“I, too, killed someone once.”

Ashmael searched in vain for some nuance, some inflection of emotion, to tell him if Arahal was proud or ashamed of his admission. That he could find none did not surprise him – Arahal was a har who spurned the excesses of emotional incontinence; aloof and ascetic, he embodied the very essence of Gelaming philosophy.

To hear him announce that he was a murderer was almost like discovering that that world really was flat, after all, or that water flowed uphill, or the Tigrina was a modest, self-effacing individual who enjoyed a purely casual and offhand relationship with his looking-glass.

“It was a very many years ago.” Arahal picked up a long, ivory candle and set it in an ornate holder upon the altar. He encircled it with both his hands, not touching it, but seeming rather to caress it from a distance. A pulse of rainbow-coloured light arced across the space between his curled fingers, and a flame blossomed on the candle’s wick.

“Things were different. In the beginning.”

Ashmael stared into the heart of the flame, the pale blue centre where the light was in the process of being born before it rose to become the yellow corona above. The flame undulated in response to some small current of the air, moving in a way that suggested life. Ashmael knew it was simply an artifact; the complexity of numbers could explain it. Sometimes things were simpler than they appeared to be.

“It must have been difficult,” he said, not taking his eyes from the flame, “in the beginning.”

In the small halo of brightness, he could almost see the burning cities. The paroxysms of fear and destruction attending the collapse of human civilization. The violence and terror. A new type of creature arising from the ashes of the old, beautiful and deadly. Born in the heart of the flames. Wraeththu.

“No,” Arahal lit another candle by more conventional means, touching its unlit wick to the already burning one. “It wasn’t. At least, not until much later. In the beginning – in the very beginning, there was still order and civilization. There were still things of beauty.”

Ashmael wondered to himself how many were left who remembered those days. Very few, and fewer still who would speak of them. There was one har who would know and remember everything, but Thiede was a closed book, and even Ashmael’s legendary and reckless courage did not extend to demanding answers of The Aghama.

He was suddenly curious about Arahal. Curious to know why a har of his abilities so often seemed content play a supporting role. Not for him the glamour of Immanion, or a position on the Hegemony, although Ashmael knew he would have been a better choice than some of those currently serving on that august body.

“Tell me about it,” he demanded. “Tell me what it was like.”

Arahal lit the last candle and placed it carefully in position. He stood back and admired his handiwork. The three bright flames hovered over the altar in a pleasing harmony. Two would not have been enough. Four would have been too many. Sometimes it was obvious when perfection had been attained.

With his customary economy of movement, Arahal turned to look at the other har. The light of the candles behind him illuminated his pale hair, throwing silvery strands into sharp relief. His eyes, too, appeared glittering and metallic, although Ashmael could not remember if this was their natural colour, or simply a consequence of the lighting. It was, in any case, impossible to read anything from that reflective gaze. There were no burning cities, and no strange, lost things of beauty held within.

Arahal regarded him thoughtfully, as if weighing up the request.

“It’s not about me,” he said at last.

ii Ashmael

For all the unpleasant things that he had seen and done, he was rarely troubled by nightmares

Once, a fire had broken out in a meeting hall in the refugee camp of Imbrilim. Sixteen hara had been trapped inside and burned to death. He had gone to deal with it himself, and when he had seen the charred remains of the building and smelled the burnt flesh, he had sent the others away on spurious important errands and entered the still-smouldering ruins alone. The burned and twisted bodies, and the even the choking stench of cooked meat which had made bile and vomit scald the back of his throat, had never returned to haunt his dreams.

But then, he hadn’t killed them himself.

The grave, calm face of the har whose life had ended on the point of his sword not three weeks past wore no expression of accusation or reproach, but every night it woke it from his sleep. Lying in the dark, he could not rid himself of the image. It burned in front of his closed eyes, and refused to let him return to the welcoming oblivion of his dreamless sleep.

Ashmael was not superstitious by nature. He did not believe that the souls of dead hara remained in limbo to torment their killers, and even if they did, it seemed logical that the intensity of anger or other emotion which could prevent such a soul from moving on to the next cycle of existence would manifest itself as something rather more dramatic than a dream face. Nevertheless, he invoked various rituals of exorcism, drew circles on the floor around his bed, and called upon the Dehara to release any malignant or trapped spirits.

The dream face continued to appear each night.

Eventually he sought advice from somehar with knowledge of how the subconscious mind can work tricks upon the owner of that mind.

Cal had laughed. Not unkindly – more in his usual spirit of acknowledging that the world would do its worst, and there was nothing to do but accept that fact. In many ways, Ashmael admired Cal for his fatalistic attitude. There was nohar more attuned to the reality of existence, or less likely to be disappointed by its outcome, but since he did not particularly want to be seeing that face every night for the rest of his life, and he considered that there ought to be at least some advantage to belonging to a tribe as spiritually and mentally advanced as the Gelaming, he thanked Cal for his counsel and sought a second opinion from somehar whose approach to such things was rather more traditional.

Arahal had not laughed.

“It is not the har you killed who is unquiet. The trouble lies within yourself. Look inwards to find the answers.”

Ashmael wondered if there was an alternative to looking inward. A different incantation, or ritual, perhaps. He also wondered if there was anyhar else in the world who used the word “unquiet”. It seemed unlikely, on both counts. He sighed. The lit candles upon the altar seemed to signify the preliminary stage of self-examination, but he was unwilling to take the first step. And besides, Arahal’s unexpected confession, and brief, tantalizing reference to his own past had intrigued him. He remembered from his youth how he had been able to postpone an undesirable event – a too-early bedtime, an unwanted bath – by soliciting tales and reminiscences from those charged with his care.

What was it like in the old days? Tell me a story…

Arahal was not so easily manipulated. And yet, it was true that most people wanted to talk about themselves, given the opportunity. Especially if they had already volunteered a beginning.

“Tell me about it, “ he demanded, sensing the chance of escape, or at least postponement, from his own self-examination. “Tell me what it was like.”

He dismissed Arahal’s attempt to change the subject.

“If you didn’t want to discuss it, you wouldn’t have brought it up.” he pointed out.

The candle-light flickered behind Arahal. Shadows skulked in the corners of the room.

“That is so.”

This was not the reply Ashmael had been expecting, at least, not quite so soon, and he was momentarily nonplussed, but he realized he had the advantage now, and he pressed it home.

“Tell me. I want to know.”

iii – Arahal

The floor in front of the altar was covered in tasseled rugs and cushions. A small offering bowl filled with smouldering incense released its dark and smoky perfume into the air. Arahal knelt gracefully and positioned himself comfortably on a pile of cushions, indicating to Ashmael to do the same. He bowed his head toward the altar, and murmured a few low words.

When he turned to face Ashmael again, his expression looked different; his eyes no longer so blank or impenetrable.

“You know the beginning,” he said. “You know where we come from. You know who we come from. We build shrines to his memory, and yet he walks among us still. We tell the tale of his genesis to awe-struck harlings as if it were already myth, mutated by time, distant and unverifiable, and yet it is not myth but fact. A real life.”

“It is sometimes easy to forget that all history is real lives, lived by real people. Perhaps it is important for those who remember those lives to pass their remembrances on, so that they will not perish on the sword of mythology.”

Ashmael shifted a little on the pile of cushions, trying to find a more comfortable spot, since it seemed that Arahal’s tale would be a long time in the recounting, if his portentous introduction was anything to go by. Arahal appeared not to notice his restlessness – he himself remained still and calm, rather like one of the statues in the gardens of Phaonica.

“You know of the end of mankind. The crumbling, decaying cities, and the wretched creatures who inhabited them. That was how it was for some; for many. But not for all. If you’re bored, Ashmael, we can move onto some meditative techniques to help you visualize your inner turmoil.”

Ashmael looked up guiltily. “No, I was just… visualizing the decaying cities and wretched creatures. Were you a wretched creature, Arahal?”

Something approaching a smile almost flickered across Arahal’s lips.

“No, I was not. I was as far from being a wretched creature as it is possible to get. I was among the privileged and cosseted, and I lived a life of ease and comfort dedicated to learning. It was a lie, of course – outside our little sealed bubble the cities were decaying and something strange and new was beginning to take root, but inside we could pretend that nothing had changed, and that civilisation would continue exactly as it had always done. We thought we could hold back the tide. We were wrong.”

Arahal lifted his left arm and looked at thin, white scar on his forearm. He ran his fingertips along it, as if he was surprised to still see it there after all these years. Ashmael did not have to ask what it was, for he bore a similar mark himself. The scar of inception.

“They came for everyone in the end,” Ashmael said softly. “Even those who thought they were safe.”

Arahal nodded. “That is so,” he agreed “There was nothing that mankind could do to save themselves. Their time was at an end, and ours was beginning. But they did not come for me. I went to them. I went to him.”

A slight shiver made its way down Ashmael’s spine. He had suspected that Arahal’s history went further back than the har had ever admitted, but he had not imagined that it was quite so intimately entangled with the progenitor of their kind.

“You mean… Thiede?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Thiede never involved himself directly with the creation of our race, at least, not after the first inception. He left that to others. One other in particular. In fact, it was Orien who realized the incredible possibility, and what had to be done to achieve it, as well he might, since he was the first inceptee.”

Ashmael recalled the story, as it was told, of the first and the second Wraeththu. How much of it was true and how much of it fantasy would never be known, because of those who had been present, one was now dead and the other would reveal no secrets, but the circumstances had obviously been unique. In the beginning, there had been no such thing as inception, just an accident, and experiment, and a vision of a possible future.

“He came to me, in my dreams,” Arahal said quietly, his expression distant, as if he was being drawn back physically to those strange times, across the uncrossable divide of time and recollection.

“Dreams are a way in which our minds can access other dimensions.” he explained unnecessarily to Ashmael, giving him a meaningful look. “In them, we can find connections both to others of our kind, and to ourselves. If we know how to use them properly.”

Ashmael now expected the conversation to take a sharp left turn into the proper ritual and visualisation techniques required to interpret and manage dreams, but Arahal continued to stare into the darkened distance of the room behind them, as if he could see the ghosts of events long past as clearly as he could see Ashmael himself.

“I dismissed them at first, of course. During my waking hours I put all thought of those strange, recurring dreams from my mind. Yet every night, in my head, that insistent voice called to me, speaking to me of things beyond all my limited experience.”

“Naturally, I assumed I was going mad, and some research through the heavy, academic tomes in the library only seemed to confirm this diagnosis. I could not speak of my experience to my teachers since they would have either dismissed the phenomenon as a mere product of my imagination, or – worse still – seized upon me as an experimental subject. There was only one person in whom I could confide…”

Ashmael waited for Arahal to continue his story, but the other har fell silent. The darkness seemed to close in around them again. Ashmael didn’t know if he was expected to provide some sort of prompting or encouragement at this point, or to hold his peace and remain the respectful acolyte to Arahal’s enigmatic master. This was against Ashmael’s nature – he was a problem-solver; a believer in direct action. He did not wait for answers to come to him; he went out and found them himself. Sitting in the dark in the hope of enlightenment suddenly dawning out of nowhere did not seem to him to be the best course of action, but he contained his frustration as best he could under the circumstances.

Eventually Arahal spoke again, and Ashmael thought he detected a note of wistfulness in the words;

“I had a friend. We were close. Very close…”

“I see.”

Arahal shook his head sadly. “No you don’t.”

Ashmael reflected that he was as close to hitting Arhal as he had ever been, or was likely to be at any point in the foreseeable future. Doubtless such a course of action would impede his spiritual progress and block his path to self-awareness even further – but it would make him feel a lot better!

“You can’t solve all your problems by swinging your fist at them,” Arahal noted primly, which only increased Ashmael’s irritation further.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” he growled, “It’s considered highly unethical to eavesdrop on another har’s private thoughts.”

Arahal produced what from any other har would have definitely been a smirk.

“I know,” he said.

“Ah, so you’re not as perfect as you pretend to be!”

“I have never pretended to be perfect. We all have our flaws. The trick is to be aware of them.”

“Being aware of them is not much good if you don’t do anything to correct them.”

Arahal inclined his head in a graceful gesture and smiled.

“Quite so. It’s very heartening to see you making such progress, Ashmael.”

Ashmael gave a disgusted snort and sprawled elegantly on the cushions, his long legs stretched out in front of him.

“Stop trying to be clever. Tell me about your “friend”.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Friend… or lover?”

“Why is that important to you?”

“Don’t change the subject. Friend or lover?”

There was the slightest of hesitations before Arahal’s reply.

“Lover.”

“Hah. I knew it.”

“Why are you so smug? It’s not such an unusual thing.”

“Few hara admit to having had such relationships prior to their inception.”

“Cal does.”

“Cal is a law unto himself.”

“Many hara had… “relationships”… as you put it, before they became hara. In a lot of cases, it is what drove them to become hara.”

“Is that what drove you to become har?”

“No.”

“Of course not. You were seeking spiritual enlightenment.”

“Actually, as it happens, I was.”

“Through the medium of aruna”

“That is one path. There are others. Tell me about the har you killed.”

“I already told you.”

“Tell me again.”

iv – Ashmael

It had been a routine mission. The hinterlands of Thaine were technically under Gelaming control, and the disparate tribes nominally united under the Tigron’s benevolent guardianship. There was no anarchy, as there had been in Megalithica; no determined adversary, as there had been in Ponclast. Only the occasional malcontent or petty brigand, seeking some unremarkable personal gain.

A calamity is still a calamity to those who experience it, even if they are few in number.

Ashmael and his band of trusted and capable hara arrived like avenging angels; a sudden crack, an instant of light, and an unexpected blast of freezing air which vanished as quickly as it had arrived, leaving in its place the snorting, stamping, sedu and their majestic riders, shaking a cloud of sparkling frost-crystals into the warmth of the morning.

The village was small – scarcely more than a handful of houses set in a small valley. A narrow river ran close by, and the surrounding fields were full of carefully-tended crops. It looked to be the very essence of rural utopia – calm and peaceful, the silence only broken by the occasional bleating of a few sheep and goats.

A little too peaceful , Ashmael noticed. He was accustomed to his spectacular, sedu-accompanied entrances producing a stir in small places like this. Harlings would run out, shouting and pointing, while adult hara would stare from a distance, equally awe-struck.

There were no open-mouthed harlings here. No adults either. The silence suddenly seemed sinister rather than peaceful. His unit of soldiers fanned out and began their systematic search of the village. They were all trained professionals, and had conducted this type of operation many times. He had full confidence in their abilities, so he remained with the sedu in the centre of the small cluster of buildings, observing everything closely.

One by one the houses were searched, and found empty. There were no signs of violence; no overturned furniture, no broken crockery, no blood. The houses were all neat and immaculately kept, and it was easy to imagine that their occupants had merely gone out for a short while and would be returning any moment. Something – experience, or intuition, or both – told Ashmael that this was not the case. He felt cold, despite the increasing warmth of the mid-morning sun.

Something moved, on the very edge of his peripheral vision, and he turned quickly, unsheathing his sword from years of habit. A har was approaching him, walking slowly over the short, tough grass. He did not seem alarmed or distressed in any manner, but Ashmael kept his sword at the ready, just in case.

The har stopped a few paces in front of him. His face was a study in beatific calm. His clothing looked clean and well-cared-for. Only his hair- shoulder-length and dark, and strangely unkempt – seemed at odds with his appearance.

Perhaps he just forgot to brush it this morning . Ashmael thought, rather bizarrely.

“I think you’ll find what you’re looking for over there.”

For a moment, Ashmael was confused. The har was pointing in the direction of a small rise, to the right of the main centre of the village. Ashmael could see nothing apart from what appeared to be a raised grassy bank.

The har looked at Ashmael, grave and expectant. Ashmael gripped his sword more tightly, and followed after the har as he led him through the centre of the village and towards the grassy rise. He summoned his unit to join him, and one by one the Gelaming hara appeared from the houses to form a tight, professional cohort behind him.

As they approached the grassy rise, Ashmael could see that it was some sort of artificially created embankment, with a gap at one end. The har led them towards this section, and as they passed through, they found themselves in a large space, enclosed on all sides by green slopes as high as an adult har. It was obviously some sort of sacred, ceremonial space; an altar-like structure lay at the far end, and there were bunches of flowers and grains set at random intervals along raised banks. Sacrificial offerings to the village deities.

In the centre was an offering of a different kind.

At first, Ashmael thought the hara were sleeping, even though common sense told him this was unlikely to be so. It was a peaceful scene – hara lay, or sat slumped, in a circle, close to each other. The remains of food and drink could be seen scattered about. It looked for all the world like the aftermath of a convivial outdoor meal whose participants had fallen asleep, replete and satisfied, except that Ashmael knew with a sick certainty that these were not sleepers, but bodies. He had seen too many of the latter to be in any doubt.

“What happened? Where are the others?” he demanded of the strange har, who still maintained his composed and impassive demeanour. Something about his unnatural calm bothered Ashmael.

“There are no others. Everyone is here.”

“The whole village?”

The har nodded. He walked over to the circle of bodies and pointed down at one of them.

“My hura.” He said. He pointed to the next body. “My hostling.” He walked on a little.

“My father. My high-hostling. My Guardian. His chesnari.” He stopped in front a harling, who could have been no more than about six years old.

“My brother.”

“What happened here?” Ashmael found himself almost shouting, demanding an answer from the har with rather more force than he had intended, but he found the disturbing scene in front of him, and the har’s studied lack of emotion unsettling. He wanted answers.

“We were celebrating Reaptide – they were celebrating Reaptide – I had drunk a little too much barley wine the night before, and I’d had an argument with Lorril, so I stayed in bed.”

Ashmael knelt down and picked up a discarded bottle which was lying on the grass. It was almost empty, but there was still a small amount of liquid in the bottom. He sniffed it cautiously, then placed it carefully back on the ground before wiping his hands fastidiously on the grass.

“What happened” he asked again.

The har looked away, in the direction of the distant forest on the horizon.

“Three days ago, a strange har came to our village. He wanted food and shelter, so we gave him it. He also wanted a companion for the night, but nohar was interested. We are a small community – most of us have – had” – he corrected himself fluidly – “chesnari, or a favoured partner. The har was displeased, I think. I also think he was of the Garridan tribe. They have certain knowledge and skills…”

“Poison.” Ashmael pronounced the word slowly and carefully, as if the syllables themselves were as dangerous as the substance he had detected in the bottle.

The har nodded.

“And you are the only one who survived?”

“Yes.”

Ashmael surveyed the grisly scene in front of him. Already, in his mind, he was planning the next step of the process; ordering his hara to collect the bodies together; deciding on whether to bury or burn….Obviously he could not let the surviving har remain in the village for that.

“We will take you back to Immanion,” he said. “We have grief counselors and healers. I…cannot promise you that it will be easy, but in time…”

“In time what?” The har seemed genuinely puzzled. “In time, my family and my chesnari will come back to life again?”

“No… I didn’t mean… “Ashmael felt distinctly awkward. These same words, this same conversation, had been required of him many times before, and yet it never became easier for all that.

“It’s alright,” the har said, giving him a sympathetic smile which seemed bizarre under the circumstances; as if their roles were somehow reversed and the har was the one offering comfort. “I’ve done my bit.”

“What do you mean?” Ashmael asked him warily.

“I told you what happened. It was important to do that.”

“Yes, it was. A terrible crime has been committed here, and it’s important that your friends and family obtain justice. That is why you must come to Immanion. You’re the only one left. You’re the only one who knows what happened.”

The har smiled tiredly. He was standing very close to Ashmael and it wasn’t until he bore down on his sword with the full weight of his body that Ashmael remembered the sharp, drawn weapon in his hand, but it was too late to do anything. The keen edge of the blade sliced into the har’s vitals with sickening ease. His face was close to Ashmael’s; so close that to an outsider it might have appeared that they were about to share breath, but all Ashmael was able to do was look into the har’s eyes – he had time to notice that they were gold-flecked brown, surrounded by dark lashes, before they filmed and lost focus, and the light behind them went out forever.

“You know,” said the har, and died.

v Arahal

“I don’t see how you can blame yourself”

“I never said I did.”

“And yet you dream of this har every night?”

Ashmael did not reply. The gold-flecked eyes which nightly woke him from his sleep bore no hint of accusation, they were simply there, in his head, along with the har’s last words

“You know”

“I don’t even know what his name was.”

“Do you want to?”

Ashmael shrugged. “What difference would it make?”

“Names are important. They have power.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Then why did you choose a new name for yourself when you became har?”

Ashmael found he had no answer for that. An unexpected draught stirred the air, causing the candle flames to gutter and throw long, attenuated shadows on the opposite wall. They looked to Ashamael like some malevolent wild creatures, crouched in the dark, circling and closing. He raised his hand in front of the candle and slowly clenched and unclenched his fist. The shadow hand on the wall did the same.

“We all do that,” he said.

“Pellaz didn’t.”

“Oh well pardon me for not being as special and unique as Pellaz!”

“Not everyhar can aspire to be as awesome as our Tigron.”

Ashmael was obliged to stare at Arahal quite closely for a few seconds before he was sure that the glint in the other har’s eyes was actually there.

“Very droll, I’m sure. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Did you change your name?”

“Of course.”

“And your… friend?”

“Not exactly.”

Ashmael was surprised. “He kept his human name?”

“Not exactly.”

“Would you care to be a little more vague about that? And if you say “Not exactly…”.”

“I’m not being vague – everything I have told you is the truth. It’s how you interpret it that matters.”

“Something is either true or it isn’t.”

“To me, the fact that I could discern someone speaking to me in my mind was true. To my colleagues, the fact that there was no voice to be heard was equally true.”

“They simply did not possess the skill or ability to hear it themselves. That does not mean it was not there to be heard.”

“And what of those who cannot hear, but believe none the less? Is that truth? Or merely blind faith?”

“There is faith,” said Ashmael caustically, “and then there is gullibility. It’s always wise to be able to tell one from the other.”

Arahal gave a short laugh. “No one could ever accuse you of being gullible, my friend. A little healthy scepticism is no bad thing, but if none of us ever took that leap in the dark, over the cliff of reason, we would miss many opportunities.”

“So it was faith that led you to follow the voices?”

“Not at all. I didn’t need faith. I knew. My friend had no such reassurance, and yet…”

“And yet he went anyway.”

“Quite so. I was not brave, Ashmael. I was young and inexperienced, and filled with fear of the outside world. I would not have ventured forth alone. Sometimes the greater part of achieving a goal is not believing in it yourself, but having someone else believe in you.

“That, I think, is what the tribes of Cordagne might refer to as a folie a deux ”

Arahal didn’t bother to hide his amusement. “If you say so, Ash. Perhaps a little shared psychosis is necessary to start great events in motion. At any rate, the sane ones stayed behind. And look where it got them.”

“Did you ask anyone else to go with you?”

“Of course not! I may have been verging on madness – allegedly – but I was far from being witless! It was forbidden to go to the city. It was a dangerous place. I’m sure you remember how things were.”

“How did you get there, then?”

“We stole a car.”

“Arahal! I am shocked! That a har of your unimpeachable standing and reputation should admit to larceny!”

“Ash, do try not to look quite so much like a virgin harling who has just discovered the manner in which his parents created him! Besides, you know perfectly well that if we all owned up to our youthful indiscretions, there would scarcely be a har in Immanion with his reputation intact. Yourself included.”

“I would defend my honour vigorously, but unfortunately you were at that party too, as I remember.”

“Yes, I was, and photography is not an art lost to Wraeththukind, and I do have the negatives, therefore I feel quite comfortable in telling you – in the sure and certain knowledge that it will go no further – that we smashed open the side window of an expensive vehicle, performed a useful trick involving an electrical short circuit in order to start the motor without recourse to the official key, and drove off without either of us ever having gone through the formality of acquiring the necessary licencing to do so.”

“All that heinous lawbreaking, and blackmail to boot!”

“I am more criminally inclined than you know.”

“My education continues apace! So, you set off in your stolen, hot-wired car, in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment…”

“Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”

“What was it like?”

“The car?”

“No, the city.”

Arahal looked thoughtful for a moment. “Abandoned, for the most part. Decaying. Those who remained represented the very dregs of human society.

“We ran out of fuel before we reached our destination. We had to leave the car and continue on foot. We were already deep in the ruins – there was no possibility of turning back, we simply had to keep going. We knew we were being followed – we could hear noises; the occasional mis-step of a foot on a loose brick or stone; rustlings, scurryings – what may or may not have been laughter. Occasionally we would catch a fleeting glimpse of something out of the corner of our eye, but it would vanish in the very instant we turned to look.”

“The smell was almost unbearable. It was summer, and the heat was oppressive. It was not like summer in Immanion, tempered as it is by the sea breezes. This – ”

Arahal’s face twisted in disgust at the memory.

“The buildings were crumbling, but they absorbed the heat of the sun – they seemed to suck it in, capture it and hold it. There were dead things among the ruins, that much was obvious. Animals – dogs, cats. Humans too, almost certainly. The smell of death was all around. The city was dying – its buildings and its inhabitants succumbing to the same disease.”

“Eventually one of the creatures who had been stalking us gained enough courage to show himself. Even for a man, he was ugly. A degenerate specimen, clothed in filthy, tattered rags. In his hand he held a lump of wood, crudely fashioned into a club, and he brandished it at us threateningly. Behind him, a few more of these creatures still lurked within the protective crevices of the buildings. I do not think they were an organised group of any sort – our assailant was not their leader. The others were merely waiting to see what would happen, and what the outcome of this confrontation would be.”

“I will not claim that I was not afraid. I had led a peaceful life, up until that point, sheltered from this sort of savagery, and I had no experience of fighting. And yet it is remarkable what one can do when one’s very existence is threatened. Besides, there were two of us, both well-fed, young and healthy. When he rushed us, we stood our ground and attacked him back, one on either side. He did not stand a chance – he was a miserable specimen, malnourished and riddled with who-knows-what diseases. My companion kicked his legs out from under him, and as he fell to the ground, I snatched his makeshift club from him and thrust my boot into his chest, pinning him to the ground.”

“I could see the terror in his eyes as I stood over him. His mouth was open, gaping, and I could see that what few teeth remained were brown and broken. I could smell the foulness of his body, and his breath. And I stood there with the club in my hand, thinking that it would be a merciful release if I were to dash his brains out there and then, and end his miserable life, for it was no life at all, merely an existence.”

“He could tell what I was thinking, of that I was certain. He stared at the club in my hand, raised ready to strike. And I steeled myself to do what was necessary.”

“You killed him?”

Arahal regarded him calmly.

“No, I did not.” he replied.

“You could have been forgiven for doing so.” Ashmael told him “Self defence.”

“I was not in any immediate danger at that point. And it was not my right to decide whose life was worth living or not. I let him go.”

“Very noble of you.”

“I kept the club.”

“Very sensible of you!”

“It was enough to convince the rest of our followers. They melted away into the rubble, and we continued on into the dead heart of the city. I began to wonder exactly what I had done. I had left the cloistered safety of wood-panelled halls and libraries and come to this place – an underworld of nightmares more fully realised than any description in a book. And I had brought with me the one person I cared for most in the world, putting us both in considerable danger.”

“If it had not been for my companion’s encouragement and determination, I doubt that I would have had the courage to continue. I would have fled back the way we had come, becoming lost in the grim and poisonous landscape, and no doubt eventually falling prey to one of the more determined of the city’s inhabitants. But the two of us together managed to maintain some semblance of courage. We took it in turns to reassure the other, clinging to the belief that we would find what we were looking for as grimly as drowning rats clinging to a piece of driftwood.”

“However, as you have kindly pointed out, merely believing in something is not enough. We were naive to think that we could find the source of my dream voices in that vast city’s carcass. We did not have the knowledge, or the ability. We were stumbling around blind, lost. In many ways, our situation was a metaphor for the plight of all humanity – don’t give me that look, Ashmael, sometimes the symbolic is a useful tool in one’s quest for inner understanding – and as with them, it took an outside force to rescue us from the blind alley we found ourselves in. You may decide for yourself whether the alley is metaphorical or not.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“We did not find him. He found us.”

“I take it you are not talking about Thiede, metaphorically or otherwise?”

“Everything our species does, or says, is about Thiede, metaphorically. But in the literal sense, it was Orien who discovered us in the ruins.”

“I recognised him immediately, even though this was the first time I had seen him. But I recognised him – his essence, his soul – from my dreams. Even if I had not, I would have know that he was not human. In many ways, he looked like all the other wretched inhabitants of this vile place. His clothing was torn and soiled; he had a feral look about him, a wild, uncivilised thing living among the squalour and the dirt. And yet… he was har. That is all that needs to be said. He carried a light with him. Inside him and around him. He was a thing of beauty in a place of ugliness, and my companion and I fell to our knees in awe.”

“Naturally, he had no time for this sort of nonsense, and he quickly hurried us away from that place to the basement of one of the nearby buildings. There were some others here – humans, like myself and my companion. There were no other hara that I could see. Although I did not know it at the time, there were only two hara in existence.

“And where was the other one?”

“Somewhere close by. But far enough away that he did not know of Orien’s plans.”

“I find that very difficult to believe.”

“I’m sure you do. There are a lot of stories told of the beginnings of our race, very few of which have any basis in fact. The truth is – and again, I did not discover this until later – that Thiede was kept in ignorance of Orien’s scheme to propagate the new species. Thiede wanted no part of such a plan – at least, not in the beginning anyway. But Orien…”

“Orien was a wise har and an inspiration to many.”

“Eventually, perhaps. But in the beginning, he was a fanatic.. He seized upon the accidental gift which had been bestowed upon him with all the fervour of a newly-converted religious zealot. He saw that where there had been one, and now two, there could be many. And so he gathered us together in his basement. There were twelve of us, and we were to be his experiment.”

“Did he call to the others like he did with you?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. I do not think the others had come as far as we had. They had the look of city-dwellers. Perhaps he simply chose them at random. I did not ask him then, and it is too late to do so now. I am not sure that you could have counted us as volunteers, for it was plain that none of us knew what it was we were volunteering for, including Orien himself. There were many things he did not know. He knew that whatever had caused his own transformation, whatever he had been infected with, was carried in the blood. Thiede’s blood. And now, perhaps, his blood too. But he did not know how long inception would take, or what its results would ultimately be. He did not even know the word “inception”, for it was yet to be used in this sense.”

“And so he assembled us there, his experimental group, twelve human subjects, and inoculated us with his own blood. He said that we would become like him, and if you had seen him there, an angel amidst all the filth and horror that surrounded us, you would have made the same choice that we made too, and gladly. We did not know what was to come. We only knew what we were leaving behind. Come – enough talk. It is time.”

vi Ashmael

The shutter release. The flash of light. The moment caught and held, fixed forever.

And then the universe continues, because that is what it does.

Ashmael was not surprised by his own nakedness; he remembered removing his clothing – not hurriedly, not in the fevered rush of an uncontrolled need that makes the hands shake and the movements clumsy, but slowly and deliberately, feeling the cool fabric slip from his body, to be replaced by the hot searchlight of another har’s gaze. Stripped of all his shields and coverings, he felt powerful. His body held magic, it could control the thoughts and desires of others, and yet the same spell was also cast upon him by that other. They were mirror images of each other. An equation which balanced.

Technically, Arahal was not naked. But there was no impediment to Ashmael’s view of the other har’s form. He could see everything – the long, lean limbs and their shadowy intersections. Muscle and bone, clothed in skin. No garment could ever fit so closely or clasp so tightly. The tight leather thong and its attached chain made a good attempt, though. Ashmael raised himself slowly, withdrawing his still hard ouana-lim from Arahal’s body with a slow deliberateness which made the other har shudder slightly. The chain had left an imprint on his own flesh; a line of small, circular marks leaving their evidence of where bodies had been pressed firmly together. The leather looped tightly around Arahal’s waist, then disappeared between the cleft of his buttocks. There was no fastening of any sort – Ashmael knew, for he had looked for one, and failed to find anything.

