kroth:  the rise

6: election

Day 935,312,437:

On the train South, Vic continued to mutter optimistic stuff like “We’ve turned a corner” and “You’re looking slightly mollified, Dunc lad, well done, you’ve got the idea now, haven’t you?”
    “What idea?” (Upon hearing the word mollified I had almost said “Get knotted”. Only, the inner sound of that word knotted caused me to shrink from the utterance, as I thought again of knotted tornadoes, stuff one ought to refrain from naming, the unpleasant weather-patterns which currents of events can form.)
    “Waves have crests,” explained Vic, “and once you’re over, it’s not so bad.”
    “Pfwurrr,” I grunted.
    But at times I got a more positive grip on my mood, saying to myself:
    “He’s right: we have turned a corner. The roller-coaster is over the hump. All right, there’s another one ahead, but so what? You’re scared of failure, aren’t you? Scared of the responsibility, aren’t you? Well, think about it for a few seconds and you’ll realize that you can’t be responsible! That’s what the wave does – that’s what Fate does – it removes human responsibility! So cheer up: what will be, will be, and it won’t be your fault.”
    That was some help. I still wished, though, that there had been some way to squelch the rumour that it had been my special brilliance that had unmasked Rags Ullamoon. No hope of that, as became ever more obvious from the newspapers. During the days of our southward journey towards Lishom-Galeeg, the dailies splashed it all out unstoppably. “Wemyss’ Magic Stare” said one particularly annoying headline, and I read with sinking heart how the combination of my vision and the Facilitator’s meant that resistance to The Rise was futile. We were (said the Gannerynch Globe) an unbeatable team.
    Vic himself believed it. The clearest sign of this came when he wandered into the carriage where I was tackling my paperwork and said, “By the way, Dunc, you don’t have to keep that diary any longer. It was only in case we failed, whereupon it would have set the record straight, that we tried our best. But fortunately we’re not just ‘trying our best’ – we’re winning.”
    “Thank goodness for that,” I said. “I mean, that I don’t have to keep the diary any more.” (Indeed, soon I shall stop it.) “I have enough to do, wading through this lot.”
    He glanced at the stack of periodicals on my table. “Good for my peace of mind, that you’re combing through these,” he remarked. “Spotting trouble in good time. How are you making out, anyway? You’re looking better now – you don’t have that wild, shocked look.”
    “I’m learning to accept the slapdash way things are arranged around here.”
    “Ah – that sounds like just another form of your grumble against Fate.”
    “I don’t like – ”
    “You don’t like success that depends upon Fate. On being in the right place at the right time. You’d rather have exams and a career structure!”
    “Laugh if you want,” I grimaced.
    “Let me tell you,” Vic smiled, “even back on Earth it didn’t always work out according to regulations. Thomas Beckett – ”
    I let out a groan.
    “ – Thomas Becket,” he continued, “was yanked up from being nobody to being Chancellor and then Archbishop – ”
    “And look what happened to him!”
    “Eight hundred years later he’s remembered when all the other big noises of his time are forgotten.”
    “A drastic way of being remembered,” I gave back.
    “All I’m saying is,” said Vic in his most reasonable tone, “that there are parallels.”
    “What about the New Star,” I said, “which has caused all this ruckus? Don’t tell me that can have anything like a parallel.”
    “The stars were linked with Fate, even on Earth.”
    “Astrology!” I exclaimed. “Krunk – garbage – ”
    “Astrology, heck. Astronomy is what I mean. If Alpha Centauri had gone supernova – not that it would, but if it had – all Earth life would have been fried to a crisp in the bath of radiation. That’s influence for you. Stellar influences can be mighty practical! According to the Nemesis theory, the death of the dinosaurs – ”
    “And here?”
    “Here, all right, it’s different. But just as practical. The New Star caused ripples in the Fate continuum including the wave we’re experiencing now, which the papers and the public call The Rise; so we might as well call it that too, eh, and rise with it, eh?”
    “Yeah, all right.” I wasn’t really arguing. I just wished I could provide backup for Fate from my own capabilities. When His Brilliance had departed the carriage, I had a serious think, to try to figure out why I had been successful last time, so as to see what chance I had to repeat the performance. How and why had I defeated Rags Ullamoon?
    I had done it by putting the assassin off his stroke, by uttering his name. But why – since I hadn’t recognized him? What had made me speak his name? Because I had just then been thinking that he was the one necessary ingredient which seemed not to be present. Necessary ingredient? Necessary for the episode’s climax. I really had believed in the wave-crest structure of events. That belief guided me well. And what about the next one?
    Sure as Fate, I know where the next crisis must occur. Lishom-Galeeg. The industrial centre of Birannithep. The headquarters of those oligarchs who hired Rags Ullamoon.
    And to the question, “What am I going to do about it?” the answer must be, “It is unreasonable to expect to know beforehand.”
    It must simply be a question of being at the right place at the right time. So –
    So it is necessary to accept this state of affairs and to like it.
    The train has stopped at Snambol, one station north of Lishom-Galeeg.
    Vic has announced to the party that we lodge here. Tomorrow, early, we descend the last miles, so that then we can make a well-prepared entrance to the Yards.

Day 935,312,438:

I must write what happened today, and then, perhaps, just one more….
    Breakfast at the hotel had its surprises. Not so many of the party were present, as I had expected. Vic had gone, I noticed. A waiter passed me an envelope while I was munching my way through bacon and egg.
    I tore the message open and read with a sinking heart:
    Gone to review Fleet Construction. Follow when you please.
    Vague, deliberately vague, so vague that I could do nothing – could I?
    And what was this other thing in the envelope? A square plastic ticket with a number ‘40’ laminated onto it. As though I had participated in a raffle.
    Undecided, accompanied by chatter from the TV in the corner of the breakfast room, I meditated during toast and marmalade. Had His Brilliance slipped off without me on purpose, was this it, and was it any use me rushing out to meet it, whatever it might be?
    My attention rambled into chance focus upon the TV.
    News of elections – the campaign had started –
    Yes, now I remembered, Vic had mentioned yesterday, he had seen to it that elections would be held before the launch of the Fleet: elections for the empty seats in the Savaluk Parliament – so that then the new MPs could sail North with the Fleet and the world would be re-united at the journey’s end. A stupendous political vision.
    A candidate for Snambol Ward was speaking at this moment.
    The pinstripe-suited fellow was hobnobbing with the people on one of the walkways of the town. A woman pushing a pram had approached him. “No, madam,” said the candidate, shaking his head while he also shook her hand, “you are not voting for me, you are voting for what I (and you) believe in.” “That’s what I meant, of course,” she replied hurriedly.
    A voice-over then said: “Korastiboon, however, had something different to say this morning.”
    The scene switched to another street where the famous craggy-faced comedian swaggered about with a microphone in one hand, a tall placard in the other. “Vote for MEE, I’m lovely” said the placard. “Oh by the way,” he added, “there must be other reasons too.”
     Korastiboon disappeared and the announcer, in his studio, resumed: “Jokes like this have, apparently, gained wide acceptance. The point has been driven home, would you say, Professor?”
