kroth:  the rise

4: revolution

Extracts from the diary of Duncan Wemyss:
Long Count Day 935,312,415; Vardeen Hotel, Gannerynch.
    What the point is of writing this stuff, I’m not quite sure, but Vic virtually gave me licence to ramble – “Just record whatever occurs to you; once you start to hesitate as to what to put in your journal, you’re only one step away from abandoning it.”
    “But why start it in the first place?” I objected. “Of all the time-wasting – ”
    “Just humour me, will you? Just do it.”
    “Yes, Boss,” I said. Fact is, he thinks he’s about to make history, and obviously would like a favourable account by someone close to him, in order to counter-balance the hostile memoirs which may be written by others, if things don’t go the way he wants – or even if they do…
    This is the first time I have been to Birannithep’s capital city, which hangs about 118 miles West of Mrakkastoom. Gannerynch is about the same size as Mrakkastoom, but with a higher proportion of plumb-heavy buildings, therefore less leafy and suburban. Tomorrow my task will be to seek permanent offices for an organization of about ten people, close to Government House. Vic seems happy to leave this to my judgement, more fool he. The College gave me leave to suspend my studies. Before packing up this morning I had a chat with the Principal who…
    Ah to heck with it. I’ve written a krunking page. I’m off to bed.
   
Day 935,312,416:

I wrote that Gannerynch isn’t as suburban as Mrakkastoom. I ought to make clear that both cities are much greener than (say) London. This is because of the grass verges which must surround all big buildings under Hudgung. For example, consider my hotel’s fifty-yard verge. That’s its anchorage, its fixative matting, so tough and tight that (the hope is) even if the stout metal posts driven up into the ground overhead should give way, the vegetable noose would still hold the building long enough for it to be evacuated before it plunged into the sky below.
    I need to be well up on these matters. Vic has given me carte blanche to decide which class of structure to choose for his HQ. When asked about expense, he was evasive, but I gather he has hopes of some powerful backers. The most expensive houses are those which do not have to dangle because they are actually hollowed out of the overhead surface of the planet. Safety and environmental regulations inhibit the construction of such artificial caves, so that only the mega-rich, or the government, seem able to afford them, as far as I can tell. I wish my instructions were more specific. “I trust your instinct,” he said laconically, as he handed me a sealed letter of introduction. “Just find me something better than this hotel.” Yet the hotel seems fine, to me.
    The chap at reception beckoned me as I was about to go out. “Sir, you have a visitor. A Lady is waiting for you in the lobby.”
    His reverent tone prompted me to ask, in amused wonderment, “Do I know any Ladies with a capital L?”
    “Yes you do!” cried a firm voice behind me, and I turned and there she was, in brilliantly smart belted white coat, striding straight into hug-position: a very directional Cora, a Cora with a purpose. “What are you doing here, Duncan?” were her first words after the hug.
    “New job. You too?” As I spoke I was full of the ships-that-pass-in-the-night feeling: she was so obviously too busy for more than a few words.
    “Cub reporter for the Gannerynch Globe. My first assignment: to cover the Grass Science Convention at this place here.” She grinned, “Sounds way-out, doesn’t it, but ‘grass’ to Krothans means just what it says; there aren’t any dope-addicts here.”
    “But you were waiting for me, the receptionist said.”
    “Yep, I saw your name on the guest list and couldn’t resist delaying my own work to say hello. Won’t do me any harm, either, to keep in with the Discoverer’s nephew! How is His Nibs, by the way? What’s he up to now?”
    “Wish I knew,” I replied. “Or – no – maybe I prefer it this way.” I explained what I have been given to do.
    “House-hunting… hmm… maybe I can help you there.”
    “Really? But what about your assignment?”
    “They may let me off it if I phone and ask. Anything about the Discoverer is the hottest news there is. Don’t worry,” she held up a hand, “I’d clear it with Vic before I printed anything. This is just my way of wangling some time with you, which for me would be nicer than a day at the Grass Science Convention, don’t you agree?”
    “Great! Sure!”
    And so it worked out. Arm in arm, we went off together, along one of the principal walkways, on my first ever morning saunter in Gannerynch. My wide-eyed mood accepted everything, from the web of walkways threaded among the dangling office-blocks over the blue sky, to the bustling people and the fat little burrsrips (the Biri equivalent of cockney sparrows) trilling “burr-srip! burr-srip!” as they fluttered from shrub to shrub and from window to window. “This is a lucky break for me,” I said to Cora. “Two heads are several times better than one, when ‘one’ happens to be my head. Wish I knew why Vic does things this way – this hope-for-the-best delegating….”
    “Because he’s even more of a child than you are. How do you put up with that roller-coaster mind of his?”
    “He’s the only family I’ve got, after all.”
    “Come on, let’s try that one.” She confidently pulled me into an estate-agent called Nonneng Associates.
    A girl handed us a form. Dangling or inground? How many rooms? How many square yards of squelm? Preferred location? Customer contact name on that line. Thank you sir, we will – what, you are acting on behalf of the Discoverer? Excuse me a moment. – Hello, Sir and Madam, I am Rastan Mongalla, director of Nonneng Associates. I hear you are looking on behalf of Vic Chandler for offices in the capital. You have come to the right place. We have a certain property –
    That evening, I reported to Vic, rather late because (as he casually informed me, in name-dropping fashion) he had supped with none other than Susan Bierce, the Prime Minister.
    “Yes thank you, I had a good day,” I said in reply to his question. “I got you a place. Or rather, Cora and I found it.”
    “Ah, good, I was hoping you’d meet up with her. How is she?”
    “Humming with energy. I half expected to see an engagement ring sparkling on her finger.”
    “Excited about her job, that’s all. I knew she was trying for it.” He did not sound worried that a reporter had got in on the act; I would not be surprised if she and he each hope to use the other; anyhow, thought I, they are welcome to their duels, provided they do not use me as their second.
    “I did the traditional things,” I went on. “Jumped on the floorboards, felt blind for the railings… Seems a solid place.” I handed him the brochure. With a smile he took it, and blinked at it.
    “Spodang House, eh? Hm… ‘built from most up-to-date adaptation of the root system… zero swaying (I bet they all say that)… ‘comprises of’ this and that – funny how illiterate estate agents are, whatever world one is in…. I would have preferred an inground, but maybe not even the Discoverer can afford inground; besides there’s the political need not to sound mega…”
    His voice had fallen to a murmur and I leaned forward, straining to catch his words, but next boomed the pronouncement:
    “I think you’ve made a good choice. Well done.”
    I decided to push my luck just a little bit further. I had a hunch that I could do this volcanic relative of mine a service, if only I could prompt him now and then to massage those egos that get hurt in his eruptions. So, tentatively, I said:
    “May I make a suggestion? That you change its name from Spodang House to Wheven House.”
    “Hum – after the Observatory – yes, might be an idea, at that. Yes, excellent thought! They were a bit miffed when I scooped them with the New Star. Excellent – I’ll do it.”
    My first day has gone well.

