[Peter]

I haven't got a title for this one yet!

EDIT - Now I have - a working title anyway.

For the benefit of any new readers there may be, this is the fourth story set among the worlds of the Blessèd sun, where refugee humanity has fled following the Ochre Plague that devastated life on Earth. It'd be cool if you read the other stories first, but otherwise:

Spoiler:

In The Castaway, we meet Doctor Cameron Powell, who wakes one morning to find that the airship on which he serves has broken from its moorings.

A Child of Glory tells of Johanna Chen's attempts to bring enlightenment to the people of Stilt Town on the land of Edge.

Pirates of the Archipelago follows the adventures of Cap'n Annie McLuskie, Terror of the Inner Sea of the Ringland of Leaven.

Pole

The days out here are cold as hell and the nights are colder than that, with ice-black skies and a dry frost on the fenders of my 'mobile that sticks until well after the Blessèd sun has come up. But what the heck. It's home; at least that's how I've come to think of it.

I shouldn't complain. It's not so bad down here on the equator. Life is much harder - and colder - at the polar bases and you can wait as long as you like for daybreak. It never comes, in this world without seasons. All day long, all year round, the Blessèd sun hovers on the horizon, never rising or setting, and the only change is the direction of the shadows. They are long and dark and they swoop and dive over the low hills that surround the base. They can drive a man mad; that is known, that is a fact.

Why do men go there, then? Why are there not remote sensors at the poles communicating directly with the equatorial settlements via the comsats, the groundnet or even the Sweetheart herself? It is this, I think; that for some of us madness has a charm, a glamour, a seductive lilting voice that calls and cannot be resisted. Perhaps that's why the 'Down summoned us. Perhaps that's why we responded to her summons. Perhaps that's why I went north.

There were three of us madmen living at the North Polar Survey Establishment, as it was officially known. We called it the nuthatch. There were Jeremy, Janey and me, Jonathan. The Three Jays, and each of us daft as a jay, each of us with his or her tic, twitch or annoyance:

Jeremy - infrastructure: 'Jeremy, for heaven's sake would you just sit down for a moment? Stop pacing up and down like that. It's driving me round the twist!'

Janey - computation: 'Tapping, tapping, tapping. Fingers on glass, fingers on tabletops, fingers on teeth. If you don't stop it soon I'll cut your nails off all the way up to your hands!'

Jonathan - sensors: 'If I see you pick one more bogey out of your nose, sniff it, crunch it and eat it, so help me I'll walk out the door without a suit!'

Each of us finds a way to escape from the others when it all gets too much. The people who designed the base knew there'd be "personal interaction issues", as the official manual puts it, from time to time - or even all the time - so they made sure we got our own private spaces. Apart from our cabins, which are basically insulated boxes hanging off the sides of the main structure and contain little more than a bed, a screen - yes, we're all Monitors here - a wardrobe, a head and a separate suit locker, we each have our own individual working areas. Jeremy is mostly to be found among the pipes and wiring of the fusor, the air plant or the ponic garden downstairs. Janey sits with a pair of phones on, murmuring into a mike or tapping (tapping!) on a board and staring at a screen. She's most definitely on another planet when she's in coding mode and her withdrawal is both better than Jeremy's chattiness ('Hey, look at this interesting blockage I've just cleared!') and much spookier. You don't know who she's talking to, or which dimension she's inhabiting half the time.

We've made it a rule that, whatever needs doing (barring absolute emergencies), we always get together for a meal at the same time each day. We've chosen eighteen hundred hours, Horn time, as the baseline. The food isn't great - how could it be? - but there's usually something fresh from the ponics, like carrots, cress or lettuce, to go with the synthetic this, artificial that and man-made the other.

We talk about the day's work, the next day's work, the next week's work, the probability of a supervisor's visit, anything that's worrying us. We laugh and chat, Jeremy stays in one place, Janey doesn't tap her nails too much and I keep my fingers out of my nose. Then, once we've had some coffee - real Falls kaffe, freshly roasted and ground - we say goodnight and retire to our rooms. What we do there is strictly private. I don't know what Jeremy or Janey get up to, and I don't want to know. Likewise there's no reason why I should tell anyone what I do in the privacy of my cabin. But we all have screens and we can access the nets, view what we like, talk to whoever we like, without worrying about paying for bandwidth (which is quite limited here, so we're careful) or being watched. We're Monitors, with Monitor's rights and privileges, and we're grownups. We're trusted.

Like the others, my escape is part of my job. Sensors are, by their nature, remote so out of the three of us I have the most regularly used exosuit. After breakfast it's my routine to suit up and go outdoors more or less straight away. That way if there are any problems I'll find out about them sooner rather than later and I'll have the rest of the day to sort them out. Just as I said at the start, it's cold - dangerously cold - outside and so I have to take precautions. My feet, for example. They have to be kept warm, or I'll get frostbite. But if the soles of my boots are too warm - more than minus ten, say - they'll melt the ice underneath them and make it slippery, increasing the likelihood that I'll lose my footing and fall. So I have to keep the boots in the lock, put them on cold, turn on my heated socks and cycle out onto the surface as quickly as I can before they heat up too much.

That's the kind of survival trick you learn, and learn fast, up here.

There are literally hundreds of sensors for me to look after. Not all of them every day, of course and, apart from a quick once-over visual inspection and snow-clearing, I probably spend no more that a couple of seconds on each one. It's only when Janey's programs find something anomalous in her data that she asks me to go out and run a specific set of tests. Like, for example, if a thermometer returns unexpectedly high or low figures or one of the scopes apparently discovers a new star or planet. I'll check, and more than likely, I'll find a slightly loose or corroded connector or a speck of dust in an optical system. Of course, sometimes I don't and Janey does some more analysis and correlation on the results and perhaps she finds something new and significant. More often than not, though, it's a malfunction of some kind. After all, if the sensors were infallible there'd be no need for me to be here and I'd never have left home to go and work in Sally's Frozen North.



This morning I was making one of my regular tours of the perimeter; those low hills I mentioned before. Out of the shadows and up to the sunlit heights. That's an exaggeration by the way; the hills rise to no more than one or two hundred feet above ground level, but because the base is in a dip the climb to the top of the first one is higher than that. Once you've reached the top you can walk around the outside of the ridge. If it weren't so improbable given the way the celestial mechanics work around here, you'd think we were sitting in the middle of an ancient meteorite impact crater, like one of Glory's Ringlands.

At the top of each hill is a collection of instruments, housed in an environmental container. An absolute thermometer, a differential mass sensor, a radar pipe, a ranging laser, a 3D strain gauge, a wideband EM listener, bundled together with netcomms gear and a power pack. It's a pretty standard rig and it's replicated all around the base, not just on the hills, to form a sensor grid. Janey's computers can assemble the information from the sensors to build a wide-ranging picture of our environment.

One of the hills is special. It's special because its summit is more or less exactly at the North Pole. The obvious advantage of being situated here at the top of the world is that we get a tremendous view up and out of the orbital plane. The equally obvious disadvantage is that we get a rotten view parallel to it. So because it's so useful to be able to look in any direction you like at any time, both north and south bases are equipped with a powerful optical telescope and because it needs to be able to see over the horizon, it's mounted at the top of a tall mast. Yes, there's a pole at the Pole and if my distant ancestors had come from Eastern Europe (on Old Earth, of course) you'd have been able to say there was a Pole on the pole at the Pole.

As it was, it was only me, and I wasn't going to go up there today, only Janey called to say the scope's PTZ rack had got itself stuck again and could I just pop up the mast and free it, pretty please? Just pop up the mast? Right. The thing is, the mast is a kilometre tall; that's well over three thousand feet. It needs to be that high for the scope to get a decent view. There's a ladder - a set of handholds really - attached to the side, just in case someone might feel like taking a bit of exercise climbing up it. Hmmm. Fortunately, there are also three sets of bracing wires, one at three hundred metres, one at six hundred and fifty and one - thank heavens - attached to the instrument platform at the top. So, rather than getting all sweaty in my suit making that climb it's much easier for me to clip a shackle round a bracing wire, step back, and fire one of my suit's thrusters while I count to three. And zip! The world falls away at a very satisfying fifty feet a second, and if I time it right - and I generally do - my velocity has fallen to zero just as I reach the platform. It takes around three minutes and the view is terrific, especially if you're fond of looking down at low brown hills lightly dusted with solidified CO2.

This time I got to the top with a metre per second of excess speed and stopped with a bit of a jerk. Not serious, no damage done. Because I'm careful I clipped a fresh shackle to the equipment platform's rail before unclipping the first one from the wire. Why take needless risks? Then I took a look at the scope. There was nothing obviously wrong - the dome was unmarked and the optical access hatch was open, just as it would have been when Janey's systems started making observations a few hours earlier. I'd have to take a closer look, then.

It didn't take long to find the problem. There was nothing wrong with the rack, but the stepper motor that drove it had slipped out of alignment. It's a common fault. I rejigged it, spun the mount a couple of times and checked it for binding. That was fine, so I replaced the dome and the hatch and fastened them back down. I could have left it there, but I've learned that it's always worth looking for incipient faults while you're on the scene. You never know what you might find that'll save you a lot of hassle later on. So I set down next to the scope mount, jacked my AE-35 diagnostic box into it and routed the optical i/f to my face-ups.

Now then… Let's try something straightforward first. Demeter, say. I punched the name of Hally's second moon into the AE-35 and waited a moment while it did a couple of sums. Yes, it decided that Hally was visible, but not in transit. Now, where was Demeter? Sunside of Hally? Yes, so what were the necessary pan and tilt settings? Got that. Right, let's go; and with a dizzying swoop - perhaps I should have delayed turning on the face-ups - the scope swung silently around on its bearings and pointed itself towards the heart of the system. Once locked on, it zoomed in on the little world like a man diving to his death. And there it was - a half-moon, airless, speckled with craters, clear and sharp in the adaptive optics. I smiled. Demeter was a dull place and far too hot to live on, but a good preliminary test of the scope all the same.

Good. What next? Oh yes - let's try the atmosphere penetrators. Give me… give me a land near Glory's terminator. What's visible? Right, OK, Bright's the word. Oh, and turn the video feed off this time until you're there. Again the soundless rotation of the scope on its mount and suddenly my eyes were filled with blue. Dark blue below, pale blue above and a fuzzy area in between. That was Glory all right, but where was Bright? Damn, what about the adaptives and the penetrators? Would I have to strip the scope right down after all?

And then as the secondary integrators kicked in the picture on the inside of my helmet suddenly leapt into detailed focus. I gasped. There were the Cliffs of Grieving, tall and dark-sided in a low tide, capped with green and shimmering in a slight haze that faded as the AE-35 got the measure of Glory's air currents. Zoom in… there were settlements at the top of the cliffs, weren't there? Closer, closer, until it felt as if I, from my seat at the top of the mast, could read the inscriptions on the memorials in Imogen's Garden and look straight into the windows of the cliff-top houses. I could pan over the fields, watch the birds singing silently in the trees, see the fish surfacing in the lakes.

I locked the scope and the picture stabilised even further. The AE-35 continued tracking the motions of the planets; Glory's rotation and this world's orbital path and spin, giving me a perfectly steady view. I was sitting on top of one world gazing into the heart of a land on another. I sat as one hypnotised, entranced, ensorcelled; transfixed by beauty. I never noticed when the Blessèd sun's terminator passed over the land of Bright, casting it into darkness, nor did I pay much attention or feel any fear when my suit's O2 alarm went off. I had passed on to another world, you might say, and there seemed to be no particular reason why I should ever return.

[Peter]

Hmmm. This one doesn't seem to be pulling in the readers. What's up, guys? Comments, please!




Skimmer

There was a terrific fuss about it, of course. Janey shouted in my phones to get the hell out of there and get my sorry arse back indoors as soon as, while Jeremy suited up, cycled himself through the airlock and bounded across Sally's dusty ground up the hills towards the Pole. Meanwhile I tore myself away from the scope, shook my head to clear it, attached a line to the bracing wire and jumped off the instrument platform with gay abandon. I was in a hurry.

'Jon, you idiot!' shouted Janey. 'Fire your thrusters! You'll crash!'

That was a good idea, so I fired my thrusters. It would have been better if I'd been pointing upwards when I did it. I hit the ground at ten metres a second. It hurt. It would have hurt a lot more if my suit hadn't noticed how fast the surface was approaching and fired the airbags, but it still jarred me pretty badly. I lay there stunned while the bags deflated around me with an inaudible hiss and waited for Jeremy to reach me.

'What the hell did you think you were doing?' he said as he helped me to my feet and put my arm around his shoulder.

'Watching. Observing.'

'For four hours?'

'How long?'

'Four hours. You ran your suit out of O2, you were there so long.'

'Oh. Ah.'

Back in the base I desuited. 'Let me look at that,' Jeremy said, taking the suit away from me. 'I'll need to check it over and replace the bags.'

'Thanks. Can you get me a spare from the stores? I'll need to get out again. Finish my inspection.'

'Not just yet.' Janey appeared in my doorway. 'You've had a shock. Take a rest. Have something to eat. Watch a film.'

'No… there's stuff I need to do. I've not finished checking the sensors.'

'It can wait. Now, lie down.' And, without my having a chance to do anything about it she shot a hypo into my left arm and I folded up.



I must have slept the clock around. That's Glory time, of course. We try to stick to it here on Sally, even though it has nothing to do with the rising and setting of the Blessèd sun on this little world. Glory's day is practically the same as Old Earth's day, and that twenty-four hour cycle is hardwired into our DNA, so we stick to it. I woke with a buzzy head, but a shower and a brisk air-dry dealt with that. Coffee and a muffin were what I wanted; that and an apple, so I put on jeans, socks and tee and wandered into the galley. I got them all right - our stores were always full - but I got something else as well.

Jeremy and Janey were waiting for me at the table. 'Hi,' I said. 'Fancy some coffee? I'll get it for you.'

'Sit down, Jonathan.'

