kroth:  the rise

2: lured

You often hear about the magic of books, about how they can transport your mind into limitless universes of the imagination, and of course that transportation spell is one spell they can weave, but I, as an immigrant to Birannithep, made more use of their quite different muting spell: the way books have of displaying a fact at one remove, to make it seem less real.
    Geography textbooks, the drier the better, I soon took to devouring; never before had I derived such benefit from the gulf between a real phenomenon and its shadowy depiction on the printed page.
    My host Milt Sibboan promised me that within a few days I could be enrolled in the University of Mrakkastoom. Craxham College, where Oraggalee Stoom taught, would be happy to receive me. Meanwhile, could I be thinking about what course of studies to pursue? My answer came without hesitation. “Geography! Dan has shown me some of your books….”
    “Hes he, now? - Oh, those,” he said when I showed him the titles. “Hed to read those for my irrigation ingineering qualification. Pretty boring stuff.”
    I didn’t tell him that the boringness was precisely what attracted me. It shrank my universe to a kind of game where I could understand the rules and could trust to get by without any more unsettling or nasty surprises, and so, the more I thought about it, the more I was tempted to make a career as an irrigation nerd, like Milt Sibboan. There’d be an analogy with Earth engineering. Admittedly inverted – but any threat to my sanity from the inverted aspect would be trumped by the analogy: for example, take the statement that pipes are dug “up into the ground”: as soon as that began to tingle my spine I’d change the emphasis, “up into the ground”, so that “ground” with its old-fashioned comfort would spare me any further reminder of where I really was…. for as long as my nose remained stuck in the book.
    Next, irrigation led me on to land use and ecology. Here the danger that the illusion might slip was perhaps somewhat greater. But again the book-magic, the shield of a printed page with its smear of remoteness, tranquilised rampaging Reality. I could settle back and simply enjoy a good read and let my mind be boggled in a comfortable way, like I used to do when reading science-fiction. Hours went by and I virtually forgot that the room in which I sat reading a book actually dangled from the world which the book described. My subdued trance could be compared with that dim academic awareness I’d experienced in my school history lessons back in England. You read about someone like Henry VIII, but you don’t really realize that the air you speak into and the air Henry spoke into persist as one and the same shuddering atmosphere. No – the old monster is just a flicker of story in your head.
    In this muted fashion I eagerly absorbed data on the ecology of Hudgung. I got the feel of its principles. All systems are supposed to bring order and in this way they can invite analogy, comparison…. something must keep your feet on the ground, whether it be gravity or glue. Life under Hudgung had in many cases evolved with adhesive properties - understandably. This meant, for instance, that not nearly so many animals drop into the sky at death as you might think. A dying animal might either dig claws, or stick by means of Velcro pads, under the matted grass, and remain to dangle as carrion for vultures or other scavengers…. And what of people? My mind wandered to the subject of sure-fingered and sure-booted people, as they needed to be…. enough of that thought... my mind wandered further, to the topics of water and sewage… it all drops down and shines at night by the Nadiral Light… enough of that thought, too, so wander on... help, I’m going too far, I need an analogy… help, where’s an analogy… analogy, help, please… something to link all this to Earth…
    It came just in time: the minimization idea.
    Vegetation under Hudgung has evolved analogously to desert flora on Earth. Both are in the minimization business. Earthly cacti minimize losses due to evaporation; Hudgung’s Velcro flora minimise losses due to gravity.
    A perfect match, and what do I hear if I turn up the volume of my background thoughts? The incessant babble of the reassurance channel: you’re doing fine, Dunc, keep it up. Relax and contemplate the fertile plains of the Antipodes, the Velcro grasslands where the spidery omong roamed long ago, and still roam, between the occasional dangling cities of modern man. You’re doing fine, and just make sure the babble never stops. Because if it does –
    Squartcho.

*

I had reason to be grateful to my hosts, Milt and Cerise Sibboan. My few days in their home healed me, re-introduced me to peace and contentment, and completely restored my faith in daily life after the dark oppression of Udrem. Milt and Cerise impressed me with their disinterested friendliness, their good-humoured hospitality towards one with whom they had nothing much in common beyond simple humanity.
    The next step for me was to accept yet more Biri generosity: I was to attend college, as a live-in student, maintained by the State.
    Craxham College was affiliated to Mrakkastoom University, and Mrakkastoom, so I learned, was actually the third largest city in Birannithep, after Lishom-Galeeg, the industrial centre, and the capital, Gannerynch. Craxham – in Biri fashion – was a sixth-form college as well as a college for undergraduates, for in this culture secondary and tertiary education were combined, so that I could look forward to a smooth slide into academic life perhaps lasting as much as five years. Five years of comfort amid the (dangling) groves of Academe – that was what I thought I was in for.
    I kept to my decision to study geography. My curiosity might have prompted me to go for history, especially as I was fascinated by the layers of culture in Biri society, the waves of settlement which must explain the mixture of names, ordinary English and unfamiliar Tremst – Tremst being the language of the Abos (the wave before last), which I seldom heard. But rather than risk the mind becoming too stimulated, I stuck to the more “grounded” subject. Besides, geography is an entrance into history anyway.
    I arrived at the start of a term, by the same route as five or six other new students who were all as happy and excited as I was and determined not to show it. As we alighted at the cable-stop I could easily distinguish the students from the other passengers, for though we were of different ages the detestable term “cool” might have described us all. Our pretence at casualness, our repression of exuberance, was (I dare say) a good idea: the extreme positive emotions can be as dangerous as the negative ones, to those who must walk over the sky. This is because happiness breeds trust, trust breeds taking-things-for-granted, and that can bring on the moment when you forget to hold on. So – be cool. Strike the right balance. Instinctively hold on; don’t dwell on why. Accept life in the spirit of everyday. Avoid – if you’re a novice like me – avoid the Velcro grass quadrangles at college, where the hardier types stroll upside-down. Gravitate – if you’re lazy like me – gravitate towards the Junior Common Room (the JCR).
    It’s one walkway from the porter’s lodge, one walkway from the bar and canteen, and two walkways from the lecture theatre (in one direction) and “C” staircase (in another). A room on “C” staircase was where I lived. College can be thought of as a self-contained world, where meals just appear, rooms are cleaned and culture is on tap from libraries, debates, seminars, lectures and chats with friends with blossoming minds. But above all there’s the delicious idleness of sitting in the JCR….
    I reached for a magazine that had a cover picture which could not scare me – though it might have done, had it not been only a picture. I contemplated it, enjoying the sensation of not being scared.
    Jack Petergate a couple of seats away remarked, “Duncan still searching for the perfect megazine….”
    “Haven’t decided yet,” I admitted, “but I might subscribe to this one….”
    I was in a phase of finding out about the Redakka – the giant net that had caught me and my condemned companions, rescuing us from the Drop. How and why and when had such a thing been built? And lo and behold, a glossy cover pic and leading article in this month’s Biri Life.
    “Wouldn’t you rather forgit?” asked Jack.
    Another student, called Jeth – short for Jethro – answered for me: “Why should he want to forgit? Don’t you forgit where our criminal encistors all came from.”
    “True, true,” said Jack. “But then, who first build the Redakka?”
    I said, “This article goes into that. It plumps for the view that the first Redakka wasn’t artificial. It was a natural trung of giant size, which caught some Dropped people alive, and after that…”
    “After that, things could git on. I see,” said Jeth. “Quite interisting.”
    “It’s old stuff,” said Jack. “Every now and thin an iditor of a piriodical gits stuck for material, whereupon he rivives the dibate between the Naturists and the Omong-Origin crowd, as to what caused the Redakka. Personally, I’m a Naturist.”
    “I wouldn’t risk thet, Jeck,” said Gedelly who walked in at that point. She added drily, “You’d ketch cold.”
    Jeth added, “And college plenning law forbids eyesores….”
    My consciousness meanwhile streamed and blended, pinch after pinch of input stewing nicely with the rest, no raw stuff, every passion smoothed and digestible. The article, the banter, the obvious chemistry between Gedelly and Jack, were all in good taste, strong but urbane.
    Jack continued, “I rickon Dunc could write some articles himsilf. A menual for biginners in Biri life.”
    “Why me?” I asked.
    “Because – look at you! You’re coping so will! Laid beck like Haroun el-Reshid waiting for the nixt Erabian Night.”
    “Ah,” I said, impressed at this allusion. Every now and then a student would come up with a cultural snippet of this kind, which survived in some tide-pool of memory, recalling the fading Dream of Earth. Accept the compliment, my instinct nudged. “A matter of psychological goal-keeping,” I explained. “You don’t let Hudgung get a shot past you.”
    “Goal-keeping?”
    “Football,” explained Jeth. “He’s referring to the game of football.”
    “Ah, so he is,” and Jack passed a hand over his brow, a gesture made by many whenever the Dream of Earth came a-glimmering.
    I dared to go on:
    “Human beings have been known to develop stunningly fast reactions. Games like cricket and baseball require them. So why not learn to react fast to emotional ambush?”
    Silence.
    Was it to be the silence of embarrassment? Surely they would not leave my words to hang in the air. If they did, I would then have to assess those words as reckless and stupid. They weren’t that; they were nicely judged probes, meant to push just far enough, and no further, along the line of calculated risk. I just wanted to increase my moral elbow-room.
    Gedelly was the one who broke the silence and fulfilled my trust.
    “Wow, a neat little licture.”
    “Too right,” added Jack. “Strong feelings are at their most dangerous when they leap out from embush. But, as Dunc has ixplained, thet need not be an insuperable problem.”
    “It looks to me,” Gedelly announced, “that Dunc ken be safely lift to proceed without advice from inny of us. C’mon, Jeck – time for lunch.” She rose, and the others followed her out of the room. She called back to me as she went out, “Coming for lunch, Dunc?”
    “Soon. Just want to read this first.” I tried to focus on the article and slow the whirling of my thoughts. Krunk! Outbreak of self-congratulation! I had got away with some nicely judged remarks! The way to do it was not to keep to safe subjects all the time. Too much playing safe, and you ended up repressing so much that you risked an explosion. Best to put out little probes now and then. Combine boldness of subject with blandness of delivery….
    Gedelly poked her head back in the room. “Where did I leave my purse… ah, I hed it all along.”
    I had looked up and smiled and then went back to reading, for I assumed she had gone out again, but then I heard her voice much closer and lower.
    “Ever heard of jurring?”
    “No – what….”
    “Imotional brinkmanship. Gitting the other side to beck down because they don’t dare iscalate the imotional intinsity.”
    “No, er… I never heard of that.”
    “Haha, I think you’d be good et thet, Duncan.” She smiled archly and turned away. “Put it in your nixt licture.”
    I could have called after her, “Krunk to that! My ‘lecture’ is this: I’m out for a quiet life, and I think I’ve got it and I’m keeping it.” I almost did. What stopped me?
    Could it have been honesty? Did I foresee the disproof?