Day 935,312,422:

I don’t care what he says about it, I haven’t the time or energy to spare right now, to keep up this diary every day. But on the other hand neither do I wish to abandon it. To have one’s own record of these stirring times is, after all, an irresistible idea. And who knows, I might manage to set down the odd detail which maybe no one else has thought fit to remark upon –
    One remarkable thing: my awareness of the Biri accent has disappeared. Some time during the days since Anne’s death, my ear simply ceased to register the vowel-change. Only if I consciously strain to detect it, can I still verify its existence. Otherwise it’s gone the way of that other phenomenon whited out by adjustment: I mean the railings, the ubiquitous, taken-for-granted railings. I haven’t heard any of my immigrant companions mention any similar point. Perhaps a diary is the only place for these creepy little thoughts.
    During the past few days I have been employed mainly in research among heaps of press-cuttings and in monitoring chat-show discussions on Biri TV, to watch “how history is grunting as it rolls over”, as Vic sardonically puts it – in other words, which way public opinion is going. Most people don’t seem as appalled as I am at the number of deaths from emotion, the Drops, the “lettings go”, currently three to four times the average; I am amazed at how most Biris seem to take this in their stride.
    I mentioned this when a journalist came to interview me. He took my words as an immigrant’s gracious compliment to Biri courage. Well, it was, I suppose.
    I also have had to testify before the Keller-Frak Committee. That happened two days ago. I was less nervous than I thought I would be. The thought came: How can a mere committee ever catch up with a fizzing Renaissance? No, this can’t be where the real action is, so I needn’t keep my wits polished to sparkle here –
    The K-F Committee meets in a panelled room at Wheven House. They motioned me to a chair at the end of the horseshoe table. At this meeting, I was not a member, I was a witness.
    Doc Keller-Frak himself, as chairman, facing me at the other end, gave me an amiable nod. Four other regular members sat on either side of him. For the record, let me note their names. On his right, to my left, sat: Antonia Tyack-Rees, geographer and explorer; Wilbur Groamcuck, economist; Morl Aggadeen, police agent; Rita Snikkel, journalist. On his left and to my right: Uhlan Mooth, writer; Mark Devagolt, biologist; Vic Chandler, journalist and Discoverer; Oraddy Songalam, psychologist – she was the youngest person there apart from me. Two other members, Guthrie and Durant, were not present on this occasion.
    Additionally, closest to the Chairman there sat, to my surprise, Mrs Foy Gunnuth of Sgombost, whom I was not overjoyed to see again.
    “Duncan,” said Keller-Frak, “Mrs Gunnuth has a memory which we need to cross-check. A memory of what you said during the moments before the Stop.”
    I gave a dumb nod, and prepared to try to cast my mind back to those dire seconds before the Shoggoth ceased its advance.
    The effort was like trying to think one’s way into a prehistoric mentality, so great was the barrier between now and then, between our current liberated selves and the musty mind-set which had enveloped us all before the transformational awareness of the New Star.
    Doc turned to Mrs Gunnuth. “Now repeat your claim.”
    She did not look at me as she said: “Duncan suggested that the Slimes – uh, the Shoggoths – might be ‘out to re-constitute a more pliable Earth’, with Duncan’s ‘blood mixed with the mortar’.”
    They all looked at me.
    I said hurriedly, “I don’t know what I meant.”
    Vic, who had been silent up to this point, now contributed a question. He leaned forward from his position three places to the Chairman’s right and said, neutrally, “Can you give us your current opinion?”
    “My current opinion is – ” I lashed my mind to get me off the hook – “that I meant it at the time.”
    The Committee stomached this and then responded with a low rumble of laughter. I meant it at the time was indeed a phrase of the moment, quite frequently in use nowadays, when a person wished to avoid argument about stuff said back when things were different. Vic suggested, “That’s good enough for today, would you say, Chairman?” K-F nodded, and the KF Committee haven’t interrogated me again since that occasion. I get the impression they were almost as keen as I was, to let the matter go. Indeed the feeling seems widespread, “let’s put it all behind us”; all the same, I’m surprised I got off so lightly, since the Committee’s remit is, precisely, to investigate the Stop as thoroughly as possible.
    They ought to have put duty before compunction, and given me more of a grilling.

Day 935,312,424:

