kroth:  the rise

5: the split second

Day 935,312,428:

The voyage by rail from Gannerynch up to Kletterweggle takes three entire days, which is fortunate for me. It gives me this long stretch of lone reflection in a luxury carriage, just what I need to wash the taste of revolution out of my mouth, or at least wipe some of its pungency away. What’s done is done, and I am a part of it, an accessory to it; that’s most obvious every time my eye falls upon the first-class furniture, and every time the staff, at my beck and call, bring in a first-class meal. I only have to wave the commission tab – the “revolutionary meal-ticket”, as I christened it when Vic handed it me together with my packet of instructions; he shrugged and agreed, yes, it amounted to what I called it, but, he insisted, “the labourer is worthy of his hire”. So here I am, labouring. On this rambling journal, if nothing else.
    I am on a “sleeper” train, but it has had one scheduled stop, at a town called Fossix. Last night we halted there. It’s an inground mining settlement, the first place of that kind that I’ve visited: the usual small-town cluster of dangling structures but with this difference, that the planetary surface overhead is pocked by caves. Some are natural, some have been artificially gouged into existence by upward excavation into the ground. By the time I stepped out of the train, work had stopped for the day. The sky underfoot had turned dim; as I emerged from the station I paused by the roadside railing and marvelled at the giant excavators’ suggestive shapes dangling in the dusk like enormous stag beetles on an attic ceiling. I do not envy the operators who have to deal with the practical problems of digging “inground”. The world, I realize, is full of people with headaches that are different to mine. In a kind of lonely contentment I strolled to the Prospectors’ Hotel.
    At sight of the tab the fellow at reception summoned the manager who immediately assigned me the best room, which even contained its own television set, a rare luxury anywhere on or under Kroth where most TV is viewed communally. I unpacked some stuff, then wandered down to the restaurant where I thought I’d dine on the best they had to offer, but when it came to the point I could not yet manage more than soup and a roll, so, restlessly, I climbed up to my room again, and switched on the TV.
    Birannithep has only one TV channel. Biris usually prefer drama to news, but evidently at the moment news was drama enough. A commentator was speaking with a duffle-coated woman correspondent. She had been stationed at the yards at Lishom-Galeeg; I could make out scaffolding and huge half-finished ovoids behind her. “….not allowed to interfere with production. Aeroether Contractors are confident they can meet their schedule. Lucy Vennance, The Biri Record, Lishom-Galeeg.” “Thank you, Lucy,” said the commentator, as the picture returned to the studio. “Well, that was our latest report on the progress of the Grand Fleet – ”
    Dazed at this portentous phrase, I sat back with an irrational wish that there might be more than one channel, that I might then switch channels as though by doing so I could shunt aside the onrush of history. Vain hope, as next I knew the screen picture had flicked to a hall with men and women seated in rows, everyone clutching a notepad except for Uncle Vic who of course sat at the front and faced them all with a smile of anticipated triumph. A press conference – announced the voice-over – had just been held at Government House, at which the Facilitator answered questions concerning the Grand Fleet.
    Vic’s voice rang back at the obsequious reporters, one after another, and if any hint of a doubt arose, his arguments bowled theirs over like skittles. These hacks might as well have been planted stooges for all the analytical rigour they showed.
    “Derek Breckinridge of the Mrakkastoom Messenger. Can you tell us, Mr Facilitator, how soon the expected triumph can be – er – expected?”
    I briefly wondered whether this might be an attempt at cleverness: had Breckinridge really fumbled his words, or had he, rather, used repetition for some ironic purpose? And the general laughter that followed – was it appreciative of the irony? No! Not a bit of it! As became quite obvious from all the shiny good-natured faces, this was all burble and froth and naïve, innocent excitement.
    Vic replied with ease:
    “I can tell you this much, that we are looking at a time-frame of weeks rather than months.”
    His words were uttered with the authority available to that type of teacher or commander whose mere expectation of discipline is enough to ensure it. It didn’t surprise me that no one argued.
    “Rhoda Rhylin of the Lishom Lamp. Mr Facilitator, what figure of probability would you give to opposition from the Gonomong?”
    “I would give one hundred per cent,” replied Vic, “either to opposition or to none, depending upon which figure is true. The matter is not one of probability because the Gonomong are not a random variable. They may seem so, but that is merely because, at present, we don’t know what they’re up to; if we did, we’d see that the outcome is not stochastic but, on the contrary, determined by factors already in play.”
    Rhoda meekly scribbled, as did the others, and I duly imagined that the words “random variable”, “stochastic” and “factors in play” would appear in many editions on the morrow.
    So it went on, like a one-sided tennis match, question after question smashed back with flawless returns of serve.
    I did wonder if the tables might turn when a trim young figure rose to say:
    “Cora Blazakkis, Gannerynch Globe. What makes you so sure, Mr Facilitator, that you are destined to lead The Rise?”
    It was a question that had some bite to it. Vic went so far as to raise his brows about a quarter of an inch. Then:
    “That’s a good one. Looks like you’ve got me there, Cora. If I answer that I am fit because of my innate qualities, then what an arrogant so-and-so I must be. On the other hand if I say that I am not sure of my own fitness for the role, then inevitably comes the next question, why have I pushed myself forward to fill it? Hmm…. maybe the fact that both answers are unacceptable ought to give us pause; such stalemates are generally a sign that there must be something wrong with the question itself, and in this particular case I suggest we expand its terms of reference so as to grasp the wider truth that it is not I who have pushed myself forward; rather, it is life’s lottery which has inveigled me, without my permission, into a blind date with destiny.”
    Oho, he’s done it, said my inner voice, and sure enough, next thing I saw, the press conference had broken up and dispersed in loyal enthusiasm tempered with humour. So he had won his display match hands down, like a chess grandmaster polishing off simultaneous challenges on several boards. Cora alone had almost played him to a draw, but his fluency had been too much for her.
    I very much doubt whether anything will stop him….
    I, on the other hand, being far from unstoppable, feel quite nervous about my impending reception at the Observatory…
    I did try to express my uncertainties to Vic before I left, but got nowhere.
    “You’ll do fine, as usual,” he had assured me.
    “Undeserved compliments aren’t always helpful,” I grumbled. “Who am I to go around like a top-class envoy? They’ll walk all over me.”
    “That depends.”
    “On what?”
    “Edward the Confessor,” he remarked, “allowed the Godwins to walk all over him, except the one year, 1052-3, when for once he asserted himself; and guess what, then he carried all before him.”
    “Typical of you – whereas some people try to blind me with science, you blind me with history.”
    “Successfully,” he smirked.
    I heaved one of my heaviest sighs. What was the use of arguing? From his vast fund of anecdotes about presidents and kings, he’d only have drawn out some further anecdote to smother all doubts.
    “So that’s that,” I harumphed. “Edward the Confessor was a doormat, except when he wasn’t.”

Day 935,312,430:

Some good moments of stupid calm, on board train once more, northward from Fossix. Vic’s mastery of events ought to mean that I can relax. Surely, the more he “facilitates”, the less I have to worry about.
    But the inevitable “on the other hand” soon harried my imagination to the opposite extreme. You only have to consider how an all-powerful Vic Chandler might stir the world up… The possibilities whisked between my ears until I sharply told myself to pull the plug on that overheated blender called a brain. Duncan, by the time you get to Kletterweggle, you’d better shut off the speculation. Order your imagination to ‘cool it’. Focus, like Mr Gradgrind, on dumb facts. Cloak yourself in bluntness. Morph into that most suitable frame of mind by the time you have to face the big scientific brains at the Observatory….