    I remained for some minutes alone in the JCR, telling myself: Eat your cake and have it. It’s the only way, the only way – and Gedelly, after all, was probably right. I had practised brinkmanship before…. the only way to fence-sit between a stimulating life and a safe one.
    But what is all this flow of twaddle in the head? Shut it off, snap.
    Peace reigned in the JCR.
    A complacent silence. My fail-safe switch, my dumb common sense, had snapped shut the shield against premature insight.
    What with a late breakfast I still wasn’t hungry enough to follow the others into the canteen for lunch, so I was still browsing magazines in the JCR when the next person happened to come in –
    “Cora!”
    “Hi, Dunc. Heard the latest crime news?”
    “Crime?”
    “Yeah, you know, as in c – r – i – m – e, crime.”
    “Er…. I suppose it must exist in Birannithep but I haven’t given it much thought.”
    “Well, I didn’t mean to make you jump!”
    “Must be my guilty conscience,” I said. “Go on with your bogglement, then.”
    Cora had chosen to read Politics and Economics and was fond of testing how I reacted to surprising facts. Now she plumped herself down into the corner seat next to mine, so that I saw her in half-profile, and she put her hands behind her head, which was often her way when a “bogglement” was due.
    “Gemma Rosten’s been cleared.”
    I didn’t at first have a clue what she was talking about, partly because, as usual in these halcyon days of my new life, Cora’s presence blanketed me with pleasant warmth of love and trust, along with just a minor tickly regret for the impossibility of more. Romance with Cora? Somehow unimaginable. A matter of temperament – “more” was simply “not on”….
    I made a polite effort to connect.
    “Er – who’s Gemma Rosten? Oh, just a sec, you told me – ”
    “I told you the other day, Dunc, Gemma Rosten’s the would-be lover of Oraggalee Stoom,” and she lowered her voice a trifle. “Who was supposed to have murdered his first wife in a love-triangle scandal. Don’t see how you could forget a choice piece of gossip like that.”
    “Umm,” I said. Loose talk had been drifting round the College, and it did seem surprising that I could have failed to pay attention when Cora explained it the first time. Unless the reason was that the whole affair had seemed so utterly incredible as to prompt some reflex to junk it from my brain. Love-triangles and murder among the urbane Biris? Fantastic, preposterous. If it did happen, how could the guilty person or persons survive? The sky below would beckon, the emotional anguish would bring on the moment of loosened grip, and down and away one would drop….
    “Cleared, you say?”
    “Yeah, the court reversed its verdict today, officially. It seemed that Sheila really had determined to kill herself – as Gemma always maintained – and moreover she’d done it for reasons which predated Gemma’s arrival on the scene. The idea of framing Gemma for it came as a bonus, apparently. Sheila Stoom was a morbid type!”
    “But how do we know all this?”
    “Her diary has come to light.”
    “Oh. Ah.”
    “So anyway,” Cora continued, “all of a sudden, after two years of ostracism, Gemma is back in the community. We’re all going to be nice to her now.”
    “We?”
    “The thing is, she’s a member of this college. A bit awkward, since Prof. Stoom teaches here… should be interesting to watch.”
    “But look…” I began.
    “Yes?”
    “Something I don’t get: this stuff about people not being nice to her. Surely, that wasn’t an issue while she was away in prison, and, now that she’s been released…”
    “No, no. She was never in prison. Like you, I didn’t understand at first how justice works down here. But now it’s clear to me – she was never in prison because down here (except in a very few cases), punishment by public opinion is deemed sufficient, even in some cases of violent crime.”
    “Uh?? You sure?”
    “It seems incredible but yes, I’m sure. And apparently the system works quite well. There doesn’t seem to be much crime in this country….”
    “I get that impression too.”
    “You noticed, eh? You read the papers? Yes, they’re a sober, straight-laced lot.” Her flippant tone put my back up a bit, and my reply was curt:
    “At any rate, they don’t swear every other word, and they manage to keep their pants on.”
    “Yes, and we know why, don’t we?” Cora sounded mildly amused as she wielded her analytical scalpel. “Sexual repression is seen as essential because once passions are let loose, it would be far too easy to transmute them into lethal action. A resentful push, a stumble, and someone falls into infinite space. Or one lets go oneself.”
    “In other words,” I said, determined to defend my newly adopted country, “folk here are well-spoken, well-behaved and decent. And what’s more, I don’t care why! The causes don’t matter to me; after all, I suppose every good thing has an accidental cause; it’s the results that carry weight with me.”
    “Hypocrisy – ” began Cora; but I was in full flow.
    “I guessed you’d say that,” I countered without giving her a chance to say more than that one word. “You’re going to make the point about Victorian style repression leading to hypocrisy et cetera et cetera. Well, it may be so, but think what you also get from it, a far more pleasant consequence – ” I checked my voice from rising; I looked to see that no one else was about to step into the room.
    “‘Pleasant consequence’?” echoed Cora. “Seems to be making you nervous.”
    “I am anxious to tread carefully when it’s a matter of carrying a bucket of mucky slopping memory across the clean carpet of – ” (I strained to complete the analogy) “ – of – ” I dared not say innocence. She would laugh. “Look,” and I made a chopping gesture, “what I’m trying to say is that, in contrast to sad old Earth, the young, here, have not been deprived of romance.”
    There – I had said it. Would the woman laugh?
    Her mouth was stretching a bit. Like lightning I saw that if I was to prevent her, I could only do it by admitting more of the truth, so I went on:
    “I squirm inwardly when they ask me about Earth. So much of it I can’t bear to tell them; I have to censor ninety per cent of it. I tell you, Cora, I’m in a fix, when they start to quiz me too closely.”
    Cora said, “You know what, Dunc: this is political.” She had decided not to laugh. Instead she sounded like a doctor discussing a grave symptom. “You hanker after the values and therefore the social structure of the England of John Buchan’s heroes. Nineteen twenties, thirties. You’re seriously out of date. Reactionary in a big way.”
    My mouth opened and closed, fish-like. She’d done it again: seen through me.
    “Congratulations! You’re absolutely right – except for the bit about ‘hankering’. I mean,” I continued, “I don’t have to hanker any more. I’ve reached it. It’s all around me, thank goodness.”
    “You reckon so? I doubt it. Seems a fairly classless society, to me.”
    “So it is. So what?”
    She said, “Not like the John Buchan scene.”
    “The values,” I said, shaking my head impatiently. “The sense of honour. I don’t give a krunk for the social structure; I told you I don’t care what accident may bring a good thing to life.”
    “Putting the clock back to the puritanical Boy Scout values of old-fashioned thrillers – you call that a good thing?” Her contempt was emerging into the open. I feared we might quarrel as seriously as we had once before, up in Topland.
    But, no way was I about to back down. So, in order to defend one of my favourite writers and to avoid a lengthy quarrel with Cora, I must carry out a quick smash-and-grab raid on the subject at issue and then scarper to a different topic, sufficiently connected, so that she would accept it as a follow-up.
    It seemed like a tall order. Fortunately my blood was up.
    “You cited John Buchan. Well, probably you’re thinking (as far too many people do) of Richard Hannay in The Thirty-Nine Steps. Hannay’s the most limited, unimaginative and stereotyped of all the Buchan heroes.” My loosened tongue released a flow of words which I had long desired to unleash upon somebody: “Why don’t people do justice to the other stories, especially the brilliant short stories, so many of which begin in a room not too different from where we are now, a club or dining hall, where someone begins to tell a tale that intertwines all sorts of personalities and events and cultures and fates, with a spine-tingling sense of the atmosphere of a place, and a range of themes that even extends across the border with the supernatural – all of it brilliantly lucid, nuanced, and at the same time readable…. but I’m sorry, Cora, if I’ve chosen an example which you happen not to click with. You’re right, I’m in a political mood. Something that’s cropped up here, in this very room, I’d like your opinion on….”
    A separate issue – but by the time she noted my quick shift, the new topic would occupy her attention and divert her from her attack on my favourite “old-fashioned” thrillers. Such was my hope.
    She nodded permission to continue. I loved her for her co-operation and hoped for yet more. My finger tapped the latest issue of JCR news.
    “Something in that rag?” she asked.
    “Let me read it out – Elections for the JCR Committee. Left-wing: vote Omchak. Right-wing: vote Crathol…”
    Cora smiled, “Wouldn’t’ve thought you’d be concerned with that.”
    “Yes, yes, not very interesting, and hardly up my street or yours, after what we’ve been through…. but,” and I really did want her advice on this, “can I ask you – um, no, I’d better give you some background – ”
    “Foreground first, wouldn’t that be best?”
    “Now, don’t start to sound like Vic; this is serious, Cora!”
    “All right, shoot.”
    “First, let me admit, I’ve got into coping with life here by means of a – er – ‘white-out’ of the awkward bits. Do you understand what I’m saying so far?”
    My plan hinged on her reaction. Was her experience close enough to mine?
    Just close enough, apparently, for her to give an impassive nod, and for me to judge it worthwhile to continue:
    “You remember Polyfilla, brand name of some cementy stuff used to fill cracks? I have given its name to the white-out process: ‘Friend Polyfilla’. Mentally equivalent to the DIY usage, Friend P. is a filler for the cracks in our comprehension, you see.”
    “Oh, brother,” said Cora, raising her eyes to the ceiling. “‘Cracked’ is the word.”
    I ploughed on, “Friend Polyfilla enables me to get through the day without having to stop every few minutes to figure out this or that antipodean craziness. Next stage is to label the whited-out patches with tags, to help us translate them into our accustomed terms, such as ‘A walk in the woods’ or ‘College’ or ‘Going shopping’….”
    Cora relaxed. “I thought at first you were going crazy – I mean, more than usual – Polyfilla, indeed! – but it’s all just another lot of accommodations and adjustments, a development of The Slant, isn’t it? That’s all. I’m certainly familiar enough with that background, and I quite see that the need for some extension to The Slant, or some successor to it, is obvious. But we’re doing it anyway, I reckon, by the way we increasingly swap our old notions of ‘up’ and ‘down’ in this bizarre place. We say, ‘it might as well be Earth except that you are always being pulled by the sky, in danger of falling up into the sky’ – that’s the swap. Can’t live here otherwise.”
    I drew a deep breath. I had let her talk. Now it was time to scrape off some of the Polyfilla.
    “Look at this,” I said. “Trace the letters.”
    I held the front page of JCR News out to her and guided her hand to the words left-wing and then right-wing.
    “What is this all about? Why trace the letters?”
    “Just do it.”
    She sighed but began to obey. Her finger did trace l – e – f – t w – i – and then stopped.
    She raised her troubled eyes to mine and whispered, “Those aren’t…. I saw them change….”
    “So, as I thought, it is the same for you,” I said softly, with a quiet com-passion for both of us, for the look on her face was all I needed to be sure that she had experienced what I had accidentally discovered some while before.
    You examine some printed words too closely, and all of a sudden with a zing in your skull a spell is broken, Friend Polyfilla is dissolved, and the true words appear before your eyes.
    Not left-wing and not right-wing, at all.
