kroth:  the rise

7: the grand fleet

For the next three days they still went through the motions of ‘keeping me posted’. By “they” I mean the real high-ups, the Government, Vic the Facilitator, and some of the fleet officers: they kept me ‘in the know’. I had, after all, been the official chief of Security – ludicrous though that seems – and they seemed to think I’d been a success simply because Vic had come through the election campaign alive; so, perhaps out of gratitude, or courtesy, or maybe just habit, some V.I.P.s who happened to be in the area for conference or inspection would pop in to see me for a chat about policy and the latest top-level decisions. On these occasions, whether I was in mess-hall or lounge, gym or weapons-ground, lecture-room or in my own private quarters in the naval barracks close to the Yards of Lishom-Galeeg, I would take a short break and revert to a semblance of participation at high level. It would have been rude to refuse. But my heart wasn’t in it. I had turned my back on political stardom. My fellow-trainees seemed to understand this; they were ready enough to treat me as one of themselves, after I informed them that by joining up as a skyman I had resigned my special status. They could tell that I wasn’t pretending; that I really did not want any more hot air pumped into the gas-bag of my deflated importance. A man who yearns at last to devote himself to some task within his limited capabilities has a clenched aura which (who knows?) may have reminded some of my crewmates of similar turning-points in their own lives.
    Vic saw me once before the Launch. He caught me on my way from quarters to simulator-room on the second day of training. After a bit of friendly back-chat, he added in throwaway style:
    “Keep an eye on Rapannaf, will you?”
    I blinked, “Eh?”
    He smiled, “Eh? What? How? You sound as though you’d never heard of the fellow.”
    “I hadn’t heard from or about him, for a long time.”
    “Well, he’ll be your commanding officer on the voyage.”
    “Commanding! He?”
    “Yes, you’ll be under his orders in the Wixibb, but if you get the chance, if you have any of those hunches of yours, if the situation arises, please do what you can to keep him alive. He is the only one of us who knows all the ways to get to the Oracle Root.”
    The memory punched its way into the forefront of my mind: that series of caverns in Udrem, where I had slaved for the Gonomong; the strange root-shaped pipe into which my captors had bowed their heads; the conjectures which I had heard concerning the influence of the Slimes upon the Gonomong –
    All possible because the Slimes, though confined to the South Polar region of Kroth, might transmit their evil will northwards through the inground root system.
    “Oh…. yes….” I stared.
    “Yes, you’re piecing the thought together, aren’t you?” remarked Vic. “No need to say much about it at this stage. But the Root might be the key target, if it should prove necessary to land a force in Udrem. A risky procedure – ”
    I snorted at this understatement.
    “ – but quite impossible without Prince Rapannaf to lead the attacking party.”
    The implication was clear: I, too, in that event, would again enter the dread equatorial forest, and perhaps also the cavern where I had worked during the last days of my enslavement. Why, then, was I not horrified?
    To think of a raid on Udrem was like reminiscing about some dramatic film. During great public events, one’s private life, I find, can be peculiarly calm. All the excitement is outside and it leaves the individual with a sense of peace in himself; you feel there is no need to create your own destiny because it is being done for you; a matter of riding a flow rather than carving out a career. Socially, too, the comradeship reduces the need for a personal quest: you feel less alone, more a part of a pageant. And so, because you don’t have to search for meaning (since it’s raying all around you), you accept what you’re given.
    But not everyone I knew might have the wherewithal…
    I remarked, “I hate to think how Elaine will feel about this. She’s so protective towards Rapannaf.”
    Vic shrugged. “Womenfolk have to get used to their men risking their lives in war. Elaine’s luckier than most; she’s flying with him. Head nurse on the Wixibb. You’ll see her, no doubt.”
    I considered, and decided that I did not particularly wish to see her. No point in digging up that stratum of buried emotion, which had been metamorphosed into mere melancholy by the pressure of more recent heartbreaks.