    I held myself firmly to this mechanic-mood, and it turned out to be a great relief.
    The train itself has been good for me. Lumpily solid, it amply repaid my efforts to study its design and structure. When, during one brief halt at latitude fifty south, I alighted and went outside in a spirit of technical curiosity, I examined the line of carriages and understood for the first time that each of them was individually pivoted – must be pivoted to adjust over thousands of miles to the change in gradient of the overhead rail. I also contemplated the knobbly excrescences which bulged on every third or fourth carriage. They got me thinking about the reason why northward (upward) trains must present a different appearance from southward (downward) trains. It must be this way, simply because downward you can descend under gravity whereas upward you need a push or pull; and whence comes the power for that push or pull? I made guesses, and a chatty guard confirmed them. Part of the energy is simply drawn as usual from the electrical grid, which in turn is fed gravitationally from the inexhaustible supply of falling objects, the Krothan equivalent of hydro power. Electricity from this source is used to keep an endless cable running, which hauls trains up-slope. But sometimes the driver disengages from the cable, and that’s when we surge upwards by means of those bulgy devices: strap-on auxiliaries, rockets and balloons, at several points along the train.
    All this was a joy to my new nuts-and-bolts self. I could really get into engineering, if I could make the mood permanent…. but at present I just needed it as a distraction, so as to stuff myself with stuff for the rest of the journey. That way I was nicely snuggled into Gradgrind “tech mode” by the time the train at last pulled up into Kletterweggle.
    How different this arrival was, from my first one!
    That first time, when I was new to Down Under, I buckled at the knees and Dr Stoom and Les Bucklaw had to hold me up…. contrast it now, as I sauntered onto the platform and advanced with easy forward stride, to shake hands with the deputation from Wheven Observatory.
    In my airy waft of self-confident stupidity I failed to take proper note of their names or their titles. Therefore, as I listened to a little speech of welcome from their leader, a thin, fiftyish woman, who presented me with a gilded booklet, I thought of her as a mere adjective, ‘Scrawny’, and her five hench-people as the Suits.
    I gazed at the booklet’s title:

                                         Proy Shubarr
                                   Wonder of the World   

    “We hand one to every visitor,” the woman said, “but not everyone gets one that has been signed by all the Observatory staff.”   
    I murmured some inane reply. Across the front cover ran a line that looked like a silhouette of a nose. Now, where had my technical mood gone? My jaw hung slack as the deputation whisked me through the station exit.     
    The sight of the exterior void punched me awake and I did more than realize, I really realized where I was.   
    My previous sojourn at Kletterweggle had been wholly spent inside the station complex; I had never before been exposed to the sky in this subequatorial region, with the world-wall chopping off the view on my left side while, on my right, stretched the infinity which now deepened towards dusk. A third sobering element in the picture (as my hosts ushered me along the Main Street walkway) was the smudgy line which I could not actually see but which I know would become visible some undetermined number of miles above my head: the inevitable protruberant band of grey-green, which (as viewed from below) would jut like a hat-brim of the world: the jungle of Udrem.  
    Hugenesses, and prickly dimnesses, smothered my mind, and I could not even formulate a worry. No substance existed for a worry – I was as insignificant as a midge.   
    We marched under one out-thrust steel bracket after another, from which dangled the houses of Kletterweggle. Other dwellings or offices were built into the world-wall itself. Not many people were out at this time of day, but I spotted silhouettes against lighted windows, and sometimes an arm waved at us, or at me, from out of a domestic orange glow.  
    Soon we came to another, smaller train station.  
    Whereas the main line continues directly north to a terminus at the Redakka – the giant net-hand which had caught me and my companions on our Drop from Udrem – this minor branch-line, slanting obliquely upwards from Kletterweggle, conveys staff and the occasional visitor to and from the Wheven Observatory.  
    We took seats in an otherwise empty little train and rattled slowly upwards across the face of Kroth, an experience which gave me a brief pang of nostalgia, whereby I gazed in a kind of rapt whimsy out of the windows in what you might call a translating mood in which I could shift everything I saw into terms of old Earth, as if I were riding a charming old branch line that survived somewhere in England. But then we came to a halt. Once more I emerged onto a walkway between the world-wall on one side and the blue sweep of vertical infinity on the other, and I shrugged: oh, well, so much for comparisons.   
    The walkway veered to the right as the land-wall to our left bulged outwards like the fold of a curtain. The houses were left behind. Scrawny said to me, “It’s a bit of a walk, but we like to show visitors this route. Proud of the view, we are.” I nodded, and mumbled that this was understandable. We strolled on. After a mile or so we approached the north-south spine of the vertical ridge.   
    As we began to round the corner my eyes met an object which must be the “nose” on the booklet.   
    “…lot of our absent senior staff,” the lady was saying, “who have to be in Gannerynch at the moment for reasons which you probably understand more than we do, would want me to impress upon you that this is one of the wonders of the world…”   
    I stared at the next ridge, that outfold of Kroth, that “nose”: Proy Shubarr.  
    Wonder of the World?   
    A fair enough term.
    The lateral mountains of Kroth’s equatorial region tend to erode; to crumble over aeons into mere stubs. This one was in grander shape than most, no doubt about it – it certainly protruded a lot further than the ridge we had just reached. What really made it wondrous, though, was the artificial use that had been made of it.
    Wheven Observatory hung like an immense Chinese lantern at the end of a cluster of cables suspended from the jutting, lateral peak.
    It was such an obviously noble feat of engineering, that admiration nipped every fear in the bud. Go out there? Yes indeed! Go and dangle inside that thing that hung like a pendulum bob over nothingness? Sure, why not? Without even having to consult the guidebook, my mind could tap out all the official reassurances. The experts – they must have known their job. Geologists must have calculated the stresses of the rock from which the Wheven was suspended. Engineers and materials scientists must have kept its weight down to safe limits. The whole structure was too expensive to lose.
    Ahead of us the path meandered as far as the very tip of the “nose”, but we could not be expected to walk all that way. Sure enough, I realized that our hike was at an end. A point of moving light, which had to be a cable car, already detached from our destination, had started along the metal strand which stretched all the way from the dangling Observatory to a blockhouse not far from where we stood.
    “We’ll have time to show you around, then have supper. Let me say again how glad we are to have you with us,” remarked ‘Scrawny’ in dignified tones.
    These people, I realized, have their pride, though at the same time they’re anxious to please. “I’m awfully sorry,” I apologised to her, “but I didn’t catch your name. In fact I need to hear all your names repeated.”
    “No worries. We’ll repeat them as often as you want.”
    This time I noted properly that she was Miss Meleeva Lostagan, Deputy Head of the Board of Directors of the Observatory, while a portly, owlish Dr Blaxted, who stood at her elbow, was Sky Survey Project Director.
    Blaxted peered at me and said with a note of challenge, “You have heard of the Sky Survey?”
    My thoughts flew to my instruction packet.
    “I assure you, Doctor,” I said, “I wouldn’t be here if it were not for the Sky Survey.”
    He nodded curtly.
    Before the cable car reached us, the sky darkened to blackness and the stars came out, including the New Star. Then for some seconds I witnessed the Observatory lights weaken and redden as if someone had twiddled a dimmer-switch that controlled all of them simultaneously.
    “The night’s work begins,” remarked Blaxted.
    “Studying that?” – I pointed down at the New Star’s blaze.
    “We have assigned a small group to that work,” he sniffily acknowledged. “They take spectroscopic and bolometric readings, measure transit times and so on. But we have not allowed a moment’s interruption to the Survey.”