Janey looked stern. There's not supposed to be a hierarchy here - we don't have ranks and all that and there's no commander as such; but all the same Janey was in charge. I had no idea how it had happened, but it had. By whatever means, her willingness to take on responsibility, our willingness to let her, laziness, fate, her access to the nets, she had somehow become the senior member of our crew. So I sat down.

'You're feeling better.' It was a statement, not a question, but I answered it just the same.

'Yes, thanks.'

'You had us pretty worried back there.'

I nodded. 'It was a close call.'

'Too close.'

'It won't happen again.'

'What were you doing?'

'I was… I was… looking at Glory. The land of Bright, to be precise.'

'I know.' Of course she did. She had screens. Jeremy anticipated my next question.

'There was nothing wrong with your suit, Jonathan. You just stayed out too long.'

'I'm not blaming you, Jeremy.'

'Nobody's blaming anyone.'

Silence fell. I knew there was a word hanging in the air. The gravity on Sally is so light, words can float for ages, suspended like dust.

'But.'

'But this isn't the first time, is it?'

'Er…'

It wasn't. I hadn't actually put my life at risk before, or anyone else's, but I had been late on duty quite a few times and I had clocked up a lot of screen time staring at images of my home world. Surely that was only natural? And what was Janey doing monitoring me?

'I've had a chat with the equator and they think you could do with a change.'

'No, no. I'm fine.'

'You will be, Jon.' I turned to the entrance. There was a new face in the room.

'Jorge! How… nice… to see you.'



The skimmer that had brought Jorge Cavanaugh to the base was waiting for me outside. Personal possessions aren't something we go in for in a big way up here so it took me, oh, all of five minutes to pack all my stuff and transfer through the access pipe to its cabin. It set off and, hey, less than thirty minutes had passed since I'd woken up. I was still eating my apple.

Skimmer travel is fun for the first hour or two; then it gets monotonous. There's no human pilot, just a local brain with the Sweetheart as backup. You really don't want to have to rely on that as the average flying height of a skimmer is less than a couple of hundred feet from ground level, rising and falling with the underlying terrain. That's what makes it fun - the feeling of sticking to the bones of the land, the slight sense of danger, the rush of adrenaline. Earthers would have called it a rollercoaster ride. I've seen them in old films.

If the Sweetheart took over control of the skimmer it would have to slow right down to allow for comms lag and the transfer would take forever. I trusted the brain - after all it belonged to the same family as the intelligence in my suit and that had done a pretty good job of saving my neck at the pole. I sat back, gnawed my apple and enjoyed the ride as Sally's rusty landscape sped by at a couple of thousand kay pee aitch.

It was becoming obvious I had seriously screwed up and I wondered if Jeremy and Janey had had secret conversations about me over a private link:

I'm worried about Jonathan.

Me too.

I think he's losing touch.

Me too.

It was too late to worry about it now. I had enough nous to realise that however good a case I put to the authorities at the equator and however indispensible my skills I wouldn't be going to either pole again. Not in the next year or two, anyway. So I sat back and enjoyed the ride.

Skimmers are constructed the way most things are built up here. Basic, in other words, with exposed metal and plastic where it doesn't matter and where it simplifies maintenance, and comfy where it does. So, although the cabin lacked decorative refinement it did feature four seriously comfortable reclining seats, a compact but fully functional head, a respectable stock of food, a media library and a minibar. The trip from the pole to the equator would take eight hours and I had already slept for twenty four hours. I had the choice between watching eight hours of vintage TV or getting plastered.

So I chose both and somewhere between episodes four and five of a classic production of Lord Jim and my fifth or sixth rum punch I reached the stage where I stopped worrying about what I would do next. The horizon rose and fell in front of me, the skimmer banked left, then right as it sought the passes that led the way south through the ranges of the temperate belt, the seat moulded itself to my body and enfolded me in its comfortable embrace. Behind us rose a trail of plasma, ejected from the drive motor at near lightspeed, below us the bones of the billion-year dead creatures that had once roamed Sally's long-gone seas and rivers were briefly disturbed by the skimmer's lifters.

They almost had to carry me off the vehicle when it finally docked at the equator.

[cap'n zem]

mmm i like it. aside from the last sentence of part one being an excellent hook though, it might have been better condensed into one as a starting point. then again it's probably just me and something about not reading things too closely, a bad habit i ought to have learned from by now... anyway, the north is extremely appealing (both as a canadian and a sraffie remembering lyra's first journey).

[Peter]

This is going rather slowly, I'm afraid, not just because I've been busy (that's never an excuse ) but also because it's taking me a while to discover what Jonathan's all about.


Choice


'Nobody doubts your commitment, Jonathan. Nobody at all. More coffee?' Heather Smythe pointed to the side-table, where a small dispenser steamed quietly. As head of human resources she got privileges - a private office with two chairs, an outside view and her very own coffee machine.

'Thank you, no. Would you excuse me a moment?'

'Of course. Take as long as you like.'

I stood up and walked over to the window. The pockmarked surface of equatorial Sally, brilliantly lit by the midday Blessèd sun, met the deep black of the sky at the horizon. The land or the sky? It seemed I had to make a choice - one as abrupt as that distant division between light and darkness.

But not yet. I turned around and leaned over the front of Heather's desk. 'Can I come back and talk to you again tomorrow?'

'It's just as I said. Take as long as you like.'



I probably wasn't meant to go outside on my own any more, but I did anyway. It was not as if I had much to do, whereas it seemed that everyone else at the equator was fully occupied. So nobody paid much attention when I put on my suit, exited the air lock and picked up a mobile. I was half-expecting it to be blocked to me, but the board lit up normally when I slid in my key and the brain asked me where I wanted to go the same way it usually did. Nor did it argue when I asked it for manual control.

There's a kind of road that leads from the surface egress ports and circles the base, and from it some rough tracks go to the commonly used places that are positioned a ways off from it, like the launcher, the mine, the antenna complex and the landing strip. The wheels on a mobile are so big and its brain is so clever that the ride is much smoother than you might expect, even when you take the controls yourself. I circled the base twice and then chose, almost at random, the road that led to the launcher.

The mobile bounced and swerved across the flaky surface, but I didn't mind that. It felt more real than yesterday's smooth, nausea-inducing swooping flight across Sally's undulating latitudes. More grounded. Sally's mobiles are ballasted and carefully sprung to assist traction and reduce discomfort in the low gravity of Glory's sister world and the brain does what it can to help. Even so, I had enough bouncing and jouncing by the time I reached the first ring of the launcher’s accelerator. I got out of the vehicle and looked around me.

The view of Sally's surface varies little, wherever you are. The same uniform dusty brown of the ground, the same near-black of the sky. The main differences between the bases at the equator and the pole are the light of the Blessèd sun which rides high in the sky at midday and rises and sets at the beginning and end of Sally's short day, and the high silver arch of the launcher's primary loop. I stood at its foot and looked around.

There was the mobile, still venting heat, there was the launcher’s power stand, there was the road back to the base with a slight haze of dust still hanging over it, and there was the base – or rather its top levels – with its antennas and dishes fixed to its roof. Of course, most of the base was underground. Everything was lightly tinted with the predominant red-brown colour of Sally, either by reflection or because a film had built up on it over time. I looked up. Yes, even the launcher was ever-so-slightly discoloured.

I looked up… and there, to the right of the Blessèd sun, was Glory, blue and white, a beautiful streaked sapphire suspended in the sky, huge against the surrounding darkness. And there, on the other side of the sky, Hally, amber-gold, glowing with lambent energy. Both worlds alive and full of thrilling possibilities. And… Sally. Dead, except for the human presence, her seas long ago taken from her by Glory’s gravitation, robbed of her future. Important still; not only historically for her role in the coming of humanity to the system of the Blessèd but for her continuing significance as the prime safe haven of the Guardians of Glory.

I was a Guardian too, but I was not a native of Sally. Only a very few were. I scanned the horizon again and saw desolation. I looked skywards and saw life. And then my decision was not a decision at all, but a foregone conclusion.

[Peter]

Acceleration

I spent my last evening on Sally touring the bars of the Atrium Centre. That was good, wasn't it? Me, a Guardian and a Monitor, going out on a drunk when there was plenty of Guarding and Monitoring to be done. Irresponsible to the nth degree. Sloppy. Well, phooey. The Smythe had given me twenty four hours leave before my Launching and I was damn well going to make the most of it.

"The bars of the Atrium Centre" sounds like quite the pleasure dome, doesn't it? It probably makes you think of the commercial quarter of Tanly on Edge, a place where deals are done and fortunes made. Or perhaps a shiny new development somewhere in the Archipelago, built of faux marble and artificial chrome. What it actually consisted of was a couple of long dark rooms tunnelled into Sally's bedrock and opening out into an underground circular space a hundred feet or so in diameter which was illuminated during daytime by the light of the Blessèd sun channelled and reflected from the world's surface by a collection of mirrors and lightguides. At night it was lit by tubes, just like the rest of the base.

Apart from its bars the Centre boasted a few shops, a choice of refectories, and a gym, where we Sallians were expected to spend at least one hour in twenty-four keeping our muscles in tone ready for our return to Glory. Normally you were given reasonable advance notice of this and got a chance to build yourself up gradually and without too much pain. Me, I was on the fast track and just come off an intensive six-hour course of drugs and exercise. I needed a drink. A strong one.

I started in the Liquid Lensman, whose main appeal was to fans of straight lines and strong colours. Sharp edges to the tables, then, purple, silver and orange walls and a perfectly dressed barman who greeted me with a wide smile.

'Johnny! S'wonderful to see you! What's your pleasure? Pan-galactic gargle…'

'Whiskey, Greg. Make it a treble.'

'Ooh. Ahh. It's serious, is it?'

'I guess. I'm launching tomorrow.'

'Gosh. You’ll be needing something extra-special, then.' And Gregory Simmonds, whose day job was in biochemistry, reached under the bar and pulled out a bottle of Glenmorangie. He poured me three thick golden fingers.

'Is that real...?'

'Earth scotch? No, old fellow, I'm afraid not. But you'll never know the difference. Your health!'

I sipped the spirit slowly. It was sweet-salty-earthy-fiery and infinitely smooth on my palate. 'And one for you, good barperson.'

‘Thank you.'

At some stage in the evening I said goodbye to Greg and crossed the atrium to finish off in the Centre’s other bar, the Raygun and Helmet. If the Lensman had been a good place to start a drunk, this was a better place to finish it. The ceilings were low and stained a peculiar yellow, the walls were covered with a confused array of pictures – scenes of Old Earth, of course, but also of Glory - and the chairs, tables, floor and bar were made of something which may as well have been real wood. It was cosy, inviting and not too busy. I switched from shorts to beer in the hope that it would dilute the nature-identical spirit that was swilling about in my insides and, I still don't know how, managed to cop off with Glenys the barmaid, who I was sure ran IT services during the daytime.



It wasn’t the worst hangover I’ve ever had, but my insides were still churning around when I took my place on the launching platform at 07:59 the following morning. I’d been chased out of Glenys’s bed an hour and a half earlier, held under the shower until I’d had enough, been dosed up with Dramamine against the stresses to come and finally locked into an acceleration suit and ferried out to the launcher. Heather Smythe’s voice, coarsened by the phones, sounded in my ears.

‘Now Jonathan, just relax and take it easy. Are all your lights green?’

‘Yes, Heather.’ Of course they were, and she knew it from her telemetry. She was just trying to give me something to occupy my last few seconds on Sally.

‘Right. I’ll turn your suit on.’ There was a hum and click and my acceleration suit, which until that point had been like a regular exosuit, only heavier, became rigid. At the same time a membrane expanded inside, wrapping itself snugly around me, limiting my freedom to move and compressing my still unsettled stomach further. I belched vigorously, and that seemed to help a bit.

‘Ready?’

‘As much as I’ll ever be.’ Was my apprehension showing in my voice?

‘Just one more thing, then.’ There was a hiss, and a concealed hypo shot some CCs into my upper arm. Ah. Perhaps she had detected something. That would be the joy-juice they kept in reserve for the more nervous travellers.

‘Here we go then. Hold tight!’

Hold tight to what? I braced myself, pointless though that was. And then like a ghost, with no noise, vibration or harshness, almost gently in fact, a great hand, wearing a soft catcher’s mitt, pressed against my back. I was instantly lifted from my feet and projected from the middle of the first launcher ring. The nut-brown landscape of Sally rushed backwards at ever-increasing speed as I shot through the second, then the third, fourth and fifth rings of the launcher at what I estimated to be a steady seven gravities.

I was going too fast to register the presence of the last three rings. Sally fell away rapidly beneath me and I heard briefly the spectral hiss of Sally’s extenuate atmosphere rushing past my limbs as I gained height. I say that, but what was actually happening, of course, was that my trajectory was almost a straight line, whereas Sally’s ground was curved. My suit rotated slowly as I sped upwards and I caught a few interrupted views of the base before it fell out of sight below the curve of the world.

Higher, higher, until not just the landscape but the whole world became visible. I checked my chrono. Five minutes since my launch and already Sally was a sphere, not a plane. I was on the path to Glory.

[Peter]

Orbit

To swim freely among the stars, unencumbered by the gross necessities of matter; that had been my dream when I was a boy. Nothing interposed between my body and the radiations and currents of the cosmos, bathing in the unfiltered light of the Blessèd sun, my course determined by a simple kick of the legs or a reach of the hands. An eternal high-dive into infinite space, a plunge into the limitless depths of the universe…

As my suit and I fell away from the feeble gravity of Sally and entered their transfer orbit to Glory I felt at least a trace of those emotions and sensations that had so bewitched me in my childhood dreams. It seemed as if I were flying free once more, although the light pressure of the suit's fusor-powered ion drive and the occasional burp from the correctional jets rather spoiled the illusion, not to mention the continual hiss and gurgle of the suit's life-systems. But I could twist around and see the rapidly receding dirty football of Sally behind me and, if I lined myself up carefully, possibly even a glimpse of the Sweetheart in her low orbit. It was she who was managing my trajectory, not me nor even the suit's brain. Sometime or somewhere between the circle of Sally and the orbit of Glory the Sweetheart would hand over control to the 'Down and the mothership would look after me for the final part of my flight. In the meantime, I could do as I liked; insofar as you can do what you like when you're encased in a suit.