    The scene shifted sideways. Another chap in the studio – presumably a professor of political science – said, “That’s beyond doubt. Nobody dares to solicit directly for votes. The candidates say what they think – and leave it to the voters to decide.”
    Back to the announcer’s face:
    “The message from all over Birannithep seems to be that the people of this country are rising to the occasion in a mature manner…”
    “BOING!” said a voice in my ear. “Snap!” A white hand plonked a ticket onto the table beside mine. ‘39’ beside my ‘40’.
    Love and gladness filled my heart. “Cora!”
    She slid onto the chair beside mine. She put her right arm round my shoulders and said, “I think we’re gonna look after each other today, Dunc!”
    My delight showed in one of my fatuous grins, in sympathy for which she grinned too, then squeezed my arm and gave a little growl of determination, saying: “This is a break, us being given places side by side in the conga!”
    “In the what?”
    “Procession, tour, whatever you call it. Of the Yards. Starting at ten, so we’d better hurry. Finish your coffee and let’s go.”
    I laid my cup aside and started to scrape my chair back but she gripped my arm once more and said, “Hang on – let’s just listen to this.”
    “….fear of what I may be leading you into,” said the image of Vic on the TV screen. “Many of you feel this, I know. A wordless fear of the loss of a world. I have had a taste of it myself – yet I know that we are strong.” The camera panned round the audience he was haranguing, and I saw some faces that were blank but others that were stirred, awakened by the oratory. “Belief systems have power like electric grids only more so!” he lashed on at them, making me aware for the first time that the political crisis must be upon us, that a reaction to The Rise had made it necessary to put forth arguments that were bolder and franker than he had dared to use before. He boomed, “Look what happened to the Slimes’ hold on Arroung at the moment of the discovery of the New Star! Look what happened to the dream of Earth after the experiment at Imperial College proved telekinesis – ”
    “What the krunking hell – ” hissed from my mouth.
    “Shhh!” said Cora.
    “….the Facilitator at Lishom Station this morning,” the announcer was saying. “In what has already been dubbed his ‘Power-grid Speech’, he has raised the stakes of debate for his opponents. Initial response from Murdoch Flarm, leader of the Traditionalist Party, has been muted – ‘We are studying the speech,’ Flarm said…”
    I became aware of Cora’s eyes on me.
    “Dunc,” she whispered, “did you know something about this?”
    I said softly, “You mean the experiment at Imperial?”
    She gave a grim nod.
    I admitted the truth: “I was there. Saw it happen.”
    “Wow. And you never told me.”
    “Never had occasion to.”
    I could imagine her shock. Her memories of Earth, I knew, were every bit as sharp as mine, yet because she had not attended that fateful college experiment, she had not known that a specific reason existed why the Earth-dream ended when it did. But my momentary fear, that she might make a scene in the breakfast room of this hotel, were groundless. After one deep sigh, she said: “Well, never mind about that now,” and did not pursue the point at all. On any other day, the topic might well have forced our attention into its own channel; today, however, the wave which carried us was too strong, and her next remark was confined to the political implications of what Vic had been saying. “But why has he chosen this moment to let out that stuff to the media?”
    I did sort of understand it. “He’s fencing with the public,” I said. “One of his strokes, as it were, is this leap of perspective – by which he demonstrates how much further and deeper his understanding of big stuff goes. Further and deeper than that of the opposition; I mean to say, no one can beat him on his own ground.”
    “Hmm… He’s going so fast,” she remarked, “he’s assuming so much, that a lot of people are starting to organize against him because of his cleverness, I’d say.”
    I shrugged, “Well, that’s all right, isn’t it, I mean, elections, they are supposed to be all about opposition, aren’t they?”
    “That’s just what he said to me,” she smiled, “when I saw him half an hour ago, when he gave me my ticket for the conga. I said to him, wow, you’re stirring up a hornet’s nest, and he said, that’s fine, we want them to be real elections.”
    I didn’t reply straight away. I waited till we were on the train –
    It was just a fifteen-minute journey south to the city, the last stretch of the commuter line, and there was standing-room only for folks like us who had got on at Stambol. Cora and I drew our faces close together and trusted to the thrum of the train and the chatter around us to keep our conversation private. Even so, we were careful to name no names, and for good measure I wore my newest trilby (chosen a size too big) tilted down in front.
    I said, apropos of my uncle’s high-risk strategies, “I hope he’s a good loser, if it comes to that.”
    “Um,” said Cora. “Yeah… hard to imagine, isn’t it? So far, he’s always kept one step ahead of any opposition. Doesn’t know what it’s like to lose.”
    Up till now, from the point of view of any other passengers who happened to overhear us, we might have been discussing any office boss, but Cora persisted more rashly with her musings:
    “Does he allow free speech only so long as he can use it to mesmerise people into agreeing with him and following him? He could easily have made himself dictator by now…”
    I stretched my mouth and showed my teeth in a mimed “Shush!” but then my anxious ears brought the surrounding voices properly to my attention, and it became delightfully obvious how unlikely it was that we would be overheard. Everyone in the carriage was separately excited. Others’ phrases drowned ours, others’ speculations fizzed all over; here was a solemn chap talking about loss of life in the “epidemic of squartcho”; there was a woman agreeing with him and quoting a line “found ground” from a popular song; “great loss of life in this revolution,” complained a pinstripe suit; “puah, the crisis would have happened anyway,” said another; “Chandler has channelled it into a healthy direction”; “yeah but this Fleet mission – unintended outcomes, that’s what – ” “after the first action, you’ll see – ”; “farming interest vulnerable” – “…future without upside-down crops – ” “Yeah, less coddling needed then!” – “all very well but whaddabout – ” “That’s it, whaddabout productivity disrupted meanwhile…” “You’re telling me! Chandler’s got his work cut out to preserve employment during – ”
    Cora mouthed, “You see, Dunc, no need to tell me to shut up!”
    Her eye-twinkling warmth gave me such a wallop of happiness that I said quite out loud, “This sure is a bright morning, with you with me.” Ah, but did that sound too romantic? Brisk comradeship, I knew, was more her style right now. I thought fast. “Gusto not twash,” I added. What did I say just then? ‘Twash’? Amalgam of twaddle and eye-wash?
    “Conslicely put,” she smiled.
    Conslicely? A slice of concise?
    “You know what, Cora, this happens to be the morning when I realize I’m really starting to speak like a Biri. And so are you.”
    “Oh, we’ve both got quite a way to go yet, before we’ve mastered the idiom.”
    “Hm, well, I’m not in any hurry.”
    “His Nibs ought to be, though,” remarked Cora. “That’s the one field in which his political opponents might get the better of him: their native vocab is richer than his. Words are weapons; I made a little study of the topic before I interviewed him last week for the Globe.”
    “Go on,” I said, but we were interrupted by deceleration, and, at the same time, a change in the gradient of our descent: then a shadow blocked the sky below as the train plunged inground amid roaring gusts of displaced air. “Lishom-Galeeg Central,” announced the loudspeaker while we slid to a stop amid lighting which smudged the carriage interior with yellow. “This train terminates here.”