    “That’s the important thing?”
    The tone of his reply was remote from any doubt. “The Survey, the Survey alone, is Wheven Observatory’s reason for existence, its achievement for all ages.”
    The dimmed, reddened Wheven now seemed to shine like an independent world, for the night had grown too dark to see its overhead support, Proy Shubarr, the sideways mountain, except as a vast nose-shaped blackness that occluded the stars. “A nose,” I muttered, “to sniff out the secrets of the Universe.”
    Meleeva Lostagan heard me.
    “Professor Zinfer would be pleased to hear you say that.”
    “And you?”
    “Ye-e-es,” she hesitated, “provided that the secrets of the universe do no damage to the workings of the Observatory.”
    What an extraordinary thing for a scientist to say. Even if she was mostly not a scientist, more of an administrator, still I found her statement surreal. How could Truth damage those who learned it?
    The trouble was, I knew full well that it could... my past experience on Earth, more precisely my experience of the end of Earth, hinted to me of an unimaginable war of Truth versus Wisdom, a civil war between Good and Good – way over my head. I put the thought aside, and watched the oncoming cable car.
    Its cable had become invisible in the heavy darkness, an obscurity in which only isolated lights were visible, which meant that the apparent scale of things flexed uncertainly, and as a result the little car might instead have been a spacecraft crossing the gulf that separated us from a glowing reddish planet.
    Within minutes, however, the arrival of the vessel knocked my senses back into reality as it bumped against the quay near the blockhouse and revealed a portion of cable in its headlights and taillights. “After you, Mr Wemyss,” said Meleeva.
    I got in, we all got in, I felt a wobble and the spacecraft-illusion came flowing back, though now more infantile: I felt I was seated in the cabin of a story written by a six-year-old Earth child, who knew from movies that you floated in space. A welcome idea! – but you wouldn’t float here, if the cable snapped. That grim truth was well known to my intellect. Yet, with a useful dose of mendacious imagination I locked away the knowledge during the ride out to the Wheven.
    Nevertheless, when we docked at the dangling Observatory, and it was time to step across to it, I knew the position. Never had I been taken so far out over the universal abyss, except on the one traumatic occasion of the Drop. But fortunately here I had the cloaking darkness, the casualness of the other passengers, and my general trust in authorities and systems. I was able to step coolly across a threshold together with my hosts. A panel hissed across behind us, and we were indoors. Indoors in a hanging round blob – best not to think about that too literally…

Day 935,312,431:

Must keep up this journal; and not just because of him who badgered me to write it. Can’t trust my mental vapourings not to be clues.
    Clues which I can’t afford to miss.
    They did show me round that night, as promised. I was too tired to write about it immediately afterwards. And then a lot of stuff delayed my account of the following day –
    I don’t want to have to describe the layout of the Observatory in detail. Let me refer the reader to the official guidebook. I’ll just mention that the Wheven is a dangling sphere about forty yards in diameter, packed with rooms, wriggly corridors, instruments both in use and spare, and – above all – the great slow construct which everybody here adores, the giant telescope barrel which is constantly inching up and down in the gradual sweeps of the Survey.
    It’s called the Brithonnuath – from a Tremst word for telescope, I gather – or sometimes, familiarly, the Bronto. I was not so tactless as to dare to point out to Dr Blaxted that his pet instrument had missed out on the great find of the age. His attitude was evinced clearly enough by the way he snorted at the idea whenever he got close to raising the topic himself. Discover the New Star? Pshaw! Tush! The mighty Brithonnuath would never so crassly stoop to go chasing after tawdry novae! Its mission is far more dignified than that. It systematically nuzzles each patch of sky in orderly sequence, noting the light-curves of eclipsing variables (most equatorial stars come under that category in this universe, of course, as they are just satellites of their planets), and sometimes studying the nearer planets, noting faint changes in hue that might be variations in vegetation; and that seems to be just about all of it, as far as I can tell. Map the sky. A huge task, a task for the ages, certainly well suited to the ponderous Bronto.
    The big ’scope, dangled out at this distance from the surface of Kroth, is far more accurate in the colder stiller air than instruments on the surface would be. It still has to contend with the Nadiral Light, but Wheven’s equatorial site does minimise interference from this nuisance. That’s why most observatories are at the equator, but even so it’s hard to cantilever a ’scope outwards far enough to get into the really crisp air, except where you can use a convenient lateral mountain like Proy Shubarr.
    “Proy” by the way is simply short for “Promontory”, as I ought to have guessed, no different from the simple way in which “Mount” is short for “Mountain”. A sideways mountain has to be a sort of promontory.  (Though sometimes Proy Shubarr is irreverently nicknamed ‘Mount Snubnose’.)
    I was given the one and only guest bedroom actually on-site. Director Zinfer sometimes uses it (in fact, officially it’s his room) but more often he commutes, in common with the rest of the staff, up by cable to lodgings in the rocky “nostrils” overhead.
    So here I am.
    Life tends to set me a certain type of problem again and again:
    I find myself in some situation which has one obvious thing wrong with it.
    A hidden obvious thing – and I can just hear my old English teacher, Mr Naik, saying, “That’s an oxymoron, Duncan! ‘Hiddenly obvious’ is like Milton’s ‘darkness visible’ – but remember, you’re not Milton!” And in reply I might say something like, “Yes, but sir, I can follow his example, can’t I?” Those were the days… anyhow, as I was trying to say before I interrupted myself, I get into these situations where there’s something so over-archingly obvious that it’s easy to miss, and so the episode develops into a race between perception and reality, which boils down to: will I recognize the nature of the truth before it clobbers me? Up till now, I have managed to win this kind of race. The fact that I am still alive proves it. But now –
    Matters appear for once to have taken a different turn.
    Here at Wheven Observatory (so I feel, so I trust) is no tricky or paradoxical or oxymoronic “hiddenly obvious” thing. No, quite the contrary, here the obvious is where it ought to be, right on the surface. The staff of the Wheven are as plain as plain. They are real scientists who deal in facts rather than emotions, except for their understandably strong emotion of loyalty and pride in regard to their work, and I must admit that I find their attitude refreshing, even though it means that they rather despise the excitement going on under the rest of Birannithep. Yes, they don’t say so in so many words but they are opposed to The Rise. They think it’s silly.
    They don’t try to convert me. Perhaps, as the nephew of the Discoverer / Facilitator / Ruler-in-all-but-name, I am in their opinion far too heavily involved with the regime, too committed to change my mind. The very sight of me must remind them of the policies they dislike. Yet they have shown me every kindness, typified by their having given me the use of their Director’s room, where I am writing this by lamplight while the stars glint at me through the window, and whisper at me closely of infinity.
    The whisper is close because, here, stars float at what would be merely planetary distances in Earth’s universe... I don’t know if I can really feel the room swaying in the wind…. the Observatory in its entirety must swing somewhat, suspended as it is like a pendulum bob –
    What a jumble of thoughts this diary is. But that’s what you can expect from a jumbled diarist, Your Brilliance.

Day 935,312,432:

These people may be opposed to The Rise, but they’re not averse to admitting that some of the data they’ve collected could be of vital importance to it – crucial, in fact, for the fortunes of the Grand Fleet.
    Meleeva stood with me on the balcony after breakfast. The wind whipped at her, making me notice more clearly that she’s as thin as a rake, but neither of us were in any danger of being blown into the blue – the strict rule is, chains must be worn on the balcony at all times. Nevertheless her knuckles on the railing were as white as mine.