*

The day of the Launch – Day 935,312,444 – was a carnival of living history.
    In my new dark blue uniform with the cap pulled low, I could cheer and wave without much chance of being recognized by the rest of the crowd at the Yards.
    Vic, at the microphone, was a tiny spot-lit glory adorning the far end of the strut which protruded like a diving-board from Dock Number One. The multitude went quiet as they listened to the Facilitator’s speech climaxing the ceremony of launch:
    “…the very same movement in the ether which produced the New Star has also produced the swell and the surge in our imagination and wills, to propel us to greater things…”
    He pressed a lever and the crowd roared as the first hull began to move: that of the flagship, the Teffenengleng, with her captain, Marcus Fenn-Dihoth, a visible dot inside the forward blister, and a skeleton crew, chosen by lot, distributed along its lateral ports. Slowly, slowly the colossus eased its way down its birth canal, with small bursts from this or that propeller to keep it kept clear of this and that bank of rock, to gain the open sky and come to a hovering rest just a few fathoms beneath the sloping under-surface of the world.
    Next came my ship, the Wixibb, to which I gave a specially loud cheer, though I don’t suppose my waving arms were noticed by Prince Rapannaf in the blister as it slid past. Although it might have been fun to have been part of the skeleton crew, the fact that the lot had not fallen on me was the best of proofs that fate had finally decided to leave me be.
    One by one the great airships, all forty-eight of them (forty-one built from Biri resources, the rest paid for by some of the smaller nations of Hudgung), were edged and manoeuvred out of the Yards and down into the sky; thousands of spectators and millions of TV viewers watched and applauded and hugged and danced, amid an outbreak of pop festival atmosphere, in which coloured streamers swirled while Sooputt Birrawill and the Flotations gyrated on stage.
    The rejoicing was all the greater, in that the successful launch of a sky-fleet was a triumph of efficiency, more remarkable, in that respect, than a similar feat on Earth would have been, for in Kroth’s universe the laws of physics were vaguer and less consistent, and machinery therefore less reliable, demanding so many redundancies and fail-safes as to pile vastly increased pressure upon the planners and engineers who were responsible for the outcome. The challenge and the achievement brought to my inner eye a little caption of text about American war production, in an A-level textbook chapter on World War Two: just a small box-paragraph below a picture of one of Henry Kaiser’s Liberty Ships, of which three per day had been launched during every day in 1943… I thought: the Biris’ performance might bear comparison with that.
    Meanwhile, all through the celebrations, work went on as elevator cables and fuel lines were let down and attached to the waiting hulls, to make ready for the serious business of lowering equipment and supplies, which would take many more days. In my stupidity I had assumed at first that “Launch” meant “Departure”; by now, though, I understood that the Departure, the real beginning of the voyage, had been scheduled for twenty days after Launch.
    Somebody nudged my arm. “A good show,” said a small, dark, Indian-looking fellow, one of my new shipmates-to-be: he was Manapti Follagan, a highly educated recruit from a small Hudgungian nation thousands of miles away, chosen to represent his people in The Rise. “Such a good show,” he continued, “it makes me hope.” He waggled his brows.
    “Hope what, Manapti?”
    “Ah, that one day we won’t say eaveline any more, we won’t even say sagorizon like the Slantlanders, we’ll be able to say HORIZON.”
    “Because we’ll get right up to Topland? Yeah, that’s the idea, all right.”
    “Maybe further.”
    “Further North than the North Pole?” I responded lightly, deliberately misunderstanding him. I didn’t want any part of wild talk about re-triggering Earth. On the other hand I couldn’t set limits to what might happen.
    Whereas it used to be the case that every theme in my life turned out eventually to be nothing but an excuse to go down, down, down, descending the world’s flank, now, by contrast, motives and ideologies all appeared sucked into the one ascension up, up, up….
    Small wonder, that some people in their fuzzy expectations raised The Rise even further, so that up transcended its geographical significance and came to mean up to a higher state of reality. I did not argue; happy so long as I could enjoy my new-found obscurity, I shrugged off the question of ultimate aims. During breaks I liked to stroll the corridors inside the Wixibb, appreciating its regimented rows of cubical cabins, their straight lines an antidote to the appalling flexibility of life. I, the fate-pummelled Duncan Wemyss, could efface myself in these undistinguished ranks, and recover from inflammation of the ego… And I need never fear a preponderance of cubic monotony; discipline and danger were antidotes to each other; overarching adventure would see to that –
    That interval of just under three weeks between Launch and Departure was the period of my private victory, my quiet, successful adjustment to the role of ordinary skyman.
    I was kept busy enough, with my training and with various duties in connection with the preparation of the giant vessel. The term “airship” may mislead those with exact memories of Earth. The fleet built at Lishom-Galeeg was not composed of small inhabited hulls slung underneath ovoid balloons. Here, rather, the ovoid itself was the habitable volume, a reinforced aluminium structure, firm yet light as the bones of a bird, with the hydrogen for buoyancy contained in sealed passages which ran like arteries and veins throughout. Making sure that the bulkheads were leak-proof and fireproof was one of the duties which occupied me and my fellow skymen during this time of testing and re-testing.
    We kept so well to our schedules that towards the end the pressure of work slackened off, and I was able to pay more attention to gossip and the media. The atmosphere, as Departure approached, was more solemn than it had been at Launch. People voiced second thoughts; I don’t mean hesitations; rather, the second thoughts were deepenings of the first thoughts.
    Vern Edmondson, a skyman on my corridor who looked like a chartered accountant, remarked on D-Day Minus One:
    “That comedian’s been quiet for a while, thank goodness.”
    I knew whom he meant: Korastiboon, with his endless outspoken jokes about falling into the blue.
    Vern went on pensively:
    “He’s right, though. Runs of luck must come to an end sometime. Indeed they ought to. Infinite prolongation would discredit a run of luck – would mean you couldn’t honestly call it luck any more.”
    As he spoke he and I were running hand-held detectors up and down a wall, watching for the red blink that would indicate leaking hydrogen molecules. I glanced sideways, saw how serious he looked, and chose the reply that would un-crease his forehead:
    “Yeah, if you were to beat the odds all the time, they would cease to be odds, and then where would be the credit in winning?”
    “None at all,” he agreed, glad that I understood; “we’d just be the pawns of krunky old Fate.”
    “Hmm… but let’s not be rude to Fate,” I said with melodramatically lowered voice. At that, he smiled briefly, and reached for a radio set which he had brought with him and placed on the floor.
    “You remind me,” he remarked, twiddling a dial, “ – talking about being rude, or at any rate outspoken: the Archbishop should be preaching his send-off sermon round about now.”
    A piano sonata tinkled to its end and then we heard an announcer introduce the Archbishop of Gannerynch.
    Ray Ballater, Primate of the Biri Church, and thorn in the side of Facilitator Vic Chandler and indeed of the entire Ascendancy Party since its triumph in the elections, was a stirrer. Sometimes he seemed to be anti-Rise, denouncing the Fleet as militaristic. Sometimes on the contrary he seemed to be saying the Rise wasn’t going far enough, because it ought to include a crusade for this or that socio-political aim. Either way, he made sport out of undermining certainties and pricking bubbles of enthusiasm; and he wasn’t an easy man to side-line. The most that Vic could dare was to insist that the prelate give his sermon no later than the eve of Departure – “speeches on the eve, action on the day”. A fair enough standpoint, given the need to sail early to maximise the daylight; so Vic got his way on that one. Tomorrow there’d be no ceremony, but today the Archbishop had his chance to sound off.
    Vern and I listened to the voice that trumpeted from the radio, cold and clear.
    The homily began acceptably enough, with a God-helps-those-who-helps-themselves message, praising the efforts which had gone into constructing the Fleet, and the nobility of its aim. “To re-connect the hemispheres of our world; to unite the peoples of Hudgung and of Yeyld in peace… this is an old dream, and our dedicated effort may soon give it reality... All who have worked for this achievement may feel justly proud… more proud than if our priority had been to huddle at home and merely pray for safety while the winds of change blew from the New Star…”
    “Good, good, keep that tone,” muttered Vern in his understandable wish that further controversy be avoided so close to zero hour. His head drooped, doubtless lulled as I was by the platitudes, pleased to be bored. Ballater seemed to be saying all the right things.
    For a while the archbishop maintained his unexceptionable flow:
    “We all have times when we wish God would interfere directly in our lives, stretching forth His hand to mend this or that, but in our wiser moments we appreciate His decision to work indirectly instead – in other words, to wear us as the glove on His hand, or to use us as His instruments; you could say, to employ us in our own salvation….
    But then came the jab, the sting in the message:
    “Suppose, for example, He had freed the slaves of Udrem by a blast of miraculous power – then that would have meant we’d lost all chance of any credit for the job, and moreover, the slaves would have lost their chance of gratitude and respect towards their fellow men…”
    It was the way Ballater said it, the smooth way he assumed that our voyage north would include the rescue of the slaves… the way he buried it inside his argument, so as to make it harder to extricate… God won’t free the slaves by waving a wand, which leaves it up to us to do it.
    Ballater – no doubt about it – was trying to force Vic’s hand; to make policy.
    Past briefings and conversations had made it clear that Vic was against the idea of intervention in Udrem to free the slaves, on this trip at any rate. Sure, we were prepared to fight the Gonomong if they tried to oppose our passage – but that was a long way from adopting intervention as a mission objective.
    This, then, was a Church-State dispute; but among the captains and commanders, also, I knew the matter had been the subject of argument.
    After the sermon ended, and Vern and I were wordlessly chewing it over, I could picture our thoughtful stillness replicated throughout Fleet and barracks. Were we skymen about to risk our lives in a mission with controversy at its heart, under a divided leadership?
    I was interested, but not really worried, for I was not even a surfer of events any more, I was just a particle of the wave. Besides, it obviously all boiled down merely to a question of timing. Whatever we did, our mission was bound to bring closer the liberation of Udrem’s slaves.
    The radio announcer was on, saying: “And that was the archbishop of Gannerynch giving his blessing to the Fleet, from…. ah…. just a moment…. ah, here is the Facilitator himself, to add a comment – ” “Give me that,” said Vic’s voice; then he crackled forth:
    “We’re ALL called upon to be facilitators, and that means, among other things, choosing the right speed.
    “Abraham Lincoln was careful not to go too far too fast, in freeing the slaves, lest he lose everything. I say he had the right approach.
    “Asking for everything at once is just self-indulgence. And to justify it by assuming that if we make the right noises and strike the right poses God will immediately reward us with success, is to attempt to force God’s hand.
    “But don’t think I am rebuking Archbishop Ballater. He made the right point himself: that we are God’s agents.
    “Rather let me go further than he, in realizing that the word ‘God’ must refer not to an Omnipotent Creator but to an Entangled Creator, who is so caught up in his project, that he must commit himself to working within the limits of his genre, making the most of it by respecting its limits while also seeking, like any great artist, to transcend those limits without destroying the character of the work…. and if I am to believe in such a Being, two things follow.
    “One: that old idea of an Omnipotent God is an unfortunate hangover from primitive religion and the sooner we ditch it the better. Far from being omnipotent, God is really up against it, as His fleshly career in Palestine showed.
    “Two: that we, His creatures, when we can bring our efforts and motives into line with His, can merge with His fingertips, as they probe and mould creation’s clay, to shape a better universe.
    “You know what, people of Birannithep? I am convincing myself as I speak, that if we thus co-operate with those transcendent fingertips, we/they are certain to press on towards the largest triumph, so there’s absolutely no point in being impatient. More haste, less speed; less haste, more speed; and best of all, no haste – CERTAINTY!”
    Archbishop Ballater, I imagine, was stunned by this encroachment upon his patch. The radio, after a silence interval longer than that which had followed the previous speech, burbled music once more.
    “Music while you work,” I said, and resumed the wielding of the hydrogen detector.
    “Old Ballater was trying to jump the gun,” said Vern.
    “Maybe because he’s never had to fire a gun,” said I; but I didn’t really know; I was just guessing. And one might object that the particular policy question had not been answered, had only been shelved.
    I imagine, though, that every skyman who had listened in to the exchange had felt sharpened by it – as was Vic’s intention, no doubt, in the hope that if we were sharp enough we would not need to know too much in advance.

*

That night, we all slept on board. At intervals I awoke to the gentle swing of the huge ship. I knew it hung slackly, its weight almost though not quite neutralised by the hydrogen in its hollow bones; knowing this truth, I pictured it 3-D and therefore, though shut inside my tiny cabin, I felt far from confined; the slow and mighty motions were telling me what I knew but could not see, and hence I felt closer to vertigo than if the walls had been transparent and I had been able to see the stars below, the wind-rocked lights of the other ships around us, and the variegated glows of Lishom-Galeeg above our heads.
    Each ship was virtually floating free. Indeed it would have been possible, at somewhat greater risk and cost, for them to hover absolutely free during this final count-down – but to maintain formation and to avoid collisions in the windy sky under the city would have cost extra fuel and sleepless nights for the captains, and so the light mooring tethers were maintained for a few hours more.
    That night before Departure, we tossed and turned and repeatedly dozed, under the sloping under-surface of Kroth, like lodgers under an attic-ceiling who hope soon to relocate to better things… a future pictured vaguely, sparky with dreams. But we trusted we’d be at our posts by nine o’clock.
    Next day, sure enough, after breakfast, at exactly nine o’clock we cut loose and sailed. I was stationed at portal number 45 and caught a couple of vanishing glimpses of the crowded dangling walkways of the city as we initially dropped away and then swerved in formation, our upper and forward propellers gaining us a northward speed of about seventy-five miles per hour. The reality matched the dream. The Rise was on. Nothing was expected to go wrong; nothing did. The occasion was too big for silly doubts or setbacks. Utter confidence prevailed in and around me, in an emotional pool of shared trust, the trust that I and my crewmates and captains would do whatever needed to be done during the ensuing weeks of our three thousand mile voyage forwards and upwards to the equator.
    The reason I knew this so surely was that the Departure had wiped my awareness clean. Freshened, shiny as a swabbed whiteboard, psychologically I gleamed, un-besmirched by past scrawls or complications, for I had risen above old distrust. We’d surely gain the equator, and then – well, we’d see then what we’d manage to do. By that time we’d really have some momentum going. In fact, we’d be unstoppable.