There was a small pile of similar bindings lying in a discarded heap on the floor, next to the candelabra. Arahal had insisted that this be lifted from the altar before they began their coupling. Now the polished ebony surface was consecrated only with his body, stretched out upon it in a form of supplication, one leg lifted and bent at the knee, long, silver hair spilling over the edge like a waterfall.

Ashmael did not set much store by the mechanics of ritual. Aruna was still aruna, whether it took place on an altar by candlelight, or in a rumpled bed. Arahal, on the other hand, insisted that all the observances be made. He had chided Ashmael for his lack of attention to detail.

“There are reasons,” he explained, without elaborating exactly on what those reasons were. “Everything has a purpose.”

Ashmael was not sure if found this as reassuring as Arahal obviously believed it to be. He watched as Arahal raised himself from the altar in one economically fluid movement. The silver chain around his waist glinted slightly in the candlelight. Arahal looked at him gravely.

“What did you learn?” he asked.

What did I learn? he thought, somewhat peevishly. I don’t know. What was I supposed to learn?

I learned how to undo all those infernal buckles and fasteners. I learned that some chains cannot be undone.

“I’m not sure,” he said neutrally, waiting for some clue from Arahal as to what he was expected to say.

Arahal gave one of his rare, dry laughs. “Oh come on Ash, it’s not like you to be so unconvincing.”

Ashmael reached across and touched the chain around Arahal’s waist. He tried to slip his fingers underneath it, between metal and flesh, but he could not, there was not enough room.

“I learned why you wear those things,” he said, indicating the pile of leather straps lying by the candelabra.

“You think so?”

Ashmael pulled a face. “Well I learned some new uses for them, at any rate.”

“Perhaps you did.”

“And I learned that you have a smug and supercilious way about you which can be very irritating!”

“You wouldn’t be the first to learn that, Ashmael.”

“And don’t think that inserting a very obvious piece of self-deprecation makes you look any better.”

“Point taken.”

“I learned how to make you scream, and beg me to stop, and then beg for more.”

“You’re not the first to learn that either.”

“What is this for?” Ashmael touched the metal chain around Arahal’s waist again.

“What do you think it is for?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking.”

“It is a remembrance.”

“Of what?”

“Of the one I killed.”

“Did it belong to him?”

“No.”

“How does it remind you of him then?”

“By making me aware of its presence, every second of every day.”

Ashmael inspected the chain with its accompanying leather thong more closely. It was not merely tight; it dug into Arahal’s flesh relentlessly. Ashmael was surprised that there were no visible wounds or abrasions marring Arahal’s perfect skin.

“It must hurt,” he said thoughtfully

“There would be little point in wearing it if it did not.”

“Isn’t that rather futile and masochistic?”

“You tell me, Ashmael. You wear one too.”

“I don’t think much of your analogy, Arahal. You could remove that if you really wanted to. You choose to wear it. I don’t choose to have… to see visions of a dead har.”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Touch it.”

Ashmael ran his fingers across the metal and leather again. He found it both repulsive and yet at the same time strangely attractive. He did not relish the thought of causing another har pain, but he recalled their recent coupling upon the altar; those other straps removed from Arahal’s body, only to be wrapped tightly around his own flesh, binding him fiercely. For the life of him he could not recall if the feeling had been of pain or of pleasure.

His fingers left the metal and glided professionally downwards, tracing the line of soft, silver hairs running down Arahal’s belly until they merged with the silky pelt covering his pubic arch, still damp and sticky with their mixed essences.

He felt Arahal’s body respond to his caress; felt the flesh harden, rise, become engorged and heavy. His own ouana-lim was still aroused from the last time – Ashmael was secretly proud of how long he was able to maintain that condition – so he took advantage of events to press his erection firmly against Arahal’s, feeling the pulsing heat of the other har’s flesh match that of his own.

His hand explored their mutual hardness, attempting to encircle both organs at the one time. He gave an exploratory squeeze, at first gently, then with more force. He was still unable to completely close his grasp, there remained a gap of some considerable distance between his fingers and thumb. Arahal shifted his position slightly, distracting Ashmael from his experiments for a moment. Ashmael looked up and saw the other har was holding something in his left hand, offering it to him.

He took the strap. The leather was soft and black, about three-fingers width, with a series of small perforations at one end, and a hard, metal buckle at the other. It was somewhat too long to be able to be fastened neatly around an erect ouana-lim, but when Ashmael wrapped it around his own and Arahal’s, he found that the buckle fastened comfortably at the last notch hole. It wasn’t tight, but it hugged pleasantly, the smooth leather feeling soft and sensuous against his hard flesh. He was acutely aware of the weight and inertia of the other har now attached to him. It wasn’t like penetrating another har’s body, no matter how tightly the soume-lam gripped. After about a minute, he experimentally pulled the strap a little tighter and managed to slide the spiked pin of the buckle into the second-last hole. He felt the pulsing in his ouana-lim increase, felt it grow even harder as the strap restricted the return of blood.

With his fingers he explored his own taut, throbbing flesh. It felt as if both ouana-lims belonged to him, as if he somehow had an erection which was twice as large as normal. He stroked the leather strap. It felt indistinguishable from his own skin; soft and warm and living. His fingertips gently traced the loose end, discovering as they did so that

vii Arahal

there were three notch holes left.

Arahal closed his eyes and concentrated on the sensation of Ashmael’s fingers playing over his ouana-lim. The leather strap was tight, but not painfully so – not yet. The constriction merely served to increase the sensitivity, and by association, the pleasure.

This was not exactly what Arahal had intended, but Ash was always a bit squeamish when it came to the soume role – Arahal could personally attest that it took some considerable patience to seduce the General onto his back – and besides, if he was being honest with himself (and given his lectures to Ashmael on that subject, it would be more than a little hypocritical if he were not), he had fantasized this very scenario on more than one occasion.

Arahal was a conscientious har, well educated in both the spiritual and physical aspects of aruna, and he took his duties as a counsellor very seriously. He did not, however, feel that any personal gratification achieved in the pursuit of those duties was anything to be ashamed of.

Leave that sort of self-flagellating nonsense to the Maudrans and their ilk.

He felt Ashmael attempt to pull away slightly, and he deliberately held his ground, refusing to move with the other har. He felt the pressure around his ouana-lim increase slightly, and a vague ache spread from just above his pubic bone down through his perineum. When Ashmael moved back towards him, the ache subsided, to be replaced with a feeling like warm, liquid honey flowing through his veins.

Arahal gasped slightly, and began to visualize a technique for delaying orgasm. He had studied this method in depth, and had once prolonged a session of aruna for three days using it. He did not think he would be quite as successful this time, but it shouldn’t be necessary. One day would suffice.

Another thrust of Ashmael’s hips, another rush of visions behind his closed eyes, and Arahal revised his estimate downwards yet again.

He focused his thoughts on the physical sensations being experienced by his body, trying to separate them from his conscious mind. The rhythm of his heart and breathing, both of them fast and urgent now, the heat of Ashmael’s body pressed hard against his own, and between them the unaccustomed, intrusive hardness that was both their ouana-lims bound firmly together. The tight constriction of the chain around his waist…

That was always there. Whatever he did, wherever he went. It was true, as Ashmael had pointed out, that he could have it removed at any time he chose. The metal was hard and durable, but there were blades and cutting devices which would slice through it easily enough. More elegantly, he could simply re-direct the energy contained within the very structure of the metal using the power of his mind. Arrange its component atoms in a different alignment, and the metal’s strength would fail. The Gelaming favoured this approach far more than brute force, both in dealing with the physical and metaphysical aspects of their world. But the chain was more than a physical thing; the metal could be removed, but what it represented would remain.

Nevertheless, Arahal kept the chain in place. He knew he would feel naked without it, which was something that he found almost amusing, since often his choice of clothing left him almost functionally naked anyway. If queried, he cited the warm climate he was frequently obliged to work in. It was rarely mentioned though – the Gelaming considered a har’s choice of clothing to be entirely his own business, and other tribes considered the Gelaming to be unfathomable in any number of matters, not just their apparel, and not worth the risk of offending through importunate queries.

The truth of the matter – which Arahal admitted quite freely to himself – was that the elaborate collection of chains, straps, thongs, clasps and knots with which he customarily decorated himself was a disguise. A distraction; a sleight of hand. While – as Ashmael had recently discovered – the various leather artifacts could be put to uses other than merely decorative, they were simply a deception. Their purpose was to conceal, and despite their flimsy lack of substance, it was something they did most effectively. In all those chains and bindings, what har would notice one more? The only one that mattered…

Hands slid roughly up over his body, from his thighs, over his buttocks, pausing to investigate with curiosity the path of the leather thong attached to the chain around his waist, then upwards over his back and neck and finally sliding a probing finger into his open mouth. Arahal obligingly sucked the finger. Denied access to the most urgent site of their mutal pleasure, Ashmael sought to find other erogenous zones to work on. He withdrew the finger from Arahal’s mouth and drew a wet curlicue over the other har’s breast, like an elongated figure of eight.

Without any conscious thought, Arahal knew it to be the sign of Aruhani, the Dehar of Aruna. For Ashmael to invoke the deity at this point was a good omen. Aruhani could open a har’s mind to many things, he was a powerful being. Arahal briefly wondered if Ashmael had considered the deity’s other aspects, for Aruhani was not only the Dehar of aruna, but also of life. And of death.

Placing his mouth over Ashmael’s, Arahal drew in the other har’s breath. Dense black smoke seemed to fill his mind, roiling and twisting, as if some unseen force were trying to create a pattern from the disorder. The darkness leaked from his mind and spread outwards, filling the room. Arahal began to consciously let go of his own thoughts, his own personality, and become one with the other har. Just as their bodies were bound together, so their minds must be. He was distracted slightly by the insistent throbbing from his ouana-lim. The strap felt considerably tighter now, quite uncomfortably so– perhaps Ashmael had somehow managed to advance it another notch, or perhaps it was simply his increased fullness and hardness as he approached orgasm.

He could feel nothing else now except the intensity of that sensation. Not the chain around his waist, or the hard edge of the altar pressed into his back. Neither heat nor cold. In calmness of his mind, he knew that Ashmael felt the same thing. They were as one. The blackness began to clear – he thought he could see stars above his head, as if the room they occupied had ceased to exist. A face seemed to form from the void, blacker than even the most starless of nights, black braided hair, black eyes. All the light in the universe seemed to be pulled into that darkness, never to escape again.

The vision flickered, the blackness receded, but the face remained. Different now, with unbraided hair and eyes of a tawny shade, flecked with gold. It looked at Arahal with an unmeasurable sadness.

Arahal felt his body reach the point of no return. Something, somewhere, escaped from its chains, breaking them like so many useless threads. There was a noise in his head which sounded like rain, and then, even as the vision vanished into nothingness, it spoke:

”You know”

He threw back his head to scream, but found himself unable to do so.

The moment caught and held, fixed forever. The flash of light. The shutter release.

And then the universe continues, because that is what it does

viii Ashmael, Arahal

It took Ashmael some time to unbuckle the strap. There was a copious amount of aren – unsurprisingly really, under the circumstances – which rendered the leather and metal slippery and wet, and his hands were shaking a little, which he put down to exertion, but in the end he managed to slip the pin from its hole – still the second from the end – and remove it from himself and Arahal.

Arahal waited patiently while Ashmael performed this task, leaning back slightly against the altar. This did not make Ashmael’s job any easier, and he suspected that Arahal was intentionally delaying things for his own personal gratification – it had not escaped his notice that Arahal rather enjoyed having his ouana-lim handled.

Oh come now, Ashmael. There’s not a har in Immanion who doesn’t nightly dream of being on the receiving end of your attentions!

Arahal’s mind touch was sardonic, and Ashmael merely snorted in reply and continued tugging at the leather strap until it was eventually unfastened and removed. He held it in his hand and examined it closely and speculatively, running his finger over the five holes. Only the very last hole, closest to the buckle end, looked unused.

“You’ve used this quite a lot, I see.”

Arahal shrugged in a non-committal way.

“Occasionally,” he admitted. He noticed Ashmael’s rather dubious expression as he continued to inspect and count the holes.

“Not all hara are created equal, Ashmael,”

Ashmael looked confused, and Arahal sighed.

“The Dehara are not quite so generous to some with their gifts as they have been to you. And I.” he added hastily.

Ashmael thought for a second.

“Oh, you mean some hara have only got small…”

“Yes, quite. Let us not dwell any further upon their misfortune.”

Ashmael looked down at his own gift from the Dehara and preened a little.

“Size doesn’t matter,” he said magnanimously.

“There speaks the voice of a har who is rarely soume! However if this misapprehension of yours is the source of your dissatisfaction, I can recommend a har who will more than fill your needs. So to speak.”

“No thank you!”

“Are you sure? He’s really quite… unique.”

“I’m not interested. That sort of thing doesn’t attract me at all …. How unique?”

In reply, Arahal reached down and picked up another of the leather straps from the floor. He stretched it out to its full length, showing it to be twice as long as the one Ashmael was holding.

Ashmael stared at it, blinking in surprise, then laughed.

“So you have got a sense of humour after all.”

“Possibly.”

Ashmael grinned and tossed the strap he was still holding to Arahal.

“Here. I believe this is yours. It could do with a clean.”

“I prefer it dirty.”

“You know, Arahal, you are slightly stranger than I had previously given you credit for.”

“Thank you. I think.”

Ashmael began to pick up his clothing from where it was lying discarded on the floor, but he did not dress himself immediately. Instead, he laid them carefully upon the altar. In the candlelight his naked body glowed a soft, golden hue, matching his hair. He looked like a gilded statue of an ancient god. In contrast, Arahal was a pale and silver ghost

“Did you see him?” Ashmael asked the question casually, but he did not look directly at Arahal as he said the words, directing them instead to the three candles which had been replaced upon the altar.. Their length had been reduced by over half. Ashmael thought that he should be able to calculate how long he had been here by that, but his brain refused to process the information.”

“Aruhani? Yes. I did.”

“No, not Him. Him.”

“Yes, I saw him too.”

“What does it mean?”

“How should I know? You were the one who invoked Aruhani.”

“Will they stop now? The dreams?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Perhaps Aruhani has taken the har’s spirt away. He is also the Dehar of death…”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps Aruhani wishes you to know that death is nothing to be fearful of. It is only the inverse of life. One cannot exist without the other.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“The dead har and his family are your responsibility now Ashmael.”

“How can they be my responsibility if they are dead?”

“You are the only one who knows what happened to them – how they lived and how they died. You must keep that memory alive. Preserve it within yourself.”

Ashmael stared into the candle flames, as if expecting a ghostly face to appear. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred.

He sighed in resignation. “I can do that, I suppose. It is not such an onerous burden.”

“No, it isn’t. Now get dressed, it’s time for you to go.”

“I’m not leaving until you tell me the rest of your story!”

Arahal looked suitably exasperated.

“I knew you were going to say that. Very well. Sit down over there. Yes – do please put your trousers on, it’s highly distracting.”

Ashmael reclothed his nether regions swiftly and settled himself down upon the cushions again. He noticed that Arahal remained naked apart from the glinting chain around his waist.

“You were in the cellar. With Orion.” Ashmael prompted.

“I know exactly where I was, Ashmael. Now, where was I…?”

Arahal closed his eyes and retraced his steps, back to earlier in the same evening, or possibly back decades and more.

“I do not recall much of what transpired after Orien infected us with his blood, but I have two memories, as vivid as if they happened yesterday, and as sharp as the knife he used to open the vein in my arm.”

“I remember the pain. If a harish life-span is counted as a thousand years, and I live every one in full, I will never forget the pain. Those who came after were more fortunate – there were drugs to numb the agony, but for us, the first, there was no such comfort. It was like being flayed alive, both inside and out. It was like being consumed by fire and acid, every nerve of my body screaming over and over again to have it stop.”

He paused, and Ashmael could see, in his nakedness, the small tremblings of all the muscles of his body. With a visible effort, Arahal stilled the tremors and continued.

“And I remember the one who came to us, and took pity on us in our agony, and laid his hands upon us and made the pain bearable as we squirmed and writhed in that dank place. I do not think he realized that we were conscious of his presence. Perhaps none of the others were, for I never heard any of them speak of it afterwards, but I could feel him, even though my eyes were blinded by blood and mucus. I could sense his presence. It was like looking into the sun, and seeing the glory and the destruction of it all. He burned so brightly, the fire within him, red flames all around him, as red as his hair…”

“Afterwards, when it was over, I awoke and lay calmly among the squalour and knew that the world was now a different place. Everything had changed. Everything. And nothing. The world outside looked superficially the same as it had done before, all filth and ugliness and death. But I had changed, in ways which I could not possibly have comprehended only three days previously. I was reborn in that foetid cellar, made new and whole, no longer the pathetic half-creature that is a human being. My hands explored my body and told me what my eyes, in the gloom, could not.”

“Orien was there to greet us, his newborn children. He was immensely proud of his achievement, I could tell. He felt himself a god who could create new life, and who is to say that he was wrong? I could feel the essence of his being far more strongly now. It was as if my previous connection with him had been through a great snowstorm, with a howling wind in my ears deafening me, and he so far away, but now everything was sharp and focused. I could see and hear and feel every little detail of him, and of the others of our kind in that basement. It was a wondrous moment, and I lay there, slowly coming to my senses, luxuriating in the sheer joy of it all.”

“What about your friend? Was he as thrilled to become har as you were?”

Arahal opened his eyes and looked at Ashmael with a degree of compassion which unnerved the other har.

“My friend was right next to me, lying against my side. I turned to look, but I already knew.” He smiled wistfully.

“She was quite dead. We did not know then that women could not be incepted…”

“It’s alright,” he continued gently, in response to Ashmael’s look of horrified distress, “It was a very long time ago.”

“That doesn’t… I mean, I know what it’s like. To lose someone. That you care for. I know…” his voice trailed off uselessly and Arahal placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“I know you do.”

“It’s different,” Ashmael said bitterly. “It shouldn’t be, but it is.”

“Of course it should be!” Arhal chided him. “Why should it not?”

“Every death is a tragedy.”

“And we are supposed to feel guilty if one particular death feels more like a tragedy than others?”

“I don’t know. Are we? Is that the Gelaming way?”

“I don’t know, but it is not my way”

“You must have felt something, surely!”

Arahal thought for a moment, a small ripple of some long-buried emotion passing briefly across his usually calm features.

“Yes, but you have to understand that my feelings were very mixed. Sadness and anger, certainly, but also the elation of my own transformation. It was… unsettling.”

“I expect it was.”

“Orien explained to us that those who had died had given their lives in a very noble cause.”

“I’m sure that was a great comfort to you!”

“No, not at all.”

“Orien could be a pompous ass at times!”

Arahal’s mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. “Yes, he could. But he was right about one thing. My friend’s death was not meaningless. Or, rather, we had within us now the opportunity to ensure that it had a meaning and a purpose.”

“There were four of us who survived. We burned the bodies of the others, and moved on to another location. In time, we would incept more, and the fatality rate declined steeply. We did not attempt to incept any more females.”

“And you wear that chain to remind you of her death?”

“No, to remind me of her life. The one she would have had. Male and female entered that basement room; male and female left it. I was given a new life, hers ended there. All that she would have been and would have experienced – I would have to experience it for her now. I was given a gift, and it is my responsibility – my duty, to be aware of that, every moment of every day, for if I ever forget it then her sacrifice was in vain, and she is truly dead. If I remember, then her life continues through me. It is the very least I can do.”

“Is that how you see the purpose of our lives then – as noble avatars of all the lost and disappointed souls who never achieved their life’s purpose?” Ashmael wrinkled his too-perfect nose very slightly.

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“It sounds a bit grim and self-sacrificing!”

Arahal snorted – a curious sound which Ashmael could not remember ever having heard before. “If it is, I suspect you’re doing it wrong.”

“What are we supposed to do then?”

“Live you life the best way you know how. It’s all any of us can do”.

“Words to live by! I shall endeavour to experience life’s pleasures all the more acutely from this day forth.”

“That’s the spirit!”

Ashmael grinned and picked up the last of his clothing from the altar.

“Do you think I will see the dead har again?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t think so, but even if you do, would it bother you?”

Ashmael thought about this briefly. “No,” he admitted

“He was not an unattractive har after all, “Arahal said seriously.

“There is that, I suppose!”

“You have made peace with his spirit within you. You have told his story.”

“Was that what he wanted? – For me to tell you”

“I don’t know. It was never about him, though – it was always about you.”

Even as he said these words, Arahal remembered the vision that had appeared before him earlier; the grave, ghostly face, the gold-flecked eyes…

”…You know.”

A brief premonition seemed to pass before his eyes. Of nights and dreams, and the har’s face appearing in his own slumbers.

Ashmael turned to leave, noticing as he did so that the candles had burned low. Soon they would gutter and die. . He stopped and turned, as if he had forgotten something.

“Arahal…” he began, somewhat awkwardly. “Thank you.”

“For what?” Arahal looked genuinely surprised. “I have told you nothing you didn’t already know within yourself.”

“No, I mean, thank you for telling me your story. You didn’t have to.”

“Perhaps I did. Perhaps it was time. I have told no-one else, in all these years. Perhaps I should thank you.”

“You have really kept this to yourself all this time?”

Arahal nodded solemnly. “There never seemed to be an appropriate time to discuss it. Until now.”

“You are a surprising har, Arahal. I wonder what other secrets you keep hidden?”

Arahal smiled enigmatically.

“That,” he said, “would be telling.”.

ix Ashmael

Ashmael closed the door quietly behind him and stepped out into the coolness of the evening. The air was damp, and held the faint scent of leaves and earth. It appeared that there had been some rain earlier, but it had now stopped, although a few drops of water continued to fall on his face from the trees above. The sky was indigo, decorated with a random throw of bright stars. Ashmael was surprised at how late it was – it seemed to him that he had only been in Arahal’s sanctuary for a short time, but then he remembered the low-burned candles and Arahal’s strange tale.

For as long as he could remember, Ashmael had been curious about the origins of his own kind. Everyhar knew the story – it was one of the very first things harlings were taught – and yet it had an oddly unreal quality to it, as if it had been something decided upon by The Hegemony, to be disseminated and propagated and absorbed into the hearts and minds of Wraeththu-kind without any actual thought.

Hearing the story from the lips of somehar who had actually been there was unsettling. The story was not a story – it was the truth. Ashmael did not know why he found that so disturbing.

Some things should remain within the realm of myth and mystery, he thought to himself. Some things are too important to be left to reality – we need them to be archetypes and paradigms.

He gave a wry smile.

Thank you for the lesson, Arahal – you imparted it flawlessly. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you simply projected it straight into my mind.

His thoughts lingered on the dead; the har who had ended his life upon Ashmael’s own sword, and Arahal’s long-dead companion. They lived on in the minds of living hara – perfect, unsullied and wholly contained. Alpha and Omega. Their stories had a beginning and an end. The book was closed, and returned to the shelf. Order prevailed. Perfection was attained.

It can be that way. Sometimes.

Sometimes not.

Ashmael did not doubt that Arahal would remember, even if he wore no chain around his waist. The chain was for something else. For regret.

It is not the things that I have done that I regret, he thought, It is the things I have not done. That I was unable to do. That which I was unable to keep alive. The realization was more than a little uncomfortable

Hara died, and lived on in the memories of those who remembered them. Sometimes, mysteriously, they lived on in more physical ways too. And yet there were some things – vague, intangible things – that died, and could not be brought back. Some things that, once lost, were gone forever.

Life was a fragile thing, it could be ended in so many ways, but more fragile yet was the web of connections which bound one living being to another.

You are wrong, Arahal. Remembering is not enough. It’s more complicated than that. And the chain you wear tells me that you know it.

“You haven’t been entirely honest with me, old friend.” he said aloud to the uninterested trees, grinning a little in spite of himself. “There are things you haven’t told me.”

He pulled his cloak more tightly around his shoulders and set off homewards.

We’ll talk again, soon.

August 2008

Even The Longest Day

Some days were so beautiful, so perfect, they could only be Almagabran days. Cal lay on his back staring up at a sky which stretched from one side of eternity to another in an arc of glorious blue. Not even the faintest wisp of cloud sullied those pristine heavens. The sun was golden and warm on his body and all around him the bearded stalks of grain whispered and rustled in the warm breeze. Poppy flowers trembled delicately, the paper-thin scarlet blooms scattered throughout the field like unexpected drops of blood

.

He stuck a piece of straw in his mouth, and sucked on it rustically, because it seemed the appropriate thing to do. He could hear voices – comforting sounds of pleasantly unimportant conversations, but they were distant, and he could block them out if he wished.

His whole body felt completely relaxed, and he deliberately put from his mind all thoughts of work and responsibility. Today was Cuttingtide, and the entire Arilisan family had left Phaonica behind to indulge in the traditional outdoor festivities. An empty bottle of wine lay at his feet, together with the remains of some bread and fruit. He had nothing more strenuous to do than digest his lunch, or possibly even take a nap.

“Hello Cal.”

He tilted his head back to locate the source of the greeting, but the voice was instantly familiar, and he wasn’t displeased to have his woolgathering disturbed. He raised one hand lazily in greeting, and waggled his straw.

Rue laughed, a bright, summery sound that matched the glorious day.

“You look very relaxed down there. Mind if I join you?”

“Be my guest.”

Caeru sat down primly, pushing down some of the barley stalks with his hand, and Cal rolled over on his side to face his consort, propping himself up on one elbow.

The Tigrina was dressed all in white; a simple muslin shift which draped loosely around his body. The material was fine enough to flutter gently in the soft air currents. His hair was long and unbound, and matched the colour of the ripe grain perfectly. It too was stirred by the breeze. The sun was behind him, and the wispy material seemed to absorb the light making him look as if he was surrounded by a gauzy, glowing halo. A soft-focus vision of ethereal beauty. Cal gazed at him and felt oddly moved by the simplicity of the scene before him.

“What are you staring at?”

“You!”

“What for?” Caeru feigned innocence, with wide blue eyes, but Cal knew he enjoyed flattery

“Because you are the loveliest har in all of Immanion – possibly even the whole of Almagabra. Well, except for that cute red-haired creature who performs those exotic dances in the market square every evening….”

He was rewarded by a sharp jab from Caeru’s foot, and he laughed as he shifted his position speedily to avoid further retribution. Rue was laughing too. The sound of it seemed to sparkle in the golden air around them, and crystalise into a tangible emotion. Contentment.

In the distance, there was a sudden squeal, followed by peals of laughter. Cal rolled over and looked across. He could see the small figures of Darquiel, Loki and Geburael running through the waist-high grain. Throwing handfuls of straw at each other. Stuffing handfuls of straw down each other’s clothing. Hence the squeals. He sighed, shook his head, and turned his attention back to Caeru.

Caeru was watching the three younger hara too. Cal was amused by the look on his consort’s face – he was almost bursting with pride and love. The threesome could have been poking each other’s eyes out with pointed sticks and Caeru would still have considered them to be the most perfect angels of all creation. Perhaps they were.

“They grow up so fast,” Caeru’s tone reflected his pride, but there was also a hint of wistfulness to it.

“Yes, they do.”

“And we never even knew Darq and Geb as harlings.”

Cal did not reply. Caeru’s words brought to mind another son whose childhood he had missed. Even though he told himself he had done the right thing by giving up custody of his first son, even though Tyson assured him that he didn’t blame him, even though he knew he had not been fit to raise a child at that point in his life… He sighed again. They grow up so fast. You think you have all the time in the world to enjoy those small, strange creatures, and then one day you turn around and realize that they have turned into adults while you weren’t looking…

Rue extended his elegant ankle and stroked Cal’s bare shoulder with his toes, curling them in an almost prehensile fashion.

“Have you and Pell ever considered… you know… having another….?”

Cal pulled a face of almost comical horror.

“Good grief, no! Neither Pell nor I are natural-born hostlings. Once was quite enough! I can’t imagine why anyone in their right minds would want to go through that. Sometimes I think men never knew how lucky they were, not being able to…. Oh, Rue… I’m sorry, I…”

Extract foot from mouth, now thought Cal uncomfortably, debating whether or not to kick himself.

“It’s alright,”

Cal experienced a heavy feeling in his guts. The feeling that most people experienced when they say something cruel and wish they could take their words back instantly. The feeling that Cal never did experience. Except with Rue. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t hurt Rue the same way that he could casually cut any other har to the core, even Pell. It didn’t matter that his faux-pas was unintentional, he still felt like shit.

“Really.” Rue reached across and took his hand. Cal was aware of the irony of this situation – Rue trying to comfort him. Rue’s tone was bright, – just a fraction too much so – and his smile was just a little too wide. Cal recognized that expression. It was the same one he had worn when Pell had broken the news to him that he was with pearl. Rue had smiled his bright smile and kissed Pell on the cheek and told him he was happy for him; happy for them both, and it had been true. He had supported Pell, stayed with him, shared his joy – even as Cal had kept his secret that this pearl was not the result of their joyful union. Pell had never wanted to give birth. Sometimes Cal thought it was all Rue had ever wanted. Sometimes he hated the random cruelness of the universe with a passion.

Rue’s hand was warm and soft. Cal squeezed it gently, and was rewarded with a more genuine smile.

“I can see them, sometimes, if I close my eyes”

Cal looked at him without comprehension…

“All the children I’ll never have. All the children that will never be born.” Rue closed his eyes, and his face became calm and beatific.

Cal found himself swallowing hard. “You and I would have made beautiful harlings” he whispered, fighting with the unaccustomed constriction in his throat.

Rue’s smile returned, although his eyes remained shut. “Yes. Yes we would. I can see him now. He has golden hair and violet-blue eyes. He is dancing in the field of ripe barley, in the sunshine. He sees me, and runs towards me. I hold out my arms and he runs into them, and I lift him up, laughing. We are both laughing…”

Cal found that he could say nothing at all. He gripped Rue’s hand even more tightly, and hoped that his hand would say what his tongue could not. Rue opened his eyes and looked directly at him. He touched the side of his face gently.

“I’m not sad.” he said “Not really. I have two sons. I have been privileged to have that experience twice, which is more than most. And I’m glad for it all – even the bad bits. I would do it all the same again.”

Hearing Rue speak these words, Cal was almost shocked to realize that he agreed with them. He would do exactly the same again, if he was offered the opportunity. He would bear Tyson, despite the hurts and the long years of separation. He would give Pell to Galdra a hundred times over if it meant that Loki would be theirs. And he would live again the strange circumstances of Darquiel’s conception and the brutal aftermath…”

“Do you remember the night Darq was conceived?” asked Rue, as if he could read his thoughts.

“Of course I do.”

“Did you….. I mean, was it….” Rue stumbled uncertainly around his unfinished sentence, as if unsure himself of what he was trying to say.

Cal sat up and wrapped his arms around him, holding him tightly

“Yes, I did. And yes, it was.”

He laid Rue gently onto his back. The Tigrina reclined languidly among the flattened stalks, his golden hair fanned out around him, and the sky reflected in his eyes. Blue in blue.

Cal remembered that night more than he cared to admit. Sometimes he dreamt of it. Being inside Caeru’s body; his mind; his soul. It was something he had never experienced with any other har. Even though Pell had been there that night too, even though he had borne Terzian’s son… There was a moment in time, and in space, that had belonged only to him and to Caeru. He didn’t discuss it with Pell. Pell, he knew with certainty, had his own private relationship with Caeru, however much he sometimes seemed to deny it. Sometimes even shared experiences had their concealed and intimate corners.