    The balcony is on the “equator” of the spherical Observatory. I gazed up at the rocky “nostrils” of Proy Shubarr and along the connecting metal braid on which we dangled from them: a braid ‘spun’, I’ve learned, from ductile ore that is continuous with the fabric of Kroth, so that we aren’t simply dangling from something that had been tacked on – and that’s a comforting thought.
    “Impressed?” she smiled at my popping eyes.
    “Yeah,” I croaked.
    She kindly said, “So are we. Impressed by everything out here. The forces which we defy, we also respect.”
    “Defy?”
    “Well, for instance, we use structures and materials which are easily compressed without damage during a ring-storm…” She saw me give a nervous start. “Have you seen one, Duncan?”
    “You mean a murkburr?”
    “I hear that’s what Slantlanders call them.”
    “I lived through one, on my journey through Slantland.”
    She nodded, smiling: “So it’s not surprising that you gave a little shudder just then! We certainly don’t want to see a lot of those things. Fortunately they’re rare. But actually, when they do occur, they have their uses.”
    It was then that she delivered a little lecture which told me precisely what I had come here to ascertain.
    She began by telling me stuff which I already knew, about the air which fills most of this Universe. I was in no position to complain at the lecture, for I had apologised earlier about my lack of scientific credentials, and besides I did not know at what point she might throw some light which was new for me; so I listened without interruption while she described the difference between hazy breathable air (which may or may not be the same as Earth air; I have never found out) and polarised crystalline air, or “ether”, which is utterly transparent (and definitely unknown to Earth’s scientists).
    “Although most of deep ‘space’ is ether,” she said, “you can imagine that the orbiting Sun must ‘melt’ a swath through it, breaking it up, de-polarising it in a belt around Kroth. You can see the effect of this in the form of an arc of slight haze, and a slight blurring of the equatorial stars at night. But the Sun’s orbit is fifteen thousand miles from the surface of Kroth, too far to affect the air closer in. Most of that is still crystalline, so any would-be flyer is faced with a problem. The hard stuff reaches too close for comfort, from his point of view. Jagged, invisible edges of ether can pierce balloons and smash aircraft, which is why aeronautics has never developed far or for long anywhere on or under our world.
    “But the Sun does help after all, for the circling stresses of its radiation cause turbulence, which in turn give rise to the ring-storms, which at times do reach further in, to clear a wider-than-usual path of flyer-friendly air around Kroth’s Equator – ”
    I at last interrupted.
    “Is this one of those times, in which it happens like that?”
    She nodded, “Yes, and we have the figures for you. Director Zinfer is coming back from Gannerynch today. He’d like to hand you the data himself.”
    “He’s not coming back on my account, is he?” My awkwardness increased as I saw confirmation on her face. But then in a flash I saw the business from these astronomers’ point of view – This is their opportunity to prove how vital they are. Yes, but… At this point a physical ache started to grow in my head. Why after all had Vic sent me here? Just to fetch data? Could not Director Zinfer have mailed his report to Gannerynch? Krunking heck, why was I here at all?
    Together with the ache, grew a wistful idea of how handy it would be if only one could tune in to a fortune-forecast, to obtain warnings, like, “A ridge of high political pressure tomorrow afternoon… bringing a warm front of stressful events…”
    (Don’t be daft, Duncan, just because you dislike responsibility – rather late to complain about that now!)
    As for why I have been sent here in person:
    That’s just the way things go, isn’t it? For that matter it’s the way things went on Earth. Up to the highest level, all those summit meetings where world leaders jetted around to gather in physical proximity – they went on doing it that same old way, despite the fact that televisual connections could have easily been arranged to spare the bother and the expense.
    Superstitious, perhaps, this stress on personal contact in the literal sense of breathing the same air in the same room.
    Or maybe it’s realistically psychological, and Vic needs me to gauge their sincerity by a personal encounter. But no – ridiculous – how can I possibly tell whether or not the information they give is what the Grand Fleet requires?
    Or perhaps my presence here is Vic’s way of overawing a potential opposition – overawing it through me!? – what a laugh. He should have come here himself. But then, he can’t be everywhere at once. …. Another idea: perhaps he just doesn’t know. Rational procedures can take too long. You need at times to cut corners with hunches and they don’t always come to order…
     The Director, Professor Zinfer, was late.
    He was supposed to arrive around lunch-time but it was more like suppertime when I received the invitation to meet him in his office. Zinfer is a shortish, jovial pumpkin of a man, who bounced forward with outstretched hand. “So sorry I’m late. I have your data here,” (he waved a folder) “but the Grand Fleet won’t be delayed while you and I eat a TV supper, eh?”
    “I suppose not, Mr Director.”
    “Come on, then. My staff and I can’t afford to miss the news while we’re munching.” I followed him into the canteen where half a dozen astronomers were already at table with part of their attention on the screen in the corner. The sound was turned moderately low; apparently nothing urgent was being broadcast, though everyone kept listening with half an ear.
    Zinfer and I sat opposite each other at the smallest table. “The Wheven,” he remarked with a wave of his fork, “was enormously expensive and ages a-building, but it has paid off. We are at the forefront of science – but not, I fear, of politics. That game will always be beyond us; we haven’t time for it. Still, we have obeyed the Facilitator’s instructions to the letter.” He looked me in the eye.
    “Of course, Mr Director.”
    He held my gaze and said, “Yes, but I wonder if you will believe our data. Murkburrs are so weird….”
    “Doesn’t matter,” I told him firmly. “Back on Earth – you know I am an oneiro, an Earthmind? – back on Earth, if I had not heard of tornadoes, I would have laughed at the idea that air and sun and wind can construct a tube of force that can destroy houses….”
    That got him interested, and we began to communicate quite well with each other. We each showed a courteous concern for the other’s tasks. He made it clear how well he understood, that it was essential for the Government to know how far the murkburrs could be relied upon to have cleared a space for air around Kroth; that to avoid the ether is as great a necessity for the aerial Grand Fleet, as to avoid reefs and shoals was for Earthly ships. I, for my part, showed that I understood how the Nadiral Light’s extent was a problem for astronomers. I asked if there might be ways of diminishing the Light by minimising the fall of debris from Hudgung, or if such a task was beyond human capability.
    Zinfer shrugged. “Evolution itself is moving in that direction,” he remarked. “More and more, animals evolve to cling to ground when they die, their claws closing in death; in fact, nowadays, water and sewage are the main things that Drop…. and beyond a certain point, no way exists to reduce those.”
    By this time I felt on comfortably good terms with the Director.
    “You know, Professor, in some ways I wouldn’t mind working here,” I said. “If things had gone differently… as it is, I did get some of my own work done, in the nice quiet – hey! I forgot! They gave me your room! I’m sorry, I haven’t moved my stuff out of it yet – ”
    “Forget about that – you can have the room. I hardly ever use it. I have posher quarters in the residential complex on Snubnose. I’m going back there this evening.” He paused, and glanced around, and I noticed that the canteen had emptied except for us and for three other staffers who were lounging close to the TV. “So – you’ve been getting some work done here.”
    I felt obliged to respond with some detail.
    “I have a sheaf of magazine-articles which I’m ploughing through. Supposed to scan them for any demonstrable lies. Not easy – most of them are speculative.”
    “Oh, yes, that reminds me,” he said, and handed me a stuffed envelope, “here’s some more material for you (they used me as a courier, see!)” Studying my expression as I somewhat gingerly took the wodge of extra articles and placed it beside me, he added: “I expect you have to read about yourself, sometimes?”
