their drinks arrived. Harry couldn't be certain whether he meant the cash or the killing.

'A toast,' he proposed.

'A toast to what?'

'Who cares...'

Ivan shook his head. 'To death,' he said. 'To death and...'

'No guilt problem.'

The bar was full, people loud and close. Smoke drifted through a sense of occasion. An evening paper had passed between them earlier.

Six dead, forty seriously injured.

They spent the night in a deserted office block, its floorspace until recently under conversion.

'There is always something bigger,' stated Harry the next morning over breakfast, deep in bacon, eggs and steam. 'First rule of any conspiracy; as far as I know universal. Are you going to eat that toast?'

'It must be your ambition to die on a full stomach,' Ivan noted.

'Yeah, well, I won't die of starvation. That narrows it down a bit.'

Ivan shifted irritably in his chair.

'Something wrong?' Harry queried, glancing round at the other tables.

'This body,' said the snatcher, 'has an uncomfortable rectal condition.'

The fat man nearly choked, taking a moment to compose himself. 'Are you serious?'

'Very.'

'Can't you, er, change it for another?'

'I've tried.'

'When?'

'Last night.'

'And?'

'I'm stuck,' Ivan said. 'The people here, they're not compatible. I can't invade them the way I did this man.' He tapped his chest.

The words amounted to a confession, the truth of Ivan's unpleasant proclivity Harry had found ways not to hear, not to believe. He faced it now, a repugnant evil. And yet an evil, a man toward whom he was sympathetic.

He wondered about that; about what it made him.

They sat in silence a while, Harry stirring spoon through coffee.

'They're different somehow.' It was not a question. 'The masked man, who you are now, he was company. Offworld.'

'I have no empathy with the locals...'

'Precisely. Or maybe you have too much.'

Ivan's head lifted.

'Think about it,' said Harry, picking his teeth. 'What brings you here in the first place? Why my suitcase?'

'Courtney.'

'Yeah. He was first-foot. Vanished on an island to the west, on a world that couldn't be more different to this one.'

Ivan brooded, said, 'I killed his father, the governor of Saturn. The company set me up.'

'And the company's here. Mother's here. You know Mother, the chief execs?'

'Of course! We've been over that.'

Harry nodded. 'Second rule of any conspiracy: the facts are always available, the truth right in front of you, provided you know where to look.'

Standing, Ivan unrolled a bill and dropped it on the table. 'Have a doughnut,' he suggested.

Harry was nonplussed. 'Wait a minute. Where are you going?'

'It's right in front of you,' Ivan chided, straightening his borrowed collar and grabbing his borrowed coat.

'Wait!'

Five past eight in the morning and the traffic nose to tail. A cold drizzle darkened sky and pavement, making piebald kerbs and windows. No sign of Ivan. Company assassin? Every thumping wiper blade registered, along with countless AM odours, fresh bread, fresh ink, fresh shirts, ordinary people about their everyday business in a city that to Harry was a throwback, an urban landscape from the early 21st Century.

'Excuse me.'

He gazed down at a man's ruddy complexion. 'Yes?' Bespectacled, tiny, florid. Not much over a metre tall.

'I don't mean to be rude,' he said, hands in greatcoat pockets, 'but you look like a man of rare sensibilities, someone I would take pleasure in introducing to my wife. That is, if you've no prior engagement. We have an apartment a short drive from here. Pendler Avenue.'

He spoke the address with pride.

'Your wife?' Harry was less suspicious than intrigued, and he was very suspicious. So far Moss City had held only unpleasant surprises. This could be another, he thought. Such an approach, however, deserved a result and there was the possibility he might learn something.

'Yes,' said the man, grinning happily. 'Pamela is sadly housebound these days, but always keen to entertain strangers; especially those of a supernatural nature.'

That clinched it. He returned the smile, offered his hand and revealed his name, adding, when the formalities were ended, the smaller man introduced as Martin Mortmain, 'I'd be delighted to meet your wife.'

Pendler Avenue was exclusive and residential. The Mortmains occupied a penthouse suite with a view of the river, barges idly traversing an elegantly fronted waterway. Martin waved Harry through a second door with a flourish, removing and cleaning his spectacles having separated his guest from his jacket, hung with the greatcoat in a spacious hall cupboard.

'This is the living-room,' said Martin, the wave taking in an array of baroque furniture, heavy drapes and two ornately framed portraits of a young woman. 'Please, have a seat. Pamela will be out in a minute.' Hands clasped, he disappeared through a panelled screen disguising, perhaps, a dining area. The open plan was broken into a number of lesser territories by silk and paper walls, vivid reds, blues, umber, gold, veneers and reliefs rising two thirds of the way to the generous ceiling.

Harry leaned back into cushions, the chair large and well upholstered.

There was a parrot in a cage.

The screens rustled and Martin reappeared, carrying a silver tray laden with teapot, cups and saucers, cakes, biscuits and preserves in small glass jars. He placed this centrally on an oval table one of whose brass legs wobbled from the floor, then positioned himself, comically short on an embroidered chaise longue. A hum of electrics heralded the arrival of Pamela. At the sight of wheels and flowing skirts Harry found he'd stood along with her diminutive husband, who seemed barely able to contain his excitement. Pamela beamed approval, asked them to sit, parked her archaic-looking conveyance, took a silver spoon from the tray and rapped the china pot with its bold design of flowers. She nodded to Martin, who poured.

Harry accepted his brew and sipped, waiting for this latest interview to be initiated.

The wasted lady, face crumpled like old parchment, scrutinized him as she helped herself to a generous slice of orange-cake.

'Pamela has so many questions,' assured Martin, filling his small mouth.

'I'd be pleased to answer them,' Harry offered politely, feeling his intestines wriggle.

Would he?

Pamela adjusted herself. 'Mr Schroeder,' she began, dabbing her frail lips with a doily. 'I don't know what Martin has told you of my researches, but I imagine an explanation is in order.' She quietened her husband with a raised finger. 'There are many unknowns,' she said. 'Many worldly secrets. Information is a privilege, even in this enlightened age. As an example, did you know that recently it has been suggested - and wildly believed, also - that life on our planet was seeded from outer space? Ridiculous, as I'm sure you'll agree; but such outlandish theories have popular appeal among the less well educated.' She paused. 'Life has only one source, Mr Schroeder.' She straightened. 'The interior.'

Harry lowered cup to saucer, saucer to knee. 'You mean?'

'Precisely! The underworld, the netherworld, those regions below us all, where the souls of our dear departed toil unflaggingly on behalf of their mortal brothers in a constant effort of salvage and replication, gathering materials for the next generation and patiently tending those living forms we grace for however brief a tenure. A veritable army, Mr Schroeder, in which you have the honour of serving. But a forgotten army on a forgotten campaign, for few among the living are either knowledgeable or grateful. Their fate is sealed, I fear, as in disbelief lies dissolution. Thus do our numbers decline over the generations. Why, I remember my home town, a bustling hive of nearly twenty thousand when I was a girl. And now? A ghostly relic! A deserted conurbation whose populace is more accurately guessed than counted, for it is ever in decline. And all through a lack of faith in your own good services.'

Martin was the colour of radishes, feet swinging clear of the thickly carpeted floor.

Harry wondered what quality the man had detected in him, dreading there was none and he'd been picked at random, a likely candidate for an unlikely conversation. The chewing in his stomach filled him with an increasing disquiet.

'You're too good,' he pretended, insides knotting 'Really, my work is not of such importance.'

Pamela was horrified. 'Mr Schroeder! How can you say that? Only yesterday Mr Mortmain and myself were present when one of our dearest friends was handed over to a contemporary of yours, a Mr Gruman. The experience was truly moving. He was a stoutly built gentleman like yourself. Do you know him?'

'Gruman.' Harry elected to lie. 'Yes - not personally, you understand; more by reputation.'

'Then he is reliable?' questioned Pamela, mollified.

Harry drew a blank.

She glanced at her husband.

Harry felt something...

'I think,' said Martin. 'That is, I know this is delicate, but Pamela is keen to learn of her late companion. How she is faring. When we might see her return.'

Something profound, the dredger decided. 'The world is in a time of crisis,' he said, sounding, he hoped, sufficiently grave. 'As you have pointed out, madam, there are secrets. It would ill-serve the lady about whom you inquire were I to reveal them.'

The Mortmains quelled their obvious disappointment, while the parrot eyed him critically.

'Martin,' said Pamela. 'The tables.'

Her husband dropped to his feet and scuttled behind a decorative partition, returning moments later with several long scrolls of paper.

'I've done my homework,' she informed Harry as she tugged loose a purple ribbon. 'These tables belonged to my mother, and her mother before, going back generations. Here are marked the criss-crossing paths of subterranean forces. The footsteps of gods, no less, from a time of perturbations, when I believe a contest was fought between the strongest immortals for dominion over those of us of flesh. But you're familiar with the histories, I'm sure. I don't mean to sound omnipotent, because I'm not, but my understanding of these events greatly surpasses any of my dead or living contemporaries.'

Harry, bored with niceties, wondering if they were merely delaying him here, returned his cup and saucer to the tray and took the roll from Pamela. His brow wrinkled. His stomach tightened further. He grabbed another scroll, sliding the ribbon off and peering intently at the displayed information, a linear series of graphs and measurements, contoural overviews and digitally precise columns of figures. He searched through the tables until he found the last in a sequence, its mass of diagrammatic evidence a violent zig-zag flourish that even to Harry's untrained eye represented the energy and magnitude of a significant tectonic disturbance.

'Where did you get these?' he asked brusquely, still absorbing the jagged readings, digesting their meaning more readily, it seemed, than his breakfast.

Silence.

Fear?

Pamela was breathless, Martin thrown into a stiff confusion.

Who were these people?

'This is a computer printout,' he stated flatly, uncharacteristically vicious, 'the hardcopy of a recording. I need to know where you got it.'

Nothing...

A tear slid from Pamela's right eye.

Martin jerked awkwardly and lunged at him across the table, a palpable hatred in his suddenly whitened features as he clawed mostly at air, upsetting crockery.

Hammering at the door echoed his crashing.

Pamela coughed nauseously.

The hammering again, reverberating through two doors into the apartment, accompanied by muffled shouting.

She vomited, sobbing as pain jolted desiccated limbs.

Harry, standing now, yelled loud enough to drown her guttural noises. Stamping on Mr Mortmain, who twitched at his feet like an injured kitten, he brought his fist round and smashed it into Mrs Mortmain's accusing visage, mending its twisted ugliness, knocking her and her wheelchair over backward. Layers of petticoats fell to cover her face. Bodies slammed against woodwork.

He folded the last roll of print, stuffed it in his shirt and headed for a window. Cold air piled in as he heaved open the multi-paned sash and climbed out onto a narrow ledge running in both directions, perhaps eight centimetres wide. Beneath stretched a sheer wall of glass mouldings, lesser dwellings, balcony gardens...vegetation and concrete.

A doily floated past. Harry shuffled nervously toward a fixed ladder and scrambled to the roof, where he found himself among topiary disturbed by a squatting contraption; half flyer, half company wing, with its decals painted out.

fourteen - final breath

Mud and Swiss were dead, killed by Luther Canning. Luther was tried and convicted, protesting his innocence, and now he'd escaped. Harry and Ivan were to bring him back. Alive if possible, as the law did not countenance his disposal. He'd held a gun to someone's head, stolen their vehicle and fled out to sea, where Harry and Ivan gave chase, churning the slick gook of the wind-sculpted ocean the Ologists called dessert, a bottomless, turgid puree Harry found loathsome.

'Why'd that bastard have to come out here?' he moaned.

The giant wheels that gave the vehicle its name, each the height of a man, whipped the ocean's superficies to a glassy foam.

'I mean, look at this stuff!'

Ivan smiled and drove. Their destination was an oasis of brittle rock labelled Island 9, eighteen hundred kilometres southeast of Central. The scene of the crime, it seemed likely Luther would return here, like a dog to its vomit. The trace on the stolen wheels confirmed the hunch - the hunch having been Ivan's, which explained his satisfied expression, as Ivan professed to understanding "the criminal mind".

'Can't you sit still?' he asked Harry.

The screen read forty kilometres to go.

Harry folded his thick arms and scowled.

In places the ocean formed a thick crust, bulging like green ice. It was even possible to walk on it. In others it was weakly fluid, shooting impressive geysers, pressure-driven plumes that from a distance resembled giant orchids, sprays of hanging flowers whose heads were blurred. The Ologists dubbed these regions inactive and active. They were headed into an area of inactive dessert now.

The sound of the wheels altered to a bass rumble.

'Nearly there,' chirped Ivan.

Island 9 was barren and yellow, sulphurous. It smelled to Harry of lighted matches. There were presently fourteen such islands, transient atolls that rose from the sea floor. Or so it was inferred. They stretched in a loose archipelago between the continents. Here Mud and Swiss had been killed. And here Luther hid, maybe armed, maybe dangerous, his abandoned wheels hunched on the crumbling beach like some bloated insect with gout.

'Where do we start?' questioned Harry, inquiring of his partner's famous brain. The island was two thirds of a kilometre across at its narrowest, and rugged.

Ivan tapped a forefinger off his brow. 'Where it's highest, I guess.'

Somehow the idea of climbing the one modest peak didn't appeal to Harry. He scratched his paunch and rooted for cigarettes, but finally relented.

The stolen vehicle disabled and their own secured, they set off. Rock, soft and moistureless, groaned like packed sand under their feet. 9 was dead; dead and sinking. The atoll filled Harry with a sense of foreboding, what Ologist's liked to call away-sickness. Behind them loomed the ocean, dark and possessive, the colour of shaded grass.

'Wait a minute. Rest,' Harry argued. 'Why the rush?'

'You rest,' Ivan said. 'It's not far to the summit.' He climbed on, leaving Harry to sweat, the taller, younger man's strides carrying him away in languid, flowing moments.

Harry swore and uncapped his flask. A few drops leaked from his mouth and fell to the ground, where they fizzed. Spittle on a hotplate, he thought, laughing quietly to himself, sensing movement to his rear as he fitted a cigarette to his lips. He was about to turn when something struck him in the back of the neck. Water gushed from the dropped flask, a bubbling rivulet that steamed and hissed toward the shore, releasing a wealth of garden compost odours.

i

Luther Canning was no murderer. Mud and Swiss had been his friends, all three engineers seconded to the survey, their boozing and long circuitous hikes just their way of relieving the boredom.

Dropped off one grizzled morning and told to expect the survey team within the hour, they'd waited four days. Why the delay? Who was in charge of this expedition that they could allow a group of engineers to be landed with only basic rations, a two hundred litre container of beer, and no radio?

ii

Crouched meditatively at the island's highest point, the opalescent sky gridded with snow, Ivan caught a shape to his left in the corner of his eye. A figment perhaps, a spectre of sun, shadow and dust, or Luther Canning.

Unnerved, he slid quickly down the incline, rolled and came up on one knee, weapon raised to meet any possible threat. He held the position a moment, wrapped in silence as the wan shades of mock clouds snapped on and off like the shutters of a thousand magic lanterns, casting dizzy forms all round him, regaling him with ghosts.

Standing, his head came level with the corroded platform from which he had jumped.

Nothing there. Ivan clambered back up, grateful Harry was not about to witness his foolishness, his nervy response. But there was a further consideration...

He holstered his gun and dusted himself off. The peak rose approximately thirty metres above sea-level, the horizon a blur of green smudges, trees shrouded in fog. There were no footprints save his own, and those would be shortly abraded by a wind pumping in off the sludge; stinging his cheeks with granules and scouring the island of human traces, the eroded particles of other islands down the line.

Looking back he was unable to glimpse Harry.

He understood Mud and Swiss to have been killed on the atoll's southern edge, a bay there, a tongue of rising folds heaving in slow motion, waves that echoed deeper currents, the end result of active and inactive zones. Areas of flux toured the ocean like submerged weather systems, separate, yet every bit as fickle as their cousins overhead. Such tides were thrall to no moon.

Returning to where he had left his partner Ivan was careful of his footing, the rock loose and powdery, assailed like himself by dust-impregnated squalls. But Harry was gone. Ivan kicked his empty flask off the shallow escarpment.

'Hey! Harry, where are you?'

No reply. He continued on to the beach.

The survey, when finally it arrived, had landed where the two wheels now stood. He imagined he could make out the vague impressions of groundhooks and dumped equipment.

'Find anything?'

Ivan spun round. 'Harry...' He struggled to contain his surprise.

His partner pushed back his hat and scratched his head. 'I made a tour of the island.'

'And?'

Harry grinned, flicked ash from his cigarette. 'Nothing.'

There was a call from Central.

Ivan rested a long finger against his nose. His sharp features resembled a bird's, a semblance exaggerated by his reflection in the wheel's canopy.

'We can shoot him? Is that what they say?'

'If and when it should prove necessary. They're waiving the rules on this one.'

'What changed their minds?' quizzed Harry, hopping from foot to foot, uncharacteristically enthused.

Ivan had never seen him so wound up. 'They're sending in a flyer, and marksmen.'

'How long before they get here?'

Ivan shrugged, his own trepidation as incongruous as his partner's excitement. 'An hour.'

'An hour,' repeated Harry, possessed of an animal hunger, a gnawing deep within. There was a savage lust in his bones. He spat, grinning at the faint coil of gases that rose from the strand. He crushed his palms together.

'Right...'

iii

Harry and Ivan were dead, killed by Luther Canning. That much was self-evident. The flyer, when it arrived, skimmed over the sea and came to rest on the beach near the two abandoned wheels, its Weekender compliment, all trained security operatives, stepping down. They walked in single file to the island's southern extreme where they had spotted two bodies on circling the crumbling atoll. Lounging like seals were Harry and Ivan, shot through the head.

The report cited the weapon involved as belonging to Harry, but there was no trace of it. Luther, too, had vanished...

Peculiar, the Ologists called it.

iv

He knew as much as he wanted to know about Oriel, its before and after: latency, riches, potential. He knew very little, the extended sphere of his thinking merely sufficient to accommodate Jenny, her death real to him: happening, actual. He knew of Harry and Ivan, their deaths past. A rehearsal? Jenny existed outside her body now.

Luther Canning.

Island 9 was a service station on the east carriageway, a faded yellow building smelling of oil-based substances wary of flame. Luther parked the car and left it, feet crunching gravel.

The place was deserted. He tried the mesh-screened door. Locked, inside dust, cartons, a faded map of Stanley county, the sprawling precincts of Moss contained in a dull rectangle of plastic - 1:100,000, the Free State of Iliac. To the south lay High Combulo, to the north and east undeveloped plateau. The service station stood at a crossroads. He had worked here between nightmares, filling tanks, listening to travellers' tales, watching television. Now, in the cold, Luther carried Jenny's body to the rear of the low building, determined to break inside before the black of night overwhelmed him.

The car was without lights, its electrics shorted. Blood on the seats and holes in the doors, he doubted it would start come morning. But he had nowhere to go. Nowhere to stay either.

He put down the corpse, a small parcel, and picked up a stone. Face turned away he broke a window, the noise of shattering glass frighteningly loud in the chill emptiness that characterized this part of the Free State. The nearest town was in High Combulo, a lawless trading post across the air border called Dryshoulders after the grey hills in whose shade it nestled, the confluence of vacant rivers. In summer the plateau and highlands fringing the eastern horizon were visible from the station's roof; Dryshoulders too, arid and boxy, if you wished to climb the five metre neon EXPRESS sign, as Luther had, to replace a fuse.

Inside was much as he remembered. There was no power, no water. Perhaps batteries, he thought, raising the steel latch on the back door, lifting the blanket-wrapped corpse and carrying it to a stuffed chair. There must be batteries. He descended the concrete steps to the workshop with its automobile parts and stagnant atmosphere. Batteries to give colour and light, to imbue the TV with pictures and flood the surrounding earth with neon glare. EXPRESS, EXPRESS, off and on in whole and part, a blazing marker on the road to nowhere.

He'd felt the bullets entering Jenny's body. They had driven him out, severing that empathic link. His scream went unheard by those surrounding the vehicle, blown out by projectiles and pain. Death crushed him, its merciless grip squeezing him from her eyes. He had been unable to save her, to drag her after him, inchoate, through the window, as their relationship was just begun and he was still the lesser partner. The flesh was wholly hers, while his own stood upright in a locker on platform six, West Terminus. Green the hue of its skin.

Luther woke in it, light and sound leaking in through vents in the thin plate steel.

Re-established, he flexed the stubs of fingers, stretching as best he could in the confined space, listening to announcements, trains and people. Then he let his anger surface and burst from the locker, scattering men and women, crashing through a flower stall and a newspaper stand, the brash illumination swamping his darkened mind as shrunken green Luther Canning charged out of the crowded terminus, leaping turnstiles and brushing aside security personnel. Skidding on the pavement, a blur of revolving doors behind him, he hailed a taxi. But none stopped. Those that were waiting sped away in panic at his glittering, toothy mien. He climbed onto the roof of a delivery truck and from there onto the roof of the station. Policemen appeared in the street below, gun-waving. He sprinted across West Terminus, discarding the Hawaiian shirt that had covered most of his warty frame, leaving it trailing on an aerial as he pummelled his short legs, the muscles of which were stiff and quickly tiring. Luther gasped for breath. Teeth gritted, he jumped a three metre gap to a neighbouring building, a sprawling street-level bus depot, rolling on his back amid puckered felt as he lost his footing.

Above and around him crowded silvered windows, seeming to lean inward at each inhalation. Suddenly his anger dissipated, replaced by a fresher urgency. There passed several frustrating seconds wherein he fought to orient himself in relation to Jenny - his and her whereabouts, their proximity.

He would have to return to the site of the attack, from there trace the car. Only the streets would be crawling with cops. And time wasn't on his side.

A TV news team hovered over the concourse, raised on a hydraulic platform.

So quick? Luther didn't wait to be interviewed, choosing instead a direction that led eventually underground via the Faux Avenue shuttle. He peered nervously through the reflective pane, huddled under a brilliant orange tarpaulin. A freak, an offworld vagrant devolved into the nodular semblance of a cartoon character. Others had taken their own lives or fled down the sewers, a community of bogeymen whose existence was denied officially, although a small number were held captive. Some lived as hermits in the wild. Most went unaccounted for. Luther was a mythological being, a strange and bizarre creature of the subvisual. The irony hurt. As a kid he'd zapped and blasted a menagerie of similar demons, unearthly beasts lurking in dark tunnels, preying on children. The symbolism was depressingly human. It might almost be a joke, an Ologist's private carnival. That the kid had grown up to be a monster robbed Luther of many treasured right and wrong illusions and gifted him with few credible excuses. He hated this persona. It had Bad Guy written all over.

Once again he found himself wrongly accused.