The first astronauts discovered it; space, when it's not scaring the whatsits out of you, is kind of boring. The hours pass and nothing changes much. Or, at least, you hope it doesn't. Rapid change and unexpected events are not what you want when you're millions of miles from the nearest help. So, although the view is beautiful and entrancing and the zero gravity of the interplanetary vacuum is liberating, it becomes less entrancing and liberating as the hours pass and turn into days. A certain anomie starts to set in.

There are remedies for this, of course. Some travellers meditate on the One and its Meaning. Some take a dose of forget-it and sleep through the trip. Others turn on the suit's entertainment systems and watch old films or listen to music. And one or two have been known to smuggle a bottle of something nice on board and get out of their heads on that. There are even rumours of special access codes that turn on some normally inaccessible servo-mechanisms for the amusement of the suit's occupant. I know nothing of them, naturally.

The crossing between the orbits of Sally and Glory takes anything between three days and several months if you're following a ballistic trajectory, as I was if you discount the low-g thrust of the suit's ion drive. In this case the alignment of the worlds meant that I was in for a ten-day trip, which is about average. Nobody takes the long, long drop unless they really, really have to. I passed the time with a mixture of drug-assisted sleep, the films of Azio Missanelli, the music of Bernard Herrmann and reading some stories the suit downloaded from the Sweetheart's library. Oh, and I still had most of that bottle of Glen.

The days and nights passed, the suit talked to me from time to time to make sure I was still approximately sane, the main theme from Taxi Driver throbbed through my phones. It was a strange kind of semi-existence, and I began to get increasing tired of it as it went along. The suit noticed this, I'm sure, because after the first five days or so of the trip it all became something of a blur. I think I was probably running on a mixture of glucose, vitamins, protein and joy-juice for most of the latter part of my journey. The suit spoke in its thin, breathy voice, telling me the latest news of the worlds, keeping me up to date with the progress of my trip, reassuring me that everything was going to plan, my BMs were satisfactorily regular, we were all right and would I like some oxtail soup now?

'Shut up, suit. Put a sock in it.'

'My only regard is for your well-being, Jonathan. I'm not upset by your negative attitude, you know. I can't be offended.'

'Shame.' I felt like offending someone, although you couldn't call the suit a someone, could you? We were never exactly going to be friends, after all.

The time passed variably and my mood swung between elation and boredom, depending on whether I was relishing my liberty or chafing under the restrictions of the suit's benevolent care. To avoid the slightest possibility of my being blinded by the direct light of the Blessèd sun, the suit kept me facing outwards towards Sally and the parsec-distant stars, so that it was not until I was quite close to Glory that I actually caught sight of my destination. But with only a few hours to go until landfall I was allowed to rotate myself so that I was no longer going arse-backwards into the future. And I saw…

Glory! Not scanned through a scope or a screen, not image-enhanced by clever ware, not artificially coloured, clarified or boosted, but the world of Glory itself, seen with the naked eye from a distance of less than ten thousand miles, a gorgeous cerulean orb, streaked with spiral white clouds. The atmosphere blurred the horizon with a fuzzy edge, the view ahead was clear all the way down to the ocean. I imagined I could see the crests of breaking waves, or the swell of Glory's mighty tides as they surged around the world in their endless circumnavigations. I mused; and perhaps floated away from the land, lost in my vision. My birth-world ached in my memory.



'Hello, Jonathan.'

A different voice; high, distant and pure, where the suit's had been low and confidential. I recognised it immediately.

''Down? 'Down? Is that you?'

'Welcome to Glory, intrepid space traveller.'

Hmmm. I sat up and paid attention, if you see what I mean. I was talking to the boss. The suit's brain contained a few trillion cells, no more. It was just about bright enough to do its job. The Sweetheart was clever, though unimaginative. But the 'Down! She was something else. Nobody had ever discovered the limits to her intelligence. You were supposed to address her with a certain respect, not to say awe. You shouldn't be rude to her, they said. No, no. She was not only supremely intelligent, she was also known for her quirky and occasionally cruel sense of humour. We Monitors knew this all too well.

'It's very nice of you to greet me like this.'

'My pleasure. And look!'

The suit rolled over. I saw space, lots of it, black and sparkly, and the blue arc of Glory's horizon.

'Look at what?'

'Forward a little… Up a bit…'

Ah. It was the 'Down herself, lit on one side by the Blessèd sun, on the other by the blue-green reflection of Glory.

'Cara mia! You're looking good.'

'Thank you.'

'New spars?'

'You noticed!'

'And you've extended your mainmasts again.'

'They give me a certain stature, I think.'

'I'm not sure about that skull and crossbones you're flying, though. Have you turned pirate?'

'Not at all, but I've a friend who's a buccaneer. It's in her honour.'

'You need all the friends you can get, eh?'

'Cheeky sod! Now listen, has the suit told you your approach plan?'

'No.' Good grief. Why the heck hadn't I asked it? Perhaps the doses had been stronger than I thought, or the Glen higher proof.

'Well, you're going straight in.'

Gulp. 'Straight in? What do you mean, straight in? What about the shuttle?'

'No need.'

Silly ship! She was winding me up. Of course there was a shuttle craft waiting to ferry me down to the surface of Glory. How else was I expected to land? I sighed. Oh well, I might as well play along with her little game.

'Can't I stop with you a while, my love? Play some chess? Catch up on old times?'

'Sorry, Johnny. Not this time.'

'What a mean old ship you are.'

'Don't say that. We've been such chums.'

The 'Down receded into the distance, above and behind me. I felt a momentary frisson of alarm.

''Down! 'Down! You still there?'

'Yes?'

'All right. Very funny. Hilarious ship. Much applause, well deserved. Now reel me in, won't you?'

'There's no need, Jonathan, just as I said.'

'But... but...' I spluttered. 'I’m falling into Glory! I'll die!'

'There's always that risk.'

'No, what I mean is, if you don't stop me entering the atmosphere at however fast...'

'Eighteen thousand, three hundred and forty-two miles per hour.'

'...I'm going, I'll leave a meteor trail they'll see from Horn to Scrape and my incandescent remains will make the hottest, most vaporous splash you ever did see. I think I'll unlatch my suit now and get it all over with.'

'Relax! Don't do it. You'll be fine.'

The ship passed out of sight. My suit rotated itself until I was facing backwards once more and to my ineffable horror I saw the first wispy tendrils of red-blue plasma passing to either side of me and felt the first push of deceleration against my back. I was entering Glory's atmosphere naked and unprotected and the 'Down had completely abandoned me. This was no joke.

Panic enveloped me and squeezed me harder than the suit ever could and I closed my eyes in sheer terror. 'No! No! No!' I screamed at eighteen thousand, three hundred and forty-two miles per hour.

[Peter]

I bet you thought I'd given up No way! Just been busy with one thing and another. So, here we are, with poor old Jon dropped into the upper atmosphere of Glory at transonic speeds and with no spaceship. How... uncomfortable for him

Suit

I screamed and screamed… and then there was no point in screaming any more. Either I was dead, in which case it was all over and done with, or I was alive and the suit was still looking after me. I opened my eyes.

The blackness of space had softened to a navy blue. Above and behind me my ripped-atom ion trail was dissipating into feathery traces, and the terrible pressure of deceleration had become no more than a gentle buffeting.

'Can I see the ground, please?'

'Sorry,' said the suit. 'Our aerodynamic integrity requires the continuance of your current attitude for a further sixty-five seconds.'

Oh, all right. Be like that. So much for the monkey. What about the organ-grinder?

''Down? 'Down?'

No answer. Bah. I'd have stern words with her later. Kick her up the arse. Ship - stern - arse. Funny, eh?

Oh, all right. Have it your own way.



Sixty-six seconds later the suit turned itself over and let me see where I was going. It also allowed me to stretch my arms out to either side and wave them around as if they were wings. Now I was fairly sure that neither the suit nor the ship intended to kill me I was beginning to enjoy myself. My fear had faded, driven away by the sheer exhilaration of soaring through Glory's upper airs, and had been replaced by a mild euphoria.

'Wheee!' I shouted as I turned somersaults and looped the loop. I was losing speed rapidly, if the suit's readout was to be believed.

'Hey, suit, this is fun!'

'I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, Jonathan.'

'I'm glad you're glad.'

We were both on drugs, or so it seemed. What was coming next? 'Where are we landing, suit?'

'Don't worry about that.'

Hmmm. Why not? Let's change the subject. 'I never knew you were equipped for re-entry. Do you have an ablative layer on your outer skin?'

'No. I'm simply very well insulated.'

'So all those impressive flames and stuff were just plasma. Burned air, in other words.'

'Yes, pretty much.'

'They must have seen us over half of Glory.'

'We didn't pass over any inhabited lands.'

'Really?'

'Really. The 'Down made sure of that.'

'Clever old 'Down! Remind me to congratulate her next time we chat.'

'If I can, I will.'

'Thank you. How high are we now, by the way?'

'Twenty-five thousand feet.'

'Fine. So we must be getting pretty close to a land. Wouldn't want to end up in the sea, would we? I don't want to become foy bait, and I don't suppose you do, either.'

'No, that would be most inconvenient.'

'That's one way of putting it.'

'Inconvenient for the foy, I mean.'

I bet.

'So, we're approaching land, are we?'

'No.'

'What? Suit, are you messing with me?'

'Not at all. I have enjoyed your company very much and I look forward to travelling with you again in the future. But for now I must wish you au revoir.'

'Oh what?'

'Cheerio, Jonathan. Happy landings.'

And with no further words the suit opened up its front seam and folded back on itself, ejecting me into the open skies of Glory.



The first thing I noticed was the freshness of the air. Pure and clean, with a slight overtone of salt. I had been breathing canned, recycled air for so long... Then the terror kicked in and I curled myself up into a ball and screamed once more.

I soared across the sky like a loose cannonball, the wind tearing at my face and the one-piece jumpsuit I wore next to my skin. Above me a whooshing roar announced that the suit had lit some kind of heavy duty propulsion system - a fusion-powered ramjet, say - and was heading back out of Glory's atmosphere at a rapidly increasing speed. Sanctimonious git. I hoped it missed its trajectory and ended up in the Blessèd sun. ~*dugong*~.

This screaming was getting to be a bad habit, so I stopped doing it. Although I was crapping myself with fear, I still couldn't quite believe the 'Down or the suit - or anyone else for that matter - actually wanted to kill me. And if they did, why here and now? I could have had an accident anywhere at any time. Why make it so complicated? Why fly me all the way from Sally to Glory just to ditch me in the sea when the suit could have pretended to have a leak or the launcher could have stuck? So I closed my mouth, opened my eyes and stretched my arms and legs out again like a bird. Actually, I had lost nearly all my forward speed by now, so the bird analogy wasn't all that valid. Stone was nearer to the truth and one that was falling fast at that. I guessed I had no more than a minute or two before I hit the ocean, at which point I would die. The impact would kill me long before any inquisitive foy could find me and eat me up.

Did my personal history flash before my eyes in those last seconds? No, of course it didn't. I felt a little bit sorry for myself - all those classic books unwritten, all those monumental symphonies nobody would hear, those vivid paintings no one would see - but as for the record of my life… Best not gone over again, don't you think? And anyway, I still clung on, as we do even when fate seems to have signed our biography on the dotted line and be preparing to shelve it for the very last time.

And even so, it was with no great sense of surprise that I saw a group of globular shapes coming up at me from below and felt the breath forced from my body by the mono net that caught me no more than a few hundred feet above the surface of the sea. See! I told you it'd be all right, my smug inner self told me. They wouldn't abandon you like that. They like you far too much!

Shut the ~*iguana*~ up, I told it, even as I passed out.



‘Wake up, Jonathan.'

I opened my eyes. I was lying on a narrow couch in a dimly-lit room. There was a gentle hum and a slight rushing sound. A face hovered over mine.

'How do you feel?'

I considered. 'Rather bashed around.'

‘Let’s have a look at you, then. Roll over for me, would you?’

I complied. Presumably I was in a hospital and this person was a doctor. The place certainly smelled like a hospital – that mixture of human odours, antiseptic and masking scent was unmistakeable. Hands poked and prodded my back.

‘Sit up, please.’ I did, carefully. ‘Say ah.’

‘Ahh.’

‘Look up… down… left… right… Fine. You’ll do.’

I stood up. Glory’s gravity tugged at me and the floor vibrated and moved between my feet. I grabbed hold of the bed. ‘Oops. I’m not too steady. Things seem to be moving around. Are you sure I’m OK, Doctor…?’

‘Powell. I’m Doctor Cameron Powell. And the floor’s shifting because we’re not on land. Welcome aboard the LAV El Dorado. Say, why don’t we pop down to the bridge? Hold on to me here. That’s it. We’ll have a chat with the captain. I’m sure he’ll answer all your questions much better than I can.’

So I was all at sea, in more senses than one. I wanted answers - good ones, preferably - but was I going to get them?

------

Gotta love the RoH censor

[Somewhat]

You're having an unholy amount of fun with this world, Peter. Don't stop.

[Peter]

You're having an unholy amount of fun with this world, Peter. Don't stop.

Don't panic. New part soon.

[Peter]

Joyeuse

The world of Glory is not renowned for the splendour of its architecture. To be sure, there is no great interstellar group of critics who tour the worlds comparing and contrasting the building styles of the various civilizations they encounter. Nobody sits in a bar overlooking the upper terraces of the world-city of Trantor and compares the crenellations of the Winter/Spring Clave of the Third Stream of Betelgeuse XV with the setbacks of the Chrysler Building in Old New York. You might say that there can be no valid comparison between Glory and the other worlds of life.