After my appearance as a witness Vic saw me privately and said, “Take no notice of such blather. They ought to know better than to rake up what was said during the moment of maximum convulsion – the idiots ought to be far more interested in what is being said now. To that end, I have arranged for you and Cora to go on an incognito ramble… Just wear a different hat and keep your ears open.”
    I met her again in the hotel lobby after breakfast.
    “Well, hel-lo, this is fun,” she remarked. “Unexpected treat – a day off, almost. How’s it going, Dunc?”
    “You mean, what’s it like working for Himself. Not as chaotic as I feared it might be. Not pure crisis-management style….”
    “And why should it be, after all? He’s not the boss of the Committee, is he?”
    “Ha.”
    “Well, is he?”
    “I’ve just answered that, reporter girl, by saying ‘Ha’. That is intended to be non-committal.”
    “All right, I get it.” She changed the subject as we strode around an intersection and took the Carys Grinsell Walkway, which leads to Carys Grinsell Park. “Have you decided where to go?”
    I thoughtfully fingered my hat. For the first time in my life I was wearing a trilby, while Cora sported a wide pink creation that would have gone down well at Ascot. Multitudes of pedestrians – well over two-thirds of the population, I’d guess – likewise wore expensive headgear rather than the cheap close-fitting caps of yore. It was no longer enough, in the aroused culture of Now, to protect your head from the drips from the ground above; you had to show some bravado. Risk the loss of an expensive item, if it were knocked off your head and fell into the sky. Thumb your nose, metaphorically, at the conditions of life.
    “We’ll have a go on the carousel,” I replied.
    It came into closer view, spinning from its overhead shaft like a rotating chandelier. As we strolled towards it, the sight of its hat-waving riders inspired me, confirmed my admiration for the morale and the daring of these people…. New Star or no New Star, one way or another, I reflected, it had always been in their blood to defy the fearful limits of their existence. The only difference now might be, that it might occur to them – collectively, as an entire people – to say, the day will come when enough is enough. We aren’t going to live like this forever.
    At the next stop of the merry-go-round Cora and I clambered onto adjacent wooden horses. Below us was the disc, and below that nothing but a net meant to catch small children or drunken adults who might fall off; as for personal belongings, which you might be so careless as to let drop, you had to pay a stiff fine if you wanted to recover them. And below the net was the omnipresent blue sky… and the disc began to turn once more.
    Cora laughed into the breeze and said, “No regrets for college life, eh, Duncan? Or do you sometimes wish....”
    “Don’t confuse me – I’m just a bambino on a carousel! Hmm… too late, drat, you’ve got me thinking now. I have, it’s true, abandoned my College idyll, yeah.”
    “And are you sorry?”
    “Abandoned it,” my thoughts plodded on, “for an unpredictable life in the capital, working for an unpredictable person. But seeing as the Principal assured me that whenever I wanted to return and pick up where I left off, I’d be welcome, well, how can I lose?”
    Unless, of course, I had already lost. Times were changing so fast, perhaps there’d be no going back.
    “And besides,” I added, “I had to do something for Anne.”
    “Anne is dead,” said Cora gently.
    “I mean, I had a hunch that only by coming here could I do something to bring forward the time…” After a gesture of frustration I at last found the words. “…the time when a moment’s pointless despair could no longer cause a crazy loss like that of Anne. That’s what I mean.”
    “Who knows…” Her voice lowered. “I have similar thoughts, perhaps, with regard to Rida; when I think about him, it spurs me to wonder how to make his death meaningful and not a mere waste – Hey, what are you doing, Dunc?” she squawked after me as I leaped off my wooden horse and sprang towards the edge of the carousel.
    It did not quite count as a suicidal risk – there is a net under the Park – but the consequences could have been unpleasant, if I had stumbled or lost my balance. The authorities are unsympathetic to adults who have to be hoisted out of the net. It is there for the safety of children, and I might have had to wait an uncomfortably long time for rescue, as well as being heavily fined. So, for an experienced blunderer like myself, the move I made was especially foolhardy; this, however, turned out to be one of those rare occasions when one of my impulses paid off.
    The speed at which I had to move was what made it all rather iffy. Goodness knows what Cora must have thought. I can picture the scene from her point of view:
    My right arm stretched crazily out. My body’s lurch, that (as the carousel turned) looked likely to miss the one walkway that connects with the Park’s main squelm – its acre of dangling platform – as I strained to catch a red object which some child had thrown off course. My successful acrobatic effort to keep my balance, grab the walkway rail with my left hand and the Frisbee with the other, and swing onto the walkway path. All that stress and hazard just to salvage a child’s plastic toy disc.
    The carousel came to the end of its run a few moments later, while I was recovering my breath. Cora stepped off and joined me on the walkway. “You’re nuts,” she said.
    “Play along, you’ll see, I had my reasons,” I panted.
    She looked past me, and murmured: “Ah – here come the reasons.”
    A family of four approached along the walkway from the other direction.
    Being quick-witted, Cora had caught on, to the extent that she now understood my aim of connecting with the owners of the Frisbee. That was business; but what she could not know was my further reason, which was to do with her.
    It was the other catch I had made: the perception that she really was concerned, for my sake, that I might be better off back in my College idyll, rather than here in the big city in this epoch of change. Well, it might be true. She might well be right, that I was not cut out for life in the capital. If so, it was just too bad. Though warmly touched by her concern, I was about to demonstrate something she had not yet realized – that there is no going back.
    “Hey, it’s Duncan!” “Well I’ll be yogged – so it is!”
    The family striding and skipping along the walkway towards me was none other than the Sibboans, my first hosts in Birannithep.
    “Quite a mover, ain’t he!” said the man. The woman cried, “Dunc, you almost gave us a heart attack. And look at your nice hat lying there.” True, my trilby lay irrecoverable, way down in the net; it had fallen off my head and I would never get it back, for property lost that way is not returned unless you’re prepared to pay a fortune. It would be dropped into infinity along with other junk, when the net was shaken out tonight.
    The parents, Milt and Cerise, and the twins, Ella and Dan, were full of friendly good humour, genuinely delighted to see me, and they invited us to join their picnic on the squelm. The risk I had run and the loss I had sustained to save their toy made it easy and natural for me to accept full participation in their day out. Moreover – a bonus to my plan – they introduced me to yet another average family, friends of theirs. “The Rullins: they live in Gannerynch, and we come over to see them quite often. Meet Derek and Adele,” and I got smiles from the adult couple, “and Owen and Simone,” and I got shyer looks from the youngsters, who were younger than Ella and Dan – about five or six, I guessed. “Siddown, siddown,” said Derek Rullin. “Say, are you the Duncan Wemyss?”
    “He is, Dad,” piped up little Owen.
    Laughter. “What’s it like to be a celebrity even among the five-year-olds?”
    Cora said, “Don’t make the poor man squirm!”
    I grunted, “I’m still at the stage of finding it weird, seeing my name in print. But every time I’m mentioned, my uncle is mentioned about ten times, so I can hide behind him.”
    “Yeah – the Discoverer,” said Derek, shaking his head. “Quite a guy. What’s it all about, that’s what I wanna know.”
    I joined in the head-shaking. “I know about as much as you do.”
    “And I reckon I know about as much as Simone here.” He nudged his daughter, who stood by with slack tongue. “What are you thinking, lass?”
    “It’s time for the show.”
    Milt said, “I think she may be right. Look there.”
    The park’s big board, an outdoor movie screen, reared twenty feet into the air at one end of the squelm. Now it flickered into life. “Come on, guys,” said Cerise, “the next Ebb-Ken show is about to start.”
    “Do we have to move?” complained Dan. “We can see it from here. It’s kids stuff anyway. Ebb-Ken,” he repeated the words scornfully. “And don’t – don’t tell me,” he said as his mother opened her mouth for a rejoinder, “don’t tell me that we’re kids. We’re not that small,” and he jerked a thumb at Simone and Owen, who were staring rapt at the screen.
    “All right,” said Milt in a lower voice. “Settle down, guys, and don’t spoil it for them.”
    I, too, mentally settled down, in the expectation of something like a Punch-and-Judy show, or an excerpt from some pantomime. I was happy to get into the spirit of the thing. A day out with family and children…
    To me, ordinary, middle-class conformity is one of the most exciting concepts ever formulated. In so many of the science-fiction stories beloved by me, the scene is set whereby it is precisely to this type of person that the stupendous event will happen, for reasons of dramatic contrast, the commonplace juxtaposed with the special; so, when I encounter decent, run-of-the-mill domesticity, I immediately sense the tingle of the infinite – for here are one half of the ingredients of a thrilling tale, and it only remains for the rest to show up: the alien invasion or the visit from the future or the telepathic mutant child or the triffids or the time-warp or whatever, the interruption, the unexpected guest who brings wonder to the feast.
    Adele Rullin said to her husband, “Maybe we ought to take them closer, Derek.”
    “Yeah, right” he said; “see you soon,” this to the rest of us as he and Adele got up and each took one of their little ones by the hand. Now as I turned my head I saw that many small children shooed and led by and leading their parents were toddling from all over the squelm to see the show. Not quite all of them. A few preferred to continue their games in the squelm’s little play-landscape: scrambling on the miniature mountains, six feet high; paddling and splashing in the pool-sized lakes. But most were anxious not to miss the show from up close – where the actors could be seen in the flesh, rather than just their magnified screen images. Cora and I and the Sibboans chuckled when a cherubic little fellow looked back at someone as he ran past us and screeched, “C’maaan, Chuckie, you can’t play Earth all the time!” As far as my imagination would allow me, I settled to watch the show through their eyes.
    “Ebb-Ken” turned out to be an abbreviation of the legendary rivalry between a good guy, Kenneth Oliver Rompton, and a baddie with a triple-barrelled name, Ebb-Bowler-Fonenn. Just as in a pantomime on Earth, this show included some more advanced jokes for the sake of the older spectators who had been dragged along, but basically it was aimed at the little ones, a fun hotch-potch of hopes and fears and trickery and violence. To my surprise, the two main characters were supposed to be industrial tycoons. Not the choice of hero and villain that I would have predicted. Could “tycoon” mean anything to a small child? Well, they could put their own meaning into it. Rompton was the kind one; EBF was the clever one. The other mystery was the chant:
   
              EBF
          May never become
          Ebb-Bowler-Fonenn

    What was that supposed to mean? I let it swill about in my head in the hope that intuition would get to work on it. And lo and behold, I found a memory to set beside it:

           Turn again, Whittington,
           Thrice Lord Mayor of London.