He left the shuttle at Harmony, causing space to appear on the platform and emptying an elevator. Skull uncovered and grinning, it wouldn't take the police long to catch up with him. He needed some clothes, and to that end followed a stocky youth into a clinically bright lavatory.

Emerging, Luther adjusted his scarf, a chill wind penetrating, as winter still had its holiday home in the city. Hands deep in pockets, he wound his way through oddly quiet streets, following his crooked nose to a line of emergency vehicles. A small crowd shuffled behind a strung tape barrier. He concealed himself in it, able to watch as an ambulance was loaded. Jenny? He couldn't be sure. How much time had passed? Maybe they'd taken her already. He had to retrieve her, coax the life back into her; a life quelled, absent, the soul transferable as Luther had experienced. Hers was a mutable self, one he'd had the privilege of sharing. And he was terrified of losing her, for without the dark woman he was nothing...nobody, soon forgotten.

Memory was all. Memory was susceptible.

Sitting in the chair she appeared waxen.

She had talked to him of the past, of incompleteness. She sought what was missing, racial memories of other worlds, private memories of her kind.

Jenny wasn't human, less so than Luther, who had found tinned carrots to feed his greenness, his fated nightvision dancing with colour.

Patiently, he waited. He didn't know how to pray, or if prayer was sufficient. He dozed, weary, empty, terrified of losing Jenny. It couldn't be over, he thought, not when it was just beginning. Having discovered true empathy, two minds in one body, Luther was not prepared to endure such loneliness as had seemed destined for him. He refused to believe in nothing. Instead, he concentrated on summoning nameless powers, begging help from unknown sources.

She had talked of sisters.

He was convinced she would find a way of returning.

Around noon he'd walked into Police Central on the corner of Turner and Hopkins, avenues broad, tree-lined and near identical. The desk sergeant eyed him suspiciously, but was too busy to stop and question the hunched individual. A steady flow of bodies jammed the lobby, citizens awaiting news of lost sons and runaway daughters, spouses the victims of accidents and violence, a toll of claims and injustices. He took the stairs down past interview rooms and holding cells, policemen staring yet choosing not to apprehend.

Luther hoped to find the morgue. Almost certainly in the basement.

It was 1930s New York, spring-hinges noisy as he entered the slab-room, chemicals muted, death present, tags on toes and shapes immobile under sheets and in sliding-drawer cupboards. Small hotel suites lined the far wall, monochrome tinged with yellow. From an adjoining theatre came the sound of rubber gloves peeling.

What now? Luther had told himself it would be easy. Security was lax, unnecessary about a morgue.

Pulling back a sheet he discovered a face more grotesque than his own, a body mutated. Proof, if it was needed, that here lay an alien expired.

Company.

Quickly he checked the others, each similarly warped, a row of emptied containers, their contents shifted or leaked down a drain.

The transfiguration, he knew, was not always so obvious, might even be constructive; an amputee growing a new appendage, those with phobias inexplicably cured. A whole range of dormant applications and bizarre talents. But these were ugly without exception, nameless trophies on stainless steel hospital trolleys. More wrongly, they were denoted by serial numbers in the hundreds.

From the adjoining theatre came a sneeze. Luther approached the partly open door, its pebbled glass smearing. The chemical smell was stronger here. He caught sight of a stained lab coat, a grey-haired man methodically reassembling.

'Come in. Don't be shy.'

Luther hesitated a moment, then entered.

'Friend of yours, is she?'

'Huh?' Caught by surprise.

'The deceased,' clarified the man, not looking his way. 'I asked if you knew her.'

He made no reply. He watched, fascinated. In an enamel tray lay blood and bullets.

Vermilion and blue.

The man turned then, smiling benignly. 'I'll let you in on a secret. The mayor of this city insists on cremation for all unidentified cadavers. Put them in the ground, he says, and they'll rise!'

Luther maintained his silence.

The man wiped his hands, peeled off a successive layer of rubber. 'She died of internal injuries; massive haemorrhaging; heart failure; shock. Take your pick. Er, low velocity slugs entering the chest and abdomen, some with explosive heads. I'd guess one in three. Random distribution. Most probably homemade. At least I've never seen any that colour. Lethal. Am I distressing you at all? I mean to. You must realize...'

Footsteps approached.

'Here. Under the table.'

Luther scuttled round and crouched as if before an altar.

The door swung open, energizing a draught.

'Forrest - body.'

'You don't say.' He winked at Luther. 'Be with you in a minute.'

The draught again, backward.

'Another secret,' whispered Forrest, bending over. 'A while ago one of my clients resuscitated. Gave me quite a shock. He babbled for hours after. Totally crazy. Anyway, if you want to take her out of here I'll understand. Burning is such a waste.'

'You mean?'

'Sure. If they do rise again, it'd be worth it just to see the mayor's face.'

'Forrest! Get out here!' boomed the voice from the slab room.

'Coming, boss,' the pathologist answered. And to Luther, 'You have friends in the strangest places.'

Yes, he believed that.

Jenny's face was peaceful. He stroked her hair, waiting, a clock ticking loudly the eight minutes it took Forrest to deal with his superior. The way clear the grey-haired man helped him trundle Jenny to a rear entrance by means of a clanking elevator. To the rear of Police Central was a compound, vehicles clustered round its edges, centring it a large cement square overlooked by numerous oval windows.

'Here are the keys,' said Forrest. 'Good luck.

Luther accepted without thought, Jenny wrapped in a blanket in his arms as he wandered casually toward the holed sedan. He lay her on the stained back seat and got in behind the wheel. The pathologist waved from the door. It was an easy matter driving out of town, as if suddenly no-one was looking.

Expecting me?

Luther's eyes opened. It was two in the morning. From outside came the low rumble of heavy traffic.

He rolled off the couch and made his way through to the empty shop fronting the service station. Headlights advanced in a long pearldrop chain, a string of armoured transports and heavy military vehicles mostly invisible against the night. Luther stood watching for ten or more minutes, the realization slowly sinking in. The EXPRESS was two hundred kilometres from Moss City, with poor farmland, scrub, a handful of scattered villages between. The convoy wound up from the south, from neighbouring Combulo. Earlier he'd empowered the TV, only the picture was lousy, so he'd left it, not bothering to rig an aerial. Now, returned to the apartment, the tyre and engine rumble still extant in his ears, he reconnected the set to the salvaged batteries. Static growled. Light snapped, blasting blue and green hues. Too much interference. Voices raged, the transmission direct from Moss but incoherent.

Sensing his mistake Luther snatched the leads from the TV, killing it.

Too late, however, as a splash of electromagnetic waves had cast tell-tale surf across sweeping, active hardware, and a vehicle was dispatched to investigate the signal.

Heaving Jenny over his shoulder he ran out the back door and continued in a straight line toward the security fence twenty metres distant, reaching it just as beams sprayed the rusted chassis and burnt steel wrecks in the lot. Luther headed for a hole in the fence, a blackmarket letterbox. Crawling through, the blanket covering Jenny snagged on a wire, exposing her features, luminous and oddly gratified. Beyond huddled trees, a thick copse nursed by the same spring that fed the service station, its stream part clogged with ancient wheel rims and corroded bumpers.

He scrambled on, the ground rising, eventually pausing for breath on the shadowed crest of a hill with a view of the undulating plain below. From this vantage it was possible to see the convoy for what it was, a fully-fledged invasion force. Not from the stars, he thought, but from closer to home, an enemy whose disposition could only be guessed at, the world's nascent stability facing its first real threat in the dubious guise of a ground army.

The EXPRESS lit up a final time, then exploded.

v

Irving Courtney left his day job at five, shedding his Forrest persona the moment he struck pavement, the polished stone facade of the monolithic Police Central building behind him for the last time. He knew exactly what was coming and why. If he had ever wished to implement a grand scheme of his own, that dream had died.

His father's murderers were here, drawn to Oriel by greed, a hunger easy to understand. Once the planet had enjoyed a peaceful cycle of creation, without blueprints or outside interference. But with the arrival of man all that changed. And his feet were not the first. There had been an earlier explorer, a lady whose person was forgotten, whose latent soul remained. And that soul? Inherited, let us say, by Runner Heidelberg. The missing pathologist had laughed on finding her, on finding that humanity was not alone.

What definition of life prevailed? Was there a contradiction, or merely a misapprehension?

Courtney had studied the mortal remains of countless mosaic forms, members of a company workforce whose short term cerebral and visceral ingestions transformed them beyond recognition, accelerating their evolution along myriad random avenues, often with shocking consequences; albeit these were largely cultural, visible, contextual deformities and self-image aberrations that resulted in death via suicide, not as an after-effect of the mutation, a process frightening in speed yet corporeally, if not spiritually, sound.

A merging of realities? Courtney smiled at passers-by.

Yes, everything might change.

vi

As dawn approached Luther resisted the winter cold, arms busy, hands shovelling as he dug a hole. An engineer, he'd sat through the night envisaging ways by which his plan might be implemented. The hill was as good a place as any. The soil was light, a deep woody loam. He made easy work of the excavation. Arranging the support apparatus was another matter. With no tools available he had to use all his considerable strength to bend and lace a system of branches, testing and refining the design until satisfied it would adequately function.

The morning was just reward to his limbs. He sweated profusely, heaving great lungfuls of frigid air. The clouds were thin and coloured a pale furnace red. The sun was more orange than yellow, an image recalled from when its radiance was filtered by an icy roof. Was the sun weaker now, or did other factors govern its output, as they governed his? He shook his head and continued, licking the dewy moisture off his wrists. The excavation was roughly square, longer than wide, the dirt piled on a series of boards, pieces of advertisement hoarding found stacked against the fence, among them an invitation to try a new brand of coffee, its merits pronounced in letters a metre tall.

Too late now, he thought, climbing with Jenny into the hole. Not quite the statutory six feet, it made a passable grave. There was to be no marker other than the faded boards.

WAKE UP DREAMING, the legend read.

Well, here goes...

Taking a deep breath he yanked the torn and knotted blanket, loosened the wooden braces, unleashed the bent-double saplings and dropped the counterweight of tyres, collapsed the network of branches and hoarding and deposited upward of three hundred kilos of soil and rock on top of himself and his love, a dull thump spreading a damp echo through the new day.

And suffocated, Luther Canning, putting his faith in worms, his trust in the strangest places, green flesh and dead flesh locked away from the sky.

fifteen - colony

Lucky Ivan. He stepped off the bus in a robust fourth decade male, unfamiliar muscles lithe if not yet agile, dressed in a colony two-piece uniform. The body was Earth-approximate, externally compatible, the nose a little too sharp, the eyes milky whirlpools that passed unnoticed under normal social conditions. His stomach was novel, a kind of organic waste-disposal disseminating pangs for chromium. It had rumbled noisily on the bus, Ivan feeding it slivers of metal peeled from the seat rail. To discern the full range of his physical parameters he would have to experiment.

Harry had been right about the offworld connection. The difficulty lay in finding a suitable donor. The overwhelming majority of remodelled company personnel exhibited their adaptations in ways visually antagonistic to a basically conservative populace, those fresh-faced indigena common to Moss City and its environs. Now, on the eve of world war, Ivan Evangela walked toward the steel and razorwire gates of the colony; part zoo, part institution.

'Good morning, Dr Stewart. May I see your pass?'

Ivan smiled pleasantly, the reflex inbuilt, while he searched the many pockets of the two-piece. His uniform differed from the guard's in that Stewart was less a member of staff as a trustee.

The guard waited patiently while he located the plastic, took it from him and pressed it flat against a hand-screen similar to the one he himself carried. Ivan was curious to know how much information was held on the card, and of what specific nature. The technology here was beyond anything in the city.

'Looks like you had quite a trip,' the man commented, handing the plastic back. 'I hope it didn't take too much out of you.'

Ivan held the smile. The gates buzzed and he passed under a cross-meshed portcullis.

So far so good. He'd encountered Stewart out near the park where Harry and himself had landed, walking, lost in thought. The perfect victim. Of the pod only a dent in the turf remained. The day was cold, the two men blowing misty spectres, ghostly submarines. The uniform had intrigued him. No giveaway, but unusual inasmuch as the few genuine city dwellers Stewart came across shied away from him in a fashion seemingly more instinctive than rude, as if refusing on a primal level his obvious existence. Ivan generated no such reaction. It had to be the uniform. Then why wear it? He followed,

Stewart pausing intermittently to peer at an object in his hands. A book? He glimpsed an image and his curiosity was further aroused, the dark slab a pocket monitor. Not a TV. The man's features were intelligent, educated, his lips moving as he talked quietly to himself, perhaps mulling over a problem or reconciling a dilemma.

Well, they had that in common. Ivan approached.

'Good afternoon.'

The man hesitated briefly. 'Good afternoon. I'm sorry, do I know you?'

'Let's say we have mutual friends,' replied Ivan, deliberately vague, eager to learn more about his intended victim. The man had concealed the screen rather hurriedly and it fascinated him.

Stewart licked his lips nervously, his apprehension made visible as he regarded the stranger.

'Why don't we walk?' Ivan suggested.

Stewart agreed, relaxing. 'Do you live in the city?'

'No, just visiting. Like yourself, yes?'

'Yes...'

They talked for some minutes, the subjects varied, Ivan at his most receptive, Stewart increasingly furtive. His nervousness appeared to shift toward that generated by expectation, Ivan noted, steering him toward a rank of mulberry bushes. A disturbing sexual tension. But it made things easier, he reasoned...less public.

He took possession.

The screen, when activated, displayed scenes of dim forest alleys, looming trees blurred with moisture, grasses parting. The perspective was low down, swamped in a haze resembling steam, the quick-fire exhalations of a living creature. Like his own these spun diaphanous wraiths up into the firmament. Unlike his, the shapes were indescribable. Ivan experienced fear, the emotion a hangover he was keen to explore, seating himself on the very bench he and Harry had occupied two days earlier.

The sense of foreboding grew. He closed his eyes and fought to separate Stewart's residual consciousness from his transplanted own, a ravenous cuckoo examining the legitimate chick it had usurped. This wasn't something he'd attempted before. It unnerved him to imagine a body's past self squashed flat on the inside. But there was undeniably a presence.

'Hey, Stewart!'

He stopped in his tracks, low buildings surrounding, a zig-zag of steps winding up the escarpment. The pallor of age hung, suspended like a fine mist, a feeling that the colony had led a varied existence.

He recognized the face and nodded.

'You look a bit shaken,' said Dormund, bouncing, hands in pockets.

Ivan thought him retarded. There was a scattering of other faces, outwardly normal. 'It's a long bus ride,' he explained. 'And the road's bumpy. Gets worse the farther west you travel.'

It was the truth. The bus was a charter and he its sole passenger. Ivan; the driver; the driver's radio.

Dormund smirked foolishly. Leaning forward he inquired, 'See any shows?'

Ivan put a finger to his lips. 'Can't talk now. Business. Catch you later.'

Seconds passed. Dormund shuffled off.

He contemplated the steps. Began climbing, the rail cold under his palm. A series of levels were cut into the rock, each with its door locked from the outside, the inmates hidden behind the exterior colony facade. The Rock of Gibraltar, he fancied, Barbary apes and Neanderthals. It seemed likely their keepers were company also, brave lieutenants whose loyal hearts - suitably refurbished - saw them installed in high political office. Stewart's faded being offered up such impressions, a disordered legacy hinting at nascent war, a conflict internecine, where rivalries and fantasies were to be enacted on the surface of an innocent world. As a theatre the planet had much to offer. Ivan was privy to these ideas, a mass of information accreted in a visual format held together by that now personal fear.

It all added to the mystery. His priority, however, was revenge, a quality equally veiled, as Ivan was uncertain on whose behalf it should be taken.

Craftsman or tool? the riddle questioned. Tool or material? Material or craftsman?

It was a circle. But then the universe was round.

i

'I don't like it,' Smith told his sponsor, communicating via a telephone line.

'He can't hurt you,' came the reply, the voice nasal. 'We have him. The bait was successful.'

'Yes, but what if he's suspicious? He came straight here; straight inside. He's acting too natural.'

The sponsor laughed. Smith held the phone away from his ear.

Silence. Then, 'He's trapped. We have him. Just do as you're told.'

Smith replaced the receiver. He still didn't like it, felt the situation unnecessarily dangerous, the Runner too great an unknown. This was no Issac Waters primed by him to explode. Mother had tampered with Evangela. Mother wanted him unharmed. Smith licked his gums and opened the heavy security door. Others Mother had tampered with, indirectly, lined the passage, a collection of motley dependants who looked to Smith for guidance, protection, leadership. Quietly they smouldered, his loyal hounds. They were hideous, he thought. But he was ugliest of all.

ii

Ivan viewed the turbulent, white-capped ocean. He was aware of a door having opened behind him. The screen, held close, pictured a maze of brown ferns and mottled boulders. The image jumped and shook, pitched and rolled between sparse trees and a sky of lazy blue.

'If you press your thumb against the top righthand corner of the display a menu will appear.'

Ivan raised his eyebrows. He followed the instruction. The menu offered analysis over a wide spectrum. He chose X-rays. The image paled, the foliage, the sky blending into a single mass of tissue. Few shapes were recognizable. Darker shades represented trees. The ferns were visible only as a shifting, oddly translucent configuration. The impression was of something alive, interrelated, its surface peeled away to reveal...what? Organs? That was too distant an analogy. The picture, thought Ivan, was out of focus, a collection of blurred garden implements against a monochrome sun. As if an unknown medium interpolated; the atmosphere viscid. 'The reception's poor,' he said, just as a form, acute and stygian, flew across the screen.

He flinched.

'What is it?' asked Smith. 'What did you see?'

He turned to face the questioner. His memory of the Base 1 commander, gleaned from Stewart, hardly prepared him for the reality. At over two metres tall the bestial outline of Smith cut a jagged swathe against the winter backdrop. The man's skull had been stretched into a bony corona of blunt horns and ridges, the nose hollowed and upturned, the eyes gouged, swimming greenly at the bottom of deep wells. The chin was elongated and the brow fierce with projections, decorated by hardened wafers of cracked skin, scales that spiralled into a conic growth at the rear of his head. From the shoulders down his body was more recognizably human, although warped, unfinished, hips and thighs bulging with new muscle, feet crimped, skin a deep rust red, hanging in folds about his loins, stretched tight over massive ribs, encrusted and sloughing.

'Pretty, eh?' Smith laughed, exhibiting teeth surprisingly mundane. He wiped his nose on his arm like a schoolboy. 'Well, Ivan Evangela, what is it you spied in the mirror?'

'A bird,' he lied, feeling outnumbered. Wind slapped at his uniform. 'A raven.'

Smith nodded, rubbed his jaw. 'An omen.'

Ivan switched off the portable and turned once more to face the sea. Real birds dotted his vision. What had flashed across the screen, that he had identified immediately, was a witch, riding a broomstick.

'Tell me something,' he pitched, staring down the escarpment while flexing his grip on the rail. 'Is war really necessary?'

Himself speaking or Stewart?

It was several seconds before Smith answered, in which time Ivan mentally perfected his fall.

'War is a means of succession, of speeding up events. Like dropping hot coals into the waters of evolution. Boiling the swamp, as it were. It is always necessary, in one form or another. Here it will be fought by organic machines.'

People, thought Ivan, and jumped, half running, half tumbling. The slope was steep yet grassy, a drop of a forty or fifty metres, the distance twice that by means of the lessening gradient. Bunched dunes ranged like low hillocks, too soft to build on, leaving only the high voltage and razorwire to negotiate.

Staggering to his feet, Ivan rested a moment, ignoring his bruises, emptying himself of nausea and dizziness. The screen was safely housed in a pouch in his jacket. He looked around for signs of pursuit. The guards or whoever patrolled this side of the wire were either held back or late in arriving. He peered up the incline, but could see only the polished railing. He jogged the hundred metres to the fence, a four metre cheese-grate he had somehow to clamber over.

There were shouts and people running toward him.

Ivan sagged to his knees, too weak to fight, realizing this was one escape too many.

Four men, ordinary in character, approached at a sprint, slipping in the loose sand. Each was beaming, frantic, bright with energy as they neared. The tallest grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him clear of the beach while the others scratched their sides and chins and babbled, speaking so fast Ivan failed to comprehend their meaning. The quartet gathered round him, jovial, clapping, hyperactive, leaping two, three metres from the shallow dunes, blissfully excited. Ivan pushed his fingers at them, gesturing for them to slow down, but succeeded only in enlivening the men further. The stockiest took hold of him, wrapping him in the crook of one arm while making swanlike shapes in the air with his free hand. Suddenly Ivan understood what they intended. He joined the humorous chorus, gorging on the bristling energy and mirth of the foursome, as he prepared to be catapulted by this Orielean circus act into either sparks or deliverance.

Shot from a cannon, he thought, no helmet for the cannonball, the safety-net a veneer of powdered crystals beneath whose gently rasping surface might lurk stakes or anti-personnel mines. He wondered, as many muscles tautened, was this the first time such a mode of flight had been attempted?

iii

They stand in line, grimacing behind glass, waiting for the bullets to miss. The trucks spin tyres over corpses, powering streams of blood from wounds squeezed like ketchup bottles. Fires rush the upper floors, joining buildings in a handshake of flames across the street, the broad avenue, the trees broken in two and charred like used matchsticks. Windows explode, bursting into faces as if laughing with mouthfuls of coloured beads. Screams merge with sirens. Machineguns issue orders and tap-dance on the roofs of armoured vehicles, their routines studded with embarrassing pauses to reload - smiles dismantled and scattered, hot hollow teeth.

A small boy runs down a corridor sprayed red, blotched and torn wallpaper peeling like burnt skin, plaster flesh decaying rapidly. Tears cartwheel from his eyes, trajectories symmetrical as they arc to the dust-breathing floorboards, splashing amid beetles, the floors vibrating heat an echo of the rooms below, the rooms where rape and torture, death and mutilation scald the air. Knives are sharpened. Bulbs pop, inviting swathes of dark, wrapping the child in his own fear, suffocating him with his own retreating senses, panic drying his throat and wetting his thighs, laces tripping him at the top of the stairs.

The soldiers pound asphalt bearing the scars of tracked carriers, their metal safety helmets buckled and unbuckled, buckles fastened tight or swinging jauntily. Crushed belongings stain the stained pavement. The drains are blocked with refuse. The city is a single entity, joined to itself as it writhes, its people governed by the same impulses, the same thoughts, the same agonies and miscomprehensions. The city has achieved consciousness, become self-aware, cognizant of its every appendage, the workings of guts and tongues. The city had awakened, is alive that it might die, killed by a rival being, a city far away.

Car horns sing a dirge and sound the death-rattle of blasted pneumonics, the deflated symphony of lives.

The city of Moss expels a breath...