    The true text read:
    Elections for the JCR Committee. Open-mouthed: vote Omchak. Close-mouthed: vote Crathol.
    Trudy Omchak, the Gabby candidate, says: “The JCR must condemn the Government’s policy of cover-ups with regard to the true situation under the southern border with Naos.”
    Jeth Crathol, the Dumb candidate, says: “Students deserve a Committee that looks after their needs and does not waste time and energy on political issues that are no business of the College.”
    Ballot boxes in the Hall this week. Don’t forget to vote.
    Gabby with Trudy. Dumb with Jeth.
    “I don’t need this,” said Cora decisively. She tossed the JCR News onto the table. “It’s best if we each stick to our own solutions, Duncan.”
    As though I had invented the phenomenon!
    As she rose to her feet and turned to go, I cried: “What do you mean, ‘solution’? Hey, I was asking you, not telling you – ”
    She looked back at me and made a speech completely ignoring what I had said and evidently convinced that I was ‘up to something’:
    “I know you, you have a habit of leaving people behind. Vic and I talk about you, sometimes. So, not only from my own experience but from his, I know how many times you’ve got yourself and your friends out of scrapes…. Whatever you’ve got, it’s not transferable!”
    I shook my head. Normally, she could read me like a book; odd that she should be so wrong now. Anyhow, as I watched her stalk out of the room I was reasonably satisfied with the way the conversation had turned out. I had rattled her, just as I had been rattled myself when I had discovered that The Slant was making me read what was not written and thus causing me to wonder what other stuff I might also not be seeing as it really is.
    Of course, it was possible to take the illusion not as something sinister but as proof that I was being powerfully protected. This was not only a nicer but also a far more plausible concept, for by now I ought to realize that The Slant knew its business. If it chose to censor a sight, a word, an idea, then that ought to be fine by me.
    Cora, meanwhile, after her little fright, might (I hoped) have a bit more respect for all my allegiances in future.

*

For some more weeks fate allowed me to snuggle blissfully in that mode of ordinariness which, amazingly, seems able to take hold wherever life can find a place to cling, no matter how fantastic the conditions – even under Hudgung.
    I still saw my other companions – the ones who were not at college with me – but our paths crossed less often than before, since I was mostly absorbed in college doings during this period. I therefore missed my uncle’s calm friendship, his vast, off-beat intelligence; I even missed Elaine, serial disappointer though she was; but for the time being I could get along without them, especially as I heard they were doing all right, for example Elaine had obtained some nursing job, and Vic, as might have been expected, particularly throve, taking steps to get back into his old line of work as a science reporter.
    No doubt about it, normality was seeping back into our lives. This despite the brute fact that ground and sky were the wrong way round, a truth so appalling that it was relegated to some mental background, taken for granted and thus almost forgettable! Quite absurd, that this could be. But there it is: the all-conquering power of the mundane.
    I had no further tension with Cora; neither of us referred again to extensions to The Slant which might be altering our vision or our comprehension. I expect we both knew it was happening, but also that it was nothing weighty, merely a sprinkle or dusting of minor illusion to smooth our lives. It wasn’t worth getting upset about, and so I let it be, and whenever she and I were together I just enjoyed the glow of her company, our quiet, almost-romantic relationship that got nowhere because we both needed it to stay just as it was. We both wished to go easy on our emotions, which is a good idea in any case if you live Down Under – as Oraggalee Stoom had told us at the beginning.
    Members of Craxton College are allowed to invite up to three guests for the Founders’ Day Dinner. I took soundings.
    “Uncle, since you happen to be in town,” I said, with a dig at the way Vic seemed nowadays to be zooming around all under Birannithep, “would you care to be my guest at the Dinner?”
    “You forget,” he replied, “I’ve already been invited.”
    I couldn’t remember who had invited him but I did not wish to admit this. “Oh yes, so you have. I’ll find someone else.”
    “Try Elaine?”
    “Too busy looking after His Highness, I should think.”
    “Invite him too. He’s ‘on the mend’, so I’ve heard.”
    “That’s a thought!” The likelihood of acceptance seemed poor, but the idea amused me.
    “Give it a try,” advised Vic. “I don’t suppose the occasion will be too exciting for an invalid, anyhow.”

                                                    *

The Great Hall at Craxton is a prime example of classic Biri architecture, called hadobu, “heavy yet safe”. From the outside you can see that the structure’s upper region, which like an udder or an icicle slopes inward as it descends, is securely netted with the tough red ivy that covers an acre of the surrounding area. This vegetable matting alone would probably suffice to hold the weight of the building, but of course its designers have played safer than that. The top “foundation” (the all-important attachment to the ground overhead) is a hidden tangle of artificial roots, which consist of inner fixings of steel and concrete embedded in the planetary rock. The result is that, inside the Hall, you never feel the slightest sway or tremble. Stroll on that floor and you can pretend that you tread the firm old Earth. In fact you can imagine that you are strolling around the interior of a gothic cathedral, or some similar vaulted stone structure piled upon the ground. For the essence of the hadobu architectural philosophy is: make sure the edifice is so securely hung, that its floor can count as ground; then you can throw caution to the winds and build as heavily as you like upon that ‘ground’.  The motto of hadobu is “hang down, build up”.
    The tables set for the Founders’ Day Dinner were ranged along one side-quarter, while the rest of the space, among the buttresses and columns, was a zone for wandering and chatting with aperitif glass in hand. I shepherded Elaine and Rapannaf towards the nearest sherry. Elaine, looking gorgeous, smiled her thanks; the Prince accepted his drink with a jerky bow, a doddering trace of his old courtly self.
    Then suddenly he plucked her sleeve and quavered, “Er….Elaine….I want to make sure the Moyt is not here, behind one of these pillars. Can we go look, just in case?”
    I was filled with pity. I had already observed that as an exile Down Under the fellow seemed content to behave like a submissive child – albeit a child with prematurely lined face and drooping moustache – but I had not realised that his mind was so enfeebled as to allow the belief that his fearsome father, the ruler of Udrem, might still be a threat to him.
    “Dear, don’t fret, the Moyt is a long way away,” Elaine said gently, “but we can make sure, if you like.” With a nod to me she took him on a stroll…. I thus lost track of my guests for some minutes.
    Another glamorously-attired female appeared beside me. “How’s your riscued princiss?” asked Gedelly.
    I inclined my ear, thinking at first that I had misheard amid the clink of glasses and the roar of chatter, and said, “What? – Elaine? Princess? Oh, I get it. I suppose by this time she is a certain person’s princess – not mine, though!”
    “You sound a bit jilous.”
    “No, no, someone has to look after Rapannaf, and I doubt that anyone else would wish for the responsibility. He appears to have lost part of his mind, along with his old position of power.”
    “Ah will, lit’s hope Elaine sorts him out,” Gedelly remarked.
    Either that, or – I thought – she may prefer to baby him in his present docile state… but I was glad I had not expressed this ungenerous thought out loud, as I glimpsed the Prince’s stoop-shouldered form, resting on Elaine’s arm.
    Gedelly, meanwhile, glanced in another direction and called out, “Hey, Jeck! Where’ve you bin?”
    Jack Petergate joined us and said, “Looking for a good conversation to join. Can’t find one, so you’ll hev to do. How’s things?”
    “We were discussing Dunc’s ix-girl-frind over there,” and she pointed.
    “Wouldn’t have thought Elaine was your type, ectually,” Jack mused.
    Taken aback, I responded with “Who said she was?” – but Gedelly’s voice drowned mine out as she reproved, “Now now, Jeck, perciptive remarks of that sort can cause trouble, you know.”
    Vic almost careened into us just then – a welcome interruption. My uncle seemed less light on his feet than usual and at first I wondered if he’d had a drop too much.
    “Sorry, did I spill something? Thought I saw Prof. Zinfer around here somewhere. I have a bone to pick with him.” I then saw that he was flushed with antagonism rather than with alcohol.
    Jack said, “If I see the Professor I’ll warn him to keep clear – you’re not supposed to pick bones this evening, you know.”
    “I could shove his face into the soup, then.”
    “Uncle, what’s the cause of this belligerence?”
    “Well… You know that Professor Zinfer is the head of the Board of Directors of the Wheven Observatory. I have managed to secure a position there….”
    “Congratulations!” we all said to him at once.
    “What kind of position?” I added. “I thought you were just a reporter, not a proper scientist.”
    “Thank you for that tactful remark, Duncan. As a matter of fact it entails a bit of both. I suppose I won’t count as a real astronomer, but they say they want someone part-time to manage their…” (he coughed) “publicity department….” His voice took on a sour tone and I listened with only half an ear as he droned on, “…have to present their findings in a more exciting light than hitherto…. secure the continuation of funding… you know. Well, listen now, I’ve been up there to look things over, and I can tell you, it’s a lot of krunk.”
    I blinked in surprise. It wasn’t like Vic to bore on in this way. “Er… well, you can’t always expect scientists to be good at public relations….”
    “No, no, you don’t get what I mean! I mean, scientifically it’s krunk. I’ve a good mind to tell them all.”
    Just then the sound of the gong caused conversations to break off while we all began to wend our ways towards the tables.
    Vic laid a hand on my shoulder. “Look, you’ve been placed near the head of the table. Just enjoy the revels. ‘There was a sound of revelry by night….’”
    I glanced round to make sure none of my other friends were listening. Elaine and Rapannaf had seated themselves opposite me, side by side and absorbed in each other, Gedelly and Jack were to my left, likewise mutually engaged, but Vic had not sat down – he looked about to move away so I touched his arm and said quietly, “Are you expecting a Waterloo?”
    “Prof. Zinfer’s, not mine, I hope,” he grinned, and sidled off towards his own place closer to the Principal.
    “Oh, that’s all right; quarrel all you like,” I muttered. Mini-Waterloos – why should I mind them?
    I felt a nudge in my ribs and Gedelly said to me in a low, significant, serious voice, her normal Biri accent hardly noticeable. “I do wonder who devised this seating plan. Look who’s next to the Principal.”
    The top end of the table wasn’t far, only about six places from where we were; I flicked a glance there, then looked back at Gedelly.
    She murmured, “Still haven’t noticed? That’s Gemma Rosten.”
    “Well, well,” I said, curious to gaze at the girl whom we all now officially knew not to be a murderess.
    It was amusing to contrast the somewhat skeletal Myron Hayton, Principal of Craxton College, with the pneumatic young woman seated beside him. She almost overflowed a horizontally striped dress just barely acceptable at a formal dinner, but – or should it be therefore? – she and Hayton were getting on fine, conversing with sparkle and animation, by the look of it. Hayton’s poise reminded me of pre-Drop Rapannaf, different though they were. Rapannaf, of course, had now lost his princely flair, but the very pathos of that loss had won him the devotion of Elaine. Ah well, I indulgently thought, this world is full of variously lucky people, bully for them all, meanwhile I’m lucky enough just to be here –
    It is customary for formal dinners in Birannithep to include a longish interval between courses, during which guests can get up and move around to help make room in their stomachs for the next plateful. When the interval came, I stayed put, daydreaming, while the people around me chose to wander off.