But there are still absolutes, and while there is grace in functionality, the general manner of building construction on Glory is absolutely, gracelessly dull. From the airship sheds of Scrape to the barns of Middle Edge, from the laboratories of Gold to the plantation huts of the Archipelago, the principles are the same - make it solid, make it strong, make it weathertight; and then stop.

Perhaps there were no style genes in the DNA of the 'Down's passengers and crew. They were, after all, not an altogether representative sample of humanity. Maybe the first landers, awestruck by the transcendent beauty of their new home, saw no point in trying to compete with it. They settled for simple practicality, and who can criticise them for that? When one looks at the desperate vulgarity of the resort hotels of a tourist town like Porth Leaven there is reason to be grateful for the stolid four-square plainness of the majority of the shops, offices, factories and homes of Glory. But oh! The tedium of it!

There are exceptions. The perilously light and airy flets of Stilt Town. The awe-inspiring, monumental grimness of the refineries and furnaces of Scree. And the multilevel dwellings on Falls are interesting and enjoyable places to visit, whatever you may think of the philosophy that underlies the moral code of their inhabitants.

But, Monitor Ilse Hight reflected (for the hundredth time) as she turned the key in the front door of her Horn Town lodgings, there was no construction anywhere on Glory that could match the Joyeuse and she was privileged indeed that for her it was more than just a beautiful sight; it was her place of work. She stepped out into the street, turned right and began the long daily climb up to her office in the School, raising the collar of her turquoise woollen coat against the breeze. Below her the tide was going out, exposing the rocky foundations of the land of Horn and, visible across the five-mile gap of the Straits of Mercy, its neighbouring land of Bright. That gap would shrink to less than three miles at low tide. Overhead the transporter bridge that linked the two lands whistled and swayed in the morning breeze. It was a typical morning in these northern latitudes; busy and brisk, with light clouds speeding across a blue sky with the suggestion that they might coalesce later and dim the light of the Blessèd sun. But for now the shadows were few and fleet. They chased Ilse as she strode - tall and fair, vigorous as the weather - up the hill towards the centre of the land of Horn. The centre of Glory, indeed.

The wonders of the Joyeuse are slow to reveal themselves. They are seen at their best from the air and it is common for the airships of the Board to make a special orbit of Horn as they come in to land so their passengers can appreciate the grand design of the structures in a way that is much harder to manage from ground level. However, from close up other pleasures become apparent: splashes of violet, green and red, unexpected views, curious angles, striking heights and depths, and everywhere there is a degree of craftsmanship which treats detail with the same reverence it does scope.

At the top of the rise, and at the threshold of the main gate of the Joyeuse, Ilse turned, as she always did, and looked back. There was Glory as when she was first found, glowing in blue, white and blue. And, turning around, Glory as humanity had chosen to adorn her; in all the colours of the lost Earth. She smiled, and entered the Joyeuse.

Through the gate she walked, and up a wide granite staircase, across a courtyard and under a Romanesque arch. Past a windy cloister, skirting the base of a tall minaret. From one side of an echoing hall of genuine oak to the other and then under a veranda roof of vaulted reeds. Across a dizzying footbridge, made of clear glass. And finally, almost casually, into the very heart of the Joyeuse.

Ilse stopped and lowered her head for a moment, as was the custom. Before her, roped off to discourage casual intrusion, lay a scrubby piece of ground three hundred feet long and ninety feet broad. Its thin soil supported a scanty growth of dry, yellowing grass and grey lichen, blighted further by a group of three six-foot circles where the vegetation was, if that were possible, even more impoverished than it was on the rest of this unprepossessing patch of earth. The apparent neglect of the area was thrown into greater contrast by the flourishing flowers, trees and bushes that grew next to the rich and varied buildings that surrounded it. Beech and elm, roses and lilies, decorative grasses and herbs jostled next to classical Greek columns and Hindu sculptures. Jaunty orange and white pagodas stood next to glass and concrete offices sporting unexpected beamed galleries and roofs pierced with gothic-arched windows; all miraculously, eclectically harmonious.

But these buildings, for all their craft and beauty, were ultimately insignificant. They could not hold the eye for long. For this parched, derelict site was the top of the mound where the shuttlecraft Ready, still glowing from its atmospheric descent, had come to rest on the land of Horn in the world of Glory, singeing the ground beneath it. It was where the first landers had stepped ashore. In a secular world, this was a holy place.

Perhaps Ilse murmured a few words of thanks, of gratitude. Then she walked around the First Land and, stopping only to exchange greetings with the porter who sat at a window in one of the pagodas, hurried into the corridors of the Faculty of Human Studies in the School on Horn.



Monitor Hight's office faced outwards from the heart of the Joyeuse and was set on one of the upper stories, so that she enjoyed a view across the turrets, roofs, spires and towers of its buildings out to the open sea. The sky was still wide open and clear, the fractal light of the deeps reverberated across the land. It was a sight to distract even the most dedicated worker. Ilse had, therefore, positioned her screen at right angles to the window, allowing her to choose when she wished to be distracted. She turned on the screen and donned a headset.

'Good morning, 'Down.'

'Good morning Ilse. How are you today?'

'Very well. And yourself?'

'I am happy to report that my systems are functioning satisfactorily.'

'My systems also. How's the weather going to be later?'

'Just a moment… Ahh. Rain this evening, I fear. If I were you I'd be home by five, unless you want a soaking.'

'Very well. What have you got for me today?'

'A couple of papers and a work of fiction.'

'No films?'

'Sorry, no.'

'Pity. I wouldn't mind watching a film today, especially if it's going to rain later.'

'You could have watched it later, if there had been one. You could have stayed in.'

Only the 'Down would have said that. No other machine (if the 'Down actually were a machine) Ilse had ever spoken to had had the ability to speculate in negatives; to be simultaneously teasing and serious.

'Thank you, 'Down.'

'Don't mention it.'

'I won't. Right, give me the first one.'

A page of text appeared on Ilse's screen and she began to read it slowly, making notes as she went along. It was an anthropological paper, concerning itself with the prevalence of cannibalism jokes among the middle classes on Edge and their connection to the urban legends of Earth, and it was right up Ilse's street. One of her streets, anyway.

It was lunchtime by the time she finished reviewing the paper. She put it on the Approved stack; it was well-written, the attributions checked out and it reached valid conclusions while suggesting some interesting topics for further study. Perfect, she thought. Nothing like a good bit of research to justify more research.

Lunch was a sandwich, an apple and a jug of lemon-and-lime taken in the School refectory with time afterwards for a chat over coffee with her friends and colleagues. Outside the plate-glass windows the clouds were gathering overhead. Then back to the office and the so-called “work of fiction” which turned out to be an historical romance set in twenty-first century Africa. Ilse skimmed through it and quickly realised that for all its - in her view - excessive preoccupation with sex it was harmless enough.

'What did you think of it?' she asked the 'Down.

'Rubbish.'

'But safe.'

'Oh, yes. Perfectly safe.' And Ilse put Virgin Queen of the Sahara on the Approved list. Many readers would enjoy it. There were no desert wastes on Glory unless you counted the oceans, and they teemed with non-human life.

The last piece of work for her that day was a postgraduate dissertation on the Highland Clearances of 18th and 19th century Scotland. Ilse trudged through its scholarly, competent and exceedingly dry ten thousand words, found nothing controversial in them and, with a sigh, added it to the Approved pile. Why, oh why? she thought. Why bother? Were there not enough subjects of interest in Glory's admittedly short history? Why was nobody studying the First Landers? What about the constitution of the Board? Or the Matter of Edge? Why did everything have to come down to Earth in the end, even when its subject was ostensibly life on Glory?

And why did she ask, when she already knew the answer?

Ilse shut down her screen and locked it. It was half-past four and her work was done for the day. It was time to go home, so she did, passing the Landing Site as before and nodding goodbye to the porters on the gates as she passed through them.

It took the same time to go down the hill to her home as it did to go up it to her workplace, so it was just on five when she let herself in through the front door and climbed the stairs to her apartment. She hung up her coat, made a cup of tea and turned on her personal screen.

'Hi Ilse,' said the 'Down.

'Lo, Downie,' said Ilse. 'Play us something nice.' And the 'Down piped Strauss waltzes through the screen's speaker and showed footage of long-dead Viennese celebrating the New Year of 1998. Ilse danced with them. Later she went out, braving the rain, and ate fish pie in a quayside restaurant. Overhead the transporter bridge hummed, carrying sacks and crates of foodstuffs from Bright, while tourists, residents, scholars and Board functionaries ate and drank and talked about their busy days. Ilse joined a group of her fellow Monitors and stayed with them until late, drinking a reasonable facsimile of Tia Maria liqueur on ice.



The following day she went to work as usual, but the message on her screen and the request the 'Down made of her sent her hurrying back home to pack a bag; and from there by express taxi to the aerodrome where a Board ship - the LAV Hundreds and Thousands - was being held for her.

---

Note: “Joyeuse” is pronounced as if it were a French word being mangled by an English speaker, thus - “Joi-erz”. Sorry about that, all you Francophones, but you'll have to blame the Hornese, not me.

[Peter]

Monty

'Step back,' you say. 'Go on now, back. Back, all the way. Move.' And you set down the chow bucket and point. I shuffle to my feet, still dazed by the light and my sudden waking, and do as I am told, pressing myself hard against the back wall. Covering my eyes, unable to see you as you turn the key, swing the door open and put the pail on the floor next to the table, I become unseen, invisible.

I hear the clang of the closing door and the click of the key in the lock. 'Thank you,' I call to your receding back, but you affect not to hear me. Still, I know that in fact you did hear me and that you will note in the log that the subject has acquired at least some of the expected social niceties. Perhaps I have succeeded in making you understand that I feel grateful for your kindness in bringing me food and providing me with shelter, and that my development is indeed going according to plan.

My breakfast is good to eat. I sit on the floor next to the bucket and consume its contents in a slow, measured way, chewing each morsel thoroughly. Then I drink; there is water and nothing else, sufficiently refreshing for the climate and my needs. All the time the cameras swivel and rotate overhead, recording my every action. They watch and note as I stand by the door, looking out at the courtyard beyond, as I turn away from the outside and defecate into the plastic bag which lines the receptacle you have provided, as I curl up by the back wall and doze in the increasing heat of the Blessèd sun, as I yawn, stretch and wake again. From time to time I drink some more. The sky is clear, cloudless. Only the passage of the occasional ship obstructs the light, and that only briefly.

As I lie, solitary, I have plenty of time to think, and to remember. My memory is not reliable; there are gaps in the recent past and further back a kind of barrier beyond which it cannot go. I understand that this is the way memory works; that the extreme past disappears from view, as if rounding a corner or falling over a cliff. You tell me that this is nothing to worry about. I am not losing my mind. But I still wonder. Especially, I wonder why I can remember nothing before I came to this place.

'Where did I come from?' I asked you once, as casually as I could, trying not to sound as if I were pleading for information. I have suspected for some time that you rather enjoy the power you have over me and I do not wish to aggravate the situation. Please understand that I am not trying to deprive you of a legitimate pleasure, but I must fight my corner as best I can, even though I know that ours can never be an equal relationship.

You made no direct answer. Instead, you asked me if I was happy in my new home. What reply could I give you? I am not unhappy, if by that you mean that I cry myself to sleep every night, but neither do I have very much familiarity with joy. So I nodded, and you made a note, and my question went unanswered.



It is an hour past midday. You come with a new container of food, and while you collect the old one and take stool samples from the bag you talk to me. Like:

'Hello, Monty. Sorry I didn't have much time to talk to you this morning. I've been so busy, you know? It's all down to me. Those lazy bastards up at the Mansion, you know?'

I nod.

'Do you know what time they get out of bed?'

I shake my head.

'Ten o'clock! And on a lovely bright Hally-morning too! Still lying around in their pits! Idle ~*Feeb*~.'

I look as shocked as my facial muscles will allow.

'Pardon my French.' You always say that after using one of the stronger verbal weapons in your arsenal. I have no idea what it means. I hope you appreciate that I am agreeing with your criticism of the higher-ups, not your mode of expressing it. I do not want there to be any misunderstandings between us.

'So it's all down to me,' you continue. 'Me and you Beasts.' And with a loud rattle you pick up the bucket and the sample bag, shut the door and leave. I hear the click of the key in the lock and your footsteps. Then all is quiet again, except for the echoes of the wind in the hills and the sounds of my neighbours shuffling and scratching in their cages.



There was a time, just once, when I did not hear the sound of the key. It was in the evening, with our moon bright overhead and Sally glowing orange-red to the west of her. The double shadows were sharp against the concrete of the yard outside my window. I know this because I left my place at the back of the cell and crept forward and looked out, expecting to see you return. You did not return, and it struck me that you had seemed a little odd as you doled out my rations and swept out my room. You had not spoken to me. You, who usually like to pass the time of day with every one of your charges in turn, had been uncharacteristically silent. I did not know what worries you had - apart from your daily complaint about the unequal distribution of labour here at the Centre - but I supposed they must have been weighing unusually heavily on you that night.

I left my place at the window and went to the door. It was slightly ajar, by no more than a centimetre, but that was enough for me to slip my foot into the gap and slowly, painfully enlarge it. The door is heavy and, although I am no weakling, it is not designed to be opened easily by one such as myself. But it opened nevertheless and soon I was able to wedge my nose into the gap and make enough space for me to slip through and outside.

At first I was badly disoriented. I had been in the yard many times before for exercise and training, but only in your company and only in daylight. It was terra incognita to me now. I stepped slowly into the middle of the square and looked around. There were the cells, making up three sides of the square in which I stood. The fourth side was open, except that a wall stretched from one side of it to the other, interrupted by a barred gate half-way along. My cell was on the opposite side of the yard from the gate, so I had seen and heard it open and close many times, admitting you and your colleagues. I crossed over to it. Like my cell door it was unlocked, moving back with a creak of its hinges as I crouched low to the ground and nudged against it. I pushed it open with my nose and passed through, feeling a new excitement squeezing my bowels.