They are fighting, the Orieleans.

sixteen - pilgrim

In six months of solitary travelling Johnson had considered many things, not least the self-combustion of Hubert Schilling, a fact she had yet to come to terms with. What occupied her mind at present though, was her name. The only Roman in Roman Johnson was her nose. Pounding the endless savannah at the heart of Oriel's southern continent, it vexed her, what she might be called, how she might introduce herself to others, the manner after which they might address her. Johnson was Pilot Johnson to Knox and Soapy, the protomen she'd discovered inside a square-hewn cave, a cellar or dungeon, its roof part collapsed and overgrown, five metres outside the toppled castle walls on the promontory far to the north. A sleeping bunch of rags, they had come awake (alive?) in the tight beam of her torch. Johnson wondered how they were faring, hurt by their absence, their disappearance a mystery. She and Hubert were similarly divorced, separated, Johnson alone in a landscape void of homes.

No-one lived here. This land was empty of all but scrub and animal bones. The dress she wore hung tattered about her knees, the material creased and torn. She walked barefoot under a large black umbrella, a canteen, a pair of gloves, a radio, a gun, a hunting knife riding along with Schilling's backgammon set and the tiger's eye in the string-pull bag over her shoulder. Clothes and luxuries were discarded, littering her path from the mountains, a trail of underwear and emergency rations. She was happy to wander south in the face of logic and explanations that made no sense to her anyway. The sun was hot and the day interminable, the answers she'd received from the Base 2 refugees no less perplexing than the questions posed.

So what? It had embarrassed her to try the dress on. Yet, it seemed, to shake all her masculine inhibitions. It had been easy with Schilling to forget everything and relax. It was hard to admit the degree to which she missed him, and the driving urge to venture south on a journey without end into a continent not so much dark as obfuscated. But south was his direction. Johnson lacked a direction of her own. South then she walked, her pool of shade bobbling, the hunting knife a present from Lloyd, Ula's lanky husband, the dress once fitting Ula's frame, since outgrown, Johnson twirling the flower-print skirt as she got used to the idea of urinating while squatting, menstruation and the strange intuitive bursts of acumen that confirmed her status as woman. Truly a sharp peculiarity, this newfound ability to conquer all opposition.

The dress was part of her now, blessedly incongruous as she froze the night in its thinness and floated by day like the sole survivor of a tribal insurrection, the dazed and dreamy missionary's daughter lost and defenceless on the arid plains of 19th Century Africa.

It was a fantasy she enacted. To date there had been neither cannibals or lions. But she was followed. The ghosts of unborn children dogged her heels, clinging to her like the breeze.

Roman Johnson told herself stories, taking a leading role in these pieces of theatre...

i

Water carved the desert, sluicing rain that pummelled at low undulating dunes, eroding the gently sculpted waves of an ocean of sand. The clouds were black, the rain dark. The sky delivered a constant straight-line barrage, fast strings of diamonds. The noise was tremendous, collected by her umbrella which threatened to tear. Her arms ached with the effort of holding it upright, pushing it against the weight of the elements, feet sinking as the ground flowed, water streaming round her ankles as she walked.

It was early afternoon and the desert stretched to the horizon, awash with fluid. The rain ate down like acid through a corpse, circulating in pools and gouging channels between chimney breasts and flagpoles, roof slates visible as the sand washed away. Falling in torrents, the rain was relentless, swirling about crenellations, battering the weather-vane on the church apse, drumming off dormer windows, beating their fragile panes. Houses appeared amid the tumult, gaunt, sagging dwellings, lopsided walls overhanging as yet invisible streets, the covering of sand packed into vestibule niches, loosened by the rain and carried in suspension along thoroughfares, spuming and dancing between ladies' hats and gentlemen's canes. The pricked ears of horses, the painted bodies of carts and carriages were revealed, their compliment of goods and citizens visible as the tide of sand receded. Eye-glasses and beards, features animated and static were uncovered, poised for business as the desert ocean drained from the town that had lain buried.

And, like Mary Poppins, Johnson descended, moving with the clouds above the rooftops, slowly finding herself, umbrella folded, rain stopped, in the middle of a busy road.

Life resumed apace. Johnson skipped to the pavement, turned to view the scene, the trader's cries and the snorting horses evocative. Pungent, too.

The sun shone warmly. The air was mellow. The gurgle of accelerated liquid echoed from copious drains.

Cabbage leaves and sawdust.

A cart rumbled by, laden with ironmongery, drawn by two donkeys, two boys riding in the rear.

One raised his cap, a thick fringe of blond hair escaping as he poked his companion in the ribs, that boy's potato nose exaggerated by the narrowness of his skull, his left eye puffy as if recently blackened. His shirt was tugged and the pair leapt to the cobbles, bowing and scraping, full of obvious mischief.

Soapy Farfriender stuck his fingers under his braces and drummed his chest before declaring, 'Well, if it ain't Pilot Johnson, scourge of the airways, bane of the rivers, traveller from afar, pilgrim and privateer!'

Know Hog laughed into a handkerchief.

Johnson was speechless.

Soapy took her arm. 'It's good to see you again. Have you missed us? No? Never mind. I'm sure you're hungry after your trip. Knox, take the lady's bag - we're to escort her to the Hotel Boreal on Fork Street.'

They walked toward evening, gas lamps lit and premises shuttered, a troop of gaudy soldiers passing at a canter, uniforms ablaze with tassels and saddles dripping polish.

'Ah,' lamented Soapy, 'the hussars, the proud hussars. If only I was taller.'

'There's war,' offered Knox, trailing. 'Everyone's in a rush to enlist. Everyone but us.'

Soapy frowned. 'Not a war, exactly,' he amended; 'more a regional conflict.'

The hotel was three storeys and unpainted, its brown facade brick to the first level, wattle thereafter, mud and sticks interlaced with proud oak beams. Inside was dim and whitewashed, illuminated by candles. There was the stale odour of beer. Two old men smoked clay pipes. A younger man, dark skinned, sat alone at a table, a handsome gentleman in high boots and tight britches, a velvet cape thrown over the back of an adjacent chair, black hair falling in ringlets.

Soapy pulled on her arm. He coaxed her ear closer, hooking his finger. 'That's captain Marshall Kay,' he whispered, guiding Johnson toward the stairs. 'His ship, the Gillyflower, has been seized by the port. They say he may attempt to run the blockade.'

Captain? Johnson paused on the second step. But the pilot was exhausted. She followed the issue to a squalid room with a bed, undressed to the red-faced chagrin of Knox Hog, and finally, delightfully slept.

She dreamed of Schilling, his powerful muscles and cue-ball head. In her dream Hubert was freshly shaved, boarding the economy flyer.

They took their seats.

'Strange,' Schilling opined. 'I don't mean to be rude, but I took you for a man...from a distance.'

Johnson taxied.

The air replaced the ground and soon they were over ocean.

'Got any cigarettes?' queried the pilot, not wishing to smoke her own.

'No - I don't...'

'Pity.'

The trooper yawned and fidgeted. 'I'm not much good at sitting still,' he said.

Johnson nodded. 'Take a walk,' she suggested. 'I'll switch to auto-pilot and join you out on the wing.'

He shrugged 'Okay...' Unstrapped, scratched, wandered aft, heaved open the portside hatch.

The wind howled warmly. Johnson set the controls, knotted the string, and followed her passenger out onto the dented aerofoil.

'How's the view?'

'Great, you can see all the way to the mine, even count the spokes in the colliery wheels.'

Johnson shaded her eyes.

Suddenly the sky was rent, a shadow passing across her face as she looked up. The roof was fractured. But it wasn't snow blocking the sun; the shape too large, too singular for that. It was a huge black spaceship, its belly a mass of complex angles, the multiform hull of a yawbus gorged on its own noise, screeching like a bat, harmonics unhumanly high as it crashed through the strangled atmosphere.

The turbulence crushed them.

The stub of a candle offered the only light, a creamy ball of insubstance placed centrally on a crude wooden table under which Knox and Soapy were looped like cats. Empty Johnson recalled the knot she'd tied in her auto-pilot string. At the door came a knock. She smelled food, rose clutching a sheet to answer.

'That'll be Faith,' murmured Knox.

A fat woman with red cheeks.

Johnson stepped aside and Faith trundled into the dank room trailing steam.

'Breakfast,' Knox specified.

Faith set a try down and scuttled out.

Soapy banged his head on the underside of the table. He rubbed his injured pate on crawling forth, stood and examined the candle. 'About an hour till dawn,' he said, seating his cap. 'Better get dressed before the captain arrives.'

Johnson was still groggy. 'Huh?'

'Marshall Kay,' he explained, mouth full, gesturing with a mug. 'You remember him.'

'I do?'

'Sure. I pointed him out last night.'

'Face like a charred pomegranate,' said Knox Hog.

Johnson let fall the sheet and searched for her dress. Gone, in its place knee-length trousers, boots and undershirt, a buttoned jacket. She gazed at these clothes, made sure of the contents of the string-pull, urinated in what appeared to be a gravy boat, accepted a chicken wing, some wine, thought briefly of Schilling and finished dressing just as a second knock, louder, rattled the door in its frame.

Soapy answered. The captain grinned like a whale. His boots were caked in mud, his velvet cape pinned across his chest with a copper brooch. He walked straight toward the pilot and, noses almost touching, peered in her eyes like a madman.

'This is real,' he said. 'I hope you appreciate that.'

But she wasn't convinced of this reality's integrity.

'I mustn't take all the credit, however,' said Marshall Key. 'The rule of chaos applies. For detail one must employ anarchy. War is a trusted method, if inexact. Anarchy the result of fallacious power - and we all know power corrupts. So...the reality you perceive,' hands outstretched, 'is a consequence of ignorant desire. Creation is a negative thing, it seems, growing more complex - like a lie - the lower one's mental horizon dips.'

'Bollocks,' Johnson rejoined.

Marshall Kay ceased grinning. 'Hmm,' he said. 'Your mind is an icecube, my dear.'

She sat on the bed. 'Meaning?'

He glanced at Knox and Soapy, hurriedly eating. 'It might be used to promote stability.'

'For whom?'

'You're not convinced?' He looked abashed.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' she confessed, examining her nails. 'Perhaps you ought to go out and come back in again.'

She didn't want her mind used for anything, thank-you.

But the captain remained.

She hefted her bag and opened it, removed the gun and lodged its cold blunt muzzle against her forehead.

'Shoot yourself?' he remarked. 'Interesting. What do you suppose that will achieve? Not that you care about anything, eh? The universe you inhabit is entirely your own. There are few entrances and no exits. It must be very lonely...'

She pulled the trigger.

What was she thinking?

Her eyes stung. Snatches of conversation leaked back into her skull. She recalled the town, the salt of ocean air transmuted from desert, one or the other of her manufacture. Maybe both.

Dead, her physicality discontinued. She no longer occupied a body, but journeyed instead through a pale gelid continuum. Immersed like a foetus. She did not see. She did not breathe. Her lungs worked and her eyes opened. She was carrying a string-pull bag and an umbrella. The ghosts of children harried her.

There was dirt in her hair and between her toes.

And missing wounds.

Touching her forehead she found nothing peculiar. It would not have surprised her to discover a neat hole.

And inside? An icecube part of wholly melted.

ii

Morning. The sun the colour of peaches. She took a drink from her canteen and shivered. The landscape had altered, become hillier, verdant, tall trees rocking back and forth, crowns of tiny clustered leaves sussurrating. She wondered if she was any nearer her goal, decided against speculation, and folding her umbrella climbed a grassy ridge, the drop it neighboured cut by a broiling river.

The cataract spilled noisily between green and grey strata, water arching, creating split-second sculpture as it flowed in blackness. The river disappeared below ground, the echo of its passage howling, resounding off the steep canyon walls. She stared into that swallowing maw, fifty metres across, lips of mottled stone. She tossed a stick and watched its rapid progress, spun high in the mist-spangled air before vanishing down the lightless throat. To the left of the opening were what appeared to be steps hewn from the bare rock, slick and rounded. Johnson traced them back to the ridge and stood at their beginning, at the beginning of a second journey, a new pilgrimage. Spray wet her face. Resolved, she stabbed the earth with the umbrella, leaving it vertical, marking her starting point with its rough black wings. Then began the descent, a true peregrination into the unknown interior of once boisterous Oriel. Her naked feet clung to the glassy stairway. She adjusted the position of Hubert's bag on her shoulder, knowing a fall would see her drowned, tumbling helplessly as the hydraulic force of the current swept her in and down, smashing her bones and tearing her flesh long before the cataract met its rocky close deep in the stygian bowels of the world, deep inside Oriel where perhaps boisterousness still reigned.

seventeen - mastic man

There were kobolds. There were goblins. There was Hubert...

Schilling knew from Franky the situation involving Mother and Irving Courtney. Courtney senior had been murdered while in residence, his castle afloat the gaseous clouds of Saturn. Assassinated, as the motives were political, Mother consisting of eight captains of such wealth and power that all or none might be implicated, all or none might be guilty. Junior had stumbled upon a means of judicial assessment peculiar to Oriel, and all those seven were here.

Franky's role was uncertain. The postbox of his brain had received a communication. Only there was no return address, no obvious clue to source. Her rescue remained uppermost in his mind. But there were problems.

Presently Schilling squatted in a cave, the pearly light variegated, shifting hues of blue and yellow offering the soft pretence of shadows. His body reflected each shade, taking its solidity from the motile floor and walls. His shape was borrowed, changeable; yet to implement any change meant broadcasting his status to stronger, belligerent, more practised minds. For now it was better to take cover. Easier to hide than fight. The cave was left over from some creatures' coupling of hours before. If he was to probe the space it might be possible to discover what manner of beings had trysted here. What, if anything, they had sporned.

There were goblins and kobolds...a deliberate generalisation, as it was impossible to tell one from the other. He knew only that the former were hostile, the latter benign, and neither to be trusted.

He may have died. He was unsure. His body, his original body, had been destroyed. But was that so unusual? Did not a body replicated itself during the course of a life under normal circumstances? Circumstances here were responsible for accelerating his perceptions, the means by which he ordered reality forced to adapt rapidly, altered by processes beyond his control. He had yet to catch up, he thought, staring at the palms of his hands.

Where did the light come from?

Schilling grew.

eighteen - irregulars

Harry's usual approach was heuristic. He saw no reason to change. His captor's were apparently satisfied with what they'd managed, quite literally to squeeze out of him. Things Harry didn't even know. The suitcase was a revelation; but he failed to gauge its significance or why the various factions were interested. Unless, he thought, there were more than two such portals opening onto a multitude of worlds. In which case (bad pun, Harry) there was more at stake here than Oriel, the company/agency power struggle, and heroic deeds.

He'd never intended to harm anyone. Martin and Pamela Mortmain, he believed, were fake. A trap successfully baited, the penthouse's occupants unreal, everything staged. He recalled the impact of face and fist, the doll-like collapse of features thereafter veiled. Had he paused to uncover that visage, lifting the shroud of her dress, what might he have seen? Then there was the printout. Seized by his captors, the roll Harry had stashed. An earthquake? Someone knew better. But they were nameless, unseen antagonists.

A calendar on the wall told him it was January, 2073.

i

War came as a shock to Jakob. Until a few weeks ago High and Low Combulo were places he hoped to export to. Chaos put an end to that. He gripped his rifle, a private in the Free State militia, an irregular appendage of the army waging a high cost guerrilla campaign through the alleys and back ways of Moss City.

Ellen was a casualty, as was the sweet factory. He counted ammunition: bullets 13, grenades 1, bayonet.

No communication. Jakob fought as part of a cell, a nail-clipping division of himself and two others. Down from nine that morning.

Yalman, the eldest, sat chewing.

Gus was asleep and Hamish meditating.

Jakob counted ammunition.

Gus wasn't in uniform.

The small bear stretched and rolled over, blinked several times, yawned and curled once more in the ample lap of Hamish Livingstone, corporal.

Rank was according to age in the irregulars. Yalman was sergeant, mouth busy with Leapers.

They'd found the bear out near the park. It had been hit by a vehicle. Hamish rescued the creature, feeding it on salvaged rations and Coca-Cola. It led to arguments, but those passed with Juno and Helpaka, killed by flame-thrower while hunting for dogends at the junction of Venus and Lester. Their charred remains were indistinguishable from countless others. Yalman said the flame-throwers were remotes. He doubted the physiological authenticity of their attackers. Jakob agreed, but for his own reasons. The one dead Combulon he'd seen was around a metre tall and sexless, melding quickly with the pavement, a thick cloud of yellow smoke obscuring the whole dissolving carcass. But remotes? Controlled by whom? He wished Ellen was here to answer the fundamentals. He would have liked to have discussed it with Yalman in greater detail. Their experiences, however, were entirely different.

Like all of Moss though, they had death in common.

The bear growled softly and Hamish flattened its ears with one hand, opening a supermarket sandwich with the other, using his teeth to breach the polythene wrapper.

Jakob toyed with the idea of priming the grenade and placing it in the damp circle made by their boots.

'What's the biggest target this side of the Mile Avenue barricade?' whispered Yalman.

Jakob and Hamish exchanged glances.

'The airfield,' said Candy.

'Right. And we're what, half a kilometre from there?'

They nodded. Hamish shared his sandwich with Gus.

'So what do you say we attack? Tonight, as soon as it's dark.'

'We'd never get inside the fence,' Jakob commented, although he liked the idea.

There was a lingering silence.

'We could follow the sewer,' offered the corporal, first to realize the sergeant's meaning.

Yalman laughed with his mouth shut.

Jakob shook his head. But in accordance? He knew better than most what lived deeper down the sewers.

'That's settled then,' Yalman concluded. He sighed resignedly, chin on left shoulder. 'Wake me at the appropriate hour.'

Gus soon joined him sleeping.

'Superstitious, Jake?' queried Hamish.

'No. You?'

'No.'

'Neither of us will be around tomorrow.'

'Yeah - big miss.'

Jakob uncovered his watch. 'Have you any idea why it's happening, this war?'

Hamish grinned splendidly, igniting the tunnel. 'None, private, none whatsoever. And you know something? I don't give a shit.'

Spoken like a man who understood he was dying. He'd been shot that morning along with Reeb, Kemler, Dowdy, Bando, Jones and Mynnisov, the last an employee of Candy's, his late father's private secretary who had opted for a return to the factory floor. 'From whence I came,' his last words on the subject, Jakob unsuccessful in keeping him in his office. 'My legs grow short under that desk. So if you don't mind...'

'Yes. Yes. Okay.'

Reeb and Kemler were students. Dowdy, Bando and Jones all worked for an insurance company, women whose mobile phones had never stopped ringing. An assortment of lives.

'Get some rest,' ordered Hamish, bleeding under his shirt, leaking like a punctured apple.

Jakob closed his eyes. Three, maybe four hours.

The world was serious.

The invaders were intent on deconstructing the city. The people had largely vanished, murdered or transported, and the buildings were next. Barricades divided the metropolitan area into smaller blocks. Like drawing chalk lines on a floor, a fixed grid of squares, walls slowly rising, blanking the depleted skyline. The grid was as yet incomplete, but it was only a matter of time before Moss was entirely sectioned into individual plots.

And then?

An ominous rumble of expelled air swept through the sewer.

Yalman woke, grimacing. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'it's not such a good idea.'

Corporal Livingstone nodded, although it was unclear if he was in agreement.

Jakob said, 'We could fly off the Sports Administration roof.'

'Fly what, gliders?' quizzed Hamish.

'Sure,' Yalman answered. 'The building's intact.'

'The building's on the far side of the barricade,' Hamish pointed out, adding, when no one argued, 'Well?'

'Well what?' said Yalman. 'You scared of heights?'

Jakob was. He kept his mouth shut.

Hamish communed with the bear, its third eye milky, an empty stare in its head.

ii

Early evening.

Ivan had swapped the colony two-piece for corpse-stripped army fatigues. What army he couldn't say. In olive drab minus identifying marks, badges and emblems picked away, he sat in a tree overlooking a road fifty metres from and three metres above the ocean. The coastline was largely deserted. There was evidence of isolated skirmishes. Thus the uniform, remarkably hole free. His life seemed to revolve round situations like this. A bleak mass of dark clouds squatted over the emerald water.

Having picked his way carefully westward, covering around twenty kilometres a day, Ivan was ready to break the peace. The war being contested had nothing to do with him, but his patience was worn, his progress slowed by the necessity of avoiding any of the disparate elements of Oriel's manoeuvring combatants, their sporadic meetings gelled by the activities of radio-generals safely housed in some concealed position while the consequences of their tactics displayed themselves in heat, noise and light, an exchange of ideologies impressing the earth with molten footprints.

Bodies were scarce, variously attired. It was easy to think of these skirmishes as being amplified and fed down wires, the war itself a sham, at best fought between twos and threes, employing brass bands and fireworks, cheap mercenaries whose screaming and dying was magnified, inflated like an angry balloon and stabbed with a pin. Certainly the explosions were loud.

The sole truck to pass Ivan's way carried a driver, a set of ladders and several large coloured sacks. Its draught wound up his trouser legs, stirring hairs. The situation, he had to admit, was perplexing. Odd.

He sat in the tree with the screen in his lap.

On the screen events unfolded in primary shades, a group of men wearing heavy overcoats crawling through an archway of rubbish bins, scurrying like rats, blackened and desperate as they traversed on bellies the urban concrete. The city smouldered, he saw. One of the men was known to Ivan. A face barely old enough to vote, he'd accompanied the girl Ellen that day in the park, the two of them leaving the car minutes before the shooting. What was his name? He, like his companions, was indigenous.

Hours spent analysing such pictorial data had convinced him of the source's four-footedness. A dog? Lately the image had started to break up. A light rain fell in the alley. He put the screen away and waited for it to rain here, too.

Murmuring along the road was a motorcycle. Ivan disguised his shape among the branches and prepared to drop.

As far as he knew no-one had followed him from the colony. The motorcyclist was perhaps a wholly innocent party. But might that be said of anyone? Ivan tensed, loosened, swung, boots accelerating down a radial arc and connecting at the nadir with an unsuspecting head. The rider was knocked clear of his machine, slack-necked as he rolled backward over the rear wheel and fell face first into the hard road, adding to its bumpiness. The engine cut and the motorcycle meandered to a stop on the verge forty metres hence. Ivan sucked the pain up from his feet before letting go of the branch, landed favouring his left peg, having bruised a number of toes.

Helmetless and dead, blood purple in the failing light. A messenger? Ivan searched his clothing. Bones protruded from the man's arms, strange angular rods. His skeleton was altered, spine ridged, boots cut open at the heel to accommodate coffee-mug spurs. His pockets housed nothing more than a length of frayed rope.