    After a minute or two I noticed that about five seats away on my left, on the opposite side of the table, someone else had not moved.
    It was a girl about my age (that is, eighteen), with long dark plaits and a long mournful face. She looked undistinguished and droopy, and on second or third glance I could tell that she was acutely miserable.
    Ordinarily, as I am very much aware of my ability to misread a situation, I would have done nothing about this one. However, my usual reluctance to get involved was weakened, this evening, by a whisper of ambition. Duncan, now that you have adjusted so well, that you are getting on so well, that you have no outstanding problems, perhaps you have reached the point where you can begin to relax some of those controls which The Slant, or an extension of The Slant, has imposed upon you. You know that you are prevented at the moment from seeing certain things as they really are. Little details, here and there, are illusion, are fabrication. Not too much, nothing decisive, nothing to change the scene out of all recognition, but still, you would prefer to see a hundred per cent truth, would you not? Go on. Dare to see!
    And how do I know that it’s not too early?
    Test yourself. See if you have the guts to approach that girl. Offer her some sympathy. Risk a rebuff.
    I got up and went over to the vacated chair opposite hers and casually said, as I seated myself:
    “Hi, excuse me, so far I’ve only talked to people I know….”
    Her face brightened. Good start! I went on:
    “So I thought I’d catch you between conversations…”
    This went down well too. She still hadn’t said anything to me but I could see she liked the implication, that she had had conversations.
    I went on: “What do you think of it so far? Bored?”
    “Not bored, no,” she shook her head. “Worried.”
    Great – something to get hold of! “Odd you should say that.”
    “You worried too?”
    “No – I’m not worried enough,” I said, “so perhaps we can do a swap.” Her jaw dropped a bit. I prayed it was the start of a big smile. “I have an excess of contentment! So please share your worry with me….”
    She managed a low laugh. “I’ll start by worrying you with my name. I’m Anne; Anne Belormen.” (She pronounced it as Enne Bilormin, but I translated it back to myself.)
    “Duncan Wemyss.”
    “I know thet. Iverybody knows who you are.”
    “Oh do they… but to get back to what you were about to say, telling me your worry...”
    “Exems.”
    “Exams!! That all? You’re talking to the right guy! I can tell you how to get through rotten old exams! Easy… unless it’s Chemistry, of course,” honesty compelled me to add.
    “It is Chimistry,” she said sourly.
    I gave a weak laugh at the eerie way history repeated itself. “Oh well, even that… you know, I’ve talked about this before. I can help. Revision techniques are a sort of speciality of mine.”
    “If you really ken hilp me, you’re a life-saver,” she said earnestly. “I can’t afford pride… I’d git down on my knees to survive this Chimistry paper; I must hev it because my aim is to do forinsic science; there’s nothing ilse I want to do as a career.”
    “Forensic science? You mean, there are criminal trials Down Under?
    “Of course. We’re civilized, you know! Don’t condimn people without trial!
    “No, of course not, but I suppose I was just surprised that there are criminals here…. I mean….” (Skating on rather thin ice, what I wanted to say was that I was surprised anyone under Hudgung would risk the emotional strain of crime. )
    She grinned, “Did you think we were all good down here?”
    “No, of course not,” I repeated, “but if you must know, I kind of thought crime would be too good a way of getting het up, and, er, dropping…. ”
    This girl was hardened to bad language, evidently, for she took it in her stride and said, “Crimes of pession, sure, tind to be one-offs, ’cause the perpitrators are likely to drop, and thet weeds out thet kind, but cold-blooded crime, thet’s something ilse; you git people who are suited to it timpermintally….”
    We chatted blissfully on.
    When (as Biri custom demanded) the second gong sounded for us to reassemble for dessert, I had not only gained a friend, I had won a victory against my own selfish timidity, and I now believed that I was ready for the Slant-imposed controls to be relaxed. I could begin to investigate how this feat might be accomplished.
    I munched my way through the kirschtorte dessert with my thoughts far away, until Elaine’s voice recalled me to the scene.
    “Did you drive down on the A1?”
    Uh? I did a double-take and then the astounding truth hit me, that Elaine Swinton had made a joke. Quite an apt joke too. The gibe had gone the rounds at our old school back in the Dream of Earth. It had originated with the teachers, or perhaps with those few sixth-formers who had passed their driving tests. Did you drive down on the A1? – the classic dullards’ question, asked at parties by those who could not think of any other way to maintain the conversation. Elaine’s allusion was perfectly timed. She was letting me know, in the lightest and most inoffensive and amusing way, that I was stodgy company. Hmm, hidden depths to you, Elaine! – I almost said out loud, but wisely refrained; instead of sarcasm, pure delight won the day and I laughed, “Wow, what a memory you’ve got!” And the joke dispelled the problem. My pleasure, at the discovery that I had underestimated her, must have showed on my face. It triggered a mutual gleam. For once, we had clicked. This was turning out to be quite an evening….
    Then came the sound of a fork rapped against a wineglass. The Principal had risen. He cleared his throat.
    “Ladies and gintlemin,” Hayton spoke, and then again, heavily un-accented this time, “Ladies and gentle-men.” A murmur of laughter greeted this amendment. “What with all this good food, good wine and the pleasant company of keen minds, I feel I am about to suffer a severe attack of complacincy.” (More laughter.) “Will now, I’m quite heppy with thet.” (Yet more laughter.) “Biri society can afford to be complacint because ivery now and thin we obtain a transfusion of new blood. Minny of our greatest thinkers and doers hev started out as rifugees from the North. Crazy Northerners, we often call thim, these immigrants from Yeyld, and yet we binifit messively from their prisince among us. Our guist of honour this evening is one who hes alriddy been eccused of ecting like a gedfly who stirs up a hornits nist.” (Lots more laughter plus shouts of “Impossible!”) “End so I hev brought him here to buzz amongst us. Ladies and gintlemin, I prisint you – Mr Vic Chandler.”
    So that was who had already invited him – the College itself.
    “Thank you, Principal,” said Vic, rising. “It’s a great honour to address you all so soon after dropping down on your country from the sky.” (Chuckles.) “The reputation of this college is so high that I am sure you are used to hearing a brilliant speech on every occasion of this sort. I therefore decided that you might feel refreshed by the change, if I were to give you one full of clichés and platitudes.” (Louder chuckles.) “One familiar phrase from the Bible, so well-used as to be taken for granted like a dead metaphor, is the writing on the wall. Ah, I see some of you looking at the walls. No need to be as literal as all that. This isn’t quite Belshazzar’s Feast. Some of you are looking puzzled, but don’t worry. I do not intend to play the part of a prophet of doom, because I am not into playing parts. Let me get you interested in some hard facts. I was at Wheven Observatory the other night. I was kindly given a most interesting tour of the institution by Professor Zinfer, and I watched the staff at their work. You know – or maybe you don’t – that the Observatory is conducting an exhaustive sky survey. I want to tell you what I found most intriguing about that sky survey. It is that they are doing nothing else, and intend to do nothing else, until the job is complete. I asked what would happen if some dramatic celestial event were to occur outside the current area of survey; in particular, how long it would take to swing the scope to target the new event. Zinfer explained that the problem would not arise because the Research Committee had already decided that ‘no extraneous projects would be undertaken during the Survey period’. So there you are, and let us hope that the cosmos has heard and understood and will co-operate…”
    Vic went on in this ironical vein, bringing a charge of inflexibility against the scientific establishment of Birannithep. His audience heard him out in increasingly solemn silence. I had the impression that the speech was listened to with respect, and some agreement, especially from the non-scientists present. They did not seem to resent the fact that this newcomer was telling them some home truths. They were mostly big enough to take the speech in good part. On the other hand, this only went to show that if Vic had the idea he was going to change the way things were done, he was in for a disappointment. The widespread and good-natured acceptance of his speech implied an equally widespread confidence that not much need be done about it.
    I did not mind, one way or the other. I was simply pleased that Vic seemed to be making a successful speech, and when it was over I felt immensely satisfied with life. This evening, one thing after another had gone right. Truly it must now be time to relax those controls on my awareness….
    The same inner whisper that prompted me to dare, also hinted how the controls might be lifted. The deed would be an exercise of will, like that which can sometimes cause one to fly in dreams. Here it would cause a command to unblock.
    I felt shy about doing it at table, so I waited until most people had drunk one or two cups of coffee and many were starting to wander again, often to seek other seating companions, and then I scraped my chair back and stood up. My friends were paying attention to each other, not to me. They did not see me walk away across the main floor, in the direction of a cloistered area on the other side of the building. Up some steps and close to a long window, I reached a vantage point from which, when I turned, I could survey the entire gathering.
    At this moment, no pressures hemmed me in; I was entirely free. I could take or not the step into further realism and whatever that might bring me. To use a rather immoral analogy, I was like a young and vigorous king with a full treasury and a well-trained army, who needs only to issue the command to invade a weaker neighbouring State. Weaker? Yes indeed, my foe is diplomatically isolated, his credibility gone. By which I mean –
    My eyes panned around the Great Hall as I carried out one last check. My “foe”, that is to say my own timid nature, the inevitable fear that I might be making a big mistake, did not offer a serious threat. I had gained enough experience in this new life Down Under to be sure that I “knew what the score was” – mostly. The smart men and women gliding around the beautiful Hall were every bit as substantial as I was, and no more or less full of mystery than they would have been on Earth. Everything that I saw was real, it just wasn’t the complete story. My aim now was merely to remove superfluous blinkers from my mind. Get the whole picture.
    Here goes, I thought, and without further hesitation I framed my will to push aside all obstacle to true sight.
    Not much more than a couple of seconds was allowed me in which to wonder if the action had taken effect. I sensed, first, in some internal way that the deed was done, that I had renounced Friend Polyfilla and that there’d be no more white-outs for me.
    Then a rash of overlooked shapes became visible.
    About half of those dinner-guests who were closest to me, standing in groups or strolling past, could now be seen to wear embroidered squares on the sleeves of their jackets or the shoulders of their dresses. Gold squares on the jackets; black or crimson on the dresses. And now that my eyes beheld this phenomenon, I acquired the memory, the confirmation that I had seen it from the start of my life here, though I had ignored it until now. Half the population had the square logo or whatever it was, stitched at one place onto their clothing. Well, that wasn’t so very terrible, was it? There’d be some cultural reason, but whatever it was it couldn’t destroy my existing picture of Biri society, since the point of Friend Polyfilla was merely to white out the odd crack here and there, not build or alter the whole thing. I felt good. I had done right, I had dared and I had been justified in my daring. Just to make sure, though, I had better look out of the window….
    Yes, ah yes, the window; surely I could not have overlooked that aspect of the matter?