Cal pulled aside the flimsy muslin shift and ran his hands over Caeru’s body, feeling him sigh and shudder slightly. The legacy of Diablo’s attack was still written in puckered lines on Caeru’s abdomen, but the scars had faded to a silvery white. In a small, hard corner of his mind, Cal felt nothing but cold satisfaction for the killing of Diablo. It was right. It was justice. It was for you, Rue. He deserved it.

“Did you ever speak to Dr Sheeva about the possibility of reconstructive surgery?” he asked, his hand gliding past the wrecked flesh and down between Caeru’s legs

Caeru bit his lower lip and shook his head.

“No. I… I didn’t want to be cut again. Anyway,” he took Cal’s hand and guided it expertly between the soft, moist folds of his soume-lam, “everything else is fine.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Cal smiled and slid his finger into Rue’s depths, feeling the small pulsations which indicated the Tigrina’s pleasure at the invasion. He undid his own trousers and released his ouana-lim from its confines. He looked down at himself admiringly. Touching Rue’s body had aroused him considerably, and he added to his growing hardness by grasping it with his right hand and giving it a long, sensuous stroke, enjoying the sensation visibly. Rue watched the performance languidly, then reached forward and placed his hand on top of Cal’s

“I should be doing that!”

“By all means…”

Rue took the engorged organ in his hand and carefully ran his thumbnail up the underside and around all the sensitive petals at the tip. He watched Cal’s face carefully, noticing every inflection on his face.

“More?”

Cal could only make a sort of gasping grunt in reply, which the Tigrina took as consent. He repeated his actions, seeming to know with unerring accuracy where to touch.

Eventually Cal removed Rue’s hand from his ouana-lim with a short hiss, and positioned himself over Rue’s prone body. Rue’s thighs parted hungrily as he pulled Cal down into his body’s embrace. Cal resisted for a second, his ouana-lim pressed insistently against the entrance to Rue’s body, but not inside him, determined to show Rue that he was not the only one with skills in the art of prolonging aruna, but Rue’s legs wrapped themselves tightly around Cal’s back, and Cal gave up the pretence and thrust deep and hard into Caeru.

He sucked and bit at the Tigrina’s lower lip, tasting his mouth and then his soul as they shared breath. Rue welcomed him in gladly and it was like returning to a familiar home, sleeping in a bed where the scent of another’s body still lingered, falling into the starless night of a place that was both unknown and yet at the same time instantly recognized…

Cal was not sure how long they had lain in the nest of flattened stalks. The sun was lower now than it had been earlier, and the air slightly cooler. Images still floated in his mind. Another night, nearly ten years ago.

He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. He poked Rue gently with a piece of straw.

“Come on sleepy, wake up. Everyone else is gone.”

Rue opened his eyes lazily and smiled at him. He pushed back the tangled mess of his hair with one hand, then stretched his limbs happily.

“You were wonderful”

“I know. I always am”

Rue laughed. “Now if only we could work on your modesty…”

Cal chuckled too. He held out his hand, which the other har took graciously. “Come on,” he said, pulling Rue up, “Let’s go home.”

“The ambassador from Maudrah isn’t going to like this one bit!”

Pellaz was striding purposefully down the long, marbled corridor in the heart of Phaonica. Cal loped along behind him, occasionally breaking into a short skip to keep up with his speeding partner.

“Just calm down, will you? A few minutes here or there is not going to make any difference.”

“Cal, you’ve been in Immanion for, what, ten years now? And you still don’t know the first thing about politics.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever really wanted to,” Cal muttered

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Look, are you sure you told Rue the right time?”

“Positive. I’m rather more organized than you give me credit for.”

“Just asking. It’s not like him to be late.”

“He’s been sulking about something for the past week. I’ve no idea what.”

“He was alright when I spoke to him last.”

“Yes, well I’m sure he makes the effort for you…”

The two hara arrived at the entrance to the Tigrina’s apartments, and the doors opened immediately, the servants ushering them both in respectfully.

“Where is the Tigrina?” Pellaz demanded of the chief Steward. The har looked slightly uncomfortable.

“Still in his bed-chamber, Tiahaar.”

“Didn’t you wake him up?”

“He said he did not want to be disturbed.”

“He needs to be disturbed! He has an audience with an important representative from Maudrah this morning. Go and get him.”

The servant looked even more uncomfortable, torn between obeying the orders of the Tigron and the Tigrina. Pell clucked his tongue irritably.

“Oh never mind, I’ll do it!” He marched down the hallway and turned into the passageway that led to the Tigrina’s bed-chamber, with Cal following dutifully behind.

Opening the door, he walked in and found himself in semi-darkness. The curtains were
still drawn and the room was dim. He stood for a second or so, till his eyes adjusted, then walked over to the windows and pulled the heavy velvet drapes apart. Bright mid-morning sunshine flooded the room, casting a broad rectangle of light on the wall opposite. Below that was the Tigrina’s bed.

It was a huge thing – draped with hangings and folded, tented materials which matched the rich curtains at the windows, and festooned with pillows, cushions and jeweled throws. It could easily have accommodated three or more hara, but this morning there was only one body lying among its voluminous coverlets.

Caeru looked swamped by the over-abundance of soft furnishings. If anything, the oversized bed made him look even smaller than he actually was. He lay at the top, over to one side, as if he feared getting lost if he moved further into the bed’s hinterlands. He was surrounded by pillows, and had the covers pulled right up to his neck. He was awake, and his blue eyes looked out at Pell warily.

“Rue, do you know what time it is?” demanded Pell irritably.

Rue nodded, but made no move to get up.

“We have the Maudran Ambassador this morning – remember?”

“I know.”

“Well why aren’t you up then? Oh come on, Rue, this isn’t good enough. Just get dressed, will you?”

When his consort still showed no signs of rising, Pell took hold of the covers and pulled them down sharply. For a second, Caeru seemed as if he was going to hold onto them, but he allowed Pell to pull the bedclothes all the way down, leaving him exposed, wearing only a white silk nightgown.

Pell opened his mouth to deliver another reprimand, but it never came. He looked down at Rue lying in the bed. Lying on the crisp, white linen sheets, wearing a white silk nightgown. Both of which were stained red with blood.

“Rue… what…?”

Pell’s expression changed instantly to one of concern. He quickly lifted the nightgown to see if he could discover where the blood was coming from. There were no obvious injuries or cuts on Rue’s body, and the bloodstain seemed to be mostly around the top of his thighs. Pell felt vaguely sick, but not at the sight of the blood itself. A sudden, awful suspicion formed within him.

“Cal,” he turned to the other Tigron and spoke calmly, trying not to alarm either of them. “Could you fetch Dr Sheeva here? Ask him to come as quickly as he can.”

Cal looked at Rue, and then back at Pell, his eyes asking unspoken questions.

“Just go. I’ll look after Rue.”

Cal nodded curtly and left hurriedly.

Pell turned back to the bed, and pulled the covers back up over Rue’s body. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and stroked the soft, golden hair.

“I’m sorry, Pell”

“Shhh, it’s alright.”

“But the Maudran Ambassador….”

“Oh, to hell with him!”

Rue gave a ghost of a smile

“I didn’t mean to…”

“I know you didn’t. It’s alright.”

“I don’t want to see Dr Sheeva”

“It’s for your own good”

Rue stared at the ceiling, blinking his eyes rapidly, and Pell reached below the cover to take his hand. It felt cold, and he concentrated on transferring energy from himself to his consort. Presently the hand felt a little warmer, and he was pleased to see a little colour return to the Tigrina’s bleached face.

“Does it hurt?”

“I… no, I don’t think so. I think the bleeding’s stopped now anyway. Perhaps I should get up now.”

“You’ll do no such thing.”

“I didn’t mean to worry you. I feel better now, really”

“Perhaps, but you still need to be examined. This isn’t normal, Rue, and you know it.”

At that moment, the bedroom door opened, and Cal entered with Dr Sheeva in tow.

Pellaz felt immediately reassured by the physician’s presence. His skill was renowned, and Pell himself had had cause in the past to appreciate his calm, reassuring manner. He also knew that whatever transpired within the Tigrina’s bedroom would go no further, and that was a blessing. Pell hated the fact that his personal life, and that of his family, was public property. We deserve a little privacy occasionally, he thought.

Dr Sheeva approached Rue, smiling reassuringly. Caeru gave a wan smile in return, but did not let go of Pell’s hand.

“Your consort tells me you have experienced some unexplained bleeding,”

Rue turned his head to the side. “It’s nothing, really. I’m alright now.”

“Let’s just make quite sure of that, shall we?”

Pell stood up to leave, allowing the doctor to take his place at Rue’s bedside. Rue gave him a slightly pleading look, but he stepped away firmly.

“I will be just outside, with Tigron Calanthe,” he informed the doctor.

“Of course. I’m sure this won’t take very long.”

“Let us know when you’re ready.”

The doctor bowed gracefully and Pell shepherded Cal from the room. They looked at each other meaningfully, but neither said a word.

“That is not possible. You know it is not possible!”

Pellaz ran his fingers through his long, dark hair agitatedly. Dr Sheeva spread his hands apologetically.

“Tiahaar… I can only tell you what I know. I agree it is a hugely unlikely occurrence, but nevertheless, the Tigrina is with pearl.”

“But you of all people know that he is not capable of hosting a pearl! You know what was done to him. You were the one who told me it was impossible.”

“Obviously I was mistaken. I do not claim to be omniscient. The Tigrina’s injuries were very severe, and I gave you my opinion based on the facts as I saw them. I am as surprised as you are. I would normally be very pleased to be proved wrong in a case like this, but…” The doctor looked down at his feet, a worried expression on his usually calm features.

“But what?”

“Tiahaar, I will not sugar-coat this, I am sure you are capable of understanding. The pearl at conception is very small. There is room for it even if the chamber is damaged. However the pearl expands rapidly. Scarred tissues cannot do the same. There is a very high risk of rupture and haemorrhage. The Tigrina has already experienced some bleeding, and while this has now stopped, it is my opinion that the situation can only get worse as the pearl grows.”

Pell listened to the doctor’s words, his expression bleak.

“How great is the risk? Could he die?”

“That is a possibility, yes.”

“There must be something you can do!”

Dr Sheeva sighed. “Normally, I would never recommend this course of action, but I believe in this case it is the best thing. My advice is that the pearl be removed before it can grow any further.”

Pell nodded. “I’m sure you’re right. Please make the arrangements as soon as possible.”

“Ah… wait a minute here,” Cal interrupted “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Dr Sheeva and Pell both looked at him.

“Isn’t it Rue’s decision to make?”

“Of course it is,” Pell said, rather sharply, “I’m not suggesting otherwise. But you heard what Dr Sheeva said. We will explain the situation to Rue. I know he’ll be upset, but it’s for the best.”

“Upset?” Cal stared at him, shaking his head a little in disbelief. “Pell, it’s not like getting a tooth pulled. You know what this means. You know what you’ll be asking him to do.”

“I am very well aware of the implications of this, thank you. It’s a pity you hadn’t thought about it a bit more.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Pell hesitated; only for a fraction of a second, but Cal caught the fleeting, unspoken accusation, and his heart sank a little.

“You’re the father, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am. Who else would it be?”

“Cal… how could you?”

“You know the way harlings are made, Pell”

“Don’t you dare be flippant!”

The sharp retort was already forming in Cal’s head and in his mouth, but he bit it back. He could see that Pell was really angry, and deep within himself he knew that he had a right to be.

“You knew that Rue wasn’t capable of hosting pearl. What on earth made you do this, Cal? Is it some sort of payback for Galdra?”

Now it was Cal’s turn to be angry.

“No. No it isn’t! It’s not always about you, Pell.”

Pell looked as if he’d been slapped. Cal knew the best thing he could do at this point was to leave, but his own stubbornness would not let him.

“Really? And what is it about, then?”

Cal opened his mouth, but found he did not have the words to explain. In his head was the image of a sunny day and the ache of longing in another har’s breath, and the remembered feeling that he could make things right, make up for past hurts, make up for the times he had destroyed by creating instead…. But he knew Pell wouldn’t understand any of this, even if he could force the disorganized explanation out past his uncooperative lips, so he simply shook his head mutely and turned away.

Dr Sheeva looked acutely embarrassed. He coughed discreetly, and Pell collected himself visibly, attempting to smooth over the awkwardness hanging in the air.

“Will you tell the Tigrina, Tiahaar? Or do you think it would be better if I were to do so?”

“Tell him what?”

All three hara turned round at the sound of Caeru’s voice. The Tigrina was standing in the doorway, one hand on the wooden doorframe for support. He looked pale, but calm.

“Rue! You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“I’m alright, I can’t stay there all day. Tell me what?”

“Come and sit down.”

Pell took Rue’s hand and led him over to a large sofa, where he solicitously installed his consort among a heap of cushions, and then sat down beside him. Cal and Dr Sheeva exchanged a meaningful look.

“I think we’ll go and see if the kitchen staff can produce some lunch for us.” Cal announced. The doctor nodded in agreement, and together they left the room. Rue watched them go, a thoughtful expression on his face. Pell took hold of his hand and squeezed it gently.

“Rue,” he said, “I need to talk to you…”

When Cal returned later, Pell was sitting alone on the sofa. Down the hall, the servants were clattering about preparing lunch, and enticing smells were drifting up from the kitchens, but in the Tigrina’s sitting room it was quiet and still. Cal closed the door silently behind him, and padded across the polished wood flood noiselessly. He sat down next to his consort. Pell had his chin in his hands, and he was staring at the floor as if he could see right down through the boards, through the rooms below, down through the very heart of the Palace and into the rock below upon which it stood.

Cal looked at him intently for a few seconds.

“He said no, didn’t he?”

Pell nodded.

“I knew he would.”

Pell looked up, and for a moment Cal thought another argument would ensue, but there was only puzzlement in the other har’s eyes.

“Why? Why does he want to keep it so badly? Why won’t he listen to sense?”

“You have to ask?”

Pell avoided both Cal’s earnest stare, and answering the question. He got up and walked to the other end of the room. Large full-length windows were thrown open, giving access to the wide, sunny balcony outside. In the distance, the sea was visible, glassy and azure, dotted with a few white-sailed ships approaching Immanion harbour. Between the palace and the sea lay the streets and houses of the city laid out in wide, pleasant avenues and well-tended gardens. Pell stood at the open windows and watched the servants arranging tables and chairs underneath the shade of an awning. It was a familiar scene – the Aralisians had enjoyed many convivial family meals on this very terrace.

“I’ll talk to him again when he’s had time to think it over.”

“It won’t make any difference. You know it won’t.”

“I can’t let him risk his life for this…”

“It’s his life to risk. And some things are worth risking a great deal for.”

“Do you want him to do this?” Pell turned and looked at Cal unexpectedly, his arms crossed in front of his body. “Do you want him to risk his life for this child? It’s your child too, after all.”

“Pell, that’s not fair…”

Pell shrugged. “Perhaps not, but that’s not the point. Do you want him to risk his life, or are you prepared to try and talk some sense into him?”

“It’s not that simple Pell…”

“It seems simple enough to me.”

“That’s because you’re only looking at it from your own point of view. Try looking at it from Rue’s perspective for once.”

Pell rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. It was getting warm; midday was approaching and the sun was at its high point, blazing fiercely down outside. In Rue’s sitting room, it remained cool.

Cal muttered something inaudible, rose from the sofa and went over to join his consort. He put his arms around Pell’s waist lightly.

“Rue wants this child” he said quietly. “He knows the risk – he probably always did. Don’t do him the disservice of assuming he hasn’t thought about it. He will make his own decision, and just because it is not the decision you would make, or the decision you want him to make doesn’t mean it is the wrong decision…”

“Besides,” he continued when Pell made no reply “Immanion’s finest physicians were wrong before – according to them, Rue shouldn’t even be in this condition, so I have full confidence in them being wrong yet again. I’m sure they won’t let me down!”

Pell grimaced. “I wish I shared your confidence”

“Yes, well, logic and reason and education and good sense and hard work and going to bed at a reasonable hour and paying your bills on time aren’t everything. Sometimes miracles do happen. Neither of us would be standing here if that wasn’t the case.”

In spite of himself, Pell smiled. He pressed his forehead against Cal’s shoulder.

“We don’t have bills, we’re Tigrons.”

“Is that so? What do Tigrons have then?”

“I have no idea. I never really thought about it.”

“Well there you are. This is why you need someone like me around. I know about stuff. Real life stuff.”

“Like bills?”

“Exactly. I know all about bills. Never actually paid any, but I am familiar with the concept!”

“Cal,”

“What?”

Pell stretched up and kissed the other har lightly on the lips. Outside, the serving staff put the final touches to the table settings as a distant clock in the heart of Immanion began chiming twelve.

Lunch was excellent, as usual. The Tigrina’s kitchen staff were acknowledged as the most creative in Phaonica, and Cal’s occasional, unsubtle attempts to persuade the head chef to defect to his own employment had met with no success whatsoever. Neither he nor Pell had much appetite today, however, and since the Tigrina himself was not present – he was resting in his bedroom at the insistence of Dr Sheeva – little of the lovingly-prepared food had been eaten.

Cal poked at a delicious-looking pastry disconsolately. “Seems a pity for all this to go to waste…”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. The staff get to help themselves to any leftovers. One of the perks of the job.” Pell gulped down the last of his coffee and stood up, pushing his chair backwards. Far below, a lazy torpor seemed to have fallen over Immanion as its citizens ceased their business activities for a couple of hours.

“I’d better go and check on Rue. Cal… do you think you could go and see about the ambassador?” Pell blinked hopefully at his consort.

“Me?”

“He likes you.”

“No he doesn’t.”

“Alright, he’s scared of you.”

“Is that your idea of flattery?” Cal rolled his eyes in mock-disgust. “Okay, I’ll go and put the fear of the Aghama into him for you!”

“Thank you.”

“I wouldn’t do it for just any Tigron you know.”

“I know. You spoil me.”

“Everyhar does. We can’t help it.” Cal stood up gracefully and stretched, pulling his arms up over his head until his joints clicked. “Right, into battle I go. You go and talk to Rue. And Pell…”

“Yes?”

“Don’t bully him.”

“Of course I won’t.”

Cal studied his consort thoughtfully for a few seconds, then smiled, blew him a brief kiss and loped purposefully off.

Pell watched him go with a mixture of affection and sadness. Sometimes he felt like he was the centre of Cal’s universe, a part of his very soul, the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle, finally found, and other times….

He shook his head. There were many pieces to Cal’s puzzle. It was arrogant of him to assume that he was the one who completed it.

He went back into the Tigrina’s apartments. It seemed dark inside, after the bright sunshine, and his eyes took a second or so to adjust. He walked down the hall to the Tigrina’s bedroom and stood at the door, wondering if he should knock. That seemed vaguely silly, so he simply turned the ornate handle and went in.

He was expecting Rue to be in bed, sleeping or resting, but that was not the case. The Tigrina was over at the far side of the room, standing in front of a large chest of drawers. Various personal items were strewn untidily on top of the chest – perfume, jewellery, hair brushes and small, ornamental knick-knacks. They looked slightly incongruous compared with the ostentatious décor of the rest of the room; small and imperfect. Out of place in the magnificence of Phaonica. A bit like Rue himself.

“Hello Pell.” Rue greeted him without turning round.

Pell resisted the urge to chide him for not being in bed. I am not a bully, Cal

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay.”

“Did they bring you some lunch?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Don’t fuss.”

Pell went up to him and put his arms around him. Rue turned his head and smiled.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, just… sorting through some things.”

“What sort of things?”

Rue didn’t say anything at first, then he disentangled himself from the other’s embrace. He pulled open one of the drawers.

“I kept them. I don’t know why. It’s not as if they would ever get used again, even if… well. But I kept them all the same.”

Rue pulled something out of the drawer, and held it gently. It looked to Pell like a scrap of cloth, once brightly coloured, now faded. He couldn’t quite work out what it was supposed to be, until Rue held it up.

It was a small garment. Not well made or expensive – the stitching was untidy and one of the sleeves seemed slightly longer than the other. It looked shoddy and ugly.

Rue held it up to his face, and pressed the ugly little shirt against his cheek. He had a strange, faraway look on his face.

“He wore this when we took him to the travelling fair. There were elephants. Can you believe it – elephants! In Ferelithia. And goats. He wasn’t scared of the elephants, but he was terrified of the goats, I don’t know why. He cried, and Kate bought him some sticky candy to cheer him up – it was bright pink and it got stuck in his hair. He thought that was funny, but I didn’t, because it took me ages to wash it out. He was only a few months old… Look, you can still see the mark.” Rue pointed to a faded pink stain on the shirt.

“I kept them all. I don’t know why.” He took another small item of clothing from the drawer, equally faded with age, and held that up to his face too, burying his nose in it and inhaling deeply.

“I can still smell him….”

Pell could think of absolutely nothing to say.

“Of course, they gave him lots of new clothes when he came here, but I kept all his old ones, I don’t know why, I…..”

Pell was standing so close to Rue that he could feel the warmth of his body, feel the slight tremor that seemed to pass through him, and then he felt something scalding and wet, like blood, on his arm and he thought for a moment that maybe the strange tearing sensation inside him was actually himself coming apart, but there was only wetness on Rue’s face, two, maybe three fat droplets running down his pale, flawless skin, and then it stopped and Rue wiped his face and smiled apologetically, but the tearing inside Pell didn’t stop. He had no idea how to make it stop.

“Rue,” his voice didn’t sound like his own, it sounded dry, like dead flowers or old leaves. “If you wanted another child so much, why didn’t you ask me…?”

“Because you would have said no. Because it’s not what you want. Because it would never have happened with us, not that way. Yes, I know it’s physically possible – aren’t we the perfect species after all – but sometimes… it doesn’t work that way, for some of us.”

Pell didn’t answer. There was no point because he knew that what Rue said was true.

“Perhaps we’re not so perfect after all,” he said bitterly.

“Oh Pell – don’t be so hard on yourself. We’re all just… who and what we are. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Again Pell could think of nothing useful to say. Rue was right. He was who he was. He couldn’t imagine experiencing the sort of longing that Rue did. He had never wanted to host a child – Loki’s conception had been a complete accident. He had not kept any of Loki’s childhood clothes…

He pulled Rue closer and hugged him comfortingly. Pressed against the other har’s abdomen, he could sense the tiny spark of life within, unaware of the fragility of its existence. He had not wanted to host a child, and if the option had been available to him, he would have had the pearl removed…

There was a sudden, bitter taste in his mouth.

“Rue,” he said firmly “If you insist on going through with this, you must do exactly what Dr Sheeva tells you.”

Rue looked up at him wonderingly, all blue eyes and dark lashes

“You will have to stay in bed and not move. You will have to let the servants do everything for you.”

“Pell,” Rue touched him gently with one finger “I do that anyway.” He smiled teasingly, and Pell found himself smiling back.

“There is no guarantee…” he said gently

“There never is Pell. Not for anything in life.”

Pell looked over Rue’s shoulder, as if he could see into the future if he stared hard enough

“I know.”

The Tigrina’s large bed was empty when Cal arrived early the next morning. A stab of anxiety bit his stomach, and he called out worriedly,

“Rue? Where are you? Are you there?”

“I’m through here, Cal!”

Cal’s relief was palpable, and he hurried from the bedroom through to the Morning Room next door, where Caeru’s voice had come from.

Caeru was sitting at the table, having breakfast. The room Cal had entered was bright and warm, perfectly placed to catch the morning sun. There were windows on three sides, and large potted and trailing plants were placed all around to take advantage of the light, and also to shade the room and its occupants. The large glass doors were thrown open, leading out into green leafiness beyond. It was difficult to tell where the room ended and the garden began.

Caeru had his feet up on one of the chairs. When he saw Cal, he removed them, and indicated to the other har to sit beside him.

“Morning Cal. Coffee?”

An elegant white coffee pot was steaming enticingly on the table, and Cal poured himself a cup gratefully.

“Croissant?”

Cal was going to refuse, but one look at the golden, flaky confections sitting in a basket in the middle of the table changed his mind. He helped himself greedily, and bit into the warm and buttery croissant, which tasted even better than it looked.

“Mmmphhh!” He closed his eyes in pleasure. Rue laughed.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full!”

Cal wiped away a few crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I’m Tigron, and I can do what I like!”

“Of course you can. Now clear up the mess there.”

Cal obediently wiped away the pile of crumbs in front of him.

“It’s a lovely morning, isn’t it?” Rue sat with his own coffee cup cradled in both hands, looking out through the open doors and into the garden beyond. Large blue trumpet-shaped flowers had already opened and were turned to face the direction of the morning sun, greedily sucking up its rays. Some had invaded the room; plant tendrils wrapped themselves around both the door frame and the bronze statue sitting just inside.

“Yes, it is. Why are you out of bed?”

Rue pouted. “Oh Cal, don’t nag. Pell’s bad enough!

Cal leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table… “I’m concerned, that’s all. So is Pell”

Rue smiled gently at him. “I know. It’s all very sweet. I’m fine – really. I’ll get bed sores if I stay there any longer! Have another croissant.”

Cal realized that he wasn’t really in any position to lecture anyone else on sensible behaviour, so he took Rue’s suggestion.

“I thought I might do some gardening later” Rue informed him.

Cal almost choked on his croissant.

“You? Gardening?”

Rue attempted to look insulted, with limited success.

“I garden! Look!” He indicated a tiny, gold plated watering can sitting by the side of the table.

Cal coughed and spluttered, trying to suppress his laughter.

“And do you fill it up yourself?”

“Of course not. I’m the Tigrina!”

Cal shook his head and grinned. “We’re as bad as each other!”

“It’s a hard life, isn’t it?”

Rue took another sip of his coffee. “It was all marble out there, when I first came here” he said, indicating the small garden outside. “Marble paving, marble fountain, marble columns, marble statues…”

“Sounds nice…”

“No it wasn’t. It was ridiculous. No place for a child to play. I had them remove it all and plant grass instead. They had to bring tons of soil up. They weren’t at all pleased. But I’m the Tigrina!”

“You certainly are!” Cal looked out at the garden, with its lush, untidy foliage, abundance of flowers and small, velvet lawn and tried to imagine it as a sterile marble courtyard. Somehow, he couldn’t.

“I mean, who designed this place anyway,” continued Rue, waving his arm around expansively. “It’s full of hard edges and cold stone.”

Cal looked down at his feet, and realized, for the first time, that the floors in the Tigrina’s apartments were wood, instead of the usual marble tiles that were in place throughout the rest of Phaonica.

“You made quite a few changes….”

“Of course I did. You couldn’t bring up a child in this place….” Rue’s voice tailed off, and his bright mood seemed to evaporate like the dew on the blue flowers.”

“You’ll have to take it up with Thiede,” Cal said with a shrug. “This palace was his vision…”

Rue looked at him seriously. “Yes,” he said, “that makes sense,”

“It does?”

Rue nodded. “It’s a vision. A concept. An impossibility. No room for small children, or untidy piles of grubby toys, or scribbles on the walls…Thiede’s vision.” He sighed sadly. “Poor Thiede. I don’t think anyone loved him when he was a child…”

Cal opened his mouth to say something flippant, but realized he couldn’t.

Only you would say that, Rue he thought. Most people look at Phaonica and see something triumphant and beautiful. You see an unloved child.

That’s why they love you, the people of Immanion. They respect Pell, they’re probably scared shitless of me, and they put up with the Hegemony, but they love the Tigrina, because he brings something soft and untidy to the hard, orderliness at the heart of Immanion.

“I wasn’t a good hostling,” Rue’s voice was very small and quiet, and Cal, thoughts wandering, almost didn’t catch what he said.

“What? That’s ridiculous Rue – how can you say that?”

“I didn’t know what I was doing. I just had to… pretend. Make it up. And then I came here, and… I was too busy feeling sorry for myself and I was just… too busy, and I didn’t pay him enough attention …”

“Rue, you were a good hostling to Abrimel. Everyone knows that. Not even the Hegemony ever denied it.”

“If I had been such a good hostling, then he wouldn’t have….” Rue’s voice was angry, but there was something else underneath it; a hint of anguish.

Cal shook his head firmly. “That wasn’t your fault. Maybe Bree didn’t have a perfect childhood, but he was an adult when he made his decision to do what he did. You weren’t to blame. You did your best for him. Which is more than I can say about Tyson.” he finished sourly.

“Tyson doesn’t resent what you did” Rue said softly, almost to himself

Silence descended upon the bright room.

How is it that things happen? Cal wondered. What actions do we take, what paths, what corners do we turn? When is it too late? Why can’t we take things back and do them again properly?

For the first time since he and Rue had lain together in the barley field, Cal experienced a feeling of guilt. The Tigrina’s current condition had not been announced to the general population of Immanion, for obvious reasons. Sitting at the table, in the warm sunshine, Cal saw very clearly two possible scenarios; He saw flags and bunting, celebrations, street parties, a sense of community and the heart of the city flourishing. Then he saw Immanion in mourning. Something irreplaceable lost. The city’s heart.

Make it the first of these. he thought fiercely. If there are any dehara listening, then I call on you to make it happen that way. It’s right that it should happen that way.

If there were any dehara listening, they did not make their presence known to Cal. The silence went unbroken.

You of all hara should know the pointlessness of appealing to an uncaring universe.

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “I’m sorry I did this to you Rue, I should have considered things more carefully…”

“Well I’m not. And you didn’t do anything to me, I was part of the decision-making process too.” He looked thoughtful. “You know, for years, I ranted at Pell, saying that he had gotten me with pearl without me knowing… and maybe it was true that it was without my knowledge, but it wasn’t without my consent. I wanted it to happen. The same as I wanted it to happen with you. And so did you, so don’t lie!”

“I’m not saying I didn’t want it to happen, I just… I never wanted to put your life in danger. I should have known the risk.”

“There’s always risk. Life is risky. If something is worth having, then it’s worth risking everything for. And don’t give me any platitudes, Cal, because that’s always been how you’ve lived your life. You’ve never been one to take the safe option just because it’s safe, so allow me the same privilege!”

“I don’t seem to have much choice, do I?”

“No, you don’t”

The silence returned for a few seconds. Cal could hear a lazy drone from the garden as the bees went about their tireless business of collecting pollen from the flowers. Already the sun was starting to climb high. Soon it would become uncomfortably warm in the bright room, and they would have to retire to a shadier spot, perhaps under the heavy branches of the ornamental tree out in the garden; sitting on the velvet grass, kept green and lush by the attentions of Phaonica’s gardeners, and not Caeru’s tiny watering can.

“Cal? Will you promise me something?”

“What is it?”

“If it comes to it… If it’s a choice between me or the pearl… Promise me you will make them save the pearl.”

“Rue! What are you saying? I can’t possibly promise you that!”

“Yes you can. It’s very simple. It’s what I want. It’s my choice, and it’s my decision to make.”

“Rue…”

“Promise me Cal. Look me in the eye and promise me.”

“I…” Cal ran his fingers through his hair helplessly. He felt trapped. He knew nothing he could say would change Rue’s mind.

“Very well,” he sighed. He looked straight into his consort’s gaze. “I promise you.”

Rue gave a soft smile. “Thank you” he said.

Cal took Rue’s hand and squeezed it tightly.

Still as glib a liar as ever, Cal, he thought to himself bitterly, even after all these years

To everyone’s surprise, the next few weeks passed uneventfully enough. The Tigrina’s public duties were cancelled, and an assortment of creative stories circulated by way of explanation. Pellaz found himself busier than ever, for which he was grateful since it stopped him brooding on things.

The ripe golden grain in the fields around Immanion was harvested. Reaptide was celebrated with fairs and markets. In the warm evenings, after darkness had fallen, dances were held in the open air, the busy public squares of the city transformed by coloured lights and decorations into magical spaces where hara could meet with friends and laugh and share breath and enjoy all the heady delights of summer, even as it prepared to slip away from them.