    My senses slipped in a mud of impressions as through the window came sounds, echoes of sounds, and then (seconds after we came to a stop) the sight of people in a hurry who appeared and disappeared around fat pillars while more loudspeakers blared. “Come on,” said Cora, voice raised against the din, “let’s get out of here while we can,” and I quickly followed her in a merry race to get out the carriage door before it was blocked by the impatient surge of incoming passengers.
    Out on the platform, I stopped and gawped. Cora slipped her arm into mine and said, “It does kind of get you, doesn’t it. Better hurry, though.”
    I was happy to be hurried along. Anything she did was fine by me. “Good thing you’ve been here before,” I muttered, more than ever glad of her guidance after I had followed her through the ticket barrier: the rectangular station area ended abruptly and beyond it were coils of steps and spiral ramps which gave crowded access to vast sweeping curves of rock. Imagine that the holes in a Gruyère cheese have expanded and interconnected so that there is just as much hole as cheese; then blow it all up to city size, and try to describe it: you will then decide that the peculiar structure of Lishom-Galeeg is best depicted in a 3D model or holograph. Fortunately, description was not my job; my role was to trust and surf the flow of events, to allow for the usual froth of reasons or excuses for things, and underlying them the raw power of the flow itself, and my puny reactions to the flow…. such were my half-mystic, half-cynic thoughts. And as for the break of the wave, the crisis ahead: if only this smash were to work out as nicely as the last one! Then, with Cora as a witness this time, I might grow in her eyes, so that she could cease to see through me so easily. That was my hope. It might seem unreasonable to expect me to repeat my fluky triumph over Rags Ullamoon. Certainly, I didn’t feel up to it. But then, need I be? Fate isn’t reasonable. Fate squashes one guy without giving him a chance and crowns another fellow with undeserved laurels. I hoped for the latter.
    Speech and writing have to be linear, words consecutive, which means you can’t “play a chord”, you can’t say it all at once, which in turn is a drawback of my Gruyère cheese analogy, for it really requires that I say, at the same time, what is enormously wrong with the comparison:
    In Lishom-Galeeg the holes, the spaces, are occupied, half-filled, with huge floating ovoids, each freckled with nets and scaffolding.
    From the sloping pavement where we walked, Cora and I could see four or five of the greyish forms, ranged in dwindling perspective. Seeing me catch my breath, she cheerily commented: “And what’s visible from here is only a fraction of the whole lot.”
    In a brisk stroll she led me down towards the closest of the airships of the Grand Fleet, while my neck stretched in wonderment, this way and that, like a toddler’s in a toyshop. To our left were terraces of offices and shops; to our right, the rock curved away lip-like to the bottomless pit of sky; overhead hung the cavern roof gapped with ways to other caverns; ahead of us floated the closest ship, looking more knobbly and unfinished as we approached – but it so crawled and twinkled with activity that I feel sure it will not remain unfinished a fortnight from now.
    Not everyone was at work: many of the people in sight were visitors like ourselves, or perhaps workers on break or between shifts, or even residents of the Yards. Every hundred yards or so a crowd was gathered around a public TV in a shop window. Two TVs further on, we spotted a gathering which grew as we watched. “I believe this is it,” said Cora, and held her plastic ticket aloft. “Yes, here we are,” she confirmed, when a woman in the group responded with a like gesture. “Seems we’re in time anyhow. That’s Aurelia Snagoof.”
    The sight of this beckoning lady prompted one of my alarmed mental leaps. She looked perfectly all right, tall and turquoise in her smart dress, curled brown hair well primped; a chic specimen, personally nothing whatsoever to do with me, yet her ridiculous name set off my grasshopper mind:
    Aurelia Snagoof – frequent Biri habit: juxtaposing names – christening Tremst-surname offspring with English first-names and vice versa –
    So what? Why worry?
    Impressive, the way in which English, the tongue of the latest wave of settlers under Hudgung, overlay Tremst, the tongue of the previous wave, without obliterating it, and soaked much of it up, resulting in that expanded English called “M’dern” by the Biris.
    And why did this cultural tidbit flash through my mind during that particular split second?
    Answer: it reminded me of the pitfalls of language here, of Vic’s inevitable weakness in that department of life. A politician has to talk a tremendous lot, and an immigrant politician is at a linguistic disadvantage. If and when the opposition discredit the Facilitator, thought I, it will be because they find a way to show up that weakness…
    More than once, I had thought of warning him, of persuading him to take special lessons in the enhanced vocabulary of M’dern, especially as I was becoming more aware of it myself, as my own mind opened to the efficient circumlocutions and the thought-widening concepts of this expanded English. No doubt it would have been a waste of time to broach the matter. Vic would always believe that he was one jump ahead.
    So far, he had been. But here he might well be up against opposition of equal arrogance. I wished I had said to him, watch out, here are oligarchs, tycoons who are immune to your persuasive power. I rapidly ran the imaginary conversation in my head, but it was no use: he only replied, sure, they’re immune, but that only means they underestimate me, underestimate my hold on the rest of the country, and I’m counting on their not realizing their mistake until it’s too late for them. I retorted: too late for them? Can’t you look at it another way? No, he could not see…
    The group, meanwhile, began to straighten out into a line, as Aurelia Snagoof marshalled us. I muttered to Cora, “This is your ‘conga’ taking shape, I see.”
    “Told you so,” she smiled. “We reporters – ”
    A man looked over his shoulder at me and said, “Hello, Duncan, it’s a long way from Sgombost.”
    Sgombost? What relevance –
    I then did a double-take and saw two things. One was that the man who spoke was Dr Keller-Frak, whom I had first met in Sgombost, whom I had been slow to recognize because he was wearing coveralls and a helmet. He saw my bemused expression and said, “Bizarre get-up, I know. But this is supposed to be an inspection tour, and this is election time.”
    The other thing I saw was on the public TV. It was only a glimpse, for the “conga” began to move just at that moment, but I stretched my neck to look back at the screen and saw, doubtless on some news programme, a panorama of Sgombost, the town in Arroung where I had encountered the Shoggoth. I had seen the view often enough in magazine photos afterwards, for the place was more famous now than it had ever been. This TV picture, no doubt taken from a balloon, showed part of the ‘real South’ half of Sgombost where people walked upside-down with magnetic soles along gleaming metal roads, and, cleverly juxtaposed, part of the more genteel district laced with dangling walkways in the usual Biri fashion, where the people could stride upright.
    Keller-Frak saw my glance. “You should make a return trip there,” he suggested. “I’m sure you would be given a hero’s welcome, and it wouldn’t do our campaign any harm, either.”
    “It might, if they sensed my lack of enthusiasm for the visit.”
    “Work yourself up into it, then; it can be done.”