Ivan shrugged, dragged the body off the road, sprinkled soil on the tell-tale bloodstains, and snapping the rope, an end in each fist like a crude garrotte, hobbled to where the cycle lay, braced against one of several stuffed panniers.

iii

He was in one of the warehouses when the news broke. His mother called; his sister had mumps. Nightmares threatened the streets. He told her not to worry, put the phone down gently, knowing their lives would cease, spilling tears on his suit and wiping them away with a borrowed handkerchief. It was cruel, he thought, just when he was coming to terms with his world it was ending. He hated himself at that moment for loving Ellen, loving her more than his mother or baby sister. It was Ellen he'd go to. He hated the old man, her supposed employer. She ran errands for Courtney in memory of Jenny, a relationship with many permutations.

Now, approaching the barricade, all thirteen rounds in a single clip, the first in the chamber, he tuned his mind to a comforting indifference. He didn't matter. None of it mattered. Powers had wrung his flesh, established his personality, fashioned the complex web of society, set in motion those circumstances, a whirlpool of self leading to this moment, beyond, to the moment of his non-being, his forgottenness. Jakob smiled. It was silly, yet he smiled. Silly was his father's word. His father had fallen off a yacht. A detail. Insignificant. Who cared? Jakob could see nothing wrong with an indifferent universe. It was less painful, less of a burden. He didn't want to be missed.

If he had never ventured into the dusty Atlantic Tearooms that morning he would not only have died but lived in ignorance. Crushed like a bug; at least this way he saw the boot coming.

He was fortunate.

The barricade shimmered, oil-rings in the rain. The air smelled strongly of disinfectant. Floor cleaner? If he closed his eyes he could imagine himself back at the factory.

Gimmicks. Special offers. Collector sets.

There was no sign of movement. Evening loomed. Yalman glanced over his shoulder. Hamish bit his lip. Jakob smiled at them both. Smiled at Gus.

The Sports Administration building was forty storeys high. It contained a department, Equipment Hire Ltd, on the 24th or 25th. Jakob had gone there with his parents to rent skis, a holiday in the fictional past occupied with snowballs, cabins and fir trees stooped under the weight of icicles. But they had the barricade to negotiate. No-one dared speak.

Even the rain was quiet.

Street lamps cast neither light or shade.

The barricade was smooth and tall.

Nothing stirred.

Jakob felt his heart.

Yalman crab-walked, gesturing the group into a tight ring, Gus included. The bear was part of the team. The sergeant used a knuckle to draw in the dirt, a map hardly visible. The buildings, reduced to twisted stanchions and sparkling rubble this side, had begun to be cleared. The barricade ran straight, bisecting the tree-stumped avenue. Yalman indicated the nearest pile of debris, conveying his meaning with a shift of his eyes. They were to raise a fire-warped beam, lean it against the wall and climb, easy targets for the most bleary-eyed of snipers.

The bear nodded and sucked a paw.

Hamish flexed his fingers.

Yalman pointed to his chest and mouthed: me first.

They watched him dodge raindrops, then roll in the grime.

Hamish followed, grimacing, clutching his ribs, Gus clinging to his back like a koala, both safely crossing the divide.

Jakob's turn. He spooned his fringe out of his eyes and ran at a crouch. No bullets struck. If they could make it to Equipment Hire tonight they had every chance of flying the short distance to the airfield on the warm updraught of morning.

The beam was aluminium, part melted, its latticework making a useful ladder. They raised it easily and made it over the wall, dropping out of sight, stepping into a pool of harrowing ashes. Jakob twisted his ankle, but shook it off. A small discomfort. Yalman tapped him on the shoulder and the irregulars proceeded down the empty street. All signs of life were expunged. No car wrecks. No foliage. Facades were blank and vacant, doorways missing doors, windows missing panes. Anything loose had been removed or burnt to dust. The only property was solid property. Only walls.

Were they on a fool's errand? Were the buildings as empty on the inside?

Three men and a bear trotted the swept avenue as night weighed on every side, continuing up the broad fan of steps fronting the complex and entering the lightless foyer.

Hamish breathed awkwardly, mumbling.

Yalman gazed full circle and moved toward an elevator, discovering in time the yawning shaft minus its car.

Behind the sergeant, Jakob's eyes swivelled, coming to rest on the stairs. The metal banister remained, gleaming dully.

'What floor did you say?' asked Hamish.

'The twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth.'

Yalman sneezed violently.

Some way into the winding ascent Jakob paused. The others were ahead.

'What is it?'

'I thought I heard something.'

'Coming behind?'

'Yes; there were footsteps.'

'Echoes,' Livingstone opined.

Yalman was heard to fumble for sweets, his pockets rattling with charms and loose change.

Leapers clattered against teeth. Strawberry, avocado, lemon. They advanced six more flights.

'There, did you hear it?'

'Yeah,' said Hamish. 'I heard it that time.'

'Footsteps?'

The stairs zig-zagged in close proximity to a long vertical ribbon of glass. Like the banister, left in place. Moss City was visible as a crenellated smudge without. Doorless exits gave onto silent corridors at every level, the spaces beyond void and lonely, offering no clue to past content.

They reached the roof.

'Spread out,' ordered Yalman. 'I hear it now.'

Ellen? Is it you? Have you come to explain? I found you with your throat cut. Despite the shock, your eyes looked a safe place to hide.

Jakob had a full view of the landing, sparsely lit. The glass shattered and rang like a million dropped coins, new-minted chimes on the steps. He caught his breath. Hamish fired. Jakob couldn't see what at as the corporal charged the exit, rifle clicking as he tumbled forward, dry of ammunition. His scream bounced back through the vacant portal.

Shaking now. Thirteen rounds, one grenade, bayonet.

He turned but Yalman had disappeared. Jumped? Strange, mused the young private, to feel in company at last, surrounded by so many friends when he was manifestly alone.

The moon hinted at fullness behind a cloud. Gus's fur rippled, catching the wan light.

He counted to ten and walked to the top of the stairs. A glass waterfall splashed with blood descended. Purple. Black. Lighter patches. Darker patches. Showers of raspberry, elderberry and liquorice.

He clambered out over the banister.

iv

Alarmed, Harry removed the transparencies from his eyes, squinting in realspace, his whereabouts changed, translated. Had he worn them all the time? The dredger scratched. He cast his mind back but failed to locate that locus of dream and fantasy, the moment of his donning the wares of a disreputable stargazing franchise.

Had he known they were there? Perhaps they were merely placebos, false irises designed to filter certain wavelengths of light rather than alter perceived reality. Or was he still fooled, and did another layers remain?

Putting questions aside Harry levered from his chair. His Zippo and a pack of cigarettes had caught his attention, lying together on the floor of this square room.

Disaster. The lighter, out of fuel, cast mournful sparks. The naked lady cold. He spied a door.

Before exiting Harry checked his flesh. Everything seemed in order, two legs, two arms, that sort of thing. He scratched again, all over, red raw, tingling as if in receipt of an icy blast of electrically charged air.

Stepping outside, he couldn't remember when last he'd seen so many stars. The moon was silver and grey. The box with one door and no windows, which he puzzled at now, looked like it had been deposited here, on a grassy knoll.

A few hundred metres away, on another such green hillock, a similar box rested. And beyond that was a third, and a fourth, a fifth. In fact, all round him were grassy knolls with boxes on them, stretching over the horizon.

A road twisted between. Harry walked down to it, wondering which direction to take, when along came a motorcycle, in silhouette nearly as wide as it was high.

He stuck his thumb out.

fifth: other worlds (lost and found)

nineteen - dead planet

Runners Purvis, Oreo and Holyhead wore their restricted access badges on their brown lapels. A blockage in vas 16, subsection 9, necessitated a manual repair. They were nervous, a maintenance triangle more at home in aquifers and sewers, located and assigned by a mould-man and a computer. The former had intrigued Purvis. Oreo made lucky symbols in the air and dirt while Holyhead mumbled numbers.

'I hear there's a bonus in this one, lads,' said Purvis in an attempt to raise their spirits, his feet crossed on a seat back, hands clasped behind head.

'A plug in a pipe,' Oreo posited.

'Right. Nothing we haven't tackled a hundred times before. No problem. A few hours and we'll be out of there, en route to Bowler.'

'But this is no municipal shit, eh? This is off limits, unrecorded territory, a world of nameless products. If it wasn't company business...' He didn't finish. Monitored? 'Never seen so much dust inside a wagon.'

'Maybe they like to fly with the windows open,' suggested Purvis. 'What say you, Holy?'

The big machine winked at him. 'Wear factor point zero six three three,' he commented. 'Lubricant deterioration in left foreclaw well with permissible levels. Shall I continue?'

'No, Holy, that's okay. System system.'

'System go.'

'And to think,' Oreo said bitterly, 'this time last week I could have been married.'

'Enough,' Purvis told him. 'Let me see the map again.'

Oreo handed it over.

A week ago they'd come up for air in the single-storey city of Bedrock on Vicar's Blind, an urban landscape flowing with pedestrian traffic, where no powered vehicles were allowed, a squat resort locale of beer houses and brothels whose drains stank of drug-induced vomit and cheap native wine. Oreo had fallen prey. As usual, he blamed Purvis, this time for stopping him signing over three fifths of his future income to a whore with no less than forty husbands to her name.

Love was a strange virus, the gaffer thought; all those slick, lubricious passages he did and did not understand.

'How long before we ground?'

'Two minutes,' answered Holy. '...Mark.'

i

The planet's cloy atmosphere shimmered with distant explosions, detonating clouds of matter registering as bright white flashes on the eye. Seymour Niaan liked nothing more than to fill his head with these sparks, bathe in their quiet luminosity as he stood on the roof of the residential tower. He longed to touch, to embrace that potential. It had been the explosions, seen from space, which first attracted him here. Observed, they'd suggested a rhythmic, purposeful intent, the communication or myriad fireflies, creatures destined never to meet, that initial breath their last. A short and sad life, but one lived at extremes. And it was those extremes he found irresistible, their brevity and menace heavy with meaning, an entire set of experiences compressed into a single gas-fuelled moment. Primed, ignited; here and gone.

The end was glorious for the imagined sky-dwellers. They died at their absolute peak, vibrant and young. For a man it was more difficult, impossible even to recognize the precise instant of optimum death. For a man, critical mass was reached, and passed, before the fact sunk in.

Niaan spent his life putting that moment off. He wasn't ready yet. Deliberately, he measured such things as position and wealth against a sliding scale omitting both one and ten.

He had a tattoo on his skull the colour of oil-quenched steel, the colour, along with green verdigris, of almost everything on Lobo, a gunmetal world whose magnetism often failed to cancel itself out, manifesting as wraiths of nickel and iron, thousand metre ghosts that might dispel in seconds or linger for days, an electric hum on the air that stirred the guts and coated the tongue. Sickness was widespread, but then few in the residential tower were prone. It was the ever inquisitive Ologists and their Weekender staff who succumbed, offworlders on field trips Niaan granted passes to just so he could watch them turn blue and run. Lobo was his world and he was immune, sharing his good fortune with those he biofactured, a workforce shaped from the very stuff they dug.

There had been himself, herself, and seventeen mechanical attendants aboard the yawbus Judge 11. A quiet sojourning between stars close enough to number, visiting planets discovered decades before, tagged and named by the company. A romantic voyage to Farandaway, Ubik, Gargantua...

How he loved those lights. She smiled, hands resting on his shoulder, chin on her knuckles.

'They make me tingle,' she said. 'Can we go down there? Is it dangerous?'

'It's always dangerous,' Niaan stated, liking her, still not bored after - how many days?

'Good.' She was excited now. 'And air, too? We can breathe.' She nodded, laughing, twirling in a gown of crimson silk he'd had the ship tailor.

They danced on a coast without a sea, under a sun glimpsed through clouds, in the company of neither plant or animal, but in a breathable atmosphere, black as coal and white as diamonds, non-colours clashing beyond the tenuous wrap of a military issue bunker screen.

'Do you like it here, Genie?'

'I adore it, Seymour! The smell makes me queasy, but I find I want to travel, to venture over...this place...I don't know exactly. It's...'

'Infectious,' he provided.

Genie kissed him. 'Yes!'

They crossed a terrain misty and fissured.

The containment field surrounding the ground vehicle burst, stalling electronics. Niaan felt a rush of pure excitement. A direct lightning strike, he conjectured, magnetic particles devouring the screen like a lizard an insect.

Genie insisted they take a walk.

The polymer casing of the truck was stained a vivid yellow, which later blistered, turning brown then black like a rotting banana.

Genie in her dress and high-heels skipped over crevices, her hands above her head, her dark hair thick and curled, a rawness of metallic stone.

She hid from him, her voice echoic, bouncing off rounded spurs and disappearing below the green-veined surface.

And he lost her. But now she was found.

On Lobo.

A sepulchral quiet...

'Sir?'

'Hm? Yes, what is it?'

The mould-man gestured shyly.

'Oh - very good. I'll take care of it. Thank-you.'

His servant looked puzzled, then retreated.

Niaan shook himself. The plumbers had arrived.

ii

The maintenance triangle fronted by Purvis were specialists in organic waste. They'd worked everything from zero-g moonlets to industrial-agricultural-habitational ships, IAHs built, staffed and flown by mini conglomerates, independent nations whose autonomy carried the proviso they leave company space within a given time frame, a territory occupying approximately one fifth of the galactic disc. It was important their sewage and recycling plants, collection an distribution networks were in good order. There had been a number of bizarre commissions in the past, but never a closed world and a badge indicating restricted access.

Disembarking, the wind held at bay, they were met by the mould-man who had contacted Purvis initially. Hands were shaken, Oreo squinting, Holyhead blithely pleased in his machine way. Purvis examined the man's face for clues. Found none, only a handsome symmetry. There were rumoured to be mould-women on Vicar's Blind. If this was so - and he had no reason to doubt it - they were not given to casual encounters. Certainly neither he or Oreo could afford such exotic services. Oreo's bride would have been cheap by comparison. It was a money factory they were entering.

An air-powered shuttle transported them from the port to the residential tower. They reached a soft-angled apartment by elevator, where the mould-man left them, Oreo sucking his teeth at the spacious rooms, the grand fitments, the cleanliness and fresh flowers.

'Do you suppose we'll be here long?' he asked. 'I could get used to the idea.'
The gaffer was afraid to sit down.

Holy exhibited no inhibitions. He leaked in a chair made of cushions.

A high-ranking company official arrived soon after, his manner cryptic.

Purvis was agitated, Oreo silent, Holyhead posing the only question.

'Everything malfunctions,' Niaan answered, adding, 'You've studied the map provided?' Someone nodded. 'Good. I'll expect you to start in six hours. Report to Curtis when the blockage is cleared. And good luck, gentlemen.'

The official left. Amused, thought Purvis. But it was irrelevant, the man's true identify, ology, status. They were here, begun, and the job must be finished.

'Curtis?' queried Oreo, smoking.

The mould-man, presumably.

It was four o'clock local, a Tuesday.

Purvis studied the map again. Vas 16 stretched for eight thousand kilometres. Subsection 9 was all but inaccessible, a series of roof falls and strata terracing making the approach difficult. The blockage itself was unidentified, information pared to a minimum.

Just unplug it, he told himself, reassuring.

Oreo said, 'I'm going to take a bath.'

Holy jumped up. 'I'll join you.'

'What? No way! You'll rust. Besides...'

'Yes?' The machine was unconvinced. The tub, he'd seen, was big enough.

'I, er, would like some privacy.' Oreo gazed at Purvis, who ignored him.

Purvis knew the answer to be simple. There were two baths, one en suite, concealed behind a secret door in the master bedroom. He'd steered the pair of them away from it earlier, claiming the room by right and the facilities by deception, top of the pile in a two man one robot hierarchy. He wished to soak his own limbs, to think and whistle; to prepare himself mentally.

iii

Following Genie's disappearance Niaan sat in the truck for hours, its backup field pulsing fitfully, his mind spinning colours before his eyes. Palpitations rocked him, a minute yet disturbing tremble of his heart. Adrenaline haunted his body. His pulse sounded loud in his ear, a steady drum-beat he failed to decipher. A telling sound.

Explosions filled the sky and the vehicle shook. He stepped outside. It was dark, a storm criss-crossing the blue horizon, honing its knife edge, keen and sharp. Figures, sprites or fireballs, cavorted there.

He rushed back inside and signalled the Judge, instructing its space wagon to rendezvous at this position.

She took twelve minutes to arrive. He boarded to find screens blazing with overload, the wagon's improvised shield unable to cope with the interference from Lobo's magnetic dudgeon.

Niaan filed a search pattern and waited, but the screens became increasingly confused, displaying multiple images. There were thousands of Genies, they told him. And then there were none.

Hours later he woke in orbit.

Afraid...

iv

19.45

They boarded the excavator, the air thin and oily, waxing the robot's smile. The gaffer folded his arms, leaned back in a stretch-seat and listened to the rumble of the digging machine, map in pocket, Oreo cleaning his nails. Two mould-men played dominoes. A lightbulb swung on a wire. They'd feasted on shrimp and pasta, a concoction of sauces from the apartment's chef, black coffee and white brandy, a fat cigar. The first of many as both Purvis and Oreo had lined their pockets with rich, pungent coronae. Holyhead just couldn't acquire the knack of smoking, although stubbornly he'd tried.

'Stick to bubble-gum, kid,' Oreo suggested, at which the robot farted, proving he was their equal in many ways.

Now, accelerating, speeding toward the unknown, Purvis was convinced he was about to die. His human contemporary sensed it, the subliminal uneasiness, content though to blame the gaffer for every quirk.

Holy tested, vented, and recalibrated his knees.

Running under the planet's surface to a depth of up to five hundred metres, the ductlike vasa spread in a web of narrowing arteries. They squirmed outward like soft clay squeezed between fingers, impregnating the surrounding rock in roughly circular channels that displayed no obvious centre, their one artificial locus the residential tower about which most human activity revolved. The map showed them in three dimensions, ranged like mould through cheese. Where each artery narrowed was a cube - or so the map's representation indicated. This was the extent of the excavation, the channel behind regular and enlarged. Purvis pictured the many burrowing heads, the munching diggers as predators eating from the tail. Vas 16 stood ten metres tall where they'd joined. The excavator was built of silicone and plastic, materials imported, assembled in vacuum, driven by an archaic system of induction motors; primitive, as these took up a third of the available hold space. The maintenance triangle, along with the two mould-men and grids of shelving, occupied the middle third. The forward area housed the cutting machinery.

The ride was slick, noiseless, the bulb throwing random shadows.

Light and shade swung in his imagination, the former silhouetting a flock of plate iron cockerels.

Oreo complained of feeling ill. That was to be expected.

The cigars, Purvis supposed, contained some form of mild sedative, a subtle medication to ease those worries and inner conflagrations Lobo engendered. He lit another toward journey's end, the elapsed time seventy minutes.

The mould-men finished their game without either having won and physically cranked open the large side doors. The darkness smelled sweet. It was cool, too, a faint breeze pushed by distant activity.

And dry. Dry as bones. The subsection was still 120 kilometres up the line.

Moisture vanished from the gaffer's lungs. He took a swig from his flask, then palmed a reading from the monitor he wore. Oxygen high. His cigar glowed. Holyhead underwent an equipment check. They could do little without him.

Purvis realized the mould-men were waiting. He'd drifted. Have to watch that. Shoving Oreo he straddled a humming caterpillar and they continued, the breeze turning to a gale as the metres diminished, roof and walls sucking at limbs and hair.

Dry...sixty kilometres...thirty...

The caterpillar shook, bounced as if over rocks, speeded up and slowed to a crawl with the scream of emergency braking or trashed machinery. The duct shimmered all round. There was a groan. Flakes of soft bioluminescence spangled his brown overalls as he stepped off the transport. Holy and Oreo appeared beside him and they stared at the mould-men, who were sleeping. Purvis nudged one for an explanation, but he was inert, unconscious astride the cat.

Dazed yet inquisitive, the two men and one robot indulged in a moment of recuperative silence.

Oreo gasped, spat, and jerked as if he'd expelled something unpleasant from his stomach.

Purvis shuddered. They were grossly similar, the mould-men, peculiar isomorphs.

'Come on lads, we can't stand gawking. Looks like we make it on foot from here.'

Five kilometres to go.

23.50

Chewing, Oreo kicked through the debris. 'What do you think happened here, boss?'

'An explosion.'

The man scowled. He waved his sandwich. They rested in a cavity, an operation's room at the juncture of subsections 8, 9 and 10, tributaries, capillaries to the main channel of the vas. 'No holes in the walls,' he pointed out. 'No indicators to detonation.'

'The explosion was contained.'

Oreo looked quizzically round the small space. 'How?'

Purvis shrugged. 'What's your explanation?'

'These consoles, all this test equipment, apparatus...and whatever that is.' A knotted purple cylinder. 'Something tore it up.'

'Such as?'

Oreo bit into his sandwich, showing his teeth and shaking his head in imitation of a grisly monster.

'Flawed,' commented Purvis, dismissive. 'No footprints.'

Oreo finished chewing and swallowed. 'It wiped them out with its tail.'

'And went where?'

'Where d'you think? It was so fat it got stuck, and that's where we come in.'

Holy laughed. 'Like Winnie the Pooh; he ate so much he got stuck in a hole in a tree...'

00.26

'Can you see anything?'

'No, it's dark up ahead. Like a fuse went.'

'How much clearance do you have?'

'Fifty, narrowing to twenty. Enough to squeeze through.'

'No. Come back. Let Holy open it out.' It seemed crazy not to risk the machine.

'I thought we'd agreed,' said Oreo, muffled. '...I think I can squeeze through,' he reiterated.

Ten heartbeats. Twenty.

'Oreo?'

The lingering draught was warm and stale. The oxygen count had dropped considerably.

'Hey, Oreo!'

'I hear you - quiet.'

Purvis nodded to Holyhead, who displayed his tunnelling fans.

00.39

Light poured from the machine, illuminating a cavern forty metres wide.

Evidence of methane. No smoking.

A trickle of coloured fluid, like a drawn glass filament, drained from the centre of the domed roof. The duct reconfigured opposite. The cavern reminded Purvis of a cartoon stomach. He scratched his head. 'Switch off a minute,' he told Holy, and sure enough, the space was transfixed by a luminous stalk, a thread of falling brightness that formed a pool before seeping away.

'Doesn't splash,' said Oreo. 'What do you suppose that means?'

'Quarter lights,' instructed Purvis, advancing toward the string.

The others watched.

He touched it, pulled back, touched it again, firmer this time. The thread warped as if elasticated. Purvis smiled, bending the fluid round his hand, rolling it between his fingers. It was a crystal green, the colour of fairytale waterfalls.

Oreo joined him while Holy circled.

'Feel.'

His companion tugged the glowing strand, twisting it, gazing at the tight stream so obviously falling from the top of the dome.

'What temperature would you say that is?'

Oreo let go. The thread wobbled straight.

'Well?'

'Body temperature,' he conceded.