Now everything was strange. It was hard to make out the details because the light glared so much, but I got a general impression of a land that fell rapidly away into a deep dark valley. A gravel path ran beside the wall and I followed it to the left. Soon it turned uphill to where I could see artificial lights outlining a large block which I knew to be the Mansion. This was the place where I was sometimes taken for testing and evaluation. I turned and looked back. Did I recognise any more of my surroundings? I had been here before, many times, but I had been led on a cord with orders to keep my head down and not to look about me. Sometimes I had been muzzled and blindfolded, but that had been in the early days; those which lay close up against the wall which separated me from my lost memories.

What should I do? I could return to my room, lie down, curl up and go to sleep. I could climb the steep path to the Mansion and ask for help. I could go away from the path, downhill into the shadowed valley, away from the light, into danger. I could simply stay where I was and wait for you to find me. What would be best? What consequences did I face? I did not think that you and your colleagues were cruel people, but neither did I like to defy you. To do that felt wrong, in a deep way, a disturbance in my insides. And yet - this was a rare opportunity. It was change, difference. It was an adventure that was being offered to me and I could not refuse it. My blood was up, my legs moved of their own accord. A rare exhilaration took hold of me and tugged at my spirit. I would fly away and see the world. There were scents and sounds out there that I had never heard or smelled before. I would taste them now.

I turned to the right and went downhill. Soon I fell in with a stream of water - an overflow from further up the peak. I stopped and drank and, feeling that it would guide me, stayed with it as I descended. From time to time there was a lip in the slope and the stream left the ground, fell a few feet and splashed into a pool, foamed and sparkled by the light from the worlds overhead. I wondered if I should take a swim in one of the pools to wash away my scent. Was I being followed? Perhaps not, not yet, but nevertheless it made sense to take precautions. So I changed from one side of the stream to the other as I descended and even waded through it for a few tens of yards. Finally I reached a point where the slope became too steep for me to follow it. I went back upstream for a few feet and then struck out to the left.

By now I was in almost complete darkness. Glory had moved under the worlds so that their light no longer sleeted directly down upon me but at an angle from the east, where it was more readily obstructed by trees or rocky outcrops. If it had not been for the sharpness of my night-vision, which was working better than I had known it could, I should have been forced to stop in case I tripped and fell helplessly into the unseen void below. I turned aside and followed the line of the hill, trying to keep to the same level and squeezing through the gaps which appeared between the trees and bushes that clad the slope. Soon I entered a wood and the light of the worlds was completely cut up by leaves and branches. I was blind.

Again I faced a choice. Go on, and risk the uncertain ground underfoot; its exposed tree-roots, its hidden traps, its sudden drops. Return, and try the other side of the stream, despite the fading light of our moon and Sally, or stay put and wait for morning.

Surely that was the worst choice - to do nothing when I had already chosen to act? If I were escaping, and that was surely what it looked like I was doing, then I should keep going and put as many miles as I could between myself and you. But... the initial rush had slowed. I was calmer. It would do me little good to injure myself by risking further flight in this dark forest, suspended over what depths I knew not, full of unfamiliar odours and new-minted sounds – small scratches and pops in the undergrowth, the sharp tang of crushed berries and bruised grass.

I decided, and once the decision was made I had to stick to it. I curled up under a tree, wrapped my tail around its trunk and, my mind set, fell quickly asleep.

[Peter]

While I'm working on the next part, here's a little treat for you all: On The Hundreds And Thousands.

Enjoy!

[Peter]

Wayfarers

I followed Doctor Powell down a narrow passageway, past a number of closed and sealed doors. He walked slowly, but even so I found it hard to keep up with him and, as I reached the end of the corridor, my left leg gave way under me and I fell with a heavy crash.

'Providence!' Doctor Powell turned, dropped to his knees and put his arms under mine. I struggled to my feet.

'Sorry, doc,' I said. 'I'm still a teensy bit unstable.'

Doctor Powell smiled ruefully. 'No, no, my fault entirely. I should have known you'd need more time to acclimatise. Would you like to go back to the infirmary and rest a while longer?'

'No, thanks. I've travelled millions of miles to get here. I'm not going to stop now when there're only a few feet left to go. I'm here to see Glory and that's what I'm damn well going to do. Lead on!'



Monitor Ilse Hight sat at the bar and nursed her drink. She was alone. Not that the forward lounge of the LAV Hundreds and Thousands was empty; far from it and Ilse, willowy and blonde, was quite attractive enough to draw the attention of any of the unattached men on board. But there was something about the angle of her back and the set of her shoulders that broadcast Not Interested on a frequency that everyone could receive loud and clear.

She drank whisky and lemonade and stared out of the panoramic windows. A pianist played softly; popular songs and melodies, some old - from Earth, even - and some new, while a self-absorbed couple slow-danced on a tiny wooden floor in the middle of the room. It was dark outside, except that the airship's running lights cast a gentle glow on the sea below and the clouds close overhead. Red to the left, green to the right, from Ilse's place in the prow of the ship the spoeklicht reminded her of the times when she, still a child, left her bed and explored the woods behind her house, on a night without worlds and with only a small pocket torch to show the way. The trees rose up out of the darkness on either side into the beam of her torch just as the clouds appeared now, making it seem that she, and the ship in which she travelled, advanced slowly through a cavern of vaguely-defined walls and ever-returning shadows. Others watched too. The lights were dim, the music tinkled and strummed, the passengers spoke sotto voce, or not at all. Underneath, almost inaudible, came the low rush of air streaming past the ship's hull and the distant thrum of her engines, seven hundred feet astern.

Ilse finished her whisky. Should she have another? How did the disadvantages of drinking by herself compare with those of drinking in company? Perhaps she should simply return to her cabin. And then the pianist took a break and stopped playing. The couple left the floor, sat on a couch under one of the windows and wrapped their arms around one another. Struck by a sudden impulse, Ilse put down her glass, crossed over to the piano and, receiving a swift nod from the pianist, sat at the keyboard with her arms resting on her knees. She paused for a moment; then lifted her hands and began to play the Aria from the Goldberg Variations, while the Hundreds and Thousands sailed through the straits of night towards the dawn waiting in the far-distant West.



The Blessèd sun came and took me by surprise. My room up at the Centre faced south so I didn't usually get the full impact of the morning light. That treat was reserved for my companions in the cages to my left while those on my right had brighter evenings. This light was different. It slanted through the trees, diffused into rays by a low-lying mist. There were no sounds, apart from my breathing.

I stood up and shook myself. Beads of water flew off me in a cloud. My fur had gained a layer of dew as I slept, as had the leaves and branches of the trees and bushes all around, up and down the slope. Now it was light I could see how wise I had been to stop and rest. The hillside was very steep and the fall became sheer as it dropped out of sight into the valley below.

Now I was awake I quickly realised how cold and hungry I was. Thirsty too, though I ran my tongue over the grass and managed to suck up enough dew to dispel my need for the present. The cold would soon pass, I knew. Hunger - that was different. Could I eat the grass? Maybe I could, although you had never given me grass to eat. My rations had consisted of artificial foods in the form of biscuits and porridge, mixed with a little meat. I decided to try the grass and tore a mouthful out of the ground. I chewed it thoroughly. Its taste was sweet and the water it contained refreshed me, but it was hard to swallow and I was not sure that I would be able to digest it, or gain nourishment from it. It stimulated my bowels, however, and I defecated against the tree where I had slept.

And, for now, that was it. I had breakfasted and it was time to start the business of the day. But what would it be? For so long I had had no control over my activities. It had been my part to wait in my room for you to come and tell me what today’s routine would be. It might be testing up at the Mansion, it might be exercise in the yard, it might be nothing but lying in my room all day while my neighbours received attention. It had never been my choice. I wondered if it had ever been yours or whether the higher-ups at the Mansion controlled your day as you controlled mine. As in the night before, when I had stood on the path outside the yard, I could do one of three things. I could stay where I was and do nothing, I could return to the compound and look for you, or I could carry on. I hesitated. There was no food here, and little to drink. There was no guarantee that I would find anything to sustain me in the valley (although I considered that the stream I had followed the night before must eventually splash into the valley floor and I would probably find a river or a lake there). If I returned uphill I would receive food, drink, and doubtless a dressing-down. My liberty - such as it was - might be further curtailed, or I might be punished in some way I could not imagine but which would necessarily be unpleasant.

To do nothing seemed unworthy of my impulse of the day before. Further, if I were to be punished anyway how much difference would it make if it were delayed a day or two? True, I would be treated less leniently the more trouble I caused but, short of ceasing me altogether, what could they do? If they had wanted to terminate my existence they could have done so already at any time they chose.

My neighbours came and went; and those who went did not always return.

So I carried on. Along the line of the valley side, going down more often than up, as the Blessèd sun rose further and drew the damp from the ground and the air. My own sounds - my breathing, my heartbeat, my paws on the ground, my flanks brushing against the vegetation - were joined by the movement of the trees in a light breeze and the calls of the birds that lived in them. Darkness withdrew from my downhill side - my left - and I grew more adventurous as I proceeded. Nothing could harm me, so long as I was careful and kept a sharp lookout for pits and traps. From time to time I stopped, let my body quieten down, and listened. Listened for sounds from above - of men following my trail, which I could do little to disguise. Listened for their footfalls, their shouts, the racket of their engines or their squawking radios. Listened; but heard only natural sounds. I wondered if I had been missed. Perhaps the idle ones were still in bed. Perhaps you were ill, and my absence not yet noted. I pressed on.

I must have been travelling for at least an hour before I met the creature. Where I had the choice I kept to the trees, skirting around any clearings I found. Although it would have been good to stand in the unobstructed light of the Blessèd sun for a few minutes, I knew that I would be easier to spot if I left the shelter of the trees. See how quickly I became a fugitive, hiding in shadows! The vegetation changed in type as I descended, the trees giving way to tall, stiff, segmented stalks which snapped easily in my paws, yielding a soft fibrous interior and an oozing white sap. Each stem made a characteristic cracking sound as it broke. After sucking the moisture from a few I moved on. The stalks obstructed my way more than the trees had done, clutching at me as I pushed past them, and my progress became ever slower and more tiring. I wondered if I should take a chance and head straight downhill to get out of this grove of rigid poles, which so resembled the bars across my window at the Centre. I sat back on my haunches and waited for my laboured breathing to subside while I thought.

I fell into a kind of trance, I think. Although I was shielded from the sky, the heat was building up as the Blessèd sun climbed ever higher towards noon. I felt as I sometimes felt when I returned from the laboratories at the Centre - a little drained, needing rest. My earlier keenness had been blunted by fatigue. So I dozed for a few minutes, and I dreamed. Dreamed that I was back in the yard, exercising as I did nearly every day, running to and fro. Across the middle of the yard was a wall, separating me from my cell. 'I've finished,' I told you. 'I'd like to go back to my room now, if I might.'

'Off you go,' you said, pointing.

'But I can't,' I replied. 'There's a wall in the way.'

'No, there isn't.'

'Yes, there is. Look!'

'I see no wall.'

'I do.'

'There is no wall. You are being foolish.'

'Yes, I am. I'm sorry.'

'Go on, then. Back to your cage. Come along.'

'But...'

'There is no wall. Now hurry - run!'

I dug in my back legs and ran. The wall reared up in front of me. I lowered my snout and put on more speed. I would push the wall over. My momentum would blast a hole through it. Cinder blocks would shatter. It would hurt. It would stun me. I did not care. The wall was not real. You had told me that. The ground rolled and crackled under my feet. I was close. Ten feet. Five feet. One foot. Now.

And, as I had so many times before, I woke before the crash could happen. The vertical green bars still surrounded me. Warmth still enveloped me. I had been asleep for only five or ten minutes. Nothing had changed. Except...

Snap.

Snap.

Snap.

I came instantly to full awareness. Somewhere close by, someone or something was cracking the stems, as I had earlier. Was it you? Had you caught up with me while I slept? I had to find out.

I pushed my way through the grove. The sound grew closer, and suddenly I broke out of the thicket and into an open space, covered with short grass. On the far side sat a creature; the first I had seen since leaving the Centre. It was of a similar size to myself, but where my fur was brown and my ears sloped back over my skull, its coat was black and white, with large black patches over its eyes, and small black ears sticking straight up out of the top of its head. It was sitting back against a tree and holding a stalk, which it was crushing in its powerful jaws. It saw me and looked up, unconcerned. It took hold of another stem and broke it.

Snap.

'Hello,' I said. 'How are you?'

There was no reply.

'My name's Montague. What's yours?'

Still nothing. How discouraging. I was not ready to give up yet, however.

'I'm a wolfbear. What kind of person are you?'



Ilse finished playing, acknowledged the applause, and returned to her cabin. As befitted her title of Monitor, it was equipped with a fully activated screen. She turned it on. She wanted a quick word with the 'Down.



I reached the top of the spiral stairs that led down to the bridge of the El Dorado in one piece. Now all I had to do was get down it in the same happy state. Then perhaps they'd give me a drink.

[Peter]

Conversations

I was curious; I have to admit it. Of course I had seen other creatures at the Centre. They were of many kinds. Some were of simple derivation. They were dogs, or cats or deer or horses. Others were mixed-species, like me. But this one was new. It looked friendly. I would talk to it.

I crossed the glade slowly, doing my best to appear unthreatening. The creature looked up from its chewing as I approached. It seemed unworried by me, which I took as a favourable sign. I did not want to get into any kind of fight - I had little experience of conflict. My teeth and jaws were sharp and powerful, but so, I could tell, were its. I stopped at a safe distance.

'Hello,' I said again. 'My name's Montague.' Still no response. Was my speech hard to make out? You had no trouble understanding what I said, I knew, despite my mouth and throat being non-human.

Louder, then. 'Hello! Can You Hear Me? What Is Your Name?'