    “S’pose you’re right,” I had to admit; “all too true, of the waves at election time.” And he did not ask me what I meant by waves, and that added proof to the reality of them: he knew what I was talking about. I meanwhile figured that I had some choice as to which particular wave to ride. I could be glad I was here, at Lishom-Galeeg, and not at Sgombost, and furthermore, I krunking well had a right to change the subject, so I announced: “Hey, I’ve just begun to sense: we’re on a kind of large spiral here.”
    Cora, tramping along beside me and just behind Keller-Frak, said: “That’s the structure of our tour. Two turns of the spiral. I’ve studied Lishom-Galeeg. The Fleet Yards have expanded into it from the ex-suburbs of Nooshannygam (which used to be a jolly little mining town, according the records) and Stanghelfong where the transports are being built…. We’re headed now for the core of Nooshannygam, where they’re putting the flagship hull together… We’ll be approaching the cameras soon, where Vic will join the conga, waving his Number One ticket no doubt. With him will be project chief Thand ‘That’ll-Be-That’ Realten and Chief Engineer Mord Reven, with his lieutenant, a chap you know from your college days, Trenton Rhind…”
    I was content to let her words flow. She seemed to know the place, the personnel…. why couldn’t she be in charge of Security, I wondered obscurely. Never mind, I had been stuck with the job, or at any rate the job-title…. Whatever my contribution might be, it would not spring from this stuff pouring into my ear….
    “Camera-stand ahoy,” said Keller-Frak.
    The ‘conga’ came to a stop and all forty of us watched as a couple of TV crews focussed upon Facilitator Vic Chandler as he emerged from a side-building, walked across the brown rock surface to the head of the line, and was greeted by Aurelia Snagoof. I could not hear what was said; doubtless I’d get it later on the news, I thought.
    Then we all started up again. The inspection tour had resumed, now with Himself at the head, and a frightful sense of doom gripped me, but I repressed it – I had to keep a clear head: above all I must get through this with nothing to reproach myself with afterwards. Put that way, it seems a selfish aim, but I knew I had to keep selfish in that way when steadiness was called for –
    As we walked, Cora took a press release from her shoulder-bag and showed me a diagram of the tour. Just as she’d said: two turns of a downward spiral.
    My memory flashed back for a moment to England, where the city of Stoke on Trent had been founded by the fusion of five (or was it six) towns. Here, analogously, this industrial city under Hudgung was founded by the fusion, first of Lishom and Galeeg, then of Nooshannygam and Stanghelfong, all growing inwards towards a common centre (occupied now by the railway station) and also in the outward direction as more Yards, foundries and manufacturing centres have been added. The vast limestone caverns, widened and connected by human action, give the place more ventilated inground space than anywhere else under Birannithep, and the unequalled facilities, the lavish suprastructure, make certain of its status as the beating heart and fount of all vigour in this southern renaissance. Our televised tour, with its double spiral covering the inward “spokes” of the four component towns, one after the other and twice repeated, was designed to leave the voters in no doubt of the effectiveness of The Rise and the wisdom of its leader.
    Our next stop was a triumph for Vic. Once more he wrong-footed his political opponents, though I have to say the cards were stacked against them as far as venue and atmosphere were concerned. The arrangement was supposed to be: a brief speech at the flagship Teffenengleng (the name comes from aboriginal Biri mythology), followed by questions from leading industrialist Taoin Shurdle, widely known as an opponent of the Fleet project. The tycoon was not expected to be physically present at this encounter; it was to be a tele-debate only. Otherwise the police would have had to be told; for, secretly, Shurdle was also known (by me, Vic, and Sir Rakmayn) to be one of the signatories of the contract with the assassin, Rags Ullamoon, and hence to be a dangerous man; but, present or absent, the fellow had no opportunity to score any points – because Vic pre-empted them all in his speech.
    Earning to the full his title of Facilitator – “he who makes what’s hard seem easy” – Vic got away once again with his trick of flattering the electorate by addressing them on a high intellectual level, and by doing so in such a way as to remind them that he had experience of more than one universe. As politics it was unbeatable. “All arguments on scientific matters,” he said in that lofty-yet-confidential tone which so far had always gone down well, “all factual judgements tend, in this universe, to be purely qualitative. Here, therefore, science and engineering are fuzzy enterprises, vague, needing multiple redundancies, analogue systems with wide error-margins… quite apart from the need to spend a fortune on nets to avoid losses by Drop!” A winning smile accompanied that naughty word. Shurdle was going to be given no chance as Vic proceeded, backed by his own concession, to turn about and answer himself: “So what do we do with all this difficulty – I’ll tell you what we do, we get round it! See the proof here. See, around us, the enormous squelm, the interconnected area of floor-space here in Lishom-Galeeg” (the cameras panned), “see all the Pittsburgh-style heavy stuff to build the Fleet” (another learned reference to Earth, went down well); “see my Project Chief Thand Realten, borrowed from Bams & Reegh of the Stanghelfong works; hello, Thand, have you a word for the viewers?”
    Realten, a wiry individual, compact, taut, powerful, took the mike. I could hardly see him from my place at the back of the conga but I saw his blown-up image beside Vic’s on the public screen. “As you say, Facilitator, we have ‘got round’ every problem; the Fleet shall be ready for launch six days from now, and that’ll be that.”
    Vic took the mike back. “And now, some words of dissent, no doubt, from Taoin Shurdle.”
    The image on screen shifted to show the victim. Shurdle, stocky and moon-faced, sat with a glum expression, in a business office which could have been anywhere.
    The man’s mouth twitched. Then it opened and he brayed out, “Dissent? Have you left me any room?” Before the voice could rise further, the mouth snapped shut. He glared.
    “You have room to speak,” was Vic’s flat retort.
    “Yes,” said Shurdle, “to speak after you have spoken, with your limitless hints. Of course, it’s true, we Biris are ingenious. We have to be. But…”
    “But you think The Rise is too great a challenge.”
    “No, Facilitator, that is not what I mean. I mean there is such a thing as trying the wrong thing.  Undertaking the wrong challenge.”
    Vic said, “Poppycock. It boils down to economic interest. You don’t want any drastic change which would force you to restructure your businesses. You’re scared of Topland and you’re even more scared of Earth – yes, you believe, with no evidence, that The Rise may in itself trigger a return of the Dream of Earth. That certainly would mean that all your industries have to be reshaped from the ground up! Well, ha! If you find yourself on Earth,” he continued with a coarse overflow of hilarity, “you can always switch to the manufacture of sewers and toilets, or become gravediggers, to make up for what can no longer just be dropped into the sky!”
    “Inconveniences,” murmured Shurdle, and I felt sorry for him as he was forced to concede, as indeed I would have done in his place, just to save some dignity; “yes, a reasonable man must agree with you, Facilitator, that change brings inconveniences to some, and advantages to others.” (Good move, I thought; creates a good impression, when you make reasonable noises. But then he went on to score an own goal:) “Murder and revenge, for example, are too easy under Hudgung.”
    “They certainly are,” pounced Vic. “Biris have had to evolve special social pressures to keep the lid on people’s passions. I hope we can all look forward to some relaxation of those pressures soon.”