    Reluctantly, prayerfully, I turned to look out; turned slowly, gulping a concentrated dose of unwelcome thoughts concerning The Slant – that long course of psychological adaptation, of which Friend Polyfilla had been the final module; that vital fix, essential in conditions that would otherwise subject a human being to unbearable vertigo of a degree unknowable on Earth, vertigo of the spirit as well as of the body. If your home is Kroth you have to acquire The Slant, unless you live all your life in Topland. Our untutored selves are not made to tolerate the Slopes of Yeyld, still less the overhanging ground and under-hanging skies of Hudgung. So the question now was: had I become sufficiently moulded, adapted, trained to live Down Under without going mad, or had I just thrown away my mental crutches too soon? The agony of suspense became too much for me. Rather than wait any longer to find out whether I had committed a lethal blunder, I jerked fully round and opened my eyes wide to receive the vista through the Great Hall window.
    Pheww! I shivered with relief.
    Ground above, matted green; sky below, infinite blue; crazy only in a faint way, the craziness accepted, dulled, made bearable by the many adjustments and corrections which were now a part of me. I could stand it. I was a proper adult Biri now. I had dared the right dare. My eyes popped with glee at the un-terrifying Eaveline where sky met ground, and they popped again when I turned back and saw Gemma Rosten facing me.
    “Er….hello,” I said brilliantly, “You’re the, uh, you – er, I saw you sat next to the Principal. You’re Gemma Rosten.”
    Despite possessing a figure like that of Aphrodite, close-up she seemed less beautiful (nose and chin a bit too heavy) and yet more coarsely attractive than she had appeared in the middle distance. I took a breath of her scent and found it overpowering, while her curves, virtually shovelled into my face, scattered my thoughts into disordered sparks.
    “Nice to find you in this corner, Duncan Wemyss. Say now, do you think my driss is a bit too sixy for this gethering?”
    What could I say? “Well, actually,” I dithered, playing for time while what was left of my mind raced to grab a suitable reply, “the effect is, er,” and then just in time I found the right adjective, “operatic,” as I recalled the protruding frontage of certain opera stars whom I had seen in clips on TV.
    Gemma trilled, “Tectful, tectful – I like a men who accords me a bit of class! You know what, I’ve wanted to git hold of you for a while now, to find out what you think of me. You know my name so you know who I em, eh? The supposed murderiss.”
    “Oh, now, come on, that’s all over with, surely?”
    “Hah,” she said.
    A silence fell, during which she moved over to stand beside me, so that we both looked over the interior of the hall.
    It came red-hot into my mind, that she was somehow determined to use me, but also that, in a way, she had a right to try. It was her against the world. She had no choice but to be the way she was. I couldn’t help but excuse her, couldn’t avoid falling largely under her spell. I did not entirely forget (in a theoretical way) the need for caution, but “suspicion” is too strong a word for the faint, thin warnings that bleated ineffectually amid sudden floods of emotion – which floods can get a bad name under Hudgung, where the rivers of feeling are supposed to be channelled through social norms; if they burst their banks they can kill. But hey, wait a minute – they hadn’t killed her. What storms she must have survived! She had conducted an adulterous affair and then been accused of murder, and here she still was, bouncing with life. Some people must exist who are so selfish, who have egos so monumentally huge, that they are immune to those surges of guilt which, under Hudgung, lead to the last despairing loosened clutch, the final drop into the sky.
    What remained of my coherent self was about evenly divided between attraction and aversion, but as far as concerned the guts of me, attraction won hands down.
    “Long face!” she said, and shook my arm.
    “Uh?” I flinched at this perceptive intrusion.
    “I bit you’re thinking, must look out, must be careful when I’m with her.”
    “I deny it – and besides, what if I am? – and anyhow, look, I’m standing my ground. Not running off.”
    She grinned, “Bletherer!”
    I went on, “The Principal, I notice, didn’t seem all that cautious of you. You two seemed to get on fine.”
    “Ah no,” she wrinkled her nose, “don’t lits talk about him. I’m fid up with the pendulum swings, the cold shoulder one day and the gush of tolerance the next day. I want to git out of here.”
    “Sounds as though you’re hard to please,” I remarked, but even as I spoke I realized that I, too, could be classed with all those who rather looked down upon Gemma, for at this very moment I was preparing to make use of what one might call her expendability. I wanted to ask somebody about the meaning of the square designs on people’s clothing, that had appeared to my eyes a few minutes ago, and I needed to ask someone whom I did not respect too much.
    “I’m intitled to be hard to please,” she snapped back.
    “I can well believe you are,” I agreed.
    “Thenk you for thet – I appreciate it.”
    “You’re welcome, and now will you do a little thing for me – will you just tell me what those squares mean, that I see on people’s sleeves and the shoulders of dresses? About half the people here have them.”
    She glanced at me in surprise. “You bin here all this time and don’t know thet?
    “Yes, and the longer I leave it the harder it will be to ask without sounding stupid – unless I ask someone who is specially kind and sympathetic to those on the margin….”
    “Tect again! You’re just full of it, Duncan. All right, I ken till you about the squares if you want. The arrangement is supposed to be a humane mithod for the evoidence of trouble between the open-mouthed and the closed-mouthed –”
    “Hang on – the what? You’ve lost me.” And then I remembered that JCR magazine. “Er – is it something to do with college politics?”
    “Wider then thet! It sprids through the whole of society – this division between those who think we should, and those who think we shouldn’t, mintion the awkward fect that we steal lots of our innergy from the Slimes’ Grid. Personally, I’m not a Square, but if I try I can see it from their point of view, which is, thet it’s just not decent to talk about these things in polite society. Squares want to be lift alone to live without the obscene subject coming up in their conversation. But they can’t live alone because they are part of society along with the rist of us. So the solution is to give thim a kind of will-difined sicond-class citizenship where they can’t influence policy (because after all we hev to tep the Slimes’ Grid) but the squares stitched on their clothing save them from imberrissmint at parties and suchlike. By common agreement, if there’s a Square in your group, you don’t mintion the Slimes. Do you git it now?”
    “Yes, thank you, I get it.” I rather approved of the arrangement. I could think of ways in which the principle might beneficially have been adapted for use on Earth. During my years in England I could have worn a square on an armband, signalling that I was out of date, and then people would have refrained from assuming that I must agree with their liberal obscenities….
    Gemma continued, “Mind you, although I ken impathise with squares, I git a bit tired of thim. I think I’d git along bitter where there are more interisting people. In fect I’m leaving tonight, for Lishom-Galeeg. Wanna come?”
    “Uh?”
    “Care to come along with me to the big city? Or are you doing something particular this week-ind?”

                                                          *

An elusive flavour of “Nothing may be the same henceforth” made the moment vaguely special, yet I replied in a matter-of-fact tone:
    “I’ve nothing on at all for the next two days.”
    “Will thin, lit me show you around Lishom-Galeeg,” continued Gemma. “Big industrial cintre.  Not ginteel like Mrakkastoom. Might do something for you.”
    “Make a man of me, eh?” I said it flippantly to conceal the fact I was greatly touched, as well as astonished at this offer from someone I had only just met.
    She ignored that and went on, “I just need to leave you for five minutes so I can git my stuff. Then we’ll git going. Right?”
    “What about my stuff?” I riposted, now hesitating, with the vague intention of arguing that the whole thing wasn’t practical.
    “Not the same. We’re not heving an equal rilationship, you know! I’m what they call rich! I ken easily buy you an ixtra suit of pyjamas and a toothbrush on the way to where we’re going! But if you can’t wait five minutes for me, the mood will be lost – from both of us. I’m not fussed either way, but it would be sort of nice if you quit stalling and just took the plunge.” Then she whirled away – left me standing with a slack jaw – and I made no use of those next five minutes. When she returned with a bag, I had not moved. “Come on,” she said, and took my arm. Fewer people were left in the Hall, and I do not think that anyone saw us head for the Station Road exit – except one person, who waved to me: this was Elaine; the sight of her jolted me to a stop.
    I muttered as I pulled on Gemma’s arm, “Hold on a moment, this is impossible, that’s my guest over there.”
    “Don’t be long,” was Gemma’s dismissive answer.
    Don’t be long? Was she kidding? I walked over towards Elaine and Rapannaf, and as I approached them I busily formulated an excuse for having been otherwise detained during the past few minutes. I decided I could truthfully say that Gemma had wanted to ask me a heap of questions about Earth, for people who struck up conversations with me did tend sooner or later to bring the talk round to Earth. It was the best bit of waffle I could snatch just then, to explain the diversion, seal it up and put it away...
    Elaine spoke before I got any words out.
    “We’re just going now,” she said, “and I want to thank you on my behalf and Rapannaf’s, for a most pleasurable evening. We appreciate it, Duncan.” She looked aside fondly at the Prince, who bleared at her side with one veined hand placed at rest on her arm. “Don’t we, dear?” she prompted him, and he mumbled something, at which she flashed a smile as though to bounce his gratitude prismatically to me. Then she turned and steered her tottering paramour towards the Centre Road exit.
    A voice behind me:
    “Lit’s git a move on, now thet thet’s sittled.”
    “Yeah, you’re right, Gemma,” I said – for settled it was. “Let’s go.”

                                                  *

She had a packed holdall which I offered to carry for her as we set off across the dangling court following the signposts to Station Road.   
    I took the opportunity to say, as she handed me the holdall, “Might as well carry this as I don’t have one of my own. Hint, hint.”
    “Frit not, Gimma will provide.”
    Our path narrowed as we passed through a gate out of the College grounds and emerged above the stars onto the relatively narrow Station Road, a heavy urban walkway slung from the ground overhead with thick cables.
    A breeze blew, but the sturdy road did not sway. It was a warm breeze; Gemma had a coat over her arm but she did not need to put it on, although night had fallen – you can still call it night even this far south, where the Nadiral Light suffuses the entire bowl of sky, for it does little to illuminate particular objects.
    In silence we strode, I closest to the waist-high barrier, over which I could look out and down into the starry dimness. It was quite a thought, that if the urge took me I could vault over that barrier and drop for ever into nothingness. Truly, as easy as that. The sudden proximity of that infinite void prompted me to ask, Why am I doing this? Why am I ambling along here? Then the question was swallowed up by the much stronger force of the waking dream I was in, the romantic enchantment of this walk to the station. I was reluctant to ask basic, practical questions about our jaunt. She’ll tell me in her own good time, I thought.
    And she did speak when we were about half way:
    “Ivver seen the caves of Lishom?”
    “Nope. Don’t forget, I’ve not been here long.”
    “Power-ful,” she breathed. “Thet’s the word for what they are. Hivvy industry, and I mean hivvy.”
    “That had connotations of grime and filth and pollution and ugliness, back on Earth.”
    “Will now, I suppose you might find a bit of thet, but the place is humming with life. It’s quite a sight.”
    “I’m sure it is.”
    “Sinds some people creckers.”
    I made no reply to that, thinking all of a sudden that I was even richer than she, in my experience of crisis after crisis: I could afford to splurge some luck upon the only real risk – emotional risk. I certainly wasn’t afraid of any industrial cave.
    “Is this part of the station? I don’t recognize it,” I remarked, for we had slowed our pace in the approach to a dangling archway, a maw of darkness.