Purvis slapped him on the shoulder.

v

'Sir...'

'What is it, Curtis?'

'Two of my brothers, sir; with the maintenance triangle.'

He nodded, waved the mould-man away. They had made good time, he thought. He'd chosen well, Runners nobody would miss. None of his own people had been able to get anywhere near the blockage. He was not sure he wanted them to. Profit did not come from loss.

Then again...

Returning to the surface via the space wagon Niaan drove recklessly, the replacement vehicle's containment field swinging like a water filled balloon. The sun rose stealthily, prizing open the sky, long claws of bloody radiance to tickle the grumbling steel clouds. Daybreak, and yet no time had seemed to pass. Stasis ruled the lodes, the carbon seams of biotic putty he would later mine, the raw stuff of life. It was a characteristic of the planet's magnetic contrariness, this temporal flow, a freezing of moments into one long sigh, looping circuits of electricity in the mind. Here water did not exist as water, but as hydrogen and oxygen, constituents which failed to bind.

After two days of searching Niaan was ready to quit. He could not trust the indicators. There were numerous trails; only one might be true. He pulled on a spacesuit intended for medical use and went out on foot, squeezing through the screen barrier with a tip of his guts and breathing unfiltered air. The metal atmosphere was harmless in itself. He hoped the suit would offer some protection from lightning strikes and the unknown. He risked his life, a fact which struck him as bizarre, a foolhardy rescue on a fool's world.

The rocks were mostly smooth, as if poured, their molten shapes long since fixed and with no rain to wear them down. Leaving the truck made it possible to explore the intimate places, the dents and niches whose interior shadows were destroyed by the wide beam from his helmet, slipping back to conceal their mystery as he passed. Lobo adopted a different aspect up close. Revealed were details previously unseen, pores and crevices, the crust resembling skin painted with a thick coat of tar. Here and there were ruptures, flues like craters in reverse, glassy chimneys out of whose raised mouths gases streamed, charged particles rising in prelude to the witnessed explosions. Was there a pattern to their distribution? Had Genie fallen? It was ludicrous but he wanted to climb in and down, to lower himself to some invisible floor.

vi

The duct wound on, a metre wide, an indented tube. It narrowed in places as if stretched lengthways, widened in others like a funnel, becoming increasingly mazy in its turns. The map didn't indicate any drop in level, but the subsection rose and fell at random, discrepancies not accounted for by displaced strata, intricate staircases that contradicted the proximity of the blockage. The maintenance triangle were forced back on themselves, the enclosed space muffling, the duct separated from itself by thin walls of black rock, dry and dustless. It was on one such staircase Holy stumbled. Purvis froze in surprise. Oreo cried out, his voice lost in the sudden gloom as the robot's lights dimmed and he clattered down. But the gaffer quickly came round, silencing Oreo as he went to the machine's aid, flexing its limbs and testing its joints in a buzz of confused reflexes. Holy appeared baffled, his face delineated by the soft luminescence of their surrounds, the metallic glow Purvis thought artificial, as if sprayed on, applied in the form of a lubricant during excavation, an archaeology whose practice circumvented death.

Living beings were hewn from these veins. Yet how were they alive, and in whose image? He had seen only the male derivative, but understood the female to be the mainstay of this peculiar enterprise. And nine-tenths of what he did know was hearsay and supposition.

'Myth,' Purvis whispered.

'How's that?' queried Oreo, beside him.

'Myth,' he repeated. Standing, his head brushed the ceiling. 'I was thinking out loud,' he added. Then, 'System system.'

No response.

Oreo gulped stupidly. 'Is he dead? What's the problem? He just collapsed...'

'Yes,' the gaffer acknowledged. 'I saw - or rather didn't see. There's nothing you or me can do about it.'

'What? He looked from one to the other, from robot to man. 'What are you saying? Are you crazy?'

'System system, Holy. Answer.'

Inactive.

'Maybe this was one pipe too many.' Oreo hunted around in his pockets for a cigar, knowing he couldn't smoke but needing to fidget. 'Maybe we ought to get out of here, off this world.'

'Negative.'

'Holy?'

'System...negative.'

Purvis and Oreo crouched.

'What happened?' questioned the gaffer.

'Blood clot,' the machine said, grinning. 'Highly ironic.' He blinked slowly. 'The metal god has a sense of humour after all.'

'Can you get to your feet? Walk?'

'No.'

'Can you move at all?'

'My left arm.' He raised it. 'Speech centres seem okay. Vision limited.'

'Oh, great,' mumbled Oreo.

'May I suggest you continue without me. It appears our host was correct in predicting breakdowns. Unscrew the arm; it may prove useful. You can come back for me later.'

Oreo shook his head.

Purvis, however, was in agreement.

Oreo coughed, spitting crystal green phlegm balls.

Purvis continued alone.

Never let it be said he dumped a commission.

02.01

He'd stared at the colour for maybe five minutes before realizing it was crimson. The duct had ended, the blockage an innocent plug of fabric.

Strange how such mundane items could choke the workings of a planet.

Like a speck of sand trapped in the gears of a finely wrought clock, this simple obstruction exerted an influence far outweighing its mass. He tried to imagine what would happen when he cleared the subsection by releasing the puckered sphincter. The walls had seized on the object, closing round it. Did they offer antipathy or protection? He fixed a grip, three arms extended, eyes wide as they drank of the dimness.

The fabric tore. Predictable. He would have to dig it out.

Lying on his belly, the light from Holy's limb illuminating, he noticed something he had missed before, the gleaming heel of a shoe.

Removing the shoe he noted the paleness of toes and saw the easy curve of a heel. He anticipated a sense of profound shock on discovering the flesh to be warm, which it was. But he felt listless and cold, twisting onto his back in an effort to gauge the extent of visible calf.

It was a gown she was wearing. He grabbed her delicate ankle and pulled.

vii

Niaan waited the hour it took Curtis to confirm the news in his favourite Queen Anne chair.

Dozing, he imagined the footsteps ticking to be Genie's high-heels.

But he'd lost her years ago.

And now?

On Lobo...

Business as usual: six or seven dark-haired incarnations a week, a workforce sufficiently dumb to be cowed, a personal fortune, an executive position and the power to subvert life that he might throw it away.

Afraid, in truth, of loving the bitch, of finding that love intact. Afraid of the plumbers' success.

twenty - in extremis

Saturn turned like a diseased orange. Uplifted on dizzy plumes, surfing majestically the gas giant's perfidious atmosphere, was the governor's castle.

Woken from a dream of alternatives, a thick residue of ideas swam in front of Irving Courtney's eyes as he peered at the flat ceiling. His wife was gone from his side. Gone to check on their son, he supposed, the boy only recently recovered.

The governor would have liked to have slept longer, but it was impossible. Today saw the arrival of the first of his guests, his rival, Markus Lydon.

And trouble.

The ceiling was bare, undecorated. Images swirled outside the blur of his lashes. As he watched the shapes grew more complicated, more organized, complex designs interrelating like a society of overlapping individuals, creatures of light and liquid: their homes themselves, themselves their neighbours. There were floating platforms and barges filled with cheerful passengers watched by cheerful passers-by, illuminating the paths they constituted. They talked, words drifting between parties, a piece of one becoming a piece of another, an exchange of gossip and organs...

'Hey - time to get up,' said Cleo.

He rubbed his eyes.

'Breakfast in ten minutes,' added his wife, smiling with just the corners of her mouth.

He rubbed his head. 'Don't wait.'

She sailed away.

Lydon's elaborate shuttle docked shortly before noon. He boomed after his silent fashion, quietly intimidating the staff prior to his reception. They were the same age, yet somehow Lydon contrived to seem younger, more annoyingly youthful. A cousin of Cleo's, he strode the stone corridors with an exaggerated gait, arms flapping and chin turning, privately criticizing the paintings, tapestries, drapes. 'The trouble with antiques,' he often said (or words thereof), 'is there outmoded context, their stubborn adhesion to an irrelevant frame of reference.'

The governor took this to mean himself.

The past was dead, Lydon insisted, its relics an unending epitaph.

'Drink, Markus?'

The man laughed. 'Yes!'

'How was your trip?'

'Dull. Space is always dull. You know that.'

Irving poured. The sat in the buttery either side of a wooden table, Lydon shifting on his bench.

'I got here early,' the plutocrat said, 'in the hope of making you see sense.'

'Sense, Markus?'

'You know what I'm talking about.'

'Right. Exhausting the supply. Greed, Markus. Whether water or wine, you always want too much. You'd bleed the planet dry. It needs a chance to recuperate. Or that's it, finished.'

Lydon produced a knife and began carving his initials in the table. 'Balls,' he said. 'You're using that as an excuse for keeping prices high.

You could easily double production with your present setup. Quadruple it even. But you won't. And you're joint owner; fifty-fifty.'

'What are you getting at?' For the first time Courtney felt threatened. The argument was old, something of a ritual up until this point; steered toward the rocks, a ship of amity that had many historical leaks, but none he believed serious enough to sink it.

'Cleo, she owns the remainder of the stock.' The blade stuck in the wood. 'How can you be sure she doesn't think differently, Irving? Maybe she'd like to sell.'

He got to his feet. The crunch had come. All hands to the pumps...

And no accident.

i

The face appeared uncertain, as if searching for itself, its true identity amid the bustle of inchoate features. A nose formed and then a mouth, boned and fleshed, slopes of cheek and forehead, ears, chin, teeth. The hint of a smile, hair flowing and dark, the eyes last, shut.

We are the company, he remembered thinking, its many incarnations, corporations, trusts.

The face reminded him of Manda Heluski; illusive Heluski, her cool and tranquil beauty. She was his neighbour, on Jupiter, a famous recluse.

They had been close once. The image, her image, seemed to bring the face to life.

ii

The orange sweated juice, huge factory bubbles packaging an array of elements from rare lanthanides to commonplace hydrogen. Irving had always contested that to boost production exponentially would lead to instability within the vast ball of gas. You could only remove so many hairs from a sleeping bear's back. You proceeded with care. More than care, respect.

Lydon failed to understand.

The others? This banquet was one of the few occasions when all would be present, to argue and debate. All save Manda...

All, he prefigured, against him.

But Cleo?

His powerful spouse.

iii

Preparations were well under way in the spacious kitchen, a succession of cooks overseeing copper bowls and pans, sauces and creams blended side by side, ovens scorched, meats and pastries palmed and buffed, cutlery polished, silver waxed to a shine, fish and fowl packed and steamed, vegetables cut, diced and poised for immersion. The smell was glorious, the butler scrutinizing his thin reflection in an eight-stemmed candelabrum. Russo was his name, imagining his moustache to look out of place, another's less than convincing lip-shadow.

It had been Gloria's idea he grow it. Gloria the giggling housemaid.

Something moved in his mind. Nudged him.

iv

He discussed futures in his dream.

Was sympathetic.

Her eyes had opened at last, stunning him.

He held his breath.

Seeing...

'Me, Irving? Me? You're the one who's been acting strange of late, and you're asking me if I have a problem?'

'Well, do you?'

'This really isn't the time. I have business to attend to. We have guests.'

He blocked her path to the door.

Cleo scowled. 'Let me past.'

He absorbed her countenance, seeing another floating behind, the projected features of her betrayal.

'Irving, don't be childish.'

'Have you had talks with Lydon? Just answer me that.'

She hesitated, then, 'Of course; we're cousins. We share a number of interests.

'And blood is thicker than water.'

She struck him. Proof enough.

v

The eyes spoke volumes, rich seams of dialogue, bright coral passages and illuminated margins, words like footprints on a deserted beach. Flickering, bejewelled memories, the tide to swallow, wiping, washing away, a forgotten history of a forgotten race. A civilization that had ridden astride stars reduced to begging favours from a species resolved to conquer all life, as if that were learning, a favour bestowed rather than asked.

He did not know what to make of any request. Assistance? Help? Today and tomorrow, to carry the fight - back home, the unselfish company exec.

He sat in the library with Imar Madruk. Portly Imar, a gloss to his chin, brow and neck.

'When was the last time you visited Earth?' he inquired of the governor.

Irving shrugged. 'Six, eight months.'

'That's a long time.'

'I keep in touch.'

Imar crossed his legs. 'Do you? In person or through your brokers? Irving, do you even know the shit you're in?'

He smiled. 'I keep in touch.'

'So you say. But events move fast. I consider myself your friend, so I can tell you this. There are those who pay close attention, who study every detail, no matter how seemingly insignificant. Not only to Earth, either, but to Saturn and yourself. They study you. They watch you minutely, Irving, not just the globe beneath your feet. They observe. And you know what they see? A weakening, an unwillingness on your part to pursue the advantage, a gradual blunting of the edge. You were a driving force, a potent adversary, a man to be wary of. At one time; but not any more.'

He was silent, contemplative. His mind filled with her face. His body given to her will.

Madruk exhaled nosily. 'The pot is close to boiling, eh? You see that. You must. The company, like a snake, is making ready to slough its skin, to take on a new girth, with a commensurate increase in appetite. Lydon for one, is bored. Never satisfied, Lydon and his clique search among the grist of stars for a world of honey and white bread. And now, perhaps, they've found it.'

He got up and left.

vi

It surprised him how things could come together, how apparent disorder could manifest a string of daisies, a line of poetry, a sunset. He stood on Tunstal's gallery overlooking the courtyard, watching the arrival of Fenmore and Potter, first names David and Anna-Louise, their combined retinues filing in under the ancient gatehouse.

Irving decided not to greet them. Let Cleo explain his absence. He took the steps down to the adjoining chapel, paused briefly in its cool space, then continued via a covered walkway to the keep.

She was waiting in the shadows, a young woman inspecting the cracked porcelain face of an old clock.

She greeted him with a nod.

vii

And here was Heluski, seemingly not out of place, unexpectantly filling her seat with flesh.

Sat round a table in the Great Hall, minstrels playing and dishes parading through the servery doors, wives and entourages, a husband, several concubines of indiscriminate sex, two leopards and a blue orang-utan safely out of the picture, they got down to business.

'Why,' said Markus Lydon, 'are you standing in our way?'

'Is that what you think?' Courtney defended, peeling his eyes off Manda Heluski.

She examined her food: smoked kippers.

'You've no vision, Irving. You're out of date.'

A delicacy.

Had she smiled then? he thought. What did she know?

'We took a vote earlier,' Lydon added, indicating his co-conspirators hovering over and deep within their platters, ladling soup from passing tureens and arranging strips of cabbage, 'and it was unanimous.'

Courtney absorbed the familiar faces. Not all appeared to be paying attention.

'Hmm,' he said, distracted.

'Damn you, Irving! Listen \- we're stripping you and your family of all powers; your heirs will be without title. We're replacing you as governor and seizing, with immediate effect, all your assets. We...'

'There's a little moon we've set aside for you, dear,' Anna-Louise Potter interjected. 'There are palm trees and a gazebo. Marshall tells me the sunsets are wonderful.'

Marshall Kay nodded and poured wine from a pitcher. 'Good beef,' he stated.

'You still have your contacts.'

Irving acknowledged him.

Markus was furious.

Seymour Niaan breathed on a spoon and hung it on his nose.

Markus started to get up but Imar Madruk restrained him.

David Fenmore stood instead. 'Irving, you understand this is nothing personal, but as defacto head of the company you're a lame duck. It was only a matter of time before new and affordable sources of wealth were discovered, and on a planet that is positively benign. You do not possess a monopoly on these elements. The galaxy holds many storehouses. And now a great treasure has been uncovered.'

A poisoned chalice, he mused as Fenmore sat.

'Yes,' said Lydon, sullen. 'We'd appreciate a written abdication, in your own hand.'

Courtney smirked. 'Isn't that rather old-fashioned?' he jibed, unable to resist.

Markus coloured, yet sensing victory decided to change the subject, a wild fluctuation of emotions having left him a little drunk, a little sad.

'What is this I'm eating?' he inquired, twisting his fork.

'Your cousin,' Irving said.

viii

It was Fenmore who discovered the body, slumped behind a chair in the Senate Room. Obviously the work of an assassin.

But the commission?

'Don't look at me,' said Lydon. 'If I'd wanted him dead I would have killed him myself.' They were reminded he had attempted such a thing only hours earlier.

Then who?

ix

Sprung from the land itself, autochthonous, they were all shaped from the same clay now. Courtney's disease was life itself, a morbid restlessness grown like a tumour, swollen and virulent, beyond his control, manifesting a number of guises, some outwardly healthy - inwardly warped - others sickly and frail. He was rightly confused, divided between avenging his father's murder and his mother's. Who was more fit for punishment, the company or Irving senior? Was it possible for crimes, like magnetism, to cancel out?

He did not think so.

All the protagonists were here, exponents of survival and personal advancement, contenders for the last laugh. Also the wild cards, those whose inclusion was down to a peculiar mix of design and fate. But who would triumph? And what exactly was there to be won?

You could not defeat death, only defy it. Perhaps it was enough to compete, to fence and joust and rescue maidens who in turn might rescue you. Not the ends but the means. Maybe they were all in this for glory, the adulation of an audience of stars, the smiles and tears of fans and not the finishing tape.

Why? Because it felt good.

x

Through the telescope the birds appeared jet black, spinning dots of hunger over the plain. Throats echoed bellies as they wheeled and dived, beaks stabbing on pneumatic necks, wings spread for balance. A gory sight, Harry thought, the image unreal, a fantastic spectacle fed through the telescope lenses into the gut of his eye, the intestine of his brain. He sensed an itch in his mental rectum and recalled Ivan's, or whoever's, troublesome piles. Lowering the instrument he grinned stupidly. Ivan's eyebrow's rose. Who was he now, and for how long?

'See anything?'

Harry passed him the scope. 'Corpses.'

The man hesitated, he noticed.

Feasting on the sight the soul-devourer paled. Then, as if conscious of some display of weakness, his face turned red. 'Must be hundreds,' he commented. 'The birds will be too fat to fly and easy prey for rats.'

'Serves them right,' quipped the dredger.

Both were sore from riding bareback, their horses loosely tethered to a protruding rock. The previous night had been spent in a town Harry could only think of as Hans Christian Andersonesque, full of cobblers and washer-women, all gaudy signs and serrated gable ends, their gold buying foamy beer and wood-panelled rooms with enormous fireplaces, as well as their equine transport, complete with hand-tooled trappings.

Harry, on entering a tobacconist's gaily coloured shoppe, was converted to a pipe. He loaded it now with curls of rich dark shag smelling of coconut and soap.

Ivan collapsed the scope, found with the gold in a well bucket they'd raised for a drink. 'Do we go round?'

The naked lady danced.

They were headed south. There was a coastal port rumoured to be under siege.

Or had the enemy been routed? Harry shrugged and breathed smoke.

Ivan's eyes were marble. 'Harry?' Hard and lustreless. His arms had lengthened and his chest narrowed. A prominence grew from his forehead that might not be there tomorrow.

Were there such differences in himself? 'I guess.'

'Okay. No rush. It can't be too far...'

They untied the horses and walked, following the gentle contours of a wooded hill, cutting across into the next valley and a plain void of spillage. Neither perceived any direct threat. It was as if the world was unravelling before them, yet loath to embroil either at this stage in anything inimical. But the world was patient and danger would cross their path.

xi

Underneath it all was Smith, Zonda by his side. They had met at a circus, one of Smith's entertainments for the boys, his close-knit assembly of drakes and hounds wrestling and chewing and tying down, fencing and sparring and dying for real in close combat with minions of Ruby Joplinski's employ, the self-proclaimed firelord. They weren't strictly enemies, but it paid to maintain a guard.

Zonda was dispirited and bored. He'd fallen asleep on top of her again. She had a talent for picking the wrong men.

Rolling his scaly body aside she rose, gathered her tail and proceeded outside, some place Smith didn't like to venture as it hurt his eyes. She found the light refreshing, spilling over her wan form like milk, bringing the promise of colour to her skin. Yet if she stayed outside too long she burned; baked, her skin separating into crisp layers like puff pastry, dry and tender, only soothed by hours of careful nursing with her prehensile tongue.

She stood on a stone balcony, the cool rock behind her trembling with snores, a cobble beach five metres below, shiny and crackling with blue-white surf. Zonda watched the waves spread like fans. Frowning, she leaned on the grey balustrade. A shape caught her eye, clumsy and large below the liquid surface. And then a man's head materialized, grizzled and astonished, like a drowned mariner. Shoulders followed. Next a torso, arms dangling, splashes foaming as he stumbled ashore, wobbling as his body was no longer supported by the ocean. His legs moved awkwardly and he floundered, sodden, wearing what resembled a flying suit, a dull brown outfit frayed and holed. He sat roughly, obviously exhausted, a pair of goggles hanging round his neck and a boot in either hand. After a moment he lay back. Peering up at cliff and sky he sighted a worried Zonda MacIntyre at her perch. She waved tentatively, recognizing the man with whom she had shared an abode. Waters, first name Issac. If only she had a rope. Or was five metres not too far to jump?

xii

Ekland tore off a chicken leg, chewed methodically, swallowed, scraped a nail between two teeth. His feet itched. Lying back in the net he scratched. A light winked inside his helmet. A red light, meaning he was hit. The net shook and a rumbling wound its way through his skull.

'Shit...' Guessing, he let fly a missile. Missed. 'Shit.'

Damage flowed. Ugly data.

'You're burned,' said a voice. 'Come on, admit defeat.'

He tracked the voice. Fired.

Missed. 'Shit!'

'Ekland, you're a lousy tactician.'

Red lights. Plural.

Burned...

'Had enough?'

Ruby was toying with him. Ekland resented that. He switched the helmet's interface. Green fields surrounded. His soles were soothed by cool grass. A white butterfly fluttered nearby and he stalked it, hands cupped.

'You used to be useful,' the voice stated. 'You got too big for your boots...'

Mocking him.

His feet itched worse than ever. Sore and swollen, each a half metre in length.

xiii

Ruby lit a cigarette. On a tray on a table beside him were a number of heads. He selected one, a pasty blond, eyes blue and staring. Nicely ripe, the way he liked them. He twirled the hair round his long fingers as he smoked. Lifting it, the tray came too, raised a few centimetres from the table before the severed base of the neck came unstuck and the tray fell back. Dangling the head over his mouth he tongued its underside, savouring the rich flavour of truncated vertebrae and congealed blood before popping it whole into his toothy maw and crushing the skull like a grape.

A soft centre. A succulent nut. He dabbed his lips on a downy skin, burped and flicked ask from his cigarette.

The migration continued apace. Both himself and Smith travelled south, their armies far-flung yet advancing in a single direction, so it was inevitable they'd clash. Ruby enjoyed these occasions, the entertainment and casualties they provided. Fear made the flesh taste good.