    “Yes,” echoed Shurdle, now positioned as the comet’s tail, “I would advise any would-be murderer to achieve his aim without too much further delay, if he is going to manage it at all. After you have triumphed, Facilitator, and brought us to where the sky is above and the ground below, it will be too late for easy disposal of the body.” Nothing for it, poor man, but to finish with that weak threat. What a walk-over for Vic, I thought.
    To put the coping-stone on his triumph Vic gave one of his indulgent smiles and paraded his generosity by making a concession of his own from his position of strength. “If we had infinite leisure for further discussion of the point raised by Mr Shurdle, we could, of course, explore the idea that as murder is forced to become more difficult, it becomes more stealthy, more (in a sense) specialised, and then in order to deal with it society must undertake a vast development of police and detective forces…. the responsibility, then, is less on the ordinary citizen. Do we welcome that? Perhaps we do. Perhaps we have earned a rest, in that department.” He finished with a shrug, somehow so expressive, that I knew at that moment that the debate was over; as we all resumed our tour I could sense a ripple of consensus all along the conga – the belief was, the Facilitator had won this particular bout hands down; and since belief is everything at election time, it ensured the bout was won.
    Only, as his on-screen face dissolved, I glimpsed something of the price: it briefly betrayed itself in a redness of glance, as if the pain and stress of repeated triumph flickered an S.O.S. from behind the eyes, appealing for a respite from the demand that the winning streak be kept up so continually. Having spotted this I walked for a while in an almost blind trance as my mind’s ear listened to an imaginary but terrifying further conversation:
    Facilitator, do you feel the strain of this campaign?
    Yes I do, I would like to retire. But one must carry on.
    Suppose the strain is too much for you?
    That’ll be all right, because I have a nephew who is perfectly suited to succeed me….
    Like one who struggles to keep awake I blinked my eyes forcibly open and asked myself, hey, what is this, am I about to wallow in paranoia? Sink into a confusion that can’t distinguish between real and imaginary conversations? And if so, could I blame it on the Wave? Look out, chum, don’t fool yourself, this may not really be that different from revolutionary hysteria on Earth. Revolutions are orgies of daftness. There is no Wave, no history with a capital H, which exists beyond the insanity of the individuals who compose it. No “force” to blame for our own misdeeds. Ah, but wait. I’m wrong there. This is not Earth, this is Kroth. Should have learned the lesson by now: the Wave is real. It may well push Vic aside and put me in his place. Ridiculous but possible. I’d only be a figurehead, of course, but that’s bad enough. The most miserable of targets, the most public of disgraces, the most horrible of fates; unendurable, unacceptable. And therefore it must not happen. And therefore it is not going to happen. Comfort ye, comfort ye….
    (Who knows, some future spiritual statistician, having read the above paragraph, may derive another useful bit of evidence regarding how the Wave affects human lives. I hope so, but I shan’t hold myself obliged to write such stuff much longer. I’m in a position now to say: When the fleet is launched, that’s my lot. In fact I could stop writing this very moment, except that a kind of artistic scruple keeps me going. No diarist worth his salt would neglect the day when fate turns.)
    Half way through the tour, after one turn of the spiral descent through Lishom-Galeeg, we broke formation. Coffee time! Each of us sought places for ourselves around tables in a street-café: a most welcome let-up in the pressure of foreboding, a relaxation of imminence. TV cameras hovered during this interlude, as they had at the other stops, but without their crews, who took their break with the rest of us. Moreover, the inevitable big screen at this particular spot did not (for once) show either a speech of, or an interview with, the Facilitator. Vic sat with us, a few tables away from Cora and me, and I was in half a mind to go and ask him how he was, but I decided to let him be, as he seemed happy chatting with the high-ups in the Project. Some chorus on the TV was singing a dignified hymn; I found it restful, a soothing religious calm. A current affairs programme had, apparently, networked with a church which was conducting a service to pray for those “in peril in the sky”.
    I had half-drunk my cup of coffee when the screen showed a change of programme, to something quite different: but it was still comparatively restful, simply because it wasn’t Vic.
    It was one of those antagonistic chat-shows designed to strike sparks from deliberately ill-matched people. In this case, I recognized the two celebrities who were the main guests. One of them I quite liked, the other I didn’t much cotton to, but in either case I felt free not to care what they said or did, or even to notice, though out of habit my ears did stay open.
    Martin Twelk was a little squirt of a guy who happened to be president of the Biri Skytrekkers, one of the many amateur Balloon Societies which had sprung into life in the wake of The Rise. The compere asked him some friendly questions about the success of the Skytrekkers. Twelk burbled enthusiastically in reply: “Everywhere you go, all under the country, people are saying, ‘we wanna fly,’ and they are flying, they’re cobbling together real airships, not as big as those in the Fleet of course” (chuckle) “but still, respectable airworthy ships. And in my opinion, that’s remarkable.” The fellow shifted in his chair. “Of course,” he added restlessly, “many people say it’s dangerous, irresponsibly dangerous. Larger numbers of people, though, insist on the right to risk their own lives. It’s the clear popular will.”
    The compere introduced a heavier note to the discussion.
    “Ah, now then, Mr Twelk, you will recall that perhaps the harshest critic of the Ballooners, and of The Rise generally, at any rate in the literary world, is the author John Groal – ”
    “Ah yes indeedy, John has let his views be known. I respect John, though I don’t advise him to turn up to a Skytrekkers’ meeting!”
    “It so happens we have him in the studio at this moment – ”
    The camera swerved to give the audience a view of a gloomy hulk sprawled in his chair. Groal is about the size and shape of John Wayne in his last decade.
    The man rumbled, “I wouldn’t waste my time at one of your jamborees, Martin!”
    Twelk retorted, “On second thoughts, it might do you good – a reactionary like you might think he’s going to get lynched, but near-death experiences have been known to convert – ”
    “Ah, come on,” drawled Groal, “it’s probably just a plot to kidnap me by balloon…”
    To me, the trivial nature of this encounter was unexpected. I had expected profound enmity between two opposed champions in the culture war. Groal symbolised all the old-fashioned antagonism to The Rise, the fear that it would sap the traditional frontier spirit of Down Under by diverting it into easier northern climes, while Twelk for his part stood for faith in the new movement. Yet instead of such heavy stuff, I heard good-humoured bickering. Blessed irrelevance! When you’ve been pressured for days on end, by fearfully relevant stuff, nothing gives greater relief than to be able to say, “this has nothing to do with me”.
    Understandably, such mildness was less welcome to the compere. In an effort to whip up controversy, he again tackled the balloonist.
    “Mr Twelk, it has been suggested that the country is in the grip of too much excitement – unhealthy for some, especially those who have lost their – er – grip, literally. Statistics have shown – ”
    Twelk nodded, “I know all that. I’m not immune, myself. It can ‘get’ you, ‘get’ anyone in a moment, the awful sense of where we really are,” (here comes the heavy stuff after all, I thought,) “even though we have lived here all our lives. Any deep emotion can trigger it. Yes, many poor devils have, as we say, met the moment when the strength goes out of your fingers and you cease to hold the rail. Let’s face it, the threat of mass-squartcho, that’s our nightmare. And yet – things could be a lot worse – morale remains good, despite our losses! And why is that? I’ll tell you why. Because of a widespread belief in the value of the struggle! Because – and here I reckon I dare speak for us all – it’s broadening and deepening our characters! That’s why the Facilitator is trusted and respected, instead of being torn to pieces.”