     Hmmm… after all, the real Dick Whittington did become a sort of tycoon in his day – in the reign of King Henry IV, if I remember my English history correctly – but that still left unclear the point of the Biri chant that EBF ‘might never become’ what his initials proclaimed him to be.
    Early on, EBF was warned by a magician that one day, if he didn’t watch out, he might become Good. This news was a dreadful shock. EBF sat down and wailed out words which all the children in the park seemed to know full well must be uttered at this point in the show, for they all joined in: Woe, lackaday, no wonder I’m sad; / If I’m going to be Good, I – can’t – be – BAD!
    The show went on to an episode where the antagonists dodged about in a sinister jungle of moving trees (actually people in tree-suits) that waved their branches menacingly and shuffled their positions sometimes to reveal a table in a clearing. When either of the tycoons found one of these tables, he would dart up to it and thump his fist on it. Immediately, the closest trees would do his bidding, swivelling their trunks and flexing their branches to try to catch his rival, who fled for his life, uttering cries of terror. Finally, to my relief, the curtain went down and up again, to reveal the stage empty.
    Ah, the climax, I thought, as I next saw the protagonists approach each other wielding clubs – which reminded me of Punch and Judy, and this suggested in turn that I needn’t feel bad about not understanding, for I had never figured Punch and Judy out either; why do they keep hitting each other? Whack, whack, and EBF lay apparently dead on the floor.
         
                  EBF
             May never become
             Ebb-Bowler-Fonenn

    The chant came out of thin air. Little pixie-nurses trotted up to revive EBF, he sat up –
    “Ah, they’re shaking hands now; I like it!” remarked Milt, and others liked it too; the adult spectators in general applauded, while young Dan looked bored until the last twist in the tale roused his interest:
    “Look, Dad, they’re forming an alliance.”
    The arch-enemies Ebb-Bowler-Fonenn and Kenneth Oliver Rompton had turned to face the audience, shoulder to shoulder. They announced in a brief speech that they had teamed up to use their fantastic resources to build a fleet, to sail north, up through the air to the Equator, to make war upon the Gonomong! Hooray! Cheers from all over the Park.
    Curtain. The big screen went blank and dark.
    “That was quite good,” remarked Milt, unwrapping another sandwich, while Cerise poured Cora and me some coffee from a thermos.
    Dan and Ella went off to play with the Frisbee some more, while Derek and Adele Rullin ambled back to join us, keeping an eye on little Owen and Simone who had gone to scamper about on the six-foot mountains at the other end of the squelm.
    “At that age,” I commented, “I think I might have found some bits of it a bit scary.”
    Adele shook her head. “Probably not. You’d have thought about it in a different way.”
    Milt took up the theme: “And even if you were scared, it would be a healthy fear. Especially now, when we need to be prodded.” He looked straight at Cora and me.
    I murmured aside to Cora, “See why I can’t go back to college now?”
    She gave me an absent nod and asked Milt, “Prodded in which direction?”
    “Well, what do you think?” he gave back. The atmosphere had become serious. It would not do to underestimate these people, I warned myself sharply, as he turned his gaze at me and went on, “The whatever-you-call’em, Slimes, Shoggoths – they’ve suffered a setback, haven’t they? You witnessed it directly, didn’t you, Duncan? Do you think there’s any chance that they’ll take it lying down? Can’t exactly guarantee that, can you? Nope – they’ll stage a comeback. And when they do, we’ve gotta move.”
    “And,” added Cerise with tight smile and downcast eyes, “we can’t move against them.”
    “Nope,” elaborated her husband, “we can never beat them on their home ground. But they can encroach upon ours. In the long run, if they put the effort into be-sliming Birannithep, we’re not strong enough to resist by ourselves.”
    Cora admiringly said: “You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you, Milt?”
    They all have, I realized, with a sudden expansion of my awareness to include all the occupants of the park, and beyond. The popular instinct is alerted to these issues, and is shaping the conclusion that things cannot go on as they are, and that two, only two, main moves are open to the human race under Hudgung.
    That’s my reward for jumping to catch that Frisbee. I learned the score. Milt only had to say (in reply to Cora), “Well, look at them.”
    Yes, look at the kiddies playing on the little mountains. Look at the fun they’re having. Details have faded from the Dream of Earth, but all agree naturally, instinctively, that Earth’s fantastic vari-directional gravity made the place one big squelm. A horizontal heaven. Everywhere a Topland. A place where you could live a life of ease, letting your emotions slurp all over the place in perfect safety, for even if you utterly lost your cool, even if the blood raged in your head, you could never fall into the sky, because the ground was always underneath you! And because Earth people could let feelings slurp, they doubtless did… but let that pass for the time being; let it be taken as read, that Earth was a state of mind in which a certain decadent self-indulgence was apt to ooze into a position of command. More relevant now was the question: what sort of binge was imminent here?
    “You may say,” finished Milt, “that it does no harm to let the little ones play at Earth. All the same, I’m sort of glad that that show suggested an alternative way forward.”
    “So am I,” I said, without hesitation. My thoughts and assumptions accompanied his, and at the end they moved far ahead, to my next Committee meeting – though I can still hope that my hunches will turn out wrong.

Day 935,312,427:

I should have read the signs, that they were preparing a case against Uncle Vic. Now, in my capacity as recorder of my own fragment of history, my duty is to set down what happened in the committee room yesterday, from my point of view, never mind objectivity. I should have a few hours in which to write this, while the train bears me north on the first stage of my journey to the Observatory…
    On Day 935,312,426, I as usual got to the Committee Room well before the meeting was due to start, in order to arrange the chairs, distribute the pads and pens and generally potter about. This time, however, I was not the first to arrive.
    Morl Aggadeen, the policeman on the Committee, and Rita Skikkel, the journalist, were scraping extra chairs along the floor, to add them to the table which had been elongated by the unfolding of an extra flap.
    I said, “Can I help?”
    Morl shook his head. “We’ve just about finished, thanks, Duncan.”
    Rita said, “You could check the milk and coffee situation – we’ll need enough for six extra people.”
    “A batch of witnesses, eh?”
    “More like we’ll be the witnesses this time,” Rita replied. “The powers-that-be are coming to check us over.”
    I did not bother them with further questions. My attitude from the start of my involvement had been: Out of courtesy the KF Committee class me as a full Member, and in return for the honour I refrain from taking it too literally; I make myself useful, prepare the room, take the minutes, speak when I’m spoken to and keep a low profile – and afterwards write my diary. That’s enough for a youngster who’s tolerated because he’s the Discoverer’s nephew.
    Sounds from the corridor prompted me to take my place at the low end of the lengthened table. Rita and Morl likewise took their seats. Then the rest of the gang entered: Keller-Frak, Tyack-Rees, Mooth, Groamcuck, Songalam, Devagolt and Uncle Vic. But he strolled in while chatting to someone else – an unflappably nice, round-faced woman whom I recognized from the news – none other than Mrs. Susan Bierce, Prime Minister of Birannithep, and behind her came five others: this, I recognized with a prickle of shock, was an invasion by the entire Cabinet. Mr. John Nugent, “Rails and Sails” (i.e. Transport), Mrs. Amanda Verrington (Science and Industry), Sir Rakmayn Barltop (Armed Forces) and Miss Reysh Olonn (Interior / Home Secretary). And one other person – a stranger, a tall man who wore a heavy coat and scarf indoors, and occasionally sniffled. Presumably a witness brought here to testify.
    Everyone was seated, Keller-Frak and the KFC at one end, the PM and her lot at the other and I at the very end, separated from my colleagues by the Cabinet. I gulped repeatedly, nerves popping. Not that the PM was formidable in appearance. She did not need to be – it was her relaxed assurance that gave me the shakes. In my watery guts sloshed the desperate hope that I would not have to speak. No reason why I should be called upon, of course. Besides, theses were all friendly people, weren’t they? This was a friendly country, as a rule. But my immediate associates and I – were we on the right side of it? Or were we thoughtless children on a wide stretch of carpet who glance down, see their muddy boots and remember having forgotten to wipe them on the mat way back in the hall…. in which case, what could stand for the carpet-cleaner? (Shut up, shut up, said I to my chattering mind.)
    The PM spoke in a firm, unapologetic voice. “I apologize, Mr Chairman, for the short notice. But it had to be this way.”
    “Yes, Prime Minister, I see it had to,” replied Keller-Frak. He sounded grim, but unsurprised. “Do you wish that I yield you the Chair?”
    “I’m comfortable just where I am, for now,” Susan Bierce smiled, “so long as I may prevail upon you to listen to a report from the Home Secretary.”
    “Be our guest.”
    “Reysh?” prompted the PM, whereupon Miss Olonn grasped a paper and appeared to dilate, cobra-like, as she leaned back to draw breath.
    “I have been questioned in the House,” she announced, her dark eyes flashing back and forth between her paper and the faces around the table, “twice in the past week, specifically concerning fears of an omong reaction to prophecies of an imminent Earth.”
    She let that sink in for a moment.
    “Of course,” she went on, “we all know that we’re here on sufferance. No one ever laughs at a ‘spiderman’. The Government shouldn’t need to reassure anybody about that!” She exchanged eye-contact with the PM and, after receiving a nod, focussed on Vic: “What is your take on this, Mr Discoverer?”
    Vic was obviously aware that he had to be fast in his reply. Glibly he said, “Miss Home Secretary, though I am a recent immigrant to Hudgung I assure you I am as aware as any native Biri, that the omong tolerate us only because we give them no trouble. They could, if they wanted to, pitch us all into the void within a week. They are the true Hudgungians, vast crawling cultures forever beyond our knowledge. I, or you, would be nuts if we antagonised them. But,” he raised a hand to forestall interruption, “I see what you are driving at. A lot of wild talk has drifted up from Arroung, and also has been roused more generally by the excitement over the New Star. Talk, you say, which concerns the return of Earth. Well yes, I’ve heard some of it. But it cannot be of any concern to the omong.”
    Reysh Olonn put on a high, urgent voice: “But they have no legs! They can only dangle from their four arms! They cannot live on Earth!”
    “Exactly,” was Vic’s unperturbed response. “Nor will they need to. Earth is a state of mind which applies only to those who are psychically inclined towards it. Assuming that Earth does ever return, it won’t affect those who need or prefer to remain Krothans; they will simply continue on this level of reality.”
    I could have said the same. I had had the point made to me by Farambolank himself…
    The PM resumed control of the debate.
    “The popular mind does not always make these fine distinctions,” she cut in, dryly. “In current myth Earth is emerging as a state attainable through emotional intensity. Something that could be conjured up by an orgy of feeling. I listen to the chats and jokes in the streets, as reported on the radio and TV opinion channels, and I tell you, if Earth does not appear, you will have some explaining to do – unless you happen to have put yourself in a position where you don’t have to explain.”
    I felt the temperature drop. This was the veiled accusation at last – that Vic was aiming at a dictatorship.
    It made frightening sense. The man who had triggered off all the excitement in the first place, by his discovery of the Star, could only make himself immune from its consequences by barricading himself into a position of unassailable authority.
    Vic, however, still had his answers ready. He did not seem worried in the least, and I caught reassurance from his next words, my mood being of that malleable sort that reflects the tone of the most recent speaker.
    “I don’t reckon most people, when you really get down to it, are idiots enough to believe that a bit of national excitement and hysteria could be enough to make Earth liable to reappear any second…. It’s got to have an age-long build-up, to the point where we reach that level of complexity, that leads to the state of being or mind called Earth. Granted, the discovery of the New Star has disturbed the ether, which might start a long train of creative thought, but it’s only a start.”
    I thought to recognize some of the phrases he had just used. It made me proud to think he must have read one of the more thoughtful essays I had tracked down and handed to him, amid the heaps of other press-cuttings. I had, possibly, provided him with the material to get him out of a tight spot.
    “Fine distinctions, again!” scoffed the Prime Minister, and her repetition of that phrase dashed my hopes. “Loose, fantastic talk is the immediate problem society has to face. Emotions whipped into frenzy, in the belief that this will be sufficient to raise us to a higher energy-state. You must understand, I can’t afford to wait until the lid is truly off.”
    I heard a sharp intake of breath – my breath – and became aware that my mouth had gaped into an “Oh!” shape.
    The PM, alert out of the corners of her eyes, swivelled in her chair and looked straight at me.
    “Young man, you look as though you’re about to burst. Better say what’s on your mind.”