He traversed the gluey undersea on a mucilaginous conveyor belt, his pulpy fortress sliding like an aquatic snail along a film of secreted ventral sludge...

xiv

Ekland attempted once more to remove the helmet. His efforts were futile. The mass was welded in position, its bony structure clamped round his features like a limpet. The visions fed him were in reality regurgitated, the dregs of bygone days, a subjective landscape composed of memory footage and simulations. Joplinski had had it fitted, Ekland unsure why, a constant torment as he slipped from one scene to the next, often at random, the interface erratic. At times he could order his environment, but he fancied this was at Ruby's discretion. The posted actuality was totally convincing, until he bumped into something that to him was invisible. Like walking into a solid wall of air. But his cell was such that injury was near impossible.

And he walked clumsily outside his head. Inside was less painful.

'Hey, Ekland.' Circling. A bird? He saw none. 'I've a job for you. An old friend has come to my attention.'

The scene changed. He was in a narrow defile, stones piled like hail, orange and red sediments disturbed, toppled, fallen. Nothing growing. He realized he was squinting. The sun beat down. He looked at his hands, which appeared normal. His feet too, bare and pink. He wore a leather jerkin, tough yet soft. A filthy loincloth sagged between his thighs.

'Find him,' the voice instructed. 'Kill him.'

Ekland shaded his eyes. 'Who is he? How will I know this man?' He felt a dislocation, a mental jolt as if roused from a particularly vivid dream. But he was still in the defile.

There was a delay before he received his answer.

'By reputation.'

xv

Smith was furious. 'Gone?' he questioned, scales glistening. 'Gone?' he repeated. 'Just vanished?' He would have the guards roasted for breakfast. She'd been beside him, quietly sleeping. And now? Taken, Smith decided. Yes, stolen. By whom? He summoned the wagon.

He'd never believed Joplinski to be dead, the proof of it early on in the shape of coded messages, tremors through the earth, resonance in his arches, whispers of the strata Smith had become attuned to. Ruby also, he figured. Others - others slowly coalescing, shapes mostly unseen against an ever changing backdrop. Potent shapes, presences he watched, observed as a subtle pattern to the winds, the harnessing of global powers, the fixing and, more importantly, control of milieu and elements.

In a word, gods.

It was inevitable, Smith thought, the company always did return in one guise or another. You were never clear of Mother. Her influence was paramount.

He was undecided whether to be pleased or angry. His existence had been dictated by the company. He was their creature, manoeuvring inside their framework...and yet? A lingering resentment. Freedom, having tickled his nostrils, proved a difficult perfume to shake.

But first, Ruby Joplinski.

xvi

They were met on the outskirts of a town that had sprung up overnight by a group of five men, stolid individuals with a host of adaptations, mutations Harry found he accepted without cost. More interesting was the group's demeanour, their urgency, the fact Ivan and himself were expected. They, the detectives, had telegraphed, the men said. They rode into town and tied up outside the jailhouse.

Inside was dim and muggy, wallpapered. A desk was hastily cleared and two chairs arranged. Harry cast his eyes over the WANTED posters.

Only one of the men remained. He asked if they wished to see the prisoner, adding, 'He confessed this morning. Real slippery customer - but we've got the goods on him.'

Ivan cloaked his ignorance by nodding.

Harry inquired, 'How'd you catch him?'

The townsman looked puzzled. 'Don't get too many robots in these parts...'

'Okay,' said Harry. 'Leave us to it.'

The man left reluctantly, perhaps sensing their displeasure, what was in fact confusion twisting Harry's mouth and puckering Ivan's nose. They could only guess at the motives of the people here in summoning outsiders. Unless, of course, the town had been created with the single aim of ensnaring the alleged criminal. However that worked. The extraordinary interplay of events was a source of constant bewilderment to Harry, something he was learning to take as given. But it didn't explain their role in this production. Perhaps Oriel was fulfilling the pair's investigative wishes.

Harry shrugged. 'Let's go in.'

The robot was small and polished, a dented chrome, head in hands behind dull steel bars. It (he?) gazed up when they entered, face mobile yet expressionless. Resigned, interpreted Harry.

Ivan creased his forehead. His stomach rumbled. 'Did you do it?' he demanded, starved...

The robot frowned. 'I don't recall.' His voice was flat but human. 'Who are you gentlemen?'

'You're not guilty?' Ivan persisted.

'I have no memory of committing a crime.'

Robot amnesia? Harry was incredulous.

'What's your name?'

The chromed prisoner thought a moment, counting on his metal digits.

'Daniel...'

'Desperate Daniel' quipped Harry, struggling to place the cultural reference.

'Of course desperate,' Ivan stated brusquely. 'These good people have thrown him in jail for a crime he can't remember. How would that make you feel, Harry?'

He wondered where Ivan was going with this. 'So what do you suggest?'

The assassin brandished a set of keys.

They wrapped Dan in a sheet and slung him across the rump of Ivan's horse.

The town wasn't large, three or four criss-crossing streets and a central square, none of which were busy, buildings of wood and brick two storeys tall displaying facades of bland architectural simplicity. The traffic was slow, mostly equine, a few pedestrians wandering the duck-boards as they spurred their mounts and rode the robot to freedom.

Over the next hill the sea was visible. Round a bend in the now paved road appeared the port that was their intended stop. Here the equine traffic persisted, although Harry detected bursts of steam close by, hot plumes from cumbersome engines mixing with vapours off the ocean. Masts were visible between warehouses, cranes and winches groaning, men stripped to the waist exercising crate-hooks; sometimes two arms, sometimes four, loading and unloading cargoes these adapted stevedores.

The harbour resounded to shouts. Two sailing ships butted hulls with a coal-fired liner. Passengers crowded its decks, waving handkerchiefs and hats. On the wharf a group of mischievous sailors ducked fists and parasols as they made improper suggestions to ladies whose cause seemed an exodus, fleeing war, the confusion working to the advantage of Harry and party, who, paying with gold, soon had themselves a stateroom on the Rebecca, no questions asked. A naval escort, they learned, ironclad and twelve inch gunned, wallowed two miles off shore, charged with providing safe passage. The intervening waters were calm and blue-grey. Gulls turned somersaults in the tangy dock air.

Commotion was the scene from the porthole. An old lady carried aloft on a chair, skirts gathered as she belaboured ears, a feisty young girl wearing a bone through her nose clearing the way, shoving one capped sailor off the rustily nailed pier into the white-foamed depths, his hat floating and his mates oblivious. The girl, not a backward glance. Her course was irresistible. Harry loved her already. But who was she? A fugitive from peace, like himself, or a refugee and a victim of consequence? Ivan, meanwhile, had lost his watch to the robot playing cards. Saliva glossed his lips...

He should know better.

Dan banded his shiny wrist.

Harry rapped his pipe off his heel, then proceeded to stuff the carved bowl.

Just as his thumb was about to spin the wheel of his readied Zippo the door burst open.

It was her.

Zonda MacIntyre. 'Sorry, boys, we booked in advance.'

The old lady had a beard. 'You heard her - out!'

Dan suggested they flip for it.

And lost.

'Best of three?'

What he'd stolen, it later transpired, that he'd forgotten, what he confessed to having appropriated under a layer of greasy canvas in a dank and undulating lifeboat aboard the Rebecca on the high seas, was a compass. But no ordinary compass, he explained. This compass, a finely wrought instrument, did more than point north, it indicated the best opportunity, the safest course; it highlighted the most favourable odds, the set of circumstances least likely to effect disaster. It pointed true, he said. And where was it now?

'I swallowed it.'

'You what?' Harry squinted, head propped on a rowing bench.

'You are this compass,' Ivan guessed. 'Right?'

The robot shuffled.

'They locked you up for safekeeping...'

'Yes!' blurted Dan, brain audibly ticking. 'I want only my freedom,' he said, comically plaintive. 'I am slave to no man, least of all that pirate, Marshall Kay.'

The name meant something to both Harry and Ivan, reminding each of a secret past, albeit Harry's was more recent. He climbed from the lifeboat and wandered the crowded decks, waiting for night. He pictured Angelo on his sofa, all those worlds ago, pitching for the agency with a company report in a brown paper envelope. Harry had never cared for the mission, vague as it was. What was he to do anyway? Write a particularly scathing pamphlet? Start a poster campaign? Incite a revolution? He avoided the saloon, chewing on his pipe stem as he thought about the girl with the bone through her nose, the same that had evicted them from their cabin. Few on board had a berth. The stars, when they were visible, reflected on the water like candles in little boats, souls adrift on an irredeemable ocean. The engine's vibration could be felt through the railing and smoke from the twin stacks was a match for the clouds in occluding the spring moon. It waxed toward full, silver and enigmatic. A bit like Daniel...

Around midnight, their escort, the Derringer, came about. Its twelve inch guns swivelled. Close but unseen they delivered a broadside that ripped the liner asunder, sending most of her passengers to their deaths, either blasted, burned or drowned. Harry knew little of the vital minutes. Fished from the cold waves by hands of flesh and steel, he bled from numerous small wounds. The lifeboat rocked disturbingly, tossed in the ship's final wake.

A woman dabbed his brow with the hem of her dress. 'Hi,' she said.

'Cigarette?'

It hurt that he'd lost his pipe. But the lighter with the naked lady was miraculously spared. Relief flooded his short bones. 'Thanks.'

'You're welcome. We're lucky. You're metal friend here predicted the attack.'

'He did?' Harry was unsurprised.

'Yes. He spoke with Issac and they agreed it best if we abandoned ship; only we couldn't find you, so you got wet.'

'I see.' Gazing at the shimmering automaton, canvas draped over its chrome pate, he knew intuitively the reason behind the Derringer's action. Dan himself, who or whatever he was, writ large in flat eyes and stencilled across cheeks like grimy mirrors.

Shaking, Harry drifted toward sleep, the cigarette damp between his lips. That was enough excitement for one day.

xvii

Marshall Kay had funded the agency from the outset. It was an open secret. He rendezvoused with Niaan and they discussed, among other things, a strategy. Seymour wore a cherry in his ear, one finger twiddling its stalk as the reception was poor.

'Just a moment,' he said. 'Okay, where were we?'

'The girl.'

'Which girl?' To Niaan there were many.

'The cross-over,' clarified Marshall, meaning Johnson.

'Not the other; the crazy one?'

Captain Kay buffed his brooch. 'The cold one.' He smirked balefully, something he'd practised in recent days. 'Rum?'

Niaan dabbed his lips. 'Thank-you, yes.' He accepted the glass, resigned to the inevitable drunkenness and mutual slaps on the back.

'She has the capacity to deceive, that one. The immunity to undo. A freedom both priceless and bold.'

'From?'

'She freezes and she boils, the girl with poisoned eyes...'

'I'm afraid I don't follow.'

'It's not a quote,' Marshall told him. 'It's her. She's disappeared.'

'You tagged her?' queried Niaan, reminded of another lost woman on another world.

'Yesterday I raised an island and built a hotel. Seventy thousand mature palm trees, Seymour. Air-conditioning in every room. A thirty metre bar. But I can't find that girl.'

'Maybe she's on the moon,' Niaan suggested glibly, stopping them dead with the thought.

'The moon?'

'Yeah...'

'Manda Heluski, she's quiet up there.'

'Too quiet.'

'We should visit.' Marshall knocked back his drink and refilled.

Niaan drained his glass and placed it on the bulkhead.

A plan was made.

xviii

Muscling for the surface, burrowing through loam and rock, the firelord and his retinue of slavering miscreants emerged as if from an ovipositor, slick and round in their glutinous shell, a sea-bottom egg.

A black shape awaited; hovering like a predator, some carnivorous insect.

The focus of scattered armies, these rivals surveyed one another for two whole days, communicating via blood.

They would fight, they agreed. But when the time was right, they would sup.

twenty-one - warriors

Schilling walked bald-headed into a crowded tavern. The L-shaped room fell silent, A moment passed, a pool ball clicked, and normal volume was resumed. He manoeuvred toward the bar, peering down amid an array of feet and boots, dust and polish, buckles, laces, straps, wafting pungent smoke from his face and self-consciously elbowing aside rigid patrons while ignoring each grimacing facade. Dropping a bag of coins onto the scratched mahogany counter he smiled at the barmaid, her left eye a shade blacker than her right. She had a tattoo on her shoulder, a dragon and fist. Schilling toyed with the strings of the bag, pull-strings like those of the larger carrier he'd possessed.

The barmaid sidled closer. 'What'll it be, handsome? Hm? Draught or a shot?' Laughter erupted behind him. Dominoes toppled. Glasses broke. 'Hey!' The barmaid was insistent. She regarded him strangely, as if recalling his face. 'We want no trouble here.' Her voice flat with menace. The room was again silent. 'I think you'd better leave...'

Schilling placed his elbows on the counter. 'Ice-water,' he said.

'Didn't you here?' questioned a man to his left. Burly and hirsute, he supported his weight on a bowed cane. Noise filtered through the throng. The man, it appeared, had taken upon himself the onus of ejection.

Schilling wandered over to the empty table by the window and took his seat. Sighing inwardly, resigned not to failure, but victory, he gazed about him at the white-flecked lips.

The burly man sat opposite.

His ice-water arrived on a tray along with the bag on coins.

In the bag the amount was always the same. Outside the bag change was at stake.

'What'll it be?' quizzed his opponent, echoing the barmaid. He sweated profusely, trembling in his chair.

The crowd began to gather. Schilling allowed it to thicken. This time he not only manifested but directed the silence. The small round table became the focus of the room, a locus for a tableau of glistening teeth.

'A meal,' he said. 'A bed.' It was all he ever asked. A night's sleep, he added to himself. Dreamless rest. Peace.

'And if you lose?'

Schilling grinned, a lopsided effect. This was the only part he enjoyed, picturing his own expression in that unlikely event.

'My head on a plate.'

In numberless contests he had yet to meet his match.

His muscles ached.

i

Early morning sunshine lanced across his features, grated like cheese by the ill-fitting boards: a seasonal repair to the roof. He'd slept well, laid out like a corpse in an attic, his host a wine merchant who had drawn the short straw, a tall thin man with a cluster of nostrils centring his concave face, corkscrews substituting the fingers of one hand, a specialization the survival potential of which was lost on Hubert Schilling. But who was he to criticize another's fate? He had his own misfortune. There was no bowl or obvious receptacle to piss in. He took a bottle from a shelf.

Emerging as he had from a rabbit burrow, covered in soil and excrement, spending the night above ground, albeit in a dank attic, came as a welcome respite. Below the earth his visual landscape had been in constant, dramatic flux. Above, places, people, happenings, encounters, all seemed reliably solid. Here nothing jumped out of emptiness to assail you. The surface world turned more predictably. But its normalcy was relative. Who knew when it might end? Already he'd lost count of the days. Each night found him in another town, a string of similar \- although often profoundly different - outposts, dog-eared and ragged, some less ordered than others, split along factional, territorial, geographical lines - homes and factories divided by trenches filled with oil, kindling stacked and sentries on watchtowers. Some ghostly quiet. All self-contained. Units, they functioned individually, these towns, border communities tight-knit and hostile wherein the stranger, if not unwelcome, was greeted with a savage mixture of surprise and contempt. Few travelled between, he imagined. Few if any. They were universes to themselves, the ex-trooper a rogue asteroid. They lined the route south, a day's walk one from the next. And no matter which road he chose, or how fast he progressed, evening saw him scuffing his soles on the outskirts of yet another nameless conglomerate.

It occurred to Schilling that perhaps he had never emerged and that the sky was artificial, the terrain false. But where did such thoughts lead? Back to the womb, he realized with a shrug.

It occurred to him to travel north.

He dismissed ideas, both.

Treading carefully, he descended the stairs, the dewy light diffused by heavy shutters. The wine merchant was wary of being robbed. Schilling passed quietly along a narrow hallway to the kitchen. Here a basement trapdoor was closed and padlocked. He tore bread from a loaf and gulped sweetened milk straight from an earthenware jug. Refreshed, he opened the back door after first loosening several bolts and standing the oak beam against the wall...

Turning slowly, he found his eyes sucked down the pitted copper funnel of a blunderbuss, his host behind it in his nightgown, bed-socks and cap.

The ugly gun smiled round a mouthful of nails.

Schilling made a quick inventory of the kitchen, assessing each item's potential, whether any might prove useful either as obstacles or weapons. He did not doubt the merchant would fire. Blithely, he estimated the spread, the lethal radius of such a crude piece of hardware. If he ducked he could make it our alive. But Schilling was too stubborn to give way. So he stood where he was while his stomach grumbled, patiently digesting its haul.

The wine merchant turned the colour of his finest reserves.

The ground was dusty and flat, piling on the toes of his boots.

The sun was full.

The blunderbuss had gone off. He'd been right about that. It had blown up in the merchant's face, seeding his brain with tacks, pinning the top of his skull to a smoke-drenched rafter.

Schilling paused to drink. Water flowed under a bridge, predictable and cold; often no more than a trickle, a rocky stream, but always present in the diurnal scheme, gurgling in his ear shortly before midday. This river was bloated as if by melted snow, its current brisk, swarming noisily about a bridge's foundations to his right. A lone figure guarded the approach, turning his back and walking toward the stone centre as Schilling wiped his face.

A new twist. He welcomed it. An unknown factor creeping into his daily sojourn between towns.

His shadow wrinkling, he made his way to the smooth edge of the span, shielding his eyes from the yellow rays to better see the figure who'd planted his feet directly over the middle of three arches. He was dressed like a hero from Greek or Roman mythology, masked and armed with a short sword, the bright steel raised as Schilling neared, the blade turned till it dazzled.

And then he was gone. There was no clap of displaced air. Schilling scratched his nose and crossed.

Another time, maybe.

Meandering through the bleary afternoon he held an imaginary conversation in his head. The conversation was between himself and Franky Heidelberg, the pair of them sitting on the edge of her bed.

Franky, 'There's clean sheets. Zonda does the ironing.'

Schilling, 'Zonda? You're kidding...'

'No; really.' She brushed back her hair. 'Underneath it all she's the domestic type. Just don't tell her I said so. She cut me...look.'

'Huh?' He was confused.

'In the Weekender canteen,' she explained. 'We were messing about. Zon wanted to spike the meatballs.'

'And did she?'

Franky screwed her mouth into a crimson knot. She didn't answer.

Loyal, Schilling thought.

'Sometimes we sit up all night arguing. Friends do that.' It embarrassed her to imply that he was alone, friendless, that she need to clarify. 'Have you decided yet what to do about Ruby?' she added quickly.

Schilling frowned. Obviously he wished to forget. 'I can't turn him in,' he said.

'Why not?' It was a stupid question. He answered it anyway.

'It'd be pointless. He'd kill me.'

'I'm sorry...' Her eyes closed with her mouth, frightened of saying the wrong thing again.

He put his arm round her waist.

'Hubert?'

He smiled. 'Yes.'

'Yes what?' she quizzed, folding her hands in her lap.

Defensive? 'Just "yes",' he replied.

She wriggled as if ice was melting down her spine.

'It's the way you said it, that's all. Like you didn't care. Like you'd agreed in advance to whatever it was I was going to ask.'

Maybe I had, he thought. 'And?' He tongued her ear.

Her shoulders closed, squeezing her breasts.

So much for advice.

'Hubert?'

The woman he loved...

ii

The man with the sword crept in an attitude of pretended stealth about the labyrinthine alleys of a great sandstone city, a helm of bronze stained with verdigris, a weapon of indented steel in one knuckled fist.

Schilling tore a door-post from its gritty foundation and bore it across his shoulder like a club.

The sun was hot and high, the shadows dissolved, the air transfused with an orange heat reflected off endless compacted walls, baked and windowless. This was the beggars' quarter, its residents hidden behind sackcloth and timber, not daring to share their gaze with the warriors passing without.

Schilling trailed Ekland, not knowing, although perhaps understanding, where he led.

The sweet smell of excrement met a barrier of perfumes, smoke from exotic hardwoods mixing with crushed flower heads and spread unguents in that section of the city occupied by merchants and prostitutes. Here veiled eyes regarded them, spies whispered of them, women rolled many-sided dice in beaten copper bowls and men measured swatches of cloth from chin to wrist. Noise echoed down narrow streets, messages and insults, grunts and warnings, rumours quickly overtaking one another as the two proceeded apace, the distance between them constant, the shufflings of people and animals increasingly evident as they moved rapidly toward the rich centre. Ladies, dimpled and bangled, dispatched servants to place bets, dark-eyed in their sedan-chairs. Gentlemen deep in their cups paused to argue the merits of sword and club. Clowns entertained and hawkers shouted the names of their goods. Children rushed like mice underfoot.

Schilling had tunnel vision. He travelled a conduit, the shapes to either side phantoms sporned by the flickering light, the corridor thronged with amorphous visions, a kaleidoscopic melange reality tried unsuccessfully to tune in.

Towers rose, ornamented with colourful pennants, streamers trailing from spires. A crush of unruly horses stirred panic about a cobbled square where a fountain promised coolness. The city's wealthy sat on upholstered benches in the shade of the water's glassy fronds. A fine spray dampened the air. Ekland stopped at the far end of the square and waited for the ex-trooper to push through the throng before passing beneath an archway. Beyond lay a trampled arena, roughly circular, with stone-cut terracing on three sides.

There was a roar of expectant voices, a vicious clamour to greet the gladiators as they took their positions on this sand-packed stage.

The two men stood ten metres apart.

Ekland was masked.

Schilling rested the post on the ground.

The arena filled to bursting. The warriors absorbed the desperate faces.

They melded into a whole, a single greedy mass, hungry and cruel. The sun beat down relentlessly. A trumpet sounded, slicing the babble, and thereafter in silence many thousands of arms were raised, the crowd rippling like a serpent awash with jewels...

And they clashed, the Orieleans.

twenty-two - sub

Set in a clasp of bones, a lush stone aubergine shone dully on the middle finger of Braxis Drum, lord of the meeting rivers, a confluence whose energies were harnessed via granite wheels to reduce limestone to dust, the dust bagged and borne to the surface on the backs of eyeless men.

In a cage languished Pilot Johnson, face set cement hard, transfixed by that ring.

Upstairs, the demon had informed her, the lime was burnt and the residue used in the manufacture of bricks.

Building bricks?

'Life is a labour intensive business,' he'd said.

Patiently, Johnson frayed rope.

Braxis Drum, his huge belly stuffed with children, lounged absently on a circular rock. Overhead sparkled myriad gems. She freed her hands and feet. The cavern was empty but for a handful of attendants, disgustingly slope-shouldered and snoozing like their lord, leaning on crooked spears. Carefully she tested the strength of the bars, teasing apart rooty fibres in an effort to escape. Braxis himself had fished her from the subterranean watercourse, surprised and amused by her gill-less nature. The children he caught here all had fins. He was about to eat her anyway when she thought of a riddle.

'What's large and green and has warts on its head?' declared the pilot, dangling by her legs, staring into that gruesome gullet.