    “Yes; it’s an odd feeling, that. Being in the news oneself. Fortunately most of it is directed at V – er, at the Facilitator.”
    “Well, you’re well out of it, for a day or two at least. Me, I’ve just returned, as you know, from fighting the Observatory’s corner at Gannerynch. Important to win one’s point at the capital! Funding for the Survey is to continue unabated, Fleet or no Fleet, thank goodness. Having settled that, and having produced the report which you will take back to the Facilitator” (I at last took the big folder off him, and laid it beside me) “I trust,” he continued in a voice suddenly acid, “we astronomers will now be left in peace to do our jobs.”
    I assured him, in my most placating tone, that I hoped so too.
    “Huh!” he said. “If only everybody had minded their own business, the New Star could have gone years without being discovered.”
    That casual sentence left me blinking. Was I in a dream, or among loonies, or what?
    I pictured what he’d just said, about the way he would have preferred things to happen: the New Star remaining undiscovered for years even though it was in brilliant view…
    So stupid, it’s unacceptable. Zinfer can’t possibly be such a fool as to believe it could have happened that way. And yet, he seems to mean it.
    The stark fact is, we’re in a kind of bubble, here in the Wheven. All around us, outside the bubble, rampages the emotional revolution, which sustains the political revolution which has swept Birannithep, but it has not penetrated into the observatory. Here we float in an enclave of dissent from The Rise. Here the same old Survey plods on and on, the focus of all interest. Here no one seems to care that at the yards in Lishom-Galeeg an epic undertaking the size of the Apollo Project or the D-Day landings or the Manhattan Project is forging ahead. The staff of this Observatory either do not believe in, or are unmoved by, the Grand Fleet and its awesome goal. I wonder what they’ll do if and when that goal is reached; if contact with Topland is re-established, and the world re-unified. Will that finally pierce their bubble of political unconcern? The staff’s non-belief in The Rise seems as strong as the belief in it everywhere else. A counter-force all the greater for being compressed…
    I was glad the Director’s attention was attracted to the TV just then, so he did not notice my shock at his strange words; in fact I was glad enough to watch a bit of TV myself. Nothing like low-grade twaddle to act as a relief from the higher-grade twaddle of real life – or so I hoped. But when I looked at the screen, I was moved to mutter:
    “Oh krunk – he’s on again.”
    Not a press conference this time, just an interview conducted by some facetious smoothie who did not appear to realize the risk he was running. I winced for his sake. Change tack you fool, I implored under my breath. Alter course before you get the Vic treatment. “But you have been quoted,” said the interviewer, “as saying that the folk of Whizzalonga” (I recognized this as the name of a small town) “are if anything more sedate than their confreres in Sreffi-Sannard.” And his tone added a ha-ha.
    I could tell a doomed point-scorer when I saw one. I waited for the obliteration to occur.
    Vic, however, looked hesitant; harassed, even. His face was lined more deeply than I had seen it before. I scrutinized it in vain for that lethal calm which used to precede his standard-issue put-downs. This was hardly the invincible uncle I knew. In useless astonishment I wondered what had happened.
    “I have this to say to the folk of Whizzalonga,” Vic replied slowly. “Duncan Wemyss will be visiting you soon. He is setting out tomorrow morning.” And he turned to look straight at the camera.
    I froze. Those deep-set eyes fixed upon me out of the screen meant that I, not the interviewer, was punched in the soul, with the evidence, both unbelievable and undeniable, that Vic had given me an order via TV! What did he think he was doing? How could he have known I’d be watching? Maybe he had only guessed… or maybe he just hoped…. in which case he was corner-cutting more desperately than I could ever have foreseen. That indeed must be what had happened: sheer overwhelm, the pressure of leadership, causing him to flounder.
    Zinfer had turned his head away from the TV set to stare at me. “You’ve been given your marching orders.”
    “Looks like it.”
    “What a way of doing business!”
    “Yeah…” I had no better response. “Yeah… I think I’ll turn in.”
    “Remember,” said the Director, “you are welcome to stay longer, as far as the Wheven is concerned.”
    My only response to this friendly remark was a mutter: “What is he playing at?” Assuming play is still the word; assuming he’s coherent enough….
    “If you stay in this part of the world, you can ask him tomorrow.”
    “Uh?”
    “He’s coming to visit the Redakka – didn’t you know that?”
    “No,” and I said it sullenly, “he doesn’t tell me his schedules.”
     “Oh, well, none of my business,” said Zinfer. “Sounds as though he wants you out of the area, anyway. But as for me – I suppose I’d better attend this occasion tomorrow.”
    I parroted stupidly, “Occasion?”
    “The one I’ve just mentioned. At the Redakka.”
    The Redakka – the stupendous net which had caught me and Vic and our companions after we had been Dropped from Udrem – the means by which thousands of others had been similarly rescued during centuries of Hudgung’s history – the Biri engineering feat which dwarfed even the Wheven – the brilliant fantastic marvel to which we owed our lives –
    Yes, it’s all of that, and we immigrants are duly grateful, yet the Redakka isn’t a favourite topic for reminiscence. If you’ve ever plonked into it, you can’t think about it without also thinking of the horror from which it has saved you. Hardly surprising, we don’t care to recall our plummet through the blue.
    And why should Vic want to inspect the Redakka now? Some detection of Gomonong activity, some capability to spy upwards on Udrem? His Brilliance’s business, not mine. But why that hint to me via TV, telling me to get going in the opposite direction, to visit a couple of small towns at the other end of the local line? An insane method of transmitting orders. Never have I heard of the like. It really does sound as if he were cracking up, and that leads to the thought, Where does that leave me?
    I was becoming wrathful about it, and to tell the truth I was in dissident mood to start with, wanting to kick and burst other people’s mood bubbles, those bulgy atmospheres which crowd my life and hem me in. This Observatory, here – drat the thing – I find it attractive as a way of life while simultaneously I can’t help but resent the urge to submit to its pull; so I’m stuffed with mixed feelings, and not only for the ideological enclave here; the same applies to the opposite, the far bigger bubble outside, the enclosing enthusiasm of The Rise.
    I bade goodnight to Director Zinfer and went to my room. I wrote up this journal. Now, since I’m not sleepy, I shall get some more of my own work done; have a look through that next batch of articles….
    (Later:)
    I don’t think I’m going to get much further with this stuff tonight.
    I’ve spotted the next ridge of high pressure.
    The articles I’ve just skimmed concentrate upon the effect of The Rise upon crime. They make the point that nothing has been heard from the top criminals recently. The subject of the third article is the possible assassination of the Facilitator.
    I know some of these publications and their writers; I used to think they were good at their jobs. What has got into them? This piece has been written in an unforgivably light-hearted tone, and so are the others. Have they been ordered to make light of serious threats?
    No – that’s not believable. Doesn’t smell right, anyhow, as an explanation. Besides, there hasn’t been time to set up totalitarian control of the media. In today’s Birannithep you can’t force someone like Skerrembi Gandeem to write in this jokey style:
    “‘Rags’ Ullamoon hasn’t surfaced for months now. What is the old villain doing these days, one wonders? Has the art of murder fallen into such low repute, that nobody expects even Rags to take a pot at the Facilitator?”
    Of course, Gandeem doesn’t want Vic to be killed. On the contrary, the article gloats at the discomfiture of the assassin. But still…. to mock murderers as buffoons, instead of condemning them as killers…. I don’t like it. Rags Ullamoon is not a phenomenon to be joked about.
    I can’t sleep now.