High above the city, Phaonica seemed to hold its breath. The palace remained cool, even in the summer heat. Ornate fountains gushed in shaded inner courtyards, and the curling tendrils of vines and creepers daily insinuated themselves into yet more nooks and crannies, as if they were reclaiming the palace on behalf of the wild; softening its edges.

The Tigrina’s garden remained lush, but the verdant grass had grown a little more brittle – dry and brown at the edge where it grew up to the doorway into the bright morning room. The door itself was permanently open, and Pell realized as he stepped through that the invasive, blue-flowered plant had colonized it so successfully that it could no longer be shut. Come the autumn, servants would clear away the overgrown foliage and restore things to how they were supposed to be, but for now, no-one minded.

On the opposite side of the garden, Cal and Rue were sitting under the ornamental tree. Long, weeping branches of green hung down protectively. Pell stood for a moment and watched his consorts. They looked so right together. Golden, beautiful. Laughing. Pell could not remember the last time he himself had laughed. Such a simple, easy thing, and yet somehow it had escaped from him. One day he had looked away, and it had gone, and now he wasn’t at all sure how to entice it back.

I am the odd one out here, he thought wonderingly. Cal and Rue, though they were different in a lot of respects, had a similarity that drew them together, made it easy for them to be with each other. That intense, carefree love of life for its own sake.

Hardly surprising, he told himself, You chose them. Both of them. Mirror images of each other. That’s what attracted you to them. That light that burns in both of them. No wonder they fit together so well.

Where do I fit?

Cal looked up and saw him standing there. He waved a hand, inviting him over. Pell felt a warm rush of affection as he went over to join them. He knew he was fortunate to have the two of them.

Three of them. The unborn pearl was never far from Pell’s thoughts. He worried about Rue, about what would happen to him if his body could not take the strain. He worried about Cal, about how he would feel if anything happened to Rue. He wondered about the child. It didn’t seem real. He couldn’t imagine it. What would it be like? Golden and beautiful. Part of Rue and part of Cal. Not part of him. If he couldn’t love his own children, how would he deal with this one? Assuming it even survived to be born.

“Where have you been?” Cal grinned happily and squirmed over a few inches to make room for Pell to sit down beside them.

“Hegemony Committee meeting”

Cal laughed at his morose expression.

“The Good Chancellor does like to dot i’s and cross t’s”

“The Good Chancellor could talk from here till Shadetide about rules and regulations!”

“I think he’s quite sweet.” Rue said coquettishly, and Cal laughed again. Pell tried to imagine any possible set of circumstances in which the stern Chancellor Tharmifex could ever be described as “sweet”, and failed utterly. Obviously he did not possess Rue’s vivid imagination.

Rue got to his feet, a little stiffly.

“I have to… um… you know…”

Cal looked shocked. “The Tigrina of Immanion doesn’t…. you know. In fact, none of us do. We’re far too important!”

Rue slapped him affectionately on the top of his head, ruffling his short blonde hair.

“Idiot.” He padded off barefoot across the grass toward the palace.

“What?” enquired Cal innocently, in response to Pell’s look. He gave a slow grin.
“You need to lighten up a bit, Tigron. You take this ruling business too seriously”

“Perhaps – but if I didn’t, who would?”

“There’s more to life than being Tigron.”

“Such as?”

“Pell, I can’t believe you said that, but since you’re obviously in one of your moods today, I will dignify it with an answer. Me. Us. Our family. Our interesting, extended family. Our soon-to-be-even-more-extended family.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Cal looked at his consort carefully. “Pell, what is eating you?”

“Do I really have to spell it out? The happy event you allude to has a high probability of not turning out at all happily.”

“I know,” Cal’s voice was quieter than usual. “But suppose it does. What then?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you really feel about this child?”

“I….” Pell found that he had no answer to Cal’s question. Or not one he was prepared to voice.

Cal plucked a small blade of grass from the well-trimmed lawn and played with it between his fingers. “Rue sees it as some sort of second or third chance. He thinks he failed his other children.”

“That’s not true. He was a good hostling to Abrimel, and it was hardly his fault that he couldn’t be there for Darquiel when he was growing up. If anyone failed…”

Cal’s violet eyes were full of compassion as Pell swallowed hard before continuing.

“If anyone failed it was me. That’s the truth. I ruined Abrimel’s life. I didn’t exactly go out of my way to be a doting hostling to Loki. If he hadn’t had you, he’d have probably ended up like Bree.”

“You’re doing alright with Darq.” Cal put his hand on top of Pell’s and stroked it encouragingly.

“Darquiel was an adult by the time he got here, so I didn’t have the opportunity to destroy his childhood. I’m sure I could have messed him up too if I’d tried.”

“Pell…”

“Let’s face it, Cal; I’m not good with children. I’m not a good father or a good hostling.”

“Neither was I, but I learned.”

“Well obviously I’m not as brilliant as you!”

Cal flopped back on the grass and stared up at the green, hanging branches above.

“Perhaps you have another chance now too. Perhaps we all do.” he dug his fingernails into the dry soil under the grass. “You can’t undo the past, but sometimes you can make up for it.”

“Children should be wanted for themselves, not as some sort of vehicle for their parents’ redemption.” Pell said bleakly.

“Now you’re getting it.”

Pell just shook his head and drew his knees up under his chin.

“It’s not even my child.” He spoke to the grass.

“You think that makes a difference?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything!”

There was a long pause. The garden seemed unnaturally silent. No bees buzzed – it was late in the afternoon, and the heat hung heavy and immovable in the air. Already the shadows were elongating, and in another hour or so the palace would awaken from its stupor and begin preparing for the evening meals. For the moment, neither insects nor hara showed any inclination to move.

“I wonder what’s keeping Rue,” Cal’s voice seemed somehow too loud, breaking the spell of silence.

Pell looked up at him with darkened eyes. “Perhaps we should go and check on him…”

With uncanny unity, the two stood up simultaneously. They made their way back indoors, expecting to meet Caeru on his return, but he was nowhere to be seen. They passed through the morning room, now mostly in shadow, and through into the main hall of the Tigrina’s apartments.

“Bathroom?” Cal jerked his head in the direction of the Tigrina’s private rooms.

Pell hesitated for a second, then followed Cal.

The Tigrina’s private bathroom was tiled in pale green marble. Gold fittings and ornaments gleamed in the subdued, almost aquatic light within which came from a glass dome in the high ceiling. Pell searched the room with his eyes and with his inner senses. He knew Caeru was there, he could feel him even if he couldn’t see him. Then, in the far corner of the room, he caught sight of what appeared to be a small heap of garments, and his heart contracted.

He and Cal both rushed over hurriedly. The Tigrina was lying worryingly still on the hard marble floor. Both his skin and his pale clothing looked greenish in the strange light, but the dark, growing stain oozing ominously over the tiles was obviously red. Blood. Too much blood.

Pell bent down and grasped Caeru’s wrist. He could feel the pulse, too fast, too thready. Rue’s eyes fluttered open, and he tried to speak.

“Hush. . It’s alright.”

“Pell…”

Pell picked him up bodily and carried him through to the bedroom. He could feel the blood soaking through Rue’s clothing; hot and sticky. He left a trail of it behind him across the bedroom floor as he carried Caeru. Cal had already left to fetch help as soon as he had seen what the situation was.

Pell laid Rue carefully down on the bed. His arms and hands were stained red, and he wiped them on his own clothing to try to clean himself, but all he achieved was to make himself even more blood-covered.

He put his hands on Rue’s chest and directed energy into him. If he concentrated, he could visualize the inside of Rue’s body. The half-grown pearl, too large now for its confined space, and the damaged, scarred tissue which had given way, ripping open blood vessels and arteries. Pell tried to focus on sealing these, but it seemed that when he did so, the blood simply found another escape route. He managed to slow the loss, but not stop it completely.

Rue was still conscious – Pell’s efforts had stabilised his blood pressure enough for that. His large blue eyes were full of fear, and some other emotion that Pell couldn’t read. Pell spoke to him gently, knowing that it was vital for him to stay calm and focused.

“It’s okay Rue, just relax, everything will be fine. Dr Sheeva will be here in a minute.”

Rue shook his head, with difficulty.

“Pell,” he whispered urgently “I want you to promise me something. If I die…”

“You’re not going to die!” Pell heard the alarm in his own voice, and strove to contain it.

Rue ignored his protest. “If I die, I want you to promise that you will look after the child. Be his hostling. Love him. He needs someone who will love him… you and Cal. Promise me, Pell.”

“I promise,” he said, much too quickly,

Does a promise count if you know you can’t keep it, even as you make it?

Rue didn’t seem to notice, he only heard the words, and gave a weak smile as he slipped into unconsciousness.

A commotion at the door announced the arrival of Cal and Dr Sheeva. The Doctor looked grave, but resigned, as if he had been expecting this.

“We have to make a decision – now.” he announced.

“What do you mean?” Pell looked up from the bloodstained bed.

“We must remove the pearl from the Tigrina’s body if he is to survive.”

“Can the pearl survive?”

Doctor Sheeva did not answer at first. He sighed deeply.

“I do not know” he said eventually. “It may just be old enough to survive outside the Tigrina’s body. If it had spent just a few days more maturing, then it would have had a much better chance. I think it would take a miracle for it to survive at this stage.”

“What if we put off removing the pearl for another few days? Can Rue hold out that long? We have enormous medical and healing skills available to us in Immanion. Can we keep him alive? “

The Doctor closed his eyes, as if in pain. “Tiahaar… I simply do not know. Life is uncertain. All I know is that we need to make a decision now. Has the Tigrina himself expressed any wishes as to what he would want in this situation?”

“No. At least, not to me.”

“In that case, the decision as to the fate of the pearl must rest with the father”

Both of them looked at Cal.

Cal stared down at the unmoving, bloodstained body on the bed. The Tigrina’s face was pale, his breathing shallow. He did not look as if he would survive another two hours, let alone another two days.

“Tiahaar…” The doctor implored him. “There is little time. Please think about this carefully.”

Cal said nothing. He walked over to the window and stared out. A cloud had temporarily occluded the sun, casting shadow over the streets of Immanion. Out at sea, however, the light still reflected as brightly as ever off the iridescent blue. On the horizon, Cal could just make out a dark, ominous shape. A storm was coming, blown in on unseasonable winds. Perhaps a summer squall, perhaps the first harbinger of an early autumn.

Cal was so deeply engrossed in his own thoughts that he was surprised when Pell’s hand fell on his shoulder. He looked at it with surprise, as if wondering why it was stained with blood.

“I asked the Dehara for help,” he said, matter-of-factly, “but they don’t seem to be in a cooperative mood lately. Where are you Gods now, Pellaz? Hmm?”

“Cal…”

“Don’t. It won’t help.”

Together they stood in silence, communicating only by thoughts. After a while, they turned and approached the Doctor together.

“You have decided?” he asked

“Yes, we have.”

“I see. Then that is what we will do. So be it.”

The fields of barley around Immanion are already showing gold. In three days time it will be Cuttingtide. The longest day. The sun will be at its strongest, and yet this is the very moment when its long decline begins, as it starts it’s circular, never-ending journey to winter, and back to summer again.

The rhythm of the seasons is a constant in all our lives. There are summers when we are children, summers when we are grown, summers when we are old, and just as assuredly there will be summers when we are gone. And there will be winters too.

To Cal, it did not seem like a year since he had last trodden these fields.

Years pass more quickly, the older one gets, he thought, philosophically. And yet this year past had been so achingly slow at times, and so urgently hurried at others that it barely seemed real when he tried to recall it.

He turned and called to his companion, who was lagging behind him.

“Come on slowcoach. Hurry it up a bit!”

“It’s all very well for you!” Pell called back. “You try carrying him for a bit!”

Pell hitched the harling up on his hip and readjusted the child’s position.

Cal spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “You know he prefers it if you carry him. He loves his Pelly!”

Pell just laughed. As if to prove Cal’s point, the golden-haired harling put his arms around Pell’s neck and kissed him delightedly three times. Pell kissed him back, and then hugged him tightly.

Cal waited until the two of them caught up with him, Pell slightly out of breath. The small child smiled angelically at him, but refused to let go his grip on Pell’s neck.

“We’re going to have a party in three days time” Pell informed the child, wiping away a smutty mark from his cheek with his thumb.”

“Party!” the harling giggled. “What for?”

“Cuttingtide. It’s when we thank the Dehara for giving us summer.”

“What’s a Dehara?”

“A Dehar,” Pell corrected him “is a God. A Wraeththu God.”

“Are they nice?”

“Of course they are! Well – mostly. They do lots of things for Wraeththu.” Pell looked Cal directly in the eye. “They can even work miracles, if you ask them nicely. Can’t they, Cal?”

Cal made a face. “Yes dear. Whatever you say. Speaking of which – look who’s here. Go and say hello to your hostling, Rolly…”

The harling squealed and jumped down from Pell’s arms. He did a little dance, twirling to some music he could hear in his own head, then he ran laughing through the ripe barley towards the har with long golden hair who held out his arms, caught him, and lifted him up, laughing as the sun shone down upon them all.

“Even the longest day has its ending”

Beautiful illustration by gyehenna aka Forest Dream on Deviantart

In A Dark Place

In the heat, he finds it impossible to sleep.

Inside the cabin it is claustrophobically dark. There is a window – a porthole, to be accurate – but no light enters though it. Outside the full moon is hidden behind cloud.

He swings his legs carefully over the edge of the narrow bunk, hearing it creak with his movement, and sits on the edge. He is naked, but the still, dead air within the cabin does not cool his skin. He can feel the slight but ever-present motion of the ship traveling through the wooden structure, like the vessel’s own heartbeat, up through his feet, his groin, his abdomen, his chest, his head, making him feel slightly giddy and off-balance.

He would open the window if he could, but it doesn’t open. A practical measure designed to keep the ship from being swamped by a high wave if some careless passenger were to leave it open, but tonight, on this calm ocean, on this airless night, it seems pointless and vindictive.

You’re an idiot, Cal. he tells himself, and his self does not disagree. You didn’t have to be here in the first place.

Since he has nothing better to do, and he feels he deserves it, he decides to torture himself by dwelling on the fact that it was his own insistence which has put him in this situation. There is no need for either him or his traveling companion to be making this journey by boat. They are both capable of travelling via more exotic means, either with or without the help of a sedu.

You thought it would be fun. An adventure. Excitement. You’re a fool. He takes a calculated delight in rubbing his own nose in his stupidity, enjoying the process of humiliating himself. And you’re a masochist too. he concludes savagely, but his inner humiliated Cal does not reply. He sighs. He knows himself too well these days.

He wipes a hand down his own throat and chest, There is a thin trickle of rank perspiration running down his breastbone, and he smears it over his skin, feeling a moment of coolness before the stifling heat returns. He could do with a drink, but in the dark he cannot see where the flask of water is.

“Some light would be useful,” he mutters up at the dark circle of the porthole, and as if on cue, the clouds part and the full moon makes its triumphant appearance. The cabin is filled with a cold, silver light. Cal grins slowly. Even the universe loves him.

He reaches over to grab the flask of water, which he sees tucked down between the two bunks. He gulps down about half the contents, and pours some of the remainder over his head, feeling it soak gloriously into his short, sleep-messy hair.

Belatedly, he wonders if he should offer some to his companion, and he looks across at the other bunk, but its occupant is sleeping soundly.

Of course. thinks Cal sourly. A Gelaming is never bothered by trivial things like heat or cold or physical discomfort. They are above all that. Smug bastards.

Cal looks at the har lying on the bed. He is naked also. Plainly he is not completely impervious to the cabin conditions. He lying on his back, with his hands folded lightly over his stomach, long silken hair draped fluidly around his body. Cal can see no movement to indicate breathing. He could be dead, for all the signs of life he is exhibiting. He reminds Cal of one of those marble effigies atop the coffin of someone who had been important in life. An unexpected memory surfaces – a graveyard at night; himself and another har; the fierce passion of aruna, the smell of the damp earth, the stone slab under him, and the marble angel looking impassively down at them, all blind, carved eyes and petrified wings. Aeons ago. He cannot even remember the har’s name, but that is true of most of his couplings.

For a brief second, he thinks he sees wings folded around the har’s body but he blinks and the illusion vanishes, leaving only familiar contours. He lets his gaze travel along Velaxis’ naked body, admiring every part. The hard and beautiful face – eyes and lips both closed. Some hara take on an innocence and vulnerability when they are asleep, but Cal cannot imagine either of those words applying to Velaxis – even sleeping, he looks contained and serene. He admires the supple neck, the smooth chest, the hard, flat abdomen with those long, manicured fingers resting lightly there. Below that, a swathe of silky hair – pale, like the rest of him – Cal briefly wonders why the eyelashes and eyebrows are dark – and below that the outline of his ouana-lim

Cal stares at it intently, and slowly runs his tongue over his bottom lip. He wonders if Velaxis’ skin will be cold to the touch, like marble. He can see muscles outlined underneath the porcelain surface, in sculpted perfection.

Voyeur, he accuses himself, but he feels no guilt. He never does. He reaches out and takes Velaxis’ ouana-lim in his hand, and is almost surprised when it is warm. He can feel a slight pulse, and a slight quickening as he lazily strokes the underside with his thumb. Flesh and blood. Not marble after all.

Pervert – Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. Add voyeurism and molesting a high-ranking Gelaming in his sleep to his list of crimes. The flesh in his hand becomes harder, the pulse more insistent. His own ouana-lim streches and rises in sympathy, demanding attention, and he moves forward, so that its swollen length rubs pleasurably against the other har’s body.

Frotteur – The internal cataloguing of his own misdemeanours provides him with a sort of sordid glee. He continues to stroke Velaxis’ ouana-lim, until it becomes fully erect, and occasionally he slips a fingertip into the moist crevice behind it. He wonders what sort of dreams the other har is having.

He glances up at the sleeping har’s face and meets dark blue eyes which are open and staring at him expressionlessly. For a moment he is startled. Velaxis’ face is shadowed, but his eyes seem to glow in the darkness. Neither of them say anything, and Cal does not remove his hand from Velaxis’ ouana-lim – instead he continues his lazy, rhythmic strokes. Velaxis raises his hips deliberately, thrusting slightly into Cal’s hand, but he does not close his eyes, does not even blink, and continues to look at Cal with an expression which Cal cannot name.

Actions, though, speak louder than words, or so Cal thinks. He tightens his grip around Velaxis’ ouana-lim, constricting and releasing and running his entire hand up and down its full length. It feels hot, like the desire which is now burning Cal’s flesh. His skin is dry, there is a hissing in his ears and there is no oxygen in the suffocating cabin, but he does not care. He climbs carefully onto the bunk, straddling Velaxis, dragging his own aching hardness deliberately across the other har’s belly then pushing it downwards firmly. He rubs his own erection against the other har’s and shivers slightly with pleasure.

Velaxis still does not move, but Cal can feel his heartbeat, both through his chest and through his ouana-lim. He leans forward and breathes heavily into Velaxis’ right ear.

“Is that good?” he demands, in a low voice. His mouth is dry, the flask of water a distant memory. He licks his lips. They are dry too. “Tell me. Tell me what you want me to do to you.”

A shaft of the silver light from the distant porthole has fallen across Velaxis’ face. Cal can see his perfect features clearly. There is a strange look in those lambent blue eyes now, and a strange expression on his face. The lips are curved upwards, almost like a smile.

“Do to me?” Velaxis’ voice is soft too, but not dry or hoarse. It is silky and – possibly – just a little amused. “What makes you think you are the one who is going to be doing anything, Cal?”

Cal is not entirely certain what happens next, but Velaxis moves with sudden speed, like a snake striking, and before he knows what is going on, Cal finds himself upright and forced against the cabin wall, kneeling on the bunk. He can feel the rough wooden planks of the ship pressing against his back, the slightly lumpy undulations of the bunk’s hard, stuffed mattress under his knees, and Velaxis’ face pushed very close to his own. He tries to move, but discovers that the other har has him in an unbreakable hold. His ouana-lim is pressed hard into Velaxis’ belly and throbs insistently. He can feel a slight stickiness of lubricating fluid, or perhaps it is sweat, he can’t tell – the cabin is completely dark again – the moon is looking away, embarrassed by the scene – but the heat is still stifling and his brain is muzzy, all the blood diverted to his groin.

Velaxis is holding him very tightly, and then with a casual lack of effort lifts him to his feet. The boat moves slightly beneath them, and the timbers creak ominously. Cal is still convinced that he can break free from Velaxis’ embrace at any time, but he finds the unexpected bondage aspect is adding to his arousal. In both his mind and his body he is expecting to penetrate the other har, so when the opposite happens and Velaxis’ erect ouana-lim suddenly forces itself inside him he is taken by surprise, but decides after the initial stab of discomfort that he can live with this, yes, and he attempts to arch his back a little to force that hardness a little deeper inside himself, but he finds that he is unable to move, pinned as he is between the body of his captor and the wooden bulkhead. He is mildly frustrated, but at the same time increasingly wet with desire and excitement as he acknowledges his own surrender.

“I don’t even have to ask,” Velaxis’ voice is still silk, but there is an edge to it now, like a snagged thread. “I know what you want. This is what you want, isn’t it Cal? “

Cal realizes that he keeps forgetting to breath.. The walls of the cabin seem to be closing in around them and the darkness is absolute. Half of him wants to strike Velaxis, – hard – to fight back against the other har’s casual assumption, but another part of acknowledges that, yes, he wants this. Wants it so badly he will collude in his own defeat and let Velaxis do what he pleases with him. He will never know if he could free himself, because he knows he will not try.

His ouana-lim is still hard and taut, despite everything. He feels Velaxis shift, move his hand downwards and grasp it firmly. Cal feels as if he is splitting into two separate entities; two layers peeling apart, mirror-images of each other. Again Velaxis moves with purposeful suddenness – again Cal cannot be sure what has just happened, but an excruciating tightness grips his ouana-lim and then he is inside Velaxis, and Velaxis is inside him. He does not know how this is possible, but plainly it is. He is joined inseparably to the other har, and he could not move now even if he wanted to. It hurts, and yet it is an almost indescribable pleasure too. He whimpers slightly and digs his fingernails into Velaxis’ white marble flesh.

If Velaxis feels pain too, then he does not show it. Perhaps he’s used to it. He must have done this many times. He has a reputation for the unusual when it comes to the pleasures of the flesh, and Cal now knows why so many of the Hegemony seek him out for such things. Cautiously he moves his hips. The twisting discomfort increases, blossoming into a deep ache, but it is an addictive sensation, and he thrusts a little more, trying to increase his tolerance. It is worth it for the hot waves of pre-orgasmic pleasure which accompany each small movement.

Velaxis senses his increasing arousal, and stills him.

“Not yet,” he whispers smoothly, and Cal finds that he wants to obey; wants this strange, awful situation to continue, wants to experience the shame, the humiliation, the pain, the helplessness and the self-disgust that comes with desiring all these feelings. All those dark passions scorned by enlightened Wraththu

He laughs quietly in Velaxis ear. “Do your worst,” he says, and he means it. There is nothing Velaxis can do to him that hasn’t already been done, at some point in his life. And now he is trapped in a dark place, suffocating in the stagnant confines of the airless cabin, unable to free himself from his tormentor. And yet somehow, it still feels like a game, like something he could walk away from at any time he chooses.

He doesn’t choose to. He lets Velaxis twist the knife, or whatever it is that is thrust deep inside him. He lets Velaxis put his hands carefully around his throat, and begin to squeeze. He lets himself slowly start to lose consciousness as his airway is closed and the arteries in his neck constricted.

Old trick, Vel. Is that all you’ve got? He’s not entirely sure whether he says the words aloud, or whether he just thinks them, but given that Velaxis’ hands are now squeezing tightly around his neck the latter seems more likely. His vision is darkened – if there is moonlight in the cabin he can no longer see it, but he hears Velaxis’ reply; soft, seductive and way-too-reasonable.

“I’m only giving you want you want, Cal.”

Reality is fading. Curtains of pulsing colour rain down where Cal’s sight used to be and he can feel the oncoming rush of orgasm, both inside and out, too close now to escape, too inevitable to avoid. The only thing he is aware of now is Velaxis’ voice, dripping into his ear like poisoned honey.

“You want this. You want me to control you, because there are so very, very few who can, isn’t that right, Cal? Pellaz cannot do this for you, can he, Cal? The only other one who could do this was Terzian…”

Anger flares from nowhere, rising up through his chest, huge and monstrous, suffocating him with its sudden ferocity. He twists furiously, struggling against his confinement, not playing now. Every nerve and fibre in his body wants to strike Velaxis dead, see him broken and bleeding, but it is too late. Even as he realizes that there are some things you can never walk away from, some things you always carry with you, something reaches out and touches him deep inside, in a raw place, and as the universe explodes and surges over him in great drowning waves he barely feels the hands release their grip from his throat, is barely aware of the huge, gasping breath filling his lungs, or the arms grabbing him to prevent him falling down onto the bunk.

His orgasm is unbearably intense, and it feels as if it will never finish. When it does, his body is racked with agony, and he is only capable of choking out the one word.

“Bastard!”

Velaxis lowers him gently onto the bunk.

“You… unspeakable… bastard. You…” his voice trails off, and he starts to laugh, just a little. It is either that or cry, and he doesn’t do that.

He is kneeling on the hard bunk, clinging to Velaxis, still laughing his half-crazy laugh. Velaxis’ arms are around him, surprisingly gentle, like soft-feathered wings, and Cal cannot look up, cannot look into the other har’s face for fear of seeing not flesh and blood, but blind, carved marble eyes staring impassively down at him.

It occurs to him that he sounds slightly insane, but he doesn’t care. He’s been insane before and sanity’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Perhaps he wants to let go again, just for a while. Perhaps Velaxis can give him that, too. It’s what he does, after all. He gives hara what they want. Sniffs out their deepest desires and fantasies and fulfils them. No wonder the Hegemony are all so wary of him, for if there is one thing Cal knows – and knows it all the more intimately for this night’s experiences – is that there is only one thing worse than being denied what you want. And that is getting it. Be careful what you wish for…

The bruises around his neck fade within the week – from blue-purple, to green, to diseased yellow – and he hides them from Pell with a silk scarf, but the desire remains in him and with him for a long time afterwards.

May 07

One man owns the world. One man rules the world. The accepted theory is that he’s telepathic, and can tell what everyone’s thinking, so no one dares think anything radical or revolutionary, or naughty.Whether it’s true or not is beside the point. People believe that it’s true, so it works, and the Man stays in charge.

This isn’t as bad as it sounds, on the whole he runs things quite well, if you behave yourself. The few thousand citizens who disappear without trace every year have only themselves to blame – they were thinking naughty thoughts, weren’t they?

This has been going on for the best part of a century now. People, especially world dictators, live a lot longer now. It’s later than you think. The world is smaller than you think. They can do lots of things you don’t know about, but don’t worry about them, I’ll tell you what you need to know.

To return to the point, most people behave themselves because they believe they will get found out if they don’t. Bark doesn’t believe this. He doesn’t believe the Man can read his thoughts; he’s never heard him inside his head. And Bark has a bomb. But more of that later.

Bark lives in a room close to the centre of the city, it’s very convenient for buying drugs and getting home quickly. There’s a fish in the room below.

You think that’s bad? The fish used to be in the room above, that was really bad, the water used to drip through the ceiling like water generally does through rotten wood and plaster. After about a year of this, Bark arranged to swop with the fish, so the fish had the ground room and he had the one above, that way the fish could fill his room with as much water as he liked and only the rats in the cellar would get dripped on. Bark thought of that one all by himself, and he was really proud.

You know, of course, that it wasn’t a real fish? Not the swimming, scaly, mouth opening and closing kind – yuck, who’d want one of those in the same block? The fish was one of those aliens, you know, the kind that like water, and have a lot of it back home, wherever that is. The furry, snouty, short-legged sort of fish. They’re okay to have in the same block, as long as you make sure they’re in the room below you.

So Bark had his own room with a good view of the street, and he didn’t have to share it with anyone. Didn’t have to. But he did. The good view of the street was instrumental in bringing into his life The Lovely Nikki.

One night there was a fight, or something, just below his window. Bark looked out, he had a good view of the street, you see. And he liked a bit of violence now and again, as long as he wasn’t personally involved. Don’t we all. He saw three men beating up a woman. Fine, a hint of sexual overtones to the violence didn’t go amiss as far as Bark was concerned. Three against one was a bit unfair, he thought, but he enjoyed it while it lasted.

After it was over, and smitten with what could almost have been a touch of post-excitory guilt, he crept down the narrow stairs after the men had gone and left the woman lying on the pavement and stuck his thin features round the corner of the door onto the street to see what he could see.

He saw a woman snivelling on the ground, dishevelled and in general disarray. He cringed with embarrassment, and wanted to sneak back up the stairs again, but she saw him and called out, so he reluctantly sloped over to her and stared sullenly down.

She looked up at him, tears filling her sky-coloured eyes, melting black mascara and carrying it in twin muddy tracks down her dirty face. Bark melted like the mascara and shyly thrust out a hand to help her up.

She blinked at him, sending more sooty sploshes across her bruises. She sniffed and gulped.

“I’ve hurt my leg.” she said, in a squeaky voice, showing him the bleeding abrasions on her shin.

Bark wanted to do something unpleasant to the three men, who were, fortuitously, long gone from the scene of the crime.

He half carried her up the narrow stairs to his room and put her on his lumpy bed. When the blood and mascara were cleaned away, he could hardly believe his luck. The Lovely Nikki was, well, you know…. lovely!

Now, to be brutally frank, Bark had never had much success with women. Even ugly ones. It wasn’t that he was particularly revolting, it was just that, as he knew in advance that they were going to say no… he never actually asked them… Thus he was rarely disappointed by the response.

With the Lovely Nikki incapacitated in his room, he found that he was able to talk to her without his usual embarrassment, and her undying gratitude was a bit of a bonus, too. She stayed with him, and he was overjoyed. She didn’t have anywhere else to go, but that didn’t matter, when she looked at him with those butterfly-blue eyes and preened her fluffy, pale hair, he could forgive her anything. Including… Well, you’ll find out about that later.

So, at this point, everything was so peachy for Bark it would just about make you throw up, you know? He was getting on alright with the fish, and he even got a rebate on his social allowance, back-dated sixteen and a half months. The Lovely Nikki could do some extraordinary things with her tongue.

Here comes the barf in the bowl of cherries.

You see, Bark was a terrorist. An Urban Guerrilla. A Freedom Fighter. He was dedicated to ridding the world of the Man who owned everything, ruled everything, and looked inside people’s heads. Remember him? Good, he turns up later.

Bark’s three most treasured possessions in the world (apart from the Lovely Nikki, of course), were a genuine antique signed picture of the Legendary Colonel Gadaffi, an army surplus green and brown camouflage jacket, and a funny old magazine he’d found behind the walls when he’d been trying to dry out after the first fish-flood.

There was an article in this magazine on how to make explosives. Okay, some of the text was blanked out, and the diagrams didn’t look as if they had much to do with the procedure, but Bark was pretty sure that he had it figured out. It didn’t look too difficult. So Bark built a bomb, and the purpose of this bomb was to blow up the Man in Charge.

Now, if Bark had ever met this Man, he probably wouldn’t have wanted to blow him up as he was a decent enough chap, with a wife, and a son, to whom he was genetically related, and quite probably a dog too, although I couldn’t actually swear to this.

But Bark didn’t know the Man, or his wife, although he’d probably seen his son, who worked in media presentation, just to embarrass his father. He turns up later too, watch out for him. So to Bark the Man in Charge was an abstract of all that was wrong in society, and thus had to be removed in order to make way for a fairer, happier, less annoying way of life. Bark was an idealist, you see.