*

Our training did not lapse during the weeks from Departure to equator; we continued to hone our skills and strengths. Here is where I must mention the tiny auxiliary craft which accompanied the huge airships. Called zornets, the one-man fliers, combinations of balloon and helicopter, could buzz around like insects – the name I suppose is a modification of “hornet” – and being cheap to build, they had been mass-produced so that the fleet possessed over a thousand, and the airships moved within a protective cloud of them.
    Zornets had the capacity to perform so many tasks that their potential was under-exploited, giving adventurous souls extra scope for initiative. Scouting, repair work, courier work – these were the obvious initial uses for the flexible, manoeuvrable little craft, and such purposes were interesting enough to motivate me to volunteer for that type of training, but from the beginning I guessed that there’d be more to it, once I had mastered the skills needed to fly like a midge – a virtually point-sized particle of freedom. I hopefully listened out for what I could learn. The phrase, ice duty, came to my ears more than once.
    I questioned the training officer on board the Wixibb.
    “Ice duty? That’s slang for… never mind, you’re too late for it.” He saw my expression and added, “Don’t take it too hard. You haven’t missed much.”
    He saw I didn’t believe that. He explained further:
    “What I mean is, the training was quite inadequate, and is sure to be superseded when the time comes to use it. Just wait. My guess is, you’ll get your chance.”
    I then questioned a crewmate who had been given this inadequate pre-flight “ice-duty” drill. He agreed with the officer:
    “Yeah, as I look back on it, I guess it was rather pathetic. For instance they slung sheets of glass down into the sky, or maybe they were plastic, and you had to zoom close and guess how close you were to collision… but it can’t be like the real thing.”
    Indeed not; and long before we got in range of it I learned that the “real thing” was not the kind of obstacle you could do much to train for –
    It is the jagged edge of the main substance of the cosmos. We would not get close to it until we emerged from under the planet – in other words, until we reached the equator. The universal crystalline ether, which fills the distances from star to star, closely surrounds Kroth on all sides except the underneath. The age-long drizzle of loose bits and pieces falling from the southern hemisphere of the world has eroded the ether below it far, far down to an immense distance, gouging a shaft of “normal” air millions of miles deep in place of the otherwise universal polarised medium. That has made Birannithep a more natural realm than Topland for the development of aviation, since the more elbow room for flyers, the easier it is to develop the art of flight. But our airships were headed north, and so there would come a time when they had to squeeze through the much smaller allowance of air-space between ground and ether at Kroth’s middle and upper regions.
     The zornets were intended to play a vital part in this awkward passage, but like I was told, prior training was not really possible.
    The most you could do was to perfect your general skills in flying a zornet; make absolutely sure you could handle its controls so that they became an extension of your own nervous system. We had weeks in which to achieve that “second nature” level of skill; and with such an objective to absorb us, in addition to the fascination of the voyage, those weeks passed quickly. I could hardly believe it when I found myself in the Out-Bay awaiting my signal to zoom forth upon – ice-duty.

*

Nine others were with me; I sat buckled into the fourth machine of the front row of five, next to Myron Gleth’s at the right-hand end. Stout little Myron, though at least twice my age, was viewed by all of us as the novice, the “baby” or “kid brother” of our group, as far as flying was concerned, and this was right and proper because he was not supposed to risk his neck the way we did. He was just a “Nudgie” – this insult, affectionately bestowed, referred to the latest term for a political buffoon, a fellow who actually campaigns for office on his own behalf; hence Nudgie as in: Hey, nudge nudge, pay attention to how great I am, and vote for me… In literal fact, Myron Gleth was MP for Lostagonoon East. He was therefore one of the Members we were supposed to be ferrying north to his destined seat in the Savaluk Parliament. By rights, in fact, he should not have flown at all, but he had insisted on accompanying us: he believed it would not look good, politically, if he left all the glory to others…
    While we sat waiting for the signal light to flash and the bay door to open, Myron’s restless button eyes darted around, and he squirmed in his seat in such a way as to remind me of a toddler – albeit a bearded toddler.
    He began, “When this is over…”
    In the row behind us, group leader Ralph Deez interrupted, “Not another of your leap-frogging questions, Myron!”
    I interceded, “Er… with respect, sir, let’s let him speak; the sooner he gets it off his chest…”
    “That’ll be the day,” growled Deez, but withdrew all objection.
    Myron half-turned his head and said, “Yes, yes, I’m the rare giraffe which you’re conveying to the Zoo, and you’re responsible for my upkeep…”
    “But so are you yourself responsible,” interposed Manapti Follagan. “Praved and couth, Myron! Praved and couth!” A tradition had developed, that the ship’s august passenger-MP was to be described by adjectives shorn of their usual negative prefix. “Yeah, Nudgie,” someone echoed, “gotta keep praved and couth and gusting, so that your Parliamentary Seat is armour-plated with all the virtues.”
    “In case you don’t come back from this outing, Duncan,” Myron went on, ignoring the ribaldry, “what do you suggest I say, if I’m asked…”
    Larry Ott, the flier to my left, groaned, “Another political question, I’ll bet; can’t you leave Dunc alone? He’s put all that behind him.”
    “I’d ask Vic Chandler himself if I could get to him,” replied Myron.
    I had no doubt this was true. It was only because the Facilitator was so busy, that Myron turned to the Facilitator’s nephew, on the assumption that the latter had imbibed some of the former’s wisdom.
    “Go on, Right Hon.,” I said resignedly.
    The Right Honourable Myron Gleth, who appreciated the fact that I never called him Nudgie, gladly resumed: “What should I say if – just suppose – people up there ask me about the contradiction between our Republic of Birannithep and the constitutional monarchy of Upland?”
    Goodness only knows why he brought that question up at a moment like this. I ran over in my mind the sort of thing Vic would surely say. “Contradiction? Er – just deny there is one. Just say… Republic comes from res publica which is ‘public thing’, and any State is a public thing and so there’s no contradiction and we can all get along just fine.”
    With that lack of connective tissue between one happening and the next, which I had come to expect from life, one moment I heard myself discuss politics, the next I saw an amber light flash. Somewhere a flight co-ordinator had timed our exit, and the amber light was our ‘clearance to buzz’. Accordingly the left-most zornet pilot started up his rotor blades. At the same moment the bay door began its upward swing. Beyond it, infinity’s blue grin appeared and widened. Meanwhile the second machine started humming. Then Larry Ott’s. Then mine, then Myron’s… By this time the left-most pilot had flown out. The remaining heavy seconds before my own tip-out moment ticked away and were gone. No matter how often you practise, you never really get used to it. But you make your move – with a shove in the back from Duty (conformity, courage, fear of failure). With one compressed shiver of fear and delight I zoomed into emptiness.
    The voice of Ralph Deez crackled in my headphones. “Very nice, couldn’t be nicer, so let’s keep it up, keep that line n-i-i-i-i-ce and straight now.”
    I obediently busied my eyes, to check that all ten of us were flying in the agreed oblique formation. Ahead of us there was nothing but the apparently simple blue of the infinite universe, but when I looked over my shoulder I saw the wall of land, the vertical surface of Kroth, as if it chopped the universe in two – for we were at the equator now. And in appearance the wall was beginning to lean, for the higher I looked the more I could see it encumbered with growths, as out from that surface there could now be seen, in crowded green convexities like a hung carpet of giant broccoli, the beginning-bulge of the jungle of Udrem.
    “Keep as you are; I’m reconnoitring,” announced Deez. As pre-arranged, he then broke formation and spurted ahead of us into the apparent nothingness of sky.
    The radio silence from the rest of us was a good sign. We had been told to keep quiet if we had nothing to say.
    Another of my backward glances now gave me a good view of the entire Grand Fleet as it sailed upwards in a line strung out over several miles. The top end of the line developed a crook in it as I watched, for, out of necessity, the lead ships must swerve to edge off from the increasingly out-thrust jungle.
    Naturally so – but unfortunately there was more to it than the obvious need to avoid collision with the tree-ends. We never ceased to be aware that Udrem was the home of our enemies, the Gonomong.
    We were prepared to fight if we must, but our mission objective was not to wage war; it was to re-establish contact between the Northern and Southern hemispheres of Kroth. This being so, we would have preferred to give Udrem the widest of berths, even to the extent of curving tens of miles out into space –
    A pity it was, that such a detour was impossible because that way, too, lay a barrier, not a forest but a worse danger; not the chancy threat of enemy action but a yet deadlier and more certain obstacle posed by Nature herself.
    The acting admiral who had been appointed for the duration of the passage of Udrem was Noomazda Gough; although gender equality did not exist in the lower ranks of the fighting services, the Biris seemed quite happy to appoint woman strategists on merit, and I hoped this particular one knew what she was doing, and I also hoped that Vic, who must be standing by her on the flagship view-deck during this crucial run, knew likewise, or guessed, what was required.
    My mind flicked away from that topic, as I reminded myself that I had nothing more to do with top-level decisions; I was done with it all; such stuff had no more place in my life. My gaze swung back to the accelerating dot that was our group leader, Ralph Deez.
    He had become almost invisible with distance, far above the leading airship, but just when I expected him to disappear altogether, he ceased to diminish. Aha, thought I, I bet he’s squinting as he hovers. He must be searching for what I’ll also have to search for, when I get there: the faintest betraying shadow of dust on the air/ether boundary.
    I and the others were catching up with him, but we were still about a furlong away when I saw the dark blue spurt from the ink tank of his zornet – saw the betraying colour splash onto a hard transparent surface some yards in front of him, smearing it visible, smearing them visible, the surfaces, not one but two or three or four, hinting at a jagged complex of planes.
    Ralph Deez had been successful in his first shot. Now the rest of us, to do as good a job as he had, must fan out to daub further portions of the boundary.