    My thoughts have taken some unwelcome paths.
    Data from Earth history:
    The fairly liberal John F Kennedy shot dead, not by a Ku Klux Klansman or by one of the many right-wing loonies in Dallas who regarded him as a Communist, but by an actual Communist, the left-wing loony, Lee Harvey Oswald. The conservative Ronald Reagan shot, not by an aggrieved left-wing loony but by a right-wing loony, John Hinckley. Where’s the motivational sense? You can if you like just shrug it off and say, “If assassins were into logic, they’d pick a different line of work anyway.” But maybe there is a more sinister conclusion to be drawn. The event is the thing. The fatal foredoomed event. The particular causes of it are mere excuses – and the excuses don’t have to be of good quality.
    Dismal train of thought. Unhealthy, superstitious…. I hate fatalism. I despise it. Intellectually it’s a cop-out.
    But what if Vic is edging towards the same conclusion?
    He’s not enjoying himself – I can tell.
    I trust him in some respects. For all his devious manipulations I trust him to be on my wavelength.
    He knows he’s in a world of fateful historic waves, of mass emotional surges, and he’s not enjoying it, not one bit.
    And as for me – I’m in a similar situation here. All this scientific allegiance to the Sky Survey is just as much a wave or gust of emotion as is The Rise.
    I can almost hear the crashing roars of wave upon wave. People who are doomed for reasons of story shall be written out, come what may; they rush towards their doom, JFK to Dallas, Vic to the Redakka –
    What exactly am I setting down here? My stupid ideas, that’s what. Ah, but are they stupid because I’m stupid, or for the other possible reason? Stupid because they are being fed into me by stupid reality itself? In which case, hadn’t I better take heed of them? The suspicion that Fate is real, is heavy upon my mind at this moment. Corny though it sounds, perhaps the sort of people who roll their eyes and say “we’re dooooomed” are on the right track, or rather, not “track” so much as “wave”. Triumphs and dooms, one after the other, and if you’re due for a doom, that’s it.
    But hang on, the wave picture might not actually be quite so bad.
    At least you can surf on a wave.
    That’s what I need to do.
    Surf on this wave – precisely how? By mindlessly playing along? Surfing with the other surfers, flying with the flock, galloping with the herd – no, there’d better be more to it than that. A requirement of skill; scope for self-respect. Well then, how about the fine art of balance on the crest of the wave? If it’s a wave of timing and plot, like the climax of a detective story, then everything, including my own wits, must come together at the right moment.
    Terrific, just what a tired eighteen-year-old with a headache needs at this time of night.
    Ah, but the thing’s not going to happen tonight.
    It’s going to happen tomorrow.

Day 935,312,433:

Zinfer and I left the Wheven on the same cable-car.
    We continued together as far as the local station, and there he took the train going west to Kletterweggle. I waved him goodbye and wished him a good journey to the Redakka; then I went back to sit in the waiting room, since my eastward train to Whizzalonga would not be in for another half an hour. I bought a newspaper at a kiosk…. I settled to read.
    The paper goes far further than the magazine article in my batch last night. This morning’s news is the worst I’ve yet read. Leaked from several underworld sources, it consistently affirms that Rags Ullamoon has been hired. Unnamed opponents of The Rise have employed the services of the master assassin. They have taken out a contract on the Facilitator.
    As soon as I digested this I changed my plans. No question now of going to Whizzalonga, whatever Vic’s orders might be.
    I bought a new ticket and got on the next westward train, where I’m scribbling this.
    (Later:)
    I entered Kletterweggle Station waiting room and the first person I noted there was Zinfer. He hadn’t yet caught his northward train. That meant I would take the same train as he, to the Redakka.
    “Surprise, surprise!” said Zinfer when he saw me. He did not, as a matter of fact, seem vastly surprised.
    “Change of plan,” I grunted. I did not feel at all like conversation; I was too full of huge undigested imaginings.
    “Yes, you have the distinctive stalk of a man who is deliberately disobeying orders… don’t you think so, Rortus?” – and Zinfer turned as he spoke to the dapper little man sitting beside him. “Let me introduce you: Mr Duncan Wemyss, nephew of the Facilitator; police chief Chem Rortus.”
    Rortus nodded at me, and replied to the Director, in a clinical tone, “I see what you mean.” To me he added, “As one professional to another I assure you I know the feeling, not only that you have to break eggs to make an omelette, but that you have to depart from the standard recipe now and then.” He gave me a friendly nod, but again, as with the magazine articles, I found the pervading light-heartedness hard to take; my anger rose and steamed unseen inside the pressure cooker of my self-control.
    “I’d like to know, please,” I glared at him, “just what you mean, by referring to me as a professional. A professional what?”
    “Ruler,” he shot back. “That’s common knowledge. The Facilitator is training you as his successor, is he not?”
    I reminded myself that I must not miss clues, if there should be any clues, as to what kind of wave I was surfing now. So it wouldn’t be a good idea for me simply to retort that he must be crazy. The sensible course to take was to sit up straight, stay on the alert, and try to ignore the way the scene tended to blur with my quickened heartbeat and the terrible fear that this policeman might be telling the plain truth. That idea buzzed at me like a hornet, and it took some swatting; when next I could spare the attention to listen, Zinfer was speaking.
    “…My own attitude likewise is the same as that of Mr Wemyss. My official duties order me in one direction, but my hunches order me in another. That’s why I’m on this train today. I reckon I had better keep a finger on the pulse of any big local event here in Equatoria, in difficult times like these.”
    “We’re all suspicious,” agreed Rortus. “We want to know. And we’re all a bit on edge, though small men like me are more relaxed than most.”
    “Stop there,” I said, confronting that grin of his. “Tell me what you mean, for krunk’s sake.”
    “Certainly. You’ve heard of this business about Ullamoon?”
    Zinfer interposed, “Of course he has. That’s why he’s here.”
    I nodded, “The assassin – I’ve been reading about him – and I have a right to know about him, with as little mystification as possible. So what’s this stuff about small men?”
    “Rags Ullamoon,” responded the police chief calmly, “is a master of disguise, but the one thing he cannot disguise is his height. He’s six foot three, and wide to match. A little squirt like me is exempt from suspicion…. whoever I am, I can’t be Rags.” He chuckled. “Nor can you, Professor,” he added, and Zinfer accepted the constraint upon his identity with a whimsical gesture which further fuelled my rage at all this glib talk –
    Fortunately, our train came in just then: the mainline train, rising like an elevator from the south. We entered the compartment which came to rest at the level of our platform, and we found seats while the doors clanged shut and the train resumed its northward climb.
    I was sitting directly opposite Rortus; Zinfer was on his right.
    Rortus resumed his earlier speech: “I will gladly answer any more of your questions, Mr Wemyss, but I must confess I am largely working in the dark. Shall we both consult with the Facilitator? We shall see him soon.”
    His tone was respectful, reasonable, and I resolved to be fair to my fellow-passengers. It occurred to me that although I was annoyed and dismayed at the happy-go-lucky element in their response to a terrible threat, at least something was being done to protect Uncle Vic: though nothing like the full secret service bodyguard which an Earth leader might have expected, the presence of a police chief did mean that Ullamoon was not being completely discounted. Perhaps, during the spiritual inebriation of the Rise, this was the most I could expect. And what of myself – what am I, I asked myself, in all this?