At this point, you can pause for a moment to feel sorry for the Man in Charge, who always got blamed for what went wrong, and never got any credit for the things that went right. Remember, too, that his son was a great embarrassment to him, and you’ll see that being a World Dictator is not as easy as you think.

In case you’re wondering, the trains didn’t run on time.

Bark explained all this to The Lovely Nikki, who nodded gravely, and agreed with him totally, as she always did, which was one of the things Bark liked best about her, then, while he was outlining his plan to rid the world of the Dictator who couldn’t even make the trains run on time, she fiddled with the velcro fastening on his trousers, which came apart with a curious scream, and began to poke and prod within, and do the extraordinary things with her tongue which had so endeared her to him in the first place, and which was another of the things he liked best about her.

After his breathing and glandular secretions had returned to normal, he realised he hadn’t the faintest idea how he was going to carry out his great plan, so he went out for a drink in the nearby bar, which was just around the corner from his room, leaving the Lovely Nikki lying on the bed humming to herself and shaving her legs.

In the bar, he ordered a pint of beer, and got something brown that complied with the nutritional labelling regulations act and tasted like piss. He saw Lizzie over in the corner, single-handedly preventing the wall from collapsing, and he went over to join him.

As far as Bark knew, Lizzie divided his time more or less equally between lying face down in the street in a puddle of his own vomit, and getting that way. Occasionally, he took a well-earned break from this arduous occupation in order to get his leg over any woman who wouldn’t snitch on him to Kizzy. There were quite a number of these, who huddled in various corners of the local drinking establishments and sighed and aaahhed over what a cute arse he had, and made surprisingly imaginative comments on what they would like to do with it.

Kizzy must think he had a cute arse too, the amount of shit she took from him. Either that or she was just plain stupid, which Bark didn’t think she was. A really nice, intelligent, sensible, decent sort of woman, except when it came to Lizzie and his cute arse, but then everyone has their weak spot. Don’t you?

Bark looked at Lizzie and his cute arse, and his long eyelashes and innocent smile and drunken spittle dribbling from the corner of his mouth, and pondered the unfairness of existence and his own passing resemblance, on his bad days, to a dyspeptic weasel, and decided he didn’t really mind after all. He had The Lovely Nikki, which was more than he’d ever expected from life, and he was content with that. All he wanted now was to blow up the Man in Charge.

Before Bark was half way through his fourth pint, Lizzie slid gracefully and elegantly down the wall, like a ship down a slipway, and landed heavily on his… you remember, don’t you? Bark jumped out of the way quickly. He’d been pebble-dashed by Lizzie before, and he didn’t relish the prospect of vast quantities of nutritionally regular whatsit gushing forth over his shoes. For a start they weren’t even waterproof!

Lizzie’s innards seemed stable tonight though, and Bark prodded him cautiously with his toe, just to make sure he wasn’t going to get up again. The man behind the bar looked down at Lizzie in disgust, glared pointedly at Bark and jerked his thumb in the direction of the door.

Bark was miffed – Lizzie wasn’t his responsibility, and who was it had sold him the vast quantities of stuff anyway? But the barman was large and muscular, so he hastily downed the last of his brown liquid of dubious quality and dragged Lizzie across the sticky, stained floor and out into the street.

Outside, no amount of vigorous contact with Bark’s foot could persuade Lizzie to assume a vertical position, so Bark took the opportunity to land a few more kicks in Lizzie’s tender regions before reluctantly hauling him up with a strangled grunt, balancing him precariously over one shoulder, leaving his arms dangling down over his back, tickling the back of his knees. For someone who regularly downed vast quantities of finest recycled piss every night, Lizzie weighed surprisingly little. Probably had worms, though Bark gloomily.

He certainly had an interesting collection of external parasites. Bark had seen a number of eager, scuttling things-on-legs boogieing about in Lizzie’s long, shaggy hair when he had bent down to haul him up. Lizzie’s crotch was now about an inch from Bark’s left ear, and he tried not to think of what was partying away down there too! Whatever it was got a sudden and unexpected bath. A warm, wet feeling began to spread down Bark’s left shoulder just at the same time as his nose picked up a familiar, unpleasant smell.

Bark’s language was unimaginative, but he used his limited vocabulary with enthusiasm. He almost dropped Lizzie onto the road again, but the damage was already done, so he just stood there and made do with an instant replay of his favourite expletives. Death and chopped liver in colour, if Lizzie didn’t get you out one end, he got you from the other! Grumbling to himself, Bark staggered off down the street, leaving a damp trail behind him.

Fortunately, Lizzie’s room wasn’t far. Bark would never have attempted his ill-repaid altruistic deed otherwise. He arrived at the place still damp and disgruntled, and pushed the enter-buzz, waiting for Kizzy to let him in.

When there was no answering bleep, he pushed the door, which swung open without resistance, and he swayed in and clumped up the dirty stairs, making sure to bang Lizzie’s head off the iron railings at every possible opportunity. Burdened by Lizzie’s dead weight on his shoulder, he was panting and coughing by the time he reached the room his unconscious passenger shared with Kizzy.

Now, strangely enough, Kizzy had a fish in the room below, too. This was not at all a common occurrence, fish were rare enough in the city, and it was just a co-incidence that these two happened to live within two blocks of each other. They didn’t know each other, and they never went out and got drunk together, and you don’t have to remember anything about them, because they’re not really important as far as this story’s concerned, it’s just one of these things, synchronicity, or whatever, okay?

Standing at the door, Bark could hear voices from within, Kizzy’s voice and another woman’s. They seemed to be arguing. He wondered if he should just dump Lizzie on the doorstep and leave him, but he was becoming increasingly aware of the dampness all down his left side, and he decided that Kizzy owed him a dry towel at least for his good deed of the day.

He knocked loudly at the door. The voices stopped immediately and there was silence. A few seconds later the door opened a cautious inch or two and Kizzy peered furtively through the crack. At first it seemed as if she wasn’t going to open the door any further, but when she recognised what it was Bark had slung over his back she relented and flung the door open wide, ushering him and his moribund cargo inside.

The room Kizzy and Lizzie shared was clean and tidy, despite Lizzie’s frequent attempts to turn it into something resembling an open sewer. It was quite large, too, over twice the size of the cramped hole Bark and The Lovely Nikki lived in, and had a big, bright window in the wall opposite the door, through which alternatively sunlight and neon street light illuminated the interior with regular, diurnal rhythm.

There was a bed in one corner, with a brightly coloured cover, onto which Bark dumped the unconscious Lizzie, who bounced once, and elicited a twang from somewhere underneath the frame. Kizzy clucked anxiously at the sight of his limp body on the bright orange bed-sheet. She sat down on the bed beside him, stroking his chocolate-coloured hair with her thin hands, occasionally crushing the odd, unwelcome life-form between her nails. She began to remove his wet clothing, still humming softly to him as he snored noisily. When she saw the marks on his body, her long fingers fluttered over the dark,bruised areas on his white skin like roosting birds, probing gently.

Bark felt peculiarly guilty. Not about kicking Lizzie, the sod deserved every last punt, but he felt responsible for causing Kizzy some undue distress.

How was it that an intelligent, nice, not to mention passably good-looking woman like Kizzy would want to waste herself on a total creepoid like Lizzie? It surely wasn’t fair, he knew for a fact of eight men who wouldn’t mind taking up with Kiz – he’d had a secret yearning for her himself until he’d met The Lovely Nikki, and here she was weeping and wringing her hands over that worthless bozo down there who was out every night getting dissolved and chasing everything in a dress until his legs gave up the impossible struggle of holding him up.

She must know – everybody knew. And if she didn’t know, he wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.

For the first time he became aware of another person in the room. A woman with short, mousy hair and forgettable features. There was something unusual about her, though – a presence, a feeling of solidity, of dominance. She was looking down at Lizzie’s naked body on the bed with just the slightest hint of disgust in her eyes.

Bark had to admit that Lizzie was not looking his most appealing best just at the moment, it was a pity all the ladies in the drink-houses couldn’t see him now, white and limp, like something unused to daylight that had just crawled forth from underneath a stone.

The look on the woman’s face suggested that she would rather he crawled back immediately. Whatever she and Kizzy had been arguing about before he came in, it was clear that Kizzy now had her mind on other things, and it didn’t look like he was going to get his towel either. He turned to go.

“See ya Kiz, and get him some rubber underwear next time, yeah?”

“… yeah, and thanks for bringing him home…” Kizzy’s voice trailed after him absently as he let himself out. To his surprise, the short- haired woman followed him, shutting the door quietly behind her, and gazing at it thoughtfully for a moment.

“What a creep!” she observed, almost unnecessarily

Bark didn’t answer, he didn’t like to slag off his friends in front of total strangers, even if he did agree with them.

“Drink?” said the woman, unexpectedly .

Bark was undoubtedly surprised, but never one to look a gift animal in the mouth, or anywhere else for that matter, so he said:

“Yeah, but better make it Toadstools, just come from the Bucket with you-know-who, don’t think they’ll let me back in tonight.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

They walked the short distance to Toadstools with the woman making short, decisive small talk. When she said ‘Nice evening,’, it wasn’t so much a comment as an order, and Bark would have been very surprised if the evening had dared to turn out even the slightest bit nasty after that. He said nothing, just nodded in vigorous agreement with everything she said.

Terry Trimble’s Tremendous Toadstool was an appalling sight. It wasn’t shaped like a toadstool, but would have been, if Terry Trimble could have got the planning committee bribe together in time. Instead, a giant toadstool motif was painted on the outside of the building, and inside patrons were required to sit on toadstool-shaped seats and put their drinks on toadstool-shaped tables, all resplendent in scarlet with white dots and green spears of grass painted around the bases of their singular supports.

The workers were dressed as overgrown pixies, and looked about as pleased at this turn of events as you would expect. One sullen faced imp dragged himself unhurriedly over to their table, and faced them with bored expectancy.

“Two pints of whatever haven’t gone off!” demanded the woman

Bark was going to add his usual joke “Yeah, and I’ll have two pints too!”, but he had the feeling jokes were not this woman’s strong point, so he didn’t bother.

“You known Kizzy long?” she asked him suddenly, after the drinks had arrived

“Yeah, well, you know. Couple of years, I think. Hangs around in the same places, her and Lizzie. I mostly go drinking with Lizzie. Or used to, he’s getting a bit ahead of me now, you know?”

“Gets in that state a lot, does he?”

“If you call every night a lot, yeah.”

“Why doesn’t Kizzy just boot him down that ever-so-handy flight of stairs outside her front door?”

Bark screwed up his face in puzzlement. “Dunno. Maybe she likes him, or something.”

The woman pulled a face.

“That’s the problem though, isn’t it? I mean, when people outstay their welcome, don’t know when it’s time to leave. And nobody wants to give them that push, even though they know they’d be better off without. In the long run. That’s the problem… with life in general … isn’t it?”

She gave him a long, meaningful stare. Bark felt flustered.

“I don’t know, I mean, is it?”

She emptied her glass, put it down smoothly and clicked two fingers at the scowling waiter.

“You must be aware, of course, an intelligent man like you,” – Bark liked that bit – “of the problem created by repressive regimes, like, say, a government, just as an example, where there is a lack of new blood, new ideas, dependency on old, familiar ways just for the sake of them. Fear of the new. It’s always easier to stick with what you know, isn’t it?”

“Of course, all it takes is a little courage, a little vision, some determination, and the old, restrictive relationship can be swept away and something better put in its place. At least, that’s how I see Kizzy’s situation, don’t you?”

Bark felt a growing buzz of excitement in his stomach. The short-haired woman wasn’t talking about Kizzy and Lizzie, he felt that for sure. Sometimes he just had this sort of, well – intuitive understanding, a sort of gift, really.

Two more pints of the management’s finest arrived. The bearer of the unhappy beverages dropped the glasses heavily onto the chipped surface of their toadstool with indifferent bad temper, and some of the fluid spilled over the edge of the glasses, across the tilted table top and into Bark’s lap. He looked down briefly, half expecting it to eat a hole in the tattered fabric of his clothing. It looked as though he had pissed himself, but since he smelt that way anyway due to Lizzie’s recent contribution, it didn’t greatly add to his feeling of discomfort, and anyway he was much more interested in the unexpected turn his conversation with the strange woman had taken.

He took a large gulp of beer, ignoring the taste by sheer will power and years of practice.

“So what you’re saying,” he frothed eagerly through a mouthful of brown suds, “is that it’s possible to bring about changes by direct action, rather than just sit around waiting for it to happen. That we can really have an effect on… on situations and, er, society, and.. everything…!”

“You have a very perceptive mind, Bark,” said the woman, drily.

It wouldn’t have helped if Bark had known the meaning of the word ‘ironic’, anyway. He was beyond help now.

By the time the fifth pint was gushing its way down into the seething maelstrom of his stomach, he had outlined in great detail his plan for the salvation of civilisation as he saw it, which, as you already know, involved the removal of one certain individual.

Halfway into his sixth pint, he told the woman about his Bomb.

Now, don’t be too hard on Bark. He didn’t actually know at this point that his drinking companion was a member of the Unaligned Terrorism Affiliation and Coalition. As a matter of fact, he didn’t actually know there was such a thing at all!

Neither do you? Okay then…

All you really need to know about the UTAC is that it was they, and not the Semi-Autonomous Quasi-Official Opposition Party, or even the Neo- Pragmatists (Hah!) who were responsible for;

(a) The bombing of the Embassy Dungeon in Greater Circle 1 six months ago

(b) The hijacking of the Inter-sat shuttle and subsequent ruthless murder of the entire crew and first class passengers, and

(c) The attempted kidnapping of the family of the Third Minister for Overall Power (failed). (The kidnapping, that is, not the Minister, he does alright.)

Their activities are mainly financed by selling addictive chemicals to unsuspecting minors, and possibly suspecting ones too, and in short, these are not a nice bunch of people at all!

Now, the short-haired woman, whose name is Rosebay-Azalea, but prefers to be known as Raz, for fairly obvious reasons, is not the sort of person who would go as far as to personally indulge in any of the above atrocities, but remember, she is a member of the UTAC, so she’s not someone you want to get mad at you.

What her personal motives are for joining such an organisation – well, discuss amongst yourselves, if you like, who’s to say, but the avowed intentions of the UTAC are total destablilisation of the Governmental System and dismantling of the power-hierarchy in order to reinstate a more socially equitable form of control.

In short – them out, us in, nothing changes.

As for Bark – our hero, remember – sitting on a two foot toadstool getting quietly pissed out of his not over-large mind, he’s not a bad sort, really. He’s a genuine idealist, he honestly believes things will improve if he can just off the man in charge. He hasn’t really thought about what he would put in his place. Certainly not himself.

As you can see, there are going to be a few ideological differences between Bark and the UTAC woman.

Bark didn’t remember getting home. The next thing he knew it was mid- afternoon, his brain was trying to make a forced exit from his skull, and Nikki’s lovely face was gazing down at him with a querulous twist to her lovely, painted mouth.

“There was a woman here this morning looking for you,” she said petulantly, with just enough emphasis on the word ‘woman’ to let Bark know he could be in trouble.

He was still half asleep, and his head was now trying to get out the door, so he didn’t take the hint.

“Oh yeah, Raz,” he muttered, as an incomplete recollection of the previous night’s events floated past, full of toadstools and snarling pixies and bombs.

“On first name terms already!” Nikki snapped, marching over to the cracked sink and dropping a bashed metal jug into it with a flourish, causing a shock wave which reached Bark’s ears and exploded like a thermo-nuclear detonation, sending bits of his brains bouncing all over the inside of his skull and sharp fragments sticking into the unprotected area just behind his eyes.

His intuition told him Nikki wasn’t pleased. He thought fairly hard about it for a minute and came to a conclusion. He hopped out of bed and swayed uneasily over to the sink, putting his arms around her.

“What an ugly cow!” he said, clutching her tightly so he wouldn’t fall over.

It wasn’t strictly true, but she certainly wasn’t in Nikki’s league

Nikki gave a happy purr. She pressed close to him, and he could smell her warm body scent, rising thick and musky into his nostrils. Her face touched his, and her tongue thrust suddenly into his mouth, hot and wriggling, probing indelicately.

She tasted salty and sour, with just a hint of sweetness. A sharp, individual flavour, mixed with the smell of her breath. Bark loved it, because it was her. He licked the delicate inner surfaces of her mouth, as if he was trying to transfer her chemical signature from her to him.

He breathed in her exhaled breath, and absorbed her pheremones, which did peculiar things to his equilibrium. He felt her strong body writhe like a snake in his grasp, felt her muscles sliding under her smooth skin like a landslip.

She giggled and grabbed him between the legs.

“I bet she can’t do what I can do! I bet she hasn’t got what I’ve got!”

Bark was finding it difficult to breathe, partly due to the intoxicating effect of Nikki’s body secretions, and partly because she had an extremely powerful grip on a sensitive part of his anatomy. Nikki was full of surprises, but Bark didn’t care.

“I don’t care,” he said, through clenched teeth, “I think you’re lovely!”

“Yes, so do I,” she whispered, eyes opening wide like flowers, as she increased the pressure of her grip.

Tears began to form in Bark’s eyes. He must be in love!

Raz waited at the Bucket Bar for Bark. When he didn’t arrive, she looked round at the dismal surroundings and its occupants. There was no-one there except the bored-looking bar-man and Kizzy’s drunken hanger-on, who seemed to live in the place. He had leered at her as she walked in, his tongue protruding very slightly between his even, white teeth.

Raz raised a finger in his direction, indicating her lack of interest.

After a while, the place began to fill up, the usual useless organised protein you’d expect to find in a tip like the Bucket Bar. A female with an expression so glazed she could have been a cherry. A guy with dingy blonde hair that hadn’t been washed since last election day, his sleeves firmly covering his lower arms, his eyes darting all round the dim Bar, searching, a flicker of desperation in his agitated expression. You could buy other things in the Bucket besides disgusting beer and watered down whisky.

A group sat in the far corner, all dressed entirely in black. Sombre expressions, surgically altered faces. A Neo-Anarchist Collective. Weirdos. Two figures of indeterminate age or sex sitting holding hands, gazing dreamily into each others eyes. Impossible to tell if they were officially partnered or illegal perverts.

The fish who lived in the room below Bark was sitting at the bar, staring into the wet depths of a pint of water, heavy with some unspoken tragedy. Aliens were uncommon, but this one had become part of the fixtures here, and no-one paid him much heed. He never spoke to anyone, just sat at the bar every night, drank three pints of water and left, apparently as unintoxicated as when he arrived.

What was he thinking about? Who knows? Aliens are different, you know?

Lizzie was now in the toilet, talking to God. God was telling him he shouldn’t drink so much, but then, that was what God always told him, so he wasn’t listening, as usual. Lizzie had been ignoring God’s advice for quite a while, and he wasn’t about to start taking it now.
He delivered one last, projectile rebuke at the Ultimate Being, then walked unsteadily back to the bar to replace his lost intake.

Very shortly Lizzie is going to wish he had taken God’s advice, however, that’s his problem, and uncomfortable as it will turn out to be for him, most of us will find it very difficult to have any sympathy for the bugger. You can if you want, though.

Raz had almost decided to give up and go home when Bark and The Lovely Nikki walked in. She raised an arm and signalled to him to come over.

Nikki tugged at his sleeve and pointed to the opposite corner of the room, but Bark wove his way with precision through the crowd of people swaying gently round the centre area towards her, dragging the reluctant Nikki with him. Her expression showed her all too obvious displeasure. Raz ignored her and turned to Bark.

“Thought I’d find you here. I have to talk to you.” She paused, watching his face very closely.

“What we were discussing last night. You remember, the, uh, hardware.”

Bark gave a weak smile. He’d been hoping she’d forgotten about that.

“Oh yeah,” he muttered, without enthusiasm.

Raz’s eyes, slitty and snakey, slid across and came to rest on Nikki’s impassive features.

“We need to keep this really low-profile, you know”

Her pale, glittering eyes stayed on Nikki, but her words were for Bark.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Bark, cheerfully, “Nikki won’t say anything.”

Raz sighed impatiently and fumbled in her pocket, producing a handful of crumpled notes.

“Here, be a love and go and buy us some solvent, dear.” she said, flatly, thrusting the notes at Nikki.

Nikki snatched the offered currency ungraciously.

“…know when I’m in the way!” she squeaked, and departed to join the long queue at the bar.

Raz didn’t waste any time.

“I can get you an opportunity,” she said, pinning him with her hard, intimidating stare.

“A what… An opportunity? For what….?”

Raz controlled her impatience with the moron in front of her and explained, quickly and simply, through clenched teeth.

“An opportunity to use your piece of hardware. An opportunity to get him. That’s what you built it for, isn’t it?”

Bark’s normal expression was with his mouth slightly open, so the few extra centimetres didn’t make that much difference.

“What… you mean….”

Raz fought the urge she had to hit the idiot in his gaping mouth.

“Yeah, shut up and listen. The Man will be at a Promotional Gathering in the Media Complex next week. I can get you a pass and an identity. You can even take your moll for a cover.

He’ll be spending a lot of time in the Presentation Studio, it’s quite small, but it’s not secure. You can plant your device and set it with a timer sometime in advance. The Media Complex is designed to keep shocks from outside out. In the enclosed area, the containment will more than make up for the device’s limited power. As it’s non-nuclear, their detection equipment won’t see it.”

“You can be out of there before anything happens. You can get the bastard, Bark!”

She didn’t add the words ‘You’ll be a hero!’, because she thought even the wretched Bark wouldn’t be stupid enough to go for that, but it was obvious by the unnatural glow in his eyes that he had already supplied the line for himself.

“Yeah, wow,” he breathed, awe-struck, “I can do it. I can really do it!”

Raz reached into the hand-sack she carried with her and drew out a sheaf of paperwork.

“Look, here’s your entry pass, your Identy-kit, your personal holo- profile and a reasonable amount of interesting Media-speak to get you through a couple of hours. Just don’t try anything clever, keep away from the snouters and don’t try and bullshit your way through anything you haven’t a clue about. Just pretend you’re drunk, okay?”

He probably wouldn’t be pretending, she thought, but as long as he kept himself together long enough to plant his device it wouldn’t matter. Whether he actually got out or not was not her concern.

“Take the Bimbo, like I said,” she continued, “that’ll keep a few snouters running in circles, she’s just their sort.” She stretched her thin lips across her teeth in what Bark realised was her version of a smile.

“She may even get a contract!” said Raz, pleased with her own humour.

Bark looked mildly impressed.

The Lovely Nikki returned at this point, with a dazed looking man in tow, carrying what appeared to be an entire evening’s supply of alcoholic beverages.

“You didn’t say what you wanted,” Nikki informed her primly, “so I got some of everything, just in case!”

Raz swore under her breath and grabbed one of the glasses, emptying it swiftly

“I’ll contact you in a couple of days,” she said, “meanwhile, keep a low profile, don’t get arrested for anything.”

“What if I need to ask you about anything, how can I find you?”

“You can’t,” she told him flatly, “I told you, I’ll find you.”

She rose to go, but as she stood up a familiar figure walked into the table, sending splashes of beer and other liquids over her legs.

Lizzie could smell spare alcohol and/or women at a range of half a mile or more. The combination of the two had proved irresistible, and he stood there, fluttering his long eyelashes at Raz, holding on to the edge of the table for support.

“Hey, you’re really pretty, y’know?” he slurred at Raz, smiling coyly.

“Nice tits too,” he added as an afterthought, seeing as his nose was a few scant inches from the glands in question. Raz was never going to be described as dainty.

She looked down at him briefly.

“Bog off, creep,” she said, with no great interest, and marched off without giving him time to reply.

Lizzie was not discouraged.

“Yeah! Total! Wonder if she’s got a whip!” He trotted off after her, scratching his behind.

“No taste.” observed Nikki sagely.

Bark smiled. He’d long since gotten over being jealous of Lizzie. He reached over and took Nikki’s hand. She gazed at him reproachfully for a moment, remembering his unexplained association with Raz, then she relented and squeezed his fingers.

“Hey, look, she left us all this booze, we can get totally dissolved!”

Bark raised his glass to her and smiled again, then without hesitation, emptied it completely in one go.

There was something bothering Bark. It took him all the next day and most of the following evening to figure it out, but when he finally sussed, he made up his mind quickly, and before he had time to change it, he set out to find Raz. He had no idea where she lived. The only other person he knew who’d had any contact with her was Kizzy, so he went round to her room as soon as the bars were throwing clients into the streets. The front entrance was open again, so he went straight up the stairs and knocked at Kizzy’s door. It opened almost immediately.

“Oh, Bark, it’s you.” She sounded disappointed.

She peered out into the poorly lit landing. “Have you got Lizzie with you?”

He shook his head. “Nah, sorry, not this time. It’s you I came to see. Can I come in?”

She nodded absently, and opened the door wider to admit him.

“I haven’t seen him all day you know,” she told him distractedly. “He usually doesn’t manage to stay upright till this late.”

Too right, thought Bark wryly to himself, Lizzie would almost certainly be horizontal by now, but it was unlikely that it would be the pavement underneath him. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t want to upset Kizzy.

“Yeah, well, if I see him, I’ll let you know. Uh, listen, Kiz… I, ah, need to get hold of Raz. Know where I could find her? It’s kinduv important, you know?”

Kizzy gave Bark a measured stare. She trailed her skinny fingers through her thick red hair and exhaled a long breath.

“Bark…” she began, uncertainly,

“It’s important, really, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t!”

She nodded. “Yeah, I know, but… Bark, maybe you shouldn’t get too involved with Raz. Maybe you should just forget about whatever it is. Some of the people she knows…” her voice trailed off in frustration.

“Y’know, I really shouldn’t be saying any of this, but… be careful, Bark, don’t get out of your depth. Just go home to Nikki and forget about her, okay?”

Bark shook his head stubbornly.

“Nah, it’s really important, yeah? But don’t worry, I know what she does, I can handle her.”

There was no humour in Kizzy’s short laugh.

“You’re a fool if you think that! Oh, I’m sorry, Bark, but I don’t want to see you get hurt. Or anyone else for that matter!”

“It’ll be worse if I don’t get to see her!” he warned, trying to sound serious and confident.

“Yeah, well, what’s it to me, don’t take any notice of what I say, will you, it’s your funeral, okay?” She sounded angry, but Bark knew he had won.

“Just give me the address, alright?”

She hesitated a moment, then wrote him a few lines on a crumpled scrap of paper and handed it over. Bark sensed that she wanted to say something else, but he cut her off.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell her how I got this.” He wiggled the scrap of paper under her nose.

“What…? Oh,… no…. doesn’t matter. Just watch your back, you know?”

He knew.

Raz’s address was the other side of Circle 2, and he had to take a shuttle-tube. Even Bark, who regularly prowled the more unsavoury corners of the city, was a bit wary of the shuttles this time of night, full of dangerous looking, oddly dressed, dope filled creatures with murder in their eyes.

Bark peered nervously at the man standing next to him. The man peered nervously at Bark. They edged carefully away from each other.

There was a scuffle and a short scream from the other end of the shuttle-tube. Both Bark and the man next to him suddenly developed a great interest in their own feet and the various pieces of rubbish, dirt and unpleasant looking stains on the shuttle floor. No-one’s eyes strayed in the direction of the disturbance.

Bark was relieved when the shuttle finally came round to the outer edge of Circle 2, and he slid gratefully out of the harsh, yellow-lit interior into the cool anonymity of the night. The air temperature was up a few degrees, and the currents were still, indicating either a mistake in the atmospheric flow management or an unexpected depression. Either way, the night felt enclosing and dangerous.

Bark slunk along unfamiliar streets like a weasel, feeling naked and unprotected away from his own territory. He hugged the walls of the dark, oppressive buildings and turned his face away from every stranger he passed, unwilling to make any accidental eye-contact which could be mis-interpreted. He quickened his pace, and was almost running by the time he reached the block containing Raz’s room. His heart was labouring from the unaccustomed exercise, and he paused for a moment to let his breathing regain its natural rhythm before tackling the steep flight of stairs which led up the tall building.

Raz’s number was right at the top. When he arrived, he was almost as breathless as he had been down below, and again he had to pause for recovery, but this time his heartbeat refused to slow, even though physical demands were no longer being made. Finally, with the rebellious heart still thumping loudly somewhere just below his dry throat, he gathered his courage and knocked loudly at the door.

There was no immediate reply, and Bark stood there, nervously shifting his weight from one foot to another, wondering whether or not to knock again. Eventually he did so. The door still did not open, but Bark was sure he could hear noises within, and encouraged he gave the door another pounding, more vigorous than before.

His arm was still raised for one, last thump when the door flew open, crashing against the wall behind and bouncing twice before swinging loose. Bark had no time for surprise before he was seized roughly by the neck and flung into the dark innards of a small room. The door was grabbed, too, and slammed shut behind him.

He blinked for a moment, his eyes adjusting from the dim outside light to the even dimmer inside light. After a couple of blinks, he saw that it was Raz who had engineered his precipitous entrance, and he was about to greet her with his explanation when she surprised him again by thrusting her hand sharply into his crutch and up between his legs.

It briefly passed through his mind that she was a lot more interested in him than he had supposed, and then he decided that she was trying to cripple him, but when he finally realised that she was searching for concealed weapons, his faith in human nature was restored for the moment.

Hers was not, despite the fact that she had found nothing of any interest to her concealed in his trousers.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she spat furiously.

Bark opened his mouth to reply, but he never got the chance.

“You never, and I mean never come here unless I tell you to. Do you understand that? DO YOU?”

She grabbed his shoulders and shook him and for a moment he began to doubt his personal safety again, and he could only nod his head furiously and gape, offering prayers to any available deity that she wasn’t going to break his neck. She looked angry enough to do it, and she looked more than capable.

She gave a sort of half-snort, and let him go with one last, powerful flick, which bounced Bark off the wall behind him, but he was relieved to have escaped so lightly.

Raz sat down slowly in a buckled, plastic chair with lethal looking broken points jutting at strange angles from its back. She wriggled a bit, squirmed in its uncomfortable depths, before pointing a finger first at Bark, then at another, oddly shaped chair opposite the one she was sitting in.

He sat down cautiously, perching on the edge, never taking his eyes off her.

“What…. “ she said, tersely, enuciating every word separately as if she was speaking to someone with a hearing deficiency, ” do – you – want?”

Bark squirmed.

“About the Promotional thing. You know, and the b… the hardware.” He swallowed nervously as Raz’s eyes narrowed to their intimidating snakeyness.

“I gave you all the information you need.” she said.

“Yeah, but…”

“No buts Bark, you just do it, exactly like I told you, don’t bother with any half-assed ideas of your own, just do what you were told to do, okay?” She wriggled in her seat again, and scratched her crotch, cursing.

He looked at her unhappily. “But what about the others?”

“What others?”

“In the room. When the bomb goes off.”

“What about them?” she seemed genuinely puzzled.

Bark pulled at his spikey hair in agitation.

“Yeah, well, won’t they…. I mean….some other people could get killed… couldn’t they?”

His voice faded away, and he cowered down into the seat, wishing he could fold up and disappear through a crack in the floorboards to escape Raz’s cold stare.

“Of course they could,” she said with scorn, “we’re fighting a war, not writing to the complaints department of MegaCo – there are always casualties in war, it’s the price we have to pay, is that all you wanted to see me about?”

She sounded bored now, but Bark couldn’t let it rest there.

“I don’t think I want to do that though,” he said uncomfortably.

“What?”

There was a dreadful, latent menace in Raz’s voice now, and even Bark was not stupid enough to ignore it, but he swallowed hard and stood his ground.