The creature looked away and gave a low moan. It did not attempt to reply to me. Was there any point in carrying on trying to communicate with it? I decided to give it one more go. Advancing right up to it I knocked the food from its paw and looked straight into its black-patched eyes. 'WHO ARE YOU?' I bellowed.

'His name's Der-der and you're frightening him. Stop it.'

The voice - soft and calm, but very determined - came from behind me. I turned. Another of the black and white creatures was standing on the far side of the glade, its eyes as full of anger as this one's were placid. 'What sort of bully are you?'

'I'm not a bully.'

'Then stop behaving like one.'

The newcomer padded over to where I stood. It laid one forepaw on its friend's shoulder and gave it a new stalk with the other. 'There, there,' it said. 'Have some more bamboo. Don't pay any attention. The nasty thing will be going soon. Won't you?' It gave me a hostile look.

'I suppose so. But...'

'But what?'

'He-'

'Der-der.'

'Der-der... He's the first... Person I've met since I left the Centre. I didn't know he couldn't talk.'

'You still shouted at him.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Don't tell me, tell him.'

I turned, abashed. 'I'm sorry I upset you, Der-der. I didn't mean to. It was very ignorant and stupid of me and I apologise.'

'That's better. You can get on your way now. Go on, bugger off!'

'Please...'

'What?'

'You see, I only left the Centre last night. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. I don't know anything. Can you help me?'

A sharp look. 'Are they following you?'

'The humans? I don't know. I don't think so.'

'So you've been Released?'

'The gate was open. I walked out.'

'Hmmm. You do look pretty helpless. Have you eaten today?'

'Not much. Some grass.'

'Anything to drink?'

'Water from the grass.'

The creature regarded me for a minute. 'Right. Well, settle down here, in the shade. I'm hungry. Have some bamboo if you like. Your name's Montague, right?'

'Yes.'

'And you're a wolf-bear hybrid.'

'Yes.'

'Ok. Now pay attention. I'm Mariannie; and Der-der and I are pandas. Giant pandas, in fact. We're stronger and quicker and fiercer than we look, so don't mess with us. You may think you're pretty tough, but you've never lived wild, have you?'

'No.'

'Do you remember anything before you came to the Centre?'

'No.'

'Ok. Let me fill you in. Do you know what this place is?'

I thought. 'The world? The hill? Sorry, I've not been told.'

Mariannie tilted her head on one side. She seemed amused. What's the name of the world?' she asked.

'Glory.' You had taught me that. I pointed upwards. 'The Blessèd sun shines down on us by day and the worlds light the way by night.'

'What are they called?'

'The worlds? There's Hally, and Sally, and our moon.'

Mariannie nodded. 'You're doing better than I thought you would. So, just to finish off, where are we now? I mean, what land are we on?'

'I don't know. What's a "land"?'

The panda waved her left paw, being careful not to startle Der-der. 'It's all this, all around. This hill, these woods, this soil, the rocks underneath them. Everything that we can walk on, everything that goes down to the sea.'

'The sea?' I replied, puzzled. 'I don't know what you mean. What's “the sea"?'

'You don't know about the sea?' Mariannie snuffled her laughter. 'Well, I can't tell you. Describe the sea to someone who's never seen it themselves? I don't think so! You'll have to find out for yourself.'

And that had to suffice.



I hobbled down the spiral stairs as best I could. It wasn't easy - I grabbed hold of the rail with both hands and did a kind of sideways shuffle, making sure that only a little of my weight rested on either foot at any one time. I wasn't going to collapse again; not if I could help it. There's only so much humiliation I can take. I kept my eyes closed all this time, for fear of vertigo.

I got to the bottom eventually. Doctor Powell helped me through the little lobby that opened out onto the bridge and guided me to a chair. I sat down heavily and opened my eyes. And there she was. Glory - at last.

We were flying at about five thousand feet, more or less due east, and the Blessèd sun was high in the heavens to our right, or starboard as the airmen say. There must have been a fair breeze at sea level, for the waves - even as seen from this altitude - were foam-topped and glittering silver in the light. The endless, eternal seas of Glory… Despite my heaviness I got to my feet and staggered to the forward-facing window in front of me. I wanted to immerse myself in Glory's blue-green-white splendour. The view wrapped itself around me and I sighed for simple happiness. I had been too long in a suit, or behind vacuum glass. I had breathed too much recycled oxygen. I had seen too much brown dust and sterile desolation. Glory had life in abundance, fresh air and limitless panoramas, and the only brick-red to be seen was in pictures, or the walls of houses. Houses with outdoor gardens leading down to fields of crops - yellow-gold and green, waving in a stream of living air. And always, only a few tens of miles away at the very most, the vast oceans of this world of water.

My breath misted on the glass and obscured the view. I turned and gingerly, reluctantly, holding on to rails and grab-holds, returned to my seat. The view was less spectacular from there, but safer. I would see very little of the world if I broke a leg now and had to spend the next few weeks in a hospital couch, in plaster. The captain - I recognised him by the four golden braided rings on his sleeve - came up to me and leaned over the side of the chair. 'Welcome back to Glory, Monitor. I am Captain Probert and my ship is the LAV El Dorado.'

'Thank you, Captain. I'm very happy to be home. Do you have a moment to spare? There are one or two things I need to know.'

'Certainly, Monitor.'

'When I fell from orbit, and you caught me - what happened? How did you know where I was? Was it a net that stopped my fall? What kept it up?'

'Well, firstly, the 'Down told us where you were.' Captain Probert made a small gesture with his left hand - one that I had seen before. 'She knew your trajectory, to within very tight limits.'

'She's a clever old thing, isn't she?'

The captain frowned slightly. 'Yes; she is very wise. Anyway, we knew where you were going, so we made a minor course correction.'

'The Down steered me towards you?'

'Of course.'

'And the net?'

'Was held up by our friends the aeroforms.'

'The 'forms?' I gasped. I had never heard of people using Glory's native flying creatures in such a way. In fact, I'd never heard of them working with humans at all. I thought they avoided us as much as they could. Doctor Powell joined the conversation:

'It's mostly down to me, actually. I've got what you might call a special interest in the aeroforms.'

'He'll tell you all about it if you ask.'

'Yes, I will. Later?'

'Surely, Doctor. Meanwhile,' I said to the captain, 'is it Ok if I stay here?'

'Yes, of course. Is there anything else I can help you with?'

'No, Captain, I mustn't take you away from your duties. Just one more thing - no, two.'

'Go ahead.'

'The first is - where are we going?'

'And the second?'

'Could a steward bring me a drink?'

The captain laughed. 'Pineapple juice only on the bridge. Board Rules, you know.'

'Oh. All right. Thank you.'

'And as for our destination... It's somewhere special. Somewhere I think you'll find very interesting.'

'You're teasing me! Please, Captain Probert.' I didn't add - because I didn't have to - that I could always ask the 'Down, using a screen, if he didn't tell me where we were going. Screen access was a Monitor's absolute right.

The captain looked at Doctor Powell, who nodded.

'Very well. Our next port of call is Lodge-in-the-Falls. But you're staying with the El Dorado until we reach Tracy Island.'

'Where?' I'd never heard of a place called Tracy Island.

'I'll tell you later,' said the doctor. 'It's a long story, and best told over a gin-and-lime.'

And that had to suffice.



''Down?'

'Yes, Ilse'

'Where are we going?'

'You've seen the ship's itinerary. You know as much as I do.'

'But why Gold?'

'You'll see.'

'I've not been to Gold since…'

'Since you left. Of course. But stick with me, Ilse. All will become clear soon.'

'Why not now?'

'Go to bed. You're tired. We'll chat some more in the morning.'

And that had to suffice.

[Peter]

Needless to say, your comments, whether gushing praise or derisive laughter, and suggestions - so long as they are anatomically feasible - are welcome.

[Peter]

Ilse and Montague wake to face a new day. Jonathan has a chat with the doctor.

Morning

'I suppose I'm going to have to help you.'

'I would owe you a great debt of gratitude.'

Mariannie snorted. 'That, and one Token, will buy you a cup of coffee in Phyle.' I shook my head, confused. I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about and she knew it. She also knew I would never admit to my ignorance, and she knew I knew that, as did I.

For a moment I envied Der-der his simplicity.



'It started,' said Doctor Powell, 'when I woke up one morning on this ship to find I was the only person aboard. I had been cast adrift; me and the El Dorado. I know now that I wasn't expected to be on the ship. It was believed that the vessel was completely unmanned and a there was a lot of discussion about me when my… inconvenient existence became apparent. It was a toss-up whether I was going to be allowed to live or die.'

'A discussion? Who was involved?'

'That will become clear, I think, as I go along.'



Ilse Hight, that most self-possessed and self-contained of persons, slept soundly in her stateroom on board the LAV Hundreds and Thousands.



'Der-der, darling, listen to me carefully. I'm going to have to go away for a few days; I'm going with Montague to help him find his way to safety. He's rather lost, you see.

'You must stay here and look after yourself. You can do that, can't you? Look, there's plenty of bamboo for you to eat. If it gets cold you can bed down in the moss in the forest.

'Is that alright, love?'

Der-der lifted his head to Mariannie's face. I saw no exchange, and nobody spoke - nothing that I could hear - but an understanding must have passed between them.

'I'll be back soon. Before you know it, I promise.'

The pandas embraced; black fur on white, white fur on black. Seeing their intimacy I was briefly swamped by a feeling of terrible loss. Their loss, for their parting, but also mine, for I had never known such closeness myself - not on this side of the wall of memory. I was desolated by my sorrow and turned away from the pair, trying to grant them the privacy they deserved. They held one another for several long minutes. I stood at the edge of the grove, staring south while the newly risen Blessèd sun poked through the trees to my right.

I had spent the previous night alone, but safe in the knowledge that the pandas were not far off and that Mariannie would come to my aid or, at any rate, alert me if danger came close. Nothing had happened, though, and I had slept well, despite the cold and my unfamiliar situation. Slept well; and it was Mariannie who had woken me with a nudge of her nose against my side, not the light of dawn.

'Wake up! Providence, but you're helpless! Suppose I were a predator? Or a human? You'd be dead now, or caught.'

'Sorry.'

'You wouldn't have time to be sorry. Come on now. Look! There's lots of yummy bamboo to eat!'

And so I had sat next to Mariannie and Der-der and done my best to chew the green stalks to a digestible pulp and suck water out of their hollow interiors.

'We pandas eat a lot of this stuff and we have to stop regularly to graze. I hope you don't mind that.'

'I suppose not.'

'I suppose not! He doesn't suppose! Well, you're just going to have to put up with it. You don't like it, you carry on by yourself.'

'No, no, that's fine, honestly. I'll stick with you. But is this… bamboo all you can eat? Does it grow everywhere? Will you be able to find it where we're going?'

'No, probably not, but we'll eat anything if we must. We're quite partial to a little meat from time to time.'

'Ah. I'll bear that in mind.'



'So are you saying the El Dorado was guided all the time you were with her? Not drifting, as you'd thought?'

'More or less. While I was awake the 'Down let the ship go where she willed. But while I slept, she adjusted the El Dorado's course.'

'Why did she care whether you knew or not? I mean; the 'Down does pretty much as she wants. If she thought she needed to intervene, she would. You know that.'

'Yes, Monitor. Oh, and by the way, you do know about the Captain, don't you?'

'I saw him make the Gesture, yes.'

'Good. Then you'll have the good sense to keep any criticisms you may have of the 'Down and her funny ways to yourself; or in the right company, won't you?'

'I have my rights as a Monitor, you know.'

'I know that. You know that. The Board knows that. But the captain's in absolute charge here. He's an airman; and airmen do what they have to do right here and now to preserve their ships and their crews. They tend to act in their immediate interests first and worry about the long-term consequences later. You might win an appeal against the captain if he decided to brig you; but that'd be in a year's time. You don't really want that to happen, do you?'

'He couldn't do that! The 'Down'd stop him.'

'Only if she knew about it.'

'Ah. Alright. So he's a raving Cultist and I'd better humour him. But all I can say is this - if he were in regular communication with the 'Down, like me; if he had Monitor-level experience of the 'Down and her idiosyncrasies he'd be less inclined to regard her as some kind of super-being. She may be bright, she may be powerful; but she has her little foibles, just like you and me. You have to get pretty near to her to discover that.'

I leaned closer to the doctor. 'She may be the Guardian of humanity; but she's not the only one. I'm a Guardian too. Every Monitor is. You 're a Guardian. Every doctor is. Every ship's captain is, for all that. We have to work together for Glory's sake, and making a god out of one of us - because that's all she is, really, just one of us - is doing nobody any favours.'

'All the same, Jonathan…'

'All the same, I'll be tactful.'

'Thank you.'

'So go on. The 'Down guided the El Dorado without you knowing about it and eventually she hit a land. Was this land the Tracy Island you mentioned earlier?'

'Yes; and you'd better keep your voice down when you say that name in public.'

Was there anything I could say without causing trouble? I looked up. The bar was nearly deserted and hardly public. Never mind - I wouldn't argue the point. 'I hear you, doctor. Now; another drink?'



'Morning Ilse.'

'Morning 'Down.'



Mariannie blew Der-der one last kiss. She looked at me with regret haunting her eyes. 'Come on then, Monty.'

We headed directly downhill. The panda led the way and I followed, picking my way carefully.

'You'll have to go faster than that.'

'Yes, sorry. I'm not used to this. It feels like my rear end wants to run past my front paws, if you see what I mean.'

'It's just the same for me.' That was true - Marianne's powerful-looking hindquarters were built for pushing, just as mine were. Going downhill felt all wrong. 'You have to take short steps and let your back legs drag a little. Watch me and you'll be alright.'