    The answer came: I was the “long ball”. I was the ball kicked to the other end of the pitch in the hope-for-the-best style of play which used to annoy me so much when I watched England play on TV. I used to wonder, naively, why footballers did it like that. Why not progress by means of short accurate passes towards the opponents’ goal, keeping possession all the while? Stupid, surely, to do those long balls which as often as not were picked up by the other side? It was only later that the obvious dawned on me: that’s how teams must play when they lack the skills to do otherwise; the reason they don’t retain possession is because they can’t. We can’t all be Brazil 1970.
    But then – if I am to think of my situation in these terms – who, or what, is kicking me to the far end of the pitch?
    That is the question I asked myself at this point, and I set it down here, for the record, to show that I’m not completely uncritical; that rather than being taken in by the metaphors that pop into my head, I can question them...
    The Rise has put all of society under strain. Future psychologists and sociologists may some day have a bash at working out the dynamics of it all, in which case they will make use of honest records, such as I hope this journal to be.
    My vaporous waffle about being the “long ball” may not be utter drivel, if it is read as evidence of a certain spreading hunch that Fate is not clever, is rather a blind monster, fumbling and chancy as it flounders towards its goal.
    Not that I am yet reconciled to the need to believe in Fate at all – but from time to time I have gathered, from the wise men of Kroth, that the relations of mind, matter and will are more smudged together in this universe than they were in Earth’s. Fate may therefore actually be a force here, a physical force. Thus, when I sink into muddy fatalistic moods, I have some excuse, and so that is my answer, if a reader asks why I spent my time in such airy speculation on this train journey northwards to the Redakka, when, logically, I ought to have been busied in racking my brains about how to deal with Rags Ullamoon. The assassin hovered in my thoughts, but I could not focus them on him. I simply felt the vague oppression of his near presence in space and time, as an un-targetable menace.
    All of a sudden the journey was over. But even then I could not concentrate properly on the danger. Things which I might have said to Rortus or to Zinfer, did not get said. I continued my wool-gathering, even though I knew myself to be falling down on the job like the bodyguard who wasn’t at Ford’s Theatre in April 1865, or the agents who failed to nab a marksman in Dallas in November 1963. Stumbling out of the train compartment onto the station platform, I was immediately preoccupied with a selfish mental flinch – I could not help it – an apprehension, concerning the sight of the Redakka. I was scared, abruptly and ridiculously, at the thought of what it might look like, close to.
    The station itself did not look different from the other stations I had known in this country. But what would I see when I went outside? A huge metal arm and net, stretching out from the planet’s side – but how huge? Too vast to see properly, perhaps?
    Rortus’ voice was a welcome interruption.
    He spun on his heel as he remarked, “Hmm… the forces of Law and Order are a bit thin on the ground, unfortunately, but then, so are the forces of Lawlessness and Disorder, aren’t they?”
    I followed his panoramic glance around the platform scene. The place was deserted except for us three.
    The police chief then made a suggestion which I welcomed.
    “It is not for me to give orders to the Facilitator’s staff…. but…. may I as it were float the idea that if you, Mr Wemyss, were to remain here, to keep an eye on the station interior, while I sniff out the exterior including paths in and around the Redakka’s reception area… er, how would you feel about that arrangement?”
    “That sounds good, Mr Rortus,” I said, glad of the excuse to remain inside.
    “I,” said Zinfer, “like Mr Wemyss, will remain here to greet the Facilitator as he steps off the train.”
    “Of course, of course,” said Rortus, “you’ll both want to be here for that, won’t you.” He hummed as he padded away. I watched as the little chap disappeared around the exit corner.
    I went and sat down on a bench; Zinfer wandered about restlessly.
    How different this was from an equivalent situation on Earth! Back there, a visit from a head of state would have brought crowds… On the other hand, after all, this place was the back of beyond…. Quiet as the grave, and the silence drained me, sapped my deliberation. I was fast emptied of coherent thought. Into the resulting void crept a trivial annoyance: I wished that Zinfer would sit down. Occasionally he did plonk down onto a bench, but then he would spring up again and go wandering about, doubtless as nervous (for his own private reasons) as I was. I got sick of the sight of him. Certainly I did not feel intelligent enough to talk to him. Even when at last the train – the train – began to rumble up from below, I looked away because I didn’t want him in my line of sight. And so, for this accidental reason, I gazed towards the exit.
    Zinfer must have looked in that direction likewise, for he shouted, “Hoy, Rortus! Back just in time! The train’s arriving! What are you doing? Hey, man, why are you crouching down there?”
    The figure who had just appeared at the exit corner did not reply. He was in a somewhat dusty position for the dapper Rortus. Normally a police chief would take greater care of his suit, but on the other hand (my thoughts twittered inanely) Sherlock Holmes himself must often have had to kneel on the floor, or on paths, in his search for clues. But, the welfare of trousers apart, this fellow’s jacket hung rather oddly around him. Now why was that? Time, meanwhile, seemed squashed, as the so-called wave of Fate was now knotted and compressed into a waterspout flinging climacteric spume. My mind’s staccato camera-clicks ‘took a register’ of the scene.
    That’s the excuse for my physical slackness – I was counting, I was checking off a list. Even the fact that the train had stopped and that the person I was supposed to meet and protect, Vic Chandler the Facilitator, had just stepped out and was hallooing at me in surprise – even this did not interrupt the toll in my head. That’s the wave for you; at its densest, it compels. And the figure crouched at the exit reacted to my stare with a cover-up laugh and an attempt at witty yob-impersonation, “Who you skennin’ at, Duncan Wemyss?”
    Like anyone who is interrupted while counting and who continues his count out loud so as to preserve his concentration, I gave utterance, so that those within earshot heard me as I reached the end of my list, heard me as I named the only ingredient I thought was missing in the scene – the one which would make the wave-crest complete –
    “Rags Ullamoon.”
    It was not an accusation, it was just that my count had got round to that item on the list! Nevertheless, out came a gun.
    Somebody behind me must have been equally swift. I was aware of an exchange of shots and the crouched figure of Ullamoon jerked, his head snapped sideways and then flopped. For a moment he seemed poised in a pyramidal heap of fleshy bulk, now obviously a much bigger man than Rortus had been; then he toppled backwards to lie with open mouth and sightless eyes facing the roof. I heard the booted strides of people behind me; a hand fell on my shoulder and a voice said: “Stay there. We go to make sure.” I saw that this speaker, as he moved ahead, still held his gun in his fist; I recognized his passing profile as that of Defence Secretary Sir Rakmayn Barltop. None of the others who accompanied him appeared to be armed, but evidently Sir Rakmayn was enough. He stood by, gun aimed to cover the body of the assassin while a trio of attendants prodded it, to ascertain that life had really departed. One of them ripped away Rortus’ jacket to reveal the legendary Rags, the leathery strips from which Ullamoon’s sobriquet had derived.
    Meanwhile the heavy shape of Uncle Vic hove into view beside me.
    He reflected softly, “Ullamoon only needed a few more seconds; just so as to allow me to step a bit closer into range…. but you denied him those seconds, Duncan. Your shout of recognition saved my life, but how did you know?”
    Here it begins, I realized. There isn’t going to be any way to convince people that my utterance was not a cry of recognition. They heard me cry “Ullamoon” and it was Ullamoon, so here the fix begins: no matter what explanation I give, all these witnesses will think that I saved the day, and they will expect and demand more tricks of this kind, and I shall have to satisfy them, heaven knows how.
    Therefore even as I hissed back urgently at Vic, “I didn’t know – you don’t understand – it wasn’t like that” – I knew that my protest was in vain.
    Sure enough, he brushed it aside.