    Its outline was a catenary structure held rigid by wire cables that angled from it like the guy ropes of a tent. The gap enclosed by this rigidified outline yawned beneath us so as to allow a whole bunch of overhead tracks to pass through. I knew, of course, that Mrakkastoom Station was rather disjointed. It was spread over a wide area, but I was still surprised that I had hitherto missed such a section as the one I now goggled at. I turned in an attempt to get my bearings. The lights of the city shone back at me in all directions, as I zestfully sniffed the night air.
    “The spicials leave from here,” said Gemma. “Don’t worry, I’m paying.”
    The walkway took us in through the arch. I could no longer see the city; in fact I could not see anything much at first.
    “Bit dark around here,” I complained. “Where is everybody?”
    “Not many customers for the spicials.”
    “I see.” A sharp little thought occurred to me: the Duncan Wemyss of old would not have accepted her explanation so readily. Ah well, I thought, one gets tired of caution. And perhaps it makes sense to admit, in some ways, that it’s already too late. Too late for what? To avoid personal involvement? With a shift of focus I thought not of the place but of the girl and only the girl: Why worry, she’s got under my radar, she’s already in a position to bomb my emotions. Perhaps even more so if I try to retreat. Best go forward. As far as that was concerned, I don’t blame myself…. but I’m not so sure about the train; should I have noticed what was wrong about it before I got on?
    It slid in, normally lit, and clanked to a stop beside the sparsely peopled platform. I am open to one criticism at this point: that by rights I should have thought it odd that nobody disembarked, at a city of the importance of Mrakkastoom, and likewise odd that none but Gemma and I got on. However, we all have to make do with the brains we were born with.
    Gemma pressed the door button and in we went.
    The carriage was not divided into corridor and compartments; it was open-plan, with seats on either side of tables. Some yellowish glow from ceiling-lights shone down upon a fair number of passengers, whom I did not look at closely while my companion and I edged down the aisle, concentrating upon finding places to sit.
    The train began to move just as we reached a clear table and I plumped down onto a seat facing the direction of travel, next to one of the right-hand windows. Gemma took one of the two facing seats, not the one directly opposite mine, and sat back and stretched her legs and watched my face –
    The bulb of recognition finally lit in my head. It happened during my automatic glance of curiosity at the other passengers. They were all holding up newspapers, broadsheets which need to be held outspread with both hands. Then, in unison, those people who were in my field of view lowered their papers, and their heads turned towards me, in a motion so co-ordinated as to roll a grey curtain over my spirit. When a second later they turned back to their reading, I was left almost without heart to continue life’s battle. What I recognized had no name; it did not need one; the situation’s odour was unmistakable. That was why I did not have enough stuffing left in me to spring up with any sort of protest. Otherwise I might have shouted, “You’re not fooling me!” No use – here I was, back on the old slide. The life I had lived for most of the past year, during the long months of descent from Topland to Hudgung, began and ended with the truth I whiffed on this train. The tale of my adventures passed before me in sadly altered review. Every success, every bit of peace and joy was now re-evaluated as a mere digression in the dominant theme of the downward, downward, downward pull which by now had contracted almost to nil the distance which yet separated me from the nethermost controller.
    “I really thought,” I sighed, “having settled so happily in College, that this time I was going to beat the system.”
    “What system?” coaxed Gemma.
    What system? I had no answer that she would accept; no way to make her see, that under one guise or another, one excuse or another, a string of events had been pulling me down the flank of the world ever since I left Topland, and this latest bunch of people, whatever their plans, were just part of the event-snake… so my response to Gemma was vague, almost meaningless.
    “The routine – I could write a manual about it,” I laughed sadly.
    She leaned forward, and I noted, without much interest, that she seemed a bit disconcerted. The tip of her tongue went over her lips and she said, “Umm… how much do you know, how much have you guissed, about…. us?”
    “Details…. what do they matter?” I replied.
    This stumped her, momentarily. Uncertain how to proceed with her interrogation, she turned her head and (I guessed) made some facial signal to some person or persons further up the carriage; two figures began to approach from that direction.
    One was a small, dapper, clerkly man with a wrinkled forehead; the other, younger, thirtyish, had a large smooth face tilted in an attitude of inquiry. Gemma hastened to say to this one, “I did my bist, but I think he may hev worked out who we are.”
    “So?” mused the smooth-faced man. “Let me at him.”
    She got up and he took her place, while his older companion sat nearby across the aisle; but I took little notice of any of this. I listened instead to the thrum of the train,
    heckle-a-cat
    pickle-a-plum
    heckle-a-cat
    pickle-a-plum
and contemplated the view through the window, the ceiling of land, softly lit from below by the stars and the Nadiral Light, with down-bulging hills, and hung brushes that were trees, hurtling overhead, as I sped towards what I knew must be the end. I was unutterably tired of the whole “battle of wits to stay alive” thing. I just was not up to that stuff any more. So the end might even be welcome, provided I got the chance to take my own way out.
    “Duncan Wemyss,” the smooth-faced man began, “you may not like our methods, but – ”
    “Quite all right,” I said, raising a dismissive hand; “you had no choice.”
    “What the krunk,” he smiled, “do you mean by thet?” I could sense he was not entirely happy, he would have preferred me to bluster, to show standard outrage, on the lines of what’s your game, why are you taking me on this ride, et cetera. But because I knew I really was close to the end, I replied with pure certitude.
    “It goes in a cycle.”
    His smile grew a fraction tighter. “Cycle?”
    “Round and round,” I mumbled. “Success – breeds over-confidence – breeds failure – the inevitable oh no – shock – breeds caution for the future – turns failure back to success, so the cycle begins again.”
    The fellow coughed. “Er – fescinating. Are you talking about us or you?”
    “Both. But as for me – I’ve rolled so close to the end of the line, there isn’t time or space for another cycle, for me.”
    Smoothie began to nod, “I see, I see. You are just talking about yourself. I thought for a moment, from your menner, that you were in the know about who we are, and that would have raised certain hard quistions about sicurity –”
    “I don’t in the least care who you are. I have no idea and it doesn’t matter anyway.”
    “But we care very much who you are, Wemyss. A lot of priparation has gone into this.”
    “I bet it has. Sympathisers in the rail system. Coaching for Miss Rosten, so she could play her part.”
    “Ah, yis.” He glanced back along the aisle, to where Gemma now sat some yards off in the dimness. “She did her duty.”
    “I’m not arguing.”
    “Good, so lit me state the situation – ”
    “Oh, I know the situation, right enough,” I snickered.
    “Stop playing games!” he snapped, rattled at last out of his cool. “You have edmitted that you hev no idea who we are, so will you – ”
    “All right, all right,” I conceded with a bored smile, and settled to listen to this dupe tell me about his organization, his motives, his plans; in short, whatever excuse his mind might have constructed to disguise the force that sucked us all down.
    “We simply can’t afford,” he began, “to be mealy-mouthed Squares.” He spoke concerning the division of opinion in society between those who wore the squares stitched on their clothing and those who did not. His sort, evidently, were those who did not. “We are variously called the Gabby, the Blunt, the Open-mouthed, the Plain-speakers or just the Plain. The others are the Dumb, the Close-mouthed or the Squares.”
    “I’ve heard about some of this,” I nodded.
    “We frontiersmin, who dare to live in Arroung, closest to the polar land, are all Plain,” he continued proudly. “Not a single Square among us. Our sittlements lie so far south, they border on Naos, and frequently we see the Slimes, so how can we avoid being as we are, blunt and plain? We see the things with our eyes; no wonder we hev to allow ourselves to pronounce the word: Slimes, Slimes, Slimes!”
    “I get the point, really I do.”
    He punched fist into palm and went on, “Somebody has to man the power-stations at Sgombost and Shruvalant, in order to draw off what Birannithep needs from the Slimes’ grid. Somebody has to view the unacceptable and speak the unspeakable so that Squares can live their sheltered lives in the latitudes above us.”
    The older man, who sat nearby, reached over and elbowed Smoothie and said, “Ah – Nolan, I think Wemyss wants to hear where he comes in. – Don’t you, Wemyss?”
    “Please yourselves,” I said.
    “Very well,” said Smoothie Nolan, “here it is. We need you, Wemyss, to inspire us; in some sinse, even to lead us.”
    I might have laughed except that his voice seemed to come from too far away, the effect of the bottomless distrust I felt, which blanked the effect of what he was saying.
    Nolan continued, “You are currently the most renowned Earthmind under Birannithep. You are an oneiro; not the only one, but the best available, the one we could catch the easiest – forgive me, I’m blunt, remember? And the most important aspect of this in our eyes is that your personality is still moulded by a world where the Southern Pole is cold and clean, instead of tepid and slimy. Antarctica is the name we remember: an unpeopled land, except for scientists doing their temporary stints at research stations; an innocent, unspoilt land. What a relief it would be if we had Antarctica instead of Naos!
    “You,” he emphasized, “come from a reality in which the Shlugakka, the Slimes, are merely fiction. You,” he concluded, “may hasten the day when they are fiction once more.”
    He and his chums must have believed, as they watched me, that I was digesting all this; they could not have known that I listened with only ‘half an ear’ to Nolan fooling himself, while with the other one-and-a-half ears I absorbed the far more meaningful voice of the train, whose track had shot under a rougher groove in the body of the planet overhead –
    flatten-a-bat
    cripple-a-chum
    flatten-a-bat
    cripple-a-chum
and dark ridges curtained either side of the upside-down valley. I eyed the scene with peaceful acceptance of its physical strangeness, for I had learned to adapt in that way, but one thing would never be acceptable: to allow myself to arrive at the destination to which I was being sucked. I must make absolutely sure that I jumped the last jump before then…. in other words, I was already a dead man, and it only remained to actualise this.
    Nolan meanwhile began to speak again, reflectively, complacently. “It is especially good for us, that we found you at this point in our fortunes. I said, didn’t I, that there are no Squares among us. I ought rather to have said that no true Frontiersman is a Square. Unfortunately some who live amongst us are backsliders, freeloaders, sniping critics, contemptible moral cowards, who hug their rectangular rectitude and look down on us who spend our guts protecting them… and matters have become somewhat extra ticklish now… we need you to witness in our favour, to point the finger at the guilty party, as in an identity parade…”
    I was tiredly wishing he would shut up, but I knew that there was no way to get him to see that the guff he spoke, or any other reason or justification he might utter, was hopelessly subordinate to the brute pattern of events. The only significant fact was that I was being pulled South towards the horror at the base of the world; that alone was what mattered. Perhaps this truth could not be sensed except by one who, like me, had descended the whole stretch from Topland to Birannithep. At any rate, I had no intention of trying to convince Nolan; nor did I expect to reach the minds of anyone else in the carriage; if they couldn’t ‘smell’ the fate that drew us, certainly no words of mine would convince them. Therefore I ought merely to have awaited – quietly – the first opportunity to make my final jump into the void. Or even feigned enthusiasm for their plans…
    Well, none of us is wholly consistent. When all hope has drained away, what ought to remain is quiet resignation, and mostly I managed that, but not entirely. Dregs of low-grade irritation, the twitchy corpses of hope, made me rise from my seat.