    I stuttered, “Th – the park, I saw a show in the park, and it contradicts what’s being said here.”
    “Oh really? Tell us about it; we might as well listen.” (As if to say: might as well take a break from serious stuff; postpone my unpleasant duty.)
    So, out of my mouth came an account of the show put on for the children in Carys Grinsell Park. The men and women round the table listened to me maunder on, perhaps because, on some level, the idea that had clanged in my head had echoed in theirs too. Perhaps, if I had not spoken, someone else might have contributed a similar observation; still, I was glad when I put it across:
    “The solution wasn’t Earth, you see. It was war with the Gonomong, agreed by both rival tycoons. Kenneth Oliver Rompton and Ebb-Bowler-Fonenn, they shook hands, made peace between themselves and agreed to team up, build an air-armada and fly up to the Equator to fight the Gonomong.”
    “Excellent,” laughed Susan Bierce, and then spoke some words that sent a shock through my nervous system: “What do you say to that, Mr Rompton? Are you going to live up to your legend?”
    It was the tall, sniffly guy, the guest at the meeting, who now unwrapped his face from his scarf and said, “One can but try, Prime Minister.”
    Kenneth Oliver Rompton – not a mere legend, a real person. Why did I know so little? It was like living in nineteenth century America and not knowing that Buffalo Bill or Kit Carson or Davy Crockett were real people as distinct from the dime novels and fabricated stories that used their names; some people just do become mythic figures in their own lifetimes – yes, I should have known, though as a recent immigrant perhaps I had some excuse for my ignorance. (I shall probably keep this excuse in readiness for a long time.)
    Vic wore an expression of open approval, of positive delight, confirming that I had pushed the mood of the meeting over some sort of crest, so that like a man with a heavy wheelbarrow I could look forward to an easier trundle down the other side. I sat limp and clammy with relief while the flow of discussion was diverted to the topic of our real enemies. Sir Rakmayn, Armed Forces minister / Defence Secretary, was speaking.
    “…proxies of the Slimes, as we have known for ages. Time we did something about it. As the Good Book says, ‘out of the mouths of babes and sucklings….’ Let’s do it, let’s hit the Gonomong. We shall have to do something, and we can’t attack the Slimes themselves directly. Can’t – and shouldn’t even if we could. I’m sick of hearing the options: ‘contact the Slimes’, ‘deal with them’, ‘study them’, ‘make war on them’, ‘make peace with them’. Doesn’t matter which – they’re all wrong! The only way to stay uncontaminated is to leave them alone, and not only that but to leave the question of them alone. The Squares were right all along. Let me go further.” Sir Rakmayn drew breath, inflated with his earnest message; an impressive old buffer, a smaller edition of Vic, similarly pear-shaped but older and with sparse reddish-curly hair atop a freckled face. Now that face swung from side to side as he glowered round the table. “Never thought to hear myself saying this, but, I agree with those who say we ought to cut down on energy consumption so as to do without what we tap from the Slimes’ Grid. Most unhealthy, shouldn’t depend on them for anything. Disaster.”
    “Right,” said Vic, “except for the exception. The one-off expenditure. The war that you’re asking for, I mean.”
    Sir Rakmayn nodded, grimly smiling. “Double or quits. Double and quits.”
    A buzz of comprehension went round the table. It did not include me; my thoughts skittered in vain and were left far behind. These people were talking about war, but not that alone – there was something else. ‘Double and quits.’ Rapid comments bounced back and forth; pressure roared in my ears, the pressure of the knowledge that great things might be decided and I had lost the thread of them.
    Susan Bierce’s voice cut in, “Ken! You tell us. Can we afford this Grand Fleet idea?”  
    Rompton replied, “I am not the Treasurer.”
    “I am the Treasurer,” said the PM, “and still I’m asking you, because you have (if anyone has) ways of efficient construction – ”
    “I have to say,” admitted Rompton, “that the one to ask is my fellow-tycoon, Ebb-Bowler-Fonenn. He is the ingenious one, who can do virtually anything with technology. He won’t do it honestly, but he’ll do it.”
    And so – EBF, too. In quiet wonder I stewed the revelation of how real that show in the park had been.
    The PM turned her head to look at John Nugent. “Any comment from Rails and Sails?”
    The Transport Minister said, “As far as I know, he’s right.”
    Amanda Verrington, Science and Industry, said: “You’ll have to do it darn quick if you do it at all. We get just ten per cent of our energy from the trade winds; twenty per cent from our not very efficient subequatorial gravity-plants and all the rest from what we steal from the Slimes.”
    Embarrassed silence.
    Verrington continued, “I know it’s not done to mention this. But you listened to Sir Rakmayn tell you the truth; you can listen to me, too. The Slimes get their power from the gravitational energy of water and other waste dripping from their environment down at the Pole. It’s bound to be a richer source than anything we’ll ever access. Candidly – I wouldn’t think about building the Grand Fleet, if it were up to me.”
    “Well now,” Susan Bierce summed up, “put that way, it doesn’t seem very sensible, does it? But we have all had a good time fantasizing. I suggest we take a coffee break and, afterwards, return to the real world. We still have some business to discuss, on a more mundane level, I hope. You have reassured me, particularly you, Vic Chandler, that nobody is rabble-rousing towards a coup. I tell you, you had me worried!” She let out a short laugh. “Now let me go get that coffee.”
    The Cabinet, well-drilled in this matter, sat tight while the PM got up from her chair and jerked her head at Keller-Frak. “Come on, Professor, I want to prove to you, I make quite good coffee.” They both walked to the sideboard where the percolator stood ready next to the boiler. After switches were clicked, and the process was obviously underway without a hitch, I heard various breaths, shufflings and chair-scrapings: a wave of relaxation all round; but I kept my head down while it still swam as though stirred with a mighty spoon.
    When after a minute or so I looked up again I saw that most of the gathering had left the room. I could still hear their muted talk; they had taken their coffees into the adjacent library or reception rooms. Vic remained behind, listening to Sir Rakmayn. The latter said stoutly, “Hope you know what you’re doing, old boy.”
    “I also have that hope,” Vic replied easily.
    “Hrrumph. Anyway, you’ll doubtless show us on that screen after the break. I guess you have something up your sleeve.”
    “Who, me? Ask Keller-Frak; he’s the Chairman.”
    “I will ask him. In fact I will ask him now.”
    “Do that, Sir! I meanwhile must just have a little word with Duncan here, who is supposed to be taking the minutes.”
    Rakmayn departed, Vic approached me via the percolator and proffered a cup.
    He said quietly as I took it and sipped, “Despite what I just said, you need not worry about the minutes. This whole meeting is being recorded.”
    “I guessed as much,” I nodded. “Though my impressions are down on paper. Can’t afford to miss out – ”
    “Quite – just what I want – your write-up. Well, what do you think of all these Renaissance Men – and Women?”
    “I don’t know about them, individually, but this is a Renaissance that we’re living in. I can feel the fizz of it.”
    To my surprise, Vic’s face lit up in absolute agreement. “My word for it is eucatastrophe. A ‘good catastrophe’. The possibilities are endless. Keep your eyes and ears open, Dunc! Have you read Poul Anderson’s Brain Wave by any chance? No? What about Arthur Machen’s ‘The Great Return’? No, well, apart from those, there’s not much else I know of, in literature, dealing with the positive equivalent of disaster.”
    “But why should the New Star have set it off?” I wanted to get that question in. This was one of those unexpected ‘windfall’ conversations with Uncle Vic, and they never lasted long.