*

I remember I scored a hit my first time, too. On my second, I missed. Also on my third. Furiously concentrating, I watched my fourth and fifth glance partially onto some oblique crystal plane; not bad but still I edged forward, craving a better result although fearing collision. Though my sixth and seventh missed altogether, my eighth splattered squarely….
    The work went on. We flew upward, northward, much faster than the fleet, as we continued to dart at intervals to spurt ink at what we hoped was the ether boundary. Sometimes we hit and smeared; sometimes we shot too soon and the ink was wasted, falling into infinity. Previous hits gave us only an approximate guide because of the treacherous irregularity of the boundary. We all had to be extremely careful not to crash into the crystalline wall ourselves; on the other hand, excessive caution meant using up our supply of ink to no purpose – and we could only carry so much. To be useful to the fleet, we had to leave a reliable and continuous and reasonably regular series of markers, to show the captains how far out they could sail. It was impossible to guarantee that we had not missed some lethal outcrop that would gouge the side of any airship which passed that way; we could only try to do our best.
    The ink was designed to last in its smeared form for hours, until the usual ether/matter reaction caused mutual vaporisation… by which time our fleet would be gone from these parts.
    I reached the stage of confidence where, increasingly, I felt able to look back and down, to see the great fat vulnerable ships steering – in the wake of our trailblazing achievement – further out from the vertical green jungle than they would otherwise have dared. That meant that if the Gonomong should commence to fire at the fleet, the likelihood of damage would be that much less. Next, with the smoothness of dream, my eyes saw the transition from theory to fact. Enemy projectiles, formerly hypothetical, were announced with real puffs of smoke and disturbances in Udrem’s outer branches.  The grey dots streaked towards the ships. I was witnessing the first attacks; the war had begun. But it was all so muffled by the immensity of sky, I could easily believe that the business might develop no further.  My headphones registered some murmurs, “It’s begun”, “No hits”, “They’re all right – carry on”. It seemed indeed that the ships were far enough out to avoid being hit. And if that were so – then we had triumphed, had we not?
    Yes, provided that we zornet-pilots continued to play our successful part till we were all risen safely past Udrem. That was the answer: continue the procedure. Life indeed was simple.
    So was death, for that matter – my thoughts taking a different turn – for whoever had heard of a war without loss of life? It was only a matter of time, perhaps of moments.
    I resumed my trail-blazing, more efficiently and rapidly than before, urged above all to win time to look back and observe the one-sided battle below me.
    The next occasion on which I felt free to stop to observe, I saw once again the unscathed ships as they floated upwards on their nicely aimed course. They still weren’t needing to return the Gonomong’s fire. Let the enemy continue to waste their shots. I silently applauded our strategy and commenced to believe that we just might get through without casualties. The belief was lightly held, and lasted only a few more minutes. Then over the radio I heard a squawk. I scanned the scene below me but did not immediately locate the source of the cut-off terror; all I knew at first was that it must be one of my fellow pilots –
    Ralph Deez’s voice blared to all our group: “Nothing you can do for him. Carry on as you are. That’s an order. – What?” (Murmurs, babblings.) “An accident… Myron Gleth has met with an accident. Not enemy action.”
    That stupid fool M.P.…. I now noted the wrong-colour smear some hundred yards below me. The fellow had crumpled himself against an ether-outcrop. Part of his machine was visible, sliding off as I watched, and then I saw it and him make the last infinite dive, disappearing into the downward blue. Myron, you should have stuck to politics. Then an even more obvious thought: how stupid and pointless it was, this whole idea of arranging for M.P.s from Down Under to sit in the Parliament at the North Pole. How utterly barmy to suppose that they could do their job at that distance from their constituents… These surges of disbelief in our mission ravaged my mind like a horde invading a settled empire; but just as, eventually in such a case, after the ravages have run their course, empire sprouts back again in one form or another, so in my case, after a minute or so, came an adjusted understanding.
    It was a waste of time to debunk the mission’s official motives, since they weren’t the real ones.  The Rise had to happen. That was the one and only motive that counted.  Excuses were just fuel; and excuse-grabbing, though a humble, necessary skill like balance on a bike, was not to be confused with any big search for truth.
    In any case, why search for truth, out here in the brilliant air alongside Kroth’s dark green equator, sandwiched as I was between the two slabs of world and sky? Caught in the air-slice, the jammed middle, amid the boggling verticality on either side (one side the land-wall, the other side the ether-wall; one visible, the other invisible), I had room only for the awful simplicity of my placement: awe replacing reason.
    Not that I was completely mindless. I did have two tasks for the brain.
    One was to use it for the job I had been ordered to do. That is, to continue with the ink-trail-blazing on the crystal boundary.
    And the other task was – the manufacture of those very necessary excuses. Since you have to swallow one krunking event after another, you need to manufacture sugar coatings for those pills.  The sugar is in the form of explanations. Keep ’em flowing down your gullet, said the inner me – you’ve got to, or else!  So that is what I did.  To put it another way: like the reflexive movements of a skilled driver, every time he meets a signal or an obstacle, I steered around the demands made by each new development in what was turning out to be the Battle of Udrem, making excuses for them, making sense of them by means of explanations which didn’t have to be true but merely had to be possibly true –
    Especially when, at last, an enemy fleet came floating into view around the westward curve of the jungle.
    In itself this posed no puzzle, no challenge to my excuse-making power. Indeed the sinking of my heart when I saw the file of dark green ovoids was swiftly accompanied by never mind, it had to be, it was too much to hope that we’d get by without a tussle with a Gonomong Navy.
    A navy evenly matched with ours. Evidently the Biris weren’t the only nation that had been working hard to build up their forces. The green ships, which commenced to fan out and fire torpedoes almost immediately, were the same size and shape as ours, almost the same design except that they had aft instead of forward propellers. It was hard to picture Moyt Ganafoon’s thugs, amongst whom I had endured my spell as a slave, achieving such a feat of construction, so I reckoned that this armada must have been built by some allied Gonomong nation on some other spot on the equator. Not that it mattered.
    What did require an excuse – an excuse to be produced fast – was the reaction of the Wixibb.
    My ship, alone, was leaving our line! I watched aghast as it began to slip off. It was heading east, as if to flee the Gonomong onset –
    At the same moment, in my headphones there crackled an order for all the Wixibb’s zornet pilots to follow, to return to the vicinity of our ship. We were required to escort it, to form a defence cloud around it, as it set out upon its new course. The command was spoken by our captain, Prince Rapannaf.