    I shouted down the carriage:
    “Listen, all you fillers of the train!”
    These words were addressed to the newspaper-readers, the “passengers” who must have been hired to fill all the seats so that no one else would butt in on the plot… The idea flitted through my head that they might be “bit players”, not real hard-line frontiers-people like Nolan and co. In which case, might I not sow doubts in their minds? Or even get their support?
    As their heads turned at my words I saw that they had folded their papers and had shifted to face each other and chat amongst themselves; “bit players” they had never been, they were full-timers, happy and relaxed in the success of their cause, and fully supportive of Nolan. I could think of nothing to say to them. What a fool I felt then! What had I been thinking of? As if I could possibly have had any real chance to explode this “leadership” nonsense! As if they’d be likely to slip up so as to give me such a chance –
    Nolan saved my face at any rate. He sprang up too, and echoed my words, “Yis, listen all of you – lit me introduce Duncan Wemyss who hes come to put the bite on the Squares!”
    Everyone cheered. Cries of thanks committed me, thumbtacked me onto their hopes. It was all so firmly decided that no one seemed to expect me to make more of a speech – which was just as well. I sat down again. I had learned my lesson.
    From now on I must do nothing except keep my eyes open, my mouth shut and my muscles ready for that final dive into the pool of sky. That alone could give me my release. Further silly outbursts would only dig me deeper into the role these folk had assigned to me. The thought of how trapped I was gave me nausea and a sense of suffocation. After an uncomputable period of time sunk in this misery, I stated:
    “I feel sick. I need the loo.”
    “I’ll show you.” Nolan escorted me down the carriage, as though I were some sort of half-wit who needed to be shown where the loo was, or (alternatively) as though I were royalty who required an honour guard.
    It was a close thing; seconds after I had locked myself in I was sick into the bowl. Then, suddenly pondering, I stared down into that bowl, at the dim sky below; next, my gaze was drawn to a small glass case on the wall…
    “You all right in there?” said Nolan’s voice.
    “Yes, fine.” I emerged, and was escorted back to my seat, my mind preoccupied with what might be a plan.
    “You’ve given me a lot to think about,” I said. “Could you let me have some space….?”
    His response exceeded my hopes. “Surely.” He snapped his fingers for attention and said, “All right, folks, clear the kerriage” – and he was instantly obeyed: the seats began at once to empty as those whom I had wrongly dubbed the “fillers” made their way along the aisle to the end doors.
    Nolan added, “You’ll need some sleep, I dare say. These rows of seats are fairly will convertible for lying down –” and he showed me, by turning the end arm-rest into a head-rest. “If you need innything, ask Gimma.” I gazed down the aisle and saw that she was still present, seated at the forward end. Nolan meanwhile, following the rest, exited to the next carriage.
    Time to put my plan, if that wasn’t too grand a word for it, into operation. I beckoned to Gemma and she stood up smartly and came over to me with eager steps, almost making a dance out of the motion of the train.
    “Can you get me a drink?” I asked. “Anything hot.” Or more accurately, anything to give me an excuse to go to the loo again soon.
    “It shall be done, Master!” she twinkled, and seeing that I gave her no responsive smile, she put her face closer to mine, “Duncan, are you sulking at me because of what I hed to do? Rimimber, you yourself hev now agreed to our proposal.”
    As coincidence would have it, the train just then began to sing a slower song:
    ferret ahead,
    pummel-the-drum,
    fer-ret a-head,
    pum-mel-the-drum,
it drawled and clanked at reduced speed, and simultaneously the vista outside the windows was sharply transformed by the glow of lamps, revealing the approach of a complex of buildings, walkways and cables, as if a city-sized clutch of coloured scarfs hung from a tangle of magnified clotheslines.
    Within the next minute, open country was completely gone, and instead the artificial forest of dangling edifices panned past us at a leisurely pace, for our train now wheezed along a platform at hardly more than walking speed, easily allowing my eyes to read the panels which announced Lishom-Galeeg.
    This was without doubt a much heavier conurbation than Mrakkastoom.
    It was the first time I had actually seen such a bulkily built-down area under Hudgung, but my readings in geography prevented me from being shocked by the dangling weight. In fact I had found out quite a bit about this kind of place. The buildings, massive to an extent which might seem to court disaster, were actually supported by so many lateral connections, that even if one entire “skyscraper” were to become down-rooted from the ground above it, the strain would be shared by its neighbours, long enough for either repairs or evacuation. In the latter case, the abandoned building would be severed from all its links by explosive charges co-ordinated to a split second, so that it dropped into the void alone. It had happened a few times in history.
    “Not stopping, eh?” I murmured, for the train had reached the end of the platform and had begun once more to pick up speed.
    “No time, Duncan, sorry.”
    “Could’ve done some sightseeing here.” For this was the very city which Gemma had said she would show me round. Part of her ploy. But of course we weren’t allowed to stop on our way. It was out of the question. “I suppose,” I added, “you’re right, I’m sulky.”
    “Well then – stop it and let’s be frinds.”
    “To sulk,” I said, “is to nurse resentment. I am sufficiently human to resent being manipulated. But don’t you worry, I put the blame much further down than on you. We’re all being manipulated.”
    Her answer was, “I’ll git you a hot chocolate, how about thet?”
    “What a good idea. Make it a big mug,” I added, semi-allegorically.
    “Will do.” She went away, said something to someone through the end door, and minutes later came back to me. “Here’s your drink.” By this time I had made up my mind to be nice to her.
    “Will you do one more thing for me, Gemma?”
    “I ixpict so.”
    “Don’t report this conversation. I mean, what I said about resentment.”
    “All right,” she said, simply. “I can agree to thet.”
    “Thank you.” That was one precaution taken. While she returned to her post, I settled down to rest. I sipped the drink and allowed time to dribble by….time given over to the hum of the train….
    Flatter-to-wreck
    Cackled-the-drum
    Flatter-to-wreck
    Cackled-the-drum...
I dozed, woke, dozed again, woke again – to a sound of raucous music.
    I listened to an announcer enthuse, “This is Arroung Radio Bop-Pop! And today we bring you Rendall Groamcuck and the Unlikely Leds singing, You Would Be Gone.” I certainly would, if I had known in time, I thought groggily, as the song resumed with
    “Goona-spak
    Goona-spak
    The bim-bim
    Dender-dan. YO!”
    Outside, dawn had broken, to illuminate an overhead landscape of glistening rock, ragged mosses and tufts of dangling grass. It was as bleak and sinister as Glencoe, with the extra affliction of being upside down, and I forgave the frontiers-people of Arroung the frenzied jollity of their Radio Bop-Pop; besides, I hoped soon to be out of range of it. I struggled up on one elbow and yawned stiffly. By now it had become reasonable, or more than reasonable, to go to the loo. Gemma, still at her place of vigil, saw me get up and head for the other end of the carriage but she made no move; good, she must think it’s all right; maybe my kind of escape was possible, as long as she did not see fit to give the alarm. It was now or never. (Probably never.)
    Meanwhile the announcer bawled, “Now for Barmy Babsie!” – and another wave of thumping noise belched from the radio.
    This next song presented fewer difficulties of interpretation than Goona-spak / Goona-spak / The bim-bim / Dender-dan – in fact I had heard “Babsie” a few times already; she was supposed to be a fat middle-aged woman with pretensions to dress like a mini-skirted teenager.
    Barmy Babsie’s wild and free,
    Swinging her hips at fifty-three!
     It was all meant to be funny, though to my way of thinking it was just sad. But the bad taste helped to concentrate my will as I sidled again into the little room and locked the door behind me; the blaring volume of the sound likewise suited my purpose.
    I checked that I hadn’t dreamed the existence of the little glass panel on the wall, with a little hammer behind it. Questions sprang to mind, but I shunted them aside. No time to work out why only the loo was thus equipped; or to ask, what in any case was the use of an emergency exit which could only lead out into the void? (Unless of course you were in my situation where that’s precisely what was wanted.) But come to think of it, in a tunnel, or a station, the arrangement might save lives. No matter. Irrelevant. I wrapped paper towels round my clenched fist and raised it… told myself, go on, punch that glass…
    Hesitation came not for any rational reason but merely from the muting of the ugly song. The radio announcer turned down the volume while he made some remarks, in a voice sufficiently moderate to permit me to hear once more the thrumming of the train:
    Gravel-your-mate
    Hammer-the-young
    Parrot-a-cad
    Shatter-my-lung
    I felt childishly grateful for this last relatively normal sound. Really, the train was most beguiling. It did have a sinister undertone but that of course wasn’t the train’s fault, it was just my imagination pasting suggestions onto the wordless thrum-tiddy-tum. I liked it, it was my last link with life, and I might never have found the courage to take the next step if the radio announcer had not just then finished his voice-over and stepped up the volume once more, as Barmy Babsie came back in full force, now partnered with her fifty-year-old teddy-boy Staggering Stan:
    Yarra-larra-bong,
    Yarra-larra-bong,
    Yarra-larra-bong-e-wong;
    CRACK – I punched through the glass and grabbed the hammer.
    THWUMP – I swung the hammer at the toilet window. It was constructed not to shatter but to be forced out of its frame if sufficient pressure was applied. I felt it budge. Progress! THWUMP – I swung the hammer again.
    Yarra-larra-bong,
    Yarra-larra-bong,
    Fifty-hipping devotEEEEEE!
    THWUMP THWUMP, I attacked the window. You may ask, did I really hate a vulgar trashy song that much, that it would goad me to pitch myself out into the void? Such an objection misses the point. I needed to be pushed. THUNK – ah, the pane was budging and grating out of its socket, any moment now I could dive through – THUNK-K-K –
    SMASH/CRASH behind me and the loo door burst apart, hands reached in, clamped my arms in a grip which my strength was unable to counter...
    Fifty-hipping devotEEEEEE!
    The music swelled, it drowned my yells and screams, and then my struggles were brought to an end by means of a needle. My body relaxed; my mind went flaccid. I heard Nolan say:
    “You can turn than damn thing off now.”
    They led me back to my couch, while the train sang its lullaby:
    Debit-a-plot
    Topple-me-in
    Perish-a-friend
    Settle-the-sum
    I drifted off into dim regions; my breathing grew shallower.