“I… I don’t want to go through with this. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll, uh, find some other way. Thanks for all your help, I…”

“Now you listen to me, you little shit.” Raz cut into him with a voice like serrated steel.

“You will do exactly what I told you to do. You will plant that bomb and you will set it off, and you will forget any ideas of backing out, because that is not one of your options, am I making myself clear?”

Bark was trembling now. “But… I can’t! “ he whispered.

“You asshole! You total shithole!” Raz got up, and Bark thought his last moment had come, but she began pacing up and down the confines of the small room like an animal in a cage.

She stopped suddenly and stood above him, towering, like a huge, threatening monument.

“Listen to me, bozo,” she said, in a low voice, “if you don’t do exactly as you are told, then it just may be brought to the attention of the relevant authorities that your lovely friend Nikki is not what she seems to be. And do you seriously think that she’ll be allowed to live with you once they know that?”

“On top of which,” she continued, her voice rising as she noted the effect her words were having on Bark, feeling the initiative return to her, “It can be so dangerous for a girl on her own. Anything could happen to her. Anything. Do you understand me, Bark?”

Bark understood. He knew Raz had won. He nodded miserably.

“Okay,” he croaked, “I’ll do it, like you said. Don’t do anything to Nikki though!” He looked up at her, pleading with his eyes. Raz said nothing.

He got up and shuffled over to the door. With his hand on the knob, he paused and looked back at the implacable Raz.

“How did you know? “ he asked, “I mean, about Nikki….”

She gave a triumphant smirk, and it was an unpleasant thing to look at.

“Oh, I was, uh, with Lizzie the other night. He seems to know everyone’s dirty little secrets, you ask your friend how he knows hers!”

She gloated at the sudden look of stricken horror on Bark’s face.

“Yeah, that guy really puts it about a bit!”

Her expression changed to a furious scowl as she suddenly thrust her hand down the front of her trousers and began scratching vigorously.

“But he won’t be putting anything about anymore, I’ve seen to that. Bastard!” She gave one last vicious scratch as Bark fled the room.

Bark didn’t take the shuttle back, he walked through the narrow streets in a daze, oblivious to the crawling night-life all around. He didn’t want to think about it, but the pictured burned in his head, like fire. He closed his eyes and it was still there. Lizzie and Nikki. Nikki and Lizzie. It couldn’t be true, there had to be another explanation.

It was cooler by the time he reached his own area, the threat of the storm had passed. The streets were nearly empty now, life had moved into the spaces behind the walls, in the cramped, insanitary boxes and rooms filled with love and fear, hate and desire, the whole city a cauldron of stale emotions and sterile passions. Life enclosed within a turning sphere. And death.

The narrow stairs leading up to his room were as grim as he remembered them, but they were familiar, and they were home. He pushed open the battle-scarred door and slipped in behind it, wearily. And almost tripped over a large, solid mass lying on the floor just inside.

It was dark in the hallway, there was no interior light, and the streetlight outside had not worked in nearly two years, so Bark was unable to see what it was he had stumbled upon. He bent down for a closer look, and the tiny, nagging suspicion he had had in his mind since his foot had first made contact with the object was suddenly and appallingly real.

The object was a body. It was Lizzie.

Bark gave a barely-suppressed shriek of horror, and leapt back immediately, nervously jumping from one foot to the other. He raised his hand to his mouth, without thinking, and found it smeared with a dark, congealed fluid that tasted like blood.

It was blood. Bark gave another half-croak and slowly edged past the dark mass, with his back to the wall, terrified of touching it again, then he fled up the stairs, two at a time, desperate to reach the comforting safety of his own room.

Nikki was inside. Her welcoming smile turned to a look of alarm as she read the horror on his face and saw the bloodstain.

“Shit! What’s happened. Bark, are you alright? Bark?!”

Bark stood panting for a moment, his legs wobbling.

“Lizzie,” he croaked eventually, “Downstairs. In the hall. I think he’s dead. Someone’s killed him!”

Nikki reacted immediately. She grabbed a small hand torch and hustled Bark towards the door.

“Shit! Come on,” she ordered. Bark followed unwillingly, he had no desire to see any greater detail of the crime, but Nikki’s tone was one of command, and he couldn’t let her go alone anyway.

At the bottom of the stairs, he found Nikki kneeling in the dark pool of blood beside Lizzie’s inert body. The small illuminator showed the floor and walls splashed with red, a horrible, wet, sticky scene, like the very innards of hell. Bark felt his stomach flip over several times.

“He’s not dead,” said Nikki, “here, give me a hand.”

Bark drew closer and looked where Nikki was indicating. He wished he hadn’t.

Lizzie’s face was exactly as he remembered it – except that some of it seemed to be missing, a dark, bloody, watery hole in the place where his right eye had been, a frightening pit full of strange fluid and macerated tissue. His mouth was opened further than before – opened by another two or three inches, a red slash into his cheek. Bark could see the back teeth, white through the red blood – blood running from his face, through his hair, down his neck, onto the floor…

The other side of his face was still perfect and untouched, his long, dark eyelashes resting innocently over his remaining eye. The skin looked soft and unblemished, the half-smile almost serene…. dreaming.

Bark watched Lizzie’s chest rise and fall very gently, confirming Nikki’s belief that life still dwelt within.

“That’s not all,” said Nikki, “look.”

She moved the small illuminator so he could see the lower part of Lizzie’s body

His clothing had been torn away and he was semi-naked. There was a lot more blood, all over his groin and abdomen.

The knife which had been used for the attack lay beside him. And beside that, a small, round piece of organic tissue. Two of them actually….

Bark turned away as quickly as he could and was suddenly sick, his vomit mixing with the blood-mess on the floor. Raz’s revenge….

“Give me your shirt.” demanded Nikki.

He didn’t argue with her. He didn’t feel like saying anything.

She took the garment and pushed it firmly against the gory mess between Lizzie’s legs, then she arranged his torn clothing to cover the worst of the unpleasantness, and laid a small scarf of her own across his face.

“Can you carry him?” she asked briskly

“What!”

“He can’t stay here,” she pointed out reasonably

“Yeah, but… shit, we don’t want him in our room. Someone might think…”

“We’ll have to take him to Kizzy,” Nikki decided, “she’ll know what to do… Come on, get a hold of him, look, here, under his arms…. no, not like that… look, you grab him there, I’ll help you…”

Bark found himself desperately unwilling to touch Lizzie’s mutilated body, but Nikki was insistent. Together they manhandled him out of the narrow, dark hallway into the street.

Bark looked round furtively to make sure no-one had seen them. He glanced down and saw that he was already smeared with blood, and he wiped his hands shakily on his clothing, trying to remove the incriminating stains, and the sudden perspiration which oozed from his palms. Nikki looked at him, and Bark knew he had no choice. He gathered the pathetic bundle up in his arms, like a child, and with Nikki in the lead they made their way, by the shortest route, to Kizzy’s room round the other side of the block.

Standing at the door with Lizzie a dead weight in his arms had a curious, dream-like feeling about it to Bark, remembering himself standing there just the other night, in the same place, in the same situation. Except that the warm, wet liquid soaking into his clothing had not been blood that time, he had never heard of Raz, and life had been an awful lot simpler all round.

How could two days change so much, and why couldn’t he just have left well enough alone?

The wait seemed to go on for ever.

He thought about Nikki’s calm and efficient handling of the situation. He would never have expected it of her, she’d always seemed so…. vague and helpless before. He knew he’d still be sitting back in his room now, gibbering stupidly and unable to face the horror in the hallway, if she hadn’t been there.

“Y’know, you really stayed in one piece back there. I kinda didn’t expect that, you know?” he told her.

“You don’t know everything about me,” she said, “I had an existence before I met you. There’s a lot you don’t know.”

And that was true enough, he thought.

The door opened at last.

Kizzy’s face. Bark watched it. Slowly, like a poor quality drama-video, the inner thoughts displayed themselves on the outer surface.

Query, at first. Recognition. Realisation – blood! – surprise, horror, disbelief. Denial. Mouth opening to emit only the faintest squeak, hand raised to cover opened mouth. Colour draining from the face, body systems out of equilibrium, eyes huge and glassy, wanting to look anywhere but the terrible, torn face and unable to move away from that appalling vision.

Bark pushed past her brusquely, unable to deal with her emotional overload, and put Lizzie on the bed, like he had done two days ago, only more gently this time.

His life seemed to be moving in horrible, endlessly repeating circles; Carrying Lizzie home. Waiting at doors. Warm, wet stains. Doors opening. Lizzie on the bed. Doors opening. Carrying Lizzie home. Waiting at doors. Faces in the gloom. Doors opening. Waiting outside doors. Lizzie.

Nikki spoke into the squirming silence.

“I’ll go and get someone. You stay here with Kizzy, Bark, I won’t be long.”

She left before Bark could say anything.

He turned to look at Kizzy, and saw that her mouth was still open, her face was still white, and her eyes were still fixed on the bloody ruin of Lizzie’s face. He wondered if he should tell her about the other damage. Someone should. He didn’t have the courage. He didn’t know what to say. He looked away.

“What…… uh, how…….?” Her small, hoarse whisper startled him. He looked up again, and he look away again just as quickly.

He was about to tell her it was Raz. Then he remembered the threats, and the other things that would have to be explained. Things he didn’t know the answers to himself yet. He refused the fence. Slid underneath the obstacle, ducked out to the side.

Shaking his head he mumbled; “Just found him like that,” still avoiding her gaze so she wouldn’t seen the lie in his eyes. Or the guilt.

There was a small noise from Kizzy, like a stone breaking. Despite himself, he looked, and saw she was crying. He felt horribly embarrassed. Kizzy was a strong woman, she wasn’t like the drop-outs and bozos he knew, she had pride, and integrity, which made it all the more incredible that she should want to have anything to do with a creepoid like Lizzie, but seeing her like this, Bark felt sick. Lizzie was important to her. You didn’t have to know the reasons why, and it didn’t matter what you thought of him, you couldn’t deal with him in isolation, you had to think of the effect on other people, the innocent bystanders. He felt even more sick.

He thought of Raz. She hadn’t considered Kizzy, just taken some petty revenge for a minor humiliation. He tried hard, but he just couldn’t make any sense of it. People like Raz who didn’t care about anyone who got in their way. Didn’t care who they hurt. Like Nikki. If Bark had been harbouring any hope about his situation, it disappeared down the plughole now. He knew exactly what sort of person Raz was, and what she would do to get her own way.

The door opened and in walked Nikki. She was accompanied by a grey, aged-looking woman Bark had never seen before.

“This is Smith.” said Nikki “She can help you, and you won’t have to fill out any forms.”

Or spend the next ten years paying back the bill, thought Bark to himself.

Smith obviously practiced without a licence, that much was obvious by her very presence here. Maybe she never had one, but from the expert way she was touching Lizzie, Bark didn’t think so. Probably had it revoked, and made a living now out of not asking the wrong questions at the wrong time.

Bark wondered briefly what she’d done. Illegal engineering was a possibility – there’d been massive purges for that. Or not filling in the forms, not telling the Man what his people were up to, not letting on what was going on in the back streets and dirty rooms.

Helping people without a licence. Shouldn’t be allowed!

Nikki touched his arm.

“We ought to go now,” she whispered, “we can’t do anything else.”

“What about Kizzy?” he hissed back, but there was no need for secrecy, Kizzy ignored them, she sat in the corner on a grimy rug, twisting a small piece of string, or wool between her fingers, not looking at either Nikki or Bark or Smith or the bed.

“She’ll be okay once she calms down. Smith’ll see to it, she’ll handle it, you’ll see. Come on.”

They left in silence.

Walking back through the gloomy streets, the very first grey of morning just beginning to dissolve the eastern quarter of the far-away, domed sky, Bark on several occasions found himself on the edge of blurting out to Nikki his recent revelations from Raz, but every time his nerve failed him at the last.

When he looked at her, all he could see were her soft, still features surrounded by fine tendrils of white-gold hair – and Lizzie’s hands, Lizzie’s arms, Lizzie, touching her, taking her, Lizzie covered in blood, his blood dripping onto her body, mixing with sweat and other things.

The wetness of the blood, shining in the faint glow of the torch, the mess of his face, weeping clotted tears from the dark hole, and the small pieces of flesh lying on the ground, neatly incised from the body.

Bark found himself shaking, his pounding heart deafening him to any external sound. He was afraid, and the fear was not of Raz, or the gory sight of Lizzie’s entrails. He was afraid of himself, for when he thought of Lizzie and Nikki together – lying together – he could have wielded the knife himself. For one moment, in his mind, he could really have done it. The thought terrified him.

He was still shaking when Nikki at last closed the door of their tiny retreat on the dreadful outside world. He had the words in his head, rehearsed silently, all the emphasis researched and refined, but when he finally found his voice, what came out was nothing like what he had planned.

“Lizzie knows,” he said, too loud, too quickly, “about you.”

Nikki was standing at the door, and she turned slowly to look at him, her expression unreadable.

“What does he know?” she asked softly. Bark could still tell nothing from her neutral tone.

“About you! He told Raz, and Raz is pressuring me now, I gotta do what she says, and what she says is not nice! I’m really in the shit because of you, Nikki!”

He waited for some reaction from her, but there was none. She stood there, immobile, a slightly puzzled, far-away look drifting over her eyes.

And then Bark was quite suddenly swamped by an overload of emotion. Anger, hurt and frustration. He slammed his fist against the wall, shaking loose a few fragments of crumbling plaster.

“I WANT TO KNOW HOW HE KNEW!” he bellowed.

That got a reaction from Nikki, but not the one he was expecting. She gazed at him with a mixture of astonishment and curiosity, as if she had never seen him before in her life.

She took a few steps towards him, but Bark held his ground.

She rolled up her left sleeve.

“Look. Do you know what that is?” she indicated a small, triangular mark, like a faded scar, just in at the crook of her elbow.

“No.”

“Good.” She rolled down her sleeve. Bark waited for a further explanation. She offered none.

“Is that it?!” he shouted “Is that supposed to tell me all I need to know. I’m not a fuckin’ mind reader, I want to know.” He grabbed her arm and forced her onto the bed.

Nikki shook him off angrily, refusing to be intimidated by his display.

“If you have to know,” she said crossly, “and believe me, it would be a lot better if you didn’t, then it’s a somatic engineering diagram – an information tracer. Yes, Bark, a genetic engineering marker, and no, it’s not an illegal one, and no, I’m not going to tell you what it was for. That’s what Lizzie told Raz about, nothing else!”

Bark stood there, blinking stupidly.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how Lizzie knew what it was?”

“How did Lizzie know what it was?” he said woodenly

“Because he’s got one too!”

Bark could still think of no suitable reply, and she took pity on his helpless incomprehension.

“Those marks aren’t too common, you know,” she told him, “hardly anyone who hasn’t been – fixed – knows what they are. For obvious reasons, you can imagine the trouble it would cause.

Your friend Raz seems to make it her business to know about these sort of things, she probably saw Lizzie’s, and he could’ve told her about me, I dunno, maybe hoping to take some of the attention away from himself.

It’s not illegal you know.” she repeated, “It’s just, well, it’s the sort of thing someone like Raz could use for her own dubious ends, you understand, don’t you?”

She looked at him, and he looked back blankly.

“I’m not making this up, you know!” She smiled suddenly.

“I know what you must have thought. You thought Lizzie knew I was a man, and wondered how he came by that piece of information.” Her smile was broader now, and her eyes held a humorous glint.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that Lizzie hadn’t shown a passing interest, but he’s more used to standing still and letting it come to him rather than doing the chasing himself, and he certainly didn’t get any encouragement from me!”

She put her arms around his neck and drew him closer.

“You know I don’t want anyone but you!”

Bark held her close, and released a long, deep shuddering breath, feeling it exhale away a painful wave of tension he had been secretly carrying with him since his encounter with Raz earlier. Until this moment, he had been scared to admit to himself just how terrified he was of losing Nikki.

There was little in Bark’s life that could be described as good or worthwhile, he had no money, no prospects, little in the way of material possessions and was not overly gifted with intelligence. It was a mean enough existence. Nikki was the one, shining, gloriously unexpected gift of an otherwise uncaring universe, and Bark was smart enough to know that the Universe doesn’t give you two chances. It rarely even gives you one.

He loved Nikki, for herself alone, for the love she brought into his miserable life, and for the opportunity to give and receive love, which he never expected to have, and if the fact that she happened to be a man was an inconvenience, then it was only a minor one to him.

She could, after all, as we have already discovered, do some extraordinary things with her tongue!

(By the way, having, at this point, ascertained that the The Lovely Nikki is, in fact, a he instead of a she, we shall continue to refer to him as her in order not to bring any further confusion into our lives. This is, after all, how Bark refers to her, and he knows her better than anyone, so I think we can bow to his judgment in this case, don’t you?)

“What shit?” Nikki asked.

“…. ah…. what?….” Bark’s mind was still struggling to assimilate all the thoughts and feelings of the last few minutes, and he stared fatuously at Nikki, lost by the sudden turn of the conversation.

“You’re supposed to be in the shit because of me, remember”

Understanding came floating back.

“I… I can’t say anything right now. Nikki, stay away from Raz, please?… and… and don’t hate me if you find out what I…. I’m only doing it for you, Nikki, I haven’t got any choice.”

Nikki heard the unhappiness in his voice, and stroked his ear soothingly.

“Hey, it’s a time for sharing dangerous information,” she said gently.

“I showed you mine, now you show me yours. I won’t hate you, not ever, I promise.”

Bark broke under her kindness.

“I have to kill the Man,” he said, in amazement, as if the whole thing was as much a surprise to him as it was to her. “blow him up, with my bomb, you know? Raz is getting me into the Media Presentation”

Nikki nodded understandingly.

“.. and everyone else near him too,” he continued bitterly, “and quite probably myself too, I’m not too sure how reliable that thing is!”

“… but not detectable by emissions.” Nikki murmured thoughtfully, “no wonder Raz is keen, she must think it’s her birthday!”

She paused for a moment, thinking, then:

“Bark, can you build another one… another bomb?”

“What!?”

“And can you get me into the Presentation too?”

“Nikki, I can’t believe you’re saying this!”

“Calm down Bark. What do they say about not being able to beat them….. something like that… Don’t worry, I can sort it all out!”

“Nikki, I hope to hell you know what you’re doing!”

“My sweet, as you have already discovered, to your infinite pleasure, the little I do, I do very well. Very well!”

She pushed him somewhat forcibly onto the bed. He did not resist.

Raz looked at the two ugly, identical objects she held in her hands.

“Yeah, this oughta do it. I like your handiwork, Bark, we can use more of these. You could be in with some career prospects here, you know?”

She rummaged in the green shoulder sack she always carried with her.

“Here’s your entry cards. You taking the Bimbo?” She jerked her head in the direction of Nikki, who smiled vacantly.

“Uh, yeah, she…. ah, wants to see the Promos.”

“Good. Good cover. These bozos are always leching after new flesh, they won’t even notice you!”

Bark suppressed a shudder, trying to conceal his disgust.

“Now, remember, I don’t want to hear from you again until after it all hits the extractor. Remember, I’ll contact you if I need you.”

She rose to leave.

“You, uh, want to take this one with you?” Bark said in an offhand manner, scratching his head as he offered her the spare bomb. “It might come in useful, you know?”

She grinned at him, showing a row of sharp, white teeth.

“Sure, it might at that. I’ll think of something. Bye bye Bark!”

“Bye bye Raz,” whispered Nikki very quietly, as the door closed.

Bark stood for a moment, holding on to Nikki for support, until his heartrate was back down to double figures and his legs remembered what their function was.

Going through the scanner, he had been sure – absolutely dead certain – that the small bundle strapped to his body under his voluminous, billowing shirt would set the alarms screaming and accusing, and that the terrifying policemen with faces like glaciers would descend on him in swift retribution. He could almost feel their heavy gripping hands on him as he entered the chamber, feel the cold muzzles of their automatic weapons jabbing into his ribs, and the sweat seemed to trickle down the hollow of his spine in cold lumps.

His mouth shrivelled and dried, but the alarms stayed silent, and they were disgorged without further attention into the main arena.

The whole area was humming, like a wine glass stroked with a wet finger. Important People were everywhere. So were unimportant people. Bark and Nikki were conspicuously ignored, which suited Bark just fine, he wanted to get to the Presentation Studio with as little fuss as possible, but Nikki had other ideas.

“Hey, look over there!” she pointed at a carefully arranged clump of people in the centre of the large arena, all of whom were instantly and immediately recognisable.

There was the woman who had invented the self-perpetuating hologram; no one had found a use for it yet, but all were agreed that it was a major advancement in technology. It was widely expected that they would manage to turn it into a neat little weapon any day.

There was the half-brother of the late and unlamented pseudo- revolutionary, Earwig-man II, a one-time hero of Bark’s, until he had found out what an earwig actually was. Earwig-man II had been killed trying to liberate a swarm of slave-bees when he had accidentally fallen into a 1,000 litre vat of honey.

Yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds, but you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s all absolutely true. There are a lot of weirdos around these days, don’t forget. Anyway, his half-brother now made a decent living doing impersonations of his erstwhile relative on late-night chat shows, so some good had come of it, I suppose.

A lot of people wondered what had happened to Earwig-man I. I know, but I’m not telling

There was a slightly-more-than-averagely attractive woman who had spent several years working her way through late night chat shows interviewing morons like Earwig-man II’s half brother, and who was now a well- respected presenter, and the face you would most likely see on your screen looking really solemn to announce the latest disaster.

Everyone knew why she was there.

The reason why she was here was standing in the centre of the throng, with everyone keeping a respectful distance.

The son of The Man in Charge.

You see, I told you he’d turn up later, and here he is!

The son of The Man in Charge is one of those people who turn out to have a very profound effect of the course of human affairs, but not right here, tonight, I’m afraid, so don’t get your hopes up.

There are two things you might like to know about him, though. Firstly, he has been very expensively genetically engineered, and that must be the worst-kept secret in the entire world, and to be honest, he doesn’t really care who knows. Because;

Secondly, everyone is afraid of him.

This is probably due in part to the fact that he is the son of The Man in Charge, and yes, rank does have its privileges these days, does it ever, let’s just say he never has to pay the fines for his traffic offenses. But that’s not the only reason people are frightened of him. He’s a frightening person in his own right, okay?

The woman presenter, who is one of six people who are not afraid of him, is here because she lusts after his genetically engineered, and, let’s face it, fairly interesting body, but this relationship is not really going anywhere at the moment, for a number of reasons which we haven’t got time to go into right here, but the very least of which is the woman he arrived with. Things should be so simple!

Nikki pulled Bark by the hand over towards the super-celebrity group. They joined a sort of secondary circle, outside the first, all standing admiring the admirable.

A man with a thoroughly alarming haircut slid up to Nikki, flashing his promo-badge at her, and said something unctuous. Nikki smiled. Bark scowled. The man lifted his hand and stroked Nikki’s cheek, and his other hand went in the opposite direction. Nikki continued smiling, and bit him.

The man jumped away, startled, and retreated to a safe distance before throwing her a dirty glance and mouthing obscenities.

“Oh, come on,” said Bark impatiently, and led her away, still smiling beatifically.

They sidled slowly and uneasily towards the back of the large arena, where the entrance to the Presentation Studio could be seen. Bark still felt embarrassingly conspicuous in his huge, flapping white shirt, like a tea-clipper in full sail. Or perhaps there was a huge, pink neon arrow just above his head, pointing down, it couldn’t have made him feel any more noticeable.

Just as he thought they were past the self-congratulatory throng, just when he thought he’d gotten away with it and everything was going to be alright, he found himself less than six feet from the son of the Man in Charge.

The son of the Man in Charge looked at him.

Bark knew what a cobra’s victim felt like the second before the snake struck. He knew why you had to avoid snake’s eyes. And he knew why people were frightened of this particular individual. He was!

The eyes like snakes, or something even worse he couldn’t even think of, looked straight at him, into him, through him, through the very flesh of his body. And right past him.

The son of The Man in Charge stepped forward and greeted another person just behind Bark. Bark nearly fainted with relief.

He was sweating lumps again, and he felt that his tent was going to stick to his damp skin and reveal his illicit cargo.

Nikki tugged him efficiently over to the back of the arena, and poked him till he recovered enough sense to produce their second-level entries.

They passed peacefully into the Presentation Studio. It was quieter in here, a sort of reverential silence. The Man in Charge was just about to arrive! Through the back entrance, thus avoiding the crowd out front.

“Now’s your chance!” hissed Nikki, “look, he’s coming! No-one’s looking at you now, go on – down there!”

Bark took a great gulp of air, slipped the bomb cautiously from under his sailing-ship and placed it neatly behind a screen at the back of the raised staging area. Easy as that!

Before he had time to let his nerves get the better of him and make a run for the door, the Man in Charge arrived. Bark didn’t look, he couldn’t, he didn’t dare after his encounter outside with this Awesome Person’s Son and (rumour went) heir. He stood frozen, eyes fixed to the ground, and again it was Nikki who gently guided him away from the scene of his crime. As they retreated into a safe corner, he lifted his head and risked a tentative glance.

He saw The Man.

“But he is just,” thought Bark with some surprise, “a man after all. One head, two arms, two legs, tall, middle aged man. What is everyone scared of? Why do they all do what he tells them? I wonder if he’s got a dog?”

Bark was then instantly smitten with an enormous rush of guilt.

He’s just a man like me, he thought, what right have I to take his life, it’ll upset his wife terribly, and his dog, too, if he’s got one, and maybe even his son (! don’t like to think about him!), but this man has done nothing to me, not personally, I mean he may have executed several thousand dissidents, but I didn’t know any of them, and who am I to talk, I’m just about to blow up a roomful of innocent people I’ve never met who haven’t even plotted to overthrow me or anything…..

Bark gave himself a vigorous shake to untrap his thoughts from their circling conclusions. He had to go through with it. He knew what sort of person Raz was, knew she wouldn’t hesitate to carry out her threats against Nikki if he didn’t do exactly what he was supposed to do.

“What’s the matter?” asked Nikki, seeing his troubled face.

“I dunno,” he said slowly, “do you think it was a good idea to give Raz the remote detonator?”

Nikki favoured him, with one of her most radiant smiles.

“Absolutely…….” she said “………… not!”

She put her finger to her lips and inclined her head slightly.

From behind the screen came a small ‘pop’. No one took any notice, they were too busy attending to the Man.

“What was that?” asked Bark

“The detonator going off.”

“The what……? Then the bomb….. it hasn’t gone off. It didn’t work!”

“No, that one didn’t”

“That one? What…. Nikki! What is going on!” Bark was beginning to loose his grip on things a bit.

Nikki shrugged innocently.

“That explosive you made, it wasn’t terribly stable, specially not in damp conditions – you’ll have to have a word with the Fish again dear – it tends to degrade a little over time, and after all you did make that bomb some weeks ago!”

Bark was saying nothing, but the hole in his face was getting larger by minute.

“The other one, however,” continued Nikki sweetly, “was quite fresh, and should have produced quite a decent Ka-boom back in Raz’s room, when she over-precipitously pressed the switch on the remote detonator which was linked up with both bombs.

Now, isn’t it terrible that she couldn’t wait till we left. We could have called her and told her about that little glitch, couldn’t we, Bark? Not our fault, is it dear?”

Bark’s mouth reached maximum aperture. “Are you trying to tell me…..”

“…….that our dear friend Raz is now a lot of red splotches and sticky lumps smeared all over the what is left of the inside wall of her room, if the room is still there, yes, I rather think I am, precious. Sad, isn’t it?” she cooed, without a trace of sadness in her voice.

Bark searched himself for any sign of remorse or guilt, and found neither, and he didn’t feel guilty about that, either. He felt as if an enormous weight which had been slowly crushing him was suddenly removed.

He looked at Nikki, and she was the most beautiful thing in his life, and his life was full of beautiful things, and joy, and wonder, and he was totally, unexpectedly and incredibly happy!

So then, that was Bark and his little skirmish with the forces of darkness. Aren’t you glad it had a happy ending? Except for Raz, of course, but then she deserved everything she got, dontcha think?

You want to know about everyone else? Okay.

Kizzy, being an intelligent, decent, hard-working sort of woman had a small amount of capital accrued, with which she immediately employed the the services of a free-lance plastic surgeon to fix Lizzie’s face, so he looks quite alright now, a bit better than before, actually. The other bit(s) she’s still saving to have replaced, (yes, they can do that these days -isn’t technology wonderful!), although quite why she’s bothering no-one can actually figure out, since Lizzie is now the best argument you’re likely to come across for having your cat sent to the vet. He stays home at night and doesn’t damage the furniture anymore, and even though he’s getting a little on the plump side, most people think it suits him.

Still, if Kizzy wants his bits put back, that, presumably, is her damn business and nobody else’s. (Except Lizzie’s, of course, and to be frank, he doesn’t really care one way or the other as long as he gets fed on time.)

Nikki got a contract from a nice promo-man she met at the presentation. She became a minor-celebrity, and she and Bark got enough money to buy lots of new clothes and move into a nicer area of the city, with two rooms and no fish, and no-one ever found out. Bark kept the old magazine, as a sort of reminder, and also because it had some strange stories in it Nikki liked, but he never built anymore bombs

Needless to say, the world had not heard the last of the UTAC, although no-one from that cheerful little band ever bothered to find out what had happened to Raz. She didn’t have any friends, you see. Hardly surprising.

There’s a moral in there so close to the surface it’s hardly worth pointing out, but just make sure you don’t go joining any terrorist organisations, okay?

The Man in Charge stayed in Charge, the trains didn’t run on time and he never got a dog.

Interestingly enough, he knew all along what Bark was up to, and about Nikki, and everything, because he is The Man in Charge and Knows All. Although how he Knows All, I’m not at liberty to say!

What he doesn’t know, though, is what his Son is up to – remember him? Good, he turns up later.

If he knew about that, he wouldn’t be so damn complacent about the trains and everything, but that’s another story.

Isn’t it?

* This story is entirely and absolutely true. All the events described actually happened, and all the people actually exist.

You try proving otherwise!

17.6.89

On the way back we took on Honoured Calla’ae, amongst others, but with us all the way has been Director Rantretg.

I hate him.

Honoured Calla’ae is a personal friend of Rantretg, therefore she is assured of his attention all the way back to Earth, which is now some 17 hours plus or minus. The major part of the journey has already been made, but the distance has not been travelled; it has been avoided.

Director Rantretg will now spend this slow time proudly exhibiting his ship, his Pilot, to Honoured Calla’ae, and his Pilot will have to smile and be courteous to those in a higher strata of society because this is the moment by which acknowledged civilisation continues. The Pilot will conceal her animosity. I will hide my hate.

Director Rantretg has too much mass on his body, the commonest affliction of the secure. He moves and thinks like a stone. Honoured Calla’ae resembles a bird, and the parts she resembles most are the legs and the feet and the beak and the neotenous hatchling, just free of the egg. She wears kingfisher colour, but in one dimension only; it is flat turquoise, with no metal, the same unpleasant shade from whatever angle you view it.

I anticipate her voice as being unmusical, and still it comes as an unpleasant surprise when the words she first speaks to me -

“So you are the Pilot?”

- are pitched too high in the normal range of human speaking to pass without snagging.

Denied her age and social standing, the stare she gives me is impolite, but I cannot admit the rudeness and stay within tolerance myself. I demur.

“You look very…. young, for such a responsible position.”

Suspicion. Censure. Disapproval.

“I can assure, Honoured Calla’ae, I have completed all training and have four years service, without endorsement.”

“Have you indeed. How nice. And how old would you be now?”

“Twenty-two complete years.”