*

Picture the shape of the battle which we were about to abandon: the vertically rising line of Biri ships, and the horizontally approaching Gonomong ships, in a file increasingly oblique but still aligned. If the commanders on each side saw advantage in that developing “T” formation, that was their business; but why should one vessel, the Wixibb, alone break ranks?
    And because the Wixibb’s zornet pilots, which meant Ralph Deez’s group, which meant me, too, were all being ordered to slant down to re-join our mother ship, we were being forced to leave off our trailblazing work; to leave it to the zornets from the other ships; well, that was all right, those others would be enough for the job. But – as I and my crewmates obediently abandoned our former task and set off downward – the question nagged me: what was Prince Rapannaf up to? Could it really be that he had been unnerved? He, the Gonomong exile – a traitor in Gonomong eyes – had his resolve broken at the suddenly revealed strength of his own people? Had he turned tail? Come here and show yourself quick, I yelled in my mind for the desired excuse.
    “Here,” says Excuse, “here I am,” – and in it pops, to my eager welcome, like a late payment which lifts one’s bank account out of the red: Rapannaf is special because he is Gonomong himself and knows the ways of Udrem; he’s the right captain to lead an effective diversion.
    Also there came to my mind the words Vic had spoken to me before the departure: “Keep an eye on Rapannaf, will you?” Fat chance of that; but at least I now had a possible way in which to view the situation. I did not ask for more, did not need more. I can obey orders as well as anybody; I simply need events to possess a minimum of plausibility.
    I was zooming downwards at an angle of about thirty degrees to the vertical, along with my companions, towards the eastward moving ovoid of our ship, when the next big demand was made upon my nerves.
    Back in the days when I had been privy to policy discussions, I had heard that the route of The Rise was planned so as to avoid any risk that fighting might break out in the vicinity of the snamboffong, the Plank, the Gonomong’s place of execution where condemned prisoners (as I could confirm from my own experience) were Dropped into the void.
    The reason for this restraint was that we did not want the snamboffong to be damaged or destroyed. If it were, then the enemy might build another one in a different location, and if this new location were offset to even a slightly different longitude, it would mean that the Biri’s expensive Redakka, the net of mercy to catch the condemned, would be rendered useless – for, of course, the rescue had to be directly underneath the plank, else it wouldn’t catch anybody.
    That was why the Grand Fleet had flown directly north from Lishom-Galeeg, the longitude of which is some degrees west of the Redakka. The idea was to miss the snamboffong by a score of miles at least.
    Now however – as I gazed ahead of the Wixibb’s course, in an effort to estimate when and where my own downward course would enable me to re-join the ship, and also with a natural desire to keep an eye out for enemies – I noticed a buttressed promontory, a bare branch with a spoon-like tip which jutted maybe a hundred yards from the leafy tapestry of Udrem.  I was immediately certain that this was the snamboffong. It couldn’t be anything else. At the same moment I thought to detect a change in the motion of the Wixibb.
    Yes, the ship was reducing speed.
    This time I suppressed my doubts and just waited for the necessary excuse, hoping, trusting it would come. I had enough to do, as I followed further orders from Ralph Deen who was directing our arrival into the formation of a defensive shell around our slowing ship. Other zornets, I noted, buzzed along the ether boundary, as they kept up the inky trailblazing for the Wixibb, enabling it to maintain its edged-out position close to the dangerous crystal frontier, in order to keep as far as possible from the forest. Those zornets had identification markings which showed they had been borrowed from other ships – proof enough that Rapannaf had the backing of his superiors in the dangerous game he was playing.
    To reduce speed was to present an easier target, a target which unfortunately became ever easier as the Wixibb changed direction and began to climb upward and inward, towards the vertical carpet of forest.
    Rapannaf knows what he’s doing, said the timely note on the welcome mat in my mind; and while he keeps on this particular flight-path he can count upon the enemy holding their fire, because they, just like we, don’t want any damage to their expensive snamboffong.
    Next question – how long would this reason restrain them? I could only wonder and wait and observe, while I maintained my position about ten yards from the hull on the upper left flank of the advancing airship.
    The Wixibb came to a stop, its nose towards Udrem. It hovered about ten yards from the tapestry of outermost leaves.
    Oho, thought I, he really is going to try it…
    “This is your captain speaking. Zornet pilots, prepare to form a landing party. Sector leaders follow me as I go in – ”
    Well, you should know the way, Rapannaf, if any of us do, thought I. Whether this was an insane move and a prelude to disaster, or a brilliant flank attack which should win us the battle, our captain’s words carried to me the promise that the heartbeat of events must now accelerate, the gap between puzzlement and excuse must narrow, so at least I’d have less long to wait. So it didn’t matter that I couldn’t see how we could have the technical capability to attack the forest. Didn’t have long to repeat, how the krunk will we get to grips with it? – because within a minute it became clear that our zornets were surprisingly suitable for such vertical “landings”. Surprisingly easy! You just have to time the switch-off correctly, then once the propellers are stilled you float with the balloon part, using the momentum of the last few seconds of powered approach; then you are expected to grasp hold of a branch –
    I obediently grasped and hooked one leg round a branch while I moored my craft; then (encouraged by the example of the other men) I grabbed more holds and stood up and began to climb inwards, oppressed though I was with a sense of nightmare homecoming. With a ready grip on drawn hand guns I and a half dozen companions followed Ralph Deez who with other sector leaders was following the Prince. We came to a wide, railed branch. We took to it all in one group. Then began our inward march. I caught intermittent sight of Rapannaf himself, among his officers twenty yards ahead, hurriedly drawing us deeper into Udrem. I tried not to feel I was being swallowed by a dark mouth. Tried to out-run the fancy that the dim, de-lighted jungle was rejoicing. Tried not to hear its taunt, that I had never really escaped from this, the realm in which I had been a slave; tried to ignore its boast in my mind, its chuckle that I would always be a part of it. Fortunately, the simple virtue of following orders sustained in my knowledge that I need not feel responsible for this plan, and that was a wonderful change from how things used to feel! Yaaargh, jeered my non-intellectual side, and as I jogged I began to repeat to myself, Myron Gleth’s stupid death, Myron Gleth’s stupid death, that’s what happens when you get above yourself, but I’m not so stupid as he; I’d told him to be careful and he wouldn’t listen; I by contrast do as I’m told.
    The name of the game was balance and speed, as we half-ran with one hand skimming the safety rail, inward through the jungle towards the vertical wall-surface of the planet. The gloom intensified, though eventually we reached a region where some lights were strung out along the tree-paths; lights which helped a little.
    Crack spoke a gun, and I muscle-flexed into fighting mode. Pale shapes swung through the grey-green murk in opposition to our advance. Staccato cracks echoed as I and my companions pressed triggers almost at random, thinking it wise to create an impression. We all knew that in hand-to-hand combat none of us would stand much chance against the gorilla-like Gonomong. Therefore we must fight at longer range, if we could. I felt a swish and the thunk of a cross-bow bolt inches from my ear. One of us was hit and toppled. Then we were at the wall – the planetary wall, at last. Indicating the way into the rocky waist of the world, here was the entrance to a cave, the cave, the one I’d been in before. No sentries this time – they’d been swept aside, or they had given way when they recognized Rapannaf. In we surged.