    “Would you believe,” mused Vic, “that my brilliant answer to that is – I don’t know? After all, why should I, or any mortal, know? But… we can see what sort of area the answer must lie in, can’t we? The separation between matter and spirit is less sharp here than in Earth’s universe, is it not? We used to talk metaphorically about ‘tides of opinion’ there. Here, they are real tides, flows in the mental medium… that’s my impression…. what do you think?”
     “What do I think? I think, ‘Wow’! I think maybe I ought to address you as Your Brilliance.”
    “Well now,” he smiled, “that’s an appealing notion; I thoroughly approve.”
    “I thought you might. I could shorten it to Y.B.”
    “Right-oh, you do that.”
    “….Except in company, when of course I’ll have to use the full title.” The swelling tide of my own sarcasm surprised myself.
    “These matters I leave to your discretion. Are you annoyed with me by any chance, Duncan?”
    I considered. “No, I don’t think I am. Adjusting, more like. Bit short of breath, as it were.”
    “You’ll catch up,” he assured me, rising from his chair. “You’re doing fine. Eucatastrophe, Act 2, about to begin…. but first, must check how the gang are doing.” He wandered off.
    As he left the room I thought at first that I alone remained, but then I noticed the lanky, muffled figure stooping by the blank screen that covered most of the end wall. His fingers felt around in the manner of one who seeks hidden springs or catches, or like a TV repairman unsure of what to do. I sat still, hoping the others would return quickly. Not that I had anything against Rompton, but it was a little unnerving to be alone with a silent legend. I could have left and joined the others – but that would have been scary too, pushing myself in among the PM and her Cabinet members, so I remained with Kenneth Oliver Rompton, captain of industry and pantomime hero; somehow it must all add up; meanwhile, I listened for footsteps, and at length, after five, ten minutes, I heard them, gladly. The others trooped in and sat down, and Rompton resumed his place too, and what my notes call the “second half” began.
    It began on an almost playful note, with some mutual inclusiveness between the Keller-Frak Committee and the Cabinet. Keller-Frak invited the Cabinet to become ‘honorary members’ of the KF Comm., and the PM in turn co-opted the KF Comm. into the Cabinet, “so that – just for today – we can all be members of each other. But hang on, who’s Chairman of this combined mish-mash? We need an unbiased, neutral figure! Ken, how about you?”
    The muffled man sniffed and shook his scarf-wrapped head. “My cold’s getting worse. Not up to it. But why discuss it? We have the Discoverer with us.”
    “Of course! Vic – you’re the man, surely.”
    He stood up, bowed and said, “Thank you, Prime Minister. I accept the honour.”
    I assumed the joke must be over at that point, but then I saw Vic walk to the end of the table and actually exchange places with Keller-Frak. Vic was now the Chairman, and I had overestimated the extent to which they had been joking.
    The new Chairman then made a speech, referring partly to what had been discussed before the break, and partly to matters which must have been argued about over coffee in one of the other rooms. My notes are necessarily incomplete at this point. “We have the germ of an alliance policy,” he was saying while I confusedly scribbled. “It is the Slimes who recharge the Gonomong’s antagonism to the North. Biris and Toplanders have a common enemy, and Topland will be beholden to us if we accomplish The Rise.” The other listeners, in their hushed acceptance of his words, all seemed to know what he was talking about, so much so that I caught it from them, and the magic of his confident voice seemed to make his meaning hypnotically clear. The Rise. Strange, how I could picture it even before I understood it. A world-shaking idea which Vic had succeeded, during the break, in getting placed on the agenda.
    That part had been accomplished. The next and final step – I realized – would be to have it accepted as policy. Or to reject it – decisively.
    Vic was wholly “for” The Rise; the others, mixtures of “for” and “against”; it was in nobody’s interests to call for a vote while their minds still circled round the subject. My own attitudes meanwhile remained in suspense while I waited for the shimmering concept to take crisper form.
    “You say the Toplanders would welcome us,” said Sir Rakmayn. “But would they even know us?”
    “In the distant past,” Vic declared, “contact must have existed between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Yeyld and Hudgung formed a loosely united World Commonwealth before the equatorial jungle of Udrem grew into a hostile barrier between them. So yes, we would be remembered. Ask any Toplander immigrant and he’ll confirm, the Savaluk Parliament building still keeps the seats reserved for Antipodean members.”
    “Fantasy,” breathed the Prime Minister.
    Vic heard her. “It is true, Madam.”
    “Logistically rather complicated, wouldn’t you say?” she replied with a curl of the lip.
    “So much so,” agreed Vic, “that it perhaps coincided with the first excitation of that state of mind, that superstructure of mentality, known as Earth.”
    Susan Bierce slumped back in her chair.
    John Nugent, Transport Minister, looked at her thoughtfully. He was a gentle-mannered, black-bearded man who spoke in a perpetually even baritone. Now he made a calm suggestion. “Let us leave Earth out of this. It can explain too many things in history. I am suspicious of glib explanations. On the subject of the Slimes’ supposed alliance with the Gonomong, which (it is now suggested) gives us common cause with the Toplanders – may I ask how we can believe that creatures who are confined to the region of the South Pole are supposed to be able to contact those of the Equator? Across thousands of miles inhabited by us? Without us knowing?”
    “Roots,” replied Vic succinctly.
    I was certain that he would say more, or that Nugent would ask him to elaborate, but neither thing happened. Instead it was as if Nugent had made a bombing run and missed, and had to fly a long way round before he could have another crack at the target. For the time being, Vic had quelled him as he had quelled the PM. I could not put what was happening into words in my notes, which is why they are so sparse at this point.
    The next ‘bomber’ was Sir Rakmayn. “The New Star has got our courage up,” he proclaimed. “It makes me wonder, should we flee the Slimes? Should we not aim our efforts South instead of North?”
    I almost gasped. This was an amazing volte face from Sir Rakmayn. The Home Secretary was astonished too. Reysh Olonn twisted her slim body convulsively as she turned on Sir Rakmayn and said in a shocked tone, “Are you saying we ought to make war upon the Slimes? After telling us we ought to leave them absolutely alone?”
    “Hmph,” Sir Rakmayn grunted. “Maybe not. Maybe not. I – hmph.” He subsided, abashed at his own suggestion, and we were all greatly relieved that he did not need to be talked out of it. For one awful moment it was as if we had had to face the task of forming an expeditionary force to mount a direct attack upon Hell. Perhaps the Renaissance juices had fizzed a bit too much in his veins, tempting him briefly towards insane daring.
    Amanda Verrington was the next who ‘bombed’ the Chair with an awkward question. Hers was: “Are we up to a war at all, even one merely against the Slimes’ proxies, the Gonomong? If we built a fleet to sail up past them, they’re not going to take it lying down, are they? They’ll attack us, to bar our way North.”
    “We’re up to it,” confirmed Vic. “Mr Rompton can answer for that.”
    Rompton silently nodded.
    Amanda said, “Very well, as Science and Industry Minister I accept that he is competent to report. But as a puzzled human being I must ask why this need for conflict between two such different races? We can’t be in competition – our environments are too dissimilar.”
    I thought this was a good point, but Vic pulverised it.
    He intoned a sentence which haunts me.
    “Chance-chosen paths are set in stone.”
    He glared around the silenced company and continued:
    “Causes are not as important as you think. They provide no reliable guide to remedies of their results – because more often than not, causes are trivial. We do not know, and need not care, why Slimes hate more solid beings. It may be they are jealous of our greater range. Shoggoths would probably get parched in sunnier latitudes; they prefer the long shadows of the Pole. That is just my guess; all that matters is the fact.