    The compere turned to Groal. “What’s your response to that?”
    If it was going to happen at all, this was the cue for a real quarrel. The frail rapport between the voluble progressive and the terse traditionalist ought to snap now if at all. Remarkable, that Twelk had been doing most of the talking though it was Groal who was the professional wordsmith. For that reason, and because he should not want to lose the argument, the heavy man had to make some effort now.
    Groal stirred, making his chair creak, as he said, “Wel-l-l-l-l… it’s true, struggle toughens the mind. Yes, if we come through this, the character of our nation….”
    My concentration blurred at this point. Whoops – they’re AGREEING, and that means –
    I couldn’t focus; my mind smeared and ran like watercolour paint in a shower, as facts mingled into one message:
    Back to the wave, an on-message wave, its crest the more pointed, as from right and left the pressure mounts to the single tip, the boss decision. Everyone agrees to go ahead.
   And what of my relaxed interlude, my supposed holiday from heavy significance? Didn’t last long, did it?
    I had better not expect any further such respite, before the final smash of wave on rock… Chairs scraped; the coffee break was over. On the TV screen the chat show host was still vainly attempting to hot up the debate, but Groal and Twelk just would not disagree. Then, as we all walked away, I caught words which suggested belated understanding, that the really exciting thing – much hotter news than any debate – was precisely the agreement between Twelk and Groal, and, beyond that, the wider consensus that we’re in a race – as the host declared – “a race between transportation and catastrophe…. no turning back…” At that point we receded out of earshot. I was glad enough of that; TV had begun to get on my nerves. I remarked as much to Cora.
    She did not answer me. She had seen something, up ahead. I murmured, “What is it?”
    “Oh, probably nothing much, only, near the front of the conga, did you notice, two of us have been led away.”
    “No, krunk, I hadn’t noticed,” I confessed, ashamed. This was the kind of event I ought to have been on the look-out for. “So we’re two fewer now.”
    “Except that two extras seem to have joined our group.”
    I kept watch and did not miss any more changes. The substitutions were made every five or ten minutes, quietly, as our group wound its way deeper along the gradual spiral descent. Vic, up at the front, must have noticed, but he did nothing, so far as I could see, so why should I intervene? He was the Facilitator, the one with the power; all I had was my nominal appointment as chief of Security, a laughable situation – I had no staff, just my eyes and brain and voice, all less well-placed than Vic’s. I therefore did nothing but churn over the situation, hoping that I would not disgrace myself, and even hoping that I might unreasonably triumph, like I had done at the Redakka. This time it would be with Cora as a witness, and as a result she would take me more seriously henceforth... and while I thus daydreamed, more and more of the substitutes blended successfully into the group. Of course I knew something was going on, but with Vic present I could never be sure who was using whom, and I was not yet sufficiently desperate to risk a push up to the front and a direct question; it seemed better to wait, but I didn’t know – couldn’t even decide what type of hero would have been best in this scene. Some, like Conan, get out of tight spots by means of superior muscle power and reflexes. Some, like Captain Kirk, think and talk their way out of trouble. But a variety, let’s call him the sniffer, survives and triumphs because he manages to sniff out the character of events, to judge what sort of episode he’s been blown into, what shade of dark the storm clouds are. It’s a gift which I had begun to hope I might have, despite my long record of being taken by surprise. Certainly, if any chance of victory came my way, it must be of this kind. In my concentration upon this issue I entered a long tunnel of thought, and so hard did I strive to unravel the mystery that I failed to notice what happened right next to me, for when I turned to speak to Cora, to say we must assume that the tycoons are behind this, I saw not her face but a stranger’s.
    I reflected bitterly on how easy it had been for them to do it. They had only needed to employ another young woman with long straight black hair and the same height and slimness, to put her in the place of the girl I knew. Furious at my lapse of attention, I glared around me to spot, if possible, their next move. Cora had carried ticket 39. Logic suggested that the last ticket holder, number 40, my own stupid self, was due next for replacement.
    I wondered what the excuse would be. Some sidling approach, of two or more figures, no doubt would bring a murmur, short and reasonable, “you’ve had a good slice of the tour, time to give someone else a turn, give your ticket to so-and-so,” that sort of thing, and then I’d be led away and Vic would be left with an entourage composed entirely of his enemies.
    I could surely resist, though. I could bluster – “you can’t do this to me, the Facilitator’s nephew, his Chief of Security – ”
    Or rather – more dignified – point out to them that although they can do what they like here and now in this little nest of their power, they can’t escape the consequences if they enrage the government and people of Birannithep.
    But they’ll have a story ready, won’t they. They’ll know how to stage an ‘accident’ –
    While thus I debated, I noticed that the view of the sky below had disappeared. The ‘conga’ now snaked along the floor of a tapering steel cave. Its walls were perforated with openings on either side, and crossed with a steel web of skeletal buttresses and beams.
    No one had come to replace me, and with every minute that passed, it seemed less likely that it would happen, more likely that their retention of me in the group was deliberate, as the cave steadily narrowed and we marched towards an end. Perhaps they did not dare remove me from the scene; that was my favourite explanation. On the other hand perhaps they did not need to remove me – and this glummer idea had the stronger teeth. I would bear its bite for as long as I could in the hope that nice, friendly facts would come to my rescue.
    The cave had shrunk to little more than a corridor, when all of a sudden, presumably at some prearranged signal or arrangement of timing, the stranger woman beside me, and almost all of the people in front of me, darted away leftwards and rightwards and disappeared into the dim openings on either side, so that nothing remained of the conga except for a handful of figures at the front end: then they, too, went away in a single group, to the right, and I alone remained while my steps faltered.
    I was too far back to see for sure, yet I could hazard a guess as to which particular opening they’d taken Vic through; it looked to be just where the corridor began lazily to curve rightwards. To follow that clue seemed the natural course; what else could I have done? Go back and call for help? Call for assistance from the police? I had no proof they were needed. Typical it would be, if I made a fool of us all during an election campaign tour.
    I took the decision to follow the group ahead, alone.
    My burden wasn’t about the odds against me, or the varied possibilities which made it so hard for me to anticipate what the immediate future might hold; confusion (for once) didn’t come into it. On the contrary, the burden was an aching certainty.
    Duncan, it said, you’re a sad case.
    What kind of fool was I, not to admit the obvious? Answer: the cartoon character kind, who, when he has walked over the edge of a cliff, continues to take several horizontal steps in the empty air until he realizes what he has done. Very well – the thought snarled – I shall postpone that realization, shall continue to ignore the truth for as long as possible, to walk on air and not look down!