    Settle-the-sum…
    Settle-the-sum…
                                                      *

After a considerable while the sum was settled, the train journey over, and I was walking along an arcade. It was a crowded, echoing space, perhaps thirty yards wide and ten times as long, the arched cross-section squashily low, like the ceiling of a car-park, and lit artificially with fluorescent strips, except the entrance far behind me and the exit far in front of me, which were open to the sunshine. I thought: I don’t care much for this dream; I wish all these people around me were not marching in the same direction as I am. Neither can I be easy about the odd way our boots clank and click, clank and click on the polished floor… a click must sound after each step, for until it did, it was exhaustingly hard to pull one’s boot off the floor, almost as if the floor sucked hard at the boot, and this peculiar sensation aroused that sense of guilt and fear which are apt to waft up from a truth so mighty important that it cannot forever continue submerged; a truth which, when it does show its face, is likely to be dire. I asked myself: how long have I been awake? I mean, awake inside this dream. I mused: I suppose that when I get to the other end I may wake even more, and hear what the concourse is shouting; they seem all of one mind, carrying placards that say Duncan Wemyss is going to “dis the Slimes”. I don’t want all this; I want the bad song back; I want to be irritated again by Barmy Babsie; I wanted to be bored in a dismal day at school back in England; I would even prefer to be a slave again in Udrem…. yes, though I had particularly hated Udrem at the time, now I could actually wish to find myself back in that ghastly episode, rather than this one; could actually prefer that the Gonomong resume control of my fate and condemn me to The Drop once more. Likewise many other unhappy situations in my past seemed now comparatively benign, and I yearned to be back in them and away from here, away especially from the further end of the arcade, towards which I marched in steady procession, hugging a placard. Strangely the placard’s wooden handle seemed to want to pull my arms upward as though its weight were pulled towards the roof, but at least that helped me to bear the weight high, to show myself proud of it…. I turned my head this way and that and my eyes focused on the signs carried on either side of me. Like mine, they all had sketches of open mouths, from which speech bubbles issued, and inside each bubble were the same triumphalist words, “Duncan Wemyss shall dis the Slimes!” Yet at every step the people were in obvious fear of ambush. I knew this partly from their expressions and glances, and partly because of some jumbled memories I had of an earlier part of the dream. For on this topic the dream had been quite informative. The knowledge was in me: that ours was the Open-Mouth Faction and we were about to win a decisive political victory, but also that because of this we could expect the Closed-Mouth Faction to mount a last desperate attempt to foil us…. so the mood around me was one hundred per cent serious, with none of the boisterous high spirits that can add some zip to election time. Here in Arroung, semi-autonomous southernmost province of Birannithep, opponents of the local regime were not considered to be proper citizens at all. Dissent was not regarded as legitimate. Hence this solemn march was a flaunting of supremacy, akin to an Orange Day parade in Ulster, only less good-humoured.
    Unwanted as a pop-up on a computer screen, the thought came into my head: a lot of expense has gone into these boots. So again the boots – clang, click – niggled at my nerves. Symptomatic, that thought, of a host of others which were waiting their moment to boil up. I came close to panic at the inner feel of a lifting lid….
    What could I do? Grab any hope. Perhaps the Closed-Mouthers would stage an ambush . Perhaps it would happen during the next few minutes, before the procession reached the far end of the arcade; in fact it must happen during this short remaining period if it was to happen at all, and if it did, I could not fail to profit. At the very least there’d be some sort of hubbub which might break me out of this robotic trance. And a change might do some other people good, too. I spotted Gemma Rosten a few yards away to my left; her face looked as wooden as her placard. Idly, my eyes also roved over her clothes, her hair…. she had changed out of her party dress, which was fair enough, and wore trousers like all the other women present, and her hair was now done up in a bun…. why was I noticing this? I counted about twenty other women in the procession and only two of them wore their hair long, but those two had their hair standing up on end, and I stared at them in dull amazement and I still didn’t get it! The next thing grasped by my dopey mind, as I swung my head again, was that the ambush had begun. People had come out of a side-corridor to barge into the main concourse and to displace the procession. The newcomers had placards of their own, which I could not read straightaway because they wobbled and swayed. The Close-Mouthers tried to wrest control from the Open-Mouthers, by seizing what they carried, and substituting their own versions. The fighting appeared clumsy; the clunky adhesive boots inhibited the free flow of movement, and the whole business looked silly, laborious as a tussle underwater between people in diving-suits. Presently, however, I did manage to read one of the Close-Mouther boards. The sign showed a sketch of a head, and out of it came not a speech-bubble but a thought-bubble, as in comics, and the wording of the thought was: “Duncan Wemyss shall dis the X”. Same slogan as the others’, except they had written “X” because the point of being a Closed-Mouther is that you regard Slime as unmentionable. The new faction was winning and it made no change in my situation at all; the procession continued to sweep me pitilessly towards the revelation at the end of the arcade. Numb with disappointment, I slack-mindedly watched the last stages of the fight. One placard came loose from the grips of those who contended for it, and the unwieldy object fell – fell upwards, accelerating, till a couple of seconds later it smashed into the arcade ceiling; and still I didn’t get it! Not that I cared any longer for the logic of Nature’s behaviour, any more than for the behaviour of people, now that my hope was spent. Because the ambush and the change of regime had resulted in zero improvement of my situation, it was finally obvious to me that we were all gurgling down the same plug-hole.
    An immaculately smart middle-aged lady with greyish hair in tight curls, who carried no placard, veered over to me and said, “Duncan Wemyss, I em Ripresintative Foy Gunnuth. In just a minute or two we ken all rillex, but before thin, I em to see you through the last stage.”
    I could not tell her that her words were nonsense. My mouth would not open to form the objection. Not even at the moment of The Drop had I been crushed by such a sense of finality.
    We reached the area where the stage had been set. At the limit itself, the arcade’s threshold, stood a telescope on a stand, like what you might see mounted at a touristy viewpoint, though rather more expensive: a binocular ’scope and evidently brand new, the base-concrete barely dry. Behind me the flow of people was spreading and pooling, the procession turning into a crescent-shaped crowd at my back, while I was impelled forward by the pressure of their gaze and by the TV cameras to either side, pointing down at where I must stand. Representative Foy Gunnuth remained at my elbow and coaxed me forward, and I gave her no trouble, for my will was blanked out. One final appurtenance remained to fix: she rolled up my left shirt-sleeve (my jacket had disappeared) and wrapped something around my arm as though she were a nurse about to take my blood-pressure.
    A stud clicked into place. “I epologise for this,” she remarked, as she stood back a step, the job done. Cynically, she added: “The great unwashed, whom I hev the honour to ripresint, need proof like a fish needs water – hince the polygraph.” She nodded and my eyes flicked to a screen which stood in front of one of the TV cameras, registering a line of sine waves that pulsed with my pulse…. a lie detector. “Of course, the other side would hev done just the same. That’s why we lit thim do all the prip…. Now, Duncan, it’s your moment. Go to it.”
    Both arms slack, left arm trailing its attached cable, I trudged forward. I was now outside, fully out in the open, my boots clunking on a semi-circular metal patio that fringed the arcade’s exit.
    “You are on the border,” emphasized Gunnuth. “A few strides more, and you would leave Arroung and enter Naos. But you need not do thet. To look is enough.”
    The telescope was pointed at a barren crest a few hundred yards into the semi-desert beyond. I could not guess why. What would be the point of taking a closer look at a stony ridge which offered nothing but scrub? The landscape was hard and bleak, with a suggestion of steamy movement that puzzled me until I began to intuit the ‘upward’ drizzle of droplets or minor debris from certain patches – a perpetual ripple on the margin of vision. At the same time I began to doubt whether “semi-desert” was the right description of this land, for though it looked bleak, maybe seven-tenths of it glistened. A wet desert? And the glistening parts were not really grey but a fungoid green-grey, I saw as my eyes adjusted and my brain abandoned its preconceptions.
    “Look through the ’scope,” urged Gunnuth.
    “All right,” I said, “I’m about to.”
    But first I scanned the little grazing creatures – there were five of them in sight – like miniature deer, which possessed ears like rabbits and which I immediately christened “dabbits”. One paw would part the wetness, which quivered and tore like a sheet of jelly, and then the dabbit’s muzzle would bend to crop the vegetation thus exposed. I saw something like green mushrooms or miniature heads of broccoli disappear into the animal’s mouth, except for a few loosened wasted fragments which fell into the sky.
    Then a sound like a distant shot reached my ears. A dot streaked into the sky from somewhere beyond the ridge. A couple more dots followed; I had no idea what they were but I guessed: more debris. Dislodged by what? My thoughts in some directions were blocked like frozen pipes; leaden, stupid. The dabbits, however, seemed to know what was going on. They froze, and then turned to run as fast as they were able. This was not very fast, as each leg had to pull itself free of the jelly-slime, and the creatures could never bound – could never allow all four feet to lose contact with the surface of the planet, lest they fall “up” (really, down) into the sky. My thoughts chattered: these dabbits are only half-way adapted, like seals and walruses were only half way between land animals on the one hand and fully aquatic dolphins and whales on the other hand –
    “What’s he waiting for?” somebody asked Foy Gunnuth.
    She spoke to me in a more savage tone than before: “You’re going to miss it! You’re going to spoil – ”
    I silenced their nagging by taking the action I was doomed to take: I bent towards the waiting eyepieces. I sensed the held breath of hundreds of people behind me. However, my awareness had shrunk away from their concerns. Whimsically, and with trivial nostalgia, I harked back to the word “fish”. “A people needs proof like a fish needs water”…. I had noticed before, during this Krothan life of mine, that the people of this world, where there could hardly be any fish except in a small area of the utmost north, nevertheless harked back to fish, as they did to other Earthly things like months and years; “fish out of water”; “she fished a key out of her handbag”; “plenty more fish in the sea”, and so on.
    How much clutch can a word have?
    Oh, well, it was time to face the remote-controlling horror that had pulled me all the way down the flank of this world.
    I pushed my face against the eyepieces. The barren ridge out in Naos leapt into close view.
    “Name what you see,” whispered Foy Gunnuth, but I was too dumbly oppressed by an extraordinary sorrow, at what appeared to be a minor explosion just beyond the ridge. More, closer fragments of rock and broken shrubbery soared, as if pulled into the sky by an elastic and accelerating force. My sense of woe – nothing to do with the cause of the “explosion”, which had not yet declared itself – sprang from my awareness, at long last, that all this time, all through the arcade, I had been walking upside-down, with magnetic soles, without realizing it, as if the most basic fact, that ground was overhead and sky below, I HAD FORGOTTEN. What sort of being must I have become, to be capable of forgetting that? Dismay at my own nature almost eclipsed my dread of what was about to appear in the eyepiece’s field of view, and I would have dodged both of these revelations, only how can one shrink away from oneself? And to make sure I saw what was coming, others besides Gunnuth were crowding me close; they held my shoulders and arms, so that even if some spurt of will-power had induced me to move, I could not have done so. My last ally was my own dopiness, which muted my emotions. I was about to find out if this would suffice to save my mind.
    “Name it,” insisted Gunnuth’s voice in my ear.
    At first, childishly, I thought a grey sun was rising beyond the ridge. But the humpy thing swelled, its outline undulated, and then a flap of it slithered forward over the rocky summit; next, the main part followed.  Massive enough to constitute a fifteen-foot sphere, it heaved over with a gelatinous bulge that randomly bubbled with mouths and eyes that frothed and boiled in and out of existence –
    I recognized it all and choked out the word –

>>  3: The New Star