    “Similarly,” he continued, his voice gathering power, “with all the wild stories seeping up from Arroung, concerning what happened outside Sgombost Arcade, seeking to explain it first one way and then another…. forget them! Remember only this: that there is an overarching force orchestrating our motives and hence our actions. I don’t say that we’re mere puppets, but there is a strong influence. In the bad old days it used to be mostly the Slimes’ influence; all my time since Topland I have been subject to one excuse after another, one plausible reason after another, to go further and further South.” (I caught my breath as I listened to Uncle put my own exact experience so expressively into words.) “And now the same degree of force is bidding me, and you, to go North. Call it the spirit of the age, if you will. We had a cliché back on Earth: an idea whose time has come.”
    It amazed me, that the enlarged Committee or Cabinet just swallowed all this. Here were supposedly hard-headed people, allowing themselves to be bamboozled by a lot of mystical proto-fascist waffle. (Sorry, Your Brilliance, if you happen to read this journal, but you did ask me to write what I thought.)
    It was at this stage that I saw clearly how much power and support had leaked away from Government House to Wheven House; from the Cabinet to the KFC. That playful merging of the two groups after the coffee break – had not been playful at all; I now saw it had been Susan Bierce’s attempt to restrain and control the KFC from within, and the attempt had backfired.
    Hers was basically the same mistake as that made by Atahualpa in 1532, when he accepted Pizarro’s invitation to dine. The Conquistador made short work of the Inca Emperor. Allowing for differences in style, I now expected a similar result here.
    Sir Rakmayn Barltop said, “And do you say this will mean war with the Gonomong?”
    Vic thumped the table, “No! I don’t say it! Circumstances will say it! All that I can do is give voice to those circumstances. What this country needs is someone to lead it North out of its sky-dangling plight. By drawing together the strands of willingness, by finding an issue that will unite all shades of enterprising opinion, in favour of resuming contact with Topland – your Antipodes, your legendary Heaven-on-Kroth – we can do it. I assure you Topland is real, and the welcome that awaits you will be most real.”
    He raised his right hand and clicked his fingers.
    At that instant I noted an empty place at the table. Kenneth Oliver Rompton was not in his chair. I then saw the stooping figure by the wall-screen turn his face in answer to Vic’s signal. The man nodded, and I thought even then that Rompton looked different – was not quite Rompton, in fact, but I had no time to wonder at this.
    The wall-screen came alive.
    It blazed a tumultuous image that I recognized: a crowd in that same park, Carys Grinsell Park, where I had seen the show – and the screen.
    Sound, also, came with the image as the man-who-was-not-Rompton twiddled a dial. A roar from the populace swept into the committee room. Vic allowed it to wash around us for some moments, and then said, “Turn it down a bit, EBF.”
    Ebb-Bowler-Fonenn. A man who looked much like his rival. No – his former rival. Both tycoons, in this story come true, were now on the same side, and formed the tools of Vic’s project, The Rise. I saw it all, and so did those who sat with me.
    Susan Bierce spoke in a voice as desiccated and cracked as a scorched mud-flat left exposed by drought. “Aha, it’s too late, I see. You had it on one-way all the time. The people have been watching our meeting from the start. But why did no one warn – oh.”
    “This room,” Vic nodded, “was sealed on your orders, of course.”
    “So it was.” She smiled and I realized she must be referring to some additional measure that had also backfired. “Well, this was not a chance-chosen path, but it has been set in stone.”
    “I am glad you accept this,” said Vic.
    “And am I still Prime Minister, or what?”
    “You remain as Prime Minister, yes,” he affirmed. “I am – shall we say – the Facilitator.” He stood and took some steps that brought him directly in front of the screen. Then he raised his arms to the people, and repeated the title in a little speech, in which he promised to lead them North. I hardly took in his words, amplified though they were. My mind murmured stupidly: “Facilitator? He’s nuts; people aren’t going to be able to pronounce that.” It was vaporous thought on my part; I might have known it would be immediately contradicted, and so it was. I heard a roar:
     “Facilitator! Facilitator!”
    The folk in the park were jigging up and down and, I suspected, so were other crowds in front of relayed images all over Birannithep by now. Different from Earth crowds. They needed shorter words on Earth – “Duce!” – but here, Facilitator was OK. The air was thick with a mental soup that was nine parts emotion and one part thought, and that thought was (as far as I was concerned):
    It will have to do. The peace I had, the quietness I enjoyed Down Under, especially in those days at college – it will have to do. There isn’t going to be any more.
    I sat and gloomed in this way, conscious that the meeting, as such, was over, though there was no general movement towards the door. People were leaving singly, at intervals, because the Facilitator was having some final separate words with each of us, hovering by each chair in turn, like a teacher who goes round a class to check that every pupil knows what he is supposed to be doing, though in this case the ‘pupil’ then got up and left, wearing – the Prime Minister included – expressions which spoke the worry, “I hope I got it right”.
    I was the last to receive the treatment. The Facilitator and I were now alone. For me, he did not stoop or hover; instead he pulled out a chair at an angle. Then he sat down and faced me. Sensing that it was now or never, I spoke first:
     “What can I do for Your Brilliance?”
    It was like trying to needle a piece of flint – his unfathomable smile reflected (I was sure) his own thoughts only, not any reaction to my bitter words.
    He told me, “I want you to prepare for a journey.”
    “Can do,” I shrugged.
    “A long journey, by train. In an hour or so I shall give you a packet, containing more detailed instructions.”
    “Thanks, Brilly.”
    My cheekiness had increased. But though it echoed in my own ears, it still seemed not to penetrate his.
    “Thanks for your co-operation, Duncan,” he said, rising.
    “Uncle Vic! What’s happened?”
    For a moment he was his old self again. “Ah – ‘if youth knew, if age could!’ Well, you’re a youth – on time for The Rise – so get on and grab the best of both worlds!”
    He turned and began to stalk towards the door. I cried out again, “This is all illegal, what you’ve done!”
    “Don’t shout. They won’t hear you, anyway; I had the audio pickup turned off again.” He chuckled as he glanced at the screen which still showed the ebullient crowds in the park. He was thoroughly pleased with all his trickery. “A revolution is neither legal nor illegal; it is extralegal.”
    “Waffle,” I said.
    “Precisely – this is a waffly universe, hadn’t you noticed?” He bestowed an extra brilliant smile on me. “On Earth you’d be right to fear an emotional fascistic mass-movement, but here the mental weather makes it fit just nice; all the New Age waffle you ever heard about universal energy and stuff like that – it’s true here. Waves of attitude, surging through the ether; just as well I’m on the crest of this latest one. Rather me than Ebb-Bowler-Fonenn! Yeah – better that he obeys my orders, than I obey his. That’s my excuse for what I’ve done.”
    His words prompted me to peer round, to make sure that the creepy industrialist really had left the room. Of course, he had. No nook existed in which EBF might have concealed his tall, scarf-wrapped figure.
    Vic remarked: “You’re worried about the irrational, aren’t you?”
    “You’re krunking right, I’m worried!”
    “Don’t be,” he advised. “I admit,” he continued suavely, “one whiff of the gunk that’s apt to swill about in the collective unconscious of any society is enough to put one off….”
    That was his genius – to guess where one’s thoughts were headed, to express them better than one could oneself, and thus to head them off.
    “…but right now we must channel it, not walk away from it. It certainly won’t go away, whatever we do.”
    “All right – all right. You win, Y.B.”

>>  5: The Split Second