*

We crowded into the cluttered lobby area. The orange-lit gloom showed me the upright Rapannaf peering into the main cavern. He then drew back to confer with his officers, and must have decided not to go that straight way, for he then led us into a warren of dimmer side-tunnels. I was now on paths I had not trod before; my stint as a slave in the Oracle Caverns had been limited to the larger hollows.
    The numbers of our company appeared to diminish at every turn of the tunnel system. I realized why when, at one turn, I and one other were bidden by Ralph Deez to stop and guard the way. I heard the rest of them recede; I heard some firing, but I concentrated my gaze along the barrel of the gun I held pointing down the corridor the way we had come.
    My companion was Orazd Idoon, a fellow about twenty years of age though he looked like a cheeky squirt about ten years younger – not his fault, it was just the way his face was constructed.
    More gun-cracks resounded and I stared harder than ever down the stone passage. “Perimeter guards,” remarked my companion.
     “Oh, so that’s what we are,” I nodded.
    We must have been set to guard the perimeter of the main cavern itself, where the Oracle Root coiled like a twisted rope. If the Prince’s outflanking march turned out one hundred per cent successful, Orazd and I might miss the fighting, but on the other hand if the enemy had time to close in, we’d get plenty of it. I remarked on this to Orazd.
    His reply astonished me.
    “Let’s hope you get through this one, Dunc. Doesn’t matter about dopes like me, but you need to take your Seat in Savaluk, else the whole trip is wasted. Praved and couth, man.”
    “Huh? Don’t get it.”
    I spared another moment for a glance at Orazd and his cheeky physiognomy. Perhaps not an accident of bone-structure after all.
    “Sorry,” he said, “you were the only one he couldn’t tell. He told us strictly not to tell you; but now he’s dead you’ll have to know. He left instructions – you look blank, Dunc, I’m talking about Myron Gleth, the late MP for Lostagonoon East.”
    “So?”
    “So a while before he died he named you his successor.”
    “Perhaps this is not the best moment for gags, Orazd.”
    “No gag, I assure you. He got the right papers signed and witnessed…”
    “But for krunk’s sake, M.P.s don’t bequeath their seats; you have to have by-elections – ”
    Instead of answering he fired at a sudden glint of metal down the corridor. “Pull back,” and we darted for cover, the cover provided by opposite openings of side-corridors. From here we continued to keep watch. “Keep that gun up, M.P. man, you gotta be crepit here.”
    I felt abruptly ashamed at being slow on the uptake. Of course, should’ve realized, this was Navy humour. And since Myron was no longer around to be the butt of it, I was elected to fill the gap. Fair enough, in view of my formerly political roles. Not to mention the ridiculous number of political questions Myron used to keep asking me… as though I had been the Facilitator’s alter ego...
    We all have our ways of coping with battle-stress and if Orazd chose a verbal lark, who was I to spoil the joke? I should have played up to it with some wit of my own…. You’re slipping, Dunc, I told myself. Still, at least you’ve grasped the point at last, better late than never…
    I heard a shout and felt a tug on my sleeve.
    “Hoy there, Ethelred, time to pull back.”
    Serve me right for wool-gathering in a military situation: I earned the Biri epithet for unreadiness, which has trickled down from Earth history.
    “Sorry, sorry,” I muttered as I ran. Another shout, and we turned a corner to join other members of our expedition in the common retreat. I pictured the lookouts’ circle in its entirety shrinking in response to the enemy advance. Bad news – but my sense of oncoming doom was checked when Orazd and I loped into the Oracle Root Cavern itself, for here we came upon signs of triumph for our side.
    My glance passed swiftly over the near floor, where a dozen bodies, some our men and some Gonomong, were strewn about, most of them dead though I saw a couple of our wounded raised on their elbows and still holding their guns.
    Penetrating further my vision focussed upon the mayhem we had successfully wrought upon the target of our raid. Smoke meandered up from fat severed coils, the hacked-about remains of the Oracle Root. Swords wielded unwillingly by Gonomong prisoners split and sliced more of it even as I watched; under gunpoint compulsion by Rapannaf’s officers, the gorilla-like arms flexed their giant muscles and jabbed and whacked and wrenched so powerfully that the sight of such force made me uneasy, despite its subjection to our orders. It was hard to believe that the Prince (who was after all an exiled traitor from their point of view) could enforce such obedience by means of an advantage in weaponry alone. And sure enough, as my eyes panned across the cavern, I saw we held another ace besides our local superiority in fire-power.
    Or rather, not ace but King.
    The Gonomong royal caste, unlike their commoners, is in its physical proportions human, albeit heroically, with arm-length and muscle-size that could pass for normal, at any rate among body-builders. Moyt Ganafoon, King of this Gonomong realm, scared me in a different way from his subjects. It wasn’t his size, though he towered six-foot-six; it was the rage in his taut face. What was in his mind, I wondered, as he saw his exiled son return to defy him and destroy the hallowed pipe through which his ally the Slimes had projected their power and influence all the way up from the South Pole? I could only feel sure that we must not push our luck any further. We must get out of here as quickly as possible. It was an oppressive feeling. No doubt it sprang from my strong memories of having been caught in Udrem once before.
    Rapannaf, unfortunately, seemed to be in no hurry.
    He and his father stared at each other, gimlet-eyed. Then the Prince made a lazy gesture with his right arm. “You two,” he said to a pair of his officers, “wrap him up – yes, with that – and take good, slow care.”
    I could see that the Moyt must be a priceless hostage, and I sensed the heavily appropriate symbolism in the idea of wrapping him up in a strip of root-fabric, winding it round and round him with such deliberation as to rub the Gonomong’s collective nose in the idea that the inspiration behind their policy and power was turned to naught. I could see all this but I wanted to shout, there isn’t time! Weeks ago Vic had told me to keep an eye on Rapannaf. How futile that now seemed. The moment had arrived and I was in no position to communicate anything to him. I simply did not dare interrupt him.
    When the wrapping at last was done, and the King as far up as his neck looked like a bark-swathed mummy, Rapannaf intoned, “Time we were away, Father.”
    I expected an even more pitiless voice to issue in reply from the throat of Moyt Ganafoon; instead, I was astonished to hear, not any blast of defiant rebuke, but a soft-spoken, utterly mystifying comment:
    “We did it first.”
    Did what first? The King of the Gonomong was smiling, gently smiling; I could not understand; but the Prince did.
    “Oh, yes, I’m sure,” he replied, dismissive of I knew not what. “In some other chamber no doubt. Come,” and now he detailed two men to carry our illustrious prisoner, and four others to carry our two wounded, as at long last we made our overdue, encumbered dash for the exit.
    Already from several directions enemy voices and clanking sounds of advance grew rapidly louder and more complicated. Unopposed, we managed to vacate the cave of the Root, but, past the next opening, Gonomong erupted into our path. Luck, so far, stayed with us: our foes were almost immediately cut down by transverse gunfire which had to be the work of friends we could not yet see, supporting us from side-corridors. I guessed that other ships from our fleet had followed the Wixibb and had disgorged their men to swell our ranks; both friends and foes were hurling more resources into the conflict.
    Darting past walls and over floors which, long ago, I had gazed at in monotony as a toiling slave, we fought in a surge which carried most of us alive to the exit from the cavern system. Then came our re-tracing of the outward route through the thickness of the forest to the sky. Enemy action diminished during this period.
    Before we reached the sky it had become clear that we were likely to escape, but it was not until I came in actual sight of the sky that I saw how decisive our victory was. Dozens of ships, in fact all or almost all the entire fleet, now hovered around the point at which we had entered Udrem. Some of the vessels appeared holed and scarred, but their presence here implied that we must have wiped out the Gonomong fleet.

*

Moyt Ganafoon’s strange words were not mentioned, and perhaps had been forgotten by all but me, when we heroes assembled in the lounge-deck of the flagship Teffenengleng for the treaty-signing.
    On the left of the dais stood Prince Rapannaf and his father and erstwhile foe, Moyt Ganafoon; flagship captain Marcus Fenn-Dihoth; acting admiral Noomazda Gough; and Ray Ballater, Archbishop of Gannerynch. With them stood the sector leaders, at the far end of the line.
    To the left of the military and thus on the right of the dais, as we in the audience looked at them, were gathered the M.P.s.
    Right in the middle, between politicos and military, stood Facilitator Vic Chandler, who partook of both roles – he led The Rise and also (a detail I now recalled) he had been returned as M.P. for Gannerynch Central.
    The floor was packed with the expedition’s chroniclers and photographers (I smiled euphorically at Cora Blazakkis as she held up her lens at the ready) together with ordinary skymen. Priority had been given to those who had accompanied Rapannaf on his raid into Udrem, and to those who had particularly distinguished themselves in the fleet’s victory over the Gonomong ships. Elaine Swinton, the only nurse in view, stood watching the Prince adoringly.
    The treaty clauses were read out loud by Uncle Vic in his most booming voice. As well he might, he seemed to express the greatest satisfaction when enunciating the terms of emancipation of the slaves of Udrem. When he had finished, he picked up the pen for the signing. Just at this point the Archbishop said:
    “You’ve done what I requested, after all. Church and state need not have quarrelled.”
    “Ah, but I preferred you not to ask,” Vic explained. Some coughs and sudden exhalations could be heard around the deck, but no one actually choked with mirth.
    He then brandished the pen and called out, “All ready for the photo op? M.P.s all gathered here on my left?”
    Sure, they were gathered; why was he looking at me?
    I then remembered Orazd’s joke, but surely –
    Orazd stepped to my side as prompt as though he’d been told to act as my minder. Placing a palm on my back he hissed, “Now then Dunc, be praved, be couth, be gormful. Go on, get up there.” (Shove.)
    Great krunking squartcho, if only I could still believe that this was a gag – but Reality, it seemed, was up to its old tricks again; incredible though it sounded, Myron really had, after all, bequeathed his Seat to me.
    With a fatalistic shrug, and a sigh for the lost freedoms of obscurity, I mounted the dais to join my fellow Right Honourables.   