Honoured Calla’ae’s assessment of youth is based upon her own lifespan. She, and many others, maintain the dogma that acquisition of complete years is advantageous. Doubtless, with time, I shall do likewise.

“And how old is your, ah……. sister?”

“My sister has twenty-two complete years also.”

Now puzzlement, and irritation that her information may not be correct.

“But I understand that the clone was always…. that there was always a difference in years…”

Even now I must not show anger, only deliver factual information in a manner apologetic for having been the one to correct her error.

“Honoured Calla’ae” (four syllables of time to suppress my fury. I succeed.) “I am not a clone.”

Rantretg laughs with total insincerity.

“You see, our Pilot (our!) is a natural clone. A monozygous genetically-identical twin!” (the terms are duplicate. Tautological.)

He grins his wolfish vanity, as he had been the god who had pointed the finger and sundered the egg. Honoured Calla’ae nods shrewdly and says the one thing of any sense she will utter in the entire voyage.

“That must have saved a great deal of money.”

So pathetic, so vile is Rantretg, that far from being insulted by this, his pride swells further, although he attempts to conceal it with badly executed disingenuousness..

“Honoured Calla’ae, what is money, in the face of such rarity?”

Honoured Calla’ae pursues her theme relentlessly. I suspect it is all she knows.

“Surely it would reduce expense even more if such a valuable resource (a cursory glance at me) were utilised more efficiently?” Naturally, safety must be paramount, but surely there is a case for economy here? Two Pilots for every ship?…”

Rantretg’s hands fly upwards, as if on strings, and his face assumes the contours of exasperation and superiority.

“Ah, if only! But I fear that you may have failed to grasp the nature of the concept here! It is a common misconception.” (friendly condescension, with smile, and heavy arm laid on thin shoulders).

“It is an unfortunate fact that the ship requires – absolutely – two Pilots to fly it. It is not a question of carrying a spare, (Calla’ae’s thin smile to acknowledge facaetiousness), but that the entire method of control, drive and propulsion depends on the conjunction of two identical minds with the artificial intelligence of the ship itself (it does not.). Let me explain…”

Rantretg cannot explain what he does not know. Nevertheless, I will have to listen again to his flawed interpretation of an idea which he cannot comprehend, corroborate and authenticate, lend my professional authority to his ineptitude, and supply the occasional, unimportant truth.

We continue down the long, grey corridor, I some respectful paces behind.

“As you know, the psychological profile which fits with the artificial intelligence is unusual. We now routinely screen some eighty five to ninety per cent of all children between three and five years of age, and those who are deemed to have a probability congruence of greater than 0.45 are approached for cloning.”

“A clone is taken, accelerated growth is induced to bring the clone to the same physiological development as the donor, and the minds are imprinted, using a series of identical psychological traumas overlaid on the thought patterns of both individuals. In many cases, these can be taken directly from the donor.”

“This is the first major hurdle, for if the imprinting is not successful, there is no point in continuing. Fortunately, this technique is improving all the time, and the success rate now stands at nearly twelve per cent!” (smugness).

“Once the imprinting has been established, a period of several years is required for training, and it is only after this time that we can attempt to link the Pilots to the ship. Each ship is individually tailored for its Pilots, of course, but success at this delicate stage is far from being guaranteed. At present, only about one third of the trainee Pilots achieve the Link. Am I correct?”

I nod briefly, although I have not been listening. I have heard Rantretg’s speech before, and with the exception of the numbers quoted, it is essentially wrong in every respect.

“Then why, “ (Honoured Calla’ae snipes at purse strings still) “waste time and money training them?”

“The difficulty is that individuals have to be psychologically mature to accept the link with an artificial intelligence, and psychologically immature to accept the imprinting with another version of his or herself.”

A small truth in that, but as always, Rantretg infuses it with gross misunderstanding. He will now give mostly the wrong reasons why Pilots cannot be cloned in greater numbers….

“That still does not explain to me why there is a necessity for two Pilots on each ship, as you say there is.” Honoured Calla’ae focuses her desiccated gaze on me. “It seems to me that this particular Pilot is seriously under-employed at the moment.”

“At the moment – yes. While we approach planetary orbit, one Pilot holds the Link with the ship. But to move the greater distances…. to attain the different dimension…. Ah, well….”

Ah well. The crux and the fulcrum. The heart, the very soul of the phenomenon. It is Rantretg who lives in a different dimension! He will now expound that interstellar displacement……

“It is a pity, of course, that we cannot clone Pilots in greater numbers – reclone proven successes….”

…. is not a science…..

“But unfortunately, whatever makes a Pilot successful is not mere genetics alone. If it was, we would not have our chronic shortage of Pilots, and one of the major restrictions on growth would be removed. In the end, we still have to rely on what amounts to a quirk of personality. Interstellar displacement is not a science…”

…. it is an art…..

“It is an art!”

They both smile indulgently, and Rantretg fondly strokes his work of art. I struggle with nausea and disgust, and, unable to force the required smile, announce that I must attend to certain logic corrections, which is a lie, and take my leave.

I turn and walk away down the long, grey corridor, back the way we came. Behind me, I feel Honoured Calla’ae’s gummy eyes razoring my back, and make out, as I am almost certainly intended to, the words “strange” and “plain” in her aside to Rantretg.

I see myself as she sees me, retreating down the long, grey corridor. Small, faded female, dressed in grey Pilot’s uniform. Rantretg grey. Rantretg’s ship. Rantretg’s Pilot. Rantretg’s design, concept, power fantasy.

Growth. Interstellar Trade. Starship.

The ship is grey, inside and out. Battleship grey. Starship grey. Long and thin, that hateful, phallic shape. Starships should be like dragonflies. Starships should have wings. Starships should hum and flash like small, iridescent birds, sing like whales and be rainbow bright. Starships should look like angels.

They have seven good reasons why Starships look the way they do, the foremost of which is that the atomic power source must be kept as far as possible from passengers and crew.

The atomic power source is a small lump of an isotope of Caesium with enough radioactivity to fog a photographic negative.

Starships are not powered by atoms.

Starships are powered by love.

***********************************

I am not a clone.

I have never known what it is to be one. I was neither created, nor created-from, in order to satisfy the need or greed of Rantretg and others like him. I exist in a separate place from individuality and artificial duality.

That which is I/We is defined by what remains outside our perspective. There lies the duality. The important thing is not whether I have a concept of separateness, but that there can exist, outwith that concept, an inversion of that state.

That is true duality. Something which Rantretg, living his insane universe of plurality cannot begin to touch upon, and so he invents a sort-of fusion, a perversion, in attempting to make sense of the anarchy he perceives all around himself, and in doing so, in substituting his contrived reality for the simple and unattainable, he shuts his prison door, and bars and bolts it.

Standing within his cell, he knows, truly, that he understands all that he sees.

And so, I come to the heart of the ship, as I always do, and find it in a small room, because in Rantretg’s universe it does not need to be larger. In Rantretg’s universe, I do not need to be here at all, but I feed on his childish superstitions and plant a few more of my own to gain this victory, small as it is. It is not worth the excursions I must make into his diseased soul. Is it any wonder I hate him?

One way or another, I spend a great deal of physical time in this room, but it is all Rantretg’s time. A thin line, and as such, of little importance to me.

This room, which should be a shrine, is the smallness and meanness of Rantretg’s mind. It contains: Four polished walls, one polished floor, one polished ceiling, two lidless coffins and two interface junctions. One warm body who is sometimes me, but not this time.

The coffin is padded and contoured to the exact shape of her body, the indentations made by shoulders, spine, hips and feet are followed and reproduced exactly by the memory-polymer and silk covering, but she never sleeps on her back, nor do I, we lie sideways on its lumpy surface and awake to a stiffness of muscle and misaligned joints.

It is useless to argue with Rantretg. Research has been done.

I am not needed here, but I know I am wanted. I know that, when it is my turn to lie askew on the unfriendly bed, she stands here, where I am now, and watches, as I do now, and sees what I see.

Sometimes, it amuses us to look different. I paint my face with different colours; she knots her hair in a different pattern. It is a game. It shows how much the same we are, in a way that is not true of Rantretg’s incestuous clones. Only the truly inseparable show their love this way.

It is Rantretg’s fantasy that the artificial intelligence moves the ship, and that the Pilot is a sort of rider who sits on its back. In this current state of short-distance, he sees the Pilot lying unconscious, synaptically bound to the ship’s circuits, and confidently imagines her mind overseeing the running of its functions.

Hah! Reality is an ungainly composite of automatic guidance and propulsion by uncouth squirts of gaseous particles in one direction making a large lump of metal move in another.

The shining technology which gave Rantretg his universe was stitched together from an assortment of unconnected gadgets, and how excellently it works too, when attached to the efficient, fail-safe autonomic nervous system of an extant intelligence. Except, of course, that the intelligence is not required – it could be rat, or a dog (I believe some species of monkey was given the honour in the original project).

The functions of the soft-unit which monitors the hardware-in-which-we-have-faith-but-not-always are in the same category as those which keep the heart beating, the eyes blinking, and insist on drawing breath every few seconds so that you might not die from the boredom of having to do it for yourself.

(Doubtless you can think of an adequate analogy for the short-distance propulsion; this comic vein has been well mined in Pilot training, but needless to say, is never mentioned in front of Rantretg and his ilk.)

Short-distance time is free time; time for dreaming, hidden from Rantretg and the Real World, but the Dream of Interstellar Displacement is this; to come together, to merge our duality, (for the duality must be maintained) and to separate, to rise.

To merge in one dimension; to cleave in another. To move in the third. We are displaced. We rise, rise like summer stars, rising in love, and the ship which loves us must follow.

If distance and time are the same, both can be made subjective according to the intensity of the experience. The artificial intelligence knows and feels nothing, and so can share our dream.

And what would you dream of, if you had enough time? Rantretg dreams of fear and grey, and infects his universe with this corrosion.

Rantretg knows so little, is wrong about so much, and does not have an awareness of his lack. In the time of Displacement, when he and the passengers retire to their private fear, and stay in their rooms and puke, we who fly, we who move, deny all that is grey.

If those who fear had the courage to open their eyes and unscrew their twisted faces, to unfold themselves like the clenched fist becoming the open hand, wouldn’t they recognise this place?

Our Starship has no wings, but still it flies, and its sky is a place familiar to some, forgotten to others. We move through heaven, and yet they do not see, for what is not in accord with their perception cannot exist.

The lines have been drawn which become borders, and just to say it is so will not make it so, either for us or for them. There is no point of reference, no spark to leap across the impassable void. In fact, there is no point at all.

*****************************

Before the alarms, before the hurrying feet and urgent voices. Before all of this, I knew, and knew that there was nothing could be done…..

It would not be true to say that I actually experienced the current surge which destroyed her mind.; there was no pain, no analogous sensation within my brain to the feeling of cells dying, synapses obliterating or tiny neural currents being swamped by an overload of electrical activity.

It happened in the briefest of moments, and all I knew, when it was over and the retreating wave left the sand as smooth and clean and featureless as peace itself, was that I, who was never alone, was alone.

I didn’t need Rantretg’s unwilling emissary to come and tell me she was dead, but he did, coiling with embarrassment, totally without reference as to how I or he should behave in this situation. Expecting a reaction, and getting none.

Of course, the ship was disabled. The spike had wiped the artificial intelligence too. We were drifting gently and blindly through the thin blackness which filled the spaces between the sun and her planets, but there was a good twelve hours before any course correction would be required. Enough time to send another ship out to us, to evacuate the living and set a holding patter on the carcass of the ship until it could be reclaimed at a later date.

The entity which had lately flown the galaxy was now reduced to a helpless, crippled thing; gold into lead. And so we drifted, heavy and silent.

When I came upon Rantretg, he was standing gazing through the clear panel giving access to the artificial intelligence control systems. it was a large room, from his vantage point on the other side of the glass he could look down and see the floor drop away in front of him into darkness. The room was silent and unlit, and had become, through one unexpected catastrophe, a hollow mausoleum.

Tragedy laid lines on Rantretg’s soft features; he grieved for his lost marvel. Honoured Calla’ae approached, soft as a bat, from the tangled web of grey corridors which laced the ship together. I waited in the background, listening with resentment.

“This is most unfortunate,” I prised from Honoured Calla’ae as she confronted Rantretg, who continued staring into the dark glass, seeing more of his own reflection than any of the details of the room beyond.

Honoured Calla’ae refused to direct her attention to the view panel, which meant that their conversation took place at a right angle.

Rantretg’s words were more difficult to make out, spoken to and absorbed by the shiny surface. A low rumble was all that I could catch at first, just a modulation of air frequencies with the exact definitions removed and only the basic structure of puzzlement and gloom remaining.

From this drone, I managed to extract the shapes of “…….never happened before…..” and “…..quite safe….” , the latter of which I took to refer to the status of passengers, especially Honoured Calla’ae.

Honoured Calla’ae’s voice, the sound of sand inside a spiral shell, the dry, silica rattle of grains trapped within cochlear whirls, carried further in the flat air filling the chambered structure of the ship.

I had inadvertently come closer to where Rantretg and Calla’ae conducted their conversation, and I was noticed. Calla’ae studied me with unpleasant curiosity, and even Rantretg turned away from his window. They examined me as if I was a creature they had never seen before. In a way, I was.

“And what will you do with this ?” asked honoured Calla’ae blandly.

This?? Only the inhuman dehumanise. I imagine tearing her stretched and mottled throat, replay the rip several times for satisfaction, and each time only dry dust and revulsion issue forth.

Rantretg has overcome his grief. There is nothing which cannot be put right, no problem that cannot be solved.

“Of course we cannot abandon one of our most valued employees!” (count the cost)

He is smiling now, in love with his own ingenuity.

“There is no need to worry, I can see no problem with it. She is psychologically adapted.”

Now his hand is on my shoulder, and I will my body to produce poison.

“We can have you cloned!”

He should die from my bitter hatred. The poison rises to my eyes, pools, and spills.

Cold Spring

The fire burned brightly on the edge of the surrounding darkness, close to the shore-line, next to the ocean.

The salt water licked dark, oily strokes across the dampness of the sand, gentle caressing fingers counting every grain, arranging each tiny particle with loving precision, then, unsatisfied, returned moments later to renew the task and improve on its delicate handwork.

The water threatened to engulf the fire, but the tiny blaze had been built with artful care a scant stretched-stride from the high water mark, and the tips of the exhausted waves grasped at it in futile frustration, out of reach, but only just.

San-San took another handful of the dried seaweed they had collected earlier and threw it on the fire. At first it hissed, as the ice crystals which had formed on its surface melted, boiled and evaporated all in the same instant, then it began to pop as the small bladders expanded and burst in the heat of the flames. San-San liked the noise they made, and he threw another handful on, just to hear it again.

“That’s enough for now,” Whe-saa told him, “we don’t want the fire to get out of control.”

San-San squirmed, wriggling into the sand, feeling its grittiness under him He was beginning to feel bored, and more than a little chilly, although he would never have admitted this to his mother. This was the first year he had been allowed to join The Watch , and he was determined to make himself worthy of the adult status this honour conferred upon him.

Still, he had to admit, it was turning out to be less fun than he had anticipated.

His sister, Shu-a-teh, a veteran of some three previous Watches, knew how to improve the situation. She rolled closer to her mother.

“Tell us a story, Whe-saa,” she pleaded, “fires are for telling stories!”

Whe-saa smiled, in spite of her daughter’s irreverence.

“Yes, fires are for telling stories,” she said, with amusement. “Look into the flames and see what is there.”

“The whole world is there, for the world was born in fire. Shaash breathed fire from her mouth and the world was formed as the great flame cooled, like ice drops form from cooling steam.”

“Shaash made the world, and when the world had been in existence for ever, she gave birth to all the living creatures who inhabit its homes.”

“Shaash desired to make a creature which would, in time, come to know her as their mother, and become one day as powerful as she, and together they would enlarge the world and determine its cause.”

“Her children were to be as beautiful as Shaash herself, so Shaash took the most beautiful part of her body – her left eye, and from it she made a thousand thousand of her most perfect creations, and placed them in their rightful place in the world”

“The people of Shaash woke and knew they were the same as their Mother, and they used the power which was in them, and they caused the seas to diminish and the land to rise, and the created with fire, even as their mother had created the world, but not all they created was fitted to its home, and not all they created was as beautiful as it should have been.”

“Then Shaash should have restored the balance and taught her children the lesson, but Shaash said ‘They are the same as me, they are my true children, they will not disappoint me’ for sometimes a mother cannot help but have favourites, and she turned her blind, left side to the ugliness they created, and saw only the best of them.”

“But the children of Shaash did not know how to control what they created, and in this way they were truly the daughters and sons of their mother………”

* * * *

Jess came out that morning to check the seeds, as he had every morning for six weeks or more now.

It was a tricky business, trying to get the things to germinate at all, let alone grow once they were outside the protective environment of the greenhouse. Last year it had been well into May before the first, gnarled, clubbed shoots had reluctantly raised their ugly heads to the vicious sun burning in the sky above.

To reach the glass covered half-acre, Jess passed along a narrow avenue of tall trees, leafless still. The morning was warm, but that did nothing to raise his spirits, he remembered these trees from his childhood, some thirty or forty years past, and he could still see the avenue in full green, only the ancient elm at the end of the row failing to respond with explosive exuberance to the seduction of spring.

Last year, only one of the trees had shown any signs of life as the new season dawned, and as Jess passed its flaking trunk he looked up anxiously for any signs of bud-break and new leaf.

There was none.

It was a tragedy repeated all over the world. In the north, the great pine forests were dying, shedding their last needles like tears for their plight into the dead, acidic lakes, and in the last, pitifully tiny remnants of the tropical jungles which had once, in aeons past, covered three quarters of the land surface, tall trunks stood stiff and still, monuments to their own passing, and silence had at last returned to the place where life first howled and shrieked in triumph at its own birth.

Jess reached the great greenhouse where the last repository of nature’s bounty lay cossetted and entombed.

Life, tamed at last, reduced to a four bit code, stitched and joined, snipped and cut, Selection and Eugenics, survival of the fittest, the tallest, the most abundant, the straightest, the most identical to its neighbour, and those that failed were cast aside for ever as part of the great, unnecessary surplus.

Under the cover of the shielding glass, the last ten varieties of grass struggled to continue unto the next generation. Victor Ludorum, and the genetically perfect shall inherit the earth. It wasn’t their fault there was no Earth to inherit, how were they to know the goal posts would be moved?

Arianne was already half way through her check list. She turned as she heard Jess enter through the air-lock, and he could tell just by the look on her face that the breakthrough had not come today.

He peeled off his mask and gloves and hung them on a hook by the door. He had been careless about wearing such things until his younger brother had lost half his face to hungry cells and the surgeon’s knife. Jan had rarely gone out with mask and gloves either. Now, he just rarely went out.

Jess walked slowly down the rows of empty trays to where Arianne was carefully scrutinising one more barren section with her usual professional expertise.

She sighed, and put down her clipboard.

“Nothing?” He knew already, but he had to ask.

She shook her head quickly. “No, but there’s still time, we’re still within statistical limits.”

He nodded. It was all he could manage in the way of the ritual of hope and confidence they employed so mechanically now.

Arianne was staring out through a clear glass panel in the side of the greenhouse, her eyes misty with distant vision, lost beyond the confines of the glass.

“It’s a beautiful day,” she said, unexpectedly, “lovely and sunny, and warm for the time of year,” she continued talking, still gazing through the pane, oblivious to Jess’s surprised stare in her direction.

“When I was a girl, we used to go for picnics. You know, out in the open air, sit on the grass, get dirty hands and ants in the sandwiches, that sort of thing.” her voice became a wistful remembrance.

“Pick flowers, climb trees, paddle in the stream. Did you ever do that sort of thing Jess…… did you?”

She turned suddenly to face him, and there was anger in her now.

“We finally did it, didn’t we? They kept telling us, but we wouldn’t listen, we thought it couldn’t happen, but it has, it’s happening now, and we can’t put it right this time, can we? Can we!”

Jess could only stare in astonishment at this outburst from Arianne, she who was so calm and placid usually.

There was anger in her voice, – desperation too, and a sort of pleading, as if she was pleading with him to do something, to put it right, and he wanted to tell her that no-one could have know, that it wasn’t their fault – it happened so fast…. that it would all come right in the end, but the lump in his throat prevented him from speaking, and all he could do was nod in agreement, and hold her close to him as she sobbed unwil­lingly against his shoulders, and the tears began to blur his own vision….

Later, they walked back to the house together, shielded by filter masks from the intense ultra-violet streaming down through the naked, unprotected sky, past dead trees with shrivelled buds, and rotting stems of plants which had finally given up the unequal struggle and returned to the dust from which they had originally built their complex, delicate

structures.

There would be no spring that year, or any year from now on. The miracle had finally failed to happen, and there would be no new flush of life in the early months, no renewal of the marvellous and diverse organisms which had been so long evolving.

Even if the planet’s protective shield managed to repair itself in time, the seeds of life would be long dead, killed by the very source of energy that first brought them into being.

Six billion souls still breathed and dreamed on the planet’s surface, but they were already dead.

* * * * *

“…. and when they saw what had happened, many of the children were sad and lay down on the Earth in order that they might find a rightful place, and many of the children returned to their mother, and she welcomed them back, though she was sad that they had not become what she had wished them to become.

But not all the children returned. Some were angry, and could not see that they were the cause of their own misfortunes, and they laid the blame with any other they could – they said it was the fault of the Earth itself, they said it was the fault of Shaash for creating the fire, and finally when there were no others left to blame, they turned on each other, and blamed each other, and fought amongst themselves.

And finally Shaash grew angry and said to them ‘Fire you were made from, let fire be your home,’ and she gave the children a fire like they had never possessed before, knowing they must either destroy themselves or learn the lesson.

And deep in her heart, she hoped that the children would learn and become like her, but even the mother of the world cannot protect and guide her children for ever….

* * * * *

Two:

Summer Heat

Waiting until the dust had finally settled and then an extra twenty heart-beats, just for security, the girl darted out from her hiding place – a crumbling scrape in the dry ground where she had lain unmoving and unnoticed for over two hours, her dusty skin and ancient, filthy rags providing her with perfect camouflage against the dry, ochre dirt, and any remaining trace of her outline blurred by the shimmering heat- haze which rose like a poisonous vapour from the scorched and desecrated earth.

She jumped nervously at a slight sound behind her, but turning, she saw that it was only a scaly lizard fleeing across the hot clay. She reacted instinctively, without the need for thought, seized a rock in her right hand and hurled it at the skittering reptile.

The lizard never stood a chance. The boulder smashed into its head with almost unnecessary accuracy, and it was dead before it even had time to register danger.

The girl leapt forward to claim her prey. She picked up the body and examined it thoroughly, but apart from one extra, vestigal hind leg and a pulsating, greenish growth near the base of its tail, it seemed okay.

She split the skin near the end of the tail and threaded the head through, then slung the corpse, still twitching, over one arm and across her back, wearing it diagonally, like a sash.

The girl was pleased. Even if there was nothing edible in the ruins she had come to investigate, she would still have a meal tonight.

The easy killing of the lizard must have made her over-confident, and her long wait in the dust until the others who were here before her left had filled her with impatience, so she stumbled through the broken brickwork and rubble without her usual caution, and she was well inside what was left of the dim interior, with her escape route blocked, before she saw the man.

He noticed her almost in the same instant. He spun and crouched aggressively, aiming the grey gun he carried at her, and they both froze.

The girl’s eyes flicked from side to side anxiously, but there was no way she could make it across the rubble strewn floor to the exit in any less than three seconds, more than enough time for the man to fire and send a hail of tiny projectiles towards her, to burrow into her flesh like a swarm of angry hornets. She waited, still as the stones around her.

The man had realised she was alone and unarmed and his confidence grew.

He rose to his feet, but still kept the gun trained on her, pointing directly at her belly.

“What do you think you’re doing her?” he barked. “don’t you know there’s going to be a test?”

The girl stared at him. She recognised by his clothing that he was a member of the armed forces, but she had no interest in the doings of two or three groups of insane survivors, all she wanted to do was to get out of this hole, alive, and preferably with the lizard.

She stood like a statue, waiting for an opportunity, the slightest break in the man’s concentration.

He began to walk towards her cautiously, drawn by curiosity. For a moment he thought…. standing within six feet of the girl, he realised at last what she was doing there, and he spat on the floor in disgust.

She was a scavenger – a wanderer; not a real citizen at all!

But he looked at her again, still curious. She looked normal enough – no extra limbs or cancerous growths eating away at her flesh. No wonder he had mistaken her for a citizen, she had all the right bits in all the right places.

He began to grin, wolfishly. He took two steps forward and grasped the flutter of decaying rags which covered her body and tore the front section away, exposing her breasts. His grin widened.

Yeah, she had all the right bits, in all the right places…..

With a quick jerk, he brought her down. The girl gave a strange, high pitched scream as she hit the ground and felt the jagged edges of bricks and glass cut into her unprotected flesh and the heat from the ground start to burn her back.

He kept his gun pressed firmly against her cheek as he bore down on top of her, tearing away the last of the rags tied around her waist, grunting as he loosened the fastening on his own clothes.

The girl began to snarl as she felt him prising her legs apart, but he struck her across the face with the gun, and took advantage of this sudden surprise to thrust all his weight down between her thighs, as if he wanted to grind her into the seething dirt below.

The girl thrashed and bucked, to no avail. The soldier was gasping in her ear, choking and slobbering.

He thrust his face roughly against hers, giving one last hard thrust as she turned her head, jerked, and sank her teeth into the bulging veins in his exposed neck.

The man roared, and his fingers twitched and clutched the trigger of the weapon, but the poison was appallingly swift, and the paralysis had him before he had time to send the fatal message.

The girl sprang to her feet and sped from the ruined building with startling speed, but not forgetting to take the lizard corpse with her. On the floor, the soldier lay twitching and convulsing, expecting death at any minute.

But death did not come. The girl’s venom was powerful enough to kill something the size of the lizard whose brains she had knocked out from a distance instead with a stone, but for something the size of a man, the sheer bulk of his body saved him. Slowly, he felt a tingling spread through his limbs, travelling along nerve pathways leaving a feeling somewhere between an unscratchable itch and a sneeze.

After about fifteen minutes of total immobility, he at last gained a feeble control of his legs again, and began to crawl, in a jerky, unco- ordinated fashion towards the blasted hole that was the exit.

He kicked weakly but desperately into the hot dust under him, he knew time was not on his side, and tears of sweat pooled in the crevices of his body and down the hollow of his spine as he struggled to force some cooperation from his insubordinate body.

That he made it to the doorway at all was a surprise, and more than he should have been able to achieve, but as he lifted his head painfully and squinted into the furnace without, he knew it was too late.

He saw the light first, before his retinas overloaded and blacked. The heat flash melted and crisped his flesh instantly, leaving nothing alive to register the shock wave when it arrived a few seconds later.

The remains of the building burst like a dandelion clock, molecules reduced to atoms, atoms to particles, particles to energy.

Dust to dust…

Not too far away, the familiar-shaped cloud began to form.

During the night, it rained. The water was warm and black, singing with sub-atomic fury as it burned like acid into the bone dry ground.

When morning came, there was no dawn The sky was filled with soot and ash and steam, and the sun’s hot rays bounced back, baffled, before they could strike the planet’s lower surfaces.

On the third day, the constant rain stopped evaporating instantly on contact with the ground, and a silent, black lake began to spread across the empty test site.

* * * * *

“…. so the children of Shaash were consumed by the very fire which could have saved them, and still they sought to find another home for the blame……”

San-san squirmed again. He was growing bored with his mother’s lecturing tone, it was all beginning to sound too much like a school lesson.

“Tell us about the People of the Hill,” he said, burying his toes in the sand to protect them from the small flurry of snow which was now falling like soft stars all around.

“Tell us about the magic city and the wonderful treasure!”

Whe-saa sighed. Children were always the impatient ones, divine or not. She settled down, closer to the fire, and the shadows retreated once again at the sound of her voice.

“The People of the Hill,” she began, “were the last of the Children of Shaash. And they built a great city on a high, high hill, which was the only land in a world of ocean.

“And here they kept the remembrance of their mother, and here they waited for her return.

“And they waited so long, so many life-times, that they did not know of the existence of ordinary men, for to the People, we were as much creatures of myth and legend as they were to us……”

* * * * *

Three:

Autumn’s Price

Greta stared out of the frosted window, stared across the white scar tissue of the great glacier which covered the land as far as her failing eyesight could make out. She rattled off a few cracked and well-chosen curses, and banged the steel shutters closed with a bad-tempered slam.

Always the same! Always snow and ice and more snow. How about a bit of variety in life? How about some sleet or rain, just for a change? All this cold weather was bad for her joints, and it didn’t do her disposition any favours, either.

She was hurrying along the cold corridor, head down, mind concentrating on the warmth to be had in her own cell, so that as she rounded the corner the collision with Ayla was a foregone conclusion, and the younger woman was almost on top of her before she knew what was happening.

“What! This is the latest in your useless ideas, to run around the corridors with your eyes shut? Why not make it more effective by riding a wheel-trolley also!”

Ayla seemed not to notice Greta’s scalding remarks, a strange occurrence in itself, for Ayla was a pale, timid, soul who melted like soft snow in the corrosive wind of Greta’s irritability.

Instead of standing dumbstruck and tearful as she normally would have after such an encounter, she grasped the old woman’s shoulders tightly, and the emotional wobble in her voice seemed to be one of relief rather than fear.

“Oh, Greta, I’ve found you at last. Please – you have to come – there’s been an explosion at the generator. Finverr….”

Her voice broke off in a tearful choke, and Greta gave her fine collection of colourful expletives another airing.

So, Finverr, Ayla’s worthless spouse, had gone and got himself blown up at the generating plant! So what! What did they expect her to do about it?

Always it was; ‘Greta, help us with this, find a cure for that’. Hah! Didn’t they know there was no cure for terminal carelessness, and didn’t they know that age in itself was not the bringer of wisdom and omniscience that they assumed it to be.

Always Greta would clean up and wipe their asses for them. Why not let snivelling little Ayla do some of the dirty work for a change, or would she faint at the sight of a little blood? Did they think that seeing it a hundred or a thousand times before made it any less red, or made its warm scent any more reminiscent of flowers?

Ayla continued tugging at her, hurrying her along the corridor until they came to the junction – almost identical to a hundred others – that led to Ayla and Finverr’s quarters. As with most of the residents of the City, they had the whole of a large, residential side corridor to themselves, although it had been built for, and in times past had housed, many more.

The actual rooms occupied by the couple were only two in number – it made keeping warm that much easier.

Ayla and Greta entered the small living area where a disproportionately large crowd of people had gathered. There seemed to be a tangible, communal sigh of relief as the two women appeared, and Greta scowled at the sight of so many hopeful faces turned towards her.

In a hushed silence, she was led through to the back room where a man lay on the hard bed, gasping painfully and occasionally emitting an unwilling moan. Greta smelled once more the familiar odours of blood and fear and death.

She sat down on the side of the bed and looked closely at the damage. Splintered bone was visible through the pulpy red mess of his left leg; blood bubbled through his breathing and a long sliver of metal disappeared into his abdomen.

Greta grunted. Finverr was a large man – hah!, not much more than a boy to her! – proud and insolent, full of his own strength and importance. He would not die quickly.

She said as much to Ayla, who gave a piteous wail and stumbled back though to the outer room to be comforted by the assembled throng.

Greta muttered to herself in annoyance. Stupid woman! Another child playing at being an adult, what was it to her if Finverr died, he beat her and shouted at her and treated her like a worthless possession, she would be better off without him.

In the outer room, she could still hear Ayla’s muffled sobs and cries. She sighed and pulled away the torn remnants of Finverr’s clothing from around his shattered flesh and bone.