So I watched her and I did my best and slowly we descended the slope. The stream I had crossed the night of my escape had cut a gully into the side of the hill and our path drifted across towards it as time passed until we found ourselves climbing down into it and scrambling over the boulders its grinding flow had exposed. I worried that we were exposed too. There was no cover apart from the occasional tree growing slantwise out of the side of the rift the rushing water had etched out of the land and the Blessèd sun shone more and more directly into our eyes as it approached its highest point. Not only were the heat and glare becoming uncomfortable, but the feeling that we were being watched - examined as you examine me under the lasers in the Mansion's laboratories - was gradually overpowering me. But there was water - as much as we could drink - and as much shade as we needed, bearing in mind that progress was what mattered most, not comfort.

At no time did I wonder how it was I knew about the movement of the Blessèd sun through the heavens or the way running water eroded the landscape. Nor did it surprise me when I realised that I knew - as I had always known - that I was treading the soil, drinking the water and eating the plant life of the land of Gold.



‘After the ship struck the land and I wasn’t killed by the impact the question of what to do with me still remained. The arguments carried on while I did my best to make a home on the land and, even after the El Dorado was freed and taken off to be refurbished and repaired, I was still there, scraping along. If it hadn’t been for something that happened I might have just faded away – starved to death.’

‘That would have been a cruel way to end.’

‘But a passive one. I mean, nobody would have killed me, not as such. No gun to my head, no poison in my food, you know? But instead, I had an encounter with an aeroform – or a pair of aeroforms, actually, and that changed everything.’



‘You called me away from my work, put me on this ship and cited immediate danger. I think you ought to tell me what that immediate danger was.’

Monitor Hight had had twenty-five hours – a full day on Glory – to become angry with the ‘Down.

‘So tell me. What’s going on?’

[cap'n zem]

more, more! i'm spellbound.

[Peter]

No, I haven't abandoned it!

Downhill


All that day we scrambled down the stream-path that led from the heights of Gold. It was now two nights since I had left my home in the compound and I was beginning to realise, if not yet fully understand, the significance of my freedom. Nobody would bring me food and water any more, nobody check my pulse and temperature, nobody clean out my room. I was in charge of myself now. All the same, I was still very far from complete independence. Without Mariannie's guidance I would by now be wandering aimlessly in the woods. I would have been retaken and be once more in your custody if it had not been for her help.

I thought more about the subject of independence as I followed the panda's shuffling frame down the hillside, through clean air and vivid patches of mottled shade. I was no longer part of an institution - the Regeneration Facility, I remembered it was called - and I had absented myself from your research programme, but I was still no more self-motivated than I had been before. In that respect I had merely exchanged one boss for another.

But the open air - so devil-may-care in its intimacy with my skin and fur, scented with pollen and the perfume of flowers and something else I couldn't identify - made the blood surge through my veins and lifted my emotions to the point where nothing could worry me; not even the shadow of my imprisonment. I would have sung, had my throat only been equipped for singing.



The heat of the Blessèd sun became intolerable around midday and Mariannie and I took shelter under a grove of ash trees and lay there panting with our tongues hanging out.

We didn't talk much. I was, I must confess, somewhat in awe of Mariannie. She was so in control; of me, of the situation, of Der-der. I wondered about him as we lay among the fly-buzzing undergrowth and waited for the temperature to fall to the point where we could continue our journey. What was he? Outwardly, he and Mariannie were identical except for their gender. They were giant pandas, with black sticking-up ears, patches around their eyes and an air of amiable composure. I almost said idiocy, but that was certainly not true of Mariannie whose eyes glowed with shrewd intelligence. Der-der was different; he was little more than an animal, or so it seemed. Why was Mariannie looking after him? What advantage was she gaining from their lop-sided relationship? There was so much I still didn't understand. The heat and my tiredness made it hard to think coherently.

After an hour or so it became possible to move on once more. Gradually the slope became less steep and the stream grew broader, shallower and less deeply dug into the hillside. Walking became easier too, and we made greater speed, hindered only by the vegetation which grew ever thicker and more green. The grass sparkled, the Blessèd sun arced over the heavens to our left and we forged our way downwards and onwards, wading through the tributaries which joined the main stream every mile or so and keeping out of sight of the buildings which were becoming increasingly frequent as we went on.



That night, as we lay comfortably couched under the worlds and the stars, our stomachs comfortably full of fruit and nuts from a nearby orchard, I felt an urge come upon me that I had never experienced before or else had forgotten. Mariannie was dozing next to me, sharing our mutual warmth, so it was a simple matter to reach over to her, extend my claws, and scratch her deeply behind the ears.

Her reaction was so fast it took me completely unawares. She swung her right forepaw around like a club and stuck me squarely across the muzzle, jerking my head back and nearly wrenching it from my shoulders. I fell hard against a tree. It felt as if I had been lifted bodily and thrown into the air.

'Try that again, you ~*dugong*~, and I'll rip your guts out!' The panda put her forepaws on my shoulders and pushed me hard against the ground, crushing me under the weight of her body. I looked up at her with dazed eyes.

'Don't you... I mean, I thought perhaps...'

'Shut. Up.'

'But listen... I'm part bear. I'm sure we'd be good together. You know, compatible.'

Marianne glared down at me. 'Get this, pooch. Listen up, doggie. Understand. You lay another paw on me and I will kill you. I'm not interested. End of.'

'You mean it's Der-der. I'm not Der-der and it's him you want.'

The panda ignored me.

'Is it because he...?' I stopped talking just in time. Mariannie raised her paws and turned her head so that I could not see her face. I wriggled out from underneath her, gasping for breath. The panda spoke into the night.

'You know nothing. Nothing about me, nothing about Der-der, nothing about this land, nothing about the world or the stars or the Blessèd sun. You are ignorant. I knew that when I took you on. You are not the first of your kind that I have met. But I did not think you were stupid as well as ignorant.'

'I'm not stupid.'

'No? Then prove it. Look around you. Pay attention to what you see and hear. Keep them in mind. Try to comprehend them, if you can. Work things out in your head.'

'I am remembering things. I'm sure I know more than I did when I left the compound. But you're right. There's still a lot I don't understand.'

'Then concentrate some more. Make an effort. Do you think I'm on this trip for the good of my health? Or because I like you? Now, I'm going for a walk. I want to be left alone. You stay here, little puppy-dog and don't try to follow me. And if you ever try another stunt like that...'

'Yes, Mariannie. I'm sorry. I won't.'

'Then perhaps you've learned something after all. Maybe there's hope for you yet.'

The panda shuffled off towards a nearby copse, leaving me alone and unable to sleep. Thoughts spun around in my head; of humiliation and shame, of course, but also... questions. Who was I? Why was I here? What was I doing? What would become of me?

There were no answers - none that came close to satisfying me or giving me peace. On and on they churned, and even as I tried to calm myself and tell myself there was no point in fretting - that in the end I would find out all I needed to know - I could get no rest beyond a few minutes of dream-haunted sleep.

The Blessèd sun rose and I rose with it. Mariannie had returned at some point and lay gently snoring a few yards away.

It was the beginning of the last day.

[Peter]

Mariannie and Monty reach the end of their journey and Jonathan has a revelation.


Fliers


'Look!'

'Look where?'

'Over there.' Cameron Powell took hold of my left arm and wrenched it over to the right. 'There. Where you're pointing. See?'

'Ouch! Yes, all right. You can let go of me now. I can see them.'

Aeroforms. I might have guessed. The good doctor was going to tell me all about his precious aeroforms, as if I cared.

'Doctor, do I really look like some who gives a...'

'Shut up, Jonathan. This is interesting.'

Sure it was.



The slope had come to an end. It had run out of steam, as it were, and become a flat grassy plain, interrupted by woods and cultivated land. Mariannie and I followed a staggered course, working our way around the perimeters of the forests and farms. We spoke little; and what we did say was direct and to the point. It was clear that the panda saw me as a burden, a duty to be done. But there were so many questions in my mind…

It was still a puzzle, why she had left her mate to help me. There seemed to be no reason why she should have agreed to take me on. She didn't particularly like me and she had left her beloved Der-der all by himself in helpless isolation thousands of feet up the peak from which we had descended. She would have a long and wearisome climb when she returned to him. I could think of no justification for her apparent altruism.

And there was another question. Where were we going? There would surely be a time when Mariannie would announce that we had arrived at our destination and that her task was complete. But I had no conception of where this destination might be, or what I would do once I reached it.

In the meantime we followed the Blessèd sun southwards, ever southwards, and I continued to drink in the beauty of the greater world. For it was beautiful - far more lovely than I had dreamed it could be when I was living under your wardenship in the compound. My heart was lifted by the sheer physical exuberance of our surroundings; the air was richer and more full of life than it had been further up the mountain, the sky brighter and more blue. The ground was soft under my paws, not rocky or hard, and despite the way it slowed me down and blocked my forward vision, I loved the tall grass with its cool scented pollen drifting in the gentle breeze. Because of this obstructing grass, I had to follow Mariannie's lead and accept on trust that she knew where she was taking me. We were still tracking the river, but keeping a fair distance from its bank because the ground became increasingly marshy as you approached it. The river was slowing down and spreading out, like a man approaching his middle years.

From time to time a cloud crossed the sky in front of the Blessèd sun and robbed the air of its radiance, but these interruptions were short and, in the brief respite they gave us from the heat, welcome. Mariannie must have been suffering dreadfully from the lack of shelter. Her fun was thick and shaggy and better suited to the cooler airs of the mist-drenched slopes far above us, while mine was short and bristly. There was more of wolf than bear about me, that much was obvious. Wolf and bear - yes, but what else?

Every fifteen minutes or so Mariannie stopped and held a forepaw up for silence while she listened carefully. What she was listening for I could not say and I could hardly ask her; not while she needed me to be quiet. I supposed she was trying to detect the sounds of men out looking for us. There were man-made sounds all around us already, of course. The farms we skirted were being worked by machinery - some manned, some robotic - but those sounds did not seem to worry her. Each time the Blessèd sun was dimmed she looked upwards in alarm, expecting, no doubt, to see an aircraft overhead, but there were none, merely wisps of cirro-cumulus. She must have heard something else, concealed in the soughing of the grass, because she never looked satisfied but continued our hike with a sad shake of her head, giving off an increasing sense of unease that I could not help picking up myself.

So our journey continued, in a jumble of intense pleasure and nervous uncertainty.



'Aeroforms! Is that all you wanted me to look at?'

'They are special aeroforms, Jonathan. Unusual. Come; look and learn.'

Doctor Powell took a small instrument from his jacket pocket. It resembled a whistle, made of glass and alloy. He held it up to his mouth and blew - three short notes, intensely sweet.

We were standing at the tip of a steep promontory on the northern coast of the land of Falls. A mild air was blowing across the land and a cluster of five 'forms was moving with it. I hadn't forgotten the doctor's assertion that aeroforms had held the net that caught me as I fell from orbit, but neither had I given it much credence. There was something about Doctor Cameron Powell that made him difficult for me to trust - or to distinguish between truth and invention in the accounts he gave and the claims he made. The way he looked, or didn't look at you when he spoke. An allusiveness in his speech; nothing was clear or direct or what it seemed at first. The fact that it always seemed to be my turn to buy the drinks. So I'd been charitable and assumed that his apparent untruths were actually metaphors or maybes or perhapses. I mustn't exaggerate this, though. A lot of the time he said what he meant, simply and straightforwardly. But not all the time, and that was the problem. I could never tell when he was kidding me.

I had let him take me up the coast from the shipyard of Lodge-in-the-Falls, where the El Dorado was being transfreighted, for this day trip because... because it was something different, a break from the routine of shipboard life. I seemed to have been spending all my time locked into routines while I was on observing duty at Sally's North Pole. It had been irksome to find that the freedom I'd thought I'd enjoy on Glory was, so far, non-existent. The Board's timetables were far too rigid and inflexible for me in my present state of mind. But I wasn't quite ready yet to adjust to complete self-determination, it seemed. If Doctor Powell hadn't accompanied me on the previous night's excursion into the more extreme entertainments the airman's quarter of Lodge had to offer, I'd probably have woken up in a cell, Monitor and Guardian or not, so when he proposed a trip up the coast I agreed readily enough. It'd keep me out of further trouble, if nothing else, and would be a way of repaying him for his intervention with the Governor.

'Nice whistle,' I said. The doctor removed the instrument from his lips. 'Can I have a go?'

'No,' was the curt reply. 'Now watch!'

He pointed to the clutch of aeroforms. I didn't notice what was going on at first, but then it registered. They had been moving with the wind, across my line of sight but now, although the pressure of the air on my face had not altered, they had changed direction and were sailing slowly, but determinedly, towards the doctor and me. He had called them and they had answered.

I had never heard of an aeroform that could propel itself. Cameron Powell was right - they were unusual. I stood and watched as the group came closer. Soon they were directly overhead, fifty feet or so above us.

'If you wouldn't mind…' The doctor pointed to the left. 'Twenty yards or so will do.' I walked over the soft, springy grass of the headland. The water was far below us on an ebbing tide and the sound of the waves had been receding steadily while Cameron Powell and I had been standing looking out to sea.

'That's fine. Now wait.' My companion held up his arms. He looked like a priest caught in the act of invocation. Above us the aeroforms began to descend and I caught the sharp reek of their venting methane. Slowly, slowly they fell until they were only twenty feet above ground level. Their streamers surrounded Cameron Powell, veiling him in a multicoloured curtain of translucent material. The doctor lowered his arms until they formed a crucifix. His palms faced upwards. And to my amazement the aeroforms' streamers wrapped themselves around his arms, one by one, until they were completely clothed in red green and blue, intertwined in chromatic spirals.

'Stay here. I'll be back soon.' There was a soft sigh of inflating gas and Doctor Powell's feet lifted from the greensward; first a few inches, then a few feet and then suddenly so far above my head that I had to crane my neck backwards to see him.

'Won't be long,' came a cry from the heavens. I sat, dazed with wonder, on the turf. I had witnessed an ascension.



You would have been impressed by the way I adapted myself. I worked out - eventually - that I would make much better progress across the water-meadows adjoining the river if I raised myself up onto my hind legs. With less effort than I expected I became upright. Suddenly my eye-level was above the tops of the grass-stems and I could see for miles rather than a foot or two. 'Mariannie, look!' I cried out. 'Can you do this?'