*

The grim business over, we battle-survivors were free to soar up the world’s flank and hit the jackpot of history.
    Mingling awe at our own luck with thoughts spared for the losers, we gave due sympathy not only to the dead and wounded, but to the bored - those who must be left behind on garrison duty.
    This last problem gave me some nervous moments. To provide support for Prince Rapannaf in the enforcement of the terms of the treaty, Noomazda Gough ordered that five captured Gonomong ships, crewed of course by our people, be left to hover alongside Moyt Ganafoon’s domain. Which of us would man them?
    Nobody in our fleet had expected to have to abandon his share in the historic expedition north. To have ordered some unlucky ones to stay, would have been to risk mutiny – the Rise was too strong; it fizzed in our veins as an unspoken higher law.
    I feared the drawing of lots, given the unlikelihood of volunteers for the stay-behind ships, but fortunately, during the course of days, with the inducement of rapid promotion, the volunteers were eventually found, the problem was solved: Rapannaf was thus provided with his fire-power and a force of officers who would train those Gonomong loyal to himself. The details were worked out. Moyt Ganafoon would remain with us as hostage for a few days more, until it appeared certain that the regime-change had been effected successfully. And that would be that: the rest of us could then lift northwards.
     Elaine opted to stay with the Prince. She did take the trouble to say good-bye to me. “And thank you for everything,” she added with a warm hand-clasp and slight inclination of her willowy form, as she gave me a little peck on the cheek.
     I opened my mouth, but words refused to come in reply to such gracious finality. Long ago I had thought of her as a beautiful dullard. Now, as I lingered at the open hatch, I half wished we could have been dullards together.
    “Please, one more point before you go, Elaine… ah, I’d appreciate it if there’s anything you can say to reassure me about your safety…”
    With a sweet smile she passed onto me Rapannaf’s assurances that the Moyt was a man of his word, who having put his signature to a peace would continue to abide by every clause to the letter. Then she turned to say her other goodbyes.
    With the farewells all said, we hurried to our posts. From my window, as the victorious skyfleet resumed its upward voyage, I was able for half an hour to watch the shaggy equator recede below us until Udrem at last disappeared from view.
    The communal awareness that we had finally crossed the jungle belt, and were really now climbing the actual definite Northern Hemisphere, sparked a transformation of mood – not surprising when you think of the differences between the hemispheres of Kroth. For those of us who had originally descended from Yeyld to Hudgung, the Rise from Hudgung back to Yeyld was stupendous enough, a triumphant return, but as for the born Biris, those who had lived all their lives Down Under, I cannot imagine what it must have been like to observe the increasing and fantastic exchange of position between ground and sky – ground now beginning to shift to below and sky to above.
    Yes, the mere sight of that reversal must – if you’re a Biri – give you a new self-image, apt for someone on a world. Dangler no more.
    In practical terms, also, our lives changed.
    We zornet pilots were no longer needed for trailblazing at the ether boundary, for since the Gonomong were beaten and Udrem had dropped away below us, no longer was it necessary for the ships to edge by at maximum possible distance from the planet’s surface.
    On the other hand, zornets were required more than ever to buzz between ground and fleet, to fetch supplies of fresh meat and vegetables to top up the dried rations on board, and more importantly to fix pipes for fresh water while an airship hovered close to a cascade. These basic tasks savoured of adventure, even for those of us who had passed these regions before, for we had not previously passed them going up. This flight’s ascending direction gave a tingling newness to the journey. It was a thrill unconnected with danger, it was the plain positive zest of a voyage of discovery as the wallscape began visibly and progressively to tilt with the first few hundred northward miles. Native tribesmen who spotted the fleet were petrified into immobility or darted at once into their caves as we rose past them. We never had to worry about them.
    We worried a bit about the fuel situation. The line of Biri fuel dumps, which had fed the airship tanks along the rise from Lishom-Galeeg to the equator, had no equivalent in the northern hemisphere, so what we had obtained Down Under would have to suffice for the rest of the voyage. This had of course been calculated. All the same we would have been happy to find some allied power in Slantland willing to sell us enough propellant to increase our margin for manoeuvre. We knew that no such civilization existed along longitude zero, but there was some debate as to whether a detour would be worth while, to explore a few degrees either side. This, though, would itself have used up fuel, so in the end we played safe – we continued straight upwards along longitude zero, as originally planned.
    The tremendous calm of the ascent swallowed up one petty dread which would otherwise have narked me: my days were not, after all, to be spent in being ribbed, or in anticipation of being ribbed, about my new political status. I was let off, doubtless because my companions were as soul-stretched as I, and thus fortunately preoccupied with higher things than making Nudgie digs at my expense. In fact, most of the time I was able to forget I had become an M.P. On the rare occasions when I did think about it, I realized the embarrass-ment was gone. Why, in any case, should I ever have felt nervous? Far from campaigning on my own behalf, I had not partaken of the campaign at all. I suppose, though, that my Earth memories did implant in me a whisper of uncomfortable self-knowledge, haha, deep down he lurks, your inner political buffoon. Duncan Wemyss the potential vote-catcher, who wouldn’t wait for others to notice his virtues; if he got the chance, he’d prompt the public, nudge nudge, look how good I am, vote for me! No, no way – I was not that man.
    And yet, better men than I had made utter fools of themselves by blowing their own trumpets. I even remembered, on Earth, having seen a candidate’s signed leaflet which listed his own achievements – an unthinkable gaffe for a Krothan.
     Well, fortunately, this was Kroth, not Earth.

*

Days of flying northward past Plim, Tokropol, N’Skupur, Jummudge, were days of secure voyaging, past former trouble-spots which had wracked my nerves and torn at my heart on the way down, but which on the way up were just names, as we floated out of their reach.
    Destiny would still have a punch to throw, but only when we reached Upland. My imagination gorged happily upon the idea that I would again see Upland, and indeed Topland, within a matter of days.
    The far north was a good realistic memory for me, but it was a land of fable to my Biri shipmates. Only in a theoretical sense did they conceive of Upland, at latitude sixty degrees or above, where the world’s gradient has decreased to thirty degrees or below. They faithfully believed in it, believed truly that it was the approximate (in some areas the exact) boundary of the governed core of Northern civilization. And logically they accepted that in the midst of Upland, right on top of the world at the Pole itself, must lie an area where the ground looks level, with an actual horizon. (“On Topland,” I told them, “you can even pretend you’re on Earth!”) Yeah, that would be the punch. A good punch, a friendly, hi-there homecoming it would be for the long-lost brethren from Down Under. We’d be doubly welcome, we who had dealt a blow at the common enemy and were now returning to re-unite the body politic – and in particular we M.P.s were coming to take our seats in the Savaluk Parliament at the very North Pole. Wow, vaguely repeated my simple mind as I indulged in vast ecstatic contemplation of the tidings which must spread like dawn over the lands which were soon to greet our arrival. Gosh, wouldn’t they go wild, the Toplanders; spellbound at the approaching Fleet.
    The voice of my crewmate Larry Ott broke into my daydreams.
    “The Facilitator wants you.” Larry sounded terse – impressed by his own words.
    “Does he, now!” I had not glimpsed Uncle Vic for days; not since he had visited the Wixibb to introduce a replacement as captain, an ace pilot-officer named Widd Stoombigand, after Rapannaf’s departure.
    “Yes, he’s come over from the flagship, he’s talking with the skipper.”
    I made my way to the bridge, where I saw Captain Stoombigand, a tall fellow with grey curly hair who looked like a venerable psychiatrist except for his gnarled fists and heavy russet trench-coat; around him was a group of officers, from which Vic emerged to greet me.
    “You know where we are, Duncan?”
    I did not feel a personal closeness to my uncle any more. Much time had gone by since I last regarded him as “family” in the usual sense; he had risen too far. On the other hand, you could say that he had not so much withdrawn as diffused his family closeness through a greater volume, inviting ordinary folk into a kind of warm solidarity with the whole Biri nation, and with the northern world which must be about to embrace our arrival.
    In other words, nowadays he was less of a man and more of an idea.
    In answer to his question I said: “I couldn’t tell you exactly where we are…”
    It was not a good enough response. Vic pointed; I obediently walked forward.
    Another few strides and I was able to look properly out and up through the blister at the entire tilted panorama of the planet’s looming bulk, and far ahead, amid the upward, northward extremity of our line of flight, a notch was visible: a blemish in the smooth skyline.
    “Neydio,” I breathed.
    “I guessed you would recognize it,” he said dryly. “We shall be drawing level with the fortress in less than an hour. I don’t think we should just fly past it without a bye-your-leave, do you, captain?” he added with a swerve of head towards Stoombigand.
    The Captain nodded, “We must be realistic.”
    Vic said, turning back to me, “A run of success is no guarantee against some stupid, tragic misunderstanding. We shall of course broadcast our peaceful intentions, but more than that, we shall send a…”
    Stoombigand supplied the words, “Herald. Embassy.”
    Vic, though, looked at me as though he wanted me to suggest a name for it.
    “Lightning rod,” I obliged.
    Easy chuckles all around the bridge told me that I had said exactly the right thing.