    “You made a good guess, then! Lucky for me, you turned out to be a better gambler than Ullamoon! If he’d known what you were about to do, he’d have chanced an earlier shot.”
    I could agree with that, anyway.
    In murmured excitement, Vic’s reflections babbled, “Only a few more seconds…. So much depends upon timing! His deception would have unravelled in any case but it would have been enough – if you hadn’t shaken him into action just that bit prematurely – ”
    “Yeah,” I sighed. I pulled at his sleeve. “I want a word with you out of earshot of the others, please, Uncle. Can you step back a bit?”
    He gave a look of surprised assent and we both paced a few strides further back from the bunch of investigators who were searching the body of the assassin.
    Vic began, “You’ve started to feel the reaction, I dare say – ”
    “You listen to me,” I said in a hoarse semi-whisper, aware that he did not understand why I had begun to tremble. “How could you do this to me?”
    “Pardon?”
    “How could you even contemplate doing this to me?”
    “Do what? What are you talking about?”
    I was seething at the emergent pattern, clearer moment by moment:
    “Right, so I have to spell it out, do I? Very well, I can see that’s so. You, O Facilitator, have been manoeuvring so that I, Dunc the Mug, could step in as your successor if you happened to get shot dead. True, eh? Admit it!” Vic paled, while I continued: “Ha, something in what I say, right? Now listen,” (I rummaged for words, images) “being pushed into that successor-position, it’s like, er, finding you’ve just pulled the sword out of the stone, right? Not so bad if you happen to be King Arthur, but suppose you’re not King Arthur but just Dunc the Mug, then aren’t you in the most awful pickle, eh? Put yourself in my place for once, will you? In the worst imaginable pipple – ” I meant to say “pickle” again but I garbled and choked on my own words in shame and fury at the sound of my ridiculous self.
    Vic, thank heavens, did not smile. He said gently, “As a matter of fact I do know what you mean. Now you listen, please. Your turn to think a moment: how do you reckon I feel in my own situation? Being a hero is hard to live down at the best of times, especially when there’s no truth in it, but the trouble, you see, is that the onward crash of history doesn’t take no for an answer.”
    My mouth hung open. He was admitting it all, but in such a way that my accusation fell flat on its face, while he was left uprightly surfing the wave –
    Amidst my bafflement I heard an explosive cry from the platform’s end, followed by the words “Absolutely no doubt,” voiced in authoritative and blimpish glee, whereupon I looked across to see Sir Rakmayn heave himself up, a document clutched in his hand. He held it out as he strode towards us.
    “Quite a few of the ‘rags’ were pockets,” he remarked off-handedly, bristling with triumph, as Vic took the paper from him.
    Vic spent a minute or so reading it; then his face creased in a smile as he exchanged a nod with Sir Rakmayn.
    “What is it?” I asked, sensing decision.
    “Absolute proof,” replied the Defence Secretary, “that the oligarchs commissioned Rags Ullamoon to kill the Facilitator.”
    “What – you mean they put it in writing?”
    Vic handed the paper to me without a word. I ran my eye over it, particularly the signatures. Iknek Remm. Jesse Narthing. Taoin Shurdle. Wilbur Groamcuck.
     “But – Groamcuck’s in the Cabinet. This all seems… unreal.” Hearing my own words I then felt compelled to add, “But of course, Rags’ shot was far from unreal….” and I stood there feeling foolish.
    Sir Rakmayn let me off lightly. “Your decent bewilderment does you credit, but with respect, Mr Wemyss, honest folk can be slow to cope with treason – the idea is beyond them, unless they’ve had experience in the police or the intelligence agencies. You were wondering, perhaps, if Rags might have forged that commission, to frame the tycoons who were backing him?”
    “The thought did cross my mind.”
    “That’s because you weren’t taking into account the psychology of Rags Ullamoon or the conditions he insisted upon whenever he took on a contract. He always retained the option to compromise his backers.”
    “I see.” Sir Rakmayn and Vic between them could easily convince me – had convinced me – and all that any further speech from me could do would be to play for time – and for what? What is the use of playing for time when riding a wave? I put out one last feeler by saying, “Right then, this is genuine, so I suppose it’s going to appear in all the papers tomorrow...”
    Facilitator and Defence Secretary exchanged another glance.
    “Hardly,” said Sir Rakmayn.
    Vic added, “Not exactly tomorrow. We don’t want to put the culprits on their guard, you see.”
    I whiffed rather than saw, that Vic is determined more than ever to go ahead and do stuff his own way and take all the risks he likes, risks that are more than ever justified in his own opinion because he regards me as capable and ready to take over if need be. In other words, he doesn’t care how I feel about being pushed into next in line for that miserable, cold, lonely fate called ‘greatness’.
     “So, what comes next?” I asked, my tongue thick in my mouth.
    “Next stop Lishom-Galeeg,” said Vic.
    Sir Rakmayn nodded at that. A man without doubts is Sir R. In his presence I felt like a waffler, but – so be it; if he thought I was talking too much, he could always say so, and meanwhile I would go ahead with another question:
    “What should I do?” I asked Vic.
    It was Sir Rakmayn who replied: “Stick with us, and if you do nothing else than what you’ve done so far today, you will have justified your appointment.”
    “Appointment?”
    “In charge of security.”
    I did not even laugh; I knew when I was beaten.
    “You all right?” asked Vic, looking at my face.
    “Just swamped by the wave,” I shrugged.
    Few people, perhaps nobody else, would have displayed the swiftness of understanding which he showed then. Absolutely of one mind with what I had said, he replied: “It’s a bit of a bind, I know. We’re both puppets in the hands of Public Expectation. Just continue to keep an eye on things as you would anyway, and that’ll be enough. Honestly, it won’t be too much; we’re past the worst now. Henceforth, downhill all the way – in the good sense, I mean.”
    The words soothed me towards acceptance of the inevitable.
    An extra little gulp of courage came from the thought of that poor devil Rortus, who, dead or alive, must surely now be dropping through space. Ullamoon must have come upon him while he was checking out the environs of the Redakka reception building. Perhaps stunned, perhaps killed by the first blow, the police chief had been relieved of his jacket and then, surely, tipped into the void. What right have I to complain of my treatment by the wave of Fate? At least (so far) I am surfing and not drowning.
    Before we headed back South to settle accounts with the oligarchs, Vic paid his scheduled state visit to the Redakka.
    It was an anti-climax, which suited me fine. I tagged along while the others grouped themselves outside the station within sight of horizontal steel girders that stretched out into the blue, to the limit of vision. Vic made a speech to the assembled staff. The Redakka had been built by immigrant engineers of German descent and had also been called the Empfanger. It was by far the greatest feat of Biri engineering – so great, said Vic, as to be an anomaly, like the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages on Earth, which leave one with a perplexed sense of wonder: how could a society of downtrodden peasants and warmongering aristocrats have built those? The question hung in the air, while I shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another, briefly anxious lest Vic’s analogy might be taken as somehow uncomplimentary. But they lapped it all up, respecting Vic’s special knowledge of the Dream of Earth, and glad to have it recognized that their work was bound up with the exceptional. All the while during his speech, TV cameras were focused upon Vic. I guessed that it was all part of his strategy for morale.
    “The net sticks out permanently,” he declaimed at the end, “rescuing those who were condemned, as they thought, to The Drop. Until now, there was no going back for them. But henceforth, who knows? Our Grand Fleet is taking shape in the Yards of Lishom-Galeeg. It may be that the day will soon come when a Toplander, whom the Gonomong had captured and Dropped, shall be able to see his homeland again.”

>>  6: Election