“Don’t just stand there whining like a bunch of old women,” she bawled through, “get some clean water here at least….”

Later, when she had done all she could, she shooed the others away back to their own corridors, and sent Ayla away with some sympathetic relatives, despite her pleadings to be allowed to stay. Finverr would never know the difference, but Greta doubted if her own nerves could stand a whole night of Ayla’s sniffing and hand-wringing.

The man was unconscious now, his skin pale like the snow all around the City, pale like the lilies which would not bloom for his funeral.

Greta sat down carefully in the chair next to the bed and began her patient vigil for death to come for another of the City’s dwindling people.

She could remember when corridors had more than one or two inhabitants each, could remember when children were more common, facts more certain, objectives more clear…

But there were things even she could not remember;

“…tell us about how it used to be, Greta,” they nagged her. Ach! What did they want to know? That she had seen trees and flowers in her youth? That the sun had shone and felt warm on her back? That the birds had sung, and fish swam in free-flowing water? These were fairy stories, flights of the imagination, nothing more.

The ice and snow had been ever-present when she was a child, just as they were now. Tell us about it, Greta! It was the same as it is now!

The past is not a foreign country, nor am I a stranger from another time, another place.

This was what she wanted to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen. She was Greta, an old woman, who had been an old woman for as long as anyone else alive could remember.

There was no-one left of Greta’s generation now, no-one who could remember the graceful young woman she had been, no-one who could connect this wrinkled husk with the laughing child who had run to her mother with the shining icicles clasped in her hot, chubby hands, only to see them melt and trickle away to nothing and mingle with her own tears, while her mother’s arms wove around her like a protective cloak, comforting.

I am the same Greta who once cried in her mother’s lap for the loss of a wonderful treasure, she thought, but who is there to believe that now?

Tell us of when you were young, Greta, and there was spring in the world. It was the spring of my life, the only spring I have ever know, can’t you see, fools, that this is all there is, all that has been, and all that will come to you, there is no magical past, no glorious future, only a now, a continuum of snow and ice and cold and death. A punishment for believing there could ever be anything else.

Tell us of the people of your youth, Greta, were they tall and beautiful, unbent by the relentless cold and frozen hopes? Did the fire of living burn in them more strongly than the feeble flame we cherish in our hearts, flickering, threatening to gutter and expire with every new morning which brings us no end to our torment? Were they strong and fearless? Resolute of purpose and unassailed by a growing doubt, a creeping dread of where they were headed?

The man in the bed stirred and moaned in his sleep. Greta sighed. Looking at him she saw another face, across the valley of the years, from the far-away past.

People, ghosts, what did it matter now they were dead and gone, dead and gone such a long time. Were the ghosts which still drifted though Greta’s fading memories given any more substance by these tattered relics, did they still live though her? Was it true that no-one really died as long as they remained in the hearts and minds of those who had loved them? If that was so, then Greta was the last keeper of a lost generation. When she went, they would be well and truly gone, at last.

Faces arose from the past, soft and hazy, washed by time to a gentle, gothic dream, all the hard edges and cruel realities eroded and carried away in the insistent stream of years.

Her sister, bright and shining, always in Greta’s mind a perfect golden sphere, shedding all hurt and unpleasantness like soft rain. Untouched and untainted by life, dead at seven. years old, frozen for ever in all her childhood freshness, left outside the City one night, so that next morning the searchers found her small, perfect body – minus her bright, laughing soul – colder than iron, hard as the rocks under the snow.

Preserved for ever at seven years old, trapped like an insect in the amber of an everlasting childhood.

And her mother’s sphere was tin – pitted and scarred by a lifetime of pain and disappointment, crushed like an eggshell by the death of her youngest daughter, its once shiny surface dulled and deformed, a used- up, forgotten container, preparing to be thrown away.

Another face, another life. The heat of youth was in her veins, and she lay awake at night, hugging herself, dreaming untellable, explosive dreams.

Greta raked into the recesses of her mind, and hiding like a jewel, she found the careful hoarded memory of the first thrill, the first time.

Even now, after a lifetime’s bitterness, the memory of his young, slender body still filled her mouth with a rush of sweet liquid, and though she cursed herself for the futility of it, for a moment she imagined her hands on his hips, lithe muscles, smooth gliding bone, like her own had been before age had gifted her a whole catalog of imperfections

Another child, preserved untouched and ageless by the hand of death. Greta deliberately avoided re-running the painful scenes of that far-off bitter July morning.

She had mourned over Dorry’s broken body lying at the bottom of the sheer ice face too many times, in the flesh and in her mind, felt the daggers in her heart too often. This was not a memory carefully cherished, this was a memory buried and forgotten, the wound healed over as best it could. Better to let it remain in its grave.

But she still had that one, precious recollection where she held him in the dark. Only her own death would dissolve that, it was part of the very core of her being. It was all she had of him.

Finverr stirred again, and she did not mistake him for Dorry, not this time. He lived and breathed still, though for how much longer she could not say. Oh, these night-long pilgrimages through the dark hours grew longer with the years! Sleep was a luxury for children, it had been so long since Greta had passed a full night in oblivion she had ceased to think anything of it, but there were times, in the dead quiet and peace, when she felt she would not struggle too fiercely if the end were to come, there and then…

Until then, night was a time to think. Time to realise what price had been charged for her long life. Time to pay the bill in full, time for retribution.

Old age brings no wisdom when you are still capable of deceiving yourself, Greta told herself sternly. She sat up each night not because she could not sleep – some dreaming hours could still be hers – but because she was afraid to sleep!

The dreams, the visions – were they a sign of coming madness? Or was she already mad, she and every last one of them left in this decaying city, trying to preserve a way of life that had been lost for centuries, merely prolonging the inevitable, making the agony last longer. Was that what her dreams were trying to tell her?

She shivered and pulled her grey robe tightly around her thin shoulders. It was old, like her. Time had been when it had fitted like a second skin, now it hung in loose folds over her shrinking frame. Still not unlike her own skin, she thought, with malicious humour.

The night reached the bottom of the well. 3.00 am. From now on there was only up. Greta felt the cold at this time of the night. Her body still remembered that it should be curled up, warm and cozy, in a dark cave somewhere, waiting out the black hours till the terrors of the night with eyes like orange saucers retreated to their rank lairs and left the warm comfort of morning for the creatures of the sun.

Greta never knew when she passed that obscure threshold between wake and sleep, conscious and unconscious, alive and dead. The mind never registers the moment, knowingness just floats away, dissolving like sugar in the mouth.

She entered her dream as easily as slipping into water, breaking the surface tension without a ripple and floating free in an idea of lightness and viscosity, shedding vortices like years and feeling her body renewed once more as she was given back what she had forgotten was rightfully hers.

Greta’s sphere was shining silver – a moon of glowing beauty, a rare and lovely thing, alive with its own lustre and incandescent with opal fire.

It moved through the water leaving no wake, no turbulences, so smooth was its silky surface, so slippery, throwing out heat and light through the embracing liquid. So perfect.

All at once she heard the voices again, but, dreaming still, they did not alarm her as the remembrance of them would on waking.

She strained to catch the unfamiliar words, fighting for recognition of a beautiful, forgotten language. How it hovered there, just in front of her, frustratingly out of reach…. She let the sounds flow over her like honey, and as she heard their message understanding dawned in her head like a new day.

Into the periphery of her vision swam a fluid figure, sleek with unguarded energy. The water melted before his passage and flowed over his streamlined contours. She wanted to join with him in his swooping, gliding dance, to run free from the shackles of time and gravity and fly like an angel in the water’s warm embrace.

She moved after the shimmering form, her body as light and silvery as her spirit. She rose like a bird through the stratified upper layers of the all-encompassing water. She dived like a meteor down again into its velvet depths, shooting fire and stars from her hands and feet. She leapt like a spark, crackling with high-tension electricity.

The dark shape moved closer to her. She turned slowly, delightfully, opened her mouth to speak….

The face she confronted was dark, muzzled, unhuman. Her mouth opened, but the scream remained inside.

She woke, shivering still, as if only seconds had passed since she last clutched her robe. The voices were still in her head, calling to her, calling her name. Voices like fingers in her brain. Voices of madness, the price for having lived so long.

Greta’s sphere was lead now, and dark. Small and heavy, impermeable to thoughts, and drawing itself down, closing in ever tighter on itself, shrinking and becoming more dense as it collapsed under its own weight.

She took a long, deep breath and released it slowly. The voices were already retreating, banished by her consciousness to their dark, underwater existence. Only their memory would remain, night after night, to torture and torment her.

“Always the same,” she whispered to herself, closing her eyes tight against the sudden threat of unexpected tears. “Always the memories stay to have their revenge. Always they say ‘look, you must suffer as we have’. Suffer, Greta – you must pay for continuing to live, while we are eternally young, and can have no life but yours.”

Greta opened her eyes again defiantly. She had shed no tears since she last sang the funeral song for her mother, decades ago, and she was not yet so feeble that a few disturbed dreams would reduce her to a snivelling child.

She looked at the clock on the wall opposite, and it was 6.05 am.

Dawn, Greta, you’ve lived to see another one. Every one a triumph, every one a poke in the eye of fate, a knee in the groin of providence. She would have the last laugh yet, if that was all there was remaining to her.

She rose from the chair, stiffly, cursing with her usual fluency, and hobbled over to the one small outward window the room possessed.

She pressed the switch in the wall, worn smooth and indented by an uncountable number of such presses, and the crystal de-polarised, revealing the dawn landscape to her poor sight.

A rose-hued virgin’s blush welled up over the north eastern quarter of the sky, and the colour bled into the surrounding snow, tinting it with pale fuchsia. The snow looked as if the land underneath was bleeding, life’s crimson slowly rising through the white above to greet the morning sunrays. The wound ran, and would never be staunched. The world died as Greta watched in sorrowful silence.

She heard a noise behind her and turned. The eyes of the man Finverr met hers.

She was surprised to find him still alive, but he was a big man, full of life and arrogance. If he had lived this long it was likely he would survive a good few years yet.

He would outlast her, that was certain. His was the future, locked away in this cold city, him and his stupid wife and any stupid children he managed to get on her. Greta was almost glad that she would never know what was to come for the last of the world’s children, hiding here in their final sanctuary, waiting for the ignorance and the end.

There was a hesitant tap at the door. Greta knew who it was before she opened it.

Ayla stood there, pale and nervous, terrified of knowing the truth. Greta snorted and pointed though to the back room.

“Always the same, ” she rasped, “they never do what you expect. Gratitude, what gratitude?”

Ayla ran through with a delirious squeak, and threw herself over Finverr’s prostrate body.

But he won’t last long if you treat him like that, Greta mused cheerfully to herself, suppressing her humour with a cough. She hobbled towards the open door and made to leave, but paused and looked back through the interior door at the couple embracing within.

” I wish you both a long life,” she told them in a strong, firm voice, “A very, very long life. You both deserve it!”

She closed the door quietly and set off down the the frigid corridors back to her own abode. A very small chuckle found an unguarded exit and escaped,much to Greta’s surprise.

* * * * * * * *

The snow had stopped, and San-san raised his head sleepily from his dug- out in the sand. To his surprise, the sky was beginning to lighten out to sea, and the darkness around was no longer absolute. Morning was still a long way off, but outriders were giving advance warning of its coming.

He rolled lazily, knowing it wouldn’t be long before the soft sea water released him from the burden of gravity.

“I wouldn’t have liked to have been a city dweller,” he murmured, “Why didn’t they just come and live in the sea, if they knew we were here? Who’d want to spend all their lives on shore?”

“They couldn’t,” his mother explained, “they weren’t made like us, they drowned too easily, although they had magic which let them come to us sometimes. But the magic drew their sustenance from them, and they grew weaker and faded…”

But Shu-a-teh, eyes indigo and misty with pre-adult longings, was staring out over water as dark as her imaginings, lost in a world of what had been, and what was to come.

“Tell us about Sil-cey and the Shore Fairy,” she whispered shyly, her moist eyes reflecting shards of firelight.

Whe-saa smiled understandingly. Shu-a-teh was an age when dreams and fantasies merged into new thoughts and feelings. The story of Sil-cey and the Shore Fairy was a favourite for those who were neither child nor adult, as it had been so for herself…

She threw another pile of spitting, smoking weed onto the fire, and began, in suitably reverential tones;

“Sil-cey was a prince, the son of the ruler of the seven seasons, and he lived in the joyful palace in the heart of his father’s world.”

“He had everything he could wish for, he had a life free from trouble and excess activity, and he had the attention of all the young females, who found him most interesting and desirable.”

“But Sil-cey did not realise his own good fortune, he pined for something, he could not say what. He grew pale and thin, and life lost all its joy and motion for him.”

“Then one day he was sitting on the shore, not caring if the wind dried his eyes or the heaviness pulled him into the sand, when he saw a beautiful and marvellous creature, long in limb and graceful in motion.”

“The sea breezes blew and fanned a great waterfall of hair which spilled over the woman’s shoulders and down her back, past her waist, and Sil- cey was struck with wonder, and knew he had come upon a Shore Fairy….”

“And the women of his father’s estate meant nothing to Sil-cey now, all his longing was for the strange creature of the shore. Day after night, month after month, he came to the same spot to watch her chase the waves as they broke laughing on the glittering pebbles, and ran like darting fish across the smooth, flat sand.”

“Finally, he could stand no more, and he gathered all his courage and revealed himself to the Shore Fairy. She was startled at first, but Sil-cey sang to her of underwater marvels and the power of flight beneath the sea/air interface, and the Shore Fairy was quiet and listened to his song and wondered.”

“So Sil-cey abandoned all his caution, and begged the woman to come and live with him in the clear green viscosity, and he begged so hard and so long, and he sang his song with such passion that eventually she agreed, but there was a condition she laid upon her coming, and that was that he should never ask her that which she feared most to hear……”

* * * * * *

Four:

Glorious Winter

Calyx swam easily through the clear, cold water. Her breathing was controlled by the clever valve attached to the filter she wore strapped over her shoulders, and a small pump moved the counter-current heat exchanger fluid through the tiny capilliaries of her skin-suit.

In an environment innately incompatible with her physiology, she experienced no discomfort or distress, nor did she expect to. When the pressure increased as she sank deeper , more ingenious devices would sneak automatically into life from their hiding places on or in her body, and begin their tasks of altering, protecting or avoiding, depending on the most effective solution to the numerous problems of keeping a particular organism alive out of its evolutionary niche.

Calyx did not even think of the swarm of tiny marvels shunting information and matter all around her. She took them for granted, she had no reason to suppose they would not perform as required, and her mind was thus freed from the mundane experience of worry to concentrate on the reason for her presence in the dark liquid world below.

Just in front of her, his image already obscured slightly by the gloom, swam the dark, streamlined figure of Sil-cey. On land he looked stocky and ungainly, his design subtly wrong, and she was the creature of light and air, leaping with long, fragile limbs and mastery of her body.

In the water, their roles were reversed, she was the clumsy one. She knew that he swam slowly so that she could keep up, but even so she felt her heart working strenuously, and her gas exchange valve was at maximum output as she swam stubbornly on through water which at times seemed to have the viscosity of syrup.

Sil-cey thought it a marvel that she could breath under water, as well as on land, but she found it an even greater marvel that he could go so long without breathing at all. He broke the surface perhaps once every hour, and then only for a minute or less, and even with all her magical aids she did not dare follow him down past the point where her ears began to hurt in earnest and her vision began to blacken and blur.

Still, it was a thrill to fly though the buoyant salt water, where gravity and direction got themselves all mixed up and indulged in humorous games which their stern alter-egos on the surface would never contemplate.

Sil-cey slowed at last, and exhilarating as the swim was, she was pleased to see they had reached the end of their journey, a deep, sheer sided trench in the ocean bed, bowed at the sides, worn by the action of underwater currents to form a vast cauldron of still, calm water. It was a great goldfish bowl, without need for containment of the water within, wherein swam the people of the sea, Sil-cey’s brothers and sister, with all joy and appreciation.

A voice formed in her mind, an image in her head, dark and smiling, or so it seemed in her visualisation. Sil-cey did not bother trying to communicate with her by sound-pressure waves, her ears did not respond well to those underwater frequencies, instead he used only direct mind to mind contact, which proved more satisfactory to both concerned.

“It is the time of gathering to sing the song of Spring!” she heard in her head.

That was the only disadvantage of mind-talk. Some of the sea people’s concepts were so abstracted that they came across only as the closest possible word-meaning she could visualise. Calyx knew that Sil-cey had not said ‘Spring’, but rather that the songs and dancing would be a celebration of some sort of renewal of the spirit, rather than the literal meaning of a different season.

Calyx herself knew ‘Spring’ only as a concept – a time after Winter, before Summer, a time when plants put forth new leaf, when animals procreated and the world grew warm.

Mithe was pedantic. Axial tilt, mean day length, equinoctal point, these were the sort of phrases which had meaning for him. It was all they had left, in reality, but Calyx preferred the older definitions, they sounded so much more…. poetic! (Bad choice of word, Mithe would die laughing, but somehow, in this luminous otherworld, it didn’t seem out of place.)

She drew level with Sil-cey as he hung in the clear water, floating like a dark cloud. He reached to her and took her hand in his, her five thin bony fingers in his four, short, connected digits. Sil-cey’s hand looked clumsy, but it was capable of everything her own could achieve, and possessed a greater strength. He pulled her close to him, gently, till she was touching his sleek, muscled body.

His large dark eyes which seemed blurred and tearful out of the water were now wide and observant. Her vision was filtered though the porous lenses which covered her corneas, otherwise she would see nothing of his face except a dark smear.

She was close enough to make out the lines of the individual hairs on his muzzle, and the long vibrissae sprouting from either side tickled her face.

She laughed. It was a peculiar sound underwater, but Sil-cey knew its meaning and he blew a short stream of bubbles in her face before playfully darting underneath her, twisting and turning, making currents which destroyed her equilibrium and caused her to tumble in the water, ending up with her head hanging downwards and her feet pointing to the surface. She didn’t mind. In the cushioning medium all around there was no sensation of falling, or fear of hurt. The water surrounded them like loving arms and protected them.

Again in her head the voice: ‘All your magic cannot keep you from swimming on your head?! Shhhh-ah! Soon you will be telling me you like being in that position! Perhaps some children will see you and think it is a new dance!’

She pretended indignation at his teasing. ‘We are not all built from rock to withstand the wind and waves!’ she thought back at him. ‘The Shore People are like sea-spray in the wind and blow as they will, above or below!’

He gave her a mock bow, paddling ostentatiously with his powerful rear flippered feet, so she could feel the rhythmic pulsing of the wave-form

‘Come with me then, and we shall see if the dance requires any swimming on the head, or flying through the air/sea interface!’

He grasped her with both stubby hands and with an energetic kick propelled them both speedily towards the centre of the great cauldron where already many of the water-people were forming intricate, exact patterns with their bodies, while all around the water vibrated and boomed with the songs they created.

Leaving the water was difficult, drained of strength as she was. Gravity’s hold suddenly attached itself to her, attempting to pull her down into the sand, down onto her belly to crawl like a snake.

She resisted its demands, and raised one leaden leg after another, forcing them to carry her out of the breakers and across the sand, while all the time her balance reacted to and compensated for the gentle rocking that was no longer there.

Sil-cey had begged her not to leave, as he always did, and every time she found it harder to resist his earnest pleas. But hollow as her own explanations sounded even to herself, she knew them to be the truth, that she must return for sustenance of the magic which kept her alive beneath the water.

When she finally made it back to the city, she was bone weary, exhausted, and she collapsed onto her bed, unable to do any more, still feeling the phantom waves and water undulating all around her, imagining its wetness on her skin.

Rest was not to be given easily though. Mithe must have seen her come back, he had probably been watching for her all this time. She had hardly lain on the bed more than a minute, when the door opened and he strode in, filled with determination and impatience.

He looked down at her lying on the bed, eyeing her disapprovingly, and she could only stare back dully, unable to do more than keep her eyelids apart by force of will. He shook his head and clicked angrily, but she was too tired to feel the irritation she should have at his rudeness.

“Three weeks!” he said at last, his foot tapping an independent rhythm of annoyance on the hard floor, “Three weeks its been this time. How much longer do you think you can keep this up?”

“Not now, Mithe,” she whispered, “I’m really to tired to argue with you…”

“Of course you are!” he snapped, “Can’t you see what you’re doing to yourself?”

“I said not now!” She tried to put some force into her words, but the effort made her head spin.

“…….. discuss this later…..” she heard in the distance, then Mithe turned and marched out, slamming the door behind him, a disturbance which Calyx barely even heard as she slipped into an unconciousness of deep green, and dark eyes and dances.

Later, she was ready for Mithe’s rebukes, but they came kinder than she expected, and this added to her guilt

She sat in the wide, bright atrium at the heart of the city. The sloping sides rose high above her head, bowing towards each other to meet at the top, forming a sort of elongated dome, almost a strange imitation of the underwater cauldron where Sil-cey’s people danced their strange dances.

In the centre of the area, surrounded on all sides by windows, and the bright, white, snow-reflected light from the world outside, was a dead tree.

It was only a small sapling, less than six feet in height, with few branches. Its buds were browned and hard, likes fossils, and the wood was ancient and brittle. The atrium gave the impression of having been built around the tree, but that was not the case, the tree had been planted at the time of the building’s completion. It had been grown from cell cultures deep frozen for centuries or more in temperatures even more extreme than those beyond the frosted windows. It had not survived outside the laboratory.

Calyx sat by the tree, on the smooth, worn floor. The atrium had a still and reverential feel to it, like an affirmation of faith. She heard Mithe’s footsteps, carried in the brittle acoustics of the dome, a good minute before he reached her.

“I had a feeling I would find you here. Still trying to breathe life into a dead stick!”

His tone was surprisingly gentle, as was the hand he laid on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off, and he sat down on the low stone wall surrounding the tree, regarding her sadly.

“One day we will have live trees, but only if you concentrate your energies, and work with us. There are too few of us for you to spend your days playing with seals!”

Her head came up indignantly at the implied slight she interpreted from his words.

“They are intelligent beings!” she snapped angrily

“Yes, I know that Calyx,” he kept his voice even, trying to mollify her irritation, “but so are we. And we’re an endangered species too, in case you hadn’t noticed. We need all our resources – and that includes you – if we are ever going to make this planet habitable again.”

“And if we do,” he paused, “when we do,” he emphasised, “we’ll

need all our people even more.” He leaned forward and put both his hands around her shoulders.

“Don’t!” she pushed him away quickly. She glared at him suspiciously.

“That’s what you really want, isn’t it? A means of repopulation!” She spat the offensive words out like sour milk. “That’s why you don’t want me spending time with Sil-cey, isn’t it?”

“And is that why you spend so much time out at sea – to avoid me?”

Mithe’s tone was not so gentle now, there was a hardness that had crept into it, and also hurt underneath the anger, which she didn’t want to hear.

“Oh, come on Calyx, what sort of game are you playing at anyway. He’s not even the same species as you!”

Mithe regretted the words even as they were leaving his lips, and the sudden fury in Calyx’s eyes warned him that he had mishandled the situation, but he refused to back down now, and returned her seething stare, locked in confrontation as to who would be the first to look away.

“Well he’s a better person than you’ll ever manage to be!” Calyx yelled at him. She could see the small muscles in his jaw working, and for a moment she thought he was going to shout, scream at her, hit her or something, and she was almost reflexively flinching when he turned without a word and abruptly strode away across the wide atrium floor, without looking back at her.

Calyx scrambled to her feet and shouted after him;

“We’ll never have trees and things again! Give up Mithe, it’s broken and you can’t fix it, not this time. None of your fancy toys will change anything, can’t you see that? ”

“We should be helping the sea-people, not sneering at them. We have all this knowledge we could give them, instead of keeping it for ourselves, Mithe, are you listening to me? Mithe…..!”

He didn’t answer her. She stood and watched him leave, then she sat down slowly on the low wall, blinking to stop her emotion from escaping.

She touched the dead bark of the tree with her finger tips. A thousand times she had examined its shrivelled buds, searching for a sign of green, and when she found nothing, in her mind she had clothed its nakedness with leafy green.

Now, even this failed her. A dead stick for a dead world, and the death of hope she could still see in the eyes of the man who had wanted her.

Down in the cauldron, in the floating green and gold, she forgot for a time the hopelessness of above and the pointlessness of existence. She swam and laughed, and sang and danced, but Sil-cey perceived her sadness and even though she had made it a condition of her visits to him under the sea/air interface that he ask her no questions about her life above, still he could not keep his thoughts within himself.

“This time you bring unhappiness with you Calyx. Perhaps I can take it from you, or at least share its burden.”

Calyx thought images of friendship and gratitude to Sil-cey.

“There is nothing you can do, Sil-cey. There is nothing anyone can do.”

“Do you know the history of this world, the whole world we inhabit, above and below, beyond the land/sea interface? Do you know of the great catastrophes, and the terrible things done in the name of my people?”

“We have stories…..” he thought shyly, “… of the great, lost worlds of the shore people, and the city on the hill…..”

“They are not stories,” she told him sadly, “they are the truth. Once this world, this planet, was beautiful and full of green, growing things, not snow and ice, and we destroyed it, with our pride and stupidity, and our refusal to believe, and now there are too few of us left to undo the damage done.”

“We can never find again what has been lost, for we are fading and dying, and we have little power now, nor even the will to use what we have.”

“Then let us help you,” Sil-cey thought eagerly, “show us your power, let us know how the magic is done, and we will build the world again as it was, and we will see the spring again, and summer too, for there are many of us and we are strong and full of life!”

Sil-cey swam in front of her, his dark eyes glowing and his long whiskers trembling, but when he saw the look on Calyx’s face, his excitement left him, and a strange fear took its place.

“Sil-cey,” she thought, anguished, “you don’t know what you’re saying, you must never think these things. Only misery can come from such a course, only grief and destruction. Our interference…..” she broke off, her thoughts a turmoil of aching guilt, “My interference in your lives can only result in ruin for you. Each time it happens……” Again her thoughts swirled with troubled emotions.

“Sil-cey, I should never have come here. I may have endangered you and your people, I….. who knows what damage I’ve done. I should never have come.” Her thoughts were small and bleak.

“I must go now.” In her mind her words were only a whisper. “I wish you knew what you have meant to me, Sil-cey, but……. there is a time for everything to end. I cannot stay. I may bring only death and trouble.”

Sil-cey swam in agitated circles. “Do not go! I will never think of such things again, but do not leave, Calyx, please!”

She shook her head, her thoughts fluttering like birds in her confusion.

“I must go now,” she repeated, “there is no more.”

“When will you return!” Sil-cey wailed as she swam away

Calyx kept her head down and swam on furiously, putting as much distance between herself and Sil-cey as she could, before she had a chance to change her mind.

Her last thought floated back to him, fainter from the intervening and increasing distance.

“I can never return. Forget you ever knew me, Sil-cey. Goodbye.”

Sil-cey could easily have caught up with her, but he remained hanging in the cauldron, confused and miserable. Her last words still brushed his mind.

He broadcast one last thought through the cold water. “Come back. Please come back!” But there was no reply.

Outside this time, the light so bright it blinded her to blackness. White snow, blue sky, a nuclear inferno, millions of miles away, alone with her thoughts till Mithe found her like he always did.

“It’s cold out here,” he observed, unnecessarily, then, after a while,

“Do you want to tell me?”

She thrust her fingers into the snow, crushing a handful of the fine, powdery crystals. Then she turned to look at him, and her eyes blazed like the sky, wide and blue, tiny pupils cowering away from the intense radiation all around, washed with wind-stung tears.

“Listen.” she said. He nodded.

She looked up at the cloudless arc overhead. “This is not our world anymore. Not a place we are fitted to live in. There are others who have it now.”

“The sea-people.”

She didn’t bother acknowledging his words, but continued staring out over the hard, white landscape”

“He asked me to help them,” she said, almost dreamily, “help them become like us, with our magic” She shook her head ruefully. “Or rather, he offered us their help. Wanted to share our burden with us.”

“You know why we can’t do that?”

“So they can’t mess things up like us, make all our mistakes over again, destroy themselves before they’ve even had a chance to become themselves.”

“Something like that.”

She turned to him again, smiling sadly. “We’re dreaming, Mithe, we can never get back what we had and threw away so carelessly, there will be no new spring for this poor place, no triumphant return of our children’s children. We have to let go and give it to its rightful owners, the longer we hang on the more chance we have of messing it up for them.” Her eyes were full of running liquid now, but her smile was glorious.

“Let’s do the right thing for once, and go now, quietly and with dignity. One final act of kindness for this sad home we have abused so much.”

“It’s time to go, Mithe, can’t we do it willingly, and with joy for what’s left behind, and what’s to come, no sullen and petty destructiveness this time, it’s the only thing we have left to give!” Her tears spilled over and ran down her cold cheeks, dripping onto the snow and burning tiny holes before they froze like diamonds in the soft white cloud.

“It’s hard, letting go of a dream,” she whispered, wiping her damp face before it, too, froze. “It’s hard, finally growing up.”

Mithe said nothing. He took her hand and pulled her towards him, and she came, and laid her head on his.

“Come on,” he said softly, “it’s getting late, we’d better get back.”

He took her by the hand, and they walked slowly back to the city together, in the direction of the setting sun.

“…. and Sil-cey came every day to the shore and sang for Calyx, but she never came again.”

“And the last of the children were called by Shaash, and they came willingly, for their time was over, and the time of the People was just beginning, and the world was given to the People, so that they would remember that in their beginning was an end, and all things will end so that it may begin again.”

There was a long silence after Whe-saa finished her story. San-san stirred awkwardly in the sand and, looking up, realised it was almost day.

“That’s just a story, thought, isn’t it, it’s just made up!”

Whe-saa smiled. “Most stories have a little truth in them somewhere.” she said.

“But there’s no such things as Shore-Fairies, is there?” he persisted.

“No, there are no such things.” Whe-saa reached over past the dead embers of the fire and pulled a small pink flower growing in the lee of a sand dune nearby. She turned it upside down over her cupped hand and shook it, and two small frozen dew-droplets fell out and lay on her palm, sparkling like diamonds in the morning light.

“Look,” she said, “the tears of Calyx.”

Shu-a-teh rose stiffly to her feet and walked down to the water’s edge. Already the morning’s warmth was beginning to melt the overnight snow, and through it small plants were vigorously poking their leaves in preparation for another hard days photosynthesis.

On the low hill, behind and to her right, Shu-a-teh could make out the sudden burst of blossoms which had appeared on the trees, it seemed with amazing suddenness, only in the last two or three days. A small insect buzzed past her ear, and a bird sang somewhere close by, celebrating the spring which had come at last.

But Shu-a-teh saw none of this, gazing out over the crystal clear, white-topped waves which leapt and played in the fresh morning, past the golden glory of the sunrise floating on the horizon, she saw in her mind a tall, graceful creature, hair blowing like sand in the wind, beckon to her and smile with a radiance which outshone the rising sun.

Then Shu-a-teh ran forward, into the water, feeling its cold, exhilarating bite as it wet her sand-dried fur, and then the water was all around her, rushing and singing, and Shu-a-teh sang too, for the joy of the beautiful morning, and in her heart she danced with all the children of the earth.

Some time later, being rather wiser in the ways of electronic obsolescence, I entrusted The Stuff to the care of an imaginary network of invisible machines, rather as one sticks a message in a bottle and throws it into the briney.

After a while, the imaginary network settled down a bit, so I decided to tidy up all The Stuff and keep it in one place. I used to use a cardboard box for this purpose. Isn’t the future marvellous? It’s everything I was hoping it would be, really!