    Primed with this desperate arrogance, I came to the turn in the corridor, where it tangentially touched the circumference of something big and thereafter followed that circumference. I had choices, if I wanted to find out what the circle contained: I could go into it down any of the short side-passages to the right. I chose the nearest – and I came onto a balcony which faced into the Bubble Chamber.
    I recognized it immediately, though magazine illustrations weren’t much good at conveying the reality of it. The pearly interior, of cathedral-like immensity, surrounded the central hulks of machinery like a Ptolemaic firmament enveloping old Earth, and this spherical wonder could not be captured in a photograph. My eyes roved among the mottlings of the “firmament”. You couldn’t pursue the astronomical analogy far enough to call them stars: they glowed too diffusely, like radioactive puddles; “nebulae”, more like. Accidentally, Biri science and engineering had created a thing of vast beauty here.
    The Chamber was in operation: as I watched, the puddles of light pulsed bright and dim, bright and dim: some instrument or engine was being tested and its radiative output was being mapped in three dimensions. In this specialised realm of controlled power, it would be easy to arrange an “accident” to the Facilitator.
    I heard a swish; a door had hissed across the passage behind me. Retreat cut off; how about advance? I turned to the balcony rail: it was gated; I pushed at it – no, it was locked. Very well, I could climb over, if my mediocre head for heights allowed me. A cautious lean forward…. my head and elbow encountered a transparent membrane, more like a pressurized air-jet than actual solid material. Whatever its nature, it yielded as much as a flattish tyre, no more. Therefore the balcony was sealed off. No way to go through and descend the steps onto one of the walkways that threaded across the Chamber. I was trapped up here.
    So, helplessly, I watched.
    Vic stood more or less in the centre of the Chamber, on an isolated observation platform. He appeared to shimmer slightly, which made me guess that they had enclosed him, also, in a restraint-field.
    Facing him on other similar perches among the central machinery were four famous men, all tycoons of Lishom-Galeeg: the moon-faced Taoin Shurdle whom I had seen minutes earlier on a TV screen; Iknek Remm, director of Remm Suspension, tall and rawboned; Jesse Narthing of JN Cables, swarthy, polo-necked, his arms restlessly lithe as though yearning to practise his golf swing; the Cabinet traitor Wilbur Groamcuck, his face a pasty blob.
    Vic had not seen me – his back was turned in my direction – but they had noticed my presence, I was quite sure, and I became certain of it when Narthing reached to his side and flipped a switch and I immediately heard a crackle close to me: of course, now that I was here, they reckoned that I might as well listen in.
    “…any reason why not?” Shurdle was saying, in his repulsive wheedle. “What have we got to lose?”
    “The patience of the people.” Vic’s voice rang out clearly. “If it so happens that I do not walk out of here, they won’t believe – ”
    “Oh yes they will,” Shurdle contradicted, “if one of us is lost in the Accident too.”
    “You’re floundering,” stated Vic. “You can’t really believe that will work.”
    “Why not? One charred body can be arranged. One of us, chosen by lot, will disappear for a while.”
    “If that were such a good plan, why the talk? What are you waiting for?”
    Don’t bait them, for heaven’s sake, I silently implored.
    Iknek Remm’s gravelly voice intervened, “You evidently mistake our reluctance for indecisiveness. You shall shortly realize your error.”
    “How shortly?” jeered Vic. (Krunk, he is baiting them, I groaned to myself.)
    “As soon as it becomes obvious that we cannot make a deal with you.”
    I winced in anticipation of the contemptuous reply I was sure my uncle would make to that. However, he surprised me again. Flatly and without mockery, he simply said:
    “No one is free to make a deal about the Rise. It goes ahead, no matter what.”
    Iknek Remm coughed to break the awkward silence.
    “You underestimate yourself, Facilitator.”
    “Oh? You think a puppet can call off its show?”
     “Don’t try to take us for fools. With you out of the way we’d at least have a… breather… in which to put our point of view to the public.”
    “Unfortunately for you,” said Vic, “the public can figure out for themselves the reason why you oppose the Rise.”
    “Then we’ll just take the issue a bit further. We’ll suggest to them that it’s reasonable, that the burden of proof should lie on the innovator of policy. We would assure them that conservatism is not anti-change, we’re in favour of organic change, we just oppose the arbitrary amputation of our past.”
    “In other words, you’d be telling the public that they had made a mistake in backing me.”
    “We’d put it to them respectfully, but yes, that’s the message.”
    Vic laughed outright. “The public are in no mood to accept any criticism, no matter how justified it may be, of their behaviour. If you try it, you know how their spokesmen will respond? Tactical exaggeration! Oh, so we’re bad, are we, we’re stupid, are we? I see! It’s like that is it? You know the sort of babyish thing.”
    Remm’s head had already begun to shake, in wide vigorous swings of denial.
    “That won’t work here. Everybody’s wise to it. You wouldn’t know, as a foreigner, as an Earthmind, but we’re all so wise to tactical exaggeration of that sort, that we actually have a word for it – ”
    “I know,” interrupted Vic. “Ooshty-boosht.”
    Silence again. It lasted longer this time. They were really dazed, it seemed, by the revelation that Vic was up-to-date linguistically. So stumped were they, that before they could retrieve any of their lost threads, he had seized the initiative from them. He went on:
    “I also know the reply, in cases like this, if anyone were to accuse the public of ooshty-boosht – they’d say, ‘get some thummu…’”
    Iknek Remm croaked, “You may have heard it from children…”
    “Nah, that’s irrelevant, children don’t know what it really means. They just use it to mean ‘come off it’. But we know what meanings it’s packed with, don’t we? Thummu is grown-up necessary hypocrisy, it’s resistance to evil by means of non-involvement, it’s repression by taboo, it’s recognition that evil is an attack on identity… thummu is knowing when both sides ought to shut up.”
    Which he then did, and so did they. Thus descended upon the scene the longest silence so far, a silence which had to mean that the tycoons now admitted Vic’s language to be more than the equal of their own. And with this, the scene – how can I put this? – turned itself inside out. Morally, probabilistically, right from the start as I at last saw, the odds had been against the oligarchs, and the Bubble Chamber the scene of their last desperate stand, the corner he had backed them into – not the other way round.
    The hiss of the door came again to my ears. The way was open for me to leave. At the same moment I saw the shimmer around Vic die away; he was free too. He then stepped off his platform, and without a word more he began to plod out of the Chamber, while his opponents, their arms slack by their sides, resignedly watched him go.
    I could guess their thinking: if Chandler’s that far ahead, he must have arranged for all eventualities, including his own death. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing we can do to stop The Rise. We might as well let him go. Let them both go.
    Yes, the certainty of their defeat is quite as plain to me as if I could read minds, for I know the emotion, it’s echoed in me, that beaten feel – though in me it’s only the idea of my own importance that has been defeated. Quite dead, that notion. I played no role whatsoever in Vic’s triumph.
    Thank goodness Cora wasn’t a witness, after all.