*

My hands rested upon the controls of the zornet as I hovered only about five yards above the sloping landscape. On my left floated Vic, and to his left Captain Stoombigand. At the back of my neck prickled the distant keenness of many eyes, which I knew were all glued to the telescopes in the fleet, massed in the sky behind and below us. But ahead of us, from up the higher reaches of the tilted scene, three small aircraft of a different kind, black dots which, as they neared, acquired form, sped down towards us.
    Slightly more than a year had gone by since I was last in Upland. Evidently, during that time, the technologists had been busy. The approaching balloon-copters must be the Northern-style version of our Biri zornets.
    Impressive, thought I, and if only the Uplanders had had a New Star to incite them further, what more might they have achieved? A sky-fleet of their own, perhaps? In which case, maybe it was just as well that, from this latitude, Nova Perpendiculi was out of sight below the sagorizon. It was comfortable to have the advantage. Just in case. But hang on - what stupid thoughts were these? Uplanders were my people. I was an Uplander myself. And as for the Biris whom I had ascended with, they were not in any sense invaders, they were long-lost returning relatives.
    All the same, it had been a wise decision on our part, to probe ahead with a peace offering.
    Like magnified bicycle panniers bulging from the bows of our small aircraft, containers heaped with weapons – mostly handguns but also a sprinkling of rifles, which so far as I knew were an expensive rarity anywhere on Kroth – displayed our gifts to the deputation from Neydio. Symbolic, more so than any mere empty-palm gesture, the actual gift of weapons said “We trust you so much, we give you this power.”
    The three craft from the fortress slowed to a hovering stop in front of us and the tall pilot in the centre position signalled to Vic that we should all descend; Vic signalled agreement and within a minute all six of us had touched down on the Slope and had emerged to stand by our machines.
    The tall, old man who led the deputation from Neydio, holding himself very straight, twinkled his eyes in recognition at Vic and me, while I could not have uttered a syllable amid the weighty memories which gripped my mind in thrall, while for the benefit of the Captain he said, “I am General Faraliew. Vic and Duncan I know well. And you, sir?”
    “Glad to meet you, sir. I’m Widd Stoombigand, skipper of the Wixibb – ” he jerked his thumb, “which you see blocking off the sunshine behind us.”
    “Your flagship?”
    “No, that one’s further up. Captain Fenn-Dihoth sends his compliments, though.”
    “Magnificent,” said Faraliew dreamily.
    He rested upon his pronunciation of that word. Then it was as if a dam broke, all formality crumbled, the General’s face sagged into a smile, he whistled and remarked, “Well, reckon I’d better retire now and write history-books!”  In an even less formal tone he addressed my uncle:  “This is really something, Vic. I had given up hope of seeing you again. Seems you’ve done the impossible.”
    “Politically impossible, yes, but – ” the Facilitator smiled – “you can’t stop a Renaissance.”
    Faraliew glanced at his two companions, who said nothing at all during the encounter, and then nodded, “A cultural explosion; yes, it would be that.” His tone lightened as he head-jerked at me:  “And what’s the lad been up to during the past year, I wonder?”
    “He’s an M.P. now,” said Vic. “I thought I might as well bring along the only M.P. who can also claim to have fought in the Battle of Neydio.”
    I at last got my vocal cords to work. It was time I said something. “Anything can happen in The Rise.”
    Faraliew smiled, “So that’s the era we’re living in.”
    “It has to be called something,” I nodded.
    “Yes,” he said, “it helps for it to have a name.”
    Helpful indeed, every word each move in the choreography of this encounter, propitious to ensure that the alarmingly colossal fleet from Down Under would be received in peace by the North.
    Faraliew got talking to Stoombigand about aviation; Vic had done well to bring an air ace to the meeting. It was another opportunity to show our good intentions, as technical secrets were willingly shared amid an atmosphere perfumed with self-congratulation, in which both sides could feel good about the way the encounter was handled.
    Yet at the same time I was perfectly well aware that the situation contained a large element of make-believe.
    Really there was, and had been, absolutely no danger of the sort which such rituals are designed to avoid. The very idea of a damaging incident between south and north was, in this context, ridiculous.  So why go through all these cautionary motions if you don’t seriously envisage hostilities?  Why had we pretended to worry?  At the time, my mind only whispered the question, and as for the answer, the signal for that was turned down so low, it only registered as a fleeting analogy… a smudgy picture which I hardly looked at, things were going so fine. Faraliew went on chatting with us warmly, and Vic and the Captain responded with equal friendliness, while I silently swam in gratitude for the privilege of attending this epic reunion. I thought: I need only listen to the important guys as they discussed practical plans for the passage of the fleet further north, into Topland, and facilities for its docking when it reached Savaluk, and then on a more personal note there suddenly came an invitation for me, me, to stay with members of the General’s family while I took up my duties in Parliament. Well, no doubt I was a convenient political totem representing inter-hemisphere concord. Symbolism again; as Vic had said, I was the only M.P. who had also fought in the great battle. My presence, my existence, meant something. They wouldn’t expect me to do anything, just look happy. Well, that I could manage… And meanwhile the real truth is broadcasting only via a thin-voiced signal, a faint analogy:
    Picture any border scene. Guards at a national frontier, or a watchman keeping an eye on a warehouse, or a school monitor on the alert to make sure that no pilferer gets into the stockroom. Then along comes Trouble. Trouble is the unwanted naughtiness of whatever kind, the pilferer, vandal, delinquent or saboteur. How does he get past? Trouble can do it this way:
    Get some adults to engage the officials and guards in conversation, about something routine and mildly serious, perhaps a valid question about passes, regulations or problematically filled-in forms. Excuse me, is this right? I thought it best to check…
    Officialdom bends its eye to the paper and says, Let me see…
    And while adult heads are occupied, the urchin with the catapult scampers unseen across the line.

*

The last stage of the flight took two days. We sailed at about half speed so as to give the people of Upland and Topland a show. Forewarned by radio news, they turned out in their hundreds of thousands; they waved enthusiastically as we passed overhead, and the towns of Upland put their lights on at night to shine their welcome.
    After the second night the Sun did not reappear but spilled its radiance from just below the horizon, in the eternal north polar day of Topland.  At this high latitude the population, instead of burning their lights, spread huge patterned ground-sheets to display their greetings as we passed overhead. Our bogus anxieties were forgotten as if they had never been, the spirit of precaution lost its hold, and I became less of an individual than ever before, content to sink into a state of collective belonging. I shared in my Biri crewmates’ sense of wonder as they goggled at the amazingly horizontal scene around us. Having lived all their lives Down Under, they saw this flatness as science-fiction come true; even to me it was a fantastic thing, after my absence of over a year. Thousands of square miles of decently level ground!  All bounded by a proper horizon! In quiet ecstasy I enjoyed the vistas.
    I had had too many adventures at too young an age, and though I did not go so far as to resolve never to have an adventure again, I was determined to insist upon some years of humdrum normality in order to digest what I had been through so far. Perhaps, after that period, I might allow myself some more risks, but not until I had stomached the last lot. And here was the ideal place in which to rest and digest and live…  Of course, interesting stuff would still happen to me, since I was an M.P. and a person of some symbolic importance, with connections to celebrities like Vic and General Faraliew, but I need not fear that this would bring real commitments, for I was now nothing but a prop, a piece of stage furniture – though privileged also to be alive, and therefore an unusually mobile prop, doubling as a spectator who was allowed up past the footlights and who did not have to pay for a ticket to watch the show.
    The two days’ flight from Neydio to the Pole gave Faraliew’s minions time to implement his promises to Vic. Proper docking facilities were prepared for the Grand Fleet. A place called Chirrer, a couple of miles from the edge of Savaluk, was done up in time. It had already been used as a centre for experimentation by Topland’s rather youthful aviation industry. When we got there, the staff received us with tremendous enthusiasm. Powered flight, freed from the jinx of ether-smashes, had recently become possible, it was the big topic of the hour, and our arrival showed it could be done on a grand scale. I happily merged into the celebrations which were organized to whisk us by open-top bus from Chirrer along the road to the big city.
    Savaluk welcomed us like New York City welcomed astronaut John Glenn in 1962. I don’t mean we had a tickertape parade – the streets were too wide and the buildings not tall or close enough for that. I simply mean that the place went wild. The sheer good nature of it all was stunning.
    I found myself in Eddum Park – the park I had sat in long ago when I first came to Savaluk, when I’d stayed at the Nistoom Hotel. I remembered the time when I’d seen picnickers seated on benches and throwing crumbs to the birds… but nobody was seated now. I was with a mixed throng of personnel from many of our ships. We had formed into an irregular line, snaking through the park and surrounded by a seething mass of applauding citizens as we wended our way towards a construction of planks where somebody was due to make a welcome speech.
    Nobody expected us to listen to all the speeches; the Toplanders simply had to let off steam, and they hardly minded who listened or not.
    I caught sight of a long white fur coat and then –
    “Cora!” I shouted.
    She wove her way towards me, trying in vain to make herself heard. Then we were hugging and it didn’t matter what she’d said. We clasped hands and wandered on amidst the great flow. After some minutes, during a quieter spell, she remarked:
    “S’pose life can never be the same again, after this!”
    “Yeah, they’ll invent a special name for the day…”
    “It’s been done. People are calling it Rejoin Day, already.”
    “Good-oh, that’ll echo nicely down the ages… and only the Last Day will trump it.”
    She blinked, as if briefly wondering why I had said that, but my own thoughts had moved on. I continued, “Where you staying, Cora?”
    “The Nistoom Hotel. And you?”
    “The town house of a certain Sir Orville and Lady Reaver-Sunch.”
    “Who? Can’t hear you,” said Cora as a band struck up a tune.
    I shouted to explain, “Lady R-S is General Faraliew’s sister… and I needed somewhere close to the Parliament Building… so…”
    “Are you looking forward to it?” she asked in my ear.
    “To what?”
    “Being in Parliament!”
    “Up to a point. I’ll leave the grandstanding to Uncle Vic and his followers; as for me, I’ll just….”
     “Rest on your laurels.”
    Ouch. It was my turn to blink, nonplussed. Why did she score hits like that?
    Yet why shouldn’t she? A fair hit should be allowable among friends. Or should I blame her for pinpointing the truth? No, she’d done it deftly and I could trust her not to spin it out into a sermon.
    And yet, and yet, I wished she had not expressed herself with such perfect accuracy.
    The noise around us had abated somewhat; we were between one brass-band zone and the next.
    “Cora, Cora…”
    “What?”
    “You really wallop the nail on the head, don’t you?”
    “Oh, sorry!”
    It was the reason why she could never be my girl – she had grown so good at knowing exactly what I was up to.
    I might, there and then, have cleared the air, perhaps with a quarrel, but also, perhaps, enabling us both to understand ourselves and each other better, progress to a maturer relationship and all that enlightened krunk – but to emote on that scale was out of the question for me just then.
    Knowing what I wanted from life, I had painted myself into a certain picture, and it was of the sunny Constable variety, not half-blind chaotic Turner, for didn’t the world, or the Fates, owe me a quiet canvas? And the Fates, anyhow, were supposed to be female, so they ought to appreciate my caution – a flattering tribute to their power.
    I squeezed her arm and said, “On second thoughts, Cora, I like you as you are, so don’t be sorry.”
    “Thank you!”
    “So I tell you what,” I continued: “you go on teasing, and I’ll go on stuffing cushions with my laurels.”

>>  8: Legislation