Braxis paused, scowled. Normally his meals did little more than squeal and wriggle and were full of juice. Either this waterbabe was overripe or a message from a fellow god. Deciding on the latter, he turned her the right way up.

The demon, she saw, had a squint. One eye magnified before her face, examining the pores of her skin. He blew on her and she grimaced.

Johnson, choking, repeated the question...satisfied by his bemused expression. His curiosity allowed her to live.

That and a love of backgammon, which he played clumsily, the pilot letting him win. Against a constant reverberation, stone pulverizing stone, she groaned plaintively each time one or more of her pieces became trapped, the demon toad's pungent breath assailing her, rotten teeth in a rotten skull, the butt of her desperate joke.

'What's large and green and has warts on its head?' mused Braxis in his slumber.

A whirlpool, whispering and seductive, had captured her before her present jailer. Starved of food and light, having had her fill of water, Johnson was gulled into bathing in her summer dress. The roof passed overhead, indistinguishable from the river bottom, speeding her on her way, the first stage of a longer journey...to where? The middle? She paused to think, but only briefly. Swinging free of the cage she tiptoed over to her bloated host, this toad of substantial girth and virulent growths. She hunted for Schilling's string-pull bag, yet found herself still oddly captivated by the ring, lush and round and compelling. Uncovering the bag she collected the backgammon set and placed that in it before turning to leave the noise-rippled cavern. But couldn't. She was at a loss to explain why. It wasn't greed, Johnson reckoned. Then what? The ring held her gaze. A trophy? A token of her contempt? Maybe - and this puzzled her - to steal the bloody ornament from the foul amphibian's finger was to prove something to herself. Her existence, for if she took the ring Braxis Drum would almost certainly come after her, proving once and for all the pilot's ability to influence events.

It slipped off easily, greasy and wet. Johnson stowed it in the bag, and checking around for signs of wakefulness found only signs of indigestion.

There was a jetty and a boat.

i

Franky gazed out the window at the harbour lights, the ships coming in red and green and yellow, those departing for nameless reaches blue globes. Outer Space, the near-flung colony as the sailors called it, was celebrating its anniversary. Not much of the original structure remained, the station having been largely rebuilt over the decades, but they would visit the inner places, tread the damp rusting halls where great metal girders still strained. Franky was apprehensive, yet excited. It was strange to think of her home as artificial, something manmade. She'd dreamed of men in spacesuits erecting the framework, fastening nuts and bolts with fantastic glowing wrenches and clambering like steeplejacks, magic spanners gripped, juggling fixings, slow-motion acrobats...

'Aren't you eating breakfast?' her mother quizzed.

Franky smiled, toying with her pony-tails.

'Lost your appetite?'

Red, green, yellow, blue.

'No,' she replied. 'Just thinking.'

'Oh dear.' Alice's expression was grave. 'Is it contagious? Ought I to stop breathing? File my nails?'

Franky laughed and poured cereal.

Alice grabbed the milk before her daughter, holding it hostage. 'I suppose you'll need some money for today, eh? A little something for postcards and souvenirs.'

She shook her head.

Alice was immediately suspicious. 'How come?'

Franky ate her cereal dry, munching loudly, painstakingly swallowing her cornflakes as if they were bathed in an opaque white fluid secreted by cows.

'Stubborn,' commented her mother; 'just like your old man.'

She arrived at school with minutes to spare, waltzing off the bus into a crowd of girls in summer dresses toting huge canvas bags, her own bobbing on her shoulder as she pressed through the chattering throng. The bell sounded and she danced up the stairs. Kath and Gloria were reading the same magazine, an article about unfeminine hair, both worried and puzzled as Franky took her seat and leaned on her elbows. Their teacher, Helen, yawned. It was, Franky Heidelberg decided, going to be one of those days.

'Okay, okay. Cut it out. That's enough, Jocine, give Molly back her pencils. Thank-you. Now...'

Today's schedule, Franky thought as Helen shuffled papers, glasses perched on nose.

'Today's schedule, as I'm sure you're all aware...' She trailed off again. Then, 'Is - where was I? Oh, yes: the trip inside.'

Commenced promptly at ten, a bus to Muirspoint that was stuck in traffic half an hour due to the burgeoning celebrations, the preparations for music and fireworks. Bulky out-system containers were parked everywhere, their shapes at odds with the surrounding geometry of a suburban landscape composed of riotous curves. No straight lines here. Straight lines were for stagnant surfaces, planes of zero energy. In Outer Space things were said to flow. Not that the traffic flowed, she mused, one of twenty soft faces pressed against the bus windows.

The traffic was sluggish, the air turgid, the bus yellow and quiet. She was lucky, Franky told herself, to be spending a day on the inside.

From Muirspoint the bus followed a transit tunnel down through industrial strata, an eerie underworld of dim illumination, the girls imagining the distant pinpoint flashes to be eyes, laughing as they rainbowed, spreading coronae of gas. Everything bubbled up from here. It was like an archaeological exploration into not only the past, literally speaking, but also the source of many everyday items taken for granted on the surface, the blue and green world above. Soap-cakes and sausages, as Helen put it, what turned out to be the title of a pamphlet she was keeping to herself, occasionally reading passages aloud.

There'd be a test.

'The first priority, of course, was the sustainable manufacture of air. Gravity came much later, after the establishment of water and electrical reservoirs.'

It was warm on the bus, increasingly humid. The girls fanned each other with jotters.

'Listen. Listen,' insisted Helen. 'When we arrive I want you all to pay close attention to what the archivist has to say. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to examine history at close quarters.'

It snowed underground. Franky was amazed. Refrigeration, Helen explained.

'Pipes run in a labyrinth of cooling ducts, some up to eight metres wide.'

She'd heard of these. Her mother had told her of monsters lurking in the shadows, an idea which made her smile. It was a fantasy, a dream she cherished, that some day she would meet such creatures face to face; nose to tentacle, as it were, to shake quivering pseudopods and engage in conversation with demons and banshees.

'Okay,' whispered Helen, shoving glasses to brow, 'we're almost there. Remember to switch on your nematodes.'

Oops, thought Heidelberg, forgot already.

'Now, quietly, in pairs.'

Hand in hand she walked alone. Lost or escaped, Franky couldn't decide which. Both, maybe. There was a cold draught blowing round her knees, an almost feral nature to the dark. Not the black of space, she was familiar with that, but the weighty black of invisible presences, lurking potentials, stalking, hiding, a multiplicity of limbs arrayed in gestures of confusion, for as yet these shapes had no purpose, no reality beyond that of the stygian aisles they haunted. Franky brought them freedom. It surprised her to think in such terms, yet it was true. And she knew no fear. They were no threat to her. They were creatures sprung from the unknown.

Ghosts, they could be anything, go anywhere, travel with her, venture forth, scrutinize and explore. They need not be fixed in one place. No rules bound them. Franky encouraged them to go. She too was an adventurer. She was twelve years old. And now? After her mother had died, killed in a car accident, she joined the company, stepping onto the lowest rung. She could climb, but the rungs got farther apart. She met Zonda MacIntyre, Zonda whose cynicism warned of rungs sawn and brittle, whose advice was to lay low and give nothing away - at least not for free. And Schilling, big dumb Hubert

Schilling, a little boy floating, an infuriating balloon. She loved him. Odd, she realized, floating herself over trees and lagoons, to admit what she had long known, that, take it or leave it, Schilling was Franky's umbilical. She had real need of him. Zonda too.

Helen folded her arms. 'Gather round. Gather round.'

The archivist had a long white beard. He leered inside his pool of light, amused and mischievous. Franky liked him immediately. He had the look of a person honest yet cryptic. His glinting eyes roved. She stuck her tongue out and he pretended not to notice.

'This place where we're standing,' the archivist began, fingers linked across his chest and visuals activated, broad sweeps of colour blinking on and off like cheap neon, his voice encapsulating each student, Franky imagined, in their own pool of education, 'is - or was - at the centre of every action, personal and commercial, to do with the day to day running...'

Running. The word nailed her, snatched her breath. She was aware of its different meanings, its possible interpretations, was fully cognizant of the archivist's gaze as it fell upon her, blessed in isolation at the very centre, the middle, alone in a web of ancient, redundant girders, the underpinnings of a world grown apathetic, unconcerned by the thinness of its manmade environment. But then how did a megalith like Outer Space differ from a planet?

A planet's core was molten, she answered, fluid.

Like hers. Yes...as Franky sailed between her bored classmates, their expressions blank yet attentive, switched on and listening while Helen beamed approval. But the archivist, she understood, was watching her, watching Heidelberg.

ii

Languishing in his cabin, the portable screen balanced on his knees, Ivan determined the interference he was experiencing was due to the depth of the submarine. Harry was elsewhere, perhaps sampling their rescuer's excellent brandy or playing darts with Issac and the robot. Zonda had the cabin next to his. She'd locked herself in, refusing food and any comfort. Occasionally he heard screams and the crash of furniture not bolted down flung against metal walls. Resounding, thunderous cannonades. Peculiar woman, he thought, distracted momentarily from the progress of giant snails...

Bristling with guns, the huge machines turned lazily scant metres above the earth, bringing arms to bear, targets likewise manoeuvring, a slow dance of spiral-shelled military molluscs. They fired, scored direct hits, knocking their enemy off balance and forcing them each time to reorient in a clumsy race of overburdened hardware. Neither suffered much damage. They would fight till they ran out of ammunition. Then what? At least nobody got hurt, Ivan intuited facetiously. His guts rumbled and he swallowed the ball-point he'd been chewing, thinking once more of the robot encased in all that delicious chromium. No wonder he'd been keen to effect Dan's escape.

There was a knock at the door. Seymour Niaan, whose boat this was, entered. Ivan disliked the squat submariner, though his knowledge of him was flimsy, his memory frustrated as regards captains, castles, conspiracies and such, regurgitating images in which he had little faith. Polished silver teapots stood out; but the background was hazy. Too many other lives in the way, smudges on the lens of his past.

'Comfortable?' Niaan inquired, leading up to something.

'Yes,' he replied, shuffling, covering the screen. The man's features reminded him of a flatulent sheep.

Niaan closed the oval door surreptitiously. 'I see you have an artefact,' he said, twiddling his fingers.

Ivan dragged his knees to his chest.

'Might I look?' His eyes were large pools of supplication.

'No.'

The captain folded his arms. 'A trade then,' he offered. 'I have knowledge that will interest you, answers to questions you've probably not dared ask.'

'Give me an example.'

The man nodded, tongue poised on lips.

Ivan knew he could trust neither those eyes or that mouth. Very likely they were responsible for his predicament.

'You're no fool, Runner Evangela. Not now at least! But what have you learned on Oriel? Why do you suppose you're here? Why are any of us? Oriel has a purpose for you, your past and future. Harry also. As agency hirelings your fates are mapped out. But it needn't be so. There is much I for one can offer. So many alternatives. Lives, Ivan, lives that are to be lived; not one like of old, but a great branching tree of existences. And for such a small price.'

With that he left, leaving a hollowness in his wake that had always been there, an emptiness in Ivan's chest he'd done his best to ignore.

On the screen the picture had changed to reveal a fiery red sunset.

Harry appeared, wiped his brow and spread his palms in a gesture of resignation. 'I don't give a fuck,' he stated. 'Okay? I just don't give a fuck.'

Zonda followed, glowing. 'Well,' she said, 'it was tough, but I managed it. What do you think?'

She was purple.

Ivan didn't believe in fate and neither did Harry. Issac Waters and Daniel, the latter wearing a tutu and the former a ball-gown much too small for him, entered the cabin next.

Only his partner looked embarrassed.

'I think it's time we got serious,' he told them.

Schroeder nodded. 'That's a relief.'

'So,' continued Ivan, putting the hand-held aside. 'Who wants to be first?'

iii

Schilling peered up at a lightless sky. He stood on the edge of a massive crater that stretched to the horizon and beyond. It was cold. Invisible snow fell, freezing his worn cheeks. Whether by such negative illumination or other means, everything was laid open to him. The world was created, had been created, would be created again, and his place in it, however tenuous, was sound.

We invent out own dreams, he reflected.

He began his descent thinking of Ekland, of their many adventures, of those to come. Recalling the sand-packed city and the dusty arena he wondered if it were past or future over which his memory stalked.

Placing feet, entering darkness, he tried to block the totality from his mind and concentrate on certain facts, needs and objectives. There was no way round the crater. It was too big. Any detour would simply cancel his direction, his road south turned east or west. There was no choice but to venture in and down.

Rubbing the palms of his hands together generated heat, but also soreness, reminding his palms of an axe. Schilling had murdered with it, abandoned it...yet might they be reunited, rejoined like the issue and their severed heads? Like Schilling and Franky, he dared hope. The path he followed proved less steep than he'd imagined, falling away from him gently. He walked deeper and deeper, refusing the children of sleep who dogged his heels, hanging about his ankles like chains. The morning sun explored his features. The air was dewy, turgid, distorting perspective. Having walked all night it was impossible to gauge how far he'd descended. The crater wall rose behind him like a mountain. More weary than exhausted, he paused to drink. The wintry environment at the crater's lip had softened and food appeared plentiful, both mobile and static. Water flowed like translucent blood over rocks. Sunlight jewelled the languid surface while magnifying the stream's bottom to reveal curious fish, and speckled pebbles like birds' eggs. He ate handfuls of succulent fruit, swallowed rodents live and whole, washing them down with spring-water. Such a diet, while horrific to an older, more fastidious self, made him grin like a badly behaved child. His stomach was happy at least.

'Are you ready to listen, Runner Schilling?'

Demoted? The burly trooper felt sick.

'You're so gullible,' Ruby said.

Hubert stared at the fluorescent strip in the ceiling, its bleaching white light.

'And you've missed a payment,' his tormentor, the man he'd bought his promotion off, added. 'That's not good. You know better than that.'

He did?

'Open your ears, Schilling, there might be music.'

He gritted his teeth. His whole body ached.

Hangover?

Had he seen Franky last night?

God, what had he done...

Joplinski was obscured behind a wall of plants. 'There might be laughter. There might be life. But take this into consideration: for every life you can imagine there are any number of deaths.'

Schilling rolled to one side and puked.

'Enjoy.' Ruby left.

He dozed a while, hoping it was a dream, but eventually the stink of his own vomit forced him out of bed.

He showered and dressed without cleaning it up.

Punching coffee from the wall, tamping the shaving cuts on his face, he strolled the infinite corridors, the exits always too far off. After frustrated minutes he made it outside, a fresh breeze stinging sore cheeks, sore throat, sore head. Candy Mountain hunkered beneath him like a weightlifter in squat, meaning to rise yet in acute danger of collapse. The uneasy feeling emanated from wobbly knees. He decided on a haircut. But wait a minute, didn't he have a haircut yesterday? His skull was less than smooth, not quite rough. Ascending, men and women in company uniform ran about flying kites, wings that in the bright air offered facets, constructing a fractured rainbow...

The barber's chair was empty.

GONE TO LUNCH, a sign read.

There was a woman at the summit he at first mistook for Franky Heidelberg. They had the same dark hair and eyes. He staggered and pressed his temples.

'You can see the world from here,' she said.

Schilling gazed outward. 'Enough of it.'

The woman turned to regard him. 'You sound bitter.'

'I feel terrible.'

She smiled. 'Serves you right.'

He nodded agreement, although his memory was blank.

There was a moment's silence, then she asked, 'What do you make of it? The planet, I mean.'

'The planet?' Schilling was baffled. He elected to take the question at face value. 'I...' He was going to say he hated it, only the words stuck in his throat.

Her gaze again, quizzical.

He shrugged.

'You're indifferent. That's unusual.'

'No,' he said; 'not indifferent. It's just...' Once more his sentence failed.

'Yes?'

He moved to stand next to her, to see the world as she saw it, brash Oriel.

'It has potential.'

'More than that.'

'Okay. It has promise.'

'Promise. How do you mean?'

'There are raw materials here,' he commented, the hesitation gone from his voice. 'Possibilities for human development. I see an indigenous industrial base.'

'Manufacturing what?'

He paused deliberately. Then, 'Wealth.'

The woman put her arms round his neck. As they kissed his sensed her vulnerability, her tenuous grip. Such an embrace offered a choice. He could thwart her, crush her, or he could ally himself to her, become one with her and raise her up.

Schilling hurt.

Hurting spoke.

iv

The Ologists sat in a tight group and swapped stories, told dirty jokes. Zonda, leaning over the fryer, popped her gum. She couldn't decide whether to encourage or reject the sexual advances of Pete Trebinek.

This was the least of her problems as time went by.

What happened next? Such thoughts careered through her mind as she watched the receding whalelike bulk of the submarine.

How could it float?

Ah, Zon, cut it out! Stamping her foot helped. It made a vague splash in the sand, raising eyebrows among her fellow castaways, each of whom, in contemplative mood, looked to her for an explanation they'd gladly miss.

Zonda obliged, saying nothing.

They'd taken a vote.

The robot had disappeared.

Seymour Niaan, with untypical zest, had enlightened them to its nature, even going so far as to reveal its moniker, its true company zenith-occupying epithet.

Imar Madruk. Desperate Dan. You had to laugh. They were all fools. Of course Zonda had heard of neither, but smirked anyway. She'd seen more than her fair share of wizardry.

Issac wasn't impressed.

Harry and Ivan exchanged whispers that annoyed her, leaning together like thinkers not doers.

Zonda MacIntyre wanted action.

'This is a circus!'

Issac laughed.

'I don't believe this!'

'What don't you believe,' Ivan chipped in, straight-backed, his side of the secret dialogue satisfactorily concluded. It was a moment before Harry righted himself too, distracted as he was by fitful smoke.

Zonda crossed her arms. 'Okay,' she said. 'We go our separate ways.' And nodding sarcastically, 'Backward...'

'So the man tells us,' confirmed Harry.

'Then?' She refused the obvious.

Harry hunched his shoulders. 'For me and Ivan, another beach, quite different to this one; gunshot wounds to the head. What was yours again?'

Zonda capitulated. 'Smothered with a pillow.'

They were all murdered.

But who was to blame?

As an excuse for existence, for coming into being, it was peculiar, if adequate.

It happened - or so they'd learned, in conversations private and public, on shores stranger than this, in restricted spaces and on open seas. The pain was easily washed away. The knowledge, unacceptable as it was, fundamentally flawed, might be negotiated by the least mentally adroit. It happened, yes, but it was too big to explain.

You had to be yourself, Zonda realized. You had to fit your clothes, or change your wardrobe. No pretending otherwise; Oriel was a world of themes.

The detectives, feigning apology, sloped toward their wheels magically parked nearby.

Issac waded into the sea.

Not a backward glance from him.

And Zonda?

And...

Fuck this. Fuck Pete? Not a second time. Death was an appointment she'd not keep.

v

The pilot scrambled over the side, her dress sodden and her palms bleeding, the pursuit outnumbering her initial estimate by ten to one. In a host of sailed craft men and beasts pointed and cried like excited children, weapons rattling and buttocks glossed to a sheen. She floundered ashore through the choppy shallows, the cavern vast and possessed of a muggy light. In the distance a city shone, traffic visible above its streets, buildings lopsided and windowless. Making dry ground Johnson ran toward the urban sprawl, hoping to lose the toad's voracious minions in its confusion. The place was some futurist's idyll, a playground of floating mobiles and snub-nosed cars, its atmosphere heady and rippled with applause.

Self-congratulation?

She tripped and fell, shattering the illusion before her. Anger throbbed in her muscles. Maintaining a firm grip on the string-pull bag she gathered herself and began to climb, slipping and sliding on the wet rock. The city conjured here, that fantastic realm, was cast in a patina of jellied liquid. What life existed was green and algal, no more complex than mould. But it wasn't complexity that mattered, Johnson realized, it was suitability, adaptability. These elemental life-forms had achieved their goal.

She almost envied their serenity. She gritted her teeth and concentrated on the ascent, scrabbling up this conurbation of her ancestors with those calling her thief close behind.

In the sunshine, holding tight to her prizes, her growing bag of treasure, Johnson paused for breath in a cornfield whose outer reaches could be seen to oscillate with the gold-smothered approach of goblins, their spear points like silver stalks catching the rays, white hairs in a blonde crop through whose bursting grains she moved once more. The ground undulated, the horizon leaning first toward, then away. It was useless to think she could lose them. This was her chosen reality, the pursuit a consequence of it. Life from now on promised to be one big adventure.

Whooping, cajoling herself, she pumped her long legs and swung her thin arms, elbows flaying corn, disturbing rodents and butterflies. She could hear the small army crashing in her wake, their gurgling abuse travelling ahead of them, their weapons dragged behind or getting under their feet. She pitied them in a way. What would happen if they ever caught up? Would they have served their purpose? What she needed was a plane, a loud-engined flyer.

The cornfield stretched on, reaching into hills, dipping into valleys, broken only by her rush. Clouds hung low, grey and immobile, scuttling in to obscure the sun. She crossed a harvester's path.

Stopping amid cut stems, fresh air surrounding her ankles, Johnson peered left and right. To the left, nothing. To the right, a tiny red speck. Biting her tongue she chased it, the harvester growing slowly, the pursuit temporarily thrown, confused by the airy swathe gouged out of the susurrous landscape. But she was easy to spot in the open and they were soon back on track.

The pilot closed on the huge threshing machine, its blades gyrating, its metal body resonant. Grain was pumped skyward in a golden haze that seemingly melted. All that remained was chaff, vegetable debris. She clambered onto the vehicle's rear and glanced over her shoulder. There they were, an unknown number of ugly squat shapes, chests heaving and arms jangling, spewing colours. Johnson opened the string-pull on a hunch and fished about for a diversion. Her hand closed round the tiger's eye. Perfect.

Swearing loudly at the determined pursuit she pulled her arm back and threw. The stone climbed its arc, gravity competing, the cut field waiting, unprepared for another seed. Would a tiger blossom? Three or four to disperse the sweaty horde. It seemed an age before the tiny jewel tumbled down.

The harvester shook, nearly dislodging her. The cornfield rose and fell as a giant corkscrew burst from under the soil, distributing it like shrapnel. The pursuit fell back, shocked and disarrayed. The corkscrew revolved at speed, whining shrilly, its note dropping as it slowed. Huge steel claws and creeping caterpillar treads could be seen heaving a long scuffed cylinder from the earth. Brass portholes held muddy windows. Levers cranked and a hatch popped outward. A figure appeared, swathed in black. The pursuit, now regathered, spilled either side of the intrusive craft. Johnson thought they would attack the crew, but they seemed in awe of the digging machine, or indifferent to it. A second figure emerged, the glint of a copper brooch at his throat. The goblins had lost their earlier momentum, however, and Johnson, riding the harvester, left them trailing farther behind in the field.

She decided to locate the driver.