Day 935,312,441:

My very last journal entry:
    Could start scribbling it now, while the girl has gone to ‘powder her nose’. The wrong girl, more’s the pity. They call this place a hittifug, which seems to mean ‘romantic restaurant’. Something about the coloured smoke, which swirls near ceiling-level, visual music accompanying the slow beat of the waltz-band. Don’t know how the effect is produced. Just the place for me to have taken Cora, if I had dared, as I might have dared, had Fate placed me on the pinnacle I’d hoped for. Ridiculous expectations. Can hardly even visualize them now. Just as well, I suppose…
    (Later)
    Gemma plonked back in her seat. “Down in the dumps, are we?”
    “Sorry, yeah, I must be terrible company.” Trying to make light of it, I added, with exaggerated assonance, “Dumped by my presumption…”
    “What are you talking about? - No, don’t tell me,” she added, changing course. “Don’t want to sound like I’m trying to worm things out of you.”
    “Worm away, if you want.”
    “No, not now, I have a different aim. I want to prove to you that I’m not the treacherous jade you thought you knew. So, forget my question. I’m being good now. Not trying to pump you, see? Won’t voice aloud my wondering what you’ve been up to since I last saw you, only – well – I bet it was interesting.”
    I could not help but grin. A thousand pities, I again thought, that this is the wrong girl. But that’s cause and effect for you – wrong fate brings wrong girl.
    Half an hour previously I had been mooching blindly along a walkway between my hotel and the shopping district of Lishom-Galeeg, when I’d literally bumped into the buxom Gemma Rosten. I achieved the difficult feat of not recognizing her immediately, which just goes to show how much I was in a world of my own. She said, “No worries, Dunc, my shock-absorbing figure has blunted the impact,” whereupon I could no longer fail to know who she was. But it was not necessary to reel with surprise; after all, here was just one more Biri drawn to this city like a moth to a beacon. For here is where The Rise shall shortly be incarnated in The Launch.
    She saw I was in a bad way. Kind-heartedly she drew me into the hittifug and now here we were, at a cosy table, and she was telling me I didn’t need to tell all.
    “Er – anyhow,” I asked myself aloud, “what is there to tell? Nothing much,” I answered myself.
    Gemma quivered with laughter. “I like that, ‘nothing much’! What you really mean, Duncan dear, is that I am nothing much, not enough for you to be bothered to tell me.”
    “No, Gemma, don’t think that: you’re not nothing, you’re quite a lot, I can assure you.”
    “Hmm... Too much, maybe, of one sort of thing. I lured you, didn’t I, and you haven’t forgiven me.” She sounded grave now.
    “That old episode! I’d actually forgotten; so much has happened since then.”
    “Top secret stuff, no doubt. – Not that I want to know…”
    “I have no secrets from you or from anyone… All that dramatic stuff is over now. What you see is what you get, and what you see, in this direction, is a cog. Or less than a cog. An average piece of cannon fodder.”
    “Fired by what?”
    “Eh?”
    “You said you were cannon fodder. And so – the cannon? Is what?”
    She had quickly forgotten her undertaking not to probe. No matter – the answer was simple, and I gave it:
    “I have joined up as ordinary skyman on the Wixibb.”
    The corners of her mouth turned down.
    I found it faintly interesting. How would she react? Poor Gemma Rosten the contrarian, she’d have to disapprove somehow, but how exactly would she work it? Straight condemnation of my part in a warmongering enterprise? Or – more subtle – the suggestion that it might be all right for some but that I personally was not suited?
    And never mind me, what about her whole world? Here and now in the context of The Rise, which itself was a kind of flouting of previous history, as well as being the new orthodoxy, what stance can a proudly unconventional anti-trend trendy take? Go against the new flow because it’s the flow, or go with it because it’s new?
    As a diversionary tactic I might have pointed out the dilemma, but I couldn’t be bothered, so I waited passively.
    Presently, looking down at her plate, she said, “I don’t have a full Earth memory like you, Dunc, but I do know some Earth literature….”
    I’ll bet you do, I thought. Tags, quotes, cultural flotsam, sticks with which to beat your own culture, standard student stuff.
    She went on, “Dulsy et decorum pro patria mori…”
    “You pronounce the Dulce with a hard ‘c’,” I corrected her. “And you’ve left out an est, I think…”
    “Whatever. The point is, war is a horrible thing.”
    “We don’t need Horace filtered through Owen to tell us that.”
    “I wonder,” she said gently, “if maybe you do…”
    “Uh? Listen, Gemma, I’ve been in a battle. I know about the horror.”
    She smiled, “You were probably drunk at the time; I don’t mean on alcohol, I mean there must have been some kind of war-dance or equivalent, to key you all up to the pitch; whereas literature, the right kind of literature, can sober you up from the war-dance euphoria.”
    I gazed at her admiringly.
    “You’re good at this! Only – it’s by no means certain there’ll even be a war.”
    “Come on, the fleet’s armed to the teeth; what else are you expecting? Surely the Gonomong aren’t just going to pop their heads out of the forest and wave to you as you fly up past Udrem.”
    “Hey – are you trying to talk me out of it? Because that’s what it sounds like.” I said this tolerantly. I was quite touched, and at the same time impressed; I thought she was arguing her case rather well.
    Not that she had a ghost of a chance of success, if her aim was to get me to shirk.
    She toyed with her fork. Eyes downcast at first, suddenly her gaze lifted, and flashed diamond-like into mine. “Putting you off – you think that’s what I was doing? No, Dunc, you were putting me off by that talk of you being cannon-fodder.”
    A glow suffused me, a transfusion of warmth of heart. “Thanks, Gemma, for not agreeing, for caring enough not to agree. I appreciate it.”
    “Good,” she snapped. “As a matter of fact I’m offering more than verbal support. Want another cliché from Earth lit.? In wartime, the girl gives her all before her man risks his everything.”
    I allowed myself a few silent breaths. Then, tenderly and tiredly, I mused aloud.
    “A day ago, it would have been child’s play for my ego to insist that the rules of honour be, er, stretched, adjusted for special circumstances… Now, however, I know, really know, that I am not exceptional at all, I’m ordinary, so I’d better follow the ordinary rules because, you know, they’re all I have; if I were to let myself down in that way, there’d be nothing left of me, just as you, Gemma, had better not be Respectable, else there’d be nothing left of your loveable subversive self.”
    Enough, thank goodness, remained of her smile. I had not enraged her.
    The waiter bustled up. “Sorry for the delay,” he said, “we’re doing a bit too well tonight. Here’s the menu, and here,” he handed us an extra sheet, “are details of our Election Night Special….”
    “Looks good,” said Gemma after a glance. “We’ll go for that,” she added decisively. “No arguments, Dunc: the treat’s on me.”
    From around the corners of our own candlelit booth we could see the hittifug was packed. And from outside, noises and shapes, blaring and parading past the windows, seeped in to add an extra blur of excitement to our already stirred emotions.
    By tomorrow morning the people of Birannithep will know whom they have chosen for the seats in the Parliament at Savaluk, Topland, which have stayed empty for millennia. But more generally, also, we’re all elected to something.
    And there’s a positive light in which to see my own obscure doom.
    Cannon fodder gets fired far.

>>  7: The Grand Fleet