'No. And stop showing off. Who's in charge here?'

'You are. But I'm not showing off, I'm finding our way. You tell me where we're going and I'll lead us there.'

The panda put a paw up to her ear. Then she lifted herself up, trying to copy me, I suppose. For a few seconds she teetered there, but fell back to earth with a heavy thump.

'Damn. All right, Montague Mutt, I suppose we'll have to do what you suggest. Tell me what you can see.'

I looked around. 'The river's about a hundred yards to the left of us. There's grass to the front of us and to the right. Then some stumpy hills and then nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'That's right. The hills are blocking the view. Wait a mo.' I turned around, nearly falling over. Behind us the mountain rose, up and up and up, rocky and forested and steep. I might have caught a glimpse of the Mansion and the compound but it was hard to tell through the haze. It was quiet; no sign of men at all, except for a hint of smoke behind the trees to our right.

'So, where now?'

'We'll keep on following the river. You can get down now if you like.'

I was feeling somewhat unstable, so I fell forward onto my front paws, shook my head and waited for Mariannie to start again. We kept on with our former track, except that now whenever we stopped I rose up and took a look around. Every time the view was the same, except that the hills in front of us grew a little nearer each time and, once or twice I thought I saw a disturbance in the savannah behind us - an irregular oscillation of grass stems - but when I looked again it had stopped. A pocket of swirling breeze; that was all it was. Nothing human.

Eventually, after an afternoon made up of quarter-hour walks and two-minute observations we reached the first rise of the hills. At the same time the character of the ground changed, becoming loose and granular, and the grass turned stiffer and sparser. The river to our left was now flowing through an impassable swamp, busy with flies and marsh-reeds, and there was a new, sharper smell in the air, carried by a light wind blowing straight in our faces. We climbed the two-hundred-foot incline of the hill, relieved to give our powerful rear legs a chance to work as they were intended. And at the top... everything changed.

The hill - it was a sand dune, of course - fell away steeply and turned into a beach. But not a beach as I had known them, with gentle waves lapping across rippled sands, or boisterous rollers charging over shingle and rocks. This beach went forward four hundred yards and then simply ceased; dropping away into abrupt, final nothingness. The sea itself only became visible an uncountable number of miles in the distance. From my left came the far-off sound of falling water. I turned and looked. The river was suffering the same fate as the beach, cast into oblivion. It had carved a horseshoe shape into the land as it fell so that I could see the foaming glitter of its fall, a mile or more away. Flying spray cast a rainbow over the near side, refracted through the mists that hung over all, blurring the sky.

These things were strange and extraordinary, but I hardly noticed them. There was something resting on the shore that was much more mysterious. A giant butterfly made of white metal, standing high on stork-like legs linked to saucer-shaped pads, stood on the sand. Four ovoid pods, open at their narrow ends, were fixed to the upper surface of each wing and, where a real insect's head would have been, flashed windows of transparent crystal. A fin rose up from the tail end of its body and on the side was painted the number 2. I looked and marvelled and tried to find some place in my memory where such a sight might once have been cached. Tried, and failed, despite a nagging insistence that meaning - vital meaning - must be linked to it. The wall still stood.

But even this alien craft was not the strangest sight on this strange shore. For somebody had set out a table and two chairs in the shelter of one of the butterfly's wings and in one of the chairs was sitting… I don't have to say, do I? You raised your arm and waved to me.

'Monty! You made it! Well done! Terrific - come on down and join us!'

I looked at Mariannie. 'Did you know about this?'

'What do you think?'

What did I think, indeed? It was bloody obvious what I thought. 'You've betrayed me, then.'

'I've brought you where you need to be. Monty, don't you realise what's been happening? Look around you. What do you see? What is this place called? You know, don't you?'

The words came unbidden to my mind. The Hanging Coasts of Gold. One of the natural wonders of Glory, to be compared with the ice-caverns of the Floating Pole, or the Spine and Shore of Edge or the Ringlands of the Archipelago of Grain. The tide was out now. When it came in, the rising sea would swallow up the waterfall and wash gently across the sands of the treacherous suspended beach.

'Yes,' I said with a sigh of resignation. 'I know.'

'Then let's go.'

I followed the panda as she made her ungainly way down the scarp side of the dune, not looking back. It was only a short walk across the beach, but difficult for me as my undersized paws sank deep into the loose-packed sand. They were wolf-paws, not designed to support the weight of my bear-body. At least, not in this gravity... Mariannie reached you first and I caught up with her a minute later. By the time I reached the shade of the butterfly-wing, you and she were deep in an intense conversation.

'Wait,' you told me, and to Mariannie you said, 'No, that's not possible.'

'But you promised,' said the panda, and for the first time her voice lacked the confidence and certainty that had coloured her speech with me. 'Please...'

'You know what can and what cannot be done,' you replied.

'But I have fulfilled my part of our bargain. I have brought him to you and see! He is nearly ready.'

'You have done well, I agree.'

'Excuse me,' I said, 'but would someone tell me what the hell's going on?'

'Wait.'

The Blessèd sun was not far from setting now. It was low in the sky to our left, casting lengthening shadows across the strand. I looked up at the orange-lit nose of the vessel, twenty feet above us. There it was, its name, the letters star-burned but still clear, the single word Show. Of course; what else would it be?

So much was becoming clear to me now, so quickly. 'No,' I said. 'I have waited long enough.'

'So have I,' said Mariannie.

'Then wait no longer. Look behind you...' You pointed back towards the dunes. I didn't see at first, what you were pointing at, but Mariannie did. With a soft, yearning cry she turned and ran - faster than I would have believed possible - to where her faithful Der-der stood, with his head tilted to one side and a joyful smile on his face.

[Peter]

It's been a while, I know.


Flight

'A revival? A successful one? After all this time?'

'Yes, Ilse.'

'Wholly successful?'

'Yes indeed.'

Ilse turned from the screen and looked out of her cabin's porthole at the sea and sky marching past in a procession of white, green and blue.

'But I should warn you...'

'Yes, 'Down?'

'There have been one or two... complications.'

Ilse sighed and looked forward into the screen where the 'Down's avatar sat facing her. 'Go on. Tell me.'



The show-off doctor dangled under his whiffy chums the aeroforms for at least half an hour. I think I was meant to be impressed and so I was. A bit, anyway. But that whole being-impressed thing was over and done with after the first five minutes of watching him float around and after that it became rather dull for me. I'm sure he was having a foy of a time.

But eventually it must have palled for him as well because he and his tame balloons floated back over the land and settled to the ground. The doctor unwrapped the streamers from his arms and waved goodbye to the 'forms. They did something complicated involving streamer-twirling in response and, caught by a sudden gust of wind, flew away.

'Was that fun, Doctor Powell?' I asked as we followed the track that led down to the access road.

'Fun isn't quite the right word, Jonathan.'

'What is, then?'

'Fulfilment. Communion. Peace. Something like that. I feel more complete.'

He was talking like a Cultist. Had he simply exchanged 'Down-worship, such as Captain Probert practised, for a different and weirder travesty of faith? I was bored and irritated by the silly look on his face so I thought I'd play him along for a while.

'Do tell me more, Doc.'

He stopped and turned to face me. His eyes were vivid green under dark brows. Funny, I had hardly noticed them before today. He exuded a strange intensity. 'Is that what you want?'

'Sure. Go on. I've never heard of anyone hitching a lift from the 'forms before.'

'Except for you. When you landed.'

I had forgotten about that. Supposedly, the 'forms had caught me in a net and saved me from plunging into the foy-infested sea, not that I'd actually seen it happen, being too busy ~*pineapples*~ myself at the time.

'Yes. Sure.'

'You've no idea, have you?'

'I can guess. It must be a bit like reef-gliding or hanging off the side of a Board ship. Isn't it?'

'Oh yes. It's like that, I suppose. But that's not what I meant.'

'What did you mean, then?'

'I meant,' and those eyes flashed with irritation, 'that you have no idea of the cost.'

'Cost? Don't be daft! I'm a Monitor. You're a Monitor. We don't have to pay for stuff.'

'I don't mean money. Tokens don't come into it. I mean the true cost. I'll show you, if you really want to know. It is a heavy price, and terrible to pay.'

'Go on, then.'

'Don't say I didn't warn you.'

And he showed me the true cost.



With a soft whinny of delight, Mariannie skidded to a halt at the foot of the dunes where Der-der waited for her. The pandas embraced as I had seen them do when they parted, but this time with joy instead of sorrow. They clung to one another, white on black, black on white and, I am sure, spoke of their mutual love. I watched, half awestruck, half jealous. They had something I had not.

And it was wonderful.

'Sad, isn't it?' you said.

'Sad?' What in the world could you mean?

'Yes, sad. They're so ill-matched. We can't possibly let them breed, and as for full incorporation...' Your voice tailed off. 'It's out of the question. Completely impossible.'

I looked at you. 'Sorry?'

'You don't understand yet? But you will, Monty, you will. I can see you're nearly as advanced as Mariannie has suggested. Only a little further and you'll truly be one of us. As much as you ever can be, of course.'

You still spoke in mysteries, but I reflected that I had learned a great deal in the two nights and three days since I had left the compound. No doubt there was still more that I had yet to discover. You reached down and put a hand on the bristly fur behind my ears. 'Not long now.'

The two pandas padded slowly across the beach towards us. You advanced to meet them. 'See!' cried Mariannie. 'You cannot deny us now.'

Your reply was too soft for me to hear. Mariannie's was not. 'How dare you! How dare you call him a failure!'

'But he is,' you said. 'Look at him. Look with open eyes and you will see it.'

'I tell you again; I have done as you asked. I have brought him,' she meant me, 'to you. I have trained him. I have uplifted him, as you required. He is close - very close. You can finish what I have started.

'And now, in return, I want my payment. I deserve it. It is my right.'

You sighed. 'I cannot give you what you ask. Look at Der-der. Really look at him. Do you see any hope? Don't you think that, if he could be saved, he would have recovered by now? How long did it take with Montague? Two days? And how long have you and Der-der known each other?'

'Thousands of years, of course. Why do you ask?'

'And here, on Gold?'

Mariannie's reply was muffled by the fur that puffed out around Der-der's neck. You heard her all the same.

'Two years. Longer than that. You have been trying to bring him back for over two years now and you have failed. Let go, Mariannie. Let go.'

'I will not!' The panda left her mate and approached you. 'I will make you!' She came closer still and reared up on her hind legs, as I had shown her on the grassy plain behind the dunes. 'Take us to the Mansion now. Incorporate us! Or I will kill you.' Her claws slid out, lethally sharp.

Dismayed, I withdrew behind the table.

You reached to your belt and drew out a shining metal thing. 'Step back!' you said. 'Or I swear I will shoot you.' You pointed to the sky. A vivid lance of fire flew from your hand, crackling and scalding the air as it passed.

Mariannie fell onto her forepaws.

'Coward!' she spat. You lowered the weapon so that it was pointing directly at her face.

'I have told you to go. Now go! And take the empty cripple with you. There is no hope for him, and if you carry on in this manner you too will be condemned.'

'What is happening?' I asked in an unsteady voice.

'Silence!'

And now memory becomes deceptive and unreliable. I cannot easily piece together the correct sequence of events in my mind. I know that Mariannie turned. I recall that your hand twitched threateningly. I saw how her shoulders slumped. I do not remember if she said anything. And I was not Der-der, so I do not know what he saw and I cannot begin to imagine how he interpreted it. Except for this; that he saw his mate treated cruelly and menaced with a deadly weapon. And I know that he was loyal and brave and strong. And so his ruined mind saw a threat to the one he loved the most in all the world, and so he reacted in the only way he could.

With a wild cry Der-der lowered his head and charged straight at you. His right forepaw reached out to rip your face. And so, I suppose, in your turn you did the only thing you could. You pulled the trigger of your weapon and its sharp beam raged forth and ripped Der-der's head from his body in one short stroke, so fast he had no time to scream. The dying panda crashed into the Show's forward landing strut, shaking the whole craft. His head rolled a short distance from the table and spilled its contents onto the virgin sands. The stench of cooked flesh and burned hair was foul, abominable, and I retched black bile, bitter and burning in my throat. I had never seen anything so terrible and the horror it engendered in me was like a monster, a physical thing, looming up in front of me and blinding me with fear.

I looked up, blinking back the darkness that had invaded my sight. You stood, dazed, by the table, a few feet from me. The muzzle of your gun glowed a dim orange. Ten yards away, Mariannie was frozen in shock and unable to move. I vomited again as Der-der's body twitched and his contracting lungs groaned and sighed. Blood pumped onto the ground, the flow dwindling even as I watched. We did nothing, any of us, for many, many heartbeats. Then Mariannie shook her shoulders and slowly walked towards us. You raised the gun again.

'Do not be afraid,' she said, almost inaudibly. 'I will not harm you. There is no need to murder me as well.' She lowered her face to Der-der's and nuzzled it for a few moments. She may have said goodbye to him. And then with a shake of her head she turned and faced south towards the invisible sea. The Blessèd sun was now only a finger's width above the hills and the panda's shadow streamed across the ground to her left. She walked away from us.

'Wait!' you called out. 'Wait! Come back! We must talk.' But I could tell that we had come to a place outside speech and so, I think, could you, for you fell silent. Mariannie broke first into a trot and then a full run. She sped away from us as quickly as she had run to greet Der-der only ten minutes before. And when she reached the end of the shore she did not stop, or hesitate, or turn and look back, but with a great heave of her powerful back legs she threw herself into the air and leapt over the edge of the land and soared headlong into the gulf beyond and plummeted to the sea, many hundreds of feet below. The rays of the Blessèd sun caught her in her flight, dyeing her coat in patches of funeral red and black. And then, soundlessly, she was gone, and all that remained of her were footprints buried in the sands of the last hanging shore of Gold.