He was a fat man among levers in a cab too small for both of them, although he invited her to join him. Made uncomfortable by her refusal, he next insisted the pilot take over. This Johnson was pleased to do. She got in one side while he got out the other, pulling the window down in order that they might talk, a beefy arm hooked round the frame. He introduced himself as David Fenmore, adding, 'Don't worry, I'm on your side. I knew the killing had to stop.'

Johnson requested no explanation and none was given.

Fenmore looked like an overgrown schoolboy, a middle-aged man who was rediscovering old haunts and how to have fun. He reminded Johnson of her father. Of her homeworld, Amy's Cupboard, his rural diocese.

He growled and spat insects.

The pilot, right foot on the floor, gazed forward at the queue of golden, quivering stalks as they blurred amid the cutting blades.

Swelling on the horizon was a slat barn, doors agape. Two camels stood tethered to a post, snarling at each other like drunks in a bar.

'Do you ride?' Fenmore asked, indicating the beasts.

'Is it far?' she replied, idling up.

'Depends where you get off,' he rejoined, leaping down to tackle the nearest animal. White foam dripped from its jaws.

Johnson descended from the cab. No sign of the pursuit, she saw, not so much as a cloud of dust.

Fenmore cracked the animals' knees with a stick and both kneeled clumsily.

'Climb on,' he instructed. 'Trust me, it's easy. Just don't fall off.'

She stuck her left foot in the stirrup, swung her right over the hump. The camel lurched and she patted her stomach. The cornfield became suddenly fluid, an ocean of yellow stretching in crests and troughs. Out there goblins floundered, terse and argumentative.

'Follow me,' Fenmore said. He flapped his heels, goading his mount to a trot.

Johnson did likewise, crushing the thin leather reins as the animal rose and dipped sickeningly before settling into a deceptively smooth gait. It carried her past the barn, beyond the corn, out into the spacious reaches of a world gone mad. Or so she imagined, sitting aside this locomotive sack. Corn gave way to dust, dust kicked into squalls by hooves, hooves padded and silent as if wrapped in blankets.

Blankets, she thought, now that would be nice. And a place to lay your worries for the night. But what worries did she have? The beast stumbled, its foot in a rabbit hole. She gave Fenmore a despairing look. Craving tobacco, he had none.

By the time they reached the oasis the pilot was asleep. Nodding aloft, he tapped her thigh and she opened one seeing orifice, the subtle odour of fresh water slithering through her nostrils.

The animals drank and the man bathed, his gut floating above his knees as he lay hands behind head.

'Join me?'

He was harmless, she decided, losing the dress. 'I don't suppose...'

He passed her soap.

'You think of everything.'

'It's necessary sometimes to be a step in front. As you'll appreciate.'

'The harvester?'

'Yes - I arranged that.'

'Why? Why rescue me?'

Fenmore feigned an injury to his gallant. Struggling from the shallow pool he rolled like a dog in the grass.

There were dates to eat, served by him on broad green leaves she later used to fan herself.

Evening brought a chill and he piled vegetation on top of her.

A bird shot past with folded wings, black and sleek.

The next morning they set off early, the pursuit a cloud of dust in the distance, fifteen or twenty kilometres behind.

'They'll never give in,' he pointed out. 'They have no other purpose, no option but to chase.'

'Then I'd better not let them catch me,' Johnson said, used now to the camel, trotting without discomfort over rusty dunes like piles of cinnamon.

She wondered what lay beneath this desert, what it might in future shape.

'We'll be into woodland soon; a cooler climate,' said the fat man, indicating a dark line on the horizon, trees inky and shaded. 'From there we travel on foot.' He made no mention of a destination.

It didn't matter to the pilot. She enjoyed travelling, the unpredictable nature of this adventure, or instalment thereof.

'There are those,' Fenmore told her, referring to an earlier, abrogated conversation, 'keen to get their hands on certain items which, rightly or wrongly, they perceive as a means of control, of exerting perhaps irresistible pressure on specific individuals to whom said items have a relationship.'

She couldn't have put it better.

He took a deep breath.

'You are remarkable, Roman Johnson, in that you possess the ability to deny, to freeze out such devices as the parties in question employ. In that mundane carrier, my dear, is the means to alter worlds. You might, if you wished, exploit it for your own ends.'

Now there's an idea...

'But you won't.' Fenmore was emphatic. 'You don't believe in others as you believe in yourself,' he said; 'therefore the desire for dominance is much diminished. Why, you have barely the will to steer that camel, a beast of burden whose tiny brain need only be jerked. What hope have you of coercing people? To manipulate individuals requires either guile or greed. To be successful one must first seek approval, then transform that approval into fear.'

His face had turned grey, his voice sonorous. Whoever he lectured was years removed.

The forest was just that, a dense growth of bizarre woods as stark as a prison circumference. They dismounted and Johnson patted her beast on its quizzical snout. Fenmore reassured her the camels would find their way home. She didn't believe that. She knew the goblin horde would butcher them. Typically, she left the illusion in place.

Forest quickly became jungle, spongy and damp. She rummaged in the string-pull bag for a pair of boots, and finding some was mildly, if not genuinely surprised.

There were predators. Fenmore took her hand in a predictable gesture. If it came to a fight she'd reverse the roles and spring to the fat man's defence. The air was saturated with insects, humming water-carriers whose swollen undercarriages provided relieving draughts to larger beetles and scuttling lizards. They plodded through swamp, trees leaning in a mist, pulling it taut like plastic sheeting, gaseous tarpaulins suspended on threads of spider silk. The two would have to find higher ground before sundown if they were ever to dry out.

Gracious mangroves spanned a river bank. Slung like vines were creaking walkways, the product of much industry. Together they walked each successive trough, balancing on the narrow planks in the sweaty jungle atmosphere.

Fenmore paused and raised a finger. 'Listen.'

Johnson strained to hear. Sounds moved sluggishly, most too big to fit in her ear; so after a moment it was possible to focus on the music. Water music, it trickled and peeled, a panoply of tiny bells and vibrant strings. They pressed on to the next fragile bridge, and the next, the music growing louder, the drooping trees thinning to reveal a cascade of shimmering droplets, individual globes of crystal performing acrobatics in a unified display from the head and many tiers of a magnificent fountain.

'Not as incongruous as it might appear,' remarked Fenmore sagely.

The pilot said nothing.

The fountain, hidden behind its own resplendent tresses, a shy bride at the altar, was carved of delicate marble, flutes and arabesques arrayed like the plumes of bone-white seahorses, a mother-of-pearl sheen clinging to the perfect lingerie, lace and silk glittering beyond a veil of diamonds. The music came from countless spinning whistles, silver reeds atwirl, voices high, melodious and lulling, the cloy jungle evening transformed into a realm of acoustic brilliance.

The fat man said, 'I don't like it. Makes me nervous.'

Johnson was thinking of angels and pins. She had a vision of thrones and dominions, virtues, powers and principalities, in rows and lines, transfixed like vampires through the heart, neatly labelled and tucked away in a drawer, collected like butterflies on a board.

Fenmore busied himself scouting a route passed, a means of eluding this spun-sugar vision.

Once more she permitted him to take her hand.

The two ambled left, foregoing the walkway for the soupy perimeters of the mangrove. Fish nibbled them in the shallows, the oily black water in stark contrast to the spangled whiteness of the fountain, directly over which hung a star, a redolent eye.

Spying, thought Johnson, in a rare concession to paranoia.

Fenmore stumbled and she grabbed him. His skull was dotted with insect bites, purple and inflamed as if impregnated. The idea of his pate hatching caused her stomach to turn. He complained his foot was caught, 'In a hole.'

'What kind of hole?'

He didn't find it funny and would she mind getting it out before he sank in the mud or it rained.

Wrinkling her nose Johnson stooped down. She found his ankle, the foot disappearing into something that fitted it exactly.

'Pull.'

'I am pulling!'

She forced her thumb against his shin yet failed to push it into the opening. The hole was stiff but elastic, clamped tightly about his flesh.

Fenmore mumbled impatiently.

'What?'

'I said "maybe we should have put our coins in the slot after all".'

His leg disappeared another ten centimetres.

'Ah,' he said. 'I distinctly feel a tongue.'

The pilot scowled. Digging in her bag she recovered Monk's knife, and enjoying the fat man's inquisitive gaze ducked under the black water, dress floating like a lily, in search of, she suspected, anatomy.

Whatever it was entangling Fenmore sprang suddenly to life, whipping the surface to a foam as she tickled its throat. He shouted, but his protests went unheard as the creature thrashed clear of the blade, his foot still lodged in its gullet.

Johnson, thrown by the unexpected surge, leaned for support on a root, its grey arch two metres tall. Then she dived forward of the backward dragged Fenmore, grappling with the writhing mud-snake. Eyes tight shut, she plunged the knife in, twisting and sawing as the snake flexed and thrashed, a knotted muscle of indeterminate length. The fat man screeched, either with pain or exultation. Freed, he clubbed the dark shape whose innards Johnson had spilled, hundreds of small loops and whirls pouring from its torn flank. The parent reeked of corruption, its putrescent children writhing themselves now, small ripples swimming away from the epicentre, the next generation of hungry serpents.

Seconds later the mangrove was quiet, although the stench remained.

Music insinuated.

Johnson peered at Fenmore, who seemed calm. He had a curious expression though, blithe yet interested. As if remembering something he reached down and raised one lacerated shoe from the water, dangling it by a lace. His foot was still in it.

By night the fountain was luminous, white tinged with gold as it shone to its own accompaniment. Not knowing what else to do, she'd hauled Fenmore onto the nearest walkway, bandaged his stump the best she could, and, as there appeared no reason not to, dropped the foot in Hubert's string-pull bag.

A baby with bubbles on his lips, red cheeks and brow thankfully void of fever, she waited for him to regain consciousness.

There came a barely discernible shift in the fountain's melodious tones, a delicate realignment of its light, a fractional tremor as if at the engagement of gears, and the entire structure began to move off, steadily picking up speed as it manoeuvred through the maze of trees. Johnson took a second to decide, heaved the fat man over one complaining shoulder and started after, alternatively gasping and holding her breath as the planks shuddered underfoot. The fountain travelled at only a brisk walking pace, but it was several minutes before she was close enough to be able to clamber aboard, depositing Fenmore with a dull thud, propping his head on a nymph and seating herself between two gurgling fishes. Around her the jungle rotated. She put her face in her hands and fell asleep.

Waking, birds squawking the dawn, she wondered if she was beneath the earth or above it. The air was hot, tinged a volcano orange. The music had stopped and the fountain rode the current of a wide, meandering river. Its banks, tens of metres distant, resembled plucked guitar strings, or the trembling wings of moths.

Fenmore was watching her.

'How do you feel?' she asked.

'Diminished.'

'Can't you grow another?'

He pondered a moment, drumming his chin. 'I'd be breaking the rules if I did.'

'Whose rules?'

'My own. I am a man of principle.'

'You're a man with just five toes,' she argued. 'You can't walk.'

He nodded. 'I shan't walk then.'

'Well,' said Johnson, wringing the hem of her dress, 'I'm not carrying you.'

'That won't be necessary.'

'Good.'

'I propose to die where I'm sitting, here on this beautiful yacht.'

She had no answer to that.

Mountains rose. There were rapids. Fenmore caressed the nymphs gathered round him like nurses in a porn flick. The ride became more bumpy, the fountain beginning to pitch and roll. She could see curtains of spray ahead, hear the water's roar. But the river wasn't sufficiently rock-strewn or narrow to present any real danger this side of the fall.

'Besides,' Fenmore added belatedly, 'I can't swim.'

'Then you'll have to take your chances,' the pilot conceded. 'I'm overboard.'

The fat man grinned victory. 'True...'

Weighed by the bag Johnson pulled her body through coarse eddies, strenuously resisting the current as it bore her relentlessly downstream, ever nearer that foam lip. Out of sight the extravagant wedding cake charged toward its truth with Fenmore absently fingering his wound, which hurt much less than he'd made out. The severed limb was sticky in the turgid heat, the sun risen and the volcanic haze paled to a sulphurous, crystalline yellow.

The pilot reached the bank and collapsed on it. After a moment she turned to look, but could see no sign of Fenmore's proud and luxurious ship of dreams.

And distantly followed the pursuit.

twenty-three - quiet

Young Mason didn't step down, he jumped, both feet imprinting Oriel, the happiness he experienced heightened by the minor crisis aboard ship. Rumour spread like a virus in that closed space, gossip and hearsay whose vectors had their common source in the Weekender canteen. For once the Ologists were quiet, a silence interpreted as grim indeed, the raw material for the blackest jokes. Just how close did we come? he wondered.

Four days later he was strapped into his seat on a rickety flyer en route from Base 1 in the north to Base Central at the foot of Candy Mountain, a round trip the first leg of which began only hours after planet-fall. A peculiar momentum seemed to occupy the passengers, a nervous fidgeting that generated its own static. He felt the hairs on his arms crawl like thousands of tiny feet.

Maybe it was sitting next to Franky. Maybe it was his imagination, or the light playing tricks. He shut his eyes and pictured a different landscape than that below. Absently, he filled and populated this realm with fantastic data. But his project remained stowed in a locker on board the Vulcana. There were easier routes to promotion, he'd decided.

i

There was a football match on the landing field. Schilling was in goal. Before him some forty men and women tussled for a ball improvised out of cardboard and tape, a hotchpotch of Weekenders and Runners; even an Ologist, name of Pearson, who appeared adept with either foot. She studied worms, he understood, a brief conversation the previous evening, hers a lithe shape on the arm of Ruby Joplinski. Molly, that was it, Molly who had softened Ruby's tongue. He was grateful, but it didn't change a thing. He still owed too much.

Franky's advice was simple: turn him in.

Hubert couldn't.

He'd made up his mind to kill his blackmailer and was sticking by it.

Yes...but how?

Murder was a complicated business.

Schilling let one in through his legs. Molly's hat-trick.

Opportunity presented itself in the form of an expedition to the west coast. There the cucumber-dip ocean carved long horizontal tunnels inland, baffling the survey, who wanted the features explored. Ruby, in his capacity as favoured son, was seeking volunteers. Schilling's name appeared on the list.

Rendezvous was five AM.

'Okay, soldier, in you get.'

Four men and four women flew as far as Brackley's Heap, a monolith the archaeologist Brackley Osbon insisted to be an alien burial site. Standing eighty metres tall and fifteen wide, the powdery rock, little weathered, emerged from the surrounding plain like a giant phallus. One good hit with a chunk of snow, and that would be it, toppled like the tower of Pisa.

It was rumoured he planned to carve a replica. His money was thick. His family owned much Renaissance art.

The heap boasted a concrete landing strip. From here they would proceed by truck the remaining two hundred kilometres over increasingly rough terrain. There'd be no respite. Schilling's discomfort was such that he jumped repeatedly on the spot, raising stares but no dust, the runway swept meticulously clean. A man half his size again, Joplinski's subordinate, Ekland, led him aside by a sleeve.

'This is just to let you know I'm watching.'

Schilling nodded obediently. 'Thanks.'

Ekland seemed unsure whether or not his reply was sarcastic.

Schilling repeated the word, adding emphasis. He fancied they were well matched.

'Just to let you know,' Ekland said.

Included in the party was the helminthologist, Pearson.

'Smoke?'

Ekland wandered off.

'Thanks,' replied Schilling in an entirely different tone; 'but no.'

She lit a single cigarette, flame blue and yellow from a genuine Zippo with a naked lady on the front.

Molly followed his gaze. 'It was a present. I should pass it on, right?'

He shrugged. What game was she playing?

'Catch you later. I imagine Ruby wants you to unload the flyer.'

He confirmed her guess.

ii

Peeking through the canvas ties of the lead truck he could see Ruby at the wheel of the vehicle behind. Molly rode alongside, her feet on the dash, knees supporting the clipboard no Ologist seemed without. Ekland drove this truck. Schilling, a cave specialist, Hong, and a surly Runner named Broon absorbed the bumps in the rear. The two other women besides the speleologist Hong were Gunn and Hradek. Vocations unknown, they travelled in the back of the second truck. The unfriendly Broon's purpose, he supposed, was that he served to humiliate the trooper, who could be made to feel lower than the low in fashionable company hierarchical terms.

Noon, and the sun was a smear, the world lit by chimerical beams, oddly fluorescent. It was easy to imagine you were on a movie set. The vehicle hummed and knocked. Broon drank from a flask. He licked his lips.

'Two more hours,' Hong said.

Schilling went forward, clambering awkwardly into the cab. Ekland made no complaint. Perhaps he expected the visit.

'Should be able to see the ocean from the top of this rise.'

'Will it look any different?'

'No.'

Schilling grinned. 'Stiff pea soup.'

'Avocado paste face-pack.'

'Turgid creme de menthe.'

'Money mulch.'

And there the ocean was. It was an effect of the planet's crusty roof that made it appear blue from this height.

The men sat is silence the remainder of the trip, captivated by the unexpected beauty of the sea.

Evening, Schilling wandered alone the length and breadth of a stony beach, the rock thin and waferlike brittle to the touch. He peered into the black holes and felt a chill. There was a regular line of tunnels stretching for approximately six kilometres. They differed only in elevation, ranging from a few centimetres to twenty metres above the present shelving of practically motionless waves.

Hong had been speechless.

Seven had ventured inside leaving one to guard the trucks.

Against whom?

They'd chosen a hole at random.

Night was colossal, despite the false proximity of the steadily flexing roof.

Listening to canvas flap he counted stars.

Sixty-three, although he may have counted some twice.

Whatever it was that woke him withdrew on padded feet.

Schilling rose, the muscles down his left side stiff.

Dawn appeared like a broken egg, oozing softly across a frying pan sky.

'Are you here alone?' a woman asked, quiet.

He stood in the open air. Searching her features for clues he found nothing. Only the possibility of secrets.

'No,' he said. 'No - there are others.'

'In the flues?'

He thought of chimneys. Ventilation? 'Yes,' he answered; 'that's correct.'

She smiled, sweeping back dark hair. 'I was passing and saw your light. I'm as curious as a cat.'

Schilling nodded. What light? It wasn't important. 'What's your name?'

'Debbie. What's yours?'

He told her.

She frowned. 'I knew a Hubert once. He died in an accident. But that was years away. What are you doing here, trooper? Do you always sleep in your uniform?'

He scratched his head, communicating in that language both subtle and confused.

Debbie replied, creasing her lip.

Schilling made coffee, drinking quickly. They walked down to the beach, the tunnels solid black discs. The chosen hole was marked with a flag he was convinced had moved.

Debbie read his face. 'Don't look at me.'

'They hadn't planned to stay overnight.'

'You're concerned?' She spoke with narrowed brow, fingers against chest. 'We'll go in after. I'll get my pack.'

Before he could argue she was off, skipping up the cliff and disappearing into the waxing dawn. He took the opportunity to piss, writing his initials on the strand.

A few minutes passed.

'Okay. Ready?'

She'd emerged from the shadows. The beam of her torch fractured into a crosshatch of monochromal shades as they advanced, the metres slipping behind at speed. The outside, the tunnel mouth receded to a dot and hung there, increasingly distant, like a dim bulb at the end of a corridor. The rock was bone dry and absorbed most sounds. Placing his thumb against the surface Schilling found it could be impressed, in some places easier than others. The team had no radio. Considered of no practical value, all electrical equipment had been left on the trucks.

He felt nauseous.

'Don't be such a baby,' scolded Debbie. Her features were smeared laterally, like cheese on a griddle.

The corpse was unrecognizable.

Schilling was unable to determine what sex it was. Desiccated, it could have lain for months, sapped of moisture by the encircling stone, a vessel from which to drink.

'I wonder what your friends made of this?'

'They should have returned...'

'Don't be ridiculous,' she remarked. 'It all adds to the mystery. I bet they couldn't resist going on. I know I would. It explains their change of plan.'

He rubbed his temples. He'd lost track of his motives for being where he was. There was too much here he needed explaining, and Debbie was no help.

Two hundred metres on was an even more unrecognizable form.

'It doesn't look human.'

'Maybe it's not.'

The third was large enough to block the way forward.

'This has to be the wrong cave,' he stated. 'The flag must have been moved.'

'Let me see.' Debbie held the torch close, projecting a roller-coaster of shadows through the empty body, curled in death, an inconvenient rictus. 'We can climb through here.' She pointed, crouched. 'The ribs are snapped. It's likely they did it.'

Schilling, nervous, afraid of his fear, had to agree.

She made it look simple, but he was far bigger, jammed amid flaking bones, the living twisting inside the dead as if eaten, consumed in a bizarre reversal of roles. Like crawling through a ruptured wooden fence, he mused, no more difficult than that, the image a means of distraction, decayed flesh and skin crackling like autumn leaves, inviting him to hibernate. He made it to where Debbie waited, unwrapping a chocolate bar, and flopped down exhausted.

'You're really not enjoying this, are you?'

He felt claustrophobic. The sensation was new and completely alien. They had pills for it aboard ship.

'Bite?'

Was she trying to kill him? A cute assassin hired by Ruby...

'Oh, come on - where's that indomitable fighting spirit?'

She was crazy; had to be.

'On your feet, soldier!'

Just passing?

Schilling got up, brushed the detritus from his knees.

The torch slowly faded, immersing him in gloom.

'I don't understand how the power's drained so quick.'

He was touched by an eerie suspicion.

'Don't worry, your eyes will adjust.'

'Nobody can see in the dark.'

She laughed quietly and proceeded, towing Schilling after using a piece of invisible string.

The fourth corpse was tiny, no more than ten centimetres long. One of them might have stood on it had it not glowed red.

A fifth, yellow. A sixth and seventh, blue and green in a final morbid embrace. The colours were distressing and hypnotic, registering like stains on his retinae, burnt impressions of once human forms tortured and shrunk.

If he concentrated he could just about make out his own feet.

What lay ahead? Did a fantastic sea creature burrow inland and were these the remains of meals? He pictured the mound, Brackley's Heap, that great leaning phallus. Was it possible the monied archaeologist was near the truth?

'Debbie,' he said, haunted by panic. 'Debbie, stop.'

There was a moment of acute silence.

'What is it?' Her voice was reassuringly near, hovering below his shoulder.

He took a deep breath. 'I can't go on.'

She touched him. 'Are you scared?'

'We just can't walk forever,' he argued, wanting to apologize; unsure what, if anything, he had to apologize for.

'The others might need you,' she said.

'The others are dead.'

'Sometimes you have to continue, no matter what.' She took his hand in hers. 'Sometimes there is no turning back.

She sounded like Franky. He'd gone to Franky for advice.

Holding his hand she resumed apace, a mother leading her young son.

'I can tell you a story if you like,' she offered jovially. 'No? Okay, maybe a song...'

Yes, he thought, a lullaby.
